And I think that in addition to our clamoring today for jobs and a return to prosperity, mine and succeeding generations have continued the yearning for a good national story. Now we have the makings of the sort of compelling story we lacked before. The only problem, as I shall conclude, is that sometimes stories can be too satisfying, too soon.

First let’s rid ourselves of the idea that a story is essentially fiction. After all, the words “history” and “story” share the same root. This is not to say that stories and history are equally non-fictional- they may be equally fictional. Their truth or falsity is beside the point. We eagerly adopt stories of either kind to underwrite our lives.

Hitler is relevant to this discussion, as he was the most strident and successful storyteller of the generations just before mine. He told different stories to different people, and everyone believed him. He told Germans that Jews and the rest of the world generally had conspired to destroy the destiny of the German people. This story was a bestseller, so to speak. Great swaths of German society devoured it as precious mental nourishment, because it made them feel good, made them feel part of something important and justified, as an effective story does. Then he told the rest of the world that he was a ferocious megalomaniac, poised to take over and punish all states and societies that were not in his thrall. That story too was a great hit, in the sense that people followed it and adopted it as their story.

The stories told by Roosevelt and Churchill were predicated on Hitler’s story: We were the defenders against Hitler, the homicidal maniac. Of course Hitler was a homicidal maniac, but as I say my use of “story” denotes neither fiction nor non-fiction. It was Hitler’s story telling capability that put him on the map. Our mental wards are full of crazed megalomaniacs whose stories are listened to by no one but bored staff. Hitler might well have been one of these isolated souls, but as a powerful storyteller, his story became, well, “real.”

Then what was wrong with post-war America’s story? Looking back I see a few things: the dreadful Hitler-enhanced war story that our parents lived, with its heroism and triumph, was not available for us to identify with, partly because it had not happened on our soil, and partly because we were so definitively post-war. Nor could we derive self-esteem from the earlier Depression, with its tales of injustice and endurance, awash as we were in surplus. We had for our coming of age rituals- not recognition of triumph over adversity- but endless exhortations conveyed via the new wonder, TV, to spend our parents’ money on keys to popularity like Brylceem (a little dab ‘ll do ‘ya!). We were just consumers of hair grease always on the look out for new products. I think I sensed even then the potential for Tom Brokaw to slander my entire generation as something less than “great.”

When we entered the hormone driven mania of adolescence we had no state sanctioned release- no righteous cause leading to carnal and moral fulfillment. Drugs like marijuana that had been confined to marginalized Hispanics and Blacks were accepted by middle-class whites to assuage our stifled impulses, and the government, though it benefited from the apolitical nature of drug mediated visions of flower-power, cleverly kept the drugs illegal to engender a sense of resistance to authority, of a sort of war which drug users could think they were part of, and this of course became, on the government’s side, the equally phony “War on Drugs.” (For contrast check out George Lucas’ masterpiece, THX 1138, in which the the central crime of a future society is “drug evasion.”)

Of course the government detected, as governments do, the people’s unsettled need for traditional war, and it had a military establishment to keep busy, so it (along with other governments facing the same problem) gave us a series of wars. The Korean War was the first, but the Boomers were too young to understand it (I remember asking my dad if the war took place at the radio station, since it seemed to be emanating from there). Too bad, because, since it involved a Chinese invasion of Korea, there was a credible foe.

Not so the Vietnam War. The Chinese, conniving even then to wreck our stories, did not invade Vietnam, leaving us with a highly questionable story about bombarding a peasant nation that posed no obvious threat to us. I marched carrying signs proclaiming many lofty ideals, but looking back my sign should simply have read, “Give us a good story!”

The rest is, well, history. The Bay of Pigs? No one will claim that was a good story. I would make an exception for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it was over so fast, with no real action, and whatever heroism was involved reflected well only on distant, mostly older leaders.

Our various involvements in the Gulf might have given us fulfilling stories had they been better told, particularly the only potentially effective one, involving Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, with its story potential of a heroic U.S. response to the plight of dispossessed Kuwaitis taking refuge in European night clubs, but, as in most of our mid-east adventures, we have ruined the narrative with our inability to acknowledge the importance of oil, so obvious a motivator for involvement that leaving it out sent the Gulf war stories into hopeless spirals of cognitive dissonance.

Of course things changed with 9/11, a completely compelling and defining story- the first since World War II. The timing of this story was so historically distinctive (coming at the end of the Cold War) that its appearance spawned a world of conspiracy theories. I’m going to stay away from these, however, as they do not pertain to my thesis, that people need stories. Whether those stories are essentially true or develop in a shadow land where truth and fiction intertwine, I will leave for a time when the public has access to the relevant information (I’m not holding my breath).

I simply point out that since 2001 we have been run by the story of 9/11. It is now our central myth. It has reconfirmed our belief in the military as the essential element of the American character, and it has unified us as a coherent nation.

Of course, stories need updating, and even 9/11 started to flag. Just imagine that only a few short weeks ago people in airports were complaining about having to stand in line to take off their shoes and present facsimiles of their naked torsos to federal agents. More ominous still, much attention was being paid to the fact that the American public school system is collapsing in insolvency, along with the dream of owning a home.

All that kvetching has faded now, however, because we’ve killed Osama! Who could have guessed that the next chapter of the story would be so compelling? I’ve quite forgotten that the high school from which my youngest son is graduating in June is laying off a third of its teachers. Really, who cares? Osama is dead!

Let me hasten to emphasize that I’m not knocking the role of stories in human society. We need stories, whether personal or communal, simply because we need to be part of a meaningful scenario, a plot, with cause and effect, so that we will be more than just respiring blobs of protoplasm. I am pro-story.

We ought to be aware, though, that the clever people who generate our stories tend to have agendas of their own.

And maybe we should take a second look at certain elements of this latest chapter, in particular those which define the summary execution of bin Laden as a victory requiring overt self-congratulation and sustained celebration. Such reactions are premature. The losers in this story are numerous and well-funded- they did not die with bin Laden, nor did their cause. When Hitler was dead, his movement was dead with him; we had really won. That was a time for sustained celebration. The end of bin Laden is not the end of a war, but the beginning. The only confirmed beneficiary so far is Obama’s chance for a second term.

And on that note, I offer a scary question: What will it take to make voters forget that America’s public schools collapsed on Obama’s watch? There are almost two years to go until the next presidential election, and the warm glow of Osama bin Laden’s death will not last that long.

—————————————–
Doug Lasken is a Los Angeles high school English teacher and debate coach. Write to him through his blog at http://laskenlog.blogspot.com/

These days I don’t talk to as many kids as I used to, but the discourse is surprisingly similar. Consider, for instance, the reply of a California Democrat to this question: “What do you think state money should be spent on?” You’ll get a simple answer: “It should be spent on services for society’s most needy: children, the indigent,” etc. That’s an answer a child could understand. And most children, hearing such a statement, would think, “Well, why would anyone not be a Democrat? We should help children and poor people.”

Thus partisanship, the adherence to one party over another, is born. The problem, of course, is that adult political life is not so simple. To put it bluntly, Democrats don’t particularly care about children and poor people. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Take, for instance, the question of President Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) grant, which, we’re told, is supposed to help children. In California, as in the rest of the nation, almost all office-holding or appointed Democrats are for it, while many Republicans are against it. What I am arguing here is that, while this is a partisan struggle, it is not about whether or not we should help children.

To begin with, RTTT applicants must commit to adopting new federal “Common Core” academic standards (CCS). The reason given is that many states have poor standards. But California, in the estimate of virtually everyone who has studied its standards, is not in that category. Nonetheless, the Schwarzenegger appointed state school board approved paying, according to the non-profit group EdSource, up to $1.6 billion to cover the costs dropping our standards and adopting the CCS, and the board’s new members, appointed by Democratic governor Jerry Brown, are not perturbed at the prospect. Meanwhile our RTTT application was rejected and we will receive no federal money, so we will be paying the $1.6 billion with state funds, increasing by that amount our $25 billion deficit.

So Democrats do want to spend money. But are they spending it on children? The money will go to test writing companies, textbook publishers and professional development pundits. Does that sound like children? Do you hear the words “student,” “teacher,” or “school” in that description?

But our partisan state, our Democratic state under Governor Brown and his new appointees to the state board is proceeding with CCS adoption because, well, because if you’re a Democrat you believe in spending money.

When last I wrote for Liberty Maven, the struggle over RTTT and CCS was under the radar, but now that states across the nation are at last dealing with their huge deficits there is a lot of noise. Washington, Maine, Massachusetts and others have been addressing CCS for several weeks, with heated debates occurring in their state houses, and Rand Paul is asking the right questions in Congress. What is happening in our Democratic state of California? That depends on where you look. If you look at online forums, whether Democrat or Republican, you’ll see scores of outraged teachers, parents and education researchers asking where the adoption money is supposed to come from, and what good it will do to spend it on new standards. But if you look at Sacramento, you’ll see partisanship in action: a lockstep march towards embracing CCS. No one anywhere is questioning the wisdom of adoption, or even admitting that we are not yet committed to it. Per education writer Tom Chorneau, the newly-established state advisory panel tasked with “providing professional development to teachers on the Common Core changes” had its first meeting in late February, and everyone discussed the done deal of adoption in total harmony.

This is great news for the recipients of the anticipated windfall. If you look at the textbook companies’ websites you’ll see glowing reports on their CCS compliance. Here’s what major publisher Pearson has to say on its home page, (http://commoncore.pearsoned.com/): “Only Pearson offers complete and cohesive support to implement the new Common Core State Standards and provide the easiest possible transition.” Note: the last realignment of textbooks for newly adopted California standards cost $1 billion over four years (see the Schiff-Bustamante bill, 1998).

“Democrat” is getting a little harder to define, isn’t it? We’ve gone from spending money on those in need to spending money on those in greed.

But it gets worse. Even normally impartial and informative education commentator John Fensterwald, in a recent exchange with me in his online forum, Thoughts on Public Education, brought partisanship into a new Alice and Wonderland dimension:

Me: Every research institute from Fordham to Pioneer has found that the current CA standards are among the best in the nation and are in no need of replacement.

John: Doug: “Every research institute from Fordham to Pioneer” is like saying “every politician from Ron Paul to Sarah Palin.”

As a consultant for both Fordham and Pioneer during their assessments last summer of state standards in relation to CCS, it was news to me that a positive evaluation of California’s standards denotes any kind of politics at all. I’m still working on John’s meaning. I think it’s something like, “We won, so our side gets the loot.”

Let’s tell it like it is: Democrats want to spend money, yes, on their buddies. Now that’s something any child can understand.

—————————————

Doug Lasken is a retired LA Unified teacher, freelancer and consultant. Write him at doug.lasken@gmail.com

Some are saying it was a disaster for Rand Paul. I don’t see it that way. What do you think? Check out the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWOEASzVnY

The Federal State has no constitutional authority for involvement in education. This alone should be sufficient reason to abolish the Department of Education and all federal education spending. But there are also two other powerful reasons . . .

* Federal education programs don’t work. Instead, they actually cause harm.
* The Federal State is headed toward bankruptcy and needs to cut spending.

Statist schools don’t work because they have no incentive to perform adequately. Unlike businesses in the Voluntary Sector of the economy, Statist schools can’t be fired or replaced by the people they supposedly serve.

This is the nature of Statism. It constantly compels the masters (citizens) to serve the servants (politicians and bureaucrats). As a result . . .

You’re now spending more than twice as much for the Feds to meddle with education as taxpayers did in the 1970′s, but student performance hasn’t improved.

Instead, costs have soared. For instance . . .

College tuition has increased at twice the rate of inflation. Federal grants and guaranteed loans that were supposed to make education more affordable, have actually increased costs by enabling colleges to raise their prices. The result is that students are now tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they graduate.

This is par for the course for Statist programs. Consider just two other examples of this phenomenon . . .

* Federal politicians create lots of schemes. Take Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These boondoggles were intended to make housing more affordable. The result was housing prices that skyrocketed, then burst, leaving millions of people poorer, and even bankrupt.
* Other federal schemes like Medicare and Medicaid were supposed to make sick-care more affordable too, but here again the costs have risen far faster than the rate of inflation.

The same thing has happened with education.

We can derive a principle from this . . .

Every time the politicians promise they can make something cheaper by spending more, that “something” becomes more expensive, not less, and we have to carry more debt and pay more taxes on top of it.

This makes the comparison between the Coercive State and the Voluntary Sector very stark.

The Voluntary Sector constantly does more with less, while the Coercive State constantly does less with more. The incentives dictate that it must be this way . . .

* The Coercive State rewards itself for failure — the worse schools perform the more money the politicians spend on them. This gives Statist institutions an incentive for INcompetence.
* But businesses and institutions in the Voluntary Sector have to perform well, or consumers reject them. This gives the Voluntary Sector a powerful bias towards competence.

The conclusion we should draw from this is equally stark . . .

The education of children is too important to be trusted to politicians and bureaucrats.

We should abolish all federal involvement in schooling.

The Constitution got it right when it failed to authorize a federal role for education. Schools should be managed at the local level, NOT from the top down. Better yet, schools should work for parents, NOT for teachers unions and the local Statist school board. We need consumer centered education, just like we need consumer centered sick-care.

If you agree, send Congress a letter telling them to abolish all federal education spending. You can use the new campaign we’ve created for this purpose in our Educate the Powerful System.

I included the following points in the personal comments section of my letter to Congress . . .

There is no Constitutional authority for federal involvement in education.

We’re now spending more than twice as much for federal intervention in education as taxpayers did in the 1970′s, but student performance hasn’t improved. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12734

College tuition has increased at twice the rate of inflation. Federal grants and guaranteed loans were supposed to make education more affordable. Instead, they’ve enabled colleges to raise their prices. The result is that students are now tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they graduate. http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml

The Constitution got it right when it failed to authorize a federal role for education. Schools should be managed at the local level, NOT from the top down.

Abolishing all federal education spending would cost us nothing and gain us much. It would bring us in compliance with the Constitution, restore a certain amount of local control to education, and save us about $120 billion a year. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12734

END LETTER

You can help generate thousands of letters to Congress.

If you know others who feel the same way you do about federal intervention in education, or might benefit from the arguments made here, please forward this message to them.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

P.S. ATTENTION Phoenix area DC Downsizers. There’s a major Tea Party convention happening from Friday, February 25 at Noon, until Sunday, February 27 at 3 PM. DC Downsizer, Will Wohler is organizing an outreach booth at the event where he will be signing up more DC Downsizers. If you’re available to volunteer at the booth, please contact Will directly at  VolunteerAZ@DownsizeDC.org

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That’s the estimated cost of replacing the California education standards with President Obama’s Common Core Standards (CCS). The Schwarzenegger appointed State Board of Education voted last summer to make the switch in pursuit of Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) education grant. Our RTTT application was rejected and we will not receive a dime of the grant, but as all eyes are focused on California’s dire budget options, we are still blithely planning to spend $1.6 billion of state money on testing companies, publishers, and school staff training, for no apparent reason.

To all appearances the Governor has what it takes to tackle such a gravy train. His speech made reference to his proposal to reduce the deficit through reversion of Community Redevelopment Agency funds, derived from property taxes, to their original uses, e.g. support of schools, police and fire fighting. Brown’s stand is brave, considering the clout of CRA defenders, headed by major players like L.A.’s mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a critic of excessive public sector wages and benefits who is apparently unperturbed that CRA secretaries make $80,000 a year. The question then becomes: Can Brown face-off against the clout of the education service industries, as he has with those who feed off the CRA?

Here’s the history: RTTT, under the management of Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, dominated education news last year primarily because of its $4 billion payload, to be divided between states that complied with its requirements. These were a motley assortment, the most well known being that school districts had to develop new teacher evaluation methods that included use of student test scores, and states had to accept national “Common Core Standards” (CCS) instead of those already in place. In addition, a state’s teachers unions were expected to support the package.

As a consultant for several education research institutes, including Fordham and Pioneer, I was involved in studying the wisdom of replacing individual state standards with one set of national standards. Towards that end I did a study of all fifty states’ standards in the area of language arts. As one might expect, some were quite good and seemed in no great need of replacement, and some were rather shabby. I, and virtually everyone involved in this work, considered California’s standards to be in the “no need to replace” category, first because they are among the best in the nation, and second because replacing them would be very expensive.

How expensive? There are a variety of estimates, but they have in common that they come to many millions of dollars. Consider that the Schiff-Bustamante bill passed in California in 1998 allocated $1 billion over four years to pay for textbooks aligned with the then new California standards, in addition to the $70 million per year already allocated for textbooks. Grim projections come as well from the nonprofit group EdSource, which estimates that adopting the CCS will incur costs of $800 million for new curriculum frameworks, $765 million for training teachers and $20 million for training principals, plus assorted minor costs, coming to a total of $1.6 billion.

In addition to questions of cost, the CCS exist in draft form only, and one would think a decision as important as replacing a state’s standards would require a finalized replacement. Regarding the draft, the language arts section is decent enough, but virtually all of my colleagues and I see no compelling improvement over the current California standards.

For reasons we can only surmise, however, the California State Board of Education voted to discard our standards and adopt the draft CCS. The primary argument in support of the vote was the promise of California’s slice of the RTTT money, estimated at about $400 million, though little of that money would have been dedicated to CCS adoption costs. Amazingly, the State Board did not think it important to ask how an amount significantly below $400 million could cover an expense of $1.6 billion.

Sadly, that is not the end of the tale. Although the state attempted to comply with all RTTT requirements, including dropping a state law that forbade the use of test scores in teacher evaluations, the state’s teachers unions did not buy into the RTTT process, and presumably for that reason California’s RTTT application was rejected (the Department of Education does not give reasons for turning down RTTT applications). We will, therefore, receive no federal money to cover the expense of replacing our standards.

In his speech, the Governor chided his critics for “not putting forward even one alternative idea for lowering the deficit.” Well, here’s one: The Governor should ask his new appointees on the state board to keep our world-class standards and save $1.6 billion.

—————————-
Doug Lasken is a retired Los Angeles Unified teacher, freelancer and consultant. Write to him at doug.lasken@gmail.com

It gets worse.

It’s your property that’s actually charged with a crime, and your property is considered guilty until proven innocent. This makes it virtually impossible for you to regain your possessions once they’re seized.

But it gets even worse . . .

This scheme of legalized theft actually fosters additional corruption, as demonstrated in the sample letter below. Please use the new evidence we provide to send Congress another letter arguing that . . .

Civil asset forfeiture laws should be made illegal.

You can send your letter using our Educate the Powerful System:

You may borrow from or copy this sample letter . . .

Civil asset forfeiture corrupts our police. It turns cops into robbers.

Civil asset forfeiture is at the heart of government lawlessness.

* It disregards the Bill of Rights.
* It confiscates property from innocent people.

The federal government compounds the problem by cutting-in local law enforcement. They’ve turned the Drug War into a referral program! In a process known as “equitable sharing,” local law enforcement can work with the federal government in pursuit of criminals, and keep as much as 80% of the booty. http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3117&Itemid=165

And where does this money go?

* In Texas, a district attorney has been indicted for using $200,000 of forfeiture funds to line his own pockets and pay for trips to casinos http://www.examiner.com/headlines-in-san-antonio/former-texas-county-district-attorney-indicted-for-misusing-200-000-for-extra-pay-and-casino-trips

* In Indiana, where the law requires forfeiture loot to be spent on public education, only one county is complying with the law. In the other counties, law enforcement departments are keeping almost all the money, and the Attorney General doesn’t seem to care! http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/18/indianas-attorney-general-on-a

Are you surprised by this corruption? You shouldn’t be.

If confiscating property is an institutional mission, one must worry about the people such a group will employ to carry out that mission. If a government tells its employees that they must steal to meet their budgets – that is, engage in asset forfeiture – then some will rationalize that stealing is okay.

And they’ll steal from their employer, too.

The Institute for Justice has a tantalizing list of how some local posses have spent the loot. http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3117&Itemid=165

Because Congress encourages asset forfeiture, I must ask you: “What about the 5th and 14th Amendments? In other words, what about ‘due process of law?’”

Civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional. Therefore, I DEMAND that you . . .

. . . end all civil asset forfeiture programs

When you abolish asset forfeiture, you will also reduce government corruption. Better yet, you will send a message to the people that the police really are there to serve and protect — not to steal.

END LETTER

You can send your message through DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

If you know friends who would be as outraged at civil asset forfeiture as we are, please forward them this message and tell them on Facebook.

Thank you for helping grow the Downsize DC Army.

Sincerely,
Jim Babka
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

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It got worse later in the day when I was reading an article about California Governor Schwarzenegger’s attempts to find the state ways to save money. The Governor was quoted as saying, “We literally have to take the ladder from the tree and shake the whole tree.” My response: “Really, you’re going to literally shake a tree?” Wouldn’t a normal person have wondered how we could balance the books without impacting the needy? Is it really necessary to put Arnold back in the 8th grade for a lesson on the difference between metaphorical and literal?

Here’s the horror of it: “Yes,” I think, “he should be taught the difference.” No kidding, a little creature within me believes someone should advise Arnold about his violations of figurative speech. “That settles it!” you say, “English teachers are like cops who give you a ticket for being the third car in the intersection to turn left while five people just ran a red light with impunity. They’re like robots turned loose on society to keep anyone from saying, ‘She went to the mall with my friend and I.’”

But I protest back that it’s a quality-of-life issue. There are few things more grating on the ears than “I” used as an object. It’s right up there with leaf-blowers. Really, English teachers should be protected from the effects of thoughtless speech. Perhaps disability coverage could be extended to include stress caused by extended exposure to bad usage. Who knows what damage has been done to my nerves over the years I’ve endured “I could care less,” knowing that the speaker means the opposite, that he or she could in fact NOT care less. Or the sleepless nights I suffered knowing that the use of “like” as a replacement for “said” and “all” as a replacement for “emphatically,” as in, “She’s all like ‘I’m not going,’ and I’m all like ‘Yes you are!’” had crept up from the rebellious realms of teenage girl-speak to the very boardrooms and press conferences of the nation! How fruitless were my years spent exhorting America’s youth to communicate clearly and logically! I need the state to cover the skyrocketing prescription costs of sedatives to help me face the demons that mock me in the night. Yes, they mock me, calling out, “Mr. Lasken, behold, if ‘like’ is now synonymous with ‘said,’ and everyone understands it, then your mandate that speech be meaningful has been obeyed! You protest for naught.” And it does not end there. These studious demons torment me with knowledge. “Consider,” they cajole, “that ‘good-bye’ used to be ‘God be with you,’ and you, would-be defender of the faith, would have done your darnedest to have halted that natural progression. See and be doomed! Ha-haaaaaa!”

Silence, demons! I’ll hear no more! Don’t you see? It’s continuity I crave, not obstruction. U can change the language all u want, as long as ur aware what’s behind ur usage. Is that 2 much 2 ask?

Please excuse me; sometimes I get a bit nonplussed. Of course I’m using “nonplussed” in the original sense of “surprised and confused,” not the American corruption that substituted the opposite meaning. Yes, thank you, I feel much better now.

Doug Lasken is a retired Los Angeles Unified teacher, freelancer and UCLA Writing Project Fellow who currently consults for The Fordham Institute on the Common Core national English standards. Write to him at doug.lasken@gmail.com

Flash forward several decades from these grand government schemes and these proclamations seem dubious at best. The average cost of attendance at a public university has increased from $950 per year in 1965 to $2,165 in 1980 to $11,034 in 2007 – to say that the federal loan program has failed to make college a more attainable goal for lower-class families would be an understatement. This rising cost spiral has been discussed at length elsewhere, however; the other issues inherent in the federal micromanagement of education are less often mentioned and are perhaps of more importance in our society.

For starters, the massive “free” public education system, combined with the plethora of after-school programs provided by the government, remove parental responsibility and the familial structure of our society. Rather than encouraging parents to be actively involved in the education of their children – probably the most important aspect of raising a child – subsidized government schooling encourages parents to send their kids to a building where they will be taken care of (and, naturally, shielded from “offensive” viewpoints or material). For families who lack the funds or resources to generate active involvement with their children in other ways, such as athletics or the arts, the destruction of this intimacy in education is ultimately damaging to the very families that public schooling claims to help. Combine this with the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies, which has substantially increased the number of dual-income families in America, and the traditional American family is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Additionally, mandated national standards such as the unconstitutional No Child Left Behind program started under George W. Bush have transformed America’s education system from one that focuses on the student to one that focuses on the school districts, teachers, and principals. While each student’s needs are different, the Department of Education’s one-size-fits-all testing forces teachers to “teach to the test,” discouraging creativity and intellectual genius in young people who might have prospered by receiving the information differently. Yet even if one were to consider the education of a state or region as a whole, standardized education simply makes no sense. A student in West Virginia, for example, might need to learn about the mining industry to open up employment opportunities above basic labor; however, in a state like Delaware, which has no mining industry, this would be nonsensical. Similarly, a student in Delaware might need to learn about the food processing industry, while this would prove relatively useless for the West Virginian. A student in a major metropolitan area may not need any such information, but could benefit from a more thorough curriculum in economics or business.

Finally, there is the obvious moral hazard of allowing an authoritatve government the power of educating its own citizens. Rather than presenting the objective truth, many textbooks used in public schools today blatantly mislead its impressionable students with propaganda or half-truths that support the government’s case (and, thus, its own security). For example, did you know that the Federal Reserve has essential purposes and functions that “provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system?” Perhaps you’d be absolutely stunned to learn that such a textbook was “revised by staff members of the Federal Reserve Board.” The conflict of interest is obvious.

Another common fallacy peddled by the historical revisionists is that the free-market capitalists of the early 20th century laid the groundwork for, and caused, the Great Depression. In Lawrence W. Reed’s essay, Great Myths of the Great Depression, he characterizes it this way:

“Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the 20th century’s greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America’s economic recovery…

…But those who propagate this version of history might just as well top off their remarks by saying, “And Goldilocks found her way out of the forest, Dorothy made it from Oz back to Kansas, and Little Red Riding Hood won the New York State Lottery.” The popular account of the Depression as outlined above belongs in a book of fairy tales and not in a serious discussion of economic history.”

It only makes sense that the government would want to protect its own interests in the areas of political science or economics: the justifications for the overreaching programs of the state are always along the lines of “helping the poor” or “keeping inflation low” or “caring for the sick.” How would the state ever expand its power if its citizens were to learn that the market can take care of its sick, provide sound money, and advance the prosperity of the entire society?

Of course, we can only hope that the fate of our federal education program does not follow the lead of one of the clearest historic examples of this conflict of interest: Nazi Germany.

The latest administration push is to promote merit pay for public school teachers rather than the guaranteed pay scales achieved by teachers unions. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is using the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” funds as incentive for “progress towards” merit pay.

It is at this point that the reader will be wondering whether I’m a pro-union stooge defending the status quo or a “change agent” who sees how merit pay works in the private sector to enhance performance, and wants to extend that benefit to teaching.

Sorry to disappoint: I’m not really in either camp. I write here to suggest only that the Obama administration, and the states reacting to its efforts, are not promoting a policy on teacher merit pay, but merely broaching the subject, or, if you will, making noise. In pursuance of the Race to the Top funds, the California state legislature and Governor Schwarzenneger have eliminated a law that forbade use of student test scores in evaluating teachers. That’s the easy part.

Merit pay for teachers is an idea worth considering, but it will be complicated, both in political venues and in the field, to carry out. If any level of government were really interested in implementing merit pay, here’s what we’d be reading in the newspapers coverage of the policy development:

1. Discussion of how to determine “merit” for teachers. In California the only objective measure available is the California Standards Test (CST), given each year in the spring to grades 2 through 11. There is no test in September to establish a baseline. The “value added” approach is a rational first step in achieving a baseline. It is used in Texas, Chicago, and some southern states. Value added uses the scores of the three previous years as the baseline. This approach may be the way to go in California, but it would not work as we are currently structured. Kindergarten, first grade and high school seniors do not take the CST. How will teachers of these grades be evaluated? Even if primary were evaluated, what would the baseline be? Where is the discussion?

2.Even if all grade levels were tested, how do we factor student transiency into the baseline? Transiency is a major statistical factor. In LA Unified, thousands of students transfer every year in and out of schools. There are migrant children who follow their parents’ seasonal work, children going in and out of home schooling, children moving to California from states whose standardized testing is structured differently from ours. How do we derive their baseline? Where is the discussion?

3. How do we factor in the impact various types of students have on measures of teacher performance, and how can we keep a collegial environment among faculties? Teachers already tend to compete for the highest scoring students, but evaluating teachers with student scores poses a counter-intuitive problem: the highest scoring students have less room to go up. It’s easier to show improvement from lower scoring students. How do we factor in those differences? How do we keep teachers from fighting over which students will be most likely to improve? Might we want to consider awarding merit pay to an entire school that has used peer assistance for struggling teachers and smart management to achieve academic growth? This might work better than trusting a bureaucrat in Sacramento to figure things out. But where is the discussion?

Bertrand Russell noted that society is motivated by strife, not discussion. It’s more fun for the villagers to march with flaming torches demanding that the teachers be held accountable, than to have rational discussions of how to hold them accountable. My own problem with the flaming torches approach is that it gets government off the hook for actually figuring out policy. I say, let’s settle down and get some real policy.

Doug Lasken is a retired LAUSD teacher and freelancer. Write him at doug.lasken@gmail.com
This article first appeared in the L.A. Daily News, 10/25/09

by John Browne – Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital

Over the past two years, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have dispersed trillions of public dollars, run up enormous deficits, and kept interest rates at zero. In just about any economic textbook, this combination of policies would be described as the perfect recipe for inflation. Yet, with the exception of the usual increases in health care and education, prices by and large are not rising. Many have concluded that our economic leadership has simply outsmarted the textbooks.

The benign CPI figures are serving as a rallying point behind which the financial talking-heads are forming a parade of optimism. The low CPI is their ‘proof’ that inflation is not a pressing concern. This view is two dimensional.

Inflation is classically described simply as an increase in the money supply. Although these changes will impact price levels, it doesn’t necessarily follow that prices will rise when inflation is high. Instead, inflation may merely result in stable prices at a time when prices would otherwise be falling.

In the popular mentality, however, inflation is simply defined as prices rising. After decades of steadily rising prices, people seem to have forgotten that prices sometimes fall. In light of the bursting of a number of record-breaking, government-fueled asset bubbles, prices should be declining across the board (as they did in the Great Depression). The fact that prices are stable, or have even rallied in some sectors, indicates that inflation is already spreading across the economy.

After falling to just 6,547 in the months after the crash, the Dow has rallied past the 10,000 mark. This should strike even novice investors as unjustified. Jobs are still being lost, a massive healthcare entitlement and carbon tax are winding through Congress, and no one with at least one foot in the real world has a palpable sense of imminent recovery. Corporate earnings have fallen far behind the rally in shares prices, stretching valuation multiples to pre-crash levels.

While not quite as frothy, home prices are now moving up for all the wrong reasons. The seminal Case-Shiller Index of home prices is now up for the fourth month in a row. The index’s designer, Professor Robert Shiller, has stated recently that the current upward trajectory is unsustainable. In fact, the levels are still above the 50 and 100 year trend lines.

In the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, and after the largest housing bust on memory, single-family home prices should be falling well below the trend lines. But with a doubling of the monetary base and special interest programs like the homebuyers’ tax credit, home prices have stabilized and even increased in some markets. That’s the work of inflation.

With GDP growth now returning to positive territory, many inflation hawks ask why inflation has yet to truly manifest. The explanation can be found in the difference between monetary base and money supply.

The latest $1.9 trillion injection of government money was composed of some $900 billion of stimulus, of which only about 20 percent has been distributed. However, in its attempts to stabilize the financial system, the government has already spent some $1 trillion of TARP-type funds.

The TARP money, financed by an increase in the monetary base, has been provided to the banks at zero cost. And for the first time ever, the Fed is paying interest on bank reserves. Therefore, the banks can loan money to the Fed and to the government, via Treasury securities, at an interest rate spread of some 3 to 4 percent without risk. Given these incentives, it makes no sense to loan to anybody else. So, despite a massive increase in the monetary base, credit remains tight and price levels flat.

However, if the Fed stops paying interest on bank reserves or otherwise ‘persuades’ the banks to lend, the $1 trillion will be leveraged up by the banks and spewed out into the economy. Fractional reserve banking will transform a $1 trillion monetary base injection into a $9 trillion increase in money supply. When that happens, prices for everything will go through the roof.

So for now, inflation is like a ninja stalking our economy. It’s lurking in the shadows but can’t easily be seen. But once its strikes, it will be fast and deadly.

For a more in-depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar, read Peter Schiff’s 2008 bestseller “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets” and his newest release “Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse.” Click here to learn more.

More importantly, don’t let the great deals pass you by. Get an inside view of Peter’s playbook with his new Special Report, “Peter Schiff’s Five Favorite Investment Choices for the Next Five Years.” Click here to dowload the report for free. You can find more free services for global investors, and learn about the Euro Pacific advantage, at www.europac.net.

Originally published October 20, 2009 at http://towneforcongress.com/economy/abolish-the-federal-department-of-education-1

Last night with the Liberty Bell Center of Constitutional Studies, I was part of a panel answering questions on public education with the Concerned Citizens of Bethlehem Area School District. The BASD has been plagued with financial troubles stemming from OTC derivatives purchases, and previously I gave an educational presentation to this group on financial derivatives.

After the lecture from LBCCS founder Paul Fiske who related how our founding fathers viewed education, Ryan Burgett, chairman of LBCCS and I (as a member of LBCCS) took questions and there was one question I was unable to answer without a projector, which was the breakdown of spending by the federal Department of Education, which is below or can be viewed online here. I also gave a short synopsis of the history and issues I have with this Department.

For the first 177 years in American history, there was no federal Department of Education, which was reserved to the states and localities to handle as they saw fit. This was also in agreement with the Constitution of the United States, which does not provide any justification whatsoever for federal power over education; in fact, the 9th and 10th Amendments make such action both unconstitutional and illegal.

This changed in 1953 when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Prior attempts by Presidents Harding and Roosevelt had failed. This department has another black mark as it is the only one created solely by presidential authority without the permission of Congress.

The powers of this department continued to grow until Democrat President Jimmy Carter, envisioning a “compassionate” federal government, spun off the Department of Education (known as ‘ED’) in 1979. For close to the next 20 years, one of the major distinctions between the Republican and Democratic parties was concerned this department. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan was in favor of abolishing the department, he was not able to do so. As recently as 1996, the Republican Platform read:

“Because we trust our fellow Americans, rather than centralized government, we believe the people, acting through their State and local elected officials, should have control over programs like education and welfare - thereby pushing power away from official Washington and returning it to the people in their communities and states… We support elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Energy, and the elimination, defunding or privatization of agencies which are obsolete, redundant, of limited value, or too regional in focus.”

Under Democrat President Bill Clinton, ED continued growing from spending of $32 billion in 1992 to $38 billion in 2000. However, ED received its fastest growth under Republican President George Bush II. From 2000 until 2008, Bush II more than doubled the budget, from $38 billion to a maximum of $100 billion spent in 2006 with spending plans like “No Child Left Behind.”

ED lowlights in 2008 included:

• $68.5 billion spent by the Department of Education in total
• $24 billion spent on post-secondary education, including many loans to college students
• $38 billion spent on elementary and secondary education
• $5.6 billion spent in what can best be described as ‘R&B’ – research and bureaucracy

Now, spending lots of money on education may seem like a good thing to the uninformed, but there have been no tanglible results over the past couple decades, if anything the exact opposite. Why is this so? Well, besides the wasteful spending on bureaucracy, a few points:

1. Similar to health care best being dealt between doctors and patients, education is best handled on the local level between parents and teachers. Both health care and the education of children are very important. Remember that when a Washington bureaucrat’s authority over the spending of funds is required, it is the child who suffers.

2. Federal mandates on education has the effect of stifling local diversity and choking off competition. What we want is a healthy competition of “50 laboratories” from state-to-state and between local areas, not a universal “one-size-fits-all” education. The more self-rule and autonomy by local communities provides local diversity and overall greater satisfaction for individual families.

3. The redistribution and control of federal funds (and certainly also on the state level) to localities makes local areas subservient to bureaucrats, even though, in most cases these are the exact same funds the taxpayer paid in to the federal and state governments. More local autonomy over funds increases both the efficiency and self-ownership over the spending of these funds.

4. It is also far easier for a parent to hold a local school board official accountable if this official is entrusted with all of the necessary responsibilities. Local communities that wanted to spend more on education could do still so, through either local taxation or – if one thinks outside the box for just a moment – fundraisers, fairs, and PTAs.

5. While Perkins Loans and Pell Grants for the purpose of college education seem like the greatest invention since sliced bread, their overall effect is to put bureaucrats in charge of the decisions in who receives which loans. Ever hear a parent complain about the cost of their kid’s college tuition? By flooding the market with credit, these government programs lead to colleges to both charge more and also become less efficient on fund allocation. [Note: The money-printing of the FED (inflation) is another root cause of rising tuition costs, to learn more read here.]

The Department of Education is one of many federal departments that, if they were to be abolished and disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, almost no one would notice. The bureaucrats all would have to seek healthy new jobs providing goods or services in the private economy. The grant and loan programs could all be halted and existing accounts closed out.

A final point in closing: one should keep in mind that ED’s budget of $68 billion dollars is sufficient to pay for the entire core federal government. We could pay for all of these federal government departments: the US House, US Senate, the White House’s staff, the Supreme Court, FBI, and the federal court system. Hmmm…   just another reason why we don’t need a federal income tax.

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Jake Towne is running for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 15th District in the 2010 election as a citizen unaffiliated with any political parties. Jake also writes at www.LibertyMaven.com, www.NolanChart.comand www.CampaignForLiberty.com. A novel campaign website where you can comment on articles and start discussions is available at TowneForCongress.com.  [Reach the Author Here!]

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

As always, unlike the NFL, the author grants full permission to allow any accounts of, rebroadcasts, retransmissions, repostings of this article to your blog or anywhere else in order to promote the Restoration of our Republic.

Veritas numquam perit. Veritas odit moras. Veritas vincit. Truth never perishes. Truth hates delay. Truth conquers.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.

As for the content of the program, Stossel states:

In my new job, I want to dig into the meaning of the words “liberty” and “limited government”.  ABC enabled me to do some of that, but Fox offers me more airtime and a new challenge.

I’m still considering what I will do with my own show, one hour each week.   Economics certainly.  Exercises in understanding libertarianism.  My “take” on the issues of the day.   Kind of like this blog.  In fact, maybe we’ll call it, Stossel’s Take?

In fact he asks for your ideas if you care to submit them.  I look forward to his program, since it appears he won’t be hampered as much by the whims of the ABC editors and producers.  At least, his new program will be less likely to be pushed out by Michael Jackson news.