Evidence Conservatives Prefer Substance (A Lot Of It) Over Appearance

We're all excited about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Yet another awesome video of him, this time taking on the NJ Supreme Court and New Jersey education.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

More NJ Gov. Chris Christie Goodness

Which is it, Ms. Wilson? Are you in it for the money or for the love of teaching?

Mind you, my usual caveat, I'm not anti-teacher, I'm anti-teachers' unions and, indeed, unions in general.

(via Hot Air)

I don't agree that teachers are paid too little.

I do agree that good teachers are paid too little. It's because we waste so much money paying all the deadbeats whose jobs are guaranteed by the sweetheart deals their unions worked out with the government.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Just The Links, Please

Wherein I write a sentence or three about each.

• I think the Tories missed an opportunity to win control of Parliament outright and Republicans risk doing the same. What must they do? Follow Barone's advice and propose a bold plan that cuts Fed spending to ~20% of GDP.

• Think moderation of radical Islam is inevitable? Think again.

• That Rush Limbaugh, he's pretty clever.

• Education reform--real reform, not the kind proposed by teachers' unions--remains one of my highest order priorities.

• What's up with Anglo-American relations? Nothing good.

• I'll just use the article title since it's sooo good: No, You Can't Keep Your Health Plan.

• When you make terrorists into run-of-the-mill criminals it does damage to both our ability to prevent terror acts and to American civil liberties.

• Islam and Trotsky.

• There are real limits to Obama/Reid/Pelosi's ability to tax-and-spend--whether they realize it or not.

• Hypocritical Democrats aren't the only ones selling American education down the river--some Republicans do it too. It will come as no surprise to most of you that these Republicans reside in Illinois.

• That awesome European model for what America could do and be? Not so awesome. Hey Krugman, are you paying attention?

• A little push-back on financial reform.

• The fundamental problem of government bureaucracy.

• What happens when you prioritize "fairness" over freedom.

• What's going on in North Korea? Obama doesn't really know.

• Another great school-choice column. Love this stuff.

• North vs. South--not the Civil War but Europe.

• Another of my favorite hobby-horses--shale-based energy--and how it's going to bring on an energy revolution. But not the kind my friend Sameer keeps rapping (literally) about.

Enjoy!

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Education: More Evidence Vouchers Work

Today's WSJ op-ed has a column on the success of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

A report released last week by School Choice Wisconsin, an advocacy group, finds that between 2003 and 2008 students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had a significantly higher graduation rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

"Had MPS graduation rates equalled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2008, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher," writes John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota. "That higher rate would have resulted in 3,352 more MPS graduates during the 2003-2008 years."

In 2008 the graduation rate for voucher students was 77% versus 65% for the nonvoucher students, though the latter receives $14,000 per pupil in taxpayer support, or more than double the $6,400 per pupil that voucher students receive in public funding.

The Milwaukee voucher program serves more than 21,000 children in 111 private schools, so nearly 20% more graduates mean a lot fewer kids destined for failure without the credential of a high school diploma. The finding is all the more significant because students who receive vouchers must, by law, come from low-income families, while their counterparts in public schools come from a broader range of economic backgrounds.

Expansion of vouchers and broader choice in education could literally transform this country. Students in areas with failing schools would no longer be locked into a losing future. The dynamism brought on by increased choice would bring higher graduation rates to those our current system consistently fails.

Central planners, teachers' unions, and their Democratic enablers will continue to clamor for more money for failed programs or tweaked versions of ones that have failed in the past. Vouchers and choice and increased competition in education (as in everything) would bring higher quality and lower prices and this means more children would be better educated.

Those opposed to choice in education should be ashamed.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

'Hey Pop, How 'Bout You Put Down That Plastic Grocery Bag Before I Report You To The Enviro-Cops'

I read Weekly Reader practically every week from the point at which I was able to read through the 5th grade. Everyone at my school did. It was on the pages of the Weekly Reader that I first learned about "CFCs," the melting polar ice caps, global warmism, whales, the rainforest, recycled paper and so on and so forth.

An email with a forwarded article from my brother reminded me of this grade school propagandizing:

Dad

This must be how you felt when I'd come home from Ms. [witchy teacher's name redacted]'s class in 2nd grade convinced we needed to save the whales and rainforest. Fortunately I had your skepticism to steer me clear of her environmental sanctimony.

This little article from Jonah Goldberg in the latest NR is "priceless"

'HELPING Dad become a better man: priceless."

That's the closing line of a new MasterCard commercial. You know those commercials; they've been out for nearly a decade. A typical one goes something like this: "Bric-a-brac: 17 dollars. White elephant: 28 dollars. Getting your wife to remove the restraining order: priceless."

Only this one has a little boy tailing his father--a man who looks like a perpetually adolescent extra from the old sitcom Friends--through a home-improvement store pointing out ways the carbon-profligate old man can reduce his footprint. The boy replaces the usual narrator as well.

"Energy-saving bulb: four dollars," quoth the child. "Reusable bag: two dollars. Helping Dad become a better man: priceless."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

There are two kinds of folks in this world: those who find this sort of thing creepy, and pod people. Okay, maybe that's a bit too strong. But how anyone could fail to find this commercial one of the more disturbing convergences of corporate power, advertising, and progressive groupthink is beyond me.

If you can't see why, maybe it will help to look a few spaces ahead of where we are. In Britain, an electric utility launched a website for kids that teaches them how to become "climate cops." Their duty is to keep a "watchful eye" and monitor the "energy crimes" of their family and neighbors, with the ultimate goal of building a "climate-crime case file." Beware that Johnson kid with the clipboard going through your recyclables.

If you still can't see why this kiddie Gestapo stuff is offensive, change the issue from environmentalism to eating habits (you know that's coming, by the way), or religion, or just about any subject where you don't think a six-year-old should be scolding you for weakness of character or informing on you to the authorities.

Now, it's not that I think kids shouldn't be encouraged to be civic-minded. And while I find today's climate obsessions to be suffused with religious hysteria, I don't see anything terrible in encouraging kids, or anyone else, to conserve resources. But that's not the issue here. Nor is environmentalism per se.

It's the kids.

There is something evil about recruiting children to lobby their parents on political causes. Okay, it's not always evil; sometimes it can be funny, like the time in 1965 when Soupy Sales told the children watching his TV show to sneak into their parents' bedrooms and take the "green pieces of paper" from their wallets and send them to him.

Sales apologized for cracking a joke that a few kids took seriously. But no apologies are forthcoming from MasterCard for broadcasting something in earnest that in a healthy society would be seen as a joke. The idea of enlisting children to the Cause is as fashionable today as it was under Robespierre. To crack the bunker walls of the family and seduce the children has always been a top priority of totalitarians, hard and soft. Progressives love to elevate the sagacity of children--Hillary Clinton says some of the best theologians she's ever met have been five-year-olds--because doing so gives children all the more authority when they parrot the talking points of the latest progressive fad.

James Lileks asks about the MasterCard ad: "If the kid didn't learn these steps to righteousness at home, where did he get them?" Precisely. It's not as if normal, uncoached six-year-olds talk about making their fathers "better men."

If the man in the ad were a better father, he would have scolded his kid for the disrespect and demanded to know who was teaching him such crap.

Because you "can't legislate morality" or teach it in public schools, we were taught the morality of the secularists. And it was and remains, environmentalism (along with, of course, relativism and its derivatives, multiculturalism, &c.)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Education Spending

We all know the key to a student successfully graduating from high school is a 2-parent home. But given the current state of affairs, that's going to be a tough one to accomplish.

As much as Democrats, many teachers, & definitely teachers' unions may dislike President Bush for No Child Left Behind, they can't justly criticize him for underfunding education. According to the numbers I've seen, under the Bush administration, education spending has increased by around 40%. That's significant.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), Doug Ross has done a little cost benefit/regression on spending vs. standardized test scores and found that--surprise, surprise--there is no correlation.

Don't get me wrong. I have many teacher-friends. I appreciate good teachers. But I despise teachers' unions and their opposition to choice in education and other initiatives that, though unfriendly to the bad teachers, would actually benefit good teachers and most assuredly, students.

You see, I've got this crazy idea in my head that education ought to be about the students and not guaranteeing tenure to people who have no business teaching anyone or anything.

Increased choice in education--vouchers, corporate scholarships, charter schools, etc.--isn't about helping the middle class students from 2-parent homes. It's about helping the poorer students whose dad isn't in the picture and whose mom is working 2 jobs just to keep the family off the street.

Education reform, left to the unions, will be about more money and less accountability. This set-up benefits neither the students nor the good teachers--it serves only to maintain the power and control of unions and the jobs of bad teachers.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.