The Great Education Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

It has taken a severe recession, combined with rising costs for gas and the weekly grocery list, for Americans to begin to seriously question where their tax dollars are going and why. As individuals, as families, and communities, we can no longer be indifferent or profligate.

The events in Wisconsin where the teacher’s union led to protests against collective bargaining has made many Americans begin to question all those TV ads about what a great job teachers are doing and the reassuring message that it’s all about the kids. No, it’s all about salaries, health benefits, and pensions that far exceed those in the private sector.

A recent Policy Analysis (No. 662) published by the Cato Institute on March 10th and written by Adam Schaeffer is titled “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools.”

The analysis is based on a review of district budgets and state records for the nation’s five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. “It reveals that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44% higher than officially reported.” In other words, taxpayers simply had no idea how big a part of their local and state budget the educational system actually represented. That is deceit on a massive scale.

“Real spending per pupil ranged from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools to a high of nearly $27,000 in the New York metro area. The gap between real and reported per-pupil spending ranges from a low of 23% in the Chicago area to a high of 90% in the Los Angeles metro region. (Emphasis added)

The educational system has been so thorough degraded with political correctness and idiotic “No Child Left Behind” national testing standards that it is little wonder many school systems have massive, unforgivable dropout rates. Black students are routinely put on a fast track to juvenile detention while others are passed through the system to avoid closer scrutiny from the state and federal Department of Education.

And Mr. and Mrs. America are picking up the tab. “Citizens drastically underestimate current per-student spending and are misled by official figures,” says Schaeffer. “Taxpayers cannot make informed decisions about public school funding unless they know how much districts currently spend.”

This is no small concern because state and local officials came up more than $158 billion short of projected tax revenue when they planned their 2010 budgets in the previous year. In response, more than 30 states raised taxes and 43 reduced services. It just got worse, “as the economy deteriorated and tax revenue plummeted more quickly than expected, 39 states discovered additional budget shortfalls of nearly $34 billion.”

Schaeffer noted that “K-12 schooling is the biggest item on state and local budgets. How big? Based on 2005-2006 totals from the national Center for Education Statistics updated to 2009 dollars, state and local governments are spending well over $500 billion on public K-12 education.”

Both the Bush and Obama administrations are responsible for “a startling increase in the federal involvement in and funding of K-12 education, but state and local governments still provide the majority of funds.” That’s YOU.

As shocking as the expenditure of all this money for schools generating students who do not compete academically with those in dozens of other nations is the fact that the statistics being published about the cost of this money pit is always three to four years out of date!

If you were to try to find out what the actual amounts involved were, you could look for timely information on total spending at individual school district budgets and even a skilled analyst like Schaeffer says “The budgets are complex and often confusing.”

“If a district is spending $30,000 per child, surely that is enough to ensure a high-quality education. If the school buildings are nonetheless in disrepair and the kids can’t read, then there is good reason to suspect that a massive share of that money is being wasted.”

Call it the Great Education Rip-Off.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Nutty Professors and Nutty New Taxes

By Alan Caruba

Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. All of which might explain why the nation is broke and why “intellectuals” like Blinder are responsible for some of the most stupid ideas ever imposed on citizens who lack their credentials.

In the January 31st edition of The Wall Street Journal, Blinder had a commentary titled, “The Carbon Tax Miracle Cure.” It is a masterpiece of ignorance.

Blinder claimed that “Everyone knows that CO2 emissions are the major cause of global climate change, that climate change poses a clear and present danger to our planet, and that the U.S. contributes a huge share of global emissions.”

One can only conclude that Blinder is among the last of Al Gore’s acolytes who has not heard that the only “climate change” occurring is the same that has been going on for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth.

Blinder’s miracle tax is “a carbon tax—really, a carbon dioxide tax—but one that starts at zero and ramps up gradually over time.” Will someone please tell Binder that the scheme to sell “carbon credits” for the right to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) has gone bust? Even the Chicago Exchange created to foster this “global warming” fraud has closed its doors.

The idiocy of Blinder’s “miracle tax” is that, if you can tax CO2, what is to prevent government from taxing oxygen too? Or nitrogen? Hell, just tax the entirety of the Earth’s atmosphere because, obviously, we are just using too much of it.

Blinder’s justification is that “the U.S. contributes a huge share of global emissions.” So, naturally, Americans should be taxed for exhaling six pounds of CO2 every day, along with every other activity from manufacturing to transportation, as well as heating and cooling our homes and all other structures. Every living creature and most all human activity emits CO2 along with the earth’s numerous active volcanoes.

It probably never occurred to Blinder that all other nations also “contribute” global emissions.

For the record the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 76.55% nitrogen, 20.54% oxygen, and 0.91% argon. Of the remaining 2% of the atmosphere, water vapor constitutes 1.95%, while carbon dioxide is 0.0389%. Let me repeat that, 0.0389%.

Despite what the liars at the Environmental Protection Agency are loudly shouting these days, carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant.” In earlier eras there was far more CO2 in the atmosphere than now, providing the dinosaurs vast amounts of vegetation on which to dine and something to eat for those dinosaurs with a taste for other dinosaurs.

The only “global warming” in recent times has been the one degree of warming that began to occur at the merciful end of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. The Earth has, since 1998, entered a new cycle of completely natural cooling due to a solar cycle called the Maunder Minimum when the Sun’s radiation is reduced.

Acknowledging that “this is a terrible time to hit (the nation) with some big new tax”, Blinder nonetheless advocates a carbon tax that “should be set at zero for 2011 and 2012. After that, it would ramp up gradually.”

“The tax might start at something like $8 per ton of CO2 in 2013 (that’s roughly eight cents per gallon of gasoline), reach $25 a ton by 2015 (still just 26 cents per gallon), $40 a ton by 2020, and keep on rising. I’d like to see it top out at more than $300 a ton in, say 2040.”

This would lead, says Blinder, to “lucrative opportunities from carbon-saving devices and technologies.” He envisions “80% of our electricity being generated by clean energy sources in 2035.”

By clean energy Blinder means wind and solar energy which, together, barely produce one percent of the electricity America uses daily. It is unreliable and would not exist were it not for government subsidies and mandates requiring its use.

Meanwhile, the vast bulk of our electricity comes from coal, just over 50%, and a combination of natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectricity (dams). Even if we blanketed several States with solar mirrors and wind turbines, we could never match the cost effectiveness and efficiency of fossil fuels.

Blinder notes that “No one likes to pay higher taxes” and dismisses value-added taxes (a favorite form of extortion in Europe), but in his view “A CO2 tax trumps them all”, concluding that a carbon tax would reduce oil imports.”

Apparently, it has not occurred to Blinder that extracting some of America’s vast oil reserves, billions of barrels worth, might also reduce oil imports, but what is one to expect from a professor of economics who thinks taxing a minor component of the atmosphere would solve our present economic problems?

Only morons want to turn America’s corn into “biofuels.” Only charlatans want to “reduce” greenhouse gas emissions. And only those locked in academic ivory towers keep insisting that man-made “climate change” is “a clear and present danger.”

You end recessions by reducing taxes, not inventing new ones. You end recessions by encouraging access to the nation’s reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil because that generates real jobs, not “green” ones. And you end recessions by not listening to the likes of Alan S. Blinder.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Chris Christie's Jersey Attitude

By Alan Caruba

It’s the curse of having sat through too many local town council meetings and too many speeches by politicians; it’s taking notes as they speak because you want to keep what’s said fresh in mind. Regular folks don’t do this, but anyone who has spent any time as a reporter will tell you it is a hard habit to break.

So, on Tuesday, January 11, I found myself taking notes as New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, gave his first constitutionally required State of the State speech. He will be back in February with a speech about his budget. It was delivered to the members of the New Jersey Senate and Assembly, mostly Democrats; all of whom had learned in the previous year that the Governor was a jolly, fat buzz-saw who just loves a good fight.

Gov. Christie was preceded by two of the worst Governors in current times, Jim McGreevey who discovered he was gay after he put his boyfriend on the payroll and the whispers in the statehouse became a raging storm. He was followed by Jon Corzine, a limousine liberal. Together they increased taxes and fees 115 times in eight years! In a single term in office, Corzine raised taxes $9 billion!

I am New Jersey born and bred. I have traveled to nearly every other State in the Union with the exception of Alaska, Maine and Vermont. Do you really think I would ever leave a state that was the fictional home of Tony Soprano and the actual birthplace of Frank Sinatra? You gotta be kidding me! Forgetaboutit!

Two days after Gov. Christie took office, the state treasurer informed him that Corzine had left him and everyone else in New Jersey with a $2.2 billion deficit! Did he immediately raise taxes to cover it? No. Instead, he and the treasurer scoured the budget and found $2.2 billion in projected spending. What he did next stunned a state legislature almost as profligate as California’s. He impounded the $2.2 billion by executive order.

Goodbye old world order in New Jersey. Hello Chris Christie new world order in the Garden State. As Gov. Christie put it, to create real change, “you’ve got to show a little attitude.” If there is one thing New Jerseyans have and love, it is attitude!

So it should come as no surprise that, when Gov. Christie turned 18 and was eligible to vote, he voted for Ronald Reagan. In a talk in November at a Goldwater Institute event, he recalled how “then-Governor Reagan spoke to me. He talked about smaller, less intrusive government that was going to open up our country to exploit the entrepreneurial spirit that has always built and made it a unique place.”

“He talked about less spending, so that less money would come to Washington and more money would stay with the people who knew how to spend it best. He talked about a government that didn’t regulate every little bit and piece of your life.”

“And he talked about lowering taxes so that people could feel the economic freedom that comes from not having a government in your pocket every 15 minutes.”

Christie’s State of the State speech reflected the values that Ronald Reagan espoused and, in this centennial year of his birth, I think he would have loved every word of it. “I believe in a culture of truth,” said Gov. Christie. The voters liked what they heard and happily replaced Corzine with a man who had gained recognition by putting corrupt New Jersey politicians in jail.

On Tuesday Gov. Christie told the assembled legislators, “We cannot spend money we don’t have.” Do I dare hope that Chris Christie will someday run for President?

The latter part of his State of the State speech was a dissection of how retrograde the state teacher’s union is and why the state’s pension and benefits system had to be changed because it was hideously under-funded by billions and because he wanted to ensure that policemen, firemen, and other civil service employees would actually have a pension when they retired.

Last year he spoke to an initially hostile meeting of firefighters. By the time he got through they all crowded around him, eager to shake his hand and get their picture taken with him. Christie is no ordinary politician. “This isn’t about politics,” he said, “This is about their lives.”

He is passionate about reforming the school system in New Jersey and would, one suspects, take delight in crushing a teacher’s union that exists for nothing other than political power. Last year, when he urged New Jersey voters to demand 4% to 5% pay cuts, 59% of the school budgets were defeated.

Ronald Reagan stood six foot, two inches tall. He had literally been a movie star! Chris Christie is short. He is fat. And he is completely comfortable with that. He is a good public speaker and when he speaks, you know he really means what he says.

He’s not some cookie-cutter version of Ronald Reagan, his inspiration. He is Gov. Chris Christie and New Jersey is loving every minute of it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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The Incredibly Shrinking Obama

By Alan Caruba

If ever a president looked impotent and helpless, it was during the press conference hastily called to secure a former president’s aid to pass the extension of the Bush era tax rates.

It was the image of a former “community organizer” unable to organize even the support of his own political party.

We are witnessing the shrinking presidency of Barack Obama.

When Obama excused himself to attend a family Christmas party, leaving the podium to Bill Clinton, he demonstrated the futility of his efforts to divide Americans along class lines of rich and poor.

Obama has never understood that the American dream is that anyone can get rich thanks to hard work and the opportunities provided by capitalism. Over the past two years it has become obvious to everyone he has been engaged in an effort to destroy the nation through an obscene increase in its debt and the deprivation of its own sources of energy.

The bill to extend the tax rates, in place now for a decade, has been encumbered by the usual “earmarks” that have turned it into a Christmas tree of pet projects by the same Congress whose two previous stimulus bills failed to increase employment and which continues to spend the nation into bankruptcy.

The best thing now is to let the bill die and to wait until a new Republican-controlled House of Representatives can extend the tax rates and rid the present bill off even more deficit spending. Congress has not demonstrated the ability to do the best thing or even the most sensible thing.

The most articulate advocate of rejecting this “compromise” bill has been Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee dedicated to electing true conservatives to the U.S. Senate.

In a statement by Sen. DeMint, he reflected the expectations and wishes of all taxpayers having been fighting for years to extend the tax rates. “It’s the people’s money and we should not raise taxes on hardworking American families.”

The compromise that the Republican leadership in Congress agreed to was dismissed by President Obama even as he grudgingly tried to get his own party to support it. It has not been the GOP that has held Americans “hostage” as they waited for action on the tax rates, but the White House and the Democrat Party.

Sen. DeMint noted that “it includes approximately $200 billion in new deficit spending and stimulus gimmicks. That’s a lot of money that will have to be borrowed from China and repaid by our children and grandchildren.”

“If we are going to increase spending on new programs, we must reduce other spending to pay for it.”

Perhaps the worst aspect of the bill is that it extends rates for only two years. “We don’t have a temporary economy so we shouldn’t have temporary tax rates.” As this is written, trillions are sitting idle in American corporations and businesses because they are unable to plan ahead to make new investments and hire new employees. A two year extension is futile because businesses must make long-range plans and investments.

Another noxious aspect of the bill is its failure to extend all of the tax rates. “It actually increases the death tax from the current rate of zero percent all the way up to 36 percent. One economic study shows that this tax increase alone will kill over 800,000 jobs over the next ten years.”

It will also destroy the ability of countless small farmers to pass on their legacy of hard work to their families who will, in many cases, have to sell their farms whose wealth is measured in the land they own, not the money they possess.

“I appreciate the efforts made by my party’s leaders to negotiate this deal, but I believe Americans deserve much better.”

The November elections that demonstrated the greatest transfer of power in the House and to some degree the Senate since the late 1940s are ample proof that Americans want and expect better results.

Starting on January 2, 2011 a new Congress could attend to the proper and sensible extension of the Bush era tax rates. Those who know how the Congress functions, however, warn that it would take three to six months to achieve this. The further stagnation of the economy would continue during that time.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Lame Ducks Threaten Economic Recovery

By Alan Caruba

As if the forcing of Obamacare on a nation vastly opposed to it was not enough, the lame duck session of Congress between now and December 31st has the potential to harm economic recovery still more.

Congress includes sixty Democrat Representatives in the House who will not be returning and six in the Senate who were also voted out of office or who have announced their retirement. If the world made any sense, none would be permitted to vote on anything at this point.

If, indeed, Congress functioned in a reasoned and rational fashion, the nation would not be forced to wait until the last month of the year for it to resolve a range of fiscal and other issues despite the fact that Fiscal 2011 has begun. It has not passed a budget and it will need to pass a continuing resolution to fund the federal government until it does.

Americans and the business community in particular are still waiting to see if Congress will extend the Bush tax rates. They have been in effect for nine years. Everyone understands maintaining the existing rates is essential to avoid worsening an ailing economy.

For the President and Democrats in Congress, the issue has to do with “billionaires” and “millionaires” when the real issue is whether small to medium-sized businesses will be able to hire and expand. The issue is whether millions of Americans who are still employed will see their take-home pay reduced in January by additional taxes. It’s worth noting that those high earners already pay some 70% of the income taxes collected every year.

Another problem is Sen. Harry Reid’s intention to bring the “Dream Act”, yet another amnesty effort, to a vote. Here again, Americans overwhelmingly oppose any easing of laws regarding illegal aliens.

Democrats are also discussing a ban on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, a policy that permits gays to serve in the military, but to keep their silence regarding their sexual orientation. In an all-volunteer military corps morale should trump this issue, but thanks to political correctness, it does not.

Medicare, who most agree was in need of repair, but not the bureaucratic monster of Obamacare, is required to reduce reimbursement rates for physicians every year and, to avoid that, Congress has always passed legislation to avoid the cut, called “the doctor’s fix.” If Congress does nothing in the lame duck session, reimbursement rates would plunge 23 percent. Those on Medicare would have to dig into personal funds as doctors would understandably raise their fees to make up for the loss.

The extension of unemployment insurance is going to prove a very difficult issue, which is why the Democrat-controlled Congress put it off until after the elections. Benefits averaging $310 per week are due to expire on November 30 and this affects some two million Americans. It is a disincentive to seeking employment.

Republicans and a contingent of Democrats are demanding that the cost of extending unemployment compensation be financed through budget cuts, but how does Congress achieve any savings when Obamacare creates a federal bureaucracy of more than 150,000 new employees? It will even provide insurance to non-U.S. residents whether they are here illegally or not. If that’s not bad enough, it gives the government real-time access to your bank account and the authority to make electronic fund transfers from it! That's not government, that's gangsterism.

Outside of Congress, another threat exists in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency’s illegal and obscene effort to regulate “greenhouse gas” emissions. The agency plans to initiate this power grab by January 2nd and it must be stopped.

After an orgy of borrowing for stimulus legislation that has failed to generate new jobs, the further devaluation of the U.S. dollar looms as the Federal Reserve undertakes a second “quantitative easing.” The first did not increase bank loans to businesses and others. The Russians and Chinese have just announced they will conduct bilateral trade using their own currencies, not the U.S. dollar that until now has been the global standard.

Further threatening an economic apocalypse is the question of whether more European nations will join the ranks of failed economies from Greece to Ireland to Spain and Portugal. England and France are imposing much needed budget cuts while Germany, the strongest European economy, appears to be understandably reluctant to bail out the Euro.

The arrogance and incompetence of the Democrat Congress and Administration defy the imagination and the clear intention of a growing legend of Americans is to put an end to their liberal legislative abominations.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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