Author: Redactor

Categories
education and schooling

Virtual Charter Schools

Progress in education does not require a never-​ending increase in funding for public schools.

My wife and I have home-​schooled our daughters. I know that kids like learning, and away from classrooms can learn, and learn well. The future of education almost certainly involves a wide diversity of educational methods and systems that place children in environments where they learn best, not where it is merely convenient to spend tax funds in huge gulps.

In Washington State, government is adapting to such new options. This was noted in the papers, recently, when Tim Sutinen, a candidate for the state legislature under the “Lower Taxes” party label, praised the state’s virtual charter schools. All of his school-​aged kids (he and his wife have ten, total) receive instruction at home. But their lessons and testing are conducted over the Internet, from teachers hundreds of miles away.

Had he lived south of the Columbia River, in Oregon, though, his children would not be so lucky. 

There, the teachers’ union has made opposition to virtual charter schools its “top priority.” Olivia Wolcott of the Cascade Policy Institute correctly argues that were the union truly supportive of “the best interests of Oregon children, it would support the virtual charter schools that have the ability to improve education through cost-​saving innovation.” 

But unions are in the business of raising pay for public school teachers. And that’s not the same thing as improving education.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Who “YouTubes” You, and Why

Government agencies now store nude pictures of you.

Well, if you travel on the major airlines out of some major airports, they do.

When the Transportation Security Administration began using full-​body scanning at select airports — with devices such as the backscatter X‑ray machine, which can show every lovely and unlovely fold (if not freckle) on your body — officials rushed to defend their practice of peering at us under our clothing. It was only for our safety. Besides, the images were made only for immediate viewing. They weren’t even stored. 

Why, they couldn’t be stored!

We learned this week how wrong that was. The U.S. Marshals Service has been secretly storing thousands and thousands of the images. Furthermore, specifications for some devices even require that they send the images over networks.

Once again, government folk have lied to us.

There’s no evidence that anyone’s been blackmailed based on the images. But you have to think of privacy dangers in the fourth dimension, time. Can we trust people in future governments with our intimate details as unforeseen crises come to the fore? As new personnel gain access to the archives? As tomorrow’s politicians pledge (and routinely break) their oaths of office?

We wear clothing to select who will see us naked. Taking that prerogative away, in the name of security, and giving it to people we do not know?

That’s transparently foolish. And unsafe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly free trade & free markets too much government

The Alternative to the Public Option

The congressional “progressive” caucus still wants to impose a public health insurance option, allegedly to “reduce the deficit.”

According to caucus kingpin Raul Grijalva, deficit hawks are “hypocrites” for predicting that government spending would balloon were a public option imposed. Their “excuse … that it was going to be too expensive is phony,” according to Congressman Grijalva.

The progressives’ notion seems to be that accelerating the pell-​mell government takeover of the medical delivery industry is the very best thing one could do to reduce the deficit.

If that’s the case, then why not also “reduce the deficit” with respect to other sectors of the economy in which government spends any money at all — that is, in any economic sector — by launching a government takeover that eventually swamps private markets altogether? 

By “progressive” logic, communizing the whole economy must be the best way to foster fiscal sobriety in DC. 

Absurd, I know.

Perhaps Grijalva’s deceived by his franking privilege. The public option for postal delivery works so well. For him. For the rest of us, we have to pay the billions the USPS loses every year.

The solution to the USPS’s constant, persistent failure is not to regulate and nationalize Fed-​Ex and UPS and every other alternative. 

Real progress requires the opposite of Grijalva’s “progressivism”: Pry government out of both health care and postal delivery. This is not a radical idea. It is only … well …

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Pennsylvania Challenge

Political change sometimes happens in hiccups.

A burst of innovation. Then a slump in its pace. An idea’s day may be done … or may just lie dormant, awaiting conditions for resurgence. Perhaps one tipping point is a rise in the number of voters who have become really, really, really fed up with the excesses of the ruling class.

Consider statewide citizen initiative rights, which many states installed between 1898 and 1920, with few more in the 1970s and Mississippi in 1993. The current total is 24.

Citizens of the other states need initiative rights too. Especially those graded F by the Citizens in Charge Foundation for their lack of initiative rights — for example, Pennsylvania. The Keystone State was rocked by a major legislative pay scandal a few years back, not to mention several scary judicial scandals. 

Michael Nerozzi and Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation argue that only initiative rights will enable genuine reform. Pennsylvania’s constitution recognizes the right of citizens to “alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think proper,” but citizens are thwarted by the politicians.

Citizen initiative, the authors say, “is the only reliable mechanism for implementing reforms such as a part-​time legislature, term limits, state spending caps, and abolishing gerrymandering.”

It’s a tough sell with the political class. But Pennsylvanians can and will win the right of citizen initiative when enough of them insist. Strongly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Freeze Federal Salaries

Procrastination feeds deficits. Deficits feed debt. Debt feeds catastrophe.

Politicians avoid balancing budgets by saying they will do so not this year, but “sometime in the future.” Hence our looming debt crisis. This debt either must be paid, defaulted, or … “monetized.”

That last term is code for inflation.

Why not bring the need for cuts and inflation together? After all, the Federal Reserve still exists, so some inflation is inevitable. Inflation is what central banks like the Fed do.

So, barring a complete monetary reform, simply freeze all federal salaries, at least until the average level of compensation for federal jobs matches the average level of compensation for comparable private-​sector jobs.

Currently, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation has uncovered, federal workers earn 22 percent more than private sector workers … and that’s just in terms of nominal pay. If our politicians turned heroic and cut these down to where they should be, immediately, we’d save $47 billion in taxpayer funds per year.

But it gets worse, as Chris Prandoni writes: “The average federal civilian employee earns on average $32,115 a year in non-​cash compensation compared to a private sector employee who earns three times less, $9,882 annually.”

So freeze benefits, too. Defrost only when they match private sector levels. 

Politicians could start the freeze right now, just to show a smidgen of discipline. More likely? They’ll go with what they know: Procrastination. 

Responsibility? Wait for another freeze. Of hell’s shiny surface.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

The Full Flush of Equality

Years and years ago, it was often said against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment that it would prohibit separate toilets. Under the ERA, men and women would have to use the same public restrooms.

Properly interpreted, nothing of the kind should have happened. The text of the ERA stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” One does not have a right to a toilet, really, so it shouldn’t have affected restroom construction.

But leaping to absurdity is, alas, a propensity of government. In Minnesota, today, the state’s Department of Human Rights has declared that the offering of a “ladies’ night” by taverns and bars, etc, is illegal, discriminating (as it does) on the basis of sex.

Economist Robert Murphy has carefully explained why price discrimination is not bad — why it is common and why it benefits us. By setting up “ladies’ nights,” certain businesses attract female customers and (shock of all shocks) male customers, too … men actually eager to pay extra, if only to be around women.

I don’t see much point in explaining the philosophical basis for not getting carried away over the “sexual/​gender discrimination” involved in this. But it may be good that the ERA fizzled in 1982. It would have been twisted by bureaucrats in state after state, and we’d all endure uncomfortable encounters in public toilets throughout the land.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.