New York’s powerful teachers’ union is running commercials advocating an increased income tax on what they consider to be high earners (currently down to about $250,000). The tax would increase the current top state income tax rate from 6.85% to 10.3%. The purpose of the ad campaign is to strongarm our elected betters to support the unions’ unsupportable pay and benefit structures. And the likely effect will be to drive high earners and businesses out of New York altogether.

The union paid $1.5 million to produce and air the commercial statewide. Maybe if the union wasn’t taking so much money from its members so it can run $1.5 million spots on statewide television, the school districts would have more money left over to spend on educating children and pay salaries. Heck, maybe if the union didn’t exist at all, there would be much more funding to go around in the first instance, because every dollar in union dues paid by teachers comes directly from a taxpayer’s pocket.

By way of illustration, in ‘Puter’s small Upstate school district, there are approximately 600 teachers, each of which is required to pay $600 each year in union dues, most of which goes Downstate. That’s $360,000 each year from just ‘Puter’s district. And there are at least 10 or so districts of equal size just in ‘Puter’s county. There are 62 counties in New York (including NYC), some larger, some smaller than ‘Puter’s county. Assuming $3.6 million to be a per county average for union dues, that’s about $223 million each year New York property owners pony up to educate children that is wasted. And that number’s likely light.

Assume for the moment that teachers’ unions are correct that increased education funding produces better educational outcomes. ‘Puter thinks that’s wrong, but that’s for another post. Under the union’s own analysis, wouldn’t the children truly be better off with $223 million in additional programs, rather than $223 million in union lobbying?

C’mon, NYSUT, stop stealing much needed education funds from the children. It’s all about the children, after all.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.