Kansas school reform. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is preparing to release a plan for reform of Kansas school finance. The reform plans, however, appear to do nothing to actually improve Kansas schools. Missing is any plan to introduce school choice to Kansas, whether in the form of charter schools, vouchers, or tax credit scholarships. While the school spending establishment says that these programs rob the existing public schools of money, the reverse is true: school choice programs cost less. An example: “Pennsylvania’s tax-credit program had saved Keystone State residents $144 million since 2001.” … It’s unfortunate for Kansas schoolchildren that the governor will not introduce these programs, as many other states are introducing or expanding choice programs.
Occupy Wall Street vs. Jobs. Steve Jobs, that is. After contrasting the behaviors of the Occupy Wall Street protests with the business accomplishments of Apple’s Jobs and how the products Apple developed have lead to better lives, Michael D. Tanner draws a line between government and the private sector: “The Occupy Wall Street crowd, and for that matter President Obama, see government as the center of our existence. It is government that makes for a better society, while the rich, businessmen, and entrepreneurs are ‘takers’ who don’t ‘pay their fair share.’ But would we really have been better off if we had taken more of Jobs’s wealth and given it to the government? Would President Obama really have used it better than Jobs did? Would the government have given us all that Jobs did? Government has spent trillions on schools that don’t educate, anti-poverty programs that don’t lift people out of poverty, stimulus programs that don’t stimulate, and health-care programs that don’t control the cost of health care. Compare Apple or Pixar’s record of success with the failures of government. For that matter, what government jobs program has created as many net new jobs as Jobs? In fact, the next time someone suggests that what we need is more taxes, more regulation, more class warfare, more government programs, we should instead suggest that what we really need are policies that encourages a poor boy from San Francisco to become rich and thereby make the rest of us a little richer as well.” … The complete article is Occupy Wall Street vs. Jobs.
OWS and Tea Party united? Are the Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Tea Party political allies? Maybe, or maybe not, explains Fred Smith of Competitive Enterprise Institute, writing in USA Today: “The problems we face come not from capitalism, Wall Street variety or any other, but rather from crony-capitalism. Tea Partiers distinguish capitalism from crony-capitalism. Occupiers confuse them. In fact, some Occupiers seek their own form of cronyism — an expanded government that will help the ‘right’ beneficiaries, such as students and homeowners, instead of bankers and automakers. … The economist Joseph Schumpeter, in his essay “Can Capitalism Survive?”, warned long ago that too many business leaders would seek success through politics rather than competition, and that this would destroy true capitalism. Certainly, too many in Wall Street have succumbed to that temptation, and capitalism has suffered accordingly. But it suggests that Occupiers and the Tea Partiers share at least one common enemy. The Solyndra scandal illustrates that crony-capitalists are found far beyond Wall Street. Thus, instead of focusing on one small part of Manhattan Island, shouldn’t we liberate the whole American economy?” … It should be noted that the economic development policies of Wichita are firmly rooted in crony capitalism.
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