Go Ask Adam: Proposition 32 and the Downfall of California
Adam O'Neal | Oct 09, 2012 | Comments 6
California, much like Rick Ross, had everything going for it. Ross has a way with words and a voice of unparalleled depth and power. California has natural resources; a young, massive population and booming technology and entertainment sectors.
For California or Rick Ross to prosper, it would only take a team of semi-competent managers to oversee the translation of raw talent into success. Only utter morons could prevent either entity from achieving greatness.
Of course, both Ross and California gave all the power to utter morons.
The end result is that Rick Ross and the (formerly) great state of California are unmanageable, broken and bad for your health. It would be fun to list off Rick Ross’ problems (e.g., smoking a dozen blunts a day or getting into fights at award shows), but it would be more socially responsible to describe what’s wrong with California.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which guarantees pension payouts to public workers, has a $38.5 billion unfunded liability. Prison guards have a better economic outlook than Harvard graduates, per analysis from the Wall Street Journal. California ranks fourth in salary for teachers, yet 47th in per-pupil spending.
If something seems off, don’t worry. It gets much worse.
In our great state, a public elementary schoolteacher can blindfold a student, spoon feed the child semen and take photographs of the whole event — and then get paid $40,000 to quit his job. Google search “Mark Berndt $40,000” for more details regarding that triumph of organized labor.
A reasonable person might expect officials in a representative democracy to do something that would prevent an injustice of such epic proportions from happening again.
As it turns out, state Senator Alex Padilla is a reasonable person. A few months after Berndt was paid off, Sen. Padilla wrote a bill that would make it easier for schools to fire teachers accused of committing serious acts of depravity like giving drugs to minors or spoon feeding semen to blind-folded children.
Slam dunk, right? Say no to drugs! Tough on sexual predators! Protect our kids!
Bills like Padilla’s are what politicians dream of getting to vote for. But for some reason, the bill didn’t pass. And everyone who voted against it went silent.
Why didn’t the California legislature want to make it easier to fire teachers-turned-sexual predators?
Consider the following:
First, the California Teachers Association made over $200 million in political contributions from 2000 to 2010 to the mostly Democratic legislature. (For context, that’s what each of the “evil” Koch Brothers volunteered to donate on a national scale in 2012.)
Second, the California Teacher’s Union opposed Senator Padilla’s bill.
And then there’s Proposition 32, which, by the way, unions have spent over $30 million trying to defeat.
The proposition prevents groups like the California Teachers Association from forcing its members to give up part of their paycheck to defend child molesters.
I’m not going to tell you how to vote. I’m just going to tell you that the CTA defends child molesters — and Prop 32 will hit those depraved sociopaths where it hurts. The people might actually have a say in policy once again, too.
Or the state can just keep going on the Rick Ross path—nothing wrong with that, especially if you’re not afraid of gunfire.
Adam O’Neal is a third-year literary journalism major. Please send all hate mail to aoneal@uci.edu.
Filed Under: Opinion
I’m not apologizing for anything, but I want to say a few things in response to some of your criticism.
1. Teachers unions do not exist to protect child molesters. I never said that. But the CTA used its lobbying influence (paid for by mandatory deductions from teacher paychecks) to defeat a bill that would make it easier to fire child molesters. (I’ll concede that it would have been more diplomatic to say “has defended” instead of “defends.”)
This CNN report (http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/us/california-schools-crime-bill/index.html) is extremely telling and was the inspiration for this column. Before you to continue to blast me, try out some empathy for a change and read the story.
2. I never once attacked teachers in this column.* Teachers are usually good people that work hard. I like teachers but I don’t care for the CTA (see: the CNN report). I will admit that I care more about students than teachers–something that can’t be said about the CTA.
3. Although I commend you for having the courage to anonymously tell me to quit writing, I think I’m going to pass. Please, though, feel free to stop reading–I won’t mind.
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If any of you would like to have some coffee and discuss Prop 32, send me an e-mail and let’s make it happen. I’d love to know more about your views, really.
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*I did attack Mark Berndt. If you’d like to defend him, please go ahead.
Cheers!
I’m entertained by your call for empathy, while calling for the suppression of any collective workers’ voice in California politics. If you look at the concerns of CTA, they are fairly reasonable. The union was protesting the fact that the bill unfairly removed process rights for its workers. I would hope that most folks would accept the premise that teachers, like all people deserve to have an fair and impartial decision making process concerning disciplinary procedures. It also erases the significant failures on the part of the school system’s administration to fulfill the existing legal requirements around oversight. It’s notable that the senator refused to recognize or respond to the concerns of the teachers who would be affected by the law. The defense of the rights of teachers is not the defense of Mark Brandt, and the attempt to collapse the two is fallacious.
The truth is that Proposition 32 is an attack on the collective political voice of workers. It’s notable that public sector unions have played a significant role in fighting the fee increases that have plagued the California school system. Unions such as AFSCME, AFT, and UAW have been on the front lines of those fights with students and faculty. Taking away their voice also takes away a significant voice in defense of the public university, an affordable university that is accessible to all. They also protect the rights of those who work on those campuses, allowing them a voice in their workplace, a living wage, and health care.
While you are obviously entitled to your opinion, perhaps, you should consider having some sort of facts.
Teachers unions exist to protect child molesters? Using such radical examples is not only absurd, it’s morally corrupt.
Stop writing, Adam.
Switch to Entertainment or something, because this article is the worst one you’ve ever written, and, by the looks of your new column, it’ll just get worse.
Thanks to the US Supreme Court, there is no such thing as INVOLUNTARY participation in union political activity. As to your libel that teachers’ unions exist to protect child molesters, it is both unsupported by fact and beneath contempt.
Excellent essay. Also note that the California Teacher’s Association spends more on political candidates and lobbyists each year than Chevron, Philip Morris, the Western Petroleum Producers’ Association, and AT&T COMBINED.
O’Neal seems to anticipate hate mail, perhaps because he purposefully constructs a specious and dishonest argument associating teachers’ unions with child abuse and molestation. Fortunately, most readers of the New University will, as my own students, recognize a deeply flawed and ultimately irrelevant display of animus for organized democratic trade unionism substituting for an actual analysis. This and other attacks on Prop 32 seem to rely on demonizing and smearing teachers instead of fairly critiquing the overwhelming negative influence of organized corporate wealth on state politics as against the legitimate interests of, again, democratic organizations as AFT and CTA. Corporations are not people. Teachers are people, and mostly good, dedicated, successful and hard-working people and not criminals. Again, I suspect O’Neal knows this. An apology is in order.
For more on why to vote NO ON 32:
http://www.calaborfed.org/index.php/site/page/1252/