Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, goobers. I guess we're going to find out
here shortly if mister Michael Danger Brown had to supposedly
go get a root canal or a Crowner place this morning,
or if he shows up.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well there, mister Caldera, did Michael Brown decide to show
up today?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You know, I know a lot of guys with a
lot of how to put it, dependency issues, But it
takes a certain man to voluntarily get an unneeded root
canal just for the opioids. And this is why I
respect and love my friend Michael Brown. It is the
(00:48):
commitment that he has to live the life he wants
to live that dedicated to his craft. He is dedicated
to his craft. He is. He is a man who
just he says no, no, no, I will fight the
social pressure of being addicted to oxy, cotton and bourbon,
(01:13):
and I'll do so publicly. Throw some chinnel in there too.
Have you ever seen who is it? Steve martin In
and Bill Murray in Oh Oh Little Shop of Horrors.
Bill Murray comes in gonna get a candy bar. Gonna
get a candy bar because like a long root canal,
(01:41):
I want his long slow root canal. No matter what
his addictions, perversions, and problems. Mister Brown is out of
town today, and that means you got to put up
with me this morning or for for most of this morning. Anyway,
give me a call. It's eight minutes past three or
three seven to one, three eight two five five seven
(02:04):
one three talk. There is so much to talk about today.
There's just a ton going on. Let's let's start off local.
I filled in yesterday afternoon for Ryan and and got
an incredible response talking about believe it or not, teachers.
(02:26):
That's right, My son who has Down syndrome, who many
of you know, couldn't go to school yesterday. Why because
the people who care about him decided to leave. Now,
I'm not saying his teachers personally, but so many teachers
(02:47):
at Boulder Valley School District took the day off to
go protest that we need more money for education. We
need more money for education. Isn't it funny that that
in order to show how much they love they love
(03:11):
their kids, our children, their students, that the best way
to show that is to abandon them, abandon them and
steal a day of their of their education. That's just
the best way to show that I love you, kid,
(03:32):
I'm gonna go there and deny you and education. Not
not only that, but you know all the other million
days we take off for teacher this Day, teacher Training Days,
and Saint Swithin's Day and Martin Luther King and President's
Day and Labor Day and Veterans Day and every other
(03:54):
day you can think of. We're gonna take it off
in Judeteenth. Can't forget Juneteenth, oh and juteenth. And therefore
we we love the kids. We're doing this for the kids. Personally.
I put that under the box of child abuse. Keep
in mind that next week is spring break, at least
(04:19):
in my school district, it's spring break. They could have
done their protest and not inconvenience to any families, not
stolen a day of education from the children, because you know,
it's all about the children. It's just how they do it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You could have protested on like say, a Saturday or
a Sunday.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
No, not Saturdays or not the Lord's Day. We are
not protest on the Lord's Day. Just we're not going
to do that. Heaven forbid. Yeah, I know, it's it, it,
It really is ridiculous. So yesterday I just took a
quick glance at the dub Denver Public school revenue. They
(05:09):
bring in about one and a half the billion dollars
of your money every year and they use that money
to serve about ninety thousand kids. That means they spend
over sixteen grand per child. So here's here's my question.
(05:38):
Is your child getting sixteen thousand dollars worth of education?
I mean, this is the kind of money people spend
to send their kids to Hoidy, Toity, Canton and gray
Land kind of schools. Your kids could go to the
(06:02):
finest private schools with that money. But you don't have
that money. So where does that money go? Overwhelmingly to
their ten thousand, one hundred seventy seven full time employees.
(06:22):
Over ten thousand employees out that's a lot of employees.
Because teaching is a labor intensive activity, it requires a
lot of teachers. Ten thousand teachers is a lot of teachers.
But wait, those those aren't all teachers. Out of the
(06:45):
ten thousand, one hundred and seventy seven full time employees,
only four thousand, seven hundred and eighty are actually teachers.
Far less than half of everyone working for DPS is
a teacher. What does this mean. It means that over
(07:09):
the last several decades, we keep spending more and more
and more and more and more on education, and it
gets absorbed by more and more and more administrators. That's
all we're paying for. The teacher to student ratio hasn't
changed in decades. It's roughly the same now. Just doing
(07:36):
the numbers here, you got four seven and eighty teachers
for roughly ninety thousand kids. That's one teacher for every
nineteen kids. I went to a little Catholic school. Now,
mind you, the nuns there all were black belts and
(08:00):
had numbchucks. All right, they knew how to keep it
a class going. But our class size was always thirty five,
sometimes forty, and run like a machine, like an absolute machine.
Here it's one for every nineteen kids. Now, I know
(08:23):
this is a false dichotomy, but you'll get my point.
If instead, if all ten thousand people working for DPS
were teachers, there'd be one teacher for every nine kids,
one teacher for every nine kids. You could have a
(08:43):
classroom with nine or ten students in it. But no,
that's all being gobbled up by administration. So isn't it
amazing that the teachers that go out to protest, the
teachers that abandon our children yesterday, are there saying we
need more money because more money is easier than making
(09:07):
any sort of tough decisions. None of them are up
there saying, you know what we need fewer administrators. We
need less bureaucracy. What we need is to get rid
of these administrators and put more money into the classroom.
That's what we need. We need more money in the classroom,
(09:30):
buy cutting administration. I saw no sign in any of
these silly protests about that. All I wanted is even
more money, because sixteen grand per kid isn't enough money. Really. Now,
(09:54):
the other little fib that's about is the teachers are
under paid. Oh so underpaid, underpaid, underpaid? You know that
is that is right up there with Santa Claus in
that it is a unchallenged, constantly believed urban myth. Let
(10:19):
me let me just do it two quick ways. One
the simple evidence. If teachers are underpaid, there'd be no teachers.
Let me say it again, if teachers were underpaid, there'd
be no teachers. In the supply of workers in labor,
(10:43):
in business. You see, there's always a delicate balance. Hiring
one more person for a private company is really, really,
really a big decision. You don't do it unless you
can afford it. You can't do it unless that person
brings you in more or utility that is money then
(11:05):
than the cost. But we don't, we don't have a
a chronic, constant, ever dwindling shortage of teachers. There are teachers.
So when they say, well, we're not paid enough. Oh,
none of us are paid enough? Are you paid enough?
(11:28):
Are you paid enough? I mean, I'm like the only
guy I know who gets much more than he's worse.
Most people are like, no, I don't add that much value,
or I add more value. I need more money but this,
But they're faced with this nasty reality of trying to
(11:48):
find a job and doing the best they can. That's reality.
The next part is, wait a second, what are teachers
actually making? Ah, they only make, you know, fifty grand
a year. Let's go with that, shall we? No, untrue,
(12:08):
they don't make fifty grand a year. A teacher makes
fifty grand in that situation for nine months, for nine months,
actually far less than that, because the teacher has the
fall breakoff formerly known as Thanksgiving break. They have a
(12:33):
week off, actually two weeks off in Christmas now called
of course winter holidays. They have Spring breakoff. They have
Labor Day and Veterans Day and President's Day and Martin
Luther King Day and Saint Swithin's Day and Mickey Mouse's
Birthday all off. But still that's what they get paid
(13:00):
when you add it up the other way. No, no, no,
that fifty thousand dollars teacher, if they weren't like a
real year long schedule, would be making sixty five or seventy.
Oh but wait, there's more. It's funny how we talk
about teacher salaries. We never talk about the full benefits package.
(13:25):
You see, ever since FDR did this stupid thing of
wage and price controls, employers started giving out benefits and
the IRS ruled way back when that benefits wouldn't be
taxed as incomes. So the only way you could give
your employees more money or attract better employees was by
(13:49):
was by offering them benefits like healthcare or retirement benefits.
And now those things have become mandatory and for the
public sector it's ridiculously, ridiculously lucrative. Teachers can retire with
(14:13):
their full pension benefits. At age fifty seven, Wight, you
can't get any Social Security benefits until you're sixty two.
You cannot get full Social Security benefits until sixty eight,
and those are those are pretty limited. What the government
(14:39):
employees have is something called the Public Employees Retirement Account PARA,
and they get paid seventy five percent of their top
wage and then it's adjusted for inflation. Is your four
oh one K adjusted for inflation? No, and it's ridiculously lucrative.
(15:05):
How lucrative you ask? Funny At Independence Institute years ago,
we did a study and went out and said, hey,
if we were going to buy a private package, a
private financial product that would guarantee a pension of seventy
five percent of your top wage for the rest of
(15:25):
your life, adjusted for inflation, but the employee had to
buy it all on their own, what would that cost?
Turns out it would cost twenty nine percent of your salary,
an extra twenty nine percent. Let me say this again.
(15:48):
In order for you to have a benefit that is
as guaranteed and as lucrative as what the teachers have,
you would have to pay twenty nine percent more in
your salary to buy that retirement product. So let me. See,
if I got this right, that fifty thousand dollars employee,
(16:11):
that teacher, if she worked full time, all year round,
fifty weeks a year, she'd be making sixty five seventy
and then to get the retirement benefits, you'd have to
pay her an extra twenty nine percent more. So we're
(16:35):
talking in the high eighties into the nineties. But they
hide those costs so that they look at the low
first cost of just oh, this is the money I get. No, no, no,
what's the total compensation? What's the healthcare? What's the healthcare
you get after you retire? You see, you retire at
(16:58):
fifty seven when you work for the government, but you're
gonna have to wait till you're sixty five to get
your medicare. Well, what do you do in between? Yes,
there is a stipend they get to help them buy
insurance in between. That doesn't happen in a private sector.
(17:20):
You retire, you got to go out and find your
own insurance. Hmm. If we loved our kids, we would
doze education. We would doze education. So here's my questions.
Are you getting your sixteen seventeen thousand dollars a year's
(17:42):
worth of Education for what is being spent on your day?
And why don't teachers protest and say cut the fat
and give it to us teachers, Because that's not the
way that unions work.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
By the way, teachers say they're professionals, but yet we
pay them like factory workers. They don't get paid by performance,
they get paid by how many years they've worked.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
I can't help but just see the irony about their
protesting yesterday while Trump cancels the Department of Education because
we spend more per head for student head than any
other country, and yet we have the second worst point average.
Couldn't be better timing?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
What a great, great point I'm John Caldera in for
the recovering? Is that in recovery? Yeah, I think it's
in No, no, no, let's just say recovering. That sounds
better than strung out on opioids and bourbon in a
straight jacket. I'm recovering. I'm recovering. Michael Brown is out.
(19:01):
Now did you get it? Is he getting a root
canal today or did he do it yesterday? How long
will he be asking for for sympathy for it?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I think he got it yesterday because as I was texting.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Once I got off work. He was in the dentist
chair for hours.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So he says, I mean, he's you've got to you know,
keep your story straight, of course.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So yeah, I don't know if you know about the
bar that he goes to. He slapped the word dentist
on the stool, and it's like, this is a dentist chair.
I'm in here for hours. Actually, I had a cracked
tooth a few months back, and it was cracked for years,
and the dentist was like, Eh, it'll be fine, Eh,
it'll be fine, and it was until it wasn't. And
(19:49):
I've always wondered about people who complain about a toothache.
You know, you see it on television. Oh my tooth
it was. It was one of those things. I was
going to pull my own tooth if I had to,
if I couldn't find somebody to give me a root canal,
which is really pretty wild when you think about what
(20:10):
we do. So if you don't take care of your teeth,
they get cavities. So take care of your teeth. If
you get cavities and do nothing, your tooth will rot out.
If you do something, you put in a filling. But
fillings lead to cracked teeth over time. Who knew that?
(20:31):
That's news to me? Yeah, right, Well, and you think
about it. You got this this hunk of metal in
there that you've just messed with the structure of your tooth.
And and most times when you need a when you
need a root canal, it's because you probably had a
cavity filled. So then they got to go in there,
and they still kind of save your tooth. They take
(20:55):
out the nerve. They they put in a big old
hole through the top of your tooth, and they they
suck out and scrape out the nerve on the inside
of your tooth, which just seems ridiculous. Then sorry, go ahead.
And then you got a deep hole in your tooth
(21:18):
that goes all the way down to the bottom of
the root that you got to keep clean. And so
they got to cap it later. But in order to
cap it, they gotta let they gotta let the tooth
kind of uh calm down a little bit. Then they
got to make them mold of your tooth, and then
they got to cap it with a crown. It. It's
it's amazing that we can keep our teeth. I'm just
(21:40):
I'm just thrilled. And the moral of the story is
any person who would fake the need for a root
canal in order to get novacine and opioids, you know,
like Michael Brown, really has a commitment and you gotta
be you gotta be impressed by that.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Kudos to Michael Brown for the dedication to his service
to uh, to those drugs. I've always admired the human body,
and I love the fact that you you know, you
break a bone, you you you break your finger, your wrists,
and you know your your body will heal itself. Step
of the teeth, You crack a tooth, screw you pull
it out, and now you got to get an implant.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
The only ones you can replace are the little baby teeth.
Oh those baby tooth are wonderful. Why can't we be
more like sharks? So one falls out, another one grows
right in? Come on, Well, you know what I've done
is I've cloned myself. There's a there's another living need,
but it's much younger, and I just harvest parts from
him when I need things. So that works out pretty well,
(22:46):
too smart. Yeah yeah, I mean you pay a little
extra for that service.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Uh but uh yeah, does does the younger version of
you at least have hair, so you can get some hair.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Sadly, no, no, if I got a hair transplant from him,
it would it would fall out. So I need to
use crisper to clone a different part, a different me
with hair and your back. Yeah from my back. Ooh
yeah night. Lower patch of hair on a man's back.
Put it up top. It looks good because I know
(23:20):
what the lady's like. All right, enough of this silliness.
The numbers three or three, seven to one, three, eight, two,
five five, Feel free to give me a call. I
actually like talking to people. Some great texts this morning, John.
Do teachers contribute to PARA like most of us contribute
to Social Security or other retirement plans? Yes, they do,
(23:42):
as matter of fact. They put money into PARA, but
they don't have to put money into Social security. So
the money you the money you put in to social
Security is matched by your employer. They put much more
into PARA, and it's it's pre tax Now keep in mind,
(24:10):
like social Security, PARA is way upside down by billions
of dollars. The difference is unlike your four toh one
K taxpayers are on the hook for PARA. And it
is ridiculously lucrative. Now, remember this, teachers can retire at
(24:31):
fifty seven. At fifty seven and for the rest of
the life get seventy five percent of their top wage
adjusted for inflation. If you could today get seventy five
percent of your your income for the rest of your life. No, Now,
(24:58):
that's silly worry that you and I have about. No,
my four oh one k is not gonna last the
rest of my life. Now, if you just say no,
I'm gonna take have seventy five percent, and I'm gonna
I'm gonna have it for the rest of my life,
and every year it will go up by by inflation,
so my buying power never diminishes. Would you take that?
(25:20):
Would you take that? Right now, everybody's driving to work
thinking about, waitmen, I make this? Could I live off
of seventy five percent? Well, remember you're you're not gonna
be paying employment taxes, You're not gonna be playing paying
Social Security and other things. You won't be putting money
into a four oh one k. This is just to
(25:42):
live off of. Could you live off of seventy five
percent of what you make? The answer is yeah, if
I don't have to pay all that in taxes. You
bet I do. Bring it on, wow, John. Another thing,
says a text writer, with many administrative personnel in the schools,
(26:07):
as they come up with new programs to quote make
education better, but the actual end result is they make
more work for the teacher that was obviously written by
a teacher. Because it's true. Administrators don't teach. Administrators fill
out pieces of paper. They do compliance. They keep the
(26:31):
wheels of bureaucracy spinning. Keep in mind, the amount of
teachers we've had have hasn't changed, It's exactly the same.
The student to teacher ratio has remained in constant for decades,
but the amount of administration has grown by like sixty percent.
(26:53):
That's where all the money's going. It's not going to
our kids, it's going to the regulators. This is why,
if there was any sort of honesty inside education, those
protests one would be done next week during spring break,
so not to deprive our kids of education. And two
(27:16):
they would be fire. The administrators take that money and
put it into the classroom. Hire more teachers, hire better teachers,
or how about this and good teachers. You know, I'm right,
Institute merit pay just like every other profession on the
(27:39):
planet pay people buy how well they do their job,
But the teachers' union will say, there's no way to
do that. You see, we're so very, very different because
you know, we don't get to choose who our customer is.
There's kids, we've got to serve them anyway, and therefore
you can't evaluate us. Are you kidding? Every single person
(28:03):
who has a job can be evaluated every single one.
Teachers are paid by what's known as a salary schedule.
You get raises based on two and only two things.
One how many years you've worked, and two how many
(28:24):
different certification certifications, certificates you've earned, degrees you've earned. That's
why everybody in education is a doctor. Because the more
you get in college degrees and teaching certificates and things
like that, the more your salary goes up. Nothing about
how well you teach kids. Nothing. So if your incentive
(28:51):
is to stay in the system longer, even if you
hate it, even if you hate it, and you go
off and get every little DEI certificate you can, what
are you gonna do. You're gonna stay in the system
longer and you're gonna get every certificate you can get
(29:11):
what if they scrapped that and said you're gonna get
paid by how good of a teacher you are. Now,
some teachers hear that and they'll just shudder in fear.
Other teachers would be like, oh, that would be wonderful
because I'm a good teacher and I deserve to get
paid more, and likely you are if your gut feeling
(29:35):
is bring that on. You know you're a good teacher.
And when you talk to teachers. Talked to one yesterday
and I asked, so, how many deadbeats teachers are there,
you know, the ones who are just punching the clock,
dying to get to the retirement. He said twenty percent.
(29:57):
Twenty percent that should be fired. That sounds about right.
No protest for that. All right, Let's take a quick
breather three or three seven, one, three eight, two five
five or no. The text line, I'm John Caldera in
for the recovering Michael Brown back after.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
This, Hey Caldera, this is Goober seven, three nine six
at Lewisville, Kentuck.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
It.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
You know, normally when I look up into the sky
in the mornings, I look to the east and I
see a bright blowing ball.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
This morning, I saw one in the.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
West and I knew, Hey, Caldera is subven for Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I'll take it. I'll definitely take it. It's eight minutes
to the top. Give me a call three or three
seven to one, three, eight, two, five five. We'll switch
gears at the top of the next hour. But let
me finish up on these these heartwarming, heartfelt protests from teachers.
I'm a little surprised there isn't more outrage about about
(30:48):
leaving our kids abandon for a day for a public
temper tantrum. I get it, you go down, we want MARMANI.
I've been doing this a long time. When have has
the public education establishment ever said now, we're doing okay?
When have they even said, here is the hard number
(31:10):
we need to get to because if you fund this
to this level, then we'll be fine. It will never
have to ask you for money again. Where is the
demand for innovation in education? And how do you feel
about sixteen seventeen grand a kid being spent? And we
(31:35):
don't get more teachers. We don't get more teachers, we
get more administrators. This urban legend of underpaid teachers is
the fulcrum they use to rob people blind and to
(31:56):
force our kids into these propaganda and doctrinations in machines
known as public schools. Don't tell me they're not. My
kids have survived them. One of the beautiful things about
COVID is that parents finally got to hear what was
going on inside classrooms when they had online education. My
(32:20):
daughter was going to high school and she got to
learn about systematic racism and critical race theory in her
English class. She got to hear it in her math class,
she got to hear it in her yoga class. And
(32:40):
I'm overhearing it through her computer about ready to jump
through this screen, and every time she does, she pleasantly
hits the mused button and says, Dad, I need to
pass this class. Stay away. That's what we are paying for.
The question is are we getting the services we deserve
(33:05):
for sixteen seventeen, sometimes twenty sometimes in some school districts
twenty four thousand dollars a year per kid. If we're
not getting the education we deserve, why in the world
should we get them more money? That's the basic question,
(33:26):
and that's worth asking it. I'm John Caldera. Let's switch
gears in the next hour. I want to talk about
governmental secrecy. What are they not telling us in the
mayor's office. Keep it here, you're on Kihaw
Good morning, goobers. I guess we're going to find out
here shortly if mister Michael Danger Brown had to supposedly
go get a root canal or a Crowner place this morning,
or if he shows up.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well there, mister Caldera, did Michael Brown decide to show
up today?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You know, I know a lot of guys with a
lot of how to put it, dependency issues, But it
takes a certain man to voluntarily get an unneeded root
canal just for the opioids. And this is why I
respect and love my friend Michael Brown. It is the
(00:48):
commitment that he has to live the life he wants
to live that dedicated to his craft. He is dedicated
to his craft. He is. He is a man who
just he says no, no, no, I will fight the
social pressure of being addicted to oxy, cotton and bourbon,
(01:13):
and I'll do so publicly. Throw some chinnel in there too.
Have you ever seen who is it? Steve martin In
and Bill Murray in Oh Oh Little Shop of Horrors.
Bill Murray comes in gonna get a candy bar. Gonna
get a candy bar because like a long root canal,
(01:41):
I want his long slow root canal. No matter what
his addictions, perversions, and problems. Mister Brown is out of
town today, and that means you got to put up
with me this morning or for for most of this morning. Anyway,
give me a call. It's eight minutes past three or
three seven to one, three eight two five five seven
(02:04):
one three talk. There is so much to talk about today.
There's just a ton going on. Let's let's start off local.
I filled in yesterday afternoon for Ryan and and got
an incredible response talking about believe it or not, teachers.
(02:26):
That's right, My son who has Down syndrome, who many
of you know, couldn't go to school yesterday. Why because
the people who care about him decided to leave. Now,
I'm not saying his teachers personally, but so many teachers
(02:47):
at Boulder Valley School District took the day off to
go protest that we need more money for education. We
need more money for education. Isn't it funny that that
in order to show how much they love they love
(03:11):
their kids, our children, their students, that the best way
to show that is to abandon them, abandon them and
steal a day of their of their education. That's just
the best way to show that I love you, kid,
(03:32):
I'm gonna go there and deny you and education. Not
not only that, but you know all the other million
days we take off for teacher this Day, teacher Training Days,
and Saint Swithin's Day and Martin Luther King and President's
Day and Labor Day and Veterans Day and every other
(03:54):
day you can think of. We're gonna take it off
in Judeteenth. Can't forget Juneteenth, oh and juteenth. And therefore
we we love the kids. We're doing this for the kids. Personally.
I put that under the box of child abuse. Keep
in mind that next week is spring break, at least
(04:19):
in my school district, it's spring break. They could have
done their protest and not inconvenience to any families, not
stolen a day of education from the children, because you know,
it's all about the children. It's just how they do it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You could have protested on like say, a Saturday or
a Sunday.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
No, not Saturdays or not the Lord's Day. We are
not protest on the Lord's Day. Just we're not going
to do that. Heaven forbid. Yeah, I know, it's it, it,
It really is ridiculous. So yesterday I just took a
quick glance at the dub Denver Public school revenue. They
(05:09):
bring in about one and a half the billion dollars
of your money every year and they use that money
to serve about ninety thousand kids. That means they spend
over sixteen grand per child. So here's here's my question.
(05:38):
Is your child getting sixteen thousand dollars worth of education?
I mean, this is the kind of money people spend
to send their kids to Hoidy, Toity, Canton and gray
Land kind of schools. Your kids could go to the
(06:02):
finest private schools with that money. But you don't have
that money. So where does that money go? Overwhelmingly to
their ten thousand, one hundred seventy seven full time employees.
(06:22):
Over ten thousand employees out that's a lot of employees.
Because teaching is a labor intensive activity, it requires a
lot of teachers. Ten thousand teachers is a lot of teachers.
But wait, those those aren't all teachers. Out of the
(06:45):
ten thousand, one hundred and seventy seven full time employees,
only four thousand, seven hundred and eighty are actually teachers.
Far less than half of everyone working for DPS is
a teacher. What does this mean. It means that over
(07:09):
the last several decades, we keep spending more and more
and more and more and more on education, and it
gets absorbed by more and more and more administrators. That's
all we're paying for. The teacher to student ratio hasn't
changed in decades. It's roughly the same now. Just doing
(07:36):
the numbers here, you got four seven and eighty teachers
for roughly ninety thousand kids. That's one teacher for every
nineteen kids. I went to a little Catholic school. Now,
mind you, the nuns there all were black belts and
(08:00):
had numbchucks. All right, they knew how to keep it
a class going. But our class size was always thirty five,
sometimes forty, and run like a machine, like an absolute machine.
Here it's one for every nineteen kids. Now, I know
(08:23):
this is a false dichotomy, but you'll get my point.
If instead, if all ten thousand people working for DPS
were teachers, there'd be one teacher for every nine kids,
one teacher for every nine kids. You could have a
(08:43):
classroom with nine or ten students in it. But no,
that's all being gobbled up by administration. So isn't it
amazing that the teachers that go out to protest, the
teachers that abandon our children yesterday, are there saying we
need more money because more money is easier than making
(09:07):
any sort of tough decisions. None of them are up
there saying, you know what we need fewer administrators. We
need less bureaucracy. What we need is to get rid
of these administrators and put more money into the classroom.
That's what we need. We need more money in the classroom,
(09:30):
buy cutting administration. I saw no sign in any of
these silly protests about that. All I wanted is even
more money, because sixteen grand per kid isn't enough money. Really. Now,
(09:54):
the other little fib that's about is the teachers are
under paid. Oh so underpaid, underpaid, underpaid? You know that
is that is right up there with Santa Claus in
that it is a unchallenged, constantly believed urban myth. Let
(10:19):
me let me just do it two quick ways. One
the simple evidence. If teachers are underpaid, there'd be no teachers.
Let me say it again, if teachers were underpaid, there'd
be no teachers. In the supply of workers in labor,
(10:43):
in business. You see, there's always a delicate balance. Hiring
one more person for a private company is really, really,
really a big decision. You don't do it unless you
can afford it. You can't do it unless that person
brings you in more or utility that is money then
(11:05):
than the cost. But we don't, we don't have a
a chronic, constant, ever dwindling shortage of teachers. There are teachers.
So when they say, well, we're not paid enough. Oh,
none of us are paid enough? Are you paid enough?
(11:28):
Are you paid enough? I mean, I'm like the only
guy I know who gets much more than he's worse.
Most people are like, no, I don't add that much value,
or I add more value. I need more money but this,
But they're faced with this nasty reality of trying to
(11:48):
find a job and doing the best they can. That's reality.
The next part is, wait a second, what are teachers
actually making? Ah, they only make, you know, fifty grand
a year. Let's go with that, shall we? No, untrue,
(12:08):
they don't make fifty grand a year. A teacher makes
fifty grand in that situation for nine months, for nine months,
actually far less than that, because the teacher has the
fall breakoff formerly known as Thanksgiving break. They have a
(12:33):
week off, actually two weeks off in Christmas now called
of course winter holidays. They have Spring breakoff. They have
Labor Day and Veterans Day and President's Day and Martin
Luther King Day and Saint Swithin's Day and Mickey Mouse's
Birthday all off. But still that's what they get paid
(13:00):
when you add it up the other way. No, no, no,
that fifty thousand dollars teacher, if they weren't like a
real year long schedule, would be making sixty five or seventy.
Oh but wait, there's more. It's funny how we talk
about teacher salaries. We never talk about the full benefits package.
(13:25):
You see, ever since FDR did this stupid thing of
wage and price controls, employers started giving out benefits and
the IRS ruled way back when that benefits wouldn't be
taxed as incomes. So the only way you could give
your employees more money or attract better employees was by
(13:49):
was by offering them benefits like healthcare or retirement benefits.
And now those things have become mandatory and for the
public sector it's ridiculously, ridiculously lucrative. Teachers can retire with
(14:13):
their full pension benefits. At age fifty seven, Wight, you
can't get any Social Security benefits until you're sixty two.
You cannot get full Social Security benefits until sixty eight,
and those are those are pretty limited. What the government
(14:39):
employees have is something called the Public Employees Retirement Account PARA,
and they get paid seventy five percent of their top
wage and then it's adjusted for inflation. Is your four
oh one K adjusted for inflation? No, and it's ridiculously lucrative.
(15:05):
How lucrative you ask? Funny At Independence Institute years ago,
we did a study and went out and said, hey,
if we were going to buy a private package, a
private financial product that would guarantee a pension of seventy
five percent of your top wage for the rest of
(15:25):
your life, adjusted for inflation, but the employee had to
buy it all on their own, what would that cost?
Turns out it would cost twenty nine percent of your salary,
an extra twenty nine percent. Let me say this again.
(15:48):
In order for you to have a benefit that is
as guaranteed and as lucrative as what the teachers have,
you would have to pay twenty nine percent more in
your salary to buy that retirement product. So let me. See,
if I got this right, that fifty thousand dollars employee,
(16:11):
that teacher, if she worked full time, all year round,
fifty weeks a year, she'd be making sixty five seventy
and then to get the retirement benefits, you'd have to
pay her an extra twenty nine percent more. So we're
(16:35):
talking in the high eighties into the nineties. But they
hide those costs so that they look at the low
first cost of just oh, this is the money I get. No, no, no,
what's the total compensation? What's the healthcare? What's the healthcare
you get after you retire? You see, you retire at
(16:58):
fifty seven when you work for the government, but you're
gonna have to wait till you're sixty five to get
your medicare. Well, what do you do in between? Yes,
there is a stipend they get to help them buy
insurance in between. That doesn't happen in a private sector.
(17:20):
You retire, you got to go out and find your
own insurance. Hmm. If we loved our kids, we would
doze education. We would doze education. So here's my questions.
Are you getting your sixteen seventeen thousand dollars a year's
(17:42):
worth of Education for what is being spent on your day?
And why don't teachers protest and say cut the fat
and give it to us teachers, Because that's not the
way that unions work.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
By the way, teachers say they're professionals, but yet we
pay them like factory workers. They don't get paid by performance,
they get paid by how many years they've worked.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
I can't help but just see the irony about their
protesting yesterday while Trump cancels the Department of Education because
we spend more per head for student head than any
other country, and yet we have the second worst point average.
Couldn't be better timing?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
What a great, great point I'm John Caldera in for
the recovering? Is that in recovery? Yeah, I think it's
in No, no, no, let's just say recovering. That sounds
better than strung out on opioids and bourbon in a
straight jacket. I'm recovering. I'm recovering. Michael Brown is out.
(19:01):
Now did you get it? Is he getting a root
canal today or did he do it yesterday? How long
will he be asking for for sympathy for it?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I think he got it yesterday because as I was texting.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Once I got off work. He was in the dentist
chair for hours.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
So he says, I mean, he's you've got to you know,
keep your story straight, of course.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So yeah, I don't know if you know about the
bar that he goes to. He slapped the word dentist
on the stool, and it's like, this is a dentist chair.
I'm in here for hours. Actually, I had a cracked
tooth a few months back, and it was cracked for years,
and the dentist was like, Eh, it'll be fine, Eh,
it'll be fine, and it was until it wasn't. And
(19:49):
I've always wondered about people who complain about a toothache.
You know, you see it on television. Oh my tooth
it was. It was one of those things. I was
going to pull my own tooth if I had to,
if I couldn't find somebody to give me a root canal,
which is really pretty wild when you think about what
(20:10):
we do. So if you don't take care of your teeth,
they get cavities. So take care of your teeth. If
you get cavities and do nothing, your tooth will rot out.
If you do something, you put in a filling. But
fillings lead to cracked teeth over time. Who knew that?
(20:31):
That's news to me? Yeah, right, Well, and you think
about it. You got this this hunk of metal in
there that you've just messed with the structure of your tooth.
And and most times when you need a when you
need a root canal, it's because you probably had a
cavity filled. So then they got to go in there,
and they still kind of save your tooth. They take
(20:55):
out the nerve. They they put in a big old
hole through the top of your tooth, and they they
suck out and scrape out the nerve on the inside
of your tooth, which just seems ridiculous. Then sorry, go ahead.
And then you got a deep hole in your tooth
(21:18):
that goes all the way down to the bottom of
the root that you got to keep clean. And so
they got to cap it later. But in order to
cap it, they gotta let they gotta let the tooth
kind of uh calm down a little bit. Then they
got to make them mold of your tooth, and then
they got to cap it with a crown. It. It's
it's amazing that we can keep our teeth. I'm just
(21:40):
I'm just thrilled. And the moral of the story is
any person who would fake the need for a root
canal in order to get novacine and opioids, you know,
like Michael Brown, really has a commitment and you gotta
be you gotta be impressed by that.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Kudos to Michael Brown for the dedication to his service
to uh, to those drugs. I've always admired the human body,
and I love the fact that you you know, you
break a bone, you you you break your finger, your wrists,
and you know your your body will heal itself. Step
of the teeth, You crack a tooth, screw you pull
it out, and now you got to get an implant.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
The only ones you can replace are the little baby teeth.
Oh those baby tooth are wonderful. Why can't we be
more like sharks? So one falls out, another one grows
right in? Come on, Well, you know what I've done
is I've cloned myself. There's a there's another living need,
but it's much younger, and I just harvest parts from
him when I need things. So that works out pretty well,
(22:46):
too smart. Yeah yeah, I mean you pay a little
extra for that service.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Uh but uh yeah, does does the younger version of
you at least have hair, so you can get some hair.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Sadly, no, no, if I got a hair transplant from him,
it would it would fall out. So I need to
use crisper to clone a different part, a different me
with hair and your back. Yeah from my back. Ooh
yeah night. Lower patch of hair on a man's back.
Put it up top. It looks good because I know
(23:20):
what the lady's like. All right, enough of this silliness.
The numbers three or three, seven to one, three, eight, two,
five five, Feel free to give me a call. I
actually like talking to people. Some great texts this morning, John.
Do teachers contribute to PARA like most of us contribute
to Social Security or other retirement plans? Yes, they do,
(23:42):
as matter of fact. They put money into PARA, but
they don't have to put money into Social security. So
the money you the money you put in to social
Security is matched by your employer. They put much more
into PARA, and it's it's pre tax Now keep in mind,
(24:10):
like social Security, PARA is way upside down by billions
of dollars. The difference is unlike your four toh one
K taxpayers are on the hook for PARA. And it
is ridiculously lucrative. Now, remember this, teachers can retire at
(24:31):
fifty seven. At fifty seven and for the rest of
the life get seventy five percent of their top wage
adjusted for inflation. If you could today get seventy five
percent of your your income for the rest of your life. No, Now,
(24:58):
that's silly worry that you and I have about. No,
my four oh one k is not gonna last the
rest of my life. Now, if you just say no,
I'm gonna take have seventy five percent, and I'm gonna
I'm gonna have it for the rest of my life,
and every year it will go up by by inflation,
so my buying power never diminishes. Would you take that?
(25:20):
Would you take that? Right now, everybody's driving to work
thinking about, waitmen, I make this? Could I live off
of seventy five percent? Well, remember you're you're not gonna
be paying employment taxes, You're not gonna be playing paying
Social Security and other things. You won't be putting money
into a four oh one k. This is just to
(25:42):
live off of. Could you live off of seventy five
percent of what you make? The answer is yeah, if
I don't have to pay all that in taxes. You
bet I do. Bring it on, wow, John. Another thing,
says a text writer, with many administrative personnel in the schools,
(26:07):
as they come up with new programs to quote make
education better, but the actual end result is they make
more work for the teacher that was obviously written by
a teacher. Because it's true. Administrators don't teach. Administrators fill
out pieces of paper. They do compliance. They keep the
(26:31):
wheels of bureaucracy spinning. Keep in mind, the amount of
teachers we've had have hasn't changed, It's exactly the same.
The student to teacher ratio has remained in constant for decades,
but the amount of administration has grown by like sixty percent.
(26:53):
That's where all the money's going. It's not going to
our kids, it's going to the regulators. This is why,
if there was any sort of honesty inside education, those
protests one would be done next week during spring break,
so not to deprive our kids of education. And two
(27:16):
they would be fire. The administrators take that money and
put it into the classroom. Hire more teachers, hire better teachers,
or how about this and good teachers. You know, I'm right,
Institute merit pay just like every other profession on the
(27:39):
planet pay people buy how well they do their job,
But the teachers' union will say, there's no way to
do that. You see, we're so very, very different because
you know, we don't get to choose who our customer is.
There's kids, we've got to serve them anyway, and therefore
you can't evaluate us. Are you kidding? Every single person
(28:03):
who has a job can be evaluated every single one.
Teachers are paid by what's known as a salary schedule.
You get raises based on two and only two things.
One how many years you've worked, and two how many
(28:24):
different certification certifications, certificates you've earned, degrees you've earned. That's
why everybody in education is a doctor. Because the more
you get in college degrees and teaching certificates and things
like that, the more your salary goes up. Nothing about
how well you teach kids. Nothing. So if your incentive
(28:51):
is to stay in the system longer, even if you
hate it, even if you hate it, and you go
off and get every little DEI certificate you can, what
are you gonna do. You're gonna stay in the system
longer and you're gonna get every certificate you can get
(29:11):
what if they scrapped that and said you're gonna get
paid by how good of a teacher you are. Now,
some teachers hear that and they'll just shudder in fear.
Other teachers would be like, oh, that would be wonderful
because I'm a good teacher and I deserve to get
paid more, and likely you are if your gut feeling
(29:35):
is bring that on. You know you're a good teacher.
And when you talk to teachers. Talked to one yesterday
and I asked, so, how many deadbeats teachers are there,
you know, the ones who are just punching the clock,
dying to get to the retirement. He said twenty percent.
(29:57):
Twenty percent that should be fired. That sounds about right.
No protest for that. All right, Let's take a quick
breather three or three seven, one, three eight, two five
five or no. The text line, I'm John Caldera in
for the recovering Michael Brown back after.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
This, Hey Caldera, this is Goober seven, three nine six
at Lewisville, Kentuck.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
It.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
You know, normally when I look up into the sky
in the mornings, I look to the east and I
see a bright blowing ball.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
This morning, I saw one in the.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
West and I knew, Hey, Caldera is subven for Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I'll take it. I'll definitely take it. It's eight minutes
to the top. Give me a call three or three
seven to one, three, eight, two, five five. We'll switch
gears at the top of the next hour. But let
me finish up on these these heartwarming, heartfelt protests from teachers.
I'm a little surprised there isn't more outrage about about
(30:48):
leaving our kids abandon for a day for a public
temper tantrum. I get it, you go down, we want MARMANI.
I've been doing this a long time. When have has
the public education establishment ever said now, we're doing okay?
When have they even said, here is the hard number
(31:10):
we need to get to because if you fund this
to this level, then we'll be fine. It will never
have to ask you for money again. Where is the
demand for innovation in education? And how do you feel
about sixteen seventeen grand a kid being spent? And we
(31:35):
don't get more teachers. We don't get more teachers, we
get more administrators. This urban legend of underpaid teachers is
the fulcrum they use to rob people blind and to
(31:56):
force our kids into these propaganda and doctrinations in machines
known as public schools. Don't tell me they're not. My
kids have survived them. One of the beautiful things about
COVID is that parents finally got to hear what was
going on inside classrooms when they had online education. My
(32:20):
daughter was going to high school and she got to
learn about systematic racism and critical race theory in her
English class. She got to hear it in her math class,
she got to hear it in her yoga class. And
(32:40):
I'm overhearing it through her computer about ready to jump
through this screen, and every time she does, she pleasantly
hits the mused button and says, Dad, I need to
pass this class. Stay away. That's what we are paying for.
The question is are we getting the services we deserve
(33:05):
for sixteen seventeen, sometimes twenty sometimes in some school districts
twenty four thousand dollars a year per kid. If we're
not getting the education we deserve, why in the world
should we get them more money? That's the basic question,
(33:26):
and that's worth asking it. I'm John Caldera. Let's switch
gears in the next hour. I want to talk about
governmental secrecy. What are they not telling us in the
mayor's office. Keep it here, you're on Kihaw
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