MISGUIDED ENFORCEMENT. InstaPundit picks up a story of a drug bust gone wrong in Wisconsin, and quotes a letter to the editor of the Racine paper, "If the Racine City Council was running Green Bay, 63,284 people would have been ticketed at the Monday night Packer game because of 70-some people getting drunk, rowdy and urinating in the men's room sinks." Instapundit asks, "Do they play electronic music at those games?" Indeed they do. As do I, when I report the scores.

REGRESSION TO THE MEDIAN. The SCSU Scholars enlighten a colleague. You mean all the children aren't above average in Minnesota?

"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine! You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are
you?
A creation of Henderson

KNOW THINE ENEMY: "Trading With The Enemy: Corporations Say They Will Continue To Do Business With Iraq," is the headline of Jeremy Scahill's story. It's about French corporations.

ENFORCE THIS. Chicago Boyz note that the Council of Europe has outlawed Internet "hate speech." Well, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys, come over here and stop me.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The Stolypin cars have been prepared for the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) chapter of Kappa Sigma. "In announcing the suspension, Provost Loren Crabtree declared that the fraternity will have 'to demonstrate a commitment to uphold our expectations for civility, ethnic diversity and racial harmony.' Crabtree wanted thought reform for the fraternity: 'The fraternity clearly needs to go through some training on diversity and some training on racial tolerance and racial sensitivity, and we expect that they will have to do that.'" Re-education for the socially dangerous elements is not sufficient for some members of the Tennessee Politburo. "Bryan F. Coker, UT’s director of student judicial affairs, wrote in the student newspaper that while 'UT does not have a hate-speech code at this point...definitely some education needs to take place.' He continued: 'A lot of campuses have [created speech codes], and it’s definitely something to look at.'" (Thanks to the SCSU Scholars for the link to this report.)

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is on the case, and Instapundit characterizes the reaction to Provost Crabtree's decision as a "public relations debacle." Indeed.

BIG BROTHER

IS WATCHING YOU

ISN'T THAT SPECIAL Fox News (interchange via the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) reports a new kind of Hallowe'en observance.

"•Finally, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, members of that school’s Multicultural Student Coalition said they would spend Halloween running around campus with video recorders capturing images of costumes that they deem offensive, reports the Daily Cardinal.

Members of the group said they would approach students dressed in ethnic costumes and ask them a series of questions regarding what their costume is and what about it is offensive.

Senior Carl Camacho, a member of the executive team for the Multicultural Student Coalition, said it’s offensive when people portray an ethnicity in an incorrect way."

I certainly hope the students got into costume suitable for the occasion. Jean jackets, matching pants, and Mao caps come to mind. For that matter, there are some spiffy green or brown uniforms that would look good.

INCOMPETENT MORONS. Instapundit files a report on another PC atrocity (excuse the redundancy), at Harvard. This time it's a reference to administrators in the Graduate School of Business as "incompetent morons." At least one administrator is not amused.

Reminds me of a Soviet era joke: Did you hear that Private Potalov got twenty years for calling his general an idiot? Yes, six months for disrespecting an officer, and the rest for revealing a state secret.

ARMISTICE DAY. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, marks the armistice suspending the war to end all wars. The Shops will be open tomorrow. Here are InstaPundit's recommended readings, and Atlantic Blog recommends this tribute to Taps. Kathy Kinsley's sequel to Flanders Fields is here, and Vodka Pundit offers a Veteran's Day salute. Don't miss this recollection of the Italian campaign during World War II. My dad's unit was the 87th Infantry Division.

MIKE SHERMAN'S Ph.D.s. It's true that the Lombardi era Packers were a team full of Hall of Famers. But that's retrospectively. Many of them were cast-offs from other teams, and a few of them provided Coach Lombardi with some discipline problems. There were a few of the Hall of Famers, and a number of the role players, who looked for teammates with Ph.D.s, referring to Poor, Hungry, and Determined. That phenomenon seems to have been reborn on the current team. A few weeks ago, there were questions about the effects of injuries, particularly on the defense. But the Ph.Ds have stepped up, with another interception return for a touchdown by Marques Anderson. Packers 40, Lions 14.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN Atlantic Blog has been following the possible introduction of "top-up" fees, which sound like premium prices for premium services. He raises two points about subsidies: "Subsidized higher education is a subsidy to the wealthier in two ways. First, the users typically come from higher income families. Second, the users end up with higher incomes than the ones who did not go to a university." I have found an article by W. Lee Hansen, this is "Income Distribution Effects of Higher Education," in the May 1970 American Economic Review. The opening paragraph is eerie; "The vast enrollment growth of the early and middle 1960's, combined with sharp price increases since then, have produced a large and continuing demand for educational resources. At the same time the revenue-generating abilities of institutions of higher education appear not to have kept pace, likely because of other rapidly growing demands for public funds. The result has been a gradually tightening financial squeeze, accentuated by recent federal cutbacks in funds and by reduced generosity on the part of state legislators responding to campus turmoil."

But it is not to that point I wish to speak. Rather, I want to look at some analysis for the state of Wisconsin. "Despite differences in the apparent 'quality' of the University of Wisconsin (UW) system and the Wisconsin state university (WSU) system, the full instructional costs in 1964-65 were approximately equal, at $1,200 per academic year. Since tuition amounted to $300 at the UW and to $190 at the WSU, net-per student institutional costs -- or the subsidies per student -- amounted to $900 and $1,010, respectively. The effect of this tuition differential is to provide larger net subsidies to WSU students and their families than to UW students and their families." Because Wisconsin's income tax has increasing marginal rates, and richer families were more likely to send students to the UW system (in those days, only Madison and Milwaukee: inter alia La Crosse, Platteville, and Whitewater were in the WSU sustem), the Wisconsin subsidy was lower on average for better-off families.

. So what's the problem in the UK?

First, the Francis Beckett commentary Atlantic Blog is referring to has a point of view:"It's something we should be trying to change. Instead, we have a Labour government which is trying to make this more marked. The more prestigious your son's or daughter's university, the more you will pay.

According to an NUS survey, nearly half of all full-time students take part-time paid work during term time. More than a third miss lectures for this reason and one in five fail to submit coursework. If you have the money, you can make sure your family has sufficient time to study."

Depends on your perspective. There's nothing wrong with working your way through college. People do it all the time. Claiming work responsibilities is a bit more respectable than owning up to sleeping off a Thursday kegger. And the more prestigious the university, the better your son or daughter expects to do. I have yet to hear of The New Republic or The Washington Monthly or Reason or any of the other Big Media hiring interns from Northern Illinois University, for example.

The more substantive part of Beckett's essay is here:"A few months ago, education minister Margaret Hodge explained why she no longer believed students were poor. At a demonstration about tuition fees, she said she could not help noticing that one of the women students was wearing a Tiffany necklace worth (so Ms Hodge said, and I trust her on such matters) £300.

I do not know (and neither does Ms Hodge) how this student came to be the possessor of such a splendid necklace. It may have been an heirloom, or a present from a monied and besotted boyfriend. It certainly does not prove that free higher education, from which Ms Hodge herself benefited in the 1960s, is what she called 'a massive subsidy to the middle classes'."

No, an example is not a proof, but accumulated research offers evidence for Ms Hodge's assertion.

"That's the New Labour way of looking at the world. This benefit is not reaching the poorest who need it most, so we should withdraw it. The other solution, which is to make sure it does reach the people who need it most, never seems to occur to them."

There's another Guardian report suggesting, to the contrary, that that solution is one of several that has occurred to New Labor.

"Speaking at his regular televised press conference, Mr Blair said there was agreement across the board about four key aims - but no options were off-limits in meeting them.

"One, that the status quo cannot continue because the universities are not well enough funded.

"Secondly that universities require more freedom and independence from government.

"Thirdly, however, that we have to improve the access of poorer students to university.

"And fourthly we mustn't do anything whereby we effectively put a financial barrier in between people and their desire to go to university.

"Beyond that there are no predispositions whatsoever. We have just got to get the best system."

He said the problem was being tackled across the world as universities increasingly competed against each other."

There are, in fact, several possible solutions here. First, the rewards to university education are at historic highs. Therefore, lending money for college might well be attractive compared, say, to lending money for long-distance capacity. Perhaps removing the financial barrier means more commercial freedom for banks and other lenders to make college loans. Second, competition among universities might well mean discovery of, if not the "best," a system of higher education that allocates resources efficiently. Third, is the use of the term "poorer" referring to ability to pay, or to ability to perform? That makes a difference to the objectives.

The folks at the Guardian will probably not be pleased with that. Here's Polly Curtis quoting an official with the lecturers' union: "Top-up fees for prestigious universities will accentuate the gap between have and have-not institutions and between have and have-not students. If you create a premier league which attracts most of the funds and charges a higher entrance fee, you impoverish the rest of the institutions and condemn poor students to go to poor institutions. It is a class-ridden recipe for a second-class national system."

A couple of observations. First, sometimes a separating equilibrium is useful. Given that resources are scarce, distinguishing the most able from less-able minds will confer benefits. Second, it does not follow that the premier league will attract most of the funds. Nothing in any of the Guardian's coverage has ruled out somebody doing for mass university education what Ford did for automobiles or Walton for retailing. Presuming that some of the students taking part-time work and neglecting their studies are acting rationally, is there anything inherently wrong with responding efficiently to their wishes?

UNDER ROBERT FISK'S ROCK. Atlantic Blog is all over the opening lines of Robert Fisk's latest. Further down comes this:"The United Nations can debate any Iraqi non-compliance with weapons inspectors, but the United States will decide whether Iraq has breached UN resolutions. In other words, America can declare war without UN permission.

So how many of the American tanks entering Baghdad will be flying UN pennants? None, I suspect."

I believe that's a feature, not a bug.

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES. No. 2 Pencil links to a Northern Star editorial questioning the effectiveness of assessment tests. Her reaction: "Wow. I don't know that I've ever before read anything by a college newspaper journalist who complains that the testing stakes aren't high enough to be useful." Hey, I have readers at the Northern Star!

GOING TO WAR. Vodka Pundit reminds us, "We're going to war soon, and not everyone we send will be coming home." The soldiers our press will interview will offer quotes such as, "We're doing our job," and "We knew the risks." Every one of them will be apprehensive, none the less.

Let's live our lives in such a way as to be worthy of their efforts.

OPEN LETTER TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Vodka Pundit says, "I don’t want to sound too harsh, but you guys really need a good talking to." Somewhat different talking-to than mine, but on point.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. "What's changed? Hearts and minds.
And once the Truth of a situation is confronted, things must change.
They cannot remain the same," writes Greatest Jeneration.

LAKE WOBEGONE EFFECT. Joanne Jacobs discovers parents who equate "average" with "underachiever." "They're used to hearing all children described as 'excellent'," she notes, then asks, "Is there a coherent all-school strategy for educating all students -- or a grab bag of special programs?" Should there be a distinction? I ask this in all seriousness. Long ago, Alfred Marshall wrote, "Ought we to rest content with the existing forms of division of labor? Is it necessary that large numbers of the people should be exclusively occupied with work that has no elevating character? Is it possible to educate gradually among the great mass of workers a new capacity for the higher kinds of work; and in particular for undertaking co-operatively the management of the business in which they are themselves employed?" (Principles of Economics, eighth ed. (1936), p. 41)

For a long time, this series of questions has been neglected by the education establishment, because the high-technology of the middle twentieth century was one in which people could be productive without being challenged intellectually. Whether there is a twenty-first century version of Fordism that will enable people with few intellectual skills to earn a middle-class standard of living remains to be seen. If there is no such magic, different strategies that draw out the best from different people make sense to me.

CLASSIFIED INFORMATION? The McDonald's Corporate release announcing restructurings in four countries, and closure of McDonald's operations in three, does not name the countries. Is someone taking seriously Tom Friedman's observation that two countries with McDonald's operations have never (apart from the Yugoslavian case) gone to war?

RHYMES WITH CARVE. Reader Bill Sjostrom provides an Allen Barra column (in the sports section! of the Online Wall Street Journal - registration required) evaluating Packer quarterback Brett Favre as the best ever, except ...

"Of course, there's an entirely different standard for ranking quarterbacks, and it has to do more with their "quality" numbers, such as yards per throw, TD-to-interception ratio and ultimately, big-game performance, than in monstrous career totals -- you know, winning. Mr. Starr, who won five championships from 1961 through 1967, is the perfect model for such a quarterback (NFL 80.5) and one whose championship record Mr. Favre can't possibly equal."

Reminds me of a joke. How many Packer fans does it take to change a lightbulb? One to order the beer, one to grill the brats, one to change the lightbulb, six to explain how much better the old lightbulb was.

CRUMBLING ECONOMY? Also from this morning's news, productivity growth exceeded (whose?) expectations, and last week's initial claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly (according to whom?) fell. And the regime change in the Democratic Party seriously must pay more attention to the left?

Others have offered suggestions, here are mine. First, dump the public employee's unions. Second, ease the Silent Generation into retirement.

Then, consider cultivating the non-tinfoil-hat libertarians. Seriously. Rather than invoking the New Deal, and hoping that will have the same effect on advocates of Social Security reform that garlic has on vampires, and defending a bad retirement investment on the grounds that it comes bundled with some bad insurance for survivors, and for disability, provide a reform that improves the return on investment and protects the best features of the insurance. And never mind that stuff about an intergenerational contract. The Silent Generation, as these pages argue, broke that long ago. Furthermore, rather than treating homeland security as an attack on government employees, treat it as an intrusion on the liberties of the people.