Whitewashing Virginia's history

The governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell has issued a proclamation to recognize Confederate History Month celebrating Confederate heritage while ignoring the issue of slavery.

Instead, Mr. McDonnell's proclamation chose to omit this, declaring instead that Virginians fought "for their homes and communities and Commonwealth." The words "slavery" and "slaves" do not appear.

Even more incendiary is the proclamation's directive that "all Virginians" must appreciate the state's "shared" history and the Confederacy's sacrifices. Surely he isn't including the 500,000 Virginia slaves who constituted more than a quarter of the state's Civil War-era population, who cheered the Union and ran away to it when they could.

The governor's explanations are quite lame.

McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

While such a move might appeal to those Virginians who are still motivated by pride in their Confederate heritage, it betrays an ignorance about the history of his state. Virginia was primarily concerned with its status as a slave-holding state and its concern that the Lincoln administration and Republicans would work to limit the spread of slavery. If Governor McDonnell doesn't understand this, he should get a little remedial education. He could read some of the resolutions adopted by the Virginia Secession Convention. For example, consider this resolution and then try to convince an impartial observer that slavery wasn't at the heart of Virginia's decision to secede.

Resolved by the general assembly of Virginia, that this commonwealth and the rest of the southern states have just cause of complaint against the non-slaveholding states, for their unfriendly legislation, in attempting to render worthless, constitutional provisions for the rendition of fugitives from labor; in obstructing the execution of constitutional laws; in imprisoning our citizens, and imposing oppressive penalties upon them for asserting in those states their legal rights; in denying the usual comity of nations--the mere right of transit through their territory with property legally acquired and rightfully held under our state constitutions, and guaranteed to us by the constitution of the United States; in endeavoring, by teachings, by declarations from the pulpit, from the hustings and in public meetings, to instill into the minds of our slaves feelings calculated to produce domestic insurrection among us, annoying by their constant repetition, and jeoparding our peace and safety; by the industrious circulation of incendiary publications to produce discord and division in our midst, and incite to midnight murder and every imaginable atrocity against an unoffending community; by their openly avowed determination to circumscribe the institution of slavery within the territory of the states now recognizing it; by subscribing money, paying for arms and munitions of war, and encouraging fanatics to invade our territory and subvert our government; by a persistent denial of the equal rights of the citizens of each state to settle with their property in the common territory acquired by the blood and treasure of all; and finally, in the election, by a sectional majority of the free states alone, to the first office in the republic, of the author and advocate of the sentiments--which he is pledged to carry into his administration of the government--that the states of this Union must be all free or all slave states; that all of the territories belonging equally and in common to the states of this confederacy, shall be forever devoted to freedom; and that slavery shall be put in the course of ultimate extinction: And in our deliberate judgment, such systematic opposition denotes a hostility which imperiously demands the most prompt and decisive action on the part of the states aggrieved, to remedy the evil, and if possible to restore friendly intercourse and fraternal regard and affection among the people and the respective state governments.

As respected Civil War historian James McPherson said in response to McDonnell's proclamation,

"I find it obnoxious, but it's extremely typical. The people that emphasize Confederate heritage and the legacy, and the importance of understanding Confederate history, want to deny that Confederate history was ultimately bound up with slavery. But that was the principal reason for secession -- that an anti-slavery party was elected to the White House. . . . And without secession, there wouldn't have been a war."

McDonnell might claim that his statement is in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War which starts next year. I know that Virginia is devoting a lot of effort on education and tourism for the 150-year anniversary, but that doesn't mean that they have to ignore the full history. Those tourists who are interested in coming to Virginia to study Civil War history wouldn't be deterred by an honest gubernatorial proclamation. Let's face it, no one would care about this proclamation if McDonnell had followed the pattern of both previous Republican and Democratic governors who had issued such proclamations that included a condemnation of slavery. Instead, McDonnell, who conducted a model campaign for governor will now waste time trying to explain away his myopic celebration of Confederate heritage.

UPDATE: Governor McDonnell apologizes for leaving out slavery and amends his proclamation.

Cruising the Web

Cheers to the D.C. Court of Appeals that yesterday ruled that the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate the internet. It seems that we still have a rule of laws and bureaucratic agencies can't just assume powers over the economy even though they were never statutorily given such powers.

Ireland has figured out how to cut salaries of public employees. This is what governments should do in times of financial trouble. States and the federal government should follow Ireland's example.

Even the Washington Post is shocked at the indifference of the Obama administration at the huge sale of arms from Russia to Venezuela. Aren't the Obamanians and those at the State Department aware of how Chavez supports terrorists such as FARC and Basque separatist groups? All they have to do is read the newspaper. Yet they seem blithe about such developments.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann refute Stanley Greenberg and James Carville's assertion that the GOP has peaked too soon for this year's election.

Why is the Department of Labor thinking of banning unpaid internships? Do they want to make it even harder for young people to gain experience to make themselves appealing for new employers?

Michelle Rhee has reached an interesting deal with the District of Columbia's teachers union. It's an intriguing combination of bonuses for teachers that will be funded by private organizations including the foundation set up by the Walton family. The Walton Foundation normally subsidizes charter schools and other choice reforms in education. In return, principals will have more discretion in deciding which teachers to retain if a school is either shut down or has declining enrollment. Seniority will receive the lowest priority and a teacher's most recent evaluation will receive the most priority. That only makes sense, but it all depends on the honesty of teacher evaluations. Some principals do not devote much effort into those. Now that those evaluations will be key in the age of D.C. school's decline in public school numbers, perhaps they'll wake up those senior, but mediocre teachers with honest evaluations.

Congratulations to Duke!

I'm just so very happy for the Duke basketball team! I've been a fan for the past 10 years since my older daughter started there in the year of the 2000-2001 championship season, but started following them more intensely in the past few years as my younger daughter spent four disappointing years camping out for more than a month for the UNC game only to see the team lose four years in a row. And I never, ever thought that this year's group had a chance at the championship. But I came to really like this group of guys. They are just a great set of kids. They're not superstars, but they played together with such heart and friendship that, even when they had some humiliating losses, they were just a lot of fun to cheer for.

People might complain about Duke's luck and easy bracket, but that is how it worked out. And being lucky is sometimes just as important as being good.

Being a fan is a funny phenomenon. There is no reason why a middle-aged teacher should be so happy for a group of young men I don't know to have won a championship, but there it is. The Butler team seems like an equally great group of young men. And the story of Brad Stevens, their coach, who quit a job at Eli Lilly to work as an unpaid assistant at Butler simply because he had a dream to work as a basketball coach is simply a fantastic story. If I hadn't been a Duke fan, I certainly would have pulled for them. They played a great game and I look forward to seeing them play again. Even though they lost, they were truly a gutsy group who could have won the game.

And on a day when the other big sports story was a guy talking about his sex addiction, this excellent NCAA championship game was a marvelous alternative story.

Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated captures the poetry of the game.

The ball is in the air. And because the ball is in the air, anything is possible. Miracle? Heartbreak? Pandemonium? Silence? Yes. Anything. That's the beauty of a magical game like this, and also the pain. The basketball is in the air. If it misses, Duke wins one of the greatest championship games ever. And if it goes in (and it looks like it is going in), Butler wins the greatest game that has ever been played.

The basketball is in the air, a 45-foot shot that looks like it is going in, and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski knows that if it goes in, the right team won. And he also knows that if it misses, the right team won, too. This is that kind of game. Both teams have played impossibly hard. Every player defended with every ounce of strength they had. Every player made a winning play -- something, a rebound, a block, a devastating pick, a tough foul, a big shot, a good pass, a hard drive to the basket -- that added a line or shade to this masterpiece. Duke wore white, and Butler wore black (the opposite of the image they came into this game with), but they played so much the same -- the same energy, the same violence, the same togetherness, the same purpose -- that at some point they just seemed to mix together into this wonderful blend of gray.

Cruising the Web

Robert Samuelson examines how our politics has come to be dominated by politicians who try to appeal to voters' self-esteem by making them feel that supporting their policy prescriptions makes them morally superior people. Politics becomes even more divisive because the choice is not just between alternate policies, but between the moral and the evil policy. If you doubt the painting of one's foes as not just misguided, but evil, look to Democrats like the morally superior Charlie Rangel who sees foes of Obamacare as similar to the racists who fought against civil rights.

John Feinstein explodes the hypocrisy of the NCAA which refuses to put in a tournament to resolve the college football championship because it would be too disruptive to the student-athletes' classwork, but blithely are planning to expand the NCAA basketball field which will take kids out of more classes than they are today.

The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. The tournament is going to expand, "student-athletes" will miss more class time, there won't be a football playoff, college basketball will still be a great game and the tournament itself will still be great fun, because it's so good even the NCAA suits can't destroy it.

Let's give them all a big round of applause for that, because if we don't do it, they will.

Jay Matthews explains how today's college-educated parents have joined into the "Rug Rat Race" as they spend more time chauffeuring their children to all sorts of activities in order to better position them for getting into prestigious colleges. I've had the good fortune to work with many of these parents who get up at 5 in the morning to help drive our Quiz Bowl team across the state to compete and then return after 10 in the evening. God bless 'em. We couldn't do what we do without their help.

It's even good news or bad news - but unemployment is likely to increase as discouraged workers return to the job market.

This is the golden age for lobbyists. And I thought that Obama was going to reduce the reach of lobbyists in politics.

And if you think lobbyists have too much influence on policy making now, just wait until we get a VAT tax. Irwin Stelzer looks at how the VAT works in England and how, depending on how a product is defined, it will or won't get taxed and have over 17% added to its cost.

They can hand a competing product the advantage in the U.K. of a price 17.5% lower (in Sweden it's 25%) than a close substitute. That invites both lobbying and corruption and sheer, inexplicable arbitrariness. Get your "sweetened dried fruit" deemed to be "held out for sale as snacking and home baking" and your product will bear a tax and have to compete on grocers' shelves with zero-rated "sweetened dried fruit held out for sale as confectionary/snacking." Peddle your sandwiches "as a general grocery item" and consumers pay no tax, but offer them as "part of a buffet service" and the VAT man wants his 17.5%.

And we'll be turning more and more control over our economy to the bureaucrats who will decide how every item is rated and what level it will be taxed at. And politicians will be able to turn on the tax spigot in ways that will not be as visible to the public at large.

Michael Barone cautions young people that Obama and the Democrats' policies will end up restricting choices available to them to have a satisfying career.

It's beginning to sound more and more like Justice Stevens will be leaving after this term giving President Obama another nomination to the Court. James Richardson at Red State takes a look at some of the possible choices.

According to The Hill, 40% of those who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement are either Democrats or independents. That's not quite what you'd imagine if you just listened to how the media portrays them.

Vulnerable Democrats who voted for Obamacare are starting to hear from their constituents.

Why dirigisme doesn't work

Glenn Reynolds has a great column in the Washington Examiner using the theories of Friedrich Hayek explaining why the sort of dirigisme that looks to the state to organize society and the economy to provide the most equitable distribution of wealth and services is doomed to failure. There is no way that any group of the most intelligent and purest motivated government bureaucrats can direct the country's economics.

n his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.

Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.

Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.

Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can't possibly be smart enough to make them work.

Hayek's insight into economics and regulation is often called "The Knowledge Problem," and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it's not just the economy that regulators don't understand well enough -- it's also their own regulations.

Reynolds then goes on to use Henry Waxman's outrage that companies like AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar had to report out their expected losses coming out of Obamacare to demonstrate that even the regulators writing the regulations can't know every element of their elaborately constructed government plans.

Obamacare was supposed to provide unicorns and rainbows: How can it possibly be hurting companies and killing jobs? Surely there's some sort of Republican conspiracy going on here!

More like a confederacy of dunces. Waxman and his colleagues in Congress can't possibly understand the health care market well enough to fix it. But what's more striking is that Waxman's outraged reaction revealed that they don't even understand their own area of responsibility - regulation -- well enough to predict the effect of changes in legislation.

In drafting the Obamacare bill they tried to time things for maximum political advantage, only to be tripped up by the complexities of the regulatory environment they had already created. It's like a second-order Knowledge Problem.

Even if you have the highest respect for Henry Waxman's intelligence and good will, there is still no way that he could understand the thousands of pages of regulations that companies have to follow. No one person can. And so when they start adding in thousands of pages of new regulations, it is inevitable that there will be unintended consequences.

We're governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can't help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or "better" rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system.

Reynolds thinks that there is an upside to all this - that people will come to have increasing skepticism towards the power of government. I'm not so optimistic. Even if people come to have more doubts about having government run so much of our nation's economy, it will be too late to take government out of our markets. Even if Obamacare is fully repealed, we're just back to where we were before with Medicare costs spiraling out of control.

Henry Payne has another example of what inevitably happens with government regulations.

On April 1, the Obama administration’s EPA issued final rules forcing automakers to increase their vehicles’ fuel economy by 40 percent in five years. The next day, the very same EPA favorably reviewed an ethanol fuel mandate that would force autos to get up to 5 percent worse fuel economy.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Follow us here. By the same date — 2015 — that the new 35.5 mpg EPA mandate is due to go into effect, oil companies are also mandated by Congress to double the amount of corn ethanol use (from 2007 levels) to 15 billion gallons. The current mandate of a 10 percent ethanol mix in fuel won’t get us there, so the powerful corn lobby is demanding EPA increase the mandate to a 15 percent ethanol mix.

Trouble is, a gallon of ethanol is 30 percent less efficient than a gallon of gas meaning that the more ethanol you mix in, the worse your gas mileage. Department of Energy studies show steadily decreasing fuel economy as ethanol blends rise from so-called E10 (fuel composed of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gas) up through E15 and E20 — with E20 suffering a 7.7 percent fuel efficiency loss.

Yet DOE’s green-zealot-in-chief Steven Chu still favors an increased mix of ethanol. So while automakers are sweating under the federal gun to make increasingly fuel-efficient engines, the government is mandating they do it with less-efficient fuel.

We’re still not making this up.

But their intentions are so dang good. Doesn't that count for everything?

Cruising the Web

Walter Russell Mead examines how the Obama administration is pushing away and offending our traditional allies while playing nice for our adversaries. It's a plan, but it isn't working all that well for us. Maybe there is a reason that we usually try to reverse those approaches in foreign policy. But Barack knows better.

Charles Krauthammer writes today on the same theme, especially on how Obama has treated Britain since he became president. He's at a loss for a rationale.

How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.

Perhaps, Obama is just taking to extreme his desire to take the not-Bush approach to foreign policy. That's not enough.


John Lott looks at the tradeoffs of severely restrictive handgun registration rules. Think of what the police could be doing instead of spending hours registering handguns.

David Pietrusza, who has written two very enjoyable books on the elections of 1920 and 1960, outlines the parallels between Obama and Woodrow Wilson. While no historical parallel is perfect, they do abound between Obama and Wilson. Having written my honors thesis on Wilson and the Polish question at the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson has long been one of my least favorite presidents. His sanctimonious sense of his own superiority shines through in all his personal records. Yup, I can see the parallels.

Veronique de Rugy runs the numbers. Guess who benefited the most from the stimulus? Teachers.

Michelle Obama delivers a science lesson to the kids brought in for her photo-op work in the White House garden. "The first lady of the United States, dirt on her knees, then taught the children how to do 'the rhubarb dance,' which consisted of wiggling fingers and casting a voodoo-like spell on the herb and chanting, 'Grow, rhubarb, grow.' She then marched them rhythmically around the plot. 'You gotta shake it!' she instructed."

Ed Morrissey links to this story at the Daily Caller by Jon Ward about how Henry Waxman inserted a provision into the health care bill that will leave states open to lawsuits from Medicaid patients if they can't get service from doctors. Just as doctors are refusing to take Medicaid patients because of the lower reimbursement rates that states provide them. If patients can't get service and are able to sue their states successfully, our broke states will be on the hock for even more money as they have to raise their reimbursement rates for Medicaid patients.

One CBS reporter, Mark Knoller, works hard to keep the stat sheet on presidential data.

David Harsanyi has a suggestion before CEOs have to obey Henry Waxman's demand that they provide his House committee with their email messages about health care reform.

Would it not be helpful for Congress to first provide taxpayers with any documents — including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by elected officials — regarding this historic health care reform bill?

Maybe if Congress applied a fraction of the transparency it demands from corporate America to its own dealings, it wouldn't have to rely on pompous bullies like Waxman to stifle free speech.

Apparently, taking different approaches to policy than Henry Waxman and Barack Obama now has to be justified under oath before the Congress.

Spreading the wealth around

Now that they've safely passed Obamacare, as Byron York reports, the Democrats have started to remove their mask and let us in on their real goal. And it is the same goal that Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber when campaigning in Ohio: wealth redistribution.

Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans."

In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." The new health care legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

Summing things up in the New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

Notice that they didn't tell us that this was the goal while they were trying to sell the bill to a skeptical public. But now that the bill is law, they let us in on their secret goal.

This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all."

The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few.

And yet that is the bedrock belief of some who supported the health care makeover. So it's no wonder that we're hearing about health care as the redistribution of income. Of course, we're only hearing it after the bill has passed.

And these Democrats like Baucus are so clueless that they think that this is something to brag about in public. I wonder how his redistributionist pride goes down in Montana.

What bureaucracies have wrought

This story about why New York didn't win the Race to the Top funds is just too funny. Apparently, the judges weren't impressed by the projected budget to furnish $200,000 to buy over-priced furniture for their offices.

The bizarre equipment wish list was so outrageous that three of the five judges who reviewed New York's "Race to the Top" application blasted it in written comments -- focusing on 24 "executive chairs" that cost $550 each, or more than $13,000 total.

State officials also sought 15 regular desks at $3,000 each, nine L-shaped desks at $1,800 a pop and 15 printers that each cost more than $1,500. "There are projected expenses (e.g. $550 for executive chairs) that call into question NY's judgment on responsible stewardship of funds," wrote one reviewer.

Another judge wrote, "These inclusions compromise the state's narrative as a careful steward of public funds."

The officials also wanted four computer stations at $2,500 each and two bookcases -- at a steep $3,000 each -- they said would go into new offices they'd create to support the educational initiatives.

New York's submission for reforming its education agenda -- produced by the state Education Department and the governor's office -- placed 15th out of 16 finalists in the national competition for $4.4 billion.

But there is a reason for their skewed estimates for office furniture. Blame rules that come down from Albany.

State education officials said they were hampered by Albany's purchasing rules, which forced them to order supplies from a vendor named CorCraft -- whose goods are made by New York prison inmates.

"It's not a state Education Department decision -- it's a state procurement issue," said Deputy Commissioner John King Jr. "We are mandated to purchase from CorCraft,"

This is what happens with bureaucracies. They become bound by all the red tape and rules that are produced for them by the politicians. Flexibility in spending flies out the window. I remember that, when I worked in the regular public schools, we could only buy school supplies from one dealer whose costs were way more expensive than just heading over to Staples. Then I think of the charter school where I teach. The classrooms are all furnished by left over or donated furniture from other schools. My room has tables and chairs from one of the local school's libraries. They've lasted, with some repairs, for ten years since that school got rid of them. When parents' offices get rid of their old office chairs or other furniture, we snap them up. When I needed more textbooks as the size of my classes expanded, I headed over to Amazon and ordered some used books for under a dollar apiece.

In New York, it seems that it would apparently even be against the rules to save money in that way and concentrate spending the money on where it was needed the most. They might have missed out on the RTTT funds, but what do you bet that this is how they've spent money on all their office furniture across the state? Local taxpayers might want to start demanding answers on how their school boards are spending money.

Sorry for no blogging yesterday. The April Fool's joke was on me - we woke up to find out that our hot water heater had burst and flooded our basement. Fun, fun, fun.