Part 2

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-07-24-swedenschools_N.htm

Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?

It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.

“I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice,” said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. “You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people.”

Since the change was introduced in 1992 by a center-right government that briefly replaced the long-governing Social Democrats, the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7% of high schoolers and 1% of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17% and 9%.

Before the reform, most families depended on state-run schools following a uniform national curriculum. Now they can turn to the “friskolor,” or “independent schools,” which choose their own teaching methods and staff, and manage their own buildings.

They remain completely government-financed and are not allowed to charge tuition fees. The difference is that their government funding goes to private companies which then try to run the schools more cost-effectively and keep whatever taxpayer money they save.

Bure Equity, listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, is the largest private school operator in Sweden and is expanding rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, net profit for its education portfolio rose 33% to about $3 million.

Such profit-making troubles Swedes who don’t think taxpayers should be enriching corporations.

The Social Democrats strongly opposed the change as anti-egalitarian, but when they were re-elected to power in 1994, they found it was so popular that they left it in place, though they imposed a lid on fees.

People like freedom and choice?! Can’t let that stay. Gotta make everyone the same. A good army of serfs to support the oligarchy.

This system of theirs has been talked about for years by the likes of John Stossel but it’s nice to see more agencies pick it up. While it seems to be little more then corporatism it sounds like it creates more competition and therefore a more efficient education system.

As for their last component of the article where they try to show that private schools can’t do everything… it’s a pretty pathetic example. Some kid wants to be a musician. A field which pays little generally because of the large pool of laborers and relative ease of entering. Apparently he can’t find a private school that provides the education so he’s going to attend a public school. So, because he doesn’t want to really take the risk and attend a private school he’s relying on the violence of the state to do what he ‘wants’ to do instead of non-violently doing what he ‘needs’ to do to survive. Great, I hope this kid ends up as a street mime in Paris.

http://www.townhall.com/…

The other day, reading the New York Post’s popular Page Six gossip page, I was surprised to find a picture of me, followed by the lines: “ABC’S John Stossel wants the government to stop interfering with your right to get high. The crowd went silent at his call to legalize hard drugs”.

I had attended a Marijuana Policy Project event celebrating the New York State Assembly’s passage of a medical-marijuana bill. (The bill hasn’t passed the Senate.) I told the audience I thought it pathetic that the mere half passage of a bill to allow sick people to try a possible remedy would merit such a celebration. Of course medical marijuana should be legal. For adults, everything should be legal. I’m amazed that the health police are so smug in their opposition.

After years of reporting on the drug war, I’m convinced that this “war” does more harm than any drug.

Independent of that harm, adults ought to own our own bodies, so it’s not intellectually honest to argue that “only marijuana” should be legal — and only for certain sick people approved by the state. Every drug should be legal.

“How could you say such a ridiculous thing?” asked my assistant. “Heroin and cocaine have a permanent effect. If you do crack just once, you are automatically hooked. Legal hard drugs would create many more addicts. And that leads to more violence, homelessness, out-of-wedlock births, etc!”

Her diatribe is a good summary of the drug warriors’ arguments. Most Americans probably agree with what she said.

But what most Americans believe is wrong.

Myth No. 1: Heroin and cocaine have a permanent effect.

Truth: There is no evidence of that.

In the 1980s, the press reported that “crack babies” were “permanently damaged.” Rolling Stone, citing one study of just 23 babies, claimed that crack babies “were oblivious to affection, automatons.”

It simply wasn’t true. There is no proof that crack babies do worse than anyone else in later life.

Myth No. 2: If you do crack once, you are hooked.

Truth: Look at the numbers — 15 percent of young adults have tried crack, but only 2 percent used it in the last month. If crack is so addictive, why do most people who’ve tried it no longer use it?

People once said heroin was nearly impossible to quit, but during the Vietnam War, thousands of soldiers became addicted, and when they returned home, 85 percent quit within one year.

People have free will. Most who use drugs eventually wise up and stop.

And most people who use drugs habitually live perfectly responsible lives, as Jacob Sullum pointed out in “Saying Yes”.

Myth No. 3: Drugs cause crime.

Truth: The drug war causes the crime.

Few drug users hurt or rob people because they are high. Most of the crime occurs because the drugs are illegal and available only through a black market. Drug sellers arm themselves and form gangs because they cannot ask the police to protect their persons and property.

In turn, some buyers steal to pay the high black-market prices. The government says heroin, cocaine and nicotine are similarly addictive, and about half the people who both smoke cigarettes and use cocaine say smoking is at least as strong an urge. But no one robs convenience stores for Marlboros.

Alcohol prohibition created Al Capone and the Mafia. Drug prohibition is worse. It’s corrupting whole countries and financing terrorism.

The Post wrote, “Stossel admitted his own 22-year-old daughter doesn’t think [legalization] is a good idea.”

But that’s not what she said. My daughter argued that legal cocaine would probably lead to more cocaine use. And therefore probably abuse.

I’m not so sure.

Banning drugs certainly hasn’t kept young people from getting them. We can’t even keep these drugs out of prisons. How do we expect to keep them out of America?

But let’s assume my daughter is right, that legalization would lead to more experimentation and more addiction. I still say: Legal is better.

While drugs harm many, the drug war’s black market harms more.

And most importantly, in a free country, adults should have the right to harm themselves.

He may be preaching to the choir but it’s still nice to have a man like him in his position. I nearly went to the MPP event last week and it saddens me that those who did go paused when he advocated full drug re-legalization. Must not have been many libertarians there.

I’m on the 1 train heading to Times Square when at Franklin a woman with a large Hillary button gets on the car and sits across from me. 1 or 2 stops later a guy sits next to me and after a minute pulls out the Mises Institutes Scholarly Edition of Ludwig von Mises Human Action. I start talking to him about it since 1) seeing a person reading Mises on a NYC subway car is fairly uncommon and 2) I’m also currently reading it but had picked up and was reading the latest John Stossel book as a break from HA. He says soming about Stossel and the Hillary supporter looks up with evil eyes and just stares at us. Ron Paul gets mentioned and she looks angry.Turns out he’s a long time libertarian but never bothered with the party. I invited him to come to a Manhattan LP meeting and to check out our website.

I should have invited the Hillary supporter too.

Just on CNN:

Woman lives in home for 27 odd years. Has no job. Lives with disabled daughter. Only income is $1200/month in Social Security disability.

Some time before February 2007 she refinances her mortgage to save money. In Feburary her rates go up around $400 and she can no longer afford the monthly payments. Her church helps her with payments for 2 more months and then just stops payment. Now she is being foreclosed on.

They show footage of her fluffy calico cat and her cluttered kitchen. She’s bundled up in a coat because they say she can’t afford to pay for heat and pan to an old electric heater in a room packed with crap.

Then they bring on her lawyer who goes on to explain that she shouldn’t have been able to get the refinanced mortgage because the contract has her income wrong. Zero monthly income from employment on one page (correct, she’s on SSD) and something like $3900/month on some other page.

They then comment on how she’s afraid of losing the house and how it’s run down panning to the attic door which obviously has water damage.

Now here’s the problems no one bothers to bring up but is pretty damn obvious.

1. The contract is void. No good. It needs to go to court to figure out if it was fraud or negligence but either way the contract should be suspended till it’s decided. She hold some responsibility for not catching the error but the bank should have caught it too. Again… either way it’s an invalid contract. If the mistake was intentional than I see no reason not to just let the old contract stand and perhaps the bank would pay punitive damages.
2. She stopped paying the mortgage. Why does she not have money to pay for heat? If she can’t afford it now with the money she hasn’t spent on the mortgage she couldn’t afford it before the rate increase last February.
3. Why the hell, beside to stir emotions, did they mention the house was in disrepair? If she didn’t keep the house in shape after she stopped paying the mortgage I doubt very much she did before the whole thing happened. I know many of people who have home in disrepair. All of them could easily and cheaply repair their home by asking their congregation for help… but they don’t. It doesn’t take much money or effort to replace an attic door. The roof which leaks likely I’ll give you is expensive and difficult to fix but I know personally there are government grants to repair them.

This shit really bugs me. I’m reading John Stossel’s Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity right now and it’s full of this kind of crap.