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Archive for 2012
August 11, 2012
WANT TO HELP THE ENVIRONMENT? Go Shoot A Pig.
I’ve written on this approach myself.
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Carolyn Jourdan writes:
I’m a UT Law Grad (’81) and my book about leaving a job as U.S. Senate Counsel to work as an inept medical receptionist for my father for free for 4 years is in the Kindle Top 100 for under $3.99 you plugged on Instapundit. Help a (poor) girl out if you can. Please??
Done! The book is called Heart In The Right Place.
IN THE MAIL: From Stephen England, Pandora’s Grave.
HAS HUMANITIES EDUCATION been gentrified?
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: David Gelernter: The Friendly, Neighborhood Internet School.
Among 65 participating nations in the latest survey, the United States ranked 15th in reading, 23rd in science, 31st in math. In “science literacy” we were beaten by such intellectual powerhouses as Slovenia and crushed by the likes of Japan and Finland. But take heart: We beat Bulgaria!
Unfortunately, science is one of our strong subjects. “American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test,” the New York Times reported last year. “Most fourth graders [were] unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure.” The exam found 12% of high school seniors “proficient” in American history.
But statistics can’t measure the outright grotesqueness of our failure. Earlier this year, the Huffington Post reported on “Lunch Scholars,” a high-school student’s video about his fellow students. “Do you know the vice president of the United States?” the filmmaker asks. One student volunteers “bin Laden.” “In what war did America gain independence?” No one had the right answer without a hint.
A local Internet school sounds like a contradiction in terms: the Internet lets you discard geography and forget “local.” But the idea is simple. A one-classroom school, with 20 or so children of all ages between 6th and 12th grade, each sitting at a computer and wearing headsets. They all come from nearby. A one-room Internet school might serve a few blocks in a suburb, or a single urban apartment building.
It could hardly do worse than our current approach, which is also hideously expensive.
AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.
IT’S ROMNEY-RYAN 2012. “Ryan puts the national debt front and center in the election, on par with or maybe even ahead of jobs. This is a winner of an issue, it’s what motivated people in 2010, and it will cause huge turnout.”
Related #GiveUSRyan — the hashtag that changed history.
UPDATE: Byron York: Romney Goes Bold.
Here’s a bunch of Paul Ryan video. Here’s one:
And on the day Ryan was picked, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve gone 1200 days now without a budget.
And here’s more on Paul Ryan from Investors’ Business Daily.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Geraghty: 2010-2012: When Wisconsin Took Over America’s Politics.
Matt Lewis: 5 notable points about Paul Ryan’s selection as Romney’s running mate.
Also, thoughts from Ira Stoll.
And Roger Kimball writes: The comeback team (or why Romney will win by a landslide).
The man who has added more than $5 trillion to the federal debt, who is running an annual deficit of some $1.4 trillion, who has burdened American business with a nightmare of stifling regulations, who has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on failed “green” energy initiatives and non-stimulating “stimulus” packages, who has insinuated government into the private sector in blundering unproductive and fiscally ruinous ways and foisted on an unwilling public the horror of ObamaCare—that chap is going down and going down in a landslide.
Nice veep choice, kid. Don’t get cocky.
MORE: Liz Peek: Ryan Choice Good for the Country and Good for Romney.
MORE STILL: The racist attacks have already started: Liberals point out that Paul Ryan is a white guy.
Meanwhile, reader John Perkins writes: “How long will it be before the MSM writes a snarky article about Romney and Ryan being like two young Mormon missionaries coming to your door. I mean, can Maureen Dowd even resist?” Well, if anyone uses this now, I’m charging them with plagiarizing John Perkins.
Also: Roger Simon: Romney’s Gutsy Choice.
Plus: Jennifer Rubin: How Ryan Got The Job. “Romney is above all else a problem-solver, a doer and a fixer. Ryan, likewise, is a policy maven who has since 2007 been trying to advance budget, tax and health-care reforms, moving the Republican Party to become the champion of market-based reform. Ryan is a smart man, certainly the smartest in Congress, with an eye for detail and a facility with numbers. Romney prizes brains, precision and the ability to wield numbers. Ryan uses a scalpel, not a sledge hammer in skewering his opposition; Romney likewise uses piles of data to slay his competitors (as he did in the Florida and Arizona GOP primary debates). Ryan is personally and professionally disciplined, a straight arrow with a gee-whiz brand of optimism. Romney is as well. . . . The left will be effusive about the opportunity to renew Mediscare. But the Ryan team has been fighting that fight for some time and is perfectly willing to engage President Obama, who has heckled but not lead on entitlement reform. Who better than Ryan to take on the president while Romney sails above the fray?”
And: Steve Hayward: “Ryan wants to have an adult conversation with America about the looming insolvency of the welfare state, and he has a serious plan to fix it. . . . I suspect Ryan is one of the few Republicans Obama genuinely fears; after all, Ryan schooled Obama in Obama’s faux-‘health care summit’ early last year. (Obama does not look pleased in the video.) David Brooks reports, by the way, that Obama never picks up the phone to try to talk with Ryan. Ryan is not simply fearless about the issues, he also gets the larger picture, and can talk about the larger picture.”
PROF. WILLIAM HENDERSON: Federal Funding of Higher Education–A Bubble that is Going to Burst.
Student loans are viewed as “assets” by the federal government … until they become uncollectable, in which case the value of the assets eventually has to be adjusted through write-downs, just like mortgages in the mortgage crisis. Extensive use of Income-Based Repayment makes it possible for a student loan to be simultaneously uncollectable but not in default.
Folks, I am an unapologetic New Deal Democrat. But the current “system” of federal higher education financing is near perfect insanity. We set tuition and, no questions asked, the federal government writes us checks in exact proportion to students’ willingness to sign loan papers. For young people who have never worked, it is all like monopoly money.
The only way the math works is if the real earnings go up en masse for virtually all college and professional school graduates. In a rapidly globalizing world in which our students are competing against Chinese and Indian professionals, the assumption of mass rising real incomes is implausible. See, e.g., views of economist Alan Blinder in this NPR article.
Right now we–higher ed and the nation as a whole–are maintaining the illusion of prosperity through debt financing heaped on naive young people. This is immoral in the extreme. Moreover, in the long run, it is economic and political ruination.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Related: Three Law Schools Busted for Underreporting Student Debt Load by 63% – 234%.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: USDA spends $2 million on internship program for one full-time intern.
Who was the intern, and what were his/her connections?
YET ANOTHER REASON TO REPEAL THE HOLLYWOOD TAX CUTS: Near-Bankrupt California Awards Hollywood $100M In Corporate Welfare.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Richard Trumka Wouldn’t Bet on House Democrats’ Gains. He thinks the Senate will stay Democratic, though. That’s the “hope,” part, I guess.
HOW RETIREMENT BENEFITS may sink the states. “Illinois is an object lesson in why firms are starting to pay more attention to the long-term fiscal prospects of communities. Early last year, the state imposed $7 billion in new taxes on residents and business, pledging to use the money to eliminate its deficit and pay down a backlog of unpaid bills (to Medicaid providers, state vendors and delayed tax refunds to businesses). But more than a year later, the state is in worse fiscal shape, with its total deficit expected to increase to $5 billion from $4.6 billion, according to an estimate by the Civic Federation of Chicago.”
GOVERNANCE: 1200 Days Without A Budget.
SO IN THIS PICTURE, President (then Candidate) Barack Obama is reading Fareed Zakaria’s, The Post-American World.
So how does that photo hold up today? Same resonance as it had back in 2008?
And let me once again suggest something Obama should have been reading in 2008. It might have imparted a bit of intellectual, or at least political, humility. Though probably not . . . .
Plus, More on Fareed Zakaria from Ed Driscoll. Bonus tie-it-all-together quote:
So a “journalist” completely in the tank for the man who says “you didn’t build that,” (and as James Taranto has noted, “Unearned success is the central theme of [Obama’s] life story”) may not have written wide swatches of own his columns. Seems logical in a Bizarro World sort of way if true.
And Bizarro World is where we live these days.
#twitterhashtag RSS feed test.
WHY CALIFORNIA CITIES ARE GOING BROKE: Hermosa Beach meter maids making nearly $100K?
UPDATE: Reader Mike Kozlowski writes:
The Patrick Bobko mentioned in the linked story was my flight chief at Shaw AFB SC longer ago than I care to remember…and he was a smart, intelligent leader who didn’t stand for any nonsense. Seems that he hasn’t lost any of that, and is trying his damnedest to change things for the better. Let me respectfully suggest that your California readers keep an eye on this man – it will be him and people like him who really are California’s last hope.
California needs all the help it can get.