I was approached with the unique opportunity to interview Presidential contender, Mr. Tom Tancredo. I had more questions, but due to the hectic schedule of campaigning for Mr. Tancredo we had to shorten it down to a few questions. However, it is an honor to have this privilege and I have been given more opportunities for possible interviews in the future. Below, are my questions and Mr. Tancredo’s answers. I am not ready to endorse and candidate at this point, but I will say that Mr. Tancredo is one of my favorites. I appreciate Mr. Tancredo for taking the time to answer my questions and his blogger, Mike Tate, for making this opportunity possible for us.
Here’s the responses:
1. Lets start with an easy one. What do you feel is the most important issue facing America today and what do you offer in helping to face this challenge?
America knows this one by now: immigration. As President I will grant no amnesty to those who broke our laws, prosecute employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, and require legal status for anyone receiving drivers licenses, welfare, non-emergency healthcare. I will encourage assimilation of legal immigrants and eliminate taxpayer funded crutches for those who do not learn English, such as bilingual education options available in public schools and on ballots.
2. Many are of the opinion that the Democrats took over both Houses due to ignoring the important issue of border control. Do you believe this played a major part or is this issue more complicated?
In 2006, many Democrats that defeated Republicans had immigration platforms as tough as mine. Consider the many Democrats in 2006 that ran on border enforcement and no amnesty platforms. Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler defeated an incumbent Republican with such positions as: “Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers approximately $70 billion a year in financial assistance for welfare benefits, health care, education and domestic crime-fighting. I do not support granting amnesty to people who have broken the law.” J.D. Hayworth — I know you all remember him — was defeated by Democratic Harry Mitchell, who has this on his website: “Every sovereign nation has a responsibility to secure its border. In Congress, I’ll make it a top priority to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and stop illegal immigration.” The list goes on and can include Montana Senator Jon Tester and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill. Democrats won because Republicans ignored the issue for too many years.
3. While immigration is a very important issue, many people think your focus in this area makes you appear as a one issue candidate. Please explain some of the other important strengths that you will bring to America as our leader.
I am a lifelong conservative that has advanced my reputation as a solid pro-life, pro-gun, small government Republican. I have consistently championed conservative principles that strengthen America.
Once again I want to thank Mr. Tancredo and his blogger Mike Tate for this opportunity. Hopefully there will be more in the near future. Make sure to visit Tancredo’s Official Campaign Blog today where Mike Tate will be live blogging the debate behind-the-scenes!
By liberalizing the education sector I mean that it has to be made totally free of government control and involvement. Whoever wants to provide educational services must be free to do so, be it domestic or international, for profit or not for profit, at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level. What would be the expected benefits of doing so?
The supply of educational services will increase, and the quality will improve. Most importantly, prices will come down because producers in search of profit have an incentive to reduce costs, and the competitive market forces the prices to track costs. These are all everyday first-order efficiency effects of letting markets work. The second-order effects will be increased productivity, increased production, and better allocative efficiency within the sector. The third-order effects will arise from the increasing returns to scale associated with the production of education. Finally, there are very important forward and backward linkages that bind the sector with the overall economy. One of them is the use of information and communications technology (ICT) tools. It will give a boost to the IT sector in a way that is unthinkable in any other endeavor.
Increase in the supply of education is a natural outcome of removing all barriers to entry. Domestic and foreign institutions will invest in educational institutions. One can imagine corporations such as Tata, Reliance, Harvard, and Stanford opening shops in India, all eager to make a profit. This is no different from a large number of automotive companies starting manufacturing in India to supply the domestic market. The effect is predictable: an increase in the variety and therefore expanded choice for the consumers.
No longer will one have to fight to get into a good school or college. Instead of a sellers’ market, we would have a buyers’ market where the consumer is king and therefore the producers will be ever eager to reduce their costs and deliver a quality product. The best part is that with competition, even the incumbents – the public sector institutions – will wake up from their “lack of competition” induced slumber. Competition for students will force institutions to be nimble on their feet and therefore provide education that is relevant. No longer will the education system be producing graduates the majority of whom are unemployable.
Think about the waste of resources that accompanies the current supply-constrained system. Just one example: each year hundreds of thousands of students spend incredible amounts preparing for the entrance exam for IITs. That is directly unproductive use of time and money. That spending would be sufficient to fund a dozen IITs every year. Or think of the estimated US$10 billion that Indians spend in getting an education abroad.
In today’s world, an educated population is more valuable than any natural resource. Yes, India has a large population with favorable demographics. But only the private sector has the resources to provide the investment required for educating them. The operative word is “investment.” Firms don’t invest unless they expect to make a profit. And yes, there is profit to be made from providing education because education itself has positive returns and therefore people will pay for education.
Servicing such a large domestic population necessarily implies a very large installed base. That results in the industry learning by doing, and the economy gains what is called a comparative advantage in producing educational services. Which means that education in India will have a quality/price ratio that would attract foreign students. That would make India the education capital of the world, if India plays its cards properly. India’s income from producing education could dwarf what it earns from IT and IT enabled services today.
Which brings us to a very important point. Producing education will be massively dependent on the use of IT to reduce costs and improve quality. Private firms will use it intensively and effectively to produce education. Meaning that instead of a few computers sitting around in a dusty room in your average school, you will find the best technologies being used in schools and colleges. Students will be learning to use the IT tools while learning other things. More importantly, one will not have to worry about the much lamented digital divide: whoever attends an educational institution will become a digital native.
And who, you may ask, will be attending schools and colleges? My answer is: everyone. If India liberalizes the education sector, then everyone – rich poor, minority, majority, this caste, that caste, this religion, that religion, you name it – will be able to get an education. Only problem will be: the politicians will have to figure out some other way of dividing the country. But that is their problem, not ours.
[Continue on to the final part.]
Part 10: Up a Creek Without a Paddle
The liberalization of the education sector in India, that is, allowing free entry – especially for-profit firms – will result in increased supply of educational services. Here I will explore the predictable consequences of this. We begin by recognizing that education is not an undifferentiated homogeneous good; there are distinct levels within it, from basic primary education to post-secondary and tertiary levels. Each level has different pay-back periods for the “return on investment.” Furthermore, different people have different abilities to pay for the various levels of education.
Let’s graph the ability to pay along the x-axis, with the very poor at the left and the very rich on the right. On the y-axis, let’s graph the level of education, with basic primary at the bottom and specialized tertiary (Ph.D level) at the top. The top right quadrant of this diagram represents rich people and higher education, the lower left quadrant poor people and basic education. Recall that higher education has a short payback period and the payback is both private and social, that is, it has positive externalities. So the rich will pay for both higher and basic education if the capacity increases. Basic education, however, has long payback periods and most of the returns are social, and therefore poor people will under-invest in basic education given their shorter planning horizons.
Firms will profitably supply to the two right quadrants because the demand and the ability to pay, both, exist. The left top quadrant is also served by the for-profit firms. For the poor, who have basic education but are unable to pay for higher education they desire, if credit (educational loans) were available them, they would be able to pay for higher education and firms will supply to that need. That leaves the left lower quadrant: if the poor have public support (grants), they would be able to pay for basic education and thus the for-profit firms will supply to that market as well.
By allowing the private sector firms into education, the capacity for greater human capital increases and thus the economy itself grows larger and the growth rate increases. This increases the revenue base for the needed public support of basic education for the poor. Universal primary education can be a reality if the government raises the resources from a larger economy and allows the private sector to efficiently provide the education. Note that the funding is public but the provisioning is left to firms that compete in the market.
Guaranteeing universal basic education is a must for ensuring equality of opportunity. Even the poor, if given the opportunity, will be adequately prepared to continue on to higher education if they so wish. While for basic education the poor needed a grant, for higher education the poor will need a loan. Banks can easily enough provide these if the funds are efficiently spent on acquiring suitable higher education – which again depends on the availability of wide range of choices. And the choices will exist if the education sector is liberalized.
India is stuck in a low-level equilibrium: a US$50 billion education market and a GDP of US$500 billion. It is possible to move to a higher-level: a US$150 billion education market and a US$1.5 trillion GDP, if education were freed. But those who extract their annual US$100 million today from the low-level equilibrium by controlling the education sector, will not allow the liberalization of the education sector for then they will lose the rent. Year after year, they extract the rent but keep the economy effectively shackled.
Let me stress this: education is an amplifying mechanism for economic growth and development. If we fix our education system, what we will get for our efforts is going to be far greater than what we put in it. In today’s dynamic world economy, the returns to education are staggering, and so also are the losses that accumulate from a dysfunctional educational system. If need be, we should even borrow – money, people, ideas – from others to fix our system.
If I were a billionaire industrialist, here’s what I would do. I would get a few of my fellow billionaires to create a corpus of funds – say US$200 million – for a “Golden Goose” strategy. With the money, I would simultaneously buy out all the politicians of every party so that they will en masse vote to liberalize the education sector. It will be a one-time cost for us billionaires. But that would lay the foundation for an India with such formidable growth that we would recover our “investment” in short order.
But alas I am not a billionaire and nor are you. We, as the saying goes, are up a creek without a paddle.
[Postscript: Previous post: Parts 7 & 8.This series was meant to provoke some debate among those readers of the Indian Economy Blog who care about India’s education. I am grateful for those who have taken the time to add to the discussion. In a followup post, I will write a comprehensive reply to such points raised in comments that I find require clarification. I am done for now.]
Here is the latest “Imus type” controversy! It will be interesting to see the reactions to this. Will Scarborough start backtracking? We’ll just stand back and watch the backlash! Hat tip: The Palmetto Scoop
SCARBOROUGH: Have you seen Fred Thompson’s wife?
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: You think she thinks she works the pole?
CRAWFORD: That’s what a Hollywood career will do for you, I guess.
SCARBOROUGH: What do you mean?
CRAWFORD: You get wives like that.
SCARBOROUGH: I mean, look at that guy. God bless him, I love his voice. But I mean, you know. He ain’t Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
CRAWFORD: Well I would like to see him back into politics because I think he’s a lousy actor
Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was indicted Monday on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money-laundering in a long- running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.
The indictment handed up in federal court in Alexandria., Va., Monday is more than an inch thick and list 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 200 years.
Not much can be said about this besides…it is about time! What was it Nancy Pelosi said about cleaning up the ‘Culture of Corruption’ again?
This is the perfect example of what Democrats mean when they mention the words “culture of corruption”. They know first-hand what it is because, as I’ve said many times before, they wrote the book on it.
Now that the indictments will be filed, it will be interesting to see how the Democrats, and especially the CBC, will react. Will they attempt to distance themselves from Jefferson? Will they force him to step down from his committee assignments? My guess is — no.
Lorie Byrd doesn’t think it will make much difference among the Democrats.
16 counts, up to 200 years in the Big House (of which he’ll serve exactly none, of course. He’s a politician and, as we all know, they’re above the law that the rest of us peons have to follow).
Trying to get back into the groove of this blogging thing, so I thought I would share some thoughts on one of the things we like to focus on around here…the Supreme Court. According to an ABC Exclusive, it looks like the White House is preparing for a possible vacancy.
The White House is developing a short list of possible Supreme Court nominees so President Bush can move swiftly if a justice retires at the end of June, when the Court breaks for its summer recess, according to sources involved in the selection process.
Bush met with top advisers last month, and they discussed possible nominees if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs.
The news is nothing to get overexcited about. There isn’t any fresh rumor being whispered in halls of D.C. that we know of. However, this is something to keep a close eye on. While both have said they don’t plan on stepping down, if any justices do, the most likely are John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In my opinion, a fresh replacement for either one of these two Justices would make for a better Supreme Court. Despite my bias against their political leanings they are both getting up in their years. With Justice John Paul Stevens just passing the 87 mark, and Ginsburg falling asleep at the bench, it is past time for both Justices to pass on the torch to others.
While the White House prepares a short list every spring just in case, there is good news to hope for in all of this. Despite many disappointments on other issues and the “Myers scare”, appointing Consitutionalist judges is something Bush has a good track record on. The addition of Roberts and Alito has helped balance out the Court, however it remains divided on many important issues.
The short list is leaning towards a politically correct approach for a balanced court with replacement possibilities being topped with women and minorities. The inside word sounds promising.
With the heated political climate — and with Bush’s approval ratings still low — advisers believe they cannot afford any missteps with the Supreme Court if a vacancy were to occur, sources said.
To that end, advisers are focusing on possible nominees who are believed to be solid judicial conservatives and would galvanize the base at a time when Bush desperately needs its support.
What should also excite fellow Conservatives is some of the names appearing on the list.
In that camp are federal appeals court Judges Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Both were filibustered by Senate Democrats after Bush nominated them as appellate judges and were eventually confirmed after Senate leaders struck a compromise on judicial nominations.
Either could have been a likely replacement for O’Connor in 2005, but leading Senate Republicans told the White House not to nominate them because they were seen as too controversial at the time. Now that both are on the federal bench, the White House has put them back on a working short list.
In summary, this is something to hope for, but not to get overexcited about. If the situation unfolds for this, only one thing is for sure. We saw it happen with the past two appointments and we will see it again. The Democrats will put up a big fight, and emboldened by their new power of majority and the threat of a real balance shift in the Court, the fight will be bigger than we’ve seen before.
If someone is bl*ck, you must not mention it. A Massachusetts jury convicted a bl*ck man of murdering a white woman but there is now a move afoot to have the verdict appealed because some jury members were “racist”. What made them racists? Apparently, during jury deliberations, one juror referred to the defendant as “an intimidating big bl*ck guy” and another referred to him as “”200-pound bl*ck guy”.
So mentioning the obvious is now racist in Massachusetts. Why am I not surprised?
After missing the last train in ‘Ek Chalis Ki Last Local’ and struggling with the existence of being a cop’s wife, Neha Dhupia seems to be looking up to the fiml ‘I m 24′. The film will see Neha going for a Cabaret dance, the first time ever in her career. The song was recently [...] - [Read more]
Leftist activists at UC Santa Cruz blockaded the UC university regents in a lecture hall last October and the police had to use force to clear a way through the crowd. One of the leaders of the obstructive group was habitual protest leader Alette Kendrick — whom the police arrested for her obstructive behavior.
UCSC has now suspended her from the university for three years and there are all sorts of claims on the net that her “free speech” was violated thereby. In Leftist circles acting like a thug is free speech apparently.
Background here. A sample of the false “free speech” claims here
How can lefties dismiss this from their beloved Anthony Romero?
Al Qaida suspects sue Boeing, with ACLU’s help
Boeing has been sued by suspected Al Qaida operatives transported by the CIA to Arab countries for interrogation and torture.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of three Al Qaida suspects transported by the CIA under the so-called “extraordinary rendition program.”
The suit charged that Jeppesen helped the CIA transport the three plaintiffs to secret locations in Egypt and Morocco, where the company knew they would undergo torture, Middle East Newsline reported.
“American corporations should not be profiting from a CIA rendition program that is unlawful and contrary to core American values,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said. “Corporations that choose to participate in such activity can and should be held legally accountable.”
Let’s remember, that the rendition program was first started during the Clintonian Infestation. Fact #1
Fact #2: The CIA transports suspects back to their country of origin. If that country, under its laws, uses methods which some people consider torture, that is beyond our control once they’ve been repatriated.
First the ACLU condemns us for holding these people. Then they condemn us for sending them back to their nations of origin for questioning. Will they ever make up their flippin minds?
Wait… They have none. Forget I asked.
Note:
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Imagine for a bit what it would be like if education were provided by private sector firms. Can it be done? Would a socially optimal amount, variety, and quality of education be provided? Would there be market failures? If so, how can those market failures be corrected? Can one devise mechanisms to correct those failures?
The answer to whether the private sector can provide education is clearly ‘yes’ because around the world for a very long time private firms have provided education very successfully. Both private sector for-profit and not-for-profit business models exist. Education, at some level of description, is a service like any of a very large variety of goods and services provided very efficiently by the market. The generalization that markets work holds quite meaningfully in the specific case of education broadly.
It may be worthwhile to briefly expand on what “markets work” means, say, in the context of a good such as computers (both hardware and software.) Basically, there is a demand for computers, or in other words, people are willing to buy them. Firms supply to the market to make a profit. They innovate to increase the variety of the goods to increase their revenues, and figure out ways to reduce their costs so that they have greater profits. Like the large number of profit-seeking firms on the supply side, on the demand side, a very large number of consumers also enter the market with the generalized desire to get the most bang for their buck. The competition that arises from the self-interested behavior of consumers and producers ruthlessly forces unfit computers (and therefore the firms that make them) out of the market and relentlessly drives up the quality and variety, while prices constantly fall.
It is a Schumpeterian world out there – red in tooth and claw. But out of the dance of creative destruction, emerges things that no one—however smart or wise—could have ever predicted. Let me stress that: no one knows what amazing stuff the market will deliver, who will make it, how it will be made, how much it will cost, what it will be priced at, how it will be improved upon and by whom. Nobody knows, and that includes government bureaucrats or politicians, regardless of how strenuously they claim to know. The inescapable fact is that every innovation, every object that you use, every service that you enjoy, arose overwhelmingly in the private sector, through the risk-taking, imaginative, innovative, entrepreneurial spirit of individuals driven by a basic desire to make a buck.
So is there no role for the government? Yes there is. First, it has to ensure what is called a “level playing field,” to set the rules, to resolve disputes, and maintain such institutions that are necessary for supporting the functioning of the market. Second, in case of market failures (which we will not go into here as this is not a text book on basic economics), to do what it can reasonably do without making the problem any worse. If the government cannot do better than the imperfect markets can, then it is better for us to live with the results of the market failures.
Here then is the basic recommendation that one is forced to make: let the private sector supply educational services in India. The government must not be in the business of providing education at any level. Let the market have a go at it. The government of India is not capable of providing education. It has demonstrated its incapacity over decades, and there is no reason to believe that it is even theoretically up to the job. Education is too critically important for the future of India for it to be left to the government. In today’s world, more than ever, education is a dynamic service. It requires innovation, creativity, entrepreneurial talent, risk-taking ability and human resources—all of which are sorely missing in the government. It is government control of the sector which has had the unfortunate consequence of Indian education to resemble Keynes’ characterization of education as “the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”
Part 8: Scarcity
Consider this list: cars, scooters, telephone service, airline ticket, seats in schools and colleges, electricity, and railway tickets. Think of the year 1980. Notice the common feature of the list: shortages. Now consider the list in the year 2007. Notice some things on the list are no longer scarce. It cannot be mere coincidence that only those items which the government has released it stranglehold on are no longer scarce. Could it be possible that if the government lets go of its vise-like grip of schools and colleges, that shortage of educational services will also be a thing of the past?
Given sufficient time, shortages have a way of entering into our worldview so that we simply start considering them as normal and acceptable. Today the power supply where I live in Pune failed for over two hours. It is remarkable that I have accepted that power in India is unreliable and don’t work up a sweat (only figuratively speaking, though.) It is part of our survival mechanism. We adjust to unreasonable situations. That’s how it is, we explain, and cope with it. We have become inured to the mad struggle that people go through to get their children into schools and colleges. We forget how astonishingly unnatural it is that something as basic as a good education involves almost superhuman effort.
Chronic shortages do not occur naturally. You can have acute sporadic shortages due to shocks to the system. But chronic shortages have to be carefully engineered and the machinery that creates shortages has to be kept in good working order. Otherwise the natural tendency for a market is to close the gap between the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied. This is a fundamental truth about the world of humans.
One effect of persistent shortage is low quality. Lacking the discipline enforced by the customer’s freedom of choice, suppliers don’t have an incentive to ensure quality. The consumer is happy to receive even shoddy goods and services because it is a struggle to get anything at all. Take it or leave it, is the basic attitude of the producers in a sellers’ market.
In summary, it is misguided government policy that lies at the root of our dismal education system. The policy change required is to allow the private sector unfettered access to the education market. Will the private sector supply educational services? An unqualified yes because there is money to be made. Currently around 10 percent of GDP is spent on education, which amounts to around US$60 billion. Half of India’s population is below 25 years of age. That defines the addressable market for educational services. If the supply of educational services were to meet the suppressed demand, the annual spending on education will be many multiple times the current level.
Which brings up one of the most important matter associated with education. There is an implicit ban against for-profit educational institutions in India. Why this is so is hard to understand. For-profit producers of other goods and services are not banned. Indeed, it is clear to see that for-profit organizations produce most of the critically important goods and services. The only caveat is that these for-profit firms have to face competition. That’s the bottom line: allow all firms to enter the market, regardless of whether they are for profit or not. The market forces will regulate the firms so that the supply rises to meet the demand, the quality improves, and the prices reflect the underlying costs.
One final point: what about the poor? First, for education up to the secondary level, those who are unable to pay for their education should be publicly supported through vouchers which are redeemable at private schools of choice. Second, for post secondary education, those who are unable to pay should be given loans. Recall that post secondary education has a short payback period and the return on investment in education is positive. So the loan recovery with interest is not a problem.
…howls of outrage from the religious right. One aggrieved alumni withdrew a $10 million donation to the college, groups like the ADF put out breathless and hysterical press releases condemning the decision as a PC attempt to destroy Christianity, the usual blather
1) I didn’t think ADF had any involvement in that controversy, so I checked to see if ADF had issued any “breathless and hysterical press releases.” I wonder if Ed can turn up any evidence of his “blather.” There are no press releases on the ADF website regarding the Wren cross. In fact, the ONLY comment I can locate from anyone at ADF is a single, decidedly non-hysterical post from David French on Phi Beta Cons. Ed, are we making anything up here?
2) The withheld gift to W&M was $12 million, not $10 million. (As if this guy has no right to give or not give to whom he wants).
Two errors, one big one small, in one sentence. How many more errors and inconsistencies would we find on “Dispatches” if all of us had as much time on our hands as “businessman” Ed does?
Last week, I posted on a column by ACLU dissident Wendy Kaminer. A day later, Ed Brayton commented on it also. I agree with Wendy, Ed agrees with Wendy, I agree with Ed’s take on this column, Ed agreed with me. All rosy except for one disconnect — Ed Brayton doesn’t agree with himself!
As “the foremost defender of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” you’d think that the ACLU would be laying waste to the fascistic regimes that have implemented and enforced the constitutional abominations known as speech codes and “non-discrimination policies” on university campuses all across the country. I don’t believe in criticizing a group when an individual case arises and that group happens to not have been involved in that singular incident. However, the university campus as whole feels it (yes, I speak of “it” as a monolith because this issue is a fixture at most public universities in the country, I’ll get to that) is exempt from the First Amendment…supposedly the ACLU’s bread and butter. No other government entity has so systematically and unapologetically violated, as a matter of published policy, the very basic freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment….
The ACLU allows the fascism (no, this is not hyperbole, it’s calling a spade a spade) to continue without comment because those strong-arm policies marginalize the very people, ideas and organizations the ACLU would gladly see just dry up and go away.
But where the ACLU has purposely failed, others have stepped in strong. It’s amazing that it takes “radical Right” organizations to draw the line in the sand and stand up for liberty on campus.
AND
Imagine the ultra-wealthy ACLU, with its half-billion dollar endowment and $150M annual operating budget, having done this (initiating a project like what the Alliance Defense Fund has with its Center for Academic Freedom ) ten years ago. With ADF’s CAF having won so many victories in such short order, the result of this “what if” would not be so hard to predict.
Bzzzt. Thank you for playing, Glib, but this one is utter nonsense. You cite FIRE as a group actively opposing such speech codes, and I applaud that; I’m a huge supporter of FIRE myself. But if you’d done just a tiny bit of research you would have found out, for example, that FIRE was founded by Harvey Silvergate and Alan Charles Kors, both staunch civil libertarians and ACLU supporters. In fact, Silvergate has been on the board of the ACLU of Massachusetts for over 30 years now…
You might have found out that the ACLU has often intervened along with FIRE in cases that they work on. For example, their suit against the University of Maryland; their intervention in a case at Occidental College; and in the Rhode Island case; in the various cases involving the Muhammed cartoons; and at Columbia University. You might have found out, also, that they’ve often issued joint open letters with FIRE in various cases. And you could have found out all of that, and much more, just from the FIRE website…
A little bit more research would have turned up even more information that might have prevented you from looking quite this ignorant. You might have found out that the ACLU has a strongly worded position against campus speech codes.
There’s more bellowing about the ACLU’s strong, strong presence in the fight for campus freedom, but this gives you an idea. Oooooooh — “strongly worded” position. I bolded the thing about the “Prophet” cartoons also because Kaminer absolutely savages Brayton’s mention of that sorry episode in the ACLU’s (Wendy says recent, I say long) history of hypocrisy.
It was pointed out when I previously posted the ACLU’s relative silence on campus speech suppression that the ACLU itself has a “policy” on campus speech codes and that ACLUers are on the board of FIRE. My answer: so what? A single 13 year-old statement and few letters here and there to universities over the years hardly excuses the ACLU from its conspicuous non-involvement in fighting the most tyrannical institutions in America. It has representation on FIRE’s board? Again: so what? Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia were on the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Leo brings the real reason to the surface — the conflict between the ACLU’s support for boutique radical causes and the money that flows from this has forced this organization to sacrifice any pretense of being true defender of the First Amendment. These speech codes and other various freedom and thought-killing university policies that silence any opposition to the radical multi-culti, homosexual agenda are set up specifically to favor those same groups that the ACLU has aligned with — politically and financially.
I’ll again point out the enormous size of the ACLU’s budget and endowment and its proud claim of filing 6,000 cases a year as the “foremost defender…yak, yak, bull.” This makes the ACLU’s sideline position that much more conspicuous and completely inexcusable. Again…what if, just what if, the ACLU had a Center for Academic Freedom.
Despite its professed commitment to religious liberty, for example, the ACLU tends to absent itself from cases on college campuses involving the associational rights of Christian student groups to discriminate against gay students, in accordance with their religious beliefs. But conservative students might be grateful for the ACLU’s absence. Consider its intervention in a successful federal court challenge to an unconstitutional speech code at Georgia Tech, brought by the Alliance Defense Fund in 2006 on behalf of two conservative religious students. The ACLU of Georgia filed an amicus brief proposing a substitute but still overbroad “anti-harassment” policy that included a prohibition on “injurious communications . . . directed toward an individual because of their characteristics or beliefs.” In other words: Students should be punished for sharply criticizing or satirizing each other’s beliefs if their remarks are deemed “injurious.” Occasionally an ACLU affiliate does intervene in defense of politically incorrect speech and vigorous debate on campus. But the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE) has become a much more reliable advocate for the rights of all college students, regardless of ideology or religion. (I serve on both FIRE’s advisory board and the board of the Massachusetts ACLU affiliate.)
Gee, sounds like EXACTLY what I said about the ACLU’s spectatorship on campus tyranny…even down to pointing out the groups who actually ARE doing something about it in the ACLU’s stead. I’m not saying that Kaminer got the idea from this site, but the similarities in our arguments and examples (mine from December, hers from late May) are uncanny.
So, Wendy Kaminer must be an ignoramus and must be bludgeoned with the ACLU’s sparkling campus battle resume, right? To borrow our favorite former stand-up comic’s visual Batmanish noise effect: Bzzzt.
I agree with this completely. Yes, the ACLU takes an official position against hate speech codes on campus; and yes, they have filed suits in the past against such cases and they still do intervene once in a while in such cases. But this is a serious issue that has not gotten near the attention from the ACLU that it deserves. Public university campuses are the only place in this country where government agencies can punish speech that is clearly protected by the first amendment. It is time for an all-out assault on such speech codes, as I called for months ago. And the ACLU should be leading the way; sadly, they are not.
Not only does Ed flip-flop his position, he nearly plagiarizes what I had written in expressing his newfound concern for the ACLU’s virtual silence on campus freedom issues!
Not literal plagiarism Ed, don’t freak out…let’s just drink in the similarities in these statements (admittedly, Ed is more succinct, but concentrate on the arguments):
Ed: Now, it’s certainly true that the ACLU’s non-involvement in any particular case does not necessarily indicate their position in that case. I’ve made that point myself in arguing with the STACLU crowd (Glib Note: I’m not sure if I’ve ever criticized the ACLU for not being involved in a particular case except in the comments section of a post some weeks ago, I did, prior to Kaminer’s piece, thrash its non-involvment in Harper and I did relate the details of a conversation I overheard between Mary Beth Tinker — she herself was baffled about the ACLU’s no-show — and ACLU staffers — who had NO good answers — after the Fredricks hearing at the SCOTUS in March)…Yes, the ACLU takes an official position against hate speech codes on campus; and yes, they have filed suits in the past against such cases and they still do intervene once in a while in such cases. But this is a serious issue that has not gotten near the attention from the ACLU that it deserves. Public university campuses are the only place in this country where government agencies can punish speech that is clearly protected by the first amendment.
Glib: It was pointed out when I previously posted the ACLU’s relative silence on campus speech suppression that the ACLU itself has a “policy” on campus speech codes and that ACLUers are on the board of FIRE. My answer: so what? A single 13 year-old statement and few letters here and there to universities over the years hardly excuses the ACLU from its conspicuous non-involvement in fighting the most tyrannical institutions in America. It has representation on FIRE’s board? Again: so what?
AND
…you’d think that the ACLU would be laying waste to the fascistic regimes that have implemented and enforced the constitutional abominations known as speech codes and “non-discrimination policies” on university campuses all across the country. I don’t believe in criticizing a group when an individual case arises and that group happens to not have been involved in that singular incident. However, the university campus as whole feels it…is exempt from the First Amendment…supposedly the ACLU’s bread and butter.
Ed, nearly identical statements aren’t true or false depending on the purveyor of the information.
So Ed, I’m wondering…was it shortly after you produced your post attacking me for saying exactly what Wendy Kaminer said last week that you reconsidered and decided to agree with me…or was it only acceptable to agree with an identical argument because Wendy Kaminer made it and you depend on your readers to just not notice the inconsistency?
OK, while we’re at it and having fun, we’ll hit Edpinata once more. Remember he used the Muhammed cartoon controversy and the ACLU’s vigorous defense of those wishing to print the cartoons?
Again, I agree completely. The ACLU should have been out front denouncing any and all attempts to censor or intimidate the publishing of those cartoons, whether on college campuses in the US or in our allies abroad.
But Ed…I thought the ACLU was leading the charge. It was one of your shining examples of ACLU campus leadership. So, the ACLU wasn’t “out front denouncing?” Hmm.
For someone who prides himself on consistency, Ed Brayton sure has shown his rear on this one. I don’t really even want to imagine a no-clothes, drawers-down Emperor Ed…so I’ll just go with Yertle the Turtle.
Alistair Cooke in his weekly radio broadcast on BBC Radio 4, A Letter from America, once explained the theory of public choice to his listeners as “the homely but important truth that the politicians are after all just the same as the rest of us.” It is an accessible, though incomplete, definition of what public choice is about. You could read James Buchanan, who in 1986 won the “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” (popularly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics) “for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.” But Cook’s version is adequate for our needs to explain why the Indian educational system is a disaster.
Politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by self-interest, and the will to power and control is deeply ingrained in them, perhaps more so than in the average person. Monopoly control of any market or institution is heady power. Controlling the educational sector is gives them an enormously powerful lever for controlling the economy. It is therefore quite understandable that the opposition to relinquishing that power would be formidable. The greatest challenge that India faces in reforming its educational system arises from this, not perhaps so much from a lack of understanding of what needs to be done, or how it is to be done. It is hard to overestimate the power of vested interests amassed against doing what is rational in education.
Here we look into what needs to be done, and leave aside for the moment the question whether it will be done, and if so how it is to be done. What needs to be done can be stated in one word: liberalization. The system is in chains.
In a socialistic economy, the state controls everything with the stated objective to reach the commanding heights of the economy, as the Indian leaders have always loftily boasted of achieving. What actually happens is that the state commands and controls and flies the economy into a very deep ditch. Remember USSR? It’s gone. A land lavishly gifted with natural resources and industrious smart people reduced to rubble. We have not fully learnt from their failures of the shackling of their economy. But there is a small possibility that we could learn from the successes of the limited unshackling of our own economy.
It is of course possible for governments to efficiently produce goods and services. The question rather is whether it is probable. The evidence is strong – at least in the case of the Indian government – that it is highly improbable. The list of government failures is too lengthy to list here. But a few instructive examples which illustrate the general idea are worth considering.
Telecommunications was the government’s sole preserve. The waiting times were measured in years, the prices were high, the quality poor. When the private sector was allowed entry, the prices dropped, quality improved, demand soared, supply expanded, and best of all, the public sector incumbents started performing as well. The same story can be told about the air transportation sector.
It is important to stress that the problem is one of government control of the sector, not whether it is served by private firms or not. Even if there are no public firms in a sector, government can control the sector by restricting entry (think license) of firms into the sector, thus limiting competition. The resulting low quantities (think permits and quotas) support high prices – therefore high profits. The competition for acquiring licenses is part of the rent-seeking game that is played by the politicians, bureaucrats and private sector firms. It is a nice little game (racket?) where all the players win, and the only losers are the poor consumers and the economy.
Let’s continue to look at the education sector against this backdrop.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit claiming Maricopa County officials have violated the rights of a quarantined tuberculosis patient for months by treating him like a criminal.
The U.S. District Court complaint filed Wednesday on behalf of Robert Daniels alleges that health officials and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have violated numerous constitutional rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The suit seeks what it calls appropriate accommodations for Daniels, rather than severe and “inhumane” jail conditions.
“It’s good news for me,” Daniels said Wednesday evening. “I finally have a chance to get out of this black hole.”
Robert England, the county’s tuberculosis control officer, declined comment.
Daniels, 27, is under a court order and has been isolated in a jail ward at Maricopa Medical Center for 10 months, although he was not convicted or charged with any crime. Linda Cosme, an attorney for Daniels, said her client has been victimized by constitutional violations.
“Robert is helpless,” she said. “And he’s at the mercy of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He needs as much support as possible, and the ACLU is supplying that support.”
Arpaio maintains Daniels must abide by security measures. “I run a safe jail, and he’s going to be treated like anyone else,” Arpaio said.
Daniels moved to Arizona in January 2006 after contracting extreme multi-drug-resistant TB. Daniels, who spent his teen years in Scottsdale, said he returned to the U.S. from Russia in search of work and a college education.
Months later, after he became severely ill, Daniels was placed in a county sanitarium for indigent TB patients.
Dr. Maricela Moffitt, a county physician, has testified that Daniels failed to take his medications and that decreased the likelihood that last-chance drugs would cure his deadly disease.
Moffitt claims Daniels endangered others by going out in public and entertaining visitors without wearing a mask.
Arpaio said his office is considering possible criminal charges against Daniels.
In his defense, Daniels has insisted that he did not understand the contagiousness or gravity of his condition.
“In his defense…” BS. This guy has been receiving medical advice and treatment for some time. Being committed to a treatment facility for “indigent TB patients” sounds to me like he’s getting all this for free…free TO HIM, of course, but not free to me. I raise the BS flag once more regarding the alleged “inhumane” conditions of the facility and may even go over and visit for myself, although I won’t be sharing a Mountain Dew with poor little “helpless Robert” if I get a chance to check it out.
By refusing to comply with measures that would minimize the risk of spreading this deadly disease, he has made his own bed. People who knowingly put the lives of others in danger just, it seems, for the hell of it or at least out of a blatant disregard for anyone else, should be subject to criminal charges. Good for Sherriff Joe. Shame on the ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit claiming Maricopa County officials have violated the rights of a quarantined tuberculosis patient for months by treating him like a criminal.
The U.S. District Court complaint filed Wednesday on behalf of Robert Daniels alleges that health officials and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have violated numerous constitutional rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The suit seeks what it calls appropriate accommodations for Daniels, rather than severe and “inhumane” jail conditions.
“It’s good news for me,” Daniels said Wednesday evening. “I finally have a chance to get out of this black hole.”
Robert England, the county’s tuberculosis control officer, declined comment.
Daniels, 27, is under a court order and has been isolated in a jail ward at Maricopa Medical Center for 10 months, although he was not convicted or charged with any crime. Linda Cosme, an attorney for Daniels, said her client has been victimized by constitutional violations.
“Robert is helpless,” she said. “And he’s at the mercy of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He needs as much support as possible, and the ACLU is supplying that support.”
Arpaio maintains Daniels must abide by security measures. “I run a safe jail, and he’s going to be treated like anyone else,” Arpaio said.
Daniels moved to Arizona in January 2006 after contracting extreme multi-drug-resistant TB. Daniels, who spent his teen years in Scottsdale, said he returned to the U.S. from Russia in search of work and a college education.
Months later, after he became severely ill, Daniels was placed in a county sanitarium for indigent TB patients.
Dr. Maricela Moffitt, a county physician, has testified that Daniels failed to take his medications and that decreased the likelihood that last-chance drugs would cure his deadly disease.
Moffitt claims Daniels endangered others by going out in public and entertaining visitors without wearing a mask.
Arpaio said his office is considering possible criminal charges against Daniels.
In his defense, Daniels has insisted that he did not understand the contagiousness or gravity of his condition.
“In his defense…” BS. This guy has been receiving medical advice and treatment for some time. Being committed to a treatment facility for “indigent TB patients” sounds to me like he’s getting all this for free…free TO HIM, of course, but not free to me. I raise the BS flag once more regarding the alleged “inhumane” conditions of the facility and may even go over and visit for myself, although I won’t be sharing a Mountain Dew with poor little “helpless Robert” if I get a chance to check it out.
By refusing to comply with measures that would minimize the risk of spreading this deadly disease, he has made his own bed. People who knowingly put the lives of others in danger just, it seems, for the hell of it or at least out of a blatant disregard for anyone else, should be subject to criminal charges. Good for Sherriff Joe. Shame on the ACLU.
I guess Martin Luther King must have been a white supremacist at that rate:
“Close to 300 Knoxville police officers, Knox County sheriff’s deputies, and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers kept close watch over a white supremacist rally Saturday in downtown Knoxville.
The 30 or so protestors came from across the United States to Knoxville to argue that national and local media are not giving enough attention to black-on-white crimes. The issue they are thrusting to the center of their message is the double murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.
I have myself commented (scroll down) about the way the atrocious crime concerned has been ignored by the major media — in contrast to the way the non-crime of the Duke lacrosse players was splashed nationwide.
But I too have been labelled a “white supremacist” for opposing racial preferences (i.e. “affirmative action”) so I guess that what we see above is just the usual Leftist substitution of abuse for rational argument.
George Orwell portrayed Leftists as using words to mean the opposite of what they really described and we certainly see a lot of that today.
Ace has some thoughtful comments on the media behavior in the matter.
I guess Martin Luther King must have been a white supremacist at that rate:
“Close to 300 Knoxville police officers, Knox County sheriff’s deputies, and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers kept close watch over a white supremacist rally Saturday in downtown Knoxville.
The 30 or so protestors came from across the United States to Knoxville to argue that national and local media are not giving enough attention to black-on-white crimes. The issue they are thrusting to the center of their message is the double murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.
I have myself commented (scroll down) about the way the atrocious crime concerned has been ignored by the major media — in contrast to the way the non-crime of the Duke lacrosse players was splashed nationwide.
But I too have been labelled a “white supremacist” for opposing racial preferences (i.e. “affirmative action”) so I guess that what we see above is just the usual Leftist substitution of abuse for rational argument.
George Orwell portrayed Leftists as using words to mean the opposite of what they really described and we certainly see a lot of that today.
Ace has some thoughtful comments on the media behavior in the matter.
One underhanded way to scare a neoclassical economist out of his wits is to creep up on him and shout “monopoly power.” Economists regard monopolies with the same mixture of dread, contempt and fascination as biologists regard cancer. They recognize the awesome virulent power of monopolies to wreak havoc on their world of mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges. Monopolies, whether public or private, lead to social welfare losses. At the other extreme, perfect competition leads to maximization of social welfare, subject to some reasonable conditions often approximated in the real world.
In a competitive market, a large number of firms compete amongst themselves to supply the stuff that consumers demand. Each firm strives to reduce its own costs to increase profits, while at the same time reducing prices to lure buyers away from its competitors, and in the resultant shuffle, prices are bid down to the level of costs, thus competing all profits away. Unlike in a competitive market where firms make no economic profits (they make only accounting profits), a monopolist makes economic profits because it is able to dictate the price by controlling the quantity it supplies. By sufficiently restricting supply, a monopoly can charge prices that are way above costs, and thus extract what is called “rents,” or economic profits.
One feature of the Darwinian world we live in is that there is always competition. It is good to be the king because the king has power. But the more power the king has, the greater is the competition to be the king. Sure, the monopolist is the king in the market, extracting rents and imposing social welfare losses. But somewhere along the way, the monopolist has to pay the king-makers. There is a competition for the market as if to compensate for the lack of competition within the market. The competition for the market leads to welfare losses, a sort of negative image of the social welfare gains from competition within the market.
One parsimonious explanation for not allowing free entry into the market for education is that by retaining monopoly control of the education sector, the government acts as a monopolist. By requiring licensing from the government, and by restricting the licenses, the government encourages competition for the right to serve the market and thus reduces the competition within the market. Restricting the licenses increases their “price.” Bribes, in other words. This is the rent collected by the government, or more accurately, the agents that represent the government such as bureaucrats and politicians.
The licensed firms (schools and colleges) have to recover the costs incurred in obtaining the licenses. They in turn, given the legal protection from reduced competition, have the means to dictate price and the outcome is predictably low quantities (shortages abound), high prices, and rampant corruption.
This is purely anecdotal but is useful in clothing the bare outlines of what I conjectured above. Some institution wants to start a medical college somewhere in India. It applies for a license and is told off the record that the price is Rs 20 lakhs (approximately US$ 50,000) per seat. For the 200-seat license applied for the price is Rs 4,000 lakhs, to be delivered in unmarked bills in a large plain brown envelope. That “fee” is routed through the licensing bureaucracy with appropriate payoffs to different people—the lion’s share ending up in the appropriate political hands. After all, securing top positions at the bureaucracy is not cheap; and running elections is a costly business.
The firm having paid the whopping fee to operate a medical college, now has to recover its costs. Perhaps its actual cost of training a medical student is Rs 5 lakhs per year. It adds on a “special college entry fee” of say Rs 10 lakhs (remember to bring in unmarked bills in a plain brown envelope) to the normal tuition fees. The hapless students are forced to pay because seats are limited. The four year medical training which should have cost only Rs 20 lakhs if free entry were allowed into the field now has to pay Rs 30 lakhs, and perhaps gets substandard training. Further down the line, doctors are in short supply and therefore they command some market power and thus are able to recover their costs. The patients suffer but that is why they are patients—they suffer.
What needs to be done will occupy our attention the next time.
It is so good to be back home. First of all I want to thank all of the writers that kept this blog going while I was away. My appreciation for that is huge!
I will be slowly getting back into writing for the blog and reporting on the fight against the ACLU. However, my priorities have shifted. My focus has changed and I will be devoting more time to my family and career. The blog has been great for me and many people, however it drained me of too much of my valuable time and energy. There are plenty of writers here helping out and most are better writers than I am. I am confident that they will continue to contribute so as this doesn’t overwhelm any of us.
Once again, thanks to all those that helped while I was gone, and thanks to those devoted readers that stuck around.
