There’s a sea of red in Chicago, and this is one sea of red that doesn’t look so good Obama!  The teachers union is on strike, throwing a hissy fit over performance-based evaluations and a 16% pay increase.  In the words of Princess Pelosi, are you serious?  Yup.  Dead serious.  These teachers unions are as serious as cancer, because they’ve been enabled for years by politicians like Barack Obama to think that they are entitled to more of your wallet.  Are they entitled to more of your wallet because they have been successful?  Hell no!  What is their role supposed to be?  Well gee, they are teachers so I suppose their purpose is to educate children.  How’s that working out for the children?

• Just 15 percent of fourth graders in Chicago are proficient in reading.

• Only 56 percent of students in Chicago who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.

• Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

• 80 percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in math.

Yet, what do they want for this astounding “success”?  They want a 30% pay increase and an end to the pesky idea of earning based on their performance (what a concept?!).  A 30% pay increase … these people must surely be underpaid to demand such an increase in such a lousy economy and considering their school district is facing a $700 million deficit!  Quite the opposite.

The average teacher in Chicago Public Schools—a district facing a $700 million deficit—makes $71,000 per year before benefits are included. If the district meets union demands and rewards teachers with the requested salary increase, education employees will receive compensation north of $92,000 per year.

According to the Illinois Policy Institute, the average annual income of a family in Chicago is $47,000 per year. If implemented, the 30 percent raise will mean that in nine months, a single teacher in the Chicago Public School system will take home nearly double what the average family in the city earns in a year.

Now, some outfits calculate their average teachers’ salary as even higher - $76,000 a year before benefits.  Now about those benefits ... according to John Fund at NRO, “Teachers pay only 3 percent of their health-care costs and out of every new dollar set aside for public education in Illinois in the last five years, a full 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs.”  Think about that …think about how much of that money for education is being paid into the retirement account of teachers unions instead of going toward the education of your child.

As of yesterday, Barack Obama has no opinion on the issue.  But based on this little flashback video from 2008 where Obama addressed the teachers unions and gave a shootout to the Chicago Teachers Union and their president, I think we know where he stands on this one.