United Liberty

A new study shows that school vouchers in DC bring better results at a fraction of the cost:

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

The Cato Institute is running another ad in newspapers disputing a position of the Obama Administration, this time taking on global warming:

We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.

Jim Harper at the Cato Institute thinks the transparency from the Obama Administration is a publicity stunt:

President Obama promised to make his administration the most open and transparent in history, and taking questions from the public kind of looks like that. But it also kind of looks like a gimmicky, canned publicity stunt, rather than true openness in government.

Real transparency would include fulfilling his campaign promise to post bills online for five days before signing them. The president has now signed 10 bills into law and not subjected any of them to that five-day public review.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.” - Thomas Jefferson

David Boaz has written a great post explaining why selective taxation, like we saw yesterday as the House passed a 90% tax on AIG bonuses, is a form of tyranny:

Gallup released a massive new series titled “State of the States” in which over 355,000 Americans in every state were interviewed regarding a host of political issues. The first issue which was released on Wednesday took an indepth look at political affilliation. The results were not surprisingly heavily in favor of Democrats, but the extent to which is quite dramatic none-the-less. This data below from Gallup.com shows what percent Americans consider themselves Democrats over Republicans in their given states. It includes individuals who lean towards a party with that party, which presumably helps increase the Democratic advantage in traditionally Republican states-

In a letter to The New York Times, Don Boudreaux compares the Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff to Social Security:

Like many people, Ben Stein was assured that Bernard Madoff “never lost money” (“They Told Me That Madoff Never Lost Money,” Dec. 28). Unlike many people, Ben Stein wisely understood this assurance to be nonsense. Americans should apply Mr. Stein’s wisdom to the greatest Ponzi scheme going: Social Security. Many pols and pundits assure us that this program is a great financial deal for ordinary Americans.

Cato has summarized the 2007 Census data that was released earlier this week. While United Liberty of all political blogs will readily admit there are major problems with our economy - problems that stem from both fundamental policy choices & execution of policy - we need to make sure we do not play into the hands of the raging liberals who exaggerate every problem in society in order to achieve their political goals. Even looking at the situation from a non-ideological and pragmatic viewpoint, there is not any more reason to intervene in the economy today than there was a decade ago.

New Income and Poverty Figures Spoil the Pity Party

• The number and percentage of Americans without health insurance actually declined slightly in 2007 compared to 2006. The share without insurance in 2007, 15.3 percent, is actually lower than it was a decade ago.
• Median household income is not falling: “Between 2006 and 2007, real median household income rose 1.3 percent, from $49,568 to $50,233—a level not statistically different from the 1999 prerecession income peak.”
• The share of households earning a middle-class income of between $35,000 and $100,000 in real 2007 dollars has indeed shrunk slightly compared to a decade ago, but so too has the share earning less than $35,000 a year, while the share earning more than $100,000 continues to rise. The middle class is not shrinking; it is moving up.
• The 12.5 percent of Americans living below the poverty line in 2007 was statistically unchanged from 2006, and remains below the 13.3 poverty rate in 1997. The poverty rate has been trending downward since the early 1990s during a time of growing trade and immigration flows.
• The Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of income inequality, was .463 in 2007, down slightly from earlier in the decade and virtually the same as it was a decade ago.