WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Honey, I Shrunk the Livestock! Insects bring a new dimension to Texas farming.
Archive for 2016
July 2, 2016
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1150.
PROGRESSIVES VERSUS CULTURALISTS: “The humiliation of the overclass [over Brexit] is new to them,” James Lileks writes. “They have no idea that they are experiencing what the Culturalists have been living for 30 years. Which is why it will take 30 years for them to learn. Not a recipe for comity.”
Read the whole thing.
CALIFORNIA WATCH: Crumbling Roads? Let’s Build Bike Lanes! Plus this: “A Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Development Committee backgrounder from last July noted that ‘68 percent of California’s roads are in ‘poor’ or ‘mediocre’ condition, putting California behind 43 other states in road condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.’”
THE ABA CARTEL: Rule of Lawyers.
It’s probably true that in some parts of the country, wealthy lawyers have monopolized the elite social networks that are helpful for launching successful Congressional campaigns. But it’s also not obvious that making more money available to non-lawyers, in and of itself, would solve this problem. The empirical evidence that higher expenditures actually increase a candidate’s chances of winning a Congressional race is still equivocal at best.
Here’s a more straightforward solution—one that would be good policy even if it doesn’t usher hundreds more working people into the Senate and House: Let’s rein in the American Bar Association cartel and introduce more competition into the legal services sector.
Lawyers at big firms are able to command extraordinary rates (24 year-old associates now make $180,000) not because their talents are so extraordinarily rare, but because, as Clifford Winston and Quentin Karpilow have argued in the American Economic Review, the ABA has created a protectionist racket that shuts competitors out of the market and blocks the technological innovation that has brought prices down for services in so many other sectors. For example, even routine paperwork that could easily be performed at lower cost by less-credentialed workers must be carried out by lawyers in many states. And firms not owned by ABA-approved lawyers are prohibited from selling any legal services in the United States, even if they hired lawyers to do the relevant work.
Eliminating some of these gratuitous barriers to entry in the legal services market would likely ameliorate inequality in two ways: First, it would make legal services cheaper and more accessible to people who can’t afford them. Second, by rolling back the ABA’s rent-seeking and making the market more fair, it would rein in the financial and political power held by high-flyers at Big Law. In other words, we can weaken the rule of lawyers while strengthening the rule of law.
If you’d like more detail on what that might look like, you should read not one, but two books by my colleague Ben Barton: Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession, and The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System. They address both the problems with excessive lawyer influence, and the promise of new technologies to expand access to the law. And both address the baleful role of the ABA in making things worse.
MAKE THE RUBBLE BOUNCE: The Imploding Cabal To Criminalize Dissent. “Inspired by the 1990s victory against tobacco companies, the Schneiderman cabal thought it could score big-time by threatening a RICO case against fossil-fuel companies. How fitting if the same threat brings them to heel.”
ACADEMIA’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM: “There Are Conservative Professors. Just Not in These States.”
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“BOTCHED:” Austria’s Botched Vote Feeds Populist Distrust. Have you noticed that these “botches” pretty much all go in one direction?
And I don’t think that allowing people to “vote securely online” is likely to improve either security, or trust.
DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION! “Buying Organic Groceries in Brooklyn Can Be a Serious Trial:”
Brooklyn may have the only grocery store in the country that puts its customers on trial.
The Park Slope Food Coop, founded in 1973, is a neighborhood institution known for its deadly serious dedication to organic produce and egalitarian values. Its 17,000 members are required to work 2¾ hours every four weeks in exchange for crunchy camaraderie and discounted groceries.
Over the years, the store has weathered its share of publicity for fighting over topics like the ethics of tuna harvesting. Recently, when one such dispute about Middle Eastern politics spiraled out of control, four members found themselves facing judgment before a jury of their peers, accused of being, well, uncooperative.
The co-op’s parallel criminal-justice system has its own peculiar lingo. Juries, dubbed “hearing and deciding groups,” are selected at random from the co-op membership. Members of a disciplinary committee build cases, which are presented by the “co-op advocate,” effectively a lead prosecutor. Judges are known as “hearing officers,” and the judicial process is overseen by a “hearing administration committee.”
Members caught in the crosshairs are given a choice: an arbitration, in essence a bench trial, or judgment by a jury of their peers. A writer from the Linewaiters’ Gazette, the co-op newspaper, serves as court reporter.
Such proceedings carry the mild title of “hearings.” Rhudi Andreolli, who stood accused in April of “extremely uncooperative behavior,” called it something else.
“It was a freaking trial,” she said.
Hey, socialism invariably leads to show trials, but some people need to learn that the hard way.
WHAT WENT DOWN ON THE TARMAC? Steve Hayward of Power Line has a theory.
WHEN THE EDUCATION APPARAT IS JUST A POLITICAL ARM OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, THIS IS WHAT YOU GET: Washington state schools seek to create safe spaces from Donald Trump.
Officials at Washington state’s K-12 schools received an email last month suggesting they create “safe places” for their students because of 2016 political rhetoric, specifically from presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The email, sent June 16 from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, opened with a mention of the “Trump Effect” and a link to the “phenomenon.”
“Regardless of one’s politics, the impact of this year’s political rhetoric on K12 schools is huge,” the email, which was provided to the Washington Examiner, said. “It has produced increasing levels of fear and anxiety among students of all ages.”
The email goes on to claim that “Fear levels are becoming especially high among ethnic, racial and linguistic minority and LGBTQ youth.”
The email insists that “Perception is reality.”
Regardless of one’s politics. That’s rich.
BREXIT CONTINUES TO BEDEVIL CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR. Ramesh Ponnuru writes at NRO on “Amanpour vs. Hannan, Gove, Brexit, Context:”
Christiane Amanpour has written a defense of her conduct in her CNN interview/debate with Daniel Hannan, which suggests that she understands that it did not go well for her. James Taranto points out Amanpour’s contradictions (and really, was nobody capable of red-penciling her line about “naked political agendas masquerading as news”?).
Go read Taranto. I’d add that on at least two occasions in the article, Amanpour presents quotes from Brexit advocates in a misleading way.
Read the whole thing to spot how Amanpour truncates one of pro-Brexit Justice Minister Michael Gove’s quotes to make him look like an idiot. Amanpour turned into Maureen Dowd so slowly, I hardly even noticed.
THAT TIME THAT TIM BLAIR AND IOWAHAWK DOGPILED ON A HAPLESS BRITISH ACADEMIC. “For the love of God, is there nobody in Britain who can teach this idiot how to operate a steering wheel and a couple of pedals?”
SO TELL DEMOCRATS TO STOP HOLDING IT HOSTAGE: Obama: Congress Should Delay Summer Break to Pass Zika Bill.
THE KREMLIN ADMITS that Snowden is a Russian agent.
TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, BARACK OBAMA: The Pentagon’s Social Justice Warriors.
QUESTION ASKED: “Did Al Gore’s daughter fly there on her private jet?”, Laura Ingraham tweets.
Karenna Gore was arrested in Boston-area protest against Houston-based Spectra Energy pipeline.
A GRUESOME DRUDGERY: Charles Cooke remembers the unromantic reality of World War I.
Read the whole thing.
RAMPANT VOTER FRAUD, revealed in Minnesota.
UH HUH: WH defends Lynch’s record after Clinton meeting.
The White House on Friday defended the record of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and declined to weigh in on whether she erred in meeting with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix earlier this week.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest avoided criticizing the meeting during the daily briefing Friday, instead deferring to the assessment from Lynch, who earlier in the day said she “wouldn’t do it again.” Her meeting raised eyebrows given the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email arrangement while she was secretary of State.Earnest said he would let Lynch “render her own judgment” on whether the meeting was a bad idea. Lynch said that the meeting has “cast a shadow” over how the case may be perceived, announcing she’d “fully” accept whatever recommendations career prosecutors and investigators offer in the case.
“When it comes to judgment, there is no quarreling with the 30-year history that Loretta Lynch has established as a highly competent, highly successful federal prosecutor,” Earnest told reporters.
Earnest praised Lynch’s tenure as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, as well as her work since taking the helm of the Justice Department last year.
If you have to reach back to her pre-AG record, that’s bad. On the other hand, there’s this take on her tenure:
Not so impressive.
VW SHAKEN DOWN: “It could be curtains for Volkswagen. No joke. $15 billion is a staggering sum. An impossible sum…VW has — had — a market share around 3 percent. The math is very, very bad. Ford would have trouble dealing with a $15 billion dollar hit (probably more like $20 billion once the civil litigation is figured in). And VW is not Ford.”
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED. How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture:
My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.
It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.
But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?
* * * * * * *
Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.
During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
Read the whole thing.