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What They've Thought
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What They Thought September 25, 2005 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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When I checked the National Debt Clock it was at $7.9 trillion and climbing. It rises at a rate of $1.54 billion a day. Something just didn’t sound right when the Secretary of the Treasury, John W. Snow, told the press that the United States had more than enough money to handle the initial estimate of $200 billion it would cost to rebuild New Orleans and the other areas of the Gulf Coast hit by Hurricane Katrina. For one thing, all such estimates are suspect and usually turn out to be less than the final, higher costs. Contrarians, however, argue that the estimates may be too high. In short, no one really knows. As reconstruction begins, money will flow to the affected areas and life, one hopes, will return to normal, along with the vital economic factors that include the traffic of goods on the Mississippi and the generation of oil and natural gas from the Gulf. The deficit differs from the debt because the deficit is the annual differential between what the government is taking in and what it is paying out during a fiscal year. The US has a deficit of $333 billion as of fiscal 2005 that ends on September 30. Fiscal 2006 that begins October 1 has a deficit of $341 billion as cited by the White House office of Management and Budget. The prospect of $500 billion seems like an awful lot of money. And that’s before the costs of Hurricane Rita are even calculated. The President says he has no intention of asking Congress to raise taxes to help reduce it, causing an outcry from those for whom raising taxes is the answer to everything. As Richard W. Rahn, a Cato Institute scholar, noted in a recent opinion published by the Washington Times, “The tax increase proponents seemingly cannot grasp that taxes reduce our economic vitality. When taxes rise, the economy slows.” And with it the amount of money the government receives. Bush has received substantial criticism for the spending policies his administration has endorsed, but the1988 Stafford Act, triggered by such catastrophic events, requires the federal government to pay at least 75 percent of the cost of rebuilding public infrastructure such as roads, bridges, along with damaged federal facilities such as military bases. This is vital to restoring the economic viability of the affected areas that, in turn, impacts all other areas of the nation’s economy. Given the extraordinary damage inflicted, Washington Times reporter, Bill Sammon, noted that, “The federal government’s share can jump to more than 90 percent,” citing events such as Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and the September 11 attacks. This is, however, the same federal government that cannot account for $25 billion it spent in 2003. And there is scant reason to believe that Congress will revisit recent spending bills chock full of pork projects. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) states plainly enough that the government does not have $200 billion to cover the estimated cost of recovery and will either have to borrow it or print it. Borrowing is government’s favorite option from the federal to the state level. It seems clear that our children and their children will be paying off this new, additional debt for decades to come. The question remains: how much debt is too much debt, even for a multi-trillion dollar economy? George W. Bush won election—just barely—the first time by promising to cut taxes. Clearly determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes, he was reelected primarily on his determination to wage war on our enemies, as opposed to his economic program. Throughout his first term and continuing into his second, President Bush has famously not vetoed a single spending bill and Congress has accommodated him by going on the largest spending spree in US history. I became more nervous when Tom Delay (R-TX), the House Majority Leader, announced that there was “simply no fat left in the federal budget” from which to cut programs by way of offsetting the $62.3 billion appropriated for Hurricane Katrina relief. Either Delay is deluding himself or he is deluding everyone else by saying such nonsense. As a September 23 editorial in the Washington Times noted, “The conservative Republican Study Committee has released a detailed 23-page report identifying and explain a menu of more than 100 specific budget offsets that total nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, including $102 billion for 2006 and nearly $400 billion over the next five years.” This year, prior to the bailout contemplated for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the spending Congress has authorized represents just a tad over $22,000 per household; that’s you, me, and everyone else earning a living and paying taxes. The estimated cost of repairing Katrina’s and Rita’s damage adds an estimated $2,000 more per household. A President not only needs a sensible economic program, but he also needs a bit of luck. On September 11, 2001, Bush was transformed from a relatively lackluster president who never saw a spending bill he didn’t like to a dynamic “war president.” Will historians and economists at some future date conclude that Bush’s luck ran out when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit? Though there are no immediate signs the economy is in trouble, there are indications that Americans are beginning to seriously worry about it. A consumer economy depends on spending and, if that tightens up, things could get ugly. The most obvious sign of trouble is the increased cost of gasoline, already impacting decisions on how and where to spend money. Minus the refinery capacity the nation needs, the higher costs are going to be around for a long time. Prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, while taking on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush pushed through spending programs that make the “tax and spend” Democrats of the past look parsimonious. His “No Child Left Behind” education program is a whopping $49 billion with no sign it has actually improved anything than the test-taking skills imposed on seven-year-olds. The welfare state has now been expanded in the form of pharmaceutical prescription benefits that have been added to Medicare. Oddly, this is occurring at the same time even the President is saying that Social Security will go broke unless “fixed.” And throughout all of this, the cost and numbers of Federal regulations just keep going up and up and up. Writing in June of this year, Rahn noted that, “In inflation-adjusted dollars, the cost of federal regulation has gone from $2.3 billion in 1960 to $38.9 billion expected in this next fiscal year. This is a greater than fourteen-fold increase.” To demonstrate how out of touch with reality some elements of the government are, in the midst of the first efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina and as Hurricane Rita passed Key West, NASA announced it wants to spend $104 billion over the next decade to send astronauts back to the Moon! What the rest of us are left with is a world of rising uncertainty. While the strength of the economy is tested, economists will debate Bush’s economic policies and the profligate and wasteful spending authorized by members of Congress while ordinary Americans struggle to pay their bills. |
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Columns from R.A. Hawkins may continue to be sporadic over the next few weeks and months. As most of you know, Hawkins lives in the area most directly affected by Hurricane Katrina. Our best wishes go out to Mr. Hawkins, his family, and his neighbors for a quick and smooth recovery from the disaster. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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I got an email over the weekend from someone who works for Fox News, whose name is Jonathan David Morris. He said he was writing just to let me know that there’s another guy in the media who goes by the same name as me. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Actually, I know exactly how I feel about it. It makes me feel like less of a person. I don’t know about you, but I take my name seriously. I don’t understand why any self-respecting human being wouldn’t. Without a name, you’re an animal—just some mass of tissue and emotional baggage wandering through the forest, looking for food. When I was younger, I used to go by Jon Morris. Back then, people would sneak an “h” into my name and spell it John. I didn’t like that. A john is a toilet. In college, I switched from Jon to Jonathan. It’s sexier—more distinguished. (Plus, it gave me more letters to work with for my autograph.) Nowadays, all those miscreant misspellers skip the “h” and try converting the second “a” in my name to an “o.” This is one of my deepest pet peeves. Jon-a-thon? What am I, a fundraiser? Am I a race or something? A test of endurance? I can’t stand that. And I can’t stand it when people who barely know me think they have a right to call me Jon. A ring announcer once said that every fighter—even a guy who’s 0-99—deserves to have his name pronounced and spelled correctly; if nothing else, at least give him that. I agree. If I introduce myself as Jonathan, call me Jonathan. If someone’s name is Sidney, you wouldn’t call him Bill. Anyway, when I first set out to become a writer, I was going to stick with plain old Jonathan Morris (with a moral dilemma when I found out jonathanmorris.com was taken). Then something happened. While surfing Amazon one day, I came across an author by the same name (who had written several Dr. Who books). This damn near destroyed me. I intend to be the greatest writer of all time. If I die without achieving that goal, I will kill myself. But this puts me in a bit of a predicament. Great writers are often imitated, but never duplicated. You think Ernest Hemingway had to contend with another Ernest Hemingway early on in his career? At that point, I had to make a decision. There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to stand up and say, “I’m not willing to be one of many Jonathan Morrises.” So I became Jonathan David Morris—the artist affectionately known as JDM—instead. For that reason, though, I always knew this day was coming—I always knew I’d cross paths with another Jonathan David Morris. I’ve had nightmares about it happening for years. I know this sounds like a literary device, but it isn’t. And telling you that it isn’t a literary device isn’t a literary device, either. I’m serious about this. I’ve had nightmares about other Jonathan David Morrises. I’ve been lucky enough to dodge the bullet for a while now, but as it is, I’ve had too many close calls. Just look up “JDM” in a search engine. Go ahead. I’ll wait. You’ll see that people all over the world are making good off my name and reputation. Check out jdm.org, for instance. That’s the home page of Jesse Duplantis Ministries. Or check out jdmshit.com, one of many sites that sells car parts from the Japanese Domestic Market. My initials also apply to a range of entertainers, such as country singer Jo Dee Messina and Doors frontman James Douglas Morrison. I can’t even leave comments on one of my favorite websites, reason.com, because there’s already a JDM leaving comments on the blog there—it just wouldn’t feel right. It’s like that episode of Seinfeld where George asks Elaine if he can join her bizarro social circle, and she says, “We already have a George.” And that’s just the stuff for my initials. I’ve had close calls with my whole name, too. On Men’s News Daily, for instance, which publishes my columns, there’s a John David Powell and a David John Marotta—both too close for comfort. On AlterNet, there’s a writer named David Morris. And whenever I look up my name on Google (not that I… um… sit around, looking up my name on Google), I come across a Jonathan David Morris who was part of some family of politicians in the 1800s in Ohio. Sometimes I get letters from people named David Jonathan Morris, who want to tell me how neat it is that our names are exactly the same, except backwards. To me, it’s not neat. It’s identity theft. When you steal my name, you’re stealing my soul. That’s what makes the email from Fox News’s Jonathan David Morris feel like a kick in the nuts by a guy wearing steel-toe boots from Gore-Tex. It would be bad enough if he just had my name, but his full title is Father Jonathan David Morris—which means he’s probably a better person than me, too. I’m at a loss here. Obviously, we’re different people. If I suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth, I doubt he could just step in and replace me in some sort of wacky Dave-meets-Moon Over Parador scenario. But still, now that I know he’s out there, it’s possible folks will confuse us. In fact, it’s inevitable. I would basically have to kill him and take his powers just to ensure it never happens—which I wouldn’t do, since killing is wrong and I wouldn’t know how to take his powers anyway. So like I said, I’m at a loss. I’m a young man; I’ve only been to a couple of countries. But I’ve seen enough of the world to know that it isn’t big enough for multiple Jonathan David Morrises. At this point, I basically have three options: 1. Slit my wrists, so that I can never write again. Granted, it’s not the ideal option. It’s certainly not the one I want to go with. But you’ve got to admit, it would solve the problem. The only thing I wonder is, would I have time to slit the second wrist after slitting the first one? Do you lose functionality right away, or does it take a while for your hand to go limp? I’d hate to slit just one wrist. That wouldn’t accomplish anything. I’d still be able to write. I’d just be a much slower typer. 2. Proceed as if there isn’t another Jonathan David Morris. Realistically, this is the only option to go with. I mean, I’ve basically been operating under the assumption that another Jonathan David Morris existed anyway. Though now that I’m sitting here, discussing my options, that makes me sound about as well prepared as the government was for a hurricane in New Orleans. But whatever. Staying the course is always a possibility. I just don’t know what I’ll do once I write a couple of best-selling novels and people start to care who I am. “Is that the same Father Jonathan David Morris we saw on Fox News?” “It must be. His novels seem divinely inspired. Let’s kill him and take his powers.” 3. Change my name to an unpronounceable symbol. I wouldn’t mind doing this, actually. I’ve already got the perfect symbol to do it with: a blank space. How cool would that be? But then I wouldn’t get any press anymore, because my name would just slip through the cracks of other words in the newspaper. Plus, I’d have to go back and change my website from readjdm.com to simply read.com, which presents a problem since: (a) you can’t use a blank space in a domain name; and (b) read.com is already taken. So I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’m just being selfish here. I’m sure this other Jonathan David Morris is a terrific guy. It’s hard to imagine anyone with such a kick-ass name being anything less than a kick-ass person. It’s just that there are other kick-ass names out there—like Corbin Bernsen and John Cougar Mellencamp—and I wish all those other JDMs and Jonathan David Whatevers would be kicking ass and taking names under a name other than my own. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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I’ve always enjoyed professors who could make their topic interesting and user friendly. They take a subject and discuss it in plain language that everyone can understand and they draw analogies so that students can better make sense of new information. In a good lecture, professors neatly summarize their ideas into a couple of talking points so that all the information that follows is organized logically. The best professors present their ideas in such a way that the listener has an epiphany and thinks, “Oh, now I see.” Last evening at Chicago’s Heartland Institute, Dr. Caroline Hoxby proved herself a stellar professor as a key note speaker during the 21st anniversary dinner. She provided me with an epiphany. There are two reform movements which are taking place today in education. One is school accountability and the other is school choice. Experts are concerned with measuring results and parents are more holistic, concerned with the total learning environment. In good charter schools both of these concerns intersect producing the best results. It wasn’t until yesterday that I understood the unique role charter schools play because they must accommodate both movements. In Dr. Hoxby’s study, The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement, she investigated the impact on students lotteried-in or lotteried-out of the Chicago International Charter School. After only two years in the charter schools, students were 5-6 percentage points ahead (1/2 grade equivalent) of those who didn’t get lotteried-in. There have been similar results with voucher studies. The evidence indicates that when regular public schools are forced to compete for students they produce better results. In 1998 in Milwaukee, vouchers expanded so that in some areas up to 95% of students could receive a voucher and choose another school (public or private). Knowing their students could leave, schools improved. Within three years, student scores improved 10-13 percentage points in math and science. Vouchers and charters are a catalyst to improve curriculum, get back to basics, counsel poor performing teachers out of the system, reward teachers through contracts, and get rid of bad programs. In choice schools teacher contracts are more flexible and pay is based on student performance. It is hard to believe that charter schools enroll less than half the amount of home schooled children. Charters and private schools are big innovators because they face pressure to perform and prove to parents that they are worth their tuition dollars. Charter schools are getting better over time. If they fail to perform, there is usually intervention. Bad charters close and that is important. They have led the pack in using technology to interact with parents. New Zealand, Australia, and the UK are especially interested in what charter schools are doing in this country. Accountability generates information and makes the education market more professional and competitive. We can now estimate a teacher’s effect on student performance. New education management organizations with replicable school models allow parents the freedom to choose which model is best for their child. Dr. Hoxby writes in, How School Choice Affects the Achievement of Public School Students, “There is obsessive interest in the question of “who wins” and “who loses” when choice is introduced. This obsession may turn out to be a mistaken application of energy. Choice need not make some students into losers and others into winners. It is at least possible that all students will be better off.” Last evening Dr. Hoxby left her audience with the disturbing thought that this is the last decade to improve our education system and help our students to be able to compete with other students around the world for the best jobs. She presented evidence that suggests choice is the hybrid vehicle that will afford our students their last opportunity to compete on the world stage. And when the foremost expert on school choice makes a statement like that, the education community should all be sharing in this epiphany. For more, see the following pdf files (Adobe Acrobat Reader required): The
Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement Nancy Salvato Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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No other place
on earth has as much appeal for aspiring autocrats than the bastion
of indulgence that sprang up out of a swamp. The Potomac cuts through
the monuments as it flows to the sea — taking with it all the
discharge and waste that inexorably comes from spent excess. Where else
can you find a place where nothing of value is created, no useful product
is produced, completely void of any industrious endeavor? Absent in
the practice of wealth creation has not hindered the establishment of
temples. The cornerstones of an empire are fueled by the tribute extracted
from the soil of the land. The superhighway of sustenance runs in only
one direction. The life blood of survival comes in, that allows the
organism of privilege to sustain its preeminent dominance. A one way
street that is divided into quadrants, named with letters and circumvented
by broad boulevards. How can it get any better than this? You just got
to LOVE DC.
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©2004-2005 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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