Alabama State Senator  Shadrack McGill has given me a splittin’ headache.

McGill

In the DeKalb County Times-Journal this week, McGill says that the answer to about half the Alabama legislature being under indictment for kickbacks and bribes is to pay them more.  He says that their salary of $47,500 a year makes them susceptible to taking kickbacks and bribes.

“That played into the corruption, guys, big time,” he said. “You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren’t worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting,” McGill said.

You know, I’ve heard that argument before.  And I might tend to think he’s got a point, but he steps on his dinky in the very next sentence.  He wanders off into the fact that school teachers don’t get paid much but that’s different.  If you increase a teacher’s salary, you will not get more qualified teachers.  And how does he know that?

“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.”

Oh wait, I didn’t mention that he was speaking at a prayer breakfast?  Well, I can’t imagine why I would miss that.

But, he hadn’t finished dancin’ with this brilliance yet. Speaking eloquently about teachers, McGill went on and on and on ….

“To go in and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?

“And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ’em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

“If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”

Except you, McGill.  You are unbalanced.

Let me get this straight:  we have to pay legislators more to keep them from getting corrupt, but we should pay teachers less to keep them from getting corrupt.

It’s Biblical.

Didn’t you just know it would be?

Thanks to Deb for the heads-up.