I defected from Ceaușescu's Romania. You don’t grow up in a regime like that and not think about state control over human lives. Today I’m a libertarian. I believe in small government. I’m pro-choice. What I find most threatening in a democracy is extremism. She’s an ideologist and would’ve appointed Supreme Court justices with extreme positions. My vote was more an anti-Hillary vote.I've read lots of people talking about Trump in totalitarian terms, but here's the voice of a woman who really lived under a totalitarian system. Hillary Clinton was the one she recognized as reflective of it. Of course, the uniformity of expressed opinion -- and the media censorship -- is consensual here, where it was enforced by secret police there. How much does that matter? At least some, and perhaps a lot.
I’ve lived here since 1993 but I’m still a European at heart and read the European papers. Let me tell you, Benghazi was covered with graphic detail. Reading the news in Europe I understood how censored the news in the U.S. has become, giving me flashbacks of a Commie regime. I also resented that when I opened the October issues of my fashion magazines, the editors all endorsed Clinton for president.
Ceaușescu's America
I'm reading this collection of interviews with women who voted for Trump. At least one of them has something quite interesting to say.
Billions down the drain
There was some freaking out dressed up as fact-checking over President Trump's inaugural reference to billions of dollars dumped into failing schools for no benefit to students. No need to take his word for it; here's the outgoing administration's analysis of the very expensive "School Improvement Grant" program. A direct quote from the Executive Summary:
There's a lot of gobbledegook about "comprehensive instructional reform strategies, teacher and principal effectiveness, and operational flexibility and support," but it's not obvious to me what really changed in the schools that got the money.
Overall, across all grades, we found that implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.
* * *
The SIG program aimed to support the implementation of school intervention models in low-performing schools. Although SIG was first authorized in 2001, this evaluation focused on SIG awards granted in 2010, when roughly $3.5 billion in SIG awards were made to 50 states and the District of Columbia, $3 billion of which came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. States identified the low-performing schools eligible for SIG based on criteria specified by ED and then held competitions for local education agencies seeking funding to help turn around eligible schools.No doubt the Keynesian spending stimulus was crackerjack, but funneling resources to the schools that are failing the most egregiously, while merciful to the struggling schools, doesn't seem to be very merciful to the kids trapped there. Maybe rewarding failure gets you more failure. It's interesting that the money ostensibly was spent on a variety of techniques associated with change and reform. Something tells me they were reforming the wrong things.
There's a lot of gobbledegook about "comprehensive instructional reform strategies, teacher and principal effectiveness, and operational flexibility and support," but it's not obvious to me what really changed in the schools that got the money.
One goal of SIG is to promote the use of instructional practices that have the potential to increase academic rigor and student achievement. The SIG application criteria focused on practices to reform instruction in seven subtopics: (1) Using Data to Identify and Implement an Instructional Program; (2) Promoting the Continuous Use of Data to Identify and Address the Needs of Individual Students; (3) Conducting Periodic Reviews of the Curriculum; (4) Implementing a New School Model; (5) Providing Supports and Professional Development (PD) to Staff to Assist Both English language learners (ELLs) and Students with Disabilities; (6) Using and Integrating Technology-Based Supports; and (7) Tailoring Strategies for Secondary Schools. We collected data on five of these subtopics through school survey questions that asked about eight practices aligned with SIG objectives in these areas (Table IV.1). Because none of the questions from the school surveys aligned with the third or fourth subtopic, we excluded these subtopics from the analysis.What I'd love to see is a study of contrasting schools with differing percentages of graduates of teaching colleges versus practically any other background, and taking into account the school's freedom to remove incurably disruptive students from the classroom or even from the school. I'm afraid many of these radical "turnaround" and "transformation" models were only pushing the food around on the plate.
Let's Halt the Eclipse
A proposal from our Brexit friends. It's not the worst idea ever, if it can be done.
The guts of an insurrection
The AEI article in my immigration post below contained a link to a fascinating piece by Dominic Cummings describing the nuts and bolts of the Brexit campaign, including his deep frustration over the inability of the ostensibly friendly Brit leaders to comprehend what was motivating the voters:
[The 2008 financial crisis] undermined confidence in Government, politicians, big business, banks, and almost any entity thought to be speaking for those with power and money. Contra many pundits, Miliband was right that the centre of gravity has swung against free markets. Even among the world of Thatcherite small businesses and entrepreneurs opinion is deeply hostile to the way in which banks and public company executive pay work. Over and over again outside London people would rant about how they had not/barely recovered from this recession ‘while the politicians and bankers and businessmen in London all keep raking in the money and us mugs on PAYE are paying for the bailouts, now they’re saying we’ve just got to put up with the EU being crap or else we’ll be unemployed, I don’t buy it, they’ve been wrong about everything else…’ All those amazed at why so little attention was paid to ‘the experts’ did not, and still do not, appreciate that these ‘experts’ are seen by most people of all political views as having botched financial regulation, made a load of rubbish predictions, then forced everybody else outside London to pay for the mess while they got richer and dodged responsibility. They are right. This is exactly what happened.
Who needs data?
It's been frustrating trying to discuss either voter fraud or sane voter i.d. laws for the last 5-10 years. I'll never understand the impulse to lump them in with racist poll taxes. Jazz Shaw makes a reasonable suggestion that, just possibly, it might help to have some data, so we ouldn't quit screaming "There's fraud." "No there isn't."
Ray Mabus Out
One of the best pieces of news I've heard in a long time is the end of the longest-serving Secretary of the Navy since World War I.
His replacement comes well recommended.
His replacement comes well recommended.
"All three of these nominees have my utmost confidence," Defense Secretary James Mattis said in a statement following the announcement. "They will provide strong civilian leadership to strengthen military readiness, gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense, and support our service members, civilians, and their families. I appreciate the willingness of these three proven leaders to serve our country. They had my full support during the selection process, and they will have my full support during the Senate confirmation process."
Bilden is a business leader, former military intelligence officer and Naval War College cybersecurity leader who served on the board of directors for the United States Naval Academy Foundation and the board of trustees of the Naval War College Foundation.
Cleaning House
The new Secretary of State will have a very free hand, as the entire senior leadership team of the State Department just resigned -- or, possibly, were required to resign.
Of course, after the Obama era -- and the Kerry State Department following on the Clinton State Department -- that is exactly what is needed. The Post describes this as the new Secretary's job getting harder, but I frankly think his job would have been impossible without replacing at least the entire top level of personnel.
Of course, after the Obama era -- and the Kerry State Department following on the Clinton State Department -- that is exactly what is needed. The Post describes this as the new Secretary's job getting harder, but I frankly think his job would have been impossible without replacing at least the entire top level of personnel.
Weird Times
As Trump's moves are matched by rising approval ratings, I notice that strange things are going on in San Francisco.
Frisco is always at least a little weird, though.
Frisco is always at least a little weird, though.
Who's with us?
My views on immigration are a mess, all over the place. In my heart of hearts I'd like an open-border policy, but for years now I'd concluded sadly that it doesn't work unless it's combined with a sink-or-swim official policy, softened as necessary by voluntary aid. The ascendancy of identity politics in the last decade or so has just about finished off my convictions. At the same time, I'm afraid I'll never quite give my heart to fierce immigration control, either; I've always thought that if people make it here somehow or other and insinuate themselves into their communities with jobs and families such that no one around them is willing to cooperate with immigration authorities to get them deported, then immigration enforcement moves right to the bottom of my priority list, somewhere below enforcement of laws against littering. (But bear in mind that I'd like to see people drawn and quartered for littering.)
This article from AEI mentions an Australian system I'm not familiar with, which applies a point system taking into account things like high skills. That sounds practical. It's contrasted with a much-reviled system of giving preference to low-skilled extended family members, but I find myself hesitating here. Surely it's a good idea to bring in immigrants who can plug into a healthy institution like an extended family. One good thing about awarding points for high skills is that the skilled workers would arrive with the freedom to change jobs rather than be shackled to their employers by H1B visa restrictions. My niece's Irish engineer husband is in that boat--or at least he was, I guess, until he married her. Now he has an anchor baby, yay! And an adorable one he is, too.
The main point of the AEI article is that there are immigration arguments that were effective in the Brexit campaign, which we should consider using here:
This article from AEI mentions an Australian system I'm not familiar with, which applies a point system taking into account things like high skills. That sounds practical. It's contrasted with a much-reviled system of giving preference to low-skilled extended family members, but I find myself hesitating here. Surely it's a good idea to bring in immigrants who can plug into a healthy institution like an extended family. One good thing about awarding points for high skills is that the skilled workers would arrive with the freedom to change jobs rather than be shackled to their employers by H1B visa restrictions. My niece's Irish engineer husband is in that boat--or at least he was, I guess, until he married her. Now he has an anchor baby, yay! And an adorable one he is, too.
The main point of the AEI article is that there are immigration arguments that were effective in the Brexit campaign, which we should consider using here:
“Vote Leave to take back control of immigration policy. If we stay there will be more new countries like Turkey joining and you won’t get a vote. Cameron says he wants to ‘pave the road’ from Turkey to here. That’s dangerous. If we leave we can have democratic control and a system like Australia’s. It’s safer to take back control.”
The Working Class
You can tell that the winds have shifted significantly when you see an article on the American white working class published prominently in the Harvard Business Review.
Did He Seriously?
Headline: "Trump hangs portrait of Andrew Jackson in Oval Office."
Is it more amazing given that Jackson is basically the founder of the Democratic Party, or because of the Trail of Tears legacy given the fight Trump just picked with the Standing Rock Sioux?
Andrew Jackson stands at the head of a muscular tradition of American politics, one that the Democrats have completely abandoned in recent years. So repentant are they of his legacy, which included both full-throated embrace of slavery and the unabashed ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, they can hardly bear to remember that he's on the $20 bill because they put him there.
All the same, if you want a model for Making America Great -- the first time -- Jackson's hard to beat. He was ruthless, but he never once hesitated to put America first. I wonder what this portends.
UPDATE: Note Joel's objections to this characterization, and defense of Jackson, in the comments.
Is it more amazing given that Jackson is basically the founder of the Democratic Party, or because of the Trail of Tears legacy given the fight Trump just picked with the Standing Rock Sioux?
Andrew Jackson stands at the head of a muscular tradition of American politics, one that the Democrats have completely abandoned in recent years. So repentant are they of his legacy, which included both full-throated embrace of slavery and the unabashed ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, they can hardly bear to remember that he's on the $20 bill because they put him there.
All the same, if you want a model for Making America Great -- the first time -- Jackson's hard to beat. He was ruthless, but he never once hesitated to put America first. I wonder what this portends.
UPDATE: Note Joel's objections to this characterization, and defense of Jackson, in the comments.
An Odd Thing
I can't find him in my copy of the venerable Drinking with the Saints. Must be a misprint.
And Adam Baldwin tweeted this:
There are several more 'Chain of Command' pics with interesting shots of Trump and Mattis in them where that came from.
And Adam Baldwin tweeted this:
There are several more 'Chain of Command' pics with interesting shots of Trump and Mattis in them where that came from.
Burns Night
Tonight is celebrated the famed Scots poet Robert Burns. Let's hear one of his poems as set to music.
This poem, titled "Cock up your Beaver," is about a young man and his new hat, and how it leads to pummeling Englishmen. What's with that face? It's a Scots song -- what did you think it would be about?
This poem, titled "Cock up your Beaver," is about a young man and his new hat, and how it leads to pummeling Englishmen. What's with that face? It's a Scots song -- what did you think it would be about?
It Probably Seems More Trivial from Brooklyn
The reference is to this bit from Sarsour. If you listened to her speech at the march, she declares herself "unapologetically" to be several things, including "Muslim" and "from Brooklyn." My guess is that this kind of thinking arises from the intersection of those things.
In any case I don't mind people being unapologetic, but I would warn them against being unreflective.
Dude, Where's My Car?
Donna B., writing at AVI's place, notes the transgender discomfort with the Women's March. Tracking that back to the original story, I find this:
For 20-year-old Sam Forrey, a nonbinary student in Ohio, and their girlfriend Lilian McDaniel, who is trans, there had been other warning signs that the Women's March might be a dangerous space for them.You're a 'nonbinary' individual who wants to be referred to in the plural? Are there three of you?
What party is he?
Myron Magnet at City Journal:
As Amity Shlaes shows in her 2008 book The Forgotten Man, that term, which Franklin Roosevelt applied to the man on the breadline in the Great Depression, “the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” more properly applies to those unhappy-if-silent taxpayers who funded the New Deal’s social-welfare schemes. And these are the forerunners of the Tea Partiers, another key class of Trump voter: the widow on a fixed income whose property-tax payment helps house a public-sector retiree comfortably but whose inexorable rise is making her own paid-off home unaffordable; the retiree whose IRA savings the Great Recession eroded or who can no longer get an adequate income from safe bond investments, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policies; the small businessman or farmer ruined by undemocratic government regulation lacking even the pretense of due process; the ex-soldier abandoned by a dysfunctional Veterans Administration; the parent disgusted with public schools that impose ideologies she abhors on her children, while leaving them inadequately educated; and all those sincere believers in God or traditional values whom Obama dismissed as clinging desperately to outmoded pieties, as the arc of history, which the elite professor-president claimed to understand and direct according to his politically correct enlightenment, swirled them down the drain.
The Tea Partiers wanted a second American Revolution that would sweep away the Administrative State that the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty set loose to devour and fatten on the carcass of the Founders’ republic, replacing a government of limited and enumerated powers with an unlimited government that rules by administrative decree and redistributes wealth as if it belonged to the governors and not the governed. No wonder Obama’s Internal Revenue Service worked to squash that movement as tyrannically as George III’s tax collectors. Let’s see if the new revolutionaries picked a leader who knows what they want and how to get it.
More Good Samaritan action
This story has South Texas a little stirred up: several days ago, two armed guys robbed a jewelry store in a San Antonio mall. One unarmed customer tried to intervene somehow when they were confronting another customer, and was shot and killed for his trouble. Another customer, who was armed and licensed for concealed-carry, shot one of the robbers and chased the other out of the store with gunfire; the second robber later was arrested. The first robber is in the hospital in serious condition.
Now it develops that the mall had previously posted signs prohibiting the carrying of weapons. The police don't seem unduly upset; their statements focus on the reasonable response of the armed citizen and the need for others to exercise good judgment in these dangerous situations. The mall manager is busy making statements about how his first priority is the safety of his customers, which may mean trusting and waiting for the police, who knows. I suppose he's trying to figure out whether he's likely to lose more customers by emphasizing his gun-free policy or by congratulating the citizen who ignored it.
Personally I like the effect of knowing that, even in a purportedly gun-free mall, the chances of an armed customer in the store you're trying to rob are pretty decent.
The Texas legislature, by the way, is again considering measures to permit open carry without a license, treating the 2d Amendment as our license. It's just the Wild West out here, ain't it? Y'all come on down. We have our own electrical grid, too.
Now it develops that the mall had previously posted signs prohibiting the carrying of weapons. The police don't seem unduly upset; their statements focus on the reasonable response of the armed citizen and the need for others to exercise good judgment in these dangerous situations. The mall manager is busy making statements about how his first priority is the safety of his customers, which may mean trusting and waiting for the police, who knows. I suppose he's trying to figure out whether he's likely to lose more customers by emphasizing his gun-free policy or by congratulating the citizen who ignored it.
Personally I like the effect of knowing that, even in a purportedly gun-free mall, the chances of an armed customer in the store you're trying to rob are pretty decent.
The Texas legislature, by the way, is again considering measures to permit open carry without a license, treating the 2d Amendment as our license. It's just the Wild West out here, ain't it? Y'all come on down. We have our own electrical grid, too.
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