The elites in this country used to have shame, or, at least, you could shame them when they did the wrong thing. Those days are long-gone, as evidenced by the naked power grab of the Katrina recovery in New Orleans, where, shortly after the hurricane, the state legislature took over most of the city’s schools and voided the teacher’s union contract. How utterly shameless must a politician be to view an unprecedented natural disaster as an opportunity to bust the teacher’s union?
Where the union once numbered 6,000 members in 117 schools, it now has just 300 members at the four remaining public schools. The rest of the schools that survived the devastation of Katrina to reopen this week are doing so as charter schools. Many of the teachers serving in these schools are the same who taught there before the hurricane, returning to the city to help rebuild, only to see their rights and benefits stripped away.
I’m going down to New Orleans on Wednesday to help the union reorganize. I wonder what further shamelessness I can expect to encounter down there.