Jan
19
2024

Road to Serfdom or Highway to the Danger Zone?

That seems to be shaping up as the voting choice in November. President Bone Spurs pressed down hard on the CAPS LOCK key, and typed:

There's a rebuttal I liked:

Rand Paul? What's he said now? My best guess is that he appears in this HuffPo story. The headline is "Republicans Divided On Whether Donald Trump Can Be Prosecuted For Crimes"

"Divided"… well, the HuffPo "journalist" doesn't quote anyone flat-out agreeing with Trump. The actual difference is more subtle, and that's where Senator Paul appears:

Some GOP senators flatly rejected the former president’s immunity claims, calling them antithetical to U.S. criminal justice. Others suggested that the matter is more complex than it appears and needs more study before they can offer an opinion.

“It’s a very specific legal argument, and I’m afraid I’m just not up on it enough to be able to comment,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a libertarian-leaning critic of executive overreach who once mounted a 12-hour filibuster on the Senate floor to warn about the threat of drone strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil.

Paul did not reply: "Dammit Jim, I'm an ophthalmologist, not a constitutional lawyer." But he could have.

But, basically, the CAPS LOCK is a dealbreaker for me. Big red flag.

And also the arrogant desire to be above the law. That's bad too.

Also of note:

  • We need more of this. Harvard history professor James Hankins shares the Honest Diversity Statement he's addressing to "Members of Harvard’s Faceless Bureaucracy". Just a couple paragraphs gives you the (wonderful) gist:

    You ask me to explain my thinking about DEI. The fact is that I don’t think about it (or them?) at all if I can help it. Sherlock Holmes once told Watson that he couldn’t be bothered to know about Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism because it took up valuable space in his brain which he needed for his work as a detective. “But the Solar System!” I protested. —”What of the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently. “You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.” I’m a working historian and don’t want to waste my brain space on inessentials.

    Since, however, you require me, as a condition of further employment, to state my attitude to these “values” that the university is said to share (though I don’t remember a faculty vote endorsing them), let me say that, in general, the statement of EDIB beliefs offered on your website is too vapid to offer any purchase for serious ethical analysis. The university, according to you, espouses an absolute commitment to a set of words that seems to generate positive feelings in your office, and perhaps among administrators generally, but it is not my practice to make judgments based on feelings. In fact, my training as a historian leads me to distrust such feelings as a potential obstacle to clear thinking. I don’t think it’s useful to describe the feelings I experience when particular words and slogans are invoked and how they affect my professional motivations. It might be useful on a psychoanalyst’s couch or in a religious cult, but not in a university.

    The Google saith that Professor Hankins is 69 years old, which is Getting Up There. I would wager they won't replace him with anyone as brave or honest.

  • To put it mildly. Josh Barro's headline reveals a shocking truth: Universities Are Not on the Level. After noting that polling reveals a sigficant decline in confidence in higher ed:

    I personally have also developed a more negative view of colleges and universities over the last decade, and my reason is simple: I increasingly find these institutions to be dishonest. A lot of the research coming out of them does not aim at truth, whether because it is politicized or for more venal reasons. The social justice messaging they wrap themselves in is often insincere. Their public accountings of the reasons for their internal actions are often implausible. They lie about the role that race plays in their admissions and hiring practices. And sometimes, especially at the graduate level, they confer degrees whose value they know will not justify the time and money that students invest to get them.

    It's long and on target. Check it out.

  • Pay up, sucka. Arnold Kling's blogging method (substacking method?) is similar to mine: mostly recommending things that he's found interesting or insightful. I will just echo one of his recent examples, based on a recent WSJ article that I wish I'd blogged about:

    For the WSJ, David Benoit and Eric Wallerstein write,

    The rate banks pay to use the program, BTFP for short, is tied to future interest-rate expectations. Now that investors have priced in a series of rate cuts later this year, banks are able to pocket the difference between what they pay to borrow the funds and what they can earn from parking the funds at the central bank as overnight deposits.

    …While the Fed offers financing below 5% through its rescue program, it is currently paying banks 5.4% on parked reserve balances.

    Walter Bagehot famously said that in a crisis the central bank should lend freely, at a penalty rate. Under the Bank Term Funding Program, the Fed lends freely at a subsidy rate. The WSJ article never mentions who ends up footing the bill for this gift to banks. Of course, it is the taxpayer.

    I've taken the liberty of bolding that last bit. Sorry if you're having problems with high blood pressure.

  • And they aren't very good jokes, which I guess is unsurprising. Speaking of Your Tax Dollars At Work, here is one of the items blogged by Astral Codex Ten

    Did you know: the US government maintains a database of dad jokes

    That is from the website of fatherhood.gov, run by the "National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse". Their budget is not easily found, but this 2019 AEI article notes it's just one of many scattered throughout Uncle Stupid's domain:

    Currently, the federal government spends over $75 million per year on these fatherhood programs, with dedicated grant funding starting in 2005. As noted by the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, “many federal departments have initiatives and programs supporting responsible fatherhood and fathers in the community,” including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, HHS, HUD, Justice, Labor, and Veterans Affairs.

    Despite the proliferation of programs, “very few rigorous evaluations have been done to test their effectiveness,” according to a December 2018 study prepared for HHS. The evaluations performed found that fatherhood programs “produce small but statistically significant effects” especially on “father involvement, parenting, and coparenting.” The study notes, however, that “self-report data” is used in assessing those factors, and “fathers may overestimate” improvements on those factors in their self-reports. The same study also noted that “none of the evaluations we analyzed reported on child outcomes,” which it called “the primary rationale for father involvement programs.”

    Maybe the dad jokes will finally solve the fatherhood crisis.

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