OCPAC e-mail - Goldwater at OCPAC, good legislation, truth about education spending

[Charlie Meadows]

Members and friends of the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC)

++  AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING

++  ANNOUNCEMENTS

++  TWO GOOD BILLS THIS SESSION

++  THE TRUE STORY OF EDUCATION FINANCES IN OK!

++  AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING

Our 12 noon luncheon for Wednesday, April 9th 2014 will be held at Olivet Baptist Church, 1201 Northwest 10th street in OKC. As a special speaker this week, we will have Barry AuH2O Jr. from Arizona. For those of you that may not remember the Presidential elections of 1964, one of the popular ways to announce support for the Republican presidential candidate was to refer to his last name using the chemical symbols for the 3 elements that make up his name, Gold (Au) Water (H-Hydrogen & 2 parts O-Oxygen) or in other words, Barry Goldwater. His son, Barry Goldwater Jr. is in town for a fundraising benefit for State Insurance Commissioner, John Doak. I will introduce Commissioner Doak and then ask him to introduce Barry Goldwater Jr.   

++  ANNOUNCEMENTS

*  WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY  -  These 3 days are the filing period for federal, state and county offices all over the state of Oklahoma. State law does not allow a candidate to file for more than one office at the same time. After Friday, we will have a better idea of all the candidates running for statewide and legislative seats, but more importantly, those Republican incumbent races in which our by-laws allow us to become involved. Our by-laws also determine which non-incumbent primary races we are allowed to be involved. All the rest of the races that are for the general elections will be done after the primary races are over. As a general rule, our by-laws only allow us to consider a Republican challenger to an incumbent if the incumbent was a RINO nominee for the 2013 legislative session (Any Republican scoring a 63 or below on the Oklahoma Constitution Newspaper’s Conservative Index is a RINO nominee). In other cases our by-laws only allow us to get involved in a Republican primary if no Democrat files or if a Democrat files and it is a 90% chance that the Democrat will not win in the general election.

*   FRIDAY EVENING  -  CHICKASHA AREA  -  The Give Me Liberty Tour will do its presentation this Friday evening starting at 6:30 p.m. with the location being The First Assembly of God church, 3340 South 16th street in Chickasha. There are just a few more of these presentations left, so please, if you live anywhere within a reasonable distance of Chickasha, do everything you can to see this inspiring and well balanced program.

*  SATURDAY MORNING  -  GUTHRIE AREA  -  The Give Me Liberty Tour will have to break down and load up in Chickasha on Friday evening and then get to Guthrie early Saturday morning to set up for a presentation beginning at 9:00 a.m., located in the American Legion Building, 123 North 1st street in downtown Guthrie. Those presenting the Give Me Liberty Tour, Paul Blair, Mark Kreslins and Dan Fisher have really refined this down to a fast moving and very professional presentation that portrays the problem, explains the solution and then inspires people to get involved. What many do not know is that there is a team of about 20 volunteers that go everywhere this is produced to set it up, man the tables and help folks touch and understand the nearly 250 year old relics of our War of Independence. It is a huge effort and well worth every minute of your time to attend. For the many folks on my e-mail list in the Guthrie, Edmond, Stillwater area, don’t miss this presentation on Saturday morning.

++  TWO GOOD BILLS THIS SESSION

I often make folks aware of problematic legislation working its way through the session, but this time I want to make folks aware of a couple of very good bills advancing through the process.

First is SB 1023, sponsored in the House by Randy Grau (R-Edmond) and co-sponsored by Speaker of the House Jeff Hickman (R-Dacoma). I am sure this is a State Chamber of Commerce bill and one of those times when the Chamber is right on. 

The bill would prevent a city or county jurisdiction of government form having the authority to set minimum wage above what is currently set by Federal or State Government. This is very important as a group of liberals and organized labor forces are circulating a petition in OKC to raise the minimum wage to $10.20 an hour. If passed this could be very detrimental to OKC as any businesses paying their employees below that amount would have incentive to relocate to the surrounding cities or perhaps another state.

Just remember these facts when you need to cut through all the BS (Blue Smoke-n-mirrors) blathered out by liberals and union bosses when they support raising the minimum wage and thus promote wage fascism. 

1. Minimum wage jobs are entry level jobs primarily intended for young people or in some cases when folks simply lack the talent or drive to be productive on a higher skill level. Minimum wage does not pay an amount necessary to support a family nor is it intended to do so. When these minimums are raised, some of these entry level jobs disappear.

2. Minimum wage increases never help those working at the new higher minimum wage level. Because salary is overhead to any business, any forced increase also forces businesses to raise their prices and thus the new higher wages have to be spent to buy the same products at higher prices. In addition, when the minimum wage is increased, it has a ripple effect putting pressure on all wages to increase and thus producing higher prices for all products and services.

3. Higher minimum wages in Oklahoma or America make what we produce in Oklahoma less competitive with goods produced in other parts of America or on an international basis, less competitive in the global market place.

4. The people most hurt by raising the minimum wage are those who become unemployed by the increase and the elderly who live on a fixed income. They suffer from inflation eating away at their income. That drives some of them to have to work at minimum wage as a greeter or some other low level job, well past a normal age for retirement.

Truth is, one of the strongest measures we could do in Oklahoma to send a message to the rest of the nation and world that we are becoming a business friendly state would be to eliminate the minimum wage and announce to the federal government, they have no Constitutional authority to set such and we are therefore going to nullify all federal edicts that say different. 

What would be the outcome of such an action? Initially not much would change. Some businesses might try to lower wages, but they would find it hard to fill many of those positions. In the long term, more businesses would move to Oklahoma with all the recent business friendly changes going on here which would create more demand for labor. More demand for labor always forces wages to increase based on supply and demand, just look at North Dakota. Of course more demand for labor brings more people to Oklahoma which would lessen the demand and wages would find their equilibrium. Folks, that is a perfect description of a free market labor economy. 

The second good bill is SB 1372, sponsored by Jon Echols (R-OKC) in the House. This bill brings into line more reasonable standards to be hired as a state trooper. It reduces the minimum age from 23 to 21 and more importantly eliminates the requirement to have a college degree to serve as a trooper.

This is so important as it represents a small step toward breaking up the un-holy and incestuous relationship between employers and the education industry. Many years ago big business in America decided they no longer wanted to be out the expense of “job training” for their employees, they wanted the taxpayers pay for that on top of the costs for an educational system. In the same way, the biggest business in America, the education industry, wanted more and more clients, and thus jumped into bed with the business community convincing them to set ever higher education standards for employees. 

We are now fed a continual mantra that you will never make much money throughout your life unless you have ever higher education achievements. There is an element of truth to this if the business community will never give a person without the education papers a chance at producing for them. 

Of course the nation is full of antidotal cases of minimally educated people achieving without a lot of education. I believe at least 2 of Oklahoma’s 5 billionaires do not have a college degree, I believe they are Tom Love of Love’s Travel Stops and David Green of Hobby Lobby fame. In fact, I don’t believe either of them graduated from high school? There are certainly some functions that need higher education, but the number of those are far less then most any of us would ever suspect. If given a chance, probably 75 percent of all jobs requiring a college degree could be performed very well by a bright and motivated person if ever given a chance to learn through apprenticeship.   

++  THE TRUE STORY OF EDUCATION FINANCES IN OK!

There was a fascinating story in the March 29th addition of the Oklahoman regarding education as revealed by the opening of a time capsule that had been buried in the basement of the First Lutheran Church in OKC since 1913. 

If one were to bore down into the article, there were some very interesting facts to understand. There was a letter from the 1913 Superintendent of the OKC school system by the name of William Brandenburg. He made an interesting prediction, that in 100 years, by 2013, his salary of $3,600 dollars a year would pale in comparison to the $10,000 dollar a year salary to be made by the superintendent of that day. Mr. Brandenburg obviously had no idea of the results of the Federal Reserve Act to be passed in Washington in 1913, creating a central bank once again in the U.S. The inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve have pushed the salary of the Oklahoma City School District Superintendent well above $200,000 especially when benefits are included in. 

However, there were other interesting statistics in the article that bare on us today. In 1913 13,000 students were in the OKC school district, being taught by 410 teachers, which means we had a student teacher ration of 1 teacher for every 31.7 students. Today, we have 46,000 students in the OKC school district, I don’t know how many of them are being taught, but there are 2,700 teachers, which works out to 1 teacher for every 17.3 students. 

I don’t know about the education quality of 1913, but I can assure folks that the education quality for the time period of my parents from the late 20s to the early 40s was far superior to that which I receive in from 1951 through 1964 and by the way, all through my schooling we had from 32 to 36 pupils in my classrooms. I can also assure folks that the quality of education made available to me was superior to what is available today. Some have suggested a high school diploma of 50 years ago is the equivalent of a college degree today and I suspect that is very close to the truth. 

Though it doesn’t seem logical, it should not take a rocket scientist to understand that classroom size is not all that relevant to the quality of education to be obtained for students. I will say that larger classroom sizes do require more work for teachers. However, with just a little critical thinking, it should raise a red flag when today’s teachers want more money for doing less work and producing an inferior product. 

Now lets look at current teacher salaries and expenses in Oklahoma schools. With the passage of HB 1017 back in 1990, minimum wages for teacher salaries were to be set when fully implemented at $31,000 per year for a beginning teacher right out of college. Often times this would be a 21 year old teacher that had not as yet proven they could teach a kid how to tie their shoes. Now, each year for the first 15 years, teachers were to be given a step raise. If they had a masters or Phd, degree, all of the numbers were to be higher.

I believe the last across the board increase in teacher salaries was in 2007, even though individual school districts have the authority to increase wages anytime they have the means and many districts have increased wages since that time. That last teacher raise was an increase of $2,000 dollars per year, with approximately 45,000 teachers in the state, the cost was $90 million a year to taxpayers. 

We continually hear that teachers have to pull money out of their own pockets to provide the materials needed in the classrooms. In 2007, the legislature could have just as easily given a $1,500 dollar increase to teachers in increased by $500 per year per classroom monies for school supplies and the cost to taxpayers would have been the same, but they chose not to do so, can you guess why?

Now lets look at today’s figures. The average salary of a teacher in Oklahoma today is about $45,000 dollars per year, with the minimum being a little more than $33,000 and who knows what the highest paid teacher in the state makes? I expect it to be a coach making in the neighborhood of $90,000 dollars a year.  The average salary for a person in the private sector is about $35,000 per year. These are the people paying the salaries of teachers and all government workers for that matter.

Now lets break that down into something we can understand. Teachers work on a contract for 180 days in the year with, I believe, 5 professional days each year that they can take off at their discretion. Most people in the private sector work around 240 days per year, if they don’t work on weekends. This allows for 10 paid holidays and 2 weeks vacation each year for the folks in the private sector.

Teachers are required to work a minimum of a 35 hour work week, 6 hours in school and 30 minutes before and after school equals 7 hours a day times 5 days each week which comes out to 35 hours. Also, many teachers have a free hour during the 6 hours school is in session which they may use for grading papers or other work related projects. Most people in the private sector work a 40 hour work week or more.

Now lets break all this down a little more. $45K divided by 180 means the average salaried teachers are paid $250 dollars for each 7 hour day they spend in the classroom. By the way, how much do you make each day you go to work? Now let me see, a teacher making $250 dollars per day, working 7 hours a day works out to $35.71 per hour. By the way, how much do you make an hour? I don’t know about you, but I am finding it really hard to feel sorry for those poor underpaid teachers that are producing a product that needs so much remedial education when the graduating seniors go off to college. 

Now Charlie, you are not being reasonable, don’t you know teachers have to take work home, they have to grade papers and all other kinds of work. Ok, ok, lets look at the salary of a teacher that takes work home the equivalent of 1 hour each night during the week. Now we are looking at $250 divided by 8 hours a day which equals $31.25 per hour or lets look at 2 hours a night 5 days a week which works out to be $27.77 an hour. There may be a few teachers that work more than 10 hours each week at home, but I believe it to be very few.      

It is human nature to want more money for our labor, but teachers want to be considered as professionals thus they are exempt from overtime pay. They also have to be paid by the people they are supposed to serve, the taxpayers. 

Just a little history, from 1907 until 1980, teacher’s annual salaries were always less than the average salary of those in the private sector that paid their wages. I would say, that most of the time during this age, they were not paid enough. However, most teachers made this up by working a part time summer job something they rarely have to do today. 

By 1990, when H.B. 1017 was passed, teacher’s annual salaries had risen to about $2,000 a year above those in the private sector paying their salaries. Today that wage disparity/inequity, that social injustice (don’t I sound like Obama right now?) has increased to where a teacher is now making about $10,000 per year more that folks in the private sector, the folks that pay the salaries of the teachers. I always like to ask this question in this context. When public servants are paid more than the people paying their wages, are they really public servants or have they become masters of the public?

How did this come about? The NEA (National Education Association) which in my opinion is a teacher union and not really an association, has a local affiliate in each state. In Oklahoma they are the OEA (Oklahoma Education Association) and also the main organizers of the recent teacher’s rally at the Capitol. Over the years they have cleverly worked each state against the others to ratchet up salaries in every state. In Oklahoma we continually hear we must pay our teachers more or they will leave and go to Texas or some other state to make more money. I would fast for 3 days for the story out of a Houston newspaper that State Representative Mike Reynolds saw about 10 years ago when working down there. The article declared Texas needed to pay their teachers more money as their teachers were moving to Oklahoma to teach. 

Or perhaps states like Connecticut which pay at the highest level telling their citizens that they must pay their teachers more or they will not want to stay in the state as other states would some day pass them up. It does not matter, any state you go to the story is the same, teachers are never satisfied, they always want more. Now, with the smaller class sizes, there are now so many teachers and often those teachers have family members that have a vested interest in seeing more money coming into the family that it makes a powerful political block. Then of course when you throw in all the administrators and support staff it is one of the largest industries in the state and a very powerful political block. In fact one of the biggest problems in the State of Oklahoma is the large number of teachers who serve in the legislature or spouses of teachers that are lawmakers. 

I don’t want to paint with too broad of a brush. Many of our teachers in Oklahoma are very good at what they do, even though they are participants in a system which ties their hands and hinders them from doing the very best they could do.  

Every time I write something like this, exposing the reality of teacher pay, some teachers will respond by saying they don’t make $45,000 per year and then I have to define what the word “average” means. Or other teachers or their spouses will contend with my numbers of which I challenge them to show me a pay check so I can break it down, but they never do. It does get a little complicated as teachers get paid over 12 months even though they generally work only a little over 9.5 to 10 months of the year. Then of course there are the many benefits, some hard benefits and some are soft, such as paying down payments to buy a home or reimbursing for additional college tuition or costs for national accreditation.

Ok teachers, let me have it, I am ready for my beat down. 

I look forward to seeing everyone this Wednesday.

Charlie Meadows

Charlie...@gamil.com 

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