A Guy in New York » Economics

Cognitive Dissonance: “I see nothing!”

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Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, ain’t nobody here at all.

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Obamagate: a three part scandal encompassing the IRS harassment of conservative groups, the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, and the handling of the Benghazi attacks.

As Moe Lane said, “This is not a failure of the system. This is the system.”

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Three serial shocks (and their continuing aftershocks) are sufficiently grave to produce a form of trauma in those who hitched their hearts to Obama:

1. Facing proof from one of their own that Obama and his administration lied and then continued to lie to the faces of the White House Press Corps through Jay Carney about Benghazi casts serious doubt on other claims of his they have supported and defended;

2. Continuing revelations of the IRS’s misbehavior toward the hated tea partiers and conservatives calls into question which side are the good guys (see point 1);

3. And finally the revelation that all their loyalty bought them no consideration at all when it came to secretly grabbing records of their communications in AP, tells them loyalty is one way street with this guy and his crowd.

The Mainstream Media Obama Psychodrama

Thank goodness Sgt. Schultz is in charge of the Justice Department: I see nothing!

GAO auditors found calculating errors totaling at least $829 million between 10 taxpayer accounts with balances equal to or exceeding $32 million, which went undetected by the agency’s internal review procedures.

“…IRS does not have a detailed listing, or subsidiary ledger that accurately tracks and accumulates unpaid tax assessments and their status on an ongoing basis,” the [GAO] report said.

Now We Find Out That the IRS Is Incompetent

The IRS Scandal, Day 8 – roundup

Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, Justice, HHS – the country is in the very best of hands.

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

How Not To Respond to Criticism

“To truly see the diversity of the human race is sometimes frightening….”
Tyler Cowen

We now present a masterclass in how a business owner should not respond to criticism.

The Folks at Amy’s Baking Company In Scottsdale Have Gone Insane

Part 2

It appears that the owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Arizona expected an appearance on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” program to vindicate them. They believed that they serve quality food, that they have been unfairly slandered by the entire Internet. Maybe they had never seen the reality program, which features last-ditch efforts to save failing restaurants run by people who are delusional or incompetent…and frequently both.

How Not To React To Internet Criticism: The Epic Facebook Meltdown Of Amy’s Baking Company

Part 1

Perhaps that it’s beyond a bad idea to accuse an unhappy customer of working for the competition, and then call him/her “ugly,” a “loser,” and a “moron.”

Ouch! Today’s Hard Lesson on Yelp

Yelpers went nuts over the weekend — and guess who was the topic? Amy Bouzaglo of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, who apparently cooked up a storm on Saturday.

In fact, I reached out to one diner who was at Saturday night’s taping of Kitchen Nightmares at Amy’s. He got a very real dose of reality television — more than he bargained for, actually.

Screaming, Expletives, and, Eventually, Police: All in the First Night of Kitchen Nightmares Taping at Amy’s Baking Company

Wow. Just wow.

Amy’s Baking Company [Yelp]

Get popcorn:

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

A presidency that began with such high hopes of “hope” and “change” has conducted itself just like so many administrations before it. A president who, just ten days ago, mocked “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” has been caught presiding over an Internal Revenue Service that, yet again, applied inquisitorial scrutiny to critics of the government, a Justice Department that, once more, snooped on journalists, and a Federal Bureau of Investigation that can’t help spying on the public’s communications. These abuses remind us not that the Obama administration has invented new ways to abuse power, but rather that even this supposedly fresh start commits the same old excesses that inevitably result from a surfeit of coercive power and plenty of targets of opportunity on which to wield it.

So, as we prepare to hand authority over our health care system to a tax agency that has, time and again, wielded its power for political purposes on behalf of whoever is currently in power, we owe thanks. Thank you, Mr. President, for demonstrating that you’re just as untrustworthy a bastard as all of your predecessors. Thank you for reminding us that, no matter the public assurances we receive, every iota of power given to the government will be misused. We repeatedly forget these lessons, and we need our reminders.

Thanks, Mr. President, For the Reminder That You’re as Big a Bastard as Your Predecessors

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

Free Citizens are Sooooooooo Much Trouble. Question Authority.

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton

It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.

Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.

These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.

The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” — basically, criticizing the government.

Thomas Jefferson . . . warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”

Why All of Us Should Mistrust the Government

Chris Rock, rube-tool.

The president is not my boss and not my dad. Sheesh.

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

The Case Against Cronies and Crony Capitalism

It’s time for a free-market corporate social responsibility. Conservatives who rail against government hand-outs should also blast companies who seek shelter from Washington.
. . .
The Republican attack on President Obama’s economic policy has changed subtly, but significantly, in the last three years. In 2009, he was allegedly a “socialist” and a “Marxist” who lusted for government control of the entire economy. But lately, that has given way to more nuanced charges of “crony capitalism” — of giving special, friendly treatment to certain companies and industries, or allowing powerful corporations to essentially write the laws, themselves.
. . .
Voters despise government officials who get in bed with corporations. But what about corporations who cozy up to government? Are companies who use cronyism to grow their profit acting unethically?

The question makes some free-marketeers uneasy. After all, we not only tolerate the fierce pursuit of profit, but also we defend it against taxes and heavy-handed regulation. Milton Friedman famously said, “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

But in the age of crony capitalism, libertarians must declare that some means of pursuing profit are immoral and call on executives to reject them. This would create a positive case for capitalism — arguing that the pursuit of profit, in the context of fair and open competition, helps the whole society. The new corporate social responsibility, redefined for libertarians, must stand athwart crony corporatism yelling “stop.”

Continue reading ‘The Case Against Cronies and Crony Capitalism’ »

Grad School and PhD Programs

My students, especially soon-to-be master’s-degree recipients, frequently ask about whether Ph.D. programs are a good career path. Given the difficulties of this job market, even for students in a professional program who have experience in the field, the prospect of a Ph.D. can seem like a permanent safe harbor. Appearances deceive, though, as a tight academic job market and a deepening reliance on adjuncts make even employment after the Ph.D. a difficult proposition. It’s no surprise, then, that there’s been an increasingly strident pushback to the idea that Ph.D.s are necessary. Numerous examples exist in the humanities, sciences and social sciences.

Rather than restate themes that have already been covered better by others, I offer recommendations for how faculty mentors should answer these sorts of questions from students. We are always going to be asked about whether students should follow our career paths, and the days of faculty blindly endorsing Ph.D. programs as if they were a universal solution for all students are over. Doing our job as advisers well requires that we take a pragmatic approach that gives students a clear understanding of the challenges currently confronted by academe. This will require many who advise Ph.D. students to take a more hands-on role in preparing their students for the challenges of an increasingly difficult job market. This pragmatic approach has three elements: honesty, professionalization, and options.

Pragmatic Advising

It’s awfully hard for something or someone to help you get where you want to go when you don’t know where that is. When you’re searching for a job, there is nothing more important than knowing exactly what you want. Going to grad school is a very expensive way to ask for directions. There is nothing wrong with being lost for awhile.

Why You Shouldn’t Go To Grad School

89. Virtually no one reads what you write.

You are not paid for your academic writing (see Reason 88) because no one is willing to pay to read it. In fact, virtually no one is willing to read it at all. After several years of work on a dissertation, you can have some confidence that your adviser will read the finished product, and somewhat less confidence that the other members of your dissertation committee will read it. Beyond that handful of people, it is unlikely that anyone will ever read your dissertation again. As university libraries are increasingly archiving dissertations digitally, you may not even have the satisfaction of seeing your name on a volume in the library. On rare occasions, someone may come along and cherry-pick something from your research that relates to his own, but chances are that no one will ever sit down and read the paragraphs over which you agonized for so long (see Reason 28).

The same fate awaits the vast majority of published academic writing. Typically, it takes months of research, writing, and revision to produce a journal article that will be seen by fewer people in its author’s lifetime than will visit this blog in an hour. Academic presses print as few as 300 copies of the books that their authors have labored over for years. Most journal articles and academic monographs are written because academics need to be published to keep their jobs, not because there is a demand or need for their work (see Reasons 33 and 34). To the extent that academic writing is consulted at all, it tends to be “read” solely for the purpose of furthering someone else’s writing. In many cases, editors and peer-reviewers probably read manuscripts more carefully before they are published than anyone will ever read them after they are published.

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School

Is Your College Degree Worth It?

CollegeRiskreport.com from Jared Moore

College has never been more expensive to attend. Now you can check if your degree is worth the cost.

As the number of students enrolling in college has increased, college costs have climbed as well. Between 2000 and 2011, the average cost of attending a private, not-for-profit, four year degree granting program increased over 37%, including tuition, room and board.

Is Your College Degree Worth It? Find Out

Higher education productivity, as measured by academic degrees granted by American colleges and universities, is declining. Since the early 1990s, real expenditures on higher education have grown by more than 25 percent, now amounting to 2.9 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP)—greater than the percentage of GDP spent on higher education in almost any of the other developed countries. But while the proportion of high-school graduates going on to college has risen dramatically, the percentage of entering college students finishing a bachelor’s degree has at best increased only slightly or, at worst, has declined.

Addressing the declining productivity of higher education using cost-effectiveness analysis

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT) and to prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

It’s Time We Learned What Members of Congress Pay in Taxes

Rep. Nancy Pelosi was emphatic. Mitt Romney’s refusal to release more than two years of his personal tax returns, she said, makes him unfit to win confirmation as a member of the president’s Cabinet, let alone to hold the high office himself.

Sen. Harry Reid went farther: Romney’s refusal to make public more of his tax records makes him unfit to be a dogcatcher.

They do not, however, think that standard of transparency should apply to them. The two Democratic leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives are among hundreds of senators and representatives from both parties who refused to release their tax records. Just 17 out of the 535 members of Congress released their most recent tax forms or provided some similar documentation of their tax liabilities in response to requests from McClatchy over the last three months. Another 19 replied that they wouldn’t release the information, and the remainder never responded to the query.

The widespread secrecy in one branch of the government suggests a self-imposed double standard. Yet while American politics has come to expect candidates for the presidency to release their tax returns, the president isn’t alone in having a say over the nation’s tax laws. Congress also stands to gain or lose by the very tax policies it enacts, and tax records – more than any broad financial disclosure rules now in place – offer the chance to see whether the leaders of the government stand to benefit from their own actions.

“Senior public officials, especially members of Congress and presidential candidates, should be required to disclose their tax returns so that the public can monitor potential conflicts of interest,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Most members of Congress keep their tax returns secret

Do Members of Congress Pay Income Taxes?

Continue reading ‘It’s Time We Learned What Members of Congress Pay in Taxes’ »

The New Deal, The Great Depression

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

The NIRA created monopolies and strengthened crony capitalism.

Where was Woodrow Wilson when we needed him?

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT) and to prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

Neo-Victorian Paternalism

Neo-Victorian Paternalism = modern puritanism = modern prohibitionists = nannies

Do it for the children.

This looks like startlingly neo-Victorian paternalism: mild suggestive remarks, not directed at an individual woman or at women in general, are presumed so offensive to women as to warrant swift retribution. Of course, no one who has worked in a mixed-sex environment seriously believes that women don’t make sexual jokes or comments in work settings. But that’s where the double standard comes in: unlike the Victorian lady, the modern feminist who demands such protections needn’t shun bawdy humor herself. Richards has made male anatomy jokes on her Twitter feed, which she uses professionally. When men make them, though, it’s apparently a female-excluding assertion of male privilege.
. . .
A hundred years ago, anarchist feminist Emma Goldman famously said that she did not want to be part of any revolution that would not allow dancing. Likewise, not only men but quite a few women women want no part of a feminist revolution if it bans innocent compliments and silly off-color jokes.

Obama’s Sexist Double Standard: What the Kamala Harris controversy reveals about about sexism and the left.

sexism, racism, stupidism

“Offending, as the high priests of correctness have informed us, is the gravest and darkest of all sins.”
Dennis Byrne

Mayor Nanny is a Neo-Victorian Paternalist

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT) and to prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

Cognitive Dissonance: “I see nothing!”

Related Posts:

How Not To Respond to Criticism

Related Posts:

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Related Posts:

Free Citizens are Sooooooooo Much Trouble. Question Authority.

Related Posts:

The Case Against Cronies and Crony Capitalism

Related Posts:

Grad School and PhD Programs

Related Posts:

Is Your College Degree Worth It?

Related Posts:

It’s Time We Learned What Members of Congress Pay in Taxes

Related Posts:

The New Deal, The Great Depression

Related Posts:

Neo-Victorian Paternalism

Related Posts:

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