Tidbits Quotations
To Accompany the May 24, 2012 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2012/tidbits052412.htm
Bob Jensen at Trinity Universit

Normally I would not forward tidbits such as this to the AECM, because even for me this is too far off topic. I did post it to my own blogs.

However, for those of you who do not have easy access to the WSJ mentioned on the AECM by Patricia Walters, here is the editorial on May 8.

"The Academic Mob Rules Instead of encouraging wide discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education fires a blogger," by Naomi Schaefer Riley, The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577391842133259230.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.

In her Monday mea culpa, Ms. McMillen wrote that her previous "editor's note last week inviting [readers] to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not." I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now, having visited dozens of colleges and universities and interviewed hundreds of faculty, students and administrators. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country, most often this one, and I have written two widely reviewed books on higher education as well.

As I wrote in the book I published shortly before the Chronicle hired me, "It is not merely that [many] departments approach African-American studies from a particular perspective—an Africa-centered one in which blacks residing in America today are still deeply hobbled by the legacy of slavery. It's that course and department descriptions often appear to be a series of axes that faculty members would like to grind."

But why take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs."

Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black."

My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard's economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese's work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication.

But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.

 

As Ellen Schrecker, a Yeshiva University historian, writes in her book "The Lost Soul of Higher Education," political ends were the goals of the founders of black studies. Ms. Schrecker—who is, by the way, sympathetic to these political goals—explains that the discipline's proponents "viewed these programs as contributions to the continuing struggle for racial justice, not as conventional academic courses of study."

My longtime familiarity with the absurdities of higher education did not, I confess, prepare me for this most absurd of results. The content of my post, after all, is hardly shocking; the same thing could have been written 30 years ago. And perhaps that's the most depressing part of all this. Despite the real social and economic advancement that has been made by blacks in this country, the American faculty is still stuck in the 1960s.

Ms. Riley, a former Journal editor, is author of "The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For" (Ivan, R. Dee, 2011) and "God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America" (St. Martin's, 2005).

 

Jensen Comment
Note that both Judge Posner and Justin Fox cited below have been featured Plenary Session speakers at recent AAA annual meetings.

"The Liberal Skew in Higher Education," by Richard Posner, The Becker-Posner Blog, December 30, 2007 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

"The Difference Between Political Journalists and B-School Profs," by Justin Fox, Harvard Business Review Blog, March 9, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/03/the-difference-between-politic.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

"New View of Faculty Liberalism:  Why are professors liberal?" by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, January 18, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/18/liberal 

Bob Jensen's threads about the liberal bias of the media and the Academy are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias

"'Taxmaggedon' Is a Real Threat: Next year's scheduled increases on dividends and capital gains will retard investment and derail the recovery," by Former Treasury Secretary John Snow, The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304743704577382371561326132.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Nine years ago this month Congress passed President George W. Bush's Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. That bill's lower rates on capital, as well as the continuity in tax policy it established, have helped make our economy far more resilient.

The legislation's centerpiece was a reduction in the taxation of dividends and capital gains to 15%. Unfortunately, the 2003 tax rates, including those on capital income, are due to expire at the end of the year.

Capital warrants special tax treatment because of the central role it plays in generating economic growth and jobs. Capital is the very lifeblood of the market economy, the mainstay of innovation, and the foundation for future prosperity. As more of it is put to work today, labor output and wages will rise tomorrow. An appreciation of that critical relationship should guide how the tax system treats earnings from capital.

The double taxation of dividends—with corporate earnings first taxed 35% at the corporate level and then, when paid out to shareholders, taxed again—has been a long-standing and well-recognized distortion in the tax code. It favors debt financing over equity capital formation, because interest is deducted as a cost of doing business and lowers taxable income, while dividends are taxed twice.

The preference for debt financing and leverage shortchanges shareholders and is not healthy for corporate decision-making. Double taxation penalizes dividend payments and discourages managements from making them.

Congress did not eliminate the double taxation of dividends in 2003, but it substantially ameliorated the distortion. Dividends are now taxed at 15%, rather than the typically higher income-tax rates paid by shareholders. Importantly, the 15% tax rate was applied to capital gains as well. Capital gains previously had been taxed at 20% with special rates for assets held five years or longer. This symmetry between dividends and capital gains harmonized and simplified the regime for the taxation of capital and still stands today as a key achievement in modern tax policy.

Corporations responded to the lower rates on dividends by paying out more of their profits, which raises the returns to those holding stock and thus increases equity prices. Both trends strengthen Americans' retirement savings. As recent actions by Google, Apple and scores of other companies attest, corporations today find it more difficult to sit on cash instead of rewarding shareholders with dividend payouts.

With the expiration of the 2003 tax law at the end of this year, taxes—not only on capital earnings but also on ordinary incomes—will return to the much higher levels that previously existed.

This would be devastating to the fragile economic recovery, and to every American still looking for work. Combined with the expiration of temporary payroll tax relief, the United States faces what has now been labeled "taxmageddon"—a fiscal headwind so strong that it threatens a swift return to recession.

What seems to be lacking is a clear path to the future. Here are some suggestions for policy makers.

First, remember the principle that you always get less of anything you tax. For this reason, society discourages undesirable activities by imposing so-called "sin" taxes. By the same token, high marginal tax rates discourage work, risk-taking and capital formation.

Second, tax rates should be held as low as possible, consistent with maintaining fiscal balance. Low tax rates are not in conflict with fiscal sanity if the rate of government spending as a fraction of gross domestic product is reduced, or if the tax base is broadened with more fundamental tax reforms. It is encouraging to see so much interest gathering in support of changes to the tax code that would scrap many special tax breaks in favor of deeply lower marginal tax rates.

Third, marginal tax rates should be as neutral as possible across different types of economic activities. Otherwise the tax code distorts behavior in ways that sap economic strength, as market participants rely less on market price signals and more on government commands to decide how economic resources are used. Social engineering through the tax code comes at a very high cost.

Finally, policy makers should remember to "do no harm." A reversion to the kind of drastically higher marginal tax rates that existed in the past would be bad enough. It would only add insult to injury to use the economic crisis as an excuse to raise the tax burden on capital formation and thus reduce the lifeblood of America's job creators.

Continued in article

"Tea Party Terror Flakeout:  House Republicans give political cover to the ACLU left," The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303448404577408181720340876.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t

A week ago the world learned of another foiled airplane bombing attack by the Yemeni offshoot of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's successors are desperate to strike the U.S. again, which isn't news to most Americans but seems to elude some Members of Congress.

As early as Thursday, the House is due to vote on a measure that effectively declares the war on terror over in the U.S. and dismantles the legal architecture that has protected the homeland since 9/11. Any wonder Americans have so little respect for Congress? Or the Constitution has Presidents run the nation's wars?

Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat, and Michigan Republican and tea partier Justin Amash want to bar the U.S. military from capturing, detaining or interrogating any terrorist of any nationality captured on American soil. Their proposed amendment to next year's defense authorization bill more or less revokes the legal authority granted by Congress a week after 9/11 to fight terrorists on every front.

What this means in practice is that if al Qaeda big Ayman al-Zawahiri and his soldiers are captured overseas (say, in Pakistan), they can be detained by the military, interrogated, and dispatched to wherever the Commander in Chief decides. But if they happen to make it to the U.S., they will have to be handled like your neighborhood burglar. That means being read their Miranda rights, handed over to the local police and put before a civilian judge. The military or CIA couldn't question them to learn about future plots.

This is a bizarre distinction, as if America is not somehow part of the global terror battlefield. Try to explain that to the al Qaeda bombmakers in Yemen, or the residents of downtown Manhattan. The amendment would essentially reward al Qaeda operatives with better treatment for having the wit to get out of their caves and sneak into America to blow up civilians in shopping malls.

The tragedy here is that the political battles over terrorist detention were finally calming down. The anti-antiterror left waged war against President George W. Bush for refusing to treat illegal enemy combatants the same as common criminals, but President Obama has adopted much of the same legal framework. Now a misguided wing of the tea party is giving political cover to the left to revive this fight and confuse the American public with overblown fears that the government can arrest anyone for anything and hold him forever.

It would be nice if Mr. Obama or Mitt Romney showed some leadership and spoke up against this amendment, but if they won't then let's hope tea partiers in the House who know better (such as Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Florida's Allen West) talk some sense into their brethren.

"Getting Even on Reliability:  The feds retaliate against an advisory board for doing its job," The Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577406273583732622.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Imagine if some obscure trading desk within J.P. Morgan had tried to warn Jamie Dimon about corporate malfeasance—or perhaps a risky investment—and it turned out he tried to shut up the whistleblower. We'd never hear the end of it. Somehow the same norms don't apply in government, as shown by a federal energy regulator's reprisals against an independent advisory body.

The target is the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, and its crime is scrutinizing the Obama Administration's anticarbon agenda. This highly respected nonprofit has monitored the power system since the 1960s and establishes best practices to keep the lights on. In 2005, Congress gave NERC a formal role as adviser. But now it may be defrocked for questioning the "pace and aggressiveness" of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory wave in a 2010 report.

NERC's position is that the EPA goal of mothballing many or most coal-fired power plants could endanger the security of the electric-power grid, with possible blackouts and much higher energy costs. In a follow-up report last year it found that "Environmental regulations are shown to be the number one risk to reliability over the next one to five years."

Apparently that was too honest for Washington. Earlier this month the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission disclosed that it has spent months conducting a highly unusual audit of NERC. The commission oversees NERC under the 2005 law, so it has every right to check its practices. But this probe exceeded normal auditing standards and was a free-floating investigation into NERC's "economy and efficiency," whatever that means. It didn't find any rule-breaking.

Instead, the auditors question NERC's focus and statutory responsibilities, concluding that it "may have exceeded the functions" Congress intended for a reliability organization. Never mind that NERC has been doing the same job for decades and its integrity hasn't been questioned. The feds also complain about NERC's "periodic reliability assessments," otherwise considered the gold standard. They say this role "should be revisited."

In other words, the energy G-men think NERC should help protect reliability without studying the actual threats to reliability. This may be intimidation to get NERC to tone down its candor, or it could be a prelude to decertifying NERC to silence a troublesome critic. NERC tried to compromise on some of the audit's proposals while protecting its core duties, but the feds are now litigating to impose them.

The back story is that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff is an EPA wingman and President Obama ally. He has told the trade press that he has "some real, real, real serious issues with respect to the functioning of NERC," without details, and he launched the audit on his own personal authority as boss. It's especially notable that Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur—an Obama appointee—attacked the move as "inconsistent with Commission regulations" and said it should have been put to a vote.

Bureaucratic infighting is an eternal reality of government, but Congress should ask Mr. Wellinghoff what he has to fear from honest counsel.

"Jenkins: The IPO From Hell? The Facebook fiasco was a blessing for the mom and pop investors who were shut out of the deal," by Holman W. Jenkins Jr., The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304019404577420383358865326.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Anti-capitalist progressives are dancing in the street
But The Economist Magazine is really, really worried

"The endangered public company:  The rise and fall of a great invention, and why it matters," The Economist, May 19, 2012 ---
http://www.economist.com/node/21555562

AS THIS newspaper went to press, Facebook was about to become a public company. It will be one of the biggest stockmarket flotations ever: the social-networking giant expects investors to value it at $100 billion or so. The news raises several questions, from “Is it worth that much?” to “What will it do next?” But the most intriguing question is what Facebook’s flotation tells us about the state of the public company itself.

At first glance, all is well. The public company was invented in the mid-19th century to provide the giants of the industrial age with capital. That Facebook is joining Microsoft and Google on the stockmarket suggests that public listings are performing the same miracle for the internet age. Not every 19th-century invention has weathered so well.

But look closer and the picture changes (see article). Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s young founder, resisted going public for as long as he could, not least because so many heads of listed companies advised him to. He is taking the plunge only because American law requires any firm with more than a certain number of shareholders to publish quarterly accounts just as if it were listed. Like Google before it, Facebook has structured itself more like a private firm than a public one: Mr Zuckerberg will keep most of the voting rights, for example.

The number of public companies has fallen dramatically over the past decade—by 38% in America since 1997 and 48% in Britain. The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) in America has declined from an average of 311 a year in 1980-2000 to 99 a year in 2001-11. Small companies, those with annual sales of less than $50m before their IPOs—have been hardest hit. In 1980-2000 an average of 165 small companies undertook IPOs in America each year. In 2001-09 that number fell to 30. Facebook will probably give the IPO market a temporary boost—several other companies are queuing up to follow its lead—but they will do little to offset the long-term decline.

Companies are like jets; the elite go private

Mr Zuckerberg will be joining a troubled club. The burden of regulation has grown heavier for public companies since the collapse of Enron in 2001. Corporate chiefs complain that the combination of fussy regulators and demanding money managers makes it impossible to focus on long-term growth. Shareholders are also angry. Their interests seldom seem to be properly aligned at public companies with those of the managers, who often waste squillions on empire-building and sumptuous perks. Shareholders are typically too dispersed to monitor the men on the spot. Attempts to solve the problem by giving managers shares have largely failed.

At the same time, alternative corporate forms are flourishing. Once “going public” was every CEO’s dream; now it is perfectly respectable to “go private”, like Burger King, Boots and countless other famous names. State-run enterprises have recovered from the wreck of communism and now include the world’s biggest mobile-phone company (China Mobile), its most successful port operator (Dubai World), its fastest-growing big airline (Emirates) and its 13 biggest oil companies.

No doubt the sluggish public equity markets have played a role in this. But these alternative corporate forms have addressed some of the structural weaknesses that once held them back. Access to capital? Private-equity firms, helped by tax breaks, and venture capitalists both have cash to spare, and there are private markets such as SecondMarket (where $1 billion-worth of shares has changed hands since 2008). Limited liability? Partners need no longer be fully liable, and firms can have as many partners as they want. Professional managers? Family firms employ them by the HBS-load and state-owned ones are no longer just sinecures for the well-connected.

Make capitalism popular again

Does all this matter? The increase in the number of corporate forms is a good thing: a varied ecosystem is more robust. But there are reasons to worry about the decline of an organisation that has spread prosperity for 150 years.

First, public companies have been central to innovation and job creation. One reason why entrepreneurs work so hard, and why venture capitalists place so many risky bets, is because they hope to make a fortune by going public. IPOs provide young firms with cash to hire new hands and disrupt established markets. The alternative is to sell themselves to established firms—hardly a recipe for creative destruction. Imagine if the fledgling Apple and Google had been bought by IBM.

Second, public companies let in daylight. They have to publish quarterly reports, hold shareholder meetings (which have grown acrimonious of late), deal with analysts and generally conduct themselves in an open manner. By contrast, private companies and family firms operate in a fog of secrecy.

Third, public companies give ordinary people a chance to invest directly in capitalism’s most important wealth-creating machines. The 20th century saw shareholding broadened, as state firms were privatised and mutual funds proliferated. But today popular capitalism is in retreat. Fewer IPOs mean fewer chances for ordinary people to put their money into a future Google. The rise of private equity and the spread of private markets are returning power to a club of privileged investors.

All this argues for a change in thinking—especially among the politicians who have heaped regulations onto Western public companies, blithely assuming that businessfolk have no choice but to go public in the long run. Many firms now go (or stay) private to avoid red tape. The result is that ever more business is conducted in the dark, with rich insiders playing a more powerful role.

Public companies built the railroads of the 19th century. They filled the world with cars and televisions and computers. They brought transparency to business life and opportunities to small investors. Because public companies sell shares to the unsophisticated, policymakers are right to regulate them more tightly than other forms of corporate organisation. But not so tightly that entrepreneurs start to dread the prospect of a public listing. The public company has long been the locomotive of capitalism. Governments should not derail it.

 

"Crony Capitalism for Intellectuals," by Luigi Zingales, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Crony-Capitalism-for/131894/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
If economists were truly better forecasters they would all be at the top of the 1%. They would have invested in billions in short sales contracts and naked put options in 2007, because even the poor can leverage themselves into the 1% with short sales and naked put options if they know "when" the economy will melt down.

Forecasting has twin brothers named If and When. The guy named If is a pretty uncomplicated scholar who builds models on assumptions. But the secret of success is not If but When, and When is a very mysterious guy who resorts to to a crystal ball. What we know is that If just can't cut it no matter how hard he wants to be in the 1%, and When's crystal ball turns out to be no better than chance itself.

The End of Capitalism, Economics, and Investment Banking as We Know It ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#InvestmentBanking

Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Bob Jensen's Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm 

Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Summary of Major Accounting Scandals --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals

Bob Jensen's threads on such scandals:

Bob Jensen's threads on audit firm litigation and negligence ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm

Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Enron --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

Rotten to the Core --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

American History of Fraud --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudAmericanHistory.htm

Bob Jensen's fraud conclusions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on auditor professionalism and independence are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on corporate governance are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance 

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

·     With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier

·     With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams

·     With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR

·     With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Bob Jensen's threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/