Karin Price Mueller’s Disappointingly Biased de-Regulation Report

Karin Price Mueller is an advice reporter for NJ.com. Her specialty is personal money and consumer issues. I have generally found her columns to be interesting, informative, and fair.

 

But some years ago Mueller abandoned her objectivity in her New Jersey Star-Ledger column Five things that have changed for consumers under President Trump. Here is her introductory paragraphs:

Every president brings change. Laws change. Regulations change. The direction of the country changes.

That’s what happens.

But drop your political lens for a moment.

Think consumer protection. What happens if you’ve been wronged by a business? What if laws and regulations don’t protect you and your wallet?

That’s what consumer advocates say is happening under the Trump administration. They’re alarmed by a cavalcade of changes they say leave the little guy behind while Wall Street and big corporations gain advantage.

Apparently, we’re asked to “drop your political lens” so we can view this article through Mueller’s—and the Star-Ledger’s—political lens.

Throughout the entire article not one quote from the people who are instituting these regulatory relaxations. All you get are quotes from a cavalcade of “consumer protection” or “public interest”—that is, biased against business—activist groups. 

I posted these comments (which are no longer published online):

This is political bias through and through. We’re getting an “analysis” of the deregulatory actions strictly from a statist “political lens.” If consumers need “protection” from business, what about protection from our “protectors”--that is, from politicians’ regulatory dictates? Where are the opposing arguments to the “expert” opinions expressed here? Where is the defense of freedom of consumer choice? Catchphrases like “predatory for-profit colleges” are indicative of propagandistic demagoguery, not fair reporting. 

Are there no valid arguments in favor of the deregulatory actions singled out here? I think Mueller has undermined her credibility with this unbalanced column. 

Related Reading:

Finally, Some Positive Recognition for the Statists' Favorite Whipping Boy, Wall Street

The ‘Wild West’ of Government Regulation Caused the 2008 Financial Meltdown

Where Does Valid Law End and Regulation Begin?

The Koch Brothers and the Nature of Government Regulation

"Regulating" Business - the Good and the Bad

Who to Trust More: The GOP Deregulationists or the Statists

Is the Russia/Trump Probe the Democrats’ Version of the ‘Birther Movement?’

In response to Paul Mulshine’s July 2017 New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed 'Unhinged' anti-Trumpers are Russian to conclusions, I left this brief comment:

Russia is looking more and more like the Democrats’ version of the “Birther Movement,” which spent eight years trying to get Obama impeached based on the notion that he is not a natural born citizen. It’s looks like the “Russianer Movement”—or whatever we want to call it—is going to spend the next eight years trying to get Trump impeached.

I think it still holds true today, more than a year later. And yes, I believe Trump will be reelected in 2020 especially if the Democrats take one or both houses of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.

Letter: ‘Vouchers Will Hurt Public Schools.’ So?

Here is an excerpt from a letter that appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on 3/17/17 opposing a federal school voucher bill:

Vouchers will hurt public schools

The proposed federal school voucher bill (HR610) in Congress will divert funds away from public education and will ultimately have a catastrophic effect on public schools.

A true democracy requires an educated public and the public school system is the most effective way to achieve that goal.

Jeanne Perry Califon

A typical argument advanced by defenders of the government (public) school establishment against school choice is that it will “divert funds away from public education and will ultimately have a catastrophic effect on public schools,” as this recent letter put it.

To which my answer is—So?

The entrenched public school establishment—the teachers unions, public school administrators, school boards—do not own the public purse. Those dollars belong first to the taxpayers, each as individuals. To take by force a taxpayer’s money, allegedly for education, and then deny that person the right to direct it as she chooses is a cruel fraud.

The dictatorial monopoly we call the “public schools” exists as it is only by force of taxation and compulsory school attendance laws. Why should that be? Why should an entrenched and powerful political faction have sole power to impose their educational philosophy, teacher training, and school administration methods on the rest of us? The question every public school apologist should be asked is; Don’t you believe that, given the choice, taxpayers and parents would voluntarily send their children to your schools, and voluntarily pay for them? The answer is obvious.

The public school establishment does not and should not have first claim on Americans’ education tax dollars or their children. If we must have tax-supported education—and at this point Americans overwhelmingly believe that every child should be guaranteed the financial means to a K-12 education—it does not automatically follow that tax-funded education must be provided by a government-backed coercive monopoly free from parental choice, taxpayer oversight, and entrepreneurial innovation and competition. The taxpayer and the parent should have first claim on how her education tax dollars are spent and on the course of her own child’s education, respectively. It is incredibly arrogant and laughingly absurd to claim that “the public school system is the most effective way to achieve . . . an educated public.” A public school that parents willingly choose not to send their child to should lose its public funds, and if that school must close or merge with another public school to survive, so be it. No public school has an inherent right to exist if liberated parents “vote with their feet”—their tax dollars.

More tellingly, the reference to “a true democracy” as the fundamental reason for government schools spills the beans as to the true purpose of the government schools—political indoctrination. But the schools should not be about directing the future voting choices of its students. The basic purpose of education is to prepare the child to be an independent, thinking, rationally critical adult capable of understanding and dealing with reality so as to give him the intellectual power and self-esteem to make his own life the best it could be. The capacity for properly analyzing political issues is of course a derivative of being an independent thinking adult. But Ms. Perry’s focus on “true democracy”—what I call Democracy Fundamentalism, the opposite of constitutional republican democracy—all but acknowledges that political indoctrination, not education, is what largely motivates the public school monopoly defenders and lies behind the opposition to school choice. How else to explain why the young come out of America's schools with a bias toward collectivism/authoritarianism/socialism? A properly educated young adult—the independent thinker—will implicitly gravitate toward the politics of individualism, liberty, and capitalism. The statists will not have that. They recognize that the independent, self-responsible adult will demand that his freedom to direct the course of his own life is the enemy of statist power of the individual. Thus, the virulent, fanatical opposition to school choice.

Greed also is a significant motivator of the anti-choice reactionaries, as it does for defenders of any coercive monopoly. The reactionary defenders of the public schools want to maintain the dictatorial monopoly not just for financial reasons but also in order to protect their lock on Leftist political indoctrination, and thus the statists’ political power. This makes it all the more urgent to break the public school monopoly through school choice. A free market is the only genuine mechanism for holding educators accountable, by virtue of the ability of parents to leave one school for another and the freedom of education entrepreneurs to offer a diverse array of competing alternatives. A broad and robust school choice option is a major step toward a genuine free market. Universal school choice through tax credits and/or education savings accounts* would legally recognize the moral right of every taxpayer to sponsor the education of any child—be it her own, a grandchild, a child of a low income household, a special needs child, gifted child, etc.—based on the voluntary choice of the recipient child’s parent or guardian. The choice could be a charter school, a private school (for-profit or non-profit), the homeschool option, or even another public school.

The ability to provide a better education alternative to their local public school should not be exclusive for wealthy parents. Nor should middle or lower income parents who do try an alternative have to endure the crushing hardship of having to pay double—once for the public schools they do not use, and again for the educational alternative they try to give their children. The universal school choice movement is the answer.

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[* NOTE: I personally do not approve of vouchers because of the potentially deleterious effect they would have on private schools accepting the vouchers. See my article Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?]

Related Reading:

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights

Modern-Day George Wallaces in Reverse

School Choice Doesn’t ‘Discriminate’; It Expands Opportunity Through Liberation

Contra Congressman Donald M. Payne, a ‘For-Profit Model’ is Just What Education Needs

The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools—Andrew Bernstein for The Objective Standard

Time to End All Government-Funded Climate Change Research

When President Trump cut funding for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the climate catastrophists went nuts—literally. The New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized, Deranged man attacks climate change funding with budget ax. The editors profess concern for controlling pollution. But its main concern revolves around climate change.

Donald Trump's effort to kill nearly one-third of the federal Environmental Protection Agency's budget, including climate research, and all climate funds to the United Nations leaves no doubt about where we, as a nation, stand.

My emphasis.

It’s becoming easier and easier for anyone who values facts over public opinion to discover how mild and manageable global warming/climate change actually is. Much if not most of climate change—the jury is still “out” on this—is not related to human activity Decades of failed predictions of increasing weather extremes is based on pure speculation, not demonstrated science. We humans are much safer from climate dangers than ever before. Living on Earth has dramatically improved during the very time when catastrophe was supposed to strike, thanks to the reliable, economical, increasingly clean “frenetic pace” of burning of fossil fuels. Increasing CO2 levels have many benefits. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on “alternative energy” subsidies, fossil fuels are still the most vital to human flourishing.

Yet, as more and more people come to understand the truth that the climate change catastrophist scenario is hogwash, the climate fanatics get more hysterical. Now, dissenters are not merely “climate deniers.” Now we can add a new pejorative, “deranged.” As the climate catastrophists’ case thins out, their insults get heavier.

The Star-Ledger seems most concerned with Trump’s cuts in climate change research funding. It worries that “This is a White House that lifts its talking points straight from ExxonMobil.” But this begs the question, why should we trust research generated by government?

Government funding of science is by definition politicized—the funding must come through politicians, after all—and EPA climate science research is probably the most politicized of all, thanks to the Left statists. The cabal of government funded scientists becomes “The Establishment,” which is then self-servingly peddled as the “The Final Authority.” Climate catastrophists question the work of dissenters if even one dollar of their funding comes from the fossil fuel industry. Fair enough. But if fossil fuel industry funded research is questionable, shouldn't research funded by politicians be even more vigorously questioned? At least the industry funding is voluntary, not taken by force from taxpayers.

It’s about time the Climate Establishment got completely cut off from taxpayer funding. The Star-Ledger claims that “A solid majority of Americans believe the effects of climate change are already occurring, and are driven by human activities,” implying that climate change is a major concern for these Americans. Let the Star-Ledger and its ilk set up a GoFundMe page and make up the EPA cuts with voluntary contributions. That will be a much better measure of the American public’s concern about climate change than any vaguely worded public opinion poll. It would be much more objective if the EPA relied strictly on privately funded research in the same manner as climate catastrophe dissenters do, giving equal consideration to all research. Then it could get a better cross section of informed opinions than it can by continuing to pit its EPA established “Establishment” against dissenters it brushes aside as “deniers” and “deranged.”

As MIT Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences Richard Lindzen observes in a letter to President Trump, “Calls to limit carbon dioxide emissions are even less persuasive today than 25 years ago. Future research should focus on dispassionate, high-quality climate science, not on efforts to prop up an increasingly frayed narrative of ‘carbon pollution.’ Until scientific research is unfettered from the constraints of the policy-driven UNFCCC, the research community will fail in its obligation to the public that pays the bills.” I submit that this will not happen until the public stops being forced, through taxes, to pay the bills. It’s time all climate research is evaluated on a level, unbiased, un-politicized playing field.

Related Reading:

Bill Gates, Capitalism, Socialism, and Climate Change

Full MIT Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences Richard Lindzen’s Letter to Trump Urging Withdrawal from the IPCC

Powerline Blog on Lindzen’s Credentials

On TrumpCare’s ‘Cut’ to Medicaid, and Other Matters

From the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s Trumpcare blocks millions from drug treatment. Where is Christie?, published last March (2017):

President Donald Trump and Gov. Chris Christie both promised to do absolutely everything in their power to fight the opioid epidemic.

"You cannot let people die on the street, OK?" Trump said in a February 2016 town hall. "The problem is that everybody thinks that you people, as Republicans, hate the concept of taking care of people that are really, really sick and are gonna die. We gotta take care of people that can't take care of themselves."

He repeated that promise after he was elected, as did Christie, who vowed to devote the remainder of his term as governor to the anti-opioid cause.

I left these comments, edited for clarity:

So what’s the problem? Trump and Christie are a couple of welfare statists—kindred spirits of the Star-Ledger and the Democrats. They have no problem with forcing other people to pay for their idea of “taking care of people.”

They’re just not as extreme as their more Leftist comrades would like.

TrumpCare (ObamaCare without Obama) will preserve the Medicaid program in its immoral forced wealth redistribution form. The problem is, the Left welfare statists are so wedded to government handouts and hateful of productive people that they can’t stomach any suggestion of any cuts to any redistribution program. Trump merely proposes to “cut”—which usually means to reduce the growth rate of (all of these welfare state systems automatically grow each year)—Medicaid and hand the money to the states, so they can prioritize their Medicaid spending within some semblance of budgetary restraint like any productive household has to do.

What’s wrong with that? Plenty, according to those who have never given a thought to those who are forced to foot the bill. TrumpCare will simply roll back some tax and spending increases put in by ObamaCare. But increases are always good. “Cuts” are always bad. No matter what. You have no right to what you earn. But the sky’s the limit on taking others’ earnings if you “need” it. “More people on the dole—the more the better.” That’s the more consistent Left’s mantra.
Related Reading:

Christie’s Insurance Mandate is a ‘Teachable Moment’

Don’t Blame Republicans for Failure to Repeal Obamacare—Harry Binswanger for The Objective Standard

Democrats Will be a Lot Less Disappointed in Trump than They Think.

GOP ObamaCare Repeal: The Left Opposes Cuts in Spending and Controls—What’s New?

From RomneyCare Without Romney to ObamaCare Without Obama?

Free Press Depends on Intellectual Freedom

In a letter-to-the-editor published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger shortly after Trump took office, “A free press is vital to democracy,” JoAnn D. Claps of Randolph, NJ wrote, in part:

Our Founding Fathers knew how essential a free press was to democracy; that’s why they protected it in the First Amendment. Our president lies repeatedly and has a willing cohort of supporters who will lie along with him in order to retain power. His authoritarian ways should alarm everyone and we should be grateful to and support the free press that reveals facts to us so that we can fulfill our rights as citizens: to make our voices heard.

I left these comments, edited for clarity:

Repeated lies? Authoritarian? A lust for power? At first reading, I thought Claps was confused, still thinking that the Obama Administration was still in office. The only evidence that Clap is referring to President Trump is a prior reference in her letter’s opening sentence to another letter published a few days earlier, Star-Ledger disrespects the White House, critical of the Star-Ledger’s coverage and commentary of the Trump Administration.

Yes, “Our Founding Fathers knew how essential a free press was to democracy.” But the Founders sought to build a free, constitutionally limited democratic republic, not an absolute democracy. In keeping with the principles of a free republic, the First Amendment they crafted protects intellectual freedom broadly, and a free press must be considered in this broader context. While a free press is essential to the democratic process in a free republic, intellectual freedom more broadly is essential to a free society. Intellectual freedom encompasses not just freedom of the press, but also freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to criticize the government, and freedom to express dissenting opinions, and so on, all without fear of legal reprisals.

How is repeatedly promising that “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it” just before outlawing millions of policies under ObamaCare not lying? How is the IRS targeting of private associations for their conservative ideological views; opposition to Citizens United and McCutcheon, two of the most pro-free speech SCOTUS decisions; laws imposing birth control mandates on Christian businesses, or laws forcing Christian businesses to provide services that conflict with their conscientious beliefs; and the AGs United for Clean Power coalition’s fascist-like prosecutorial assault on climate change dissenters consistent with intellectual freedom? They’re not. All of these initiatives have been orchestrated by the Democrats.

It’s true that Trump’s direct attacks on media outlets—which would be ok as a private citizen but not as president, the leading representative of the federal executive branch—implies a disturbing threat toward the press. It’s also true that hostility toward freedom of speech is not a monopoly of the political Left. And it’s true that Trump has an authoritarian streak. But Trump’s hostility toward the press pales next to the Democrats broader assault on intellectual freedom. We need not excuse Trump’s attacks on the press to realize that intellectual freedom is under attack from many sides, including from the Democratic Left. Generally speaking, whataboutism is not a counter-argument, and I do not like to use it. My point in using it here is to point out the futility of non-objectivity. True First Amendment defenders should fight all threats to this vital part of the Constitution, wherever those threats originate, regardless of political loyalties.

Related Reading:

Real vs. Pseudo-Censorship

Linda Stamato Smears (and Fears?) the Koch Brothers

Stamato vs. the Koch Brothers: Campaign Finance and the First Amendment

If Removing Cop Killer’s Memorial Violates Free Speech, What About Dem’s Amendment?

Freedom of Speech and Press are Linked

Still Peddling the “97%” Myth

Shortly after Trump took office, an op-ed appeared in the NJ Star-Ledger offering Advice for Trump from N.J.'s former EPA chief: Phone a scientist. The op-ed equated Trump’s intention to roll back Obama’s so-called “Clean Power Plan”—which is really a war on reliable energy more drastic than Germany's failed energy poverty scheme—with the rollback of “environmental policies that keep our air and water safe.”

Obamacare isn't the only major health reform on the chopping block under President Donald Trump. So are the environmental policies that keep our air and water safe.

The Clean Power Plan to limit the smog and soot flowing into New Jersey from other states, the Paris climate pact to help contain global warming, the hard-fought settlement with polluting companies to clean up the Passaic River -- all could become casualties of Trump.

The equation of policies to reduce harmless greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide in order to “contain global warming” with actual pollution that is harmful to human life is a common trick of environmentalists.

But the goal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan is to drastically roll back co2 emissions by restricting and ultimately outlawing fossil fuels, not contain pollution. The purpose of embedding global warming into a paragraph about pollution is to sneak in the real motive of the anti-reliable energy crowd by equating them. They do not equate.

Environmentalists claim to have science on their side. But if so, why the deceitfulness? Perhaps because the science doesn’t support them. So, they deceitfully distort the science, as well. In a section asking former Obama Northeast EPA administrator Judith Enck if she has “Any advice for the Trump administration?,” she answered

I think the best thing is for them to get briefed by scientists. If they objectively listen to the science, they will understand how serious a threat climate change is.

I often cite a peer-reviewed scientific paper in which the author surveyed about 13,000 scientists, and asked them, “Do you believe that climate change is real and is primarily caused by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and burning forests?”

Ninety-seven percent of the scientists said yes. What we need the Trump administration to do is listen to the science. The leadership, including the president himself, should randomly call up any credible scientist and have a conversation about climate change.

My emphasis. I left these comments:

Notice the bait and switch under the question “Any advice for the Trump administration?” [Former EPA Regional Administrator Judith] Enck first asserts that “science” will tell you “how serious a threat climate change is” if we will only “listen” to them.

But the actual question that 97% of scientists supposedly agree on says nothing about any threat, serious or not, posed by climate change. The question she cites asks, ““Do you believe that climate change is real and is primarily caused by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and burning forests?” The “97%” merely agrees that climate change is real and that human activity is a factor.

Climate change is real and humans are partly responsible? Even if "primarily" responsible—i.e., more than 50% responsible—so what? It doesn't say they agree there is a threat of catastrophe. It doesn’t say they agree that fossil fuels and other life-giving activities should be curtailed or eliminated. The question implies no moral evaluation at all. So why do environmentalists and their political allies keep regurgitating the 97% statistic? Because they want to establish the "big lie" that climate change in and of itself is bad if caused by human activity. They are anti-human race.

Environmentalists believe that human-caused environmental change—not negative change, but change as such—is bad and thus human impact must be curtailed at all costs. But non-impact is an anti-human flourishing standard, and we should reject it. Humans survive and thrive by changing the Earth from a danger-filled environment to a place hospitable to human life and flourishing. Life is better with climate change and fossil fuels than without either. Humans don’t need a stable climate. We need plentiful reliable energy and the freedom to produce it, in order to drive all of the industries that improve our lives. Climate change is not the threat. The Environmentalists’ war on energy and industrial development is the real threat.

I’m surprised that anyone still peddles the “97% of scientists agree” myth. That statistic has been debunked as meaningless ad nauseam. The truth is that, on proper analysis, only about 2-4% actually agree that catastrophic climate change is imminent and humans are the primary cause. Catastrophic climate change is pure speculation. What is scientifically demonstrated is that climate change is mild and is partly natural and partly human-caused, and has not led to more dangerous weather extremes despite decades of increasingly hysterical and failed predictions of disaster.

But even if global warming causes weather extremes to become a little more extreme, so what? The fundamental issue is not whether or not we should clean up actual pollution whose harm to humans is greater than the benefits. The fundamental issue is human non-impact on nature versus human well-being. The truth is life keeps getting better and safer for more and more people as fossil fuel energy usage increases. Someday, viable replacements for fossil fuels will become technologically and economically feasible, provided the energy free market that enables energy entrepreneurs to flourish is not totally crushed. That would not make environmentalists happy, but it would be great for humanity. In any event, rolling back reliable, industrial-scale energy production would cause a real catastrophe—for human life.

Trump should pay attention to the big picture, rather than be swayed by scientists who simply claim that “climate change is real and is primarily caused by human activities” and blindly accept that that is a bad thing.

Related Reading:

Unreliable Energy, Not ‘Dirty’ Energy, Threatens New Jersey

World’s CEOs are Right to Demote Climate Concerns, Worry About “Over-Regulation”

Obama's War on Energy Producers and Consumers by Ari Armstrong

King Obama's Carbon Emission Mandate

School Choice Doesn’t ‘Discriminate’; It Expands Opportunity Through Liberation

Betsy DeVos, the Education Department Secretary, was opposed by leftists during her confirmation period. As NICHOLAS BALLASY reports for PJ Media in NAACP Argues That DeVos' School Choice Programs Discriminate:

A coalition of civil rights organizations criticized Betsy DeVos, President-elect Trump’s nominee for education secretary, for her support of charter schools and school choice programs. 

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said school choice programs weaken the public school system. 

“School choice is an interesting phrase because it implies that the choice that parents make is just about the school when in fact school choice really only works for those parents who have other choices – to be able to select a school across town that you think is better means that you have to have the ability to get your child to that school and the ability to pick your child up from that school.,” Ifill said on a conference call with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights last week shortly before DeVos’ confirmation hearing.

Translation: Parents who succeed in getting their child a better education should be stopped because other parents can't. This is the evil of egalitarianism: a war on excellence and success. Of course, if real education freedom existed—that is, no smothering government "oversight"—education entrepreneurs would create myriad new opportunities to cover the wide diversity of child learning capabilities and parent economic means to serve the market demand from parents who "can't." There are no guarantees, of course. But the bottom line is, anyone who denies any parent their moral right to direct their own child's education simply for equality reasons cannot claim to be "for education." The only equality that matters—the only equality that is moral—is the equal right to choose. This does not mean equal opportunity. It simply means equal right for each parent to choose from whatever options are available to them at any given time, and/or the freedom to create their own opportunities. A parent without the ability to take advantage of opportunities across town gains nothing by preventing parents who do from capitalizing on the opportunity.

The fact that some people can better avail themselves of their freedom is not discrimination. To call it that is one of the most idiotic pronouncements possible—one that only an egalitarian can come up with.

We need to challenge the whole concept of "equality" adopted by the statist egalitarians. What they mean by equality is antithetical to the equality that America is based on. Egalitarianism is tailor made for the envious, the resentful, and the kind of people who hate personal achievement so much that they'd rather see someone else fail than for themselves to succeed. What it is not made for is improved education.

Of course, Ifill has a point when criticizing existing school choice programs, from school vouchers to charters: They do limit choice. But the answer to limited choice is not to eliminate school choice altogether and throw more money and more federal control at the traditional government schools, as Ifill advocates. The answer is to expand school choice to everyone through tax credits or Education Savings Accounts and the like, while limiting government interference so as to invite increased entrepreneurialism, and move toward an eventual fully free market. This will not create “equal opportunity”, which by the nature of man is impossible short of destroying all opportunity and all freedom. But it will raise the general educational excellence and opportunities for all who have the motivation.

Let’s recognize these anti-school choice reactionaries for what they are; modern-day George Wallaces. Whereas the original George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to keep black kids out, today’s Wallaces can be seen standing in the schoolhouse door, not to keep any kids out, but to keep all but the kids with the most well-to-do parents trapped in schools that their parents judge to be inferior or even detrimental. The moral standing of today’s George Wallaces is just as bad as the original’s.

Related Reading:

‘Unqualified’ DeVos Could Be Just the Education Secretary We Need

The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Contra Congressman Donald M. Payne, a ‘For-Profit Model’ is Just What Education Needs

NJ Congressman Donald M. Payne’s letter, published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger under the heading DeVos poses threat to education, claimed that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos poses a “direct threat” to traditional public education:

The president of Michigan's State Board of Education warned against DeVos' nomination, saying that her "agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids, and replace it with a for-profit model."

I wish it were true! While DeVos is a well-known advocate of parental school choice, I doubt the government school establishment has much to worry about.

Nonetheless, I left these comments:

Let’s examine the difference between the public education system and the for-profit model.

Profits are earned by persuading consumers to buy what you are selling. For-profit schools, whether public charters or private schools relying on vouchers or education tax credits, essentially rely on voluntarism. Traditional public schools, when parents are forbidden choice, require no effort to persuade. They are held in place by force. Voluntarism versus force: The moral difference is like day and night.

Charter school options and school choice programs are thus the moral thing to do—but also the practical thing to do. They only exist to the extent parents chose them. True, school choice programs reduce traditional public school funding. So what? All parents are taxpayers. We’re all taxpayers. If we’re going to have tax-funded education, why shouldn’t all schools, not only certain politically connected schools, be afforded a claim on education tax dollars? Why shouldn’t education tax dollars follow the child to the school she attends, whether it is a traditional public school or another choice made by her taxpaying parents? It’s only fair.

Reactionary defenders of the status quo, by fighting to keep kids trapped in schools their parents judge not to be the best option for their kids, are the real roadblocks to good education for many kids. True, not all parents will make good choices. But neither do many traditional public schools do a good job with every kid. It is morally the parents’ choice, not the states’, and good parents shouldn’t be punished for the bad choices of some parents.

There is nothing sacred about the tradition public school establishment. A good injection of for-profit educational entrepreneurialism competing for and accountable to parental choice, rather than government bureaucracies, is just what education needs in this country. Anyone who denies parents their rights to direct the course of their own children’s education cannot claim to be proponents of “high-quality education”and “educational success.” DeVos will head the Department of Education, not the Department of Traditional Public Education. If DeVos can leverage the DOE to expand school choice and diminish the iron-clad grip of the coercive and monopolistic public school establishment across America, she will have been a great Education Secretary.

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My comments were tempered to conform to and support DeVos’s school choice leanings. Of course, I advocate the ultimate realistic education ideal—a fully free, individual rights-based, laissez-faire market in education.

Related Reading:

‘Unqualified’ DeVos Could Be Just the Education Secretary We Need

DeVos Could Advance the ‘Civil Right’ of School Choice Across America

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools—Andrew Bernstein for The Objective Standard

GOP’s ‘Horrid’ Tax Bill Exposes Monstrousness of ObamaCare

A monstrous tax bill that wounds Obamacare, too

That’s the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s editorial page editor Tom Moran:

The best estimate is that 13 million Americans will lose coverage, and the rest will see premiums jump by about 10 percent. In New Jersey alone, 340,000 would lose coverage. 

In its final form, the tax bill eliminates the mandate to buy insurance coverage under Obamacare. Millions of people with limited incomes are likely to take advantage and opt out, since the monthly premium is a genuine burden, even after federal subsidies. Younger and healthier people will be the first to go, since they aren't as dependent on regular care. 

Remember, Republicans tried to kill Obamacare outright in July but couldn't muster the votes for such a brutal move. So now, they are trying to squeeze the life out of it slowly, as a python would.

I left this comment:

13 million Americans will not “lose coverage.” 13 million Americans, freed from the mandate, will have the option to buy or not to buy without the thuggish coercion of the tax fine hanging over their heads. The estimate that 13 million Americans were not free “to take advantage and opt out” exposes the evil of ObamaCare. I’ll agree that the Republicans didn’t have the guts to repeal ObamaCare outright, and replace it with genuine free market reforms that could have greatly expanded health insurance options while dramatically lowering the cost. Their method is sneaky like a snake. A broad-based, transparent reform should have accompanied the repeal of the mandate. But that aside, the mere fact that more individual liberty would “squeeze the life out of” ObamaCare is the worst indictment of that monstrous law one could imagine; proof that ObamaCare is contrary to the principles of a free society, immoral, and should be repealed.

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One of the reasons why “the rest will see premiums jump by about 10 percent” is because young people were forced to buy overpriced policies to subsidize those premiums. Which begs the question: how did our health insurance premiums become so wrapped up in Washington tax politics? Welcome to government controlled healthcare.

Related Reading:

In ObamaCare Repeal Debate, Who is the Real ‘Taker’

Replacing ObamaCare Should Mean Replacing Government Planning With Individual Planning

In NJ: ‘No’ on Ballot Question #2

As New Jersey’s election approaches, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized, Vote yes on ballot question #2: The lockbox for enviro funds:

The concept is simple: When polluters destroy your neighborhood, the fines they pay in settlements should go toward restoring your neighborhood.

But not in the twisted logic of Trenton. All too often - especially under this governor - this money has gone to plug holes in the state budget. The Legislature tried to minimize the diversions, but Chris Christie vetoed its attempt.

Now, a ballot question on Nov. 7th will allow voters to put a stop to this, once and for all. It would amend the state constitution to say that every dollar in polluter fines would have to go to "repair, restore, replace, or preserve the state's natural resources."

This money is not for cleanup, which polluters are already mandated to pay for; it's to restore the neighborhoods, waterways and marshes that were damaged, and compensate the public for the loss of their use.

It can rehabilitate unhealthy river banks, build parks on land that had been contaminated, or even construct baseball fields to make amends to communities that lost the use of them for years.

I left these comments:

If the fund is not for cleanup, then what is it for? It’s a giant piggy bank for ideological environmentalists to “"repair, restore, replace, or preserve the state's natural resources." What exactly are “natural resources?” What does “compensate the public” mean? What is the public, if not the clique that controls the fund? To an environmentalist, anything man builds is not “natural”—including your home or business or even church. Environmentalists are, by definition, concerned with unaltered nature as opposed to nature improved for human flourishing. Will the money be used to fund eminent domain to seize private property in order to “restore” it to “natural resource” status? Will the money be used to “preserve” even more property from human improvement, further exacerbating the “affordable housing crisis?”

Here’s a better option. If the purpose of the fines—which, for the sake of argument, I’ll assume to be just—is what this editorial says it’s for, how about using the money to directly compensate the actual individual victims of the pollution with monetary awards?—something on the order of the asbestos settlement, where in theory an objective process determines actual harm. True, this could create a “gold rush” of people trying to cash in. But at least real victims of “destroyed neighborhoods” have a chance at actual compensation—and a choice to do what they want with their share of the settlement. If they want to use it for their own personal benefit—say, to move to a cleaner neighborhood—fine. If they want to pool their payout with other victims to build a baseball field or rehabilitate a river bank they actually use, they’re free to do it. If there is real harm, the money rightfully belongs to the victims who were objectively harmed, not something labeled a “natural resource.” (Why should non-victim members of neighborhoods, communities, or “the public” get free parks or ball fields?) At least everyone, not just environmentalists, would have a crack at it. Award any excess money not awarded to individuals directly to “the public,” in the form of equal payments to all individual residents who together comprise NJ’s public—If we’re going to “compensate the public,” let’s actually do it.

In the meantime, based on this editorial, I’m voting “No” on ballot question #2. The collectivist premise behind it gives too much power to the environmentalists as opposed to actual victims. True, the money will probably continue to be diverted to the state budget. But at least the general fund is controlled by our elected representatives, accountable to voters. True, Trenton’s loot is a special interest feeding frenzy. But at least all special interests—through our elected representatives, not just the environmentalist lobby—will have a say in how the dough is dished out. Vote “NO” on Ballot Question #2.

Related Reading:

Misrepresenting NJ GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Guadagno’s Positions.

Environmentalist Witch Doctors Not Concerned With Human Benefaction

Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism

We Owe Our Children a More Technologically Advanced Society, Not 'Preserved' Nature

Misrepresenting NJ GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Guadagno’s Positions.

New Jersey has a governor's race coming up. Kim Guadagno is the Republican candidate. A major Left-leaning NJ newspaper, the Star-Ledger, had some choice editorial comments to make about Guadagno back in December when she was the lieutenant governor and before she was nominated.

I left these comments under Guadagno's rules for working class: Suck it up, highlighting certain excerpts from the editorial:

"Should the government dictate to you what you provide to your employees?" she asked her audience of 100. "I personally do not believe so."

To follow that logic, we should rescind child labor laws, overtime laws, and minimum wage itself.

The moral and economically enlightened answer to Guadagno’s question is a resounding NO. But I would also add that the government should not prohibit any job-seeker from accepting a job that doesn’t fit some political elitist’s vision of what that job should pay. Yes, businesses should be left free precisely to pay employees whatever they want, and employees should be free to accept any job at whatever pay they willingly agree to. No job should be outlawed. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a tyrant or thug, and hiding behind law doesn’t change that. A job is morally a contractual matter between employer and employee. The government shouldn't step in unless there is evidence of fraud, breach-of-contract, and the like, or unless the “job” involves criminal behavior such as murder-for-hire or driving a bank robber’s getaway car.

As for “child labor laws, overtime laws, and minimum wage,” child labor laws do not belong in that category. Children have the same rights as adults but they need extra oversight from adults, mainly from the parents but also the state, to prevent child exploitation. But labor laws like overtime rules and minimum wage violate the rights of consenting adults to contract voluntarily to mutual advantage. I hope Guadagno is consistent enough to apply her principle against government dictates to all rights-violating labor laws. We have very few, if any, such principled free market Republicans in New Jersey.

Guadagno's second pander was her claim that private business should not provide paid sick leave.

This is undoubtedly a flat out lie—an example of Fake News.

What possible reason would Guadagno, or anyone, advocate such an idea? I don’t believe she ever advocated such a thing. Her point was that government shouldn’t be dictating it.

Being against government's legally dictating paid sick leave is not the same as being against private business voluntarily providing these benefits, any more than being against subsidies for solar companies equates to being against solar energy or being against food stamps equates to being against voluntary food banks. The statement above is fundamentally dishonest. Statists always use such package-deal tactics because they can’t rationally and morally justify their unconstitutional economic crony laws.

There's nothing wrong with being pro-business, even if supply-side drones have [been] spouting this government ethic since Hoover.

More fake news. Herbert Hoover was a major state interventionist, whose economic policies became a model for FDR. Hoover was a major progressive-era hero. As President Harding’s Commerce Secretary, Hoover advocated economic interventionist policies in response to the 1920-21 depression. Fortunately, Harding ignored him, the depression didn’t become “Great,” and a roaring job-filled recovery and expansion ensued. A decade later, President Hoover had his chance, responding to the much milder 1929-30 recession with major “progressive” interventions that turned the recession into a Great Depression. Hoover was no more a “supply sider” than Barack Obama.

I don’t yet know enough about Guadagno to endorse her for governor. But if this dishonest Marxist-inspired editorial is any indication, she may warrant a good look.

Related Reading:

The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself—James Grant (See my review for The Objective Standard).

Paid Sick Leave, No Matter How ‘Beneficial,’ Should Never Be Legally Mandated in Any Way

Is Andrew Puzder ‘Anti-Worker’ for Opposing Labor Laws?

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

Fairness, not Envy, Should Be the Purpose of 'Tax Reform'

Not surprisingly, the Republicans’ tax legislation is hated by the Left. In Trump, the huckster populist, lies about his tax plan, the New Jersey Star-Ledger weighed in:

“President Trump, desperate for a legislative victory, now hopes to find it in bipartisan tax reform. Let us help.

The Democrats should unite on three conditions: Not a dollar more in tax cuts for the rich, not a dollar added to the national deficit, and no votes on anything until Trump reveals his own tax returns.” [emphasis added]

That was followed by a diatribe about how much taxes would go down under Trump—leaving out, of course, that the people who will see the biggest tax “break” also happen to pay the lion’s share of the federal income tax.

I left these comments:

Of the three reasons given, only the second is relevant. Tax reform should be revenue neutral. (How “revenue neutral” is determined is a separate matter. But we’re talking broad principles here.) Taxation is not the biggest problem today. Spending is, because deficit spending is backdoor taxation. Merely cutting overall tax revenue is no tax cut at all. While I love tax cuts, it makes no sense to cut tax revenue without spending cuts—and neither party is willing to cut spending.

As to “tax cuts for the rich” and Trump’s tax returns, let me say this: My father once told me, as I was entering the workforce out of high school half a century ago, that in regard to money and wealth, “Never worry about the next guy. Only worry about yourself”—Specifically, am I being treated fairly? Reason one and three above is an appeal to envy and to the psychological illness that is placing more concern with others than for oneself. What is of concern to me is fairness, which is why I favor a flat tax with no deductions (deductions typically favor some while bypassing others) save for a generous low-end personal deduction for everyone. Will some rich guy get a big tax cut? Why should I care? As long as the tax rules treat me the same as him, it’s all I can ask. Trump’s tax returns? I even care less.

But since a simple flat tax is not in Trump’s cards, let me address the biggest part of Trump’s tax plan: corporate tax cuts. Cuts? We should eliminate the corporate income tax altogether. It is both morally unfair and economically stupid.

Especially in high-tax states like New Jersey, people are up in arms about the proposal to end the deduction for state and local taxes, on the grounds that we shouldn’t be taxed twice on the same income. Though the issue of tax deductibility is more complicated than that, for the sake of this principle I'll just say: Fair enough. But if that’s so, then we should eliminate the corporate income tax. The corporate tax is the poster child for double taxation.

A business corporation is not a person. It is an association of individuals who come together voluntarily for a productive mission. It is a legal and cultural framework for cooperation. It makes no more sense to tax a corporation than to tax a labor union or a chess club. The owners of the corporation are taxed at the individual level, to the extent they draw dividend income or earn capital gains or draw wages and salaries from the company. To tax a corporation is to tax the owners twice, which is no less bad than taxing individuals once at the state level and again at the federal: Both are double taxation. Morally, this is wrong. To the extent profits are not distributed, they should remain with the company unmolested by taxation. Economically, all corporate taxes do is harm the company’s ability to reinvest in the company, which harms the company’s ability to innovate and grow, to the detriment of owners, employees, and consumers.

So let’s stop whining about “tax cuts for the rich” and Trump’s tax returns, and focus on what really counts—a fairer and less complicated tax system.

Related Reading:

The Left’s Insatiable Lust to Soak American Business

The Tax System and Income Inequality are Two Separate Issues

Rather than Repeat the Mistakes of 1986, How About a Flat Tax?

Christie Should Focus on School Choice Ahead of Funding Formulas

In a New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed last summer, Star-Ledger writer Paul Mulshine took up an issue that has been permeating NJ politics for years—state aid the local school districts. In Steve Sweeney could pass his school-funding reforms; instead he's creating a commission, Mulshine wrote,

For years [state Sen. Mike Doherty has] been touting what he called his "Fair School Funding Plan." It calls for state school aid, which is raised through the income tax, to be distributed equally so every student in New Jersey is back by the same amount.

Chris Christie recently purloined that plan and renamed it "The Fairness Formula." Doherty didn't mind the theft. He's just glad to see the governor make that plan the centerpiece of the 2017 elections when all 120 legislative seats will be up for grabs.

The Republicans are pushing for the plan to be put on the ballot as a constitutional amendment so the voters can decide the issue.

"This is the flagship issue," said Doherty. "If you want any property-tax relief in your lifetime this is the chance to do it."

Doherty's reasoning is simple. School funding is provided through the income tax, which is progressive. But the current distribution formula is also progressive.

That means the taxpayers in a suburb like Bernards Township get back a mere 3 cents in school aid for every dollar they pay in income tax.

Under Christie's plan the tax would still be collected progressively but it would be distributed equally, with every student in the state backed up by $6,599 in annual state aid.

I left these comments, focussing on a larger issue:

In 2010, his first year in office—in his Keynote Address to the American Federation for Children—Christie called school choice a “unique moment” in American politics. He then went on record for universal school choice. He said the Opportunity Scholarship Act that he supported would only be a "first step" that would lead to the day when "choice is available to every parent and every child... across the state of NJ."

I favor fairer school funding. I think his plan is a good one—equal funding for each child. Who could disagree with that? But I wish Christie had chosen to spend his last year political capital trying to make good on his promise to bring universal school choice to NJ. I wish he’d started last year rather than run for president. I wish he would have made that a leading goal of his every year. If successful, what a great legacy that would have been.

Related Viewing:

Related Reading:

Christie’s Final Year as NJ Governor Should Focus on School Choice

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

• How can a tax-credit program keep government from regulating private schools, and is such a program politically viable?
• Would the Federal Government Permit States to Implement a Tax Credits Program?

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights