Sunshine scares academic-labor complex

Subject: txt edu crpt -
It is not uncommon to find tax exempt and state-supported academic institutions hosting labor study centers that conduct research and offer training programs for unions. Because unions are highly partisan political powerhouses, the possibilities for abuse are endless, in effect funneling public money into politics (as may have been the case with ACORN). The left's dominance on most campuses only increases the hazzards.

Accordingly, The Landmark Legal Foundation has filed information requests and complaints with 11 academic institutions. Sunshine is as much anathema to the left-labor cozy campus arrangements as it is to Dracula. The American Association of University Professors, which is a labor union more than an academic organization is outraged, crying that academic freedom is at risk... [no news there - snip]

The AAUP statement reads in part:

Thus far, to our knowledge the most serious complaints, which threaten academic freedom, appear to have taken place at UC Berkeley and Evergreen, where the foundation seeks to restrict the work of the centers, in terms of who they serve and what they do.

At Berkeley, among other charges, that the Labor Center provides services for private (union) benefit rather than for public benefit.

The letter from Landmark went on to say that "Rather than a valid public purpose, the Center's activities are designed to promote a particular political ideology."

Academics are accustomed to zero public accountability for their use of public funds. In the leftist hothouse on campus, serving the cause of the left is often seen as a question of simple morality. The doctrine of academic freedom has been perverted into lack of accountability.

Academics often defend labor centers on the ground that they offer a counterbalance to business schools and economics departments. This is nonsense. Business is commerce and industry, activities upon which human welfare depends. It is the stuff of life, not of politics.

Labor unions, on the other hand, exist only to enrich their members, and monopolize the supply of labor in a particular employment relationship. They are legalized cartels, operating for the benefit of their members, and they survive at the expense of the majority by devoting a substantial portion of their extorted income to political donations.

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image toon - mny crpt = Union payback expensive re tires