Panic Pilgrim, Quick Grab Your Suitcase
Balance of Power
Sen. John McCain wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent; Sen. Barack Obama doesn’t. Obama wants to increase the minimum wage; McCain doesn’t.
It’s hard to mix up the economic proposals of the two presidential candidates. Likewise, when it comes to workplace issues, they tend to lean in predictable ways – Obama toward the employee, McCain toward the employer.
Yet regardless of who’s elected, employment lawyers and Washington-area lobbyists say labor laws could get reshuffled in areas as varied as union organizing and gay rights.
“Some people are saying this could be the most active 'workplace Congress’ in the last 20 to 25 years,” said Mike Aitken, director of government affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management, based in Alexandria.
Where do McCain, Obama stand on labor issues? Philip Walzer, The Virginian-Pilot, September 21, 2008.
Here’s a nicely summarized view of the prospects for some basic changes, most of which, oddly enough, are not fully dependent on a Democrat becoming president. It helps to read this sort of thing, if for nothing else, in order to get some prospective on the frightening prospect of a third Republican term, and the shadow of a fourth.
The piece downplays the role that Palin– or Palin’s politics, and the right wing of the Republican party, might play in any future McCain administration. The idea is that McCain’s “libertarian” side would resurface soon after the election and that he would have little reason to spend political capital fighting, say, gay rights legislation.
I’m not sure how persuasive I find that idea. McCain could also spend his entire term fighting to keep the margins of his party happy; he could be uninterested in governing, like Bush, and leave the messy policy details to his neo-conservative precursors. I doubt Palin would be as powerful as Cheney.
What’s exciting, of course, is the prospect of a Democratic president enabling the rapid passage of all of these bills, especially the Employee Free Choice Act, pushing the U.S. just a few more steps out of the past. That might mean the birth of a unionized and green economic expansion. That could provide the tools for real change.
Grade Capital
Instructor-review Web sites like RateMyProfessors.com are nothing new for today’s tech-savvy students. But even though online rants and raves can suggest which courses to take and which to avoid, they provide users with only a vague idea of how they would fare in a particular course. Until now.
A new site created and maintained by a Yale undergraduate is about to take online course shopping one step further. The site, Gradifi.com, promises to give students a more statistically sound review by actually predicting the grade an individual student would receive in a course, reports the Yale Daily News.
Wired Campus: Yale Student Creates Grade-Predicting Web Site – Chronicle.com, Caitlin Moran.
In theory, grades are like ‘money in the bank,’ as they say; it’s capital that you can invest after graduation to help ensure that you get a good job, etc. That’s certainly the general feeling students get– at least the competitive ones. The social capital– who you meet– and the institutional capital– the school’s reputation and history– might well be more important, of course.
What are the income differences are between A students and B students at Yale? My guess is that it is pretty minimal. Our current president, by all reports, was a C student there. So I think the reasons for this competition are a little mysterious. It’s less like students trying to get ahead and more like a drinking game.
Competition begets competition; competitive schools also attract and encourage the most competitive students. I think, though, that this might be a kind of ‘investment bubble’ that suggests the profound weakness, even decadence, of the old meritocratic system of assessment. This idea of a ‘grade’ as a measure of success is hopefully going the way of the standardized entrance exam.
The Smoke Faries