Obama’s Campaign Strategy, Revealed in Two Cartoons

Actually, the title is an exaggeration. I think this Chuck Asay cartoon best captures the Obama political game plan, but I did enjoy this pair of Glen McCoy cartoons (and, given Obama’s weak track record on the economy, I do think there is a lot of truth to the notion that the White House would rather the election be determined by social issues).

The above cartoon reminds me of some of the amusing material that was put together when Sandra Fluke was getting her 15 minutes of fame for demanding subsidized birth control. You can enjoy some of that humor by clicking here, here, and here.

Here’s the second McCoy cartoon.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s a role of government to sanction any kind of marriage (or to persecute people based on their beliefs), so I definitely think this issue is a distraction.

P.S. As far as I can remember, I’ve only shared on other McCoy cartoon, which can be seen here.

P.P.S. Here’s another Asay cartoon about the election, though note my important caveats.

Read Full Post »

The Higher-Education Version of the Government-Screws-Up-Everything Chronicles

I’ve previously shared an amazing chart that shows how more government spending on public schools has yielded zero positive results.

Well, it seems that government spending on colleges and universities also leaves a lot to be desired.

Three academics investigated the relationship between higher-education spending and economic performance and it turns out that this perverse form of redistribution from poor to rich is counterproductive. Here’s the key sentence from the abstract.

Results from a series of fixed-effects regressions using a 1992-2002 panel of state-level data indicate that increased spending on higher education generally exhibits a relatively large negative effect on private sector employment or gross state product growth when the increase in education spending is financed through own-source revenue.

Yet Obama and most of the other politicians in Washington want to increase the subsidies for colleges and universities – even though the macroeconomic effects are dismal.

But I guess that doesn’t matter since politicians seem more concerned about creating more comfortable lives for unproductive professors and bloated school bureaucracies.

By the way, let’s not forget that students also suffer. As the federal government has squandered more money on higher education, colleges and universities have responded by jacking up tuition and fees, leaving more and more students deeply in debt.

Read Full Post »