Stan Geiger

Stop SQ 744

I have to believe SQ 744 is DOA, but you just never know. So I reckon it's time for all good men and women to stand up and start ripping this thing. I have put up a link to the right. You might think about hitting it from time to time.

If you are not aware of the educators' latest attempt to screw this state silly for their own benefit, you will be made aware in the coming 90 days. You will be asked to vote, up or down, on an educator proposal that would mandate an $850 million bump in state funding for common education. That bump, by the way, would just be for starters. There would be more to come for years and years and years.

There was a poll done at the first of the year, January, I think. It showed 61 percent in favor. I put no stock in that poll at all. Aside from the fact that polls don't have a very good record of predicting the future of late, those poll results are old. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since January.

I don't know of a single prominent politician that has not condemned this measure. Our two candidates for governor have condemned this measure. Our sitting governor, Brad Henry, Mr. Education himself, has condemned this measure.

Even the Oklahoma Policy Institute---a liberal stink tank---has condemned the measure. It condemns the measure from a liberal standpoint, of course. The institute complains of no funding mechanism. The institute logically figures if common ed gets another $850 million, funding for its other socialist darlings will get gutted.

The institute is quite right.

Educators claim their constitutional amendment would not result in gutting of funding for other things. Educators claim their constitutional amendment would not result in a tax increase. They seem to think a billion dollars can magically fall out of a tree.

I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic. For now, I'll just tell you that if you have more than 3 living brain cells, you'll decide to vote no on this issue long before election day.

Oklahoman, 39, Dies Due to Educator Greed

News reports say an Oklahoma man, a former cop working for a private security company giving firearms training to Afghans, was shot to death by one of his students. He was 39 years old.

Private security companies operating in war zones pay very well. They have to pay well, or they would have no employees. The fellow in question, according to reports, quit his cop job and signed on with the private security firm for the money. You see, he had three kids and wanted them to go to college. Now he's dead and his three children have no father.

I guess it's not enough for families to go bankrupt because they have to take on mortgages to pay for college degrees. Now people are actually dying so educators can line their pockets.

Enjoy your blood money, fuck-heads. (Pardon my French.)

School Super Ads

I've seen ads from a couple of candidates for state school superintendent. They are NBP ads. NBP stands for nuttin' but platitudes.

Both of them speak of routing more education money directly into classrooms. I don't really know what that means.

Excluding the students, there are two components to a classroom: a teacher and the various tools.

Are the candidates for school super calling for more teacher pay without actually saying it? If so, I'm in complete disagreement with them.

A punk that just graduated from a university with a teaching degree can take a job as a classroom teacher and be paid more than the state average wage from the get. That new teacher will also get free health insurance, courtesy of the state. And that teacher will become a part of the Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System, which offers a very generous defined-benefit pension plan. Meanwhile, that teacher will have a 6-hour workday and be required to show up for work only half the days in a calendar year.

Teachers are more than amply compensated for what they do.

Are the candidates claiming a need for more educational tools in the classroom? Every time I see a news story on education, complete with video of kidlets playing with Crayons, I see a classroom so full of stuff you couldn't get anything else in it without the aid of a shoehorn. The only thing in the classrooms that seems to be in short supply is students.

If the candidates are saying too much money is being spent outside the classroom, I'm in complete agreement. But that money should be pruned from the system and given back to taxpayers. There is no need for it anywhere else.

I saw a report just the other day that mentioned the results from a recent study of 30 industrialized nations. U.S. students ranked 21st in science and 25th in math. We spend more money on education than any nation on the planet, yet we rank in the bottom third in science and math.

Statistics say anywhere from a fourth to a third of students entering a public high school won't be around come graduation day.

For three decades, we have given educators everything they said they needed. We have hired more teachers to reduce class sizes, we have hired more non-teachers, we have increased pay for everybody in education, we have built fancier facilities with fancier equipment. What we have to show for that massive public investment is something just short of spit.

Still, the educators sing the same tired song. They just don't have enough money.

There is a thing in economics known as the law of diminishing returns. Basically, that law says you can gain by throwing money at a problem up to a point. After that, you're just wasting money. I think we hit the point of diminishing returns a long time ago when it comes to funding education.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Einstein that defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Have we, as a nation, gone insane?

The Big 12-10

It was a joke back in the day: The Big 10---with eleven teams---was the conference that couldn't count. Now we've got a Big 10 with twelve teams, a Big 12 with ten teams and a Pac 10 with eleven teams. Marvelous.

At any rate, the Big 12 is still in business but it seems to need a new name. How about the Big 1? That sounds fitting to me because, from the sound of things, Texas owns the conference. And that, from the sound of things, was the thorn in the paw of Nebraska for years that ultimately led it to bolt to the Big 10.

In the days of my youth, OU and Nebraska met up annually in a late-season football game with much on the table. It was a game to look forward to; I liked that game. The Big 12 divisions meant the two teams would only compete from time to time. Now the two teams might never meet again, lest they happen to meet in a bowl game. I don't like that.

But hey, screw the fans; it's all about the money.

And to what end? I mean if Texas brings in millions more off athletics, is the money going to go to anything that might benefit the common good? Is the money going to go to reducing tuition for attending students? Is the money going to go to some kind of research that might produce something of value? Is the money going to go to reducing taxpayer subsidies?

Not bloody likely. History indicates any additional money brought in from athletics will go to pad the pocketbooks of coaches. Mack Brown, for example, will be able to make $10 million a year instead of a paltry $5 million. Dude, I'm stoked!

I played some as a younger man, a little basketball and a lot of baseball. I had a lot of coaches over the years. I'll steal, and alter, a line from Dwight Eisenhower he uttered with regard to his then-VP Richard Nixon: If you give me a week, I might be able to think of a coach I had that was bright enough to get his shoes on the right feet without referring to an owner's manual.

Today, coaches are revered. They are revered beyond all reason---and they are paid accordingly.

We have a couple of basketball coaches at our state's two top state-funded universities. Both of them, according to reports, make well over a million bucks a year in base salary alone. I wouldn't care to venture a guess as to their total compensation. I would have to have access to their inch-thick contracts full of whatever.

A fellow died a few days back---a few months short of celebrating his 100th birthday. That fellow was John Wooden. He was a basketball coach at UCLA for many years. I'm old enough to remember John Wooden's success. He won 10 national championships. Seven of those championships came consecutively.

I offer major kudos to KTUL's Chris Lincoln. He reported Wooden's top-paid year in a recent telecast. It was the 1974-'75 season. Wooden was paid $36,000.

Now, for you youngsters out there, 36 grand wasn't bad pay for the day. In fact, it was damn good pay for the day. Stated in current dollars, I'd say, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 grand. And that's a pretty good neighborhood.

John Wooden had maybe the best resume any college coach could dream about. He was making maybe $200,000 a year---at his peak---in today's numbers. Take the two goobers I mentioned before, add up their combined accomplishments and you get something just short of squat. They are both millionaires by virtue of nothing more than job title.

Something is wrong---really wrong---with the picture.

You Go, Lady Boomers!

Back in 1971 it was! The OU Boomers collided with the Nebraska Cornhuskers on the gridiron in what was dubbed the "game of the century."

Last night, there was another "game of the century." This time, however, the battle took place between ladies in a gym. The second-ranked Boomer gymnasts engaged the top-ranked gymnastics team from Alabama. The Boomer ladies, by the slimmest of margins, prevailed.

I love lady gymnasts. They are cute as all get out, for starters. But they also do incredible things. Assuming I could do a back flip, for example, which I can't, I would be proud of myself if I could actually land on the floor. A little cutie can do one while landing on a 4-inch piece of wood. I find that amazing.

Major kudos to the lady Boomers!

Focus on Three Things

Educators won!! Taxpayers lost!! No surprise. That's usually the way it goes with school bond issues these days. They pass with 70 percent, 80 percent or even 90 percent yes votes.

Such was the case yesterday. All four TPS measures passed, by an average yes vote of 75 percent.

There are a couple of points to make concerning the numbers.

First, there is the low turnout. Only about 25,000 people showed up to cast a vote. In a city with a population of nearly 400,000 people, most of which is covered by TPS, only 25,000 showed up to vote.

School districts rely on low turnout. That's why they set school bond votes for days when there is nothing else on the ballot. About 6,000 staunch citizens showed up to vote no. Roughly 19,000 showed up to vote yes. I suspect almost all of the roughly 19,000 yes votes came from TPS employees and their family members.

Somebody wrote, two or three hundred years ago, that democracies fail when people realize they can vote themselves money from the tax coffers.

Relative to education, I'd say we're about there.

Second, there were about a thousand votes less cast on the third and fourth propositions than there were on the first two. That tends to indicate about a thousand voters didn't have sense enough to turn the ballot over. That's a sad comment on the state of our society.

Whatever, the measures passed. TPS gets a whopping $354 million to spend. The rug-wearing dick of a superintendent is gleeful. Good for him.

I recall reading about the super of the day, back in the '90s, getting a fat bonus because of the passage of a bond issue. Do you reckon the current super is having an orgasm because he gets a bonus due to the passage of this bond issue?

Maybe somebody in the bona fide media should ask.

I request that you pay attention over the next few years. Supposedly, this bond issue, set to expire in 2016, constitutes the last leg in a 20-year plan to make TPS all shiny and new. Fine. Pay attention.

Pay attention to performance. I mean after several hundred million dollars in borrowed money has been pumped into TPS, performance should be enhanced. I'd say dropout rates would be a good thing to watch. Currently, they say a fourth to a fifth of students entering high school don't graduate. Let's see if all the "shiny and new" changes that.

Pay attention to your tax bills. The educators claimed pumping $354 million into a school district wouldn't affect your taxes. Validate that claim.

Pay attention to the end. As I said, this bond issue is supposed to be the end of a 20-year run. Let's see if that comes to pass. Let's see if the school district quits now that all its dreams have come true.

Pay attention.

School Bond Money and Salaries

I've heard it issued almost like a disclaimer in news reports about TPS' enormous proposed bond issue: Bond money can't be used for salaries. Well, that's not quite true.

In my previous piece, I wrote of the big lie about how people can vote $354 million to a school district without incurring a tax increase. Your property tax goes up every year. The more junk you have loaded on that bill the more the annual increases will be. Of course this bond issue will cost you money if it passes.

But even accepting the claim as true, there is still no good reason to vote yes. I mean I can come up with a plan. I can argue the government should borrow $5 million and give it to me. It would be good for the economy because I would get rich, and could go out on a spending spree. And my plan could certainly be implemented without raising your taxes.

Would you vote for that?

If not, you shouldn't vote $354 million in bond money for TPS just because the educators claim it can be done without raising your taxes. That's not a good enough justification.

On the matter of bond money not paying salaries, it can be done and is being done---indirectly.

Reports say $260 million is to go to capital projects, renovations, classroom construction and, of course, athletic facilities. I think this part of the bond proposal definitely overreaches. That point aside, it is at least valid to pay for capital projects with borrowed money.

The rest of the money, some $90 million, goes to other stuff. The other stuff, like computers and software, buses, technological gadgets for teachers, television sets and textbooks, come under the heading of supplies and equipment. They should be purchased using annual operating money.

If tens of millions of dollar's worth of expenditures can be moved out of operational spending and financed with debt instead, tens of millions of dollars in operational funds are freed up for salaries.

It's a shell game, folks. The educators are just moving the pea.

Vote No

Tomorrow, a vote will be held. Tulsa Public Schools is going for a state record $354 million in borrowed money. Vote no across-the-board.

I cannot imagine, in my wildest dreams, that TPS has 354 million dollar’s worth of dire needs. I guess that’s as good a spot as any to start. The world is falling apart around us. We should not borrow money for schools just because. And it seems that is what is being marketed here. The district is going for the money just because it thinks it can get it.

I’ve been amazed at the TV ads. They promote no specific needs. They show people shooting lip, they might show video of cute little kids, but they cite no specific needs. The biggest selling point seems to be that of a yes vote not raising your taxes. Well, hell, that’s a good reason to hand a school district $354 million.

The ads fail to mention a no vote will reduce your property tax burden. The ads fail to mention a redirection of this public money might lengthen your lifespan, not to mention the lifespan of your child. I mean what’s more important, a renovated library at your child’s school or a bridge your child can pass over or under without dying?

Putting that stuff aside, the argument that a yes vote won’t raise your taxes is a lie. Maintaining the status quo relative to tax rates, do you expect your property tax liability to be the same in five years that it is today? If so, you haven’t been paying attention.

I recall a TPS bond issue from, oh, fifteen years ago, give or take. It was a big deal. I guess it was a big deal because it was the first time a TPS bond issue moved into the 9-figure range. The district was asking for $100 million. The superintendent humped it; Mayor Susan Savage humped it; various civic leaders humped it; the Tulsa World, of course, humped it. The measure passed, and there was a great celebration.

The measure on the ballot tomorrow is 3.5 times---or 250 percent---larger than the one passed some 15 years ago. School bond issues get bigger all the time. If approving them doesn’t raise your taxes, from where does the money come?

If you need more, I’ll give you more. Let’s look at some recent local reports that have come out of public education.

Oklahoma City Public Schools hired a new super not too long ago. He lasted, maybe, a year. He was using the district like it was his own personal piggy bank. He was putting in reimbursement requisitions for every dollar he spent---up to and including his booze purchases. It’s pretty easy to get rich when you’re getting overpaid for your job and then you don’t have to pay for anything.

Sequoyah Public Schools had a superintendent that was convicted for embezzling a million bucks over a 10-year span of time.

The big story now is Skiatook Public Schools. Current reports say that district squandered half a million bucks on janitorial supplies.

The official word from the district is standard. “Mistakes were made,” they say. Nobody noticed. That’s a lame excuse. But it’s good enough to roll some heads. I mean if Skiatook schools employs people that are too stupid to notice $529 is too much to pay for 3 mop heads, then the district employs people that are too stupid to hold jobs.

What any person with any sense knows is there were no “mistakes.” It was a deal-deal. The people in charge of the money were getting kicks.

The state auditor says there are currently half a dozen school districts under the microscope for various reasons. Oklahoma has over 500 public school districts. If the auditor’s office had greater resources, I figure they would all be under investigation.

If there is money to steal, schools are overfunded. Don’t give TPS $354 million just because.

Education and the Constitution

Educators need to be slapped down and put in their places.

Just the other day I wrote of a school district that put remote-controlled cameras in the bedrooms of teenagers. If educators haven't yet been informed, I'll tell them now: kiddie porn is illegal.

Now comes another story, this one from Illinois. A young man was handed a 5-day suspension because he posted a negative comment about a teacher on his Facebook page. The young man posted his comment on his own time, in his own home, using his own computer.

There is a reason the First Amendment is the first amendment. When a citizen has no right to criticize his or her government with impunity, that citizen has no rights at all.

Public schools are public enterprises. If we lose the right to criticize them, we lose everything.

Lottery Impact

KOTV's Oklahoma Impact series continued last night with a story on the lottery. It was a nice piece. The News on 6 continues to be my local station of choice---from 5 o'clock through the end of the evening, at least.

The story focused on that omnipresent ad featuring the cute little kids shouting out about what lottery proceeds "could" buy---things like 1,500 school buses and 75,000 computers.

Maybe lottery proceeds to this point could have purchased those things, but they haven't. Schools don't buy such things with lottery proceeds. In fact, schools don't buy such things with operating budget money at all; they float debt to buy such things these days.

The overall impact of lottery money is overstated in the ad. The figure thrown out is $300 million. But, as a fellow interviewed noted, that figure is from inception. The average annual amount going to education is about $67 million. Common education---of which the little kids in the ad are a part---gets 45 percent of that, or about $30 million per year. There are over 500 public school districts in the state, so it averages out to about $60,000 per school district per year. The money is apportioned, so the bigger, more affluent, school districts get the lion's share. Smaller school districts that might actually need the funding get something on the order of spit in a bucket.

One of the key stats mentioned in the report should be well-noted by everyone. The report said 85 percent of lottery money that actually makes it into school districts is absorbed by payroll. The ad speaks of computers, buses, desks, microscopes and books. But, in reality, lottery proceeds go home with the educators.

If you really believe your child's school is in need of more of your money, I have a suggestion for you.

Running the numbers, 35 percent of the lottery's gross goes to "education." The rest goes to administrative costs, prizes and advertising. Of the 35 percent, common schools get 45 percent. So if you drop a dollar on a lottery ticket, common schools get 16 cents.

If you want your kid's school to have the money, instead of buying a dollar lottery ticket just go down there and hand over 16 cents. It's a whole lot cheaper that way.

I would be remiss if I closed out this writing without mentioning the negative macroeconomic impact of having a lottery in the state.

As we all know, the state's economy is not in the best of shape. Unemployment is up. Consumer spending is down. The state government, as a result, is facing a billion dollar shortfall. Without a doubt, we would be in better shape if the lottery didn't exist.

A lottery is a nonproductive entity that sucks money out of the economy. In other words, money that could be going to productive commerce is going into our state-owned gambling operation instead. That feeds unemployment and dampens consumer spending. In turn, those things cause a drop in state revenue.

Installing a lottery was one of the dumbest moves this state has ever made. We should move to do away with it.