Watch: Teachers Union Boss Has Meltdown on the Steps of SCOTUS Over Student Debt Bailout
As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the legality of the Biden administration’s decree forgiving student loan debt, you might want to know what teachers union president Randi Weingarten said Tuesday in front of the court’s building.
“THE STUDENT LOAN LENDERS CHALLENGE IT! THAT IS NOT RIGHT! THAT IS NOT FAIR! AND THAT IS WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING AS WELL WHEN WE SAY CANCEL STUDENT DEBT!
Oookay. Sorry to put it in all capital letters, but that’s how Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, came across.
See for yourself in the video below. And if you’re a medical professional, please try to not be alarmed by thinking of the two words “blood pressure” that might distract you from what Weingarten was saying.
Before the Supreme Court building, Weingarten shouted: “And frankly – and this is what really pisses me off – during the pandemic, we understood that small businesses were hurting. And we helped them! And it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it!”
“Big businesses were hurting! And we helped them! And it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it,” she continued.
“All of a sudden, when it’s about our students – they challenge it! The corporations challenge it! The student loan lenders challenge it! That is not right! That is not fair! And that is what we are fighting as well when we say cancel student debt!”
Note the word “fair.” What’s not fair? People obligated themselves to loans and they became obligated to repay them. But Joe Biden, waving his magic presidential wand, declared large portions of the loans gone.
Poof!
That’s what the Supreme Court is trying to untangle. After all, Congress wasn’t involved. Just the Biden administration and its scheme to buy votes, er, improve education by forgiving those nasty student loans.
True, people got themselves deep in debt, and, college degree in hand, their new career as a Starbucks barista might present a problem in paying it back.
But they signed the contract; they incurred the debt. Welcome to adulthood.
Admittedly, the terms of the contracts are draconian.
And colleges and universities pushed access to the funny money because they knew ultimately where it would end up — paying for all those highly credentialed administrators keeping students happy, promoting diversity and, of course, recruiting more money.
But it’s not fair, Randi Weingarten argued.
Without addressing the perverseness of the overall system, that’s not the point.
What is unfair is forcing individuals of all ages who never took out student loans to subsidize those who did.
What is unfair is requiring the same of the people who made it a priority to retire their student debts, sometimes at great sacrifice. I include in that a member of my family, who not only tightened his belt to pay off his modest student debt but at the same time also worked to pay off his wife’s substantial student loans.
Weingarten’s claim of unfairness does not resonate with a lot of people.
While she will bring up the topic of students while yelling in front of the Supreme Court, always remember where, as a union president, her real interests are.
Her professional biography on the website of the 1.7-million-member AFT speaks little about educating students.
Rather, there are “solutions” for students, federal investments in higher education for “student supports” and a campaign to allow “all students to attend regardless of ability to pay.”
And there are all the usual leftist buzzwords and phrases such as “justice,” “voice in our democracy,” “healthcare as a right,” “the right to vote and civil rights” and “a vibrant democracy.”
Of course, Weingarten’s professional bio promotes that great driver of superior teaching and learning: unionization. And it’s more than teacher-student ratios, pay or working conditions contained in that unionization.
Rather, it says, “The AFT and its members advance these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through members’ work — we care, fight, show up and vote.”
In other words, don’t mess with us.
Oh, and her biography speaks of the Trump administration’s “racist policies and attacks on facts and democracy.”
Whatever.
This week in Arkansas, where I live, the state House is considering a serious public school reform bill recently passed by the Senate and driven by our new governor, former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
It’s an amazing effort at providing school choice, higher pay for new teachers and general reform.
Not surprisingly, the Arkansas education establishment — people like Weingarten – opposes it.
In Florida, the union boss has been busy fighting reforms by that state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis, who has worked to remove inappropriate LGBT material from libraries accessible to children as young as 10, has defended himself against accusations of “book banning.”
“They’ve tried to create in Florida a narrative,” he said in a speech last week. “It’s basically a book ban hoax. It’s a hoax, what they’re doing.
“And they’re trying to say that because we have parental rights and because we have curriculum transparency — if you have a book that has hardcore pornography in the library that 10-year-olds can access, a parent objects to that, that does not satisfy Florida standards.
“It should not be in the library with those young kids, and I think 99 percent of parents agree with that.”
Q: Did Fla teachers complain of book banning before DeSantis started his “anti woke” crusade? Did we see pictures of tarps over classroom libraries? Were teachers threatened with felonies if they used the “wrong” book?
A: No.
Now that he is being exposed. Now it’s a hoax. https://t.co/8kHGdsazjB
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇦🇺🇸💪🏿👩🎓 (@rweingarten) February 25, 2023
In response, Weingarten asked on Twitter: “Did Fla teachers complain of book banning before DeSantis started his ‘anti woke’ crusade? Did we see pictures of tarps over classroom libraries? Were teachers threatened with felonies if they used the ‘wrong’ book?
“No. Now that he is being exposed. Now it’s a hoax.”
And so it goes.
Parents, employers, some government officials and others know what’s going on.
It’s difficult to take seriously the words of Weingarten and her union when we see illiterate students and graduates, skills in decline and the U.S. falling behind brutal competition from other nations.
Indeed, that might be something to yell about.
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