The U.S. Department of Education has been gobbling up more turf over the last several years, issuing mandates and pushing a one-size-fits-all set of standards.  Now the most disturbing move is to implement a national K-12 education curriculum.

What’s wrong with that?  To those who advocate for efficiency in education, this may seem like a good thing.  It’s anything but.

A broad group of education reformers who are fighting this initiative has published a manifesto, titled “Closing the Door on Innovation.”

“A one-size-fits-all national curriculum based on mediocre high-school standards will stifle the educational innovation essential to closing the racial gap in academic achievement,” said Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who signed the manifesto.

Bill Evers, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy under President George W. Bush, recently participated in a question-and-answer session regarding a national curriculum.

Q: Some might say that a national curriculum would promote efficiency.  What is your response?

A: The efficiency we should seek in K-12 education should be systemic and be grounded in sound rules and institutions. If we have pluralistic institutions with the right incentives, we will have better learning and more efficient and productive schooling than if we have a uniform and unified national curriculum. Such a uniform curriculum can too easily be bent in some wrongheaded way in the future.  Monolithic national uniformity is inefficient if it cuts off examination of alternatives, readily becomes stagnant, resists feedback, and all too easily becomes captive of future fads and fancies.”

Q: Is there danger in a one-size-fits-all curriculum?

A: Officials in Washington cannot design a curriculum that is fitting and appropriate for all classrooms in huge country like the United States.

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ATLANTA (AP) – Newt Gingrich is running for president.

The former House speaker disclosed his bid on Twitter and Facebook on Monday and urged followers to tune into Fox News on Wednesday.

“I will be on to talk about my run for president of the United States,” Gingrich wrote after spending a year or more publicly laying the groundwork for a GOP presidential candidacy. “I have been humbled by all the encouragement you have given me to run.”

The move was hardly a surprise; Gingrich has spent months raising money, assembling a campaign team and visiting early primary states. He also quietly opened a campaign headquarters in Atlanta, and had long been scheduled to address the Georgia Republican Party Convention on Friday in Macon, Ga. Aides say that will be his first speech as a full-fledged candidate.

Gingrich, 67, enters a Republican field that’s far from fully formed; no less than a dozen Republicans are weighing bids and only a few have taken steps toward candidacies. It’s a crop of candidates that has many in the Republican Party yearning for more options as they seek the strongest candidate to take on President Barack Obama in 2012. (more…)

Why has the Food Safety Modernization Act (S510) encountered opposition from the Tea Partiers and their unlikely ally, the hippy, natural food, organic farmer, granola crowd?  Look at the history of the FDA and see if they truly have the best interests of America’s health and food safety at the core of their concerns.

In the early 1990s the FDA was constructing their genetically modified organisms (GMO) policy.  During the Clinton Administration Michael R. Taylor was appointed policy chief at the FDA, whose job it was to make policy with regards to these GMOs.  Prior to working at the FDA he had been Monsanto’s attorney. One of the products of Monsanto was Posilac, which is the brand name of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST).  This product, when injected into dairy cows, causes them to produce 10 to 15% more milk on average.  This was marketed as a safe drug to increase milk production and therefore increase revenues for dairy farmers.  Michael R. Taylor declared all GMOs, including rBGH/rBST, to be essentially identical to the natural product and therefore safe for human consumption, even though no safety studies were done. In late1993 Monsanto received permission from the FDA to market Posilac.

Farmers began purchasing Posilac and injecting their cows and found that it did indeed cause the cows to increase their milk production.  What they also discovered is that these cows began to suffer with mastitis (infected udders) continuously and they had to inject them with antibiotics to fight these infections, resulting in pus being present in the milk the cows produced.  They also suffered with fertility problems, hoof diseases and lameness among other illnesses.  The cows were producing milk constantly and were living shorter, unhealthier lives.  The farmers decided that the health of their cows was not worth the increased profits and began to market their milk products as not containing milk from rBGH or rBST treated cows.

The FDA took swift action, at the insistence of Monsanto, and told them that if they were going to continue to label their products, they must also add the statement that “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST and non rBST treated cows.” rBST/rBGH can be found in milk, ice cream, ice milk, frozen yogurt, yogurt, baby formula, cereals, cheese, cream cheese.  Think powdered milk products, too.

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From Heritage Newspapers:

On Senior Day 2011, more than 100 University of Michigan Law School grads walked out on a speech by Ohio Senator Rob Portman.

Last Year, President Obama spoke to the University of Michigan. He criticized “poisonous” rhetoric and advised students to sample opinions of both left and right. President Obama also opposes same-sex marriage along with the majority of Americans.
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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the commodity crash last week, and the rise of cyber warfare and the cybersecurity industrial complex.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Coffee & Markets: Commodities, Unemployment, and the Debt Ceiling
The rise of the cybersecurity-industrial complex
Loving the Cyber Bomb? The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cybersecurity Policy
Booz Allen Hamilton gets Naval cybersecurity deal

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Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

“Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives,” said the small-c communist tactician Saul Alinsky, who is now worshipped by the Obama administration and the activist Left. The thuggish, in-your-face activist group ACORN was the vehicle that 1960s radicals created to bash Americans’ heads in to get them to accept a radical transformation of American society. The antisocial group also led the way in destigmatizing welfare by pushing people to abandon their job searches and get on the public dole.

When Barack Obama was a little boy surrounded by parents and grandparents and mentors sympathetic to communism, likeminded people were building ACORN’s parent organization, the National Welfare Rights Organization. Armed with tax dollars, left-wing extremists Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, and Alinsky were at play in the 1960s, wreaking havoc on society in an effort to induce revolutionary change. All three of these at the time relatively obscure figures labored to create NWRO along with a vast constellation of tax-supported groups determined to destroy the American society they loathed.

Changes in federal social policy in the early 1960s helped to lay the groundwork for this artificial activism and the welfare-related unrest it caused. President Lyndon Johnson’s “unconditional war on poverty in America” really should have been called an unconditional war on American values. For four decades, ACORN destroyed property, forcibly occupied banks, assaulted employees of the companies they targeted, intimidated executives and government officials at their family homes, and engineered home invasions in order to seize foreclosed properties. ACORN took money from powerful special interests to produce instant rent-a-mobs to harass their clients’ competitors.

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The Obama Administration has recently floated the idea of a national mileage tax. The government would install electronic tracking equipment in vehicles to determine how many miles drivers traveled, and drivers would pay the tax electronically at gas stations.

The President proposes creating a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office costing $200 million through fiscal year 2017, to study how to best implement such a policy. The new office would examine four areas including “the capability of states to enforce payments, the reliability of technology, administrative costs, and ‘user acceptance.’”

I think a mileage tax is a non-starter for several reasons.

1. Mileage Taxes Are Regressive

Any mileage tax would harm lower-income people the most as transportation costs consume a far higher percentage of their income than wealthier consumers. One could argue that these taxes will likely replace current federal excise taxes on gasoline today, so the status quo would not likely change for these folks. However, I am skeptical that the federal government will ever phase out the gasoline tax, especially since it will naturally go away as people start replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with electric-powered alternatives. In fact, that is really what this mileage tax is really all about. The government sees this trend coming and is trying to get ahead of the problem before revenue from federal  gasoline taxes start declining.

2. Mileage Taxes Will Likely Harm the Economy

The purpose of taxation is twofold: to raise revenue and to encourage/discourage citizen behavior. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, there has been far too much emphasis on the former and not enough on the latter. Sadly, a mileage tax will actually encourage behavior that harms the economy because it will discourage people from driving. When people drive less, they will be less likely to attend a movie or drive to the mall for an afternoon of shopping. The bottom line is that a mileage tax will likely discourage economic activity because people will drive less and will have less discretionary income for consumption.

3. Administering a Mileage Tax Violates Privacy

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Andrew Breitbart’s recent epic battle with the forces of liberal tolerance is not the most important lesson he offers – not by a longshot.  There has got to be someone surprised by the way the Huffington Post fell to its figurative knees to kiss the figurative asses of Van Jones and his commie pals the second they started whining about how Breitbart was speaking his mind, but that someone likely believes in climate change and unicorn rodeos.  Liberals treat concepts like “freedom of speech” and “diversity” like lonely teenage boys treat Kleenex; their floor is littered with wadded-up, discarded principles like free expression that have out-lived their usefulness.  If you are shocked that the liberal media is anything more than a Ministry of Truth promoting the lamest collectivist clichés du jour, you either haven’t been paying attention, or you are really, really dumb.

No, Andrew Breitbart’s most important lesson – one he’ll happily tell you about and which his bestselling book will describes in depth – is that ten years ago, he was just some regular guy.  He wasn’t a Harvard grad or a congressman or a TV anchor.  He was just a normal American citizen who had had enough.  The only difference between him and everyone else is that he chose to get into the fight by leveraging his growing political maturity with the exploding phenomena that is the internet.  And that’s a decision you can make too.

At a superficial level, what my boring communications professors droned on about while my buddies and I took Bacardi hits off a flask in the last rows of the UCSD lecture halls, is true – the medium itself is the message.  Supported by talk radio, conservative think tanks and Fox News, the internet and the social media it has made possible – the Facebooks, the Twitters, the podcasting and the blogs – represent the destruction of the old order of political discourse.  And that creative destruction is what we represent – the new paradigm that has turned the once mighty New York Times into a pathetic brochure that today sets the agenda for no one but the Manhattan-bound, neo-Pauline Kael set whose members can’t believe those Tea Party barbarians prevailed last November because they don’t know any.

The issue is not whether you can be part of the fight.  You can.  You can organize, to the extent the Tea Party movement lends itself to organization (Chaos is its best defense against co-opting!).  You can start a blog, you can tweet, or you can Facebook (Is that a verb yet?).  The number of internet radio shows and podcasts like Jimmy Bise, Jr.’s “The Delivery” are exploding.  New radio hosts are coming out of the movement, like Larry “Stage Right” O’Connor, Dana Loesch and Tony Katz – and they are crossing into terrestrial radio.  Your opportunity is unlimited.

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As Greece nears a probably default on its debt, it is becoming increasingly likely that the country will have to exit the EU. The finances of California and Illinois aren’t far behind.

From the Associated Press:

Holding signs and chanting “We love sluts!” approximately 2,000 protesters marched Saturday in Boston, as the city officially become the latest to join an international series of protests against sexism and rape, known as “SlutWalks.”

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I’ve discussed this topic a lot all across the country, the wave of women, of mothers in political activism.

Why have so many mothers become so active?

Because motherhood is political.

I have two sons. One day they may hear the call of duty and enlist to fight for our liberty. One day they may be called upon to defend America’s shores. They may decide to enter business or take up a trade. They may decide to have families of their own someday. I want them to have every opportunity available to them and I will stand against that which impedes on their rights. It’s instinctual: my job as a mother is to raise up, nurture, and protect my children, to protect their interests, to protect the interests of my family. In a society where my first line of defense, my husband, has been compromised by the self-victimization of the female sex, I’ve volunteered to go to the front lines of this ideological battle and I do it for my children. I’m not the only one.

It’s unconscionable to me that I would protect my children from running out into a busy street but not protect their right to be free. A month after my oldest was born my husband and I spent an entire morning baby-proofing our house: placing plastic covers on all empty wall sockets, installing cabinet latches, covering all the sharp edges of the tables with adhesive cushions. Why wouldn’t I also rise to install barriers against that which harms my children’s future? We armed our children with the knowledge against “stranger danger,” we taught them how to dial 911 in emergencies, we’ve taught them how to properly handle and not handle firearms. Why wouldn’t I teach my children about their fundamental rights as an American? Their right to free speech, to assemble, the freedom of the press, the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the freedom of religion? Their right to pursue happiness but not the expectation that they are owed happiness from their fellow man?

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Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed an expansive new voucher law today. It’s a disaster for educational freedom. Read the full explanation here.

The voucher program has been widely praised as a momentous victory for school choice and Gov. Mitch Daniels on the brink of his long-awaited presidential campaign announcement. In reality, the voucher program is a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom. This program will greatly expand state regulation of and authority over participating private schools.

In our efforts to expand educational choice across the country, we can’t lose sight of what makes that choice valuable; educational freedom and the diversity of choices it allows to develop. School choice is meaningless if all the choices are the same.

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In a post two years ago this week, I reported on the story of Steve McQueen, a leader of the then-fledgling Quincy (Ill.) Tea Party, who was prevented from speaking at a meeting of the local city council:

It was the last thing McQueen expected to have happen when he appeared at the meeting last night. But it did happen. In a 7-6 vote down party lines, members of the Quincy City Council voted to deny him his right to speak, despite the fact that he had taken all of the proper steps required of a citizen to appear on the council’s agenda.

“I actually went last night with the idea that I was going to speak about our local city budget and a water-sewer increase,” McQueen told me this morning during a telephone interview. “I did ask to speak prior to going and I was placed n the agenda, so I went in with the idea that it was a foregone conclusion that I would speak. When I walked in and the vote happened, I was shocked.”

Shocked, yes. But not deterred.

A lot has changed in Quincy since then, according to Tara August, a QTP member who was at the meeting. Early this afternoon, she sent me an update about the local political situation in the Mississippi River town 130-odd miles north of St. Louis. I share it below:

“Someone reposted your blog of 2 years ago – the article about our Quincy Tea Party leader, Steve McQueen, who was denied be able to speak at our city council meeting. I was at that meeting. Just thought you might like to know what has happened since then.

“Our 7/7 split on the city council with a Democratic mayor has turned into a 10/4 Republican majority since our election in April. Quincy Tea Party was instrumental in making this happen. We also have two new female Republican councilwomen.

“I remember the comment the day after Steve was denied his request to speak. Someone wrote “I hope they enjoy being in hot water because they just cooked their goose”. We still have the Dem mayor but he is up for reelection in 2 years and we will get him then! Enjoyed your article.”

Thanks for the update, Tara!

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House Republicans who once considered Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) to be a brilliant and courageous rising star of the party, one who could put the nation on a more sound fiscal path by tackling entitlement programs, are now abandoning his Medicare proposal simply because it will not pass the Senate. Both Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and Rep. David Camp (Michigan), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, have said that, while they support Ryan’s Medicare plan, they would prefer to focus on ways to achieve savings that could “realistically” be signed into law. Hmmm….so, why did the House repeal Obamacare in January? Most knew the Senate would not repeal it. What happened to being on the record for real change in Washington?

Republican leaders say they want to tie changes to the debt ceiling to savings from entitlements, and that changes to entitlements are best done in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, “bipartisan” is starting to be synonymous with “ineffectual.”

There’s a reason why politicians want to treat the entitlements gingerly. It’s called fear. Listen to the woman challenging Paul Ryan in this liberal media video of one of the town halls he conducted in Wisconsin during Congress’ Easter break. She is under 55 and already on Medicare. She has heard Mr. Ryan explain that, under his plan, those over 55 would keep the current Medicare program, and begins her statement to him with, “I’m screwed,” even though the congressman explains that those already on Medicare will be grandfathered in, regardless of age. “Like I said,” she says, “I know I’m screwed.” Refusing to even listen to what Mr. Ryan is saying, she has decided his plan will cut her off from government healthcare.

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Happy Mothers’ Day. (Special shout-out to Alana!)

In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the last century, and future Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek engaged in a legendary battle of ideas about the role of the government in ending and causing economic downturns.

Last year, George Mason University economist Russ Roberts and director-producer John Papola retold that debate in the form of a rap video, “Fear the Boom and Bust,” in which Hayek and Keynes fight it out over the causes of the Great Recession.

In a new video, the battle continues: Should government juice spending via massive stimulus or “do nothing” once a recession is underway? And did World War II end the Great Depression? Whatever side you take, the video, which pulled over 500,000 views in its first week, is sure to entertain and edify.

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From WTMJ, Wisconsin:

The AFL-CIO is cutting ties to people who do business with Governor Scott Walker.  On Thursday, the union withdrew more than $100,000 from M&I Bank.  Union leaders are upset bank executives contributed to Governor Walker’s election campaign.