OKLAHOMA’S LEGISLATOR "WHORE" OF THE YEAR AWARD

– AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
– ANNOUNCEMENTS
– OKLAHOMA’S LEGISLATOR "WHORE" OF THE YEAR AWARD?
– MEMBERSHIP REPORT

– AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
Our speaker for this week will be Mr. David Glover. During the debate over extending Oklahoma’s quality jobs act to include professional sports, David did invaluable research on the numbers and debated eloquently on the subject. Currently, he is concerned about possible legislation which would require photo ID’s to be required to vote. He will show a brief DVD of John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, explaining his reasoning for opposition to such legislation. Democrats claim it is an attempt to exclude certain people from being allowed to vote and Republicans claim it is necessary to protect the veracity of the election process. Libertarian Neal Boortz is very open about his desire to limit the ability of some to vote or at least to lessen the impact of certain people. Part of his plan would be to allow the people who are paying the most in taxes to have more than one vote. Say, 1 vote for each $50,000 in taxable income up to 5 votes. I will have a serious moral question for David similar to one faced by our Founders. Only it will be the flip side to one of their complaints. This should be a lively discussion, so don’t miss out.

– ANNOUNCEMENTS

OKC AREA CLOUDS OVER AMERICA CONFERENCE The conference will be
held from Friday afternoon until Saturday at noon on January 23rd and 24th. I will try to get a special e-mail out on this conference, with details, tomorrow night.

OKC AREA The monthly meeting for the Business and Professional
Chapter of the John Birch Society will meet for breakfast this Wednesday morning at 7:00 a.m. with the program beginning at 7:30. The location will be the Character First Center, 520 West Main in downtown OKC. The speaker will be State Representative Jason Murphey (R- Guthrie). Representative Murphey served as the Vice Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee for the past 2 years and has just been appointed as Chairman of a newly formed committee tasked with Government Modernization. With the reduction in state revenues, it will be vitally important to cut waste, eliminate duplication of services and make other cuts where practical. Come hear Representative Murphy as he has been investigating and working on this for well over a year.

NORMAN AREA A new group, Oklahoman’s for Initiative Rights, will
have a meeting Wednesday evening from 7 to 9:00 p.m. at the Norman Library, 225 N. Webster Ave. They are proposing to create a state wide citizen task force on ballot initiative and referendum rights. They will discuss the recent 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling calling Oklahoma’s election laws unconstitutional. For more information contact Norma Sapp at ekco@swbell.net or call (405) 321-4619.

STATEWIDE One of the really fine organizations in Oklahoma is
called, Oklahomans For Sovereignty and Free Enterprise (OK-SAFE). They have raised enough support to hire Amanda Teegarden as their Executive Director and will therefore be a much more effective research and educational force at the Capitol this year. One of the really important things for any organization like OK-SAFE or OCPAC to be successful is for them to be able to notify and educate as many citizens as possible as to the activities of their lawmakers. I highly recommend making sure you are on their e-mail alert list. You can accomplish that by logging on to www.ok-safe.com.

OKC AREA The ninth annual Winter Ball will be this Friday evening.
If you want to attend and have not made your reservations as yet, please do so immediately. For complete information log on to www.annualwinterball.com.

– OKLAHOMA’S LEGISLATOR "WHORE" OF THE YEAR AWARD?
After hearing news accounts last week of State Senator Kenneth Corn’s
(D-Poteau) proposed legislation, I new we must institute a new award.
I will explain in a minute, but please let me know if you prefer the award to be named "PROSTITUTE" or "WHORE" of the year award?

Here is my take on the situation. Kenneth Corn has been in the legislature since he got out of college at age 21 or 22. As far as I know he has never done anything other than be an elected official. He will be term limited out of office in 2010. Rumors around the Capitol well over a year ago was that Senator Corn was lusting to run for Governor. However, after seeing big name heavyweights like Attorney General Drew Edmondson and Lt. Governor Jari Askins decide to run for Governor, Corn has decided to bide his time and run for Lt. Governor at this time. Should he win, this will eventually become a launching pad for a run for Governor.
Like all good little socialists, Corn has a penchant for big and expensive government. This is especially true if it would involve him being seen by some powerful special interest group as their "provider," their "champion," their "savior" yes even their "messiah."
Therefore, what better group to offer your assets to than the all powerful education industry, especially the teacher’s union and their members.

This past week, even though Oklahoma is looking at a budget shortfall of about $300 million dollars, Senator Corn issued a press release announcing his desire to increase teacher pay across the board by $9,000 per teacher over the next 3 years. His statement was that Oklahoma shouldn’t just reach the regional average, but we should exceed it.
Of course my question is, WHY would we want to do that? Why should we try to exceed paying the regional average when the cost of living in Oklahoma is near or at the bottom of the region? Wouldn’t that mean we would be over paying our teachers? In the private sector, other than cost of living increases, pay increases are based on improved performance. Since the advent of the largest and most expensive education reform effort ever in the state, HB 1017 passed in 1990, we have not seen any appreciable improvement in academic performance as measured by the ACT scores. The cost has more than doubled, but the performance is flat or perhaps even worse when taking into account those ACT tests have been dumbed down twice since 1990.
Shouldn’t the goal of the State of Oklahoma be to have the highest academic performance level of any state at the least cost of any state? Wouldn’t that be considered "efficiency" in education? The last time I examined an efficiency - cost comparison, Utah came very close to that achievement.

Before we look at some statistics on teacher salaries, I will assume folks understand the meaning of the word "average." I sure hope I don’t have to waste precious time and space defining the word "average"
Lets look at current pay for teachers in Oklahoma from several different perspectives and also see what it would be if Senator Corn is able to deliver for the teachers. Today, the average pay for a teacher in Oklahoma is about $43,000 per year. They have a contract for 180 days per year with 5 of those days being professional days, of which they can use as they see fit. They are required to be in the classroom for 175 days per year.

Therefore, for each day they are in the classroom they make: $43,000 divided by 175, equals $245.71 per day. Under Corn’s proposal that average would be $52,000 in 3 years, which divided by 175, that would equal $297.14 per day. How much money do you make each day you go to work? For a 5 day work week at the current average salary, they make
$1,228.55 per week. Under Senator Corn’s proposal, they would make
$1,487.71 per week. How much do you make each week?

While teachers only work about 9 and a half months out of the year, they are paid on a monthly basis. Currently they make about $3,583 per month. Under Senator Corn’s proposal, they would make $4,333 per month. The average salary of Oklahoman’s who work in the private sector (non government workers) is about $30,000 per year. The people who pay the wages for the teachers make about $2,500 dollars per month.

But wait, there is another consideration for those in the private sector. If they don’t have to work weekends, if they get 5 paid holidays per year and a 3 week vacation, they have to work 240 days per year to make their $30,000. At that rate, $30,000 divided by 240 means they make $125 per day or $625 per week. All of a sudden, I am not feeling so sorry for the teachers, but wait there are even more ways to look at it.

The school day is 6 hours long and teachers are supposed to be at school 30 minutes before class and 30 minutes after class. So while in the classroom, they work 7 hour days or 35 hours per week. Therefore, for their time at the school, they make $35.10 per hour ($245.71 daily pay divided by 7 hours equals $35.10). Under Corn’s proposal, they would make $42.45 per hour. How much do you make per hour?

While most teachers have some time each day to grade papers or plan lessons, some do take work home. If they work one hour each night at home, 5 days each week, that will lower their hourly wages to $30.71 per hour. If they work 2 hours each night that will reduce their hourly rate to $27.30, a rate most people would love to have.

Of course teachers like to be considered as "professionals" They claim they have continuing education time they must put in each year. May I suggest, it is not uncommon for private sector professionals to have to do the same. May I also suggest, many professionals in the private sector work much longer than a 40 hour work week.. In fact, most people who want to really want to do well in life find they work more than a 40 hour work week.
Please pay close attention. For most of the early history of the state, teachers were under paid. As late as 1979 they were paid slightly less than those in the private sector who paid the salaries for teachers. During the decade of the 80s teacher salaries moved slightly ahead of those in the private sector who paid their wages.

Since that time I believe the big teacher’s unions (NEA) on the national level and the (OEA) here in the state of Oklahoma have done a masterful job of extracting ever higher taxes from those in the private sector to facilitate teacher salaries to surge far ahead of those paying their wages. By comparing themselves among themselves and by themselves, the teachers in each state have been successful in using the surrounding states to rachet up the costs and thus wages for teachers in each state.

Since the teachers are usually the most powerful special interest group in any state, pandering politicians like Senator Corn prostrate themselves before the teacher unions in an effort to curie their favor and political support. Pandering politicians like Senator Corn, willing to prostitute themselves with ever more money are the reason education is so expensive and the quality is so low. To keep pumping ever more money down the dark hole of education without demanding academic improvement, takes a person like Corn with an enabling mentality. Legislatively speaking Senator Corn is part of the problem, he certainly isn’t part of the problem.
Senator Corn is my first nominee for "whore" of the year. I am going to appoint someone to keep track of all the nominees this year and I want to allow all of our dues paying members, whether or not they are able to attend our meetings to vote to determine the winner of this dubious award. In the meantime, if you see someone fitting the profile of a person willing to accommodate a powerful special interest group with their influence to make government larger or more expensive, then you need to be ready to make a nomination yourself.

– MEMBERSHIP REPORT
Just before our meeting this past Wednesday the 7th, we had 46 dues paying members so far this year. With those joining during our meeting and with what has come in the mail we are now close to 60 dues paying members. I am so appreciative that people are willing to join by way of direct membership appeals and we don’t have to go through time consuming and expensive fund raising events or mass mail outs. Thanks so much for your loyalty, confidence and continues support of OCPAC.

One of the joys of my life is being able to associate with such quality citizens and patriots. For those wanting to join, please follow the instructions below.

I look forward to seeing everyone this Wednesday.

Charlie Meadows
charliemeadows@peoplepc.com