The Texas Rainmaker blog shreds an AFP article meant to make the reader feel sorry for homeowners who have failed to repay their mortgage loans. TR argues:
"Am I heartless? Hardly. Unless I’m supposed to feel bad for companies who failed to conduct proper due diligence on those to whom they’re lending huge sums of money… or borrowers who over-extended themselves, didn’t take time to learn the terms of their loan or simply lied on their applications."
I agree. The exaggeration of the pain from the mortgage crisis might even be greater, because many of the borrowers were probably real estate speculators who had bought houses in order to ride the real estate bubble earlier in the decade. Not all of the borrowers were poor and oppressed. Why should the American public subsidize speculators whose bets turned sour?
As well, Captain Midnight of the Captain's Comments blog argues that government should leave the problem alone:
"if the government butts out of the economy and allows people to engage in commerce without restrictive and repressive rules and regulations, the economy can soar. When the government plays the role of buttinski, their actions can cause the economy to sour.
"There's no shortage of ideas in an election year. But it remains to be seen just how much the government can do to halt the continued slide in an economy battered by falling housing prices, rising energy costs and a lending slowdown caused by worries about how many more loans will go bad...
"Politicians get to look good twice: first when they cause a problem, and later when they try to "fix" the same problem they created."
Actually, they get to look good a third time: when they fix the problems that the fix created. And a fourth, when they fix the problems that the fix that fixed the fix goes bad, etc. There's no end to how much money Washington and the state capitols can waste.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Brooklyn College Has a New Provost
Brooklyn College President Christoph Kimmich's internal release concerning Brooklyn College's new provost follows.
28 January 2008
To: The Brooklyn College Community
From: President Christoph M. Kimmich
I am pleased to inform you that I have invited Dr. William W. Tramontano to serve as Brooklyn College’s next Provost, and that he has accepted. The appointment will be effective 1 July 2008, subject to the formal approval of the University’s Board of Trustees. This concludes the search we inaugurated in fall 2006.
Dr. Tramontano comes to us from Lehman College, where he is Dean of Natural and Social Sciences and where, in 2006-2007, he served as Acting Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. For many years he was chair of the Department of Biology at Manhattan College, where he also headed important governance committees.
Dr. Tramontano comes with a wealth of administrative experience, in public as well as private institutions, and he has a good working knowledge both of Brooklyn College and of The City University. He has a commitment to the mission of a public liberal arts college and to the faculty as the principal custodians of that mission. He is a strong advocate of teaching and research, of students and student learning, consonant with our values and goals. At Lehman (and earlier at Manhattan College) he worked productively with faculty to plan and develop new academic programs, to strengthen research, and to increase both research and institutional grants. At Lehman, he was deeply involved in the college’s strategic planning process and the Middle States Self Study Committee, and he played a major role in the planning and design of a new science building (also one of our priorities). As Acting Provost, he chaired the tenure-and-promotion and the Distinguished Professor committees, and he served on various subcommittees of the CUNY Taskforce on Restructuring Doctoral Education in the Sciences.
Dr. Tramontano has degrees in biology from Manhattan College and New York University, with a special interest in cell biology. He is well published in the field and the recipient of major research and institutional grants. He has taught biology and physiology, and in fact continues to teach even as dean.
I believe Dr. Tramontano will serve the College well as chief academic officer, embracing change but mindful of tradition, and will help advance our goals and objectives. Please join me in welcoming him to Brooklyn College.
28 January 2008
To: The Brooklyn College Community
From: President Christoph M. Kimmich
I am pleased to inform you that I have invited Dr. William W. Tramontano to serve as Brooklyn College’s next Provost, and that he has accepted. The appointment will be effective 1 July 2008, subject to the formal approval of the University’s Board of Trustees. This concludes the search we inaugurated in fall 2006.
Dr. Tramontano comes to us from Lehman College, where he is Dean of Natural and Social Sciences and where, in 2006-2007, he served as Acting Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. For many years he was chair of the Department of Biology at Manhattan College, where he also headed important governance committees.
Dr. Tramontano comes with a wealth of administrative experience, in public as well as private institutions, and he has a good working knowledge both of Brooklyn College and of The City University. He has a commitment to the mission of a public liberal arts college and to the faculty as the principal custodians of that mission. He is a strong advocate of teaching and research, of students and student learning, consonant with our values and goals. At Lehman (and earlier at Manhattan College) he worked productively with faculty to plan and develop new academic programs, to strengthen research, and to increase both research and institutional grants. At Lehman, he was deeply involved in the college’s strategic planning process and the Middle States Self Study Committee, and he played a major role in the planning and design of a new science building (also one of our priorities). As Acting Provost, he chaired the tenure-and-promotion and the Distinguished Professor committees, and he served on various subcommittees of the CUNY Taskforce on Restructuring Doctoral Education in the Sciences.
Dr. Tramontano has degrees in biology from Manhattan College and New York University, with a special interest in cell biology. He is well published in the field and the recipient of major research and institutional grants. He has taught biology and physiology, and in fact continues to teach even as dean.
I believe Dr. Tramontano will serve the College well as chief academic officer, embracing change but mindful of tradition, and will help advance our goals and objectives. Please join me in welcoming him to Brooklyn College.
Sharad's Law
Several people met at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn to discuss the establishment of a not-for-profit that would serve the function of raising money on behalf of students and faculty who are sued or otherwise legally harassed by higher education institutions. The meeting went well. In the course of the meeting, Phil Orenstein suggested a law, which I call Sharad's Law, after Sharad Karkhanis, who is being sued by a union officer of the faculty union of the City University of New York. Sharad's Law would prohibit the hiring of convicted terrorists by governmental institutions, including higher education institutions.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Why Do US Citizens Vote?
The US Census Bureau published a study in 2000 tracking voting behavior in non-presidential election years from 1966 to 1998. The percentage of the population voting was:
1966...55.4%
1970...54.6
1974...44.7
1978...45.9
1982...48.5
1986...46.9
1990...45.0
1994...45.0
1998...41.9
Whites voted more than Blacks, but in 1998 the difference was only 43.3% versus 39.6%. In the highest year of voting, 1966, 57.0% of Whites and 41.7% of Blacks voted. A greater percentage of Blacks than Hispanics and Asians vote.
There is a non-linear correlation between age and voting. The data show four age categories. The peak age for voting in every year is 45 to 64. Above 65, voting turns down by a few percent because of health factors. However, those over 65 are two to three times more likely to vote than those 18 to 24. Voting increases with age until age 65.
In 1998, a slightly higher percentage of females was registered and voted (44.9 percent versus 45.7 percent).
That year, there was a direct correlation between family income and voting. 25.4% of people with family incomes below $5,000 voted, 44.2% of people with incomes from $25,000 to $35,000 voted, 59.6% of people with incomes over $75,000 voted, etc. Also consistent with the income correlation, 51.4% of homeowners voted, while 28.4% of renters voted. People who lived in the same place for at least five years had the highest voting rate, 57.9%, and there was a linear correlation between length of residence and voting. Only 21.3% of the people who lived in their residence for less than one month had voted (presumably they could have voted elsewhere).
The Census Bureau concludes that "people with more education, higher incomes, and employment are more likely to vote":
"In 1998, citizens who had bachelor’s degrees were nearly twice as likely (58 percent)to report that they voted as those who had not completed high school (30 percent). At each level of educational attainment from high school completion and above, voting rates increase significantly. People with bachelor’s and advanced degrees made up 31 percent for those who reported voting in the election, compared with just 10 percent for those who did not graduate from high school. The greater the income of an individual, the higher the propensity to vote. Over 50 percent of citizens living in families whose total income was $50,000 or more reported voting in the election, compared with less than 28 percent of those with a family income of under $10,000. All together, about one-half of those living in families who voted in the November 1998 election had family incomes over $50,000."
This suggests why the Democrats, who favor the more affluent workers and homeowners, have triumphed. The poor simply do not vote, and so inflationist Federal Reserve Bank policies that hurt low-wage workers are simply not debated. For whites, 32.2% of those with under a ninth grade education voted (the percentage for Blacks with less than a ninth grade education was 41.4%), while 70.2% of Whites with advanced degrees voted.
In an opinion survey, the census bureau asks non-voters why they did not vote. 34.9% of voters say that they are too busy, 12.7% say that they are not interested, 11.1% say that they are disabled or ill, 5.5% say that they don't like the candidates, 8.3% say that they are out of town, and 5.3% say that they forgot.
No wonder Ph.D. holders like Peter Levine, Ronald Hayduk and Kevin Mattson favor the "new progressivism" and "deliberative democracy". A more interventionist system would serve their specific interests well, because the political vote weights the opinions of the highly educated much more heavily than does the economic vote. Although the economic vote favors the wealthy over the educated to a greater degree than does the political vote, the political arena is the one where the highly educated professional has the greatest opportunity to wrest benefits from the public. In the end, deliberative democracy is just another special interest pleading. 40.2% of those over 65 say that they were ill or disabled, which explains the higher rate for that age group's not voting. The percentage saying that they are not interested declines by about one third for education, from 15.3% for those without a high school diploma to 10.3% of those with a college degree. 5.7% of those without a high school diploma said that they did not like the candidates while 4.5% of those with a college degree said that they did not like the candidates. 37.6% of college grads said that they were too busy while 21.5% of high school dropouts said that they were too busy.
1966...55.4%
1970...54.6
1974...44.7
1978...45.9
1982...48.5
1986...46.9
1990...45.0
1994...45.0
1998...41.9
Whites voted more than Blacks, but in 1998 the difference was only 43.3% versus 39.6%. In the highest year of voting, 1966, 57.0% of Whites and 41.7% of Blacks voted. A greater percentage of Blacks than Hispanics and Asians vote.
There is a non-linear correlation between age and voting. The data show four age categories. The peak age for voting in every year is 45 to 64. Above 65, voting turns down by a few percent because of health factors. However, those over 65 are two to three times more likely to vote than those 18 to 24. Voting increases with age until age 65.
In 1998, a slightly higher percentage of females was registered and voted (44.9 percent versus 45.7 percent).
That year, there was a direct correlation between family income and voting. 25.4% of people with family incomes below $5,000 voted, 44.2% of people with incomes from $25,000 to $35,000 voted, 59.6% of people with incomes over $75,000 voted, etc. Also consistent with the income correlation, 51.4% of homeowners voted, while 28.4% of renters voted. People who lived in the same place for at least five years had the highest voting rate, 57.9%, and there was a linear correlation between length of residence and voting. Only 21.3% of the people who lived in their residence for less than one month had voted (presumably they could have voted elsewhere).
The Census Bureau concludes that "people with more education, higher incomes, and employment are more likely to vote":
"In 1998, citizens who had bachelor’s degrees were nearly twice as likely (58 percent)to report that they voted as those who had not completed high school (30 percent). At each level of educational attainment from high school completion and above, voting rates increase significantly. People with bachelor’s and advanced degrees made up 31 percent for those who reported voting in the election, compared with just 10 percent for those who did not graduate from high school. The greater the income of an individual, the higher the propensity to vote. Over 50 percent of citizens living in families whose total income was $50,000 or more reported voting in the election, compared with less than 28 percent of those with a family income of under $10,000. All together, about one-half of those living in families who voted in the November 1998 election had family incomes over $50,000."
This suggests why the Democrats, who favor the more affluent workers and homeowners, have triumphed. The poor simply do not vote, and so inflationist Federal Reserve Bank policies that hurt low-wage workers are simply not debated. For whites, 32.2% of those with under a ninth grade education voted (the percentage for Blacks with less than a ninth grade education was 41.4%), while 70.2% of Whites with advanced degrees voted.
In an opinion survey, the census bureau asks non-voters why they did not vote. 34.9% of voters say that they are too busy, 12.7% say that they are not interested, 11.1% say that they are disabled or ill, 5.5% say that they don't like the candidates, 8.3% say that they are out of town, and 5.3% say that they forgot.
No wonder Ph.D. holders like Peter Levine, Ronald Hayduk and Kevin Mattson favor the "new progressivism" and "deliberative democracy". A more interventionist system would serve their specific interests well, because the political vote weights the opinions of the highly educated much more heavily than does the economic vote. Although the economic vote favors the wealthy over the educated to a greater degree than does the political vote, the political arena is the one where the highly educated professional has the greatest opportunity to wrest benefits from the public. In the end, deliberative democracy is just another special interest pleading. 40.2% of those over 65 say that they were ill or disabled, which explains the higher rate for that age group's not voting. The percentage saying that they are not interested declines by about one third for education, from 15.3% for those without a high school diploma to 10.3% of those with a college degree. 5.7% of those without a high school diploma said that they did not like the candidates while 4.5% of those with a college degree said that they did not like the candidates. 37.6% of college grads said that they were too busy while 21.5% of high school dropouts said that they were too busy.
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