Enron

The wife and I saw Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room last night. What a well-made and entertaining documentary. I never had so much fun watching arrogance and greed. Highly recommended.

Watching it made me think about how many "business people" are friends of the Bush Administration. I put that in quotes because most of them weren't very good at business (Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom). They were very good at bilking investors and creating money laundering schemes that seemed to be businesses. They were very good con artists. Smoke and mirrors. The essense of the Bush Administration. Fudged Enron-like numbers and information to substantiate an invasion of Iraq that was unnecessary. More stories this week about how the Bush Administration invented the entire thing. Fudged Enron-like numbers in Houston to get the No Child Left Behind law going. States are rebelling. The real numbers don't add up and yet we are saddled with a law that demands we meet impossible goals. Goals built on lies.

The Bush Administration is all a house of cons built on Church Lady rightiousness. Behind it all is nothing but smoke, mirrors, and insatiable lust for power at the expense of everything - the United States of America, the environment, lives, and, yes, even religion. Their rightiousness has made the average American look over their shoulder for even thinking these things. Thought crime just makes our enemies stronger. Unbelievable, but thank God we're safe from gay marriage. Maybe things are getting better? Social Security reform is DOA. Bush's fake war is very unpopular and getting more unpopular by the day. His poll numbers are sinking lower and lower and lower.

I'm glad I left corporate America for teaching. Too bad the greedhead jackasses of corporate America think they can squeeze profits out of schools and have followed me. Let's run schools like businesses. Right. Let's run everything like a business. Let Adam Smith's friggin' invisible hand move everything. The only problem is schools lose money because they can't be efficient businesses. People don't learn efficiently in tight time frames. Things aren't always quantifiable. This isn't shirking accountability. This is reality. Learning is messy. The world is inherently messy.

Schools can't be businesses and shouldn't be. Everything is not up for privatization. Some things, like schools, that are good will lose money and should be left alone to lose money because they are valuable. Public transit is another one. Power plants are another. Social Security is another.