The First Amendment Could Break the Grip of Government Unions by Charles W. Baird

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On January 11, 2016, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. It will be one of the Court’s most consequential cases this term. A decision in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs, a California public school teacher, could begin to undo the catastrophic damage caused by the widespread unionization of government employees in the 1960s and 1970s.

Municipal bankruptcies, state insolvencies, decaying public education, political corruption, and attacks on the freedom of speech and freedom of association of government employees are only the most visible wreckage of that disastrous mistake.

The question before the Court is whether forcing government employees to pay dues to a government employee union is a violation of the First Amendment.

In the Abood decision (1977), the Supreme Court sanctioned such coercion. Government workers could be forced to pay for the collective bargaining activities of the unions that represent them, but, the majority held, they could not be forced to pay that portion of dues unions use directly for political advocacy, as that would violate their right to free speech.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Lewis Powell warned the Court that there is no “basis … for distinguishing ‘collective bargaining activities’ from ‘political activities’ so far as the interests protected by the First Amendment are concerned. Collective bargaining in the public sector is ‘political’ in any meaningful sense of the word.”

In Abood, the majority disregarded Powell’s concern. But in Friedrichs, the Court will have to reconsider Powell’s insight that collective bargaining in the government sector is inherently political. The wages, salaries, and other conditions of government employment are political questions: they directly affect voters, taxpayers, and the actions of government agencies. Therefore, no employee should be forced to pay dues or fees for government sector collective bargaining.

If the Court finally agrees with Powell, no union will be able to force any government employee to pay union dues or fees for anything. This will shut down the vicious cycle whereby government unions collect forced tribute from government workers and then use it to help pro-union politicians obtain and maintain political power — who then empower and enrich the government employee unions.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) is panicked by the possibility of losing this case. It’s been showing this PowerPoint presentation throughout the state to try to prod its sympathizers to counterattack. It begs for ideas for “next steps and timelines necessary for CTA to respond to the impact of a negative rulings [sic].”

At the end of the presentation, the CTA finally does what it should have alwayshad to do: It considers how it might do a better job of convincing teachers that union membership is worthwhile. Forced dues and fees make it unnecessary for unions to justify themselves to their captive members.

The unions’ main argument in support of forced dues and fees is the chimerical “free rider” problem. They argue that, under the principle of “exclusive representation,” certified unions must represent all government employees, and if any of those workers did not pay dues and fees, they would receive the benefits of union representation for free. That would be unfair.

But this argument raises a more fundamental question: Why should government unions represent any workers who are not their voluntary members? Without exclusive representation, there could be no free riders. Without free riders, there is no case for compulsory union dues — political or otherwise.

Exclusive representation is not before the Court in this case, but if forced dues and fees in government employment are forbidden, exclusive representation itself may be challenged. After all, forcing anyone to accept the representation of an unwanted union as a condition of government employment seems clearly to violate that worker’s freedom of association. I look forward to such a case.

Charles W. BairdCharles W. Baird

Charles Baird is a professor of economics emeritus at California State University at East Bay.

He specializes in the law and economics of labor relations, a subject on which he has published several articles in refereed journals and numerous shorter pieces with FEE.

Los Angeles Unified School District closed after ‘credible threat’ from ‘foreign country’

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Hmmm. Which foreign country has a concentration of “right-wing extremists” that could have sent this threat? If this threat comes from jihadis, did the LA school district have students draw Muhammad, or provoke the poor dears in some other way?

Los Angeles school terror threat

“LA schools threat ‘came from foreign country,’” ANSA, December 15, 2015:

(ANSA) – New York, December 15 – An email threatening Los Angeles schools arrived from a foreign country, investigative sources told ABC News on Tuesday. LA School Superintended Ramon Cortines said the threat was explicitly aimed at “students at school”.

Meanwhile in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Chief William Bratton said officials there received the same threatening email and assessed it as “not credible”.

School districts throughout the country were targeted by the threatening email, De Blasio and Bratton said.

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Every Student Succeeds Act: Common Core by a New Name and on Steriods

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A bill over a thousand pages long is drafted behind closed doors and given a nice-sounding name.  The chair of the Senate committee, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, announces on November 18 that the conference report, which is finished, will not be available for reading until November 30.  The House vote will be two, at most three, days later.

The vote takes place two days later, on December 2.  The 247 House Republicans are divided, but most (all but 64) side with 100 percent of the 188 Democrats who vote for it.

On December 8, the Senate votes to advance the bill and it is passed the following day. Again, zero opposition from Democrats.  Only 12 of the 54 Senate Republicans oppose the measure.

This is the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), an arm of the War on Poverty that sends federal funds to low-income area schools.

ESSA is supported by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and 37 liberal and far-left civil rights and education groups.  It is supported by “the owners of the Common Core Standards” (National Governors Association and the Council of Chief School Officers), as Donna Garner notes.  Lamar Alexander, a Common Core booster, joins with Democrat Patty Murray, expressing hope for more such “bipartisan” legislation.

The over 200 grassroots groups and experts who sent a detailed, open letter on October 13 to Congress opposing the Act valiantly continued the battle in the two days between the release of the conference report and the vote in the House.  Volunteers divvy up the bill in an attempt to digest it in 48 hours.  They continued to rally the troops after it went before the Senate, to no effect.  It passed on December 9.  The next morning Obama signed it.  According to one activist, the hurry was manufactured to prod members to “vote blindly.”  ESSA had been on “ice” for six months.

The American Principles Project announces their “disappointment” over passage. Emmet McGroarty chastises Republicans for failing to listen to “the more than 200 pro-Constitution, anti-Common Core grassroots groups that laid out in detail their objections . . . and practically begged their ‘conservative’ elected officials to pay attention.”

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch, calls ESSA “a huge lump of educational coal.”  Effrem, a pediatrician, sees in ESSA a solidification of the harmful age-inappropriate methods of Common Core.  She thanks presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for their “steadfast opposition.”

Left-wing sites claim, “Christmas miracle sees end of Common Core.”

The Department of Education had prepared the groundwork for the hurried holiday-time vote with Obama’s own announcement in October, when he inveighed against “excessive testing”–as opt-outs spread like wildfire. He subtly blamed the unpopular testing on [George W. Bush’s] No Child Left Behind.  New tests, we are told, will be “state driven and based on multiple measures.”  Multiple measures include “non-cognitive skills,” attitudes and emotions.

The Department of Education announces that “The bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind…incorporates many of the priorities the Obama administration put forward.”

It does.  These are the same priorities undergirding Common Core.  According to Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow at the American Principles Project, the rub is in the mandates, as she explained to Dr. Susan Berry at Breitbart.  States must coordinate with eleven different federal statutes and submit their plans for approval by the feds.

Statutes include “the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that’s designed to connect the K-12 education system to government-controlled workforce-development, the Head Start act that centralizes preschool standards, the Education Sciences Reform Act (which seeks to boost data-collection on students)….”  Standards must focus on “minimal workforce-development rather than academic knowledge” – just like Common Core!  States will comply or lose their federal money.

The federal government will determine “college-and career-readiness,” thus continuing its power grab on campuses.

At the other end of the “cradle to career” spectrum is “mission creep” into preschool, as states participate in Race-to-the-Top-like competitive grants.  The Act expands ESEA power by making Head Start pre-school a statute (instead of an appropriation), Dr. Susan Berry reports.

Promoters ignored the research that shows the ineffectiveness of Head Start.  They ignored studies that indicate that pre-school programs often have a negative impact on students’ ability to concentrate in school.

Additional concerns listed at the Truth in American Education blog include the weakening of parental rights to opt children out of tests, removing checks on federal control, increasing overall federal spending through ESEA, and transferring federal dollars from the classroom to for-profit companies.

As consumers face skyrocketing health insurance premiums they realize that the “Affordable Care Act” is not what its name implies.  Similarly, many supporters of the Every Student Succeeds Act will learn that rather than eliminating Common Core, ESSA implements Common Core on steroids.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website.

Star Wars Episode 10: Donald J. Skywalker v. Darth H. Obama [Video]

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Pat Condell, noted commentator from the UK, in a video titled “We Want The Truth” explains from a British perspective why Donald Trump is the favored candidate in the Republican Party.

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EPA’s ‘Covert Propaganda’ Campaign to Sell Its Water Rule Explained

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“Covert propaganda” is something you’d expect from a foreign spy agency not from EPA. Yet that’s what the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report on the agency’s efforts to sell its water rule– Waters of the United States (WOTUS), The New York Times reports:

Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but are not allowed to engage in propaganda, defined as covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grass-roots lobbying — urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.

As it promoted the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule, the E.P.A. violated both of those prohibitions, a 26-page legal opinion signed by Susan A. Poling, the general counsel to the G.A.O., concluded in an investigation requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

“E.P.A. appealed to the public to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation in violation of the grass-roots lobbying prohibition,” the report says.

bloomberg_ginamccarthy_senate_testify_1600px

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.

The story came on the radar earlier this year when EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy bragged to a Senate Committee about the outpouring of public support for its (then) proposed water rule:

We have received over 1 million comments and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far… are supportive of this rule.

As I wrote in May, The New York Times told us how that outpouring of support came about; EPA drummed it up.

Led by Tom Reynolds, the agency’s top communications adviser, EPA fired up its propaganda machine to counter critics of WOTUS—farmers, ranchers, home builders, the golf industry, and other businesses–who pointed out how the rule will empower federal bureaucrats to regulate “wetlands, intermittent streams, ephemeral steams (those that only flow after a rainfall or snowmelt) , and man-made bodies of water like ditches, ponds, and canals,” federalize local land use decisions, and make it even harder to build things in America.

One cog in that machine was social media. In September 2014, the agency used social media tool Thunderclap to push pro-WOTUS messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

EPA’s Thunderclap campaign said, “Clean water is important to me. I support EPA’s efforts to protect it for my health, my family, and my community,” and included a link to an EPA webpage (now unavailable) that directed the public to submit comments on the draft regulation. The effort reached 1.8 million people.

EPA WOTUS Thunderclap social media campaign

GAO determined that EPA’s use of Thunderclap was a “covert propaganda” campaign and broke the law. EPA pushed pro-WOTUS messages without properly disclosing that the agency was the author of the messages:

While EPA’s role was transparent to supporters who joined the campaign, this does not constitute disclosure to the 1.8 million people potentially reached by the Thunderclap. To those people, it appeared that their friend independently shared a message of his or her support for EPA and clean water.

In addition, the Thunderclap campaign appears to have violated the spirit of internal EPA policy. A 2010 memo on indirect lobbying from EPA’s general counsel states:

EPA employees may not explicitly or implicitly encourage the public to contact Congress in support of, or opposition to, a legislative proposal, nor explicitly encourage the public to contact state or local governments for that purpose.

EPA’s Thunderclap campaign asked the public to leave comments in support of WOTUS, which EPA Administrator McCarthy then referenced in testimony before Congress to claim overwhelming public support for the controversial rule.

Not only was EPA caught producing propaganda, GAO also found the agency engaged in inappropriate grassroots lobbying of Congress, The Times reports:

The agency is also said to have violated the anti-lobbying law when one of its public affairs officers, Travis Loop, wrote a blog post saying he was a surfer and did not “want to get sick from pollution.” That post included a link button to an advocacy group that discussed the danger that polluted water posed to surfers and, at least at one point, also included text that said “Take Action,” telling the public to “tell Congress to stop interfering with your right to clean water.”

It’s bad enough that EPA is engaging in such unprecedented regulatory overreach by crafting WOTUS, but its aggressive (and illegal) advocacy of it shows how out-of-control that agency is.

As for Tom Reynolds, who spearheaded EPA’s illegal WOTUS communications efforts, he got a promotion and is now working on climate issues in the White House.

RELATED ARTICLE: Report: EPA Broke Federal Law With ‘Covert Propaganda’ on Social Media

Hiding Malik’s Face: To be or Not to be a Muslim — that is the Question

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“You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” As you may know, this statement was uttered by a bystander after a non-Muslim Muslim™ slit the throat of a man in the Leytonstone subway station in east London last weekend. It was, apparently, a logical spontaneous reaction because, as we all understand, a Muslim ceases to be a Muslim upon committing a terrorist act. It’s not yet known if the transformation turns him into a Christian, an atheist, a Hindu, a Jew or a Zoroastrian, but some magical de-Islamizing process occurs.

Speaking of which, the man shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” ain’t no Muslim himself, contrary to initial suspicions. Rather, he’s a 39-year-old security guard from north London identified only as “John”; you know, the kind of guy Archie Bunker might call “a regula’ Englishman there.” But let us just call him No-Muslim-Jihadi John.

Now, John is apparently an authority on Islam. As such, the Obama administration might want to consult with him on a certain matter: the public display of San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik’s photograph. Note that while fellow terrorist Syed Farook’s photo was published almost immediately, his bride Malik’s didn’t appear for days. And according to ex-Muslim and author of The Devil We Don’t Know, Nonie Darwish, this was to appease Muslims.

Appearing on a special Monday edition of “The Glazov Gang” (video below), she says she can think of only one reason why Farook’s photo was immediately shown while Malik’s was withheld. As she put it, “[A]s a former Muslim myself, I know that Islamic law prohibits posting the photos of veiled Muslim women in public.” Darwish goes on to say she suspects “the [Obama] administration was pressured by Muslim groups to not show the female terrorist’s photo to the public.” And, of course, we know that Muslims and leftists were enraged when Malik’s photo finally was released.

But then Darwish made an excellent, excellent point. Said she, “There’s an obvious contradiction here; it’s a contradiction for moderate Muslims and even President Obama, who constantly claim, and constantly lecture us, that terrorists have nothing to do with Islam.”

Bingo. If Malik wasn’t really Muslim, she couldn’t have been a Muslim woman. And then the Islamic prohibition against showing veiled Muslim women’s images in public doesn’t apply, right? So why was everyone so upset?

Oh, I get it: when her picture was taken, she was still Muslim because the magical, de-Islamizing process induced via commission of a terrorist act hadn’t yet occurred. But when she pulled the trigger, her Muslim status went up in smoke along with some gunpowder.

As for No-Muslim-Jihadi John, Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch spoke about the surreal nature of his reaction, writing “The fact that this man [John] is a non-Muslim makes the whole scene grotesquely absurd. Here is a man lying on the ground bleeding from stab wounds, with his attacker standing right there with his bloody knife, and the first thing this onlooker can think to do is to say something to try to protect the image of Islam. As the last jihadi slits the last non-Muslim Briton’s throat, the victim will probably be gurgling out as his life slips away, “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv.”

So No-Muslim-Jihadi John appears to know as much about Islam as he does about grammar. Then again, maybe he’s more clever than we think. Perhaps in using his double-negative, he was really sending the message, “You are a Muslim, bruv!” This may explain why, fearing violence by suddenly transformed non-Muslim Muslims™, his identity isn’t being released.

It’s more likely, though, that he just wouldn’t want to be responsible for a man losing his faith.

EDITORS NOTE: Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Treachery! Intrigue! Common Core Skullduggery Exposed

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common core dilemma book coverAre you curious about how the crazy new convoluted Common Core math problems came about?  Ever wonder why high school students are reading EPA standards in English class?

Want to read a book full of suspense about backroom deals, MOU’s (Memorandums of Understanding), CCSSO licensing agreements, NGA funding, and secret handshakes?  That reveals who and what CCSSO, EASA, and AYP are?  That gets down to the statistical trickery of surveys showing that teachers just love Common Core?

Then read Mercedes Schneider’s fascinating Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?

Schneider cuts through the eye-glazing jargon and reveals the players, their connections, and credentials (or more accurately lack thereof).  She uses her advanced degrees in education and statistics to explicate the legalese and interpret the misleading numbers, and then put them into a gripping narrative. There is a plot line that goes from when Common Core was a twinkle in the eye to the monster we have today.

This dedicated high school English teacher also maintains an excellent blog in which she cuts through all the arcana.  Her work is clearly a labor of love.  I don’t know how she does it all.

In Common Core Dilemma, Schneider has done a superb job in telling the back story.

But I wish that she had left it at that because the introductory chapters present a distorted view of the history of education and might put off some readers.

In the first chapter Schneider challenges the 1966 Coleman Report’s recommendation that standardized tests be used as measurements of progress (full name, Equality of Educational Opportunity Study).  She takes issue with the fact that “the researchers believed that ‘culture bound’ testing was justified because, in their view, particular attributes were necessary for students of color to have success.”  E.D. Hirsch, in his 1987 bestseller,Cultural Literacy, argued the same point: historical and cultural knowledge (e.g., important dates, scientific facts, familiarity with literary classics) are essential to reading comprehension and academic achievement. For that he was vilified by progressives.  Common Core (in spite of the similarity in name) deemphasizes cultural knowledge by dictating that short “texts” (or excerpts) be read “cold,” with no context provided by the teacher.

Schneider maintains that it was naïve “to believe that people of color in 1960s America would ‘get a good job and move up to a better one’” by demonstrating academic achievement.

No, it was not.

Schneider repeats the myth that has been accepted as holy writ in education schools: that racism and lack of cultural sensitivity are responsible for the achievement gap. This myth is promulgated by anti-American radicals who took over schools in the 1960s.   Perpetuating such myths serves their larger revolutionary goals.  Thomas Sowell, however, has aptly demonstrated that in the days of segregation, all-black schools sometimes outperformed their white socioeconomic counterparts.

That is because they used the tried-and-true methods of directed teaching, which the late Jeanne Chall demonstrated were especially helpful to students from low- and middle-income families.  This is old-fashioned teaching, with the teacher as the authority and students required to demonstrate knowledge of a body of material.

Progressive teachers, however, have taken it upon themselves to indoctrinate students in social justice, while pretending students are “discovering” such lessons through project and group work.

The Obama administration’s policies in academic standards and school discipline, modeled on the theories of Obama education transition team leader and Common Core test developer, Linda Darling-Hammond, go counter to the methods that have worked.  Clearly, there is a larger agenda.  The fall-out includes loss of local control and teacher autonomy.

Schneider, unfortunately, seems to have accepted certain progressive premises.  She questions the validity of committees on the basis of racial and gender make-up (if they are overwhelmingly white and male), but cites anti-testing activist William Schaefer of FAIR Test as an authority.  This is surprising because Schaefer has no qualifications in the education field.  His public relations company promotes a number of far-left causes, with the anti-testing campaign being just one.

Unfortunately, Schneider repeats what could be a line from Schaeffer’s anti-testing propaganda.  She maintains that test administrators can be blind to “the manner in which their own perceptions of the world interfere with both test selection and the utility of test results.”  Furthermore, “The ‘skills most important’ for Whites to be successful in a predominantly White society that is often openly hostile to the ‘success’ of its members of color differ from those that may be deemed ‘most important’ by the oppressed members.”  Cringe.

Schneider relates how she learned from “students of color” that “academic achievement is frowned on as an attempt to ‘be White’ or is viewed as an affront to subgroup acceptance.”   That is true, as Jason Riley points out, but it is a harmful attitude that is encouraged by lessons about endless oppression and cultural difference.

Unfortunately, education schools and teachers unions have made reform efforts necessary.  At conferences I’ve heard teachers share strategies on avoiding state standards (pre-Common Core), so they could use the class to promote such lessons in grievance instead. Teachers unions have notoriously protected incompetent or negligent teachers.

There was an educational “crisis,” as well as a financial one, in 2008.  The Obama administration, of course, did not let either “crisis go to waste,” dangling stimulus funds before governors as carrots for adopting Common Core.

Now let me get back to the other nine chapters—the vast bulk—that make it worth your while to read this book.  Once Schneider dispenses with the bleeding heart excuses in the first two chapters, she exposes education exploiters who lie (Bill Gates), who violate their federal roles (Arne Duncan), and who negotiate deals to make U.S. education dependent on their demonstrably incompetent companies (Pearson chief financial officer Robin Freestone).

Teachers, rightfully, should be appalled at the imposition of standards that have not been piloted and that were written by unqualified “experts” from non-profits tied to companies standing to profit from Common Core.  They should be outraged over having their job evaluations tied to how well students perform on ridiculous tests.

But they should also be putting their own house in order.  Teachers should be asking themselves whether their union dues should be going overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party, which supports big government/progressive education programs like Common Core.

I hope Mercedes Schneider takes her passion, and her great analytical and writing skills, to tackle the more deep-rooted problems plaguing education.

But first, we have a task: to kill the Common Core beast.  The big government/big money interests are banking on the fact that the “little people” can’t understand the contracts, the jargon, the backroom deals.

Mercedes Schneider demonstrates, to the contrary, that with her book, oh, yes, we can.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website.

Ideas in Exile: The Bullies Win at Yale by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

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The student speech bullies have won at Yale. Erika Christakis, Assistant Master of Yale’s Silliman College, who had the temerity to suggest that college students should choose their own Halloween costumes, has resigned from teaching. Her husband, sociology professor Nicholas Christakis, Master of Silliman College, will take a sabbatical next semester.

One of the bullies’ demands to Yale President Salovey was that the couple be dismissed, and a resignation and sabbatical are a close second.

As had been widely reported, Erika Christakis said,

Is there no room any more for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.

At issue are costumes such as wearing a sombrero, which might be offensive to Mexicans; wearing a feathered headdress, which might offend Native Americans, previously termed Red Indians; and wearing blackface to dress up as an African American.

Dr. Christakis’s comment is so obvious that it hardly needs to be said. Students who are admitted to Yale are some of the brightest in the country, and it should not be the role of the University to tell them how, or whether, to dress up at Halloween.

The speech bullies want mandatory diversity training, rules against hate speech, the dismissal of Nicholas and Erika Christakis, and the renaming of Calhoun College because its namesake, John Calhoun, defended slavery.

If America is to be whitewashed of the names of individuals from prior centuries who fall short of the political standards of the 21st century, we will be a nation not only without names but also without a past. The names of our states, our municipalities, and even our universities would disappear. Elihu Yale was a governor of the East India Company, which may have occasionally engaged in the slavery trade. It is easy to condemn the dead who cannot defend themselves. But if we curse the past, what fate awaits us from our progeny?

Not all Yale students agree with the tactics employed by the bullies. Freshman Connor Wood said,

The acceptance or rejection of coercive tactics is a choice that will literally decide the fate of our democracy. Our republic will not survive without a culture of robust public debate. And the far more immediate threat is to academia: how can we expect to learn when people are afraid to speak out?

The Committee for the Defense of Freedom at Yale has organized a petition in the form of a letter to President to express concern with the bullies’ demands. Over 800 members of the Yale community have signed. Zachary Young, a junior at Yale and one of the organizers of the petition, told me in an email, “We want to promote free speech and free minds at Yale, and don’t think the loudest voices should set the agenda.”

Nevertheless, it appears that the loudest voices are indeed influencing President Salovey. He has given in to protesters by announcing a new center for the study of race, ethnicity, and social identity; creating four new faculty positions to study “unrepresented and under-represented communities;” launching “a five-year series of conferences on issues of race, gender, inequality, and inclusion;” spending $50 million over the next five years to enhance faculty diversity; doubling the budgets of cultural centers (Western culture not included); and increasing financial aid for low-income students.

In addition, President Salovey volunteered, along with other members of the faculty and administration, to “receive training on recognizing and combating racism and other forms of discrimination.”

With an endowment of $24 billion, these expenses are a proverbial drop in the bucket for Yale. But it doesn’t mean that the administration should cave. Isaac Cohen, a Yale senior, wrote in the student newspaper,

Our administrators, who ought to act with prudence and foresight, appear helpless in the face of these indictments. Consider President Salovey’s email to the Yale community this week. Without any fight or pushback — indeed, with no thoughts as to burdens versus benefits — he capitulated in most respects to the demands of a small faction of theatrically aggrieved students.

Yale’s protests, and others around the country, including Claremont-McKenna, the University of Missouri, and Princeton, stem from the efforts of a small group of students to shield themselves from difficult situations. Students want to get rid of speech that might be offensive to someone that they term a “micro-aggressions.” This limits what can be said because everything can be interpreted as offensive if looked at in a particular context.

For instance, when I write (as I have done) that the wage gap between men and women is due to the sexes choosing different university majors, different hours of work, and different professions, this potentially represents a micro-aggression, even though it is true. Even the term “the sexes” is potentially offensive, because it implies two sexes, male and female, and leaves out gays, lesbians, and transgenders. The term “gender” is preferred to “sex.”

What about a discussion of the contribution of affirmative action to the alienation of some groups on campuses today? Under affirmative action, students are admitted who otherwise might not qualify. In Supreme Court hearings on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”

The majority of students at Yale want an open discussion of all subjects, but the attack on the Christakises have frightened them into silence. Zach Young told me,

If the accusers’ intent was to enlighten and persuade, their result was to silence and instill fear. I worry that because of this backlash, fewer students or faculty — including people of color and those of liberal persuasions — will feel comfortable expressing views that dissent from the campus norms. Why risk getting so much hate, disgust, calls against your firing, just for the sake of expressing an opinion?

Why indeed? The answer is that arguing about opinions is the only way to get a real education. Let’s hope that another university stands up for freedom of speech and offers the Christakises teaching positions next semester.

This article first appeared at CapX.

Diana Furchtgott-RothDiana Furchtgott-Roth

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is director of Economics21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

King Canute vs. the Climate Planners by Jeffrey A. Tucker

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“With a small hammer you can achieve great things.”

Oh really?

This claim comes from French foreign minister Laurent Fabius as he banged his gavel at the close of the Paris climate summit. To the cheers of bureaucrats and cronies the world over, Fabius announced the deal that the press has been crowing about for days, the one in which “humanity” has united to stop increases in global temperature through the transfer of trillions of dollars from the rich to the poor, combined with the eventual (coercive) elimination of fossil fuels.

And thus did he bang his gavel. To his way of thinking, and that of the thousands gathered, that’s all you have to do to control the global climate, cause the world to stop relying on fossil fuels, and dramatically change the structure of all global industry, and do so with absolute conviction that benefits will outweigh the costs.

One bang of a gavel to dismantle industrial civilization by force, replace it with a vague and imagined new way of doing things, and have taxpayers pay for it.

Markets Yawn

Interestingly, the news on the Paris agreement had no notable impact on global markets at all. No prices rose or fell, no stocks soared or collapsed, and no futures responded with confidence that governments would win this one. The climate deal didn’t even make the business pages.

Investors and speculators are perhaps acculturated to ignoring such grand pronouncements. “The Paris climate conference delivered more of the same — lots of promises and lots of issues still left unresolved,” the US Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. And maybe that’s the right way to think, given that the world is ever less controlled by pieces of paper issued by government.

Still, breathless journalists wrote about the “historic agreement” and government officials paraded around as planet savers. Meanwhile, the oil price continues to fall even as demand rises, and the Energy Information Administration announced the discovery of more reserves than anyone believed possible. As for alternatives to fossil fuels, they are coming about through private sector innovation, not through government programs, and successful only when adopted voluntarily by consumers.

It’s a heck of a time to announce a new global central plan affecting the way 7 billion people use energy for the next century. Anyone schooled in the liberal tradition, or even slightly familiar with Hayek’s warning against the pretensions of the “scientific” government elites, shakes his or her head in knowing despair.

The entire scene looks like the apotheosis of the planning mentally — complete with five-year plans to monitor how well governments are doing in controlling the climate for the whole world and do so in a way that affects temperature 10-100 years from now.

King Canute?

The scene prompted many commentators to compare these people celebrating in Paris to King Canute, who ruled Denmark, England, and Norway a millennium ago. According to popular legend, as a way of demonstrating his awesome power, he rolled his throne up to the sea and commanded it to stop rising.

It didn’t work. Still, the image appears in many works of art. Even Lego offers a King Canute scene from its historical set.

Historians have challenged the point of the story. The only account with have of this incident, if it occurred at all, is from Henry of Huntingdon. He reports that after the sea rose despite his command, the King declared: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

He did and said this, say modern experts, to demonstrate to his courtiers and flatterers that he is not as wonderful and powerful as they were proclaiming him to be. Instead of subservience to his own person, he was urging all citizens to save their adoration for God.

His point was that power — even the absolute power of kings — has limits. During his rule, King Canute was enormously popular and evidently benefitted from the common tendency of people to credit authority for the achievements of the spontaneous evolution of the social order itself. His sea trick, if it happened at all, was designed to show people that he is not the man they thought he was.

The Pretensions of the Planners

Lacking a Canute to give us a wake-up call, we might revisit the extraordinary speech F.A. Hayek gave when he received his Nobel Prize. He was speaking before scientists of the world, having been awarded one of the most prestigious awards on the planet.

Rather than flattering the scientific establishment, particularly as it existed in economics, he went to the heart of what he considered the greatest intellectual danger that was arising at the time. He blew apart the planning mindset, the presumption that humankind can do anything if only the right people are given enough power and resources.

If the planning elite possessed omniscience of all facts, flawless understanding of cause and effect, perfect foresight to know all relevant changes that could affect the future, and the ability to control all variables, perhaps their pretensions would be justified.

But this is not the case. Hayek called the assumption the harshest possible word: “charlatanism.”

In the climate case, consider that we can’t know with certainty whether, to what extent, and how climate change (especially not 50-100 years from now) will affect life on earth. We don’t know the precise causal factors and their weight relative to the noise in our models, much less the kinds of coercive solutions to apply and whether they have been applied correctly and with what outcomes, much less the costs and benefits of attempting such a far-flung policy.

We can’t know any of that before or after such possible solutions have been applied. Science requires a process and unrelenting trial and error, learning and experimentation, the humility to admit error and the driving passion to discover truth.

In other words, science requires freedom, not central planning. The idea that any panel of global experts, working with appointed diplomats and bureaucrats, can have the requisite knowledge to make such grand and final decisions for the globe is outlandish and contrary to pretty much everything we know.

Throw the reality of politics into the mix and matters get worse. Fear over climate change (the ultimate market failure “problem”) is the last best hope for those who long to control the world by force. The entire nightmare scenario of rising tides and flooded cities — one that posits that our high standard of living is causing the world to heat up and burn — is just the latest excuse. That fact remains whether or not everything they claim is all true or all nonsense.

Pretensions Everywhere

Hayek explains further: “To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.”

Why? Because planning overrides the spontaneous discovery process that is an inherent part of the market structures.

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based — a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

He went further. The planning fallacy doesn’t just affect economics. It is a tendency we see in all intellectual realms, including climatology and its use by governments to justify the desire to manage the world from on high.

Hayek’s conclusion is so epic that it deserves to be quoted in full.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success”, to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Or we could just quote King Canute after the tides failed to respect his edict: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name.”

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

Five Different Government Agencies Vetted San Bernardino Muslim Female Slaughterer

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It just keeps getting worse. At first we were told that she had been vetted by two agencies. Apparently Obama Administration officials were hoping to cover up the magnitude of this failure. In any case, Tashfeen Malik stands as a witness to the impossibility of vetting for jihadis.

Tashfeen-Malik

Tashfeen Malik

“U.S. missed ‘red flags’ with San Bernardino shooter,” CBS News, December 14, 2015:

As investigators focus on what or who motivated San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, to open fire at the Inland Regional Center, a report about Malik’s comments on social media before she moved to the U.S. is raising questions about how thoroughly she was vetted.

Law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News that Malik made radical postings on Facebook as far back as 2012 — the year before she married Farook and moved to the U.S., reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans. According to a report in the New York Times, Malik spoke openly on social media about her support for violent jihad and said she wanted to be a part of it. But none of these postings were discovered when Malik applied for a U.S. K-1 fiancé visa.

“If you’re going to start doing a deeper dive into somebody and looking at their social media postings or other things, you really want to focus your effort on the high-risk traveler, the person that you’re really worried about being a threat to the United States,” said James Carafano, national security expert and vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “The question is, how do you identify them?”

Malik was not identified as a threat despite being interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and vetted by five different government agencies that checked her name and picture against a terror watch list and ran her fingerprints against two databases.…

RELATED VIDEO: Pamela Geller with Charles Payne on Fox Business on San Bernardino Catastrophic Intel Failure:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Three House Panels to Investigate Islamic State Intelligence Scandal to Make it Appear that President Obama is Winning the War Against ISIS

DHS chief extended policy preventing scrutiny of visa applicants’ social media

100s of migrants in Norway had photos of executions and severed heads

Massachusetts judge orders landlord to learn about Islam after dispute with Muslim tenant

100s of Muslim migrants had photos of executions and severed heads

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You heartless Islamophobes can’t even let these poor people have some photos that obviously have great sentimental value for them?

“Hundreds of migrants arriving in Norway had mobile phones containing images of executions, severed heads and dead children, police reveal,” by Imogen Calderwood, Mailonline, December 14, 2015:

Hundreds of asylum-seekers entering Norway were discovered to have images of ‘executions’ and ‘severed heads’ on their mobile phones.

The revelation comes amid heightened fears that ISIS is exploiting the migrant crisis to smuggle fighters into Europe, following last month’s attacks in Paris.

Police admitted that the ‘explosion’ of refugees crossing into the country over the summer and in recent months meant that security checks were less thorough than required, and weren’t checking the background of those entering the country.

The Police Immigration Service (PU) in Norway has been forced to work overtime and under severe pressure due to the massive numbers of asylum-seekers hoping to take refuge in the country.

But after searching belongings and mobile phones belonging to refugees and migrants crossing the border, police discovered ‘hundreds’ of examples of ‘photos and videos of executions and brutal punishments, such as images of people holding up severed heads or hands’….

RELATED ARTICLES:

Maryland Muslim charged with supporting the Islamic State

San Bernardino jihad murderer was vetted by FIVE different government agencies

Islamic State letters give government 3 days to convert to Islam or be decapitated

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A report by RT Arabic published on December 12, the “Swedish government is in a state of panic after dozens of its citizens received threatening letters signed by ISIS and offering them three choices, either conversion to Islam, payment of jizya, or decapitation.”

The letters warned their recipients that they had three days to decide.

Written in the Swedish language, the letters appeared yesterday on dozens of homes in different cities at the same time.  Police are reportedly taking the threat “very seriously.”  Among other regions, letters appeared in the cities of Ronneba, Sigtuna, Vstroes and the capital Stockholm.

Along with threatening those who refuse to convert to Islam or pay the jizya with death, some letters also threatened their recipients with “the bombing of theirs roofs above their heads.”  The letters further warned that the police will not save recipients of the letters and that “death would extend to all.”  Click here for image of one of the letters and an English translation.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Maryland Muslim charged with supporting the Islamic State

Muslim ex-Illinois Guardsman pleads guilty in Islamic State plot

An Economist’s 10 Objections to the Minimum Wage by Mark J. Perry

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One of the biggest political issues right now nationwide, and one that will likely be an important issue in next year’s presidential election is the minimum wage.

Economists are generally in agreement that increases in the minimum wage, especially large increases to $15 an hour like in Seattle, will reduce employment opportunities for unskilled workers.

Despite the inevitable negative outcomes that will surely result from a $15 minimum wage — we’ve already seen negative effects in Seattle’s restaurant industry — politicians and unions seem intent on engaging in an activity that could be described as an “economic death wish.”

Proponents of a higher minimum wage point to the obvious and visible benefits to some workers — those who may find a job at the higher wage or keep their existing job and get a higher wage.

But that is only part of the story — there are many less obvious downsides to an artificially high minimum wages that take longer to recognize, and it’s those inevitable negative effects that lead economists to generally oppose minimum wage laws.

What are the specific objections of economists to the minimum wage and why do they generally favor market wages instead? Here are ten reasons in favor of market wages over a government-mandated minimum wage:

  1. Proposed minimum wages are almost always arbitrary and never based on sound economic analysis. Why $10.10 an hour and not $9.10? Why $15 an hour and not $16 an hour?
  1. A uniform federal minimum wage may be sub-optimal for many states, and uniform state minimum wages may be sub-optimal for many cities. A one-size-fits-all approach to the minimum wage is really a “one-size-fits-none.”
  1. Minimum wage laws require costly taxpayer-funded monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, whereas market wages don’t.
  1. Minimum wage laws discriminate against unskilled workers in favor of skilled workers, and the greatest amount of discrimination takes place against minority groups, like blacks.
  1. Adjustments to total compensation following minimum wage laws will disadvantage workers in the form of reduced hours, reduced fringe benefits, and reduced on-the-job training.
  1. Many unskilled workers will be unable to find work and will be denied valuable on-the-job training and the opportunity to acquire experience and skills.
  1. Minimum wage laws prevent mutually advantageous, voluntary labor agreements between employers and employees from taking place.
  1. To the extent that higher minimum wages result in lower firm profits and higher retail prices, that’s a form of legal plunder by workers from employers and consumers that is objectionable.
  1. Market-determined wages are efficient, whereas government-mandated wages create distortions in the labor markets that prevent labor markets from clearing.
  1. Like all government price controls, minimum wage laws are distortionary. If you trust government officials and politicians to legislate and enforce a minimum wage for unskilled workers, you should logically trust those same bureaucrats to set all prices, wages and interest rates in the economy. Realistically, if you agree that those economy-wide price controls would be undesirable, then you should also agree that the minimum wage law is also undesirable.

In summary, economists are not unconcerned about unskilled workers, we are actually very concerned about those workers. And it is because of that concern to maximize employment opportunities that economists oppose the minimum wage.

Simply put, we would rather see unskilled workers employed at a market wage — even if that wage is only $5, $6 an hour — that allows them to gain valuable work experience and on-the-job training, than to be unemployed at $0.00 an hour. And unfortunately, a $15 minimum wage maximizes the probability that an unskilled worker will be unemployed at $0.00 an hour instead of being gainfully employed.

This post first appeared at InsideSources. Reprinted with permission.

Mark J. PerryMark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

Why Is Liberty So Important? by Lawrence W. Reed

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At this time of the year, all of us at the Foundation for Economic Education take special note of our many friends, both new and old. Though our work is vitally important, we never want to be so absorbed in it that we neglect the people like you who make it possible.

So allow me this moment to express a collective thanks from all of us at FEE to all of you who partner with us as trustees, donors, seminar attendees and alumni, faculty network members, readers of the Freeman and FEE.org, and ambassadors for liberty.

If you’ve never financially supported FEE in the past, I invite you to do so today.

If you’re a past supporter of FEE, I thank you for your generosity and invite you to consider renewing your support.

When you invest in FEE, you invest in life-changing events and publications that will pay dividends for decades.

FEE is focused on cultivating an understanding of the principles of freedom in the minds of young “newcomers” to liberty — particularly those of high school and college age.

Every time I hear a student exclaim “I never heard this before FEE told me about it!” I know we’ve made a difference for the rest of that person’s life.

Why is liberty so important?

  • Liberty is precious, rare, never guaranteed, and always threatened. It can be lost in a single generation if it’s not advanced and defended.
  • Liberty follows from human nature: We are unique individuals, not a blob or an army of robots to be programmed by those with power.
  • To be fully human, all of us must be free to exercise our choices and govern our lives so long as we permit the same of others.
  • Liberty works. Over and over again, it produces a degree of interpersonal cooperation, innovation, and wealth creation that allows human beings to flourish — nothing else even comes close.
  • Liberty is the only social, political, or economic arrangement that requires that we live to high standards of conduct and character and rewards us when we do so. This is a crucial difference between liberty and the soul-crushing, paternalistic snares that are offered as alternatives.
  • Life without liberty is unthinkable. Who wants to live at the end of another’s leash, fearing at every turn what those armed with force and power might do to us, even if they have good intentions?

We wouldn’t expect, even if it were possible, that everyone who supports us will agree with everything they ever see or hear from FEE. We have our own core beliefs, of course, but to a considerable degree we are a forum for differing views among those who broadly share an affinity for liberty.

We don’t take for granted that we’ll earn your support every day, every month or every year. We know we have to earn it all the time. So we are engaged in a non-stop, self-improvement program. We experiment and innovate. Seminar themes, technology, content, and speakers change and improve. We expand and grow what works and drop what doesn’t. We do it all in an effort to be the best-known, most effective “first encounter” for young people with the economic, ethical, and legal principles of a free society.

I hope this cause in general — and our work at FEE, in particular — excites you as much as it does every member of the team we’ve assembled. We go to work every day with passion for what we do, and with appreciation for you who support us.

Thank you, too, for being an ambassador for liberty. Because of your sharing on social media and your own engagement with our content, FEE is reaching a wider audience than at any time in our 69-year history.

We are experiencing record levels of applications for our seminars. FEE voices are appearing in the international press. And FEE.org itself is being read by over 500,000 people per month (and rising fast!). This is a level of reach that would have delighted FEE’s founders, and the champions of freedom from time immemorial.

However, without the generosity of individuals like you, FEE would not be able to deliver life-changing moments for countless young people. We need your financial support to continue our work for liberty.

Whether you give a little or become a continuing benefactor in substantial amounts, we appreciate it deeply as a vote of confidence in FEE’s message, mission, and work.

Thank you for thinking of FEE in your year-end giving. And, thank you for all that you do to advance liberty in any way!

Best wishes to you and your families for this holiday season and for a blessed and prosperous New Year.

Lawrence W. ReedLawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

Some Recent Energy and Environmental News

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The latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter, is now online.

Special Note 1: All U.S. citizens should take 1 minute to formally object to a proposed extension of the wind PTC. (Please pass this request onto your lists.)

[FYI, the “PTC Elimination Act” now has 50 cosponsors, 7 U.S. Senators Opposed to Extension of PTC, and Horse Trading in Congress: Lifting Oil Ban for Extending Wind PTC.]

Special Note 2: Since the dust is still settling, we’ll have a specialNewsletter edition just about the Paris talks later this week.

Some of the more interesting energy articles in this issue are:

UK’s energy ‘policy’ is an act of national suicide (similar for US, Canada, Australia, etc.)

New Video: Real World Experiences Living with Wind Turbines

Movie: Blue Beats Green

National Association of Scholars study about Fossil Fuel Divestment (esp note “recommendations” on page 3)

Learn what our opponents are saying:

Some Wind Energy Tactics to Win Over Local Community

The Puzzle of Energy Policy

Study: Waterfowl and Industrial Wind Turbines (p 115+)

Some of the more informative Global Warming articles in this issue are:

Nobel Laureate, PhD Physicist: video on Climate Change (exc)

What they Haven’t Told You About Climate Change: short video

Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming

The Ugly Face of Climate Cultists

U.S. Senate Hearings on Climate Change: Data or Dogma?

Archive: Global Warming is a Myth

Archive: 100 reasons why climate change is natural