FTSE+78
DAX +112
CAC +77
Comments »S&P futs are up 13.6 and Asian markets are up 1%+ on the EFSF announcement.
Comments »HAT TIP: @geckler
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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2x5IkfJ3ng&feature=youtube_gdata 550 412] Comments »Conventional wisdom says that government should run schools. This idea is intuitive. It is also wrong. The free market would do a much better job.
This week in my syndicated column, I compare the public school system to the cars produced by governments:
The Trabant was the best — the pride of the Eastern Bloc. It was produced by actual German engineers — known for their brilliance. Yet even the Trabant was a terrible car. Drivers had to put the oil and gas in separately and then shake the car to mix them. Trabants broke down and spewed pollution. When government runs things, consumers suffer.
Our school system is like the Trabant. Economist Milton Friedman understood this before the rest of us did. In 1955, he proposed school vouchers. His plan didn’t call for separating school and state — unfortunately — but instead sought a second-best fix: Give a voucher to the family, and let it choose which school — government-run or private — their child will attend. Schools would compete for that voucher money. Today, it would be worth $13,000 per child. (That’s what America spends per student today.) Competition would then improve all schools.
50 years later, school vouchers are finally becoming a reality, although the education establishment still resists them.
Ronald Holassie, a graduate of the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, came on my Fox Business show last week to talk about the dramatic difference between a government school and his private school:
“In the public school system when I was in there, (there were) lots of fights. There were shootings, stabbings, and it was really unsafe — drugs.” … But he got the voucher and a good education, and now he’s in college.
Despite the data showing that voucher kids are ahead in reading, the biggest teachers union, the NEA claims: “The D.C. voucher program has been a failure. It’s yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement.”
Holassie asks: “How is it a failure when the public school system is failing students? I don’t understand that.”
I don’t either.
The rest of my column here.
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/10/26/school-competition-rescues-kids#ixzz1bwcW4Xa5
1.4 trillion euros.
Cash on hand will be leveraged 4 to 5 times.
Banks to get 30 bill euros in funding.
Italy pledges to cut debt gdp ratio to 113% by 2013.
50% haircut on Greek debt, EXCLUDING ECB holdings- LOL
MERKEL: ECB NOT INVOLVED WITH EFSF LEVERAGE OPTIONS.
Comments »Overheard during tonight’s “general assembly,” the fat cats from OWS, who reportedly have $500,000 in cash, decided
to donate 20k to Occupy Oakland.
Related: they intend to move their base to Central Park by 11/11/11.
Comments »A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly lifting the arms of a 15-year-old drug smuggling suspect while handcuffed — in what the Justice Department called a deprivation of the teenager’s constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force.
Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. was named in a November 2009 federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under color of law during an October 2008 arrest near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, in response to a report that illegal immigrants had crossed the river with bundles of drugs.
In a prosecution sought by the Mexican government and obtained after the suspected smuggler was given immunity to testify against the agent,Diaz was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlumin San Antonio. The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass had filed a formal written complaint just hours after the arrest, alleging that the teenager had been beaten.
Defense attorneys argued that there were no injuries or bruises on the suspected smuggler’s lower arms where the handcuffs had been placed nor any bruising resulting from an alleged knee on his back. Photos showed the only marks on his body came from the straps of the pack he carried containing the suspected drugs, they said.
Border Patrol agents found more than 150 pounds of marijuana at the arrest site.
The allegations against Diaz, 31, a seven-year veteran of the Border Patrol, initially were investigated by Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which cleared the agent of any wrongdoing.
But the Internal Affairs Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection ruled differently nearly a year later and, ultimately, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas brought charges.
The Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council said thegovernment’s case was “based on false testimony that is contradicted by the facts.”
In a statement, the council said that because the arrest took place at about 2 a.m., darkness would have made it impossible for the government’s witnesses to have seen whether any mistreatment took place. It said Marcos Ramos, the Border Patrol agent who stood next toDiaz, testified that he did not see any mistreatment of the smuggling suspect.
The council said other witnesses made contradictory claims and some later admitted to having perjured themselves. Such admissions, thecouncil said, were ignored by the court and the government. It also said that probationary agents who claimed to have witnessed the assault raised no objections during the incident and failed to notify an on-duty supervisor until hours later.
“Instead, they went off-duty to a local ‘Whataburger’ restaurant, got their stories straight and reported it hours later to an off-duty supervisor at his home,” the council said. “Then the ‘witnesses’ went back to the station and reported their allegations.”
The council also noted that the teenager claimed no injuries in court other than sore shoulders, which the council attributed to “the weight of the drug load, approximately 75 pounds, he carried across the border.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, which brought the charges, is the same office that in February 2006 — under U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton — prosecuted Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean after they shot a drug-smuggling suspect, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, in the buttocks as he tried to flee back into Mexico after abandoning a van filled with 800 pounds of marijuana. Aldrete-Davila also was given immunity in the case and testified against the agents.
Agents Ramos and Compean were convicted and sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.
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