Learning to nod in unison

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:54 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 26, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Learning to nod in unison

The Clark County (Las Vegas) School Board has already committed $14,000 -- and eventually expects to shell out $24,000 -- retaining Atlanta-based management consultant Miriam Carver to teach members how to avoid internal squabbling. The key to that, Ms. Carver contends, is for the board to avoid micromanaging the superintendent.

Instead, board member must focus on "the big picture," Ms. Carver argues.

Disagreement among board members is to be expected, but once a vote is taken the board should speak with "one voice. ... Everyone, at some point, is going to lose a vote. And everyone who has lost a vote has a specific job -- get over it."

The school board should then expect regular reports from the superintendent on how their decisions are being implemented, but should otherwise leave the superintendent free to do whatever he believes is effective, Ms. Carver teaches, referring to the superintendent as the school board's "CEO," or chief executive officer -- a term borrowed from private business.

Ms. Carver's advice is sound when she says board members should put their frustrations behind them and move on, once a decision has been taken. We might hope most folks learned that lesson in their student counsel days, but it would be unrealistic to deny that petty feuds and grudges have persisted, even in such hallowed cloisters as the Ed Shed.

Beyond that, though, there are two potential pitfalls in Ms. Carver's proposed modus operandi.

First, while it's certainly preferable for board members to speak to their subordinates with one voice when it comes to policy, this should never be taken to mean that all substantive debates should be conducted behind closed doors, carrying the desire for consensus to the point where parents and taxpayers get to see nothing but seven heads nodding in unison, while requests for an explanation produce nothing but plain-vanilla press releases.

The rough and tumble of public debate is a necessary safeguard to prevent large institutions from veering off course. "Public meetings" are already, too often, mere formalities to rubber stamp business-as-usual decisions taken by the staff and the board majority in their private councils. Let's not embrace any course likely to further homogenize the cake batter.

But more crucially, a word needs to be said about this notion that the school superintendent functions like a "CEO" in a private corporation.

The image of the school board operating like the board of directors of some private railroad is a seductive one. The board votes to shut down one unprofitable route, lay new tracks to Kansas City to compete with the Union Pacific, and upgrade the old coal-burners to sleek, modern diesels. A bond sale is authorized and the CEO is told to get it done, at which point he in turn hires the most competent men he can find, clearing out the deadwood of those who can't make the trains run on time.

But is this really an accurate model? Could the school board vote tomorrow to shut down costly and unsuccessful special education programs and wasteful after-school athletic rituals, banning the doping up of male adolescents on Ritalin and Luvox and Prozac, instructing their "CEO" to cut the pay of English teachers because they're a drug on the market in order to double the salaries of harder-to-find math and science instructors -- who would then be hired based on their expertise and talent as lecturers, irrespective of whether they've attended any "education college"?

Could they allow kids to take their classes from home, via computer, with no concern about "taking attendance," and thus proving their required count of warm butts in the seats to collect state funding?

Could they order the expulsion of that 10 percent of the student body who are disrupting classes, doing worst on their exams, and clearly don't want to be there, anyway -- in order to reduce student-teacher ratios while funneling large sums into courses in conversational foreign languages for their most gifted students?

Or would their "hired man" calmly explain to them that they can do none of these things, due to state and federal mandates, union contracts, and the certainty of a spate of resultant lawsuits?

In which case, are school board members really in the position of private businessmen hiring a "CEO" to run their own railroad? Or do they have more in common with the team of outmanned special operatives familiar from popular disaster movies, rappelling down cables from helicopters to try to gain control of some runaway train or hijacked warship before it can complete the mission of destruction on which it has been dispatched by some modern-day Captain Nemo?

In which case, would it really be adequate to merely occupy the pilot house, enunciate a few calm orders into the engine room speaking tube, and then sit back, nodding happily in unison and "refraining from further micromanagement"?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair