Write your own Obama speech

Benjamin Sarlin at the Daily Beast has a smack-on list of the 13 sure-fire entries for writing your own Obama speech.

Defying the educrats

The Los Angeles Times ran a story about a successful charter school in Oakland, the American Indian Public High School, that has also had phenomenal success. Like Gaston College Prep whose story I linked to below, AIP has its first high school graduating class this year and all students are going on to college. They've achieved these results through basically the same philosophy: long hours, high standards, and hard work. They've also achieved some of the highest test scores in the state although they cater to an inner-city population and score 4th in the state on California's Academic Performance Index.

What is really galling to the education lobby and, reading between the lines of the LA Times story, to journalists is that they have achieved this success while metaphorically spitting at all the accepted bromides of educationese. The school has an almost joyful resistance to such patter. Just check out their employment page on their website.

AIPHS is always in search of teachers and staff who are smart, ambitious, and
motivated to teach inner-city youth. We are looking for hard working people who
believe in free market capitalism to join our family at AIPHS.

AIPHS believes in setting a high standard for ALL students regardless of race, ethnicity,
language, economic standing, etc.

Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators
need not apply.

If you believe "hard work" is the key to academic success for minority students, poor
students, and all other students, we encourage you to submit the following documents
by fax or email:

You can almost hear the education professors fainting right now.

So what are they doing?

The short answer is that American Indian attracts academically motivated students, relentlessly (and unapologetically) teaches to the test, wrings more seat time out of every school day, hires smart young teachers, demands near-perfect attendance, piles on the homework, refuses to promote struggling students to the next grade and keeps discipline so tight that there are no distractions or disruptions. Summer school is required.

Back to basics, squared.

There is no secret to any of this. Portions of the American Indian model resemble methods used by the KIPP charter schools or, for that matter, urban parochial schools.

"What we're doing is so easy," said Ben Chavis, the man who created the school's success and personifies its ethos, especially in its more outrageous manifestations. (One example: He tends to call all nonwhite students, including African Americans, "darkies.") Although he retired in 2007, Chavis remains a presence at the school.

A Lumbee Indian who grew up poor in North Carolina and later struck it rich in real estate, Chavis took over American Indian in 2000, four years after it was founded with a Native American theme.

He began by firing most of the school's staff and shucking the Native American cultural content ("basket weaving," he scoffed). "You think the Jews and the Chinese are dumb enough to ask the public school to teach them their culture?" he asks -- a typical Chavis question, delivered with eyes wide and voice pitched high in comic outrage. There is no basket weaving at American Indian now -- and little else that won't directly affect standardized test scores. "I don't see it as teaching to the test," said Carey Blakely, a former teacher at the school who is writing a book about it. "I see it as, there are certain skills and knowledge that you're supposed to impart to your students, and the test measures whether your students have acquired those skills and that knowledge."

This is what strikes me again and again when I read of such schools. There is no secret about how such schools are achieving their success. They've shucked all the standard pap that comes out of education schools and have gotten back to basics. They teach kids for long hours and don't accept deviations from their standards. The results are that the kids learn. At AIPHS they've removed the achievement gap between Asian and other minority students.

At American Indian, the largest ethnic group is Asian, followed by Latinos and African Americans. Some of the schools' critics contend that high-scoring Asian Americans are driving the test scores, but blacks and Latinos do roughly as well -- in fact, better on some tests.

That makes American Indian a rarity in American education, defying the axiom that poor black and Latino children will lag behind others in school.

Imagine that. Set the standards and hold kids to those standards and they can achieve. Don't waste time with multi-cultural nostrums or the standard educational resistance to teaching kids to do well on tests. Horrors! If there are tests that evaluate how well students can read and do math, teach them to read and do math. That isn't some sin violating good teaching as I seem to hear at too many gatherings of teachers. It's what kids are supposed to learn. Until they can do that, none of the other stuff matters one bit.

This sort of school isn't for everyone. I wouldn't have wanted it for my children. But then my children come from a middle class home where education was prized. They learned to read a couple of years before starting school and had absorbed the importance of education in their lives. But imagine a child who doesn't have those advantages. That child might need those long hours and strict discipline to achieve a level of success where he or she can go on to college and compete with the kids from middle class families who started out with advantages in education that students at a KIPP Academy or AIPHS just don't have. This is where school choice is so important. Let those parents who are willing to make that commitment for their children have this opportunity. And let other schools study their methods and realize that the secret is already out there for how to turn around inner city schools if we could just get beyond trying to do everything the way it's being taught in ed schools across the country.

Success in Gaston, NC

Bob Herbert writes this weekend of the success of a KIPP charter school in rural North Carolina, Gaston College Preparatory, that has seen its first graduating class. In a community with few students going onto college and teaching a population of poor children, this charter has achieved remarkable success. There were no secret reforms or magic philosophies. Just a combination of hard work, high standards, and dedicated teachers to helping students achieve their full potential. But the payoff is huge.

I remember being struck by how quiet the school was. It was a disciplined environment, and the schoolwork was approached with the utmost seriousness. I wrote: “The school lasts from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., which allows time for additional classroom work and extracurricular activities. After that, there are two hours of homework. The kids also attend classes every other Saturday. And there are three weeks of summer school.”

The school flourished. The youngsters worked so hard and did so well, so quickly, that the founders of the school felt they needed to create an academically rigorous high school if the hopes raised by the middle school were to be fully realized.

....Nothing about it was easy. High-quality teachers from around the country and abroad had to be persuaded to set up shop in Gaston. An athletic program had to be established. Most important, the kids had to maintain their commitment to a high level of academic achievement.

How has it worked out? Shanequa is in the first graduating class of the new high school. Of the 48 seniors, 48 will be going on to college.

The pride in Ms. Sutton’s voice was as palpable as the joy in Shanequa’s. “All of our graduating seniors have been accepted into at least two colleges,” she said. “One hundred percent of them will be attending college in the fall.”

Most of the kids, including Shanequa, will be the first in their families ever to go to college.

What I thought was interesting was that neither Ms. Sutton nor Shanequa downplayed the difficulties of their respective efforts. The idea that there is any shortcut to real success — in school, in business, in government, in life, anywhere at all — is silly, a figment of the imaginations of those who have never stopped sitting on the sidelines.

Starting the high school was a “monstrous” undertaking, Ms. Sutton said.

And getting through it as a student was no cakewalk. “It has been very difficult,” Shanequa told me. “I had my ups and downs. There were some bad days, but I fought through them. My teachers were always pushing me: ‘Shanequa, you can do it. Don’t give up.’ ”

She then described the payoff: “When the acceptance letters started coming in the mail, I was like, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I wish I could do it all over again just to get the letters in the mail that said, ‘Shanequa, congratulations, you have been accepted at this university.’"

I know a bit about this charter school since the universe of charter schools in North Carolina is small. I know that they would like to build on their success and open up similar schools in other communities in the state where there is a deep need for such schools to devote themselves to teaching these students. Unfortunately, North Carolina has a cap of 100 charter schools and we're very close to that limit now. There is some talk of stretching that cap to perhaps a grand total of 106 schools. This is ludicrous. Why, with the budget shortfalls that we face in our state is there so much resistance to opening up opportunities for schools such as Gaston College Preparatory School that will achieve better results for less money? Such schools aren't for everyone. Probably there is a limit to the teachers who want to work such long hours and to the students willing to stick it out. But for the ones who are willing, the opportunity is golden. The fact that politicians and education officials don't embrace such programs is one of the great scandals of our age. They'd prefer to throw more and more money at failed models than to break the mold and allow such opportunities for our state's students.

Watch this news report of the first-ever College Signing Day for these Gaston College Prep seniors and just imagine how wonderful it would be if the state would bend and allow there to be more such schools inspiring students to achieve beyond what their backgrounds and family histories might suggest would be their fates.

How not to not run an auto company

George Will takes a few whacks out of the government's plan to run General Motors while all the while protesting that Obama and his administration don't want to interfere with the day-to-day running of the car company. There is no sign that the government will have any more success running GM as a employment service for the UAW than the old GM had doing so.

"What we are not doing -- what I have no interest in doing -- is running GM," says the president who, when not firing GM's CEO, purging its board of directors and picking new members, is designing new products (imposing fuel economy requirements that will control size, weight, passenger capacity and safety). The president, overcoming his professed reluctance to run GM, resembles the journalist Don Marquis when, after a month on the wagon, he ordered a double martini and exclaimed: "I've conquered my goddam willpower."

Washington mandates that Detroit must build cars for which there is much less demand than Washington demands that there be. Then Washington tries to manufacture demand with a $7,500 tax credit for purchasers of the electric Chevrolet Volt, supposedly GM's salvation. So, GM is to be saved by a product people will not buy without a cash incentive larger than the income tax paid by 83.4 percent of America's families.

It is reasonable to assume that GM will become profitable -- if you make unreasonable assumptions about annual vehicle sales and GM's share of the market. Besides, the government that runs Amtrak (which has lost $23 billion, in today's dollars, just since 1990) vows to make GM efficient.

This is what happens when government runs a car company

Yesterday senators called in auto executives to ask questions about how they decided which car dealerships to close. Apparently, the senators have been hearing stories from the dealers who were shut down and so they want to protect their constituents. Since the government now is going to own large portions of GM and Chrysler, we now have a public interest in how these decisions were made and, admittedly, there have been a lot of questions raised about how the dealerships were chosen to be closed. I don't buy into all the conspiracy theories that wondered whether Republican donors were chosen to be closed, but there clearly are legitimate questions about how they went about the decision to close these dealers.

However, a Senate committee is not the appropriate venue for those questions. The senators all have parochial interests to protect in their own state. No politician wants to see businesses shut down in their constituencies and people thrown out of a job. Their main interest is not the viability of the car companies, but concern for their constituents.

This is why Congress had become so impotent when it came to closing down military bases. No politician wanted to vote for closing down a base in his or her district. They were so paralyzed that they outsourced the decision making to the Base Realignment and Closing process. If our elected representatives couldn't do their job and close down military bases because they were stymied by their own political natures, what kind of job are they going to do with oversight of a private business?

Meanwhile, the politics has already begun. GM has reversed its decision to close down one of its plants that had been slated for closing. And which plant was it? The one in Barney Frank's district. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he is in charge of oversight of the bailout TARP program. So he had quite a bit of leverage to use on GM. That's what politicians do. It is why politicians shouldn't have a role in operating business. Their interests don't necessarily converge with what are good business decisions. We've already seen this with the protection of the UAW in the bailouts of Chrysler and GM and with the demand that the companies make certain cars that are more favorable to the environment. How soon before we see other powerful politicians pressuring the companies to make decisions to benefit those politicians' supporters? As the WSJ comments,

Mr. Frank's spokesman, Harry Gural, says the Congressman discussed, among other things, "the facility's value to GM." We'd have thought that would be something that GM might have considered when it decided to close the Norton center, but then a call from one of the most powerful Members of Congress can certainly cause a ward of the state to reconsider what qualifies as "value." A CEO who refuses the offer can soon find himself testifying under oath before Congress, or answering questions from the Government Accountability Office about his expense account. To that point, Mr. Henderson spent Wednesday with Chrysler President Jim Press being castigated by the Senate Commerce Committee for their plans to close 3,400 car dealerships. Every Senator wants dealerships closed in someone else's state. As Mr. Gural put it, Mr. Frank was "just doing what any other Congressman would do" in looking out for the interests of his constituents. And that's the problem with industrial policy and government control of American business. In Washington, every Member of Congress now thinks he's a czar who can call ol' Fritz and tell him how to make cars.

The auto executives better get used to these sorts of hearings. Now that federal money is supporting their companies, they'll need to be ready to fly in (coach, of course) to answer whenever a politician starts worrying about how the whole bailout program is playing among his constituents.

Obama speaking to the Muslim world

There was much that was good in Obama's Cairo speech yesterday. Just the fact that an American president is being welcomed and dlistened to by Egyptian students and Muslims from around the world is an encouraging moment. His advocacy for religious freedom, women's rights, freedom of speech, education, and economic development were necessary. I hope they resonated with his audience.

But it strikes me as patronizing to list the contributions of the Arab world when that list stops centuries ago. Arabs need to get beyond celebrating their greatness from a millennium ago and focus on how their forms of government have stifled economic progress for their masses of people for centuries.

He also sets up this moral equivalence between the Israelis and Palestinians that is distasteful. When he talks about the Palestinian refugee status for 60 years, why not mention that it is their fellow Arab states that have denied them citizenship and kept them as refugees for all this time. He chided Hamas, but failed to drive home that Hamas was given the opportunity to rule in Gaza without the Israelis and they blew that opportunity in order to pursue violence against their Fatah opponents and against the Israelis rather than to build up institutions to help their own people.

Charles Krauthammer notes the false humility of Obama's speech.

President Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty and humility. Above all, there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions," he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth "start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating."

An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone -- Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imperiously explained the diktat: "a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."

He goes on to explain why this opposition to natural growth on Israeli settlements is a false issue. And Krauthammer points out the lack of honesty in Obama's detailing of recent Palestinian history.

In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo yesterday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.

That's why Haj Amin al-Husseini chose war rather than a two-state solution in 1947. Why Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in 2000. And why Abbas rejected Olmert's even more generous December 2008 offer.

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.

Blaming Israel and picking a fight over "natural growth" may curry favor with the Muslim "street." But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.

It is patronizing and deceptive to ignore this history and then to put so much of the blame on Israel.

Peter Wehner has a perceptive post in which he details all the ways in which Obama seeks a "golden mean" in the major conflicts in which the U.S. is involved around the world. This is the typical Obama posture to seem to recognize the extremism of each side and then seek some middle way to compromise between them. Perhaps this is possible when you're discussing domestic policy, but it sets up a false dichotomy between opponents in world conflicts.

Then there is the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. What is troubling about Obama's account is the moral equivalence he asserts between Israel and the Palestinians is false. It also ignores what Israel is: democratic and lawful, willing to grant rights to its Arab citizens, willing to hold itself accountable for its mistakes, a country of bustling energy, entrepreneurial spirit, and a thriving civil society. Israel is among the most admirable and impressive nations in the world, and that we have ever seen. And all of this despite living in a region that for the most part despises her and in some instances wants to destroy her.

Beyond that, Obama perpetuates falsehoods, including the one that Israelis deny the Palestinian right to exist just as Palestinians deny Israel's right to exist. That is true only in rare cases, and in any event it fails to take into account Israel's many good-faith efforts to give the Palestinians a homeland, including in 2000, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories the Palestinians had asked for. Yasir Arafat rejected the offer and began a second intifada. And in Gaza in 2005 Israel did what no other nation -- not the Jordanians, not the British, not anyone -- has ever done before: provide the Palestinians with the opportunity for self-rule. In response, Israel was shelled by thousands of rockets and mortar attacks. Hamas used Gaza as its launching point. Yet it is Israel , according to Obama, that must make yet more concessions and give up yet more land, as if stopping settlements will fundamentally transform Palestinian attitudes. It will not. The sine qua non for progress is for the Palestinian leadership to make its own inner peace with the Jewish state. If it did, as Jordan has, a Palestinian homeland would surely follow; and if it does not, peace is impossible. Israel has already shown it can make peace with Arab countries and give up huge swaths of land (like the Sinai Desert) if only those nations reconcile themselves to the existence of Israel and cast aside their violent animus toward her.

The suffering of the Palestinian people is real and tragic and needs to end. But the source of that suffering lies with a corrupt leadership and the complicity of other Arab nations. To cast all the blame on Israel is deeply unfair.

President Obama, in his speech to the Muslim world, said he would "speak the truth as best I can." Some of what he said about democracy, religious freedom, women's rights, and economic development and opportunity was sound and appropriate. And I will concede, as others have, that it could have been worse -- though that's a fairly low bar to clear. But a good deal of what Obama presented, particularly in the first half of the speech, was a cartoon version of history. In the process, Obama downplayed the achievements of the Arab country we have very strong relations with and placed the most intense pressure on the nation that counts among our closest allies and best friends.

It would have been nice if, in his appeal for an honest approach to the world if Obama could have been less anxious to strike a moral balance between two sides and been more truthful about the differences that have kept the Palestinians in their own horrid situation.

That "creating or saving jobs" bilge

Rick Klein of ABC News points out how utterly empty the claim is that the stimulus will "create or save" 3.5 million jobs. It's an empty assertion because there is absolutely no way to know how many jobs were saved.

The administration will be collecting such data from those receiving stimulus funds, but has said those numbers will only be used to supplement other job indicators, and won’t be the final word on job creation.

It’s an imprecise measurement in a very imprecise field: “To understand just how unknowable this data point is, it's not necessary to be an economist, a mathematician or a statistician,” writes Tony Fratto, an economist-turned-CNBC-analyst who was a deputy press secretary under President George W. Bush.

“You only need to know this: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) -- thousands of the most professional and rigorous counters and analyzers of labor data in the history of mankind -- makes TWO revisions of employment data for their ESTIMATE of the PREVIOUS month! And even then the reports are mere estimates -- an annual benchmark survey is required to reset the nation's payroll baseline.”

“That is, the best employment statisticians the world has ever known, people whose lives are dedicated to employment data, conducting labor surveys and research, constantly refining their complex models, have a difficult time telling you how many jobs were created in the PAST!”

But who cares if the assertion actually means anything? All that is important is that it seems to mean something. Democrats can use it in their speeches and their ads against Republicans who opposed the stimulus. What matters precision when obfuscation can be so successful?

Opposing school success

The WSJ details how opponents of school choice are poised to cut back on the demonstrated success of such reforms in Milwaukee and New York City. The Milwaukee voucher program has been in place for 20 years and is quite popular. So the Democrats and teachers unions who oppose school vouchers are trying to strangle the program through bureaucratic maneuvers that wouldn't be as visible to the public that likes the program.

To that end, Democrats in the state legislature voted last week to cut per-pupil payments to private schools by $165 while increasing public school spending by $400 per student. Taxpayer support for students in the program is only $6,607 per student to begin with, which is less that half of the $13,468 for students in Milwaukee public schools.

Those funding cuts would be accompanied by mandates of dubious academic benefit. One regulation would require schools that have already been accredited to meet additional accreditation requirements. Another would force schools to offer expensive bilingual programs that suck up scarce resources and are spurned by most immigrant parents who want their children taught in English.

By chipping away regulation by regulation they hope to reduce the program. These concerns ignore the steady decline of the Milwaukee public schools.

The irony is that satisfaction and enrollment at Milwaukee public schools has steadily declined despite these very policies that choice opponents want to impose on successful private schools. A recent evaluation of the Milwaukee choice program found that its high school graduation rate was 85%, compared to 58% for students in the city's public schools. Between 1994 and 2008, the voucher program saved taxpayers more than $180 million. Yet opponents insist these schools need additional regulations to make them more like the public schools that cost more and produce inferior results.

Shouldn't the focus be on expanding the successful program and, in this day of budget shortfalls, saving money by sending more kids into the voucher program?

In New York City the question revolves on whether or not to allow Mayor Bloomberg to continue his control over the city schools. Since the Mayor has taken control over the schools, there has been some improvements in student achievement. He has also loosened up the barriers to charter schools.

Academic results argue strongly for continuing the policy, which expires June 30 unless state lawmakers renew it. According to the latest test scores, 82% of children in grades three through eight scored at or above grade level on this year's standardized tests, up from 74% last year and 57% three years ago. Mayoral control has also eased the expansion of charter schools, many of which are performing better than the district schools. In Harlem, where 19 of the 23 elementary and intermediate public schools are failing, all of the third graders at the Harlem Success Academy passed the most recent state math exam and 95% passed the English exam.

We'll see if the state legislators vote to continue such success or, in the name of maintaining union and bureaucratic control, vote to return control over the schools to bureaucrats who will be sure to put up roadblocks to the charter school movement.

Innovation Obama-style

Daniel Henninger makes the point that, contrary to what maybe his supporters thought, President Obama hasn't ushered in an era of innovative approaches to old problems. Instead, his solution each time has been a bigger government doing more things. That is the mindset of his administration: how can we make the government responsible for whatever problem we're facing.

Without exception, the Obama people with responsibility for the private economy come from a lifetime in politics, public administration or academia.

Besides Mr. Obama himself, the list includes Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, EPA's Lisa Jackson (16 years with EPA), Commerce's Gary Locke (zero private experience), or Transportation's Ray LaHood (14 years in the House). The bio for Agriculture's Tom Vilsack says he "has served in the public sector at nearly every level of government." How can the private sector -- especially the world of risk capital, sweat equity and start-ups -- be anything but an abstraction for this group?

Many of Mr. Obama's supporters surely thought this young, dynamic generation of public leaders would elevate the hip, cutting edge of the U.S. economy -- nanotechnology, genomics, robotics, even health and medicine technology. Instead, we've gotten the Old Economy on dialysis. General Motors has been commanded to restart aging UAW factories to output product on behalf of the administration's hybrid-car obsession. Where's the New Economy in any of this?

How not to not run an auto industry

Recognizing how unpopular the government takeover of GM has been, the President is eager to tell us at every opportunity that he has "no interest" in running an auto company. His administration continues to promote the illusion that this is a quickie fix and they will be able to exit the car business as soon as possible. The WSJ notes a little irony today that demonstrates what a deception all those claims are. The Obama administration has been busy reassuring the mayor of Detroit that GM will not move out of Detroit to Warren, Michigan. As the WSJ concludes,

We don't know whether GM should stay in Detroit. But we do know that the location of a company's headquarters is one of those decisions typically not made by people who are busy not running the company.

Think of the myriad of such decisions that the people not running GM, i.e. government officials, will now be making.

This entire effort is doomed to failure. David Brooks has a good summary today of all the reasons why the government will end up worsening, not addressing, the deep, underlying problems that made GM go belly up in the first place.

First, the Obama plan will reduce the influence of commercial outsiders. The best place for fresh thinking could come from outside private investors. But the Obama plan rides roughshod over the current private investors and so discourages future investors. G.M. is now a pariah on Wall Street. Say farewell to a potentially powerful source of external commercial pressure.

Second, the Obama plan entrenches the ancien régime. The old C.E.O. is gone, but he’s been replaced by a veteran insider and similar executive coterie. Meanwhile, the U.A.W. has been given a bigger leadership role. This is the union that fought for job banks, where employees get paid for doing nothing. This is the organization that championed retirement with full benefits at around age 50. This is not an organization that represents fundamental cultural change.

Third, the Obama approach reduces the fear that impels change. The U.S. government will own most of G.M. It would be politically suicidal for the Democrats, or whoever is in power, to pull the plug on the company — now or ever. Therefore, the current managers can rest assured that they never need to fear liquidation again. There will always be federal subsidies for their own mediocrity.

Fourth, the Obama plan dilutes the company’s focus. Instead of thinking obsessively about profitability and quality, G.M. will also have to meet the administration’s environmental goals. There is no evidence G.M. is good at building the sort of small cars the administration demands. There is no evidence that there is a large American market for these cars. But G.M. now has to serve two masters, the market and the administration’s policy goals.

Fifth, G.M.’s executives and unions now have an incentive to see Washington as a prime revenue center. Already, the union has successfully lobbied to move production centers back from overseas. Already, the company has successfully sought to restrict the import of cars that might compete with G.M. brands. In the years ahead, G.M.’s management will have a strong incentive to spend time in Washington, urging the company’s owner, the federal government, to issue laws to help it against Ford and Honda.

Does any of this sound like an opportunity to cut out the deadwood and for GM to come back as a profitable company that people will want to invest in?

As National Review editorializes today, GM is being set up to be run as the kind of lovely public-private enterprise that has made Fannie Mae the success that it is today.

All three Detroit automakers now share the same GSE structure (public mission, private ownership) that failed Fannie and Freddie. Going forward, the automakers’ missions are A) to provide health care, benefits, and high-wage employment to the United Auto Workers union, and B) to build the little green cars that President Obama and the Democrats want them to make, and the American people do not want to buy (at least not from Detroit while Japan makes them better for less). In exchange, the Big Three will continue to enjoy implicit and explicit taxpayer support.....

The administration has emphasized that it will not use its ownership stake to micromanage GM. But we know from watching Fannie and Freddie that the government doesn’t need an ownership stake to push a GSE in the direction it wants it to go. Just ask House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, who repeatedly made it clear to Fannie and Freddie that their government charters (which exempted them from state taxes, among other things) depended on their willingness serve government ends, i.e., “to make housing more affordable.” Fannie and Freddie proceeded to underwrite America’s adventures in trash mortgages to the tune of $1 trillion. They did what Frank asked them to do. Now we’re on the hook for hundreds of billions, and Frank still has his job.

It used to be that those arguing against government takeover of an industry such as the health industry would ask if you wanted the people at the Post Office or DMV to be running your health care. Now they can ask if you want the same people who had such a success running mortgage companies like Fannie and Freddie running your health care system. In a few more years, we'll be able to add in GM to the metaphor mix on that question.

So when you hear that Obama is not really running GM, remember that we used to pretend that the government wasn't running Fannie and Freddie either.

A coach who mentors more than his players

Tony Dungy has an essay in Sports Illustrated this week about the importance of mentors and father-figures in young men's lives. He starts off by wondering if a strong and loving father-figure in Michael Vick's life might have helped Vick avoid the mistakes that he made once he hit the big time. Dungy is putting his life where his words are. At a relatively young age, he has quit coaching after winning the Super Bowl just two years ago. He is now devoting his focus to helping young men who don't have a a strong mentor in their lives to help mold their characters and set them on a path towards an honorable success whatever career they might undertake.

In my mind I didn't retire from football as much as I was moving to something else. I wanted to do something to help the next generation of young people realize their potential. As a coach I was blessed to have developed a bond with many of my players. But I always felt that those who made it to the NFL were, for the most part, men who had gotten some good mentoring along the way. I wanted to reach out to young men who hadn't had the benefit of college and NFL environments.

I've always been drawn to young men and the issue of fatherhood because of the impact my dad had on me. I leaned on him for advice for 48 years, and he shaped me into the man I am today. I'll never forget being thrown out of a basketball game in ninth grade for fighting. (I know that's hard for people to imagine after watching me on the sidelines.) Afterward, my dad calmly told me how he saw it. "You let your emotions help your opponent instead of your own team," he said. "You have some talent, but you'll never be a great player until you get those emotions under control and use them for good." I listened to him, and that was the beginning of the "cool" Tony Dungy persona.

As a Christian, I follow the Biblical model of how a community should be structured—wisdom should be passed down from elders to juniors, and when that doesn't happen the results won't be good. That's why I'm concerned about the number of young men growing up without active fathers in their lives. This is an increasing problem all across society but especially in African-American homes.

Good luck to the Coach. May he has even more success in this new venture than he had in his NFL career.

A dismaying parallel

If you're at all optimistic about government success in running an auto company, consider the parallels with the other form of transportation that our federal government runs - Amtrak.

Analysts said the government's hope of creating an efficient mass transit service through a partial nationalization of the rail system was stymied by its inability to get tough on unions and rein in labor costs. The same could hold true, they say, as the Obama administration deals with the UAW.

Amtrak has fielded criticism over the years for being guided by officials with little or no transit experience. Today, Obama's Auto Task Force has a combined experience of zero years in the auto industry.

With Amtrak, the government got too involved in decision-making, leading to inefficiencies in the system that would never be corrected, say analysts. Since its creation in 1970, Amtrak has sucked up $30 billion in taxpayer money, and the money is still flowing. The original aid package from Congress in 1970 was $340 million with an expectation the railroad would make a profit in five years....

We've been running a railroad for almost 40 years and it has yet to run in the black. So if you're thinking that we'll be able to get out of running an auto company by quickly putting it on the track to profitability and then get out, think again. As Obama asked in another context - what's our exit strategy? Can he promise us that we will get out of Government Motors by a date certain? Remember Amtrak and you'll know the answer.

Some realism on ethanol

The WSj reports on two government reports on why government subsidies on ethanol are such a rotten idea.

First there is the evidence of what corn-based ethanol does to our grocery bills. Only an economics illiterate would fail to see that subsidizing the growing of corn for fuel would raise the price of other crops.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last month that Americans pay another surcharge for ethanol in higher food prices. CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008 "the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices." Ethanol raises food prices because millions of acres of farmland and three billion bushels of corn were diverted to ethanol from food production. Americans spend about $1.1 trillion a year on food, so in 2007 the ethanol subsidy cost families between $5.5 billion and $8.8 billion in higher grocery bills.

Think of that the next time you pause over buying some ears of corn for summer barbecues.

That might be worth it if using ethanol actually achieved its promised environmental benefits. But the EPA itself casts serious doubt on that claim.

A second study -- by the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality -- explains that the reduction in CO2 emissions from burning ethanol are minimal and maybe negative. Making ethanol requires new land from clearing forest and grasslands that would otherwise sequester carbon emissions. "As with petroleum based fuels," the report concludes: "GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are associated with the conversion and combustion of bio-fuels and every year they are produced GHG emissions could be released through time if new acres are needed to produce corn or other crops for biofuels."

The EPA study also explores a series of alternative scenarios over 30 to 100 years. In some cases ethanol leads to a net reduction in carbon relative to using gasoline. But many other long-term scenarios observe a net increase in CO2 relative to burning fossil fuels. Ethanol produced in a "basic natural gas fired dry mill" will over a 30-year horizon produce "a 5% increase in GHG emissions compared to petroleum gasoline." When ethanol is produced with coal burning mills, the process "significantly worsens the lifecycle GHG impact of ethanol" creating 34% more greenhouse gases than gasoline does over 30 years.

Despite the Obama's self-proclaimed respect for applying only research-based policy, the Obama administration is pushing ahead for more government support for corn-based ethanol and for raising the government mandate for ethanol use in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Here's a government expense that forces consumers around the world to pay more for food and for which there is no real evidence that it will do more to reduce CO2 emissions than using gasoline. So what's to like? Well, corn farmers are making out like bandits. And both Republican and Democratic senators from corn-growing states love pleasing those agricultural interests. And environmentalists love the illusion that they're supporting a program that will benefit the environment despite research to the contrary. This is a bipartisan boondoggle, but when has that ever stopped our government?

Don't pull a LeBron

Forget all the stories about GM, North Korea, or Iran. The subject that really heated up the airwaves and conversations yesterday and this past weekend was LeBron James' failure to shake the hands of the Magic players after Cleveland's loss on Saturday. The young superstar rarely has set a foot wrong on the court or off and has rightly deserved all the media hype and corporate contracts. But he was wrong here. Period. Like it or not, he's a role model and there are certain ceremonies of sportsmanship that come with the territory. His excuse is self-centered.

“It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,” he said. “I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a competitor. That’s what I do. It doesn’t make sense for me to go over and shake somebody’s hand.”

Sorry, that's part of the game like standing for the national anthem. It may be totally insincere, but that's what athletes have to do whether it's hockey, boxing, or tennis. After all, it's just a game and LeBron's dominance is fleeting. But character is permanent.

I think that, if LeBron had come out an apologized afterwards for leaving without the ritual handshakes, people would have easily forgiven him. We can all understand the burning disappointment and anger he felt at the end of that game. But he blew his opportunity for dispensation by doubling down and excusing his behavior by saying he's a "competitor." They're all competitors. They're just not all bad sports.

And in this case, LeBron will be an exemplary lesson for the students I coach in Quiz Bowl. Now when I teach them about shaking competitors' hands after a match whether they've won or lost, I'll be able to add "Don't pull a LeBron."

The doomed fate of Government Motors

The Wall Street Journal has a pessimistic, but realistic take on what will happen with Obama's takeover of General Motors.

There's also the labor agreement that the UAW approved last week, which goes some way toward reducing costs but probably not enough to make the new, smaller GM competitive. The new agreement simplifies some work rules and job descriptions but makes no reductions in hourly pay, pensions or health care for active workers. The agreement must also be renegotiated in two years by an Obama Administration running for re-election and weighing the need to keep Big Labor happy against the risks to taxpayer-shareholders. Who do you think wins that White House debate?

The Administration's concessions to the UAW also restrict the company's ability to import smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that it already makes overseas. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger boasted on PBS's "NewsHour" last week that "we, quite frankly, put pressure on the White House, the [auto] task force, the corporation" to bar small-car imports from overseas. GM is also selling its Opel operation in Europe as part of this restructuring, and the Washington Post reports that one of Treasury's sale conditions is that Opel's new owners must stay out of the U.S., and even out of China, where GM's business is strong.

This is raw trade protectionism. It is also textbook cartel behavior and would be an antitrust violation if practiced by a business. But the benefits for GM are illusory because the import limits mean the company will have to spend even more to retool its domestic plants to make the little green cars that President Obama and Congress are demanding. No one knows if Americans will buy such cars, even if GM can make them competitively in the U.S.

As they predict, we will see the worst of government myopia now applied to the car industry.

The Administration promises to wield a light ownership hand, but it's only a matter of time before Congress starts to micromanage GM's business judgments. Every decision to close a plant will be second-guessed, much like a military base-closing. And what about buying parts from foreign suppliers? Will those also be banned when Mr. Gettelfinger demands it, even if the costs are lower? GM's managers and directors will have one eye on enhancing shareholder value, but the other on pleasing their political minders in Washington.

The Obama Administration has been whispering to the press that it could start selling its stake within a year to 18 months, and that it hopes to be out of the business entirely in five years. But even assuming that the taxpayer investment stops at $50 billion, GM would have to be worth a cool $80 billion for taxpayers to break even on their 60% stake. By way of comparison, GM's market capitalization at its recent peak in 2000 was only $56 billion.

The larger corruption will be when government tries to vindicate its ownership by favoring GM over Ford and the other auto makers that aren't wards of the state. The TARP legislation contained one blatant example in the form of a $7,500 tax credit for consumers who buy GM's new electric car, the Chevy Volt. Expect more such favoritism, including huge new subsidies for green cars if consumers prove resistant to their charms.

What will happen to Ford when the government starts tipping the scales in favor of GM? Will there be diktats issued that all government-owned vehicles must now be purchased from GM rather than based on some more rational cost-benefit analysis? And does anyone expect the Obama administration to take the tough measures necessary when it comes to renegotiating UAW contracts?

Perhaps it will give you more confidence to read this profile of the 31-year old guy in the Obama administration in charge of dismantling GM.

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”

How comforting.

Another problematic case for Sotomayor

The Washington Times highlights another issue that should come up in Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. She was in the minority arguing on the appeals court that New York's law barring imprisoned felons from voting violated the Voting Rights Act.

In Hayden v. Pataki, a number of inmates in New York state filed suit claiming that because blacks and Latinos make up a disproportionate share of the prison population, the state's refusal to allow them ballot access amounts to an unlawful, race-based denial of their right to vote. Eight of 13 judges on the liberal-leaning Second Circuit dismissed their arguments, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled likewise in a similar case.

Yet, operating on a dubious and extremely broad reading of the Voting Rights Act, Ms. Sotomayor dissented from the decision. In a remarkably dismissive, four-paragraph opinion, she alleged that the "plain terms" of the Voting Rights Act would allow such race-based claims to go forward.

She does seem to show a predilection for such race-based claims, doesn't she? The only problem is the plain wording of the 14th Amendment as Jose Cabranes argued in the majority opinion.

Judge Jose Cabranes, who like Ms. Sotomayor was appointed by President Bill Clinton, didn't find the matter to be so clear. His majority decision against the criminal felons, in favor of the state, comprised 36 tightly reasoned pages. Particularly compelling is the fact that the Voting Rights Act was passed to help further the aims of the Constitution's 14th and 15th Amendments. The 14th Amendment specifically allows states to deny the vote to those convicted of crimes.

Ms. Sotomayor is thus in the position of asserting that Congress can prohibit New York from doing something the Constitution itself specifically endorses.

Here's the relevant language from the 14th Amendment.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. (Emphasis added)

Here is the case and here is what she wrote in her dissent. Her point is that the Voting Rights Act "applies to all "voting qualification[s]." And it is equally plain that § 5-106 disqualifies a group of people from voting. These two propositions should constitute the entirety of our analysis. Section 2 of the Act by its unambiguous terms subjects felony disenfranchisement and all other voting qualifications to its coverage." She makes no mention of the 14th Amendment. If I understand her dissent, she is buying the argument that the higher rates of minorities imprisoned is de facto evidence of discrimination and thus disenfranchising them is a violation of their civil rights guaranteed under the Voting Rights Act.

This is in accord with her approach to the New Haven firefighters case where she seemed to buy the argument that the fact that no African American passed the promotion test was de facto evidence that the test was biased. As Stuart Taylor wrote she is from the school that looks at disparate impact as the sole evidence we need for detecting discrimination.

Back in 1971, when the Supreme Court first grafted disparate-impact rules onto the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they seemed to complement the anti-discrimination ideal.

The problems addressed by the 1971 decision were the difficulty of proving intent to discriminate and the fact that many companies -- especially those employing blue-collar workers without college educations -- were evading the 1964 act's ban on overt discrimination by using written tests designed less to measure job-related skills than to screen out blacks.

The Court's response was to rule that any test with a "disparate impact" on blacks -- meaning that disproportionate numbers had low scores -- was presumed to be invalid unless required by "business necessity." Lack of intent to discriminate was no defense to such a disparate-impact suit. This remains the law today, although the Court and Congress (in 1991) have tinkered with the detailed rules.

Over the decades since 1971, fewer and fewer employers have engaged in intentional racial discrimination against blacks or Hispanics. Likewise, the objective tests used by employers -- including the New Haven fire department's written and oral promotional exams -- have been more and more carefully designed to be valid measures of job-related skills.

Rather than looking at the differences in education and support for education in the homes, the assumption of disparate-impact believers is that the only reason some groups do worse on any sort of objective exam is evidence of discrimination whether or not anyone can point to particular language in the test that is discriminating. The same approach requires analysts to assume that higher incarceration rates in the 21st century are the result of discrimination and not related to any other social and economic factors.

Forty or fifty years ago, it was clear that discrimination was the culprit for these results. Today, it is a lot harder to point to any overt act of discrimination so all that liberals in agreement with Sotomayor's approach have to base their accusations on is disparate impact. As Taylor noted, it was fear of a disparate-impact suit that led New Haven to throw out the results of their promotion exam.

The disparate-impact dynamic has the benefit of expanding opportunities for preferred minorities. But it also has great costs. It is unjust to high-scoring white and Asian workers; it has greatly eroded the anti-discrimination principle; and it downgrades incentives for students and workers to study and learn -- both in school and in rigorous test-preparation courses such as the one that helped some New Haven firefighters improve their skills and do well on the test.

That is a most unhealthy message to be sending to blue-collar families at a time when America's competitiveness is being crippled by the inferior educations of many of our high school graduates compared with those in other developed countries.

I hope that the senators asking her questions in her confirmation hearings will be able to raise these issues. For conservatives, even if it is futile to hope to block her confirmation, it is still owrthwhile to have a national conversation about such issues. Just as I would confidently bet that the majority of Americans wouldn't support her position in the Ricci firefighters case, I would also bet that the majority of Americans don't believe that it is illegal for a state to deny imprisoned felons the right to vote.

John Murtha: The appearance of corruption doesn't appear to bother him much

One delightful aspect of John Murtha's old-fashioned attitude towards pork for his district is his totally unapologetic demeanor. Sure the organizations he's steered earmarks to are being investigated for corruption, but that doesn't stop him from touting the pork that he's brought home.

Most lawmakers in Murtha’s position would hire lawyers — as Visclosky has — or engage a PR specialist or mount an aggressive public defense, as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel did when he asked for an ethics investigation into himself. But Murtha has chosen a different path — no lawyers, no public defense and an in-your-face defiance whenever he’s asked about the ethics issues.

“[Murtha is] not really troubled about it, as others might be,” insisted one House source close to Murtha. “His theory is not to talk, so he’s not talking.”

At least not when he can avoid it.

While many members might find a scandal over earmarks an opportune time to steer clear of public ties with industry, Murtha went right ahead with his annual Showcase for Commerce in Johnstown, Pa., last week — an event underwritten by some of the same defense firms to whom he’s steered federal funds.

He doesn't have a worry about the Navy disbarring a company that he has had major dealings with for "alleged fraud."

When reporters covering the event asked Murtha about Kuchera’s disbarment, the Johnstown Tribune Democrat reported Murtha shot back: “What’s that got to do with me? What do you think? Do you think I oversee these companies? That’s the Defense Department’s job. That’s not my job. You guys write these stories — you don’t have a clue what this is all about.”

The Kuchera brothers, Bill and Ron, and their employees have given more than $65,000 to Murtha’s reelection campaign and leadership political action committee, and Murtha held a major fundraiser at Bill Kuchera’s ranch last fall. At the same time, Murtha has secured nearly $15 million in earmarks for the company, and he helped the company win a missile contract that could be worth $100 million.

When reporters asked Murtha on Friday whether he’d hired a defense attorney to deal with the PMA scandal, he snapped, “What kind of question is that?” And then he walked out.

And the deepening scandal about the lobbying firm PMA - not a worry.

The lobbying shop imploded earlier this year, following an FBI raid on its offices in November. Its founder, former Appropriations Committee aide Paul Magliocchetti, has moved to Florida and retired, while its other lobbyists have moved on to different firms. The Justice Department is reportedly looking into whether Magliocchetti used “straw donors” to steer hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to lawmakers who in turn pushed earmarks worth tens of millions for its clients.

Visclosky said he would cooperate with the federal subpoenas “consistent with my constitutional obligations to Congress and my duties and responsibilities to my constituents.”

But while Visclosky was a big recipient of PMA-related campaign cash, no one was more popular with the firm than Murtha.

The Pennsylvania Democrat received $2.38 million in campaign contributions from PMA and its clients over the past 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. During the same time period, Murtha secured millions in earmarks — more than $97 million in 2007-08 alone — to PMA’s clients.

....Instead, the towering former Marine remains unbowed and unapologetic, telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently, “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.”

Lovely.

And he even has the nerve to argue that his earmarks are just part of his personal stimulus package for Johnstown.

Throughout the show, Murtha extolled the value of years of projects he brought to the former steel and coal-mining community. He joked that the federal money he steers "has been the stimulus program for Johnstown for a long time."

But the old bull has some manners. He recently sent out thank-you notes to House Democrats, perhaps demonstrating his gratitude for their support in blocking any House investigation into his doings. How sweet. They sacrifice all their rhetoric about cleaning out the culture of corruption in politics and he sends them a thank-you. And maybe Nancy Pelosi got some flowers.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a close Murtha friend and political ally, has remained tightlipped about him as well. One Democrat says Pelosi “won’t even discuss” Murtha and “won’t even consider” any move to replace him as the head of the Defense Subcommittee.

“[Pelosi] is totally committed to him,” said this lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “She won’t even discuss him with anyone else. It’s a ‘no-go’ zone.”

Meanwhile, the House Republicans might consider sending him their own thank-you note for providing the poster face of their campaign against Democratic corruption in next year's election.