But On The Other Hand...

Pat Buchanan chronicles the destruction of City University of New York, once a gateway for the best and brightest of modest means.

In D.C., nearly half of all black and Latino students drop out. Of those who graduate, nearly half are reading and doing math at seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade levels. D.C. academic achievement ranks 51st, last in the U.S.

Yet last week came a report from New York that makes D.C look like M.I.T. Some 200 students, in their first math class at City University of New York, were tested on their basic math skills. Ninety percent could not do basic algebra. One-third could not convert a decimal into a fraction.

If this was a representative sampling, nine in 10 CUNY students not only do not belong in college, they do not qualify for their high school diplomas. As for that third who can't do decimals and fractions, they should not have been allowed into high school until they could do sixth-grade math. 

On the other hand:

The good news imbedded in all this bad news is...

A very well-prepared young person is a joy to admissions committees and academic faculties.

Maths, English, Languages.

English, Maths, Languages,

Languages, English, Maths.

Need to hear it again, Moms and Dads and kids?

Now, get back to work...the world needs competent people, recession or no.

Governor Palin Wins A Round

Hats off to the Governor for not letting a Hollywood gasbag get away with his BS.

He's not likely to try it again...and you notice, she did her recitation from memory!

The Nippert Gift To Cincinnati

In an overwhelmingly generous and unexpected gift, 98-year-old Louise Nippert has placed $85 million of capital underneath the performing arts organizations that have in great part defined Cincinnati as a city.

A deep love of classical music prompted arts patron and philanthropist Louise Nippert to announce a gift of $85 million on Thursday to preserve music at the highest possible quality in Greater Cincinnati.

The Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund will help maintain the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as a major, full-time professional orchestra. It also will allow Cincinnati Opera to continue a 90-year collaboration with the Cincinnati Symphony in its pit, and allow dancers to pirouette to live music at Cincinnati Ballet well into the future. It is the largest single gift by an individual to a Cincinnati arts organization and one of the two or three largest ever to a U.S. symphony orchestra.

A classically trained singer who was a soloist in Mahler's Symphony No. 4 with the Cincinnati Symphony in 1957, Nippert has shunned the limelight as a philanthropist. In 1995, she told The Enquirer that her motivation behind charitable contributions was simple: "Giving is enough - you see how it affects everything, and you don't have to sit back and pat yourself on the back."

Did you read that last sentence? 'Giving is enough...'

Giving is enough. No need for publicity, fanfare, the public giving of alms.

Green Shoots Award Finalist, not only for the size, location and timing of the gift, but primarily for the attitude of the donor.

Giving is enough.

Sunday Evening 13 December--Random Thoughts

The alarm rang early this a.m., but once again, church was worth the drive. Gospel reading was on the Annunciation, we sang the Standford Magnificat in G, sermon was spot on.  I need the reminder that even if the world is in chaos, God is in charge.

One of the joys of the season is XM Radio's Holiday Pops, which we receive via our Direct TV service. The programming is magnificent, inspiring, a real blessing.

One day, not soon, I plan to tell the tale of the journey of a member of the family, one of the finest people I have ever known, through the dark swamp of academia.  He has held up well, but the darkness he has encountered is truly profound. At this point, I can say I now understand why my ancestors considered a journey in a small sailboat across the North Atlantic preferable to continuing to live under English rule. I appreciate Adams and Jefferson more than words can say. I feel keenly for all my dear friends who have to endure present life in the UK and Europe.

If you don't read Jesse's Cafe Americain, I urge you to begin. He brings a moral insight rare in our day.
His link is to the left on the page.

Today's header from Jesse is especially inspiring, a quote from Dickens:

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Have a great week. Hug your family extra good, and make sure they know they are loved.

Remember Gabriel's reassurance to Mary: 'With God, nothing is impossible.'

Cultural Enrichment

Every now and then, in spite of myself, I stumble across a gem.

From Gates of Vienna: The Cultural Enrichment archive.

It's a list of horrors, some well-known, many less so, compiled to chronicle the effects of the Islamization of the West, and our leaders' refusal to confront obvious problems.

I'd usually invite you to enjoy the read. But I can guarantee you won't.

Are The Buyers Leaving The Room?

Some days, it feels like the same news circulates 'round-and-'round.  My interest is always piqued when two thoughtful sources, from two different spots on the planet, are discussing the same locally occurring phenomenon .

First, Jesse discusses the drop in price/rise in yield of US Treasury securities.

Foreign central banks were noticeably light buyers, much preferring the shorter durations like the three year.

Primary Dealers took a big chunk of the offering. Current trends suggest that Ben will take it off their hands through monetization.

The Fed will be under signficant pressure to buy the bonds as the bias to the short end of the curve creates imbalances that precipitate a funding crisis, and a possible currency crisis, at the Treasury in 2010 if this trend continues. It is unlikely that they will raise rates when monetization is a viable, if not preferred, option.

Short form--the world is getting cold feet about the US's situation, and our ability to produce any manner of prudent leadership to set things straight.  The Beloved Leader's address on the economy, where he declared that we will have to borrow and spend our way out the mess created by borrowing and spending, certainly did not help.

The BBC's ever-droll Robert Peston tells the same tale about the UK gilt.

There's an unmistakeable smell of the 1970s about finance, politics and economics: the City recovering from a banking crisis; a super-tax on wealthy bankers; fears that international investors will stop lending to the British government; excitable chatter about the likelihood of a hung parliament. All we need now is a power cut and I would swear I had been transported back to my teens (if only).

Hmm...the same approach pursued in both countries isn't working, and the marketplace is letting both governments know. They are walking away from the auction, or sitting on their hands if they remain.


In late October 2007, my bride and I made one of our jaunts to the Lawrenceburg Antique Auction, in a county seat just north of the Alabama border.  It has always been a wonderful event, and we've furnished much of the house from it. Vast amounts of wonderful pieces for sale, big crowds, high-rolling bidders--great entertainment, even if we didn't buy much.

October 2007 was different.  Parking was easy to find.  We walked in to a half-empty room, and gloom was in the air. The bidders had not shown up, and the ones there were sitting on their hands.  Many times the opening was met with stone silence, followed by a lower opening, followed by silence. Fabulous pieces were selling for 30% of what they would have purchased a year earlier. We lusted after them, but could not think of where they could fit in our small house.  We ended up buying several small tables, which we did need, enough to fill the pick-up truck, and paid under $300 for the lot of them. I honestly felt badly for the auctioneer. A few times, we and other bidders would raise the paddle just to keep the proceedings underway.  We knew then that something was seriously amiss in the economy.

I wonder if we are now on the front end of the same scenario with US and UK government debt. Congress and Parliament will not restrain themselves, so the marketplace called upon to keep it all afloat has begun to demand interest rates concomitant with the risk they face.

Seriously. Would you bet much money on a government running these sorts of deficits, and occupying its time on how to expand spending via health-care, environmental regulation, stimulus packages, bailouts of both industries and states? 

And a war thrown in for good measure, just to keep it interesting.

It's not the economy, stupid, to contradict Bill Clinton's  Ragin' Cajun.  It's the culture, the one that thinks all of the good things of life should fall into our hands like ripe fruit from the tree, because, well...it's us. We deserve it!

At least we think so.  The world is perhaps beginning to disagree with us.

While Washington Steadfastly Ignores The Mexican Border...

...the Mexicans surely don't!

This evening, CNN's Anderson Cooper will treat us to a tour of one of the tunnels used to smuggle drugs (and criminals) from Mexico to the United States.

Amongst the things Mexican culture has traditionally done well, engineering is near the top of the list. Remember those ancient pyramids, and that highly developed city that Cortez encountered in the sixteenth century? This tunnel is a very slickly designed piece of work, requiring some real design and mining expertise, definitely not an amateur's efforts.

Mexican culture is also known for its imbedded corruption. This could not have happened without the active cooperation of people in some level of authority in Tijuana(and likely, Mexico City). The tunnel is wired for electricity, complete with ventilation, etc. That's no small wiring job, and would be a pretty major consumer of electricity from the state-owned electrical utility. Imagine attempting a similar tunnel under Des Moines, by way of comparison.

This is not another 'Those Bad Mexicans' diatribe. Mexico is what it is, always has been, and likely always will be. In my misspent youth, I worked there for two years, and no news from there can ever shock me.

The problem lies with us, here on our side of the border. First, we have a culture with a huge appetite for marijuana and cocaine amongst recreational users, and heroin and worse amongst the more afflicted.  If we weren't a market here for this bad stuff, there would be no effort expended on tunnels there.

Second, we have steadfastly refused as a nation to enforce the border with one of history's worst-run countries. And both places are worse for it. We can't fix Mexico, 'cuz Mexico doesn't want to be fixed. Even if it did, it's their job to put their house in order, not ours.  In the meantime, we can protect our citizenry from the criminality, corruption and general stupidity that seems to flow inexorably northward.

Why does this matter to us, here in the heartland, specifically?

Last week, in a little town thirty miles south of here, one of the many who made it across the border got himself liquored-up, took to the wheel of his uninsured car, and killed two innocent people by vehicular homicide. The crime took place on a road we and our children often travel. It could so easily have been us.

Had our government carried out its duties, those innocents would be Christmas shopping for their families, the alcoholic Mexican would still be a drunk, but he would be a drunk in his homeland; and the devastated families would not forever face Christmas in the shadow of this needless tragedy.

These tragedies keep happening, and won't stop happening until we summon the will to make it stop.

The culture shapes the economy(and political landscape)...

RBS and the British Taxpayer. Not A Love Story

The BBC's Robert Peston once again weighs in with that English dry humor:

In my wilder imaginings over the years about the future of the public sector, it never occurred to me that one day as a taxpayer I would be financially liable for the overdrafts on 3.2 million UK retail bank accounts, £10bn of loans to British small businesses and a further £10bn of UK residential mortgages provided to 70,000 home owners.

He goes on to detail how the taxpayers of the UK will be paying for RBS into the indefinite future.

It's not pretty.

I wonder if this was assembled in order to be inexorably in place before next year's elections. Brown and Labour must certainly know they are on the way out.

Which raises the next question: What else do they have under their sleeve?

America's Best High Schools

US News and World Report released its list of America's best high schools today.

The list is based on a 'three-step process that examines how well a school serves its entire student body (average students, disadvantaged students, and collegebound students).'

It's an impressive list, not the least for its wide geographic distribution.

The top 100 list is here.

It's an inspiring read.

I get to work with a student in one of the top 30 on the list.  It's an old building, with literally no campus around it.  Students attend based on achievement, and a lottery is also involved.  The level of motivation is very high.  For every student there, there is at least another in the city happy to replace him. Hmm.  No reports of drugs and discipline problems. He thrives there, generally, except that he is so far ahead of the maths program that boredom is a real challenge.

In the general attitude of cynicism towards schools, it's good to be reminded that greatness is possible in unlikely places.  It's not so much a matter of spending money on the latest and greatest physical plant, as it is about building great faculties, and fostering that sense of community that tends to pull everyone along in the right direction.

If what we see here can be our expectations of normality, we're in for great days ahead.

The culture shapes the economy...

Gone Fishing

We found it! The governmental approach to society!