SHOCKER: Americans Are Far More Compassionate than “Socially Conscious” Europeans. Plus: “It’s also worth sharing the data showing that proponents of small government in the United States are far more generous than those who favor a big welfare state.”
It’s easier to talk about “social consciousness” than to actually do anything.
THE SEARCH ENGINE POLICE: Innocent Couple Visited by Feds After Google Searching for Backpacks and Pressure Cookers. And yet nobody caught the Tsarnaevs even when the Russians were telling us they were terrorists. . . .
UPDATE: Yes, that Michele Catalano. Plus: “On a broader note, I’d like to add that the first successful American counterattack in the Terror War was a passenger revolt led by Todd Beamer aboard United Airlines Flight 93. The Shoe Bomber was stopped by passengers, too. Meanwhile, the TSA sticks its fists up our collective rectums on a continuing basis and has yet to stop a single terrorist.”
ROBERT KAPLAN: The Tragedy Of U.S. Foreign Policy.
NO, BUT THEY’LL DO THEIR BEST: Investor’s Business Daily: Media Can’t Ignore New Developments In IRS Scandal. An extensive roundup of the rather disturbing recent developments, plus this: “Lew, Carney and Obama himself act like people worried about a threat lying a little farther under investigators’ shovels. And they should be considering the suspicious timeline of Obama-appointed IRS chief counsel William Wilkins visiting the president on April 23 last year; IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visiting the White House the next day; and Wilkins’ office sending the IRS “guidance” on the Tea Party the day after that. . . . If we find our tax-collection agency helped re-elect a president under political orders, Watergate could look trivial by comparison.”
UNION MARCHERS SINKING TO WESTBORO-LIKE LEVELS, ASSAULTING CHILD’S FUNERAL. People need to start showing up at their houses.
HMM. IT’S ALWAYS “POLITICS” WHEN REPUBLICANS DO SOMETHING: Plan to Capture an Asteroid Runs Into Politics. The piece spends more time calling Republicans obstructionist than explaining what they’re doing. But there’s this:
Republicans on the House science committee complained this month that the proposal came “out of the blue,” lacking much explanation from NASA officials, support from scientists or cost analysis. Some Democrats on the committee were also skeptical, but most were willing to hear NASA out.
“I was never very excited about it,” said Representative Donna F. Edwards of Maryland, a Democrat on the committee. However, she was much more critical of the Republican alternative that passed.
There’s also this hint about why Republicans may not see the asteroid mission as a NASA priority: “Separately, at least two private companies have announced intentions to mine asteroids for rare metals, arguing that supplies on Earth are dwindling.”
I personally favor the Obama-proposed asteroid mission over the — unlikely to happen — Moon/Mars base plan. But this NYT story doesn’t tell you much about what’s really going on here.
DESPITE ALL THE DIVERSITY TWADDLE, elite colleges enrolling fewer minorities. But that’s not the only way college promotes inequality even while denouncing it.
College can even make income inequality worse, despite its being touted as the great equalizer. In a multiyear study of female college students, Paying For The Party, sociologists Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton found that students who looked similar in terms of “predictors” – grades and test scores – came out of college on very different trajectories. The biggest danger was when smart women from less-well-off backgrounds got onto what Armstrong and Hamilton call the “party pathway.” The richer girls who did this usually emerged okay, with family connections and parental subsidies allowing them to snag good jobs and internships in spite of any partying-related stumbles. The poorer girls with similar credentials (“strivers”) who got on the party track tended to emerge with low GPAs, unimpressive post-college jobs (frequently jobs that they could have gotten without a college degree) and burdened with debt. They actually often wound up with downward mobility, rather than the upward mobility that colleges sell. (Interestingly, the “strivers” who did best were the ones who transferred to less-prestigious regional state universities, which were also often cheaper. These schools – the Northern Kentucky Universities of the world – focus more on teaching, and are often more oriented toward student success, frequently in a less party-oriented atmosphere). The big schools, for the “strivers,” were often an expensive detour.
I discuss this at some length in my new book on education reform, coming out next year.
LIST: Post-Apocalyptic Survival Gear. More here.
Also, today only: Up to 68% Off Entourage: The Complete Series (2012). On Blu-Ray and DVD.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 84.
MICHAEL WALSH: James Risen, the First Amendment, Congress, and the Emperor Hussein.
UPDATE: Shocker: Obama was ‘rude and dismissive’ in exchange with Democrat. “During a question and answer session Wednesday with Democrats on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama offered what Democratic sources said was a testy response to a question about a federal loan guarantee program, with one source in the room calling it ‘rude and dismissive.'” I’m inclined to believe that, since that’s his style whenever he’s challenged.
LIKE I SAID BEFORE, THE REAL BRADLEY MANNING PROBLEM is that we have a lot of secrets in the hands of people like Bradley Manning.
JOURNALISM: Salt Lake Tribune Blood Libels Glenn Beck.
JAMES TARANTO: McResearch: Watch out for junk journalism. “Perhaps the White House is too generous in handing out temporary press credentials, but it seems to us that the idea of the government’s issuing ‘privileges’ to journalists in exchange for which they are held to standards of ‘professional responsibility’ is awfully close to a regime of press licensing and cartelization, which would be an anathema to the First Amendment. The right to engage in journalism–also known as freedom of speech and of the press–belongs to everyone. News organizations adhere to professional standards not because the government compels them to (except to the limited extent that they can be legally liable for certain types of false or intrusive reporting) but because their credibility, and thus their long-term cultural and commercial viability as purveyors of information, depends on it. . . . New media make it easier to disseminate both bad information and good. That poses a dual hazard to professional journalists: As the hazards of slipping up have multiplied, so have the opportunities to shine a light on journalist error or malfeasance.”
HEY, MAYBE INFLUENTIAL JOURNALISTS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ASKING THAT A YEAR AGO: National Journal: What If Obama Can’t Lead?
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Chuck Schumer Engineers USDA Greek Yogurt Subsidy: The New York senator helps land a sweetheart deal for a politically-connect yogurt company.
Starting this month, the United States Department of Agriculture has announced that it will test out a new product in school lunches—high-protein, a.k.a. Greek-style yogurt—in four different states. Yet, what seems like an innocuous, even reasonable addition to the menu of foods offered to American public school students upon inspection turns out to be the latest example of corrupt nanny-statism masquerading as “for the kids” do-goodism.
The USDA argues that Greek-style yogurt is better for kids because it has more protein. And given Michelle Obama’s new National School Lunch program offerings required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a higher protein, lower-fat, and lower-sugar yogurt seems like it would be a good thing, full stop.
Here’s the trouble.
Greek-style yogurt is more expensive than other comparably nutritious yogurts. The USDA has to pilot this program in only four states—New York, Arizona, Idaho, and Tennessee—because the bureaucrats don’t know if they can get such a highly perishable item to schools that are situated further from the yogurt distribution centers. And most important, there is one particular state and one particular business that stand to benefit from a big increase in Greek yogurt sales. Those would be New York State, where most of this yogurt is produced and Chobani, which sells the most Greek-style yogurt in the U.S., is located. All of which explains why the biggest manufacturer of Greek-style yogurt spent tens of thousands on lobbyists and worked so closely with New York’s Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer to try to get this pilot program off the ground. . . . Greek yogurt may be high in protein, but so are a lot of other, less expensive and less politically-connected food products. Adding Chobani to the school lunch program is just a fat-lot of government cronyism.
It’s crony-capitalism all the way down. Should we start a Chobani boycott?
RELAX, THOUGH, IT’S NOT A HATE CRIME OR ANYTHING: Teens accused of Mableton murder held over in court. “The four teens accused in the death of 36-year-old Joshua Chellew of Sm