11 July 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
How California’s Schools
Brought the State to its
Financial Knees [Cato at
Liberty]
JUL 10, 2009 06:02P.M.
As we watch California struggle with a budget deficit larger than the
entire Iranian government’s budget, it’s worth exploring how the
state got there. The biggest contributing factor: a staggering collapse in
educational productivity.
In 1974-75, California spent $1,373 per pupil on k-12 public schooling.
By 2006-07, it was spending $10,937. Adjusting the earlier figure for
inflation (to $5,286 in 2007 dollars), that still represents a more than
doubling in real spending per pupil.
Of course, if California public schools had doubled student achievement
and eliminated dropouts, that might justify their staggering increase in
cost. They haven’t. On the most reliable available measure of state
academic achievement trends, the NAEP, California public school
students have seen their scores go up by about 0.2% per year at the 4th
and 8th grades since state-level data became available in 1990. In other
words, the state’s scores have barely budged from the low position they
have long occupied. As a 2005 RAND paper observes:
California placed 48th out of 50 states on the average NAEP
score across all tests, just above Louisiana and Mississippi…
California’s low scores cannot be accounted for by the high
percentage of minority students. California’s scores for
students from families with similar characteristics are the
lowest in the nation: It ranks 47th out of 47 states when we
compare scores for these students.
California is in budgetary hell because of a massive collapse in the
productivity of its public schools. If the public schools had just
maintained the productivity level they enjoyed in 1974-
75, taxpayers would now be saving $36 billion annually.
That’s $10 billion more than the deficit the state is currently
facing.
It’s not hard to understand why: public schooling is a monopoly. There is
no field within the free enterprise sector of the economy that has had a
similarly horrendous productivity collapse over the past 35 years.
1
California can work its way back to fiscal sanity, and jump-start
educational improvement, by encouraging entrepreneurship in
education via k-12 education tax credits like this one.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Courts Check D.C. Government
— Again. [Cato at Liberty—
Again.]
JUL 10, 2009 04:22P.M.
Last year, the Supreme Court declared the D.C.’s gun control law
unconstitutional (pdf). Now a federal appellate court has
unanimously declared that D.C. police’s aggressive ”Neighborhood
Safety Zone” (NSZ) checkpoint policy is unconstitutional (pdf).
Under the policy, any vehicle entering an area that has been declared a
“Neighborhood Safety Zone” by the city’s police chief can be “stopped for
the purpose of determining whether the driver has a legitimate reason
for entering the NSZ.”
Here’s an excerpt from the appelate court decision:
We further conclude that appellants have sufficiently
demonstrated irreparable injury, particularly in light of their
strong likelihood of success on the merits. … The harm to the
rights of appellants is apparent. It cannot be gainsaid that
citizens have a right to drive upon the public streets of the
District of Columbia or any other city absent a
constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access. As our
discussion of the likelihood of success has demonstrated,
there is no such constitutionally sound bar in the NSZ
checkpoint program. It is apparent that appellants’
constitutional rights are violated. It has long been established
that the loss of constitutional freedoms, “for even minimal
periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable
injury.” …Granted, the District is not currently imposing an
NSZ checkpoint, but it has done so more than once, and the
police chief has expressed her intent to continue to use the
program until a judge stops her.
It’s time for Mayor Adrian Fenty to show Peter Nickles, the Attorney
General of the city, to the door. Too many of his ideas have proven to be
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
misguided and contrary to law.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Yoga Instructors: Enemies of
the State(s) [Cato at Liberty]
JUL 10, 2009 03:02P.M.
The NY Times reports today on various state government efforts to
regulate yoga classes by forcing instructors to obtain a government
license.
I’m not going to get into why government licensing is a pernicious racket
here. Rather, I just want to make a point about the nature of the
mini–Washington DCs currently in charge of laundering Uncle Sam’s so-
called economic “stimulus” money.
From the NYT article:
In March, Michigan gave schools on the list one week to be
certified by the state or cease operations. Virginia’s
cumbersome licensing rules include a $2,500 sign-up fee — a
big hit for modest studios that are often little more than one-
room storefronts.
Lisa Rapp, who owns My Yoga Spirit in Norfolk, Va., said she
had canceled her future classes and was preparing to close
her seven-year-old business this summer. “This caused us to
shut down the studio all together,” Ms. Rapp said. “It’s too
bad, because this community really needs yoga.”
A nice little story to keep in mind the next time you hear some politician
or government apologist claim that the states’ current inability to spend
as they did before the recession is somehow endangering an economic
recovery.
I think what disgusts me the most about this story is the fact that the
yoga “industry” opened itself up for attack by creating an online registry
“to establish teaching standards in an effort to have the industry regulate
itself.” As a friend sarcastically intoned to me in an email, “They tried to
self-regulate and Leviathan just ended up using it to impose regulation.
Brilliant.”
The NYT captures the mentality of these bureaucratic thugs:
The conflict started in January when a Virginia official
directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an
online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the
words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income” in the
process…
“If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you
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11 July 2009
should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a
Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was
the first state official to discover the online registry and use it
to begin regulating yoga teaching.
The bright side is that these yoga instructors are feeling the
government’s boot on their throat and not liking it:
Brette Popper, a co-founder of Yoga City NYC, a Web site that
has closely chronicled licensing developments, said that the
yoga community — described on the site as “a group that
doesn’t even always agree about how to pronounce ‘Om’ ” —
was finally uniting around a common enemy.
(Emphasis mine.)
The NYT quotes one regulation opponent as saying the conflict is about
“bureaucracy versus freedom.” Amen, my friend. I don’t know much
about yoga, and I’m as flexible as steel, but today we lovers of liberty are
all yoga instructors!
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Retiring General Counsel’s
Shocking Admission: The NEA
Is a Union! [Cato at Liberty]
JUL 10, 2009 01:57P.M.
A YouTube video that catches Bob Chanin, retiring general counsel of the
National Education Association, calling right-wing groups ”bastards” for
attacking his soon-to-be-former employer has recently been making the
rounds. Not surprisingly, some right-wingers haven’t been too
happy about Chanin’s retirement speech, not caring for the “bastard”
label. I, however, want to thank Mr. Chanin for his salty valedictory.
Why? First off, because his pugnacious presentation has a certain
Teamsters feel to it, furnishing almost visceral confirmation that the
National Education Association is a labor union pure-and-simple — not
the high-brow “professional employee organization” it bills itself as —
ready to slash tires or do whatever else it thinks necessary to get its way.
But I’m especially grateful because Mr. Chanin all but declares that the
NEA is a power-obsessed, hyper-political union that serves not children,
but adults. Of course, anyone who has followed the NEA knows that —
indeed, its exactly what we should expect considering that it’s the adults
who pay the dues — but it’s a shocking admission from someone so high
in the association, and a reality the public all too often misses.
What follows is my transcription of the speech’s most revelatory section.
Of course, if you would prefer to catch all the inflections, hemming and
hawing, and crowd reactions, you can just watch the video. If you’re
going to do that, either start at the beginning for the whole address
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com 11 July 2009

(obviously) or go to about the 15-minute mark to hit the really revealing inappropriate. To the contrary, these are the goals that guide
stuff. And maybe, when you’re done either reading or watching, send Mr. the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved
Chanin a retirement card with a little thank you note in it. After all, at the expense of due process, employee rights, and collective
giving this honesty-filled speech could very well be the best thing he’s bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay!
ever done for children or the public:
When all is said and done, NEA and its affiliates must never
Why are these conservative and right-wing bastards picking lose sight of the fact that they are unions, and what unions do
on NEA and its affiliates? I will tell you why: It is the price we first and foremost is represent their members.
pay for success. NEA and its affiliates have been singled out
because they are the most effective unions in the United
States. And they are the nation’s leading advocates for public
education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
that these groups find unacceptable….
Death to Power Point! [Cato at
At first glance, some of you may find these attacks troubling.
But you would be wrong. They are, in fact, really a good thing. Liberty]
When I first came to NEA in the early ’60s it had few JUL 10, 2009 01:48P.M.
enemies, and was almost never criticized, attacked, or even
mentioned in the media. This was because no one really gave
a damn about what NEA did, or what NEA said. It was the
proverbial sleeping giant: a conservative, apolitical, do-
nothing organization.

But then, NEA began to change. It embraced collective

bargaining. It supported teacher strikes. It established a
political action committee. It spoke out for affirmative action,
and it defended gay and lesbian rights. What NEA said and
did began to matter. And the more we said and did, the more
we pissed people off. And, in turn, the more enemies we
made.

So the bad news, or depending on your point of view, the

good news, is that NEA and its affiliates will continue to be
attacked by conservative and right-wing groups as long as we
continue to be effective advocates for public education, for
education employees, and for human and civil rights.
And that brings me to my final, and most important point.
Which is why, at least in my opinion, NEA and its affiliates
are such effective advocates. Despite what some among us
would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It
is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because
we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision
of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates
are effective advocates because we have power. And we have
power because there are more than 3.2 million people who
are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues
each year because they believe that we are the unions that can
most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect
their rights and advance their interests as education
employees.
This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates
with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates,
improving teacher quality, and the like are unimportant or
That’s not quite the point of T. X. Hammes’ article in the current Armed
Forces Journal, but it’s pretty close. My familiarity with Power Point has
been much more on the academic than DOD side, but my understanding
is that academics are nothing when compared to Pentagon planners
when it comes to egregious abuse of Power Point. Here’s Hammes:
Before PowerPoint, staffs prepared succinct two- or three-
page summaries of key issues. The decision-maker would
read a paper, have time to think it over and then convene a
meeting with either the full staff or just the experts involved
to discuss the key points of the paper. Of course, the staff
involved in the discussion would also have read the paper and
had time to prepare to discuss the issues. In contrast, today, a
decision-maker sits through a 20-minute PowerPoint
presentation followed by five minutes of discussion and then
is expected to make a decision. Compounding the problem,
often his staff will have received only a five-minute briefing
from the action officer on the way to the presentation and
thus will not be well-prepared to discuss the issues. This
entire process clearly has a toxic effect on staff work and
decision-making.

3
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
The art of slide-ology
Let’s start by examining the impact on staff work. Rather than the
intellectually demanding work of condensing a complex issue to two
pages of clear text, the staff instead works to create 20 to 60 slides. Time
is wasted on deciding which pictures to put on the slides, how to build
complex illustrations, and what bullets should be included. I have even
heard conversations about what font to use and what colors.
Most damaging is the reduction of complex issues to bullet points.
Obviously, bullets are not the same as complete sentences, which require
developing coherent thoughts.
Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues
into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide
building. Slide-ology has become an art in itself, while thinking is often
relegated to producing bullets.
Hammes makes a number of excellent points, including his mention of
my pet peeve, the presenter who places full paragraphs on slides
(preceded, of course, by a bullet, which makes it more Power Point-y),
and then proceeds to read the paragraphs to his audience and calls this
a “briefing.” Of course, humans can read faster than they can speak. One
wonders whether there could be any real value in a brief provided by
someone who does not understand this.
Hammes closes by mentioning that one excuse for using Power Point in
this way is that
senior leaders don’t have time to be pre-briefed on all the
decisions they make. If that is the case, they are involved in
too many decisions. When the default position is that you are
too busy to prepare properly to make a decision, it means you
are making bad decisions.
Sage wisdom. Some of us might argue that there are many indications
that folks in the Pentagon are “involved in too many decisions,” but the
entropic debasement of thought there, enabled by Power Point, is as
good a sign as any.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
More Bad News for the F-22
[Cato at Liberty]
JUL 10, 2009 01:41P.M.
This won’t make the “Buy the Planes that the Pentagon Doesn’t Want”
Caucus happy. (There’s a similar “caucus” in the Senate, too; and 12
governors.)
The Washington Post reports that the F-22 requires
4
11 July 2009
more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the
skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000,
a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces.
How might this bad news be twisted into a good news story by the F-22’s
advocates in industry and on Capitol Hill? Look for the same line of
reasoning that has been used up to this point. If we’re building the F-22
in order to give jobs to workers who might otherwise have to seek out
other opportunities, then maybe the plane’s high operating costs can be
justified on the grounds that it employs more maintenance workers?
J.M. Keynes must be smiling down on us.
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Kennedy’s Incredible
Disappearing, Reappearing
Health Tax [Americans for Tax
Reform]
JUL 10, 2009 01:03P.M.
The regulatory monstrosities of Kennedy’s new health care reform bill
are difficult to fathom. Tucked into the end of Title I of the bill is the
drolly named CLASS Act. The CLASS Act i...
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Friday’s Daily News [The Club
for Growth]
JUL 10, 2009 11:55A.M.
THE DAILY NEWS Senate Weighs Tax on Capital Gains - Ryan
Donmoyer, Bloomberg Democrats Hoodwink the Health Lobby -
Kimberley Strassel, WSJ Climate Change Punted Deeper into Fall - Lisa
Lerer, Politico The Political Psychology of ‘Stimulus’ - David Hirshleifer,
Psychology Today The Case for Doing Nothing - Jeffrey Miron, Real
Clear Politics A Second Stimulus Package? Yikes! - Alan Reynolds,
Forbes Few Economists Favor More Stimulus - Phil Izzo, WSJ The G-8
Economic Suicide Pact - IBD Editorial Jeff Flake vs. the Spending Robots
- Chris Edwards, Cato Institute VIDEO: The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar
Campaign - YouTube
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Death Taxes While You’re Still
Alive? [The Club for Growth]
JUL 10, 2009 10:04A.M.
This is offensive on so many levels. From the Examiner:
The [Maryland Court of Special Appeals] recently upheld
earlier decisions that required a Montgomery County family
to pay $138,518.53 in state inheritance taxes on gifts a rich
uncle started giving a year and half before he died of a heart
attack.
The case highlighted an unusual law in Maryland — and a few
other states — that allows officials to determine that a gift
from the dead was made to avoid taxes, even if made as much
as two years before death.
The family of Dr. Edwin Cohn said he was “a vigorous man
who had no thoughts of death when he made the gifts,”
according to court records.
But the Court of Special Appeals agreed with the Montgomery
County Register of Wills that the octogenarian’s decision to
give $1.2 million to his extended family was made in
“contemplation of death,” and therefore the state’s
inheritance tax applied.
HT: Steve Bartin
FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG FEEDS
Broken Promises - to Voters and
the New York Times [Cato at
Liberty]
JUL 10, 2009 08:50A.M.
“[O]nce it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the
White House will post the bill online,” White House spokesman Nick
Shapiro told New York Times reporter Katherine Seelye for her June 22
story on President Obama’s “Sunlight Before Signing” campaign pledge.
“This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill,
often many more than five days before the president signs it into law.”
5
11 July 2009
The story, titled “White House Changes the Terms of a Campaign Pledge
About Posting Bills Online,” was about the White House effort to walk
back from President Obama’s campaign pledge to post bills he receives
for five days before signing them.
When the New York Times published the story, five bills had been
presented to the president and were awaiting his signature. Four more
were presented to him after the story’s publication. All nine are now law.
And for the life of me, I can’t find where any of them have been posted on
Whitehouse.gov. Surely it was clear to the White House that the five bills
it had and the four soon to come would reach the president’s desk.
I disagree with arguments for releasing President Obama from his pledge
to sign bills only after he has posted them for a full five days after
receiving them. It would have the same effects as the 72-hour hold the
Sunlight Foundation is seeking from Congress — also a welcome
legislative process reform.
And it’s becoming more clear that the five-day promise could be
implemented. At this point, only one of 39 bills that the president has
signed has been posted for five days in advance. (The DTV Delay Act was
actually not held five days after formal presentment, but the White
House posted it after the final version had passed Congress.) Twenty-
three other bills have been held at the White House five days of more
before the President has signed them. They just haven’t been posted.
To repeat, nearly 60% of the legislation coming out of Congress waits
five days for the president’s signature as a matter of course. The only
thing preventing implementation of the president’s promise as to these
bills is the White House’s inexplicable reluctance to do what it says it will
do.
At this point, it’s worth repeating that I can’t find the bills online at
Whitehouse.gov. I have searched the site high and low, even entering
URLs where I would guess they might be. I find it hard to believe that no
bills have been posted under even the modified promise given to the
Times late last month. I will happily post a correction and apology if
there is a corner of Whitehouse.gov that I failed to explore. (If bills are so
deeply hidden, that’s a problem, too, of course.)
I’m fond of joking that the “Sunlight Before Signing” promise is a golden
opportunity because I can write 100 blog posts over the next few years
with out thinking a single original thought. But voters and me are one
thing — if the White House is breaking a promise to the New York
Times, that could be serious!
Public Law Date Presented Date Signed Posted (Linked) for Comment?
Five Days? P.L. 111-2, The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
1/28/2009 1/29/2009 1/29/2009 No P.L. 111-3, The Children’s Health
Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 2/4/2009 2/4/2009
2/1/2009 No P.L. 111-4, The DTV Delay Act 2/9/2009 2/11/2009
2/5/2009 Yes and No P.L. 111-5, The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 2/16/2009 2/17/2009 2/13/2009 No P.L.
111-6, Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2009,
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR lgn@limitedgovernmentnetwork.com 11 July 2009

and for other purposes 3/6/2009 3/6/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-7, A bill to
designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2105
East Cook Street in Springfield, Illinois, as the “Colonel John H. Wilson,
Jr. Post Office Building” 2/26/09 3/9/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-8, The
Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 3/11/2009 3/11/2009 3/6/2009 No
P.L. 111-9, To extend certain immigration programs 3/18/2009
3/20/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-10, To provide for an additional temporary
extension of programs under the Small Business Act and the Small
Business Investment Act of 1958, and for other purposes 3/19/2009
3/20/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-11, The Omnibus Public Land Management
Act of 2009 3/30/2009 3/30/2009 3/30/2009 No P.L. 111-12, The
Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2009 3/24/2009
3/30/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-13, The Generations Invigorating
Volunteerism and Education Act 4/20/2009 4/21/2009 No n/a P.L.
111-14, To designate the United States courthouse under construction at
327 South Church Street, Rockford, Illinois, as the “Stanley J.
Roszkowski United States Courthouse” 4/14/2009 4/23/2009 No n/a
P.L. 111-15, The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief
Program Act of 2009 4/14/2009 4/24/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-16, The
Statutory Time-Periods Technical Amendments Act of 2009 4/30/2009
5/7/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-17, A joint resolution providing for the
appointment of David M. Rubenstein as a citizen regent of the Board of
Regents of the Smithsonian Institution 4/28/2009 5/7/2009 No n/a
P.L. 111-18, A bill to repeal section 10(f) of Public Law 93-531, commonly
known as the “Bennett Freeze” 4/28/2009 5/8/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-
19, The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 4/30/2009 5/12/2009
No n/a P.L. 111-20, The Protecting Incentives for the Adoption of
Children with Special Needs Act of 2009 5/5/2009 5/15/2009 No n/a
P.L. 111-21, The FERA 5/19/2009 5/22/2009 No n/a P.L. 111-22, The
Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 5/20/2009 5/22/2009
No n/a P.L. 111-23, The Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of
2009 5/21/2009 5/22/2009 5/14/2009 No P.L. 111-24, The Credit
Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009 5/20/2009 5/22/2009
5/14/2009 No