A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling... Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

...The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union.

"We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting."

Update... Reader Dave Duval replies:

Since when in the past 20 years (or more?...especially in the Granola State) have the teachers unions taught "good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation?" Those are 3 areas where home schoolers would beat credentialed teachers every time.

1) Wallpaper for low-income homes. Why spend good money on paint or wallpaper, when you can just slap a recurring portrait of America's first president on the wall? It's both cheap and patriotic!

2) Wheelbarrow testing device. No doubt the manufacturers of wheelbarrows test their products using some relatively weighty ballast. What better use for the dollar, then, to be bundled up in bricks and carted around a la its Weimar ancestor?

3) As a replacement for the Zim dollar. Can't get your hands on any Zimbabwean dollars? Never fear, the US will print up a batch of Yankee dollars for ya. Pretty soon, folks won't be able to tell the difference.

4) T.P. A pack of Charmin costs $5.20. A dollar costs $1.00. You do the math!

5) As a way of supporting a car whose tires have been stolen. Why waste good money on breeze blocks when you can just use blocks of Benjamins instead?

...the Belgian central bank still employs more than 2,000 people, even though it has not had a currency to oversee since 1999, when Belgium joined the euro.

The senator, a medical doctor who used to be a big wheel with Médecins Sans Frontières, notes that the survival instinct of Belgian civil servants is especially impressive when you compare the National Bank of Belgium's headcount with that of central banks which still have currencies to attend to. Belgium employs twice as many central bankers as Britain, he reports, and four times as many as Sweden.

My DC-insider friend "Mick Danger" says, "I can't validate that this speech, attributed to Robin Williams -- seen here wearing a t-shirt that says 'I love New York' in Arabic -- is real, but it's bouncing around Washington as if it is. If true, it shows that even a Hollywood liberal has an "inner McCain."

I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's one plan.

1) The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good 'ole' boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany , South Korea , the Middle East , and the Philippines They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in.. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

5) No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH..learn it...or LEAVE...Now, isn't that a winner of a plan?

(11) "The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, "you want a piece of me?"

The Williams speech is false. It's circulated around here for years. It figures D.C. is just now getting it; a 5-year disconnect to the rest of America seems about par. And when they do get information it's not right to begin with...

As [Xavier] Gabaix and [Augustin] Landier write in a new Quarterly Journal of Economics article, the sixfold increase in American CEO pay from 1980 to 2003 is almost wholly explained by the roughly sixfold increase in market capitalization of big U.S. companies over the same period. (Asset values have increased sixfold because both corporate earnings and the price-to-earnings ratio investors are willing to tolerate have increased by factors of 2.5.) The trend lines of market capitalization and executive payouts rose and dipped in near-perfect tandem.

According to Gabaix and Landier’s model, the talent differences among CEOs are generally minor. For example, if a given firm substituted the most talented CEO for the 250th most talented CEO, its market capitalization would only increase by 0.016 percent. But for a $500 billion company like ExxonMobil, 0.016 percent is equivalent to some $80 million. In other words, as companies get bigger, a talented CEO can have a greater impact. Therefore, large companies bid up prices across the board for the small number of men and women deemed capable of managing them. The reason CEO pay in other countries (such as Germany) tends to be lower is that the “big” companies abroad are generally smaller than the big companies in America. We do not yet have a global market for CEO talent.

Should I sell my stocks? If, like most Americans, you're a long-term investor, the answer is no. Equity returns over five-, 10-, or 20-year spans outperform most other investments. Donald Luskin of Trend Macrolytics notes that average annual returns in the S&P 500 have been almost identical during both expansions and recessions. Plus, bailing out after the market has already dropped this far means you're likely to take bigger losses. In short, don't panic.

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:56 AM | link  

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

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