The People Versus Politicians

The People Versus Politicians
01/11/09 - BaltimoreExaminer.com By Walter E. Williams
via InstaPundit

[edited] Without the rich for whipping boys, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99.5% of the rest of us.

Legalized corruption is widespread, the job of 35,000 Washington D.C. lobbyists earning millions of dollars. They represent America's corporations, labor unions, foreign corporations, and unions. They are spending billions of dollars for favors at the expense of some other group of Americans.

Chairmanship or a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee is coveted. For a price, a loophole can be inserted into tax law, saving a company tens of millions of dollars, as in the Rangel scandal. At state levels, governors can award public works contracts to a generous constituent. At local levels, mayors can provide subsidies for stadiums and convention centers. Politicians can give favors, and they will find buyers.

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions
01/09/09 - The Daily Beast by Kathleen Kingsbury
Quotes from admissions officers.

Age 25, elite Northeast liberal arts college:

One year I had a student with a near-perfect SAT score and straight A’s. His essays were a little more boring than the other kids. So I cut him.

If the Pittsburgh Steelers lost a game and I read your file the next morning, chances were you weren’t getting in. Where I could have been nice, I was a lot less charitable.

State university in the Northeast:

One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications. I couldn’t stomach reading them.

Ivy League university:

Some 70 percent of kids who apply are qualified to come here, and we have space for one in ten. It almost always comes down to whether you are likeable. An admissions officer is asking "Would I like to hang out with this guy or gal for the next four years?" So if you are just another Asian math genius with no personality, then it’s going to be tough for you.

Ivy League university:

Some middle-tier schools will reject top applicants. The admissions officer thinks "Oh, he just applied here as a safety. He’ll never come." They don’t want to lower the yield they report for college rankings.

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College is an Expensive IQ Test

Other Posts about College

Disobedience Using Compact Fluorescent Lights

CFLs and a call for civil disobedience
01/06/09 - Christopher Fountain reports on the EPA Guidelines for cleaning up after a broken Compact Fluorescent Light. Don't break one! Here is a small excerpt.

[edited] Pending the completion of a full review of the Maine study, EPA will determine whether additional changes to the cleanup recommendations are warranted. The agency plans to conduct its own study on CFLs after thorough review of the Maine study.

Disposal of Clean-up Materials
- Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.
- Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area.
- Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.

See also The CFL Advertising Account.

Pelosi Silences the Republicans

Pelosi Moves to Erase Prior House Rules and Silence the Republican Minority
01/05/09 - Gateway Pundit

[edited] Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority will have no influence on legislation. Democrats are ready to assemble legislation in secret, then push it through Congress without debate or amendment. The proposals are draconian and polarizing. Any bipartisan cooperation with Obama will be rendered impossible before he takes office.

These rule changes will reverse the fairness rules of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America" made in 1995. Those reforms opened to public scrutiny a secretive House legislative process that had developed under decades of a Democratic majority.

The Republican reforms included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen to end decades-long fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorizing House audits, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees that the minority party could offer amendments to legislation.

Carbon Dioxide Does Not Drive Climate

Carbon Dioxide Does Not Drive Climate
01/04/09 - WSJ.com Notable and Quotable
TalkingAboutTheWeather.com by Harold Ambler, via HuffingtonPost

[edited] The theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. (read more)

Gaza's Rocket Scientists

Gaza has its version of rocket scientists
01/03/09 - NationalReview by MarkSteyn

[edited] Westerners seem to expect more civilized behavior from Israel than from its adversaries.

Professor Samuel Huntington wrote "The Clash Of Civilizations" About 15 years ago. He argued that Western elites viewed man as a rational, economic creature, and that this was simplistic. Actually, cultural identity is a stronger force than the appeal of Western-style economic liberty and its benefits. Very few of us want to believe this.

At an unspoken level, we understand that Huntington is right. When French President Sarkozy (and others) bemoans Israel's "disproportionate" response, he expects better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. He regards Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is excused as "desperation."

Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see Islamic leaders like Iranian President Ahmadinejad speak for themselves. It is more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly, but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you."

Most Western elites believe that everyone wants to go to university, get a steady job, and settle down in a nice house. Against this belief, Ahmadinejad's statement that "England's demise is on our agenda" is almost literally untranslatable.

We deplore Ahmadinejad as a genocidal fantasist when he threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map. But, maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

Markets Take Time

The Crisis Prophet Speaks
01/01/09 - Econlog.Econlib by Bryan Caplan

[edited] Markets will respond to price changes, but the responses take time. People must discover the relevant changes, confirm and assess them, consider alternative arrangements of their affairs, and carry out those changes.

The competent economist knows patience is needed in evaluating the market's operation. We have no reason to conclude that "the market doesn't work anymore", simply because the market does not appear to have fully reconfigured itself soon after a shock.

Decent analysts know this; I am not breaking new ground here. So, we can only shake our heads in wonder when we see well-known, free-market economists and other formerly sound analysts taking unsound and ill-considered positions.

We must appreciate that the sky is not falling, even if the news media and the politicians act as if it is.

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Stimulus Does Not Cure a Recession
The population and millions of businesses built our economy. They will adjust to any new conditions, if the government does not raise taxes and waste resources. Government agencies created a financial crisis. Don't let government make a difficult situation worse.

Diplomacy and Terrorism

Diplomacy and Terrorism
12/30/08 - ChicagoBoys by Shannon Love

[edited] For nearly three decades people like Greenwald claimed that if Israel merely ended the occupation of the Palestinian territories it would get peace. Instead it got human bombs and rocket attacks. Ditto for the withdrawal from Lebanon.

Terrorists stop for only two reasons: (1) They win and graduate to despotic rule (Mugabe), or (2) they’re physically prevented from acting. Israel has decided to go for reason (2). The rest of us should hope it succeeds.

Matthew Alexander on Torture

Matthew Alexander on Torture
12/30/08 - Schneier.com

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Mencken's Timeless Insights

Mencken's timeless insights
12/26/08 - PittsburghLive by Donald J. Boudreaux
An excerpt from a great article.

[edited] If I could bring one person back to life for an evening of good food, stiff drink and sterling conversation, that person would be H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).

Mencken thought the typical politician is a "merchant of delusions," a "pumper-up of popular fears and rages. The politician is never to be trusted.

"What is a political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better?"

"If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth."

"It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear."

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The Political Manual: Adequate Compensation
As a politician, get paid what you are worth.