(Local) global warming caused by wind farms?
I’ve always thought it was crazy to think that pulling that much energy out of the atmosphere would have no effect. But it’s a politically correct energy source, at least for now.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
“I’m Not A Lawyer”
Sorry, but that’s not an excuse to be indifferent to the Constitution, particularly when you’ve taken an oath to uphold and defend it. As Jen Rubin says, the Dems are very selective about their concerns about “judicial activism.”
Obama, of course, doesn’t care one bit about deference to legislation passed by a democratically elected legislative body. He is concerned with outcomes, namely that the Supreme Court rubber-stamp his agenda. (Strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, uphold Obamacare, etc.) As do many on the left, he is convinced that whatever legislation he likes is constitutional and whatever he strongly objects to must offend some constitutional provision. This mind-set perfectly reflects the degree to which judicial review has become a matter of subjective preferences for the left.
Ironically, Obama’s appointee Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to discern in the administration’s argument an overreach not consistent with federal principles of preemption. Kudos to her; she seems to not be operating, as she told law school gatherings once upon a time, as a “wise Latina” but as a justice responsible for determining the meaning of the Constitution and the laws that come before her.
For too many on the left, judicial philosophy approaches deconstructionism (or postmodernism, if you prefer) — the literary, interpretative fad that posits that words have no fixed or objective meaning. In the literary realm, all that is lost is intellectual rigor. Unfortunately, in the political realm such a viewpoint leads to the disintegration of the rule of law.
They don’t want the rule of law. They want the rule of them.
A College Education
The false promise.
It seems to me that the big problem is that there is no relationship between student loan rates and prospects of paying them off, because the government got involved and completely eliminated the connection between them. In a sane world, an art history degree would carry a much higher interest rate than an engineering degree, and the market would send a signal to the students that maybe they weren’t making the best choices in major.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Jerry Pournelle:
What everyone seems to overlook is that the cost of college tuition will always rise to exceed the amount of money seeking tuition. The more money the government puts into the market, the higher the price of college, and it will trickle down from Harvard to the meanest community college. When more money chases goods, the price of the goods goes up; and if government then acts to increase the money supply, the price will rise without limit. Evan as I write this, the faculty of the California State Universities is voting to authorize a strike because they have not had raises in four years, poor things. The California State Universities were in the master plan to be the State Colleges, undergraduate institutions kept cheap and open essentially to everyone qualified to be in a a State College. They were to incorporate the State Teachers Colleges, and be the primary undergraduate education system; outstanding students would be accepted at or allow to transfer to the State University system, which would have a monopoly on graduate education.
The State College took over the State Teachers Colleges and next thing you know they needed to offer graduate degrees in education (although there is no evidence that those who have graduate degrees in education are any better at teaching, and in fact California State Colleges for twenty years taught such an ineffective system of reading that the illiteracy rate in California soared; but that’s for another story. If you know anyone about to enter the California state public schools, go to www.readingtlc.com and get my wife’s reading program so the kid will learn to read even if the teacher is a Cal State grad.) Anyway, all the Cal States offer graduate degrees in everything, and most of them are not very useful; but so long as the money supply lasts the costs will continue to rise, the faculties will be paid and paid and overpaid and pensioned off at very high levels, and the dance will continue.
So now it is becoming manifest that not only is the public school system nearly worthless, but half the graduates of the higher education system are unemployable.
There are solutions to this, most of them drastic, and we know how to have good higher education institutions. But so long as we are willing to pay for it, we’ll continue to have what we get. Charlie Sheffield and I played with this decades ago in a book called HIGHER EDUCATION. Alas it is not yet a Kindle book (I’m working on it). But the decay of our institutions of higher education under the relentless attacks of the government shoveling in money and the Iron Law assuring that the money will be accepted and overspent continues. And the beat goes on. We sowed that wind a long time ago, so why are we astonished at what we reap now?
Not all of us are.
[Update a few minutes later]
Glenn Reynolds expands on the thought:
What would a serious student-loan reform look like? Well, it would look more like normal loans. Students’ ability to borrow would be based on the likelihood that they’d be able to pay. Plus, loans would be dischargeable in bankruptcy if things turned out badly.
Right now, student loans are sold on the basis that “college” promotes higher earnings. But “college” isn’t an undifferentiated product. Some degrees — say in Electrical Engineering — increase earnings dramatically. Others — in, say, gender studies — not so much. A rational lender would be much more willing to finance the former than the latter.
Oh, and in ordinary credit transactions, creditors bear some risk. Loan someone money that they can’t pay back, and you take a loss if they go bankrupt. In the housing bubble, this discipline broke down because the people writing the loans weren’t going to hold on to the mortgages. Similarly, colleges today get their money upfront; if the student can’t pay it back, that’s someone else’s problem.
Let’s give colleges some “skin in the game” by making them absorb the loss, or at least part of it, if students can’t pay. Perhaps if students can’t pay their loans by 10 years after graduation, they should be allowed to discharge them in bankruptcy, with the institutions that got the loan money on the hook for, say, 20 percent of the loss.
If not a higher percentage. This would go a long way to fixing the broken incentive structure. But what Obama is proposing is just more of the same, pouring more gasoline on the flames.
[Afternoon update]
More thoughts from Nick Gillespie, and a response from Instapundit. Yes, humanities degrees aren’t intrinsically worthless, but the way that many of them are taught these days makes them so in many cases.
Climate Changing
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
A Rectification Of Names
I have some thoughts on the “end of the War on Terror” over at PJMedia.
Blade Runner
What did Philip K. Dick think of it? Now we know.
Libertarian Immigration
This isn’t exactly news (Milton Friedman, no doubt among others, pointed it out years ago) but you can’t have both open immigration and a welfare state. Mark Krikorian has some related thoughts:
I can keep playing this game: “it’s simply unsustainable to have a libertarian immigration policy and a post-national elite that has no concern for sovereignty,” “it’s simply unsustainable to have a libertarian immigration policy and a public school system,” “it’s simply unsustainable to have a libertarian immigration policy and laws requiring emergency rooms to treat all comers regardless of ability to pay.”
At some point you become like the Ptolemaic astronomer who adds epicycles on epicycles to avoid the bitter conclusion that the Earth is not, in fact, at the center of the universe. Occam’s razor would suggest embracing the simpler explanation — mass immigration is incompatible with modern society and should be discontinued. It makes no more sense than geocentric astronomy, and it’s a lot more harmful.
As Jim Bennett is wont to say, “Democracy, immigration, multi-culturalism: Pick any two.”
They Really Lack A Sense Of Irony
The White House’s hand-picked “anti-bullying Czar” bullies a conference of schoolchildren. They say they’re not anti-Christian, but as with the Roman Imperialist at the EPA into crucifixion, by their words (and deeds) shall ye know them.
[Update a few minutes later]
If “it gets better,” why is Dan Savage so bitter?
What’s The Real War On Women?
Not forcing Catholic institutions to hand out free birth control, or “honor” killings? Call me crazy, but I think the latter is much more of a war on women.
Laying The Groundwork For The Next LA Riots
Thanks a bunch, Al:
By yoking himself to the memory of the Los Angeles riots, and to the coming trial of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Sharpton is implicitly threatening violence even as he explicitly denounces it. “I’ve fought for justice for Trayvon,” Sharpton wrote at the Huffington Post, “because I believe in America and I don’t believe we should burn it down. Let’s prove that we are in fact the United States of America, and let’s not miss another opportunity to show just how great we can be.”
And just how great can we be, Mr. Sharpton, if “justice for Trayvon” results in an acquittal of George Zimmerman?
Sharpton surely knows this is a real possibility. As pointed out by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, among others, the case against Zimmerman is feeble. But this is of little import to Sharpton, and indeed may even be to his advantage. The initial narrative of the Martin shooting – racist white guy shoots harmless black child – has come unraveled, leaving Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey in the unenviable position of pressing a murder case in which the only known eyewitness bolsters the defendant’s claim of self-defense. But expectations of a conviction have already been raised, not least by Sharpton himself, leaving him in the role of the man who will pour oil on the troubled waters. And, conveniently for Sharpton, the anniversary of the L.A. riots arrives to provide exactly the right platform for the type of self-promotion at which he is so adept.
I’m sure that Chris Gerrib will be along any minute to defend the lying race baiter, though.