RULES SUCK

RULES SUCK!!!!

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Wish it was different, but this way it might stay more interesting.


These are excerpts from Kersten commentary.

Katherine can be found here at the Star Tribune:
http://www.startribune.com/bios/10645201.html

Sunday, November 21, 2010

KK calls Democrats whiners

"

Since Nov. 2, we've heard lots of grumbling from Minnesota Democrats. In a year of unprecedented GOP gains across America, they're not satisfied that their candidates won every statewide office in our state (subject to a recount in the governor's race).

DFLers, it seems, are sore that they didn't win the Minnesota House and Senate as well -- completing their sweep. They don't seem to grasp that the tide that washed through the Minnesota Legislature was a nationwide phenomenon, as voters shouted "enough" to a Democrat-led glut of taxes, spending and deficits. Today, Republicans hold more legislative seats across the country than at any time since 1928.

DFLers should be counting their blessings. Instead, from their blinkered perspective, the GOP's capture of the Minnesota Legislature appears aberrant and dreadful. And they've found a bogeyman to blame: Minnesota businesses. Their gripe seems twofold. First, business, through independent groups like the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses, spent too much -- i.e., "bought and paid for" the Legislature. And, second, business groups unconscionably exploited voters with negative advertising.

We hear this so much that the reality comes as a surprise: Minnesota Democrats and their allies actually outspent Republicans and their allies in 2010 roughly 2 to 1, though final totals won't be known for some time.

The Senate DFL caucus raised four times more than the Senate GOP caucus, and the House DFL caucus raised two times more than its GOP counterpart. The DFL state party raised over three times more than the state GOP. Mark Dayton raised more than one and a half times what Tom Emmer did.

Business promoted a pro-jobs agenda of more streamlined government, lower taxes and more controlled spending. Voters resonated to this message in an age when capital is highly mobile, and you can work as easily from South Dakota, Mumbai or Beijing if you have Internet access and a smart phone.

Without business' involvement, Minnesota's electoral field would largely have been left to Democrats and their biggest donors: public employee unions such as Education Minnesota, AFSCME and SEIU, and Indian tribes with big-bucks casino interests.

All political contributions have an element of self-interest. But we all benefit from a healthy business climate. More jobs mean more prosperity, more families with good health insurance, more kids in our schools.

But the interests of public employee unions and tribes don't parallel voters' interests. These groups are monopolies, intent on electing legislators who will lock in their monopoly benefits. Unions donate huge sums to elect their own bosses, expecting them to increase benefits and hire more public employees to keep union donations flowing.

DFLers' second complaint is that business groups relied on below-the-belt negative advertising. This rings hollow. In 2010, the left threw the first and dirtiest mud ball.

On July 6, Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) -- an independent, DFL-allied group funded primarily by public unions and Dayton's family -- launched what was probably the earliest attack ad in Minnesota campaign history, targeting Tom Emmer more than a month before the DFL even had a gubernatorial candidate.

Factcheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center, labeled the first ABM ad's claims about Emmer "false" and "pure nonsense." A second ad used a mother's grief about her son's death at the hands of a drunk driver to focus on Emmer's decades-old DWIs. You can be sure ABM didn't mention that its own favorite candidate -- Mark Dayton -- is a recovering alcoholic who has acknowledged temporarily returning to drink sometime after February 2005 while representing Minnesota in the U.S. Senate.

Thanks to ABM's early funding edge, its anti-Emmer ads ran 2,400 times before the Aug. 10 primary, while the one pro-Emmer ad that ran appeared just 330 times, according to the Campaign Media Analysis group.

Every ad that ABM ran -- with its $5 million-plus budget -- was negative. ABM's parent organization, ProgressNow, prides itself on taking negativity to new lows. Yet when Republicans use negative mailers that focus on DFL candidates' records, Democrats moan about our negative electoral climate.

If business "bought" Minnesota's new legislative majorities, does that mean the unions bought our Legislature in previous years? Democrats' outrage seems to betray a sense of entitlement to power. Instead of fuming, they might better reflect on whether such arrogance is one reason that voters around the country drummed them out of"

Sunday, November 14, 2010

KK tells us how schools should be run .. with a single source

"

Last summer, Money magazine named Eden Prairie as the "best small city" in America. It highlighted the Twin Cities suburb's "top-notch" schools as a primary reason the thriving community is "great for raising a family."

But the days of Eden Prairie's pride in its schools may be numbered. School officials have announced a plan to abandon the district's neighborhood-schools model and to bus hundreds of elementary students across town to balance schools on the basis of income. Parents are up in arms about the plan -- scheduled for a decision in December -- but officials insist the upheaval will be justified. The economic diversity that results, they promise, will improve the academic achievement of low-income, minority children.

Have we learned nothing? From the 1970s to the 1990s, America conducted a massive social-engineering experiment in race-based busing that was expected to improve the academic achievement of low-income, minority children. The experiment failed virtually everywhere it was tried -- from Boston to St. Louis, Kansas City to San Francisco. Busing for "desegregation" had little, if any, reliable effect on minority achievement. It did, however, wrench neighborhoods apart, create insurmountable obstacles to parental involvement, cost vast sums and send middle-class families fleeing to the suburbs.

Eden Prairie need look no farther than Minneapolis to see where forced busing can lead. The city bused students for racial balance for more than 20 years, but black achievement hardly budged. In 1996, a fed-up Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton called for an end to the practice.

Income-based busing is the new rage, because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled busing for racial balance unconstitutional in 2007. Wake County, N.C. -- which has bused for income balance for 10 years -- is often cited as glowing proof that this approach works. In 2007, Myron Orfield of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty, who has presented to the Eden Prairie school board on income-based school assignment, lauded Wake County's results in the Star Tribune.

Wake County citizens beg to differ. In 2009, they voted in a new school board, and today the program is being dismantled.

Income-based busing "sounds like a noble idea," says new board member John Tedesco. "But it was terrible for kids and for the community. We took our eye off the prize -- academic achievement for all kids -- and put it on trying to meet quotas in a balancing act."

In the last five years, Wake County test scores and graduation rates have dropped every year, and the racial achievement gap has widened, says Tedesco. Low-income students have suffered most. "We were classifying kids by group, and labeling low-income kids 'at risk' just because of the money in their parents' pockets," he says. "We've actually dumbed these kids down." A recent study found that 80 percent of high-performing low-income students, who should be in challenging classes, were in fact assigned to remedial classes, he adds.

Wake County's test scores and SAT scores are still better than those of most other North Carolina districts, according to Tedesco. But that's misleading. As home to the renowned "Research Triangle," the county has one of the most highly educated workforces in America. "The academic success we do have is attributable to our demographics, not our busing program," says Tedesco.

Income-based busing has provoked cultural division, not unity. "It started pitting us against one another, because it classified people in terms of groups and set school quotas," Tedesco explains. Ironically, racial segregation has actually increased in Wake County schools. While the county's overall poverty rate is about 10 percent, its schools are now at 30 percent because the affluent are fleeing to private schools, says Tedesco. The national average for opting out of public schools is about 8 1/2 percent, he says. "Our rate has doubled in 10 years to almost 18 percent. Guess who's left behind?"

Tedesco sums up Wake County's "nightmare" this way: "Income-based busing tore apart our schools. It tore apart our community. It got our parents fighting one another. It created an academic mess, an efficiency mess and a cultural mess."

Eden Prairie is one of a number of districts -- including Hopkins, Bloomington and Osseo -- where racial and income "balancing" is a growing issue. Orfield has proposed a "comprehensive strategy to integrate" the entire Twin Cities metro area.

Before Minnesota embarks on yet another grand experiment in wishful thinking and social engineering, we might listen to David Armor of George Mason University, who has studied busing and desegregation for 30 years. Districts that consider income-based busing plans "are undertaking policy shifts that bring great controversy and costs, with no solid evidence that this will improve education for anyone,"

Saturday, November 6, 2010

KK applauds America for believing another set of lies

"

Last week's historic election repudiated the grandiose, left-wing governance schemes of President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. Conservatives are still toasting the victory. But the election, and the two years leading up to it, hold lessons that go well beyond this election cycle. America, it turns out, is a far more resilient nation than we had feared.

When Obama walked through the White House doors in January 2009, several factors suggested that, from a conservative point of view, the world was coming to an end.

Obama had billed himself as postpartisan and pragmatic. But he demonstrated quickly that his "hope and change" program meant not just a tilt to the port side but a hard-left tack. He pushed relentlessly for schemes of unprecedented scope --from a quasi-governmental takeover of health care to potentially economically debilitating cap-and-trade legislation. Conservatives feared that even if such changes prompted grumbling they would eventually embed themselves in voters' expectations.

Obama's allies in his campaign to remake America, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, steered the liberal juggernaut through a Democrat-heavy House and a filibuster-proof Senate. This trio's bare-knuckle, Chicago-style approach seemed almost invincible. They rammed through a deeply unpopular health care bill by using end runs around Senate rules and bald-faced buyoffs, including the infamous "Cornhusker kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase" that finally snared support from Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu.

Conservatives could also point to larger factors that seemed to signal an ominous long-term trend. After Obama's election, liberal commentators proclaimed that a permanent realignment of single women, young people, blacks and Latinos would soon render conservative politicians extinct. In his 2009 "The Death of Conservatism," Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, announced that the decades-long "Reagan Revolution" was dead and buried and that Big Government was here to stay.

To these prophesies, many conservatives added cultural concerns. They warned of a softening of character and a decline of civil society that threatened to push Americans into government's smothering embrace. They cited the deterioration of the family -- society's most fundamental governmental unit -- and a campaign by elites to redefine marriage itself. And they pointed to an erosion of religion and other cultural guideposts that hold us to a standard higher than "give me mine."

As conservatives looked across the Atlantic, their gloom increased. They feared they saw the end game of Obama's welfare state in chaotic Greece and France, with their ever-expanding public sectors, powerful unions and insatiable sense of entitlement.

But last week's repudiation of Big Government confirmed that we were wrong to be tempted by despair. The election demonstrated that there is something in the American spirit that rejects the siren song of the nanny state.

The gains were sensational -- at least 61 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the biggest electoral shift since 1948. In the Senate, a pickup of six seats may bring de facto control, as some Democrats there show newfound zeal for working with Republicans. (Divided House and Senate control may be the best scenario for Republicans going into the presidential race of 2012). Republicans now hold at least 30 governorships. The GOP gained more than 680 state legislative seats nationwide -- giving it the greatest number of seats since 1928 -- and now has majorities in both legislative chambers in 26 states.

In Minnesota, Republicans won majorities in the both the House and Senate and saw newcomer Chip Cravaack defeat liberal icon Jim Oberstar in the Eighth Congressional District. The governor's race may be close enough to trigger a recount.

Hopefully liberals will learn a lesson about political hubris and overreach. But the election holds a more important and reassuring lesson for conservatives: Americans can stand up to liberalism's temptations. They can see government "candy" for what it is and have the wherewithal to reject it as undermining the ideas at our nation's core: liberty, free enterprise, opportunity and self-determination.

The grass-roots revolt began with ordinary people standing up, one by one, at town hall forums to proclaim their opposition to Big Government. Legions of activists and candidates -- completely new to politics -- reenergized demoralized conservatives. The Tea Party movement grew spontaneously, as citizens said "no" to replacing America's founding vision of individualism and limited government with a statist model that will restrict freedom in the name of redistributionist "fairness" and encumber future generations with a crushing public debt.

The great lesson of this election is that America may not be on an inexorable slide to soft political tyranny and cultural drift. Our nation is built of sterner stuff than we dared to hope."