What are California’s School Children Learning?
As I was driving to the Capitol in Sacramento from my home in Folsom the other morning, I heard yet another radio commercial from the Education Coalition. Now if you go their website you will see that it is a collection of unions and associations who have a vested interest in education funding and not necessarily for the benefit of the kids, although that is their stated goal.
For my money they are all looking for more funding from the Legislature to maintain their stranglehold on how and what California’s school kids are learning. And judging by the product they are pushing out into society we should all demand our money back.
In their radio ad they use the old arguments of classroom size and cuts to art and music programs. I’m all for arts and music and smaller classes, but what the hell else are they learning? Can they count and do arithmetic at grade level without a calculator? Can they write a cogent essay? Can they spell without Microsoft Spellcheck? And most importantly, have they learned the most basic thing that a well rounded education should provide—the ability to think for themselves.
Fire and Taxes
Fires roared out of control across California. Pictures of heroic firefighters battling the blazes appeared on the nightly news and in the newspapers. As it so happened, the fires occurred just a week prior to Californians voting on a measure to raise the state sales tax a half-cent, the revenues to be distributed to local governments for public safety purposes.
This occurred in 1993. In a special election called by Governor Pete Wilson, the voters considered the fate of Proposition 172. The measure was little noticed by the voters until the firestorms hit. A campaign ad in support of the measure was hastily thrown together showing the firefighters standing against the blazes. The tax measure passed with 58% of the vote.
Today as thousands of fires sweep across Northern and Southern California the discussion of fires and taxes is intertwined again. The question is: Will the fires of 2008 lead to tax increases?
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed what he terms a fee on property insurance to be set aside for fire protection. The governor’s proposal would charge policyholders a 1.4 percent surcharge in high fire zones and a .75 percent surcharge in other areas of the state. The fee would raise about $125 million.
HJTA’s Coupal on Legislative Spending Limits
Check out this piece that ran over the weekend at Flashreport, a commentary by Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association calling for Legislative spending limits to help deal with Sacramento’s seemingly continual budgeting problems.