For those who have missed the kerfuffle, Phyllis Schlafly will be speaking the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL)commencement and will receive an honourary degree from the school.   Yes, this has provoked outrage; modern college women are upset because they feel as if Mrs. Schlafly does not represent their values:

Do her views fit with the future the men and women of Wash U’s graduating class see for themselves and their peers? Probably not. Then why honor her with them? Wouldn’t having someone like her in the midst of Wash U’s female graduates be incongruous at best, offensive at worst?

Well, sweeties, why not read Mrs. Schlafly’s bio?  She earned a college degree from WUSTL at the age of 19 - in 1944!  She then earned a Masters in Government from Radcliffe College in 1945.  By any sane standard, Mrs. Schlafly is a maverick and an inspiration for feminists who care about women in education.  As a Master’s from one of the most prestigious universities in the country was not enough for Mrs. Schlafly, she went back to earn a J.D. from WUSTL in 1978.  She began her law school career scarcely three years after Title IX was passed and eleven years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Is that really a woman who is anything but an inspiration to young women who are about to receive a university degree from a fine institution?  What “values” are shared by university women that she does not hold dear - and has not demonstrated that she holds dear? 

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McCain is kowtowing to the enviro-mental-cases.  He advocates for a “cap-and-trade” system whereby each plant has a set amount of permissible pollution.  This system is fundamentally flawed, for several reasons:

1. There is no just way to allocate credits.  If a plant is performing badly, it will get more credits than one that is already clean.  It may be much costlier to reduce emissions from a clean plant by 10% than a dirty plant by 50%, although the company that does the latter will be in a better economic position.

2. It ignores the economic reality that it is much easier to build something new and green than to retrofit something to be green.

3. It creates a cartel whereby existing companies can prevent new ones from coming onto the market - even if those new factories are significantly cleaner than their competitors.   A business owner need only refuse to let a newcomer purchase emissions credits, and the newcomer will not be able to operate a plant.  This will happen, even if the new plant is cleaner and will produce better environmental results than the one it replaces.  (See #2.)

4. It creates an unnatural monopoly. The ability to pollute is not something like the creation of a railroad line or a telephone pole, which is somewhat monopolistic in its existence.  It makes sense to regulate railroads, energy lines, and telephone lines, as it is horribly inefficient to let people build zillions of parallel railroad tracks, power lines, and telephone poles for the sake of creating a “free market” in the relevant goods.  McCain’s proposal, although it has that “buy, sell, broker, cost/benefit analysis” look of a free market, actually undermines a properly-functioning free market.  The government, through its initial allocation of carbon credits, imposes an additional cost upon each company, which is unrelated to the cost of doing business, polluting, or cleaning up pollution.  Businesses may then impose costs upon each other by refusing to sell the credits, except for an exhorbitantly high cost.  The “supply” part of “supply and demand” is fixed: for obvious reasons, you can’t increase the supply of carbon credits without making the whole system utterly idiotic.

McCain, McCain… please, just stop this nonsense.  Ask people to plant trees… or face up to the reality that the earth is actually cooling down, despite an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

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The Boston Globe brings out the tears for people who bought houses that they cannot afford (here).  First of all, the  monthly payments should be affordable, not budget-straining, so any increase in interest rates would result in belt-tightening, not foreclosure.  Second, if the house was unaffordable when it was appraised at $700,000 in a good market, it isn’t any less affordable when appraised at $500,000 in a bad market.  The current market value of a home does not change whether or not the mortgage is affordable, just whether or not it is a financially good idea.  If it doesn’t make financial sense to keep the house, tough luck: the buyer gets the benefit of an upswing in the market (by selling the house at a profit, potentially) and pays for that with the risk of a downturn (whereby the she would have to sell at a loss). Now, the market value of a house only matters when… drum roll… wait for it… the house is on the market.  If you aren’t selling your house, it does not matter, financially, whether it is valued at $700,000 or $400,000.  So this is complete and total b.s. that a change in the housing market makes these homes unaffordable.

Third, and most importantly, two groups pay for these irresponsible people: responsible homeowners who will see an increase in their interest rates to cover foreclosure, and renters who are blocked out of the housing market by less financially stable, but irresponsible, homeowners, and, of course, the rising interest rates on mortgages to pay for the financial irresponsibility. Notice how wrongdoing and irresponsibility do not correlate to financial burdens.