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Teacher’s Union Memo “Parents Will Blame Us For Their Own Inadequacies”

This letter is beyond offensive. An internal Pittston Area Federation of Teachers memo penned by vice president Rocco D’Angelo. In response to a teacher caught on tape berating a student, It implies parents are to blame for the recent string of suicides, takes an incredibly angry and defensive tone, and encourages the confiscation of electronic devices to make sure they can’t be caught on camera again. Sickening. (via PA Homepage)

To all staff,

I am sure you are aware of the recent news report about one of our teacher being videotaped on a student’s cell phone. This raises two major areas of concern.

Primarily, in these troubling times, it is of utmost importance to conduct ourselves in a professional manner. As you know we are always under the public’s microscope, and the tiniest morsel of controversy that is fed to the public will no doubt be easily amplified into a smorgasboard (sic) for their insatiable appetites. We must ALL be on our “A” game and ride this one out as a group proudly showing our unity. Since we all seem to get painted with the same brush by the public, let’s try to giving (sic) them nothing negative to paint with.
Secondly, I advise ALL personnel to carefully follow the zero tolerance policy for electronic devices in our schools as spelled out in the student handbook that our students’ parents signed off on.

The policy is spelled out clearly and I have attached it to this email. It is very simple. No PED’s (sic) (personal electronic devices) are ever allowed in ANY part of the school, at any time, even if they are in the “off position.”
We must ALL stand and act united in this effort also. I fear that students and parents will now, more that (sic) ever try to implicate us in their misplaced blame for their own inadequacies as parents.

Vikki from Dunmore reminded David on the Facebook page that this isn’t the first time we’ve gotten a glimpse inside the liberal democrat machine’s agenda. Remember the Rockefeller memo?

We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.

For example, in addition to the President’s State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton’s office at the State Department.

The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don’t know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic ‘additional views’ to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.

In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.

The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration’s use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.

The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:

B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter footdragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman [Jay Rockefeller]. We have independently submitted written requests to the DOD and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

SUMMARY: Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public’s concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war.

The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration’s dubious motives.