The Adoration of Gun Rights

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t3#/video/us/2012/02/28/piers-bill-maher-guns.cnn

In the aftermath of the school shooting that took place in Ohio earlier this week, Bill Maher brings up what I consider to be a valid question. Why is it that so many Americans adore their gun rights? Yes the second amendment gives U.S. citizens the right to bear arms, but why is the number of individuals that choose to exercise this right so large? (There are over 300 million firearms in circulation in our country.) And why is it that many of the people that own one or more guns value them so much? Maher argues that guns are a religion to a large portion of the United States and feels that we need someone that is willing to stand up to the gun lobby. While it would be impossible to get rid of all the guns in the U.S. he emphasizes the need for someone to highlight the bad relationship that our country has with guns.

I tend to agree with his overall stance. If people feel the need to have a gun for protection that's their right, but I feel that it should be concealed in a safe location and knowledge of its existence need not be broadcast to others. It's often the case that the individuals who carried out a shooting, did so with a gun they stole from a relative. Now I'm not saying that a family that owns a gun needs to hide this fact from each other, but the way that it is made known should be carefully considered. Much of our society has the mindset that guns are cool and when young kids learn that their family owns a gun, many of them like to share this information with their friends. This wouldn't be much of a concern if everyone stored their guns in a safe place where they couldn't be easily accessed, but obviously this isn't the case. I feel that it would be possible to create some kind of storage requirements for firearms that wouldn't restrict the right of individuals to bear arms. It might be impossible to enforce any such requirement, but I feel that our country's adoration of gun rights needs to be countered in some fashion.

More Fallacies put forward by GOP candidates

Paul Krugman has a short but important post today on his blog that focuses on the national debt and the plans put forth by the candidates, including President Obama.

What does he find? Obama's plan is the best for future Debt-to-GDP levels. This is a crucial point going further. Yes the deficit is large, but it is more important to have a growing economy that outpaces debt issuance. The focus of government should be restoring Aggregate Demand and not on its own balance sheet.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/four-fiscal-phonies/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

Internet radicalizes U.S. Muslims quickly

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/27/report-internet-radicalizes-us-muslims-quickly/#disqus_thread

"Young American Muslims can become radicalized online very quickly and with few warning signs, becoming potential terrorists before federal agencies can identify them..."
America should allow young Muslims to stay? No, I think that the problem is not the internet. The problem is religion. It is hard to find a solution because we have different culture and religion.

Obama "snobbish" for pushing college?

Rick Santorum, former senator, and proud possessor of three college degrees -- a B.A., M.A. and J.D. -- has for the past two days taken his Culture War scorched-earth policy to a whole new level.  Calling the President a "snob" for encouraging students to seek education beyond high school (though Obama is careful to say that community college training in a trade or in the operation of high-tech manufacturing equipment is included), Santorum completes his rant with the more-customary ultra-conservative dismissal of higher education as a haven for producing "graduates just like the President, ideological clones of Mr. Obama."  The rant is replete with the pejorative put-down of college and university professors as enemies of genuine independence of thought, practicing instead their politically-correct version of university-based liberalism. The latter, Santorum's version of Gingrich's secular-socialist left, is of course completely divorced from real-world life in almost every respect (though it does, its critics agree, function to recruit defenseless young voters for the Democratic party!)

At a minimum, such a view presumes little independence of thought on the part of the ideological victims of professorial brainwashing that pass through the gulags that comprise our finest institiutions of higher learning.  And it assumes an ideological unanimity and motivation on the part of those teaching in US colleges and universities that is remarkable at best, and positively conspiratorial at worst.  But this is only my own view, and Mr. Santorum's observations obviously are connecting with some segments of those who are willing warriors in the Culture Wars (beyond Charles Murray, who obviously Santorum's intellectual kindred spirit.)  So the inevitable question:  Do you concur with the "snobbish" label for those advocating greater levels of college attendance by American high school grads today?  If we set aside the deterrent posed by cost considerations, is it fair to brand those pursuing a college education in twenty-first century America as "snobbish" wannabe's?

What ails Europe?

OPINION | February 27, 2012
Op-Ed Columnist: What Ails Europe?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The two common explanations - call it the Republican narrative and the German narrative - are just wrong.
Professor Krugman's column today is, as usual, contrarian in the sense that he takes issue with so-called "conventional wisdom."  Actually, he condemns two versions of conventional wisdom today: one he tags "the German narrative" on what accounts for the frightful state of Greece, Italy and a few other of the euro-zone economies; the other is easily recognized as familiar to Americans following the Republican nomination race.  Hence it is termed by PK as "the Republican narrative."  You will recognize its ties to Mitt Romney's indictment of Obama as wanting to abandon American exceptionalism and emulate European socialism.  The latter, in this narrative, is bad, bad, bad, because it commits the sins Charles Murray and his ilk see the federal government doing by "enabling" the Fishtown Poor.  In other words, it's the welfare state that has brought Greece and Italy to the edge of the economic abyss.  Except it's not.  When you look at welfare spending as a percentage of government outlays (or as a percent of GDP), the actual data tell a different story than either the  Republican or the German narrative.  Sweden, crown jewel of social democracy, was earlier cited as evidence that states with large social-welfare programs are doomed to economic ruin.  This was the conclusion of the Cato Institute years ago when the Swedish economy suffered through a recessionary dip.  And this is the oft-repeated litany of the new Republican orthodoxy: from Paul Ryan to Rand Paul to Mitt Romney, welfare states and entitlement programs doom their citizens to lazy moochers who live off the tax revenues that hard-working, self-reliant citizens with jobs pay only to learn that their industriousness is subsidizing the sloth of the Fishtown folks.  A very compelling story, except that it is not supported by any facts.  Check out Sweden's economic health now; and while you're at it, check the fractions of the Swedish population who are chronic consumers of the welfare benefits alloted year after year to the unemployed or disabled in that country.  So if a story persists in spite of facts that point to the contrary as reality, what is it that explains the American attraction to the yarn that it is exceptional and, as such, holds a special place in God's creation and is therefore obligated morally to cut off subsidies to those in its borders who are morally unfit?  Check out the post preceding this one by Mr. Nelson for one possibility.

Mayan Calendar ending refers to the GOP of today?

 http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-chait-2012-3/

 This article is very important to the discussions we had in class prior to break.

"...its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics."

This article, appearing in New York Magazine, brings together many of the events coinciding with the election of Barack Obama. The article focuses on what is really a Schumpeterian outcome: The impending destruction of the current Republican party.  The article brings the idea forward of a last ditch effort by the Republicans to maintain the status quo: the old-school base that disliked welfare and followed ethnocentric rhetoric.

Check it out. You won't be disappointed.

American manufacturing jobs are not coming back

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/23/news/economy/unemployment_benefits/index.htm?iid=SF_E_River

I am going to talk to the class about the topic which we covered last time. I think this news relates to the Charles’s book. Mid-level jobs such as manufacturing have been taken to China, so the middle class in the US has been losing the jobs. According to this video, in China, they work faster and better. It sounds like that to me, both countries have people who are looking for jobs but people in fishtown US, cannot go to college because of the quality of education they receive and income levels. There is a difference. Thus, I believe that it is one of the reasons of the increase of the number of people in fishtown, US.

Israeli attack on Iran might pull US into new war

http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-attack-iran-might-pull-us-war-131844092.html

“An Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear sites could draw the U.S. into a new Mideast conflict, a prospect dreaded by a war-weary Pentagon wary of new entanglements.”
People in America are feeling the effects of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has already increased the debt.
However, Obama is due to meet with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on March 5. His decision would be a big event which could be decisive in determining Obama’s votes. The Media could also play a big role of priming us for a war.

campaign madness....

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/maher-donates-1-million-obama-super-pac-131123895.html

Syria: Policy Options

This link will take you to an op-ed from Friday's NYTimes arguing the case for military intervention.  On the page where the column appears are links to other columns dealing with the situation in Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/how-to-halt-the-butchery-in-syria.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Rick Santorum cites Murray

This is a very interesting article on the subject of contraceptives.  It relates to our conversation from class the other night.  Rick Santorum cited Charles Murray in the GOP debate last night and it has caused quite a stir, as many people see Murray as a racist.  

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/02/23/430916/santorum-cites-racist-author-to-defend-his-views-on-the-dangers-of-contraception/?mobile=nc

http://wegoted.com/blog/default.asp?NID=1135

Washington Rules reading schedule

The Bacevich book is available via Amazon at the link below.  For our March 6th class, the first 145 pages (The Introduction and Chapters 1-3) are assigned.  The final three chapters will be the assignment for the March 20 class.)

http://www.amazon.com/Washington-Rules-Americas-Permanent-American/dp/B0055X4CS8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330037666&sr=1-1#_

Affirmative action - yeh or ney?

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear a case on affirmative action. For those of you unfamiliar with the history of affirmative action in the United States, Grutter v. Bollinger came before the Supreme Court in 2003 upholding affirmative action (the right to use race as a factor in the admissions process) at the University of Michigan law school. The reason? Promoting diversity was the main reasoning given and so long as a quota system is not used, the 5-4 decision on the courts said this affirmative action process was ok, not neccessary, but acceptable.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Ginsberg said that she didn't believe affirmative action practices would be necessary in 25 years. And that was the idea of affirmative action (using Brown v. Board of Education as an example) in the first place: to give minorities an equal opportunity.

Cases since have considered if compelling reasons exist to consider race as a fact. In a case involving public schools, the answer was found to be no. Other cases influencing this topic have been pursed in racial discrimination in employment and promotions.

Since these decisions many groups have investigated the differences. An article from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education states:

"At 13 of the 18 [high-ranking] universities that supplied data to JBHE, the black student acceptance rate was higher than the acceptance rate for white students. In some cases the difference was substantial. For instance, at MIT the black student acceptance rate was nearly twice as high as the 15.9% acceptance rate for all applicants. At the University of Notre Dame 55.6% of black students were accepted compared to 30.4% of all applicants. At the University  of Virginia 62.2% of blacks were accepted whereas 38.2% of all applicants received notices of acceptance...Six of the high-ranking universities we surveyed had black acceptance rates that were lower than the overall acceptance rate. At the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles , which were prohibited from taking race into account during the 2004 admission process, the black acceptance rate was significantly below the rate for whites. The black acceptance rate was also lower than the white rate at Washington University , Emory University , and Wake Forest University." (http://www.asianam.org/college_admission_officers.htm - for a complete table of data by school, visit this link).

So what next? The case the Supreme Court agreed to hear yesterday is a case from a student who believes she was denied admission to the University of Texas because she is white. So why does another case coming before the Supreme Court on affirmative action matter? The makeup of the court has changed significantly since 2003 with the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts (2005), Samuel Alito (2005), Sonia Sontomayor (2009), and Kagan (2010).

But today, let's play the court. What do you think about affirmative action in higher education? Is it necessary?

MoDo gets it right

In this op-ed, a great look at Santorum's religious ideals and how it is impacting the electorate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/opinion/dowd-ricks-religious-fanaticism.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_joe/

An interesting look at Iran's current status in regard to nuclear power.

What I wish Obama would say

This is a quote from Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1934-1948:

"I believe, however, that the most basic right of all is the right to live, and next to that, the right to work.  I do not think that empty stomachs build character, nor do I think the substitution of idleness and a dole for useful work relief will improve either the dignity or the character of the people affected.  We cannot expect to preserve our free institutions in this country if we condemn a substantial proportion of our people to prolonged idleness on a bare subsistence level of existence.  Further than the right to eat and the right to a position, I think the individual, whether rich or poor, has a right to a decent place to live.  I think he has a right to security in old age and to protection against temporary unemployment.  I think he has a right to adequate medical attention and to equal educational opportunities with the rest of his countrymen.  The government expenditures (…) have in large part been the means of translating these basic rights into realities." [Emphasis Added]

If This is not a good campaign message, I don't know what is. Not only does this make economic sense, it makes moral sense. What is really sad is that these calls, from the time of FDR and government as a friend of the people, are not even being made by our leaders.

Service overseas

This is food for thought and I would appreciate everyone's humble opinion on this topic. How many of us would accept to serve overseas and how many have in the past, say in the peace corps? And what country would you chose, or if you did not mind where you got posted?

Coming Apart = Idiocracy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXRjmyJFzrU&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLF26AFFCCAE1DC3AB

Seems fairly similar to Coming Apart's fishtown vs. the elite. Thoughts?

Conversation Piece

http://abcnews.go.com/US/death-row-inmate-writes-taunting-letter-life-leisure/story?id=15438651&fb_ref=.TyBPT9yTqT0.like&fb_source=timeline

This gives a look at the life of a murder row convict. This should be a conversation starter for sure. It made me angry, to say the least.

Krugman on Murray

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to post a couple of Paul Krugman's criticism's of Murray's book in his blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal". I think that this notion that the elite need to "preach what they practice" is ridiculous. As Krugman criticizes  "we’ve created a society in which many young people see no chance of ever achieving middle-class status; then we look at their failure to adhere to middle-class values, and declare that there must be some mysterious force corroding our morality." So here are just a couple of things to think about for tomorrow. 


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/blaming-the-victims-of-inequality/?scp=1&sq=paul%20krugman%20coming%20apart&st=cse

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/jobs-and-values/?scp=3&sq=paul%20krugman%20coming%20apart&st=cse


Below is another article from Krugman. In this article he points out a few things that Murray has overlooked. The main argument against Murray is that he overlooks the drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/opinion/krugman-money-and-morals.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=paul%20krugman%20coming%20apart&st=cse

Personally, I agree with him that it is money, not morals.

See you all tomorrow,
Carly M.

Wage growth from 1980 on...

Here is an interesting link that provides a truly enlightening graph on Worker Pay following President Reagan.

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/02/supply-side-destruction-worker-pay.html

Below is a quote from a commentator who gets it dead right:

Volcker would claim this as his crowning achievement. A superb job managing to keep incomes suppressed for decades. If only they were more effective at containing the price of food, energy and housing at these low levels while raising incomes.
Odd that countries from Chile to China are trying to grow incomes faster than inflation with great success while the US tries to grow incomes less than inflation to manage inflation.

This is what leads to an accumulation of wealth at the top. The bit about Chile and China is also very important as the models of economic growth promoting low inflation (one central tenet of monetary policy and those advocating a return to the gold standard) does not increase wages efficiently or quickly.

Xi Jinping visits Iowa

Good evening,

What did you all think about Xi Jinping's visit to Iowa? I thought it was a really fascinating connection between Iowa and foreign relations. So called "kitchen table" diplomacy can't be overlooked in politics. Xi is likely to become the next president of China. Leaving a good impression on an important figure  may influence vital issues in the future such as trade and dealing with North Korea. I was also intrigued by Xi commenting, "for me, you are America" in the Muscatine living room. Whatever your opinion may be about Chinese politics, I believe he is absolutely correct. The United States isn't the do-nothing Congress in Washington, it's the welcoming people who are industrious, hard-working, and good-natured. Xi's comment reflects that Iowa hospitality is the way he remembers the United States. Iowa nice may be not have won over Stephen Bloom, but it sure has won over Xi Jinping.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017518741_apususchinawhoisxi.html?prmid=head_main


Have a lovely Friday and weekend,

Melissa

The Growing Impact of Social Media

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t3#/video/tech/2012/02/16/nr-dhs-social-media.cnn

I came across this video and wanted to hear people's opinion about it. It seems like Homeland Security would argue that the practice of monitoring social media postings shouldn't be considered an invasion of privacy since it's only viewing what people post publicly. However, I have a feeling that some people would be disagree with such a claim. The video also mentions that the intention of this practice is to uncover the what's of certain events rather than the who's associated with them, but is this really the case? Another question is whether or not this practice merits its $11 million price tag at a time when the country is looking for ways to cut spending.

Our Nation's Children: Destined to Fail?

In tonight’s PS 460 Capstone we shared our analysis of Ricci’s volume. It came through that there have been many failures. Narrowly, I’d like to raise the topic of how our system is failing children. At my internship this summer for a statewide, nationally recognized nonprofit organization I was fortunate enough to look at many statistics illustrating the horrible state of children in America, even in Iowa. An organization called Kids Count gathers data on the various states of children. Here is a brief summary of a handful of the statistics for your digestion:

·         In 2010, 11 percent of children had at least one unemployed parent and 4 percent have been affected by foreclosure since 2007.

·         The national average total death rate (deaths per 100,000 teens ages 15-19) is 62. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanic/Latinos the rate is 58

o   Black/African Americans the rate is 83

o   Asian and Pacific Islander the rate is 33

o   American Indian Alaskan Natives the rate is 87

·         The national average for the percent of teens not in school and not high school graduates (ages 16-19) is 6%. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites: 4%

o   Black/African-American: 8%

o   Asian and Pacific Islander: 3%

o   American Indian and Alaskan Native: 13%

o   Hispanic/Latino: 10%

·         The national average for the percent of teens not in school and not working (ages 16-19) is 9%. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites: 7%

o   Black/African-American: 13%

o   Asian and Pacific Islander: 5%

o   American Indian and Alaskan Native: 17%

o   Hispanic/Latino: 12%

·         The national average for the percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment is 31%. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites: 24%

o   Black/African-American: 47%

o   Asian and Pacific Islander: 22%

o   American Indian and Alaskan Native: 49%

o   Hispanic/Latino: 38%

·         The national average for the percent of children in poverty (income below $21,756 for a family of two adults and two children in 2009) is 20%. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites: 12%

o   Black/African-American: 36%

o   Asian and Pacific Islander: 13%

o   American Indian and Alaskan Native: 35%

o   Hispanic/Latino: 31%

·         The national average for the percent of children in single-parent families is 34%. By race:

o   Non-Hispanic Whites: 7%

o   Black/African-American: 13%

o   Asian and Pacific Islander: 5%

o   American Indian and Alaskan Native: 17%

o   Hispanic/Latino: 12%

See a pattern? Minorities, especially Black/African-Americans and American Indians and Alaskan Natives, have the cards stacked against them: they are not graduating from high school and some are not working; they come from single parent families, thus sole-income earning families; and they live in poverty over twice that of other races. Examining the map of the United States (page 8 of the Summary.pdf linked below), it is evident that the Southern United States is at a disadvantage as well.

So to you, I pose the question about why and how these structural or just unfortunate fates will change politics? Or for the future of America? Does it matter that this disparities exists for the children of America?

Kids Count 2011 Summary data

Thomas Edsall on Charles Murray

This link to Thomas Edsall's blog, "Campaign Stops," at the New York Times website, gets you to a very fine assessment of the political influence of Charles Murray on American social policy.  It reviews the impact of his former books, especially Losing Ground as intellectual grist for the Reaganite assault on the social safety net inherited from the New Deal Era.  The main thrust, however, is reserved for the already-buzzworthy Coming Apart which only recently was published.  As with his earlier work, Murray goes right after the key premises of liberal or progressive policy thinking.  In this case, he does so by focusing on whites' experience in the US over the half century from 1960 to 2010.  (The deliberate detour around race is no doubt a product of the fallout from The Bell Curve, in which Murray and his coauthor, the now-deceased Harvard Professor of Psychology, Bruce Herenstein, claimed to show that IQ was inherited and, since it was at the crux of the achievement gap between winners and losers in our society, it was basically impervious to the effects of interventionist social policies.) 

In Coming Apart, the case is made again that the differences between winners and losers over the past half century are due principally to "intractable" differences in worldview -- work ethic, intelligence, morals -- between the better-educated 20% of American caucasians and the woefully "under-socialized" 30% of American whites.  Unlike their college-educated cohorts, the bottom-feeders are a pathetic lot, unmotivated and unprepared for productive lives, unmindful of social norms that used to operate powerfully to minimize out-of-wedlock births and repeated dependence on the public dole.  Students of political economy, especially to disappearance of manufacturing jobs that has inexorably accompanied globalization, will have some difficulty with Murray's overly-dispositional bias.  But without such a bias, he has hardly a case: one cannot argue for the elimination of government-supplied public assistance unless the alleged beneficiaries of public benefits are deemed no better off -- and typically worse off -- with such policies in place as opposed to trashed in the ashcan of history.

For Murray, the most interesting message to emerge from his plumbing of the depths of misery among elements of American society hovering at the margins of poverty is his admonition to the winners "to preach what they practice."  Rather than remaining reflexively tolerant in the face of society's cast-offs, the successful should trumpet the values that Murray believes brought them the lifestyles that they have attained: Murray knows how to provoke his progressive readership.  The Edsall essay cites a three-part response to the volume already in print by the foreign policy intellectual Russell Mead, who is hardly a paragon for progressive thought.  Given the real-world political impact that these ideas are already having, it is hard to deny the warrant that Murray's volume has as a candidate for Capstone consideration.  Toward that possible end, here's the link to the Edsall essay:

OPINION

February 12, 2012

Campaign Stops: What to Do About 'Coming Apart'

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

How should we respond to the diagnosis of America's ills offered by Charles Murray?

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/what-to-do-about-coming-apart/?emc=eta1

News Flash No. 1

Elise, Walker and Zak will be especially interested in this breaking news since they were along with the May in DC group in 2010.  Among our appointments, you will recall, was the visit with Chris Hayes, in the tiny office across from the Supreme Court.  Then a sit-in on MSNBC for Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, Chris is now a host of his own news program, "Up with Chris Hayes," on Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC.  This morning he announced that the book he was toiling on when we visited has been completed.  The Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy analyzes the crisis of authority -- across all major institutions -- now raging in America.  As such, it would be a strong candidate for consideration by this capstone.  Unfortunately, however, the publication date is slated for June 2012!  :-(

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Christopher Hayes (Jun 12, 2012)

News Flash Number 2

Colleagues,

Those of you who've utilized the New York Times interactive maps to examine election results by county will be especially intrigued by today's map at the paper:  It uses the same technology to chart dependence on government "welfare" as a percentage of their household income.  The key optical take-away:  the areas of greatest government dependence are located geographically where the electorate is most anti-welfare and anti-big government.  No lie: check it out--

U.S. | February 12, 2012
Where Americans Most Depend on Government Benefits
See the share of Americans' income that comes from government benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans' benefits and food stamps.

Wartburg Model United Nations

Hey fellow classmates.

Sorry that it took me forever to give you more details about Wartburg Model United Nations. But here is the idea of what we are trying to do with Wartburg MUN.

What is MUN?

Model United Nation is an academic simulation of the United Nations that aims to educate participants about current events, topics in international relations, diplomacy and the United Nations agenda. I have done a research and most of the colleges in Midwest have MUN organizations on campus. Wartburg did not have one yet there was an attempt for MUN in 2006 that was led by International Club on campus but there were not many students at that time willing to make commitment to run this organization. However now there is great interest our there to have a Wartburg MUN and therefore each of you is welcomed to join the meeting every other Tusday at 4:30pm in McCoy East.

What is the purpose of Wartburg MUN? 

The purpose of Wartburg Model United Nations is to get a first-hand experience in how the world’s largest international organization i.e. the United Nations carries out diplomacy and facilitates pacific settlement of disputes.  The Wartburg MUN would give students a platform to engage in professional diplomatic procedures and discourse to get further insight into the policies and interaction of countries around the world.

What can we do as PS 460 class?

What I am purposing here it that we spend two class period of Capstone and each of us research one country and participant in mini-conference that Wartburg MUN initiative is hoping to organize during the second week of March. The idea is that we get all the countries prior to break and you guys use some time to research and write your paper. At first it might look like its so much work but believe me it’s a great experience and really helps increase discussion and understanding of professional diplomatic procedures.

Some of the sections that we are hoping to cover and talk are: Millennium Goals, Peace and Security, Human Rights. 

Under those three sections we have different topics like:

Millennium Goals:

•       End Hunger and Extreme poverty

•       Environmental sustainability

•       Child health

Peace and Security:

•       Nuclear Weapons

•       Regional Disarmament-Africa

Human Rights

•       End Violence Against Women

•       Indigenous population

•       Human Trafficking 

Out of the three sections only one will be covered during the conference. But we would like to hear your opinion which topic you would prefer? 

Finally, even if we are not going to do this as a class I really encourage all of you to take part on this mini-conference because it will really be worth experience. If you have any additional question that would like to know and get more details feel free to post here and we can get a discussion going on. Thanks!

Interesting Postulate on Financial Regulation

I was reading this afternoon and came across this interesting idea on financial regulation.

"If Regulation Q, for example, put a ceiling on the rate of interest that savings and loan institutions could pay on their deposit liabilities, the consequence was an incentive to create a new financial instrument, with the look and feel of a deposit account but with different legal status, to which Regulation Q would not apply. Here is the origin of the money market mutual fund. Subsequently, whenever interest rates rose above the ceiling, funds would move from the regulated to the unregulated account, and borrowers and lenders would find one another outside the regulated sector, especially the largest and most sophisticated borrowers and lenders. Experience with this kind of 'disintermediation' as it was called, produced political pressure from the regulated sector for equal treatment, pressure that was amplified by the voice of borrowers who did not have access to the unregulated sector and so were cut off when funds flowed elsewhere. The result was gradual relaxation of Regulation Q, and a similar dynamic led to relaxation of other New Deal-era regulatory strictures, as the acceptance of one financial innovation emboldened the invention of others." [emphasis added] - Perry Mehrling in The New Lombard Street

What I find to be fascinating about this is that the reaction was not for further regulation but the opposite, less regulation. This is a very interesting idea and it seems to promote increased risk-taking in the financial world. It has similar connotations in my mind to easing regulation on Marijuana to decrease the incidence of marijuana violations. But where one has impact on an individual, in the case of marijuana, the other has aggregate effects on risk.

Other Possibilities

Could we propose a system in which students select their own readings and then report, in the form of book reviews, the results? This could help the class in covering many different topics while also allowing students the independence of selecting volumes they are interested in.

Just a thought. Happy Saturday!

Number 6: Charles Murray's "Coming Apart"

This one has just been published.  Written by the controversial critic of the American welfare system and the co-author of The Bell Curve, the title of this volume almost says it all.  What it doesn't say is that the data are drawn from whites only in the US over the past half-century.  This one is lengthy, but it is already spawning a lot of talk.

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray (21 customer reviews) List Price: $27.00 Price: $16.20 You Save: $10.80 (40%) 15 used & new from $13.50 Usually ships in 9 to 12 days

Five: The Washington Rules

This volume is a far more fundamental critique of American foreign policy than Brzesinski's.  Bacevich is a retired Colonel in the Army, and now a professor at Boston University.  He gives a devastating critique of the premises and wisdom of the pax Americana that has dominated international affairs since the end of World War II.

Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (American Empire Project) by Andrew J. Bacevich (81 customer reviews) 22 used & new from $6.59

Fourth: From Zbig

For the foreign policy intellectuals, former national security advisor Zbgniew Bzresinski (Mica's dad) argues far more conservatively about America's future role in the world than does Professsor Bacevich.  This takes the world as it is and is therefore more likely to affect the so-alled defense intellectuals than Washington Rules.  Obviously, more for the IR-inclined than the domestic-policy/politics oriented crowd.

Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power by Zbigniew Brzezinski (6 customer reviews) List Price: $26.00 Price: $15.60 You Save: $10.40 (40%) 43 used & new from $13.85 In Stock

Nominee Number Three: Bubba Speaks

The next nominee is a slim volume by William Jefferson Clinton. Its title and author pretty well point to the policy emphases the former president would like his successors in the policymaking perches to consider:

		Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy by Bill Clinton (86 customer reviews) List Price: $23.95 Price: $14.13 You Save: $9.82 (41%) 115 used & new from $7.95 In Stock

Nominee Number Two: Not from the Right

This little volume is hot off the press by Thomas Frank, best known for his What's the Matter with Kansas?, the best-selling effort to understand why voters of modest means have been drawn to the Republican Party at a time in history when its policies have been less than friendly to families of modest means.  This one is aimed at understanding the rise of the Tea Party and its electoral allies whose success in 2010 returned America to divided government and policy gridlock.  It shows Frank's keen eye for developments not well chronicled in the mainstream media; and it reflects Frank's rye wit as well.

		Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right by Thomas Frank (41 customer reviews) List Price: $25.00 Price: $15.95 You Save: $9.05 (36%) 60 used & new from $10.90 In Stock

Following Melissa's Lead

First, thanks are due to Melissa for putting up some concrete ideas on how to satisfy the writing-intensive requirements for PS460.  These are a good place to save spinning wheels and hence time in class, so feel free to engage her post by use of the comment button.

Second, let me use this forum to do the same thing with respect to reading/topic possibilities for the remainder of the term.  The volumes are ones that I'm reasonably familiar with.  All are considered "important."  Some reflect "perspectives in political science" that are more tilted toward the IR/global challenges; others are aimed at gaining some understanding of this strange moment in American political history.  This one was used by last year's class; it's likely on its way to becoming a classic.  The title gives away its focus. The links take you to Amazon's website where you can find extensive discussions and reviews on each volume. 

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker (54 customer reviews) List Price: $15.00 Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%) 71 used & new from $8.59 In Stock

Idea for the rest of class

Hello and happy Friday!

I was just thinking of some ways we could take care of the rest of the required writing for our class. Personally, I would prefer a few medium sized papers, rather than one large one. I was thinking we could do them on topics that are of interest to us, for example one paper could cover an event in the past in relation to political science, the next could be a paper covering a current political issue that we are concerned about, and the final one could be any topic as long as it is tied into political science. If each paper was 5-6 pages, everyone would fulfill the requirement as long as they kept track of how many pages they needed from each paper.

I also think it would also be good if we would use class time to give presentations about our findings in the papers and discuss them with the class. This way everyone gets the chance to be listened to in class and teach everyone something.

This idea sounds ideal to me, but it could be combined with other people's ideas. Please let me know what you think as it is just a suggestion.

Thanks,

Melissa

More true facts (about Obamadogs)

For PS460 folks (and others with posting privileges for Obamadogs), you can check the stats on the number of visitors to this blog by clicking on "Overview" under the Design section of the blog.  Nicely charted, this shows we had 89 page views on Thursday, February 2nd.  Most were likely due to the mention of this blog, along with a link, in the Alumni Newsletter sent out on that day.  In the three days since, we've seen quite a bit fewer page visits, including a series of posts by me.  Most have been aimed at soliciting comments or posts from our class members, but with no effects.  Hmmnn...

Big Hair is Back: Another true fact?

One may wonder what the relevance of this truth-claim is to Obamadogs.  But here we deal with the world as we find it, and fashion magazines (Mrs. DT subscribes to every one of them) have stipulated: "Big Hair" is back!  Apparently, this is true only for women to this point in time.  But who decided that this is true?  For those who were not aware of this, remember: you heard it first on Obamadogs!

As with all such truth-claims, saying it's so doesn't (necessarily) make it so.  But if it is so, what are the political implications (if any)?

HootSuite Photos

 

Since Tom Brady has big hair -- or bigger hair than Eli Manning -- it must be New England's day . . .

 

DT

 

More true facts . . .

President Obama's record on jobs

www.barackobama.com

Since taking office, the President has created or saved millions of jobs and acted to get our economy back on track. Help spread the word.

 

A fitting post for an Obamadogs blog.  The recovery isn't breaking job-creating records, but Friday's .2% downtick in the unemployment rate makes it appear as if it's gaining momentum.  This is a reality that complicates the Republicans' campaign hopes if the trend continues. 

 

Just for fun: New England 31, New York 21

 

DT