Fighting Dirty to Save Affirmative Action | Cato Institute

Fighting Dirty to Save Affirmative Action | Cato Institute: "its�Top-Ten Percent Plan�— by which the top 10% (since changed to eight) of graduates in every high school in the state are guaranteed admission — had already created a campus with some of the highest “diversity” in nation"

SAFE Act an Expensive Boondoggle | Cato Institute

SAFE Act an Expensive Boondoggle | Cato Institute: "Since 1933, the federal government has deported over 5.5 million people. Twenty-nine percent of those deportations, or 1.5 million, occurred during the first term of the Obama administration. George W. Bush’s two full terms netted just over 2 million deportations, or 36 percent of all deportations since 1933."

"For American citizens, .2 percent of job applicants run through E-Verify are falsely flagged as unauthorized to work. That may sound small, but it means that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be initially labeled as illegal workers. The appeals process can then be relatively easy in most cases but for some it can take weeks or months.

Embarrassingly, error rates for permanent residents and visa holders have increased from 1.5 percent to 2 percent over the last few years. Nobody should have to ask government permission to work."

"The Legal Workforce Act punishes E-Verify violations with a $5000 fine per violation that can climb to $25,000 for each repeated violation and jail time up to ten years — which is comparable to manslaughter or second-degree murder penalties in some states"

"E-Verify will be far more costly — an average of $141 per check"

OK Preschool Study Provides No Evidence of Lasting Benefits from Preschool | Cato @ Liberty

OK Preschool Study Provides No Evidence of Lasting Benefits from Preschool | Cato @ Liberty: "There is little evidence in the research that these kinds of preschool programs impart lasting gains to low-income students and no evidence that they benefit middle-class kids. The real-world evidence demonstrates that the test scores of children in Oklahoma have eroded significantly, as have our nation’s performance on international tests, at the same time that preschool programs have massively expanded and the quality of those programs has supposedly improved."

Spending by Wisconsin unions on lobbyists plummets, records show

Spending by Wisconsin unions on lobbyists plummets, records show: "In just two years, spending by the state's public employee unions on lobbyists has plummeted from the summit of Wisconsin politics, a new report shows.

The figures show the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teacher union, spent nearly $2.1 million in the first six months of 2011 and $1 million in the first half of 2009, but a mere $84,000 in the first six months of this year.

The new leaders in lobbying spending at the Capitol are large business groups, which are more numerous than large unions.

That means their total spending adds up, though they spend less individually than the largest unions once did. In fact, the top five lobbying groups in the capital for the first half of 2013 spent less combined than what WEAC spent in the first half of 2011."