The school rated “America’s Most Challenging High School” by the Washington Post is about to get an extreme makeover. With the surrounding Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) producing a drop-out rate double that for the rest of California, the American Indian Model Charter School clearly poses an embarrassment to the OUSD’s unionized teachers and...
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Join the Independent Institute this summer for its college seminars in Colorado Springs and Berkeley. These five-day programs feature lectures, readings, multimedia presentations, and group discussions on the fundamentals of free societies. Students will learn about ethics and liberty, Austrian economics, public choice, money and banking, the follies of socialism and interventionism, myths of...
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In January I left Suffolk University to start the new Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University. I remain affiliated as a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute and plan to continue my productive relationship with them well into the future. Since I’ve continued to write commentary for Independent some of you might have...
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Arline Alchian Hoel reports that her father, Armen Alchian, “passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning at his home in Los Angeles.” He was 98 years old. Armen Alchian was a major figure in the economics profession for more than half a century. At UCLA, where he spent his academic career as...
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The good news from the NAS study of American history survey courses: if Hayek was right, then American college graduates–the next generation–will learn a lot about racial oppression, class, and gender (all from a left-wing perspective) but precious little about State Power. Forget what you think of State Power (force for good or source of evil). Americans will know NOTHING. I’ll venture they know nothing already. . .

What do readers think? Is it better that Americans know little about history? Is it better than having them learn Zinn-style history on issues unrelated to race, class, gender?

A bottle of Jack Daniels is sitting on our kitchen counter, the result of a fire in our microwave oven. The oven was destroyed so we ordered a replacement, which was supposed to be installed a few days ago, but the installers who showed up couldn’t get the new oven into the spot where...
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In immediate response to the Newtown massacre, every pundit began pointing fingers and giving their answers. The problem was gun culture. No, the problem was feminism. Violent video games. Insufficient funding for programs for the mentally ill. Hollywood. Rightwing paranoia. And so on. Now, I have my own views about the cultural conditions in...
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James M. Buchanan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1986 for his pioneering work that developed the field of public choice, passed away on January 9, 2013, at age 93. Buchanan’s work has had a major influence in academic economics and beyond, and he was one of the twentieth century’s leading...
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Welcome to the 21st century Hotel California. The number of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers warehoused in administrative offices, also referred to as “rubber rooms,” for alleged misconduct has doubled in the past 18 months to nearly 300 according to the LA Daily News. The cost is staggering: $1.4 million a month just...
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The American Federation of Teachers has just released a report calling for teachers to pass a bar exam before entering the profession. Similar to lawyers and doctors, AFT President Randi Weingarten says, “It’s time to do away with a common rite of passage into the teaching profession—whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys...
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