Archive for 2011
August 6, 2011
AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling knives.
STEVE HAYWARD ACCEPTS JOE NOCERA’S APOLOGY AND OBSERVES: “Since Reuters and other establishment media types embrace the moral relativism of the ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ nonsense, why not hoist them with their own petard, and start referring to ‘Tea Party freedom fighters’? It will enable Krugman and Dowd to phone in yet another column.” Wait, is that supposed to be a selling point?
MICKEY KAUS: “Psst. Despite recent reported profits, GM stock is trading at around $26–below its IPO price of $33 and about half what it would take for the government to break even on its investment. Is the Obama administration really going to dump its GM stake at such an embarrassingly low price? Wouldn’t that provoke a lot of stories, not about how the government is finally out of GM’s hair as promised but about how poorly the bailed-out company is doing? … P.S.: Yes, the entire market is down. But GM has done worse than the overall market, trailing the major stock indexes by a significant margin. …”
THAT SEAL HELICOPTER CRASH: “This is just an extraordinarily bad day for America.”
THE MATHEMATICS of lawn-mowing.
PHILIP KLEIN: Obama Won’t Escape Blame For Credit Downgrade.
When Obama came into office, he argued that we needed deficit spending to boost the economy, so he passed a $800 billion stimulus package. Then, in one of his first supposed pivots to the deficit, he convened a ‘fiscal responsibility summit’ in February 2009. But that actually turned out to be part of a different pivot altogether. It was during that summit that then White House Budget Director Peter Orszag declared, “health care reform is entitlement reform.”
And so, for the next 13 months, Obama spent all of his energies trying to get health care legislation across the finish line. The end product was a plan that, according to both the Congressional Budget Office and actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, did not bend the health care cost curve down. Let’s even set aside the argument over the accounting gimmicks that were employed to obtain a CBO score that showed modest deficit reduction. The reality is this: the law used money raised through tax hikes and Medicare cuts that otherwise would have been available for deficit reduction, to instead expand Medicaid by 18 million beneficiaries and create a massive new health care entitlement.
Of course, there’s more. After health care passed last March, Obama punted on the debt for the rest of the year as he awaited a report from his fiscal commission. He then ignored its recommendations and released a budget so ludicrous that within two months, it failed 0 to 97 in the Senate and he himself rejected it. He instead delivered a speech about his deficit reduction vision, which didn’t have enough details for the CBO to score. And then he spent the last few months arguing that he was prepared to offer Republicans a “grand bargain,” but to this day he hasn’t released details of this supposedly awesome deal that Republicans refused, beyond calculated leaks to favored reporters.
Indeed.
GO AHEAD, EAT CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST: Why the lawsuit against Nutella is bunk.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION, ARAB WOMEN SEEK MORE RIGHTS: “Images of women marching alongside men in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Jordan led to predictions that women’s rights would also make huge strides forward.” Not so much, as it turns out.
OBAMA ON THE DEBT DOWNGRADE: The Man Who Voted Present Now Says “I Told You So.”
But while it’s hypocritical of Obama to say that, J.W. Verret has the right.
THE NARCISSISM OF BIG DIFFERENCES: “He becomes visibly agitated. . . . He does not like to be challenged on policy grounds.”
FRANK J. FLEMING: What’s Wrong With Making Future Generations Pay For Our Debt?
GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE: Arctic “Tipping Point” May Not Be Reached. “Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.”
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Automotive.
I THOUGHT THEY’D CALL THEM “FIRST AMEND-MINTS.” Company Makes Breath Mints In Honor Of Tennessee Lawmaker. “A Tennessee lawmaker now has a package of breath mints in his honor, after he complained about some satirical mints sold at the University of Tennessee bookstore. . . . The company has created a mint in Representative Armstrong’s honor, naming them ‘Joe Armstrong’s Strong Arm Censored’ mints.”
UPDATE: More here, including a picture of the can.
COOL PICTURE: The Layers of Rock in Mars’s Gale Crater.
THIS MAY SPUR EMIGRATION: For Many Chinese Women, Mr. Right Is Bald, Fat & Faithful.
STEPHEN GREEN: The Man Of Steel Appears Quite Steely.
RYAN CALO: Will Drones Save Privacy Law? “The introduction of government and private drones into our cities will feel very different to the public and perhaps to the courts. What data there is suggests that Americans are nervous around robots. They may associate drones in particular with violence and the theater of war. The proliferation of drones in our skies could lead to a new, Warren and Brandeis moment—all of our amorphous fears about new technology watching us suddenly reified and immediate.”
Related: DIY Flying Spy Drone Hacks Wi-Fi, GSM. “Hobbyist hackers have built a DIY flying spy drone that’s capable of intercepting communications over remote Wi-Fi and cellular networks and beaming them to snoops located half a world away. Short for wireless aerial surveillance platform, the WASP is equipped with a battery of off-the-shelf hacking tools that can secretly hover over unsuspecting targets and infiltrate their networks. A 4G cellular connection links it to a back-end server that allows operators to control its operations and monitor its sensors in realtime.”
WANT TO CUT THE DEFICIT YOURSELF? You can make the changes here. One thing this calculator will do is demonstrate just how much cutting it takes.
IN THE MAIL: From Andrew Klavan, The Final Hour.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Widener Law School Goes Soviet, Demands Law Professor Undergo Psychiatric Evaluation. “Widener’s requirement of a psychiatric evaluation under these circumstances clearly is intended to further damage Connell even though the committee found no conduct which reflected any alleged psychiatric or anger management issues. Connell simply defended himself. Widener Law School Dean Linda Ammons has done further damage to her law school and her own reputation by using psychiatry as a vindictive tool against a law professor whose worst crime was defending himself against false accusations of racism and sexism.”
UPDATE: David Bernstein: “Dean Ammons has recommended that Connell be suspended for a year without pay and be forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Widener’s administration, apparently oblivious to the long-term damage this is doing to the law school’s and university’s reputation, agreed. I hope Connell sues, and I hope he wins big. Meanwhile, if any of our readers are considering attending Widener, I recommend looking elsewhere–-anywhere else. If Connell can be abused in this way, so can you.”
I suspect that advice would go double for faculty candidates.
MORE: Bernstein adds this to his post: “I had agreed to participate in a Widener-sponsored project after the committee report was released, which I thought would be the end of the matter. I’ve now sent an email to my contact at Widener, withdrawing. I can’t in good conscience have my reputation associated in any way with Widener Law School.” I wonder if others will feel the same way.
MIKE RIGGS ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE:
A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America’s next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing delinquency and default rates on nearly $1 trillion worth of private and federally subsidized loans. Now the ratings agency Moody’s has weighed in with a chilling diagnosis: “Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place.”
PETER WEHNER: The Public’s Complicity In Its Own Outrage.
I understand fierce criticism of our political class is sometimes in order. (I’ve even engaged in such criticism myself from time to time.) Often, and understandably, it’s driven by objective circumstances. And the American public is not inclined to deify its (living) politicians, which is a healthy thing.
But we need to recognize this as well: if the public’s animus for our system of government is unrelenting and unceasing, it eventually undermines self-government itself. A democracy relies on widespread respect for the authority of government and compliance with its laws, including (and even especially) from those who are on the losing end of elections. Beyond that, it’s difficult to maintain one’s love of country if one harbors, over a sustained period of time, utter disdain for its governing institutions, for its lawmakers and for its laws.
That’s true, but we also need a governing class that makes at least some effort not to be contemptible. As I’ve suggested before, the current crowd not only underappreciates the role of financial capital, but seriously underappreciates the importance of moral capital. Related thoughts here.