Groundbreaking? Earth shattering? Paradigm shift? What is the right word or phrase to describe what just happened in Colorado where a local school district implemented a school voucher program where any student can go to any school and the money will follow them.
Education
Score one for Mr. Boehner. He has been getting lambasted by conservatives for being had on the 2011 budget deal he negotiated. But if you dig a little deeper you can find a nugget of gold.
(This is the second of a series of articles focusing on topics presented at the Cato Policy Perspectives 2011 conference held at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel on Friday, April 8, 2011)
Kicking off the conference, Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, talked about American exceptionalism and how President Obama doesn’t believe in that. To illustrate, he gave the example where while in Europe the president was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, and he hedged by saying he supposed so, just at the Germans believe in German exceptionalism, the British believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. President Obama doesn’t think that America is exceptional and to the extent that he might, he is doing everything in his power to root it out.
The other key point that Mr. Crane made concerned people talking about national goals and aspirations. Nations shouldn’t have goals. People should have goals and nations should protect their right to pursue them. Who wants Washington to set some goals and then have individuals reorder their lives to fit into the grand plan? To me that is the essence of the battle between libertarianism and statism. This is also a nice segue into the Cato presentation on education provided by Charles Murray.
I got an opportunity to watch the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” and it confirmed much of what I have been saying. Teachers are a national treasure. Teachers’ unions are the new empire of evil. Whoa! That’s harsh. Yes, but not nearly as harsh as flushing thousands of uneducated children into the streets to fend for themselves, when we should be educating them for our future.
K-12 education is in trouble. A recent report on schools in New York City said that of the 60% or so of students who actually graduate, about half need remedial classes before they can perform at the college level. We have a Department of Education that has spent over $1 trillion since it was created by President Jimmy Carter and school performance has declined.
Why in the world would a talented teacher want to link his career to an incompetent teacher and be sold to a school district as a package? Are teachers professionals or are they not? If they are, then why do they aspire to the level of an unskilled assembly line worker?
For years Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the most thoughtful and erudite public servants we have had, published a document New York and the Federal Fisc that described the flow of dollars from New York and the great imbalance on the return trip. Steve Israel seems to have taken up that mantle but his votes in the House are baffling.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Reagan
Our friends on the left scoff at such words as those above, but the longer they are in power and providing “help”, the more they get tied up in knots. Let me walk you through an example using Congressman Tim Bishop as the key player.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. – Unknown (often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)
An article in The Hill newspaper titled “Teachers union expands playing field for midterms” describes how the teachers’ union is getting out supporting certain candidates.
The ads for Chuck Schumer’s re-election campaign is touting how he’s for the middle class. The centerpiece of this ad is a $2,500 tax credit for college. At the same time, he is prepared to wave through the largest tax increase in U.S. history, by not voting to keep the current tax rates in place beyond January. Notice how I didn’t say tax cut for the rich, or anyone else for that matter. That’s because there is no tax cut under discussion. It is about keeping the current tax rates in place and not jacking them up on January 1st for anyone, lest the already feeble economy be snuffed out entirely. But back to Chuck.
A seventeenth century observer famously said, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” What Chuck Schumer is talking about is exactly that. He supports high taxes wherever he can (a 19% rating from the National Taxpayers Union). He voted against the 2003 Bush tax cuts. So Chuck Schumer believes in taking as much of your hard earned money that he can and then arrange for specific “bribes” such as tuition tax credits that he can brag about running up to an election. The same can be said for earmarks. It is a way for incumbents to bribe the public with the public’s money.
