Almost every page of the blog refers to the school, which I think is normal ! We have also not used the school’s shield or symbol.

After our rebutting the legal notice, there has been no response for about a month now.

Can I sit back and relax, or is there something more I should do ? Thanks

The social reaction: here in Canada during the last labor action by the teachers striking teachers were subjected to ridicule and violence from parents and the general public. Private schools, home-schooling and “online” education are rising rapidly.

So take heart, they are going to get what’s coming to them. Send your kids to an online school, or a privare school if you can afford t.

Palin is set to release her book soon and it appears that the left is releasing one of the same title the following day. To me, this one truly appears as an attempt to confuse. Your thoughts?

See article and book covers here: http://tinyurl.com/ykgkucl

I have no problem with teachers who provide a valuable service being paid well for their efforts. But that is not the goal of the teachers’ unions, at all.

Bear in mind that the teachers’ unions do support merit pay so long as everyone gets it.

If you want to see what is wrong with both Detroit public schools and the economy and budget of the State of Michigan, just look reasonably closely at the AFT.

Maybe because they use extortion to get more compensation than they deserve and bankrupt companies like GM? Soon we’ll hear of cities and states filing bankruptcy because police and firemen retiring at 50 with $100,000 a year pensions.

We need a movement to forbid unions for government employees. It’s not like the government is greedy capitalists.

union leaders DO represent their members, at re job-related issues.

And this has what relation, exactly, to their non-job-related political excursions?

I hate those guys! My original idea was to use aftexposed.com to sell half-nudist cruises on which the back of the ship would be clothing-optional.

I’ll see your frustration and double it, rj. My prospective half-nudist cruise concept struck a rather more enlightened balance between passenger freedom and decorum (the clothing optionality would have applied not at the back of the ship, but to the backs of the passengers).

This visionary venture failed for – it still galls me – lack of sufficient backing.

Splunge: I have no problem with teachers who provide a valuable service being paid well for their efforts. But that is not the goal of the teachers’ unions, at all.

That would be pretty much the opposite of the unions’ goal.

No, I suspect it’s the other way around. One often becomes a “right-winger” or “libertarian” (to use your terms) because of a sustained nasty experience with certain unions.

Particularly teacher unions. At my daughter’s high school less than one half of the employees are actually teaching in a classroom on a daily basis, the average hourly wage is $45 (roughly double the US median, with astoundingly generous benefits and infinite job security) — while the science textbooks are over a decade old and the teacher who through seniority has the right of first refusal to teach AP US History spends his classroom hours telling amusing (to him) anecdotes of how he burned his draft card in ’71, so that she has to prepare for the AP exam at home, using books I purchase from the bookstore.

I have no problem with teachers who provide a valuable service being paid well for their efforts. But that is not the goal of the teachers’ unions, at all.

As to the first, I don’t see any “slathering knee-jerk hatred” of unions in the posts on this string. I’m not sure really what you mean (slathering?) but there isn’t evidence of hatred of working people, or even unions in general. If your point is about the entire VC blog, you’re on even weaker ground, as it’s classic little-guy plaintiffs such as those in Heller and Kelo whom this blog’s authors tend to support against powerful moneyed interests.

As to the second post, re “who votes in” the union leaders, it proves way too much. The little guys voted in Obama. We can’t criticize him? The little guys voted in Bush 43 (even you would concede the 2004 election, right?), and Reagan, and everyone else in the US government past and present. We can’t criticize Bush and Reagan? Remember, the moneyed blue state coastal elites are opposed to the Republicans (see the Goldman Sachs donation records). Anger at the red state “working man” is, in fact, a recent Democrat obsession — see the book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”

The point made by the left recently, and everyone over time — with respect to unions and politicians alike — is that for various public choice reasons the “leaders” can bad for their constituents. In addition, the point made about the teacher’s unions is that the unions are typically good for the average and poor teachers, and bad for the exceptional teachers and most students, and that “improving the working lives” of some teachers is not worth the cost of destroying working lives of others, or the educational lives of the far greater number of students.

I think you know this. How could you not? And if you do know this, why are you hurling “slathering” invective instead of engaging on the issues?

I think some libertarians and right-wingers reflexively hate “unions” and that attempts to say, “oh, they only hate the LEADERSHIP” are often (not always, but often) false. Who votes in the leaders? Who votes to be members of unions? Ordinary working class folks, or in this case, teachers.

Re the AFT, union officers at the local and state level have almost always spent a decent chunk of their careers as actual classsroom teachers. Same is often true for SEIU *officers* at the state and local level, although not as often for SEIU *organizers.*

It is a trope of both the far right and far left that union leaders somehow never really represent interests of the actual members. In some cases, that’s been true, I’ll grant you, but I’ve worked with unions for decades, and I think more often than not, union leaders DO represent their members, at re job-related issues.

You are correct that SEIU and teachers’ unions are major players in the Democratic party. That explains a lot of the antipathy by many right-wingers and/or Republicans to unions. Of course there is a chicken-and-egg question: the Republican party has been pretty anti-union, and that reached an all-time extreme level under G.W. Bush.

Anyway, I don’t want to hijack the thread to be about whether unions are Good or Bad. David Post was careful to separate his views on the IP issue — which this thread should be about — from his views on unions. I wish the commenters had done the same, but I’ll let this be my last word.

I always marvel at the slathering knee-jerk hatred some posters here have for groups of workers who try to improve their working lives by forming unions

Don’t you think its the union itself and its officers that are “hated”?

How many senior officals at AFT have ever been teachers, or if they were, how long has it been? How many SEIU officers or organizers change linens at hotels? Is the AFT’s General Counsel a “worker” as you use that term?

When unions engage in political activity, they are going to get opposition. The SEIU and the teacher unions are major, major players in the Democratic Party. Look at how many union officials were delegates to the last convention.

Do I have standing here?

[Pp. 127-135 of this book has a decent summary of the development and rather poor state of this area of supranational administrative law, from which I grabbed some of those examples. The trend appears to be getting worse, as most of the victories for "-sucks" sites were around 1999-2000.]