Today's Unfortunate Tweet
Amber Gunn of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation:
Fact: most politicians have never held a private sector job in their adult life. Lynn HarshFrom Lynn Harsh's biography on the EFF's website:
Lynn Harsh is Chief Executive Officer and Senior Education Fellow for EFF. She taught high school English and history and served briefly as a school principal, before leaving the field of secondary education to work in politics and eventually public policy.I'm not exactly seeing a whole ton of private sector work in that job history, Lynn.
Labels: Amber Gunn, EFF, Evergreen Freedom Foundation, Lynn Harsh
posted by Ryan at 5:24 PM
5 Comments:
Perhaps these were private schools and not public schools.
The real issue is that we need elected officials who know and understand how the economy works and what it takes to keep businesses viable.
The better the business climate, the better the job/wage market is for employees.
Ryan,
Lynn taught at a private school. As principal, she managed the private school's finances.
Also, she started and has managed EFF for 19 years. As a non-profit that neither accepts nor solicits public funds of any kind, we are part of the private sector, not public sector. We have a bottom line.
Even if what you are implying were true--that Lynn has no private sector experience--it would not change the truth of what she said. As it stands, you are wrong about her experience anyway.
I stand corrected, then, on her private sector experience.
As to the truth of what she said, though, I'm not convinced. This, from Media Matters, seems to speak to the point:
http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/200912030015
Or Politifact:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/02/glenn-beck/beck-says-less-10-percent-obama-cabinet-members-ha/
These sorts of public sector v. private sector debates really don't get us very far.
So, Ryan, are you going to post a correction to your front page?
And the links you cite above are totally off point, having to do with a specific claim about a handful of Obama appointees. The conference Lynn was speaking to wasn't about national politics.
Humorous is the fact that this post of yours very exactly puts the lie to the point you thought you were making. You teach in a government school, therefore when someone talks about being a teacher or principal, you assume without thinking that they're talking about a government school. Your own government job seems to be coloring the way you see the world, so much that you made an embarrassing factual error in this post.
You teach in a government school, therefore when someone talks about being a teacher or principal, you assume without thinking that they're talking about a government school.
Actually, I assume that the rules of probability still work. With Public school enrollment being roughly 9 times what private school enrollment is:
http://www.edreform.com/Fast_Facts/K12_Facts/
....it's not a terrible assumption to make.
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