Oops! Left’s New Role Model Is a Christian Conservative
Traditional wisdom says to never meet your heroes. You’ll only discover they are not as great as you hoped. The Left might want to be careful of their heroes, as they might find out they are far more conservative than they realized.
Larry Powell has done something most would consider heroic. And despite traditional wisdom, there’s nothing about this man of humility and generosity to disappoint. Powell’s sacrificial act earned plenty of attention, because it is so rare today: He gave up over $800,000 of his own income to help cash-strapped schools in Fresno, California.
On August 31st, Powell retired as Fresno County superintendent of schools so that he could take back the same job the next day but with substantially less income. Powell’s salary and benefits package this past year was over $280,000. Now he will be do the same job for around $32,000 and no health insurance. That amount puts him at $10,000 less than a first year teacher in Fresno. Not only that, Powell has said he will donate the $32,000 to charity. Why would he do such a thing?
Powell simply said he wanted to help the school’s budget cuts and lead by example. He told one interviewer:
My wife and I are very well compensated. We’ve been very blessed. These are tight budget times in California for public schools. My wife and I thought, what can we do that might help change the dynamic in my particular area.
Powell will now have the freedom to use the money he gave up to pick and choose where to fund areas in the school system that are hurting the most. The district’s rules provide him with the freedom to slash through any red tape and rescue under-funded programs.
The Fresno superintendent appears humbled and surprised by the attention from the press. He rejects any claims that he is a hero. He simply wanted to help. Powell may also want to soon reject how many on the Left have decided to make him a poster boy for taxing the wealthy.
ThinkProgress picked up the story and many of their “top” commenters decided to use Powell to promote big tax increases. Shayla Walsh commented,
If the super rich paid their fare share in taxes imagine how great we could make this country! Powell is a hero. I wish there were more people in the world like Powell.
Powell was also heralded by other blogs and news sites on the Left like the Huffington Post, NPR, Daily Kos, AlterNet, and more. While many sites may not have mentioned raising taxes directly, they repeatedly used Powell as a reason to slam wealthy people. Gather.com said,
If just a few of our nation’s politicians and Wall Street personnel took this approach, our economy may actually be able to recover.
But the Left missed something pretty interesting about Larry Powell. While many reported with elitist surprise that Powell is also an ordained Baptist minister, most failed to realize that the new Great Saint of Class Warfare is actually a conservative Republican.
Here’s hoping a few progressives give private charity a chance.
I’m hoping they DON’T. Be careful what you wish for! The problem with the progressives is that their idea of ‘private charity’ is exactly the opposite of ours. They use their money to fund foundations and NGOs to push their agenda all over the world.
The last thing this world needs is another George Soros.
Right now the valueless left does not know what to make of Larry Powell. They are scratching their socialist heads to the point of raw skin and blood. When they realize that Larry Powell has sunk their battleship they will turn on him like the pack of rabid dogs they are. Mark my works… they will demonize him and ridicule him as soon as their stubby little fingers get tire of scratching their skulls full of mush. Insanity is their trademark!
Okay, I’ll bite: so what? Just because the far right cannot being themselves to cheer anything a lefty does doesn’t mean that the left has to be as douchey. The guy made a personal financial sacrifice in support of the schools and he should be commended for it, regardless of his religion or political bent.
Douchebag hypocrisy is considered a virtue among Leftists. In fact, it’s SOP. Mr. Powell has values…the Left has talking points.
Very well said Moira, in fact I am stealing it for my own use “the right has values and the left has talking points”. Thanks.
If you’re a republican in CA, you don’t talk about it in public. If you do, you’re ostracized from polite society. If he’s a school superintendent, he didn’t talk about it in public, which means everyone he works with thinks he’s a democrat.
It’s hard to convey the level of “sit down and shut up” a right winger experiences in places like California if you haven’t lived there.
California is too big and diverse a state to be discussed with such glib generality. As it happens, the inland areas, including Fresno, tend to be much more conservative than the coastal population centers. Your comment doesn’t apply to Fresno.
On the other hand, getting beyond the broad brush treatment of California, the fact that he’s involved with schools could have a stifling effect on his expression of political views. Teachers unions are liberal tools wherever you go in California, as far as I know.
Of course he’s a conservative. He put his own money on the line vice telling others they should put up theirs.
I’m afraid I have to agree with CalPatriot. My guess, if one of those liberals who praised Mr. Powell read what Mr. Cooper has said here, if they go to Powell’s Facebook and see what Mr. Cooper claims is there, I’m betting, first, they will feel embarrassed, maybe even humiliated. Then they will decide that they were set up. That Mr. Powell is the enemy here. The Mr. Powell is the bad guy and a direct threat to their way of life.
They will go to a local, Democrat heavy, news station there in Fresno and they will start making a case that, because of what Mr. Powell says on his Facebook, because of what he believes about gays and church and all the rest, that he is unfit to be superintendent of schools. They will start a petition, maybe even a protest to have Mr. Powell removed and replaced with someone who will respect the diversity of America more. Someone who won’t indoctrinate our children with hate and bigotry.
I hope Mr. Powell is telling the truth when he says that he and his wife are set up, financially. My guess, he’ll be forced out of his job due to politics more than anything else by the end of the year.
Mr. Powell, well done.
Well, if I start getting trackbacks from ThinkProgress on this post:
http://www.conservativecommune.com/2011/09/public-union-watch-is-it-heroic-not-to-overly-double-dip/
I’ll know why.
Meeps, I read the link and I don’t understand his point regarding Powell’s pension, which he says is 100% of his salary, which he receives at age 63. This reporter was trying to take the halo off of Powell’s head by claiming he’s doubled dipping, getting his pension and a salary. So what? Why place anger on Powell instead of the progressives in the California school system who put that over the top pension there in the first place?
What the left misses is the fact that schools and all other functions in society would not be so cash strapped if the damned government bureaucracies were abolished along with all the nanny state deadbeat bureaucrats who work in the system. The worthless U.S. Department of Education has an annual budget of about 100 billion dollars and all this worthless federal bureaucracy does is pass out mandates by blackmail to state and local schools that cause local and state schoold districits to have to squander billions annually just to meet the federal mandates, all of which do great harm to our children, and none of the federal programs do any good at all. We should not fund the federal department of education which does great harm to our country and to our children.
I would like to know why a school superintendent’s salary and compensation package is $280,000 dollars a year to begin with?? There is something terribly wrong in California and it stinks to high heaven! How many superintendents are making this kind of money?? The state of California is supposedly broke and operating in the “red” but yet there is this frivolous waste of money going on right underneath the tax-payer’s nose…..
Anyone who doesn’t realize that state and local education budgets have places where cuts can be made, without directly affecting the education of students, is not paying attention.
I live in Texas. When the big budget debate was going on, I actually went on line and looked at the state budget and the education section in particular. It was obvious that there were “programs” which were redundant.
I have also noted things through simple observation. I live in a small town with a small Independent School District. Not only do we have school buses which transport students, we have vehicles- Suburbans- which transport school officials, such as the Superintendent. Why? Why can’t these folks (like most of us) use their private vehicles, and be reimbursed if they absolutely must travel on school business? Why, if the officials need to attend academic or sporting events to “support the students,” can they not ride the bus with said students?
I’ve also heard an official’s wife lament about how “poor” her spouse’s district was, and in the same conversation talk about taking a personal vacation trip utilizing the airline miles he had accumulated traveling on “school business.”
Some “expenses” have apparently become so entrenched into the thinking of “how schools are done” that no one stops to think about where some real cuts can and should occur, cuts that would not necessarily affect the students nor teachers in the classroom one iota.
I’ll go even further and say that we don’t need school superintendents at all. Schools need to be decentralized and they should be run by school boards that are composed of the parents whose children attend the school. Let them make the decisions locally about hiring and firing, budgets, curriculum, rules and regulations, and so forth.
This is the going rate for school superintendents. These are not union positions. School systems are huge and complex enterprises that require every bit of the executive and management expertise of corporations which pay their CEOs multiples of what superintendents make. But in any case, the superintendents negotiate contracts with school boards – one may not like the outcome salary, but that skill set does have that compensation level. And I do not want the government to outlaw salary negotiation.
As far as being a Christian and a conservative…. those of us who are Christian conservatives would do well to spend as much time praying for leaders and politicians with whom we disagree as we spend criticizing them. It would soften our hearts, foster humility if and when political power returns to conservatism, and perhaps, like this superintendent, win hearts.
This is absolute nonsense. Good intentions don’t guarantee good results; that’s the whole problem with liberalism—just look at Detroit.
By lowering his salary, he is implying that high-level leadership skills are not worth paying for and that it was wrong for him to accept the $280k in the first place. (That was not his issue, but an issue between the taxpayers and the local Board of Education, which should be more accountable to the taxpayers.) The leader of a large organization has lots of responsibilities, accountabilities, and pressures that are shared by no one else. We must acknowledge that these skills are worth rewarding. $32k a year is not leadership pay for handling a large organization. Perhaps $280k is too much—perhaps it’s not—but he could have made the point by reducing his salary by 25% and still earned the pay he is working hard for. He is, ultimately, going to demoralize himself and will probably quit. The state needs good leaders with a conscience.
Plus, he should never have eliminated his healthcare coverage. 1) He deserves to get the same HR benefits that are extended to the rest of the employees in his organization. 2) It is too extreme, and results in a worthless gesture. No one, especially no one with a family, will follow his example. Better for him to have voluntarily paid a higher percentage of his healthcare coverage—now that would have encouraged his co-workers to follow suit and might have started a movement. It would have accomplished more because more of his co-workers would have found it feasible.
This is nothing but well-intentioned nonsense.
He didn’t need the healthcare because he is covered by his wife’s job.
What is your problem? Shall a man be compelled to ask for more than he wants? No one is imposing this cut on his successor, nor is there even talk of him resigning, so what concern is it of yours what “message” it sends? (Quotes are used because this message you’re reading into it is imaginary.)
Ahem – listen to Myth Buster. And . . . what IS your problem?
“The Left would really turn on Powell if they knew he is a fan of the Traditional Values Coalition of California. That coalition proudly questions evolution, is attempting to stop children from pro-homosexual education in schools, and had called for government not to raise the debt ceiling. Such an organization is public enemy number one to the Left in California, and they would not have praised Powell if they knew of his support for this organization.”
Here’s an idea: let’s not tell them! (Of course, if any of them read here, we’re too late for that strategy.)
I think it would be hilarious if the MSM and leftist elites – but I repeat myself – spent a couple of weeks praising Powell to the skies, then it turns out he’s a Republican, and a conservative Republican at that. They’ll have a lot more trouble walking this back after they’ve built him up into a national icon. Otherwise, I’m afraid Jefferson @4 will turn out to be right: they’ll turn on him and force him out of his job altogether.
“…proudly questions evolution…”
Or, “proudly questions reality.” These anti-evolution fools are every bit as bad as the people who think that humans cause global warming. They believe in these idiotic theories and want to teach them in schools, even though there is absolutely no evidence that supports human-caused global warming or creationism.
Lots of scientists, including anthropologists and those who are experts in DNA, question evolution. Even Darwin questioned it in the last 5 years of his life. Science is not democracy. It is not determined by vote or “consensus”. It is about absolute, empirical proof. Do you think I am some dummy, because I agree with the scientists who might or might not be in the minority? They are scientists, after all, right?
Skepticism is the foundation of science. Pardon me if I remain skeptical of the Theory of Evolution, until such time as it becomes the Law of Evolution. Even then, science requires that I revisit it, time to time. Would that approach be okay with you?
For the record, there is no evidence, none, proving Creation wrong. The story of the beginning of the Universe is amazingly accurate. It is consistent with what we have learned via science, “Big Bang” and all. There was void. Big Flash. Separation of bodies of liquids (waters from the waters). Sky formed. Plants. Then animals. Then man. Not bad for primitives, who had no words for many of these concepts.
The dumb one here is you, having so much faith in evolution, that you do not treat it as the simple theory that it is. From now on, never say just evolution. Say “Theory of Evolution”. It’ll help a lot. You won’t be disparaging us skeptics so much, then.
For a long time before, and at the turn of the 20th century, steady state cosmology was all the rage. Then the big bang came along and ruined it for all the deists. Big Bang is the best thing that happened to theism, post-Darwin. Perhaps the only reason it is still alive.
Matt,
I’ve often wondered whether people who question “evolution” are debating the “Big Bang Theory” of evolution or the obvious genetic changes that take place in creatures as time progresses. If one supports the former, then few of us could support evolution, the latter, almost all. IOW’s, physicists who say there is no God, PERIOD, vs. those who say the “Big Bang” cannot explain how the whole process started life on earth. I’m not well versed in the varying theories put forward, so pardon my ignorance.
Micro-evolution is a fact that no one disagrees with. Dog breeding proves that. The giant leap of logic is to simply say, well since the earth is probably super old, then things can evolve from one species to a totally different one. That was Darwin’s argument. It has yet to be proven, but it is treated as fact. And Matt ironically puts the creationists with the global warming folks when in fact global warming has much more in common with evolution. Both are blindly supported by the majority of scientists even though they are both filled with unexplained gaps.
This supports the research studies that conservatives give more of their own money to charities than liberals.
Some time ago I read about a study that conservatives also tip more generously than liberals. Judging from my own experience it is true.
Mr. Powell embodies and epitomizes the Compassionate Conservative movement George W. Bush indirectly led and made famous, but which the liberal establishment and the mainstream media have been demonizing, villifying and distorting the past several years as racist, crazy, ignorant, selfish, greedy and uncaring. The fact of the matter is, and the liberals know it, is that we’re just the opposite of all of those horrible things they say about conservatives because, like Mr. Powell, conservatives constantly give and give to our fellow man and those less fortunate, whether through church offerings, donations or some other humanitarian contributions or acts. And all without any fanfare; the only fanfare conservatives receive are the non-stop lies and fabrications by the hypocritical liberal elite who aim to bring conservatives down and destroy the movement. When you can’t win by substance, you go personal and lie and distort. That’s the true ‘bully’ pulpit.
Larry Powell seems like a decent guy trying to do his best, but it’s always a good idea to be wary of anything the left thinks is wonderful.
It is simply not the case that we can “fix our problems” by having well-compensated public employees (or anyone else) give up their incomes.
Someone else said we should eliminate the job of school superintendent. Maybe so; the bottom line is that the economy of the Central Valley won’t recover until the total burden of government is lightened significantly. I don’t think school superintendents are the biggest economic problem, but suppose for the sake of argument that they are.
If you’re a householder or a businessman, and your regulatory burden hasn’t changed, and your tax burden hasn’t changed — the only thing that has changed is that the incumbent of a particular office has decided to be paid $250K less than he was being paid — does that make any difference at all to your behavior?
If every single superintendent in the state of California gave up most of his income, is there the slightest possibility that that would affect your personal economic behavior?
Not only would it be meaningless to you in an economic sense, it would be meaningless to you in an educational sense. The act of giving up salary won’t make the difference between kids being educated versus kids not being educated. I’m sure the Fresno system can use the $250K for something, but it will be a marginal difference that won’t make a dent in anything important. The California public schools are still swimming in lard, even in these tough times with declining property tax revenues. (Their cost-saving decisions are always anti-education as well: they invariably fire teachers rather than firing administrators, and continue constructing schools they don’t need at the expense of operating schools they do.)
While I appreciate the sacrificial thought behind Powell’s gesture, it has a destructive implication: that we can restore our economy (or anything else) through sacrifices of this kind. We cannot. Sacrifices are negative, and only actions that are positive and creative — profitable, in fact — are capable of producing restoration.
Since Powell is a Baptist minister, it’s worth pointing out what the Old Testament says about God’s view of sacrifice. See I Samuel 15:22, “But Samuel replied: ‘Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’” And Hosea 6:6, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Without denigrating what Powell has decided to do, it’s important to rain on this parade in the abstract. Sacrifices like this aren’t a model for fixing our problems.
#5 Greyhawk: “we should not fund the federal department of education which does great harm to our country and our children….” Well, there is another good example of someone talking without having all the facts. Greyhawk: what is your beef against disabled citizens? The Dept. of Education includes the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
RSA’s responsibilities include providing funding to support state departments of vocational rehabilitation and provide uniform rules for service delivery across the 50 states plus territories. State VR agencies provide counseling services, medical care as needed, schooling, retraining, and job placement so that citizens with disabilities can re-enter the work force, and do so with dignity.
#6 reply by 1389AD: “Schools need to be decentralized and they should be run by school boards that are composed of parents whose children attend the school…..” I’ve never had any kids in any school system, but yet, I still have to pay taxes to support the schools. What you’re proposing is a ‘taxation without representation’ scenario.
#9 reply by Marc Malone: ” for the record, there is no evidence, none, proving Creation wrong….” There also is no evidence proving Creation right.
I personally don’t think that Mr. Powell is a true conservative, in the “small government is best” view of things. That opinion, however, does not lessen my praise at his act of leadership. I wish some of our school superintendents here in Colorado had similar vision.