Education and Free-Market

*Edit: Links didn't carry over.*

A friend of mine sent along this article and asked for thoughts I figured why not just post it?

Article:


Education, Entrepreneurship, And The President



Today, President Barack Obama addressed school children across America. Political emotions are running hot, the Drudge Report has highlighted the speech for days and it has been daily fodder for blogs, radio and television. Personally, we believe that our children should learn to respect and honor the Office of The President of the United States of America – no matter who sits in that office or what their politics are.



Typically, students are exposed to politics and government indirectly through their parents, teachers, or the media, and more directly on their eighth-grade trip to the state capitol or to Washington, DC. Reversing this process, by bringing the politician into the classroom, is what bothers people.



So, why are we writing about this? Because the speech is about economics, that’s why. The President told the kids, “Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.”



He adds, “Maybe you could be a good writer…maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor…maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice…You can’t just drop out of school and drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.”

Good stuff.



“Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.”

Great stuff.



These are the things many of us tell our kids every day. The American system of free market capitalism and democracy has provided an amazing array of opportunities for those willing to work hard. In America, unlike under communism or feudalism, freedom not only allows choices, but provides them. In the Soviet Union, at the height of communism, the government planned just about everything.

It decided on individual careers (who would be a doctor or bus driver). It divvied up the pie. In a free market, the forces of supply and demand do this. They push and pull people to sectors and jobs that best utilize individual talents – where people are the most gifted.



As a result, resources (labor and capital) are shifted to where they are best used and most profitable. Entrepreneurs who treat capital well are rewarded with more of it, while those that treat capital poorly face the loss of it. Education is an important step in this environment, and increases the odds of success, but it does not provide a guarantee of success.



In fact, public education (especially in the inner-city) is failing many children as the President speaks. And it’s not all the kids’ fault. The schools are publicly run and face little to no competition. Vouchers, which would provide that competition, are universally condemned by teachers’ unions

because they don’t like competition. In a competitive environment, voucher money would leave public schools and so would students to go to schools that worked.



Nonetheless, the President finished his speech by saying, “Your families, your teachers, and I are doing

everything we can to make sure you have the education you need….I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too.”



This is the one part of the speech we completely disagree with. While we certainly understand the President’s desire to be the bearer of all gifts to all people, it is not his money or time that is supporting the school system. Hardworking American taxpayers are the ones supporting the school system with their tax dollars. And it’s their children attending the schools. In a truly free market system, they would be the ones that directed the resources. But the public school system is not a free market. As a result, the government directs the resources and the system remains inefficient and less effective than it could be.


B rian S . Wesbury - Chief Economist

Robert Stein, CFA - Senior Economist

Thoughts:

If I were Emperor the first thing I would do is eliminate any system of education that did not explicitly train people to work in my regime, or that taught critical thinking in the form of the Scientific Method or otherwise.

Anywho:

I'm always suspicious of 'free market' arguments where 'free market' is not clearly defined. I know that as Good, Patriotic (same thing), Freedom-Loving Americans we're not supposed to question the motivations or wisdom of the masters of our markets. Our markets are good because they're 'free'. No, they're not free as in they don't cost money they're free in the sense that...

You know what? How about a nice creamy McCafe? You'd like that wouldn't you? What's wrong? You don't feel like a refreshing McCafe? Is it the corn syrup? Why don't you want corn syrup? Is it because you hate corn? You know the American-Indians gave the Pilgrims corn and then they founded America. You don't hate America do you? No, I didn't think so. Have a McCafe, you may be an instant winner. Drink it!

As for these guys I'd take a look at their backgrounds as far as a few minutes of internet research allows:

If it's this Robert Stein and this Brian Wesbury or (I have a hard time reconciling the pictures bad with faces, no excuse I know) these guys:

They and / or their mentors are all products of the US public school system. One might say that they can see as far as they do because they stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with the system as it is, but to eliminate public education in the name of the 'free-market' as these gentlemen do not explicitly state but strongly imply is absurd.

As they state in the last paragraph it's the 'hardworking American taxpayers' that are supporting the pubic school system and that 'they would be the ones that directed the resources'. In a Representative Democracy (which I'd say we strive to be, if not then some form of Republic) the public directs its resources through its representatives in its elected government.

Now, are there 'inefficiencies'? Yes. But through government we at least make an effort to represent the interests of a broad section of the population and make an attempt to move forward by examining potential courses of action from as many points of view as possible, hopefully finding the steadiest course.

Situations where individuals can take action based solely on their own interests, without temperance (regulation via some third party, in our case an elected government, hopefully) lead to the formation of oligopolies and cartels and monopolies among other things. Don't get me wrong, these systems are great if you control them (or have controlling shares or whatever you want to call it) but they're not so pretty if you don't.

(Hint: We Don't)

And by the way, when the hell did people start taking all of their advice from bankers? What the hell does anyone think a banker is going to advise them to do but to give them all of their money. It's what they do.

My friend takes a look at public education here and can speak more comprehensibly about the issue(s) than I ever could.

tl;dr;

These guys and / or their mentors owe their station in life to the US public education system. They make their living by convincing people to give them money with the promise that they will create more money with it. While I might take seriously what they have to say about a prospectus describing the distribution of assets for a pension fund, I'm highly suspect of their advice for just about anything else.

Of course, these guys are Economists and I'm just Some Guy.

(Incidentally I had never heard of them, we all live in our little bubble, nice to get out of it sometimes.)

Horrifying

Man carrying assault weapon attends Obama protest

PHOENIX – About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

I've got no words.

Technology Fail

Attacks on lone blogger reverberate across Web

That's the AP headline, and my reaction is threefold:

First, why is "Web" capitalized? Is it the proper name of a specific place, like Des Moines or Middle Earth?

Second... technology fail:

On Friday, the surge of traffic to Twitter was about as it was Thursday — as much as 20 percent above normal traffic levels. But Gomi said NTT was better able to filter out the fake traffic, which is why Twitter stayed online.

20%? Seriously?

Third... Shirtless Putin says "Down with Georgian bloggers!"

Follow the Money

Working for the New York City public school system has taught me at least one universal truism. That is, if you want to find the root of any social problem, follow the money. Once you realize who is profiting from the failure of education, or health care, or international relations... then you know who is really invested in obstructing any sort of solution.

Bill Maher seems to have figured this out. Check out his rant about health care -- it starts around 2:00. (The whole clip is funny if you want to watch from the beginning, but the relevant part is two minutes in). Enjoy.

Retail Politics

Off to see a soccer match. In the meantime, enjoy this:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

Awesome.

Mom! I'm being blackmailed again!

You may recall John Ensign, the GOP senator from Nevada who had the good sense to make his affair public just days before Mark Sanford hiked the Appalachian Trail (thereby knocking Ensign off the front page).

Let's find a nice picture of Ensign so you can get his image back in your head. Something that suggests his character:



Pretty much nails it.

Ok so, blah blah blah, snarky comment snarky comment, et cetera et cetera. "You're bagging on a GOP senator who announced his affair a month ago, Matt, what's the big deal? You're boring us when TMZ is on."

Good point, so let's just get to the latest news about the distinguished gentleman from Nevada:

It looks like John Ensign's sexual dignity -- which hasn't been high lately -- has plunged to new depths. His lawyer has just released a remarkable statement saying that Ensign's parents paid the Hamptons $96,000 after the 51-year-old senator told his Mom and Dad about the affair.

I love politics

Drudge is Fun

Headlines like this are why I check Drudge.

Out With a Whisper

I have to agree with Bob Herbert today, not that I was there the first time around.

"Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s icy-veined, cold-visaged and rigidly intellectual point man for a war that sent thousands upon thousands of people (most of them young) to their utterly pointless deaths, has died at the ripe old age of 93."

The '80s Greatest Hits

Last week, and over the weekend, we reprised one of the classics: A Central American military coup. Brought me back to the days of Reaganomics, Spandau Ballet and Bloom County.

And as you can see in the background, we had absolutely nothing do do with it.


Not to be outdone, China - always China! - stepped up to the plate with some good old fashioned anti-state riots. Not exactly Tiananman Square, progressive, student-led "freedom now!" style; instead, these are ethnic riots. Turns out the Uigers are pretty pissed.

The protesters were demanding a probe into a fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese workers at a southern China factory last month that had left two people dead.

Riots had erupted in the region ahead of the Olympics last August. Seventeen policemen were killed in Kashgar on August 4 in what China described as a "terrorist" attack.

Xinjiang has a roughly eight million population of Uighurs, who have alleged the government of suppressing their rights.

Not sure this is a pattern or a series of unrelated events, but if I were Danny Quayle I'd start dusting off my resume for 2012. Seems like everything old is new again.

Do not go stupid into that good night...

Caribou Barbie calls it quits.

Yeah, hard to believe that Sarah Palin, of all people, is tired of the spotlight. I'd believe the bit about her doing it to shield her family from "all the negativity," but she's pimped her children more thoroughly than anyone this side of the Lohans. I'd believe the bit that she's doing this to get out on the trail in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina a bit early, but quitting an elected post 18 months before your term ends isn't likely to win anyone support, anywhere.

Which leads me to believe that some of the crap thrown against the wall is gonna stick. The "other shoe dropping" option is the early leader, so here's some reading from DailyKos (I know, I know - sorry).

Whatever the reason, I'd just like to thank our lucky stars one last time that this person has been a part of our life for the past nine months. I can't remember a crazier politician thrust onto the national stage in my lifetime, and true to form, her outgoing press conference was a thing of rambling, twisted, mind-numbing beauty.



That's something special, isn't it? Just one long, run-on sentence, or perhaps a series of sentence fragments tied together by nothing at all. It really is the closest thing to the Billy Madison scene I've ever witnessed.

Seriously, I hope this is a prelude to a legitimate run in 2012. She's too much fun to be gone. Don't go, Sarah! Don't leave us!

Buying Africa

It's the rubber trade all over again, except this time it's the Russians and Chinese instead of the Belgians and Portuguese.

Gazprom seals $2.5bn Nigeria deal

And yes, the name of the new joint venture is called "Nigaz." I shit you not.

More from Iran

Naturally, I get the lion's share of my news from a soccer message board. I found this post - from an Iranian involved in the protests - particularly compelling:

Things just went from bad to worse. Another miscalculation because he (Khamenei) wants to save face and continues with his illogical support of AN.

He basically warned Mousavi to stop this or we'll make it worse. Veiled threats against Rafsanjani who is now being portrayed as the ring leader of all the troubles in Iran!

It is now 2 opposite poles: Khamenei and his supporters (no longer AN and his supporters!!) who include AN, Basij, and to varying extents Revolutionary Guards. Against everyone else!! I don't think Mousavi will back down; Karrubi certainly won't. In any case, when you have 1-3 million people on the streets of Tehran for you for 5/6 days in a row, not only will you not back off, but if he does, the crowds won't dissipate, they may simply become more violent!

For the first time, Rafsanjani should feel directly threatened. He is man after saving his own neck first and that is why despite rumours for about 3 days that he has gone to Qom to talk with Maraje' and try to hold an emergency session of the Council of Experts, there was still some doubt. For him and everyone else on the "opposition" side now, it should be clear that Khamenei will either have to go or at the very least taught a lesson (the former being more likely)!

Unfortunately, there will be many more deaths now. It is inevitable that the foolhardy and brainwashed will hit with that much more zelousy and the worse they hit and kill, the more people will come out in protest.

May God, Jesus, Buddha, Yauwe, Shiva or whomever else might be up there help. A massacre although still hopefully unlikely, just became one step closer. More deaths, almost inevitable.

More good reading here.

Shoop de woop

The discord in Iran is both scary and encouraging, given it could end with either a semi-legit democracy in an area of the world that could badly use one, or it could end with nuclear annihilation*. It's like trying to turn a double into a triple with less than two outs at this point - a crazy risk that either pays off spectacularly, or (more likely) ends any chance of progress.

Fun part about it is that it puts the amateur Iranian photoshoppers back in the news. Remember this from last June?















It's from last summer, and at a quick glance it looks like four SCUD-type missiles being launched. Hurrah for the mighty power of Iran. Except...













Clearly shooopped. Those of us whiling away our days looking at pictures of kittens online can spot this stuff pretty quickly. And Iran's propaganda machine was, well, ridiculed:













What's that got to do with the current civil unrest after an obviously rigged election? One in which the ostensible victor claims to have had rallies of several million supporters showing their utter devotion? Well... take a look:



















Remember to enjoy your news, kids, but believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.

*Or it could end somewhere in between. Which is the most likely outcome, but as a blogger I'm duty-bound to present only the most extreme options.

lolNYS

I admit it, I love Gail Collins.

"I am deeply depressed about my state’s Legislature. This is an embarrassing thing to have to admit, since it obviously suggests the lack of a full and meaningful inner life."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11collins.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Building a bridge to the 20th century

Courtesy of Mike Vallo:

A mayor who changed his own term limits a coup in the state capital and an unelected governor, what former Soviet Republic do I live in?

That about sums it up.

A bit more information if you can stomach it.

The new Journal

The NY Observer has an in-depth look at the WSJ's move to midtown from their Battery Park offices. No groundbreaking stuff here, more just a collection of holier-than-thou faux libertarians lamenting their horrible fate (hey, it's just what the market dictated! Ergo, it's only right and natural!) and reminiscing about "simpler times and values."

But it's worth a read simply for the description of the NewsCorp cafeteria, and general culture at NewsCorp headquarters (a building the WSJ reporters call "The Death Star." Full points for that - it's good comedy.)

The new real estate space means The Journal will be pushed into the forefront in a whole new way.

In the elevators, in the gym—which Journal reporters can join for $7 per week—they’ll be reminded wherever they turn that they are now aliens living in someone else’s house.

“In the cafeteria, there has been some reaction to the names of the sandwiches!” said an editor. “There is some sort of O’Reilly wrap.”

“When you walk in, you walk by this huge picture of Fox Nation,” said a reporter. “That’s the hardest part for them to handle—that you’re in the same building as Fox News. There’s this sort of visceral feeling that you’re cheek to cheek to the least palatable parts of Murdoch world. He owns The Times of London, The Australian and then you’re there with Fox News.”

And even when you wind up climbing back to your desk, the TVs all have a feed tuned directly into Fox News and the Fox Business Channel. Reporters who are there now said that they can’t change the channel, but a Journal spokesman said, “The TV channels can be changed. Facilities will be coordinating the distribution of the remote controls once the move is complete.”

When do we get to change NewsCorps' name to "The Ministry of Truth?"

See how it spins...

By now you've probably heard about the murder of Dr. George Tiller at his Wichita, Kansas church. Let's look beyond the fact that Tiller performed legal operations that saved the lives of countless mothers, and instead focus on how his murder has transformed the politics of the abortion discussion in the US.

For years one side has been branded "Pro-Choice," those who think that the mother has the right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The other side has been branded "Pro-Life," which ostensibly meant that they venerate human life above all else, and since most pregnancies will end up producing a living human being, consider abortion to be murder.

Problem is, the "Pro-Life" movement also tend to be the same people who support war and the death penalty. In liberal circles there have long been jokes about "Pro-Life" folks being upset about a medical procedure to dispose of some cells that couldn't win an arm-wrestling contest with a bit of amneotic fluid, yet venerating and supporting with a passion the act of electrocuting retarded people. So "Pro-Life" didn't seem to be the correct title for this bunch.

Which brings us to this article from our friends at the AP:

Anti-abortion leaders voiced concern Sunday that the Obama administration and other Democrats may try to capitalize on the murder of Dr. George Tiller to defuse the abortion issue in upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Many anti-abortion groups condemned the killing of Tiller, a prominent abortion provider who was shot dead at his church in Wichita, Kan. But they expressed concern that abortion-rights activists would use the occasion to brand the entire anti-abortion movement as extremist.

"Anti-abortion." The phrase "Pro-Life" doesn't appear even once in the article, and the AP ain't exactly known for it's left-wing bias.

Honestly you could knock me over with a feather, but it seems like the mainstream media's finally caught on: These people are not pro-life. They're anti-abortion; they couldn't give a shit about living, breathing human beings.

It's nice when the press does its job. Well done, AP.

It's Sonia

Three weeks ago when David Souter announced he was stepping down from the Supreme Court, everyone assumed that Obama would nominate a woman, and preferably a minority, to replace him. Check and check.

Meet Sonia Sotomayor.

She was pretty much the frontrunner from day one, so this comes as no surprise. Will she be a good justice? I'm not an expert, but my lawyer friends seem unanimous in their praise of her. She's considered a liberal, but a moderate one rather than a firebrand. Assuming she's confirmed (a very, very safe assumption) she'll be the third woman and just the first latino to be on the court. Interestingly, she'll be the sixth Catholic in this particular court.

And let's toot Esquire's horn for a moment here as they called this way back in October:

If Obama becomes president, his first nominee to the Supreme Court will likely be Sonia Sotomayor. As a Hispanic woman with 16 years of court experience, Sotomayor would slay two of the court's lack-of-diversity birds with one swift stone. "These are criteria that matter these days. Even Laura Bush was disappointed that her husband didn't name a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor," says Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard. And because Sotomayor has a reputation for staying behind the scenes and sits on a federal bench known for its centrism, it's likely that she would be able to garner a two-thirds majority in the Senate, even if the Democrats only control an estimated 55 or so seats.

Well done to them. Hopefully she's paid all her taxes and didn't have a nanny off the books.

Also, for those of you who don't follow the court: This doesn't really change things. Souter was liberal, Sotomayor is liberal, so the balance of the court pretty much remains 5-to-4 conservative-to-liberal.

EDIT: TPM already has a pretty comprehensive and hilarious look at GOP talking points.

The DNC's New Best Friend

It's official. The Republican Party the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats.

Case in point: this video recently posted on YouTube by the RNC. It actually makes no fucking sense, but I vaguely suspect it's some kind of murder/sex masturbation fantasy centering around Nancy Pelosi. I mean, we've all had them, sure. But we don't go around posting them on YouTube.

Conservatives are hella tough

Anybody can take a waterboarding, especially if they know they're not actually gonna drown, right?

Witness

"I don't want to say this... Absolutely torture... No way in hell, had I known it was that bad would I have done that."

The words are from conservative radio host Eric "Mancow" Muller. And full credit to the guy for having the balls to 1) submit himself to torture, and 2) admit he was wrong.

And for some perspective... this dude lasted six seconds. The typical person lasts 14. And, ya know, isn't around friends with an EMT standing by.

Absolutely torture. That's our legacy right now.

Maureen Dowd...

Get out.

NEW YORK – New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.

Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to The Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

The newspaper issued a formal correction Monday saying Dowd "failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse" to Marshall's blog.

The error appeared in Dowd's Sunday column, in which she criticized the Bush administration's use of interrogation methods in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Just when the NYT was actually turning things around... *sigh*

We interrupt my snarky little blog...

To cross-post some actual journalism from an old friend of mine, Jon Rougeot.

Fighting for the Right to Marry in New York

My partner, Craig, and I are in our early 30s. We've been in a committed, monogamous relationship for more than two years. We are sickeningly in love with each other. So, of course we are naturally peppered with the question, "Are you going to get married?" To which we answer, "We would love to, but we can't." At least, not in our adopted home state of New York.

Good luck, Jon. We're with you.

When did Paul Begala get so funny?

Hilarious, if not exactly ground-breaking stuff from lil' Paul:

According to a CNN poll taken in December - back when Cheney was spending most of his time hiding in a secure and undisclosed location - a fourth of all Americans believe Cheney is the worst vice president in American history. The worst. Worse than Spiro Agnew, who was a crook. Worse than Richard Nixon who, well, was a crook. Worse than Dan Quayle, who's looking better and better compared to Cheney. Worse even than Aaron Burr, who shot a guy. Oh, wait. Never mind.

When I think competence...

I think Lehman Brothers. But I think it sarcastically.

Mayor Mike apparently lacks my well-developed sense of humor. Or perhaps I lack his. Either way, he appointed a former Lehman Brothers exec as head of the NYC Housing Authority, which is responsible for housing nearly half a million New Yorkers. Seriously, this isn't a bad joke.

Meet John B. Rhea:

A graduate of Wesleyan University who also holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School, Chairman Rhea began his career in the Fixed Income Division of PaineWebber Inc. He most recently served as Managing Director and Co-Head of Global Consumer/Retail Group at Barclays Capital (formerly Lehman Brothers) managing strategy and budget for one of the largest industry sector teams in investment banking.

Imagine the balls it takes to put the fact that you managed the budget - any budget! - at Lehman Bros. on your resume. Then imagine the balls it takes to hire that guy.

Sad thing is we're pretty much stuck with Bloomy for another four years since he bludgeoned term limits to death with the rod of unyielding hubris. Only way he loses is if Bill Clinton runs for mayor.

Anyone wanna start DraftBubbaNYC.org?

NY Assembly passes same-sex marriage bill

Go Team Sodomy! NY is trying to become the third state to allow gay marriage without going through the courts, but there's still some work to be done.

The fight to legalize gay marriage will now go to the Democratically controlled Senate where Majority Leader Malcolm Smith has said he will not bring the bill to the floor until he is sure he has the votes. Smith reiterated his personal support for gay marriage in a statement released earlier today. Word is that supporters of the bill in the Senate need to win around five votes to secure it’s passage.

Those five votes are most likely upstate in the BlueDog areas. Will it happen? Honestly I don't know, but here's the link for the NY State Senate: http://www.nysenate.gov/

Harass whomever you see fit to receive an email or phone call. FWIW, the NY Times identified Vincent L. Leibell and James S. Alesi as two of the most crucial swing-voters.

Just when you started feeling bad for the mainstream media...

We get this little bit of news: John Yoo, he-who-penned-the-fuck-the-Constitution-torture-is-happy BushCo. memos, was surreptitiously put on staff by the Philly Inquirer. Seriously.

The fact that the Inquirer has always been a shit paper doesn't really matter here, it's more the continuing principle that the press is more interested in being the news than breaking it, Frank Rich's tears from this weekend's NYTimes notwithstanding (and thanks to loyal reader Esteban for sending me this one):

The American Press on Suicide Watch

That’s why the debate among journalists about possible forms of payment (subscriptions, NPR-style donations, iTunes-style micropayments, foundation grants) is inside baseball. So is the acrimonious sniping between old media and new. The real question is for the public, not journalists: Does it want to pony up for news, whatever the media that prevail?

It’s all a matter of priorities. Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for by advertisers). Then cable and satellite became the national standard.

By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom. Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that, like the cockroach, will always be with us. But if a comprehensive array of real news is to be part of the picture as well, the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.

Funny enough, I actually agree with Rich. It would be more meaningful, however, if he wasn't talking from atop the pinnacle of the "media-as-news" movement, namely the NYT Op-Ed page. And probably at a salary that could keep 5 real journalists employed.

But right now, that's what the MSM is: commentary of ideology in the hopes of landing a 5 minute spot on Olbermann or O'Reilly, as necessity dictates. God save the 4th estate from itself.

Stay crazy, GOP

Dick Cheney says it's a mistake for the GOP to "go moderate."

This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles.

Begs the question, since when did Cheney start caring about what's in the Constitution?

Good news for the Dems and bad for the idea of a legitimate 2-party system is that Cheney's not alone in trying to push the GOP even further to the right.

Social conservatives are blasting the National Council for a New America, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) nascent effort to rebrand the Republican Party, as a misguided and weak-kneed initiative that is out of touch with the GOP rank and file.

...

But social conservatives couldn’t help but notice that the policy areas the group will focus on included no mention of same-sex marriage, immigration or abortion. And the roster of GOP luminaries who signed on to the effort was missing a few of the pols who are most popular with values voters.

So while fewer folks are self-identifying as republican, and more folks are starting to come 'round on the social issues of the left, both the former vice president and the money-laden base want to run hard to the right.

We might see a 70 seat Dem senate and 260 seat house if this keeps up. Great news for the Dems, yes, but probably bad news for the country.

Will the Rockefeller Republican please stand up?

How to succeed in business without really trying

In doing some research for a script this morning, I came across this old collection of stories from the NY Times:

Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans
Finding of Fraud Led to Suspension of Company Supplying Arms to Afghanistan
Washington Blocks Exports of Munitions Firm Suspected of Fraud
Dealer Accused of Selling Banned Munitions to Army
American Envoy Is Linked to Arms Deal Cover-Up
Henry Waxman's letter to said envoy (PDF)
Army Awarded Contract, Unaware of Dealer’s Past
Not Guilty Plea In Ammunition Case
Albanian witness in U.S. arms probe dies suddenly
Speculation Surrounds Case of Albanian Whistle-Blower’s Death

Sadly, the story seems to have petered out. I'll assume that it simply hasn't come to trial yet, but I'll be googling Efraim Diveroli every couple of days from here on out just to make sure we stay current on what is really a pretty hilarious piece of bureaucracy.

Steele the figurehead and Obama the pragmatist

loltastic story of the day is erstwhile comedian Michael Steele losing his control over the RNC's budget after a series of calamitous public appearances followed by what appears to be a six-week banishment. Steele - you remember him as the guy who actually had the balls (stupidity?) to call question the divinity of Rush Limbaugh - now is nothing but a figurehead:

The "good governance" agreement revives checks and balances Mr. Steele resisted implementing for RNC contracts, fees for legal work and other expenditures that were not renewed after the 2008 presidential nominating contest.

I'm not sure this is a good or a bad things for the Dems. Good because the idea of secret meetings taking place to sort out public policy is exactly the type of thing that shows the GOP haven't learned shit; bad because it's hard to imagine the new leaders will be as inept as Steele.

...

Best column I've read in some time, courtesy of Robert Reich at TalkingPointsMemo. Reich points out that, while it's great that Obama is a pragmatist, it's not nearly enough.

I’m relieved the President is a pragmatist, but that doesn’t let him or anyone around him off the hook for describing what he wants to achieve and why. Being a pragmatist is a statement about means, not ends. It describes someone who chooses the most practical way of achieving a certain goal but it does not explain why he chooses one goal over another.

The President seems to me especially thoughtful and passionate about one of the great moral questions of domestic policy today: widening inequality of income and wealth, and therefore of opportunity and political power. As I’ve noted before, as recently as 1980, the richest 1 percent of Americans took home about 9 percent of total national income. But since then, income has concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. By 2007, the richest 1 percent took home 22 percent of total national income.

Burying the lede

More bad journalism, this time from the AP:

Iran's leader sparks Western walkout at UN meeting

Why is this story important? It's not because Ahmadinejad gave his typical anti-semitic stump speech, or that the Israel refused to attend the conference, or that tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It's not even the fact that the people of Iran seem to be catching onto Ahmadinejad's act, meaning he could be in trouble in this summer's elections. (Ok, that one is pretty big - a return of the moderates who were ousted in 2004 could signal a sea change in the one country in the region with even small semblance of progressive, democratic thought.)

No, the real story comes all the way at the end.

Speaking directly after Ahmadinejad's speech, Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said the Iranian leader's comments "run counter to the very spirit of dignity of the conference."

Ahmadinejad "has made Iran the odd man out," he said.

See, by boycotting the conference and bringing the likes of Canada, Germany, Italy and a few others with us, the US has forced the EU to (finally) publicly acknowledge Ahmadinejad's regime for what they are.

WHICH IS THE CRUCIAL FIRST STEP TO ACTUALLY RESOLVING ANY OF THE PROBLEMS WE'RE FACING THE MIDDLE EAST.

Caps are for anyone from the AP who might be reading this and, presumably, missing the point. I'd draw it in crayon if I could.

So yeah, today was a big day and the Obama Admin played it just right. After 8 years of playing it retarded, it's nice to see us acting like grown ups.

Hopefully the rest of the world will continue to fall into step.

EDIT: Obviously related content.

Why newspapers are failing

I might take a closer look at this next week, or I might play videogames. Either way it's worth noting that The Washington Post, one of the papers of record for these USofA for the past two centuries, is 1) in serious financial trouble, and 2) regularly hires reporters who don't understand what they're covering.

These two things might be related.

The new Washington Post reporter covering the Nationals baseball team would rather be writing about something else. Food, preferably.

“I don’t like sports—I am embarrassed that I cover them,” Chico Harlan says. “I can’t wait to stop. It is a means to an end and a paycheck.”

...

“My approach might drive hard-core fans crazy because I might not get inside for that nitty-gritty play-by-play,” he says. “The passion I can drum up is wanting to capture what is unique about each game. I am interested in the characters more than anything.”

Harlan on Adam Dunn, the Nats’ new slugger: “He’s very Will Ferrell-ish in his humor. He has that half-amused smile on that big body and that curly hair. It’s hard not to look at that guy and laugh.”

Hard-hitting! In-depth!

To be fair, this is about as much as the Nationals deserve. They suck out loud. But it's also obvious that Chico is part of the old breed of reporters who think the story is all about them and what they find interesting, not about what's actually happening.

That's the same breed of reporters that drove the newspaper industry down the toilet in the first place, in case anyone was wondering. And it also clears up a bit about how a paper as respected as the WaPo once was can fall so far, because having this guy on the staff reeks of only one thing: contempt for your readers.

Of which there is now one fewer. Adios, WaPo. Enjoy your place at the table with the Rocky Mountain News and the NY Sun. You've earned it.

Let's pass a law saying that police must end all crime by 2014.

Seems like kind of a silly idea, doesn't it? Well, it would make about as much sense as Bush's 2001 No Child Left Behind law, which requires 100% of students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

To believe that schools can accomplish such an outcome simply because the federal government has instructed them to do so, we'd have to believe that schools are the single, decisive factor determining student achievement. In other words, according to NCLB, all socio-economic factors, parental education level, parental involvement, individual motivation (or lack thereof), and variations in native intellect can all be overcome, in every case and in every circumstance, by public educators -- just as long as you tell them they have to do it.

Later this year, NCLB will be up for renewal. Undoubtedly the Democratically controlled Congress will make some revisions to the law. What is not yet clear is how extensive those revisions will be, and what changes will be made. What does seem apparent is that NCLB and the fundamental notions underlying it, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Which is too bad, because it's a junk law. Here's why.

Standards

"Standards" simply refers to the list of stuff that we expect students to know and be able to do. Without clear standards, you can't have accountability... right? I mean, you'd have nothing to hold people accountable for. And if you want a genuinely educated populace, those standards need to be high. So that's one major pillar of the NCLB law: high standards.

Except that, NCLB does absolutely nothing to improve standards, and one could easily argue that the law has lowered educational standards far more frequently than it has strengthened them. NCLB does not set any specific standards for student performance. Instead, it mandates that each state must write its own standards. Now, undoubtedly this is a step in the right direction. Every state should have clear, concrete standards for every subject area. Unfortunately, even while complying with NCLB, many states have standards which are weak, vaguely worded, short on specifics, short on content, and often just plain low. Bush's law doesn't contain any mechanism for evaluating the quality of state educational standards, or for ensuring uniformity across the states. There is no standard for the standards.

Given that it is up to each state to set its own standards, and then test whether its students have met those standards... it's not too surprising that test scores are on the rise. One simple explanation is that standards are being lowered so that more students appear to be proficient.

Testing

Under NCLB, standardized tests are the mechanism used to determine whether students are learning, and therefore whether schools are doing their job. Standards + Testing = Accountability. That's the essential formula of NCLB.

Contrary to what many people seem to think, there is no federal "NCLB test." Rather, the law mandates that each state is to administer its own tests in reading and math, and then submit the results to the federal government. While this is a tremendous windfall for private testing companies who write the tests, it's not the most reliable measure of student achievement.

In reality, the tests vary in difficulty level from state to state. Even if we set aside all the other questions and concerns surrounding the use of standardized tests to gauge student achievement and educator effectiveness (maybe we'll save all that for a later post), we still must face the fact that reading and math proficiency in Missouri are not the same as reading and math proficiency in Massachusetts, and No Child Left Behind provides no means to distinguish between the two.

(In New York City, teachers administer the tests within their own classrooms to their own students, with minimal [if any] supervision. Relying upon the results of tests administered under such conditions involves a pretty big leap of faith in teachers' integrity. Funny that legislators and the general public don't tend to trust teachers' competence, motivation nor professionalism. Yet they predicate billions of dollars of spending on this blind trust in teachers' honesty regarding test results.)

Accountability

This word gets thrown around a lot in contemporary education policy discourse, but it doesn't often get examined. Underlying all the discussion is an implicit assumption: schools haven't been properly educating children, because nobody has been holding them accountable for doing so. Increased accountability - holding teachers and administrators (and maybe even state governors, if Obama has anything to say about it) responsible for their own student outcomes -- is supposed to have a direct, positive effect on student achievement. In fact, that's the whole essence of the law. Logically, it presupposes that schools or individual teachers could be doing much more to educate children, but they simply haven't done so, only because they haven't been motivated to do so. They've been lazy, because nobody has been holding them accountable.

Yet NCLB doesn't hold educators accountable for their administrative or pedagogical practices, or even their students' actual achievements; it only holds them accountable for test results, which we've seen are essentially meaningless.

NCLB provides minimal guidance and weak support for struggling schools, totally failing to address the underlying issues and entrenched problems which cause students to fail in the first place. For example, the law offers a supposedly research-based reading curriculum whose development and implementation have been rife with corruption and mismanagement.

The law also mandates that schools which fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years in a row must offer free after-school tutoring to students. This tutoring is provided by private companies, who have earned literally billions of dollars for providing their services. But the private tutoring companies are chosen by the individual states at their own discretion. NCLB includes no standards, no oversight and no accountability for these companies. It simply requires states to shell out piles of cash to them, with absolutely no way of measuring their effectiveness, and no apparent desire to do so.

Without a universal standard and without a reliable means to test progress toward that standard, accountability becomes a farce and NCLB becomes a very expensive exercise in futility. It allocates billions of dollars to private companies with no oversight or accountability. It does very, very little to provide real support for struggling schools or to address underlying problems which cause schools and therefore students to fail.

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan appear to favor a stronger role for the federal government in public education, and they appear inclined toward strong accountability measures. It remains unclear how much of Bush's educational policy Obama will retain, but using NCLB as a template is probably a shaky foundation for real reform. It's a junk law that accomplishes nothing other than piling even more money onto the heap of wasted educational spending in America.

Inauguration Day

First a little bit of fun: The out-going VP, the one and only Dick Cheney, threw his back out while "moving boxes" (one can only assume the rest of that description should properly read "towards the shredder") yesterday, and will be confined to a wheelchair today for the inauguration ceremony.

Chuck Shumer reassures the middle 60% that Obama's their guy.

Obama is “a moderate activist,” according to Schumer, who will push for changes in the short-term to both the economy and the war in Iraq.

And what does being "a moderate activist" mean? Acceptance of responsibility, and the willingness to make sacrifices if the NYT's preview of Obama's speech is accurate.

So what does this all mean? According to the Washington Post, it means that the governing starts at 12:01, and that soon-to-be-President Obama, through a unique confluence of personal gifts and national/international crises, has a chance to be the most powerful and important president since FDR.

No pressure, Barack. And good luck.

Crooks and Liars does the work so I don't have to

The great thing about FoxNews and the like is the veritable cottage industry of snarky blogs it's created that are devoted to debunking just about everything they say. Crooks and Liars (you'll see it linked in the left panel) is the best of them. They started as a rebut to FoxNews and O'Reilly in particular, though they've branched out in the four or five years since their start to become one of the more legitimate blog commentators out there, producing in-depth and expert commentary on everything from Gaza to the economy.

But it's nice when Pappa Bear gives you a chance to go home again.

O'Reilly really owes Paul Krugman -- and the public -- an apology

It's a pretty funny read. Enjoy.

Stocks Tumble as Retail Sales Report Shows Sharp Decline - NY Times
Geithner Questioned on Tax Returns - NY Times (keep an eye on this one)
Clinton to Engage Iran and Syria Soon - WSJ

New FCC Head

Obama gets this one absolutely right:

During the campaign, Mr. Genachowski shaped many of Mr. Obama’s telecom policies. He advocated an open Internet in the debate over so-called “net neutrality,’’ and media-ownership rules that promote a diversity of voices on the airwaves.

My Brain Hurts

I just plowed through this paper by Christina and David Romer, noted Cal-Berkeley economists. Christina, in fact, is the recently named chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

I don't suggest reading the paper. It hurts the think-box, so I will do my best to sum it up for you:

1. Tax cuts in a healthy economy (one that shows sustained growth, strong manufacturing and economic balance) can end up seeing a threefold return on investment. In other words, for every dollar you cut taxes, your economy sees $3.00 of gain.
2. Tax cuts in a struggling economy (erm, ours) show a net loss for the economy as a whole; for every dollar cut, you infuse $.99 into the economy.
3. Tax hikes in a struggling economy (ours again!) show a net gain for the economy as a whole; for every dollar taxed, you infuse somewhere around $1.30 into the economy.
   

The interesting part, and the part that the paper omits (or is unconcerned with, or doesn't measure) is what happens when tax breaks are given to one part of the economy while hikes are given to the other? After all, the argument against tax cuts as a means to get out of recession/depression is that, in tough times, people save money. If they're saving, they're not spending, and if they're spending, the supply/demand balance maintains grossly tipped towards the former.

However, what happens when you're giving tax cuts to the portion of the society that's more likely to spend it? Small businesses for one, comes to mind. The working and lower-middle classes do as well. These are the segments of society that have seen their disposable income dip precipitously over the past decade, to the point that another dollar in their pocket now is very likely a dollar that's going to go right back into the economy, rather than under the bed as it would have 50 years ago.

And these are the parts of society where Obama's new stimulus plan will cut taxes and create jobs. There's still some amount of consternation about the mathematics of this whole thing - and I'm not smart enough to figure out who's right and who's wrong - and it does fly in the face of Keynesian economic philosophy, but I like the idea of treating the symptom (by giving tax cuts to people and businesses who will spend) as well as the disease (by raising taxes on corporations and the richest 5%). It makes intuitive sense.

gLibertarians are dumb

Thanks to alert reader Seth for sending along this Social Security vs. Madoff summary from Fortune (via CNN). Michael Zuckoff does a good job of keeping it simple, and at the same time blowing up the gLibertarian memes about Social Security (one of the government programs that actually does work as intended) flitting about the web these days. To wit:

Third, Social Security is morally the polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme and fundamentally different from what Madoff allegedly did. At the height of the Great Depression, our society (see "Social") resolved to create a safety net (see "Security") in the form of a social insurance policy that would pay modest benefits to retirees, the disabled and the survivors of deceased workers. By design, that means a certain amount of wealth transfer, with richer workers subsidizing poorer ones. That might rankle, but it's not fraud.

That $800 or so per month many retirees receive is quite often the bit that keeps them from falling into poverty. If social security keeps even 10% of its recipients from that fate, then it is an absolute bargain for all Americans.

Just remember that the next time you hear a Corporatist say Social Security should be privatized (how would that have gone over this autumn, eh?) or a gLibertarian say it should be done away with all-together.

In other news:
Friday's Jobs Report Could Show Decline of 670,000
December's Job Loss Was Bad. But How Bad?
GM, Chrysler's federal loan deals bar strikes
China Losing Taste for Debt From U.S.

LOLhaters

A cross-section of doom

Courtesy of the NY Times:

The End of the Financial World as We Know It by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn. How the Madoff scandal and the market's general collapse have undermined America's standing in the financial world, and what they reveal about the nation's financial mindset.

Fighting Off Depression by Paul Krugman. This is exactly what it looks like: Krugman says it's time to gird our loins for The Second Great Depression.

Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution’s behalf: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

It turns out, however, that preventing depressions isn’t that easy after all. Under Mr. Bernanke’s leadership, the Fed has been supplying liquidity like an engine crew trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and the money supply has been rising rapidly. Yet credit remains scarce, and the economy is still in free fall.

Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy — large-scale deficit spending by the government — is needed to fight mass unemployment. The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time. And Keynesian thinking lies behind Mr. Obama’s plans to rescue the economy.

But these plans may turn out to be a hard sell.

Obama Plan Includes $300 Billion in Tax Cuts from the NYT business section. It's a good companion piece to get an idea of what "Keynesian thinking" actually is.

And on the lighter side, Bruce Sterling sums it up from a delinquent's point of view, courtesy of BoingBoing:

I'm a bohemian type, so I could scarcely be bothered to do anything "financially sound" in my entire adult life. Last year was the first year when I've felt genuinely sorry for responsible, well-to-do people. Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent living-it-up.

These are people who obeyed the social contract and are *still* getting it in the neck.

Issue 1: Climate Cha...

Actually, let's call it what it is: Global Warming. And according to The Independent, plan A has already failed:

An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary.

The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.

Wonderful. We've reached the point where atmospheric liposuction, if not quite a gastric bypass, is the preferred route to creating a "sustainable" environment.

"Sustainable" is, of course, the operative word here; the earth, whether we want to admit it or not, has finite resources. And legislation like the Kyoto Treaty has done nothing to curb our hunger for fossil fuels, as you can see from the graph above. Nonetheless, revisiting Kyoto should be high on President Obama's list of priorities.

Almost everyone who thought that geoengineering should be studied as a possible plan B said that it must not be seen as an alternative to international agreements on cutting carbon emissions but something that runs in parallel to binding treaties in case climate change runs out of control and there an urgent need to cool the planet quickly.

Which makes this article from the Times that much more interesting. Right now Obama's energy team is divided into two camps. The first, led by Carol Browner, wants aggressive, immediate and direct action to reduce our carbon emissions. The second, led by Larry Summers, wants a more cautious approach for fear of damaging the economy and further deepening the recession.

Striking the right balance - or perhaps eschewing balance all-together in favor of aggressive action on behalf of one concern or the other is the type of "first hundred days" challenge that could come to define Obama's first term. I don't know the right answer here; hopefully he does.