Debt Limit Debate on Networks a Joke

I was in the gym on Wednesday and someone had turned on one of the television news channels. I usually watch Turner Classic Movies when on the treadmill; TCM is more informative.  The news story of the hour is the debt limit debate. The Democrats want to raise taxes so that they can pay more interest to bondholders, and the Republicans say that they don't want to raise taxes but that just enough of them are planning to vote for higher taxes that, well, they might as well be Democrats.  The network reporters don't know about government operations so that their reporting is uninformed.

When I worked in Albany, the Democratic speaker of the assembly, Mell Miller, who was later indicted, said in an assembly ways and means committee meeting that I attended that there was no fat.  Even some of the extreme left wingers with whom I worked on the Democratic WAM staff laughed privately.   The government of New York State was and is pure fat. There is nothing but fat. Even my friend, a Maoist working full time as a Democratic staffer, showed me a fictional line item that had been charged by the Department of Social Services simply to provide itself with some additional fat when Mario Cuomo had transferred a block grant program to it.  Experienced in state government, it took him two minutes to identify the increase in spending; to an outsider, it would have been next to impossible to identify it.  Another friend, also a left-winger, laughed uncontrollably when I told him that Miller had said that there was no fat.

The incompetent television coverage of the debt limit debate is grounded on the claim that government operations are efficient.  They are efficient at one thing: waste.  Even private firms waste money. Government is amateurish and deliberately wasteful. It would not hard to reduce spending by 30% for someone interested in efficiency. 

Watching news about the debt limit should make you certain of one thing: watching television news is a waste of time.

Celebrating Indepedence Day

I just returned from my good friend Mike Marnell's Marnell Family Fourth of July barbecue. Mike lives in Kingston across the street from his mom and dad. They throw a great July fourth barbecue. The Marnell family is huge; I guess there were about 80 people there, and they're all doing great. Mike's dad, Bob, is suffering from heart problems but he is in good spirits.  The food is always awesome at the Marnell parties. Mike made the BEST Buffalo wings I ever had. I brought  bottle of single malt scotch which Mike and I worked on all day.

Fireworks, family and barbecues are what the Founding Fathers envisioned for the Fourth. Upon recovering from the party and driving home I took a minute to watch my favorite scene from HBO's John Adams television series. I love when Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) reads the Declaration to her children who are recovering from an epidemic--they are America's future and one of them is to become the sixth president:

Civic Literacy Quiz

My friend Mike Marnell asked me to take the civic literacy quiz on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute website at http://www.isi.org/quiz.aspx?q=FE5C3B47-9675-41E0-9CF3-072BB31E2692&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1. I got 100%; give it a try. According to ISI:

• ISI has surveyed over 28,000 undergraduates from over 80 separate colleges, and the average score on our basic 60-question civic literacy exam was about a 54%, an “F.”
• At elite schools like Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Duke, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins, their freshmen did better than their seniors on the same test, what ISI dubs “negative learning.”
• Among adults, those with a college degree also failed on average ISI's civic literacy test, scoring little higher than their peers with a high school diploma.
• College-educated adults were particularly ignorant of the Founding and Civil War eras, constitutional themes, and the essential features of a market economy.

Professor Robert Paquette Resigns from His Chair at Hamilton College

This past January, one of the nation's leading historians and one of the history field's few conservatives, Robert Paquette, resigned from his chair at Hamilton College. He continues to teach at Hamilton but gave up his chair in protest.  Professor Paquette had obtained a multimillion dollar grant to set up a conservative leaning institute, but Hamilton College refused to permit it.  Hamilton College is where there was a controversy concerning Ward Churchill's speaking. Churchill had called the 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns" but Hamilton had invited him to speak anyway. After some controversy, the College rescinded the invitation.   I am planning to write a piece for The Lincoln Eagle about Professor Paquette. 

Alan G. Lafley is former CEO of Procter and Gamble. He is a Hamilton alum and chairman of its board of trustees.

14 January 2011

Mr. Alan G. Lafley

3 ..... Street

...., OH 4...

Dear Mr. Lafley:

Enclosed please find the medal that I was awarded some years ago after receiving the Publius Virgilius Rogers professorship.  I am resigning the title and the perquisites that go with it effective immediately. I ask that you convey this information to President Stewart.  I also ask that you convey copies of this letter to every member of Hamilton’s Board of Trustees at the March meeting.

Please know that in the classroom, I will continue as a senior professor to serve the College, as I have always done, to the best of my ability until my retirement in the not-so-distant future.  I regret, however, that I can no longer carry this title in good conscience, given my treatment by College officials over a period of almost a decade. It is sufficient for me at this stage of my career that I bear the title of chief architect of the Alexander Hamilton Institute...

...To date, I have received no explanation as to why officials of this College, including members of the Board of Trustees, after publicly announcing in 2006 that the Alexander Hamilton Center ( my creation) would “not go forward,”  not only attempted to trademark the name “Alexander Hamilton Center,” but did so using language extracted verbatim from a charter I wrote. (One might have thought that Gene Tobin’s serial plagiarism would have made someone thoughtful.)  The College documents, still publicly available on file with the US Patent and Trademark Office,  include a  sworn statement—yes, sir, a  sworn statement—that at the time of the filing Hamilton’s Board of Trustees knew of no competing claim on the name. 

To date, I have received no explanation as to why “administrative sources” informed an FBI agent (Margarita Alvarez) that I was “mentally unstable” when she was performing a routine background check in preparation for my nomination by President Bush for a prestigious seat on the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The delay that ensued before President Bush forwarded my name to the United States Senate in 2008 quite possibly cost me that position during an election year that resulted in a change of party in the presidency...

Cato the Younger, a favorite of the founders as well as one of my personal favorites, refused to accept an award from his commander after the defeat by slaves of a Roman army of which he was a part. His honor would not permit it.  Honores mutant mores.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Paquette

Department of History