Archive for 2010
October 1, 2010
CONCEALED-CARRY PROPONENTS WHO WON’T PATRONIZE BUSINESSES THAT BAN GUNS: No Guns, No Business.
RICK SANCHEZ: The Jews Are Holding Me Down. This guy’s been an embarrassment from day one; maybe this’ll give them an excuse to fire him. As if they needed one.
IN THE MAIL: Madison and Jefferson.
ANN ALTHOUSE: CNN reporting on Gloria Allred reads like a press release — an embarrassingly written press release. Par for the course these days.
UPDATE: Dale Franks on Twitter: “I’m perfectly happy to let Nicky Diaz stay in the US, if we can deport Gloria Allred, instead.”
TRANSPARENCY: The Hill: Watchdog group waiting for Obama to fulfill ethics pledge for online hub. “Despite a campaign pledge, the Obama administration so far has failed to set up a central online hub for all of the government’s ethics information.”
CATO: Three Views Of Matt Ridley. I’m glad to see The Rational Optimist inspiring more discussion.
FAT-CAT PUBLIC PENSIONS: Angry Populists’ Next Target? “Government pensions, built into law and mostly protected from stock market vagaries, are the envy of the private sector. Voters who have lost jobs, taken pay cuts, or watched 401(k)s plummet provide tinder for politicians condemning the excesses of government retirement protections. But voter outrage will be fanned as states and cities face the prospect of cutting services or raising taxes — or both — to cover rising pension costs. . . . The story will only get worse because pensions nationwide are underfunded. Earlier this year the Pew Center on the States calculated a $1 trillion shortfall between the $2.35 trillion states set aside in 2008 for employee retirement benefits and the $3.35 trillion committed. Economists like Biggs say the gap is far bigger because the states use overly optimistic projections on investment returns.”
SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? For Many Families, Bad Times Require ‘Doubling Up.’ “As they struggle to cope with a chronically weak economy that’s falling well short of replacing the 8.5 million jobs lost since 2007, a rapidly growing number of American adults are moving in with relatives in the hope of avoiding financial ruin. These aren’t just 20-somethings back living with Mom and Dad. Many are experienced, once-successful professionals, entrepreneurs and others — like Sherry Shaffer and her husband, owners of a failed real estate business in Memphis who vacated their six-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot home in Tennessee for her brother-in-law’s attic in Pittsburgh.”
THE HILL: 2012 hopefuls are not showing the Tea Party candidates the money. “Senate GOP candidates backed by the Tea Party movement have received much less financial support than more established candidates from their party’s leading contenders for the White House. The GOP figures jockeying for a 2012 bid have largely avoided contributing from their political action committees (PACs) to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Mike Lee in Utah, Ken Buck in Colorado and Sharron Angle in Nevada.”
“PUBLIC SERVANTS” HELP THEMSELVES: L.A. Times: Lots of cash and little scrutiny in city redevelopment. “It was a redevelopment deal with an unusual form of payment: plain white envelopes stuffed with cash and delivered to a go-between at a preschool. And that was only part of what developer Randy Wang said he paid to Temple City officials who ‘repeatedly solicited bribes’ in return for their support of his $75-million Piazza mall project.” Yeah, I know, it’s a dog-bites-man story, but . . . .
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From the Unbelievable to the Passé. “I cannot quite believe how quietly and without audit America’s moneyed and cognitive elites became such hectoring populists — with the constant assumption they could still live, school, work, and marry largely among like kind — oh so distant from the objects of their concern.”
CHANGE: While You Were Sleeping, The Dollar Continued To Get Crushed. “Or to put it another way, the US gained ground in the global competitive currency devaluation war.”
TRAVELING the Jedi Path.
PAUL HSIEH: 2010: Dawn Of The Terran Empire? It’s an endless array of Bearded Spock moments, but with one redeeming feature: “I do like the fact that bacon is now a health food.”
PETER SUDERMAN: How ObamaCare’s exchanges undermine quality health care.
DAVID FREDDOSO: Did Giannoulias lie to the IRS, or did he just lie to voters and journalists?
Did Illinois Democrats’ Senate nominee, Alexi Giannoulias, stop working for his family’s Broadway Bank in 2006? If so, he has repeatedly lied about it to shake questions about some of its dodgiest lending practices.
Did he stop working for Broadway Bank in 2005? If so, he lied to the IRS and got a huge tax deduction that resulted in him paying no taxes this year.
Naturally, Republicans are loving this storyline.
Read the whole thing. I wonder why this isn’t getting more national attention? I guess there’s nothing to do with masturbation, or witchcraft.
MICKEY KAUS: “Yesterday’s L.A. Times fake front page — ‘MEDIA ICON HIT BY CRIME WAVE/GRISLY SCENE IN NEWS VAN’ — that was really an ad for NBC’s Law & Order fooled nobody. Everyone knows the real L.A.Times would never put a huge, riveting crime story on the front page.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: An Art College President’s Compensation Reached Nearly $2-Million in 2008. “The college paid Ms. Wallace’s current husband, Glenn E. Wallace, $289,235 in 2008 for his role as senior vice president for college resources. Also on the payroll was her son John Paul Rowan ($233,843 for consulting; he is now a vice president who oversees the college’s Hong Kong campus), daughter Marisa Rowan ($101,493; director of the equestrian programs), daughter-in-law Elizabeth Rowan ($85,494; director of external relations at the Hong Kong campus), and mother, May L. Poetter, a member of the Board of Trustees, who earned $61,767 in consulting fees.”
NEW YORK TIMES: Gates Fears Wider Gap Between Country and Military.
Even after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Gates said, “in the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do.”
The defense secretary said that military recruits came increasingly from the South, the mountain West and small towns, and less often from the Northeast, West Coast and big cities. The military’s own basing decisions have reinforced the trend, he said, with a significant percentage of Army posts moved in recent years to just five states: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. . . .
Mr. Gates dismissed any notion of reinstituting the draft, terming the all-volunteer force that began in the 1970s a “remarkable success.” But he called for the return of R.O.T.C. to elite campuses across the country — Duke is unusual in that it has three programs — and for the academically gifted to consider military service.
Clearly, we need federal legislation forcing schools like Harvard to offer R.O.T.C. on pain of being shut down or defunded. In the interests of diversity.
THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT Gary McDowell.
PROFESSOR JACOBSON: “Gloria Allred is doing more to drive illegal immigrants underground and to target Latinos for racial profiling than anything the State of Arizona has even thought of doing.”
Yeah, but she’s doing it in the service of electing a Democrat, so it’s okay. Kind of like outing gays, engaging in racist rhetoric, or whatever. It’s irretrievably evil — unless the cause is right. But wait, there’s more: “The other interesting aspect, quite apart from politics, is Allred’s willingness to expose her client to legal harm even though the client does not have any meaningful legal claim. This is not a case where Allred’s client is a crime victim who comes forward to the police. There does not appear to be a violation of any law by Whitman, but there do appear to be both immigration and possibly criminal violations by Allred’s client, who filed false documents with the government. By going public as she has, Allred has exposed her client to significant legal jeopardy in order to score publicity and political points for Allred.”
September 30, 2010
ELITE COLLEGES? OR COLLEGES FOR THE ELITE? There’ll still be both after the higher education bubble bursts, but the overlap won’t be as complete.
UPDATE: Reader Marc Bacon writes:
A note from a recent grad (2.5 yrs ago) concerning the higher education bubble: I think that combining higher education into one category misses an important point. I have two degrees, one in accounting and one in information systems. Both are in “the sciences” and are technical. I appear to be unaffected by the bubble.
All high schoolers should know: for the most part, anything without math, science, or logic will not significantly add value to you.
True only to a first approximation, but worth considering.
HEY, IF YOU’RE GOING TO CHECK OUT THE SIEU RALLY IN DC ON SATURDAY, please try to get me an overhead photo so we can measure the crowd.
UPDATE: A reader emails that the SEIU folks will be parking buses in the Pentagon’s North Lot for this rally, and asks if that’s legal. I have no idea. Anyone know anything about this?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing writes: “Yes, it’s legal to park those buses in the Pentagon’s parking lot. It would never happen on a weekday, of course. When I was stationed in the Pentagon from 90-93, not just ralliers’ buses but ordinary tour buses parked in the lot on weekends. In fact, tourists in their cars did, too, then took the Metro into town. Of course, this was before 9/11 and car bombs and all that. I would presume that nowadays bus companies have to get DOD’s permission (or perhaps just that of the Military District of Washington), but it’s not a legal matter, just administrative.”