Delaware Libertarian
Homegrown Boy discovers the military suicide rate ... a few years too late
Offensive is when you turn the issue of military suicides into a diatribe to be used in the health care debate, as Homegrown Boy does today at Resolute Determination:
That’s right we have failed. The New York Times – see for all of you liberals who swear I’m a troglodyte, I am literate and do on ocassion read more then the comics – reports today that one transportation unit in Iraq has had two suicides among them since returning to America.
Since returning to America.
Yet there is a push in the socialist health bill to give free health care – that means you and I pay for it – to illegal aliens; yet we have two Americans dead because they couldn’t get enough help?
To reinerate, these two men fought to keep us free so we can scream inanities on blogs and host shows on channel 28 and bleat incessantly about our beliefs yet …….. not enough help was there for them.
Illegals will get surgery if the bill passes.
Yet our soliders commit suicide in the country they fought to protect.
Be you pro or anti the war we need to be ashamed for we have failed.
Apparently he was reading only the comics over the past 3-4 years a military suicide rates have skyrocketed to the point where the military suicide rate now exceeds the suicide rate for the general population.
For the details, and the military's own incomprehension, see this from six months ago:
American troops are taking their own lives in the largest numbers since records began to be kept in 1980. In 2008, there were 128 confirmed suicides by serving army personnel and 41 by serving marines. Another 15 army deaths are still being investigated. The toll is another of the terrible consequences that have flowed from Washington's neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The army suicide rate is now higher than that among the general American population. The rate has been calculated as 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, compared with 19.5 per 100,000 civilians. This is a shocking statistic, as soldiers theoretically are screened for mental illnesses before enlistment and have access to counselling and health services that millions of ordinary people cannot afford.
As there is an average of 10 failed suicide attempts for each actual loss of life, the figures suggest that more than 1,600 serving army and marine personnel tried to kill themselves last year.
Army Secretary Pete Geren told the Associated Press that "we cannot tell you" why the number of military suicides was rising.
The SecArmy may not know why military suicides are rising, but the grunts on the ground, in the air, and in the water could tell you pretty damn easily.
Homegrown boy is moved to immediate patriotism:
I’ll call the VA myself and see what they need. Then we’ll see who wants to really help and who wants to *itch. I’ll even send out a list.
But note two things: (a) he intends to use your participation/non-participation as a litmus test of patriotism; and (b) it somehow does not occur to HGB that thousands of us--vets, war criticizers, and other volunteers--have been working with our returning soldiers for the past eight years before he figured out there was a need.
Excuse me. I feel the need to hock something bitter out of the back of my throat.
That’s right we have failed. The New York Times – see for all of you liberals who swear I’m a troglodyte, I am literate and do on ocassion read more then the comics – reports today that one transportation unit in Iraq has had two suicides among them since returning to America.
Since returning to America.
Yet there is a push in the socialist health bill to give free health care – that means you and I pay for it – to illegal aliens; yet we have two Americans dead because they couldn’t get enough help?
To reinerate, these two men fought to keep us free so we can scream inanities on blogs and host shows on channel 28 and bleat incessantly about our beliefs yet …….. not enough help was there for them.
Illegals will get surgery if the bill passes.
Yet our soliders commit suicide in the country they fought to protect.
Be you pro or anti the war we need to be ashamed for we have failed.
Apparently he was reading only the comics over the past 3-4 years a military suicide rates have skyrocketed to the point where the military suicide rate now exceeds the suicide rate for the general population.
For the details, and the military's own incomprehension, see this from six months ago:
American troops are taking their own lives in the largest numbers since records began to be kept in 1980. In 2008, there were 128 confirmed suicides by serving army personnel and 41 by serving marines. Another 15 army deaths are still being investigated. The toll is another of the terrible consequences that have flowed from Washington's neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The army suicide rate is now higher than that among the general American population. The rate has been calculated as 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, compared with 19.5 per 100,000 civilians. This is a shocking statistic, as soldiers theoretically are screened for mental illnesses before enlistment and have access to counselling and health services that millions of ordinary people cannot afford.
As there is an average of 10 failed suicide attempts for each actual loss of life, the figures suggest that more than 1,600 serving army and marine personnel tried to kill themselves last year.
Army Secretary Pete Geren told the Associated Press that "we cannot tell you" why the number of military suicides was rising.
The SecArmy may not know why military suicides are rising, but the grunts on the ground, in the air, and in the water could tell you pretty damn easily.
Homegrown boy is moved to immediate patriotism:
I’ll call the VA myself and see what they need. Then we’ll see who wants to really help and who wants to *itch. I’ll even send out a list.
But note two things: (a) he intends to use your participation/non-participation as a litmus test of patriotism; and (b) it somehow does not occur to HGB that thousands of us--vets, war criticizers, and other volunteers--have been working with our returning soldiers for the past eight years before he figured out there was a need.
Excuse me. I feel the need to hock something bitter out of the back of my throat.
The Delaware Student Torture Program and me
Kilroy has up a post on the DSTP; he and I have exchanged emails on this topic in the past, and his post convinces me that it is time to tell (most) of what I know and witnessed.
I say "most" because I am going to explain what happened in some detail, but I am also going to leave out the names--at least 90% of them.
From 1992-1995 I co-chaired the Delaware Social Studies Curriculum Frameworks Commission, which was charged with developing new K-12 Social Studies Standards. I also chaired the writing team, and did the bulk of the actual writing and editing of the final document. We produced standards in four different areas: History, Geography, Economics, and Civics.
It is important to note that all the curriculum frameworks commissions (SS, English/language arts, Science, and Math) were charged to create standards that were to be tested through a process called authentic assessment. This was one of the big buzzwords in the early 1990s, and it essentially meant that students would not take a test, but would produce a product or perhaps even a portfolio of work to demonstrate mastery of subject matter. The standards to be evaluated for such assessments differ markedly from conventional pencil-and-paper tests. Here's an example:
In History we developed four standards that would play out with increasing sophistication as students reached higher grades:
History Standard One--chronology: how history locates events in time; including time lines, cause-and-effect, and tracing trends and ideas through history
History Standard Two--analysis: how historians examine and analyze documents and artifacts; difference between primary and secondary sources;
History Standard Three--interpretation: how historians build different narratives depending on the evidence they examine, the questions that they ask, and the perspectives from which they work
History Standard Four--content: what you should actually know about US and World History (who was George Washington, when was the New Deal, yada, yada).
The point of these standards was that History Standards 1-3 were considered skills or process standards, that students would use to engage the content from History Standard 4, and that any assessment would expect students to demonstrate through a project the ability to take an event, person, or phenomena from HS 4, and then locate it in time (HS1); analyze data about it (HS2), and then develop an interpretive narrative (HS3). Essentially, we wrote standards not for students to learn history, but to practice history.
And that's how we were told that the eventual DSTP would test them.
[We were also assured (and I went to several meetings with concerned parents to pass on these assurances) that special needs students would be assessed at their functional/developmental level, not their grade level. That later turned out to be such a bald-faced lie on the part of the Department of Education that I have since been deeply ashamed for helping to promulgate it.]
So we wrote that kind of standards. The process was as political as academic, as you might imagine. The UD Geography Department and the Delaware Geography Alliance (which is essentially a UD subsidy operation) got to dictate the Geography standards which, not unreasonably, reflected the then-current National Geographic standards.
The UD Center for Economic Education received virtual carte blanche to saddle Delaware students with a set of laisse faire ultra-conservative standards in economics that could actually offend even a libertarian. For example, it is not intellectually possible even to explain the concept of neo-colonial economics in a Delaware classroom any more, because the DE Economics Standards are so tightly written from a Western Industrial Capitalism model that there isn't even room in the abstract to consider other theoretical economic models.
Ah--if I only knew then what I know now.
But we wrote good standards, overall.
And then the General Assembly decided it was cost prohibitive to create the kind of assessment those standards (again, in ELA, SS, Math, and Science) required. So they hired people to come in and write old-fashioned paper tests for standards that were not designed to support them. The Math people did a pretty good job because a lot of the math standards had been cribbed from the nationally normed NCTM [National Council for Teachers of Mathematics], but for everybody else....
The experience was a nightmare.
Let me explain what happened to the History standards. DOE hired an individual from Maryland whose primary background was English/Language Arts to supervise the Social Studies test, giving that individual complete autonomy from the only Social Studies expert on staff at DOE. That individual came from a school of thought that believes that only skills are important; that content is merely the vehicle to teach skills. So that person then reached a decision [which was in turn rubber-stamped by the General Assembly] only to test History Standards 1 (chronology), 2 (analysis), and 3 (interpretation), and not to test history content knowledge at all. Ever.
The DSTP History test to this day does not test History content.
As a result, groups of teachers sat down and tried for months to come up with test items that would somehow assess student performance on chronology, analysis, and interpretation without being based on historical content. Are you screaming yet? Then, when they found something they thought might work, they simply threw it into the test without ever vetting their historical material with actual historians.
So on the original DSTP 8th Grade examination we found some of the following:
--An extended answer question on trade between the "thirteen British North American colonies" and the Caribbean/England during the period 1783-1790. yeah, that's right, after Yorktown
--An extended answer question that required 8th graders to draw conclusions about a picture of young Black men conducting a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in the late 1950s--when the curriculum guide said 8th Grade American History should only go as far forward as 1877....
There was more, but it is too ugly to tell.
During this period, the individual spearheading the creation of all the DSTP materials stayed around for about 18 months--long enough to engineer the award of the final work and the grading of the assessments to the company he then promptly went to work for.
Meanwhile, successive Secretaries and Associate Secretaries of Education came and went, and each one stirred the pot. In about 1998 we added "Performance Indicators" that were supposed to break down the standards into manageable pieces and give teachers a sequence of instruction. Only problem: State law says the DSTP is to be created from the Standards, not the Performance Indicators, so the branch of DOE doing the Assessments refused to acknowledge or use the new PIs even as the Curriculum branch was passing them out to all districts and demanding they be used to revise curriculum.
Kilroy is exactly right: successive generations of Delaware school children have been abused by a system of testing that--except in Math and some parts of ELA--has actually no educational reliability or validity (and I am using those terms in their technical senses) whatever.
So of course we made those tests make or break for student progress and school assessments under No Child Left Behind.
We didn't have to do it: we simply did it because they were already in place and neither the legislators nor the educrats could ever admit the dirty little secret to the public: our tests did not align with our standards, and our test results in most academic areas were actually damn near meaningless.
If I had a child today who was mandated to go to summer school on the basis of the DSTP, especially for failing either Social Studies or Science, I would refuse and sue the State, based on the fact that the State would not be able to prove in a court of law that they were actually testing the standards they had adopted.
I'd win.
The era (I am tempted to say "error") of high stakes testing and the concept that assessment should drive instruction is hopefully passing us by, but it has irreparably harmed a full generation of students just as palpably as the infamous New Math of the early 1960s left us with a generation of school children who could not even do simple calculations.
The problem is that in Delaware we got in at the very start of the trend, and have ridden it out to the end, warping it even further by bringing in pseudo-experts to keep it going and then refusing to actually pay to have real tests or aligned standards developed.
The irony? Our new effort to develop or purchase an adaptive, computerized test is, frankly, heading down the same stupid road, because in making the DSTP a political football we have neglected as a State to ask the right question.
The question we're asking: Can't we have a better test?
The question we should be asking: Why did we let wild-eyed educational researchers ever convince us that high-stakes testing was either good for kids or for school systems?
Until we get somebody in power (and, unfortunately, it is not Jack Markell, Matt Denn, or Lillian Lowery--as much respect as I have for all of them) who is willing to examine the roots of our testing and achievement problem, rather than simply whore out our children's futures in a Race to the Top for more Federal money, public education in Delaware will only continue to provide a mediocre payback for a massive investment.
I say "most" because I am going to explain what happened in some detail, but I am also going to leave out the names--at least 90% of them.
From 1992-1995 I co-chaired the Delaware Social Studies Curriculum Frameworks Commission, which was charged with developing new K-12 Social Studies Standards. I also chaired the writing team, and did the bulk of the actual writing and editing of the final document. We produced standards in four different areas: History, Geography, Economics, and Civics.
It is important to note that all the curriculum frameworks commissions (SS, English/language arts, Science, and Math) were charged to create standards that were to be tested through a process called authentic assessment. This was one of the big buzzwords in the early 1990s, and it essentially meant that students would not take a test, but would produce a product or perhaps even a portfolio of work to demonstrate mastery of subject matter. The standards to be evaluated for such assessments differ markedly from conventional pencil-and-paper tests. Here's an example:
In History we developed four standards that would play out with increasing sophistication as students reached higher grades:
History Standard One--chronology: how history locates events in time; including time lines, cause-and-effect, and tracing trends and ideas through history
History Standard Two--analysis: how historians examine and analyze documents and artifacts; difference between primary and secondary sources;
History Standard Three--interpretation: how historians build different narratives depending on the evidence they examine, the questions that they ask, and the perspectives from which they work
History Standard Four--content: what you should actually know about US and World History (who was George Washington, when was the New Deal, yada, yada).
The point of these standards was that History Standards 1-3 were considered skills or process standards, that students would use to engage the content from History Standard 4, and that any assessment would expect students to demonstrate through a project the ability to take an event, person, or phenomena from HS 4, and then locate it in time (HS1); analyze data about it (HS2), and then develop an interpretive narrative (HS3). Essentially, we wrote standards not for students to learn history, but to practice history.
And that's how we were told that the eventual DSTP would test them.
[We were also assured (and I went to several meetings with concerned parents to pass on these assurances) that special needs students would be assessed at their functional/developmental level, not their grade level. That later turned out to be such a bald-faced lie on the part of the Department of Education that I have since been deeply ashamed for helping to promulgate it.]
So we wrote that kind of standards. The process was as political as academic, as you might imagine. The UD Geography Department and the Delaware Geography Alliance (which is essentially a UD subsidy operation) got to dictate the Geography standards which, not unreasonably, reflected the then-current National Geographic standards.
The UD Center for Economic Education received virtual carte blanche to saddle Delaware students with a set of laisse faire ultra-conservative standards in economics that could actually offend even a libertarian. For example, it is not intellectually possible even to explain the concept of neo-colonial economics in a Delaware classroom any more, because the DE Economics Standards are so tightly written from a Western Industrial Capitalism model that there isn't even room in the abstract to consider other theoretical economic models.
Ah--if I only knew then what I know now.
But we wrote good standards, overall.
And then the General Assembly decided it was cost prohibitive to create the kind of assessment those standards (again, in ELA, SS, Math, and Science) required. So they hired people to come in and write old-fashioned paper tests for standards that were not designed to support them. The Math people did a pretty good job because a lot of the math standards had been cribbed from the nationally normed NCTM [National Council for Teachers of Mathematics], but for everybody else....
The experience was a nightmare.
Let me explain what happened to the History standards. DOE hired an individual from Maryland whose primary background was English/Language Arts to supervise the Social Studies test, giving that individual complete autonomy from the only Social Studies expert on staff at DOE. That individual came from a school of thought that believes that only skills are important; that content is merely the vehicle to teach skills. So that person then reached a decision [which was in turn rubber-stamped by the General Assembly] only to test History Standards 1 (chronology), 2 (analysis), and 3 (interpretation), and not to test history content knowledge at all. Ever.
The DSTP History test to this day does not test History content.
As a result, groups of teachers sat down and tried for months to come up with test items that would somehow assess student performance on chronology, analysis, and interpretation without being based on historical content. Are you screaming yet? Then, when they found something they thought might work, they simply threw it into the test without ever vetting their historical material with actual historians.
So on the original DSTP 8th Grade examination we found some of the following:
--An extended answer question on trade between the "thirteen British North American colonies" and the Caribbean/England during the period 1783-1790. yeah, that's right, after Yorktown
--An extended answer question that required 8th graders to draw conclusions about a picture of young Black men conducting a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in the late 1950s--when the curriculum guide said 8th Grade American History should only go as far forward as 1877....
There was more, but it is too ugly to tell.
During this period, the individual spearheading the creation of all the DSTP materials stayed around for about 18 months--long enough to engineer the award of the final work and the grading of the assessments to the company he then promptly went to work for.
Meanwhile, successive Secretaries and Associate Secretaries of Education came and went, and each one stirred the pot. In about 1998 we added "Performance Indicators" that were supposed to break down the standards into manageable pieces and give teachers a sequence of instruction. Only problem: State law says the DSTP is to be created from the Standards, not the Performance Indicators, so the branch of DOE doing the Assessments refused to acknowledge or use the new PIs even as the Curriculum branch was passing them out to all districts and demanding they be used to revise curriculum.
Kilroy is exactly right: successive generations of Delaware school children have been abused by a system of testing that--except in Math and some parts of ELA--has actually no educational reliability or validity (and I am using those terms in their technical senses) whatever.
So of course we made those tests make or break for student progress and school assessments under No Child Left Behind.
We didn't have to do it: we simply did it because they were already in place and neither the legislators nor the educrats could ever admit the dirty little secret to the public: our tests did not align with our standards, and our test results in most academic areas were actually damn near meaningless.
If I had a child today who was mandated to go to summer school on the basis of the DSTP, especially for failing either Social Studies or Science, I would refuse and sue the State, based on the fact that the State would not be able to prove in a court of law that they were actually testing the standards they had adopted.
I'd win.
The era (I am tempted to say "error") of high stakes testing and the concept that assessment should drive instruction is hopefully passing us by, but it has irreparably harmed a full generation of students just as palpably as the infamous New Math of the early 1960s left us with a generation of school children who could not even do simple calculations.
The problem is that in Delaware we got in at the very start of the trend, and have ridden it out to the end, warping it even further by bringing in pseudo-experts to keep it going and then refusing to actually pay to have real tests or aligned standards developed.
The irony? Our new effort to develop or purchase an adaptive, computerized test is, frankly, heading down the same stupid road, because in making the DSTP a political football we have neglected as a State to ask the right question.
The question we're asking: Can't we have a better test?
The question we should be asking: Why did we let wild-eyed educational researchers ever convince us that high-stakes testing was either good for kids or for school systems?
Until we get somebody in power (and, unfortunately, it is not Jack Markell, Matt Denn, or Lillian Lowery--as much respect as I have for all of them) who is willing to examine the roots of our testing and achievement problem, rather than simply whore out our children's futures in a Race to the Top for more Federal money, public education in Delaware will only continue to provide a mediocre payback for a massive investment.
Comment Rescue : Dana Garrett Gets Owned by a New Commenter
Most readers know Dana Garrett is quite selective and narrow about what he presents in (trying) to argue with opponents.
His latest triumphal hogwash post (about me in this instance) is just classic.
[I guess the whole issue's settled now that Dana has himself convinced I have been "humiliated" by the remark of one commenter. Woe is me!]
Dana also quotes a new commenter here (welcome, Beto!), but leaves out the rest of Beto's comments, which are far more humiliating to Garrett than anything I faced from any commenter :
"Garrett's post is hogwash, however, simply because he does not seem to grasp simple logic very well (I'll choose to believe incompetence instead of malice as the cause for his weak reasoning). He uses a quote criticizing paternalism that says "Opponents of paternalism [...] claim that liberty supersedes safety in terms of actions that only affect oneself" (my emphasis), and goes on to claim that this basic libertarian view would justify the Neumann couple's actions, which obviously affected mostly their daughter, not themselves."
I, too would like to think it is incompetence rather than malice. Unfortunately I think Dana is intelligent enough to know better.
After Dana recently got quite nasty, calling me a "liar and demagogue", I have to believe Dana's distortions of libertarian thinking are purposeful and malicious....but not personal. Dana is a friend, and I stand by that.
However, if I thought to write posts about every instance of Dana being humiliated on his own blog, I would have to start a whole new blog just to keep up with all the content I would have to work with.
His latest triumphal hogwash post (about me in this instance) is just classic.
[I guess the whole issue's settled now that Dana has himself convinced I have been "humiliated" by the remark of one commenter. Woe is me!]
Dana also quotes a new commenter here (welcome, Beto!), but leaves out the rest of Beto's comments, which are far more humiliating to Garrett than anything I faced from any commenter :
"Garrett's post is hogwash, however, simply because he does not seem to grasp simple logic very well (I'll choose to believe incompetence instead of malice as the cause for his weak reasoning). He uses a quote criticizing paternalism that says "Opponents of paternalism [...] claim that liberty supersedes safety in terms of actions that only affect oneself" (my emphasis), and goes on to claim that this basic libertarian view would justify the Neumann couple's actions, which obviously affected mostly their daughter, not themselves."
I, too would like to think it is incompetence rather than malice. Unfortunately I think Dana is intelligent enough to know better.
After Dana recently got quite nasty, calling me a "liar and demagogue", I have to believe Dana's distortions of libertarian thinking are purposeful and malicious....but not personal. Dana is a friend, and I stand by that.
However, if I thought to write posts about every instance of Dana being humiliated on his own blog, I would have to start a whole new blog just to keep up with all the content I would have to work with.
Cash for Clunkers : Another Clunker of a Program Burning Taxpayer Dollars
My good friend Dana Garrett triumphantly touts the "stunning success" of a government program to give away "free" money to trade-in "clunker" automobiles for purchase of new higher-fuel-efficiency vehicles.
I do find it interesting that Dana seems compelled to make a headline of the proclamation that there is a government subsidy program "that is working" (as if the opposite is the predictable outcome, not noteworthy). I love Freudian slips of truth.
But I have to say, Dana, thanks so much for such brilliant insightful analysis. People are flocking to a program handing out $1000's in cash? You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Sure it's working. People are lining up like gangbusters to get their "free" money. It's blowing through billions so the Obama junta can manipulate the U.S. economy in yet another way, rigging outcomes through private enterprises (car makers, car dealers) and charging it to whoever will end up paying their champagne government tab, if ever.
Despite Dana Garrett's belief that the government's handing out money and people actually taking it, in droves, is in itself a "stunning success", the efficacy of this program remains to be seen.
Sure Dana offhandedly mentions the environment and improved gas mileage - the benefits of which are largely nebulous and incalculable under this program. For example, how many people are trading in that "clunker" second car they rarely or never actually drive for a spanking new second car that they will now, in fact, make use of with more frequency because, well...like taking free money....they can?
Taxpayers, in such instances, are being charged $1000's so that a vehicle rarely or ever used (and thus that rarely burns fuel, by lack of use) is now replaced by a vehicle with somewhat better fuel economy but that may well end up being put to far more use, the net result of which will actually be more fuel burned. So much for energy independence.
How many people are taking unused, idle junk cars and turning them in so they can have government subsidize their purchase of a new car for immediate resale, allowing them to walk with most or all of the "clunker" subsidy in cash. Someone makes a quick buck, and taxpayers get bilked by assuming the super-inflated junk purchase of a "clunker" that was never actually on the road, burning fuel, or emitting anything, which purportedly are what the program is seeking to curb, beyond just outright public subsidies for now-government-owned automakers like GM (Government Motors).
People are quite enterprising at cashing in on big honkin' giveaways, especially in a bad economy, and frankly I doubt any give a rat's ass about the feel-good pseudo-environmental nonsense behind this colossal misappropriation of taxpayer resources. They just want the money and will get it, even if it means thwarting the supposed purpose of the program that enables them to grab some "free" cash.
The statist candymen behind this are (as Al Mascitti of WDEL so hilariously put it) like the Philly Phanatic with his T-shirt cannon - except they are shooting bundles of cash into the hoardes.
They are also unfailingly ignorant of the laws of unintended consequences in their mania to put the country further into crushing hock for lurching ad hoc schemes like this, underlain by their obsessive push to "do something/anything", making their omnipotence and control known and felt across the land.
The "Cash for Clunkers" ruse is no exception. They are robbing demand from future markets in which competition for dollars would drive innovation and production of far more efficient or even petroleum-free motor vehicles than are being produced by the automakers we now reward with public subsidies.
The statists could probably have obtained better results in the aggregate and wasted exponentially less money had they offered $1000 to simply turn in running "clunkers" rather than replace them with yet more petroleum-burning combustion engine powered vehicles...only to become the "clunkers" of tomorrow.
But alas, we have to keep those big clunky government-controlled automakers and their bloated union albatrosses in clover.
And just wait until you see the statist market manipulators try to make this program permanent - yet another indicia of the creeping fascism at hand.....another "stunning success" in government's giving away other people's money "free".
But who cares? It's all borrowed from some future generation anyway, right?
Even in Vegas they get what a clunker this program actually is :
Mary Katherine Ham also catalogs what a wishful ad hoc waste of public resources is this clunker of a scheme :
I do find it interesting that Dana seems compelled to make a headline of the proclamation that there is a government subsidy program "that is working" (as if the opposite is the predictable outcome, not noteworthy). I love Freudian slips of truth.
But I have to say, Dana, thanks so much for such brilliant insightful analysis. People are flocking to a program handing out $1000's in cash? You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Sure it's working. People are lining up like gangbusters to get their "free" money. It's blowing through billions so the Obama junta can manipulate the U.S. economy in yet another way, rigging outcomes through private enterprises (car makers, car dealers) and charging it to whoever will end up paying their champagne government tab, if ever.
Despite Dana Garrett's belief that the government's handing out money and people actually taking it, in droves, is in itself a "stunning success", the efficacy of this program remains to be seen.
Sure Dana offhandedly mentions the environment and improved gas mileage - the benefits of which are largely nebulous and incalculable under this program. For example, how many people are trading in that "clunker" second car they rarely or never actually drive for a spanking new second car that they will now, in fact, make use of with more frequency because, well...like taking free money....they can?
Taxpayers, in such instances, are being charged $1000's so that a vehicle rarely or ever used (and thus that rarely burns fuel, by lack of use) is now replaced by a vehicle with somewhat better fuel economy but that may well end up being put to far more use, the net result of which will actually be more fuel burned. So much for energy independence.
How many people are taking unused, idle junk cars and turning them in so they can have government subsidize their purchase of a new car for immediate resale, allowing them to walk with most or all of the "clunker" subsidy in cash. Someone makes a quick buck, and taxpayers get bilked by assuming the super-inflated junk purchase of a "clunker" that was never actually on the road, burning fuel, or emitting anything, which purportedly are what the program is seeking to curb, beyond just outright public subsidies for now-government-owned automakers like GM (Government Motors).
People are quite enterprising at cashing in on big honkin' giveaways, especially in a bad economy, and frankly I doubt any give a rat's ass about the feel-good pseudo-environmental nonsense behind this colossal misappropriation of taxpayer resources. They just want the money and will get it, even if it means thwarting the supposed purpose of the program that enables them to grab some "free" cash.
The statist candymen behind this are (as Al Mascitti of WDEL so hilariously put it) like the Philly Phanatic with his T-shirt cannon - except they are shooting bundles of cash into the hoardes.
They are also unfailingly ignorant of the laws of unintended consequences in their mania to put the country further into crushing hock for lurching ad hoc schemes like this, underlain by their obsessive push to "do something/anything", making their omnipotence and control known and felt across the land.
The "Cash for Clunkers" ruse is no exception. They are robbing demand from future markets in which competition for dollars would drive innovation and production of far more efficient or even petroleum-free motor vehicles than are being produced by the automakers we now reward with public subsidies.
The statists could probably have obtained better results in the aggregate and wasted exponentially less money had they offered $1000 to simply turn in running "clunkers" rather than replace them with yet more petroleum-burning combustion engine powered vehicles...only to become the "clunkers" of tomorrow.
But alas, we have to keep those big clunky government-controlled automakers and their bloated union albatrosses in clover.
And just wait until you see the statist market manipulators try to make this program permanent - yet another indicia of the creeping fascism at hand.....another "stunning success" in government's giving away other people's money "free".
But who cares? It's all borrowed from some future generation anyway, right?
Even in Vegas they get what a clunker this program actually is :
Imagine you're in the car business. You have a problem. Government mandates -- aimed at "fuel efficiency" and lots of other high-sounding matters in which Congress is granted no power to meddle by the Constitution -- require you to manufacture cars that are more expensive, yet lighter and thus less safe than the cars Americans already have.
Add that to the current economic slowdown -- exacerbated by high government taxes -- and your customers are maintaining, buying and selling amongst themselves their old vehicles rather than visiting your showrooms. What to do?
One option would be to take billions of dollars seized from your customers against their will, and use it to buy those older cars and trucks, at higher than market value, from anyone who comes in and agrees to buy one of your newer models.
Then -- this is the good part -- don't turn around and re-sell those trade-ins as used cars: Destroy them.
You could claim you're doing it to "protect the environment" -- though in fact any car without smog controls that's still on the road would be more than 30 years old, probably a restored classic whose owner is hardly going to sell it for $4,500.
What's that? Private auto manufacturers would have to explain to their stockholders why they were destroying those valuable assets for a dead loss? And private car makers have no power to seize their customers cash against their will and put it to use in such a scheme, in the first place?
But who said anything about "private" automakers? The U.S. government now runs America's biggest car company, formerly known as "General Motors." The federal government does indeed have the power to seize billions of dollars from its "customers," on threat of jail. And it has indeed launched such a program, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, or more colloquially as "Cash for Clunkers."
They launched it early last week. And suspended it on Friday, as Congress raced to allocate an extra $2 billion to keep the scheme from running dry. And what a week it was.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said about 40,000 vehicle sales had been completed through the program but that dealers estimated they were trying to complete transactions on another 200,000 vehicles.
Jim Mooradian, general manager of Courtesy Imports in Henderson, called getting registered for the program a "nightmare," with systems crashing and dealers experiencing trouble submitting documents. Nor are guidelines clear on when the federal rebate money will flow to dealers.
One letter-writer last week reported her family visited a local Las Vegas dealer and completed one of the "cash for-clunkers" deals -- only to be called back later, told their trade-in didn't qualify, and that they had to bring back either their new car or their $4,500.
"At this point, if you start it three days ago and say it will be a three-month program, and within two days you panic and pull things offline, you will have dealers very hesitant to sign people up again," Mr. Mooradian warns.
This is like getting your car fixed up after your drunken teenager drives it into a wall, handing him the keys, and saying "Try again."
If someone estimates funding of a plan is adequate for 90 days, and the money runs out in a week, how much of the American economy would you trust that person to run?
These days, the method in Washington is to dream up some crackpot scheme, insist that it has to be enacted "immediately! -- no time to read the bill or organize anyone to administer the program! This is an emergency!" Then they draw some dollar figure out of their hat (some would suggest a more proctological source), throw a billion or two at the fan (after all, it's only tax money), and see what flies.
First there was last autumn's huge bank bailout -- the "Troubled Asset Relief Program." Leaders of both parties raced to Washington and said there was no time for study and debate: the thing had to be enacted in a week! It was an emergency! Remember?
The rich banking buddies of the rich bankers at the Federal Reserve got bailed out, all right. But as for all that new credit that was supposed to flow out into the economy, making it easier for small businesses to stay in business? Still waiting.
Next, in Feburary, came billions of dollars in "economic stimulus" funding.
Five months later, less than 10 percent of that money has been spent, most of that on propping up state budgets to make sure no Diversity Training Officer goes without her bureaucratic raises and benefit hikes. Those "shovel-ready projects" that were going to immediately create "high-paying new construction jobs"? Perhaps Washington can use the shovels to shovel something else they've got plenty of.
Now, Congress races to throw another $2 billion of our hard-earned money down the swirling "Cash for Clunkers" whirlpool, approving said measure Friday by a vote of 316-109.
"The federal government can't process a simple rebate. I've got dealers who have submitted the paperwork three times and have gotten three rejections," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich. "What is a dealer supposed to do?"
"There are a lot of questions about how the administration administered this program." House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio told The Associated Press, Friday. "If they can't handle something as simple as this, how would we handle health care?"
Oh, gosh. He would have to ask that.
Mary Katherine Ham also catalogs what a wishful ad hoc waste of public resources is this clunker of a scheme :
Meanwhile, the unintended consequences are stacking up with a vengeance:
Buy a Chevelle with your Cash-for-Clunkers money!
Jack up prices for car maintenance on the likely lower-income and responsible folks who forgo the giveaway to keep an old car that doesn't come with a monthly car payment:
If you own a "clunker," you would be harmed by this legislation, because it would remove old cars, and old car parts, from the market, making older cars even more expensive to buy and to fix.
Because the government plans to destroy the "clunkers" traded in -- even if they are perfectly good vehicles -- the supply of used cars will dwindle and both used -- and new-car prices will increase.
Cost already-hurting car companies millions in ads planned and paid for touting the Cash-for-Clunkers program!
But by all means, let's have these folks revamp the 15 percent of the economy that is health care. I'm sure they'll be able to keep us alive for more than a week.
Update: The House hurriedly passed $2 billion more for the Cash-for-Clunkers program, which Obama proclaimed successful "well beyond all expectations."
The vote was 316-109. The bill now goes to the Senate which remains in session for one more week. But they will have to pass the exact same bill since the House goes into recess today and will not be around to participate in a conference to hash out differences.
President Obama praised Congress for their quick action and said he was "pleased with the progress" made in the House.
Republican Rep. Dave Camp had this to say on Twitter: "Cash for Clunkers was running on fumes, so we voted to top it off through September."
Sen. Claire McCaskill at first declared, via Twitter, her intention to vote "no" on a similar provision in the Senate, should it come up next week, as expected: "I will vote no on any extension of Cash for Clunkers program."
But later prevaricated: "I will consider using EXISTING stimulus $ that has already been appropriated to finish up cash for clunker program. No new $."
Sen. John McCain was more definitive in his opposition: "House passes $2b additional for "cash for clunkers" - another outrageous act of generational theft!"
Here's a Newsweek video highlighting the bureaucratic idiocy associated with this messy program. At the end you'll see a dealer marveling at how a perfectly good running late-model Dodge pickup truck that could be well-used by a contractor or small business is headed to be crushed for scrap...If this is true, we really are dumber than bricks
From GoogleNews:
WASHINGTON — The success of President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda — from health care and climate change to education — could depend on how quickly he recovers from the sharp drop in support among white voters after criticizing a white policeman's arrest of a black Harvard scholar.
Obama's widely publicized effort to defuse the first racial flare-up of his young presidency by inviting the protagonists to the White House last week for beers and conversation ended well by most accounts, even though there were no apologies.
Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. Joseph Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. agreed to disagree about the July 16 confrontation at Gates' home and pledged to meet again.
Obama's impromptu comments about the incident could become a defining moment. Nearly immediately after Obama's remark that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, his approval rating plummeted among whites, dropping over two days from 53 percent to 46 percent in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
If Obama is to have success with the policy changes he wants, he can't afford to shed white support. Not to mention the disaster that losing the affections of many in the blue-collar, Reagan Democrat constituency would spell for any re-election campaign.
Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, said he was stunned at how poorly Obama, normally so controlled, handled what Jacobs called "the first major personal debacle for the president."
"This thing was just hung around his neck and he couldn't get rid of it," Jacobs said. "I think he presumed too much. He really started to believe his own press releases on post-racial America."
OK: even if I have a lot of unresolved issues with the Gates controversy, I would agree that as a politician and a President, Barack Obama shoved his foot squarely into his mouth with the stupidly comment.
And OK: I don't at all like the direction of health care, or civil liberties, or foreign policy, or deficit spending, or a lot else under this administration.
And even OK: I will grant you that this is President Obama's first really serious media gaffe.
But if that's how we, as American citizens, then make our decisions on issues like health care, or civil liberties, or the war in Afghanistan, we really are truly f**ked.
PS: please spare me the idea that this moment suddenly revealed Obama's true character or socialist nature or racial agenda to a large number of Americans. That would simply be arguing that we're all incredibly stupid from the other direction.
WASHINGTON — The success of President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda — from health care and climate change to education — could depend on how quickly he recovers from the sharp drop in support among white voters after criticizing a white policeman's arrest of a black Harvard scholar.
Obama's widely publicized effort to defuse the first racial flare-up of his young presidency by inviting the protagonists to the White House last week for beers and conversation ended well by most accounts, even though there were no apologies.
Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. Joseph Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. agreed to disagree about the July 16 confrontation at Gates' home and pledged to meet again.
Obama's impromptu comments about the incident could become a defining moment. Nearly immediately after Obama's remark that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, his approval rating plummeted among whites, dropping over two days from 53 percent to 46 percent in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
If Obama is to have success with the policy changes he wants, he can't afford to shed white support. Not to mention the disaster that losing the affections of many in the blue-collar, Reagan Democrat constituency would spell for any re-election campaign.
Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, said he was stunned at how poorly Obama, normally so controlled, handled what Jacobs called "the first major personal debacle for the president."
"This thing was just hung around his neck and he couldn't get rid of it," Jacobs said. "I think he presumed too much. He really started to believe his own press releases on post-racial America."
OK: even if I have a lot of unresolved issues with the Gates controversy, I would agree that as a politician and a President, Barack Obama shoved his foot squarely into his mouth with the stupidly comment.
And OK: I don't at all like the direction of health care, or civil liberties, or foreign policy, or deficit spending, or a lot else under this administration.
And even OK: I will grant you that this is President Obama's first really serious media gaffe.
But if that's how we, as American citizens, then make our decisions on issues like health care, or civil liberties, or the war in Afghanistan, we really are truly f**ked.
PS: please spare me the idea that this moment suddenly revealed Obama's true character or socialist nature or racial agenda to a large number of Americans. That would simply be arguing that we're all incredibly stupid from the other direction.
Justice
Interestingly Dana Garrett recently raised the issue of the March 2008 death of 11-year old Madeline Neumann, whose criminal parents caused her slow, painful death by denying medical treatment of her diabetes, in order to satisfy their religion-based insanity.
Garrett tried to imply that this tragic crime was somehow relevant to a discussion of libertarianism. His whole piece was hogwash. Homicide is not libertarian.
For the record, this libertarian is glad to see in today's news that justice has now been served for Madeline unto her monstrous criminal father. (Her mother was convicted earlier this year).
Garrett tried to imply that this tragic crime was somehow relevant to a discussion of libertarianism. His whole piece was hogwash. Homicide is not libertarian.
For the record, this libertarian is glad to see in today's news that justice has now been served for Madeline unto her monstrous criminal father. (Her mother was convicted earlier this year).
The Associated Press - 5:58 p.m. ET, Sat., Aug 1, 2009
function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById("udtD"); if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,(('false'.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp('633847607172030000');WAUSAU, Wis. - A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.
Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn't walk, talk, eat or drink. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
Sitting straight in his chair, Neumann stared at the jury as the verdict in a nearly empty courtroom was read. He declined comment as he left the courthouse.
Defense attorney Jay Kronenwetter said the verdict would be appealed. He declined further comment.
Prosecutors also declined comment, citing a gag order.
Mother convicted in spring
Leilani Neumann, 41, was convicted on the same charge in the spring. Marathon County Circuit Judge Vincent Howard set Oct. 6 for sentencing for both parents, who face up to 25 years in prison.
Their case is believed to be the first in Wisconsin involving faith healing in which someone died and another person was charged with a homicide.
Last month, an Oregon jury convicted a man of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment for relying on prayer instead of seeking medical care for his 15-month-old daughter who died of pneumonia and a blood infection in March 2008. Both of the girl's parents were acquitted of a more serious manslaughter charge.
Neumann's jury — six men and six women — deliberated about 15 hours over two days before convicting him. At one point, jurors asked the judge whether Neumann's belief in faith healing made him "not liable" for not taking his daughter to the hospital even if he knew she wasn't feeling well.
Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, testified Thursday that he believed God would heal his daughter and he never expected her to die. God promises in the Bible to heal, he said.
"If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumann testified. "I am not believing what he said he would do."
Government by Blackmail: an update from the WNJ letters
Herbert Harrington of Wilmington wants to make us all safe by having automobiles equipped with cell phone jammers:
A letter to the editor last Saturday had a great idea of installing cell phone jamming devices in autos when they are being driven, suggesting that this technology be developed.
The devices are available right now on the Internet. The only problem: They are illegal to own in the United States. Is this a great country or what?
All around us on Interstate 95, nitwits are having animated phone conversations, or texting (which is cell phoning on crack), and we can't protect ourselves.
Cell phone jammers have an effective cone of protection of about 30 meters, and their use for individuals trying to protect themselves should be immediately made legal.
Yep. This makes perfect sense. My son is having an asthma attack in the back seat of our car. We are racing to the hospital. My wife, in the passenger seat, is attempting to call 911 and get better medical instructions or at least have the ER personnel alerted that we are coming in.
Technological gizmos do not resolve all safety issues because--Herbert, you twit--they are incapable of making judgments.
But I am sure that he will someday find political support for eliminating all ability of anybody--passengers or drivers--from having access to cell phones in any vehicle.
Oh, wait, some progressives already have.
A letter to the editor last Saturday had a great idea of installing cell phone jamming devices in autos when they are being driven, suggesting that this technology be developed.
The devices are available right now on the Internet. The only problem: They are illegal to own in the United States. Is this a great country or what?
All around us on Interstate 95, nitwits are having animated phone conversations, or texting (which is cell phoning on crack), and we can't protect ourselves.
Cell phone jammers have an effective cone of protection of about 30 meters, and their use for individuals trying to protect themselves should be immediately made legal.
Yep. This makes perfect sense. My son is having an asthma attack in the back seat of our car. We are racing to the hospital. My wife, in the passenger seat, is attempting to call 911 and get better medical instructions or at least have the ER personnel alerted that we are coming in.
Technological gizmos do not resolve all safety issues because--Herbert, you twit--they are incapable of making judgments.
But I am sure that he will someday find political support for eliminating all ability of anybody--passengers or drivers--from having access to cell phones in any vehicle.
Oh, wait, some progressives already have.
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