Is NEA's Reg Weaver a millionaire through his pay, pension?
NEA Boss Reg Weaver: Is he A Millionaire Through the Empire's Bribes
By Rich Gibson
Reg Weaver was the president of the National Education Association for
two terms. During that time, school workers suffered setback after
setback while NEA tops not only bargained bad contracts, disorganized
social movements, and allowed the US War Agenda (regimented curricula,
high stakes exams, militarism, merit pay to even more dominate what has
always been capitalist, never public, schooling, but those same NEA
bosses did very well for themselves, sucking up scraps from the tables
of rich.
Here we see Weaver, a real incompetent who couldn't even memorize a one
page press release written by staff for him, bringing home nearly
$250,000 from his state pension.
"Reg Weaver receives a state pension of $242,657 a year, not because
it's based on his last salary as a teacher, but because he gets to count
the $300,000-plus check he made as president of the National Education
Association." (link below)
In his last year in office, Weaver made $686,949. That was one year's pay.
I believe, but cannot prove, that Weaver's NEA pension would be based,
at least in part, on his last year's income.
I am an NEA member and NEA has not responded to my inquiries.
Weaver now works for Education International, on the payroll along with
other past NEA bosses and former AFT presidents too.
Education International is the inheritor of the old CIA sponsored Cold
War US and international teacher unions. It is connected to the National
Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front.
Weaver serves on boards sitting next to these people and, slow as he is,
it would be impossible for him not to know that they do.
If follows that he is aware of the fact that a good portion of his fat
pay comes from the wars of the empire, backing them, attacking
indigenous movements in other countries on the belief that if the rest
of the world's workers do poorly, American workers will do better,
something akin to what the AFL did to black workers for decades.
Weaver and his pals in NEA then use their abilities, limited as his may
be, to influence NEA delegates to not discuss the wars, as they voted
overwhelmingly to do, but to be early supporters of the war maker Obama
who bombed and infiltrated Libya, one of the Clinton's favorite
dictatorships, not for democracy, but to drive off Chinese oil
interests---that would be Obama the Nobel Peace Prize winner operating
outside the War Powers Act, thumbing his nose at a compliant legislative
branch, and apparently peering at Syria.
School workers who accept the empire's bribe, as Weaver has, will find
that tying their interest to the bankers and industrialists of the US,
makers of wars and bailouts (as well as the school to war pipeline),
handcuffing themselves to men like Weaver, will do them no good in the
long run.
Neither will complying with the high-stakes test regimen which
necessarily lead to merit pay, dividing scool workers even further along
the lines of the parental income of the children they teach. Those
divisions, if they are not fought, will be used to demolish any movement
rising out of schools.
The education system is now the focal point of North American life. It
is one of three choke points that all members of the ruling class,
Democrats and Republicans, are in full accord about: the wars, the
bailouts, schools.
Barbarism rises internationally: religious fundamentalism, mindless
forms of resistance: residual postmodernism (religion with an angry
cloak), multiculturalism (nationalism paraded as pluralism), dogmatic
pacifism--all leftovers from a decade and more of consumerism on the one
hand, and deindustrialization on the other.
Only reason, which is rooted in an ethic of equality, can battle its way
through this swamp of preposterous ideas and the people who personify
them: Reg Weaver, Cornel West, Michael Moore, Henry Giroux, Staughton
Lynd, Jesse Jackson, etc.
It is a task of schools to construct reason, to combat mysticism.
And the task of organizers to expose the material bases of deception and
to connect reason to power.
Rich Gibson is an emeritus professor at San Diego State University
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-pensions-teacher-side-20111023,0,6864114.story
