THE NEW CIVILITY (CONT’D): NPR executives caught on tape bashing conservatives and Tea Party, touting liberals.
UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “This is just too funny. My irony meter has red-lined and wisps of smoke are curling up from it: Remember when news organizations went trolling for bigots at NASCAR events and Tea Party rallies? Wonder if 60 Minutes will be interested in following up.” Heh.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The sounds of silence.
TALKING CARS, with the Car Lust guys.
HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Obama to resume military trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay. “The decision will be a disappointment for liberals already upset with Obama’s political compromises.” Suckers.
WISCONSIN UPDATE: Doctors who gave out fake excuses still under investigation.
RAND SIMBERG: Eerie Coincidences in Failure of NASA Climate Monitoring Satellites. Occam’s razor says, as Rand notes, that it was an accident. But the fact that people have been wondering about this demonstrates just how much trust has been forfeited already.
TINA BROWN’S NEW NEWSWEEK not getting rave reviews.
THE “OTHER” PENSION CRISIS: Options for Avoiding a Taxpayer Bailout of the PBGC.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Why Fire Teachers? This is why. “I doubt that the lowest possible turnover rate is compatible with the best possible education. Turnover has costs, but it also has benefits: fresh blood, lower burnout rates, and an incentive for teachers to keep performing. The whole idea of hiring someone in their early twenties and employing them forever seems like an unhealthy organizational structure to me–in the military and old-school law firms as well as teaching, though the military and law firms do more to weed out the number along the way. It breeds an organization that is insular–resistant to new ideas, suspicious of outsiders, resentful of its nominal clients. We should be looking for ways to make teaching more open to part-timers and people in second, third, or eighth career cycles, and to make it easier for teachers to move around between schools and districts, and between teaching and other industries. . . . I think that the educational benefits outweigh the drawbacks. In part this is simple contrarianism: right now, it is very hard to fire teachers, and many schools are very bad. It’s worth trying whatever we’re not doing.”
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Gas prices too high? Obama may not think so. He’s pumped to use high oil prices. “Obama is also reluctant to expand offshore oil drilling. And he’s also trying to boost the sales of electric cars – something that won’t be easy if gasoline prices go down – as part of a broad government effort to reduce carbon emissions and boost energy security.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why aren’t any high schools asking Obama to speak at commencement this year?
WELL, ISN’T THAT SPECIAL: UK electricity CEO: Get used to not having any electricity, suckas! “Steve Hollliday is the UK’s power czar, basically. He’s the CEO of National Grid. He is predicting that, because the UK is moving to more wind-generated electricity to meet government emissions targets, residents will end up with less access to electricity. And they’d better learn to like it!” Or respond with tar and feathers, whatever.
MEN WITHOUT WOMEN: “According to the United Nations there are far more men on the planet than women. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia.”
KENNETH ANDERSON: The Law and Politics of U.S. Intervention In Libya. Plus this quote from an unnamed military officer: “Where’s the CIA? Isn’t this what we’ve got a CIA for? Isn’t this what you think the CIA is supposed to do? Covert or at least deniable ops? Why don’t they go support the rebels and not pull us into an overt conflict?”
DAVID STEINBERG: What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Big Government.
REPORT: Oregon State: Republican candidate’s children expelled as retribution? Charlie Martin is looking for independent confirmation of this somewhat hard to believe story.
UPDATE: Jerry Pournelle writes:
I find the story Dr. Robinson tells in the above so shocking that it would approach incredible, but two factors apply: I have been reading Robinson for a long time and I have never had any reason to doubt the accuracy of his factual statements. I do not always agree with his conclusions, and in particular in those in which I do agree with him I don’t share all his certainties; but I have never had any reason whatever to question his honesty: which leads me to the conclusion that there is something very rotten in the State of Oregon.
Given the burden of student loans which are rapidly turning the middle class into bondsmen, science and engineering majors might take heed that displaying independence in thinking about AGW can result in financial ruin: it’s bad enough to be burdened with student loan debts after graduation, but it’s far worse if you aren’t allowed to graduate. Those vulnerable to these tactics might think hard about what student organizations they join, and what blogs and tweets they publish. Not everyone can afford independent thought in modern academia. Scary, isn’t it?
And those looking at colleges should probably think about whether they’re worth taking on debt for, when political risk is added to economic risk. And, for that matter, taxpayers should be thinking about whether such behavior is worthy of public support. I still find this story hard to believe, though, but I’m sure that more information will emerge soon.
A HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE INDICATOR? Paul Krugman questions the value of a college degree. Well, he’s catching up, but still behind.
UPDATE: Carl Stritter emails: “Every time Paul Krugman sits down at his typewriter he proves that a college degree is valueless.” Heh. And here are some thoughts from Walter Russell Mead. “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day; Paul Krugman was almost this lucky in his recent New York Times column. . . . And Krugman’s column also illustrates the point I made in The Crisis of the American Intellectual: that many of the smartest and best educated people in this country are so blinkered and blinded by the assumptions and values of the blue social model that they simply cannot think outside the box. . . . Krugman’s column is part of a much broader trend: the intellectual and economic underpinnings of the blue social model are in a process of accelerating and serial collapse. . . . The problem with the blue social model today is systemic. It’s not a problem with one piece or another. The pieces are all falling down and breaking apart at once.”
RON BROWNSTEIN: Public-sector pensions are too high, but 401k plans haven’t done so well. “Replacement of traditional pensions with 401(k)-type plans amounts to a massive shift of risk from employers to individuals. Under defined-benefit programs, employers bear the primary financial risk: They are obligated to provide the benefits regardless of how their investments perform. Under defined-contribution programs, workers invest their own money and suffer if the markets tank, as anyone with a 401(k) discovered in the 2008 meltdown.” You can look at mine and see that. On the other hand, defined-benefit plans mean that businesses are hostage to their retirement program investments, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Defined-contribution plans give workers an incentive to see that society has proper emphasis on economic growth. We’re paying the price for the lack of that now.
Related: Megan McArdle: America’s 401(k)s Are Disasters, but Are Pensions Any Better? “There’s an almost delusional quality to our expectations of retirement.” Individuals don’t want to set aside enough money to cover requirement, because that would require sacrificing consumption today. Governments feel the same way.
SHIKHA DALMIA: Obama’s clean energy boondoggle will be expensive for America. I’m beginning to discern a theme in this presidency.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on software.
SO WHEN I WAS THINKING ABOUT WHAT THE 21ST CENTURY WOULD BE LIKE, I never thought that a booming business would be providing anti-pirate security for yachts. Because you wouldn’t see that sort of thing unless you saw a rich global society that was nonetheless incapable of providing the most basic elements of international order, and how likely is that?
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