News

Average public school teacher paid more than median household income

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CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

The average public school teacher in the United States is paid more in base salary alone for just the work he or she does during the school year than the median U.S. household earns in an entire year.

In the 2011-2012 school year, according to a newly released report by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the average base salary for a full-time public school teacher in the United States was $53,100 for the regular school year—not counting any earnings made for summer work.

In 2011, the latest year estimated by the Census Bureau, median household income in the United States was $50,054.

Thus, the average base salary paid to a public school teacher for the regular school year was $3,064 more than the income the median household made in an entire year.

According to the NCES, many public school teachers are paid additional money—over and above their base salaries—by the public school systems that employ them. For example, 41.8 percent are paid an average of $2,500 during the school year to work in extracurricular activities; 4.4 percent get an average of $1,400 during the school year in compensation based on their students’ performance; and 7.9 percent get an average of $2,100 during the school year from other school-system sources.

Also, 16.1 percent of public school teachers have a second job outside the school system that employs them as a teacher. These teachers earn an average of $4,800 during the school year from those outside jobs.

When all sources of teacher income are taken into account, according to the NCES, the average teacher income during the 2011-2012 school year was $55,100.

If two public school teachers were married to one another, and each earned only a public school teacher’s average base salary of $53,100; their combined income would be $106,200. That is 212 percent of the nation’s median household income.

And what are you paying for, exactly?

One of the reasons why I think that teachers should not be paid so much is because they are not accountable when they do wrong. Thanks to teachers unions, it’s almost impossible to fire them. I can understand paying people less when they have more job security, but we are paying teachers more and they have tons of job security. How much job security? Well, consider this story about a public school teacher who molested one of his students and was convicted of rape. That part is not surprising. What is surprising is how seven of his female colleagues wrote letters on his behalf to try to get him a lighter sentence. Do you think that those seven teachers will be fired for doing that? Guess again.

One of the character witnesses is the rapist’s own wife:

High school teacher Toni Erickson is the wife of child rapist Neal Erickson.  Clearly, Mrs. Erickson has exhibited loyalty toward her husband and is willing to overlook that he molested an eighth grade boy for three years, and that is very touching.  But what’s scary is that from Toni’s lopsided perspective, the child is less a victim than the rapist.

In her letter to the judge on Neal’s behalf, Mrs. Erickson said this:

As for punishment, because I know that is something the community expects, hasn’t he been punished enough? He is losing a job he has held for 17 years [during three of which he was raping a child] and losing all future career potential as a teacher.

It’s clear that Toni seems more upset about the damage to her husband’s future than the physical and psychological damage he imposed on a child.  Mrs. Erickson also blames the community for demanding what she apparently feels is a disproportionate level of punishment, and deems herself qualified to determine how much penance for a child rapist is penance enough.

Toni’s moral position that statutory rape is not harmful to children was further exposed when she said,

I have seen many delightful students who have been damaged by horrible events in their lives. While I acknowledge that Neal’s conduct with [a victim he found ‘delightful’] was wrong, I do not believe [the 14-year-old] was damaged by Neal’s action[s].

Furthermore, she said,

“I base my opinion on my personal interaction with [the boy], both before and after Neal’s actions. However [my daughter] very likely could be [damaged]. Please don’t punish her by [her father’s] absence in her life.”

So according to a woman who has overseen a high school classroom for 15 years, jailing a dangerous predator is cruel, because when he’s not molesting boys, Neal is needed to father their daughter?

Would you like to get your money back from the public school system and send your child to a school that is accountable to you? Well, tough. You can’t. You can’t even have them fired when they condone raping children. If they’re not going to be accountable, then I don’t see why they should be paid so much.

News

Grindr for heterosexuals: new Pure mobile app facilitates hooking up

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Dina sent me this disturbing article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Young people looking for no-strings-attached sex who don’t want to go through the rigmarole of chit-chat online are looking forward to the launch of a new app next week.

Pure, which has been described as ‘bringing Seamless to the bedroom’, offers sex on-demand by simply asking users their gender and the gender of their preference, whether they can host and then shows them potential partners who answer ‘Okay’ or ‘No Way’.

Pending approval by Apple’s App Store, Pure’s intentionally soul-less and potentially dangerous approach to hook-ups has no profiles, no chat sessions before-hand and deletes unfulfilled requests after an hour.

Markedly different from more traditional internet dating sites such as Match.Com and OkCupid, Pure is also a departure from newer apps for anonymous sex hook-ups such as Tinder and Bang With Friends.

All these apps and sites require some kind of profile and online conversation to get to know the potential date better.

However, Pure, created by Roman Sidorenko and Alexander Kukhtenko removes all of that and simply provides two people who want to have sex based on their image online the ability to arrange a meet-up.

I see this story as the final conclusion of a trend I say when I was in my 20s where men and women were unable to evaluate the opposite sex for the responsibilities of marriage. Although young people said they wanted to get married, the way they did it was by choosing the best looking person available. There was no concept of courting, which is putting a person through their paces to see if they can actually do the job that marriage requires of them. I have literally been told by women that they can tell if a man is a good provider based on his appearance. If he is good looking then there is no need to investigate his academic credentials, his resume, his savings and so on. The tingles and peer approval, according to the criteria seen in the culture, are everything she needs to know his balance sheet. This app is the next phase of that, with pleasurable sex taking the place of slow, steady evaluation.

Now it is so bad that people actually want to have sex with people based on a photo. Honestly, this is so far from where I am and what my plans are that I think that it is pointless to even consider marriage at this point. The rules of this society are going to be made by people like the Bro-Choice man and the Duke University athlete hook-up woman. As women keep choosing men based on appearance, government is going to grow and grow to subsidize their behavior with free condoms, free breast enlargements, free abortions, free single mother welfare, and (for the feminists), free IVF. Why would I get involved with an enterprise like marriage where half the women are Sandra Fluke and the other half disagrees with Sandra Fluke, but is too cowardly to say anything about it for fear of “judging” and being seen as “divisive”. If no one is standing up for courtship and marriage, then why should I feel obligated to risk what I have? It seems like people are just not serious about real marriage. Bills, duties, obligations, intimacy, faithfulness.

There is never going to be evidence that shows that anonymous recreational sex is good for marriage or parenting. People can do it if they want to, but it doesn’t help anyone like me who really wants marriage and parenting done right. The truth is that premarital sex is bad for marriage and parenting. It reduces marital stability and quality. It puts children at risk for many dangerous thing, for example child neglect, child abuse and poverty.  If I lowered my standards and married someone in her 30s after she had lived a life of binge-drinking and hooking-up, it would put the quality of my marriage and children in jeopardy. I would not be able to trust such a woman like that with the responsibilities of wife and mother. I would be paying for a marriage and children, but not getting the kind of marriage and parenting that counts for God.

I don’t mind if a woman wants to go on the “photo-only hook-ups” path through her 20s and early 30s, but I’m not obligated to make those choices (WRONG choices) work out for her. Chivalry means picking a good woman who is struggling while doing good things, and helping her to do good things. Chivalry does not mean picking an immoral woman and trying to make her happy. That’s not chivalry, it’s stupidity. Marriage is not something you do with someone who chooses recreational premarital sex partners based on photographs. Period. Marriage is not compatible with that level of stupidity.

News

Unionized UPS to drop health insurance for 15,000 spouses because of Obamacare

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The Washington Times reports. (H/T Letitia)

Excerpt:

Citing Obamacare, the United Parcel Service plans to remove 15,000 spouses from its health care plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere.

Rising medical costs, “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS said in a memo to employees, Kaiser Health News reported.

UPS expects the move will save about $60 million a year, company spokesman Andy McGowan said.

The health law requires large employers to cover employees and dependent children, but not spouses or domestic partners, Kaiserreported.

On Tuesday, Forever 21 Inc. became the latest national company to cut employee hours to counter the impact of Obamacare, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported.

The Heritage Foundation has more on that Forever 21 story.

Excerpt:

A leaked memo shared last week on social media with the hashtag #Never21 proves the company capped some full-time workers at 29.5 hours a week as of August 18, resulting in a loss of the health coverage and other benefits offered to full-time workers.

Conservatives have warned that the provision under Obamacare defining a full-time worker as one who works 30 hours a week or more incentivizes businesses to drastically cut workers’ hours to avoid the heavy financial burden of mandatory insurance requirements under the bill.

Forever 21 joins several fast food chains that have cut workers’ hours to less than 30 in the past few months, ahead of the provision taking effect.

I’ve blogged about several of these companies who are having to adjust to Obamacare, but actually, this is not happening to a company here and a company there.

Reuters explains:

U.S. businesses are hiring at a robust rate. The only problem is that three out of four of the nearly 1 million hires this year are part-time and many of the jobs are low-paid.

Faltering economic growth at home and abroad and concern that President Barack Obama’s signature health care law will drive up business costs are behind the wariness about taking on full-time staff, executives at staffing and payroll firms say.

Employers say part-timers offer them flexibility. If the economy picks up, they can quickly offer full-time work. If orders dry up, they know costs are under control. It also helps them to curb costs they might face under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Now on first glance, it would seem that conservatives should be happy because the leftists who voted for Obama are finally getting what they deserve.

However, my conservative deist friend ECM says “not so fast”:

This would be entertaining, but this is a feature, not a bug.

Remember: they passed the present Ocare on the premise that 44-million were uninsured (never mind how bogus that stat was/is)–now that the ranks are being swelled by the self-same act, there will be tens of millions more which, as the left is wont to do, will be used as ‘proof’ that we need single-payer, not that Ocare wrecked a working market for healthcare.

(No, it doesn’t matter that everyone against this law said *exactly* this would happen, because, to the left, cause and effect and accurate predictions–despite their pretensions at being scientifically-minded–are never valid unless it confirms their biases, so they’ll just blame ‘big business’ and the bogeyman for why it’s going in exactly the direction the sane said it would. The media will reinforce this and, pow, single-payer.)

So laugh while you can–it won’t be funny for long.

I think that this could go either way. If the media covers up for Obama because they want single payer, and the conservatives pick someone like Mitt Romney instead of Bobby Jindal or Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz, then we are going to lose. We are going to lose because people will blame the decisions of private businesses instead of the Obamacare that forced them to make those decisions.

We still have the 2014 elections coming up. The public needs to have a good taste of what Obamacare does in order to understand what they’re getting. If they still choose to elect Democrats after seeing the effects of socialism, then they’ll have to live with socialism. I’m fine with it. I don’t plan to be working when the bill comes due, and I’m not going to be paying for big houses and college tuition, either.