OBAMA/ALINSKY: Newt “Goes There.” This is why he’s polling so well. Romney take note.
Archive for November, 2011
November 30, 2011
CHANGE: U.S. Nears Milestone: Net Fuel Exporter. “U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and other oil-based fuels are soaring, putting the nation on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years. A combination of booming demand from emerging markets and faltering domestic activity means the U.S. is exporting more fuel than it imports, upending the historical norm.”
This would be good news, if it weren’t for the “falling domestic activity” part. That really just means that our economy is falling behind.
UPDATE: Note the difference between “oil” and “fuel.” We’re still importing a lot of oil. But if we get the shale-oil going, that’ll change.
POLITICS: “I’m fascinated by a few things: how Democrats close ranks around one of their own, how much these people drink together, and the hypocrisy about feminist matters.” It’s like Penn State. But then, anywhere the powerful gather is like Penn State.
WHERE WERE PENN STATE’S TRUSTEES? When the most highly paid employee is the football coach, it’s clear something is awry. “Every generation or so, a scandal emerges that not only exposes the flaws of an institution but shakes entire industries to their foundations. For higher education, that scandal should be Penn State. The unfolding events of the Penn State sports scandal show a major university that has been more interested in protecting itself than in educating students or serving the public. The institutional reckoning must begin and end with the governing board. It is responsible for the actions of university leaders, and its members owe taxpayers and students accountability and transparency.”
UPDATE: Reader Ken Bullock emails:
I don’t write in very often, but your uncritical quotation of a vacuous WSJ article has moved me. Ms. Neal apparently didn’t look up the facts about Joe Paterno’s salary, which was 11th among the 12 Big 10 coaches. More to the point, the ousted PSU President, Graham Spanier, made about eight times as much as Joe did.
Both Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Michigan’s Brady Hoke made over three times as much as Joe did, even though their life achievements are only a small fraction of Paterno’s . I’m sure that Jim Tressel made much more than Paterno did, before he was forced out. And none of the direct salary comparisons take into account the fact that Joe contributed a large portion of his pay back to the university.
The PSU Board of Trustees has some sins to answer for, but first among those sins is the way they ousted Joe Paterno.
Updated.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Oops — I was tired and missed this but my alert readers didn’t. Reader Theodore Simon writes:
Quote: “More to the point, the ousted PSU President, Graham Spanier, made about eight times as much as Joe did.”
Don’t think so. From the information at the links your reader Ken Bullock provided:
11. Joe Paterno, Penn State: $1,022,794 (64)
PSU President Graham Spanier is fifth on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s survey of public college presidents’ pay at $800,500 in total compensation.
It looks to me as if the coach is paid more than the prez. Bad math: someone has slipped a decimal point. If Spanier earned 8X what Paterno earned, his annual salary would have been $8 million. According to the sources linked by your reader, Spanier’s salary was only $800K, or ten times less than that.
Those decimal points can be tricky. And reader Gary Rosen emails: “Ken Bullock made some good points in his response to the WSJ article on Paterno’s salary. I read the article before that and something about it didn’t seem quite right to me, more of a rant about relative salaries than the ugly goings-on. But Bullock was off-base in condemning the firing of Paterno. One comment I heard put it all in perspective – ‘Coaches get fired for having a losing season’. Maybe you could argue he should have been put on leave instead in the spirit of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. But Paterno has been the public face of PSU for 40 years and regardless of their own shortcomings the trustees were well within their rights to not let him continue in that role.”
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Bioethicists’ built-in conflict of interest.
UPDATE: Reader Craig Mason emails:
Regarding your re-post of your “Bioethicists’ built-in conflict of interest” story, years ago as part of my training to be a clinical psychologist, I attended a lecture by a bioethicist. He presented data from a study he did in which a hypothetical “patient”, his/her spouse, and his/her doctor, were each presented with increasingly dire end-of-life medical situations faced by the “patient”. Each was asked when the patient would want to have care terminated. He found that the doctor was consistently the first one to pull the plug, the spouse was the second one, and the “patient” would be the last one to say to pull the plug.
Without missing a beat, the bioethicist went on to conclude that this demonstrated why such decisions should be left to doctors because it shows how patients can’t make the right decision.
I have been skeptical of that field ever since.
I remember talking with a bioethicist about how he pulled the plug on his father. I’m not saying it was the wrong decision, but he seemed a bit too proud of it.
NEW YORK, AMERICA, WHATEVER: “Every Time Obama Comes to New York, It’s a Nightmare.” “Obama’s ill-timed trip turned Midtown into a parking lot for hours, and ticked off New Yorkers simply looking to get around as the President glad-handed fat cats from the Upper East Side to the East Village to the Sheraton New York.”
UPDATE: Occupy Protesters Mobilize for Obama’s Visit. “Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. ‘Obama is a corporate puppet,’ one said. ‘War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,’ read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.”
Nice to see that someone in NYC was mobile. Of course, the story says that the Occupy folks had a police escort, which is kind of odd. Oh, well — it gives them some common ground with Obama!
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Tea party activists audited by city. Would that happen to Occupy protesters? “The city denies allegations that the audit warning was some kind of political retaliation or harassment. But for tea party groups, the city missive highlights long-running complaints of a double standard in the treatment of tea party activists.”
SIGNATURE FRAUD IN WISCONSIN RECALL PETITIONS? Does the Justice Department’s Voting Rights office know about this? Hey, stop laughing . . . .
PERFORMANCE ENHANCERS: Opiate of the Student Proletariat?
#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy L.A.: 30 tons of debris left behind at City Hall tent city. “Sanitation officials said Wednesday that they expect to haul away 30 tons of debris from the Occupy L.A. encampment –- everything from clothing to heaps of garbage to oddball curiosities left behind by the protesters who lived at the City Hall tent city for two months.”
Remember how the Tea Party protesters left things neater than they found them? Which group is more likely to have a positive vision for America’s future?
MORE ON SKILLED TRADES: In this interview with Andy Grove, he talks about his support for vocational education. “Most people don’t even realize the need for more highly trained workers. The assumption remains that technical education is for less intelligent people. The first item cut from educational budgets is vocational education. People are required to be suitably trained for their work requirements, and yet the classes that are required for this are cut to the bone. In some instances, students are halfway through the course when funding is cut and then they are sent home. We create a damned obstacle course for people who want to work! . . . We fund scholarships for students at community colleges and in other vocational programs. The value of the scholarships ranges from $500 to $5,000 per year, depending on the type of training and needs of the student. The people for whom we provide support are not those who intend to transfer to four-year universities. Rather, we are funding scholarships for those students who intend to enter a career immediately upon completion of their studies.”
Plus, a model trade school.
All of this is great. I should note, though — as several readers have pointed out — that you can’t just “decide” to go into skilled trades any more than you can just decide to become a lawyer or a doctor. It varies, of course, but most trades take years of practice and a considerable degree of native talent. But it’s certainly true, as Grove notes and as others have said, that we’ve systematically undervalued such work for the past 50 years or more.
UPDATE: Reader Phil Hawkins writes:
I’m 62, have a degree in Christian Education, but have been a small businessman since 1975, the last 25 years as a carpenter/remodeler. The conclusion I reached a long time ago was that few 18-year-olds in our society have enough experience to know what they would be good at and enjoy doing. I was a “brain” in high school and college, graduated with honors. Got into small business, went back to school and studied accounting. About the time I had enough hours taken to sit for the CPA exam, I figured out that I did not have enough tolerance for paperwork to do that for a living, especially dealing with the IRS. Being good at school can be deceptive in that way–I aced most of the accounting classes. Just because you’re good at the classes does not mean you will like the work. Eventually, rehabbing a couple of old houses for my family to live in got me into remodeling as a business. The accounting was useful–most contractors have little clue how to run their business, even when they’re great at doing the work. Knowing how to analyze situations and solve problems has been a plus; being able to read and follow written directions is a big help–many guys in the trades can’t, and are slow to adopt new products and methods. But most of all, I found I liked working with my hands as well as my mind. I had little background with tools, but once I learned, I became pretty good at it. And I found it very satisfying. (Not to mention, swinging a hammer is a great way to get rid of stress.)
With my own kids, we told them if they wanted to do something that required college, go for it; but don’t go to college just to be going to college. We also encouraged them in hobbies and let them work with me when possible. (Even my daughter learned to tape drywall and paint.) Over time, each had certain things he/she was good at, and was not afraid to tackle new things. The older two are established, the youngest (24) is still struggling in this economy, but has several things going that may lead to success.
Success is a process, not an event. And I took the intro-accounting sequence in college because my advisor — Jack Reese, who was the Chancellor — ordered me to. He had gotten his Ph.D in English, but as Chancellor had to teach himself accounting. I found it hugely useful, in law practice, on the boards of various nonprofits, and in my own business interests.
DONALD SENSING: The “perfect storm” of bullishness – or not. “It’s true that the latest jobs report looks good. Even so, I think the surge will retreat – the move announced today has already weakened the dollar, resulting in higher prices of futures for oil, gold and silver, which are always priced internationally in dollars. . . . The fact is that none of the underlying, weak fundamentals about the Eurozone’s or America’s economy have changed.” If printing money can make us rich, we’ll be rich. Otherwise, not so much.
IS PHYSICAL STRENGTH the most important thing in life?
PAUL HSIEH: Screening For Terrorists vs. Screening For Cancer:
As the holiday travel season approaches, millions of American air passengers will become painfully reacquainted with Transportation Security Agency (TSA) screening measures. Passengers must submit to either medically unnecessary X-rays or intrusive gropings. Yet in the realm of health care the federal government has adopted a new policy of discouraging routine screening tests for many cancers. Although these two policies may seem superficially contradictory, they demonstrate an underlying common theme of the government seeking ever-greater control over our bodies and our freedom.
Screening travelers and screening patients share some common features. In both cases the goal is to sort through a large, mostly-normal population to identify the relatively few problem cases — either an undetected terrorist or a hidden cancer.
The TSA’s current approach of mass passenger screening has long angered many Americans.
Indeed it has.
EUROZONE FALLOUT: The reality, though, is that there are no safe havens anywhere any longer. I’m going long on shotgun shells and canned goods.
TINA BROWN: Obama Isn’t A Leader. “I think knowing how to exercise power is absolutely crucial. He doesn’t understand how to underpin his ideas with the political gritty, granular business of getting it done. And that kind of gap has just widened and widened and widened. And so that every time there is a moment, a window where he can jump in, like something like a Simpson-Bowles as well, he just doesn’t do it. He hangs back at crucial moments when you have to dive through that window.” Video at the link.
RESEARCH: Georgetown students shed light on China’s tunnel system for nuclear weapons. “Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data. The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.”
UPDATE: Payback? Heh.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Blue Storm Batters Black America. “The civil rights movement and the emergence of a Black middle class has been one of America’s greatest successes of the 20th century, now Black families are seeing decades of progress unravel in the span of two years.”
I guess things aren’t living up to those 2008 hopes.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Reasons to Worry About the Prospects for a European Bailout. “The world used up a lot of its firepower during earlier phases of the crisis. I’m not just talking about those debt and spending numbers highlighted above. I’m talking about the political capital, the diplomatic capital, the institutional capital. In 2007, if this had happened, the US could have taken a much more aggressive role in helping Europe to get its act together. These days, even if Obama wanted to do the right thing at the expense of his sure and certain defeat in 2012, he’d never get Congress to go along. Similarly, my sense is that the last few years have frayed whatever pan-European goodwill existed.”
REALLY? 2014 Infiniti EV to Debut Wireless Inductive Charging System. “Nissan is now working on inductive charging, with the first production application of the technology arriving when Nissan’s luxury arm, Infiniti, launches its new EV model in 2014. Nissan says the charging system is 80-90 percent efficient depending on how well aligned the car is to the charging area. That’s about the same range, the automaker says, as a conventional (conductive) plug-in charger because of electrical losses between the plug on the car and the plug in the wall. Inductive charging would certainly leave homeowner’s garages free of cords. But the real benefit would come in the city.”