As I was writing my blog entry yesterday, I was overcome with a strange sense of deja vu. Has that ever happened to you?It occurred when I heard the words "15,000 layoffs" from Mayor4Life's lips. I got the feeling that it wasn't the first time I'd heard them.
As it turns out, I was right. More right than even I bargained for. Mayor4Life and his stooge, Joel Klein, threatened to lay off 15,000 teachers once before. Check out this article from Gothamschools and see you notice anything creepy about it. Besides Klein's face, I mean.
Points for you if you noticed the date of the article. It was January 28, 2009--exactly two years to the day ago that the mayor last threatened to lay off exactly the same number of teachers.
What's going on here? Is this mere coincidence, or is the mayor calling plays from his old playbook? If you'll notice, Klein even used many of the same words that Bloomberg used yesterday:
“We don’t want to lose personnel,” he said later. “Particularly, we don’t want to lose young talented people that we’ve recruited in recent years.”
Clearly, Bloomberg is trying once again to force a change in seniority laws by threatening to axe new teachers. It didn't work last time, and it will fail again. State politicians must know that it's political suicide to change seniority--not because of the teacher's union, but because ALL unions would then be subject to the same threat. This is the third rail of state politics.
The mayor pulls out this threat annually, the way the mayor of Punxsutawney, PA pull out the groundhog every year. The only difference is that in PA, a mayor wearing a big hat pulls a rodent from the ground, whereas in NY, a rodent pulls a trick out of his hat.
As I was writing my blog entry yesterday, I was overcome with a strange sense of deja vu. Has that ever happened to you?
.
What's going on here? Is this mere coincidence, or is the mayor calling plays from his old playbook? If you'll notice, Klein even used many of the same words that Bloomberg used yesterday:
“We don’t want to lose personnel,” he said later. “Particularly, we don’t want to lose young talented people that we’ve recruited in recent years.”
Clearly, Bloomberg is trying once again to force a change in seniority laws by threatening to axe new teachers. It didn't work last time, and it will fail again. State politicians must know that it's political suicide to change seniority--not because of the teacher's union, but because ALL unions would then be subject to the same threat. This is the third rail of state politics.
The mayor pulls out this threat annually, the way the mayor of Punxsutawney, PA pull out the groundhog every year. The only difference is that in PA, a mayor wearing a big hat pulls a rodent from the ground, whereas in NY, a rodent pulls a trick out of his hat.
As I was writing my blog entry yesterday, I was overcome with a strange sense of deja vu. Has that ever happened to you?
.
