These People Are Disgusting…
The far left is using a woman’s suicide to attack Governor Scott Walker.
The Progressive, a liberal website in Wisconsin, reported this week that a Wisconsin teacher committed suicide because of Governor Scott Walker’s union bill. The website says she was “distraught” to learn that she was going to have to pay 12.6% instead of 6% of her insurance premium cost?
Really?… Really?
Jeri-Lynn Betts, an early childhood teacher in the Watertown, Wisconsin, school district, died on March 8 of an apparent suicide.
A colleague says she was “very distraught” over Gov. Scott Walker’s attacks on public sector workers and public education.
Betts, 56, was a dedicated teacher who was admired in the Watertown community.
“She was an amazing person,” says the Rev. Terry Larson of the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Watertown, where she was a member. “She really put her heart and soul in her work,” adds Larson, who officiated at her memorial service on March 15.
“She was one of the good guys,” says Karen Stefonek, who used to teach with Betts. “She was very, very dedicated, and worked so well with the little special needs children. She just was very, very good with them, and very well respected in the district.”
In the days after Betts’s death, two members of the school district contacted The Progressive about her death, calling it a suicide and saying it was connected, at least in part, to the policies that Walker has proposed. He has demanded that public workers, including teachers, contribute a significant amount of their salaries to health care and pensions. And in his budget, he proposed taking $900 million out of the public schools, imposing a freeze on property taxes so local governments can’t chip in more for education, and allowing any student, regardless of income, to go to a private school with a taxpayer subsidy.
“She was definitely very distraught about it,” said one of her co-workers, who requested anonymity. “She was feeling a lot of stress about the legislation that was going through.”
Sad. The poor woman killed herself because she didn’t want to pay a higher premium?
She killed herself because of this?
each state employee will contribute 12.6% towards their health care costs beginning April 1st. Presently, state employees contribute roughly 6% . The national average for workers’ contributions in the private sector is 25% so this is not an unreasonable request of our state workers.
UPDATE: A concerned coworker of Jeri’s sent this in. I am withholding the name.
Read the whole thing–
I was a co-worker. She was truly a wonderful, and gentle, woman who worked for our district for over 25 years. During that time, as you might imagine, Jeri worked in many different buildings because over the years her EC program relocated to multiple locations. I want to be clear that she moved with the program, and was not shuttled from building to building for any reason, since as we see, the vile left will lie about everything. No matter the building, or who you spoke to, everyone had the highest praise for Jeri as a teacher and a person. No exceptions. None. As tremendous an asset as she was to the district, she was a greater asset to the community. She devoted countless hours to her church and to programs to alleviate hunger in the city. She was a blessing to all.
I will not honor the charge about her death with a response. As one of the contributors above asked, I ask you to please keep your comments about Jeri kind. She deserves no less. As for Mathew Rothschild, the editor of the Progressive–do as you see fit.
This human garbage, Mathew Rothschild, started trying to contact teachers in the district the day after her passing. He was rebuffed–the polite term–by everyone I know, including both administrators and teachers, who understood that there was no purpose for Madison scum to do a story on Jeri, except as political propaganda. How hideous is your soul to do so. Instead of celebrating her life and accomplishments, of which there were many, leftists instead sully her name and reduce her life to a momentary smear of their political opponents.
I pray for her family and those who knew her. Even those who betrayed her memory.
This will pass.
The good Jeri did will live long past the evil Rothschild and his minions have done. Her students will go on to live wonderful lives. They will use knowledge and skills imparted by Jeri throughout their lives. Long after they have grown up, they will do things Jeri taught them, and when they do, they will remember Jeri’s kindness and love. They, and their families for the lifetime of their children, will warmly recall everything Miss Jeri did for them, from teaching proper etiquette to celebrating the adventure of learning, but most of all, they will remember her with love.
Jeri will be missed.
And always loved.
