Sunday Spin Cycle
CBS Sunday Morning started the conversation with a piece on skyrocketing college tuition rates. This is a topic that conservatives need to be interested in as well as liberals. It’s not enough to simply say, “Not everyone should go to college.” The majority of employers use a bachelor’s degree as a weeding tool for their job applicants. That needs to change, but until it does, it doesn’t win any political points to tell a large swathe of Americans to scale-down their ambitions.
Of course, CBS’s look was expectedly limited. They point out the extreme rise in tuition rates and simply scratch their heads. The point is, this problem is comprehensible, but not by the left. Conservatives need to get in on the conversation, otherwise it will be wholly owned by those who only know how to keep throwing other people’s money at things they don’t understand.
ABC’s This is Weak (with George Snuffleupagus) talked tuition rates and tax reform, which means they bandied about why no proposed solutions are workable, threw their hands up, and called it a show. Actually, the conservative side of the panel expressed some very good points about the laws of finance which the other side couldn’t really counter except to say they don’t like sound finance.
Paul Krugman expressed his usual disdain for actual economics, saying Ben Bernake has been assimilated by the Borg. I’m not sure who he thinks the Borg are, but it’s clear that, for as many times as “rearranging the deck chairs” was criticized by the panel overall, Krugman thinks just that is just the solution our economy needs.
On education, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt lamented that colleges aren’t putting out enough technically skilled individuals. I could do a rant on several education reform ideas that aren’t being discussed, but the most pertinent question I could pose to Mr. Schmidt is why isn’t Google stepping up to train-up the individuals they need? Education is a commodity like any other, and if you can’t get enough from the market place, you have to make your own or improvise. But sitting on your hands complaining of shortage is a horrible business practice that, frankly, I’m stunned how many companies are guilty of in this area.
CBS’s DeFace the Nation was a mish-mash. They talked election 2012 where Haley Barbour came on to say nothing in particular about Mitt Romney’s chances.
Some other folks talked the Dream Act and compared Rubio’s alternative proposal to the president’s. Interestingly, the Hispanic Republican’s proposal, according to the pundits, would create a new underclass while the food-stamp president’s proposal is an immigration panacea.
Later, they were stunned to learn from their all-Hispanic web panel that Hispanics are not a monolithic group! Why, some of them even plan to vote for Romney!
Finally, they did a retrospective on the Rodney King beating and all but called riots in response to the Treyvon Martin shooting.
NBC’s Meet the DePressed allowed Romney advisor Ed Gillespie to make some very sharp remarks against the divisiveness of Obama’s reelection campaign—including his desperate low-swinging ad suggesting Romney would not have taken out bin Laden—and against the president’s economic policies that are hurting the very groups they are purported to help, specifically women. Unfortunately, Gillespie can’t do anything about the format, and Obama advisor Robert Gibbs got the rebuttal. He sounded like a worn and broken record, blaming Bush, characterizing Romney as a vulture capitalist, and accusing the GOP of trying to suppress women. Still, he was given the last word on all of those subjects, which will fool many viewers into believing it is the better word.
The remainder of the show was inordinately obsessed with the female vote. It was slipped in as an aside that women will decide this next election. Translation: men, stay home. Hilary Rosen gave a disingenuous mea culpa over her remarks against Anne Romney (I’m sorry you got mad). And Rachel Maddow got irate over the gender pay gap, refusing to understand the “work” side of the “equal pay for equal work” equation. If I could rebut Maddow, I would offer that equal pay could be achieved if men and women were required to take jobs in equal numbers and women were prohibited from taking family leave or breaks from their careers. Oh, but there’s that pesky “freedom of choice” thing in the way, isn’t there?
Finally, Faux News Sunday brought in White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to discuss military drones, terrorist activity, the Secret Service, and Chen Guangcheng. The interview was disappointingly light and Brennan didn’t really say anything that hasn’t been said already about any of the issues.
The roundtable discussed the implications of the two major cases currently before the Supreme Court: ObamaCare and the Arizona immigration law. Again, nothing particularly revelatory or insightful was said here, making me feel like Fox was just a total waste of airtime this morning.
And there you have it!
In my MBA class the professor of Strategic Maangement was talking to us of making a course in business a prerequisite for all student degrees. In order to sell this idea he said the economicss professors could teach the course. This was giving them something in order to gain their support for the idea. The class was supposed to cover basic finance, business taxes, reconciling bank statements, what a mortgage document really means, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe economics professors balcked because they one) did not think the course was necessary and then actully finished off their argument by stating that someone with a doctorate in economics did not understand business well enough to teach a basic course in business.
Given that these "economists" are the go to guys for the govenment to draft budgets and write tax law this revelation is rather disturb ing.
Indie, I have long said that Paul Krugman, the left's most prominent economist, has no apparent interest in the field. I say this not only because he insists on things that simply aren't so, but also because he hasn't changed his tune one note so long as I can recall; that shows a remarkable lack of inquiry on the part of someone who is supposed to be a leader in his field.
ReplyDelete