Education: Too Important to be Left to Government

Our education system is not suffering a lack of money, it is suffering a lack of competition.

Our education system is a colossal failure, still being run on an outdated, century-old model.  It is a Progressive Ozymandias:

...Nought but the teachers unions remaining to disclose
The site of these forgotten students ... (Apologies to Shelley)

Government Rewards Failure, The Private Sector Punishes It

Walter E. Williams asks a simple question, then answers it brilliantly:

Why is Wal-Mart so successful? Millions of people voluntarily enter their stores and part with their money in exchange for Wal-Mart's products and services. In order for that to happen, Wal-Mart and millions of other profit-motivated businesses must please people.

He then contrasts private sector success to endemic public sector failure.

A major non-profit service provider is the public education establishment that delivers primary and secondary education at nearly a trillion-dollar annual cost. Public education is a major source of complaints about poor services that in many cases constitute nothing less than gross fraud.

If Wal-Mart, or any of the millions of producers who are in it for money and profits, were to deliver the same low-quality services, they would be out of business, but not public schools.

Schools don't need more money

John Stossel writes about how an "underfunded," "minority" charter school is outperforming all public schools in Oakland.

Consider the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif. It was once a failing school, but now it's one of the best in California. Ben Chavis turned it around without any additional money.

Chavis' experience exposes the school establishment's lies for what they are. Nearly all of Chavis' students are considered economically disadvantaged (98 percent qualify for free lunches), yet they have the fourth-highest test scores of any school in the state.

"In Oakland this year, on the AP (advanced placement) exam, we had 100 percent of all the blacks and Mexicans in the city of Oakland who passed AP calculus," Chavis said. "There are four high schools, and we're the only ones who had anyone pass AP calc."

Yet Chavis accomplishes this without the "certified" teachers so revered by the educational establishment. His classes are as big as, and sometimes bigger than, public school classes, but only a quarter of his teachers are certified by the state. (John Stossel - Money is Not What Schools Need)

I highly recommend you read all about The Indian School here:  LA Times - Indian School.  It will open your eyes and give you ammo for arguing against the statists who insist we need to give those who have wrecked the system more money and more power.

I like David Warren's solution to all this:

The one immediate, radical reform for which I think we should aim, after winning the battle of ideas, is the destruction of all centralized school boards and liquidation of all departments of education. Put every single public and high school in the control of a local parent association, and necessity -- the most efficient instructor -- will soon teach the parents what they must do. (David Warren - Back to Schools)

Indeed. For the sake of this nation, get the federal government out of primary and secondary education.  Only competition and innovation will restore what progressive statism has destroyed.

Government-owned nonprofit entities are immune to the ruthless market discipline of being forced to please customers. The same can be said of businesses that receive government subsidies. (Walter E. Williams)

Expose the education system to the brutal forces of the marketplace
It will empower parents, shut out the parasitic bureaucrats, bring costs down and student knowledge up.  Best of all, the crappy teachers will be looking for a job in another line of work, because no competitive school will want them.

Frogs in a Pot

We have more laws than we had 100 years ago, but we're less safe, less happy, and less free

Democrat and Republican Progressive rodents have nibbled away at our freedoms for over 100 years now.  John Stossel writes:

It's become easier to get into trouble. We've become a nation of a million rules. Not the kind of bottom-up rules that people generate through voluntary associations. Those are fine. I mean imposed, top-down rules formed in the brains of meddling bureaucrats who think they know better than we how to manage our lives.

Its always in the name of safety, security, equality, etc.  Meanwhile, Congress exempts itself from the laws it piles on us mere mortals while democratic voters cheer the trampling of our constitution.

It hit me a few months ago when the Supreme Court struck down Chicago dictator Daily’s unconstitutional gun ban.  Daily declared he would just rewrite the law.  I wrote a blog post featuring Ted Nugent declaring “Don’t.  Tread.  On.  Me.  Period!”

What Gives Them the Right?
What gives an elected official the right to tell a free man he can’t own a gun to protect himself and his family?  Seriously.  We should be asking our elected officials that at every turn.  

But no, we are all suspect, with hundreds of thousands of incomprehensible laws hanging over our heads, and it’s all for the betterment of society.  Progress!  That is their talking point.  “We don’t let you run with scissors, Little Kurt, because you may hurt yourself of someone else.”  

“Someone might get hurt.  We have policemen to handle the bad guys.”

Yeah right.  You can’t sue the police department when your house is robbed or, God forbid, a loved one is murdered.  So the state denies us a fundamental right but fails to step in and fill the void.  That is just one of the myriad logical inconsistencies of progressivism.  

Progressivism Kills
People in liberal victim societies like New York and Chicago are lambs to the slaughter because their governments have disarmed them while failing to do the same to the predators.

Too many have no retirement savings because the Social Security siren song has dashed them upon the rocks of fiscal insolvency, while government-sponsored inflation ate away their savings.

Education performance decreases as federal government intervention increases

“Stimulus” money bailed out irresponsible state governments, keeping the economy-killing bloat alive and allowing them to dodge the hard decisions needed to restore fiscal sanity.

This is progress?

Federal Government: Too Big to Succeed

John Stossel:  Free enterprise does everything better

Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently,they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compelpayment through the power to tax.

Notice how every government "solution" involves more of what caused the problem in the first place? And how more money and more bureaucracy are always involved as well?"Oh yeah!"  Sneers the progressive.  "What about public roads?  Huh?  Huh?"


Private enterprise does roads better than government

In 1995, a private road company added two lanes in the middle ofCalifornia Highway 91, right where the median strip used to be. Itthen used "congestion pricing" to let some drivers pay to speedpast rush-hour traffic. Using the principles of supply and demand,road operators charge higher tolls at times of day when demand ishigh. [...]  Bureaucrats were skeptical. Nowcongestion pricing is a hot idea for both private and public roadmanagement systems.

He provides two more examples from France and Indiana.  Cheaper, better, faster is not in the bureaucrats' lexicon.  E-470 that skirts Denver to the east is one more example right here in Colorado.  Democratic governor Dick Lamm refused to fund a bypass, so businessmen got together and built one themselves, and it is a well-used, money-making road.  If I need to get to the airport or skirt around Denver in a hurry, I pay to use it.  If I'm not pressed for time, I don't.  

Michael Medved Piles On: The Most Dangerous Corporation in the World

What's the most powerful, arrogant and dangerous corporation in the world?

No corporation on the planet comes close to the United States government in sheer magnitude, or unimaginable, unprecedented power. The nation's top 100 corporations combined still fall far short of the behemoth in Washington, D.C., which conducts extensive operations in agriculture, weapons production, medical care, housing, real estate, education, mail delivery, policing, resource development, banking, the arts, security services, food provision, transportation and much, much more. 

Within five years, federal spending will consume 25% of every dollar generated by the private economy.

...they (Tea partiers, and a growing cohort of independents) focus on the federal deficit "not because it presents an imminent crisis of its own, necessarily, but because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness, a disconnectedness from the reality of daily life."

The public also understands that such recklessness, such unsustainable spending, would bring individuals or small businesses to rapid financial ruin; only the largest corporations, and the federal government itself, can get away with long-standing patterns of irresponsibility. The contrast raises the painful issue of double standards: the application of different rules for the people and the powerful (a designation that includes both governmental and corporate elites).

If government had to run itself like a business and follow the rules it makes everyone else follow, we would not be in the mess we are in.

Paul Krugman is an Intellectually Dishonest Crapweasel

Krugman Distorts, Stossel Clarifies

Nobody is better at distorting economic data for political purposes than liberal Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.  When Mark Twain spoke his famous "lies, damned lies, and statistics" quote, he anticipated Krugman by 100 years.

Nobody is better at cutting through the BS than John Stossel, and he does it in a brief burst of brilliance,  Krugman Misleads On Greece

How does Krugman mislead?  By dazzling us with a chart comparing deficits as a percentage of GDP.  He soothes us with data showing Obama and the Pelosicrats' spending really isn't that bad and we are not destined to suffer the fate of Greece.

Stossel points out that Debt as a Percentage of GDP is where the danger lies, since it is cumulative.  And he uses Krugman's data to produce a chart that damns to liars' hell Obama, the Democrats, and chief economic propagandist Krugman.  By even the rosiest predictions, we will be where Greece is at by 2020.

Go read Stossel's piece.  It is very short but quite instructive on how liberals will distort data to trick people and avoid facing reality.

I am a Libertarian

According to the Libertarian Purity Test, I am a Medium-Core Libertarian.  Because I am not a Hard Core Libertarian willing to legalize the sale of heroin to children and shred every last safety net, I have always feared coming out of the closet.

I am a big fan of the Austrian School of economics, but I have never placed ideological purity over whatever works in the real-world.  I realized I may have went overboard when I got a facebook invitation to an Anarcho-Capitalist group.  So I have dialed myself back to a squishy sort of libertarian that the Hard Core sneers at.

I am also not an Ayn Rand fan.  Her atheistic and narcissistic Objectivism seems like Nietzschean ubermench morality dumbed down and warmed over for a new generation.  Her novels, though turgid and preachy, provide a needed counterbalance to an overweening state sponsored collectivism, as long as we don't take the rugged individualism stuff too seriously.  We are an interconnected society after all, driving on taxpayer funded roads, and enjoying public utilities right in our own homes. 

John Stossel does a great job succinctly explaining just what libertarianism is: 

We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they're for limited government, but they're pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support "nation-building."

And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government -- they say -- to make life kinder for people.

By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone -- in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don't hurt anybody else.  (RCP - Stossel)

I have a whole permanent page dedicated to Libertarianism.  Please visit it if you want more information. It has numerous links if you want to strike out and explore the issue on your own.