MY HAM SANDWICH NATION: DUE PROCESS WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME has finally been published, in significantly revised form, by the Columbia Law Review. You can read/download it here. Or get the pretty PDF version here. (Bumped).
Archive for 2013
July 10, 2013
DEMOCRATS DIVIDED OVER STUDENT LOANS: The Hill: Warren Rips Manchin On Student Loan Proposal. “Liberal firebrand Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) blasted a fellow Democratic senator Tuesday as a dispute over student loan rates escalated divisions within the party. The clash, which is highly unusual among party colleagues in the upper chamber, came at a private caucus meeting about a subject that is helping Republicans land blows against their Democratic opponents. . . . The bipartisan plan endorsed by Manchin and the others would set interest rates for undergraduate Stafford loans at the 10-year Treasury rate plus 1.85 percent. It would set the rates for unsubsidized graduate Stafford loans at the 10-year Treasury rate plus 3.4 percent.”
Here’s some recommended reading on the problem, which transcends Warren’s rather simplistic take.
UPDATE: Related: Student Loan Pretenders: New evidence that subsidized debt is harming borrowers.
Government researchers continue to show that federal student loans are hazardous to both students and taxpayers. But Senate liberals don’t seem to care, as long as the money keeps flowing to their constituents in the nonprofit academic world. . . .
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated taxpayer losses on student loans at $95 billion over the next decade. Meanwhile, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have been tracking the harm to young borrowers. Student-loan debt used to be a rough indicator of economic progress, because it meant that the borrower was attaining higher levels of education, long associated with higher incomes and lower unemployment.
But in recent years an historic surge in student-loan debt is changing education for many borrowers from a winning investment into a staggering burden. Such debt has nearly tripled since 2004 and now hovers around $1 trillion, with defaults rising on student loans and other types of debt held by these young borrowers.
Whereas credit scores used to be similar for young people with or without student-loan debt, New York Fed economists find a divergence after 2008. “By 2012, the average score for twenty-five-year-old nonborrowers is 15 points above that for student borrowers, and the average score for thirty-year-old nonborrowers is 24 points above that for student borrowers,” they note in a recent report.
Fed researchers are now struggling to understand the impact on markets such as housing and autos given the “lowered expectations of future earnings and more limited access to credit” for those who made large leveraged bets on education. Many of them must now delay starting families and buying their first homes.
The problem here isn’t an insufficiency of credit. It’s that prices are too high.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Student Loan Compromise Pits Dem Against Dem.
MORE: Reader Nathan Brindle writes:
I had student loans in school that totaled about $20,000 by the time I left grad school (in 1993). (Obviously I didn’t attend an Ivy!) The only reason they didn’t total $30,000 was because I had a fellowship for one year of grad. And I paid the $20K off in 10 years – no consolidations, although I did take three years of deferral while I got settled into my new job (which had nothing to do with my degree tracks, FWIW).
What I can’t understand about student loans is this: The government thinks it’s OK to loan tens of thousands of dollars to 18-22 year old kids with no jobs and only imagined prospects on no more than a handshake and a signature. And it guarantees those loans, too, even it if will pursue you to the grave to pay them back. Some kids end up with enough in student loans that they could have bought a house, instead.
And there’s the rub. No bank would give a mortgage loan to a 18-22 year old with no job and no prospects on no more than a handshake and a signature. Not only would it be a dangerous risk, but it would be bloody immoral on its face to do such a thing to a young person just starting out in life. Why then is it considered appropriate and moral to load up the same cohort of kids with mortgage-sized student loan debt?
What exactly is so valuable about a college education that warrants mortgage-sized costs to get one, when so many students fail to complete their courses of study (and probably shouldn’t have been in college anyway)? I worked for the university when I was in grad school, and let me tell you, I met a LOT of students who were only there because some high school guidance counselor or their misguided parents had pushed them to attend.
Higher education bubble, indeed. Let that sucker pop, let the bad and mediocre colleges and universities wither, and let a million MOOCs bloom in its place. Let professors compete for students. Because competition is good!
I think we’ll see that.
JAMES TARANTO REFLECTS ON the different expectations of men and women regarding marriage and cohabitation. Plus this riff:
In case you were wondering what Moos saw in Collins, here’s the answer: “He was intelligent, good-humored, handsome, and importantly, taller than I am–7 feet. (I’m 6 feet 5 and a former pro basketball player myself.)” Even Cosmo readers can’t avoid the reality of female hypergamy.
Heh.
SEE, THIS IS WHY IT’S A BAD IDEA FOR AGENCIES TO LET THEMSELVES BECOME PARTISAN TOOLS: Blowback: Republicans Aim at IRS by Pairing 24% Budget Cut With Limits. “Since the IRS apologized May 10 for giving extra attention to Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions, the government has replaced at least four executives. Six congressional committees opened inquiries and the Justice Department began a criminal probe.” Then there’s all the crazy overspending on conferences, etc.
SCANDAL BLOWBACK? The Hill: Acting IRS chief looks to cancel staff bonuses. “Danny Werfel, who took over the reins at the IRS in May, told staffers that across-the-board spending cuts had required bonuses be suspended elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy, and that agency employees serving under union contracts shouldn’t be treated any differently. But while the tax-collecting agency remains under fire for its targeting of conservative groups, Werfel also said scrapping the bonuses was not a comment on the work staffers were doing.”
Uh huh.
NEW YORK SCHOOL DROPS MICHELLE-OBAMA LUNCH PLAN after kids complain they’re starving.
NOW, SEE, I TALKED ABOUT THIS IN MY SECOND AMENDMENT PENUMBRAS PIECE, BUT IT’S STILL HAPPENING: Man protests felony gun arrest, had permit.
While police reports show that Preston’s Tennessee permit to carry a concealed weapon expired when he obtained a Delaware driver’s license in December, he contends he never knew that would or did happen. Nor did Tennessee officials ever inform him his permit had been canceled.
Preston also said he thought he was protected by a “reciprocity” law between the two states that recognize each other’s concealed handgun carry permits. He said he even checked Attorney General Beau Biden’s website to review Delaware’s policy on reciprocity and saw nothing that indicated his Tennessee permit was invalid if he got a Delaware license.
Two things: (1) Rely on a Biden at your peril, obviously: and (2) It’s a chilling effect on the exercise of a constitutional right for technical violations like this to be treated as felonies. That should be forbidden by, well, the Second Amendment’s penumbras.
ANTI-LEAKING: McClatchy: Obama To Federal Workers — Spy On Each Other.
SEE, IT’S NOT JUST THE COPS YOU SHOULD BE RECORDING: Sex video clears men accused of rape.
The hookup got hot and wild, and one of the two men whipped out his cellphone to shoot a video of the room-to-room romp with the woman they’d just met that night.
The sex video may have been the only thing that saved the two from prison.
The woman accused them of rape. The video showed otherwise, police and prosecutors said. What happened that night led to the vicious beating of one of the men two days later. . . .
Unfortunately for Kurre, 27, the man’s friend shot the video, showing her laughing and carrying on with the two alleged rapists – hence, the lack of charges against them and the lodging of the misdemeanor false-report accusation.
“This is great stuff,” Citrus Heights Police Detective Ron Pfleger told the man who shot the video, according to a transcript of his interview five days after the Feb. 17, 2011, beating of his friend, outside the assault victim’s apartment. “This is exactly what you guys are hoping for.”
Had it not been for the video, the chances were likely that Kurre’s rape accusation against the two men would have been given more credibility by police and prosecutors.
Instead, it turned the tables on Kurre, who now is looking at the possibility of four years behind bars.
Sounds like she told her boyfriend she was raped in order to cover up what had really happened. That’s the same story as the Hofstra false-rape-accusation case, which was also busted by cellphone video.
And, you know, when defendants in these group-sex cases say it was consensual, the response is often what woman would consent to have sex with several guys? Well, some do. . . .
July 9, 2013
WILL ALLEN: Terry McAuliffe and the Rise of the House of Ugland. “Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic fundraiser-turned-gubernatorial-candidate, is closely linked to a company headquartered in a Cayman Islands building long derided as a tax shelter by President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats.”
OVERRIDING GOVERNOR’S VETO TO JOIN THE OTHER 49 STATES: Illinois Enacts Concealed-Weapons Permit Law.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on Dockers for Men.
FASTER, PLEASE: ‘Scent’ test can detect bladder cancer: study.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Man Seeks “Cronut Slut” On Craigslist.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Chancellor U. To Shut Down.
WIRED: After Asiana 214, Examining the Intricacies and Perils of Landing a Modern Airliner.
There were four pilots on board the 777, which is not unusual for a transoceanic flight. Typically, one pair will sleep or relax in the crew rest bunks just behind the cockpit while the other is flying. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot at the controls was a captain in training with 43 hours in a 777 but nearly 10,000 hours in other airliners, including the Boeing 747. In addition to the flight experience, the pilot, identified as Lee Kang-kook by Asiana Airlines, also would have undergone many hours of transition training in a 777 simulator. . . .
Because Asiana 214 was cleared for the visual approach, and there was an inoperable glide slope, under normal circumstances the pilots would use the runway markings as aiming points, and the PAPI lights to place them on the correct glide slope. It is not yet known why this system did not work and is a question the NTSB is seeking to answer.
Seems like he just blew the approach for some reason.
TEST DRIVE: The 2014 Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid.
THAT’S FOUR STRIKES TOO MANY: Woman is finally jailed after FIVE false rape allegations against her ex-boyfriends in eight years. The sentence seems awfully light, considering.
The judge, however, seems to have missed the most obvious victims — the men she falsely accused. Instead: “Judge William Gaskell told Black that her history of made-up rape claims had made it more difficult for genuine rape victims to be believed.” Well, that’s true, too, of course. But. . . .
DIDN’T THEY SAY THIS RIGHT AFTER KATRINA, ONLY TO SEE THE NUMBER OF HURRICANES PLUMMET? Stronger, more frequent tropical cyclones ahead, research says. “The world typically sees about 90 tropical cyclones a year, but that number could increase dramatically in the next century due to global warming, a US scientist said Monday.”
AT AMAZON, Automotive Deals: DIY In July.
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ROGER KIMBALL: Sheriff Andy Taylor On The Coercive Power Of The State. “As sheriff of the town of Mayberry, Andy is responsible for maintaining order — no, that’s not quite right: the townspeople are responsible for maintaining order. Andy is simply a sort of boundary marker. He represents what Walter Bagehot might have called the impressive side of the social contract. He has a sidearm. He rarely wears it. It’s usually at home, unloaded, hidden on top of a china cabinet. He barely wears a uniform. That’s to say, his uniform is homey, not scary. Why? Because he wished people to trust and respect, not fear him; he was an authority, not an authoritarian figure. His sidekick, the lovable but bumbling Barney Fife, likes the paraphernalia of police garb. Andy lets him wear a revolver, but it has to be unloaded. He’s allowed to carry one round of ammunition in his shirt pocket.”
The Barney Fifes have pretty much taken over law enforcement now, but today they have AR-15s and armored vehicles. Less respect, though.
WE’VE GOT SITE MAINTENANCE SCHEDULED FOR A BIT LATER THIS AFTERNOON, as InstaPundit is upgraded with some new features. Posting may be “suspended” for a few hours, but then we’ll be back up and running. Don’t be alarmed if that happens.
ED DRISCOLL: Mencken Weeps (With Laughter).