Time was before planning for the automobile. With the automobile-based development, or sprawl, came the demise of the mom-and-pop stores upon which the entire structure of capitalism was based. Hardly anybody walks from their house to the store anymore and, if you tried to sell anything from your house today, you would be cited for a zoning violation. Your neighbors deserted the local stores when the national stores started opening up branches “convenient” to the highway. Some of the national chains moved into the vacated storefronts, got the town to knock down some other houses with storefronts, and to seize the backyards by eminent domain so they could put up a parking lot to “serve” Main Street. The local manufacturing companies got fewer orders, none from the national retail chains, of course. As those companies failed, the remaining local stores started stocking fewer local items, until you couldn’t tell the difference between the mom-and-pops and the chains. The only real difference was the mom-and-pops were less convenient to the automobile driver. The mom-and-pops become denigrated even as they try to conform to sprawl. People actually talk about a new chain store opening up as if that was something to be proud of. At that point, capitalism is dead in their town. To be certain, there are, here and there, some vestiges of capitalism left, though they may strike us as unremarkable. It was always misleading to characterize capitalism as a road to unfathomable riches. People confuse it with debt and global mercantilism, with the creditor sultans oppressing their people, which is very much in evidence.

The Localsville Canned Beans company was bought up by investors from out-of-town using borrowed money — it was purchased in a leveraged buyout by General Foods — and General Foods now grows and cans the Localsville Canned Beans in South America. The plant is closed and the people in Localsville, those who are left, now work and shop in the Walmart down Highway 666. They had to cancel the parade this year. They didn’t choose a Localsville Canned Beans Queen, either.

Copyright © 2011 by C. P. Klapper

The Popular Capitalist View

A key part of the Popular Capitalist program is to reduce the cost of living.  A lower cost of providing the necessities puts the rudimentary task of paying the cost of sovereignty more easily within the reach of the political economies of regions with modest resources.  This allows those political economies and thus most political economies to offer its citizens opportunities to reach beyond mere survival and build capital that will benefit their communities for years to come.  Also, a lower cost of the living beyond survival makes those efforts at building capital more attainable.

Many authors throughout the ages have touted the solitary life and its cheapness as a model for sustainability and meaning, yet much purpose is lost in spending so much of the day in mundane tasks.  The economies of the hermit’s survival mode are not as great as the efficient production of goods in factories.  Nor can that life be as fulfilling as one where knowledge, wisdom and art are shared among members of a community.  For that, people and material must get together in one place on a fairly regular basis and finished goods distributed as frequently.  This is accomplished by some system of transportation, which should be made as affordable as possible to accommodate survival and a simple but civilized life while keeping it inexpensive for more ambitious tasks.  But what is needed to make sure that people use the transportation system enough to accomplish these goals?

It is often said in real estate that there are three important things: location, location and location.  The reason why we often quote it and accept it is that it expresses a fundamental truth about that business: all of the other important things in real estate are either dependent upon location or part of achieving goodness in that area.  This does not mean, however, that hopes, expectations or even a plan for good location are important.  Just because a location should be a good location does not mean that it is.  There can be some factor that is missed by the seller that is picked up by a prospective buyer and which causes him to either not bid on a property or to realize a great bargain.  Conversely there can be something that the seller does not reveal to the buyer that dupes a buyer.  Eventually, the fools with money become harder to find.  Eventually, the truth will out and a market that knows the true goodness of a location will be based on location.

We can go through the other factors.  Is price important? Yes, but the price will be driven by demand and demand is driven by location.  Is the quality of building important?  Yes, but only if it is useful and usefulness is driven by location.  Is the presence of good jobs or stores important?  Yes, but that is part of what makes a location.  Is the absence of natural hazards, such as floods or earthquakes, important?  Yes, but again that is part of what makes a good location.  A property can be had for practically nothing and have a gorgeous building solidly built, but if it is located far from anywhere people would want to be, it will languish on the market with no buyers.

A similar dictum applies in transportation: the three most important things in transportation are frequency, frequency and frequency.  Whatever else is important in transportation is either driven by it or is part of achieving goodness in that area.  As with real estate and location, hopes, expectations or schedules showing good frequency are not important.  It is the actuality of good frequency that is important, not the opinion of officials that frequency should be good or, even worse, is good enough.  The public, or some portion of it, can be duped for a time by promises of frequent service.  Eventually, though, the truth will out and the personal horror stories will travel quickly through the offices and school functions.  Then the public will make their next decision of where to work or where to live or just how to get from one to the other based on the true goodness of frequency of a transportation service.

What then is good frequency?  We need to be clear about this so that we know exactly what we should be achieving.  Here we part company with real estate.  The goodness of location can be changed and whatever is good now is most important; the sins of the past are forgiven.  This not so with transportation.  Because transportation is most memorable when it is needed most urgently, the sins of the past present a danger for the future.  It is the worst frequency that is remembered, while the best is forgotten.  Similarly, it is the most unusual need and circumstance that is used to judge transportation.  The early-morning rush to deliver an important project is a more important transportation need than the daily commute.  What this comes down to is this: the frequency of a transportation system is the longest time between a person’s intended departure time and the next departure time of the transportation system for a trip in which the user reaches his destination.

Is speed important? Yes, but the rider is only concerned about the total time from when he needs to leave to when he arrives.  The total time is driven by frequency. The fastest train in the world that runs once a day is of no use to him.  Conversely, very slow train makes frequency difficult by tying up too many engines and cars.  A stopped train makes frequency impossible since it can not be said to be providing service at all.  Is location important? Yes, but frequent transportation creates its own demand.  Once business owners feel assured that their workers, or their prospective replacements, can get to a new location in time, they will see that location as viable for their workforce.  Similarly, if they are convinced that the location has frequent service for freight, they will find the location viable for acquiring raw materials and shipping the finished product.

Note that frequency of service is important for both passenger and freight transportation.  A promise to ship a package by 10 am if it is presented by 5pm or even 9pm the previous day is of no use to a contractor with a deliverable ready by 4am for a government client expecting it by 8 am.  Alternatives are used, such as a weary contractor driving their car in the wee hours of the morning and hand-delivering the computer tape.  I know because I have been that contractor and I use overnight shippers sparingly as a result.  But if there was a shipper who I could bring a package to at any time of the day and be assured that within a half hour my package would be on its way, reach its destination a little faster than with me driving the distance and be delivered to the client no more than a half hour after reaching the depot, well then I would use that shipper over not only the once-a-night shipper but also over making an early morning trek in an automobile.  The reason is frequency.

We should not forget, however, that there are other types of transportation besides the powered kind.  Most of us are blessed with the ability to move our bodies from one place to another without the assistance of a motor and without the trappings of a conveyance.  The pedestrian mode of transportation we have in walking is the least expensive and most frequent form of transportation available.  It is also the most convenient for short distances, requiring only a walkway.  Other forms of transportation require more space for their conveyances to move from point to point, roads for vehicles and waterways for ferries, barges, boats and ships.  This additional space and its use by these conveyances can and often does interfere with pedestrian traffic, making it less efficient than it would be without the roads and canals in the walkers’ path.  Therefore our goal above to not let the transportation for more ambitious travels make our simple, civilized and necessary transportation more costly implies that all vehicular traffic be kept to the borders of our pedestrian communities and that those communities have no roads but only walkways.  Any space should be used to enhance the quality of life in that community, namely with parks, squares and open air markets.  Further, every opportunity should be given to allow pedestrians to access other communities without burdening them with a vehicle for which there is neither space nor purpose at home.  Thus, rail and other forms of public transportation with easy access at the borders of the pedestrian neighborhood is preferred, as long as the railroad or roadway does not present a hazard to the people in that community.  So subways, contained elevated rails or monorails would be acceptable whereas rails at pedestrian grade, especially those crossing pedestrian paths, would not.

Extending this scheme outwards does not require personal automobiles for transportation; such would be relegated to amusements or within the confines of communities which enjoy the smell of petroleum in the morning.  There would also be communities which prefer horses for local travel, probably combined with their use in agriculture, and these would be more sustainable than the motor towns.  Beyond the local environs, each level of government can and should own and operate public transportation which connects the municipalities, counties or states at the next level down.  This is one point on which the United States has failed to properly implement its federal ideal.

A more immediate issue, though, is how we get to there from here.  How do we transform our expensive, wasteful, dangerous and uncivilized transportation system into one which is affordable, efficient, safe and cosmopolitan?  The answer, again, lies in frequency.  By passing development laws favorable to pedestrian communities, such as those favoring mixed-use, infill and vehicle-free development, as well as abolishing all requirements for roads and parking, especially near existing train stations, we can start the process of transforming sprawl into walkable villages.  Next, by using smaller vehicles, such as vans and cars, and running them every fifteen minutes throughout the day and night, we can better establish new lines until the ridership increases enough to move gradually to buses and, eventually, to trains.  Once a solid, federally structured (as in municipality-county-state) transportation system is in place, then we can place more stringent requirements on those who wish to drive automobiles.  Raising the driving age to 21 would no longer be a burden on teenagers needing to get to school or work if they can get there more conveniently and safely by public transportation or walking.  Requiring retesting of all drivers every five years also becomes less onerous for the same reason. It is one of the great absurdities of the United States, and of New Jersey in particular, that we have made it a necessity to drive in most of both.  We can change that in New Jersey.

We can change that in New Jersey and be surprised as our air becomes cleaner, asthma is reduced, obesity declines and prosperity increases.  Or perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

Image courtesy of www.freephotosbank.com

The workers built this state, the country,
Not the unions. Not some party.
Not some distant calling in the wind.
But hand took up hammer or plow
And propelled it through land and air
To strike the earth and fashion it well
Springing forth a bounty standing tall
While some voice in a box in fractured lives
Lays a claim for the produce raised by labor
Of one and one and one and, then again, one
Building a bridge that says a city makes
Or a monument that points to a politician
Or a golden calf who blazed the trail to Zion
With one flash of a photographic opportunistic

Show of  driving a spike or digging a hole
One shovelful deep into trains and towers
While the many ones who led us out of Egypt
Are paid a paltry, starving wage and sent away
From all honor and praise and slightest recognition
For building, each and every one, this state, the country.

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper
written December 6, 2009

And yet another law
And another law where the sun don’t shine
Where the lawyers oughtn’t be
About things the lawyering can’t fathom
As Jesse might say, Amen!
“A legislation of a misconception.”
Amen, brother!  Amen, again!

“Call marriage to the stand?”
“Yes, Your Honor, if it please the court”
– and even if it doesn’t –
Mister Bigshot, Esquire, insists.
“So marriage, you did not bring happiness,
The money, the wealth, the power, the prestige
The gay and carefree days of bliss
My client had full right to expect.
What sorry excuse do you have for this life
Of struggle, Of pain, Of occasional misery?”

Then marriage replies with humility:
“Though I know that these words have no standing sir
In any court of law,
Still the promise, the vows, were very clear
No contract like yours was made.
In sickness and poverty do I reside
As much as your so-called remedy,
But I bring a wealth unknown to law,
Not drafted by attorney’s hands.
You will never be able to legislate it
Or compensate for its loss.
Yet that is what I am all about,
My mission, my purpose on earth.”

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper
written December 11, 2009

Those are the words that are missing
From the end of the phrase on the news.
Echo advertisement nestlings:
“A bad break has us chirping the blues.”

They say adversity happened
“In these tough economic times”,
As if the storm clouds had threatened,
In these rough ecologic climes,
A fiercer wind than we had thought
Which blew our tree down with the nest,
A dearer bargain we had bought
Which brought your wealth down with the rest.

Oh, well!
Who can tell
“In these tough economic times”?
My Eye!
Be not shy:
These are cruel economic crimes!

“Created by those in power”,
That is how the phrase should end.
“In these tough economic times
created by those in power”,
That is what the people say
Away from the ears and lips
Of the news and advertisements
Created by those in power.

“Created by those in power.
Created by those in power.
Created by those in power.”

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper
written November 18, 2009
Carl Peter Klapper, in addition to being an accomplished poet, is also the author of the bi-weekly column The Popular Capitalist View.

In my last column, I discussed education through the filter of the perennial New Jersey political theme of property taxes.  There I had slain the dragon, at least to my own satisfaction, so that I can return to the subject again without further acknowledgment of what remains a pressing issue for politicians who do not bother to read the Johnsonville Press despite my pointing them to it on numerous occasions.  This column is therefore directed to those of us who find more to education than the uninteresting problem of how to pay for it.  That most of the readership, being draw from the ranks of current college students and recent graduates, is interested in education itself goes without saying.  It may not be as apparent why I should address it in this column.  To clear up this confusion, I describe my motivation as a popular capitalist and, in so doing, set the direction and focus of the rest of this piece.

The popular capitalist interest in this matter is primarily in moving beyond mere necessities to the dreams toward which capital can be applied and rewarded.  If a dream is to become a venture and then a successful one, there needs to be an understanding of the field which is best and most often gained through study and reflection which, in turn, usually has some strong basis in the prior results taught in schools.  This understanding needs to be present not only in the entrepreneur possessing the dream but in the cadre of skilled workers assisting in its implementation.  Secondarily, popular capitalism is also concerned with training for public service in crisis management, justice, medicine and, reflexively, education.  For both purposes, the key is to not only disseminate knowledge but to verify that an individual understands it.  No less for the investor than for the employer is it important to check the credentials of an applicant to be sure that they know whereof they speak.  Yet it is precisely in this task that our current educational system is woefully deficient, indeed misdirected.

This error can be most plainly seen in the focus of our evaluations.  We accredit institutions and judge the way they teach, sometimes leniently and sometimes harshly depending on whether individual cases of failure make it to the press.  This is folly.  For the purpose stated above, we are accrediting the wrong things.  Instead of accrediting schools, we should be accrediting students.  And in accrediting students, it is not how the students are taught but that the students are taught that is important.  It is fundamentally a matter of diplomas and degrees and not the circumstances under which they are earned.  All of the effort that goes into the school accreditation process, and it is substantial, would thus be better spent in designing and administering the student accreditation process.

This important distinction can be seen in a farcical situation that has made news at various points in the past year or so.  This involved a superintendent of a school district who received a doctorate from what has been called a “diploma mill” and insisted that he be called “Doctor” in addition to receiving additional income and compensation for what he spent at the institution of higher degree giving.  What struck me about this case is that it called to mind the observation that academia was rife when I went to college, and probably still is, with aspersions towards institutions which were more worthy than Breyer State.  Even in the modest, unassuming Midwest, I frequently heard the assertion “If you can’t go college, go to Coe”.  Most likely, Coe College was passed that dubious mantle among Iowa colleges from the old Parsons College, traditional home of Ivy League dropouts, which had closed its doors only to re-open as Maharishi U. and thus became too easy and obvious an object of derision.  At some point, all of these institutions were accredited, making degrees valid in one year but invalid in the next for those who lost their accreditation.  Others among the maligned retained their accreditation, but their graduates were and are deemed less equal than graduates from Grinnell or Princeton.  Yet there are likely graduates of the worst schools and even from among the receivers of “life experience” degrees from the “diploma mills” who are as knowledgeable in their fields as some Ivy League graduates.  And who are we to say that the good “Call Me Doctor” superintendent is not among them?  Truth be told, without an independent accreditation process for the students, we can’t say that he is or is not qualified.

The problem worsens when we apply this lesson to the case of “failing” high schools.  Some students maintain much higher standards than their schools offer and have their reputations ruined because their school failed by some measure.  In my town, we have a case of the entire student body of Edison High School being maligned by a “failing school” label because the State determined that its special education students did not meet some targets.  By every other measure, Edison High students ranked among the top students in the state.  Thus, what should have been a call for additional help for a few students resulted in a blot on hundreds of students, a silly exercise of transfers to J. P. Stevens and back and no help at all for the students needing it.  Clearly, school accreditation and evaluation is not only ineffective, but haphazard and destructive as well.

The program of student accreditation which I have proposed is just as clearly an improvement on all fronts.  With a course-based curriculum and accreditation through statewide course exams, the good student from a “failing” school is given the same credit and acquires the same good reputation as their counterpart in a “successful” school for the courses on which they receive the same grade.  When a student has trouble and fails a course exam, whether “special” or not, additional help can be given so that they learn the material and can pass the exam at the end of the next trimester.  Lastly and probably least, we can definitively say whether “Call Me Doctor” should be called doctor, though only after he satisfies through the course exams the requirements for the bachelors and masters degrees and then enters a real doctoral program in public administration and writes and defends a real doctoral thesis before a real doctoral thesis committee.

More importantly than the particular case of a superintendent is the flexibility the separate course exam accreditation gives to students with varying backgrounds and responsibilities.  If you have to go to a maligned school or earn a living instead of going to college because you are poor and underestimated, you have the same opportunity to study a course and take a certifying exam on it as a wealthy or more conspicuously talented student.  These real opportunities then crowd out the temptations for the underprivileged of the “diploma mills”, whose product is more explicitly useless.  If diplomas and degrees are issued by the state based on uniform standards, masquerading as a high school or college granting a diploma or degree is an easily exposed deception.

One more improvement of note is the effect that moving the responsibility for degree granting to the state has on colleges and universities: the ability for them to focus on the critical thinking and new research that has been the traditional strength of academia.  There is no reason for institutions of higher learning to be devoting so much of their time and energy on remedial education or, for that matter, high school level courses such as calculus.  Indeed, as learning progresses, we should expect that more advanced courses should find their way into the public schools to be taught at earlier and earlier ages as colleges and universities become once again engines of new ideas.

In closing, let me point out the obvious extension to the federal level of this program of an independent standard of student accreditation through course exams.  Embarking on such a task would be of great benefit for colleges considering the qualifications of out-of-state students and for employers considering applicants from across the country.  It would also redeem the promise of the Federal Department of Education, which has floundered in the haze since its inception under President Carter, by giving it the kind of task to which government bureaucracies are particularly well suited: creating standards in exhaustive and minute detail.

The election of the next New Jersey Governor is fast upon us with only one real issue being addressed, that of property taxes and the public education system which it currently funds.  Each of the three major candidates – and by “major” I mean that they are on the ballot and on television – has taken up a predictable strategic position on this issue.

The Democratic incumbent looks at who is inclined or might be convinced to vote for a Democratic candidate and notices that most of them rent.  They do not care about property taxes; that is their landlord’s problem and they are not exactly friends.  Even among the homeowners in the Democratic base, the bigger concern is with their local school, especially if they are depending on their high school seniors getting scholarships to pay for college based on good grades at good schools.  The appeal of the Democrat to these voters that he is “investing in our future” and “has the right priorities” is signaling that he will make sure that the schools will have a great reputation no matter what the cost.  He throws a bone to the stray non-Democrat that he will increase taxes on the “wealthy” — and by “wealthy” he means those with high incomes serving as sacrificial lambs for inherited or previously acquired wealth – rather than increase the property tax, or not too much.  Yes, he will really try this time to keep property taxes under control as he makes the tough choices of how to pay for education.

The Republican challenger looks at who is inclined or might be convinced to vote for a Republican candidate and notices that most of them own their own home, with a good number of those no longer having children in the public schools, if they ever did.  Even if they have school-age children, these voters have been long since disaffected by the incessant Democratic Party propaganda which so many of the teachers engage in, that they have opted out and enrolled their children in private or religious schools.  Overwhelmingly, the Republican base gains no benefit from the public school and sees the property taxes which pay for them as wasted money.  They hear about the “Obama hymn” in Burlington and, though disgusted, they are not surprised: “Typical!” would be their cry.  Thus, the pledge of the Republican to reduce property taxes by reducing spending is signaling that he is going to not only run a tight ship but, if necessary to reduce property taxes to bearable levels, will not be afraid to gut the schools by forcing the districts to make do with austerity budgets.  To the stray non-Republican, he throws the bone of  “charter schools” which are supposed to be an improvement over existing inner-city public schools.  He thus makes his appeal to the parents of children in truly awful high schools and, though he expects this to save a lot of money, he assures them that he is doing this to make the schools better for the kids.  Yes, he will really try not to shortchange education as he makes the tough decisions of how to balance the budget while cutting taxes.

The major independent candidate takes up a middle position of promising voters that they can have their cake and eat it, too.  In all candor, he must admit that the cake is not appetizing, nor much of a prize to hold.  Still, he is hoping that enough Democratic voters are fed up with the corruption and scandals in their party and governor that they will switch to him as a friend to education in some vague, general sense.  With more emphasis, he is pledging to reduce property taxes and even has a plan for that, appealing to Republican voters straight up.  The details show that he is targeting the blue-collar Republican voters because they would rather be taxed on income they don’t have than on the assessed value of the property they do.  The impression is thus left that the major independent is a spoiler for the Democrats, taking away more votes from the Republican than the Democratic candidate.  Insidious allegations are made that he was “entered into” the race for this express purpose.

I would agree with the former statement, but not the latter.  The major independent was, perhaps, overly confident about the number of voters willing to vote for him because he was neither Democrat nor Republican.  Most likely, he still is as he seeks to broaden his appeal beyond that base to other voters most likely to vote against the Democratic incumbent.  However, neither he nor the Republican challenger, who is also courting the disaffected Democrats, seem to recognize that they need to appeal also to the Democrats who are not disaffected in order to win the election.  If the major independent becomes a spoiler, it will because the Republican candidate let him be one by failing to go after the Democratic base.  One or both of these challengers need to advocate and highlight an explicit plan for educational reform that is fundamentally that and believably so.  I am not, however, optimistic that they can do so with about a week before the election.

You will note that I have not mentioned names in this discourse.  That is because from the popular capitalist perspective, the personalities involved in drafting policy are less important to the people than the policy itself.  I will offer up my own, Carl Peter Klapper, as the creator and most interested advocate of the policy I put forward now.  Though you will not see me on the ballot, you can write my name in for Governor of New Jersey.  Or, since we have the new, undefined, yet very public office of Lieutenant Governor, you can write me in for that and confound the parties in the game of unblemished electoral lambs they have been playing by creating this office.  So, without further ado, here is the Popular Capitalist view of and plan for property taxes and educational reform.

1. Abolish property taxes.  Just off them in true Soprano State fashion.  We defer discussion of the education budget and funding until later.  Besides, property taxes have nothing to do with that.  It was always a false connection, a Gordian knot tying property taxes to school budgets.  What smart people like Alexander the Great do with a Gordian knot is to cut it.  And so do we.
2. Put the schools under the jurisdiction of the municipalities, under a municipal education department.  In some cases, schools would be administered at the county level on behalf of municipalities where the school population is too small.  This makes the schools accountable to the people in the town or county where they operate and thus far more accountable to anybody than the cross-jurisdictional school districts are.  Further, this makes all school staff and administrators municipal employees and appointed officials.
3. Standardize position descriptions, the formula for staffing levels and pay scales at the state level.  This would be a decision by the Governor and the executive branch which needs to stay within the budget authorized by the legislature for education as for all other municipal, county and state agencies and departments. The state budget for municipal and county educational staffing will pay for all mandated positions, which I will make almost entirely for teachers. The municipalities and the counties would still be able to fund additional positions through their own revenue.  This reform prevents the featherbedding abuses that are keeping money from being spent on our children.
4. Establish a New Jersey Board of Regents with a charge to create a published course-based curriculum for all public schooling through masters level, design certifying examinations for every course,  frequently administer these exams and establish course requirements for diplomas and degrees. The Board will consist of current presidents of colleges and universities in New Jersey, receiving a small stipend for their time in meetings to set policy and appoint chiefs of each curriculum subject department.  The staff of the board will be led by these chiefs, who are experts in their subjects.  This method of certification and granting diplomas and degrees will allow pupils from a variety of educational settings to proceed independently and receive their high school diplomas when they have mastered the courses required for graduation.  This will be a drastic improvement over the current “social advancement” method which moves students through the schools and graduates them for warming a chair.
5. Allow municipal education departments to offer elective courses for which they may charge a fee.  This would be the preferred way for municipalities to pay for their local educational offerings.  An education department may choose to open some courses to adults.
6. As part of my proposal for establishing municipal medical departments, a medical curriculum will be devised and staff allocated to each municipality to teach courses in medicine leading to certification as doctors and nurses.
7. Change the school calendar to an annual trimester system, with the school day expanded to 8 hours.  In transitioning from the current grade-level system, kindergarten and grades 2, 4, 6 and 8 would be taught in one trimester and grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 would be taught in two trimesters.  This would not only streamline the traditional K-12 education, it would also allow college-level courses to be taught at an earlier age and, because of the independent administration of the Regents exams through masters, allow diligent students in whatever neighborhoods to earn a college or post-graduate degree without leaving their homes or having to pay to go to college.  As an aside, speaking as someone whose family could not afford vacation trips, I would have much rather accelerated through school during the summer vacation months than to try to stay cool in the sweltering heat of July and August.  I expect that this is the view of poor students throughout New Jersey.

It should be clear now why I did not immediately describe how education would be paid for in the absence of a property tax.  The educational reforms I am proposing change the nature and costs of the educational system, as any real reform must.  You can go through my points and see reduced and additional costs, but in the absence of any measure or approximation of the magnitude of those ups and down you would be at a loss to determine whether we spend less or more after the reforms.  However, if you consider which governments pay for this system and which elected body decides what will be paid, the improvement is clear.

Under the current system, property owners pay for the system in their town, even though they might not have had children, let alone children in school now.  This sets up a false conflict between property owners and parents of school-age children.  The property owners are paying through municipal governments for systems administered by separate school districts representing the parents of schoolchildren and the teachers’ union.  But even the school districts do not always determine school expenses.  The state issues unfunded mandates regularly dictating what must be paid.  But whether the state or the school districts decide the school budget, those are different governmental entities representing different constituencies from those who pay the bills.  Consequently, the people can choose neither the quality of schooling nor its expense.  Parents, like myself, who want better public education for their children and are willing to pay for it are forced into austerity budgets by homeowners who don’t, and vice versa.  The teachers’ union, an entity unto itself that controls the state, forces bad schools on the  parents and extravagant budgets on the homeowners.

In my administration, the people, not the parents, nor the homeowners,  nor yet the teacher’s union, would decide what will be spent on instruction and will pay for it themselves.  If the people decide through their state assembly and senators that they are willing to pay x dollars for instruction in the public schools, then x dollars will be paid for by state revenue in the state budget, and the Governor will structure the pay for teachers, principals and other school workers so that the state school budget adequately staffs the schools.  If some teachers or administrators think they can do better outside the state or teaching, nothing is keeping them from leaving and nothing is keeping the municipal education departments from replacing them.  If the pay scale is not realistic in one or more areas, then there will be a shortage which will force the Governor to either increase pay in those areas or reduce staffing requirements until the pay scale and the staffing requirements are consistent with the budget and the labor market.  If the people in a municipality want to expand offerings, they can do so and place the burden on those parents and students who wanted the new classes through course fees.  Further, the students themselves can determine how many classes they need to attend by taking and passing some Regents course exams without instruction.  Students could even earn degrees locally without the expense of college, a great boon for their parents that would more than compensate for the minor cost of the Regents exams for college courses and any state-mandated or locally offered classes their children require.  Lest we forget, this applies to medical education as well, opening up this field to children from poor families without the debilitating med school loans and with a ready opportunity in the many municipal medical departments throughout the state.

So I ask the Democratic voters, particularly, why vote for a Democratic candidate who does not offer you what I have: a public educational system that serves you and the aspirations of your children?  If you agree that I would do a better job, if you share my dream of helping our children fulfill their dreams, then help our cause by spreading the word and writing in Carl Peter Klapper for Governor of New Jersey.

And forget about old what’s his name.

There is a lot of confusion in our business world about what is or is not personal which seems, to this observer, designed to misplace our sympathies.  A deliberate legal fiction that a corporation be treated like a person, so that it gain some benefit thereby, has been accepted as fact. Glib sales talk, intended to make a high price for a house more palatable, is taken as the gospel truth.  But beyond the initial trickery is the molding of our minds and hearts to endorse, in the same breath, compassion for the dear, old corporation in dire straits who may be left out in the proverbial cold without a few, small billions of dollars and callous disregard for real people who will be left out in the real cold because their home is in a house for which some investments have soured.

To be sure, the patent absurdity of both situations becomes briefly apparent to even the talking heads on television.  But then the corporation and the home dweller are colored in the tones of hero and villain, respectively, so that the public compassion, which believes everything it sees and hears on television, can continue to be misplaced.  The corporation is an industrial giant with millions of employees who will lose their jobs and, it is assumed, all chance for future income if it fails.  Or the corporation is a financial conglomerate which will lose the pensions of millions of widows and orphans if their investments sour, of course through no fault of their own.  These true-blue American multinational conglomerates are neighbors in need of our help.  At the other end of the melodramatic chasm lies the evil homeowner who has greedily bought a million dollar home, which we assume is more spacious and luxurious than a two bedroom condo.  This sinister foreigner, whose family illegally entered the country in 1848, does not have the income to support his extravagant lifestyle.  Certainly, he has misrepresented his finances and fabricated documents to support his perjury because the loan officer would not have otherwise extended a mortgage to someone so manifestly unqualified.  So our beloved television news, minions to the financial-political complex, breathe a sigh of relief as trillions of tax dollars are given to personified companies while dehumanized people are victimized by those same companies.

These things ought not to be.  More hopefully, we can make sure that they no longer happen by striking at their hearts with the stake of truth.  Both falsehoods should be stricken down, but I have already addressed the second in a previous article somewhat by advocating Adjustable Equity Mortgages so that the purchase of a house to serve as a home does not become a tool of speculation.  For the rest we will focus on the first fiction.

A corporation is a government, not a person.  Consider the operation of a corporation compared to that of a government on one hand and a person on the other.  A corporation has laws, which they call “bylaws”.  A government has laws, but a person does not.  A corporation is owned by stockholders who vote on various matters and sometimes for leaders, such as board members.  A government is owned by its citizens who vote on various matters and sometimes for leaders, such as members of a legislative council.  Persons are just themselves and if they have to take a vote to decide matters we admit them to a psychiatric hospital.  A corporation has paid servants, who are called “employees” who do the business of the corporation.  A government has civil servants who do the business of government.  A person may hire a domestic, if they are wealthy enough, but the domestic is doing the other stuff that gets in the way of the person doing their business.  A corporation can continue well beyond the life of any one officer, stockholder or employee.  A government can continue well beyond the life of any one officer, citizen or civil servant.  A person continues just as far as their life, no more, no less.  It should be fairly clear from the foregoing that a corporation is indeed a government and not a person.

Since a corporation is a government, it is necessarily in conflict with other governments, both other corporations as well as the governments of the people.  As Adam Smith pointed out in “The Wealth of Nations”, companies should be in conflict with each other:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

— Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations”, Book I, Chapter X

However, as a corporation grows in size it engages in such conversations regularly within itself.  And as it grows in scope beyond that of a public government, it is able to implement those conspiracies with impunity.  It must be pointed out that the nature of contrivances is a bit broader than Smith described.  The goal, after all, is profits and the price of the product sold is only half of the equation.  The other half is the price of the resources used to manufacture that product.  It is that other half that has been used by large corporations whose scope extends beyond the jurisdiction of public governments to eliminate competing companies with more limited scope.  For example, cheap labor in another state or another country can be used to drive out local competition with prices that would leave no profit for any company using only local labor.  Because the multi-state company is not under the jurisdiction of a single state, it is able to play one state off of another in offering employment and income to its people and thus become a government more powerful than the governments elected by the people.  As such, they pose a threat to the people and their liberty and power much greater than that posed by their state government.  The popular capitalist, in seeking power to the people first and then, as necessary, to smaller, local governments more under their control, opposes these multi-state corporations as a usurpation of power.

Many have pointed out a similar problem with multinational corporations and have railed against them for decades.  However, their attempts to curb those greater powers have been in vain.  It seems clear to me that their failure is in attempting to control multinational governments with national governments.  Similarly, attempts to control multi-state governments with state governments will come to naught.  The best tactic is not to control them, but to exclude them.  Rather than placing regulations on all companies doing business in the state or require certain benefits or impose additional taxes to ensure that the multi-state corporations are “good citizens” — and thus fall into the personification trap – we should only allow corporations which are registered in the state to operate within the state.  If the products of an out-of-state corporation are so superior or so inexpensive to produce, they will remain so as imports, but they will not be assured of a lack of competition in the state.  And with respect to retailers, whom we used  to call “merchants”, we have no use for out-of-state corporations.  Many a capitalist entrepreneur has started as a merchant who saw an opportunity in a new idea or product.  That is the type of capitalist we would like every citizen to become or ally themselves with as a capitalist investing in their new venture.  Not from the national big-box, but from the local corner store comes the popular capitalists.

The rushing never fruitful
In its speed from here to there
Makes there so much more distant
And this place never here
Yet one must be both here and there
At some points in the day
But now we cannot walk it
Must take the faster horse
Or, horseless, ride a fast machine
With foul, expensive fuel
Befouling our land and shore
Befouling our integrity for
The rushing never fruitful
In its speed from here to there
Enshrined the thoroughbred
As the emblem of the horse
The racetrack sets the value
With a wager long since lost
While the draft horse, sore neglected –
Who could pull a plow with a fuel of grass,
Without an ounce of gas,
Who is fruitful without the burden of debt,
Who helps us grow in the fields which are here
So our harvest is always near –
Is passed by in fleeting progress
Of the rushing never fruitful
In its speed from here to there.

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper