Tweet This Post

The linked article is, IMO, an important read for all of us in the think tank/free market movement. I’ve often started feeble attempts to write a nearly exact commentary, and thankfully, some one wrote it for me.

It encompasses many of the things I’ve attempted to communicate in various debates/discussions with colleagues at Heartland and out on the Free Market Rubber Chicken circuit. It applies to libertarians as much as conservatives.

MODERNIZING CONSERVATISM cogently lays out exactly why the conservative movement is heading toward rough waters.

While I don’t agree with every aspect of prescribed remedies, the need for a reformation of the movement is 100% accurate, IMO.

Some titillating excerpts…

“Long-term evidence indicates that the starve-the-beast strategy not only fails, but may make the problem of unrestrained spending growth worse, suggesting that a “serve the check” strategy might be a more effective means of curbing the growth of government spending. The simple explanation for this seeming paradox is that the starve-the-beast strategy currently allows Americans to receive a dollar in government services while only having to pay 60 cents for it.”

The “no new taxes, ever, for ever and ever, Amen” is actually driving the nation into the dirt. Every dime of debt, deficit spending, and borrowing, is a tax of some sort. We may have reached the point where stopping a tax increase while increasing spending leaves America worse off than before.

My prescription has always been a tax swap combined with an entitlement swap. This is, of course, too obscene for the followers of Grover Norquist to countenance.

Too bad. Grover and the left are both wrong. We need some revenue increases to buy off the left to enact real entitlement reform, and they need to understand that failure to transform (not “reform”) Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are imperative. Absent some compromise, the US fades as a premier nation.

____

“While the activists and political strategists must think and act in terms of victory as a practical matter, conservative and liberal intellectual leaders should not. There are three dominant political facts of our age that conservative thinkers (and also liberals) need to acknowledge. The first is the plain fact that neither ideological camp will ever defeat the other so decisively as to be able to govern without the consent of the other side. This is not merely my political judgment; it is sewn into the nature of America’s basic institutions and political culture.”

If you can’t accept the above paragraph, then you may as well skip the article. You are mistaken to do so, of course, but you may well be beyond the reach of reason. We aren’t going back to 1910, 1880, or 1789, and no, the Articles of Confederation were NOT superior to the Constitution.

I believe the article can (and perhaps, should) be taken into account in terms of reformulating some strategies in the free market movement. Even if you believe in the ability to get back to a “First Way” fundamentalism, the only possibility would be to accept, and implement, the direction Hayward is pointing.

Tweet This Post

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

How is this for a headline?

“Key Democrats call for Ending Democracy”

Some people subscribe to the idea that politicians are stupid. They shoot from the hip until reined in by their consultants during election season. There is probably a great deal of truth to that. On the other hand, the use of the “trial balloon” is a well-tested technique for gauging public reaction to an idea.

With that in mind, I submit today’s WSJ’s “Notable and Quotable” into evidence to let the jury decide.

“Most Americans complain that government is unresponsive to their wishes. But not everyone feels that way. In the space of two days, two prominent Democrats have called for less responsive government that ignores public input.
 
One of them, former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, penned a piece this week in the New Republic arguing, as the title says, “Why we need less democracy.” Orszag wrote that “the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing.” His solution? “[W]e need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.” . . .
 
[S]imilar comments by Gov. Bev Perdue, D-N.C., are far more troubling. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue told a Rotary Club gathering in suburban Raleigh this week. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”

Gaffe or Trial Balloon?

I’m in the trial balloon camp. I think the “Ruling Elite” (aptly described by Codevilla) wants to literally cut governance from “the consent of the governed.”

Democrat or Republican, inside government or outside, these rulers are in the process of turning most important decisions over to “depoliticized commissions,” and they simply don’t want any pesky citizens or constitutional barriers in their way. This class of people has a simple goal – to turn America’s “government of laws, not men,” on its head. They want to govern by edicts issued by commissions. I may be wrong, and I don’t want to appear overwrought, but I think this is (or should be) a big deal.

I don’t know how to make this a huge campaign issue, but it should become the top issue on the presidential campaign trail immediately. If I were Perry or Cain, I’d be asking for a poll of our military brass to ask whether they would follow the ruling elite, or uphold the Constitution. Obama should be asked to repudiate all of the above statements. He should be threatened with making his tacit approval of the statements a central campaign issue. [As an aside, looked at in the context of the above statements, Perry's musings about secession are now perfectly reasonable.]

This issue goes way beyond tax rates, regulation, class wars, abortion, or party politics. This goes to the heart of the nation. It illustrates a cancer eating away at the Republic. That cancer isn’t merely a bad idea floated for reaction. The people floating it are evil. They are the cancer.

Orszag and Perdue are cancerous tumors that need to be removed by vote. Every citizen should make this a huge issue – at every level of government – in the upcoming elections. There is a great deal of evidence that raising this issue could be monumentally successful against the current administration and those in the Democratic Party that support it.

Recent polling, highlighted in a National Review article shows that a good number of rank and file Democrats could be swayed to vote differently with the right message.

The Battleground Poll showed that:

The lesson here is that the conservative brand is perfectly acceptable in many corners of the coalition that comprises blue America. That may explain why strategists on the left feel it is so important to toss what Ross Perot famously described as “monkey dust” into the air to cloud debates on so many important policy issues and dissuade these voters from entertaining and ultimately embracing conservative solutions. It also explains why leftist politicians use conservative rhetoric to sell their wares: It not only works among middle-of-the-road voters, it can be effective within their own political base.
 
The debates that threaten to decouple these voters from the liberal political machine tend to involve questions of fairness, the best routes out of poverty, and how best to enable ordinary Americans to achieve the American Dream. These include policies that offer educational options to children in low-income families, require welfare recipients to work and act responsibly in exchange for benefits, and end discriminatory mandates that require employers and schools to prefer some racial groups over others.

How about making “suspending democracy” and being ruled by “depoliticized commissions” a central campaign issue? Might that not make a few Democrats nervous?

We need to use the vote to remove these people from any political power and purge them (yes, purge) from all administrative roles. If we fail in that endeavor, we will eventually have to remove them by other means.

Tweet This Post

This is one of the funniest, most creative, accurate, and informative videos I’ve ever seen. It could educate the nation through rap.

Keynes v. Hayek

Enjoy, pass it on.

Tweet This Post

Check out my recent appearance on WPWR’s (Channel 50) “Perspective” program yesterday (Sunday). The discussion was around a voucher bill, along with other issues confronting education.

Of course, with three people defending the existing system, and only one person (me) describing it accurately as failing, it’s not like we don’t have our work cut out for us. You may be interested in the other guests, as they make their conventional case for dumping more money into a failed system. If not, my stint starts at the 11:22 mark.

As always, constructive critiques are welcome. Being more used to radio, I have to work on my TV persona. Any advice on how to quickly make friends with the first camera shot would be greatly appreciated.

Tweet This Post

I put up a post titled “What If” over at Heartland’s blog site.

One minute I think we’re going to win this over the next few years, and another minute, I think there’s no hope. But a man can dream.

Tweet This Post

I made my Fox Chicago debut last week, with the interview/segment airing on Sunday Morning. It’s amazing how much coverage you can get by walking through a parking lot, talking to news anchors.

Since I can’t put the video up here, I linked to Heartland’s new blog, Somewhat Reasonable.

UPDATE: Video appears below.

Tweet This Post

I doubt if I was the first person to use the phrase “Government-Education Complex,” but I use it often to describe the current education system. Others have clearly started to pick up on the meme, which is good.

A friend of mine in Indiana emailed me and asked me to define it for him. So I did.

The “Government Education Complex” is the interlocking set of interests that control the vast majority of American education dollars, education policy, and the steady increase in unnecessary education job creation. The explosion of spending, debt, and taxation we’ve witnessed in the last 25 years was used to fund the growth of this Complex.

The complex is made up not only of associations of administrators and teachers unions, but an interconnected network of bond dealers, builders, architects, law firms, textbook companies, and other service providers who profit off of the overproduction of service contracts, debt, public employment and bureaucracy. This interlocking network has played a role in funding the campaigns of 1000s of elected officials at all levels and in both parties.

Like the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned of, the “Government Education Complex” is politically powerful, and completely self interested in perpetuating itself. Unlike the Military Industrial Complex, which has provided America with the most effective fighting force on the planet, the Government Education Complex has failed to provide our society with the educated populace we are paying for.

Rather, it merely uses our children as a stick to beat more money out of us while providing, at best, a mediocre education for the lucky few. The unlucky get to go to America’s urban drop-out factories.

The vast sum of political money raised by the “Government Education Complex” is used to write legislation at the state level to grow the complex while protecting it from any competition. State school codes are written by and for the complex and its members, and passed by the political class whose campaigns they fund.

The “Government Education Complex” succeeds because of one key factor in its structure – the school district. The “district” is an artifice that provides voters and citizens with the false perception of “local control.” In fact, your local school district is merely a “franchise” of the centralized complex – like McDonalds, only more expensive and with a more limited menu.

That is why America has 1000s of school districts, almost all of which are creatures of the individual states’ school codes. While there is some variation state-to-state and district-to-district, most of that variation is due to differing socio-economic or regional factors, not district autonomy.

This raises the question of whether the “Government Education Complex” is corrupt. The short answer is, “Yes.” At any given moment, you can find 100s of local news stories about wasted money, insider contracts, or the difficulty citizens encounter when looking into school district finances. The entire process, from the complex property tax collection systems to the overly complex fund accounting dictated in many states, is designed to obfuscate spending.

The long answer on corruption is more complex, simply because a great deal of what most regular citizens call “corruption” has been legalized by most state school codes. The Government Education Complex is designed to grow itself, while spending money by the billions. It is operating exactly as intended. The actual education of America’s children is not its agenda. Spending money is its agenda.

The Government Education Complex cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled. If you are serious about educating America’s children, you must disabuse yourself of the notion that any combination of tepid reforms – a transparency law here, a teacher merit pay tweak there, or teacher measurement improvement law anywhere – can “fix” our education system.

Dismantlement means that we need to move toward the money following the child to a much more vast array of education content providers. We need to replace the Government Education Complex with a “Parent/Child Education Network.” This means that there will be a place for every imaginable learning system, from the traditional school to international digital content beamed to tablets and smart phones on demand.

The transition from a Government Education Complex to a Parent/Child Learning Network should be our goal, and every incremental step in education reform must be measured by whether it leads there.

Any set of “reforms” that leaves the Complex in place should, and will, be viewed as a failure.

Tweet This Post

The Heartland Institute is “trigger happy” today.  They’ve been one of the few free-market think tanks really promoting the concept of parent empowerment.  That’s why today’s news is so promising.

The first school has pulled the trigger, and is working to convert “government/education complex” infrastructure over to independent infrastructure.  This is a good thing.

For more information on how the Parent Trigger changes the dynamic on education reform, check out these links.

Heartland’s Parent Trigger page.

Wall Street Journal op-ed.

__

For purposes of full disclosure, yes, I am the director of the Center for School reform at The Heartland Institute.

Tweet This Post

As someone involved in the education reform movement, I hate to criticize Michelle Rhee.  That said, if you want to bring about a better education system, you have to know the source of the problem.  That’s the only way you can develop a solution.

Rhee’s article is an lesson in problem avoidance.  It makes the point that education reform is a political battle.  So far, so good.  It’s high time that high profile people started talking like this, though I suspect much of that can be attributed to Chris Christie’s surviving the campaign of lies put out by the teachers unions and bloated bureaucracy.

Where the article fails is her failure to take on the 800 lb. gorilla in the education debate.  After being successfully targeted for destruction by these engines of greed and mediocrity, Rhee turns tail and opines the this is what unions are supposed to do.  This is a travesty.

What I’ve Learned
We can’t keep politics out of school reform. Why I’m launching a national movement to transform education.

The teachers’ unions get the blame for much of this. Elected officials, parents, and administrators implore them to “embrace change” and “accept reform.” But I don’t think the unions can or should change. The purpose of the teachers’ union is to protect the privileges, priorities, and pay of their members. And they’re doing a great job of that.

What next, Michelle?  ”Kim Jong Il’s role is to turn millions of North Koreans into brainwashed, undernourished midgets building bombs to terrorize neighboring nations, and he’s doing a great job of doing that.”

Not to paint the unions as bad as Kim Jong Il, but the comparison still fits.  Teachers unions, along with the feather-bedded layers of administrative bloat, are the primary obstacle standing between the taxpayers and the educated populace they are paying for, but not getting.

Rhee’s argument would be much more powerful if she simply said that unions role in the education debate is morally illegitimate.  They are preventing the nation from creating a just and effective education market, and they are doing so for the purpose of simple greed and power.

Why congratulate them for being immoral?  Rhee at least gets one thing right when she closes her article with the following observation and action plan.

Lastly, we can’t shy away from conflict. I was at Harvard the other day, and someone asked about a statement that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and others have made that public-school reform is the civil-rights issue of our generation. Well, during the civil-rights movement they didn’t work everything out by sitting down collaboratively and compromising. Conflict was necessary in order to move the agenda forward. There are some fundamental disagreements that exist right now about what kind of progress is possible and what strategies will be most effective. Right now, what we need to do is fight.

[Just FYI, yours truly has been saying that for years now.]

We can be respectful about it. But this is the time to stand up and say what you believe, not sweep the issues under the rug so that we can feel good about getting along. There’s nothing more worthwhile than fighting for children. And I’m not done fighting.

Fair enough, Michelle, but if you are really up for a fight, don’t unilaterally disarm yourself. The existing system needs to be dismantled, and it will take a good dose of righteous moral outrage on our part, directed at the morally illegitimate financial interests that have grown rich, protected and powerful that the expense of America’s children.

Americans turned against segregation when they saw the true nature of the segregationists.  It’s time for us to do the same to the government/education complex.  Telling people unions are “just doing their job” isn’t cutting it.  Unionization has no place in the public sector. Every dime they extract is at taxpayer expense.  Their existence is an outrage.

Tweet This Post

While I’ve been purposefully avoiding any news shows or blogs this weekend, the situation in North Korea forces me to post this potential solution to the problem. Let’s start with some premises.

1. NK is a buffer state for China. It exists at China’s will.
2. NK is a clear and present danger to its own people and to the world.
3. China, belligerent and “ascendant” as she may be, is linked to our currency and to our consumption of her cheap goods.

While I could add details and subheadings to the above, I think the premises are sound. If not please correct me.

With that in mind, why shouldn’t America, in the person of its CEO, simply offer China the ultimatum below.

Dear Hu,

President Obama (or his successor)

Why shouldn’t we use trade as weapon in this situation? Aside from hurting Walmart’s stock price for a few quarters and losing a few transportation jobs in the interim, why can’t we do this? Discuss.

Tweet This Post

News reports are rolling in regarding the TARP paybacks and stock sales on GM.  Some are saying that these bailouts  are “turning a profit” for taxpayers.  Here is one example.

G.M. Prices Its Shares at $33 in Return to Stock Market

American taxpayers’ ownership of General Motors was halved on Wednesday, and billions of dollars in bailout money was returned to the federal government, as a result of the nation’s largest initial stock offering ever.

The offering, which raised $23.1 billion, is bigger and more ambitious than had once seemed possible. But the recently bankrupt automaker will have to build on its revival for the government to recoup its entire $50 billion investment and validate the Obama administration’s decision to keep G.M. from collapsing.

The idea that these policies were beneficial, simply based upon some of the money being returned through IPOs, needs to be placed into context.

Let’s start with this. Since 2007,  revenues to the Fed. government have collapsed.  This collapse was precipitated by a dramatic slowdown, which, in turn, was based upon a variety of factors.  The key is that many of these factors could have been addressed prior to the collapse.

Instead, American governance is a freak show where we have an above the surface gridlock on any good policy, with a below the surface greasing of every stupid policy under the sun.  This culminated in bursting asset bubbles, bailouts of rent-seekers, and a slew of morally hazardous policies that replace self-governance with “Czarism.”

Into this tragi-comedy of political idiocy, unemployment, and huge deficits, defenders of the bailouts point to a paltry few pennies returned to the treasury as a sign of “success” while ignoring the billions (or trillions, even) in lost revenues based upon bad government policies.

This is ridiculous. GM’s $33/share price is based upon a czarist edict waiving away taxes on bailed out entities.  What some tout as a “return on investment” reads more like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged, where some people get bailed out based upon the “aristocracy of pull.”

There are far too many Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians who operate under the false theory that the well of our moral, social, financial and intellectual capital will never run dry. I think they are wrong.

The GM situation is evidence of deep decline, not of a “bailout” having worked.

Tweet This Post

“Can you govern yourself, or do you need a Federal Czar to govern your life for you?”

That question should be asked of every interested person who might vote in the next few elections. Everyone.

“Can you find a doctor, a light-bulb, or control the flow of your toilet, or should one of our Federal Czars take that decision out of your hands?”

When framed in this fashion, the answers to these questions probably have a 75-25 pro-freedom response rate, even in today’s electorate.

This “frame” (see Lakoff and Overton Window)  articulates the central message that all Republicans, conservative Democrats, the Tea Parties/Patriots, as well as the think tank types should be shouting from the hilltops.

Once brought to consciousness in this philosophical context, virtually every “self-government” policy initiative can be promoted on the foundation of “self-government”. Most Americans are hard-wired to agree with the conservative view on this.

On top of that, we will have Obama and Reid as the face of the Democrats, forced to defend their “Czarism,” top-down big government, and the intrusive nanny-state initiatives like San Francisco’s silly ban on Happy Meals (“The Democrats are against “happiness.”).  Meanwhile, the self-government frame literally sells itself.

When confronted with questions on whether people are capable of self-government, our opponents are forced to –  simultaneously, or alternatively – argue that:

1. People are “too stupid” to govern themselves, or that
2. We need large armies of government employees to either rule people, or teach them to govern themselves.

Given the superior solutions offered by the free-market and center-right, they will lose this debate.

With Tuesday’s election behind us, liberty-oriented people need to focus not so much on what Congress does as much as how to win the next round in 2012.

The only real danger is listening to the wrong people and foolishly re-running 1980 and 1994.  We shouldn’t pretend that a tax cut and cutting a few programs will balance the budget.  It won’t even come close.  We need a robust communication model that allows us to literally dismantle the failed “big government” programs of the 30s and 60s.

Using the self-government frame allows us to build that political support, not only for the necessary dismantlement, but for the more necessary policies needed to replace the failed system(s). This is something that Reagan, Gingrich and Bush attempted to do, but failed to accomplish.

This Congress will, or will not, take care of itself, so, while we still need to keep our eye on federal and state legislation, our real job is to cement the gains we’ve made in the minds of the voters, and get more of them involved in the process of taking back “government,” not for the Republicans, but for themselves.

Tweet This Post

For background on just how awful a person I am, start with my first installment of the Tea Party Bozo Show.  Read all the slams on my breach of protocol against Senate Candidate Joe Miller.  Once finished, read on.

My response:

Boy oh boy, the angry conservative/libertarian faction is in full bloom tonight. A near universal drubbing from the commentariat!

Out of respect for the many intelligent people disagreeing with me, (and no, that is not being sarcastic or facetious), let me re-examine my premises.

First, I supported Miller winning, and still do. I remain an uncompromising critic of the “establishment” types, Murkowski in particular. (I notice no one took me to task for calling establishment types “perverted uncles.”) Check.

Second, I properly criticized an absurd unforced error on the part of a novice politician. Check.

Third, I remain convinced that the weakness of many Tea Party candidates is their penchant for running off message to prove some Randian, quasi-constitutionalist, Galt’s Gulch bona fides instead of realizing they are running for office in a state/district populated with 10s of 1000s of voters with millions of nuanced positions zipping through their neurons. Check.

Fourth, the radio host portion of my personality took hold for a moment, and caused me to go nuclear with some rhetoric. Guilty as charged. (but it did generate 17 comments on a slow news day, so hey…)

More evidence in my favor?

1. Sarah Palin, perhaps one of the most naturally talented politicians in the nation, was taken to task by a lightweight like Couric because she couldn’t bother to do a few hours of political homework every night.

2. Rand Paul opens the first week of his post-primary win with blurb about repealing the civil rights act.

3. O’Donnell is perhaps the first person to trump Nixon’s “I am not a crook” with her new slogan “I am not a witch.”

4. Paladino

5. Sharon Angle can’t keep out of trouble. http://www.mynews4.com/story.php?id=29918&n=122

6. Ken Buck “Being Gay is like alcoholism.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/theweek/20101018/cm_theweek/208303

C’Mon Y’all!!! Your aggressive reaction to my post critiquing Miller smacks of a little of projection. You’re all CB readers! Tell me this isn’t embarrassing. Be honest.

Also, complaining about liberal bias and double standards doesn’t cut it.  In this environment, it’s an even stronger supporting argument for my view.

Look. I’m quite familiar with the libertarian/conservative penchant for attempting to convince the 70-95% of America that disagrees with us on some issue that THEY’RE WRONG!!!   As someone on record for supporting the de-unionization of the public sector, I do quite a bit of that myself.  I just get a kick out of some of the posts here attempting to rationalize the comparison of East Germany with the US. It’s endearing on a blog. On the campaign trail, it’s just plain stupid.

Exhibit 1 – “If East Germany could do it, we could do it.” What!? No supporting evidence from Kim Jong Il’s North Korea?!

I rest my case.

As a blogger or radio host, it’s a vocation. As a politician, it’s an absurd self indulgence. I applaud Miller beating Murkowski, and my strong reaction is a function of my really wanting him to win.  But when you make the big leagues, realize where you are!! Grow up, and fast.

Bash me all you want. Leaving aside the heated rhetoric and name calling, I was dead on. If we are serious about winning, we had better approach the opportunities we are given with a modicum of professionalism.

Tweet This Post

Miller cites Communist East Germany as effective in dealing with border security

The scuffle between the editor of Alaska Dispatch and Joe Miller’s security guards at a public forum in Anchorage late Sunday is getting much national attention today. Getting lesser but growing attention is Miller’s answer at the forum to a question from the audience about how he would deal with illegal immigration. Anchorage blogger Steve Aufrecht was there and is among those today who are criticizing Miller’s response that Communist East Germany is a good example of a nation achieving border security. He quotes Miller as saying: “The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. … East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could do it, we could do it.”

What a blithering idiot!

These apparently are the only choices for Rs these days.  A class of in-bred crooks who serve the functional equivalent of perverted uncles molesting American principles, or a class of pseudo articulate ass-clowns.

Oh well, the upside is that I’ll likely get my wish that Rs don’t get the senate. That’s a nice silver lining.

Tweet This Post

The Heartland Institute just opened up their new blog today, somewhatreasonable.com. I encourage a visit.

This is where the Heartland staff will post their quick takes and commentary on the rapidly developing stories of the day.

I just posted a spirited defense of Mitch Daniels there…like he needs my help.

Tweet This Post

It’s nice to know that the rhetoric I’ve been using on my website for about 6 years now, which some called “extreme,” has gone mainstream.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editors are dipping their toes in the water of truth. They ought to dive in head first, and start rescuing children.

Hating ‘Superman’

The new film “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film’s opponents it is having an impact.

Witness the scene on a recent Friday night in front of a Loews multiplex in New York City, where some 50 protestors blasted the film as propaganda for charter schools. “Klein, Rhee and Duncan better switch us jobs, so we can put an end to those hedge fund hogs,” went one of their anti-charter cheers, referring to school reform chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers.

Or maybe not so odd. Teachers unions and the public school monopoly have long benefitted from wielding a moral trump card. They claimed to care for children, and caring was defined solely by how much taxpayers spent on schools.

That moral claim is being turned on its head as more Americans come to understand that teachers unions and the public bureaucracy are the main obstacles to reform. Movies such as “Waiting for ‘Superman’” and “The Lottery” are exposing this to the larger American public, leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.

Teacher’s unions are on the moral defensive because people have finally started to question their moral legitimacy. (welcome to the club) Teachers Unions have none, and, as a concept, they have no right to exist.

Every dime a teachers union extracts from a tax payer for pay, benefits, pensions, etc., is a dime that can’t be used to better educate a child. It’s so obvious that it’s been staring us in the face for decades.

Just as Reagan hastened the fall of the USSR by challenging their moral legitimacy (evil empire, ash heap of history), we must openly start telling our neighbors that teachers unions have no right to one iota of say in education. Their interests, and the interests of society are diametrically opposed.

You don’t negotiate with such an entity, you abolish it. It’s that simple. Get to work.

You want to teach? Compete in the open field of professionals and processes that can better educate our children.

Tweet This Post

My son made it back from his first tour in Afghanistan two days ago.  He will probably have to go back at least once.  This is from his Facebook posting.

“Lindsay Lohan, 24, is all over the news because she’s a celebrity drug addict. While Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Chase Stanley 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23, Sheldon Tate 27, they are all Marines who gave their lives this week, no media mention. Honor THEM by reposting…”

Done.

Tweet This Post

Watch this video.

Then watch this one.

Put it on all your websites, facebook pages, and e-mail lists.

Tweet This Post

Public Unions are taking well-deserved heat for their pension greed. If you look at all the pension articles, the comments are full of reasonable sounding folks trotting out the argument that the really bad examples of abusive pensions are “outliers.” They then tell you that the average benefit is “only $20,000/year.” It’s best to address this calmly, reasonably, and accurately. Here’s how.

Some folks defending the public employee pension issue like to point out that the majority of those receiving benefits get relatively low payouts.  They often use lines like “the average benefit is only $17-20K/yr.”  This union talking point needs to be addressed.

While it is technically correct, they mask the real problem, which is the large number of the new retirees on the horizon, coupled with the actuarial insanity of their benefits. (I’m using Illinois as an example, but the same has occurred in CA, NJ, and the entire Northeast)

Think of 10 people who retired 15-20 years ago receiving $20K/yr. Now think of one greedy school superintendent who just retired sucking down $200K (or more) after hopping from district to district, ramping up his retirement with fat contracts no one ever vetted. Multiply that one person by a few 1000 in each state. Add to that whatever number of teachers are receiving big pensions after goosing their unwarranted salaries for the last 4 years of their careers.

Now you have this large run up in the number of retirees, the size of the pensions, and the INSANE early retirement options. It’s a HUGE problem. For icing on the bankruptcy cake, add in free health care for life for many of these folks.

Public Unions have bankrupted the states where they’ve gained massive power. It’s time to tell them to sit down, shut up, and take the massive cuts they deserve. Since their pension benefits are probably protected by awful constitutional clauses guaranteeing them, the best solution is to make every one of these folks with pensions over $100K pay 100% of their own health costs. In this political environment, that policy will pass political muster.

When a politician balks at this policy, and defends unions, fat pensions, and the feeble idea that “government workers” have the right to bankrupt the state, burn their political career to the ground. The time is right.
There is no real downside to being rhetorically and politically aggressive on this point. To that end, I post this type of comment on many articles about the pension greed of public unions.

Look here, the fact that police protect us, that firemen run into burning buildings, and teachers educate our children, does NOT give them the right to bankrupt our civilization. It is time to get right up into the face of these unethical people and tell them to stop! It is also time for all of you to stop buying the “poor public employee” load of lies, and abolish public unionization. The best next step is to end this era of public greed forever is to cap the growth of EVERY government entity’s budget to inflation plus population growth.

Tweet This Post

America, even with Republicans in the House and possibly Senate, runs the risk of becoming the model sclerotic empire, wasting away while other states move toward more freedom. Canada and Sweden, nations we conservatives and libertarians used to scoff at as silly, are starting to beat the US on measures of freedom and competitiveness.
Sweden is one country to watch. First, it does socialism about as well as any state could. (of course, this is easier when your nation is small, homogeneous, and free of the burdens of world leadership). Next, unlike the US, Sweden is moving in the right direction, toward that conservative (in the true meaning of the word) ideal of a 3rd way, where the welfare state, to the extent it exists, is individualized.

Sweden’s Quiet Revolution
Without much fanfare, the Scandinavian country has been moving away from socialism.

There is something about Sweden that provokes a mix of envy, horror, and bewilderment among American observers. Liberals have traditionally celebrated its cradle-to-grave safety net, while conservatives have disparaged its high taxes and centralized health-care regime. Yet both groups have generally agreed that Swedish-style socialism is a far cry from rough-and-tumble U.S. capitalism.

In fact, contemporary Sweden is much less socialist than many Americans realize. Since the early 1990s, when it suffered a painful financial crisis, the Scandinavian country has deregulated key industries (such as airlines, telecommunications, and electricity), lowered its overall tax burden, established universal school vouchers, partially privatized its pension system, abolished certain government monopolies, sold a number of state-owned enterprises (including the parent company of Absolut vodka), and trimmed public spending. Several years ago, it eliminated gift and inheritance taxes. The World Economic Forum now ranks Sweden as the second-most competitive economy on earth, behind only Switzerland. According to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (compiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation), Sweden offers greater business freedom, trade freedom, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption, and property-rights protection than does the United States.

…

Bolstered by prudent economic stewardship and a relatively conservative financial sector, Sweden entered the global recession on a sound footing. While it endured a nasty spike in unemployment, its export-driven recovery has been so vigorous that the central bank is now concerned about inflation risks. In the second quarter of 2010, Sweden posted a 4.6 percent annual growth rate, prompting the Wall Street Journal to hail it as “the biggest success story in post-recession Europe.” It currently has the lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio in the entire European Union. Before the election, Swedish finance minister Anders Borg announced plans to privatize another $14 billion worth of state assets. “If we get a surplus in place,” Reinfeldt told a Reuters interviewer, “we will deliver on tax cuts for 6.1 million workers and pensioners.” (The total Swedish population is roughly 9.4 million.)

To be sure, Sweden won’t look like Hong Kong or Singapore anytime soon. It still has a lavish welfare state, and its aggregate tax burden is still quite heavy. The top marginal income-tax rate is 57 percent in Sweden, compared with 35 percent (for now) in America. On the other hand, a 2008 OECD study found that household taxes are substantially more progressive in the U.S. than they are in Sweden, even after we control for America’s higher level of income inequality. Sweden has a much lower average statutory corporate-tax rate than the U.S., and also a much lower effective corporate-tax rate on new capital investments (according to University of Calgary economists Duanjie Chen and Jack Mintz). Its tax structure is made even more regressive by a 25 percent value-added tax on consumption of most goods and services.

Which brings us to a common misconception about the Swedish system — that it takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Actually, says Lund University economist Andreas Bergh, “the majority of the taxes you pay are given back to you during your life cycle.” Thus, “if you pay more when you work, you will also get more when you retire.” Even upper-class Swedes enjoy bountiful government largesse.

Another popular myth would have us believe that Sweden’s wealth was somehow created or facilitated by social democracy. In reality, “Sweden’s prosperity is the result of well-functioning capitalist institutions,” says Bergh, author of the new Swedish-language book The Capitalist Welfare State. As Cato Institute scholar Johan Norberg explained in a 2006 National Interest essay, the relative “success” of the country’s social-democratic model “was built on the legacy of an earlier model: the period of economic growth and development preceding the adoption of the socialist system.”