Henry Ford rolls over

Barack Obama has now unveiled the next iteration of America's new industrial policy, and if you own shares of Ford Motor Company you have every right to be angry. The bailout of GM and Chrysler and the intrusion of the White House on their corporate governance is now part of a program to pick the winners and losers in the U.S. auto industry. The President has made it clear that GM will not fail due to ineptitude, decrepitude or attitude, and the full faith and credit (such as it is) of the United States has now interceded to ensure it. The market no longer is working, because your government wants the UAW to have jobs, and is willing to use your tax dollars to fund them. And, of course, it wants American auto companies to build small "green" cars, and now that it controls the behemoth that is General Motors, you can bet that they will -- whether you want to buy them or not. And what of Ford Motor Company? The company that brought you the modern automobile industry has, of course, struggled over the past year in a tough market. But due to superior products and better management, Ford has managed to resist the need for tax payer dollars. In a true market, Ford would now be enjoying the fruits of its effort by gaining on GM and Chrysler -- both of which would now be in bankruptcy. The company's employees and shareholders would now be benefiting from the demise of two of its main competitors and be rewarded for its ability to negotiate the difficult waters of CAFE standards and tough credit by surviving in the short-run and and expanding in the long-run. A great American success story, right?

Only not in Obama's America -- where it is more important to reward vested interests than it is those who play by the rules and do a good job. Why should Ford be in a position of watching its two primary domestic competitors receive government aid that will make them leaner and more effective competitors? How is that fair? What is the incentive for doing a good job and not needing a hand out if it puts you at a strategic disadvantage? This is the ultimate moral hazard -- that it is actually better to fail than to succeed, because the government will be there to save you. No matter what.

And don't be mislead. The taxpayer is now on the hook for saving GM and Chrysler. And if you work at Ford or own Ford stock -- tough luck. You will have to sit back and watch as the government puts is ample resources into making your competitors stronger. You lose for winning. What an ironic place to be for the company that Henry Ford built -- the man that created the foundation for mass production, who developed the Model T and established the roots of the modern transportation industry. A man built to compete, with a legacy that is now threatened by the ultimate in non-competitive forces.

One thing you can be sure of: somewhere in his grave in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit, Henry Ford is rolling over.

Teacher's Desk: Unions & Charters

In New York the teachers union wants to organize a couple of KIPP charter schools. That couldn't be done in Denver without concessions by the local union, since every charter school employee is an “at will” employee as is written into all charter contracts with school districts or the state. No doubt NYC union teachers were severely disturbed with the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) required work week, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, the teachers are fairly compensated for the longer hours. Most teachers at charter schools would be considered probationary teachers at a district school. Why? Most of these teachers either do not have an initial license, professional license or have less than three years service at their schools. In Colorado, a probationary teacher is also an “at will” employee. The teacher’s contract can be non-renewed and the district does not need to give a reason. The teacher is then banned from working at any school in the district. I learned about this law the hard way when I worked at a Denver district high school. I was nearing the end of my last probationary year, when the interim principal who had only been in that position for three weeks and had previously retired from an elementary school assistant superintendent position, popped into my classroom, observed my instruction for only five minutes and then asked to speak with me after school. According to Colorado law, he didn’t need to step foot in my class. It was a crazy class that day with everyone and their father popping their heads in needing something. After a slow start, and after the interim principal’s departure, I had one of my better instructionally executed classes on finding the area of a circle.

I used my right to grieve and won my grievance as he did not use evaluative measures spelled out in the Denver Classroom Teachers’ Association’s contract with Denver Public Schools. Those evaluative measures are best practices and are used at every school I’ve worked with. Teachers are asked what instructional and academic goals they have for themselves that school year. The evaluating principal (sometimes it is an assistant principal) sets up an appointment to observe, observes, speaks to the teacher about what he saw, does a few “walk-throughs” during the course of year, pops in and observes another class, speaks to the teacher about what he saw, fills out an evaluation form and again speaks with the teacher. Sometimes the evaluating principal will also speak with colleagues and/or survey students so he has a well-rounded picture of the teacher’s work ethic and instructional ability. I had good evaluations before this “school leader’s” decision to derail my career and since. I won the battle, but because of Colorado’s probationary teacher law, I lost the war---so I thought.

The community, my colleagues, and my students were mortified, as was I, when we heard of my non-renewal, and both students and colleagues tried to speak with the interim principal to no avail. The students were told it was “none of your business.” The students and parents threw me a terrific going-away party with students pitching in their own cash on a massive fifty dollar cake.

I checked with my colleagues the following year and discovered the interim principal had hired an African-American friend, like himself, as my replacement.

Poor school leadership practices are why teachers’ unions flourish and why there is tremendous growth in the charter school movement. I applied for positions to charter schools close to my home and where I had previous relationships because they have their own hiring practices and do not participate in the non-renewal ban. Not only was I treated very well, but they also gave me recognition for a job well done. How often do any of us receive that!

Lies only prove worth of 47 & 49

Politicians and campaigns are masters of "spin" – selectively presenting facts in a way that leads the target audience to believe what the spin doctors want them to believe. Like it or not, spin is unavoidable because everyone has a unique perspective, formed by their own experiences and beliefs.

But there's spin, and then there are lies — outright, premeditated, willful lies that have no basis whatsoever in truth.

That's the campaign strategy now being employed by labor union bosses who are, ironically, fighting against the rights of workers by opposing Amendments 47 and 49.

Amendment 47 (also called "right to work") simply guarantees that an employee cannot be required to join a union or pay union dues in order to get or keep a job. It neither encourages nor discourages union membership, but simply protects the right of every working man and woman to make that choice without coercion from labor union bosses or pressure from management.

Those principles defend freedom for all workers, plain and simple. Amendment 49 ("ethical standards") prohibits state and local governments from intercepting a worker's paycheck to collect dues or contributions for unions, lobbyists or any other special interest. It simply requires all interest groups to ask supporters directly for their contribution, rather than use government payroll systems as their collection agency. Groups from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club rely on voluntary contributions, so why can't labor unions and other special interests.

To hear the outrageous lies of labor union bosses, you'd think these amendments would catapult Colorado back to the days of dirt roads, oil lanterns and outhouses.

An unbelievable commercial paid for by Protect Colorado's Future shows a fireman claiming these amendments would "keep (public workers) from speaking out on public safety" and "silence the voice of firefighters, teachers and nurses."

Strangely, they never identify the language that repeals the First Amendment, but maybe union lawyers have special glasses that reveal the super-secret code when viewed in black light.

Another hyperventilation by the same disreputable outfit warns that these amendments "put Colorado's economy at risk" and suggests that passing them would "let special interests do to Colorado what they did to Wall Street."

The only thing these amendments put "at risk" are the cushy accommodations reserved for labor bosses and their leverage to crack heads of workers who don't join the union.

Then there's the whopper by the "Coloradans for Middle Class Relief" that claims "a few rich owners" – "Big Bad Wolf" was already taken — want to pass these amendments so they can "cut wages and reduce health care for their employees."

What stops those greedy owners from treating their employees like indentured servants today? The good old profit motive, of course. It's tough to sell goods and services without productive, properly compensated employees.

The Denver Post called the union attacks dishonest, noting that Amendment 47 "does not in any way prevent unions from organizing and collecting dues from willing employees." The Post also pointed out that the firefighter in the commercial works in a department where union membership is voluntary.

Why then are unions crying wolf and destroying what remains of their own tattered credibility?` `

Because when workers are allowed to choose for themselves, 92% of private sector workers and 64% of government workers decide against union membership.

As this campaign demonstrates, union leaders don't give a darn about protecting the little guy. They want to force the little guy to pay union dues to enhance their own political power, and they are more than willing to play dirty.

Mark Hillman served as Senate Majority Leader and State Treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.

The real Ayers threat

I've been researching a piece on the Ayers connection, so was glad when Palin started focusing on Obama's relationship with this "unrepentant domestic terrorist", and have, like many in the conservative blogosphere focused my own blog often on Obama's work with Ayers at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I'm glad that the mainstream media is finally being forced into addressing the issue -- even as they continue to whitewash the issue in their determination to make Obama president. But in looking deeper into the Ayers connection, I realize that part of the story has not been effectively told -- and that is the practical impact that Ayers will have on the education policy of an Obama presidency. The most significant aspect is a focus on "education debt" -- essentially paying reparations to minorities for the "history of oppression" perpetrated by Whites. This is a cornerstone of Bill Ayers' education reform program, and is also a key element in the race-based education philosophy of Linda Darling-Hammond -- a Professor of Education at Stanford, Obama's primary education adviser and prospective Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.

Here's part of what I found -- excerpted from my piece entitled "Reading, Writing and Radicalism": The radical orientation of Ayers as an “educational reformist” should be well known, as he has written more than a dozen books on the subject and has been a leading educational scholar and advisor in Chicago for the past two decades. Ayers was recently elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association -- the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. His work with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has been highly emphasized by the Obama campaign as a form of “legitimization”, and Daley was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying “People make mistakes. You judge people by their whole life”. Daley’s view is likely based on a politician’s appreciation for Ayers’ role in doling out $100 million in grants within the city during the 1990s rather than any deep analysis of Ayers’ political or educational views – none of which have changed since the 1960s. Ayers continues to describe himself as a “radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist”, and has written that he believes “teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression”. He sees teaching as a natural extension of the quest for social justice – which he feels requires a revolution in the capitalist economic, political and education system. In a speech given in November, 2006 before Hugo Chavez and the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, Ayers said the following:

As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion! It is in this context that the Obama-Ayers relationship should be viewed. While the Ayers’ terrorist connections are significant retrospectively, his education goals that were actively endorsed and sponsored by Barack Obama are prospectively even more important.

And this is where things get interesting. While it is obvious that Ayers will not have a formal role in an Obama administration, it is equally obvious that Obama’s experience with Ayers and the CAC will animate his education policy as president. The Obama Campaign’s primary education adviser is Linda Darling-Hammond, a Professor of Education at Stanford University, and well-known expert in school design and teacher training. Hammond has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education in an Obama administration, has been a vocal supporter of traditional teacher certification programs, current union control of public education and opposes charter school programs. She also has been a vocal critic of the implementation of the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. More importantly, she is an advocate of a race-based paradigm for education that fully embraces the concept of “education debt” – a form of reparations for generations of racial bias perpetrated by White America. Hammond argued forcefully last year in the liberal magazine The Nation, for example, the importance of “pay(ing) off the educational debt to disadvantaged students that has accrued over centuries of unequal access to quality education.” The concept of education debt is an idea laid out in 2006 by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then-president of the American Education Research Association and actively supported by Ayers. Ayers wrote himself in January of 2008 on his website the following:

The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white…the monster in the room: white supremacy. Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans…transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up. Further, the long-standing professional relationship between Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings – and thus Barack Obama -- is well established. As legal analyst Steve Diamond writes at No Quarter, a chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called “A Light in Dark Times”. In addition, a chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called “Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader”. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book “To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher” and Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of “City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row” just published. All have been consistent in support of a radical education reform program.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s piece in The Nation is an excellent illumination of what may underscore education policy under a President Obama. She makes abundantly clear that she supports the notion of education reparations and that this should be paid in part by a wholesale revamping of NCLB to focus on more on investment and less on testing – modifications that the Obama Campaign’s education platform also supports . She calls for a “New paradigm for national education policy…guided by dual commitments to support meaningful learning on the part of students, teachers and schools; and to pay off the educational debt, making it possible for all students to benefit from more productive schools.” This is education code-speak for vast sums of money to be poured into minority schools and community programs to atone for past sins.

The Ayers-Hammond approach to education debt has been essentially supported by Barack Obama on the campaign trail. In fact, Obama has spoken repeatedly about the need for reparations to make amends for the past oppression of minorities. On “Meet the Press” in July he said:

The biggest problem that we have in terms of race relations, I think, is dealing with the legacy of past discrimination which has resulted in extreme disparities in terms of poverty, in terms of wealth and in terms of income…And that involves investing in early childhood education, fixing the schools in those communities, being willing to work in terms of job retraining. And those are serious investments.Obama’s education platform as outlined at his campaign website is full of community-focused programs that will be ripe targets for massive “reparation” investments in a reformulated NCLB. His K-12 Education Fact Sheet discusses at length the expansion of Head Start programs, universal preschool and includes “enlisting parents and communities to support teaching and learning”, including “school-family contracts” and a massive school redesign project that includes increased funding for teacher recruitment and retention. It is a blueprint taken almost whole-cloth from one written by Darling-Hammond that calls for a “Marshall Plan” for teaching and the institution of a more authoritarian structure for driving curriculum development, testing and investment. Like Ayers’ own admiration of Venezuela’s centralized educational dictatorship, Darling-Hammond has expressed support for countries such as Singapore that have instituted highly structured systems that are the antithesis of school choice – signaling what will certainly be a strong emphasis on the unionized public education system in the U.S. under an Obama administration.

The real impact of the Obama-Ayers relationship is not in Ayers’ radical past but rather in his radical present. The influence that Ayers’ has had on Obama’s view of education during his time at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge can be seen in his appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as his primary education advisor, and signals what is certain to be radical reform at the core of Obama’s education policy as president. This will include more investment into the current public school monopoly at the expense of free market solutions like vouchers and charter schools, and a more aggressive social change agenda that will result in greater control by unions and community organizations – all orthodox elements of the William Ayers radical agenda.

Business chumps fund their opponents

Colorado's so-called "business leaders" just don't get it but, oh boy, are they about to. Shrewd in making deals in their own respective realms, the power brokers who agreed to pay labor union bosses $3 million in exchange for withdrawing four job-killing ballot initiatives have been played for suckers. Politics is a different ballgame. These business executives consented to an extortion racket and will pay the price for years to come.

It is understandable that business leaders didn't want to risk passage of even one of these four destructive initiatives. But the peace they have purchased is only temporary.

Anyone who still believes that businesses are philosophically conservative should take note. CEOs are more pragmatic than ideological, especially in big business. Their primary interest is building a profitable enterprise and they disdain uncertainty. From that perspective, negotiating a truce seems like a better plan than trying to score a big win over labor at the risk of suffering a costly loss.

However, trading something tangible for something intangible is always a lousy deal. Years ago, Israel learned that trading land for peace with the Palestinians doesn't work. Peace is a promise that can be rescinded at any time while land can be reclaimed only with force.

The business participants in these negotiations made an even worse bargain, trading cash for peace. By this time next month, labor bosses will have spent the $3 million. Business will then be out $3 million and left only to trust labor's good will for as long as it lasts.

These are many of the same business types who bought the myth of Bill Ritter as a pro-business Democrat, only to watch him unionize state workers and raise property taxes. About the only business benefiting from Ritter's reign are trial lawyers and electric utilities - which might well explain Xcel Energy's participation in this newest trade-off.

Now, thanks to the gullible generosity of these business leaders, labor - which had already raised $12 million for this election - can re-direct much of its cash to electing more labor union puppets and trial lawyer lackeys to the state legislature where they can haunt business interests for years.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Colorado State University professor Ray Hogler sees the big picture clearly, noting that "labor will now enjoy an even bigger financial advantage" and can "divert some of their campaign cash to help Democratic allies."

How this obvious strategy escapes business executives who have lived through the hostile legislative climate of the past two years is utterly inexplicable.

If labor is successful in defeating Amendments 47 (right to work) and 49 (ethical standards), its agenda will be bolstered by an apparent voter mandate.

Labor's iron grip over the legislature will be strengthened by electing more of its own and by more political clout to intimidate the few remaining business-friendly Democrats and any Republican silly enough to think that labor will ever back him or her against a Democrat.

Nothing prevents labor bosses from trotting out these same anti-business initiatives at any time in the future to extract another payoff from business.

Business leaders just purchased the ammunition for their own execution. Labor bosses and Democrat activists - like shrewd negotiator Ted Trimpa who helped engineer this deal and just happens to be an advisor to Democrat financier Tim Gill - will be laughing all the way to the ballot box.

Labor union leaders understand strength and toughness. Unfortunately, many Colorado's self-proclaimed business leaders have responded with weakness and timidity. In so doing, they have thrown to the wolves the handful of gutsy business leaders who truly understand labor's political strategy and therefore backed Amendments 47 and 49.

Labor will continue its racket of extortion and intimidation until business executives grow tired of being beaten with their own hammer or until so few of them remain that their opinion doesn't matter.