In the videos, YAF members approach their classmates with a petition calling for the redistribution of student GPAs. “It would make it so that all students have an equal opportunity to go to grad school,” University of Oregon YAFer Kenny Crabtree explains. Students with bad grades would therefore be entitled to points earned by straight-A students.
Their classmates are flabbergasted.
“Is that, like, a joke or something?” one guy responds.
“Why would you take points from people who are higher up and give them to people who didn’t meet the requirements?” another asks George Mason University YAFers. But when asked if he supports Obama’s wealth redistribution schemes, he says “yes.”
Shocking? Not really. As I pointed out in my March 30 column, most college students are economically illiterate. When quizzed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute about basic concepts, such as supply and demand, the average student’s score was 53 percent. And since most don’t work or pay taxes (only 46 percent of full-time students have jobs), they simply have no idea how capitalism works.
The economic illiteracy being promulgated by our educational system is quite depressing. It’s almost like it’s part of a grand scheme.
Senate Democrats have denied Arlen Specter seniority on the committees on which he will now serve as a Democrat. That means Specter, who has been a senator for 28 years, will now occupy the most junior position among Senate Democrats. A few minutes ago, I asked a GOP Senate source for his reaction. “I don’t know if it says more about [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s lack of commitment or Specter’s naiveté,” he told me. “But either way, it’s going to be hard for Specter to argue that dumping him now would cost his constituents seniority and clout — he has the same ranking on committees that his successor will have in 2011.”
Normally, I’d say that this would be the move of the Stupid Party, except that the Republicans now have some leverage over this creature. And of course, vice versa.
At this point, I’d say that he’s a man without a party…
NASA, predictably, is not happy about being forced to change. NASA’s ex-administrator, Mike Griffin, has been a particularly vocal opponent of the idea, claiming that outsiders shouldn’t try to second-guess NASA on technical decisions, and that it’s cheaper to stay on course after four years of effort than to start over from scratch. Sorry, but that’s not the way it looks to me.
I’d agree that it would be cheaper, if I thought NASA had made four years of progress. But Ares I is the International Space Station of rockets: redesigned again and again, justified using assumptions that no longer apply, and already escalating mightily in cost (and already well behind schedule). There comes a time when it really is cheaper to start over in some more sensible way, because banging your head against the wall harder and harder isn’t getting you through it.
Mike Griffin is employing the sunk-cost fallacy — that the fact that we’ve already invested a lot in something justifies further expenditure. In this case, though, the investment isn’t just taxpayer dollars, but his personal pride and reputation.
Let’s hope that Norm Augustine comes to a sensible conclusion.
The hypocrisy of these people never fails to amaze. She’s supposed to give up her crown for having exactly the same opinion as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?
Not surprisingly, companies’ take on the issue is that the proposals, if passed, would raise their cost of operations and put them at a disadvantage when competing against overseas rivals based in countries with lower corporate tax rates, according to SiliconValley.com. Silicon Valley companies will be among those lobbying against the proposals. Said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group:
On a Richter scale of 1 to 10, this is about a 20.
So ye sow, so shall ye reap.
We’ll see what this does to his approval ratings in Silicon Valley.
This isn’t new (Fischer’s book has been out for years), but it may be interesting to those who haven’t encountered it previously:
It’s not hard to pick up echoes of these different “freedom ways” in today’s debates. Probably each of us finds some one of the four more attractive than the others. Very approximately speaking, modern liberalism descends from the first and third of Fischer’s styles, modern conservatism from the second and fourth.
It should also be noted that the War Between The States was a war between the Puritans and Quakers in the north against the Cavaliers and Scots-Irish in the south, though the Cavaliers were more likely to be slaveholders, and the latter were just fighting for their states and pride. Modern “liberals” are indeed descended from the Puritans — they’re just puritanical in a more secular way.
…versus universal health care. Some thoughts from (MD) Paul Hsieh:
According to a recent CNN poll, 8 out of 10 Americans are generally happy with their current health care. But they are legitimately concerned about rising costs. Furthermore, the constant media drumbeat about our health care “crisis” is making most Americans think that everybody else is having a rough time with health care (even if they themselves are doing relatively well). This fuels the false perception that we need drastic change in the form of government-managed “universal health care.” In fact, the opposite is true. If Americans are satisfied with their health care quality but unhappy with rising costs, then the proper course is free-market reforms that lower costs, preserve quality, and respect individual rights.
Americans have already been burned by the congressional rush to pass the “stimulus” bill, which many legislators now acknowledge that they didn’t even read before voting for. Congress should not make the same mistake by rushing to pass “universal health care” legislation. Instead, Congress should slow down, take a deep breath, and engage in a full, honest discussion about the kinds of genuine reforms we need to actually correct our current problems.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.
That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.
The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.
As Clayton Cramer notes, this won’t be big news, because it doesn’t fit the template. The bad guys were supposed to take his gun and shoot him with it. He refused to play by the nutty Brady script.