People want to have their soul in the game. In that sense, decentralization and fragmentation, aside form stabilizing the system, improves people's connection to their labor. N. Taleb
George Rebane
‘Trump’s Hoover Temptation’ appears to be real and, to me, scary. The only thing that would keep the world from spiraling into another Smoot-Hawley abyss is that today countries have many ad hoc trade relationships with each other such as the new TPP from which the US withdrew. But we’re still the economic gorilla on this planet, so it’s hard to tell what will really happen. My own hope is that Trump has the guts to replace Gary Cohn with some equivalent anti-tariff voices like Kudlow, Laffer, or Graham. The Dems, of course, are cheering on Trump’s tariffs, hoping that they will cause enough economic chaos to dent the GOP’s chances in November. For today's Dems it's always party above country.
The national ID card is here for all intents and purposes. Remember all the debates we had for decades protesting the issuance of such a card – ‘We don’t need no stinking ID card, we’re Americans!’ Well, all that has gone by the board. All US citizens are already ID’d twenty ways from Sunday, and now one more won’t hurt much. So, has everyone heard of Real ID (here)? Congress passed a law in 2005 that is now coming due that will require all of us by 1 October 2020 to be properly identified with a Real ID if we want to fly on domestic airlines and go into federal buildings and facilities, and who knows what else. On 22 January 2018 California’s DMV started letting residents convert their driver’s licenses to serve double duty as their Real ID cards when they renew. The DMV will also issue separate Real ID cards to non-drivers. On the same date the law has required that travelers show an equivalently vetted ID for air travel. (more here)
To get your Real ID you have to present a birth certificate, valid US passport, …, confirming your legal status in the country, and show that you really live in California with something like a utility bill. Your driver’s license will then bear a specific logo to identify it as a Real ID card. Veterans can also get ‘Veteran’ to appear on their license. To qualify for that you have to take the DD214 form you received on discharge to the county Veteran Affairs office, and they will verify your DD214 and give you another certificate confirming your service, which you then will present to the DMV. Got all that?
[update] In today's mail was Cato's Policy Analysis #831, 'The New National ID Systems' which summarizes the several ways the feds and the states are going to keep closer tabs on all of us through various new approaches to comprehensive identification (and tracking) of all Americans.
[10mar18 update] Since the launch of President Johnson’s Great Society, the Left has done its best to cripple the US educational systems. As part of that program, they have also attacked standardized tests that measure the performance of students coming out of their union-dominated, pension-prominent profession. They have vigorously opposed and rejected anything that can remotely reflect on teacher performance. For once you have become a member of the education industry family, your reliable vote and dues producing sinecure become paramount – and doubly so if you are a member of a privileged minority.
A dominant theme in this destruction has been the dunning of standardized tests, specifically the SAT and the ACT. Among other criteria, these are the staples used by colleges and universities to guide their admissions decisions. To denigrate these tests over the years, the Left has promulgated a number of well-publicized myths that have sought to deny the predictive power of the SAT and ACT in forecasting the academic and post-academic success of the test takers. Nationally prominent industrial psychologists and researchers Drs N. Kuncel and P. Sackett (q.v.) have conducted longitudinal studies of these test takers. Their work concludes that “myths abound about standardized tests, but the research is clear: they provide an invaluable measure of how students are likely to perform in college and beyond. … If anything, the relationship between scores and success increases as scores went up.”
The results of their research, also published in Measuring Success: Testing, Grades, and the Future of College Admissions (2018), summarily dismantles the Left’s myths in chapter and verse. A myth-by-myth synopsis of this research – ‘The Truth About the SAT and ACT’ – can be found in the 10mar18 WSJ.
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