PAUL RYAN ON OBAMA’S CORPORATISM: A ‘grand bargain’ for Big Business: President’s pitch to cut corporate tax rates leaves families and small businesses behind.
Archive for 2013
July 30, 2013
NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Brief History Of The Bikini.
NOAM SCHEIBER: Yes, BigLaw Really Is Dying. “The point is not that, of the top 250 firms in the country, only 25 will survive the next decade, period. It’s that only 25 will be doing roughly what they do today—using the same business model, charging roughly the same hourly rates (or more), with roughly the same proportion of partners to associates to clients.”
I think that’s probably right. My colleague Ben Barton has just finished a book for Oxford University Press on what’s happening to the legal profession, and he makes a similar point quite persuasively with reams of data.
Plus, a more general warning: “One final point worth keeping in mind any time someone points to history and insists the future will look pretty similar: Historical arguments tend to be right up until the moment they’re not. To take one random example, consider the insistence by so many people in the mid-2000s (many of them tied to the real estate industry) that housing prices couldn’t fall across the country all at once, since it had never happened before. That didn’t work out so well then, and you’d think it would give Big Law defenders pause now. You can’t just look at historical patterns. You’ve got to look at the reasons why the patterns existed. And if those reasons no longer apply, you’re going to find yourself in real trouble. Just ask all the happy people who bought condos in Ft. Lauderdale back in 2006.”
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. That’s the defining sentence for this decade, I believe.
PROTOZOAN RELATIONSHIPS: Social amoebae travel with a posse, have amazingly complicated social lives.
WOMEN: “Baffled” By Huma’s Choice? “Such pathetic nonsense about Hillary and her place in history. And as for Huma, the notion that she could now be some pathbreaker is so stupid I don’t know where it came from. Some people — who are they? — got fixated on her — why? Because she’s somewhat attractive? Because she’s somewhat attractive and Muslim? Because she’s somewhat attractive, Muslim, and close to Hillary? I’d like those people to confess what they’re so enamored about. I bet they won’t, because it’s nothing but stupidity.”
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Hilary is throwing Huma under the bus so she doesn’t get dragged down. First the husband betrays Huma. Then her mentor. Could be powerful narrative.” Maybe it could be an NBC mini-series!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Lotus writes: “If Diane Lane is going to play Hillary, can we have a similar lack of verisimilitude and have Padma Lakshmi play Huma?”
WATCH AP TURN “ABOUT 75 PEOPLE” INTO A BLANKET EXPRESSION OF SUPPORT FOR OBAMACARE FROM “IOWANS.”
Funny they never do that with Tea Party gatherings. . . .
WELCOMING OBAMA TO TENNESSEE TODAY: “There’s a lot you can learn from us.” He’s kind of a slow learner, though . . . .
MANNING IS ACQUITTED OF “AIDING THE ENEMY,” convicted of a bunch of other stuff. The “aiding the enemy” charge was always weak, since Obama doesn’t seem to think we’re at war with anybody. Manning isn’t really a “whistleblower,” though, since he didn’t even know what was in a lot of the stuff he turned over to Wikileaks, and when he did know, it was often stuff like troops’ personal information.
The most damning piece of news he got out was that we entrust secrets to idiots like him. I’m sure they’ll do better with your healthcare information. . . .
ELECTRIC-CAR HYPE: Fiat 500e $199 lease deal sounds great, is nearly impossible to get.
#WARONMEN: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin? But if you buy the explanations in this article, then rape jokes should be hilarious.
I’VE BEEN DREAMING OF THIS! The Robots Are Coming — To Mow Your Lawn.
STANLEY KURTZ: Obama’s Second-Term Assault On The Suburbs.
A BITTER SUGARY BLOW AGAINST MIKE BLOOMBERG’S SODA CRUSADE: Appeals court upholds ruling striking down NYC’s large soda ban.
PARALLELS: Huma, Hillary, and Humiliation. “It’s not Anthony, I suspect, that is gnawing at Hillary and Bill but Huma. Huma’s made herself into the object, first, of pity and then of disgust; her relationship with Hillary is just a little too close. Too power-hungry, too transparently self-delusional, Huma suggests that she learned all the wrong lessons from Hillary.”
NOTHING CREEPY HERE: White House Creates “Nudge” Squad To Shape Behavior. I mean, it’s not like they’re in bed with Google, Facebook, and all the old-style media or anything. Key quote: “Nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly.”
Gleichschaltung!
IN THE MAIL: The AMA Handbook of Public Relations.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY: REHABILITATING WEINER, COVERING FOR FILNER, SHILLING FOR SPITZER: My USA Today column on the Democrats’ War On Women.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Saudi Prince: US Shale Threatening Our Economy. “Saudi royal and billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal thinks the US shale boom is endangering his country’s economy. The WSJ reports that the prince published a letter yesterday that he wrote in May to the Saudi Oil Minister and several others, warning of the dangers to Saudi Arabia of American gas production. Still, the importance of Saudi oil to the US and to the world market is not diminishing. The Kingdom’s spare capacity and ability to increase exports in times of need (during periods of decreased supply from Iran and Libya, for example) helps keep the global oil market stable. Saudi oil has been consumers’ best shield against price shocks for a while now, and as long as we consume oil, no amount of cheap American gas can make that otherwise. But if you’re in the House of Saud, that’s not much comfort. There’s no denying that the Kingdom’s economy will suffer under decreased demand for petrochemical exports from its biggest customer—the US. American domestic production means a steep drop-off in demand for the $100 billion Gulf petrochemical industry, and if China masters the exploitation of its own shale reserves, the cracks in the Saudi economic model will grow wider still.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of terrorism-exporting religious fanatics.
MEGAN MCARDLE: WHO’S WORSE? RENTERS, OR OWNERS? “I think the experience of New York is instructive. It suggests that if we shifted away from the current high rates of homeownership, we might lose some of the skewed political incentives to artificially restrict the supply of housing . . . but only by replacing them with different, equally troubling incentives. . . . You used to hear that rent controls were a stupid vestige of the past, slowly but surely being phased out. But the city keeps stepping in to slow down the pace of decontrol. And no wonder, if renters are a majority of the city, and the majority of renters are in some sort of controlled or subsidized housing. Meanwhile, you don’t even get the benefits that should accrue to a high-renter city — like fewer ridiculous zoning restrictions — because rent control regulations have given tenants property-like interests in their apartments.”
AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Nutrition & Wellness.
Plus, 25% or more off on select grills. Gas and charcoal.
Also, today only: Up to 66% Off “Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection.” On Blu-Ray and DVD.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 82.
Related: IRS Chief Counsel Continues To Draw Critical Fire. “I sure would like to see the attorney client privilege waived as to all conversations [in the White House] involving IRS counsel.”
KURT SCHLICHTER: When People Swoon Over The Royal Baby, It’s A Rejection Of Contemporary Family Chaos. “We need to make it so that the novelty of the birth of someone like Prince George is that he is part of a royal family, rather than that he is part of any family at all.”
With a nice mention of Men On Strike. “Family courts are so tilted against men that when I was taking the Bar Exam, the joke about how to pass the family law question without studying was, ‘Give the kids to the mother.’ Which I did, and I passed the first time.”