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American Exceptionalism

American exceptionalism does not spring from our economic or military power but rather from America’s pioneer spirit.

We may need someone to monitor Monitor

(Image from Mother Jones) The Boston Globe piece by Farah Stockman starts out this way: It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar Khadafy, his theories on democracy, and his “core ideas on individual freedom.’’ The Mother Jones piece by David Corn and Siddhartha Mahanta is even more blistering. In February 2007 Harvard professor Joseph Nye Jr., who developed the concept of “soft power,” visited Libya and sipped tea for three hours with Muammar Qaddafi. Months later, he penned an elegant description of the chat for The New Republic, reporting that Qaddafi had been interested in discussing “direct democracy.” Nye noted that “there is no doubt that” the Libyan autocrat “acts differently on the world stage today […]

Bill Gates is Wrong!

UPDATE: His TED talk just went up. Well done overall and worth watching. But its not really his fault. Mr. Gates is getting a lot of press for some recent comments about state spending at TED. In conjunction with the presentation, his foundation has set up a nifty budget analysis tool. If you look at MA, we look pretty bad – 47th in nation on K-12 spending, etc. But our poor showing is driven by the underlying data source, NASBO’s state expenditure guide. In it, we’ve got a $47b state budget (versus a roughly $30b operating budget) while other states’ are reporting numbers much closer to their operating budget numbers. I think we reported a gross number while other state’s […]

Memo re: public dancing

MEMORANDUM To: Former Pioneer executive directors Re: Attempts at dancing in public (photo available at WickedLocal.com) Having noticed a recent uptick in dancing activity by former executive directors, we urge great care be shown in considering public dancing. Our mission recognizes competing priorities, which may give credence to the view that former executive directors might like to dance in public. We urge great caution for the following six reasons: 1. Our mission calls for liberty, but also individual responsibility. 2. Our mission does call for accountability; further it emphasizes effectiveness. Where accountability and effectiveness are not observed, one must emphasize the need to “limit” certain activities. 3. Our mission emphasizes the application of free markets, and we have seen no […]

Two Things to Ponder About Quasi-Public Salaries

As the Governor continues his march through the quasi-publics (many of which have taken him a full term to gain control over), it is worth mentioning two key points that were raised in the compensation review done by UMASS’ Steve Crosby. First, the report emphasizes that, for all the kerfluffle raised by the various quasi-public boards about independent studies and ‘market compensation’ rates, a troubling number of these hires came from the local market. In the words of the study: “..with almost no exceptions, the individuals hired to run these agencies are hired locally and not from a national pool. Does it make sense to use national standards and then hire locally?” Next is a point that I made in […]