Mae Smith is an energetic woman who is membership chair of NEA Retired.
She’s from Illinois. Michigan before that. When we met the other day she greeted me like we knew each other for years.
“Oh, I read your columns,” she said with a smile.
She was polite enough not to say whether she agreed with them or liked them. But that’s her way. Her job is building membership among retired educators in the NEA. Not reviewing some blogger.
And she has been overwhelmingly successful.
While school closings and charters have contributed to a membership loss for the NEA nationally of over 300,000 over the last couple of years, NEA Retired is the fastest growing group within the union.
Mae made her report to the Retired Conference yesterday. She handed out awards to Vermont and Pennyslvania for their successes at membership recruitment like she was announcing the winner of American Idol.
“And the winner is,” followed by the long pause.
The Representative Assembly gets under way tomorrow.
This morning over a healthy breakfast of a poached egg and grapefruit I was reading another report on fast food and obesity.
The report suggested that customers that ate at fast food restaurants that offered low calorie options and that posted calories on the menu board still tended to make unhealthy choices. This was true even among customers who were generally health conscious. The study suggested that the presence of healthy choices might even have the effect of driving the customer to choose the unhealthier item. Our brains are funny things.
The conclusion I came to was that if you are trying to do the right thing, don’t go there. That doesn’t mean never eat at a fast food restaurant. Just know that you probably won’t be ordering the salad. It’s not a place that is designed to say no.
Even if saying no is what is best for us.
Even on my current weight loss and exercise life-style I still go for the calories now and then. It’s a matter of knowing when, how much and where.
Naturally I think about bargaining, negotiating and pensions as I read the results of this study.
I think the same rules apply.
In Illinois our pensions are constitutionally protected.
If we sit at the table to bargain what is constitutionally ours, we will make an unhealthy choice. It is not an environment that is designed to say no. Even if no is what is best for us.
That isn’t the same thing as never sitting at the table to bargain.
It is a matter of knowing when, how much and where.
This afternoon I change hotels.
Illinois Caucus meets for the first time tomorrow afternoon.
Fred Klonsky 
Unhealthy food and bargaining constitutionally-guaranteed rights and benefits:
The shortest distance between believing what is our best choice and what is, indeed, the “best choice” is metaphor. Excellent, Fred.
I hope your next hotel is also a superlative selection.