“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
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Herbert Spencer
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Brits pass Tea Act, Spencer born
On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Since it lowered the price of tea in America, British Prime Minister Lord North couldn’t imagine that the colonists would protest cheaper tea. He was mistaken. Within the year, the East India Company’s tea was dumped into Boston harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.
On April 27, 1820, Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England. Spencer became a philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist. An “enthusiastic exponent of evolution,” even writing about it “before Darwin did,” Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest.” He was considered “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.”
“The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child labor laws to children working on family farms,” Daily Caller’s Patrick Richardson reported on Wednesday, “prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.”
Somewhere, farm kids high-fived each other.
But not Rossie Blinson of Buis Creek, NC. Now in college, Blinson expressed concern that the new rule would shortchange young people. “I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around eight,” Blinson declared. “It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”
Minnesotan John Weber, 19, argued that the proposed regulation would “prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16-year-old interested in farming than a 12-year-old.” Weber is majoring in Agriculture at college and credits working on his grandparents’ and uncle’s farms with instilling a “work ethic” in him. “It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life.”
In high school, Weber took out a loan to purchase a few steers to raise and sell. “Under these regulations, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
Further, the regs would forbid groups like 4-H and FFA from providing safety training, mandating, instead, a 90-hour federal government course.
Oh, but wait a second . . . it must be an election year or something! “Citing public outrage,” informs a notice posted on the Daily Caller story after business hours last night, “the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.”
My goodness, that’s actually common sense! I’m Paul Jacob.
Wait for it: There’s another financial bubble ready to pop.
I’m not an economist, so I could be as wrong as, uh, a Keynesian strung out on (and pushing) “economic stimulus.” But the usual signs of an over-priced market sure seem to apply to higher education, today. After all, colleges and universities are sustained and over-fed by massive debt . . . in this case, government-guaranteed student loans, now passing the trillion-dollar mark.
From your local community college to the Ivy League, the whole industry reeks of insider advantages, constricted supply and inflated demand. So of course prices rise.
Beyond all reason.
The latest sign on the way to the bubble’s bursting comes from Harvard. That august institution’s Faculty Advisory Council for the Library issued a memorandum last week declaring that the cost of subscribing to peer-reviewed journals has become too great to bear. Robert T. Gonzaleaz, writing at io9, puts this news in perspective:
What does it say about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its peer-reviewed journal subscriptions?
When I look at the prices of textbooks and journals and academic books, I wince. Were this industry marked by laissez-faire policies and free markets, the typical leftist “anti-greed/anti-business” attitude might make sense. But this is an industry riddled with government intrusion, as far-reaching as the intrusions into housing and banking that led to 2008’s financial debacle.
How could the over-sold, over-subsidized, over-controlled college-university industry remain immune to a similar catastrophic deflation?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Marcus Aurelius
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
On April 26, 121, Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome. He would become emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD, and write “Meditations,” which remains revered as a literary monument to the Stoic philosophy.
On April 26, 1607, English colonists made landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.
On April 26, 1933, the Gestapo, the brutal secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.
On April 26, 1937, during the market’s busiest hour in Guernica, Spain, the Nazi Luftwaffe began an unprovoked three-hour attack aerial bombardment, which killed or wounded one-third of the city’s 5,000 residents. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica became a symbol of fascist brutality.
North Carolina, like many states, licenses all sorts of businesses activity, especially enterprises related to medicine. That’s why the state’s Board of Dietetics and Nutrition is gearing up to jail a blogger. According to the Carolina Journal Online,
Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”
Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.
Cooksey had been hospitalized for diabetes in February 2009, and decided to take a major, independent step towards his health, beginning a low-carb, high-protein diet dubbed the paleo (or “cave man”) diet. Within 30 days, he claims, he was off insulin; within a few months he had shed off 45 pounds.
He started his blog, Diabetes-Warrior.net, to chronicle his progress and help others achieve similar success. But after he challenged a local, certified nutrition expert at his local church, the state board went after him, especially objecting to his Q&A section: “If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information — you are counseling.”
Need a license for that!
Journalist Brian Doherty wittily asserts “that someone should be able to describe his experiences . . . and advocate for his own good results should go without saying, though my saying that may well contradict a directive of the California Board of Going Without Saying.”
We don’t need another bureau.
Getting rid of some that we have might be the best policy diet.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On April 25, 1599, Oliver Cromwell, who would become Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
On April 25, 1908, journalist Edward R. Murrow was born. Murrow became widely heard by listeners in the United States and Canada through his series of radio news broadcasts during World War II. Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which was portrayed in the 2005 movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
On April 25, 1961, Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit.
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Edward R. Murrow, born April 25, 1908
“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
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Who’s In, Who’s Out
Hopes for a “Tea Party”-based revolution sputter against the rocks of partisan politics. The non-partisan nature of the movement has dribbled away as Republicans — not Democrats — have courted Tea Party support.
And GOP leaders have remained firmly in control.
James Hohmann, writing in Politico, shows that the old guard “has withstood the tea-party revolution.” A recent insider meeting in Scottsdale showcased the persistence of the old way of doing things:
The . . . movement’s influence has waned everywhere since its apex in 2010. Most visibly, the Republican Party is poised to nominate the most pragmatic of the men who ran for president this cycle even though many tea-party groups vocally opposed him during the primary. Indeed, Mitt Romney received a coronation of sorts at a unity lunch here Friday, soaking up standing ovations and basking in blessings from 2008 rival Sen. John McCain.
Though it may be that “it’s only a matter of time” before Tea Party folks run the GOP (as “the longtime national committeeman” from my state put it), the price of admission to the higher ranks seems calculated in the abandonment of principle. Hohmann quotes one old party hand as saying that Tea Partyers need to learn “that everybody who is in government is not evil, that we’ve got some really good people in government. Let’s don’t burn the barn down to get rid of the rats.”
And here you have the real problem.
Real change isn’t about putting “better people” in office. It’s changing the principles by which anyone in government — good, bad, or indifferent — must operate.
The founders knew this. Today’s Republican insiders do not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.