The Next Move

By the Obama administration against the private sector. In an NRO article and a lengthy post at the Corner, Stephen Spruiell explains the Obama administration's attacks on for-profit colleges.

[F]or-profit schools are the latest front in the Obama administration’s campaign to control as much of the higher-ed industry as possible. As with other industries, regulating the risk out of the for-profit sector also means shrinking the available choices: New rules under discussion at the Department of Education would link a for-profit school’s eligibility for federal funds to its graduates’ debt loads as a percentage of the average starting salaries in their chosen fields, an arbitrary measure that the schools say would restrict their course offerings to just a few programs. Other measures being considered would link eligibility to a 70 percent program-completion rate and a 70 percent in-field-placement rate after graduation — standards the administration would never dream of requiring of traditional universities. (Imagine the Department of Education telling Big State U that 70 percent of its “peace studies” grads must be placed “in field” or it will lose federal funding for the program.)

The lesson, as always, is that government subsidies are never no-strings-attached affairs. Once an activity is fully subsidized, it is one Bob Shireman away from being fully controlled.

And at The Corner,

Let me just clarify something that might not come through in my piece: I have a problem with the way these schools are built to profit from government higher-ed subsidies. But I also have a problem with the way in which the Department of Education is cracking down on them. As usual, the government is attacking a problem it created with the worst possible solution. In the process, it is threatening to kill the value that the for-profit sector has actually brought to the table.

[...]

[W]e reached the point years ago at which the traditional colleges and universities could no longer accomodate the demand — that's where for-profit schools stepped into the picture. And, because we have increased higher-ed subsidies so dramatically, both traditional and for-profit schools have increased tuition to capture their share of the rents. Tuition inflation routinely outpaces other measures of inflation. Tuitions at for-profit schools are particularly high.

Rather than curb the subsidies — a move that by itself would reduce the cost of postsecondary education — Obama's DOE would prefer to use a price control, and boy, have they come up with a doozy...With few exceptions, it would apply only to the for-profit schools, and the most likely outcome would not be the across-the-board tuition reductions the administration wants, but the elimination of programs that are popular with students and meet market needs.

[...]

Will a wave of student defaults be the next shoe to drop in the ongoing financial crisis? I think the odds are better than even. But if it happens, let's not pretend the for-profits made this mess. This is another government-created disaster-in-the-making, resulting from policies that started out with good intentions and ended on a road to hell.

Maybe Because They Were Looking For Somebody Upset About the Health Care Bill

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked Tuesday why the suspect in a failed attempt to bomb Times Square, Faisal Shahzad, was able to board a flight at Kennedy Airport if he was supposed to be on a "no-fly" list."

Inanity, from Bloomberg and others, here.

F2F

The main topic tonight on Face to Face was immigration. In the first segment, Jon Ralston had Chad Christensen and Russell Pearce, the Arizona legislator and sponsor of that state's recent immigration law. Pearce endorsed Christensen today and Christensen asked Governor Gibbons to call for a special session of the legislature so that Nevada could enact a similar law. Yeah, good luck with that.

After those two appeared, Ralston interviewed the Mexican consul. Interesting. Having the Mexican consul on to criticize American immigration policy is like having the Saudi ambassador on to criticize America's treatment of women.

The Gulf Oil Rig Explosion - On the Scene Photos

At Watts Up With That?

Visions of Utopia Dance In Their Heads

A lesson from history.

Stalin is long dead and communism and fascism are history’s dust, but the evil that birthed it all still haunts us, still pushes in on us in new guises with new rationales.

The killing arrogance of those who believe they have the knowledge to order entire societies, even the entire world, is ultimately what empowered Stalin to do what he did.

That arrogance has not abated. One need only glance at the news to see it. The intellectual descendants of the people who lectured us all about the virtues of Stalin’s regime back then, today lecture us about their own grandiose visions. They are every bit as certain in their intellectual and moral rectitude as were those who defended Stalin. If we risk letting them into power, we risk a Stalin reborn.

We must remain ever vigilant all of our days to fight against this evil that forever lurks in the core of our beings. We must all resist the urge to believe ourselves superior, to believe ourselves possessed of the one true knowledge, to believe ourselves entitled to sacrifice the living here and now for the sake of a utopia
generations hence.

Should we fail, we should all pray to fate, physics or all the gods ever named that we quickly meet the peace of the grave rather than find ourselves in that brave woman’s shoes.

Read the whole thing for a real-life story of the horror that was the collectivists' utopia. Our schoolchildren are taught about the Red Scare, McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist. Yet very few of them are aware of the horrors that were (in some cases still are) the USSR, Red China, Vietnam, Cuba and everywhere else the "utopia" of communism reigned.

The excesses of those who fought communism are well-known, while the oppression, starvation and murder that are the inevitable result of this utopic vision are not. This ignorance is dangerous for, as the old saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Quote of the Day - 5/2/2010

Walter Russell Meade, speaking not only of Greece but of the entire world:

[T]he clash between those who like the world that capitalism has made and those who hate it is not going away. The global capitalist revolution offers the best and indeed the only hope that I see for the relief of poverty, the advance of human rights and the protection of the environment worldwide. Like all great revolutionary movements, however, it creates divisions, inequalities and resistance. Revolts against the liberal capitalist world system — fascism and communism above all — shaped the history of the twentieth century and inflicted unprecedented misery and harm until they were defeated. The radical terrorist movement led by Islamic renegades has more recently inflicted grave harm in many places and its violent course has not yet come to an end; we are likely to see more crises and conflict in the twenty first century as the anti-capitalist counter-revolution finds new forms and new allies.

via Instapundit

Peace, Love and...NO TOYS?

Write on Nevada has the latest in Nanny State extremism. This pretty much nails it:

Once Californians were known for rebelling against their parents and the establishment, but now they are the establishment…and they want to be everyone’s parent.

Solar Blemishes XXI

Or, Looking For Cover

Campaign 2010 continued this morning at the OFA Sun. In lauding President Obama's creation of a deficit commission, they presented yet another editorial combining Republican-bashing with sycophantic worship of the President Who Can Do No Wrong.

One of the reasons why Barack Obama was elected president was that the American people knew he would talk to them like adults, leveling with them on the tough choices facing the nation. So far during his presidency, he has not let us down.

[...]

[T]here is much more work to be done, and one of those key areas is fiscal responsibility. That is why we were heartened this year when Obama created a bipartisan commission to make recommendations to Congress and the president on how best to rein in this country’s growing federal debt.

Appointing a commission to develop solutions to a problem is hardly an act of political courage. It is, in fact, an admission that a President desires political cover to make unpopular decisions. He can deflect any criticism by pointing to the commission rather than having to accept responsibility himself. Very adult, that.

The principal reason for the debt explosion is that President George W. Bush and his Republican backers in Congress ran up the deficit, not making spending cuts to offset huge tax cuts that Congress approved.

You'll not find me defending the spending habits of Bush and the Republicans while they were in power. But the tendency of Obama's most fervent backers, including the Sun, to blame everything on Bush is becoming more than tiresome, especially when it comes to deficits.

The deficits that Bush ran up pale in comparison to those of Obama - the difference between someone who goes to a party and has 2 drinks and the guy who has 12. A little visual may help.


This has since been updated to (via Heritage):

Furthermore, for the Sun to criticize Bush for not making sufficient spending cuts is simply astounding. When Bush presented a budget containing relatively modest reductions in spending, the Sun condemned the cuts as "Draconian" and the budget as "obscene." Indeed, "Draconian" was the Sun's standard description of virtually every attempt by Republicans to attack spending.

Back to this morning's editorial:

On Tuesday, the day the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform met for the first time, Obama alluded to the tough challenges ahead. The president has found areas in government to trim — $20 billion in cuts this year have been identified — and he has advocated “pay-as-you-go” budgeting: the rule that says Congress can’t spend money on a new entitlement program or pass a tax cut unless comparable savings are found elsewhere to offset it. But he noted that more sweeping changes will be required.

$20 billion is less than 1/5 of the amount of additional annual spending created by the health care bill alone. Yet it is enough for the Sun to tout the virtues of the President.

"Pay-as-you-go" budgeting is a sham. It makes tax cuts all-but-impossible and big spenders merely ignore it whenever it proves inconvenient - with the support of the Sun. When a Republican Senator held up an extension in unemployment benefits because it violated pay-go rules, the Sun crucified the GOP as "cold-hearted" and "[s]hameful."

This morning's piece continues,

Indeed, we were encouraged to hear the president say this week that “everything has to be on the table.”

I wonder if "everything" includes tax increases for people making less than $250,000. The cynic in me believes this is the real reason for the deficit commission.

During the campaign the President was adamant that he would not raise any taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. His allies, including members of the media, reacted fiercely when anyone attempted to explain that the policies he proposed would inevitably force him to break this promise. Just as he has blamed Bush for the deficits, he can lay the responsibility at the feet of this commission when he breaks his firmest campaign promise.

The reality is that spending cuts alone aren’t going to put a dent in, let alone erase, the national debt over time. For that matter, tax hikes alone aren’t realistic. We don’t envy members of the commission as they embark on this task, but getting our fiscal house in order is mandatory if our economy is to fully prosper.

The real reality is that the deficits in the first seven years of the Bush presidency were sustainable. Our current and future projected deficits, mostly brought on by the Obama administration's massive increase in the size and scope and power of the federal government and which the Sun supported and continues to support, are not.

The Sun has rarely seen a tax hike it couldn't support nor a spending cut it couldn't condemn. The inevitable result of such tax-and-spend policies is tepid economic growth and large deficits. Now their Favorite President Ever is searching for cover to reduce the deficits he created. Supporting that effort is all part of Campaign 2010.

May 1

Victims of Communism Day

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The Definition of Frivolous

As if any were needed, here is further proof that our tort system is out of control.

Roy Werbel and his counsel are back with yet another attempt to call out Kellogg USA for its dastardly marketing of "Froot Loops" cereal. As you may recall, Werbel sued Kellogg in state court in San Francisco last October, alleging that the "Froot Loops" name had misled him by causing him to believe that "the product contains real, nutritious fruit." That case was dismissed without prejudice in February, on the grounds that Werbel had not successfully served Kellogg. But Werbel sued Kellogg again on April 19[.]

This suit and the others(!!) like it do not warrant even the time and effort and expense required for a clerk to enter them. That the company is forced to commit the time and money to defend it and a judge is obligated to spend some of his time to even read it is evidence of the absurb farce that our tort system has descended into.

The idea that everyone deserves his day in court is an asinine notion, most likely concocted by an attorney. Some lawsuits are so ridiculous, and these particular ones represent not even the tip of the tip of the tip of that iceberg, that they do not even merit hearing.

What's next? What about when he finds out that Liquid Plummr is not an actual plumber? Imagine the personal injury suit when he attempts to park on the parkway.

Merely requiring the plaintiffs to reimburse the defendants and the courts for their costs and permanently disbarring the attorneys is not punishment enough.