1. Joel Kotkin is always impressive. This (h/t Ray Sawhill) on the new power class – the real 1%; the new “clerisy”:
An even greater beneficiary of the second term will be the administrative class, who by their nature live largely outside the market system. This group, which I call the new clerisy, is based largely in academia and the federal bureaucracy, whose numbers and distinct privileges have grown throughout the past half century.
Even in tough times, high-level academics enjoy tenure and have been largely spared from job cuts. Between late 2007 and mid-2009, the number of U.S. federal workers earning more than $150,000 more than doubled, even as the economy fell into a deep recession. Even as the private sector, and state government employment has fallen, the ranks of federal nomenklatura have swelled so much that Washington, D.C., has replaced New York as the wealthiest region in the country.
2. Dain Fitzgerald on pet preferences in red states and blue states. Red staters seem to prefer dogs while blue staters seem to prefer cats. I believe some of this is a function of land area as well as the utility of dogs versus the uselessness of cats (save, for staving off bubonic plague).
3. A third of all fired military commanders are dismissed for sexual misconduct. Force the forces to go co-ed and then force them to conform to some standard of sexual behavior that completely ignores the nature of man. Our biggest geopolitical threats are laughing at us.
4. Denmark’s Board of Equal Treatment (what?) rules that hairstylists cannot charge more for women’s haircuts than they charge for men’s haircuts.
5. Jezebel’s Tracie Egan Morrissey writes in a recap of Girls:
The only thing that felt inauthentic was that Sandy was a Republican. Having lived in Greenpoint and Williamsburg for the past 13 years I’ve only ever met one republican. He was white. And rich. And 40.
Morrissey is not unlike plenty of other liberals who routinely characterize conservatives’ (or just non-liberals’) motives, personalities and characters. Contrast that with conservatives who certainly have some liberal neighbors or at the very least “meet” liberals through their televisions and radios. So who is operating from limited knowledge of the other?
6. Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and native of a small town a couple hours north of Dallas and a short distance from my hometown, hates Dallas. Me too.
Like this:
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The Kotkin piece read like a mainstream guy had read some Moldbug and figured out how to write it for a more mainstream audience. I was happy to see it.
The military dismissals are not surprising, and along with that, what si not surprising is the military witnessing this and pushing continuously for more gender integration by having women serve on submarines. That’s a terrible idea. Unplanned pregnancies full steam ahead.
More like James Burnham probably:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham#The_Managerial_Revolution
Calling Washington, DC the wealthiest area in the nation is stupid. Manhattan is the richest place in the US and will remain that way for a long time.
Unplanned pregnancies? Naw, the women get bored and want to go home. I had a company of soldiers in the first Gulf war. When I got there, they attached an Air Traffic Control platoon with 19 women to my unit. I told them that if a single one got pregnant, I’d proffer charges on them for desertion under fire. I had zero pregnancies. Most of the units were running 20-30%. When one of the colonels asked me how I did it, he said, “You can’t do that!”
I told him; Sir, I’ll do the charges, if you dismiss them, that’s your call. But it worked.
albert mangus,
by a different measure and more to Kotkin’s point, Charles Murray noted that D.C. has the highest number of zip codes wherein the average income is at the 99th percentile for the whole country.
At the risk of being pedantic, this wording, “A third of all military commanders are dismissed for sexual misconduct.” is different than wording “Among dismissed military commanders, one third are for sexual misconduct.”
Interesting the Gen. McChrystal resigned, but was later cleared by a Pentagon investigation of any wrongdoing.
jz,
it was clunky wording on my part but i did write “a third of all *fired* military commanders are dismissed for sexual misconduct.”
toche. missed that.
Regarding your tweet on Pres. Obama’s “better half” not having run for political office, I predict that Michelle Obama will become Illinois Senator Michelle Obama after her daughters are out of the house. Michelle has the following, comfort at the podium, and ideology to serve IL. She is the figurehead for the new advocacy group Organizing for America.
yeah, she’s pretty much a shoe-in.
What’s so bad about Dallas?
grungy, ghetto, overrated. ft. worth has the texas culture that everyone thinks dallas has or should have. there are some decent pockets of dallas, but they tend to emulate austin and aren’t as good at it. even within texas it is just overrated as far as the big cities go.
Don’t count out Rahm running for the IL Senate seat in 2016. He has his network in DC set. He left the WH not out of fear of Obama losing re-election but because he couldnt stand Val Jarrett + didn’t like her influence on Obama’s decision making and mindset.
I’ve lived in both Dallas and Houston and in my opinion Dallas is a better place to live. The surrounding suburbs are nicer and the city itself is smaller yet has the big city attractions, though admittedly not as many as Houston. Plus with Dallas, Ft. Worth is just 30 min. Away so if you say Ft. Worth is great, Dallasites get to claim that as a benefit to their city as well. Finally, Houston is so dependant on oil and gas I see its long term greatness in danger just as Detroit is/was in danger from being the Motor City. My kids will be able and want to call Dallas home 50 years from now. I don’t think the same will be said of Houston.
“What’s so bad about Dallas?”
It’s in the south! (rimshot!)
(Seriously, I know; to each his own…. I’m partial to the boring ‘ol upper Midwest).
I think there are lots of ways of county which places are richer, but rent in Manhattan is $4000/m and in DC is $1800/m. There aren’t houses like there are in DC, so you can’t quite compare those, but there is no way Manhattan isn’t a lot wealthier.
Oil and gas aren’t going to be “cheap” in the future like they were in the 80s, thanks to the growth of China. Houston makes a lot of money selling engineering services around the world and oil equipment manufacturing and shipping, so it isn’t dependent on local prices of oil.
However, Houston is 2/3 minority and a lot of the reason that it was a good place to grow up (like I did) are slowly going away. Namely, it was super cheap with excellent schools (because the ISDs were almost completely responsible for paying for them, the suburban schools jacked the property tax rates to high heaven and were able to lure lots of good teachers with high salaries. Now everything is completely different).
Dallas represents everything bad about Texas to me mainly because they are a bunch of bankers. Also, no one is actually from Dallas, but from Plano, Richardson, Garland, etc.
It’s in the south! (rimshot!)
Nah, Southwest.
I have to take umbrage with suggesting that cats are useless. Vermin control is not overrated and having no mice in my house is well worth the cost of one mangy old cat
Also cats do actually give affection and company too, Not as well as dogs but they have their moments.
I’m exiled in San Antonio right now, but I’ll always love Dallas. Like Chuck, I grew up in a little Texas town near Big D, but I never really rebelled against it.
Dallas is a city where money talks, beauty is valued over intelligence, and your best friend will stab you in the back to make a buck or get ahead. In other words, it’s just like any other place in the world. Dallas is unique only because no one there pretends otherwise. There’s something comforting in that, I think.
Here’s a long article defending the city, warts and all. Anyone really down on the city should check it out.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/12/20/dallas-part-1-from-afar/
My dog caught a mouse.
Thanks for the Kotkin link. Always interesting to see what new class of persons are jockeying for elite status in the “progressive” crusade. But with the bleak economic realities setting in, I’m wondering how much this Administrative Class can expand. How many of these aspiring “clerisy” members are going to realize they have been sold a bill of goods, once they graduate from college?
Back when “Occupy Wall Street” was in full swing, The Volokh Conspiracy did a post about how the Recession was fragmenting the “New Class” and how the lower-tier (the administrators, regulators, social workers, functionaries, etc.) saw their status slipping away. It argued that “Occupy Wall Street” was basically the product of would-be administrative class members whining about how their promised authoritative and elite positions would not be forthcoming.
http://www.volokh.com/2011/10/31/the-fragmenting-of-the-new-class-elites-or-downward-mobility/