Gov. Jindal Spanks Teachers Union

With all the attention focused on the recall election in Wisconsin you might have missed this from Reuters. After reading it I just had to smile:

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

The hope obviously is that this policy will be cost neutral - if not favor private schooling by reducing the number of over-compensated public (unionized) teachers needed. Governor Jindal had this to say:

"We are changing the way we deliver education," said Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who muscled the plan through the legislature this spring over fierce objections from Democrats and teachers unions. "We are letting parents decide what's best for their children, not government."

Novel thought there - letting the parents decide rather than government. Now you know this runs counter to all that liberals hold dear and I am amazed that Gov. Jindal got this through the legislature given the power of the teachers union. But it seems that the electorate agreed with Jindal that something - anything - had to be done given Louisiana's education performance is a consistent cellar dweller when it came to national rankings. The latest from ALEC has Louisiana coming in 49th out of 51!
So what does the opposition have to say?:

The Self-Destruction of Entitlements

Here is a report from Shaya Tayefe Mohjer via myway chronicling the desperate plight of Santa Monica College students who are outrageously outraged that their higher education is not free:

Raw video posted on the Internet Tuesday evening showed students chanting "Let us in, let us in" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free."

Community colleges statewide have lost $809 million in state funding over the past three years, causing schools to turn away about 200,000 students and drastically cut the number of classes offered.

Trustee Louise Jaffe said during the meeting that she doesn't believe the students want to listen.

"We spoke for four hours and we weren't understood," she [Louise] said.

Most of the article is about how the meeting had limited seating and some 200 students wanted to attend and got pepper sprayed for their efforts. But what gets me is not so much that these privileged crybabies got pepper sprayed by the drastically outnumbered (not to mention threatened) campus cops; no it's the abject sense of entitlement that has permeated every facet of our lives.

Louise's comment that 'we weren't understood' is telling in the extreme. Of course the trusties weren't understood, in order for that to happen the other side has to take their fingers out of their ears and stop yelling "I can't hear you - I can't hear you - la la la la la."

These children have no interest in why the trustees are cutting back due to lack of funds, they just want to know "where's my free stuff?"

Look many of these kids have no idea how businesses are run (and yes public universities are businesses albeit non-profit). More importantly they (and to a large extent the country) have no idea how entitlements should work.

For their benefit lets review how it should work. First society decide that some entitlement will ultimately be for the public good and therefore should be paid for by the state (i.e. taxpayers). If enough elected officials believe this to be true then the entitlement is pushed through the legislative process and volia we got somebody on the dole good bad or indifferent.

But here's the tricky part. What ultimately happens (and has for the past 70 years) we get what is called 'Entitlement Creep'. This is where an entitlement is put into place to serve a limited number of recipients. What will happen over time though is those who are just outside the requirement to receive the entitlement complain that they should get it too.

So those wily politicians always looking for the next vote takes up the charge and changes the requirements of the program to include these likely voters poor folks. The problem is that the original entitlement program was not budgeted to take on these new recipients. So, one of two things will happen: 1) raise taxes to cover the shortfall or 2) borrow to cover it.

Now if everyone still agrees that the said entitlement was still worth it to society then the first option is the way to go simply raise taxes. But more times than not, people just don't want their taxes raised. Weird huh?

So what's a corrupt hard working politician to do? He has promised these new entitlements but can't pay for it because those unenlightened taxpayers just don't understand how badly he needs the votes. Is he stymied? 

Well no silly, he simply borrows to pay for it thereby increasing the public debt. Thus the more ever-expanding entitlements the more ever-expanding debt. And over the years (just like in my Aunt Mable's attic) stuff starts to pile up and you end up with unfunded entitlements all over the place and the state has to borrow more and more just to keep pace.

So fast forward to today and we find that we have raised a bunch of self-centered, ahem, young adults who have been given everything on a silver platter their entire life. They've never been told no. We've raised a bunch of chronic complainers where no matter what they get it is never enough.

The real tragedy here is that if the students miraculously get what they want they will have effectively destroyed higher education in California. Why? Same reason O-Care will destroy health care. So called 'Free' education will inherently increase demand (econ 101 price goes down demand goes up). With increase demand and no efficient increase in supply will cause shortages and limit services.

The lesson here? Entitlements without limits will ultimately destroy itself and collaterally everything around it.

College Degree: Bad bet for taxpayers?

OK - I got a great investment opportunity for you. Sshh - don't tell anybody, I'm gonna let you in on the ground floor. Here it is. You invest $1 trillion and get absolutely nothing in return. I know - I know sounds like a deal huh?

If you think that is a bad investment keep reading because that is exactly what we are about to see when the student loan bubble bursts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came out with a study suggesting that student debt has hit $1 Trillion. Wow That's a lot of scratch, we must have the most educated folks in the world if we've spent that much on college education. But wait here are a few other facts via College Board Advocacy & Policy Center:

• It takes about 5 years to earn a degree
  
• Only 57% earn a degree within 6 years
  
• Of those who earn a degree most are in useless disciplines
  

OK so after 5 to 6 years you graduate with a Women's or African Studies degree, spending 10's of thousand (public university) 100's of thousand (private university) along the way, and once you are out you can't understand why no one will hire you.

Wait a minute at this point I want to show you something:

That's my shocked face!

The way we look at a college education this day is wildly distorted. From birth we were trained to think that 1) we had to go to college or we would be shoveling shit in the pig sty 2) Follow your heart and you will succeed 3) everybody else is doing it so you have to as well.

Unfortunately there is no market rationalization in the decision process. Nobody told you that if you spend a fortune getting a Fashion Design degree from Notre Dame that there is a 99.9% chance you will be waiting tables after graduation and owe $300,000. No one said to the prospective Library Science major that there are enough Library Science graduates each year to staff every single library in the world twice over.

My early morning shocked face!

So ultimately what this means is that consumers have borrowed $1 trillion dollars (most from taxpayers) betting it on future revenue in Fashion Design, Women's Studies, African Studies, Library Sciences etc. If my broker came to me with this proposition as a long-term investment I'd fire him. But unfortunately that's what we are stuck with thanks again to the wisdom of our elected officials who consistently make unbelievably bad decisions with our money.

How do we fix this? We have to make the prospective graduate and the university pay the price for stupid decisions. If someone chooses to get a degree that is perfectly worthless or the university offers a degree that is perfectly worthless then the taxpayers have the right to NOT fund it. If someone decide to get a degree in something worthwhile then we can talk. What ticks me off is the fact that the folks funding this boondoggle (taxpayers) don't have a say.

Put another way, if my daughter came to me and said she got accepted to Stanford and she was majoring in Women's studies I'd say good luck with that. If she wants me to pay it is incumbent upon her to show me what I will get for my investment. If it's waiting tables after 4 years I would just have to turn that one down.

Holy Cow George Washington was not Gay

When I heard that Jerry Brown signed a law mandating gay education, I simply shook my head and dismissed it, thinking there goes those dysfunctional juveniles in Sacramento, screaming for attention again, like a spoiled three year old. My guess is that the mentally unstable CA state legislature were feeling that the rest of the country hasn't shown them enough attention lately. So they decided to poop in their pants again to garner our attention. But then I thought it over and decided that if their goal is to demonstrate all the great achievements by gays in history, and force it down the throats of the citizenry, then, I thought, maybe that can work both ways. Below is a short bio of George Washington (ed. Note: lifted shamelessly form Wikipedia) see if you can spot the changes I made (hint: it's the stuff in 'Bold' print).

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] – December 14, 1799) was the dominant heterosexual, God fearing, military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory, with God's help, over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as a heterosexual commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775–1783, and he presided heterosexually over the writing of the Constitution in 1787. The unanimous choice to serve as the first heterosexual President of the United States (1789–1797), Washington, who went to church every Sunday, presided over the creation of a strong, well-financed national government, based on Judeo-Christian values, that stayed neutral in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion and won acceptance among Americans of all types including heterosexuals of all walks of life. His leadership style established many forms and rituals of government that have been used ever since, such as using a cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address and being heterosexual. Washington is universally regarded as the heterosexual "Father of his country".

My point above is to demonstrate that regardless of GW's sexual orientation, he was a pretty impressive fellow. My guess is that even if he was gay and still did all that stuff he'd still be on the $1 bill. So why in the wide-wide-wide-world-of-sports do the youngster's in California need to know the sexual orientation of the people they study? Next the idiots will pass a law for Islamic Education praising all the great people from history who were Muslim.