School Choice Could Help States Balance Budgets

"Nearly all of America's 50 states are facing budget deficits," writes education professor William Jeynes, who maintains that education spending, which consumes nearly 50% of state budgets, is the biggest driver of those deficits. Since private schools operate at roughly 60% of public schools' per student costs, "states would save money by implementing programs that pay for children to attend these schools instead of more expensive public ones."

National School Choice Week Jan 23-27

For decades conservatives have advocated giving all families the freedom to choose from among all available schooling options—public, private, parochial and home—without having to pay twice for the education service for their children (i.e., public school taxes plus private school tuition). Today the desire for school choice spans all socio-economic, political, and ethnic groups, as this You Tube video celebrating last year's events and activities shows.

Keystone Pipeline: Losing Friends, Gaining Enemies

In a scathing video commentary at Canada Sun News on the rejection of the Keystone Pipeline, Ezra Lavant lambasts environmentalists and the American president for choosing America's enemies over her northern friends. It's a matter of pride for Canadians. View the full 12 minute video.

Levin: A Post-Constitutional America

Radio personality Mark Levin tells Sean Hannity, "we are living in a post-constitutional America."

Much of what goes on in the federal government has no constitutional basis whatsoever. This was part of a scheme, real scheme hatched by a number of leftists about a century ago. And you know them. Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson didn't make any bones about his contempt for the declaration and individualism and that's what this is, an attack on the individual. He made no bones about his contempt for the Constitution. Woodrow Wilson said in a speech before he became president that the government is like a body, you can't have one organ working against the other. In other words, you can't have separation of powers. So he spent his presidency, as did subsequent Democrats, trying to evade the Constitution or rewrite it.

FDR, of course, did the same thing. FDR attacked the Constitution. And Cass Sunstein, who now works for Obama, he made the point that we now live under FDR's Constitution. You know what that means? A powerful centralized government, exactly what the framers of the Constitution rejected.

"'Ameritopia' is here," Levin warns. "The question is how far are we going to go with this?" He ends the book with a question: "So my fellow countrymen, what do you choose, Ameritopia or America?"

The book is Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.

SOPA Protest Scores

Yesterday's protest against SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy legislation "yielded some positive results," reports the Consumerist. Google brought in 4.5 million signatures on an anti-SOPA petition, Fight for the Future another 1.5 million signatures, and several members of Congress announced they were withdrawing support.

Obamacare: How to Repeal and Replace!

Health care expert Sally Pipes has published a practical, nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step plan that can make the slogan Replace and Repeal! a reality. She penned a series of three op-eds as an overview:


Where to Start in Repealing Obamacare

End Obamacare's Taxes Before They End Lifesaving Medical Advances and

How Real Reform is Different from Obamacare.

Groupthink Diminishes Learning, Creativity and Productivity

"Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink," writes Susan Cain in the NYTimes. But research, she continues, strongly suggests that Groupthink robs us of our individual creativity, productivity and ability to achieve. It also tends to make us more hostile and less healthy.

The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions... Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.

Cain points to research showing that solitude and privacy are essential to creativity, productivity, learning, personal health and healthy professional relationships.

... it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.

Solitude can even help us learn. According to research on expert performance by the psychologist Anders Ericsson, the best way to master a field is to work on the task that’s most demanding for you personally. And often the best way to do this is alone. Only then, Mr. Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class — you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.”

Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity.... decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases.

Cain's article prompted Rob Long at ricochet.com to post "Brainstorming is For Losers," in which he concludes,

Underpinning all of this collectivist, brainstorming groupwork, is, I think, something nasty and totalitarian. All thoughts must be produced—and vetted—by the hive. Squirreling away in silence and solitude is condemned for being "anti-social" or, worse, ego-driven. When you're alone you have interesting and (maybe) revolutionary thoughts. When you're in a group, you naturally tend to fit your thinking into the prevailing pattern. No wonder our public schools love this kind of group thinking so much.

Iron Lady: Utter Anti-Female Travesty

"'The Iron Lady' is an utter travesty, both in content and in form," writes Examiner movie critic Kelly Jane Torrance. "The woman born Margaret Roberts won a place at Oxford on scholarship, studied science, and became a chemist. She became friends with many of the leading free-market thinkers of her time. The woman on screen gets all her ideas from her father...This film was written by, directed by, and stars women. But it's the most anti-female film I've seen in quite some time."

Gallup: Conservatives Largest Group in US

This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives, Gallup reported today. The breakdown: 40% conservative, 35% moderate, and 21% liberal.

Video: Satirical Look at U.S. Debt Limit

U.S. debt in context (http://youtu.be/Li0no7O9zmE produced by debtlimitusa.org):

Iron Lady: the Ultimate Women's Libber?

That's the argument leading historian Amanda Foreman makes about Lady Margaret Thatcher, saying her achievements should be celebrated rather than sniped at by feminists. Read the full article.

Will: Liberals' Rendezvous with Regret

Liberals' "largest achievement is today's redistributionist government," writes George Will. "But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself. Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage."

Rather than producing "social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth," the Left's redistributive policies increase social strife, increase wealth disparity among citizens, and increase governments at the expense of the people--utterly destroying any hope of achieving its stated mission.

Beware Soft Authoritarianism

"Today's progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians," write Fred Siegel and Joe Kotkin in the City Journal. "Rather they resemble the medieval clerical class ... as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah." The see citizens as a "nation of dodos" "too dumb to thrive" without government direction. 

Soft authoritarian progressivism is at odds with democratic, pluralistic traditions and presents a growing potential for a constitutional crisis "pitting a relentless executive power against a disgruntled, alienated" nation of the "'dodos' who make up the majority of Americans ..."

Skirting the Constitution

The recess appointments of Richard Cordray and 3 others, in the words of conservatives, were "the first of their kind by any president," "are symptoms of a larger constitutional problem," and project a soft "authoritarianism ... reminiscent of the 1930s, when many on both the right and left looked favorably at either Stalin's Soviet experiment or its fascist and National Socialism rivals."

Grasping at Employment Straws

Despite MSM cheer leading, "last Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation report," writes Louis Woodhill at RealClearMarkets, "was actually terrible."

BLS uses Payroll Employment numbers to conclude there was an increase of 200,000 jobs from Nov to Dec 2011. But, notes the author, BLS's Household Survey—"which is a more accurate picture of labor market conditions"— shows:

• the civilian labor force fell by 50,000 in December, following a 120,000 decline in November
• for all of 2011, the labor force rose only by 274,000
• during the first 3 years of Obama's presidency, the labor force fell by 0.7 million overall.

"December marked the 30th month of Obama's economic recovery. During this time, the reported unemployment rate fell from 9.5 percent to 8.5 percent. However, this 'improvement' was entirely an artifact of workers giving up and dropping out of the labor force. In fact, if labor force participation had remained constant at the 67.5 percent level that obtained at the end of the recession (June 2009), December's unemployment rate would have been reported at 10.9 percent."

Read the entire article here.

U.S. Debt Now Equal to Economy (USAToday)

"The soaring national debt has reached a symbolic tipping point," reports USA Today. "It's now as big as the entire U.S. economy."

"The amount of money the federal government owes to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other programs, now tops $15.23 trillion."

"The total national debt topped the size of the economy for three years during and after World War II. It dropped to 32.5% of the economy by 1981, then began a steady climb under President Reagan, doubling over the next 12 years. The combination of recession and stimulus spending caused it to soar again under Obama."

Hayward: The Dirty Little Secret of "Income Inequality"

One of the most basic problems with the whole 'income inequality' topic, writes John Hayward at Human Events, "is that people don't really understand what 'income' means any more. Do you really know what your precise weekly income is?" If you say either the 'net payable amount' or 'gross pay total' on your paycheck stub, you'd be wrong.

Citing numbers crunched by CATO Institute, Hayward notes that "much of the 'income inequality' battered about in the media is actually due to a rising share of income being delivered in the form of increasingly expensive health care benefits." As CATO's research reveals, the real problem isn't 'income inequality'—"the rich are getting richer slower than the rest of us are getting richer."

The problem is the government's stealth 'income diversion' from our paychecks:

[T]he whole idea behind paycheck withholding [is] grab those taxes before people even realize the money is gone. Very few of us have a clear idea of just how much of our money is “going,” or where it goes.

Age-Old Gender Stereotypes Right After All

A new study finds that men and women are psychologically very different after all, and those age-old gender stereotypes are more accurate than some today would like to admit.

Psychologists at Manchester University and in Italy analysed the results of personality tests which were given to 10,000 people and measured 15 traits.

In keeping with age-old stereotypes, women scored more highly on sensitivity, warmth (attentive to others) and feelings of apprehension, while men fared better on emotional stability, dominance (forceful and aggressive) and rule consciousness, or sense of duty.

The researchers concluded that there were 'extremely large' personality differences between the sexes which could have implications in the workplace.

The Ten Most Influential Conservative Women

In case you missed it, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute teamed up with Human Event in December to bring you a series of profiles, authored by some of our favorite conservative men, highlighting the lives and achievement of ten exceptional conservative women. Take a few minutes to check them out.

1. Sarah Palin: Grit, Tenacity & Fortitude, written by Steve Bannon

2. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: God-Given Rights, Small Government and a Strong National Defense, written by Glenn Beck

3. Phyllis Schlafly: The Clearest Political and Constitutional Thinker of Our Time, written by Rep. Steve King

4. Ann Coulter: Unapologetic, Unsinkable, Unwavering, written by Rob Long

5. Michelle Malkin: The Sledgehammer to the Left Who Holds the GOP Accountable, written by Jason Mattera

6. Bay Buchanan: Conviction and Courage, written by Pat Buchanan

7. Marji Ross: A Woman of Enthusiastic, Energetic and Personable Leadership, written by Newt Gingrich

8. Cleta Mitchell: A Passionate and Articulate Advocate for Conservative Principles, written by Al Cardenas

9. Michelle Easton: A Woman Who Changed the Face of the Conservative Movement, written by Ron Robinson

10. Star Parker: A True Conservative to Her Core, written by Patrick X. Coyle

Finally, a woman who has inspired and influenced conservatives in America and around the world: Lady Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady, written by Daniel Hannan.

Pass the Kool-Aid: OWS Protest Welcomed Only in Academe

The Occupy Wall Street protest movement has worn out its welcome even in the most liberal US cities, but there's one place idiotic Leftist ideas always find a home—the education system.

Next semester Columbia University will offer an OWS course "in which grad students and upperclassmen can earn a full course credit by getting involved in the movement's projects outside the classroom."

And in the Albemarle County, Virginia, school district, a group of third graders reportedly wrote the following lyrics—on their own—to an Occupy song:

Some people have it all
But they still don’t think they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes — they’re the 1 percent

I used to be one of the 1 percent
I worked all the time
Never saw my family
Couldn’t make life rhyme
Then the bubble burst
It really, really hurt
I lost my money
Lost my pride
Lost my home
Now I’m part of the 99

Some people have it all
But they still don’t think they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes — they’re the 1 percent

I used to be sad, now I’m satisfied
’Cause I really have enough
Though I lost my yacht and plane
Didn’t need that extra stuff
Could have been much worse
You don’t need to be first
’Cause I’ve got my friends
Here by my side
Don’t need it all
I’m so happy to be part of the 99

Public school officials insist the eight-year-olds wrote the lyrics without any direction or assistance from school officials or adults. 

Of course they did. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.

Should Social Security Be Means-Tested?

It's curious that so many, including the Heritage Foundation, want to fix the federal debt by means-testing Social Security, especially since it would be the surest way to kill the program by turning it into a pure federal welfare program. After all, why should voters continue to support FICA deductions (i.e., Federal Insurance Contributions Act) from their paychecks when only the poor would ever receive anything from it?

In "Is Means-Testing Just," Paul A. Rahe develops a strong argument that means-testing is the wrong solution to the Social Security problem, and he cautions conservative policy-wonks not to "march over the cliff" without thinking this through. It's an important read, particularly for young conservatives.

"Here's Why I Love 'Greed' and So Should You"

The Wall Street Occupiers have it completely wrong. Human greed, writes Walter Williams, "gets the most wonderful things done."

When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I'm talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves.
Before the rise of capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man.
Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving one's fellow man. Capitalists seek to discover what people want, and then produce it as efficiently as possible [emphasis added].

Ironically, free-market capitalism's enemies are the political tyrants, intellectual elites, and useful idiots who prefer pre-capitalism's "despicable behavior" path to wealth. What they want, concludes Williams, "is congressional permission to share in the booty from looting their fellow man."

Read the full article.

Hayward: Voter ID and the Diluted Franchise

Why does a cybernetic info-society tolerate ridiculous amounts of voter fraud?, asks John Hayward at Human Events, after the Justice Department shot down South Carolina's voter ID law last month. "The Left deserves a measure of grudging admiration for convincing Information Age America to hold its elections in 1965, even as they conduct their daily affairs with 21st-century speed and accuracy ... especially since those elections are, increasingly, the only real control we have over vast swathes of our nationalized, hyper-regulated lives."

Shlaes: New Fiscal Buzzwords Obscure Old Problems

"As it happens, more young Americans know what Google Inc's Android operating system is than know some basic facts about our politics," writes Shlaes. Now, though, the "budget-ese we're not learning is allowing our legislators to get away with some deeply misleading claims, and it's threatening to make our fiscal problems much worse."

Second example: "making the rich pay their fair share." So what is a fair share? In the rest of the English language, “fair” means proportionality. “Share” implies equality by percentage. A bigger man lifts a bigger load, in proportion to his size. But our tax system isn’t proportional. It’s progressive, with a graduated scale, so that the wealthier man pays more than his share. The bottom half of all earners pay less than 5 percent of the income tax. 

That so many Americans don't know the difference between progressivity and proportionality is certainly convenient to revenue-hungry Washington.