Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
It's the administrators.
Anyone who's ever worked in a government office knows the answer to this one. We know where the money goes. We know why no matter how much money we keep throwing at the schools (or parks or welfare or housing or health or transit or conservation or energy or communication or defense or everything else the government has managed to take control of since FDR started systematically destroying our Constitution), they just keep getting worse so the government keeps begging us for more money.
As Denis Leary would say, I've got one word for you: "ADMINISTRATORS." That is a code word used in the government. It means "people who get paid comfortable salaries and have job security for the rest of their life, and they never have to accomplish anything." The classic ADMINISTRATOR is a person who has formal duties -- to ADMINISTER other ADMINISTRATORS. That is the crowning achievement of civil service. If you can get a job like that you never have to know anything or do anything. Just show up at meetings and sign an occasional report, and you can just sit there every day for the rest of your life, counting the days until you get your pension. So you can "stop working"!
The government is pouring tons of money into the school system. The reason they've got nothing to show for it is that it's all going into the pockets of the ADMINISTRATORS. What a sweet deal. When times get tough, instead of laying off ADMINISTRATORS, who are nothing more than parasites, they lay off TEACHERS, the people who are actually performing the work of education. You can actually go to college and get a degree in SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION! There are that many jobs in that category that you can go take classes and learn how to do it! Let's see, Staring Out the Window 101A, Sending Back a Form because Line 13 Isn't Filled out 202B, Telling Parents that Only the School Nurse is Qualified to Decide When Their Kid Gets to Use His Own Damn Asthma Inhaler 115C, those must be some really fun classes!
Some of you have already hit pretty close to home, talking about programs that are being funded while children aren't being taught to read and write. That's nothing compared to the PAYROLL of the people who work in the back offices and the school district's administrative headquarters.
I haven't seen the statistics for California, because parochial schools aren't as popular there, but I have seen the statistics for New York City, about seven or eight years ago. The Archdiocese of New York runs a school system that is fully HALF the size of the NYC public school system. They have just about HALF the number of students. But guess how many administrators they have, compared to the public schools? ONE-TENTH!
Private and parochial schools put their money into the classrooms. Government schools put their money into the back offices. It's as simple as that.
You see this same model replicated over and over again in every government enterprise. How many ADMINISTRATORS are there in the National Park Service, compared to the actual rangers that do the work? How many in public hospitals, compared to the number of doctors and nurses? How many in the military services? The police force? We've got entire federal departments, like Energy and Transportation, that are nothing but huge flocks of ADMINISTRATORS! They don't actually "do" anything at all except administer each other and go to meetings and sign an occasional report!
We've all heard the aphorism that "power corrupts." We're accustomed to seeing that borne out in people like Hitler and Stalin, people who get too much power and become evil. But the corruption of power is just as insidious, just as harmful to the nation, and a hell of a lot harder to notice, when all the power does to the people who have it is make them INERT.
Turn this nation back over to the citizens before it's too late.
Anyone who's ever worked in a government office knows the answer to this one. We know where the money goes. We know why no matter how much money we keep throwing at the schools (or parks or welfare or housing or health or transit or conservation or energy or communication or defense or everything else the government has managed to take control of since FDR started systematically destroying our Constitution), they just keep getting worse so the government keeps begging us for more money.
As Denis Leary would say, I've got one word for you: "ADMINISTRATORS." That is a code word used in the government. It means "people who get paid comfortable salaries and have job security for the rest of their life, and they never have to accomplish anything." The classic ADMINISTRATOR is a person who has formal duties -- to ADMINISTER other ADMINISTRATORS. That is the crowning achievement of civil service. If you can get a job like that you never have to know anything or do anything. Just show up at meetings and sign an occasional report, and you can just sit there every day for the rest of your life, counting the days until you get your pension. So you can "stop working"!
The government is pouring tons of money into the school system. The reason they've got nothing to show for it is that it's all going into the pockets of the ADMINISTRATORS. What a sweet deal. When times get tough, instead of laying off ADMINISTRATORS, who are nothing more than parasites, they lay off TEACHERS, the people who are actually performing the work of education. You can actually go to college and get a degree in SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION! There are that many jobs in that category that you can go take classes and learn how to do it! Let's see, Staring Out the Window 101A, Sending Back a Form because Line 13 Isn't Filled out 202B, Telling Parents that Only the School Nurse is Qualified to Decide When Their Kid Gets to Use His Own Damn Asthma Inhaler 115C, those must be some really fun classes!
Some of you have already hit pretty close to home, talking about programs that are being funded while children aren't being taught to read and write. That's nothing compared to the PAYROLL of the people who work in the back offices and the school district's administrative headquarters.
I haven't seen the statistics for California, because parochial schools aren't as popular there, but I have seen the statistics for New York City, about seven or eight years ago. The Archdiocese of New York runs a school system that is fully HALF the size of the NYC public school system. They have just about HALF the number of students. But guess how many administrators they have, compared to the public schools? ONE-TENTH!
Private and parochial schools put their money into the classrooms. Government schools put their money into the back offices. It's as simple as that.
You see this same model replicated over and over again in every government enterprise. How many ADMINISTRATORS are there in the National Park Service, compared to the actual rangers that do the work? How many in public hospitals, compared to the number of doctors and nurses? How many in the military services? The police force? We've got entire federal departments, like Energy and Transportation, that are nothing but huge flocks of ADMINISTRATORS! They don't actually "do" anything at all except administer each other and go to meetings and sign an occasional report!
We've all heard the aphorism that "power corrupts." We're accustomed to seeing that borne out in people like Hitler and Stalin, people who get too much power and become evil. But the corruption of power is just as insidious, just as harmful to the nation, and a hell of a lot harder to notice, when all the power does to the people who have it is make them INERT.
Turn this nation back over to the citizens before it's too late.
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