2/27/09

Attack of the PC Police

According to a story from Sporting News, there are some lawmakers in Connecticut that feel bad about Jim Calhoun being the highest paid state employee with a salary of $1.6 million, when the state has a budget deficit of over $1 billion.

Let's go through this in detail shall we?

Sen. Mary Ann Handley, D-Manchester, and Rep. Roberta Willis, D-Lakeville, said Thursday that Calhoun's outburst on Saturday does not reflect well on him or the state's flagship university.

The outburst in question?
[A] political activist and freelance reporter, questioned Calhoun at a news conference following Saturday's 64-50 win over South Florida. He asked why the coach of a public university collects a salary of $1.6 million while the state has a budget deficit of more than $1 billion this fiscal year and up to $8.7 billion over the next two fiscal years.

Calhoun first responded with a joke, then grew angry as Krayeske continued the line of questioning.

"My best advice to you is, shut up," Calhoun said.

A political activist, asking question at a college basketball press conference. Brilliant. Does he have the right to ask about the salary? Maybe. I'd accept arguments from both sides on that question. But to continue to pester Calhoun until the point where he finally had enough is not journalism, it's political activism, and doesn't belong in a college basketball press conference. Save it for the local communist rag.

Why is the line of questioning a bad one? Well, let's see. UConn pays Jim Calhoun $1.6M to coach the basketball team. Not a professor of economics, not a janitor, not a UConn regent, a basketball coach. As such, his number one priority is to take care of himself, and his family. UConn has every right to not pay Jim Calhoun $1.6M, but to pay him something less. But they know that by paying less for one of the top three coaches in the game today is to lose one of the top three coaches in the game today. Calhoun's program does not suck at the teat of the state, drawing state funds to keep it running and fly the team across the country, they generate their own revenue, for their own program as well as for the institution they represent. Sure UConn could pay a lesser coach lesser money, but they know that the $12M the program brings in right now would take a sharp nose dive. This is an investment by the university, and a damn good one. An investment that has a rate of return by my calculations to be around 650%. Try to find another investment like that right now.

This little argument posted by this little political activist, who didn't get his name posted here for the same reason the NFL doesn't put streakers on camera, was not about Calhoun and his salary. It was not about anything but his leveraging a rotten economic time in our history to show his utter jealousy for those that are better off than he is. It is all about class warfare, and an opportunity to push his PC communist views out to a wide range of people. Do professors and teachers deserve to paid better than sports players and coaches? Maybe. That's a debateable proposition. But we live in a free market society. The players and coaches get paid like that because someone thinks they are worth it, and it is an investment. Until teachers and professors can get 20,000 people to drop $30-$50 a ticket to come watch them teach, too bad. It will be a cold day in hell if this blogger could get TEN people to come watch a redesign of a plastic part in an automatic gear shifter for free, let alone pay money to do so. Not to mention it would be a cold day in hell when this blogger complains about not making as much as the punter for the New England Patriots, maybe the most overpaid job in the world.

Get over the petty jealousy and try to make life better for yourself. The avenues are wide open for you. Once you get there, you can try to help bring up some of the less fortunate, rather than pulling from the bottom trying to bring those more fortunate down to your level.