NSEA: Money doesn't matter to teachers; CCEA: Fire 500 teachers so others get a raise
Rarely is the disconnect between what an organization says and what they're actually doing as apparent as it is with the words of the Nevada State Education Association and the actions of the Clark County Education Association.
Here's what Gary Peck and Lynn Warne of the NSEA wrote in a recent op-ed.
Success can be measured different ways. For many, it involves wealth, prosperity or power. For Nevada's educators, it means something entirely different.Peck and Warne are clear - teachers care about kids, not money or perks.
For these educators, success in schools is about more than test scores. It's about values and hard work. It's about the expression on a child's face when she finally grasps the concept of a basic equation, the enthusiasm in a roomful of kids eager to be called on to answer a question, and the tearful goodbye from an accomplished student at the end of another academic year.
Nevada educators experience success - and disappointment - every workday, because they care about kids, not money or perks. Somehow this gets lost in education policy debates, where the voices of front-line experts aren't heard. [Emphasis added]
Someone alert the CCEA!
Right now the CCEA is bargaining with the Clark County School District and pushing for a proposal that would force CCSD to lay off 500 teachers, in order to give remaining teachers a raise.
So which is it? Is the CCEA not representing the interests of teachers or do teachers care about money and perks, despite the claim made by Peck and Warne? Or both?
I should point out that there isn't anything inherently wrong with caring about your salary or perks. I love how Peck and Warne make it seem like caring about their salary is beneath the dignity of teachers in a column where they spend most of their words shilling for more spending on education - and therefore educators.
The major problem with teacher salaries isn't that teachers are paid too much or too little. It's that there's little to no relation between how good of a teacher you are and how much you get paid.
Most everyone can agree that great teachers need to be paid more and poor teachers should be paid less (or encouraged to find other work), but the union insists on paying teachers for length of service and advanced degrees, neither of which have significant impacts on teacher quality.
Once again, union rhetoric doesn't match union actions.
Read moreHilarious video: Occupy Wall Street protestors love Wall Street banker
And that "Wall Street banker" is named ... James O'Keefe. Hilarity ensues.
Video: What we saw at Occupy Las Vegas
Yesterday, a group called Occupy Las Vegas held a rally in front of the New York New York casino.
This is what we saw.
The Occupy Las Vegas group is a Nevada representation of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
After the jump, check out ReasonTV's video on what they saw at Occupy Wall Street.
Refuting the economics behind the 'rich don't pay their fair share' fallacy
See yesterday's post for a refutation of the "rich don't pay their fair share" fallacy.
Today, I'd like to address the economic philosophy behind that statement and why it is also wrong.
The unstated, underlying economic assumption that many leftists make is that the rich have to pay their "fair share," because the rich are wealthy only because they have taken from society or the poor and that government must right that wrong through taxes or "spreading the wealth around."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What's amazing about free-market capitalism is that the way you get rich is by meeting the needs of other people and making their lives better. Generally, rich people are those who've created the most wealth or value for other people. They've grown the economic pie.
This idea of creating wealth is critical. If you think the amount of wealth in the world is limited, it might make sense for government to take from the rich and give to the poor, because the economic pie is finite and if someone has more, than someone else has less.
But that's not the way the world is. The amount of wealth in the world is rapidly increasing.
You have to make a distinction between wealth and money. Wealth is stuff - cars, cell phones, medical care. Money is the ability to buy stuff. There's little point to having $300 billion in money, if there's nothing to purchase.
An easy way to think about this is to imagine yourself - with your car, income, internet access, indoor plumbing, A/C, refrigerator, cell phone, TV, etc. - living in the early 1900s. With those modern conveniences, you'd be the wealthiest person in the world. John Rockefeller would have more money than you, but you and I would have the best stuff and the best standard of living.
Your TV is bigger and gets more channels. He never had a microwave. Your cell phone is better than any form of communication he had. He never had a DVD player or even a VCR. Through the internet, you have access to more information at virtually no cost than he could have imagined. He never had access to a CAT scan, MRI or Lasik. The twelve-second flight at Kitty Hawk didn't even occur until 1903.
I drive a 1994 Mercury Sable, and I have a better car, in terms of performance, than Rockefeller, a man who would have been worth over $300 billion in today's dollars, ever did.
Think about that. It's stunning to consider.
You and I are wealthier - in terms of stuff - than John Rockefeller, who would have been worth over $300 billion in today's dollars.
Why?
Because over the last 100 years, thousands upon thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs have created stuff that made the lives of people they didn't even know much better off.
Why did they create and invent? While, given the complexity of human motivation, it's impossible to give a definite blanket answer, for most entrepreneurs making money is a significant motivation. And the best way to make money is to create something that another person will pay for. And what do people pay for? Things that improve their lives.
As a result of entrepreneurs' ability to make things that are beneficial to others, some of these inventors and businessmen and women became rich - some fabulously wealthy.
Their wealth has not detracted from our wealth or quality of life. In an uncountable number of ways, you and I are indirect beneficiaries of the wealth they created.
Rich people aren't the enemy of the poor. In many ways, rich individuals (through their businesses and inventions) have made the lives of the poor in America better than the lives of rich Americas 100 years ago.
Via the Heritage Foundation, consider these facts about poverty in modern America.
• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioningAs he often did, Milton Friedman explained this best. Enjoy this clip of him talking with Phil Donahue about how the masses escape poverty through the free market.
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation
• 43 percent have Internet access
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo
Because the economic pie is always growing in a free-market economy, the richer the rich get, the better off the rest of us are.
Refuting the 'rich don't pay their fair share' fallacy
Via the Heritage Foundation, here's how much the "rich" pay in income taxes.
So, the top one percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the total federal income tax bill in 2008. In comparison, the bottom 95 percent of wage earners paid 41 percent ... combined.
This isn't a one year aberration either. In 2007, the top one percent actually paid more than the bottom 95 percent paid combined.
You might think this fact would be enough to defeat "the rich aren't paying their fair share" fallacy, but I'd respectfully disagree.
The problem with that statement isn't that liberals are wildly misinformed about how much the rich pay in taxes - although that's often true - it's the assumption built into that statement.
Saying "the rich aren't paying their fair share" assumes that government or other members of society have a right to your wealth - at least if you're rich. After all, who determines what's fair, and why does that amount always seem to be increasing?
Now government costs money, and there should be a uniform and low tax rate, but after that, neither the government, your neighbors nor society has any right to your money or mine!
I'm not the first person to come up with this. There's a pretty famous document out there that talks about "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Once you've paid your taxes, society's "fair" share of your wealth is zero.
Is it scandalous to vote against your personal financial self-interest?
Government corruption takes many forms, but one of the most obvious is when an elected or unelected official uses his authority to benefit himself, a spouse or a supporter financially.
That's the reason Rep. Shelley Berkley is in hot water. As The New York Times reported, she used her influence with regulators "to pursue an agenda that is aligned with the business interests of her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner." (I'm not commenting here on whether or not Berkley did anything unethical or wrong here. I'm just noting that the appearance of acting in the financial interests of her spouse, and hence her own financial interests, raises questions.)
Now, imagine Berkley had acted in the opposite manner. Say she had supported shutting down the kidney transplant program, even though it would hurt her husband's business. This would be a non-story, because she had done something not in her financial self-interest.
That's why I don't understand Patrick Coolican's column Friday in the Las Vegas Sun. In it, he attacks Nevada state Sen. Michael Roberson for supporting putting more money in classrooms, while his wife has a CCSD job "outside" the classroom. If Roberson is successful in mandating that 65 percent of school funding be classroom funding, his wife's position may be eliminated.
First, this is actually the kind of behavior we should be encouraging in our elected officials. Supporting a policy because it's best for students and taxpayers, even if it might have a negative impact on your personal situation, is a very good thing. If there were a columnist or two out there who kept wondering where Nevada's leaders are, this might have ended the search.
Second, Coolican's column is really an attempt to claim Roberson is acting in a hypocritical manner.
State Sen. Michael Roberson is a rising star in the Republican Party.Now, Roberson isn't the first one to have this kind of attack thrown at him. One of the Left's primary criticisms of the Tea Party's call for entitlement reform is that members of the Tea Party are drawing checks from Social Security and are using Medicare.
He caught the attention of conservatives during his first legislative session this year with tough rhetoric attacking teachers unions and a Clark County School District he said was bloated with personnel who aren't in the classroom. In fact, he offered legislation that would have mandated 65 percent of education money go to classrooms.
As it happens, the School District received a report recently from Gibson Consulting Group recommending $162 million in efficiency savings over five years, money that could be put toward classroom instruction. One of the cost-saving measures that would reap $1.8 million per year would eliminate the position of "theme coordinator" and "recruiting counselor" at the district's magnet schools.
That's the job title of Liberty Leavitt Roberson, Roberson's wife, who works at Advanced Technologies Academy.
Awkward!
Think about this for a second. Liberals have mandated that all citizens pay taxes into the public school system and Social Security and Medicare. Mandated. If you try to avoid paying those taxes, you'll go to jail.
But when fiscal conservatives point out problems in those systems, some liberals shout "hypocrisy," because those conservative individuals are participating in a mandated system.
What garbage.
It's not hypocritical or "awkward" to work for changes in a mandated system you're employed in or living under - especially if those changes would actually impact your personal bottom line negatively - because the government mandates those systems.
Third, Coolican then tries to claim that Roberson misidentified the number of CCSD members making over $100,000. Roberson said it was 350.
There aren't 350 education bureaucrats making six figures. There were 299 in 2009 and 285 in 2010. (But hey, if his accuracy were a batting average, he'd be the best hitter ever.)After checking on TransparentNevada, I found out that there were actually 346 CCSD employees who made over $100,000 in 2010. When I e-mailed Coolican to ask about this discrepancy, he said that he only asked CCSD about administrators, because Roberson's exact quote was "350 education bureaucrats."
Since one definition of "bureaucrat" is anyone in a bureaucracy, that's pretty thin hair splitting to try to justify a snarky shot.
Voting for policies that benefit you financially and directly (like legislators who are government employees voting to raise taxes to increase government pay) should raise a red flag for voters.
However, voting for policies that might hurt you financially doesn't raise any of those red flags.
How many talking points can Sen. Denis fit into 700 words?
Now, I don't begrudge anyone the occasional talking point - my favorite is "government shouldn't pick winners and losers" - but to build a whole column out of talking points, clichés and buzzwords is truly an impressive feat.
And in today's Las Vegas Sun, state Sen. Mo Denis does just that as he touts President Obama's American Jobs Act. [I've bolded the talking points, clichés and buzzwords]
Besides creating jobs and helping to turn Nevada's economy around, the American Jobs Act is fully paid for by ending taxpayer giveaways to big oil and tax breaks for corporations that ship American jobs overseas while asking the wealthiest of Americans to pay their fair share.You have to read the entire column to fully appreciate how much it resembles someone cutting and pasting a sheet of talking points.
In contrast to President Obama's comprehensive approach to cutting taxes for the middle class and small businesses while creating jobs right now, Washington Republicans have taken their eye off the ball and are focused not on job-creation but on killing Medicare by turning it over to private insurance companies to pay for taxpayer giveaways to the special interests that bankroll their campaigns.
Republicans in Washington and those running for president are rejecting bipartisanship and pretending that more handouts to big corporations and the wealthiest will grow the economy. The American people aren't buying it. The Republican budget plan, in addition to killing Medicare, takes a meat ax to Social Security and destroys nearly a million American jobs, all while repealing the protections put in place to prevent another financial crisis.
Republicans should abandon their reckless agenda and reject the same failed policies that got us into this mess and join Democrats in passing this bill. The American Jobs Act is what the American people want: common sense, not controversy. Too many Nevadans have been out of work for too long for Washington politicians to waste time playing partisan games. Congress should pass this bill immediately.
In fact, it's so over the top that I wonder if Denis actually wrote the column. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a slightly modified version of a generic op-ed that the White House is trying to run around the country.
Regardless, cramming that many talking points, clichés and buzzwords into 700 words is impressive.
It's also worth noting that this is the same Jobs Act that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to schedule a vote for, instead focusing on a bill regarding China and currency that isn't likely to pass, but will help Midwest Democrats vying for reelection.
Video: The Nevada Policy Research Institute celebrates 20 years!
For the last 20 years, the Nevada Policy Research Institute has been dedicated to defending and promoting free enterprise, individual liberty and limited, accountable government.
This is our story.
If you enjoyed the video, I hope you will share it on Facebook or Twitter and forward it to your friends and colleagues as an introduction to NPRI.
The more people know about and support NPRI, the greater the Institute's impact will be in defending and promoting freedom.
Celebrate Leonard Read's birthday: Read 'I, Pencil'
And who is Leonard Read?
A free-market economist born on this day in 1898, who wrote "I, Pencil" - one of the best, yet shortest, explanations of the power of the marketplace's "invisible hand." "I, Pencil" is available for free here. There's even a free audio book version!
If you are a parent or a teacher, read "I, Pencil" and then make sure your kids read it. It's that good.
(h/t Foundation for Economic Education)
New CCSD communications model: Hey, let's talk with the media
Lest you think I'm joking, here is the Clark County School District's new Media Model Overview for you to review.
Click to enlarge, or a PDF version is available here.
The plan represents a fundamental shift in how CCSD relates to media members. Instead of having to go through PIOs (Public Information Officers), each department will have the authority and ability to communicate directly with the press:
What: A shift to content expert model with representatives in each area, division and department responding directly to routine media inquires related to their areas of responsibility(ies)Previously, media members (including reporters from NPRI's Nevada Journal) would be directed to talk with CCSD's Communications Office, which - at least in the case of NPRI - has often done its best not to communicate. I know I've seen other reporters (probably on Twitter) make similar complaints.
This policy - if it is actually followed - would be a great step forward for transparency in CCSD. Instead of having the Communications Office delay or prevent communication and attempt to control the message, this policy should open up CCSD more to the media and the public's eye.
I applaud CCSD for taking a concrete step to remove the barriers it has previously imposed. Media members should take advantage of this policy and make sure CCSD actually follows its own model.
