Tag Archives: Cost

Commentary

What helps kids to learn? Parents, teacher unions or education bureaucrats?

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Christine Kim
Christine Kim

What’s the best way to help children do well in school?

On the one hand, social conservatives on the right favor the traditional family structure, complete with a father who lives in the home and is an involved parent. Parents have an incentive to help children do well in school because they are biologically linked to the children and they are paying all the bills at home. They are making sacrifices and they want to see some results.

On the other other hand, social liberals on the left favor raising taxes on working families, and funneling the proceeds to unionized public school teachers. Do teachers get paid more for improving the quality of education for students? Or do they get paid more for contributing to Democrats who will increase their salaries? Do they have an incentive to make children learn?

Parents vs teacher unions: Who does the best job?

Consider this research paper from Christine C. Kim of the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.

Excerpt:

American taxpayers invest heavily in education. Last year, spending on public K–12 education totaled $553 billion, about 4 percent of gross domestic prod­uct (GDP) in 2006. For each child enrolled in a pub­lic elementary or secondary school, expenditures averaged $9,266 that year—an increase of 128 per­cent, adjusted for inflation, since 1970.

Despite this increase in public spending, student achievement and educational attainment over the last four decades has remained relatively flat. In 2007, a significant portion of students, disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, scored “below basic” in reading and math on the National Assess­ment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Sadly, in many of the nation’s largest cities, fewer than half of high school students graduate.

While academic research has consistently shown that increased spending does not correlate with edu­cational gains, the research does show a strong rela­tionship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Two compelling parental factors emerge:

  1. family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and
  2. parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.

Consequently, the solution to improving educa­tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.

The PDF is here. In the rest of the paper, Christine supports her conclusions using evidence.

Commentary

Cato Institute says the cost of Obamacare is over six trillion dollars

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Story here from the Cato Institute. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years.  Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

[…]When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion.  That’s not a precise estimate.  It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

Read the rest here.

News

Navy SEALs face assault charges from Iraqi terrorist they captured

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Let me start by quoting Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who doesn’t approve of punishing the Fort Hood terrorist with the death penalty.

She writes:

Major Nidal Hasan had his first hearing in the Ft. Hood murder case. The hearing was held in the hospital. His lawyer says he is paralyzed from the chest down, incontinent and in severe pain.

[…]How barbaric that the military will seek to kill a man with no sensation in his body from the chest down. He might prefer it (I certainly would) but it’s inexusable behavior for a civilized society and way beyond the pale of decency.

One wonders what she would say to the families of the victims.

The death penalty as a deterrent to future crimes

The trouble with Democrats is that they make decisions based on feelings and intentions, instead of based on knowledge and results. No one likes the death penalty, but that’s not the point of it. The point of the death penalty is that is deters future crimes.

The left-wing Washington Post reports on the latest research.

Excerpt:

“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) – what am I going to do, hide them?”

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory – if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

[…]Among the conclusions:

– Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

– The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

– Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

So, removing the death penalty encourages criminals to commit more crime. And this also applies to terrorism. If you want to coddle captured terrorists by giving them civilian trials and life imprisonment, instead of military trials and death sentences, then you get more terrorism.

Navy SEALS face criminal charges after capturing terrorist

Now let’s turn to this story from Fox News. (via The Weekly Standard via Fausta’s Blog)

Excerpt:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Just consider the incentives being created by this prosecution of Navy SEALS. This is exactly what caused the Army and the FBI to keep silent when Major Nidal Hasan was giving all the warning signs of committing a terrorist attack, including communicating with terrorists. The Army and the FBI didn’t want to face the wrath of politically correct lawyers and judges.

So we have the left opposing the death penalty for terrorism on the one hand, and on the other hand the left is in favor of prosecuting Navy SEALs and CIA interrogators for their work in stopping terrorism.

How Modern Liberals Think

If you want to understand why people on the left call evil good and call good evil, be sure and watch Evan Sayet’s speech at the Heritage Foundation, entitled “How Modern Liberals Think”.

Here’s the lecture:

Democrats aren’t not serious about evil, and that disqualifies them from any office involving national security. In my opinion, they are not qualified to do anything of any importance.