WHAT SHE SAID.

Those of us who teach college English classes are always overwhelmed by the astonishing deficits in our students' ability to get their facts straight, to think clearly and logically, and to express their ideas in language that actually makes sense and that follows the most basic rules of grammar.

Tina's guest commentary at Irascible Professor is today's Required Reading.

Hat tip: Newmark's Door.

It's not just the freshman comp faculty that are frustrated: go here or here for the frustrations of supervising senior capstone papers.

ROLL OUT THE BARREL

When it came time for 3,000 beer memorabilia collectors to pick a city for their group's national museum, there were a couple of obvious names on the list - St. Louis and Milwaukee - and one not so obvious, Potosi, Wis.

Potosi beat out the bigger rivals. The collectors' association picked the right state. Pretty setting, although it's a bit off the interstates.

SECOND BEST? Gary at Winds of Change makes a sobering discovery: drug companies are "addicted to government-granted patent monopolies." The basis for his post is an essay from the New York Review of Books that argues,

The hints of trouble and the public's growing resentment over high prices are producing the first cracks in the industry's formerly firm support in Washington. In 2000, Congress passed legislation that would have closed some of the loopholes in Hatch-Waxman and also permitted American pharmacies, as well as individuals, to import drugs from certain countries where prices are lower. In particular, they could buy back FDA-approved drugs from Canada that had been exported there. It sounds silly to "reimport" drugs that are marketed in the United States, but even with the added transaction costs, doing so is cheaper than buying them here. But the bill required the secretary of health and human services to certify that the practice would not pose any "added risk" to the public, and secretaries in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, under pressure from the industry, refused to do that.

The industry is also being hit with a tidal wave of government investigations and civil and criminal lawsuits. The litany of charges includes illegally overcharging Medicaid and Medicare, paying kickbacks to doctors, engag-ing in anticompetitive practices, colluding with generic companies to keep generic drugs off the market, illegally promoting drugs for unapproved uses, engaging in misleading direct-to-consumer advertising, and, of course, covering up evidence.

The essay prays for relief:

One could hope drug companies would decide to make some changes—trim their prices, or at least make them more equitable, and put more of their money into trying to discover genuinely innovative drugs, instead of just talking about it. But that is not what is happening. Instead, drug companies are doing more of what got them into this situation. They are marketing their me-too drugs even more relentlessly. They are pushing even harder to extend their monopolies on top-selling drugs. And they are pouring more money into lobbying and political campaigns.

Those prayers are not likely to be answered, as the money is well-spent:

The Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003, and scheduled to go into effect in 2006, promises a windfall for big pharma since it for-bids the government from negotiating prices. The immediate jump in pharmaceutical stock prices after the bill passed indicated that the industry and investors were well aware of the windfall. But at best, this legislation will be only a temporary boost for the industry. As costs rise, Congress will have to reconsider its industry-friendly decision to allow drug companies to set their own prices, no questions asked.

What appears to be missing from this essay is the recognition that those third-party payments -- as is true of any other insurance or subsidy program -- attenuate the incentive to find cheaper methods of production or quote Ramsey-efficient prices for products. U.S. taxpayers end up paying for the research and development either in the form of government grants or in the form of higher "benefit" payments.

OPEN UP A SPRECHER. One-nil, Brewers. (Sorry, too many yuppies in the seats, thought it was a soccer game.) Sheets makes Counsell's first-inning home run stand up. Brewers bounce back from losing all four at Pittsburgh, continue to mess up the pennant race.

MORE ON THE CORE. Chris at Signifying Nothing has one view:

Degrees in the liberal arts and sciences are intended as training in general competencies—how to think scientifically, how to come to your own conclusions based on information, how to think—rather than specific, rigorous training in the minutae of a particular field of knowledge, which is the goal of graduate and professional education (law school, medical school, et cetera).

And, in general, I think (in retrospect; as an undergraduate, I probably concurred with Ms. Malcolm’s assessment) that this is the correct approach—specialists are pretty useless outside their field of expertise without a general education to back it up.

Kate at Kitchen Cabinet has a different perspective.

I have a problem with this evaluation of higher education. It seems to me that this approach assumes that college is necessary to be a productive member of society -- "an educated citizen." It also seems to assume that the quality of education at these universities would not decline if they imposed a larger core of required classes. I can't say this for certain, but I believe that a larger core of required classes would likely result in bigger, less personable, less detailed classes. It might result in less motivated, less interested professors. It most certainly would sap resources from other courses. And it would also force specialized education more strongly into the graduate realm, depriving students who can't afford those extra years (for one reason or another) of that educational opportunity.

To an extent, these posters are talking past each other. The problem with what passes for general education today is the absence of anything resembling a core -- oh, there might be a writing course that properly ought to be the purview of tenth grade, and there likely is a "diversity" requirement of some kind, that can be satisfied by hearing somebody's grievance -- rather than the absence of any required courses that have to be added to the exclusion of something more field-specific. More here.

SECOND SECTION. Read this:

The trends against systematization, against context-keeping, against integration, are trends against reason, and it is only by undermining reason that the great mass of the citizenry can be turned into "passive sheep."

BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR

It is crazy to think that in a time of famine, Ethiopian farmers had warehouses full of surplus grain. Ethiopian farmers, who are unable to get rid of their surplus, fear not having enough money for the next round of harvest and storage. Also, prices in Ethiopia will drop, farmers will be unable to pay loans and expenses. These factors will contribute to a smaller crop planted for next season, and famine will continue. Many groups “charge that Washington uses food aid to dump surplus commodities, in effect subsidizing U.S. growers”.

Thus does a beginning economics student discover the sweet land of subsidy.

FRAMING. Is a 57 point deficiency on an 800 point base meaningful? The context is the effect of calculator use on SAT scores, as interpreted by an aspiring expert. (Via Joanne Jacobs.)

BELOW THE FOLD. King at SCSU Scholars is not happy with the radical chic on official display. The factoid also displayed is more telling.

Just so you know: During the last, 2,850 students earned more then $7million from on-campus part-time employment.

I suppose it's a bit much to carp about the "than" that's missing, as well as the unspecified direct object of "during." But if a university raises tuitions and fees in such a way as to collect $7 million, and then assigns 2,850 students to jobs to earn $7 million, is it engaging in perfect price discrimination?

HUH? Susan Lenfestey has a case of selective memory.

Bill Clinton's personal immorality distracted a nation and hurt him and his family terribly, but he presided over a bountiful eight years, eliminated the national debt and honed America's image abroad to a sparkling finish, at least in the eyes of all but the most rabid fundamentalists like the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Back then, most people wanted to be like us.

I don't recall the national debt being eliminated, although some of the existing debt was retired. Perhaps graduates of econ camp can distinguish deficits from debts. Some of the money coming in to help pay down the debt (or did it -- how much of that was supposedly "contributed" to the social security trust fund?) was capital gains taxes on stocks bought at 100 times earnings and sold at 200 times earnings to buyers who hoped to sell them for 300 times earnings? Bountiful bubbles if you ask me. And that American image? Not if you rode Amtrak.

TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT. Nick at Tapped commends Winning Argument:

If you're a lefty, you'll find good took points on Judd's blog. And if you're a righty, well, don't you want to know what the other side is thinking?

And if you'd like something other than the usual talking points, you might want to stop, look, then look elsewhere. Consider The United States should not repeal the estate tax.

Opponents of the estate tax argue is unfair because it is double taxation. They believe the value of the estate has been taxed once as income and should not be taxed again. But people with modest incomes have most of their incomes subject to double taxation through sales and excise taxes. Their incomes are taxed once when they earn it and again when they spend it. Essentially, opponents of the death tax are arguing that the rich should be privileged to protect most of their income from double taxation.

Perhaps. But perhaps opponents of the estate tax oppose other manifestations of double taxation. Debaters expect something better than tu quoque. The suggestion that follows, although still subject to debate, does address several of the major talking points opponents of estate taxes raise.

Rather than eliminating the estate tax, simply raise the estate tax exemption level for family-owned farms and business to $4 million. A treasury department analysis found that would exempt almost all family-owned farms subject to the estate tax.

COMMON CARRIERS. The Pernambuco Tramway doesn't work any better just because the Pernambuco Transit Authority, rather than the Patagonian Public Service Commission, is enforcing the obligation to serve. Live from the Third Rail has picked up coverage of a court order mandating service improvements to an underserved and transit-dependent population in New Orleans. The post correctly observes,

Does local transit have an obligation to provide service to those who need it, or should they instead operate as a 'free market' enterprise that can serve only areas that are profitable? In the U.S., at least, transit went from free market to full-service in the 50s and 60s when state and local agencies purchased failing private transit providers. While it's harder to force private operators to service all areas (although in some cases, this has been done), its very easy to force the government to provide service coverage, because they're under an obligation to serve their constituents. This, then, creates an endless argument between governments that refuse to fund transit because it isn't profitable but will not allow service to be cut in unprofitable areas because of service obligations (hence, some WMATA funding issues and many of Amtrak's current problems).

The short form is that regulators used to force private operators to provide coverage. One of these days I may have to revisit the passenger train discontinuance cases of the late 1960s, and the weak carrier-strong carrier pairing of airlines by the Civil Aeronautics Board.

NOW THIS I LIKE. Will at Vodka Pundit recalls Question Time at a campus visit.

I believe I may be the only human being alive who's personally cracked up both Jimmy Buffett and William F. Buckley, Jr. The Buffett incident doesn't bear repeating, but in honor of WFB's retirement from National Review, here's what happened:

In 1991, Buckley gave a speech at my alma mater, Auburn University, and took questions after his remarks. I'm sorry to say that most of the questions were terrible; psuedo-intellectual claptrap from students who'd cribbed a few big words from their philosophy texts. Buckley was visibly bored, and after four or five pointless efforts, the moderator motioned for the last student questioner.

Which was me.

My question: "Mr. Buckley, I'm sure you're familiar with the famous observation of Sir Winston Churchill that a young man who is not a liberal has no heart, but an old man who is a liberal has no brain.

"Just before the last election [1988], a poll here found that 75 percent of Auburn's students were voting for President Bush [41], while over 80 percent of the faculty were voting for Michael Dukakis."

(Brief pause for breath, hopeful I wouldn't screw up the punchline.)

"Given all those facts, would you say that Auburn is a school of heartless students, being taught by a brainless faculty?"

Brought the house down. When WFB finished laughing, his answer went so far over my head, it smacked into a guy six rows behind me.

Priceless. But not that far off the mark. Somebody has to be validating those cliches that come up in the bull sessions of sophomores.

ECON CAMP. The Illinois Council on Economic Education has obtained state funding for a program called the Illinois Global Economics and Finance High Schools, intended to infuse knowledge about economics, finance, and the world economy throughout the high school's curriculum. Part of this program is a summer academy in which teachers and students from the participating school spend two weeks at college and they can obtain some college credit for their efforts. This year's summer academy was at Northern Illinois University, where the housing services have much practice with these programs, and their internal memoranda referred to "economics camp." (Also in town this week are a cheerleader camp, a wrestling camp, and the next generation of Mia Hamms have arrived for soccer camp. I'm not sure whether it was intentional or not that the economics students and teachers were housed in a different building.)

The teacher training included a program invented at the Idaho Council on Economic Education that culminates in an International Economic Summit. The teachers showed great creativity in developing their presentations, and we will have pictures. There will be some economic summits as class projects in participating schools, and there might be -- in the future -- a summit among schools, perhaps at one of the universities that host centers of economic education.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES NO. 93 is on Capitol Hill at Quasi in Rem.

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW. Never fails. Some people want to sleep in on weekends or go to bed early. Others find that to be a good time to fire up the lawnmower, weed whacker, or leaf blower. Noise ordinances exist, and some will be amended.

QUIS CUSTODIET CUSTODIES?

Top legislative leaders and the governor rallied Tuesday around a proposal to fire all nine members of the state agency that oversees hospital expansion and construction amid an investigation into projects it is weighing.

The proposal, introduced by House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), was made as the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board undergoes scrutiny by state and federal officials looking into pending decisions on whether new hospitals can be built in the southwest and northwest suburbs.

Isn't that the basic behavior of regulatory commissions, to generate rents and dissipate them, and isn't that going to tempt the crooks?

Several influential lobbyists with close ties to powerful Democrats have been hired in recent months by Edward Hospital and other health-care firms with interests in expansion projects, even though state law prohibits lobbying of the health-care board. Some lobbyists said they worked only until applications were filed with the board. Rules governing the board prohibit communication with individuals on the board once a formal application is filed.

Is the public interest really served by a hospital cartel?

STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND.

And so the day wore on. We watched for eagles on the bluff, blew the boat's horn in the traditional one long, two short bursts to greet large crowds in Cassville, and in Guttenberg, Iowa, and points in between, and admired the steam engine Milwaukee 261 when it clattered noisily by on the Iowa side carrying land-based excursionists.

When the Anson Northrup unexpectedly ran out of water - oddly enough a crisis even when surrounded by it - we made an emergency pit stop in Clayton, Iowa, where the volunteer firemen brought a tanker to save our bacon. The boys at Bill's Landing Bar & Grill will be talking about that one for a while.

Steam trains rule. More here.

KEEP 'EM ROLLING. Amtrak's budget request goes to Congress.

While Amtrak carried a record 24 million passengers in fiscal 2003, it still operates money-losing routes, most of them in the nation's heartland.

Supporters of enhancing long-distance rail service point to growing congestion in the skies and on the nation's roads, where more than 40,000 people die in accidents each year.

The federal government spends more than $35 billion on highways and more than $15 billion on civil aviation each year.

The Bush administration, eager to reduce Amtrak's federal funding to about $900 million a year, has proposed cutting up Amtrak into smaller pieces and allowing private investors to operate profitable routes.

David Gunn, Amtrak's chief executive, said, "We have been able to control operating expenses for the first time in a while."

About 3,400 jobs have been eliminated, reducing Amtrak's workforce to about 20,000 positions. Over the last two years the railroad's infrastructure also has been upgraded and its rolling stock modernized.

Amtrak's 2005-09 strategic plan counts on federal assistance averaging $1.65 billion a year.

"We desperately need an appropriation that is near $1.7 billion," Gunn said. "If you don't get it, the ability to restore the system to a good state of repair is jeopardized. We are approaching the moment of truth for Amtrak."

That's consistent with what Mr Gunn reported last week.

The corridor development is also as he reported, with these additional developments.

Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan have already acted to fund additional service and infrastructure improvements for higher-speed rail service in the future. Illinois spent $83 million to upgrade the Union Pacific Railroad's Chicago-St. Louis line where Amtrak operates, according to IDOT.

Wisconsin broke ground on Monday for a train station that will offer service later this year on Amtrak's Hiawatha line to Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport.

The Hiawatha line operates seven round trips a day between Chicago and Milwaukee. A federal matching grant would enable extension of service to Madison.

The Mitchell Airport station represents a new station for Amtrak, not a reuse of a steam-era stop. It also puts some Chicagoans closer to Milwaukee's Mitchell Field timewise than it does to O'Hare, and it will bring to five the Chicago area airports served by rail. But to use Amtrak for Milwaukee-area commuting? That's a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, in the early days of Mitchell Field, which were in the last days of the North Shore Line, only the two Wisconsin Division local cars in each direction called at Grange Avenue. The new service would be more frequent. On this map, the North Shore Line ran along the east side of Sixth Street.

SPOT ON

http://coldspringshops.blogspot.com may explode without warning

M EXPLOSIVE

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

(Hat tip: Joanne Jacobs.)

WHY I'M NO FAN OF CONSENSUS.

Cass Sunstein:

Return here to NASA, whose failures have been partly a product of a culture that disfavors dissent. In fact, group polarization is a pervasive problem in government circles, where like-minded officials often end up holding a more extreme version of the view with which they began. Surowiecki offers the example of the Bay of Pigs disaster, in which President Kennedy's advisers squelched their private doubts and developed unjustified enthusiasm for a ludicrous invasion plan predicated on the absurd thought that twelve hundred people could unseat Castro and take over Cuba. Is it too speculative to suggest that the current problems in Iraq are partly a product of group polarization within the executive branch--and that those problems could have been anticipated if the White House had had a better process for aggregating privately held information?

That's part of a much longer -- and worth reading in its entirety -- essay (hat tip: Milt Rosenberg, who has more time to do online research with the Choke-cago Cubs blowing leads on Extension 720's time) on circumstances under which the wisdom of crowds beats the wisdom of experts.

Professor Sunstein spends a lot of time on markets, which ought not come as a surprise. Markets exist to resolve disagreements. We have markets for goods such as desktop computers, where sellers can disagree on their vision of what a desktop computer ought to do, buyers can disagree over the use to which the computer ought to be put, and the price is a sufficient statistic that rations the right to sell to those who are willing to accept that price -- or less, and rations the right to buy to those who are willing to pay that price -- or more. Where there is less room for disagreement on the end use, as might be the case with some sub-assemblies of the disk drive and is certainly the case with a pin-length piece of brass wire, the market will not be as effective at resolving disagreements.

Fads -- which in econ-speak go by the less normative sounding name of "information cascades," are one possible consequence of decision making with too much deference to experts. Back to Professor Sunstein:

The problem with information cascades is that group members are likely to do far worse than they would if everyone disclosed his or her private information. By pointing to the dangers of bad cascades, Surowiecki signals the importance of starting with a "wide array of options and information" and of having at least a few people who are willing "to put their own judgment ahead of the group's, even when it's not sensible to do so." Much of the time, Surowiecki writes, groups do best if their members pay little "attention to what everyone else is saying."

Gee, there's an idea ... the Therapeutic University as information cascade. Well, I'm on sabbatical, and that might be more sexy than the basic oxygen furnace as an information cascade. Developing ...