IN THE NEW YORK POST, MY ADVICE TO REPUBLICANS: The Footloose Fix: How Republicans can get cool.
Archive for 2013
February 25, 2013
MICHAEL BARONE: Jack Lew’s sweet deal at Citigroup.
Should the Senate confirm as treasury secretary a man who was paid $1.1 million by Citigroup after it was bailed out and whose employment contract gave him favorable stock option treatment if he left his job for a high federal government post but not for another governmental or nonprofit job? That’s the question raised by the nomination of Jack Lew, according to Bloomberg News’s Jonathan Weil, who got hold of the first three pages of Lew’s Citigroup employment agreement and interviewed a Citigroup spokesman about it. One inference you could draw is that Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration treasury secretary who has been exceedingly well paid at Citigroup even as it headed to bailout territory, wants to keep a Citigroup alumnus running Treasury.
Ya think?
SO SINCE DEMOCRATIC LOBBYISTS ARE SAYING THAT the worst thing for them is if the sequester hits and nothing happens, I assume that the Obama Administration is doing what it can to ensure maximum sequester-pain for voters. Somebody ought to be filing FOIA requests for emails concerning sequester implementation; there’s probably some gold there.
IS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DISSEMBLING ON GUNS? “The memo, under the name of one of the Justice Department’s leading crime researchers, critiques the effectiveness of gun control proposals, including some of President Barack Obama’s. A Justice Department official called the memo an unfinished review of gun violence research and said it does not represent administration policy.” Well, that part’s certainly true.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Lincoln Memorial University Eliminates 13 Faculty Positions. And note this: “Many students enrolling in the education specialists program and the education doctorate program were from Georgia, which offered large pay increases to teachers who received advanced degrees. Recent changes to which degrees would qualify teachers for a pay bump have changed, and now do not include the programs LMU offers.” An awful lot of the lower-tier higher-ed market is driven by jobs that require you to get an advanced degree for a raise or promotion. As those requirements fade (partly because the economy means fewer raises and promotions, partly because employers are growing less enthusiastic over the check-a-box approach) that sector will come under considerable pressure.
None of this comes as a surprise, for those who have been paying attention.
SALENA ZITO: Party Dominance Doesn’t Last.
ROGER SIMON: The Academy Awards Come Out Of The Closet.
Meanwhile, here’s my Oscar-related column from this weekend.
Also, repeal the Hollywood tax cuts!
UPDATE: Related: Hollywood’s pious hypocrisy.
LOOKING INTO JACK LEW’S TENURE AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, “where he pulled down an enormous salary, including sweetheart loans, while the students were footing enormous tuition bills. Worse, under his nose NYU negotiated a deal with Citicorp (miraculously, Lew’s next employer!) to provide loans to students, a deal that then-state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found to be illegal.”
Sounds like a perfect fit for the Obama cabinet.
100 IDEAS for improving higher education.
HOPEY-CHANGEY: Trade protectionism looms next as central banks exhaust QE. “There is too much industrial plant in the world, and too little demand to soak up supply, like the 1930s. China is distorting the global system by running investment near 50pc of GDP, and compressing consumption to 35pc. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times.”
HMM: Congressional Leaders Discuss Deal to Avert Shutdown at Cost of Extending Cuts. “Already looking past the current budget impasse gripping the capital, congressional leaders are quietly considering a deal to avert a government shutdown next month—but at the cost of prolonging across-the-board spending cuts.” Cost? Sounds like a benefit.
Personally, I’d like to see 5% across-the-board, year-over-year. Repeat as needed.