Quote without attribution

Who said "Slavery's chains are forged in the furnace of envy"? I've been using that but can't find an attribution...

At least the UAW is paid to work poorly

Hooray! Another victory for the glorious proletarian revolution, keeping the capitalist oppressors’ foot off our necks. All hail our brave and industrious comrades in the teachers’ unions! Look how they make all our lives better – especially our most precious resource, the future tax- and dues-payers of the great collective (what the free-thinking non-union aristocrats still condescendingly call “children”):

DA: NYC Teacher Had 4th-Graders Fight In Class
[Link to cbs story]

A teacher at a New York City public school has been charged with forcing his fourth graders to fight in the classroom. The allegations are startling; that a fourth grade teacher at PS 65 in Queens not only condoned, but encouraged two boys to turn his classroom into their very own private "fight club." …

Prosecutors say Gullotta [the teacher] then instructed the boys to lie to the school nurse about what happened….

Of course, the part about this being good for the children is bullshit. Thanks to the union, this guy can’t be fired, even though he was arrested. He’s still on the public payroll, as are many other non-fireable teachers. Sure, deep down, in the slimy dungeon core of the educational establishment there’s some level of normal thought where at least they pull them out of the classroom, but hey – you get to keep paying your fair share to keep them employed doing nothing! I was going to just link to the article about NYC spending $53 million to keep them plugged into the union machine, but instead why don’t you Google “paid not to teach” and see how many of these stories come up… NATIONWIDE!

Guess what? The real travesty is not just there’s a 1930s-style industrial union thieving from the taxpayers, fighting every single reform, and corrupting state and municipal politics… it’s that there are actually great teachers in the public schools, people who can change kids’ lives (for the better, not like the example above), and they’re trapped in the teamsters. They can’t be promoted or rewarded, nor can they protect our children by excelling at their jobs and having the crappy teachers wash out of the system. Or even the ones running a fight club. Such a system encourages, enforces, and engrains mediocrity. But hey, pay your dues.

Oh, and for the record I have many friends who are teachers in public schools. They of course belong to the trade unions. I don’t have any friends who are poor or mediocre teachers. If any of them read this and consider it an attack on them, or their profession, I encourage them to read this again; my beef, like almost everyone else in the private sector, is not with teachers but the unions.