Friday, February 28, 2003
THE GENE POOL NEEDS A GOOD CLEANING NOW AND THEN
Westerners taking on role of human shields
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WITH GENIUSES LIKE THESE....
What a fantastic editorial in the Register yesterday! Here’s how it begins:
Here are three big problems:
1) The economy isn't getting any better.
2) State and local governments are pleading for help from Washington with their budget shortfalls.
3) The country isn't in a much better position to respond to chemical or biological attacks than it was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Now think. Is there a way to help with all three at once?
I don’t know, is there? I’ll bet the Register is going to propose one. I can hardly wait!
The federal government should be spending billions more to help states and local governments improve their capabilities to respond to terror attacks or other emergencies.
OH YAY!!!! Our problems are solved!
The infusion of money would help alleviate state and local budget woes. It would stimulate the economy, too. Pumping billions into the purchase of equipment and paying the salaries and training of first responders would provide a more direct stimulus than further tax cuts.
What a great solution! This can only lead me to ask: Why aren’t the geniuses at the Register editorial page running the country?
Hmmm…I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because they don’t know the first little thing about economics? Government spending couldn’t stimulate a 14-year-old male at the Playboy Mansion, let alone the economy. You see, government doesn’t create any wealth. It simply takes wealth from the private sector via taxes. New government spending involves nothing more than taking resources from one portion of the private sector and giving them to another portion of the private sector. Thus, no new wealth—the thing that is essential for economic growth—is created. In fact, there is a great experiment in this sort of economic stimulus. It’s called Japan; it’s been stuck in a sluggish economy for a decade. This strategy might be reasonably called “bone-headed.” For the Register it’s called economic theory.
And there is another reason why this is a stupid idea. It rewards irresponsible behavior, namely the irresponsible spending habits that led state governments to their current budget problems. To see how much states overspent in the last decade, see this report from the Cato Institute. Figure 1 on page 3 shows that state budgets increased from a total of $274.7 billion in 1990, to $505.6 billion in 2001, the year the budget crisis began. That’s a whopping increase of 84%! After that type of binge, states can surely find ways to cut spending. An infusion of money from the federal government only lets state governments off the hook for bad behavior.
The editorial ends:
It wouldn't be a cure-all for everything that ails the nation, but it would be money well spent.
No, it would be money flushed down the toilet, right along with the quality of Register editorials.
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EVEN MORE GENIUS!
The next editorial of that day began:
Speaking of the economy
Oh boy.
It ended:
The public is jittery in large part due to the looming war with Iraq. No one is comfortable making plans for the future when it feels as though the whole world is hanging in the balance. Troops are being mobilized. Lives disrupted. Major nations disgruntled with the United States.
And President Bush continues to push tax cuts as the answer.
He doesn't get it.
Yep, it’s definitely the President who is the clueless one.
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I CAN SPEND MORE THAN YOU CAN!
Are Iowa politicians really this stupid? State legislators are bumping up the amount to be spent on “economic development” to $2 billion. This is four times larger than what Governor Vilsack initially wanted.
Iowa politicians can scarcely contain themselves:
"We want to start under the assumption that we're going to do something big," said Sen. Jeff Lamberti, an Ankeny Republican who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee.
It’s big all right. The taxpayers will take on a “big” $2 billion in debt for the purpose of corporate welfare transforming Iowa’s economy. Who says Republicans can’t outspend Democrats?
Will all of this be “invested” in private companies? Well, not exaaactly:
Under the GOP's preliminary proposal for using the $2 billion, the money would be spent in four areas: $1.12 billion for job creation, including seed money for biotechnology and other targeted industries; $400 million for school construction; $320 million for roads, utilities, parks and community attraction programs such as Vision Iowa; and $160 million for marketing Iowa.
“Community attraction programs” and “marketing.” In other words, pork! What the hell, Iowa has a lot of hogs anyway. Might as well put some lipstick on them.
Lawmakers also have suggested a different name for the new economic development fund: BIO, or the Bring it On fund. The name is a response to a recent newspaper ad by South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, which invited Iowa and Minnesota to "bring it on" in trying to compete with the economic advantages claimed by South Dakota.
Well, ain’t that quaint? Here’s a better one: DIMWIT. Dunderheads Injure, Main, and Wreck Iowa Taxpayers.
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IOWA TO THE LEFT
How's it going in Iowa for the Democrats? Good for anti-war candidates, not so good for pro-war ones. Check out Ryan Lizza's extensive coverage in The New Republic.
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
FRED ROGERS, RIP
Mister Rogers Dies of Cancer at 74.
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003
MORE ON GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF ARTS AND CULTURE
Jane Finch disagreed with my post from last Friday about government funding of arts and culture. So let’s begin:
The health and social benefits of providing equitable public access are well documented. Museums, community recreation centres, art galleries, heritage sites, public rinks and ball diamonds, libraries….all these are part of that public interest.
The argument here seems to be that government should provide something if it has "health and social benefits." In that case, why don't local governments hold a community dinner each week? Surely there would be lots of health and social benefits to that. Or how about professional sports (and I mean all levels, not just the majors)? By using Jane’s principle we now have justification for public financing of major and minor league sports stadiums. Heck, the government might as well pick up team salaries. The problem with Jane's principle is that if realized to its full extent, the treasury is broke.
I want to live in a healthy, interested, and interesting community. And culture and recreation are as much a part of that as are police, fire and road services.
Culture and recreation are definitely part of a healthy and interesting community, but society isn't going to stop functioning without them. Government is supposed to provide things that are essential to society and that the private sector cannot provide, like roads, police, etc.
Most of the items Jane mentions would be provided by the private sector. Either people are willing to pay money for them, or non-profit foundations are willing to provide them.
And finally....intelligent, thoughtful, interesting...,are you spoken for, Jane?
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AND THE COST OF GOVERNMENT?
The Des Moines Register rails against the current health-care system because it is a “drag on the economy.” No doubt this is in support of the editorialists desire to have a government-run health-care system. I wonder, what kind of “drag on the economy” will the taxes necessary for such a system impose? Or the bureaucratic regulations that are sure to follow such a system? No surprise the Register doesn’t consider such questions.
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OH JOY....
....Lecture panel said to be eyeing Clinton
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WHAT IF THE WAR GOES WELL?
James Lileks has the talking points memo for the anti-war protestors.
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U.S. IS LESS FREE THAN FRANCE!
So says Reporters Without Borders. Ed Boyd has the smackdown.
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003
ISN’T ACCOUNTABILITY A PAIN?
I wanted to post some thought on the two Des Moines Register editorials dealing with the new federal education law yesterday. But, I ran out of time—hey, blogging doesn’t pay the bills.
Anyway, here are some random thoughts:
The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in January 2002, affects all public schools in Iowa. This unprecedented federal intrusion forces local districts to divert resources to meet a mandate despite being so short of money they cannot pay competitive teacher salaries.
The first thing I notice about that passage is the complaint about “federal intrusion”. Since when has the Register been worried about that? If it is, say, the federal intrusion into the corporate boardroom, the Register doesn’t seem to have a problem. I suspect this is a distraction from the real problem, which I will get to in a moment.
The other thing that piqued my interest is the line “being so short of money they cannot pay competitive teacher salaries.” Didn’t Governor Vilsack sign a teacher pay increase just two years ago? How uncompetitive is Iowa?
But the real problem with the new federal law is exemplified in some of the following quotes:
1. Some Iowa educators struggling to comply with the act sound as if they want to weep from frustration, and no wonder. They are supposed to assure all students are proficient in reading and math by 2013-14, including poor children, children learning to speak English and most children with disabilities. That's a great goal, but impossible to attain, so even some of the best schools could end up being labeled in need of improvement, or failing. That seems more likely to undermine than improve schools.
2. West Des Moines Superintendent Les Omotani echoed the sentiments of many educators when he said, "We absolutely believe in the goals of the program." He also said, "It doesn't fit Iowa."
That's just it: No Child Left Behind doesn't fit Iowa.
"We have a state and communities and families that value education," said Omotani. "We have teachers and administrators and board members who have articulated for a long time trying to serve the needs of all children."
3. "So we have been really working this year to get those things in place, and we will wait and see how the test scores come out and hopefully we will make some progress," Williams said. "Can we sustain that over time and get 100 percent of our kids reading in 10 years? It's a heck of a goal. I hope we can. We're going to give it all we've got."
That may not be enough.
The problem isn’t that the law imposes unreasonable standards, it’s that it imposes any standards at all. Finally, an authority (the federal government) is holding the education establishment accountable for its performance, and backing it up by withholding resources if it fails. This is new territory for the education establishment and liberal hand-wringers like the Register editorialists, and they’re in a panic. This is underscored by the fact that one school official doesn’t think 10 years is enough time to achieve the goal. Only 10 years?! If the education establishment moved any faster, it might present a speed challenge to a glacier.
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SPEAKING OF EDUCATION
While some education official in Iowa actually have to worry about teaching readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic, others can give their students a healthy does of environmental indoctrination. Check out this letter to the editor in the Quad City Times:
As a group of concerned high school students, we would like to share a concern of ours that we believe could become a national tragedy.
We would like to direct this open letter to the citizens in the District of the Honorable Representative, Jim Nussle. We are the students of the biology class at Rivermont Collegiate, a college prep school in Bettendorf. We support the Alaska Coalition in their goal to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. This 1.5 million acre wilderness is home and breeding grounds to thousands of migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, grizzlies and musk oxen.
Jim Nussle, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, is well positioned to make a difference in keeping this Arctic Refuge pristine.
Hopefully other citizens will join us in letting Nussle know how they feel about this area.
Rivermont Collegiate
Biology Class
Bettendorf
I wonder how these students came about their “concern”? Did it grow out of the ranks of the students? Or did the teacher impart it to them? I can’t know for sure at this point, but I’m willing to bet it is the latter.
I also wonder, did the teacher present the other side of the ANWR debate, that the oil drilling would only take up a few thousand square acres, and that ANWR isn’t exactly Yellowstone Park? Again, I can’t know for sure, but I’m betting no.
Finally, I wonder, was class time used for this “class project” of writing a letter in an attempt to influence a member of Congress? Again, I can’t know for sure, but, well, you get the idea.
Nice to know that your taxpayer dollars are being put to such good use, isn’t it?
UPDATE: Well, Archpundit had to mess up my day by pointing to a little inconvenient thing known as a “fact.” Namely, Rivermont Collegiate is a private school; thus, taxpayer dollars are not involved. My goof.
Still, the issue of what, exactly, is a teacher imparting to his or her students holds.
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Monday, February 24, 2003
THE CRITIQUEES
These are the awards given at BlogCritics. To see who won, start here.
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KICKING KITTENS
Henry Hanks fisks Janeane Garofalo. Not too difficult a task, but entertaining.
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THIS REFORM COULD HURT THEIR FEELINGS!
The Des Moines Register editorial page has its undies in a bunch again over the welfare reform bill moving through Congress:
Currently, an Iowa mother with two children receiving about $300 a month from the government and getting help with child care can meet the requirements of welfare by attending classes full time at a community college. If she uses this time to get an education, the hope is that her long-term opportunities will be more promising. The cycle of poverty will be broken.
If the House legislation is imposed, the Iowa woman might need to work 24 hours in a job before her schooling could count for her "work requirement." (It's worth noting jobs are in short supply in the current economy.) That could result in her having to go to school part time instead of full time. If she makes even a little too much money at her job, both her child-care subsidy and tuition aid could be at risk.
That's what stricter work requirements mean in the real world.
Since the federal government instituted welfare reform in 1996, the welfare rolls have dropped by over 50%, poverty among former recipients has declined, and, most significantly, child poverty has declined. That’s what stricter work requirements mean in the real world. Reading passages like that, I have to wonder if some people will never change their myopic view on welfare reform despite all the evidence that it works.
The following passage that reveals the depth of the Register’s resistance to welfare reform:
The marriage initiatives are simply wrong. They don't work. They only further stigmatize single motherhood and scapegoat single parents as the reason for poverty.
How does the Register know that marriage initiatives don’t work? They haven’t been tried. All the initiatives involve is counseling. Let’s give them a go and see if they work.
As for single “parenthood”, it is one of the primary causes of poverty. Countless studies show that women who have children out of wedlock are far more likely to be in poverty. Focusing on single parenthood isn’t a scapegoat, it’s going to the root of the problem.
Finally, what’s so bad about stigmatizing a behavior if it is a destructive behavior? Stigmatizing it would mean that persons are less likely to engage in it. But then, that might hurt the feelings of those who do engage in it. And in this sensitive day and age, we can’t have that, can we?
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