Shot in the Dark

Fully Fungible

A friend of the blog emails:

How can St Paul Teachers be voting to strike for more money? Weren’t Minnesota schools fully funded?

They left themselves a pretty clever out.

  1. The DFL said they were going to spend a $19B surplus to “fully fund” schools
  2. But they would never define what “full funding” meant – cannily avoiding having two of Alinski’s rules, “framing” and “making them playi by their own rules”, against them.
  3. They did, however, do the end-zone happy dance over doing it (whatever it was)
  4. But now teachers are striking and districts want more, and…
  5. …DFLers are telling us to quit talking about the thing we asked them to define in the first place, knowing that…
  6. …they were never aiming their spiel at smart people with critical thinking skills.

It’s fiendish genius, really.

Also destroys education, and contributes to the destruction of a civil society, but tomayto tomahto.

Posted

in

,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

7 responses to “Fully Fungible”

  1. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    One of the first requirements for a Liberal (or its cousin, a RINO) is the ability to forget whenever required by The Narrative. “Schools were fully funded? I don’t remember that. But if teachers say they need money, then we should give them money. I’m Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota. I’ll Do It For The Children.”

    It’s like the Covid Nazis who expect to be forgiven by saying, “Mistakes were made.” No, they weren’t. Lies were told, and people’s lives ruined because of them, including that woman in Albert Lea who went to jail for trying to salvage her life savings in her restaurant business, closed by Governor Walz endless series of executive orders for “two weeks to flatten the curve” that never existed.

    And no, the Founding Fathers were not Black or Indian. People alive today can’t personally remember events that long ago, which is why writing was invented. Altering our past by rewriting the books (or churning out graduates who can’t even read the books) is just another way of making us forget, akin to chiseling Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s name off her monuments.

    Critical thinking requires the ability to contrast events, which requires the ability to remember events, which is in short supply today.

  2. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    It’s also similar to the lack of critical thinking about Green Energy policy. Why are we blithely accepting remote-shut off electric meters?

    We must go Green for political reasons
    Green does not generate enough power to meet demand
    We reduce demand by shutting off power to certain people at certain times
    Not hospitals, obviously, or jails, that would be life-threatening
    We shut off non-essential people, like closing their businesses for the flu
    And with the new meters, our computers know who non-essential people are
    Not rich people
    Not politically connected people
    You

  3. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    If you have any disposable income, you can’t say you’ve fully funded education. Unless Denise Specht has all your money, you haven’t done enough. Cough up, haters.

  4. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    I’m told that part of their demands include priority getting into the Mayo Clinic Concussion Center after they get beaten up by the kids because they won’t punish kids for misbehavior.

    Somehow I am reminded of Reagan’s quip about government being like a baby, with an insatiable appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

  5. Bettyboop Avatar
    Bettyboop

    You gotta read the fine print. They meant ‘Fully funded for right now, this minute. We might in fact probably will need more in the future.’

    There’s always a sell by date with these grifters.

  6. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    Starting pay is $49,000 but they get a step increase every year plus they can change lanes to earn more money if they take credits toward advanced degrees so the starting pay number is the absolute floor, not the norm, but let’s use starting pay for our analysis.

    $49,000 plus cadillac health and dental insurance and a defined-benefit pension (“defined benefit” is like Social Security, your retirement pay is defined by charts regardless of how much you paid in, which contrasts with “defined-contribution” which is like a 401(k) where your retirement pay is limited by how much you saved over the years). What’s the value of pay and benefits? HR types usually tell me benes cost 40% of salary so let’s round up to $70,000. To START. That doesn’t suck so bad. What’s that work out to on an hourly basis?

    Well, now, hold on. A normal full-time job is about 260 days per year, 2080 working hours per year. But the school year is only 170 teaching days, 1,360 working hours. Yes, but many teachers coach or do one-act plays. Yes, and they get paid extra for that. We’re talking straight hourly pay and it looks a lot like $50 TO START. Oh, and those student loans you took to get your teaching degree? Might be able to get some of them forgiven.

    Plus they get off the good holidays – Christmas Break and Spring Break – and every Summer when they paint houses for even more cash.

    I have a hard time sympathizing with people starting at $50 an hour with full benefits and 12 weeks paid vacation every year. I’m not interested in seeing them get a raise.

  7. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    ^ All true. Now lets add in the fact that if/when teachers strike it causes huge problems for the parents of those children. Mothers have been convinced that what they really should be doing is spending 8 hours/day shuffling papers and let teachers (educated childhood experts) raise their children for them. So now, Suze Minnetonka, corporate drone, needs to hope for flexibility from her employer, and Cheryl BrooklynCenter, working at 7-11, has to miss work and possibly her job.

    So then those mothers/parents beat on the school board to settle.

    Brilliant scheme. On top of that, when teachers do actually go to work, some (many? most?) purposely eff-up their charges with LGBTQ indoctrination instead of teaching them to read, write, and do math.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.