The Failure of Tulsa, Oklahoma Public High Schools

I graduated from Tulsa's Memorial High School in 1965.  I have a number of family members who still live in the Tulsa Metro Area.  I just looked up an evaluation website to see what the Tulsa Public School system was providing as an "education" at the high school level.

Let me start with my own high school.  Memorial High School students are 10 to 14% proficient in math and 10 - 14% proficient in reading.  This is about what most of the 18 public high schools in Tulsa are accomplishing in the way of an "education."  The best of the bunch are Tulsa Met High School (math proficiency <50%, Reading < 50%) and Booker T. Washington High School (Math 38%, Reading 53%).  Next is Dove Science Academy Tulsa High School (math 30 - 39%, reading 30-39%) where it is apparently thought that science can be performed without math and without being able to read.  Union High School, ranked fourth best of 18, boasts a 29% math proficiency and a 34% reading proficiency.  The fifth best is Tulsa Honor Academy High School (a charter school) proudly proclaiming the Honor in having a 25- 29% math proficiency and a 30 - 34% reading proficiency.  The Thomas Edison Preparatory High School is math 18% and reading 45%.  This cannot be preparation for college.  Perhaps it is preparation to enter a decent middle school somewhere else in the USA.

Of the remaining public high schools in Tulsa, not one of them has a math proficiency score as high as 20%.  Two of those schools have Sciences in their name and one of those has a math proficiency of 5% or less.  Four of the high schools have math proficiencies of 5% or less.

Nine of the Tulsa high schools have reading proficiencies of less than 20%.  Five of the high schools have reading proficiency for 10% or less of their students.

Why do the people of Tulsa pay for high schools and teachers at all, if this is viewed as anything close to an acceptable educational outcome?  Is it just so they can have high school football?  Tulsans are mad about football.  I love football.  But one can have both football and an education.  In my graduating class of about 250 individuals, two of our starters on our conference-winning football team went to The U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  One of them and another starting offensive lineman became MDs.  At least another two of my classmates became MDs.  One became a professor of economics at Northwestern University.  Numerous others became engineers, dentists, and lawyers.  The Tulsa public schools system has clearly destroyed my high school, along with many others.

Or do Tulsans pay taxes for useless high schools because the politicians and the teachers unions have completely bamboozled them? 

It is morally wrong to force children to attend failing high schools.  Among those Tulsa children forced to attend a useless high school, there are many whose time is being wasted.  Some would learn useful skills if they were allowed to work.  Others would teach themselves more than these useless schools are teaching them.  Parents have an obligation to educate their children.  Others do not have an obligation to educate the children of others.  What individuals must do morally for the children of others, is to not act to prevent them from getting an education.  When voters elect government officials who force children to waste their time in useless high schools, this is a case in which those voters are acting to prevent children from learning.  The Tulsa high schools are a moral abomination.

They are not alone.  The public schools of America are generally an abomination from elementary schools through the universities.  The complete system of American education needs to be torn down and restarted on rational principles.  Few young Americans are proficient in math and reading.  Few know enough science, civics, history, and economics/business practices to function as well as they ought to in an advanced capitalist economy and civilization.

It is a sad result that AI will actually be easily able to replace many of our uneducated people before long.  This should be a much harder task for AI to accomplish, but people who know nothing have also never learned how to know much of anything.  Mankind's primary means of survival is the mind.  If you will not train and optimize your mind, you will not thrive and you may well not survive.  Parents need to live up to their obligations and everyone else must at least not be roadblocks preventing a child who wants to learn and develop his mind from doing so.

Progressive Experts are Superior to Parents in Raising Children -- So They Claim

The 1930 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection under the Hoover administration claimed that progressive experts were superior to parents in raising children in the Progressive Age because "it is beyond the capacity of an individual parent to train her child to fit into the intricate, interwoven, and interdependent social and economic system we have developed."

Do not wonder why the public schools to which parents are forced to send their children are so disdainful of parents and their values and their attempts to play an important role in the education of their own children.  If individual parents were incapable of performing these roles in 1930 because society and our economic system was so complex, then in 2018 parents must be vastly less capable.  Indeed, that job is a hard one.  Yet, I have seen no evidence that Progressive Experts are better able to handle that difficult task.  Indeed, they have proven themselves to be unusually blind to the reality of our society and of our economic system.  If the average parent is wanting in this task, it does not follow that the Progressive Expert is not vastly more wanting in the job of raising children.

The public schools are used as a wedge between parents and their children.  Many parents are inclined to forfeit much of their role as parents to the schools and in some cases to government agencies other than the schools.  In effect, the government becomes a force that diminishes the role of parents and substitutes its one-size-fits-all ideas for raising children.  This control over children allows them to form children as willing subjects of ever-increasing government incursions against individuality, independent and rational thinking, and individual rights in favor of collectivism and a willingness to accept the authority of government officials.

But since the Progressive Experts (Elitists) have declared the parents incompetent in the raising of their own children, this is all done for the good of the child.  The parents have been designated the Deplorables since at least 1930 by the Progressive Elitists.  Actually, they were so designated by some socialists in America about 100 years before that.  Never mind the wondrous claim that these Progressive Experts implicitly make that they do not even have to know any more about your child than will fit into a simple classification system.  Every child is a stereotype of that simple classification system.  What decent parent can tolerate this treatment of our children?  We, unlike the Progressive Elitist Education Experts, at least know our children as individuals.  What could be more important than that knowledge in educating children and preparing them for adulthood?

The Educational Attainment of Americans Before 1850

It is widely assumed that few Americans prior to 1850 and the development of government-run school systems were capable of reading and that knowledge was sparsely distributed.  This is a myth which there is much evidence to refute.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Andrew Berstein which was published in The Objective Standard, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2010) under the title The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools.

Prior to the mid-19th century, government schools did not exist in America. All schools were private, and education was widespread and outstanding. For example, in the Middle Atlantic colonies during the pre-Revolutionary period, professional educators established numerous schools to satisfy the demand for education.15 Philadelphia, for instance, boasted schools for every subject and interest. Between 1740 and 1776, 125 private schoolmasters advertised their services in Philadelphia newspapers—this in a city whose population was miniscule relative to today. Professional educators provided mentoring services in English, contemporary foreign languages, science, and a wide variety of other topics.16 Children who grew to be such brilliant scientists, writers, and statesmen as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington received their education at home or in private schools.

(As to higher education, by the late-18th century six private colleges operated in the colonies: Yale, the College of New Jersey [Princeton], the College of Philadelphia [Penn], Dartmouth, Queen’s [Rutgers], and Rhode Island College [Brown].)17

Predictably, the educational results of such a free educational market were superb. The literacy levels of Revolutionary America were remarkably high. For example, Thomas Paine’s book, Common Sense,written in plain style but enunciating sophisticated political principles, sold 120,000 copies during the colonial period to a free population of 2.4 million (akin to selling 10 million copies today).18 The essays of The Federalist, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in support of a Constitution for the nascent republic, were largely newspaper editorials written for and read by the common man.

Sales of American books and educational materials in the early- and mid-19th century likewise indicate a high national literacy rate. Between 1818 and 1823, while the U.S. population was under 20 million, Walter Scott’s novels sold 5 million copies (the equivalent of selling 60 million [actually more than 77.5 million] copies today). Early in the 19th century, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper likewise sold millions of copies.19 The McGuffey’s Readers, first published in 1836, routinely used such terms as “heath” and “benighted” in third-grade texts. They asked such questions as “What is this species of composition called?” and gave such assignments as “Relate the facts of this dialogue.” The fourth-grade reader included selections from Hawthorne, and the fifth-grade text, readings from Shakespeare. “These were not the textbooks of the elite but of the masses,” explains Thomas Sowell. “[F]rom 1836 to 1920, McGuffey’s Readers were so widely used that they sold more than 122 million copies.”20

Given the high quality of education in early America, it is no surprise that two renowned French visitors observed and reported on the phenomenon. In an 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours reported that Americans received an education far superior to that of other peoples. “Most young Americans,” he wrote, “can read, write, and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly.”21 Several decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that Americans were the most educated people of history.22

The bracketed text in red is my correction.  Footnote 17 explains that Harvard College, King's College in New York City (now Columbia University), and William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, which are all private colleges now, were founded by governments.  Harvard was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and King's and William and Mary Colleges were founded under Royal Charters in the colonial period.  It is clear that the 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours stating that "not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly" did not include slaves.

The idea that a private education system would leave many Americans less educated than the government-run education system of today is belied by this history and by the fact that the approximately 11% of schools today that are private out-perform the government schools readily.  Home-schooled children also greatly out-perform government-schooled children.

The government-run schools have little reason to teach children good reasoning skills, the knowledge they need to earn a living, and the habit of independent, critical thinking.  Without these attainments, it is a very uphill battle for individuals to achieve wisdom and the necessary skills to make their own value choices well.  Government-run schools have a tendency to propagate myths that support Big Government and diminish the exercise of individual rights.  Government-controlled education endangers children, future adults, and our constitutionally limited republican government of a few enumerated powers.  Government-educated students generally have no idea what purposes and achievements define a legitimate government, no sound understanding of individual rights, no thoughts about the intelligibility of laws and regulations, and no commitment to the Rule of Law.  Because the People are divided about ideas of morality, the government schools downplay moral principles.  They have little knowledge of history and the many lessons of how governments have deprived their citizens of their rights.  They have no understanding of basic economics and are taught to believe in policies that deny the basic Law of Supply and Demand and the importance of production itself.  They massively promote group identifications and victim-hood and victimizer status for these groups in a highly divisive manner.  They systematically undermine the much greater diversity and wealth of individual choices provided by the private sector in favor of the rigid, group oriented controls of the government sector.

The government-run education system wallows in a profound conflict-of-interest and because it is coercive and tax-funded, it has no reason to improve.  In fact, the schools are more commonly provided with more money the more they fail, providing them with no incentive to provide a decent education.  Government-run and controlled schools very commonly put the welfare of their under-performing employees well ahead of that of their under-performing students.

The state of education in America today is tragic and is much of the reason that the state of government in America today is increasingly harmful to the freedom, security, and general well-being of Americans.

Public School Monopoly Favored by Obama over Education

I have long opposed the government monopoly on our school system and education.  There is only a path to less and less freedom so long as this monopoly control continues.  It is the greatest of all impediments to the protection of individual rights in the USA.  The government will always use the schools as a propaganda tool to gain more and more power for itself at the expense of our liberties.  Children are rarely capable of teaching themselves how to think critically and independently enough to overcome the onslaught of highly biased Progressivist attacks on the private sector as the government is held up as the cure to all problems.

Not only are they devoured as individuals by a biased view of history, economics, and of society, but they are all too often left even more defenseless by schools that deliver them into adulthood unable to read, write, and perform basic math skills.  These government-run and controlled schools are making adult dependents, which really means they are producing people who will always be children.

Daniel Mitchell has written a very good article on the Obama administration backing of public teachers unions at the clear expense of the education of mostly black and totally poor students in the Louisiana voucher program.  Louisiana is a state particularly cursed with a long tradition of awful public schools.  Obama wants to prevent the reform of these terrible schools simply to keep the backing of the powerful public teachers unions.

Dan also gives some interesting links to articles by the always great Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, as well as to articles on how Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands are using vouchers to reform their school systems.

Daniel Mitchell is an economist and commentator well-worth the read.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a very good man.

My Response to a Democrat Politician's Wife Request on Father's Day

Karmen Walker Brown is the wife of Anthony Brown, the present Lt. Governor of the state of Maryland, who is now running for Governor.  Anthony Brown has served under the present governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley.

O'Malley is a strong Obama supporter and has aspirations to run for the office of the President.  He has also strongly pushed applying the high state sales tax to gasoline sales, on top of the fixed cost gasoline tax now in place.  He has forced Maryland electric utilities to buy expensive alternative fuels and pass the costs on to the consumer.  He increased the sales tax by 20%, the top personal income tax rate by 16%, and the top corporate tax rate by 18%.  He pushed for and signed a gun control law that drastically infringes the right to bear arms in Maryland.  He even promoted and signed a rain tax on Marylanders that taxes them for any impervious surfaces on their property.  Before he became governor, he was mayor of Baltimore and presided over that city's horrendous public school system as it became even worse.  He headed the Democratic Governors Association from 2011 - 2013.

The Democrat Socialist Party has tight control of the Maryland state government.  It has large majorities in both houses of the legislature and it has controlled the governor's office for a long time.  The Democrats manage this dominance with a very touchy, feely approach.  Karmen Brown is playing this game now by requesting huge numbers of Marylanders to sign a Father's Day card for her husband Anthony.  Here is how this works:

If you asked Anthony what the most important thing is to him, I know what his answer would be: Family. Our kids mean the world to him.

Father’s Day is one of Anthony’s favorite days. It’s a time for our family – and families across Maryland – to come together and celebrate what’s really important.

With Father’s Day coming up this weekend, the kids and I are hoping you can help us out. We’re putting together a big card and we want you to sign it! I know he’d love hearing from his friends and supporters on such a special day.

Click here now to wish Anthony a Happy Father’s Day.

For Anthony, there’s no doubt that being a father is his most important job. You can see it in the way he helps the kids with their homework or asks about their day.

He’s as dedicated to them as he is to making life better for kids across Maryland. It’s why he works – every day – to improve schools, create jobs, and ensure that all families have access to the health care they need to thrive. He knows that this great state is only as strong as the families who call Maryland home.

That’s why the kids and I want to give Anthony a big Father’s Day surprise.

Can you take a minute to sign our card for Anthony? Click here to add your name.

Thanks and Happy Father’s Day,

Here is my response to Karmen Brown:

Karmen,

I vote on my conviction that there is no political value as great as that of the individual for his individual rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of his own body, mind, and labor, and the pursuit of his personal happiness.  The individual has a very wide right to freedom of conscience and association, which is not to be infringed by the state.  Gov. O'Malley has been committed to almost constant infringement of individual rights, as indeed any big government advocate and user of brutal force for any purpose but the protection of individual rights must be.  Lt. Gov. Brown has been his ally in these tyrannical infringements of individual rights.  It is very unlikely that he will be able to convince me that he is the less wrongheaded and evil of the two thugs who will be running for Governor under the nomination of the two major parties.

I believe I was put on your list of favorably inclined people because I believe in marriage equality.  Yes, such a belief is implied by individual rights, but so is the belief that I own my own body and that as such I have the right to control my health care and health insurance.  ObamaCare claims that my body belongs to the government.  I reject that claim and I have no intention of selling my body to the government even at the cost of being sent to prison.  I defend all of the rights of the individual, including the right of some to say things that may hurt the feelings of others. Our right to bear arms shall not be infringed.  Bloggers and all writers have the same freedoms as are protected for newspapermen and for the same reason that we all have the right to use our minds and freely express our beliefs in speech, in writing, and in assembly.  We have the right to choose who we will hire, to choose our clients, to choose our friends, and choose our sex and domestic partners.

The rights of the individual are broad and the legitimate functions of government are narrow.  This was established in our earliest founding document, the Declaration of Independence.  The proclamation there established the basis for a People of sovereign individuals mandating the very limited powers of the Constitution and setting up a government which is not sovereign, but was only a legitimate means for sovereign individuals to protect their individual rights.  Note that the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights further inform us that the individual retains his sovereignty.

These issues are of such critical importance that they must be addressed by rational minds, not by feelings that seek to associate your big government thug with fatherhood and child-raising on Father's Day.  I too am a father and my greatest wish is that my three daughters will some day have federal and state governments that will protect, rather than violate, individual rights.  There is nothing else so important.  This is why many a man has fought for these rights and many have given up their lives to protect them.

In a society which protects individual rights, we are enabled to choose our own values and manage our own lives with all of the advantages of free trades in all aspects of our associations with other individuals.  Then and only then can we all pursue our dreams in a harmonious way.  Then and only then are we free to hope that the future will be good and better for us all.  Free minds are the most essential means for improving our standard of life, our security, and for achieving our happiness.

Charles

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.
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Government-Run School Fraud in Camden, NJ

New Jersey government-run schools spend an average of $18,045 a student in K-12 education.  For that amount of money, a student should receive a very high quality education.  Generally, they do not get that high quality education.  In Camden, NJ the school district of 13,700 students spends even more per student, namely $24,709.  For such a princely sum, a student should get the equivalent of a very good private school education.  But in Camden one gets a 49.3% graduation rate in 2011-2012, down from a 56.9% graduation rate in 2010-2011.  There is a consolation.  Trenton, NJ has an even lower graduation rate, though that may only be because Trenton has a higher expectation of graduates.

Camden has the 3 worst schools in the entire state.  90% of its schools are among the worst 5% of all schools in the state.  Only 28% of 11th graders are proficient in math.  Fewer than 20% of 4th graders are literate in the language arts.  Governor Chris Christie has announced that the state of New Jersey is taking over the control of the extremely dysfunctional government-run Camden School District.

There is no lack of examples to illustrate the fact that the problem with the American government-run education system is not one to be solved by spending more money on it.  Many dysfunctional government-run school districts are spending $24,000 per student.  The problem is the purpose and the value choices of these government-run school systems, not their finances.

These problems are generally going to  be solved by setting up a free market of school choices in the education marketplace.  Voucher programs are essential in the transformation to a privately run education system in which competition and innovation in education will come to be more rewarded than thorough paperwork and a rigid, slow-minded bureaucracy with the interests of its union blue collar workers taking precedence over the education of students.  Almost every government-run school district would actually save money over time simply by issuing vouchers for an amount somewhat less than they spend per student.  Private schools will quickly spring up to provide a better education for that smaller cost per student.

Government-Run-Down Education in California

The Progressive Elitists love to wax eloquent about how much they care for children, especially for their education.  California is a state well-controlled by the Progressive Elitists.  True to their stated values, they spend mightily on K-12 government-run education.  Falsely, their children have become nearly the worst educated in the nation.

Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner wrote an excellent piece on the lessons of government-run education in California.  In 1975, when Gov. Brown was first governor, he pushed the Rodda Act that allowed government worker unions to directly withhold union dues from organized worker paychecks.  The California Teachers Association used the massive sums collected to mount political campaigns to get more money for the government-run schools and for teacher pay and benefits.  In 1988, they helped pass Proposition 98 that required the state to spend at least 39% of the state budget on K-12 education.  The results:

• An average teacher salary of $69,434 a year.  This is third highest in the nation.
• A doubling of unionized teachers.
• Union contracts requiring teacher pay be based on longevity, not teaching quality.
• In 1992, California ranked next to last in reading proficiency for fourth-graders.
• In 2011, California 8th graders were 48th in reading and 48th in math.  They did outperform Mississippi in both!
• California has one of the highest student to teacher ratios in the nation, despite the huge spending.  The national average ratio is 15.5 and California is 20.9.
• California once had among the highest percentages of college-educated people and still is #6 in college degrees for those over 65 years old!  But, its 25 - 34 age group is 1% below the 31.5% national average in college degrees.  It is sinking fast.
• The exodus of companies out of California will have to continue not just due to high taxes and over-regulation, but because they will not be able to find enough college graduates to hire.  There is a projected shortfall of 1 million jobs requiring a college education by 2025.  [College feedstock from the 48th worst elementary schools in the nation must almost certainly lead to a particularly dire grade inflation in college, making many college degrees from California colleges quite bogus.  This is not to mention that high school graduates who cannot read and do simple math proficiently are not suitable for many jobs one might think a high school graduate could handle.]

The Progressive Elitist program for government-run education is not only failing the children of California, but it is also resulting in many young adults losing earning power relative to the past in California.  Indeed, it is causing the entire middle class that Progressive Elitists also pretend to champion to fall behind in income equality, another goal supposedly dear to the Progressive Elitist's heart.  The middle-earning 20% is faring much more poorly against the upper 20% of earners in California to the point that it is now the ranked 49th among the states by this criteria.  The Progressive Elitist control of education in California is a clear object lesson that they cannot, will not, and do not want to accomplish what they say their goals are.  They are con artists, pure and simple.

Over and over, I have made the point that quality education, for many reasons, must be private education, not government-run education.  California is a great object lesson in the failure of government-managed education.  One of the reasons it cannot fix itself is because its government-run schools are excellent at one thing -- indoctrinating the young with a belief in big government and a fear of the private sector.

Obama Calls for More Spending on Education, But Does More Spending Improve Education?

In the last debate, Obama said that a cornerstone to recovery from the never-ending Great Socialist Recession was an increase in federal spending on education.  This he says is critical to improving the economy.

Now, we can all agree that an American population of thinking individuals with a broad and accurate knowledge base and excellent problem-solving skills would be a major economic factor.  One can even imagine an education system based on sound principles which might do a better job of educating the People if it had more money.  However, the present American education system gives no evidence that spending more money on education has any beneficial effect upon the knowledge base of Americans and on their development of critical thinking skills.  Let us examine the recent history of total spending on education:

Since 1981 there has been an almost 6-fold increase in education spending in the U.S.  To be sure, if we believe that education spending should be proportional to the GDP, then this is only a 23% increase in spending as a proportion of GDP.  In 1981, education spending was about 6.4% of GDP and in 2010 it was 7.9% of GDP.  However, the student population has not grown at anything like the rate of the growth in GDP, so one should be able to expect an equal level of educational results with a decreasing fraction of the GDP being devoted to education.  The trend is clearly in the wrong direction.

There are very fundamental reasons why the massively increased spending on education and on a per pupil basis has not resulted in any significant increase in student knowledge and thinking skills.  In almost every community, the local school labor unions assemble a slate of Board of Education members who appear to have good education credentials and their election is backed by lots of union money.  This slate wins almost every position on the school boards.  Because of this and the power of the teachers unions in also greatly influencing the election of city and county officials, the schools are managed for the benefit of the teachers labor unions, not for the education of the children.  Increasing the pay and  benefits of teachers who are blue-collar union members unable to even negotiate their own pay and benefits with their employer, guarantees that few of them will have the teaching skills, knowledge, self-confidence, and managerial skills needed by a professional educator.  Union members are not picked and not rewarded for their teaching professionalism.  Of course, as so often happens when a con is being performed, teachers present bogus certifications proclaiming them experts in teaching.

We have government-run schools specifically because Progressives saw them as a means to indoctrinate children to believe that big and socialist government was needed and moral.  Of course a government-run school could be counted upon to advance the never-ending quest of governments for power.  Such government schools could be counted upon to subvert the American Principle that government should be highly limited and only act to protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own mind, body, and labor, and to the pursuit of personal happiness.  Thus, government-run schools have become increasingly anti-American even as they became the dominant force in the education of American children.  The general viewpoint of American government-run school teachers is well-aligned with the socialist and extreme environmentalist viewpoints of Obama.  It is opposed to a healthy and robust private sector in which Americans should be free to exercise their freedom of association to cooperate with others to achieve their self-chosen goals.  The government-run schools are generally bastions of Progressivism and opponents of Capitalism.

Despite the large increases in education spending, we have not seen an increased ability of American young people to perceive reality and understand it.  In fact, they are more and more removed from reality and less and less capable of performing real productive work in the private sector without more and more massive training efforts by private businesses.  Few students graduate with a proper respect for those with the skills and motivation to produce in our society.  Few are able to communicate well and solve problems well.  Despite our spending more and more and spending far more of our GDP on education than does almost any other country, we keep losing ground to other countries in rankings of educational attainment.  It could not be more clear that we are throwing our education dollars into a black hole.

Marcos Cordero in an article called The Link Between Unemployment Rates and the Lack of Qualified Professionals in America notes that

The Defense Department found that 75 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are not qualified to serve in the armed forces. In fact, 30 percent of the high school graduates who take the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a test of basic reading and math skills, fail it.

A very fundamental reform of American education is desperately needed and it will not come from government.  Governments are only eager to increase their power and politicians are easily bought by the massive teachers union money accumulated as the government automatically deducts union dues from teachers paychecks.  Labor unions and government increasingly see their interests to be largely in common and the interests of students and good governance are not now able to compete with them.  Only when the People understand these problems and massively rebel will there be any real hope of fixing this problem.

But most of the American People are largely in a feel good mode on education.  Because labor union members provide children with inflated grades, most parents think their child is doing well in school and they are inclined to assume that that means that they are actually learning.  The labor union policy of easy grading and of placing few demands on students lulls the parents and students to sleep.  Until parents and students wake up to the fact that they are being poorly educated and heavily indoctrinated in socialism and extreme environmentalism, America will continue to go downhill.  Obama is happy to push us down that hill.

Democrat Party -- The Party of the Welcoming Big Pre-Tents

Jon Stewart and his crew at the Daily Show actually did some interesting journalism while at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).  See the segment he did on Tolerance here.  DNC delegates and attendees were interviewed and each said that the Democratic Party was the party of the big tent with room for everyone, until they were asked for exceptions.

One young white man at the DNC says that everyone is welcome, "Except unless you own a corporation, or if you’re a hunter, a gun owner, white males."  Yes, though he seemed to feel at home in the Party, he actually excluded white males, with no exceptions.

So let us examine how many Americans are unwelcome in the Democrat Party by his prescription:

• Corporation Owners:  Corporations are owned by their shareholders.  How many Americans own shares in corporations?  A study in 2005 reported that about half of all American households owned stock due to the growth of 401(k) retirement plans.  This is about 57 million households in America.  Of course, many university endowments and union pension funds are also heavily invested in stocks, so university faculty and staff and union members are all very dependent upon the institution they belong to making money on their stock ownership.  In addition, many churches have investments in stock, as do many charitable foundations.  Now even if we exclude all those who are dependent in some way on stock ownership and only count those who actually own a stock or an investment vehicle that owns a stock, the young man has excluded at least half of all Americans, including many millions of women.  In truth, he has just expressed a desire to ex-communicate many millions of women who actually are Democrats.
• Hunters and Gun Owners:  It is estimated that about 52 million households in America have at least one gun.  Gallup reported a poll in October 2011 that found that 47% of American households had a gun on their property.  55% of Republican households had a gun according to this poll, while a sharp recent increase brought the percentage of Democrat households with guns up to 40%.  The young man wants again to make many Democrats unwelcome in his party.  There may be additional bow hunters or trappers who do not own a gun, who are excluded, but I am sure the number is relatively small.
• White Males:  This is a small minority of voting eligible Americans.  According to the 2010 Census, males are 49.2% of the population.  The white population is 63.7% of the population, though the separately grouped Hispanic/Latino population of 16.3% includes many who also think of themselves as white.  If we take the more restrictive 63.7% as white and assume that 49.2% of them are male, then the white male population to be excluded from the Democrat Party is 31.3% of the population.  I expect the Republicans would not be too upset if that complete block of 31.3% of the population voted for them.

While there is very considerable overlap in these three excluded groups, it is also clear that the set of voters who fall into these three excluded groups is much more than half the voting population.  This is especially true since the voting turnout among whites is considerably higher than it is for Black Americans or for Hispanic/Latino Americans.

Virtually every other person interviewed mentioned that they excluded gun owners.  Many of them, who were mostly females, made disparaging remarks about males.  Comments about the owners of businesses were less common.  But even if the Democrat Party delegates were only to exclude gun owners and white males, the party would become a consistent out-of-power party.  The party that likes to claim inclusion and to be the Big Tent party, is really the party of Big Pretense.  In a punning mode, we might call them the party of the Big Pre-Tents.

In a discussion with my oldest daughter recently, I pointed out that it is becoming alarming that the population of college students is approaching 60% female.  I claimed that a good part of the reason for this is that males have been made to feel less than welcome by the education system.  She scoffed at this idea, saying that males just make poor students.  But in the context of the many male-negative comments made by the Democrat Party stalwarts and given the fact that educators are predominantly Democrats, it is entirely unlikely that male students are finding themselves in a welcoming environment when they are in the formal education system.  In the government-run and socialist union-dominated public schools through high school, they are in an unfriendly leftist environment.  Then those who do go off to college often drop out as they find the radical left wing beliefs there incompatible with their interests and with their understanding of the practical and real world.

The attitudes of the committed leftists in control of our education system on the education of American males, particularly white males, are certainly deleterious.  Males want to believe that they are the heroic protectors of women and children and this greatly motivates them to try to work and learn so that they can fill this role.  When the Democrat-dominated education system portrays them, especially white males, as brutes, unfeeling cads, and privileged evil-doing masters at every turn, this is destructive.  Many are fleeing the education battlefield for more peaceful and nurturing pastures where they are less often the victims of discrimination.

Past American Federation of Teachers Union President on School Children

Mark Mix just sent me an e-mail in which he noted that the late American Federation of Teachers union president Al Shanker once said:

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."

As I have often said, children need professional educators, not blue-collar labor unionists.  Shanker also once said that many of his union members were not competent teachers.  He was right about that.

The Race to the Top and Over the Cliff

The federal government Race to the Top program has just made its Phase 2 awards this last week.  This program is designed to increase state and federal control over school systems.  The states are supposed to establish changes to:

• Adopt standards and assessments to assure student success in college and employment.
• Establish data systems to measure student knowledge and to allow educators to improve instruction.
• Recruit, develop, reward, and retain good teachers and principals, especially in the worst performing schools.
• Improve the performance of the worst schools.

The new standards and testing are in reading and math.  The states to date have often set these standards so low that they are virtually meaningless.

The Phase 1 awards were to Delaware and Tennessee.  A total of 46 states and the District of Columbia have applied for the Phase 1 or Phase 2 awards.  The Phase 2 awards were just given to 9 states and the District of Columbia.  These awards totaled $4 billion at a time when many states are facing deficits due to their high spending habits adopted prior to the recession, the drop in state revenues due to high unemployment and lowered company spending, and the increased costs of expanded entitlement programs due to the same unemployment.  The time was ripe for the federal government to exercise greater control over the many needy state governments.  Many a state was in crisis and vulnerable to a further federal grab of control of education.  The pressure for states to take more control from local school districts was a key "reform" in this program, as was pressure to put more resources into the worst schools, largely in the inner cities.

Aspects of the program try to reduce the power of the stultifying teachers unions.  They are opposing education reforms in more states than not.  The Race to the Top program favors charter schools, evaluating teachers based on their student's test scores, and firing large fractions of teachers and the principals of the worst performing schools.  The teachers unions are critical allies of the Democrat Party.  They vote solidly for the Democrats, their unions contribute huge sums of money, and the teachers can always be relied upon to donate large amounts of their time to support the Democrat candidates for office.  This critical role was recognized by the House and Senate returning from their summer recess and the start of many of the congressional campaigns in order to add $26 billion of a new stimulus round expressly for teachers and schools.  This was viewed as so critical, that the Democrats even reduced the Food Stamps program to find the money for it just prior to the mid-term elections!  Now, few teachers were in danger of being fired due to the decrease in state revenues, since the schools are nearly sacrosanct in most school districts.  Cuts are usually made elsewhere in government.  But, this infusion of money will have made the teachers unions more enthusiastic about the upcoming election and was to offset their concerns about the Race to the Top program and its threats to  poor teachers.  If the teachers unions signed on to the proposed state reforms in the Race to the Top program proposals, extra points were given to the state in the competition.

During the Great Depression, FDR was very efficient in giving money and programs to those states which were important in his re-election plans.  He drained money from the South, since he was assured of the votes of the South.  He poured money into a number of western states he thought he could win with their higher ratios of electoral votes to their populations.  Bearing in mind that virtually every state applied for the Race to the Top program educational money, examine the table below for a balance of Democrat and Republican governors, legislatures, and the 2008 presidential election vote:

D = Democrat, R = Republican, I = Independent, S = Split, Y = yes.

The most evenly divided category is the governor's party.  Three are Republicans, six are Democrats, and one, Charlie Crist of Florida, was elected as a Republican, but is now serving the Democrats.  Seven of the legislatures are Democrat, 2 are Republican, and one is split.  All but two of the states voted for Obama in 2008.  Apparently, Democrat dominated states are much better managers of statewide education reform, according to these results.  One of the consequences of more federal control over our education system will be a continued such politicization of our schools, already heavily Democrat influenced via the control of the socialist teachers unions!

Aspects of the Race to the Top program seem to actually address some educational problems, specifically that of low expectations for principals, teachers, and students.  This makes the program for more federal control seem to be less objectionable.  However, this is really a Trojan Horse and that may be why at least 4 of  the states were able to persuade the teachers unions to back their reform plan.  Actually, in the case of Hawaii that was easy since their plan was very light on reform anyway.  In the longer run, this plan will enable more federal control and that will be used to increase the power of the unions and will also be used to push the unions to give even more support to the Democrats in order to influence that power to favor the unions.

If the Race to the Top program really were very serious about improving education reform, it would have encouraged the states to produce voucher programs to replace poor performing public schools with private schools.  It would have allowed schools to experiment with the curriculum, rather than standardizing just on reading and writing and that on what is likely to be low standards.  It is unlikely any teachers union would sign on to support a true reform of our education system.  Of course, a decentralization of power over the schools and the increased exercise of smaller local school boards would be a most critical part of any real reform plan.  It is necessary to produce schools that are responsive to the parents and that emphasize the role of the professional, not the blue-collar, educator.

You cannot interest students in reading unless you give them interesting things to read.  To do that, you must emphasize literature, history, economics, and science.  Math is a great tool, but it is a tool.  Its study is commonly best motivated by teaching its applications to science, economics, engineering, and business.  Finally, programs teaching that some people are victims by virtue of their race simply provide the people of those races with excuses and encourage lower expectations.  They need to be told that they will individually be judged on the basis of their character and that many people will judge that in good part on what they know and on their commitment to knowing more throughout their lives.  The Democrats are not willing to deliver this essential message.  Without it, their so-called reform cannot be taken seriously.  Unfortunately, their grab for national control of our complete public school system should be taken very seriously.

The Public School Scandal

I have stated over and over that our biggest problem in the fight for the equal, sovereign, and unalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States of America is the fact that the education of our young is controlled by government.  Government at the local, state, and federal levels always has a conflict of interest in education.  American children need an education in which a cornerstone of their knowledge is knowing that legitimate government, as stated in our Declaration of Independence, is that government which governs with the consent of the governed for the purpose of securing their individual rights.  They need to understand that the purpose of the Constitution was to insure that the federal government had very limited powers dedicated to the purpose of securing individual rights and nothing more.  To understand how important this is, students need a knowledge of the history of great numbers of governments which oppressed the People.  They need a realistic knowledge of the Capitalist system with its free markets for goods, services, and ideas and how that system serves every unique individual by allowing them many, many choices and an easy path to forming many voluntary associations with others for specialized purposes of their own.  They need to understand that socialism cannot accommodate individual rights, cannot recognize the individuality and uniqueness of each of us, and cannot allow us to develop and express ourselves as the individuals we are.  Students need to understand that a Capitalist, free market society offers a richness of life no other system can offer.  Yet, all governments inevitably want to grow and want to feel needed in far more ways than the protection of our individual rights.  And frankly, many politicians hunger for power and learn how to use special interest groups to help them attain it.  Hence, government has a fundamental conflict-of-interest when it is put in charge of running our education system.

Yet, in America, as in most countries, government is in charge of the education of our young.  We know that the quality of government-run education in many other fields than history and civics is also very disappointing.  The governments that run the welfare system, the DMVs, job licensing, metro transportation systems, regulate health insurance and electricity rates, and much else equally poorly, do not do much better with education.  In many cases, they also spend far more money on education than they tell us they spend on it as I reported in this post on Washington, D.C. public schools.  According to a study released on 10 March 2010 by Adam Schaeffer with the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom entitled They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools, this problem of under-reporting the real cost of public school educational expenses is very widespread.  He examines the reported spending and the real spending per pupil for six metropolitan regions, including the five largest for K-12 public schools.  He also compares the cost of the K-12 public schools to an estimate of the cost for private schools in that metropolitan area.  The results are very enlightening and offer a sound reason for hope that we can convince the People that government-run education is a very bad deal indeed.

The Cato Institute report compiled public school K-12 costs for the central city school district, for the highest income adjacent school district and for the lowest income adjacent school district.  I have complied a table to condense the most important of the results found by Adam Schaeffer in the following table:

The public school districts under-reported the true cost of public education per pupil anywhere from 3% to 151%.  Only the low-income North Chicago school district did a faithful job of reporting their real expenditures, though the low-income district in the Phoenix area of Deer Valley at 13% and the low-income district in the Washington, D.C. area of Prince George's County at 17% were much more accurate than most in their reporting.  Los Angeles city school district was the worst: they spent more than 2.5 times as much as they claimed to spend per pupil!  The other districts spent between 22 and 85% more than they reported spending.  It turns out that many voters when told about the difference in real spending from what they thought was being spent per student were very upset.  They indicated that they were not willing be taxed so much as they were for the purpose of spending so much.

Equally interesting as the great deception of the People about the amount spent on public education, is the fact that the public education is clearly no bargain compared to private education.  The public school districts spent between 21% and 201% more than the local private schools!  In 8 out of the 18 public school districts examined, the public schools spent more than 100% more than (twice as much) did the local private schools per pupil.  Only the Houston school districts and the low-income school districts of Phoenix, Los  Angeles, and Washington, D.C., were less than 50% more expensive than the local private schools and all but one of them was one-third or more higher in costs.

Now, I am pretty sure that these private schools are generally offering as good or better educations than the public schools.  I am very sure that if they spent as much as the public schools do per pupil, most private schools would offer a substantially better education.  It would seem very clear that the taxpayers in many of these examined school systems could be convinced that a voucher system that allowed them to send their children to a private school instead of the public school money-eater would be preferable both for providing their children a better education and to save the local tax district a huge amount of money, as they shut down more and more of their schools.  Indeed, even the taxpayers with no children to educate would clearly be better off.

Some will argue that many of the private schools are associated with religious groups.  Indeed, in a country in which the taxpayer has to pay for these very expensive public schools and then has to shell out a substantial amount of money for a private school, there is likely to be another motivation of the effort and commitment, such as a strong belief of some kind.  But, if public policy allows a healthy voucher system, the market for private schools will expand greatly.  Many secular schools will be established, as will be schools with strong arts programs or strong science programs.  The competition to provide good educations at reasonable prices will produce many more good schools that people can afford more readily than the bloated socialist holding cells we call schools today.

So, when the topic of public education comes up in your school district, do not feel bashful about informing your conversant that public schools are ridiculously expensive and provide a poor education compared to what a private school can and will provide.  Let's get the People to demand a shift from government-run schools to private schools, where the parents will once again have a say in the education of their children and the taxpayers will have some relief.  The public schools are just one more case of the gullible being taken for a ride by government.

Nationalizing the Student Body

In the same gargantuan bill that established ObamaCare, the federal government once again used the fascist socialist model of gaining control by effectively nationalizing college students.  They did this by putting all student loans under a government monopoly.  The theory is the time-honored one of:  "He who controls the money, controls everything."  Of course in the short-run, this just means that whereas a student could approach many private lenders, he can now approach only one lender, the federal government.  That lender will even allow him not to pay back the loan, if the student takes a government job after graduating.  This reveals the government's bias against the private sector, which is merely tasked with the need to be productive enough that the government can suck enough of private sector blood to continue on happily in its bloated growth.

Why did this nationalization of student loans wind up in the ObamaCare bill?  Of course, in part just because Obama can usually count on the young who have been indoctrinated in the socialist viewpoint throughout a public school education and then again in college and he believes in making his followers believe they have been rewarded.  He knew ObamaCare was unpopular and wanted to be sure it would be popular with his loyal base of young people.  But, perhaps it was also in the bill due to simple logic.  ObamaCare nationalizes the bodies of every American by making all Americans dependent upon the federal government for all of their medical care.  The government monopoly of student loans, in the face of extremely high college costs, nationalizes the student body of every college in America.  So, the common issue of the bill was the nationalization of bodies, both student bodies and everyone else's as well.

The first great goal of socialists in America was to nationalize education.  The major American socialists of the 1800s and early 1900s worked very hard to have the government take over education in America.  Then, they worked very hard to enlarge school districts so that very few of the student's parents were on the school boards or would know the people personally who were on them.  The socialists wanted the controlling school boards to be distant from the parents, because the parents were not a good influence on their children, since most parents were not socialists.  The purpose of the schools was to engineer the students into socialists.  It was to design their behavior, direct their emotions, and to fully indoctrinate the students in socialism.  As the government-run schools escaped the effective control of the parents, this plan could be implemented more and more fully.  One of the most important further requirements was that the professional commitment to teaching children to think for themselves on the part of true educators had to be broken.  This was done with the unionization of teachers, which had the added advantage that union leaderships were full of socialists.

The need to put as many scientists as possible into the war effort in WWII, started the heavy funding of research for scientists at universities and colleges which continues to this day.  Along the way, other academics drooled with envy at the funding the scientists were getting.  The government realized that it had gained advantages by winning over the allegiance of many scientists to the idea of a growing federal government by controlling their funding for research.  The government had long exceeded its powers as granted by the Constitution, so it would be a disaster if the learned academics in colleges and universities were to start calling the government on this usurpation of power.  So, it became very clear that it would be wise for the government to provide taxpayer money to researchers in disciplines such as economics, history, sociology, psychology, and other fields to get them on board with an ever-growing government.  This would happen because these academics would want more and more money and a government would have to be growing and taking more and more in taxes to give it to them.  Besides, those researchers who did not praise big government, could be cut off from research funding.  Academics, not normally known for their bravery, could be mostly counted upon to toe the line.  They have done so.

Am I being unfair in saying that academics are not normally brave?  I do not think so.  First, the current crop of academics has among its older members the Baby Boomers.  This is my generation.  I know something about them.  They protested the Vietnam War when they were in college.  Now, there were valid reasons for protesting the use of the draft in the Vietnam War, but they rarely did so for the right reasons.  Most college students were really, really frightened at the prospect of going to Vietnam.  So much so, that they jumped right on board with the flimsy and false arguments of the organized socialists who were the organizers of almost all of the college protests of the day.  Unusually large numbers of this generation hated private enterprise as part of the so-called military-industrial complex.  These fearful people also felt an aversion to the risks of the free enterprise system.  This in turn, drew them into the belief that there was something wrong with the profit motive, so they could claim that they were averse to Capitalism for moral reasons, rather than fear.  Soon, they were largely inclined to sneer at anything to do with the private sector and sing their own praise as being more nobly engaged in the education of young people and to sing the praises of government leaders as well, provided they were not in the Defense Department.  This group, due to its size and the rapid growth of colleges in that era, soon was able to determine which other faculty were hired and then which would be granted tenure.  Almost every department on almost every campus was soon full of liberals and only the socialist viewpoint was ever to be heard.  This proved to be of immense value to the growth of governments in America.

Further evidence of cowardice is the insistence of college faculties in silencing any real dissention on campuses.  Brave academics would welcome debate, but today's academics try to shut it down and when challenged to debate, they most generally refuse to do so.  They have even developed extensive speech codes to limit debate by anointing politically correct speech.  A very blatant example of their cowardice was the very widespread acceptance on almost every American campus of the government-accepted theory of catastrophic man-made global warming.  This has long been a hypothesis of at least dubious standing and for several years now has been clearly wrong.  Any good scientist reviewing the evidence, whether a climate scientist by profession or not, can clearly see that its central theory that CO2 emissions by man have caused a uniquely large increase in temperature in the late 20th Century with catastrophic circumstances is wrong.  Where have the many academic scientists been who should have vociferously put this failed hypothesis to rest?  There has been hardly a peep from almost any college, but for the very occasional professor emeritus, who the socialist controlled universities had less power to intimidate.

Once the universities were well-controlled by these socialist faculty members, they could put pressure on the student bodies to become socialists in many ways.  First, the faculty only presented the socialist viewpoint at most colleges.  Second, it is much easier to agree with a teacher and regurgitate his line of thinking on exams and in assignments than it is to take off on your own as a student and present an opposing viewpoint.  Third, opposing viewpoints were and are usually graded more harshly.  Fourth, the egalitarianism of socialism resulted in huge inflation of grades so there was little in grades that could be used to distinguish students and this same grade inflation made it more risky not to agree and to be penalized with a lower grade.  Fifth, scholarships and awards are made to students who are good socialists and the criteria are blatantly socialist.  These awards are more important because there is no differentiation in grades.

Affirmative action provided the socialists and government still more power by forcing universities to take under-qualified students, who then were beholdened to government.  But, this still did not make the remainder of the student body sufficiently beholdened.  Meanwhile, the costs of colleges, fed by huge sums of federal research money and the huge increase in faculty salaries and benefits that came with that, kept rising very rapidly.  The colleges could not get these faculty members to teach classes without paying them enough to lure them away from their research efforts a few moments of each week.  Universities had generally become cost plus operations with little need to operate efficiently.  Besides, very many were run by governments and had all the customary efficiency of a government agency such as the DMV.  But, this put a huge strain on students and/or their families to pay the costs.  So, government-guaranteed loans from private banks came into being.  The next logical step in gaining complete control of the students was for the government to create the student loan monopoly, which it just did.

Now, almost every college student will be beholdened to government.  If any college graduate ever argues against socialism, the socialist opponent will yell "Hypocrite, did you not benefit from socialism by taking a student loan to graduate from college?"  What is more, the ready availability of student loans will reduce what little pressure there has been on the colleges to hold down expenses, so tuition and fees for students will continue to go up much faster than costs in the private sector.  This means that the government-run colleges and those private schools so beholdened to the government will become a larger and larger part of the drain on the hated private sector.  The fact that graduates will be able to have their student loans forgiven if they take a government job, will ensure that many graduates will clamber for more government jobs.  Why not?  The pay is twice that in the private sector, the benefits are out-of-this-world, and your huge student loan debts will be forgiven.  Who would go into the private sector under these conditions?  So, the college-educated elite who are supposed to direct the growth of socialism and the corresponding growth of government will be pushed all the more monolithically toward socialism and bigger and bigger government.

Do not kid yourself.  This is an absolutely insidious plan.  It fits perfectly well on the plane with the use of the health care insurance mandate to nationalize our bodies and make us dependent upon government for the very continuance of our lives, at least once we ever have a life-threatening disease or a cause of great pain.  The socialists' fascination with the control of education will be complete when they start using this monopoly on student loans as reason to assure that students are getting a good education with the money the government is committing.  Yes, the government will in time evaluate the colleges and universities the students are choosing and will deny those it does not like money by not loaning money to the students who would go there.  This will be the end of dissenting colleges and universities.  Then, the government will also exercise choice in which students to allow to have student loans.  Those who are not socialists and who view government with great distrust, will be weeded out.  This is a very powerful tool for a socialist federal government to develop as time goes on.  It will too.  It is inevitable.

Unless we kill this voracious monster and recreate the limited government of our Constitution whose purpose was to make the sole job of the federal government the protection of the equal, sovereign, and unalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We must keep socialism from killing our very individuality and our individual rights.  We must start by repealing this particularly insidious ObamaCare and Student Loan Monopoly Bill.  And then, we must start dismantling the federal, state, and local government controls on the education of young Americans.  We have to eliminate their indoctrination as socialists, or this fight for our individual rights will have to be desperately fought with each generation and will eventually be lost.

The only savior will be a return to private education with professional educators, rather than blue collar unionists. These teachers must be committed to teaching Americans about our Founding Fathers and the American Revolution and why they fought for the American principle that each individual has an equal, sovereign, and unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  They must teach about the real purpose of our Constitution.  They must be knowledgeable about how Capitalism allows every individual to exercise his individuality and how it has allowed an incredible richness of life for almost every American.  They must also be able to tell the sad story of the many failures of socialism, whether of communism or fascism, or any combination of the two.  Then, and only then, might we be able to concentrate on living our own lives without undue concern that the monster of tyrannical government will squash us once again.

Americans Demand Smaller Government

While our socialist federal government is busy expanding the powers and the many intrusions of government, the American People are clearly saying they want smaller government.  The latest Fox News poll says that 65% of American voters think the government is too big and is restricting American freedoms.  30% say they are comfortable with the size and role of the federal government.  So, by more than a 2 to 1 margin, the American People want to be free to exercise more of their individual rights than the government now allows them to.  84% of Republicans think it is too big.  [Who on earth are the 16% of Republicans who do not think it is too big?  Why are they Republicans at all?  I suppose these are the people who just have to have the political party of their parents or of the majority of people who live around them.  These are the social metaphysicians, as Ayn Rand called them.]  Wonderfully, 74% of independents also think government is too big.  Woefully, 51% of Democrats believe the size of the government is OK, but this is, for the socialist party, a very weak level of conviction in favor of big and bigger government!

Overall, this is very good news, but it comes with some hints that many Americans who want smaller government and who say they want to be more free to live their own lives, may still hold some contradictory views.  Let me set up the argument that this is the case by noting a few more results of the poll.

78% of voters believe the government is "larger and more costly" than it has ever been before.  65% think the national debt is a bigger problem than terrorism (23%).  79% of voters believe it is possible the economy may collapse.  Republicans believe this the most at 84%, but independents are almost as inclined to worry about this at 80%.  Democrats lag the independents on this concern by 8%, but 72% is still a large majority of Democrats with major concern over the economy.  62% of voters believe Obama has no plan to deal with the severe weakness of the economy, while 35% think he does.  Republicans at 88% know he has no plan and 67% of independents know he has none.  Even 33% of Democrats have at least one eye out of the sand.

The people think Congress is even more clueless.  24% think the Democrats in Congress have clear plans to fix the economy.  These must be all Democrats who think this nonsense.  But, only 16% think the Republicans have such an economy fix-up plan.  Well, we cannot expect that any Democrats are likely to think the Republican Congressmen have a plan.  They do not even think their party in Congress has a plan!  So, the implication is that the mere 16% of the voters who think Republican Congressmen have a plan are probably all Republicans.  I would guess few, if any, independents are included in the 16%.

What should the Republican plan for the economy be?  It is simple to state.  The Republicans should seek to make government smaller and make it protect, rather than violate, the rights of the individual.  This is what 65% of the American voters want.  It is about time the Republicans actually make a concerted effort to do this.  This is not just a plan for the economy, but it certainly includes a plan for the economy, in the very limited way it is appropriate for government to play a role in the economy.  There is little the government should do for the economy other than to get out of the way and let a free and hardworking people do their thing.  Now even though this is exactly what most American voters want, most would probably say that this is no plan.  There is always that expectation that government must have a plan for every problem and every issue, even if the best plan is for the government to get out of the way.

So, the Republicans do need a plan.  Here are some components of my proposed plan:

• Republicans have cut taxes in the past, but start this time with cutting spending and follow that with some tax cuts.  Cut spending where it will remove as many obstacles for the private sector as possible.
• Repeal ObamaCare, which at once will restore our freedom, cut the deficit, and improve health care.
• Tell the EPA it cannot regulate CO2 emissions.  These emissions do more good as plant food than they do any harm in warming the Earth.  That bit of warming is probably good anyway.  Insist on rational benefit analyses to back up any EPA chemical tolerance claims.
• Open up most federal lands for oil and gas exploration and field development.  Open up most off-shore areas for similar development.  This will create jobs and tax revenues, while providing reliable energy.  Use any income to reduce the deficit.
• Sell much of the western lands held by the government and use the income to reduce the deficit.  The point of doing this is not actually so much to reduce the deficit now as it is to put the land to more productive uses in the private sector, which will further reduce deficits by generating more tax revenue in the future.  One benefit will be more energy production.
• End the wasteful biofuels and alternative energy development projects.  Some research funding may be retained, but if the use of these fuels makes sense, let the private sector develop them.  End the subsidies and the mandates for their use.  The end of the ethanol subsidy and mandate programs will save consumers a bundle.
• OHSA should be kept away from companies that do not have high accident rates.  Since companies are subject to liability lawsuits, there is really no need for OHSA anyway.
• Contract out more government services.
• Work up a comprehensive plan to end crop subsidies and restrictions.  These should be ended with a rational phase out plan.  Consumers will save a bundle.  Animal husbandry will save money also.  American exports will expand.
• End federal programs for financing exports, but work up agreements with as many other countries as possible to encourage free trade between our countries.
• Fold the Dept. of Labor into the Dept. of Commerce.  The class warfare between labor and management is only encouraged by this archaic separation of functions.  There is no reason to encourage labor unions as a special interest group anyway.  The resultant cabinet department should be much smaller than the two combined are today.
• Push the approval of Yucca Mountain through so we can finally get started on cleaning up and consolidating nuclear waste.  Nuclear power should not be discouraged with the many harassments it puts up with today.  The cost of nuclear power will come down with rational government policies.
• Reduce the excessive accounting and tax record-keeping requirements that put a very serious drain on the resources of business, especially small business.
• The highest individual income tax rate should be equal to the tax rate of the median income person.  Joint returns should have taxable income divided by 2 with the tax calculated on that amount and twice the individual tax then is to be paid.  I am willing to allow a somewhat progressive set of rates for those with less than the median income, but not too progressive.  Everyone should pay something because everyone is deriving the benefits of a properly limited government and should have an interest in its expenses.  There really should be no corporation income, but if there is, the rate should also be equal to that of the median income earner's rate.
• A near moratorium on new laws should be invoked, while Congress does a serious re-evaluation of the excessive number of laws already on the books.  Cutting back the irrational laws of the past will remove obstacles for the private sector and allow the paring of government watchdog agencies that are no longer needed to enforce those laws.  New mischief will be minimized, while old mischief is eliminated.
• The Dept. of Education should educate the American public on what the public schools really cost on a per student basis.  The vast majority of school systems say the cost is much less than it really is.  Then the Dept. of Education should point out that in most cases what is spent greatly exceeds the per student cost of private schools and push for vouchers for students allowing them to choose either a public school, a private school, or even home-schooling.  The vouchers should be for somewhat less than the cost of the local public schools per student, so the local government will save money for each student who opts for a private school education.  This would lighten the load greatly on many local and state government budgets.  Many of these local governments are in serious trouble now and this is a painless way to relieve that problem, while improving education and reducing the burden of local and state taxes on the private sector.  [It will also reduce the power of the teachers unions and ultimately shrink them.  This, and the shift to private education, will weaken the socialist indoctrination of our children.]
• Congress should stop writing tax laws with special taxes for special groups.  They love to penalize some groups and reward others.  Tax law should not be used this way.  It and other regulatory actions have clearly become tools of extortion.  The extortion must stop.  Tax laws should be reviewed to eliminate such provisions.  This will simplify the tax code and allow the reduction of IRS staff.
• The inheritance tax should be eliminated.  This tax now kills many businesses and anyone who has spent a lifetime of productive work and built up wealth, should have the right to give it to whomever he pleases.  The government will get more tax revenue in the long run anyway by eliminating the death tax, which is just an envy tax.
• The Commerce Clause of the Constitution should be used as it was intended:  to protect trade and commerce between people and companies in different states, not to inhibit it.  The elimination of federal government restrictions on interstate commercial activities would have a huge benefit for the private sector growth and health.
• Anti-trust laws should be revoked.  The only monopolies and cabals able to take advantage of the People for any significant time and to any significant extent, are those supported by governments.  That government support for such monopolies and cabals should be ended.  That support frequently hides under the umbrella of a regulatory agency.  The free market is especially dynamic now and the Internet makes it easy to gather information on products and services and to make sales across the country, with special advantage to small competitors, so that monopolies locally or nationally are harder than ever to support.

The Republican party should come up with such a plan and start promoting it early and frequently.  For once, there appear to be plenty of Americans interested enough in government and its shenanigans that we may be able to sell them on real reform of our overblown government.  Right now, we have a socialist government and that must be corrected so we Americans can regain our freedom to choose our own values and manage our own lives in accordance with our self-chosen values.  The Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, was intended to allow us just this individual freedom.

Oklahoma High School Students Cannot Pass Citizenship Test

One of the principal reasons for acquiring an education is to be informed about history and to have sufficient civics knowledge to be able to function as a citizen in your society. We Americans have always further thought that every American child should be well informed about American history in general, the assertion of our individual rights in our rebellion against the tyranny of King George III and the British Parliament, the struggles we went through in the Revolutionary War and then again in the War of 1812 to achieve and hold onto our independence, the growth of a sense of the American nation from a collection of states and the development of the U.S. Constitution, the problems of lingering slavery and the sectional interests in agriculture versus manufacturing and trading interests, the advance of the industrial revolution with improving standards of living due to unleashing the talents of individuals as no other nation ever has, World War I and the great growth of the federal government, the Great Depression and the further growth of government, WW II and fascism, the Cold War and Communism, the great advances of science and technology, and the ever-continued growth of governments. Every child should understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They should understand the structure of our federal government and the limited, enumerated powers of Congress, the limited role of the President as Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief, and the role of all three of the major branches of the government in preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States of America.

Many Americans argued that these functions were so important that the schooling of America's children had to be undertaken by government. Unfortunately, this viewpoint always failed to comprehend that government never wants to be limited and, most especially, never wants to be forced to base its legitimacy upon its protection of the rights of the sovereign individual. Yet this was the task the Constitution set out to hold government to. To accomplish this, government had to be kept away from the education of our children, not invited to steer their education as government wished it to be. The system of government-run schools we settled upon was largely copied from socialistic Prussia and was well-suited to the purpose of advancing socialism rather than the rights of the individual!

This process was also made easier by the required separation of Church and state, which meant that moral issues were to become almost undebatable in our schools. This kept serious discussions of morality in general out of our schools. This conflict of interest between morality and government is sufficient justification for the incompatibility of education and government-run schools. Thus stripped of morality, children were more and more susceptible to the propaganda of socialism.

Another key requirement to advance socialism was to not teach much of U.S. history and to over-emphasize every mistake ever made in America to try to take away any sense of American exceptionalism. The meaning of our Constitution and its role in protecting the sovereign rights of the individual were subverted. The understanding that rights could only take the form of individual freedom to develop your own ideas and to act to improve your own life in accordance with your own chosen values with only voluntary relationships with others was subverted. Instead the schools taught that each of us is everyone else's keeper, especially if that someone else has fewer material goods than we do. The schools taught a crass materialistic system of values in which little mattered except material goods, so these material goods had to be redistributed equally. The schools always assumed that the material goods were of that quantity available at that particular point in time, no matter that the number of goods grew much more for each new generation. The schools never concerned themselves with how this came to be. After all, this is not of interest to the public sector. Empty minds are what the public sector wants!

We have very solid evidence that the government-run schools have succeeded marvelously in dumbing down American children and making them susceptible fodder for the propaganda of socialism. An especially dramatic demonstration of this is the complete civic incompetence of Oklahoma high school students. In the spirit of disclosure, I graduated from an Oklahoma high school in 1965. The teaching of history then in my school was disgraceful, but it is clearly much worse now.

In an oral examination, 1000 Oklahoma high school students were asked 10 questions randomly selected from the questions used to test immigrants for citizenship in the United States. These immigrants pass the test if they answer 6 of the 10 questions right, which 92.4% of them do on the first try. The test is not a multiple choice test. The respondents actually have to know the answer and cannot get say 25% of them right by randomly choosing one of four multiple choice answers. Oklahoma students are "taught" history and civics every year through elementary school and high school. Let us see how the Oklahoma high school students did. The question asked is followed by the percentage of students answering the question correctly.

1) What is the supreme law of the land? Answered correctly by 28%.

2) What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 26%

3) What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? 27%

4) How many justices are on the Supreme Court? 10%

5) Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 14%

6) What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? 61%

7) What are the two major political parties in the United States? 43%

8) We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years? 11%

9) Who was the first president of the United States? 23% [George Washington, not John Hanson was expected.]

10) Who is in charge of the executive branch? 29%

Of the 1000 high school students, the breakdown in terms of correct answers was as follows:

None, 4.6%
1, 15.8%
2, 24.6%
3, 26.5%
4, 17.7%
5, 8.0%
6, 2.2%
7, 0.6%
8, 0.0%
9, 0.0%
10, 0.0%

Not one student answered 8 or more questions correctly. Only 2.8% of the students would have qualified to become citizens, had they not been born citizens! There were more students who could not answer a single question than there were students who could qualify for citizenship. 45% of the students could not answer more than 2 questions correctly. 71.5% could not answer more than 3 questions. 12th grade students performed barely better than 9th grade students.

So, it is clear that the socialist government-run schools in Oklahoma have done a fantastic job of rendering Oklahoma students perfectly incapable of defending their sovereign individual rights against the onslaught of socialist, nanny-state government. But is this unique to Oklahoma? No. A similar test was administered in Arizona and only 3.5% of Arizona high school students could pass the citizenship test. Jay Leno's Streetwalking tests across America, even on college campuses, indicate that this is a problem across the entire country.

I would have the federal government pass a law that no one can vote until they have passed a citizenship test. Every American who wants to vote should have to take such a test before they are given a lifetime award of the privilege to vote. What is more, students should not even be allowed to enter high school until they can pass the citizenship test.

There should be at least 200 questions chosen on basic U.S. history, government, and geography which every citizen should be expected to know. At least 50 of these questions should be chosen to be administered to each American who wishes to be allowed to vote. That person should have to answer 80% correctly to be allowed to vote. 60% is too low a measure of knowledge to give anyone the vote for government issues, since the government holds the awesome power of a monopoly on the use of force. Ignorant, child-like people should not have the power to direct that awesome force. Only people aware of the limitations the Constitution puts on the federal government and on the high cost our forefathers paid to protect our liberties, should be entrusted to maintain the government whose only purpose is to protect, preserve, and defend the sovereign rights of the individual.

The Real August Unemployment Rate

The August unemployment rate has been announced as being up from the July rate of 9.4% to 9.7%. As I noted in a post on 31 August 2009, this is far from the real unemployment rate. When the unemployment rate gets high and has been high for some time, people start falling out of the pool of the unemployed that gets counted, since they are not going to the unemployment bureaus to qualify for unemployment checks after their unemployment benefit runs out. So, in August the nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 216,000 and the number of unemployed increased by 466,000 to 14.9 million. This means that 250,000 new jobs would have had to be created for the unemployment rate to remain unchanged.

There are also 2.3 million who are said to be marginally attached to the work force and appear likely to want jobs, but there is no record that they are looking for jobs. This number is reported as being the same as it was in July, but 630,000 higher than a year ago. Adding these unemployed to the 14.9 million unemployed, gives us a real unemployment figure of 11.2%! This compares to the real unemployment rate in July of 10.9%.

There are also 9.1 million who are working part time, but want full-time employment. Adding them in gives us a 17.1% underemployment number in August.

Obama and the Democrat Congress claimed the unemployment rate would stay below 8% if they were allowed to pass the Stimulus Bill. We find repeated claims that the Stimulus Bill is working, as in today's Washington Post on the front page. Very little of the stimulus money has been spent, most of the money spent has been spent in unproductive ways, and the debt it has created and is going to create has scared the wits out of employers and consumers, who are saving more money for the rainy days ahead. And ... the real rate of unemployment is 11.2% and the rate of combined unemployment and underemployment is 17.1%. These are numbers similar to those of much of the Great Depression, though the worst numbers in the Great Depression were higher. But, it appears that the numbers in the current economic downturn are going to increase more in the near future.

Obama and the Democrat Congress are always boasting about their ability to create jobs. They have shown that they are only effective in destroying jobs. But, given their lack of economic and business understanding, this is no surprise to anyone who does know anything at all about economics and business. Why do we elect such wrongheaded fools to the Congress and the presidency? I suppose it is because the People are educated in the public schools and never learned economics and business basics either. Our schools are biased against the knowledge needed to live in the real world, which is the private sector. Instead, they are advocates of the public sector, as totally immoral and impractical as it is!

But Obama wants to talk to our schoolchildren and exhort them to more public service. This is service in the cause of governmentally exercised force, whose purpose is to make people do what they will not volunteer to do. What we need them to do is to choose to become business owners and employers. As such, they will produce the goods and services that people actually volunteer to pay for and they will create the jobs that Americans need.