brainiac conspiracy

"Reform"

In the past, the word generally denoted a policy change that was intended to bolster the safety and security of the commonweal, such as the financial reforms that were enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Nowadays, though, the word is employed in the pursuit of efficiency! Because the private sector can accomplish anything for a fraction of the cost of government. And because school teachers and postal workers and food inspectors and air-traffic controllers are all grossly overpaid.

---Baron V

Stupid Lawmaker Tricks

One thing they excel at is in making things far more complicated than they need to be:

Elizabeth Warren made headlines last week for saying that she believes students should pay the same rate for loans as big Wall Street banks, 0.75% . . . The Obama plan allows the rate to move with market conditions (as does the House Republicans'). The two plans differ in that Obama does not want the rate to vary over the life of the loan (House Republicans do).

Durbin and Reed's plan looks a lot like the House Republican plan, but puts a cap on interest rates and uses a different benchmark for the rate---the 91-day Treasury rate plus a percentage determined by the Education Secretary to cover administrative costs rather than 10-year Treasury Bonds.

Your humble blogger (not surprisingly) thinks the Warren plan the best of these, but what if we just cancelled a couple of jet-fighter contracts and made post-secondary education free to every citizen who qualifies for admission to a not-for-profit public institution? Yes, I said free. In return, I suppose students could be required to perform some sort of paid civil/community service for a couple of years---teaching, tutoring, mentoring, etc. It could even be serving in the military! But regardless, I see no reason why this could not be done. As with most policy matters in this country, we have the money---what we lack is simply the political will, and a leadership class that doesn't revel in willfully impoverishing people.

---Baron V

It's Not a Question of "If"

But "when."

Of course they are going to vote to impeach the President, and they are simply waiting to recapture the Senate next year so they can drag the Republic through a full-throated show trial with the Chief Justice presiding. Barring that, they'll stage some symbolic vote in the House as they've done repeatedly with the Affordable Care Act. But it's going to happen, and it has little to do with the President. It has almost everything to do, on the other hand, with the fact that one of the two major political parties in America no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the other party---which is to say, the legitimacy of two-party government. It's like Hamas and the Israelis. This also explains why it was always, and still is, foolish for the President to attempt any kind of compromise with Team Republican. That's because bomb-throwers waging ideological jihad don't do compromise.

This isn't your father's Republican Party. It's not even Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. It's a party of the crazy, by the crazy, and for the crazy. And that's why they'll eventually vote to impeach the President. Because it's crazy, and so are they.

---Baron V

Credit Where Due (Lots, Actually)

This actually strikes me as a big fuckin' deal:

The proposed regulations will require workers in all subsidized child-care centers and homes to be trained in first-aid procedures, such as CPR, and safe sleeping practices. They call for universal background checks and fingerprinting of child-care workers. And they impose tough standards for monitoring and inspections to ensure that the regulations are being followed.

Now, we can't be sure how strictly the new regulations will be enforced, how many exemptions that Childcare Centers of America LLC will manage to carve out of them, and how many members of the Butthurt Militia will be given coverage in Politico to rant and rail over States' Rights and socialism. But it's a promising development either way, and a handy reminder that Team Democrat can accomplish some useful policy goals when they decide to start governing like, well, Democrats.

---Baron V

Not a Scandal

We can blame Team Republican all we want for being such nasty little obstructionists, but Team Democrat could have---and still could now---remove the impediment anytime they wanted to with a simply majority vote. You want a real scandal, from my perch in the monkey cage, it's the reality that Senate Democrats have allowed themselves to be ruled by incompetents who keep insisting that the crazy people will stop acting crazy if we only cut another deal with them, only to discover, after the fact, that the crazy people are, well, still crazy. You want to get those presidential appointments confirmed, then do what it takes to confirm the appointments because it's been obvious for years that the bomb-throwers will never declare a truce.

---Baron V

Arts Education

It's certainly one of the things I look back upon most fondly when I think of my school days. Whether it's painting pictures or joining in a sing-along, or playing in the marching band or performing with the drama department, arts education bestows a lot of advantages upon children. First, it instills discipline, since it takes a lot of practice to become good at drawing the human figure, playing a sonata on the piano, or memorizing the lines of a soliloquy. Arts education gives kids who might not excel at other academic subjects an opportunity to discover any hidden talents they may have. It also encourages self-expression, which can bolster a child's sense of identity and self-worth, and it promotes all sorts of cognitive skills, like hand-eye coordination and memorization, that can be useful later in life. And finally, simply put, arts education is just beneficial to children.

On the other hand, arts education doesn't do much to help us pass state-mandated proficiency tests aimed at making us loyal wage slaves and dutiful consumers, and I am guessing this is a big reason why we can't have arts education anymore. But we still should!

---Baron V

Not Seeing The Problem

There seems to be some liberal outrage over it, but for some reason, I can't see anything terribly wrong with this policy at all. Seems to me that there are many, many other educational initiatives that would be far worse than teaching kids how to write legibly. Don't normally agree with Republicans on education policy, but:

State Rep. Pat Hurley, an Asheboro Republican and a primary sponsor of the bill, said learning cursive will help children with their brain activity, motor skills and self-discipline. And, she said, it aids students in reading historic documents, such as letters from Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.

It also promotes literacy, since it puts a prize on accuracy (e.g., spelling, punctation), which in turn improves reading skills. It also encourages kids to think for themselves when communicating instead of relying on technology to do their thinking for them. (Same goes for memorizing multiplication tables.) Shit, just read the comments section at the bottom of virtually any Yahoo! news article, and you'll see plenty of compelling arguments in favor of teaching kids to think more clearly and independently, and cursive is simply one many proven educational tools to achieve this outcome. The way I see things, it can't hurt at all.

---Baron V

Chavez

Will leave it to others to assess the man's place in history, and to assign him the measures of credit and blame to which he is rightfully due. I'd only say that (a) he was not lacking a wicked sense of humor, and (b) he leaves behind an educational-cultural legacy that every public school in every civilized nation should embrace as its own immediately. The evil that men do may live after them, true, but sometimes the good does, too.

Update (3:55 pm:) To be fair, it should be noted that El Sistema's origins predated Chavez, but he was one of the program's biggest boosters, and funded its expansion from 100,000 to over 1 million schoolchildren. Like I said, credit where due.

---Baron V