On Monday, the Iowa legislature will convene for the 2010 legislative session, and Iowans across the state will hold their breath, waiting to see if Governor Chet Culver and legislators will increase taxes. Iowans are all painfully aware the state budget is in terrible shape with a billion-dollar spending gap.

In October, the governor issued a simplistic 10-percent across-the-board budget cut, subjecting Iowans to property-tax increases, reductions in services, and a bigger budget disaster for next year. The state budget cannot be fixed by short-term reactionary measures; I chose to suggest state-budget-savings measures to Governor Culver and the legislature, with the following criteria for each recommendation:

• cumulatively reduce state spending by 10 percent;
• hold K-12 education funding harmless;
• hold-public safety funding harmless;
• no mass layoffs; and
• no property-tax or any other tax increases.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner for 49 Nobel laureates. The occasion provided the opportunity for JFK to display his keen wit in this memorable quote: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

I wonder how many of today's high-school and college students appreciate Jefferson's genius. Our third president -- the author of the Declaration of Independence and the founder of the University of Virginia -- was a masterful scholar of history, a political philosopher for the ages, a noted horticulturist, an archaeologist, an architect, and an inventor. He also knew a thing or two about money and banking. Let's take a moment here to review the wise insights on money and banking left to us by this consummate Renaissance man.

Regarding money, Jefferson commented, "Paper is poverty. ... It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." We should remember this when we contemplate the loss of 95 percent of the purchasing power of the paper currency called "Federal Reserve notes" in less than a century. As Ben Bernanke and the Fed create trillions of new paper "dollars," we, the richest country in history, face the possibility of a hyperinflationary collapse and accompanying impoverishment.

There are people who say that what's being called "Climategate" is no big deal -- just the sausage-making of science -- and others who say it undermines all claims about human-caused global warming and about the necessity of measures to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

Those are people with strong, passionate views on climate change, and their reactions support the idea of Climategate as a Rorschach test, that "one's view of the issue is deeply colored by his or her incoming biases," as Stephen J. Dubner said.

But I think this will be a major issue for the rest of us, too -- and for public policy moving forward. And that's as it should be.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." -- Thomas Jefferson

According to President Barack Obama, making school days longer and extending the academic school year will increase learning and raise test scores among American children. However, it's not the length of the school year that is the problem so much as the quality of education being imparted to young people, especially when it comes to knowing American history and their rights -- what we used to call civics.

Clearly, the public schools are fostering civic ignorance. For example, a recent study of 1,000 Oklahoma high-school students found that only 3 percent would be able to pass the U.S. Immigration Services' citizenship exam, while incredibly 93 percent of those from foreign countries who took the same test passed. Only 28 percent of Oklahoma students could name the "supreme law of the land" (the Constitution), while even less could identify Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. Barely one out of every four students knew that George Washington was the nation's first president. None of the students correctly answered eight or more of the 10 questions, and 97 percent scored 50 percent or less.