If the funding is not 100% local then control by locally elected school boards (abolished in 1902 in England and Wales – and Schools were taken out of true local control in Scotland in the 1870s) is an illusion. And, of course, the only people allowed to vote in those School Board elections should be people who actually pay the local school tax.

Of course the power of the unions is a factor – where the unions are allowed in things become hopeless, but even without the unions the natural trend is for government administration to expand and for the people attracted to such work to direct the schools more and more to the task of collectivist propaganda.

From 1950 to 2009, the amount of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees grew 386 percent while the amount of public school students only grew by 96 percent, according to a recently released report from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Excellence.

Looking even closer at the data reveals that the number of teachers increased by 252 percent during this time period, while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 702 percent – more than seven times the increase in students.

Some states – like Iowa, Louisiana and Mississippi – even increased their staffs when their student populations were declining.

The above is from this piece:

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=5196

“AS IF?”

However, unless they get a large amount of cash from somewhere (such as selling Autotrader) it is hard to see them getting beyond the end of this year.

Lots of “surprising” news from the United States of course.

Output – down.

Unemployment – up.

At lots of Islamist terrorist attacks around the world (including on American targets).

It is almost as if the media narrative (for the reelection of Comrade Barack) was a pack of lies.

They’ll run Autotrader into the ground before they’d ever sell.

It got a good offer to sell its auto-trading publication – but it rejected the offer as not enough.

With the weakening economy – the payment it is offered is only going to go DOWN.

The BBC….

An organisation that should not exist.

And I blame my own “tribe” for its continued existance.

The BBC has been a leftist organisation for half a century (since “That Was The Week That Was” and so on in the early 1960s) yet the Conservative party has supported the continued existance of the BBC tax (the “license fee”).

Defunding the left is vital (both in the media and in the education system), if “Conservatives” do not understand this basic fact they deserve to lose.

Midwesterner (Wisconsin, USA)
January 31, 2013 at 1:38 am

In fact, if you fired enough of them you would actually cause a recession (which is defined as a decline in GDP for 2 consecutive quarters).

Easy solution. Fire them all in the same quarter. Voilà! No recession.

Brilliant!

Sure, but the problem with this is that money saved on firing government employees wouldn’t, in reality, go back to the taxpayers. It would be used to pay down government debt. This is what is happening in the UK — public sector workers are being fired (not enough of them, of course), but the government has as a result just increased its debt payments (although of course debt is still rising, despite this).

Maybe it’s a good idea to use this money to pay off debt rather than give it back to the taxpayer in the form of lower taxes (or whatever). Don’t know. But sacking government workers on masse would be easier if it was directly linked to a cut in taxes, or a payout to taxpayers. If taxes were to stay stay the same in such a case then the public would feel that it was somehow being cheated, because there would be less services (as the BBC and The Guardian would be screaming) for the same money (and the BBC and The Guardian would conveniently ignore the debt situation).

It would have been easier to cut the public sector when times were better and the public could see the benefits in the form of lower taxes. But of course when times are good the left argues that this is a great time to raise government spending because we can afford it. So whatever the situation is, selling the idea of cutting government to the public is tough.

not even economic and other catastrophes looming are recognized in the short time horizons of the particular interests that shaped the motivations of today’s citizenry.

Absolutely, understanding the proliferation of functions assigned to governments (in the US, local, state and federal; in the UK local and parliamentary) are key to the continuing deterioration of conditions in the developed economies of the West.

It bears repeating:

Normative Libertarianism is framed by the impacts of the functions of governments on Liberty and thus to limit those impacts by limiting those functions.

So we are taken to examine the historic trends of the last 50 years of particular interests to use the mechanisms of governments for ideological, economic and political objectives. What are the motivations of the individuals making up the various sectors of our societies that cause them to demand these uses of the mechanisms of governments?

What has been the transformation in the members of the social orders that have led to the transformations of civil societies into governmental societies requiring the expansion of the administrative state?

Does a broad enough spectrum of the members of our society desire a return to the dominance of civil society in preference to the uses that can be made of the mechanisms of governments? Currently, it does not appear so.

There does not appear to be a broad appreciation of the impacts of the increasing functions of governments on liberty and that the seeking of the advancement of particular individual and group interests through the uses of the mechanisms of governments increase those functions and increase the limitations on liberty.

Even economic and other catastrophes looming are recognized in the short time horizons of the particular interest that shape the motivations of today’s citizenry.

(on a side note, and in a purely grandfatherly way, going to Hillsdale does always confirm theories which have been expressed here in the past about the relationship between political inclinations and female pulchritude.)

I would take the excellent suggestion one step further and say, not only let go a mass of Government employees, but abolish their departments and agencies. This sends the important message that the things they used to do are not legitimate functions of government in the first place.

llater,

llamas