The True Cost of Public Schools

George Noga
Public schools spend as much or more per student than even the most elite
and expensive private schools. This post presents a fair and correct analysis.
By: George Noga – April 1, 2016

   This is not an April Fool although teachers unions and school administrators (“educrats”) wish it were. It is a fair comparison of spending between elite private schools and public schools. It compares Trinity Prep and Lake Highland Prep to a typical Orange County, Florida public high school. Note: Trinity and Lake Highland are the creme de la creme of elite Central Florida preparatory schools offering small classes, top notch facilities, individual attention and every possible tool for success.

   The all-inclusive (books, transportation, etc.) cost of attending Trinity and Lake Highland currently is $19,000. The spending per student from the Orange County education budget is $11,000; however, that figure fails to include education spending elsewhere in the county budget and off the budget. It does not include federal funds (average 10%), grants from governments and other organizations (5% estimate) and funds paid by parents and students (5% estimate). These items increase public school spending by $2,200 per student to $13,200 – but wait – we are only getting started.

   There is other off budget spending including: (1) proceeds from bonds and other debt; (2) health care including retirees; (3) pensions; and (4) debt service on school and/or mixed purpose bonds. The county budget does not break out these items; therefore, estimates are necessary. A fair guess is this spending adds another $2,200 or 20%, raising the spending to $15,400 per public school student. Note: A CATO Institute national study found public schools spend an additional 44% that is not contained directly in the education budget; herein we have added 40% which is less than the CATO average.

   There is even more chicanery in public school budgets; they artificially inflate the number of students to make their numbers appear better. They accomplish this by counting students who may attend as few as one class per year. For an apples-to-apples comparison, we must decrease the number of students 12%. This raises the spending of public schools to $17,500 per equivalent student. Finally, high schools on average spend at least 10% more per student than lower grades. This final adjustment raises the per student spending of Orange County public high schools to $19,250.

   There you have it! Public high schools spend about the same or even slightly more per student than the most elite private schools; they spend more than double that of the top Catholic high school in the area and 300+% more than the average private school.

   It is not accidental that no human being knows the true spending on public schools. Educrats and unions intentionally make the data as opaque as possible to prevent anyone from doing what I tried in this post. This is similar to Lynx buses which have intentionally painted over windows so citizens can’t see how empty they really are.

   We need independent audits of county public school systems so citizens will know the true amount of spending. Until that happens (phat chance) I stand behind my analysis that public schools spend about the same per student as the most elite private schools. Ponder the ramifications. Every student now attending public school could have an education equivalent to the most elite, exclusive and expensive private school. School choice truly is the civil rights issue of our lifetime and that is no April Fool!

The next post on April 10 pillories Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners.

Bottled Water and Socialism

George Noga
A simple bottle of water, available in stores for under a dollar, proves why
communism, socialism and all command economies are doomed to failure.
By: George Noga – March 27, 2016

       In the 1970s still water began to be offered for sale in the USA in single serving sizes. I knew sparkling water had been sold for some time and there was a market for bottled water in parts of the world where the tap water was not safe or of poor quality. But I thought “Who in America would pay for single serving still water when safe, good quality water runs Scott free out of faucets, water fountains and coolers?”

     I am trained in economics and like to consider myself as reasonably bright, possessing integrity and motivated to make the best possible decisions to serve my fellow man. Yet, if I were a 1970s era government planner, I would have prevented our economy’s scarce resources from being used to produce and distribute bottled water.

     I would have been dead wrong! Today, bottled water is the second largest beverage sold – ahead of both milk and beer. In 2014, 11 billion gallons ($25 billion) were sold in just the USA – equal to 34 gallons per American and this ranked the US as only 10th in the world. This was true despite its cost of around $1 for 500 milliliters which works out to $7 per gallon – nearly three times the price of gasoline.

     Education, training in economics, smarts and logic coupled with the very best of intentions would have proved incapable of discerning the preferences of my fellow citizens, the ambitions and creativity of entrepreneurs and the behavior of consumers armed with a free choice. If I had been the chief government planner in the 1970s, there would be no bottled water available for sale today in the USA.

     Yet, despite a government apparatchik being as totally wrong as I would have been about bottled water, no one ever would have known about my mistake because  no one could possibly have known what would happen with free people in a free market. And it isn’t just bottled water. There would be no copy machines or personal computers; IBM originally estimated the world market was for only 5,000 copiers and under 100 personal computers. There would be no internet as the cognoscenti of the time believed it would only be used by government and universities.

     The humble bottle of water we now take for granted proves all forms of socialism and command economies are frauds and conversely proves why free markets work.

The next post will be on April 1st; readers may think it is an April fool, but it isn’t!

EPA Carbon Regulations: Science or Religion

George Noga
The EPA carbon mandate costs America over $200 billion to achieve a
reduction in temperature of 2.35 ten-thousandths of one degree per year.
By: George Noga – March 20, 2016

    The EPA enacted, and President Obama enthusiastically touted, new regulations on carbon emissions targeting coal burning power generation. The regulations phase in between now and 2030. This post contains the numbers – which you are not likely to read anywhere else – behind the regulations. Note: The US Supreme Court recently stayed the regulations until after the matter is adjudicated in the appellate court.

    The US uses 18% of the world’s energy of which 36% is coal generated. Thus the US uses 6.5% (18% times 36%) of global coal power. However, absent new regulation, America’s reliance on coal is falling rapidly; over the next 15 years (the length of the EPA regulation phase in) it will be less that 5% of global coal power generation.

    The EPA mandates a 32% decrease in carbon emissions by 2030. A cut of 32% of 5% is equal to a reduction of 1.6% – or one-tenth of one percent per year between now and 2030. The regulation reduces temperature by less than two-hundredths of one degree Celsius by the year 2100. During the phase-in period of the regulation, China alone will add far more coal burning capacity than the US takes out of service. Despite virtually non-existent benefits, the costs to achieve them are astronomical.

    The American coal industry is savaged, big swaths of our country economically devastated, 300,000 jobs destroyed and economic growth stifled. The initial compliance costs are $50 billion and then $10 billion of ongoing costs per year and increasing every year thereafter ad infinitum. Every American household and business will pay much, much more for energy with working people and the poor, i.e. those who Obama claims to be looking out for, the most severely impacted.

    For any American president to invoke such an extreme measure by executive fiat, one would have to believe the horrendous sacrifices being demanded of the American people are justified by the results attained, i.e. the costs bear at least some relationship to the putative benefits. Yet as shown herein, the costs are real, onerous and immediate while the benefits are  microscopic, uncertain and remote. Reductions of carbon of .1% (one part per thousand) per year and in temperature of .02 degrees by 2100 (2.35 ten-thousandths of one degree) per year are so small as to defy measurement.

    Obama is demanding extraordinary sacrifices without benefits; yet that is not the most absurd part of this American tragedy. The pinnacle of absurdity is that these sacrifices are being imposed, not in the name of science, but in the name of climate religion. There is no evidence warming is significantly anthropogenic or even harmful, while there is much evidence (see March 6th MLLG posting) to the contrary.

    This is another instance of liberal elitists impoverishing millions of working Americans solely in obeisance to their unscientific, politically climate religion.

Next up is a compelling juxtaposition between bottled water and socialism.

Pope Francis Enters the Twilight Zone

George Noga

When Pope Francis strays from religion, he is eminently fallible; he has erred

about clergy child abuse, climate change, capitalism, economics and Trump.

By: George Noga – March 13, 2016

  As an observant Catholic for much of my life, I take no pleasure in chronicling the recent pratfalls of the pontiff, which have been too numerous to ignore. The most egregious is his shameful re-characterization of the priest sex scandal as “child abuse” which now replaces “pedophilia” as the Holy See’s descriptor of choice. What actually happened was neither child abuse nor pedophilia as Pope Francis well understands.

  Only 3% of the clergy sexual assaults were pedophilia, i.e. involved prepubescents; 97% of the victims were older; ipso facto, the scandal could not be pedophilia. Child abuse is a gender-neutral, catchall term connoting non sexual forms of abuse. In the priest sex scandal, the only abuse was sexual and it was not gender neutral. Overall, sexual assault victims overwhelmingly are female; in the church scandal, the victims were 80% male. Therefore, the scandal could not possibly be considered child abuse.

   Okay, so what really was the scandal and why does it matter so much the pope dissembled to such a preposterous extent? Pure and simple, the scandal is homosexual abuse of young males. The church, abetted by the media, injected the polemical straw men (pedophilia, child abuse) solely to palliate and obfuscate. The motive was in part political correctness; but the greater motive was to avoid dealing with the 900 pound gorilla in the room, i.e. the increasingly dominant homosexual culture of the church.

   Independent studies estimate priests at over 50% gay with a higher percentage for younger priests. Some seminaries are so militantly gay, they drive out heterosexual seminarians. Pope Francis knows this truth full well but he either will not or cannot change the culture; instead, he disingenuously changes the name of the problem.

   Pope Francis imbibes the climate change kool-aid. At the UN, he pleaded for immediate action and blamed the problem on capitalism’s “selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity.” He forgot the worst environmental degradation in Earth’s history resulted from socialism in the USSR and is now being cleaned up by those selfish capitalists. Only rich countries can afford to protect the environment.

“A poor child in an African slum doesn’t need a solar panel.”

   He doesn’t get that squandering trillions for uncertain, infinitesimal benefits means we cannot spend it to alleviate suffering from unsafe water, malnutrition and lack of electricity and medicine. A poor child in an African slum does not need a solar panel! Pope Francis undoubtedly is well-intentioned but we all know where that road leads.

   Economics is Pope Francis’s real blind spot. He believes capitalism makes people rich by exploiting the poor. Unfortunately for the pontiff, even the most cursory look around the world confirms the dead opposite to be true. The poorest people under capitalism in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea are light years better off than those in socialist sinecures like Venezuela, Cuba or even Francis’s native Argentina. Capitalism has lifted one billion people out of poverty in China and India.

   This brings us to Trump. Is building a wall unchristian? Is the USA unchristian for creating great wealth amidst liberty and becoming a magnet for people everywhere? Or are Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela unchristian for creating great poverty, stifling  liberty, fomenting civil unrest and making life so miserable their people flee from their homes?

   There is a pattern in the pope’s pratfalls. He has a socialistic, Utopian world view that is demonstrably contrary to how world really works – especially the world of economics. Pope Francis needs to stick to his knitting to avoid further embarrassments.

The next post dissects recent EPA carbon regulations in a manner not found elsewhere.

 

Ultimate Climate Change Primer

George Noga
If you believe global warming is man-made to any significant extent, then
reading this post should forever change the way you look at climate change.
By: George Noga – March 6, 2016

      Our first ever posting in 2007 was about climate change and we have written about it more often than any other topic. This post updates our position based on the latest science buttressed by logic. Earth has been in a secular, solar-caused warming pattern for 150 years; it is a normal part of alternate warming and cooling cycles throughout history. Nevertheless, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that recent increases in atmospheric CO2 have contributed to warming in some small and inconsequential way.

    Evidence warming primarily is nonanthropogenic continues to mount. Recent science (now being peer reviewed) shows CO2 feedback is not amplified 300% as per the computer models but instead is dampened 50% – a decrease in warming due to CO2 of 600%. Following are the top ten things you should know about global warming.

  1. The most compelling proof of solar causation is temperatures throughout our solar system. Since 1970, NASA has documented warming on our moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Triton, Pluto, Titan, Enceladus, Dysnomia and Eris. Much of this warming has a similar pattern to Earth’s. There is not one instance of observed non warming in our solar system. This evidence is so powerful it led me in 2007 to conclude that warming is solar caused and not man-made.
  2. There has been no observed warming (net of El Nino) for at least 18 years; this emphatically devastates the hockey-stick computer models predicting disaster.
  3. Earth’s temperatures fit a secular warming pattern with increases in fits and starts, pauses for long periods and even intervals of cooling as in the 1970s and perhaps again in the 2020s. No CO2 based computer models fit the pattern.
  4. Climate models have not been updated for decades because it is impossible for them to incorporate the actual results of the past 18 years. They have no answers for the simple reason that temperature changes cannot be explained by CO2.
  5. There is scientific agreement that a doubling of CO2 should cause a rise of about 1 degree by 2100. However, there is no agreement CO2 feedback is amplified (increased) by a factor of 3 per the computer models. Instead of a 300% increase, there is a 50% decrease in feedback. This means computer models are wrong by 600% and temperature gain due to CO2 should be only .5 degrees by 2100.
  6. Per the UNIPCC, the warming expected by 2100 is a net benefit to mankind. Moreover, their oft quoted summaries are written by politicians, not scientists.
  7. Science is not settled; it never is settled. Government funding of studies outstrips funding from all other sources by 3,000 to 1; you get what you pay for. If the science is truly settled, why won’t any scientist or politician agree to debate?
  8. Even if the worst scenario were to be believed, the best response is to spend scarce resources to ameliorate the effects of warming if and when it occurs rather than squander trillions today on infinitesimal reductions in temperature.
  9. Humanity’s best strategy is to maximize economic growth to have the most possible resources available in the future. Instead, we are choking economic growth by lavishing money on political feel-good initiatives that have no impact.
  10. The precautionary principle is being grotesquely misapplied. Warmists insist we spend trillions willy-nilly today to perhaps save lives in the future. But squandering trillions now will result in certain death for millions of poor people from lack of funds for clean water, electricity and disease eradication.

   Thus, affluent liberal elitists are condemning tens of millions in the third world to death solely in obeisance to their unscientific, politically motivated climate religion.

   We will continue to address climate change on these pages; this was but a beginning.

The next post addresses the many recent pratfalls of Pope Francis.

If the Election Goes to the House of Representatives

George Noga
What happens if the presidential election goes to the House of Representatives?
You could be in for a surprise; the process may not work the way you believe.
By: George Noga – March 2, 2016

      MLLG is providing this post as a service to our readers. It is way too early to speculate about the outcome of the election; however, the possibility of a third (or fourth) party candidate is much greater this year. Michael Bloomberg is poised to enter the race and to spend billions of his own money under a variety of scenarios such as a Trump nomination or a Clinton indictment or medical crisis. Trump could run if denied the Republican nomination. There are some other plausible scenarios as well.

    Most Americans know if no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College, the election goes to the House of Representatives (“House”). Once the election goes to the House however, the process operates much differently than is generally believed. You may want to print this post and retain it for future reference just in case.

    In early January 2017 in a joint session of the new Congress, the President of the Senate opens the Electoral College ballots; tellers count them; and the results are announced by state in alphabetic order. If there is no majority, the Twelfth Amendment prescribes what happens. The House must choose among the top three receiving votes in the Electoral College – the 12th Amendment says this is to be done “immediately”.

    Each state gets one vote regardless of size; Wyoming counts the same as California. To be elected president, the winner must receive 26 votes. Under a rule of the House (not a Constitutional provision) a majority of each state’s delegation must vote for one candidate. Florida has 27 house members; a majority of 14 is needed for Florida’s vote to count. There are 7 states with only one house member (AK, DE, MT, ND, SD, VT and WY); how they vote determines their entire state. If there is no majority (a tie for example) that state’s vote is not recorded. The process continues as long as necessary.

    Meanwhile, the Senate chooses the vice president from the two highest vote getters for vice president. Each senator gets one vote and a majority of 51 is needed for election. There is no requirement that the Senate coordinate its vote with the House and it is possible the president and vice president could be from different parties. Note: The 12th Amendment requires a quorum of two-thirds of the Senate to be present before voting for vice president; thus, any party with 34 senators could prevent a vote.

    The term for President Obama and Vice President Biden ends at noon on January 20, 2017. If the House has not acted by that time but the Senate has, then the Senate’s choice for vice president becomes Acting President. If neither the House nor the Senate has acted by January 20, then the Speaker of the House becomes Acting President with the President Pro Tempore of the Senate next in line.

    The president has been elected only once before under the 12th Amendment. In 1824, a four way election between Andrew Jackson, John Quincey Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay left Jackson 32 votes short of an electoral college majority. Clay threw his support to Adams and on the first ballot Adams received 13 votes of the 25 states then extant – giving him a bare majority and the presidency.

    The next time you find yourself in a conversation and someone brings up the possibility of the 2016 election going to the House, you will be loaded for bear.

 The next post on March 6th revisits our favorite topic – climate change.

America’s Conflict with Radical Islam Dates to 1785

George Noga

MLLG Icon

Visit the new MLLG website; it contains the best posts of all time.
Conflict between radical Islam and America goes back 231 years.
By: George Noga – February 28, 2016

     We will get to America’s first encounter with Islamic terrorists, but first a few words about our new More Liberty – Less Government website. The website now is ready with most writings from mid 2011 to the present already on the website and more being added each week. Eventually, there will be over 75 past posts plus all 2016 posts. The website already has experienced thousands of hits even though I have yet to mention it in a post. Moreover, our posts now show up in Google searches (especially our Guns in America series). Go to www.mllg.us and you will find the following:

  • A heading titled “About MLLG & Author” with much background information
  • Most posts from mid 2011 to the present – more being added all the time
  • Chronological and topical indexes plus a “Search Window” for finding posts
  • The best posts of all time and the best series of all time
  • All the most recent (2016) postings in order of publication
  • A portal to subscribe to the blog so you will receive all posts via email
  • Links to all the usual social media

    You will find extensive information about MLLG and also about yours truly, including some things that may surprise you. If you enjoy reading our posts, you will enjoy browsing the website and finding all our most popular posts and series including: Defining Liberalism, IQ in Society and Public Policy, The Gods of the Copybook Headings and many about climate change including Warming Throughout the Solar System. It also is a great way for your friends and associates to learn about our work.

America’s First Encounter with Muslim Terrorism

     In 1785 (231 years ago) Dey Muhammad of Algiers declared war on the United States and captured several American ships. Soon thereafter,  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, American diplomats in London at the time, requested a meeting with the ambassador from Tripoli regarding piracy by the Barbary States. The meeting took place in early 1786 and Adams and Jefferson sent a letter dated March 28, 1786 summarizing the meeting to John Jay, at that time the US Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation.

    Adams and Jefferson asked the ambassador why the Barbary States made war upon the United States which had done them no injury. Adams and Jefferson went on to say that America considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador’s response to Adams and Jefferson as contained in their letter to John Jay is excerpted in the following paragraph.

     “The actions of the Barbary States are founded on the laws of our Prophet, Mohamed. It is written in our Koran that all nations who do not acknowledge our  authority are sinners. Therefore, it is our right and our duty to make war upon such infidels wherever they can be found and to make slaves of all that are taken prisoner. Moreover, any Muslims slain in battle are sure to go to paradise.“

     Eventually, the US fought two Barbary wars in 1801-1805 and again in 1815-1816. In the first war, a combined land and naval assault by the US Marine Corps on Tripoli won the war; in the second, the US Navy, led by Commodore Steven Decatur, forced a peace treaty on the Barbary States. Thereafter, the Barbary States did not capture any more US ships although they continued to pillage and plunder those of other nations.

     Not much has changed in over 230 years; is there a lesson here from the past?

 The next post revisits our favorite topic – climate change; it is not to be missed!

The Origin of Government

George Noga
Economic means must precede political means; production must precede
consumption; how prehistoric economies led to the origin of government.
 By: George Noga – February 21, 2016

    Economic means must precede political means. That axiom by Tom Palmer explains why there are no governments among primitive societies. They have leaders but never a state. Hunter-gatherers and nomads don’t generate enough of an economic surplus to support a permanent predator class. Nonetheless, such societies were victimized by roving bandits (precursors of government) who moved on once they plundered what little was available. There was no reason for them to stay. Also nomads and hunters were not stationary and hence not easy targets for predators.

    Everything changed once people settled permanently and established agriculture. Now they generated a regular economic surplus and were vulnerable because they had to remain in one location. Once again, roving bandits came, pillaged and plundered. However, the bandits were not stupid; they grasped the opportunity. Now there was a reason for them to stay and to plunder permanently. Hence, roving bandits morphed into stationary bandits who, through sheer force, subjugated the people and kept out other roving bandits. They thereby acquired and enforced a monopoly on physical violence within a given territory and, voila, government was created.

    The etiology is clear enough. An economic surplus is an a priori condition for the existence of a state. Government cannot exist without entrepreneurs; they have to build it before government can plunder it. Without those who invest, take risks and build businesses, government could not exist. Even the earliest farmers had to invest (plant seeds, tend crops) and take risks (drought, pestilence) while the now-permanent bandits did nothing constructive and often imposed obstacles to hinder productivity.

    Things are no different today. Permanent bandits, who now sanctimoniously go by titles such as kings, emperors, presidents and prime ministers, plunder through their enforced monopoly on violence. America is little different simply because our rulers govern with the pro forma consent of the governed. They call themselves mayor, governor, congressman or president but they behave like the bandits of yore. They plunder from the rest of us to enrich themselves in many ways – licit and illicit.

    Some like Barack Obama (“You didn’t build that”) and Hillary Clinton (“Businesses don’t create jobs“) have the sheer chutzpah to claim government is the source of economic success. Even barbarians of prehistoric times clad in animal skins would have found that absurd; lacking economic knowledge, they nevertheless understood that plunderers did not help the plundered create their businesses. They also viscerally understood Say’s Law that production must always precede consumption, i.e. there was nothing to be plundered until someone produced something.

    We might even be better off today with the bandits of ancient times. Sometimes they got sated and left us alone. Some grasped that plundering less today caused the economy to grow faster so they could plunder more tomorrow, thus benefiting both plunderers and plunderees. Bandits understood imposing arbitrary rules, regulations and creating uncertainty was counterproductive to the amount of plunder. Our current crop of stationary bandits never gets sated and is less enlightened than its ancient barbarian predecessors who stormed down from the steppes of Central Asia.

 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
The next post describes America’s first encounter with Islamic terrorism – 230 years ago.
Do you know what it was?

Guns in America – Summary and Conclusions

George Noga

MLLG Icon

Facts about guns are far different than most believe. Gun violence is down 50%; we
compare favorably with other countries; solutions are possible if we abandon dogma.
By: George Noga – February 14, 2016

     There is one overarching reality about guns in America. The Constitution grants Americans the right “to keep and bear arms” (underlining added). Thus we have a right not just to own guns but to bear them, i.e. to hold and to carry them. The Second Amendment is broadly misunderstood as being about target shooting, hunting, militias or self defense. It has nothing to do with any of these. According to well documented and copious references, the framers understood the second amendment as a political right for citizens to protect their liberty against tyrannical government.

     Guns are a political and cultural flash point exacerbated by media anti-gun bias. The facts are far different than widely believed. Gun violence is down 50% in 20 years. Most (60%) gun deaths are suicide; other causes include police, self defense, mental illness, crime and accidents. Homicides are a distinct minority. Guns stop crime 2.5 million times a year and have stopped a terrorist attack (Texas) and numerous rampage shooters. The ratio of murders to guns has plummeted 70% providing prima facie  evidence that more guns do not result in more crime.

     Liberals like to talk about gun control because their vapid dogma has no solutions to Islamic terrorism, horrific public schools, economic stagnation or mass shootings. They live in plastic bubbles and go through life without ever knowing a gun owner. They only hear about guns in connection with crime. They can’t imagine the many places where guns are a normal part of life. Paradoxically, gun violence is greatest where there is long-term liberal governance and uber-strict gun laws.

     Most Americans (and foreigners) believe gun violence in America is much worse than in other developed countries. Yet, most of America compares favorably with Canada, England, Europe and Asia. Many places in America are safer than all of the aforementioned places and some are safer than Australia, which forcibly confiscated guns in 1996. Gun crime is a regional issue; national gun laws are largely irrelevant. There is no correlation whatsoever between gun violence and gun laws.

     There are actions we can take immediately to reduce mass shootings. The biggest impact would come from treating or institutionalizing possibly violent schizophrenics. The copycat effect is real and fueled by over-the-top media coverage of mass shootings which contributes to future shootings. The media could report the news without sensationalizing it to attract other psychopaths. We can implement the successful run/hide/fight strategy that businesses have used to reduce workplace shootings by 70%. Gun free zones are an open invitation for mayhem and must be eliminated. Finally, we can change the culture and restore the guardrails for society.

     The sine qua non for progress against gun violence is to make guns non-political and non-ideological as we have with tobacco. As a corollary, there must be a laser-like focus on truth, logic and real world solutions. Myths and shibboleths about guns must be abandoned no matter how comfortable they are to intellectuals, the media and political, religious and cultural elites. The alternative is Groundhog Day where after each inevitable tragedy we perform the same kabuki and nothing ever will change.

The next MLLG post describes the origin of government – don’t miss this one!

Guns in America – Minimizing Mass Shootings

George Noga

MLLG Icon

Some mass violence is inevitable; however, it can be greatly reduced if we take off
our political and ideological blinders. This post shows the way to achieve that goal.
By: George Noga – February 7, 2016

     Following are five actions we can take to reduce mass gun violence; they are listed in the order of importance, i.e. the most effective are listed first.

1. Treat or institutionalize the violently mentally ill. Imagine living in a country where those with advanced dementia wander the streets without medical care, food or shelter. Imagine such a policy was based strictly on political dogma? That is precisely America’s policy for untreated violent schizophrenics. The 70,000 untreated and potentially violent mentally ill are condemned to tortured lives – and all in obeisance to liberal dogma. When there is a shooting by one of these miserable souls, liberals blame it on guns – also in obeisance to their dogma. Progressives refuse to institutionalize or force treatment due to their twisted beliefs. Since 1960, beds in US public psychiatric hospitals are down 90% despite an increase in population of 150 million.

2. Reform media coverage. Media should begin its reform with honest reporting about guns, including the 2.5 million times each year legal guns prevent or stop crime and all the mass shootings that were stopped by guns (listed in Part I). The key media reform is reducing the copycat effect caused by their over-the-top 24/7 reporting. When there is a copycat shooting, the media blame it on guns, ignoring their own culpability. The copycat effect is real and well documented since 1774 when Goethe’s classic, The Sorrows of Young Werther, resulted in a spate of copycat suicides.

3. Eliminate gun free zones. Signs proclaiming gun free zones are welcome mats for rampage killers. Gun free zones increase the danger to those within. The Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990 needs to be repealed. We need to make school choice universal so parents can choose to send their kids to a school where they are safe. How many liberals would then choose to send their children to a gun free school or to erect a sign in their front yard proclaiming: This home proudly is a gun free zone?

4. Learn from business. Mass killings in the workplace are down 70% in the past 20 years and without any changes to gun laws. Only 5% of recent shootings have involved businesses, which have become adept at understanding personality and risk. Most businesses use the run-hide-fight paradigm; they don’t ignore threats; they have violence prevention programs and they practice deterrence. They change the calculus in a killer’s mind that he will be able to control events until the SWAT team arrives. And yes, that involves guns. Corporate shootings are way down because businesses are non-political, non-ideological and are interested only in real solutions.

5. Change the culture. We have lowered standards for personal and civil conduct; long established rules, limits and barriers have been ignored and destroyed. We have removed all the guardrails for our society. When standards are lowered, those at society’s margins go off the tracks. Intellectual, political, media, cultural and religious elites need to rediscover good manners. Progressives need to bestir themselves and consider the effects of the vitriol they have injected into the public discourse.

We must recognize some mass killings are inevitable and not consternate over every one in a never-ending, in-your-face, 24/7 news cycle. There is much we can do now to reduce rampages. Taking the five actions outlined herein is a great place to begin. First, however, we must shed liberal shibboleths about guns and move forward in a non political, non dogmatic manner. We need a laser-like focus on truth, logic and real solutions, even if that means abandoning cherished myths about guns in America.

 Next up is Part IV – the final in our series: Guns in America.