Tuesday, March 17. 2009
 There's a monotonous feel to the interaction between the stock market and government these days. A government hack says something dumb, and the market tumbles. The only adult left in the room, Ben Bernanke, will appear in some forum and talk a little sense. First the market stabilizes, and then jumps. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then every once in a while, the big kahuna of them all, Studs Urkel Obama, opens his yap and everyone with even a sock full of pennies heads for the exits. It's like clockwork.
Yesterday was only one in a raft of examples of this dynamic. Bernanke appears on Sixty Minutes, the market's riding on multiple consecutive days of big gains, likely fueled solely on shellshocked investor optimism that there's enough stability to preclude their money being subject to a kind of three-card-monte oopsie the next day. The DJIA is up 200+ by midday and it looked like maybe people might start to think it's dangerous not to be in the market. Then at noon a picture of Little Timmy and President Urkel running their mouths about AIG appears on Drudge and the market gives up three percent in two hours. Little Timmy Geithner has fallen into the Treasury well, and Lassie is dead. President Urkel can't even be in over his head, because he's never even been to the pool. He literally knows nothing about being an executive. Here's some advice for the dynamic duo: AIG deals in counterparty risk. The counterparties listen to you too.
It's the executive branch, you know. He's the chief executive. And it's his first executive position. It shows. President Urkel went live yesterday, and he complained. Whined, actually. He made an impotent gesture, talking about how someone should do something about those bonuses they dole out at AIG. Or he was going to do something, except he can't. Well, he said something, I'm not quite sure what, and neither was he. The US government owns 80% of AIG, and the chief executive of the US whined like a recently promoted secretary still asked to make coffee. He could do anything he wanted. But he did what all bad executives do: He tried to leave his castle with a pitchfork and join the mob and yell at the spot he used to be standing in. It doesn't work that way.
If President Urkel knew the first thing about being an executive, he'd know that you only whine up the ladder. You never whine to your underlings. They whine to you, you whine to your boss, and so forth. There is no "up" where you are, Mr. President. You're the Decider, now, remember? You asked for the job. That's why Nixon roamed the halls and talked to the pictures of dead people. They're your only colleagues now.
Be quiet, or do something. My advice is the former, because you seem to have no clue about the latter.
 I saw a Right Whale with calf from a schooner in the Gulf of Maine about 20 years ago. I had no idea there were so few of them, or that the european Right Whale population had been long hunted to extinction.
Along our American coast, with a few conservation efforts, their numbers are slowly recovering. Still, 350-400 is about as close to extinction as a species can get. Whales are as easy to kill as cows.
Magnificent critters.
Photo from the NYT article.
Monday, March 16. 2009
That's the evaporation of wealth in the US in 2008 - not including 2009. Some of that was mine - enough to make a difference in my plans and in my comfort level. No, I do not expect markets to only go up, nor do I ever expect to sell our house (which still has a significant mortgage) - but this was a tornado. A fluke.
Being no longer a young fellow, I must admit that it causes me some anxiety. We don't have pensions (who does these days, except government employees?). We have 401-Ks. I have no problem with working forever, but I did want some choice about it. I like choices.
IBD explains why it matters to everyone.
Tigerhawk explains why Lefties should be pleased about wealth destruction. More equality, etc. Tigerhawk can be a bit flip about it, though, because he is a young guy, full of beans and ideas, and clever enough to outsmart Obama's Socialist plans for us.
Friday, March 13. 2009
I assisted with an abortion one time in medical school, on my OB-Gyn rotation. I went to the bathroom afterwards, shook and sweated, and then puked my brains out. I refused to help with another abortion. Nobody minded. I delivered about 30 babies during that rotation. Scary if you get into a jam, but otherwise good fun.
Knippenberg considers the embryonic stem cell issue (an issue about which I have no particularly strong opinion), and notes the contradiction between the amoral notion of "let science do science" and the political notion of "most people want this."
I guess pols are experts at insulating their decision-making from morality and ethics. In my view, Utilitarianism, like "efficacy," is neither a moral nor an ethical posture. It's a cop-out. It's the easy way.
From Yuval Levin's Obama's False Choice:
Obama (also) chose to repeat the familiar cliché that the Bush policy was a betrayal of science. In his administration, he argued, “we make scientific decisions based on facts and not ideology.” The facts of the Bush administration’s funding of the research, its support for science funding more generally, and the emergence of alternatives to embryo destruction seem not to count. And the fact that every human embryo is a living human being seemed unworthy of mention.
Science policy is not a science: It must seek to use science to the benefit of the larger society, and also to restrain science in those rare instances when it threatens that society’s ideals. In hindsight, it seems increasingly clear that President Bush’s stem-cell-funding policy will stand as a model of how to strike a balance between these concerns. President Obama’s overturning of the Bush approach offers an unfortunate example of how fragile that balance often is.
Ed. note: Krauthammer today: Morally unserious in the extreme
 Somebody told me this week that he was putting together a Team Penning team in New York State. Not only did I not understand how that Western game works, I never would have imagined that there are Team Penning classes and competitions throughout NYS, CT and MA.
Here's how the game is played. Sounds like good fun, a bit like billiards with horses and cattle. Or maybe more like Chinese Checkers?
Here's just one of the sponsors I found by Googling Team Penning New York.
Thursday, March 12. 2009
A Mr. Free Marketesque wave of a fine cigar to all of the sites that linked with Bruce Kesler's excellent and well-researched post on ObamaCare here. Light one up for the cause of freedom and choice in medical treatment, with our thanks.
We do want to get those facts out there because in a DC health care debate we will be the recipients of many self-serving and emotionally-manipulative lies and scare tactics.
 Our Editor and I have had an email discussion about Kesler's post. Sad to say, we agree that the facts often play a minor role in politics because Lefty politics is all about accumulating State power. Their term is "by all means necessary." Of course, that means removing notions of freedom, free choice, and self-reliance from all of their political equations. It isn't even discussed.
Except for abortion (which is arguably a political issue of self-determination but not, of course, for the tiny new life that is snuffed out), have you ever heard a single Dem or Lefty argument for more freedom, more independence, and less State power over the individual person? Or his/her hard-earned money?
Here at Maggie's, we tend to believe in the virtues of freedom and self-reliance for most, and the human tragedy of dependency only for those unfortunates who require it. That's the only way to build people with strong spirits. The only "universal" things we want from the Feds are protection from foreign enemies and law-enforcement.
(We should note that our blog friend Shrinkwrapped posted a simultaneous and fine piece on the same subject: Preparing for the "Healthcare Reform in the United States" Debate: Beware of GIGO)
Wednesday, March 11. 2009
Related to our first link of this morning, Focus on Outcome, we see this from Dr. Clouthier: We need to redefine merit...because standardized testing is racist.
How come I always thought that merit was supposed to be the solution to genetic and ethnic bias? I guess not. Racism and ethnicism are the new anti-racism and anti-ethnicism. Silly me to have trouble with that, after all this time.
With this obsession with the genetics of skin tone, why don't we simply revert to the old way, where our genetic blood-line determines what we get to do? No, I have no African blood (well, way back we all do), or royal blood either. English serfs mostly - essentially slaves (does that give me a leg up?), I believe, back in the 1400s. Hard workers who survived long enough to reproduce. A random knight or two, I believe, for whatever that's worth, and a few clergymen.
Thank God, no Irish blood.
"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay -- in solid cash -- the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy."
Aldous Huxley, as quoted at Overcoming Bias
Theo asks whether the advertising image above is demeaning to Italian women. I say NO! (that's Italian for "No"). I say it's art. Let's analyze the picture:
It's a compelling image, with the late Renaissance landscape in the background (the Garden of Eden, with Eve covering her private parts with pasta in her new-found shame? Or is the background the bleak, sterile desert of Western Capitalism?). The gal's hair and the dinner plate are obvious echoes of Botticelli's Venus. But why the cup of cappucino? Coffee with pasta? What exactly is the artist trying to say about gender, transexualism, race, power, veganism, consumerism, carbon trioxide or whatever, capitalism, spaghetti, and coffee? Or does she have some Barbera in the coffee cup? Wine or coffee - bloodthirsty Christian wine or peaceful, spiritual Moslem coffee? West vs. East? But assuming it's wine in the coffee cup, what's up with that? Is she a victim of Capitalism, too oppressed and impoverished by The System to afford clothing or a proper wine glass? Or is her nakedness a warning about the Crisis of Anthropolitical Capitalist Global Warming? Is there Christian meaning in that cup: "Take this cup. This is my blood..."? For sure, she is saying "Eat me (and drink this)", but in what way, exactly? And does the lady represent a blasphemous pomo version of the Holy Virgin - or a faithful representation of the whores sex workers to whom Christ ministered? Madonna or sex worker? Or maybe a female Christ? Is she saying "Drink of me" (a request for an oral, not a phallic interaction - as a critique of our phallus-dominated, warmongering culture)? Is the snake-like pasta a reference to Satan, or an echo of Laocoon and his Sons? Or both, a deft blending of pagan with Christian imagery? And how do the tensions of all of these dualities help us to interrogate the dangerous and discredited assumptions of Western Civilization?
(I can do this sort of BS all day long, without once mentioning that she's a hot and delicious Italiano babe. Our college readers are welcome to expand on this post for their Art History term papers. An "A" guaranteed from your crackpot pomo prof.)
Tuesday, March 10. 2009
George Bernard Shaw warned “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” The major overhaul of American health care pursued by President Obama and his supporters is based on many false premises and is excessive and likely to do more harm than good. Tuning up and improvements already always dynamically occurs. Instead, ObamaCare is aimed at dramatically changing one-sixth of the US economy in ways that are untested or tested and found wanting, primarily involving huge increases in government direction of health care.
The details of ObamaCare are largely being left to Congress, the same body that stuffs the federal budget with earmarks, waste, and other programs that are not requested. ObamaCare is premised on claims for drastic changes in health care and major increases in government programs being necessary. Those claims are largely specious.
Below the fold, the top ten specious premises for ObamaCare are discussed:
 1. Comparing US Health Care To Other Developed Countries
2. US Health Care Spending Is More Than We Can Afford
3. Reform Overhaul Will Yield Major Savings
4. Increased Evidence-Based Medicine And Health Information Technology Will Significantly Improve Care and Reduce Costs
5. Present Administrative Costs And Insurer Profits Are Too High
6. US Consumer Dissatisfaction Requires Drastic Health Care Changes
7. Health Care Costs Are So High They Are A Major Cause Of Personal Bankruptcy
8. The Number Of Uninsured Is So Large That Drastic Health Care Changes Are Necessary
9. More Preventive Care Will Better Serve Consumers And Save Costs
10. Health Care Consumers Are Being Served By Drastic Health Care Changes
(More could be added, such as that government restraints on prescription drug prices will not impede incentives for innovations, but they are so transparently false that the list below dwells on other ObamaCare premises more misleading.)
Continue reading "Top Ten Reasons For ObamaCare Are Based On False Information"
Monday, March 9. 2009
My cousin Oscar offers this comment -
I don't want to sound like a spoilsport, but does anyone in the Mainstream Media or in the Obama Administration understand that the latest unemployment rate of 8.1% as of February, bad as it now feels, is actually close to the normal unemployment rate in France and most of the European Union (EU) without a recession?
Yes, that is the same EU which Obama and his friends want us to emulate in terms of much bigger Government, higher taxes on producers, weaker Free Markets, and much stronger Labor Unions.
In fact, there is no country in the EU which came close to the United States' former unemployment rate of about 4.5%, save Ireland, which adopted our Free Market approach and so was loathed by the other welfare states.
So, if you're an Obama enthusiast, stop whining. This is the norm for governments whose spending absorbs 30+% of their Gross National Product.
Get used to it...this is what you wanted.
Or, is it?
-Oscar
Sunday, March 8. 2009
It's about the pathologizing of opinions you don't agree with. Mind you, I have no problem with ending an exasperating disputation with "You're nuts. I can't discuss this with you."
But that's not a diagnosis. While I am fully aware of group and mass psychological themes, I only confer a diagnosis on those who pay me to do so. Even then, I often cannot give them a label because every person is unique.
I have more science under my belt than 95% of the folks I encounter who dispute my skepticism about AGW. But, in the world of science, the only proper attitude towards anything is skepticism. That's how it works. "Proof" is usually very elusive. We have many theories, few truths, and no Truths.
Brendan O'Neill at Spiked reports on the disease of Anthropogenic Global Warming Denial. One quote:
This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.
"Eco-psychologists"? May I conjecture that these people are nuts?
A re-post from 2007 -
 The post about Beantown food yesterday, with the link to Sissy Willis' baked bean recipe, put me to thinking about some of my favorite fall and winter foods. I guess spending yesterday afternoon getting a couple of loads of firewood with a friend's truck helped.
Johnnycakes, or Cornmeal pancakes, or these. You can do them with or without flour in the mix. I like to add a can of canned or frozen corn to the batter: it's one of the very few valid uses of canned corn.
(In fact, corn is a nice addition to regular pancake batter too. Give it a try. Of course, cranberries are great in pancakes. Their tartness adds a lot of zip to a dull pancake.)
Indian Pudding. It's what was called "Hasty Pudding," but made with corn meal, and cooked slowly - never hastily. A little ice cream or drizzled heavy cream on top.
Why is Boston called Beantown? It's because of the triangular trade. Here's a Durgin-Park recipe. Really good with black bread. Heck, I even like baked beans from the can. Our reader reminds us that, in the old days, beans or peas in the pot were termed "Pease Porridge."
I'll do Yankee apple desserts in another post.
 Pruning is a subject of great interest to us, as it is to all gardeners. It is now the last chance to do our winter pruning of those late-blooming shrubs and trees which bloom on new growth.
This site from Texas A&M is an excellent pruning overview, with special attention to the pruning requirements of Crepe Myrtle.
Shrubs which are pruned wrong offend my delicate gardening sensibilities.
Photo: One of my young Crepe Myrtles blooming a couple of Augusts ago. Up here in Yankeeland, north of their growing zone, they have a small chance of thriving if they are a hardy variety, and are well-sheltered and well-mulched for the winter. Mine do just fine. While they are commonplace in the South, up here nobody seems to know what they are.
As with hybrid Rhodadendrons and azaleas, it's an iffy proposition up here - but well-worth when it works.
Saturday, March 7. 2009
 Roast grouse recipe wars between The Englishman and Mr. Free Market.
My guess is that the Brit grouse, for dining, are unlike our delicately-flavored flavoured Ruffed Grouse and more like our Sharp-Tailed Grouse.
Photo above: A Highlands grouse walk-up hunt. Wonder why there are no trees? There were, once. The Great Caledonian Forest.
Photo below: Red Grouse
Friday, March 6. 2009
 I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed on Imus this morning during my 6 AM drive to work, and lost all respect for her. She was flacking hard for Obama.
She claimed that "nobody knows what to do about the economy." She said that Obama must experiment with government's role just as FDR did. She said his personal popularity polls show that people believe that he cares, and that's the important thing. She said he needs time to solve all the problems (What!?!). Oh, I almost forgot. She said that teleprompters are the modern way (although neither she nor Don Imus were using one).
Wrong on all counts. Pure flackery by a partisan Dem delivering Dem talking points propaganda. I would have expected more from her.
I'll just take her first point, because I happen to know what to do: 1) Restore the uptick rule to discourage the highly profitable bear raids against solid companies (rumor is that Russian and Chinese hedge funds are making a mint doing that, probably in collusion). 2) Cut corporate taxes to encourage hiring 3) Cut cap gains taxes to encourage investment in business growth 4) Cut individual tax rates to unleash spending and to remove the crushing threat of higher taxes 5) Get rid of "mark to market": it makes it almost impossible to make a long-term inventment in a tree that needs time to bear fruit. 6) Quit the war against business and the delusion of big government "solutions" (ie my money) to everything from my health to GM's de facto bankruptcy, and 7) Talk up the American economy and its resilience.
In other words, unleash the animal spirits of the economy and the creative power of the people instead of frightening everybody by threatening to put it all on a tighter leash. People yearn to be unleashed to do things and to follow their dreams, and not to be hand-fed or to become serfs to The State. Disincentivization to effort and reward has been tried elsewhere, and it does not work very well. (Plus a prosperous nation is in a good position to take decent care of its feckless, unmotivated, parasitic, and unfortunate.)
But they will do none of those things, because they are not about what works. They are about their ideology and their political goals. They are clever, crafty and tricksy - but deeply unwise, and unwilling to think outside their little old 1930s box.
Why? Same old reason: These people live inside government, and thus play the government game. They love power, and somehow became deluded into thinking that they are smarter than us regular folks. Wrong! Disgusting as it may be, whatever 'system" they give us, people will find a way to "work it" for their own interests. It's called "incentive," and it is quite human: people want to take care of themselves, their families and their loved ones - and they want to be free to do things their own way, whether they screw it up or not.
It's about human dignity. Nobody can give anybody that. All anybody can do is to free people to pursue it.
Thursday, March 5. 2009
An honest accountant dies and St. Peter tells him that he must first spend a day in hell to decide where he wants to be. In hell, he finds beautiful golf courses without greens fees, alluring women who promise to fulfill his fantasies, and a mansion without cost to him. The accountant returns to St. Peter and tells him that hell is his choice. Upon arriving back in hell, it’s a desolated wasteland full of poor wretched souls, the women are decrepit and reject him, and his home is a hovel. The accountant asks the Devil about the change. The Devil replies: Before you were a recruit, now you’re staff.
The former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, respected for honest accounting, Peter Orszag, is now Director of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Now he’s staff.
His fall from grace was on exhibit several times this past week.
Last Friday, Orszag defended the trimming of itemized deductions by asserting that, “the best way to boost charitable giving is to jumpstart the economy and raise incomes – and the purpose of the Recovery Act enacted earlier this month was to do precisely that.”
The conclusion of the current Congressional Budget Office on the stimulus Recovery Act? As Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiew reports:
“they estimate the long-run effect on GDP may be slightly negative due to crowding out.”
In a Congressional hearing on President Obama’s budget forecast, Orszag was questioned how the budget could count savings based on the “surge” in Iraq continuing for 10 more years when President Obama announced all combat troops would be withdrawn by 2010. The YouTube is here. Orszag counts as “savings” not continuing for 10-years the temporary level of “surge” troops in 2008. Peter Wehner, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, now a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, observes: “This is, even by Washington standards, unusually dishonest. And coming from the administration of Barack Obama, who promised us “honest” accounting and made a big show of how much integrity and candor he would bring to his governing, this is astonishing.”
Democrat Senator Max Baucus, a leader in the Obama administration’s effort to enact sweeping, mostly untested or tested and found wanting, changes to Americans’ health care, pressured the current Director of CBO to cook the books. Senator Baucus: “…it’s not too much of an overstatement to say CBO can make or break health care reform, and I mean that because we got to go by your numbers…I do believe that there are several different intellectually honest pathways to get from here to there. It’s not just one automatic, and so it needs - you got to be ever more creative to find intellectually honest pathways to get the savings we have to have - practically and both politically - to get health care reform.”
A crooked employer asks several applicants for an accounting position the answer to 2 + 2. The winning applicant asks the employer what he wants the answer to be.
That’s the kind of accounting the Obama administration is practicing. It’s not a joke.
People I talk to are beginning to act a bit scared - even those who voted for Obama. I sense a new fear factor emerging which transcends the banking crisis. People have lost a lot of money, and foresee a business-stifling, high-taxing, low profit future which will burden generations with a bigger government we will never be able to get out from under.
The plan to phase out the mortgage, medical and charitable deductions is just one piece of a series of rule changes in the middle of the game which makes folks uneasy. It's especially uncomfortable for those within ten years of retirement, or with tuitions in their future, who made plans based on existing expectations and stability.
How do you plan for your family when the rules are in flux? How do you invest? How do you invest for retirement? How do you plan to start a business? How do you buy a house? Why would you spend a penny on anything?
Several (non-paranoid) people mentioned to me this week that wealth destruction is a deliberate policy in DC. True or not, Hopey-Changey is slowly turning into plain Scary. We predicted this.
Powerline quotes a reader comment:
If I postpone my retirement as a result of losses to my savings caused in substantial part by President Obama's policies, so that I do not leave the workforce when I had planned, does that mean that my job has been "saved" by Obama?
Never Yet Melted, with a quote from Obama's book:
Who could possibly have predicted that a red diaper baby community organizer with a life-long record of radical associations would adopt an ultra-left program of taxing and spending? Messrs. Buckley and Brooks obviously weren’t paying attention when they read Dreams from My Father. Obama explains that he learned as an adolescent that he could get away with doing drugs and raising Cain, simply by mollifying the adults in his life by speaking softly and politely.
DFMF, 94-95:
It was the start of my senior year in high school… and one day she [his mother] marched into my room, wanting to know the details of [his friend’s] arrest. I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry. I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.
Dick Morris:
...he is determined to pass his agenda of bigger government, nationalized healthcare and vastly greater spending even at the price of inflation and subsequent recession. He puts ideology first and the economy a distant second.
The stock market has figured out his priorities and is responding accordingly. One can only hope that voters also eventually realize what is going on.
Mankiw:
Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, has said, “You don’t ever want to let a crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
What he has in mind is not entirely clear. One possibility is that he wants to use a temporary crisis as a pretense for engineering a permanent increase in the size and scope of the government. Believers in limited government have reason to be wary.
Why so tentative about that, Professor?
From Krauthammer's The Obamaist Manifesto:
In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48 percent to 47 percent of GDP during the past 10 years. In the United States, it has shot up from 34 percent to 40 percent. Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.
Ed. note: To top it all off, and to add insult to injury, Congress has now given itself a pay raise, along with an extra gift of $93,000 for petty cash. If $93 grand is "petty," I am in the wrong business. With their pensions (not 401-Ks - real old-fashioned pensions) and remarkable medical plans and perks, they are entirely insulated from the consequences of their own actions. I see no collectivist "sacrifice for the common good" on the part of Congress.
Wednesday, March 4. 2009
The President wants more college grads. As VDH noted in Triumph of Banality:
President Obama also promises historic new rates of high-school and college graduation. Again, he seems to think the present problem is the absence of money — as if brilliant, gifted, and motivated young people are ending up at McDonald’s rather than doing quantum physics because the bogeymen “they” raised the bar and didn’t give them enough college scholarship support.
Actually, Obama's goal is easily accomplished: just lower the bar. I happen to believe we need fewer college grads, and to make the High School diploma meaningful again. America needs more plumbers, electricians, handymen, mechanics, gunsmiths - and fewer Women's Studies majors.
Ferguson addresses Obama's Diploma Mill in The Weekly Standard. One quote:
The assumption here is that the way to make somebody a competitive worker is to send him to college, an idea that will astonish anyone who's ever been served in a restaurant by a waiter with a master's in art history. This is just the first of the confusions that dog the president's proposal, which for the moment exists only in hypothetical form. Another confusion comes from his hazy definition of what the problem is.
On re-reading my post the other day, and a few of our recent posts on education, I am beginning to think that our American "system" of "higher ed" is obsolete.
A Liberal Arts education was designed for gentlemen-scholars, the few who were driven by curiosity, towards careers in the clergy, or to produce new teaching professionals. Good citizenship, and the practical tools to function in the world were taught in the lower years. The basic furnishings of the mind, as reader MM would term it.
A Liberal Arts degree was never meant to be practical, yet 30% of Americans have Bachelor Degrees: degrees that could mean anything, or nothing at all.
The democratization of higher ed, via things like the GI Bill, turned higher ed into a job credential. These days, I seem many young people who enjoy and are inspired by college in the old-fashioned way - but a very large many who "just need the piece of paper" and who cheat, screw, and drink their way through it while avoiding anything difficult or challenging.
The social consequence is having masses of non-scholars living extended childhoods at a ridiculous cost to their parents. While enjoying the luxury to some extent, many are also frustrated by a yearning for independence and adulthood, and the desire to do something real. Famous college drop-outs like Bill Gates, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Noel Coward, Woody Allen, Warren Buffet, Charles Dickens (grammar school drop-out), Albert Einstein (high school drop-out), Robert Frost, J. Paul Getty, Horace Greeley (high school drop out), and Bob Dylan are among them.
This site lists many of the rich or famous who either dropped out of high school or college. In some cases, grammar school - when you used to be allowed to do that.
I'd like to see more of our high school grads out there working, and getting night course education in areas of expertise they might like to pursue. I'd like to see more apprenticeships too.
A relevant post at Phi Beta Cons asks "How does the military manage it?"
We keep hearing about all the jobs that "require" a college degree — as if the work were so hard that a bright high-school kid couldn't possibly learn to do it. But as the writer of this e-mail points out, the military has jobs that call for a great deal of training, intelligence, and responsibility and manages with young people who for the most part have never gone past high school in formal education...
If I had the time and brains, I'd redesign the entire thing with high school as the core, with a core mission. I'd expect each school board to decide what kids need to know to get a HS diploma. I'd also consider reducing high school to 3 years and liberal arts degrees to 3 years. Do our readers have any ideas?
Monday, March 2. 2009
 Man, did Rush's CPAC speech (which we linked here) kick up a lot of dust in all quarters. He loves that: it gets him listeners, and he loves being provocative. Truth is, I have never heard Rush say a single hateful thing to anybody, although he can be tough on seminar callers. Plenty of humorous mockery, of course. As far as I can tell, the guy loves people, and respects them and their potential enough to not want them to be serfs of the State. Anyway, a few links:
Rush to Chairman Steele: Where are your guts?
Where Rush went astray at CPAC. Hawkins at Pajamas
Rush to the Kultursmog. Driscoll
Rush has been demonized ever since he hit the airwaves. As an interesting and articulate spokesman and evangelist for the Conservative cause, the Left just had to do that. They demonize anyone Conservative who attracts a following, and have done so, with the MSM's assistance, for 40 years. Rush is Everyman's Bill Buckley (except Buckley got a pass because "he was one of us" - a "sophisticated" Yalie - plus he never had a large, populist following and thus was viewed as harmless). Whether I agree with him or not about things, I see him as a national treasure and as a stimulant for debate about important subjects and principles. That is his role.
Sunday, March 1. 2009
The long-time prosperous but (historically) tasteful, silver-spoon WASPy NYC suburb of Greenwich, CT (the growing-up home of George Bush Sr.) became the hedge fund capital of the world over the past decade, as well as a highly-desirable address for newly-weathy Wall Street Masters of the Universe. Many houses, too, are owned by international folks who visit only occasionally, or as second homes for New Yorkers.
In 2006, the median home price was $1.7 million. I recently read that Greenwich suddenly has over 80 homes for sale for over 7 million. That's a lot for a small town. But yes, prices have toppled, sales are nearly dead, and the inventory is surging in the fancier NYC suburbs. Let's see what real estate is doing there now:
Here's one for $460,000. A simple, classic, nice c. 1900 workingman's house:
Here's a less modest listing, for $2,175,000. It says 4 bedrooms, but I'd bet that they are small:
This place is cute, for only $519,000. A happy couple could be happy here - but a contented couple could be happy anywhere:
Here's a 4-acre building lot (in 4-acre zoning) for 1 million. I like it just as it is:
Moving a bit upscale, this pleasant 3 BR place is now only $3,125,000. A tiny Cape with some small additions:
This 5 BR was the carriage house for the servants on an old estate from the pre-income tax days. 2 acres. $4,000,000. I like it:
That one was lovely, but you can also buy this hideous architectural monstrosity for $4 million. I guess you could set it on fire, live in a tent, and farm the land, but I doubt that tomato prices could pay your mortgage. But who cares? The Obama plan could get you off the hook:
Moving up to $6.5 million, your basic, solid New England 6 BR colonial:
Jumping up to $9.5 million, you often tend to leave good taste behind and begin to find new, self-aggrandizing places like the one below. Things meant to be "mansions," I guess, in wannabe Brit aristocracy-style. Some folks need a mansion-thingy for self esteem or social-climbing purposes. It's a free country: to each his own. You could cover this whole thing with ivy and it would look better:
Just for fun, let's see what $18 million will get you. This one is comfortable, homey, unpretentious - glitz-free - and pleasant:
Tommy Hilfiger's house is for sale for $22 million. The 20,000-square-foot home has seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, a massive great room, basketball court, spa with a waterfall, theater, gym and a 2,000-bottle wine cellar.
Let's spend our very last penny on this one. $95 million, plenty of bedrooms but a mere 40 acres. The sellers were major Lefty donors. Impress your friends! Set up a nice rifle range! Get some kegs, dig a pit next to the pool and roast a pig or two and throw everybody's girlfriend into the pool. Or is it just a shallow self-reflecting pool?
President Obama’s proposed budget includes increasing the income and capital gains tax bracket on those earning over $200,000 while reducing the percentage of income that can be deducted for charitable contributions, and other itemized deductions such as mortgage interest, to 28%. Combined, the effect would be to raise their tax percentage bracket into the 40’s.
Both tax increases raise ironic issues for the many more affluent who voted for Obama and Democrat Congressmen and Senators, which those who didn’t might enjoy. However, one should expect alliances opposing these tax increases between many Republican and Democrat voters, if for no other reason than self-interest, not to mention the deemed negative economic growth and charitable impacts. I’ll leave the capital gains and housing arguments for now to focus on the charitable deduction.
Obama is focusing on the wrong problem with the charitable tax deduction, besides making matters worse.
The strongest arguments for retaining the present charitable tax deduction are:
· It’s our money, not the government’s, and particularly in a time of increasing taxes retaining any of our money is preferable.
· Most itemized deductions are already reduced by 3% of the amount for single taxpayers by which their adjusted gross incomes is above $75,000 and married joint taxpayers above $150,000, the reduction reaching a loss of up to 80% of the itemized deductions at higher adjusted gross incomes. Charitable deductions are, also, already restricted to 10% of corporate income, 30% of individuals’ if to a private foundation (which contributes to other public charities), and 50% to a public charity.
· Individuals can make better choices and exert better controls over charitable spending than the government.
· Many important functions are funded via the charitable deduction, such as religious institutions, education, veterans organizations, aid to the poor.
· Many of the added government programs on which the higher tax revenues would be spent are unnecessary or wasteful.
The strongest arguments for restricting the present use by the more affluent of the charitable deduction and other itemized deductions are:
· The better off economically are larger beneficiaries of the tax deduction because they are at a higher tax bracket. Although they are also already being taxed for a percent of tax revenues double the size of their proportion of incomes, Obama argues that they should pay even more, to help fund his panoply of major spending increases on programs for which he and Democrats yearn as important.
· Er, can’t think of any others.
This may seem to pretty much seal the case against further restricting the itemized deduction.
However, there is still a separate case to be made in favor of some further restrictions on the charitable tax deduction. Most lay in the realm of more enforcement of the present tax code. In too many cases it is abused. During the Bush administration, enforcement was increased. More is needed and remains to be done. This should be Obama’s focus.
· Some not-for-profit organizations’ executives receive compensation that is unreasonable and excessive, the present IRS Code’s metric. Public embarrassment has caused some to be cut back. The new IRS 990 filing developed during Bush’s administration will further expose compensation practices. It’s an amorphous tax Code metric, but instances grossly over the line are clearer. One should expect the IRS to follow up, especially when public embarrassment isn’t enough. Similarly, many charities spend disproportionate amounts of their income on administration and fund-raising. Some are combining to cut overhead. Others whose spending is out-of-whack to their purpose should face percentage limitations on such functions.
· Current economics is leading to closer contributor scrutiny of which charities merit donations. Similarly, some added information should be made public about some contributors, as many tax-exempt organizations influence US public policies. The new IRS 990 filing provides much added and new information from which to judge charities. Much will be available on the Internet. As the voluntary disclosure of foreign contributors to former President Clinton’s foundation exhibits the potential influence of non-citizens on US public policies, and the refusal of former President Carter’s to disclose, all contributions by non-citizens should be publicly disclosed.
· The IRS Code for tax-exempt, tax-deductible 501(c)(3) public charities is drawn broadly. A tax deduction or exemption on income is not a privilege granted by the government, but a right that can only be legally circumscribed. Still, when government spending is increasing and taxes increased, it is reasonable to re-examine which income is to be taxed. The IRS Code does not require major percentages of charities’ income to be spent on their purported purpose. Further, many organizations receiving the public charity designation are spending for purposes either distant from their ostensive “charitable” purpose, or possibly less needed in the face of other needs. Many not-for-profit hospitals do not provide appreciably more care to the poor. Many educational organizations are thinly veiled partisan political fronts. Many that purport to aid the poor are targeted at aiding a political party’s ends. The IRS explanation of the present Code, below, should be tightened to reduce or eliminate veiled political party advocacy, is aimed at the poor to require that a significant proportion of spending is upon those in financial need, or to curtail edifices in excess of clear need.
“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”
If President Obama is really serious about all paying their fair share of increased taxes, he should direct his attentions to this sphere. There’s tens to hundreds of billions of annual tax revenues that might be collected. According to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis done at the request of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, of political donations from the staff at the 25 wealthiest foundations and 75 of the largest charities, 82% from charity employees and 98% from foundation employees went to Obama and Democrat congressional candidates and political party committees. Republican Senator Charles Grassley has led the fight in Congress to examine and restrict charity abuses.
You might encourage him.
The Obama administration's rationale, complete with many misleading statistics, is here. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/02/27/TheBudgetandCharitableDonations/
Related: The war on charity at Wizbang
Saturday, February 28. 2009
 Question re Cap & Trade: why would corporations mind paying a carbon surcharge? They will simply pass it on to consumers as a price increase and have a net cost of zero.
Answer: Passing the cost to consumers, which they must do, will make domestic American products more expensive in comparison to imports and will result in reduced sales.
Unintended consequences: 1. To the extent that production can be shifted to foreign companies or foreign plants of US companies, jobs will move overseas. 2. With respect to domestic production, the result will be wildly inflationary. 3. Because cap & trade fees allow pollution to continue, the environment will not benefit (but it is becoming clear that global warming climate change is not human-caused in any case so the only effect will be that production will shift to China and the world will see a net increase on pollution). 4. Cap & Trade is designed to motivate companies to spend money to reduce their pollution, but that will further increase their costs and further reduce their competitiveness – a lose-lose situation.
Photo: That's our Kondratiev
Friday, February 27. 2009
 David Leonhardt explains in the NYT how Obama's budget sweeps away Reagan.
How nice. Back to the 1970s, or the 1930s. Reagan wanted everybody to get wealthy. The old way is to reduce prosperity. It's very easy to do: just take their money away from them, take the gummint cut, and hand it to somebody else.
The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second.
That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
She Who Must Be Obeyed has already warned me: If this goes through, I am working 4 days a week, not five. She would prefer my company to my working at 50 cents on the dollar (with CT income tax) for the government - and she mostly handles the financial affairs. Fortunately for me, I enjoy her company too. I can easily help to reduce income inequality by being less productive. I love to work, but I love to have fun too. And there is nothing I wish to buy...besides vacations and trips.
Thursday, February 26. 2009
A repost from 2007:
 Today during lunch I read the piece by Tyler at Tangled Web about Dawkins, who is hopeful that a "final scientific enlightenment" will destroy religion on earth. Dawkins thinks it might require that elusive "theory of everything" to do the job.
Tyler correctly notes that the "theory of everything" will never address mankind's eternal questions.
Then I followed a link in one of his commenters to an essay by physicist Stanley Jaki, who makes the case that the "Theory of Everything" must be subject to Godel's Theorem. Very interesting essay, but I cannot cut and paste from it. Read it. He discusses Stephen Hawkings' epiphany, after many years of championing the quest, that a "theory of everything" is impossible.
Then I went over to Wikipedia to refresh my vague recollections of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which has nothing in common with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. That Wikipedia entry was good, but there was some rough sledding in it.
And that led me to the entry on The Liar Paradox.
The Liar Paradox is the old "Nothing I say to you is true," and the many variations thereof.
Is the Liar Paradox a true paradox, or an artifact of symbolization? I think the latter, but that reveals my bias of expecting consistency from reality. If you're curious about the approaches to the puzzle, the Wikipedia entry seems to do a good job with it.
Thus passed a very enjoyable Tuesday lunch break for this dilettante. (The Escher image is perfect, Bird Dog - thanks.)
Update: Here's a piece that takes you deeper into the Liar Paradox. Thanks, BL
For those who have faith in the power of civil discourse to expose and isolate radical nonsense, there was a small victory this week at San Diego’s prestigious University of California campus.
The faculty and grad students of its Ethnic Studies Department issued a Statement one-sidedly accusing Israel as racist for its actions in Gaza, the Statement failing to consider Gazans’ fault or, indeed, that Israel itself is a multi-racial society where Sephardic (mostly Middle Eastern) Jews as well as Arabs have more rights and economic opportunities than in any Islamic country. The Ethnic Studies Department scheduled a forum on campus for Wednesday, Feb. 25, to further their charge.
From on and off campus, there was vigorous written refutation of the charge, and criticism of the Ethnic Studies Department’s lack of academic standards. The refutations were informed and civil. I wrote a column in the San Diego Jewish World on the matter (including a link to the Statement and comment thread on it), pointing out that the Islamist and pro-Palestinian groups alliance with far leftists on campuses has graduated anti-Semitism from singling out individual Jews to eradicating the Jewish state.
The UCSD Ethnic Studies Department cancelled yesterday's forum, claiming that the “character” of counter-writings is threatening. This is another of such groups’ canards and excuses, actually further revealing their fear and inability to stand up to determined factual and sane rebuttal.
Each campus is different but, regardless of outcome, this incident demonstrates the power of civil discourse. If not exercised by those who believe in it, the field is surrendered to those who don’t.
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