BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT?

The Romney campaign thanks the editorial board at the Chicago Jewish Star for an endorsement.

There's one troubling excerpt.

With his executive experience, belief in the enervating potential of the private sector, proven ability to deal with opposing views, positive outlook and quiet but admirable religious and charitable persona, Mitt Romney is the candidate who can best guide our country in the years ahead.

We like Mr. Romney- and strongly endorse his candidacy for president- because of his moderate, small-government views.

Enervating?

It's encouraging, though, to see an endorsement that doesn't propose to replace one Presidential Messiah with another.

Contrary to the implications of Mr. Obama’s 2008 statement, Americans provided for the sick before his time; the rise of the oceans did not begin “to slow” and our planet did not begin “to heal”- not in a metaphoric sense and not in a real one.

…

Mr. Obama’s unsatisfactory direction for America was rooted in untenable assumptions, fueled by arrogance, and promoted by divisiveness. We don’t need more of that.

It is not only that Mr. Obama thus deserves to be a one-term proposition; it is that Mr. Romney is simply the better bet for our country.

The better bet in the form of lowered expectations for the President of the United States. That's encouraging.

PASSENGER RAIL PROGRESS.

In March, we noted a plan for privately-operated passenger trains in Florida.  My assessment at the time noted, "the freight railroads would like to have the kind of control over scheduling and reliability that comes from common mechanical standards, dispatching, and scheduling."  That's evident from the All Aboard Florida filing with the Surface Transportation Board, as reported in Trains.

The passenger train operator will rebuild a second track along the Florida East Coast Railway between Miami and Cocoa, Fla., and build entirely new track on right-of-way leased from the Florida Department of Transportation and Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority. This would place about 40 miles of new rail line alongside or in the median of state Route 528, which runs between Cocoa and the Orlando airport and is operated by the OOCEA.

All Aboard Florida will not seek public operating subsidies for the project, but is exploring the possibility of obtaining construction financing through the Federal Railroad Administration's Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Program. Through the program the railroad can apply for direct loans and loan guarantees through the FRA.

The filing stipulates the new passenger service will not be a part of the interstate passenger rail network and should be exempt from federal oversight. All Aboard Florida will not participate in any through ticketing program with Amtrak. It also says no freight service will be operated by All Aboard Florida, or over the new right-of-way to Orlando. It does say that, for flexibility in operations, FEC dispatchers will have the option of using either track on the shared right-of-way for freight and passenger traffic.

It's intriguing that the operator wants to be freed of Congressional meddling with Amtrak, which is the cynic's interpretation of "exempt from federal oversight."  The stipulation that the new trackage will be Passenger Service Only likely calms fears at the CSX Railroad of freight competition.  The absence of joint ticketing, or any mention of connectivity, troubles me.  The value of a Passenger Rail network is in being able to make connections.  Admittedly, Amtrak's Florida service is a pale shadow of what Seaboard Coast Line operated almost up to 30 April 1971, and the Miami to Orlando service has more promise as a boat train connecting cruise ship passengers to the theme parks and Grapefruit League stadia.

In Illinois, passenger trains are again rolling at 110 mph.

The demonstration included a 15-mile segment of 110 mph running between Dwight and Pontiac, Ill., for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo, Amtrak Chairman Tom Carper, and a host of local politicians and reporters.

Heritage-painted GE P42 No. 66 led the special train out of Chicago to Normal, Ill., along with Amtrak No. 63. Both units are equipped with the Incremental Train Control System already used on Amtrak’s 110 mph Michigan Line trackage between Porter, Ind., and Kalamazoo, Mich., as well as UP’s cab signals. This is the first installation that joins ITCS’s ability to verify that quad-gate highway crossings are clear and operational with the UP cab signal system. Although higher speeds up to 150 mph are routinely attained on the grade-separated Northeast Corridor, the cab signal-ITCS combination launched in Illinois fulfills the requirements of positive train control in highway grade crossing territory.

The test run offered the public officials a chance to do what comes naturally.

At Normal, while the politicians were giving speeches, the diesels ran around the train on a passing track and coupled up to [Amtrak official car] Beech Grove for the trip back to Chicago.

Too bad the train doesn't cut as attractive a figure at 110 mph as the Nebraska Zephyr would.

The Associated Press reporting on the Illinois test run does nothing to counter the suspicion that mainstream journalists are Democratic operatives masquerading as journalists.

In a modest milestone for President Barack Obama's high-speed rail vision, test runs will start zooming along a small section of the Amtrak line between Chicago and St. Louis at 110 mph Friday.

The 30-mph increase from the route's current top speed is a morale booster for advocates of high-speed rail in America who have watched conservatives in Congress put the brakes on spending for fast train projects they view as expensive boondoggles. But some rail experts question whether the route will become profitable, pose serious competition to air and automobile travel, or ever reach speeds comparable to the bullet trains blasting across Europe and Asia at 150 mph and faster.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Gov. Pat Quinn are scheduled to be on board when an Amtrak train hits 110 mph for the first time in Illinois. But it will only maintain that speed for a short time, somewhere along the 15 miles between Dwight and Pontiac, before braking back to more normal speeds.

Governor Quinn has publicly hailed the 110 mph speed (a Global Positioning System speed estimate hit 111; that's likely an approximation error) as a first "outside the Northeast." In the Amtrak era, that's true, although the Pioneer Zephyr's dawn-to-dusk run included some Illinois mileage at 112; the 1935 Hiawatha test train maintained 112.5 for several miles across the Wisconsin sand country, and speeds in that range were routine for the 75 Minute Trains between Milwaukee and Chicago until 1950.  Let the younger generations enjoy the higher speeds, as they've had no previous experience of them.

There's also enough repaired and renovated rolling stock on hand to provide Thanksgiving relief trains on the Michigan corridor.

One round trip, Nos. 356 and 359, will make a same-day turn at Ann Arbor on Wednesday, Nov. 21, and the following Friday through Sunday. No. 356 will leave Chicago at 9:20 a.m., 2 hours after the departure of morning train No. 350 to Detroit and Pontiac, and return from Ann Arbor at 4:05 p.m., more than 3 hours prior to afternoon train No. 355’s westbound stop.

A shorter round trip, Nos. 358 and 357, leaves Chicago at 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, remains overnight on Amtrak-owned trackage in front of the station at Kalamazoo, Mich., and returns to Chicago at 6:15 a.m. the following morning, Thursday through Monday. Amtrak tested this schedule over Labor Day weekend in 2010. The four additional trains can be operated with only one additional set of equipment, though the consist will be exchanged with other Midwest operations to allow for maintenance in Chicago.

The holiday service expansion in Michigan can serve as a prototype for expanded frequencies on this corridor, a national network route where only agreements with Norfolk Southern and Canadian National, not states, are needed. Those host railroads approved the temporary service expansion because normally heavy freight traffic would be reduced on a holiday weekend. It is also in a region that has sufficient operating and onboard crews available to staff the additional trains, which will all offer business class and café car amenities.

That freight train interference is salient on the former New York Central main line between Porter and Englewood; less so on the trackage east of Kalamazoo that Norfolk Southern will be conveying to Michigan for Passenger Rail purposes.

The pathing of the relief train indicates a weakness of the network east of Ann Arbor.  I'm referring to the early summer timetable, in which trains require about 4 hours 30 minutes for the 243 miles Chicago to Ann Arbor, and two hours for the 61 miles Ann Arbor to Pontiac.  Thus, the eastbound relief train meets the westbound midday train 353 somewhere in western Michigan, turns on a wheel at Ann Arbor, and meets the eastbound evening train 354 either on the fast rail or on Norfolk Southern's two main tracks.  The regular westbound evening train doesn't get away from Pontiac until after 4 pm.

It's progress, though, compared to what Amtrak inherited from Penn Central.

WISCONSIN'S NEWEST PARTY SCHOOL.

Not the Madison campus of The University of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee campus, now serving more Wisconsin residents than the flagship.  We noted earlier the importation of the Madison social environment to Milwaukee's east side.  The authorities have responded.

Milwaukee police on [September 8] vowed a crackdown against drunken misbehavior near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Chief Edward Flynn announced the effort with a roll call in the street - a symbolic effort he has used to unveil police efforts. This one was on E. Newberry Blvd. and N. Cramer St., where residents have said the loud parties and drunken shenanigans have hit an intolerable level.

In this crackdown is an opportunity for universities to consider their public image.

Flynn said the neighborhood is afflicted by "adult-looking individuals who have no common sense." The goal is to protect the area from drunken students and protect the students from becoming crime victims, he said.

"It's a challenge because everybody you can put in this circumstance are sure they are smarter than you and have very important parents," Flynn said. "We are going to educate them in the ways of citizenship."

Here's the task for the universities.

Is it an unwillingness to confront the hook-up culture and the MTV Spring Break construction of collegiate life and the marketing of a Jacuzzi U. or a summer camp, to name four themes that never fail to provide material for these pages?

Let things be done decently and in order.

YOU DIDN'T CLEAN IT UP FAST ENOUGH.

That's former President Clinton's memorable characterization of the Republicans' criticism of President Obama's performance.  Reason's Nick Gillespie sees it differently.

Does anyone else remember all the crowing that went on after Obama's "historic" first year in office? This is a president who basically was able to get everything he wanted - stimulus, healthcare, the sorts of military actions he wanted, a free-hand in surveilling enemies here and abroad, and more - and he has still reaped a whirlwind when it comes to a vaguely decent economy and America's standing in the world. Indeed, the Dems took a "shellacking" (his term) in the 2010 mid-term elections because of his legislative record, not in spite of it. By his own litmus tests - especially the unemployment rate - he's been a huge and undeniable failure. When it comes to foreign policy, does anyone really believe he's done more than drive down U.S. standing from the already-low place that his predecessor left it? And when it comes to a variety of other issues - ranging from executive power to raiding medical marijuana joints in states where they're legal to immigration - he's simply been godawful.

That statement is not an endorsement of Governor Romney.

[M]aybe the presidential election will be tight right down to election day. Which is good for cable news, but bad for the large majority of libertarianish Americans who believe the government should do less in the economy and not promote a single set of traditional values. We just weren't represented on the stage last night.

The major parties are acting as if voter disutility functions are quadratic, meaning each party has to please the more vocal elements of its base, rather than cultivate the median voters.  I'm not clever enough to see the strategy by which a limited government party could attract members of both the fiscal Leave Us Alone coalition and the social Leave Us Alone coalition.

JUST AS ETHICS TRAINING MONTH BEGINS.

The investigation of the Northern Illinois University coffee fund has produced arrests.

Robert Albanese, Susan Zahm, Lawrence Murray, Kenneth Pugh, Mark Beaird and Joseph Alberti were arrested; Michael Hall, Keenon Darlinger and Keith Jackson have not been, according to NIU Police Sgt. Alan Smith.

With the exception of Albanese, all are current NIU employees. However, “the employment status of the eight current employees is under review,” according to NIU Today. Interim Controller Barbara Seldal has taken over Jackson’s duties and has also taken his place on a policy review board. Controller Jackson was put on the policy review board following the coffee fund allegations; however, he is currently charged with official misconduct, obstructing justice and violation of the State Property Control Act.

Following the announcement that charges had been filed against NIU employees, the university announced they had retained the services of J. William Roberts; Roberts will “provide additional expertise to the president and the Board of Trustees,” according to NIU Today.

I wonder if the Property Control Act will be part of this year's online ethics training.

There are nine warrants outstanding.  Look at the left sidebar of the article for the specifications, as well as downloadable copies of the warrants themselves.

Each of the individuals named has a Certificate of Completion on file for each year's ethics training program, which has been in place since around 2004.  The Ethics Act was signed into law by then-governor Rod Blagojevich.

There are no fugitives from justice.

RENDERED UNEMPLOYABLE BY COMPASSIONATE POLICY?

Once upon a time, McDonald's bragged about its Speedee Service System, although in those days the speed was a consequence of Fordist standardized manufacturing techniques in the extreme: the hamburgers already cooked, the fries fried, some milk shakes ready in the cooler.  The menus have become more complicated in the interim, and recent analysis of waiting time in the drive-through lanes (something not provided under the original Golden Arches) suggests a connection between that complexity and longer waiting times.  Probably a good thing the study doesn't consider the walk-in trade, as the default setting at most establishments with drive-through lanes is "We're busy with the drive-through traffic, and we're going to ignore you for now."

An InstaPundit guest commentary on the story suggests there's increasing complexity aggravated by decreased competence of the help.

I own a fast food restaurant and the biggest reason service has slowed (other than the growing incompetence of the workforce) is that we are all running our businesses with way fewer employees. We used to have 23 total employees, we now have 9. We used to run a lunch rush with anywhere from 6 to 8 people we now do it with 4.

While business has certainly decreased the biggest reason is probably labor cost. 7.25 dollars an hour for the current functionally illiterate, no work ethic, yet strangely full of so much self esteem they can’t take instruction teenage product of the public schools is also why staffing is low. We hire adults when we can but of course we pay them more thus high labor costs=fewer workers and slower service.

The owner's complaint lays off a lot of the blame for the incompetent help on public policy.  I can't help but wonder whether there's insufficient help as a consequence of downsizing for its own sake.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD.

Northern Illinois University president John Peters calls it a career.

The university has changed considerably since Peters took over in 2000. Under Peters, the university reached higher student enrollment numbers, peaking at 25,313 students in fall 2006. However, enrollment has dropped steadily since – fall 2012’s enrollment of 21,869 students is a 4.9 percent drop from the previous year.

State support to higher education has shrunk as well. In the outset of his speech, Peters highlighted the “bleak” landscape facing NIU and other public universities. The Illinois General Assembly has cut the university’s appropriations in six of the past 13 years, Peters said.

“And this year’s state funding was the same as what we received in 1995,” Peters said.

Circumstances have been difficult. The upside to having only two presidents in the past 26 years is there are fewer serial administrators bringing in their ideas and  dragooning, or enticing, faculty into endless rounds of planning and retreating and otherwise not concentrating on the primary objective.  That's not to say that the primary objectives are well thought out, or coherent.  In the university's announcement of the president's retirement plan is a statement of the current objective.  I'm not sure what "student-centered public research university" refers to.  Is it a dig at the state flagships for too many large lectures at which grant-getting research stars rack up enough student credit hours to pacify the legislature?  Or is it a way to place more burdens on a faculty that, thanks to the latest state appropriation, is likely to become smaller at the same time that headquarters plans to add enrollment?

Despite that, the latest state of the university address notes encouraging developments in the Honors program, in freshman recruitment, in academic proficiency among scholarship athletes, merit scholarships, and fund-raising.

The speech also invites faculty and staff to think about what it is they should be doing.

Our work lives similarly are filled with small obstacles that might be removed with a little ingenuity, initiative or elbow grease.

What stands in the way of becoming the best instructor you can be?

What barriers prevent you from doing the caliber of research you are capable of?

What impediments reduce efficiency and undermine our efforts to best meet the needs of our students?

So, today I am calling upon you to identify these obstacles.

I can state publicly what I will say privately, when this opportunity presents itself.

The principal impediment to achieving any of these goals is that I, and my colleagues, are over-tired, and tired of having to make do with less, year, after year, after year, state non-support or not.  The secondary problem, and it is a non-trivial problem, is the proliferation of projects that get introduced with great fanfare, and get a lot of good people involved, only to be scaled back or abandoned in a few years.

Admit good students in numbers that the faculty can work with.  Recruit good colleagues capable of talking with each other about their scholarship.  Fix the roof during the summer session, when there's less pressure on classrooms, rather than because the building inspector has condemned it.  And leave us be to do our work, rather than forever distracting us with initiatives and management fads and the latest high-sounding idea from so-called pedagogical theorists that never survive their first encounter with a classroom.  Maybe in two hundred years, or two thousand years, we got a few things right.

MORE WORK FOR FRENCH LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Students come from different circumstances. Thus some parents compel their children to study. Others less so. In order to attenuate the resulting endowment effects, new French president François Hollande proposes to ban homework. That proposal might appeal to disaffected students everywhere, but those disaffected students probably won't learn about Harrison Bergeron until it's too late.

Banning out-of-school assignments would put France on the cutting edge of pedagogical fashion, though it wouldn't be entirely unprecedented. An elementary school in Maryland recently replaced homework with a standing order for 30 minutes a day of after-school reading. A German high school is also test-running a new homework ban, after an earlier reform lengthened the school day and crowded out time for extra-curriculars such as sports or music.

These small-scale experiments aim to give students more freedom to excel on their own initiative. Mr. Hollande wants just the opposite. As Education Minister Vincent Peillon told Le Monde, the state needs to "support all students in their personal work, rather than abandon them to their private resources, including financial, as is too often the case today." The problem, in other words, isn't with homework per se. It's that some homes are more conducive to homework than others.

Here we begin to wonder: Are the French losing their mind? Fortunately not. More than two-thirds of the country would oppose the ban, according to an Ifop poll, so there's hope that even in the land of égalité there's some recognition that state power cannot equalize everything. It's also reassuring to know that a majority of French adults believe there's something to be said for instructing children in the need for personal initiative and responsibility, regardless of excuses or circumstances.

Mr. Hollande, however, remains out of step. At the Sorbonne, he stressed that school is where "the child becomes the citizen of the future." Perhaps his ideas about homework say something about the kind of citizens of the future he wishes to see.

Insta Pundit guest correspondent  Elizabeth Price Foley quips,

Kinda like a French “No Child Gets Ahead,” I suppose.  We wouldn’t want to “abandon” kids to “private resources” like support, love, and a culture of hard work.  Better to let the government take over all that stuff.  Now that’s“progress”!

I like seeing the dual proposition to No Child Left Behind propagate.

It doesn't surprise me that such an idea would appeal to the French, who used to enforce a 35 hour workweek, the repeal of which took away some perquisites for skilled workers.

The new law lets companies ignore the nominal 35-hour maximum and negotiate — or impose — longer hours for staffers. In doing so, bosses will no longer have to worry about compensating extra time with days off, as they were previously obliged to do to keep any worker's average workweek over the year within the 35-hour limit. What's more, overtime work will no longer come attached to a 25% bonus, but with one as low as 10%, to be determined through negotiation.

Opponents of the new measures complain employers will now be able to impose non-optional overtime on employees, who would have to fear being fired if they refuse. They also expect businesses to stick to the lower-end 10% scale in paying for extra time, knowing that workers fearing for their jobs may not be able to stand up to their bosses for more money. That will be especially true in smaller companies, labor experts say, where staff organization and union representation don't match levels in bigger groups.

In any case, the new law means the de facto death of the 35-hour week introduced in 1998 with great fanfare and considerable controversy by the Socialist government of the day. The measure was designed to stimulate job creation by cutting up the pie of available work into smaller pieces. Socialists claimed the creation of 350,000 new posts in its first five years; similar numbers were provided by independent economists and organizations monitoring labor activity. However, conservatives have consistently accused the law of shackling French businesses and undermining economic growth. They've also noted that state subsidies softening the impact of the reduced workweek on businesses have cost taxpayers billions. The new legislation, its backers say, will leave companies freer to demand more work from staffers when needed, and allow employees to heed Sarkozy's appeal to help lift the economy — and their own slumping purchasing power — by working more.

Thus far, lower-paid workers appear ready to do just that. Ironically, the new law looks more set to cramp the style of middle and upper managers, whose long work days and greater disposable income made them the 35-hour week's biggest fans.

We wait for homeschooling to emerge among ambitious French parents, and perhaps for a new birth of entrepreneurship.

THE ROOT CAUSE OF SCHOOL FAILURE.

Not curriculum, not security, not money.  It's all about the Flaming Hot Cheetos.

Yet there is something about Flamin' Hot Cheetos that inflames critics in a way that other snacks -- including regular Cheetos -- never did. Some schools and districts, including the Noble Street Charter School Network and the entire Rockford school district, have banned Flamin' Hots by name, citing nutritional concerns.

The article mentions serious research into the science of obesity and addiction.  I suspect, though, that there are other influences on student performance with more substantial effects than a bag, or four, of spicy chips.

VOODOO ECONOMICS?

Rather than raise tax rates, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel anticipates economic growth to bring in additional revenues at current rates.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to offer a good-news budget to City Council on Wednesday that would siphon money from special taxing districts and rely on predictions of an improving economy to balance the books, aldermen said.

But while Emanuel has already said he will not raise taxes, fees or fines, the details of how he will do more with less pain were lacking in the PowerPoint presentation Budget Director Alexandra Holt made to aldermen Tuesday.

In Chicago, the political infighting is blue-on-blue, not blue-on-red.

Even as the mayor and his staff try to paint that positive picture, they reiterated a warning that chronic underfunding of city pensions will catch up to Chicago next year if state law isn't changed.

At a briefing for council committee leaders, Emanuel "said we have to get a handle on the pensions, or this would seem like the good old days next year," Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, said.

If changes aren't made to how taxpayers and public employees pay for pensions, the city will face a $700 million increase in contributions just for police and firefighter retirement funds in 2014, said Laurence Msall, president of the nonpartisan Civic Federation budget watchdog group.

And pension reform isn't the only major issue the city will have to resolve come next year. The city's major labor contracts, for police and firefighters, have expired and are under negotiation.

The city layoff numbers are lower than last year, in part because Emanuel hit taxpayers in the pocketbook with this year's budget. He began the process of doubling water and sewer fees, boosted the cost of vehicle stickers and increased the hotel tax and the taxes on downtown parking. The 2011 budget also increased a host of fines for various infractions, from not cutting grass to playing loud music in a vehicle.

Once the housing market picks up (perhaps the cold dead fingers of the current political regime will have to be pried away first) it's likely that residents will look for jurisdictions with less burdensome municipal service fees, and perhaps without parking taxes and parking stickers.

THE PRISONERS DILEMMA THAT IS A HUB AIRPORT.

Milwaukee's Mitchell Field, which is so close to Chicago's airports that the most cost-effective way to get aircraft from Milwaukee to O'Hare might be to build a very long taxi-way, now may have to write off some of the taxpayer investment in having an international airport.

The gate shifts will cost the airport about $1.1 million, according to a Milwaukee County report. But shutting down Concourse E, the airport's smallest concourse, would save an unspecified amount of money, airport spokeswoman Pat Rowe said Friday.

Unfortunately, it is not as easy to reconfigure an airport as it was for Patrick McGinnis to sell half the tracks at Boston North Station to a parking-lot operator, or for The Pennsylvania Railroad to sell the air rights above Pennsylvania Station for a then state-of-the-art, now crappy sports arena.

US Airways is moving to Concourse D, which at 23 gates is the airport's largest concourse, according to a report to Michael Mayo, chairman of the County Board's transportation committee.

Those moves will help make that area more active, said the report, written by Frank Busalacchi, county transportation director. Concourse D has seen a decline in activity since Frontier Airlines reduced its operations from a peak of 87 daily flights to just seven daily flights.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines, which now owns AirTran Airways, is moving its operations from Concourse D to Concourse C, where the AirTran gates are located, to consolidate those operations, the report said.

Finally, United Airlines, which now owns Continental Airlines, wants to consolidate those operations on Concourse E.

However, that would leave United as the only carrier in that concourse, which has just 10 gates. Airport managers want United to instead move to Concourse D, the report said.

For all the concourse shifts to occur, the airport needs to expand security systems, relocate passenger loading bridges and make other changes, costing an estimated $1.1 million, the report said. The county-owned airport is funded mainly by fees and lease payments from the airlines and concession operators, as well as parking revenue.

A proposal to recommend closing Concourse E has not yet been submitted to the County Board, Rowe said, but is being considered by airport managers.

A number of commenters on the report suggest that the airport do more to encourage intermodal connections.  There is an Amtrak station nearby.  Now, if passengers could get to the airport from Green Bay or Oconomowoc or Eau Claire on 110 mph trains, the city's experience attracting Illinoisans to fly out of Milwaukee might work well with local residents.

THE PRISONERS DILEMMA THAT IS COLLEGE SPORT.

Resources that could be used to strengthen academic programs or hold the line on tuitions go into sports.

So you lose more money on sports, but gosh darn it, you're slowly paying off the arena. That's called throwing good money after bad, even in the Ozarks, and you might lose less money dropping the athletics and having the bank foreclose on the arena.

That's the story at [Southwest] Missouri State. At Northern Illinois, the football team is 14-1 over the past fifteen games, including a bowl win, despite continued local skepticism about the investment value of selling wins to Iowa and Wisconsin for the benefit of their Chicago area alumni.

More generally, the logic of putting more money into the sports programs is dubious.

Coach Auriemma, is the University of Connecticut attempting to be competitive with Northern Illinois in accounting or Michigan State in engineering or Wisconsin in chemistry or Penn State in economics? I leave the generalization of your argument to the reader as an exercise.

Now comes Historiann, with an observation from Colorado State in the same vein.  The football program underachieves, and there's accumulating evidence that playing football is hazardous to adolescent health, and yet the program is underachieving because of underinvestment.

That’s right:  a guy with a 1 and 4 record isn’t out on his a$$–he’s even being rewarded for this kind of performance!  (And guess what?  Baa Ram U. is still paying out to other coaches they’ve fired in the past several years.  Sing it loud and sing it proud:  being a football coach is awesome!!!

Look, over there!  It’s a schoolteacher, and 80% of her students failed to make adequate yearly progress!  Let’s get her! She’s what’s wrong with education today.

There is ample evidence of resources being misallocated in the academic areas, in the Cold Spring Shops view most notably in student affairs, assessment, and retention.  Misallocation of resources there, however, does not excuse misallocation of resources in sport.

A PINCH OF SEASONALITY.

There's a dispassionate analysis of the most recent, politically charged, monthly employment surveys at the World Socialist Web Site.

The establishment survey for September showed desultory hiring, in line with previous monthly reports. Private-sector payrolls rose by only 104,000, less than economists’ projections. Government employment increased by 10,000.

The combined total was considerably lower than the upwardly revised figures of 142,000 for August and 181,000 for July. Manufacturing jobs actually declined by 16,000 in September, the second consecutive monthly drop. The biggest increase in payrolls was in the lower-paying service sector.

The household survey showed a totally unexpected increase of 873,000 Americans with jobs, the biggest monthly jump in 29 years. It also showed a decline of 456,000 people out of work and the entry of 418,000 more people into the labor force. Thus, according to these figures, the decline in the jobless rate was not, as in previous months, the result of more discouraged workers giving up looking for a job, but rather an increase in both hiring and job-seeking.

Steve Haugen, an economist at the BLS, provided CBS News with a partial, but plausible, explanation for the improbably positive household survey results. He noted that people in the 20-24 age group, including college students and those who often work temporary jobs, left the job market this summer in August, earlier than usual, confounding the expectation of the BLS that they would leave in September.

Since the BLS does seasonal adjustments of its data, a big decline in employment in this demographic was factored into the bureau’s calculations for September. “Because there was no decline,” Haugen said, “there’s a big increase after seasonal adjustment.” In other words, perhaps hundreds of thousands of nonexistent temporary jobs were reported to exist.

Expectations revised downward plus students returning early to college because Labor Day came early this year equals fewer unemployed workers in a smaller full-time labor force.

An essay by former Secretary of Labor and regular Ed Schultz guest Robert Reich is instructive, in part for what it sees, and in part for what it does not see.

According to the separate payroll survey undertaken by the BLS, just 114,000 new jobs were added in September. At least 125,000 are needed per month just to keep up with population growth. Yet August’s job number was revised upward to 142,000, and July’s to 181,000.

In other words, we’re still crawling out of the deep crater we fell into in 2008 and 2009. The percent of the working-age population now working or actively looking for work is higher than it was, but still near a thirty-year low.

But at least we’re crawling out.

Romney says we’re not doing well enough, and he’s right.

Secretary Reich offers the expected Democratic talking points. Then he gets interesting.

Romney promises if elected the economy will create 12 million new jobs in his first term. If we were back in a normal economy, that number wouldn’t be hard to reach. Bill Clinton presided over an economy that generated 22 million new jobs in eight years – and that was more than a decade ago when the economy and working-age population were smaller than now.

Both Obama and Romney assume the recovery will continue, even at a slow pace, and that we’ll be back to normal at some point. But I’m not at all sure. “Normal” is what got us into this mess in the first place. The concentration of income and wealth at the top has robbed the vast middle class of the purchasing power it needs to generate a full recovery – something that was masked by borrowing against rising home values, but can no longer be denied. Unless or until this structural problem is dealt with, we won’t be back to normal.

Here's what's missing from the picture. First, the structural problem might be a mis-match of jobs requiring skilled tradesmen and a work force holding the wrong kinds of college degrees, or lacking aptitude or desire to acquire those skills.  Second, the structural problem might be precisely the cold dead fingers of the current administration's pork barrel projects masquerading as economic stimulus, its health care reforms that will constrain people unto the third generation, its continued mau-mauing of successful people as lucky or ungrateful.  I've heard some claims that 12 million jobs are about what one would expect of the United States's private sector as a matter of course.  Perhaps, though, those cold dead fingers have to be pried away before events can run their course.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE INDUSTRIAL MIDDLE CLASS.

In the first half of the twentieth century, in the United States, it wasn't unionization and the G.I. Bill.  It was the adaptation of the high-technology of the time to the skills, or not, of large numbers of the work force.

Today, the high-technology in manufacturing is not yet adapted to the skills, or lack thereof, of large numbers of the work force.

High school teacher Scott Bruening encourages his students to pursue blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, something that's much less common now than it was 30 years ago.

One reason is that, nationwide, more than 600,000 skilled-trades jobs remain open because of a shortage of qualified applicants, according to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., which provides audit, tax, consulting and financial services to companies in more than 150 countries.

It's one of the top-five issues for manufacturers, according to Deloitte, especially as 10,000 Americans a day turn 65 and companies haven't attracted enough young talent to replace their retirees.

Bruening teaches auto mechanics and other shop classes at Waukesha North High School.

Those programs are making a comeback, he said, as more students realize they can lead to a good career.

"It's a daily conversation we have," Bruening said.

Worldwide, more than 10 million manufacturing jobs cannot be filled because of the growing skills gap and because the jobs have become technically more demanding, Deloitte said in a recent report.

In the race to future prosperity, nothing will matter more than talent, said Tim Hanley, the Milwaukee-based U.S. process and industrial products leader for Deloitte.

Evidently, new manufacturing technologies are sufficiently knowledge-intensive that it may be a few years before developing countries are able to adapt the same Fordist manufacturing techniques that made people with few work skills productive enough to compete jobs away from the already industrialized countries.

Companies such as Super Steel LLC have grown their own talent through skilled-trades classes.

"If somebody has a good work ethic, we can teach them how to weld," said Mark Rutkowski, Super Steel's marketing and sales director.

Even with waves of retirements, there's some hope the skills gap has narrowed with increased enrollment in technical colleges and with high schools placing more emphasis on manufacturing careers.

"For a long time, there was a real block in education that just cut off manufacturing as a 'nothing' career with no future," said Paul Rauscher, president of EMT International, a Green Bay company that builds equipment for the paper, packaging and other industries.

There are still too many high school students graduating with no career goals, said Jim Golembeski, executive director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board in Green Bay.

"There is either complete ignorance about manufacturing careers in many school systems or an outright hostile attitude," he said.

At the same time, much of Wisconsin, and the Rockford area of Illinois, there has been an industrial tradition of blue collar aristocrats (welding, tool and die making, pattern-making, carpentry) that is harder to outsource than the assembly-line factories that hired people for their muscle only.  Perhaps if school administrators understand this tradition, they'll be less likely to treat the trades as a dumping ground for burnouts and troublemakers.

BLEEDING THE PATIENT.

At the end of August, the comparison of the most commonly reported unemployment rate with the expectations of the designers of the economic stimulus looked like this.

Now comes the sickly, stagnant September jobs report, unless you're really optimistic.  There is improvement in both the U-3 unemployment rate and the participation-rate-held-constant estimate.

This chart has already been circulated by Insta Pundit.

There's a more instructive chart in the American Enterprise Institute post that is serving as source.

That's the U-Six unemployment rate, which started trending upward with the swearing in of Speaker Pelosi, and has been heading generally downward since the swearing in of the Tea Party House of Representative.  Those are both coincidences, not likely to be confirmed by any sort of serious social science.

RETRENCHMENT BY THE LEGACY MEDIA.

The joint venture of the networks and Associated Press will conduct exit polls in 31 of the 57 fifty states.  The omitted nineteen are in the view of the experts solid for one candidate or the other.

Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Sometimes what is unseen is as important as what is seen.

All 19 of the states with no exit polls are classified as either “solid Obama” or “solid Romney,” and there is only one “toss-up” gubernatorial or U.S. Senate race not on the list: the competitive North Dakota match-up of Heidi Heitkamp and Rick Berg.

The Received Wisdom on all the electoral maps I have seen has Illinois as "solid Obama." And yet, exit pollers will be working in Illinois.  Perhaps that observation by Vice President Biden about the middle-class being slammed by the past four years is consequential in Illinois.

"For Mr. Obama to be in a statistical tie in an area that he won by around 20 points in 2008 truly reveals the failure of his Presidency," said Illinois-based political consultant Paul Miller. "The economy is undoubtedly the key factor, but in suburbs with a large Jewish population, his treatment of Israel is also taking its toll."

There is a sizable Jewish vote in the district. It could account for the rising dissatisfaction with Obama here. Also a factor could be the lack of leadership from Illinois' Democrat legislative leaders, who dominate state government and are quickly bankrupting the state. The state's debt level has exploded and recent massive tax hikes have done nothing to plug the state's gaping budget deficits.

The state Republican organization is in disarray, for reasons other than past party leaders being jailed.  Perhaps, though, there's enough afoot that the networks are watching.  I can think of nothing more likely to wipe that smirk off Rachel Maddow's face than to have to call Illinois for Romney.

THERE ARE ENEMIES TO THE LEFT.

The Socialist Equity Party makes it abundantly clear that Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats, San Francisco style or otherwise, aren't their kind of socialists.

In the United States, the Obama administration has bailed out the banks, carried out a relentless attack on the working class and led the calls for cutting social programs. To the extent that differences exist between the two parties, they are of a tactical character—over how best to defend profits and prevent the development of an independent opposition in the working class.

That's coming from a different frame of reference than the Tea Party's complaint about the bank bailouts or the Romney-Ryan campaign allegations of a $716bn theft from Medicare.  What's different is the analysis of boutique multiculturalism.

The rightward movement of the Democratic Party has been accompanied by attempts on the part of its middle-class supporters to promote all manner of lifestyle issues and identity politics as a means of obscuring the question of class and social equality.

That's not quite Ann Coulter talking about mascots and pets. It is suggesting that the Democratic Party uses protected-status minorities for show, rather than for substance.

FAILURE TO TEMPER PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

Paul Rahe offers an unsparing evaluation of the consequences of Democrats not letting a crisis go to waste.

Barack Obama is a sitting duck. His is a failed Presidency -- and everyone who has been paying attention who is not blinded by partisan passion knows it.

Obama inherited a recession and, without bothering to disguise what he was up to, dedicated himself to exploiting it for the purpose of jamming through a radical program, dear to his party, that never had public support. About the recession, he did nothing, assuming that the economy would bounce back quickly, as it usually does, and that he would get the credit for the recovery. In fact, everything that he did do when he and his party were fully in control -- the looting bill thinly disguised as a stimulus bill, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank -- retarded the recovery by running up the deficit, loading on new taxes, and making it more expensive to do business. To this the President added the threat of further tax increases -- targeted on the investing class: those especially apt, when future developments are exceedingly unclear, to be hesitant to risk their hard-earned capital in funding new ventures or in expanding old ones. The truth is that the programs passed by the Democrats, when they had the initiative, produced stagnation and prolonged and deepened the downturn. All that Mitt Romney had to do last night was to draw attention to the level of unemployment, the level of underemployment, and the size of the deficit.

If Barack Obama seemed halting, uncomfortable, exhausted, and depressed last night, it was because he was saddled with defending the indefensible. What could he say? He had promised shortly after becoming President that his program would bring unemployment way down. He and his allies in Congress had sold Obamacare in part as a jobs bill. And the facts were there to be seen -- exceedingly high unemployment and underemployment coupled with persuasive evidence that the growth needed to boost the economy was not in the offing. Instead of coming out of a recession, we were on the cusp of a new recession, and nearly everyone sensed it.

There are enough testable hypotheses for twenty doctoral dissertations in the preceding paragraphs.

I long ago learned from a professor who had extensive experience working with Washington politicians that when the economist offers a choice between a policy instrument with a list of desirable consequences A, and another instrument with a list of desirable consequences B, the politician will ask for both.

What Our President and his majorities in Congress have learned, perhaps the hard way, is that sometimes when you ask for both A and B you get neither.  What the voters think about it will be determined in another month.

THE MARK OF MATURITY.

George Will offers an observation on the most logical way to recognize the obsolescence of affirmative action.

[President Barack] Obama's administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically. This may not, however, entirely be evidence of the irrationality of the electorate. Something more benign may be at work.

A significant date in the nation's civil rights progress involved an African-American baseball player named Robinson, but not Jackie. The date was Oct. 3, 1974, when Frank Robinson, one the greatest players in history, was hired by the Cleveland Indians as the major leagues' first black manager.

But an even more important milestone of progress occurred June 19, 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was colorblind equality.

Managers get fired all the time. The fact that the Indians felt free to fire Robinson — who went on to have a distinguished career managing four other teams — showed that another racial barrier had fallen: Henceforth, African-Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.

Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African-American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC's excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up.

Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African-American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation's heart, if not its head.

Mr Will wrote this column before the fanboys at MSNBC started yelling at Our President for not doubling down on their defense of Moocher Nation. What's in the Nation's head, and heart, has not yet been revealed.

WHY WE TEACH TRADEOFFS.

A Washington Examiner essay indulges in Schadenfreude, contemplating the folly of faster trains with negligible environmental impact?

For decades the environmental movement has used [the National Environmental Protection Act], and its [California Environmental Quality Act]-like state equivalents, to block key energy development and infrastructure projects. Seeing Obama’s signature transportation initiative killed by this same tactic is some sweet poetic justice.

The Cold Spring Shops position has long been that incremental improvements in Passenger Rail, in particular running the existing trains on existing, properly signalled tracks at 1938 speeds make more sense than building new, dedicated, passenger only lines in which billions of dollars buy you a few minutes of faster running times.

The more serious lesson, however, is that it's not easy to square two Good Things, namely environmental protection and improved infrastructure.

GUTBOMBS

A recent satisfaction survey suggests there are billions and billions disappointed with the leading hamburger joints.

McDonald’s and Hardee’s shared the bottom rankings for overall value. Jack in the Box was last in the food quality and cleanliness categories. Hardee’s was deemed to have the worst service, while Dairy Queen’s atmosphere was voted as the most lacking.

Hardee's service has had a lot to be desired for at least the past twenty years, and McDonald's has deteriorated from "Speedee Service System" to "Pick a Line and Wait, and Wait, and Wait."  They also share one musical theme with the Illinois Lottery, hardly a recommendation.

Among the leaders are two companies I have to inform myself about, Five Guys (hmm, retro-themed website) and Smashburger.  Good old A&W (yes, I know, it's part of a national chain now) also got high marks.

BOREAS GETS HELPERS.

The Weather Channel proposes to help identify serious winter storms by giving them names.  They're getting some stick for naming the seventh storm "Gandolf" and some commenters are less than pleased with the choice of name for the seventeenth storm.  There aren't a lot of classical references to Q.  You could use Quirinius, a variant spelling of Cyrenius, the governor of Syria, who served when Caesar decreed that all shall be enrolled to be taxed; or you could just use Q.  In the James Bond canon, Q is the designer of gadgets, and thus a good code for a bringer of mayhem.  The Weather Channel uses a rapid transit reference.  The Broadway Express in New York, a BMT line between Coney Island and Astoria via Manhattan, is the Q Line.  That works for Weather Channel and NBC people.

It's also a missed opportunity.  In the land where the blue northers have serious consequences, Q refers to The Way of the Zephyrs.

YOU'RE STUCK WITH IT.

The latest additions to the Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit car fleet borrows from New York City the latest thing in bowling alley cars. The riders don't like them. They're too expensive to rearrange.

Replacing the longitudinal aisle-facing seating arrangement on the new rail cars with a traverse style of both forward- and rear-facing seats that are the norm in Chicago would require redesigning the 5000 Series cars to anchor the seats to new beams added to the frame, according to CTA engineers and the manufacturer, Montreal-based Bombardier Transportation.

The high-capacity cars, which can hold up to about 120 total passengers, are inconsistent with the CTA's current philosophy of "de-crowding" trains, with a goal of carrying only 70 to 75 people per car.

[Transit Authority president Forrest] Claypool said what's important now is that the new cars provide many benefits to riders, from a smoother, more reliable ride to more interior space allowing passengers to enter and exit more easily.

Yet a slew of emails received by the Tribune [recently] raised new concerns, ranging from fears that passengers sitting with backpacks and purses on laps facing the aisle will become easy prey for thieves, to a cattle-car atmosphere that is not conducive to reading or even gazing out windows.

"Women with low tops are going to feel uncomfortable with guys standing over them staring at their cleavage in warm weather. Pickpockets will reap a bigger harvest on crowded trains. It's going to be a nightmare with people sweating on you from both sides," rider Joseph Casillas said.

Toni Apicelli said one of the things she loved about moving back to Chicago from New York, where the MTA trains are equipped with inward-facing seats, was "not having to look at people's butts and crotches on the subway."

But now that she and her husband are getting older, "we will likely be less and less able to handle riding the CTA because there will be fewer seats and the swaying hoops make you less stable," she said.

"If the CTA refuses to change the seating, at least add more poles so short people like me, who can't reach the top pole, won't be at the mercy of the swaying hoops," Apicelli said.

Not everyone is experiencing a ride from hell on the new rail cars, however.

"My husband and I rode in a new car on the Green Line, and the openness and center-facing seats gave us a better sense of security by seeing everyone's face," Mena Boulanger said.

I wonder if "swaying hoop" refers to a redesign of the traditional standee strap.

THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE?

This is no time to be bringing children into the world.

U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.

The second derivative is positive, and the article suggests that birth rates among unmarried women are decreasing, while birth rates among married women are increasing.  The article's reference to greater financial security among married women might be evidence of greater social polarization, or of people developing life-management skills.  Teenagers, in particular, are observing the mugging by reality their older sisters are getting.

THIRTY YEARS AGO.

The Brewers' magic number in the American League East was any combination of Brewer wins and Oriole losses adding up to two.  The Brewers played Baltimore.  The Brewers tagged Jim Palmer and three relief pitchers, two named Martinez, for ten runs in support of Don Sutton.  Thus ended a tight pennant race, in which the magic number had stayed at two for several days.  I had an opportunity to watch the Brewers play at Tiger Stadium on September 13.  Gorman Thomas hit a home run in the top of the eleventh.  Rollie Fingers was not available as closer, and Lance Parrish hit one with one on in the bottom of the eleventh.  The ball landed not too far from where we were watching.

This year, an odd season has just ended.  The team lost several key players to injuries early on, then the late-inning relievers regularly surrendered leads, and after being swept by the Reds and the Phillies, management started dealing players away.  Despite all those troubles, the replacement players called up from Nashville performed well, the relievers found their stuff, and there was an improbable second-wildcard playoff run that ended only on the weekend, and the Brewers achieved a winning record.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, who looked so promising early in the season, ended, again, with a losing record.

CALLING FOR CREATIVE ADJECTIVES.

School lunches are still unappetizing.  Once upon a time, the Milwaukee Public Schools must have had a creative writer on the payroll, to make mystery meat on a stick sound good.  In the menu published in the Thursday Milwaukee Journal, it would be mock chicken leg with a savory gravy, and it might be accompanied by golden glow salad on crisp lettuce -- that being a concoction of orange jello with carrot shavings.

Your tax dollars are still at work, attempting to convince parents to serve food at home more like the new, nutritious yet unappetizing school lunches our best and brightest have just imposed on the schools.

Responding to concerns that students are throwing away the healthy food on their cafeteria trays, the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledged that adapting to the changes "may be challenging at first, as students are introduced to new flavors and foods in the cafeteria."

But the government also says parents can help school make the taste-transition easier:

"We know that many parents are already making changes at home to help the whole family eat healthier," the USDA blogged on Monday. "We recommend reviewing school menus with kids at home and working to incorporate foods that are being served at school into family meals as much as possible."

This despite student pushback against the portion-controlled, limited-calorie, one-ration-feeds-all meals now on offer.

A recent video produced by high school students in Kansas mocked the healthy school lunches, showing young athletes fainting from starvation. "We are hungry," they lip-synched, as one by one they topple over.

The USDA blog appears to be a response to that satire:

"We know it is important that students get the calories and nutrition they need to stay alert and energized through the day, and schools are doing a number of things to make sure this happens," wrote Dr. Janey Thornton, USDA's deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services.

Schools can "allow kids a certain amount of flexibility to choose only the foods they intend to eat," the blog said. "We refer to this as “offer vs. serve” (OVS). OVS allows students to decline one or two of the food items offered in a school lunch. Schools can decide how to implement OVS, including which grades and how many items can be declined."

There was a similar protest in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, where a protesting student has a pithy description of what The Best and The Brightest have wrought.

Last year's fare featured favorites like chicken nuggets and mini corn dogs in helpings that were "relatively decent," [senior Joey] Bougneit said. But health-conscious regulations have changed that. Last week's super nacho plate, for example, offered just eight tortilla chips.

Adding to the dissatisfaction is a 10-cent price hike on lunches because the USDA, which oversees the National School Lunch Program, forced many districts to raise full-price lunches closer to the $2.86 it reimburses for students who qualify for free lunches. That means the leaner, greener lunches at Mukwonago High this year now cost $2.50 instead of $2.40.

"Now it's worse tasting, smaller sized and higher priced," Bougneit said.

The boycott is winding down, but students are learning something about the use of people power to limit the power of government.

Mukwonago High School students are heading back to the hot-lunch line, feeling they made their point and their voices were heard.

With such a sharp drop in sales, Director of Food Services Pam Harris said the food program, which is self-funding, can't lose money for long before it might affect jobs.

"We wanted to make a statement to make it very clear that we weren't against the school, that we know this wasn't the school's doing at all, that we were against the federal government regulation, and we didn't want our protest against the federal government to affect the Mukwonago School District by laying off employees," said MHS Senior Class Vice President Ryan Williams. "We felt it was a good end because we got the result we wanted."

Despite the reductions in grains, with smaller sub buns, fewer nacho chips and smaller garlic bread servings, there is no overall reduction in the amount of food, said MHS Principal Shawn McNulty. The decrease in grains came with an increase in fruits and vegetables, an option some students enjoyed. Additionally, students had the option of purchasing pizza, a sub or food from the a la carte line, McNulty added.

"I think some people did like the healthy options," said MHS Senior Class President Nick Blohm.

Nick Blohm said he is going back to his old eating habits, but some kids discovered they enjoyed bringing their own lunches.

Collecting comments from parents and students, Harris said a common theme among parents was concern over the detailed way federal government is getting involved in personal lives. Additionally, parents don't seem to think that school lunches are much of a factor in contributing to obesity. Students' main concerns were with less food.

As Harris continues working with students to provide more lunch options and works on an appeal to allow the district additional time to adhere to the federal guidelines without penalty, students have been pleased with the way the boycott was handled overall.

"We learned that high school kids can make a difference, that their voices can be heard through a peaceful protest, through an organized protest of sorts, that the federal government shouldn't regulate what kids are eating," Williams added.

A lot has changed in fifty years. The Thursday newspaper might on occasion mention Italian pizza with sausage and cheese and a tossed salad. That's what everybody got, and if it was assembled out of government surplus ingredients, all we could do was joke about it.

A PROSPECTUS FOR A BAD INVESTMENT.

A syllabus is different from a course outline, and both, properly conceived, are different from whatever higher education's worshipers of everything legalistic and inclusive are foisting on faculty and students these days.

As I was finishing up my syllabus for the college where I now work as an adjunct, I asked my husband, “Should I include a note saying that no animals were harmed in the making of this syllabus?”

“You can’t,” he said. “Don’t you remember how you made the cat wait outside the door and how you yelled at him through the window?”

Sometimes all you can do is laugh.

THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS IS STILL EVIL.

Vodka Pundit offers a libertarian case for electing Governor Romney.

What we need is breathing room, a chance to get the economy growing again, to get people back to work again. It’s no coincidence that when we reformed welfare, it was during an economic boom. Wealth papers over lots of differences, and allows people to get things done. And there’s lots that needs doing. We can start by repealing ObamaCare, repealing Dodd-Frank, and just generally undoing the last four years. These are things Romney has promised to do.
Will he do it? I hope so, and if he wins it will be our job to ride him and ride him hard to live up to those promises. What I do know for certain is that Romney isn’t Obama Lite, despite what you might think. Romney won’t dial back Washington to 18% of our GDP. But he might get it down to 20%, which, believe it or not, is a big — and absolutely necessary — improvement.

We’ll see no such improvement from a second Obama administration, which aims to ramp up Washington to something like 110% of our economy.

Obama sees it as his job to add every day to the Rube Goldberg device that Washington has grown into, while simultaneously throwing sand into its gears. If that seems like a contradictory notion, or even a sick notion — it is. But we’ve watched Obama do just that for four years now. How much more can it, can we, take?

But the simplest reason is this: If Obama’s Cloward-Piven crash does come in the next four years, a turnaround artist like Romney might just be the right person to have at the helm. It’s no scare tactic to remind you what a dedicated Progressive does with a crisis, especially an engineered one.

Doug Mataconis agrees that the Obama Presidency has delivered precisely what the self-styled progressives wished for, and the results are horrible.

With some minor exceptions, such as the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, I consider much of President Obama’s Presidency to date to have been a disaster. Despite the fact that he was elected largely because the economy had crashed under the Presidency of George W. Bush, Obama did little to actually address the problems facing the nation. Instead, he championed an $800 billion “stimulus” bill that was packed full of Democratic Party pet projects. So, it wasn’t a surprise when we discovered a year later that the “stimulus” hadn’t really worked, and that we find ourselves four years later with an economy that is barely growing and a job market that remains incredibly weak. This is, as several analysts have said, the worst “recovery” since the end of World War II and, while I agree that there is much about the economy that is beyond the control of the President, the problem is that Obama didn’t even make a serious effort to revive the economy beyond engaging in the same failed Keynesianism that Democrats have become famous for.

In addition to failing on the economy, the President also vastly increased the power of the Federal Government with a far reaching health care plan that, if preserved, would create an entirely new entitlement program that would drain Federal dollars. Internationally, he foolishly expanded the scope of the war in Afghanistan, a decision that has done little but result in the death of another thousand American soldiers for no good reason. He has expanded an assassination by drone program far beyond that contemplated by President Bush, including authorizing the assassination of an American citizen without due process and without judicial review. He committed American armed forces to a military engagement in Libya without seeking the authorization of Congress, something even George W. Bush didn’t do. And, he’s refused any entreaties to investigate the excesses of the Bush Era War On Terror.

Those policy failures do not provide reason to vote for a Republican.

After all, the last time we had Republicans in charge of the Executive and Legislative Branches, we ended up with a trillion dollar unfunded entitlement, a massive increase in the Federal education bureaucracy, and two wars that we not only didn’t pay for but which coincided with tax cuts which is about the fiscally dumbest thing you can do. We also, of course, ended up with massive erosion of civil liberties in the name of the “War On Terror,” and people being tortured in America’s name. Given that record, why should I think that a Romney Administration would be any more palatable to libertarians, or that it would take any real steps toward reducing the size, scope, and power of government?

If the record of the GOP weren’t enough, there’s also Mitt Romney’s record itself. Up until he decided that he wanted to run for President, Romney was the prototypical Northeastern Republican, moderate on social issues, mostly fiscally conservative, but also willing to consider programs like the Massachusetts health care program, which was the prototype for ObamaCare. What assurance do we have that he wouldn’t change his mind again once he became President, especially if it meant that it would help enhance his re-election prospects? I understand that political leaders need to be flexible at times, but when I run into someone who has changed their political beliefs more than once for obvious political advantage, I really have to wonder if I can trust them.

Keep in mind that President Bush the younger promised to spend the political capital of his re-election on private retirement accounts for new participants in "Social" "Security".  We ended up with the pork-laden 2005 transportation bill, the prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate just before the bad mortgages brought the credit markets down.

Will it really take a total loss of confidence in governance before business as usual ends?

WEIGH THE COSTS AND BENEFITS.

A recent Pew survey of student loan debt reaches a sobering conclusion.

Richard Fry, a Pew senior economist and author of the report, says he hopes the report will provide perspective for families as they consider educational options.

"Given the fact that the job market has been especially weak for young adults, I think there's a conversation going on in a lot of American families with high school students about, 'Is college worth it?' " he says. "Student loan debt is sort of the lightning rod issue for this conversation."

Perhaps I'm more jaded than normal, after observing a big end-cap display of red plastic cups and five-packs of table-tennis balls on sale at a local supermarket.  As far as I know, there has not been an upsurge of interest in building analogue chain-reaction simulators.  I'll moderate my jadedness enough to note a student request, just for fun, to see the integral describing the evolution of a futures price with continuous storage costs, as part of today's classes.  I did emphasize that the story behind it was examinable, although the math was not.

But then I read about the amenities race going beyond the climbing walls and the nap pods, and out to the bars.

In an effort to appeal to increasingly demanding students, bars are cleaning up their sticky-as-caramel floors, installing midcentury modern furniture, and offering more hard liquor. This while struggling to keep prices low. “Students want to get drunker faster and cheaper,” said Jason Sidle, general manager of Rulloff’s Restaurant and Bar in [Ithaca, New York's] Collegetown. In its last decade, the Royal Palm Tavern sold about twice as much hard liquor as it had in the previous one, [retired Ithaca tavernkeeper Lenny] Leonardo said.

Mike McLaughlin, 21, a senior at Cornell, said, “I drink liquor because it takes too long to drink beer.” On the drinks menu at Rulloff’s, “Bitch Fuel” (vodka, gin, rum, peach schnapps and lemon-lime soda) is a popular recent addition, but Mr. Sidle has also required all his bartenders to download mixologist apps to their phones. “We get all these requests for weird drinks we’ve never heard of because they’ve seen someone drinking it on Facebook,” he said.

Put half that effort into evaluating integrals and you, too, dear student, can make option contracts and design Mars rockets.  Meanwhile, as the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee enrolls more Wisconsin residents than the Madison campus, its attempts (or not) to raise its academic profile look increasingly like basketball and baby-sitting, as the beer-'n-circus model of the student life takes hold.

For decades, longtime residents and the commuter school got along well. But as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee grows into a robust residential campus, more students are spilling into nearby neighborhoods, especially at night.

Some of the neighbors aren't happy about that.

Students cut through residential streets and yards on the way to house parties and North Ave. bars. Some stumble home after a night of drinking and raise a ruckus while neighbors are trying to sleep.

It's the noisy, disrespectful drunks who give all students a bad name.

Just how many students fit that description is a subject of debate. Twenty-five of the university's 29,000 students were arrested Sept. 8, the first weekend after fall classes started, and 26 were arrested a week ago during police crackdowns on misbehavior.

Campus neighborhoods have changed a lot, and not for the better, says Capt. Stephen Basting, a Milwaukee Police Department captain who went to school at UWM and now serves in the police district that patrols the area.

At one time, Wisconsin-Milwaukee was where students took notes, took tests, and took off.  Taking off takes on a different meaning these days.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photograph by Michael Sears.

There's another university in Milwaukee, with perhaps a stronger athletic tradition.  (Hint: who is the Milwaukee Normal analogue of George Andrie?)  That university also maintains a modicum of community standards.

[Milwaukee alderman Nik] Kovac and many neighbors also would like to see a strengthened law allowing UWM to kick out students who continuously misbehave.

"If you screw up at Marquette, they kick you out," Kovac said. "At UWM, they say they are a public university and it takes heaven and earth not just to kick them out, but to discipline. That answer is getting old with the neighbors."

UWM Chancellor Michael Lovell said the law doesn't need to be stiffer. Chronic offenders already can be dealt with through existing measures, he said.

"I don't want to harm someone's life for one mistake," Lovell said. "The majority of students are good citizens. If they do get into trouble, we've invested a lot of resources to teach them.

"You treat people who are chronic offenders differently."

Wisconsin has a drinking culture that exposes young people to alcohol long before they go to college, and that's part of the problem, Lovell said.

"To me, the solution is not to show force," he said. "I want to educate students - show them what it takes to be a good citizen and a good neighbor."

It's not just the Wisconsin drinking culture. Somewhere between the government-guaranteed loans and the open enrollments, there's a misallocation of resources.

ZEBRAS WORK HARD, BUT WE DON'T GIVE THEM WHISTLES.

National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell apologizes, sort of.

"The folks on the field during the last three weeks were under unprecedented scrutiny," Goodell said. "Everything they did, every call was magnified. They kept the game going. They worked and they trained hard. They were incredibly focused and dedicated."

That's the kind of thing one hears from the student disgruntled with his grade, rarely from the professor.

In the scheme of things, the league's failed experiment with unqualified replacement officials is more accurately described as a bump in the road, compared to some of the idiocies coming out of Washington, D.C.

If the national attention being paid to the league's errors includes a generalization of "I really worked hard" as an inadequate defense of failure to problems of greater import, some good will be done.

THE FOLLY OF AVERAGING.

Don't vote Republican without analyzing the details.  Red states' income growing faster than blue states'.  It is true that in many of the states that gave Our President electoral votes, a truthful answer to "are you better off than you were four years ago?" is "On average, no."  But in the states that did not give Our President electoral votes, there is a wide variation in income growth rates.  Thus,

North Dakota, a red state, tops the nation in income growth thanks to an oil boom. Other major energy states — Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas — are solidly Republican, polls show. Poor, southern red states depend heavily on government transfers for income and benefited from increases in Medicaid and other federal programs.

But for the national government: do you say thanks for the transfer payments, or do you note that but for the constraints implied by "shovel ready" do you say energy development has been hampered?

BEST. PICTURE. EVER.

Got it from the USA Today gallery!