What a long, strange trip it has been for teachers. A century ago they were forced to abide by some of the most onerous rules governing a profession. Women could often not marry or date during the terms of their contracts and had to scrub the floors and light fires to keep their rooms warm when the season required it.

According to the contract of one teacher in Tennessee from the 1930s, he or she had to promise to "remember that I owe a duty to the townspeople who are paying my wages, that I owe respect to the school board and the superintendent that hired me, and that I consider myself at all times the willing servant to the school board and the townspeople ..." My family and I recently visited the Wilson County Fair in Lebanon, Tenn., where I found the citation.

Now teachers unions are the thugs who tell the people who pay their salaries how they must behave.

Read the Maryland State Education Association's full response to a report from a commission studying the sustainability of state employee retirement benefits to see for yourself. (Thanks to Maryland Reporter for the link: http://marylandreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MSEA-Response-to-Final-Recommendations-of-Pension-Sustainability-Commission-2.pdf.)

One of the union's top priorities includes passing legislation to make it impossible for counties to spend less on education than in a year prior -- regardless of the number of students enrolled and the economy.

Its totalitarian dreams do not end there, however. Clara Floyd, the president of the 71,000-member MSEA, also requests in her letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley, House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller that the state withhold money from a county that does not abide by union funding guidelines once passed into law. Most egregiously, it says local governments should be forced to raise their taxes to meet the union's education goals -- regardless of tax caps that may be in place, the will of the people in the community and, again, regardless of the economy.

The union is so deluded it suggests increasing pension benefits, which were modestly changed this past legislative session. (Contribution rates were raised and benefits reduced for new employees.) In the words of Floyd, "There is no need to rush to judgment that cuts were not deep enough. Market performance has improved, significant changes were made and all signs point to improving funded status (of the pension fund)."

While the state fund closed the latest fiscal year with a 20 percent gain at the end of June, the market could have erased those gains in the past week. Besides, despite strong financial performance, the state pension fund is woefully underfunded and cannot meet its obligations unless it is both fully funded each year and experiences a decade of 20 percent returns.

The projected $1.1 billion budget gap this year and large "structural" deficits in coming years are due in large part to a 2002 law that drastically increased public education funding without a means to pay for it. To save teacher pensions and the state budget, legislators must reject MSEA demands.