Dash of Calabash

Roger Takabayashi, president of the Hawai’i State Teachers Association, in a letter to the editor in the Honolulu Advertiser quoted Dick Rowland as saying:

Mr. Rowland contends we “have an abundance of highly qualified teachers who do not produce the desired results.” This could not be further from the truth.

He then goes on to tilt against a windmill not of Rowland’s making. The full quote from Rowland’s letter to the editor to which Takabayashi was referring says:

We can have an abundance of highly qualified teachers who do not produce the results desired.

By dropping the first two words of the sentence the meaning was completely changed.

The full context is as follows:

Those results are children who are prepared to excel in life. Thus, our objective should be to get effective teachers into the classrooms and the ineffective ones out. If the ineffective ones are “highly qualified,” they still need to go. The HSTA, as it does so often, is focused on the needs and wants of the HSTA instead of the students.

What is particularly ironic is that while Takabayashi says:

Fourth-grade reading scores are up 24 percent.

Eighth-grade reading scores are up 16 percent.

SAT scores are rising faster than the national average.

The proportion of fourth-graders scoring at the highest two levels in the NAEP exam is up 64 percent.

The proportion of eighth-graders scoring at the highest two levels in the NAEP exam is up 42 percent.

The Advertiser on the same day ran an article stating:

Hawai’i ranked among the bottom eight states in all test results and the state’s eighth-grade reading scores were the lowest in the nation, according to the 2005 scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test considered the best measure of how students in every state perform on core subjects.

The results are significant because the national test is being used, more than ever, to check whether states are challenging their students.

The average reading score for fourth-graders rose 2 points from 2003 scores to 210 on a scale of 500, but was still 7 points below the national average.

Eighth-graders’ reading scores were off slightly from 251 in 2003 to 249, which was the nation’s worst.

National averages in reading were 217 for fourth-graders and 260 for the older students.

In math, scores for Hawai’i eighth-graders remained unchanged at 266, which was fourth lowest in the nation and well below the national average of 278.

The fourth-graders’ math score was 230, tied for the second lowest in the nation with Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada. New Mexico was the lowest at 224.

The national average for this year’s testing was 237 for the younger students and 278 for eighth-graders.

The Advertiser article directly contradicts Takabayashi. Who are you going to believe?

(dn)

While this doesn’t look like it relates to the Eminent Domain issue it is, in reality, virtually the same thing. Property rights, intellectual rights and eventually individual rights don’t matter in the face of “public need”. Senator Charles Schumer wrote:

I deeply respect the investment Roche has made in order to bring Tamiflu to market, but am confident that there is a way to both serve the public need and ensure that your company receives compensation. (emphasis mine)

This is the ultimate justification for any public policy decision. There is no tax, no public policy decision and no government imposition that cannot be justified in such a manner. It is all based upon the fallacy of the “common good”. Whole article here.

(dn)

Five Native Hawaiians have filed suit alleging that very thing. Here, here and here.

See Honolulu Advertiser editorial 10/6/05, “Campaign spending fraud cheats taxpayers.” As bad as the campaign spending scandals involving corporations are, there is a more insidious problem taking root in election policy. The utter lack of any standards for individual voters participation in elections is becoming more disturbing every year.

First, it is considered routine and perfectly OK for voters to discriminate by race. If you don’t believe read the papers which always include quotes like “Mufi has captured the Filipino vote.” etc., etc. And how is such a vote “captured”? By the politicians promising to give benefits to Filipinos? How is he going to finance such? By taxing and otherwise hurting others?

Then there is the recent push by some to say that it is discriminating to check the ID of voters. What? Is it OK to vote six times? How about seven? Where does it stop? Or does it?

And finally: an illiterate, careless drunk who cares nothing about any issue but his next drink can vote (if he is registered) and can be picked up from the gutter by an activist, promised a bottle of booze for a vote and taken to and from the polls.

The whole lack of standards encourages stupidity, dishonesty and destructive attributes. But many of the same people who most decry the “corporate” corruption, actually seem to love and embrace the idea of individual lack of character and standards.

Go Figure. Would love to see your thoughts.

ror

Yet another article explaining how high housing prices are a result of limited supply. The last sentence states the reason for this limited supply.

For many families still trying to buy their first homes, their only hope lies in politicians waking up to the reality that the best way to keep housing affordable and to avoid the looming housing shortage is to stop passing land use and housing regulations and start approving more housing construction.

In other words, stop trying to manage homebuilding with “smart growth” initiatives and let construction companies just build housing. Or pay the price.

Whole article here.

dn

Isn’t it curious when our elected officials talk about “affordable housing” since one of the largest barriers to “affordable housing” is the government? In their infinite wisdom, our legislators pass laws that actually restrict the housing supply. They require developers and home builders to wait years for permits to build homes and then require them to set aside a certain percentage of the homes to be sold as “affordable housing”. Read the National Bureau of Economic Research report here.

walth

When Hawaii’s Democrat Caucus proposed and passed Act 51, The Reinventing Education Act of 2004, as a counterproposal to Gov. Lingle’s local school board initiative, the overall intent was to get more money out of the DOE bureaucracy and into the classrooms. The laws states that not less than seventy per cent of appropriations for the total budget of the department, excluding debt service and capital improvement programs, shall be expended by principals.

The total operating budget for the department for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2006 is approx. $2 Billion, not including capital improvement projects. That equates to approx. $11,000 per student, nearly $7,700 per pupil to be spent directly by principals at the school level.

However, the pilot schools under Act 51 have only received half of that amount. Where is the other 35 percent? How can the DOE get away with breaking the law?

laurab

People often castigate the “free market” as being inefficient and unfriendly to the consumer. John Stossel has an excellent op-ed explaining precisely why the opposite is the case. The fact is dealer associations and similar organizations induce government to pass laws to restrict markets and drive up prices. John has some classic examples here.

Bruce Bartlett is really taking the NY Times to task in this editorial but the facts he presents are astounding:

. . . the top one percent of taxpayers paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes in 2003, although they earned just 16.8 percent of the adjusted gross income. The top five percent of taxpayers paid more than half of all federal income taxes, the top 10 percent paid two-thirds, and the top half of taxpayers paid 96.5 percent, meaning that the bottom half paid just 3.5 percent.

Kind of puts the kabosh on the class war rhetoric that the rich don’t pay “their fair share”. The top 5 percent pay more than half of all federal income taxes. If that isn’t “their fair share” then what is?

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has a survey running on their website.

Do you think state tax funds should continue to be used for Hawaiian programs?

If you are interested in registering your opinion go here. Lower left.