Hope is a good thing - here's how to create some...

As you may recall, several months ago I was on here writing about a good friend of mine who told me I was being too negative in some of my blogs.  I tried to reform for awhile but life - and Supreme Court justice John Roberts - got in the way.

My friend was at my home this evening having dinner when he again mentioned that it seems I have gone back to telling everyone there is no hope for America and that we all need to move and that our country is going to hell in a handbasket and etc., etc. etc.

Then, he said something that made so much sense that I can't believe I didn't think of this before.

That is, instead of only fussing about our loss of liberty and how stupid government is, maybe I could offer some advice to people on how to promote liberty and limited government.  He asked me, "So what do I need to do?" 

Great question.  Here are some answers.

If (and for some of you that might be a big if...) you sincerely care about the erosion of our God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you can start by using social media to spread the concept of limited government to your "friends" or "followers".  If you like this blog, for example, you could go on Facebook, and ask your friends to follow it, read it and spread it to their friends. 

I would suggest going to www.fee.org  - the Foundation for Economic Education and read articles from The Freeman.  For $50 per year you can get the Freeman sent to your home.  It has incredible articles that provide historical perspectives on free markets and small government.  Send links to your friends that you find interesting or useful.  This foundation also has summer seminars for high school and college-age students in Atlanta that are very intellectually challenging.

Other places like the Institute for Humane Studies, The Institute for Justice and the Ludwig von Mises Institute to name a few are great places to read about liberty and find out about seminars and workshops.

On my website - www.jackchambless.com you can click on SPEECHES and see talks given by Walter Williams, John Stossel, Milton Friedman and others that you could send to people.  Many of my lectures can be found there as well if you want your kids to learn about free market economics.

Speaking of kids, if you have younger ones (real young ones), read Yertle the Turtle to them!  It is a classic story of one turtle's fight against tyranny and would help start a conversation about the nature of freedom.  For older students have them read The Law by Frederic Bastiat, Leonard Read's "I Pencil", Not Yours to Give by David Crockett and other books and essays on liberty.  Read the Declaration of Independence to your kids and talk to them about what Jefferson meant in each paragraph. I have other book recommendations on my website.

Teach your kids about the concepts of private property, the role of enlightened self-interest and the principle of voluntary versus forced relationships.  Towards this end, help them understand, for example, that burning CD's and DVD's is a violation of someone's artistic property.  Tell them how income taxes did not exist from 1776-1913 in America because the Founders thought income taxes took property by force.  Discuss eminent domain, property taxes, seat belt laws (if you want to go this far) under the umbrella of, "When is this law a violation of property rights?"

I would suggest teaching your children about the concepts of giving in order to help them understand that giving is the basis of relationships that are profitable in the long run.  Specifically, businesses that people like and trust and don't mind seeing make money are the ones that show that they have some sense of honor, integrity and justice.  These businesses avoid the age-old temptation of being greedy by often doing things that might not make textbook economic sense (i.e. paying their workers a bit more than the market rate or giving to charity in large amounts, or being generous to customers in the discounts offered).  Let's face it.  Many people hate captialism because people who call themselves capitalists are really dishonest and/or selfish.

If you are a businessperson that accepts government subsidies you are not a capitalist and you are helping to destroy liberty.  You are doing this by using lobbyists to plunder the taxpayers - many of whom do not even use your products.  Do you push for protective tariffs or quotas?  Do you push for regulations designed to hurt your competition?  Do you often try to wiggle your way out of serving your customers by telling them to read the fine print on your warranties?  Do you pay your workers a wage that the voters believe is just?  If not, those same voters will pick politicians who promise to regulate your prices and wages and tax you in the name of forced justice.  Do the right thing ( in the eyes of the voters and God, if I may be so bold....) to begin with and maybe the people will love you and not their elected leaders.  We all know that the private sector does everything better than the government.  Show people you can also do compassion and honesty and you will see people vote for less government on your back.

Speaking of you voters - do you receive plundered money?  If you get any money other than what you have created by serving your fellowman, you should stop it and encourage others to stop it.  If everybody steals from everybody, liberty fades away.

Write letters to the editor of your newspaper pointing out where our rights are being threatened. 

Email your elected leaders when they trample our rights - or promote them.

Attend meetings where politicians are campaigning or are discussing matters that impact your rights and let your voice be heard.

I am sure there are some other ideas I am forgetting, but I hope you can use something here.

The bottom line is simple.  There is a multiplier effect from spreading the word of freedom to other people.  All we need is 51% of the people to believe in liberty and we have enough to preserve it.

Yes, I know a couple of blogs ago I said it was over for America.  Who knows?  It might be.  If it is - meaning if we are Rome - at least you and I can fight to delay the inevitable.  If it is possible to avoid becoming Rome that would be great too - and requires that all of us do something - little or big - to help this cause.

I half-jokingly tell my wife that I want my headstone to read,

HERE LIES JACK CHAMBLESS.  IT WASN'T HIS FAULT.

Don't let it be your fault either.

Guess who caused Colorado's Wildfires?

Eight years ago, four major hurricanes blew through Central Florida, toppling thousands of trees and sending debris all over our peninsula.  Yet, after each storm passed you would have thought that somehow, magically, the Magic Kingdom had been spared.

That is because the Disney Corporation sent workers out with chainsaws, trucks and probably brooms to clear everything the hurricanes left behind with blinding efficiency.  Within a couple of days tourists could travel safely to any Disney Park and not even be bothered by the unsettling sight of hurricane-damage, much less actual tree limbs lying in the road.

Outside of Disney - where the local and state governments were in charge, weeks dragged on with snail-like efficiency as the "experts" tried to manage the cleanup.  They did manage alright.  They managed to allow human misery to extend well into the summer as a result of two key missing ingredients to a successful cleanup.  More on that later....

This summer, forest fires are ablaze all over the western United States with no end in sight.  As I am typing this sentence, more than half of all airborne fire-fighting equipment in the U.S. is currently in the state of Colorado.  This beautiful state is turning into ashes and somwhere around 103.27% of the blame lies with government bureaucrats. 

Of course we have all heard that lightning, the pine bark beetle and human carelessness caused these fires.  But ask yourself a question.  Why are all of the fires originating on government lands? 

We don't see the fires starting on private land and spreading to state and federal forests.  We see only the opposite.

This gets us to why this is the case.

Private land owners - especially timber companies and other large landholders - have the right motivation to keep their land free of fire-risk.  If a large timber concern fails to manage its forests properly by clearing dead trees and underbrush, the company will face the consequences of higher fire danger, lost trees (translation: lost money) and economic disaster.

On the other hand, what motivation does the federal government have to do the same thing?  Profit?  Nope.  Love?  Give me a break.  The desire to be efficient?  Have you been to your local tag office or public school lately?

The not-for-profit Forest Service has no overriding motivation to be efficient or even remotely competent because it faces no consequences for failing to do so.  Unlike the private companies who do not want to lose money and therefore must perform well, the government knows that if dead trees from a beetle are not cleared out, or if underbrush is not tended to it will not matter how many homes are burned as a result.  The Forest Service is funded through the forced taking of our incomes and as long as that force is omnipresent, it can allow thousands more homes to be destroyed and still be funded in the future.

Attached to this blog is a short video-clip that I believe clearly illustrates the fact that there is nothing we can count on the government to do well simply because of the lack of motivation and consequences.  Therefore, make sure you have a good water hose if you are reading this anywhere out west.

Andy Griffith and good parenting

Today America lost a great television personality when the actor, Andy Griffith, passed away at the age of 86. 

I have spent the past several years watching the beloved, Andy Griffith Show with my wife and children - usually during our lunches together. 

We have seen every episode (only the classic black & white ones) many times and jokingly quote from them in many of our family situations.

I think more American kids should be encouraged to watch this classic program.  It is wholesome, well-acted, intelligent and overall a good example of how to live a simple life.

There are also moments that are very educational and have helped me as a dad and as an economics professor.  The following clip is one of them.  I hope you will enjoy it.

Thanks for all the laughs and lessons Andy...

The ObamaCare Ruling: Why its Over for America

I am in Montgomery, Alabama this weekend to speak at a homeschool convention.  On Saturday one of the speeches I am delivering is entitled, "Is Socialism America's Destiny?"  How fitting...

Somewhere on a country highway today I learned of the gutless assistance John Roberts gave the liberals on the Supreme Court in ruling that the federal government has the Constitutional right to tax all of us if we refuse to purchase something the government demands that we purchase.  Roberts said that the government cannot require us to buy health insurance but can "tax" us if we do not.

This means that if the government decides some day that a certain type of car is best in fighting global warming or that a certain type of school is best for our kids or that a certain type of food is best for our health that we will not have to buy the small car, go to the local school or buy carrots but can be taxed on these decisions to not partake of these goods.

Folks, I am sorry, but it is over for this country.

Let's look at it.

1913 - the creation of the power to tax income.  This destroyed the right to property and privacy.

1935 - (see Butler vs. the United States) - the ruling that the government can spend our taxes on anything it wants to in the name of the general welfare.  This converted plunder into a legal right.

1937 - the ruling that the government can alter private contracts concerning wages.  This eliminated the right to determine wages freely between willing buyers and sellers.

1973 - the ruling that allows women to end the life of the unborn - even though the Constitution protects the right to life.  This - arguably - ended the lives of millions of free human beings.
2001 - The Patriot Act - we are no longer secure in our papers, effects and communications with one another.

2005 - the eminent domain ruling that told us that we can lose our homes to any other private entity.  This ended the right to physical property in America.

2012 - the ruling that we are not free to decide what we will or will not purchase.  This ended the rest of economic liberty as we know it.

In 1849 Frederic Bastiat wrote:

"If the natural tendancies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendancies of these organizers are always good?  Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?  Or do they believe that they themselves are made of finer clay than the rest of mankind?  The organizers maintain society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse.  The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and give it a saner direction.  Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority."

Bastiat understood - as did the Founding Fathers - the arrogance of politicians and judges.  And now we are paying for what they always saw coming.

I believe Thomas Jefferson would say, "But of course" upon reading today's Supreme Court decision. 

The fact is, as we approach the 236th birthday of this dying experiment that it is somewhat of a miracle that a republic could have lasted this long.  The "makers" in our nation are now so outnumbered by the "takers" that we will most likely not be able to get back the liberty we have now lost.

Historians will record, with bewilderment, that the people who were given the gift of liberty on this Earth turned over their gift to the same forces that always destroy liberty to begin with.

I do not know how to tell the folks in Alabama this weekend that the only thing they are really accomplishing by teaching their kids the meaning of free markets and individual liberty is to buy their children a little more time before it is all over.  In effect, I am selling caulk to the guests on the Titanic.

Well, well - so much for gasoline conspiracy theories

A few months ago, gasoline was selling for more than $4 per gallon in much of the nation and just a few pennies below $4 in my hometown.

Today, there are parts of the country paying $2.99 per gallon (I saw $2.81 in Eufala, Alabama) and my local 7-11 is charging nearly that price.

So what happened?  I thought that 'BIG OIL' (the catch phrase used by all non-thinking hysterical liberals) could do whatever it wanted to us?  I thought the law of demand did not apply to gasoline?  I thought that a conspiracy was afoot to take advantage of all of us poor drivers who could do nothing to combat the omnipresent power of OPEC, Exxon-Mobil and the speculators in New York?

My, my, how sad it must be to be so economically ignorant. 

To you liberals out there, please tell me something.

If $4 per gallon causes very little change in human driving behavior, wouldn't that signal 'BIG OIL' to raise prices to $4.01?  If $4.01 doesn't do much but cause more grumbling why not try $4.09, then $4.32?  If 'BIG OIL' is in control it can do whatever it wants until we are forced to ride donkeys or walk to the store.

For the last time, oil prices change because of changes in supply and demand.  Period.  There is nothing else out there.  No bigfoot, no Loch Ness Monster, no UFOs, no government plots, no billionaire-CEO torture tests.  Nothing.  There are only the forces of the market that guide prices up and down.

Right now those forces (led by falling demand in debt-choked Europe) are guiding prices down.  So fill up, be happy and when prices stop going down please do us all a favor and save your silly arguments for when you meet people like President Obama, Nancy Pelosi or other folks who would fail my economics class.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ron Brandolini

In August of 1991 I sat in a room with around 20 people interviewing for the job I have held for the past 21 years.  I was 24 years old at the time, fresh out of graduate school and very nervous about my prospects. 

Sitting only a few feet to my right was a man who kept grinning during my interview.  I did not know if he was grinning because he was thinking, "Man what a dunce", or if he was grinning because he liked my answers.

When the interview concluded, rather than have me spend another $20 for a cab ride to the airport, this man offered to give me a ride. 

Along the way we talked about economic philosophy, our views on the world around us and other personal matters of interest to us.

I took an immediate liking to this polite, calm, generous person who could tell how badly I wanted this job.

When we pulled up the airport he gave me the same gentle smile you see in the photo below and said, "Don't worry, I think everything will turn out fine."

He was very reassuring in his demeanor which allowed me to think that things might actually turn out well for me.

 

 

What I did not know was that he had to go back and push hard for me to get the job.  Many in the department wanted to keep the current part-time professor who had filled in when a full-time professor passed away.  Others may have thought I was too young or had detected (though I tried to keeep it from being obvious) that I was a staunch free-market economist.

Ron Brandolini convinced Valencia College to give me a chance.  A year or so later  - when he started our Honors Department - he gave me the chance to teach honors courses.  A few years later he gave me some great advice on how to survive in higher education when your views are despised by most of your colleagues.

 

 

What follows is the obituary from today's Orlando Sentinel.  While it captures many things that were true about Ron Brandolini, it does miss one thing.

Ron Brandolini was an intellectual champion of liberty, free markets and the rights of all human beings to plan the course of their lives without the force  - or the threat of it - to guide them.  He had great natural instincts about how markets worked. 

The economics community has lost a great economist. 

I know I will be forever grateful to him for convincing Valencia to give me the job I have proudly held for two decades.  I am convinced now that he was grinning during my interview because he could tell we shared similar beliefs about the world around us.

Thank you and God bless you, Professor Brandolini.

By Jeff Kunerth, The Orlando Sentinel

The Mod 3 faculty lounge on the west campus of Valencia Community College seated 10 or 12 uncomfortably. The chairs were metal. The room was narrow and cramped, its walls painted concrete block, the floor covered in commercial-grade carpeting.

"It was utilitarian and stark like a train station in London said Ron Nelson, 69, a retired English professor.

What made the room special was the ongoing, free-floating conversation and intellectual debate among the faculty members who occupied the place in the 1980s. There were English teachers, accounting professors, mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, psychologists, and this one economics professor who seemed to stand out among them all — Ronald Brandolini.

"He was one of the shining stars in that group of people," Nelson said. "The quality of conversation was a lot better because he was there."

---

Ron Brandolini, of Orlando, died June 16 after a long battle with cancer. He was 65.

Brandolini, who came to Valencia in 1976, was the founding director of the college's honors program in the 1980s and served in that capacity for 20 years. During that time, he recruited top students and teachers for the program, elevating the program's stature throughout the country.

Honors students from Valencia went on to North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke, Ivy League schools and top-tier state universities.

"It was rated one of the highest community college programs in the country," said Ivan Applebaum, 76, a retired psychology professor.

Brandolini's intellect allowed him to converse on any subject with experts in their fields, but his personality made him accessible to teachers and students alike. For his students, Brandolini had the ability to translate the principles of economics into the language of everyday life.

"He would take events from TV and apply it to his lecture and make it interesting. His students would say, 'I never thought of it that way. It makes sense,' " said his wife, Nicoleta Brandolini, 43.

Brandolini liked to view things from afar and get the big picture, whether it was from the peak of Machu Picchu in Peru to the backyard telescope he programmed with a computer.

He liked to fish, but always let his catch off the hook. He knew how to invest, but never cared much about money. He liked to sit at home in a buttery-colored love seat, facing the entertainment center with the television off, and listen to music. Mozart. Springsteen.
Willie Nelson.  Elton John. The Drifters.

To his friends and family, Ron Brandolini had that rare combination of soaring intellect and common sense, far-reaching vision and fine attention to detail, self-confidence without the self-centeredness.

"He did not have much of an ego," Applebaum said. "His interests were in others, not himself."

My Experiences with Home-Schooled Students

Note:  This is from the Op-Ed page of the June 10, 2012 Orlando Sentinel.  I have revised it to include information on an upcoming homeschool expo in Alabama.  For those of you thinking about homeschooling your kids - or know others who might be thinking about it - please share this and feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.

For the past 21 years I have taught economics to more than 14,000 college students here in Central Florida.

During that time I have made a concerted effort to glean information from my Valencia students as to their educational background preceding their arrival in college.

 

Drawing from a sample size this large multiplied by two decades multiplied by hundreds of thousands of test answers has put me in a good position to offer the following advice to any reader of this paper with children in Florida's K-12 public schools.

Get them out now before you ruin their life.

While this may seem to be a bit harsh, let's look at the facts.

First, my best students every year are in order — Chinese, Eastern European, Indian and home-schooled Americans, and it is not even close when comparing this group to American public-school kids.

Since it is highly unlikely that any of you plan to move to Beijing, Warsaw or Bangalore, you might want to look at the facts concerning public vs. home-schooled American students.
(In Florida, more than 60,000 students in about 42,000 families study in home education programs, which meet the requirement for regular school attendance and were protected under state law in 1985.)

All of us have seen or heard about the annual disaster that is called FCAT results. Thanks to government officials in Washington, D.C. and Tallahassee, kids in government-run schools are failing miserably in a wide range of subjects while teachers face bureaucratic nightmares that strip them of their status as professionals and relegate them to servants of standardized testing.
It is also a fact of public education that incidents of bullying, teacher-student sexual misconduct, abusive behavior by teachers and incessant protection of poor teachers by education unions have put students in public schools in the unenviable position of dealing with issues that no learning environment should impose on them.

Moreover, the public education system in Florida and other states is one of the worst forms of monopoly power.

Everywhere in our lives as citizens we have free consumer choice as to where we shop for food, clothes, cellphones and more. However, if you are economically disadvantaged you rarely have this choice in education.

Poorer families in Florida are instead given the school district that their children are forced to attend. Rather than give poor parents choices so that competitive pressure is imposed on public education, we have lower-income families — mostly minorities — who are condemned to 13 years of inferior education just because they live in the wrong zip code.

Everywhere in America where vouchers or other forms of school choice exists, we see competition forcing the unionized public schools to adapt, or lose students.
This used to be the case in Florida, but those options are now lower than in past years and the victims show up in my classes woefully unprepared for challenging college course work.

 

It is routine that students from Florida's worst high schools make failing grades in college. These kids have been lied to by a system that tells them that a diploma from an "F" school will not impact them in college.

Meanwhile, the more than 2 million home-schooled kids around America (my two sons included) routinely appear in America's colleges with an education that prepares them for virtually anything.
The home-education movement has unleashed the forces of capitalism in such a way that anyone can find dozens of types of curricula for any grade level to help educate their kids in areas where one might not be an expert.

Home-school conventions like the one coming at the end of this month in Montgomery, Alabama offer thousands of options and professional speakers who can help guide willing parents through their child's formative years.

The home-schooled kids who show up in my classes usually arrive at the age of 16 or 17, score in the high 90's on their exams and then go off to places like Harvard, Penn and other world-class universities.