"American Sniper" Breaks Super Bowl Weekend Record

Not everyone was watching the Super Bowl yesterday. At least some folks were still out there going to see American Sniper, because it's still breaking records.

This weekend, it broke the record for the biggest Super Bowl weekend gross ever.

@BryanCaskey I went, with my Dad, to see the movie again today. We chose the moment well -- we had our choice of seats this time...
— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) February 2, 2015

Anyone else go to the movies this weekend?

The Senate Report On the CIA Reminds Me of A Movie

There's been a lot of debate about the use of the CIA's interrogation techniques, in the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report. It's been a chance for everyone to re-litigate the entire issue of whether we tortured detainees, and there's been some good debate on this.

It's certainly an open question, and anyone who conclusively comes down either way without acknowledging the other side may have a point is not a grown-up. This debate about torture is a debate about where you draw the line on what can and what cannot be done to captured combatants in war. Reasonable minds can disagree.

However, what really upsets me about this report has nothing to do with the issue of torture. What I find completely revolting about this report is the the fact that the main findings of the committee are essentially that the CIA didn't tell them about all this, and they are shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in Rick's. But that's not the movie reference I thought of.

Essentially, this report is some Senators trying to avoid the fact that they asked the CIA to do whatever it took to avoid another 9/11. Do you remember how America was after 9/11? I do. 

Everyone was looking at the smoking rubble of the twin towers, a crater in Pennsylvania, and a hole in the side of the Pentagon and saying: We cannot let this happen again. You guys in the CIA need to take the gloves off and make sure this doesn't happen again. Keep the country safe. Stop playing nice - go after these people. Do everything you can.

People who weren't openly saying this were silently happy to go along with those who were. Not a single representative of the people rose up to say Well, wait. Maybe we don't need to change how we deal with the bad guys just because they did something bad to us.

Accordingly, the CIA started turning up the heat - as they were asked to do. They didn't do this on their own accord. We the people, through our elected representatives, asked them to do this. The Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed on exactly what the CIA was doing. And now, they're trying to say: Hey, I didn't intend for you to be mean to those poor souls! I wanted you to do everything possible to keep us safe while being perfect gentlemen! I have no culpability for these things that you did!

I know. Politicians evading their responsibility seems so farfetched. In any event, this whole thing reminded me of the end of Clear and Present Danger. In the movie, the President gets very upset when a Columbian drug cartel kills a personal friend of his who was laundering money for them (and stealing a little bit for himself). Therefore, the President tells his Chief of Staff to get the CIA to start really going after the drug cartel. The CIA basically does what it is told and starts really hurting the cartel - killing people and breaking things.

Eventually, the President decides he's had enough of the operation, simply says it should go away like "It never happened", and hangs all the men out to dry, who are then killed by the cartel. Ryan is neck deep in the whole thing and eventually goes to confront the President. Here's the scene:

The President tries to tell Ryan that he is "just becoming aware" of the certain things that happened, and that he "never ordered any" strike against the cartel. Ryan, having no patience for the cutesy little game of plausible deniability, tells the President: I will not have you dishonor their memories by pretending you had nothing to do with it.

That's the note that the Senate Report strikes for me. They're trying to pretend that they had nothing to do with the CIA's methods, when it's crystal clear that they asked the CIA to take the gloves off. Specifically, the WaPo had an editorial pointing this out:

On May 26, 2002, Feinstein was quoted in the New York Times saying that the attacks of 9/11 were a real awakening and that it would no longer be “business as usual.” The attacks, she said, let us know “that the threat is profound” and “that we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.”

This report is a purely political document, and its intent is to allow the authors to engage in some moral preening. They're simply engaging in a political act to curry favor with their constituents now that the existential threat from terrorism is a distant memory, and the people who swallow this report are doing the same thing.

I accept that we did some brutal things to people. We the people, asked the CIA to do exactly that. Maybe we made a decision in a moment of weakness that some of us regret. That's fine. However, it's just a damn lie for the Committee to say that they didn't know what was going on.

They all knew and approved. We The People all knew and approved. If you feel regret for what happened, that's fine. If you're ok with what we did, that's fine, too. But for goodness sake, take some responsibility for your actions.

Thoughts on Halbig, the ACA, and Suing the President

Had an interesting post bring up some thoughts over at Brad's blog. This is what got my train of thought rolling:

"I think what he [The President] did was react to criticism and complaints, and try to make the implementation less onerous and painful to those complaining, or likely to complain. To give the law a chance to start working, if only partially. Whether he had the authority to postpone implementation of parts of the law is something I don’t know enough to judge." -Brad

Complaints and criticism of a law do not convey authority to the executive branch to delay enforcement of existing law. I hope that's a fairly non-controversial statement. If you disagree with that proposition, then you'll be happy to know that in a Caskey Administration, I may choose to simply delay enforcement of the capital gains tax, or delay enforcement of the minimum wage laws. How does that sound? Not so great, right?

The executive (on multiple occasions) has unilaterally delayed the enforcement of the employer mandate. That's a fact. No part of the ACA allows this.

I think it's fairly obvious that he did it solely for political purposes, but I would certainly concede that to be my opinion. Nevertheless, the motive for delaying enforcement of the law is irrelevant for our purposes here.

Some more history: The Republicans do not like this law. They have never liked this law. Not one Republican voted for this law. In fact, the law had to be pushed through Congress using arcane rules to avoid a conference committee after the election of Scott Brown, on the platform of opposing the ACA.

Congress basically ignored the will of the people and did an end run around the normal procedures of legislation to produce this law. It's now the law, after surviving a constitutional challenge ending at SCOUTS, on a 5-4 decision.

So here we sit. The supporters of this law are now so dedicated to holding onto it, they are willing to chuck principles aside to keep it.

For instance, people are willing to simply let the executive pick and choose what parts of the law he wants to selectively enforce so as to not subject the public to the full force of the law as written - which would arouse the anger of the public, and be politically negative for Democrats. This is short term political gain, for long term bad precedent. It's bad precedent to allow the executive to selectively enforce any law. If you think selective enforcement of the law is OK, then you really haven't thought it through.

Additionally, the Halbig suit: The relevant statutory language says that only state exchanges get the subsidy. It's clear. That's what the text of the law says. However, if you do that, then the law essentially collapses, as a significant number of states didn't set up exchanges.

Obviously, the people who wrote the law never considered that states might simply refuse to set up exchanges. (To quote Rick Perry: "oops") The non-lawyer defenders of the ACA are now reduced to saying "Hey, man, it was a typo" while their lawyers are saying "Ummmm yeah....this text is ambiguous, so we need to rely on Chevron Deference to the IRS in it's rule-making authority here" (What the Fourth Circuit did.) To me, the first argument is laughable, and the second argument is weak to the point of being almost laughable.

Now, Brad may not have heard about this lawsuit, but people have been talking about it for a long time. Pretty much since the law was passed, and as Nancy Pelosi said "We learned what was in it". This isn't new.

Halbig only became a problem now that lots of states have refused to set up exchanges. But normally, issues like Halbig aren't a problem, because the executive just goes back to Congress and they pass a new law to make some changes. However, the executive doesn't want to do that, because that would mean negotiating with the Republicans, and that's apparently not on the table.

Accordingly, rather than openly acknowledge the problem and concede that the law needs additional legislation, you have the executive defending a tenuous legal position and hoping the Courts will hold their nose and bail him out, since he doesn't want to involve the legislative branch in the legislative process and involve the will of the people again.

Keep in mind, Halbig isn't a constitutional question. It's simple statutory construction. The Supreme Court has pretty consistently ruled that statutory construction pretty much starts and ends with WHAT DOES THE FOX TEXT SAY? We write down laws with words, with a commonly understood meaning for a reason, sports-fans.

It's the job of courts to read statutes as written. If they need fixing rather than reading, that's the job of Congress. I really don't think that SCOTUS is going to bail out the administration on this. I can bore you with some law on this, but just take my word for it that this isn't a controversial issue when you boil it down to the statutory construction. If SCOTUS grants cert, my guess is they'll uphold the statute as written and basically tell the government to go fix it on their own - using the legislative process. That's just my guess. Anything's possible. (By the way If you don't believe judges should be originalist/textualist, then I don't see how you can also want them to be life-tenured & unelected, but that's a whole 'nother debate.)

Now....why are the Republicans doing this? They want the law enforced as written to highlight how horrible it is and to highlight the bad precedent being set here. Ulysses S. Grant said: "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution."

That's basically the premise here. You want the ACA? Then take it. Take it good and hard.

Having said that, I think the Congressional suit against the President is stupid. Congress doesn't need to sue the President. Congress is the most powerful branch of government. They are just refusing to flex the muscle. It's called the power of the purse. (Stuff Madison Said, Vol. II)

"I didn't care if people stole the newspaper. I just wanted them to read it."

That was Brad Warthen's best line from his interview on the radio last night.

He was discussing what motivated him while at The State, and he had this line to make the point that he didn't care if his opinions pleased the newspaper's advertisers or not. He didn't write things or take positions to try and sell newspapers. He just wanted to be read. (I can relate to that in a way.)

I thought that was the best line of the program.

Some Thoughts on Hobby Lobby and Why Liberals Fail at America

Now that the long holiday weekend is over, it's back to work. That meant I had a full day today, so no time for blogging until now. I haven't blogged much here on the Hobby Lobby case.

If you go over to Brad's post on that case,I probably wrote more over there than I have over here. In any event, I've covered the legal aspects of the case over there, and I don't really care to rehash that aspect. What I've been mulling over the weekend was the absolute freakout that the left had over the decision. Frankly, it doesn't seem that earth-shattering to me. What really puzzled me was all the hair-pulling, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. I saw all that and thought....really? Um, ok.

It puzzled me that people are aghast to discover a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protects religious freedom. The whole reason you pass a law like this is to protect religious freedom and give them accommodations. That's the whole point. But then, this upcoming point was made on Ace's podcast, and it bears repeating here, on this much less frequented corner of the internet, because it clarifies the issue.

The whole point of RFRA is to make special provisions, and to make accommodations with different beliefs. Because normally, the majority of a group finds it annoying to have to make these accommodations.

Accordingly, we passed a law about it - the RFRA. For instance: If a guy at your job site is a Muslim, then he may have to take a break three times a day to pray to Mecca. Obviously, not everyone gets this break. The rest of you guys have to keep digging the ditch. But to get along with the Muslim guy and be tolerant, we've decided, with RFRA, that we are going to respect that this guy has a belief system that isn't what everyone else's belief system is. Therefore, we're going to cut him some slack from the general rule that you don't get three breaks a day to pray in the direction of Mecca.

And for the most part, liberals are seeming fine with some of these special exceptions. But as soon as you have just one special exception that goes against their belief system, they want to crush people and impose their will on them. And then when you point out that the law also protects this religious group, all the liberals start yelling: "What the hell!, Now we're making laws for EVERY SINGLE RELIGIOUS GROUP?? It's going to be like ANARCHY here!" Well....that's kind of what the law says. What did you think the law said?

And that goes into the main point: One of the things that most people think was a good quality in liberals is that they wanted to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. I did. I kind of thought that it was a good thing that liberals at least thought about that problem a lot. They always seemed worried about a small group getting steamrolled by the conventions of the larger group.

But...it turns out that liberals don't really think about that. They don't really care about small groups having their own little exceptions if it the small group isn't part of their voting coalition. It was never about principle for liberals. For them, it's purely a transactional process for members of their voting coalition. LIberals are not fighting about the principle of the minority, because when it gets extended to a Christian, they're aghast, and they want to overturn the RFRA. They don't believe in the principle of protecting this religious minority. This whole thing has been very revealing for me.

I've seen liberals basically say that they don't support pluralism of viewpoints in general. They support specific exceptions and accommodations for people in their voting coalition - and that's it. It's not that liberals are principled and good people, they've just decided to do favors for people who vote like them.

And I hear these liberals say, If only these trouble-making Hobby Lobby Christians could be could be forced, somehow coerced by the government, to behave properly, then we wouldn't have these problems!

They fail at America.

Ramius Killed Political Officer Putin Last Night in VA-7

Over on Facebook where I'm a newbie, Brad referred to Eric Cantor as the one time "zampolit" who kept Boehner in line, and how it was somehow fitting that Cantor would lose to a Tea Party challenger.

When I read the word zampolit, the first thing I thought of was of Political Officer Putin, who was similarly taken by a rouge agent, who then changed the standard orders.

The Tea Party is burning the orders from Moscow.

I think my attempt at humor works quite poetically, as Ramius killed Putin, and then covers it up by claiming he slipped on some....tea.

Watch out for that tea, Eric.

Everything always comes back to The Hunt For Red October.

Gun Related Discussion at Brad's Bar and Grill

I've been pretty light on content here, but it's been a busy week. The billable hour is a harsh taskmaster. Anyway, there's a gun-related post over at Brad's place, so you should go there and discuss. It's about the knuckle-heads in Texas who decided open carrying AR-15s into coffee shops was going to win hearts and minds...or something. Anyway, the NRA kind of distanced themselves from it.

Is is smart to take this to a coffee shop? Probably not.

Tell him I sent you.

You're All Conservatives Now

Dan Henninger had a good piece in the WSJ about the current intolerance on college campuses today.

Berkeley's [former chancellor] Mr. Birgeneau is famous as an ardent defender of minority students, the LGBT community and undocumented illegal immigrants. What could possibly be wrong with this guy speaking at Haverford??? Haverfordians were upset that in 2011 the Berkeley police used "force" against Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza. They said Mr. Birgeneau could speak at Haverford if he agreed to nine conditions, including his support for reparations for the victims of Berkeley's violence.

In a letter, Mr. Birgeneau replied, "As a longtime civil rights activist and firm supporter of nonviolence, I do not respond to untruthful, violent verbal attacks."

Smith president Kathleen McCartney felt obliged to assert that she is "committed to leading a college where differing views can be heard and debated with respect." And Haverford's president, Daniel Weiss, wrote to the students that their demands "read more like a jury issuing a verdict than as an invitation to a discussion or a request for shared learning."

Mr. Birgeneau, Ms. McCartney, Mr. Weiss and indeed many others in American academe must wonder what is happening to their world this chilled spring.

Here's the short explanation: You're all conservatives now.

I guess students today feel like they have to protest something.

h/t Brad W.

The Caskey Doctrine

In case you missed it, Obama said the Obama Doctrine was too long to explain...whatever the heck that means. I think it means he doesn't really have a plan.

Anyway, I put in my two cents over at Brad's Bar and Grille on what I thought isolationism is a bad idea. Since not everyone looks at everything on the internet, I'm re-posting it again here.

China is looking at two American allies (the Philippines and Japan) that are essentially defended by America and America’s nuclear umbrella. And now, whether or not we defend them from Chinese aggression is an open question. That’s bad – and I’ll tell you why.

Once American allies believe that our defense guarantees are a hollow gesture, they will begin to develop and secure their own defenses, and we have been taking that for granted for a long time. For instance, Europe has no defense capabilities to speak of. That’s not going to happen in perpetuity.

If the US ends up abdicating its role as the guarantor of the NATO alliance and our allies such as Japan and the Philippines, then we will be leaving space for these individual nations to develop their own forces out of necessity.

Essentially, the different nations will begin to balance against each other. That balancing will be self-perpetuating. As each nation grows its military, another nation will be forced to do the same. Japan will have to balance against China. The Baltic States will have to balance against Russia. Rinse, lather, repeat. It will grow and grow. Then we will have what will essentially be a multi-polar world in terms of military power – like in the 1920s and 1930s.

That’s bad. All of these balancing forces act in relation to each other in ways that are unpredictable. And that ultimately leads to a military confrontation, which can then catch fire.

And even if America abdicates its leadership role as the guarantor, we will still be the hegemon (lead country). We’ll be the hegemon for at least the next 50-80 years or so regardless of what we do or don't do. So, we’ll be drawn into one (or more) of these conflicts.

Accordingly, it’s in the interest of the USA to ensure that there is no conflict between two nations. Because we’ll be almost assuredly drawn in to any conflict between any European nations, Japan, China, or otherwise.

Aside from the military aspect, we want to maintain a world economic and trade system that is maintained and secured by military force if need be. But it’s much harder to secure the world’s trade if you have many, different, competing poles of power, seeking to create little places of their protection for trade. China just did this recently.

Eventually, transit such as shipping lanes and air corridors could be closed. And that leads to miscalculation by other nations…which leads to war…which we want to avoid.

That’s why we want to “get out in front” of this sort of thing. We don’t want to allow bigger, broader conflicts to come up.

The problem with isolationists who advocate “staying out of it” in certain areas of the world is that they don’t realize that “staying out of it” isn’t a permanent decision. Sooner or later, the US will be involved.

The only question is do we want to be involved up front, with minimal conflict, or do we want to wait to get dragged into a shooting war between nation states later?

That’s the Caskey Doctrine, anyway. (For whatever it’s worth.)

Smart Guns are Kind of Stupid

This technology was developed in 1911.

The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that he wished to "explore" the idea of smart-guns.

I think that one of the things that we learned when we were trying to get passed those common sense reforms last year, Vice President Biden and I had a meeting with a group of technology people and we talked about how guns can be made more safe. 

By making them either through fingerprint identification, the gun talks to a bracelet or something that you might wear, how guns can be used only by the person who is lawfully in possession of the weapon. 

It’s those kinds of things that I think we want to try to explore so that we can make sure that people have the ability to enjoy their Second Amendment rights, but at the same time decreasing the misuse of weapons that lead to the kinds of things that we see on a daily basis.

As an initial matter, smart guns are a stupid idea. You're starting with a firearm that is pretty basic and introducing another layer of complexity that carries additional points where the firearm can fail. The batteries could die, electronics aren't water-friendly, bio-metric scanners require a good scan, and probably wouldn't work at all with gloves. Radio signals can be jammed, and electronics just don't work 100% of the time like we want them to. If you can't trust your iTunes 100% of the time, do you really want to wait for your self-defense tool to sync up?

Aside from the fact that it's just a stupid idea, Holder's attitude really annoys me. His tone is dripping with the implication that the federal government will indulge us citizens our adorable little rights, on the condition that he can make our firearms safe enough for him.

Our basic liberties and rights aren't something that we "enjoy" like building model airplanes or cooking. The second amendment is serious stuff. It's the last stop check and balance against the state. Honestly, the nature of the firearms that a citizen owns isn't any of the government's darn business. Regulate some interstate commerce, and otherwise get out of the way.

If there are citizens out there who want to introduce another layer of modern technology into their firearms, and have some sort of Wi-Fi connection for their handguns, they're free to do so. There isn't a demand for a smart gun, so as always, this leftist idea is so good, they'll have to force people to comply.

As for me, I'll stick with the technology developed circa 1911.

Frank Underwood, Faulkner, and the South

Good conversation over at Brad's place about House of Cards, the South, and Faulkner. My thoughts are down in a comment from his original post, so you'll have to go over there to read them.

If you're a southerner, your history is something you grapple with.

Trigger Discipline (Do's and Don'ts)

Brad had a post today about some Jihadists who wear knock-off clothes. I'm not really sure what his point was, but the guy in question had some poor trigger discipline. (Finger directly on the trigger; go see for yourself) Also, it was an RPG, so we're not just talking about a stray round from an AK here. Don't be this guy.

If you're a regular reader of this blog (or just have good gun safety) you know the rule. Say it again, this time with feeling: 

Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you have acquired your target and made the decision to fire.

Here's an example of good trigger discipline.

The Five Worst Christmas Songs Ever

Happy Monday.

Brad's got the list of worst Christmas songs over at his place, and my only quibble with it is that I like Frank Sinatra's version of Little Dummer Boy. Otherwise, I concur.

On a related note, one of my pet peeves with Christmas music is people who play it before Thanksgiving. There should be a law allowing people to make a citizen's arrest when that occurs.

Anyone got any other Christmas songs they could do without?

Lone Survivor Trailer

Brad had an interesting post on top war movies according to British newspaper, The Guardian. Although the Guardian's list isn't very good, the commentariat came up with a better list.

One that might make the list in the future is Lone Survivor. Lone Survivor is based on the true story of a failed SEAL team mission in Afghanistan to take out a high value Taliban leader. The mission ended up compromised and ultimately the first Medal of Honor of the Afghanistan war was awarded posthumously to one of the SEAL team members. Here's the trailer.

If it's like the book, it's not going to be a rah-rah America movie, but it will show the sacrifice that our soldiers, sailors, and airmen make in war.

Do You Even Know A Tea Partier?

A Yale professor learned something about people who identify with the tea party: Tea Partiers are more scientifically literate than non Tea Partiers.

 Here's my favorite part though:

“I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,” Kahan wrote. “But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the tea party,” he continued.

So, this Yale professor has a negative preconception of a group of people, but he's never gotten to know anyone in that group. Guess who sounds kind of stupid to me?

Over at Brad's place, he's got a post/comment in which he compares them to "backwoodsmen who came to Jackson's inaugural and trashed the White House".

Much like the Yale professor, I don't think Brad actually knows any people who identify with the Tea Party. If he did, he would know that they're actually pretty polite and courteous people, and he probably wouldn't call them nihilists and arsonists.

It annoys me that my being in favor of smaller, more limited government and more personal liberty somehow brands me as a nihilistic, anarchist/arsonist.

Deal for the Palmetto Compress Warehouse?

Maybe.

It looks like the City of Columbia is pretty close to a deal on selling the old warehouse.

I was against the City buying the real estate, and I still am. However, if the deal goes through, it's a good outcome.

Doesn't mean I'm wrong, though. Just because something works out doesn't mean that the process was correct.

Friday Open Thread

I'm starting my weekend early, so here's the Friday Open Thread with a news roundup that you've all been waiting for. Feel free to talk about whatever suits you.

1. US will allow Syria to miss the first deadline. I'm shocked, I tell you...shocked.
2. ObamaCare exchanges in 36 stats cannot calculate how much people will pay. We're in the best of hands.
3. Mediation continues in the "Baby Veronica" case. Hopefully, people will make reasonable decisions.
4. Navy Yard Shooter used an illegal gun. He sawed off the end of the shotgun with a hacksaw. Anyone wondering if he paid the requisite fee and fill out the proper paperwork? We obviously need to ban hacksaws.

If you don't like my open thread, go check out Brad's. He may have something different. If you don't like that either, turn off your computer and go to the Greek Festival. It's the weekend. Enjoy it.

We're Going to Degrade Assad's Spoon Inventory

A "senior official" at the White House just described the planned attack:

The strike, as envisioned, would be limited in the number of targets and done within a day or two. It could be completed in one fell swoop with missiles, said one senior official familiar with the weapons involved. A smaller, follow-on strike could be launched if targets aren’t sufficiently damaged.

A second senior official, who has seen the most recent planning, offered this metaphor to describe such a strike: If Assad is eating Cheerios, we’re going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he’ll still be able to eat Cheerios.

Seriously.

We're going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. These are the people in charge of my country right now. Sleep tight, America.

I don't know about the rest of you campers, but I can eat cereal pretty well with a fork. And isn't the idea to make it where I don't want to continue eating the cereal or don't have the capability to keep eating the cereal?

First of all, that's the dumbest metaphor for a military operation ever. Wait a second! What if that's not a metaphor? What if that's the plan! Gotcha, Assad! You're spoonless now. I bet you'll think twice about using chemical weapons now that you don't have any spoons. Looks like it's all solid breakfast food for you from now on!

Second, remember: we're just "sending a message" here, y'all. And the message is what? You're reduced to forks now, Assad! Maybe we should just drive by Assad's house and throw a lit sting of black cats in his front yard. That might have the same effect. Also, I hear egging some tanks and airplanes is a good way to send a message. Don't forget about the ol' flaming bag of poo on the doorstep. That's a classic.

So, to sum up: This is a hugely important moment for the entire world, and it requires an unbelievably small response from the United States that is merely symbolic, all so the rest of the world will respect us. Got it.

Maybe we should just send Assad a dead fish wrapped in a newspaper.

OPERATION: Total Clownshow

Also, per the piece above: "Degrade" is not a military textbook term, the four officers and officials said. In other words, it is open to interpretation. I had a little riff going on this word over at Brad's place, so I'd like to go ahead and say this now: I was right.

Further Thoughts on Student Loan Debt

I had to wake up early to tend to some BBQ I'm slow cooking overnight. While up, I checked around to see if the internet was still awake. It was.

I checked on Brad's blog. While over there, I saw that Mark asked me a question about student loans. I started writing an answer, but it turned out to be too long for the comments, so I posted it here.

Mark, if you've made it this far, welcome to my little corner of the internet, and here's my answer to your question about student loans:

My entire life, I’ve heard everyone in charge (parents, politicians, administrators, professors, etc.) insist that there is insufficient funding for education and that having a college degree is the pathway to a better life. That's certainly true, but only to a certain extent, and only at a certain price.

But as any economist will tell you, when you subsidize something you get more of it than you would otherwise have; and the price of what you're subsidizing will rise. Accordingly, we've all (as a country) agreed to subsidize the cost of going to college since we all think it's such a great thing. We have subsidized it too much.

The ocean of student-loan money artificially boosts the cost of tuition, which creates a new cycle of indebtedness by students. How else to explain the way in which the cost of college tuition has outpaced the rise in the price of almost every other measurable good. Higher tuition makes “pay-as-you-go” a less-likely option. Think about it. Do you know anyone who pays for college "as they go" by working? It's just not possible to earn $25k over the summer when you're 18 years old. I bet that some of y'all actually used to "work your way through college". That's now impossible. Look at this chart:

Sure enough, when you have a credit bubble, you're going to start increasing the amount of debt. Student loan is higher than all other types of loans (except mortgages).

How is college subsidized? Student loans. How easy is it to get a student loan? About as easy as it was to get a subprime home mortgage in 2003. Anyone remember how that ended?

Soft student loan requirements make it easier for colleges to spend money poorly. The federal government provides a loan to virtually anyone who applies for one, which enables university administrations can spend foolishly (which they do).  There’s so much money, why not hike salaries and pensions for professors? Why do you think there are so many college administrators now? Why not offer programs and majors that are of questionable intellectual or economic merit? Why not offer beautiful, expansive "health club" like gym facilities for the students?

I know people with six-figure loan debt, multiple degrees and few job prospects. There were few lending standards – hey, it’s free government money – so they took on loan after loan. The lenders kept making loans. Other friends of mine used loans to gain useful degrees with lucrative job potential, but they still came out of school with a huge load of debt that will take decades to repay. Guess what it's harder to do when you have a big student loan: buy a house, buy a car, save money to get married and have kids. I'm lucky. I got a great job as a lawyer, and I'm able to repay my debt.

But I would almost have to say that the group only 5-8 years behind me isn't going to do as well. It's really hard to find good jobs out there to support your student loan debt. Here's that previous sentence in a chart:

The consequences of the student loan bubble are pretty far reaching. Remember, this debt isn't dischargeable in bankruptcy, so it's there forever. A decision you made when you were 18 to borrow $125k to major in "Gender Studies" at Wellesley is going to follow you around until you die or pay it off. Why do you think so many young people have left the labor force, taken part time jobs, and/or moved back in with their parents? It's the combination of high student loan debt and a lousy economy.

So, that's my answer as to why it's the principal - not the interest - that's the real problem with student loan debt.

I'm Sick - So Are Others

I wasn't feeling good yesterday, and now I feel really bad. In any event, I'm swiping this post from Brad's blog since I don't have the energy to do my own post.

I was going to say something about Jahar being on the cover of Rolling Stone, but he beat me to it. Why reinvent the wheel, right? Apparently, there is a "Free Jahar" movement, and it' mostly made up of women.

I guess there's the old stereotype of women who like a "bad boy" type, but does that really go all the way to terrorism?

Yes, he's a monster, but what dreamy eyes! /sigh

Maybe it's because he's in jail, and he's unattainable. Who knows? I kind of thought that stopped at the guy who cut class in high school, or the guy who was in a band rather than working in an office job. Either way, I don't think there's a male analog to this. I can't remember any attractive female criminals with a male following.

Then there's the whole other issue of Rolling Stone glorifying the guy. Terrorist as a rock/culture icon? That's pretty sick. I would expect this from some Al-Quaeda magazine that is trying to glorify his violence and recruit more terrorists, not Rolling Stone. Maybe they're trying to come up with a new, modern version of Che.  I hear he killed people and had soulful eyes as well.

It reminds me of the Tom Wolfe piece about "Radical Chic".

Whatever the reason, if you're part of the "Free Jahar" movement, you're stupid.