Anyhow, got to work this morning, checked my mailbox, found a hardcopy of the following article from NEA.org, the website of the National Education Association:

Ravitch Lashes Teacher Bashers

A former important cheerleader for No Child Left Behind now says that she, and it, were wrong. Diane Ravitch, a leading education historian who was Assistant Secretary of Education under Pres. George H. W. Bush, says the test-driven accountability strategy of the law “has warped U.S. education in the pursuit of higher test scores, but not better education. Kids, especially in poor neighborhoods, are getting schooling that consists of test prep, test prep, and testing.”

The next paragraph, published at the website of a teachers’ union that promotes education, featured the following sentence:

Ravitch traced her turnaround on NCLB to session conservative American Enterprise Institute November, 2006, where after speaker reported that law not improving education.

Law not improving grammar either. In short, Ravitch argues that the federal government doesn’t know how to reform schools, and that it should scale back its involvement in public education.

Fine, but–at risk of starting an argument–why would such staunch opponents of No Child Left Behind (i.e., the National Education Association) favor universal health insurance? After all, if the feds don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to education, why should we expect them to have any idea what they’re doing when it comes to something far more expensive and complicated, such as health care?

Look at Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They make up a larger and larger piece of the federal spending pie, despite initial promises that they wouldn’t break the bank. And these unfathomably expensive programs are so entrenched that merely talking about reforming them can be political suicide. How many of these massive federal programs have to approach insolvency, increase our unfunded liabilities, and threaten America’s long-term financial stability before we realize that, at least when it comes to social spending, the feds don’t know what they’re doing?

Should we believe that universal health insurance will be the one thing that the federal government finally gets right?

…

Connecting NCLB and health care may seem a stretch, but Obamacare’s in the news, so I think it’s at least timely to make the connection and ask the question. Furthermore, the NEA does have a position on universal health care, so I think it’s worth pointing out the inconsistent logic behind their positions on health care and NCLB. And yes, I’m sure that if we tweaked just that one little part of NCLB, or that one little part of Social Security, or that one little part of Medicare, everything would be perfectly fine and dandy.

I am at my aunt’s house for a big family dinner. I don’t know what the occasion is; there probably isn’t one. Car by car, family members show up and march into the house for the feast.

A dark red minivan, which I don’t recognize, pulls into the driveway. Dad gets out of the driver’s seat, goes around the side, and slides the door open. He pulls out a wheelchair, sets it up. He then opens the passenger door and lifts the passenger out, putting her in the wheelchair.

It’s my grandmother. She looks pretty much like the last time I saw her awake: thin and pale, white hair, broken nose. As Dad pushes her towards the house, she seems agitated and frustrated. She’s trying to look over her shoulder at Dad and speak to him, but she can only manage to move her head a little to the side, shift and hop in her seat, and moan and murmur gibberish instead of talk.

They get her inside the house. My aunt calms her down and brings Gram to the dinner table. As the family feasts as we usually do, sitting around two tables and at a bar, people take turns hand-feeding bits and pieces of food to Gram. She is quiet, but still clearly distraught. Her eyes mist, and she silently cries.

I go over to see her–I haven’t seen her in years–and try to figure out how much she can understand. As she stares straight ahead, I stand next to her, asking her how she’s been, telling her what I’ve been up to. None of this stops the tears.

Finally, in a very fluid, calm motion, she looks over her shoulder and up at me, with a very sad look in her eyes. I tell her I wish I knew what was wrong.

I am lifted to the ceiling by something invisible and I start spinning. I yell for help. My family keeps eating. Nobody notices the guy spinning violently on the ceiling; nobody except Gram, who watches the whole thing happen with great and haunting sadness in her eyes. She can’t help me, and everyone else eats lasagna rolls and sausage-rice casserole.

…

I wake up, heart pounding.

I’m in my twin bed in my old bedroom at Dad’s house. It’s dark. My little brother is still asleep in his bed. I shake him to wake him up because I’m on the verge of having a heart attack from the dream. He wakes up, but he’s clearly still sleepy. I tell him about my dream, but he keeps tilting over like he’s about to drift back to sleep.

I reach out to keep him from flopping over onto the floor. As I do, his eyes get real wide and he starts spinning uncontrollably and involuntarily in my arms. He screams.

…

I wake up, heart pounding.

I’m in my twin bed in my old bedroom at Dad’s house. It’s dark. My little brother is still asleep in his bed. I leave him alone this time. I get up, open the door, and cross the hallway. I knock on my big sister’s door. She lets me in her room and I tell her about my dreams.

…

I woke up, calm.

I was in my current bed, calm, in my own house. It was dark. My little brother was at his house in Pennsylvania. My big sister was in her apartment. We haven’t lived together in the same house since 1993. My grandmother died in 2005.

I had a sandwich and went back to sleep.

…

Now that I write this, it occurs to me that in the initial sequence of the dream, no one spoke to me or even acknowledged me except Gram. Maybe that was Gram if she had recovered (at least partly) from her stroke, and maybe I had died somehow and she was the only one who could see or hear me. Who knows.

Two environmentally-conscious loons down in Argentina killed their two-year-old son, shot their seven-month-old daughter, and then relieved themselves of the burdens of their failed and useless lives. According to the suicide note, they were afraid of global warming–which is ironic considering their likely eternal disposition.

The only silver lining is that the unnamed (after seven months!) daughter survived being shot in the chest, undiscovered for three days, and is now “out of danger.” Hopefully she stays that way. May God bless this little girl with a sane, loving foster family and a beautiful name.

In recent weeks there’s been talk of using a procedure called “reconciliation” to pass health-care reform in the Senate. It’s controversial because reconciliation is not subject to a filibuster, which effectively means that it only takes 51 votes to pass a bill instead of 60. Because the Democrats are currently in power, the Republicans are complaining about the potential use of reconciliation. Back when the Republicans were in power, the Democrats complained about the potential use of reconciliation. And so on.

Here’s a bit from the Senate’s online history of itself, oft-quoted by opponents of reconciliation (whichever party that happens to be at the moment):

In selecting an appropriate visual symbol of the Senate in its founding period, one might consider an anchor, a fence, or a saucer. Writing to Thomas Jefferson, who had been out of the country during the Constitutional Convention, James Madison explained that the Constitution’s framers considered the Senate to be the great “anchor” of the government. To the framers themselves, Madison explained that the Senate would be a “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” that tended to influence the attitudes of the general public and members of the House of Representatives. George Washington is said to have told Jefferson that the framers had created the Senate to “cool” House legislation just as a saucer was used to cool hot tea.

In short, the Senate was meant to slow things down and cool things off, lest you drink hot legislation too quickly and scorch your throat.

The Senate was supposed to temper the democratic impulses of the House, to slow down the legislative process and make it more deliberative. But nowadays, whenever the majority party whines about the minority using the filibuster, it seems that they simply want to ram legislation through without careful deliberation–and that’s fine with me, if we’re talking about a bill I like. At the same time, whenever the minority party whines about the majority using reconciliation and subverting the deliberative nature of the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” it seems that they simply want to stop the bill–and that’s fine with me, if we’re talking about a bill I don’t like.

There is something about the modern Senate that certainly isn’t what the Framers intended, something that does, in my humble but probably correct opinion, damage the deliberative nature of the Senate. It’s the 17th Amendment, which requires that Senators be elected by the people of a state instead of by that state’s legislature. Usta be that Senators, because they represented the state governments, tried to protect the power and interests of the state governments from the intrusion of the national government. Not that the state governments were somehow more pure, noble or enlightened than federal legislators–there’s no reason to suspect that at all. But it probably did a better job of pitting egomaniacal power against egomaniacal power (in this case, state power against federal power), thereby slowing the process down. That right there’d be plenty of deliberation.

Deliberative or not, there’s absolutely no law or constitutional provision stopping a simple majority of Senators from changing the rules of that chamber, including the “obstructionist” filibuster and the “nuclear option” reconciliation rules. I would love to see a Senate majority simply say, “We know it’ll cost us the next election, but we’re getting rid of the filibuster and we’re going to pass laws with 51 votes instead of 60. We’re going to be a majority-rules chamber, just like the House is, just like the Senate once was.” There just aren’t any Senators, much less 51 of them, with the testicular fortitude to do it.
…

Nope, nothing interesting under here, either. I think I’ll have a good work-related topic soon, but I have to see how things play out this week.

10. When I leave my classroom at the end of each day, my desktop will be clean, organized, and ready for the next day’s work.

Let me be a little more specific: by “my desktop,” I mean the top of the moveable piece of furniture called “my desk.” This does not apply to the computer desk built into the wall that runs alongside my desk. I’ll do what I can to keep the computer desk cleaner and better organized, but I’m making no promises. The idea came from a former coworker whose desktop was always clean at the end of the day, except for the items he had to work on the next day. Eventually I’d like to get to the point where my desk is completely clean and clear at the end and beginning of every day, but let’s start with baby steps here.

Quick update on my other resolutions: so far I’ve kept #1 (drink less sweet stuff), #2 (exerbike), #5, #7, and #8. I’ll visit Chicagoland in July (#9), I’ve started working on a garlic chicken dish (#4), and I need to get crackin’ on the others.

Anyhow, since we’re up against Washington’s Birthday (Observed) tomorrow, various websites have various rankings of the Presidents. The lists of the greatest usually have Washington, Lincoln, or FDR at the top. The lists of the “most badass” usually have Teddy Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson at the top. The lists of the “most handsome” or “sexiest” usually have JFK, Pierce, or Jefferson at the top.

I find the rankings of the “most libertarian” Presidents to be most interesting, partly because they’re so much different from the typical list of greats. You probably won’t see Washington, either of the Roosevelts, Wilson, or Reagan ranked high on libertarian lists, but you will see such luminaries as Coolidge, Van Buren, and Cleveland near the top.

Lincoln, who would’ve turned 201 years old Friday if he hadn’t been shot or died from anything else, is typically ranked low on the libertarian lists. For instance, “davidbier” listed Lincoln as the worst President of them all, with the following rationale:

Caused the Civil War, Burned the South, Started the First Draft Ever, Huge Protection Tariffs, Income Tax, Corporate Welfare, Cotton Trade Takeover, Huge Deficits, US Bank/Ended the Gold Standard with the Greenback, Censorship of the Press, Imprisonment/Deportation of Political Opponents, Deported African-Americas to Liberia

On another website, Xavier Cromartie listed Lincoln second-worst based on a point system:

Good: Did not finish second term.
Bad: Started catastrophic war (-10) in order to prevent freedom to secede (-10), murdered 350,000 Americans (-10), white supremacist who did not care about slaves and tried to deport all blacks to Liberia (-9), destroyed 10th Amendment (-9), suspended habeas corpus (-9), Union blockade (-5), imprisoned 15,000 political opponents without a trial (-9), shut down newspapers (-8), restricted firearm ownership (-8), rigged elections (-4), started draft (-10) and murdered its protesters (-10), divided Virginia for electoral advantage (-6), ordered destruction (-9), plundering (-9), rape (-9), and murder (-10) of Southern civilian towns,^[273] used European mercenaries (-6),^[274] Chicago machine “pay to play” politician (-2),^[275]nationalized railroads (-7), anti-capitalist (mercantilist) policies:Morrill Tariff (-7), National Banking Act (-9), greenbacks (-9), and deficits (-7), genocidal policy toward Sioux (-10),^[276] Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act (-3), created temporary income tax in order to fund Civil War (-9),^[277] made medicine contraband during war (-10),^[278] attempted assassination of Jefferson Davis (Dahlgren Affair) (-10),^[279] used water torture on Northern civilians (-9),^[280] cotton industry takeover/cronyism (-9).^[281]
Score: -261

[NOTE: Lincoln's -261 was better only than George W. Bush's -332.]

I get why these guys would rank Lincoln so low; he expanded federal power far beyond anything yet seen. Heck, I might even agree with their rankings, as awful as they made Lincoln seem, but for one minor detail. Do you notice anything missing from both descriptions of Lincoln’s administration? Anything that might normally jump out at you, anything that might normally be considered his greatest accomplishment, anything that might normally be considered one of the biggest steps towards liberty in American history?

If you guessed “freeing the slaves,” good for you. At least you remember that much from history class. Cromartie, in spite of all the internet research indicated by his citations, seems to have missed it.

One might think that these two bloggers are racist and therefore they don’t care about freeing the slaves, but that certainly isn’t the case. For instance, davidbier credits Fillmore with abolishing the slave trade in D.C., criticizes Washington for signing the first Fugitive Slave Act, and applauds Grant for supporting black voting rights and promoting the passage of the 15th Amendment. Cromartie gives Grant 4 points for supporting equal rights for blacks, gives Jefferson 7 points for banning slavery in the Northwest Territory (before he was President), and deducts 2 points from Buchanan for supporting the Dred Scott decision. Both bloggers even criticized Lincoln for attempting to deport slaves to Liberia. These bloggers aren’t racist.

It is true that the Lincoln-as-Great-Emancipator meme has many flaws–Lincoln was a bit racist; he once made a joke about hanging an abolitionist; he initially opposed black suffrage; he was willing to preserve the Union without freeing any slaves; he supported the “Corwin Amendment,” which would have protected slavery from Congressional interference; he initially opposed the Confiscation Acts; his Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply throughout the United States; he wasn’t alive when the 13th Amendment was passed; blacks were denied equal rights for a century after abolition; et cetera.

But I think these two bloggers have missed the forest for the trees. Shouldn’t davidbier at least mention that Lincoln vaguely-kinda-sorta had something to do with freeing four million slaves? Shouldn’t Cromartie give the man at least one point, no matter how many reservations he has?

Simply put, if John Wilkes Booth blamed Lincoln for freeing the slaves and seeking voting rights for blacks, shouldn’t davidbier and Cromartie–lovers of liberty that they are–give him some credit for it?

…

A quick internet search reveals that today, the Iraqi Communist Party celebrates “Communist Martyr’s Day.” I will celebrate with them, though probably not for the same reason.

You have a dry sponge in the sink. You have a cup of water. If you dump the water on the sponge all at once, then the sponge will only get a little bit wet because a lot of the water is going to splash right off the sponge and down the sink. It’s wasted. Like most cramming.

But if you very slowly pour the water onto the sponge, the sponge will absorb the water more efficiently, there’ll be minimal splashing, and you stand a better chance of getting the entire cup of water into the sponge. It’s efficient. It works. Like studying the way I said to in the first place. The end.

…

It’s two weeks late, but the best thing about Brett Fav-ruh’s humiliating defeat in the NFC Championship is the fact that he still hasn’t won a Super Bowl without Jim McMahon on his team. In fact, when the Packers went to the White House that year, McMahon wore his #9 Bears jersey–which hopefully pissed off as many of the Packers and their fans as possible–because the 1985 Bears never got to visit the White House.

Why not, you might ask? According to noted historian Bob Swerski, it was feared that having the 1985 Bears and President Reagan within 100 yards of each other would have generated so much testosterone-laden awesomeness that the Soviet early-detection systems would have read it as an all-out attack, and in “retaliation” they would have launched all their ICBMs at us. Swerski notes that even though either Reagan or a drunk and blindfolded mini-Ditka would have easily swiped all the Soviet nukes out of the sky, policy was policy.

…

I don’t yet care who wins this Super Bowl, but that might change during the game. I just want to see a ridiculously high-scoring game that’s won an a safety in overtime. 54-52.

Here’s President Obama on the stimulus, from his 2010 State of the Union Address:

The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That’s right -– the Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus bill. Economists on the left and the right say this bill has helped save jobs and avert disaster. But you don’t have to take their word for it. Talk to the small business in Phoenix that will triple its workforce because of the Recovery Act. Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created. [Emphasis added.]

Why add the emphasis?

Once upon a time, a long time ago, a French legislator and economist named Frédéric Bastiat wrote a book called That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen. In it he describes the “broken window fallacy,” which goes something like this:

The town shopkeeper’s son breaks a window at the shop. The shopkeeper pays ten bucks to a glazier to fix it. The glazier now has ten bucks that he wants to spend on a shirt. So he buys a ten dollar shirt form a haberdasher. Now the haberdasher has ten bucks he wants to spend on food. And so on and so forth. All kinds of economic activity was triggered by a little boy breaking some glass, which turns out to have been a good thing for the town.

This fallacy is very well known in economics circles. The problem lies in forgetting that if the window hadn’t been broken, the shopkeeper would’ve had an intact window and ten dollars to spend as he pleased. Whatever economic activity might follow the breaking of the window (which Bastiat called “the seen”), the value is ten dollars lower than that of the economic activity that would have occurred if the window hadn’t been broken (which Bastiat called “the unseen”).

To generalize, the broken window fallacy is the failure to recognize that there is a cost to diverting resources away from their most productive and/or desired uses.

(There is a far more rock-solid defense of Bastiat’s argument, but I’m trying to keep this blog-length. For a longer explanation, here’s a Wikipedia entry, and Bastiat’s book is linked above. For an even better understanding of why Bastiat’s argument holds, take a really, really good econ course.)

Politicians often commit a form of the broken window fallacy when they claim that their tax-funded projects and programs are good for the economy, but they ignore the costs of those programs. I don’t mean the dollar costs of those programs, I mean the opportunity costs of those programs–how would people have spent their money if it hadn’t been taxed away? That forgone spending is the true cost of any tax-funded project or program.

So, good for that Philadelphian window manufacturer whose business has picked up due to the stimulus. But those stimulus dollars came from somewhere, and one way or another the taxpayers are picking up the cost. Who knows how, given the choice, they would have spent their money? I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t be making windows in Philly.

This is not to suggest that President Obama is unique in making this mistake. He isn’t–he just happens to be the one who committed the broken window fallacy by actually referring to a window manufacturer. And with a post-stimulus unemployment rate higher than the President’s budgeteers predicted in a worst-case, non-stimulus scenario, one must wonder if taxpayers would spend their money more efficiently and productively on their own.

…

I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t catch the irony the first time I heard the speech.

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