Patriotism or Jingoism?

Jonathan V. Last, blogging for The Weekly Standard, about the implications of childlessness in the United States (and elsewhere in the developed world):

The reason we care about fertility numbers and demographics is because this—our civilization—is exactly what’s at stake.

That comment presupposes that our civilization is worth saving, that it has intrinsic worth.

Second Debate Reconsidered

Jay Cost writes a column called "Morning Jay" that analyzes politics for The Weekly Standard. This week he has written what amounts to an editorial that looks at the second debate, the history of the Republican Party, and the importance of small businesses in this nation of ours.

I know that description sounds grandiose, and it is sweeping column, but it is also very worth your time. His argument that big business - as opposed to small business - is darned comfortable with either party in power is solid. Remember all the Fortune 500 CEOs who snuggled up to President Obama.

Educational Savings Accounts

Clint Bolick has an excellent article for Defining Ideas, a publication of the Hoover Institution, concerning the improvement of K-12 education. It concerns educational savings accounts for any child who agrees not to attend the public schools, funded by the roughly 90 percent of public school spending which doesn't come from local district taxes.

The savings account can be used for any approved education expense, from private school tuition to distance learning, curriculum, software, tutoring, community college tuition, contributions to a 529 college savings plan, or discrete services offered by public schools. Any money remaining after high school graduation can be used for college.

Income Inequality Is Irrelevant

Scott Winship, an economist at the liberal Brookings Institution, has a very interesting column for Reuters about income inequality. His conclusion: U.S. income inequality has not happened at the expense of our poor. My favorite quote:

Cross-national comparisons are tricky, but the evidence we have (from the Luxembourg Income Study) suggests that if you could line people up from richest to poorest in the United States, in Europe and in other English-speaking nations, Americans at every point in the richest 80 percent of households are better off than their counterparts occupying the same place in line in nearly every peer nation. Among the poorest fifth of households, this pattern breaks down, but it is hardly obvious that our inequality levels are to blame.

Most of our poor live better than the middle class of other countries. Why else would the poor of other nations want to emigrate here?

Quote of the Day

President Obama, speaking on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart about the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans:

Here is what I will say, if four Americans get killed it is not optimal,  and we are going to fix it, all of it.

OMG, four dead Americans "not optimal?" Can you believe we elected this person president?

It's certainly "not optimal" for his reelection chances; how does he "fix" dead Americans? My source for this quote is CBS News.

Quote of the Day

The following is attributed to Paul Ashworth, chief North American economist for Capital Economics, from an article in CNN Money:

The employment-to-population ratio is the best measure of labor market conditions and it currently shows that there has been almost no improvement whatsoever over the past three years.

Where We're Better Off

I just finished reading a well-written article in The New Republic entitled "Blue States are from Scandinavia, Red States are from Guatemala." It discusses all the government-provided benefits in blue states and the lack of these in red states, all the ways blue states take care of the less fortunate, while the red states do not. The article admits taxes are higher in the blue states, the bluest of which is probably Massachusetts.

As I read this I kept wondering why author Jonathan Cohn forgot to mention that people were migrating from the blue states to the red states? Blue states are redistributive, they tax the earners (plus their employers) and spend those taxes on the non-earners.

Red states are less redistributive than blue states. The result is that employers (and their employees) are migrating to red states whereas non-earners are migrating to blue states.

For example, blue state California has roughly one eighth of the U.S. population but one third of U.S. welfare recipients, much more than its share. Needless to say, CA is broke.

The comfortably employed receive relatively little in the way of benefits from a blue state, but pay plenty in taxes. Such folk end up better off in a red state where they can keep more of their earnings.

I wonder if Scandinavians are migrating to Guatemala or maybe Costa Rica?

Garrett: Four Ls, Four States

Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News, now of National Journal, writes that the campaign has boiled down to four topics starting with L, and four states: Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. The four Ls are Libya, Ledbetter, Lying, and Lame.

Libya and Lame certainly play against Obama, Ledbetter probably plays against Romney, and they're both Lying, of course, they're politicians. Garrett tries to suss out who wins what among those four states, reaches no particular conclusions. It still seems too close to call.

Singles an Important Voting Bloc

Demographer Joel Kotkin writes of the Single Nation, by which he means that subset of Americans who are unmarried adults, many without children. He argues that this group is important to the Democrats this year and in the immediate future as a major component of their voting coalition.

See his article in The Daily Beast for more details. One cute factoid Kotkin gives us is that today more American households have dogs than have children!

Weird Infant Science

It turns out we are all hardwired to respond to the cries of an infant, research shows. Evolutionarily it makes sense, doesn't it? See this The Week article at Yahoo News for more.

The researchers hope this will give them a way to understand cases of "failed mothering." I know to be near a wailing infant on an airplane, ours or someone else's, is no fun.

Tories Souring on E.U.

The U.K.'s Conservative Party is moving gradually toward a decision to hold a referendum to take the U.K. out of the European Union. See this article in The Telegraph for details. It remains to be seen whether or not they're sincere. This is a major move.

Gallup: 51% R, 45% O

The Gallup polling organization has a graph showing their seven day rolling average for the voting intentions of likely voters. Since the beginning of October, the two lines for Romney and Obama have diverged substantially in Romney's favor.

Check it out. Hat tip to Matt Drudge for the link.

Do We Still Listen?

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff asks an interesting question. After four years, do people still listen to Barack Obama? Do they still find him interesting?

We see presidents so much it is probably a good question for any incumbent, let alone one whose speech is so often burdened with the tired cant of class warfare.

Further Evidence

This Reuters article at Yahoo News is further evidence of the possibility of a wider Middle East war between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims and their allies, in this case, the Alawites. The U.N.-Arab League mediator says as much.

Shia and Alawites are allies entirely of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" variety, I'm certain the ayatollahs of Shia Iran consider Syria's Alawites as much heretics as they do the region's Sunnis, their major threat.

CU Predicts Mitt Wins Popular Vote

University of Colorado political science professor Dr. Michael Berry reports that the CU popular vote predictive model has a 100% accuracy rate for predicting the popular vote winner of every presidential election since 1980.

Berry says only four times in the nation's history has the winner of the popular vote not won the election, the most recent being in 2000. In other words, 2000 was the only one of the past eight elections where they did not also predict the winner of the presidency.

The CU model gives a 77% probability that Mitt Romney will win the popular vote in early November. See the Campus Reform article for details. BTW, we first wrote of this model and its prediction for Romney on August 23 of this year.

Round Number Two

Everybody agrees Romney won the first debate, and it wasn't even close. In order to get back to where he was with the voters before the first debate, President Obama needed a clear win on debate number two, needed to clearly defeat Romney - it didn't happen.

Did Obama do well enough to stop his continuing erosion in the polls? Maybe. But not well enough, I think, to gain back lost ground.

In boxing terms, Obama gave the first round away, tied the second round, and is unlikely to catch Romney napping in the third round - in other words, another near-enough tie. When the officials (i.e., voters) add up their scorecards for the match, no knockout but Romney wins on points.

A Good Line

Howie Carr writes for the Boston Herald and I really like his conclusion about debate number two:

Barack Obama was better than in Denver, but he’s still got this very big problem, namely, his record.

Exactly so, this election is Obama's performance evaluation, On the basis of his performance during the past 3+ years, he doesn't deserve to be rehired.

Homeschooling

National Review has a nice article arguing that home schooling is the only "authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States." The points it makes are good but, in my view, incomplete.

I believe homeschooling works better than other schooling because the ratio of adults to children is greater. Ceteris paribus, the larger portion of an adult's undivided attention a child gets, the more they learn.

What evidence of this do we have? The studies that show the fewer children there are present in a household, the more the children there learn.

We humans spent a million years learning at our parent's knee, and the last three hundred learning at a schoolroom desk. To which of these two do you suppose we are better adapted?

Independents Preferred Ryan

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press surveyed people who watched the vice presidential debate between Biden and Ryan. You'll remember that Vice President Biden was notably animated, perhaps excessively so.

Asked who won the debate, as you'd expect Republicans liked Ryan (88%), Democrats liked Biden (89%), and importantly, Pew reports:

Among independents, 50% say Ryan did better, 39% say Biden.

Texas Cuts Costs

Texas is the current pioneer in a movement that California originally led, and then gave up - the inexpensive baccalaureate degree. See the article here at RealClearPolicy.

The other DrC and I both got low cost bachelors' degrees in CA, back in the day. That  day is long gone. Now Governor Rick Perry claims Texas can deliver B.A.s and B.S.s for $10,000. Not every degree or at every campus, but at least some degrees at some state campuses and they're trying for more.

Bully for the Lone Star State! I believe this is something other states should try to do. North Dakota could afford this, so could my home state of Wyoming.

I have some suggestions for states picking up the < $10,000 challenge. Encourage students to do transferable general education work at their local community colleges. Accept more transfer students and fewer freshmen.

Offer basic courses online, such do not require classrooms. Utilize more adjunct faculty with no research and committee requirements.

Hold more degrees to a strict 120-124 semester unit limit. Enable more students to finish in four years or less via tracking and counseling.

Offer fewer "boutique" programs requiring personal relationships between students and faculty. In short, cut the frills.