(Guest post by Greg Forster)
The latest item making the rounds is an e-mail from Organizing for America, the old Obama campaign appendage now grafted into the DNC. A teacher from Ambler, Pa. pleads that if we don’t shovel a huge chunk of money into the EduJobs rathole, it’s theoretically possible that someone “like me” could potentially lose a job.
With that special blend of entitlement mentality and self-righteousness only the blob has mastered, she solemnly intones:
I’m not a special interest. I’m a teacher.
(Portentious boldface in original.)
Jim Geraghty would like you to be aware of the numbers featured above – this teacher’s school district, Wissahickon, has an average salary almost half again as high as the state average salary. And that’s before we look at benefits, which are much richer for teachers than in the private sector. Geraghty remarks:
When the local board of education spends money at a rate that the local tax base cannot afford, those teachers who refuse to adjust their salaries to reality do start to look like a special interest.
Mike Petrilli hammers the point home:
Your job could easily be saved if your union leaders were willing to accept some modest concessions. (Even a salary freeze might do the trick.) But when teachers demand job protections, generous benefits, and salary increases in the midst of a recession…well, that’s expecting special treatment, indeed.
Not to mention JPGB’s own Matt Ladner, commenting on the instantly-famous chart comparing private sector job destruction in the current crisis to government job protection:
The yellow line just put another $10 billion on the credit card of the red line. Let them eat cake!
Sometimes I almost feel sorry for these people.
Posted by Greg Forster 
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