My Beauty Best Teacher

Two values that are supported more by conservatives than liberals are traditional values and parent choice, and yet Republicans in Michigan keep forgetting these values that they were elected on. Seduced by the power of government and feeling empowered by their large majorities in the House and the Senate, Michigan Republicans recently supported President Obama's Race to the Top program which gives more control over education to Washingtion DC and even more recently have supported raiding the K-12 School Aid fund in violation with voters stated wishes on the subject.

And now I hear that Republicans are prepared to use the power of the state to tell parents when they think a child is ready or not to go to kindergarten, overturning over 100 years of established values on the subject.

It is understandable that liberals would push to overturn tradition and take away choice from parents on when they send their own children to school, since liberals thrive on power and control, but I would never have thought that the tea party and conservatives in our good state would have swept into power people who now are about to meddle in parent's choice and established values in the name of new-age science.

Feeling that every month in a child's life makes a big difference, that young kids lack the stamina for kindergarten, and that the youngest ones have a harder time integrating socially, emotionally, physically and academically, Michigan State Senator Darwin Booher (R-Evart) and Michigan State Representative Ray Franz (R-Onekama) are planning on introducing legislation that would move up the kindergarten cutoff date from December 1 (where it has been set for over 100 years) to September 1. This would act to prevent children who turn 5 from September to December from attending kindergarten, even if their own parents feel that they are ready.

If parents still want their children to go to school earlier than the government mandated cutoff date, they would be forced to sit down with a government committee which would judge them and issue a decree on whether or not their child was ready to go to school or whether they would have to pay thousands more in daycare for another year until the state deemed it now appropriate for them to send their child to kindergarten.

State Senator and Education Chair Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair) also apparently supports this attempt to take away choice from parents and overturn tradition. It is unclear why the state has to get involved with setting arbitrary deadlines on when a parent is allowed to send their own child to school, and I suggest that in coming elections that conservative and tea partiers keep these thoughts in mind and work to knock off these corrupted-by-power Senators and Representatives.

Parental choice and tradition, dear state government- that's the way to go.

UPDATE: For those who asked...

• Representative Ray Franz- RayFranz@house.mi.gov
• Senator Darwin Booher-either darwinbooher@senate.mi.gov or dbooher@senate.mi.gov
• Senator Phil Pavlov- either phipavlov@senatoe.mi.gov or ppavlov@senate.mi.gov

UPDATE II: Thank you all for the comments- they support my original point that I'm pissed at Republicans running as conservatives and then not being conservative- so thank you for supporting my argument.

While many feel that children should be older before going to kindergarden, that's their choice. No offense intended, but I don't want anyone to have the power to control when my children start going to school- that's my call as a parent. I do not want any sort of government committee to telling me that if I (as the parent) choose to send my kid to school earlier, that the government will not allow it. That's not how our state has run in the past.

Tradition and parental choice- those are conservative values, and they are the values I support.

Africa is Country's riposte to the FP's annual Failed State index:

...they never cease to amaze with the levels of sensationalism and hyperbole that seem to define their work. Now they’re back with a photo essay titled, Postcards from Hell. And as you can expect from a publication like FP, 30 of the 60 states (the most failed of the failed states!) on their list are in Africa. That’s more than half of the countries on the continent. So, essentially, Africa is hell on earth.

More here
via Aid Thoughts

In Aid Thoughts:

We take for granted that there is a vision of ‘development’ or ‘developedness’ that poor countries are striving to, but how accurate is this? There are many different paths that can be taken to the same aims of better incomes, life expectancy, health and education. These paths will lead to a different kind of economy and society, with different advantages and drawbacks. Yet, it doesn’t appear that development policy, certainly not from the donor side, takes into account the myriad approaches to development. From the developing country side, the mania for strategies, visions and plans, while well intentioned, seeks to hit specific targets rather than laying out a conception of what kind of society and economy is desired.

If we accept that developed countries have used different methods to get where they are, and that they have created economies, state structures and societies that have different sets of advantages and disadvantages, there is a case to be made that development policy should focus on individual countries. Specifically, perhaps we should be looking at how the population, state, geography etc. might best develop as a functioning economic and social structure, rather than focusing on the outcomes and outputs that these structures are supposed to achieve to merit the tag ‘developed’.

Image of Hongkong courtesy of Aid Thoughts
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In Aid Thoughts:

New media is all the rage. Tanzania’s political class has been pretty excited over the last week or two by the formation of a new political party, CCJ (the name stands for Chama Cha Jamii, or Party of Society). There are a number of interesting things about this event, but one of wider interest beyond the confines of Tanzanian political discourse is their use of an innovative way of registering new party members, normally poaching them from other parties: text messaging and internet registration. The Swahili daily Nipashe ran an article about this a few days ago which I’ve only just noticed now, under the headline ‘CCJ Yazidi Kujitanua Kisiasa’ (‘CCJ are Growing and Widening Themselves Politically’). It writes:“This strategy, unprecedented in the history of the whole of East Africa, relates to the use of news and communications technology [ICT] … as the service which allows citizens to join the party by electronic means wherever they are…”...[continue reading]

In Aid Thoughts:

Most countries in Africa are using Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers as their templates for development. I have no problem with this approach insofar as there are a number of interlinked problems which hamper development and some idea of how scarce resources will be allocated to address them is to be welcomed; if there a clear vision as to what should be achieved and how it may be done, it should be welcomed. Unfortunately, my experience has been that most PRSPs have fallen prey to the problem of empty rhetoric as well. The PRSP professes to lay out a plan, and suggests a set of activities that will be performed in its name, but in actuality it is little more than a paper document designed to dazzle...[continue reading]

From a paper by Xavier Sala‐i‐Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy:

The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala‐i‐Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970‐2006. We show that:

1. African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly.
2. If present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time.
3. The growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it.
4. African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic. All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in poverty. In particular, poverty fell for both landlocked as well as coastal countries; for mineral‐rich as well as mineral‐poor countries; for countries with favorable or with unfavorable agriculture; for countries regardless of colonial origin; and for countries with below‐ or above median slave exports per capita during the African slave trade.

via Aid Thoughts

John Iliffe writes:

In normal circumstances, the urban poor, while resenting corruption and the gulf between ‘us’ and ‘them’ were too vulnerable, divided, dependent on patronage, committed to rural values, and aware of recent social mobility to challenge their rulers openly.

via Aid Thoughts

Aid Thoughts delves into the work of Mushtaq Kahn who recently participated in debate with Daniel Kaufmann on the issue of corruption.Mushtaq asserts that:

Much of Sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by complex patron-client networks, in which a number of groups vie for the patronage of a Government with a weak power base vis-à-vis these groups. The Government cannot cut the corrupt relationships that exist between them and any of these groups in order to aid economic transformation, as the spurned group frequently has the political power to successfully challenge the Government. This contrasts sharply to patterns prevalent in most currently developed countries at the time of their transition to capitalism.

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More on Poverty Porn in Aid Thoughts:

Aid Watch, after recently discussing the do’s and don’ts of intelligent charity advertising, have unearthed this new ad from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Take a moment and watch it:

More here
via Texas in Africa

More on Poverty Porn in Aid Thoughts:

Aid Watch, after recently discussing the do’s and don’ts of intelligent charity advertising, have unearthed this new ad from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Take a moment and watch it:

More here
via Texas in Africa

I'm going to come back to this post several times in the future, because there is a lot of gold to mine in this debate. Here are my running thoughts- I'll expand on some of these later.

First, while I was watching the pre-debate on ABC, as they went through the history/biography of both candidates, I thought to myself how surprising it is that this election is even a contest. McCain is a true American hero- a war hero who has been at the forefront of legislation for 20 years, has few scandals, and is a decent person, running against Obama, who is... what? A world traveler? A community organizer? Black? I don't understand how Obama could win- it's like everything our country has been about for the last several hundred years is all being forgotten. Our Founding Fathers would not be proud of us if Obama won. For a more comical take on this, see this earlier 'joke' I posted on this idea.

Economic Plan- Obama. Obama talked about putting forward a series of proposals to solve the economic crisis. Did he actually do those things? To whom? Was it in the form of legislation, or just talk? I don't recall this ever coming up in the news- if you brag about this sort of thing, shouldn't it be well-known? Obama then summed up the issues facing us. He emphasized that things are really bad right now and getting worse.

Economic Plan- McCain. McCain talked about the fact that he has been a leader on this issue and is trying to get a bipartisan approach passed. He talked about specific elements of proposed legislation that is working to pass. Although I got the sense that he is more about trying to be a leader than actually crafting the legislation, that's not really a bad thing for a President. He ended with a good quote about how this isn't the beginning of the end, but is the end of the beginning of the crisis- projecting hope. Going back, he did project a lot more hope than Obama throughout the whole debate- I don't get why Obama is the candidate of "HOPE".

Obama emphasized that the question to ask about this crisis is what did we do wrong several years ago. McCain stressed asking what we can do now and in the future. Again- why is Obama considered the candidate looking into the future- all he does is talk about how he would have made different decisions in the past. That's great if we have that time-travel machine invented, but we don't, so I want to hear about what you are doing now and will do in the future- both areas Obama can say very little about.

Obama said that there are problems that need solutions. McCain mentioned specific solutions that he was working on. Obama mentioned problems with the solutions. McCain offered solutions for the solutions. Obama offers visions and questions, McCain offers legislation and answers.

Obama thinks tax breaks for the rich are bad. As he said, he wants to grow the economy from the bottom-up- give money to the poor, and then the money will trickle up to the top. Has this economic theory ever worked in history? For that matter, which economics believe in this idea, or is this just another case where Obama has decided he is really smart and knows what to do. I guess this means that Obama believes in "TRICKLE-UP" economics!

Obama wants to give 95% of people a tax cut, but then clarified that it would not be a tax cut, it just wouldn't be a tax increase. Such a politician- not raising taxes is just that- not a tax cut. If this is what he means by cuts, I'd be worried- anything he wants to 'cut' will just stay the same, and anything he wants to stay the same will be going up. I guess if 95% get cuts, the top 5% will pay more now? That's a lot of money. That's anti-trickle down economics!

Obama talked about how the market doesn't solve problems and that deregulation doesn't work. See, Obama does not believe in the free-market- he does not think that you are smart enough to make the right choices about what products to buy and how much to pay for them. He wants the government to run the economy. He might fudge this, he might clarify this, but if Obama had been in the Soviet Union in the 1980's, he would have been closer to Gorbachev than Reagan!

Obama again references using the line-item veto to solve the issue of earmarks- he said he would "go line-by-line and veto stuff"- am I mistaken about this? I'm 99% sure he can't do that right now. Does he even understand what powers the Presidency has? See my earlier post on this subject- I've noticed this in the past too- this is a reoccurring claim by Obama, and really speaks to the fact that he is less knowledgeable about what the President can and can't do than a high school government teacher (me). Someone who is a constitutional scholar should educate Obama about this, or write an article on how Obama doesn't know what he is talking about.

McCain talked about looking at his record on tax cuts, fighting spending, etc. He emphasized that a tax system has to be fair for everyone, not one sided 'anti-rich'. He is a fighter of earmarks and government waste, and an independent or moderate would really like his record. As a conservative, I like it less so- he did vote against Bush's tax cuts, and has supported some large expansions of federal power. Regardless, his record is a 1000 times better on this issue than Obama's, who is the most liberal left-wing senator in Congress.

Obama talked about how oil companies shouldn't get any tax breaks, because if they do, others will have to pay more. This logic only works if tax cuts don't cause growth in government revenue- which they do- or you refuse to lower taxes overall- which as a liberal Democrat, he could never ever even imagine lowering taxes overall. Obama wants energy independence now by developing more solar and wind power. These will not work now- although in 20-30 years, maybe!

McCain cited specific attempts of his to fight wasteful spending by talking about contracts he had fought as wasteful, legislation he introduced to combat wasteful spending, etc. McCain took this chance to talk about his proposal to increase nuclear power in the US, which is a common-sense solution to our energy needs while satisfying those who believe in the global warming myth.

On what spending would be delayed, Obama said nothing specific would be, and instead just attacked lobbyists. McCain said that he would be in place a spending freeze until after the crisis was over. Obama will not freeze spending due to the financial crisis- instead, from his answer, it sounds like in a time of crisis when money was tight he would spend more. That's the change we need! McCain said that he would help the economy grow to off-set losses.

Lesson of Iraq. McCain said the lesson was on developing a good strategy and getting the tactics right. He said he pushed for these and got them, and then success happened. Obama said the lesson he learned of Iraq was that 6 years ago he opposed the war. The lesson he learned is that it is important to always say you were against decisions that are now unpopular. He really wants that time-travel machine. Odd that again he is more backward looking than McCain. Obama then said that he would never hesitate with the use of force, but he will hesitate a lot about whether to use it in the first place (ha ha ha). Read the transcript. That's what he basically said.

Obama said that McCain was wrong that we would be welcomed as liberators, thus showing his lack of judgement, and thus why he was unfit for command. I'm always curious when I hear this one- exactly who has not welcomed us as liberators? The bad guys? People who strap bombs to their children to blow up innocents shopping to show their opposition to democracy and freedom? So what if these people don't welcome us as liberators. Most of the population has. McCain hinted at this by saying that the good guys are winning now.

Obama that the role of the President is to make the first call, but let everyone else settle on the correct tactics. McCain said that making the right tactics is also important as President. Obama said this is just managing bad problems- that's actually a good point. Maybe the only job of the President is to set the big vision and not worry about the details. Although, the Democrats and Obama have spent the last 7 years ripping Bush for his weakness with details and lack of micro-managment of everything, so I think that although this might be a good point, it is not a fair one.

Afghanistan. Obama said that we should send in more troops, by pulling them out of Iraq. He denies that there are any bad guys or terrorists in Iraq. He wants to press Afghan government to give more welfare to its people and have a stronger national government. McCain said that a troop surge isn't just it- you need to change tactics too. He also said that you shouldn't tell people your moves ahead of time. Obama implied that he would allow attacks into Pakistan if cross-border attacks continue, McCain said that you have to think of Pakistan as a failed state, and treat it with caution. He only goes all-in if he can win. Both candidates bring up bracelet- did Obama steal this idea from McCain? That's sad. Says Afghanistan is the central conflict in the War on Terror. McCain says Iraq is. And says that if Obama thought that, he should have visited Afghanistan.

Iranian Threat. McCain wants to come up with a "League of Democracies" to combat Iran. Obama doesn't want to provoke Iran, and wants Russia and China to get involved in diplomacy with the US for sanctions. Obama said that isolationism has never worked, and elaborated that never in history has not sitting down with dictators worked. McCain gave example after example of when it had worked. I guess using actual events and experience is just not that important to Obama- or for Obama voters. Obama said that he has been a leader- he said that he had suggested that we need to think about looking at talks with North Korea, and this might have started progress. McCain said that North Korea isn't progress, and implied that if this is Obama's experience, then it is rather weak. Both candidates then got into an exchange about Kissinger- Obama is flat wrong on this.

Russia. Obama said that Russia is bad, but you can't piss them off. McCain said that this is naive, that Putin is bad, and that he's been there and seen it. It really doesnt' even matter if Russia or Putin is bad, Obama doesn't believe in good or evil, just how he can win more power. I wonder- has Obama the world traveler ever been to Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, etc.? McCain called out Obama's slow response to Georgia conflict. Obama replied that he was the first to call for foreign aid for Georgia to help them build a bigger welfare system. He then said that one of the reasons that Russia is resurgent is because of oil, and so he supports increased drilling. Did I miss something? I'm pretty sure he never has done this and is way against drilling. But actually citing experience, past voting records, and real events is probably just boring.

Preventing another 9/11. McCain said we are safer now and led push for 9/11 Commission. Obama said safer in some ways but not enough. Isn't he supposed to be about hope? He was the less hopeful of the two. He then talked about world perception and how important that was. Is improving world perception more important than sponsoring legislation? McCain said we should stay in Iraq and win, Obama disagreed. Seriously? Isn't this the debate from 4 years ago? I thought Obama's position was thoroughly discredited by now.

Obama talked about catching Bin Laden, and that this is more important than winning in Iraq. Iraq is not worth it. It's about a broader strategic vision. McCain said that Obama does not have the experience and judgement to seriously say these things.

McCain said that his record speaks for himself.

Obama said that the children of the world no longer respect us, and that's why we should elect him. Has anyone seen the research on this claim?

The after coverage was also interesting to note- I was flipping around. Here is what I saw. MSNBC said that Obama missed his chances to get McCain, and that Obama looked better. CNBC was interviewing Democrats who repeated talking points I heard last week. CNN said that McCain knew his stuff and was more in command, but Obama looked good and wove themes well. Fox News said that Obama was more direct and knew more, but Obama was more nuanced and sounded better.

I judge the winner of the debate to be McCain.