What’s the Best Way To Learn? Whatever Works For Your Kid.

ClassroomAt a moment when New York City Mayor Bill de
Blasio is
rubbing his constituents the wrong way
with an attack on the
education options represented by
charter schools
, let’s take a break and examine a vision of the
future of education that embraces all sorts of alternatives. Where
de Blasio seems to use your average 1970s-era Department of Motor
Vehicles as the starting point for his policy preferences, a recent
report authored by Goldwater Institute Education Director Jonathan
Butcher looks at the increasingly dynamic and diverse world around
us as a model for helping children learn. Butcher takes it as a
given that children have different needs and should be able to
learn in the variety of ways that suit them, rather than being
plugged into one-size-fits-all institutions.

In
A Vision for Education and the Future of
Learning
 [PDF], Butcher writes:

[I]magine sitting with your child at the dinner table and
preparing for the new school year. But instead of reading a letter
telling you what school your child is assigned to, you have a menu
of schools, classes, tutors, and extracurricular activities to
choose from, some located nearby and others online. This
educational directory lists such options as virtual classes,
schools that focus on the liberal arts, classes in computer
programming, and even lessons taught in another language.

You select math, English, and art classes offered by a local
charter school, where your child will sit with friends she’s had
all of her life. In the afternoon, she’ll study Spanish and music
online and prepare for the SAT in an evening class at a nearby
private school. She swims on the swim team at the neighborhood
traditional school twice a week.

New technology and bold legislative advances in educational
choice are bringing us closer to the day when this hypothetical
dinner-table exercise becomes a reality for every family. However,
this vision for the future is a sharp contrast to the factory model
of education we have come to accept. We have grown accustomed to
the routine of parents sending their children to an assigned public
school, and these schools employ administrators, teachers, and
other staff who receive their pay regardless of how many children
learn to read or drop out of high school. The question for parents
and their students in the next generation must change from “Where
do we go to school?” to “How do we want to learn?”

Butcher makes the point that children should acquire marketable
skills as they learn—something that equips them to function in a
world that increasingly requires some knowledge of science and
math.

Whatever skills are acquired, and for whatever purpose, he also
suggests using technology to allow children to self-pace their own
learning, so that they’re neither bored nor overwhelmed. That would
involve a significant break from the increasingly rigid model
currently in vogue.

Butcher gets specific about the policy tools that can be used to
achieve these ends, including education savings accounts, online
classes, charter schools, and funding that follows kids rather than
schools. But the specific tools are less important than a vision of
education that recognizes that children aren’t widgets. You can’t
shoehorn them into identical settings, treat them as objects of
cookie-cutter teaching plans, and expect good results.

There’s no one right way to teach children, because there’s no
one type of kid. We recognize the need for options everywhere else
in life, from eateries to clothing stores to places where we live.
There’s no good reason to think that a world that offers hot dog
carts and five-star restaurants, thrift stores and Brooks Brothers,
yurts and mini-mansions, should settle for a single model of
institutionalized education. Nor should we pretend that we’re
well-served by letting the de Blasios of the world choke off our
choices.

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Financials Lead Stocks To Recover Yellen Losses (Bonds & Bullion Unchanged)

Treasuries ended the day practically unchanged. Gold, despite some early weakness, ended the day unchanged. The USD ended higher onthe day – extending post-Yellen gains but was esentially flatlining aside from concerted buying pressure from 3ET to 7ET. Copper kept falling (as did silver) and oil prices slipped lower. VIX pressed lower as stocks rallied out of the gate but VIX diverged notably after Europe's close to end the day almost unchanged near 15%. So, given all of that, where do you think stocks closed? Thanks to a pre-CCAR ramp in US financial stocks (which notably diverged from financial credit spreads), US equities managed to clamber their way back up to pre-FOMC levels before giving some back inthe late-daye (with a mini-melt-up into the close). AUDJPY ruled the 'fundamental'-driven US equity markets from open to close.

 

Spot The Odd One Out…

 

US financials led the post-Yellen re-exuberance…

 

Which dragged the blue-chip indices up to unch from FOMC before fading into the close…

 

And while much of this rampaging recovery from Yellen's mis-step is due to US financial stocks jerking higher into tonight's CCAR results – but credit wasn't buying it…

 

Of course AUDJPY ruled stocks all day…

 

And VIX diverged notably…

 

FX markets have been trading in fits and jumps – total flatline then chaos –

 

Copper crapped out again… (but wasn't yesterday's ramp the end of the problems? – That's what we were told?)

 

Charts: Bloomberg

Bonus Chart: The chart explains why Shinzo Abe should be stockpiling "Depends" (via Brad Wishak of NewEdge)


    



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Chinese Stocks Enter Bear Market Following 2 More Defaults Overnight

Following the default of 2 more corporations last night, Hang Seng’s index of China Enterprises plunged to 8-month lows and officially entered bear market territory. Overnight angst in the Chinese currency markets (which saw the Yuan trade back to 1-year lows) has sparked broad commodity weakness (as CCFD unwinds en masse) with copper giving back most of yesterday’s major short squeeze gains back. Chinese corporate bond prices also tumbled to one-month lows.

Hang Seng’s China Enterprise Index (the most liquid vehicle for trading Chinese stocks for foreigners) has entered a bear market

 

as cash-for-commodity financing deals continue the unwind,

 

Charts: Bloomberg


    



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NSA Doesn’t Want to Reveal Water Bills, Cites National Security

While Americans are invariably subject to prying eyes, the
National Security Agency (NSA) is holding in as many secrets as
possible post-Snowden. When asked for information about the NSA
Utah data center, authorities replied
with documents, but redacted the water bill amount.

According to Wired,
the official argument “requires a pretty big leap of logic”:

“By computing the water usage rate, one could
ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the
Utah Data Center,” wrote the NSA’s associate director for policy
and records, David Sherman, in an undated letter filed with
Bluffdale in response to the Tribune’s public records request.
“Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much
intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining.”

The State Records Committee, the state panel tasked with
overseeing open records laws, was not convinced. Yesterday, it

ruled
5-0 in favor of ordering Bluffdale, the city that
supplies the NSA with water, to release the information.

Water consumption is peculiarly significant issue in the state
of Utah. “We’re just in the habit of accounting for water in this
state because we have to. There’s just not enough water,” Nate
Carlisle, the Tribune reporter that filed the initial
information request, told
Wired. The OffNow campaign has been fighting tooth and
nail to turn off the NSA’s water.
State rep. Marc Roberts
introduced
a bill in February to discontinue the flow of water
to the massive data facility.

As far as plans to tame government snoops go, this is eccentric
approach. But the huge data center, estimated to hold exabytes of
data, swallows, perhaps,
a million
gallons of water a day to cool down the
surveillance-data-holding computers and equipment.

Coincidentally, the Associated Press released a

study
on federal handling of open records requests. They found
that mismanagement of Freedom of Information Act requests is on an
upward swing. The Obama administration cites national security as
grounds to reject a request more than under any other
administration ever.

Carlisle expects the records to be released within the week.
Wired is less
confident
, “Don’t expect the NSA to give up its water numbers
without a fight.” 

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The Honeymoon Is Over: Ukraine To Stun Citizens With 40% Gas Price Hike

Back in 2011, when as part of the Arab Spring one after another regime were toppled in North Africa following violent coups, not without substantial support by the US foreign service and the CIA, the local population was delighted – after all there is nothing quite like the specter of Hope and Change to lift one’s mood, and murder the reigning dictator. Unfortunately, what is usually not discussed, is that within a very brief period of time, usually within a year or two, the post-coup nations promptly reverted to violence and kicked out the ascendent coupy rulers themselves. Hardly new, this is process has been observed in history throughout time, most notably with the French revolution, where the concept of the Thermidorian Reaction was first penned. Most recently, this was best captured by events in Egypt in the past year, when the Hillary Clinton-blessed regime of Morsi was toppled last summer with even more violent witchhunts organized against its Muslim Brotherhood supporters. No wonder one hardly hears a peep about this particular US success story.

So where should we look for the next such process? Why in Ukraine of course. Only right now the general population is still in its euphoric Hope and Change phase. Understandable – the evil regime has been toppled and the new and pure (even though in reality they are just as corrupt as the old ones) politicians are in charge, so why not look to the future with rose-colored sunglasses?

Alas, Ukraine’s honeymoon period with its new rulers may end far sooner that most expect, and it will be certainly accelerated with news such as this. A few hours ago, Interfax reported that Ukraine expects to increase domestic gas prices by 40% once discounted import prices from Russia expire, the country’s Energy Minister Yury Prodan told journalists in the European Parliament on Thursday.

Just as we warned a few weeks ago when we were discussing the creeping capital controls gripping the crisis-riddled country with the foundering currency and its rapidly depleting reserves, the first thing that usually happens, with or without foreign aid, is runaway inflation. And a 40% jump in one of the core staples will certainly dent much of the quite brief and tenuous hope and change the population may have had as a result of recent events. Because once the downstream effects of nat gas funnel through the economy, we wouldn’t be surprised if Ukraine ends up with hyperinflation of all goods and services within the year.

What is certain, is that the struggling population, most of whom never wanted the recent political overhaul and were quite happy with life as it was, will suddenly demand a return to the living standards under the old, if “horrible” regime, and demand an even quicker overhaul of the current administration.

Something Putin knows all too well.

Why does he know it? Because current events are a carbon copy of what happened in 2007 that led to the infamous 2008 Ukrainian political crisis.

What happened in 2007? This:

Ukraine agreed to pay close to $180 for every thousand cubic meters of natural gas it gets next year from Russia, Russia’s state-run gas monopoly said, marking a nearly 40% increase over current prices.

 

The deal, which comes after months of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, is part of what Russia describes as an effort to stop giving energy supplies to former Soviet republics at cut-rate prices.

 

That effort escalated into a full-blown dispute two years ago, when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine. The dispute affected some European countries, raising concerns about Russia’s reliability as Europe’s main energy supplier.

 

OAO Gazprom said Ukraine agreed in a deal signed by Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boiko to pay $179.50 for every thousand cubic meters it buys from Russia next year. Gazprom said transit prices would be set at $1.70, the price for gas shipping across Russia.

 

Ukraine currently pays $130 for every thousand cubic meters of gas from Russia.

 

In October, Russia urged Ukraine to make good on what it said was a $1.3 billion debt for gas shipments, a demand described by some Ukrainian officials as an effort to influence Ukrainian politics after September’s parliamentary elections.

 

The deal comes a week after Gazprom said it would pay as much as 50% more next year for natural gas from Turkmenistan. Russia controls nearly all gas exports from the Central Asian nation.

Funny how history not only rhymes, but sometimes repeats itself. Verbatim.


    



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Soros Has A Modest Proposal For How To Punish Russia

Having warned of Putin’s blind-spot (and Merkel’s position of potential leadership) in the Europe-US-Russia debacle, billionaire investor George Soros has some ideas on how to punish Russia (and some warnings on the consequences)

  • *SOROS SAYS PUTIN ‘ACTING OUT OF WEAKNESS’
  • *SOROS SAYS UKRAINE CRISIS IS LEADERSHIP CHANCE FOR MERKEL
  • *SOROS SAYS MERKEL’S LEADERSHIP HAS GROWN IN UKRAINE CRISIS
  • *SOROS SAYS U.S. SELLING OIL RESERVES WOULD HURT RUSSIA
  • *SOROS SAYS U.S. HOLDS ‘STRONGEST SANCTION’ WITH OIL RESERVE

Via Bloomberg,

Russian President Putin sought to prop up flagging support at home in a move that “turned him adventurous abroad and repressive at home,” billionaire investor and Chairman of the Open Society Institute George Soros said today during a podium discussion in Berlin.

Soros also said:

Putin “acting out of weakness” following sag in domestic popularity since beginning second term as president

 

On Merkel: Ukraine crisis “an opportunity for the chancellor to emerge as the leader of a united Europe, not just a chancellor preoccupied with the national interests of Germany.”

And added that the US still holds the biggest bazooka…

“Strongest sanction” against Russia “is in the hands of the United States” because U.S. could sell crude from the Strategic Oil Reserve and depress prices, investor George Soros says during panel discussion in Berlin.

 

Says Russia needs oil at $100/bbl “to balance the budget”

The problem, Soros notes, is…

“Task is to help Ukraine rather than just punishing Russia because just punishing Russia will push Putin further into a corner and as a wounded animal he would strike back and it would be a lose-lose proposition.”

So will Obama shoot himself in the foot?


    



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Video of the Day – Reporter Reveals White House Press Conferences are Entirely Scripted Nonsense

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

– The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene I

As readers of this site are already very much aware, the entire world around us is micro-managed with intense propaganda by what Professor C. Wright Mills called ”the power elite.” This culminates into an existence within a manufactured, nonsensical world that investment legend Seth Klarman referred to as The Truman Show.

Well The Truman Show that is the USA has been exposed once again. According to this CBS reporter from Arizona, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney receives all questions to “press briefings” ahead of time. In many cases, the reporters themselves even possess the scripted answers to their questions before the conference starts. Yes, as suspected, it’s all just one gigantic stage and you are the clown in the audience.

Watch and weep serfs.

 

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Video of the Day – Reporter Reveals White House Press Conferences are Entirely Scripted Nonsense originally appeared on A Lightning War for Liberty on March 20, 2014.

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PRISM: Don’t Worry, We Only Track Your Email Address, Not Keywords

Lawyers representing the
government’s intelligence services claim that PRISM, the mass
surveillance program that mines data from major Internet
communication companies, does not snoop on people based on
“keywords like terrorism” and instead targets certain email
addresses and phone numbers. Isn’t that heartening?

Agence-France Presse (AFP)
writes
that “they told the hearing hosted by the Privacy and
Civil Liberties Oversight Board…that the NSA did not aim to scoop
up all web transmissions, but that the surveillance was narrowly
tailored to track or uncover terror suspects and other
threats.”

“We figure out what we want and we get that specifically, that’s
why it’s targeted collection rather than bulk collection,” a
representative of the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence
said
about the program, “which focuses on foreign suspects
outside the United States.”

“Any time there is not foreign intelligence value to collection,
by definition it will be purged,” the National Security Agency’s
Rajesh De stated.

Unsurprisingly, another NSA representative “insisted that the
American government and the NSA had acted within the law at all
times,”
according
to The Register.

The claims are suspect, given the proclivity of NSA officials to
sometimes offer the “least untruthful” answer
when questioned. And even if PRISM does not itself pay attention to
keywords, that does not mean that one of the U.S. government’s 21
other
known
mass surveillance projects, systems, and initiatives is
not providing PRISM with deeper information on its targets. The NSA
does, after all, employ “parallel
construction
,” a tactic which Reuters
decribed
 last year: “federal agents are trained to
‘recreate’ the investigative trail to effectively cover up where
the information originated.”

The Guardian
reported
 an apparent bombshell—that “testimony by Rajesh
De contradicted denials by technology companies about their
knowledge of NSA data collection”—but the paper has
retracted that claim.

Edward Snowden spoke through a telepresence robot at a
conference on Tuesday,
assuring
that “there are absolutely more revelations to come.”
Whether we’re moving closer toward a sci-fi utopia or dystopia, I
can’t tell, but the fact that a robo-Snowden has already been
unleashed seems like a good sign.

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The United States of Cigarette Smuggling

Some 56.9 percent of the cigarettes consumed in
New York state are smuggled in from another state. That’s a bigger
percentage than any other state, according to a
ranked map
put together by analysts at the Tax Foundation. The
states with the next highest inbound smuggling are Arizona (51.5
percent), New Mexico (48.1 percent), Washington state (48 percent),
and Wisconsin (34.6 percent).

Cigarette smuggling is pervasive in large part because of the
high cigarette taxes some states impose. The sizable differentials
between higher-tax states and their lower-tax counterparts,
especially when those lower-tax states are nearby, creates a big
incentive to run cheap, low-tax smokes across borderlines.

So it’s not surprising to find that New York is not only the
state with the most inbound smuggling but the state with the
highest tax: $4.35 per pack—with an additional $1.50 tacked on if
you’re lucky enough to live in the Big Apple. According to the Tax
Foundation, both smuggling and cigarette taxes have risen rapidly
in New York during the last eight years. The rate of taxation is up
190 percent; smuggling has risen 59 percent over the same time
frame.

How does your state stack up in the cigarette smuggling
rankings? Check the Tax Foundation’s handy map to find out:

Higher cigarette taxes make legally purchased packs more
expensive. But they don’t always lead to the gush of new revenue
that legislators expect when those taxes are passed, in part
because of smuggling. When states count on that revenue (and spend
it) before it actually comes in, they
sometimes find themselves with budget holes as a result
.

We’ve seen the same thing happen with the states involved in the
Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the big obacco
manufacturers: States basically partnered with cigarette makers in
exchange for a share of the revenue stream, which would then be
used to fund public health programs. But when the revenue
started to fall
, states were left struggling to pay for the
programs they’d intended to fund with MSA money.  

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@BarackObama’s First Tweet Was Anti-War

On April 29 2007 @BarackObama, which is
currently run by Organizing for Action, tweeted its
first tweet
:

@BarackObama is one of the most followed accounts on
Twitter, with 42.1 million followers at the time of writing.

The tweet came a few days after the Senate passed a funding bill
that would have set a date for American combat troop withdrawal
from Iraq. From a press
release
 about the bill from then-Sen. Obama:

I believe that my plan for a phased withdrawal with the goal of
removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31st, 2008 is still
the best way to pressure the warring factions to reach a political
settlement necessary to end this war. This similar plan responsibly
redeploys our troops from Iraq while protecting our interests in
the wider Middle East. It ensures that we are as careful getting
out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama made sure to
highlight the fact that—unlike another Democrat seeking the
presidency, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—he was an early opponent of
the war in Iraq.

As Reason’s Ed Krayewski pointed out in September 2012,
President Obama
did not end
the war. The agreement to withdraw American troops
from Iraq in December 2011 was negotiated between American and
Iraqi officials in 2008. In fact, Obama wanted American troops to
stay in Iraq after 2011. The troops left then anyway
because of that agreement signed by his predecessor—and so, as
The Huffington Post
explained
, “the president ultimately had no choice but to stick
to candidate Obama’s plan.”

More from Reason on Iraq here.

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