Shame on you, School Boards Association

email | Craig J. Cantoni

[hsmomx3]

One of the most powerful and insidious lobbying groups in the nation is the K-12 public education establishment, which feeds on the concerns of parents about their children, paints state legislators into a corner by threatening to portray them as not caring about children, and bombards the mainstream media with folderol about the need to increase public education spending -- for the children, of course.

Since you won't read an expose in your local newspaper about the deviousness and power of the education lobby and how it is joined at the hip with leftist organizations, this article in intended to give you a peek into how it operates and thinks -- and stinks.

I have obtained a letter to Arizona legislators written by a lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, a letter that is being touted by a money-grubbing public school parent group in Scottsdale, Arizona. The members of the parent group are wealthy enough to pay for their kids' education out of their own pockets instead of mooching off of taxpayers, but their selfishness and greed will never be revealed by mainstream reporters, who swallow their "It's for the children" rhetoric.

The parent group and the School Boards Association are in a lather over a bill in the Arizona legislature known by the acronym TABOR. What will the bill do? Will it reduce education spending, increase class size, cut teacher pay, or, heaven help us, end the government's monopoly over K-12 classroom thought? No, it will not do any of these things. It simply says that the state's budget cannot increase more than inflation and population growth. Mind you, the bill refers to the state's budget, not the state's education budget or school district spending.

Because Colorado has a similar law, it was one of the few states that did not engage in a spending frenzy over the last decade and end up with a huge budget shortfall when the economy turned south. As such, unlike other states, it does not have to raise taxes on families with children -- see, I can use the word, too -- to close the deficit.

The letter of the School Boards Association lobbyist is reprinted in its entirety following this article, but some parts of it warrant special attention here. (Warning: Be careful of reading the letter in its entirety, as it will give you a headache with its poor grammar, bizarre numbering of paragraphs, profound ignorance of economics and history, and overall fallacious thinking.)

The letter quotes the Bell Policy Center. What is the Bell Policy Center? It is a left-liberal advocacy organization in Colorado that claims to be progressive and not left-liberal, although its web site (www.thebell.org) proves otherwise with its belief in statism. For example, the web site says:

"Expanded opportunity in America often has been stimulated or supported by government action - the Emancipation Proclamation, the Homestead Act, universal education, rural electrification, Social Security, the GI Bill, the Civil Rights Act and more. With each step, government used its authority and resources to sweep away barriers and throw open new gateways to opportunity for millions - gateways that might never have been opened otherwise."

Being a statist organization, the Bell Policy Center fails to give the other side of the story. It fails to explain that bad things -- really bad things, huge bad things -- happen when governments exceed or fail to perform their primary mission of protecting the lives, property and liberty of citizens. For example, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act would not have been necessary if the government had performed its mission with respect to blacks in the first place. And the Homestead Act gave away land that belonged to Native Americans.

Although this is not the place to make it, a compelling case can be made that universal education through government coercion has done more harm than good, and that the government monopoly on K-12 classroom thought is a threat to liberty and keeps students from getting a liberal eduction in the classical sense of the word. You won't hear that perspective from the Bell Policy Center, from the School Boards Association, and from government teachers in government schools.

The Bell Policy Center says that "Every family should have access to health services." That is code talk for nationalized health care. Of course, the problems with the American health care system were caused by the government killing a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago -- that is, by the government exceeding its primary mission. The Center thinks that the way to fix the problems caused by the government exceeding its mission is for the government to exceed its mission.

To be intellectually consistent, which is foreign to left-liberal groups, the Center would have to advocate the nationalization of such other necessities of life as food, housing, clothing and transportation. If it believes in government-provided health care, then to be intellectually consistent, it would have to say that for every family to have food, housing, clothing and transportation, all Americans should be forced to get their food at government commissaries, to live in public housing, to wear government uniforms and to take public transit.

The Center also does not give the other side of the story about Social Security. It does not say that seniors, the wealthiest socioeconomic group in America, are sending their retirement bills to their children and grandchildren. (Hey, using the word "children" is fun.) Nor does it talk about the single parent who earns $70 a day at the local gas mart and has $10 taken by the government to pay the Social Security and Medicare of the retiree who pulls up to the gas mart and puts $25 worth of gas in the tank of his $35,000 SUV.

Enough about the Bell Policy Center. Let's return to the letter by the School Board Association lobbyist.

The lobbyist says that the bill on limiting increases in state spending to increases in inflation and population growth would be akin to not letting families find more work to increase their income. Ouch, that one makes my hair hurt. I think that the lobbyist is saying that there is no difference between the government taking money from people and people earning money for themselves and their children.

But the statement that made my teeth hurt in addition to making my hair hurt was this:

"Take India, in which overpopulation severely handicaps the economy and about a quarter of the population is too poor to be able to afford an adequate diet (2002 CIA World Factbook). India experienced an average annual population growth of 1.51% in 2002; however, its average annual growth rate in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was a mere 0.65%. In India, and in many other third world countries, TABOR would likely lead to growth in government that matched or more likely exceeds growth in the private sector."

Yikes! First, the growth numbers are wrong. India's growth rate has been averaging over 6 percent since 2000, and India has reduced poverty by about 10 percentage points.

Second, India has been an economic basket case until recent times due to Nehru setting it on a course of socialism over a half-century ago, a course that is now slowly being reversed. In the latest Index of Economic Freedom, India ranks a lowly 121 out of 155 nations. Another former British colony, Hong Kong, ranks number one. Accordingly, Hong Kong has a per-capita income of better than $24,000 while India's is less than $3,000.

The United States ranks tenth on the Index of Economic Freedom, an embarrassingly low ranking for the supposed world leader in liberty. The economic policies advocated by the School Boards Association and the Bell Policy Center will result in the U.S. moving further down the index. But, hey, it's for the children.

Speaking of children -- for the last time, I promise -- school boards control what children are taught in government schools. Given the leftist bias and ignorance of economics and history displayed by the School Boards Association, that is a frightening thought. __________

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

LETTER FROM LOBBYIST

HCR 2032 would limit the rate of growth of state expenditures to population and inflation. This is a very detrimental bill for schools. Below is the information sent out to all House members. Please contact your House legislators and urge them to vote no on HCR 2032. The House goes to the floor at 1 p.m.

THE ARIZONA SCHOOL BOARDS ASSOCIATION URGES YOU TO VOTE NO ON HCR 2032 (TAXPAYER BILL OF RIGHTS). THE DEFEAT OF THIS BILL IS ONE OF ASBA'S TOP FOUR PRIORITIES THIS LEGISLATIVE SESSION.

1. Supporters say that the taxpayer's bill of rights state that government should budget more like a family and live within its means; however, isn't it true that TABOR does not allow state government any of the financial flexibilities that families enjoy?

1. The Bell Policy Center has looked at Colorado's TABOR system and found that "A family budget, by necessity, is shaped by a mixture of immediate needs, future plans and changing priorities ... If TABOR applied to families, those having trouble making ends meet would not be allowed to find more work to increase income - by taking a second job, perhaps, or working overtime. If TABOR applied to families, workers would have to refuse merit raises above inflation and might even have to give back any bonuses." The Bell (TABOR & Government), "Fiscal Policy Overview"

2. Taxing and spending limits such as TABOR restrict government flexibility, making it nearly impossible for policymakers to adjust to the changing needs of the citizenry. This sort of excessive restriction makes fiscal responsibility virtually impossible to achieve.

2. A broad rule such as TABOR ignores particular pressures on government service providers that are NOT reflected in aggregate population or price data. For example, suppose that a government serves a disproportionately large segment of the population that is aging, low-income, or unhealthy. Or, suppose that the government serves a disproportionately large number of K-12 children or large numbers of children that are English Learners. Arizona fits both of these examples. Arguably, it may cost more to provide services to these populations than to an average citizen, but a broad rule like TABOR, applied across the board, simply ignores such realities.

3. A TABOR rule excludes government from growing to match overall economic growth. In fact, a TABOR rule would mean that the government sector actually would shrink rapidly (compared to the size of the overall economy) in any state that experienced healthy economic growth.

3. While TABOR rules include the effects of inflation, they include only a portion of "real" growth, that attributable to an expanding population, not that attributable to increasing productivity. As economies grow in real productivity (above the rate of inflation and population growth), the standards of living for people in the economy grow as well, not because of population growth but because of productivity growth. In short, healthy economies (those with rising standards of living) exhibit real growth that far outstrips the growth rates of their populations.

4. To emphasize this point, it is best to look at one of the few areas where a TABOR rule would NOT cripple the public sector. Take India, in which "overpopulation severely handicaps the economy and about a quarter of the population is too poor to be able to afford an adequate diet (2002 CIA World Factbook). India experienced an average annual population growth of 1.51% in 2002; however, its average annual growth rate in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was a mere 0.65%. In India, and in many other third world countries, TABOR would likely lead to growth in government that matched or more likely exceeds growth in the private sector.

THANK YOU FOR VOTING NO ON HCR 2032

Janice Palmer

Associate Director of Governmental Relations & Public Affairs

Arizona School Boards Association

2100 N. Central Avenue, Suite 200

Phoenix, AZ 85004

Phone: 602-254-1100, ext. 114

Fax: 602-254-1177

[Theodore R.]

Mark Twain said it best: "For starters, God created idiots. Then he created school boards."