Sowell Points Out What Is, in Fact, Funny about Peace, Rawls and Understanding

February 11, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over on NRO, Thomas Sowell lays out one of the many underlying problems with Rawlsianism: the information problem. The traditional rules of interpersonal justice, which Rawls called “formal fairness” – don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t defraud, fulfill contracts, etc. – are a feasible basis for policy because they only require knowledge of a limited number of discrete acts. Within reasonable limits we can usually get a pretty clear idea of who did what to whom. But Rawls’s desire for a more comprehensively “fair” society presupposes that we have information on the whole state of facts across all reality, and not just in a snapshot but dynamically over time, and not just in the actual course of events but also in all possible anticipated courses of events depending on what policies we enact. This fallacy was also identified by Hayek as “the fatal conceit.”

Required reading for those tempted by the Rawlsian fallacy.

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Posted by Greg Forster

Robert Enlow on Vouchers and School Safety

February 3, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Robert Enlow, my boss at the Foundation for Educational Choice, writes in this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times that school vouchers are a safety issue:

When Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited the community in October, Holder said the Albert murder was “a call to action” and that youth violence had to come to an end…

In October, Holder said, “We are not going to protect any sacred cows. The status quo is not acceptable.” If that is truly the case, if Chicago parents, community leaders and politicians have had enough bloodshed, justice will no longer be delayed.

If you’re in Chicago Friday morning, or can be, don’t miss the big event the Illinois Policy Institute will be putting on. Rev. Senator James Meeks will be giving a barn-burner of a speech, from what I’m told. You’ll want to hear it.

(Oh, and yours truly will be on stage as well, to talk about this. But come anyway.)

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Posted by Greg Forster

Attack of the Killer Vouchers!

February 2, 2010

Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Vouchers”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Yesterday we learned about the horrible massacre of the innocents in Milwaukee Public Schools. Confronted with evidence showing substantially higher graduation rates in private schools participating in the city’s voucher program than in public schools, a public school official cited “mortality” as an excuse.

No doubt it won’t be long before they announce that Milwaukee public school students are dying in such large numbers because of the voucher program!

You doubt it? The journal Environmental Science and Technology has already published an article – carefully peer reviewed using the same totally neutral and non-corrupted system they use for all the other climate science – finding that school vouchers cause global warming. You see, vouchers irresponsibly permit parents to choose whether and how far to drive their students to school, thus recklessly increasing the levels of the dangerous chemical globalwarmic hysteriphate in the atmosphere, further sapping the purity of our precious, precious bodily fluids.

And since it’s already an established scientific fact that global warming causes everything bad, it follows as night follows day that vouchers, by causing global warming, cause mortality in Milwaukee public schools.

Now if only we could find a way to protect our children from this threat . . . if only there were an education policy that were proven to improve school safety by moving students from less safe schools into more safe schools. Hmmm…

HT Dan Lips

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Posted by Greg Forster

PJM on Racial Excuses

February 1, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over the weekend, Pajamas Media carried my column on the latest developments in educational racial excusemaking:

The [Berkeley high] school’s governance council thinks that science labs benefit white and Asian students to the detriment of blacks and Hispanics, whom the council apparently views as not capable of learning science…

“When broken down in racial terms,” says the local superintendent, “African American and Latino students are not scoring as well as their peers.” Well, I guess that’s that, then! If some student groups are scoring poorly in science, obviously the only possible way to deal with that problem is to shut down the science labs! Then they won’t score poorly in science anymore!

“The majority of students of color don’t really go” because the labs take place outside normal school hours, says one student by way of defending the decision. Well then, obviously the most equitable and fair solution is to close the labs — then everybody won’t go!…

The best comment comes from Berkeley junior Kacey Holt. He has a message for those students who “are not scoring as well as their peers” in science and “don’t really go” to the science labs: “I think they need to talk with their teachers and get more tutoring, afterschool programs, and basically show up for class,” says Kacey.

Kacey Holt for Berkley Unified superintendent! Campaign slogan: “Basically, Show Up for Class.”

The column puts this in the context of the larger fight over racial excusemaking in education, and also of the behind-the-scenes power struggles that often drive these outwardly ideological battles.

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Posted by Greg Forster

“Just Call Me Mister Butterfingers!”

January 22, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

President Obama says health care socialization has “run into a bit of a buzz saw.”

Jim Geraghty asks: What’s the survival rate for people who run into buzz saws?

5 Comments | economics, politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Edsall Plays the Race Card

January 21, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Well, that didn’t take long.

Just one day after the election, Thomas Edsall argues that Scott Brown won – and Americans generally are rejecting health care socializiation – because white people are just so darn racist.

No! It’s true! Because he read a book that says ethnically diverse neighborhoods have more social tension than ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods! The book had numbers in it and everything! That proves it!

Update: Edsall’s not alone. Howard Fineman, editor of Newsweek, thinks pickup trucks are racist.

Apparently not everyone’s ideological blinders have been loosened by this experience.

What do you suppose it will take to get through to these people?

2 Comments | economics, politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

You Can’t Go Home Again

January 20, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Coakley didn’t just lose Massachusetts, she failed to carry Hyannis Port. The Kennedys’ home town voted for Scott Brown.

Get out your magic lamps and flying carpets, because it’s a whole new world!

Update: It’s even bigger than that. Brown won every single prescinct in Barnstable, where Hyannis Port is located, racking up 61 percent of the vote in the town at large.

3 Comments | politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Pat Robertson Is an Expert on Deals with the Devil

January 14, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

You may be tempted to dismiss Pat Robertson’s remarks about Haiti on the narrow and pedantic grounds that Robertson is a crazy man. But before you do, you should know that when Pat Robertson talks about making deals with the devil, he speaks as an expert in the field.

1) He regularly cozies up to bloodthirsty dictators in nations where he has large financial interests – China, Congo, Liberia – praising them on the air as enlightened statesmen and inviting their mouthpieces onto his program to spread their propaganda. China has full and complete religious freedom! Falun Gong wants to eat your children’s eyeballs! It’s turning out that there are some things even Google won’t do for China – but not Pat Robertson.

2) The contract under which he sold his TV network to ABC (it became ABC Family) requires ABC to air his show in perpetuity, no matter how crazy he gets or how low the ratings go. He could be up there telling us to worship Mongo the Martian Monkey God and they’d still have to air it. That’s the price ABC paid to get the network. Rumor has it they’ve tried over and over again to buy the man out, and who can blame them? But he won’t sell – the only two things Pat Robertson loves more than money are his ego and his self-righteousness. And ABC put its blood on the signature line, so they’re stuck with him.

Of course, none of this is to deny that Robertson is, in fact, a crazy man. Check out this archive photo from the early days of his ministry:

It was after he shaved off the beard that his show really took off.

3 Comments | tributes | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Cory in the House!

January 13, 2010

This Examiner article from Jan. 5 has just been brought to my attention:

Another concern is that private schools work against segregation and decrease tolerance. On the contrary, in a study by Cory Forster of The Friedman Foundation who compared segregated levels in private voucher schools and public schools, less segregation was found in the private schools.

In my time I have been cited in newspapers as Greg Forester, Greg Foster, and other spellings. But I have never had the honor and privilege of being a Cory.

I’ll try not to let it go to my head.

2 Comments | blogging, random pop culture | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Public Schools: Cornerstones of Democracy!

January 5, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

During the mad real estate rush a couple years ago, five school districts here in Wisconsin (including the biggest district here in my county) borrowed $200 million and sunk it into some extremely unwise investments hoping to get rich quick.

Because that’s exactly why we gave the public school system the right to tax us – so it could play the market with our money.

The investments all went south and are now worthless.

But don’t panic! Fortunately, they structured the deal so that in the event they lost all their money, they could totally shaft their creditors. The investments were made by a trust they set up rather than by the districts themselves, so the districts aren’t liable for the losses. Their creditors have to eat it all.

One bank, which lent the districts $165 million, has asked the districts to try to pay at least some of it back, on grounds that they have a “moral obligation” to make the losses good even if they don’t have a legal obligation to do so.

Here, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is the districts’ response:

The districts’ officials have argued they are protected from paying back the $165 million because the loans were undertaken by trusts rather than the districts themselves and because a moral obligation is not the same as a legal obligation.

But remember, public schools are the cornerstone of democracy because they and only they are capable of inculcating children with strong civic values like responsibility and respect for the rights of others.

5 Comments | civic values, economics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

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