Tonight as I was finishing my work for school and I couldn’t help but read the news. The post office made their announcement about what they wanted to do to trim a 3 billion dollar deficit. As I am reading this article, I began to grow more upset because here is another entity that is virtually “too big to fail” in a lot of individuals eyes. My mind wandered towards the automobile industry and AIG. Companies like Chevy and Chrysler took taxpayer dollars as a bailout for their ginormous financial crisis they put themselves into. Let me enlighten you by saying that there is a common thread between the post office, the automobile companies, and AIG. The common thread is they didn’t plan for the future. Instead they hustled and bustled to worry about the here and now. People who were in leadership roles failed. They should be FIRED! What happens when the everyday person doesn’t plan for the future? We pay for it in the end don’t we. People might lose their job, people might not eat for a week, etc.

As teachers, if we don’t plan for our classes every day, we look like idiots in front of our students. Don’t get me wrong, we do have to wing it once in a while. As teachers we are trying to plan for the future by getting our students to the next grade. So, what happened to the people in these leadership roles. Most of them got rewarded by getting bonuses. Or, if they were fired, they received million dollar pensions. What type of message does this send to our children? It’s alright to fail because you are going to get rewarded. I wish I could go to school one day and not teach anything, then get reprimanded with a $5000 check.

You can’t honestly sit there and tell me that the postmaster or any of the other political geniuses we have running this country didn’t see the impact of the internet and technology. Now about the simple fact that email was replacing letter writing. Do you think phone companies have prepared for the barrage of cell phones people have and the termination of landlines in homes? But, once again, the people who run these companies and are in charge get rewarded for their failures.

Let’s take a look at the Ford company shall we. Here is a company who was offered money by the government and it turned it down because they had the smarts to see what was coming down the line. They knew the cost of oil and gas and our dependency of them were going to change how we needed to look at transportation. They planned ahead. They made vehicles that were more fuel-efficient. They had a leg up on the market because of smart planning. They were smart enough to make it through a crisis because of a quality leader. Bill Ford is the one who needs the million dollar bonus for having his company earn profit during a time when there wasn’t much profit to be made.

I guess I am bothered by the lack of poor judgement and planning by these companies. If we want to set a model for our children to follow, certain people need to be held accountable. Every year there are classrooms where teachers and students are being held accountable. It is hard for us to get our message across to these students when they see failure is being rewarded.

Cheers!