1) Victory in Florida for Universal School Choice - and Civil Rights
Ron DeSantis proved again that he is one of America’s top governors when his expanded school choice bill HB1 passed 26-12. It is headed to the Governor’s desk.
The bill makes every Florida student eligible for $8,000 in an education savings account that can be used toward private school tuition, tutoring, homeschooling materials, or testing fees.
Previously, about 70 percent of Florida students were eligible for the state's school choice scholarships -- but as other states enacted universal school choice, Florida was in danger of losing its longtime leadership on school choice dating to the Jeb Bush era.
The passage of this bill is one of the great civil rights victories in modern times as the state’s minorities - particularly black and Hispanic school children - are the biggest winners of all.
So why are so few Democrats for this?
2) Hopefully This Means More Charters Schools: They Work
One bogus argument that we hear over and over is that school choice means less money for the public schools.
Wrong. Charter schools have been around for many years now. Have they depleted the money for traditional public schools? Researchers at the Fordham Institute crunched the numbers and have refuted anti-choice myths. Among the key findings:
• Total public school revenues per pupil increase in most cases when students exit the system for charter schools.
• The handful of studies that incorporate student outcomes suggest that charters tend to make affected school districts MORE efficient in the long run. This puts the lie to the claim by charter opponents that charter schools increase districts’ fixed costs per pupil, making them less efficient.
It simply confirms what we all know: competition is always a good thing for consumers - and parents.
3) A Great Economic Lesson From - Zimbabwe
You may have heard of - or even seen - Zimbabwe’s infamous $100 Trillion bill - yes a 1 followed by 14 zeroes. Even with all those zeroes, it is only very barely worth the paper it is printed on.
You see the former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was an extreme Keynesian who believed that to end an economic crisis in the country he could simply “stimulate” the economy with spending and pay for it by printing more currency. (Sound familiar?) He got so carried away that the government began issuing trillion dollar bills. This, in a country where the average annual family income is roughly $1,000 a year.
You think Biden’s 8% annual inflation was bad, try 8 billion percent. The restaurants had to reprint menus and prices nearly every day.
So now the WSJ reports that the country has reverted to barter, using paper IOUs, and pens and pencils as currency.
It’s an extreme lesson in the nutty idea that governments can print money to get out of financial trouble. Quick: someone tell Biden and Yellen - whose $6 trillion experiment in helicopter money has failed miserably.
4) The Fed’s $9 Trillion Balance Sheet Is Expanding Again
The best way for the Fed to reduce inflation is to sell off assets - bonds, mortgages, etc. - from its near $9 trillion balance sheet. But as we roll from one economic crisis to another, the Fed is buying not selling assets.
It recently rolled off $3.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities last week, but then loaned out $60 billion in repurchase agreements OVERSEAS, and made another $36 billion in loans largely from its emergency fund. Add it up and the Fed grew its balance sheet again last week, wiping out more of its planned tightening.
The Fed's total assets have expanded to $8.78 trillion. That’s more than double the $4.1 trillion reported in February 2020 before the onset of the pandemic.
Will they ever unwind?
5) Here’s One Good Reason Americans Don’t “Trust the Science”
Kelley Krohnert is a Georgia mom and technical writer who gained a global reputation over the last three years as a meticulous compiler and evaluator of COVID data, frequently correcting credentialed experts. She’s been proven correct over and over challenging the conventional science conclusions.
Her new paper with a group of University of California, San Francisco researchers is a scathing indictment of CDC inaccuracies:
Results: We documented 25 instances when the CDC reported statistical or numerical errors. Twenty (80%) of these instances exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation, 3 (12%) instances simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed the severity of the situation, one error was neutral, and one error exaggerated COVID-19 vaccine risks. The CDC was notified about the errors in 16 (64%) instances, and later corrected the errors, at least partially, in 13 (52%) instances.
Conclusion: A basic prerequisite for making informed policy decisions is accurate and reliable statistics, even during times of uncertainty. Our investigation revealed 25 instances of numerical or statistical errors made by the CDC. Our investigation suggests 1) the need for greater diligence in data collection and reporting, and 2) that the federal entity responsible for reporting health statistics should be firewalled from the entity setting policy due to concerns of real or perceived systematic bias in errors.
