Archive for 2014
January 11, 2014
KEEPING A MIATA GOING one million miles or bust. “As nice as it is, the car is no cream puff. It’s a driver. With 325,000 miles and 25 years under its belt, the Million-Mile Miata has averaged 13,000 miles a year. We’re only going to improve on that, and you’ll be able to follow our progress the whole way.”
THE MAN HAS SUPERNATURAL POWERS: Ted Cruz turns the Harvard Law Review into a . . . right wing “dog whistle?”
21ST CENTURY PARENTING: Anonymous Mom: The ‘Natural Parenting’ Movement Can Kiss My Ass. “My baby is formula fed. Now, I’d planned on breastfeeding, but after my C section I had delayed milk and post-surgical complications and my supply tanked and never recovered. I did my best for a few months and then quit. Best thing for me. And I’ve had smiling people drop their grins when they ask if I breastfeed and I say no. I’ve seen moms side-eye me with a furrowed brow as I mix a bottle. And then the internet’s opinions, screw them all.”
READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Tim Hargadon recommends Jackie Bouchard’s Rescue Me, Maybe.
WHEN THE BATTERY COSTS MORE THAN A CAR: Chevy Volt replacement battery cost varies wildly, up to $34,000.
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Should You Be Afraid Of Cyberwar?
“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Taliban talks going nowhere despite secret meetings.
IN THE MAIL: From Larry Perry, When God Left America.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 247.
JAZZ SHAW: The Virginia Senate race may have just gotten interesting. “Warner is definitely a solid, strong competitor with a substantial following and the built-in advantages of incumbency. But in 2014, Obamacare is offering a boost which will weaken the positions of even solidly safe Democrats to the same degree that Iraq knocked the wind out of the sails of shoe-in Republicans in 2006.”
Related: Gallup: ObamaCare Approval at Lowest Point in 14 Months, 48% Think It Will Make Life Worse.
THEY’LL TRY TO SNEAK IT THROUGH AFTER PRIMARY SEASON IS OVER: Website of Top House Republican Drops Opposition to Amnesty. It’s very unpopular with the base, but it’s very popular with the donors.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Marriage Makes You Rich And Stupid.
I mean, I used to know where I kept my batteries and old documents. But when we got married, my husband, who is much tidier than I am, took over organizing the house. Now, unless it’s a piece of my clothing or kitchen equipment, I have no idea where we keep anything. And while I’m pretty sure I used to be able to put up shelves, now all I know how to do is ask my husband to do it.
On the other hand, he has no idea how much money we have, or in what accounts. And he can’t do the grocery shopping, because he doesn’t know what we consume. Individually, we are less competent to survive on our own. But collectively, we eat better, and we have a tidier house and better-managed finances. And our shelves don’t fall down so often.
Obviously, child-rearing is a major area of specialization. One interesting thing I’ve heard from gay parents is that they find themselves falling into roles that you might describe as “Mom” and “Dad,” even though this is obviously not some pre-programmed gender destiny. It just doesn’t make sense to try to jointly manage a kid 50-50; one parent keeps the social calendar and decides what kids Junior can play with, because two parents trying to do it actually makes the task take a lot more time, as both people have to learn about all the friends and the birthdays and the parents, and then negotiate what Junior does with her time. I’m not saying this happens with every gay parent. I’m just saying that gay parents I know report considerable benefits to specialization.
Specialization also allows for external income gains — perhaps one reason that married men make a lot more than single ones do and married households are richer than single ones. Some of that is selection effect, of course — stable, responsible men are probably more likely to get married, especially in this day and age.
Well, possibly.
ASHE SCHOW: Did the EPA’s inspector general cover up the agency’s wrongdoing? “An oil industry analyst says the Environmental Protection Agency colluded with environmental activists to go after a Texas natural gas firm, and the agency’s inspector general whitewashed the issue in its report.”
SENATOR MARK UDALL’S EFFORTS TO COOK OBAMACARE BOOKS IN COLORADO: “It is a small story of great interest.” Plus, help from the courtier press: “Shepherd’s Complete Colorado story strongly suggests that Udall hit pay dirt with the Denver Post. It appears that Udall found the Post to be more compliant than the folks at the Colorado Division of Insurance. The Post coughed up this story by Michael Booth right on cue, on November 15, putting those troubling cancellation numbers ‘in context.'”
CAN I GET THE TAR-AND-FEATHERS CONCESSION? Europe: Peasants Restless, Nobility Concerned.
CHANGE: GOP Turns to Courts to Take On Obama.
Republicans are bringing their objections to Obama administration policies to a courtroom near you.
It doesn’t seem to be a concerted strategy, but rather an outgrowth of the use of executive actions that they oppose. Only controlling the House of Representatives, prospects for legislation to block the regulations are not good.
“I’ve never been a big fan of lawsuits. Normally you should be able to settle disputes between the branches using the various powers each branch has, but I’ve signed on to a few including the recess appointments,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said. “There’s a very, very strong pushback among the American people concerning the president’s executive orders. They feel like he passed Obamacare, then he just amends the law without Congress. I hear that all the time.”
The recess appointments matter looks to be a landmark case on executive powers. It will be argued before the highest court in the land on Monday. . . .
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has launched an effort to sue the National Security Agency to contest the bulk collection of phone records as part of National Security Agency surveillance efforts, and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson filed a lawsuit in federal court in his home state of Wisconsin against the Office of Personnel Management’s decision to allow members and staff to maintain employer contributions to their health insurance when they transitioned from the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan to the District of Columbia’s Obamacare exchange.
Well, finally somebody is listening to one of my suggestions. Now if they’d just get behind lowering the drinking age. And repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!
JAMES TARANTO: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground: A clarification, and more questions, on “gender equality.”
If X wants to raise taxes 20% and Y doesn’t want to raise them all, it doesn’t follow that a 10% tax hike would be the optimal policy. Such a framing of the question leaves out the possibility (among others) that it might be a good idea to cut taxes instead. Similarly, discounting by 50% the estimate of the economic gains from “gender equality” leaves unquestioned the assumption that such gains would inevitably obtain.
Further, it seems implausible to estimate the opportunity cost of forgone household work based on the income one realizes through paid work. To illustrate the point, take two hypothetical examples at the extremes of the income distribution: a woman who works as an investment banker and makes $1 million, and a woman who works as a store clerk and earns $15,000 (roughly a year’s earnings working full time at minimum wage).
Assuming that both women have the same number of children, is it really plausible to suggest that the former would be worth $500,000 as a stay-at-home mom and the latter only $7,500? Surely not. The magnitude of the differential captures the opportunity cost of forgoing paid work for household work, not the other way around.
And these numbers do not give a full picture of the women’s economic incentives. In today’s America, the banker-mother is likely to be married to a high-earning man, whereas the clerk-mother has a high probability of being the sole support for her family. If both women want to become stay-at-home mothers, the banker is in a much better position to do so. For the clerk, it may not be feasible at all. But by Jacobsen’s reckoning, the clerk who stays in the workforce because she has no choice thereby makes a small contribution to “gender equality,” while the banker who exercises the choice not to is setting back equality, and much more considerably.
Read the whole thing.
LABOR-FORCE DROPOUTS: Your Scary-Ass Chart Of The Day. (From The Federalist.)
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Dollar stores are now getting too expensive for many Americans.
ROLL CALL: Jobless Numbers Add to Concern on Monetary Policy. “The debate on Capitol Hill over expired unemployment benefits is putting a spotlight on the still-rough labor market. The nation’s unemployment rate may be ticking closer to the Federal Reserve’s threshold of 6.5 percent, the point where the central bank will reassess its historically low interest rates. But even as the central bank has started to ease back ever so slightly on its economic stimulus program, economists from both sides of the political aisle say the jobs crisis sparked by the 2008 financial meltdown is far from over.”
Whatever “recovery” we’ve supposedly experienced, most Americans aren’t experiencing it in their personal lives.
CHANGE: Reid Backs Down In Unemployment Fight.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he is now open to considering Republican amendments to a bill extending emergency unemployment benefits through most of 2014.
On Thursday, Reid clashed with several Republicans after saying he didn’t want to consider any changes to an amended version of the bill. Reid’s amendment paid for an 11-month extension by extending the sequester for another year, into 2024.
Republicans have other ideas on how to pay for the benefits, but Reid dismissed them.
He must be facing some defections.
IT’S A WALK-IN CLOSET, AND IT’S FULL: Hillary’s skeleton stampede.
Even when her friends try to raise their voices in Hillary’s defense, what comes out is mostly static. The attempted whitewash by The New York Times of the hash she made of Benghazi only reminds everyone that she was asleep when the telephone rang at 3 o’clock in the morning.
Indeed.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Academia Quits Me.
Tomorrow I will step into a classroom to begin the last semester of a 24-year teaching career. Don’t get me wrong. I am not retiring. I am not “burned out.” The truth is rather more banal. Ohio State University will not be renewing my three-year contract when it expires in the spring. The problem is tenure: with another three-year contract, tenure becomes an option. In an era of tight budgets, there is neither money nor place for a 61-year-old white male professor who has never really fit in nor tried very hard to. . . .
My experience is a prelude to what will be happening, sooner rather than later, to many of my colleagues. Humanities course enrollments are down to seven percent of full-time student hours, but humanities professors make up forty-five percent of the faculty. The imbalance cannot last. PhD programs go on awarding PhD’s to young men and women who will never find an academic job at a living wage. (A nearby university—a university with a solid ranking from U.S. News and World Report—pays adjuncts $1,500 per course. Just to toe the poverty line a young professor with a husband and a child would have to teach thirteen courses a year.) If only as retribution for the decades-long exploitation of part-time adjuncts and graduate assistants, nine of every ten PhD programs in English should be closed down—immediately. Meanwhile, the senior faculty fiddles away its time teaching precious specialties.
Read the whole thing.