Obama Administration Suppresses Scientific Research

Did the EPA suppress a study that was critical of the Obama administration's line on so-called global warming? It certainly looks that way when you look at a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) pdf that published the email exchanges between a scientist who wanted to run more tests and an EPA that wanted to push the administration's line of taking over domestic production of energy. (CEI is a think tank out of DC that has at least two CMC alums, Marlo Lewis and Richard Morrison, working for it.)

Over at The Forum, I recently got into a heated (you'll pardon the pun) comment exchange with Kim Munoz CMC '10 about the inherent problem with trusting science that is conducted by government regulatory bodies. In short, there's no incentive for the scientists to have their data speak for itself. No scientist ever got more funding by saying, "hey, let's run more tests before we go on a banning crusade." But many scientists get more funding by hyping the threats posed to us all and distorting our country's priorities and potentially even our entire economy.

Well, let's take the climate change report suppression as exhibit A in a very long trial against those who would politicize science. Given that the EPA stands to gain tremendously with more power and a larger budget, it's not suprising that they wanted to suppress a report that would be critical of the threats mankind faces from anthropogenic global warming. Careful readers of the email will note that the EPA administrator in question laments the budget cuts of 66%. It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or a climate change scientist, for that matter -- to see that the passage of a law that puts the EPA at the center of the economic regulation will probably come with more "grants" and more money for the EPA.

And no, I'm not above saying, "I told you so, Kim."

Some Ideas I've Been Having Lately

A few random thoughts on the passing scene. They are in no particular order and they aren't exactly Claremont related, but I'm working on them in my head and figure that I would share them with you.

We'll do the shameless self-promotion first.

• I was contacted last week about being on NPR to talk about the future of the Republican Party. I don't know what qualifications I have per se to talk about this, but I said yes. Do you have any ideas about where the Republican Party is going? I want to speak in sound bites, but also appear original and witty and to offer solid advice. Feel free to let me know via email or in the comment section. I've heard from enough people that the Republican Party needs to split. I'm not convinced that that would be a good idea. Also, I think the point about Sanford has been belabored too much. Allow me to be the first registered Republican to admit this: who cares that he's sleeping with some hot Argentinian woman? I'm ticked that he used taxpayer money and that should be paid back, but at the end of the day, he's been a great governor for South Carolina. And on the plus side, it helps my man Mitt in 2012.

• I attended FIRE's conference in Philadelphia a weekend ago. I met some very interesting and insightful people of all different ideological stripes that were committed to ending the abuses of liberty on America's campuses. I spoke at the conference on how Ilan Wurman, Sam Corcos, and others and I use the blog to promote freedom of speech and conscience on the Claremont Colleges when newspapers like The Forum and The Student Life were missing in action. I mentioned how we've been able with the help of others to score key victories against would be censors on our campus, including the White Party fiasco and David and Kyle's ordeal with Pomona College. I would have liked more time for questions (and indeed I kept my remarks short as a result) but alas, we didn't have the time for them as my co-panelist talked in a little too much detail about using video. (Fascinating presentation, but an argument for effective use of PowerPoint if ever there were one...) If anyone has a question related to starting a blog, etc., I'd be more than willing to talk your ear off.

Ideas that I've been wrestling with.

• I've been at work thinking of ways to encourage more people to donate blood. The more I research, the more fascinated I get with it. Did you know that the WHO doesn't believe in compensated blood donations, but wants to set an international standard of unpaid, voluntary blood donation? I can't figure out why this might be. To me, anything that can be done to increase the flow of blood is a net positive. I should have a Forum blog post about this in the near future, with particular relevance for Claremont McKenna. I'm sure it will ruffle a few feathers, but alas, some feathers need ruffling. If I wanted to be liked, I'd join a monastery or get a puppy.

• I'm currently at work building a company with a older friend/mentor that will deal with individual expenditures and McCain-Feingold. It's really heating up. If you want to read our business plan, the email address is chuckwalla1022@gmail.com. I'd love to get your feedback. I'm sure CMCers and others will have intriguing ideas for how I can make the business plan more effective. Thanks already to the CMC alums I have spoken to about this idea. The group is growing rapidly and I'm very thankful to all who have weighed in.

• For work, I'm doing a project reading books about all of the new philanthropists that been joining the scene as of late. I just finished two great books on the subject. One is Dan Pallotta's Uncharitable (about how charity is adversely affected by needless regulations) and the other is Matthew Green's book, Philanthrocapitalism. I read another marverlous book titled Imagining India earlier in the summer by Nandan Nilekani, the founder of Infosys. Vishnu N. CMC '12 informs me that Nilekani's going to be joining the Indian cabinet as the head of their national ID program, in what would be first time an Indian business leader leaves the private sector to help India's government. I think such moves portend well for the future of India, even if I'm skeptical of such an undertaking as a national ID card.

CUC Announces Budget Cuts of 9.5% for 2009-2010

Claremont's University Consortium has announced cuts for the coming academic year. Am I just being cynical or does it seem as if they annouce the cuts every summer? Which, is of course, not to say that things shouldn't be cut. They ought to. Contra Costa Times reports the following:

CLAREMONT - The Claremont University Consortium plans to cut its 2008-09 operating budget by 9.5 percent for a savings of $2.4 million.
The plan includes an involuntary reduction of 10 staff positions as well as a voluntary early retirement program.
The early retirement program has been made available to staff members who are 55-years-old or older and have 10 or more years of continuous service with the consortium.
"Losing these valued colleagues will be a very personal and professional challenge to the employees of the CUC," said Robert A. Walton, chief executive officer for the consortium.
"However, the CUC remains committed to delivering quality academic and business services to these outstanding colleges even in these challenging financial times."
The consortium gives business and academic services to the two graduate and five undergraduate institutions that make up the Claremont Colleges.
In the early retirement program, qualified employees elected to retire on June 30, according to a Claremont University Consortium news release.
There were 30 employees who accepted the program. The positions will not be filled throughout the 2009-10 academic year and until the completion of the program's payout to the employees, officials said.
Additional budget reduction efforts included reducing costs for contracted and travel services, merging consortium business and budget office functions as well as senior management pay reductions.
"Wherever practical, vacant positions will remain open until financial conditions significantly improve," consortium officials said.
Forty positions will be either held vacant or eliminated starting June 30.

Verizon Service to Be Better in Claremont, CA

There's a new cell tower going up in Irvine, CA. You can find the details here, but it's going to help all of Claremont and the colleges have better phone service.

As a Verizon customer, I've got to say that I'm excited.

Will Budget Constraints Mean the End of Free STD Testing at Claremont?

Harvard College ended anonymous HIV testing due to budget constraints in the wake of a collapsing endowment. The Harvard official responsible for cutting that errr... public health serivce ... says that people who use said testing are really just promiscuous and promises to put a letter in people's file, instead of the old policy anonymous, free testing. Good for them for calling it like it is.

So if Harvard does it, I have to ask: Will the Claremont Colleges do away with their lavish subsidies?

As I've argued in the past, they ought to, if only because it's wrong for people who so clearly don't partake in a service to subsidize that behavior with money they willingly give over to the college believing that said money will be used for an educational purpose. David Daleiden, my erstwhile co-blogger, argued as much on this blog back in April of 2008. In March 2009, I asked if we really did needed eight days for school-subsidized HIV, clap, etc testing, only to be heckled by the commenters that yes, we do, because people have sex and its a public health concern.

Now let the Charles-hates-promiscuous-people-even-though-he's-not-a-social-con-likes-to-date-and-have-a-good-time trolling begin.

A Professor Supports the Iranian Demonstrators

The other day I was walking in Kansas City and I saw dozens of Persians with signs in support of the demonstrators. One of the signs was "Honk if you love justice."

I went home to check my email. And then I saw this: a letter of support of the demonstrators signed by college professors. (I'm not too wild about them quoting the ANC for support, but hey, you take the good with the bad and its nice to see tenured people actually grow a back bone.)

How many professors from the Claremont colleges have signed it? Only one.

Suzanne Orbrzalek, Department of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College

Maybe they, like our president, are just taking their sweet time.

Professor Kesler on the Problems With Women's Liberation

At the risk of getting branded a reactionary, I thought I might post this video from his discussion with Peter Robinson.

What do you think? Have there been problems with women's liberation?

Dear City of Claremont: Leave the Water Alone, You Have Bigger Concerns Right Now

Claremont meets over water company purchase while utility says it isn't interested in selling

Wes Woods II, Staff Writer

Created: 06/24/2009 05:29:41 PM PDT

CLAREMONT - While the City Council met in closed session Tuesday night about possibly buying the Golden State Water Co., a water official said Wednesday his company is not in favor of any purchase.

"Golden State Water Co. provides exceptional water service to the residents and businesses in Claremont at competitive rates," said Alice Shiozawa, district manager for the foothill district. "We do not believe the city's ongoing consideration of purchasing the water system is in the best interests of the community."

No action was taken Tuesday night despite the council meeting in closed session both before and after the regular council session.

Nonetheless, Claremont officials will continue talking about the issue for the next couple of months "at least," said Councilman Sam Pedroza.

"The important point is we're seriously talking about it," Pedroza said.

Golden State, whose Claremont office is at 915 W. Foothill Blvd., Suite E, is a public utility and a wholly owned subsidiary of San Dimas-based American States Water Co.

City Manager Jeff Parker said the council had previously met with Golden State officials in 2004 and 2005 discussed a purchase price, when the water company was known as Southern California Water.

Parker said he had seen letters that put a city consultant's estimate of the company's value at $40 million while the company's estimate was $100 million.

An American States Water Co. report

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said "GSWC disagrees with the consultant's valuation assessment. As of Dec. 31, 2008, management believes that the fair market value of the Claremont water system exceeds the $40.9 million recorded net book value and also exceeds the consultant's estimates of its value."

Councilwoman Linda Elderkin said her biggest concern was "so many residents think they want us to acquire the water company to bring the rates down, and I think it's been made clear from so many sources that it wouldn't happen for a long time. Eventually, the long-term rates would go down. In the short term, we can not do better than Golden State."

Pedroza said regardless of the outcome for purchasing the water company, the city will continue to fight water rate increases through the California Public Utilities Commission process.

"We're going through the whole process of fighting," Pedroza said.

Elderkin said the city will "consult with their attorney, examine the situation from many points of view and make a decision on if it's appropriate to do more than we've done or take it off the table."

Gulp: A CMCer Now Runs OSHA

I can't post the entire article, but you should see this section from my column about Jordan Barab CMC '75 and his new role at OSHA on The Forum:

Don’t expect Barab to be persuaded that OSHA is a waste of money and beholden to the unions he formerly worked for. Barab, in the days since he became acting OSHA head, has promised that “OSHA is back.”

Back from where? And just what kind of OSHA can we expect from Barab? Here it is instructive to look at his record, but before we do that, it’s worth pointing out his Facebook (publicly accessible from here) where he lists himself as a fan of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” and George Orwell. I guess that I read 1984 as a warning and that he read it as an instruction manual. Ah, sometimes you cannot make this stuff up. Given that even the liberal, left-leaning, former presidential candidate, George McGovern has come out against an effort to eliminate the secret ballot from America’s workplaces.

Either Barab hasn’t looked into the actual track record of OSHA — or worse, he just doesn’t care. Had he, he would see OSHA’s record of utter and abysmal failure which he should have recognized when he worked with it from 1998 to 2001 when he served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA until 2001.

After spending two years on a request from an employer about complying with OSHA from at home — now that’s speedy regulation! — OSHA finally responded and told the employer community that OSHA standards applied to those working at home as well as those working at the office. Public outcry forced them to reconsider, but that was after employers wasted an estimated $1000 dollars per home getting them up to OSHA standards and after it took OSHA two years to respond. All of this stopped more flexible work arrangements by forcing employers and employees to bear the cost of a stupid regulation. Many of those who were adversely affected were women, who wanted to stay at home with their kids and still have a career from their home office.

Not egregious enough for you? Let’s look at what happened in 2000, when Barab was also working for OSHA. Many CMCers will go on to work in the for-profit sector and like me, have aspirations of working on your own start up. At first, many of your employees will be paid hourly wages if they work on a new firm, that is, of course, until you all make serious bank when the company goes public, thanks to your diligence and hardwork. But thanks to OSHA’s unclear and silly regulations in 2000 which mandated that stock options be included in overtime pay, many firms just turned around and refused to award stock options to their hourly employees. It was simply too complex and not worth the legal hassle. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to argue that some of the early programmers who were denied those stock options might not have been too incentivized to work their hardest on the new firms that had hired them. In the free lance economy of Silicon Valley, this couldn’t have been good for start ups looking for people to move through the ranks.

Of course, OSHA, being a government entity, doesn’t regulate one of the most unsafe workplace environments in the entire federal government, the totally wasteful, U.S. Postal service, which according to Reason Magazine, “accounted for 29 percent of all federal agency workers’ compensation claims in fiscal 1994. In the same year, it paid out over $521 million in workers’ comp, death benefits, and medical expenses.” Putting it simply, we’re not only paying for the 750,000 employees of the Postal service’s generous government benefits and subsidizing the whole government-run business, we’re ignoring the very real human costs that it puts on the workers out there who would undoubtedly be safer in competitive firms that had to compete on safety, wages, etc. for the best workers.

First Things Blog Examines Sprague's Pro-Euthanasia; an Examination of the Inner Workings of a Conventional Progressive

I should have blogged about Charlie Sprague's laughable (yet utterly creepy) blog post, titled The Economic Argument for Euthanasia. Fortunately, the ever intelligent people at First Things blog beat me to the punch. (Hey, I'm overworked this summer, what can I say?) They actually believed that Sprague's argument to allow the old people to kill themselves was a satire. I wish that it were and explained to them in the comment section that no, Sprague's actually serious. Here's what they wrote regarding the post.

If this is a parody, it just proves the Smith Maxim on Satire and the Culture of Death: They always catch up to you. Look how Oregon Medicaid has already denied chemotherapy to cancer patients but offered to pay for their assisted suicides. Moreover, some real euthanasia supporters have already made the argument. Thus, Derek Humphry and Mary Clement adopted the save-money-by-killing-the-sick argument, on page 333 of their book, Freedom to Die:

A rational argument can be made for allowing PAS [physician-assisted suicide] in order to offset the amount society and family spend on the ill, as long as it is the voluntary wish of the mentally competent terminally and incurably [note: not the same thing as terminal] ill adult. There will likely come a time when PAS becomes a commonplace occurrence for individuals who want to die and feel it is the right thing to do by their loved ones. There is no contradicting the fact that since the largest medical expenses are incurred in the final days and weeks of life, the hastened demise of people with only a short time left would free resources for others. Hundreds of billions of dollars could benefit those patients who not only can be cured but also want to live.

And don’t forget the radical environmentalists are looking toward instituting increased abortion and euthanasia as a way of reducing human population and “saving the planet.” Alas: This article may be a parody, but it is already behind the times.

If you want honest and open conventional progressive opinion, go to Charlie Sprague's column on The Forum. You might remember when I wrote a blog post that demolished his defense of racism/affirmative action. Or better when, Jesse Blumenthal embarassed him in the Israel-Palestine debate by explaining what white phospherous actually was and pointing out that American servicemen have actually been awarded medals from the U.S. government for its tactical use. To stick with the military analogy for a moment, Sprague's column consistently succeeds at presenting a target rich environment for those of us that love documenting and explaining the logical fallacies and inconsistencies of the modern left. And lest anyone believe I advocate censoring him, please know that I welcome the opportunities to show just how mistaken he is.

Today, Sprague argues that we need to geo-engineer the planet because global warming might be a serious problem in the near future, but for his evidence, he asks us to believe the U.N.'s seriously flawed data.

Global carbon emissions have exploded at a faster rate than even the previously most pessimistic forecasts by the United Nations. Furthermore, global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons problem where every country wants to keep polluting and free ride off other countries costly carbon reduction programs. In fact, America’s decision to remain outside of the Kyoto Protocol has made many European governments fear that they are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage by continuing their carbon reduction programs.

I wonder if he's actually serious or if The Forum fact-checked this argument as relentlessly as it fact checks that which I write. For one, the United Nations' itself estimates that the total rise in global sea level will be only one meter! There are serious project problems with the IPCC, which other scholars have documented in their laughable entirety.

Second, he totally ignores the fact that China has become the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the Europeans were tired of losing manufacturing and jobs to China and decided to shirk on already unrealistic carbon dioxide quotas?

Moreover, Sprague fails to examine the incentives of the scientists that call for more funding of research related to targeting global warming. Or as, Nature editor, John Maddox, puts it: the "excitement of the chase leaves little room for reflection" and that "there are grants for producing data, but hardly any for standing back in contemplation."

The hubris of some people knows no bounds and that's why many scientists are itching for the ability to reengineer the planet and Sprague would willingly allow them to turn the entire earth into a Petri dish. Worse yet, when people question the wisdom of those policies, he calls them crazy in the comment section. How's that for uncritical thinking?

For those looking for a serious discussion of the politics surrounding environmental crusaders and their ilk, I would recommend this article put out by the Claremont Institute for a serious discussion of so-called global warming and its new turn as an almost religious undertaking. (Uncommon Knowledge did an interview with its author, Steven Hayward, and he's done a few internet videos that address this topic.) Unfortunately, much of our policy is based upon those quasi-religious impulses that are so clearly on display in Sprague's post.

Double Standards and the Left

A friend at Claremont McKenna has been circulating a video from John Stewart that rightly criticizes Congressman David Dreier CMC '75 for comparing the treatment of the House Republican minority to those people bravely fighting for their rights in Iran. Have a look.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Irandecision 2009 - The Oppression of House Republicans
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

I won't defend the statement as it stands, but I would point out that they were being locked out of the political process, just as the Iranians were locking out the opposition. But that's just about where the similarities end. Many lefty bloggers are acting shocked that there would be this kind of comparison.

Still, I have a longer memory. Remember when Clinton got a free pass for comparing the running of Congress to a "plantation"? I sure do.

Friend Sues Napolitano with a Little Help from the ACLU

The Leadership Institute is a group committed to helping conservative student activist organizations get organized and achieve serious victories on behalf of freedom and liberty.

One of its members, Steve Bierfeldt, is a friend of mine and is the plaintiff in a lawsuit against T.S.A. and Homeland Security's Janet Napolitano when he was unlawfully detained for possessing cash for Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty. In detention, he was threatened by T.S.A.

He's the raw audio and here's the video CNN produced and here's Judge Andrew Napolitano.

This is a rather perfect illustration of the use of technology to safeguard your rights. I spoke about just that at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)'s CFN conference in Philadelphia with Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers. It was too bad we didn't get to any audience questions, but if anyone has any, I'd love to answer them. There's no such thing as a dumb question when it comes to blogging!

On Cowboying Up and Increasing the Price of Censorship

One of the better lines from today's conference was from David A. French, formerly of the Foundation of Individal Rights for Education (FIRE) and now of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), about how we subsidize anguish on America's campuses by actually conceding that a minority's pain is genuine or worthwhile and so we give them an in on censoring. As Daphne Patai, another panelist puts it, we allow their emotional blackmail because we concede to their power.

I asked what to do about it when people call you a racist because for many students that's the worst thing that they can be called. How do you answer that remark without in a way, legitimizing it?

David A. French said that he has little patience for these kinds of arguments. Free speech requires toughness, so they say, and sometimes you're alone because of what you believe. "Cowboy up," says David French. And he pointed to the very brave soldiers who have died fighting for freedom abroad.

I would never downplay the sacrifices of the soldiers, but I would remind Mr. French that they chose that lifestyle. Many of us just want to get an education that is free from ideology and go about getting our degree. We're not soldiers for liberty and this isn't a war. And if it were a war, it's an assymetric war where unlike the soldier who gets to go home and see his family, the fighting is consent and always.

I think this "cowboy up" argument is largely a cop out and a means to say to conservative students, "grow a pair." But left unsaid is why does freedom of speech require toughness? It requires it because the enemies of free speech have increased the price of speaking one's mind. Maybe what we need to do is increase the price for the other side to censor. In a way, that's what FIRE does, but it's far too reactive for me.

Pitzer College Sure is Cutting Back!

Via The New York Times, we learn that Pitzer College "is power washing its sidewalks and windows once a year instead of twice."

Wow. They are really cutting back hard. For other examples of weird, yet oldly cool cutbacks, see the article and my Forum pieces.

Notes from the FIRE Conference: KC Johnson

Tonight I attended FIRE's second conference on free speech and academia.

The first talk of the night was by KC Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College. Professor Johnson wrote a book titled Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Case that I read early last summer.

KC Johnson had a lot to say about the Duke Lacrosse case, but I was more struck by his observation of how so much of the information -- the syllabi, emails, etc. -- was publicly available and how a lot of that data became less available as the issues related to the case went to trial. He predicted that a lot of that university provided information would dry up. He may be right, but I think that the self-promotion of academics will encourage them to put more and more information online. After all, as KC Johnson notes, academics are often hired away by other colleges. Why would they voluntarily restrict that information?

Professor Johnson also predicted that as technology gets smaller, more students will record their professors being abusive or moronic. Cameras and audio recorders are going to be in the classroom and once that information gets leaked out, trustees and parents can see what things are really happening in the classroom. In that vein, I can imagine technology that records and distributes the content throughout the internet so that it cannot be bottlenecked at YouTube.

Claremont McKenna's Creditworthiness is Downgraded

It's obviously not a crisis, but it's something that the college should keep an eye on. Inside Higher Education has more.

S&P and Moody’s Investors Service, two major rating agencies for higher education, have both been reassessing the financial stability of colleges and universities. In the last three months of 2008, Moody’s downgraded nine colleges, and upgraded only one, Danville Area Community College District in Danville, Ill. The trend grew starker in the first quarter of this year, when Moody’s downgraded 12 colleges and upgraded none. As for S&P, the agency downgraded 10 colleges and universities in the first three quarters of the 2009 fiscal year.

Among the colleges downgraded by Moody’s was Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., which dropped from Aa1 to Aa2, a category that is still deemed a low credit risk by the rating agency. Given the fact that Claremont didn’t fall into another investment category altogether, officials say they’re not terribly worried about the shift. Richard Rodner, spokesman for the college, said the rating change likely raised the interest rates on newly issued bonds by less than 1 percentage point.

“We do not have plans for further borrowing in the near future,” he said in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed. “So, I guess I would say that we do not see a significant impact for CMC.”

FIRE Conference Begins Tomorrow; Yours Truly is Speaking

I apologize for not blogging this sooner, but I'll be leaving in a few hours to fly to Philadelphia from Kansas City. My gracious co-workers at the Kauffman Foundation have given me a few days off to participate in a conference put on by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The conference begins Friday morning and it will be broadcast live on the Internet. It looks to me as if there is a star studded cast descending on Philadelphia and I'm very grateful to be a part of it.

As cliched as it sounds, it actually is a dream come true to speak to FIRE, the only truly non-partisan civil liberties organization devoted to freedom of speech, assembly, and thought in American higher education. In part, I decided to come to Claremont McKenna because of its commitment to free speech and because I had the Leonard Law to protect me if things got bad. I only knew about that stuff because of FIRE.

My topic is new media and how censorship can be defeated on campus. I will be on how the internet is proving William F. Buckley Jr. right. In God & Man at Yale, Buckley argued that getting the trustees onboard could change the culture of the college.

With the advent of technology like Facebook and YouTube, we're proving him right. Exhibit A is Kyle and David.

Yep, Adam Kokesh CMC '06 is Running

He says that if he's elected, he'll forgo the traditional $170,000 salary. I hope that's right, but we'll see.

I'm always glad to see a CMC alum run for office. Sometimes, though, Mr. Kokesh CMC '06 sounds like he thinks he's in a superhero movie. Watch the video he put up on his exploratory committee website.

How I've Come to Enjoy Writing for The Forum

After I stepped down as editor of The Claremont Independent, I've started writing for The Forum lately and God help me, I actually enjoy it. (And just so we're clear, I still believe that it should have its subsidy revoked, even though it now cuts my checks.)

You might remember my disagreements with its thankfully gone editor-in-chief over issues of censorship, but it's new editor, Abhi Nemani, runs a tight ship and he's given me the ability to write articles I never would have otherwise written. Abhi is a fair and gracious editor. I overlook some of his nutty politics and consider him the sharpest liberal on campus.

I'm going to be using my time as a blogger for The Forum to probe deeply into some ideas I have for reform at Claremont McKenna and the Claremont Colleges. So far, I'm really pleased with some of the conversations that have come up as a result. Here are the posts I've written thus far:

• "Dealing with the Deficit" about how CMC should rethink financial aid to consider us more stock issuing corporations than bond issuing ones.
• "Ebaying CMC" about how auction markets can be used to make the school more efficient with housing, courses.
• "Like it in the Ath" more, about various ideas I have for reforming the Athenaeum. My favorite of these ideas is to have the Ath videos be accessible on YouTube.

Please check them out and tell me what you think.

Jihadi Airlines, Next Stop Palau!

Today on The Huffington Post (hide your surprise)...

Dru Gladney, an expert on Uighurs, applauded Washington's decision not to send the detainees back to China, where he said they would be treated worse than at Guantanamo. Resettling them in the U.S. _ especially in the Washington area where there's a substantial Uighur population _ would have been ideal, but Congress opposed that idea, he said.

Palau will be tough for them because there aren't many Muslims in the predominantly Christian nation of 20,000 people, he said.

"They are going to have a very difficult time of it for sure," said Gladney, a professor at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California.

When the Uighurs arrive, this balmy island nation will likely seem like an alien planet, with bikini-clad women on white sand beaches, meals of fresh saltwater fish and people snorkeling with dolphins in clear blue water.

Back in the Uighurs' desert home, camels haul cargo across dusty deserts, cold winds blow off snowy mountains, and women usually cover up with head scarves. Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most remote city from any sea in the world.

Okay, so apparently the Obama administration's response to the thugs we pick up on the battlefield, is to let them have paradise in this life as well as the next. Was Disneyland taken?

I have just one more question after I saw Palau's good looking women: where do I sign up to join the global jihad and can I get flown there at taxpayer expense, too?

Henry Olsen CMC Alum Moderates Fascinating Discussion on Religion by Economist Writers

If you have a few spare hours and enjoy public lectures, I would highly recommend this Henry Olsen of AEI moderated discussion with panelists Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait about their new book, God is Back: How the Global Rival of Faith is Changing the World.

I have read nearly every book by Wooldridge and Micklethwait and can't wait to get a copy of this one!

Top Chef Masters Come to Pomona, With Hot Plates

Pomona College was the locale of the Top Chef Masters competition that debuted on Bravo a few evenings back. The chefs were to use only that which a student has in his dorm room to make a delectable meal. (Already, I'm hearing groaning from CMC students and alums that we weren't featured. Allegedly we were the scene of a porno not too many years ago...)

Check out, erstwhile TSL sex columnist and provocateur generale, Zoe Yang PO '08's blow by blow (pardon the pun) of the premiere here. (While we're talking cooking, it might be worthwhile to point to a blog post exchange that put us in hot water with Ms. Yang awhile back.)

She brings up a great point: why were the chefs allowed to use a hot plate? Those are banned at Pomona College. I'd make some crack about Pomona banning things, but alas, I'm pretty sure Claremont McKenna bans them, too.

Pomona College Student Robbed: Can We Please Carry Guns on Campus Now?

Jogger robbed in Claremont

By Melissa Pinion-Whitt

Posted: 06/10/2009 06:42:04 AM PDT

A Pomona College student out for a jog this morning was robbed by a man who asked him for directions, police said.

The 20-year-old victim was running near the intersection of College Avenue and Eighth Street in Claremont at 12:45 a.m. when a passenger in a car stopped him, said Claremont police Lt. Jon Traber.

The passenger asked the jogger for directions. When the victim approached, the man in the car leaned out of the window, grabbed the victim and threatened him, Traber said. He demanded his personal property.

The victim feared for his safety, so he handed over items that were in his pockets. The people in the vehicle drove away on College Avenue. Police said the vehicle is a black four-door 1990s Honda or Toyota. The victim was unable to give a detailed description of the robbers.

Anyone with information may call Claremont police, (909) 399-5415.

Congrats to the Claremont McKenna Class of 2009!

Your city Now, June 6

Posted: 06/05/2009 06:54:48 PM PDT

Updated: 06/05/2009 08:14:31 PM PDT

CLAREMONT NOW

Class of '09 raises thousands

The Claremont McKenna College Class of 2009 in May raised more than $15,000 in donations and matching grants during the Senior Class Gift campaign.

The campaign concluded with a 98.4 percent participation rate and $5,897 raised, according to a college news release.

That amount, combined with Parent Network Challenge grants, brought the total amount of gift-funds raised by the class to $15,846.

The participation rate was a significant improvement from last year's 95 percent overall participation.

"The ideal goal is to reach 100 percent participation, and this year's campaign fell just four gifts shy of that mark," said Andrew Carrillo, senior associate director of annual giving.

Each year, CMC competes in The Claremont Colleges Senior Gift Competition, according to a college news release.

Carrillo said this year's winner - Pitzer College - achieved 100 percent participation from its senior class.

"A number of students expressed their appreciation for the education they were provided at CMC, designating their gifts to things like scholarships, athletics, institutes," Carrillo said.

"Many members of the class commemorated the class effort by making a gift of $62, representing the 62nd graduating class at CMC, the class of 2009."

How Much Does Your CEO (or College Endowment Officer) Tolerate Risk?

A new study by Claremont McKenna professors has found its way onto The Motley Fool. Here's what the article says, 

Recent research from professors at Ohio State University and Claremont-McKenna College looked at how CEOs handle their personal finances and found "a strong and robust positive relation between personal and corporate leverage."

In other words, they found that CEOs with significant personal leverage -- in the form of ahefty mortgage -- tend to oversee companies with higher-than-average corporate leverage. And the link is even stronger with CEOs and companies that have weak corporate governance structures in place.

I don't know about you, but I find this stuff downright fascinating. I'm reading a book called, Good to Great, about how CEOs aren't necessarily visionaries, but that they represent how their company is doing. The thinking is, Steve Jobs is the epitome of Apple, and so he doesn't lead it, but direct it. 

In any event, I wonder if you can tell the difference with how risky a school's portfolio is by looking at the terms of the mortgages of its endowment officers or its college presidents...

Hmm...

 

CMC Professor Charles Kesler on Uncommon Knowledge!

Wow!

My favorite online program is Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge. And yes, this beats out the amazingly fascinating reason.tv or ted.com.

And guess who is this week's guest? Claremont McKenna Professor Charles R. Kesler! Watch the first bit here.

Kesler's discussing the many different waves of liberalism and how Obama is its fourth wave. Insightful as always, but it will be a bit dry to students who took his Liberalism and Conservatism class earlier this semester.

Gay Marriage and Claremont College Professors' Comments

Professor Ken Miller of CMC is quoted in The Berkeley Daily Planet about gay marriage. Here is the essential paragraphs.

Kenneth P. Miller, associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, recently published an article, “The Democratic Coalition’s Religious Divide: Why California Voters Supported Obama but Not Same-Sex Marriage,” that describes the electoral politics that drove the vote on Prop. 8. Miller said same-sex marriage proponents will need to make inroads with the Christian community in California if they are to produce a different outcome in 2010 or 2012.

“They need to persuade those Christian voters that extending marriage rights to the gay community is consistent with their religious beliefs, not undermining them,” he said. “There are a lot of strong Christian arguments for and against gay marriage.”

I agree one-hundred percent with the notion that gays should try to persuade Christians and not use the bench to legislate what they want. It seems to have worked well in New Hampshire and Vermont, why wouldn't it have worked in California? It would have saved us a lot of fighting.

As you know, I have some very heterodox views on gay marriage. I don't think that there's a right to marriage and that the state has a right to limit it, but I think that if gays really wanted to win this issue, they would couch it in a "any-two-people-living-under-the-same-roof" get the same economic benefits of marriage. If this were to happen, you'd suddenly have a lot of heterosexual couples, siblings, business partners, etc. brought in to support it. Who doesn't want a lower tax burden? Such an effort would unite gays with a whole host of different constituents. (They might even pick up a few votes from girlfriends who want their boyfriends to move in wit them.)

I think the philosophy that allows gay couples to adopt children and then robs those children's parents of the tax benefits of marriage is fundamentally flawed.

As it put in May of last year,

As a pro-life, non-religious Republican, I feel that if we are going to be the party of life, we must also be the party that allows adoptions for it must be so that having a parent is better than having no parent at all. Put simply, it must be better to be raised by a gay couple than to drown at the bottom of a Chinese well [. . .]

I suspect, though that the homosexual left which is controling this issue, wants to use the marriage issue to mainstream homosexuality, which tactically is a fool's errand. You can't use the power of the state to force people to accept something that they think is aberrant and dangerous without causing a tremendous amount of social strife. Witness all the fighting over abortion.

And so, I'm grateful to see gays and their activist allies trying to make some economic arguments in favor of homosexual marriage. Careful students of history know from reading Akhil Reed Amar's masterful book, America's Constitution: A Biography that the reason women got the right to vote wasn't the Suffragettes, but the laws of supply and demand. Here's what Amar writes around page 425 or so,

In 1869-70, Wyoming Territory broke new ground by according women equal rights with men to vote and hold office. Twenty years later, Wyoming entered the union as the first woman-suffrage state. Colorado, Utah, and Idaho soon followed suit. An overly simple yet relatively robust explanation for these developments is that women were an especially rare and precious resource in the West. Under the laws of supply and demand, where women were exceptionally scarce, men had to work that much harder to attract and keep them. By letting women vote with their hands, perhaps Western men hoped that women would vote with their feet—and head West. . . .

Data from the 1890 census provide some support for this admittedly crude theory. For every hundred native-born Wyoming males, there were only 58 native-born females. No other state had so pronounced a gender imbalance. Colorado and Idaho were the fifth and sixth most imbalanced states overall in 1890. The other early woman-suffrage state, Utah, had a somewhat higher percentage of women (thanks to its early experience with polygamy), but even Utah had only 88 native-born females for every hundred native-born males, ranking it 11^th among the 45 states in the mid-1890s. Also, the second, third, fourth, and seventh most imbalanced states—Montana, Washington, Nevada, and Oregon—would all embrace woman suffrage in the early 1910s, several years ahead of most sister states. In all these places, men voting to extend the suffrage to women had little reason to fear that males might anytime soon be outvoted en masse by females. [Emphasis mine.]

Amar continues, discussing the women's rights movement in the British Empire and explains, fairly convincingly that New Zealand, of all places with its high gender disparity, was the first state to allow women to vote. You can read more about Amar's findings here.

Moving now to the question of the gays, there might be something to Amar's findings that could have a serious implication. Notice how the states --either through the Courts or through the legislature -- have legalized gay marriage have tended to be in the educated, more secular Northeast. These states tend to be more office park than industrial park and so, office politics tend to be more common and so, they are probably more likely to come across gays in their day to day life. In job markets that depend upon intellectual skillsets, it'll be tough for states to discriminate against gays because they need the labor.

Apparently, many legislators are coming to this realization, according to an article in Newsweek. They see gay marriage as a potential revenue stream for their states and so they want to legalize it to prop up their dwindling coffers. But are they right to?

...some economists urge caution in looking for same-sex wedding profits—in particular citing a kind of "first-mover advantage" that benefits states with early gay-marriage laws. (After similar laws were passed in neighboring states Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire became the latest state to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday, but the state might not gain as much as did Massachusetts, which has become a destination for gay couples from other states.)

"If you're the 50th state to allow [same-sex] weddings, you're not going to get as much of a bump as the first state," says Michael Steinberger, an assistant professor of economics at Pomona College who worked with the Williams Institute on the Massachusetts study. "There's going to be a bump, but it cannot be as big."

Still, I have a hard time buying it for several reasons.

1) Wouldn't the benefits of taxing gays as single people be higher over a life time than the simple one hit in sales tax that a gay marriage may yield? This might be an example of tax money starved pols looking for a quick hit, rather than long-term finances. Are we surprised?

I suppose that here the states are getting the best of both worlds. On the one hand, gays get taxed as individuals for federal income tax, which is much higher than state income tax anyways and on the other side, states get the benefits of higher consumption around the marriages.

2) I think the study misses a key variable: divorce rates. Most research indicates that gay couples get divorced at much higher rates than straight couples. Is revenue gained from marriage higher than the lost costs of tying up divorce courts?

3) I'd like to see evidence that gay marriage leads to a higher adoption rate, which in turn, would lead more child welfare and less money spent there.

I think more research needs to be done, but I applaud the efforts to make things more empirical and less emotional.

Pomona Professor Writes About Pakistan's Private Schools

You've heard the argument before: that Pakistan, a nation with nukes, is descending into chaos and that all of the children are going to madrasas. It's an argument that pervades our media, but is it true?

A web exclusive written in Foreign Policy magazine says, "no." The article is co-authored by none other than Pomona College economist, Tahir Andrabi. [Bolding is mine.]

Unfortunately, this well-intentioned approach risks failure. First, contrary to the public hysteria about madrasas serving as "weapons of mass instruction," in 2005,just 1.3 percent of children in Pakistan's four main provinces attended madrasas. Most students attend public schools (nearly 65 percent), and the remainder attend nonreligious private schools (34 percent). Nor are madrasas the last resort of the poor. In fact, the socioeconomic profiles of madrasa and public school students are quite similar -- except that madrasas have more rich students than public schools. Of the extremely small number of households enrolling at least one child full time in a madrasa, 75 percent use other types of schools to educate their other children.

. . .nonreligious private schools now enroll one third of Pakistani students, according to the 2005 education census. This sector is dramatically expanding. In 1983, there were roughly the same number of madrasas and private schools in the country -- 2,563 madrasas and 2,770 private schools. By 2005, there were five times as many private schools. Moreover, the growth in private schools has increased since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, while madrasa growth has stayed relatively flat.

Data collected by the authors as a part of the largest-ever longitudinal study of education in Pakistan find that private schools are cost-effective and affordable.They keep costs low because they are "mom and pop"-managed, for-profit, independent schools, unsubsidized by the government and responsive to local demands for education.

Although education standards all over Pakistan are poor, private schools outperform government schools at all income levels. In three districts of rural Punjab where the project team tested more than 25,000 primary-grade students, private school children outperformed those attending government schools by a large margin. Moreover, data show that the same students learn more when they switch from public to private schools and learn less when they leave private schools for public schools.

To make matters even better, listen to how they treat teachers.

Private schools take advantage of an important untapped supply of labor by relying upon moderately educated young women from local neighborhoods who are willing to work for low pay. In fact, private schools are one of the largest sources of regular, salaried employment for Pakistan's women. Private schools also boast lower teacher absenteeism than public schools, which minimizes wastage and increases time spent learning. They also use their compensation structures effectively to reward better teachers and punish those who don't perform well.

File this under the burgeoning category: "How Entrepreneurship Can Save the World."

It would seem to me that Obama, himself a scholarship winner at an elite prep school and a symbol for what good education can produce, has a great opportunity here to say to the world that America will help unlock those education entrepreneurs throughout the third world.

But America's State Department has largely ignored these private schools, according to the Cato Institute. Professor James Tooley has documented this trend of the poor to educate their children with private schools. Watch this 13 minute video and prepare to be blown away.

Despite an opportunity to really lead the world, Obama has allowed congressional Democrats to gut the hugely successful, D.C vouchers program. You watch that tragedy here.

CMC Professor Shields on Abortionist George "The Killer" Tiller

The death of abortionist George Tiller has put the scholarship of Jon A. Shields, CMC professor, front and center in the national debate about abortion.

On Christian Today Professor Shields writes up what the murder of George Tiller, a radical partial birth abortionist, has done for the image of the pro-life movement. In The New Republic, Shields writes about just who Tiller was and what the pro-life movement has been about since its inception.

Tiller, you'll remember, aborted babies days before they would otherwise have been born. I'll save you the gory details, unless you have an academic interest, and just let you know that it has been estimated that Tiller performed over 60,000 of such abortions. Shields points out why Tiller so irked pro-lifers by mentioning that Tiller, who was paid well over a million a year, "offered cremated ashes to parents and baptized aborted remains."

Indeed, he was one of only three abortionists in the country willing to perform the operation. And for left-wingers who are quick to say that anything Europe does, we should do, such procedures are illegal in most of the world. He's not your garden variety abortionist, no matter how many times people may say he is or stress the fact that he was gunned down in a church. For the record, I'm an atheist/agnostic and these kind of arguments are basically meant to suggest that someone is a good person because they frequent a house of worship. How quaint and unfortunately untrue.

Pro-lifers continue to be stigmatized as violent nutjobs. Shields writes that these radical groups have almost no support in the pro-life movement. He writes,

Although radical factions have often existed in social movements, they have almost always been marginal. This fact is constantly obscured by the media's attentive vigil over the most sensational and militant activists. Currently, for example, one of the most prominent radical organizations in the pro-life movement is Operation Rescue West, a group that has devoted itself to harassing the late Dr. Tiller. Nonetheless, Troy Newman, the director of Operation Rescue West (ORW), confessed to me, "We have no base."

Despite the fact that it is hardly an organizational secret that Operation Rescue West has no members, an internet search of ORW yields more than twice as many hits as Birthright International, a pro-life organization that manages more than 400 crisis pregnancy centers with thousands of volunteers.

I'm of the opinion that Roe led to fighting in the streets over abortion because a workable compromise couldn't be achieved politically. Shields writes about that history of non-violence and how marginalization of pro-lifers has led to more and more violence, especially as evangelicals join the debate.

Roe guaranteed that electoral politics would bring only marginal victories for the pro-life movement, such as parental consent laws and a ban on partial-birth abortion. As Risen and Thomas conclude, "Roe led almost inevitably to revolution and sent opponents out into the street." The court decision birthed one of the largest campaigns of civil disobedience since the anti-war movement, even as other '60s movements were dying. According to the National Abortion Federation, there were more than 33,000 arrests and 600 blockades between 1977 and 1993.

Though a tradition of Christian pacifism held sway over the first generation of activists in the rescue movement, some grew exasperated by the late 1970s by the small, ineffectual clinic blockades in cities such as Washington D.C. and St. Louis. Activists such as Joan Andrews began attracting headlines for vandalizing abortion clinics. Once caught, her dogged refusal to cooperate with the criminal justice system earned her solitary confinement and fame as a pro-life martyr. Midnight bombings began. Radicals orchestrated 28 bombings between 1977 and 1993. Some of the perpetrators were Catholic leftists who had cut their political teeth on the anti-war movement. In their destruction of abortion clinics and equipment, for example, such radicals were trying to consciously imitate the "Plowshares" anti-nuclear movement.

By not allowing anti-abortion activists to protest or blockade abortion mills by using federal law, anti-abortion activists were pushed still further from the mainstream and unfortunately, some of them decided to turn to violence. Or at least, says Shields.

I'm a reluctant pro-lifer. Here's the article that best sums up my philosophy regarding abortion in all its nuance. I came to the party way late and I don't see it as the most important issue for the GOP or the country. While I'm personally pro-life and would vote for a law criminalizing abortion on the state level, I would rather spend my energies elsewhere.

That said, if I could push a button, and end abortion everywhere, I would. But such a button will never exist because we as a society, just as society's before us -- the Greeks, etc. -- have always had policies that approach infanticide. Whether it be leaving the nation's babies out to die in well, as do the Chinese, or the ancient Greeks, who left them out in the cold, I don't think we're ever going to stop aborting them.