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The Ramble for 10-12-11

Conklin, NY– I’m just south of Binghamton, NY. From where I’ll run up to Rochester, grab a load and be in Brooklyn by the time you get up.

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Lots of polish, paint and simple hard work

Raining a bit today, which is about what I figured. After all, I spent the last several days cleaning and preening the truck. Looks pretty good.  The aluminum alone took hours.

  • It’s ours to lose:  Poll: Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney All Beat Obama. [2]But if the GOP nominates anyone but a real conservative…. and Romney doesn’t quality…. winning isn’t worth a damn. And we both know it. Let me be clear; I don’t care in the slightest if the GOP wins back the White House. What I care about is that a real conservative wins the White House. Are you listening, GOP?
  • Education? I made a comment at OTB yesterday, incidental to the Wall Street protest mob:

    So, you took out a huge loan to pay for an education that turned out to be nigh on worthless in terms of finding a real job… one large enough to pay for the loan. And you’re pissed at…. the BANK?How about being mad at the school that convinced you you could get by on an education with more indoctrination than substance?

    So, you can imagine the smile on my face today as I note Glenn saying:

    Mother Jones doesn’t like [3] Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s proposal to cut back on support for liberal arts education in favor of more practical subjects. But I think this trend is inevitable anyway, given economic realities. Just look at all those unemployed [4] and heavily-indebted #Occupy protesters. [5] I didn’t notice any Petroleum Engineering graduates among them. Here’s what Scott said:

    You know, we don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state. It’s a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here. I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on. Those type of degrees. So when they get out of school, they can get a job.

    Even at Mother Jones we hear: “Scott’s reasoning could attract a lot of Floridians.” Ya think? But there’s this, too: “Is a degree’s intrinsic value really reducible to its marketability?”

    After decades of selling college as an “investment” — and pricing it accordingly — it’s going to be hard for the higher education establishment to pivot to a college-as-personal-fulfillment argument.

    Perhaps, Glenn, but given the number of college grads now flipping burgers, it’ll be easier than trying to sell colleges peddling liberal arts as a path to better jobs. Or, Any jobs, for that matter, given unemployment figures.

    We could lower education costs and make a degree worth something again, rather simply… get government out of the education business. Where else but a government controlled environment would liberal arts be considered of greater import than actual job skills? I fear we’re years from that point, but given the direction of things, it will happen.

  • Basics: A business’s primary purpose is not to provide a service, or to create jobs. Those two are secondary to the primary goal of making money for the owners, and investors. The jobs and services tend to come along in direct proportion to the success had in the primary goal of making money. Government regulations and high taxes tend to diminish that ability, and thereby the number and quality of jobs created. You can have a tightly regulated and highly taxed marketplace…(The US has now either the highest or second highest corporate tax rate on the world)… or you can have jobs. That’s the choice. That’s always been the choice. And that’s why Obama’s been unable to deal with the joblessness… all he understands is tax and pass laws and threaten the very people job creation depends on.