(HOST) With a new legislative session about to begin, commentator Rich Nadworny is still bothered about a bit of unfinished business from last session.
(NADWORNY) When State Senator Vince Illuzzi recently announced plans to introduce a bill that would call for Public Service Board members to be elected, rather than appointed – to make the board more accountable – I got to thinking.
The board’s current independent status allows it to weigh cases based solely on evidence and law, so I couldn’t see right away whose needs and wishes weren’t being met. Then it came to me. Electing members would make them more beholden to politicians, lobbyists and other special interest groups.
So then I got to wondering if there are other areas in our lives where we could apply this principle to make people more accountable and to reap similar benefits.
Take teachers, for example. They don’t really have to account to anyone for brainwashing our kids with all sorts of things only they deem important, like explaining that separation of church and state is written into our U.S. Constitution, or teaching that someone like Ronald Reagan could actually have evolved from an ancestor of his movie co-star Bonzo. Something needs to be done about that!
Well, actually, in Texas, the State Board of Education, an elected 15 member board, has done something to make those pesky pedagogues more accountable. They’ve gone right over the heads of the teachers and rewritten the textbooks.
Now kids in Texas won’t have to study Thomas Jefferson, who didn’t really do much except write most of the Declaration of Independence, become the third President of our country, and design an improved version of the dumbwaiter. Nope, that liberal loser is out. The only way Texas school children will hear the name Jefferson is when they take that mandatory 9th grade class "Sitcoms of the Seventies."
And while we’re at it, how about baseball umpires? Did you know that Doubleday’s original rules placed those four overweight, out-of-shape guys "above the law"? I mean, really, did anyone watch the playoffs this year and see how many calls they blew? I’d say they’re in serious need of an accountability adjustment.
So how about this: I think we fans should elect two umpires for the ultra-rich owners, one for the home team and one for the visiting team. Then, we should elect two umpires for the super-rich players, again one for home and one for away. With all the arguing likely to go on in that group, game times will probably stretch from a sleepy 3 hours a game to an insufferable 5 hours a game, putting baseball more in line with the guidelines of the International Cricket Foundation.
But at least that would make them more accountable to those of us who really care about the game. Right?
Now, can someone please tell me when the word accountability came to mean "opportunity to twist someone’s arm." Silly me – I was still thinking it had something to do with personal integrity.