The primary reason I want to abolish the Department of Education and see it budget set to $0 is that its existence has done far more damage to the education system of the United States than it has done good. The Department of Education didn’t existing in this country until 1980. Its not like it has been around since the revolutionary war. Since it has been in place drop out rates have increased and the US has dropped in international rankings of math SAT scores (the only scores practical to compare internationally). Despite their failures, congress keeps giving the Dept. of Education more money. It has grown to a department with a $63.7 billion annual budget whose general employees are paid an average of $98,000+ and executive level employees are paid $153,000+. These federal employees are not teachers, they’re administrators. With their congressional appointed powers and ability to set one size fits all federal standards, they have been able influence much of the $400+ billion in education spending by the states. They have removed the ability of towns to experiment and innovated better method of teaching.
College loans are another areas where they have failed terribly. By subsidizing college loans, the Department of Education is responsible for the cost of a college education increasing at a rate 3 times that of general inflation since 1980. This has saddled most college graduates with a mound of debt upon graduation that often take 10+ years to pay off. The bankruptcy laws where even changed a few years back because so many people were defaulting on these loans they could not afford. The department of education has made college unaffordable to most students unless they take federally subsidized loans.
Another reason I believe it should be $0, is that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved with education. When the US Constitution was written, the states delegated to the Federal government only 17 enumerated powers in article 1, section 8. Education was not one of them. To further clarify that the federal government didn’t have that power, the 10th amendment was put into the Bill of Rights. The way the the federal government has justified the Department of Education at all, is by the general welfare clause. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison declared that general welfare clause had to be tied to one of the other 16 enumerated powers. Otherwise to “provide for the general welfare” could mean absolutely anything. Why else would the framers of the Constitution have taken the time to list out the other 16 enumerated powers if the general welfare clause meant the federal government could do anything? This limit on the powers of the federal government kept the federal government in check for over 143 years until in 1936 the supreme court ruled in United States vs. Butler. The sitting justice Owen Josephus Roberts in the opposition view, argued that it was “but a means to an unconstitutional end.” That decision let loose the flood gates to greatly expand the size and scope of the Federal government. I believe this to be the most damaging decision ever made the the supreme court.
In my opinion, if a state wants to, it should be able to decide that it wants to abolish all forms of tax payer funded public education. I am convinced that the majority of children would be better educated if they all went to private schools or were homeschooled. The current cost of public education is close to $10,000 per child annually. Privately funded schools can do this better and cheaper. Believe it or not private schools average under $5,000 per student annually. Most people don’t send their kids to private school because they are already forced to pay for public education even if they don’t want to use it. People that disagreed, would have the freedom to vote with their feet to move to another states that did believe the best path toward education was for it to be publicly funded through taxes. A Federal Department of Education prevents this from ever happening and doesn’t allow for innovation in education to occur. Until last week everyone had the similar freedom to do this if concerned with health insurance. If you wanted to live in a state that mandated everyone has health care insurance coverage you could move to Massachusetts. I’d encourage people to look into the works of John Talyor Gatto (former New York Teacher of the Year) on how a privatized school system would do a better job of teaching children.
What event has 140 private jets, 1,200 limos, and in total produces 41,000 tons of the “poisonious” carbon dioxide (equal to 1 year output of Switzerland)
1. Exxon Mobile Annual Board Meeting
2. Al Gore’s Birthday Party
3. The Copenhagen COP15 Climate Change Conference
I think there are very big concerns about freedom here and unfortunately I feel freedom loses in both of the outcomes of the vote on net neutrality. Like many people I want the goals of net neutrality. An Internet where the content, method of transmission, and the willing receiver of my data is not restricted so long as I am not hurting other people. That’s my definition but I’m sure it is very close to most others. I think my definition is pretty close to what we have right now. The biggest problems right now are that it could be faster and available in more places. Compared to other forms of media, the Internet is currently way ahead in terms of freedom.
On one side of the current net neutrality debate you have the government that wants to put in an increased set of regulations on ISPs. Governments can’t be trusted not to censor. North Korea is the extreme, Iran and China are not far behind and the US has made of mess of broadcast TV, radio, newspaper with its regulation and censorship. These net neutrality regulations will stifle innovation to levels seen in the telephone industry from 1900-1990. Over time, buried within these regulation will creep in government censorship against unpopular information and media.
On the other side you have large corporations like Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner. These large corporation often have monopoly influence in their own areas. They are not effectively regulated by competition like so many other sectors of the economy because they typically do not have any competition. In a town with only one broadband ISP prices will be higher and services will be lower than towns with multiple ISPs. These government granted monopolies would also block technologies such as VoIP or streaming TV because it competes with their own offerings. Government granted monopolies do not have to innovate, they do not have to listen to customers unless they behave so badly that the citizens of that city/town push that town to sign an exclusive contract with a different major ISP which will only behave a little better.
Until we can remove the regulation and government granted Internet monopolies/oligopolies, we will be stuck with two bad options. How can true net neutrality be achieved? Opening up the FCC controlled radio spectrum to more ISPs is likely the best answer to increase competition and true net neutrality. Not just more players but more section of bandwidth so different technologies can be attempted. Adding more unregulated sections will likely spur this even faster. This will allow innovation to occur and maybe even out pace the transmissions speeds of wired ISP technologies. It would allow businesses to innovate and customers to choose an ISP based on how well they adhere to the principle of net neutrality.
An interview with Rand Paul on the lack of capitalism in health care. He hits most of the points I made in my last post. As an eye surgeon, he has certainly seen how the costs of a completely elective surgery like lasik eye surgery have gone down over time.
Heavy regulation is one of the major reasons why there are only a handful of health insurance companies in each state. The big insurance companies are in favor of heavy regulation because it keeps out the upstart insurance companies that might give them real competition. The big insurance companies have the government connections and lobbies to craft the regulations in their favor. Government influence and regulation creates an unnatural oligopoly that would not occur in a real free market. Regulation kills competition.
It would also be nice if more people were in a position to directly purchase their own health insurance rather than have to rely on the HR department at their job to choose for them. Some people would then purchase health insurance from the company least likely to screw them over. Others would just go for who ever was cheapest. This is how the auto insurance industry currently works. A real free market health care system is the answer not a half socialize system like we have today or a fully communist system like some want.
Last summer I exercised my free market choices but dumping cable tv service from Comcast and switching to Dish Network Satellite TV. Comcast was pushing $90 a month for cable TV so I just shut it off and went without TV for a few months. It was summer so I wasn’t watching TV anyway. Once football season started back up I decided to re-up for service. Satellite proved to be a much more affordable option at $40 compared to Comcast which was almost $90 for equivalent service. I see the main reason for this as neither Dish or Direct TV have a government granted monopoly like Comcast does. However since there are still only two players in the satellite market I found out there is little market pressure from having fair contracts. Unlike many mobile phone contracts that have a fixed base price over the term of the contract, Dish can change the base price of their service and still hold you to the terms of the contract. This is of course because you don’t get to negotiate the terms of the contract. Its a one size fits contract that is sign only by the customer.
I found this out for myself last December when Dish jacked the base price up after I was four months into the contract. I let them have it over the phone about what a “contract” was supposed to be. In my mind the contract says “I’ll guarantee I’ll be your customer for two years if you guarantee you don’t raise your prices for two years.” They didn’t budge on the contract issue but I was however able to get them to credit the difference of the price increase for the next 12 months. I was pretty sure Dish had the appropriate weasel words in their contract so I took the compromise even thought it would leave me paying a little extra on the back eight months of the contract. So I’m doing my free market duty to inform the public that Dish TV contracts are worthless. The extra $50 that dish will pull out this deal will result in me bad mouthing Dish to everyone I know for being weasels. If you are a new customer ask to sign up without a contract purchase your own receiver if you’d like if you want to go no contract. If you are an existing customer do not resign up for you contract when it expires. It will not guarantee pricing. Also see if you can get that 12 month credit while its available. If you do sign a contract cross out the sections you disagree with and try to get a Dish employee to sign it like a real contract would be.
Also you are a customer that took advantage of the free Cinemax for a year for allow them to automatically bill your credit card be sure to reverse that after 12 months and can back to making them send you a bill. Make them reoffer you something for the privileged of being able to automatically bill you.
I’ll have more comments on this as I learn more about the situation. Word is that on March 9th Candia Police and the SPCA took 12 horses from a Brian Travis’s Candia horse farm. So far no charges have been filled and there is no indication that any charges will be filled. They just took the horses.
Finding real facts on this case has been difficult so far. The Union Leader newspaper does have a story on this finally. The discussion board is getting pretty heated on both sides.
Although I do not know these people personally I have heard from others that these horses were all in healthy condition and that there was an ongoing vendetta against the owners of the farm. The other rumor is the “anonymous call” about the owners not having a proper horse structure was made by the wife a horse structure builder. The owner’s had decided to build their own horse structure rather than pay for a contractor to build them. The claim was that health certificate for the horses was not on file with the New Hampshire. He had it for Colorado but not New Hampshire.
List of People and Organizations colluding with this raid.
Michael McGillen Chief of Candia Police 603-483-2318
Steven Sprowl, Manager, Field Services Division Office, SPCA
work: 603-772-2921 ext. 111
cell: 603-674-9836
Currently no other parties can be identified because they duct taped over their license plates and farm names.
Well the game was a lot closer than I thought it would be. All and all a good game. Outside of the 100 yard interception the first three quarters were kinda dull but of course sometimes good defence plays out that way. Although Warner did have one mistake I think he helped his chances of getting into the hall of fame, This was the first time I’ve seen Fitzgerald play. The kid is good, I think he’ll be a top WR for a good number of years. Commercials sucked this year. The Doritos ones were the old decent ones. That and the rude box of flowers but I don’t even remember of the name of the company. The Sobe one was retarded again.
Here’s is another example of another good intentioned “for the children” law that I believe will only further a police state. This new bill would require that cell phone cameras make a noise when they are used to take a picture. Last week a handcuffed Oscar Grant was leathly shot in the back by a BART police officer. The event was witness by dozens of onlookers and make of which record the event on video using there cell phone camera. The BART cops were trying to confiscate cell phone cameras of onlookers that took pictures of BART cop Johannes Mehserle murdering Oscar Grant who was handcuffed on the ground. If those people with cell phone cameras were not there, Johannes Mehserle would not be getting charged with murder. The thin blue line would be covering up the murder and claim that Oscar Grant was resisting arrest. As far as I am concern all of the cops that were trying to confiscate phones should also be tried for accessory to murder after the fact. Right now cameras used by citizens seem to be the only effective means of stopping police brutality. Legislating that phones click will have a chilling effect on citizens exposing police brutality. Perverts will just use a normal cameras or old cell phones to do what they want to do.