If you think a Supreme Court nominee can be an existential threat, then you might have the wrong idea about what the Court is supposed to be doing. David Harsanyi weighs in on the liberal furor over President Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court:
[A]lmost none of the objections coming from leading Democrats have been even ostensibly about Kavanaugh's qualifications as a jurist or, for that matter, his interpretation of the Constitution.
"Specifically," prospective presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., argued, "as a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy, his nomination presents an existential threat to the health care of hundreds of millions of Americans." Surely, the former attorney general of California comprehends that "health care" is not a constitutional right but rather a policy concern whose contours are still being debated by lawmakers—and probably will be for decades.
What Harris probably meant is that Kavanaugh is an existential threat to the practice of forcing Americans to buy products in the private marketplace against their will. Kavanaugh, incidentally, upheld Obamacare as an appellate judge for jurisdictional reasons even though it displeased him on policy grounds. (He wrote that the law is without "principled limit.") He did this because he has far more reverence for the law than Harris does.
[David Harsanyi, "Democrats Don't Fear Brett Kavanaugh. They Fear the Constitution." The Daily Signal, July 13]
The number of middle-class students attending elite universities is declining. Jason D. Delisle and Preston Cooper look at who is attending selective schools:
[T]he share of dependent students enrolled at [selective] institutions who are from the top income quartile increased between 2003–04 and 2007–08. While these students made up 52.1 percent of the student body at selective colleges in 1999–2000, their share increased markedly after 2003–04 to 57.5 percent in 2007–08, and the figure is similar for 2011–12. [...]
The increase in the share of dependent students at selective colleges who are high income in the mid-2000s appears to have come at the expense of students from the middle two income quartiles. Most of that change can be observed in the third income quartile. Earnings for the third quartile in 2015–16 were between $53,600 and $98,810. That group shrank from 25.2 percent of dependent students enrolled at selective colleges in 1999–2000 to 20.5 percent in 2011–12, the most of any income quartile.
One possible explanation:
The middle class may be far more susceptible to the trends and practices that observers worried would shut low-income students out of selective colleges. It may also be that these students are caught between two competing goals and pressures that selective universities face in their enrollment practices. Enrolling low-income students requires that the universities make generous aid and discounts available to these students; the institutions must therefore continue to enroll large numbers of high-income students who pay the highest tuition prices, which helps finance the aid and discounts for low-income students. Middle-income students fall into neither category, which could be why their ranks are thinning at selective colleges and universities.
[Jason D. Delisle and Preston Cooper, "Low-income Students at Selective Colleges: Disappearing or Holding Steady?" American Enterprise Institute, July 12]
Meanwhile, enrollment at non-elite universities is declining. Richard Vedder has an explanation:
The enrollment declines have been particularly acute in the industrial Midwest, but noticeable elsewhere as well. To cite one example, the spring 2018 enrollment at the University of Central Oklahoma was 14,313, down more than 10% from four years earlier. Facing high fixed costs and relatively stagnant or sometimes falling state support, enrollment declines mean the loss of vital tuition revenues, forcing schools to adopt previously politically unacceptable forms of change (e.g., firing tenured professors) in order to survive.
Yet amidst these declines, often even more dramatic at community colleges, highly selective admission universities' enrollments are at record highs and their problem is not attracting students but rather deciding whom to turn away. The flagship state schools in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, for example, are easily achieving their enrollment goals, as are the most prestigious and expensive private elite schools nationwide. The gap between the generally wealthier top and usually poorer bottom schools is widening sharply.
Why? A large part of the reason relates to the fact that college degrees are becoming less effective as screening devices, information helping employers separate the likely most productive, bright and disciplined prospective workers from others. When nearly everyone has some sort of post-secondary credential and posts high grades (because of grade inflation), a degree from Harvard or the University of Michigan still is highly respected, so their graduates mostly get decent jobs. That is distinctly less true of those graduating from less selective schools.
The imperfect but still useful College Scorecard website of the U.S. Department of Education tells us that average earnings after attending the U of M are $60,100, and 90% of students do graduate (within six years). By contrast, at EMU, seven miles away, average earnings are nearly 38% less ($37,500), and only38 % actually graduate. And the tuition at U of M, for the typical in-state student, is only a bit more expensive. No wonder students are clamoring to get into the schools perceived to be the best, and losing interest in less selective schools.
[Richard K. Vedder, "Why Enrollment Is Shrinking at Many American Colleges," Forbes, July 5]
Unions want direct taxpayer funding now. Ken Girardin looks at one pro-union response to the Janus decision in New York:
A senior member of the state Assembly is already promising to introduce legislation that would effectively use taxpayer money to reimburse government unions for the "agency fees" they are no longer allowed to collect under last week's SCOTUS decision in Janus v. AFSCME
The predictable response was laid out in a memo circulated to members of the Assembly by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) on Monday, just five days after the Janus hand-down.
Gottfried, who hasn't yet filed the bill itself, proposes letting public employers agree to "direct reimbursement" of the unions as part of contract negotiations. Public employers would pay unions for "the costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and related costs."
"That collectively bargained amount," Gottfried wrote, "would then proportionately reduce the workers' salary."
In reality, however, it's unlikely that any worker would experience a pay cut under the scheme described by Gottfried, given the realities of union negotiations under state law. Instead, a percentage of future raises would be designated as collective bargaining expenses and permanently embedded in base salaries on a recurring, permanent basis.
[Ken Girardin, "How NY Will Thwart Janus Rights," Empire Center of Public Policy, July 3]
Casualties of the trade war. China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on American products, including a 25 percent duty on soybeans. Stephen Vukovits writes:
[S]oybeans make up 63 percent of U.S. agricultural exports to China. A study by Professors Andrew Muhammed and S. Aaron Smith at the University of Tennessee estimated that a tariff of this magnitude would reduce American exports between $4.5 billion and $7.7 billion. [...]
While American soybean futures have fallen to the lowest level in over a decade, the Brazilian soybean premium has tripled since May. The gap between the bushels from the two countries is now $2.21, the largest margin recorded since the measure began in 2014.
Those most affected by the soybean tariffs are farmers in the Midwest. Politically, these rural areas are conservative, and President Trump carried 95 percent of the counties that harvest soybeans in this region. However, a major downturn to local farm revenues could turn many away from the President and Republicans. With toss-up Senate races this fall in Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, rural voters will have a major influence on who controls Congress.
Because of the importance of this constituency to the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections and President Trump's potential re-election efforts, it is no surprise that Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is exploring potential countermeasures to combat falling soybean prices.
One option under consideration is relying on the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to stabilize the soybean market by offering loans and buying unsold crops. Established in 1933, the CCC can borrow up to $30 billion from the Treasury to fund any programs protecting farm revenue. Rather than selling soybeans to traditional customers, the USDA would likely sell these crops directly to foreign governments and donate the leftovers to international charities.
However, this proposal is nothing more than a short-sighted bailout of the soybean industry that would have damaging long-term repercussions. Government subsidies may balance farmers' budgets this year, but buying excess soybeans does nothing to discourage additional tariffs. The government cannot buy unsold crops forever.
[Stephen Vukovits, "Soybean Price Decline Illustrates Trade War Dangers," Economics 21, July 11]
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