March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Notable from here:

Relativism allows everyone to be right, and puts our feelings ahead of everything else. We all know that it is not fun to find out that we are wrong about something, but a part of growing up is learning to cope with this negative feeling and learn from the experiences of failure. It would seem that many people today, however, would prefer to shield themselves and their children from ever being wrong or from feeling that hurt. This is true on the Little League diamond, where every player now makes the team, and in the school classrooms, where every assignment is given a modification to make sure every student can easily get by.

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Notable from this article:

I’m not saying that I don’t like some politicians more than others. I like those who vote the way I want them to and I dislike the ones who don’t. But when you get right down to it, most politicians on either side of the aisle are pretty mediocre human beings. What is their great accomplishment, after all? These are people who have devoted their lives to convincing other people to hand over their hard-earned money so that they can get or keep a job that essentially consists of spending other people’s tax dollars. Often enough to keep the tabloid press occupied, these palookas are caught taking bribes, using drugs and getting involved in sex scandals. In other words, they often behave like the rock stars they aspire to be, even though they can’t sing, cavort around a stage or play a musical instrument.

…

I don’t happen to think it’s a coincidence that left-wingers are much more juvenile than conservatives when it comes to making idols of politicians. As psychiatrist Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., points out in his new book, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness,” liberals are very much “like spoiled, angry children. They rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from the cradle to the grave.”

For over 35 years, Dr. Rossiter has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients and examined nearly 3,000 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. Regarding the sort of liberalism being espoused by Obama, Clinton and their devout worshippers, he states: “A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity, as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population, as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state, as liberals do.”

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

 Below is  notable from here:

Something is holding back lower-income Americans from going to college, says Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute.  It’s not that there aren’t major incentives for them to go.  In fact, the college wage premium — the difference between the average wages of college grads and those of high school grads has climbed to around 85 percent, up from less than 50 percent in 1980.

If more money isn’t the answer, what does have an impact?  In a word: culture. Everything we know about high performance in all fields of endeavor tells us that, while natural talent is a plus, there is no substitute for long hours of preparation and hard work, explains Lindsey.

Child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley tested the effect of class on the differences in how parents interact with their young children.  They were able to document dramatic differences in the intensity and nature of the verbal stimulation the kids were getting:

• Professional parents directed an average of 487 “utterances” per hour toward their children, as compared to 301 for working class parents and only 176 for welfare parents.
• Among professional parents, the ratio of encouraging to discouraging utterances was six to one; for working-class parents, the ratio slipped to two to one; and welfare parents made two discouraging utterances for every encouraging one.
• By the time the children in the study were around three years old, the ones from professional families had average vocabularies of 1,116 words; the working-class ones averaged 749; the welfare kids, 525.

Once kids reach school age, the growing influence of peer groups reinforces the early patterns established at home.  College-educated professional parents make sure their kids are in college-bound peer groups, while working-class and underclass kids tend to gravitate toward others like them.  Consequently, children on either side of the class divide grow up with very different attitudes about the importance of school achievement — which leads to different expectations about future life plans and different self-conceptions in relation to larger society, says Lindsey.

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Education and economic growth from Education Next.

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

The four-day Democratic National Convention in August is expected to pump $160 million directly into the regional economy.

The economic shot-in-the-arm, whatever the total actually ends up being, will be a welcome boost. But we’re beginning to question whether the short-term benefit is worth the long-term expenses.

Denver, and Colorado, could be left holding the bag for years to come.

Even before the Democrats awarded their national convention to Denver, Mayor John Hickenlooper had to promise a union-run hotel, the city’s first. He delivered.

Then, with the memory of picket lines set up by Boston police during the 2004 DNC convention hanging quietly over negotiations, Denver cops received at least a 14 percent salary increase for the next three years. The contract nearly tripled the percentage raise handed out in the previous three-year contract.

And last spring, after Gov. Bill Ritter wisely vetoed a bill making it easier to form labor unions in Colorado, the AFL-CIO threatened to ask national Democrats to find a new city for the convention if the state didn’t adopt a pro-labor measure.

Teamster president James Hoffa Jr. confronted Ritter, saying if he and Hickenlooper didn’t work out some key issues, the convention could be plagued with protests and picket lines.

“It could blow up,” Hoffa told Ritter.

Months later, right on cue, Ritter delivered his Friday afternoon executive order, granting state workers unnecessary collective bargaining rights that will drive up the cost of state government.

Unions have been thriving only in the public sector, and Ritter’s order ensured that they will continue to flourish there — at least until there’s a new governor to overturn the order.

And now, parking lot workers at Denver International Airport are the latest to hold the city hostage as they negotiate a new contract.

The Service Employees International Union’s chapter director for parking employees, Dennis DeMaio, said the union will strike during the DNC if it needs to. The union is concerned about which company may get the contract to manage parking at DIA.

The threat of a strike is enough to perk up most ears on the city council. After all, what would happen if 40 percent of the more than 6,000 delegates who are union members refused to land at DIA while their brethren were striking?

Then we learned that three city councilmen, two with strong union ties, met privately with representatives of the union and one of the companies vying for the parking contract. Not only was the meeting in violation of Colorado’s open meetings law, it raised questions about who those councilmen are working for: the union or Denverites?

Hickenlooper has promised that not a penny of taxpayer money would be spent on the convention. Yet it appears taxpayers could pay more indirectly for having the convention here.

Read it all here. (HT: Division of Labour)

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March 31, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

More from Don Boudreaux and free trade.

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