We Still Must Strive

43 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, beating Kennedy’s simple goal set forth less than 10 years prior.  They represented a pinnacle achievement for Americans and humans.  In 66 years, we went from a couple of Ohioans taking flight on the beaches of Kitty Hawk to another Ohioan taking a giant leap for mankind on the moon.  And where are we now? 

Hitching rides from the Russians to the space station.

We cannot grow into dependency, because we will not grow.  Innovation and entrepreneurialism are in our genes.  First settled in search of a more perfect union, Americans have always sought to push the boundaries of possible.  We take risks, we fail, and we aim higher.  More often than not, we have forgone the safety net of the status quo. 

Achievement is not easy.  Temporal comforts are convenient but fleeting, especially when given to you by others.  If you chose a life of least resistance, do not bemoan or besmirch those who act on their dreams.  We have to continue to celebrate the achievers and the doers, and drown out those trying to discredit success from the comfort of their couch.  Don’t get in the way of the doers.  Don’t take away, diminish, besmirch, or bemoan the achievement of those around you, let it raise your own personal standards.

We can still strive for and achieve greatness.  We have to.

The American Dream and the American Spirit can only be defeated from within, by us and us alone.  If the 20^th century is remembered as the American century, I fear how dismal this century will be that we are not remembered.

For Rent

In the same week Obama publicly signed an executive order to cut down on coffee mugs and what not in executive departments (we're told it will save $4 billion), news comes out that the honorable Joseph Biden is charging the secret service rent when they stay at his Delaware cottage.  The same secret service that protect his life.

Now, one can easily counter that he is losing potential income since he cannot rent out the residence like past years, when he was merely a Senator.  True, and fair enough.  But when your administration has attempted to build a facade of budget cutting for the last 2.5 years, can your credibly demand rent money for your bodyguards?  Especially when you are paid hundreds of thousands a year - and are set for life with speaking fees!

With all this jobs talk in DC, it seems Biden is only worried about his own income.

#Occupy ... the Banks?

The #occupy movement can not seem to live up to its own idealist standards yet again.  First, the wall street bunch complained when the New York homeless were snagging free meals from the encampment's kitchen - apparently displeased about bums taking from the contributors.

Now, Occupy Oakland has deposited $20k into a Wells Fargo account, after their group vandalizing a branch of that same corporation about a week earlier.  Camping in a taxpayer funded park, living off donations, and not contributing to anything of value will only last so long.  Amorphous movements are great, but occupy will set itself on proverbial fire as their unrestrained masses are not held to account by the greater movement.

I don't think you're supposed to #occupy the bank with your money...

Taxing Christmas

The Obama administration (though probably not Obama specifically) has announced a new 15 cent tax on live Christmas trees.  The best part of the tax is that the revenue is intended to promote real Christmas tree purchases!  When has a tax ever increased commerce for that product?

To be fair, 3/4 of the industry is in favor of this new tax, which funds an estimated $2 million ad campaign for real Christmas trees.  But this begs the question - how is this the role of government?!  If private tree farms want to fund a public relations campaign, they do not need the government to do so.  If artificial tree manufacturers decided they need a PR campaign as well, will the federal government organize a tax on their products as well?  What about Menorahs for Hanukkah or fireworks for the 4th of July?

I almost forgot, the preferred nomenclature is now "Holiday Tree," not the intolerant Christmas Tree.

In Defense of Jubilation

When you hear that the President is holding a press conference within the hour on a Sunday night, one's mind can only think we've been contacted by aliens.  The elimination of Osama Bin Laden by American troops was a great second, and greeted by immigrants and native-borns, yanks and southerns, liberals and conservatives with equal ecstasy.

Spontaneous celebrations broke out; most significantly at ground zero and the White House, but also at numerous college campuses.  Chants of "USA" and the like filled an almost tailgate like atmosphere.  And with the jubilation came the usual hand-wringing from certain corners on how a death can elicit such a brutish joy from a whole population.  These debbie downers are fundamentally wrong in their moralistic concern.

A short thought exercise if you will.  In a parallel universe, Osama was captured yesterday.  I would dare say the same visceral joy would be on exhibit.  If he was locked in a cell awaiting trial, and suffered kidney failure resulting in death, Americans would not take to the streets to celebrate.  

We celebrated as a nation, and specifically as students, because the demise of Osama Bin Laden marks a bookend in our world experience.  I was alive for the fall of the Berlin wall, the first Gulf War, and our action in Bosnia - but I don't remember them.  I have vague recollections of OJ and OKC.  

But 9/11 is vivid.  9/11 slapped my 12 year-old consciousness out of sleepovers and junk food.  My teen years, as well as every other college students', was in part defined by the War on Terror.  Emerging from the limitless 90s, our world was now colored by a looming threat.  After anthrax, DC sniper, botched bombings, TSA screenings, and 2 wars later, we have some closure.  We have justice. No one claims our wars or international terrorism is over, but the elimination of Osama brings us just a little bit closer to the morning of September 10th, 2001.

It hasn't been the best couple years stateside, for anyone.  But this accomplishment, this justice served, brings us a national sense of pride in what America can still accomplish.

And They Vote with Their Feet

The states are often referred to as the "laboratories of democracy."  Well, I think it is quite apparent which experiments have worked;

• The eight states with no state income tax grew 18 percent in the last decade. The other states (including the District of Columbia) grew just 8 percent.
• The 22 states with right-to-work laws grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew just 6 percent.
• The 16 states where collective bargaining with public employees is not required grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew 7 percent.

Read the whole article from Michael Barone here

You're Not Allowed to Do This in Science

AEI's chief editor, Nick Schulz, shared a great video discussing what the climategate's "tricks" actually means in terms of raw data

Wisconsin Polls Prove Wording Matters

The summer reading assignment for my introductory statistics class was a short little book entitled How to Lie with Statistics. Before we ever took our first random sample or ran our first regression line, we learned how questions and numbers can be used to affirm any position (and yet for some reason the professor docked us points if we tried to do such on exams).

In the recent Wisconsin budget saga, pundits and politicos on both sides of the debate have attempted to reinforce their positions with public opinion numbers and statistics. Rachael Maddow has led off numerous shows in the past couple weeks with the latest poll from Wisconsin, and Nate Silver has critiqued Rasmussen’s early poll on Walker and unions. This week, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute added another statewide poll to the mix. Partisans may and have cherry picked numbers out of it like “65 percent think Governor Walker should compromise” or that a majority disapprove of Senate Democrats’ leaving the state. Fortunately, there is more information within the poll release than partisan positioning.

Two aspects of WPRI’s release make it notable over previous polls on the subject; they included two questions in an “experiment to examine responses to different ways of framing a key element of the budget repair bill, specifically collective bargaining, and they released the full crosstabs of their data, revealing the beliefs of different demographic groups. Question framing and wording are often cited as reasons to dismiss poll results when they are unagreeable, though rarely is there a direct comparative sample to see if such dismissals are correct.

The first question in the experiment asked if respondents strongly or somewhat favor or somewhat or strongly oppose the following Walker-friendly statement (let’s call it statement A); “Limiting most public employees' ability to negotiate over non-wage issues in order to prevent local union affiliates from obstructing the budgeting process for local governments.” The results found a statistical tie: 47 percent were strongly or somewhat in favor of the statement, while 50 percent somewhat or strongly oppose the statement.

And yet, when the other half of the sample is asked about favoring or opposing the second union friendly statement (statement B), “Stripping most public employees of their right to collectively bargain over benefits and working conditions as part of a ploy to eliminate public employee unions altogether,” there is a 25-point swing in the favor/oppose margin! Only 32 percent favor the second statement while 58 percent oppose it.






An interesting demographic aspect is the shift in opinion among the college educated between the two statements. 40 percent of those with an undergraduate or higher degree favor the first statement, statement A. When we turn to statement B, where overall favorability fell by 15 points, the favorability of those with college or graduate degrees marginally increased (42 percent). The best educated were more inclined to favor a statement of “stripping … rights to collective bargaining” that is supposed to be engender sympathy for the unions than the Walker-friendly statement. These results suggest that the college educated are more impervious to the phraseology of poll questions.

Gallup discovered a similar occurrence regarding the wording and results in their union questions. On February 21st, they found that only 33 percent of Americans favored the Wisconsin bill “that would take away some of the collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the state teachers’ union,” and 61 percent opposed it. Less than two weeks later (March 3-6), a question on the same subject found 49 percent favored “changing state laws to limit the bargaining power of state employee unions,” and 45 percent opposed. The 34-point swing between the two Gallup questions is even larger than the swing between the two WPRI experiment questions.

The essential difference in both sets of questions is the wording “collective bargaining rights”; statements with those words in some order suggest clear support for unions, where as questions omitting the words “collectively” or “right” show mixed opinion. Gallup observes that their “differing results likely reflect Americans' sensitivity to nuances in how the debate can be framed. They may also indicate the high and low boundaries of support for setting new limits on collective bargaining.”

Question wording matters, not just the percentages that follow them. So, too, does looking beyond the state level responses to see how different groups react. The certain take away from these polls reaffirms the old adage popularized by Mark Twain; there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Japan: The Aftermath

An amazing series of photos of the Tsunami aftermath is compiled at by the UK's Daily Mail.  The images are incredible.  The complete destruction is simply humbling.  Nature has the final say.

My Man Mitch

Even if he hasn't decided, I know it's true; Mitch Daniels will run for President.

After a second appearance on a Sunday morning show in as many weeks, keynoting a night at CPAC and the Gridiron Club dinner, and writing Op-Eds appearing in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Daniels is intentionally gaining national exposure your typical Governor never seeks.  Unlike most other candidates, there isn't another possible candidate in the mix that competes for Daniels' natural base of support.  Romney and Huntsman overlap.  Palin, Huckabee, and the run of other social conservatives overlap.  I contend that Gingrich, Barbour, and Pawlenty overlap a core constituency as well.

I also think Daniels has a gift that will allow voters to connect with him in the early primary states.  He is humble, not larger than life.  At CPAC, he took time to speak to about 50 students when he arrived, free from any media or big donors.  He was frank and honest.  His speech was serious and steady.  He has a unique message, not an anti-Obama drivel that falls from the lips of others.  Most importantly, he will not run simply because he want's to be the President, but because he has something to offer.

Lastly, some jokes from his recent Gridiron Club address;

Daniels, who gave the Republican response, invoked the sling he wore thanks to recent rotator-cuff surgery. He mentioned Obama’s comment during the 2008 campaign about conservatives seeking religion and guns as touchstones.

“Mr. President, until I get this thing off, I can cling to my gun or my Bible but not both,” Daniels quipped.

The Indiana governor, who is considering a run for the White House, also joked about the president’s widely-reported use of written texts at big events, saying, “Mr. President you’re not laughing, who forgot to put ha-ha-ha on the teleprompter?”

But Daniels saved some of his harshest jabs for his potential Republican primary rivals.

Daniels poked both Palin and Mike Huckabee with a single punch, raising the former Arkansas governor’s gaffe in which he claimed inaccurately more than once that the president grew up in Kenya.

“Sarah Palin pounces and says, ‘Wrong, Mike — he’s never been to Europe,”

Daniels/Christie 2010