U.S. Education Secretary: “Expect Layoffs…” Ha, ok…

I laugh at his little “joke”, proceed to initiate facepalm.Reuters, via Alea:

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Many teachers and educators across the United States are at risk of losing their jobs in the next few months, the country’s education secretary told a meeting of the National Governors Association on Sunday.

“I am very, very concerned about layoffs going into the next school year starting in September. Good superintendents are going to start sending out pink slips in March and April, like a month from now, as they start to plan for their budgets,” said Arne Duncan, referring to the slips of paper included in some paychecks to notify a person of being fired.

Sure, most states and municipalities are nowhere close to being able to meet their existing educational obligations, but please, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, collectively, are the BIGGEST contributor to the Democratic party.  From Andrew J. Coulson, published in the Cato Journal (pdf), emphasis mine:

Public school employee unions are politically partisan and polarizing institutions. Of the National Education Association’s $30 million in federal campaign contributions since 1990, 93 percent has gone to Democrats or the Democratic Party. Of the $26 million in federal campaign contributions by the American Federation of Teachers, 99 percent has gone to Democrats or the Democratic Party (Center for Responsive Politics 2009).

In fact, if the NEA and AFT are taken together (not unreasonable, given that they overwhelmingly support the same party and pursue a similar agenda), they constitute the most generous source of federal political donations over the past 20 years. According to a ranking by the Center for Responsive Politics (2009), the NEA and AFT together have spent $56 million on federal political contributions since 1989, roughly as much as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, the NRA, and Lockheed Martin combined.

Given this revelation (heh), we’d be deluding ourselves to expect the Obama Administration will sit idly as any meaningful number of educators gets the boot.  I really don’t have anything more to add here, besides to point out what should be, by this point, so painfully obvious:  The Administration, and the Democratic Party in general needs its traditional support base now, perhaps more than ever, as their approval ratings and public perception are pretty crappy, at best.