Posted by: Mike ||
10/02/2008 13:13 Comments ||
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#5
Pretty good reasons. Strong enough logic to make me think twice about my vote for Bob Barr.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/02/2008 13:41 Comments ||
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#6
Pretty good reasons. Strong enough logic to make me think twice about my vote for Bob Barr.
I don't have much respect for McCain as a politician, but I'm a McCain guy myself. One of the facts of life is that in politics, as in life, you never get 100% of what you want. Ever since I watched "The Spy Who Loved Me", my dream car has been a Lamborghini Countach, but I've spent of time driving a Ford.
#7
Any Glenn Beck TV or Radio fans here, he gets it..
Watch him on CNN tonite.. Wish he had a bigger audience!! His frustrations of what is going on is starting to show. He's only for Palin because of her honesty and genuineness. Obama is a fascist!!
Posted by: Tom- Pa ||
10/02/2008 15:32 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON - The Obama Administration began at midnight Sunday.
Okay, I exaggerate.
But I am trying to make a point.
Which is this: Even if Sen. Barack Obama loses the presidential election and of course he may the playing field of our politics now has shifted seismically in his philosophical direction.
The era of cowboy capitalism has died, largely of self-inflicted wounds. Who knows whats coming now? I do: A new era of tight business regulation and government intervention in the markets.
For now, and perhaps for many years, there will be no going back.
The Rubicon was crossed this weekend, when the deal was struck for a $700 billion federal takeover of the carcass of Wall Street.
At that moment, the conservative era in America, which began with Ronald Reagans election in 1980, ended. It did so not with a bang, but with a whimper a cry of help from erstwhile Masters of the Universe who suddenly feared for their platinum-level lives.
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson could hear those cries because, until two years ago, he was a Master himself.
For decades, conservatives had fought in very good conscience to unshackle free enterprise from the grip of statist thinking, the kind of thinking represented at its most suffocating by communism. It was a worthy fight; Hayek was right: the road to serfdom lies in the idea that The State is the answer to everything.
But Wall Street and Washington (especially the hacks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) produced, in addition to colossal profits, a farrago of greed unseen since the Roaring Twenties, which was the last time, by the way, that the gulf between the rich and poor was as wide as it is today.
That party is over.
If Obama does win, it will be because of the economic crisis now upon us, of which the bailout is the capstone and political symbol.
The crisis has had two pro-Obama effects.
For one, it yanked the national consciousness away from security and terrorism, Sen. John McCains two strongest areas of expertise and appeal.
Second, the crisis underscored and amplified the yearning in the country for something and someone new. Voters have been saying for more than a year that they want change. Now they REALLY want it.
Suddenly, experience and purported expertise mean next to nothing. After all, Dick Cheney was experienced, and what did that get us? And George W. Bush had a Harvard MBA! And what did that get us?
Cheney and Bush have given credentials a bad name. If that is the case, why not go for a fellow who by virtue of his very being represents change: a new generation, a new demographic, a new outlook?
And Obama does represent something new or, rather, something old that is new again. He believes it is the role of government to help people and regulate the markets. He is a lawyer by training, and believes in the use of the law (and the courts) for the common good. He doesnt, frankly, know much about economics or the profits those were not his specialties in law or life.
Hes a law professor and community organizer! Those are two categories it has been fashionable for conservatives to revile for decades. Well, perhaps the wheel turns.
Its no coincidence that Obama now has his biggest lead in the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll. Watch and see what happens now.
In fairness, Democrats (the soft money hedge-fund crowd of the Clinton 90s and the party hacks who got rich at Fannie and Freddie) are as guilty as the Bush-era Republicans (who argued against ANY regulation of anything).
But, as the Kennedys liked to say, life isnt fair and neither is politics.
#1
Race-based apartheid housing loans to people who could not afford them are not an example of "cowboy capitalism". They are an example of the failure of the cowboys to stop Obama's friends and employers from making these loans in the first place.
#2
Why did Bush push the bailout turkey in the first place. He must have known it would put McCain and Palin in a tough place? Maybe a sitting lame-duck President shouldn't be allowed by law to do anything the last year of his term except things to do with national defense. The ultimate gotcha would be if Bush vetoed this plump growing fat porker. They ain't going to happen. Or maybe the House will say hell no to it. That probably ain't going to happen either. I guess the trainwreck in progress will be on CSPAN tomorrow morning.
#4
In the New York Times, linked by the DrudgeReport, the kind of thing lotp, Senator McCain and President Bush are concerned about:
Wachovia Bank has limited the access of nearly 1,000 colleges to $9.3 billion the bank has held for them in a short-term investment fund, raising worries on some campuses about meeting payrolls and other obligations.
#5
I've been poo-poo'ing the 'credit crunch' for a year now, but there's no denying it. Some sort of crunch has arrived. The only question now is, How big will it get?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
10/02/2008 21:15 Comments ||
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Why is it that liberal misrepresentations are never fully addressed before they become established as received wisdom? Whatever the topic may be, the left is consistently allowed to set the terms on which the argument takes place. Opponents may then debate minor points, split hairs, and count angels, but nobody ever seems to get around to looking the basic premises over, even when they're transparently bogus.
In the past few years we've seen "WMDs were the sole reason for invading Iraq", "CO2 is the major driver of climatic trends", and "Karl Rove is the Devil Incarnate", to consider only three. Each case is demonstrably false, yet each case has been allowed to dominate the public debate.
In the 2008 election, one of these ruling myths is "Sarah Palin does not have the experience to be vice-president."
Well, let's stomp that one flat right away: out of all four candidates, Sarah Palin is the only one with any of the requisite executive experience required for office. She is the sole candidate who has ever run anything larger than a college debating society. If she is not qualified, none of them are, and we'd better dump em all and start over.
A major peculiarity of this election is that three of the candidates are senators. Only two senators have been elected president in this century: Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. (Johnson, Bush, Sr., and Truman all served as VPs before entering the Oval Office.)
Americans like governors -- somebody with hands-on experience at running a state who can demonstrate that experience. McKinley, Wilson, Coolidge, FDR, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. were all successful governors before becoming president. (We'll overlook Carter for the moment, if you don't mind.) Eisenhower, the single great exception, can be said to have run something larger than a state. Commanding the forces that booted the Nazis out of Western Europe will get you through the interview.
The value of having been a governor is obvious, the progression from there to the presidency apparent. Not so with senators. Whatever it is they do when not traipsing around Washington in their purple-trimmed togas, walking their pet ocelots while the Vestal Virgins strew rose petals in their path, it has nothing in common with executive experience.
Typically they get out of law school, work awhile as lawyers, go on to local or state office, then to the House, then to the Senate. At no point do they run anything larger than their own offices. The governor of the smallest state or territory in the union easily trumps them on that score. Often, that's all that's necessary. After his Three Stooges first term, the only edge that Bill Clinton had on Robert Dole was his gubernatorial experience. That was enough.
Only one person in this race has ever held that kind of responsibility. Only one person has ever actually run a government. Only one person has the necessary experience, and that is Sarah Palin. Yet thanks to a media as obtuse as it is vicious, this undeniable record of experience has been thrust aside in favor of the myth that at least two of the senators in the race -- Obama and Biden -- possess superior experience.
Several objections to Palin's record exist, some of them unspoken.
The first is that Wasilla is a small town, and Alaska a small state, as far as population goes. As one Clintonite notable -- I forget if it was Panetta or Begala or Magilla -- put it, "the caribou outnumber the people". (Caribou, it seems, only matter to liberals when they're being frightened by drilling equipment.)
The answer to this is straightforward. The differences between running a town, a state, and a country are matters of degree, not of essence. The same skills and abilities are required in each case. An individual who has learned to run one is not likely to be overwhelmed on taking the next step up. As for the size argument, there was once a country that consisted of about three million people, only a small multiple of Alaska today, a country which in the midst of serious crisis produced several of the greatest leaders in its history.
That country is, of course, the United States of the 1780s, which produced Washington, Hamilton, Gallatin, Jefferson, Madison, and Jay. This would seem to testify that numbers, per se, have little to do with anything.
Beyond that, we have the fact that Alaska, due to remoteness, climate, and sheer size, embodies a set of challenges greater than and unlike those of any other state. It is vast, spends close to half the year in a deep freeze, and requires aircraft to reach many points across the state, including Juneau, the capital, which cannot be reached by road. (Many Alaskan families, including the Palins, own light planes for this very reason.) The governor of such a state will have met and overcome challenges quite unfamiliar to continental U.S. governors, Washington senators, and East Coast pundits. This certainly has to be taken into consideration.
The last point involves the question of success. Wasilla, the town of which Palin served as mayor, increased its population by 2,000 -- nearly a full third -- under her stewardship. Not bad for a hockey mom.
A second, virtually unspoken objection is that there's something wrong with Palin's actual experience, that it's not the right kind, that in some ineffable way it fails to make the grade. It's as if she first served on the city council and then ran off to fight as a mercenary, returned to serve as mayor only to decamp with the circus, then interwove her term as governor with the sale of patent medicines.
None of this being the case, we have to ask what precisely is wrong with the progression, city council-mayor-governor-VP candidate. And the answer is -- absolutely nothing. It's as perfectly natural a progression as can be found in politics, the only remarkable element of it being the swiftness with which Palin has traversed it. This implies that she is very good at what she does. Which means, according the media and the Democrats, that we're supposed to question her skill and abilities. Everybody got that?
Which brings us to the third objection -- that she wasn't governor for long enough. Only eighteen months, according to the stopwatch. Barely a flicker of the eye, the way they judge time in Washington... Though it happens that Woodrow Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910, and went on to be elected president in 1912. Are we to take it that the extra six months make all the difference?
Experience is not simply a matter of duration, but what you do with the time you have. Palin accomplished more in that year-and-a-half than most governors do over full terms, including facing down a corrupt and entrenched old-boys network and bringing the oil companies -- the state's biggest business -- to heel.
And finally, there's the fact that she has no foreign policy experience. None. Zero. Why, no less than Charles Gibson clearly demonstrated that on the tube, with plenty in the way of sighs and head shakes, too.
...except for the easily demonstrated fact that Governor Palin, on August 27th of this year, completed a pipeline agreement with Canada, which is a foreign country. The agreement had been stymied for over two decades by various interests in Alaskan state government. Palin got it wrapped up in that busy eighteen months.
Now, anyone present who has ever successfully concluded an agreement with a foreign country please raise their hands. Uhh... not you, Sen. Obama? Or you either, Sen. Biden? Hmm... I see.
I can't think of any other objections, but if they exist they'd drop as swiftly and completely as these. But that's not what we've been told and are still being told. Gibson is supposed to have demonstrated the case through asking questions about matters that he himself does not understand. Most irritating are the conservative writers wailing counterpoint to this melody.
They may be right. But as we've seen, it's not likely. Palin has gained her experience where it counts. Not in the Ivy League, not at the think tanks, not in the Senate. But down in the trenches, where life is for real, and the work gets done because it must be done.
There is no more common figure in American history than the "unprepared" backwoods politician who steps forward in the midst of crisis. From Lincoln through Truman, there is no end of them, at all levels of the political sphere. Palin may be the next in that long and impressive line.
Or she may serve a quiet term or two as a ceremonial vice-president before returning home to hunt moose and raise grandchildren. She will unquestionably be tempted, and who can blame her?
But she may turn out to be very different. To be exactly what the GOP rank and file believe her to be: a woman who will go on to make fools out of all the doubters and questioners and agonizers. One thing for certain: she has no end of experience in that.
#1
Ask your favorite donk if they voted for Kerry-Edwards in 2004. Ask them if they questioned whether a "less than 1 term" Senator with no prior political experience was qualified for VP. If they are old enough ask them if they voted for Carter in 1976. Ask they how a 1 term governor from Georgia and 4 years in the state senate representing Plains, Georgia was qualified for POTUS.
#2
I've thought about the US prefers governors angle for a while now. Maybe we were wrong, or maybe things have changed with the hyperpartisanship going on these days.
Senators are forced to compromise in the Senate to get anything done. Maybe that's what we need, a President who came from the Senate and can deal with them rather than one seen as an outsider.
* Is it smart for a mother to abandon her young children and jet around the country with an older, married man?
* When field dressing a moose, you bleed it, break the bones, slice it, then gut it. Gov. Palin, how would that experience guide your Social Security policy?
* Joe, when you talk to Barack, does he ever mention me?
* Yes, I've written an inaugurational book titled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. But to be fair, I've also written one to be released if Obama loses The Breakdown: Politics and Race in the Age of a Cancer-Splotched Crank and a Stupid Moose-Hunting Whore. Too subtle?
* Should taxes be doubled or tripled? And what about the second year?
* Gov. Palin, please briefly explain how Quantum Chromodynamics give rise to the physics of nuclei and nuclear constituents. And Sen. Biden, in response, what's your favorite color?
* So what salary range is Obama considering for his White House press secretary? Full medical/dental, I assume?
* Time for audience questions. Remember to limit the subjects to Delaware history, Washington cocktail parties and male pattern baldness.
Full disclosure alert: My brother wrote this for his blog, Exurban League (He also did the Palin: Miracle "poster" you may have seen floating in cyberspace. He's making it hard to tell that I am the clever one in the family. LOL)
Gov. Palin. How would you plan to straighten out the world's economic problems? Please keep your answer brief.
Sen. Biden: Tell us about your war experiences for all who might not know them.
As has been said, Sarah should congratulate Gwen Ifil on her new book about BO coming out on Inauguration Day? Do you think it will be a best-seller or relegated to the more dung heap of history?
Who do I blame for this financial disaster? Let me count the villains.
Start with President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. By their own actions, they have shown that they believe markets have become too vulnerable under their watch.
The Bushies have mishandled the $700 billion bailout at every juncture. They pulled a too-large number out of the hat, then asked Congress to write a blank check. Paulson even rejected limits on the compensation of the geniuses who bought bad mortgage paper with other people's money. No way was Congress going to go along with that scheme.
Like many Americans, I am angry and have strong doubts as to whether the bailout is necessary. Having proposed it, however, Paulson probably made it necessary. If there is a 10 percent risk of an economic collapse without a bailout, Washington probably has to pass something.
I blame Democrats, who pushed to give government-supported mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more flexibility to buy dicey home loans, despite their accounting irregularities. It was Senate Banking Committee Democrats who blocked GOP-backed reforms of Fannie and Freddie in 2003 and 2006 -- but that doesn't stop them from disowning any role in this fiasco now.
I blame Democratic leaders for larding the Senate version of the bailout bill with what the national political news website Politico.com described as a landmark provision that would require that "insurance companies provide coverage for mental-health treatment -- such as hospitalization -- on parity with physical illnesses."
This bill is in trouble, and the Democratic leaders decide to add $100 billion to the total tab -- as well as make a new enemy, insurance companies. And they think Bush is dumb.
I blame congressional Republicans for being addicted to pork-barrel projects and driving federal spending so high that they lost control of the House and Senate in 2006. In their greed, they forfeited their credibility.
House Republicans didn't help themselves when they said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's partisan pre-vote rant killed 10 Republican "yes" votes. They showed America that -- like Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- their instinct was to throw the blame at the other party first, then to think about what is best for America.
Oh, and you can thank Senate Republicans for a five-year, $3.3 billion rural school aid measure packed onto the bailout bill. Shameless.
Pelosi and Reid have played this as poorly as Bush. Last week, they said they had a deal. Clearly, they don't know the meaning of the word "deal." The leadership of the party that believes in more government regulation cannot count votes (a simple accounting procedure) and cannot regulate itself.
When she was supposed to be rallying all House members, Pelosi instead brandished her dagger, as she parroted that lame old line about Republicans believing in "no regulation." It is amazing how a party that flatters itself for its intellectual wattage can disseminate such patently false drivel with wide eyes.
Sure, maybe two Republicans in Washington oppose most regulation. But look at the party's nominee, John McCain. Not only did McCain push for improved regulation of Freddie and Fannie, he also voted for the 2002 accounting oversight measure, Sarbanes-Oxley -- that was supposed to prevent another Enron -- and authored a measure to regulate campaign spending.
I'm a small-government conservative. But I've worked for other people since I was a teenager -- and that sort of experience leaves me with only a jaded respect for how the "free market" works. It doesn't work without regulation.
Most of all, I blame the financial masterminds on Wall Street, who have justified their high salaries because they were supposed to be so clever -- yet apparently had no idea that they were buying inflated paper.
Although if Congress keeps larding the bailout to the point that America will need a bailout for the bailout, then the order of my list could change.
#2
Tell me again Besoeker, I got mixed up somewhere there about who are the money changers and who are the whores? It is possible they are one and the same?
#4
The problem is that if you do not reform at the same time as injecting capital, you have left the problem unsolved. You need to eliminate CRA completely as a program. You have to either privatize the GSE's (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae, etc.) or super regulate them with new rules. You have to lower corporate income taxes to compete globally and more importantly bring home tax revenues on those profits from off-shore. Throwing money at the problem won't make it go away.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/02/2008 13:47 Comments ||
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#5
This article is WAY incomplete as it doesn't mention Alan Greenspan!
Mess around with inflation figures, then reserve ratios to blow-up a credit bubble which causes malinvestment throughout the economy.
The fix is easy, the implementation is hard.
1/ Go for a real inflation measure.
2/ Increase reserve ratios.
Two days after George W. Bush criticized Syria as a state sponsor of terror in a speech at the United Nations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem in New York. The meeting was first reported in the Syrian state press which noted that it took place at Rice's request. Mouallen told Al Hayat that the meeting represented a softening of the US position on Syria.
It's a fair reading. Long gone are the days of George W. Bush's "with us or against us" approach to terrorism. Rice has made it clear through her dealings with Iran and Syria that terror sponsoring states can be with us on some days and against us on others. In fact, in an interview with The Weekly Standard back in May, she said this rather directly. "Syria can't decide which camp it's going to be in, you know. Maybe it's fitting that they came at the deputy foreign minister level at Annapolis, because one day they're going to be part of the solution and the next day they're going to be a part of the problem. I think, on balance, they're more part of the problem."
So do the State Department terrorism analysts, at least officially. "Iran and Syria routinely provide unique safe haven, substantial resources and guidance to terrorist organizations," they wrote in the State Sponsors of Terror Overview. "The Syrian Government continued to provide political and material support to both Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups. HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), among others, base their external leadership in Damascus. The Syrian Government insists that the Damascus-based groups undertake only political and informational activities. However, in statements originating from outside Syria, many Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for anti-Israeli terrorist acts. Syria's public support for the groups varied, depending on its national interests and international pressure. In 2003, these groups lowered their public profile after Damascus announced that they had voluntarily closed their offices in Syria. In September, however, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad held a highly publicized meeting with rejectionist leaders, and a month later the rejectionist leaders participated in a meeting in Damascus with the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel. Syria continued to permit Iran to use Damascus as a transshipment point to resupply Hizballah in Lebanon."
The new Bush Doctrine: You are either with us or against us. Or both. Whatever. That, at least, seems to be the version of the Bush Doctrine preferred by Condoleezza Rice, who has pushed for warmer relations with Axis of Evil nations North Korea and Iran, and Iranian satellite Syria. By most accounts, President Bush still believes in the original Bush Doctrine and continues to articulate his views forcefully in meetings with members of Congress, in off-the-record sessions with journalists and sessions with foreign dignitaries.
With less than four months left in his term, the question of this: Is the president in charge of his foreign policy or has he completely handed it off to his Secretary of State?
#2
The syrians will string us along, just like the rest of the states and organizations we try so hard to reason with, when they are just playing a time wasting game. The US Dept of State seems to be the place of ruin of many good people.
The Lockheed Martin will deliver Israel 25 F-35 planes, the first export sale of the aircraft. The jets are too expensive for the US Air Force which severely cut back on its prior orders, and lack an adequate air opponent. At $70 million a piece, the jets are too expensive to risk them. Russia claims F-35 is vulnerable to both S-300 and S-400 SAM batteries. Inexpensive Russian aircraft would more than suffice for ny Israeli battle needs.
The deal's value is oddly stated at $15 bn, which doesn't match 25 planes by $70 million or even the potential sale of 75 planes. The $15 bn figure is too high even if it includes C-130 cargo aircraft.
The F-35 are touted as the worst-case aircraft. Capable of vertical and short-range take-off, they can be used when Israeli airways are bombed. The 25 of them, however, lack that capability and Israel's reason for purchasing them is unclear - unless Jews decided to bail out the overexpensive American program for a commission.
The planes won't be delivered soon, and cannot be used to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
Maybe the housing bust - along with the disappearance of home equity lines of credit - has something to do with it.
At some point in the past 10 years, lots of people in my part of town went from driving Hondas and Fords to driving brand-new BMWs and Porsches.
I like cars, and I pay attention to them. I always wondered how all these folks managed to make enough money to properly afford $60,000 cars. I didn't get to know many of them very well, but the ones I did meet at soccer practice or Little League games seemed to have the kinds of jobs that paid about what I was used to making, or what my wife makes: a solid professional income -- comfortable, but not wealthy.
Even though my family has always tended to live below its means, I knew there was no way I'd be comfortable buying a $60,000 car, not even if we threw caution to the wind and splurged. And when you factor in that some of these folks paid considerably more for their houses than we had -- housing prices started rising sharply in our area about 15 minutes after we closed on our house in 1998 -- I eventually started to wonder how they were doing it.
Now, I'm starting to figure it out.
The secret was in-house
We're building a new home, in a community with some friends. We've been working on it for a long time, and we've known for a couple of years that our current house would go on the market this past April. And so it did.
Boy, did that turn out to be lousy timing. Within a few weeks of our house hitting the market, five or six other houses in our neighborhood had "FOR SALE" signs out front. We'd never seen anything like it -- very few houses in our area had turned over in the 10 years we'd been there.
To be fair, I don't know any of those folks, and I don't know why they all put their houses on the market last spring. But I keep reading stories about people who funded above-their-means lifestyles with home equity, only to get burned when the prices started to fall. I'm starting to see a picture emerging, and it's not a pretty one.
By the way, six months later, only one of the houses in the neighborhood has sold -- and it wasn't my beautifully maintained, lushly landscaped, bargain-priced specimen.
The credit bubble fueled a lot of bubbles, one of which was steep hikes in college tuition.
Remember that queasy feeling you got whenever you heard someone advise you that, "In 20 years, the cost of a four-year private college education will be a half-million dollars, so start saving aggressively!"?
Those scary predictions weren't pulled from thin air. Between 1989 and 2005, college costs increased at double the rate of inflation, according to American magazine. At that rate (about 6%), compounded over 20 years, annual tuition at private institutions George Washington University and Sarah Lawrence College, for instance, would end up being $129,543 and $126,521, respectively, by 2028.
But let your tummy settle, because that's simply not going to happen.
Here's why
College tuition skyrocketed in the past 10 years or so, largely because of the convergence of rapid technological change, the increasing need for a college degree in a service-based economy, and cheap and easy credit. Colleges frequently cited "infrastructure" and "technology" improvements to explain the 6% annual tuition increases. But now that colleges are largely wired and wireless, it's doubtful they'll be able to keep using those reasons.
Additionally, if the credit markets do in fact dry up as much as some believe, families will simply be unable to secure those enormous loans for school. According to FinAid.com, about two-thirds of college students use loans to pay for college, leaving them with an average debt load of $19,000. The recent turmoil with credit markets has to be disconcerting for parents with kids currently or soon to be in college.
Even if the credit markets are fully restored by 2028, there are still very few people who have the means -- or desire -- to fork over a half-million dollars for their child's education. And even if they could come up with $100,000, there's little chance they'd be able to secure a $400,000 loan. Lots of people can't get mortgages that big.
Bright flight
Along this line of logic, bright students who had previously been vying to get into highly regarded private colleges, only to find out they couldn't afford tuition, may start flooding the less-expensive state schools. As a result, the average test scores of private schools may suffer, while those at the public schools improve, thus putting costly private education in less demand.
Harvard University has already begun taking steps to keep the top students coming through its doors. In December, armed with its $37 billion endowment fund, the university announced that it would spend an additional $22 million a year to slash tuition costs for middle- and upper-middle-class families, in some cases reducing tuition from $30,000 to $18,000 for a family making $180,000 a year. Unfortunately, not all private schools have such a large endowment to tap when things get rough.
Finally, at some point, the return on investment for an education with a large price tag becomes negative, and people will find alternative routes to higher education, whether that be trade school or local community colleges (both very respectable choices). See, the math for continuous 6% tuition hikes just doesn't add up. In good times, the annual starting salaries for college grads will likely increase by just 3%-4%. Eventually, it won't make sense from a career standpoint to attend expensive four-year colleges.
What this means for you
At some point, the tuition bubble has to give. It's simply unsustainable for universities to continue to raise tuition 6% per year, and it's a situation that college presidents need to address immediately.
Now, this doesn't mean that you should be saving any less for your kids' college tuition, but it does mean that you may not need to be taking undue, overly aggressive risks with the kids' investments.
Next excuse for the college tuition hikes will be their employee benefits. You wouldn't believe how underfunded a lot of public pension funds are, and there's a bunch of employees very close to retirement right now. It will not be pretty ten years from now.
Also, 19k in student loans at graduation seems low to me. I know several that are close to 100k, and these loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy like virtually every other debt. There's all kinds of cute ways for them to raise the debt level after graduation, too (forbearance, variable rate changes, etc.)
#2
Really ?? Do you ever check prof's salaries ? How about coaches ? These are both way out of line. Prof's (some) are among the brightest, but they are far overpaid. If they want money, let them quit their cushy jobs and become entrepenurial. Big risks, big returns. On a salary, way too much. Coaches are among the dumbest(most) and don't deserve anywhere near the bucks being paid. No McDonald's I know of is in that pay range. And, most of them would be there, were they not on university pay.
#3
One other effect - more students working their way through school. Via internet, or alternating semesters, or part-time, or .... you get the picture. Once the kids get out of their insulated bubble of pampered princes and princesses and decide to take 'real' jobs and do 'real' work for competitive prices we should see them take the places in the work force of some of the aging boomers and of the illegal immigrants - but first somebody has to pop their bubbles. My father cleaned septic tanks in college, I made boxes at a perfume factory, my kids did nothing or tutored athletes.
#4
I wouldn't say "tuition", I would say "college education" is the next bubble to pop. This is because only a percentage of degrees actually contribute to student success later in life. The rest are fluff, that actually wastes four of their most productive years.
#5
Why do people have to go to high-priced colleges to get the imformation and skills needed for a good job? People can and should go off shore for quality education. India can give you a great education at a great price. Another way to endrun the financial beaing you get from mortar and brick schools is on line schooling. As long as the system loans the money, people will make stupid choices.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
10/02/2008 15:02 Comments ||
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#6
Yeah, you wanna major in psychology? Sociology? English lit? Political science? Journalism? Liberal Arts in general? A complete waste of time. Another waste is the duplication of curriculum between the last two years of high school and the first two years of college. It simply takes too long to get educated. If you go to college right out of high school and do it in four years (rare these days) you'll be 22 before you're able to start looking for a real job...if you're lucky and don't have to go back for some kind of specialty or because you chose a worthless major. If you go into the military first you'll be what? 25? 26? 30? Yikes! Sorry folks. But I was bored as hell with school until I got into the upper division and started learning things that I didn't already know and would be useful for actually earning a living when I finally graduated. But you're right about the community colleges. If you're gonna waste two years you might as well do it some place that isn't gonna break your parents.
#7
Or you find the little hidden schools that the corps try to avoid advertising so they can keep a lock on grads.
I go to Tennessee Technological University, tuition is about $2800/semester. It's a science heavy engineering school, and I have never heard of one of our engineering graduates having trouble finding a job. Heck, our profs get requests for 50% more grads than we have in my program.
It's a small school, less than 10,000 students in a town of 35,000. But it'll shove a good education in your head that will get you a job with a minimal amount of liberal insanity. Heck, they still play Christmas music in the Student Center during the holidays.
And while we may not have a big huge artillery piece for our Football games like Texas A&M or University of Texas, we do have a neat little 3 pounder that was actually used during the civil war that they fire off when we score.
I did something today I didn't think I would ever do.
I cancelled my subscription to The Atlantic.
I started reading The Atlantic many, many years ago. Back before the internet and the web, you actually had to buy a magazine to read it. Crazy idea, I know, but as a young doctor, I was looking for a higher end magazine I could read when moonlighting. The Atlantic seemed to be just the ticket -- it was smart and engaging, it had a stable of superb writers, and it presented ideas that seemed to matter.
I was hooked, and I kept reading through the years. I was about as loyal a subscriber as a magazine could ask.
I didn't object too much to their 2004 and 2006 election coverage. Everyone has an opinion, and it's good to be challenged by the opinions of others. And they kept covering other issues that I enjoyed reading about. They added bloggers like Megan McArdle and Marc Ambinder, and while I didn't always agree with them, they made me think.
Then came 2008, and The Atlantic morphed into a magazine that I no longer recognize. But the straws that broke the camel's back -- my back -- was the most recent issue featuring John McCain and the title, 'Why War is His Answer'. Nevermind that John McCain, as a veteran and former POW, has stated emphatically how much he hates war, having seen it up front, the writer of this piece knew better.
Oh well, just another article I don't like. And then I looked again at the cover photo by the nasty Jill Greenberg, the 'celebrity' photographer famous for making babies cry for the sake of her politics, and read her comments about how she deliberately tried to trick McCain and his people. I waited for a response from The Atlantic and their editors, and what I read in response was the usual mealy-mouthed, non-apology 'apology' that people make when they want to placate the rubes.
That was the first straw. The second was the insufferable Andrew Sullivan and his scurrilous accusations that somehow, Governor Sarah Palin didn't birth her youngest child. Mr. Sullivan keeps demanding 'medical records' for something that seems pretty obvious to the average person. I was hoping that at some point the editors at The Atlantic would tell Mr. Sullivan to shut up and move on, but so far they haven't.
A test for Mr. Sullivan: walk down the street and interview the first one hundred mothers you see with small children. Suggest to them that they didn't really birth their children, and demand to see medical records. See what happens to you. I don't know much about Governor Palin, but so far she's demonstrated that she's far more forgiving than most people would be. That's a testament to her true character.
Let me repeat: Mr. Sullivan's accusations are scurrilous and contemptible. He is pushing a nasty and unfounded accusation first raised by the infamous 'ArcXIX' on the Daily Kos. ArcXIX is brave enough in his convictions to remain completely anonymous, and Markos Moulitsas is brave enough to have deleted those posts without acknowledgement or apology. That's a demonstration of their true character. In a decent society Mr. Sullivan would have been dismissed from his position as a Senior Editor, and that The Atlantic hasn't dismissed him is a demonstration of their character as well.
So I called the subscription office at The Atlantic this morning and cancelled. The woman on the phone was pleasant though it was clear she'd been hearing from plenty of other subscribers. When we were finished with the mechanics of canceling, I asked her what the odds were that my comments would actually make it up the managerial chain at the magazine. She informed me that the editorial office does hear the reasons why subscribers cancel and offered to have a member of the editorial board call me. I gave her my cell phone number, and I'll wait patiently.
But I'll no longer read The Atlantic. It's a shame. I really liked that magazine.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/02/2008 11:30 ||
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#2
Steve, bravo. Sullivan is a shameless and irrelevant personality. I would not go so far as to call him an intellectual since he is really just a charlatan. Whatever his education and background I find him just a cry baby with a wet finger constantly prowling the wind of outrageous rumor and slander. He has to write his tripe here since if he went back to the UK and did the same has here he would bankrupt his publisher do to the libel laws. As a Catholic, he makes me puke - but then Mugabe is a Catholic also.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/02/2008 13:31 Comments ||
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#3
So what's the line as to when the good Dr. Steve actually hears back from the Atlantic?
#4
I used to read The Atlantic cover to cover but let my subscription expire a couple years ago when the amount of leftist hooey and propaganda began to overwhelm the thought-provoking content. I still flip through it in the local library looking for the occasional tidbit - an excerpt from Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah comes to mind. It would be almost worth it to subscribe again so I could cancel over that scurrilous McCain issue and the editor's lame-ass response.
Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence. We've been reminded of that classical wisdom these last three weeks.
In a manner not seen since the Great Depression, Wall Street went into panic mode from too many bad debts. The symbolic pillars of American monetary strength for years -- AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Shearson-Lehman and Washington Mutual -- in a matter of hours either went broke, were absorbed or were reconstituted. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed like the house of cards that they were.
Even though the U.S. government rushed to restore trust, hundreds of billions of dollars in paper assets simply vanished. Friends and enemies abroad were unsure whether the irregular American heartbeat was a major coronary or a mere cardiac murmur. How strong really was the world's greatest economy? Was this panic the tab for years of borrowing abroad for out-of-control consumer spending? Had America finally gone too far enriching dictators by buying energy that it either could not or would not produce itself? Had the chickens of lavishing rewards on Wall Street and Washington speculators rather than Main Street producers finally come home to roost?
Allies trust that the United States is the ultimate guarantor of free communication and commerce -- and they want immediate reassurance that their old America will still be there. In contrast, opportunistic predators -- such as rogue oil-rich regimes -- suddenly sniff new openings.
We've seen the connection between American economic crisis and world upheaval before. In the 1930s, the United States and its democratic allies, in the midst of financial collapse, disarmed and largely withdrew from foreign affairs. That isolation allowed totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia to swallow their smaller neighbors and replace the rule of law with that of the jungle. World War II followed.
During the stagflation and economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Iranians stormed our embassy in Tehran, the communists sought to spread influence in Central America and a holocaust raged unchecked in Cambodia.
It was no surprise that an emboldened Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again last week called for the elimination of Israel. He's done that several times before. But rarely has he felt brazen enough to blame world financial problems on the Jews in general rather than on just Israelis. And he spouted his Hitlerian hatred in front of the United Nations General Assembly -- in New York, just a few blocks away from the ground zero of the Wall Street meltdown.
Flush with petrodollar cash, a cocky Iran thinks our government will be so sidetracked borrowing money for Wall Street that disheartened taxpayers won't care to stop Tehran from going nuclear.
At about the same time, a Russian flotilla was off Venezuela to announce new cooperation with the loud anti-American Hugo Chavez and his fellow Latin American communists. The move was a poke in the eye at the Monroe Doctrine -- and a warning that from now on the oil-rich Russians will boldly support dictatorships in our hemisphere as much as we encourage democratic Georgia and Ukraine in theirs. Chavez himself called for a revolution in the United States to replace our "capitalist" Constitution.
The lunatics running North Korea predictably smelled blood as well. So it announced that it was reversing course and reprocessing fuel rods to restart its supposedly dismantled nuclear weapons program.
Meanwhile, some shell-shocked American bankers looked to our "friend" China, which holds billions in American government securities, for emergency loans. But the Chinese -- basking in their successful hosting of the Olympics, their first foray into outer space, and a massive rearmament -- showed no interest in sending cash to reeling Wall Street firms.
During this Wall Street arrhythmia, Islamic suicide bombers attacked the American embassy in Yemen and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan. Suspected Islamic terrorists were caught boarding a Dutch airliner in Germany. And suicide bombers were busy again in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The natural order of the world is chaos, not calm. Like it or not, for over a half-century the United States alone restrained nuclear bullies, kept the sea lanes free from outlaws and corralled rogue nations. America alone could provide that deterrence because we produced a fourth of the world's goods and services, and became the richest country in the history of civilization.
But the bill for years of massive borrowing for oil, for imported consumer goods and for speculation has now has finally come due on Wall Street -- and for the rest of us as well.
Should that heart of American financial power in New York falter -- or even appear to falter -- then eventually the sinews of the American military will likewise slacken. And then things could get ugly -- real fast.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
Today Brendan Nyhan has an article at RCP entitled; "Blankley Likens Media to Nazis." Nyhan has published the liberal response to Langley at RealClearPolitics. The following article is the posted op-ed article by Tony Blankley. So at the end of the day, Brendan Nyhan "covers" for Barack Obama in his last paragraph.
Nyhan says: In a loathsome Washington Times column attacking reporters' treatment of Barack Obama, Tony Blankley likens the mainstream media to the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and to "Goebbels' disciples":
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2008 22:52 Comments ||
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#7
Don't be an ass, Hellfish dear. Ms. Ifell is amply qualified compared to her peers. For that matter,
Senator Obama is well qualified compared to his peers in the community organizing community.
Financial Crisis: So much for tirades against American greed
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says it is ironic that European banks have turned out to be deeper in debt than their US counterparts.
It took a weekend to shatter the complacency of German finance minister Peer SteinbrÃŒck. Last Thursday he told us that the financial crisis was an "American problem", the fruit of Anglo-Saxon greed and inept regulation that would cost the United States its "superpower status". Pleas from US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for a joint US-European rescue plan to halt the downward spiral were rebuffed as unnecessary.
By Monday, Mr SteinbrÃŒck was having to orchestrate Germany's biggest bank bail-out, putting together a â¬35 billion loan package to save Hypo Real Estate. By then Europe was "staring into the abyss," he admitted. Belgium faced worse. It had to nationalise Fortis (with Dutch help), a 300-year-old bastion of Flemish finance, followed a day later by a bail-out for Dexia (with French help).
Within hours they were all trumped by Dublin. The Irish government issued a blanket guarantee of the deposits and debts of its six largest lenders in the most radical bank bail-out since the Scandinavian rescues in the early 1990s. Then France upped the ante with a â¬300 billion pan-European lifeboat for the banks. The drama has exposed Europe's dark secret for all to see. EU banks took on even more debt leverage than their US counterparts, despite the tirades against ''le capitalisme sauvage'' of the Anglo-Saxons.
We now know that it was French finance minister Christine Lagarde who begged Mr Paulson to save the US insurer AIG last week. AIG had written $300 billion in credit protection for European banks, admitting that it was for "regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation". In other words, it was underpinning a disguised extension of credit leverage. Its collapse would have set off a lending crunch across Europe as banking capital sank below water level.
It turns out that European regulators have allowed even greater use of "off-books" chicanery than the Americans. Mr Paulson may have saved Europe.
#1
So do we counter-gloat now, or should we just leave it alone?
Posted by: Jonathan ||
10/02/2008 9:53 Comments ||
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#2
The headline is not unexpected - European homes are far more inflated price-wise - absolutely and related to income - than American ones. In fact, the US housing bubble (3x historical valuations relative to income) was rationalized by comparing it to European valuations.
#3
Yep. Watch HGTV House Hunters International and you see prices in the outlands in Europe, not the major metro areas, going for the same high price per square foot for something just as small in the middle of New York or SanFran. Knowing that they have even less disposable income than we do, it never seemed to make sense.
#4
Remind me again of why these people are our friends.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
10/02/2008 14:46 Comments ||
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#5
In their unending need to prove they are better than us, they have proved they can make bad housing loans at a level Americans can't hope to match.
Congrats, you really ARE better at something.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
10/02/2008 20:22 Comments ||
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#6
Some Netters are accusing the US of engaging in BANKING/FINANCIAL TERRORISM AND IMPERIALISM, and also FOOD TERORISM-IMPERIALISM vee CHINA'S MELAMINE CRISIS???
World-conquering OWG USSA, versus Weak Anti-sovereign OWG Global SSR/United Socialist Republiks of Amerika Rising!?
D *** NG IT. BOYZ, MCDONALDS IS CHANGING THEIR DOLLAR DISCOUNT PRICE-MENU - THE STAATBUREAU WANTS TO BECOM THE GLOBAL BUREAU. WITFH IS GOING ON AROUND HERE [humor]!?
. . . Media bias used to mean that they would slow-walk stories that reflected badly on their candidate; now they just flat out ignore them, or even try to shoot them down. They're not just in the tank, they're functioning as arms of the campaign, and Obama's strategy shows that he knows that and is relying on it.
So various readers have been asking what I think people should do. For example, reader Steven Murray writes:
Do you subscribe to Newsweek magazine? I do and my sister told me that I should cancel the subscription. She says that since that magazine is so deep in the tank for Obama, I am just subsidizing his campaign and the Democratic party. You know, I think she has a point. If more conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans canceled their subscriptions to these types of publications, maybe then they would take notice.
I doubt it. Most of these general-circulation magazines are in fact niche products serving their version of the NPR demographic (and, in Newsweek's case, doctor's offices). By all means, if you don't like them, cancel your subscription. People have been doing that for years, and it does have an effect -- look at the plummeting viewership of network news programs.
You can also write them, and their advertisers, and complain. This does some good, but it's usually temporary. As soon as the heat's off, they go back to their old ways. It's the only thing that's likely to do much good between now and the election, though.
But if you really want improvement over the longer term, you need to support competition that isn't an arm of the Democratic Party. The New York Sun folded yesterday. It was a serious, right-leaning newspaper in New York City. It was undercapitalized, and its shutdown is probably symptomatic of what's going to happen to a lot of bigger newspapers soon, but if even a fraction of the people who are unhappy with the Times had subscribed it would still be in business. And, still, while the New York Times gets in deeper trouble, the New York Post seems to be doing fine.
If you want to have a media environment that isn't dominated by the Gwen Ifills and Keith Olbermanns of the world, you need to ensure that other kinds of voices flourish. That means supporting the alternatives with your eyeballs, your subscriptions, your advertiser-patronage (and you could write those advertisers and tell them you're happy that they're supporting that kind of programming, too -- they probably don't get many letters like that, so they'll be noticed) -- basically, your money. Businesses need money to flourish. There's a vast underserved population out there, for news, entertainment, movies, etc., and if people start serving it, the current "mainstream" media won't be so mainstream anymore. So if you're unhappy with current offerings, put your money where your mouth is.
And if you're one of the people with creative interests, start making alternative stuff. Not just news and punditry, but entertainment, documentaries, etc. If An American Carol does well this weekend, it'll make it a lot easier for the next film of its type to be made. If Evan Coyne Maloney's documentary work does well, it'll encourage a lot more of that kind of work.
Think of it like cultivating a garden: Starve the weeds, feed the flowers. Like gardening, it's work. But like gardening, if you do the work you'll see results.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/02/2008 08:13 ||
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#1
Chance the Gardener in "Being There?"
MSM = Unabashed, Unapologetic Trumpeters for the Left. Too lazy and too agenda-driven to do incisive, hard-hitting investigative reporting of abuses in its Democratic Party.
#2
Some of these magazines for lefties are give-aways that I have gotten in the past from airline frequent flyer miles only because they don't have anything more useful such as woodworking, gun magazines, camping, sports, Shotgun News, how to make your home brew, saving energy methods, hunting, otherwise useful stuff, etc. You know JohnQ-SixPack types of magazines. I do recycle them for landfill and other stuff. Rantburg is still the finest thing out there. Besides I am certain that Sun Tzu (Art of War) must have said somewhere: "Know what your enemy is thinking."
#3
The gray lady needs to sink, with BO tied to the mast(head).
I'm SAILING!...glub glub glub.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
10/02/2008 9:33 Comments ||
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#4
BNice but not enough: if the media are biased in favor of liberals it is in no small part because their staff is chock full of liberals and that is because that is the only variety availbale in the market. It would be time that conservatives embreace careers in journalism. And it would be time they attcked the root causes: those universities where teachers don't content themselves with using their classes for indoctrination but give bad appreciaytions to students who don't toe the line. Once they find that having Ward Churchils or Chomkis in their payroll is baaaaaad for business, universities, spevcially in soft sciences, will stop brainwashing students.
#5
Its a business. It goes out of business just like any other. It should be subject to the same standards as they demand by any other business. It's not a free speech issue. It's a commerce issue. The intent to defraud and misrepresent is punishable in both regulatory and civil law. If GM knew of a defect or a serious problem with their product and withheld that information they become liable as a consequence. We've been entertained to no end by the media hammering on other businesses. They should be subject to the same treatment. The truth is a defense. The lie is not. Just as GM can't avoid blame or penalties because a subcontractor fails to meet requirements, neither can the media that willfully neglects to check for the truth, escape the consequences for acting as an agent in any misrepresentations. I'll give them an out with a prominent front page disclosure posting, just like on the side of the cigarette packages, 'that the contents are not to be assumed to be true and that it is provided for entertainment purposes only'. Otherwise, they're in for the full consequences.
#6
Most of these general-circulation magazines are in fact niche products serving their version of the NPR demographic (and, in Newsweek's case, doctor's offices).
Perhaps you should tell your doctor that you dislike them
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/02/2008 17:46 Comments ||
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#9
Rupert Murdoch looked at media bias in cable news and saw "underserved market segment". Fox has taken tremendous market share from it's competition and has been very profitable.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
WASHINGTON - The Obama Administration began at midnight Sunday.
* Is it smart for a mother to abandon her young children and jet around the country with an older, married man? 
I blame Democratic leaders for larding the Senate version of the bailout bill with what the national political news website Politico.com described as a landmark provision that would require that "insurance companies provide coverage for mental-health treatment -- such as hospitalization -- on parity with physical illnesses."
