Niagara Times Politico and County Bureaucrats Assault Education at NCCC

The demagogic pseudo-political hitman over at the Niagara Times blogspot who calls himself “Hobbes,” is once again finding an excuse to assault the integrity of the NCCC Faculty Association. The issue is a shortfall in operational funds due to NYS cutbacks. The issue is not the pending contract for the faculty. The Faculty Association is not holding up funding by the county. The Association is not the problem in the negotiations with the college Administration. The problem is an administration that continues to insult and assault the faculty and the community by breaking the Taylor Law, lying about negotiations and doing its best to divide and conquer the faculty in order to destroy the Association, if not the very right to "associate." The truth of the matter is that the Administration does not really even believe in the right to associate and legally defend one’s own interests. While the Administration and its Board of Trustees supporters attack the faculty endlessly and mercilessly, they fail to see they are destroying the atmosphere of healthy learning at the college and the morale of all who work at the college.

The faculty has bent over backwards to accommodate the Administration but the Administration doesn’t really wish to settle. They aim to take over control of educational functions from the faculty in the name of saving money. The administration does not care about the quality of education let alone conditions for quality education. If the Board of Trustees was not behind the “union-busting” tactics of Klyczek and Co., they would have intervened four years ago and settled.

It is the Administration and the Board of Trustees who waste the County’s money paying expensive lawyers to stonewall every attempt by the faculty association to reach reasonable agreement. It is a hapless legislature that continually acts to throw the baby out with the bathwater and otherwise is usually penny wise and pound foolish. NCCC is the best economic asset in Niagara County. It’s the best available first two years of college education in Western NY.

When these ignoramuses will ever learn to stop playing self-destructive politics, it is hard to tell. Probably never. Hobbes continues his rabid, toxic and violent disinformation by, for example, making it appear that the only issue separating the Association and the Administration is the faculty’s wish to hang onto “cosmetic plastic surgery.” This is so ludicrous it's almost embarrassing. Most if not all of the faculty have no problem dropping this “benefit.” Hobbes, however, wants to make it look like the faculty has the top of the line health care package. We don’t even have dental care. The Faculty Association agreed to a health package over a year ago that would have saved the County over a million dollars and the Administration refused. They must think if they reduce the Faculty to a minimal wage and an inadequate health care package that they will save the County more in the long run. What else can explain their deceptive practices and otherwise irrational negotiation tactics. They have an ulterior motive and they aim to carry it out even if the County goes bankrupt doing it. This is kind of like Hitler wanting to kill the Jews and extend his war to the entire world even though he would inevitably destroy Germany while trying to do it.

Hobbes seems to be insulted by the faculty Newsletter. Yes, free speech does insult Hobbes. That’s why he denied me free speech on his blog. He’s afraid of honest, open, public dialogue in which everyone declares who they are and we all know who’s talking. We don’t know who Hobbes is but we know who he speaks for. And it’s not for the people. Justice doesn’t seen to apply to the faculty, only to Hobbes' business and political friends. Hobbes belittles the faculty’s attempt to fight for what is just for itself. He says we are “insulting to every group in history who has actually had to fight injustice.” For his information we fight for justice and against injustice everyday in the classroom while he's at home making up lies in order to win more political power for Niagara County Republicans and the rich business crowd.

Hobbes wants you to think we are taking food out of the mouths of the poor. How about those tax breaks for all your business friends like the illegal multi- million dollar give away to the coal burning plant. Hobbes is paid by the Republican Party in Niagara County not only to gain political and economic control for his big business friends but also to suppress every possibility of true democracy and meaningful quality education. Hobbes has already written about what he thinks the community college is good for: job training to supply ready-made laborers for all his business buddies. As far as critical literacy and political knowledge for these same people, he could care less. The more ignorant the people are the more his type can control them and pay them slave wages.

Everyone wants a good education and good teachers. But they don’t want to pay for it. I was working my way through graduate school to earn a Ph.D. for many years making nothing except survival stipends. I deserve everything I make and more. Hobbes and his ilk could care less about the people unless his big business friends can use them to make more money.

Klyczek and Co.. ought to spend more time working on quality education at NCCC rather than wasting untold hours trying to build more buildings and figure out ways to divide and pit the faculty against themselves in hopes of destroying our right to associate. Such elitist administrative bureaucrats and their henchman such as Hobbes, who fears to show his face in public, are the death knell for Niagara County, the community college and the public sphere. We need to start worrying about something more than "money" if we are going to put Niagara County and WNY back on a strong political and economic footing. The basis of such power is an educated and autonomous public. Hobbes would take that away from us.

The only “greed” in Niagara County is the greed on the part of the likes of Hobbes and selfish business people who are greedy for power, the control of knowledge and information. They are greedy to continue to carry out their plan to reduce democratic practices to the blathering of professional politicians who could care less about “the people.” They are greedy to obey only those laws that benefit their elitist social class and the administrative bureaucrats who carry out their dirty work in stopping what really benefits the people.

Yes, let’s make what’s really happening at NCCC public. Not Hobbes' vicious distortion of facts and truth, nor his selective dissemination of slanted “facts” that make him and his buddies look like Jesus Christ while making everyone else look like Judas. These tactics should be transparent to anyone with any brains whatsoever. Let’s make public how the administration get’s egregiously large pay increases and the faculty is denigrated and maligned for wanting a 3% increase. How about the 30% increase of Klyczek who is pushing his way toward the $200,000 a year club. The rest of the administration whose size, by the way, continues to grow disproportionate to their usefulness and our need for them, are also receiving excessive pay increases. Why favor the administration? Because then there are more bureaucrats to try to control the freedom and will of the faculty to truly educate and do what’s right for the students.

Niagara County is on the brink of losing more than a few dollars to pay the faculty a fair wage. It is on the brink of succumbing to the authoritarian anti-democratic elitists who are turning education and the public sphere into the private property of the rich and powerful and their bureaucratic hitmen, deceitful lawyers and professional politicans who have no respect for the law.

Pay those people who still care about truth and justice in Niagara County a fair wage and stop playing venomous "politics" with the future of education in Niagara County.