There are two possible outcomes:
If the result confirms the hypothesis,
then you've made a measurement.
If the result is contrary to the hypothesis,
then you've made a discovery.
Enrico Fermi
Stats of the Day: Public Education and the Same Old Song
From Reason:
Since 1970, K-12 education spending in the United States has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars. The just-released results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows no score improvements for high school seniors in reading and math since 2009 and little progress over the last decade. Just 26 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level in math. In reading, the national average stayed flat at 288, with 37 percent of students scoring at or above proficient. The national average for reading decreased by four points since the current version of the test's first administration in 1992.
Image of the Day
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| Via Mark Heroux on FB |
I read this CNN news item after publishing a FB comment critique on Romney's abysmal election campaign against one of the worst Presidents in American history. For lack of a better term, I call Romney's call for a minimum wage increase as counterproductive "focus group populism". It's unprincipled madness. The minimum wage is wrongly considered as a proxy for showing you as a politician allegedly care for low-wage workers, forcing employers to give the workers a raise. This is ludicrous; this supposes, among other things, that the demand for low-wage workers is inelastic and that the business manager has the budget for higher compensation.
Familiar readers can predict what I'll say: supply and demand determine what's a "fair wage"; only 2% of jobs pay minimum wage (meaning the market pays 98% of workers more than the minimum), many, if not most minimum wage workers are teens or young adults, not the heads of households; they are often inexperienced workers whom will earn raises after training and higher productivity. In a certain sense you can view training as a fungible benefit; if an experienced lower-wage worker is not being paid fairly, he or she may be able to work for a competitor at a higher wage, and his old employer may be stuck training another employee from scratch. Also, keep in mind that at lower wage work, we don't see the type of productivity gains that result in higher wages. For example, mopping technology hasn't changed much since I mopped floors at my college cafeteria as a freshman. It's harder to mop twice as many floors over the same unit of time.
We still face the fact that government is setting a price floor. In a robust economy, this is unnecessary because the demand for labor goes up. But in a weak economy, you end up with a surplus of available workers at a higher wage--and some of that surplus would be employable at lower level, but the government gets in the way of an employer and a potential employee making a contract. The higher the statutory wage, the fewer labor hours are available. The employer might respond to a rise in the minimum wage by cutting hours, increasing work loads, raising hiring criteria, etc. It doesn't help anybody having trouble finding even a minimum wage job at today's rate.
We think that it's nobody else's business to intervene between what the employer and employee voluntarily agree to; we think it's immoral to artificially bar people from finding work: with "friends" like that, who needs enemies?
So why are Romney, who should know better, and self-styled blue-collar populist Rick Santorum fighting those of us opposing the minimum wage on moral, conceptual grounds? They obviously understand it's bad, counterproductive economic policy which does nothing to help people already out of work. My guess is political expediency; even if it's bad economics, it might look to the average voter that you are sensitive to the plight of lower-wage workers. Besides, with only 2% of the labor force getting a raise, it probably isn't that big a hit.. Of course, some industries employ more minimum-wage workers than others. But the bottom line is this goes to prove Romney is hardly a principled conservative and is all too eager to intervene domestically or internationally.
I was going to leave it there when I stumbled across in a recent Politico piece a couple of fellow Republican Congressmen going after my favorite, Justin Amash:
“Once you get to know [Amash], and I know that district from being around Michigan for long enough, he’s completely out of line with these people,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, a senior Michigan Republican in an interview. “He votes more with the Democrats than with the Republicans, and that’s not out of principle, that’s out of him branding himself as something different.” Rogers even cut Ellis a $5,000 check, a bold move for a fellow Republican Michigander.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Amash isn’t a “serious member of Congress,” and added “this is someone here playing games, and trying to be on the opposite side of Republicans.” Nunes gave his opponent $5,000. Nunes said his dealings with Amash on a water bill critical to California turned him off. “He’s been leading the charge and not telling the truth about [NSA surveillance policies],” Nunes said in an interview. “He’s been fanning the flames, and it gets to the point where my assessment is this is a guy willing to work with San Francisco Democrats to protect bait fish, and at the same time he’s Al Qaeda’s best friend in the Congress.”With respect to Nunes, here's Amash's discussion of his water bill vote:
I voted no on #HR3964, Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act. The bill is nearly identical to #HR1837 from the 112th Congress, which I also opposed.
As before, the bill pre-empts (overrides) the State of California's environmental regulations as they apply to the federal government's Central Valley Project (CVP) and the state government's State Water Project. It also changes a federal law passed in the 1990s that requires a certain amount of water flowing through the CVP to be used to preserve wildlife.
I support the legislation's reduction of federal restrictions that have impeded California's ability to address its own water supply problems; however, the Constitution doesn't grant the federal government power to pre-empt state water laws.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." I may not support California's water laws, but it is not for me or for any of my colleagues in Congress to dictate to California.Amash is spot on. I completely agree with his analysis and decision. (The House passed the bill anyway, but Nunes, who has never personally met Amash, is holding a grudge. The Al-Qaeda crack is unforgiveable and particularly nasty given the fact Amash is a second generation Arab-American.)
As for Amash's dispute with Rogers, keep in mind Amash and Conyers sponsored an amendment to rein in NSA's mass collection of phone records, which barely lost 217-205; Rogers led the opposition but lost 94 GOP votes for the amendment. So this explains Rogers' petty vendetta against Amash.
Amash was correct on both counts, and so Nunes and Rogers' lack of colleagiality earns both my contempt and nominations. Amash has my unconditional support for his reelection--not that he needs it. A February poll put him as a 5-1 lead over Ellis with over a 60% approval rating.
Campus Censorship by "Progressive" Fascists
You Should Not Have To Leave Your Home To Care For Your Child
Facebook Corner
(Lew Rockwell). “Michelle Obama spared a moment between lavish tax-victim-funded vacations and celebrity outings to join this year’s version of the Kony campaign, which seeks military action in Nigeria to liberate 276 Christian schoolgirls who were abducted by Muslim militants.
Mrs. Obama’s Twitter photo was revised and corrected by a revolutionary socialist group in Detroit to reflect the hideous reality behind the administration’s humanitarian posturing,” says William Norman Grigg.
At least Bush went to Congress first. We have a Nobel Peace Prize winning hypocrite whom not only personally approves killlists, including of American citizens overseas without due process, but has refused to get Congressional approval for any of his own adventures in Yemen, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.
(Reason). Florida legislators wrapped up their 2014 session by passing "the Pop-Tart bill."
We already have an unalienable right to liberty. Are we going to have a knee-jerk response every time some idiotic public bureaucrat makes up a stupid rule? What we need to do is to get rid of the bureaucrats.
(Cato Institute). VIDEO: The Social Security Administration was created in 1935. Today the agency takes up one quarter of the us budget, spending $914 billion a year, around $7,600 for each U.S. household.
I paid into SS from 1967 thru 2012. I started receiving SS in 2013. I also have a 401k. If the money I paid in SS taxes for those 45 years was invested in the same investments I had in my 401k, my monthly SS check would more than DOUBLE ! ! !
But then your money would not have been invested in federal overspending....
(Reason). Mandated trigger warnings would set a troubling precedent on campus.
So help me if I hear one more condescending "progressive" obsessed with controlling every other person's behavior (except their own)...
(IPI). Tell lawmakers to keep their promise to taxpayers by allowing the temporary tax hike to sunset in 2015. Click here to email your state rep. http://illin.is/1iy3XpQ
Legislators and governors should be temporary. Voters, make it so....
(Libertarian Republic). Was Mitt Romney's Loss A Good Thing For The GOP? Ft. Richard Viguerie (PODCAST) http://bit.ly/1su9CAr
Well, for one thing, we would have been spared a 2016 Obama-Romney rematch. I've argued in a different forum that I thought Romney missed a golden opportunity to resurrect the free-market, non-interventionist Old Right, that he should have thrown Bush under the bus, to run against 12 miserable years of mediocre economic growth and massive deficits. He also come across as unprincipled, a flip-flopper on various issues (abortion, immigration, etc.) He also came across as wonkish vs. populist; Hermain Cain's '9-9-9' was easily to grasp than Romney's 59-point economic plan. I thought that trying to play to the right of Obama on foreign policy was a strategic mistake; Obama had spent much effort in his first term trying to co-opt the right, by promoting Petraeus, out-droning Bush, etc. What Obama was not prepared for was Romney doing an about-face and saying, "You know, we can't afford to continue nation building in strategically questionable places half-way around the world." I think Romney was saying what he thought the people wanted to hear, like when he ran on "progressive" positions in Massachusetts. We have big challenges, like the Baby Boomer Retirement Tsunami, that we need to address directly, with imaginative solutions, not political rhetoric or policy tweaks.
Was Romney's loss a good thing? No; we've lost 4 years we'll never get back under undeniably one of the worst, most incompetent Presidents in American history. It was a wake-up call: the GOP's ground game in getting out its base and using high technology has been uncompetitive since the first Bush's reelection debacle of being unable to anticipate or adjust to Clinton's rapid response team. Romney did far worse among immigrants--even Asian immigrants--than George W. did, all because an alienating stance on immigration, trying to appease the anti-immigrant special interest group; this is not a surprise. Republicans have been uncompetitive in the People's Republic of California since Wilson's scorched-earth reelection as governor. Republicans need to stop rerunning Reagan's campaign from over 3 decades ago; they need to come up with a compelling, simpler, consistent pro-liberty message, sort of a revamped pro-markets, non-interventionist Old Right.
Magic
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Lisa Benson via Townhall |
Jon David, "American Heart"
