Virginia Libertarian

Many Changes at Lanier - News - Centre View - Connection Newspapers
“There is a very low turnover in our teaching staff,” said Poole. “We call it the Lanier family.”

Something about this just struck me as amusing.  Just something about a member of the NEA talking about family gets me to thinking about the mob.  Once you’re in the family, you’re always in the family.

TCS Daily - Three Can’t-Miss School Reforms

External Examinations
Interactive Textbooks on the Web
Independent Study and Guided Study

Some excellent ideas from Arnold Kling in an article over at TCS.  He has given all the explanations needed in the article.  From the article it looks like he is referring to colleges, but I think these can be applied to K-12 schools as well.  I don’t know that government would agree to having external examinations though, as that would provide a private industry with control over the public schools, which is not something they appear to want.  I think anything that provides external accountability that the parents get feedback on would be a good thing.  Even if you don’t get to transfer out of the school, if there is transparency in the process, then everyone could find out that the students in the school are performing badly in math, english, whatever, and demand an explanation of why, and a plan to change.

Townhall.com::Point of no return?::By Thomas Sowell
We are fast approaching the point of no return.

A wonderful little story on the effects of regulations, codes, statutes and what have you that try to control what we do in our private lives, on our private property.  I like this one because I have just finished building my own house, and have had run-ins with building “codes”.  My favorite one is the one that requires a hand-rail to be of a certain maximum size.  My nice vinyl covered rail was to big, so I had to have a skinnier one screwed into it in order to pass code.  Of course once it passed, the first thing I did was get rid of the crap.

A Wonderful World of Parrillas - Mises Institute
Then he told me a story that reminded me of the Three Little Pigs, each of whom built his house according to his own lights. He had two friends, also Argentine emigrants, who had built their own parillas from local materials before the prefabricated imports became available. One of them, he said, did the work under cover while the other took the high road and got permits and submitted to inspections at various points during the work.

He continued, “Here’s how the costs fell out. My imported prefab unit cost me $1,200, delivered and installed. My friend’s sub rosa project ended up costing him $6,000 and it took over a month. And my other friend’s certified, approved, and inspected project ended up costing him $12,000 and took almost a year.”

But at the end of the day, everybody had an attractive, functional parrilla. Everybody, that is, but the upright soul who did his in accordance with all local laws and regulations.

He never was able to get his parrilla to work right.

Don’t rush development
Staunton City Council and other members of the city’s government agencies will face a decision of enormous importance when they ponder the best way to proceed with the commercial redevelopment of 300-plus acres surrounding Western State Hospital while providing a state-of-the-art hospital on part of the site.

One thing we hope and pray the city’s leader’s don’t do is this: give carte blanche to developers just because “those are the rules the state plays by.”

Yes, lets just make another set of rules, different for each developer that comes to the area, that will encourage growth, right?

While the Public-Private Educational Infrastructure Act may allow private developers to come up with any concept for the land’s use without the city or state setting much restriction, that’s not what we should do.

Not at all.

Staunton has too often borne too great a similarity to the “girl who cain’t say no,” agreeing to put exorbitant amounts of public funds into private projects just to be done with a project. That approach is going to backfire on the city — and its residents, without which the city would neither exist nor be able to pay its bills — sooner or later.

OK, now we get to the crux of the issue.  Using public funds for private projects.  Why would you think that a developement that can’t fund itself in order to build is going to be able to sustain itself afterwards?  I daresay very few of these types of projects fare well in the long term.  Now, let a private developer in who has to fund the operation themself the whole way through, and they are going to make sure that it is a business venture that has the potential to survive.  The way things have been working is basically a form of corporate welfare.  Who wouldn’t take a shot at winning the pot of gold when the cost to play is lowered by the area funneling public funds into your investment?

What the city should do — and the state and developers be damned — is take the reins, control the property in perpetuity and lease the land to developers. That way, when Steak-On-A-Stick, Widgets, Inc. or whatever the Big Deal of the Moment that decides to build on our property goes bust, we won’t be stuck with another set of moldering buildings at one of Staunton’s most visible gateways. We can lease the property to another user who can then breathe new life into the area and provide the city with a renewable revenue stream.

Yes, because we all know that keeping property public is the best way to run things.  When will we learn that communism doesn’t work, even in limited forms such as this?   The only thing this idea will buy you is a continuous string of failures, for in order to get a private business owner to agree to this kind of deal, you’re going to have to subsidize the initial development.  Thus you will continue to get what you’ve been getting.