Friday, May 29, 2009

Vouchers for Private Schools = Threat to America?

Reason.tv has a wonderful Youtube video describing Obama's unceremonious canning of the DC Voucher program that gives a very tiny minority of DC kids the opportunity to escape the miasma of DC public schooling in favor of the many available private school options.  As the lady on the tape asks, why?

Is it failing?  No--it's becoming evermore popular, especially as public school educational numbers circle the drain.  Is it expensive?  No--unless you call $18 million dollars expensive.  Even the Pell Grant additions I mentioned earlier are not so cost-effective as the DC Voucher system.  It seems the only reason one would have to vote against such a cheap-yet-effective measure is found here:  the voucher program takes students out of public education.  Note how I didn't say "students AND money," because that's another hidden benefit of vouchers--in the case of the DC program's video, the cost of one year of public school is $14,000 per student.  The voucher program only offers $7500 per year.  That's a net profit for the government (since funds for public education are taken from the general tax fund) of $13,500 per student per year, and they don't have to use it on the student involved, because he or she is not attending a public institution!  It's like having your cake and eating it too!

So in reality, is there any answer to the lovely lady's question in the video?  Why in the hell cancel the program?  Certainly not from the standpoint of Obama's "whether it works" criterion--if he at least followed his own preachy rhetoric, the program would be totally safe.  Rather, I would like to posit my own possible answer, in line with the hypocrisy of the above-mentioned writer, Jay Mathews.  The key to a docile population is not education, but propaganda; one cannot subjugate a population merely by force of arms, but it is all too easy for a people to subjugate themselves by the force of ideas.  

Independent schooling often leads to independent thinking, as the video above clearly describes; students whose families have control over what is taught invariably get more focused, better-equipped education for a cheaper price than what the government has to spread scattershot on the general-ed pigs at the grant trough.  What I can only describe as "education postponement" is the product of socialized state-approved curricula, where only "grade-appropriate" learning is allowed and all independent thought is curbed behind a sanitized syllabus, a dumbed-down learning curve (for catching up those who don't want to learn), and a constant deferral of basic and necessary learning until just a few grades higher--grade-school prep, middle-school prep, high school prep, college prep, grad school prep, post-doc prep, and finally, unfortunately, shockingly, "real life."  

Students now entering their very first grades will not be taught how to balance a checkbook until high school; they will not be taught how to apply for a job ever, nor how to properly avoid getting STDs; they will not be allowed to ignore subjects that do not interest them even in PhD-level programs, thanks to imbecilic "general education requirements."  They will be given a basic reading test upon entering college, disregarding the fact that successfully entering college while illiterate is both a monumental achievement for the student and a massive indictment for the institution being hoodwinked.  And most tellingly, they will receive little or no realistic job skills, either in on-the-job training, apprenticeships, or simple work.  The term "vocational prep" is universally maligned as a dumb jock idiot course of study, while the "progressive" and "enlightened" Liberal Arts education teaches people to hate whites, go green, cheer on the deaths-by-starvation of 4 billion people, and avoid anything too horribly pedestrian like "communication skills" or "work ethic."  Who needs a work ethic when you can be the most educated coffee-jerk on the planet?

Obama is most certainly correct on one assumption:  this problem is neither "liberal or conservative," mainly because liberals and conservatives agree that socialized education is to the benefit of all, regardless of the detriment to the individual students.  So long as students are forced into "No Child Left Behind" classes that make sure no child bothers to achieve, those same stupid students will agree with them and continue to vote them into office.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Where is all the Pell Grant Money Going?

One of ObamaCo's recent bailout plans, the education bailout, did not initially catch my eye.

As a whore to Academe myself, I have slaved under the yoke of assistantships when burger-flipping would have been a more lucrative (and less stressful) economic venture.  So one would assume that the vast amounts of money already being poured into general and higher education from both government and students, of which I have been a beneficiary, would be more well-known to me, at least.

But the new bailout plan here explains only the additions to the current federal education budget, which are nonetheless blindingly out of proportion.  Take Pell Grants:  "$15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4850 to $5350."  Does that math sound funny to you--almost $16 BILLION to increase the maximum grant by only $500?  I tried to reason that the author just mistyped "million" for "billion" (such an easy mistake these days!), but FrugalDad already found the House.gov Appropriations Committee press release, and that's Billion with a Big frickin' B.

I know I'm not the greatest math whiz, but let's break that number down a bit for comparison:

306,505,240 (est. population of the US)

6,782,087,301 (est. population of the world)

$15,600,000,000 (est. addition to Pell Grant system)

At the time of the 2007 Census report on education, almost 18 million people (technically, 17.956mil) were enrolled in college or higher education courses.  If EVERY student enrolled in the US received the $500 increase in award money, the result would look similar to this:

 $500
x   18mil
-------
9000mil (9 billion)

$9 billion dollars would give every student enrolled in college $500 to blow on books, beer, or (gods no!) tuition... so where is the other $6.6 billion going?

Remember that the Pell Grant, according to Ed.gov, supports only "low income undergraduates and certain (read: homeless) postbaccalaureate (sic) students," so technically i'm way too generous thinking that the $500 will be going to all of the enrolled US students.  According to a 2007 Enrollment Status census report (Table 6), only 12.656 million students were enrolled at 2 or 4 year colleges, with 626k being graduate students.  Technical schools and online education apparently aren't up to the government's standards!

So in reality, 12 million students would only need $6 billion to get $500 each--and that's not even how many students actually receive the Pell Grant!  According to the study in Table 6, only 6 million students are unemployed during their college career.  This alone is not an indicator of a low income (I only had to take an undergraduate job when I tried private school--mistake!), but considering that most families in poverty already can't send a son or daughter to college, the majority of students in need are not the ones receiving the largest amounts of financial aid--as this tragically well-researched analysis of income vs. grant award amount shows (.pdf).  The facts are clear--even something so small and simple as an increase to the Pell Grant award is riddled with confusion, corruption, and confiscation.  The benefits are nominal at best, being realistically counterproductive to any solution to the problem of subsidizing education at the national level.

If something so simple and straightforward as an increase to the Pell Grant award amount can be so unbalanced as to be BILLIONS of dollars over what's required for the bill's own stated goals, what ought we to do about the TRILLIONS that are going completely undocumented as back-room deals are struck between huge investment firms like AIG and bureaucrats handpicked from the leadership of other investment firms like Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve maintains an open-door policy on forgiving mountains of toxic debt, and Obama shamelessly laments not being able to spend other people's money quickly enough?

It's enough to make a grown man cry... or go libertarian.  It's time to take back the mantle that, for one brief and shining moment, liberals championed:  accountability.  The more libbo bloggers, libbo thinkers, and libbo individuals are calling the pigs on their taxpayer-funded gluttony, the better we will serve our fellow man!  Buy American--but don't buy American B.S.!

Friday, May 22, 2009

Killing Terrorists with Kindness? Jesus Takes on Torture (He Has Experience in the Area)...

A fellow libboblogger by the name of Chet at the Young Americans for Liberty blog (blog.yaliberty.org) commented on the most recent Laurence Vance article, "The Morality of Torture," that got my fingers typing. Specifically, Vance brings up several very interesting points on the difference between hypocritical situational ethics and moral absolutism even in the face of threats or acts of terrorism.

Yet the situation is not so cut-and-dried as either Chet or Vance want to admit: Chet mentions Jesus's commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," and Vance uses a James Payne article entitled "What Do the Terrorists Want" to explain that Osama bin Laden's premeditated attacks on US targets are partially the result of blowback from interventionist foreign policy. Both these points are laudable, but they are misused in their context.

For Jesus, let's not forget, was facing persecution on all sides; both the Pharisaical authority and the (puppet) king of Judea wanted him dead for being, in a manner of speaking, a political insurgent. Jeshua bin Nazaret was attempting to expose the greed and corruption of the Roman Empire who wanted to tax and regulate Judea into submission, and who was turning the Jewish government against the people to achieve its aims. But he was also trying to turn his fellow Jews away from the corruption of the imperialist temple, a position that threatened his movement and his very life so often that he was kicked out of nearly every town he visited--the people were both drawn to his message and threatened by the lethal consequences of going against the powerful Pharisees and Herod Antipas.

Instead of "turning the other cheek," which to my mind sounds more like "please hit the Empire State building this time!", I say look at Matthew 25:35-46, where Jesus points out that those who do good even to the least of mankind do good to Jesus himself; on the other hand, those who do evil to mankind, even to the least member, do evil unto Jesus himself. It is important to recognize that suicide bombers, terrorists, and other wicked folk (rapists, serial murderers, and megalomaniacal tyrants come to mind) think very little of humanity, often de-humanizing innocents as merely targets, collateral damage, or "infidels" not worthy of saving (or involved in some vast conspiracy against the crazy person/group).  Like Augustine said, sin is separation; one cannot underestimate the separation that wicked folk will perpetrate to avoid seeing the humanity in their targets--separating themselves and their victims from reality, logic, and humanity.

There is nothing holy in being a suicide bomber--true martyrs like Jesus were horrified at the thought of any more people dying in the name of politics or religion. They offered themselves up as blood sacrifices to appease the mobs, in the hope that through their willing sacrifice the mobs afterwards would calm down and refocus their efforts on reconciliation. Not so with today's suicide bombers, who more resemble IEDs than ancient martyrs. Their goal is to kill innocent people and cause pain, unimaginable pain to both their victims and society abroad. Their goal is separation--the destruction of the fabric of society as people stop being able to trust anything familiar or simple, like airplane passengers, or unattended backpacks (or tourists, for that matter).

To make a long point short, this is all not to say that I disagree with both Chet and Vance; I simply think their points are not thought through to their fullest extent. Of course we must defend ourselves against terrorists; even Jesus made his disciples carry swords with them when he suspected that Judas Iscariot was going to betray him to the Romans. But we're forgetting that WE'RE also terrorists if we believe that these folk are anything less than the wonderful humans Jesus died for. Terrorists don't need torture--they need to be isolated from all the fruits of western labor, so that everyone around them can see just how twisted and wicked their ideologies really are.  

Only when we are winning converts (not religious, but economic) with our "evil infidel empire" of good healthcare, quality jobs, education for the poor and ::gasp!:: women, not to mention the decidedly NOT holier-than-thou secular rule of law, then we will see the eventual destruction of terrorism from the inside out. Of course, both commentators are correct in pointing out that this will never happen unless the afflicted areas are allowed freedom from western military intervention. But we cannot simply abandon the Middle East to petty tyrants and madmen--we must encourage peaceful reconciliation through our own sacrifice of hard work, enterprise, and common decency to our fellow man. Whoever will take our goods is our friend; otherwise, Jesus tells us to shake the dust off our sandals and head to the next town.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

My Journey Didn't Begin with Atlas Shrugged...

For many of the libbo-bloggers that I am reading out there, their journey towards the great mansion of libbo-studies started back in the heady eons of high school or undergraduate collegiate banality--all Tennyson and Civics classes, populated by a mangy assortment of pimply, clique-y, and sometimes stinky juvenile versions of adults who are rightfully mortified by their adolescent selves.

But somewhere in that soup of hormones and Ramones, Ayn Rand's wild black eyes tore through the growing hearts of our fair libbo-bloggers and poured the liquid gold of Objectivism into their cold insides, searing the heroism of rational ethics and moral egoism upon their unwitting bones.  Needless to say, these acolytes of Rand (just general followers; not her actual acolytes, who all suffered under the Randian cult) cut their teeth on libertarian theory through her novels and perhaps even the Objectivist newsletter.  This sparked an interest in laissez-faire capitalism, which leapfrogged onto the Ludwig Von Mises organization promoting the Austrian School of Economics, which is devoted to promoting the most boring and difficult subject in the humanities (economics) as also the subject most necessary for saving both the academic world and the greater world at large.  By the time these libbo-veterans got to Daily Reckoning or LewRockwell.com, they were past masters in the art of libbo-blogging, knowing all the backstories, buzzwords, and (hopefully) masterworks that ensured a lifetime of sublime bravado on the blogging circuits.

I, however, have a well-worn copy of the Tao Te Ching on my nightstand, where it has sat, only to be replaced sporadically by Harry Potter and the New Testament, for the last eight years.  The Tao Te Ching has been a moral comfort for me since before I knew the definition of libertarianism, and it remains untouched only while I leaf through a copy of Rand's "Philosophy: Who Needs It" (a wonderful Christmas gift that I assiduously ignored during my own lamentable social-democrat hippie phase).  To say that the Tao Te Ching forms the basis of my moral, aesthetic, and political value system is an understatement--I have, to date, found more wisdom in the tiny 81-poem volume than in the combined wisdom of all the other religious, moral, and philosophical texts I have digested in my short time on this earth.

However, I must admit my failings:  I use the Gia-Fu Feng/Jane English translation, sometimes offset with the Ellen Chen translation or anything else I can get my hands on, because I simply can't read Chinese.  All props to those who can, but I'm short in that department, so I must rely on whatever approximations to the original that these translators can achieve.  But even in my current studies of Rand's Objectivism in her short essays, I find more parallels to Lao Tzu's work every day.  It boggles my mind that such a simple little text can keep opening up new ideas for me, wholly without the gobbledygook of religious moralizing and sin-baiting.

But what really makes me happy about the TTC is that it contains ALL the dimensions of inquiry you could want:  questions about God, the universe, and man's place in it; questions about men and women, sex, birth and death; and questions about man's role in the government and the government's role in the universe at large.  Yet these are not questions to be answered by rote repetition of dogma, to which most religious philosophers ultimately accede; instead these questions serve as keys to unlock those parts of the mind that are crippled by self-doubt, fear of success or failure, and a false understanding of the world.  The book provides no easy answers--just a lot of food for thought, which is surprisingly calming at the end of the day.

Greater minds than I have already written on the libertarian underpinnings of Lao Tzu's little book.  Murray Rothbard's article about Lao Tzu on the Mises.org website (http://www.mises.org/story/1967) made me very happy, knowing that I wasn't completely off my rocker for seeing the connections between libertarian philosophy and the TTC.  It also jibes very well with my irreligious views, because the TTC in no way resembles the many versions of Taoism in ancient China, populated (as religions often are) by pantheons of gods, ancestor and authority-worship, and a host of wacky folk traditions (astrology, alchemy, etc.).  The same can be said about the philosophy that Jeshua bin Nazaret spread and the cult of Iesu Christ that sprang up after his death, but I won't stoop to denigrating the practice of religion just yet (I'll save that for a later post... :)).

I also won't put any quotes from the book up on here, because it cheapens the effect of each amazing little poem to be showcased like a sideshow freak in some noob's blog.  But I do enjoy this site:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html#63

You can also check out the version I keep by my bed at Amazon.com:

http://tinyurl.com/qvopug


Just consider putting this book (or printing off an online copy) on your nightstand for a week, reading a few poems before bed, and seeing what kinds of things they can unlock inside your mind.  I've found more philosophical understanding in the TTC than reading any psalm, sura, or treatise, and it has even been a help to me when I was at my most naively and proselytizing collectivist.  Just as those who promote Atlas Shrugged will explain until the cows come home how that book helped open their minds to libertarian thought, I hope you receive the same consistent fulfillment from the Tao Te Ching as I continue to do.

Jon Stewart Comes out Against Nationalized Health Care! (Or something like that...)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228019&title=newt-gingrich-pt.-2

During his chat with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, Jon Stewart simultaneously shilled for the Obama Administration and managed to become just as befuddled by rhetoric and circular argumentation as his guest, entangling the both of them in an actual clusterf@#$ of fallacies.

Jon begins round two of the bout by being offended that the Obama administration would be called "socialist," even though he is perfectly willing to sling back at Newt that the bailouts began with AIG under Bush II's watch.  When Newt points out that both Geithner and Paulson were in fact architects of that bailout as well as the new administration's bailouts, Jon nervously backtracks and attempts to prove that ObamaCo's socialism is not their fault because it is merely the end result of previous socialist administrations.  Yeah--and I shouldn't be stopped for running a red light because the guy before me ran it as well.  I was merely following in his path!

At 3:33 in the attached video, Jon's shilling hits a fever-pitch of insane logic:  "Wouldn't that be great?" he asks, as Newt describes the potential atrocity of nationalized health care.  When Newt very deftly brings up the fact that small businesses would be taxed into bankruptcy to pay for their "free" health care, Jon retorts that the entire process would be a wash, with no chance of skyrocketing "300% taxes..." "... like California?" Newt responds.  "No, no," Jon says, "let's not get crazy." Yes, Jon... let's.  Because, as Newt points out, "if Albany, NY can't run their state government and Sacramento, CA can't run their state government, why would you believe a Washington-based national health care program would work?"  "Why would you believe," Jon parries, "that a national military program could work and a health care program couldn't?"

Needless to say, neither talking head has an answer for this question, because it relies on a false premise--namely, that the "war" in Iraq (invasion, occupation, perpetual empire, what have you) is "working."  If Ron or Rand Paul, or Mark Sanford, or any of half a dozen thinking individuals in politics were in that chair, the very first response would have been "The war isn't working!!" and Jon would literally have been crushed by his own logic.  Because it is an indisputable fact (very well-documented by the Daily Show itself in its own segment, entitled "Mess O'Potamia") that our actions in the Middle East have made "success" in that arena (defined as catching and prosecuting the 9/11 masterminds and global terrorist leaders) almost impossible.  

Once it is established that NO, the government can't replace the efficacy of the private sector, and YES, national health care will be susceptible to the same failures, waste, and corruption as the Iraq occupation, the Afghani/Paki imperium, and the War on Drugs pandemic, then there is no defending nationalized health care.  It is a fundamentally flawed idea, founded upon false premises and supported by comfortable lies about the power of our government to stop the world from turning.  Jon is perfectly willing elsewhere to grant that the government is wholly incapable of running an efficient military occupation; thus, he is caught in his own logic of having to explain how a health care program would be run any better.

Will Jon still be shilling for the administration when we have been adding yearly trillion-plus dollar deficits to our hyperinflated currency in order to prop up AIG, Chrysler, and the hosts of other unmanageable businesses and unthinking individuals who ask for government handouts over the next 8 years?  Obama's already passed out more money for bailouts in 100 days than Bush spent in 8 years of global cowboy empire-building.  How far are we willing to go to support this redoubled surge of decadent largesse?