There’s an act for that! And another act, and another act, and another…

Oh, did we forget to mention the painful results? Well, federal education “gifts” do have a tendency to blow up in your face.

Tomorrow night at 8:00pm, Fox Business News will air a John Stossel special on the failures of state-run schooling and the merits of parental choice and competition in education. I make an appearance, as do Jeanne Allen and James Tooley.

News of the show is already making the rounds, and over at Demo​c​ra​ti​c​Un​der​ground​.com, one poster is very upset about it, writing:

When will these TRAITORS stop trying to ruin this country?

HOW can AMERICANS be AGAINST public education?

Stossel is throwing out every right-wing argument possible in his namby pamby singsong way while he “interviews” a “panel” of people (who I suspect are plants) saying things like preschool is a waste of money and why invest in an already-failing system.…

I hate Stossel and I hate all of those who think the way he does.

This poster goes by the screen name “Live Love Laugh.” I guess there wasn’t enough space to tack “Hate” onto the end.

What this poster–and many good people on the American left–have yet to grasp is that critics of state monopoly schooling are NOT against public education. On the contrary, it is our commitment to the ideals of public education that compels us to pursue them by the most effective means possible, and to abandon the system that has proven itself, over many many generations, incapable of fulfilling them. I wrote about this crucial point more than a decade ago in Education Week, in a piece titled: “Are Public Schools Hazardous to Public Education.”

Fortunately, a small but steadily growing number of American liberals have already grasped this pivotal difference between means and ends, as the growing Democratic support for Florida’s school choice tax credit program evinces. Giving all families, particularly low income families, an easier choice between state-run and independent schools is the best way to advance the ideals of public education.

• Is there a place for gay people in conservative politics? We’ll be discussing it today at Cato. Watch here live at 12 PM EST.

• President Obama announces $8 billion in loan guarantees to build a new nuclear power plant in Georgia. But are government subsidies for pet energy projects a good idea?

• Are there loopholes in Obama’s ban on torture?

• What happens when the Olympics don’t go completely according to plan.

• Podcast: “Lessig, Schumer and Citizens United” featuring John Samples.

• How the Tea Party movement can prove its authenticity.

• Why Americans’ first loyalty must be to the Constitution

• “Snowmageddon!” If you’ve been watching the news, recent snow storms both prove and disprove global warming, depending on who you talk to. According to Pat Michaels, both sides are wrong: “The fact of the matter is that global warming simply hasn’t done a darned thing to Washington’s snow. The planet was nearly a degree (Celsius) cooler in 1899, when the previous record was set. If you plot out year-to-year snow around here, you’ll see no trend whatsoever through the entire history.”

• Did last week’s government shutdown actually save American’s billions of dollars?

• Podcast:“Scrap ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ ” featuring Christopher A. Preble.

The AP reports:

In a land dispute pitting Madonna against African villagers, Malawi’s government has sided with the pop star who has pumped millions into the impoverished Southern African country and adopted two of its children.

Villagers have been refusing to move from a plot of land near the capital, Lilongwe, where Madonna wants to build a $15-million school for girls. The government, however, says it had originally planned to develop the plot, and only allowed the villagers to live there until a project was identified.

Lilongwe District Commissioner Charles Kalemba, accompanied by other government officials and representatives from Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity, on Thursday met with about 200 villagers and told them they would have to move. The villagers have been offered other government land.

“Government allowed you to occupy this land because there was no project yet. But now that Madonna wants to build you a school you have to give way,” Kalemba told the villagers. “You are lucky that Madonna has compensated you for your houses, gardens and trees.”…

Headman Binson Chinkhota urged residents to move, saying the school would benefit their children. But Amos Mkuyu said the $1 500 in compensation he received from Madonna for mango trees and three homes was not enough. He said his family had been living on his three-hectare plot for three generations.

Susette Kelo vs. Madonna — that would be a great battle. As usual, the government has a beneficent purpose in taking these people’s land. They took Kelo’s home for a development that would yield “new jobs and increased tax revenue.” They’re taking Amos Mkuyu’s home for a school. But stealing land is not beneficent; it is not an act of kindness and charity.

In this case the Malawian government says that the villagers are living on government land. But Mkuyu says his family has been there for three generations. Sounds like they thought it was theirs. For a discussion of collective and traditional property inspired by the movie “Avatar,” click here. Hernando de Soto, author of The Mystery of Capital, has spent a career showing how the lack of well-defined property rights hurts the poorest people in the world.

The Washington Post profiles Daniel Weinberg, assistant director of the Census, who says:

“Since the decennial census is in our Constitution, it is the most important task a government statistician can undertake. The census is key to our democratic society by making sure that our congressional districts are equal in size so that we have representative democracy. To be involved in something that is central to our democracy is pretty exciting.”

Good point. The census is indeed in the Constitution, Article I, Section 2. The Constitution provides that every ten years an enumeration of the population of each state shall be made in order to allocate members of the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, the census has been loaded down with intrusive questions not authorized in the Constitution and bearing no relation to the constitutional necessity of reapportionment. This year the Census Bureau is boasting of “one of the shortest forms in history,” which is all to the good. Still, it does ask respondents to list their race, which really should be irrelevant to government. And to tell whether they own their home or have a mortgage, in order “to administer housing programs and to inform planning decisions.” (That’s worked out well!) And of course they need age and sex data, in order to facilitate various government programs and mandates and to assist “sociologists, economists, and other researchers who analyze social and economic trends.”

Through the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau continues to ask Americans many more questions, from whether you’re on food stamps to how many bathrooms you have. All very interesting to sociologists and planners, of course, but hardly what Madison anticipated when he and his colleagues provided for an “actual enumeration” of the constituents of Congress.

Writing in Slate back in 2000, Tom Palmer complained that the Census Bureau was selling the census as a kind of Super Lotto: You can’t win if you don’t play! “The numbers are used to help determine the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal and state funds. We’re talking hospitals, highways, stadiums and school lunch programs.” Come on! Get your piece of other people’s tax dollars!

In 1990 David Kopel reviewed the Census Bureau’s promise of confidentiality.

The public is unhappy with government. How could it be otherwise, given the mess our governors have made? Reports the Washington Post:

Two-thirds of Americans are “dissatisfied” or downright “angry” about the way the federal government is working, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. On average, the public estimates that 53 cents of every tax dollar they send to Washington is “wasted.”

Despite the disapproval of government, few Americans say they know much about the “tea party” movement, which emerged last year and attracted voters angry at a government they thought was spending recklessly and overstepping its constitutional powers. And the new poll shows that the political standing of former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who was the keynote speaker last week at the first National Tea Party Convention, has deteriorated significantly.

The opening is clear: Public dissatisfaction with how Washington operates is at its highest level in Post-ABC polling in more than a decade — since the months after the Republican-led government shutdown in 1996 — and negative ratings of the two major parties hover near record highs.

Surely this is a moment for a true political entrepreneur, someone who believes in liberty–across the board–willing to challenge Washington’s bipartisan consensus that government should grow ever bigger and more expensive. Someone who opposes expensive, and often deadly, social engineering at home and abroad. Someone willing to simply leave the American people alone, rather than determined to conscript them into yet another annoying, intrusive, and expensive national crusade. Someone willing to back up his or her rhetoric about individual liberty with action.