Ian Underwood 
The Judicial Branch, apparently unconcerned about that whole separation-of-powers thing, is telling the Executive Branch what to do. In particular, it’s saying that the Trump Administration has to distribute $2 billion in foreign aid, even though it contains substantial amounts of wasteful, fraudulent, and harmful spending. Ideally, President Trump would take a page from Andrew … Read more
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about budget caps for school districts, and the kinds of numbers that are being thrown around. Would a reasonable cap be $25,000 per student? Or closer to $100,000? It’s crazy to try to choose a number without first knowing what you would be getting for that amount of money, … Read more
In a response to a post about whether Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) should be universal, a reader responded by saying: I still believe it is a societal responsibility to ensure children are schooled. The problem with discussing ‘societal responsibilities’ is that once you get beyond the defense of self and property, there’s usually a lot … Read more
The missing Epstein files were supposed to be on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s desk by February 28. If she had them, we’d have heard about it, right? So presumably she doesn’t. Assuming the files exist, that is. We just have the word of a single whistle-blower who contacted Bondi. But if the files do exist, … Read more
A basic principle of the martial art Aikido is that instead of struggling against an attacker’s force, you work with it. As I listen to Democrats continue to complain about how DOGE shouldn’t be given access to the private data of American citizens because it is staffed by ‘unelected employees’, it occurs to me that … Read more
So, Governor Ayotte is moving us down the road towards universal eligibility for Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs). Awesome! Now what will she do to move us towards universal eligibility for food stamps, and heating oil subsidies, and housing assistance? While I don’t need any of those subsidies, I would certainly like to have them. And … Read more
This morning I am seeing reports that Kash Patel will be named as acting head of the ATF. When? Oh, sometime next week. Probably. I think that would be a good thing, but as someone used to say, I’ll believe it when I see it. It reminded me that for a while now, it’s bothered … Read more
I was recently asked: How would you go about eliminating public schools? I think we would eliminate public schools in the same way that we would eliminate public oil refineries, and public farms and ranches, and public grocery stores, and… Oh, wait, we don’t have those, do we? We don’t have those, because we have … Read more
There’s a rumor going around that there is a web site where people with Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) can go to find people who need things like printers, or musical instruments, or martial arts gear. Holders of EFA accounts can use them to buy things that have been approved (by the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which … Read more
Wait, isn’t that backwards? Didn’t Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. famously say that ‘Taxes are the price we pay for civilization’? He did, but he had it backwards. Taxes are, as Tommy Shelby said of politics in general, a way of deliberately making things better for some people by deliberately making them worse for others. … Read more
Judy Aron’s regular posts about what is going on in the House are informative, insightful, well-written, and worth reading. Near the beginning of a recent post, she started out with this comment: We knew the 23 bills we had before us were going to yield some very good wins. I don’t think that’s an unusual … Read more
Now that Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii is holding up all of Trump’s nominations , it seems appropriate to re-post a recommendation I made a while back: Okay, if this is the way things are going to go, here’s what I think Trump should do. He should tell the Senate: “You just pick whoever you … Read more
Although many people resist acknowledging this, we use a kind of Marxism to fund our schools: The Accidental Marxist The Accidental Marxist, Part 2 That is, by taxing each property owner in a school district a flat rate on the assessed value of his property, we take more from people who have more. So that’s … Read more
One of the many problems with universal EFAs is that they take money from people who don’t have it, to give to people who don’t need it. Let’s ask a straightforward question: Under what conditions should we give tax money to, or spend tax money on, people who can afford to get along without it? … Read more
One of the many problems with EFAs is that they simply continue the Pay-and-Pray paradigm that is at the root of our failing school system. Let’s ask a straightforward question: Under what conditions should we spend tax money on something for which we have no specific, agreed-upon goals (and therefore no way to judge whether … Read more
Let’s ask a straightforward question: Why should we spend tax money on education? The New Hampshire Constitution gives one possible answer: Education is essential to the preservation of a free government. The New Hampshire Supreme Court gave an expanded version of this answer: Every educable child should have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge … Read more
All these last-minute pardons may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. You don’t have to accept a pardon. It’s offered to you. Some people have rejected the offer of a pardon, because a pardon carries with it an admission of guilt. So the first thing that needs to happen is to get the … Read more
Suppose we ask a very basic question: Under what conditions should we give tax money to, or spend tax money on, people who can afford to get along without it? We don’t give LIHEAP subsidies to people who can already afford to heat their homes. We don’t give Section 8 subsidies to people … Read more
On his way out the door, President* Biden keeps issuing executive orders. One of the most controversial is the recent order that ‘permanently’ prohibits exploring or drilling for oil along most of the US coastline. This is being reported as something that will be difficult or impossible for Trump to reverse, because doing so would … Read more
[This was written in response to an editorial at the New Hampshire Bulletin, about Education Freedom Accounts. I sent it to the Bulletin, but the editor, who is also the author of the piece, said that it was ‘just not the kind of opinion pieces we run’. So I’m publishing it at Grok instead.] Confucius … Read more