My Beauty Best Teacher

Great leaders  hire people smarter, more innovative, and better than themselves.

Great leaders care about those who work for and with them... their life stories, their hobbies, their interests. They know that personal lives can effect professional careers and realize that to know an employee and care is the key to unleashing their potential at work.


Great leaders give others credit for good things even when a lot of the credit goes to him or her. If bad things happen, the great leader steps out front to take the blame.


Great leaders have a great staff and tell everyone.


Great leaders focus an organization on the organization's mission. They focus on the customer

Poor leaders focus an organization on pleasing him/ her and become the only customer that matters to the employees.

Great leaders attract other great leaders.


Great leaders can turn even poor leaders into better leaders. They mentor and create other great leaders.


Great leaders work hard and smart and are able to tell which work is the most important. They never mistake urgent work for important work. They know that an open door as much as possible during working hours means that people will communicate with them.


Great leaders encourage and inspire the best and trust others to do their best. Most often they are made proud by the results. Sometimes, they are let down when someone misuses their freely given trust but believe it is still worth it to trust and give others the joy of service. Dale Carnegie is his friend.


Great leaders know that their words of encouragement are like $1000 dollar bills and look for opportunities to give honest praise and spread the wealth. They do not spend their praise for it to return to them, but it multiplies exponentially anyway in good will.


Great leaders believe that most people want to do a good job and use mistakes as teachable moments. His ability to wisely, discretely handle staff problems earns the loyalty of the flawed humans he leads. His staff is more willing to forgive his inevitable mistakes (when they happen) and are willing to provide valuable feedback to him so he can have a teachable moment as well. The leader's attitude about mistakes is ALWAYS paid back to him in his moment of need. For great leaders are also flawed humans.


Great leaders take criticism, examine it, and examine themselves to determine if there is a grain of truth in the criticism. She knows that most criticism has a grain of truth but also that there are the rare instances of a mean person (usually poor leaders) who just make stuff up. She can tell the difference.


Great leaders often have their heyday and are a living tradition of leadership. But every great leader typically has a horribly dark moment. It is most often when the great leader stands against a poor leader who has taken root somewhere and is doing harm. It is during these times of alienation, loneliness, and enmity when poor leaders and their oft-intimidated followers malign the great leader's love of the organization and the organization's mission. As the poor leaders and their followers circle, machinate, and manipulate, the great leader often questions the meaning of his whole life and if it is for naught. It is at these times the Great Leader must turn to his Maker and his mission and remain consistent with all he believes. He rarely realizes that great leaders like Churchill, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were largely made by their heroic behavior in the darkest days of their organization. The great leader clings to noble thoughts, deeds, and actions amidst even when surrounded by the most grotesque of human behavior. Great leaders eventually see the opportunity for rain amidst the dark clouds.


Great leaders have great character, mission, and are well grounded in things that are important in life. They are real but they are not always recognized. They are loved but often not by the powerful people. They are great because they make us all greater and we do great things when they are around. Their power is lasting for when they are gone, they leave a legacy of what it means to live a good life.
Poor leaders have little character, no mission but self-promotion and are not grounded in what is important. They are fakes and make sure they are recognized. They are loved by the powerful but often disdained by the average person. They are poor leaders because they make the people around them poorer in spirit, life, and love and we do worse when they are around. Their power is often temporary for when they are gone, the power vacuum is quickly absorbed by other poor leaders ready to jostle into place.


Please add your thoughts in the comments.


This article is dedicated to two of the greatest leaders I know, my husband Kip Davis (former Rotary Club president for Camilla and recipient of the Governor's Award of Excellence for his leadership in my hometown for leading the tornado recovery efforts) my father, James Lee Adams (former president of the American Soybean Association.) These two men define my thoughts of great leadership.


I would also like to say that my headmaster, Ross Worsham, is a great leader and that these thoughts have been formed from my 43 years of living, leading, and learning about what it means to lead. He is mentioned without being named in many of the "great leader" notes. We need more great leaders and we need to know that it is important to aspire to be great, to do the right thing, and to treat all human beings with respect. Power is fleeting but a person who treats everyone with respect deserves to be a leader.

Aneel G. Karnani counters(PDF) C. K Prahalad's assertion about a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid:

We argue for the need to view the poor primarily as producers, not as consumers. Rather than emphasizing selling to the poor, we should emphasize buying from the poor. By far the best way to alleviate poverty is to raise the income of the poor. Even though the BOP proposition conceptually focuses on the poor as consumers, it sometimes cites examples of successful organizations that treat the poor primarily as
producers... In discussing solutions to poverty, it is useful to conceptually separate the role of the poor as consumers and producers...The poor often sell their products and services into inefficient markets and do not capture the full value of their output. Any attempt to improve the efficiency of these markets will raise the income of the poor.

via NextBillion

Juan Williams was on Sean Hannity today discussing President Obama's economic and domestic policies, and when push came to shove and facts and figures and data and evidence was cited, he fell back on the same argument that liberals and progressives always fall back on when the results of their policies prove to be harmful to poor people, minorities, and the groups in society that need the most help- he fell back on the argument that for all of the government's faults, at least it was taking wealth from rich people and redistributing it as charity to poor people.

Liberals and progressives, who have seized the old Democratic Party and are now running it as a communist organization, believe that one of the primary roles of the new United States of America is to use the power of the state to distribute charity to those who need it. But their actions and beliefs are in fact resulting in less money and wealth going to the people who need it in society because the government is THE SINGLE WORST charitable organization in the world, having considerable overhead, being motivated by politics and not need, and full of corruption and graft.

CATO, in a report that, although dated, still gets to the heart of the matter, said:

Private charities have been more successful than government welfare for several reasons. First, private charities are able to individualize their approach to the circumstances of poor people in ways that governments can never do. Government regulations must be designed to treat all similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the difference between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights which cannot be fully abrogated . . . public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services without any attempt to differentiate between the needs of recipients.

Take, for example, the case of a poor person who has a job offer. But she can't get to the job because her car battery is dead. A government welfare program can do nothing but tell her to wait two weeks until her welfare check arrives. Of course, by that time the job will be gone. A private charity can simply go out and buy a car battery (or even jump-start the dead battery).

The sheer size of government programs works against individualization. As one welfare case worker lamented, "With 125 cases it's hard to remember that they're all human beings. Sometimes they're just a number." Bureaucracy is a major factor in government welfare programs. For example, a report on welfare in Illinois found procedures requiring "nine forms to process an address change, at least six forms to add or delete a member of a household, and a minimum of six forms to report a change in earnings or employment." All that for just one program.

In her excellent book Tyranny of Kindness, Theresa Funiciello, a former welfare mother, describes the dehumanizing world of the government welfare system--a system in which regulations and bureaucracy rule all else. It is a system in which illiterate homeless people with mental illnesses are handed 17-page forms to fill out, women nine months pregnant are told to verify their pregnancies, a woman who was raped is told she is ineligible for benefits because she can't list the baby's father on the required form. It is a world totally unable to adjust to the slightest deviation from the bureaucratic norm.

In addition to being better able to target individual needs, private charities are much better able to target assistance to those who really need help. Because eligibility requirements for government welfare programs are arbitrary and cannot be changed to fit individual circumstances, many people in genuine need do not receive assistance, while benefits often go to people who do not really need them. More than 40 percent of all families living below the poverty level receive no government assistance. Yet more than half of the families receiving means-tested benefits are not poor. Thus, a student may receive food stamps, while a homeless man with no mailing address goes without. Private charities are not bound by such bureaucratic restrictions.

Private charity also has a better record of actually delivering aid to recipients. Surprisingly little of the money being spent on federal and state social welfare programs actually reaches recipients. In 1965, 70 cents of every dollar spent by the government to fight poverty went directly to poor people. Today, 70 cents of every dollar goes, not to poor people, but to government bureaucrats and others who serve the poor. Few private charities have the bureaucratic overhead and inefficiency of government programs.

Democratic policies are increasingly being defended on 'charitable' grounds, from healthcare policies to economic policies to environmental policies, but the truth of the matter is that government is a poor method of distributing charity. Instead of relying on government and its horrible charitable giving, all of these programs should be ended and the money spent on them should be returned to citizens. Even if a small percentage of this money was given in charity, then it would be more successful than government programs, and as long as there are a lot of conservative Republicans around, we can be sure that a good percentage of money will be donated and not a small percentage (according to studies, liberals don't donate to charity- they feel superior by taking money from you and giving that to charity).

Not that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but I always love it when statistics generally bear out my crazy theories that the way to create a prosperous free economy is to have low government regulation and low taxes. For my unit on state and local government, I found this article on Variations in Government Aid Across the Nation that was put together by the New York Times. This report looks at welfare, unemployment, housing assistance, food stamps, health insurance for poor adults, and health insurance for poor children, and measures them from state to state.

The top states in terms of providing generous benefits to their citizens- in other words, those that take money from taxpayers and re-distribute that wealth to those who did not earn it are (in descending order): Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, DC, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Iowa, and Michigan.

Out of curiosity, I decided to pull up some information on GDP growth, and provided by the Department of Commerce. The results are interesting. Here are the GDP growth rates for those states, with numbers from 2006 and 2007: Vermont (2.8, 1.5) , Maine (1.9, 1.3), Massachusetts (2.9, 2.5), DC (4.1, 4.3), Pennsylvania (1.7, 1.6), West Virginia (0.6, 0.1), Iowa (2.6, 1.7), and Michigan (-0.5, -1.2).

Those states that let citizens keep their wealth and freely make their own decisions are: Colorado, Texas, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Virginia.

Here are their GDP growth rates (2006, 2007): Colorado (4.3, 2.0), Texas (4.3, 4.1), Utah (7.2, 5.3), Florida (4.2, 0.0), Nevada (4.1, 0.6), Arizona (6.8, 1.8), Oklahoma (6.7, 4.0), and Virginia (3.2, 1.9).

As you can see, the results are pretty conclusive. States that redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, divert money from taxpayers to nonworkers, subsidize poor quality housing, give people food, and provide government-paid healthcare are less prosperous, less successful, and less free.

Those states that follow these unsuccessful public polices have GDP growth rates significantly and consistently lower, and over several generations destroy the wealth and productivity of their citizens. If our whole nation were to adopt those same policies, our children and children's children- our posterity- would grow up less free, less happy, and less prosperous than we are today.

The conclusion, as demonstrated with this limited amount of research, is clear- our public policies should emphasize self-sufficiency, less public welfare, and lower unemployment benefits, and should keep the state out of building structures for people just because of their income status, and should teach a man to fish instead of giving him fish, and should not provide as a right of birth state-supported healthcare.

UPDATE: Today I saw a report from the Mercatus Center at Georgetown called Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom. Earlier I pointed out that many of the states that provided the most social welfare services to its citizens also are less prosperous. Looking over this report, I notice that those states that provide healthcare to poor, housing subsidies, and food stamps also are less free. I guessed this fact (see above), but it's nice that my guess is now backed up in numbers that show that.

According to the rankings in the report (1 is most free, 50 is least), the least free states- the states with the most tyrrany and oppression by government- compare favorably with my list of states that had the highest social welfare.

Here are the states that provide the most social services and their rankings on freedom- Vermont (40), Maine (39), Massachusetts (43), DC (NR), Pennsylvania (20), West Virginia (33), Iowa (16), and Michigan (14). Here are the states that provide the least social services and their rankings on freedom- Colorado (2), Texas (5), Utah (11), Florida (22), Nevada (24), Arizona (8), Oklahoma (18), and Virginia (9).

There you go- states that encourage conservative values are more prosperous and more free. The data doesn't lie.

William Easterly writes on the rebirth of utopianism"...it is in 2005 that utopia seems to have made its big breakthrough into mainstream discourse. In March, Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist and intellectual leader of the utopians, published a book called The End of Poverty, in which he called for a big push of increased foreign aid to meet the Millennium Development Goals and end the miseries of the poor...British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown likewise called in January for a major increase in aid, a “Marshall Plan” for Africa. Brown was so confident he knew how to save the world’s poor that he even called for borrowing against future aid commitments to finance massive increases in aid today...We have already seen the failure of comprehensive utopian packages in the last two decades: the failure of “shock therapy” to convert the former Soviet Union from communism to capitalism and the failure of IMF/World Bank “structural adjustment” to transform nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America into free-market paragons. All of these regions have suffered from poor economic growth since utopian efforts began...With all the political and popular support for such ambitious programs, why then do comprehensive packages almost always fail to accomplish much good, much less attain Utopia? They get the political and economic incentives all wrong. The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help...ree markets and democracy are far from an overnight solution to poverty—they require among many other things the bottom-up evolution of the rules of the game, including contract enforcement and fair political competition. Nor can democratic capitalism be imposed by outsiders (as the World Bank, IMF, and U.S. Army should now have learned). The evolution of markets and democracy took many decades in rich countries, and it did not happen through “big pushes” by outsiders...The problems of the poor nations have deep institutional roots at home, where markets don’t work well and politicians and civil servants aren’t accountable to their citizens. That makes utopian plans even more starry-eyed, as the “big push” must ultimately rely on dysfunctional local institutions..."
Via Bullets and Honey

Fredrik Segerfeldt makes the case for water privitization "...Ninety-seven per cent of all water distribution in poor countries is managed by the public sector, which is largely responsible for more than a billion people being without water. Some governments of impoverished nations have turned to business for help, usually with good results. In poor countries with private investments in the water sector, more people have access to water than in those without such investments. Moreover, there are many examples of local businesses improving water distribution. Superior competence, better incentives and better access to capital for investment have allowed private distributors to enhance both the quality of the water and the scope of its distribution. Millions of people who lacked water mains within reach are now getting clean and safe water delivered within a convenient distance..."the argument against it being that"...privatization increases prices, making water unaffordable for millions of poor people. In some cases, it is true that prices have gone up after privatization; in others not. But the price of water for those already connected to a mains network should not be the immediate concern. Instead, we should focus on those who lack access to mains water, usually the poorest in poor countries. It is primarily those people who die, suffer from disease and are trapped in poverty.They usually purchase their lower-quality water from small-time vendors, paying on average 12 times more than for water from regular mains, and often more than that. When the price of water for those already connected goes up, the distributor gets both the resources to enlarge the network and the incentives to reach as many new customers as possible. When prices are too low to cover the costs of laying new pipes, each new customer entails a loss rather than a profit, which makes the distributor unwilling to extend the network. Therefore, even a doubling of the price of mains water could actually give poor people access to cheaper water than before..."
Via Cato.org

Today on my drive home from work I listened to both a liberal talk radio show (the Ed Schultz show) and a conservative talk radio show that was having liberals call in to debate (the Michael Medved show). The basic point of liberals, no matter what the topic, was that conservatives/tea party supporters/Republicans support tax cuts for the rich which is corrupt and wrong and takes money and jobs away from the poor people in society, and the better way to go is to support the liberal/progressive/socialist/Democratic policies best illustrated by President Barack Obama. Also, they like to bring up the fact that when Republicans are in charge no one likes America, and now that Obama is in charge everyone around the world loves us. That's pretty much the heart of every argument on every issue that comes up.

Does the recent news support that Obama's policies are better for the poor, are less likely to lead to corruption, and help build strong partnerships around the world? Based on a summary glance of stories this week, I think the answer is a pretty clear 'no'.

According to a recent study, Democrats policies could force vehicle prices up by nearly $10,000, reduce sales by 5.5 million vehicles annually and eliminate more than 260,000 jobs. Thankfully Republicans are able to block many of these policies from the one half branch of government that they currently control, where they are expending massive amounts of time and money to try to simply stop these policies. Imagine if they had control of the Senate and the White House- they might be able to put in the opposite policies leading to cheaper cars, increased sales, and more jobs. The rich and wealthy will be okay under the Democrats plans- they can afford to pay a little extra for their cars- but the poor and middle class will be the hardest hit by these Democratic policies. The record is clear- Democrats policies don't help the poor and the middle class, they hurt the poor and the middle class more than Republican policies.

The election of Obama and the implementation of his policies was supposed to lead to a new era in international relations, an era where our allies became more supportive of our nation and took over a larger share in conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan (or Libya). Instead, reports indicate that our allies are increasingly frustrated by our policies, and are beginning to reconsider their friendly relationships with us. Last month it was Israel that was stunningly badly treated by the Obama administration- this month, we see in the news that the Czech Republic is withdrawing from our missile defense plans because they are frustrated that their nation was forced into a minor role at the request of Russia. This weakens the US, Czech Republic, and our allies in Western Europe, all to the advantage of Iran and Russia. The Bush administration and Czech Republic struck a groundbreaking deal to put interceptor missiles in the Czech Republic, missiles that would possibly be able to knock nuclear missiles launched by rogue or terrorist nations. Obama rolled in and decided that he'd change the deal and instead just give the Czech's an early warning center instead, and rather than waiting around to see if he'd alter the deal further, the Czech's withdrew in frustration.

Liberals are often upset at 'tax cuts for the rich', because in their minds they see some sort of corrupt deal going down when Republicans are in charge, where 'the rich' get to keep more of the money that they earned in exchange for some sort of kickbacks or something. Democrats hint that Republicans are more corrupt and are taking bribes and deals in exchange for giveaways, still cashing in on reputation of Nixon's shady dealings while conveniently ignoring the impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton for lying under oath. The truth is, while Bush may have given tax cuts to the rich, Obama is giving jobs, commissions, stimulus money, government contracts, and more to those who supported his Presidency. More than two years after President Obama took office vowing to banish “special interests” from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found. This is the sort of real corruption that only a liberal Democrat who believes the purpose of government is to distribute gifts to those who help earn power can bring.

The record is clear- Democratic policies lead to more expensive cars, allies upset at us, and corruption in the White House.

For more on the direction that liberal policies lead, check out Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

• Has the Accountability Movement Run its Course? - Leading From the Classroom - Education Week Teacher

  Here is a broadcast from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on January fifth about "Has the Accountability Movement Run Its Course" in response to the fact that gains during the accountability movement "have plateaued" and how to raise achievement. Important types such as the harmful effect of focusing on outcomes instead of process (the system), the lack of tools for teachers, and the harmful effect of shifting blame versus finding solutions. Something you'll want to watch.

  tags: edreform research education researcher_thoughtleader learning

• A good teacher’s lessons last a lifetime - NY Daily News

  The measure of a good teacher. This is talking about an increase in test scores or decrease when you arrive or leave. What if you're there for a long time - it is hard to measure the delta then. The findings from the New York Daily News.
  
  "Instead, they discovered that some teachers are demonstrably better than others — and that those teachers have long-lasting effects on their pupils.
  
  The data showed that when an excellent teacher joined a school, scores in that teacher’s grade immediately rose. When such a teacher left, scores plummeted.
  
  The benefit of having such a teacher, as measured on exams, lasted for three to four years in school. Later on, the students
  
  were more likely to attend college, earned more money, lived in better neighborhoods and were less likely to become teenage parents than those with poor instructors.
  
  Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff predicted that children who have just one quality teacher between grades 4 and 8 will see their lifetime earnings increase by $4,600.
  
  The researchers also estimated that replacing a poor instructor with just an average one — not even a good one — means children in that class will collectively earn an additional $267,000 over their lifetimes. Leaving a poor instructor in a school for 10 years, Friedman told The New York Times, means as much as $2.5 million in lost income to students.
  
  “The message is to fire people sooner rather than later,” he said."

  tags: research education edreform researcher_thoughtleader learning

• Escaping the constraints of ‘No Child Left Behind’ - The Washington Post

  Arne Duncan, US secretary of education, says it is time for a new NCLB in his OpEd in the Washington Post on January 6.

  tags: education edreform learning us politics deptofed

• Students of Virtual Schools Are Lagging in Proficiency - NYTimes.com

  Virtual schools are in demand but are they effective? This article in the New York Times.
  
  "The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed charter schools and in traditional public schools."

  tags: education edreform learning

• BBC News - Free schools 'will not boost access to good schools'

  The UK controversy over school choice. Somehow these same arguments are raging across the globe.
  
  The government is not sure that "free schools" (charter -type schools) are going to boost access to good schools because they will be too expensive.

  tags: education edreform learning uk

• Preschools flunk the test

  Australia is now in a long line of countries who feel their education system is poor. Here is a "shocking" study in the Sydney paper:
  
  "THE standard of teaching in Australian preschools is ''very poor'', a government-funded national study into the quality of early education has found.
  
  The finding from the E4Kids study suggests children may be attending little more than glorified playgroup, despite research indicating that early learning makes a crucial difference to their long-term development."

  tags: edreform preschool learning australia

• Success of Florida Virtual School is difficult to measure - Tampa Bay Times

  This article in the Tampa Tribute points out just how large and yet, how unknown the Florida Virtual School is. 
  
  "In less than 15 years, Florida Virtual School has become the largest state-funded online K-12 school in the nation, an enterprise with a $166.3 million budget and close to 1,500 employees and 130,000 students. It offers more than 110 courses, from core subjects like algebra to electives such as Chinese and guitar."

  tags: education edreform learning

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Cynthia Stroum served as the United States Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from December 7, 2009 to January 31, 2011, when she resigned after (source)

...an internal State Department report released Thursday, less than a week after she quit, Stroum's management of the U.S. Embassy in the tiny country was abysmal. The report says her tenure of about one year was fraught with personality conflicts, verbal abuse and questionable expenditures on travel, wine and liquor.

The Luxembourg embassy "has underperformed for the entirety of the current ambassador's tenure," said the report, which was prepared last fall before she resigned abruptly. "At present, due to internal problems, it plays no significant role in policy advocacy or reporting, though developments in Luxembourg are certainly of interest to Washington clients and other U.S. missions in the NATO and EU communities."

Stroum resigned effective Jan. 31, just days before the scathing report from the State Department's inspector general was made public...

...The report paints a picture of a corrosive atmosphere at the small embassy, with the ambassador running roughshod over staff, threatening to read their e-mails, largely concerned about job-related perks and involved in improper purchases.

The situation was so bad that the inspector general recommended that the State Department dispatch medical personnel to Luxembourg to test the stress levels of embassy employees. It said at least four staffers quit or sought transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan during her tenure, unusual steps for diplomats assigned to a modern, Western European capital.

"The bulk of the mission's internal problems are linked to her leadership deficiencies, the most damaging of which is an abusive management style," the report said. "She has followed a pattern of public criticism of colleagues, including (deputies), who have not performed to her satisfaction."

Cynthia Stroum was a political appointee who was nominated for this position because of her extensive fundraising efforts on behalf of Barack Obama when he was running for President in 2008. When he won his election, Obama rewarded many supporters like Stroum with positions in our government, as is our custom. Although I do not fault Obama nor his continuation of appointing to political positions key supporters of his campaign, I do fault him for picking a poor nominee, although not greatly, because her resume was solid and she likely seemed like a decent pick, and it looks more as if this was simply a reward and not a personal pick of Obama's.

Mostly I lay blame for this international disaster at the feet of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is supposed to check and vet and provide oversight to the President's nominee's for offices. They failed in their duties to do their proper due diligence on this issue.

As you can see from the following video of her confirmation hearings before the Senate, from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, October 08, 2009, which begins discussing nominations at the 11:00 minute mark, Democrats supported and believed in Cynthia Stroum. Senator Cantwell from the state of Washington gives the first speech in support of her (15:00-17:00) and vouches for her. Cynthia Stroum begins speaking herself at the 30:00 minute mark, and in her testimony she thanks Obama, cries, and speaks about why she is going to be a great ambassador. The bulk of the time she talks about cancer research and money laundering. She finishes at the 34:00 minute mark. As far as I was able to figure out, she was only asked one softball question at the 64:00 minute mark about how the people of Luxembourg feel about how they are doing in Afghanistan (where they contribute 9 troops and some money), which is done at 66:00. She was later confirmed with no further discussion, hearings, or testimony.

The Democratic members of the 111th Senate Foreign Relations Committee that fail in their duties and did a poor job in confirming the poor nomination from Democrat President Barack Obama. Hold the following Senators responsible for voting for and confirming this poor nominee: Democrats John Kerry (Mass., Chairman), Christopher Dodd (Conn.) Russ Feingold (Wis.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Jim Webb (Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Ted Kaufman (Del.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.).

Last week our school had an assembly that was put on by the Family Independence Agency. You wouldn't think that a government agency would be openly promoting liberal ideas in a school, but you'd be surprised at how your taxpayer money is being used.

The speaker was a very nice African-American woman, and she started by describing all the good and wonderful things that the agency does in our society. The way that she described it, you really felt like the FIA was very productive- if only it had more money. The FIA provides help for people, who students are told, need this help because they have problems at home, are given a poor education, or are otherwise victims of this evil capitalist society that we live in. The FIA, according to this speaker, does not think that a single poor person is that way due to their own responsibility. After hearing this spin, students heard from another African-American speaker who encouraged the students to write their Congressmen to ask for more money for the FIA to distribute to these poor poor people.

Two things stood out about this required assembly, and apparently they only bothered me, for most of the students and staff were enthusiastically nodding along. The first thing that bothered me was that the presenter never once mentioned the cost of these programs. Every program was presented as a great thing- with no cost. The students are being taught on a fundamental level that government can provide all these great things to people, and to just not even think about the cost or the downsides of this government intervention into our private society.

The second thing that bothered me about this presentation by the FIA was that the students were hit with a very strong leftist slant of welfare- that it isn’t those people’s fault, that they don't have to accept any responsibility, and instead it is someone else who is at fault for their condition. This idea removes the personal responsibility from the welfare recipients- likely these people had some bad luck strike them, and I feel bad- but I think that you pick your own self up by your own bootstraps and get moving. Students are being not being taught this- instead, they are taught to rely on the state.

The good thing is that during these assemblies, students’ faces assume a vacant stare- they are not interested in this stuff and so mentally shut down, or it is even possible that they are so used to this liberal slant that they shut down mentally and thereby reject it.

Akin expands on the "Why Poor Countries Are Poor" theme covered earlier:

Corruption is exacerbated by the layers and hoops of unnecessary bureaucratic requirements that simply keep pen-pushers and deadwood in their positions of unwarranted privilege as enemies of change – people need to get things done and the only way to smooth out any activity is to grease grubby palms...The best thing any government of a developing country can do is reduce layers of bureaucracy, bureaucratic irrelevance and the people who feed that system – time to register companies, accumulation of unnecessary information, provide access to relevant economic data without strictures and nip all sources of patronage in the bud.

2011, regardless of what happens in the 2010 elections, will be a bad year for America due to the avalanche of tax increases that will hit everyone, specifically dead people, married people, rich people, investors, poor people, those with kids, those who save, those who buy medications, and small businesses. New tax increases of varying amounts will be levied on these groups starting in 2011, and the result of these tax increases will be lower spending, lower saving, lower investment, lower business activity, and increasing hiding of taxable income by those that can, with the end result being falling revenues to the government and less economic activity. That will mean less jobs, less income, and a lower quality of life for you. The blame for this can be laid 100% on politicians, namely anyone who voted for Obamacare and anyone who refused to vote to make permanent the 2001 tax cuts, both of whom are almost all Democrats and who are all liberals.

There are so many new taxes and taxes that are going to come back from the dead that it is tough to know where to begin, so let's start at the end- on midnight of December 31, the death tax returns. If you die before than, there is no tax on your beneficiaries property simply because you died, but if you die in 2011, the government will swoop in after you die and take more of your already-taxed before property simply because you are dead. They will take 55% of the property of those who have left behind $1 million or more in savings and redistribute that property to favored political groups in society. Of course this is immoral and unethical, but that's what you get when you vote Democrat. If you are a small business owner or farmer, you may very well have an estate that is valued in excess of $1 million, especially if you have worked hard your whole life and been successful, and after you are dead government agents will come in and figure out how to destroy your life's work and break it up and redistribute it to those who didn't work hard and earn it. This will obviously hurt our economy.

The Bush tax cuts are also set to expire in 2011. These tax cuts are not just 'for the rich'- the lowest bracket for the personal income tax, or the tax cuts 'for the poor', will jump 50% from 10% today to to 15% under Obama and the Democrats. You read that correctly- Obama and the Democrats will have worked to raise taxes on the most poor in our society by 50%.

The next lowest income bracket, we'll call that 'taxes on the lower-middle class' or 'taxes on the working class', will be increased from 25% to 28%, and 'taxes on the upper-middle class' or 'taxes on the hard-working class' will be increased from 28% to 31%. Again, these tax increases will strike the middle class as well, meaning that more of your money that you work hard for every day will be taken to you and transferred to the government who will then transfer that money to various politically connected groups. You will have less money to spend on goods and services, which will mean lower demand for those products, which will mean someone will lose a job who provides or makes those, which will mean someone else on welfare sucking down tax money. Unemployment will raise, consumer demand will fall, and our society will be more poor because of these tax increases.

Oh, I guess 'the rich' also will be taxed at higher levels too, although once you become rich, you are able to hire good tax attorneys who figure out how to hide your wealth from the government anyways. And I imagine with a more confiscatory government swooping in to take more of your wealth just because you are more successful will encourage more people to seek to hide their income and assets behind politically-engineering loopholes and accounting tricks, leading to the tax increases 'on the rich' not taking as much of their wealth as liberals and Democrats hope. The details are that those currently in the 33% taxable income bracket will have their taxes increased to 36% and the 'taxes on the super-rich' will be increased from 35% to 39.6%. I predict that the results of these massive tax increases on the rich will not provide the revenue that the government hopes it can steal from these people, and so they will demand higher and higher taxes on 'the rich' out of envy and greed. This immoral theft will result in more money and effort spent in hiding assets from an unethical government rather than in doing anything good for society, less money at the top for goods and services resulting in less demand for products resulting in unemployment and a falling economy, considerably less 'play money' for the 'rich' to put in the bank where it can be used for mortgages or small business loans, or less 'play money' for the 'rich' to invest in the stock market leading leading to depreciating assets and less business investment.

Democrats, liberals, and anyone who votes for them, are bringing this falling economy on us in 2011 by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and the death tax revive. But that isn't all- those who voted for Democrats in 2008 also share the blame for the massive amounts of taxes that come with the new Obamacare bill. That will be my next post.

Source: Investors Business Daily.

Where does Microfinance go from here Raghuram Rajah asks "...How can microfinance be made more viable? Asking this question relegates financial services for the poor to a separate and unequal existence. Instead, we should ask how we can make financial services available to all. If we focus just on finance for the very poor, the thinking immediately shifts to subsidies and charity, which hurts the quality of service. Not only do the poor lack the collective voice to demand better services, but government money can spoil the credit culture. As one participant in a women's credit cooperative said, 'We don't default now because we would be defaulting on our sisters' money. If we took money from the government, default rates would go up because we would all feel we were defaulting only on the government...What needs to be done? For one, the government should encourage the creation of infrastructure that can allow technology to bring down transaction costs...Perhaps most important, the government should encourage competition in the financial sector. As private sector banks find their traditional businesses coming under fierce competition, they will seek out nontraditional businesses, including providing services to the very poor..."
via PSD Blog

Judi Wakhungu stated that"...the poor are actually a source of opportunity because they are often willing to work much harder than the rich, are more adaptable, physically often stronger, more resilient and often more industrious and innovative in the face of challenges. What they do lack is access to credit, technology and markets. They are the creative underclass waiting to burst out. Poor people too have talent and intelligence, and it is African society's responsibility to discover talents and develop them...We need to redesign products for poor countries around their needs. The poor need technologies to tap their unrecognised talents and convert their arid land to food-producing, the trash to art, and their voluminous labour to capital..."

The reason why you probably shouldn't go to the mainstream media for anything but sports editorials and the comics is because whenever it writes about anything else its amazing liberal bias shines through. Take for example a recent 'article' (not editorial) appearing in the Detroit News called Death a sure thing, taxes less so: Uncle Sam's share at 60-year low:

Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.

And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

From the way this is written, you would imagine that it is Obama and the Democrats in Congress that are to thank for lower taxes and that because of all those low taxes the Democrats provided us with taxes are now at a 60 year low. In reality, tax cuts were pushed for by Republicans over Democrats objections, and it is the Democrats that we can thank for the job-killing regulations and taxes and uncertainty that has destroyed our national economy leading to few with jobs and few companies earning money, thus lower overall revenue to the national government, thus all that 'lower share' nonsense.

Democrats still don't get the Laffer Curve- that when taxes are too high, they choke off investment and economic growth, leading to less tax revenue to the national government, leading to less revenue to spend on national defense, welfare for the truly needy, money for speculative science, and a secure social security system. It is liberals and Democrats who are pushing higher taxes and thus are creating lower revenues for the national government- under Bush and Reagan and Kennedy when they cut taxes revenue to the national government went up and this could allow the federal government to do all those wonderful things liberals want them to do.

The truth is though that liberals don't really want a government that provides for the poor, the needy, the sick, and everyone else if that means that they control your behavior less with lower taxes. Nope, liberals would trade higher taxes and the control this gives them even if the revenues that the federal government are lower as a consequence. That is the only conclusion to reach, if experience demonstrates time after time the truth behind the Laffer Curve.

The author of the article in the Detroit News demonstrates that lack of knowledge of the Laffer Curve must be pervasive in the liberal community- rather than think 'taxes and regulation and government control are higher and tax revenue is down; I want tax revenue up; perhaps we should have less taxes and regulation and government control' the author of the article pushes for more taxes and regulation and government control, and then will have to cast around for someone to blame when this shortsighted and uneducated policy doesn't work (I've been in Michigan for a while and seen Democrats desperately go through a laundry list of people to blame for the failures of their policies).
For more information on the Laffer Curve, check out Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status or The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen.

According to a recent poll by CBS, most Americans believe that taxes on millionaires should be increased in order to reduce the deficit. When asked "should taxes on millionaires be raised in order to lower the the deficit," 64% of those responding to this poll said "yes." This is exactly why our founding fathers rejected a democracy in favor of building a republic.

When our founding fathers built our nation, they knew from history that democracies inevitably fail. Democracies are governments built on majority rule, where the majority has the power to decide what to do with your property, your liberties, and eventually your life. In a democracy, votes are held, and if the majority decides that they want to take more of your money, property, wealth, or business in order to 'lower the deficit', that is exactly what happens. Although those who are voting played no part in you earning this wealth and those who are voting did not expend any effort for you to gain this wealth, they derive their power from the fact that there are more of them than you, and majority rules. On this basis, they feel that they can gather as mobs and demand higher taxes on you and more control over your choices, simply because there are more of them than you. This sort of mob rule is exactly the sort of rule that was common in ancient Greece and common at the end of the Roman Republic, and eventually both of these republics-turned-democracies slide into governments ruled by Caesars and Tyrants.

Our founding fathers knew this was the nature of man and knew that although democracies and majority rule have some favorable aspects to them, the only way that people's lives, liberty, and property could be properly protected is by building a republic. A republic is a government where political power is limited by the law, which sets up a government of limited powers that is frequently checked by separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. In a republic, minority rights are protected and the government is unable to threaten your life, liberty, and property because it lacks the power and capacity to do so- it does not rule on majority rule, but rather rules based on the majority properly running a firmly established and defined political entity which performs certain needed tasks well, such as national defense and establishing police services, but which does not have the real power to inject itself into tasks which it can not do well, like setting up social values and controlling the free market of exchange. In a republic, the government lacks the capacity and power to take money from those who earn it simply because they have it- rather, taxes are raised on people because it is argued that those people benefit the most from the services of the state so should pay more. This argument only works to a certain point, and assumes that even the poor pay taxes into the system to a rate comparable to what the services that they receive from the state- it is not just 'loot the rich because they have money and there is more of us than them.'

Our nation is approaching a key election in 2012, much as Rome faced a key turning point in its history when Lucius Sergius Catilina attempted to overthrow the Roman Republic by playing to the lures of democracy and populism. Catiline rallied the poor to his banner by arguing for debt relief for the poor people of Rome, and many supported him because there are always more people who are poor than there are people who are truly wealthy. Because of the destructive policies of the government, which had collapsed the housing market and had taxed and regulated the small farms and small businesses to the brink of destruction, there were many people out of work who listened to the siren song of 'support me, I'll claim majority rule, and take from those who have wealth and give to those who do not.' Thankfully, Rome had an ardent defender of the Republic in a man like Cicero, and the conspiracy was foiled, but I believe that it had come close enough to succeeding to inspire men like Julius Caesar and Pompey to try again soon after, and they were successful in harassing the forces of democracy to institute a dictatorship over the masses.

So, after reading that the majority of Americans believe that taxes on millionaires should be increased in order to reduce the deficit, I once again thankful that our nation is a Republic- if only we can keep it that way.

From Slum Dwellers International:

Once Federations begin to negotiate with local governments around secure tenure and basic services, the next step is always to find the finance for the actual implementation and delivery. Very often the lack of access to funds delays projects and results in a loss of morale for the communities involved.
These constraints have prompted many SDI affiliates to build new institutions, called Urban Poor Funds(pdf), which monetize the social and political capital of savings groups to leverage additional resources from formal banking institutions, the State, and international donor agencies. By combining the savings of the poor with external contributions, Urban Poor Funds gear up capital for large-scale construction and infrastructure development...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of SDI

Bill Easterly sounds a note of caution in FP:

For Jeffrey Sachs the crash is an opportunity to gain support for the hopelessly utopian Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty, achieving gender equality, and improving the general state of the planet through a centrally planned, government-led Big Push. “The US could find $700 billion for a bailout of its corrupt and errant banks but couldn’t find a small fraction of that for the world’s poor and dying,” he wrote in September. “The laggards in the struggle for the [goals] are not the poor countries ... the laggards are the rich world.” To Sachs and his acolytes, poor people can’t prosper without Western-country plans—and the crash only serves to turn Western governments inward. Therefore, progress on poverty is bound to suffer...[continue reading]

via BOPreneur

In a recent interview development expert William Easterly stated "...Securing pledges for more aid is not going to make poverty history. What we should be examining is the aid industry’s plans to spend this new money because it has a track record of failure dating back to the 1940s and 50s. There’s been numerous and diverse attempts to buy the poor out of poverty but none of them have been particularly successful. So in 2005 we found ourselves ostensibly throwing more good money after bad. Above all, this is tragic for the poor...“There might be one billion people living on a dollar day but they are not a political constituency - they have no voice. They are effectively customers of this multi-billion dollar aid industry but lack the ability to give feedback and influence the type of aid they receive...At the same time, aid industry investors – rich country tax payers and the politicians writing the cheques – are ill-informed and far removed from the lives and daily challenges of the world’s poor. Therefore the disconnect that resides at either end of the development supply chain mitigates against change and reform to deliver the type of development the poor so desperately want and need..."
Via NextBillion