Attention Teachers: Winter Is Coming. But We're from Buffalo

Is anyone else thinking this is a real good time to get the so called national union leadership together and start working on a plan to deal with the next incarnation of the Friedrichs case? Not that I have one on my calendar or anything but do you really think the people that brought the last one along as far as they did have decided teacher's unions are simply too clever and well funded to be outmaneuvered? If Randi and Lily have sobered up from their Hillary binge yet I wonder who has the wherewithal to point them in the direction of being good scouts and getting prepared? Can Mikey Mulgrew do that for us? Can anyone? Do they do requests? It didn't impress me last time that either Randi or Lily had a fuck's clue what to do about the Supreme Court doing to public education what Citizens United did to campaign finance. Come to think of it the way they flung our endorsements at such a toxic and divisive candidate with little to no rank and file say so kind of showed me they don't have a fuck's clue about very much at all outside of their own little spheres of power. 

Fact is pedagogues we simply cannot afford to stand by and allow these 2 politicized insiders to keep picking losers with our money and our livelihood on the line. Did you read the email to Podesta where Weingarten called a nurse's union high and mighty and accused them of sanctimonious conduct? What did they do to earn such disdain from their fellow unionite? Oh they endorsed Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary for which Weingarten flexed her muscles and postured " We will go after them (NNU).  Just for kicks go take a look at their website. Then look at the AFT website and ask yourself who do you think are the cool kids and who are the weenies? Hint: the cool kids have zero pics of Randi Weingarten on theirs. 

About now whom you voted for and/or why you did as you did is pretty much last year's lesson plan book. You can relive the magic and recapture the rapture as they say in 12 step land or you can look ahead and get real about what we're in for. I will say -- and feel free to disagree here -- that I have less than zero tolerance for the gloom and doomers who seem to find some perverse thrill in spreading the message of hopelessness and despair about the coming months and years. Those faculty room shit fairies who find their G-Spot by trying to ruin everyone else's day with their dreary assed words of woe. We're screwed. We're effed. This is the worst of all possible worlds. Well thanks Scheissgloss but if you're done with your personal Orson Wells broadcast some of us have 10 or 20 years to go in this game and we are going to have to close ranks and get our collective act together in a hurry. The nattering nabobs of edu-negativity need not apply. 

I trust you've seen NYSED just did exactly what we knew they were going to do. They pretended to ask some questions then pretended to care about the answers they got. Then announced they were going to do exactly as they fucking well have been and thanks for playing, saps!  It's the same game as when they sent Lil John King out with Regentus Flatulentus Bennet and Dowager Empress Tisch to barnstorm the small folk in their wee burgs and hamlets. They even had the olympian sized metric balls to call it a "listening tour." And after a couple of nights of plugging their ears a la Pee Wee Herman saying I can't Heeeeaaaarrrrr youuuu! they finally got run in Poughkeepsie by pissed off parents and teachers who simply refused to give them any quarter. Remember King trying to shush the mob and being told to shut up and sit down? It was Theatre of the Nectarous. The degree of butthurt was so bad that Lil John King the current lame duck/pet lamb of D.C. cancelled the rest of the stops or tried to until Cuomo and Tisch took him out back of the woodshed and smacked the goatee off of him. Well the Q. and A. about high stakes testing and the "Listening Tour" put on by Kinger, Bennett and Tischy are isotopes of the same horseshit. We know the games NYSED plays and we've been able to play ours pretty damned effectively when you consider the funding and connections they have and we don't. 

I don't want to be Bluto giving the Deltas that famous speech about not giving up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor but if nobody else has it in them I will. There's talk of a Michelle Rhee Secretary of Education. There's more talk of Eva (Destruction) Moskowitz being installed. I thought I heard Ivanka had first dibs on the job unless maybe she's poised to make more selling her 60 Minutes appearance jewelry on E-bay than setting policy. Fact is this will not be a time for the faint or heart or the wobbly of spine. If the Buffalo News calls you to ask what you think about Phil Rumore's future please remind them they have worked against us at every turn and slanted their coverage to present BTF members and Phil in the worst possible light. Please tell them you have nothing to say to them and if they want to know about Phil's future plans maybe they should buy him a really expensive dinner and ask him their own damn selves. It's time to close ranks and demonstrate solidarity as a profession and a union. The people looking to end public education as we know it are certainly stepping up their game. We can do no less.