GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME . . . FEDERALLY FUNDED HEALTH CARE?
Archive for 2011
February 4, 2011
REDESIGNING THE AMERICAN LAW SCHOOL. “American law schools are an integral part of a vertically integrated system of production in which the end product is lawyers. Law schools are having rapidly increasing problems ‘selling’ their ‘products’ to potential employers/purchasers. Even if the law schools do not voluntarily cut back on the numbers of admitted students some states will decide there should be no public subsidy for educating students for employment areas such as law where there is no demand.” And quite a few others. All part of the higher education bubble’s eventual deflation.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Concerning your post and the commentary on http://instapundit.com/114388/ I have to say this. I’m NOT a lawyer, and I think of that as a badge of honor, I went to school to be a mechanical engineer, but something I learned over the years is that one of the advantages of being a law grad isn’t the ability to bleed money from the system, but rather that any study of law seems to promote a very broad sense of understanding. I’ve yet to meet a dumb lawyer. They might be wrong, but they aren’t dumb, simply because of the broad application of law requires them to understand many things. A lawyer, someone who never played with legos, might find themselves needing to understand the intricacies of building a bridge to bring a suit, so. . .they learn the basics of those intricacies so they can bring their case. A lawyer who was born without feet might have to make an argument about the harmful construction of a sneaker (I actually heard that that was a real thing, not the lawyer with no feet, but about poorly designed shoes) and that lawyer who never wore a shoe in their life will learn about the basics of making shoes, and what it can do to feet.
I have a lot of problems with “The System” but as far as the individuals that serve the field? I think they are some of the most curious individuals in our society.
Yes, that’s right. (And it’s part of the fun. When I was in law school and moonlighting for a local firm, I had to learn a lot about how locomotives brake for a case, and I did, and I liked it.) Some would say, of course, that the law is a waste of these talents, and they may be right. But society decides what talents it will reward and how, and it has decided to reward those who put these talents to work in law. Now it appears supply has caught up with demand, but society should still think about what it wants to reward. My Sunday Washington Examiner column is about this, more or less.
MIKE BLOOMBERG CALLS FOR MORE DECORUM IN PUBLIC LIFE, but some people aren’t impressed: “But I guess it’s OK for Bloomberg to diss ObamaCare opponents by insinuating they had a role in the attempted bombing of Times Square, or diss the state of Arizona by running a gun sting, right?”
My advice to Bloomberg — focus on fixing the bedbug problem, the snow problem, the garbage problem, the financial problem, and the education problem, and maybe the decorum problem will take care of itself.
STEPHAN GUYENET on dietary fat and cholesterol.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
Charitable contributions to colleges and universities in the United States increased 0.5% in 2010, reaching $28 billion. . . .Adjusted for inflation, giving declined 0.6%. Support of higher education institutions is at the same level now as it was in 2006. In inflation-adjusted terms, however, support is 8% lower in 2010 than it was in 2006.
And yet I’d bet that people are still basing long-term spending plans on the expectation of steady growth.
THE ANCHORESS: Uncredentialed Wonders. There’s educated, and there’s credentialed. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they don’t.
SANDMONKEY FOLLOWUP: This Is What Happened Yesterday.
THIS ACTUALLY REPRESENTS A TRIUMPH OVER ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY: “More than one in 10 of the world’s population is obese – more than half a billion adults – and rates have doubled since 1980.” Think about it: For millions of years, the normal condition of humanity was hunger. Now, it’s becoming overeating. Okay, that’s not ideal — but it’s actually progress. If the price of the escape from hunger and premature death is more fatties, that’s not a bad trade, really.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on power tools.
COMMON CAUSE RESPONDS TO CALLS FOR A CLARENCE THOMAS LYNCHING BY ITS SUPPORTERS, and James Taranto observes: “Everybody does it? Think it through and you will see that this is a stunning indictment of the American left. To begin with, it is not true that everybody does it. As we noted yesterday, the formerly mainstream media have spent the past two years trying to depict the Tea Party as precisely the sort of racist, hateful, violent political movement that Common Cause appears in the video to be. That media effort has failed, not for lack of will but for lack of evidence. If everybody did it, the Tea Party would do it, and if the Tea Party did it, you would have read about it in the New York Times.”
Plus this: “So here we have a corporation that advertises itself as a ‘grassroots organization’ while exercising its First Amendment rights to advance the position that corporations do not have First Amendment rights, only individuals do. Some individuals, participating in the corporation’s ‘grassroots’ rally, exercise their First Amendment rights in ways that harm the corporation’s image. The corporation responds by exercising its First Amendment rights to denounce those individuals for having exercised their First Amendment rights. And it does in its capacity as a faceless corporation, by issuing a statement for which no individual–not even CEO Bob Edgar–takes responsibility.”
Conclusion: “For the sake of truth in advertising, Common Cause should change its name to Hypocrisy Hub.”
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: DYNAMITE MEMORIES. “That’s how people took family snaps. With film and miniature incendiary devices.”
“WE ARE THE SAME WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR” (CONT’D): Dems: Obama broke pledge to force banks to help homeowners. “Before he took office, President Obama repeatedly promised voters and Democrats in Congress that he’d fight for changes to bankruptcy laws to help homeowners — a tough approach that would force banks to modify mortgages. . . . But when it came time to fight for the measure, he didn’t show up. Some Democrats now say his administration actually undermined it behind the scenes.”
SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE NINTH CIRCUIT: “The 9th held that a female co-worker’s repeated sexual advances to a male colleague can form a prima facie case of sexual harassment where the man informed her the conduct was unwelcome and repeatedly complained to various supervisors, who did not take steps to stop her behavior. . . . The decision in unremarkable, except it confirms that the laws against sexual harassment apply equally to men and women.”
USA TODAY: ERIC HOLDER’S DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PERPETUATING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MYTHS:
“The facts are clear,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Intimate partner homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45.” That’s a horrifying statistic, and it would be a shocking reflection of the state of the black family, and American society generally, if it were true. But it isn’t true. . . . Yet Holder’s patently false assertion has remained on the Justice Department website for more than a year.
When Eric Holder says the facts are clear, it’s usually time to get a second opinion.
EXERCISE PROTECTS MEMORY FORMATION CAPABILITY. If there were a pill that did for you what exercise does, everyone would take it. But hardly anyone would go to the gym then . . .
NO, REALLY? Wikileaks Hints at U.S. and China Space Weapon Showdown. Shockingly, the anti-satellite weapons tests may have been meant as a “show of strength.”
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS: Electric Cars Powered By Bumper-Car Technology.
“WE ARE THE SAME WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR:” Harkin Calls On Lobbyists To Fight Spending Cuts.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Problem Of The Friendly Tyrant.
“DISAPPOINTING:” Santelli Slams CNBC Panelists For Spinning Jobs Report. See my post on the news below. The numbers are confusing, but they do seem to be being spun as if they’re clearly good news.
UPDATE: The Insta-Wife thinks the good news is real. She puts it down to small businesses being more willing to hire after the extension of the tax cuts. As the coiner of the term “going John Galt,” she may have some insight into this phenomenon. . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Instead of going John Galt, it’s going Robert Half.
CITIZEN ACTIVIST GRATES ON STATE: STATE TRIES TO SHUT HIM UP. Get this: Citizens come up with an 8 page traffic plan presentation with diagrams and traffic projections to make their case, and the state — in the person of North Carolina chief traffic engineer Kevin Lacy — responds by trying to get them punished for “practicing engineering without a license.” Best bit: “Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report ‘appears to be engineering-level work’ by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.”
Stay in your place, proles, and don’t challenge your betters.
ANOTHER MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: Senators question intelligence agencies’ anticipation of Egypt uprising. Considering what we spend, I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth.
AS THEY SHOULD BE: Oil sands in focus as Canadian leader visits Obama. But instead of us focusing on getting more oil from Canada and less from crazy middle eastern — and Latin American — dictators, the greens are trying to make it harder.