Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level.
Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled.
R.M.Pirsig
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Rant of the Day: Justin Amash Explaining Why He Voted 'Present' on Keystone: Thumbs UP!
I voted present on H R 3, Northern Route Approval Act. The Keystone XL pipeline is a private project owned by TransCanada Corporation. This bill improperly exempts TransCanada Corporation—and no other company—from laws that require pipeline owners and operators to obtain certain government permits and approvals.Zambia and Economic Liberty
I support construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and holding it up for over four years (with no end in sight) for political reasons is wrong. It's improper, however, for Congress to write a bill that names and benefits one private project, while doing nothing to address the underlying problems that allowed such delays to occur. The Constitution gives Congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations," but the Rule of Law requires that legislation be of general, not specific, applicability. A proper bill would address the circumstances that allow *any* such project to be held up for political reasons, not just Keystone XL.
As F.A. Hayek explained in The Constitution of Liberty: "It is because the lawgiver does not know the particular cases to which his rules will apply, and it is because the judge who applies them has no choice in drawing the conclusions that follow from the existing body of rules and the particular facts of the case, that it can be said that laws and not men rule. Because the rule is laid down in ignorance of the particular case and no man's will decides the coercion used to enforce it, the law is not arbitrary. This, however, is true only if by 'law' we mean the general rules that apply equally to everybody. This generality is probably the most important aspect of that attribute of law which we have called its 'abstractness.' As a true law should not name any particulars, so it should especially not single out any specific persons or group of persons."
My commitment to my constituents when I took office was that I may vote present on legislation in three extremely rare circumstances (this is the 12th present vote out of nearly two thousand votes in Congress): (1) when I could otherwise support the legislation, but the legislation uses improper means to achieve its ends, e.g., singling out a specific person or group for special treatment; (2) when Representatives have not been given a reasonable amount of time to consider the legislation; or (3) when I have a conflict of interest, such as a personal or financial interest in the legislation—a circumstance that hasn't happened yet and I don't anticipate happening.
H R 3 uses improper means to accomplish its laudable goal by singling out TransCanada Corporation and its Keystone XL pipeline for special treatment.
It passed 241-175-1.
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(National Review). Maggie Gallagher: "I am not Charlie Hebdo, because I am not a martyr."
This is one of the few pieces on Charlie Hebdo that is different from the anti-Muslim groupthink pieces I've seen on National Review.
However, whereas I largely agree where she points out her disagreements with the type of work Charlie publishes, I find it hard to use terms like 'martyr' or 'hero' when it comes to the victims of the terrorist attack.
In part, this reflects what I fear as watered down terms are used universally. Do we think use the term for any returning veteran from the Gulf region? Does the mess hall chef take on the same risk as vulnerable soldier advancing within ranges of IED's? To me, a hero is someone who knowingly takes on risk to help others, like an American health care worker who volunteers to help fight Ebola in West Africa. A martyr is someone who is willing to die for principle in the face of repression; to an extent, George HW Bush knew that going back on his political promise not to raise taxes would be seen as a betrayal of his base and would be used by the Democrats against his character in reelection, i.e., he probably sacrificed his reelection in achieving a budget deal he considered more important for the sake of the country. (I'm sure not many readers agree with his decision, but one has to admire his political courage in making a decision in the face of known risks.)
Yes, I'm sure when the Charlie editor talked about refusing to back down publishing similar content in the face of militant Muslim opposition, it was principled, even courageous depending on whether he perceived those threats to be probable or likely in nature. I don't know what it is until I see it, but an example of what I would consider a matter of courage would have been admitting his identity in front of the terrorists.
Make no mistake; this was a tragedy. Ms. Gallagher is honest enough to admit that identifying with Charlie in the safety of your office or home is not the same as continuing to publish similar material after a firebombing. But real courage takes place in your own actions and decisions, not retweeting a popular slogan.
(Reason). Obama's "America's College Promise" proposal will end up subsidizing bloating community college administrative staff, not students' educations
Rarity increases value. If everybody has an AA degree, it will have no value; much like a GED or high school diploma. This of course increases the value of graduate/doctoral degrees, thus expanding the income gap that has so recently been flogged as "unfair."
Back to the OP: I scanned down the thread: "rarity increases value"--the assumption being that like high school graduation, it could become the new default qualification for many business entry-level positions.
Let me start by noting I was one of 2 philosophy major graduates of my class (I was also a math major). There isn't a pent up demand for professional philosophers. (I initially considered a vocation for the priesthood, and philosophy is a common major for aspirants.) Philosophy remains my first love, but several people had "the talk" with me, as talented as I was: if I pursued a doctorate in my preferred area, my best shot for the most likely professional opportunity, a faculty position, was if a senior professor retired or died. To a certain extent, there's a danger in seeing a college education as a job ticket. Certainly it's an investment in your human capital--and there are real costs for making that investment, like, in most cases, giving up full-time employment. In my case that included giving up 3 years of work after earning my MBA to pursue my doctorate living on a very modest stipend (teaching two sections a semester) barely covering basic expenses. How significant is that? I was the fourth PhD in my discipline (I defended my dissertation one week after #3, and I was #16 to become ABD--I leapfrogged 12 ahead of me; most of these others had families and had taken a break to earn more money. After I left, there was a stream after me because the department warned them they might need to go through comps again after a 5 year window.)
I had to leave academia because I was on a temp one-year appointment as a visiting professor; the economy was in a recession, and there was a glut of applicants on the market. Schools that normally might get a dozen resumes were suddenly getting 80; it changed search processes; normally I would have had an advantage having my degree in hand and 5 years as a professor. There were some "hot" hiring niches, like computer networks and/or increasing the presence of female professors on faculty, not relevant to my qualifications; I was often told they already had professors teaching the courses I had covered.
I had a hard time breaking back into the IT profession. A lot of employers thought I would be biding my time until the job market in academia improved. Most HR professionals were dismissive of my 8 years in academia as little more than 8 years of unemployment in practical work experience, and my preceding IT skills were considered largely degraded. Companies were dismissive of "ivory tower academics" and many were unwilling to consider me for mid-career opportunities. It got to the point for the first few years, I edited out references to my PhD. A few years back, I got called by a UH alumni fundraiser and asked why their mailing labels referenced my MBA instead of my PhD. She got back to me a few days later saying other graduates with the same degrees had told them they preferred the MBA reference as "more valuable".
In my role in the profession, I've been more as a senior consultant and/or tech lead than a line manager with hiring authority; I've been asked on many occasions to qualify candidates. I can give you some of my perspective; in high tech, people often like to work in sharply defined niches--I like people who are more flexible in their roles and willing to take the initiative; decent written communication and oral presentation skills are typically missing or limited; you should be familiar with business concepts and your industry; most tech guys I know have terrible people skills; I like to see a hard work ethic, a positive attitude, respectful attitude to users, colleagues, and management, willingness to give up evenings, weekends or holidays as necessary, reliability, preventive orientation, enlargement and updating one's knowledge and skills. I've often had to mentor young developers, even project managers.
I will say that I've met a number of IT workers, particularly in the early part of my career without college degrees. Obviously Bill Gates has been hugely successful despite being a Harvard dropout. I will say after I decided to leave graduate school with my first Master's (math), I didn't expect to spend 7 months in Austin unemployed. As the fall semester approached, I tried to enroll to pick up high school teaching certification, but I couldn't get aid from the university. I eventually got my first break into IT sending in a job query with my auto insurance payment. It turned out the insurance company had problems training computer programmers in a mathematically-notated computer language often used to develop actuarial applications.
Going back to community colleges, it used to be other criteria, like GPA, often served as a discriminating factor in assessing students, but grade inflation has changed the landscape since the time I was one of 2 summa cum laude graduates at my undergraduate school and sometimes earned the only A in class. I would say today's Internet provides alternatives to take online classes from around the world, earn certifications, do volunteer work, etc.
But as a pro-liberty conservative, I would say if this President really wanted to improve job opportunities for young people, he would repeal dysfunctional employer mandates which add to the costs of hiring--like wage and benefit mandates, embrace more globally competitive business taxes and repeal taxes on investments and savings, liberalize trade and future immigration, reduce deficits competing with the private sector for investor dollars and pay down the massive debt, and massively reduce the $1.8T regulatory choke hold on the economy (as a starting point).
(National Review). Why it actually makes sense to raise [fuel taxes] by $1 per gallon
Krauthammer has lost his mind. The first thing to note is the fuel tax is regressive in nature and unduly shifts the infrastructure burden to owners of older, less fuel-efficient vehicles. We need to shift from a fuel to a fairer user-fee/toll/mileage-based system, we need to devolve taxing/spending authority to the states (and preferably ultimately privatize operations). Second, part of the funding problem is that the federal highway funds are diverted to public transit. If anything should be offset by other public revenues, it should non-highway disbursements funded not by the taxpayers but by drivers. We need for political hacks to stop using highway funds as a corrupt slush fund. Third, whereas I do commend Krauthammer for understanding the regressive, anti-employment effect of a payroll tax system, this budgetary shell game confounds usage (fuel) fees and taxes (certainly a windfall for non-drivers.) Moreover, given the fact that social security is chronically underfunded as it is, however meritorious the concept of reducing payroll taxes is, the last thing we should be doing is to exacerbate an already huge unfunded social security liability.
A final comment about Krauthammer's anti-market way of using fuel taxes to manipulate consumer behavior. I would argue that the higher-price trend of fuel does that organically, and if and when fuel price revert to trend, Krauthammer's steep tax hike (which goes over and beyond existing highway underfunding) will take a particularly nasty bite out of consumer discretionary spending. If Krauthammer really wants to manipulate car buyer behavior for that purpose, there's a far easier way to do it: slap a high federal excise tax on SUV's and trucks. You want to guess the middle class reaction to this idea?
(Ron Paul). Was it all just for a cartoon? It couldn’t be that simple. http://bit.ly/1wxVyq0
I do think that Western policies in the Africa/Middle East/Gulf Region are part of the radicalized context, but I think that this has more to do with religious sensibilities to perceived disrespectful media portrayals of Mohammed, which has been apparent at least since the publication or Salman Rushdie's fourth novel. There has been retaliation targeted at specific media sources of said material, not random acts of terrorism.
(continuation from one of yesterday's threads)
Ronald, just because the text, picture or act offends your or anyone's worldview does not mean that it should be disallowed, unless it is targeted at the individual with the sole purpose of being threathening to the safety or wellbeing of the individual.
But criticising, making satire of, or even arguing anything's existence of being questionable is a part of free speech, free thinking, and even if it may sometimes come across as hostile towards an idea or disrespectful, it does not mean it is wrong. Not all ideas are good and they then should be criticised, including religions.
Patrik, there are things one can say but shouldn't in polite society. I am not advocating repression of criticism of the speech or behavior of others, but I don't think ridicule, which is an aggressive form of expression, is an effective way of making one's point. As a writer, I'm very careful of when and how I use humor; one has to know one's audience very well. I'm a former professor and have a fairly thick skin; I've tolerated some nonsense from bosses and students most people wouldn't. Some people do not handle ridicule very well and may respond in a very aggressive fashion. I'm not saying an overreaction to hostile speech is justifiable; but one does need to take into account the risks one is taking with his message. I've seen some of the Charlie cartoons, and I personally would not have written or published them--not because of fear of fanatic pushback, but because I wasn't raised to mock other people's differing faiths. Maybe it works if you publish an atheist humor publication, but I've had Muslim colleagues and project managers.
Yes, Charlie knew that its publications were pushing people's buttons; there's the 2011 firebombing. I understand why they might want to take a stand and refuse to be intimidated, but if you play with fire, you can get burned. It's more a question of judgment: is this fight worthwhile? Don't sweat the small stuff.
(Justin Amash). See Keystone Pipeline Rant of the Day.
I usually agree with you, but we part ways on this one. I see very little benefit for a lot of potential environmental concerns with this. Even if it were our oil, I would be opposed but it is not even ours. Oil company executives have enough mazarratis.
Oh, this is crackpot environmentalist bullshit. The fact of the matter is that Canadian oil is going to be sold and transported in some manner. Let's face reality: we are still importing a third of our oil. Do we buy from our friendly northern neighbor, or do we further expose our economy to the risks of volatile global regions or hostile suppliers? Note that even if the pipeline doesn't go through, this doesn't mean the oil doesn't get to our Gulf refineries--there are integrated rail lines, tankers, etc. The question is: which is the most "environmentally-friendly" alternative? HINT: pipelines.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall |
Céline Dion (with Peabo Bryson), "Beauty & the Beast"
