The Foundry

One component of education reform that often gets overlooked is online or virtual learning. In the August-September 2010 issue of Reason Magazine, Katherine Mangu-Ward notes the following:

During the last 30 years, the per-student cost of K-12 education has more than doubled in real dollars, with no academic improvement to show for it. Meanwhile, everything the Internet touches gets better: listening to music on iTunes, shopping for shoes at Zappos, exchanging photos on Flickr.

Education reformers across the nation are listening. In 2000, only 50,000 students were enrolled in online classes. Today, that number is over 1 million. Julie Young of Florida Virtual School (FLVS) set up a system to offer supplemental courses, not replace the curriculum of the public schools. Mangu-Ward explains: Continue reading...

If the Senate doesn’t ratify New START, proponents of the arms-control agreement fear, then … well, the world will come to end.

The latest warning came from Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that advocates a nuclear weapons-free world. “A delayed ratification with a close vote would be a blow to U.S. leadership around the world,” he told the Associated Press, “People would doubt the president’s ability to negotiate other agreements.”

More pressure to just “sign the treaty so we can purge the world of nuclear weapons” will be fueled by the premiere this week in Washington and New York of “Countdown to Zero,” a documentary on the threat of nuclear weapons. As one reviewer notes, the “film asserts that the United States and Russia, the entities with the most weapons by far, should lead the other nuclear countries toward a total disarmament initiative.” Continue reading...

If Congressman Peter Defazio (D–OR), sponsor of the End the Trade Deficit Act, had grown up in Kansas instead of Massachusetts, he might have learned a valuable lesson from an association called the Kansas Agri-Women.

In 1978, this group started placing billboards across the state proclaiming, “One Kansas farmer feeds 55 people + YOU.” The Agri-Women regularly had to update their billboards as farmers became more productive. Each year, one Kansas farmer could feed more people than he could the year before.

By 1999, the billboards advertised that one Kansas farmer feeds 128 people—plus you. Eventually, rather than continually having to update the billboards as farmers kept getting better at their jobs, the group changed the text to read: “One Kansas farmer feeds more than 128 people.” Continue reading...

An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Robert McDowell, a commissioner of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, warns that a FCC proposal to regulate broadband Internet access could lead to international regulation of the Internet by the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU, a largely autonomous organization that actually predates the United Nations, is the leading U.N. agency for information and communication technology issues.

As McDowell observes, many U.N. member states are opposed to an unregulated Internet and have proposed granting the U.N. oversight of the medium. This possibility threatens the freedom and vitality that has been a large part of the success of the Internet: Continue reading...

Liberals are desperate to bully or chide the rest of the country into accepting massive new taxes to support the recent federal spending surge. Many opponents who resisted the spending on the grounds that it increased the budget deficit are now being called deficit chickens because they oppose the tax hikes needed to pay for all that spending. This is a particularly nauseating development as the charge comes from those whose actions prove they care not one whit about the nation’s finances. Nauseating or not, however, there is no reason to cave to such frail bric-a-bracs.

Even under normal circumstances, at just over 18 percent the federal tax burden is already too high. Opponents of even higher taxes need to keep this in mind, just as they need to remember that the excessive budget deficit for 2010 and in the following years is not the result of a shortfall in revenue but is due instead entirely to an attempt by Obama and friends to increase the size of government substantially and permanently. Whereas federal spending as a share of our economy is typically just above 20 percent, under Obama’s budget it hits 25.1 percent, according to his own numbers, and stays around 23 percent for the balance of the decade. Continue reading...

You can buy a lot of car for $41,000. A BMW. A Mustang GT convertible. Even a Mercedes. Or you could shell out for a brand-spanking-new electric-powered Chevy Volt and do your part to “save the environment.” Government-owned General Motors is counting on the government to encourage you to do the latter.

According to a New York Times report, GM spokesman Greg Martin said in an e-mail:

Policy makers can do their part to speed the market acceptance of these vehicles as part of a much broader energy policy that sends a market/economic signal that places a premium on fuel efficiency. Could a carbon price be a part of such a policy? Yes. As well as consumer tax incentives. Continue reading...

The State Department is sorely upset about July 28 headlines in The Washington Post and The Washington Times about a recent Department report on Russian noncompliance with several existing and past arms control treaties and how the Russian record could derail Senate approval of the new arms control treaty with Russia, which is called New START. It seems, however, that the State Department cannot keep its story straight.

According to a report in Foreign Policy’s online journal The Cable, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller asserts that Russian non-compliance with New START’s predecessor treaty, called simply START, was about minor technical issues. On the other hand, a State Department official speaking off the record is quoted as saying, “As far as State is concerned, cheating in any form would be a huge issue … so it absolutely would be something we would take very seriously.” Continue reading...

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus uses “quack medicine” to describe conservatives’ support for extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Yet she commits her own economic malpractice.

Ms. Marcus asserts that the tax cuts devastated tax revenues by pointing out that “tax revenue fell from 21 percent of GDP in fiscal 2000 to 17.5 percent in 2008. (I’m leaving out the recession-induced plunge, to under 15 percent this year and last.)”

This cherry-picked data is highly misleading. Her starting point (2000) was a year in which revenues reached their post-war record due in part to an untenable stock market bubble. Her end point (2008) occurred during a recession that began in December 2007. To blame that entire revenue  drop on the 2001/2003 tax cuts completely ignores the bursting of the stock market bubble as well as the recession. Continue reading...

The aim of releasing thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war on the WikiLeaks Web site was apparently to undermine American public support for the war. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said he wanted the world to see the “true nature of the war” and equated the WikiLeaks Afghanistan archive with the release of the secret files of the East German police following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But an initial look at a handful of the thousands of released reports reveals no shocking information but rather a mix of both operational battlefield information and unverified spot reporting, the credibility of which is impossible for the average U.S. citizen to determine.

Commentators are essentially using the so-called “Afghanistan War Diaries” to re-emphasize their own positions on the war. The reports provide details and context on the day-to-day conduct of the war, but they are only pieces of information that do not lend themselves to sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of the overall war effort. Continue reading...

Hours after yesterday’s decision by President Bill Clinton judicial appointee Susan Bolton to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), told The New York Times: “This is a warning to any other jurisdiction.” Just in case the message from the Obama administration and its leftist allies was not clear, Obama appointee U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke told The Associated Press: “Surely it’s going to make states pause and consider how they’re drafting legislation and how it fits in a constitutional framework.”

But no amount of pause by states and localities could ever possibly satisfy the Obama administration, its amnesty allies, and activist judges like Bolton. In a textbook case of judicial activism, Judge Bolton rewrote the Arizona law to her own needs, invented her own facts and ignored clear federal law. President Jimmy Carter appointee and immigration law professor at Yale Law School Peter Schuck told The New York Times: “She rushed to judgment in a way I can only assume reflects a lot of pressure from the federal government to get this case resolved quickly.”

The Obama administration’s case against Arizona sought to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona’s new immigration law. The legal term for this is a “facial challenge,” and federal precedent is clear that facial challenges “must be careful not to go beyond the statute’s facial requirements and speculate about ‘hypothetical’ or imaginary cases.” But that is exactly what Judge Bolton did. First, she ignored Section 2(B) of the law as written and completely ignored the section’s first sentence that required an officer to have “reasonable suspicion” that a person was in the country illegally before their immigration status should be checked. Then, she invented a completely hypothetical case about a Chilean dog walker detained by a completely fictional Sheriff Smith. Finally, despite the fact that 8 U.S.C. §1373 clearly requires the federal government to “respond to an inquiry by a…State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual,” Judge Bolton concluded that the Obama administration’s decision not to enforce this provision was as good as rewriting the law itself. Continue reading...

LAS VEGAS – Amidst a slew of liberal legislation passing Congress, conservatives have many reasons to feel down and out. However, at the RightOnline convention this weekend, hosted by Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the mood was overwhelmingly positive. From brand-new grassroots activists to veteran campaigners, the feeling was the same.

Activists from all over America took part in sessions that taught tips on how to effectively use blogs, Facebook and Twitter. There was an  advanced track that focused more on connecting and mobilizing online. Other sessions stressed the importance of citizen journalism and the major news stories that broke in outlets outside of the traditional mainstream media. The underlying message: Everyone can make a difference. Continue reading...

Two weeks have passed since al-Shabab, the African subsidiary of al-Qaeda, murdered over 70 innocents in Kampala. Former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen makes a convincing case that the Obama Administration must keep a sharp eye on Somalia and Yemen as an emerging terror threat to the U.S. Thiessen recounts recent adverse developments, including the July 11 Uganda bombings and the arrest of a northern Virginia man, Zachary Adam Chesser, charged with seeking to join foreign fighters in Somalia.

Thiessen questions the Administration’s decision to order U.S. special operations agents to target and kill al-Shabab leader Saleh Ali Nabhan in September 2009 rather than try a capture of a potential intelligence gold mine. Overall, cracking down on terrorists and piracy safe-havens in Somalia is proving difficult for the Obama Administration. Continue reading...

The White House has some tough questions to answer about the Deepwater Horizon disaster in light of a new report from the Center for Public Integrity. In the critical first days after the explosion, the U.S. Coast Guard disregarded its own firefighting policy and might have caused the oil rig to sink — prompting the leak that resulted in the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

New evidence unearthed by reporters Aaron Mehta and John Solomon reveals the cash-strapped Coast Guard broke its own rules and didn’t have a firefighting expert on the scene to oversee the private boats battling the blaze. There’s an ongoing investigation to determine if the salt water sprayed on the burning oil rig caused it to sink.

“[T]he question of what caused the platform to collapse into the Gulf … remains unanswered and could prove vital to ongoing legal proceedings and congressional investigations,” the article states. “That is because the riser pipe from which the majority of BP’s oil spewed did not start leaking until after the rig sank.”

Continue reading...

As everyone knows, Arizona, chafed by the Federal government’s inability to control the flow of illegal immigrants into the State, enacted Senate Bill 1070 (PDF) in an effort to do something about the resulting collateral damage to it and its citizens. Now, a federal judge appointed by President Clinton, Susan Bolton, has temporarily blocked enforcement of portions of S.B. 1070, reasoning that those portions interfere with the Federal government’s system of immigration laws.

Significantly, Judge Bolton rejected the demand by the Obama Justice Department that the entire law be struck down. In fact, the judge upheld twelve different provisions of the law, including a prohibition on Arizona officials limiting the enforcement of federal immigration laws and another that allows Arizona citizens to sue any state official that adopts a policy of restricting such enforcement. The judge also upheld parts of the law intended to stop human smuggling, such as a provision that makes it possible to impound vehicles used to transport or harbor unlawfully present aliens.

Unfortunately, however, Judge Bolton (using very fallacious reasoning) did preliminarily block provisions (1) calling for Arizona law enforcement officials to verify the immigration status of individuals who are arrested when an officer has a reasonable suspicion that they are an illegal alien; (2) making it a state crime to violate federal alien registration requirements; (3) creating a crime for an illegal alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work; and (4) authorizing an arrest when there is probable cause to believe that an individual is removable from the U.S. Continue reading...

A drilling moratorium aimed at big oil is a drilling moratorium aimed at local oil as well. That’s the message being sent by the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce in Lafayette, Louisiana as they revive the “Energy Division” from several years of dormancy.

Why now?

According to The Daily Advertiser, “challenges from the moratorium and other anti-industry legislation signaled a need for its return, said Chamber President and CEO Rob Guidry.” In short, they are fighting the federal government. The Chamber was amongst those who organized last week’s 11,000 strong anti-moratorium “Rally for Economic Survival” held at the Cajundome. Continue reading...

As many predicted, Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D–NV) new energy bill contains neither a cap-and-trade program nor a renewable electricity standard (RES). But in a complete change of direction, the bill has made coal, the nemesis of the cap and trade/RES crowd, an alternative fuel. So now, to the list of politically correct alternatives such as wind and solar, we can now add coal.

In addition to the bill’s plethora of subsidies, tax credits, and other “incentives” to increase the production of electric vehicles, the bill, according to a draft summary, Section 2115 of the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act: Continue reading...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on July 22 to participate in Asia’s largest security conference. This past week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) and the 43rd ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers Meeting was filled with diplomatic discussions on how to create a safer and more economically efficient East Asian community.

At the ASEAN Plus and ARF dialogues, Clinton participated in several discussions, including ones on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, their recent attack on a South Korean Naval Ship, Burma’s upcoming political elections and human rights violations, and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. An Asian diplomat referred to the multilateral discussions as “a game of diplomatic brinkmanship,” referring to the politically controversial nature of the topics. Continue reading...

The public option has reared its head once again. Last week, H.R. 5808 was introduced in the House Ways and Means Committee to add a public option to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

The plan would be administered by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Payment rates for providers would be set at Medicare rates plus 5 percent and would grow according to increasing physicians’ costs. The plan would be required to maintain solvency, so premiums would have to cover benefits offered and administrative costs.

Momentarily setting aside the major drawbacks of a public plan, this legislation isn’t necessary—the PPACA already lays the groundwork for a robust public option. The new law will allow the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which currently oversees federal employees’ health benefits, to administer plans in the exchanges. These plans would be offered by private insurers but run by unelected government officials. Continue reading...

Research on the last seven recessions shows that small businesses generate about two out of every three new jobs during the recovery. But this time around the Obama administration has crippled the ability  small businesses to lead the way in new hiring with their job killing Obamacare legislation.

Not only does the bill slap small businesses with an employment tax, new tax reporting requirements, and tons of new regulations, but it is also an unconstitutional extension of federal government power. Continue reading...

During his otherwise ordinary remarks yesterday at the National Press Club, education secretary Arne Duncan said something quite extraordinary.

It came as he was announcing the 19 finalists for the second round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant competition:

We arrived in Washington at a time when America was deeply divided over the proper federal role in educational policy.… We are a very long way from the classroom in Washington, and if we have learned one thing from [No Child Left Behind], it’s that one-size-fits-all remedies generally don’t work.

Continue reading...