Moeller Does Miami
I am very excited to be in Miami, FL this week for a conference hosted by the conservative think-tank The Acton Institute. I will be here until Sunday morning, so for the next four days blog-posts here at AVITW will be limited to what time I have in between sessions on the topic of: "Property Rights, Economic Growth, and the Environment".
Doesn't sound like anything I'd be interested in, right?
The Acton Institute hosts conferences like this three times a year, all across the nation. Here's how Acton describes their vision for these events:
The Liberty and Markets program offers a deeper look into the core issues at the intersection of truth, liberty, and economics for alumni of Acton’s Towards a Free and Virtuous Society and Acton University programs.
Utilizing a format of three lectures and six Socratic discussion sessions, each conference provides an environment of intense dialogue and exploration. To insure active engagement with both the ideas and faculty, participation is capped at 18 attendees per event.
The program is intellectually demanding; participants are required to do advanced reading (approximately 250 pages) and must be prepared to offer comments and defend their views throughout the weekend.
I'll be reporting to you all about the event next week.
Until then, watch this example of the quality of work that Acton does:
Rep. Paul Ryan: A Voice of Reason in a Congress Gone Mad
Paul Ryan is a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and one of the sharpest tools in the GOP shed. In today's Washington Post, in a piece that can only be described as "systematic" and "brilliant", Rep. Ryan presents the problems with the current health care "reform" bill being proposed by the Obama-Pelos-Reid triumvirate of incompetence and corruption, and lays out the very real legislative alternatives he (and many others) have been promoting for months.
An excerpt:
Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families' premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers' options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.
Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin. When you strip away the double-counting, expose the hidden costs that must be funded and look at the price tag when the legislation is fully implemented, the claims of deficit reduction are as hollow as claims of cost containment.
This legislation includes a range of job-killing tax hikes and controls on all Americans -- to fund this new entitlement and to penalize employers and individuals who don't play by Washington's new rules. The CBO said last July that "requiring employers to offer health insurance, or pay a fee if they do not, is likely to reduce employment." The mix of mandates and higher costs will drive Americans into government exchanges, with an ever-enlarging number reliant upon taxpayer subsidies for their care. The architecture is designed to give the government greater control over what kind of insurance is available, how much health care is enough and which treatments are worth paying for.
Ryan closes out the column with this:
If this debate had actually been about health care, we could have worked together to get a grip on costs, make quality care more accessible, address exclusions for preexisting conditions and realign the incentives of insurance companies with those of patients and doctors. Yet this process -- including its embarrassing conclusion -- demonstrates that the debate has never been about health-care policy but, instead, paternalistic ideology.
Should the Democrats' health-care train wreck make it to the president's desk, it will be a pyrrhic victory, and its devastating consequences will take their toll on our health-care system, our budget and our economy.
Read the entire Post piece here, and PLEASE send it along to those who are on the fence in regards to their support for Obamacare.
Here's Rep. Ryan at the president's umpteenth summit last month, handling his health care business like a pro:
Tribune Editorial Page: Keep The Best Teachers
The Chicago Tribune is anything but a bastion of conservative opinions, but today's opinion from the editorial page is something all Americans ought to be able to get behind.
Last fall, Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee laid off 229 teachers. Here's what was unusual about that: She chose who would stay and who would go based on the competence of the teachers.
That's a radical departure for public education. Most schools across the country make personnel decisions largely or entirely based on seniority. Last in, first out. Illinois law requires that teacher layoffs be based on seniority unless a school district and its local union negotiate different rules. Result: seniority is the deciding factor everywhere, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. So law and custom protect older teachers — whether they're good teachers or bad teachers.
What a shock to learn that the Peoples' Republic of Illinois has such a backwards, ineffective system for hiring and firing teachers!
Many cash-strapped Illinois school districts face the prospect of layoffs in the coming months. Unless outdated rules are scrapped, the schools will have to fire some of their best teachers because they happen to be younger teachers.
They also will have to fire more teachers. Younger teachers have lower salaries, so when schools operate strictly on seniority, they have to let more teachers go to achieve a certain dollar savings.
Yes, there is value in experience. But the National Council on Teacher Quality reports that "teachers in their third year of teaching are generally about as effective as long-tenured teachers."
Seniority can be considered, but along with such factors as competence, drive, classroom performance and willingness to learn new skills. Younger teachers, for instance, may be more computer-savvy and thus more capable of teaching the tech skills children need to succeed.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that almost everyone has a teacher who impacted their life in a positive way. We want to honor teachers, and we want the best possible teachers in our school systems. But tax dollars aren't charity to be doled out based on a general feeling of good will towards people who enter the teaching profession. People must earn those dollars, same as any other job.
And it is the constitutional duty of those running these bloated bureacracies at the state and federal level to do everything in their power to see that the best possible people are hired in the most efficient way.
All governments have to find ways to lure and keep the best and brightest in their work force. Where is that more important than in the classroom?
School vouchers, anyone? Real change requires real change. Enough talk. If we're serious about education, then let's put our votes where our mouths are and let our elected officials know that changes like the ones the Tribune is talking about matter to us.
Walter says Bill isn’t your biggest problem
There is a real, palpable disdain for the "rich" in this country. I think that disdain is to our own detriment.
So does economist Walter E. Williams. As he points out in his latest column, the "rich", like Bill Gates, is not the person to fear or direct your ire at. Politicians, even small-time local ones, have much more control over your life.
Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels.
...
Politicians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.
Can't say it better than that. Read the rest of the piece here.
Dr. Williams is an equal-opportunity mis-truster of politicians:
Has the Stimulus Worked?
From Robert J. Barro, writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:
The first anniversary of the Obama stimulus package generated a lot of discussion about whether and how much the package (originally estimated at $787 billion but now priced at $862 billion) moderated the recession. These are complex questions, and their answers require more than merely counting the quantity of goods and services that the government purchased or the number of people that the government hired.
We need to ask whether the government's spending reduced or enhanced private spending and whether public-sector hiring lowered or raised private hiring. This requires an empirical model based on the history of past fiscal actions in the U.S. or other countries. The administration must have such a model, but my own analysis makes me skeptical about the numbers they've reported about GDP increases and saved jobs.
I'm so disgusted with this new "jobs bill" that was passed this week. Just read the rest of the Barro article and mentally prepare for November.
Walter E. Williams Isn’t Happy About The Census
Dr. Williams is certainly one of the clearest thinkers and best communicators of free market principles in the country, but no one has ever accused him of mincing words. His target this week: the 2010 U.S. Census.
The Census Bureau estimates that the life cycle cost of the 2010 Census will be from $13.7 billion to $14.5 billion, making it the costliest census in the nation's history.
That's a pretty penny in a time of economics crisis. Williams sees not only wanton waste in the Census, but a unnecessary (and un-Constitutional) intrusion into the lives of American taxpayers and voters.
What purpose did the Constitution's framers have in mind ordering an enumeration or count of the American people every 10 years? The purpose of the headcount is to apportion the number of seats in the House of Representatives and derived from that, along with two senators from each state, the number of electors to the Electoral College.
He continues
The Census Bureau also asks questions about race, and I want to know what does my race have to do with apportioning the U.S. House of Representatives?
If I'm asked about race, I might respond the way I did when filling out a military form upon landing in Inchon, Korea in 1960; I checked off Caucasian. The warrant officer who was checking forms told me that I made a mistake and should have checked off "Negro." I told him that people have the right to self-identify themselves and I'm Caucasian. The warrant officer, trying to cajole me, asked why I would check off Caucasian instead of Negro. I told him that checking off Negro would mean getting the worse job over here. I'm sure the officer changed it after I left.
Most people don't care that the government incrementally intrudes into their lives more and more each year. People want jobs and food on the table and some vacation time. I get that. Dr. Williams gets that.
But there are some principles and values and ideals that are worth taking a stand for NOW so that we can avoid things like top-down Socialism LATER. On a very basic level, and if nothing else raises your ire about this year's Census, consider the absolute waste of time and taxpayers' money it is to hire the workers to administer and collect the Census data (many of whom quit after getting paid for their "Census Training").
From The Washington Post:
Thousands of workers hired last year for temporary positions by the U.S. Census Bureau were trained and paid but never worked for the agency, while others who fulfilled assignments overbilled for travel expenses, according to an audit released Tuesday.
Nice. Here's more from Williams on the waste in government:
Breitbart, Big Government, and Welfare
I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with Andrew Breitbart, but I couldn't recommend him (and his work) more highly to you. Chances are, if you do know who he is, it is because of the now-famous ACORN-prostitute videos he helped facilitate the release of last September.
As great as those videos were, and the fall out for the radical-Leftist ACORN was, Breitbart has so much more to offer.
His site, Breitbart.com, is the closest thing to DrudgeReport.com in terms of timely, important news reporting. What is more, Andrew has launch a series of websites intended to specifically combat progressive and liberal ideas in the areas of Government, Hollywood, and Journalism.
Spend a few minutes and check each of those sites out, and make Breitbart.com a "Favorites" on your home computer.
At Big Government.com today, Dan Mitchell discusses the New York Times' report that more and more New Yorkers are accepting the welfare entitlement known as food stamps. As frustrating as this news is, what makes it even worse is the key role some Republicans have played in promoting the culturally-crippling practice of A forcibly taking from B to give to C.
The ranking Republican on the Agriculture Committee is a big defender of the program, in part because of the sordid pact among urban and rural politicians to support each other’s handouts. And President George W. Bush’s food stamp administrator actually had the gall to assert “food stamps is not welfare.” No wonder the burden of federal spending skyrocketed during the reign of so-called compassionate conservatism.
The correct policy, of course, is to get the federal government out of the welfare business. If Mayor Bloomberg thinks it is a “civic duty” to expand food stamps, he should see whether New York City voters agree with him – and want to foot the bill.
You simply cannot
Mark Steyn,
President Obama and the Democrats have been trying for a year to get their brand of 

