The Nov. 26 published Blog Watch batch
The blogs considered for inclusion

Note: I've proposed that a portion of Monday's extra letters space be confiscated in order to offer some more room for my review of what's happening in the blogosphere. Below is the batch that would have appeared Monday if I had been given the space.

How to lose the majority
drtaxsacto.blogspot.com

Yesterday, the incoming chair of the House Ways and Means Committee renewed his call for reinstitution of the draft. It is odd that Mr. Rangel would renew his call during the week that Milton Friedman died. But such is politics.

Rangel and others argue that the draft is a democratizing force. That is nonsense. Those of us who supported to creation of the All Voluntary Military (I worked for a Senator who was a key supporter of the concept) found that all of the promises of the volunteer force have been realized and none of the risks raised by the supporters of this form of involuntary servitude threw out have come true.

The draft at it was last practiced was called the Selective Service System whose leader was a general named Lewis B. Hershey. It accomplished none of that -- it was not selective, it did not perform a service and it was certainly not a system. It was run, as these kinds of bureaucracies are often run, with an indifference to anything but maintaining its own operations. Hershey was blind in one eye (somehow appropriate for his bureaucratic role) and the only person named a general who never served in a combat role -- although he served in the military for 62 years. How about that for a role model?

One of the canards raised about the draft is that a president would be loathe to enter a war knowing that he would be sending people who were involuntarily there. The evidence from Johnson's wanton efforts in Vietnam belie that "logic" but Rangel continues to press it.

Rangel's proposal would cost plenty. One estimate is in the range of $800,000,000,000. That assumes that all 18-21 year old males would participate in the process at some point and that some range of young women would also avail themselves of this "opportunity" and that the government would not reduce the pay offered to enlisted soldiers. Even if it is a quarter of that estimate, that is still a chunk of change.

If the democrats begin to push this notion, their majority will be short lived. There is no support for the position in the populace and there are a lot of people in my generation who remember the genuinely bizarre policies that the SSS created. There are few issues that would mobilize me as much as a serious attempt to reinstitute the draft.

Milton Friedman and Scandinavia
nagarjuna1953.blogspot.com

"I think his [Milton Friedman] belief in the superior efficiency of free markets to government as a means of resource allocation, though fruitful and largely correct, was embraced by him as an article of faith and not merely as a hypothesis. I think he considered it almost a personal affront that the Scandinavian nations, particularly Sweden, could achieve and maintain very high levels of economic output despite very high rates of taxation, an enormous public sector, and extensive wealth redistribution resulting in much greater economic equality than in the United States. I don't think his analytic apparatus could explain such an anomaly."

I wonder how Friedman would have explained Scandinavia. I wonder how anyone does who unwaveringly champions the free market, small government, and low taxation. If Posner's correct, Friedman couldn't explain it, and he felt bothered that he couldn't. I feel bothered that economists and politicians with Friedman's influence continue touting a system--ours--in which there's such a gross and unfair distribution of wealth and so much suffering among the young and not-so-young when nations such as Sweeden seem to point to a better way that combines the best of the free market with the best of big government to foster opportunities for the greatest degree of happiness for the greatest number of people.

Isn't this what a nation should primarly be about?

Personal park safety
opinionmill.com

George Allen has introduced a bill that would make it legal for visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons. ... Kurt Repenshek (Author of National Parks for Dummies and operator of National Parks Traveler) has a rational analysis on the opposition side. At the end of the day his conclusion is no guns, more funding.

Where Kurt provides the rational analysis, the New York Times editorial staff provides the irrational analysis and comes to the same conclusion using the standard NYT formula: create fear and blame George Bush:

"If Americans want to feel safer in their national parks, the proper solution is to increase park funding, which has decayed steadily since the Bush administration took office. … The concealed-weapon advocates are doing an excellent job of sounding terrified by 'lonely wilderness trails.' But make no mistake. Senator Allen’s bill would make no one safer. It can only endanger the public."

The truth is that some of us do take those lonely trails. It might be hard for a New Yorker to imagine, but not everybody tours Yosemite in the shuttle bus. Packing a sidearm in the wilderness is not exactly a new idea. What is new is the severity and frequency of crime in remote places. According to Jesse Jordan, an Olympic National Park Ranger "Park rangers are the most assaulted federal officers, urban police officers had a lot more crime to deal with, but we have less staff."

We should support and fund Rangers. But we should not suppress the right to bear arms, especially in areas where that right might need to be exercised for self survival.

Phony school reform
choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com

We have experienced over twenty years of corporate driven “school reform.” Usually the administrators in charge have adopted an accountability model and relied upon test scores as a primary measure of progress. The accountability model has been successfully promoted by business interests notably the Business Roundtable.

Administrators seeking change have focused on implementing a common curriculum. Given the short comings of measurement, they have focused on an easy to measure curriculum leading to the choice of reductionist and behaviorist curriculum such as Open Court. In math they have focused on the drill and drill approaches of Saxon Math.

School reform from these efforts has been largely confined to press releases. When you look at drop out rates, or national tests such as NAEP, there has been little substantive progress. ...

Lacking evidence for their change, this ideologically driven project also seeks to impose their (as of yet unproven) model on teacher preparation in the state. A new system of teacher assessment is being imposed on our teacher preparation institutions. Ironically the data driven form of school improvement does not have data to demonstrate its success.

The faculty are being told to revise their programs to significantly increase the amount of measurement and evaluation, perhaps at the cost of teaching time and practice in the schools....

So, we have an ideologically driven school reform system that has failed to demonstrate progress on its own terms (measured student achievement) being extended to an ideologically driven reform of teacher preparation without data to support its mandates. That is what presently passes for school reform in California.