Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Tuesday, August 31. 2010

Tuesday morning links

Neo: Skilled workers wanted


VDH: The Sources of American Anger - Barack Obama, the great healer, is proving to be the most divisive president since Richard Nixon.


Sowell: ObamaCare’s Deadly Consequences


Headline: Glenn Beck is a poo-poo head


GOP Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot. But Volokh wonders: Repub win good for Obama's career?


Althouse thinks about our Kesler piece, and the meaning of life. And AVI thinks about regrets in life. The longer you live, the more regrets you accumulate.


George Will: Major Gaps in Education Achievement Between Whites, Blacks



Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."



Hmmm. As I recall, anti-discrimination is not the only thing that was happening then.


Barack Obama's plan to nationalize the fishing industry


Isn't it sexist (and racist) to say that cutting the size of government is sexist and racist? I mean, isn't it biased and demeaning to people of gender and color to assume that they must be dependent on others?


“It Was Certainly a Dry Run”: Two Muslims Arrested in Amsterdam After Flight from Chicago

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:06 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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The sexist and racist effect of cutting government spending stems from the fact that poor people are most dependent on the government. If a single woman has a child, it's much harder for her to duck out than it is for a single man to disappear. The racist effect is because of a chain of events: women from minority communities are far more likely to become single mothers at a young age, they are far less likely to have help from the father, and their children are far less likely to make a successful start in the world. Thus the population of people that are poor and dependent is disproportionately female and disproportionately minority. This is well-established in America's statistics. I don't know how it applies in other countries.
The very programs to be cut seem to have fostered the problem in the first place. Pushing responsibility back to individuals is going to cause significant deprivation for some families and it will probably save a lot of other families from deprivation. It's a tough choice but the situation calls for tough love.
#1 Geoff Brown on 2010-08-31 10:33 (Reply)
I know this is not going to be a very popular position, but I think the fisheries article is overstating the economic factor and under valuing the fisheries science that Dr. Lubchenko is using to support her position.

The simple truth is this - ground stocks are rapidly disappearing, in-shore/mid-range stocks are at the point of collapse and open ocean schools of blue fin and other pelagic species are in deep and very serious trouble. It is simply a case of over fishing by commercial interests and too many boats chasing too few fish.

Something has to give. The quota system is working in other parts of the US - notably Alaska where sustainability was the mantra during the '80s leading to the per boat quota system. Smaller operators who were diverse and fished for more than one species did just fine - others sold their quotas to big operators or other small operators. Those that coulnd't hold out or work with the quota, sold boats and moved on.

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be dislocation and some family operations will lose out. And this is where I disagree with Dr. Lubchenko - set the quota system and let the market, the oceans and the operators slug it out in the market place. Imposing a top down system will only lead to more problems - open competition in an open market is the only way to solve the problem.
#2 Tom Francis on 2010-08-31 11:57 (Reply)

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