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Education System Unfair to Teachers and CATS, Judicial Politics, and Smoking Bans

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

1.       Kentucky Education System Unfair to Teachers and CATS – Public school teachers recently were lobbying the state legislature in Frankfort, saying they are not being treated fairly.  Unfortunately, they are right.  Good teachers definitely provide services worth far more than they are being paid, but, given our monopoly education system, they cannot possibly be treated fairly.  When education money is extracted from taxpayers by force, and teachers’ pay rates are established by the government monopoly based on the number of degrees and years of service rather than on the quality of service, then parents are not free to bid up the price they are willing to pay for good teachers as they would in a normal, free market situation.  This lack of competition harms good teachers as much as it harms students.  (Of course, at the same time, it also benefits bad teachers and overpaid administrators.)  Unfortunately, we have to assume the teachers’ unions really believe the majority of their members currently are being paid much more than they would receive under competitive free market conditions, because the unions fight tooth and nail against every attempt to create competition in the education arena.  Perhaps the union leaders believe most of their members are incompetent?  If I were a public school teacher, I would find it very insulting for my union representatives to assume that, in a free market, I would not be able to command at least as much pay as I do under the current force-based system.

In Kentucky, we use the CATS test to measure the progress schools are making.  I have always found it interesting that the education experts say the CATS test does not provide an accurate assessment of individual students, while also claiming that, when you put together all the inaccurate assessments for all the individual students, you miraculously get an accurate assessment for a school.  Wow!  Anyone else would swear by the old motto: “garbage in, garbage out”, but I guess that’s what makes these folks the “professional educators”.  However, we certainly can sympathize with their current frustration that, despite giving students pep talks, bribing them with treats, revising the CATS test, and spending boatloads of money, they still are not able to show good progress.

2.                 Judicial Politics – Kentucky Representative Ed Lewis has come up with a real doozy of an idea – pass a federal law that says you can amend the U.S. Constitution without going through the amendment process required by the Constitution!  http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Boortz20040319.shtml   I’ll grant you that it is extremely frustrating to see judges ignoring the Constitution and making it up as they go along, but the solution is not to trash the Constitution, as Lewis proposes.  To the contrary, the solution is to enforce the Constitution and other laws.  We should impeach the judges who are overstepping their bounds, kick them out, and install judges who will exercise judicial restraint and stick to the law, even when they don’t like the results in a particular case.

“Government does not create liberty; on the contrary, government is the one persisting danger of human liberty.... This role of government as the enemy of liberty was well understood by the Founding Fathers of the Republic. They wished government to have sufficient power to 'restrain men from injuring one another.' But beyond that, they tied it down securely with constitutional limitations, separation of powers, bills of rights, and other legal barriers and barbed wire entanglements.”-- Clarence Manion

The American people need to understand that it is much more important for the law to be upheld (and the “legal barriers and barbed wire entanglements” to be enforced) than it is to get the outcome they want in any particular case.  Once we accept that the law doesn’t matter as long as you get your way, and we fail to respect private property rights and individual liberty, we are in the same position as a third world, tin pot dictator nation, or a fascist or communist tyranny, and we will see our freedom and our prosperity go down a rat hole, accordingly.   It is unfortunate that those teachers who are lobbying for more money haven’t bothered to teach children this lesson, and it is just as unfortunate that they probably don’t understand it themselves.  But that’s what happens when the government monopoly controls education!

The judicial appointment process currently is a mess, with liberals pulling every trick in the book in order to appoint judges who will legislate from the bench rather than uphold the law.  Arlen Spector, liberal Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, will be the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee if he is re-elected this year.  This is a very bad place for a liberal to be if we want to appoint judges who will uphold the law rather than legislate from the bench.  The Club For Growth is asking its members to send money to Pat Toomey, who is challenging Spector in the Republican primary. For more info check out: http://www.clubforgrowth.org

3.       Louisville Mayor Abramson Supports Smoking Ban – One of the ways the rule of law is supposed to protect us from tyranny is by protecting private property rights, including the right of business owners to run their own businesses as they think best and the right of consumers to spend their money where they choose.  Unfortunately, Mayor Abramson supports the trashing of private property rights, preferring instead to forcibly prevent restaurant and bar owners from permitting smoking in their establishments.  If the Mayor thinks we are too stupid to decide for ourselves how to run our own businesses, or whether or not we want to spend our money in a particular restaurant or bar, surely he must agree that we also are too stupid to be allowed to vote for people to make these decisions for us.  In fact, if we do vote for people who are as arrogant as the Mayor and who treat the citizens as children who need to be ruled rather than adults whose property rights should be protected, then we really are too stupid to govern ourselves.

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