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LaPlante: Union dinosaurs vs. online learning

Friday, October 28, 2011

Digital technology has transformed the way we read, bank, shop, keep in touch with one another, and do business. Can it shake up the nation’s sluggish public schools? Perhaps – but only if we don’t expect tomorrow’s schools to be managed like yesterday’s.

Consider that, according to the Michigan Department of Education, one of every of four students who enters the ninth grade does not graduate on time – if at all.

Consider also that on the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation Report Card, only one-third of Michigan’s fourth-grade students can read at grade level – a number that gets worse as students go through the system.

Even if you discount the importance of standardized tests, it’s clear that there are problems. Michigan schools serve some students, but not all of them – including those who have found help at the W-A-Y Program, an online school that reaches at-risk kids.

But dinosaurs like the Michigan Education Association feel threatened by online learning. In an op-ed published in the Detroit News, MEA president Steven Cook impugns online learning.

Some of his claims are at best questionable – at worst, wrong. For example, he claims that “some school districts, home-schooling advocates and private corporations across the country. . . are advocating for full-time online learning as a substitute for traditional neighborhood schools.”

But religious and secular homeschoolers are anything but advocates for turning public schools into online schools. They want to be left in peace, and many of them see district and state online offerings as a Trojan Horse offered by the public school establishment that lures in their children and destroys what is unique about homeschooling.

Cook’s warning that online students don’t get “vital social skills” ignores the fact that of the 4 million students in online programs nationwide, only 5 percent spend all their days in front of a computer screen. The other 95 percent spend a significant amount of time in a classroom.

They may, for example, use one or two online classes as a supplement to traditional classes. They may also have a school that includes using the same teachers to lead both computer-based classes and traditional ones. And what of those 5 percent who take all their classes online – at home? They’re using a number of tools to communicate electronically, which is what every kid does these days, and they’re taking part in field trips, dances, and other face-to-face events. Online students are hardly zombies living in the basement.

Cook asserts that “Advocates for full-time virtual learning are more interested in increasing their profits than investing in our children.”

In case he hasn’t noticed, students are already failing—in government-run schools where profit is not a concern. Ironically, public schooling is already a huge business, with building contractors, textbook publishers, psychologists, therapists, test developers, administrators, and so forth. Teachers – as well as the employees of the MEA – do not work for free. So the charge that seeking financial gain is somehow new in education doesn’t wash. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Are online schools effective? Some are, some aren’t.

Cook says they aren’t, but the most thorough study of online learning – conducted for the U.S. Department of Education – concludes that “[o]n average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

Cook says that research by the Great Lakes Center supports his views. Since I work for groups often accused of being in the pocket of the Koch Brothers, I’ll point out that the Great Lakes Center is an entity of the NEA and its state affiliates, including the MEA. Do you think that teacher unions have any self-interest? Yep. But I think an argument rises and falls on its merits. Still, it’s ironic that Cook sees self-interest in others while pretending that he has none.

Online learning is not a cure-all for everything that ails public schools. But online learning opportunities make all the difference for some kids. Michigan should embrace, not fear, the possibilities.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20111028/MIVIEW/110280399/LaPlante–Union-dinosaurs-vs.-online-learning#ixzz1c5J4GQDv

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Pawlenty endorses Obamneycare

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

[The following was the lead article on "The Michigan View," an opinion portal of the Detroit News.]

The Republican Party battle between the establishment and the tea party took another twist today, with a would-be populist throwing his weight behind the candidate of the establishment, Mitt Romney.

Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, has endorsed Mitt Romney as the Republican’s 2012 standard-bearer.

You might remember Pawlenty giving Romney a smack-down on his defense of health care reform in Massachusetts. He dubbed it Obamneycare. It was correct on its merits, and good politics too.When Romney and Pawlenty were brought together to debate, however, Pawlenty backed down – and eventually, out of the race.

Now, you might say that Tim Pawlenty was against RomneyCare before he was for it.

I live in Minnesota. I want to like Gov. Pawlenty. I really do. Though I’ve never met him, I get the impression (having talked with various people who know him) that he’s personally likable. And politically, he did as good a job for Minnesota conservatives as might have been expected during his eight years in office.

I remember a time when he said Republicans “need to be the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” Nothing against country clubs – but they’re not where the votes are.

These days, the Sam’s Club Republicans are primarily upset about Obamacare. Pawlenty’s endorsement of Romney, especially in light of other non-Obama alternatives still in the game, suggests that he’s concluded, “oh, never mind. Let’s do what we have always done.” That is, with Romney at the helm, Republicans will return to the days of being not the party of new policy ideas, but the party that can more competently manage the bloated, corrupt welfare state.

What happened? When I interviewed Minnesotans for my Michigan View exclusive portrait of the former governor, one criticism was especially sharp: “He bends with the wind.”

Tim Pawlenty has laid down his marker. The future of the GOP, he has concluded, lies with the country club after all. Of course, activists within the tea party have other ideas.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110913/MIVIEW/109130366/LaPlante–Pawlenty-endorses-Obamneycare#ixzz1XqP5C8Pp

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Ten Years After 9-11, Dismantle “Homeland Security”

Monday, September 12, 2011

When government is involved, it may be worthwhile to rework a law of physics: For every action there is, in response, an over-reaction. Such was the case in the actions the federal government took after 9-11.

Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.) lays the wood on the TSA, saying it has “failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.” He added that it has been a “complete fiasco” of mushrooming budgets and poor management.

In tests, airport screeners at major airports have failed even by their own standards, letting (more often than not) forbidden items pass through security checkpoints. And of course there are also the gropes, semi-pornographic imaging devices, and rude treatment of the flying public.

To add insult to injury, the TSA has been a poor steward of taxpayer dollars, racking up bills at posh resorts and not being able to keep track of its assets.

Also on the occasion of remembrance, David Rittgers says that the TSA’s parent agency, the Department of Human Security (DHS), is too big too work well, and should be abolished. But the problem lies not not just with DHS, says Rittgers, it’s the politicians who fail to talk straight with us about security threats. He says, “Instead of pandering to fear and overreacting to every potential threat, policymakers should keep the risk of terrorist attacks in perspective and focus public resources on cost-effective measures.”

Will we miss the DHS and TSA? Not really. Steve Chapman says that, contrary to predictions made in the early days after 9-11, the U.S. has not been plagued by scores of terrorist attacks. Why? Muslims in America have not, contrary to expectations, been radicalized. Sure, a few have hatched plots for domestic terrorism, but their impact has been an asterisk compared with, say, the number of “regular” homicides. Why so few? “They like living in a democracy that respects their rights. People with good lives are not inclined to throw them away in grisly acts of violence.”

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Hillary Clinton and Smoking Bans

Friday, September 2, 2011

Our recent discussions on the smoking ban in Michigan reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s remarks during the health care debate in 1993. Her health care ideas–Hillarycare–called for a significant financial burden on businesses, especially small ones.

In response to the criticism that she would drive small businesses out of work, she said, “I can’t be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America.”

In other words, the government is going to change the rules of the game, and if a business can’t afford to operate under those new rules, well, too bad.

HillaryCare went down to defeat, of course, but if you click on the op-ed I’ve linked to above, at least one person argues Clinton, now the U.S. secretary of state, developed a better appreciation for the burdens that government imposes on business.

Would that legislators in Michigan and other states learn that lesson as well. Some bars and restaurants will survive the smoking ban, though perhaps with decreased revenue–which will translate into fewer jobs and fewer pay raises. Others will go out of business. Call the smoking ban an unfunded mandate, for that it does it use the power of government to reduce the income of some businesses. (Rather than directly raises costs, it reduces income by discouraging some people from becoming customers of these businesses.)

All this is a far cry from the red herring argument that, hey, you wouldn’t want government to allow John Doe from peeing on the floor next to Jane Doe’s table. First of all, no restaurant that allowed such activity would stay in business very long. More importantly, everyone who opens are bar knows that there is a legal prohibition on such activity. A ban on smoking, which for decades if not centuries has gone hand-in-hand with the consumption of alcoholic beverages, is quite different because it is a game-changer.

I suppose you could argue that in its wisdom, the representatives of the people are free to say, “As a society we have decided that we don’t want this kind of business to exist anymore.” For that is indeed what legislators do when they enact smoking bans. But they trample on the property rights of bar owners at the peril of us all. No business owner deserves legal protection to always exist (that’s just one thing that’s wrong with bailouts). But at the same time, changing the rules of the game discourages the development of new businesses that offer us goods, services–and jobs.

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No Shame? Shame on you!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

So the U.S. government thinks that in an age of obesity and a soaring federal debt, the thing we need is to … give “free” food to children with high-income parents. (Of course it’s free only at the point of delivery; the government must extract money from the economy to pay for it.)

The reason, we are told, is that we must eliminate the shame some students may feel in receiving free food.

Here’s a wild idea: Maybe the students–or better yet–their parents–should feel some shame.

In my adult life, I’ve received free food from others, who gave it voluntarily and not (via taxes) through compulsion. I was grateful and yes, a bit ashamed. But that shame motivated me to stretch the limited budget I had, and to find more income, so that I no longer needed the help.

The food came to me through friends. Since they knew me, theywould be able to call me out if they figured I had decided to rest on their kindnesses. They also could have–and would have–cut me off if they decided I was not making an honest effort to improve my situation.

Making those kinds of decisions requires personal knowledge of the person receiving the handout, and making a judgment. Friends and personal contacts are in a position to do that. Public employees? Not so much.

I am concerned that the “free for all” approach planned by the feds will simply encourage hopelessness (“I can’t live without government help”) and an entitlement mentality. It’s an insidious form of the egalitarian impulse to make everyone dependent on the dole.

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Fear the Federal Debt? Blame the Progressive Income Tax

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Is the tea party to blame for the downgrade of U.S. credit? Or perhaps President Obama? Try “the increasingly progressive nature of the federal income tax system.” A new working paper from two economists has the details.

Jody Lipford (Presbyterian College) and Bruce Yandle (Clemson University) take a look at several related topics: the thoughts of some of our early political leaders, the tragedy of the commons as applied to U.S. finances, Milton Friedman’s idea for welfare spending, the shrinking federal tax base, the rise of entitlement spending, and more, in their 31 page paper. It’s an interesting marriage of the tools of political science (which emphasizes the importance of political institutions in shaping policy outcomes), with some economic analysis thrown in.

The authors start out talking about James Madison (father of the Constitution) and James C. Calhoun (a leading senator from the early 19th century). Both were concerned about how to reconcile two competing notions: giving people some say over the laws that govern them, and making sure that the majority do not oppress the minority, especially in a way that makes the institution of government unsustainable.

Madison was concerned that a “universality of suffrage” could lead to “a dependence of an increasing number on the wealth of a few.” For his part, Calhoun wrote about the inevitable division of the population into “taxpayers and tax consumers.”

Writing much later (1962), Milton Friedman proposed a “negative income tax” (think of today’s Earned Income Tax Credit, but simplified) to replace the large number of welfare programs. He recognized the same problem that Madison and Calhoun noticed. He worried that the negative income tax might “be converted into [an arrangement] under which a majority imposes taxes for its own benefit on an unwilling minority.”

The problem noticed by Madison, Calhoun, and Friedman is not merely political. It’s economic as well. (Credit downgrading of the U.S. government, anyone?) Lipford and Yandle invoke one of the key items in environmental economics, “the tragedy of the commons,” to describe the financial risks of democracy: “In terms of economic theory, the budget has become a ‘commons’ and is subject to the tragedies of overuse and abuse.”

What is the tragedy of the commons? In the late 1968, Garret Hardin coined the term. A wikipedia entry sums up the concept nicely, calling it “a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.” Hardin was talking about the natural environment, but the term works pretty well if you think of the fiscal health of the nation as a commons, too.

So what has been the fate of the commons?

Federal spending, especially on entitlement programs, has exploded in recent decades. In 1962, “income security, labor services, health, and Social Security” took up 23 percent of the federal budget in 1962, but 61 percent in 2010.

Not only has the type of federal spending changed, so has the nature of the federal tax system. It has become more and more skewed: An ever-larger portion of the burden is carried by a small number of people, while more and more people carry, on balance, no burden. It’s certainly a politically popular move: Who doesn’t like “free stuff” and making someone else pay for it? Even “conservative” George W. Bush followed this logic, boasting that his income tax cuts wiped out federal income tax liability for millions of people.

In 1979, the top 10 percent of households (in terms of income) paid 41 percent of all federal taxes, and 48 percent of all income taxes. By 2007, the numbers were 55 and 72 percent, respectively. Starting in 1995 and continuing to this day, the bottom 40 percent receive more in federal benefits than they pay in income taxes. It’s not simply that they don’t earn enough to face a tax burden; we have (witness Bush) decided to reduce their obligations in law.

Federal tax receipts have, with minor exceptions, stayed at 21 percent of GDP over time, meaning that the increase in spending has had to be financed through increased debt. In 1979, federal debt was about 41 percent of GDP; in 2007 it was about 65 percent, and of course now, it’s an even higher number.

A sentence from the summary of the paper does a good job of telling us where we are and how we got here:

“As the distribution of tax liability has become more intensified on those with high incomes … the U.S. debt-GDP ratio has risen [translation: a sea of red ink is covering the nation], as have the ratios of entitlement spending to GDP and the total budget.”

“The decreasing share of tax liability borne by low-income households and the increasing share of tax liability borne by high income households is clearly associated with higher government debt and more entitlement spending ….”

As any student of statistics 101 will tell you, correlation of numbers does not prove causation.  The authors acknowledge that. But they also sketch out a theoretical reason why the numbers are the way they are (causation), and I believe they’re right.

So what should we do now? The authors say, ”These results support the contention that if the U.S. is to get its fiscal house in order, the tax law will have to be changed to broaden the base, just as President Obama’s deficit reduction commission has argued.”

It’s not the only thing that should happen. I’d prefer some other steps (such as Medicare reform along the lines proposed by Paul Ryan) to restrain spending increases. But as Lipford and Yandle suggest, making sure that more people interact with the IRS — not just to receive a check, but to pay taxes — is a key to our national fiscal health.

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Do the Wisconsin Elections Mark the End of the Government Bubble? Far From It

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Ever since the tulip bulb mania of the 16th century, if not earlier, people have fallen for various “bubbles.” Right now, I think we’re in the midst of a “government bubble.” The Wisconsin elections may–may–signal that we’re coming to an end of that mania, and a realization that fundamental reform of government is not just a matter of ideology, but of math.

In the tulip-bulb craze of the 16th century, people bet their futures on–are you ready for this?–tulip bulbs. In the words ofInvestopedia, “prices [for bulbs] were rising so fast and high that people were trading their land, life savings, and anything else they could liquidate to get more tulip bulbs.”

More recently, we’ve had the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble. Like the tulip bulb mania, these bubbles were fueled by greed that overcame prudence. They were also fed by a belief that “things are different now.”

In the political sphere, the U.S. has operated in a “government bubble,” since at least FDR, who ushered in the New Deal and the promise of technocrats in government. Through FDR’s Social Security proposal, poverty among the elderly would become a thing of the past.

LBJ brought us the “whiz kids,” who failed in their plans for Vietnam and for urban renewal. But he also introduced Medicare, through which the elderly would never have to suffer from medically induced poverty. One theme uniting FDR, LBJ, and indeed most of the politicians of the 20th century (think of the “Humphrey-Hawkins Act,” for starters) was the promise that smart people in government could manage away poverty, economic cycles, and in general, human misery. In the current century, George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy promised, in No Child Left Behind, that properly tuned government policies could make sure every child became academically proficient.

But like all bubbles, the government bubble can’t stay afloat forever. On the national level, Social Security is still popular enough to head off major reforms. It also has been headed towards insolvency for decades. Each time the actuaries run the numbers on the program’s fiscal health, the forecasted day of reckoning keeps getting revised to an earlier and earlier date. Ditto for Medicare, a program whose unfunded liabilities dwarfs the size of the U.S. economy.

More recently, the stimulus spending splurge brought us more bubble magic at work, in the belief that government can stimulate the economy through demand-side measures. It also significantly added to the national debt. “ObamaCare,” meanwhile, promises the idea of “universal health care,” while carrying a fiscal time bomb of its own. As a result, S&P has downgraded the debt of the U.S. government, as the company questions our political leaders’ abilities to find a way to pay for everything they and previous leaders have promised.

State governments, meanwhile, have their own troubles, particularly in the education and health care spheres. In these two areas, “more” is never enough. Another problem is the unfunded liabilities for public-employee pensions and post-retirement healthcare benefits, which go only one direction (up).

Unlike the U.S. government, states can’t print money to “paper over” their troubles. Some states (Illinois, in particular) continue to postpone the day of reckoning. Others (New York) have stopped making things (much) worse. Still others (Indiana and most famously, Wisconsin) have taken steps to bring the cost of government under control by changing collective bargaining laws for government employees–laws that make it difficult if not impossible to reign in personnel costs or manage public workforces effectively.

Leaders of those unions (and by the logic of “solidarity forever,” all unions), don’t like the changes and have lashed back. Of course. They threw everything they had at 6 Republican state senators in Wisconsin, and defeated two of them. Those elections may have been the high mark of political activism by public-sector unions, though perhaps not. You can make the argument that unions across the nation have wasted $15 million, since they “only” picked up one seat that should have been Democratic anyway, while the other was held by a flawed candidate embroiled in a particularly seedy divorce.

There’s one other fact that should be kept in mind: Most of the seats up for grabs in yesterday’s recall elections were solidly Republican anyway. One of them was even based in the city that lays claim to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, so as a group, the incumbent senators had the advantage.

So was the union money and effort wasted? Not at all. The unions demonstrated they have the power to inflict fear into the hearts of reform-minded legislators, or at least make their political lives very difficult. So the government bubble may continue to expand for quite a while before it pops.

In addition, there’s more fueling the bubble than the demands of public-sector unions. The public, for one thing, likes big government, though not necessarily big government as an abstract idea. There is plenty of approval for specific aspects of big government. The suburban parent says “don’t touch my kid’s school.” The green business owner says “don’t touch my ethanol / wind / solar subsidy.” The Republican Party activist says, ironically, “don’t let government interfere with my Medicare.”

Self-interest is not the only factor fueling the government bubble. Cynicism is another: It’s hopeless to think of making government smaller and rational, so let’s grab something for myself while I can. Such is the position of some people I know who support a palace for the state’s gridiron royalty, the Vikings. “I don’t mind paying taxes for something I enjoy.” Government may be my master, but at least he gives me some cool goodies now and then!

Do the Wisconsin election returns tell us much about the future of the country? Perhaps not. I hope so.

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The Daily Grope – diabetic harassment

Sunday, August 7, 2011

There are plenty of indignities that people face when they confront the TSA at the airport. But lately the agency has hit a new low by endangering the life or at least the health of a pregnant, diabetic woman.

According to a news report from a Denver TV station, TSA employees seized a woman’s insulin, syringe, and needles. (Note that if you don’t have enough insulin in your body – either by natural production or through injections - you will die):

The Aurora woman was traveling alone to a baby shower in Phoenix when she was questioned by a TSA agent as she went through security around 4 p.m. Thursday.

“He’s like, ‘Well, you’re a risk.’ I’m like, ‘Excuse me?’ And he’s like, ‘This is a risk … I can’t tell you why again. But this is at risk for explosives,’” the woman said. She asked 7NEWS not to use her name for fear of retaliation for speaking out.

“I got a bottle of nail polish. I got hair spray bottles. I got needles that are syringes. But yet I can’t take through my actual insulin?” she asked.

The TSA: Annoying and endangering Americans since 2001.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110807/MIVIEW/108070320/LaPlante–The-Daily-Grope—diabetic-harassment#ixzz1UqSXQP29

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Consumer choice is … controversial

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Will the U.S. House vote to repeal the ban-that’s-not-a-ban on incandescent bulbs? Henry Payne is optimistic, but as last night, The Hill had a different opinion: “House Democrats on Monday indicated strong opposition to a controversial bill to repeal federal lightbulb standards, which could lead to the defeat of the measure in an expected Tuesday vote.”

Read that sentence again. The idea that Americans are competent to decide which light bulbs they want to purchase is … controversial.

If that’s really true, we’re not citizens, but serfs and subjects.

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Bulb ban means more spending on bulbs, less on other items

Monday, July 11, 2011

Writing on the “it’s not a ban (wink, wink) on incandescent bulbs, Jacob Sullum points out some other problems with the arbitrary law: the higher prices on replacement bulbs mean “people will have to spend more money on light bulbs and less on other things they value more.”

To be sure, light bulbs are not a large expense for most households–at least for now. But the crowding-out of other purchases is a common side effect of laws, as government picks and chooses “acceptable” consumer purchases for us.

First published by the Michigan View.

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