August 5, 2009

Peter Brimelow on The Helen Glover Show At 8:35 a.m. ET.

Peter Brimelow will be a guest on The Helen Glover Show tomorrow morning at 8:35 a.m. ET. He will discuss illegal immigration and its relative absence from the debate over healthcare reform. The program airs in Providence and can be streamed live here.

An Untaught Moment, Again

I had to read Susan Christian Goulding's column about the murder of a 17 year-old in L.A. several times to see if I could follow the logic. I had a hard time but I think she was saying everybody racially profiles and white men spew like volcanoes but minorities "ever so mildly express sentiments" about bias.

Outsourcing: New York Schools Hired "Future Technology Associates"

The New York Daily News did a series of articles about a dubious outsourcing contract that the New York school system is involved with. To put it mildly, the NY Department of Education (DOE) is getting taken to the cleaners!

The story begins when the Chancellor of the New York City DOE, which is the largest public school system in the United States, recently cut the school budget by $400 million and ordered a hiring freeze. Nothing unusual about that as states wrestle with budget problems, but the story doesn't end there.

Washington Post's Richard Cohen on Hate Crime Bill: Why so late?

With the Hate Crime Bill safely embedded in the Defense Authorization legislation (S.1390) which has now passed the Senate, the Washington Post’s columnist Richard Cohen has surfaced with a strong essay denouncing it: The Folly of Hate-Crime Laws Tuesday, August 4, 2009.

Why, one might ask, now? Why not earlier in the summer, when this disgrace was getting its scandalously limited Congressional exposure (a whole two hours of hearings!)?

NYT: Let's Burn Down the Economy All Over Again

From an op-ed in the New York Times:

Safe at Home
By DALTON CONLEY

THE financial crisis has given rise to all sorts of wrongheaded ideas, among which is the notion that we should not subsidize the “losers” who can’t make their mortgage payments. In fact, the solution to our troubles is not to restrict homeownership, but to expand it.The timing is right.

Calling All Actuaries

I have to confess that I've never firmly understood life expectancy statistics. Razib has been putting up graphs on GNXP of life expectancy by county, such as this one of white male life expectancy (highest in southern Minnesota, lowest in the South, Oklahoma, and the Coal Belt).

The Expiring Economy