April 27, 2024 • 39 mins
Look at the madness on college campuses these days with the antisemitic, pro-Hamas protests and ask yourself: What am I getting in return for my tax dollars that support these left-wing schools? Then, think about your local schools where the top-heavy administration eats up more of your taxes, and yet so many students cannot read at grade level. Lou Ann Anderson of Political Pursuits the Podcast and Lynn Woolley of Planet Logic discuss how bad the situation is, and what you can do about it – if anything.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Planet Logic and Political Pursuitsthe podcast. Today's episode from Colleges to
Kindergarten, Your school tax dollars atwork. I'm Lynn Woolley of Planet Logic
Lewn Anderson of Political Pursuits. Thisis a joint project that we do from
time to time, low N.I don't know where you want to start,
but no matter where you look,whether it's it's a K through twelve
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campus, whether it's a college campusessentially the bigger college campuses, it seems
like nothing is as it used tobe. And the question is our tax
dollars are financing precisely what? Well? When you look at all the money
that's going into education, which ofcourse at any level they'll tell you it's
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never enough, never ever enough.When you look at that, I come
down on it and that you know, I'm going to look at it the
same way I would look at abusiness and what's my return on investment?
In terms of the performance article thatI wrote, you know, it asked
something about, you know, doesthe performance match the pay? And I
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asked that kind of rhetorically, butin my mind, absolutely not. And
that's what we're seeing that the performanceisn't matching the pay in terms of academic
performance. But also now we alsohave all of this craziness, certainly in
the college campuses. I think it'sjust a matter of time, especially now
that we are here at the endof school, and you know how the
public schools, the high schools,things get. Things start to get just
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more loose, but at the sametime more tense in the last weeks of
school. I can't imagine that inthe next week or two we're not going
to see these same kinds of protests, the anti Semitic, the anti Israel,
the anti Western civilization protests that we'reseeing on college campuses. I think
we're going to start seeing them trickledown into the high schools. And all
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of this just bodes back on withthis on a pandemonium. What kind of
return on our investment are we getting? That's the question that you would ask
any business. Why are we notasking the education industry? And the answer
to that is not much. Well, you're sending return on investment in A
lot of people may be thinking,well, yes, we build nice buildings,
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we have computers in the schools,all the things that they need.
I think we're talking mostly here aboutsome of the human capital. For example,
superintendents of school districts. What dothey make and is it reasonable?
And number two when you're talking aboutcollege presidents, college chancellors, and certainly
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tenure among professors, which is almosta part of pay because it keeps them
from getting fired in so many cases. Do we need a new system?
Do we need a new way tolook at this? How we compensate a
guy like Jay Hartzel who's the presidentof the University of Texas at Austin.
Or this woman Minutia Chaffiq whatever hername is, at Columbia University who seemed
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at those congressional hearings leuann to bea deer in the headlights? Does she
not have any control over her owncampus? Well, the answer to that
is obvious to look at the TVfootage. But what are we getting for
our money? Well, that's thewhole thing, you know. And to
go back to the business analogy.Yes, you can build all sorts of
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nice schools and different facilities. Youcan go hire people for a business.
You can go build a nice,big factory. You can go and use
all of the consultants and come upwith all of your managerial help and have
all of your line employees. Butif you produce a crummy product that goes
out into the market and is notfunctional, what good is it done?
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And how long can you stay inbusiness? And that's what's happening with the
schools. I'm going to give youtwo examples. I don't think you're going
to disagree. But my example atthe local level is the reading grades.
Reading at grade level that just ondoesn't happen anymore, especially in some of
our communities. Maybe it's our poorcommunities. I hate to relate it to
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race at all. I don't likethat, but there are certain areas where
the kids can't read. If theycan't read, how do they do mass
I mean, how do they doalgebra, trigonometry, calculus and that sort
of thing. And then over atthe college level, it seems like the
kids are more into trying to supportinternational terrorist organizations right now than they are
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learning. Whatever happened to going toschool and coming out of the first grade
ready for the second grade, andso on and so forth, And by
the time you get to the endof the twelfth grade, you're supposed to
have a pretty good basis for goingon and doing something to create a skill
so that you don't enter the welfareprogram. Well, that's what's so crazy,
And that's my most recent article that'sasking It focuses on our local county,
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Bell County, their school superintendents,and it's asked, does the performance
match the pay? But what broughtthis up was that TEA recently released the
figures for school superintendent salaries back intwenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
the most recent numbers that they have, and at that same time, some
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months prior to that, they releasedsome other findings, and you report that
said half or more of Texas thirdthrough eighth graders are below grade level standards
in reading and in math, halfor more are below grade level standards.
That means that barely half and oftentimesnot half are above that. And so
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you have half of your student populationsometimes more, that is functionally illiterate for
where they are supposed to be inthese academic milestones. And so I thought
it was interesting that you know,okay, well let's take those performance levels
and let's compare it to these salaries. And that's where we came up with
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the question of you know, doesthe pay match the performance? I just
want I just want to ask youone question. I do think the school
superintendent job is a tough job,and I think the school superintendent automation so
are a lot of jobs slightly morethan the rank and file teachers. Do
the school superintendents make more than theteachers make, without a doubt, with
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how many times more Lunn anywhere fromfour to six or seven times as much
as the teachers. Yes, yes, are they worth it? I mean,
that's what we're talking about today.Are they worth it? Is a
is a college president who makes Idon't know, just pick a sum out
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of thin air a million dollars andthen you look at what's going on on
these campuses. Well, look atthis, I mean Texas scorecard. They
did some great analysis on this too. They came out and said that,
you know, with this data andit was I'm sorry, it was the
twenty twenty three twenty twenty four schoolyear. It showed that eight superintendents here
in Texas had salaries above four hundredthousand dollars, eight another eighty one.
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We're receiving three hundred thousand dollars ormore last year or the year prior to
that. Only seventy seven superintendents wereat that three hundred thousand dollars level,
with five making more than four hundredthousand dollars. And then in the twenty
twenty one school year, only sixtyof the superintendents were at or above three
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hundred thousand. So what you havehere is, oh, the economy has
a lot of inflation going on.Well, that absolutely applies to your school
superintendents, because not only are thedollar amounts rising of what these people are
being paid, but the numbers ofthem getting these inflated salaries are also increasing.
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And that brought me or what caughtmy eye also was Texas Public Policy
Foundation, an organization of which youand I both hold in high regard.
Brian Phillips, their's chief communications officer, he made a comment about this.
He said, according to Yahoo Finance, the top five percent of all earners
in Texas make two hundred and fiftythousand dollars or more per year. That
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puts one hundred and seventy two ofour school superintendents into the elite category of
the state's most wealthy people. That'ssaying something for a state that boasts the
home of the oil and gas industry. Well, this is true. Yes,
absolutely. The TPPF is on this, Texas scorecard is on this.
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Are our local newspapers, TV stations, radio stations? Are they talking about
this? Oh goodness, no,not in the least in fact, as
I finally refer to them. AstocracyMedia recently had our own Temple ISD Superintendant
Bobby Ott on the front page Superintendentof the Year for twenty twenty two.
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It wasn't mentioned in this article thatI give them credit. Their old habits
are hard to break. But anyway, he has adopted a new motto of
spread the Empire, and so hehas these little silicon wristbands that he is
going around and handing out to peoplewhen he's posting their good deeds and accomplishments,
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and that he said, you know, students get seemed to get excited
about it, and so did adults. It would make me smile when to
see how proud they were when theywere publicly celebrated. And so he thought,
you know, maybe we should justdesign something small but trendy that folks
have to wear. And so notonly are students wearing it, but now
it's kind of been a you knowwhat I call a tag the sheep kind
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of movement that we're also encouraging localpeople, parents, former students, community
members that support the schools and say, hey, supporting your local school district
is fine, but it's a matterof you know, here we are talking
about. To me, it's deflection, it's a distraction. It almost comes
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to like a scene from Idiocracy,that movie if you've ever seen, you
know, spread the Empire, Whatan empire of imbeciles. Because let me
just say that, in twenty twentytwo, according to the TEA statistics for
reading in math, we had thirtyone percent of kids that were at grade
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level. For reading we had fiftybut math it was like forty two percent,
And in twenty twenty three the numberswere not a whole lot better.
And so we don't have an academicallysuccessful school district, but we're out celebrating
our accomplishments. That concerns me becauseI asked, you know, before,
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if parents knew what their school districtthe real stats, and oh, their
kids may be doing well, butwhat about those kids that aren't. You
know, That's one of the otherthings that just kind of mortifies me sometimes
when I go and talk to,you know, other parents of school children.
My daughter is older. But whenI talk to people who you know,
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are peers of my daughter and theirkids. Oh, their kids went
through school and got a great education, Well, yay them, But you
know what, a bunch of kidsdidn't. And we're depending on the rest
of those kids for our society tofunction. All right, you mentioned this
whole thing about what you promote andwhat you don't. Did you watch the
State of the Union. Oh yeah, did you see Joe Biden talking about
all the fentanyl depths. No,did you see him talking about all the
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the MS thirteen gang members that comeacross his own personal open border. Did
you see Joe Biden say, We'vegot to do something about inflation. It's
horrible. People can't afford the goodsof cost the cost of goods and services.
Now everything was through rose colored glasses. He does talk about wanting to
go ahead and forgive student loan debt, but at the same time he never
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mentions that those student loans, thatthe diplomas are oftentimes not even diplomas.
A lot of those kids were justagain sheep like sheep, just sent into
college. Many never finished. Butyeah, he never talks about it.
Well, I agree with him thatI agree with him that student loan debt
should be forgiven. I absolutely onehundred percent due. I think the question
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here is where where we go forthe forgiveness. I think the colleges and
universities that took that money from peopleand then gave them crappy degrees ought to
issue refunds, but not the taxpayers. And I think the federal government needs
to get out of the student loanbusiness and disassociate itself with it, and
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then lawsuits need to be filed,in my opinion, against the colleges that
pushed these crappy degrees at ten times. They're worth well as someone who has
a family member who paid off morethan most household median income worth of debt
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within a few years after college bymaking complete and total concessions in their lives.
And I'm so proud of him forhaving done that, but he got
it paid off. I'm not real, I'm not real sympathetic to the people
that took these things on and thenthey're like, oh, wow, maybe
that was a mistake, No kidding, Yeah, that was a big mistake.
And I think part of it isthat colleges do what you're talking about
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at the local level. We havebeen fed this line of bull that you
cannot succeed in life without a collegedegree. I reck that's like the cigarette
companies back in absolutely absolutely, andthe school counselors that go and pedal that
they are no better than somebody downthere on eighth Street here in Temple peddling.
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And I can remember my own daughterback when she was in sixth seventh
grade. I remember sitting in alocal school library for a parent meeting,
and they were talking to these kidsand they were like, Oh, it's
so important that you, you know, take the certain course work to prepare
to go to go to college.Don't worry about how it gets paid.
There are lots of ways in whichit can be done. And during that
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time, you and I were onthe air and would regularly talk about the
fact that the federal government was takenover these loans. And I remember back
then us having conversations saying that thisis going to be a time bomb tickets.
It was so predictable. It wasn'tbecause we were that damn smart.
It's just it was that obvious.I can tell you that some others that
are coming. I'm in the nationaldebt is a ticking time bomb. Credit
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card debt in America is a tickingtime bomb. Municipal debt is a ticking
time bomb. School debt is aticking time funded pensions. Yeah, and
how many could we add to thatlist? There's so many more. But
this student loan thing you have tounderstand. Leuanne at my age, which
is I'm the ancient of days now. But I graduated from the University of
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Texas at Austin in nineteen seventy two. Within a couple of weeks, I
had an offer to go into aradio job in Dallas, and I took
it. When I went to Dallas, I was debt free from student loan.
It was not something that was aconcern to me. It was less
than zero of an issue. Whathappened it was back during that fifteen or
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so years ago, early in theObama administration, is when it seems as
though it really started kicking in.That was when they really started promoting it.
And it's been devastating and it's hada ripple effect too, because what
that did was that also started encouragingall of these colleges to come out and
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say, oh, well, wehave to accommodate all of this uptick in
enrollment, and so we need togo and build all these big taj Mahal
buildings. Oh but wait, wealso have to compete. So we can't
just have classrooms functional classrooms for peopleto become a larger student population to come.
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We have to have fitness centers withlazy rivers and climbing walls, and
we have to have you know,sushi bars in our cafeterias, fans zones.
Oh, and the safe absolutely gotto have a safe zone. Yeah,
and all of these accouterments that camewith it, and all of that,
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especially for our state supported schools,that's coming at taxpayer expense. Well,
of course it is. And youknow, again, we've got to
get government out of this. Whenevergovernment makes these guarantees, then the colleges
have app absolutely no incentive to tryto keep the prices low. It's just
it's an unlimited way to print moneyfor colleges and universities. And by the
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way, when we say some collegeadministrator or some schools superintendent makes a certain
amount of money, most of thetime we're talking base pay. Absolutely,
yes, base pay that and thatdoesn't include what can go on top of
that, like a gigantic cell phoneallowance that can't possibly be used, and
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all kinds of sens as soon asas healthcare retirement perks, you know,
housing allowances. I mean, there'sall insurance policies. Yes, yes,
yeah, it's crazy. It's soout of control that I think so much
of this particular community, the educationcommunity at whatever level, what kindergarten right
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on up through a grad school,are so addicted to it. They will
fight like cats and dogs to keepthis. And what's so ironic is it's
the American economic system. It's theAmerican taxpayers who are helping to fund this.
But meanwhile, back to the dysfunctionthat's in these environments across our campuses,
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we have these students that are yes, right now, their focus is
largely on Jews, and it's veryanti Semitic. But trust me, the
next step is Christians. The nextstep after that is the American Western America
and the Western civilization. We alreadyhave the Muslims and dearborn death to America.
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I mean, they just haven't gottenthere yet. On the America headquarters,
dear, I'm going to have todisagree with you on this. I
mean sometimes and you're just wrong.We have put in diversity, equity and
inclusion. Everybody on college campuses isnow welcomed because college campuses are welcoming,
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and they are about inclusion, tolerance, tolerance. What do you seriously though?
All right? I jest, butmy point is not just we have
had all these years now of diversity, equity and inclusion, and what are
these college uprisings about hatred of onegroup of people? Yes? Well,
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And what's frightening is that it isthe way I see it is. And
some of the people that I listento, a lot of the national security
people that I listen to, theytalk about it being a red green axis,
and that's what they find that isso disturbing. Red communism and green
climate chain. Red, red asin cultural Marxists, and green as in
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hamas as in Islamic supremacists. Imean, forget, you know, and
here, let me take off mytolerant hat and chose some intolerance here.
Never mind muslim you know, nevermind Islam. These are Islamic supremists who
want nothing but Westerners or non Islamists. They want them dead. That holds,
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That includes the Americans, that includesEurope, much of Europe. All
right, you're just raising my hacklesagain. I heard the President of the
United States of America last week saythere are fine people on both sides of
this issue on these college campuses.And I'm not talking about Trump. I'm
talking about Joe Biden. He alsosaid his uncle was eaten by cannibles,
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but we never did find out ifthey used any kind of sauce or anything.
All Right, look this guy,Joe Biden. I will not refer
to him directly as president. Heis not my president. He's the worst
piece of crap that ever happened tothe United States. And I'm holding myself
back. He's walking through the woodsthis past Monday as we record this with
Alexandria Ocassio Cortez and people that it'sEarth Day, and they're yelling questions at
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him. And it was like Charlottesville, except you can't refute this at Charlottesville.
And I've read the transcript of whatTrump said about Charlottesville from start to
finish. As recently as this week, Trump was talking about good people on
both sides of the issue of whethera statue should be removed. It was
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deceptively edited. It was deceptively edited. It was a media hoax that CNN
and MSNBC still perpetrate. At theEarth Day thing, Joe Biden was asked
about the college protests and what wouldwe do about anti Semitism, and he
said, I don't support anti Semitism, but we also have to understand the
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Palestinian problem or whatever however he putit. Yeah, the Palestinian problem is
that they're they're supported and run byterrorists, and they yelled slogans like from
the River to the Sea, whichmeans the death of the Israelis, and
they teach that to their children.Talk about a problem in k th twelve.
They teach it to their kids startingat the earliest of ages. All
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right, to interconnect this the collegesand all these protests with what we've got
going on at the local level.These kids who hate Israel and have been
had that inculcated in their mind bycollege professors. How do you think they
entered college with that? Do youthink they're getting some of that at the
high school? Without a doubt,without a doubt. I mean, because
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we do have all of this,all of the DEI I mean, remember
remember how you and I we dida lot of stuff about when tisd was
promoting the No Place for Hate programthat's done by the ADL. I believe
it was the Antidefamation League, whichis answered by then, which is a
bunch of crap. Weasels right,But in that curriculum, it talked about
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oppressed and oppressors, talked about findingyour allies. It was a road map
for pitting people against each other.And they had a curriculum that started in
kindergarten and ran all the way upthrough high school. Now, in all
fairness, I don't know the degreeto which TISD was actually implementing that.
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I don't actually even know that.Perhaps it wasn't more of a thing to
appear that we were doing a littlevirtue signaling more so than actually being that
functionally used, but nonetheless to evenbring that crap into the schools to open
the door for that type of ideology, because what it was was teaching hatred.
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It was teaching that you're bad andI'm good. Well that's right.
Let me ask if you think thepast election we just had, I'm assuming
Hillary Hickland and others in her categorywill go to the legislature. I mean,
we still have a general election,but I would think in so many
of those cases, the Democrat isa figurehead un less hope. So how
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much of this type of problem there'sno place for hate stuff. Anytime you
hear anything like that, it's leftwing and it's Marxist. How much do
you think the change in the legislaturecan actually effect some kind of change to
get rid of that sort of thing. I think it's it's incremental. It's
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not the answer, you know,the same as getting the library books,
the explicit books out of the listsex manuals, yes, yeah, typically
homosexual sex manuals. It's it's notgoing to solve the problem, but it's
a good piece to get removed,you know. Right now, I think
from the legislative lative standpoint, allof this transgender, this mutilization, mutilation
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of these small kids of minors,that's taking up so much oxygen. And
I think legislatively kind of in thatsame lane of dealing with what's happening in
our schools that I think some ofthe other DEI and that type stuff isn't
really getting the attention that perhaps itcould. But the other thing too is
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that school choice. School choice canbe a huge boon to helping to squash
because you don't have to send yourkid to that school. Yes, yes,
you can choose to go to aschool, choose to send your child
to a school that values Western civilizationand teaches about our culture and teaches about
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the value and the good things thatthis country is. Well. To give
you an example, one of thelovely things that Austin Independent School District does
for its students every single year isthat during Gay Pride Week they bust all
the students to downtown Austin to attendthe Gay Pride Parade. Now, let's
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say that two parents complain about that, eh. Let's say that one thousand
and fifteen hundred parents complain about that. That's still an eh. But not
with school choice. It's not asmuch. Only with school choice you may
actually have to pay attention to theother opinion, don't you think? Absolutely
absolutely? And they need to alsobe mindful that there may be people like
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me that if I had a childin there, I may have said enough.
I may, you know, respectfullyraised my hand enough times complaining about
things and been ignored or been rebuffedthat it's like, okay, this is
the final straw. This time,I'm not going to bother saying anything about
it. I'm just going to goand start filling out the paperwork for my
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kid to go someplace else. Wellyeah, yeah, what do they call
it? Quite quitting? Well,let me put it a different way.
The title of the episode today isyour school tax dollars at work. If
you pull a kid out of apublic school and put that kid in a
school that you agree with more philosophicallyand politically and educationally. I might add
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as well, which seem to me, that is your tax dollars at work.
Absolutely in that case. So they'reworking for your interests, for your
family's interests. That's the problem isright now, they're too often working against
our interests and our politicians and theelites of this country that populate so many
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of our different institutions, education beinga big one. Care nothing about that,
but you look at all the thingsthat the liberals have believed for a
long time, and whoever Joe Biden'spuppet masters have put into place, open
borders, print money, without anyregard for what kind of bad effect it
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might have. Little boys and littlegirls aren't really anything until we let them
grow up a little bit side whatgender they want to be, The whole
idea of gay marriage, which hasnow been totally normalized. These are things
that go against civilization and the waywe were for over ten thousand years.
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Are there enough people who believe intraditional values to keep them at least alive
in some way? Have we alreadylost all this? That's what the battle
is about right now, and Iwould like to think that, yes,
there are enough of us, butwe have to keep fighting. And when
you see things like these school results, and you see that these kids nearly
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half can't read or perform math tograde levels, what you were doing is
creating generations of imbeciles. And youknow what, Imbeciles are easier to control.
Imbeciles can be given drugs and videogames and be kept go over there
in the corner and be happy.You know, It's like what was it
the bread and circuit of the RomanEmpire? You keep the masses happy,
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they'll do what they're told to do. That is what too often it feels
like is being engineered here, andthat is what we have to fight.
And there have to be enough peoplethat still do manage to have critical thinking
skills so that when things come upabout oh, a man, you know,
a man can become a woman ora woman can become a man.
They're kind of like, wait aminute, now, how does that really
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work? Or when they're told,oh, well, let's go ahead and
shut down all of the viable energyproduction means of our society and use you
know, electric things and have togo all this green stuff. And oh,
by the way, we're not goingto produce enough energy for you to
be able to use these devices.But that's okay, it'll work out.
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Don't worry about it, you know. And meanwhile, we sit in the
dark house. You're a new tesla, nonexistent, but you should, as
a good American, want to buyan electric car because Joe Biden's says So
Joe Biden and good American aren't twoterms that I would use anywhere in the
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neighborhood. Well, all right,let's end this conversation where we started,
and that is our return on investment. Seeing what's going on at Columbia,
at Yale, at New York University, at the University of Texas, at
Austin at Rice University. How doyou think we're doing on that ROI on
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colleges not good at all? Allright, we're paying how many school superintendents,
did you say, get a baselinesalary of more than four hundred thousand
dollars? Eight get more than four, but another eighty one. We have
nearly ninety that are getting three hundredthousand or more and that's base that's back
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counting the perse. How do youfeel about our return on investment for that?
Right? Well, and especially whenthe average income per ZIP recruiter,
the average income in Texas is fiftytwo thousand, five hundred and ninety five
dollars, and that's kind of Ithink for those that money, I think
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these superintendents ought to also coach thefootball team. Oh, I think that
would be that that would be oneof the things that get extra for.
They get extra for that. Allright, people like you and me,
we're trying to at least do awareness. But we can't go in and force
the school board to pay a reasonablesalary for a school superintendent. And then
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we can't force that school superintendent toturn around and make some kind of a
policy change where kids can read atthe third grade level when they're in the
third grade. What do we doabout this? That's why I do have
a lot of appreciation for organizations likeyou know, Moms for Liberty and the
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parent organizations that have popped up largelyin the aftermath of COVID. You know,
I can't help but wonder that,in the same way that COVID opened
up a lot of eyes of what'sbeing taught K through twelve, that these
demonstrations, especially they as they grow, which I'm afraid they're going to as
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they grow, I think that maybethis will be the kind of tipping point
that will make people even more sostart looking at colleges, because I mean
there's a lot of there's been alot there has been a changing wind regarding
the view of colleges in these lastyears anyway. I mean, Charlie kirk.
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Kirk wrote a great book about it. Doctor Phil even had an episode
in his new primetime show, whichincidentally, I would encourage anybody to take
a look at. It's very he'sgot some good topics that he's taken on
things for the people that probably wouldlisten to that. And you know,
my fellow news junkies, it's notnecessarily things we don't know, But what's
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important is that it's introducing it toa new audience, and I think that
is very valuable, and I appreciatehim taking on that task. But anyway,
the college, the view of collegeis changing. This may just be
kind of the final thing and thatyou know, we weren't happy with what
they were doing in the classrooms andnow they're out here running wild in the
streets and unfortunately, somewhere along theline, I mean, I know there
(33:28):
have been a couple of students whohave been hurt, but unfortunately something bad
is going to happen. Well,of course it is as all stems from
our leadership at all levels. AndI think that our school superintendents are in
a rut. I think they knowwhat to act, how to act,
what to say. They're provided that. I think in any given situation,
(33:52):
I think if you took Superintendent Aat this school and moved it over to
B, and took Superintendent C andmoved it over to A, I don't
think any thing much changes. Ithink basically they're they're just carbon copies,
and we need to get back tosomebody who can be a hero, somebody
who can stand up, you know, like Uri Berliner over at inn PR.
(34:13):
That guy has made a difference.He has made a huge difference.
Except that CNN is bringing back ontheir air, Don Lemon and Brian Stelter
and Jeffrey Tuban. But CNN isbeyond, beyond, beyond saving. I
just I just looked at the futureand I think I graduated college in seventy
(34:36):
two. You probably graduated in seventysix. Seventy six, all right,
not not that much later. Hey, I feel I feel a lot younger
when we were at college eighty sorry, college eighty. Oh, that's worse,
all right. When you and Ihang up the podcast and hang up
the radio talk shows and hang upthe column writing and all that, and
(34:59):
ever body else in our generation doesas well, then what who replaces us?
Who is there to ring the alarmbells? Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobic,
There's a lot of them out there, Ben Shapiro. I'm not a
big fan. Tucker Carlson. TuckerCarlson. Are you a big Tucker fan?
(35:20):
Yes? Absolutely, absolutely no,There are there are people out there.
And the other thing you've got torealize, too, is that media
is changing. It's not going tolook like the media you and I do.
The comdition of media we do nowdoesn't look like it did ten years
ago. Exactly. It's absolutely fair. You know it may be X spaces,
you know, and things like that. I mean, you know that
(35:42):
that's where people are going, andI mean I know enough about that to
be kind of dangerous, but youand that's okay, that's okay. Experience
I had two weeks ago. Iwork at a radio station in Austin.
Are general managers moving up to KRLDin Dallas, and we have a new
general manager in I don't know aboutthis guy. From what I can tell
about him, he seems to beto the right of me, but we
will see. Casey Johns, whois our producer, and we were talking
(36:07):
at the going away party for thegeneral manager and we got to talking about
what AI can do. And Isaid, I was talking it was in
the context of me writing my weeklycolumn and my weekly sixty second commentary.
Casey whips out his phone, pullsup Chat GTP and he says, write
a sixty second radio column about theborder and put in the fact that the
(36:30):
border is open under Joe Biden andthat a lot of people don't like it.
He hit enter ding he pulls itup. Took one second. I
read it out loud. Unbelievable,just unbelievable. What AI can do.
In some point, AI could takeleu Ann Anderson's voice and Lynn Woolly's voice
(36:55):
and do this podcast and a lotof people would not know the day prints.
And that's why you need to beconcerned that all these kids are such
unlearned because what happens when we havea useless population. There are people that
(37:16):
are running this world that do notput the value on human life. We
do the upcoming AI revolution where youwhere we can have all the Beatles songs
we want from now on because theycan be making crazy, crazy crazy things
could be ahead. Driverless trucks.How many people does that put out a
(37:36):
business? Driverless cars? It's dangerouswhen your only value to a society is
a unit of consumption. And foryears, you can listen to your favorite
radio station. I'd say mostly onthe FM band, but in some cases
AM although it's a little different withtalk radio, and you may be in
(37:58):
Sacramento, California, but the persondoing that show may be in Providence,
Rhode Island, and you don't knowthe difference and know there's nobody live.
There could be some crazy times ahead. We think the last five years have
been crazy. I don't think we'veseen anything yet and I know, yes,
my tenfoil hat may be a littletight this morning, so maybe we
(38:20):
need to wrap it up. Butnonetheless, no, there's a lot going
on in education to watch, andunfortunately not a lot of it's real good.
And if we did one thing itwould change everything. That would be
if we treated both our college peoplewho run our colleges the people who run
(38:42):
our secondary schools as we would ifthey were a general manager. Or I
would say this a football coach,you know, say you play Dallas Cowboys,
play played ten games and they onlywin one. There's going to be
a new coach. So we needto demand that ROI from college just to
kindergarten, your school tax dollars atwork. Political Pursuits, lou Ann Anderson,
(39:06):
thank you so much. Enjoyed it. Courage is contagious. Please go
out and spread some around. AndI'm Olen Woolley and this is Political Pursuits,
the podcast and Planet Logic
Welcome to Planet Logic and Political Pursuitsthe podcast. Today's episode from Colleges to
Kindergarten, Your school tax dollars atwork. I'm Lynn Woolley of Planet Logic
Lewn Anderson of Political Pursuits. Thisis a joint project that we do from
time to time, low N.I don't know where you want to start,
but no matter where you look,whether it's it's a K through twelve
(00:23):
campus, whether it's a college campusessentially the bigger college campuses, it seems
like nothing is as it used tobe. And the question is our tax
dollars are financing precisely what? Well? When you look at all the money
that's going into education, which ofcourse at any level they'll tell you it's
(00:44):
never enough, never ever enough.When you look at that, I come
down on it and that you know, I'm going to look at it the
same way I would look at abusiness and what's my return on investment?
In terms of the performance article thatI wrote, you know, it asked
something about, you know, doesthe performance match the pay? And I
(01:07):
asked that kind of rhetorically, butin my mind, absolutely not. And
that's what we're seeing that the performanceisn't matching the pay in terms of academic
performance. But also now we alsohave all of this craziness, certainly in
the college campuses. I think it'sjust a matter of time, especially now
that we are here at the endof school, and you know how the
public schools, the high schools,things get. Things start to get just
(01:33):
more loose, but at the sametime more tense in the last weeks of
school. I can't imagine that inthe next week or two we're not going
to see these same kinds of protests, the anti Semitic, the anti Israel,
the anti Western civilization protests that we'reseeing on college campuses. I think
we're going to start seeing them trickledown into the high schools. And all
(01:57):
of this just bodes back on withthis on a pandemonium. What kind of
return on our investment are we getting? That's the question that you would ask
any business. Why are we notasking the education industry? And the answer
to that is not much. Well, you're sending return on investment in A
lot of people may be thinking,well, yes, we build nice buildings,
(02:19):
we have computers in the schools,all the things that they need.
I think we're talking mostly here aboutsome of the human capital. For example,
superintendents of school districts. What dothey make and is it reasonable?
And number two when you're talking aboutcollege presidents, college chancellors, and certainly
(02:40):
tenure among professors, which is almosta part of pay because it keeps them
from getting fired in so many cases. Do we need a new system?
Do we need a new way tolook at this? How we compensate a
guy like Jay Hartzel who's the presidentof the University of Texas at Austin.
Or this woman Minutia Chaffiq whatever hername is, at Columbia University who seemed
(03:02):
at those congressional hearings leuann to bea deer in the headlights? Does she
not have any control over her owncampus? Well, the answer to that
is obvious to look at the TVfootage. But what are we getting for
our money? Well, that's thewhole thing, you know. And to
go back to the business analogy.Yes, you can build all sorts of
(03:23):
nice schools and different facilities. Youcan go hire people for a business.
You can go build a nice,big factory. You can go and use
all of the consultants and come upwith all of your managerial help and have
all of your line employees. Butif you produce a crummy product that goes
out into the market and is notfunctional, what good is it done?
(03:45):
And how long can you stay inbusiness? And that's what's happening with the
schools. I'm going to give youtwo examples. I don't think you're going
to disagree. But my example atthe local level is the reading grades.
Reading at grade level that just ondoesn't happen anymore, especially in some of
our communities. Maybe it's our poorcommunities. I hate to relate it to
(04:05):
race at all. I don't likethat, but there are certain areas where
the kids can't read. If theycan't read, how do they do mass
I mean, how do they doalgebra, trigonometry, calculus and that sort
of thing. And then over atthe college level, it seems like the
kids are more into trying to supportinternational terrorist organizations right now than they are
(04:28):
learning. Whatever happened to going toschool and coming out of the first grade
ready for the second grade, andso on and so forth, And by
the time you get to the endof the twelfth grade, you're supposed to
have a pretty good basis for goingon and doing something to create a skill
so that you don't enter the welfareprogram. Well, that's what's so crazy,
And that's my most recent article that'sasking It focuses on our local county,
(04:54):
Bell County, their school superintendents,and it's asked, does the performance
match the pay? But what broughtthis up was that TEA recently released the
figures for school superintendent salaries back intwenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
the most recent numbers that they have, and at that same time, some
(05:15):
months prior to that, they releasedsome other findings, and you report that
said half or more of Texas thirdthrough eighth graders are below grade level standards
in reading and in math, halfor more are below grade level standards.
That means that barely half and oftentimesnot half are above that. And so
(05:40):
you have half of your student populationsometimes more, that is functionally illiterate for
where they are supposed to be inthese academic milestones. And so I thought
it was interesting that you know,okay, well let's take those performance levels
and let's compare it to these salaries. And that's where we came up with
(06:02):
the question of you know, doesthe pay match the performance? I just
want I just want to ask youone question. I do think the school
superintendent job is a tough job,and I think the school superintendent automation so
are a lot of jobs slightly morethan the rank and file teachers. Do
the school superintendents make more than theteachers make, without a doubt, with
(06:29):
how many times more Lunn anywhere fromfour to six or seven times as much
as the teachers. Yes, yes, are they worth it? I mean,
that's what we're talking about today.Are they worth it? Is a
is a college president who makes Idon't know, just pick a sum out
(06:49):
of thin air a million dollars andthen you look at what's going on on
these campuses. Well, look atthis, I mean Texas scorecard. They
did some great analysis on this too. They came out and said that,
you know, with this data andit was I'm sorry, it was the
twenty twenty three twenty twenty four schoolyear. It showed that eight superintendents here
in Texas had salaries above four hundredthousand dollars, eight another eighty one.
(07:15):
We're receiving three hundred thousand dollars ormore last year or the year prior to
that. Only seventy seven superintendents wereat that three hundred thousand dollars level,
with five making more than four hundredthousand dollars. And then in the twenty
twenty one school year, only sixtyof the superintendents were at or above three
(07:36):
hundred thousand. So what you havehere is, oh, the economy has
a lot of inflation going on.Well, that absolutely applies to your school
superintendents, because not only are thedollar amounts rising of what these people are
being paid, but the numbers ofthem getting these inflated salaries are also increasing.
(07:57):
And that brought me or what caughtmy eye also was Texas Public Policy
Foundation, an organization of which youand I both hold in high regard.
Brian Phillips, their's chief communications officer, he made a comment about this.
He said, according to Yahoo Finance, the top five percent of all earners
in Texas make two hundred and fiftythousand dollars or more per year. That
(08:20):
puts one hundred and seventy two ofour school superintendents into the elite category of
the state's most wealthy people. That'ssaying something for a state that boasts the
home of the oil and gas industry. Well, this is true. Yes,
absolutely. The TPPF is on this, Texas scorecard is on this.
(08:41):
Are our local newspapers, TV stations, radio stations? Are they talking about
this? Oh goodness, no,not in the least in fact, as
I finally refer to them. AstocracyMedia recently had our own Temple ISD Superintendant
Bobby Ott on the front page Superintendentof the Year for twenty twenty two.
(09:05):
It wasn't mentioned in this article thatI give them credit. Their old habits
are hard to break. But anyway, he has adopted a new motto of
spread the Empire, and so hehas these little silicon wristbands that he is
going around and handing out to peoplewhen he's posting their good deeds and accomplishments,
(09:26):
and that he said, you know, students get seemed to get excited
about it, and so did adults. It would make me smile when to
see how proud they were when theywere publicly celebrated. And so he thought,
you know, maybe we should justdesign something small but trendy that folks
have to wear. And so notonly are students wearing it, but now
it's kind of been a you knowwhat I call a tag the sheep kind
(09:50):
of movement that we're also encouraging localpeople, parents, former students, community
members that support the schools and say, hey, supporting your local school district
is fine, but it's a matterof you know, here we are talking
about. To me, it's deflection, it's a distraction. It almost comes
(10:13):
to like a scene from Idiocracy,that movie if you've ever seen, you
know, spread the Empire, Whatan empire of imbeciles. Because let me
just say that, in twenty twentytwo, according to the TEA statistics for
reading in math, we had thirtyone percent of kids that were at grade
(10:39):
level. For reading we had fiftybut math it was like forty two percent,
And in twenty twenty three the numberswere not a whole lot better.
And so we don't have an academicallysuccessful school district, but we're out celebrating
our accomplishments. That concerns me becauseI asked, you know, before,
(11:03):
if parents knew what their school districtthe real stats, and oh, their
kids may be doing well, butwhat about those kids that aren't. You
know, That's one of the otherthings that just kind of mortifies me sometimes
when I go and talk to,you know, other parents of school children.
My daughter is older. But whenI talk to people who you know,
(11:24):
are peers of my daughter and theirkids. Oh, their kids went
through school and got a great education, Well, yay them, But you
know what, a bunch of kidsdidn't. And we're depending on the rest
of those kids for our society tofunction. All right, you mentioned this
whole thing about what you promote andwhat you don't. Did you watch the
State of the Union. Oh yeah, did you see Joe Biden talking about
all the fentanyl depths. No,did you see him talking about all the
(11:48):
the MS thirteen gang members that comeacross his own personal open border. Did
you see Joe Biden say, We'vegot to do something about inflation. It's
horrible. People can't afford the goodsof cost the cost of goods and services.
Now everything was through rose colored glasses. He does talk about wanting to
go ahead and forgive student loan debt, but at the same time he never
(12:11):
mentions that those student loans, thatthe diplomas are oftentimes not even diplomas.
A lot of those kids were justagain sheep like sheep, just sent into
college. Many never finished. Butyeah, he never talks about it.
Well, I agree with him thatI agree with him that student loan debt
should be forgiven. I absolutely onehundred percent due. I think the question
(12:33):
here is where where we go forthe forgiveness. I think the colleges and
universities that took that money from peopleand then gave them crappy degrees ought to
issue refunds, but not the taxpayers. And I think the federal government needs
to get out of the student loanbusiness and disassociate itself with it, and
(12:54):
then lawsuits need to be filed,in my opinion, against the colleges that
pushed these crappy degrees at ten times. They're worth well as someone who has
a family member who paid off morethan most household median income worth of debt
(13:15):
within a few years after college bymaking complete and total concessions in their lives.
And I'm so proud of him forhaving done that, but he got
it paid off. I'm not real, I'm not real sympathetic to the people
that took these things on and thenthey're like, oh, wow, maybe
that was a mistake, No kidding, Yeah, that was a big mistake.
And I think part of it isthat colleges do what you're talking about
(13:37):
at the local level. We havebeen fed this line of bull that you
cannot succeed in life without a collegedegree. I reck that's like the cigarette
companies back in absolutely absolutely, andthe school counselors that go and pedal that
they are no better than somebody downthere on eighth Street here in Temple peddling.
(14:00):
And I can remember my own daughterback when she was in sixth seventh
grade. I remember sitting in alocal school library for a parent meeting,
and they were talking to these kidsand they were like, Oh, it's
so important that you, you know, take the certain course work to prepare
to go to go to college.Don't worry about how it gets paid.
There are lots of ways in whichit can be done. And during that
(14:22):
time, you and I were onthe air and would regularly talk about the
fact that the federal government was takenover these loans. And I remember back
then us having conversations saying that thisis going to be a time bomb tickets.
It was so predictable. It wasn'tbecause we were that damn smart.
It's just it was that obvious.I can tell you that some others that
are coming. I'm in the nationaldebt is a ticking time bomb. Credit
(14:45):
card debt in America is a tickingtime bomb. Municipal debt is a ticking
time bomb. School debt is aticking time funded pensions. Yeah, and
how many could we add to thatlist? There's so many more. But
this student loan thing you have tounderstand. Leuanne at my age, which
is I'm the ancient of days now. But I graduated from the University of
(15:11):
Texas at Austin in nineteen seventy two. Within a couple of weeks, I
had an offer to go into aradio job in Dallas, and I took
it. When I went to Dallas, I was debt free from student loan.
It was not something that was aconcern to me. It was less
than zero of an issue. Whathappened it was back during that fifteen or
(15:37):
so years ago, early in theObama administration, is when it seems as
though it really started kicking in.That was when they really started promoting it.
And it's been devastating and it's hada ripple effect too, because what
that did was that also started encouragingall of these colleges to come out and
(16:04):
say, oh, well, wehave to accommodate all of this uptick in
enrollment, and so we need togo and build all these big taj Mahal
buildings. Oh but wait, wealso have to compete. So we can't
just have classrooms functional classrooms for peopleto become a larger student population to come.
(16:25):
We have to have fitness centers withlazy rivers and climbing walls, and
we have to have you know,sushi bars in our cafeterias, fans zones.
Oh, and the safe absolutely gotto have a safe zone. Yeah,
and all of these accouterments that camewith it, and all of that,
(16:45):
especially for our state supported schools,that's coming at taxpayer expense. Well,
of course it is. And youknow, again, we've got to
get government out of this. Whenevergovernment makes these guarantees, then the colleges
have app absolutely no incentive to tryto keep the prices low. It's just
it's an unlimited way to print moneyfor colleges and universities. And by the
(17:07):
way, when we say some collegeadministrator or some schools superintendent makes a certain
amount of money, most of thetime we're talking base pay. Absolutely,
yes, base pay that and thatdoesn't include what can go on top of
that, like a gigantic cell phoneallowance that can't possibly be used, and
(17:29):
all kinds of sens as soon asas healthcare retirement perks, you know,
housing allowances. I mean, there'sall insurance policies. Yes, yes,
yeah, it's crazy. It's soout of control that I think so much
of this particular community, the educationcommunity at whatever level, what kindergarten right
(17:51):
on up through a grad school,are so addicted to it. They will
fight like cats and dogs to keepthis. And what's so ironic is it's
the American economic system. It's theAmerican taxpayers who are helping to fund this.
But meanwhile, back to the dysfunctionthat's in these environments across our campuses,
(18:14):
we have these students that are yes, right now, their focus is
largely on Jews, and it's veryanti Semitic. But trust me, the
next step is Christians. The nextstep after that is the American Western America
and the Western civilization. We alreadyhave the Muslims and dearborn death to America.
(18:36):
I mean, they just haven't gottenthere yet. On the America headquarters,
dear, I'm going to have todisagree with you on this. I
mean sometimes and you're just wrong.We have put in diversity, equity and
inclusion. Everybody on college campuses isnow welcomed because college campuses are welcoming,
(18:59):
and they are about inclusion, tolerance, tolerance. What do you seriously though?
All right? I jest, butmy point is not just we have
had all these years now of diversity, equity and inclusion, and what are
these college uprisings about hatred of onegroup of people? Yes? Well,
(19:21):
And what's frightening is that it isthe way I see it is. And
some of the people that I listento, a lot of the national security
people that I listen to, theytalk about it being a red green axis,
and that's what they find that isso disturbing. Red communism and green
climate chain. Red, red asin cultural Marxists, and green as in
(19:44):
hamas as in Islamic supremacists. Imean, forget, you know, and
here, let me take off mytolerant hat and chose some intolerance here.
Never mind muslim you know, nevermind Islam. These are Islamic supremists who
want nothing but Westerners or non Islamists. They want them dead. That holds,
(20:08):
That includes the Americans, that includesEurope, much of Europe. All
right, you're just raising my hacklesagain. I heard the President of the
United States of America last week saythere are fine people on both sides of
this issue on these college campuses.And I'm not talking about Trump. I'm
talking about Joe Biden. He alsosaid his uncle was eaten by cannibles,
(20:33):
but we never did find out ifthey used any kind of sauce or anything.
All Right, look this guy,Joe Biden. I will not refer
to him directly as president. Heis not my president. He's the worst
piece of crap that ever happened tothe United States. And I'm holding myself
back. He's walking through the woodsthis past Monday as we record this with
Alexandria Ocassio Cortez and people that it'sEarth Day, and they're yelling questions at
(21:00):
him. And it was like Charlottesville, except you can't refute this at Charlottesville.
And I've read the transcript of whatTrump said about Charlottesville from start to
finish. As recently as this week, Trump was talking about good people on
both sides of the issue of whethera statue should be removed. It was
(21:25):
deceptively edited. It was deceptively edited. It was a media hoax that CNN
and MSNBC still perpetrate. At theEarth Day thing, Joe Biden was asked
about the college protests and what wouldwe do about anti Semitism, and he
said, I don't support anti Semitism, but we also have to understand the
(21:49):
Palestinian problem or whatever however he putit. Yeah, the Palestinian problem is
that they're they're supported and run byterrorists, and they yelled slogans like from
the River to the Sea, whichmeans the death of the Israelis, and
they teach that to their children.Talk about a problem in k th twelve.
They teach it to their kids startingat the earliest of ages. All
(22:11):
right, to interconnect this the collegesand all these protests with what we've got
going on at the local level.These kids who hate Israel and have been
had that inculcated in their mind bycollege professors. How do you think they
entered college with that? Do youthink they're getting some of that at the
high school? Without a doubt,without a doubt. I mean, because
(22:32):
we do have all of this,all of the DEI I mean, remember
remember how you and I we dida lot of stuff about when tisd was
promoting the No Place for Hate programthat's done by the ADL. I believe
it was the Antidefamation League, whichis answered by then, which is a
bunch of crap. Weasels right,But in that curriculum, it talked about
(22:56):
oppressed and oppressors, talked about findingyour allies. It was a road map
for pitting people against each other.And they had a curriculum that started in
kindergarten and ran all the way upthrough high school. Now, in all
fairness, I don't know the degreeto which TISD was actually implementing that.
(23:22):
I don't actually even know that.Perhaps it wasn't more of a thing to
appear that we were doing a littlevirtue signaling more so than actually being that
functionally used, but nonetheless to evenbring that crap into the schools to open
the door for that type of ideology, because what it was was teaching hatred.
(23:42):
It was teaching that you're bad andI'm good. Well that's right.
Let me ask if you think thepast election we just had, I'm assuming
Hillary Hickland and others in her categorywill go to the legislature. I mean,
we still have a general election,but I would think in so many
of those cases, the Democrat isa figurehead un less hope. So how
(24:06):
much of this type of problem there'sno place for hate stuff. Anytime you
hear anything like that, it's leftwing and it's Marxist. How much do
you think the change in the legislaturecan actually effect some kind of change to
get rid of that sort of thing. I think it's it's incremental. It's
(24:27):
not the answer, you know,the same as getting the library books,
the explicit books out of the listsex manuals, yes, yeah, typically
homosexual sex manuals. It's it's notgoing to solve the problem, but it's
a good piece to get removed,you know. Right now, I think
from the legislative lative standpoint, allof this transgender, this mutilization, mutilation
(24:55):
of these small kids of minors,that's taking up so much oxygen. And
I think legislatively kind of in thatsame lane of dealing with what's happening in
our schools that I think some ofthe other DEI and that type stuff isn't
really getting the attention that perhaps itcould. But the other thing too is
(25:17):
that school choice. School choice canbe a huge boon to helping to squash
because you don't have to send yourkid to that school. Yes, yes,
you can choose to go to aschool, choose to send your child
to a school that values Western civilizationand teaches about our culture and teaches about
(25:38):
the value and the good things thatthis country is. Well. To give
you an example, one of thelovely things that Austin Independent School District does
for its students every single year isthat during Gay Pride Week they bust all
the students to downtown Austin to attendthe Gay Pride Parade. Now, let's
(25:59):
say that two parents complain about that, eh. Let's say that one thousand
and fifteen hundred parents complain about that. That's still an eh. But not
with school choice. It's not asmuch. Only with school choice you may
actually have to pay attention to theother opinion, don't you think? Absolutely
absolutely? And they need to alsobe mindful that there may be people like
(26:25):
me that if I had a childin there, I may have said enough.
I may, you know, respectfullyraised my hand enough times complaining about
things and been ignored or been rebuffedthat it's like, okay, this is
the final straw. This time,I'm not going to bother saying anything about
it. I'm just going to goand start filling out the paperwork for my
(26:45):
kid to go someplace else. Wellyeah, yeah, what do they call
it? Quite quitting? Well,let me put it a different way.
The title of the episode today isyour school tax dollars at work. If
you pull a kid out of apublic school and put that kid in a
school that you agree with more philosophicallyand politically and educationally. I might add
(27:08):
as well, which seem to me, that is your tax dollars at work.
Absolutely in that case. So they'reworking for your interests, for your
family's interests. That's the problem isright now, they're too often working against
our interests and our politicians and theelites of this country that populate so many
(27:30):
of our different institutions, education beinga big one. Care nothing about that,
but you look at all the thingsthat the liberals have believed for a
long time, and whoever Joe Biden'spuppet masters have put into place, open
borders, print money, without anyregard for what kind of bad effect it
(27:52):
might have. Little boys and littlegirls aren't really anything until we let them
grow up a little bit side whatgender they want to be, The whole
idea of gay marriage, which hasnow been totally normalized. These are things
that go against civilization and the waywe were for over ten thousand years.
(28:15):
Are there enough people who believe intraditional values to keep them at least alive
in some way? Have we alreadylost all this? That's what the battle
is about right now, and Iwould like to think that, yes,
there are enough of us, butwe have to keep fighting. And when
you see things like these school results, and you see that these kids nearly
(28:40):
half can't read or perform math tograde levels, what you were doing is
creating generations of imbeciles. And youknow what, Imbeciles are easier to control.
Imbeciles can be given drugs and videogames and be kept go over there
in the corner and be happy.You know, It's like what was it
the bread and circuit of the RomanEmpire? You keep the masses happy,
(29:03):
they'll do what they're told to do. That is what too often it feels
like is being engineered here, andthat is what we have to fight.
And there have to be enough peoplethat still do manage to have critical thinking
skills so that when things come upabout oh, a man, you know,
a man can become a woman ora woman can become a man.
They're kind of like, wait aminute, now, how does that really
(29:25):
work? Or when they're told,oh, well, let's go ahead and
shut down all of the viable energyproduction means of our society and use you
know, electric things and have togo all this green stuff. And oh,
by the way, we're not goingto produce enough energy for you to
be able to use these devices.But that's okay, it'll work out.
(29:45):
Don't worry about it, you know. And meanwhile, we sit in the
dark house. You're a new tesla, nonexistent, but you should, as
a good American, want to buyan electric car because Joe Biden's says So
Joe Biden and good American aren't twoterms that I would use anywhere in the
(30:06):
neighborhood. Well, all right,let's end this conversation where we started,
and that is our return on investment. Seeing what's going on at Columbia,
at Yale, at New York University, at the University of Texas, at
Austin at Rice University. How doyou think we're doing on that ROI on
(30:26):
colleges not good at all? Allright, we're paying how many school superintendents,
did you say, get a baselinesalary of more than four hundred thousand
dollars? Eight get more than four, but another eighty one. We have
nearly ninety that are getting three hundredthousand or more and that's base that's back
(30:49):
counting the perse. How do youfeel about our return on investment for that?
Right? Well, and especially whenthe average income per ZIP recruiter,
the average income in Texas is fiftytwo thousand, five hundred and ninety five
dollars, and that's kind of Ithink for those that money, I think
(31:11):
these superintendents ought to also coach thefootball team. Oh, I think that
would be that that would be oneof the things that get extra for.
They get extra for that. Allright, people like you and me,
we're trying to at least do awareness. But we can't go in and force
the school board to pay a reasonablesalary for a school superintendent. And then
(31:34):
we can't force that school superintendent toturn around and make some kind of a
policy change where kids can read atthe third grade level when they're in the
third grade. What do we doabout this? That's why I do have
a lot of appreciation for organizations likeyou know, Moms for Liberty and the
(32:00):
parent organizations that have popped up largelyin the aftermath of COVID. You know,
I can't help but wonder that,in the same way that COVID opened
up a lot of eyes of what'sbeing taught K through twelve, that these
demonstrations, especially they as they grow, which I'm afraid they're going to as
(32:22):
they grow, I think that maybethis will be the kind of tipping point
that will make people even more sostart looking at colleges, because I mean
there's a lot of there's been alot there has been a changing wind regarding
the view of colleges in these lastyears anyway. I mean, Charlie kirk.
(32:43):
Kirk wrote a great book about it. Doctor Phil even had an episode
in his new primetime show, whichincidentally, I would encourage anybody to take
a look at. It's very he'sgot some good topics that he's taken on
things for the people that probably wouldlisten to that. And you know,
my fellow news junkies, it's notnecessarily things we don't know, But what's
(33:04):
important is that it's introducing it toa new audience, and I think that
is very valuable, and I appreciatehim taking on that task. But anyway,
the college, the view of collegeis changing. This may just be
kind of the final thing and thatyou know, we weren't happy with what
they were doing in the classrooms andnow they're out here running wild in the
streets and unfortunately, somewhere along theline, I mean, I know there
(33:28):
have been a couple of students whohave been hurt, but unfortunately something bad
is going to happen. Well,of course it is as all stems from
our leadership at all levels. AndI think that our school superintendents are in
a rut. I think they knowwhat to act, how to act,
what to say. They're provided that. I think in any given situation,
(33:52):
I think if you took Superintendent Aat this school and moved it over to
B, and took Superintendent C andmoved it over to A, I don't
think any thing much changes. Ithink basically they're they're just carbon copies,
and we need to get back tosomebody who can be a hero, somebody
who can stand up, you know, like Uri Berliner over at inn PR.
(34:13):
That guy has made a difference.He has made a huge difference.
Except that CNN is bringing back ontheir air, Don Lemon and Brian Stelter
and Jeffrey Tuban. But CNN isbeyond, beyond, beyond saving. I
just I just looked at the futureand I think I graduated college in seventy
(34:36):
two. You probably graduated in seventysix. Seventy six, all right,
not not that much later. Hey, I feel I feel a lot younger
when we were at college eighty sorry, college eighty. Oh, that's worse,
all right. When you and Ihang up the podcast and hang up
the radio talk shows and hang upthe column writing and all that, and
(34:59):
ever body else in our generation doesas well, then what who replaces us?
Who is there to ring the alarmbells? Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobic,
There's a lot of them out there, Ben Shapiro. I'm not a
big fan. Tucker Carlson. TuckerCarlson. Are you a big Tucker fan?
(35:20):
Yes? Absolutely, absolutely no,There are there are people out there.
And the other thing you've got torealize, too, is that media
is changing. It's not going tolook like the media you and I do.
The comdition of media we do nowdoesn't look like it did ten years
ago. Exactly. It's absolutely fair. You know it may be X spaces,
you know, and things like that. I mean, you know that
(35:42):
that's where people are going, andI mean I know enough about that to
be kind of dangerous, but youand that's okay, that's okay. Experience
I had two weeks ago. Iwork at a radio station in Austin.
Are general managers moving up to KRLDin Dallas, and we have a new
general manager in I don't know aboutthis guy. From what I can tell
about him, he seems to beto the right of me, but we
will see. Casey Johns, whois our producer, and we were talking
(36:07):
at the going away party for thegeneral manager and we got to talking about
what AI can do. And Isaid, I was talking it was in
the context of me writing my weeklycolumn and my weekly sixty second commentary.
Casey whips out his phone, pullsup Chat GTP and he says, write
a sixty second radio column about theborder and put in the fact that the
(36:30):
border is open under Joe Biden andthat a lot of people don't like it.
He hit enter ding he pulls itup. Took one second. I
read it out loud. Unbelievable,just unbelievable. What AI can do.
In some point, AI could takeleu Ann Anderson's voice and Lynn Woolly's voice
(36:55):
and do this podcast and a lotof people would not know the day prints.
And that's why you need to beconcerned that all these kids are such
unlearned because what happens when we havea useless population. There are people that
(37:16):
are running this world that do notput the value on human life. We
do the upcoming AI revolution where youwhere we can have all the Beatles songs
we want from now on because theycan be making crazy, crazy crazy things
could be ahead. Driverless trucks.How many people does that put out a
(37:36):
business? Driverless cars? It's dangerouswhen your only value to a society is
a unit of consumption. And foryears, you can listen to your favorite
radio station. I'd say mostly onthe FM band, but in some cases
AM although it's a little different withtalk radio, and you may be in
(37:58):
Sacramento, California, but the persondoing that show may be in Providence,
Rhode Island, and you don't knowthe difference and know there's nobody live.
There could be some crazy times ahead. We think the last five years have
been crazy. I don't think we'veseen anything yet and I know, yes,
my tenfoil hat may be a littletight this morning, so maybe we
(38:20):
need to wrap it up. Butnonetheless, no, there's a lot going
on in education to watch, andunfortunately not a lot of it's real good.
And if we did one thing itwould change everything. That would be
if we treated both our college peoplewho run our colleges the people who run
(38:42):
our secondary schools as we would ifthey were a general manager. Or I
would say this a football coach,you know, say you play Dallas Cowboys,
play played ten games and they onlywin one. There's going to be
a new coach. So we needto demand that ROI from college just to
kindergarten, your school tax dollars atwork. Political Pursuits, lou Ann Anderson,
(39:06):
thank you so much. Enjoyed it. Courage is contagious. Please go
out and spread some around. AndI'm Olen Woolley and this is Political Pursuits,
the podcast and Planet Logic
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