Body Parts

Obama Doesn't Get It. Too Much Government Deadens The Spirit.

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, is a perfect example of the liberal who doesn't get it. In a recent column, Friedman argues that Obama needs to make private sector creation of jobs the first priority of his second year on the job--the post-Massachusetts election of Scott Brown year on the job. (Thomas Friedman, "How Obama Can Spur Jobs Revival", The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, California, Wednesday, January 27, 2010, A13.) Obama should, Friedman recommends, seek to encourage entrepreneuralism among the young. The President should convene a meeting of "the country's leading innovators and ask them, 'what legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over?' "

What doesn't Friedman not get? Indeed, more dangerously for America, what does Obama also not get? Neither understand that it isn't what government does that would stimulate entrepreneurship and the creation of a million new businesses. It's what government does not do that would stimulate new business formation.

For government's effect in the economy is primarily to dampen enthusiasm for risk taking. This effect can be seen in several ways. When one looks at startup opportunities and costs for a new business, government regulation and taxation stand as enormous barriers. And I mean, government at all levels--municipal, county, state, and federal. Here's a frightening example. An entrepreneur wanted to purchase and convert a Los Angeles city downtown fire station, taken out of service and then unoccupied, into a restaurant. Eventually, she and her partners succeeded in creating a chic, thriving eaterie that has endured for several decades. But to do it, she had to obtain over 100 separate permits, over three years, for the new business, before the doors opened. That was three years of carrying loans, renegotiating loans, begging investors for patience, accumulating capital for the state labor costs had to be paid before a laborer was hired, accumulating reserves to carry the restaurant through the first year, when most new restaurants fail.

A second example points to every family's personal experience. Having children. What is the greatest obstacle to having children? Their cost. It is not the cost sending children to college that dissuades prospective parents from having children or having more children. It is the lack of income the parents have to raise a child after taxes are taken from their paychecks. The cumulative tax load, all levels of government, for a middle class family approaches 35% to 40% (*); then, on the net income, parents must pay the rent, food, clothes, medical expenses, and all the other expenses, for each child. In Europe, the tax burden is the main reason for the low fertility rate. So it is in America. It's difficult to imagine that anything could dampen the sexual urge to reproduce; but government manages to do so.

The dead hand of government on the entrepreneurial economy, as on the household domestic economy, cannot be lightened by a minor tax mechanisms, such as an employee tax credit or increasing the dependent deduction on federal income taxes. Such proposals, as Obama will probably recommend to Congress, are laughable. They are, tragically, symptoms of his and his economic advisors' failure to understand what is wrong with the economy. The proposals will, and properly should, offend and alienate the majority of the nation's taxpayers.

You don't need some rhetorical crusade by the President to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit in America. What you need is to de-regulate the economy, dramatically lower taxes, and reform labor and environmental laws to enable any business owner to make a sizable profit on the money she or he risks in investment in a new business. That's all you have to do. The very second that governments draw back their claws, reducing startup costs and then letting owners make reasonable profit by keeping a good portion of the money and wealth they create, entrepreneuralism will spring up spontaneously. That's the glory of freedom. That's the glory of the capitalist, free market economy. With opportunity not restricted by government or government-controlled cartels and without governments confiscating most of the business revenue, a free market capitalist economy generates entrepreneurialism all by itself. And that is precisely what Thomas Friedman and Obama and Obama's economic advisors don't get.

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(*) Think of all the taxes--sales tax, property tax, gasoline tax, income taxes at two or three governmental levels, medicare and social security taxes, regulatory fees for highways, telephone, and so on.

UC Campus Admin Gives Advice on How to Work in the Rain: Wear Rain Clothes

Draw your own conclusions about the University of California campus that produced this memo.

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While there have yet to be any emergency weather alerts issued for Riverside County by the National Weather Service today, the weather systems impacting us, and surrounding us, have proven to be a bit unstable and unpredictable.  The UCR Community is reminded to be especially careful during weather episodes such as this by getting and staying informed.  EH&S can keep you up to date on any issued weather alerts, on campus traffic impairments, and other hot topics at the Campus Status webpage.

Employees are reminded that working in the rain presents additional hazards, such as poor visibility and wet, slippery surfaces. Here are work practices that will help prevent accidents and injuries when working in the rain.

• Move more slowly and carefully. When working in the rain, a natural reaction is to try to work more quickly to get back inside as soon as possible. However, because rain makes everything more slippery, you should do the exact opposite—work more slowly and deliberately to prevent slipping and falling, especially when climbing ladders.
• Report problem areas quickly (leaks, power issues, blocked drainage, flooding)
• Use the correct equipment. Do not use electrical tools and equipment that are not specifically rated for outdoor use when working in the rain. When using hand tools, use tools with textured, nonslip grip handles.
• Wear appropriate rain gear. If you are cold and wet, you are likely concentrating more on how miserable you are than the work at hand. Rain gear which includes both a coat and pants or overalls and is ventilated should be worn for prolonged wet-weather work. If it's cold and rainy, wool or synthetic fibers specifically designed for cold weather use are the best for wear under rain gear because it will keep you warm even if it gets wet. Also, wear rain gear that is the proper size; if it's too large it may interfere with movement.
• Wear appropriate footwear. Footwear for use in inclement weather should have deep treads to help prevent slipping. Footwear that is in poor condition (treads are worn down or worn smooth or footwear with holes) should not be worn. To keep water out of shoes or boots, make sure the top of the shoe or boot extends above the ankle and rain gear extends to the ankles. Also, the top of the boot or shoe should be inside the pant leg (as opposed to tucking the pant leg into the footwear).
• Use proper hand protection. When doing work requiring a sure grip (using hand tools, for example), wear gloves that fit snugly and provide a nonslip grip. To prevent water from entering gloves, make sure that the sleeve of the glove is either tight fitting or is long enough that it fits under the cuff of your raincoat.
• Ensure that you can see. If wearing goggles or eyeglasses, use antifogging sprays or wipes on them before going outside. Be sure that the area you are working in is well lit; if needed, light the area using lights rated for outdoor use. Wear hoods or hats to keep rain out of your eyes. Also, since hoods on rain gear narrow your range of vision, make it a point to turn your head to look both ways and above and below you when wearing a hood in the rain.
• Make sure that you can be seen. If working or walking in an area where there is vehicular traffic (trucks, cars, forklifts, etc.), always wear bright-colored, reflective vests or rain gear, even during the day. Do not wear rain gear or vests that have become worn and are dull and/or no longer reflective.

If you have any questions regarding severe weather, workplace safety, or other contents of this message please feel free to contact me.

Income Mobility In US Strong in Ten Years 1996-2005

Class composition was not frozen; individuals moved from class to class. As individuals moved up, their places in the lower class they left behind were taken by other persons moving into it.

UC Riverside Is a Top 'Value-Added' University

The Rodney Dangerfield UC campus deserves respect for this ranking, by the Washington Monthly, which looks at public good contributions in research, service, and social mobility of its students.

Multiplication of Administrators in Higher Education Is the Cause of Escalating Costs

The number of administrators in higher education increased over 100 per cent, while the number of tenure track faculty increased only 17 per cent, from 1975 to 2005. The number of professional, nonadministrative, employees in higher education increased over 200 per cent, during the same decades. Why did administration and services increase so much? I don't know, but here are three observations. (1) Increased number of federal regulations required more administrators to administer them. (2) Desire to increase affirmative action and diversity employment led to multiplication of mid-level administrative appointments that did not require peer review and could serve at will (which gave higher administrators freedom to make, discriminatorily, appointments on affirmative action and diversity basis). (3) Administrators over-evaluated their own importance and could multiply themselves, since they represented the universities and colleges to boards,legislators, and funding sources. Being an administrator is easier than being a brilliant, recognized professor, and many administrators are former professors. Professors who get tired of research or aren't good or successful at it in the first place gravitate to administrative jobs.

A Different Measure of America's Public Educational Needs

Education is like the carnivorous plant in the "Little Shop of Horrors". It grows on the sacrifice of blood, but its appetite is insatiable, and it is only pleasant when it's being fed. So let's take a wild leap and look at the biggest possible estimate of expenditures needed to make American public k-12 education perform with ideal success in the configuration it presently occupies. What would the monster plant look like?

According to educational research*, students make their greatest educational progress in small classes. The optimal class size is 12 to 15 students. Current class size in California is about 35 students. The research shows that student accomplishments are not significantly improved when class size is reduced to 30 or 25 or 20 students. It has to drop way down, to at least 15 students, then student performance skyrockets. When we look at other countries, such as Japan, with educational systems we admire, we also notice that they have much longer school years than does the US. Lengthening the school year appeals to common sense. As it is, students forget much of their  previous year's learning over the long summer break, requiring dedication of the first part of the new school year to review of the previous year's subjects. 

So let's hypothesize that two changes, reducing class size to 15 students and increasing the school year to year-round for students, would dramatically improve student educational progress. What would these measures cost? Basically, they would require doubling our educational expenditures. Doubling is a lot. It would mean doubling the number of teachers, doubling salaries, doubling benefits and pensions, doubling the physical plant of schools, and increasing administrative staff to oversee the increased plant. California requires by law that 40% of its general fund be spent on public education. Doubling would mean that 80% of general funds would be spent on education.

In the real world, doubling expenditures on education is practically impossible. Society has other needs that are important, such as taking care of the increasing elderly population. That being the case, notice the opposite. Decreasing expenditures from current levels would not significantly diminish educational accomplishment. We could let class size rise to forty students, for instance, and increase the number of instructional classes a teacher has a day from five to six, without dramatically deteriorating educational progress.

That we could reduce educational expenditures without significantly degrading educational accomplishment makes available funds for educational experimentation. I have several proposals.

First, I suggest outsourcing the education of some students to private, residential schools, to what used to be called "prep schools". Students with impaired family lives but with some intellectual promise might benefit from the housing arrangement of the traditional prep school, which involves living in a small group of (5 to 6) students with a master and his/her family in their residence. Outsourcing would also provide the opportunity to move students, who live in deteriorated neighborhoods, to more favorable locales.

Second, I suggest fostering other problem students, who live in cities, to host families living in small towns around the country. There, they would enter small public school systems.

Third, school vouchers, which could be taken to private and charter schools, need to be given a real opportunity to work nation-wide.

Fourth, create a useful vocational track in the public secondary schools. For instance, why not a national industrial apprenticeship program? The current mantra is for universal college education; but it does not make sense that college education would meet the needs of everyone. One of the keys to Germany's industrial success was the industrial apprenticeship program that the US created after WWII; the same might help us.

Fifth, allow many students to leave school, without graduating, at an earlier age, say 14 years, and pay for their return to complete their schooling ten years later. It seems clear, from the behavior of student themselves, that many adolescents are not able to focus on school. Personal growth issues, social concerns, hormonal disruption, all divert their attention so that much of the money spent on their schooling is wasted. Allow students, who can show good cause, to leave school at 14 to enroll in some kind of employment, such as agricultural labor, or industrial work, or service. Then pay them to return to school some years later, when they have grown up, learned about life, and have some sense of the value of education to them.

Just suggestions. We need to do something; and it is clear that simply increasing the funding for education as presently constituted is not going to do anything significant.

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* Sorry, I can't recall the source of the studies; you'll just have to take my word, or at least my memory, for it. But it seems credible, so run with it.

I've blogged on these ideas before, here.

Anti-Semitic Professors in California Organize Academic Boycott of Israel

California academe has long contained a strong, prominent party of Left sympathizers and fellow travellers. Communist sympathizers were well ensconced in the 1930s at Berkeley and in the 1960s the Old Left was joined by the New Left. So it is no supprise that California academics have created a US organization to follow the Palestinian cultural and academic boycott of Israel. The new US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel simply cuts and pastes the PACBI mission statement onto its own. This campaign means nothing. It is just part of a political propaganda campaign against Israel. The anti-semitic compulsion fools and deludes its proponents into thinking they are being objectively reasonable and acting out of idealism, whereas they are really only political partisans.  One can only regret that California taxpayer money pays most of their salaries.

Founders of USCACBI

The profiles of the founders are predictable.  

Mohammad Abed, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, CSULA. His research and teaching interests (largely concerning Islamic thought) are a gem of the "justice" movement.

Rabab Abdulhadi, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies Program, SFSU. Senior Scholar, Arab and Muslim Erhnicities and Diasporas Initiative. She is a Palestinian. 

Lara Deeb, UCI. Associate Professor of Women's Studies. Research interests--gender, Islam, modernity, religion, public sphere, time/temporality, memorialization, interfaith intimacies, transnational feminist analyses, Islam, Middle East Studies, Arab American Studies.

Manzar Foroohar (name misspelled as "Foorohar" on the petition), Professor of History, CalPoly San Luis Obispo. Specializes in Latin American and Modern Middle Eastern history. She also signed the "No US Intervention in Iran Petition".

Jess Ghannam, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences, UCSF. He specializes in working with chronic illness, including chronic pain and cancer. He also works and does research in the area of Global Health and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is a Palestinian-American doctor and is on the National Council of Arab Americans. See this video of his prejudiced views; he is simply a Palestinian propagandist.

Sherna Berger Gluck, Director Emerita, Oral History Program, CSULB. A prominent feminist activist, who previously opposed "Israeli aggression" in Gaza as a member of the 100 member academic organization, California Scholars for Academic Freedom. She is a Jewish sympathizer of the Palestinians.

Sondra Hale, Professor of Anthropology, UCLA. Specializes in gender identity issues in the Middle East and developing societies.

David Klein, Professor of Mathematics, CSUN. Much involved in k-12 math education. Considers Israel the most racist state in the world; see this propaganda that was linked on his professional web page (previous link): here.

Dennis Kortheuer, Lecturer, Department of History, and advisor, College of Education, CSULB. Apparently his research interests involve Mexican history. He is a Jewish sympathizer of the Palestinians and opponent of Israel, accusing Israel of imposing something equivalent to a holocaust on the Palestinians. He supports a manifesto that cites Edward Said.

David Lloyd, Professor English, USC. Has written about Irish literature, cultural nationalism, and minority "discourse". 

Sunaina Maira, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, UCD. Research interests include transnationalism and "American empire". She has worked on civil rights issues in Boston and immigrant rights issues in "the Bay area".

Marcy Newman, Associate Professor, An Najah National University, "Palestine". She believes that Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish state. See "body on the line," her blog. For links to "anti-racism", she gives us ANSWER, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and Howard Zinn, among other delights.

Edie Pistolesi, Professor of Art, CSUN. Specializes in visual arts, apparently. See her Flickr photos. She had previously been involved in anti-war activities (anti-Iraq War apparently).

Magid Shihade, Visiting Scholar, UCD. Teaching courses on foreign policy, the Middle East, and the impact of 9/11 on people. She is involved with "resistance studies"--"Resistance Studies Network is invigorating for me. It is uplifting to be part of a network of scholars who see their work at the academy as part of resistance to hegemony and a site of pushing for change."

(Thanks to Atlas Shrugs for the reference.) 

Revised. January 31, 2009.

At the Tipping Point: The Nationalization of American Life and Culture

I have remarked several times that, with this Autumn's financial crisis and the early Bush administration responses to it, America is turning a historical corner. We are driving blind, through old (and I would argue, inappropriate) economic paradigms, into the future. Though the future is murky, the past we are leaving behind, growing smaller in the distance seen in our car's rear view mirror, is clear. We are accelerating the nationalization of American life and culture. We are leaving behind a decentralized, regionalized society. This nationalization is a change we cannot reverse, short of a catastrophic war that destroys national institutions and blows the nation back to where it was in about 1850, as Herman Kahn once estimated. There is hardly a social force that is not effectively working to remove the nation from its historial past and concentrate it in nationalized homogeneity, as has happened in, for instance, Britain after World War Two. But the change in America since the 1930s has been quite gradual, compared to the change we are now experiencing.

We will see in Obama's administration major shifts of power from the local and state levels to the national level. The major reason for these shifts is the lack of money in local and state government to solve the financial and economic problems that Americans believe are going to destroy their livelihoods. State and local governments will sell their souls to obtain the money to continue programs, rather than curtail programs for a few years and find local funding. With federal funding to bail out states will come more federal regulation and authority. Citizens will discover that they have nearly no direct say in the governmental decisions that affect their daily lives. They have little now, no doubt, but they will have none soon. Corporations will similarly feel the loss of power. As the federal governments buys its equity stakes in major financial institutions and major manufacturing corporations, as surely will happen in the auto industry, those corporations will find themselves being compelled to serve public interest, as defined by the federal executive and national political parties in Congress, rather than their private owners' interests. Our big corporations will look much like those in Germany and France, where they are governed in private capital-national governmental partnerships.

Nationalization will not achieve the progress its proponents desire. Nationalization of American life will make America weaker, not stronger; less secure, not more; less resilient, not more resilient; less inventive and creative, not more; less courageous, not braver; less independent, not more; less free, not more. Nationalization will weaken community life and cast individual fates upon the distant ministries of the federal government. Nationalization will not make cities and localities stronger in the face of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans; it will make them weaker. Communities will give up their local preparations and rely upon federal intervention; but they will discover that a distant national government can't really be johnny on the spot to help. The federal government does nothing without bureaucratic delay. For good reason, federal disaster advice is that citizens should be prepared to live for three days at a minimum without assistance. The Democratic Party effectively convinced the American public that the Bush administration was responsible for the New Orleans disaster, but that was a lie at the time and is a lie now. National government is precisely the kind of institution that can't respond to a local disaster to save everybody. Everybody has to save themselves, and that's what local government is for. It was a failure of local and state government that destroyed New Orleans, not the hurricane and not some supposedly mismanaged federal emergency bureaucracy.

Nationalization of medicine and health care will produce a major struggle with local forces and values of individual choice; but I think the biggest fight over nationalization will come over education. There are big institutions, such as the Gates Foundation, and prominent policy analysts arguing that American education should be nationalized. They argue that local and state control of education is responsible for the poor achievement of American education generally. We cannot afford not to be "competitive", especially in the sciences and math, in a globally competitive economy, they say. These arguments will persuade Congres. The President will agree; there is no frontier spirit in Obama. He and the black community have a deep dependency upon, even faith in, federal power that goes back to emancipation. The dependency is steeped in Obama's bones and intellectually reinforced by an adulthood schooled in Marxism and big-government progressivism. 

The trend set in motion with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 will finally be completed in federal control of funding, curriculum and content, instructional and teacher standards, and school administration. This nationalization will come as a shock to local communities, with their PTA groups, local school boards, local funding with local hearings, and teacher-parent conferences. Local communities will resist; but they will lose. We will have a national educational system that creates uniformity. And uniformity is weakness--look at the history of collectivized nations for proof. The government will argue that a nationalized educational system is better; but the argument should be dismissed. Government always argues that its programs are better. When nationalization of education is complete, we will know the difference. Education with local funding and local control is the heart of the local community. When it is gone, localism will wither. American strength will wither with it.

School Choice and the Black Middle Class

The sad death of her son, twenty-six years old, while riding a motorcycle on a Los Angeles freeway, has brought an extended family and network of friends to our neighbor's home. For several days and evening, she has had their support and comfort, as well as advice. Naturally, as on every similar occasion in my experience, friends and family re-united, even under sorrowful circumstances, invariably turn to reminiscence of their childhood and youth together. Because our friendship with our grieving neighbor does not extend back that far, we could not contribute anecdotes; but we enjoyed listening to their stories and news. The news particularly interested me. There was much discussion of schools they attended and to which they sent or were sending their children. The schools were mostly private. In the case of one young cousin, who has elementary school children (and whom I saw nearly daily during the school year, as my walk took me by her school), she was removing them from public school. She has enrolled them in a nearby Catholic school, though she is not Catholic. I asked her about the choice. Well, it was her aunt's school, and the school of several other relatives. She made the choice, which entails considerable sacrifice, for the educational quality of the school. "My girls will learn more. They will learn discipline," she said, referring to intellectual discipline. In the crowded rooms, several other women volunteered similar information. One young woman had just graduated from a small Christian college in Texas. She said that she didn't want to leave Southern California for Texas ("It's so boring there"), but family insisted. She majored in biology and is now working as a surgical room assistant at a nearby university hospital and applying to medical school. The names of other, elementary and secondary, private schools were mentioned, but I was not familiar with them.

The choices of these families are similar to the choices of other middle class black families in our neighborhood. One family sent their two daughters to private local Christian colleges. The son went into the Navy (their father served in the Marines). This family lives in a modest home that could use some repair; but the condition of their house is clearly a sacrifice they made to pay for the high tuition of the private schools. They also have sent their daughters to Europe for month-long tours in the Summers. Last year, the oldest daughter, a teacher, travelled to New Zealand and Australia. The son sees the world with his job, of course. When they don't travel abroad, they travel to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and other ancestral home states to visit distant cousins.

Some nearby families have opted for public schools, of course. The daughters of two of our neighbors graduated from a state college; one is in business in Las Vegas and the other is headed for teaching in public schools. The men of another neighbor's family attended Sprawling Suburb's community college. No doubt, convenience and cost were a factor in their decisions. Military service was a common route to education and vocational training for black men on our street (I can think, quickly, of three black patriarchs on our street who were military).

The decision for education and the choice often of religious schools are integral to the pattern of life-decisions of these families that has brought them success. Family life; religious life with church attendance; maintenance of networks of kith and kin; owning their homes; several I know own their own businesses; college and often private college; travel. Sacrifice of one generation for the advance of the next.

Imagine how a school voucher program could expand and strengthen the black middle class.

Nationalization of Education and Destruction of Local Society and Community

Lee Carey, in the article, "Obama and the Independent School District" (American Thinker, July 19, 2008) previews the Obama camp's thinking about education. To deal with the widely perceived deficiencies of American k-12 public education, Obama and his advisers favor massively increasing federal spending on education. Some of his advisers also favor nationalizing educational curriculum and instruction to create a single national standard. Such a policy is also favored by head program officers of the Gates Foundation, according to a radio interview a month ago (with newly appointed Jeff Raikes, I believe, to which, alas, I have been unable to find a Google reference [if someone finds the reference, please let me know if my memory is correct]).

The notion of nationalizing education is built on the assumption that the best k-12 curriculum prepares all students well for college level education. This assumption needs to be debated. The consequences of nationalizing education need also to be examined and debated. Two issues especially concern me.

1. Vocational education would be eliminated from k-12 education to make room for college preparation. Most reformers believe that industrial work today requires education in the lines of engineering preparation, rather than mechanical and craft skills.

2. Education to local community values and needs would be eliminated. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, one of the functions of schools was reproduction of local culture. Since racism and segregation were a part of local culture, these practices of course had to be removed from local education; but nearly everything else about local community and culture was also removed.

I think that traditional liberal arts college-level education and college-level preparation for professional careers that require post-graduate education do not suit the needs of a significant portion of Americans. In particular, they do not help most immigrants and working class minorities. Most immigrant and working class minorities do not have the family culture required to lift their children into professions. They would be a generation or two away from such an achievement. The exceptional children who do become doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals do not falsify this proposition. The enormous popularity of proprietary post-high school trade and business schools and the enormous success of vocational education in California's community colleges are evidence for the proposition. Vocational education, broadly conceived in terms of contemporary industrial and business needs, should be an important separate curriculum.

The notion that American can do without local community and society, but can survive with a homogeneous culture, is surely a great mistake. I have argued at length in my farming blog that we have a national security interest in maintaining rural society, which is one category of local society and community and which differs region to region. My argument in this series of articles, "A Theory of Rural Life", can be applied here.