The Examples Just Keep Coming

In my efforts to look at Transformational Change in government, this is an amazing time to be a news junkie and writer. This video below of a speech that Leftist Harry Reid actually delivered in the US Senate chamber, is an opportunity to see the largesse that needs to be cut from the things that the federal government spends money on.



Here is the text of that video so that you can actually see this stupidity:

"The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1,, eliminates National Public Broadcasting...It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."

I do not think you can watch this video, and then read the words, and still believe that government spending is not out of control and that Transformational Change is not needed.

And before you attempt to tell me that we need PBS, NEA, NEH and NPR and all this other nonsense, realize that I don't want the federal government funding this sort of leftist propaganda in any case. The Constitution does not call for this sort of heavy-handed intervention. If PBS and NPR are so great, let the marketplace decide that and fund it. Pacifica Radio is also full of Leftists who hate America, but unlike NPR and PBS, Pacifica finds fellow travelers to pay the bills. The same should apply to NPR and PBS. It's time to stop paying for these things. Let us minimize the functions of government, keep more money in our communities, and keep more of our own earnings.

ObamaCare vs. the Post Office - Should Government Handle Either?

There was a great, short post over at The Weekly Standard today that is certainly worth looking at.  So much was said in so little space.

"The problem is, America’s Founders wrote the following words (penned at Independence Hall) into our Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Meanwhile, Obamacare may contradict the Founders’ vision of limited government and liberty more completely than any legislation ever passed in our nation’s history. The only good thing about Obamacare is the backlash against it, which has reignited national debate over the proper scope of government and has generated renewed interest in fiscal responsibility, limited government, and our founding principles. But it doesn’t help to advance those principles to suggest that Obamacare is like the Post Office.

It didn’t take 2,700 pages to found the Post Office. The Post Office doesn’t try to run what will soon be one-fifth of our economy. It doesn’t cost more than $2 trillion over ten years. It doesn’t compel Americans to buy health insurance.  It doesn’t consolidate heretofore unthinkable levels of power in the hands of the Secretary of Health and Human Services and other unelected officials."

As my readers know, I think the Post Office has become an unmanageable system for the federal government to handle.  The Post Office has not turned a profit in many years.  But, the larger points here are fantastic and it's good to see validation for what I've been talking about here in previous weeks.

How Many More Ways Could We Possibly Stifle Small Business?

I came across an interesting column today over at OpenMarket.org, discussing how to help small businesses across America. I recommend the entire column, but the three highlighted sections below merit particular attention.

"Paychex, Inc., a payroll service provider that works with many small businesses, recently commissioned a survey. They asked small business owners their thoughts on the economy, and what the biggest obstacles are to growing their businesses. The most common gripe? Regulation. 47 percent of small business owners say that regulations have “slowed or prevented” their business from growing."

This is where bureaucracy gets in the way of real economic growth. Damn, just get out of the way and let those with initiative and drive and capital investment put people to work.

"If Congress is genuinely interested in helping small businesses while speeding up economic recovery, it’s time for a different approach."

Can you join me in saying "Transformational Change"?

"Federal regulation alone costs $1.75 trillion to comply with. Congress should lighten the load. 47 percent of small business owners say that regulation has made their business grow more slowly. Letting that 47 percent grow more quickly would go a long way toward getting the economy growing again."

Almost $2,000,000,000,000 (yes, that's 12 0's) just to comply with regulations!

What To Do About Rising Gas Prices

You have no doubt seen gas prices on the rise in recent weeks and months. What solutions do you have for bringing down gas prices?

You do realize that rising gas prices make consumer goods rise in price too, right? While gas is getting closer to $4 per gallon, will you like it when it gets to $8 per gallon? All the transportation costs of consumer products will increase.

Book Review - A Chance To Make History

A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for Allby Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp is a current look at a positive force for education improvement in America. Education books about various educational programs are released each year, but as numbers change, the books become outdated and less accurate, or less applicable. So, A Chance to Make History, released in 2011, and with stats reported from the latter part of 2010, is a very good current snapshot of the education system in America.

Right at the outset, I wish I had the book in electronic format so I could easily count the number of times the words “transformation” or “transformational” were used. I think this word was the right choice for the needed reforms in American education. I do think those word uses were incorrectly applied in some instances, where the words were another way or saying “better”, “different” or “changing”. What American education truly needs is Transformational Change.

Calling for such change is another way of saying that the current system is beyond being fixed by piecemeal measures, or tinkering around the edges. As was pointed out in this book, more money and more funding is not always the answer. In many cases we are simply spending more for the same, mediocre results.

What A Change to Make History clearly demonstrates is that private enterprise can achieve better results than can any level of government, such as local or federal. There are several instances where not having to deal with any government bureaucracies allowed innovators and investors the chance to get in and do the work of educating children. One great quote to illustrate this:

"Post-storm, there was no bureaucracy left, and it really was an open opportunity for people to come down and get schools open quickly, schools that could be designed to close the achievement gap right from the start." (p. 96, in reference to post-Katrina New Orleans)

I understand that Teach for America does get some federal funding, but that most of its funding is philanthropic and received from donors. I object to the federal government being involved in education at all. If government has to be involved, I would prefer to see them solely fund organizations such as Teach For America. Get the bureaucrats who look at numbers and studies and decide the fate of students across the country that they have never seen and will never see, out of the way of state and local education authorities.

The federal government has proven it can not manage large, complex systems well. Look at the post office, which recently had to be bailed out to the tune of $11 billion. If the federal government had to go to a rational bank and apply for a loan to fund the Department of Education, and if they presented the current model for education as their business plan, they would be laughed out of the building, denied the loan, and shut down for good.

Specifically, A Chance to Make History is an enjoyable read, it is a narrative, with stories that the author comes back to time and again. It is a hopeful book, and a positive book when you see the positive results. I felt the book, at 218 pages, was a quick read, and frankly I could have kept reading. Fortunately, the book is loaded with some great footnotes for further research. Finally, this book might be seen very much as a sort of brag sheet for Teach For America. I’d advise readers to get over that fact and focus on the results oriented focus of the book instead. Whether it’s through Teach For America or similar efforts, let’s start transforming education in this country by unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit that can be found in our 310 million citizens. Let’s start at the local, community level and build up from there.

I'll close with this quote from page 113:

"I believe part of the reason that the achievement gap has not narrowed in an aggregate sense over the past two decades, despite all the energy and resources invested in education reform, is that our policy makers and influencers have been so obsessed with finding a quick fix that we have gone lurching from one silver-bullet solution to another rather than embracing the big idea of transformative education and engaging in the very hard work of implementing it. Equally distracting, we have also spent inordinate amounts of energy blaming one group or another-"silver scapegoats," we could call them - when there are clearly larger systemic issues at play. The fact is that our system was not initially designed with an understanding of what it would take to change the path predicted by students' socioeconomic background."

The time for Transformational Change in American education, is now.

National Start-A-Business Month

I can't speak to anything specific about LegalZoom.com, I have never used their services and frankly I don't know anyone else who ever has. But March is National Start-A-Business Month over at LegalZoom. Find out more about it here. Even if it's just a set of reduced prices for their services, the idea of someone encouraging entrepreneurs to try something new is a good idea to me.

WSJ Blurb - Brief Post for Now

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting little blurb in one of it's two editorials that I'm going to come back to in an upcoming post, but I figured the blurb was worth posting now.

Medicaid isn't in trouble because it is badly run, though of course it is. The problem is that it has become so vast and is meant to fill so many political demands that no one can truly control it. Given the Obama Administration's rigidity, this is not the best reform moment, but unlike his predecessors, Mr. Cuomo seems to recognize that these liabilities can't be repaired at the margins. The real test will be if he starts to do the politically difficult work of scaling Medicaid down.

My readers will note that their reference to "repaired at the margins" sounds a lot like the "tinkering around the edges" phrase I often use. It all means the same thing. Again, I'll come back to this editorial in a day or so, but I felt this was worth posting now. The final point of focus, is that Medicaid has simply gotten out of control. As the editorial suggests, this is no time to make marginal changes, to "tinker around the edges", it's time for an overhaul. More later.