Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The Other GM Bailout
Saturday, February 11, 2012
What about the people whose identity he stole?
IRS Employee Stole Data To Forge $8M In Fraudulent Returns - Slashdot
Do they get any compensation?
Gasoline deliveries and the economy
If there is one thing Freakonomics taught us is that seemingly unrelated data sets can often be important predictors of human behavior.
Guest Post: Why Is Gasoline Consumption Tanking? | ZeroHedge
I don't know about rest of the country but demand is going to go down in Maryland as the General Assembly considers more gas taxes.
Good.
A VICTORY FOR CITIZENS IN THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY: Public can record Baltimore police officers …
This should be the case. So long as the videotaping does not interfere with the police doing their job, such as getting in the way of a crime scene, or putting officers at risk, the public should be entitled to video the officers. Cops have to be held accountable and a public armed with cameras is the best way to do it.
Louisiana's Governor betting big
On Revolutionary education reform
With Gov Bobby Jindal and a Republican controlled legislature on the verge of radically expanding school choice programs, Jindal may very well be providing education watchers a unique real life laboratory of democracy and public policy.
But is Jindal really taking a risk?
Even now, 80% of New Orleans students attend a charter school and some of the most egregious education barriers, like the racial achievement gap, are falling.
Of course the teachers unions are fighting tooth and nail, but it is hard to argue with the success of New Orleans. What will the educational establishment think when Louisiana tops the national rankings and do so with less per pupil spending than most other states?
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Orwellian Justice in New Haven--This Time against a Professor
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Women In Sports
really?
WH: Women 'Deserve' to Have Catholic Church Buy Them Sterilizations, Contraceptives and Abortifacients (Fred Lucas/CNSNews)
Last I checked health insurance was a benefit that is not required to be offered.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Word Play Gone Awry
A Slate resident feminist hears Gov. Christie talking about oral sex when he's obviously not.
Course, as Althouse points out, the writer's name means nothing.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Random Thoughts--January 6, 2012
If Republicans in the House had any balls, they would impeach Obama for violating his oath of office. He won't be convicted by the Senate,of course, but can anyone tell me exactly how Obama has preserved the Constitution of the United States?
Scientists have cloaked a moment in time. Wait, What? Check this out. If they can do this, how soon before we get a Star Trek transporter so I don't have to sit in traffic between DC and Richmond, VA when I want to visit my family in Florida? I don't need to be transported all the way to Florida, say DC to North Carolina would be fine.
Here's something to shut the environmental nutcases up: New Materials Remove Carbon Dioxide from Smokestacks, Tailpipes and Even the Air. Faster please scientists, I am getting sick and tired of some one driving an SUV or a private plane bitching at me because I emit CO2.
Finally, who is writing Chevy's press releases? Bill Clinton? It ain't a recall, but all owners of Chevy Volts are being asked to return their cars for "structural improvements" It's a step below a recall. Wait, how is it not a recall? Ifyou are asking owners to bring the car back to the dealer, it sure sounds like a recall. But then, it depends on what your definition of "is" is, right?
“Does the First Amendment Protect Your Right to Speak for a Living?”
Clear campus rules needed on ‘harassment’
The concept of freedom of speech is under fire by college campuses AND the Obama Administration:
Overly broad harassment codes remain the weapon of choice on campus to punish speech that administrators dislike. In a decade fighting campus censorship, I have seen harassment defined as expressions as mild as “inappropriately directed laughter” and used to police students for references to a student government candidate as a “jerk and a fool” (at the University of Central Florida in 2006) and a factually verifiable if unflattering piece on Islamic extremism in a conservative student magazine (at Tufts University in 2007). Other examples abound. Worryingly, such broad codes and heavy-handed enforcement are teaching a generation of students that it may be safer to keep their mouths shut when important or controversial issues arise. Such illiberal lessons on how to live in a free society are poison to freewheeling debate and thought experimentation and, therefore, to the innovative thinking that both higher education and our democracy need.
Just because I say something that you don't like doesn't make harassment. It might make it rude, it might make it unpleasant, but it doesn't mean it should be banned simply because some college administrator thinks it is harassment.
Why getting a good education and a good job doesn’t necessarily mean going to a four-year college
But we need to meet the moment. We’ve got to up our game. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission — a national mission. Government and businesses, parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. And their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. Which means we shouldn’t be laying off good teachers right now — we should be hiring them. We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools –- we should be demanding more. We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college — we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn’t rack up $100,000 of debt just because they went.
A college degree “is about dignity, a sense of yourself, this notion of self worth, your standing in the community … it’s about becoming a better man and better woman,” Biden said. It’s about a person’s “social acceptability … the sense of your self worth and accomplishment. … Folks, it unlocks the mind and it serves as a tool to increasing civilization and progress.”“A college education is almost a prerequisite to the middle class,” he said.
The only legitimate message about education that should be preached is that kids should finish high school, then they should work hard at what they do to earn a paycheck. Success comes from hard work, not a piece of paper.
A rare personal post
As the start of the new year 2012, I have found that a great deal of my life has come into focus a little, various strings of thought that had been out there flapping in the winds of my brain, have seemingly come together, woven together as the result of a some serious time spent thinking about my life, about what I want (and don't want) it to be about. I am struggling to find more positive energy in my life.
On a professional level, my career has come to a crossroads. While I don't anticipate abandoning the law as a profession anytime in the near future, I have begun to think that my current legal practice is filled with a fair amount of negative. I meet clients when the excrement has hit the wind generating device. While I hope they appreciate the effort I and my colleagues put forth (and many have expressed thanks), I rarely see clients in the best possible light, at a time when they are at their best. I don't blame the clients at all, it is the nature of being a litigator. But I have had a few episodes in the past six months or so that have given me a better insight into the kind of law I would like to practice and that involves dealing with clients in a more positive light, helping them achieve their goals as businesspeople and as humans, rather than when it has all gone haywire.
Being a litigator can be a great deal of fun, I am competitive, I like to win and I like a competition that has rules, but allows for some creativity. But litigation is also very negative as well. It is a zero sum game. If you take a case to court, there is a winner and a loser--that is what a court does. Even if you settle a case, both sides win and more likely both sides lose. It is not very satisfying.
But there is so much negative energy that flows from litigation that I believe it has been affecting me on a personal level. The confidential nature of my work (and I take my ethical obligations seriously) forbid me from talking about my work in too much detail with my wife. I talk in generalities, I talk about procedure--which is pretty damn dry--and I internalize things. Sure, I can talk to my colleagues about the cases, but I don't like talking too deeply about my personal life at work. So the separation of the two means that work's negativity bleeds over into my home life and the stresses of my home life bleed over into my work. The result has been that both my home life and my work life have been negatively affected.
Thus, the search for some more positives in my work life means that I can help clients move forward with the things that make them happy. Being the general counsel to entrepeneurs is what I am looking for. So that is where I will be focusing my attention.
But I have also found that so much of what I considered so important for so long is just a load of crap. I used to follow politics so closely, but I am simply disappointed in our leaders of both political parties. I suppose I am not the only one, it is something of a movement in the country I believe. But at the same time, I know that all the shennigans affect my life professionally and personally.
I spent some time seeing my family over Christmas and New Year's and they don't seem as engaged in the whole political farce and they seem happier for it. I was recently asked if I was interested into returning to the political arena as a staffer or as an attorney and I said no. It is not that it would be a step back in my career, rather it was a realization that I am sick of politics.
I have been reading Declaration of Independents and some of the thinking there so summed up my thoughts, I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal., I do believe in free minds and free markets, I do think that neither party is interested in even what they say they believe--they are only interested in prolonging their power.
And so, in the dawn of our New Year, I have decided to attempt to rid myself of as much of the negative influences as I can. I can't abandon politics, but I can limit my involvement. I can't abandon my career, but I can change course. I will pursue my own happiness. I will seek out more time with people who are positive, who are actively pursuing their own happiness. Who knows, maybe we will help each other find our happiness.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Random Thoughts--January 3, 2012
I did some math today and realized, that if I didn't have to pay my mortgage (or rent) for an entire year, I still wouldn't be debt free. That is a troubling thought.
Take that last thought and expand it writ large to the United States--pretty frakking sad, isn't it--for me and the nation.
What should you do if you are stuck on a mountain road, behind a nasty accident for the better part of two hours---play Bubble Buster on your phone--I did and got farther than ever.
Dear Crayola---your Color Wonder toys are wonderful--except on small matter---those glitter versions of the paper should come with a warning--"If you open this, it will look like a fairy threw up in your car." Keep up the good work otherwise. Thanks, Matt
