Nigeria’s Moment: A visit to a West African nation reveals tragic failure, yet great potential by Doug Bandow

/in , , , /by

ABUJA, NIGERIA—Arriving in Abuja, Nigeria results in an almost simultaneous impression of poverty and potential. After decades of economic disappointment, even collapse, much of Africa is growing. Yet even its leading states—such as Nigeria—remain locked in an impoverished past and fail to live up to their extraordinary potential.

I’ve arrived with a journalist group organized by SLOK Holding Co., chaired by former governor Orji Uzor Kalu, a potential presidential contender. In Abuja the airport looked more appropriate for a small American town than for a capital city. While less chaotic than some other airports I have suffered through—Dhaka and Islamabad, for instance—it hardly befits what seems destined to be Africa’s leading nation. I changed money at an “exchange” with two men sitting at a small desk, cash in one drawer. The parking lot was cramped and disorganized.

Although cities such as Abuja, Lagos—Nigeria’s most populous urban area—and Port Harcourt—dominated by the nation’s oil industry—enjoy significant development, poverty is never far away. There are paved sidewalks, but usually in disrepair, and dirt roadsides remain common, even the norm, depending on city and district. Trash litters many streets. Most urban buildings are solidly constructed, some even stylish, but most are simple.

In Lagos wealth has created a genuine skyline on Victoria Island. Yet crowded streets filled with poor street vendors sit in the shadows of these fine structures. And the majority of residents live in vast expanses of simple homes crammed together. In Port Harcourt, shacks on overgrown lots dot the city, sometimes adjoining even the best buildings, such banks and hotels. Driving in we passed a pen filled with horses.

Electrical outages are constant, requiring any serious enterprise to maintain a generator. Riding an elevator is especially suspenseful; you find yourself plunged into darkness and brought to a jerky stop for what seems like an eternity, before the brightness returns and you continue on your way. Traffic gridlocks can be worse than Los Angeles, New York, or Washington—in Port Harcourt my group took a couple hours to go a few hundred yards at a particularly bad time.

Rural Nigeria is much poorer. Even the main highways lack even minimal maintenance, while burned and rusted wrecks, stripped of anything useful, litter the sides and medians. Trash is tossed alongside or piled in medians. Roads off the main drag are dirt, always rutted, often muddy, and barely adequate. Most shops are shacks built on dirt just feet from traffic. At times it appears that half of the population subsists by selling merchandise in traffic.

Still, hope remains. Everywhere in Nigeria I saw enterprise. People sit for hours under primitive lean-tos by the highway to sell drinks and food to travelers. Open-air markets, which seem to occur every couple miles, are bustling, with people dashing hither-and-yon selling most everything you can find in a department store or supermarket. At major intersections and along busy streets people sit in the median and walk into traffic hawking fruit, drinks, sim cards, picture frames, newspapers, magazines, cell phone chargers, cigarettes, sunglasses, watches, tools, socks, mops, cooking utensils, and even triangular hazard signs (quite appropriate given Nigeria’s traffic!).

Intellectual capital also is growing. Citizens of this former British colony typically speak English, the global commercial language. I visited a university filled with bright and engaging students hoping to make better lives for themselves and their country. What is desperately needed, said one business executive, a Nigerian who worked in America before returning to help manage his family’s business, is an “enabling environment” for enterprise.

In this the government fails miserably.

One problem is insecurity. Nigeria has suffered dictatorship, civil war, insurgency, militant violence, Islamic extremism, and crime. Kalu said “internal security is critical,” because without a police escort you cannot move throughout much of the country. One newspaper editor cited the risk of robbery in driving papers for distribution at night. Business executives, political figures, and expatriate workers routinely travel with armed escorts, especially in the Niger Delta in the south.

Corruption is rife. One expatriate worker observed: “Nigeria’s not a country. It is an opportunity.” Mundane economic mismanagement bears even greater blame. State enterprises, especially the National Nigerian Petroleum Corporation, are particular founts of abuse. The World Bank ranks Nigeria among the bottom third of nations in its Doing Business report.

Average Nigerians are commonly—indeed, uniformly—frustrated. The young especially crave the opportunities that the country’s dishevelment precludes. A third of adults under 25 are out of work. It’s one reason Nigeria sports a diaspora of millions. The driver of my cab to the airport to start this trip was a Nigerian. Even the more optimistic Nigerians with whom I spoke say much more has to be done, despite the progress they see. Public involvement is essential to create a freer and more honest business environment.

Some see hope in Kalu, a wealthy businessman who understands entrepreneurship and promotes political reform. As a teen he started trading palm oil. He now holds interests in energy, finance, journalism, real estate, and more. Among his recent enterprises is The New Telegraph newspaper. His success—without using government office to his own advantage—is unusual. Noted my Cato Institute colleague Marian Tupy: Nigerian politicians usually “become wealthy during their time in the governor’s mansion.” When talking about his nation’s future, Kalu denounced restrictive licensing and promoted markets; he advocated privatization, including in less traditional areas such as education, which he views as critical for Nigeria’s moral reformation. He told me that he “would like to see small government and big enterprise” and spoke with admiration of Ronald Reagan.

Kalu may run for president in 2015, though his chances are complicated by being an Igbo, a tribe whose members have not held the presidency in a half century.  Substantial problems of ethnic division persist.  Kalu viewed murderous attacks by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram is a continuation of many earlier violent episodes.

The bigger question is whether he could actually implement his message of market liberalization if elected. Noted Tupy, Nigeria “has never had a president committed to small government, privatization and liberalization.” But Kalu forcefully argued that committed leadership could make the difference.

Obviously industrialized states have their problems, including sometimes galloping regulation (think ObamaCare!) and fail to fully live up to their potential. Yet they remain far freer, especially in economic affairs, enabling bright, enthusiastic, and hard-working people to prosper. Nigeria needs to follow the same broad growth path that enriched America and Western Europe, and more recently East Asia, including China.

The greatest tragedy of Nigeria’s poverty is that it is so unnecessary. Its people know what to do. The spirit of enterprise is everywhere. It’s time for the Nigerian people to liberate themselves. It’s time for freedom to come to Nigeria.

dougbandow3540ABOUT DOUG BANDOW

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of a number of books on economics and politics. He writes regularly on military non-interventionism.

Benghazi interview with Clare Lopez on The Blaze Radio

/in , , , , , /by

The media have been virtually silent about the Benghazi tragedy of September 11, 2012 in recent weeks, despite the ongoing relevance of this chapter to Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign. Her “What difference does it make?” comment has been translated by the media to mean “nothing at all.” This, despite the fact that a new Bloomberg poll indicates that 51% of respondents do not believe that Clinton didn’t see the requests for additional security at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, as she claims.

“Her responsibility as Secretary of State was to provide for the security of the missions under her responsibility,” said Clare Lopez, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy and a member of Accuracy in Media’s Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) in a recent interview on the Jay Severin Show. “I’ve served abroad in many missions. We’ve been in places where there were natural disasters, civil unrest, and even civil war, and there’s a commitment that is understood between those sent to the field and those who send them that if there is trouble, if we get in trouble in the field, help will come.”

“That is her responsibility and she failed it.”

Lopez is an intelligence expert with the Center for Security Policy and a former officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Benghazi cover-up reaches through many levels of government, and has many shades of culpability. It engulfs the President, the former Secretary of State, the Department of Defense, the CIA, and others, yet little journalistic or congressional progress has been made toward finding out what really happened that day. David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times attempted to declare the final verdict on the scandal, in a report that has been widely debunked by AIM and others.

“Everybody knew right away that our mission in Benghazi was under attack,” said Lopez in the interview. “They also knew very shortly after the beginning of the attack that it was a terrorist attack.” Yet the President, in an election year, was allowed to go on the news and blame a YouTube video for weeks. His former United Nations Ambassador, Susan Rice—now his National Security Advisor—recently expressed on Meet the Press that she had “no regrets” over touting a non-existent demonstration in Benghazi, saying she shared the best information available at the time.

“We’re shortly getting ready to make some more revelations in a public event to let the people know what we’ve been doing,” noted Lopez. These revelations will help get to the truth of what really happened in Benghazi. The press should sit up and take notice.

You can listen to the entire interview here:

RELATED STORIES: To read all of Clare Lopez’s columns click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Accuracy in Media.

“There’s a Bear in the Woods”: Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign ad revisited

/in , , , , /by

ronald reaganIt is ironic that is was just thirty-years ago that a political ad was run by President Ronald Reagan titled “There’s a Bear in the Woods”. Today we are seeing that bear reemerge from the woods. The bear is hungry for territory where it may prey on the weak, feed vociferously and expand its influence. That bear then was named the Soviet Union. That bear today is named Russia.

Russian influence in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South America is on the rise. Since 1984 Russia has invaded: Afghanistan, Georgia, Crimea and is on Ukraine’s door step. We are facing a new “Red Dawn”.

This is the same bear, same ideology, with the same goals but a different face that Reagan’s ad was speaking to.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NpwdcmjBgNA[/youtube]

There have been many comparisons made between President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin. Pundits miss what is really the focus of each leader. Putin has a global view, while Obama has a local view. By that I mean Putin thinks and acts globally with Russian sovereignty first and foremost in his mind. Putin acts in the best interests of Russia, to protect its borders, expand its power and become a world leader using military force.

President Obama is focused domestically. His social programs, domestic policies and political power are totally aimed like a laser on government expansion internally. Obama is adept at community organizing. Foreign policy, expanding American influence globally is not his forte. Military force is not in President Obama’s lexicon of options. He may say it is, but actions (like Putin’s) speak much louder than words.

Now that the bear has come out of the woods, who will stop him? That is the question.

John Greer lists this ad in his Attack Ad Hall of Fame. Greer writes:

The Reagan campaign aired the ad. “There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don’t see it at all.” The script goes on to say that we need to be as strong as the bear and that we should not risk being unprepared. Who is the bear? The Soviet Union? Probably, but since it’s not clear, some argue that the spot is not negative. It’s an interesting ad and one that probably was run because of Reagan’s huge lead over Mondale. It’s subtle meaning just makes it not very informative.

RELATED STORY: A Ukraine divide: Congress, world leaders debate how to counter Russia

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by John Cummings. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Dial “D” for Murder: Democrat controlled U.S. cities as bad as deadliest 3rd World countries

/in , , , , /by

In 2013 World Net Daily reported, “Those pushing President Obama’s gun-control agenda often portray the United States as one of the murder hot spots of the world, but the numbers tell a different story. Even more revealing, gun murders in the U.S. are concentrated in big cities that typically have the strictest gun-control regulations. And it is those cities’ gun murder rates that are comparable to the rates in some of the deadliest countries in the world.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/g_D2DFY3_5A[/youtube]

Richard Florida from The Atlantic reported, “A number of U.S. cities have gun homicide rates in line with the most deadly nations in the world.”

  • If it were a country, New Orleans (with a rate 62.1 gun murders per 100,000 people) would rank second in the world.
  • Detroit’s gun homicide rate (35.9) is just a bit less than El Salvador (39.9).
  • Baltimore’s rate (29.7) is not too far off that of Guatemala (34.8).
  • Gun murder in Newark (25.4) and Miami (23.7) is comparable to Colombia (27.1).
  • Washington D.C. (19) has a higher rate of gun homicide than Brazil (18.1).
  • Atlanta’s rate (17.2) is about the same as South Africa (17).
  • Cleveland (17.4) has a higher rate than the Dominican Republic (16.3).
  • Gun murder in Buffalo (16.5) is similar to Panama (16.2).
  • Houston’s rate (12.9) is slightly higher than Ecuador’s (12.7).
  • Gun homicide in Chicago (11.6) is similar to Guyana (11.5).
  • Phoenix’s rate (10.6) is slightly higher than Mexico (10).
  • Los Angeles (9.2) is comparable to the Philippines (8.9).
  • Boston rate (6.2) is higher than Nicaragua (5.9).
  • New York, where gun murders have declined to just four per 100,000, is still higher than Argentina (3).
  • Even the cities with the lowest homicide rates by American standards, like San Jose and Austin, compare to Albania and Cambodia respectively.

“Yes, it’s true we are comparing American cities to nations. But most of these countries here have relatively small populations, in many cases comparable to large U.S. metros,” notes Florida.

Why Government Does Not Function

/in , , , , , /by

Do you have the feeling that we no longer have government from the federal to the local level that is able to function because of vast volumes of laws and regulations that have made it impossible to do anything from build a bridge to run a nursing home? If so, you’re right. The nation is falling behind others who do a better job by permitting elected and appointed officials to actually make decisions. We are living in a nation where lawsuits follow every decision to accomplish anything.

Cover - The Rule of NobodyThis is the message of Philip K. Howard in a book that everyone concerned for the future of America should read; “The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government”.

It explains why we can elect a Representative or Senator, send him or her to Washington, D.C. and still see no progress. Instead, we get the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—that began as a 2,700-page law that has already metastasized into regulations that, stacked up, stand seven feet tall! And more on the way. It has destroyed the healthcare insurance industry and is destroying the U.S. healthcare system.

“The missing element in American government could hardly be more basic. No official has authority to make a decision. Law has crowded out the ability to be practical or fair,” says Howard. “It’s a progressive disease. As law grows to fill the vacuum, the wheels of government go slower every year.”

Howard points to a variety of problems that nation is encountering. “America’s electrical grid is out of date—transformers, on average, are about forty years old, and not digitized.” As vital and essential as the grid is to all life in America, “there’s no active plan to rebuild America’s electrical grid. The main reason is that government cannot make the decisions needed to approve it.”

Citing proposals that would allow the Bayonne Bridge to permit the new generation of large container ships clearance that would enable the Port of Newark to remain competitive, it took three years for environmental reviews to clear the project, but as Howard notes, “the average length of environmental review for highway projects, according to a study by the Regional Plan Association, is over eight years.” Eight years!

“Government on legal autopilot,” says Howard, “doesn’t have a chance of achieving solvency. In 2010, 70 percent of federal tax revenue was consumed by three entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—that don’t even come up for annual congressional authorization.”

Americans are in general agreement that Big Government is a big problem, but did you know that more than twenty million people work for federal, state and local government—or one in seven workers in America. Their salaries and benefits total more than $1.5 trillion of taxpayer funding each year or about ten percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Cities in America are declaring bankruptcy because they cannot afford the retirement and other benefits that their employees receive. State budgets are comparably weighed down.

We read about the often incomprehensible results and costs of the legal system affecting all levels of government. “Up and down the chain of social responsibility, responsible people do not feel free to make sensible decisions,” says Howard. “Everything is too complicated: rules in the workplace, rights in the classroom, and machinations in government. We’re bogged down in bureaucracy, pushed around by lawsuits, and unable to steer out of economic and cultural storms.”

“The point of regulation, we seem to have forgotten, is to make sure things work in a crowded society.”

What is forgotten or never learned is that there are elements of risk in everything we do. Trying to legislate risk out of our lives only leaves us with millions of rules that make it impossible to function intelligently in business, in schools, in hospitals and nursing homes, and everywhere else. It eliminates swings and seesaws from playgrounds out of fear of lawsuits.

“America is losing its soul,” says Howard. “Instead of creating legal structures that support our values, Americans are abandoning our values in deference to the bureaucratic structures.” Too often, decisions made by elected officials or reflected referendums voted upon by the public have been taken over by the court system in which judges now feel free to decide these matters. The response was a growing objection to “judicial activism.” Now even the judges are distrusted.

Howard’s book explains why America is in trouble and offers recommendations to put it on the right path again. If it is ignored, the America into which I was born more than seven decades ago will not be around or livable for the next generation or two of Americans.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Setting the Record Straight: Lottie Beebe Does Not Support Common Core

/in , , , /by

On March 22, 2014, the Monroe News-Star quoted Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member and St. Martin Parish Superintendent Lottie Beebe (pictured above) in such a manner as to incorrectly portray Beebe as supporting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Beebe does not support CCSS.

In her response below, Beebe clarifies not only her position against CCSS but also her experience and position on a number of so-called education “reform” issues mandated in Louisiana’s classrooms:

I have learned a lesson.  In the future, I will provide a written response to reporter inquiries.  This is my response to Common Core and there may be those who say I sound like a politician. To the contrary, I consider myself a public servant and educator. 

There has been much debate surrounding Common Core Standards.  According to Merriam-

Webster dictionary, a standard is a level of quality, achievement, etc. So what is the problem?  

 Many educators will say they are not opposed to rigorous standards and high expectations.  Some will say they are not opposed to Common Core (CC) standards because the standards are merely objectives—norms.  Two examples taken directly from the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) website include the following:

* 3rd grade math:  Tell and write time to the nearest minute and measure time intervals in minutes.  Solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes.

*5th grade reading:  Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text.

Again, what is the problem?  Upon close examination, many of the CC standards are not age/grade appropriate and are rigorous because students are now expected to perform at a skill level in which prerequisite learning has not yet occurred for many.  Many education researchers have pointed out that the K-3 standards are not age appropriate.  The same can be said for other grade levels due to the lack of requisite skills. The rigor comes into play when the standards, once addressed at 5th or 6th grade, are now addressed at 3 or 4th grade.  Simply put, performance expectations are increased (rigor) by setting the bar higher. 

 The Common Core debate is alive and somewhat contentious in Louisiana.  Some are quick to say Louisiana can no longer continue to rank last in educational outcomes next to Mississippi. Chas Roemer, BESE President, likes to reference the 700,000 students who are trapped in failing schools.  (Again, we must understand the rationale for CC implementation—follow the  money; examine the education reform agenda; examine BESE policy to see how quickly we are approving charter schools expediting the charter application process, and the emphasis on Choice options.)

Governor Jindal and members of BESE supported Common Core in 2010. (Jindal, with aspirations for a national political office,now sees the writing on the wall and is “crawfishing.”)  It is also important to note that Jindal is a member of the National Governors’ Association (NGA).  He was also supportive of John White for the position of state superintendent of education.  I often tell people the support for CC is bi-partisan–Republicans and Democrats embraced the CC agenda as early as 2008 and the support for CC continues to be a bi-partisan effort in 2014.

Bill Gates and other philanthropists lured others (educators) into the CC venture by providing money–representatives of the education associations were lured into believing in and advocating for CC standards.  This has been documented by Dr. Mercedes Schneider, a blogger, in several articles.

I will also add there are educators in Louisiana who strongly support CC standards. 

Therefore, it is difficult for those who don’t share the enthusiasm to stand up and be vocal.

Please note that Superintendents, Central Office Staff, Administrators, and teachers are often silent because educators are not supposed to reject standards.  How dare an educator object to the setting of standards!

The reality is superintendents, like me, are in awkward positions.  We are charged with a mandate from BESE and the LDOE.  If we speak up, we risk conveying a mixed message which could likely result in negative student outcomes.  For example, let’s compare the district superintendent to a military leader set to engage in battle. Does the military leader tell his troops all the reasons why they can’t defeat the enemy, or does the leader proceed with a positive attitude to say we will carry out our charge and claim the victory!  Superintendents have to be careful not to convey the wrong message; otherwise, teachers and students could likely give up and lose hope and do poorly on high stakes exams.  Districts could then earn failing grades and are subject to state takeover.  It is also important to note that the state superintendent of education holds the key to test data. (The picture is clearly evident.) Stand tall, be submissive, and you may be victorious!

After numerous hours of CC debates at a BESE meeting in October, it remains clear that many on BESE are in full support of “staying the CC course.”BESE’s response to the nearly 8 hours of debateof CC occurring in October was the approval of policy which gives parents an option to review textbooks and opt out if they view the material as inappropriate.  Again–an ineffectual response.  Parents have always had the autonomy to review textbooks and educational resources.

 I must be honest.  The Common Core discussion is somewhat challenging for me.  As an educator of 30 years, I value standards.  I have always set high standards for my students.  Having taught both regular and special education students, I fully appreciate establishing rigor while maintaining realistic expectations.  My objection does not lie with standards per se’, but I can’t negate what education research says regarding brain development and students’ ability to perform tasks which are not developmentally appropriate.   There have been numerous concerns expressed by education stakeholders regarding indoctrination, student data/privacy issues, and federal involvement in education.  I have viewed videos where it was stated that computer assisted tests can be manipulated to become  more complex while the student is taking the exam or technology can be utilized to gauge student aggression and can predict whether the student has the tendency to become a  criminal, etc.   Some might say this is hype, but this is a concern communicated by many parents.

  There was also the lack of communication regarding the implementation of Common Core Standards.The Louisiana  Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved these standards in 2010. There was very little input from educators, parents, and other education stakeholders in Louisiana. While it is often stated there was input from the education community, I have to question why the Louisiana Department of Education leadership failed to host community meetings to educate the public to the proposed changes to the Louisiana developed standards prior to the public outcry.  Because of the outcry, there have been scheduled meetings initiated by local school officials in an effort to educate the public.  Perhaps, the lack of education was not an oversight on the part of Louisiana officials.  A survey conducted by Phi Delta Kappa/Gallop Poll (2013) indicated 61 percent of Americans do not know about Common Core.  This is somewhat of a red flag when this is a national agenda.  Forty-five states and Washington, DC initially adopted Common Core standards.  (Some states are now backing away from the standards.)

As an educator, my concern lies with the reports from educational researchers who have studied the Common Core standards  and have indicated many of these standards are not developmentally appropriate and may negatively impact student outcomes.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky, a member of the CC Standards review committee, did not sign off on the standards because she considered them to be “empty skill sets.”  Some months ago, there was a letter written by Catholic scholars who denounced Common Core.    There was no piloting of the standards in Louisiana or elsewhere to justify effectiveness.  These CC standards may be inferior to previously-implemented  Louisiana standards (The Fordham Institute gave Louisiana’s English Language Arts standards a B-plus, the same grade they gave CC.)

 The implementation of standards in Louisiana warrants a letter grade of F, in my opinion.  I feel Superintendent John White, his staff, and BESE failed to effectively communicate and provide proper guidance to local systems.  School systems were led to believe there would be a gradual transition into the Common Core.  Initially, the math curriculum for grades K and 1 was provided to districts.  District officials thought the ELA curriculum would also be available.  This did not occur. Many districts thought the LDOE would provide a Louisiana curriculum addressing the standards; however, this did not happen.

On May, 2013, it was fully disclosed that there would be no curriculum provided to school districts.  Superintendent John White touted autonomy for school systems.  While it is admirable to offer school districts and educators autonomy, it is important to understand teachers have different skill sets.  Some may have the skills to be curriculum writers; others are less likely to have extensive training in curriculum development. Therefore, this creates an inequitable playing field and puts some districts, schools, and educators at a great disadvantage within the accountability program. Recently, a LDOE staff member indicated “the state lacked the capacity to roll out a Louisiana developed curriculum.”  In essence, the state lacked the resources, or capacity, and then passed on this responsibility to school systems in the form of autonomy.  Many districts were put in a vulnerable position and were caught off guard and unprepared.  Superintendent White’s response to districts’ lack of preparedness was “some districts had their heads buried in the sand.”  This is an unfair characterization of school systems.  Many school districts put their trust in their leader who failed to respond in a responsible manner to their needs.

 Another issue of concern is PARCC–the assessment component.  Who has seen PARCC?  I must acknowledge there are sample PARCC-like items distributed to school systems, but who knows whether there will be changes.  (In Louisiana, we have become accustomed to changes—several that would need to be addressed in another article.) No one has seen the exam. Many states have backed away from PARCC, so where is the standard assessment?   One reason for promoting common standards and common assessments is to have more accurate comparisons relative to student achievement regardless of the student’s zipcode.  The decision of many states to back away from PARCC will result in higher test expenditures  for school systems.  There are also technology issues—many school districts are financially challenged.A lot of money has been invested in Common Core standards.  Textbook publishers have spent millions of dollars developing curriculum and supplemental resources.  The LDOE is advocating specific curriculum such as Eureka Math and the publishers who invested lots of money may be “holding the bag” although their product may be superior to Eureka Math.What happened to free enterprise?

There has been a move away from the previous state textbook adoption process—school systems now have the autonomy to review and select textbooks and other education resources.  This, again, proves challenging for districts because teachers, administrators, and central staff are preparing students for high stakes tests and PARCC field tests while engaged in textbook reviews.  The anticipated math and ELA textbook costs for the St. Martin Parish School System are at a minimum– two million dollars.  As a superintendent, I have questioned what happens if systems deviate from the LDOE Tier 1 approved publishers? Is this real autonomy or is there enough fear in the trenches to sway districts to go with the Tier 1 recommendation?   One also has to ask who and how many individuals at the LDOE review and approve publishers for Tiers 1, 2, or 3? 

Districts are challenged with costs associated with CC implementation and PARCC. Technology infrastructure and textbooks will be major expenditures for many systems.  Employer retirement contributions are increasing.  In March, 2014, BESE submitted a MFP resolution without a 2.75% increase over this year—the funding will remain constant to the money received in 2013-2014 in many instances.  School districts are expected to do more with less.  Expectations are to increase student achievement without funding the essential  resources!  Superintendent John White has stated he does not want to denigrate students and teachers.  He has acknowledged that principals know their teachers best and should be given the responsibility of rating teacher performance.  (Say what?)  In 2012, Governor Jindal and John White, State Superintendent of Education, toured the state saying 98% of the teachers in Louisiana received a satisfactory rating; only 2% received an unsatisfactory rating.  According to Jindal and White, this was unacceptable! (The suggestion was that principals were not effectively evaluating teachers.)  In 2013, 96% of teachers received an effective rating (synonymous to satisfactory) and 4% received ineffective (synonymous to unsatisfactory).  The results included teacher value-added (VAM) data.  Millions of dollars were invested in COMPASS—the teacher evaluation program.  Amid tremendous frustration and a mass exodus of teachers, Superintendent White recommended the suspension of VAM for a two year period.  (Note the timing here—VAM will resume after statewideelections—gubernatorial, BESE, and the legislature.) He also recommended an external researcher who will study VAM at a cost of $57,000 to taxpayers.  He then added he does not want to denigrate teachers and students.  Yet, he continues to advocate the assignment of letter grades to schools and school systems.  Doesn’t the labeling of schools and school districts denigrate students and teachers?

 One thing is certain–there is no consideration of the suspension of letter grades assigned to schools and school districts.  My question is why?  Although rhetorical, the answer lies with the dismantling of traditional public education and the increase of charter schools.  It is evident!   As an educator of 30 years, I have witnessed reform initiatives come and go. As educators, we have learned the art of submissiveness.  We go along with the mandates hoping that “this, too, shall pass!”

 As one in the education trenches, I can say there are many educators who have reconciled to the fact that Common Core is a state mandate.  We have struggled with the implementation and have invested numerous hours writing curriculum while searching other states’ websites for additional resources. We have seen education initiatives haphazardly implemented and later placed on hold, or reversed.

Simply put, our only hope is the Legislature and honestly, I don’t know if there is enough will among Louisiana legislators to end Common Core or PARCC.  The question is often asked—if not Common Core standards—what?

 It isn’t as though Louisiana was without standards prior to CC. Louisiana teachers are welcome to organize and review Louisiana’s standards and make changes according to what they view as good for Louisiana.

In closing, I know for every problem there is a solution. I still believe in the Louisiana product! So at the end of the day, developing new standards would be a major task, but one worth the effort considering what research reveals.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo of Lottie Beebe is courtesy of The Advocate.

EXPOSED: The U.S. and British “Sex Industrial Complex”

/in , , , , /by

Former KGB spy and Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE) member Geoffrey Prime (left) and PIE Chairman Tom O’Carroll

The United Kingdom has been rocked by a scandal of major proportions involving government support for pedophilia & pederasty. Child rape has been going on for decades at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) offices. “The BBC will be plunged into a major crisis with the publication of a damning review, expected next month, that will reveal its staff turned a blind eye to the rape and sexual assault of up to 1,000 girls and boys by Jimmy Savile in the corporation’s changing rooms and studios,” reports Daniel Boffey from The Guardian.

The Daily Mail reported,”A vile paedophile group with links to senior Labour politicians was funded with huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, it has emerged. The Paedophile Information Exchange was allegedly given £70,000 by the Home Office between 1977 and 1980 – the equivalent today of about £400,000. The astonishing claims made by a whistleblower are now being investigated by the police and the government.”

Before It’s News reported in January 2013 how PIE became a ‘legal’ paedophile ring:

“This history must start in 1967 when the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men, both of whom had to have attained the age of 21, in England and Wales. It is important to note that  Homosexuality was not decriminalised in Scotland until 1980, and in Northern Ireland until 1982.

Following the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, homosexuals in parts of the UK other than England and Wales organised in an effort to attain equality in law. One such organisation, founded in 1969, was the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG). The SMG, which was based in Glasgow, was a self-help organisation working for the rights of homosexual men and women, and had the aims of providing counselling, working for law reform and providing meeting places for lesbians and gay men.

PIE, originally chaired by Michael Hanson,  began as a special interest group in 1974 under the SMG umbrella organisation. Note that paedophilia was no less illegal than homosexuality in Scotland at this time. PIE relocated to London in 1975 under a new chairman Keith Hose.

Read more.

Dr. Judith Reisman states, “‘The Sex Industrial Complex’ is an economic and attitudinal merger of pedophile and pederast crusaders with ‘sexology’ and its allies in other academic fields, along with commercial pornographers.  The pharmaceutical and abortion industries–both obviously profit from sexual promiscuity–are satellite players in the SIC. It was the academic pedophile/pederasty crusaders, largely employed by the pornography industry, with whom I locked horns in Wales when I presented my research on child pornography at the ‘British Psychological Association Conference on Love and Attraction’ in 1976.”

“Chasing down [Alfred] Kinsey and his closeted sexual revisionists is one of the most mesmerizing detective sagas in social history.  For, tracking the path of brazen clues left by liberal left ‘social scientists,’ we can learn a great deal about how and why our national moral philosophy was overturned,” notes Reisman.

Tom O’Carroll, the head of PIE, Pedophile Information Exchange, a pedophile supported by radical British political leaders, explained in his child molester’s handbook, Paedophilia, The Radical Case: “erotica had a powerful influence on my own attitudes, an influence almost as powerful and revolutionary as the impact on me of Ford and Beach and Kinsey.”  O’Carroll, the pioneering organizer of the English and European academic pedophile movement, nicely links together for us three key agents of “The Sex Industrial Complex” (SIC) discussed in detail in Chapter 5 of Reisman’s book Kinseyan Anthropology as relying upon three-key bodies of change agents:

a)  The pedophile/pederasty crusaders, (heterosexual and homosexual child molesters)
b)  Kinsey’s disciples in sexology and allied disciplines and
c)   The pornography industry.

We are seeing the same thing happen in the United States. Peter Bella in an August 2011 Washington Times article stated, “The modern age has been hailed as post-gender and post-racial. Meaning that we’ve grown as a society beyond petty discrimination against people on the basis of race or gender identity, and such discrimination is met with the entire wrath our legal and social institutions can muster. If some people have their way, this modern age will soon be post-pedophilia.   And playgrounds will be empty.”

According to Bella, “B4U-ACT is a Maryland-based group of mental health professionals, psychiatrists and pedophiles who want to normalize pedophilia. Instead of pejoratively calling them ‘pedophiles,’ ‘fiends,’ ‘deviants,’ ‘freaks,’ ‘perverts,’ ‘degenerates,’ ‘predators’ or ‘pedophiles,’ they would prefer that society refer to them by the sensitive and socially-accepting term: minor attracted persons.” (Daily Caller)

The target of pedophiles and pederasts remain our children. Call it what you may, it is wrong in so very many ways.

RELATED STORIES:

1977 Guardian article with Reisman quotes
How did the pro-paedophile group PIE exist openly for 10 years?
Pensioner backed Paedophile Information Exchange and may hold key to links with left wing groups
Home Office ‘gave Paedophile Information Exchange £70,000′: Group allegedly given taxpayers’ money between 1977 and 1980

Relentless Global Warming “Scientists” Continue Their Scams

/in , , , , /by

Despite the growing worldwide recognition that global warming—now called climate change—is a hoax and that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle going on seventeen years, those most responsible for it continue to put forth baseless “science” about it.

The hoax has its base in the United Nations which is home to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and got its start with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 that went into force in 2005. It limits “greenhouse gas” emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2). It purports that the gases are warming the Earth and many nations signed on to reduce them. The U.S. did not and in 2011 Canada withdrew from it. Europe is suffering economically from the billions it invested in “alternative energy” sources, wind and solar power.

Five years ago, emails between a group of the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia scientists and others who were generating computer models that “proved” global warming were revealed. It was quickly dubbed “climategate” for the way the emails demonstrated the manipulation of data claiming that global warming was real. They had good reason to be worried, given the natural cooling cycle the Earth has entered, but of even greater concern was the potential loss of enormous amounts of money they were receiving for their deception.

To date, not one of theirs and other computer models “proving” global warming have been accurate.

On Wednesday, March 10, The Wall Street Journal published an article, “Scientists Say Four New Gases Threaten the Ozone.” It reported on the latest effort of “scientists” at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia and it is no coincidence that the university was the center for the original IPCC data created to introduce and maintain the global warming hoax.

“Traces of four previously undetected man-made gases have been discovered in the atmosphere, where they are endangering Earth’s protective ozone layer, a team of scientists from six countries reported Sunday.”

Trace gases are those that represent less than 1% in the Earth’s atmosphere. CO2, for example, represents a meager 0.038% of the atmosphere and represents no impact whatever on the Earth’s climate. It is, however, vital to all life on Earth as it is the “food” for all of its vegetation.

“The gases are of the sort that are banned or being phased out under a global treaty to safeguard the high altitude blanket of ozone that protects the planet from dangerous ultraviolet radiation, experts said.” These “experts” failed to mention that everywhere above the Earth’s active volcanoes the ozone is naturally affected by their massive natural discharge of various gases. The oceans routinely absorb and discharge CO2 to maintain a balance. The bans included the gas used primarily in air conditioners and for refrigeration. It has since been replaced.

Another gas that was banned is a byproduct of chemicals called pyrethroids that “are often used in household insecticides.” Banning insecticides is a great way of reducing the Earth’s population as insects spread diseases and destroy property. Ironically, termites produce massive amounts of carbon dioxide.

The means used to detect the gases included comparing “the atmosphere today to old air trapped in annual layers of Greenland snow” and they also studied “air collected by high altitude research aircraft and by sensors aboard routine passenger jet flights around the world.” Not mentioned is the fact that the Earth has had higher amounts of CO2 in earlier times which posed no threat to it, so a few trace gases hardly represent a “threat.”

This kind of questionable “science” was practiced by one of the most well-known of the East Anglia scientists, an American scientist named Michael Mann, who used tree ring data to prove a massive, sudden increase in CO2 in his “hockey stick” graph that has since been debunked by skeptical scientists.

Mann has brought a libel law suit against columnist Mark Steyn, the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, charging defamation. Such suits cost a lot of money and Robert Tracinski, writing in Real Clear Politics in February noted that “it’s interesting that no one asks who is going to go bankrupt funding Mann’s lawsuit. Who is insuring Mann against this loss?”

Tracinski pointed out that “It is libel to maliciously fabricate facts about someone” but that it is “legal for me, for example, to say that Michael Mann is a liar, if I don’t believe his erroneous scientific conclusions are the product of honest error. It is also legal for me to say that he is a coward and a liar, for hiding behind libel laws in an attempt to suppress criticism.” The East Anglia emails revealed that they were doing whatever they could to suppress the publication of studies that disputed global warming in various science journals.

How specious is this latest announcement about trace gases that they assert are a threat to the ozone layer? An atmospheric chemist, Johannes Laube of the East Anglia group making the announcement, was quoted as saying “We are not able to pinpoint any sources” for the trace gases. “We are not able to point a finger.”

The objective of the announcement is the same as the creation of the entire global warming hoax. It provides the basis for the transfer of funds between developed and undeveloped nations and would grant greater power to the United Nations to reduce the world’s manufacturing base while endangering and controlling the lives of everyone on Earth.

Is the latest “research” a lie? The data it cites has some basis in fact, but those facts are an excuse, like those cited about greenhouse gases, to frighten nations into wasting billions on climate threats that do not exist. The real threats remain climate events over which mankind never has and never will have any control.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Divided We Stand: A Traditionalist Manifesto

/in , , , , /by

Conservatives are generally very nice people — who never saw a culture war they couldn’t lose. That is to say, we often hear cracks about how Barack Obama and his ilk may “evolve” on issues, but conservatives exhibit that tendency, too, and their evolution goes something like this:

“Marriage is between one man and one woman, period!”

Five years later…

“I can accept civil unions, but marriage should not be redefined.”

After five years more:

“The states can do whatever they want, just keep the feds out of it.”

And 10 years further on:

“People can do what they want. How does faux marriage affect me, anyway?” (This is the point British “conservatives” have reached.)

And at an even later juncture it’s, “Why shouldn’t homosexuals have the right to ‘marry’? It’s a matter of equality.” (Just ask some “conservatives” in Sweden.)

Oh, this isn’t limited to marriage or anything else some dismiss as “social issues.” Conservatives were against Social Security (in FDR’s time) before they tolerated it before they were for it before they demanded it. And they are against socialized medicine. But should it endure for 15 years, their children will tolerate it and then accept it and then expect it — as today’s conservatives do in Western Europe.

This gets at the only consistent definition of conservatism: a desire to “conserve,” to preserve the status quo. This is why while 1950s conservatives in the US were staunchly anti-communist, conservatives in the USSR were communist. As the status quo changes, so does the nature of the prevailing conservatism. And it is liberals, as the agents of change (without the hope), who shape tomorrow’s status quo.

Here’s how it works: the liberals come to the bargaining table demanding a change. The conservatives don’t like it, but being “reasonable” they give the other side some part of what they want. And it doesn’t matter if it amounts to 50 percent, 30, 15 or just 1 percent.

Because the libs will be back, next year, next election cycle, next decade.

Again and again and again.

And each time the cons will get conned, giving the libs a few more slices, until the left has the whole loaf and those ideological loafers, conservatives, are left with crumbs and a crumbled culture.

In a word, today’s conservatives are generally people who have assimilated into yesterday’s liberals’ culture. And every time we compromise — on civil unions, big-government programs or whatever it may be — we assimilate further. And what is the nature of this evolution?
It is nothing less than a superior culture being subsumed by an inferior one.

Now, all this perhaps sounds hopeless. Are we damned to inexorable and irrevocable movement toward the “left,” at least until the complete collapse of civilization is wrought? Well, there is an alternative to assimilation.

Separation.

There has been some talk of secession lately. But note that there is a prerequisite for political separation: cultural separation. Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Slovenia didn’t become their own nations because they suddenly thought the name Yugoslavia was no longer cool, but because of profound cultural differences. And Catalans in Spain some time back empowered parties that have called for an independence referendum this year because of cultural differences. Make the cultural differences great enough, and separation (assuming you can avoid bondage via a governmental iron fist, which is the other possibility) is a natural by-product.

But a key to increasing that cultural divide is avoiding assimilation. Did you ever hear of an Ainu (Japan’s original people) independence movement in Japan? No, because they’ve been largely absorbed by the wider culture, sort of how traditionalists get absorbed by our modernistic culture and end up having, at best, children who’ll reflect today’s liberals and be called tomorrow’s conservatives. So how can further assimilation be avoided?

We only need to look at how it’s done all over the world. And there are two ways. To illustrate the first, consider how ardent Muslims avoid being subsumed. They don’t view fellow citizens in a host nation as national brothers.

But as the “other.”

Oh, the others may occupy the same borders, but they are as alien as anyone outside them. Their culture is to be rejected not just because it’s decadent and despicable — and our liberal-created variety is certainly those things — but because it is of the other. So it is with the others’ laws, social codes, and traditions, too: they are born of an infidel, alien culture and are to be viewed with extreme suspicion if not hostility.

And this is precisely how leftists should be viewed.

For this to work, our instincts must be thus: If liberals say left, we go right. If they say down, we say up. If they scream “Change!” we shout all the louder “Tradition!” and then push for our own change — tradition’s restoration.

Note here that I’m not speaking of a cold intellectual understanding of the issues, which, don’t get me wrong, is important. But just as it is passion that makes a man fight for a woman, it is passion that makes you fight for a cause. Loathe what the liberals stand for, meet their agenda with animosity, cultivate a visceral desire to wipe it from the face of the Earth. Hate, hate, hate it with the fires of a thousand burning suns.

One drawback to this tactic for division, however, is that it constitutes a blind defiance that could conceivably reject virtue along with vice. An example of this is when elements of the black community dismiss education, Christianity and higher culture because they view embracing them as “acting white.” Yet since liberals are right only about 0.4 percent of the time (and I’m perhaps being generous), this isn’t the greatest of dangers at the moment. Nonetheless, this brings us to the ideal method for separation.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” A good example of love-driven separation is the Amish. They do try to avoid hating anyone (although I suspect they hate certain ideas), yet their love for their culture is so great that they remain a people apart. Of course, where they fall short is that they won’t fight at all, even politically. And this philosophy will not yield separation on a wide scale because the left simply won’t allow millions of people to live “off the grid.” Someone has to fund the nanny state, after all.

But the proper combination is obvious. We need sort of an Amish jihad, a deep love of the good and hatred of the evil that translates into action. But there is a prerequisite for this, and it brings us to something both the Amish and Muslim jihadists have in common.

They believe in Truth.

Sure, the Muslims may call it the will of Allah; the Amish, God’s law. But the point is that they aren’t awash in a relativism that, amounting to the Protagorean notion that “man is the measure of all things,” is unduly influenced by man. They don’t see a large number of people lobbying for some loony social innovation and figure that, with man as arbiter, they have to “get with the times.” Rooted to what they see as eternal, they don’t bend to the ephemeral.

Quite the opposite of G.W. Bush, I’m a divider — not a uniter. If this sounds bad, note that Jesus himself said He had not come to unite the world but as a sword to divide brother against brother. And while I certainly don’t claim to be God or even godly, I do know that tolerance of evil in unity’s name is a vice — and blessed division a virtue.

We can hate what is in front of us, love what is behind us, or both. But if we’re sheep and not soldiers, compromisers and not crusaders, Western civilization’s days will be behind us — and in front, perhaps, a thousand years of darkness.

Florida one of 46 States Tied to Common Core in 2009?

/in , , , /by

In June 2009, the National Governors Association (NGA) held an education symposium in which NGA outlined its plans for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money. Twenty-one governors attended; so did US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The following information is included a part of that June 2009 report:

At the Symposium, Secretary Duncan made an important announcement regarding these [ARRA] funds: $350 million of the Race to the Top (RTTT) funds has been earmarked to support the development of high-quality common assessments.With 46 states and three territories already signed on to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association-led initiative to develop a set of common core standards that are fewer, clearer, and higher, this announcement was greeted  enthusiastically by Symposium participants. [Emphasis added.]

That’s fishy: In June 2009, NGA reported that 46 states and three territories had already signed on to the NGA- and CCSSO-led Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

CCSS would not be finished for another year (June 2010).

RTTT would not be announced for another month (July 2009).

And now, in March 2014, we have former Florida Governor Jeb Bush urging states to “stay the course” with CCSS.

Stay the course?? According to NGA, 46 governors signed on to the race before there was a course and before there was even a race.

That’s dumb.

It’s 2014. CCSS is electric. What is a governor (or former governor) with 2016 presidential aspirations to do?

Bush is apparently putting the full force of his political clout behind CCSS via commercial ads.

However, not all Republican governors are doing so.

Take Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, for instance.

In May 2009, Jindal and then-State Superintendent Paul Pastorek signed the CCSS memorandum of understanding and included it as part of Louisiana’s RTTT application, dated January 19, 2010  (appendices are here). The following statement is from page 52 of Louisiana’s Phase 1 RTTT application:

On May 14, 2009, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and State Superintendant Paul Pastorek signed the Memorandum of Agreement with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) to participate in the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI).

Jindal– who was quick to sign Louisiana on for a not-yet-existent CCSS– and who thought the majority of Louisiana’s school districts would be lured along by the possibility of federal funding– is playing “cautious, silent.”

Ever mindful of his own political career, Jindal offered the following noncommittal statement regarding CCSS to the Baton Rouge Advocate on March 21, 2014:

In general, we think we should have strong standards as a state. We don’t think we should be going backwards on standards.

Which standards should “we” have, Bobby? The former Louisiana standards, or the current, amalgamated CCSS?

(I’m thinking that is the royal “we.” “We” tend to follow only what serves “us,” not what benefits Louisiana citizens.)

As to that May 2009 CCSS MOU:

It was no good, at least initially, without the support of the local school districts.

Louisiana has 69 school districts. Only 26 districts are on record as voting in the affirmative to adopt CCSS (see page 52 of the Louisiana RTTT application appendices).

This was a problem for Jindal and Pastorek. They counted on Louisiana districts’ buying into the already-signed CCSS MOU.

As St. Tammany Parish School Board (Louisiana) member Mary K. Bellisario recalls in a March 21, 2014, email,

In 2009 and early 2010, “to participate in the CCSS initiative” literally meant for each state to compete against the other states for the RTTT money–which of course was the impetus for the CCSS initiative.  Better to use the RTTT funding as the carrot, rather than Common Core itself.  This was the 3-hour debate in our board room the night we voted it down – how much funding were they talking about (the state couldn’t tell us that night), and how committed would we be to standards which weren’t even written at that time.

Most importantly, what would those standards say?

At first it was felt at LA DOE (where Pastorek was then superintendent) that all would go well, that each parish would vote in favor (after all, who would turn down “free” money?), and then the state could apply [for RTTT].

They (La DOE) were stunned when so many parishes voted no. 

The deadline in March for Round 1 of RTTT was fast approaching, and they lacked a major component (see page 18) of the application—a large number of cooperative parishes.

Too bad for them that so many parishes had total distrust of Supt. Pastorek! That was a major reason many of them turned it down.

There should be media sources after March which refer to the altering of the “participation” process at the national level. After the first round’s submissions in March 2010, the rules were relaxed so that a state could “participate” by being signed up by their governor and state supt. regardless of what individual counties/parishes determined.

Ironically LA didn’t win any [RTTT] money in the second round, either. 

But because we were now “participating,” we got the Common Core standards, whether we wanted them or not.

Bellisario continues in a separate email:

In early January 2010, St. Tammany Parish had to vote. … 

Pastorek was sure LA would get the RTTT/Common Core simply by applying and listing those parishes which had voted yes.  (Eventually 28 parishes and RSD schools did vote yes.) 

It wasn’t until sometime in late May or early June that the state officially adopted them via Jindal’s signature.  

We had thought we were safe — until Jindal and Pastorek signed up the entire state, once LA failed to get the RTTT money in early spring, because not enough parishes had signed up.  … 

After that, the rules were changed so that a governor and a state supt. could jointly sign up a state [for CCSS].

Jindal and Pastorek did exactly that. [Emphasis added.]

Louisiana’s application for RTTT funding was rejected. Among the application’s  reviewer comments is the following statement regarding the low participation by local school boards as concerns a section on the grading rubric, Translating LEA(local education agency) participation into Statewide Impact:

The hope is that non participating LEAs will adopt best practices through RTT. No evidence is provided that peer pressure will compel non participating LEAs to change. No evidence was given to support the idea of non participating LEAs making the shift on their own. [Emphasis added.]

Peer pressure??

That certainly does not sound very “voluntary.”

Common Core Lord of the Flies.

The “state-led” CCSS was initially supposed to be informed by the democratic process– one in which a state’s local school boards could vote on CCSS adoption. Then, when that did not yield the “right” response, the democratic process was conveniently discarded for the corporate-reform-style of “forced volunteering” under the sham name of “state leading.”

Allow me to add that the language of the CCSS MOU stands alone as a commitment to CCSS not contingent upon RTTT funding. Therefore, a governor’s and state superintendent’s signatures bind the state to CCSS. (Note: this so-called “agreement” violates Subpart 2, Section 9527 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act {ESEA}.)

In CommonCoreSpeak, the “state” is the governor and the state education superintendent.

In June 2009, NGA had it right when they called CCSS “NGA and CCSSO-led.”

Sometimes, however, Arne still needs to intervene in order to tie as much of the USA as is possible to his education privatization project. Thus, in 2012, Duncan decided to bypass the state and allow districts to deal directly with USDOE in applying for RTTT money.

If the state will not “lead” districts into corporate reform, USDOE is willing to dismiss the state.

And so, this is the manipulative game against which numerous states are fighting in the 2014 legislative session.

Jeb is pushing.

Bobby is squirming.

And somehow, in the midst of all of this education exploitation, America continues to be a world superpower.

Amazing, isn’t it?

RELATED STORY: Bill Gates loves Common Core for your kids, BUT NOT HIS

England Goes Back to the 17th Century: The Insane Wood Bonfire

/in , , , , , , /by

The Brits have decided to Save the Planet by going back to burning wood instead of coal. The giant DRAX power plant in Yorkshire, which provides about 6% of Britain’s electricity – you know, heat, lights, telly – is being converted from burning coal to burning wood, 100 year-old hardwood, the kind prized for making furniture. American wood, from North Carolina.

No, I’m not making this up. No sane person could make this up. I know because I’ve read it in a British newspaper by a proper Brit reporter.

MoS2 Template Master

The Daily Mail is a rather skeptical Brit newspaper, meaning they don’t seem to uncritically accept what the Brit upper class tells them is good for them, like Charles, Prince of …let’s not go there.

I’m telling you this because the people who support the claims of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) are so world class stupid that explaining the science to them does no good. Perhaps pointing out the idiocy of their remedies for the non-existent “global warming crisis” will make an impression. The reductio ad absurdum works in math and logic; perhaps it will rouse our voters to get rid of these morons.

Secretary of State John Kerry confuses carbon dioxide, equally diffused through the atmosphere, with ozone, mostly in the stratosphere. Senator Nelson believes sea level will rise enough by 2100 to put 28 million Floridians under water. These are people who believe their highest priority – yes, that’s what Kerry said – is stopping – totally – the increase of “carbon pollution” in Earth’s atmosphere. We all exhale “carbon pollution” with every breath; it’s really carbon dioxide, invisible, odorless, and essential to all life on this planet. I really wish Kerry and Nelson would walk their talk – but, these are politicians – and stop exhaling their “carbon pollution.”

So, what did the Brit fishwrap say? A few quotes:

On a perfect spring day in the coastal forest of North Carolina I hike along a nature trail – a thread of dry gravel between the pools of the Roanoke river backwaters. A glistening otter dives for lunch just a few feet away.

Majestic trees soar straight and tall, their roots sunk deep in the swampland: maples, sweetgums and several kinds of oak. A pileated woodpecker – the world’s largest species, with a wingspan of almost 2ft – whistles as it flutters across the canopy. There the leaves are starting to bud, 100ft above the ground.
The trees seem to stretch to the horizon: a serene and timeless landscape.

Sounds pleasant. Not fast-growing trash trees, like pines for pulp. What else?

The UK is committed by law to a radical shift to renewable energy. By 2020, the proportion of Britain’s electricity generated from ‘renewable’ sources is supposed to almost triple to 30 per cent, with more than a third of that from what is called ‘biomass’.

The only large-scale way to do this is by burning wood, man’s oldest fuel – because EU rules have determined it is ‘carbon-neutral’.
So our biggest power station, the leviathan Drax plant near Selby in North Yorkshire, is switching from dirty, non-renewable coal. Biomass is far more expensive, but the consumer helps the process by paying subsidies via levies on energy bills.

So this “renewable biomass” (from America) will cost much more than coal. It also costs much more than natural gas – of which Britain still has a fair amount. They could have far more, of course, if they began fracking, but the EU disapproves of fracking. But, surely, this will save the planet by reducing carbon dioxide emission, right? No!

In fact, Burdett admits, Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas.

Then there’s the extra CO2 produced by manufacturing the pellets and transporting them 3,800 miles. According to Burdett, when all that is taken into account, using biomass for generating power produces 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

There are additional reasons to believe this is insanity run amok, but why belabor the obvious? These are rules from the European Union. Now you understand why Vladimir Putin can take over Crimea without objection from the EU. Angela Merkel and Germany get 40% of their energy from Russian gas. The BMW production line will not shut down for Crimea.

Surely, the British voters will rise up and sweep out of power the government that fosters such policies? No; there are three major parties in Britain (Labour, Liberal, and Conservatives), who all support this green stupidity. No hope there.

But, no doubt OUR Environmental Protection Agency will step in to protect the home of the pileated woodpecker? No; American wind farms have been given a license to kill bald eagles, golden eagles, other raptors, bats… EPA works for the Marxist thug in the White House, who’s been sitting on the Keystone XL decision for five years. Three more years of stupid.

The word “bonfire” comes from “bonfire”, in the years when the Black Death created dead bodies faster than they could be buried. Now the Green Death is sweeping across Europe – and America. Goodbye, pileated woodpecker.

RELATED STORIES:

New Study: President Obama a “member of the Flat Earth Society” on Climate Change

Climate Truth and US Government Climate Policy

Even a child could understand climate change

EDITORS NOTE: The feature image of a bonfire is by Janne Karaste. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

In the dictionary under weakness, there’s a picture of —

/in , , , , /by

Slide15-300x180The dictionary defines weak as liable to yield, break or collapse under pressure or strain; not having much political strength, governing power or authority; impotent, ineffectual, or inadequate…well, you get the idea.

This week we saw clearly the contrast between weak and strong. This week President Obama did his NCAA basketball bracket, delightfully referred to as “Barack-etology.” discussed mom jeans with Ryan Seacrest, and chatted up Ellen Degeneres about Obamacare and those critical issues on “House of Cards” and “Scandal.”

In the same week, the territory (Crimea) of a sovereign nation (Ukraine) was annexed by an invading one (Russia). Down South, would-be football champions dream of going “between the hedges.” Instead, we have a President who went “between two ferns” — and that’s supposed to instill confidence? Nah, that’s a display of weakness, regardless of how liberals see it themselves.

Now, some believe President Obama is displaying the highest degree of strength and resolve — by not fighting back. They think only a real strong guy can say “there will be no military option.” It reminds me of another heroic Obama administration idea: the Combat Restraint Medal. Yep, a medal to be rewarded to combat troops for NOT firing back at the enemy. Only in Obamaworld is not shooting back at the enemy reason for an award.

In the world of progressive socialists, crushing your political opposition by using governmental power is strength. I call it tyranny. However, not standing up to a dictator who has invaded a sovereign free nation is showing strength? Both instances show weakness. Rhetoric about standing with protesters is courageous — unless of course those protesters are Iranian and belong to the Green movement. Then no one stands for you.

Liberal progressives are very adept at changing the meaning of words, altering the lexicon and turning words upside down. After all, a terrorist attack is just a man-caused disaster or workplace violence. Ergo weak is relative, according to the “living” meaning of the word. What a crock!

America, we elected a president who believed we needed to improve our global image. Someone who thought that it was more important to be “liked” — as if foreign policy is a Facebook page — than respected. We elected a person as Commander-in-Chief who truly believes “peace through strength” is an imposing and threatening mantra, and prefers “peace through appeasement” as a means to make friends. We elected a person who hasn’t a clue about geo-political strategy — as he evidenced by his sarcastic remark to Gov. Mitt Romney telling him “the 80s are asking for their foreign policy back.”

The only thing Barack Hussein Obama has brought to America is domestic tyranny and a cult of personality — neither impress the current list of despots, dictators, autocrats, and theocrats who now salivate at the naiveté and weakness of this “prankster.” Both are making us weak, at home and abroad.

So what does this mean for the American Republic? It means we have three more years during which we shall suffer, unless we wise up and take the gavel away from Harry Reid in the US Senate. But then again, Obama, keeper of the pen and phone, has shown his abject disdain for the rule of law and our governing Republican principles of separation of powers, coequal branches of government, and checks and balances. Has anyone ever had a front row seat to a train wreck? You do now. Sadly, there are those who actually bought the tickets — twice—and the rest of us are forced to watch. Heck, we’re all on the train.

The spinmeisters can try all they want, but you cannot deny the fact that Obama is weak and it is crippling America. The seminal question is, how low does America have to go? Have we now decided as a people that we no longer wish to lead? We no longer aspire to be exceptional? Are we fine with just sitting around watching reality TV shows, getting fat, and smoking dope while a new era of global brutes step forward? Barack Obama is forcing us to decide, and define, who we are: weak or strong.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Ought Implies Can by Steven Horwitz

/in , , , , /by

Ethical Pronouncements without Economics Lead to Disastrous Public Policies.

One of the most common objections to free markets is that they ignore ethical considerations. In particular, critics argue that there are many things we “ought” to do that they believe will make people’s lives better off. We ought to “redistribute” income to the poor, they say. We ought to make health care a right. We ought to fix the economy by bailing out the financial industry.

The problem with all these “oughts” is that they eventually confront the principle ought implies can. Can the desired end (improving the welfare of the poor, for example) be achieved by the chosen means (income “redistribution”)? If not, then what does the “ought” really mean? “Oughts” without “cans”–ethical pronouncements without economics–are likely to lead to disastrous public policies.

In exploring the relationship between economics and ethics, we can start with two definitions that seem relevant here. The economist David Prychitko once defined economics as “the art of putting parameters on our utopias.” And in a particularly insightful definition, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek wrote that “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” What both definitions suggest is that economics deals with the realm of the possibleand in doing so demarcates the limits to what should be imaginable. Before we say we “ought” to do something, perhaps we should be sure we can do it, in the sense that the action is likely to achieve the intended ends. Put differently: ought implies can.

Ethicists can imagine all kinds of schemes to remedy perceived social ills, but none of the aspiring benefactors can afford to ignore economic analysis. Being able to dream something doesn’t guarantee it is possible. Too often ethical pronouncements have an air of hubris about them, as the pronouncer simply assumes we can do what he says we ought to do. By contrast, economics demands some humility. We always have to ask whether it’s humanly possible to do what the ethicists say we ought. To say we ought to do something we cannot do, in the sense that it won’t achieve our end, is to engage in a pointless exercise. If we cannot do it, to say that we ought to is to command the impossible.

So contrary to the commonly heard complaint, it is not that economists ignore ethical issues. Rather we attempt to describe the likely results of putting particular ethical rules into practice. For example, someone can argue that a living wage is an ethical imperative, but that doesn’t change the economic analysis of minimum-wage laws. Those laws increase unemployment and/or lead to reductions in nonmonetary forms of compensation among all unskilled workers, but especially the young, male, and nonwhite. No matter how much we think we ought to pass such legislation as a way of helping the poor, the reality remains that economics shows us that we cannot help them that way. Those who argue we ought to have such a law can still pass it if they want, but they should do it with eyes wide open to the fact that it will not achieve the result they wish, no matter how much they think we ought to have it.

It might be more accurate to say that ethicists ignore economics than that economists ignore ethics. To the extent that good economics shows what we can and cannot do with social policy, it is engaged with ethics. After all, if the point of saying we ought to do X is that we think it will achieve some set of morally desirable goals, then knowing whether or not doing X will actually achieve those goals is, or at least should be, a key part of moral inquiry. One of the tasks that economists should set for themselves is to engage in this sort of dialogue with moral philosophers and others who argue from “oughts.” Economist Leland Yeager’s recent book Ethics as Social Science is a good example of how economics can inform ethical questions just this way.

Studying “Ought,” Ignoring “Can”

The more interesting question is the degree to which moral philosophers are engaged with economics as they develop their theories. It might be true that introductory economics courses do not consider moral questions as often as they might, but it would seem at least as true that courses in ethics and religious studies are unlikely to confront either economic arguments or economic data that relate to their subjects. Exploring the “ought” without broaching the “can” will not get one far in designing policies that will achieve the intended results. One exception to this neglect of economics is the philosopher Daniel Shapiro’s Is the Welfare State Justified? In that book he brings to bear a good deal of empirical data and economic theory on the question of whether the welfare state can do what its proponents claim for it. From the philosophy side, this is the kind of work that needs to be done.

Can Doesn’t Imply Ought

Once we recognize the insight behind “ought implies can,” we can see that the reverse is true as well. Just as we cannot do everything people say we ought, we ought not do everything we can. We see this in the frequent calls for political actors to “do something” in the face of a crisis. There are many things politicians can actually do in a crisis, and doing them is often fairly easy, especially if the politicians can generate a climate of fear to help make the “ought” seem more pressing. But the fact that they can do something does not always mean they ought to. Even if it is true that “yes we can,” understanding the unseen and unintended consequences of what politicians are able to do should help us to decide whether they ought to do it.

Both ways of looking at “ought implies can” put economists in the position of throwing cold water on the plans and designs of social engineers left and right. This is what Prychitko and Hayek mean. Economists are thus often seen as only knocking down the ideas of others without coming up with solutions of their own. There is some truth to this claim. That is how economists spend much of their time. But it’s an important function: showing why a proposed solution would only make matters worse is a valuable contribution to the broader process of solving the problem.

More relevant, however, is that economics teaches us that solutions are much more often found in the actions of individuals and organizations responding entrepreneurially to the situations they face. The notion of a top-down solution to any social problem is going to attract the economist’s critical eye. In terms of “ought implies can,” economists are often reluctant to say what everyone ought to do because no one person or group knows what people can do. If ought implies can, and “can” is particular people in particular contexts developing solutions to their problems, then it is difficult to say what we all ought to do, especially in a crisis. This is the way that Prychitko’s and Hayek’s definitions cash out in the real world.

All the themes above have been on display in the current economic crisis. The bailout of the financial sector is a classic example of both letting the “ought” blot out the “can” and of assuming we ought to do whatever apparently can be done. The original promise of the bailout was that government would buy up the bad assets of troubled financial institutions then later resell the assets, making the real cost substantially less than the original $700 billion. Many critics, including many economists, suggested not only that this plan was counterproductive–because it only enhanced the likelihood that other firms would take unwise risks in the future–but also that the availability of those funds would lead to demands for the government to use them in other equally unproductive ways. That is more or less what has happened, as the bailout expanded to partial government ownership of banks and then demands from the auto and insurance companies to get in on the goodies. The plan changed again when the government announced it wouldn’t purchase troubled assets but instead would inject money directly into banks and other kinds of businesses. But soon all the “oughts” were crashing against the limits of what can be done via government intervention. Meanwhile, the machinery of government did many things it can do–borrow and create money, for example–without the planners thinking very much about whether they ought to do any of those things.

Social scientists who disregard ethical issues abandon one of their central roles in bettering the human condition, and ethicists who ignore social science in formulating their moral prescriptions are negligent for not asking whether those solutions will achieve their stated ends. Only when both realize that ought implies can will we get public policies based on an accurate understanding of human interaction.

ABOUT STEVEN HORWITZ

Contributing editor and Freeman Online columnist Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University and the author of Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, now in paperback. This summer, he will be lecturing for FEE at Rebels with a Cause.

EDITORS NOTE: The feature image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

US Foreign Policy In A Tailspin

/in , , , /by

The weak and inadequate leadership displayed by the occupant of the Oval Office, over the last 5 years, is responsible for, and has created the worldwide political destabilization we are witnessing. When Obama came into office, he felt the United States prior inordinate stature in the international community was an undeserved stature and a result of unfairly acquired advantage, Obama now believes that the US underserved stature has been reset by “changes” he instilled in US policies, and Obama is bent on continuing to bring the Republic down in its military and economic strength. Obama sees US foreign policy as antithetical to domestic spending, since military readiness would be retained only at the expense of public entitlement. There is no Obama Foreign Policy or Obama Doctrine; just an intent to be sure that the United States will not be the only Superpower in the world.

Hillary Clinton’s naïve “RESET” with Russia obviously didn’t work, and was wrecked by Putin’s aggression in Crimea. Putin invaded Crimea because he has been watching Obama lead from behind for 5 years. The situation in Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating with Ukraine on the brink of war with Russia, yet Obama takes feeble action that has the Russians laughing and the world community shaking their collective heads. Obama should encourage NATO to join with the US in taking a number of actions that will send an strong signals to Putin that may get him to stop. Obama should halt his unilateral disarming of the US military, should support the development of energy resources on federal lands that he has restricted from domestic exploration for the last 5 years, provide the missile defenses systems for Poland and Czechoslovakia that Obama cancelled as soon as he was inaugurated in 2008, send humanitarian supplies to the people of Ukraine on a nonstop Military airlift bridge, deploy US Navy destroyers into the Black Sea, move a carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean, commence NATO exercises with the former Eastern member nations, and provide the Ukrainian Defense Force with the small arms they have been desperately asked the US for. The “Red Line” in Syria only empowered Putin; Putin has been supporting Assad’s suppression of the Syrian people, and he hoodwinked Obama into thinking Assad would turn in his chemical weapons which has come to a halt. Putin has given whistleblower Edward Snowden political asylum to demonstrate to the world that he has obvious disrespect for Obama. Obama’s now empty “Red Line” in Syria, then his empty “Red Line” in Crimea, has encouraged Putin’s to consider future land grabs in Eastern Ukraine, Moldova, more of Georgia, and he will probably takes bites out of the Baltic States.

Obama’s employment of standoff aerial drones to attack Al Qaeda’s leadership over the last 5 years has been ineffective, because leader are just replaced by the next in line. Instead of employing Special Operations Forces on the ground to decimate rank and file terrorists & capture others to develop operational intelligence for future strikes, he used drones and is solely responsible for the massive expansion of a depleted Al Q’ieda when President Bush left office—Al Q’ieda terrorists have no fear of attacks or capture by Special Operational Forces. The proliferation of Al Qaeda has manifested itself with the Black Flag of Al Qaeda flying over much of Libya, flying over the northeastern region of Syria, flying in Fallujah and the western regions of Iraq, flying throughout Somalia, and the Black Flag will soon be flying over Afghanistan once again, because Obama has been signaling Al Q’ieda for over 3 years that he will definitely pull out all US military forces from Afghanistan in about 8 months—–does anyone believe Obama’s false pronouncements in his last Presidential campaign that “Al Qaeda has been defeated and is on the run.” Military casualties in Afghanistan have increased by 358%/year over the last 5 years, over the annual casualty rate during the previous 8 years, because of Obama’s new and very dangerous Rules Of Engagement forced upon the US Armed Forces by Admiral Mullen. Mullen’s legacy has created unheard of casualty rates and Killed In Action rates in Afghanistan.

All efforts to achieve an effective Iranian boycott to stop a nuclear Iran have been abandoned by Obama, and without concessions. Iran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power and has been providing Republican Guard ground troops in Syria to kill freedom loving Syrians. The support for Israel has been be relegated to the trash heap of history, and Israel knows it is on its own. A nuclear confrontation is in the making in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey seeking nuclear weapons from Pakistan in self-defense. The heroic effort to stabilize Iraq by US Combatant Forces was thrown away when Obama yanked all US troops out of Iraq after the success of the “Surge,”; US military forces were abruptly pulled out without the negotiation of a Status of Forces Agreement (Iraq is the only country in the world, that the US saved from a dictator, that the US hasn’t entered into a Status of Forces Agreement with). Iran has filled in the void in Iraq left by the abrupt removal of US military forces from Iraq by Obama, and is now repeating the benefits of an alliance with Iraq as a result of the sacrifice the finest sons of America who removed the despot, Saddam Hussein, from power.

Relationships in the Middle East are in shambles. Obama’s unwise initiative to develop diplomatic relations with Iran at a time when it is threatening old US friends in the Middle East, killing freedom fighters in Iran, destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, & Bahrain, is threatening the destruction of Israel, has fractured US relations with US diverse friends such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. When the US commenced negotiating to normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, in its defense, Saudi Arabia established an independent coalition with the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan, and is now developing close relations with Putin. Libya whose ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was turned from being hostile to be more supportive of the US, was deposed by military strikes led by the US, the attack on Gaddafi unleashed Al Qaeda that built 10 training camps in eastern Libya, and those training camps provided the commandos that attacked the US Mission in Benghazi that resulted in the death of 4 Americans because Obama refused to authorize “Cross Border Authority” required to send in military support; now a destabilized Libya has become Somalia on the Mediterranean, and is another failed state created by ineptness of the Obama administration.

Egypt’s Pro-US Prime Minister, Hosni Mubarak, was deposed by Obama, so the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi could come to power, Morsi permitted the Muslim Brotherhood to start murdering Christians throughout Egypt, and for over a year the Obama administration has had proof from Egyptian intelligence that Morsi was complicit in having his followers participate in the attack on the US Mission in Benghazi; when Morsi was deposed by the US trained & US friendly Military Junta, Obama had all arms shipments and financial aid to Egypt promptly cancelled. Saudi Arabia was infuriated when Mubarak was deposed by Obama in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi, the Saudis helped undermine Morsi, and provided 10 times more financial aid to the pro us Junta than Obama cancelled. Putin jumped in to replace the military arms shipment Obama cancelled, and now for the first time in 35 years Egypt has moved away from the US and is more friendly to Putin’s Russia.

China, Russia, and Iran are building and modernizing their very powerful military armed forces, while Obama continues to degrade the US Military to pre-World War II levels. The US unilateral reduction of its nuclear arsenal with no concessions from anyone, together with our Hamlet-like stance toward China, has terrified our Pacific allies. The US Navy had more ships in the Pacific when Jimmy Carter was President than the US has in the entire US Navy today, and President Reagan’s 660 ship Navy is headed to a less than 200 ship Obama Navy (less ships than the US Navy had before WWI). China is expanding its navy with its first aircraft carrier and many missile firing submarines; it is getting ready to forcibly annex the 5 tiny Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands that Japan purchased many years ago. China Like Russia and Iran viewed Obama’s follow thru when his “Red Lines” were crossed in Syria and Crimea. In the next three years, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (and perhaps the Philippines and Australia as well) will either make concessions to China or threaten to go nuclear—especially if their suspicions continue to grow that they are no longer under the US strategic umbrella.

Obama’s outreach to Latin America’s Marxist regimes has been a colossal failure. Bolivia has now become a Marxist state; Communist Cuba, Ecuador and Argentina are more anti-American than ever. Ortega of Nicaragua humiliated the US with his long public dressing down of Obama. To make matters worse, on November 19, 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry declared the 200 year old policy that was adopted by the US Congress in 1823, The Monroe Doctrine, is “dead!” Obama’s strongly support for Hugo Chavez’s Marxist Venezuela, while he ignored the pro US demonstrators in the streets voicing their opposition to Marxist regime of Chavez, they were seeking a democratic form of government. It is interesting to know that Obama did support demonstrators in the streets during the Arab Spring who were trying to destabilized governments allied with the US in the Middle East; Chavez prevailed against the freedom seeking demonstrators in the streets, destroyed the economy of Venezuela, and now Venezuela is another failed Marxist state.

Obama feels his foreign policy towards China, Russia, and Iran has been a smashing success, and because the left of center liberal media establishment is deeply invested in Obama’s success, they obviate, obscure, mislead, and outright lie to confuse the American people about the truth on issues. However, for the past 5 years, despite the attempt by the media and the Obama administration to mislead the American people, clear thinking Patriots understand how completely Obama has failed the United States, leaving the Republic less secure, gave them a weaker military establishment, financially weakened the Republic, and the nation is now less respected in the eyes of the international community. The long and the short of it is that, Putin is a dynamic leader who is maximizing what little military power he has and is rapidly rebuilding his military, while the United States is virtually leaderless on the international stage with a strong military establishment that is rapidly being degraded by Obama. More likely over the next 3 years, we will see a doubling down by Obama on reducing US influence, going into a project debt of $24 trillion, reducing the US military strength in the world, and ensuring the US no longer has, a too-prominent global profile.

The only thing the American voters can do is elect Senators and Congressmen in less than seven months who will put a stop to Obama’s failed foreign policy, and his out of control spending. The thirty-four endorsed Combat Veterans For Congress are some of the Patriotic Americans who will support the principles upon which our Forefathers based the US Bill of Rights and the US Constitution—elect them in November to protect and defend the US Constitution and The Free Enterprise System.

EDITORS NOTE: The flag used as the featured image is that of the United States Secretary of State.

The Economist Who Said Maybe by Michael Clark

/in , , /by

The answer to most economic questions begins with “I don’t know”!

Is microfinance in the developing world a beneficial strategy? Is bitcoin a good idea? Will 3-D printing substantially change our way of living? Imagine a panel of economists being asked questions like these. What kind of answer do you expect from them? Plenty of economic and techie jargon will get thrown around by those who have done their homework. Many of their answers will contain substantial merit, but I think the best answer is a simple “I don’t know.”

It’s not a complete reply and should be followed by some reasoned response. But “I don’t know” should be a prelude to more responses to economic questions, even pivotal ones about the future of our currency or the development of impoverished nations.

It might not look like a good answer for a trained economist to give. But humility is the most important lesson that training in economics yields. From Adam Smith to F. A. Hayek and many in between, a sound approach to economics involves understanding our limited capacity to answer such questions.

The essence of this humility is the respect for spontaneous order; market-based institutions answer questions like the ones above in ways no individual could. This yields phenomena, as Adam Ferguson puts it, of “human action, but not of human design.” The deep appreciation of the phenomenon of spontaneous order leads one to humility; we never know exactly what the market solutions will be.

The Evolution of Music

Consider a blunt history of music as entertainment. The trend of big bands was replaced in 1948 by LP vinyl records and moved individuals out of the dance halls and into their own homes. After vinyl came the 8-track in the late 1960s, the cassette tape in the late 1970s, and then the CD started to gain popularity in the late 1980s. The big band, vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD progression is a bit of a simplification because radio had come into play as a separate market and multiple platforms had alternate sizes and models. However, the general popular-use trend was quite clear: About every decade, a better platform was developed.

It was not weird for people in the early 1990s to think that their CD collection was only temporary; most people thought something better would come along. More than a few thought they knew exactly what it was. The common thought was that popular music would be widely used on a disc similar to a CD, but the disc would be much smaller. If you watch the 1997 film Men in Black, the two characters have a discussion about the future technology. One complains that he’s going to have to buy the Beatles’ White Album again soon to replace his CD with the mini-CD.

But just about everyone was wrong. Mini-CDs never supplanted the original CD. But a new market did emerge as the format of choice right around the year 2000. When answering the question, “What will be the next thing to hold our popular music,” the actual answer was, “Well, nothing!” What followed the CD was a digital file that could be transported via the Internet. Imagine an individual trying to convince you in 1992 that the next step beyond a CD is in fact nothing. You wouldn’t have anything physical on you. You’d have nothing to search for underneath the passenger seat of your car, nothing to put into binders or towers for storage, and nothing to worry about getting scratched, mangled, or tangled. You’d have this file called an MP3. You would essentially have nothing physical to replace the CD. Convincing someone of this invention before its existence would seem fairly absurd.

So What?

In a market society the answers to questions like “Is X a good idea?” are often conclusions that exceed what most people originally considered possible. The market system often moves beyond what we were capable of seeing. How is the market so effective at progress? It is the same reason why I think the answer “I don’t know” is often a great answer for an economist.

The true benefit of freedom is that the institution or the market system (not any one individual or expert) bears the cognitive burden of figuring out what is a good idea. The profit and loss system, where consumers voice their opinions, quickly guides entrepreneurs. What serves consumers’ needs best? Do we value using titanium for the current design of a tennis racquet or would it be better used in a new design of a toaster oven? With so many consumers having so many preferences for so many products, it is no easy task to figure out what the best use of a resource is. That is, unless you have the profit and loss system.

Many entrepreneurs play their role in helping us to figure out little parts of what works and, perhaps even more importantly, what doesn’t work. Entrepreneurial actions bring disjointed, disparate, and detailed local knowledge to the forefront. When filtered through the market mechanism of profit and loss, the gathering of knowledge from the many will exceed the foresight of most, if not all, experts. Markets bring together the best from many and help us discover together instead of in isolation. When determining what works and what doesn’t, it is the market setting that allows a spontaneous order to do the heavy lifting that individual planners and experts simply cannot manage.

So is bitcoin a good idea? Is microfinance a path to prosperity for the impoverished? We have some grasp of the beneficial aspects of those ideas, and we can try to push forward some lines of argumentation to help the process. But it is a large part of our responsibility to remember our humility when it comes to questions of economics. F. A. Hayek put the context of discussing economics best when he stated, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

ABOUT MICHAEL CLARK

Michael Clark holds the Reemelin Chair in Free Market Economics at Hillsdale College.