the tindog coffeehouse

Dallas Morning News columnist Jacuielynn Floyd framed the Texas State Board of Education’s incessant tussling over social studies standards perfectly:

But it glaringly underscores that this entire exercise, which I once naively believed to be part of an effort to produce intelligent, intellectually responsible citizens, is not about academics at all.

No, there’s nothing to see here but the same old blowhard talking points that currently pass for political discourse.

Religious conservatives who dominate the board don’t even bother trying to pretend otherwise. They’ve made it clear that they believe their mission is to even the score with what they see as snotty leftist academics who have poisoned public education.

It’s not about kids grasping history and learning to draw independent conclusions – it’s about who gets to run the indoctrination camp. …

Paradoxically, the saddest thing about all this is also the only consolation I can find.

It’s this: Ideological fist-pumping over such meddlesome trivia as substituting “free enterprise” for “capitalism” or “constitutional republic” for “democracy” won’t make much difference to teenagers who graduate without being able to punctuate, add simple fractions or find Panama on a map.

Indeed, the SBOE has spent months bickering over a trivial list of names each public school student should somehow be expected to memorize in order to be deemed properly educated. How many whites are on the list, how many blacks, how many Hispanics, women, Christians, non-Christians, conservatives, liberals, etc., etc. etc. How much should Christianity factor into history lessons, whether or not to emphasize certain Constitutional amendments over others, de-emphasize the Civil Rights Movement while championing free enterprise, and so on, ad nauseum.

As if any of that matters.

Here’s a tip for our esteemed Board: History has very little to do with individual names, facts, and figures. Anyone can look up a name or find a statistic. But without context they’re meaningless. And that’s what history is all about. It’s looking at a particular event or moment in time and understanding how it fits in with all the other events and moments of time. What are the political, economic, religious, and social factors that led up to this thing, and what are the repercussions as a result of it? What caused this event, and what are the effects? If you can’t answer those questions, you haven’t really learning anything, and none of those names, dates, and other random numbers will matter a bit.

But instead of figuring out how to actually teach context, about how to teach kids to ask questions and solve problems and think critically and then communicate those ideas verbally and in writing, the State Board would prefer to quibble over terminology and racial quotas, argue over which tune to fiddle while our public schools burn. That’s not progress. That’s not education. And it does nothing to benefit the students of Texas.

Previously:
Academic freedom amendment isn’t necessary
How much emphasis should be placed on Christianity when teaching history?
Should evolution be debated in public schools?

I’ll be honest, I debated for months over whom I’d vote for in the Texas gubernatorial race and even whether I’d vote at all. I knew I wouldn’t be voting for any of the Democratic candidates, so the choice came down to 10-year-incumbent Rick Perry, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, or ultra-right-wing newcomer Debra Medina.

In the end, I voted for Hutchison.

Now, if you’ve read my previous posts about Hutchison, you know I haven’t exactly gushed over her. Frankly, her campaign has been a mess, and I’m not exactly confident that could do any better job than Perry. Furthermore, for someone who has served in the Senate since 1993 (after pledging to serve only two terms), she has little to show for it other than a bunch of pork barrel spending she’s accumulated for her home state.

So why vote for her? I suppose it was a process of elimination.

Debra Medina seems like a good person, and I respect her conservative principles. But she is in no way qualified to be governor of Texas. Her only political experience has been as the Wharton County Republican chairperson. That may in fact be a bigger deal than it sounds, but it certainly doesn’t sound impressive. She might as well say she’s been the president of the PTA. My advice to her would be to run for the state legislature instead, get some real experience in Austin, prove that she can handle it, then come back and talk about bigger things.

But even with more experience, I still wouldn’t vote for her. Her ultra-conservative Ron-Paul-flavored beliefs are too extreme for me, and they expose her naïveté. For example, the foundation of her platform is the elimination of property taxes and the raising of the sales tax. That would be a complete disaster for the state economically. Just look at California. They have the highest sales tax rate and the highest income tax rate in the country, and they’re also broke. I’m not in favor of repeating that same mistake in Texas.

And then there’s Rick Perry.

Perry has been the governor of Texas since December 2001, serving longer than any other governor in the state’s history. In terms of evaluating whether to reelect him for yet another four years, that works to voters’ advantage since they can clearly see what he’s done in office and how he approaches the job. And personally, I’m not that impressed.

While Texas may be doing better economically than almost any other state in the nation, we still relied on federal stimulus money to pass a balanced budget last year. Plus we’re looking at a projected $10.8 billion shortfall in 2011. So while conditions may be not dire, they’re certainly not as rosy as Perry claims they are.

Perry has also campaigned as a champion of the Tea Party movement, speaking at tea parties, writing op-ed pieces in national publications espousing “self-governance” and limited government, and even suggesting that Texas could secede from the Union. (For the record, I don’t believe he was really suggesting or promoting secession, but it shows how his rhetoric has been groomed over the last year to play to anti-Washington conservatives.) While I myself am a conservative and also believe in limited government regulation and low taxes, I have a hard time supporting the Tea Party movement, and as such, have a hard time supporting Perry.

To be fair, though, I’ve never been a big fan of Perry’s. His arrogant, “Adios, mofo” bravado has always turned me off. In 2006 I voted for Democrat Chris Bell, a vote which was more of an anti-Perry stance, driven particularly by Perry’s fondness for toll roads and his support of the hated TAKS test in public schools. While some of those toll road plans have since been scrapped and a new end-of-course exam will soon replace the TAKS (a bill which Perry signed), my opinion of him over the last four years has not changed.

So that leaves Kay Bailey Hutchison. Granted, she has no real hope of beating Perry in the Republican primary, having consistently trailed in the polls for months. But if the vote is close enough, it may at least result in a run-off election, which is as close a victory as Hutchison can realistically hope for.

Previously:
The many ideas of Rick Perry
Why are the Internets turning on Kay Bailey Hutchison?
Race for Texas governor on …sorta
Is it hypocritical for Perry to accept stimulus money?

What happens when your computer crashes? You get ticked off, probably spew a few four-letter words, then turn it off and turn it back on. In most cases, the system comes back up and you’re good to go.

Now, what happens if your car’s computer crashes?

Rep. Henry Waxman sent a terse letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, complaining that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn’t have the expertise to properly evaluate technical problems in cars, such as those that have plagued Toyota:

According to some accounts, autos now contain more computer code than some fighter jets, nearing 100 million lines of code. Yet, NHTSA officials told the Committee staff that the agency does not employ any electrical engineers or software engineers. As a result, NHTSA appears to lack the technical expertise necessary to analyze whether incidents of sudden unintended acceleration are caused by defects in the cars’ electronic systems.

Waxman makes a good point. Cars and trucks today have extremely sophisticated computers, and a software defect can cause all kinds of problems. And yet apparently there’s no real government oversight when it comes to all that code.

Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo wrote a great essay a while back about the “beta” culture that has become the norm in the technology world:

I’m tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The “This will work in the next version.” The “It’s in our roadmap.” The “Buy now and upgrade later.” The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn’t tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I’m tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic cancer in the last few years, starting with software from Google and others and ending up in almost every gadget and computer system around. …

Clearly, the problem is the development process and the time to market, with product cycles shortened and corners cut to keep a continuous stream of cash flowing in. The rush to feed these cycles with increasingly more complex engineering seems to be at odds with shortened development and quality assurance processes, resulting in beta-state first-generation products. This beta culture, the same one that already plagues the web, breeds people who are willing to accept bugs in the name of cutting-edge gear.

Diaz was clearly talking about consumer electronics and the Internet, but the same arguments can be applied to auto manufacturers, who face the same market pressures that any other technology company does: produce more complex, more capable, and yet more efficient products year after year at a lower cost and market the hell out of them to gain whatever slight edge you can over your competitors.

If you’re talking a website or a computer operating system or a smartphone, manufacturers can probably afford to cut corners in the development cycle if they know most bugs can be patched later. After all, in the vast majority of cases a software failure is at most an inconvenience and an annoyance. But a software failure in a car can — and does — endanger lives.

It’ll be interesting to see how Toyota and other auto makers respond to these issues. Hopefully they can improve the quality control on their own, but I’m willing to bet the government will also have lots to say. It usually does.

Previously:
What the auto mileage bill really means for consumers

In an interesting turn of events, Senators Maria Cantwell and John McCain have proposed reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which — among other things — prevented commercial banks from merging with investment banks.  That restriction, first passed in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression, was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and it was that law that set in motion much of the financial meltdown that we’re still dealing with today.

“I want to ensure that never again we stick the American taxpayer with another $700 billion or even larger tab to bail out the financial industry,” Mr. McCain said, referring to the Treasury bailout program of financial firms.

Mr. McCain said he isn’t opposed to investment banks taking risks to pursue greater returns, but he doesn’t believe these risks should be taken using retail banking depositors’ money.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, it’s unlikely that the call to separate the banks will go very far in Congress, and Newsweek has compared it to “unscrambling an egg”.  So why is it so interesting?  Because McCain voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999 and because one of the authors of the bill, Phil Gramm, was McCain’s chief economic adviser during his presidential campaign.  Which makes me wonder if McCain would be making the same call had he won the election.  My guess is, probably not.

Previously:
The root cause of the subprime meltdown

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka recently quoted a report on ProPublica.com, which indicated that (according to the Treasury) the federal government would actually make about $15 billion profit from last year’s $700,000,000,000 bailout rescue plan known as TARP.  Burka’s point was that even though gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison has since renounced the plan, she may have done the right thing in initially voting for it.

But did she?

First, the ProPublica report goes on to show that even if some parts of TARP make money, overall the government is still in the red when you factor in the rest of the program as well as all the other bailouts (AIG, Fannie Mae, GM, etc.).  So Burka’s point is moot.

But let’s assume the government did actually end up profiting from all the various bailouts.  Does that make them OK?  Or are they still unacceptable based on principle alone?

Senator Hutchison wrote in September 2008 that:

With every bailout, each American taxpayer becomes more invested in these markets. And we all have the right to ask the question, why is one firm rescued, when another must face the consequences of its actions? In a capitalist system, some risks will yield big rewards and some will lead to failure. When possible, it is better to let free market economics pick the winners and losers, not the federal government. Corporate bailouts set a dangerous precedent and stand to negatively impact market dynamics over the long-term.

So do big government bailouts still set a dangerous precedent if they not only help the market stabilize and recover but also yield a profit for taxpayers?

Again, that’s just a theoretical question since we have yet to see (and almost certainly won’t see) a return on our investments.  But in my opinion, a bailout’s potential profitability doesn’t make it right.  Otherwise, the government simply becomes a massive investment manager whose motives are driven more by the bottom line than the public good.  Which would make it just as “evil” as the Wall Street firms that the bailouts were designed to save us from.

Previously:
Report: Bailouts hurt the government’s credibility
TARP is the financial equivalent of the Vietnam War
Actual cost of TARP bailouts: $2.9 trillion

According to Texas governor Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison’s decision to not resign from the Senate was his idea:

“If there was ever a time to have full-time representation in the United States Senate, it would be right now,” Perry said during a visit to Emmett J. Conrad High School in Dallas. “So I really appreciate her taking my advice and staying on the job full time.”

Never mind that Hutchison has been decisively indecisive throughout the campaign and has seemed determined to hedge her bets as long as possible.  I guess she just needed some helpful guidance from Governor Rick.

Also Perry’s idea?

• The Interstate Highway system (followed later by the invention of toll roads)
• Sliced bread
• Penicillin
• The Roman aqueducts
• Rocky IV
• Cherry Garcia ice cream
• Mega-strength hairspray

I’m pretty sure he also single-handedly planted thousands of acres of apples throughout the upper Midwest in the early 1800s and once had a giant blue ox named Babe.

Previously:
When will Kay Bailey Hutchison resign?
Race for Texas governor on …sorta
Why are the Internets turning on Kay Bailey Hutchison?

John Hinderaker at PowerLine makes a great point about how under Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill (full 1,990-page PDF here), private health insurance is technically really no longer insurance:

Under the House bill private health insurance companies will still exist, but to what end? They will be legally prohibited from competing in any meaningful sense. They will be required to issue substantially the same coverages at substantially the same rates, changes in which must be justified to the government. They will be prohibited from underwriting insurance risks in any rational way: they must pay all bills resulting from preexisting conditions, and they will be prohibited from charging lower-risk customers lower rates.

As I wrote here, you can force insurance companies to “cover” preexisting conditions, but the resulting product is not insurance. You cannot insure against something that has already happened. It is merely a bill-paying mechanism. …

Under the House bill, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that health insurance companies are no longer in the insurance business. They can’t rate and underwrite risks, which is the essence of insurance. That’s illegal. They can’t decide to whom they will issue policies; that’s illegal, too. They can’t offer novel or innovative coverages; their coverages are dictated by law. To a limited extent they can make decisions on paying claims, but under the watchful eye of government regulators. Meaningful competition among insurance companies will be, in effect, illegal.

I’m not saying insurance reforms aren’t needed, but regulating any industry to this extent simply can’t be good.

A new report claims that the $700,000,000,000 bailout rescue plan known as TARP may have saved the economy (debatable), but it also severely damaged the credibility of the federal government:

The mixed and blunt assessment by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general in charge of oversight for the bailout fund, appears in a quarterly report scheduled for release Wednesday. Barofsky said the Troubled Asset Relief Program has come at great cost to taxpayers, to the integrity of the financial system and to the public’s perception of the federal government.

“Despite the aspects of TARP that could reasonably be viewed as a substantial success,” he wrote, “Treasury’s actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.”

Of course, the report assumes that Americans had any faith in the government in the first place, which is questionable.

There’s a reason our currency says “In God We Trust”.

Previously:
‘Dude, where’s my $700 billion?’
TARP is the financial equivalent of the Vietnam War

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks the U.S. should try to cut its budget deficits before Asia completely destroys us with its super economy-rebounding powers.

“As the global economy recovers and trade volumes rebound, however, global imbalances my reassert themselves,” Bernanke warned. For the United States’ part, “the most effective way” to boost national savings in this country “is by establishing a sustainable fiscal trajectory, anchored by a clear commitment to substantially reduce federal deficits over time,” Bernanke said. He didn’t suggest ways to do so.

Bernanke may not have any ideas for how to cut the deficit, but I have a few suggestions.  How ’bout no more bailouts for starters?  Maybe stop buying banks, auto companies, and insurance companies?  Also, we could stop paying people to trade in their old cars.  And — call me crazy! — maybe we should abandon plans for a massive, multi-trillion-dollar health care overhaul.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head.  You’re welcome.

Previously:
The real ‘death panel’? The federal budget

Apparently, education is a popular topic this week.  Yesterday, I mentioned the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act being debated in the U.S. House, which would give the Department of Education the authority to “develop” and “disseminate” high school curricula.

Today, the Texas State Board of Education begins debating social studies curriculum standards that would affect history, government, and economics classes in public schools for the next 10 years.  And naturally, the debate isn’t without controversy.

One of the biggest questions is how much emphasis should be placed on the role of Christianity in history books.  Critics argue that the Board is showing a clear Christian bias, including appointing conservative Christian experts to review current standards.

Some of the board-appointed reviewers are picking and choosing certain people and events from history to make an argument that America is a Christian nation, said John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College, a Christian school in Grantham, Pa.

“Students are not learning history. They are learning the facts about the past that suit some larger agenda, a cultural and political agenda,” said Fea, who has been following the Texas curriculum process.

“My best advice would be to respect the historians, respect the voice of historians,” said Fea, “and try to keep politics out of the teaching of history.”

A few observations here:

First, it’s impossible to teach history or government without discussing politics and religion.  Go on, try it.  It can’t be done.  It’s a proven fact that 99% of history involves politics and/or religion to some extent.  The other 1% mainly involves men in funny hats, but even that often is related to politics and religion.

Second, all historians have an agenda.  Don’t be fooled by their stunning good looks, these folks are serious.  And as someone with a History degree, I know of what I speak.  The reality is that history, while comprised of objective facts and statistics, is largely subjective.  What history “is” depends on how the historian interprets those facts and statistics.  So any time an “expert” tells you a history book is completely unbiased, they’re lying.  The bias might not be great, but it’s there.  The critics in Austin simply want to trade a bias that they don’t like for one that they do.

Third, the United States is a Christian nation, so to downplay the role of Christianity in our history is pretty reckless.  Now, when I say the U.S. is a “Christian nation”, what I mean is that Christianity has played a critical role throughout our existence.  Christopher Columbus, the Puritans, the Founding Fathers, the U.S. Constitution, slavery, the Civil War, Manifest Destiny, the Enlightenment, Prohibition, the Civil Rights Movement, abortion, gay rights.  Every single one of these topics was influenced in one way or another by Christianity.

Does that mean we should ignore the role of Judaism, Islam, or other religions in U.S. and world history?  Absolutely not.  But just because you discuss a particular religion in an historical context doesn’t mean you’re promoting it.

Finally, I’m struck by the irony of this debate.  This is the same Board of Education who only 6 months ago voted to eliminate the “strengths and weaknesses” requirement when teaching evolution in science classes, pretty much guaranteeing that evolution will go unquestioned in public schools.  The critics who argue that the Board is being biased with social studies now didn’t seem to mind them being biased with science back then.  I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.

As I said back in January regarding the evolution question, I think students need to be able to do their own research and come to their own conclusions, and they should be free to question and debate as part of the process.  That’s true with science, and it’s just as true with history.

Previously:
Should evolution be debated in public schools?
Bill would protect the grades of students who disagree with evolution
History to be (re)written by the victors?

“History is written by the victors.” — Winston Churchill

Now it looks like it might be rewritten by those who won the 2008 election.

The House of Representatives is expected to pass the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (HR-3221), which, in addition to expanding federal grants and other education initiatives, would allow the Department of Education to get in the business of creating high school curricula, something previously not allowed by federal law.

Section 505 of the bill states (emphasis mine):

(a) Open Online Education- From the amount appropriated to carry out this section, the Secretary is authorized to make competitive grants to, or enter into contracts with, institutions of higher education, philanthropic organizations, and other appropriate entities to develop, evaluate, and disseminate freely-available high-quality online training, high school courses, and postsecondary education courses. Entities receiving funds under this subsection shall ensure that electronic and information technology activities meet the access standards established under section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. 794d).

Yet, under federal law the Department of Education is specifically disallowed from creating or controlling curricula taught in schools (emphasis mine):

(a) Rights of local governments and educational institutions
It is the intention of the Congress in the establishment of the Department to protect the rights of State and local governments and public and private educational institutions in the areas of educational policies and administration of programs and to strengthen and improve the control of such governments and institutions over their own educational programs and policies. The establishment of the Department of Education shall not increase the authority of the Federal Government over education or diminish the responsibility for education which is reserved to the States and the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the States.
(b) Curriculum, administration, and personnel; library resources
No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, over any accrediting agency or association, or over the selection or content of library resources, textbooks, or other instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, except to the extent authorized by law.

By allowing the ED to create high school and other courses, the federal government is specifically infringing upon rights previously reserved for state and local entities.  Exactly what curricula would be “developed” or “disseminated”, of course, remains to be seen.  But parents might want to scrutinize their children’s history books a little closer going forward.

Forget any talk about rationing or “death panels” or whether the government is gonna rifle through your wallet before deciding whether you’re worth saving.  That’s irrelevant.  You want a simple answer as to why ObamaCare is bad for America?

We can’t afford it.

Wednesday night President Obama claimed that his health care plan would (only) cost $900,000,000,000 over 10 years while not increasing budget deficits.

In the words of Congressman Joe Wilson, “You lie!”

The Congressional Budget Office’s initial estimate of the cost of Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care plan estimated that it would cost about $1.3 trillion over 10 years and still leave 37 million people uninsured.  The CBO also noted that the House plan would increase the deficit by $239 billion over that same 10-year time period.  And then from 2019 to 2029, the CBO says, spending would increase by 8% while revenue would only increase by 5%, creating even larger deficits over time.

Further, writes Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan:

The House health-care bill gives a large subsidy to millions of families with incomes up to three times the poverty level (i.e., up to $66,000 now for a family of four) if they buy their insurance through one of the newly created “insurance exchanges,” but not if they get their insurance from their employer. The CBO’s cost estimate understates the number who would receive the subsidy because it ignores the incentive for many firms to drop employer-provided coverage. It also ignores the strong incentive that individuals would have to reduce reportable cash incomes to qualify for higher subsidy rates. The total cost of ObamaCare over the next decade likely would be closer to $2 trillion than to $1 trillion.

The administration’s claim that the health-care plan would be “self-financing” is both false and irrelevant. It is false because it would only be self-financing if one counts a variety of President Obama’s proposed tax increases—and even those would produce much less revenue than is assumed in the budget calculations. The claim is irrelevant because those tax increases have nothing to do with health care and could be used instead to reduce other projected deficits.

(Emphasis mine.)

(Ah, remember the good ol’ days when $700 billion seemed like a lot of money?)

So forget debating about whether the government is gonna kick grandma to the curb because she’s too old to treat or whether the public option covers illegal immigrants.  The simple reality of President Obama’s health care plan is that it is too expensive.

Period.