Free Republic

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is on the East Coast meeting with housing experts to design the ideal standard house for all Americans. They are deciding what square footage, color, style, décor, appliances and landscaping should be mandated by the government. Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? But few people think that it’s ludicrous that she is doing something equally as ludicrous as the fictional opening paragraph. She’s meeting with left-leaning education experts to reform K-12 public education and establish a standard curriculum. Let me state it differently: From all of the different facts and views that can be taught in primary and...

Virtually every big-city newspaper in the country parrots press releases, studies and statistics from the government and special-interest groups, especially from their favorite group, the public education establishment, without questioning the validity of the information. Then newspapers wonder why they are losing intelligent readers to other media. It's not that intelligent readers have anything against parrots. They may even have them as pets and enjoy watching them at an aviary. But that doesn't mean that they want to get their news and information from them. Take the Arizona Republic. For years it has been parroting the public education establishment's claim...

My son is taking an algebra course this summer at the Catholic preparatory high school that he is entering as a freshman this year. It's also a political indoctrination course. Neither my son's excellent school nor his excellent math teacher is the source of the indoctrination. The source is the textbook, which is designed to do more than teach algebra. As I will show momentarily, it is also designed to convey politically-correct group-think. Because government schools have a near-monopoly over K-12 education, textbook publishers cater to their largest customer, the government. As a result, Catholic schools and other private schools...

What is a blatitude? It's a combination of blather and platitudes spouted by elitist central planners. For example, the following blatitude was written in an op-ed in the June 6, 2005 edition of the Arizona Republic by Richard Seline, CEO of New Economy Strategies: "All these efforts [at economic development] and many more like them suggest that Arizona is poised to catalyze a response to global innovation challenges." Let me catalyze a response to the above: Huh? Another blatitude: "Given the competitive landscape, accelerating the baseline performance of Arizona's assets and people is imperative." Well, I don't know about you,...

Are you smart enough to live in Arizona? To find out, answer the following five questions: 1. Who is at fault if your kids fail the AIMS test, which is a statewide test in Arizona that public school students have to pass in order to graduate? a) You and your kids. b) The government. c) Rich people. d) Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Enron and global warming. 2. What should be done about your kids failing? a) You should make them study more. b) They should get free tutors so that you can watch Oprah uninterrupted. c) They should get free breakfast and...

Listed below are 15 commonly-held myths about social, economic, health and environmental conditions in the United States, followed by facts that debunk the myths. The facts have been gleaned from the Pocket World in Figures 2005, published by the The Economist magazine. Myth # 1: The U.S. ranks low in human development. Fact: On the Human Development Index, which measures literacy, life expectancy and income levels, the U.S. ranks above Japan, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and 38 other countries. Myth #2: The U.S. is uncompetitive in global markets. Fact: The U.S. is...

KABUL (Reuters) - A man claiming to have kidnapped an Italian aid worker in Afghanistan told Reuters on Friday he had killed her, but a government spokesman said she was still alive. Clementina Cantoni, 32, who works for the CARE International aid agency, was snatched on Monday when four gunmen stopped her vehicle on a central Kabul street and bundled her into a white Toyota car. Cantoni's abduction raised fresh fears among Kabul's 2,000-strong foreign community of Iraq-style kidnappings by anti-government insurgents but officials said the kidnapper was Timoor Shah, the leader of a criminal gang. Shah, who has claimed...

A man claiming to have kidnapped an Italian aid worker in Afghanistan told media overnight he had killed her, but a government spokesman said she was still alive. Clementina Cantoni, 32, who works for the CARE International aid agency, was snatched this week when four gunmen stopped her vehicle on a central Kabul street and bundled her into a white Toyota car. Timoor Shah, who has claimed in several conversations with media to be holding Ms Cantoni, said he killed her after President Hamid Karzai's government refused to accept his demands. "We strangled her with a rope at nine...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has just announced that tire sensors will be required on vehicles beginning in 2008. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently issued a report showing that car ownership costs are the second highest household expense in the U.S., second only to housing costs and three times as much as medical costs. Maybe the two agencies should talk to each other. That way, the NHTSA would know how its regulations have increased the cost of car ownership over the years, one regulation at a time. The establishment media could help. Instead of reporting that the...

For years, the Propaganda Ministry of the government, government schools and left-liberal media outlets and think tanks have brainwashed Arizonans into believing that per-pupil spending is low in Arizona. Thanks to the Goldwater Institute, the Ministry's control of spending data has been ended. By going to the URL at the end of this article, you can get total spending figures for the state as a whole and for individual schools. District data will be added soon to the site. The average per-pupil spending in the state is $8,703 for K-3, $8,530 for grades 4-8, and $8,913 for high school. That...

The Sunday, January 16, 2005, edition of the Arizona Republic published what it called an "objective" report on how Arizona compares to other states. The report was written by the Morrison Institute for Public Plunder, located at Arizona State University. Oh, I got the name wrong? You say that the correct name is the Morrison Institute for Public Policy? I'm so embarrassed. My apologies to the staffers at the Institute. In my defense, the word "plunder" must have crept into my subconscious from years of reading Institute reports that advocated central planning, higher taxes, bigger government, and remaking Arizona and...

US Airways has announced a new pricing policy. Instead of letting customers know how much the airfare is for a flight, US Airways is going to start letting them know what the airline spends per seat. At a press conference to announce the new pricing, a US Airways spokesperson said, "Customers don't care about what they pay; they care about what it costs us to run this airline. The higher our per-seat costs, the more value our customers believe they are getting." Just kidding. The above is not a new pricing scheme by US Airways. It is an old scheme...

The Arizona Republic, which is a daily with the second-largest circulation in the Gannett empire next to USA Today, ran a long editorial on October 19 about the flu vaccine shortage. The title and subtitle were: "Bug in the system. Our stand: The shortage of flu vaccine reveals a yawning gap in health care." A telephone conversation between myself and the author of the editorial, an intelligent and personable member of the editorial board, reveals the yawning gap between many in the mainstream media and people like myself on the subjects of markets, economics, government and health care. It's a...

The government of the United States has become a government of unpatriotic gigolos. Congress and the President not only screw us out of our money while pretending to care about us, but they also commit one of the most unpatriotic acts possible: They brazenly violate the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, a document that embodies the very essence of the nation. Their actions are worse than spitting on the flag. At the same time, the political institution of the Supreme Court ignores the lawbreaking, government schools encourage it, and anyone who has the temerity to call it lawbreaking...

Now that the kiddies have returned to public school, here's a checklist that you can use to determine if they are being educated according to government standards: • Do they know that Sacagawea was on the Lewis and Clark expedition, but do not know that Thomas Jefferson was president at the time? • Do they know that the White man oppressed Native Americans, but don't know that Native Americans oppressed and enslaved each other? • Do they believe that FDR ended the Great Depression but don't know that he actually extended it through misguided central planning? • Do they know...

Last week, my wife and I drove 110 miles to Flagstaff, Arizona to escape the summertime furnace of Phoenix and to take our minds off of political issues, especially the meeting of plunderers and economic illiterates known as the Democratic National Convention, which will be followed by a meeting of plunderers and economic illiterates known as the Republican National Convention. Pulling into the hotel in the pines at 7,000 ft. elevation, our soaring spirits took a nosedive when we saw the marquis, where, emblazoned in large letters, was a welcome to plunderers and economic illiterates. As luck would have it,...

It is said that Social Security and Medicare are the third-rail of politics. If you dare mess with the entitlements, AARP will electrocute you on the third rail and then tell grandma and grandpa to drive the train back and forth over your body for fun. But there is another entitlement that is even more entrenched than Social Security and Medicare. If you have the temerity to even suggest that it is an entitlement, its beneficiaries will torture you before throwing you on the third rail. What entitlement am I referring to? Public education. And who are the people most...

In the event you missed it, last week's PBS show "Washington Week in Review" discussed the presidential campaign between John Kerry, George Bush, Ralph Nader and Thomas Jefferson. Here is a transcript of the segment: Gwen Ifill (Host): It's not surprising that John Kerry and George Bush are still running neck and neck, but the big news of the week is the huge drop in the polls for Libertarian candidate Thomas Jefferson. CBS is now projecting that he will get fewer votes than Ralph Nader. Michael Duffy (Time Magazine): I have never seen a candidate with such radical ideas and...

Why aren't Americans storming the castle and overthrowing the overlords who have consigned them and their offspring to lives of tax servitude? Are they wimps and socialists? They are neither. They are frogs. You may know that if a frog is put in hot water, it will jump out. But if it is put in a pot of cold water on a stove and the heat is slowly turned up, the frog will stay put and boil to death. The same is true for taxpayers. If government expenditures suddenly increased by 300%, taxpayers would grab their pitchforks, overthrow the House...

The June 8 edition of the Arizona Republic had a front-page story with this opening line: "More than 45,000 seniors and disabled Arizonans have saved $3.2 million on prescription drugs in the year since Gov. Janet Napolitano launched her program to help deal with expensive but necessary medication." In keeping with the standard journalism formula, the story had the obligatory quotes from someone with AIDS and from a single mom of three kids. It also printed quotes from leftists who think the program isn't rich enough, from a Retard (Republican embracing taxes and rampant dependency) and from a representative of...