http://www.bethechangeinc.org/…

• Nine-year-olds growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.
  Does this include children attending private schools? Stating the effect without an understanding of the cause means wasted resources treating symptoms. Could it not be that the war on drugs, which harms low-income communities more, combined with welfare and other government disincentives, combined with the general inefficiencies of government provided education are the sources of these sad statistics and therefore should be the focus?
• Only 31% of fourth graders are proficient in reading. Low-income students do half as well.
  See above. I’d also recommend reading John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education, Mary Ruwart’s Healing our World, and Samuel Blumenfeld’s Is Public Education Necessary?
• As many as fifteen million students have no place to go after school.
  You can blame some of this on the war on drugs and the welfare state which has split apart families. On a more abstract note I would focus on the Federal Reserve System [PDF]. The federal government through the Fed through inflation taxes all users of Federal Reserve Notes without their supposed consent or knowledge. It hurts those who receive lower or no increases in their income the most. As inflation increases so do prices and do so ahead of any increases in income. Slowly wealth is stripped away requiring individuals to work more and/or longer to bring home the same amount. No longer can an average family survive on a single salary.
• Teens who do not participate in after school programs are nearly three times more likely to skip classes or use marijuana or other drugs, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
  Is it that teens who participate in after school programs are less likely to do those things because they are participating or simply because those who tend to participate just don’t. Could it be that those who are not interested in after school programs are also the same ones who have issues with the school curriculum?
• The hours between 3-6 p.m. on school days (referred to by law enforcement officials as a “danger zone”) are the prime time for violent juvenile crime.
• More than 1.2 million children drop out of school each year. The cost is more than $312 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetime.
• Only 70% of students in the U.S graduate from high school. In the nation’s urban schools, the dropout rate is fifteen percentage points lower. Those who do graduate high school will, on average, read and do math at the level of eighth graders in high-income communities.
• Only 1 in 10 students in low-income communities will graduate from college.

• Since its founding, 17,000 people have participated as Teach For America corps members, teaching and affecting over 2.5 million public school students.
• Since its founding in 1988, City Year’s 10,400 corps members have served 1,060,000 children, completed 16 million hours of service, and engaged more than 1,015,000 citizens in service.
• According to a study by The Urban Institute, high school students taught by TFA corps members on average performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors.
  If that’s the case why don’t they teach the “far more experienced instructors”? Wouldn’t that be more efficient? Are they teaching a general curriculum or teaching to the state-required end-of-course exams? Are they comparing general instruction to specific tutoring?
• A study by Mathematica Policy Research in 2004 randomly assigned students within the same schools to teachers both from TFA and traditional certification programs. It found that students taught by TFA teachers performed better in math and science as those taught by non-TFA novice teachers.
  Again, if the goal is helping the children why wouldn’t they be teaching those running the certification programs? Perhaps they do but it’s not something I’ve heard from them.
• One study shows that first-, second- and third-graders tutored by AmeriCorps members gained seven to fourteen percentile points in reading scores compared to their peers.
• AmeriCorps members in Education Works help inspire students to improve attendance, helping low-income schools to keep students coming to class for an average of 20 more days per year than other neighborhood schools.
  I have no doubt that showing a student more attention and giving the direct encouragement would increase attendance. But how does the Education Works members compare to Big Brother Big Sister and other organization which are private and perform effectively the same service? 20 days is huge but 20 more days to from what?
• By focusing its efforts on standardized test preparation, the AmeriCorps program Admission Possible helped students raise their ACT scores by an average of sixteen percent.
  This is a meaningless value. Teaching to tests is not education.
  
• AmeriCorps members working for College Summit help low-income students apply to and enroll in college. One study found that 80% of College Summit students got into college, compared to less than 50% of their peers. Aren’t guidance counselors and parents supposed to do this? As with above shouldn’t these College Summit members be working with counselors and parents so that the labor can be distributed?
  
• National service programs give students who did not complete high school a chance to finish their education. Since 2002, almost 5,000 AmeriCorps members in the program YouthBuild USA have earned their GED. Many of these GED recipients were previously incarcerated.
  Doesn’t the federal prison system already provide prisoners with the ability to get a GED and take college courses? Seems to me that AmeriCorps was used by these young people as an outlet from their situation at home. Likely it helped them but these programs should be provided by private institutions which would direct the participants labor toward things the community would need instead of what bureaucrats want.

This morning I met a few bloggers though one in particular I’ve had some more extensive discussion with was Julia Rocchi of the Case Foundation. She’s blogging at their site SocialCitizens.org/blog. I’m glad to see some of my criticisms were noted by her on the post “questioning service.”

Voluntarism can be a great thing and the inhabitants of the United States are these most generous people in the world. State involvement taints this. While the service itself is not mandatory (for the moment) the taxes used to fund these state run projects makes all tax payers participants regardless of whether or not they agree with the way it’s being spent. And given the governments track record on thriftiness we may as well hand out cash on the sidewalk. Yes, that same argument may be said about all tax money utilization. I would argue that’s one of the reasons to oppose taxation in general (and that it’s theft). Government incentivized voluntarism, isn’t. Just as welfare is not charity. The government is taking money from one individual in order to pay another to “serve.” True voluntarism is completely from oneself. It is the “altruistic” (non-tangible selfishness) spending of time, money, labor, and skill.

As I’ve mentioned so often before, there is what is seen when the government promotes these projects and that which is not seen. What does not get seen is the potential lost because of government incentivizing individuals away from their free market path. The investments which would have been made with the money which was taxed away. The capital which would have been created due to those investments in the private sectors need to serve the customers. The jobs that were never created, the businesses never started. Many may scoff at these suggestions but that’s why it’s the problem of the seen and not seen.

As government grows, and we all know it does, more and more resources will be taken from the tax payers to be thrown around by politicians at their whim until such time that we have a near complete centralized control of resources. At which point our society will crumble.

Those who advocate more government involvement in anything let alone voluntarism need to take a serious look, both practically and morally, at what they ask for. Does government interference in the market lead to lesser or greater standard of living? Does the threat of violence, which is how government functions, not negate the good they intend to perform with the money and capital obtained?

Society would not accept as a defense from a theft that he was robbing John in order to feed Paul who’s starving. Society should also not accept that defense when the government uses it.

For those interested in this topic I recommend reading:

• The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
• Healing Our World by Mary J. Ruwart <== this one in particular for liberal leaning individuals.
• The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill
• and other works by those at Mises.org including Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, John Taylor Gatto, Robert Murphy, Henry Hazlitt, Lew Rockwell, etc.

http://www.petitiononline.com/…

I found this petition linked from Austrian-Athenian Empire:

To:  Dr. Mary J. Ruwart

The Libertarian Party in need of a principled libertarian who can articulate our views effectively while winning over the hearts and minds of the American people to the cause of Liberty.

Likewise, the American people want and deserve a presidential candidate they can trust.

Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, author of the best-selling book Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression, is a principled, articulate speaker, writer, and scientist who has been involved in the libertarian movement for three decades. Her message is one that brings together the various strains of libertarianism, and her work is appreciated by both the pragmatists and purists in our party.

We, the undersigned, implore Dr. Mary J. Ruwart to enter the race for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination for the 2012 election.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

I’m not going to be part of those trying to bring back the national LP from the Barr’k side but I’ll happily expend the little effort to voice my agreement with a Ruwart candidacy. For those interested in her beliefs I highly recommend Healing Our World, 3rd Edition.

After 6 rounds of voting Bob Barr has been nominated as the 2008 Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States.The final results:

Bob Barr: 324
Mary Ruwart: 276
NOTA: 4

I was hoping for Ruwart. At this point I do not believe Barr to be authentically libertarian. This may be the end of the LP as we knew it if the conservative takeover conspiracy is to be believed.

5th vote:

Ruwart: 229
Barr: 223
Root: 165
NOTA: 6

Root will be dropped from the next ballot. Even though there are only two candidates left, they must get a majority of delegate votes to be nominated. “None of the above” and write-ins are included in the total.

Root just endorsed Barr and said he hopes to be the VP candidate.

4th vote:

Barr: 202
Ruwart: 202
Root: 149
Gravel: 76
NOTA: 2

Gravel will dropped from the next ballot.

3rd vote:

Barr: 186
Ruwart: 186
Root: 146
Gravel: 76
Phillies: 31
NOTA: 2

Phillies will be dropped off the next ballot. Phillies got up and declined to endorse anyone.

2nd vote:

Barr: 188
Ruwart: 162
Root: 138
Gravel: 71
Phillies: 36
Kubby: 32
NOTA: 1

Kubby will now be eliminated on the next ballot. Kubby got up and endorsed Ruwart.

1st vote:

Bob Barr: 153
Mary Ruwart: 152
Wayne Root: 123
Mike Gravel: 71
Geo. Phillies: 49
Steve Kubby: 41
Mike Jingozian: 23
Ron Paul (WI): 6
Christine Smith: 6
NOTA: 2

Jingozian and Smith will be dropped from the next ballot. Following the vote announcement, Mike Jingozian spoke and endorsed Mike Gravel. Christine Smith got up and gave an anti-endorsement of Bob Barr.

Is Richard Viguerie Trying to Buy the Libertarian Party? by David F. Nolan

Key developments in the weeks leading up to the Libertarian Party National Convention, which takes place this weekend, show a disturbing pattern. While none of them is sinister in itself, taken together they add up to a strong indication that outside forces are in the process of trying to take over the LP and turn it into an arm of the conservative movement.

Some of the principal officials working on the campaign for former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr appear to be veteran “partyjackers.” Barr finance operative Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative fundraiser, mounted an unsuccessful hostile takeover attempt on the American Independent Party back in 1976. In 2000, Russ Verney, now Barr’s campaign manager, first opened the Reform Party up to a successful takeover by “the Buchanan Brigades,” then defected and ran a rump convention to further split the party by nominating Natural Law Party invader John Hagelin.

Recent events within the LP show a similarly disturbing trend.

The convention organizers were told that they must invite Neal Boortz, a conservative Barr supporter, to be the speaker at the Sunday Banquet. Boortz had to cancel because of knee surgery, but the pattern of placing Barr supporters in many of the prominent speaking spots has continued.

The convention organizers were told that they must have Barr himself as the convention’s keynote speaker. After Barr launched his presidential exploratory committee, they were then told that his replacement would be Richard Viguerie. This choice of having Viguerie, a movement conservative, deliver the keynote was imposed on the convention organizers contrary to their own desire, which was to fill the slot with one of the many Libertarian speakers available and eager to fill the keynote slot.

The LP’s former Executive Director, Shane Cory, used the national office to release without authorization a statement that many considered to be openly hostile to candidate Mary Ruwart. He then resigned and has since accepted a position within Viguerie’s organization. (The unauthorized press release appears to have been taken down, but here’s the text.)

Sunday, it was announced that Mr. Viguerie has purchased the popular blog Third Party Watch, which until now has been a largely unmoderated site where proponents and opponents of all third party candidates could freely express their views.

Monday morning, longtime libertarian activist and Third Party Watch contributor Tom Knapp attempted to post a piece about a highly critical story appearing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Bob Barr’s fundraising practices. Within minutes, his piece was deleted and his previous posting privileges on the site were revoked.

Clearly, Barr and Viguerie are attempting to gain control of the LP so that Barr can campaign on a conservative/libertarian hybrid platform and Viguerie can extend his fundraising empire into the libertarian quadrant of the political universe. If they succeed, the Libertarian Party will become just one more mouthpiece for malcontent Republicans.

This makes the attempts of some Libertarians to get back to first principles, such as by restoring the 2004 platform, all the more important.

This may be a more recent development but was easily predicted. From the ‘74 Dallas Accord to the Reform Caucus to even the Ron Paul Revolution.

Update:

You can find more at Steve Kubby’s radio show from the 20th.

Libertarians call for increased communication to combat child pornography

The Libertarian Party is calling for increased coordination and communication between federal and state law enforcement agencies in order to help to apprehend and convict child predators and those who engage in child pornography.

“FBI Chief Robert Mueller was correct when he said we are losing the war on child pornography,” says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory, referring to comments made by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday before a House Judiciary Committee meeting. “We have an obligation to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, and we can do this by increasing communication between state and federal agencies to help combat this repulsive industry. While privacy rights should always be respected in the pursuit of child pornographers, more needs to be done to track down and prosecute the twisted individuals who exploit innocent children.”

I tend to agree with Stephan Kinsella over at LRC:

While child abuse is obviously evil and unlibertarian, it is still bizarre that the LP would issue this release. To specifically call for the national police force to work more with state and local police is not just something radical libertarians would have trouble with. It is also unconstitutional. Under the Tenth Amendment, criminal justice questions–-including murder, rape, arson, theft, child abuse, violence against women, drug policy, gun laws and the like–are to be handled by state and local governments, not the federal government.

There is some gossip that this release was a stupid inner-party power play, to make radicals, including believers in decentralist law enforcement, feel uncomfortable in the party. By forcing this issue over the very emotionally charged issue of child porn, some people in charge of the party are trying to force anarchists and other radicals to admit they do not think the federal government should be involved in such questions. Specifically, they are attacking one presidential candidate, Mary Ruwart, over this and using it as an excuse to alienate radicals.

Ruwart–who spent 19 years as a pharmaceutical research scientist for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals and holds a PhD in biophysics–says she has been unfairly attacked and her words have been misrepresented in a smear attempt. Apparently the sell-outs and compromisers are trying to destroy her career.

In any case, why should a presidential election even have anything to do with this? The 1996 and 2000 LP presidential candidate, Harry Browne, used to point out that “The Constitution recognizes only three federal crimes — treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to deal with any other crimes.” He convincingly argued that this was a reason even pro-life libertarians should oppose federal abortion laws. (And Ron Paul would argue that pro-Choice libertarians, for similar decentralist, Constitutional reasons, might oppose Roe v. Wade.) (See Browne on prohibition and drugs; Browne on abortion.)

Would Harry Browne feel left out of what the Libertarian Party has become?

David Nolan, the minarchist founder of the Libertarian Party, was outraged by the press release. He wrote:

“The question is, how does society best protect its members from these bad things? And the LIBERTARIAN answer is ‘rarely, if ever, by giving more power to governments, especially at the Federal level.’ I am appalled at the national HQ staff putting out a press release that implicitly disowns one of our candidates over such a relatively minor issue. First, because that’s not a proper role for paid staffers to assume, and second because several other candidates have taken overtly anti-Libertarian stances on a number of issues, and none of them have been shot at by the national staff for doing so. This whole fiasco just reeks of cronyism and witch-hunting.”

This is why I hate political activism and electoral politics. The desperate attempts to seem respectable, the constant disingenuous smearing of more principled opponents as racists or pro-pedophiles, the selling out of even Constitutional government to hysterical federal wars on terrorism and child porn, and under-the-belt punches. It’s all very disgusting.

And even Ian Free Talk Live has had enough:

The Libertarian Party (LP) had, after the late, great Harry Browne’s campaigns, been falling further and further from it’s original principles. In the early portion of this decade, when the LP removed from the party platform their calls for the abolishment of the CIA and FBI, I wrote their newspaper to say I’d not send them another dime of money until they got back to their founding principle: the non-initiation of force.As I drifted away from the LP and politics and toward market-based action, I paid less and less attention to the LP. I even said on the air recently on “Free Talk Live“, my talk show, that the only reason I was still a member is because I bought a life membership and it hadn’t been worth my while to cancel it.

Well, along comes this post on the LRC blog. I agree with the sentiments of the post, and felt this move by the LP was the last straw. I called and revoked my membership, and felt clean and fresh afterward!

The LP is dead to me and no longer resembles the party I joined ten years ago. After the 2000 Browne campaign, I jumped into LP activism. I attended meetings regularly and single-handedly organized and paid for libertarian outreach at the county fair, gun shows, and gay/lesbian pridefests as well as created and tended their website. I did and funded it all myself because of the political nature of the LP. It was not hard to notice how bureaucratic and slow they were. For example, they spent uncountable weeks debating over bylaws. Plus, at the non-bylaw-reviewing regular meetings, whenever an idea was proposed there would nearly always be someone who would derail the discussion into debate on the idea or the issue. Very little ever got done. This was just my experience with the local LP in Florida. (Nothing against the individuals, they are good people. It’s the central planning that is the major failure.)

The LP state conventions I attended were dull. Having watched the LP national conventions on TV, I can say that while some of the speeches were excellent, the bulk of the time was spent bickering over party platform, blah blah blah. I’m glad I never went to one. All of this distasteful bureaucratic, political garbage was frustrating to me, as I didn’t know what else to do to achieve liberty in my lifetime.

Since I discovered the Free State Project in the first half of the decade and especially since moving to New Hampshire, I’ve been learning about the free market and experiencing REAL, decentralized, activism. Sure, there are a bunch of political Free Staters (for those of you who still believe you can change the system from the inside), but the most exciting and effective activism has been market-based. There’s a cadre of great market-based activists (both NH natives and Free Staters) here in Keene, NH, and that number is growing. We’re creating our own media (TV, radio, print, blog) and have begun living free. If the Blue Light Gang interferes, we already have proven success at deterring their aggression. As more join in withdrawing from coercive society and joining the voluntary society, we will only be more successful as the coercive gang’s veil of legitimacy will crumble from its own inherent contradictions. Eventually, the transition to the free market will be completed and not one vote need be cast or politician promoted.

Goodbye LP. Their contribution to the dilution and destruction of the term Libertarian is appreciated. “Free Marketeer” is so much more descriptive of my beliefs. Thanks LP, for helping me realize that politics is never the solution to problems.

We will never be free by begging, but only by choice. I choose liberty. What about you? Will you join the Nonviolent Evolution?

I think the means to freedom is multifaceted. We need political and apolitical actors. If we don’t defend ourselves in both spheres we risk serious loss of ground. However, party politics will not be the vehicle for change. As you see here the “party of principle” has been infiltrated by rejected Republicans and Democrats. Mike Gravel, Bob Barr and Waine Allen Root may be better than your average D and R politician but that’s not saying much. This latest attack on Mary Ruwart has really turned me against the LNC moreso then I had been prior. The outright lies and slim being thrown around at Third Party Watch and the like is incredibly petty and sad.

The national LP will likely continue to run candidates who blow the competition away for some time but they will also likely continue to pick up D and R rejects and their downward spiral. Oh well…. one more reason to head up to NH.