The Decisionist

Stop the presses!

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:28:12 -0400

Administrator at private university calls for public wage freeze.

In case you forgot...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:07:00 -0400

He really does not mind compromising.

— Anti-Cato

Maybe begins with "j"?

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:46:00 -0400

Matt Yglesias points out—almost gleefully, really—that organized labor has opposed the government’s antitrust action against AT&T and T-mobile. It’s a dilemma for the left! Our friends and our enemies are on the same side! So hard.

But what if there were some other principle that really mattered to us? Something that couldn’t be reduced to the distinction between friend and enemy?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what that is.

— Anti-Cato

Ron Paul

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:59:00 -0400

has this bumper sticker on his desk:

When I first read this, I was like — Steal what? The sign? But then I was like, oh, it’s a joke, because the government likes to steal. (Signs?) And then I was like, wait, if this is a joke, does that mean stealing is okay?

— Anti-Cato

Matt Damon and Arne Duncan and Jonathan Chait

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:58:00 -0400

Chait is smart — he has a degree from the University of Michigan! — but he is also way into “ed reform”. So naturally he finds Matt Damon annoying. But here is today’s reason why.

According to two people familiar with the efforts, the administration tried to arrange a meeting with Damon and government officials, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, before the July 30 march. The sources declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In fact, Duncan was willing to meet Damon at the airport when he flew into the Washington region and talk to him on the drive into the city, according to the sources. Damon declined all of the requests.

Chait is mad because Damon (supposedly) did not want to meet with Duncan about something. We don’t know if the story is true, and we don’t know why Duncan wanted to meet with Damon, and we don’t know why Damon didn’t want to meet with Duncan (if he didn’t), but — whatever — Damon is against “ed reform”, he was going to speak at a rally against it, so he had an obligation to meet with the Secretary of Education.

I don’t know that this follows, but here is what Chait says:

If Damon knows enough about education policy to speak at a rally, then he knows enough to take a meeting with Arne Duncan and debate it. Getting a chance to make your case to policy makers is what political activists are supposed to want. That’s the goal. If Damon feels he doesn’t know enough about the issue to survive a meeting with Duncan with his convictions intact, then he has no business speaking at a rally.

Here’s where I’m thinking maybe Chait hasn’t been to so many rallies. A rally is not like a policy summit. Larry Summers isn’t there, they don’t circulate white papers, it’s not in Jackson Hole. Anyone can speak at a rally (though it helps if you are good at speaking in public). More generally: you don’t need to be able to “survive a meeting” with a policymaker to be entitled to an opinion about this kind of thing. “Ed reform” isn’t an engineering problem: there are principles at stake. For example: the principle of academic freedom. Or the principle that a decent education is not one thing for rich people and another thing for poor people. It’s like: did you even see Good Will Hunting?

— Anti-Cato

From Reuters

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:49:22 -0400

Obama says he inherited economic problems

Sure, but look what’s he’s done with them!

—Anti-Cato

How the Bush tax cuts play out

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:12:00 -0400

Jonathan Chait has been saying hopeful things.

[T]he Bush tax cuts expire after 2012 barring action by Congress. What’s more, Republicans have signaled that they will not extend the tax cuts on income below $250,000 a year unless the tax cuts on income over that level are extended as well. As I’ve argued endlessly, this provides a huge opportunity to the Obama administration. It can simply refuse to extend the tax cuts for the rich, demand a clean tax cut bill for income under that level, and when Republicans refuse, blame them for hiking middle class taxes while taking quiet satisfaction as projected revenue increases by $4.6 trillion, solving the medium-term deficit problem. I can’t be sure by any means that this will happen.

Agreed — it is a huge opportunity. But not for this administration.

Obama’s already shown that he is committed to retaining Bush’s “middle-class” tax cut. (More like “upper-middle-class”, but whatever.) This commitment isn’t particularly ideological; it is basically political. His political advisers are telling him that the words “middle-class tax cut” poll well. Also: the words “middle-class tax hike” do not poll well. And recent events have shown that his policy priorities are not important even to him.

So this is how it plays out. Obama initially says he wants to prolong the “middle-class” tax cuts, and not the tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans say they want to make all the cuts permanent or no deal. Obama then agrees. (He also agrees to further cuts in Medicaid or whatever.)

I can’t wait for the second term!

— Anti-Cato

Chicago School: somehow not dead

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:18:00 -0400

No doubt Paul Ryan was inquiring about the “value neutral” research of the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago when he met him for dinner this week. (Also, why oh why was Clifford Asness’s name not incorporated into Cochrane’s title?)

— Felix Holt

Political science

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:55:10 -0400

Archon Fung writes,

Political science may displace economics as the dismal science at just the time when we need new visions of political possibilities.

AlI I can say is, I think he selected on the dependent variable.

— Felix Holt

Wisconsin: More fucked up than Arizona?

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:23:39 -0400

Physical assault of supreme court justices by other supreme court justices may now be part of the state’s union-busting strategy.

— Felix Holt

There may be a god. [Updated]

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:07:00 -0400

Ron Johnson is in some deep shit.

— Felix Holt

_____________________

Update: This may be harder to prosecute than TPM makes it out to be. (Consider this, for instance.) But one can hope.

More confusion from Republicans

Sat, 28 May 2011 21:15:00 -0400

Apparently, Republicans voted to end medicare. Wait, cancel that.

— Felix Holt

USA!

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:20:55 -0400

Fans riot.

At last

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:16:10 -0400

At last, Kevin Drum says:

Unfortunately for voucher fans, when kids all take the same test it’s way too obvious that voucher schools don’t really outperform traditional schools. Nor do they outperform schools in poor neighborhoods (that’s the blue line in the chart). At best, they perform about the same, and at worst they perform more poorly. Not only does this undermine the case for vouchers, but it also undermines the case that, for example, it’s the troglodyte teachers unions that are holding back Wisconsin’s kids. That can hardly be tolerated, so the best bet is to simply not allow comparisons to be made in the first place.

Good. That’s step one. Step two is pointing out that union teachers are, on the whole, as good or better than non-union teachers.

— Anti-Cato

"What if these voters are just a clueless horde?"

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:52:36 -0400

Michael Kazin has the answer.

— Anti-Cato

The new pantheon

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 11:16:04 -0400

Aristotle • Gibbon • Mill • Dawkins. (Also: Cicero • Hume • Mann • Hazlitt • Camus).

— Anti-Cato

Don't ever listen to the radio

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:34:00 -0400

Heard on Rush Limbaugh this morning:

Is it even legal for a college student to be on food stamps?

I know he’s an idiot; but, still—fuck you, Rush.

—Felix Holt

There is power in a union, according to George Will

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:42:35 -0400

Jonathan Chait suggests that Republicans are (inadvertantly, I assume) promoting teacher union power through the shibboleth of “local control of schools”.

“Local control” almost invariably means letting a policy question be dominated by the strongest local economic interest, with no countervailing power. In education, the only real economic interest with skin in the game is the teachers’ union.

The source of this insight? George Will, naturally.

And, while it’s hard to imagine that Will — who has a Ph.D. in something from Princeton — could ever exaggerate the power of labor to determine public policy, this seems incredible. First, unions generally exercise only slight influence on local school boards: in my experience, school management is a much more potent force. (It’s a little like corporate governance: the single most influential force on the board of any major company — even a unionized company — is the CEO.) And school management is typically driven by two incentives: raising test scores and cutting costs.

Second, there actually are good reasons to oppose local control. The main one is that localities typically protect local money, with a view to excluding poor and minority students. “Local control” doesn’t mean “letting a policy question be dominated by the strongest local economic interest”; it means segregation (cf. “states’ rights”). That’s the point of it, obviously.

The good news, I guess, is that George Will isn’t totally racist.

— Anti-Cato

Why are teachers so dumb? Because teaching isn't prestigious. Or the other way around.

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:13:10 -0400

Today Yglesias is saying that the distinctive thing about Finland’s (apparently successful) education system is the prestige associated with the teaching profession there — apparently in contrast with the US.

The key point as far as I can tell is simply that [teacher education] programs are very selective. Lots of people want to be teachers, so it’s hard to get into the programs, so getting into the program makes you seem prestigious, which makes applying to be a teacher desirable, etc., etc., etc. It’s a self-sustaining cycle.

I don’t really know about any of that; but all I can say is that if you want teaching to be prestigious, a good place to start might be not shitting all over the teaching profession all the time.

— Anti-Cato

In other news

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 10:57:00 -0400

Dilbert is having some problems.

— Felix Holt