Posts
Confusion | John Mueller | Cato Institute: Commentary: "DHS has "struggled" to identify a clear example in which a fusion center provided intelligence that helped disrupt a terrorist plot. And, when investigators looked at the four "success stories" touted by DHS, they were "unable to confirm" that the fusion centers' contributions were "as significant as DHS portrayed them; were unique to the intelligence and analytical work expected of fusion centers; or would not have occurred absent a fusion center.""
Thursday, October 11, 2012
What the Critics of Won't Back Down Don't Understand | Andrew J. Coulson | Cato Institute: Commentary
What the Critics of Won't Back Down Don't Understand | Andrew J. Coulson | Cato Institute: Commentary: "do a brilliant job teaching kids to read at your local public school and … the system treats you pretty much the same way as it does your least motivated, least effective colleague. Consequently, many of our brightest educational stars burn out and others leave the profession. Some are even pushed out.
Jaime Escalante, the brilliant public school math teacher celebrated by the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver, fell victim to a union-backed putsch. His offense? He couldn't bear to turn away kids, so his classes grew to 55 students. But the union had negotiated a 35-student limit, and Escalante's astonishing success undermined their bargaining position. So the union successfully campaigned to take away his chairmanship of Garfield High's math department.
Demoted and besieged by union opposition, Escalante left Garfield. At the height of his tenure, one out of every four Mexican Americans who passed Advanced Placement calculus nationwide attended Garfield High. After he left, the math program declined and has never recovered.
It's not surprising that the union found enough votes to oust Escalante. He expected excellence, and rising to meet his standards meant extra work for his colleagues — work for which the system offered none of the recognition or compensation that would accompany it in any other field. As Won't Back Down faithfully recounts, virtually all teachers do care about their students, but they're also human beings, and incentives matter.
Any system that ignores the performance of its workers and denies freedom of choice to its consumers is doomed to fail."
Jaime Escalante, the brilliant public school math teacher celebrated by the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver, fell victim to a union-backed putsch. His offense? He couldn't bear to turn away kids, so his classes grew to 55 students. But the union had negotiated a 35-student limit, and Escalante's astonishing success undermined their bargaining position. So the union successfully campaigned to take away his chairmanship of Garfield High's math department.
Demoted and besieged by union opposition, Escalante left Garfield. At the height of his tenure, one out of every four Mexican Americans who passed Advanced Placement calculus nationwide attended Garfield High. After he left, the math program declined and has never recovered.
It's not surprising that the union found enough votes to oust Escalante. He expected excellence, and rising to meet his standards meant extra work for his colleagues — work for which the system offered none of the recognition or compensation that would accompany it in any other field. As Won't Back Down faithfully recounts, virtually all teachers do care about their students, but they're also human beings, and incentives matter.
Any system that ignores the performance of its workers and denies freedom of choice to its consumers is doomed to fail."
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Book Bans Just Part of Issue | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary
Book Bans Just Part of Issue | Neal McCluskey | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The real issue isn't protecting books from those who would banish them for eternity. It is that public institutions select books in the first place. The instant such a selection is made freedom is already compromised."
"it is, indeed, a fundamental threat to liberty when a government entity — either a school district or public library — decides what is or is not "acceptable" content.
The problem is, the school or library makes just such a discriminatory determination when it decides which books to buy, or to make required reading, in the first place."
"it compels taxpayers to support speech that, often, they find abhorrent"
"it is, indeed, a fundamental threat to liberty when a government entity — either a school district or public library — decides what is or is not "acceptable" content.
The problem is, the school or library makes just such a discriminatory determination when it decides which books to buy, or to make required reading, in the first place."
"it compels taxpayers to support speech that, often, they find abhorrent"
Colleges Keep Suppressing Free Speech | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary
Colleges Keep Suppressing Free Speech | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "“Among the college seniors in the survey sample, only 30.3 percent answered that they strongly agreed that ‘it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus.’”"
" “Even more alarmingly, the study showed that students’ sense of the safety of expressing unpopular views steadily declines from freshman year (starting at 40.3 percent) to senior year... But the students were downright optimistic compared to the 9,000 ‘campus professionals’ surveyed, including faculty, student affairs personnel, and academic administrators. Only 18.8 percent strongly agreed it was safe to have unpopular views on campus.
“Faculty members, who are often the longest-serving members of the college community and presumably know it best,” adds Lukianoff, “scored the lowest of any group — a miserable 16.7 percent!” "
" “Even more alarmingly, the study showed that students’ sense of the safety of expressing unpopular views steadily declines from freshman year (starting at 40.3 percent) to senior year... But the students were downright optimistic compared to the 9,000 ‘campus professionals’ surveyed, including faculty, student affairs personnel, and academic administrators. Only 18.8 percent strongly agreed it was safe to have unpopular views on campus.
“Faculty members, who are often the longest-serving members of the college community and presumably know it best,” adds Lukianoff, “scored the lowest of any group — a miserable 16.7 percent!” "
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
The IRS Has Gone Rogue | Michael F. Cannon and Jonathan H. Adler | Cato Institute: Commentary
The IRS Has Gone Rogue | Michael F. Cannon and Jonathan H. Adler | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The mere fact that a taxpayer is eligible for a tax credit can trigger tax liabilities against both the taxpayer (under the act’s “individual mandate”) and her employer (under the “employer mandate”). In 2016, these tax credits will trigger a tax of $2,085 on many families of four earning as little as $24,000. An employer with 100 workers could face a tax of $140,000 if even one of his workers is eligible for a tax credit."
"During a September 23, 2009, committee markup of his bill, Baucus acknowledged that restricting tax credits to policies purchased through state-created exchanges was the reason the Finance Committee had jurisdiction to direct states to establish exchanges, making this language an essential part of the bill."
"During a September 23, 2009, committee markup of his bill, Baucus acknowledged that restricting tax credits to policies purchased through state-created exchanges was the reason the Finance Committee had jurisdiction to direct states to establish exchanges, making this language an essential part of the bill."
MARTA Hardly Indispensable | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary
MARTA Hardly Indispensable | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Before MARTA took over the transit system, nearly 11 percent of Atlanta-area commuters took transit to work. Now, thanks to MARTA’s investment in high-cost rail at the expense of low-cost bus improvements, transit’s share of commuting has fallen to slightly more than 4 percent. That hardly helps to reduce congestion, air pollution, and all the other things transit is claimed to do."
Stop Demonizing Job Creators | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary
Stop Demonizing Job Creators | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary: " the highest corporate income tax rate among all of the world's industrialized countries and the unusual requirement that profits earned abroad by U.S. multinationals are subject to U.S. taxation upon repatriation. No other major economy does that. Who in their right minds would not expect those incentives to encourage moving production off shore and keeping profits there?"
"If Levin is concerned about diminishing federal tax collections from corporations (which, of course, reduces his power), the solution is to change the incentives — to change the convoluted artifice of backroom politics that is our present tax code."
"If Levin is concerned about diminishing federal tax collections from corporations (which, of course, reduces his power), the solution is to change the incentives — to change the convoluted artifice of backroom politics that is our present tax code."
English for All, Freedom for None - Danny Hieber - Mises Daily
English for All, Freedom for None - Danny Hieber - Mises Daily: "The colonial statist Benjamin Franklin penned in 1753,
They come in droves.… Few of their children in the country learn English.… Advertisements intended for to be general are now printed in Dutch and English, the signs in Our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German, they began of late all their bonds and other legal writings in their own language, which (tho' I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in Our Courts.[3]"
"93.6 percent of all children of immigrants spoke English well or very well.[6] As I detailed in my Mises Daily "Why Languages Die," this is the standard process of language shift. By the third generation, all trace of the heritage language is gone. If this were not the case, it would be difficult to explain why Dutch, German, Italian, or other major immigrant languages in the States haven't spawned lasting communities of monolingual speakers. Even places like Chinatown in New York City only retain a persistent heritage language presence because they are continually resupplied by new immigrants. But the children of those immigrants continue to learn English, and their children continue to never learn the heritage language in the first place, making them English monolinguals."
"this is precisely the case for Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City, who because their parents were told by school administrators not to speak Spanish to their kids at home, grew up unable to socialize well in either English or Spanish, and are now at a distinct social and economic disadvantage in both.[13] Today, this segment of the immigrant population remains statistically among the most impoverished in the country, for largely this reason. Yet no one predicted this pernicious and unseen effect of such language policies."
They come in droves.… Few of their children in the country learn English.… Advertisements intended for to be general are now printed in Dutch and English, the signs in Our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German, they began of late all their bonds and other legal writings in their own language, which (tho' I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in Our Courts.[3]"
"93.6 percent of all children of immigrants spoke English well or very well.[6] As I detailed in my Mises Daily "Why Languages Die," this is the standard process of language shift. By the third generation, all trace of the heritage language is gone. If this were not the case, it would be difficult to explain why Dutch, German, Italian, or other major immigrant languages in the States haven't spawned lasting communities of monolingual speakers. Even places like Chinatown in New York City only retain a persistent heritage language presence because they are continually resupplied by new immigrants. But the children of those immigrants continue to learn English, and their children continue to never learn the heritage language in the first place, making them English monolinguals."
"this is precisely the case for Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City, who because their parents were told by school administrators not to speak Spanish to their kids at home, grew up unable to socialize well in either English or Spanish, and are now at a distinct social and economic disadvantage in both.[13] Today, this segment of the immigrant population remains statistically among the most impoverished in the country, for largely this reason. Yet no one predicted this pernicious and unseen effect of such language policies."
Means Testing Your Social Security Payments - Gary North - Mises Daily
Means Testing Your Social Security Payments - Gary North - Mises Daily: "If Medicare's age of eligibility were raised, the premiums of all health-insurance policy owners would rise. This will be fought by the insurance industry. It will also be fought by the geezer lobbies. "
"The budget killer is Medicare. This is because the subsidy is the largest: almost $12,000 a year."
"At some point, there will be means-testing. The politicians will decide that anyone with an income above a certain rate will have his payments reduced. The more his income, the greater the reductions. At first, this cap will apply to earned income. Then it will be applied to all income."
"When it is clear that rich people who have paid into Social Security are costing the taxpayers billions of dollars, there will be bills introduced into Congress similar to the ones introduced on unemployment insurance payments to millionaires."
"The budget killer is Medicare. This is because the subsidy is the largest: almost $12,000 a year."
"At some point, there will be means-testing. The politicians will decide that anyone with an income above a certain rate will have his payments reduced. The more his income, the greater the reductions. At first, this cap will apply to earned income. Then it will be applied to all income."
"When it is clear that rich people who have paid into Social Security are costing the taxpayers billions of dollars, there will be bills introduced into Congress similar to the ones introduced on unemployment insurance payments to millionaires."
Giving Florida Firms First Dibs on Bids Stifles Competition, Quality | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary
Giving Florida Firms First Dibs on Bids Stifles Competition, Quality | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary: "As of July 1, Tallahassee is required to grant preferences to in-state companies when considering bids to procure commodities and finished goods."
"when we artificially reduce the size of markets by law or regulation or some arbitrary boundary, we reduce the scope for specialization, competition and economies of scale, which are the ingredients of value and wealth creation, economic growth and increased living standards."
"contracts denied numerous other companies because the state's resources have been stretched and depleted to satisfy the in-state preference rules."
"when we artificially reduce the size of markets by law or regulation or some arbitrary boundary, we reduce the scope for specialization, competition and economies of scale, which are the ingredients of value and wealth creation, economic growth and increased living standards."
"contracts denied numerous other companies because the state's resources have been stretched and depleted to satisfy the in-state preference rules."
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