Angelo M. Codevill in his seminal piece “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution” at The American Spectator describing the new American political dichotomy of the Ruling Class and the Country Class:
Its attitude is key to understanding our bipartisan ruling class. Its first tenet is that “we” are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.
This idea most precisely describes why I left academia. I have an MA in Medieval English Literature and was about 1/3 done with my PhD when, in the midst of a semester, I up and left the academy forever. I loved my work,1 but I hated academia (the environment) and most of those in it because of their inability to admit their own intellectual limits, particularly when it came to matters outside of their expertise, and their utter need to impart that intellectual betterness to everyone else, even when they were full of shit. They are convinced that the way in which academics process information is inherently superior, and that, because of their inherent intellectual superiority, they were/are more qualified for political determination and impose that determination on everyone.
The entire piece is one of the few political writings that changed the way I think about the American polity and how, in many ways, I’ve ended up where I have in the American political spectrum. I highly recommend it for everyone.
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1. I was part of a team of academics which would analyze badly damaged manuscripts (fire, water, worms, times, etc) and use digital processes to “restore” them to readability. In my field, the research was invaluable, and personally it was interesting to bring to light what others have been unable to read for centuries.
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Fuck. Man falls and injures himself at home, police rush to the scene after paramedics are done and taze the man 3 times for resisting arrest (the only charge, so we’re clear).
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According to a Reason Foundation study on road quality in the US, the people of New Jersey are the dumbest fucking people ever.
Their roads are the most expensive in the nation, costing a smooth $1.1 million per mile to construct, and another $62,748 per annum in administrative costs. To rub salt in to the wounds, NJ roads are also among the top 3 for shittiest pavement condition, and top 6 for overall cost-effectiveness. They spend far more than any other state, yet have some of the shittiest roads to be had.
Hows about yous guys get the backroom wheeling and dealing and union coverage bullshit out of the way so yous can have better roads at a much lesser cost?
Great job, NJ. Great job.
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From The Denver Post:
As kids head back to school, conservative Christian media ministry Focus on the Family perceives a bully on the playground: national gay-advocacy groups.
School officials allow these outside groups to introduce policies, curriculum and library books under the guise of diversity, safety or bullying-prevention initiatives, said Focus on the Family education expert Candi Cushman.
“We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled,” Cushman said.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That’s a good one. Guys: the “Christians and white people are the only victims of meaningful discrimination” meme is getting fucking old.
Public schools increasingly convey that homosexuality is normal and should be accepted, Cushman said, while opposing viewpoints by conservative Christians are portrayed as bigotry.
That’s because is it fucking bigotry.
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There’s a good piece at Downsizing Government which sums up the woes of MMS/oil industry partnerships.
Also, I’ve never quite understood why regulatory capture is described by Leftists as a free market failure, rather than a government failure. If government regulators are charged with making sure that industry players abide by sets of rules and restrictions, why is it industry’s fault that those regulators don’t do their jobs?
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Is there anything that could make Senator Baucus’ disdain for the American people more clear than openly admitting he isn’t even slightly interested in doing his goddamn job?
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You see? We definitely need government overlord protectors because businesses aren’t responsible enough and don’t recognize that they have a monetary incentive to do what is good for their businesses all on their own.
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CBS4 Denver:
A former Secret Service agent who oversees Denver’s police, fire and sheriff’s departments submitted his resignation Monday amid community anger over police officers caught on video hitting a man during a violent arrest.
[. . .]
An independent police monitor publicly clashed with Perea over the decision to suspend rather than fire the officers.
Monitor Richard Rosenthal said in a report last week that he believes the police video of the incident clearly shows one officer doctored his account to keep the second officer from getting in trouble.
This is exactly why we need scrutinizing public review boards rather than internal police investigations for looking in to police misconduct. The case has been reopened, and may be persued by the FBI, and the government official in charge of dealing with police misconduct has stepped down due to public anger over what is clearly a cover-up.
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The New York Times on Cuomo, Clinton’s Housing Secretary (because the founders definitely put a proviso in to the Constitution that the federal government oversee fucking housing):
And, in an effort to reverse decades of discrimination against blacks and Latinos, Mr. Cuomo pushed the government-sponsored banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to buy more home loans taken out by poor and working-class borrowers.
But when presented with chances to throttle back on the exploding subprime market, guard against predatory lending and reel in mortgage brokers and lenders, Mr. Cuomo several times faltered and backed down, interviews and records show.
He did not heed local officials and others who wanted him to make Fannie and Freddie publicly report details about the loans they bought.
And he chose not to impose penalties and other deterrents to ensure that the giant public banks did not promote dangerous lending.
2 things:
1. Why is it discrimination to not supply a loan for those without a means to pay? I don’t want to say that we don’t have a history full of horrible discrimination, or that many minorities who could afford repayment weren’t discriminated against, but not loaning money to poor people because they can’t repay isn’t one such example regardless of whether many or even most of them were minorities.
2. I especially like how they still frame subprime lending as “predatory” when they were necessitated due to federal housing policy, and F&F’s promotion of the “homeownership at all cost” mantra of the late 90s and early naughties. I can guarantee that that if government didn’t mandate giving out loans to those who couldn’t afford to repay them in the name of universal home ownership, banks would not have been rushing to lose money.
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