John Stossel on Thanksgiving

I just ran across this over at Fox. Stossel is a brilliant guy, and he's right on the money about private property.

Private property use, also, reflects risk and uncertainty. If you are uncertain about the future past some degree, you would wait to invest your private property in future endeavors. Sound familiar?

Chronicle of Higher Ed on Cheating

Steve Cotten pointed me to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed about cheating and how some people do it for a living. Check this out when you get time.

OK, who saw this coming?

UAW cleans up on sale of new GM stock. (Click on title)

No way!

More on the saga as it comes to light. No surprises from GM, though.

Latest on the DREAM Act

Hold on there folks, the DREAM may still be alive. Some lawmakers are still planning to push for the DREAM Act, evidently.

Good luck on that.

Edupunk reference

Check out this egghead discourse on the future of higher ed. Click on title, iPad don't do paste for an insert.

My comments are listed under Joe Momma - I guess "Doc Finance" was taken. Squatters!

Some of my insightful comments (later)

Mortgage crisis gets really squirrely

Dr. Ed Waller sent me a linky today with a few references on the robosigning fiasco. At AOL. Click on title - iPad don't hardly do Control -V.

Also, you might want to look up the term "rescue fantasy" over at Wikipedia. We gotta be careful not to let our warm wishes spill into our interpretation on this- most folks still owe their mortgage, regardless of robosigning. Sorry.

Details of GM IPO emerge

Reuters has some details today of the pending GM IPO, here. It stands to be the largest ever.

If you were an investor, looking at how the last group of investors were treated, would you invest in GM? If you were a pension or mutual fund manager or advisor, charged with maintaining a "prudent person" standard in your portfolio, could you recommend GM stock?

Bloomberg's article is here.

State Worker Pension Voodoo

Dr. Steve Cotten tipped me to this gem of understanding.

Please note as you're reading it that in Texas, all state employment details are public record. Salaries of state workers being the biggest one - everyone's wages are on display (in the Neumann Library, in our case). So unless there was some privacy issue involved, I'm not sure what the sheriff in this article is so upset about.

He either was, or was not, receiving his retirement while he was working.

NASA finds more problems with Discovery

Announced today, new cracks in the tank foam (and it sounds like cracks in the tanks themselves).

Not good. Shows how delicate things are late in the game - you can find the same kind of problems in businesses that are in financial distress: jobs don't get finished right, suppliers miss their quality targets for materials, etc.

In any case, we can hope they'll get it straighten out soon.

Shuttle main page is here.

The Road to Serfdom, Part 17

The President's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility (stop laughing, this is serious) has released a preliminary document on what they plan to suggest that we might, someday, do. As a nation, as Americans (right...this commission is about as partisan as they come. Look up some of the names when you get a chance - Bowles, Rivlin, etc.)

There's all kinds of stuff here, but the part where they reduce military retirement benefits kind of stands out with a quick read. They lump civil service pension reform in with military retiree support, and military schools in with public schools. On the first point, I have no doubt that Andy Stern (head of the SEIU, a huge government worker union) had something to do with that -- after all, we can't reduce retirements of toll booth workers in New Jersey without chopping the benefits of fighter pilots and drill sergeants, can we?

Update! WSJ has an article about it.

Another related item: The Washington Monument Syndrome (or, ploy)

That's when some bureaucrat, when faced with cuts, picks the most visible or important things to cut, to "maximize" the visible pain (or actual pain). Do you remember how we heard that the Grand Canyon was going to be closed a couple years ago, due to budget cuts? Or Yellowstone? That's what we're talking about.

Now that you know what to call it, you'll see it everywhere.

Link to UN HRC submissions

It's at Fox. Click the title.

UN Human Rights Commission

Scary, but the UN has invited union reps to inform the US human rights record in Geneva.

See, that way we can be judged by Saudi Arabia, Libya, China and other paragons of human rights behavior from around the world.

Interesting Graph

Mike Goldberg tipped me to this today (click title). Explains a lot about why things SEEM worse.

New Orleans: Just not worth it, gang.

I know I'll be going to Nawlins in the next couple of years for conferences, but I wish I wasn't. Not only do I NOT want to hear any more about Katrina (what about Ike?), but I don't want to see what Katrina did, either.

But the main reason to stay the hell away from New Orleans is the CRIME. God Almighty! Not THAT different from before Katrina, but wow! Seems like more reports are coming out all the time.

Can't see going there for "fun" when people are getting blown away, stabbed, etc. left and right. No thanks, not me.