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Some markets are more equal than others.

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The subprime crisis may soon lead to a shortage of liquidity, but it’s already produced a surplus of unhelpful commentary. A happy exception is this little rant from MSN Money columnist Bill Fleckenstein, especially this bit: Wall Street, the hedge-fund community and their lap dogs in the news media continually brag about how much they love capitalism and free markets. Yet when the creative-destruction component of capitalism rears its ugly head, they want the central planners to bail them out immediately, before they take any pain. And the ones clamoring the loudest are the very same folks who behaved the most irresponsibly. This isn’t just about central banks. In trying to manage the market, municipalities and states often resort to […]

Good God, professors bow to the Left?

/3 Comments/in , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

Who wudda thunk it? I mean, I never saw any hint of politicized courses at university! Marcella Bombardieri today reports in the Globe that 75% of the $7 million given to campaigns by academicians went to Democrats. I am shocked–shocked! 81% at MIT, 82% at Harvard, 90% at BU, 99% at Northeastern, and 100% at Tufts. More importantly, Bombardieri notes at the top of her article Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries — a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes. We need laws–yes, laws!–to stem the controlling influence of the […]

Bored with education progress

/0 Comments/in , , /by Scott W. Graves and Micaela Dawson

It was something of a blast from the past that Governor Patrick appointed Paul Reville to chair the Board of Education. Entirely expected given that Paul chaired the First Task Force that led to the Second Task Force. But the appointment does say something about the “blast from the past” quality of education debates. Paul was on the board from 1991 to 1996. A bipartisan agreement (Weld-Birmingham-Finneran) led to the replacement of Paul and others and the appointment of the top vote-getting Democrat (and previously electoral opponent to Weld) John Silber to the helm of the BOE. Positive qualities Paul brings to the BOE are that he listens, and that he has some broader academic training (M.A.), which could be […]

Wednesday Quick Hits

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Burying the lede: State House News has a brief piece on the latest filings for School Building Assistance program. Towards the end, it notes that several of the schools built under the program (when it was administered by the Dep’t of Ed) in western Mass were being used for non-school purposes since the students never materialized to fill the building. So what exactly did we subsidize? We didn’t say it: I enjoyed this quote from a local restaurant bulletin board: “Ugh. So, I’m attending the American Chemical Society meeting with 1223947928 of my closest friends. Historically, this meeting (along with all the others) was at Hynes, which left you any number of options for lunch/dinner/drinks. But the new convention center […]

MBTA Pension Brouhaha

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Today’s Globe has a brutal piece on the MBTA’s pension plan and the unbelievable payouts it generates. One of the highlights is former MBTA General Manager Michael Mulhern’s payout. He retired as GM several years ago and got the proverbial soft landing as head of the T’s pension plan. At age 48, he collects a pension of $130,000 and a salary of $225,000. The T’s plan does this because it has many of the crazy features of the other public pension systems (read more about those here) plus it has no minimum age feature, so folks can retire as soon as they get their 20 years in, even if they are in the prime of their careers. To add insult […]