- "Low" test scores in school? Longer school year and school days. How did no one think of this earlier? And who cares that such a massive change will handicap, if not destroy, numerous portions of our economy, including the travel, leisure, and hotel industries.
- People are "distracted" while driving? Ban federal workers from texting while driving. Who cares if driving a car is an inherently dangerous activity and that there are thousands of distractions available to a driver (including the radio, the sun, wildlife, other drivers, passengers, food and drink, etc.). If it will only save one person, it has to be worth it, right?
- Heavy taxation and segregation hasn't stopped people from enjoying their tobacco products? Use the FDA to ban flavored cigarettes and set up a place for people to tattle on those who continue to sell flavored cigarettes. Who cares if using tobacco as an adult is a legal activity. Just think about the children, won't anyone think about the children?!?!
- An increased percent of Americans polled think that the threat of global warming (or is it climate change? I'm always a few years behind on the slang the kids are using these days) is exaggerated? And congress has yet to pass a "climate bill"? Just give the EPA the authority to regulate green-house gasses. No matter that this will raise energy costs and dampen job growth during a recession, won't anyone think of the trees? And the polar bears, and the tree frogs, and the dolphins?
- Unemployment is the highest it has been in over 20 years? Just grin and bear it and claim that "because of the bold and coordinated action that we took, millions of jobs have been saved or created; the decline in output has been stopped; financial markets have come back to life; and we stopped the crisis from spreading further to the developing world." Who would dare question you about it?
- Have any other great "progressive" policy changes you'd like to make, but have no way to pay for them? (especially with fancy things like statistics and graphs like these from the TaxProf Blog)
Something tells me that someone is going to have to break one of his promises, that "if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."
And people wonder why my wife and I are in no hurry to have children.
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Love the title. I think it sums up this blog post perfectly. "Wink"
ReplyDeleteThe school thing is based on a lot of studies. Especially in at risk neighborhoods with low-income kids, performance seems to increase tremendously when students do not have a longer summer break.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure it will work quite as well for students who were already performing well.
For a quick summary of this read the section on it in "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. In fact, for some fun and interesting reading, read everything by Gladwell.
(note: gladwell is not that political...the book is about the nature of suceess)
Personally, I don't support a longer school year, just shorter breaks spread out throughout the year.
ReplyDelete