Freedom Line Blog

This gem is from David Boaz at the Cato Institute:

Wouldn’t it save time if the Massachusetts legislature would just pass a law saying that if the governor is a Democrat, he fills any Senate vacancy, while if the governor is a Republican, a special election must be held?”

“We have to perform well, or we lose our charter.  It makes us step up our game.”

Those are the words of Stacey Gauthier, principal of a New York City charter school, explaining why charter schools have so significantly outperformed public schools in a study released this week. 

The study, by economics Professor Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University, demonstrates that poorer, inner-city students who spent their elementary school years in charter schools excelled compared to counterpart students in New York’s public system.  Remarkably, these charter students’ achievement scores even matched those of more affluent suburban students. 

The reason that Professor Hoxby’s study is particularly enlightening is that critics of charter schools and vouchers typically argue that their students are somehow selected from “the cream of the crop.” According to these apologists for public teachers’ unions, more ambitious students and families are the ones who selectively gravitate to charters.  But Professor Hoxby compared only students who were similarly-motivated: those who actually attend charters versus students who were motivated to seek entry to charters but were denied random lottery applications to do so.

Imagine how much public schools could improve if faced with the choice described by Principal Gauthier – perform well or lose your charter.

Breaking News from the Miami Herald:  “It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power.  He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and ‘Israeli mercenaries’ are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.”

This, dear readers, is the guy that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demand be returned to power as President of Honduras.

Politico – ACORN Fights Back
Breibart – IRS Cuts Ties with ACORN
CBS News – Pelosi Seeks More Liberal Health Care Bill
CBO – Health Care Legislation and “Unauthorized Immigrants”
Cafe Hayek – Mystery of Supply and Demand

WSJ – ACORN Files Lawsuit
Steny Hoyer – House Schedule
Greg Mankiw – Is a Mandate a Tax?
The Hill – Effort to Replace Kennedy Hits Snag
CNN Money – An Interview with Michael Moore

Federal Debt: $11.833 trillion

The Boston Globe is reporting that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick will announce his choice to fill U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat on an interim basis.  He is schedule to make the announcement at a press conference at 11:00 a.m. 

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul G. Kirk, Jr., who served as an assistant to Senator Kennedy from 1969-1977, appears to be the choice. 

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts legislature changed state law to permit Governor Patrick to appoint an interim Senator, but the legislature stipulated that the Governor would have to wait 90 days or, alternatively, declare an “emergency situation” to name Kennedy’s successor immediately.  Not surprisingly, the Governor is choosing to do the latter.

In his weekly descent into leftist frivolousness today, Wall Street Journal token columnist Thomas Frank argues that Democrats have remained far too…  get this…  “civil” in contemporary political debate.  Frank absurdly claims that in response to conservative activism, Democrats “pine for civility, pretending that the argument comes down to the scary rhetoric issuing from the right.”

On what planet is he living?  As noted by Tony Blankley in his most recent commentary, Democrats have met citizen activism by labeling them “evil” (Senator Harry Reid), “un-American” (House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer), “racist” (Jimmy Carter)  and accusing them of employing “Nazi” tactics (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi).  In contrast, Republican leaders have maintained a professional, restrained, rational tone, as illustrated by Senators Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl, and Representatives Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.  Frank proceeds to unfurl his usual litany of anti-capitalist tirades and bogeymen, but that’s nothing new.  Asserting that Democrat leaders have somehow taken the rhetorical high road, however, is remarkably silly even for him.

We’ve heard the line time after time. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor,” exclaims the President during every major town hall and Congressional address.  Unfortunately, when it comes to the sausage factory that is Congress, pledges morph into broken promises quickly.

Here is a perfect illustration of how Congress takes the simple (patient->doctor) and makes it maddeningly complex.  There is nothing Congress is incapable of ruining, including your relationship with your physician.

It has come to our attention that Barack Obama, the duly-elected 44th President of the United States, today went before the United Nations and appealed for a New World Order.

Based solely upon that empirical evidence, it is your immediate duty to release from your institutions all who have been committed there based on conditions that were previously and erroneously diagnosed as “paranoid delusions regarding black helicopters and the world takeover by the United Nations.”

As should be eminently clear from the above-cited evidence, those unfortunates aren’t loonies at all, just visionaries decades ahead of their time.

Once that considerable space in your institutions has been emptied, you would be well advised to begin preparing more luxurious, though no less secure, accommodations for the 44th President of the United States, whose delusions thus far exposed are yet to be thoroughly diagnosed and categorized, but are being addressed around the clock by the absolute best psychiatrists at the CIA, many of whom have volunteered to work on their own time at their own expense in the interest of national security.

Apparently, Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the New Wizard* of ObamaCare has decided that it is bad form to tax condoms, but really good form to tax insulin pumps and hearing aids and power wheelchairs.

Worried about perceptions that ObamaCare will tax the middle class (it still will, and we will be telling you we told you so for decades), Baucus seemingly decided to exempt consumer items of $100 or less from his previously proposed tax on medical devices.

There are no middle-class people who are deaf, diabetic and lame?  What did they do to get screwed?

Do these people really think we are that stupid?  Do they think that by applying the tax to the medical device companies, you won’t know it’s going to be passed to you?  There’s no one that stupid.  Plenty of people docile enough to let it happen, but not so stupid as to not understand this.

*Note that we are using Wizard as a coded expletive rather than Imperial Wizard, which is a better coded expletive, in this context, but would be mischaracterized and get us charged with saying bad stuff and inciting violence.

According to Senate staff, the Senate Finance Committee just rejected a proposal to require the full legislative text (not the summary) and final CBO cost estimate to be placed online 72 hours before a vote.

Before the Committee votes, taxpayers and even Senators won’t have a chance to read the bill or determine its projected cost.  So much for transparency and open government.

“AP:  Ahmadinejad urges Obama to see Iran as friend”

Learned commentary thereon:  Hey, you anti-semitic psychopath, the problem for your people and for ours is that he already does.

In related news, thanks to Canwest News Service, “Canada will boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the United Nations on Wednesday, saying his outbursts about the Holocaust and Israel are ‘shameful.'”

Learned commentary thereon:  Canada, and only Canada?

Hello.  Good morning.  We need to use this opportunity for an urgent message to American business, large and small (and even tiny), to American agricultural interests, large and small, regardless of crop, if you are or are trying to sell overseas or buy overseas.

Your president is in the process of starting a trade war with the Chinese over imported tires.  He is doing this on behalf of a union, no big news on that.  It is, as most protectionist acts in the global village, silly and ill-advised.  In this case, the potential upside is infinitesimal and the downside, in an unusually fragile economy, similar unto the scariest Halloween movie in which victims are picked randomly and abruptly for slaughter.

You may not be paying attention now, but you better.  Trade wars cannot be contained.  Trade wars cannot be limited to the original countries involved.  Trade wars cannot be limited to specific products or commodities. You wanna talk political triangulation?  Trade wars involve hyperdextrangulation squared. 

The problem with trade wars you ignore is that one day you wake up to learn you have become collateral damage, through no fault of your own, never did one thing wrong in or to any country involved.  Doesn’t matter.  That’s what collateral damage is.  You don’t want to become collateral damage.  You don’t want to explain to your employees and farm workers and families and children that you are collateral damage.

You have three choices.  The first is to call the president and tell him to stop this nonsense before it gets out of hand.  The second is to write the president and tell him to stop this nonsense before it gets out of hand.  The third is to do nothing and play foreign trade roulette.  You do not want to take the third option.

Trust us.  We know.  We once, shall we say, had some proximity to advising on targets for collateral damage in other countries.

Americans concerned about alleged extensive corruption within ACORN can rest easier tonight.

ACORN has launched its very own, no-holds-barred investigation of itself.

Overseeing the investigation will be former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros as an ACORN advisory council member.  Cisneros was forced to resign as HUD Secretary in 1997 as a result of an 18-count indictment for conspiracy, giving false statements and obstruction of justice, regarding payments to a former mistress.  In 1999, he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI, getting off with a $10,000 fine and no jail time.  President Clinton pardoned him in 2001, cleaning up that fine mess.

Conducting the investigation will be Scott Harshbarger, former Attorney General of Massachusetts.  Harshbarger certainly knows evidence – and how to trump it up.  In the 1980s, as a district attorney in Massachusetts, he prosecuted a case almost universally regarded as one of the most shameless miscarriages of justice in the country.  Using the coached, nay, manipulated and transparently irrational testimony of children, and exploiting public emotions over sexual predators, Harshbarger prosecuted and convicted Gerald Amirault of the Fells Acres Day Care Center in Malden, Massachusetts.  Harshbarger has to this day never acknowledged the overzealous prosecution, nor has he had to.

With sturdy citizens like Cisneros and Harshbarger at the helm of ACORN’s internal investigation, there is just no need for those state and federal investigations, like with subpoenas and sworn testimony and all that stuff.  Is there?

Oh and by the way, as columnist Deroy Murdoch points out, when “ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told Fox News Sunday her group ‘absolutely pays its taxes,'” she must have forgotten the state and federal tax liens filed against ACORN’s New Orleans headquarters.  When you’re busy collecting millions from state and federal governments, it’s just ever so easy not to remember a measly $1 million in back taxes.  Surely Cisneros and Harshbarger will want to clear that little misunderstanding up as soon as possible.  Won’t they?

HT: Andy Roth

NY Post – Why Doctors Hate ObamaCare
National Review – Democrats and the Uninsured
NY Times – Parties Clash over Health Care
George Will – Cost of  a Presidential Cave-In
Reason – Forcing Health Care

Steny Hoyer – House Schedule
WSJ – Frank Moves Forward on Financial Overhaul
The Hill – Pelosi Nixes Deal with ‘Blue Dogs’
Congressional Budget Office – Policy Options on Health Care
WSJ – Revised Baucus Bill Eases Excise Tax

Federal Debt: $11.829 trillion

From the Associated Press, paraphrased:  On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance that limits possession of a rooster to one per household.  

Rise up, Angelenos!  Next they will come for your goats, then your pet pythons, then your Golden Retrievers.

Seemingly upset about everyone picking on their favorite community organizing group, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) want to know if Conress’ efforts to stop ACORN from receiving any more federal funds are, get this… constitutional.

Specifically, Conyers and Frank have submitted a formal request to the Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) asking it to analyze the ACORN defunding measures recently passed by the House and Senate to determine “their possible unconstitutionality and whether they could constitute an unlawful bill of attainder.” 

In addition, the two Chairmen want CRS to analyze the “recent ‘sting’ activity concerning ACORN” — referring to the brilliant videos commissioned and released by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com —  including a run down of  “federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties.”

And they wonder why Congress’ job approval ratings are in the dump.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done Americans a big favor by posting a crystal-clear graph illustrating the dramatic impact of Obama’s deficit on the nation’s economy.  What immediately stands out is that the nation’s budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) during the past 45 years has essentially remained in the +/- 5% range.  Although politicians from both parties and political pundits from all perspectives have famously used the federal budget deficit as a bludgeon during that 45-year period, the CBO’s graph shows that it’s fluctuations have actually remained fairly moderate.  Those Bush deficits for which he was justifiably criticized?  They actually remained within post-World War II averages, and were headed on an improving trajectory.  In contrast, Obama’s deficit trajectory shows an new, alarming, dramatic deterioration.

Obama ran on a slogan of “change,” but who suspected that this is what he would deliver so soon?

As much as Massachusetts Democrats fought to remove their Governor’s power to appoint temporary Senators, it appears that principal has taken a back seat to politics once again.

Today, the Massachusetts Senate approved a bill allowing Governor Deval Patrick to name Senator Edward Kennedy’s replacement by as early as this week.

This was the same Senate that removed the power of the Governor to appoint to temporary Senators in 2004 when Republican Mitt Romney ran the show.

If there was ever a reason to loathe political parties, this is it.  Principal and logic, two qualities that most Americans possess, are constantly subsumed to politics in today’s world.