It is important to remember that neither the Heritage Foundation nor the American Enterprise Institute exist to do actual empirical research. You know, the kind of research where you really don't know what the answer's going to be until you've done all the research and assembled all the data. You know, the honest kind.

Oh, no. None of that for these folks. Both of these outfits exist solely to put a pseudo-academic gloss on what conservative politicians choose to believe anyway. They are not "think-tanks," if that buzzy phrase ever had a real meaning. They are talking-point factories. They exist so that people like Michele Bachmann can appear to be smart. Their "research" is given mainstream credibility only because the people who run America's major communication conglomerates would cut out their own spleens rather than be called "liberal." Heritage and AEI produce "research" the way the Fox News Channel produces "journalism." It's propaganda with data points.

So, naturally, when a couple of their bright "researchers" go out in search of What's Wrong With Education?, their research remarkably comes to the conclusion that, all visible evidence to the contrary, public school teachers are overpaid lazy bums who aren't bright enough to work at places like the Heritage Foundation.

Here's something they say about their own data:

According to Census data, Richwine and Biggs admit that teachers do look underpaid; they receive a 20 percent lower salary than private-sector workers with the same level of education, and have benefits approximately the same.

Here's something else they say about their own data:

They show that the typical worker who moves from the private sector into teaching receives a salary increase of 8.8 percent, and the typical teacher who enters the private sector receives a pay cut of 3.1 percent. If teachers were underpaid, they write, "this is the opposite of what one would expect." They also admit, however, that given the small sample size of workers who switch between teaching and non-teaching, "these data should not be considered precise."

Actually, given the small sample size, these data should be considered unworthy of the intellect god gave a goat.

The rest of this swill is the old but-they-have-summer's-off bilge we've heard for 30 years, and an expression of deep outrage that the benefits and pensions enjoyed by teachers haven't been utterly decimated the way 30 years of Republican economics and Wall Street thievery have utterly decimated the benefits and pensions of the workers in the private sector. (Why do they get what I can't have? Because only 10 percent of the workforce is unionized, that's why.) In fact, judging by their "research," it's hard to know why Richwine and Biggs don't quit their jobs as slaveys in a rightwing idea mill and take one of those cushy jobs teaching seventh-grade English somewhere. Wait, I just figured out why.

Because neither of these two whelps would last 15 minutes, that's why.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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