Speaking Of Public School Teachers and the NEA.

If you are a teacher in a public school or know someone who teaches in a public school you just have to read this article from today's Wall Street Journal. It's about the National Education Association (NEA) the largest teacher union in the country. For years the NEA fought hard to prevent the implementation of a rule that would require them to make the records of their political contributions public. Well they have lost their battle, and now we know why they didn’t want to disclose this information. You can go to this web site to get all of the details. But wait! The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has saved you the trouble. Here are some of the details:

The NEA gave away more than $65 million dollars last year, virtually all of it to leftist, liberal groups. We're talking groups like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, who accused our troops of prisoner abuse and compared the treatment of terrorist prisoners to a Soviet gulag, in case you forgot who they were. There was also a donation of $15,000 (pocket change to the NEA) to the Human Rights Campaign, this group, you may remember, lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights". How special. The Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000. There was also money spent to fight charter schools in Florida. How dare Florida try to improve the quality of education through the use of charter schools? The NEA also spent money trying to "redirect Florida politics in a more progressive, Democratic direction."

Oh ... and then there's this. The WSJ article also reminds us of just what these union officials earn a year. The NEA has about 600 employees. Their payroll is $58 million. Get out the old calculator folks. That makes the average NEA salary about $96,670 a year. How many teachers make this much? Not many. The average teacher salary is roughly $48,000 a year, give or take some. Reg Weaver, the president of the NEA, makes $439,000 a year. Over one-half of the NEA employees make over $100,000 a year.

So are you disgusted by all of this yet? Sure you are. And you can rest assured that there are thousands of government school teachers out there who will be just as outraged as you when they learn how their dues money is being spent. But will anybody actually do anything about it? That is the real question.