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1. I feel so grateful to Iowa State University for maintaining a pretty clean, respectable athletic program. The biggest “scandal” I can recall was when the men’s basketball coach was found to be a drunk (and a rather sad drunk at that), and promptly fired. I don’t recall any kind of violent backlash afterward, either. (Though I do recall being part of the crowd which marched on President Jischke’s house to protest “Dry VEISHEA” back in the 1990s, so I have some sympathy for Penn State students; it’s so easy to act dumb when you’re in college.) Bigger picture, though, is there some point at which the stink from America’s college athletics world gets so bad that we finally do something to reform it? I’m not sure, though if there is such a point we’re almost certain to get there sooner or later, the way things are going.

2. For the most part, Ohio politics seem to be taking a breather in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election. But, obviously, armchair ideologues never rest, and so it was really no surprise to see rabid wingnut Kevin O’Brien wasting no time in declaring that statehouse Republicans should respond to Issue 2′s defeat by ramming the exact same legislation through all over again. Just exempt cops and firefighters, this time, and that should make it more palatable to voters. Uhhh huh. Frankly, that may have worked, or at least made the vote much closer, had they tried it the first time. At this point, though, I’m pretty sure that Republican-backed collective bargaining restrictions are a radioactive concept in Ohio, and likely to remain that way for a while. And I think the GOP will be the ones getting burned, should they try to shove it down voters’ throats a second time. But, hey, by all means. You go right ahead, Kasich & co., and listen to Kevin O’Brien. He hasn’t steered you wrong yet, has he?

3. It sounds like President Obama may be exercising a kind of “pocket veto” of the abominable Keystone XL pipeline, which has united liberal environmentalists and rural Nebraskans against Canada’s oil industry. If “delaying the study” ends up effectively dooming the plan, great. North America absolutely should be investing in large-scale energy infrastructure projects; those projects absolutely should not involve sinking more money into infrastructure designed for an energy source which is unsustainable from either an economic or an environmental perspective. Building a super pipeline to funnel more of our money into the dead end of petroleum dependency, and the carbon-intensive tar sands to boot, is fucking moronic. I had somewhat higher hopes for the Obama administration on energy and the environment, but it still takes some courage to veto this dogfucker, even via a passive-aggressive approach. For all its negligible worth, Obama has inched closer to winning my vote in 2012.

4. Amidst all the domestic and international cause for despair, there may be at least one glimmering of hope. In a recent public rambling, Warren Ellis notes that “my sixteen year old daughter… has a t-shirt that reads OF COURSE I’M NOT ON FUCKING FACEBOOK.” Mercurial adolescent enthusiasm made you, Zuckerberg, and it can unmake you too.

I wish I had something useful or insightful to say about the crisis unfolding in Greece. If only because being able to somehow “master the situation,” if only intellectually, might make it seem less worrying.

As-is: very worrying.

What seems the most worrying is the seeming absolute denial of the men* in suits that there is simply no painless way out of this.

Those with a better grasp of the situation than mine have been writing for quite some time about “haircuts,” their favored euphemism for creditors getting less money than they have heretofore expected to get. Now we’re to the point where a Greek exit from the Euro is beginning to look like a matter of “when, not if” to even sober, skeptical observers.

Whatever may happen, the one thing which seems completely impossible is for the matter to just fix itself if alleged “leaders” simply temporize long enough. Short of the Greek government stumbling upon the buried treasure of all classical-antiquity treasures and promptly putting it up for auction, I fail to see how exactly Greece can just “fix itself” without anyone else being inconvenienced in any way. (more…)

Another in a series of posts which I basically wrote and finished except for putting them in WordPress or actually, y’know, posting them, and then forgot about as weeks became months. In this instance, I multiply two of my worst most-endearing habits by posting a “deleted scene” in which I argue back at The Economist. Which really makes you glad to be alive, I’m sure.

So, our friends at The Economist have apparently decided to argue inequality out of existence, by combining a number of inequality-related issues into an artificial whole which is so broad and complex they can easily lose sight of any particular section they don’t feel like dealing with. Their assembly of a giant straw-man complaint is obvious to even rudimentary critical analysis, and frankly it’s embarrassing, particularly relative to the generally high standard of insight and commentary which they produce. (Interestingly, the cover art seems to tell a much simpler and much more believable story; perhaps the editors intended it as “tongue in cheek.”)

Residency restrictions in China, and growth in Latin America, don’t really have much direct relevancy to a tiny portion of America’s populace hoovering up nearly all growth in the country’s overall wealth. But if you don’t notice the conjurer’s trick of tying them all together because they are in some way associated with the word “inequality,” then you might be convinced that inequality is a complex story which seems to be getting better to as-great if not a greater extent than it’s getting worse. Likewise, if you accept some flippantly tossed-out alternative explanations for various social ills attributed to inequality, then you might add that to the suggestion that aside from a very small number of “outliers” Americans are clumped relatively closely together and not actually getting poorer, and might thus be satisfied with the noble-sounding suggestion that “inequality itself [is] less important than ensuring that those at the bottom were becoming better-off.”

Well, yes and no. (more…)