Not a Bad Idea

From John Stossel:

Immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens have to pass a test. It’s not that hard a test. 92.4% of new immigrants pass on first try. The test includes simple questions like “Who was the first President?” and “How many justices are on the Supreme Court?”

But a new Goldwater Institute study finds that only 3.5% of surveyed public high school students could answer enough questions correctly to pass the citizenship test.

USA Today profiled the Goldwater study and suggested:

Why not make the 100-question citizenship test part of the high school curriculum, and passage a graduation requirement?(links in original)

It really is not a bad idea.

See, we have been told over and over by the education establishment that the purpose of a high school diploma is to prepare our young people to be effective, contributing members of society. I accept that as a good reason among others, for a high school diploma. But one of the "rights" that comes along with attaining the age of 18 in this country is the same right that immigrants looking to become naturalized citizens seek--the right to vote.

It seems that in order to graduate from high school, our young people should demonstrate a basic understanding of our history and political system. After all with rights come responsibilities, including the responsibility to know a little bit about the country of which you are a citizen.

"Powerful GM"

John Stossel talks about real power in the context of Government Motors.

He makes a good point.

I confess: I don’t write everything that I say on TV. I write almost everything, but when I anchor, another writer often does a first draft.

Tonight on 20/20, we report on GM. The writer suggested I begin: "it was once the most powerful company in the world…"

GM was indeed the most "profitable," or "biggest"—that I get. But powerful? Why do people think about business that way? GM has/had no armies with which it can invade other companies. It had no power for force anyone to work there. It couldn’t force anyone to buy GM cars.

Your average two-bit government bureaucrat has more "power." He can send people with guns to take your money (tax collection). He can lock you up, seize your property, tell you what you cannot do on your property, summon you to court, and so on. Government has the monopoly on power.

I think we all need to remember that.

When government, i.e. Obama and the Congressional Democrats, talks about big, bad companies, remember this: Government has the ability to take one of the biggest companies that has ever existed and rendering it a tax payer owned company in the blink of an eye. True, GM has a big role in their own government take over, but the government had the power to just sit on teh sidelines and let the company fail and you know what- it would have sucked, but it is the nature of companies to be born, live, and die--just like people, and unlike govnerments.

Cool: In So Many Ways

Teen becomes youngest African American female to complete flight across U.S.

Kimberly Anyadike took off from Compton 13 days ago with an adult safety pilot and Levi Thornhill, an 87-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. They flew to Newport News, Va., making about a dozen stops along the way.

Anyadike learned to fly a plane and helicopter when she was 12 with the Compton-based Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum, an after-school program that offers aviation lessons to at-risk youth and economically disadvantaged students. The organization owns the small plane.

The Case Against College Entitlements

Those libertarians are at it again, make a strong case based in logic. reason.tv - The Case Against College Entitlements. go Check it out.

This is a mind boggling stat: Four year colleges graduate just 53% of their students in six (6) years. No that is not a typo. When I was in college just 12, 13 years ago, we joked about a "five year plan." Six is getting ludicrous.

Of course, colleges don't want you to know that it takes six years to get that done.

Fabius Maximus: Government Intervention has softened blow of economic downturn

But it still doesn't make the scope of the federal reaction right or proper.Why has the worst recession since the 1930’s had such a mild effect on America? « Fabius Maximus

How Not to Generate an Economic Recovery

The Rangel Tax Plan. Apparently, our leaders in Congress have not learned their history:

Every detail isn't known, but late last week Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel disclosed that his draft bill would impose a "surtax" on individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $280,000 a year. This would hit job creators especially hard because more than six of every 10 who earn that much are small business owners, operators or investors, according to a 2007 Treasury study. That study also found that almost half of the income taxed at this highest rate is small business income from the more than 500,000 sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations whose owners pay the individual rate.

In addition, many more smaller business owners with lower profits would be hit by the Rangel plan's payroll tax surcharge. That surcharge would apply to all firms with 25 or more workers that don't offer health insurance to their employees, and it would amount to an astonishing eight percentage point fee above the current 15% payroll levy.

Here's the ugly income-tax math. First, Mr. Obama has promised to let the lower Bush tax rates expire after 2010. This would raise the top personal income tax rate to 39.6% from 35%, and the next rate to 36% from 33%. The Bush expiration would also phase out various tax deductions and exemptions, bringing the top marginal rate to as high as 41%.

Then add the Rangel Surtax of one percentage point, starting at $280,000 ($350,000 for couples), plus another percentage point at $400,000 ($500,000 for couples), rising to three points on more than $800,000 ($1 million) in 2011. But wait, there's more. The surcharge could rise by two more percentage points in 2013 if health-care costs are larger than advertised -- which is a near-certainty. Add all of this up and the top marginal tax rate would climb to 46%, which hasn't been seen in the U.S. since the Reagan tax reform of 1986 cut the top rate to 28% from 50%.

States have also been raising their income tax rates, so in California and New York City the top rate would be around 58%. The Tax Foundation reports that at least half of all states would have combined state-federal tax rates of more than 50%.

You don't generate an economic recovery by taxing the very people who generate jobs an income. If they are not a small business owner, the people with the most money invest in other companies that generate jobs and income.

Class warfare has never stimulated an economic recovery. There is a reason why small businesses are referred to as the engine that drives the American economy.

Democrats claim these tax increases on the rich won't do any economic harm. They should read the work of Christina Romer before she became chief White House economist. Ms. Romer and her husband, David Romer, a Berkeley economist, have published multiple studies on the impact of tax policy changes over the past 100 years. One of their findings is that "tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained and highly significant negative impact on output." In other words, tax hikes are an antistimulus.

Another implication of the Rangel plan is that America's successful small businesses would pay higher tax rates than the Fortune 500, and for that matter than most companies around the world. The corporate federal-state tax rate applied to General Electric and Google is about 39% in the U.S., and the business tax rate is about 25% in the OECD countries. So the U.S. would have close to the most punitive taxes on small business income anywhere on the globe.

snip

A new study by the Kaufman Foundation finds that small business entrepreneurs have led America out of its last seven post-World War II recessions. They also generate about two of every three new jobs during a recovery. The more the Obama Democrats reveal of their policies, the more it's clear that they prize income redistribution above all else, including job creation and economic growth.

Elsewhere, the WSJ notes that when you raise taxes on the rich, their reported income tends to decline. For proof, look what happened in Maryland (see also here. The same thing is happening on other places as well.

See, this article from Portland, OR, this one from the DC Metro area, or Ohio's plight, Tennessee.

I'm sorry, but the only rationale for increasing taxes in this economic climate is to redistribute a dwindling wealth.

ObamA Administration: Hope to Change Perceptions

And not doing a very good job at it.

President Obama’s approval rating has fallen six points in the past month, a new CBS News poll finds, amid growing skepticism about his handling of the economy and questions about the impact of the stimulus package.

The president’s current approval rating, which is 57 percent, is still relatively high. But it has fallen 11 points from its peak of 68 percent in April, and has also dropped since last month’s mark of 63 percent. His disapproval rating, meanwhile, has risen from 23 percent in April to 32 percent today.

That is CBS trying to put a decent spin on poll numbers that are in free fall. Yes 57 percent approval is far better than President Bush enjoyed in his second term, but Obama has fallen 11 points in just three months.

The fact is that as we move further and further from January 20, 2009, the hard it becomes for the Obama Administration to claim that the problems were started by Bush. President Obama's highly touted plans and stimulus package do not appear to be garnering any fans and the constant intrusion and government creep in to private enterprise must have a fair number of people getting nervous.

The flip side of the notion of "too big to fail" is that no company is so big that the government can't step in to correct matters as it sees fit. If the government can take over General Motors and their legion of lobbyists, lawyers and contributors, what is to stop the government from stepping in to take over some small business or worse, put that small business out of business.

Similarly, the pace of Obama's legislative agenda and push to pass legislation without some much as allowing Representatives to read it has made people nervous. While people may grumble about the inability of Congress to get anything done, I think a happy medium of deliberative action, with time for reflection and investigation, is much more palatable than the break neck speed of legislation that Obama has pursued.

Grant Wahl, "The Beckham Experiment"

Today is the release date of "The Beckham Experiment" the new book by Sport's Illustrated's Grant Wahl and the book could very well be the most important book about the current state of soccer in America. I personally can't wait to read the book, I am hoping that Amazon comes through and gets me the book today or tomorrow. This Is American Soccer's Adam Spangler has an interview with Wahl.

There has been a fair amount of press about Landon Donovan's comments and how Beckham considers them a personal affront (and they are), but this question from Spangler and answer from Wahl is actually the most interesting bit of back story on the book:

That speaks to my #1 question for you. Access. It appears you had tremendous access to players and some management. The candidness of your sources is unbelievable. Take me through how you negotiated those usually tepid waters for sports journalism as you went along.
With Beckham I had done two major stories about him for SI. One in 2003, kind of introducing him to the American audience, and then a cover story in 2007 for his arrival to Los Angeles. We had a good relationship based on the time we spent together. Both stories involved significant one-on-one interviews with me and him, about an hour each time; photo shoots in both cases. I didn’t know going in how much one-on-one access I was going to get with Beckham, but I knew he would do media availabilities before and after every game, which is more than he had ever done in Europe. But when I brought the idea of the book to Beckham’s people, even though we had always had a very good relationship, their stance was that David had done books before that were “by David Beckham, ghost written by somebody else” and that he got significant advances for those books—over a million dollars. The implication being, if I wanted to have special one-on-one access to David Beckham for this book itself, that was the sort of money that had to be paid. That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t angry about that, and I would not have accepted the book deal if I thought that was a possibility. I knew that Beckham’s voice would be throughout the book, and I would be able to ask him all sorts of questions because of the access before and after most games. So I wasn’t all that concerned to be honest because Beckham is not the most colorful source ever, and I don’t know how much I would have gained one-on-one.

But I did know that everyone else within the Galaxy, just because of my relationships that I developed over the last 12 years at SI, would be interested in sitting down with me throughout the reporting process, and that is what happened. It worked out really well in the end. Hypothetically, I guess if Beckham’s handlers wanted money they also wanted approval over what went into the book, and I don’t work that way. I’m a journalist. No past stories I’ve written about Beckham were subject to the approval of Beckham and his people, so the best way for me to put it is that this is neither an authorized chronicle or an unauthorized chronicle. It’s just a straight-up chronicle of what happened, good and bad, from the inside.

I think that the viewpoint of money for access to Beckham says a lot about brand Beckham. I don't know how much Beckham has a role in that "money for access" set up that seems to surround Beckham, but that Wahl refused to be a party to that situation speaks well of Wahl and the book itself.

I think that most interesting part of Wahl's book will be the actual collision of history and stature that permaeates the MLS. In 2007, the MLS still had a reserve division, where players were making just $12,500 a year, which is less than what Beckham made for a daily training session, and how they dealt with the press, the media, the entourage of a player who has made millions of dollar a year, on par with American basketball players.

Those stories open up that larger story of American soccer, and the realities of life in MLS for a player, team, franchise, and even the league. How different would this story be if those situations didn’t exist?
I think it would have taken out a big, interesting part of the story—this world’s colliding narrative. I found it fascinating. Going in I knew that would be one of Beckham’s biggest challenges to try and relate to teammates who were making such a microscopic fraction of his salary and his income and whose fame was minuscule, nonexistent really, compared to him. And yet a guy like Alan Gordon was going to play a lot and be relied upon to finish a lot of the passes that Beckham was giving him. That to me was a crucial part of the story. Alan Gordon to me is very symbolic of the MLS player. So many players in MLS, most of them American, make almost no money—Gordon made $30,000 for four years and only later got a bigger contract, which was still not guaranteed. But he kept performing and was asked to do a lot of things in front of crowds of 66,000 people in New York when he is getting paid $30,000 a year. He represents this huge section of MLS players who don’t get a lot of recognition and probably deserve a lot more.

I cannot wait to see and read the whole book.

Gooch to AC Milan

Chris Courtney of Letters from Vagabondia is reporting that U.S. center back Oguchi Onyewu has signed a three year deal with Italian powerhouse AC Milan. The U.S. international will be the first American to play in Serie A since Alexi Lalas played for Padova in 1994-1996. The biggest difference is that Onyewu will be playing for a Italian powerhouse at the San Siro, will be playing on a Champions's League team.

Given the age of the AC Milan starting 11 last year, just putting Gooch in the starting 11 will reduce the average age of the team. Gooch will also be playing against some of the top talent in the world and that will only make him better.

Congrats to Gooch.