Monthly Archives: September 2016

Some Lives Are More Equal Than Others

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Cornell University is looking for a Dean of Diversity.  OK, they’re looking for a Dean of Students, but an important part of his DOC is his ability to promote diversity.  But the new Dean mustn’t promote diverse diversity, only the diversity of school-favored groups of students.

…one top candidate, Vijay Pendakur…held a “diversity townhall” with students to persuade them to support his candidacy.

Then he let the cat out of the bag.

If I say, “The dean’s area of focus is diversity and inclusion,” the unspoken thought in response often is, “Oh, so he’s here for only the marginalized students.”  So we need to undo that, because that is a deeply problematic framework.  If we’re going to make progress, it needs to be everyone’s conversation.

Cornell’s Vice President for Diversity of Inclusion, Julia Montejo, chose to be offended by this truth.

I’d like to hear more on how that kind of approach and philosophy still puts the concerns of minority students, students of color, underrepresented students, LGBTQ-identifying students and students with disabilities at the forefront….

Because.

Cornell favors some diversity, but not complete diversity.  Some groups of students should just proceed to the back of the Cornell bus.

Climate and Race

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From a piece quoted by What’s Up With That:

Police arrest seven of nine people chained to tripod on runway in protest against impact of air pollution on black people.

Flights have been cancelled at London’s City airport after nine protesters from Black Lives Matter UK got on to the runway and chained themselves together.

And [emphasis in the original]

The group issued a video that said the reason for the protest was that the climate crisis was a “racist crisis”.

The Black Lives Matter movement will manufacture a racism beef out of anything.  They’re projecting, again.

When Government Competes with Private Enterprise

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This is an example of the failure that is the inevitable outcome of “competition” from Government, a competition that just as inevitably dooms the private enterprise.

Amazon.com Inc and Wells Fargo & Co had teamed up to offer student loans at discounted interest rates to members of Amazon.com’s “Prime Student” facility.  But the Federal government and others favoring Big Government objected to this free market entry into Government’s lucrative business.

TICAS [The Institute for College Access & Success] called the partnership “a cynical attempt to dupe current students who are eligible for federal student loans with a record low 3.76% fixed interest rate into taking out costly private loans with interest rates currently as high as 13.74%.”

Never mind that this was access that wouldn’t otherwise have been available, or that no one was forcing the prospective students to choose amazon.com-Wells over the government.  The government’s lower rates should have been an effective competitive factor, but Government didn’t want any competition.  Of course, Government caps how much a student can borrow, even if the allowed borrowing doesn’t cover the student’s total college costs—limiting the student’s ability to repay even that much by limiting his ability to finish school and get the requisite job making, thereby making the borrowing done a waste of money.  Maybe those higher rate loans might have been competitive after all.

Critics of private student loans claim they are riskier for borrowers than federal student loans, which charge the same fixed interest rate to all borrowers regardless of how low their credit scores are.

Government made this claim, too, as it moved to interfere with the amazon.com-Wells hookup to the point they ultimately were forced dissolve the partnership and the offering.  The claim is either completely disingenuous or breathtakingly ignorant of the realities of economics and of risk.

Charging all student borrowers the same interest regardless of the quality of that borrower is…suboptimal.  A student borrower’s ability to repay is not governed solely by the student’s current financial status, unlike, for instance, a mortgage borrower.  A student borrower’s ability to repay also is governed, and more strongly so, by the prospective future financial status of that student borrower, which is driven by whether the student is pursuing a course of study likely to lead to a job with an income capable of supporting loan repayment.

The likelihood of inability to repay when every borrower is charged the same interest rate independently of risk simply drives up the interest rates for all: other, lower risk, borrowers are simply forced to subsidize the higher risk borrowers’ loan costs.

With Federal student loans, that higher cost is borne by us taxpayers.  Higher cost, despite the lower face rates on the loans?  Yes, because we’re all paying the taxes that support these otherwise uneconomical loans.  And when a student defaults on his loan, we’re the ones who pay.  But Government doesn’t care about that.

The regulatory and political opposition to private student loans has had an effect. Private student loans are among the smallest volume-producing categories of consumer loans.

Indeed.  Which is what Government has wanted.

An Outcome of Leading from Behind

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This isn’t just harassment, or actions taken to embarrass us and humiliate our Navy in the Arabian Gulf, though it’s those things, too.  It’s also both a technique to desensitize us to these close approaches by enemy combat vessels and to give those combat vessels and the navies that operate them operational combat practice through exercises that are live in every important way, lacking only live fire.   This time, at least the third incident of this nature just in the last month or so, the

USS Firebolt, a coastal patrol ship, was shadowed by seven Iranian vessels. Three of the vessels came within 500 yards and shadowed Firebolt for eight minutes. Then one of the Iranian vessels broke off and raced in front of Firebolt and “came to a stop directly in front of the ship” at a range of 100 yards, according to the official.

That’s the closest approach, yet, by Iranian Navy combat vessels.  The meek response by the Firebolt, and the other ships in those earlier incidents—responses mandated by President Barack Obama (D), not by our Navy—only encourages more, and more dangerous, such actions.

“Clearly the Iranian behavior has to change,” Capt Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday.

Davis refused to outline any specifics on how to bring about that change.

Davis could not identify any specifics because Obama has none; Obama has no plan at all other than to put in his time until the next President takes over and must deal with his mess.

There have been nearly twice as many cases of harassment by Iranian vessels against the US Navy in the first half of 2016 as the first half of 2015.

Oddly, that’s about the time Obama’s nuclear weapons deal with Iran has been in practical effect after Obama signed it last October.

This is one result of leading from behind following along behind events/other nations’ initiatives.  This isn’t likely to end well.

Because Sit Down, and Shut Up

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Apple Inc’s aggressive response to a €13 billion ($14.5 billion) tax ruling by the European Commission shows the U.S. technology company doesn’t understand the moral obligation on big companies to pay taxes, according to the leader of the eurozone’s finance ministers.

Because it’s terrible that a company which has played by all the rules should see its money confiscated—or the attempt made—anyway.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem [President of the Eurogroup, the collection of Eurozone finance ministers] said Apple had “failed to grasp” the public outcry over tax avoidance by large companies.

Perhaps Dijsselbloem has failed to grasp the public’s dismay over excessive taxation and Europe’s refusal to allow competition—especially on taxes.

And just to emphasize Dijsselbloem’s disingenuousness, there’s this comment by him:

The Apple response shows that they don’t grasp what’s going on in society and they do not grasp what’s going on in the public debate.  This is a very strong moral issue and large companies, even if they’re this large, can’t say “this is not about us, there’s no problem here.”

American companies or any company that uses all these different tax plans and at the end of the day pays no tax, that’s not fair.

No, the moral issue is the EU bureaucracy’s demanding to impose its concept of morality in place of the morals of sovereign peoples’.  What’s not fair is being punished even though all the rules, all these different tax plans, have been satisfied.  What’s not fair is demanding all these different tax plans to be normalized in accordance with an EU bureaucracy’s diktats, in complete disregard of constituent nation sovereign imperatives.

Or perhaps Dijsselbloem’s just pettily jealous of having been outgamed by a better man.  If Dijsselbloem, or his cronies in that EU bureaucracy, don’t like the gamesmanship here, they should work to eliminate the incentives associated: they should work to get the rest of the EU’s tax plans‘ tax rates reduced to competitive levels, so such gamesmanship becomes irrelevant.

But that’s inconceivable to folks like the Eurogroup, so all they have is their inchoate demand that dissenters just sit down, and shut up.