It's A Great Day

Marc Fisher writing in today's Washington Post laments the decline of the once proud Choir at Eastern High School. But what he really has done is sing the praises (pun intended) of charter schools:

Contrast Eastern's sad state with the artistic and academic attractions offered
by the growing fleet of charter schools and you see why so many parents are
switching. At Stokes Public Charter School on 16th Street NW, the choir has
released its third CD, produced by its accomplished music director, Cheryl
Jones. The student choir tours along with a spirited faculty chorus. A number of
charter schools boast similar lures...

"Folks who are looking to reform the schools have a tendency to define success exclusively in terms of reading and math skills," without regard to the rest of education, says D.C. school board member Victor Reinoso (Wards 3 and 4). When charter schools let kids delve deeply into something -- robotics (Friendship Edison), culinary arts (The New School), the law (Thurgood Marshall Academy) -- it's no wonder parents flee the regular public schools.

His column even hints that if Wilson High School converts to a charter then Eastern may not be far behind.

PermaLink | 5:41 AM | |

Avis Berman has written a new book to be released in April which shows how the painter Edward Hopper documented life in New York City through his work. The New York Times printed a story by her yesterday and here is an excerpt that I only partially agree with:

People become hardened by materialistic pressures, he concluded, and to survive,
they grow indifferent or estranged from one another. Hopper probed this idea in
his representations of white-collar workers inhabiting the drab, impersonal
offices in paintings like "Office at Night" and "Conference at Night," both done
in the 1940's. Even before he had established himself as a delineator of New
York places, the artist had already pinpointed a New York state of mind. That
state is not so much "loneliness," as the maudlin clich� about him would have
it, but a tougher and more unsparing isolation that touches on the traps of
modern urban existence, one in which individuals must become inured to life's
insults and injuries.

I think the author has taken the easy way out by describing the isolation found in his paintings in such a depressing manner. Compare Ms. Berman's writing with that of the excellent review Laura Cumming wrote regarding last Summer's exhibition at the Tate Modern:

A great Hopper, in the paint, is all stillness, silence, solidity. Not the
stillness of Vermeer, of stopped yet reverberating time, but a stillness all of
his own: the hiatus, the lapse, the longueur, the moment between significant
moments.

If you go to the link for the article you will find a tremendous slide show featuring Hopper's scenes from New York. By the way, we saw 18 of his paintings on our trip last week.

PermaLink | 4:53 AM | |

Edwuardo Porter of the New York Times has noticed that the power of individual choice is now at the center of public policy prescriptions from fixing healthcare to public education and he does not like what he sees.

But don't ask the general public if they agree with him. On a cab drive from Cambridge back to our Boston hotel I asked the driver where he was from. When he said Chile I asked him if he had a private social security account since the Cato Institute is basing their plan on this Country's experience. He replied that he certainly did and then he became excited and said thank god for Milton Friedman. We all laughed.

PermaLink | 9:59 AM | |

In Sunday's Washington Post Outlook Section Katie Davis provides a fascinating ground-level view of trying to find the most appropriate high school for a 13 year old boy.

Update: I emailed Ms. Davis to say I liked her column and asked her if she had looked at charter schools. On Sunday I received her response:

Hi Mark,

Thank you for writing. Yes, we looked at the Charter Schools. Luke was in a fabulous one-Capital City. Hyde and Chavez are both excellent but there is a certain rigidity there that doesn't fit Luke's personality. Mandatory summer school, detention if a child is late.

He's more of an open classroom type of kid. That's where he thrives.

So, sadly, we passed on those Charters. I have placed quite a few other kids
in those. We are thrilled that he's going to go to Field...and I'll just raise the
money!

Let's stay in touch.

Katie Davis

PermaLink | 5:30 PM | |

Arizona's Scholarship Tuition Tax Credit Again Upheld by Court as Constitutional
Federal District Court Judge Dismisses AzCLU's Frivolous Lawsuit

Phoenix: Federal District Court Judge Earl Carroll today granted the Institute for Justice Arizona Chapter's motion and dismissed the Arizona Civil Liberties Union's (AzCLU) frivolous legal challenge to the state's innovative Educational Tax Credit program. The Institute represents the Arizona School Choice Trust (ASCT), a scholarship-granting organization, and parents whose children receive scholarships from ASCT.

"We are extremely gratified the District Court has once again recognized that school choice programs, such as Arizona's Scholarship Tax Credit, are constitutional," declared IJ-AZ Executive Director Tim Keller.

Despite prior rulings from both the Arizona Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court that school choice programs meet federal constitutional requirements, the AzCLU in the federal lawsuit dismissed today had contended that the scholarship tax credit violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The District Court, while granting the Institute's motion to dismiss, also denied as moot motions filed by the Defendant State of Arizona and the Defendant-Intervenor Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization.

The ruling comes at a crucial time because the Arizona Legislature is considering multiple bills involving the expansion of the tax credit, including proposals to create a corporate tax credit and to eliminate the marriage penalty. Currently, individual taxpayers may receive a tax credit up to $500 for donations made to a scholarship tuition organization such as ASCT, but a married couple may only claim a credit of $625. The Legislature is also considering several additional school choice measures involving school vouchers.

"Arizona's Tuition Scholarship Tax Credit provides thousands of Arizona children the opportunity for a better education, but there are thousands more eager families on waiting lists," said Institute for Justice Staff Attorney Jennifer Barnett. "With the District Court's affirmation that there is no First Amendment obstacle to school choice in Arizona, policy makers should seize the moment to expand education opportunities for all of Arizona?s school children."

"The time has come for opponents of school choice to stop filing baseless legal actions," Keller said. "Groups such as the AzCLU and the teachers' unions should join forces with those of us working toward meaningful education reform or step aside and let the work of improving public education continue unimpeded."

In 1999, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a similar challenge under the Arizona Constitution, in a case also litigated by the Institute for Justice. In addition, IJ successfully defended tax credits in Illinois and vouchers in Cleveland and Milwaukee. IJ is currently defending Florida's groundbreaking Opportunity Scholarships program.

PermaLink | 5:09 PM | |

NATIONAL SCHOOL CHOICE MOMENTUM GROWS AS ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO LEGISLATURES PASS SCHOOL CHOICE BILLS

PHOENIX: Demonstrating the growing momentum of the national school choice movement, two state legislatures passed school choice bills Thursday. The Alliance for School Choice applauds the states for taking another step forward for educational opportunities.

The Arizona scholarship tax credit bill offers income tax benefits to companies that contribute to scholarship funds for low-income children transferring from public to private schools. The New Mexico bill provides $5 million to implement a pilot pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds in high-poverty areas with low-performing schools.

"Not all children profit from the same learning environment and these programs recognize that, giving parents more educational options for their children," declared Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, the Phoenix-based organization that leads the national effort to support school choice programs that expand opportunities for economically disadvantaged children.

Arizona currently has the nation's oldest tuition tax credit system, providing dollar-for-dollar tax credits to individuals and married couples (capped at $500 and $625 respectively) who make donations to school tuition organizations. The corporate tax credit would provide scholarships up to $4,200 for low-income children in grades K-8 and $5,500 for grades 9-12. The bill will now go to Gov. Napolitano.

The New Mexico program includes public and private schools. Advocates and policymakers aim to expand the program to all of the state's four-year-olds. Gov. Bill Richardson is expected to sign the bill in the next few weeks.

PermaLink | 5:06 PM | |

Charles Quigley, Executive Director of the Center for Civic Education, reported in a presentation last year that the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test of 12th graders in the subject of civics and government in 1998 showed that only 25% scored in the proficient range. I can attest to these findings. In recent years I have lectured on the subject to students in a Washington, D.C. charter high school focusing on public policy, to a political science class at George Mason University, through a distance learning course on the media and the presidency hosted by C-Span and taught to students at the University of Denver, and to my own daughter's government class in Fairfax County, Virginia. In all cases I found that our country's children are lacking in a basic understanding of the principals upon which our nation was founded.

The significance of this knowledge gap in now influencing the level of discourse regarding public policy issues we are confronting in America today. For example, while the sad case of Terri Schiavo has raised the issues of federalism and when it is right to end a human life, I have seen almost no one point out that the fact that Congress passed a law targeted toward a single individual, an act which is explicitly forbidden in the U.S. Constitution. This is called a "Bill of Attainer" and Article 1 Section 3 states that "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." The matter could not be as black and white as this and yet the President, the House of Representatives, and the Senate all went along with the legislation although all take an oath of office in which they swear that they will uphold and defend our founding document.

I could share many other examples of disconnect between our debate on important issues of the day and America's democratic ideals. The issue first came to mind as I followed the debate surrounding the use of private school vouchers for students to attend parochial schools. Many people are opposed to this suggestion because they believe it violates the separation of church and state inferred in our Bill of Rights. But no matter what your position on school choice, it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding regarding Article 1 to try and use it to stop the implementation of these programs.

Article 1 says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It was included in our Bill of Rights because at the time of our Country's founding the English government and the Anglican Church were not separate entities. During this period monies paid to either organization automatically supported the other. This is what Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason were trying to correct. Does providing scholarship money to students to attend a religious school circumvent their efforts? Not according to five members of the Supreme Court:

"There also is no evidence that the program fails to provide genuine opportunities for Cleveland parents to select secular educational options for their school-age children. Cleveland schoolchildren enjoy a range of educational choices: They may remain in public school as before, remain in public school with publicly funded tutoring aid, obtain a scholarship and choose a religious school, obtain a scholarship and choose a nonreligious private school, enroll in a community school, or enroll in a magnet school. That 46 of the 56 private schools now participating in the program are religious schools does not condemn it as a violation of the Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause question is whether Ohio is coercing parents into sending their children to religious schools, and that question must be answered by evaluating all options Ohio provides Cleveland schoolchildren, only one of which is to obtain a program scholarship and then choose a religious school." (Zelman V. Simmons-Harris, p 13-14).

It should not take the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to write this opinion. A high school student equipped with a solid grasp of the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution can come to the same reasoned conclusion. Just think about all the time, money and other resources that could have been saved by an understanding of the Establishment Clause. (The amount of resources used to win the Zelman case is documented in Clint Bolick's excellent 1993 book Voucher Wars.)

The Center for Civic Education quotes remarks by Thomas Jefferson on the need for civics education,

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."

This is not a matter to be taken lightly. The future survival of our 229 year experiment in democracy may just be dependent on teaching civics to our kids.

PermaLink | 11:18 AM | |

Our family had a great school spring break vacation in New York City and Boston. It was filled with fine food and drink, wonderful theater and art. For example, I have been reading bloggers go on and on about the Chelsea area but it was only on this trip that I understood what they are talking about. We hit some relatively warm weather (we had lunch outside) and strolled from one gallery to another marveling at the all of the stimulating paintings we were seeing for free.

At the other extreme was the new Museum of Modern Art. .

We paid over $100 for two adults and three students to get in. Then, because we had already made quick visits to the Whitney and the Met we went to sit in one of the museum's cafes for some drinks. $20 later we were ready to see some art. It was difficult to find. After drifting through three gigantic floors of modern junk we went up to the fourth level to see the type of abstract stuff that is often the subject of many jokes. Finally, on the fifth floor, we got to see the paintings that led me to fall in love with this museum years ago. However, now that they are in these large galleries they have lost the intimacy that allowed you to recognize their significance. I did not think it possible to make "Starry Night" look like just one of numerous other paintings on display but somehow it was a simple accomplishment by the folks over at MOMA. Sad. I don't think I will be returning.

If you are in NYC the place to be now is the Whitney. Their fifth floor has ten Edward Hopper painting on display. And on the fourth floor until May 29th is the first ever retrospective of the work of Tim Hawkinson. We all found it interesting and fun. You should have seen the little kids getting into it. The Whitney describes him as a sculptor but I would say that his creations transcend categorization. I've included a link here so that you can get some idea what I'm talking about, but you really need to see it in person.

PermaLink | 6:13 AM | |

Many of you have followed the sad case of Terri Schiavo, whose husband has been trying to have the feeding tube removed from this woman who has been living in a coma for over 15 years. The Florida Legislature, Governor Jeb Bush, and the Florida Supreme Court have all injected themselves into a dispute between Schiavo's husband, who wants the tube removed because he insists she would never want to live this way, and her family, who oppose the move.

Yesterday, our U.S. Congress got into the action. And as Charles Babington and Manuel Roig-Franzia from the Washington Post report, the House and Senate could not agree on a bill last night:

Both houses of Congress agreed this week -- in unrecorded voice votes -- to let
federal courts take the Schiavo case away from Florida's courts. The House bill
would require federal courts to review cases involving "incapacitated" people.

But some senators from both parties said the House language was too
broad. At 5:35 p.m. yesterday, the Senate approved a bill that would apply only
to Schiavo and would allow, but not require, a federal court review of her case.
But the House had adjourned 75 minutes earlier for the long-planned two-week
recess.

Those of you who study our Constitution know that Congress is overstepping its authority here. The body is trying to pass a "Bill of Attainder," explicitly prohibited under Article 1, Section 9:

Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

A Bill of Attainder is a law targeted at a specific individual or group. Our Founders were against such legislation because when we lived under British rule the King used to go after people through laws aimed directly at them. Congress has make this mistake before, in passing RICO legislation focused on the Mafia and by approving a decade-old bill from Representative Tom Davis allowing Elizabeth Morgan and her daughter to return to this country after they ran away to Australia to avoid a custody fight. About a year ago the Morgan bill was ruled unconstitutional, although by that time the damage was done since Elizabeth Morgan's daughter was now over the age of 18.

The fight over Schiavo is bound to continue. Let's see if anyone dusts off our Constitution to determine what is right.

PermaLink | 5:44 AM | |

Jeff Jacoby asks the question I have been wondering about for months. Why isn't Congress outraged regarding the use of torture by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cuba?

PermaLink | 6:15 AM | |

Up until very recently whenever I said I was a libertarian I was asked if I that meant I was a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. But now the term is being widely used, whether you are referring to Condoleezza Rice, Alan Greenspan, or the issues of affordable housing, eminent domain, social security reform, or school choice. Comic Julia Gorin, on OpinionJournal.com, even jokes about us.

PermaLink | 5:16 AM | |

I'm tired of David Brooks and his conclusion, which he has written about 10 times already, that President Bush's social security reform plan is dead. Life is too short for moderate Republicans.

PermaLink | 6:08 AM | |

PHOENIX - The Alliance for School Choice, the Phoenix-based organization
that leads the national effort to support school choice programs to
expand opportunities for economically disadvantaged children, applauds
the 16-12 vote by the Arizona Senate today, passing the Parental
Educational Choice Grant Program.

Senate Bill 1506 allows any child in the state to use public funds to
transfer from public to private school or to start kindergarten in a
private school. It would give parents a yearly grant for private school
tuition -- up to $3,500 for kindergarten through eighth grade and up to
$4,500 for high school. Students already attending private schools are
exempt from the program.

"Arizona is already a leader in school reform and is now poised to enact
the nation's first universal scholarship program," said Clint Bolick,
president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice. "This
is a victory for Arizona school children and I applaud the Senate for
taking this step forward for educational opportunities."

PermaLink | 6:09 PM | |

Last Saturday night Michele, Sarah, and I saw "The Goat" at Arena stage. Apparently so too did Peter Marks of the Washington Post. The actors were all extremely good and were able to generate sympathy for the main character who has a strong marriage and a successful career and who falls in love with - you got it- a goat. Much of it was very funny.

The play by Edward Albee, author of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," is my daughter Amy's favorite. She saw it a couple of times when it was on Broadway. I do not share her views.

The piece expresses the idea that love is a good in and of itself. It doesn't matter if a man is in love with a woman or another man or a dog or a cat. It is the feelings of one towards another that is important. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the main character's son is gay. We are led by the parents to understand that they have accepted the fact that their child is a homosexual. We are then asked to make the intellectual leap to recognize the value in the relationship that the main character has with an animal. It is not an easy night at the theater.

The playwright does not understand the fundamentals behind relationships. Physical attraction between two people is often a start. But if a couple is to stay together beyond a one night stand then there has to be much more. People stay with one another because they share common values and a similar view of the world. They want to share their future together because they both envision the future to look a particular way. They need to stay together because apart they may not be able to reach their goals. It is also good to have that person with you for support when things don't go exactly as planned. And it is fantastic to share the things that go right, especially with the one who you planned the occasion with when it was only a dream.

Animals cannot share the same vision of the future with man because they lack the ability to reason. They can think only of now. They have no capability to reach opinions on matters such as ethics or the nature of the universe. Furthermore, an intimate physical relationship with an animal cannot be rewarding (or normal) because there are no common terms in which it can be experienced.

Mr. Albee inserted into the play comments regarding the fact that the main character was good because he is a Democrat. Liberals often confuse the differences between man and animals and other forms of life, and will treat them all as if they are on the same hierarchical level. That is why you will often see private property confiscated by government entities or a project stopped because someone has found one living being which is a member of a rare species that has taken up residence on a site.

(It was good to write about art for a change. And I'll have plenty of other opportunities coming up. Next week brings another visit to New York City complete with tickets to "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," a trip to the new Museum of Modern Art, and a walking tour of places Ayn Rand frequented. There will be much to discuss.)

PermaLink | 5:45 AM | |

Mike Allen of the Washington Post quotes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her views on abortion:

"If you go back to 2000 when I helped the president in the campaign," she said,
"I said that I was, in effect, kind of libertarian on this issue. And meaning by
that, that I have been concerned about a government role in this issue. I am a
strong proponent of parental choice -- of parental notification. I am a strong
proponent of a ban on late-term abortion. These are all things that I think
unite people and I think that that's where we should be. I've called myself at
times mildly pro-choice."

As loyal readers know I am a libertarian but I am not pro-choice. A contradiction? You will not find one in this space.

Our U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were adopted to protected individual rights. Among those unalienable rights are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I believe, as does Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, that life begins at conception and therefore that life is constitutionally projected from that time. However, to be honest, libertarians, like America, are split on this issue. It all comes down to when you believe a person's life starts.

PermaLink | 7:24 AM | |

United States (free-market) Economist Laureate Walter Williams sets the record straight on the true costs of social security payroll taxes:

Suppose you hire me at $6 an hour. From that $6 an hour, you must deduct 35
cents in Social Security tax and add 35 cents of so-called employer
contribution. Here's the big question: What is your hourly cost to hire me? If
you said $6.35, go to the head of the class. Now comes the bigger question. If
it cost you $6.35 an hour to hire me, what must be the minimum value of my
contribution to your company's output? If you said $6.35, again, go to the head
of the class. If you said that the value of my hourly output had to be $6, our
agreed-upon wage, you'd be losing money and soon would be out of business
because my hourly cost would exceed my hourly output.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has proposed for years that instead of paychecks listing an employee's hourly rate it include the total expense of having the individual on staff, including social security taxes, Medicare taxes, unemployment insurance, and health insurance.

PermaLink | 8:23 AM | |

I just received this invitation from the Alliance for School Choice:

Clint Bolick, president and general counsel of the Alliance for School
Choice - the nation's leading organization committed to providing school
choice for economically disadvantaged school children - will discuss and
debate school vouchers in the District of Columbia with People for the
American Way's general counsel and legal director, Elliot Mincberg, on
March 15, from noon to 2 p.m. at the National Press Club, Lisagor Room,
525 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

Bolick led the litigation team that defended the constitutionality of
school choice programs across the nation, culminating in the successful
defense of the Cleveland program in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court
decision of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. He maintains that school choice
boosts the performance and test scores of children at the bottom of the
academic ladder and offers a competitive incentive that spurs public
schools to perform better.

Mincberg has served as co-counsel in several education cases and opposes
school choice, arguing that it undermines public education, costs
taxpayers millions of dollars and lacks basic academic and fiscal
accountability. Both participants will discuss the future of school
vouchers in D.C and what it means for the national debate.

The event is sponsored by the D.C. Republican Committee, the D.C. Young
Republicans, the American Conservative Union and the Center for a Just
Society. Genevieve Wood, vice president of the Center for a Just
Society, will moderate and Christopher Barron, Ward 2 D.C. Republican
party chair, will emcee.

PermaLink | 4:34 PM | |

Terry Teachout, writer of the Washington Post's "Second City" column, "About Last Night" blogger, and Wall Street Journal cultural reporter, wrote a piece in 1987, reprinted on National Review Online, which predicted that the news anchor would be involved in something like the forged papers regarding President Bush's service in the national guard.

PermaLink | 5:48 AM | |

Nominating John Bolton to be United Nations Ambassador may be as smart as putting in Rod Paige as the Secretary of Education.

PermaLink | 2:39 AM | |

From Saturday March 5th.

PermaLink | 2:03 AM | |

Last evening I attended the monthly open meeting of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. At the session the Board voted to begin the process of revoking the charter for The SouthEast Academy of Scholastic Excellence PCS.

The school was recently up for its five year review and has been on probation with the Charter School Board for the last two years. The reason given for this action is the failure of the school to meet the standards contained in its accountability plan. The process for revocation could take up to 90 days and does not necessarily mean that SouthEast Academy will be closed. But the Board made it quite clear that the future of this facility does not appear bright. SouthEast Academy serves 695 kindergarten through 8th graders and is located in Anacostia.

If SouthEast Academy loses its charter then this would be the first school closed by the Public Charter School Board. The Board of Education has closed a couple of charter schools, if I remember correctly.

Also at the meeting the Board placed the Sasha Bruce Public Charter School on probation because of it failure to provide for the needs of special education students according to its charter and federal law. The Board made clear that because these violations have been identified in the past and not corrected that this school also was heading toward revocation of its charter. Sasha Bruce has 197 students in grades 6 through 9 and is located in Northeast.

Since I was one of the few observers at the meeting, at the end of the forum the Board members and staff asked for my impressions of what I had just seen. I told them as a Chairman of a board of a charter school it gave me new respect for the seriousness of what the charter means to those involved with WEDJ and drove home the great responsibility we have to the citizens of Washington D.C.

PermaLink | 5:50 AM | |

Since DCPS cannot find a way to get the mercury out of Cardozo, and students worry about weapons and drugs in the schools (even in Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy) and standardized test results continue to be an embarrassment, I say its better that the kids are home.

PermaLink | 5:01 AM | |

Despite the fact that the temperature outside is freezing I sit at my computer quite comfortable in my warm home, sipping my coffee as I type my thoughts. And while the D.C. Council, School Board, Mayor, and Superintendent go about their daily jobs, all talking as we are on the cusp of major improvements regarding the quality of education in the District of Columbia, outside in the real world nothing has changed. In fact, the argument can be made that public schools in the nation's capital are in much worse shape then before the ruling of Brown vs. The Board of Education was issued almost 51 years ago.

Enough is enough. No more secrets. For the great majority of parents the only decent education their children can get is from the vibrant charter school movement or from being fortunate enough to attend a private school. Our new school Superintendent is trying to make things better from the inside but the bureaucratic fight against these initiatives is certain to be fought to the death.

So while we wait for the situation to improve another generation of kids will not learn as they should and will be unprepared to make valuable contributions to our society.

When something is not working to the extend that public education in broken in our city then something drastic needs to be done. I say let's start over. Let's make each school a charter school or a private school. Or let's turn the whole thing over to a few different organizations like Philadelphia did. All of us who have a stake in the future of Washington D.C. need to stop accepting the status quo and call for an immediate fix. Today, not tomorrow. We cannot afford to let another school year go by.

PermaLink | 8:08 AM | |

The question today on C-Span's Washington Journal program this morning was "Is Alan Greenspan a political hack?" It comes from a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank and Nell Henderson in which Senate minority leader Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is quoted as referring to Mr. Greenspan in this way.

I called in to point out that Mr. Greenspan is definitely not a political hack, adding that he is simply advocating opinions he has believed in for years. I reminded the television audience that Mr. Greenspan was part of the small group of individuals, who jokingly called themselves "The Collective," that met in Ayn Rand's apartment on Saturday evenings to hear her read chapters from Atlas Shrugged as she completed them. At a party many years back I learned directly from Mr. Greenspan that he was with Ayn Rand the night before she died. It is no wonder,therefore, that the Federal Reserve Chairman would support ideas that she would have backed such as federal income tax cuts and social security privatization.

The Washington Post article does refer to Mr. Greenspan's connection to Ayn Rand:

Democratic strategists say Greenspan, who turns 79 on Sunday and plans to
retire in January, is newly vulnerable. "It is about time Democrats stopped
treating him like he was an untouchable," said Chris Lehane, a campaign adviser
to Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John F. Kerry. And Marshall
Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council said Greenspan has "returned to
his Ayn Rand roots" in recent times, referring to his work for a publication
affiliated with the libertarian philosopher in the 1960s.

PermaLink | 7:40 AM | |

For fun let's see how many logical errors Eugene Robinson makes in his column appearing today in the Washington Post (my comments and count in bold):

So Now Bush Cares?

I have to assume that President Bush's sudden concern for my life expectancy, and that of my homies, is just breathtaking political cynicism, nothing more. He isn't sincere. If he were, it would mean a road-to-Damascus transformation as profound as his earlier conversion from jejune, fun-loving frat boy to sober, responsible man of God.
This is cynicism at its highest level. Especially when the facts show that the President is telling the truth, as the author admits later in the piece. (1)
Here's what he said in January, pitching his dodgy private Social Security accounts at a forum: "African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed."
Like I said, it takes your breath away. An administration that claims to be colorblind, that has been consistently hostile to affirmative action, that deals with black America mainly by inviting some preachers to the White House every now and then to toss them a few faith-based dollars -- an administration that denies race any importance -- has suddenly identified a blatant racial injustice and is determined to right it?
Mr. Robinson is confusing color-blind equal rights before the law in this country with the liberal assertion that rights should be provided to a group of people simply because of their skin color. (2) Bush has never asserted that racial differences are not important. He just does not agree with the Left as to how they should be corrected. (3)
What this would mean, if Bush were serious, is that he now accepts race as an objective, quantifiable factor in American life. Not only that: It would also mean that to measure the impact of race he is using not "opportunity" -- the Republican mantra -- but "outcome," which is doctrinal heresy. The grave, after all, qualifies as the ultimate outcome.
No one is denying that differences between whites and blacks in general can be measured, such as earning potential, level of education reached, average number of children per family, etc. If you cannot measure outcomes then why in the world would you propose public policy solutions to solve a problem. How would you know you have changed anything? (4)
If the president were serious, he'd have to spend the rest of his term reversing his policies. Take the death penalty. Bush was the Grand Executioner of Texas as governor, but since blacks are disproportionately represented on death row and the killers of white victims are more likely to be executed than those who killed blacks, the system must be "inherently unfair." Obviously it "needs to be fixed," doesn't it?
Yes, this needs to fixed. I'm against capital punishment and the racial issue is one of the reasons for my conclusion. He got one right.
What's so cynical about the whole thing is that Bush, for once, is right. Black men in America, statistically, do die six years sooner than white men. That's irrelevant to the Social Security discussion, because most of those excess deaths occur earlier in life, but it's still a fact -- white men live to 75 on average, black men to 69.
Here's the worst part. He attacks the President and then agrees with his major premise.
So let's fix it, Mr. President. According to health statistics your administration published last year, one big factor is that infant and neonatal mortality rates for black Americans are nearly three times those for whites. A lot of black baby boys never make it out of the hospital. Let's start with that.
Why would infant mortality in black America be nearly twice as high as in impoverished, repressed Cuba, to cite one comparison? For one thing, the mothers of those doomed black baby boys are twice as likely to be teenagers as the mothers of white baby boys, and those too-young black mothers are twice as likely to have had no prenatal care. Blacks are less likely than whites to have health insurance and more likely to use hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of physician care.
The implication here is that Cuban healthcare is better than that in the U.S., (5) that the government can stop black teenage mothers from having children (6), and that access to healthcare is the major problem regarding infant mortality. (7)
Please, no lectures about personal responsibility and choice. That was the old you. I agree we're all responsible for our decisions, but nobody gets to choose his parents. Nor do black boys choose, in much larger numbers than whites, to grow up in single-mother households, often in desperate, violent, drug-ridden neighborhoods. Black men 15 to 24 are eight times more likely to be murdered than white men that age. Fix it, please.
Sorry, whining will not get you off the hook. Personal responsibility is the answer here. We have done the Great Society and other grand experiments and things only got worse. Where have you been? (8)
Black men are also much more likely to suffer from stress-related diseases such as hypertension and to suffer "serious psychological distress" -- if they're poor, that is. If they're not poor, they have fewer mental problems than whites.
I hate to say it but there is probably a biological cause for hypertension in blacks. (9)
That's the real reason we black men go to our reward so soon, Mr. Bush -- poverty. According to your figures, 24.1 percent of black Americans live in poverty vs. 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Yet you accept this as a given, so you can make specious arguments to salvage your attempt to privatize Social Security.
Helping people rise out of poverty is one of the main advantages of social security privatization. When you have money that can be passed down through generations then this in an inheritance that can be passed down through generations. Why would you prefer the current system where your "social security trust fund" doesn't belong to you? (10)
Raise the minimum wage. Put some real money into health care, especially prenatal care, and, while you're at it, put some real money into No Child Left Behind -- serious money, Iraq-scale money, enough to put decent teachers and new books in the classrooms of inner-city schools and toilet paper in the bathrooms. Stop slashing every discretionary program your budget-cutters can find. Care as much about what's happening on the streets of Washington, Detroit and Chicago as you care about Baghdad, Mosul and Basra.
Raising the minimum wage will force more people out of work. (11) The government now accounts for about 47% of all healthcare dollars expended in this country. (12) Adding funding to education has been shown to have an inverse relationship to the quality of schools. (13) If you believe in fighting the war on terror then what happens in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra will determine whether there is a Washington, Detroit, and Chicago in the future. (14)
Until you do, please, no more crocodile tears for my posse and me.
The whole article does nothing to advance a serious discussion of social security privatization and public policy in general. (15) Finally, I wonder what Mr. Robinson's reaction would have been had Bill Clinton made the same comments as Mr. Bush.

PermaLink | 5:05 AM | |

From today's Washington Post:

Vouchers to Go to Public School Students

The president and chief executive of the Washington Scholarship Fund, the organization that runs the D.C. school voucher program, said the fund expects that new vouchers awarded this year will go only to students who otherwise would have attended public school.

Fund President Sally Sachar made the statement in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that was released by Feinstein's office this week. The senator, a key supporter of the legislation establishing the federally funded private-school scholarships, had complained that more than 200 of last year's 1,000 voucher recipients were already attending private schools.

Sachar has said that her organization did not have enough time last spring to recruit voucher applicants from public schools. "We are seeing a great amount of interestfrom public school families" this year, Sachar said yesterday. "We will not move to private-school applicants."

Sachar said the deadline for voucher applicants is March 11 for junior and senior high students and March 22 for elementary school applicants.

PermaLink | 1:24 AM | |

Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post that the replacement for retired New York Times columnist William Safire is John Tierney - A LIBERTARIAN! From his piece:

When John Tierney wrote a cover story for the New York Times Magazine titled
"Recycling Is Garbage," the reaction was fierce.

One critic sent him a box filled with garbage.

The 51-year-old reporter will have a prime opportunity to keep stirring things up after being named yesterday to the newspaper's op-ed page, succeeding William Safire as a columnist. A self-described libertarian, Tierney has mused about the privatization of Central Park (complete with turnstiles) and attacked commuter rail under the headline: "Amtrak Must Die."

I can't wait.

PermaLink | 5:39 AM | |

This is my opinion but the Wall Street Journal strongly disagrees. In their view:

No doubt most Americans will concede that the death penalty for 16- and
17-year-olds is a difficult moral question. That is why different U.S. states
have different laws on the matter, and we'd probably oppose such executions if
we sat in a legislature. But rather than defer to the will of voters as
expressed through state legislatures and at least two ballot initiatives (in
Arizona and Florida), Roper imposes the view of five justices that the execution
of 16- and 17-year-olds is both wrong and unconstitutional. As Justice Antonin
Scalia writes in a dissent that is even more pungent than his usual offerings,
"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards."

Justice Kennedy rests his decision on his assertion that American
society has reached a "national consensus" against capital punishment for
juveniles, and that laws allowing it contravene modern "standards of decency."
His evidence for this "consensus" is that of the 38 states that permit capital
punishment, 18 have laws prohibiting the execution of murderers under the age of
18. As we do the math, that's a minority of 47% of those states. The dozen
states that have no death penalty offer no views about special immunity for
juveniles--and all 12 permit 16- and 17-year-olds to be treated as adults when
charged with non-capital offenses.

The editors then attack the Court for its "liberal judicial activism." But if the Justices disallow, for example, the personal property takings in the recent New London, Connecticut case then I'm sure they would interpret that decision as correcting a state's misguided view of the Fifth Amendment. I am one who likes judicial activism, as long as it take the form of supporting individual liberty.

PermaLink | 4:55 AM | |

Marie Gryphon of the Cato Institute shines light on the games that states are now playing with standardized tests in order to get around the No Child Left Behind Act's requirement that schools demonstrate "adequate yearly progress" of their students. Says the author:

According to the RAND Corporation, Texas boasted an 88 percent pass rate on
its eighth grade reading test last year while South Carolina turned in a miserable 21 percent pass rate.

Texas children read far better than South Carolinians, one might conclude. One would be wrong, though. On the standard National Assessment of Educational
Progress, scores from these two states are nearly identical: South Carolina
has a 24 percent "proficiency" rate compared with only 26 percent among Texans.

Different state exams were useful in a pre-NCLB world. Then, states set standards with an eye toward cleaning their own houses. Now they tailor tests and statistical methods to obscure reality, compromising the integrity of state systems to keep the federal government flying blind.

Last year the state of Michigan reduced the number of "failing" schools under its care from 1,500 to 216. But this remarkable achievement was merely a statistical sleight of hand. Michigan lowered the minimum passing score on the state's assessment from 75 percent to a mere 42 percent, the Heartland Institute reports.

Other states lower standards by manipulating their methods for reporting results. North Carolina increased the percentage of its schools reporting adequate progress from 47 percent to 70 percent last year. The increase is largely due to a technical change in the way the data are reported. Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have made similar adjustments.

Of course, loyal readers of this space could have guessed this would happen.

PermaLink | 6:30 PM | |

Jeffrey Smith reports in today's Washington Post that District Court Judge Henry F. Floyd ruled that Jose Padilla must be charged with a crime within 45 days or released from prison. Mr. Smith comments that:

Using a phrase often levied by conservatives to denigrate liberal judges, Floyd
-- who was appointed by President Bush to the federal bench in 2003 -- accused
the administration of engaging in "judicial activism" when it asserted in court
pleadings that Bush has blanket authority under the Constitution to detain
Americans on U.S. soil who are suspected of taking or planning actions against
the country.

But that is not all Judge Floyd had to say. In words spoken as if I had planted them the judge added in his 23-page opinion:

...to do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this
country's constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this
Nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic
values and our individual liberties.

PermaLink | 6:07 PM | |