Performance-based

The Chicago Tribune had an editorial yesterday or today (I don't know anymore, since I stopped subscribing) praising the new law in Florida that ties teachers' job security and pay to test scores. Of course the Trib, true to their traditional Colonel McCormick stance on such matters, thinks Illinois should do the same thing. They don't quite come out and say that teachers' unions are making our kids suffer so they can get rich, but they mention the unions in the last sentence as being among those who would oppose such "reasonable" measures to improve our educational system. The Tribune is good at sounding "reasonable." Collective bargaining is so 1950's. It's outlived its usefulness.

A blog called "Crooks and Liars" featured this story and pointed out that a job where your performance is judged on factors outside of your control is a recipe for burnout and failure. (That's why I always identified myself as an "angry operations guy" whose life was being made impossible by those people in marketing!) In this case, some tiny little things like poverty, hunger, and lack of community stability might be considered to be outside the teachers' control. Not to mention things like school boards making them teach creationism and other crap.

But one of the commenters who calls himself "cafeenman" made an even better point, saying that he works in mental health, and wonders if the next step will be to base his salary and job security on whether the mentally ill people he works with get better. He then adds, why not pay police based on the incidence of crime? But his last rhetorical question was the best: "And politicians don't get paid until the country has a booming economy and there is no war."

Why not? Let's propose to all the newly minted angry young Tea Partiers that their job security and pay should depend on whether most people in their district are actually better off in terms of quality of life, freedom from fear, and other real measures. Not, mind you, whether they're "better off than four years ago," because that really means whether Joe can buy a new flat screen TV, which the early 2000's showed us is fairly easy to manipulate by making EZ credit and Chinese goods available. We need to measure quality of life in the community by factors that make sense: freedom from anxiety, hopelessness, incivility, violence, fear, hatred, and ignorance. While we're at it, let's reward those elected representatives that have demonstrated a track record that shows they respect human rights (which, as of 1948 and the UN statement on Human Rights, included the right to organize for better working conditions).

Let's show them some of that "performance based pay and promotion" instead of letting our elections be dominated by who can smear their opponents the loudest, the most often, and the most brainlessly.

Well, guess what? We can already do that. All we have to do is, as John Prine said, "Blow up your TV, throw away your paper," and stop listening to campaign ads and editorials. Instead, look online or in your library and see what you can learn about what the issues really mean and what the candidates actually stand for. League of Women Voters is a good start. WorkingAmerica is good. Don't forget FactCheck.org.

I used to trust the Tribune to be fairly impartial, but as they get broker, they seem to get stupider. Maybe they, like the politicians, have concluded that the way to succeed in 21st century America is to cater to the lowest common denominator.

We need people to point out when politicians are gaming the system so democracy is actually impossible Lke the trick of counting a lack of a vote as a "no" vote, as Delta Airlines wants to do, or the shenanigans of the Wisconsin Tea Party crew last month. Which they are now following up on by trying to stack the state Supreme Court. I love how conservatives can hijack a narrative. Aren't they the ones who railed against "Activist judges"?  Well, I guess they think that no one will notice.

We need to retrain our politcal candidates to actually think for themselves and not be afraid to depart from the party lines. We need to reward problem-solving and pragmatism, and punish ideological rigidity. We need to shame blaming, and blow the whistle at ad hominem attacks. We need to dust off our logic books, and take a refresher course in critical thinking. I believe we can do this. I don't think society is sliding down a greased chute to oblivion. There are plenty of caring, thinking people out there. We can do something.