This is going to suck all the air out of the news for a while, and I’m predicting it will cause several heads to explode on both “sides” of American politics, let alone the impact it will have on the Deep State bureaucrats who think they are above the law.
The US constitution is 4,440 words long. It is the shortest constitution in the world and the oldest still in use.
Unfortunately, the Constitution was not quite enough, so over the years, we added a few more laws. By 1925, all of the country’s laws fit in a book 7 inches thick–much more impressive than that flimsy old Constitution. Later came the IRS tax code. It is around 4 million words, but no one really knows for sure because it gets longer every year. It is now longer than the Bible (788,000 words), War and Peace (587,000 words), and the complete works of Shakespeare (884,000 words)–combined.
Not bad, but still not quite enough. Obamacare added another 387 thousand words and its regulations another 11 million words. It is important to remember that laws include both statutes and regulations. The regulations are often much longer than the law (statute) itself. I tried and failed to find a word count for all US laws, including federal, state, and local. I failed because it turns out there are so many of them, no one knows how many there really are. A rough guess is that there are probably around 100 million words total in all the country’s laws.
Now we’re getting somewhere. A Roman orator named Cicero famously said “more laws, less justice.” But those were ancient times. Things are completely different today. The record of history clearly shows that as laws grow more numerous and complex, corruption and crime decrease. This is especially true for vice laws which have successfully eradicated prostitution and drugs. And with no unintended consequences whatsoever.
You see, with every law we pass, we inch ever closer to utopia. That’s why we should be passing as many laws as possible and never, ever repealing them. To repeal even one law is to risk plunging the nation into anarchy. So the next time you hear someone complain about laws, just remember that laws are the only things stopping people from killing and eating each other. Even the laws like the one which banned pinball machines in New York City from 1940 to 1976. Those are the most important of all.
In May 1907, Timothy D. “Big Tim” Sullivan, a key leader in the powerful Tammany Democratic organization in New York City, spoke to a reporter from the New York Herald. “Help your neighbor, but keep your nose out of his affairs,” said Big Tim, seemingly libertarian-ly.
Timothy Sullivan
The former New York state legislator, who had recently resigned from Congress but not from his role as Tammany power-broker, wasn’t actually endorsing libertarianism. He was talking about his no-questions-asked policy of distributing charity to the poor who lived in the Bowery district – poor people whom the Democrats relied on to get elected and re-elected. Sullivan held an annual daylong summer extravaganza of food and entertainment for grateful voters and their families, and an annual Christmas dinner, too, plus clothing giveaways. He literally bailed out people who got in legal trouble, and helped job-seekers get employed in government or the private sector.
A businessman who had ownership interests in saloons and theaters, Sullivan probably chipped in some of his own money for his charitable efforts. But he didn’t have to rely solely on the contents of his own pocketbook. Sullivan took a “regulate and tax” approach to gambling, liquor, and other kinds of vice – if by “tax” you mean payoffs to himself and his friends, plus help for his poor constituents.
Often charged with being “King of the Underworld,” Sullivan denied it. He particularly denied shaking down prostitutes. At one point, in order to forcibly, as it were, rebut the allegations, Sullivan’s people raided some brothels and beat up some pimps.
Sullivan was even more enthusiastic about practicing violence against Republican poll-watchers. To take one example: when political reformer William Travers Jerome in 1901 threatened to employ poll watchers in Sullivan’s territory, Big Tim told the press: “If Jerome brings down a lot of football playing, hair-mattressed college athletes to run the polls by force, I will say now that there won’t be enough ambulances in New York to carry them away.”
And if Big Tim had to recruit from the criminal underworld to accomplish his dirty work, he would do so. As Professor Daniel Czitrom put it: “The Sullivan machine occasionally employed rival gangs for strong-arm support at election time, especially during the rare but bruising intra-Tammany primary fights. The largest and most notorious of these were the Jewish Monk Eastman gang and the Italian Paul Kelly Association, whose bitter feuding sometimes exploded into gunfire on Lower East Side streets.”
Shortly after Sullivan gave his comments about keeping one’s nose out of people’s affairs, a prestigious Quaker school in Washington, D. C., held its graduation ceremonies. Friends School, as it was known, was presided over by the husband-and-wife team of Thomas and Frances Sidwell, after whom the school would later be renamed. The graduates were to be addressed by a very important, albeit non-Quaker figure: President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son went to the school (Roosevelt, incidentally, was an old adversary of Sullivan’s).
While waiting for Roosevelt and his wife to arrive, the graduation crowd listened to a Friends School alumnus and Harvard graduate, who had studied in Berlin and Vienna to be a professional violinist and now shared his talent with the audience with solos by Vieuxtemps, Elgar, and Bazzini.
The violinist, Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, was from a Southern family as distinguished as his name sounded. His doctor-father had financed his education and was probably relieved that Fitzhugh seemed to have settled down to a regular job. Fitzhugh’s sometimes strange and disturbing behavior made him unpleasant to have around the family home.
President Roosevelt arrived and gave his speech. Goldsborough remained during the speech, as we know from a photograph of the event showing the violinist standing on the President’s right. A later search of Goldsborough’s notebook showed the violinst describing the Rough Rider as “An example of evolution from Politics to Barbarism,” but despite this, perhaps Goldsborough found something in Roosevelt’s speech worth listening to. Roosevelt gave a version of one of his favorite speeches, “The American Boy” (the graduating class had a handful of girls as well as boys). Roosevelt proclaimed: “When a boy grows up, I want him to be of such a type that when somebody wrongs him he will feel a good, healthy desire to show the wrongdoers that he can not be wronged with impunity.”
With these not-fully-Quakerish sentiments echoing in their ears, the graduates, the President, and Goldsborough went their separate ways. Goldsborough got work playing first violin for the Pittsburgh Orchestra. He had undeniable musical talent. But he was not a talented poet. This was unfortunate, since Goldsborough insisted on reading his poetry to other members of the orchestra. His colleagues put up with it, until one day a fellow-musician said that Goldsborough’s poetry was terrible. Goldsborough broke his violin over the other musician’s head.
[insert “sax and violins” joke here]
Soon after this, in 1910, Goldsborough left Pittsburgh, explaining everything in a brief note so that nobody would worry: “The Pittsburgh smoke has driven me crazy. You will never see me again.”
David Graham Phillips
On January 23, 1911, around New York City’s Gramercy Park, the novelist David Graham Phillips was taking his regular walk in the high-toned neighborhood. Phillips was a “muckracker,” a term coined by President Roosevelt to describe writers like Phillips who focused on corruptions and abuses in society. Phillips had written several novels denouncing political abuses, and he had also written a novel of manners, The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, mocking the upper crust.
One of the young ladies in the Joshua Craig novel was described as follows: “To her luxurious, sensuous nature every kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove in every way to make it keener.” Someone had recently been bombarding Phillips with letters complaining that this character was a satire on his (the correspondent’s) sister. This was not true, and Phillips had rightly concluded that the letter-writer was a nut, but what Phillips didn’t know was that the letter-writer had taken up lodging nearby in order to stalk Phillips and seek “revenge.”
And now the letter-writer, Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, was coming up to Phillips, shooting the novelist and then himself. Goldsborough died promptly; Phillips died the following day.
Phillips’ murder was quite helpful to a bureaucrat named George P. LeBrun, a gun-control zealot who got together a coalition for a more restrictive firearms law. LeBrun recruited a committee consisting of John D. Rockefeller and other bigshots – the committee called itself the Legislation League for the Conservation of Human Life, of which LeBrun became secretary.
To sponsor the gun law, LeBrun recruited Big Tim Sullivan, who by this time was back in the state Senate. Sullivan, who now represented in the Lower East Side, piously told LeBrun about the need to stop murderous gang rivalry. (Cynics to this day suggest that Sullivan wanted a legal weapon to keep his allies well-armed while disarming his adversaries, but what possible basis can there be for such a supposition?) Sullivan took the floor on behalf of his bill, which would require permits for concealable guns. The legislature voted with Sullivan and the bill became law.
LeBrun credited Phillips’ murder: “Four shots fired by a maniac caused me to become the father of the Sullivan Law…” This law, of course, restricts the arms-bearing rights of perfectly sane people. Unless they have connections, like Big Tim Sullivan’s allies.
The New York Times reported Sullivan’s reassurances: “Senator Sullivan said that householders and business men who desired to keep weapons in their homes and places of business as a measure of protection would not be inconvenienced by the new law.” As reported in the Times, Sullivan was sure of the law’s constitutionality because he had “consulted a Supreme Court Justice [i. e., state trial judge] in preparing it.”
This justice may or may not have been the retired judge – and Tammany ally – Roger A. Pryor, who in an interview with the Times assured the reporter that the law was constitutional, because the state of New York did not have to obey the Second Amendment – “it is settled by uniform adjudication that [the Second Amendment] is a limitation on the authority and power of the Federal Government only….Senator Sullivan is entirely right and his critics are all wrong.”
Judge Pryor had certainly come a long way since that April day in Charleston harbor half a century before, when he and others discussed whether to fire on Fort Sumter…but that is a story for another time.
As for Sullivan, he was elected to Congress again in 1912, but went mad, and died mysteriously in 1913.
Commencement Exercises and President Roosevelt’s Address, May 24, 1907. Friends School, Washington, D.C.
Richard C. Cortner, The Supreme Court and the Second Bill of Rights: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Nationalization of Civil Liberties. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
Daniel Czitrom, “Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889- 1913.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Sep., 1991), pp. 536-558
Friends’ Intelligencer, Sixth month [June] 8, 1907, p. 366.
George P. Le Brun, as told to Edward D. Radin, call me if it’s murder! New York: Bantam, 1965, pp. 69-77.
The seven-meter rigid hull inflatable boat carried us across a light chop on the purple sea. There is something about the Gulf Stream that makes the sea a deep purple. I often stared into the depths wondering how many fish would get a go at me if I was sinking to the sea floor 700 fathoms below. I sat on the sponson, gripping the life line and felt the weight of my body armor and the Berretta on my belt with each bounce of the hull. My preferred job was to be the guy operating the boat. That was why I joined the Coast Guard, after all. I had no desire to be the guy climbing off the small boat and onto the sailboat we were racing toward in front of us a few hundred yards away. In the opposite direction, past the widening V of our small boat’s wake was our ship: a glistening white 110-foot patrol boat with the well known diagonal orange stripe on the bow that parted the light chop with a small splash as it passed through each wave.
The captain had made contact with the sailboat prior to our departing the cutter. He gave them the usual orders, “Sailing vessel off my starboard bow, this is the United States Coast Guard. Muster your crew on deck, maintain heading and speed, and prepare to be boarded”. The USCG has the right to board any US flag vessel on the high seas, as well as any foreign flag vessel within our territorial waters extending out 12 NM. This “right” is written into law. 14 U.S. Code § 89
• (a) The Coast Guard may make inquiries, examinations, inspections, searches, seizures, and arrests upon the high seas and waters over which the United States has jurisdiction, for the prevention, detection, and suppression of violations of laws of the United States.
I knew little of this law when I joined the Coast Guard. The right of the Coast Guard to board a vessel was only briefly covered in a seamanship school I previously attended in hopes of making a career as a sailor. (My life didn’t work out that way.) My only contact with the Coast Guard prior to becoming one of them was being boarded once during a sailboat delivery from Grand Cayman to Venezuela. That trimaran was a UK flagged vessel, but the captain I was working for, a grizzled, wrinkled, weathered old German with an affinity for speedos, gave the Coast Guard permission to board our boat a couple hundred nautical miles south of Jamaica somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.
Having grown up in western Colorado, I had a strong mistrust of authority, as did everyone I grew up with. I think there is something in the water in Colorado. Or at least there used to be. The general attitude was “leave me alone, and I will leave you alone.” The best government was a small government. We grew up with a respect for private property because if you didn’t, there was a good chance you would get shot at. I had learned of the constitution only in a basic way in high school civics classes, but I did know what the 4th amendment was. All that I was part of that day as we raced across a small part of the Florida Straights to board a boat we did not suspect of anything but were going to board, anyway, just because we could, seemed, at least to my simple understanding of the constitution to be, kind of messed up, and at the worst, un-fucking-constitutional.
The boat coxswain matched the sailboat’s speed and came alongside, edging the bow into the hull of the larger boat at an angle to allow us to climb over the wire rope lifelines onto the deck of the sailboat. The owners were polite, but, as usual, annoyed at the intrusion. Standard procedure was to keep the people on board in the cockpit, and search the vessel, “for officer safety”. The training goes: search all “man-sized” spaces to ensure there is nobody else on board that could do you harm and that the vessel was safe i.e. not sinking or about to burst into flame. My supervisor and I went below while the Boarding Officer stayed on deck and went through the owner’s documents and asked questions from a checklist to ensure they had all the required safety equipment. I went forward to the V-berth. My supervisor, the BM2, said, “Close the door to check that closet, and when it’s closed have a good look around”. I closed the door, looked in the closet, the bilge, and then flipped the bird at the door outside of which my BM2 stood. I did not have it in me to search where I should not. This is why I am no longer in law enforcement. It turned out not to be my cup of horse shit.
“Assets” *snicker*
I spent somewhere around 18 months stationed in Key West attached to that patrol boat. Much of it standing watch as we floated dark ship on dead calm nights on the Cal Sal bank under the glow of a magnificent star-filled sky as I stared off into the darkness looking for the smugglers. Many patrols ended with the rescue of rafters fleeing Castro’s Cuba, and I can say the odor of people who have been pickling in salt water for days is something that does not leave a person. We rescued a few boaters in distress and got underway in what was a storm lacking a couple mph of wind speed to make it to hurricane status. We made one big drug bust that was all intel and DEA had been watching the guys for months as they outfitted their boat with a false hull in the Bahamas. The amount of intelligence the federal agencies had filled several binders kept on the bridge with the names of suspect vessels as well as those on watch lists. All in all, I have fond memories, but it all watered the seeds of liberty from my Colorado youth and mistrust of big government and all the eyes watching what we do.
• Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety — each one lying on top of a predecessor — eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late.
14 USC 89 became law in 1949. It was a building block for safety and is the reason “inquiries” are made.
My goal at the time I joined the Coast Guard was to drive boats and do search and rescue. To advance at the rate that were the drivers of said boats, Boatswainsmate, one has to become a Boarding Officer. As I advanced in rank and moved on to my next duty station in Washington state, I got orders from the USCG Maritime Law Enforcement School in Yorktown Virginia. The most important thing I learned there was that the strippers at the clubs in the area can’t actually take their clothes off. What kind of puritan idiocy is that? Hell, they even have proper strippers in Oklahoma for titties sake. I also received lessons in the case law that allows the USCG to continue with what seemed to me to be unconstitutional searches. Those searches have stood up in court time and time again. (I am sure there are those who would comment on this with much more knowledge than I and is why I followed this group of intelligent well-read degenerates across the interwebz. For lessons in liberty and smartassery.) A good breakdown of how 14 USC 89 became law can be found here, written by much smarterer peeples than me.
My experiences in that realm of things I never intended to be a part of all occurred in the early 90’s, when I was young and not nearly as jaded as I am now in my current state of being an irascible middle age jackass. Those were times when the USCG was under the umbrella of the Department of Transportation and fought Amtrak for funds. Now, after 9/11, the Patriot Act, and lord knows what else, they fall under Department of Homeland Security. I fear for what happens on the seas these days, and I wonder what eyes watch us at this very moment.
Trump speech live blog with updates in the article from your intrepid Glibs “staff” and your reactions in the comments.
8:05: Much cheering from a little more than half of the crowd….
8:08: That hair is just ridiculous. (sloopy)
8:10: Starts off condemning hate speech, vandalism and evil. Not bad. (sloopy)
8:11: See? He wants to torch the world! (HM)
8:14: Campaign speech? Ugh. (sloopy)
8:18: Hair is looking’ good tonight, y’all! But where’s The Hat? I demand a close up! (SugarFree)
8:19: HOLY SHIT! This just became “Questions to the Prime Minister”! (HM)
8:19: Who could complain about the lobbying rules? Team Blue, I guess. (sloopy)
8:19: He’s really angling for that Union vote. Clinton shouldn’t have taken them for granted. (sloopy)
8:23: I had no idea I was living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland! (HM)
8:29: Doesn’t look like even the Dems that voted to confirm Gorsuch the last time can get off their hands. Hypocrisy? Or are they lamenting their rubber-stamping some years ago? (sloopy)
8:30 American juche is awesome! Maybe we can get 2 hot Asian chicks to smear VX nerve agent on Trump’s brother-in-law. (HM)
8:35: Two kids are diaper-less and the third has just walked in with an entire chocolate cake in her hands. Shit. (sloopy)
8:39: REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE with something closer to the free market. Yes, please! (sloopy)
8:43: “Across state lines.” About time that got corrected. (sloopy)
8:46: Jesus, fiscally liberal and socially conservative is the worst of both worlds! (HM)
8:48: Wait, so Team Blue likes the arduous FDA approval process that keeps drugs from market that could save lives? Seriously, what the fuck? (sloopy)
8:49: SCHOOL CHOICE!!!!! (sloopy)
8:50: *sigh* No one gives a shit about normal people, Donald. (HM)
8:53: What gets both Republicans and Democrats on their feet? Cop-fellating. (HM)
8:55: He’s gone 55 minutes without saying we need to bomb a specific nation off the face of the earth. Is that a record for a President? (sloopy)
8:56: Aaaaaaand as soon as I say that he talks about pissing a fortune away on military expenditures. (sloopy)
8:59: Amending HM’s comment from 8:53…and Soldier-fellating. (sloopy)
9:04: Somehow Chuck Shumer manages to look worse than normal, like a melted wax figure of himself. (SugarFree)
9:07: Holy shit. Trigger Warning, please. You can’t just flip over to Pelosi like that.
9:13: An entire presidential speech that didn’t ask for support in bombing another sovereign nation. That’s got to be a first so far as I can remember. (sloopy)
Once again a premature curmudgeon yells at clouds. You have been warned.
Always appropriate. -sloopy
When I bought my house the toilet that came with it was too small, to the point of being uncomfortable, and prone to clogging. So when I had a contractor fixing some exterior woodwork (I knew it would need to be done at the time of purchase, so this was not some shock) I inquired about people to replace the toilet. (It was a general contractor, so they had plumbers either on staff or in their contact list). The price quoted was cheap provided I got the actual replacement unit. Fair enough, it would let me pick what I wanted in a replacement.
Except for a proper water volume.
It is illegal to sell a new toilet that uses more than 1.6 gallons per flush. The canned answer I get to the question “Why?” is always “to conserve water”. This annoys me on three counts.
Low flow toilets: scourge of ISIS
Count one – If a toilet clogs I end up cycling it three to four times in the process of clearing. Meaning 4.8 to 5.6 gallons go down the drain. This ends up using more water anyway while wasting my time unclogging the system.
Count two – I live in New York. New York is a literal swamp. Admittedly, one that was drained before the founding of the EPA. It gets more precipitation per annum than Louisiana (one of the random facts I learned in our less than stellar public schools). My house in particular is near the confluence of two rivers. Millions of gallons of water flow past it towards the sea each minute undisturbed. (The Mohawk spits an average of 5,900 cubic feet of water into the Hudson per second. Or 2,651,694.5 gallons per minute. Then add in what’s already in the Hudson from up north…) We have water to spare.
Count three – I get billed by the gallon for my water usage and that amount is doubled to cover sewerage. I am paying for what I use. I should be the arbiter of how much gets to be allocated to what purpose. A rule that was written by econuts living in a desert with no idea how physics works just isn’t appropriate to my circumstance in a swamp.
The only upside of the tale is that innovators will find a way to work around horrible rules until they literally fly in the face of the laws of physics *cough*automobile emissions*cough*. So the new Kohler is actually fairly reliable. But just because there are people smarter than the regulators out there is no excuse for stupid rules to be on the books for stupid excuses.
In this past election, those over 45 strongly favored Trump, while those younger than that cast their ballots for Clinton. Trump’s improbable victory, and the more significant GOP sweep across the country, demonstrated that the much-ballyhooed Millennials simply are not yet sufficiently numerous or united enough to overcome the votes of the older generations.
Yet over time, the millennials —arguably the most progressive generation since the ’30s—could drive our politics not only leftward, but towards an increasingly socialist reality, overturning many of the very things that long have defined American life. This could presage a war of generations over everything from social mores to economics and could well define our politics for the next decade.
And some broad political generalizations ensue about the voting patterns of the existing generations. For the sake of brevity we will skip this and get right to the meat of the article:
Millennials’ defining political trait is their embrace of activist government. Some 54 percent of millennials, notes Pew, favor a larger government, compared to only 39 percent of older generations. One reason: Millennials face the worst economic circumstances of any generation since the Depression, including daunting challenges to home ownership. More than other generations, they have less reason to be enamored with capitalism.
These economic realities, along with the progressive social views, has affected their voting behavior. Millennials have voted decisively Democratic since they started going to the polls, with 60 percent leaning that direction in 2012 and 55 percent last year. They helped push President Obama over the top, and Hillary Clinton got the bulk of their votes last year. But their clear favorite last year was self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, who drew more far millennial votes in the primaries than Clinton and Trump combined.
And Socialism – everyone’s favorite zombie ideology lives on:
Roughly half of Millennials have positive feelings about socialist, twice the rate of the previous generation. Indeed, despite talk about a dictatorial Trump and his deplorables, the Democratic-leaning Millennials are more likely to embrace limits on free speech and are far less committed to constitutional democracy than their elders. Some 40 percent, notes Pew, favor limiting speech deemed offensive to minorities, well above the 27 percent among the Xers, 24 among the boomers, and only 12 percent among silents. They are also far more likely to be dismissive about basic constitutional civil rights, and are even more accepting of a military coup than previous generations.
But fear not there is some hope:
Other factors could slow the lurch to the left. There is a growing interest in third party politics, not so much Green but libertarian; 8 percent of Millennials voted for Third Party candidates, twice the overall rate. Overall, Tufts finds that moderates slightly outpace liberals, although conservatives remain well behind. Millennials, note Winograd and Hais, also dislike “top down” solutions and may favor radical action primarily at the local level and more akin to Scandinavia than Stalinism.
As Millennials grow up, start families, look to buy houses, and, worst of all, start paying taxes, they may shift to the center, much as the Boomers did before them. Redistribution, notes a recent Reason survey, becomes less attractive as incomes grow to $60,000 annually and beyond. This process could push them somewhat right-ward, particularly as they move from the leftist hothouses of the urban core to the more contestable suburbs.
As the old saying goes, read the article for yourself to get all of the details. There is also a warning to the Republican Party, suggesting they abandon socially conservative ideas that offend Millennials.
My analysis: Political generalization are often broad, and many writers assume that the parties are static and will only become fossilized as the next generational wave comes roaring in. And maybe there is a lag in time before the voters trust an ostracized party again, one that I believe the Democrats are going through now, and the Republicans went through after Bush the Second. Of course, Trump’s election may be a political outlier; we shall see how much he upsets the DC apple cart. Based on past history I don’t give him much chance against the Bureaucratic State.
Regarding Millennials – I see some of them drifting rightward as time and their incomes rise. Some may keep their idealism, but reality has a funny way of destroying that. Perhaps this is a chance for libertarians or even the Big-L Libertarian Party? I have little trust in the latter, but some distant hope for the former. We have to find ways to educate, and dare I say, gain some political leverage during this strange Trump intermezzo. It remains to be seen whether that means the slow take-over of the Republican Party, or splitting off on our own. Based on the current two-party dynamic, I’m guessing the first. But if that brand image is forever tainted, then maybe a strong Libertarian party is the way to go.
H.R.610 – To distribute Federal funds for elementary and secondary education in the form of vouchers for eligible students and to repeal a certain rule relating to nutrition standards in schools.
HR 610 is a seemingly dry and dusty bill currently with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce; but HR 610 has the potential to fundamentally re-shape publicly funded education in the US. Previously I covered the “nutrition standards” aka school lunch part of this bill. Now let’s dive in to the delicious libertarian puzzle that is the voucher part of HR 610.
Section 102 repeals the The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. The 1965 act in it’s much-amended form tips the federal education dollars scales towards poor students by net funding poor students at a higher rate than non-poor, which creates perverse incentives failing students.
Repeal of the 1965 act is coupled in Sec 102 (b) with a limitation on the authority of the US Secretary of Education:
The authority of the Secretary under this title is limited to evaluating State applications under section 104 and making payments to States under section 103. The Secretary shall not impose any further requirements on States with respect to elementary and secondary education beyond the requirements of this title.
So, still federal funding of local schools but no more micromanagement. We may fully expect the delicious irony of critics of this carping about the lack of accountability when the consistent position of those critics has been more money, always more money, while the schools continue to fail. Presumably there is some large number of net jobs in in public education whose only function is to collect the figures for the US DoEd so as to keep those block grants coming. Those jobs would suddenly become superfluous, as would the jobs at DoEd to check those figures and approve the block grants.
Section 103 is the real meat of the bill. Currently block grants to schools are awarded according to multiple criteria. At the most basic level is per-child funding to Local Education Agencies (school boards), then the extra poor-kid funding as outlined above, and various other shenanigans. The new legislation would entirely flatten the federal block grant program to proportional per-child funding. True equality.
Section 104 states that to be eligible for block grants that various states must make it lawful for parents of an eligible child to elect to enroll their child in any public or private elementary or secondary school in the State; or to home-school their child. So, a soft mandate on the states, but a mandate the states may avoid by foregoing federal block grants.
Section 105 contains a mandate that states who wish to receive federal block grants must establish a voucher program:
(5) DISTRIBUTION TO PARENTS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—From the amounts allocated under paragraph (3), each local educational agency that receives funds under such paragraph shall distribute a portion of such funds, in an amount equal to the amount described in paragraph (2), to the parents of each eligible child within the local educational agency’s geographical area who elect to send their child to a private school or to home-school their child (as the case may be) and whose child is included in the count of such eligible children under paragraph (1)(A), which amount shall be distributed in a manner so as to ensure that such payments will be used for appropriate educational expenses.
(B) RESERVATION.—A local educational agency described in this paragraph may reserve not more than 1 percent of the funds available for distribution under subparagraph (A) to pay administrative costs associated with carrying out the activities described in such subparagraph.
There you have it. Federal tax dollars going to icky religious schools, objectively evil for-profit schools and slack-jawed fundamentalist home-schoolers. And the act doesn’t say anything about whether those schools must be accredited by anyone. Someone bring the fainting couch.
Treating everyone the same? Sounds suspiciously like A-N-A-R-C-H-Y. Also, triple word score.
There is a one percent rakeoff for local education agencies for administrative purposes which is not unreasonable. The voucher payments are not to be considered as income to the child or his parents. The act also contains the interesting definition: The term “eligible child” means a child aged 5 to 17, inclusive. So, no federally funded Pre-K, and no federal funding for kids who were “held back” for a year or two. Everyone gets thirteen years of federal education block grant money.
But now let’s look at what the act doesn’t do. It doesn’t require the states to setup a voucher program using state funds. Some states may become so cross at Congress that they forego federal grant money altogether rather than pass any money through to competitors or home-schoolers. And the act does not address funding; congress will still budget a line item for those block grants, but hopefully will reduce that amount as states drop off.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where HR 610 currently resides, has twenty two Republican members including Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (NC), Vice Chairman Joe Wilson (SC) and Tea Party star Dave Brat (Virginia). The committee also includes seventeen Democrats. It will be interesting to see if the Republican members really do have the stomach to upset the apple cart. But they have cover for HR 610 which is far less extreme than HR 899 (Massie, KY) which outright eliminates the DoEd.
Hello libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, fellow travelers, and those who just kind of experimented in college but have been curious ever since.
Today we bring up a subject only slightly less contentious among the aforementioned ideological groups than abortion or deep-dish pizza. I am speaking, of course, of intellectual property laws.
Many commenters in the precious few articles we have seen on this issue in our previous lives expressed a desire to rein in the perceived outrages and over-application of IP, without necessarily wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
Texas Tech’s football coach looks like this. I am a huge booster of Texas Tech Football. What I’m saying is that I want to have gay sex with Kliff Kingsbury.
Linked here is a free copy of a book, Against Intellectual Property, that I hope you will take the time to read. The author, Stephan Kinsella, is a critical voice in the current milieu of libertarian, anti-state, anarchist, and minarchist thought, and even when I disagree, I always enjoy his thorough and rigorous logic.
I believe the title tells you where Mr. Kinsella stands on the topic, however, for those of you uncertain either of the practical or ideological underpinnings of IP as it currently exists and why the system should be abolished rather than merely reformed, I hope that you take the time to grapple with the presented material and hone your own thoughts and arguments.
Howard Root, founder and CEO of Vascular Solutions, was found not guilty on federal charges spearheaded by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Yes, that Sally Yates. The actions of the federal government under her control were described by one juror as “nothing short of criminal”.
By the gram? That’s how you know it’s bad for you.
Kerrygold butter, one of the premier dairy products on the market, cannot be sold in Wisconsin. I’m sure there are perfectly legitimate and logical reasons to protecting consumers from a noted dairy established in 1961, and protecting the Wisconsin dairy farm lobbying interests had nothing to do with it.
Daniel Crowninshield was sentenced to 41 months in prison for “unlawfully manufacturing firearms”. Special Agent in Charge Jill A. Snyder, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said that Crowninshield “owned and operated a machine shop where he allowed customers with unknown backgrounds to use his machinery to unlawfully manufacture firearms for profit. That activity posed a very dangerous threat to the safety of our communities.”
The US constitution is 4,440 words long. It is the shortest constitution in the world and the oldest still in use.
H.R.610 – To distribute Federal funds for elementary and secondary education in the form of vouchers for eligible students and to repeal a certain rule relating to nutrition standards in schools.
