Quote of the Day
I like a man who grins when he fights.Winston Churchill
Image of the Day
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| Via Libertarian Republic |
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| Thank you, Obama |
This investigation is all a Kabuki dance. The fact is that we are in the sixth year of the Obama era; he specifically ran on VA reform; how was he going to get an independent opinion of his administration's performance, leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse with administrator playing the role of the three monkeys? Obama pandered to the military community when he wanted their votes. The fact of the matter is that he saw the VA hospital system as a showpiece for government-sponsored healthcare; Obama really didn't want to hear or know that bureaucrats were manipulating stats to keep waiting vets off the books. The private sector, which, unlike the government, cannot rely on force to engage in transactions, looks at feedback loops to drive improvements or innovations in products or services. Vets find themselves captive to a Procrustean system driven at the convenience of government hospital administration; there is no private-sector competitive alternative, closer to the vet's home, which can provide more responsive, quicker, and better services. Government employees are almost impossible to fire, attrition rates at less than a third of the private sector (no, not that government employees are "better" but because of civil service or union protections). Compensation is not linked to productivity, service-oriented effectiveness/efficiency criteria, market conditions or metrics, etc.; innovation or creative destruction is not rewarded in a bureaucratic system. In fact, it looks as though politicians across parties seem willing to reward the already expensive VA bureaucracy with counterproductive budget increases, in a transparent effort to demonstrate their concerns for veterans before this fall's elections: why would you reward incompetence and perverse compensation systems? Where's the reform, the competition? The fact is that vets did not rate high on Obama's set of priorities: when did he call in the VA Administration and ask about veteran satisfaction with the hospitals, comparable operation metrics, etc.? This is one of the problems with a government monopoly; how do you know how to allocate resources without the discipline of a free market?
A Niece Public School Teacher Discovers Her Uncle's Views on Public Education
I found myself dealing with another pro-"gay marriage" troll in yet another self-serving Cato Institute thread, pointing out differences between conservatives and libertarians. I am not going to copy and paste the exchange (my initial comment is below) because I think the case is clear and the responses are dismissive, evasive, repetitive and ad hominem, e.g., you're not a real libertarian. Cato Institute's talking point is that conservatives want to use the power of the State to impose their moral principles on others; this is not true of conservatives like me; I personally don't agree with promiscuous lifestyles, recreational drug use, alcohol abuse, gambling, nontraditional relationships, etc., but I don't want to criminalize these activities, dysfunctional though they may be; I think the individual has free will and except for certain violations of the Non-Aggression Principle (attacking or threatening another person, his liberty or property), I don't favor State intervention. If I were a friend or relative, I might try to persuade the person of the errors of his ways. And I'm not alone; for example, probably the most prominent conservative intellectual over the past 60 years was William F. Buckley, and he had reservations about the War on Drugs.
In the midst of this nonsense, I saw one of my nieces favorably post a liberal image saying instead of attacking teacher compensation, we should have a tax surcharge on the rich. Familiar readers may know that two of my nieces are public school teachers. I do not know to what extent my own relatives read my posts; on some days my readership would be higher than it was if they were regular readers. I have been a harsh critic of government employment even though 5 relatives have worked in the military and/or civil service. I graduated from a public high school and two state universities; I have had appointments at 3 state universities, and I worked in the public sector practice for Oracle Consulting. Am I being hypocritical? No. I did graduate from a Catholic college but never got a private college job offer, although I interviewed with 3 Catholic colleges in person (California, Illinois, and Rhode Island) and my last serious college interview was with a fourth (Virginia), and most of my IT experience has been in the private sector.
One of my pet peeves is a sacred cow in American politics: paying lip service to "underpaid, overworked" public school teachers. I have a problem with this; I have known a few gifted public school teachers, particularly a more demanding sixth-grade English teacher and a high school English teacher, but they were the exceptions, not the rule. In my 8 years as a college instructor and professor, I had to deal with students whom were not qualified (needed remedial work), had poor work habits and unrealistic expectations; most couldn't write a decent essay (in a profession where communication skills are essential). Many of the students had been the beneficiaries of inflated grades in high school, Now I had issues with some of my colleagues (for example, another data structures instructor at UTEP didn't require a single computer assignment, and 90% of my database students, most of them his former students, didn't know what a linked list was); I experienced some morale issues with students whom thought my higher standards were at their expense. But spare me the self-serving rhetoric of teachers; I think IPI posted recent statistics about Chicago schools with a mean salary (never mind benefits, including a generous unpaid-for pension system) in the upper 70K's, abysmal reading and math benchmarks and attrition rates of 40 points or more.
In this particular image, it posed the alternative $50K teacher facing a 20% pay cut vs. a 3% millionaire surcharge. Now to be honest, I've never heard of a single public employee taking any significant pay cut; I know of some cases (e.g., in Wisconsin) where some highly-paid teachers refused to take minor cuts to prevent young teacher layoffs. Now I've had to take serious pay cuts since 2000, despite saving my clients literally thousands of dollars. Only in teaching do you have perverse productivity incentives like shrinking class size but hiring more teachers and paying them more. In this case, $50K is in the neighborhood of median household income--for 12 months vs. 9 months of work, for private sector employees with less job security and less generous benefits.
But what really incenses me is the class warfare argument, that effectively asserts that someone else's income/property should be a slush fund to protect teacher income. I consider the Politics of Envy to be morally repulsive and contrary to Judaic-Christian values. When I took lower job offers in a weak economy, I didn't say, "Hey, I've helped make Larry Ellison [billionaire Oracle CEO] a hell of a lot of money from satisfied customers... It's time for him to give back..."
My niece, who is not tenured and makes nowhere near $50K, had a very emotional, defensive response to a few critical comments on the image (I pointed out teachers earn a living at the expense of the taxpayer, and I believe that education should be privatized, things I have written in the blog several times), insisting that she worked hard for her money, and her folks would have not been able to afford private school. (Reality check: my sister was an RN when she met her husband, and I, and to a lesser extent my sister and younger sibilings, attended part or full school years from my second through sixth grades in Catholic schools, when my Dad was a low-earning military enlisted man. Usually Catholic schools take family income constraints into account; there are a number of anonymous donors, fundraisers, lower administration costs. lower teacher costs, etc.) The fact is that we all pay for public schools through a variety of taxes (property, etc.); in a private system, we would simply pay for schools differently with more control over our own money. I had to deal with a teacher troll whom spat out education would only be for the privileged. This is the nonsense that comes from economically illiterate trolls whom take a public monopoly on education as a self-evident truth. I see public monopolies as intrinsically uncompetitive and suboptimal...
Whoops! I Guess Lerner's Computer Didn't Crash Fast Enough...
Facebook Corner
(Cato Institute). "Unlike liberals and conservatives, Cato scholars have a consistent, minimalist view of the proper role of government...We want government out of our wallets, out of our bedrooms, and out of foreign entanglements unless America’s vital interests are at stake.”
I happen to be a fusion libertarian-conservative. This is a red herring distinction. Long before I evolved to a more libertarian perspective, even as a cultural conservative whom opposes socially experimental policy and the gay lifestyle in my personal value system, I had a live-and-let-live perspective towards the gay community. However, make no mistake here--Cato Institute violated libertarian principles by seeking to use government power and intervention to overturn Proposition 8, which simply restored traditional marriage to the California Constitution, which had been stripped by an activist court. Cato Institute cheered the times that "gay marriage" won at the ballot box and hypocritically sues when "gay marriage" fails at the ballot box. The libertarian position should be to get the government out of the marriage business, not agreeing to government intervention to impose special recognition of nontraditional relationships. It's one thing to tolerate nontraditional relationships, another thing to impose them on social norms, which violates the whole concept of free association. You should be ASHAMED of your unprincipled, incoherent position; it lacks intellectual merit and integrity.
(IPI). Not-so-fun fact: Illinois adopted its income tax in 1969 Read more: http://illin.is/1mm5jkH
It should be repealed. Several states have no personal income tax, it can be done. I'm sure those states have higher taxes and fees elsewhere to help offset it but Illinois already has some of the highest fees and taxes around so it probably works out ok. We need a study on this! Of course we first have to turn the state from blue to red to have any hope at all.
Actually, most states DO have an income tax. There are states without it...7 out of 50. You do realize without an income tax they would just raise sales taxes and property taxes? OR the debt would get even worse. You don't get something for nothing.
The original discussant is correct, but I would go further. Look at what happened once Feds got the income tax--and even worse, made it progressive, which creates a marginal disincentive to maximize labor or production. Federal spending shot up with its obscene plundering of the economy, well beyond the smaller, more legitimate mandates for government. Not only that, liberals have created tons of tax incentives on behalf of corrupt special interests (including unions and environmentalists) to manipulate the economy. We need to turn away from an economically perverse tax and regulatory regimen; we need to stop immoral, wasteful government from taking away from the productive economy to line the pockets of corrupt politicians and unproductive petty bureaucrats. Government needs to divest itself from nonessential operations; note that the troll makes the tacit assumption that functionally bankrupt, failed government is necessary; that is what I refer to as "begging the question". I would say at least two-thirds of what government does, the private sector can do it faster, cheaper, and better.
(Reason) Further evidence that we need Free Range Kids now more than ever.
The 5-year-old victim of a child bully is being terrorized and judged by incompetent school administrators lacking a modicum of common sense, labeled a deviant without due process, including the knowledge or consent of his parents. PLEASE... Kids don't even know the birds and the bees at that age.
I did come across this gem on WebMD: One night at dinner, my husband asked our then 6-year-old son what he wanted to do for work when he grew up. He replied, "I don't want to work, I just want to be a dad." My husband and I exchanged smiles. Then, without missing a beat, our son continued. "But I'm not sure I want to do that either, because then you have to pee in your wife."
The proper response do any child dropping their pants: Please, pull your pants up.
Smack them on the bottom first.
No, violence is never acceptable; you don't overreact. You need to talk to him privately and be patient but firm.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Henry Payne and Townhall |
Dan Fogelberg, "Hard to Say"
