James Taranto thinks the reaction to Bill Bennett's comments on the relation of abortion and crime indicates maybe the end of political correctness. He does so by actually reading Steven Levitt, whose work was the impetus for Bennett's remarks. But Levitt points out that Bennett (and by extension, Taranto) have misread him.

It is true that, on average, crime involvement in the U.S. is higher among blacks than whites. Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide. (The homicide gap is partly explained by crack markets). In other words, for most crimes a white person and a black person who grow up next door to each other with similar incomes and the same family structure would be predicted to have the same crime involvement. Empirically, what matters is the fact that abortions are disproportionately used on unwanted pregnancies, and disproportionately by teenage women and single women.

We are forever explaining to students of economics the value of the term ceteris paribus or "all other things being equal." Since we don't have test tubes or other treatments, we have to do it theoretically through a mental exercise or empirically using regression analysis. This is the kind of thing economists argue about frequently -- did you include all the right variables to be able to invoke ceteris paribus and claim the relationship? This type of problem, called specification bias, is explained by Peter Kennedy (who wrote one of the best books for teaching econometrics to undergraduates). See also these notes.

Levitt and Dubner, in Freakonomics, note that former Minneapolis police chief and gubernatorial candidate Anthony Bouza, who wrote a book including the argument that abortion was

"arguably the only effective crime-prevention device adopted in this nation since the late 1960s." When Bouza's opinion was publicized just before the election, he fell sharply in the polls. And then he lost.

If somehow NARN replaces Bennett in morning drive, nothing will have changed.

The Elder decides to try beers of the FSU. Didn't like 'em.

All in all, I was not impressed. The Baltika was the best of the bunch, which is not saying much. Alcohol is a critical part of the taste of a good beer, but in these three beers, especially the Zhiguly, it was overwhelming. Considering the punch these beers pack, I suppose that's not surprising, although other beers with similar alcohol content do a much better job masking the flavor. When it came to taste, there's just not much else there with this trio.

Good beer ends at the Czech border by and large. (Gambrinus all over Pilsner Urquell, btw. Maybe Radegast too.) The problem is that most of the Slavic beers aren't meant to ship. The good stuff, like Coors of the old days, isn't pasteurized. I have very fond memories of Obolon from my Ukraine days, but damned if I can find a decent bottle here in the States. Particularly the dark beers like this porter. (Yes, that's in Cyrillic. That's part of my explanation.)

At least you can find them there. I worked in Egypt one summer, and that was as expected a wasteland. But it was at least better than Indonesia. Bintang -- eeyewww! And the imported Malaysian Tiger and Singa beer was no better. So during your Trinkensraum, Chad, give South Asia a wide berth.

BTW, the Obolon website notes this "Interesting fact":

Just like breakfast cereals, beer is a rich source of B vitamins which are an essential part of a healthy diet.

So that explains the guy who drank three of those on the Air Ukraine flight sitting next to me before we took off on the 6am flight to Budapest! I will be noting this interesting fact to Mrs. Scholar, who continues to feed me kasha (Russian for bird seed) for breakfast.

I think Intellectual Takeout has improved the site now that it can be visited repeatedly. It provides a balanced resource for students doing research, as well as covering the same ground we do here at Scholars, looking for bias on campuses. See for example their coverage of an appearance by Chris Mooney at the U of M. Some on my campus have circulated praising reviews of Mooney's book, and IT led me to a review in the WaPo that was less so. (Guess what went out on our campus discussion list this afternoon?)

Welcome to the blogroll, Intellectual Takeout!

In the process of talking about this today I found in my mailbox a copy of Jeffrey Hart's pamphlet What is a College Education? Here's a shorter version from several years ago, and a like article in National Review. Reminds me I need to put this book on my wish list.

Contemplating the same thing I did, Joshua Sharf says consumer confidence is a lagging, not a leading indicator.

What that says to me is that people's perceptions of the economy, and even of their own finances, are more a reflection of what they've been reading than of what they've been saving.

Applying this to our current situation, we shouldn't be surprised if personal spending doesn't rise much this month compared to last year, but we certainly shouldn't be projecting Christmas sales on the basis of this number.

Most of the evidence on the effect of bad weather says it's a two- to three-month shock, nothing more, when it comes to consumption. The more interesting part of the story is the supply-side effect. The whole intertemporal substitution hypothesis would be badly damaged if we did not see an increase in savings and work effort in the affected areas and in the country as a whole.

I'm not linking to things and I'm reading very little about Tom DeLay. All I'll say is that I saw him hurry onto Special Report last night, watched him, and and some instinctual level thought "he's been caught." I can't give you an analysis because the charges are so vague as to be unverifiable from what I know. And my sense was there from the very first answer. It was a Blink moment.

This is hilarious!
The use of pink paint in Iowa's visiting locker room is causing a bit of a commotion around Iowa City.

Soft pink hues were added to the visiting locker room at Iowa's Kinnick Stadium by former football coach Hayden Fry in the late 1970s. Fry believed the color had a calming effect on people.

As part of an $88 million remodeling job at the stadium, designers retained that color motif, splashing pink across the walls, carpet, showers, sinks, metal lockers and even the urinals.
Last week, an Iowa law school professor received death threats after criticizing the university for using pink paint. The professor, now joined by others across campus, says using pink demeans women and perpetuates negative stereotypes of women and homosexuality.Want to bet it's drunk tank pink?

Here's some bulletin board material for your game Saturday.

The NCAA News -- January 21, 2002
St. Cloud State CEO calls for increased attention to mascot issue
Roy H. Saigo, president of St. Cloud State University, asked Division II presidents to consider the issue of American Indian mascots and whether those mascots are appropriate in light of antidiscrimination policies, both at the university level and within the NCAA.

Saigo made his remarks at the Division II chief executive officers luncheon January 13.

"This is an issue we haven't talked about as presidents, and yet it's an issue that has caused a lot of consternation in our part of the world," Saigo said. "I bring it up not to attack anybody but simply to broaden the discussion."

Saigo made his remarks during an open forum portion of the program.

"I believe it is a racial issue," he said. "I believe it is a civil rights issue. I believe it is a religious issue, and people are getting hurt."

Saigo's institution, St. Cloud State, is in the same conference as the University of North Dakota, whose mascot is the "Fighting Sioux." Saigo's institution also has a notable American Indian population, and the issue has become divisive, particularly when North Dakota's teams come to play St. Cloud State.

Today's newspapers note that the NCAA rejected UND's appeal of the subsequent ban on Native American team nicknames. UND President Charles Kupchella will appeal.

Obviously, we do not agree with the decision, and we will continue to press our case through all of the levels of review and beyond as necessary. Because of the harshness of the words “hostile” and “abusive” we have no choice but to pursue an appeal and prove, in a court of law if necessary, that this choice of words was inappropriate, and in no way describes what we do here at the University of North Dakota.

While the appeal is being drawn up, the 4-0 Fighting Sioux host the 5-0 SCSU Huskies, where President Saigo still is in charge. It's homecoming weekend for North Dakota.

Gentlemen of the UND football team, good luck.

Yellow bikes and yellow leaves will grace our campus again this fall.

Despite a 2004 trial run at St. Cloud State University that didn't produce great results, the yellow bike program is back this year.

Out of about 20 donated bikes intended for students to use for free to commute locally and on campus, only four survived the last academic year. And those were in rough shape at year's end.

The program takes its name from the bright color the donated bikes are painted before being randomly parked around campus for students to use.

Failure of the program can be credited to students' lack of respect for the bikes and disregard for the program's potential benefits, said Grant Schnell, student manager at St. Cloud State's Outdoor Endeavors office.

..."It didn't work out very well. Basically they all just got ruined," Schnell said. "In one instance we found a rim wrapped around the entire front fork of a bike." Other bikes disappeared, he said.

It might come as a surprise that along with a new crop of about 15 more bikes, the program is back for another round this year.

No, it doesn't come as a surprise. Nothing, not even reality, deters the innocent greenie from belief that incentives don't matter.

Only one condition is crucial to the success of the yellow bike program: When finished using a bike, the rider must return it in good shape to a bike rack on campus so someone else can use it.

Incentives, children, incentives. We told you last year to take my economics class. You obviosuly were too busy repairing bikes nobody cared about.

The current score is Learned Foot 6-0 5-1, Anoka Flash 3-3 1-5, by dint of a three-game swing last week. We only pick three games, so you can see that the Flash had a bad week. But if they keep picking opposite each other, a three-game swing means nothing. Just ask the White Sox. Anyway, off to this week's games.

1. San Diego at New England (-5). This is deja vu all over again. We had a weird 5.5 line last week with the Bolts, but they were favored in that one and blew out the Giants with LaDainian Tomlinson throwing and running all over the Giant defense. The Pats defense is a patchwork affair, but that defense did enough to stymie the Steelers on the road. If Rodney Harrison and Teddy Bruschi and the rest of the defense was healthy, would this line be 7? 8? Let's put this to our prognosticators.
2. Green Bay at Carolina (-7.5). So how bad are the Packers really? Not so bad that this line moved towards them after opening at 8. This is deja vu too, as the Packers went to AllTel last year as 3.5 dogs and beat the Panthers 24-14. But the Panthers lost a tough game to the Dolphins on turnovers and, at 1-2, need this game to start contending in a tough division with the Falcons and Bucs. The Packers are 0-3 ATS, but have won 5 of their last 6 ATS against Carolina. Which way does this one turn out this time, guys?
3. Indianapolis (-7) at Tennessee. These teams play so often that every down is deja vu -- Indy is 4-0 ATS over the last three years against the Titans. Indy looks great with an improved defense and a running game that has worn people down, but they have had two big numbers and not covered the chalk against the Jags and the Browns. The Titans, though losing last week, have covered the last two weeks and look like they might have righted the ship in a year where they are supposed to be rebuilding. Do the Colts continue to look like the cream of the AFC, or is this the start of their slide to 11-5 and a trip to New England in January?

UPDATE: Had their records wrong with a total brain cramp.

Looks like the Change Agent class down in the Department of the 3.7 GPA has had a field trip.

Two St. Cloud State University professors and about two dozen other people gathered outside U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy's St. Cloud office Tuesday and urged him
to vote against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental advocacy group, sponsored the demonstration. It was intended to pressure Kennedy to vote against the 2006 federal budget if it includes drilling in the 1.5 million acre Alaskan refuge.

Environmental groups have focused their lobbying efforts on Kennedy and a handful of other House Republicans who haven't said how they will vote.

The 6th District Republican, who is a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2006, won't decide how to vote until he's seen the final bill, spokeswoman Anne Mason said.

He has opposed drilling in the refuge in the past and is working to keep it out of the budget, she said.

Of course, they might have looked up Kennedy's record. Or his press statement. But research doesn't appear to be their strong suit down in the D3.7GPA.

Graduate student Laddi Makene said the United States doesn't need oil from the refuge and should instead focus on alternative, sustainable forms of energy.

"You're going to destroy the environment. You're going to displace the people. You're going to pollute the area," Makene said. "It's only a three-month supply of oil, so you destroy the entire ecosystem for a three-month supply of oil."

That's quite impossible. There's at minimum 5.7 billion barrels of oil recoverable at a price of about $24/bbl, and as prices rise efforts would increase to recover more. We consume about 23 million barrels per day, of which about we import maybe 9. Is the student assuming we supplied the whole world out of one field in Alaska? I can't see how this number is determined.

And are these students getting credit for this activity?

Two rather humorous announcements this afternoon on our campus.

Campus community, A new business, Fair Trade Café, will be operating the Miller Center coffee shop beginning in October.

Friday, Sept. 30 will be the last day Meeting Grounds will be operating the coffee shop.

Campus community, I will not be taking coffee from the Fair Trade Cafe. I'm sure this is mostly about the Meeting Grounds -- a local coffee roaster and shop well known to locals -- not getting the new contract to run the space. And that's what's bothering me. Isn't "fair trade" about providing good prices to local suppliers? You know, the "thing globally, act locally" thing? The new vendor is also local, but somehow implying the previous vendor isn't fair isn't right at all.

And the whole fair trade coffee debate is pretty bogus. But bogus economic education is what this place is all about.

Second, a one-sentence missive:

The Atwood Center Council voted today to terminate the smoking facility in the Apocalypse Room as of 8 pm (building closing) on Wednesday, November 23rd,
2005.

There was something so poetic about a smoking lounge called the Apocalypse Room. It is in the basement and has no windows; it is closest to the dining facility in the student union building. What the hell else will they do with the place?

I know! Milliways! (UPDATE: Link fixed, Tim.)

In conjunction with the Quarterly Business Report release I've been fielding some radio interviews over the last couple of days. The report is written with about a four lag to publication, so this time we had to have copy to the publisher about three days before Katrina. My answer has been something along the lines of "higher gas prices and Katrina have to have some impact on retail sales, but we won't know how much until we see some data on consumer confidence."

Today, we got the first look at the data, and it ain't that pretty at all, as Warren Zevon might have said.

“Hurricane Katrina, coupled with soaring gasoline prices and a less optimistic job outlook, has pushed consumer confidence to its lowest level in nearly two years (81.7 in October 2003) and created a degree of uncertainty and concern about the short-term future,” says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. “Historically, shocks have had a short-term impact on consumer confidence, especially on consumers’ expectations. Fuel prices remain high, though they have retreated in recent days, and when combined with a weaker job market outlook, will likely curb both confidence and spending for the short-run. As rebuilding efforts take hold and job growth gains momentum, consumers’ confidence should rebound and return to more positive levels by year-end or early 2006.”

And yes, there's some turnaound already showing up in retail chain-store sales, but it's barely perceptible. And some observers are getting nervous.

"We may now see a pullback in spending,'' said Quincy Krosby, who helps oversee $293 billion in assets as chief investment strategist for The Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut. "This winter and this Christmas shopping season are going to be the test case, and we're going to see if this is the tipping point for the consumer.''

Is this justified? Call me cautious. If you want to be optimistic, you would look to the research that suggests consumer confidence tells us rather little. If you gauge on nothing else, yes, consumer confidence can help explain consumption, which is the key right now to continued economic growth. But we already have forecasts that suggest a quarter-point downshift in consumption. This is forecast to be offset by a decline in the trade deficit, as one thing consumers will cut back on in the scenario will be imported goods.

If you want to be pessimistic, you could point to a speech by the Chicago Fed president Michael Moskow, where he argues that we could see a 0.3-0.5% decline in GDP growth in the second half of 2005, arguing that it's an order of magnitude larger than Hurricane Andrew (which nobody thought took more than 0.1% from GDP growth.) And you could base it on conversations I'm having with people around town that suggest people aren't going to restaurants as much as they did a year ago and otherwise reducing discretionary spending ... but this was happening even before Katrina. The reason you hear is simply this graph.
Which camp am I in? I'd characterize myself as someone with a foot in each. I think the pessimists have the day in the short-run, and I agree with Chicago Fed President Moskow. And the story that we've seen the bottom of the slide in the trade deficit has some 'splainin still to do. But in the long run we should get more work, more savings and investment.

After the Race to the Right appearance I'm asked whether I picked a horse in the Sixth Congressional District race. The answer is no. And I'm not a delegate to the party convention. Therefore, it's not yet time for me to choose. After the endorsement, if there is a primary, then I'll make a choice, and I may let you know here (or not, if I decide not to.) And besides, I'm still learning about the candidates, as I only have had experience with one of the four remaining candidates (Knoblach, who it's fair to say I liked on the show more than the other hosts and guests.) I'm only making a choice between candidates I actually will vote between (or among, possibly).

Here's a podcast of two guys I often link to here: MOBster Phil Miller of Market Power and John Palmer of The Eclectic Econoclast. I will drop it on my USB drive before I go home and listen to it tonight and update with reactions.

I am contemplating creating short principles lessons via podcast like these posts I did last summer. Are readers interested? Let me know in comments, please.

I was asked on two of the shows over the weekend about the Vikings proposal. I was working mostly off past knowledge, in part this report from the stadium screening committee. Zygi Wilf didn't find the Anoka site -- this proposal has been around for quite some time.

I've pointed out two things that have changed. The first is that the original deal had the Vikings putting up 70% of the cost of the deal, a number the Vikings in principle didn't flinch at when Red owned the team. This would have at a minimum been $330 million of the low-end cost of $475 million. The proposal unveiled last week has the owner's number reduced to $280 million, and the cost ratcheted up to $780 million, including the retractable roof (which added about $115 million to the price, and for which Wilf says he will not pay.)

Second, the whole argument about economic benefits in the original proposal -- that it would generate $1.1 billion in private investment -- seems pretty far-fetched, and even more so now that some of Wilf's money is off the table. The assumption that a dollar of public investment could leverage $3.50 in private investment struck me as a reach in any case. The multipliers we're talking about normally are more likely less than $2 to $1, and perhaps much less. And there's no reason to believe the investment would not come without the Vikings. Remember that part of the deal is to speed up infrastructure investment, mostly through widening roads. So those roads would have been widened, and the private investment would have flowed, with or without the Vikings. What changes is the nature of the investment: What different types of businesses will be built around the area with and without a stadium, and why are those with a stadium better types of investments? There is little different between investing in stadium construction and other types of industrial policy -- government uses public monies to pick winning and losing types of firms. Its history in picking winners and losers is, well, not much better than Flash's history picking NFL games.

John Laplante observes that putting this deal out there with the Twins and University of Minnesota proposals makes all three deals unlikely to survive legislative scrutiny. I think the answer is more nuanced: If Wilf and Anoka County officials can figure out how not to ask the state for $115 million (for example, by scratching the retractable roof), all they need is to be rolled into the Hennepin proposal to have the law requiring a county vote on the stadium proposal waived. That proposal would then gather a little steam; I would make the vote for that deal in a special session still less than 50-50 in favor, but it would have a real shot.

Last note on this: Mark Yost on Next Big Thing has asked me a few times on the question of whether the "psychic income" argument -- "you love those sports teams, and you'd be depressed to live in a city without them" -- carries any water. There's an article from three economists who did a study of the psychic income generated by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Most people feel pride about having a sports team in their town, but they also feel pride over a zoo or a museum, and those things don't cost nearly as much as a stadium. And those who feel civic pride for sports happen to be those who go to games; those who feel civic pride from museums and theaters are art lovers, etc.

Overall, we find that the civic pride benefit of a sports team is primarily found in citizens who attend games and who feel that sports generate civic pride for the community. This conclusion suggests that the public choice theory is not necessarily a minority exercising their will on the majority, but a minority that believes that their public good is everyone's public good.

That last sentence accords to my feeling when I hear people tell me how Minnesota needs the Twins or the Vikings. "Those buggers are going to tax me anyway, they should spend it on things that I like, which are sports." Down that road lies the welfare state.

UPDATE: Phil Miller notes that Zygi is trying to logroll the three stadium proposals, but Phil thinks this will not work.

Opinion Journal carries a reprint of Victor Davis Hanson's discussion of The Claremont Review of Books article on the decline of the university presidency. The whole thing needs reading, but the conclusion bears your serious consideration:

More importantly, we have lost sight of what university presidents are supposed to be. Their first allegiance ought to be to honesty and truth, not campus orthodoxy masquerading as intellectual bravery amid a supposedly reactionary society. In a world of intellectual integrity, Robert Birgeneau would ask, 'Why are Asians excelling, and what can Berkeley do to encourage emulation of their success by other ethnic groups?' Denice Denton might wonder whether open hiring, monitored by affirmative action officers, applies to university staff or only those who are not associates of the President. President Hoffman would decry Ward Churchill's crass behavior and order a complete review of affirmative action and the politicized nature of hiring, retention, and tenure practices at Colorado. And Larry Summers? In the old world of the campus, he would defend free inquiry and expression, and remind faculty that all questions are up for discussion at Harvard. And if self-appointed censors wished to fire him for that, then he would dare them to go ahead and try.

I've inserted links to the university presidents mentioned here, all of whom lack the courage and vision VDH wants. But name me those who have had it?

Benjamin Rogge once noted that George Stigler said, "The typical college catalogue would never stop Diogenes in his search for an honest man."

So the weekend consisted of NARN, Race to the Right, Next Big Thing (hope Speed Gibson got to listen and rate) -- all of which were great fun, especially finding out it was just Mitch and me for week in review in a week where I had little to review -- and also the latest Quarterly Business Report, in which we gave a mostly thumbs-up on the local economy. The bigger radio station in St. Cloud called for an interview this morning.

I see how Howard Stern could like this king of all media thing.

And, btw, for being the only guy in the room without his own radio show, Andy held his own very well. He has the right combination of knowledge and edginess, as do Marty and Tony. But damn, Mitch is scary to work with when he isn't quarterbacking as he does with NARN. Note to self: offer to get Mitch out of the QB chair a little more often. He's even funnier when he's not worried about the breaks.

Oh, and to the Slavic-language trained tongue, ah-plik-OFF-ski isn't that hard. (He uses the Americanized OW as the third syllable.)

I've been able to get first-class tickets paid for by others to travel to places like Jakarta or Yerevan, and I can tell you they never cost me this much.

Until the new report, no detailed accounting had been done of the [American University President Ben] Ladners' spending, even as bills came in for first-class tickets for overseas trips, a waterfall for the back yard of the president's house and chauffeurs spending much of their time running errands for his wife to jewelers, salons and dry cleaners.

"It galls me to learn that Ben incurred a travel expense for himself alone to Nigeria of $22,345," trustee Paul M. Wolff, a senior partner in the Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington, wrote in a letter sent to board members Tuesday. "Had he bought a business elite ticket, the savings would have covered a student's tuition for one semester." Tuition this year is close to $28,000.

University Diaries has wall-to-wall coverage of this debacle, with inside details. Go and scroll; there are too many to enumerate.

I'll be on Race to the Right on KNSI with Martin Andrade tomorrow. 1-3pm at 1450 KNSI; at last local folks can hear me without a webstream. Not local? Marty's got streaming action. BTW, Marty, it's Banaian. Every other letter is an 'A'. Just ask Foot: He always spells my name so well.

I'm also supposed to appear on The Next Big Thing, which will feature The Right Brothers of the Pioneer Press, Craig Westover and Mark Yost. They'll do stadium talk. I'm working up a longer post on this for next week and contacting some other stadium types (like Phil Miller) to engage in a blog conversation about the Vikings and Twins proposals. Watch this space.

...that Foot and Flash make opposite picks on six games in a row? But they have. Follow the colors:

New England at Pittsburgh (-3)
NY Giants at San Diego (-5.5) -- worth noting the line moved to six many places.
Cincinnati (-3) at Chicago -- both teams are 2-0 ATS

LF says if he was going to pick three games to steer clear of, these would be the three. I agree -- that's why I picked them! My preference this week is to a) take the under of Jets/Jags (33.5) and b) fear the trap game! Pats look like a trap to me; so too the Vikes this weekend. Teasing those two teams at seven points (so you get Pats +10 and Vikes +3.5) at four-to-get-three might be the best play this weekend.

UPDATE (9/26): Foot buries the Flash this week, 3-0. My teaser worked out very well; indeed, a parlay there would have cashed too. Just missed on Jets/Jags.

David Downing continues to work some economics into DowningWorld. Today he looks at Ed Lotterman's explanation of oligopoly theory as it regards the airline industry and the stadium issue. I pose the questions a little differently than David (and Ed, for that matter), though I think we end up in the same place.

Regarding Northwest, we know the industry consists of a few large players. It's worth remembering that not very long ago airlines were considered the prime example of a contestable market -- a market where the mere threat of competition would force firms that have otherwise natural monopolies to control their prices. Northwest operates a route between St. Cloud and MSP on which they currently charge $35 each way when the hop is appended to a NWA ticket from MSP onward. There are six flights a day. This is a great deal -- given parking is free at the local airport, I seldom drive to MSP. What makes it so? There is an agreement between NWA and the local transportation authority, but why does NWA agree to it? Simply because there is the possibility of another airline that would fly St. Cloud to Chicago. While that link is to a recent letter, the possibility has existed for quite some time, particularly since the runway was lengthened.

Now consider: NWA has a number of legacy costs from pension plans agreed at an earlier time when the ability to compete was lower. The ability compete requires largely three things: planes, gates, and employees. Given that travel has diminished after 9/11 and that financing plane leases is easier, it is easier to get planes and gates. Competition is fiercer. And the potential competitors have none of the pension costs involved. So the airlines figures it has to declare bankruptcy and move out from under those costs to meet the contestants for their markets.

The union is not necessarily engaged in a prisoner's dilemma with NWA, however. It represents other mechanics at other airlines, and it may invest in its reputation by staging a strike to deter lowball wage offers from other airlines. It may also want NWA to cut back its routes, allow competitors into the market, then negotiate better deals with them. It may well have known that taking NWA into a strike would mean bankruptcy, but that isn't necessarily an act of someone "aghast" or "insulted". It may be a rational calculation. There was no assurance that, had they settled, NWA wouldn't have declared bankruptcy anyway. The pension costs were still there to be shifted.

I'll save the stadium issue David addresses for another time, perhaps tomorrow on NARN, or in another radio appearance on Sunday. But it isn't a prisoner's dilemma with the Gophers (who can't go), and it actually isn't with the Twins (who have no place to credibly threaten to go) or the Vikings (unless someone convinces the other NFL owners that the Vikings should follow the Lakers to LA, at the cost of millions of expansion revenue. Bloody unlikely.)

KC Johnson reads an email from a CUNY administrator for a Vanity Fair student essay contest, and finds insertions that reveal much about academic groupthink. Here's the paragraph the administrator wrote, with italics the parts inserted, probably, to help students prepare to write.

What's on the minds of America's youth today? More than 30 years ago, young people across the country staged sit-ins for civil rights, got up and protested against a misguided, undeclared war, and actually gave a damn if a president lied to them. Although a lot has changed since then, there are still racial divides, and America is once again mired in a largely controversial war. Back in the 1960s and 70s, a similar climate motivated great numbers of young people to act, organize, and take to the streets in defiance. Today it seems as if younger Americans are content to watch their MTV, fiddle with their game players, follow the love lives of Brad, Jen, Jessica, and Paris, and assume the hard work is being done for them by others. What has changed? Is it simply that we do not have motivating factors such as a draft or Kent State to bring us together, to anger us? What is going on inside the minds of American youth today? In 1,500 words or fewer, explain what is on the minds of America's youth.

I haven't gotten to this in my class yet, but I will. The Eclectic Econoclast reviews the cost-benefit analysis of hybrids.

Even if the cost of gasoline goes to $5 a gallon, the 122 gallon difference would save you $610 and it would still take almost four years ($2,390 divided by $610 is 3.9 years) to recoup the extra cost of the hybrid.

Meanwhile, if you're in an SUV and contemplating dumping it for one of those hybrids or other gas sippers, guess what? So is everyone else, and it's driving down the trade-in value.

We are all speculators. Some of those who bought SUVs speculated that the price of gasoline would stay (in real terms) close to where they were when the vehicle was bought. When the bet goes south, there's no free lunch that allows you to get out of the SUV, into a smaller car and avoid the cost of your action. That money is gone.

Either pay more or substitute for driving the guzzler. Them's your choices.

The Eclectic Econoclast notes that there is a market in Saudi Arabia for old coins to operate payphones, as it is hard to get a phone in the country and the payphones use a coin no longer in general circulation. My readers who remember post-Soviet Ukraine will smile wrily at this story. There were payphones, which used old 1- and 2-kopeck coins. Since a kopeck was worth a very small fraction of a penny by 1993, they had no other use. Babushkas would stand near phones and sell you the coins for perhaps 1000 times their face value (still likely to be $.02 or less). In its infinite wisdom, the Ukrainian telephone company made all the pay phones free to use, killing off the kopeck coin market.

John wonders whether there are pre-paid cell phones in Saudi. They are all over Ukraine.

While in Portsmouth (my parents, who I visited for Mom's birthday last weekend, live nearby in southern Maine) we stopped at a grocery store. The folks like bananas in their morning cereal, so we went to buy some at a Super WalMart. They were 64 cents a pound. "Oh!" Mom said. "We're not going to pay that!" After prices had stayed steady through summer, banana prices appear to have gone up a good bit, because it turns out many of our bananas come through Gulfport, MS, which is still more than a week away from reopening after Katrina.

So that got me thinking about shipping and I found an article from the University of Delaware, complete with a pretty cool map showing shipping lanes. It is interesting that they say "the bright red line to the Port of Houston represents primarily oil imports to the region." And more will go there diverted from the damaged ports. So if Rita is indeed heading towards Houston, it may have a fairly big impact on gas prices. Up more than $.14 at one time today, they closed up 7.7 cents to $2.13 (they were around $1.89 late last week.)

Look at it this way: There are four refineries still down from Katrina; there are 21 in the path of Rita. (Source.) If it's that big a hit and the storm is moving towards Houston, why have gas prices not moved more?? Maybe I need to look at these maps more.

I was walking around Portsmouth NH recently when I walked by a shop that had both cellphones and typewriters. "That's an interesting cross-marketing idea," I thought. It turns out typewriters are back in vogue with your usual bohemians. My grandfather had an Underwood No. 5 which he had gotten after college working for Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover NH. I typed most of my high school and college term papers on it. I have wondered if there was a market for a software program so that when I type on my keyboard I get the clackity sound from an Underwood. I had a Smith Corona in college myself, and a Selectric in grad school, but nothing ever felt like that Underwood.

h/t: Craig Newmark.

...but Financial Rounds does us the service of reinforcing the notion that you need to reduce what you teach in principles. He's talking about teaching principles of finance.

At my alma mater, they taught the same class in a way that totally spoiled me for the purpose of working at most other schools. In a rare (for academia) fit of common sense, they realized that you can teach a lot of topics poorly, or a few topics very well. So, they limited the introductory course to a few critical concepts (like time value of money, how to read financial statements, how to value a security, etc...), but completely beat these topics to death.

Economics professors know this, and have been talking about it for years. Yet text books continue to grow. A paper I wish we would do some day: What is the change in the length of a principles of economics text from first to second edition, second to third, etc.? I have yet to meet a book publisher representative who said to me that the "third edition of Smith and Jones' econ text has removed 15% of its pages to focus on just what matters." What happens instead is someone writes a new book that is shorter; some faculty adopt it; the feedback comes that sales grow if you add more stuff; next edition is 10% larger; rinse and repeat.

Don't blame the authors or the publishers: They are responding to market demand. Our demand, the same professors who keep publishing papers and pontificating on blogs saying we need to just focus on a few principles.

Cognitive dissonance? Maybe. So I don't know if even the author of Financial Rounds believes what he writes. But he's right nevertheless. Besides, anybody who uses Five Minute University in context needs to be linked, often.

FMI, read this conversation between Russell Roberts and Bill Polley before WSJ expires the link.

FIRE is pursuing another case of a school of education using "dispositions" theory as a loyalty oath for its students. A student invited to "write what you really feel" without feeling uncomfortable revealed that he is a "conservative Christian" who believes “white privilege and male privilege do not exist,” and professed support for Second Amendment rights. He was evaluated to fail some dispositions and required to sign an agreement to remediation before he could join a practicum for his teaching degree. As David French notes on the Torch today, "ideology cannot function as a proxy for actual merit. ...It is not proper for a state university to condition its degrees on acceptance of the state-approved ideology." Washington State has since dropped the imposed agreement with the student.

In their first week, Learned Foot and Anoka Flash battled over three games, with Foot coming out the victor in two and Flash the other. We learned Tampa Bay is a better team than people gave them credit for. Given they are travelling to Green Bay this week and that the two combatants wish not to pick too many Packer or Viking games, we'll leave the Buccaneers for a week or two. Nevertheless, the board this week has some interesting games. Here are the three I choose. This week's theme: testing sophomore quarterbacks.

1. New England @ Pittsburgh (-3). The Pats looked vulnerable last week against a tricky blitzing Panther defense, and Pittsburgh has both a good front seven and a new, slashing running back in Willie Parker. But Belichick is the only genius not recognized by a MacArthur grant, and you figure this has to be the game he gets New England's Patriot faithful down from the ledge. The game figures to be put in the hands of Ben Rothliesberger, because that's the guy Belichick will want to force into mistakes.
2. NY Giants @ San Diego (-5.5). Numbers like 5.5 are weird in pro lines, and this is a weird game. The 2-0 Giants finally go on the road after their "road" game Monday night at Meadowlands against the Saints, where Eli Manning looked good. He faces an 0-2 team that made the playoffs last year after passing on him for rejuvenated Drew Brees. The Chargers are desparate for a win, but can't generate enough excitement to merit a line of six.
3. Cincinnati (-3) @ Chicago. The most interesting games this week are the interconference ones. Here we have Carson Palmer seeming to have made a step forward, and he faces a team with a quarterback that, before an injury his senior year, was considered to be on the same level. The Bears will be considered for real if they win this game; a Bengal win means Pittsburgh has some serious competition.

I'm travelling more lately, and one of the advantages of this is getting time to read things I can't seem to get to read when I'm home or at the office. On a plane to New England last weekend I read the latest copy of the Minneapolis Fed's publication The Region, which is one of my favorite Fed publications (I read many.) This month's issue features an interview with Robert Barro, and the first item discussed is Ricardian equivalence. Barro argues that people confuse the argument for the equivalence of taxing and incurring debt with an argument that the size of government doesn't matter.

...a central part of the proposition is that the amount of public expenditure—today and tomorrow—is being held constant. It's never part of Ricardian equivalence that the level of government expenditure doesn't matter. As [University of Chicago economist] Milton Friedman put it, the costs or benefits of government outlays depend on the amount and nature of what the government spends—there is no free lunch about paying for that spending. So whether you pay for it now or later is secondary.

As a first-order proposition, it is right that it matters little whether you pay for government spending with taxes today or taxes tomorrow, which is basically what a fiscal deficit is. The difference between taxes today and taxes tomorrow is analogous to the difference between paying for spending with an income tax or a sales tax. The method of public finance is an important question, but it is less important than the question of how big the government is and what activities it should carry out. Taxing now versus taxing later is an issue about optimal taxation, that is, a public-finance topic.

So what does this say about the spending arguments arising from the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina? The story -- I seem to recall this being in some form as an exam question for Barro's macro text, but I can't find my copy of the book right now -- is to imagine how people would react to having the barn on their farm blown up. They would want to replace it and begin to save immediately. They would also most likely work harder as they attempted to generate the capital they need for replacement. Now suppose the bank comes and offers a loan to rebuild the barn. Does this change the farmer's behavior? It really shouldn't. The decision of when to work and when to save depends on the productivity of the farmer with and without the barn -- the wage you can receive, the interest rate at which you can save up. You borrow so that you can smooth out your consumption of goods, just as students and their parents borrow for college. That's the public-finance question Barro refers to (in older times, economists referred to this as Ramsey taxation.)

So too with Katrina. The behavior of the economy, expressed in terms of prices, wages and interest rates, is changed at the moment the of the hurricane and flood, not by the decision to shift the financing from the private sector to the public, or from local government to federal. Now, Ricardian equivalence does have some gaps, as even Barro recognizes, but he says these are second-order effects.

Discussion of deficits and needing to raise taxes to pay for them, in this view, is rubbish. The discussion needs to focus on how much government spends, not how it pays for its spending.

Remember when we mentioned Princeton's experiment in setting a quota for A's? Well, the first year results are in, and the percentage of A's awarded are down five percent. As you'd expect, the economists were exemplary.

In Economics, for example, the department agreed on specific target percentages for A grades, depending on the type, category, and level of course. At the beginning of each semester, the chair reminded the faculty of the departmental agreement, adding that "any instructor who feels that there is a special reason to exceed the ordinary maximum may do so, but his or her grade sheet must be accompanied by a memo addressed to the chair explaining the circumstances."

In English, to take another example, the approach was to use the new grading expectations to enhance rather than abridge the ability of the faculty to employ their own expertise and experience to make informed grading decisions. The chair suggested to the faculty "that we view the policy as a tool to help us call grades as we see them and to resist the impulse to award high and higher grades for work we know is undeserving.

In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscribers only), we get this from the English department.

Diana Fuss, acting chair of the English department, believes that professors have become more judicious with A's because of the policy. "The mercy A- has disappeared," Ms. Fuss said.

The mercy A-???

Let's suppose a certain team builds a stadium for $675 million. Stadia have a useful life of what, twenty years? The team plays eight home games and two really crappy pre-season games (for which you pay full price) per year in the stadium. At the end of 20 years or 200 games, the stadium's value is zero, except as a nice 30-second demonstration of the power of dynamite at the end of the local news.

What is the rental price of an NFL stadium? Your answer is invited in the comments section.

At least the price is down some. And it comes with an assurance of livable wages.

Scholar's Notebook points out that we are supposed to teach the Constitution, but that Senator Byrd's amendment may be itself unconstitutional. He points out, interestingly, that the latest omnibus education bill in Minnesota explicitly permits teachers to use original documents, even if they have that pesky G_d word in them. Cheri Yecke, meanwhile, reminds us that the pesky democracy word isn't.

I wonder if our Democratic Citizenship course understands those points?

Over at DowningWorld, David is thinking about a proposal to require firms receiving subsidies from the city of St. Paul to pay higher wages. In a followup piece, David says this.

It's been fairly common for some time for cities to assist businesses either with some kid of grant or by giving some sort of property tax relief. This must be what is meant by "subsidies."

If that's the case, then it absolutely makes sense to consider the wages the subsidized business will pay its workers. The purpose of the subsidy is to benefit the city, through jobs and taxes, and a business in a sector where people earn higher wages is going to benefit the city more than a business that pays workers lower wages.

So it becomes a matter of return on investment. If public dollars are to be diverted to a private business, then the guardians of the public purse would be remiss not to consider the wages that business will be paying out in the city. If the wages paid are low, that business might not be worth having at the price the taxpayers are being asked to pay. The city may be better off letting that business leave, and concentrating on attracting businesses that do pay their employees well.

I have written about this before, and this appears to be the same type of proposal discussed in St. Cloud. In his first post, David points out that these subsidies are not free:

And how will the city pay more? Raise taxes, or cut services, like rec centers and libraries, and filling the potholes in the streets. But at least we'll be making sure that someone who may not even live in St. Paul is getting a "living wage."

This is along the lines of the Green Party mayoral candidate who wanted to impose a city income tax. They think they can just take and take, and there are no consequences. But really, what does simple economics matter, when you mean well?

...which is the point I was making as well. You give subsidies, that lowers the revenue you have to fund other city services, and you either must raise taxes on someone else or cut back on services. The money does in fact come from the economy.

So here's the question that David's followup raises: Should governments be in the business of bidding for high-wage jobs, which in essence is what the living wage legislation does? This is not a Democrat-Republican thing, as Pawlenty's JOBZ legislation is in fact the same type of proposal as the St. Paul desire for living wage ordinances; the movements generate from a common source to which very well-meaning people are attracted.

We know that if the living wage ordinance was applied to all jobs -- whether or not with government contractors, whether or not the business is subsidized -- that it would create massive unemployment. It would be a minimum wage, as I argued before. The proponents get this, so they propose instead to restrict the scope of the ordinance to just the subset of firms that do business with government. What should be the harm? The better question to ask is qui bono -- who benefits from it? First off, to answer Downing's question on "why contractors", simply ask who the alternative to contractors would be? Answer: Government workers, represented by public employee unions. These are huge beneficiaries of living wage ordinances for government contractors; they would restrict the ability of the private sector to compete with union workers to provide public services.

But more to the point is that, as an anti-poverty program, trading business subsidies for poverty reduction is a bad bargain. The poor are unlikely to be able to get the jobs provided; the biggest problem for the poor isn't a low wage but insufficient hours of work. It also takes away from the starter jobs the poor need to develop job skills that allow them to move up the wage ladder.

If governments wanted to help they would focus on these things. But before you spend $1 on any of that, ask yourself why the private sector isn't already providing those opportunities? The answer is: it is. You call it "McJob."

Still on the road, but news from home is that Mrs. Scholar makes the paper. She credits/blames me for converting her to vegetarianism. That tabbouleh recipe at the end is one we use around the house constantly.

Captain Ed and the Fraters will be on NARN today, and they have the blogosphere's favorite cartoonist, Chris Muir of Day by Day, on in the 1pm hour. Your streaming audio experience begins at noon CT, here. I'm still out on assignment, and will post intermittently through Monday night.

Flash and Learned Foot have entered their selections for the three gams I offered on Wednesday.

Week #1

1. KC (-1) @ Oakland. Flash wants the Raiders, Foot thinks this is KC in a walkover
   
2. Miami @ Jets (-6). LF will lay the touchdown and take the Jets; Flash says Jets win but don't cover the number.
   
3. Buffalo @ Tampa Bay (-2.5). Foot wants the Bills and the points. Flash is over the moon for Gruden and says Tampa easily wins this game.

Interestingly, they are against each other on all three games, so we'll have a leader after week 1. I will refrain from picking the games here myself,

UPDATE: Was busy catching a train, hit publish too early. I mislabeled Flash's pick in game 2 (noted in italics, sorry Foot!) and I meant to add that Tampa Bay is the trendy pick in Vegas this week. Is it resurgent Grudenmania or belief that Cadillac breaks on through? The Scholars are bullish on the TB running back, but the Bills are no ordinary defense. The bigger question is whether McGahee can run on the Buc defense: Bills are 8-0 when he gets a c-note on the ground.

This will generate a lot of talk over the weekend.

Consumer confidence fell sharply in August due to the surge in gasoline prices. "Consumers have found it increasingly difficult to cope with the recent surge in gasoline prices as their required budget cutbacks escalated each time they filled their gas tank," according to Richard Curtin, the Director of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers. The unusually large August decline was widespread among all demographic groups and across all regions of the country. "Consumers anticipated higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher unemployment and a slower pace of economic growth during the year ahead," Curtin said. Although consumers did not anticipate a recession during the year ahead, they were more likely to expect an economic downturn sometime during the next five years.

The Index of Consumer Sentiment was 89.1 in the August 2005 survey, down from 96.5 in July and 95.9 in August of 2004. Only ten monthly surveys since 1978 recorded a larger one-month decline. The Index of Consumer Expectations, a closely watched component of the Index of Leading Economic Indicators, fell to 76.9 in August, down from 85.5 in July and 88.2 in August 2004.

This is pre-Katrina, too. There is a good deal of thought out there that the current expansion is substantially buoyed by consumer and business confidence (see for example Business Week last week and today.) I think business more than consumer confidence will matter here, but there's no doubt at this point that consumer spending is being effected both by high gas prices and concern over the effects of Katrina.

It's a travel day as I'm away on assignment through Monday. I have downloaded through my aggregator some interesting stories to read; I may get back to these later.

• I've been following with interest the discussion of the new Economic Freedom index and Doing Business 2006. Political Calculations has some interesting tables comparing the two.
• Have you followed CentCom's "What Extremists are Saying?" It's insightful. It's MEMRI on steroids, with badder guys.
• Mrs. Scholar is a new fan of Nihilist in Golf Pants. Last night's episode, penned to Penn, was good enough I could hear her laughing across the house and up a floor.
• I watched the President's speech last night, and unlike most of my NARN brethren I wasn't so pleased. An "FDR/LBJ" speech just doesn't do much for me, thanks. Hedge Fund Guy explains the implications of Crisis and Leviathan. Pragmatism is the first refuge of the scoundrel that wants to spend OPM.

Back later this PM with more, if I can.

I think this makes great sense.

The very method by which one becomes an expert explains why experts are much better at describing, explaining, performing tasks, and problem-solving within their domains than are novices, but, with a few exceptions, are worse at forecasting than actuarial tables based on historical, statistical models.

Maybe they should be more pragmatic.

A friend directed me to a site on labor market statistics for the areas affected by Katrina. This is issued by the Bureau for Labor Statistics. The data reflect wage data and employment for the "most affected areas", defined as "the 8 counties in Alabama, 31 parishes in Louisiana, and 47 counties in Mississippi that were designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for both individual and public disaster assistance as of September 8, 2005." The area contains over 145,000 establishments with about 2% of national employment and about 1.5% of the nation's wage bill. The area had an unemployment rate of 5.8%; it was over 7% in many of the counties and parishes.

By far the flooding in Louisiana did the most damage to the local economy -- 18,000 firms were flooded out, with quarterly wage bills of nearly $3 billion. Most of the damage in Mississippi was due to the high winds of Katrina itself, but the total damage there was about $415 million.

All told, in the most affected areas about $76 billion in wages were paid in 2004. If that area uses labor at about the same rate as the economy as a whole, the hit to GDP as a result of the damage done should be somewhere around 1% of GDP. That's pretty large, but not catastrophic, and still probably unlikely to tip us to recession. James Hamilton's guess that at least 200,000 jobs are lost for several months looks quite reasonable with the data provided by BLS today.

Reader Roger Lewis shares this observation made while he walked to lunch on Atwood Mall today.

Yesterday at lunch, Delta Sig sold a brat and pop for either $2.50 or $2.75. Today the Aviation Club is selling a brat and pop for $1.50. No damn wonder the airlines are filing bankruptcy!

The answer, says John LaPlante, is "more than you think." He cites a study from Oklahoma that perhaps as much as spent off-book as on.

So if the official numbers understate the true effort by at least half, where does that the extra money go? Shell games and Enron-like accounting, say the authors. Some money spent on education is funneled through departments outside the Department of Education. Some money is spent (or in some cases, obligated for payment in the future) on the teachers' retirement plan, which has a gross imbalance between promised benefits and income. Some of the money being spent on education now, in other words, is being deferred to the future--a future that will put a tight squeeze on other public priorities and on taxpayers.

The per-pupil amount in Oklahoma could be $11,250 per student, rather than the official number of $6,429. Someone should duplicate this study for Minnesota.

When I'm asked what the most important concept in economics is, most people expect me to say supply and demand. I actually answer comparative advantage. But then comes supply and demand, and nothing illustrates that better than showing examples of where governments try to avoid the market as the mechanism for rationing goods and services. One I'll use this term is the story of Indonesia's energy policy put up today by the Mises Institute. Indonesia is spending $522 per person this year to impose a price ceiling on gasoline and other fuels -- this in a country with per capita income of $810.

One might wonder why they do this. The article's author, K.Y. Leong, makes a compelling argument that this is part of the Suharto legacy.

For example, there are no less than five toll-collection points between Jarkarta’s city centre and the international airport (about an hour’s drive), all owned and operated by the sons & daughter of the ex-Indonesian President Suharto. All car distribution businesses and assembly plants are either owned directly by the members of the Suharto family or in partnership with foreign investors. Again it is in their interest to encourage car ownership and usage. They couldn’t and wouldn’t give gasoline away, so the next best thing was to strong-arm the government into a costly subsidy scheme. Thus, the government’s predicament today.

Private toll booths. Now that's an economics story!

UPDATE: Phil Miller weighs in:

...if it weren't necessary for students to have been exposed to the concept of opportunity cost before they learn about comparative advantage, I'd teach opportunity cost second.

Exactly so.

Katie Newmark is correct: This is the kind of story that bring a smile to a principles of economics teacher's heart.

With gas prices in the Washington region among the highest in the nation, increasing numbers of beleaguered commuters are looking to trade two-hour treks on congested freeways for speedy telecommutes via the information superhighway, teleworking advocates say.

And the price rose, and lo, the quantity demanded fell. Demand curves slope downward after all.

Arthur Levine, the President of Columbia's Teachers College is stepping down to continue working on a his study of the state of educaton schools. He also argues that ten years as leader of a college uses up all his ideas. I've often argued that presidents need term limits for the good of the university.

The Scholars wish him well. The Chronicle of Higher Education will be running an article on his work on the education school project next week, and I can't wait to read it.

I seem to be getting stuck in this mode of linking two other posts together, but I find the linkage allows me to synthesize some thoughts. Here's another. I first read this article last week, on how both George W Bush and William Rehnquist don't like strict adherence to theory. Now of course not having a theory makes you both unpredictable and unlikely to know when enough is enough, as Professor Stuntz argues. But, it has the virtue of perhaps preventing you from making huge mistakes. Thus, while one can argue...

[Bush] isn't running around the world toppling governments and rebuilding nations. A better summary would go like this: America's interests changed after September 11, and in the Muslim world, some targets of opportunity appeared. Bush exploited them, or tried to. His is the sensibility of a business executive who says: Here's some money on the table. Let's pick it up.

...one can see that he's likely to be benefitted by good luck. Some people -- you know them, don't you? -- can have lots of good luck but are so beholden to being right that they avoid that luck. Stuntz continues:

There is something charmingly modest, and deeply conservative, about that vision of law and governance. Conservatives have long believed that human nature disposes us to arrogance, that we're not as smart and not nearly as farsighted as we think we are. The world is a terribly complicated place. If I think I've figured it out, I'm bound to be wrong, maybe disastrously so. Those who run things should not be enforcing some ideological orthodoxy but muddling along -- looking for targets of opportunity, picking up money on the table, testing their intuitions against those of others. It's not a grand vision of how the Supreme Court or the White House should work. But perhaps all those grand visions -- there is no shortage of them -- will lead us to very bad places.

Now here's where readers not kindly disposed to the President will protest but he never admits failure! Or at least he didn't, until now. And I left it there until reading Grant McCracken today on Bush as a practicing Christian.

He reaches out and thanks these people for their criticism. After his meeting with Bush, the mayor of New Orleans, Mr. C. Ray Nagin, said, "If anything, he told me he kind of appreciated my frankness and my bluntness."

This might be the triumph of a Christian generosity, a turning of the cheek. It's hard not to notice that no one takes Bush's Christianity seriously, unless, in my opinion, they take it too seriously. No one seems ever to read Bush's behavior as if he were being animated by Christian beliefs or practices. Instead, people treat his Christianity as if it were somehow "part of the act," an opportunistic play for sun belt, heart land, anti-coastal voters. No one seems to believe that George W. Bush is ever actually listening when in church. {emphasis mine --kb}

My impression of most scribblers is that they are wholly uninformed on what it means to be a "practicing Christian." I use the quotes because what I would call practicing is probably different than others, but the differences aren't as important as the action of trying to be like the person you want to be when you leave Sunday service. An opening part of the service I attend each week is a confession, that you didn't hit the mark. That doesn't mean you didn't take it seriously, only that you recognized your sinful nature. I do sense that part of Bush.

Of course, McCracken argues, this could be just another part of the Bush pragmatism, but even that has the quality of charity.

Or Bush's response to the mayor of New Orleans might be a triumph of a leader's pragmatism. It says, effectively, “your criticism helped me see the work we had to do. Thanks.” This is the selflessness of leadership. The leader accepts that people will behave badly. He/she accepts that people will behave badly at his/her expense and the expense of his/her presidency. The leader might engage in a blame game, but, really, what would that accomplish? A leader "takes the hit" and moves on to solve the problem.

I'm forwarding that paragraph on to others that I work with, and that's the goal I'll try to hit. I will confess not hitting it each Sunday, and resolve to try again next week, and the next, and the next.

I absolutely love this idea: Stephen Karlsson suggests we economists rent the Mt. Washington Resort in Bretton Woods NH for a night to hold a monetary conference. I'll up the stakes a bit: We make it an endorsement contest from economists for the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. The betting is still on Bernanke, but I think the odds are good on Feldstein.

A rolled up newspaper across the snout of Brooklyn College's administration has led them to back down from their attempt to intimidate KC Johnson. FIRE has more.

My open local newspaper this morning leads to this letter in the opinion page. Writes Patricia Strang of Foley:

An idea popped into my head during the current gas crisis.

To get some type of handle on the situation, our nation's businesses should begin by returning to the policy of not working on Sundays.

Families would be able to reunite, churches would be full once again, money would be saved and some stress would be reduced.

"Aw jeez, WalMart's closed. Let's go to church, Martha. And while we're at it, fix me dinner since there I can't get into Burger King. Invite the kids to walk over. Don't want them using gas."

If there was no such place as Foley, Minnesota, we'd have to create it.

Imagine poor Kathleen here, who would have gotten more notice for