By Larry Sand .

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New documents show, yet again, teachers unions’ disdain for American workers.

If you Google NEA + middle class + Friedrichs, you will be barraged with a load of demagogic union bromides about how the Friedrichs case – which opposes mandatory dues payments to public employee unions (PEUs) as a condition of employment – will, if successful, destroy the middle class. “Friedrichs Is Missing Its Warning Label” and “American Dream a casualty of Friedrichs lawsuit” are typical pro-union manifestos sounding alarm bells about the purported horrors that would befall workers should Friedrichs pass muster in the U.S. Supreme Court next year.

But in reality it’s the unions themselves that are destroying the middle class. Here in California, due to exorbitant pensions and Cadillac healthcare perks to PEU members, San Bernardino, Vallejo and Stockton have already gone bankrupt. Very possibly your city could be next. And at the same time that municipalities are going under, “Taxifornia” is among the highest in the nation in state income tax, sales tax, gas tax, corporate tax and property tax. And for those among us who demand that we “soak the rich,” it will only speed up the California-to-Texas migration already in progress. At this point, the rich – defined as the top 1 percent of taxpayers – earn approximately 22 percent of the nation’s income, yet pay 38 percent of all federal income taxes. What about the top 25 percent of taxpayers? They earn almost 69 percent of the nation’s income, but pay 86 percent of all federal income taxes. In California, the wealthiest one percent paid over 50 percent of the state income tax in 2012. Virtually every other tax dollar is forked over by the middle class.

Now comes a report that Teachers Unions Spent Millions on Luxury Hotels, Overseas Travel, Car Services. Investigators from The 74, a news site headed by former newswoman-turned-education reformer Campbell Brown, dug up financial documents filed with the U.S. Labor Department by the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and United Federation of Teachers (UFT) which reveal that the union elite “show a penchant for five-star business expenses that are far removed from the $56,000-a-year average teacher’s salary in the U.S.” Between 2011 and 2014, the country’s largest teachers unions “spent more than $5.7 million booking rooms at the world’s poshest hotels and resorts, scoring flights to exotic overseas destinations and traveling back and forth in limos….” These luxuries are paid for by dues that teachers have forcibly removed from their paychecks in California and throughout much of the country. And as the wealthy flee to more tax-friendly states, it is predominantly the middle class – via taxes – that foots the bills for teachers’ salaries and, of course, their union dues.

Limos, cruises, exotic overseas destinations, car services, luxury hotels – all above the pay grade of the average teacher and average American worker – are de rigeur for the union elite. One union leader, blind to the bombastic hypocrisy, has no qualms about the extravagance. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said “We’re proud of every nickel we spend on our members and retirees.”

The teacher union elite clearly have a “Let them eat cake” attitude toward its rank-and-file, not to mention the rest of us. We can only hope that the Friedrichs case will be successful. If it is, the unions will have to become accountable to its members, many of whom do not appreciate the union elite’s profligate spending on their pampered selves. And, of course, the beleaguered taxpayers will get some relief also. Now that’s an “American Dream” worthy of us all.

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Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

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