A Message to John Boehner: Teachers Aren't "Special Interests"

[proud2BlibKansan]

Run time: 01:28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8REyNvSDAQo   Posted on YouTube: August 06, 2010 By YouTube Member: DemRapidResponse Views on YouTube: 305   Posted on DU: August 06, 2010 By DU Member: proud2BlibKansan Views on DU: 906

 

[Igel]

1. Everybody's a special interest.

When you hire lobbyists to have money sent in your direction as opposed to somebody else's, they're lobbying for you. When the money gets chucked in your direction, you're happy; you don't lament that it didn't go for solar power, that it didn't go to restore wetlands, that it didn't go to reduce taxes, that it didn't go for making sure that the Interstate system is upgraded or high-speed rail instituted to connect Alaska with the lower 48. Arguably the Interstate system is the common good, but there are certainly people that would argue for solar power or wetlands or tax reduction or high-speed rail (even if it's not going to Alaska).

People confuse their causes with the common good; I like the highway system so I perceive my desire to see it maintained and upgraded, esp. as it runs through Houston, as the common good. How could it *not* help people in Walla-walla or Wapakoneta or even Chili, New York?

Very few people that I've met have ever considered that their interests didn't actually serve the common good; it takes a certain ironic detachment to see this. A millionaire trying to prevent an environmental regulation that would cost him money from being passed? Hey, he makes a useful product, he hires people--how is that not the common good? You heard the bickering over oil drilling in the Gulf? If you were out of work because of the drilling moratorium, your personal "common good" was affected, even as others, many nowhere near the Gulf, argued that oil drilling needed to be banned for "the common good." People being foreclosed on see cram down as "the common good," even if it would weaken the banking system and make small business loans even more rare (but that's not the common good--at least not for people about to be evicted).

Needless to say, the versions of "the common good" have nearly all been at odds with each other.

[redixdoragon]

3. Special Interest is...

..or at least seems to be, a term coined to indicate everyone, but more often than not is used as a means for one political official to state that their opponent serves an interest not in line with their own. It also seems to be a way by which they can say "corporations" without actually saying the word. Corporations are and have defined themselves as being interested only in profit and their own self interests and so are far from the common good. A lot more can go to the common good if resources are not so readily given to the hands of few who have so much already. Now they may end up not as rich as they wish to be, and will have to do with less than everything, and so their feeling may be the "common good" isn't served. But if it helps millions of people then truly a common good is served.

If the oil industry isn't made to drill and we all pay higher prices at the gas pump, and yet a newer, cleaner and more efficient method of transportation is developed from it for our children and children's children to use then we have served a common good because we have looked out for those not even yet born. And that is why we have to give environmental regulation against a company who'd rather just dump their waste rather than have to safely sequester it, because others will follow after us.

The problem , especially here, is that teachers preform a public service and yes they are payed for it, but their duty is to those that come after us. We have to understand and most certainly the most wealthy of us have to understand that there are more people around us, than just us. We have to help the greatest majority of people, even if we stumble in doing so.

Ultimately by trying to state that because a person has a vested interest in something and are therefore as equally as selfish and greedy as say a corporate special interest that has no other desire than to make more money, that then becomes another use of the ever more popular and ever more tiresome "Equivalency Fallacy" which in most forums boils down to "That's your opinion, but I have an opinion too, therefore your opinion is invalid." The fundamental difference here does not need ironic detachment to see. One "special interest" that would like to see a natural area preserved for future generations is not equally as selfish as an executive that would like to destroy such an area for immediate gain for the next fiscal quarter. These things are simply not equal, and so this is an "Equivalency Fallacy."

[JDPriestly]

6. Igel, teachers are not a special interest.

Neither are highways or investments in alternative energy.

Oil companies, the coal industry, Walmart, Bill Gates, AIG, Goldman Sachs, they are all special interests.

Teachers represent institutions that perform a public service. They make a living, but their main interest is helping the students they teach, not making ever higher profits or wrangling special tax cuts so that they can afford some second, third or fourth mansion somewhere.

If I understand what you are saying, I think your post is insulting to teachers and other public servants who do not move back and forth form government jobs to jobs with much bigger paychecks in the private sector.

How do you define a special interest? How do you differentiate a special interest from a public interest? If there is no difference, then the term "special interest" has no meaning and is superfluous. I think that the term does have a meaning. It does not refer to teachers. Teachers are not a special interest.

And, no, I am not a teacher.

[stray cat]

2. What is a special interest? If I work in a field that gets extra money from the gov to save my job

is that field more special than those fields where no help or aid is given? What makes a group or cause a special interest?

[Diane R]

5. +1

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. So you agree with Boehner

:eyes:

[SILVER__FOX52]

4. John Boehner can blow it out his ass.............That

piece of shit.

[Roci]

7. The freaky man

with the bright orange tan should realize something. Without quality teachers, there would be nothing but members of the party of NO running around and......

Ok, ok, I get it..

Now I understand why "Mr. I-tan-with-a-trowel" wants to vilify teachers. Because educated people are harder to swindle.

[sulphurdunn]

9. The defintion of terms must be mutually agreed upon

before the possibility of rational argument can exist. I would define teachers as essential interests, predatory politicians and corporate serial killers as harmful interests. The term "special interests" is vague and implies no distinction between the two. It is one of those trivialized, undefinable and overused cliches like "fiscal responsibility" that no longer has meaning due to careless overuse.