Blogs for 2008 - Road to the Middle Class

Yes, all the fashionable people agree that hip urban living in the “ideopolises” of the Cultural Creatives of Richard Florida is the wave of the future—not to mention necessary to save the planet.

In recent months, the city-centered media such as CNN, The New York Times and National Public Radio have jumped unfold

L'Esprit d'Escalier at KPLU

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST NIGHT I went into the belly of the beast to the taping of a roundtable at the local NPR affiliate KPLU. I and five others listened to audio clips of presidents past, present and future talking about Social Security and welfare—safety nets—and then talked about our feelings to KPLU reporter Paula Wissel.

After an experience like that you always think of the zingers you could have delivered, but didn’t. The French have a word for it: l’esprit d’escalier, the spirit of the stairs.

No unfold

What Ails Education?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT’S wrong with education in the United States? It used to be that Americans were the most educated people in the world. Yet eduational performance seems to have peaked in the late 1960s, according to David Brooks.

[H]igh school graduation rates peaked in the U.S. in the late 1960s, at about 80 percent. Since then they have declined.

So what went wrong? Researcher James Heckman says that it’s not falling unfold

Who Cares About Inner City Schools?

by Christopher Chantrill

ACCORDING to Sen. Barack Obama, the conservative solution to pervasive school failure is "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

That’s what he told the American Federation of Teachers.

Of course, he’s right. Conservatives flog away at pushing for more school choice and more access to vouchers for the children of the poor in lousy inner-city school districts and the Democrats keep cold-cocking them. You get really tired after unfold

President Bush and Blacks

by Christopher Chantrill

PRESIDENT Bush’s domestic signature in 2000 was “compassionate conservatism,” resulting in two domestic initiatives: No Child Left Behind and “faith-based” outreach to the poor, writes Mona Charen.

In other words the Republican president was concentrating his programmatic domestic agenda not on helping and paying off Republican voters but on trying to make a dent in the awful mess in the underclass.

So unfold

Obama's Secret Mission

by Christopher Chantrill

IT CAN NOW be told. The reason for Barack Obama is simple. He has been sent down to Earth to drive conservatives to distraction.

Today Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) spoke to the German people (and really the people of Europe, for Germany is the center of Europe). Evoking the “soft power” of the Berlin airlift when (hint, hint) the US turned back the Soviets without firing a shot, he told them that this is the moment: to dry up the well of terrorism, rid the unfold

The Mess in the Academe

by Christopher Chantrill

IN HER LATEST article marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher takes out after the fake Obama world tour. Even Andrea Mitchell, she writes, realizes that Obama is faking it, faking press conferences when no media was actually there.

"Let me say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell unfold

What the NYT Wouldn't Print

by Christopher Chantrill

THE FLAP over The New York Times refusing to print an oped by John McCain is a gem. Their refusal to print McCain’s responding to an Obama oped published last week is the sort of thing that conservatives love.

And the absurd rationale offered by the NYT editor was a gem. David Shipley didn’t like the oped because it didn’t mirror Obama’s oped but instead criticized Obama.

But now the New York Post has unfold

Obama and Berlin

by Christopher Chantrill

POLITICIANS are creatures of their staff. And this becomes even more so as we climb the food chain to the presidential level.

So when we say that President Bush is clueless, we are really talking about the quality of his staff. Their job is to make him look good. Of course, he hired them, so it’s his fault if they screw up.

In the current flap about Obama’s speech in Berlin, we should keep this in mind. We can’t really expect Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to know all about the gaffe factors associated with making unfold

A Good Denier Day

by Christopher Chantrill

FIRST A note to our readers. The American Physical Society wants you to know that the paper published by Lord Monckton and the posting by Jeffrey Marque does not represent a change in APS policy. On the APS home page:

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s unfold

Liberals' Race Crutch

by Christopher Chantrill

AFFIRMATIVE action opponent Linda Chavez comments today on a boringly same-old-same-old race poll conducted by The New York Times. Guess what. African Americans are convinced that the US is racist.

But the interesting part of the post is the comments section. There’s Scott:

I am a bureaucrat in a big city welfare department. I am constantly amazed at the level of racial hostility I see in my black co-workers, including those unfold

Everyone Doesn't Do it

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE agrees, don’t they, that candidates appeal to the base in their primary campaigns and then they tack to the center when it’s time for the general. Agreed?

And nobody has done that more completely and ruthlessly than Sen. Barack Obama (B-IL). As Tony Blankley writes:

[I]f there are two things people know about Barack Obama, one of them is that he recently has changed his positions on abortion, unfold

The Business of Government Isn't Business

by Christopher Chantrill

PRESIDENT Calvin Coolidge famously proclaimed that “the business of America is business.”

Unfortunately some people evidently misheard him. They thought he meant that government should get into business.

Please. Government does everything badly, including making war and legislating. Yet helpless and abject failure doesn’t seem to matter too much when government keeps to war and law enforcement.

The last thing that anyone should think of is getting government involved in business.

But when Sen. unfold

What About the Real Problem with Obama?

by Christopher Chantrill

THE OH SO sophisticated New Yorker has a picture of Obama and wife on the cover, depicting what they assume is the right-wingnut slur of Obama as a Muslim and his wife as a chic radical guerrilla.

As usual, the sophisticates miss the point. Conservatives worry more about Obama’s out-of-touch Hyde Park elitism, the curious access he seems to have had to City Hall divorce records of opposing candidates, the unsavory connections like Tony Resko, and unfold

Who Are the Top One Percent?

by Christopher Chantrill

YESTERDAY we looked at the IRS’s most revealing spreadsheet (xls), the one that says that the top one percent of income tax filers pay 40 percent of the federal income tax.

It’s mighty nice of those folks to pony up all that cash, particularly when you consider that they only earn 21.20 percent of the income reported to the IRS. But who are these generous chaps and chapettes?

In short, how much money do you have to make in order to make it into the unfold

Only the Rich Pay Taxes (update)

by Christopher Chantrill

THE IRS keeps a handy-dandy spreadsheet on the federal income tax. The latest version, for 2005, is here (xls).

The IRS’s spreadsheet shows that “only the rich pay taxes,” well income taxes, anyway.

Stephen Moore, boss of the Club for Growth, writes that he talked to his pal at the Treasury, and the latest results are about to come out. The new numbers will hit a major milestone.

The 2006 numbers unfold

Vanity of Vanities

by Christopher Chantrill

JANE AUSTEN’S last complete novel, Persuasion, is about vanity. Principally, it turns around the vanity of the novel heroine’s father, Sir Walter Elliott. This empty vessel (Latin: vanus: empty) is remarkably proud of his title, his lineage, his good looks, and his splendid mansion, Kellynch. He provides a suitable contrast to the heroine, Anne. “[N]one so proper, none so capable, as Anne,” as the hero Captain Wentworth, puts it.

The unfold

More Capital Needed at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

by Christopher Chantrill

YESTERDAY, shares in Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored Federal National Mortgage Assocation were down 16 percent, while shares in the government-sponsored Freddie Mac were down 18 percent. There was concern on the market that both needed “to raise more capital amid larger-then-expected losses.”

So the brilliant managers at the government’s mortgage mills are going to need a bailout too. Only, you can bet that the shareholders of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae won’t get the haircut that the folks at Bear, Stearns unfold

The Trouble With Faith-based Initiatives

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK WHEN President Bush was pushing his idea for faith-based organizations to have access to government monies it seemed like a good idea. But many conservatives warned against it, because whatever the government touches the government controls.

Think the Catholic adoption agency in Massachusetts that decided to get out of the adoption business rather than be forced to accept gays as adoptive parents.

A number of conservatives have had their doubts in the years since. Now Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has come out in favor of unfold

Clark's McCain Put-down

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU AND I can only guess at the tactical political calculations of presidential campaigns.

So we just shake our heads and wonder at the attempt by Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter, to brush off Sen. McCain’s military experience as mere by-play. As Jake Tapper quotes,

“He hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron,” said unfold

New Hope for Global Warming Deniers

by Christopher Chantrill

THERE ARE some of us, and we are few, who reflexively recoil from the latest liberal enthusiasm.

(And why is it that every liberal enthusiasm involves a dip into your pocketbook?)

So we grab at hopes that the liberals are wrong—again.

Last week there was a straw to grasp for us global warming deniers. A couple of astsro-physicists published a paper on sunspots and the solar cycle.

As reported by Andrew unfold

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

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