The original of this post disappeared in the Blogger Blackout.

[ Politifact ] Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wisconsin.

Moore began her remarks by referring to the keynote speaker, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and his new memoir, A Reason to Believe.

"I was thinking: How in the world can you believe, what reason would you have to believe in anything, when you had just elected a governor who says that Wisconsin was open for business and therefore closed to every single human being in the state," Moore said to applause.

This is someone who flatly and openly hates business. The logical inference from her comment is that Wisconsin should not be open for business, because businesses hurt people.

This is the mindset of the loony left. Where is Pat Moynihan where you need him? I believe he once said that the Democrats had to come to terms with the fact that you can't be pro-employee without being pro-employer. Apparently, such thinking is dead and mouldering right along with the much-missed Moynihan.

Moore is undoubtedly someone who wants lots of public services and lots of taxes, but doesn't understand that it takes productive people and businesses to pay those taxes.

It's the therefore in Moore's comments that really gets me: you're pro business? Therefore you must, you simply MUST, be anti-human.

NPR is doing a series on financial literacy among young Americans. They started with two pieces on college loan debt today. In the introduction to one piece was this comment about college graduates:

For many of them, life's first big decision will be how to pay off college loans.

Ahem, their first big decision should have been whether to take the loans out in the first place!

Again and again I see the contents of the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds referred to as "money" or "cash." Here, for example. Another one here, for example:

Social Security, financed through payroll taxes, has enough money in its trust fund to pay full benefits through 2037, according to its 2010 trustees report.

Good grief. There is no money in these trust funds. There is no cash in these trust funds. The trust funds contain special government bonds, not money to pay out to beneficiaries. All the cash that has been collected through Social Security and Medicare taxes has been spent already. To get the money to pay beneficiaries, the government will need to use taxes, borrowing, or printing.

Who knew? Arthur Treacher's is still around. It seems it has been absorbed by Nathan's.
You can see one in NYC on google maps.

A while back I mentioned Groupon, saying among other things that I really didn't understand what the benefit was to retailers.

I am happy to report that I am not the only one.

President Obama wants to make all companies seeking government contracts to disclose the political contributions from every single employee. Much has been said about how this would allow the government to pick political allies for contracts while shunning companies loaded with the other party.

Much less has been said about the chilling effect within each company.

How many people share the political views of their bosses and the owners of their company? How many people want their boss to have to compile a list of all of his employees' political contributions and have that sitting in front of him when it's time to decide on layoffs, promotions, and assignments?

I know I do not want my boss knowing my political persuasion, because it will automatically diminish me in his/her eyes. The thinking would be: How can you possibly believe and support that! I thought you were smart, like me!!! Now I find out your a stupid, idiotic, twit!

No thank you! Disclose is an abomination!

Charges of arson in the Pizza Man fire.

Feras Rahman, 27, of Milwaukee, was indicted on counts of arson resulting in injury, arson to commit mail fraud, mail fraud and lying, according to the indictment. The fire caused more than $3 million in damage.

Rahman was the owner of the Black and White Café, a counter-service restaurant, which opened next door to Pizza Man in January 2009.

If he's guilty, I hope they throw the book at him.

Ann says: I believe it was always known to be arson, they've just taken this long to figure out who to charge with the crime.

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... it's community organizers advocating on behalf of people living in "food deserts." These are urban regions where the nearest grocery store is a mile or more away, or rural regions ten miles from a grocer.

The idea here is that obesity, which strangely correlates with lower income, is due to the lack of healthy food choices in certain neighborhoods. Advocates call for zoning laws that will keep out fast food restaurants from such places. It seems rather paternalistic to me. It's hard for me to believe that people eat at McDonalds because no Whole Foods is nearby.

The USDA has an interactive map showing "food deserts" across our nation. It's pretty interesting. Vast swaths of Nashville are included.

I was particularly struck though by one large neighborhood in Milwaukee. It's centered along Capitol Drive between the Milwaukee River and I-43. It runs south to Keefe and up to Hampton.



Ummm... ok. So I guess Piggly Wiggly and Aldi don't count as grocery stores? Not wholesome enough perhaps?




Ok, but what is the explanation that accounts for Outpost Natural Foods not counting? It's a giant natural food store smack dab in the middle of this "food desert." This doesn't inspire confidence in the USDA's assessment of the problem.



(h/t wmbriggs.com)

So, here's this month's employment graph (click to embiggen):

Just to review, the shaded areas represent the time between elections, so Obama was elected in November, 2008. The vertical red and blue lines represent the swearing-in of the president in January of 2001 and 2009. The red blue series is the Household data. This is created by a telephone survey of real people. The blue red series is the Employer data, created by polling large employers. The unemployment rate is determined from the Household data.

Analysis: As you can see the two lines went in opposite directions this month. According to Employers, we've added almost a quarter of a million jobs last month. According to Households, we lost 190,000 jobs.

The line on NPR this morning looked at the Employer's data and said: We have lots of new jobs! When asked why the unemployment rate, now standing at 9%, went up, they looked at the Household data and the number of people who have entered or reentered the job pool, and said: More people looking means more unemployed. However this seems to me to be mixing apples and oranges. If you look at the Household number for the number of people looking for jobs, it seems to me you should also look at the Household number that says we lost close to 200K jobs this month. That's how the unemployment rate is calculated.

However, looking at the numbers, it appears that NPR pretty much flat-out lied. Remember, the question was: Why did the unemployment rate go up when jobs increased? and the answer was: Because more people entered and reentered the labor force. They also specifically said that it was actually a good sign, because more people looking, means a good mood change.

So what are the real numbers--which NPR never mentions?

                        March    April      Change
Civilian Labor force:  153,406  153,421     15,000
Employed:              139,864  139,674   -190,000

So, looking at those numbers, what would you attribute the increase in the unemployment rate? The 15K increase in the number of people looking for work? Or the 190K decrease in the number of jobs?

A former aid of Hillary Clinton was on The Factor today, and reminded me of something that Hillary said about Pakistan back in November of 2009. Here is something I posted about it, from November of 2009:

Hillary Clinton, during her recent trip to Pakistan:

"Al-Qaida has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002," she finally asserted when challenged about Washington’s tough prescriptions for Islamabad. "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

The US Secretary of State also took a swipe at the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, telling the senior journalists, "If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together" then "there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment." She said she was "more than willing to hear every complaint about the United States'' but the relationship had to be a "two-way street."

At one point during the exchanges, when a journalist spoke about all the services rendered by Pakistan for the US, Mrs Clinton snapped, "We have also given you billions."

Well done Mrs. Clinton! How refreshing to hear an American diplomat dishing it out rather than just standing there and taking it. Finally, someone in power has the nerve to tell the truth.

Strange now that she is going out of her way now to tell us how useful Pakistan was in the capture of Bin Laden. It doesn't seem to me to ring true.

Sincere congratulations and thanks to President Obama, our SEALS, and everyone else involved!



Awesome pic from the White House. Watching the attack unfold.

And Happy Birthday Mom!!

Traditional American comfort food with fake meat.

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion
• 1/2 large green pepper
• 1 12oz pack MorningStar Farms Meal Starters Grillers Recipe Crumbles (not the sausage flavored ones)
• 1 14.5oz can basil-garlic-oregano diced tomatoes
• 1 8oz can basil-garlic-oregano tomato sauce
• 2C macaroni elbows, uncooked
• 2C water
• 1t Italian seasoning, plus salt and black pepper

Directions:

1. Chop onion medium-fine, fry in 4 quart saucepan with a few tablespoons of oil on medium-high heat.
2. Dice green pepper and add to cooking onions. Cook until onions are translucent. Green pepper will probably not be fully cooked.
3. Poke hole in bag, and defrost meat substitute for a couple minutes in microwave.
4. Add meat substitute, and other ingredients except seasoning to pot. Include the juice with the tomatoes. Mix well. Simmer until macaroni is cooked and absorbs the water. About 20+ minutes.
5. When nearly done, add seasoning and salt and black pepper to taste.

I made this recipe up after reading several meat-based versions online. The ingredient amounts in those recipes were all over the place, with a majority calling for condensed tomato soup and very little herbs and flavorings. My version turned out pretty well (almost as good as mom's!), and even my three year old enjoyed it. It tastes like the classic hot dish would taste if made with lean beef and an eye for some flavor. I sprinkle some red pepper flakes on my serving for some added bite. Serve with traditional microwaved frozen peas!

A year ago I blogged in defense of the infamous Duke Lacrosse team accuser, stating that charges against her of arson and attempted murder were a case of "overcharging." I am happy to report that prosecution was unable to obtain a conviction on those charges.

Unfortunately, this same woman has now been accused of murder, for stabbing another boyfriend to death.

That's the trouble with the system. The cops bring the scum in off the streets, and bleeding hearts like myself put 'em right back out again!

I hereby express my opposition to President Obama's recently initiated kinetic peace reduction in Libya.

I was reading today about the moaning and gnashing of teeth on Capitol Hill over the prospect of a government shutdown. The building complex is all a quiver because there are 2,600 federal employees who work there--this does not count the staff of the elected officials. Capitol hill employs people as elevator operators, food service workers, cleaning staff, maintenance workers, tour guides, etc. There is a Capitol Police force too, but I don't know if they are included in the 2,600 count. Many of these employees, if they are deemed "non-essential," will be off work in a few hours if a budget agreement isn't reached.

Is there any other office complex in the country that employs that many people just to keep the building running? In one article I read, they quoted someone as saying that most make 30-50K a year. At $30K, that means the Capitol has an operation budget of $78,000,000 just on salaries alone--and that's at the low end of the estimate.

Think there's any bloat in that budget?

In the last few weeks, the post below and ones like it have been circulating around Facebook and the internet (see eg: here, in the comments here: , and here ):

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Their ranking on ACT/SAT scores:

South Carolina - 50th
North Carolina - 49th
Georgia - 48th
Texas - 47th
Virginia - 44th

Wisconsin is currently ranked 2nd. Welcome to the race to the bottom.

The statistics have become so widespread that they've been used by the Economist and Paul Krugman at the NYTimes has pulled similar data.

Rebuttals have pointed out that the SAT is a really bad way to judge educational achievement, since in Wisconsin in particular only a small portion of students—those heading for selective colleges—ever take it:

As it turns out, these ratings are bogus. For each state it adds the ranking for SAT scores to the ranking for ACT scores (and it's not even clear what year the data comes from), but it doesn't take into consideration the percentage of the population who take either test. The College Boards specifically warn against doing state-to-state comparisons for the SAT, because in some states all students are required to take the text, while in others only the best students do. Only 4% of Wisconsin students took the SAT in 2010, and since they tend to be the cream of the crop it's not surprising that Wisconsin does well (but third in the nation, not first). On the other hand, 69% of Wisconsin seniors took the ACT in 2010, and Wisconsin comes in 17th in terms of composite ACT scores.

A more thorough debunking of these statistics may be found here; among the revelations is the fact that the data is from 1999. The owner of this site is actually an advocate of "student organizing"; it is to his credit that he has the intellectual honesty to challenge claims that purport to back up his side of the argument.

So, since I like data, playing with data, and living in data, I decided to look at a much better measure of educational achievement—the “Nation’s Report Card.”

For a long time now, the US Department of Education has compiled NEAP scores. These are the results of exams given nationwide to a massive number of students. They show trends, and apples to apples comparisons can be made easily. The exams are given in Mathematics, Reading, Science, Technology and Engineering, Arts, Civics, Economics, Foreign Language, Geography, US History, World History, and Writing. The exams are given to both 4th and 8th graders. A pilot program has started to test 12th graders as well, but none of the states mentioned above are participants.

Iowahawk, the usually comedic web poster, took a break yesterday from satire to mine some of this data--he compared Texas and Wisconsin, with Texas coming out mostly on top.

As it turns out, I was already compiling data from this same source. I decided to focus on the two main parts of the NEAP results: Math and Reading. The reports for 2009 are available here: Math and Reading.

I looked at three categories of student for each grade level: 1) All students, 2) Students eligible for subsidized lunches—which is a short-hand way of looking at children in poverty, and 3) English Language Learners. I also looked at two levels of educational achievement: 1) students meeting basic requirements and 2) students testing as proficient. I took the 50 states and sorted them from best to worst and gave them their numerical rank (I gave states with ties the same rank.) The charts below show the numerical rank of each state with respect to the other 49. (Some students, such as people with reading disabilities, are granted special accommodations for the exam, I used those scores for the data below.)

It is clear that Wisconsin does quite well, especially in math, but the results are really not much to crow about. Wisconsin’s reading scores are actually surprisingly low. The best ranking for Wisconsin in math in any of the categories came in at a rank of 8—that was for 8th grade English language learners testing at the basic level. In reading Wisconsin achieved a rank of two for educating ELL students in 8th grade to basic levels. It should be noted, though, that ELL students do very badly overall.

Here is what I found:

4th Grade Math



For all students, and for these six states—remember Virginia, the Carolinas, Texas, and Georgia are used for the comparison because they do not allow their teachers to collectively bargain—Virginia, North Carolina and Texas are all better at getting kids a basic understanding of 4th grade math than Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the best of the bunch at getting kids to a proficient level, but 13 other states in the union actually do better than the cheese state, putting the dairyland in the second quintile. The percentage of Wisconsin students ranking at basic and proficient levels are: 85% and 45% respectively.

For students in poverty, Wisconsin gets a ranking near the middle of the 50 states: 22 for students reaching basic levels, and a better 19 for students reaching proficient. In Wisconsin 73% of students in poverty can do math at a basic level and 24% are proficient.

For English language learners, Wisconsin is well above the median for the 50 states with rankings of 14 and 13, however, among the six states presented here, Wisconsin actually does poorly, only Georgia does worse. In Wisconsin 66% of ELL students in 4th grade are at the basic level and 15% are proficient. The ELL scores, though, do have a caveat: not all states report these results. On this exam nine states did not report: Alabama, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Whether those states would change the rankings can not be known from this data.

8th Grade Math



For 8th graders, Wisconsin does well overall, getting more kids to the basic and proficient levels than the other five states, and makes the top ten for overall basic skills. The percentage of students scoring at basic and proficient are a respectable 79% and 39%. Texas shows itself to be very good at educating children in poverty, getting a basic rank of 3 (they are tied for third place with South Dakota and Massachusetts, and North Dakota and Montana do better,) and a proficient rank of 9. (Wisconsin’s scores are 60% of student in poverty achieve the basic level, 20% proficient.) South Carolina is again the best at educating English language learners, tying with Virginia for the number 2 spot at the basic level and getting the second rank for proficient as well. Wisconsin does well (45% at basic, 9% at proficient), but lags behind Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina—Georgia did not report these scores, neither did: Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming (16 states did not report ELL scores.)

4th Grade Reading



Wisconsin does surprisingly poorly on this exam. For a state that is said to have a good educational system, scoring below or at the median for reading among all students is not the educational beacon it’s been made out to be. Only 67% of Wisconsin 4th graders read at a basic level, only 33% are proficient. For students in poverty, the numbers are even worse. For the first time in the data I’ve looked at, Wisconsin falls into the bottom quintile of states, wracking up a pathetic rank of being the 42nd best (worst!) state in which to be a student in poverty. Of these six states Wisconsin is the worst at educating students in poverty (with SC tying at the proficient level.) In Wisconsin, less than half—only 46% of 4th graders in poverty read at a basic level, and only 15% are proficient. My own state of California is in the dead-last position, with only 38% of students reaching the basic level, and only 10% reaching proficiency. Again, South Carolina seems to understand how to teach English language learners, or their cohort of ELL students is different from the ones in other states. They have the honor of being at the top of the league in ELL. Wisconsin is better than Georgia among these six states, but is the second last in both basic and proficient ELL students. (Eleven states did not report their ELL scores.) Among ELL 4th graders in Wisconsin only 31% are at basic and 8% are proficient.

8th Grade Reading



By comparison to the other five states in this dataset, Wisconsin does well at educating students in 8th grade reading. However, with the exception of ELL students, Wisconsin still isn’t doing very well. Wisconsin has a 50-state rank of 19 and 15 for educating all students to the basic and proficient levels respectively. In Wisconsin 78% of 8th grade students reach the basic level of reading, and 34% are proficient readers. Again Wisconsin is below the national median at educating students in poverty to the basic level of competence (61% of students in poverty achieve basic scores), but does slightly better than the median at getting kids to proficiency (18%). The ELL exam is again hampered by the fact that not all states report these results; in this case nearly half (23) failed to report. Among Wisconsin’s ELL students in 8th grade, only 49% can read at a basic level and only 7% are proficient.

Conclusions: Don’t send your kids to school in Georgia! Georgia did poorly across the board, though in a couple categories Wisconsin actually did worse. Wisconsin comes in at being a better-than-average state for education, but not if you are a student in poverty. Of the 24 categories presented here, Wisconsin was the best of the six states in nine of them, Virginia: eight, South Carolina: seven (all ELL), Texas: four, North Carolina: one, and Georgia: none.

Does Wisconsin’s collective bargaining state shine above the ones without it? Not according to this data. Unlike the skewed SAT results, this shows these states doing some things well and some things poorly. None are shown off in a really good light, and Wisconsin’s reading achievement is surprisingly bad when compared to its reputation as a great state for education.

Update (4/8/11): Jay P. Greene posted a chart of gains and losses on these same tests. I highlighted the five non-collective bargaining states in red, and Wisconsin in green. These only show gains in the scores over time, not the actual scores:

Congratulations to India, world cricket champs!!

Not sure what's going on here, but it looks like 2621 Newton is getting hammered. Click to zoom.

What a rip-off "fancy" hotels are. It seems the more expensive the hotel, the more they try to nickel-and-dime you for every feature "lesser" hotels give you for free. Here at the Hyatt, we get one free breakfast, and internet access is $10 per day. Usually, we stay at places like Country Inn and Suites, where breakfast is free for all of us, as is internet access. It's also about 1/3 the price for a room.

Looking around the room here at the Hyatt, I'm wondering if it is really any better than Country Inn. Same yucky carpet, chairs and faux-finish desk. No fridge or safe like Country Inn. Maid hasn't been here yet and it's mid-afternoon. Loud air conditioner. Dirty dishes left in the hallway. Blah. I don't think a nice atrium is worth another $200 per night.

Even if I had enough money to stay at Hyatt whenever I wanted, I wonder if I would. Spending money is fine, if I'm getting something for it. But I don't like getting ripped off. Who does? Some people, it seems.

From Ron Radosh at Pajamas, discussing the left's infatuation with the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire story:

Look, for example, at the article by CUNY’s labor historian Joshua Freeman, writing in The Nation. Arguing that the fire took place “at a moment of radical challenge to the national structure of power,” Freeman sees an exactly parallel situation today. He writes:

“Today, as a cult of deregulation, a rabid ethos of unrestricted capitalism and the ability of firms to play workers in one country against those in another have seemingly sent us careening back in time toward a pre–New Deal regime of labor relations, there is less domestic opposition to sweated labor than 100 years ago (though low-paid workers overseas have been increasingly militant, evident in the fusillade of strikes in China). Periodic waves of moral outrage sweep across college campuses in antisweatshop campaigns, but as an organized force, labor has weakened to the point that the percentage of privately employed workers who belong to a union is now lower than in 1911.”

---

These people are basically whining that all of the consequences that the right has warned them about at every step in their push for more regulation and more state control really are real. It’s like they’ve had their fingers stuck in their ears for the last six decades and are now stomping up and down in a tantrum, because the consequences are finally too big to ignore.

They wanted more-regulated workplaces with unions around every corner, work rules, and benefits galore. The right warned that this would make manufacturing less efficient, increase the cost of labor, and reduce the number of US jobs. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

They wanted tighter environmental controls on business, driving up the costs of raw materials, energy, production, and delivery. The right warned that this would make domestic manufacturing prohibitively expensive, drive factories overseas, and reduce the number of US jobs. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

The left wanted higher taxes on business, to the point where the US has the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world. The right warned that this would place domestic companies at a disadvantage, force companies to open and incorporate elsewhere, and reduce the number of US jobs. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

The left wanted laws on corporate financial reporting so stringent, that CEO’s of private companies are afraid to grow their companies by going public, because they face the threat of federal prison if their financial statements don’t meet with government approval. Instead, they are incorporating overseas, or forgoing the capital infusions of going big and public and staying small and private. The right said that this will drive corporations to other countries, stifle domestic investment, and reduce the number of US jobs. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

The left wanted laws nearly-nationalizing healthcare insurance, eliminating reduced-coverage and reduced-price options for lower-skilled and lower-pay workers, forcing many companies to either report massive losses on their books (to great hue and cry from the left), to go on bended knee to beg the government for a waiver like a supplicant before a tyrant (my high school physics teacher often pointed out that the definition of tyrant is one who rules arbitrarily,) or to dump their employees’ insurance completely. The right warned this would reduce the number of people who could afford health insurance, increase the costs to business, increase the cost of labor, and thus reduce the number of US jobs. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

The left wanted more taxes to soak the rich. No one should be that rich, they said. We have the money in this country to do everything our little hearts desire; we just need to take it from those bastards! But those bastards don’t have a safe in the basement filled with gold. It’s invested in stocks, venture capital start-ups, real estate, and the economy. Every time taxes go up on the investor class, the right says this will cost the economy capital for investing in new businesses. Businesses won’t grow, new jobs won’t be created. The left said, we don’t care, we want it anyway.

We’ve had sixty years of the left not listening or caring what the consequences were. Sixty years of the left making it harder to do business and create jobs. We were rich enough to take the hit, they countered. Surely, we’re a rich-enough country to provide all of this. But each law, each tax, each regulation makes it harder and harder to employ people. Sooner or later, the weight of all of it forces a collapse.

What our government and the left must start doing every time a new law is proposed is to ask themselves: will this help marginal employers create jobs, or will it help to destroy jobs? In other words, what are the consequences of each turn of the tax and regulatory ratchet, because sooner or later, the ratchet drives the bolt home, and we’re all royally screwed.

Update: As if on cue, this article appears today from "Ray Buursma is a Laketown Township resident":

You are either stupid or lazy. Maybe both.

Now, I’m not referring to your work ethic or job performance. [...] I’m addressing the way you view economics and employment.

In light of what I wrote above, that's a promising start, right?

[...Y]ou continue to elect leaders who offer nothing but tax cuts, as if that would stem the flow of disappearing jobs.

You knew that was coming, right? Here's more:

Did you demand your leaders address America’s trade imbalance or continuous outsourcing of jobs? [Oh, lord!] Did you demand your leaders require foreign countries to buy a dollar’s worth of American goods for every dollar of goods they sell here? [Dude, we got a dollar's worth...in cold hard cash.]

[...] You made concessions to your employer and hoped that would stem the exodus of jobs, or at least yours.

He then goes on to praise unions to the sky. After a while, he lets off this whopper:

Does your company offer a pension plan, or do you now fund your own 401(k)?

Take an econ course, bonehead--either you fund your own retirement plan or you take the money from your kids after you retire. There is no other way. Where the h*&% does he think the money comes from? It comes from what a worker produces, that then gets sold, and the employer keeps part of it, and passes the rest to the employee in wages and benefits. Whether those benefits are a matching contribution to the 401K or some other program. The alternate is if you don't pay for your retirement out of your own productivity, but expect your employer to pay for you later. You get a nice big fat paycheck while you're working, but your kids get screwed, because the fixed benefit pension you enjoy is coming out of their pocket, not yours. Nice work if you can get it. Or does money fall from the sky?

I warned you I’d likely offend you, and I suspect I did. But once you overcome your anger, consider my analysis. Then, either wise up and do something about it, or resign yourself to a lower standard of living for the next decade.

I'm only angered by this guy's breathtaking stupidity.

Of course that's not all. I saw this article because two of my college friends linked to it on Facebook. College educated friends, of course. I reposted it as a form of bait. A junior high teacher of mine has since posted it as well--I don't know if she saw it from me or saw it on her own.

This is the world I grew up in and have lived in all my life, first in liberal Shorewood, Wisconsin; then at liberal Grinnell College; then in liberal Minneapolis; now in Los Angeles. Every single day supplies another reason to shake my head in dismay.

It is a beautiful Spring day here. When it's broiling hot this Summer, remind me how nice this Spring has been and how mild the Winter was.

Here's a big full moon, rising over our neighbors' house.

Beautiful!

A sight not seen, but once, in the last 40 years. Dad, without a beard:

What a surprise. I guess I was wrong... I didn't think it would take a whole week to happen.

A commenter on Instapundit:

Any other city in the world would have seen buildings flattened and the deaths of tens of thousands. To the best of my knowledge not one person in Tokyo died, although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some poor soul fell off a ladder.

Sound engineering, preparation, precaution, and technology saved the day. I could walk home last night secure in the knowledge that my kids, wife, and mother-in-law were completely safe despite experiencing the worst earthquake in Japanese history and the fifth-worst in the world ever.

He's absolutely right. If this quake had struck Los Angeles, much of the city would have been destroyed. Why? First this was one h&^% of an earthquake, but also because American engineering codes are not designed for the preservation of structures at all. As I was told when I was studying structural engineering, American codes are designed so that in a major earthquake the buildings fall down slowly.

Does that sound stupid? It isn't really as stupid as it sounds. Buildings in the US are designed for the preservation of life. If a building falls down slowly, the thinking is, then people will have a chance to escape. People live, the building doesn't. Billions of dollars in damage, but a low casualty and death count.

Japan has a much higher standard, both life and structures are supposed to survive.

Because a strong earthquake can be so expensive with the loss of so many structures here, there has been some discussion as to whether the US should adopt Japan's philosophy. But most of the country's earthquake zone buildings were built to the life-only standard.

As with any talk about US, earthquakes, and death and destruction, we must not only consider California, but the bigger fault line: New Madrid--sleeping soundly in the middle of the country. Let's hope it doesn't wake up.

This from the USGS website:

The earthquake locations and magnitudes cited in NOAA tsunami statements and bulletins are preliminary and are superseded by USGS locations and magnitudes computed using more extensive data sets.

Do I detect a hint of friendly competition? Or something more?

Kevin Drum:

Tyler Cowen has put together a list of common mistakes made by left wing economists. I'm not an economist, but I'm left wing and I comment on economics, so close enough. So I'm going to go through the list and note where I stand on each of his items. I'm not going to explain things or justify myself, I'm just going to stake out my position in a sentence or two. Here are Tyler's 14 mistakes:...

9. Overly optimistic views of the fiscal positions of state governments. Since the states don't have the same tax-raising powers that the feds do, and since state government spending is favored, there is a tendency to see these fiscal crises as not so severe, or as caused by mere obstructionists who will not raise taxes to the required levels.

In general, there might be something to this. Right now, however, state problems are largely caused by drops in revenue, not out-of-control spending, and many state problems are indeed caused by obstructionists who will not consider tax increases in any way, shape or form. However, it's possible that I'm biased in my views because I live in California.

Hello? "Problems are indeed caused by obstructionists who will not consider tax increases"...like California?

California is one of the most heavily taxed states in the country. High property taxes, high income taxes, high car taxes, high sales taxes, high business taxes, high environmental taxes, high breathing taxes. And yet Drum calls out California's tax "obstructionists" as being at fault in our fiscal nightmare? How about the fact that, despite full knowledge of California's meltdown, spending has skyrocketed under Schwarzenegger. Since 2003 spending has increased by 40%. This despite the fact that Grey Davis was recalled in part because of the cost overruns of the state government. Schwarzenegger and the Democrats went right on spending for the better part of another decade. And Drum thinks it's the revenue side that's the problem?

How about tallying up the unfunded mandates--in particular the unfunded pension leviathan?

Overall the numbers look like this: California's state retirement systems have promised current and retired workers around $3.35 trillion in pension, health care, and other post-employment befits as of 2008 but have $2.35 trillion on hand to pay for them. Strictly looking at the retirement system, there were $454 billion in pension and benefits on the book in 2008, $59 billion was unfunded liability, that means that the fund had the assets to cover 87 percent of its obligations. [ Data originated with a Pew Center study.]

Sure, Drum. It's the revenue side that's the problem, not the insane amount of spending and promising to spend. California has been doomed for over a decade because the politicians can't help but spend our money, our kids' money, our grandkids' money, our great grandkids' money....

Run! Run for your lives!!!

Of course that's what everyone with five brain cells and the ability to do so is doing.

... before some judge declares the Wisconsin Senates's action re collective bargaining for public employees null and void. It's a sure thing, no?

I am mulling over the following, which I posted as a comment here.

I have a question about Iowahawk’s analysis. In his follow-up post he describes Simpson’s paradox…:

“Hitter B has a higher batting average against both righties and lefties, but Hitter A has a higher overall average by dint of facing a different mix of pitchers. Now comes the question: it’s the bottom of the 9th, two out, and you need a base hit. Who would you insert as a pinch hitter, A or B? The detailed data suggests Hitter B, irrespective of whether the pitcher was right- or left-handed. The overall average, in this context, is worse than meaningless – it leads you to exactly the wrong conclusion.”

If this is legit analysis, it opens a can of worms, I think. Suppose that instead of handedness, we had pitchers with and without some “X Factor.” Suppose we didn’t even know what the X Factor is. Suppose we didn’t even know what the proportion of pitchers in the league have the X Factor. But suppose some third party did know, and simply provided us with a breakdown of our two hitters’ averages against the two types of pitchers, and they formed a Simpson’s paradox. Would it still be “wrong” to put in hitter A? Is it better to put in B, because he is better at hitting against both X and not-X pitchers? Color me skeptical.

How stupid are science reporters? How about this from MSNBC:

"The images show that refrozen ice makes up 24 percent of an area known as Dome A, a 13,800-foot-high plateau roughly the size of California. Much of the sheet and refrozen ice lies atop an underground mountain range."

What is this, Jules Verne? Journey to the Center of the Earth? How can you have an UNDERGROUND mountain range???

THE HILL POLL: U.S. future depends on cutting debt, voters say
By Bernie Becker - 03/07/11 06:10 AM ET

Likely voters overwhelmingly believe deficit reduction is crucial to America’s future, but generally oppose raising revenue through tax reform to cut those deficits, a new poll conducted for The Hill found.

A full 95 percent of likely voters believe that lowering the debt is either very or somewhat important, the poll found

The other 5% seem to be all my friends on Facebook. I've heard: "When will people realize that socialism is the answer!!" and echoing Michael Moore's "There's no problem, we have plenty of money!!!" even before he said it, and "We can pay off everything if we kill the DoD, so what's the problem?"

I love this on Instapundit today

AT AMAZON, a sale on typewriters. They still make those? As with VCRs, I’m tempted to buy a couple just to hoard against the day when they don’t . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ben Samuels doesn’t like that manual typewriter link: “Geebus, Glenn – did you read the reviews??? They say it’s a worthless piece of Chinese crap. You’d have been better off giving readers the link to a used Selectric.”

I replied: “I didn’t think anyone would actually buy one. I mean, good God. Maybe after an EMP attack you’d want a manual typewriter, except how much typing would you actually do?”

MORE: The inevitable followup email:

I know somebody who knows a guy who can get you a great deal on a sturdy 40 year old model that can handle superscripting.

Courage,
Dan Rather

Heh. (Via Brian Gates.)

Something else caused by Climate Change: insanity.

Now I'm changing my life again. Today, underneath the solar panels, there's a new set of deadbolt locks on all my doors. There's a new Honda GX390 portable power generator in my garage, ready to provide backup electricity. And last week I bought a starter kit to raise tomatoes and lettuce behind barred basement windows.

I'm not a survivalist or an "end times" enthusiast. When it comes to climate change, I'm just a realist.

Does the Washington Post think this guy's thoughts are rational? Very sad.

Isn't it interesting that in this article by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (about friends on Facebook breaking up over the Wisconsin situation), they couldn't find a single person who had problems with insulting or nasty things said by the union side? All of the problems mentioned are with the rudeness and nastiness of the Walker side.

The weather has been nice down here in the South. It was around 70 again today. Meanwhile, it's been snowing again in Milwaukee. Fortunately, there are some videos out there of Midwest weather to make me feel a little less homesick. Like this one, from Chicago:



h/t Threedonia

Wow is this piece from Reuters idiotic. The headline and lede:

Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes

(Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

Note the conflation of sales and income (a pet peeve of my Dad's, as I recall.) Reading the article, we see that in the 8-year period studied, 57% of corporations paid no income taxes in at least one year. First of all, how does that get translated into "most"? Wouldn't "most" mean at least 50% each year?

But, more important, couldn't this mean that 57% of corporations don't make any money in 1 or more of 8 years? Note that 57%/8 = 7%. Is it reasonable to think that about 7% of corporations make no money in a given year? Seems reasonable to me.

Of course the article doesn't give us any details. It's just an anti-corporate hit piece, and giving details would likely spoil the fun.

So, is the fight in Madison over some long-held, deeply-cherished cornerstone of decades of public union powers?

Not according to John Fund in the WSJ:

The governor's move is in reaction to a 2009 law implemented by the then-Democratic legislature that expanded public unions' collective-bargaining rights and lifted existing limits on teacher raises.

So, Walker is actually just trying to take back union powers that they've had for a whoppin' 2 years.

On the flip side, since they've only had these powers for two years, you can't really blame the collective bargaining rules for the deep doo-doo that Wisconsin is in.

On the other flip side (we're up to three) since the unions did not have this power from 1848 through 2009, they can't really make the point that removing them would be a catastrophe and lead to working conditions where there's a guy beating on a drum while another guy walks up and down with a lash.

Update: I tried to find some contemporary coverage of Fund's claims, and I couldn't really find anything. The closest was the extension of collective bargaining to various teachers at UW--including grad students. If you read his words carefully, this might be what he is talking about, but it is not the wholesale implementation that he seems to imply.

If, as has been reported, some teachers marched their students to the Madison Capital to participate in the demonstrations, I have one question: did they have permission slips from their parents?

At every school I know, the teachers need a permission slip every time the kids are taken off campus--even for regular monthly trips, a permission slip comes home every time at our school. I've always assumed that was due to a law. If so, can't parents protest the taking of their kids without permission?

IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer, named "Watson" did very well today on Jeopardy.

On the 30-question game board, veteran "Jeopardy!" champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter managed only five correct responses between them during the Double Jeopardy round that aired Tuesday.

Usually, I am quite skeptical about this sort of thing, but I have to say I am pretty impressed. Note that the human players weren't just any players. Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutt are often cited as the best human Jeopardy players ever.

Watson did not have to process the audio, it was given the questions as text input. Since the players can read the questions too, this seems fair to me.

One point though is that it seemed to me watching that often the humans had the answer in mind but were not as fast as Watson at pushing their answer buttons. It used to be, in the old days of Jeopardy, that a player could ring in whenever he wanted, even before the question was completely read. Nowdays however, players must wait until the question is read completely before they press the button. It seems to me that Watson, knowing the question, would be able to ring in much faster than any human. This has nothing to do with "brain power," it's just human reflexes versus electronics.

Overall though, it's quite an achievement for Big Blue. Up there with their beating of Gary Kasparov at chess 10+ years ago.

In light of the President's new proposed budget...

Ok, so there are probably a billion reasons why I am not a billionaire. But the one that keeps coming to mind is that I have no clue why some companies, reportedly worth billions, are worth anything at all. The messaging service Twitter is said to be worth 8-10 billion dollars.

... what's remarkable is the money that people familiar with the matter say frames the discussions with at least some potential suitors: an estimated valuation in the neighborhood of $8 billion to $10 billion. This for a company that, people familiar with the matter said, had 2010 revenue of $45 million but lost money as it spent on hiring and data centers and estimates its revenue this year at between $100 million and $110 million.

So Twitter took in $45 million last year (from companies advertising on their site) but it cost more than that to run their computers. Where does the $8 billion come from then? Twitter, like Google and Facebook, seems to provide me with excellent services in return for absolutely nothing from me. How do they make up the cost of running the computers that do all this for me? Volume?

I recently switched from Internet Explorer to the Google Chrome browser. Google provides this browser for free. With a few more clicks, I installed AdBlock as well. AdBlock, also free, effectively blocks all ads on Google, Facebook, Twitter and practically everywhere else. It's great! So here is Google, providing me with free tools to avoid the only hope that Google has to make money off me. Estimates of how much Google is worth? 100 billion? Beats me.

Facebook makes money on ads too, or supposedly will some time in the future. Even before I installed Chrome and blocked all ads, I can't recall ever seeing an ad on Facebook. I think they are off on the side somewhere, but I certainly never clicked on one. I don't even think their presence registered in my brain. I recently saw a discussion on the Bloomberg business cable channel about Facebook. The analysts were raving about it, saying how it is going to revolutionize marketing. They were estimating a worth of $50 billion or more. In their vision, Facebook users will network with their friends to rate and recommend products targeted to them. Who is going to bother? Why? Is that why people use Facebook? So they can tell their friends how much they like Jiffy Pop?

Then there is Groupon. Groupon started in November 2008, and expects to have a $15 billion IPO this year. It is said to be the fastest growing company ever, going from a value of zero to a billion in about a year. At least Groupon has a kind of product. Essentially, you get an email every day offering you a coupon for a deal at a local business. If enough people commit to the deal, the business is bound to it. If not, then the deal is off. I don't really see why this appeals to businesses. Is there some economy of scale where only if a certain number of people want, say, 50% off a haircut, is it worth it to offer? Or are businesses hoping most wont bother to redeem the coupon? I don't get it. Anyway, I signed up for this a month or two ago. After a couple of weeks I cancelled it. I just wasn't interested in the items they were offering at a discount. Half off a dinner at a restaurant I've never heard of. Twenty percent off a ticket to a band I don't like. When you think about it, what are the chances that a random coupon offered to you is going to be something you are interested in having? There are millions of products out there, of which I purchase I tiny, tiny fraction.

Are these businesses really worth this much? Is this all some sort of bizarre market bubble/speculation phenomenon? A modern-day Tulip mania? Maybe if I were a budding billionaire I would understand.

I don't understand what's wrong with this ad:

It's been pulled from the air in China. I don't get it. Do people think it's racist? Why? Or is it the slapstick violence? Aren't presidents pretty much fair game for these sort of ads? Hasn't it always been so?

Ann says: It's obviously promoting violence against politicians through the use of fish sandwiches. If this airs, what's next, pelting with hamburgers? Rampages with Philly cheese steak? Where will it end!

More here.

How about this one? No problem, I guess.

Stay for the punch-line...

I don't think it is a wise investment now. An interesting post at NR, and the comments thereon prompted me to post a comment of my own:

State governments collect $0.27 per gallon in gas taxes. The Feds collect another $0.18. If we are going to make an honest assessment of highway subsidies, shouldn't these taxes be subtracted to get the net? Aren't these taxes essentially user fees?

Doesn't it make more sense to work on increasing freight rail rather than passenger rail? Getting more trucks off the highways would decrease fuel use and road wear, and wouldn't require the high speeds. For some reason, people rarely discuss the question of freight transport.

Anyone surprised?

A Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to use Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.

The Duke of York is also said to have played a behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the terrorist’s release.

The Libyans closely followed the advice which led to the controversial release of Megrahi – who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 – within months of the Foreign Office’s secret intervention.

The disclosure seriously undermines British Government claims that is was not complicit in the release of al-Megrahi, and that the decision to free the convicted terrorist was taken by the Scottish Executive alone.

One of my classmates at college was on the plane.

From the debate in Wisconsin to require a photo ID for voting:

He added it is easy to commit voter fraud, while difficult for poll workers, law enforcement and prosecutors to identify fraudulent votes.

However, studies from Van Hollen’s office about past votes have found low percentages of voter fraud. In the 2004 presidential election, only 18 out of 3 million votes were fraudulent.

In other words: not having to show ID means it's hard to tell if people are committing voter fraud, but we know they're not, so no big deal! (The person making the statement does thing an ID requirement is a good idea, just not really necessary.)

I have a new post up on Square Dots.

The grand jury report said that one look at the place would have detected the problems, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the place since 1993. Here’s the grand jury report, in surprisingly strong language:

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

One of the big arguments for legalized abortion has always been to prevent women from having to get abortions in kitchens and in unsafe environments...

A great quote that underpins the shifting bases of the Democrats and Republicans:

[I]t’s true that rich individuals can do a lot more to rig government policy in their favor than can poor individuals. The straightforward implication is that the more power the government has to pick winners and losers, the more power rich people will have relative to poor people. - Will Wilkinson

The Republicans used to represent the corporate establishment and businesses, but as more and more decisions are being made at the government, not company, level, those businesses have migrated toward the party of government: the Democrats. The Democrats, in turn, love the nice symbiosis between corporate and government power. They especially love to get the money that flows from businesses towards their party, and the nice way that the elite among the party can easily slip between government and corporate jobs.

As long as the above statement is true, Democrats are the party of business and of the rich.

Steve: You are spot-on. Crony capitalsim marches on.

Representitive James Clyburn (D-SC):

Clyburn complained that "we've had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else"

I thought moving south would mean no more snow.




Kind of glad I was wrong.

Here's what the Republican Congress should do right off the bat:

1) Pass a clean health care repeal bill. Sure, it will die in the Senate, but so what.

2) Pass a friend-of-the-court resolution backing the states that are suing to fight Obamacare, with details of where the legislators believe the law is unconstitutional. Don't leave it for the states and the courts--get a dog in the legal hunt.

3) Pass a bill removing the waivers from health care bill. The waivers are corruption waiting to happen--or not waiting at all. It leaves the administration with the power to choose to help political allies and thrash opponents. Pass it while saying that everyone should be treated equally under the law, regardless of the skill of their lobbyists. Would the Senate be so quick to reject that? I'm not so sure.

4) Pass a corporate tax bill along the same grounds: remove all loopholes and special tax breaks. Every company should be treated equally by the government. Better yet, start the flat-tax movement at the corporate level. Make the corporate taxes a simple one-page form with a nice flat rate--and make the rate in-line with other developed countries, or lower. Imagine all of the money that would flow away from accountants and tax lawyers to research, development, expansion, marketing, etc. Even without cutting taxes, it would unleash a big chunk of money that businesses currently waste complying with the tax laws. Secondly, it would be great to sell to the public: you want to diminish the power of lobbyists in Washington? then take away much of what they are lobbying for. Much of corporate lobbying goes into the tax code, the rest into regulations.

5) Pass a bill to kill grants and government money currently flowing to companies--yes, even those that are pursuing "green" projects. Again, it is ripe for corruption, as the government gets to choose winners and losers, and the side with the most-connected lobbyists wins! It would be easy to sell to the public too, as an end to real corporate welfare.

6) Completely kill farm subsidies. Again, most of the subsidies go to corporate farms. We should stress efficiency over some quaint and outdated view of the family farmer getting up every morning to milk the cows by hand and reap his hay with a scythe. Agriculture is big business. It shouldn't be subsidized--that goes double for ethanol.

7) Defund, or refuse to fund this coming year the NEA, NEH, CPB, and a host of other alphabet agencies that have no business existing when the whole of their budgets are basically borrowed from China. This country shouldn't be funding the arts when we can't pay to keep the lights on.

8) Pass a hiring freeze on the federal government. No new employees--we have plenty of bureaucrats already. Let workers shift from one job to another, one agency to another, but no new total hires.

9) Pass a law requiring massive fines for any employer found employing illegal aliens. An employer can avoid the fines by simply showing that they have cleared the employee through eVerify. The fines should be great enough to threaten the existence of the company.

10) Pass a repeal of the stupid bills that have made it into law lately, such as light bulb bans, or the water cut-off in California's central valley.

Then, next month...

I'd never heard of two of these.

It's cold here in Tennessee, and we've got a bit of snow on the ground. Our daughter really enjoyed playing in it.

This is about twice as long as it needed to be, but it's worth watching:

From Mark Perry at Carpe Diem, why do boys outscore girls on the math SAT?

Indian diplomats have gotten their saris in a bunch over having been frisked by the TSA.

"On December 4, Indian ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar was selected by security officials at a Mississippi airport for a pat-down search, despite reportedly notifying officials of her diplomatic status."

...

"We have taken it up with the U.S. authorities and the matter is at that stage," External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said on Monday, referring to Puri, a Sikh.

Sikh men keep their hair covered at all times with a turban, which is not allowed to be touched in public.

Boo freakin' hoo.

You think that because you are a diplomat, or a US Senator, or a member of some other self-proclaimed elite, that you should not have to go through the TSA process the rest of us have to? I call bullsh*t. If I have to go through it, then everyone else should have to as well. It's called "equality under the law."

Ann says: But diplomatic immunity is as helpful to us overseas as it is to visitors here. Do we want to do away with it, knowing that if we do, we will lose it for ourselves in other countries? What percentage of our necessary spying takes place under the cover of diplomatic immunity? The world is a safer place when we know what is going on in other countries. I'm not ready to throw all that away, just so that everyone has to go through the same foolish security-theater at airports.

Steve: Yes, I think diplomatic immunity should be abandoned. I would bet our gains from it overseas are greatly exceeded by our losses due to it at home.

President Obama will be on Mythbusters this evening. He will be asking the show's hosts to once again investigate the possibility of "Archimedes' Death Ray." This is the legend that Archimedes was able to destroy ships at sea by having soldiers reflect enough sunlight off their shields to set the ships on fire. The Mythbusters have investigated this twice before, and each time it was "busted."


Really, it's preposterous, unless by "ships at sea" you mean ships a hundred feet from shore, sitting motionless in absolutely still water, and if by "shields" you mean parabolic mirrors. I found the whole process of testing this myth pretty boring. Both times. The myths that I think work best for testing are the ones that have some degree of believability from the start. I wasn't buying this one.

On the other hand, part of me thinks that they must have come up with some contrived way to make this work, or they wouldn't bother testing it a third time. I doubt President Obama came to them with this problem. They probably already had a plan to retest it and suggested it to him.

I think having the President on the show is a fun idea. It might get kids interested in science. I just wish they would have chosen a better myth.

Archimedes was a genius. I am awestruck by some of the mathematics he was able to do over two thousand years ago. With his towering achievements, it would be a shame to associate him mainly with this mythical "Death Ray."

Update: Busted again.

George Will:

Has the U.S. Supreme Court construed the commerce clause so permissively that Congress has seized, by increments, a sweeping police power that enables it to do virtually anything it wants?

Yes. Duh! How hard is this to understand?? How many more such essays are conservative and libertarian pundits going to write? Blah blah blah "10th Amendment!!" blah blah blah "Founders' Intent!!" blah blah blah "Federalism!!" It's like a bunch of people sitting around a burnt-out light bulb endlessly talking about how illuminating and warm it was. It's burnt out!

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. Go on quoting Marbury vs Madison, George. I'll go on living 200 years later, in what is often referred to as "the real world."

Everyone always comments that the debt rose sharply under Republican presidents and declined under Democrats...basically just Clinton. And, it's true. Here's the graph.



But no one points out that in Washington, it takes three to tango. Here's the same data, matched to control of the Senate:



And here it is matched to the House of Representatives:



One note on how I colored the bars. I figured if a politician gets elected in 2010, he takes office at the start of 2011, but the first budget that he can pass is for the 2012 year. So that's how I colored the bars, and that's why it might look a little off. I didn't just go by election year. Otherwise, Republicans would get assigned our current year, even when all of Washington was firmly in the hands of Democrats, and I figured there was also a lag between taking office and actually starting to change things. For example, with this method, Bush gets blamed for Tarp I. Otherwise, it would have all fallen under Obama.

It's well-known that Warren Buffet is in favor of the estate tax. He is a favorite of the pro-tax pundits out there. They paint him as a humanitarian, willing to give up more of his wealth for the good of the people. However, he has another interest in the matter. A comment posted here:

I used to work IT in the Hartford Insurance arena. One day an agent sold a Life insurance policy worth 50 million dollars to a 75 year old man. The client paid a single premium of about 53 million and his son was the sole benficiary.

Why would anyone do this? because Insurance benefits are not taxed like a ‘death tax’

Warren Buffet owns six life insurance comapanies. Yeesh. Like I wasn't cynical enough already.

You can read a pdf report of the life insurance lobby's efforts to re-institute high estate taxes here.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Typically, I find the comments sections of blogs to be pretty depressing. Once in a while though, I am pleasantly surprised. Here, someone at The Corner posts an article praising the new airport security measures and the people who implement them. Commenters rightly give him what-for.

On the other end of the political spectrum, in this article at Huffington Post, a doctor warns of the horrible dangers of mixing alchohol with caffiene. "Combining alcohol and caffeine is -- in one word -- crazy. Don't do it! It has an excellent chance of hurting you, and a fairly good chance of killing you." Yes, that's right. Rum and Coke, Kaluha and Cream, Irish Coffee... cocktails of death!! His readers let him have it.

In both cases, the comments are pretty satisfying.

Doing some more math...if you put the 4-year cost of a Carleton education, $224,600, into investments, and only got back 3% a year, that would give you an annual benefit of $6,700 per year. In addition, instead of wasting four years paying others, you could easily make $20,000/year at a low-end job. That's $80,000 in your pocket, instead of $224k going out--a swing of over $300,000.

Of course, the $224k number doesn't take into account interest on loans. According to this loan calculator, assuming that Carleton's tuition will be 5% higher next year ($54,715), and an incoming freshman borrowed that entire amount, they will have to pay back $67,920 just for their first year--24% more than the initial loan of $55k. Carrying out the calculations at 24% overall loan interest, and a 5% tuition increase each year, that comes to approximately: $292,700 (Grinnell comes to $265,500).

So would a student whose family saved for college and could cover the cost be better off pocketing the cash?

Would a student who had to borrow $300,000 for a high-end diploma be better off getting a job instead?

Is the piece of paper from Carleton, Grinnell, or another high-end college worth $300,000?

Tuition and fees at Carleton College, my alma mater

Academic Tuition Fees 2010-2011
Tuition: $41,076
Student Activity Fee: $228
Room: $5,676
20 Meal Plan (full board): $5,130
Total Due: $52,110

Absurd. If anyone asked for advice, I'd advise them to go elsewhere. Carleton is a fine school, but it's not worth $52000/year. A state school like Minnesota or Wisconsin would be about 1/3rd of that. I couldn't begin to justify the additional expense of going private.

Ann says: There are only three reasons to go private these days: 1) to get the name on the diploma, 2) choosing a network of friends, 3) being able to graduate in four years instead of 5-6. None of those are worth the $172,500 $224,600 (my math was wrong) Carleton or other high-end privates will cost to get through. (That's assuming 4 years at 5% tuition growth per year--when I was in school, the average increase was 8%.) Grinnell's 4-year cost at 5% growth per year is currently: $203,700.

If a student really has their heart set on a private, they should do a 2-year AB, then transfer in. Even that isn't worth it--especially if you have a soft major. And if you want to do a hard major like math, science, or engineering, you're better off with the larger facilities and opportunities of a state school anyway.

I come down on the side that young adults should walk away from school for a few years to decide what they want to do with their lives. Spending time being aimless at college, and spending a fortune doing it, really doesn't make any sense. You should only go to college these days if you have a real, concrete goal that requires a specific degree. (As long as you don't want to be yet another lawyer!)

In case there was any doubt...



I find it difficult to watch more than about 15 seconds of this. Who can stand this guy?

"'Entropy increase,' as my old friend Huxley used to say, and I've never heard a truer word spoken." ~ Dr. Who (Tom Baker, I think in the episode "Logopolis", 1981)

---

"Second law of Thermodynamics: The second law of thermodynamics states that the efficiency of a heat engine is always less than 100% and that the entropy of a closed system must always increase."

Every time I think about the rallying cry that the economy will turn around once millions of "green jobs" start popping up, I think of entropy.

Basically, physics says that things will settle into the lowest energy state, and continue to decline--entropy increases. In order to get something into a higher energy state, you have to put in more energy than you will ever get out.

Economic energy flows into the most-efficient means of production. Successful companies maximize their outputs and minimize their inputs--becoming more efficient. Unsuccessful ones will go under and disappear.

The "green jobs" movement's claims go against the laws of thermodynamics. Basically, they say that companies will gladly sign onto what are currently--and will be for the foreseeable future--less-efficient and more-expensive means of production.

Until the green technologies evolve to the point that they offer better efficiency than current forms, adaptation simply can't happen without government force in the form of either laws or subsidies. In the absence of subsidies, the companies that adapt "green" technologies will pay a premium for doing so--will be inherently less efficient and will collapse in favor of more-efficient non-green competitors. If instead of subsidies, the government enacts laws, they then run into the problem that we don't live in a closed domestic market. Non-green competition from abroad would wipe out the less-efficient, but piously green, domestic companies.

But, in an open international marketplace, funding non-efficient technologies through subsidies puts your whole economy at a disadvantage against companies that allow companies to thrive on their own merits.

Companies will gladly adapt green technologies when it gives them a competitive advantage. They currently can not offer that, despite all the hype.