The biggest ripoff going is textbooks for K-12 and, even worse, college. I know some college kids who spend way more than $1,000 a year for required textbooks for their college classes.

Usually the texts are sub-par regurgitations of P.C. claptrap. And the professors who write the texts “update” them every couple of years, so you can’t buy a used copy.

Enter Apple.

According to Ars Technica, “Apple announced what it’s calling ‘iBooks 2′ during its media event in New York on Thursday, a textbook software program that allows textbook-makers and instructors to create rich, interactive teaching media for the iPad. As we first reported earlier this week, the announcement is akin to ‘GarageBand for e-books,’ giving authors access to easy-to-use tools on the computer in order to create multimedia content for the iPad.”

Steve Jobs lives!

Apple says the price will be no more than $14.99 for high-school books. It’s not clear what could be charged for college texts. But it’s unlikely anyone would be dumb enough to charge the $100 or more kids get stuck with nowadays.

This also will sharply cut costs for private, parochial and home schools.

And instead of kids schlepping around heavy textbooks, they can sprint carrying their iPads, weight 1.34 lbs.

Interactive

The new iBooks also will be interactive. So instead of just reading about the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s, students could read the text, then watch pictures of rockets taking off, such as the Apollo 11 launching; or listen to JFK’s moon shot speech.

Better yet, kids also will be able to download critiques of their textbooks. Imagine taking a sociology class and getting stuck with a textbook laden with the usual post-modern, deconstructionist, anti-Western, Marxist, anti-capitalist rubbish. But on your iPad, right next to the official text, is snarky commentary from some other student that you uploaded.

The monopoly on students’ thoughts has been broken. The cultural Marxist totalitarian Berlin Wall inside kids’ minds has been torn down.

How appropriate that, on the same day Apple announced this great new tool of liberation, Reuters reported, “Apple Inc’s quarterly results blew past Wall Street’s expectations as U.S. consumers snapped up near-record numbers of iPhones and iPads, sending its shares up 8 percent.”

The truth shall make you free. In color and with a soundtrack. With your iBooks 2.

Jan. 24, 2012

Food fight!

I love it when kids rebel against the government schools. Reported CBS Los Angeles: “The revamped school lunches at Los Angeles Unified School District have won awards, commending them for improving the menu at the second largest school district in the nation. Too bad the students don’t agree.

“Rejecting healthful alternatives like vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles, students are throwing them in the trash by the thousands, bringing junk food from home and buying instant noodles and other decidedly unhealthy fare from the ‘black markets’ that have begun to thrive at campuses across the district, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

If the food smugglers get caught they really would have a “Twinkie Defense.”

More: “The kerfluffle led to LAUSD’s decision to change the menu in favor of healthier options. The district decided to do away with chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk.

“Now, the Times reports cartons of plain milk are being thrown away en masse, unopened, along with uneaten entrees. Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students, who are ditching lunch and are suffering from hunger-related ailments.”

One problem is that it’s much disputed what’s a “healthy” lunch for kids. The schools push the federal government’s vegetable/carb-heavy Food Pyramid.

But what about the low-carb/paleo/Atkins diets that emphasize meat, eggs and cheese? What about kids with Celiac disease, who can’t have gluten (in bread, pasta, etc.)?

Food Diversity?

Usually, the LAUSD is ultra-politically correct when it comes to ethnic diversity. Its Web site boasts: “The Office of Human Relations, Diversity & Equity is committed to fostering a safe and respectful District, school and community culture where the seeds of peace and justice are sown so that all students and staff can lead safe, purposeful and academically fruitful lives.”

The district has identified 92 different languages spoken in the homes of its students, a rough approximation of ethnic background. Why then does it push only one food menu? Shouldn’t it have 92 menus, with the food adjusted to what the kids chow down at home from Mom?

As usual, the government doesn’t like dissonance, even in a system that prepares 650,000 lunches a day. It can’t accept that there can be conflicting, unreconcilable explanations for something. It can’t get beyond the lobbyists, such as the powerful grain and processed food companies that push the “healthy” food on kids.

The LAUSD has responded the only way it knows how: “The complaints have been heard and LAUSD is planning changes to the menu, the Times reports. Burgers and (healthy) pizza are coming back, and dishes like quinoa salads and brown rice cutlets are out.”

Let’s hope this food rebellion turns bigger and overturns the whole rotten government schools system. The kids hate the system, so why make them stay?

Abolish the government schools. Kids who want to study then will do so with enthusiasm, in private schools. Those that don’t can work. But better than the government schools would be to unleash the kids to run wild in the streets.

Jan. 21, 2012

To avoid bankruptcy, any sensible business or family begins selling things: cars, TVs, computers, office furniture, etc. Otherwise, the stuff might be sold anyway at a bankruptcy auction.

Not California. The state owns billions of dollars of property it could sell, but doesn’t.

Here’s something else it could sell: University football teams. The Wall Street Journal lists the estimated value of America’s top university and college football teams. These teams, although supposedly non-profit, are worth as much as professional teams. They make tens of millions on lucrative TV and memorabilia contracts.

One advantage they have is low labor costs. The “scholars” are paid almost nothing to play for a couple of years. Only a handful will go on to glory and multi-million-dollar contracts in the NFL.

It’s a ripoff and a bad example for all students.

The most lucrative teams all are back East:

Texas: $805 million
Florida: $630 million
Michigan: $619 million
Notre Dame: $581 million
Georgia: $565

In the Golden State, the school racking up the most gold is USC at $302. But it’s a private school (although getting a lot of tax money).

For the schools owned by the California government, here are the numbers:

California: $135 million
UCLA: $123 million
San Diego State: $47 million
San Jose State: $26 million

Total:  $331 million.

That’s not chump change in these times of tight budgets.

Sell the teams to the highest bidder and use the money to reduce the state budget deficit.

The teams still could be associated with their respective universities. But they would be run as private corporations.

What if the NCAA doesn’t like it? They might object, but I doubt if they would take action to prevent the sales.

The NCAA is, essentially, a monopoly of mostly government schools; with the “private” schools also receiving tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers. A couple of hints about anti-trust inquiries by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein should do the trick. State Attorney General Kamal Harris could make similar inquiries.

If that idea gets thrown for a loss, then how about an investigation by California Labor and Workforce Development Agency of the slave status of players who could get millions for their services getting paid nothing but room, board and tuition?

The investigation would include not just California teams, but any teams, including those from other states, what have played in California the past decade.

It’s late in the budget game and the state needs to switch to a two-minute drill.

Jan. 12, 2012

Given that California is the global epicenter of the digital revolution, you would think our schools would be promoting every type of digital learing.

But they’re not.

Lance Izumi is our colleague at the Pacific Research Institute, CalWatchDog.com’s parent think tank. He’s been a source of mine on education for about 20 years. Nobody knows the subject better.

He’s just produced a video that details how California, and many other states, remain stuck in 1930s pedagogy. No wonder test scores here remain abysmal.

Lance wrote in National Review a piece describing his work. He wrote of California:

“Under California law, students can enroll in a virtual charter school only if they live in a county that is contiguous to the county in which the school is chartered. Policymakers are essentially saying that the Internet somehow changes at the county line and therefore instruction is diminished when it’s delivered to students residing in a non-contiguous county.

“California’s “contiguous counties” rule is a prime example of how the law has not kept up with technology.”

Even worse than denying kids these vital new technologies is that the people running this system have no idea what the Internet is, and how it works.

Here’s Lance’s video:

Dec. 14, 2011

“About 27,300 freshmen in the 2010 entering class of about 42,700 needed remedial work in math, English or both,” an Oakland Tribune story reported about CSU students.

How is it possible that 27,000 students are even accepted into the Cal State University system with remedial math and English skills?

The admissions chart on the CSU website clearly shows that students with grade point averages below 2.0 are not eligible, and students with low GPA’s must score fairly well on the SAT and ACT tests.

So how do the remedial students get in?

On the GPA eligibility index, the CSU website states, “Neither ACT nor SAT writing scores are included in the calculation of the CSU Eligibility Index.” Student applicants are not required to submit a written essay demonstrating their literacy.

And here is why – the English and math remediation courses are non-credit. Students must still pay a great deal of money to attend university, but do not receive credits for taking remedial English and math. The CSU schools are accepting thousands of ill-prepared students, and then booting them out when they fail to pass remedial math and English courses.

These students should be sent to Community College first. And really, they shouldn’t even have graduated high school if they could not pass grade-level math and English.

When I attended college, anyone who didn’t pass the English Composition test had to take bonehead English. There was a stigma attached to taking the class, and most students worked diligently to pass the course.

At Cal State East Bay, 73 percent of this year’s freshmen were remedial in math, and 60 percent were remedial in English, reported Matt Krupnick with the Contra Costa Times.

Yet some college officials insist that the numbers of students who have to take remedial courses has been going down. Are the numbers really going down, or have schools just lowered the requirements?

According to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, “in 1996, CSU set a goal to reduce the percentage of unprepared freshmen to 10 percent in math and English by 2007. That goal was not met, and CSU has now implemented its Early Assessment Program to improve student preparation.”

While the LAO found that college unpreparedness has decreased slightly, 85 percent of all community college students have remediation needs. Since Community Colleges must, according to state law, accept every applicant, I am not sure how record numbers of students enrolled in California’s Community Colleges has led to a decrease in college preparedness.

These numbers do not speak well for California’s state-run public schools, and why school choice and Charter schools make more sense.

The focus by the Legislature has been growth and expansion of California’s college and university systems, and access to education instead of quality. In the ensuing years, public education in California has been marginalized, as the students have been dumbed-down by ”a rising tide of mediocrity,” a warning educators received several decades ago from a presidential commission report on education.

More has become less in public education.

DEC. 12, 2011

It’s open season on California taxpayers.

Gov. Jerry Brown is painting bull’s eyes on the backs of the middle class. He wants to increase taxes $7 billion, putting it on the November 2012 ballot. It’s supposed to help close an expected deficit of $13 billion.

The tax increase would have two parts: First, a half-cent sales-tax increase. That’s really going to slam the middle class. Need to buy a $20,000 car for your family just to get to work and to take your kids to the soccer game? It’ll cost you another $100. Thats in addition to the $1,600 you’re already paying in sales taxes. Plus gas taxes, sales taxes on the gas, and road tolls.

Maybe you should just skip that car and wait for Gov. Jerry to build his High-Speed Rail.

The second tax increase would be an additional 1 percentage point increase on the state’s exceedingly, filthy-rich taxpayers, defined as those with income tax for single-filers making $250,000 or more.

Maybe Gov. Jerry doesn’t realize it, insulated as he is from what’s really going on, but $250,000 in California actually puts you in the middle class. Certainly, the high-end of the middle-class. But the middle-class just the same.

Due to the state’s absurd regulations on housing construction, plus the massive tax gougings, California is so expensive that $250,000 goes as fare here as about $60,000 does in Michigan. Think I’m kidding? Decent houses in the nice city I grew up in, Wayne, Mich.,  go for about $50,000. OK, you can’t drive to the Pacific Ocean and surf in February. You can’t even surf on the lakes, because they’re frozen over.

But the point is that, in Michigan, you can live comfortably and raise a family making a lot less than you can in California.

Will Gov. Jerry be able to impose his tax increase? It’ll be hard. But he’s designed it to use the old Democratic “Appeal to Envy” campaign, hoping also to get a boost from the Occupy movement. You can see the TV ads now: “Rich people are plundering California. Let’s gouge them to fund our wonderful state schools, police and fire. And we want to assure you, dear voter, that the money won’t just get sucked into the pension system that’s $500 billion in the red — we really, really assure you of that; government never would lie to you, would it?”

OK, so they wouldn’t include that last sentence.

The last tax increase voters approved in California was Proposition 63, back in 2004. It imposed a new, 1 percentage point tax increase on those making more than $1 million a year to fund mental health programs. And it was another example of the insanity of “ballot-box budgeting” in which special interests force taxpayers to fund their pet projects — at the expense of the general fund. Thereby depleted, the general fund then doesn’t have enough money for everything else, and a bead again is taken on the backs of the middle class.

Other tax increases likely will be on the November ballot, including the reform of state budgeting, with a $10 billion tax increase thrown in, as part of the plan from the Think Long group of the rich and famous.

And the California Federation of Teachers seeks a “millionaire’s tax” on anyone making more than $500,000 a year. Yes, the CTA actually says it wants to “Tax Millionaires,” yet defines them as those making $500,000 or more a year.

So those teaching math to our kids need a remedial math class. Maybe that’s why state budget and pension numbers never add up.

– Dec. 1, 2011

Sometimes polls make sense; sometimes they don’t. Almost a year from the November 2012 election, polls on what people think of tax increases don’t make sense.

That’s because people aren’t focusing on a specific tax increase. And they aren’t subjected to the blizzard of ads, pro and con, that goes with any controversial initiative.

So the latest poll, by Children Now, is worthless. It shows people would support a tax increase if it’s tied to education reform.

For one thing, after decades of reform, why are schools still so crummy? And why are schools in other states that get less money, such as Utah, doing so much better?

Would the new tax really go to schools — or to the pensions of retired schoolteachers and administrators? Even an initiative that “guarantees” that the money goes only to schools, still could  send money to pensions; because other areas already funded could be cut, and that money shifted to pensions. Money is fungible.

We also don’t know what the election climate will be in November 2012. President Obama won by more than 3 million votes in California in 2008. He’ll win again, but probably not by that big a margin. The enthusiasm for  him is gone. And the types of voters that are enthusiastic for Obama are the types who favor tax increases.

Another factor is the economy. If it’s performing as badly as it is now, voters may not want to slam business and jobs creation further by boosting taxes on businesses and jobs.

Finally, although voters tend to like their local schools, they don’t think much of the statewide system. So while they might vote for local school bonds, and the taxes to pay for them, they’re more reluctant to vote for taxes that would go to the schools they dislike in other districts.

None of this will preclude several tax-increase initiatives from being plopped before voters. Hope springs eternal among the Government Class of gouging taxpayers even more.

– Nov. 30, 2011

The University of California’s motto is: Fiat lux — Let there be light, from Genesis.

It ought to be: Fiat ripoff  — Let there be a ripoff.

Despite massive tuition hikes and the ongoing national and state recession, yesterday U.C. Regents boosted the salaries of top administrators. Reports The Bay Citizen:

Before they left the small room, the regents voted unanimously to ask the state to increase the university’s funding for the 2012-13 fiscal year to $2.7 billion from $2.3 billion.

The regents also approved salary raises for 10 administrators and managers, including a 9.9 percent increase for Meredith Michaels, vice chancellor of planning and budget at UC Irvine, whose annual salary will increase to $247,275 from $225,000.

Six campus attorneys also received salary increases. The largest increase, 21.9 percent, went to Steven A. Drown, chief campus counsel and associate general counsel at UC Davis. His yearly salary will rise to $250,000 from $205,045.

Mark G. Yudof, the university system president and a regent, said the raises were necessary to attract and retain talented employees.

Is he kidding? There are so many lawyers in California, if you throw a frisbee off a building, chances are it will float down on top of the head of a lawyer. Drown’s pay hike alone will be 22 pecent.

But Yudoff himself is a law professor, so he’s promoting the good of the guild.

As to the other administrators, there’s no way you couldn’t find better people for less. With all the corporate downsizing, there are scores of top-level executives that could bring a private-sector drive and flair to UC — at bargain-basement prices.

And what’s so great about UC anyway? Sure, the hard science, math and technical departments are world-class. But the humanities departments are mostly P.C., cultural Marxist, anti-intellectual brainwashing. With a price tag so high students commonly graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

These massive salary hikes will be paid for, naturally, by all the tax hikes being promoted by Gov. Jerry Brown, the Democrats who monopolize the Legislature and the government-worker unions that run Brown and the Legislature.

While millions of Californians suffer unemployment and jobs are being destroyed by high taxes, the tax increase would just go to line the pockets of these academic flim-flam artists.

Nov. 29, 2011

A California Dream Act bill proposed by the Stanford Associated Students of Stanford University, recently failed to pass the Graduate Student Council after passing the Undergraduate Senate unanimously.

The Stanford Daily reported that despite the support the bill had with the director of Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, students expressed concerns about illegal immigrants’ employability, and access to public funds.

“People who are here illegally will have access to state funds, and people who are here legally will not have access to the funds–that doesn’t sound right,” Manish Choudhary said. “And [students] will not be able to find jobs because they do not have the legal right to work.” Choudhary, a second-year engineering graduate student and public relations and communications director for the GSC, said the vote was difficult. “But when you make a law, [illegal aliens] should not get an advantage.”

This advantage provided to illegal aliens would be instead of international students, who do not receive financial aid from public funds, the Stanford Daily reported.

The Stanford Dream Act bill author, ASSU Senator Brianna Pang appeared unhappy with the vote.“I can’t really say much. I was upset. But they voted, and they have every right to vote.”

Pang explained just how the system works today. “With most Stanford students, they get private financial aid from Stanford anyway. But the passage can also set the tone for the overall national conversation about the national Dream Act,” Pang said.

Read the story here, and about the Stanford Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council here.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd is protesting against the high pay of the top 1 percent in income in America. They say they’re part of the “99%ers” — all the working people who keep the country going.

Our friend Larry Sand points out that California’s government worker unions, especially the teachers’ unions, are joining the bandwagon, claiming to represent the 99 percent. He writes:

It’s almost Halloween and the California Teachers Association, a rich and powerful outfit, is in costume as one of the “99%ers” – protesters who claim to be have-nots.

A couple of weeks ago United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten made sympathetic statements about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Now the California Teachers Association has jumped in with a full endorsement and suggestions on its website as to how teachers and others can get involved in OWS activities.

Well, guess what?

Larry listed the salaries of some of the government union “99%ers.”

I plugged those salaries into the “What percent are you?” calculator. Here’s what I found:

* National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel (parent group of the CTA): $543,868 in salary in benefits: He’s actually a “1%er” — in the top 1 percent of incomes in America. So, by joining OWS, he’s protesting against himself!

* American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (parent of the California Federation of Teachers): $493,859. Turns out she’s not in the top 1 percent — just the top 2 percent. So, she’s part of the proletariate — she’s an authentic 99%er. A real working-class person. Salt of the earth. Has trouble feeding herself.

* CTA President David Sanchez: $289,550. Another poor working stiff! He’s in the top 4 percent. As Sands notes, that’s “three times what an average teacher in CA makes.” Yet he, too, is an authentic, working-class “99%er.”

Actually: Bunch o’ fat cats, living off our tax money.

And let’s remember that this money for their salaries is forcibly taken from teachers’ dues — which originally is funded with money stolen from taxpayers. Unions keep resisting any move to make union dues optional — even dues for political causes that teachers themselves may despise.

It’s the best scam around because it’s all done “for the children.”

Wall Street certainly has a lot of sins to answer for. In particular, it buys the politicians who rip off our tax money for bailouts. President Bush’s treasury secretary was Hank Paulson, former top honcho at Goldman Sachs. When Paulson was doling out Bush’s TARP bailout money, guess who got a huge chunk? Hint: Initials are G.S.

But the government worker unions also are part of the government-Wall Street-union Axis of Bankruptcy.

What we need is an Occupy the Schools movement to get union power out of the classrooms — and competency and standards back in.

– Oct. 25, 2011