Teachers aren’t paid enough, we hear. If we really want to invest in education, we’ll recruit an “army of teachers” and provide incentive for quality professionals to want to become teachers. If we really want to invest in our kids, we’ll make sure there are low student-to-teacher ratios and that every classroom is outfit with an iPad for every student.

The truth is, teachers are like many – not all – union workers in the United States: overpaid and spoiled.

Let me ask you something, blogger to reader: did your public school help you adequately prepare for and land your current job?

If you’re like many people, the answer is no. Some people study Business Administration and end up working in retail. Some people study Pre-Med and end up working in fast food. Some people study Theatre and end up in California waiting tables. Or worse, they end up in Iowa waiting tables.

(Photo source: inlandnet.com)

I know that I am no friend of public schools, but I think I have a critique a lot of people won’t find difficult to agree with: public schools have messed up priorities.

Frequent subjects include advanced math, art, music, science, and other subjects many people barely use throughout their lifetimes. Since public school has us from the approximate ages of five through eighteen, they can be doing better things with our time than teaching us how to dissect frogs.

They could be teaching us skills.

Ronald Reagan was deservedly known as “the Great Communicator,” a politician with quick wit, an authentic smile, and the ability to deliver his message with the force and substance that can only be backed by the exact optimism he espoused. In communication circles, this is known as “congruity.”

Some two and a half years ago I wrote my list of the best and worst Presidents of all time, ranking them from #1 to #41 (I only counted Grover Cleveland once and George W. Bush was still president).

In 2010, with me four and a half years wiser by my own estimations, this list needs a good updating. I’m still no expert (Who really knows where to put Zachary Taylor?) but have a few criteria you might find interesting.

(Left: Which of these Presidents dropped out of the top five?)

Note: I think it would just be plain wrong to write about a trivial issue like this without mentioning the Haiti earthquake yet. So I’d like to recommend you donate to Catholic Relief Services.

Now, to the post:

“No matter how I look at this I am in the wrong. And I’ve looked at this thing, like, a hundred different ways. From my point of view, from their point of view … 98 others … and bottom line, I’m in the wrong. I’m the bad guy.”

-Michael Scott in “The Office”

Any kindergartner, even if not taught it, knows that school stinks. But adults don’t realize it.

That’s because many adults keep on insisting we have this thing they call the Department of Education – wouldn’t you know it, education is too important to be left in the hands of a private market or a school voucher system. The current public education system in America is, quite literally, communist. And, like the U.S.S.R. before it, it’s basically a giant expensive disaster.

In the NFL, there’s this thing called “The Rooney Rule.” It refers to a rule that stipulates every team looking to hire a head coach must at least interview one minority for the job. (You know, not to patronize them or anything.)

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that many NFL teams simply conduct “token” interviews in order to comply with the Rooney Rule – which, oddly enough, is named after a white guy. Just recently, the Washington Redskins and the Seattle Seahawks hired two big-name coaches who happen to be white – one of whom was a highly prized college coach, Pete Carroll of USC.

Your job stinks. At least that’s what most of you are saying according to a report that says just 45% of people are satisfied with their jobs. If you’re counting, that’s down from 61.1% in 1987, when this particular survey started.

So what’s up? I’m guessing that with today’s technology, jobs don’t stink any more than they did in 1987, and in all likelihood have gotten better.

Not that I’m for the privacy-invading measures like the Patriot Act, but it’s not hard to see that when you stop calling terror terror, you look like you’re weak on terror.

Take the case of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who doesn’t call terror but instead calls them man-caused disasters. “That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur,” says Napolitano.