Happy Blogiversary #6!
Quote of the Day
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Chinese Proverb
Tweet of the Day
The government, through burdensome tax, regulations, and spending and fiat monetary policy, threatens economic growth, jobs, and prosperity.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 30, 2014
Say NO to Jack Lew's scheme to bailout SSDI from an already eroding OASI trust fund. The Baby Boomers will bankrupt entitlements in 20 yrs.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 30, 2014
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Image of the Day
Chart of the Day
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| Via IPI |
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| Via Mercatus Center |
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| Photo: Stefan Jeremiah via New York Post |
Some things just rub me the wrong way. I am not a fan of education historian/teacher union apologist Diane Ravitch. I came across this story via Reason (cf. FB Corner below), but this extract comes from NY Mag via the Brown-affiliated website:
Paul Farhi profiles Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor turned education-reform activist, who is working to end strict teacher tenure protections. Naturally, this enrages teacher-union evangelist Diane Ravitch, who not only disagrees with Brown’s position, but expresses offense that anybody should listen to Brown at all:
“I have trouble with this issue because it’s so totally illogical,” says Diane Ravitch, an education historian. “It’s hard to understand why anyone thinks taking away teachers’ due-process rights will lead to great teachers in every classroom.”
As for Brown, Ravitch is dismissive: “She is a good media figure because of her looks, but she doesn’t seem to know or understand anything about teaching and why tenure matters ... I know it sounds sexist to say that she is pretty, but that makes her telegenic, even if what she has to say is total nonsense.”Chait, the author of the piece I just excerpted, references another post published by his wife in not exactly a conservative/libertarian forum. Let me excerpt a few points:
It is well documented that teachers are rarely dismissed. National estimates from the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education find that school districts dismiss on average only 2.1 percent of teachers each year for poor performance.
A number of indicators suggest that the percent of teachers dismissed is relatively low compared to the percent who should be dismissed. Teachers and principals report in several national surveys that they believe there are ineffective teachers teaching in their schools. In a recent survey of a nationally representative sample of teachers conducted by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates, 59 percent of teachers reported that there were a few teachers in their building who “fail to do a good job and are simply going through the motions” and 18 percent of teachers reported there were more than a few.
Similarly, the New Teacher Project conducted a recent study of evaluation practices in 12 districts entitled “The Widget Effect” and found that 81 percent of administrators and 58 percent of teachers reported there was a tenured teacher in their school who delivers poor instruction. Finally, a Public Agenda survey found that while overall, principals and superintendents were very satisfied with their teaching staff, more than 7 in 10 reported that making it easier to fire bad teachers, even those with tenure, would be a very effective method of improving teaching quality.
Researchers from the Brookings Institution conducted an analysis of data from the Los Angeles public schools and projected that dismissing the bottom quartile of novice teachers in the district after their first year based on value-added estimates would result in a net increase in student test scores gains of 1.2 percentage points annually across the district. This gain would be significant over time.This condescending crap by Ravitch is inexcusable, not just for its unprofessional tone, but it's seems that Ravitch thinks that taxpayers and parents don't have a right to express an opinion because they aren't part of her self-designated educational elite. Well, Ms. Brown isn't nearly a radical reformer as I am; I'm a free market guy whom wants to privatize the market. I also know how to research and analyze empirical research; I'm unintimidated by the likes of Ravitch and I throw back twice as hard.
Researcher Eric Hanushek from Stanford University finds that removing the bottom 6 to 10 percent of teachers would lead to a gain in student achievement that is the equivalent of improving the performance of students in the United States to the level of Canada’s students (from 29th to 7th) on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment in mathematics test over a 13-year period.
I was quite fearless as a young academic; during my dissertation process, I wrote to a MIS professor whom held an endowed chair in Florida about one of the most cited articles in the literature that he wrote (I found the results counterintuitive, although others didn't see an issue) and got a dismissive response. While at UWM, I decided to try a replication study and found his findings inconsistent with mine; I did a little writeup of my findings for a national DSI conference, one of my favorite papers although I didn't rewrite it for a journal. (I LOVE academic conferences and at cocktail parties used to introduce myself to people whose articles I had analyzed in doctoral seminars.) I knew him in passing from an ICIS conference we did while I was a PhD student in Houston and was hoping to see him there (nope). Now to explain, a lot of academic conferences have light audiences at presentations; you might typically have just a handful of people present. For this paper, I found I had a full classroom; people loved my little paper, and they laughed when I told my dissertation anecdote. At the time, most of my research was more interdisciplinary (human factors was more of a fledging discipline in MIS), but I had taken on a classic article. To this day, it was one of my favorite moments in academia; these people didn't know this obscure junior researcher, but they came based strictly on the strength of the paper. There was a sense of validation from my peers, a Sally Field Oscar moment.
I'm not much of a movie buff, but there is a line I would give Ms. Ravitch: "Go ahead; make my day."
Gruber and the Halbig Kerfuffle
I've already tweeted twice on Gruber's disingenuity on this issue--in fact, on the first tweet, I started to write that Gruber was just another Massachusetts flip-flopper, but I ended up against the 140-character limit. I had speculated earlier: why did they want state exchanges in the first place? I speculated, among other things, that having to set up 50-plus exchanges would have been complex and politically risky, and they had in mind a Medicaid-like shared responsibility structure. Tying subsidies to the exchanges was the state's incentive to manage the exchange, the idea being that state leadership would have to answer why their taxpayers were having to subsidize other state exchanges and not getting their own fair share of the subsidies. I think the Dems miscalculated; they never expected the pushback and the need to create a federal exchange; I think the federal exchange was an implicit threat to marginalize state healthcare policy if the state didn't play along. I suspect with the federal exchange, they figured they would cross the bridge when they got to it; they probably figured it would be an easy sell to pass a legislative patch to states not getting their fair share of subsidies. I think many states, especially red ones, understood the political risks, including that of a federal exchange failing, particularly without the subsidies. The Obama Administration knew that the GOP-controlled House would demand significant changes in ObamaCare to bail out the federal exchange, and so they illegally issued an IRS ruling, pretending they could arbitrarily extend subsidies. Gruber no doubt realizes this is an Achilles heel to ObamaCare and has flip-flopped, pretending it was a "drafting error". No, it wasn't--it was the federal government's incentive to get the states to share political risk. If federal exchanges had had subsidies all along, what incentive did the states have to host the exchanges? In short, the Dems miscalculated; what's more if and when the subsidies are declared illegal, the Dems face a backlash from middle-class policyholders whom will have to pay the full cost of overpriced insurance.
Facebook Corner
(Mercatus Center). (See above chart). Historically, as the relative minimum wage has risen, unemployment among young workers without high school diplomas has increased dramatically: http://bit.ly/1Auq7kN
The answer is lowering the dropout rate, and tying minimum wage to cost-of-living.
So many economically illiterate "progressive" trolls. The Idiocy is that some political whore decides to pick some number out of his ass and declares it a minimum/living wage. You can't push up demand for low-skilled workers; for much of the work on this level, you have limited ability to increase productivity, which might justify wage increases. Plus, a number of you confuse real with nominal wages; we need to look at sound money policies and trade liberalization to facilitate real wage increases, not with what the idiot populist politicians and the Fed are doing. All you do with minimum wages is make it harder for people whom could find a willing employer under that arbitrary line. In a more robust economy, demand for labor would rise, organically driving up wages without Statist counterproductive meddling in the economy. Something like 2% of jobs are minimum-wage jobs. None of the higher-paying jobs benefit from an arbitrary wage floor. During the Gilded Age, wages increased without government monopoly protections for unions, with large immigrations, and without dysfunctional government regulations getting in between a worker and a hiring manager.
(responding to a troll; I didn't reproduce his whole rant here because I didn't have the time and patience to debunk all of his nonsense. It was enough just to debunk his first.)
To the guy whom is trying to lecture people on how to read graphs: you're dead wrong, i.e., "As regular hourly wages fall, those with less education are statistically more likely to not have a job. " The plot is against the UNEMPLOYMENT rate, and it shows as you increase the minimum wage (i.e., relative to some higher average rate), unemployment increases. Alternatively, as you lower or eliminate the minimum wage, you lower unemployment, which is basically elementary supply and demand: as you lower the price of labor, there is more demand; when you increase wages, there's less employer demand, and you end up with surpluses of workers willing to work at said higher rate. In the real world, surpluses mean unemployment. What this suggests to anyone with a functioning brain, is what we should be doing to promote gainful employment by young and/or less educated labor is ELIMINATING the minimum wage. Why do the crony unionists favor restrictions on labor, e.g., bans on temporary foreign workers, minimum wages, higher occupation criteria (e.g., "certified" math/science teachers) is because they are trying to restrict the supply of workers to drive up compensation. For the unemployed, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
(Drudge Report). SURRENDER: BOEHNER RULES OUT IMPEACHMENT
Boehner is right: this empty threat of impeachment was just a ruse to galvanize their base and facilitate fundraising heading into a likely dismal mid-term election.
(Mercatus Center). As evidence proves time and again, policies that either raise the cost of hiring or reduce the incentive for work are counterproductive to fostering employment: http://bit.ly/1rWVhMz
govt provides jobs.
The government, through reckless meddling with economic liberty and anti-sound money monetary policy, is the biggest threat to jobs and prosperity.
(Reason). See Hall of Shame.
Don't cops have better things to do with their time than cracking down on foodies? Why grab her by the throat? Couldn't you just grab her grilling tong?
(Mercarus Center). The 2014 Annual Reports of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees released Monday. Here's what you need to know, from Mercatus scholar and Trustee Charles Blahous: http://bit.ly/1rCmhQw
Say NO to SSDI bailouts; time to tighten criteria. We need to radically reform, preferably privatize, retirement entitlements; at minimum, we need to convert these programs into means-tested, benefit-capped, eligibility-deferred programs, more in terms of poverty support, not to mention devolving federal healthcare programs to the state/local.
We need to ignore trolls advocating legal plunder; we need public policy that eliminates moral hazard and vests people in retirement planning and savings, not to mention healthcare spending. We need honest accounting that explicitly recognizes over $80T in unsustainable unfunded entitlements and factors obligatory paydowns in the federal budget.
(Citizens Against Government Waste). Yesterday at CAGW's policy breakfast, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai proposed four simple steps towards ending waste, fraud, and abuse in the Lifeline or "Obamaphone" program:
1. Put the program on a budget.
2. Reduce financial incentive for people to commit fraud.
3. Empower states to release the program and have power over administering it.
4. Review the size of the current Lifeline subsidy, and enforce proof of eligibility.
Commissioner Pai stated "Lifeline wasn’t designed to give people free phone service, but to provide low income consumers who genuinely need it a discount on phone service."
do you idiots even understand it has nothing to do with Obama? It was started a long time ago and is funded by TracPhone to get more minutes and customers.. sorry to put a bump in your happy road of hatting everything not lily white, but you are the dumbest, dullest, of the lot;. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/
When "progressive" trolls try to fact check, they should start with their own replies. The Lifeline discount program was started for landlines in the 1980's, funded by taxes on providers, typically passed onto consumers. Clinton expanded the program in the 1990's and in 2008 it was extended to cellphones. TracFone was merely one of the first vendors to service the program. However, the program under Obama had nearly doubled from 7.1M to 12.5M by 2012.
I'm pretty sure it's in the Constitution somewhere that entitles me to a free cell phone. Obama was a constitutional law professor.
No, even Obama knew that the Constitution does not establish positive rights,i.e., things government has to do on my behalf. It is funny sarcasm, though
(LFC). Do you live in Fall River? Whatever company that secured the contract to supply the city with bags just made out. These bags, like all government mandated purchases (Obamacare, car insurance, fire insurance in some areas, DUI classes, real estate contractors, etc), are made and performed in the private sector. And, like the aforementioned services, whatever companies that land the contract or official acknowledgment just made out because they don't have to use the market (and be regulated with competition) to sell their product. They have the law behind them threatening you to do something that totally lays aside your choice as a consumer. #BecausePolitics I hope this is boycotted and not one bag is ever purchased.
My folks were born there. Luckily they escaped before I was born--in the great state of Texas.
(Reason). Teachers unions think former CNN anchor Campbell Brown is too pretty to fight for firing lousy teachers in New York.
Tenure IS necessary to prevent cash-strapped school districts from firing more expensive, more experienced teachers in favor of less experienced, less expensive teachers. But tenure MUST be EARNED. No teacher should benefit from near-automatic tenure. 2 [Cali] or 3 [NY] years of employment is nowhere near enough time to accurately determine and permanently reward teaching efficacy. Especially when a decent system of evaluation has yet to be developed and implemented.
No, tenure is NOT. And I'm speaking as a former junior (untenured) professor. This is such a lame excuse--I bet you can't even name 5 unprotected superb teachers let go in favor of less experienced/expensive teachers. No administrator is going to lay off good performers, regardless of job tenure or salary; I could see a situation where people might share temporary pay cuts. NOBODY is owed a way of making a living. You earn it everyday. If you're good at what you do, there will be a market for your services. We need to break the corrupt hold of unions which generally oppose market-based compensation, argue unearned increases in compensation at taxpayer expense, and resist evaluation based on a student's incremental performance.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Billy Joel, "Big Shot"
