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[HeyBub]

Not exactly. Teachers are hired or fired by local school districts. The state doesn't get involved.

The state, however, did cut the amount of state aid to schools by some $10 billion and, of course, the cry went up that many teachers would get laid off. But it doesn't have to be that way.

In my school district (Houston Independent), less than half the payroll goes to teachers. Sure, you've got to have somebody to drive the busses, mop the floors, and even print the paychecks, but when a HUGE percentage of your payroll goes to "administrators," there should be obvious areas for cutbacks without bothering those who run the classrooms.

This, of course, only moves the problem you worry about around some. Where can someone with a Doctorate of Education Administration find a job suited to his or her skills?

Hint: "Do you want fries with that?"

In my view, productivity should be the goal, not employment.

[Han]

"HeyBub" wrote in news:BpGdnYzOtrrP1KzTnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

NONSENSE!!!

When I arrived at the VA in '69, the chief (ACOS) in charge of research was assisted by a secretary/purchasing agent and perhaps a part time person. Now the chief has an assistant, 2 secretaries, 2 human compliance persons, a fulltime purchasing agent, a fiscal checker and I don't know how many others. Granted, there are more grantees perhaps with bigger programs, but from 1 1/2 to 7 administrative people? The assistant who should help the principal investigators navigate the vagaries of the system complains that he now is spending more than 85% of his time on compliance issues. So, yes, you can hire from the grant money (or the overhead) people to help you navigate the compliance and forms issues, but in my not so humble opinion the money spent on that and them is not really used for research. And expanding the cadre of forms navigators and lingo experts for the satisfaction of the bureaucracy does NOT add to the nation's capabilities of doing research or obtaining research results.

[Han]

"HeyBub" wrote in news:8L2dnR5Nx_vw1qzTnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

See my other replies. The farce about "What is the heaviest elemet around"? and the answer "Administratium" is really to the point here. All assisted by flunky lawyer types who keep insisting that the forms from 3 months ago have to be redone because of some legal issue or another. No kidding, this happens ad infinitum. Sure, this type of stuff supplies some very nice people with jobs when their research grants ran out, but "we" are spending far too much time filling out forms and kibbitzing about the language.

On top of that, if someone does something ethically really bad or really stupid, they get barely punished. Little example: Chronic fatigue syndrome is a condition that's really bad (for those who really have it). Big research paper in very good journal claims it is from some virus. Very interesting. Now there is a target for therapy. Only, the work can't be repeated by others. Finally a hint of the (most likely) cause of this is identified. The workers in the lab that "identified" that virus were also growing that virus in tissue culture cells like the ones they used to "find" the virus in cells from chronic fatigue patients. Bad research - there should have been very good checks and prevetive measures to prevent cross contamination, and the journal should not have published this without proof there was no such contamination. Can be done. As far as I know, the only "punishment" for this is a note that is now included with the original publication on line, stating there are doubts on the causality claimed (or some such language). Errors are human, but this is negligence, IMNSHO!

[Robert Green]

Bushwa. You're relying on a technicality that doesn't represent reality.

"Studies show that the peak years for government health care and disability compensation costs for veterans from past wars came 30 to 40 years after those wars ended. For Vietnam, that peak has not been reached."

We haven't finished paying for the folly of Vietnam. The spending time lag is up to 40 YEARS. To assume that the current budget isn't loaded with past promises from past presidents and congresses is beyond belief. But not beyond HeyBub. One trillion of our *future* dollars will likely be used to care for the horribly blown-apart veterans of our current wars. Wars that were pretty much the discretionary actions of George Bush. Is Obama responsible, now, for every wounded veteran who fought under Bush? Technically, yes but morally, no. Even had he ended those wars the second he came into office, the costs would still be coming in like credit card charges from a soon to be ex-wife. Non-stop. For up to forty years.

The huge deficit we are facing came from a decade of drunken spending on wars, pro-industry drug benefit plans, the TSA, the build-up of the CIA, NSA and FBI, the creation of Homeland security and more. How successful (or fair) would it be if Obama said "I won't pay for anything previous administrations have committed to?"

Obama was also stuck cleaning up the mess caused by an under-regulated Wall St. and a deliberately starved and muzzled SEC. There was no one able to stop Wall St. from starting to sell insurance without a license or without the proper reserves regulators demand of insurers.

Which leads me to ask: Why are insurers supposed to be regulated? Because freemarket insurers have had such an unsavory history of taking premiums and declaring bankruptcy when faced with more than a trivial payout. After an unconscionable number of such defaults, the government HAD to step in. The largest CDO insurer, AIG, followed in the tracks of all those past insurer "bust outs." They didn't maintain the reserves regulators would have demanded of them - that would have "crimped" their profits. So what happened? We ALL got to pay for it by bailouts from both Bush AND Obama.

Federal law is basically a record of all of transgressions and failures of freemarket capitalism. It's why the Federal government is so large - there's no end to corporate villainy nor has there ever been:

"The American Civil War (1861-1865) was marked by fraud on all levels . . . unscrupulous contractors sold the Union Army decrepit horses and mules in ill health, faulty rifles and ammunition, and rancid rations and provisions, among other unscrupulous actions. In response, Congress passed the False Claims Act on March 2, 1863, 12 Stat. 696"

It is any wonder why Big Business is out to pare down the government? So they can get back to the freemarket ideas that lead to such abuses. And incredible profits. FDA? Got its start when pharmaceutical companies began selling poison potions to Americans nationwide.

"By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, cosmetics which caused blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through the Congress of the United States for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent."

I can give you examples from every corner of the business world. The people screaming to "starve the beast" really wouldn't want to live in a world without government oversight. They just don't know enough about the issue to hold anything but soundbite opinions that usually aren't even theirs to begin with. Federal law *is* the history of business operating without a conscience. In those cases, businesses operated in such a way that they had to have a conscience surgically attached by Federal law. Even after the recent freemarket debacle, it's amazing how many people believe Big Business can operate fairly without oversight and regulation. It's never happened in modern times and it never will.

-- Bobby G.