Another Higher Education FAIL

As the effects of the higher education bubble are increasingly being made themselves felt, it seems those who managed to get expensive yet useless degrees are finding the real world doesn't really care that they put themselves into hock to gain those worthless sheepskins. This was recently illustrated by a comment to a WSJ piece that covered the goings on at Swarthmore College. It aptly illustrates one of the biggest problems with overpriced educations: the students don't really learn anything of value.

Recently a loud protest was underway in NY City on 3rd Ave and 32nd St. What was it about? Who was protesting?

The delivery crew from a Dominos Pizza site was on the warpath about its wages, protesting as loudly as possible. There were a few dozen and they were given space near the sidewalk to march with their signs and chant about the evils of corporate operations, though this time it was more about olive oil rather than crude oil.

Several policemen were assigned to the protest to ensure order, though, due to the noise, the stretch of sidewalk was largely avoided by pedestrians. The protestors remained in the area delineated by the blue saw-horses that had been delivered earlier by the police department.

A couple of protestors carried signs that said, "I didn't spend so much on tuition as Swarthmore so I could be paid so little at Dominos."

They went to an expensive liberal arts college and got a degree in order to get jobs at a pizza joint? What is wrong with this picture? They could have gotten the same job at Domino's while still in high school and saved $200,000 by not going to college. A follow on comment asked “I wonder what degrees they earned? Maybe something that ended in 'Studies'?”

Probably. Heaven forbid they actually get degrees in something useful that would have helped them get jobs that paid more than minimum wage...plus tips.

Scandal Surrounds The White House

It appears the nearly impenetrable walls that have surrounded the Obama Administration have started to crack and crumble.

The IRS scandal – targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for 'special' scrutiny – has put the White House on the defensive. Unlike the previous four years, the media are not cutting the president any slack. Many of the MSM are asking questions of the type we haven't heard since the Nixon administration: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

While in the past the president made jokes about having the IRS audit his political adversaries, it appears someone in the upper echelons of the IRS took him at his word and started targeting numerous conservative groups and individuals who had the audacity to question the level of government spending and taxation.

Where will all of this lead? No one really knows, but if I had to guess I'd say it will lead to an even weaker presidency as congressional Democrats distance themselves from the White House in an effort to not be dragged down.

And then there are the questions about Benghazi.

From what's been revealed so far there's more than enough blame to go around for that tragedy. As Harry S Truman stated more than once during his time in office, “The buck stops here”, meaning the Oval Office. I doubt there's any way the Obama administration is going to be able to sugar coat that royal screw up. As e-mails released under the Freedom of Information Act show, there was a concerted effort to try to downplay the attack on our embassy, trying to spin it as a 'spontaneous' reprisal to an obscure YouTube video when in fact it was a full out attack by an Al Qaeda splinter group. No amount of PR or spin is going to be able to change that or the fact that the State Department abandoned our ambassador in Libya, leaving him to die at the hands of our enemies.

It's going to be an interesting time in Washington as the full breadth of these and other scandals come to light. Here it is we were thinking that Obama was another Jimmy Carter when it turns out he was also channeling Richard Nixon at his worst.

A Space Oddity

Here's a new take on a classic tune:


Somehow I doubt David Bowie could have made a better video.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I didn't get as much work done around The Manse as I had hoped, but got most of the brush moved off of the hillside and to the brush piles at the rear of the grounds.

Rainy weather precluded some of the other outdoor work I'd hoped to complete, but it will wait a few more days until I can get to it after work.

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BeezleBub has finished his classes for the year and is back at work full time at the farm. Horse Girl still has a few weeks of classes to attend before she's out for the summer and starts working full time at her job. It will be a time of adjustment for both of them to make the transition from school to ful time work schedules.

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Bogie has an interesting take on farm tractors versus cars.

At least BeezleBub can use this to attract chicks if he and Horse Girl don't work out...but maybe that's what attracted her to him to begin with! (Only kidding, B!)

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The expanding IRS scandal is showing how a supposedly apolitical government agency was set upon conservatives in an effort to silence them. Even the Washington Post sees this as a gross misuse of government powers.

Back in the days of the Cold War it was understood that the KGB and GRU didn't fear the CIA or FBI nearly as much as they feared the IRS, knowing it didn't have to 'follow the rules' in regards to American law.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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The IRS scandal reminds me of the Congressional hearings chaired by former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) that looked into IRS abuses of its power. The hearings highlighted decades of institutional abuse of taxpayers by overzealous revenue agents and regional IRS offices ignoring the agency's own rules and regulations.

A new series of hearings should be held to determine just how far the rot has set in. It's obvious the reforms enacted after the Thompson hearings have fallen by the wayside and the IRS has now become nothing more than a government arm of the DNC.

One way to solve the problem? Eliminate the income tax and go to a national sales tax, which in turn would make the IRS as it exists now an agency without a purpose. It could be restructured because it wouldn't require the thousands upon thousands of employees it now has in order to make sure the proper sales taxes were collected and remitted. The tax code could be reduced from the 70,000 plus pages it is now to one not much more than 5 or 6 pages.

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If we need even more evidence of Leftist douchebaggery there's this little bit showing New Jersey Democrats forgetting the one rule that everyone in a public forum should remember: Never assume the microphone is off.

In this case a number of New Jersey state senators were caught talking about how what their state needs now is a bill to “confiscate, confiscate, confiscate” all guns. Part of this drive may be explained by the mistaken belief that gun crime is up. But the government's own figures show that all violent crime is at the lowest level in decades and still falling, so it isn't the only reason the gun-grabbers want to take away our guns.

Don't try to tell me the Leftists don't want to disarm all law abiding citizens. After all it means the populace will no longer be able to resist any of the follow on legislation that will further strip us of our rights.

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It used to be only media like Fox News and many of the more conservative media covered the debacle that was Benghazi. But now the rest of the media, including some of the Big Three networks and the more liberal leaning print media are starting to question the actions – or should we say inaction - by the government in regards to guarding our embassy.

I have to wonder if there is an ulterior motive for the non-conservative MSM to begin covering Benghazi. If there is I think I can state it in two words: Hillary Clinton. Why? Someone on the left doesn't want her to become the Democrat nominee for president in 2016.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where weekend weather hasn't cooperated, outdoor chores have gone unfinished, and where Monday has yet again returned too soon.

Sad Cat Diary

It seems I can't get away from feline themed subjects. This latest video strikes close to home, considering The Manse houses 7 and three-quarters cats.


WARNING!: Do not drink any beverages while viewing this video. Ignoring this warning may lead to said beverage being spewed upon your monitor and keyboard.

Another AGW Prediction Failure To Add To The List

It seems that one dire prediction after another about the bad effects of AGW are being debunked, not by skeptics, but by Mother Nature. The Warmists scramble to explain away each failure of their models to predict what has actually happened.

The rapid rise in sea level that is supposed to inundate coastal cities by 2100 (or sooner) hasn't been happening. The rate of increasing sea levels hasn't changed a bit, meaning our coastal cities are safe for at least another thousand years.

The more numerous bigger, more powerful hurricanes that were supposed to devastate our coasts haven't been happening. In fact we've reached a stretch where the number and strength of damaging hurricanes has decreased. (Sandy was a weak Category 1/strong tropical storm when it hit the northeastern US last year.)

The unprecedented droughts that were supposed to wipe out farming haven't happened, though there have been droughts. However none of them were outside what we've seen over the past couple of hundred years. (I haven't seen a return of the Dust Bowl. Have you?)

Forest and brush fires were supposed to become more common, more widespread, and more damaging. But that isn't what has happened, media reports about the annual battle against such fires to the contrary. The actual number of such fires has been decreasing. That most of them still occur in arid areas isn't surprising. It's to be expected. But the ecosystems survive because they require such fires in order to regenerate. That human beings live in those areas makes them vulnerable to those fires.

Another dire prediction has been that the number of tornadoes will increase, but in general that hasn't been the case. The number of tornadoes seen over the past 12 months has fallen to the lowest level in 60 years. If this trend continues I thing we can put a stake through the heart of this prediction.

I must state that I am not denying that climate change is happening. I doubt anyone can really deny that for the simple reason is that it changes all the time. It's never static. What I am questioning is the many predictions made about how bad things would get because of warmer temps. How did the “We're all gonna DIE!” CAGW folks make those predictions? Did they make their predictions by assuming only one factor in our semi-chaotic atmospheric system would change and project the consequences from there? Or did they pull out a climate dart board and throw darts to generate their predictions?

One last dig: I still see a lot of the AGW faithful sticking by their guns that things are getting warmer even though global temperatures haven't risen for the past 15 years. The actual temperatures have flattened, fallen out of the 'envelope' of the myriad climate models. Many expect the temperatures to start falling, particularly in light of the very weak sunspot Cycle 24. (The sun's 11-year cycle has some effect on climate, both here on Earth and the other planets in the solar system. Weak sunspot cycles, called minimums, seem to coincide with cooler temperatures. Some solar physicists believe we're entering a lengthy period of lower sunspot activity which mighty mean cooler temps here for a few decades.)

How many other dire predictions will fall by the wayside over the coming years?

Quotes Of The Day

Here are two great quotes from the Web, both of which are fitting considering the state of our nation these days.

The first comes by way of Samizdata and reveals a truth too many without understanding of economics might find enlightening:

“If prices are information, then subsidies are censorship.” - Russ Nelson

Anyone with a modicum of economics knowledge knows that prices are a means of feedback in a market economy. Subsidies distort feedback and skew prices, causing them to rise or fall from their normal level depending upon what is being subsidized and why. In the end it causes a distortion in the marketplace which will hurt some other part of the market.

The second quote is a takeoff from a phrase coined by Hillary Clinton many years ago, in this case describing our present president's effect on us:

It takes a community organizer to raze a village (and a country).

There's little I can add to that.

Baby Kittehs!

For a change of pace, baby kittehs being born and raised (a silent film in black and white).

A Tale Of Two Oil States

There has been many comparisons made between two of our largest states in the continental US – California and Texas – with economics being in the forefront, particularly in relation to oil production.

California's economy has been weakened after decades of poor decisions made at both the state and local level and at the moment has the highest unemployment rate and tax burden in the country. Texas, on the other hand, has seen its economy rebound as it has become far more business friendly. The resurgence of oil and natural gas production has only added to its economic rebound.

So what the heck is going on in California that makes it the economic basket case it has become?

First, it doesn't help that the state government, which is totally in thrall to the environmental lobbies, has made it almost impossible for the state top make use of its vast energy resources (read that to mean oil and natural gas) by all but banning drilling. That's stupid considering it may have untapped resources to rival those of the Bakken field, and that's not even counting the offshore resources. But California won't let anyone drill for it anywhere.

Second, the public unions are draining the state and municipal coffers dry.

Third, the almost pathological NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) attitude that permeates the thinking of too many of those in power.

I could go on and on, but I would merely be reiterating things I and others have written about the once great Golden State and its decline.

What was interesting about the WSJ opinion piece linked above were the comments by California residents, some of whom knew their state was dysfunctional but planned to stay and fight, others who knew their state was dysfunctional and were packing up and leaving, and yet others who appear to have been hitting the hash pipe a little too hard. This last has been evidenced by their continuing trash talking of Texas and quoting long discredited or obsolete stats they claim show California is better. A couple of the last group kept making claims that the per capita income and life expectancy stats were all that anyone needed to look at to see that California had it all over Texas. Of course they ignored California's high cost of living, which if they had taken into account, gives Texas the edge. The claim was also made again and again that Texas had a much higher poverty rate than Texas, but recent stats from the Census Bureau gives lie to that, showing that California's poverty rate was on the order of 23% while Texas has a poverty rate of 16%...and falling.

A number of companies have been relocating from California to Texas, including defense contractor Raytheon, which plans to move its space systems business unit HQ to Texas.

All the indicators show that California is headed for a crash unless the state government can get its collective head out of its rear end and starts to address both economic and environmental realities. And should the crash come I think you'll see a lot of states balking at bailing it out. Why should the fiscally responsible states be forced to pay for the profligate and irresponsible spending by a state incapable of understanding that they've run out of other people's money?

In the mean time Texas sees its economy booming and its popularity as a business destination growing by the day. Too bad if California can't see its problems are of its own making.

Thoughts On A Sunday

The warm, dry weather continues here in New England, making the hazard of brush fires very high. That has limited some of the activities planned for the lower 40 here at The Manse. We had hoped to clear more brush from the property, but with the very dry conditions the last thing we want is to chance sparking a fire while using the chain saw. So for some of our work we've been using a pair of loppers which are sufficient for some of the work, but not all.

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Do you want to try to make the case for AGW keeping this in mind?

Probably not...unless you're one of those that believes that AGW causes everything.

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An Internet sales tax bill is wending its way through the Senate that will require online retailers to collect sales taxes from customers in states with sales taxes.

You would think that large retailers like Amazon would be against it, but they aren't. Instead Amazon is supporting it, not because they think its right but that it will make it more expensive for smaller competitors to do business online. Call me cynical, but isn't something like that really rent-seeking by the Internet giant? After all, they have the infrastructure and the capital to deal with sales taxes from 45 different states. Most smaller businesses don't which puts them at a major disadvantage.

While there is a $1 million exemption for small businesses, that doesn't help the states without sales taxes like Delaware, New Hampshire, Montana, and Oregon. None of those states has an infrastructure for collecting sales taxes and implementing one for the benefit of other states seems like a loser.

While there was a proposed amendment that would have exempted states without sales taxes from having to collect them for other states, it was killed. (Of course that might have been a big boon for those four states if it had been included because it would have enticed online retailers to relocate to those states to avoid having to collect sales taxes.)

I can see a lawsuit coming on this one.

Looking at the ongoing battle between two states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the courts have consistently ruled that New Hampshire (no sales tax) does not have to collect sales tax from residents of Massachusetts (sales tax) who buy merchandise in New Hampshire. There is even a state law in New Hampshire making it illegal for New Hampshire business from being forced by other states to do so. (This was done to preclude Maine, Massachusetts, or Vermont from trying to force New Hampshire to collect their sales taxes.) If the new bill passes, then New Hampshire will have to spend its tax dollars to set up the infrastructure to collect sales taxes for other states. How is that fair?

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Are the big newpapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post doomed to die a slow, lingering death. If the latest report from the Washington Post Co. are correct, I'd have to say they are.

WaPo's parent company has reported an 85% earnings drop. That is not the sign of a healthy publication.

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By way of Glenn Reynolds comes this Quote of the Day from Samizdata:

If you want to introduce someone to libertarian thinking, encourage them to try this experiment. Spend a few days reading nothing but technology news. Then spend a few days reading nothing but political news. For the first few days they’ll see an exciting world of innovation and creativity where everything is getting better all the time. In the second period they’ll see a miserable world of cynicism and treachery where everything is falling apart. Then ask them to explain the difference.

Call it another case of willful cognitive dissonance if they still believe both at the same time.

Having a foot in both worlds, I have a bit more faith in the technology as it is based upon proven science and math (mixed with innovation) and no amount of political demagogy will change either... but don't tell that to the AGW folks.

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If you want to find out about what the Fair Tax really is, then Tim Condon points us to the Understanding the Fair Tax webinar coming up on May 23rd. You can register here.

While I know something about the Fair Tax, I still plan to log in for the webinar because you never know if you'll learn something new.

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BeezleBub started cleaning up the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout – aka The Boat – attacking the mildew that seems to make itself at home every winter. I still have to get and install two new batteries and get The Boat down to the local marine repair shop to get a tune-up, but I expect it will be ready to ply the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee by Memorial Day weekend.

Unlike previous years, we will not be renting a slip this year. Instead we'll be trailering it to the lake. While I like being out on the lake as much as is possible, we had the choice between putting some much needed work into The Boat to ensure it would be shipshape for the next few seasons or take our chances and spend the money on a slip we might not be able to use because The Boat wasn't running right.

While I may not be able to get out on to the lake as often as I would like this coming boating season, at least we'll be able to get out there, and that's the important thing.

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I saw my purported Representative to the House, Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), on the TV this morning and frankly I didn't hear anything new from her. Then again, I doubt she's really had an original thought or idea since she's been in office. During her first term in Congress she was basically a mouthpiece for Nancy Pelosi and voted the way Nancy told her to vote. It's one reason she got kicked out during the 2010 mid-term election.

Now that she's back in office by once again pulling the wool over just enough of the voter's eyes in 2012, she has even less to say than during her first time in office. Basically she has no opinion about anything.

But she is still a leftist hack who believes that only the Democrats (and maybe some Independents) in her congressional district are her constituents. New Hampshire Republicans in her district need not contact her office because she doesn't represent them.

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This just goes to show you how well supplies will be preserved in your bomb shelter if you pack them correctly. In this case they have survived over 50 years and look as good as they day they were stored.

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I must admit that I've had exactly the same thought.

“Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they lie to us. Yes, they do. For that reason alone, I will not trust them. Period.”

If those who disagree with you will tell any lie to get their way, then there's no way you can trust anything they say nor believe any promise they make. Such a tactic makes it impossible to debate anything. This doesn't apply just to guns, but to other issues such as AGW, taxes and spending, or our constitutional rights.

And people wonder why there's such a divide in this country.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where boats are appearing back on the lake, summerfolk have been working on their cottages and camps, and where an endless supply of yardwork awaits.