Jobs Program

My recent visits to Sacramento really crystallized for me how much power the unions have over the legislative process and how the unions are about saving any job at any cost. In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby takes a harsh look at how teachers unions differ from other unions.

If the UAW proposed that domestic automobile manufacturers be paid a federal subsidy for each new employee they hired, everyone would recognize its self-serving aims -- to swell the ranks of auto workers and increase its own membership.

But when teachers unions demand hefty increases in education spending or mandatory reductions in class size, they get a respectful hearing. Union officials are routinely quoted in the media and invited to testify before legislative committees. And yet their aims are no less self-serving and their interests no less mercenary than those of any other union.

Jacoby discusses how the media treats the teachers' unions as if they were neutral sources and concludes that: "Teachers unions, like all unions, want to make money and amass power. Those are the motives behind everything they say and do. They're not in business ''for the children.'' They're in business for themselves."