A Big Bag of Money With a $ Sign On It Will Do

A brief story in this morning's Journal (viewing of vapid "Parade Magazine" ad required) recaps Our Current Governor(TM)'s proposal to pay teachers extra to work in "failing schools" and remote parts of the state. While I still like the briefcase full of $100 bills initiative I brought up in my last post better, OCG's idea is a start (okay, we know it wasn't OCG's idea exactly, but he will get and take credit in the next few months for every invention since the kiva and Roman aqueducts).

The proposal, and the brevity of the Journal story, make it unclear exactly which schools would be lousy and undesirable enough to participate in such a plan, but I'm guessing the South Valley ABQ schools near my house (Harrison MS, Polk MS, and Ernie Pyle MS in particular) would be prime targets of such a plan. Anyone who has ever checked out the APS "careers" page online knows that any even remotely sentient creature with a Special Education teaching certificate could walk off the street any day of the week and get a job at these schools. Any day of the week. My guess is that the eventual NM plan will include extra-special bonus incentives for SpEd and Math/Science, just as these ideas always seem to do.

The more important question this morning is dropping a new moniker on OCG. I've used "Our Current Governor" for about 20 minutes now, and it's not working. "Big Bill" is taken, and is old and stale. Deliberate pseudo-cool misspellings like "Guvernator" are not only extremely lame, but also bring to mind the Governor in California instead of Richardson. And just saying "Governor Richardson" is boring and misses out on the opportunity to create a nickname for the guy that combines the plenitude of positive and negative attributes the dude possesses. Not to mention the he's so out of here to run for President angle.

I'm all ears on the question. If you have a good name for the guy (and let's show a little more sophistication than "Big Evil Guy" or "The Next President of the United States" here), throw it my way through either comment or email.