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Saturday, July 12, 2014

Miscellany: 7/12/14

Quote of the Day

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
Muhammad Ali

Guest Quotation for the Day
"Most of the energy devoted to political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government" - Milton Friedman. (HT Mercatus Center)
Tweet of the Day
Image of the Day
Via LibertyViral
And SCOTUS doesn't offer much protection...

Via LFC
Via LFC
Via Drudge Report
via the Independent Institute
See above tweet
The Democratic Party Motto

Via We the Individuals
Via We the Individuals

Obama Caught Between Teacher Unions and His Attempts to Centralize Education

The Hill points out that Obama and Education Secretary Duncan are not on the good side of teacher unions, a traditionally strong part of the Democrat constituency. In part, they are not thrilled with an increased competition by public charter schools, especially if those schools aren't unionized, and by Common Core-related student performance improvements tied to teacher evaluations and tenure in federal funding incentives to the states; a nontrivial percentage of states have enacted relevant reforms. The unions already feel under siege by a recent California court ruling arguing tenure policies essentially keep disadvantaged youth from fair access to a quality education, and they've had public fights with Chicago Mayor Emanuel over compensation and NY Governor Cuomo over his advocacy of charter schools.

I have mixed feels with respect to the Obama Administration, especially at the centralization of education and continued intrusion on traditional state responsibilities. This is simply an unacceptable violation of the principle of Subsidiarity. Federal programs have strings to them and are intrinsically morally hazardous in nature. There are some worries I have specifically about Common Core (given my two math degrees), even if we divorce the federal issue; I'm far more concerned about dumbing down of standards and experimental education theory, when, in fact, many at risk students are being socially promoted or drop out with limited, if any real reading and math literacy. This is not rocket science. Other countries have schools which excel, not based on union-friendly small class size or experimental paradigms. In part, we have an inefficient agrarian schoolyear calendar, with among the smallest number of schooldays. Certain types of learning are highly structured and can easily be facilitated by computerized learning aids. I want to suggest that a lot can be learned by finding out why Catholic and/or other, international schools do well. In part, I think, for instance, there is a lot less state or administrative meddling in Catholic schools; they are also more demanding of students and disciplined.

I find the teacher fretting over job security and student performance measures tied to compensation as fundamentally self-serving and morally reprehensible. I do see these state reforms as steps in the right direction, but I see a limited number of education alternatives (e.g., public charter schools) as a de facto monopoly and no authentic competition, particularly for lower-income households. I have made it clear I prefer privatization; at minimum, I would like to see parents have the option to spend their child's allocated dollars to the school of their choice. I regard prohibitions on faith-sponsored schools as irrational; I'm sure these schools would make any religious content optional and concentrate it, say, at the beginning or end of a schoolday (to address the knee-jerk objections to the separation of church and state). The better scholarly performance is not related to religious content. I also think we need to think outside of the box, say, for example, recording master teacher classes which might be useful for self-directed studies, Internet classes, etc.

As someone who believes in the development, validation, and utilization of standardized measures, I see them as a tool not only to evaluate teachers but to provide early warning signs of suboptimal student performance in time for corrective actions. I'm hesitant to tell school administrators how to run their schools in terms of testing; that should be a function of the market, but if I'm a parent, I want to know about things like school rankings, graduation rates, the percentage of graduates to go onto college, etc.

Facebook Corner

Via Drudge Report
You would think the child-killing industry would then be arguing for a separation of health insurance and employment....

(FEE). Amtrak is using public funds to commission art for the buildings surrounding its train tracks.
Read more: http://at.FEE.org/1sBBUMI
An alternative: post a sign saying "No Graffiti Allowed".

(Tom Woods). I find Connor is pretty much always right. (i.e., it is futile to expect suing the President or Congress to do much good.)
Since this lawless President so idolizes the abominable FDR, I'm half-surprised that he hasn't also threatened to pack SCOTUS with his political cronies....

(LFC). Nationalism aka "statism" is an ugly, destructive, and deadly mental disease. 
Sigh. Why should I not be surprised this piece would bring out the xenophobes, the economically illiterate anti-immigrant populists? It's one thing to defend one's own property from trespass, but under the Constitution these jerks pretend to respect, it's the federal government's responsibility to control immigration, not the states or some self-appointed militia. A number of children have waiting relatives, but they would be murdered by these lawless vigilantes. Does it make you feel like more of a man, killing an unarmed child in cold blood? Who are you going to target next--pregnant women?
(separate comment)
Prohibitions, whether it's alcohol, drugs, or immigration (among other things), basically lure organized crime through manipulation of artificial shortages and high profit goods or services. What we need is liberalized immigration, including temporary worker programs.

(Reason). A lawsuit shines a light on a USDA-created board that controls supply, says you can't sell tart cherries without board permission.
Isn't it time we bring economic liberty to the farm sector of the economy? We need to pull out heresies by the roots from free market principles--no market orders, no subsidies, no high tariffs, etc.

(IPI). The big question surrounding Stockton's bankruptcy has always been what might happen to city employee pensions. Most government advocates assumed that these pensions would remain untouched no matter what happened to the city's finances.
Now the federal judge in charge of the bankruptcy proceedings has hinted that government employee pensions might not be as untouchable as first thought.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein suggested that employees and retirees could have their pensions reduced to facilitate the city’s financial reorganization. ‘I might be persuaded that … the pensions can be adjusted,’ Klein said.
Wait till the State of Illinois goes BK, and see what happens to the all those public sector union workers that caused the bankruptcy loose a good chunk of their pensions. I especially want to see what happens to the double and triple dippers.
No, current federal law does not allow states to file for bankruptcy. There's a reason why all states (except Vermont) require a balanced budget by constitution (most) or statute. Probably a good thing--just imagine how high Illinois' interest rates would be if Quinn and his fellow Democrat legal plunderers could stick it to bondholders... Still, imagine if Chicago and/or other municipalities filed for bankruptcy. It may be the ultimate stick to force the crony unions into necessary givebacks--or gamble facing a bankruptcy judge without union ties.

 I'll give an example of one modest suggestion--I don't think any public entity should distribute more than the maximum social security check, roughly under $30K the last time I checked. I would also distribute based on average inflation-adjusted FTE salary over work history, no gimmicks like overtime, vacation/sick leave conversions or retirement-year spiking. I would also like to see deferrals of pension eligibility consistent with social security eligibility, and the healthcare retirement system converted into an insurance voucher system. I realize that serious retirement reform is going to make the crony unionists go apeshit, and anything I suggest will be attacked by the parasites, but it's time to stop playing games. If the parasites are in a state of denial, maybe it's time for Chicago to declare bankruptcy, and let them argue to the judge how they are more equal...

(National Review). The Supreme Court has given Speaker John Boehner the green light to sue against President Obama’s abuse of executive power.
I expected better from a Hillsdale scholar than this piece of crap. This President in name only deferred implementation of the ObamaCare mandate for businesses for purely political reasons; he was worried about political fallout from the mandate before the mid-terms.

 This is from last year:

 President Obama would veto a House bill aimed at legally delaying the employer mandate for a year, the White House announced on Tuesday, even though his administration has already issued a regulation embracing the delay. On July 2, the Department of Treasury announced it would delay until 2015 a provision of Obamacare that requires larger employers to provide acceptable health insurance or pay a penalty. But it wasn’t clear that the administration had the legal authority to do so, as the text of Obamacare states that the mandate, “shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” 

 As you may recall, the House passed legislation legally changing the date, but Reid sat on the bill. Under what theory of the Constitution can the President arbitrary change a date? He cannot change the date on his own; he is compelled to enforce signed law. And he would veto a bill just because the Congress is legitimately changing law but he regards unnecessary? That is a tacit admission the President is making vs. faithfully executing laws--a direct violation of the separation of powers. Of course, SCOTUS has a duty to review whether the President's actions are unconstitutional, the same way it determines if Congress' actions are unconstitutional.

(Being Classically Liberal). Thoughts on abortion: A human is still a human, even at early stages of development. If scientists found single-celled organisms on Mars and started destroying them, no one who has taken an introductory biology course would argue that the scientists aren't destroying life. Without the original single-celled organisms of early earth, mammalian life (and all life) on this planet would be non-existent. We were all single-celled zygotes at the beginning of our lives (conception), and all life is derived from single-celled organisms, yet many people ignore this fact as if an organism in early stages of development is not alive at all. Once we recognize that a human zygote, embryo, and fetus, are in fact living and human, there is no adequate justification for their termination. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Agreed. Looking at the comments below, a lot of people conveniently define away, because of a difficult political issue, the absolute scientific fact that human life begins at conception, and he or she has DNA distinct from any other human, including her parents. You see substantive development far before the quickening, in fact before the mother may even realize that she's pregnant: 

 18 days - heart begins to beat.
21 days - pumps own blood through separate closed circulatory system with own blood type.
28 days - eye, ear and respiratory system begin to form.
42 days - brain waves recorded, skeleton complete, reflexes present

 The sincerity of our belief in unalienable rights is only as legitimate as to the degree we recognize the same in others, preborn or born.

(a follow-up exchange of IPI on the Illinois state supreme court dealing a blow to state retirement liability reform)
Until 1968 retirement funds could only be invested in safe saving accounts. Then they decided to make use of the free market. Just saying.
Economic illiterate troll! It's not only that the federal government only allows "investment" in politician overspending, Tbills; the result? A skyrocketing national debt, over a $40T underfunded liability, and we've been running a social security deficit on a pay-go basis for 4 years running--and the Baby Boomer tsunami has only just begun. We now pay over 12% of income with a shrinking number of workers seeing all their contributions not trickling down into a reserve for their future but repackaged to existing retirees. If the reserve had actually been invested by workers, say, at an average 8% return of stocks over the years (and say the rule of 72), we would not be facing the current crisis.

 No, the issue has nothing to do with savings accounts--I'm absolutely sure that the crisis would be multiple times worse than it already is. It has to do with an aging population and people living decades in retirement--most businesses and corporations knew that for decades, which is why they migrated to 401K's. I have not looked at the performance of Illinois pension funds, but there's a lot of research that shows market index funds do better than most actively-invested funds, and certainly Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed the indexes for decades. It also didn't help that that the Democrat political whores took pension funding holidays.... Just saying...

More Marriage Proposals









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via investors.com
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Anne Murray, "Shadows in the Moonlight"


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