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.
Data from more than 1,300 four-year colleges and universities in the United States show that the use of race and ethnicity in admissions declined sharply after the mid-1990s, especially at public institutions. The proportion of public four-year colleges considering minority status in admissions has fallen from more than 60 percent to about 35 percent. Among private institutions, the drop during the same years has been notable but less dramatic, from 57 percent to 45 percent. The major decline came after 1995, when the campaign against affirmative action intensified, and schools, particularly public ones, thrown on the defensive, retreated. They were reacting not only to actual litigation but also to its threat. While colleges and universities that are considered elite are more likely to have practiced affirmative action and to have been more protective of it, even they have retreated. Few innovative or vigorous forms of affirmative action are now in play in the face of courts and federal agencies exercising strict scrutiny when examining admissions procedures and in the face of an increasingly suspicious citizenry.
Another reality is redefining, and probably weakening, the meaning of affirmative action. Although few schools publicize the fact, one of the central historic principles giving rise to affirmative action is being undermined. President Johnson’s speech assumed that affirmative action would help the descendants of former slaves (he made no mention of Hispanics). That assumption from yesteryear is out of sync with today’s realities. Affirmative action more and more functions to open the campus not only to the descendants of former slaves but to black students with different cultural and political heritages. Once championed, as in Johnson’s speech, as a means of reparation or restitution, affirmative action now turns out to be helping hundreds and hundreds of young people who have suffered the wounds of old-fashioned American racism little or not at all. More than a quarter of the black students enrolled at selective American colleges and universities are immigrants or the children of immigrants. African-American students born in the United States thus turn out to be more underrepresented (given their presence in the U.S. population) at selective colleges than one might imagine. At some of the most exclusive institutions (Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania), no less than two-fifths of those admitted as “black” are of immigrant origin. Such facts, as they come into view, blunt the force of arguments favoring affirmative action. Diversity and restitution are better reasons than diversity alone, but restitution seems less and less in play.
Diversity itself, moreover, seems weaker and weaker as an argument for affirmative action when many campuses now appear, at least to the public at large, more diverse than ever before. The increasing presence on campus of students from myriad ethnic groups (Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Iranian, and many others) and the consequent reduction of “white” students (witness student populations at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, USC, Columbia, and other schools) undercut the notion that American higher education is still unfairly monochromatic.
Prof. Chace favors affirmative action only for blacks with American heritage.
"...a romantic buzz-bender and a relationship are not exactly the same thing."
Most of the wealthy in America are Dems and Lefties, and even more so with the mega-wealthy. Whiny millionaire should donate taxes. If they don't do that, they're hypocrites.
Although collective bargaining by government employee unions may offend one’s sense of justice, what’s truly unacceptable is government labor’s stranglehold over the local, state, and federal governments with which they bargain.
...the story is also more disturbing in that it batters our faith that modern economics—whether of the Left or Right—can protect us against great instability and insecurity. The financial panic and subsequent Great Recession have demonstrated that the advances in economic management and financial understanding that supposedly protected us from violent business cycles—ruling out another Great Depression—were oversold, exposing us to larger economic reversals than we thought possible. It’s true that we’ve so far avoided another depression, but it was a close call, and the fact that all the standard weapons (low interest rates, huge government budget deficits) have already been deployed leaves open the disquieting question of what would happen if the economic system again lurched violently into reverse. The economic theorems and tools that we thought could forewarn and protect us are more primitive than we imagined. We have not traveled so far from the panic-prone economies of 1857, 1893, and 1907 as we supposed.
Our experience since 2007 has also revealed a huge contradiction at the center of our politics. Prosperity is almost everyone’s goal, but too much prosperity enjoyed for too long tends to destroy itself.
OK, PETA didn't really make that demand so that horses aren't abused by being ridden. (Sounds like something they'd do, though, doesn't it?)
Actually, in a bid for triumph over sense or learning, a Queens, NY congressman demands that a statue in front of the borough hall be taken down, titled "Triumph of Civic Virtue," because the male figure has his foot on the neck of a female. It was sculpted by a famed 19th century US artist and unveiled in 1922 to depict, as its defenders write "a strong, muscular, heroic man overcoming temptation represented by two female sirens representing corruption and vice." The sculptor is quoted: "The heroic figure, the sculptor said, "looks out into the distance so concentrated on his great ideal that he does not even see the temptation" of the pleasure and luxury that lead to "devious ways".
His sin, according to the congressman who wants the statue removed: "it is ugly and sexist" because "The statue by sculptor Frederick MacMonnies depicts a nude male figure standing atop two women who represent evil sirens."
The congressman, Anthony Weiner, will next week have his last name changed from a synonym for putz.
P.S.: Veterans statuary does not get respect from the Left, either.
The following post has just gone up at New Criterion's blog, Arma Virumque, one of the most prestigious in the blogosphere. The editor, Roger Kimball, also runs Encounter Books, one of the best sources for serious considerations of issues. I am most grateful, and humbled, to be included as a contributor to serious discussion of a serious issue. Thank you Roger Kimball for all you do.
The stereotype of ruler-wielding, dogma-enforcing Catholic nuns has nothing on the parody-proofing self-image being created by the AAUP of college professors as academic thugs.
In its latest draft document to define academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors has gone abroad to authoritarian regimes and overboard to try to suck the air out of critiques of academia.
Who is to blame for the AAUP’s draft? It seems that I am, at least in major part as the stimulus to putting the fear of criticism into AAUP. I launched critiques last Fall and again for the Spring semesters of politically biased practices at Brooklyn College, my alma mater. My critiques reverberated throughout New York City and nationally.
The AAUP denigrates and seeks to negate the views of anyone other than the usually incestuous faculty majority or insider group in control. Although couched in proceduralism, the AAUP’sExecutive Summary reveals the motivation and the cure for insulating faculty from critique:
Current political threats to academic freedom have intensified with the rapid growth of new media and Internet connectivity that has made it possible for talk-show hosts, bloggers, and well-funded interest groups to supplement the trustees, politicians, corporate and religious groups, and journalists who previously put untoward pressure on the university.
Therefore:
1.Complaints regarding alleged classroom statements forwarded by outside agencies or individuals should be generally ruled out of consideration in initiating or conducting personnel reviews.
2.When complaints regarding alleged classroom speech arise from or are promoted by student political groups, the complaints should be respected only to the extent merited by the complaints and only when they are based on evidence from students who were actually enrolled in the course or courses in which the alleged inappropriate conduct occurred and who were present to observe that conduct.
Who is to judge?
1.It is essential that the hearing committee be elected or appointed by an appropriate elected faculty body.
Here’s the real point: If you want to work for government (which can be a very honorable or practical or neutral thing to do), you are forced to pay union dues. You know, when you pay those dues that they will be used to fund the Democrats. This is true whether or not you, personally, want to fund the Democrats.
Once elected, the Democrats shower benefits on the public sector unions, since that ensures that the unions will then shower money right back on the Democrats. What’s important to remember is that these elected Democrats are your employees, just as the public sector workers are. Nevertheless, you, the tax payer, have been cut out of the loop. Instead, there’s an endlessly cycling mutually beneficial relationship going on between unions and benefits, that you’re paying for.
Our thoughts are now actions. There literally is nothing the federal government cannot regulate provided there is even a hypothetical connection to the economy, even if the connection at most is in the future.
Our thoughts are now actions. Whoops, I already said that. I just can't get over it. The following sentence has now become a justification for regulating decision-making even where the decision is just to do nothing:
The Congress shall have power.... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
I think I'm going to be ill. Which of course, is now subject to regulations to be promulgated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Any serious conversation about American decline must start with the fact that too many of our countrymen have lost the plot about how the United States became the beacon of the free world, the world's largest economy, and the lone superpower.
Private sector unions confront managers who have an incentive to push back against their demands. Public sector unions face managers who have an incentive to give in to them for the sake of their own survival. Most important, public sector unions help choose those they negotiate with. Through gigantic campaign contributions and overall clout, they have enormous influence over who gets elected to bargain with them, especially in state and local races.
What the heck is he talking about? Forests and woods and global cooling or warming or whatever, and what?
There is something deeply the matter with this poor fellow. I mean, besides his greed for money and massages and estates and jetting around the world.
Why doesn't he donate his tobacco farm and his mining land to a conservation organization so happy trees can grow there? At Maggie's, we support all rational land and habitat conservation efforts, and we even are big supporters of good sustainable nuclear energy.
And who are all of these wealthy consumerists who applaud him? Probably people who want all of the little people like me to change their ways of life. It's not gonna happen.
First, the Democratic Party is the party of government, not only because of its extravagant sense of government's competence and proper scope, but also because the party's base is government employees. Second, government employees have an increasingly adversarial relationship with the governed. Third, Obama's "move to the center" is fictitious.
Only a year too late to recognize the blatantly cooked numbers used to justify the passage of ObamaCare, the New York Times can’t avoid reporting the awakening because the Obama administration had to fess up to the new Congress.
In March 2010, I wrote about ObamaCare’s CLASS Failure. CLASS is ObamaCare’s long term care program, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act. The primary motivation for its inclusion in ObamaCare was to game the Congressional Budget Office’s calculation of budget gains from ObamaCare.
The best objective and factual summary and analysis of CLASS I’ve found is that by one of the preeminent global consulting firms on benefits, Towers Perrin.
“The Senate version is projected to bring in $72 billion, with an average monthly premium of $123. The initial positive cash flows come, of course, from the five-year period before participants vest, when premiums are paid but benefits are not. Tens of billions are foreseen to flow into the trust fund during those five years. In later decades, however, the flows would turn negative and increase the federal deficit.”
Well, guess what?
HHS Secretary and chief commissar of ObamaCare now admits the CLASS program was flawed from the inception and requires major overhaul. CLASS, reports the New York Times, “is too costly to survive without major changes, Obama administration officials now say.”
To make the program viable, Ms. Sebelius said, she is considering changes in the eligibility criteria, including employment and earnings requirements, to ensure that only active workers may enroll. She also said she favored adjusting premiums to rise with inflation.
Even then, experts say, CLASS will fail, in what is called an insurance death spiral: premiums rise to meet costs, which drives away the healthier, leaving those more likely to use the benefits, and further increase costs, further driving away the healthy and those unable to afford premiums, leaving a yet higher proportion most likely to need benefits, and so on.
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College; and leaders of the American Academy of Actuaries all said the program would be unstable if, as expected, it attracts disproportionate numbers of people with health problems.
Mr. Foster said his analysis showed the program faced “a significant risk of failure” because people who are or expect to be sick or disabled were more likely to sign up. In a study issued this month, Ms. Munnell, an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, said more stringent work requirements and an effective national advertising campaign could help attract young, healthy people to the insurance pool.
Even so, she said, “premiums may never reach an affordable level for middle-class households,” so “the program faces enormous challenges.”
Mr. Obama’s debt-reduction commission, a bipartisan advisory body, said in its report late last year that Congress should “reform or repeal” the program.
“The program’s earliest beneficiaries will pay modest premiums for only a few years and receive benefits many times larger,” the panel said, “so that sustaining the system over time will require increasing premiums and reducing benefits to the point that the program is neither appealing to potential customers nor able to accomplish its stated function.”
Well now, there's another fine kettle of fish(iness) you've gotten us into, Obama.
The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they’re thinking about politics still in Washington” involves “the old playbook [which] says, “lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election.”
"We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor." - Samuel Gompers
In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful. But there's no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions' target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer.
Those statehouse Republicans want to bust up that longstanding sweetheart deal in which public employee unions elect Democrats, who turn around and give the unions anything they want.
This arrangement between the unions and Democrats has led to unfunded liabilities for pension and benefits for retirees that now total $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion among the states.
I think the backlash is going to be harsh, and the Presidents' joining the fray is going to hurt him with the middle class. Too many taxpayers feel left out of the equation and resent the apparent greed, childishness, anger, bullying, and inflexibility of the people who are in their employ. It's understood that there is much - if not everything - at stake for the government unions who currently seem to own the Dem Party. However, by making such a conspicuous and unappealing spectacle during a time when so many are out of work, underemployed, or plain hurting, far more people are becoming aware of the sorts of generous deals these unions have made with their Dem patrons in the cities and states.
Only government employees get pensions these days, and many governments have switched to normal 401-Ks.
As Gov. Walker commented, the people of Wisconsin are saying "Hey, where can I sign up for this deal?"
I think people are most appalled by the teachers' behavior. People want to admire teachers. They are damaging their reputations and damaging their cause, so I suspect they will evoke little sympathy regardless of whatever justice may be in their cause.
Hats off to Gov Christie, TigerHawk's "Governor Awesome," for having shown the way to sanity and responsibility.
This is actually somewhat rare. It's one thing if individual bloggers face off, like some squabble between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, but the big league blogging sites, like Pajamas Media, Townhall, Politico and RealClearPolitics, usually refrain from any specific finger-pointing or name-calling.
Still, I agree that this Politico piece of AGW sputum is an exception. As I was reading it, I was thinking in the back of my mind, "Wow, what is this, 2003?" Then I get down to the comments and some guy's exclaiming, "Wow, this looks like a piece from 2003!" It just reeks of nostalgia. The only thing missing was any mention of the polar bears and their sad, plaintive plight.
The problem, as with any AGW article these days, is that the question that immediately arises is, do they know what they're claiming is complete bullshit — and thus they're just flat-out lying to us? Is it money, power, sex? Ego, pride, reputation? Or are they honestly so naive as to believe everything they read in the MSM and disregard the rest? As the renown TigerHawk would ask, can you think of a third alternative?
I have no comment as I read it yesterday and my mind has mercifully deleted the entire contents — and I refuse to go through such an ugly ordeal again. My guess is that he was entirely correct about the warming part, right up until he used the word "man".
The response from RealClearPolitics is not only a superb piece in itself as he totally dismantles the guy, but it also has some interesting background on Galileo, which is actually why I'm posting it. I don't do straight AGW anymore. The whole topic is just so 2010.
I would only add that despite my having a plethora of questions for the author of the first article, the very first question — as it relates to the title of his post — would be, "What does global warming have to do with the GOP and politics?" From the title of his post, alone, he exposes the fact that this is an ideological rant bent along established party lines, not an independent review of a scientific question. It's just amazing lefty writers don't understand how clearly we see through the ideological patina they cover themselves with.
As a small footnote, Bird Dog did one of his semi-annual "Tell your friends about Maggie's Farm" posts the other day. When you describe it to them, you can now add, "It's the kind of site where you'll see the words plethora and patina in the same paragraph!"
ObamaCare reduces the number of tax-paying Americans while increasing unemployment and adding to the personal and government costs of providing medical insurance.
It’s not just the 800,000 fewer workers seeking jobs under ObamaCare, as the CBO Director admitted last week to Congress, becausethe law will reduce "the propensity to work" in order to get medical insurance. With subsidized guaranteed issue of medical insurance, there will be less incentive to find a job with benefits. At the same time, medical insurance premiums will increase for all as ObamaCare’s guarantee issue creates an incentive to wait until ill to obtain insurance.
Further, due to higher required levels of benefits within allowed medical insurance policies, the premiums are increased for tens of millions, only deferred for this and maybe next year by the temporary waivers issued by the Obama administration.
On top of that, there will be untold tens or hundreds of thousands lower wage workers who want to work who will not be hired, because the required cost to employers of their medical insurance under ObamaCare is too high. The cost of medical insurance to employers under ObamaCare will be near as much as lower wage workers earn, especially for those with a family. Indeed, many are not being hired now, as businesses restrain hiring to prevent being locked-in when this 2014 job-killing effect of ObamaCare kicks in.
In 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees, 30 hours a week or more, may only charge employees 8% of their income for their contribution toward employer-provided medical insurance. For a worker earning $125,000, that amounts to $10,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $10,000 to pay, or an additional 8% above wages.For a worker earning $25,000, that amounts to $2,000 toward the typical $20,000 annual cost of family coverage. That leaves the employer with $18,000 to pay, or an additional 72% above wages.
Many sane employers will think twice and more before hiring that will bring its head-count to 50 or more. Many sane employers will hire those who are single, instead of with families, because of the required 8% of singles’ lower medical insurance premium. Many sane employers will seek efficiencies and technologies to avoid hiring lower-wage workers. Many sane employers will reduce hours worked by lower-wage workers in order to reduce its full-time head-count. Many sane employers will rather pay the $2,000 per worker ObamaCare penalty by ending its medical insurance program and letting the government provide medical insurance.
The ultimate toll of ObamaCare will be far greater than the $trillions in budget costs already estimated. ObamaCare’s budget costs will actually be even larger, and so will the as yet uncounted costs. The US tax-base will shrink while the number of unemployed will remain high.
The Constitutional challenges to ObamaCare center on the individual mandate, and on that causing the whole of ObamaCare to be thrown out of court. There is no other court recourse against these other travesties of ObamaCare. Only a Congress with both houses overcoming a Presidential veto can save us, or 2012 bringing us more in the Senate willing to vote for repeal and a new President willing to sign off.
It will be important to get across to lower-wage earners that they have much at stake in 2012.
USDA employees and FBI officials estimate that the number of fraudulent claims ranges from 50 to 95 percent. Boyd takes issue with those statistics, though.
Increasingly, innovative companies are avoiding going public, and confining their capital-raising to the now vast private capital markets. This is not surprising; we have made it so unpleasant to be an executive of a public company that I do not know one who would not rather be private. Worse, the people who do succeed at public companies are experts in process and governance, and not very likely to make imaginative leaps or forge new businesses from the wreckage of the old.
...getting a grip on mass immigration would at least signal to existing foreign residents that the west has ceased to fetishize civilizational suicide as moral narcissism. For Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron to give speeches arguing that their societies have failed to turn immigrants into citizens to a degree that threatens social cohesion while simultaneously leaving the doors wide open suggests a certain lack of seriousness.
...it’s one thing if teachers just want to be hard-core unionists, no different from the least pretentious laborers you can think of. It’s just the “for the children” stuff that’s so hard to swallow.
Obama is not “failing to lead” as some people are claiming. That is all wrong. All suggestions to that effect are all wrong. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.
Obama is setting up a confrontation and he plans to win.
Call it Chess, or call it Rope-a-Dope; it's a DC game but the MSM will never say so.
Religious as well as non-sectarian writings all contain various prescriptions and injunctions related to their view of morality. Most Americans recognize the difference between individual morality and state morality, as exemplified in the two versions of the Golden Rule. Individual morality is violated when state morality is violated.
The prescriptive Golden Rule – rule for a better life by individuals and voluntary associations -- comes down to do to others what one would want done to oneself. The variation, the injunctive Golden Rule – the prohibition, not to do to others what one wouldn’t want done to oneself, is more limited and more applicable to manmade laws that have restraints upon the extent of state power.
When the latter, the injunctive Golden Rule, is violated by the state, there is an intrusion into the former, the prescriptive Golden Rule. To some or many affected, there is a denial of their individual moral rights. The state mandates behaviors that force individuals to act in ways that they would not want to be done to themselves.
The upholding of the injunctive Golden Rule is closest to our Constitution and to the philosophy of libertarianism.The violation of that injunction is closest to those philosophies or political movements, whether from the Left or Right, which seek to force their particular moral political agenda upon others.
Our Constitution works to restrain these violations.
The legal debate is moving through our courts over whether the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution allow the mandating of purchasing medical insurance. Advocates of the mandate argue for it as increasing the ability to obtain more affordable medical care by increasing the breadth of the insurance pool. Opponents challenge that affordability assertion due the impracticalities of creating such a broad pool without unacceptable draconian measures, and due to the sheer demand-cost inflation created for more medical services by many more. However, the Constitutional issue is whether the state can require activities, as compared to enjoin activities.
Those not at the poles – either libertarian or moralistic – are the majority of Americans. In most cases, once the poles have argued, and courageous individuals entered the fray to focus the discussion regardless of the heat from the poles, the majority of Americans do not so much compromise as recognize the necessary interaction between the prescriptive, individual Golden Rule and the injunctive, state Golden Rule.
As fashionistas and celebrities pile into New York City this week for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, they might want to do a look over of their outfits before heading out. The reason? The fashion police just got themselves a brand new patrol car. Black and white, with sirens and yellow flashing lights, the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Force will be paroling the streets of New York City in their 2012 CLS63 AMG. Serious powerplant built and modified by AMG, the 518-horsepower engine about to do 0 to 62 mph in 4.4 seconds. Fast enough to stop anyone in the middle of a styling faux pas and nip any fashion disaster in the bud. Look for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Force CLS63 AMG around your block this week.
How sea turtles 
It was sculpted by a famed 19th century US artist and unveiled in 1922 to depict, as its 
Algore: 
FDR's Ghost Is 
This is actually somewhat rare. It's one thing if individual bloggers face off, like some squabble between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, but the big league blogging sites, like Pajamas Media, Townhall, Politico and RealClearPolitics, usually refrain from any specific finger-pointing or name-calling.
Michael Milken warned us: 
As 