Still on display in the National Archives and revered as one of the most important documents in U.S. history, the Declaration of Independence tells us that a just government requires “the consent of the governed.” But a Rasmussen poll released Thursday shows that only 21 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.

Among the “Political Class,” which Rasmussen defines as people who implicitly trust the government and political leaders, 63 percent think that the government has the consent of the governed, but among voters it defines as mainstream, only 6 percent believe it.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence from British rule, the first document to establish the United States as political entities, says in part:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Rasmussen found that 78 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of independent voters, and 44 percent of Democrats believe the government does not have the necessary consent.

People were split not only along party lines but along income levels as well. Those making the most money were more likely to say the government has the consent of the governed, while the poorest voters were least likely to believe it.

Moreover, 71 percent of all voters now believe that the federal government is a special interest group, and 70 percent think that government and big business collude to harm consumers and investors.

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.” — Rasmussen Reports

This is a golden opportunity for the liberty movement. We know we have the answers for today, just as our ideological forefathers had the answers for 1776. The challenge ahead of us is to communicate our principles to our fellow Americans and show them how liberty and freedom will restore the economy and improve their lives.

The telephone poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted February 15 and 16 and has a margin of error of ±3 percentage points.

(P.S. Gardner Goldsmith says that Thomas Jefferson made a huge mistake when editing the Declaration of Independence. If you’re into alternate history fiction, L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach explores what America might have looked like had Jefferson not made this particular edit to the Declaration. Gard also explores what “consent of the governed” actually means.)

It’s tax season again. And for many of us, the idea of doing taxes and giving the IRS the pound of flesh they demand is a harrowing thought. One Austin, Texas, man, claiming to have been fed up with being ripped off by the IRS for over 20 years, flew a small plane into a building containing the local IRS office Thursday morning.

Joseph Andrew Stack, 53, flew a Piper Cherokee PA-28 into the side of the Echelon 1 building at 9430 Research Drive at around 10 a.m. Central time. According to FAA officials, the plane took off from nearby Georgetown Municipal Airport at about 9:40.

Stack was killed in the resulting explosion. Two people in the building were injured, and one person is unaccounted for, according to reports. The IRS said it is still trying to account for its 190 employees who were in the building at the time. News reports disagree on whether firefighters have been able to bring the building fire under control.

A lengthy diatribe posted to Stack’s web site this morning, since taken down at the request of the FBI, revealed that Stack suffered what he considered years of abuse by the IRS and laws meant to harm businesses like his, noting that “this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I let it.”

Stack’s apparent suicide note speaks of the irony of stockbrokers killing themselves after the 1929 crash, while after the 2007 crash the wealthy get bailed out at the expense of the poor, who pay for it all. (This much is true.)

“I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I’ve had all I can stand. . . . I can only hope that the numbers get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less.”

Federal officials are saying they do not consider this a terrorist attack. “At this time, we have no reason to believe there is a nexus to terrorist activity,” says a Department of Homeland Security news release.

Before leaving for the airport this morning, Stack set his home on fire, according to local officials. Worse, he apparently set the fire while his wife and daughter were away, leaving them shocked and distraught when they returned home to find it on fire.

It’s easy to understand what drove Stack over the edge: “In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.” He makes a number of legitimate complaints about the U.S. government, grievances which we all suffer and are all unlikely to see redressed any time soon.

But Stack seems to think that if enough people kill themselves in government offices, perhaps taking some bureaucrats with them, the rest of the country will “wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and mindless minions for what they are.” Violence, he concludes, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”

I must disagree: Few people woke up after September 11; in fact, that event put nearly everyone to sleep. But the continuing decline of the U.S. economy which began in earnest in 2007 and shows no signs of stopping certainly began to wake people up.

Those of you who are desperate, understand first that you aren’t alone, and there are ways out of this mess which don’t involve killing yourself or IRS agents. A good place to begin would be to learn the economics behind how we were all taken for a ride. Then you can recognize and denounce the people who want to do more of the same to you. There is a way out, and it’s called liberty. Learn the philosophy of liberty, why it is the only way to have real prosperity, and then join the rest of us who are working hard for a free society.

Join us, the members of the Conspiracy as we offer thoughts on government enforced intellectual property issues. . . . In this production, Gardner Goldsmith looks back at history, in an attempt to answer the question: Is government-enforced copyright and patent “protection” reconcilable with a free society?

The answer is no.

And is it economically efficient? No.

Take a listen! And then comment by calling 206-984-1069! Be Seeing You!

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce Friday that it is dropping a controversial plan to track livestock.

The National Animal Identification System began as a voluntary program in which each animal on a farm would be tracked with a unique identification number and stored in a federal database. The Bush administration created the program in 2004 after a report of mad cow disease in 2003.

Government officials said the program would have made it easier to track disease outbreaks and isolate sick animals, but critics said the program imposed costly and onerous requirements on small farmers and feared that the government would eventually make it mandatory and use it to pry into farmers’ lives.

Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, held public meetings on the NAIS program in 2009 and heard stiff opposition.

“It was just overwhelming in the country that people didn’t like it, and I think they took that feedback to heart,” said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had opposed the identification system. “I think it’s good they’ve at least said we’re going to do something different.” — New York Times

The department still plans to create rules for livestock transported in interstate commerce, but will leave overall livestock tracking to the states.

["Oreo Cows" photo by Shea Hazarian; CC BY 2.0]

By a 70-30 vote, the Senate confirmed embattled Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term Wednesday afternoon.

The vote followed a 77-23 cloture vote to end debate on Bernanke’s confirmation.

Bernanke has received praise for preventing the economic crisis from becoming even worse than it might otherwise have been, as well as criticism for failing to stop it from happening in the first place.

Speaking on the Senate floor after the vote, Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she voted against Bernanke because he did not feel the same sense of “urgency” to help Main Street as Wall Street and called on the Fed, Treasury and President Obama to provide capital to small businesses and community banks, as well as increased “transparency and predictability” to prevent another bubble from forming.

The Fed decided today to hold interest rates steady at 0 to 0.25 percent, citing signs of economic recovery, but stating it expects to hold interest rates low for “an extended period.”

Senators voting against confirming Bernanke were: Begich (D-Ak.), Boxer (D-Calif.), Burning (R-Ky.), Brownback (R-Kan.), Cantwell (D-Wash.), Cornyn (R-Texas), Crapo (R-Idaho), DeMint (R-S.C.), Dorgan (D-N.D.), Ensign (R-Nev.), Feingold (D-Wis.), Franken (D-Minn.), Grassley (R-Iowa), Harkin (D-Iowa), Hutchison (R-Texas), Inhofe (R-Okla.), Kaufman (D-Del.), LeMeiux (R-Fla.), McCain (R-Ariz.), Merkley (D-Ore.), Risch (R-Idaho), Roberts (R-Kan.), Sanders (I-Vt.), Sessions (R-Ala.), Shelby (R-Ala.), Specter (D-Pa.), Thune (R-S.D.), Vitter (R-La.), Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Wicker (R-Miss.)

["Ben Bernanke Dollar" photo by Gage Skidmore; CC BY-SA 2.0]

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week that for the first time, the number of government employees in unions exceeded the number in the private sector, which fell to a new low of 7.2 percent, down from 7.6 percent in 2008. At the same time the number of government employees in unions rose from 36.8 percent to 37.4 percent.

But private sector union membership has been on a slow and steady decline for decades. While union leaders decry the numbers, saying that good union jobs are disappearing, the reality behind unions is much more complex. To an extent, they have become a victim of their own success.

The AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the U.S., claims on its Web site that unions help “build stronger workplaces” and “give workers a voice on the job about safety, security, pay, benefits — and about the best ways to get the work done.” Further, it says, unions “represent working families before lawmakers, and make sure politicians never forget that working families voted them into office.”

All of that, it turns out, is somewhere between misleading and blatantly untrue.

“They artificially increase wages in unionized industries, limit employment opportunities, depress wages in nonunion jobs, lower rates of return on investment in unionized firms, and slow the growth of productivity,” writes James A. Dorn, professor of economics at Towson University and editor of theCato Journal. “Unions politicize labor markets and have used the threat of violence to protect their wage premiums. In addition to using their monopoly power to secure higher than market wages, unions spend huge sums of money to maintain their power and limit competition.”

In its first issue of 2010,Cato Journal asks, Are unions good for America? The answer may surprise you, especially if you are a member of a union.

(Before going on I should disclose that I once paid union dues to the United Food and Commercial Workers when I worked at a grocery store.)

In 232 short pages of hard-hitting analysis, (but don’t do what I did and read it all in one sitting) Cato exposes some of the myths behind labor unions that practically everyone believes. Here are a few of them.

Myth: Unions work to ensure a level playing field for employees.

Fact: Unions advocate for laws which tilt the playing field in ways that are unfair to both employers and employees. Those laws often impair economic growth and innovation, as well as destroy the freedom to contract, according to Randall G. Holcombe and James D. Gwartney, economics professors at Florida State University. Over time, these labor laws actually cause a shift in employment from union jobs to nonunion jobs. In fact, research shows that the growth of labor unions during the Great Depression actually increased unemployment. Unions are still destroying jobs today.

“In the short run, because labor law has given to unions an advantage in the bargaining process, union contracts have had the effect of increasing the wages and benefits of union workers,” they wrote. “In the long run, the higher cost of union labor brought on by those union contracts has resulted in a steady decline in private sector unionism, and has eroded U.S. manufacturing in unionized industries — most visibly, the railroad and auto industries.”

Myth: Unions bargain on behalf of their members to get employees the wages and benefits they deserve.

Fact: Unions “bargain” with the guns of government in hand, to get employees more wages and benefits than they deserve, with a little for themselves on the side. By crawling in bed with government to pass laws which benefited the unions at the expense of employers — and, in the long run, employees — union leaders have drained American businesses dry. The long, slow decline of private sector unions reflects the economic destruction they left in their wake as they searched for fresh blood to leech. And today they’ve found the biggest source yet, the government.

Armand Thieblot, an economic consultant who has written books on union corruption and violence, writes:

When Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, was asked in the early 1920s what unions wanted, he famously replied, “More.” At the time, everyone correctly understood that unions’ targets were the capitalists from whom additional wages and benefits would be wrested by force, and also that if unions were successful, capitalists would have to be content with “Less,” thus, just a transfer of economic rents within the system from one factor to another.

By the 1980s and 1990s, however, when unorganized capitalists had become thin on the ground and those already organized had mostly been rendered uncompetitive by past concession to union demands, unions’ new guiding trope became “More government.” To achieve it, unions became mordantly political. In economic terms, after unions had absorbed all of the readily available economic rents from their capitalist opponents, they have turned to seeking rents from new sources beyond the system — from the polity at large (from taxpayers), using government as the intermediary.

Myth: Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.

Fact: Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers. PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.” Then, unions use veiled threats to “labor peace” to intimidate project owners into accepting PLAs for “job stability.” Further, PLAs increased costs for every project studied which used them, sometimes as much as 20 percent.

“PLAs are motivated by a desire on the part of the construction unions to shore up the declining union wage premium against technological changes and other changes that make traditional union work rules and job designations obsolescent,” Tuerck writes. “Now the PLA has evolved into an instrument that the unions employ in tandem with the prevailing wage laws in order to reduce the competitive advantage of nonunion contractors.”

Myth: Prevailing wage laws are good for competition, improve safety and quality, and help train new workers.

Fact: Prevailing wage laws stifle competition, have no effect on job safety and quality, and do nothing to help train new workers. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, mandates that on federal construction projects, workers be paid the so-called “prevailing wage” for similar local workers. In practice, the wage is set far higher than the actual prevailing wage, closely mirroring union pay scales. This virtually locks out nonunion construction workers from federal contracts.

George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, finds that all of the arguments for prevailing wage laws fail to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Worse, the Davis-Bacon Act was racially motivated: “The hearings and debate on the legislation revealed some ugly racial overtones with comments on how ‘cheap colored labor’ was driving down wages of white workers.” Robert Bacon originally proposed the bill because he was upset that a construction firm from outside his district, employing black workers, built a veterans’ hospital in his district.

Myth: Organized labor has worked to promote racial equality.

Fact: Unions have used racial discrimination as a tool to enrich themselves, and continue to do so today. In 2008, Richard Trumka, who is now the president of the AFL-CIO, said, “We know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” He should, because the unions have been doing it for their entire existence, and still are, as Paul Moreno, history professor at Hillsdale College, illustrates. It isn’t — and probably never was — the employers oppressing the black, or the Chinese, or the Hispanic people. Most employers, as it turns out, really are color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in 1957: “With the growth of industry the folkways of white supremacy will necessarily pass away. Moreover, southerners are learning to be good businessmen, and as such realize that bigotry is costly and bad for business.”

As racism goes, unions made the KKK look like amateurs. Big Labor lobbied for, and got, special laws to make them completely immune for whatever they did — all the way up to outright murder. InUnited States v. Enmons, in 1973, the Supreme Court held that unions were immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act if their violent acts were in furtherance of a “valid union objective.”

Moreno concludes:

The problem of racial discrimination in organized labor in America was less solved than it was outgrown. The story of racial discrimination in the American labor movement confirms the view that unions act as cartels that attempt to limit the supply of labor and raise its price. An easily identified and culturally disfavored minority group provided a convenient category for exclusion. But most unions were unable to succeed without state power, and by the time that they acquired such power, blacks had already fought their way into the industrial workforce. Discrimination within, rather than exclusion from, unions then became the chief problem — one that spawned the policy of “affirmative action.” Finally, the macroeconomic costs of unions decimated the ranks of private sector unions.

And Trumka? He talked a good game about ending racism in organized labor, but whether anything will change remains to be seen.

Myth: Unions help preserve manufacturing jobs.

Fact: Unions were a contributing factor in the decline of American manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry. Detroit makes a great example. At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was a boom town and its manufacturing jobs were paying 33 percent above the national average. Union organizers brought their message of capitalist greed and exploitation to already highly paid auto workers, where it largely fell on deaf ears. Until the Great Depression, when union organizers used a variety of underhanded tactics to force automakers, steel plants and other manufacturers to unionize.

(Interestingly, Henry Ford at the time threatened to break up his company rather than submit to union demands; he finally gave in when his wife threatened to leave him.)

Stephen J.K. Walters, economics professor at Loyola, explains what happened next. Companies, squeezed hard and struggling to survive, would move their operations out of Detroit and other cities, and later, out of the country entirely.

In sum, at the onset of World War II most of America’s great industrial firms — which, thanks to agglomeration economies were concentrated in cities throughout the East and upper Midwest — now faced labor cartels. These cartels needed some time to consolidate their power, so increases in employers’ wage costs would be significant but gradual. Further, WWII and its aftermath, during which time America’s industrial rivals’ productive capacity suffered heavy damage that would be restored only slowly, insulated the unions and firms to some degree and for some time from the most severe competitive consequences of monopolistic and opportunistic prices for labor. But the employers started to adapt immediately in ways that standard economic theory would predict — and that would ultimately help create what became known as America’s Rust Belt. Union actions, clearly, were not the only reason that industrial cities would decapitalize, depopulate, and become poorer in the second half of the 20th century, but they merit inclusion on the list.

If you’ve lost a manufacturing job any time in the last 50 years, thank your union boss for destroying your job, with a one-finger salute.

Myth: Teachers’ unions work to increase the quality of children’s education.

Fact: Teachers’ unions work to increase their membership rolls and their political power, at the expense of your children’s education. While collective bargaining has done little to increase the salaries of union public school teachers over nonunion public school teachers, these unions perform a different service for their members: preventing them from having to educate children. Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, explains that teachers’ unions strongly oppose government reforms which would improve the quality of K-12 education, such as charter schools, vouchers, and property tax credits.

The NEA and AFT spend large sums on political lobbying so that public school districts maintain their monopoly control of more than half a trillion dollars in annual U.S. K-12 education spending. That monopoly, in turn, offers a more than 40 percent average compensation premium over the private sector, along with greater job security. And since both the U.S. and international research indicate that achievement and efficiency are generally higher in private sector — and particularly competitive market — education systems, the public school monopoly imposes an enormous cost on American children and taxpayers. We are paying dearly for the union label, but mainly due to union lobbying to preserve the government school monopoly rather than to collective bargaining. (Emphasis in original)

Myth: Public sector unions work for the general prosperity of their members and all Americans.

Fact: Public sector unions dramatically increase the cost of government to unsustainable levels. The cost of employee wages and benefits accounts for half of the $2.2 trillion that state and local governments spent in 2008, and that number is set to grow dramatically as employees retire and generous pension packages kick in. Though, calling them generous is an understatement.

Moreover, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, those pension obligations are grossly underfunded, which will make the fiscal crisis even more acute this decade.

The upshot of all this is that policymakers will need to make large budget reforms in the years ahead. They will to need to deliver public services more efficiently, to privatize services when feasible, to cut staffing levels, and to terminate low-value programs. Policymakers often hesitate in making such reforms, but the high level of unionization in many state workforces will make reforms even harder to achieve. During labor negotiations, for example, public officials often succumb to pressure to make short-term concessions that end up damaging public finances in the long run.

Businesses can and do mitigate the inefficiencies of a unionized workplace, but governments are much more constrained and have less incentive to do so, driving up taxpayer costs even further. And public sector unions use their large war chests to buy influence and protection. “So the problem with public sector unions is not just that they block compensation reforms, but that use their privileged status to control broader policy debates.”

Myth: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions.

Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act. That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith. This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.

I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal. It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.

Myth: Labor unions support trade liberalization because it lowers the prices of goods that workers buy.

Fact: This used to be true, but today’s labor unions oppose trade liberalization. They believe that increasing globalization has directly led to the decline of their unions, and thus their power. This isn’t exactly true, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. “Although the evidence is lacking to implicate globalization as a whole, two aspects of the trend have been found to have significant negative effects on labor unions: inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and ’social integration’ across borders.”

When foreign companies invest in the U.S., companies here realize that they can also invest in other countries. “The correlation of FDI and declining rates of union density suggests that ‘many workers feel greater insecurity from seeing capital mobility in their sectors, even if not in their own particular firms,’ Slaughter (2007: 344–45) concluded.”

And social globalization, “the spread of ideas, information, images and people,” a natural result of advances in communications and transportation, “reinforces what Dresher and Gaston (2007: 176) call a ‘growing normative orientation towards individuals rather than collectivism [which] makes collective organization more difficult.’ Adding to the trends are rising levels of immigration and perceptions of younger workers who view unions as old-fashioned and anachronistic institutions.”

In competitive product markets, the drag that unions impose on firm performance can be debilitating to the firm and its workers over time. As described above, firms facing vigorous competition are not able to pass along higher costs to consumers without risk of losing significant market share. Newly unionized firms in such markets face the cruel choice of passing along higher labor costs to consumers, thus losing market share to more cost-efficient competitors, or eating the higher costs in the form of lower profits and less reinvestment in physical and intellectual capital. Either choice will result over time in an erosion of the unionized firm’s market share.

Myth: Paying workers higher wages will reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy.

Fact: The “high-wage doctrine” increases unemployment and drags down the economy. This doctrine originated with a 1921 report that Hoover commissioned while he was Secretary of Commerce dealing with what was, in retrospect, a minor recession. In addition to recommending higher wages, the report also said that government spending (now known as the stimulus package) can help the country recover from a recession. Neither is true, of course, and the report might have been completely forgotten had Hoover not become President. He put his disastrous ideas into practice, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Worse, proponents of these theories, which John Maynard Keynes gleefully signed on to, are more concerned with theories than facts, according to Lowell E. Gallaway, economics professor at Ohio University. That’s just a polite way of saying they’re full of crap. Galloway writes:

In the intellectual world, the high-wage doctrine continues to have its appeal. Prior to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, collaborating with Martin Parkinson, noted: “Maybe Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford were right. Higher real wages may have paid for themselves in the broader sense that their positive effect on aggregate demand compensated for their tendency to raise costs” (Bernanke and Parkinson 1989: 214). More recently, Paul Krugman reiterated this view in a New York Times oped (3 May 2009), arguing, “Many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs.” He then asks, “What’s wrong with that?” His answer refers to what he calls “one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now . . . workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.” This is simply a reprise of Klein’s (1947) views. Never mind the existence of more than a century of empirical evidence to the contrary. Krugman’s concern is not with the empirical problem, but with the theoretical connection between wage rates and employment. The high-wage doctrine still lives. In all probability, this persistent adherence to an incorrect doctrine once again will prove to be detrimental to the U.S. economy, just as it was in the 1930s.

Myth: Unions currently operate in a free market.

Fact: Unions are heavily dependent on the government to provide them unfair leverage over employers and control over their members. It is possible for unions to exist and provide valuable services to their members in a market free of government-sponsored violence and control, but those services would likely have to be geared toward helping employees improve themselves, rather than extracting undeserved compensation from employers.

Charles W. Baird, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, East Bay, examines what constitutes a free market, how existing labor laws destroy freedom, and what a union might look like in a true free market. It won’t happen any time soon, though, he says: “It is politically impossible, at this time in America, to repeal the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the National Labor Relations Act and replace them with any sort of free-market union law. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to prepare the ground now for doing so in some future, more enlightened time.”

If you’re wondering why you’re out of a job, why Detroit is a wasteland, and why the economy is on the verge of collapse, don’t be so quick to blame Wall Street: Some of the blame belongs to the labor unions.

["AFL-CIO building, Washington, D.C." photo by Derek Blackadder; CC BY-SA 2.0]

With literally nothing to show for the $100 billion it has wasted so far, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wants even more money to “strengthen” Head Start, a preschool program its own study finds is a failure.

The study, which was ordered by Congress in 1998 and finally released Wednesday, showed that by the first grade, any advantages children had received from Head Start had vanished.

“Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children,” HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “Now we must increase its effectiveness and continue to provide the support that our children, from birth to eight, need to prepare to succeed later in school and in life.”

That news release revealed part of the truth: “The study showed that at the end of one program year, access to Head Start positively influenced children’s school readiness. When measured again at the end of kindergarten and first grade, however, the Head Start children and the control group children were at the same level on many of the measures studied.”

The rest of the story was in footnote 99, buried over halfway through the 420-page report.

“A certain number of apparently significant results are to be expected merely by chance, and the probability of these false positives grows in proportion to the number of tests you report,” explained Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. Applying any of a number of statistical correction methods, he said, causes the results to be correctly read as statistically insignificant at best, and at worst, “these marginal results would be savagely beaten, buried in concrete, and dropped into the Mariana Trench.”

“These results make it clear that we need to build a more coordinated system of early care and education, and to focus on key improvements to teaching and learning in the early grades,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the same statement.

“There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical,” Coulson wrote, such as the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, in which students showed significant educational gains over those not in the program, and at a quarter of the cost of a student who remained in a public school. Congress refused to reauthorize the program.

“Will they now redirect their efforts to the support of programs whose benefits for disadvantaged children actually grow in magnitude the longer kids stay in school, or will they continue to push for programs like Head Start that have been proven costly failures?”

Three guesses on that one.

Clearly the powers that be want children in government schools, whatever the cost, and even if the children would be better served by a program proven less expensive with better results. Even if the bureaucrats have no ulterior motives, which isn’t terribly likely, this isn’t good for your children, and alone is enough to justify removing them from public school any way you can.

Not only aren’t your children learning much of anything in public school, they may well be in mortal danger, thanks in part to the attitudes and beliefs of their teachers and school administrators.

I was recently sent a letter from a high school teacher published in the December 28Boston Globe. In the letter, Brockton High School math teacher Doug Van Gorder, who lives in nearby Quincy, perfectly illustrates the so-called “progressive” ideology.

In case you’re tempted to believe this letter is satire, a local newspaper called him for comment and got only this: “The letter speaks for itself.”

Brockton High School was the site of a December 2 shooting which left a non-student injured. Last week another teenager was shot in the city’s Westgate Mall.

The school district is defending this teacher’s right to free speech, and I would do the same. Even the insane have a right to speech, I think. However, combined with comments from a local discussion board on this teacher’s classroom antics, a psychiatric evaluation seems in order.

It doesn’t really matter who wrote the letter, though. It captures the “progressive” ideology quite well, though it is perhaps best understood as a caricature. For a long time I didn’t believe it was possible for someone to hold such beliefs. Now I merely don’t believe it is possible for any sane person to hold beliefs such as those expressed in this letter:

I am a math teacher at Brockton High School, the site of a school shooting earlier this month.

Current school security procedures lock down school populations in the event of armed assault. Some advocate abandoning this practice as it holds everyone in place, allowing a shooter easily to find victims.

An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.

Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.

Some propose overturning laws that made schools gun-free zones even for teachers who may be licensed to securely carry concealed firearms elsewhere. They argue that barring licensed-carry only ensures a defenseless, target-rich environment.

But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime. — Boston Globe

This is not the sort of person any sane parent would want within ten miles of their children, let alone teaching them, yet every public school in America has teachers who hold similar views. Worse, they are the majority, and they are reinforced in their anti-child views by their unions.

First, teachers and school administrators really do believe that your children should be held back when they get too far ahead. If you complain too loudly, they will get shunted into a so-called “gifted and talented” program where they can be held back without “disrupting the class” with their constant need to do something more challenging, useful or important.

Leveling the playing field, in the eyes of public school teachers and administrators, has become making sure as little actual educational achievement occurs as possible without parents noticing until it’s too late.

Finally, as difficult as it is to believe, many people really do believe it’s better to die than to defend yourself. This is quite a bit different than the otherwise admirable philosophy of pacifism; in this case, they believe in and celebrate violence, especially when it is done by their group to members of other groups. Teachers and administrators holding this philosophy of death will not shed a single true tear when your child gets killed in the next school shooting, and while they talk about reducing school violence, will do everything they can to ensure that there is a next school shooting.

These individuals are truly disturbed and rarely get the psychiatric help they need. If your child’s teacher makes statements like those in this letter, you may be dealing with such an individual. In any case, they are so common in schools today that you will have to search hard to find a teacher who doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy of keeping your children ignorant and possibly getting them killed.

As always, I suggest looking anywhere but a public school if you want your child to actually have an education.

["Adolf Hitler Target" photo by Marshall Astor; CC BY-SA 2.0]

It’s that time of year again. Time for you to send in your protection money so Guido doesn’t have to come around and take it from you.

The Internal Revenue Service seems less interested in providing “customer service” and more in intimidating you into paying up, whether you truly owe anything or not.

A report released Wednesday by the IRS National Taxpayer Advocate showed that the IRS expects to answer only 71 percent of phone calls made to its 1-800-TAX-1040 help line this tax filing season, and callers to the line are expected to spend an average of 12 minutes on hold.

“This level of service is unacceptable for taxpayers who require assistance,” National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson wrote in the report, noting that the poor “level of service” would cause many people to give up on filing tax returns or make “avoidable errors.” The long hold times and call abandonment rate are “this year’s number one most serious problem for taxpayers.”

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge told theWashington Post that the agency has dealt with a rising number of calls over the years and that the IRS “is committed to providing the best possible service to every taxpayer. . . . The bottom line is we have answered millions more phone calls in the last two years than ever before.”

In the private sector, a good level of service is considered answering 96 to 97 percent of calls; with only 2 or 3 percent of callers “abandoning,” or hanging up before a representative can answer. The IRS has not been above 82.6% in the last five years, according to the report.

The report also noted that the IRS collected far less in delinquent tax payments than it had originally reported. For the fiscal years 2005 through 2007, the IRS actually collected $86 billion in delinquent payments, but reported a figure of $118 billion, burying the lower number in a footnote. Worse, “There is an astonishing lack of transparency as to what is included in these revenue figures and how they are computed,” the report noted.

In addition, it said the IRS relies too much on automated filing of liens, which are claims against the taxpayer’s property or income. The liens, it noted, are increasingly used against taxpayers with little income or assets, making it even harder for them to pay back taxes. The IRS claimed it needed to use the automated liens to force taxpayers to eventually pay, and that the liens meant the government would have priority over other bills such as student loans or medical bills.

In practice, such a lien placed on poor people can literally ruin their lives, making it difficult or impossible to pay rent or buy groceries. Such people may lose their jobs or move into the underground economy simply to stay alive.

If you’re still one of the majority of Americans and haven’t told the government to stick it and stopped paying taxes entirely, here’s hoping you don’t make a mistake on your forms and have to suffer a visit from Guido.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, during its $180 billion bailout of American International Group, Inc., instructed AIG to omit details of its purchase of certain toxic assets from a December 24, 2008, Securities and Exchange Commission filing, according to e-mails between the company and the Fed released Thursday.

Using bailout money provided by the Fed, AIG paid a number of banks 100 percent of the face value of credit-default swaps, contracts tied to subprime home loans, at a time when other institutions were negotiating deep discounts for the paper. The names of the banks were also omitted from the SEC filing.

The information was finally disclosed in March 2009 after the SEC challenged AIG’s filing, prompting lawmakers and analysts to call the transactions a “backdoor bailout” of the banks. Topping the list of banks which benefited from the backdoor bailout of their toxic paper were Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale SA.

The e-mails, released Thursday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, show the Fed wanted a number of other details about the AIG bailout withheld or their disclosures delayed.

The coverage from Bloomberg News has all the gory details, including a non-denial denial that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was then chairman of the New York Fed, had anything to do with the cover-up.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has called the disclosure “troubling” and plans to hold hearings on the issue, though he publicly maintains full confidence in Geithner.

“The new details revealed today regarding AIG’s bailout in 2008 come as no surprise to those of us who believe that the American people deserve full transparency from the Federal Reserve,” Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said in a statement. “My strong suspicion is that secret arrangements between cronies like this are not an anomaly, but the norm.”

The Fed, as you’ll recall, fought disclosure of the information, claiming that it would erode market confidence. No such thing happened, of course.

If dollar investors aren’t already spooked enough to run like hell, it’s hard to see what would convince them that the dollar isn’t nearly as safe as they seem to think.

“The status quo has made it entirely too easy and too tempting to behave recklessly with public funds in total secrecy,” Paul said. “The system needs radical change, but we should start with honesty, transparency and accountability to the American people about how their money is being handled.”

Update: TheNew York Times reported Friday that the Treasury department explicitly denied Geithner had anything to do with it. TheTimes quoted Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly as saying Geithner “played no role in these decisions and indeed, by Nov. 24, he was recused from working on issues involving specific companies, including A.I.G.”

["AIG New York" photo by eflon; CC BY 2.0]

You have maybe two months to stock up on the necessities of life before food prices rise dramatically, potentially prompting a food panic, widespread famine, and quite possibly the long-expected collapse of the U.S. economy.

Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.

A popular farmers’ Web site is chock full of stories of entire crops of soybeans rejected for moisture damage, long delays in harvesting corn only to find out the corn is moldy, damaged or too light to be used as animal feed or even ethanol, and farmers unsure if they’ll even have a farm for another year due to the losses they’ve taken.

Most agricultural products are purchased in futures, which are promises to deliver a quantity of a commodity at a future date. Futures carry many risks, prominent among them the possibility that the commodity simply won’t be available at the promised delivery date. While futures prices are set by the market, some of the information used to set the prices comes from the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates reports. The unrealistic 2009 bumper crop predictions in its recent reports, which may have seemed reasonable months ago before 2009’s long string of bad weather but which USDA has failed to revise, drove futures prices artificially low.

But grain futures prices have already risen well above the USDA’s latest projections as the corn harvest threatens to drag on into March in some areas of the country, thanks to an unusually wet 2009 and unprecedented fall flooding in the Midwest.

The good news is that even with 2009 being the worst harvest in human memory, there will still be plenty of food in the U.S. to feed everyone in the U.S. The bad news — if you’re in the U.S. — is that the food won’t be used to feed everyone in the U.S.

It seems China has finally figured out what to do with all the U.S. dollars it’s holding. You’ll recall that the Federal Reserve took some pretty extreme measures over the last two years, ostensibly to save the U.S. economy. In fact, those measures have set us up the bomb. For decades China has been buying U.S. debt and financing Americans’ credit addiction as well as the government’s massive spending on millions of projects it has no business being involved in. But, it seems, they’ve had enough of the dollar and are about to pull the plug.

In the meantime, China has been using those dollars to buy every morsel of American food it can get its hands on. Combined with 2009’s bad weather and the USDA’s ridiculous numbers, this prompted a late August soybean shortage which is expected to continue through 2010.

The U.S. has a very good reason to fudge the numbers on crop estimates. If it published realistic numbers, and crop futures prices rose sharply, three things would likely happen: Wall Street would take massive losses, inflation fears would cause investors to dump bonds, frustrating the government’s attempts to finance its incredible expanding debt, and most importantly, China, whose currency is tied closely to the U.S. dollar, would allow it to appreciate. That alone would likely send the U.S. dollar into freefall; all three would mean utter economic collapse.

Of course, you can’t fool the market for long; as noted above, futures prices are already well above the USDA’s numbers. All they really managed to do with their numbers game was buy the U.S. dollar another year of life.

One market analyst believes that the 2010 food shortage will be the catalyst which not only brings about the collapse of the U.S. economy, but takes down Great Britain and Japan with it.

While a food crisis was unavoidable to some extent because of the abnormal weather and financial crisis, the total panic which will soon grip world agricultural markets is a creation of the USDA and its fictitious production estimates. If not for the USDA’s interference, food prices would have risen in the first half of 2009 in anticipation of the 2009/10 shortage. The United States Department of Agriculture has caused incalculable damage to the world economy by encouraging overconsumption of rapidly diminishing food supplies.

Once the 2010 Food Crisis starts, confidence in the US government will be shattered as a result of the USDA’s faulty estimates. The starvation and misery caused by higher food prices will also create a lot of anger . . . — Market Skeptics

In this scenario, rural banks will begin failing rapidly, especially in the Midwest, and the inevitable bailouts will drive up U.S. debt further. These bailouts, combined with the Chinese allowing the yuan to appreciate, will erode confidence in the U.S. dollar to the point that foreign banks and investors begin dumping U.S. debt at fire sale prices. At that point the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to print money, leading directly to hyperinflation.

I shouldn’t have to tell you what hyperinflation will look like, but in case you need a reminder, it will likely make the Great Depression look like a minor recession. Tens of millions of people who have never known want in their entire lives are going to be shocked to wake up broke and hungry, with no idea what happened or why it happened to them. The government will almost certainly be unable to fulfill its promises of food stamps, social security and other such welfare programs. Food riots are likely and people will almost certainly die when the government attempts to put them down.

Worst of all, almost nobody will assign blame where it truly belongs: central banks and fiat currency.

Market Skeptics and many other foreign investors I’ve seen quoted widely in foreign media but virtually never in the U.S., recommend investing in agriculture, except derivatives, and in precious metals. I also recommend you invest in as much nonperishable food as you can lay hands on in the next two months, at least a year’s supply if you can manage it. If there’s no collapse, you can eat it, and if there is, you’ll at least have something to eat. And when you read a headline such as “Yuan allowed to rise versus dollar,” it’s time to head for the hills.

Two days after serving two journalists with subpoenas demanding that they reveal a confidential source, a move that prompted widespread backlash among frequent fliers, the Transportation Security Administration has withdrawn the subpoenas and returned a damaged laptop to one of the writers.

A TSA spokesman claimed Thursday that its investigation into who leaked a December 25 security directive was nearing completion and the subpoenas were no longer necessary.

The directive, issued immediately after a failed Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, specified temporary heightened security measures which international airports were to use on U.S.-bound flights. The directive was to expire Wednesday but has been revised and extended through the weekend, according to Homeland Security officials.

Steven Frischling, a freelance photojournalist and travel writer who also blogs for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, received a copy of the directive anonymously and published it on his personal blog, Flying with Fish, on Sunday. On Tuesday armed TSA agents arrived at his house with an administrative subpoena and threatened him into surrendering his laptop. The agents wanted to know who sent him the document.

Christopher Elliott, a syndicated travel columnist, also received the directive and published it at his personal blog. He too received visits Tuesday from armed TSA agents, but he declined to cooperate and informed them that he would challenge the subpoena. As a result, his laptop never left his possession and his livelihood was largely unharmed.

Frischling wasn’t so lucky. Though TSA returned his MacBook laptop Thursday, he reports that it was damaged and nearly unusable, according toWired.

While many states shield journalists’ confidential sources, a federal shield bill which passed the House in March has been stalled in the Senate. Even so, the bill would exempt from protection information which the government claims would help prevent an act of terrorism or harm to national security.

It’s unlikely any information in this security directive would have any negative impact on national security if released, since affected airports and airlines also had to publish much the same information to assist travelers through the security procedures. It’s also clear that Homeland Security cares more about plugging leaks in its bureaucracy than plugging leaks in homeland security.

From my own experience with having federal agents at my door, let me say this: Remember that if law enforcement shows up at your door, you are in no way obligated to speak to them, and in no way obligated to hand over anything immediately if they hand you a subpoena. You can and should challenge (move to quash) such a subpoena in court, if you receive one. You only have to surrender anything immediately if they have a search warrant, and only if the thing is named on the search warrant. Other than that, say absolutely nothing until you can consult a lawyer. Be polite, of course, when you ask them for their business card and send them on their way.

Finally, from Frischling’s description, it would seem the computer’s hardware may have been modified. Reportedly the TSA has offered to pay for a new computer; if true, I suggest he take a check and buy it himself — from the Apple Store, not online.

The Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit has shown exactly how ineffective most of the post-September 11 security measures have been in providing actual security, even as passengers flying in its aftermath experience even more stringent security theater.

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday in media interviews. “In many ways, this system has worked.”

Today she backed off of those assertions. “Our system did not work in this instance,” she told NBC. “No one is happy with that.”

Now that many of the details of what took place have emerged, we can see exactly how this so-called security failed.

Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, 23, of Nigeria, attempted to detonate a powerful explosive sewn into his underwear while on Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit as the flight was preparing to land Christmas Day. His chemical detonator failed to set off the explosive, and the passengers and flight crew put out the fire and restrained him.

It is currently believed that AbdulMutallab was radicalized while at university in London. He is alleged to have traveled to Yemen earlier this year for terrorist training, and at the time told his family that he was cutting off all ties with them. In recent years Yemen has emerged as a terrorist hotbed which its government has been unable to control, leading the United States to lend military assistance.

At the time, his parents reported his behavior to the U.S. embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, and he was placed in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, which contains pretty much everything the U.S. knows about known or suspected terrorists. Much of the information in the database is incomplete and inaccurate. Despite the fact that AbdulMutallab had a valid U.S. visa, which should have caused his information to be forwarded to the Terrorist Screening Center for possible inclusion in the selectee list or no-fly list, this did not take place.

On Christmas Eve, AbdulMutallab returned to Lagos and bought a ticket to Detroit via Amsterdam. The Homeland Security database gave him the green light to fly.

It’s long been known that current airport security measures are woefully incapable of stopping a determined attacker from bringing explosives through security and onto a plane.

And the heightened security measures in effect for the last few days, while they might or might not have stopped this particular attack, are much like closing the barn door after the horse gets out.

The only two things that have actually improved aviation security, says security expert Bruce Schneier, are reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who resist attempted attacks. “This week, the second one worked over Detroit,” he wrote.

None of the security measures that actually work require the massive Homeland Security bureaucracy, the nearly irreversible loss of privacy and freedom, the misidentification of thousands of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, or even taking off your shoes.

The biggest failure of all, of course, is the one nobody is talking about: the U.S. foreign policy of interfering in the Middle East and manufacturing terrorists out of thin air by making enemies of ordinary people. Until the U.S. changes its foreign policy, expect more terrorist attacks.

Given the fact that most of the many layers of “security” the government provides are ineffective, useless, or just simple security theater, it’s going to be up to the rest of us to provide for our own security, as best we can.

["Schiphol Plaza" photo by Shirley de Jong; CC BY-SA 2.5]

If you’re struggling to make ends meet in this economy, you aren’t alone. But government employees aren’t with you. The average federal government employee takes home far more in salary and benefits than productive Americans, their pay has risen throughout the recession, and is set to continue to rise.

And, during the recession the number of federal employees making over $100,000 per year has literally exploded. Even while the rest of us have to make do with less, it’s boom time for the federal government as more and more of your hard-earned money gets taken from you and shoveled into these bureaucrats’ luxurious compensation packages.

A USA TODAY analysis of Office of Personnel Management data found that the average federal worker’s salary had risen to $71,000, while private sector workers averaged $40,000.

Corroborating this data is an August analysis from the Cato Institute which also figured in benefits. Those numbers, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, also a federal government agency, showed the value of federal government salary and benefits packages averaged double the private sector, at $120,000 vs. $60,000 in 2008.

Even more shockingly, federal government compensation is growing at a much faster pace than the private sector, Cato found.

The Cato analysis had been criticized at the time, but USA TODAY’s analysis using a different data set appears to confirm it.

“The federal government has become extremely bloated and top heavy,” writes Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato who conducted the institute’s analysis. “With 383,000 workers earning six-figure salaries, the government has become an elite island of overcompensated administrators immune from the competitive job realities of average families.”

A Rasmussen poll released last week showed that 59 percent of Americans believe government employees are paid more than the average American, 51 percent believe government employees are paid too much, and 71 percent believe private sector employees work harder than government employees.

A government bureaucrat told USA TODAY that federal employee salaries were higher on average because the government hires more highly skilled workers, and that for comparable jobs, federal pay is 26% lower than the private sector. No data were immediately available to confirm this.

And then there’s government employees spending their time goofing off. “Bureau of Labor Statistics data indeed shows that government workers work fewer hours in a year and have much higher job security than private sector workers,” Edwards wrote.

“The Bush administration let federal pay and benefits grow completely out of control, as it did with other areas of federal spending,” Edwards continued. “President Obama . . . should call for a multi-year freeze on federal pay, work to overhaul a system that moves workers up the pay scales too rapidly, and begin purging the upper ranks of federal management.”

We should all appreciate what government bureaucrats do for us — or do to us. Without them, we might actually have to live like free people and take responsibility for our own lives.

["Capitol Hill" photo by Will Palmer; CC BY 2.0]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is buying beef and chicken to serve to your children in public school that fast-food chains reject as poor quality or even unsafe.

An investigation by USA TODAY found that quality and safety standards used by fast food chains were much more stringent than those the government uses.

For instance, the USDA supplied schools with old, rejected chickens which would have otherwise been used as pet food or compost. KFC refuses to buy these so-called “spent hens,” which are too old to lay eggs, and Campbell’s Soup cites quality as its reason for rejecting them. But your kids are eating them in school.

“Mature hens must comply with the same safety standards as any other chicken processed and sold to consumers,” Rayne Pegg, head of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, told USA TODAY. But a 2002 Washington State University study found that spent hens were four times more likely to be contaminated with salmonella.

It found that McDonald’s, Burger King, and retail outlets like Costco tested their meat five to 10 times more often than the government, and that fast food standards for potentially harmful bacteria were up to 10 times more stringent than government standards for school lunches.

“We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants,” says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. “We are not using those same standards.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt “the highest standards” for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that “the disparity would exist no more.”

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department’s minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers. — USA TODAY

“Companies that have to attract and keep customers to stay in business have a huge incentive to avoid such things as, you know, sending their customers to the hospital,” wrote Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “Not so government bureaucrats or educationists, who are getting your tax dollars no matter what.”

A USA TODAY analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data found that between 1998 and 2007, over 470 outbreaks of food-borne illness sickened at least 23,000 school children.

Now some government bureaucrats want to copy the fast food chains’ testing requirements. “Our children deserve a testing program at least as good as the fast food chains,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Gillibrand also asked for the USDA “to terminate contracts with any habitual violators of your food safety policies.” Vilsack said that the department would conduct a review, but didn’t promise anything.

One of those “habitual violators” was Beef Packers of Fresno, Calif., which supplied 450,000 pounds of ground beef to the government for public schools last summer. Beef Packers had to recall another 826,000 pounds at the time for salmonella contamination. After a second recall last week where two people in Arizona fell ill, some members of Congress want Beef Packers closed.

Maybe we need corporations to save us from evil government, rather than the reverse. It’s clear that the government is incapable on its own of assuring food safety. Or, as McCluskey says, “How many more children have to get E. coli before we allow freedom in education?”

["School Lunch" photo by Ishikawa Ken; CC BY-SA 2.0]