Quote of the Day

White House press secretary "Jay Carney ... calls the IRS's behavior 'inappropriate.' No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense."  —George Will, In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate.

Will: Subprime College Education

Taxpayers, students and their families are "paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality," writes George Will, and the government-induced bubble, built around a 440 percent increase in tuition and fees over 30 years, is about to pop.

In his "The Higher Education Bubble," [University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan] Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. 

Will cites examples of declining quality:

• Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions).
• UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.”
• UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. 

Read his full article.

Will: When the Looter is the Government

Is it unanticipated 'collateral damage' from the War on Drugs, or deliberate highway robbery by government agencies? George Will relates a chilling story of a $1.5 million motel, owned by the law-abiding Caswell family since 1955, that should scare every property owner.

The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury [MA] Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery.