We're still alive and kicking! Thanks to the many who responded to our last mailing with a contribution, we have been given a new lease on life for at least a couple more months.

Thanks especially to Jeff Jacoby's (syndicated) column in The Boston Globe and his last-ditch plea for support for CLT&G, we've been joined by some 450 new members who called in to the office and signed up.

That is exactly what we've been looking for. Barbara does not want to keep going back to the same well -- our loyal longtime members -- and asking for support over and over again only to give tax breaks to those just too darned apathetic to get off their butts and help themselves, but who enjoy the benefits of all our hard work. While our members have been the backbone of CLT&G, and while we must still depend upon their generosity, it is critical that we expand that base. Or die.

If you've already sent in your contribution to keep CLT&G alive and benefitting you and your family, thank you.

If you haven't, you too are helping to make our sink-or-swim decision, which will come this fall when all the returns are in and evaluated.

Especially rewarding has been learning that the teachers union is monitoring our website and quoted Barbara and me in their members publication, MTA Today (June 16, 1998 issue: Superior Court ruling good news for children & education). The only place they could have gotten the quotes is the website or these updates!

What's really bizarre is that they used them! If we could have gotten their membership list -- which of course is difficult if not impossible, but that doesn't mean we're not working on it! -- I would love to have sent those very quotes on to all 80,000 of their members to get them thinking about what their union's doing to them! That the MTA did this dirty job for us at their expense is . . . to be kind, considerate if self-defeating.

It demonstrates why so many of them can't pass the teachers tests! ("Those who can, do; those who can't do, teach," someone once said. Add to that, Those who can't do or teach run the teachers unions!)

Most of the article is publicly posted on the MTA's website ( http://massteacher.org ), but the best stuff, excerpted below, was left off ... it was sent only to their members:

"In the end, Barbara Anderson didn't have enough signatures to put her ill-conceived income tax cut proposal on the ballot. "She characterized the Massachusetts Teachers Association as the "crushers of democracy" in her press release following the ruling by Suffolk Superior Court to disqualify a $1.2 billion state income tax cut petition for the November ballot. . . .

"Anderson, co-director of CLT&G, in her column that appeared May 9 said, ‘... if only 26 mall shoppers who were too busy to sign the petition had stopped for a minute on their way to saving $1.69 at a sock sale, the average taxpayer could have kept $500 a year of his own money that now goes into the state surplus.'"

"Chip Ford, co-director of CLT&G, describes the MTA as ‘the enemy' and says ‘that there will be many confrontations ahead between the citizenry and this insatiable enemy, for it represents everything that is wrong with government of today.'

"Ford goes on to say, ‘It is not all teachers themselves who are the enemies -- though God knows, the enemy couldn't exist without feeding off their supine and tacit support ... But they fear our enemy -- their master -- as much as we loathe it.'"

As Congressman Jim Traficant is so fond of saying, "They're so dumb they could throw themselves at the ground and still miss!"

For a look into their how the selfish MTA minds work, here's how they saw our effort to keep the promise and rollback the "temporary" income tax increase:

"To put $1.2 billion in perspective, MTA calculated the magnitude of that sum relative to various educational services.

"In the public school arena:

• "It is equal to nearly one-fifth of all state and local spending on public K-12 education. "It is more than the total annual amount of additional state aid provided to cities and towns under the ambitious 1993 Education Reform Act.
• "It is two-and-a-half times local school district spending on insurance health, life, unemployment and workers' compensation) for all active and retired teachers and other school department personnel.
• "In the state higher education arena:"It is nearly seven times state spending on  community colleges.
• "It is 60 percent more than state spending on all higher education -- community colleges, four-year colleges and universities -- combined."

About teacher testing, the MTA's position is:

"Gorrie said that Massachusetts teachers wholeheartedly support the idea of testing candidates for teaching jobs. But, he said, it makes no sense to give what amounts to an entrance exam to veteran teachers who have been certified and have been on the job for years. Veteran teachers are constantly being evaluated in their own school districts; they must meet performance standards, recertification, and professional development requirements.

"Adding yet another requirement for these dedicated professionals -- and threatening them with being fired -- is nothing more than harassment by a politician [Gov. Cellucci, who the MTA asserts has "declared open season" on teachers, at the top of this article] who has no real commitment to education reform."

Do you get the feeling that the besieged MTA is running a bit scared these days!

Chip Ford -- 

"The only alternative to limited taxation and government
is unlimited taxation and government"