04 February 2012

Some state legislators are idiots

We offer for your consideration Shadrack McGill (R-AL):
According to Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill (R), the Bible says that increasing teacher salaries would only lead to less-qualified teachers. McGill said at a prayer breakfast that doubling teachers’ salaries — starting pay for Alabama teachers begins at $36,144 — would not help education. In fact, he said that keeping teacher pay low is a “Biblical principle“: 
“If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.

“To go in and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?

And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”
However...
McGill... evidently found nothing in scripture preventing him from approving a 67 percent pay increase for legislators in 2007, which increased annual salaries for the part-time legislators from $30,710 to $49,500. He said that the higher pay helped to stop corruption.
Found at Think Progress, via A Little Bit of This, A Lttle Bit of That, A Little More of...

11 comments:

  1. "Idiot" is too kind - it assumes that there is no malice, greed, or even self-awareness.

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  2. Apparently, like the poor, the stupid we have will always be with us.

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    1. He isn't stupid, he's malicious. We need to stop believing people who say things like this are stupid or don't know what they are doing. They know exactly what they are saying and what they mean.

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    2. Good point. I made the point of confusing his point - which IS stupid - with the person making the point, who is obviously, pointedly malicious. Thx for the correction.

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  3. It's a bit reductionist to say that he's an idiot, because he's got a sick sort of logic that actually makes sense on some level. It's the sort of political meme that's extremely attractive to a pretty large segment of the population, which can be seen in the string of "anti-elite" political candidates we've had lately. His audience obviously wants their reality to be neat & simple, and that's what he's providing.

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  4. He's preaching to the idiots that believe him.

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  5. “If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.

    Yet we always hear that banks must pay their bumbling, fraudster bosses huge bonuses in order to keep their "talent".

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    1. Your ignorance is showing, Steve. Only those at the very top of the financial industry can be trusted to handle our economy wisely. They're experts, after all. And rich! As we all know, wealth = success.

      Teachers, though, are deserving only of scorn. Can't even do their jobs properly without the incentive of government-mandated testing, and most of them don't even have winter homes. Don't get me started on those uppity climate scientists, too.

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  6. Somebody give this guy's home address to Taylor Mali. Just sayin'
    JK

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  7. omg!!!!! that's it, open wilderness and squirrel meat here i come.

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