“Look, Mr. Straun, John, can I call you John? We’ve been at this for 25 days. We’re all sick of this. We all want to go home. You’re the only one left. You’re the one keeping us here. I got things to do at home. I got to go to work and make a living. All of us do. The judge is mad as hell at us. You’re going to hang this jury. You’re going to make this trial into a farce and waste of time. You have no right to vote acquittal. You heard the judge’s instructions. The jury is not allowed to judge the law, only the facts.”

“The fact are clear as day, aren’t they?” Dillard ranted. “You even admitted that to us. The guy was found with marijuana in his car. That’s against the law. And the guy admitted the marijuana was his. What more do you need?” said Raymond Dillard, the jury foreman. Raymond Dillard was tall, beefy, in his 30’s, and he was getting mad, so mad he wanted to beat John Straun’s head in.

Straun was a small, slim man in his 30’s, with a straight back, dark brown hair, large, steady eyes, and a firm mouth. He seemed not to care at all about all the trouble he was causing. And he seemed to be fearless.

John Straun said, “I don’t care what the judge said. I happen to know for a fact that a jury has the right to judge the law. Jury nullification has a long history in this country. A jury has the right to judge the law, not just the facts.”

Raymond Dillard and a few other jurors sneered. Dillard said, “Oh, are you a lawyer, Mr. Straun? You think you know more than the judge? What history are you talking about?”

John Straun said calmly, “No, I’m not a lawyer. I’m an engineer. But in this particular case, I do know more than the judge. When I found out I was going to be on this jury, I did a little research about the history of juries, just for the hell of it. Most people don’t know this, but jury nullification has been upheld as a sacred legal principal in English common law for 1000 years. Alfred the Great, a great English king a thousand years ago, hung several of his own judges because they removed jurors who refused to convict and replaced these courageous jurors with other jurors they could intimidate into convicting the defendant on trial.”

“Jury nullification also goes back to the very beginning of our country, as one of the crucial rights our Founding Fathers wanted to protect. Our Founding Fathers wanted juries to be the final bulwark against tyrannical government laws. That’s why they emphasized the right to a jury trial in three of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. John Adams, second President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, third President and author of the Declaration of Independence, John Jay, First Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Alexander Hamilton, First Secretary of the Treasury all flatly stated that juries have the right and duty to judge not only the facts in a case, but also the law, according to their conscience.”

“Not only that, more recent court decisions have reaffirmed this right. In 1969, in “US. vs. Moylan,” the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of juries to judge the law in a case. In 1972, the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the same principal.”

Raymond Dillard said, “Yeah, if that’s the case, how come the judge didn’t tell us this?”

“That’s because of the despicable Supreme Court decision in “Sparf and Hansen vs. The United States in 1895.” John Straun said. “That decision said juries have the right to judge the law, but that a judge doesn’t have to inform juries of this right. Cute, huh? And guess what happened after this decision? Judges stopped telling juries about their rights.”

“The judge knows about jury nullification. All judges do. But they hate letting juries decide the law. They hate juries taking power away from them. That’s why judges never mention a jury’s right to judge the law, and most judges squash defense attorneys from saying anything about it in court. Remember when Jimmy Saunders’ defense lawyer started talking about it? The judge threatened him with contempt if he didn’t shut up about jury nullification.”

“And since you asked me,” Straun continued, “I’ll tell you a little more about jury nullification. Did you ever hear of the Fugitive Slave Act? Did you ever hear of Prohibition? Do you know why those despicable laws were repealed? Because juries were so outraged over those laws that they consistently refused to convict people who violated them. They refused to convict because they knew that these laws were unjust and tyrannical, that Congress had no right making these laws in the first place. So, because juries wouldn’t convict, the government couldn’t make these laws stick. They tried for many years, but finally gave up.”

“What do you think this mad War on Drugs is that we’ve been fighting the last sixty years? It’s the same as Prohibition in the 20’s. It’s the same principle. A tyrannical government is telling people that they can’t take drugs, just like in the 20’s they said people couldn’t drink liquor. What’s the difference? A tyrannical law is telling people what they can or can’t put in their own bodies. Who owns our bodies, us or the self-righteous politicians? Does the government own your body, Mr. Dillard? Do you smoke, Mr. Dillard? Do you drink beer?”

Dillard nodded his head, “Yeah, I do.”

“Well, how would you like it if they passed laws telling you that can’t smoke or drink a beer anymore. Would you like that, Mr. Dillard?”

Dillard looked at John Straun, thought about the question, then admitted, “No, I wouldn’t, Straun.”

John Straun turned to the others around the table. “You, Jack, you said you’re sixty-five years old. You like to play golf, right? What if they passed a law saying anyone over sixty-five can’t play golf because the exercise might give him a heart attack? You, Frank, you said you eat hamburgers at McDougals all the time. What if they passed a law saying fatty hamburgers give people heart attacks, so we’re closing down all the McDougal restaurants in the country, and they make eating a hamburger a criminal offence? You, Mrs. Pelchat, I see you like to smoke. Everyone knows that smoking can give you lung cancer. How would you like it if they passed a law banning all cigarettes? What if they could crash in the door of your house without a warrant to search for cigarettes in your house, like the SWAT teams do now, looking for drugs? Mrs. Pelchat, how would you like to be on trial like Jimmy Saunders because they found a pack of cigarettes you hid under your mattress?”

“Do you all see what I mean? If they can make it a crime for Jimmy Saunders to smoke marijuana, why can’t they make golf, hamburgers, and cigarettes a crime? If you think they wouldn’t try, think again. They had Prohibition in the 20’s for almost ten years, till they finally gave up. The only reason they haven’t banned cigarettes is because there are thirty million cigarette smokers in this country who would scream bloody murder. They get away with making marijuana and other drugs illegal only because drug-users are a small minority in this country. Drug users don’t have any political clout.”

Raymond Dillard sat down in his chair. The others started talking among themselves. John Straun started seeing heads nodding in agreement, thinking about what he had said.

“OK, Straun,” Dillard said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Jimmy Saunders shouldn’t go to jail for smoking marijuana. Hell, probably most of us tried the stuff when we were young. Clinton said he smoked marijuana in college. Bush said he tried drugs in college. Probably half of Congress and their kids took drugs one time or another. O.K. we agree with you. But what about the judge. He said we can’t judge the law.”

John Straun stood up. He was not a tall man, but he stood very straight, and he looked very sure of himself. He looked from one to another of them.

He said, “If you agree with me, then I ask you all to vote for acquittal. You are not only defending Jimmy Saunders’ liberty, but your own. You are fighting a tyrannical law that is enforced by a judge who wants the power to control you. I told you that many juries like us in the past have disregarded the judge’s instructions. They stood up for liberty against a tyrannical law. Are you Americans here? What do you va!ue more, your liberty, your pride as free men, or the instructions of a judge who doesn’t want you to judge the law precisely because he knows you’ll find the law unjust? Will you stand with those juries who defended our liberty in the past, or will you give in to this judge?”

“Here’s another thing to think about,” John Straun said with passion. ”What if it was your sister or brother on trial here? Do you know that if we say Saunders is guilty, the judge has to send him to prison for twenty years? I understand this is Saunders third possession charge. You know the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, don’t you? The politicians passed a law that if a guy gets convicted three times on possession, the judge now has no leeway in sentencing. He has to give the poor guy twenty years in prison. What if it were your sister or brother on trial? Should they go to jail for smoking marijuana, for doing something that should not be a crime in the first place? Do we want to send Jimmy Saunders to prison for twenty years because he smoked a joint, hurting no one? Can you have that on your conscience?”

“Do you know that there are almost a million guys like Jimmy Saunders in federal prisons right now, as we speak, for this same so-called “crime” of smoking marijuana or taking other drugs? These men were sent to prison for mere possession. They harmed no one but themselves when they took drugs. How can you have a crime without a victim? When does this horror stop? It has got to stop. I’m asking you all now to stop it right here, at least for Jimmy Saunders. The only thing that can stop tyrannical laws and politicians is you and me, juries like us. If we do nothing, we’re lost, the country is lost.”

“I’m asking you all to bring in a not-guilty verdict, because the drug laws are unjust and a moral obscenity. I’m asking you all be the kind of Americans our Founding Fathers would have been proud of, these same men who fought for your liberty. That’s what I’m asking of all of you.”

John Straun sat down and looked quietly at Dillard and all the others around the table. They looked back at him, and it seemed that their backs began to straighten up, and they no longer complained about going home. They were quiet. Then they talked passionately amongst each other.

Fifteen minutes later, they walked into the courtroom and sat down in the jury box. When the judge asked Raymond Dillard what the verdict was, he was stunned when Dillard, standing tall, looking straight at the judge, said “Not guilty.” Over the angry rantings of the red-faced judge, all in the jury box looked calmly at John Straun, and felt proud to be an American.

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The human race is heading for ecological disaster because of its increasing and all-pervasive assaults on our air, water, and land. Pollution is everywhere. Our industrial civilization is heading toward environmental collapse, and mankind’s fate hangs in the balance.

Does this scare you out of your wits? It’s intended to do just that. This scenario from a second-rate horror movie is passed off as scientific fact by a new breed of doomsday prophets, the radical environmentalists. Read and take heed — the end is near. Here is an example of a typical environmentalist scare story:

“The present course of environmental degradation, if unchecked, threatens the survival of civilized man. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way in which we now live on the earth is driving its thin, life-supporting skin, and ourselves with it, to destruction.”

Environmentalists’ doomsday predictions would be comical, if it wasn’t for the fact that these scare stories have frightened local, state, and federal legislators into creating a massive, poisonous layer of regulations. Environmental regulations violate our property rights, restrict our personal liberties, threaten our standard of living, and throw thousands of Americans out of work.

Environmentalists concoct end-of-the-world scenarios all the time. These predictions are calculated to scare us, and usually turn out to be pure fantasy, exaggerations, or deliberate distortions of the facts.

The mother of all doomsday stories, of course, is global warming. For over thirty years, environmentalists have scared us with this one. It seems that car exhausts, forest clearing, power plants, and other industrial activities increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Increased carbon dioxide will allegedly create a barrier in the atmosphere that traps the Earth’s heat, creating a “greenhouse effect” As a result, the Earth’s temperature will rise, causing glaciers to melt, seas to rise, worldwide flooding, and calamity to the human race.

As expected, there are many reputable scientists who think this theory is nonsense. Other scientists have their own theories that totally contradict global warming.

“Kenneth E.F. Watt, professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Davis, theorized that an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should lead to global cooling, not warming. Watt argued that carbon dioxide will heat tropical oceans, leading to additional evaporation. This will produce denser and more widespread clouds at high elevations, which will decrease the amount of sunlight that penetrates the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that the Earth is warming, but attribute the change to causes other than carbon dioxide production. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that solar activity may have caused global warming, and Reid Bryson, director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that dust and smoke are the primary causes of climate change.”

There are also many scientists who question whether the Earth has gotten warmer over the last hundred years.

“Temperature measurements may be biased by the effects of urbanization; weather stations are located in urban areas, where heat-absorbing buildings and pavement can raise the readings one to two degrees above the surrounding atmosphere. After correcting for the “urban” effect, a study by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that there was no statistically significant evidence of warming in the United States [italics added]. Andrew R. Solow, a statistician at Woods Hole, pointed out that because monitoring stations tend to be located on land rather than oceans and more are in the Northern than in the Southern Hemisphere, temperature readouts are not really global at all. Ten years of weather satellite data have also shown no evidence of global warming [italics added].”

There’s little valid evidence of global warming. Instead, there’s solid evidence that the Earth has not been warming. Since 1978, a temperature-measuring satellite called Tiros II has been orbiting the Earth 24-hours a day. Guess what? The satellite’s measurements showed no significant increase or decrease in the Earth’s temperature. Scientific temperature measurements from Tiros II show no global warming trend in the last fifteen years. In other words, global warming is a myth.

Many eminent scientists agree that global warming and other environmental scare stories are just unproven theories. Prior to the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, scientists from around the world issued the Heidelberg Appeal. In the Appeal, scientists asked government leaders at the summit to be careful. They asked the leaders not to make serious environmental decisions based on pseudoscientific arguments or false and non-relevant data. More than 250 scientists, including 27 Nobel prize winners, issued the Appeal on June 1, 1992. Today, 2,300 scientists from 79 countries, including 65 Nobel prize winners, have signed the Appeal .

Former governor of Washington state and former chairwoman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, also thought that global warming is nonsense. In her wonderful 1993 book, “Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened To Common Sense?,” she said that it was unlikely that carbon dioxide would cause any significant changes in worldwide temperatures. Jeffrey Salmon is executive director of the Washington-based George C. Marshall Institute. In the July 1993 issue of Commentary, he flatly stated that he found no valid scientific evidence to prove that man-made gases are causing the Earth to warm from a greenhouse effect.

In short, we are being conned. Government takes billions of tax dollars out of our pocket to enforce massive environmental regulations that, in most cases, protect you from nothing.

I could describe many other eco-scare stories, but I think I’ve made my point. These doomsday prophesies are either distortions or exaggerations of unproven facts. Unfortunately, radical environmentalists and the liberal media spout this eco-nonsense so often that we start to believe them. That’s the problem and the danger. Panicked, short-sighted Congressmen believe the scare stories and then pass environmental regulations that strangle our economy and destroy our property rights.

It is time that we see these environmental scare stories for what they are — a tactic by left-leaning environmental radicals to destroy the thing they hate most. What they hate most is our liberty, property rights, and the free-market that can make life for human beings on this planet a joy instead of a brutal struggle for existence.

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The idea of forcing someone to pay his “fair share” of taxes through progressive income taxes applies only to a society of cannibals. It applies to a society where the majority has the right to devour those people who earn more than others. Paying your “fair share” in taxes implies that all of us have a responsibility to support the rapacious Welfare/Entitlement State, but some of us have more responsibility than others. It implies that the more money you earn, the larger your “fair share” should be, simply because you have more to give.

In other words, the “fair share” principal embedded in our progressive income-tax code brings to America, the “land of the free,” Karl Marx’s dictum from his Communist Manifesto, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

This dictum is the philosophy of socialist looters who are consumed by envy. This policy simply justifies stealing from those people who earn more than others. And since there’s always someone richer or poorer than you, the progressive income tax leads to universal looting, on a massive scale. Through the progressive income-tax system, everyone steals from the next victim above him on the economic ladder. Paying your “fair share” of taxes appeals to looters or parasites who have no idea how wealth is created or why it’s wrong to steal.

To see what fair share really means, imagine the following. You have $10,000 saved in your local bank. You worked for ten years to save this money. The bank then gets a new “progressive” manager. The manager finds that most of the bank’s customers have less than $500 in deposits, which he thinks is grossly unfair. So he makes new rules for the bank. He sends you a letter telling you that he is going to “redistribute” your $10,000 to all his poorer depositors so that everyone has their “fair share.”

Do you think the bank manager should be arrested or sent to the loony bin? What if the government passes a law that lets him get away with this theft? You know that the bank manager has no right to “redistribute” your money. Does the government? Yet progressive income taxes do exactly the same thing the bank manager did.

In 2005, if you earned $80,000, you now pay a 28 percent income-tax rate, or $22,400 in Federal income taxes. A person who earns $28,000 a year now pays a 15 percent income-tax rate, or $4200 in Federal income taxes. If you pay $22,400 in income taxes, do you get five times more in services from the Federal government than the person who paid only $4200 in taxes? No you do not — you get the same “services.” In effect, those who earn higher incomes are looted far more than low-income earners to pay for Welfare/Entitlement programs that are now devouring our country. By what right?

What is the excuse that liberals make to justify this legalized looting of people who earn more than others? Simply this, that low-income earners need more money for all the goods and services they are “entitled” to. Since higher-income earners have more money, they claim, these higher-income earners have a moral “duty” to hand over their “excess” money to the “less fortunate.” In other words, they say “you have the money, we want it, so we’ll take it from you, and we’ll use the progressive income tax to do this. In effect, the federal government becomes a fence for stolen property.

Well, any mugger does the same thing when he puts a gun to your head and says, “your money or your life.” The mugger sees that you have money, he wants it, so he has decided to take your money at the point of a gun. Our government income-tax collectors are simply legalized muggers who loot our money through the progressive income tax.

In a free society, the taxes a person pays should depend on the services he gets from government, his agent. We should only pay for services that we personally use or benefit from. We could devise a system where each of us paid taxes for government services we bought – a voluntary trade between a citizen and his agent. But this system would be possible only if America had a small, limited government.

This goal is entirely possible. In 1914, the entire federal government’s budget was only $725 million. The 2005 fiscal-year budget was over $2 trillion, a 2000-percent increase from 1914. Why the incredible difference? The income-tax revolutionized the role of government from limited agent to safety-net builder. It gave government the income-raising tool it needed to create our devouring Welfare/Entitlement State.

We could have a contractual tax system if we reduced government to its size in 1914. A contractual system would be easy then, because the budget would be so small. Imagine that the annual federal budget is $750 million because we phased out regulations and entitlement programs. To be more realistic, let’s increase the budget to $75 billion (one hundred times the amount in 1914) to account for inflation, defense costs, and the general increase in population.

The United States today has a population of about 250 million people. If we had a simple flat tax calculated by dividing the total budget of $75 billion by the population of 250 million, the tax per person would be $300 a year. Do you think you could afford $300 for taxes? This figure also excludes money the federal government collects from other taxes, such as excise, tariffs, and user fees, which were its primary taxes before 1913. These extra taxes would further reduce the income taxes needed and give government more funds to work with.

Most of us would be so happy about our low tax bill that we wouldn’t want to bother with a complicated contractual tax system. We would be happy to pay the $300 and be done with it. Except for this small tax, you could keep everything you earned. Add up all the taxes you now pay and then subtract $300. Everything else would be yours.

But low taxes are possible only if we totally reject the philosophy behind the Welfare/Entitlement State. We pay heavy taxes only because we have thousands of regulations and entitlement programs and millions of government bureaucrats. The Welfare/Entitlement State and out-of-control government can be swept away only when we reject the idea that helping others is a moral and political duty instead of a personal choice.

Until then, the Welfare/Entitlement State forces us to help others at the point of a legislative gun. Our paychecks and savings accounts are no longer private property to be scrupulously protected and used for our own benefit. Instead, liberals assume that your salary, profits, and property are collectively owned. They assume that your income is a national resource they can give away to anyone who “needs” it. They assume that the only person who has no right to your money is you, the person who earned it.

Are they right? Should you let them get away with that? Does your hard-earned money belong to you, or to any looting moocher who wants to steal it from you? The next time you go into a voting booth, ask yourself these questions. Every liberal, most Democrats, and too many Republicans believe in the welfare-state philosophy. Vote only for those who don’t believe this.

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“Mayor, we’ve got a big problem on our hands,” said Police Chief Bud Anderson to Mike Branden, mayor of Palm City, Florida, a small city of 200,000 old-fashioned Americans, sitting in the middle of the Florida panhandle. It was a beautiful spring day in April.

Bud Anderson was a handsome man, in his thirties, dark brown hair, blue eyes, a wide, easy mouth. He wore a light-blue short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Mayor Mike Branden, also dressed casually, was in his forties, tall, and well-built. He used to be an orange-grower, his family going back generations in Palm City. He had a weather-beaten face, strong mouth, and calloused hands the size of mitts. He had just been elected mayor in November and won the election on his promise to clean up crime in the city.

Over the last five years, the city had become a little Silicon Valley, with computer companies moving in by the droves because there were no corporate taxes in Florida or in Palm City. The city was prospering, and the newly-rich computer millionaires and their employees with stock options were all building big, fancy houses by the river. The money and big houses had attracted the thieves. The city crime rate had been exploding, especially home burglaries and rapes. All the women in the city were scared and up in arms over the crime spree, and wanted something done. Mayor Branden promised to do something about it.

“Bud, tell me what you think the problem is,” Mike Branden said. “Tell me what you think we can do.”

“Well, Mike,” Bud Anderson said, “I think the thieves and rapists have it too easy. They’re smart. They case the mark’s house carefully before they break in. They only break in when they know the wife is home alone. But that’s not the real problem, Mike.”

“The real problem is that the women are defenseless. You may not know this, being so new as Mayor, but about five years ago the previous Mayor passed gun laws that made it illegal to have a gun in the house, and illegal to use one against a burglar. He also made it illegal for anyone to carry a concealed gun outside the house. That’s when our troubles started, Mayor.”

Mike Branden grew up with guns ever since he was a boy. He belonged to the National Rifle Association. He loved skeet shooting, and bought his kids their first rifles when they were eight years old. He taught them how to shoot straight and how to use a gun safely. His wife also owned a rifle and handgun, shared his love for skeet shooting, and was a crack shot. Mayor Mike Branden was not a college graduate, but he had guts, common sense, and imagination. He immediately saw the problem, and the solution.

“Well, I think we’ll change those gun laws, Bud. Thieves and rapists have it too easy around here. They know they can rob houses and rape women with no risk.

Let’s put the risk back. Let’s see what happens when they get shot if they break into a house or bother one of our women. I’m sick to death of all the gun laws in this country, so let’s try a little experiment. I’ll convince the City Council to revoke our gun-control laws. Next, I’ll convince them to pass a new law requiring every man and woman in Palm City to own a handgun or shotgun, and know how to use them safely. I want a pistol and shotgun in every home. I want every woman walking around town with a concealed gun in her purse or under her dress. Let’s see what happens when we change the laws. Let’s see what happens when we give the victims a way to defend themselves.

I also want you to put a series of ads in the Palm City Gazette and Daily Press that announces the new laws, so everyone knows that every Palm City resident will soon be armed. I want you to set up gun safety and training courses on the local firing ranges, so we know that every woman in this town will be dead shot.”

Bud Anderson’s eyes lit up with admiration for his new Mayor. He had been wanting to revoke those gun laws for the last five years, but never dreamed of the daring plan the new Mayor now wanted to put into action.

“That’s a damned fantastic idea, Mike. You’re going to make a hell of a Mayor. I think the citizens in this town are going to love you. They’re going to have a great time learning how to use a gun again, especially the women. I know the women will form gun clubs. They’ll probably want to buy designer guns with pretty colors. Hell, I might even buy a pearl-handled 45 myself.”

Mike Branden laughed out loud at his Police Chief’s boyish enthusiasm. He said, “I think the new laws should be in place in about a month, Bud. Let’s meet again in about three months and you can tell me whether we’ve had any success with the plan.” Bud Anderson gave a mock salute to his Mayor, said “yes, sir,” and walked out the door into the Spring sunshine.

THREE MONTHS LATER:

It’s a hot July day in the Mayor’s office, and Police Chief Anderson and Mike Branden are having an enthusiastic conversation.

“Mike, mother-of-god did your plan work! The crime rate has dropped like a rock in Palm City. Burglaries are down 80 percent. Rapes are down 90 percent. I’ve never seen anything like it. It all started about two months ago, Mike. There was a burglary gang that had been hitting most of the houses. Well, about ten of them have been shot, three killed in the last two months. As soon as the burglar alarm goes off, the women took their guns from their purses and started shooting. I’ve interrogated some of the thieves we caught. They’re pretty stupid and don’t read much, so they weren’t aware of the new gun laws. They thought we were still operating under the old laws. You should have seen the shock on their faces. They were mad as hell. They never expected pretty young housewives to be spraying them with semi-automatic fire. They were mad as hell at you.”

“Then there were the rapists who didn’t know about the new gun laws either, the ones who prayed on women at night in the shopping-mall parking lots. Did they get the shock of their lives! About twenty of them have been shot already, five killed. They just came up to the women, brazen like, thinking they could get away with anything like they used to. Then the girls suddenly pulled out their pretty pistols and started firing away. You should hear how the women laughed with glee and pride when they told me their stories. They told me how thankful they were to have their guns. I think all the women in this town love you now, Mike. It’s a good thing you’re already married.”

“I think the bad guys are getting the picture, Mike. Burglars and rapists are getting scarce in Palm City. Matter of fact, I just got a call from Ben Radley, Police Chief at Hampton Bay. They still have the same idiotic gun-control laws we had here. Seems they’ve been getting a sharp rise in house burglaries and rapes there. Looks like our bad guys are moving on to easier ground in Hampton Bay. I sure feel sorry for the people in that town right now. Ben Radley wants to talk to you real bad. He wants to know how you got crime down so fast in Palm City. Who knows, Mike, maybe what you did here will spread all over the country. I hope so.”

“One other thing, Mike. Every teacher and principal in every public school in this town now carries a concealed gun. Every one of the kids know this, and they now feel real safe in the schools. They’re not worrying anymore about one of their deranged teen-age friends suddenly going on a shooting spree, like what happened at Columbine High School. If anything happens, they know they don’t have to wait an hour for the cops to show up. They know the teachers and principal can protect them. Did you know math and reading scores are going up at the schools, too? It’s the damndest thing.”

“Mike, I think you’re going to be Mayor in this town for as long as you like. I hope you stay on forever, because Palm City folks are really grateful to you. At first they were a little skeptical about your plans. But now, after they’ve seen the results, you couldn’t get them to give up their guns anymore. We’re even getting calls from newspapers, magazines, and TV stations all over the country. CNN wants to interview you, did you know that? They called me this morning. You’re becoming a celebrity, by god!”

Mike Branden laughed out loud. “Me, an orange grower, a celebrity? Forget the interviews Bud. How about we go fishing this afternoon after work? It’s getting kind of quiet around here, just the way I like it.”

Bud Anderson, grinning, stuck out his hand to shake Mike’s big, calloused hand, for he now counted Mike Branden as a good friend. That afternoon, they caught a dozen trout at Briar Creek lake. It was a fine afternoon.

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However, many studies show that smaller class size does not guarantee that children get a better education. The pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to about 17 to 1 by the early 1990s, which means the average class size fell by 28 percent. Yet, during the same time period, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores fell from 954 to 896, a decline of 58 points or 6 percent. In other words, student academic achievement (as measured by SAT scores) dropped at the same time that class sizes got smaller.

Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist, examined 277 published studies on the effects of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement. He found that only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in achievement with smaller class size, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on achievement.

It seems to go against common sense that student academic achievement could drop with smaller class sizes. One reason this happens in public schools is that when class sizes drop, schools have to create more classes to cover all the students in the school. Schools then have to hire more teachers for the increased number of classes. However, public schools across the country are already having trouble finding qualified teachers to fill their classrooms. As a result, when reduced class sizes increase the need for more teachers, schools then often have to hire less-qualified teachers.

Teacher Quality and Teaching Methods Are Far More Important

As we might expect, teacher quality is far more important than class size in determining how children do in school. William Sanders at the University of Tennessee studied this issue. He found that teacher quality is almost twenty times more important than class size in determining students’ academic achievement in class. As a result, reducing class sizes can lead to the contrary effect of hurting students’ education, rather than helping.

Similarly, a study on class size by policy analyst Jennifer Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes do better academically or that teachers spend significantly more time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20 percent class-size reduction cost the Australian government an extra $1,150 per student, yet added only an additional two minutes of instruction per day for each child.

Reducing class sizes can’t solve the underlying problems with public schools. No matter how small classes become, nothing will help if the teachers are ill-trained or their teaching methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers use whole-language or balanced reading instruction, they can cripple students’ ability to read no matter how small the classes are. Even if classrooms had one teacher for every student, that child’s ability to read could still be crippled if the teacher used these reading-instruction methods. In fact, smaller class sizes could give the teacher more time to hurt (not intentionally) each student’s reading ability.

Here’s an analogy on this issue of class size vs. teaching methods: Suppose a horseback-riding instructor was teaching one little girl to ride. This instructor’s teaching method was to tell the bewildered girl to sit backwards on the horse, facing the horse’s rump, and control the horse by holding its tail. Does it matter that the student-teacher ratio in this horseback-riding class is one-to-one if the instructor is an idiot or uses bad teaching methods?

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