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.
As we can see from the desperate economic and fiscal woes of California, New Jersey, New York and other states with dominant public unions, this has become a major problem for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance. It may be the single biggest problem. The agenda for American political reform needs to include the breaking of public unionism's power to capture an ever-larger share of private income.Eventually these public service unions kill the host. See above-mentioned NY, NJ, & CA.
The central battle in our time is over political primacy. It is a competition between the public sector and the private sector over who defines the work and the institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.I strongly dislike unions. They stand in the way of free trade, choice in education, and myriad other good, liberty-oriented, market-based reforms that could improve the quality of life of everyone in the world.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.
This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.
They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.
Stone: Do you think it’s fair to send people to jail who don’t buy health insurance?
Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.
An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with "extravagant lifestyles" would be affected by the carbon allowances.
He said: "A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out."
However, some have criticised the move as "Orwellian" and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.
Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: "This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about. It's Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business."
Under the Climate Change Act, Britain is obliged to cut its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. This means annual CO2 emissions per person will have to fall from about 9 tonnes to only 2 tonnes.Do you have an "extravagant lifestyle" as defined by the Holy Church of the Environment & Mother Gaia?
You could have ended the sentence thus: "you cannot efficient-ize the government." Even if the liberty/efficiency tradeoff did exist the point would be moot because government is not capable of increasing efficiency. Policymakers simply face the wrong incentives, lack the competence, and cannot process the information required to increase the efficiency of anything.
So there's no trade-off in which government policy could somehow increase efficiency at the cost of liberty. If they're taking your liberty, they're doing it inefficiently.
Never mind that reducing medical lawsuits is a rare reform provision that really would reduce health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the savings at $54 billion over a decade. Consulting firm Tillinghast Towers-Perrin has suggested the direct cost of medical tort litigation is more like $30 billion annually. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates that last year $240 billion in health expenditures were the result of doctors ordering unnecessary procedures to protect against the risk of lawsuits.This is another one of those things President Obama said he would do & didn't. As in, he said he would introduce tort reform as one piece of his overall healthcare reform, but the legislation leaving the House includes, per the article above, a proviso that will actually undermine existing state tort law.
At the National Press Club last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he opposed school choice: “Let me explain why. Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. . . . But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent down.” It was a bizarre statement: Why not simply let more than 1 or 2 percent enjoy the benefits of school choice? In Milwaukee, they actually do. It’s the largest urban school-choice program in the country, dwarfing the size of the one in Washington, D.C., whose de-funding by congressional Democrats has drawn so much criticism. Roughly one in five of Milwaukee’s school-age children receive vouchers. All of them must fall below an income threshold. Researchers say that the program is beginning to show systemic effects. In other words, it doesn’t merely help its participants. It also gives a lift to non-voucher students because the pressure of competition has forced public schools to improve.
Consider the 1998 "Gnomes" episode -- possibly surpassing Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" as the classic defense of capitalism -- in which the children of South Park, Colo., get a lesson in how not to run an enterprise from mysterious little men who go about stealing undergarments from the unsuspecting and collecting them in a huge underground storehouse.
What's the big idea? The gnomes explain:
"Phase One: Collect underpants.
"Phase Two: ?
"Phase Three: Profit."
Lest you think there's a step missing here, that's the whole point. ("What about Phase Two?" asks one of the kids. "Well," answers a gnome, "Phase Three is profits!")
At issue are "virtual colonoscopies," or CT scans of the abdomen. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of U.S. cancer death but one of the most preventable. Found early, the cure rate is 93%, but only 8% at later stages. Virtual colonoscopies are likely to boost screenings because they are quicker, more comfortable and significantly cheaper than the standard "optical" procedure, which involves anesthesia and threading an endoscope through the lower intestine.The debate about health care isn't simply one about costs. This is not about providing "health care" to all Americans the cheapest way possible. One could hand out vitamins to all Americans very cheaply and call this "universal coverage." Congratulations.
Virtual colonoscopies are endorsed by the American Cancer Society and covered by a growing number of private insurers including Cigna and UnitedHealthcare. The problem for Medicare is that if cancerous lesions are found using a scan, then patients must follow up with a traditional colonoscopy anyway. Costs would be lower if everyone simply took the invasive route, where doctors can remove polyps on the spot. As Medicare noted in its ruling, "If there is a relatively high referral rate [for traditional colonoscopy], the utility of an intermediate test such as CT colonography is limited." In other words, duplication would be too pricey.
This is precisely the sort of complexity that the Democrats would prefer to ignore as they try to restructure health care. Led by budget chief Peter Orszag, the White House believes that comparative effectiveness research, which examines clinical evidence to determine what "works best," will let them cut wasteful or ineffective treatments and thus contain health spending.
The problem is that what "works best" isn't the same for everyone. While not painless or risk free, virtual colonoscopy might be better for some patients -- especially among seniors who are infirm or because the presence of other diseases puts them at risk for complications. Ideally doctors would decide with their patients. But Medicare instead made the hard-and-fast choice that it was cheaper to cut it off for all beneficiaries. If some patients are worse off, well, too bad.
[...] Washington's utilitarian judgments about costs would reshape the practice of medicine.
Who will control the system? Doctors and patients, or politicians and regulators? That's the crux of this year's health-care debate.
In the last session of Congress, Democrats tried to: Raise the notice period required for certain layoffs at private companies to 90 days, extend health benefits for laid-off workers for up to a decade, and increase penalties for noncompliance (the expanded WARN Act); reclassify certain managers as employees who can be unionized, forcibly in non-right-to-work states (the Respect Act); facilitate class action suits for alleged gender-based pay discrimination (Paycheck Fairness Act); and much more. None passed, but now they might.In case you think it can't happen here, well, it can.In the Obama revolution, unions are the vanguard force. Contrary to promises of moderation, the Administration has so far sided firmly with the union left. On the day after the Inauguration, the Department of Labor stopped the implementation of new union financial disclosure rules that provide greater transparency about union finances. A fortnight on the job, President Obama issued four executive orders, on federal contracting and political spending, demanded by Big Labor. Mr. Obama this month endorsed card check and vowed that it "will pass."
If you read the top 5-10 opinion pieces on today's WSJ website you will realize that the leadership in our government right now SUCKS. I can't capitalize that word enough. It is unbelievable. Why could we not elect a group of real men to lead this country and not a bunch of slimy, spineless, uneducated losers that seem to occupy every power wielding position within our government? It is just unbelievable. Who were the people that decided that Frank, Pelosi, and Dodd had the capacity to do anything? I would not trust them to clean my house. I am just beside myself with this whole mess. I mean these people seem to be hell-bent on running the most successful economy of all time into the ground. Please tell me. How is it not obvious to EVERYONE right now that all of these people are incompetent and doing the exact opposite of anything that would make sense. It is hard to believe that the Dow is above 4K. How is it not obvious to again EVERYONE that Obama and Co. have not done a single thing that would be beneficial to our economy. I mean if you asked economists what would be the top ten things you could do to ruin the economy Obama has done 1-8 and is actively trying to cross off 9 and 10 (protectionism and strengthen unions).It's gotten so bad, even the NYT is writing op-eds (I'm loathe to link them, but oh well) urging the President to avoid the protectionist elements of his party. And the Unions are going to keep fighting.
So low taxes are good in bad economic times so people can get rich, but when the economy is good we can soak the rich and damn the poor? I can't understand how he can't see the fault in his logic. Even when he's right, he's still wrong.To which I responded as follows:
From his post yesterday:
"To be totally out of the closet, I actually embrace every part of Obama's agenda, right down to the increase on personal taxes and the mortgage deduction. I am a fierce environmentalist who has donated multiple acres to the state of New Jersey to keep forever wild. I believe in cap and trade. I favor playing hardball with drug companies that hold up the U.S. government with me-too products.
"... I believe his agenda is crushing nest eggs around the nation in loud ways, like the decline in the averages, and in soft but dangerous ways, like in the annuities that can't be paid and the insurance benefits that will be challenging to deliver on.
"So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don't want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That's what I see now."
I'm all for "giving back," but shouldn't that be my choice?
Cramer is a liberal Democrat & an idiot [ed. note: but I repeated myself]. I guess, from him, we should be glad when he criticizes Obama at all, as he has done recently.This is the new reality: In a country where market forces aren't left to themselves to pick winners and losers; in a country where trillion dollar budgets and spenduli are used to shower billions of dollars on campaign supporters (read: ACORN, Unions, etc.); in a country where government picks the winners and the losers, you better hope that, at the very least, you aren't on Obama's naughty list.
Obviously, I am in wholehearted agreement with what you say.
To liberals, your money is not really your money. It's the money you got by exploiting people, probably, and you don't deserve it. Plus, they know how to use it better than you do. It's all about power & control--that's the conservative vs. liberal argument at it's core:
Conservatives want everyone to have as much control over their lives as possible. They understand that some people are going to screw up, and that sucks, but that most people will do best whatever makes them happy.
Liberals want to control everyone's lives in every possible way because they think they know how to make everyone equally happy, or, as happens to be the case back in a little place I like to call reality, they know how to make everyone's life suck equally (except, of course, for the American version of the Politburo and their friends who get the green dacha's* in the countryside.)
Your most recent blog post mentioning our new "post-partisan" era made me think of an email I received from my quite liber... err... very liberal uncle recently. He asked "Why... is the majority party permitting the bankrupt policies of the elephant party to dominate so much of the discussion surrounding the stimulus package? They don't seem to value bipartisanship, why should the Democrats?"The Spendulous was always going to pass. Regardless of its particular impact if/when it comes to pass, the economy will, eventually, recover. Democrats can then claim (in a partisan, rather than post-partisan or bi-partisan way) to have effected the recovery by passing out free condoms and building dog parks and whatnot.
To me the answer is quite clear, even when accepting the premise that Democrats are not partisan and that the minority party had a huge say in anything that happened with this stymie-ulus bill. My answer, in part:
"From a purely political standpoint, if this can be portrayed as a bipartisan effort, it can be claimed as such, which would drastically reduce the overall risks of such a bill failing while maintaining the positive political upside if it were to succeed. "If we hadn't reached out the Republicans, this wouldn't have failed." Or, "If we had reached out [to] the Republicans more, this stimulus would not have been as effective."
From an ideological standpoint, I don't think that either party should place such high value [on] bipartisanship as it's much over-hyped in its importance. If you truly believe in something, you should make every reasonable effort to bring it about, especially on something as important as this. It's about making sure that the application of principle does not pull you away from that core belief. If you believe that this is our economic armageddon and the only way to avoid that is to either borrow the money or make nearly a trillion dollars out of thin air, then bipartisanship is a non-issue."
That being said, I can't stand this thing for a host of reasons, but I don't have the time to go into that.
I liked Dan K's comment about FTAs and how they can undermine global efforts.And Branden B.
A note should be made, however: many realists argue that FTAs are better for America because in bilateral agreements, the big country can push the little country for better terms. In other words, lately a lot of big countries have been seeking bilateral or small regional agreements simply because they can get favorable terms.
So to true economic liberals, as Dan K appears to be, FTAs are often perceived as a problem. But for foreign policy realists, FTAs may make more sense.
Dan is right on bi-lateral FTA's. That may seem obvious given his credentials, but we both know that there are a lot of nuts out there with great credentials. I forget how all the math works, but I remember solving the bi-lateral fta models in Econ 257 and being surprised. His position is absolutely correct. Strong support for all-inclusive trade agreements (Doha, WTO) and opposition to bi-laterals. The bi-laterals might have a few political benefits so they are not altogether detestable, but for a free trader like yourself they are not what you are looking for.I have just a couple of points to make in response. I don't necessarily disagree, I just think there may be more things to add to the equation.
Looks like Obama picked Ari Emmanuel's brother to be his Chief of Staff. In case you didn't know, Ari Emmanuel is the founder of Endeavor, a well known agency here in LA. Ari Emmanuel reps Marky Mark among others Ari/Endeavor is who and what Ari Gold and his agency on Entourage is/are rumored to be based on. I can't imagine what Yom Kippur gatherings must be like in that family. Especially if they play a "friendly" game of Monopoly or Acqui[re].Now, imagine Ari Gold running the White House. Good times.
