The Chicago Teachers Union. Is there an organization more worthy of scorn and ridicule? Hard to say.
I will say this. Coming from someone who owns a business that is determined essential infrastructure, I have little no sympathy for these walkouts illegal strikes.
When all of the teachers agree not to go to a grocery store, have their heating and air conditioning maintained, fly, or basically do anything not in their domicile, then we can talk.
Until then, all of us “essentials” who have been working through this thing from day one don’t really have any time for this temper tantrum.
I truly feel sorry for the parents of Chicago Public Schools kids who don’t know from day to day if their kids have school.
In the bigger picture, I feel sorry for those parents if they don’t have any choice but to send their kids to the Chicago Public Schools. But that is certainly grist for another post.
I understand that all Catholic schools are open and have been all along. Vouchers would solve this.
Honestly here is where people from sane states need to be stepping up and saying that in most places schools are completely back to normal. From reading the traditional media you’d think that perpetual masks and school closures are normal. Someone needs to take the initiative and showing kids having classes, school concerts, etc., without these stupid masks, and there’s no catastrophe. I guarantee you a lot of Chicago school parents are utterly terrified because all they’re hearing is hysterical fear-mongering.
From early 2020 in the developing C19 pilgrimage, I thought the real heroes were folks whom the media and the politicos gave no recognition: staff at grocery stores, hardware stores, business supply stores, non-government schools, restaurants, factories. Truckers, too, who got some but far too little recognition. These people, to the extent allowed by government, kept the rest of us alive. And that not figuratively, but actually.
The experience of these people also had one other obvious, astounding, utterly neglected feature. It provided an experimental test case evaluation of C19 response paradigms. This, along with the age related C19 data, lead to nearly polar opposite conclusions than those promulgated by politicians in power.
Rather than masking, jabbing, closing down, running in fear, these heroes simply kept on keeping on.
Mike, except perhaps in very limited situations, vouchers won’t happen. They take power from politicians.
@Roy – several industries should have the “hero” label on them, not just the medical folks like the media are known to do. My industry and others – as you so aptly put it – just kept on keeping on.
We’ve made it an especial effort – especially in the early days when the staff at our local grocery stores were slammed – to be pleasant and complimentary to the cashiers, stockers and baggers. I’d say that if anyone were in more danger of catching the Commie Crud than teachers, it would be grocery store personnel. And they have carried on, marvelously. Our local chain, HEB even gave them all a raise, early on.
@Dan-my oversight error. In writing comments one does not always put in what would if better at recall. Your work, especially when reflecting on some of your reports on the details of the HVAC industry and your own efforts specifically, was on my mind as among those qualifying as heroic.
I intentionally did *not* mention the medical field. Doctors, and especially nurses, do properly receive kudos for going above and beyond. But they also chose a profession where they know the risks, including time demands, and are also usually well compen$ated. Further, in terms of C19, to the extent such work, they have direct access to the best protections available (hazmat equipment and protocols rather than the ineffective jokes of masks and plastic shield for the cashier at grocery store checkout). Using that protection is, in itself, very stressful in terms of time, routine, and inherent acknowledgement of danger. But they had the equipment. Meanwhile, they themselves evaluated reality. In opposition to the mandates of management whose decrees diminished available staff, a significant percentage chose not to get jabbed. That despite not being able to do the job they trained for and wanted to do, despite loss of income, despite multiple levels of inconvenience. These are the health care profession heroes.
Look also at what TPTB are morphing towards.
https://notthebee.com/article/the-cdc-director-just-admitted-over-3-in-4-covid-deaths-were-people-who-had-at-least-four-comorbidities
@Roy – related – of all people the new gov of New York is finally asking if people are/were dying WITH covid or FROM covid. The question we should have all been asking a long time ago.
“the new gov of New York is finally asking if people are/were dying WITH covid or FROM covid”
1. NY as a state has to get back to normal or the exodus is going to get catastrophically bad. It’s bad already, but it can still get worse.
2. Democrats as a whole have to change the covid storyline somehow or they’re going to get obliterated in November. I predict that they will soon say that most covid deaths since ~mid 2021 are “with” not “from” in order to get Biden’s death count below Trump’s.
When I was at U of C I tutored at the local elementary school in Hyde Park. Half the time I showed up the teacher wasn’t even in the room. I don’t think Chicago kids are getting much of an education in the best of times.
I think the Democrat game plan to avoid blame for all their f**kups under Biden is to run on the “Insurrection.” I just finished Julie Kelly’s book, “January 6.” I just don’t think it will work.
What I’ve concluded is that the vast majority of the COVIDiocy has come out of the chattering classes, the laptop-lugging “world citizens” who think they’ve transcended nation and reality. The actual people down where work is done? Not so much; they can’t behave the way the laptoperati can, because they live a lot closer to the bone, and they have to actually produce, as opposed to talk about producing. You can’t Zoom meeting a construction site.
The thing that all these feckless felching morons seem to have forgotten is that they are, in the final analysis, a “luxury class”. There’s nothing there that they produce which is essential to society or its survival; we’d do very nicely without Keith Olbermann, and probably better, without his distraction being present.
The problem for all these idiots is that the “rest of us” are finally starting to cotton on to the fact that we’ve been lied to. You can get away with the three-card monte act for quite awhile, but once you’ve hit everyone in town, ain’t nobody going to be stopping by your tables, anymore. We’re nearly at that stage with the mass media and the rest of the parasite class; they’ve been playing us for fools for so long that it’s not even funny, but people are starting to notice. The really funny thing is, the only ones who aren’t noticing are the chattering classes themselves, and the rest of the people who want to emulate them. Everyone else is edging away, as witnessed by all the dropped ratings on their shows.
Right now, they’re very powerful, culturally speaking. What happens when nobody watches them? Nobody reads them? Nobody listens to them? What happens to the rich athletes and their enablers, when nobody wants to go watch their games that they play?
These people are only successes insofar as we make them successes; the general mass of the public quits paying attention to them, quits spending money on their “product”? What happens, then?
I think we may be about to find out. They’ve been overdrafted at the bank of credibility for most of my life, and I think the creditors are about to come looking for them. You might also know them as Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings”.
The CDC reports 3450 pediatric hospitalizations as of last week, 40% testing positive for COVID , “incidentally”, meaning that they were not admitted presenting COVID symptoms; none are in the ICU with COVID symptoms. Finally, perhaps in light of approaching midterms, they report that 75% of all COVID deaths had four or more comorbidities, and were in fact “very ill.” Naturally it took almost two years for this analysis to be made public
“Laptoperati” – thanks for that term, Kirk. Let’s make it a common term of reference, shall we?
Although I do have a lap-top, I don’t use it much. I do my serious work at home, on the PC in my work corner…
Your point regarding the cultural powers-that-be is well-made. I haven’t watched anything on a major network in a good long while. I might be tempted to watch Yellowstone, eventually, when it turns up on one of the streaming services that we already pay for. A news/commentary program or anything of that ilk – I have never watched The View (apparently known as The Spew in conservative circles). I only know of it through comment on sites of a conservative bent. I bailed on public radio sometime shortly after the election of B. Obama, since they seemed to be going all out in kneeling down before the Throne and giving him the big sloppy media kiss. I think the cultural Civil War split has already been done and dusted. We watch different shows, listen to different radio stations or podcasts, read different books, watch different movies on streaming services, are already favoring different social media providers. Hasn’t every movie but the latest Spiderman installment basically laid a big fat egg at the box office, the last couple of months?
There should be no sympathy at this point in time for anyone who has put their children into the government indoctrination, propaganda, and brainwashing system known as “public education”. Doing so is de facto child abuse.
There is no saving the federalized indoctrination system from itself. It is utterly and completely beyond hope. The collectivist, statist authoritarians of the left-wing of the UniParty co-opted the pedagogical system starting back in the early 1900’s (John Dewey, with the goal of turning out perfect socialist slaves) and have destroyed any chance of actually educating children with its complete takeover of the universities and colleges in the 1950’s. CRT is only the latest, most-current abomination to emanate from the once-liberal arts schools (liberal in its original meaning).
Take off, and nuke the (government indoctrination) site(s) from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
@JaimeRoberto, did you tutor at Murray?
@Carey, I don’t remember exactly which school it was, but looking at the map I think it was Brett Harte.
It’s not just the teachers in the blue state unions, I am dismayed at the lack of protests by the Pre-K educators, Pediatricians, and Educational psychologists. No heroes there. What has been done to children is monstrous.
If you are a parent or relative of a pre-school child who is in a masked day care or Pre-K setting, double down on the following: reading aloud, teaching nursery rhymes and alliteration (Peter Piper picked a peck….), clearly enunciating phonemes (the individual sounds composing a syllable or word), and as much interactive speech as possible.” I spy” games are useful, I see something that starts with “b”. You may or may not know this, but your word memory is stored in the brain as phonemes. Pre-K, educators, Pediatricians, and Educational psychologists, and other experts know this. This has become indisputable over the last 20+ years.
Children must see your facial expressions, the movement of your lips and mouth as you speak, as well as clearly hear the distinct sounds of our language. Think of how little difference there is between the sounds, “t” and “d”, or the other brother sound consonants. Nobody is born with the neurological pathways to read or write. Birth to Kindergarten is a crucial time for establishing and networking those areas of the brain required for these skills. An ounce of prevention…..
I have a nephew in Chicago with three kids. He is a single father now and Catholic school tuition is around $15,000 a year. He makes a good living but not that good. What he should do is get out of Chicago but selling a house in the city is no easy task.
My sympathy is greatly tempered by considering who is voting in the school board and other politicians in the first place? Our own may-he-burn-in-hell Governor Inslee was reelected by a yuuuuuge margin. Newsom survive the recall attempt. And on and on and on.
Inslee is a crook and a carpetbagger, but in the final analysis, he’s only the front man for the people who put him into power. I blame them, and the useless “Republicans” in this state. They’re all in on it, top to bottom, side to side.
Do note that there are still precisely zero prosecutions coming out of the whole CHAZ/CHOP fiasco, when they had clear video evidence of blatant violations of Referendum 1639. You might ask your representative why that is, and what they’re doing about it. Believe me, though… Let something happen where the people handing out weapons aren’t left-wing adjacent, and you’ll see prosecutions aplenty happening.
State’s corrupt. Always has been, likely always will be. Issue is, will we tolerate them doing what they are, and taking the rest of us down the toilet?
Yes Inslee is a front man for the people who put him into a position where he could run for governor… But still voters had a choice, and could have picked a fellow who had no connection with those powerful people. His main problem? He wasn’t merely from Eastern Washington, but from a very very small town in Eastern Washington. “Not out type, dear.”
Inslee was born and raised in Seattle; he only went to Selah once he became a lawyer and that’s where he got into politics. He lasted one term as the Representative from the 4th District because he was a lying sack of sh*t that told us he was going to do one thing in Congress, and then did the diametric opposite.
He is manifestly and emphatically not an “Eastsider”. That boy is a 206er, through and through. Carpetbagging piece of human trash–Bastard lied to my face about what he stood for and what he was going to do in Congress, and he’s the main reason why Doc Hastings even got into politics in the first place. Of course, we’re now gerrymandered into a majority Democratic district where I live, so it doesn’t matter who the hell I vote for, they’ll be a 206er and useless.
I’ve really got no use for any of that ilk, TBH. At some point, the contradictions are going to become too great, and there’s going to be a break between the west side and the east side of the state, which may come down to violence–Try to enforce that COVID camp crap over here, and I’m pretty sure that there will be trouble.
Of course, most if not all of our state-level Republicans are complicit in all of this–They know where their bread is buttered, the smarmy bastards. They keep running to lose, then coming back to their constituencies and claiming they could’ve won, really they could, they just need more money, next time. Then, next time, they run to lose again. The legal “challenges” to Gregoire’s election frauds were telling; they were meant to lose, too. The whole “Yeah, we just found these trays of ballots days after the election, forgotten in the trunks of someone’s car…” should have been thrown out on its ear, but nooooo… We’re not even going to fight that. Then, they rolled over for “vote by mail”, and they’ll never win an election in this state again. Intentionally. Even the Republican Secretaries of State, when we’ve had them, have been more likely to come down on the side of the Democrats than their own party, which is telling.
No, Washington State was founded in corruption by the corrupt, and that ain’t changing any time soon. There’s a reason they threw those bastards in Seattle out of the Oregon Territory when they went for statehood, and that had a lot to do with the criminal crap they constantly pulled, and got away with because they were so far from the centers of authority in Oregon. If you ever get a chance to listen to some of the oral history from the Indian tribes who had to deal with those assholes, you’ll find a different set of accounts than the ones enshrined in the history textbooks.
Yeah, sorry about that, but Inslee is as westside as you can get. His time in Selah is meaningless, in terms of culture or background. He is emphatically a prototypical 206er.