NY Times Letters to the Editor:
As an African-American and a recent Harvard graduate, I have found that my day-to-day life
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
As an African-American and a recent Harvard graduate, I have found that my day-to-day life
by John Cole| 12 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Which brings to mind a good question — why not require the entire country to take an introductory economics course? If everyone had to learn a little basic, non-calculus economics it seems to me that that would be a very worthwhile investment.
I agree- it would be great. Except the NEA would probably never allow it.
1.) No one will be able to agree what to teach in the course. Economics is just as politicized as everything else these days. I am sure Matt remembers the Truman quip:
“GIVE me a one-handed economist. All my economists say, ‘on the one hand…on the other.'”
2.) If there is going to be a national requirement for an introductory economics course, there will be the need to test the results of that course. This alone is enough to make the NEA oppose it, let alone the other issues that will arise. In between the wails that ‘We aren’t teaching the children to learn, but we are teaching to the test,’ claims that the test was racist or Euro-centric would arise, etc.
3.) What would you do if people failed the test?
4.) Can basic economic principles be taught to people in schools dominated with students who can not perform fundamental math or read at a 3rd grade level?
I think one of the problems with people like Matt is that he has had too good of an education- the Dalton School, Harvard. I am certain that if he is not already applying, in a few years he will be applying to and will be accepted to a prestigious graduate school to further his studies. And because he is that intelligent and will be that fortunate, he will never truly fathom what goes on in education departments around the country. He will never truly grasp the institutional inertia i public schools, never truly understand the NEA, never understand the built-in obstacles that impede ANY change in schools.
Having said all that, it still is a worthy goal.
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
I have a confession to make. While I am always openly pleasant and polite to police (for reasons of self-preservation), I hold extremely antagonistic opinions about most police. I understand they have tough jobs, but more often than not, my experiences have been that when you introduce police into a benign situation, their attitudes and behaviors are what makes the situation worse.
If you want an example of the thug-like mentality of many police, I suggest you check out this website and watch this shocking video.
And, as Richard Bennett notes, the Supremes have now made it illegal for Hiibel to refuse to provide identification.
by John Cole| 33 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
I wonder how Kerry will downplay this good news:
.S. companies are gearing up to create jobs at rates not seen since the height of the 1990s boom, a survey released on Tuesday showed, adding to evidence that job growth will keep the U.S. economic recovery rolling.
Following two months of strong government payroll reports, the survey is a boon to President Bush in the run-up to elections and will likely confirm expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise U.S. interest rates at the end of June as it moves to beat off emerging inflation.
Thirty percent of polled U.S. employers plan to add to their payrolls in the July to September period, the survey by Manpower Inc. showed. That is up from 20 percent a year earlier and 28 percent in the April to June period.
The survey hit its highest level of 35 percent in 2000, powered by the Internet-fueled boom.
Far fewer companies now plan to lay off employees, the survey showed, making the net year-over-year increase in employers planning to create jobs the largest in the history of the Manpower survey, which was started in 1976.
*** Update ***
Kimmitt states:
We can start even vaguely thinking about calling it a “boom” when Bush is not the first President since Hoover to preside over a net job loss.
How about this, Kimmitt. How about we count job creation from the time Bush’s first exonomic policy was cast until now? Or are you going to demand that the Clinton/Gore recession be Bush’s possession despite all the facts?
For the record, I think Presidents get too much blame and too much credit for the economy, but it is you guys playing this game. Seems to me it would be fair to judge the efect of Bush’s actual policies, which did not ake effect for a good bit after he took office.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
To hell with the price of gas- have you checked out the price of milk? I just got back from Kroger’s, and a gallon of milk was $3.45. not a few months ago the price was around $2.45.
On the cooler was an explanation (of sorts), with a link to this website. Read the whole thing, but the only real explanation was this:
U.S. dairy farmers produced about 1.7% less milk through April this year than they did in those same months last year. The primary cause is the low farm milk prices of 2002 and the first half of 2003. The milk supply, which is slow to adjust to reduced dairy farm returns, is finally responding. Hampering recovery is the U.S. ban of movement of live dairy cattle from Canada, formerly a major supplier of young milking cows, due to last year’s discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) in a Canadian cow.
The price of beef is also through the roof, too.
by John Cole| 8 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Mark Kleiman has a must-read piece on nulear power, in which he cogently outlines the case for nuclear power. However, as a partisan and a polemicist, I shall choose to focus on this part of his post:
Nuclear waste. This is a problem only if you think that we need to plan waste disposal that will (no, I’m not making this up) survive the end of civilization and be safe for the ignorant primitive nomads who will wander the earth 10,000 years from now. Actually, the solution isn’t technically very hard.
Current plans are to deal with all the waste, high-level and low-level, together. The idea is bury the stuff in deep salt caves and pray the water table doesn’t rise. And of course no one wants to have the burial site nearby; that fact just might cost George Bush, who broke a campaign promise and did the right thing, Nevada’s electoral votes.
In the Washington Post today, George Will writes:
John Kerry recently stopped in Las Vegas to say: “Rest assured, Nevada. If I’m president, Yucca Mountain will not be a depository…”
But in 1996 President Bill Clinton promised to veto any attempt to make Nevada even a temporary repository. That promise helped him beat Bob Dole there by just 4,730 votes, the smallest state margin that year.
In 2000 George W. Bush promised not to make Nevada a temporary repository, but said “sound science” would guide him regarding establishing a permanent repository there. He beat Al Gore 50-46 (301,575 to 279,978). A switch of 10,799 votes would have made Gore president.
In 2002 Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the permanent site. Congress said Nevada’s governor could veto the selection but that his veto could be overridden by majorities in both houses. He vetoed it; Congress overrode him.
By this protracted dance of democracy the interests of an American majority — 161 million live within 75 miles of today’s storage sites — prevailed, respectfully, over the objections of an intense minority, the approximately 2 million people who live in southern Nevada. Kerry’s willingness to overturn this accommodation reflects a cold, and factually correct, calculation having nothing to do with the national interest: For the intense and compact Nevada minority, unlike for the diffuse American majority, this is a vote-determining issue.
Two points:
1.) Bush flip-flopped to do the right thing. Kerry seems to have changed his mind as a result of political calculations.
2.) It isn’t the GOP and the mainstream media unfairly portraying Kerry as having consistently changing positions. It is the fact that Kerry has consistently changing positions, based on crass political opportunism.
by John Cole| 9 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Good news for the internet:
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to restore a ban on taxing Internet connections for four years, stopping short of the permanent ban approved by the House.
The two chambers will try to work out their differences over an issue that pits a U.S. telecommunications industry trying to expand a range of services against state and local governments worried they could lose billions of dollars in tax revenue.
Voting against the ban:
Voting against the Senate bill were Democratic Sens. Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico; Bob Graham, Florida; and Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey.
Apparently, Kerry did not want his patriotism questioned again, so he declined to vote.