This is a great union story, pitting a potential New York lieutenant governor candidate (Mayor Robert Duffy of Rochester (a Democrat, of course)) against an teachers’ union leader (Adam Urbanski of the Rochester Teachers’ Association (read Corrupt Teamsters Wannabes)).

Duffy wants mayoral control of the schools, rightly claiming that since he’s forced by state law to “maintain effort” (read: dump over $100 million taxpayer funds each year into a horrible, ineffective school system), he should at least have some say in how the District is run. Urbanski responds that the mayor is a Communist, because Duffy’s plan would concentrate power in the mayor’s hands. The Democrat & Chronicle helpfully notes Urbanski’s childhood in Poland under communist rule, mentioning (again helpfully) Stalin and Lenin, just so the reader doesn’t miss the larger point: union = goodness and light, mayor = genocidal communist regime. Seriously. Read the article.

The mayor can’t possibly do worse than the City School Board, aided and abetted by the Urbanski led teachers’ union, has done. Check out Rochester’s test scores, and mind you that the Regents tests noted have been significantly dumbed down since the inception of No Child Left Behind. Let’s see, fail rates routinely between one third and one half? Check. Kids scoring 85% or better in the single digits, percentage wise? You bet. Mr. Urbanski, you’ve clearly got everything under control. Your teachers are doing such a great job churning out kids destined to fail at life that nothing needs be done. Clearly, your visionary leadership and childhood in Poland puts your teachers beyond blame for the absolute Armageddon that is the Rochester City School District. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The mayor wants to focus on spending education funds in the classroom where the funds belong, instead of on teachers only. That’s the last thing Urbanski wants: accountability for his minions. If there’s accountability, he might lose members. And power. And Urbanski’d rather throw the children under the big, yellow school bus than lose his power.

Are the teachers and their oppressive unions the only people to blame? Clearly not. Parent(s) (grandparents?) and students themselves must shoulder much of the blame. Unsafe homes, absent parents, crushing poverty, drug addiction, crime, etc. are rampant in Rochester. But the parents, students and environmental obstacles aren’t the ones standing in the way of student progress in this instance. The teachers union is.

And for that, Urbanski should be ashamed.

'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.