Flashpoint

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If I had to describe this editorial about Bob Riley in one word that word would be gushing.  I really don’t think I have ever seen an editorial say so many nice things about a politician without the slightest hint of negativity.  The editorial was written by Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator and it makes me think that the conservative intelligencia is trying hard to lay down the groundwork to coax Riley onto the national scene in 2008.

Here is how Riley’s disastrous largest tax increase in Alabama history was described.

During his first year in office, Mr. Riley pushed an ambitious, complicated tax-reform proposal that was part of a multiyear plan to shift revenues to under-funded departments such as law enforcement while relieving the tax burden on low-income workers. Derided (a bit misleadingly) by opponents as a huge tax increase–although far more people would have enjoyed a tax cut than endured a tax hike under the proposal–the initiative was destroyed in a statewide referendum, receiving only 32.5% of the vote.

Hillyer does a good job of summarizing how Riley crawled out of the dog house.

How, then, did Mr. Riley recover from such political disaster to win re-election so resoundingly? Not just Mr. Riley but editorial writers across the state will readily identify his successes in the “Three Es”: economic development, education and, not least, ethics. Consider the statistics: An unemployment rate that dropped to an astonishingly low (especially for Alabama) 3.3% from 5.3%; school test scores rising, especially in reading proficiency in at-risk schools blessed with the Riley-backed (and nationally copied) Alabama Reading Initiative; and public standards of ethics combined with radically open government records, along with measurable performance standards imposed on every department of state government.

The third E has to be giving Riley a bump in the eyes of the national GOP.  The Republicans in DC lost their job, in part, due to significant ethical lapses.  It should be noted that it is far easier to run an ethical administration when the other party controls the legislature and would love nothing more than investigating any appearances of wrongdoing than when both branches are controlled by one party.  Just ask Don Siegelman.

These accomplishments stand in marked contrast to the record of Mr. Siegelman, who presided over a budget crisis and now stands convicted of bribery and other infractions.

That’s quite a little barb Hillyer decided to toss at Felonious Don.

Hillyer’s closing paragraph:

In his victory speech on election night, Bob Riley put himself on the line by urging the people of the state to “demand a higher level of excellence from state government than you have ever demanded before.” Judging from the election results, Alabamians think that type of excellence already is housed in their governor’s mansion.

I wonder if Mr. Hillyer has a framed oil painting of the guv hanging over his bed?

In New Jersey there are 23 “nonoperating” school districts that have a staff, hold meetings, and collect tax dollars - and they have no students!

TETERBORO, N.J., Nov. 12 — The tiny borough here elects three school board members to keep records and divvy up its $261,887 budget. Yet Teterboro has no schools and only 10 students, who are sent to neighboring districts.

…

If New Jersey’s 615 school districts seem a lot for a small state (New York has 697 and Connecticut 169), nowhere is that more evident than in Teterboro and the 22 other “nonoperating districts.” Essentially, they exist in name only, yet have staffs to schedule board meetings, record the minutes and collect tax dollars to pay tuition and transportation costs for their students.

I don’t know of any such wasteful situations here in Alabama.  Post a comment if you’re paying education taxes for a useless school district.

The GOP has not learned a thing from their thumpin’ at the polls.  Lott is a big time porker and carries with him the baggage of his racially inflammitory comment at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party.

Good job guys!

Are the Dems and GOP having a contest to see who can elect the worst leadership?

As a follow up on a previous post I did on declining math skills in this country here are a couple of charts that speak volumes.  The first chart shows just how far we are trailing other countries, including the Czech Republic, Poland (!) and Hungary.  So much for all those Polish jokes I’ve been learning for years.

Raise your hand if you think the solution is to spend more.

If your hand is up then you are a first-rate product of our government education system.  You may put your hand down now.

This has got to be one of the best marketing campaigns for a blender ever.  Visit the linked site to watch their “unusual” blender demo videos.

My favorite is the one where the guy blends 40 Bic pens.

Who said the following back in 1991 when asked why American troops didn’t invade Iraq and topple the government?

They’d get mired down inside Iraq in a conflict that’s been raging for generations in the interest of trying to dictate who’s going to govern in Iraq. That is not something that we are prepared to see American forces do.

For the US to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as the classic definition of a quagmire.

The answer…

Dick Cheney.

I happened to be listening to the Rush Limbaugh show (not a regular occurrence, mind you) about two weeks ago (just before the election) and he was interviewing President Bush.  The topic of China was brought up and Bush said something that really bothered me.

… Mr. Bush said China should become “a society in which there’s consumers. Because now they’re a society of too many savers”.

“And the reason why they’re saving so much money is because there’s not a pension plan or a legitimate health care system. And so, therefore, people hoard the money they have in anticipating a bad day,” said the president.

“If we can encourage China to become a country of consumers, you can imagine what it would mean for US producers and manufacturers to have access to that market,” he said.

One of the first things that stood out was his rationale for why China’s savings rate is so high, namely that they don’t have “a pension plan,” by which I assume he means a system analogous to our involuntary Social Security Ponzi scheme.  I’ve always had people tell me that we need a Social Security system because we can’t expect people to save their own money for retirement.  I’ll put aside the argument that our government does not exist to protect us from ourselves and simply say that if the communists in China can respond to the lack of a centralized retirement plan by saving money then why couldn’t we?

Just how much is China saving?  Well, when measured against GDP their savings rate “has gone from almost 20 percent of GDP in 1981 to 30 percent in 1988, and currently stands at about 40 percent.”

Much has been made in recent months about the negative savings rate here in the U.S., although that number is calculated a bit differently.  Our savings rate is typically reported as the percentage of disposable income that is saved.  It went negative in the second quarter of 2005 and hasn’t crossed zero since.  A good many people try to rationalize that number by pointing out that things like home equity and education spending, a form of investment, aren’t included, but they are trying to blunt the impact of the bad news.  When measured like the Chinese statistics, our savings rate is about 20% of GDP (it was 15% in 1996 by the way).

I personally feel that excessive consumption in this country is one of our principle vices (I don’t claim to be immune from it).  The data is quite troubling.  Since 1960 personal consumption expenditures have gone from about 60% of GDP up to about 70%.  Even worse, the ratio of household debt to personal disposable income has steadily climbed from 60% to about 120% over the same time period.  Economist Kevin Lansing (previous link) tells us why these trends are a cause for concern:

In coming decades, a growing fraction of U.S. workers will pass their peak earning years and approach retirement. In preparation, aging workers should be building their nest eggs and paying down debt. Instead, many of today’s workers are saving almost nothing and taking on large amounts of adjustable-rate debt with payments programmed to rise with the level of interest rates. Failure to boost saving in the years ahead may lead to some painful adjustments in the future when many of today’s workers could face difficulties maintaining their desired lifestyle in retirement.

What will come of those people?  They will stick their hands out and demand that the federal government support them through a senior welfare program. 

Maybe savings is one area in which we should actually emulate China, rather than attempt to convert them to our bad habits.

Gee, who would have thought that fuzzy math would not work out?

SEATTLE — For the second time in a generation, education officials are rethinking the teaching of math in American schools.

The changes are being driven by students’ lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians’ warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math — critics call it fuzzy math — has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and memorization in favor of allowing children to find their own ways to solve problems.

…

Shalimar Backman, who put pressure on officials here by starting a parents group called Where’s the Math?, remembers the moment she became concerned.

“When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student, was in sixth grade, I realized he had no idea, no idea at all, how to do long division,” Ms. Backman said, “so I went to school and talked to the teacher, who said, ‘We don’t teach long division; it stifles their creativity.’ ”

God forbid we stifle the creativity of our children by making them learn.  I bet policy makers think the solution is more government…

The Bush administration, too, has created a panel to study research on teaching math. It is expected to issue recommendations early next year.

Here in Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire has asked the State Board of Education to develop new math standards by the end of next year to bring teaching in line with international competition, and a year later to choose no more than three curriculums to replace the dozens of teaching methods now in use.

Yep!  That should fix everything.

One technique I heard about the other day is integrating writing assignments into math class.  I think this is a great idea for a couple of reasons.  First, most young people come out of school with no idea how to write technical papers and this will sharpen that essential skill.  Second, writing things down helps ingrain the material in your brain, which is critical for math.  Math should be reflexive.  If you have to think about it then you’re not doing it right.  Writing out the methodology used to solve problems helps shift math from a thought process to a reflex. 

But not too corrupt to serve in Congress.  That’s the message being telegraphed by Dems in what is their first sign of significant infighting - and we’re only one week past the elections.   It looks like presumptive Speaker Pelosi is busy undermining her promise to run “the most ethical Congress in history.”

House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of Rep. John P. Murtha’s bid for House majority leader set off a furor yesterday on Capitol Hill, with critics charging that she is undercutting her pledge to clean up corruption by backing a veteran lawmaker who they say has repeatedly skirted ethical boundaries.

Murtha’s most significant (only?) contender for the majority leader position is Maryland’s Steny ”Slavish” Hoyer.

Backing Murtha isn’t Pelosi’s only strategic blunder thus far.  Pelosi is in a cat fight with Rep. Jane Harmon, who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and has decided to pass her over as chair of that committee.  The next in line?  Alcee Hastings.  Democratic strategist Lawrence O’Donnell describes Hastings pretty well:

No one outside of the Black Caucus would be happy to see Alcee Hastings in a chairmanship. I first saw Alcee Hastings in his impeachment trial in the Senate.

Who knows, maybe Pelosi will come out and endorse William Jefferson for chairman of the Ways and Means Committee!

Update: Kim at Wizbang points out that when Hastings was impeached by the Dem controlled House in 1989, by a vote of 413-3, even Pelosi voted to impeach him.  I guess she thinks that his “time served” in Congress has reformed him.