Your favorite professor cited by The Signal, new level of fame reached

Check out the early December version of The Signal (the new name for The Uhclidian). The writer happened to catch me over at Career Services for a Finance Recruiting Night skull session with Chuck Crocker and Caitlin Weekley, and interviewed us about the "value of a college degree."

I'm sure you can guess where I stood on the issue.

Of course she'd already checked out REAL sources such as an OWS blogger. That's kind of hard to compete with, you know.

As a professor, I'm offended

California Democrat compares President Obama to college professors. Interesting.

I'm sure we can come off as overbearing and self-sure at times, but that's what they pay us for. After all, we're experts. We may be an expert in the most obscure piece of Medieval literature ever found (the pope's laundry list, for example), but by God we're an expert in something.

After all, if we aren't experts, then we can't certify that you learnt something while you were at the Kollege of Knowledge. That's our job, you know.

As for "NEVER TALK TO REAL PEOPLE" as a policy, I'm sure we've all seen how that phenomenon works in real life. During the Bush administration they were criticized for having a "bunker" mentality - I wonder if this is similar.

I know in higher ed it's very common for administrators to forget what it's like to teach classes; they sometimes forget the mission of their institutions after being elevated to higher ranks. Cases of this are rampant, and now the buzz is that there is a "bubble" in administrators and staff throughout colleges and universities in the US. Maybe the "bubble" wouldn't get noticed as much if there was more attention to "teeth" and not so much to the "tail" of the operation.

Fort Hood shooting was just another example of "workplace violence"

I hate to post Fox News stuff here because so many people have a knee-jerk reaction to that agency, but they're running this today and it needs to be highlighted.

Evidently the Obama administration has characterized the killing of 13 people and maiming of dozens of others at Fort Hood two years ago as "workplace violence." Senator Susan Collins of Maine (R-INO) has trouble with it, too.

And that's probably the FIRST conservative thought that's crossed her desk in the last 10 years. If the RINOs are even rampaging about it, it must be a big deal.

"Fast & Furious" was all about gun control

Don't take MY word for it, take it from CBS. They're saying today that internal memos show that ATFE's gun-running operation into Mexico was going to be used to tighten gun restrictions in this country.

I never would have guessed that.

""Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

Booyah.

Next, we need to find out if Dept. of State was involved. If you'll remember, ole HRC herself was making a case that the border violence was due to loose guns from Texas and it was out of hand and she wanted to "do something about it." Did she know about this too?

A lingering question: A couple of years ago there were rumblings from the anti-gun crowd about how the administration wasn't planning anything, but then they were evidently reassured that "something" was in the works by some admin "insiders" and the rumblings from the base stopped. Was Fast-and-Furious the magic "something?" That would be great to know.

And this reference comes to mind from earlier this year.

FoxNews again

The hidden gotcha of ObamaCare

It exploded last week: a legal requirement that companies spend 80% of premiums on expenditures for covered expenses, when the average was something less than that before. The administration accomplished this feat by publishing a list of qualifying medical expenses through HHS.

Isn't that nice of them.

The best part: some companies get 85% as the number.

So, once again, it's death by 1000 cuts - health insurance companies must live and die by the federal government's whim, not by serving their customers. Insurance has been regulated plenty before, of course, but this is just over the top.

When we look back in a decade or so at how health care has deteriorated, some folks will still be asking "Wot happend?"

This guy's perspective is that it's GOOD for the system, eliminating or hurting all those evil for-profit insurance companies. He points out that there will always be a health insurance system for "those who can pay for it."

I can pay for mine now. I can even pay for my kid's health care now since BCBSTX figured out a way to weasel out of paying for it. I just can't afford to pay for other people's health care or poor decisions.

I think he's talking about allocating health care the way they allocated Zil limousines in Soviet Russia. OF COURSE there will always be a system "for those who can pay for it." Or those who know the right folks. Or those who have certain names. Etc.

Why big companies dive or thrive: Peggy Noonon on SJobs

I find the first few words of this article by Peggy Noonan very interesting.

There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He's at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to "build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products." Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about "why decline happens" at great companies: "The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues." So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company's daily life. They "turn off." IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but "they didn't know anything about the product." In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.

Jobs's theory of decline was elegant and simple as an iPad, and when I asked business leaders about it the past few weeks, they agreed, some with the kind of engagement that suggested maybe their own companies had experienced such troubles.

Noonan, Peggy. WSJ. 11/18/11. A Caveman Won't Beat a Salesman.

Man, ain't THIS the truth! We see this all the time! The belief that a better salesman can fix things is always flawed.

Groupon falls 35% in 3 days

I hate being RIGHT all the time. Damn.