Slow day here, traveled back from Palm Desert. I never watched the show The OC, but I hope the scenery is better than what I saw on the drive back to the airport.
Where has everyone gone this weekend? Ah, this explains it, Power outages from East Coast snowstorm top 3M. The storm missed both Rhode Island and Ithaca, and pretty much went straight up the middle much like Hurricane Irene. That’s why so few people are visiting the blog this weekend, right? Right?
Glenn Reynolds of Istanpundit has a really important column in The NY Post about how the college education bubble has been inflated by government subsidies, Screw U:
That’s because when the government subsidizes something, producers respond by raising prices to soak up as much of the subsidy as they can. College is no exception. Tuition has been increasing much faster than disposable income, and families — believing that a college education is a can’t-lose investment, much as they used to think houses were — have been making up the difference with debt. After all, we’re told, student loan debt is “good debt,” because a college degree guarantees more earnings….
The problem is, “college” isn’t an undifferentiated product. Companies can’t hire enough mechanical engineers, but there’s no bidding war for majors in Fine Arts or Women’s Studies, degrees that cost just as much, but deliver a lot less in terms of employment. In an economically rational market, it would be harder to borrow money to finance fields of study that were unlikely to produce enough income to pay back the loans. But since the federal government subsidizes everything — and makes student loans un-dischargeable in bankruptcy — there’s no incentive for lenders to care, and even less incentive for colleges and universities to care.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters should be occupying their professors’ offices (or better yet, the Admissions Offices), particularly in the social “sciences,” but instead their social “sciences” professors have convinced them Wall Street is to blame. How convenient.
I didn’t get to watch Herman Cain on Face the Nation today. Good, bad, ugly?
I sense a developing “Stop Romney” campaign emerging. Bad move. Not stopping Romney, but launching such a campaign. The not-Romneys need to prove why they should be the nominee, not why Romney should not. The best way not to Stop Obama is to select a nominee just because the person is not Romney.
What else?
Added: Shared a cup of coffee tonight with Donald Douglas of American Power Blog, who lives not far from the hotel we are staying in.
Then got back and saw that it’s starting, a Politico headline article asserting that Herman Cain was accused of, well it’s not really clear, the article usese terms like “sexually suggestive” behavior in the 1990s at when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.
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I’m working downtown … listening to the groovy drumming of the OWS crowd across the street until midnight tonight.
Seems tensions are running high and they’ve split into two groups. A coworker said he read they’ve ruined the lawn and sprinkler system at city hall, causing $50,000 in damage.
Just like the tea party.
Have a safe trip home, Professor.
LukeHandCool (who feels sorry for the residents in the downtown lofts a block away who’ve been complaining about the drumming at night).
Picture….Thousand Words……..Can’t find a Job… http://moonbattery.com/?p=3824
It’s not lost on me that-
With our 10 years under the “Aticles of Confederation” Before ratification of the Constitution, Europe today is among other things where we would be today were it not for the Constitution
That it was 150 years before the Constitution that “The [Christian] Religous Wars” in England and Europe were what prompted the migrations to America
That it was 150 years ago that America fought it’s bloodiest war with the most fatalities per capita, the most Civilian casualties per capita and the bloodiest polarization of Americans. Some families today still have family legends – direct family oral traditions that date back to the Civil War, The Revolution, or even The English Civil War or The Thirty Years War. Too many Americans don’t remember the European Twentieth Century Wars..or the Nineteenth, Eighteenth, or Seventeenth Century European Wars.
Actually, I think I watched “The O.C.” once and forgot about it, LOL! Laguna Beach and the coastal areas are much nicer than some of the inland locations.
Anyway, thanks for the link, William. Great to meet you and your wife!
Palm Desert?
heh-
Haven’t been there in 20 years. Probably over commercialized by now-
Used to be just a few Hollywood types; now it’s politicians and corporate types (1%ers, lol)
The Little Oasis…
Huffington Compost is finally giving Herman Cain the full Anita Hill treatment. It is accusing him of sexually harassing two females while he was with the National Restaurant Association. Funny how the accusers waited 15 years to make the accusations? Well, this shows Herman Cain has made the big time, he joins Clarence Thomas as another attempted lynching victim. Indeed, Herman’s prognostication that he would be the victim of a high tech lynching did not take long to come to pass. But I wonder what happened to the liberal credo, that to accuse a black man of sexual impropriety with a woman, is the height of racism and should subject the accuser to ostracism and possibly imprisonment and re-education camp?
Um, no. They made their complaints, whatever they were, at the time, and were paid nuisance money to go away. Which doesn’t mean there was anything to the complaints. But they did not make them up now.
Towards the end the article quotes several people as saying that Cain treated women at work exactly as he treated men. I wonder whether that’s precisely what these alleged incidents were about – that he spoke to some woman in the same way he would have spoken had she been a man, and she was one of those women who only pretend to want to be treated equally with men, when what they really want is to eat their cake and have it too.
Also, the article claims he acted and spoke in a way that made the complainant uncomfortable. OK, suppose he did; what of it? Did he give her reason to feel uncomfortable? Would a Reasonable Person have felt uncomfortable? This is just a repeat of the feminazi (and I use that word advisedly) standard, that what matters is not what you objectively did but the subjective feelings of your “victim”. If a woman claims to be uncomfortable with anything you did or said, then you’ve by definition harassed her, no mens rea or even objective offensiveness required.
After years of schooling, the profs must tell the students whom to protest? These students must be morons or they have been mis-educated.
This is so inane, this Cain attack. Not that it’s unexpected or beneath the leftists (or vicious candidates who want this “usurper” neutralized).
What offends a woman? Or anyone for that matter? And since when is it that an employee is to be “comfortable” with or not be “offended” by what your boss or manager says? He could have accused these ladies with unprofessional, borderline illegal conduct; that sure would make me uncomfortable, even if merited. Anything can be said anymore and be considered “harassment” or “unpleasant” or “uncomfortable” anymore. This is a nation of victims, looking for a target to blame, or attack. Rule 13 in action.
So, the accusation is just another Alinsky mud-slinging attack. They can’t throw down the race card, so – a al Clarence Thomas – throw down the “sex-crazed black man” card. Too predictable.
I just hope the Cain campaign team is ready to handle this type of attack. Cain said he expected a “hi-tech lynching” so he hopefully is prepared to throw FACTS out, and hold MSM and anyone else attacking him to account. He had to have known this might happen, whether true or not. Clarence Thomas’ SCOTUS Senate “hi-tech lynching” is textbook how-to for these thugs. BTW – Anita Hill is doing just fine these days.
Just a thought re: the tuition bubble. The govt., under Obamacare, took over the student loan industry subsidizing college education. We have all seen how much tuition has increased with little to no increase in instructors. Coincident with this we have seen more and more meaningless majors. Said majors have no value in the private workplace but are only valuable to governmental employment. So now we can only conclude that the government is paying the universities to supply the government with more and more workers at the expense of private business and the economy.