No one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Pensions and the art of politics.
From a much longer email, a reader writes:
I read this from your blog, “No deals can be cut that would reduce our pension benefits or increase our costs. No deals can be cut that result in taxing our benefits or raising our medical costs for retirees.” This strikes me as a nearly impossibly doctrinaire position, Fred. Not a penny more in contributions? Not a penny less in benefits? No agreeing to taxes on retirements earnings generally, across the board? No movement at all on anything whatsoever? Just demand everything exactly as though there were no problem? Don’t you see how this plays exactly into the image of teacher unions as intransigent and self-centered? Politics is the art of compromise, isn’t it? Or are we to make it the art of perpetually stone-walling change?
I don’t know about what politics is the art of these days. Speaking as an Art teacher, what passes for politics all seems pretty artless to me.
Mostly it seems to be the art of giving Wall Street whatever they want and blaming teachers and other public