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May 3,
2006
Vol. 2, No.
7
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Also in
this issue:
Microsoft's new brain
LV office projects
may face glut
A
conversation with
the Senate's 'Most
Dangerous Creature'
The MBA myth
Disclosure rules expose
lavish union spending
Judge stuns Al-Arian
with maximum sentence
United 93
Commentary:
Educating from the bench
White guilt and
the Western past
Cool Hand Steve
Simple steps to cut
oil company profits
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Tions
'Educating'
from the bench
Judges order legislators to spend more on
schools, and taxpayers see less in return.
By Jay P. Greene
Opinion Journal
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.—Spending on public schools
nationwide has skyrocketed to $536 billion as of
the 2004 school year, or more than $10,000 per
pupil. That’s more than double per pupil what we
spent three decades ago, adjusted for
inflation—and more than we currently spend on
national defense ($494 billion as of 2005). But
the argument behind lawsuits in 45 states is
that we don’t spend nearly enough on schools.
[continued]
The War'
White guilt and the Western past
Why is America so delicate with the enemy?.
By Shelby Steele
The Wall Street
Journal
There is something rather
odd in the way America has come to fight its
wars since World War II.
For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we
would use anything approaching the full measure
of our military power (the nuclear option aside)
in the wars we fight. And this seems only
reasonable given the relative weakness of our
Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle
East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam,
and today, despite our vast power, we are only
slogging along—if admirably—in Iraq against a
hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even
as we seem unable to stop it. Yet no
one—including, very likely, the insurgents
themselves—believes that America lacks the raw
power to defeat this insurgency if it wants to.
So clearly it is America that determines the
scale of this war. It is America, in fact, that
fights so as to make a little room for an
insurgency.
[continued]
This article will be available to
non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to
seven days after it is e-mailed.
The Fed
Cool Hand Steve
By
Peter Schiff
Euro
Pacific Capital
Yesterday,
in a turnaround reminiscent of the 1960’s film
“Cool Hand Luke, “the bosses at Morgan Stanley
finally succeeded in getting poor old Stephen
Roach’s mind right. For years Mr. Roach had
caused headaches up and down Wall Street for his
stubborn “failure to communicate” the upbeat
messages so vital to the investment trade.
Instead he was one of the most influential
voices calling attention to the dangers of
America’s lack of domestic savings and
production, growing current account imbalances,
and reliance on asset-based consumption. The
more upbeat Stephen Roach now anticipates the
rosy “soft-landing.” scenario.
[continued]
Gas prices
Simple
steps to cut oil company profits
By Merrill Matthews
Human Events
With gasoline
hitting $3 a gallon across the country, and Republicans
already smelling voter dissatisfaction in the air, it
seems everyone in Congress wants to do something about
gasoline prices—especially before the November elections.
[continued]
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WHY
BusinessNevada
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Predation
You’re not dreaming
Nevada
businesses
are
being
set up for a big new hit.
By Steven Miller
Business Nevada
YOU'VE GOT THIS recurring nightmare.
You have a zillion things to do, but nevertheless find
yourself stuck out in the middle of heavy traffic.
You know it’s dangerous. You’re carrying scars from
earlier collisions.
But now, once again, hurtling at you are a couple of big
new rigs. And the drivers clearly intend you harm.
At the same time someone is yelling out at you from the
roadside. However, they’re not telling you to get
out of the way.
Instead, they’re shouting, bizarrely: “Don’t try
to get out of the way! Worry about … unintended
consequences!”
You want to wake up.
But you’re NOT dreaming: You’re just another Nevada
business person in a “nightmare” that really IS
happening again and again in the Silver State!
[continued]
Innovation
Microsoft’s new brain
Bill Gates has unleashed his new hire, software genius
Ray Ozzie, to remake the company—and conquer the Web.
By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune
Magazine
Last June,
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer summoned the company’s top
15 executives to Robinswood, a rustic 19th-century house
a few miles from Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash.,
headquarters.
The
meeting was urgent: Google (Research), Yahoo!
(Research), and other newer companies had been amassing
customers, revenue, and investor enthusiasm not by
selling software, as Microsoft (Research) has for
decades, but by deploying it over the Internet as
advertising-supported services such as search and photo
sharing. Even Microsoft Office was starting to feel heat
from Web alternatives.
[continued]
Real estate
LV
office projects
may face glut
By Jennifer Shubinksi
InBusiness Las Vegas
The for-sale office market totaled more than half of all new office space that
came online during the first quarter 2006, and at least
one developer foresees a glut in the near future.
[continued]
Politics
A conversation with
the Senate’s ‘Most
Dangerous Creature’
An interview with Sen. Tom Coburn
By Steve Stanek
Budget & Tax News
There’s a reason
nationally syndicated columnist George Will recently
wrote Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is “the most dangerous
creature that can come to the Senate.” As Will noted,
Coburn is “someone simply uninterested in being
popular."
That attitude is reflected in Coburn’s leadership of the
“Fiscal Watch Team,” an informal group of seven
Republican senators who have repeatedly jabbed at fellow
lawmakers for embracing pork-barrel politics and
allowing an unprecedented growth of government.
Largely because of the Fiscal Watch Team—whose members
also include Sam Brownback (R-KS), Jim DeMint (R-SC),
John Ensign (R-NV), John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham
(R-SC), and John Sununu (R- NH)—two Alaska pork projects
last fall were ridiculed as “Bridges to Nowhere” and
became national symbols of waste and abuse of the public
treasury.
[continued]
Management
The MBA
Myth
Most of management theory is inane, writes the founder
of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in
business, don’t get an MBA. Study philosophy instead.
By Matthew Stewart
The
Atlantic Monthly
During the seven
years that
I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of
time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty
good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber
expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I
made up for my youth with a fabulous education in
management. They were wrong about that.
[continued]
Labor
Disclosures expose lavish union perks
By
Michael Reitz
Evergreen Freedom Foundation
What does Tiger Woods have in common with union officials?
Answer: they both play a lot of golf. The only
difference is union officials get to play on their
members’ dime. A lot of dimes, actually. Organized labor
spent $1.3 million on golf in 2005.
[continued]
Terrorism
Judge stuns
Al-Arian with maximum time
By Josh Gerstein
The New York Sun
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America’s voice
New York Sun Editorial
Every once in a while there occurs one of those
clarifying moments, when a public official rises
to a difficult occasion and speaks on a highly
fraught subject with an inspiring clarity.
[continued] |
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A federal judge
Monday lambasted a former Florida college professor,
Sami Al-Arian, as a liar and “master manipulator,”
before sentencing him to nearly five years in prison for
providing support to a Middle Eastern terrorist group,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
[continued]
Film
United 93
Hollywood goes to war
By Jack Sorock
Human Events
This past Friday
I went to see "United 93," the movie that dramatizes the
events in the flight-control offices and aboard the
plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and appears to have
been destined for the U.S. Capitol building.
[continued]
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