Quick Hits

David Plouffe is a Washington Rainmaker, so politically connected that it is likely that if he called President Obama on the back channel line, Obama will answer. David Plouffe is REALLY connected!

Uber has hired away from the administration, and just for good measure, Uber hired away a guy who sat in the inner circle of Rham Emanuel’s Chicago administration to help in Chicago, and just for good measure, Rudy Giuliani has been hired.

There is a great article in POITICO, and the analysis is that Uber has gone into cities, set up and dared anyone to stop them, claiming that as a new technology they should not be held to laws designed for ancient technologies.

The article notes that taxi cab owners and taxi driver unions have a presence in Sacramento politics developed over the years amounting to $3,500 for every $1 donated by Uber and LyFt. Obviously, Uber has decided on a political counterattack using name brand political operatives.

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I understand that teachers want to disassociate themselves from their unions. In truth it is difficult for a single teacher to have much effect when there are 300,000 teachers in various teacher unions. However, every union responds to large reform movements, and I know there is one in LA BUT IF THERE IS ONE HERE IT IS TINY.

On the local level, teacher unions are the major donor to the election of the majority of School Boards, making those elected members beholden to the local union in negotiations. Thereby the union is represented on both sides of the negotiable table!

FDR was right. Government employees should not be permitted to unionize!

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Every time I enter a debate with teachers (more often they idetify themselves as teachers, but they are also Union organizers or union exceutives) I here that theer and many reasons that Massachusetts students do better than us on rankings by the US Department of Educaation.

Yes, there are many variables: Massachusetts is at another longitude and longitude, they are in another time zone, they speak a different dialect of English, they have Plymouth Rock…

If you are going to blame non-English speakers, then let’s look at that. Administrators and teacher unions have always objected to identifying non-English Language Speakers, have always refused to segregate NSL speakers until they are proficient, and there are cases in recent history where in border communities in both California and Arizona where school districts where districts sent buses to the border to pick up Mexicans — all because schools get paid by occupied seats.

Teachers cannot support a Governor who INVITES ILLEGAL ALIENS to come to the state, objects to identifying them, will not segregate them, and then complain that our education suffers from Non-English Speaking students!

Talk about killing your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the Court because you are an orphan….