Don't be fooled by Obama's 'moderation'

The mass media have been filled with news of the pending policies and appointments of President-elect Barack Obama, particularly the signs that his administration will be more ‘moderate’ than many on both the left and the right expected. The leftists are restraining their rage and the conservatives are breathing a sigh of relief. Don’t believe it. While it is true that the responsibilities of governing can be sobering for even the most ideological of presidents, they can be overcome in time. And while it is also true that “personnel is policy” to a considerable degree, even the old Clinton stalwarts that Obama has selected for the cabinet-level positions serve only at the president’s pleasure.

“Rule will show a man,” the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote 2300 years ago, and it always does. Obama’s strength has always been rhetoric, and his two-year quest for the presidency revealed that he is not too shabby at campaign management and organization. But making life and death decisions for the sake of the American polity is a whole different matter.

Those of us who recall the presidencies of the two previous Democrats find more similarities than differences. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton won over the national media to their cause, taking office on a wave of enthusiasm. They, too, had the advantage of their fellow Democrats controlling Congress. And they also made impressive cabinet-level appointments.

But both Carter and Clinton had failed administrations. I don’t mean failure in the narrow sense of failing to achieve their goals, which in fact they did in some cases. I mean in the more profound sense that their ideas for improving the country were demonstrably mistaken.

Carter was elected in 1976 on a vague promise of restoring the trust of the American people after the defeat in Vietnam and the trauma of the Watergate scandal. That got him into the Oval Office but didn’t restrain him from bestowing unconditional amnesty on Vietnam-era draft dodgers (like Bill Clinton), calling for austerity rather than production to deal with the 1970s energy crisis, failing to restrain spending and raising the payroll tax on social security, cutting the defense budget, abandoning America’s allies in Central America and the Middle East, and failing to rescue 58 Americans held hostage by Iran.

As for Clinton, he didn’t merely admit, like Carter had, that he had lusted for other women but actually had affairs with several women while “stand by your man” Hillary vouched for him before the adoring cameras of CBS. The most notable slogan of his 1992 campaign was “It’s the economy, stupid,” as if the challenges facing our nation abroad could be wished away after Ronald Reagan had won the Cold War.

Clinton had higher priorities, like lifting the ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces, abandoning his promise of a middle-class tax cut (this will soon be repeated), nationalizing health care and, of course, cutting the defense budget.

Congress, after members were given a videotape of gay pride parades, defaulted to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but continued with a policy of unrestrained domestic spending. Not surprisingly, Clinton asked for an income tax rate increase, which passed Congress by a narrow margin. Then there was the “Hillary care” takeover of the health sector that went down in flames even without a vote. Islamist terrorism was merely a legal question.

Obama has proposed new federal spending of nearly one trillion dollars, huge cuts (again) in the defense budget and abandoning our allies in Central America and the Middle East (again), while signaling a desire to “transform” this country into a kind of model project of “progressive” reform. However he couches his proposals in reassuring terms such as “stimulating the economy” or “restoring America’s prestige abroad,” you can be sure that taxes will go up and America’s defenses will go down.

Obama’s studied pose as a moderate actually is the personification of the academic habits he acquired in elite colleges and universities where professors typically affect a detached approach which only obscures a radical impatience with the supposed inequities of flawed human institutions.

The professorial class sees America as a racist, imperialist, oligarchic, sexist and homophobic regime that is indifferent, if not hostile, to the needs of other nations and peoples and needs the stern corrective of impoverishment and impotence. The Constitution places obstacles like separation of powers, bicameralism, judicial independence, freedom of speech and press, and private ownership in the way of progressive enthusiasms. Sooner or later, however, Obama’s contempt for the Constitution will become clear.

ABOUT THE WRITER Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause”  (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.

We, the people, should control commerce

The hearts of progressives everywhere are racing as they contemplate the delightful prospect of a federal replay of the New Deal and Great Society, those overrated nostrums intended to solve major economic problems which they only made worse. In less than two months the sainted Obama Administration will take power, already in transition promising to stimulate our commerce with massive public works projects (including unprofitable and inefficient "green" energy) and doubtless more bailouts of companies "too big to fail." Preference will be given, of course, to those saddled with huge costs imposed by federal mandates, with expensive union pensions, "job banks" (money for not working) and top wages.

Hint: The initials are GMC, FMC And CMC.

The late great economist Henry Hazlitt, author of the remarkable volume, "Economics in One Lesson," advised economic policy makers to look not just at the immediate consequences of a given policy but the long-term consequences as well. Actually, one does not have to have a very long attention span to notice that the first bailouts of the credit markets have begotten still more in any industry or business whose bottom line is in trouble. This took only days and weeks, not years, to become evident.

A still longer term consequence has to do with how Americans view their commerce. Is it a multitude of transactions between willing buyers and willing sellers? Or is it a single entity waiting for the expert guidance of politicians to maximize the payoff to those most deserving of consideration, which always means the influential and the powerful?

A thoughtful article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year debunked the false notion that there is such a thing as "the economy." When one considers the billions (yes, billions) of people who are buying and selling every day, 365 days a year, in a multitude of different markets and a great variety of ways, it leads the prudent person to scale down massive expectations. Commerce cannot be saved by government policy that intervenes on behalf of those not benefitting enough–whoever they are, whatever their resources.

Many who take this sober view of the possibilities of controlling the marketplace by political action consider themselves exponents of what has been called "laissez-faire" economics. Far from seriously quarreling with this point of view, I only hasten to mention that the United States Constitution authorizes Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes."

Government, with its power to tax and spend, will always be the greatest single influence on commerce, particularly in this era of Big Government. For decades federal spending has accounted for about a fifth to a fourth of the nation’s total, not to mention that of 50 state governments and thousands of local jurisdictions.

Prominent economists of the past such as John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith argued that, given the massive influence government had even before the New Deal dwarfed all previous federal spending, it should intervene on behalf of socially desirable objectives, such as reducing unemployment, raising wages and redistributing wealth.

But government by nature is not a commercial enterprise. It does not compete in a free marketplace. It depends upon forcible collection of taxes and other revenues in order to ensure the performance of its basic functions, viz., insuring our safety inside and outside our borders and administering justice, civil and criminal.

Republican government was designed to be impartial among the many (fortunately) competing interests of our people. To regulate is to "control or direct according to rule, principle, or law." Rules, principles and laws are no respecters of persons. The object is the common good, not the good of favored groups.

Of course, this republican restraint is more easily advocated than practiced. But we Americans have been governed by principle to an extraordinary degree, and for that reason the majority of us still believe that the purpose of government is not to reward indolence or failure but to promote enterprise and provide no more than a ground floor for victims of circumstances beyond their control.

But as we are tempted once again to consent to massive controls over our commerce, here and abroad, let us remember, as Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem."

Everybody wants some

Nearly five decades after John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to ask what they could do for their country, the new national sentiment seems to be, “Ask what your country can do for you.” In fact, it could have been an ’08 election slogan. How many times did we hear jubilant Obama supporters exclaim how the government was going to pay their mortgage and buy them gas? Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones hoping to get a pocket full of newly minted change.

Unexpected voices have joined the entitlement choir. It isn’t just the grievance industry who wants politicians to redistribute the wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not. Middle class families and businesses of all stripes have come to feel entitled to other people’s money. They may criticize big government in the abstract but fiercely defend their government loan, farm subsidy, business incentive or government program. To borrow a line from Van Halen, “everybody wants some/ I want some too/ Everybody wants some!/ Baby, how 'bout you?”

The real legacy of the bipartisan accord between liberals and big government Republicans is not the $10 trillion national debt levied on the next generation, but the spread of government dependency to the formerly self-reliant.

Even the once tough pioneer-spirited state of Colorado has been seduced by Washington largesse. Only days after the election, several Colorado business leaders told the Rocky Mountain News how they would like the new president to spread the wealth around. Their Christmas list includes funding for individual homebuyers, money for the state, health care for their employees and, of course, subsidies for their industries. It reads like a conversation between Orren Boyle and Wesley Mouch of Atlas Shrugged.

They are not the only ones. After a $1 trillion bank and Wall Street bailout, Congress is talking about bailing out automakers and sending cash to the states. In the new state stimulus package, Congressman Ed Perlmutter is hoping for energy sector giveaways. Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Congressman-Elect Mike Coffman want cash for infrastructure. Of those interviewed by the Rocky Mountain News, only Rep. Doug Lamborn seems to understand that “giving aid to states and their taxpayers at the expense of placing an equal burden upon federal taxpayers” is a bad choice.

“There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do,” observed Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman. The government cannot produce jobs or wealth out of a hat. To give to some through handouts, bailouts, subsidies, and grants, it must take from others. The government burdens entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers, the true engines of a vibrant, free economy, through taxation and regulation and further weakens the dollar through debt spending.

Anyone who lived through the 1970's saw firsthand what government intervention can do. Nevertheless, a new poll shows 72 percent of Americans are looking to the new president to revive the economy. Some 44 percent of Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in this false hope. I’d be willing to bet that a significant percentage of these Americans expect to get a check, a program, a subsidy, or an incentive for themselves, their business or organization.

Proponents of limited government should be worried. We’re counting on the predictable failure of liberal government policies to pave the way for a conservative comeback like they did in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. There is a worrisome difference between then and now, however. Americans nodded when Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Since then too many people have come to see government as their source of hope and have no qualms with being its object of charity. Is America already so far down the road to serfdom that we're forgetting what it was like to be free?

Krista Kafer is a Denver-based education consultant, frequent cohost on Backbone Radio, and regular columnist for Face the State.com, from which this is reprinted by permission.

The real Ayers threat

I've been researching a piece on the Ayers connection, so was glad when Palin started focusing on Obama's relationship with this "unrepentant domestic terrorist", and have, like many in the conservative blogosphere focused my own blog often on Obama's work with Ayers at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I'm glad that the mainstream media is finally being forced into addressing the issue -- even as they continue to whitewash the issue in their determination to make Obama president. But in looking deeper into the Ayers connection, I realize that part of the story has not been effectively told -- and that is the practical impact that Ayers will have on the education policy of an Obama presidency. The most significant aspect is a focus on "education debt" -- essentially paying reparations to minorities for the "history of oppression" perpetrated by Whites. This is a cornerstone of Bill Ayers' education reform program, and is also a key element in the race-based education philosophy of Linda Darling-Hammond -- a Professor of Education at Stanford, Obama's primary education adviser and prospective Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.

Here's part of what I found -- excerpted from my piece entitled "Reading, Writing and Radicalism": The radical orientation of Ayers as an “educational reformist” should be well known, as he has written more than a dozen books on the subject and has been a leading educational scholar and advisor in Chicago for the past two decades. Ayers was recently elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association -- the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. His work with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has been highly emphasized by the Obama campaign as a form of “legitimization”, and Daley was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying “People make mistakes. You judge people by their whole life”. Daley’s view is likely based on a politician’s appreciation for Ayers’ role in doling out $100 million in grants within the city during the 1990s rather than any deep analysis of Ayers’ political or educational views – none of which have changed since the 1960s. Ayers continues to describe himself as a “radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist”, and has written that he believes “teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression”. He sees teaching as a natural extension of the quest for social justice – which he feels requires a revolution in the capitalist economic, political and education system. In a speech given in November, 2006 before Hugo Chavez and the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, Ayers said the following:

As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion! It is in this context that the Obama-Ayers relationship should be viewed. While the Ayers’ terrorist connections are significant retrospectively, his education goals that were actively endorsed and sponsored by Barack Obama are prospectively even more important.

And this is where things get interesting. While it is obvious that Ayers will not have a formal role in an Obama administration, it is equally obvious that Obama’s experience with Ayers and the CAC will animate his education policy as president. The Obama Campaign’s primary education adviser is Linda Darling-Hammond, a Professor of Education at Stanford University, and well-known expert in school design and teacher training. Hammond has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education in an Obama administration, has been a vocal supporter of traditional teacher certification programs, current union control of public education and opposes charter school programs. She also has been a vocal critic of the implementation of the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. More importantly, she is an advocate of a race-based paradigm for education that fully embraces the concept of “education debt” – a form of reparations for generations of racial bias perpetrated by White America. Hammond argued forcefully last year in the liberal magazine The Nation, for example, the importance of “pay(ing) off the educational debt to disadvantaged students that has accrued over centuries of unequal access to quality education.” The concept of education debt is an idea laid out in 2006 by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then-president of the American Education Research Association and actively supported by Ayers. Ayers wrote himself in January of 2008 on his website the following:

The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white…the monster in the room: white supremacy. Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans…transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up. Further, the long-standing professional relationship between Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings – and thus Barack Obama -- is well established. As legal analyst Steve Diamond writes at No Quarter, a chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called “A Light in Dark Times”. In addition, a chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called “Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader”. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book “To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher” and Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of “City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row” just published. All have been consistent in support of a radical education reform program.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s piece in The Nation is an excellent illumination of what may underscore education policy under a President Obama. She makes abundantly clear that she supports the notion of education reparations and that this should be paid in part by a wholesale revamping of NCLB to focus on more on investment and less on testing – modifications that the Obama Campaign’s education platform also supports . She calls for a “New paradigm for national education policy…guided by dual commitments to support meaningful learning on the part of students, teachers and schools; and to pay off the educational debt, making it possible for all students to benefit from more productive schools.” This is education code-speak for vast sums of money to be poured into minority schools and community programs to atone for past sins.

The Ayers-Hammond approach to education debt has been essentially supported by Barack Obama on the campaign trail. In fact, Obama has spoken repeatedly about the need for reparations to make amends for the past oppression of minorities. On “Meet the Press” in July he said:

The biggest problem that we have in terms of race relations, I think, is dealing with the legacy of past discrimination which has resulted in extreme disparities in terms of poverty, in terms of wealth and in terms of income…And that involves investing in early childhood education, fixing the schools in those communities, being willing to work in terms of job retraining. And those are serious investments.Obama’s education platform as outlined at his campaign website is full of community-focused programs that will be ripe targets for massive “reparation” investments in a reformulated NCLB. His K-12 Education Fact Sheet discusses at length the expansion of Head Start programs, universal preschool and includes “enlisting parents and communities to support teaching and learning”, including “school-family contracts” and a massive school redesign project that includes increased funding for teacher recruitment and retention. It is a blueprint taken almost whole-cloth from one written by Darling-Hammond that calls for a “Marshall Plan” for teaching and the institution of a more authoritarian structure for driving curriculum development, testing and investment. Like Ayers’ own admiration of Venezuela’s centralized educational dictatorship, Darling-Hammond has expressed support for countries such as Singapore that have instituted highly structured systems that are the antithesis of school choice – signaling what will certainly be a strong emphasis on the unionized public education system in the U.S. under an Obama administration.

The real impact of the Obama-Ayers relationship is not in Ayers’ radical past but rather in his radical present. The influence that Ayers’ has had on Obama’s view of education during his time at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge can be seen in his appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as his primary education advisor, and signals what is certain to be radical reform at the core of Obama’s education policy as president. This will include more investment into the current public school monopoly at the expense of free market solutions like vouchers and charter schools, and a more aggressive social change agenda that will result in greater control by unions and community organizations – all orthodox elements of the William Ayers radical agenda.

Only markets can rescue schools

Editor: If you thought the government schools only turned out collectivist-minded clones, think again. Contributor Jimmy Sengenberger of Centennial, Colorado, a 2008 honors graduate of Grandview High School who's now at Regis University and a national leader in the Liberty Day national movement, proves otherwise in this diagnosis of the educratic system he recently escaped from. A Lesson Plan for American Education

The United States of America is in the midst of a dire situation. Across the country public schools are failing, and attempts by the federal government to remedy the situation only serve to worsen it.

A 2004 study orchestrated by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found that only 32 percent of high school graduates had the qualifications to attend a four-year college.

The knee-jerk reaction when it comes to education is to either throw more money at it or cede more power to the federal government. But throwing money at the problem has proved itself never to be the solution. According to ABC News' John Stossel, increases in education spending have surpassed a rate of 100 percent since 1971, yet graduation rates and achievement scores have remained stagnant.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) expanded the range of the federal government in matters of education to record-breaking levels. However, the federal government failed to fund the mandates, or new requirements that the states had to meet, of its own program. This consequently resulted in increased strain on the states, which had to reach into their own pockets to fund the federal program.

The role of the federal government, however, is not to run a national school board. Nowhere in the Constitution is it granted authority over education or does the word education even appear. The Department of Education (DE) itself was not established until 1979, and since then its power has expanded to epic proportions.

Time and again micromanagement of education proves to cause problems, not solve them. The farther away the decision-makers are from those that are actually affected by education, the worse the system is. Education needs to be tailored to fit the needs of the students and the wishes of the parents, not government bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

Education requires fundamental reform, starting with the repeal of NCLB and a substantial shrinkage in the mandates and power of the DE. The federal government should play a minimal role in the system, doing little more than ensuring that when a student changes states his or her grade level is the same, establishing the most basic of standards and providing grants to the states to aid them in enacting their own plans.

When a monopoly exists, competition and innovation are stifled, and the quality of the product or service goes down. American education is a government monopoly; each state should take a lesson from the free-market playbook that has made America the economic powerhouse that it is and enact reforms which spur competition.

As a result of a lack of contrariety between schools, the quality of the service is bound to go down, and innovative styles of education are less likely to emerge. Therefore, it is essential that competition become the foundation of our nation's education system.

Instead of funds being allocated to the schools based upon the number of students they have, the money should be attached to each individual student, a policy successfully instituted in Belgium. Whatever school a student goes to, the money follows. Schools will then have to provide higher-quality services in order to remain competitive, as with a university, or else they will no longer attract students and consequently be unable to sustain themselves.

Many argue, however, that such a free-market system would expand the disparity between schools of higher and lower quality, like the gap between the rich and poor, further destabilizing the parity of education.

The free-market itself, however, does not create this discrepancy; it is, rather, the result of when a given business provides a higher-quality service at a lower cost that beats out the competition. If a school establishes itself as a source of higher-caliber learning, it is only a positive measure of the success of its programs. There will naturally be a progression in favor of those schools superior to the others, but that is the point: opening up the system to spur an increase in quality. And there can always be flexibility in the system to give further aid to those still-failing public schools.

Education is a drastically important issue which requires fundamental reform to improve. Without a good education, a child's future has the potential for ruin. First returning power to the states and then spurring competition between schools is the path to a better system.