Romney on Teachers and Their Unions: Silence Them!

John Nichols on September 26, 2012

Mitt Romney has absolutely no problem with billionaires buying elections. In fact, had it not been for billionaires’ buying elections, he would not be the Republican nominee for president.

But Romney has a big, big problem with working people’s participating in the political process. Especially teachers.

America’s primary proponent of big money in politics now says that he wants to silence K-12 teachers who pool their resources in order to defend public education for kids whose parents might not be wealthy enough to pay the $39,000 a year it costs to send them to the elite Cranbrook Schools attended by young Willard Mitt.

“We simply can’t have a setting where the teachers unions are able to contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians and then those politicians, when elected, stand across from them at the bargaining table, supposedly to represent the interest of the kids. I think it’s a mistake,” the Republican nominee for president of 53 percent of the United States said during an appearance Tuesday with NBC’s Education Nation. “I think we’ve got to get the money out of the teachers unions going into campaigns. It’s the wrong way for us to go.”

That’s rich.

So rich in irony, in fact, that it could be the most hypocritical statement uttered by a candidate who has had no trouble scaling the heights of hypocrisy.

If Romney wanted to get money out of politics altogether and replace the current crisis with a system where election campaigns were publicly funded, his comments might be taken seriously. But that’s not the case. Romney just wants “reforms” that silence individuals and organizations that do not share his antipathy for public education.

Romney is troubled that unions such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association voice political opinions. But he is not troubled by Bain capitalists’ pooling their resources in Super PACs and buying election results.

Indeed, if it had not been for massive spending by the lavishly funded Romney Super PAC “Restore Our Future” on Republican primary season attack ads—which poured tens of millions of dollars into the nasty work of destroying more popular rivals for the nomination.

When he was facing a withering assault by “Restore Our Future” in Iowa, Gingrich said Romney would “buy the election if he could.”

Romney could. And he did.

Never in the history of American presidential elections has so weak and dysfunctional a candidate as Romney been able to hold his own as a presidential contender solely because of the money donated by very wealthy individuals and corporations to the agencies that seek to elect him.

Yet he now attacks teachers who are merely seeking to assure that—in the face of frequently ridiculous and consistently ill-informed media coverage, brutal attacks by so-called “think tanks” and neglect even by Democratic politicians—the voices of supporters of public education are heard when voters are considering the future of public education.

Romney is the most consistently and aggressively anti-union candidate ever to be nominated for the presidency by a major American political party. His disdain for organized labor has been consistently and aggressively stated. He’s an enthusiastic backer of moves to bust public sector unions, he supports so-called “right-to-work” laws as a tool states can use to bust private-sector unions and he wants to do away with guarantees that workers on construction projects are fairly compensated and able to negotiate to keep job sites safe. The Republican platform on which Romney and Paul Ryan are running goes so far as to call for the “enactment of a National Right-to-Work law,” which would effectively undo more the seventy-five years of labor laws in this country.

That’s extremism in the defense not of liberty but of plutocracy. But there are points where Romney goes beyond extremism.

When it comes to the role of teacher unions, the Republican nominee’s royalist tendencies come to the fore. Unable to recognize the absolute absurdity of a nominee who would not be a nominee were it not for the support he has received from billionaires and millionaires seeking to prevent kindergarten teachers from pooling small donations to defend their schools, his message is the modern-day equivalent of the monarch of old sneering at the rabble and ordering his minions, Silence them!

Some Republicans do support unions… when a labor lockout gets in the way of their football game, that is. Check out Dave Zirin’s take on Scott Walker and the NFL.

Editorial: Class warfare comes to Monday Night Football

Why union labor is a good idea.

Even Gov. Scott Walker, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are supporting the referees' union is this fight.  They won't say it like that, but they know we need the experienced union refs back in the game.  A additional problem is the fact that the health and safety of  NFL football players is in peril as long as the scab refs are on the field.
 
St. Louis Post Dispatch
September 25, 2012By the Editorial Board

We interrupt the presidential campaign, every other political campaign, the looming "fiscal cliff," Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the rollout of the iPhone5 to note that on Tuesday, the biggest story in America was that the Green Bay Packers lost a "Monday Night Football" game to the Seattle Seahawks because a replacement official blew a call.

Oh, the humanity.

There's actually a lot to like in this story, unless you're a Packers fan and/or you had some of the $250 million reportedly bet on the Packers Monday night. Wisconsin's union-busting Gov. Scott Walker took to his Twitter account Tuesday morning to demand the return of locked-out union referees.

Oh, the irony.

Then there's the unfortunate Lance Easley, a vice president of small business banking at Bank of America in Santa Maria, Calif. In his spare time, Mr. Easley referees junior college and high school football and basketball. When the NFL locked out its officials this summer, Mr. Easley decided to move up in class. He was the side judge who blew the call Monday night.

Bankers don't cause all of the nation's problems. Just this one. And a few others.

The 121 members of the National Football League Referees Association have been locked out since their collective bargaining agreement expired this year. They're part-timers who are paid very well — beginning at about $70,000 for 20 weekends of work. Senior officials make well into six figures.

Money isn't the big issue, though. As with firefighters, cops and teachers, the big issue is pensions.

Unlike public employees, the refs' employer, thanks to a socialistic business model that divides TV revenue, has lots and lots of money. The NFL has been paying into a "defined benefit" pension plan for the refs since 1974. At current levels, a referee who is fully vested will receive an six-figure pension when he retires.

But the league wants to do away with pensions and go to a the less expensive (for the owners) 401(k) plan. As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put it, "About 10 percent of the country has [a defined benefit plan]. Yours truly doesn't have that."

Of course, his truly makes $10 million a year running the league office, which, by the way is organized as a not-for-profit corporation, because he has valuable skills that referees don't.

You turn on "Monday Night Football," and suddenly class warfare breaks out. At least maybe this way people will pay attention.