23rd July 2008, 12:12 am by Alicia
Am in the midst of reading Tim Harford’s “The Undercover Economist” (Little, Brown, 2006), and was struck by my extreme lack of knowledge in this area. The author, a columnist for the Financial Times and occasional Slate.com contributor, breaks down the beautiful science to make it accessible and fascinating for dunderheads like me. Gem chapters include “Beer, Chips and Globalization.”
The product of a fairly good secondary school and university, I was never required to take an economics course. My post-college education primarily consists of books such as “Freakonomics” and the movie “A Dangerous Mind.”
Barack Obama believes that requiring students to take a second language is the answer to making America more aware of the world and make U.S. tourists more palatable to the Frogs, but wouldn’t making economics a required course in high school be more advantageous?
It would be easy enough to get rid of filler classes such as Yearbook and Basketweaving and teach students how to actually think. A semester devoted to why poor countries are poor may do the little pampered darlings a world of good and cut down on traffic stoppages due to student-filled protests. See, everyone wins.
7th July 2008, 04:34 pm by Alicia
I continue to be amazed and amused at the creativity and unabashed avarice of Obama’s campaign. In the latest e-mail from David Plouffe, campaign manager, he pitches the opportunity for a chance to win one of 10 grand prize packages that includes a free trip to Denver to attend the stadium acceptance speech event and meet Barack backstage. In order to have a chance to win, you just have to make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31. Now I know Senator Obama is trying to fight the alleged insinuations that he is a closet Muslim, but is that any excuse to turn the Democratic convention into a giant church-basement Bingo game?
19th June 2008, 01:07 pm by Alicia
In today’s statement Obama again straddles the line saying that he “supports public financing…but the system is broken.” Was it not broken in February 2008 when he wrote an Op-Ed in USA Today saying that he would accept public financing if his Republican opponent did as well? Let’s face it, he’s got a good deal going with his aggressive fund raising machine made up of “real people” (especially the real people in Silicon Valley c-suites), so why turn off the spigot? His comments about organized groups drowning out the voices of real people are disingenuous as well. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of May 2008, Obama has accepted $7 million from the education industry compared to McCain’s $727,000 from the oil & gas industry. Who is in whose special interest pocket?