DIVISIONS AMONG THE ELITES.

The bourgeois confronts the bohemian, as summarized by Marquette Warrior.

Liberals resent mass affluence. The believe they are entitled to live better than other people, but ordinary Americans live in nice houses, own big cars, drive in from the suburbs to work and go where they want to go.

They vote against gay marriage and sometimes elect Republicans.

They are, in other words, uppity.

Since elitist liberals have trouble distinguishing themselves by consuming more than ordinary Americans, they have to distinguish themselves by consuming differently.

Thus they despise the vulgar affluence of the masses, while consuming politically correct luxuries. Hybrid cars. Fair Trade coffee. Exotic cuisines.

And of course they deride the tastes of ordinary Americans, whose affluence and political power they resent.

It's a broad, categorical statement, and as such, probably incorrect in different ways to different observers.

And yet, it captures why Republican attempts to paint Our President, and the Liberal Establishment, and the Legacy Media, and much of the academy as arrogant snobs resonates with a substantial part of the electorate.

THE RAPID TRANSIT IS NO PLACE TO PLAY.

Boy, 14, dies after touching third rail.

Preliminary information indicated that the boy was trying to get down to the tracks for an unknown reason when he made contact with the electrified third rail.

Sadness in a family yet to be identified, and commuters delayed while the first responders do their work.

THE TRAINS THAT MAY NEVER ROLL.

Wisconsin's Talgo trains, complete with food service cars, are ready for acceptance testing.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photograph by Angela Peterson.

On a party-line vote, the legislative Joint Finance Committee voted against allocating funds for building a maintenance base for the trains.  The trains may or may not enter service, depending on on how willing either Talgo or the state is to allow itself to be held up.

Immediately after the vote, Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb issued a statement saying, "Today's decision to not provide funding for the permanent rail maintenance facility means that the state will be unable to put the Talgo trains into revenue service. We hope to work cooperatively with Talgo to resolve any outstanding contractual issues in a mutually satisfactory way. Existing rail service on the Hiawatha route, using Amtrak equipment, will continue without interruption."

But Talgo Vice President Nora Friend said the new trains still could enter service later this year, using the temporary maintenance base that has been set up at Talgo's north side manufacturing plant. She said that would give the state and the company until 2014 to work out a solution for a permanent base.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has concurred with the committee, despite the prospect of a lawsuit.

Journal-Sentinel editors question the decision.

There is a real benefit to upgrading Amtrak's Hiawatha service. The route is among the fastest-growing in the nation, carrying nearly 800,000 passengers last year. And the train set, built at Talgo's north side factory in the 30th St. Industrial Corridor, was providing jobs for city residents.

The legislators defend their action, in doing so continuing one error while confirming a point we've long been making.

Those trains were meant to be built for a less than high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee at great taxpayer expense. Gov. Scott Walker smartly turned away one-time federal funding for a train people didn't want and couldn't afford. The federal funding wouldn't have touched the long-term costs of maintaining and operating the train that wouldn't have saved commuters any time and would cost taxpayers in perpetuity. It was a boondoggle we couldn't afford.

If those trains were really intended to run only between Madison and Milwaukee, with through passengers changing in Milwaukee, the Wisconsin project was poorly conceived. On the other hand, if the trains were intended to run from Madison to Chicago, the project was poorly sold, and the choice of a short fixed-formation train even more dubious.

Since the trains wouldn't be used for the Madison-to-Milwaukee line, the trains had to go to Amtrak's Hiawatha line. Unfortunately, the trains are too small to meet ridership demands for that line, which means we would need to build even more cars that are more expensive to operate on the Hiawatha line. It's throwing good money after bad. For the sake of the taxpayers in Wisconsin, it was time to go back to the table and work on a deal that would better protect taxpayers.

We made the decision in the Joint Finance Committee like any family would - by looking at the numbers. In early December, the committee passed a motion to ask the Department of Transportation for a full analysis of the taxpayer cost of running the Talgo trains and opening a permanent maintenance facility for 20 years vs. the cost of running the current Amtrak trains. The difference made last week's decisions an easy one for Wisconsin taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee to Chicago travelers will continue to make do with the beverage cart service on the existing, aging Horizon and Amfleet coaches.

Milwaukee Road photograph from the Trains Magazine collection.

At one time, passengers on the Chicago-Twin Cities line had a flexible formation train with coach, parlor, dining, and tavern service, and as that service grew, the original equipment cascaded to other services, including Madison-Milwaukee trains, some of which connected with Hiawathas or other corridor trains in Milwaukee, and some of which ran through to Chicago.

(NOT) CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK.

A ballot that is 1/16" too wide does not fit the scanner.

An issue emerged when reports of up to 2,000 improperly sized ballots came from Winnebago county. The ballots were made 1/16 of an inch too big and could not be feed into the tabulation machine, according to the Rockford Register Star.

The oversized ballots were remade by hand with the voter’s selections transferred onto the proper ballots by a contingent of five Democratic and five Republican representatives from Winnebago county.

Transcription onto properly-sized ballots fed into the counting machines turned out to be faster than creating a tally sheet and counting the votes by hand.  Ballots trimmed with a paper-cutter were rejected by the counting machine.

Local lore has it that when DeKalb County went to the scanning machines, the punch-card stylus voting templates that we previously used went to notoriety in Florida, home of the butterfly ballot and the hanging chad.

BUILDING YOUR RESUME BY TRASHING YOUR PREDECESSOR'S.

Book Review N^o. 7 will be Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.  Much of the substance of the book appears in briefer form here, with commentary here.  It doesn't surprise that University Diaries "finds Ginsberg more convincing," given that many of his illustrations of administrative overreach involve the commercialization of research in engineering, pharmaceuticals, medicine, and computer applications (it would take another book to deal with the rot in the income sports).

The source of higher education's troubles with administrators might be in the absence of intellectual foundations for a coherent defense of what higher education ought to be doing.  When any social arrangement is a construction, it can be deconstructed, and the sub-plot that ought to make readers angriest is the one in which serial administrators serially bring in their own retinues of assistant-tos, facilitators, and consultants to replace the strategic plans and mission statements of the previous administrators, after much work by the previous assistant-tos, facilitators, and consultants that distracted the faculty from doing what faculty ought be doing, namely having original thoughts and challenging students and each other with those thoughts.  (But, Professor Ginsberg argues, there are ample opportunities for administrators to play on faculty sympathies with underdogs by framing some of the usurpations as in the service of diversity or equity or inclusion or access.  Why more observers haven't caught on that academic prestige rests in part on bad writing not getting published, or bad dissertations not being defended, or weak students not graduating, or -- keeping March Madness in mind -- bad teams getting a play-in game at best escapes me.)

I've attempted to capture some of the flavor of Professor Ginsberg's writing.  The titles he turns up for assorted functionaries will make a beleaguered professor smile and should give pause to even the most committed defender of administrative prerogatives.  But those prerogatives ought to be limited.  Turn to page 204.

Most deanlets, left to themselves, are content to wile [c.q.] away their days meeting and retreating.  They represent a growing threat to the university but do not appear to be an immediate threat to its management or academic priorities.  But, appearances are deceiving.  New numbers create new possibilities.  The existence of large numbers of deanlets gives ambitious senior administrators the tools with which to manage the university with minimal faculty involvement and to impose their own programs and priorities on the campus.  Like other potentially destructive instruments, armies of staffers pose a threat by their very existence.  They may seem harmless enough at their tiresome meetings but if they fall into the wrong hands, deanlets can become instruments of administrative imperialism and academic destruction.

The remedy is part Ko-Ko and part John Galt: identify the twenty percent of the deanlets and deanlings who would not be missed, and fire them.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

LESS DISTRESSED MATERIAL AT THE RECEIVING DOCK.

The Northern Star produced a three-article report on the Illinois applicant pool and the matriculant pool at Northern Illinois.  The State of Illinois now requires all eleventh graders to take the ACT, and tax-supported test preparation seems to have a positive effect.  The applicant pool, statewide, looks stronger on paper, something that enrollment managers view favorably.

Brian Hemphill, vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, also noted in an email interview that individual motivation impacts a student’s success in college.

On average, however, he said student quality impacts retention rates, graduation rates and overall student performance.

“I think it speaks to the overall NIU experience in that good students want to be here and we offer programs and service that appeal to those students,” said Kitty McCarthy, associate vice president for Enrollment Management.

Hemphill also said student quality is important to NIU because it will help with other Vision 2020 goals of increasing the number of students who study at NIU from locations in southern and central Illinois and will help increase overall enrollment.

Vision 2020 is the designation for the current strategic plan, at least until sufficient administrative interest in revision of the vision manifests itself (I'm not kidding with that phrasing, by the way).  The challenge facing Northern Illinois, as well as universities at the other cardinal points of the compass, and Illinois State and the  various branches of University of Illinois, is that each university currently has or currently plans to go after more of the academically stronger high school graduates.  But that pool is shrinking, and it's subject to precisely the same dynamic that depletes fisheries.

Over the past seven years, the number of students graduating high school each year in 23 Northern counties in Illinois has been increasing, according to the 2010-2011 NIU Fact Book. That number was expected to peak in 2011 at 132,129 students graduating, a 21.9 percent increase since 2004. The growth is projected to now slow through 2020, with fewer students graduating high school in Northern Illinois in 2020 than 2011.

The number of prospective students is not only declining in Northern Illinois - the number of public high school graduates in the Midwest is projected to decrease 6 percent between 2007 and 2020, according to a report released by the National Center for Education Statistics in September.

Kitty McCarthy, associate vice president for Enrollment Management, said NIU will see increased competition to recruit students because of the population decline.

“In Illinois, schools like NIU wanting to grow [are] competing for a shrinking pool, and then you combine that with some of the out-of-state and even for-profit competition, and it will be fierce,” she said.

McCarthy said universities have been preparing their recruitment strategies for this increased competition.

“This population decline has been on everyone’s radar,” she said. “... Everyone’s been in a building mode, and it’s going to continue.”

Whether the competition for stronger students will continue as the pool becomes smaller, or whether one of the universities will emphasize access in preference to other criteria for admission, or whether we will see another round of retrenchments, with retired or raided faculty not being replaced, is yet to be determined.

PENNY-WISE, POUND FOOLISH.

Work continues on the extension of Amtrak's Downeaster service beyond Portland to Brunswick.  The existing service is, as Cold Spring Shops wished, attracting additional riders and drawing compliments for timely and courteous service.

Residents of Brunswick, however, don't like the idea of a train terminal in their backyards.

Residents of Brunswick have concerns about the impacts of the facility. At a town council meeting on February 28, Patricia Quinn, Executive Director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) presented a detailed explanation of the facility and the efforts to mitigate noise, pollution and vibration concerns which the Brunswick West Neighborhood Group continues to raise. Many of the group’s members spoke in opposition to the facility or the data presented.

Until a fueling station for the diesels and a facility for cleaning coaches and restocking the cafe cars is in place, Brunswick trains will either run through from Boston or originate as a turn out of Portland to head to Boston.  That defeats two of the advantages of a train, frequency and connectivity.  When we speak of connectivity, that includes being able to make connections to Acela services in Boston and to Maine Eastern summer trains in Brunswick.

HO-HO-B-H-O-G-8-SUMMIT'S-GOTTA-GO.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, onetime darling of the self-styled progressives as the most effective president at passing the right kind of legislation, couldn't run for re-election in 1968, and stayed away from the Democratic convention in Chicago because of outrage to his left.

Barack Hussein Obama, who occasionally draws kudos from contemporary self-styled progressives for effectively getting health care, infrastructure, and pay equalization bills through Congress, has to move the economic summit from Chicago because of outrage to his left.

The heirs to the Youth International Party declare victory.

Ministerial meetings and summits like the G8 have increasingly been held at remote locations to lessen the likelihood of mass protests, which have become common venues for democracy and global justice activists to mobilize around. When the G8 was last in the U.S., it was hosted at the isolated and luxurious Sea Island Resort in Georgia.

The institutional violence and anti-democratic nature of NATO-G8 is again affirmed by Obama’s unilateral decision to move the G8 summit. Neither of these bodies allow for the people to participate directly in crafting the policies that affect so many and to characterize the talks as needing protection from interruption—as HR 347 does by criminalizing the protesting of persons or events under Secret Service’s direction—reveals the authoritarianism of the system. Without provocation, it is unlikely that the state will outright suppress the Occupy movement with direct violence. Rather, the state needs the force of the law to protect itself from protest and civil unrest, particularly when that defiance is nonviolent and more difficult to counter.

Dig it, they stopped the pigs, made them run and hide.

“They realized they [G8] couldn’t actually put on their little show of power,” Bill Ayers told a group of about 50 people at the Golden Frog Cafe in an appearance hosted by the Foundation for a United Front. “It’s a defeat for them and a victory for the people’s movement.”

In the same interview, Mr Ayers regrets not having gotten to know Our President better.

History doesn't repeat, but sometimes the rhymes surprise.

THE TYRANNY OF THE HIGHLIGHT REEL.

Here's Cold Spring Shops, on the degeneration of basketball, two election cycles ago.

Very few men's teams (unless they are coached by a Bennett) understand what these things mean. For "low standards of athleticism," substitute "presence of transition defense, precluding breakaway dunks by a bucket-hanger." Very few men's teams (same disclaimer) get this either. That leaves as "drama and excitement" the typical men's game (including in the NBA), characterized as 36 (or 44) minutes of no defense and individual improvisation, followed by 30 minutes to play the remaining four minutes, in which the leading team plays no defense and the trailing team commits fouls.

Now comes Minneapolis Star-Tribune sports pundit Patrick Reusse, interviewing St. Louis coach Rick Majerus, who has a similar assessment.

"We've taken some good things from the NBA -- shot clock, three-pointer, now the charge-block cup painted on the floor -- but we've also taken things that make it not as pretty of a game," Majerus said.

"It's more a 1-on-1 game, more a pick-and-roll game, and that's the pro influence. There are also very few big men, and we have more of a premium on the three-ball than ever.

"Overall, the three has been good for our game, but that's only when the right guys are taking those shots. You go into any gym now, and watch kids from 7 to 17, and they all gravitate to the three-point line. Even the kids that can't shoot are out there throwing up threes.

"The middle [-range] game is gone. The players we get in college -- it's about the dunk, the three and, more subliminally, about me as an individual. No bad intentions, just kids that want to do it by themselves."

Majerus had Andre Miller as his point guard with Utah's national runner-up. The other prominent point guard in Salt Lake City at the time was John Stockton.

"Stockton and Andre made the pass, they took the open shot, and if they got to the basket, they laid it in," Majerus said. "One factor in the lower scoring we have now is that there are more missed layups than ever. Everyone is trying to style the layup."

As an exercise, keep track of how many blown bunnies contribute to the busting of your brackets.

(Via Newmark's Door, where you'll also find a discerning list of excellent posts from econobloggers.)

MINDLESS QUANTIFICATION.

Cornell economist Robert Frank analyzes the positional arms race among universities that aspire to high status, and the students who seek to enroll there.

Because of the bitter competition for those premium salaries, elite educational credentials are often a precondition for even landing a job interview. With so many applications for every vacancy, many consulting firms and investment banks , for example, now consider only candidates from a short list of top-ranked schools.

Degrees from those schools clearly open doors. For example, more than 40 percent of the 2007 graduating class at Princeton landed one of the most highly sought prizes: a position in the lucrative financial services industry.

For all the good that did: all those geniuses had exactly the same preparation for the surprises that hit their sector.  At least a few universities, however, recognized the excess demand for academic prestige and worked to lift their game.

Their main strategy has been to bid more aggressively for the most distinguished researchers, which explains not only the rapid salary growth for top faculty members in the last several decades, but also the fact that teaching loads at many elite schools have decreased by more than 25 percent. Similar, albeit smaller, changes in salaries and workloads have percolated throughout higher education.

Yet no matter how much universities might spend in pursuit of elite status, only 10 percent at any moment can end up in the top 10 percent.

Since the top 10 percent do not provide enough graduates to fill all the high-status jobs, the quest for stronger academic programs is not futile. The problem, however, is getting misinformed stakeholders to do the right thing.

Richard H. Thaler, a former colleague at Cornell and another contributor to the Economic View column, once remarked about an unsuccessful candidate for a faculty position, “What his résumé lacked was five bad papers.” By that, he meant that while the candidate had published several papers containing enough genuinely important ideas to satisfy any rational hiring committee — more than could be said of most faculty members — he had too few to satisfy the bean counters, who fretted about how uninformed outsiders might react to the appointment.

The column concludes with a suggestion that increasing marginal tax rates might do something to stem the competition for credentials.  Perhaps so, but another interpretation of widening salary gaps among graduates of different majors and different universities might be an overproduction of content-free degrees.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.

According to Michael Barone, Governor Romney isn't saying it in exactly that way, but the bourgeoisie might be receptive all the same.

I sense that affluent voters find Romney a kindred spirit — articulate but politically awkward, self-disciplined and successful, able to make a sharp argument but polite. He’s conservative on cultural issues, but in a way that reminds me of the 18th century Englishwoman’s gravestone noting approvingly that “she was religious without enthusiasm.”

Barack Obama’s appeal to high-education and young voters in the Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana primaries carried over into the general election. He carried all three in November, though none was a target state in 2000 or 2004.

Will Romney’s appeal to high-education and high-income voters carry over to the general election, too? That’s not clear.

Whether the so-called values voters who vote their beliefs rather than their pocketbooks will turn out for a Republican in November, or stay home, also remains to be seen.

THE WEAKNESS OF A FIXED-FORMATION TRAIN.

We've been following the purchase and rollout of Wisconsin's Talgo trains, which, to their credit, will have food service, but, to their disadvantage, are fixed formations of idiosyncratic stock.  Now comes news that the trains, as designed, will have insufficient seats for the Hiawatha passenger loading.

"It should be noted that the capacity of the state-owned Talgo passenger rail cars is less than that of the Amtrak-owned cars currently used in the Hiawatha service," says a footnote on the last page of an eight- page memo from the state Department of Transportation. "Currently, capacity is an issue on the current service on peak-period trains. The lower capacity of the state-owned trains will limit ridership and revenues at some point. Addressing the capacity issue will require the purchase of additional passenger cars from Talgo."

Amtrak says the Hiawatha is its most heavily used Midwestern route and the sixth-busiest in the nation. Last year, ridership grew 4% to a record 823,163, the first time it cracked the 800,000 mark.

A Trains report has Wisconsin officials debating whether to scrap the trains rather than put them in service. A simpler expedient might be to sell those trains to the Pacific Northwest service and buy some additional cars as part of the Illinois and Michigan car order, which will be for a Midwestern version of the California Corridor cars, which in California include a food service and a business class version.  (It's too much to ask, probably, for an updated version of the Super Dome as a lounge car.)

THE FLEXIBILITY OF ENTITLEMENTS.

These stories are both Instalanched.  One is a bona fide request to Canada's Human Rights Commission, citing oppressive provisions that require cars be parked in back.  The other is a probably parodic expansion of the list of employer mandates a proper health care policy ought include.

Living at the expense of others, indeed.

TO REMEMBER.

Neptunus Lex, retired naval aviator, flying to the end.

SEEKING INDIANA JONES?

He retired from Northern Illinois University to seek ever-larger fish.

ADVERSE SELECTION?

The Chicago Tribune attempts a Lorenz curve for public school suspensions.

African-American students comprised three-quarters of school suspensions in 2009-10, the year data was collected for the national civil rights survey. Latino students made up 42 percent of CPS' enrollment but 20 percent of the suspensions. White students, who represented less than 10 percent of district enrollment, made up 3 percent of suspensions.

The article notes that the students of African descent comprise about half the district's enrollment. The focus of the article is on alleged disparate effects of punishment on school completion, to which the realist might note that sinners are disproportionately represented in Hell, at the same time that it notes other differences within and among schools.

Although student discipline remains a thorny issue for CPS officials, the federal study shows African-American and Latino students in Chicago have better access to rigorous study, such as Algebra II, than minorities in other large cities.

It also shows Chicago's elementary school teachers at work in largely black and Latino schools are paid better than teachers in predominantly white schools in the city, while high school teachers earn significantly less than peers in largely white schools.

A government report offers additional detail.

NOT A TRAIN THEY WOULDN'T TAKE.

The Diamond Jubilee celebrations begin with a train ride.

Daily Mirror photograph.

The article suggests the royal party engaged first-class space on a regular train to Leicester (the 10.15 ex-St. Pancras, which appears to be a Midlands multiple unit train of some sort.)  Shame a Skytop Lounge or dome sleeper with a master suite doesn't fit the loading gauge.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHEN HITLER SHOT HIMSELF?

In Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II, Nicholas Best collects reminiscences from individuals, many of whom later became famous.  Book Review N^o. 6 recommends the work, for its pacing, readability, and no end of surprises, unless you're already a devotee of World War II arcana.  Jimmy Carter and Jack Kennedy make cameo appearances.  So does a sympathetic officer in the U.S. Army, who takes Benito Mussolini's wife in protective custody, allowing her son to become brother-in-law to a hungry girl the world later knows as Sophia Loren.  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn is already in another kind of protective custody.  Josef Ratzinger and Karol Wojytila have slipped away, at some risk, from respectively conscripted service and forced labor, anticipating a return to their devotions at seminary.  And Adolf Hitler's nephew William is in the Navy.  That's the U. S. Navy.  Fascinating collection of stories.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

A GOOD PLACE TO BOARD A TRAIN.

Trains correspondent Fred W. Frailey likes Portland's station.

So that’s my nominee for best urban passenger station. Not too big, not too small for what’s demanded of it, but just right. It’s older than just about every other city passenger station in the U.S. without feeling old. Convenient to the city it serves and right next to the tracks. In other words, practically perfect in every way.

It's possible to board trains going long distances (Chicago, Los Angeles) and corridor trains to Eugene or Seattle there. The through-station layout is reminiscent of the long-lost Milwaukee stations. The Cold Spring Shops evaluation of the station dates from two summers ago.

I DON'T WANT TO PLAY TWENTY QUESTIONS.

I'm doing your company a favor by purchasing your goods or services.  I'm not interested in signing up for your own charge card (a single-store charge card is so 1948) or your frequent buyer club no matter how much money I'll allegedly save by signing up.   I prefer retailers that let me make my purchases and go without a lot of delay at the register.

Are you listening, Barnes and Noble? Carmike Cinemas?  Carson Pirie Scott?

And Farm and Fleet, Office Max, Penney's: my zip code is none of your business.