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Year of School Choice a Great Birthday Present in Milton Friedman’s Honor
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 2:12pm
The birthday of the late, great economist Milton Friedman is in two days. He would have been 99 years old. Since the anniversary of Friedman’s birth falls on a Sunday and I won’t be blogging then, what better time to commemorate him and his passionate life’s work to expand school choice? In the Education Policy Center’s ever-evolving issue paper — A Chronology of School Choice in the U.S. — senior fellow Krista Kafer describes the seminal contribution he made to this important movement:
At mid-century, the concept of a ‘voucher’ for parents first appeared in 1955 in the article “The Role of Government in Education” by economist Milton Friedman, who would later win the Nobel Prize in economics. [link added]
Robert Enlow, who heads up the Foundation for Educational Choice (created to carry on Milton and wife Rose Friedman’s legacy of school choice advocacy), penned a great op-ed yesterday that brings together a confluence of important events:
Friedman noted that education had been stuck in a 19th-century model for decades, producing results that hadn’t kept up with our fast-paced world. That’s why he offered his vision of privatizing a portion of the educational establishment with school choice, to provide a variety of learning opportunities for students and to offer competition to public schools.
In 2011, we may have finally launched Friedman’s Year of School Choice.
No fewer than 18 voucher, tax-credit, and education-savings-account programs have been adopted since January by state legislatures, Congress, and one local school board. [emphasis added]
Of course, that one local school board is Douglas County, Colo., and you can find all the information you’d ever want about the groundbreaking Choice Scholarship Program on a page created by my Education Policy Center friends. But as I’ve pointed out before, the excitement of Douglas County’s achievement is enhanced by seeing it come with the development and growth of so many other voucher, tax credit and other private choice programs. It’s reassuring to hear another prominent education reform voice dub 2011 “The Year of School Choice.”
I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that the Foundation for Educational Choice — as much as any reform group out there — is basking in the sun of a successful year that has surpassed most anybody’s expectations… and still has 5 months to go! Passing laws and policies that enact and expand school choice programs can be a difficult but important task. Yet what can be even harder is the work of making sure that agencies implement those programs properly, that families have the information they need, and that the good news is effectively disseminated to help carry the momentum forward.
In my home we call that a good problem. Many of us may look back gratefully some day at 2011 and the numerous doors of educational opportunity it opened. But we also should never forget to look back even further to the passionate pioneering work of Milton Friedman. For now, we can consider the Year of School Choice a tremendous birthday present to honor his legacy.
Categories: Other News
Looming education-funding fiscal and budgetary train wreck aided and abetted by Colorado Supreme Court
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 1:23pm
Days before a landmark school-funding lawsuit goes to trial, Gov. John Hickenlooper and Attorney General John Suthers on Thursday took a pre-emptive bipartisan stand against the legal challenge, arguing that it could cost the state billions of dollars if it loses in court. (Denver Post, “Colorado governor, attorney general stand against education-funding challenge“)
When Colorado’s Democrat Governor and Republican Attorney General agree that “education funding should be left to the legislature and voters” and not decided by the courts, it might be an indication of the return of some level of fiscal sanity to state government (or a sign of the impending apocalypse).
Unfortunately, the restoration of some level of sanity to Colorado’s judicial branch (which recently earned the state the title of “judicial hellhole“) may take a bit longer.
This educational-funding lawsuit (seeking to force even higher state educational spending by court order) represents yet another abuse of the courts for the pursuit of political ends – unfortunately aided and abetted by an all-too-complicit (and highly political) majority on the Colorado Supreme Court.
Current Chief Justice Michael Bender (together with disgraced then-Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, joined by justices Alex Martinez and Greg Hobbs) overturned two lower courts which had (correctly) dismissed the case (Lobato v. Colorado) as non-justiciable (meaning, not to be decided by the courts).
Unfortunately – thanks to the Colorado Supreme Court’s majority injecting their personal sympathies ahead of the law – this lawsuit has already cost the state tens of thousands, and if upheld will likely lead to court-ordered increases in funding (and, inevitably, taxation) – a violation of separation of powers, and yet another unconstitutional tax increase facilitated by the Colorado Supreme Court.
One not need look very far (indeed, just across the border to Kansas) to see the potential for a fiscal and budgetary train wreck of epic proportions. Indeed, as Governor Hickenlooper correctly points out, the consequences for Colorado would be “devastating.”
The issue of educational funding is NOT one for the courts, but rather for the legislature and/or local school boards. The Lobato lawsuit is a fiscal, legal, and political disaster in the making.
Clear The Bench Colorado will, with your support, continue to promote transparency and accountability in the Colorado judiciary, informing the public to increase awareness of the substantial public policy implications of an unrestrained activism and political agendas in the courts. We will continue to work to educate voters and provide information of relevance related to the judicial branch, and to provide useful and substantive evaluations of judicial performance.
However, we can’t do it alone – we need your continued support; via your comments (Sound Off!) and, yes, your contributions. Freedom isn’t free -nor is it always easy to be a Citizen, not a subject.
Ultimately, though – it’s worth the effort.
Categories: Other News
Apple Phases Out Optical and Magnetic Drives
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 12:49pm
Years ago in school we students plugged standard tape recorders into computers to load programs and save files. (That was a big advancement over the older card systems.) Then came the 5.25 inch floppy, which lasted quite a while, then the 3.5 inch floppy, then the zip disk, with a whopping 100 megabytes of storage!
During the development of the magnetic removable disk, of course, the magnetic hard disk drive also became prominent; today terabyte drives are common and cost less than a hundred bucks.
But removable magnetic disks are not commonly used today. They have been replaced by CD and (a bit more recently) DVD optical drives. It seemed reasonable to think that the trend would continue to higher-capacity optical disks (namely Blu-Ray). But now that seems not to be the case.
What is interesting about Apple’s latest design changes is that the company dropped its base-model $999 MacBook, which featured both an optical drive and a hard disk, making its entry-level laptop the MacBook Air, which features neither sort of media. Instead, the Air runs exclusively on flash memory; the entry-level model carries 64 gigs of it. Meanwhile, the entry level $599 Mac Mini dumps the optical drive but keeps a hard drive.
How, then, do you load up software and move around files? The Air is basically an internet-driven machine. Apple has facilitated online software sales with its app store, and later this year it is rolling out its own cloud service for file storage. If you want to move stuff around via physical media, you can plug in a flash drive, optical drive, or hard drive. The computer, then, is going the way of Apple’s portable devices in terms of using (primarily) the internet to transfer data, rather than optical or magnetic drives.
Of course, this model kind of sucks if the internet ever comes down or falls under political control.
I realize I’m describing pretty obvious trends; still, sometimes I think it’s worth stepping back to observe the breathtaking evolution of technology.
Categories: Other News
Taking a “Blight” Out of Taxpayers
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 12:44pm
Boy is the corporate welfare machine rolling in Aurora these days. Gaylord Entertainment is benefiting from a massive amount of subsidies and tax breaks from the city of Aurora for the honor of locating their hotel and conference center there. If Gaylord were not granted the $300 million in generous “support,” the theory goes, they would not have located their project in Aurora. Of course whether they put roots down in Aurora or somewhere else is besides the point. What matters is the massive wealth transfer from taxpayers in Aurora to a private corporation.
One way for a city to oil up their corporate welfare machine is to “blight” some land, which allows local governments, schools and special districts to “rebate to developers what they pay in property taxes for 25 years.” The word “blight” is to developers as the word “candy” is to children. Except that children have to work a little sometimes to get their candy. However, blighting some land only requires some fancy English language tricks and a stroke of the corporate welfare pen. Here’s what Sen. Morgan Carroll had to say in the Denver Post about this scheme,
It does not pass the straight-face test for the blighted designation… It’s a financing game to get public subsidies for a project that might be wonderful if it were privately financed.
Sen. Carroll hits it out of the park with, “if it were privately financed.” You know, I remember a time when companies would raise money the old-fashioned way – through bank loans. And, now I know I’m showing my age with this one, through private investors. Crazy right? Corporations used to raise capital through means that do not take taxpayers hostage. Not anymore. Now when a project isn’t profitable enough to catch the attention of folks who want to make investments with their own money (to earn a little profit), corporations go to city councils and pitch unprofitable ideas to be financed off the backs of the residents. If banks say no, governments say yes.
Beware of the terms, “incentives,” “grants,” “urban-renewal,” “blight,” “public-private partnership,” and “public investment.” They are all euphemisms for the taxpayer funded corporate welfare gravy train.
Here’s what senior fellow Randal O’Toole has to say about this Gaylord project in the Denver Post earlier this month: Taxpayers Should Reject TIF.
Categories: Other News
One More Thought on the BBA
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 11:45am
There are a couple of ways that, skillfully used, the BBA could actually end up helping the Republicans, at least in this first round.
First, it’s a bargaining chip. If the owners can give up an 18-game season that the players were never going to play, the Republicans may be willing to settle for a BBA vote (as opposed to passage), forcing the Dems to re-assert their Big Government bona fides.
More interestingly, if Boehner 2.1 (Boehner 2.0 with the BBA upgrade) passes the House with Democrat support, as seems likely, it’s going to make it harder for them to go back on that when it actually comes time to vote on the BBA. And if it gets stripped out in the Senate, you may end up with the spectacle of House Dems, having vote against 2.0, and then for 2.1, having to turn around and vote for 2.0 when it comes back around.
Regardless, the Republicans need to hold firm on the smaller cap increase number. The benefit of having this debate again – and possibly yet again – before the election, both political and policy-wise, are too integral to the overall strategy to roll over on.
Categories: Other News
Debt Markets React to Washington – Finally
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 10:33am
People have noted the failure to demand higher yields for treasuries, and concluded that the debt markets don’t believe there’s any problem with August 2, or 10, or any other date we care to mention. In fact, this was largely out of disbelief that Washington could fail to act.
In fact, this week, the debt markets have begun to react. Banks are beginning to pull money out of treasury-heavy money market funds, which in turn are selling treasuries and putting their money in banks. This has the effect of reducing the financial flexibility of each. The repo market – where financial institutions lend securities money to one another, using treasuries as collateral – is beginning to demand higher interest rates. Companies that don’t even like debt are issuing short-term commercial paper to make sure they have cash on hand. Let’s not turn this into panic – it’s not. But the markets are beginning to take prudent and overdue steps to protect themselves against a loss of liquidity in treasuries, even if it doesn’t mean technical default.
In the meantime, it appears that Speaker Boehner has agreed to a stricter Balanced Budget Amendment requirement for the 2nd round of cuts & debt limit increases – requiring passage rather than just a vote. I think this is a mistake.
There is every indication that Boehner Plan 2.0 was pretty close to the plan that he and Harry Reid presented to the President on Sunday, and which he indicated he would veto. But a close reading of the tea leaves also indicates that he was hoping that a strong enough statement against it would prevent him from actually having to make that decision. If he had signed it, it would have strengthened the conservative case for governance immensely.
Now, the House has probably made it more likely that they will end up voting on – and probably passing – some compromise between McConnell and Reid. That deal would, in fact, work towards marginalizing the Tea Party groups who have done so much to get us to this point.
I hope I’m wrong, and that the wording of the BBA is something that can get passed – it requires no presidential signature – and that the extra time we’re buying is put to good use making the case for it. Certainly Obama & the Democrats’ desire to run the federal budget on auto-pilot helps in that regard.
But if not, and if the 30 or so Republicans end up setting the stage for an exact repeat of this in 6 months, with no BBA in hand, they may well end up moving the debate to the left, rather than to the right.
One other point – I do think reasoned analyses such as McArdle’s, which show what will likely happen if we don’t raise the ceiling, without the histrionics, actually help our case down the road. If the markets do shudder a little bit, it should server as a spectre of what will actually happen, for real, when the debt markets finally decide to take that decision out of Washington’s hands altogether.
UPDATE: The Dollar-denominated Swiss Franc ETF, FXF, opened almost 2% higher this morning, and stayed there the whole day. I went back and looked, and since 2006, the daily percentage change has been bigger than this – in this direction – only 10 days, so this is definitely a multi-sigma event. One guess as to why it happened.
Categories: Other News
Western Conservative Summit Livestream
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 9:55am
Via Centennial Institute:
Watch live streaming video from coloradochristianuniversity at livestream.com
Categories: Other News
Quote of the Day – Powerline
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Fri, 07/29/2011 - 9:31am
One would hope that voters have begun to notice that the only body that has actually done anything concrete to resolve the debt impasse is the House of Representatives. Unlike the Senate, it has passed a budget. It also passed cut, cap and balance. So now, for the third time, the House will have acted while the Democratic Senate can’t get its act together.
Categories: Other News
The Most Popular Man In Town
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 9:42pm
Is usually the backup quarterback. Right now, Rick Perry is polling extremely well. He’s played this skillfully so far, not letting himself be rushed, getting people to ask him to enter, and them building up a fundraising effort and making all the right contacts. (Personally, I like what I see so far; he’s turned what was a weak office into a strong one, and made Texas - Gen. Kearney notwithstanding – into where Galt’s Gulch would be located if Rand were writing today. This stops well short of an endorsement, I’d just like to see him have a chance to make his case.)
That said, we really don’t know how he’ll do on the big stage of a presidential race, or much about his governing style yet. He’s the backup quarterback, whose popularity largely reflects discontent with the starters. Time will tell if he’s Tom Brady or Bubby Brister,.
Categories: Other News
For the Kids, Please, D.C. Leaders Need to Streamline Department of Education
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 3:17pm
Judging by some of the grumbling I hear from my parents lately, there’s a big hubbub in Washington, D.C., about people in government borrowing bazillions of dollars and not paying it back — or something like that. Which reminds me… You really ought to watch this 2-minute video put together by my friends at the Independence Institute:
Even though it stars yucky girls, it won seventh place in some big national competition. Guess I should be happy for all of them — so sue me, all right?
But anyway, this is an education blog, and I did have a reason for bringing up D.C. and politicians. (Only so often, you know, don’t want to make it more than I can take.) Allison Sherry of our own Denver Post has an interesting write-up for Education Next on the education policies and platforms of leading Republican presidential contenders. While you should read through the whole thing, I picked out one section to highlight:
A candidate like [former Massachusetts governor Mitt] Romney or [former Minnesota governor Tim] Pawlenty is still going to have to explain to the Republican base why they’re not going to shutter the U.S. Department of Education. During the 2010 midterm elections, Tea Party Senate and House candidates across the country promised on the campaign trail that they would shut down the U.S. Department of Education and hand control over to state governments. Many of them are now members of Congress.
Shrinking the size and the budget of the U.S. Department of Education seems a cause we all can rally around, given the realities pointed out at the beginning of the post. Closing it down altogether in the near future seems a bridge too far, though on the Republican side it’s open for debate. Those candidates looking for a less stringent approach might consider the ideas set forth in a new American Enterprise Institute Outlook by Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric, titled “Federal Compliance Works against Education Policy Goals”. Recommendations for federal education policymakers include:
1. Closely examine all existing compliance requirements, whether statutory, regulatory, or OMB requirements, to ensure they are consistent with federal policy objectives and worth spending the time to enforce at the federal level and comply with at the state and local level.
2. Eliminate federal compliance requirements that do not directly relate to achieving federal educational policy goals.
3. Ensure federal requirements are aligned and not duplicative across programs.…
Yeah, these recommendations aren’t the most exciting stuff to run on as a candidate. So I’m not a political campaign manager. But they do seem like the sort of basic actions that could attract a great deal of support — simple, basic things to do to start undoing the growth of the federal behemoth… For the kids. (Remember that video at the beginning?)
Categories: Other News
Left and Right Assault Free Speech
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 1:31pm
The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published July 22, 2011, by Grand Junction Free Press.
Within a week of Independence Day, representatives of the left and right started lining up to assault free speech and advocate censorship.
On July 7 Michele Bachmann, a Republican candidate for president, signed a pledge from the Family Leader to “protect” women from “all forms of pornography.” The next day, guests on Thom Hartmann’s “progressive” radio show called for a Constitutional amendment to censor political speech. God help us if they ever reach a “bipartisan” agreement to gut the First Amendment.
We’ll start with Bachmann. The pledge she signed neglects to specify what should be done about pornography. But this is a pledge for candidates, so we can sensibly conclude the intent is to pass laws limiting or outlawing pornography. Moreover, the pledge equates pornography with slavery and the murder of children, and obviously those latter two things should be outlawed. (The pledge also suggests abortion should be banned, but that’s the topic for another article.)
The first problem is who gets to decide which naked pictures constitute high art and which get banned as pornographic. For example, R. Crum’s illustrated Genesis features a nude Adam and Eve, both looking quite healthy (and neither wearing a fig leaf). Should we ban that?
Pornography can be written text as well as images. Chapter 19 of Genesis features Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and then having sex with him. The daughters get pregnant, having sons who go on to found the Moabites and Ammonites.
So who in Bachmann’s world gets to decide which sexually explicit images and texts rise to the sacred and which deserve criminal prosecution? What about Playboy? What about romance novels? What about Michelangelo’s sculpture of David?
Obviously the government has a legitimate interest in protecting the rights of children, who have not reached the age of consent. But consenting adults properly have the right to engage in whatever behavior they want, free from political interference. Anything short of that standard leads logically to the incremental destruction of individual rights.
While Bachmann deserves the harshest criticism for her frankly idiotic move to sign the pledge, the left’s censors deserve even harsher condemnation. They should know better. There was a time in this country when the left actually took free speech seriously. Not anymore.
Hartmann’s guests made two recommendations. First, amend the U.S. Constitution such that only registered voters may donate funds to a campaign or issue group, and regional politicians may limit the amount donated. Second, finance all campaigns for public office with tax dollars. Both these measures blatantly violate freedom of speech.
The purpose of the proposed amendment is to prevent corporations and other groups from funding campaigns. But who gets to decide which people are qualified voters? Some people don’t register to vote for ideological reasons; do they lose their rights of speech? Apparently seventeen-year-olds lose their rights.
Even if the amendment were restricted to individuals, rather than qualified voters, it still would violate people’s rights. True, as leftists monotonously drone, corporations aren’t people. But apparently leftists have neglected to notice that corporations are comprised of people. So are unions. So are educational organizations.
Individuals have the right of free speech, and they have the right to join with others to speak. People don’t lose their rights merely by collaborating with others.
Limiting the amount people can give to political causes also violates their rights of free speech as well as property. People have the right to support the speech of their choice, whether by lending a printing press, handing out flyers, or donating money to help somebody else speak. Limiting people’s ability to support the speech of their choice constitutes censorship.
What about “publicly” funded campaigns? The freedom of speech entails the right not to speak. If somebody forces you to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Communist Manifesto, or whatever, that violates your rights of free speech. Likewise, forcing people to financially support speech against their will violates their freedom of speech.
An important practical problem is who gets to decide which candidates “deserve” tax dollars. Can just any kook declare to be a candidate and go on the campaign dole? Obviously that wouldn’t work, so somebody would be in charge of blessing the “right” candidates with political welfare.
Notice that both Bachmann and Hartmann’s guests offer their pretexts for imposing censorship. The religious right often claims that pornography promotes sexual promiscuity and so on. The left claims that money in politics corrupts it.
Censors of all stripes unite in their belief that individuals are just too stupid to make their own decisions, and therefore they need benevolent politicians and bureaucrats to do their thinking for them. No presumption could be more deadly to a free republic.
Categories: Other News
What’s Going on with Obamacare These Days?
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 12:50pm
What’s going on with that little health care law know as Obamacare? Tune into this week’s Devil’s Advocate to find out as I am joined by Independence Institute health care policy center director Linda Gorman and Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner to talk about Colorado’s new health insurance exchange and Grace-Marie’s new book. “Why Obamacre is Wrong for America.” That’s Friday, July 29 at 8:30PM on Colorado Pubic Television 12. Re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30PM.
Categories: Other News
Obama’s Evergreen Goes Brown
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 12:23pm
Barack Obama and Harry Reid may not be able to produce a spending plan, but at least they have their old campaign talking points from 2008 to fall back on.
With the Senate having failed to produce a budget in over 2 years, the President’s budget having succeeded in uniting Washington to a degree not seen since it was under threat of attack 150 years ago, and neither willing to commit a spending plan to paper, they can be relied on to Blame Bush!
The White House has put out a graphic purporting to show that – surprise! – 8 years under President Bush added more to the national debt than 2 years under President Obama. (They play with the numbers, by assuming that the cut in marginal tax rates didn’t stimulate growth, for instance.) That President Bush wasn’t exactly a fiscal conservative like FDR isn’t a secret to anyone. In its day, what was seen as recklessness spawned Porkbusters, the Tea Party in embryo.
But let me remind you of this chart, originally in the Washington Post:
It’s been updated by the Heritage Foundation:
Much as Babe Ruth redefined baseball by showing what could be done when you try to hit home runs, so has Obama redefined deficit spending by showing what happens when you really put your heart and soul into it. You’ll notice, by the way, that the latter graph compares the CBO to itself, rather than to the White House budget, because, haha, there isn’t a White House budget.
Note also how the color bars in each graph look the same, only they’re shifted to the right by two years in the update. It’s evident that 2010 and 2011 haven’t worked out as planned. It’s no wonder that Tea Partiers don’t really believe in out-year cuts; the deficit reduction hasn’t occurred because Obama’s policies and those of Congressional Democrats have stifled economic growth, and because they’ve been happy to govern illegally, without a budget for two years, leaving federal spending essentially on auto-pilot.
The other argument you hear is that Paul Ryan’s budget made use of the same accounting trick that Harry Reid’s budget-avoidance bill does: counting savings from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars we won’t be fighting. But Ryan’s plan was an actual budget. There were always holes, but the difference between “will spend” and “would have spent” means a lot less when you’re drafting an actual plan, than the difference between “will spend” and “will take in.” Ryan applied that $1,000,000,000,000 to a headline.
Reid proposes to let the President spend it between now and Election Day 2012.
The Democrats won’t produce a budget because they can’t, only they don’t want you to know that until after the election. So much for them.
The Tea Party folks have a different complaint, namely that Boehner’s Plan doesn’t go far enough. I’d like to see more cuts, too. But the idea, as I recall, was to use the debt ceiling deadline as a means for forcing a debate, forcing changes to the spending that is current and planned. It was never realistic to run the entire federal government out of the House of Representatives.
To that extent, the plan has been wildly successful. It has exposed the Democrats as dangerously delusional about the state of our finances, whose only current idea is to soak you to ratify a massive increase in the scope of our economy directly controlled by the government. The Boehner Plan re-adjusts the baseline, keeps the debate on the front burner pretty much through the election, and does it without raising taxes. These are major victories, and they would not have been possible without the Tea Party. Period.
That said, this particular fight is one of many. Pushing too hard right now, bringing on a technical default, or, more likely, putting incredible discretionary power in the hands of a teenage president, won’t be Sherman marching through Georgia, it’ll be Napoleon marching to Moscow.
There is considerable frustration abroad that we can’t simply win this thing already. But politics isn’t about that. Regardless, we’ll have to keep watching, pushing, and prodding. There aren’t any final victories in politics, either over the other party or within your own. The best use of this battle is to pocket the gains, and use the process to help prepare the battlefield for the next fight.
Categories: Other News
Mencken’s imaginary hobgoblins of today
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 9:59am
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
See Warming, Global; Terrorism, War on; Drugs, War on; Fracking, Oil; Social Security, Checks Withheld; et al.
Categories: Other News
Fiscal Child Abuse – in a 2 min video
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Thu, 07/28/2011 - 8:38am
Power Line just ran a highly contested and highly coveted contest for a grand prize worth $100,000 to “whoever can most effectively and creatively dramatize the significance of the federal debt crisis.” They allowed any and all types of creative art – like sculpture, paintings, songs, poems, videos, dance, etc. The Independence Institute decided to get in on the action so we created a video for the contest that you’ll find below. It focuses on the fiscal child abuse our national debt is hanging around the necks of our future generations. Although we didn’t win, we did get 7th place! I am so proud of our team for making such a high quality video, while having to work with such difficult on-screen talent (Todd!). You can see some of the other top entries here.
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The Party of "No" Chooses Default Over Compromise
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Wed, 07/27/2011 - 9:40pm
Rather than compromise with their counterparts in the House, all 53 Senate Democrats have sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner promising to vote down the GOP compromise bill when it gets to the Senate.
At this point, the GOP has sent multiple bills to the Senate to deal with the debt limit and the Senate has shot them each down. And yet, the Senate has only proposed one real plan and that only showed up in the last couple of days. Even my fiscal conservative wannabe Senator Mark Udall has done absolutely nothing useful. He’s just another member of the Party of “No” just like the rest of his sorry party.
Categories: Other News
Colorado Task Force to End Zero-Tolerance Rules?
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Wed, 07/27/2011 - 8:36pm
From the Colorado News Agency:
A new task force scrutinizing school discipline policies statewide dug into its work at the Capitol today with a search for alternatives to what some are calling a “school-to-prison pipeline,” said to be the result of inflexible school rules.
Critics particularly blame one-size-fits-all “zero-tolerance” policies at public schools, which they say have tied educators’ hands and are forcing too many youths into the justice system.
I would love to see the zero-tolerance policies come to an end. Too often, zero-tolerance means zero-thought on the part of school officials. It’s like the girl who was suspended because she accidentaly brought her father’s lunchbox instead of her own which contained a small knife for cutting an apple. She did absolutely nothing wrong but she fell victim to the stupidity of the system.
It’s time to bring thought back to the schools.
Categories: Other News
Save Our Schools… Huh?
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Wed, 07/27/2011 - 4:23pm
Update, 7/28: Writing at redefinED, Doug Tuthill and Adam Emerson highlight the rich irony behind the “Save Our Schools” phenomenon.
So apparently there’s some big national march called “Save Our Schools” or something like that. I told you about it a month ago. While the good people at the National Council on Teacher Quality took a conciliatory approach to pointing out the flaws in the “SOS” program. But the award goes to Sara Mead, writing at Eduwonk, for this effective takedown:
…This is not an agenda for accomplishing anything. It’s just a wish list. Half of it is a wishlist of things the organizers don’t want (performance-based pay, school closures). Half of it is a wishlist for things someone might want, without any clear theory of how to operationalize them or what that might actually look like in practice in the real world. (I, too, would like to see “Well-rounded education that develops every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential”–but in the absence of clear prescriptions and mechanisms about how to make that a reality, well, you might as well wish for a pony, too.)…
I can’t help but think that a lot of people marching on the nation’s capital for this cause — as pure as their motives may be — are tangling with some vague, outsized imaginary enemy. Then again, as Anthony Krisky has pointed out, it’s not exactly a grassroots movement. Given the pro-union sympathies of so many of its outspoken leaders, one might have to ask them what they think about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s reforms enabling local school districts to save teacher jobs? Is that “anti-teacher”?
Guess what, Colorado has its own “SOS,” too. I wholeheartedly defend their right to speak up. I just don’t get much of where they’re coming from with a largely illogical, fanciful and ambiguous agenda. Maybe we should just start referring to it as SOS?… as in: Huh?
Categories: Other News
Celebrate Milton Friedman’s Legacy with Liberty on the Rocks this Friday night!
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Wed, 07/27/2011 - 4:22pm
Join Liberty on the Rocks this Friday night, July 29 to toast to Milton Friedman on what would have been his 99th birthday (well, the 31st will be, but it’s close!).
Mr. Friedman was a free market economist, statistician, author and Nobel Prize winner for his work with economics. He spent much of his life spreading the message of not only free markets, but liberty and freedom, across the globe.
To celebrate the life and work of this phenomenal man, Liberty on the Rocks will host a night of remembrance, complete with a short video of Mr. Friedman discussing many different aspects of liberty and free markets, which will include a message from Mr. Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute. So join us as we raise our glass to Milton Friedman and his legacy!
Don’t know much about Mr. Friedman? All the more reason for you to attend! Check out this great Youtube video of him on Phil Donahue’s show in 1979. Poor Phil didn’t stand a chance against him ; )
We will have DOOR PRIZES, FREE APPETIZERS (while they last), and FREE DRINK tickets to the FIRST TEN ATTENDEES! (limit $7.00 value) You don’t want to miss this event!
After we conclude the festivities, we will head a few blocks down to Marlowes, where the Centennial Institute is hosting an after-hour get together with Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. The first round of drinks is on them, so be sure to stick around for that!
What: Happy Hour to celebrate free market economist Milton Friedman
When: Friday, July 29th from 7-9 PM
Where: Jackson’s Sports Grill (back room) | 1520 20th Street in Denver
Why?! To raise a glass to Mr. Friedman and to learn more about his contribution to free market ideas – plus, great networking opportunities, as always!
Categories: Other News
Mary Katharine Ham – ATF Party 2011
Peoples Press Collective (PPC) - Wed, 07/27/2011 - 2:55pm
If you were crazy enough to miss our 9th annual ATF Party this past Saturday, you missed the very funny and entertaining keynote speaker Mary Katharine Ham. But as always, we’ve got you covered. Below you will find the YouTube playlist of Mary Katharine’s remarks and the Q and A that followed.
Categories: Other News
