Ladies and gentlemen, I, Jack Run, would like to say first and foremost that it is a pleasure to be speaking to you right now. I would also like to thank one Joel Lightly for being so kind as to invite me to scream my opinions into your collective face as a contributor to Real Weird Politics. Thank you for your generosity, Mr. Lightly, and I hereby do solemnly swear to be an objective and abrasive cunt of a contributor that speaks my mind and abuses grammatical hyphenations.
Ah, but who am I? I am probably a Virgo, I imagine that I like long walks on the beach, I probably enjoy a good candle lit dinner, and I am most certainly not a “cat person”.
And now, down to brass tacks…
...because the first bailouts of the automotive industry set such a good precedent...
In the article Money For Teachers Could Go Elsewhere, published today March 30th by CBS, we learn that while Obama promised that nearly all of the $100 billion spent on education in his seizure-inducingly-horrid-and-hyper-costly-travesty-of-tax-payer-and-future-tax-payer-money-spending-monstrosity-of-a-stimulus-bill was designed to retain teachers, some states will be spending said money elsewhere. Like on playground equipment (awesome!). Or wallpaper (lame). Or filling a budget gap (fiscal responsibility!).
The article covers a lot of ground, such as how some states plan to refuse their cut of the stimulus, how the money is an ever-expanding ball of many-strings-attached legalisms and bureaucracy, how Education Secretary Arne Duncan is trying to find a way to force these states to accept the money, and how kittens actually taste more like baloney than chicken. Weird, I know.
But I digress…
As Obama said, the money is supposed to be spent on the teachers, not on playgrounds no matter how awesome, not on paying off budget gaps no matter how fiscally responsible, and CERTAINLY not on lame-ass wallpaper. As a huge slice of the stimulus/bailout bill, this money is as one protesting teacher aptly scribed on a picket sign, a bailout.
Let’s just state the obvious ugly fact: despite the king-size spending, America’s public education system sucks. The children it produces are dumber than snot, and in similar fashion to the King of Pop’s face, all the money in the world doesn’t promise any form of improvement to a total fucking clusterfuck of this magnitude.
To clarify the above statement in plainest English, what I mean to say is that raising the pay or even in some cases continuing the salary of failing teachers in a failing system will change nothing other than the balance on the account of he-who-pays; that being YOU, fair tax payer.
Now I understand fully that teachers are people too, and that what I’m talking about here is JOBS – jobs that these teachers need in order to put bread on the table. But I also understand that the money that these “teachers” (yes, quotes – because if children are no smarter after being taught by said teachers, then are said teachers really teachers?) are paid comes directly out of the tax payer’s pockets. Do I think that it is fair that my siblings and my parents and my peers and all you other hardworking sons of bitches should pay these people’s salaries if they’re not actually doing their job? No.
Yes, I know I am over simplifying here, and I would be so bold as to say that kids these days are as dumb as they are due more so to the failed institution of parenting than to our educational system, but folks, let’s call it like we see it. If you want to keep your job or earn more cash, you gotta prove you’re worth it. You gotta show results.
I view the education bailouts in the same light as I view the bailouts of the auto companies – all these bailouts do is support failed institutions in their current failure-prone form. Go ahead, bail them out – but be prepared to bail them out again and again and again…
Picture yourself in a rowboat on the high seas with a hole in the bottom – if you don’t do the work necessary to plug up the hole, you’re never going to be able to stem the flow of water sinking your boat.
And no, kittens don’t REALLY taste like baloney. If I were to describe the taste, it would be something more along the flavor of narwhal…or justice.
That is all.
FULL STORY – Money For Teachers Could Go Elsewhere
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