Jimster;
You provided some sage advice and did it without rancor. My opinion goes this way, but it is just my 2 cents. You placed most of the blame where it more appropriately belongs, with the unions. That doesn't leave the teachers guiltless, because we have been repeatedly reminded how 'educated' they are, so thus, they have no valid alibi as to why they allowed such immoral activities to continue.
Surely, any one element of this tri-partite cabal could have stopped this ruthless money-magnet machine from fleecing the taxpayers, but it appears that for some reason the unions, politicians and teachers let it continue cutting a swath through the earnings of the taxpaying public. I tend to look at the majority fault as lying at the final tax-dollars receivers, the politicians, then the unions and lastly, with the teachers; however any one of those three could have stopped it..at least that's the way I see it.
Now, I don't presuppose that all teachers are on such a gravy train. Guzzijohn says he's not even a union member, and his renumeration and benefits are quite modest. I don't believe he is alone in this either, and I'll take his word for it. All the more reason I wonder, why the few teachers not involved in the money-magnet machine would so stridently reinforce the claims of those who have been "fleecing the flock".