Are Climate Alarmists Glassy-Eyed Cultists?

Will Happer is an eminent physicist at Princeton who has chosen (along with his colleague Freeman Dyson) to plant a flag on the skeptic side of the climate debate.  I've had the pleasure of meeting Happer on a couple of occasions.  Recently his name has been floated as a potential candidate for the position of Science Advisor to President Trump.  (This is the position that has been held by eco-fanatic John Holdren during the Obama presidency.)  Although it is not final, and others remain in the running, Happer has said that he will take the position if offered.

Yesterday Happer gave an interview to the Guardian newspaper.  When it came to the issue of "climate change," Happer didn't pull any punches.  Here is my favorite quote:

“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”

I would only comment that in my experience Hare Krishnas don't takes tens of billions of dollars of government money for themselves, and don't seek to impose energy poverty on everyone else while they themselves jet around on private jets.  Other than that, Happer was spot on.

If you are still considering the question of whether what Happer calls "climate so-called science" is real science versus a cult, you may want to review a few articles from the New York Times about the recent California drought and its end.  For example, from August 2015, we have an article headlined "California Drought Is Made Worse by Global Warming, Scientists Say."  

Global warming caused by human emissions has most likely intensified the drought in California by 15 to 20 percent, scientists said on Thursday, warning that future dry spells in the state are almost certain to be worse than this one as the world continues to heat up. . . .  The paper provides new scientific support for political leaders, including President Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who have cited human emissions and the resulting global warming as a factor in the drought.

Or try this one from January 5, 2017 (just six weeks ago!), headlined "A Winery Battles Climate Change."

After decades in the business, the Jacksons are sensitive to slight variations in the weather, and they are convinced of one thing: It is getting hotter and drier. . . .  Climate change is forcing the Jacksons to confront questions both practical and existential: Can you make fine wine with less water? . . .  Already, winemakers in the region are noticing distinct changes that signal a hotter, drier future.

And then, of course, things promptly turned around and the rains came -- as they always do.  Suddenly California is in the news because it has had so much rain that some of its dams are threatened with overflowing.  Well, what caused that?  You guessed it -- climate change!  From yesterday's Pravda, here is the lead headline from the National Section:  "A Climate Change Warning for California's Dams."  What, does "climate change" cause both wet and dry?

Scientists have said for years that a warming atmosphere should lead to more intense and frequent storms in many regions.  

Now you tell us!  As usual, climate change as the cause of everything is the classic unfalsifiable proposition.  The word "cult" may be a little over the top, but whatever it is, it sure isn't science.

Bill de Blasio Three Year Review: The Best Progressive Is A Lazy Progressive!

It's hard to believe it's been so long, but our super-progressive mayor Bill de Blasio was elected in November 2013, and took office on January 1, 2014.  That means that he's now been in office for a full three years plus.  And indeed, he has begun his campaign for re-election, albeit unofficially.  Shall we have a review of how he's done?

For reasons that won't surprise anyone, my prognosis for de Blasio's mayoralty upon his election was not good.  My first post on the subject was way back just before the 2013 election, titled "Bill de Blasio:  How Bad Is This Guy?"  (Conclusion: bad.)  Literally everything he proposed threatened to make the city worse off.  But what we couldn't know then was how much of his progressive agenda he would get enacted and implemented, and how fast any destructive effects would be realized.  (As covered here many times, the corrosive effects of "socialist death spirals" play out very slowly.)

And then, we stumbled into an unbelievable piece of good fortune.  It turns out that de Blasio is one of the laziest people on the planet, and undoubtedly the number one laziest person ever to hold such high and responsible public office.  As reported in many places, his daily schedule seems to run something like this: arise around 8 or 9 AM at the mayoral mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; get in his two-car motorcade of gigantic Chevy Suburbans for the 11 mile ride to his gym in Brooklyn; leave the behemoth cars idling while he works out for an hour or so; stop by his favorite coffee place; then back in the motorcade for the 5 mile trip to City Hall.  Wander into the office some time around noon.  Here's a snippet from the Brooklyn Paper in 2015 on de Blasio's routine, with some emphasis on his exquisitely sensitive environmental consciousness:

Mayor DeBlasio routinely travels 11 miles in a two-car motorcade to workout in his beloved Park Slope YMCA, and leaves his security force in idling cars outside as he breaks a sweat inside.  The mayor, who has positioned himself as an environmentalist by backing bans on in-home wood-burning fireplaces and single-use Styrofoam containers, and is considering a fee for the use of plastic bags at stores, is thumbing his nose at the environment by allowing his motorcade — generally made up of two Chevrolet Suburbans — to idle for up to an hour while he works out, opponents say.      

So, for this guy who barely can be bothered to show up for work, how has progress been going on his signature issues -- things like increasing taxes on "the rich," instituting universal pre-K in public schools, expanding "affordable housing," ending homelessness, and reducing income inequality?  

Increasing taxes on "the rich."  Probably the most talked-about item in de Blasio's agenda immediately after his election was his plan to raise the top New York City income tax rate by a little over .5%, from 3.88% to 4.41%.  That proposal required approval from the state legislature, and it went nowhere.  Mostly, taxes have stayed right where they were before de Blasio was elected.  The exception is the real estate tax, which has seen small increases each year.  Of course, that one is paid substantially by non-wealthy people.

Universal pre-K.  Basically, he got this one done, so I guess we should give him credit.  Of course, the basis on which he sold the idea was that it would be critical to reducing income inequality.  How universal pre-K would have any noticeable effect on income inequality in less than about 20 years (when the beneficiaries begin to enter the work force) has never been obvious to me.  However, de Blasio did accomplish getting several thousand more dues-paying members for the teachers union.

Income inequality.  Of course, it has gone up.  Oops!  According to a December 2016 report from Alex Armlovich of the Manhattan Institute, "Household income inequality, as measured by the Census Bureau’s Gini coefficient, has risen moderately . . . since the beginning of the current mayor’s term in January 2014."   Looks like the universal pre-K didn't help.  Also not helping was the fact that other de Blasio initiatives, like "affordable housing," don't count as income to the recipients and therefore have the inevitable effect of increasing rather than decreasing income inequality, if only marginally.

Homelessness.  That has increased too.  Oops again!  From the New York Post, December 7, 2016: "The population of the city’s homeless shelters has hit a record high as the number of families and single adults with nowhere to live continues to rise under Mayor de Blasio’s tenure."  According to that Post article, the number of homeless in city shelters had reached about 61,000, an increase of some 83% over the previous ten years (granted about a third of that during the Bloomberg tenure).  I predicted that an increase in homelessness would occur when de Blasio reinstated priority for public housing slots for people who have declared themselves "homeless."  Deeply subsidized housing for life if you will only go through a period of "homelessness" first -- what could go wrong?

Affordable housing.  This is an enormously expensive exercise in futility that I have covered dozens of times, calling it the "most expensive possible way to benefit the smallest number of people," and then of course trap them in poverty for life.  In early January the de Blasio administration trumpeted a figure of 22,000 units of "affordable housing" supposedly "built or preserved" in 2016 -- but the New York Times, skeptical for the first time in its existence, asked a few questions and learned that only 6800 units had been "built."  Nobody knows what's in the "preserved" category.  This in a city of well over 3 million housing units.  On this one, I'm not giving de Blasio any credit.  If the city would only stop over-regulating private builders, they would quickly build enough housing to drive market rentals down.  De Blasio will never allow that.  We are doomed to a lifetime of housing lotteries to allocate microscopic numbers of subsidized units that will never make any real difference in housing affordability for the masses.

Meanwhile, on the budget front, it's basically what you would expect from an incompetent manager who's not paying much attention and gives the subordinates free rein.  The employee head count is increasing on some kind of autopilot, as the bureaucrats build their empires without accomplishing anything you can notice.  According to the Wall Street Journal back in September, the number of City employees was about 297,000 when Bloomberg left office, and is expected to reach about 323,000 by the time the next budget kicks in in July -- about a 9% increase.  Nobody knows what the extra people are doing (other than the universal pre-K).  Mayor Bloomberg's last budget (FY 2014) was $72.7 billion.  The budget for the coming FY 2018 (beginning July 1, 2017), which was projected to be $81.6 billion back in 2014 (during de Blasio's first year in office), is now projected to be $84.7 billion.  I sure hope your income is going up that fast!

There are definitely some worrisome long-term trends here, particularly allowing unproductive government spending to increase faster than the underlying economy.  But just think about how much worse it could have been if de Blasio was an energetic guy striving hard to implement the "progressive" agenda!  As it was, he has done little, and things where city spending has any impact have gotten a little worse. 

An Alternate Vision Of The World, Finally Getting A Chance To Play Out

In my youth (I'm talking about the 1950s through the election of Reagan in 1980), there really were not two competing political visions for the United States.  Instead, there was near universal acceptance of the idea that the federal government could fix all the problems of the people by hiring "experts" and giving them authority to enact regulations together with piles of taxpayer money to spend.  OK, an occasional cranky economist might stand up and ask a question from time to time (Milton Friedman anyone?); but with a huge majority the economics profession was also completely on board with the program.  Among Republican presidents, Eisenhower never lifted a finger to try to roll back anything about the New Deal, and Nixon was as much in favor of "big government" in domestic affairs as any Democrat.  Meanwhile, both houses of Congress were completely controlled by Democrats from 1955 to 1980.  The Congressional Republicans did not have much of an alternative message.  Basically, their pitch was that they would slow things down and avoid some of the worst excesses of their opponents.  

I know I'm exaggerating, but not by much.  Goldwater in 1964 did try to articulate an alternative libertarian vision, and ended up not only losing badly himself, but also giving the Democrats strengthened Congressional super-majorities to get much of their agenda enacted.  It's no accident that Medicare, Medicaid, and much of the War on Poverty date from the years immediately after the Johnson landslide in 1964.

And even in the years following Reagan's election, the push-back started slowly, with as many set-backs as victories.  Reagan never experienced Republican control of both houses of Congress, and neither of the two Bushes had much appetite a tug of war against the bureaucracy or against the prevailing Washington groupthink of bureaucratic expertise.  When Republicans took control of Congress in the 1990s, and again in the 2000s, it seemed like their main program was not to push back against the bureaucracy, but rather to give some of the infinite piles of money to "our" friends rather than "their" friends.

I give all this background to put into context the current hysteria and frenzy that has greeted the Trump presidency.  Even though plenty of people disagreed with Obama on many issues, there was never anything like this.  For that matter, I and many other conservatives and libertarians have plenty of disagreements with Trump -- as to trade protectionism; as to whether a "balance of payments deficit" is a bad thing and whether such a thing can be "fixed" by "better trade deals"; as to whether a big wall on the Mexican border will accomplish anything meaningful for the money; as to whether massive "infrastructure" spending is a good idea; as to many details about immigration; and so forth.  

But are these the issues that are motivating the desperate primal screaming that we have been seeing the past few weeks?  I don't think so.  None of the issues just mentioned (with the possible partial exception of immigration) is the kind of thing that normally generates this kind of emotion.  The thing that generates such emotion is the push back against the bureaucracy and and the parasites in government-funded agencies and academia.  Suddenly, many people who have spent their lives doing what they perceive as "good" with taxpayer-funded salaries and grants are being told that it was all a bad idea from the get-go.  Their funding could be cut!  Their lifetime sinecure could be gone!  They could lose their jobs and their livelihoods!  They might have to compete for jobs and customers in the private sector!  The Democratic Party could lose its taxpayer-backed funding (from public employee unions, particularly teachers unions)!

How many of the current crop of protesters and rioters represent people actually on the government gravy train?  With the exception of a few who have been outed (like the UC Berkeley employee involved in planning riots, or the professor of "lobster porn" at the big NYU demonstration), it's hard to get any numbers.  But what is clear is that the bureaucracies are organizing internally to "resist" the results of the last election.  The New York Times had a big article on the front page of the Sunday edition, headlined "'A Sense of Dread' for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition."   The article describes the "intensity of feelings" among the bureaucrats that has become "raw" as they realize that incoming political appointees in many cases question the very missions of the agencies.  

Or, consider this piece by Victoria Taft at the Independent Journal Review on February 2, describing various groups of federal employees holding meetings to plan "resistance" and "work slowdowns."  Or, from the Washington Post on January 31:

The resistance is so early, so widespread and so deeply felt that it has officials worrying about paralysis and overt refusals by workers to do their jobs.

So far, almost none of the administration's predicted push back against the bureaucracy has even occurred.  But, as the new cabinet secretaries slowly get confirmed, will we actually be getting a chance to see an alternate vision of the world -- a vision without bureaucratic micromanagement of every aspect of our lives -- get a chance to play out?  One can only hope.  

Connecticut In The Grip Of The School Funding Fallacy

In the realm of the thoroughly disproved fallacies of progressivism, perhaps the very most thoroughly disproved of all is the idea that throwing more taxpayer money at failing unionized schools will improve the education of the students in those schools.  Just a couple of weeks ago, in a post titled "How Do You Measure 'Success' In K-12 Education?" I covered the latest of umpteen such failed efforts in the federal government (the $7 billion School Improvement Grants program), and here in New York City, (Mayor de Blasio's "Renewal Schools" program).   After multiple years and vast amounts of money, neither of those programs could demonstrate any positive impact of any kind in any metric selected, from test performance to graduation rates to college enrollment.

This is just one of those things where no amount of actual evidence can ever convince people that it's not working. Today, the state of Connecticut is about to head down the same path yet again.  The chance that Connecticut's new initiative will work is exactly zero.

Recall first the big news in Connecticut last September: In long-running (commenced in 2005) school finance litigation instituted by Yale Law School faculty, a judge in Hartford issued a 90 page decision declaring Connecticut's school finance system to be "irrational" and "defaulting on [the state's] constitutional duty" to provide all students with an adequate education.  I covered that decision here.  The court's decision did not set any specific remedies, and seems to contemplate a lifetime job for the judge in overseeing and meddling in the state's school finance system.  The court's decision is currently on appeal and temporarily stayed.

However, on Wednesday Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy made a budget presentation in Hartford.  According to coverage in the New York Times yesterday, Malloy said that he "broadly . . . agreed with the [court's] decision," and that "it would be better for the state to 'design and take our own medicine' rather than leave it to the courts."  OK, Gov, what's the big concept for fixing things?  You guessed it!  Throw more taxpayer money at failing unionized schools.

In the Times, their headline tells you all you need to know about their take on the story, which will not surprise you:  "Malloy Moves to Narrow gap Between Connecticut's Rich and Poor School Districts."   What exactly is the "gap" they are talking about?  Nothing in this article will tell you.  Do you get the impression that the state of Connecticut is granting more money to rich school districts than to the poor ones.  Undoubtedly, it is the intent of the headline writer, and of the article's author, to give you that impression.  But of course, that impression would be completely false; indeed, it would be the complete opposite of the truth.

Fortunately for us, Connecticut puts out some pretty thorough data on its public school funding.  Here is a chart with per student funding by district for each of Connecticut's districts for the 2015-16 year; and here is a chart of source of revenue by category (state, local, federal) for each of Connecticut's districts for the 2014-15 school year.  Put the two together, and you can get a pretty good idea of what if any "gap" might exist between the "rich" and "poor" districts.

For example, with a little arithmetic, we learn that, as of the most recent year available (2014-15), among Connecticut's "poor" urban districts, Hartford got about $14,900 per student from the state; New Haven about $12,500; and Waterbury about $9700.  Among its "rich" suburban districts, Greenwich got just over $1000 per student; Darien got about $950; New Canaan got under $600; and Fairfield got a big $535.  Gap?  Now, you may think that it is perfectly appropriate for Connecticut to give most to all of its state funding to its poorer districts, while leaving the richer districts mostly on their own.  But really, to call this a "gap" in favor of the richer districts couldn't be more ridiculous.

But maybe, you think, the "gap" they are talking about must be the gap that exists between the rich and poor districts after the rich districts top up their school spending with the vast local resources.  If so, you will be surprised to learn that total school spending per student in Connecticut does not not vary much as between the richest and poorest districts, and there is no obvious pattern that richer districts always spend more.  Some of the poorest districts spend at or near the top, and some of the richest districts spend less than some of the poorer ones.  Using the same six towns as before, total per student spending, this time for the 2015-16 year, was: Hartford $19,313; New Haven $18,248; Waterbury $15,219; Greenwich $21,331; Darien $19,318 (about the same as Hartford); New Canaan $19,576; and Fairfield $16,561 (well less than Hartford or New Haven). 

But as always, the only solution they seem to be able to come up with to fix the failing city schools is more taxpayer money.  From the Times:

Increases of around $10 million or more would go to 11 municipalities. Hartford would get the largest increase, more than $47 million, followed by Waterbury, which would receive a $43 million increase. Both cities have a substantial number of poor families. 

That $47 million increase for Hartford will (if it goes through) represent about a 14% increase in its annual state school funding.  For Waterbury, a smaller city currently receiving substantially less, the $43 million would represent almost a 25% increase.

But if more money translated into better and more successful schools, then why is it that Hartford, already spending $19,313 per student, isn't achieving about the same results as Darien and New Canaan, and well better than Fairfield?  Don't expect the Times to enlighten you on such questions.

Meanwhile, classic "blue" jurisdiction Connecticut is facing approximately its 30th annual budget "crisis."  The additional money for these poor urban school districts will have to come from somewhere -- either from the (already meager) grants to the richer districts, or from other state spending, or from increased taxes.  Any of these options will make Connecticut even less competitive in attracting new businesses and entrepreneurs, and in keeping its wealthy citizens from leaving for more attractive states.  Given that it is absolutely certain that the additional money will not improve the schools, would Connecticut's poor be better off instead with a better business climate that might attract more businesses and jobs?  Nobody in Connecticut thinks to ask such questions. 

Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart" -- Part III

Each day I skim over the op-eds in the New York Times so that you don't have to.  And what do I come upon yesterday but an op-ed by two prominent Republican economists (not quite an oxymoron), Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiw, advocating for "A Conservative Case for Climate Action."  Uh-oh.  And then, upon checking my emails, I learn that there is a nearly-identical op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "A Conservative Answer to Climate Change," this time with different authors -- former Treasury Secretaries George Shultz and James Baker.  A co-ordinated attack!

Get ready:  A bunch of Grand Pooh-Bahs, calling themselves "conservatives," have formed something they are calling the Climate Leadership Council to advocate for a new approach to tackling "climate change."  Besides the authors listed above, the members include another ex-Treasury Secretary (Hank Paulson), an ex-chairman of Wal-Mart (Rob Walton), a venture capital guy (Thomas Stephenson), and long-time do-gooder Ted Halstead (who seems be the one who rounded the whole thing up).  All of these guys have co-authored a new paper, just released, titled "The Conservative Case For Carbon Dividends."  

Now, these authors are obviously a collection of really, really smart guys.  And, because they are really, really smart, they have that special ability that you and I lack, which is the ability to devise ultimate solutions to the most difficult societal problems through the magic of the government's power to tax and spend.  And, you will not be surprised to learn, they have used their very special ability to devise the solution to that most critical problem of our time, "climate change."  And what is the solution?  You guessed it!  A large and steadily-growing tax!:

[T]he federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions.  It might begin a $40 per ton and increase steadily.  this tax would send a powerful signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints.    

Does anything about this sound familiar?  Oh yes, it was the "Risky Business Coalition," another small collection of Grand Pooh-Bahs who also issued a clarion call for drastic action by the U.S. federal government to stop "climate change," this one back in mid-2014.  That call was the subject of my first post in this series on June 25 of that year, "Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart."  The Climate Leadership Council and the Risky Business Coalition have substantial overlap in their small list of members -- Paulson, Shultz and Walton lent their names to both groups.  (The other members of the RBC were Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.)  RBC advocated a massive transition away from fossil fuels and toward so-called "clean energy" -- although its mechanism of how to make that happen was far from clear.    

All the members of this new Climate Leadership Council are obviously people of great ability and great accomplishment.  No one would doubt that they are really "smart."  But, before seeking to impose hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes on the American people, do you think that people this smart could be troubled to ask a couple of the most basic questions?  Questions like:  Even assuming the U.N.'s worst-case projections for world temperature increase caused by CO2 emissions, how much could this tax be expected to reduce that increase?  Of course they do not address that question.  Hey, everybody knows that we have to reduce carbon emissions -- we're just coming up with the best way to do it!  However, if we humble peasants are interested in the answer to the question, we can go the the Cato Institute's handy Carbon Tax Temperature Savings Calculator (which in turn is based on the government's own model known as MAGICC).  If we go there, we will find that, assuming that this new tax can reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 60% (that will never happen), and that climate "sensitivity" is 3 deg C per doubling of atmospheric CO2 (crazy high), then this new tax will save a big 0.032 deg C of warming by 2050, and 0.076 deg C of warming by 2100.  Why, 83 years from now, that's almost enough to be as large as the margin of error of the measurement!

Or maybe these really "smart" guys could ask whether there is actually any dangerous warming going on that requires these kinds of massive government-directed "solutions."  I won't go here into the extensive government temperature data alteration that is the subject of my series "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time."  But Roger Simon at PJ Media yesterday was quick to point out the disastrous timing of the NYT/WSJ op-eds, coming as they did just a few days after whistleblower John Bates's revelations of data manipulation at NOAA intended to dupe world leaders into making "climate" agreements.  How much of recent world temperature increase is real, versus an artifact of altered data?  Maybe we will find out as the new Trump administration takes control of the reins. 

Well, now for the good news.  I don't know how it happened, but somehow, at some point,  Republican politicians stopped being susceptible to falling for the climate alarm scam.  The old guys had all fallen for it.  Presidential candidates McCain and Romney were both on board with the climate alarm bandwagon.  And this Climate Leadership Council crowd is considerably older still (Shultz is 96 (!), Baker 86, Paulson 70, Feldstein 77).  Meanwhile, in today's Congress, you literally won't find a single Republican to speak in favor of massive fossil fuel restrictions to stop the existential threat of "climate change."  Could they have figured out that the politics of "climate change" is really about massive government programs and handouts and growth that will have little to no effect upon the climate?  Probably.  You don't actually have to be very smart to figure that out.    

Not A Single Senate Democrat Stands Up To Teachers Unions

What's been predicted for the past week or so has now occurred:  Betsy DeVos has been confirmed as Secretary of Education by a  51-50 vote, with Vice President Mike Pence called upon to cast the tie-breaking vote.  Not a single Democrat broke ranks.  Apparently this is the first time in history that a Vice President was called upon to cast a tie-breaking vote for the confirmation of a cabinet secretary.

Obviously, defeat of DeVos was a top priority for the teachers unions, and they pulled out all the stops.  DeVos has devoted much of her life to the cause of school choice, particularly to giving poor and minority children the ability to escape failing unionized public schools.  Fox News yesterday described the "furious push" to find one more Republican to vote against DeVos and defeat the nomination.  Forbes on January 17 accurately identified DeVos as "public enemy number one" with the teachers unions.

The guiding theme of the anti-DeVos campaign has been that she has "used her money, power and influence to destroy public education. . . . ," (per "education activist" Marie Corfield, quoted in the Forbes piece).  Funny, but when I was a kid, the inner city public schools in essentially all major cities were already a disaster -- and that was well before DeVos started her advocacy.

Well, you don't have to look very far, or think very hard, to understand what this is all about.  School choice absolutely does pose an existential threat to the teachers unions.  When there is educational choice, that means charter schools and private schools, most of which are non-union. The charter and private schools can out-perform the traditional public schools precisely because they can institute teacher evaluations, pay differentials and termination of under-achieving teachers -- all things that are verboten in the unionized schools.  So as soon as the alternatives are available, parents move their kids away from the traditional schools and into the alternatives.  

According to a UFT dues schedule here, each unionized teacher means about $1300 - 1400 in dues revenue per year to the union.  With about 3 million K-12 teachers in public schools, that means that each 1% loss in market share costs the teachers unions some $40 million in dues revenue per year.  Real money.  If public school alternatives suddenly went from their current market share of about 7% to more like 20%, we could be talking about a loss of multiple hundred million dollars per year for the teachers unions.  And, of course, the teachers unions are the number one funders of the Democratic Party and its candidates.

Somehow, few seem to comment on the fundamental immorality of denying school choice to poor and minority kids in order to keep open the taxpayer money spigot for the teachers unions and the Democratic Party.  An exception is David Harsanyi.  His January 22 piece at the Patriot Post is headlined "Dem's Fight Against School Choice Is Immoral"; sub-headline: "Teachers unions are the only organizations that openly support segregated schools."  Excerpt:

Democrats often tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet, few things have hurt African-Americans more over the past 40 years than inner-city public school systems. If [former] President Obama is correct and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic stratum, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.  Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, typically those who are black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.  The National Education Association spent $23 million during the last election cycle alone to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are.

I would only comment that that $23 million from the NEA in the last cycle is but a small part of the total value of teachers union cash and in-kind contributions to the Democratic Party, its allies, and its candidates.  First, in addition to the NEA there are the UFT and various other independent teachers unions.  Then there are contributions to various PACs, Super-PACs, and "issue advocacy" organizations.  Then there are the in-kind efforts:  phone banks, mailings, voter cards, driving people to the polls.  A fair estimate of the total value of the cash and in-kind contributions of teachers unions on behalf of the Democratic Party, allied groups, and candidates in an election cycle is a minimum of $200 million. 

So, poor and minority kids and your parents, face the facts:  you contribute pennies per election cycle to the Democratic Party and its candidates, and the teachers unions contribute hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Dems know where their bread is buttered, and it's not by you.  Not one single one of them will stand up for you when it counts.

Nick Gillespie at Reason today has an excellent round-up of the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) by reputable researchers as to whether school choice, particularly charter schools, improves student performance.  Here are his bullet points with embedded links:

 In Boston, a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard, Duke, and the University of Michigan, conducted a RCT and found:: "The charter school effects reported here are therefore large enough to reduce the black-white reading gap in middle school by two-thirds."

A RCT of charter schools in New York City by a Stanford researcher found an even larger effect: "On average, a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English."

The same Stanford researcher conducted an RCT of charter schools in Chicago and found: "students in charter schools outperformed a comparable group of lotteried-out students who remained in regular Chicago public schools by 5 to 6 percentile points in math and about 5 percentile points in reading…. To put the gains in perspective, it may help to know that 5 to 6 percentile points is just under half of the gap between the average disadvantaged, minority student in Chicago public schools and the average middle-income, nonminority student in a suburban district."

And the last RCT was a national study conducted by researchers at Mathematica for the US Department of Education. It found significant gains for disadvantaged students in charter schools but the opposite for wealthy suburban students in charter schools. They could not determine why the benefits of charters were found only in urban, disadvantaged settings, but their findings are consistent with the three other RCTs that found significant achievement gains for charter students in Boston, Chicago, and New York City.

I wouldn't expect much to change over night now that DeVos is Education Secretary.  Most of the federal funding to K-12 schools is pre-allocated by appropriation bills and funding formulas, and the Education Secretary can't just start moving money around tomorrow.  But the upcoming budget (for the next fiscal year starting in October) can start moving things around, including providing strong funding (or de-funding) incentives for states and districts that variously encourage or discourage school choice.  Expect the teachers unions to fight to the death for every inch of turf.  But this could be the beginning of a long, slow, painful decline.