Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Stupid in America
ABC News 20/20: By JOHN STOSSEL: "'Stupid in America' is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.
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American students fizzle in international comparisons, placing 18th in reading, 22nd in science and 28th in math — behind countries like Poland, Australia and Korea. But why? Are American kids less intelligent? John Stossel looks at the ways the U.S. public education system cheats students out of a quality education in "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids"
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Would you keep going back to a restaurant that served you a bad meal? Or a barber that gave you a bad haircut? What if the government assigned you to "your" grocery store. The store wouldn't have to compete for your business, and it would soon sell spoiled milk or stock only high profit items. Real estate agencies would sell houses advertising "neighborhood with a good grocery store." That's insane, and yet that's what America does with public schools."
See Also:
ABC News 20/20 Video Report
2006 Thomas Paine Award to ABC’s John Stossel for his 20/20 report
Stupid in America has the potential for becoming the “moral and intellectual touchstone” for Americans who have been fighting for independence from the tyranny of government schools in this country for many years now.
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American students fizzle in international comparisons, placing 18th in reading, 22nd in science and 28th in math — behind countries like Poland, Australia and Korea. But why? Are American kids less intelligent? John Stossel looks at the ways the U.S. public education system cheats students out of a quality education in "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids"
***
Would you keep going back to a restaurant that served you a bad meal? Or a barber that gave you a bad haircut? What if the government assigned you to "your" grocery store. The store wouldn't have to compete for your business, and it would soon sell spoiled milk or stock only high profit items. Real estate agencies would sell houses advertising "neighborhood with a good grocery store." That's insane, and yet that's what America does with public schools."
See Also:
ABC News 20/20 Video Report
2006 Thomas Paine Award to ABC’s John Stossel for his 20/20 report
Stupid in America has the potential for becoming the “moral and intellectual touchstone” for Americans who have been fighting for independence from the tyranny of government schools in this country for many years now.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Keep Politics Kosher
House Republicans need a low-pork diet: "As long as the federal government is as big and powerful as it is, there will be corrupt lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. The best way to deal with influence peddling in Washington is to move more power out of the Beltway and back to states and communities. We can start by putting Congress on a lower-pork diet and fixing the broken system we have today."
Monday, January 16, 2006
Consumer Driven Health Care
Consumer Choice: Can It Cure The Nation's Health-Care Ills?
Directly or indirectly, workers pay for their own health insurance. Benefits are simply one part of compensation, and higher insurance costs mean that wage increases will be lower. Shifting to a high deductible plan does not shift costs to employees as a group, but it does make those costs more apparent.
The $150 billion-plus tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance also comes largely from workers, who pay higher taxes or receive fewer government services than they otherwise would. Low-income people pay less, high-income people pay more -- but high-income people also enjoy a larger tax benefit.
If we ask employers or the government to pay more for middle-class insurance, that simply means lower wages or higher taxes for employees. That also means, as John Goodman indicates, that more of the decisions about one's health care will be made by someone else. That could result in less choice among health plans and more restrictions on what a person may spend his own money on -- surely a less desirable outcome.
Directly or indirectly, workers pay for their own health insurance. Benefits are simply one part of compensation, and higher insurance costs mean that wage increases will be lower. Shifting to a high deductible plan does not shift costs to employees as a group, but it does make those costs more apparent.
The $150 billion-plus tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance also comes largely from workers, who pay higher taxes or receive fewer government services than they otherwise would. Low-income people pay less, high-income people pay more -- but high-income people also enjoy a larger tax benefit.
If we ask employers or the government to pay more for middle-class insurance, that simply means lower wages or higher taxes for employees. That also means, as John Goodman indicates, that more of the decisions about one's health care will be made by someone else. That could result in less choice among health plans and more restrictions on what a person may spend his own money on -- surely a less desirable outcome.
Saddam's Documents
What they tell us could save American lives today.
It is almost an article of religious faith among opponents of the Iraq War that Iraq became a terrorist destination only after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. But what if that's false, and documents from Saddam's own regime show that his government trained thousands of Islamic terrorists at camps inside Iraq before the war?
Sounds like news to us, and that's exactly what is reported this week by Stephen Hayes in The Weekly Standard magazine. Yet the rest of the press has ignored the story, and for that matter the Bush Administration has also been dumb. The explanation for the latter may be that Mr. Hayes also scores the Administration for failing to do more to translate and analyze the trove of documents it's collected from the Saddam era.
Mr. Hayes reports that, from 1999 through 2002, "elite Iraqi military units" trained roughly 8,000 terrorists at three different camps--in Samarra and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle, as well as at Salman Pak, where American forces in 2003 found the fuselage of an aircraft that might have been used for training. Many of the trainees were drawn from North African terror groups with close ties to al Qaeda, including Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Mr. Hayes writes that he had no fewer than 11 corroborating sources, and yesterday he told us he'd added several more since publication.
It is almost an article of religious faith among opponents of the Iraq War that Iraq became a terrorist destination only after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. But what if that's false, and documents from Saddam's own regime show that his government trained thousands of Islamic terrorists at camps inside Iraq before the war?
Sounds like news to us, and that's exactly what is reported this week by Stephen Hayes in The Weekly Standard magazine. Yet the rest of the press has ignored the story, and for that matter the Bush Administration has also been dumb. The explanation for the latter may be that Mr. Hayes also scores the Administration for failing to do more to translate and analyze the trove of documents it's collected from the Saddam era.
Mr. Hayes reports that, from 1999 through 2002, "elite Iraqi military units" trained roughly 8,000 terrorists at three different camps--in Samarra and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle, as well as at Salman Pak, where American forces in 2003 found the fuselage of an aircraft that might have been used for training. Many of the trainees were drawn from North African terror groups with close ties to al Qaeda, including Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Mr. Hayes writes that he had no fewer than 11 corroborating sources, and yesterday he told us he'd added several more since publication.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Eight Is Not Enough
"Today fewer than 10% of Americans live in households of five or more people and only 1.8% in families of seven or more. That means that if your family consists of a mother and father and five children, you live where I do, which is statistically on the lunatic fringe. "Omigod, five kids?" people gasp when I tell them. "Are you nuts?"
"The odd thing is that, off the [movie] screen, large families are seldom the ones with wildly misbehaving children. In real life, they tend to be the orderly people with the polite children, the families in which older siblings can be seen caring for their little brothers and sisters without griping about it. Indeed, onlookers are so taken in by the popular stereotype that they are often surprised to see a large family acting peacefully.
The recent return of big families to the screen is both telling and pleasing. It will be more pleasing still when those families are able to appear not solely amid zany pandemonium but also in orderly accommodation with the rest of society. Then reel life will be a whole lot closer to real life."
"The odd thing is that, off the [movie] screen, large families are seldom the ones with wildly misbehaving children. In real life, they tend to be the orderly people with the polite children, the families in which older siblings can be seen caring for their little brothers and sisters without griping about it. Indeed, onlookers are so taken in by the popular stereotype that they are often surprised to see a large family acting peacefully.
The recent return of big families to the screen is both telling and pleasing. It will be more pleasing still when those families are able to appear not solely amid zany pandemonium but also in orderly accommodation with the rest of society. Then reel life will be a whole lot closer to real life."
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
It's the Demography, Stupid
The real reason the West is in danger of extinction:
"That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug."
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"The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, 'Racism!' To fret about what proportion of the population is 'white' is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are 'white' or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%."
"That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug."
***
"The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, 'Racism!' To fret about what proportion of the population is 'white' is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are 'white' or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%."
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Teachers' Pets
"If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you'd probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.
Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings -- the first under the new rules -- helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students."
Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings -- the first under the new rules -- helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students."
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Death of a Sawmill
Environmentalists wreck small businesses--and do ecological damage while they're at it.
: "Thanks to the nation's housing boom, business has been good for the West's sawmills for the past three years. But Jim faced an insurmountable problem: He couldn't buy enough logs to keep his mill running. This despite the fact that 10 times as many trees as Jim's mill needed die annually on the nearby Kootenai National Forest. From his office window, Jim could see the dead and dying standing on hillsides just west of the mill. They might as well have been standing on the moon, given the senseless environmental litigation that has engulfed the West's federal forests."
"Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."
: "Thanks to the nation's housing boom, business has been good for the West's sawmills for the past three years. But Jim faced an insurmountable problem: He couldn't buy enough logs to keep his mill running. This despite the fact that 10 times as many trees as Jim's mill needed die annually on the nearby Kootenai National Forest. From his office window, Jim could see the dead and dying standing on hillsides just west of the mill. They might as well have been standing on the moon, given the senseless environmental litigation that has engulfed the West's federal forests."
"Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."
