From the Daily Press

As another school year ends, so too ends another year of hoping someone changes the public education system into something close to effective.

If you haven’t noticed, public education and our economy have little in common, and without major restructuring, that gap will widen.

Now, before anyone starts warming up their Standards of Learning talking points, understand that education’s problems have little to do with standards and testing. That’s like solving the Titanic’s sinking by adding some lifeboats.

Better solution is to not hit the iceberg.

That’s what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in a recent talk about education, and I believe he is absolutely correct.

The problem is the entire design of education, which is still industrial-based and trains young people for exactly the type of world we don’t live in.

I agree with Dr. Ted Hershberg, from the Center for Greater Philadelphia (whose name doesn’t mean getting the Eagles into the Super Bowl, sadly). He opines that decades ago, public schools taught the top 20 percent very well, and they went off to higher education and professional careers. The other 80 percent could still make a middle class wages in jobs that weren’t knowledge-reliant.

In other words, public education worked.

It doesn’t anymore. Schools have to educate much higher percentages of students well, and they aren’t designed for that. The economy’s demand for creative thinking and individualized work habits is alien to today’s K-12 model.

Education needs an overhaul. Some ideas:

Massive early graduation: America used to have a problem of social promotion. Now, we have a problem of homogenizing student achievement.

How many sophomores or juniors could pass an exam for senior graduation? I suspect a lot.

How about offering early graduation to those who can learn four years of high school in fewer years and remit the cost of those years as a scholarship to the college of their choice?

Those who remain will be able to have a great deal more attention.

Gingrich offered this while noting that Ben Franklin was apprenticed and working at age 13 after formal schooling ended at age 10. Average age of going to Princeton at the time? 13.

Now, I’m not suggesting a wholesale repeal of child labor laws, but the system of keeping knowledgeable young adults out of the workforce until they are at least 22 might have been advisable during the industrial revolution, but it completely misreads the needs of today’s economy and, more importantly, today’s student.

Individual Education Plans: If a 14-year-old can do 11th-grade math, 6th-grade science and 9th-grade English, why insist she be grouped with a bunch of other 14 year olds, most of whom don’t match those levels? Why not group students according to their aptitudes? Students progress according to learning and not because they just had a birthday.

Information technology exists to manage every student’s progress at a self-accelerated rate, meaning once they master a skill or topic, they move on regardless of whether the curriculum tells them they are ready to do so.

The focus is on learning and progress, not forcing everyone into the same pace, frustrating half the class while boring the rest.

Are we ready to really change education? Or should we just make sure we pack a few extra lifeboats?

From the Daily Press

The neat thing about science fiction is that eventually it stops being fiction.

Two of my favorite sci-fi films grabbed me from the concept. The special effects, acting and everything else mattered not a bit. They had me from “Hello.”

“Minority Report” is one, for its “pre-crime” concept of predicting people who will commit crimes and arresting them before they do.

The other is “Demolition Man,” where everyone is coded and GPS tracked so that if government ever needs to find someone, the computer finds him at a moment’s notice.

The Obama administration and a few Virginia state Senators are floating the idea of a “Demolition Man” tax on how much you drive.

They haven’t proposed it yet, so the mileage tax is still only a pre-crime.

Their vexing taxing dilemma is that cars are more fuel efficient (be careful what you wish for, legislators), so people aren’t increasing gasoline usage even while they drive more. Add to that electric cars and hybrids, and you have panicked budgeteers in state capitols and in DC wondering where the money went.

So they’re considering taxing your travel. Government installs electronic equipment in your car, and it calculates how far you drive and figures out the taxes you owe, and you pay. If you drive from point A to point B, even if you used hardly a drop of gasoline in your Al Gore-endorsed electric car, you still get nabbed by the tax man.

Call it taxation without gas station!

Some think this is no problem, saying that the gas tax was mainly taxing your driving anyway, and this is a more direct method. Boy, are they wrong!

I think there’s a Brave New World’s difference between measuring energy consumption while taxing it and installing technology on a car and reporting mileage to government.

Flatly, it’s none of government’s business how much I drive, how far I drive, where I go and what I do.

And it doesn’t take a movie to see how small the leap would be from an electronic mileage-reporting computer to GPS tracking.

Mileage taxes and GPS tracking are two lanes that are destined to merge.

In “Demolition Man,” all vehicles are coded for instantaneous tracking, but so is every person. Government can tell instantly if someone besides you drives your car. Car thieves are caught seconds into their acts. Convenient? Cars automatically adjust the mirrors, steering and seat position the second you take the wheel.

GPS trackers in cars are almost common now. When General Motors developed OnStar tracking for cars in case they’re stolen or in an accident, I wondered how useful that technology would be if government ever wanted to find someone.

Or tax someone.

And I didn’t like the potential. Taxing consumption at the point of purchase is fine with me. Any Fair Tax advocate will tell you it’s the only fair tax to impose. Government, they say, shouldn’t know how much income I make.

They have a point, especially when you realize how much information government demands about your expenses and revenues to “qualify” for their measly tax credits and deductions. It’s a wonder anyone starts a business anymore.

But I digress.

Taxing fuel consumption? OK. Taxing based on where I go and how far I go after leaving the pump?

Too far.

From the Daily Press

Before professors find the time in their busy, two-class-per-semester schedule (like at William and Mary) to write a nasty response, explain to me why this high-dollar industry encourages a generation of debt with less of a warranty on their product than a DVD player from Best Buy.

College tuitions are skyrocketing, and more young people start their futures under a mountain of debt that for many will be too much to overcome.

Old Dominion University’s tuition, room and board has jumped 33 percent in four years. Virginia Tech’s students will face a 9.6 percent increase this fall. W&M students get a deal! Only a 7.7 percent increase.

Some offer scholarships aplenty, the academic equivalent of Groupon.

Mostly, students just borrow and cross their fingers. For some, the investment will be worth it. For others, a college education is the most expensive non-guaranteed purchase a person can make.

Car buyers have lemon laws to protect them from shoddy products. Colleges convince students to invest over $50,000 in a degree, frequently in majors that have little or no hope of creating an income worth the investment.

Would today’s colleges offer a warranty for the education they sell?

Somehow, the basics of the free market haven’t made it to the college classroom. While information technology has revolutionized the impartation of information in virtually every major industry in America, our collegiate educational experience still revolves around renting a shared dorm room and sitting in class to learn.

Two billion electronic transactions happen every day, and colleges still act as if we must listen to Socrates in person.

Makes me want some hemlock.

Colleges still construct new buildings, new dorms, new weight rooms, new entertainment areas and still rely on the model that a student needs to be physically present to learn.

Some distance learning happens, but that’s like praising the Titanic for having some lifeboats.

The private sector, normally the source of innovation, hasn’t helped education in this regard. Too many for-profit colleges offer the academic equivalent of a strip mall, and it just doesn’t compete with the educational offerings at a major university.

So, what to do?

I have a few ideas.

First, if a student doesn’t excel in high school, they have no business being accepted into college.

Sorry, but the politically correct notion that everyone deserves to own a home, whether they can afford it or not, almost bankrupted the entire nation. College entry should be an accomplishment, and if someone is taking reading classes or remedial math, they don’t belong anywhere near college.

As Judge Smails said in “Caddyshack,” “The world needs ditch diggers, too”

Second, imagine the look in these stuffy college bureaucrats’ eyes if they had to stand behind their product. If you paid top dollar for a chemistry degree, and the most you can use it for is analyzing the hamburger you’re flipping, someone owes you a refund.

Third, government money should be tied to major structural reform of college education. In the world of the Internet, the discussion shouldn’t be the percentage of in-state versus out-of-state students. The discussion should be why aren’t there 1,000 times more students learning online than sitting in that lecture room.

Then someone can ask why we have all these colleges in the first place.

I’d be tempted to veto the whole thing and start all over.

I imagine most chief executives occasionally have the same thought.

Probably not Barack Obama. The only thing he vetoes is vacations to Williamsburg, and I’m not convinced he controlled that decision, either.

But I bet Gov. Bob McDonnell is looking at redistricting plans and feeling a pretty strong urge to hit the legislative reboot button.

It would be easy to do and easy to sustain. Both plans take a fair amount of shots at the party that’s in the minority in each, but the Senate’s plan is gerrymandering in the extreme. Some of these Senate districts look they were drawn with a paintball gun.

Senate Democrats were so fixated on their enemies list that when they accidently drew Sen. Frank Wagner into the district of Sen. Harry Blevins’ (whom they like) instead of Sen. Jeff McWaters’ (whom they don’t), they apologized and quickly redrew Wagner and McWaters together as they intended.

Senate Democratic Leader Dick Saslaw, the legislative equivalent of Mr. Vernon from “The Breakfast Club,” said he wanted to make Dem districts “better” with “the lines I draw.” I? Saslaw?

Good thing Barry Manilow doesn’t know he raids his wardrobe.

These plans deserve a veto, but I’m not holding my breath. If the Lord was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if 10 righteous folks were found, McDonnell will probably tolerate the Senate for the sake of the House.

After all, a veto could spiral this dispute right into a courtroom, and if there’s one thing worse than legislators, it’s a judge.

Any McDonnell amendments would head to the same 22 lockstep Senate Democrats who sent him this plan.

In the House, at least there was a decent amount of aisle-crossing and some pretty strong consensus. The Senate was as partisan as a convention.

How’s that for role-swapping?

For all the talk Senate Democrats (Hi, John Miller) spouted against partisan redistricting, they sure loved doing it. They drew lines to help Democrats and hurt Republicans.

Twenty-two Democrats earned visceral scorn at public hearings that are usually quaint and peaceful. After convincing themselves “no one cares about redistricting,” they dropped the partisan hammer and earned no votes from anyone but themselves.

By contrast, the House of Delegates was singing Kumbaya.

The House plan passed with only eight “no” votes. Eight out of 100! Supporting it was Legislative Black Caucus and a whole lot of Democrats.

Del. David Englin, about as liberal as Democrats come, called it “the fairest plan we could have hoped for.”

Englin, so liberal that he wrote a bill to lower penalties for prisoners who do drugs while in prison, voted for and praised the House redistricting bill: “We both know that they treated us way better than we would have treated them under a partisan process.”

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats patted themselves on their 44 shoulders and went home, ignoring every citizen who crowded the few public hearings that were wasted on Senators who were long past listening.

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling thinks that plans by the governor’s bipartisan redistricting commission should replace the ones that didn’t garner broad support. Only the Senate’s fits that bill.

To do so, McDonnell will have to convince two Senate Democrats who talk about bipartisan redistricting to actually vote that way.

If not, there’s always that veto!

Brian Kirwin’s latest column in the Daily Press:

Ever notice that the “pro-choice” crowd favors one choice more than any others?

You can tell by the volume of their screams and the tone of their rhetoric. I never see blistering press releases from pro-choicers about anything but abortion.

Some choices are more choice than others.

That’s the way it is for Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, and her attack on Gov. Bob McDonnell last week.

NARAL. That used to stand for “National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws.” Roe v. Wade pretty much did that for them, so a quick makeover later they became the “National Abortion Rights Action League.”

They started noticing that no one was as excited about abortions as they were. A past NARAL president spoke of one of the anniversaries of Roe v. Wade “a time of great celebration.”

Party City is not yet carrying the NARAL Abortion Party theme.

They shifted to the “National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League” and, in 2003, like Lady Macbeth scrubbing away spots, shortened everything to NARAL and added “Pro-Choice America” to it.

This is the biggest political smokescreen since Bill Clinton didn’t inhale.

As much as they talk about “choice,” the only choice NARAL gives a hoot about is abortion.

Take this past week in Virginia, for example.

Gov. Bob McDonnell added an amendment to HB 2434, a bill for health insurance exchanges in Virginia. McDonnell’s amendment prohibits them from paying for abortions.

In NARAL’s press release, Keene hyperventilates that the amendment “will only result in dangerous outcomes for Virginia women in need of serious medical care resulting from complex and sometimes life-threatening pregnancies.”

Keene uses words like “callous,” “attack,” “devastating,” “dangerous” and “cruel.”

Apparently, she was too busy reading her thesaurus to actually read the amendment.

The amendment prohibits insurances in those exchanges from paying for abortions except “when the life of the mother is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or (b) when the pregnancy is the result of an alleged act of rape or incest.”

Don’t let the actual language of the bill ruin your talking points, Tarina.

What Keene and the pro-abortion crowd fail to realize is that taxpayers don’t want to be forced to pay for abortions. Taxpayers deserve a choice, too.

But it is the intensity of NARAL’s venom that tips its hand about how pro-choice they really aren’t. Real pro-choice would mean equally strong support for all choices, not just a fevered focus on only one choice.

I searched for “adoption” on the NARAL website, and it brought me to page on emergency contraception.

NARAL is as interested in choice as the old Soviet Union elections.

For two decades, they’ve repeated the mantra that abortions should be “legal, safe and rare,” but they opposed the General Assembly’s requiring abortion clinics to meet high medical standards.

They aren’t in the business of “rare,” and they’re fighting against “safe.” But they’ll go to the mat for “legal,” and now they want “funded.”

Legal, safe enough, and funded? Not as catchy.

How about “Defending dependent disposability”?

It’s not as catchy as the slogan I wrote for our side: “Every pro-choicer had a pro-life Mom!”

Brian Kirwin’s latest column in the Daily Press:

As the General Assembly prepares to reconvene to consider the governor’s amendments and vetoes, I have a few recommendations.

Make autism coverage law: Gov. Bob McDonnell has proposed amendments to the bill to require insurance companies to cover autism.

Extremists have whimpered about opposing “health care mandates.” If McDonnell wants to follow along, why isn’t one of those amendments a repeal Virginia’s mandated coverage for mammograms?

Mandates are bad, right?

How about that mandated coverage for pap smears? And that mandate covering adopted children? And newborns?

Virginia’s been mandating these coverages for years. Somehow McDonnell managed a 14-year legislative career without repealing any of them.

Let’s see those who oppose autism coverage step up to the consistency plate and repeal mandated coverage for mammograms, pap smears and children and then go home and hug their wives.

Enjoy the couch!

Autistic children shouldn’t be the victims of legislative hypocrisy. Don’t wave the “opposing mandates” flag while standing on a hill of mandates you’d never touch in a million years.

Virginia’s been a top state for business and job creation with all these mandates. So this one mandate makes the Chamber of Commerce don the Chicken Little costume? I’m not buying it. Stop the games and make it law.

Override the gym class veto: State Sen. Ralph Northam’s innocuous bill to require 150 minutes of physical education in elementary and middle schools scored McDonnell’s first veto.

“Education officials tell me that this measure would cost them tens of millions of dollars,” said McDonnell.

Asking education officials for a price quote is like asking a barber if you need a haircut. You’ll be joining Hair Club for Men before you know it.

Does anybody really think that the cost of teaching 30 kids chemistry is cheaper than having a gym class?

Want a laugh? The Virginia Education Association opposes it because of high costs. They live for higher education spending! Now they’re talking like Ron Paul?

They don’t mind the costs of smaller class sizes or pay raises, but suddenly gym class costs more than a Hollywood personal trainer.

I’m sure most of the “costs” are already figured into the cost of schools. Legislators shouldn’t fall for it and override the veto.

Keep our word on Oceana: When NAS Oceana was on the BRAC chopping block, a few commitments were made. One commitment was to spend $15 million each year purchasing property closest to the runways. State officials agreed to pick up half of that cost.

Jobs, remember?

The total economic impact of the military in Hampton Roads is about $15 billion. NAS Oceana employs about 12,000 people with an annual payroll near $800 million.

$7.5 million from the state is the wisest investment in the biggest regional job determiner we’ve ever seen. A few state legislators outside Hampton Roads left that commitment out of the budget this year.

As if we wouldn’t notice.

McDonnell’s former legislative district was near Oceana. He certainly understands the value of the military here. The General Assembly should approve the governor’s recommendation to restore those funds that were included in his original budget request. State revenues are up, as McDonnell’s communications team is proud to proclaim.

The first $7.5 million of that should go to keeping the promise made to retain Oceana.

Brian Kirwin’s latest column in the Daily Press

Dig, baby, dig!

I expect to hear that chant soon, with public opinion about nuclear energy shifting, I’m betting we get reacquainted with our old friend — coal.

Usually we only opine about energy when it gets too expensive or the lights won’t go on. Despite the best efforts of the radical left, the lights on coal energy aren’t going out anytime soon.

In fact, looks like Old King Coal is poised for a giant public relations rebound.

Japan’s disaster-instigated nuclear plant issues have started a global chill on the nuclear power industry. Germany announced a moratorium on new nuclear power plants and that it was shutting down all seven of its pre-1980 plants. American nuclear plant developers are bracing for a regulatory wave in this country.

Polling shows Sweden opposing new nuclear power plants with 64 percent against. Seventy percent of France thinks what happened in Japan could happen there, but still support nuclear power with 55 percent.

American polls took a big tumble last week. A Rassmussan poll showed America’s support for nuclear energy a virtual tie at 40 percent - 38 percent. That’s a far cry from the 49 percent versus 27 percent margin of support shown only a year ago.

Popular support for offshore oil drilling suffered a similar drop after the Gulf spill, but has rebounded.

I don’t expect a similar rebound for nuclear. For one thing, an oil spill can be an ecological mess for the coastal states, but how much do people in the other 49 states really care? One good spike in gas prices is usually enough to snuff out sympathy.

Nukes are a whole different story. Nuclear energy brings radiation, cancer, China Syndrome — truly scary stuff! Scary enough to make us appreciate coal again?

You betcha!

For one thing, we’ve got an unbelievable amount of it. America has over 22 percent of the world’s known coal reserves. It’s been said that we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. It’s an understatement.

We have it and we use it. Half of the electricity Americans consume comes from coal, more than twice as much as any other single energy source. Old King Coal is still king.

Offshore wind energy has real potential, but the turbines aren’t turning yet. Natural gas accounts for about a quarter of our power consumption, but America has a mere 3 percent of known world reserves. No other energy source is ready to step up for market share today if the nuclear energy share shrinks.

Coal is. The natural beneficiary of a tumbling nuclear energy industry is coal.

The loony left are all over themselves giddily opposing nuclear energy, while still giddily opposing coal power and giddily opposing everything else except their real goal — the “Scarcity solution” — where everyone uses less energy and exchanges a modern standard of living for burlap and sackcloth.

“The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy,” the group’s website proudly proclaims, while they urge us to “move beyond coal.” I’d love to know where they’d like us to move to, or better yet, they can go first!

They aren’t too keen on drilling for natural gas, either, so in one fell swoop, the Sierra Club shakes its head at 88 percent of our national energy production.

Then again, I don’t usually take advice from folks singers singing “Save the trees” while playing wooden guitars.

All we are saying is give coal a chance!

Brian Kirwin’s latest column in the Daily Press

Who won the War of 1812?

If you ask Del. Sal Iaquinto, the answer is clear.

“Many people might not be sure who won,” says Iaquinto. “But since we’re still paying for it, we’re still losing.”

He’s right, actually.

To pay Virginia’s share of the costs of the War of 1812 (which didn’t end until 1815, showing that government back then wasn’t any more efficient than it is today), a business license requirement was broadly expanded with higher rates paid by more businesses.

Presto! A new sustainable revenue stream that doesn’t fund Patriots Crossing either.

Iaquinto’s Bill, HB 1587, is now law, and it’s the first real dent in the BPOL tax since the war it funded.

BPOL stands for the Business, Professional and Occupational License tax. It might as well stand for Businesses Put Out of Livelihood, especially for startup companies that rarely turn a profit early but still pay BPOL taxes as if they did.

Iaquinto’s bill gives an option to localities to exempt, refund or rebate BPOL taxes for new businesses for the first two years of their existence.

That’s important to Virginia Beach Councilwoman Rosemary Wilson. She approached Del. Iaquinto with the BPOL incentive for Virginia Beach.

“The BPOL tax is so hated,” said Wilson. “What can we do to chip away at it, and at the same time, help new businesses in a recession?”

The Chamber of Commerce told Wilson the first two years of a business are the hardest. “I thought it was the perfect time frame,” added Wilson.

Virginia Beach City Council unanimously endorsed it, and Chesapeake followed suit. By the time the bill was heard in the House Finance Committee, it was expanded statewide.

Most localities come to Richmond asking for more money, or at least the flexibility to raise more money. Less local revenue means more reliance on Richmond’s funding, and neither side usually likes that. But this bill found a lot of supporters, passing almost unanimously.

For Iaquinto, it was about principle.

“This tax is the prime example of how government creates a tax but never takes it away, even though the reason for the tax is gone.”

And for Councilwoman Wilson, it is also about jobs.

“Small business and entrepreneurs are the job creators. This is a great incentive for new businesses right when we really need them.”

Gov. McDonnell signed the bill into law last week. After July 1, it’s in the localities’ hands, and how successful it is depends on local governments declaring themselves “open for business” for new businesses.

If your city or county doesn’t, but a nearby one does, I’d complain pretty loudly! It should have an immediate impact on where new businesses locate.

But if cities and counties across the commonwealth adopt the exemption, what will become of BPOL? I’ll bet there will be plenty of anti-BPOL businesses in, let me guess, about three years.

Plus more than a few existing businesses will tire of a tax breaks available to their startup competition and not themselves.

The BPOL tax is about to become a bicentennial tax. Wouldn’t it be a great way to remember the War of 1812 — 200 years later — by eliminating the tax that paid for it?

Then we can proclaim the War of 1812 actually over, and legislators like Iaquinto can claim victory.