StickWithANose

Has Obama grown a couple? Or is this just more rhetorical magic lacking in substantive action?

If you’re wondering why President Obama is now adopting a policy position that candidate Obama rightly ridiculed John McCain for you need look no further than the Rubinites advising him. Obama’s supposed spending freeze is but the opening act for the headliner: making significant cuts to social security, medicare and medicaid. NYT
It is the growth [...]

In my morning class, I finished off a series of lectures on the foundation of sociology that focused on the key concepts of Marx, Weber and Durkheim: alienation, the iron cage and anomie respectively. After class, a student approached me with a deceptively simple question for which I had no answer. She explained to me [...]

A meditation on living in the Age of Bubbles… Gin & Tacos
Every patriot worth his salt is burying some gold in the yard ahead of the inevitable collapse of the worthless fiat dollar. That Glenn Beck is paid by retail gold outlet Goldline International to hawk gold on the air is no cause for suspicion. [...]

After Beck and doughy pantload served up their own particular view of ‘Liberal Fascism’ this past Friday night, real historians are [at last] pushing back against this tragic re-writing of history. For those who aren’t politically active, this may all appear to be much ado about nothing, however it is deadly serious. The only real [...]

Is the sound of public tax dollars financing the new hot thing in commercial real estate speculation. Kansas City Business Journal [h/t Schools Matter]
Entertainment Properties Trust has increased its investment in public charter schools by $48 million, the company said Friday.
The company (NYSE: EPR) purchased five new charter schools from Imagine Schools Inc. of Arlington, [...]

Same as it ever was… Chicago Tribune
Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.
Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance [...]

If former Reagan revolutionary David Stockman is on board for taxing the sh*t out of Wall Street then I am quite sure that hell has [at least temporarily] frozen over…
Make no mistake. The banking system has become an agent of destruction for the gross domestic product and of impoverishment for the middle class. To be [...]

Beneath the veneer of the Republican Lite education policies being pursued by the Obama administration lies a stark reality that remains neatly out of sight from the gentle gaze of the Heartland. [aka. Places where middle class, white people live] The testing and accountability regimes that we are now constructing produce perverse incentives that push [...]

So, if corporations are legal “individuals” with protected political speech and political contributions are a form of political speech then I want to know when my limited liability protection kicks in… NYT
Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban [...]