Archive for 2014
March 21, 2014
DOUBLING DOWN ON FAILURE: Illinois: How will we fix our budget problems? Let’s tax millionaires!
IN NATIONAL REVIEW, Arthur Herman reviews my The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. “While Glenn Reynolds’s book is by no means the first to address these crises and offer solutions, it ranks as one of the best.” That’s nice to hear.
NEPOTISM AND GOVERNMENT JOBS: LAFD recruit program is suspended. “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti suspended the city’s firefighter recruitment program Thursday amid concerns about mismanagement and nepotism, including new emails that show special recruitment workshops were organized for relatives of department insiders.
I WAS TALKING TO MICKEY KAUS ABOUT THIS VERY TOPIC JUST THE OTHER DAY: Affirmative Action And Diversity Don’t Mix.
FERTILITY ADVANCES draw fire from bioethicists. Well, okay, but what is it about bioethicists that suggests we should care what they think?
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HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: So my USA Today column generates this comment over at Reddit:
Remember, this writer is a law professor who has had to of known this for decades and that there is probably a reason why he is only writing it now.
Yeah, I’ve never written about this kind of thing before.
LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Navy database tracks civilians’ parking tickets, fender-benders, raising fears of domestic spying. “LinX is a national information-sharing hub for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. It is run by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, raising concerns among some military law experts that putting such detailed data about ordinary citizens in the hands of military officials crosses the line that generally prohibits the armed forces from conducting civilian law enforcement operations. Those fears are heightened by recent disclosures of the National Security Agency spying on Americans, and the CIA allegedly spying on Congress, they say.”
NEIGHBORS: The Bugs In Our Homes.
CRONY CAPITALISM UPDATE: Corruption Index Indicator: Cities That Ban Ride Sharing To Protect Taxi Incumbents.
MEDIAITE: Rothman: The Left’s Laughable Effort to Label Paul Ryan ‘Racist’ Crumbles. Yes, but just as the Koch attacks aren’t really about the Kochs, but about discouraging other rich people from becoming donors, so the racial attacks on Paul Ryan aren’t so much about Paul Ryan as about discouraging Republicans from talking about poverty.
TODAY’S OVERPROTECTED KIDS. “A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer.” It’s always been about parental (mostly maternal) reassurance and status competition.
ANNALS OF COMPUTER LAW: “Weev” prosecutor admits: I don’t understand what the hacker did.
21ST CENTURY LAW ENFORCEMENT: Democrat Attorney General Shuts Down Corruption Investigation After Catching Democrats Accepting Cash Bribes, Because Racism.
Related: Pennsylvania Attorney General Kane lawyers up.
The decision of Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane to drop the investigation and potential prosecution of Philadelphia Democrats who were recorded accepting cash, money orders, or jewelry certainly seems suspicious. According to news reports, investigators collected over 400 hours of audio and video of five Democrats, including four state lawmakers, before Kane, also a Democrat, secretly killed the investigation last fall. When confronted with this troubling story by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kane cited racism and mismanagement in the investigation, but the detailed descriptions of the recordings certainly seem to indicate that the payments were made.
Kane’s reaction to reports about her decision went from bad to worse. At first, she complained that white men were attacking her. . . .
But Kane, apparently frustrated by continuing scrutiny of her decision, has now escalated further, hiring counsel and suggesting that if the Inquirer continues to pursue the story, she would start suing people!
Good grief. You know, maybe we should exclusively fill important jobs with white men, since they’re apparently the only ones society can hold accountable.
POLITICAL NATURE ABHORS A POWER VACUUM: Is Putin making moves in Latin America too?
UPDATE: Wrong link. Fixed now. Sorry!
IN THE MAIL: The 7 Secrets of Happiness: A Reluctant Optimist’s Journey.
Also, today only: Up to 45% Off Select Thermos Products.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 316.
JOHN FUND: Racial Preferences Under Siege. “Two recent events, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast, demonstrate that after half a century, support for racial preferences in college admissions is getting more and more unsustainable — both politically and intellectually.”
ILLINOIS NEEDS SOMETHING: Will Illinois Get Its Scott Walker?
Illinois’s public employee unions are bracing for a fight they’re not going to like: a race between two gubernatorial candidates bent on public pension reform. Worse still for the unions, the Democratic candidate, incumbent Governor Pat Quinn (D), is vulnerable, reports the New York Times. Republican candidate Bruce Rauner, a private equity millionaire, hopes to ride the red wave that has carried Mitch Daniels (R-IN), Scott Walker (R-WI), Rick Snyder (R-MI), and John Kasich (R-OH) to the helms of Midwestern battleground states. Can he do it?
Illinois is in bad shape. The two governors before Quinn (a Republican and a Democrat) were both sent to federal prison on corruption charges. The state is a nation-wide leader in job losses. Its pension system is underfunded by about $100 billion. Its largest city Chicago, the current murder capital of the U.S., is incurring credit downgrades at the rate of a banana republic, while many of its schools are closing and its population is in rapid decline. In 2008 it looked like the new President of the United States would have the same affectionate connection with Illinois that Harry Truman had with Missouri or Ronald Reagan had with California; today, no one can remember the last time President Obama so much as mentioned his home state.
This goes a long way toward explaining why the labor unions are so afraid of a Republican reformer in such an otherwise deep blue state.
They should be. But are Illinois voters as smart as Wisconsin voters?
NEW FRONTIERS IN FEMINISM: Australian anchorwoman: Stop blaming men for your problems.
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