Return of the PPC Re-Education Camps – You Know You Want to Be There

by Eileen | 8:27 pm, February 28, 2013

As promised, kids, the Collective is bringing back its free classes for activists, agitators, and freelance revolutionaries.  Trust us, this time will be even awesomer. Speaking of awesome, our great friends at the Independence Institute are kindly allowing us to use their basement rumpus room. Topics for the first classes of 2013 are not yet [...]

Ihre Papiere or GTFO: Micro-tracking students in Texas survives legal challenge

by Eileen | 5:18 pm, January 9, 2013

Some of you are perhaps aware of a case in San Antonio, Texas where a student, a minor at a public school, refused to wear an ID tag embedded with an RFID chip.  With her parents’ support, she sued, taking the interesting legal angle that such a requirement violated her religious freedom.  Specifically, Andrea Hernandez [...]

“Harness the Wind”; Rep. Scott Tipton Speaks With PPC About His Energy and Education Bill

by Kelly Sloan | 4:44 pm, May 4, 2012

“Harness the wind” may sound like irritating far-left babble, the sort offered up by those more keen to loftily announce that a problem exists than to take on the work of solving it. However, on a sunny afternoon in Grand Junction, it summed up a solution to falling education figures, rising unemployment, and the deep unease many of us have with relying on unstable, hostile, or just plain loathsome governments for our oil. In an exclusive interview with People’s Press Collective in Grand Junction, the freshman Representative from Cortez spoke about his Education and Energy bill, which would forward royalties collected off of new federal mineral leases to state Education Departments.

CFR’s Plan to Improve Education: Change Nothing

by Bob Adelmann | 6:59 am, April 7, 2012

Sometimes what isn’t mentioned is the most important message of all: don’t touch the schools, don’t disturb the unions, and for Heaven’s sake don’t mention home schooling.

MIT’s Online Threat to the Higher Education Cartel

by Bob Adelmann | 5:08 am, January 31, 2012

As a graduate of an Ivy League college myself, I never could quite justify the enormous investment my folks made in my education, especially since I never used any of it directly after graduation (Mechanical Engineering)! Now the free market is about to set things right.

Institute for Justice Celebrates 20 Years of “Litigating for Liberty”

by Bob Adelmann | 5:53 am, December 8, 2011

Just when we get to thinking that all lawyers are cunning manipulators of the law, seeking loopholes to weaken the protections we have against overweening government, and along comes IJ in the nick of time to rescue us from damning them all!

Prop 103: Kills Jobs, Has Little Effect on Education

by Jon Caldara | 4:00 pm, October 21, 2011

As you may have noticed, we at the Independence Institute don’t like tax increases of any kind. We especially don’t like them during rough economic times. (Side note: Have you heard the good news yet?! Colorado’s unemployment rate is DOWN to 8.3%! Hooray?) The evidence is pretty clear. If Proposition 103 passes and we get [...]

Analysis of Colorado Proposition 103

by Rossputin | 9:42 am, October 20, 2011

Penn Pfiffner, a Senior Fellow of the Independence Institute, has released an analysis of Proposition 103, including measuring the size of its tax hike, explaining the likely shell game to be played with the money raised, and showing how throwing more money at education is not the answer to poor student performance.

The analysis is worth reading – and sharing – and can be found here:
http://liberty.i2i.org/files/2011/10/IB_2001_D_1.pdf

Further Independence Institute analysis of the true long-term cost of Prop 103 to taxpayers can be found in another short paper here:
http://liberty.i2i.org/files/2011/10/IP_7_2011_a.pdf

Colorado off-year election thoughts

by Rossputin | 5:41 am, October 18, 2011

While there are no state-wide candidates on Colorado’s mail-in ballot this year, there are nevertheless a few things worth paying close attention to and worth voting on.

First, Proposition 103, a gigantic tax hike marketed, as usual, as being “for the children.” While discussing the issue with me on Backbone Radio, former State Rep Victor Mitchell who chairs SaveColoradoJobs.org described a debate he had with the Proposition’s main proponent, State Senator Rollie Heath (D-Boulder). Mitchell stated that his group’s economist predicted Prop 103 would cost the state 119,000 jobs. Heath disagreed…and then said his side believed it would “only” cost the state 30,000 jobs. And that’s from the measure’s key backer.

Beyond the fact that it’s incomprehensible to propose a massive income tax hike (along with a more modest but still unacceptable sales tax hike) at this time (incomprehensible both in terms of economics and politics), Proposition 103 does not include anything about reforming the way K-12 education money is currently spent. If people are unhappy with Colorado public schools’ performance, and if throwing more money at it for the past decade has not helped one bit, why would anyone thing that throwing even more money at it now would make a difference?

Even the Denver Post decided, at long last, to oppose Prop 103, though with a horrible argument which accepted the “modest” $3 billion (over five years) tax hike as not unreasonable. No wonder nobody pays much attention to the Denver Post anymore.

Interestingly, two Boulder area female teachers told me the other day that they oppose Proposition 103 because they’ve simply heard this same siren song too many times and even they are not falling for it anymore.

VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 103.

Next is the Jefferson County School Board election. In JeffCo, unlike in Boulder County where I live, there are two good choices for election to the County School Board.

They are Jim Powers and Preston Branaugh.

(Preston will be on the Mike Rosen show on Newsradio 850 KOA today, October 18, at 10 AM.)

These gentlemen, if elected, will begin to break the union stranglehold on Jefferson County Public Education, a change that’s much needed. If there were ever something “for the children” worth doing, it’s voting in “the Dads.”

Just a few examples of what’s going on in this race:

 

• It appears that the largest donor to one of the union-backed candidates is the brother of the school district superintendent.
• It appears that leftist heiress Pat Stryker is behind a 527 which is campaigning for the union-backed candidates.
• The business partner of one of the union-backed candidates has a contract with the school district that has paid her over $100,000.
• Public school principles are using taxpayer-funded infrastructure including e-mail to campaign for the union-backed candidates.
• The Denver Post reports that Jefferson County is one of six school districts in the state “red flagged” for financial weakness, after what appears to be an intentional strategy by the School Board to rapidly spend down its fiscal reserves.
• A teachers’ union e-mail makes plain their interest: “Remember the Board of Education is about protecting your contract and owning your profession.” Even the teacher’s no longer believe it’s “for the children.”

The union backed candidates in Jefferson County need to go, at least if you care about kids’ education more than you care about maximizing union dues.

In Jefferson County School Board elections, VOTE FOR JIM POWERS AND PRESTON BRANAUGH.

Build a Fence Around the Bubble

by Joshua Sharf | 8:11 pm, October 11, 2011

Looks as though a lot of The Occupation could use a good college-level education.  Someone’s noticed that The Occupation of those without an occupation is as much about the Higher Education Bubble as much as anything else (h/t Instapundit), only those involved don’t even realize it. There’s just one thing that confuses me: a lot [...]

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