Action Update - Issue 95 : : April 4, 2007
Serving the Customer in
Texas’ Elite Universities
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Many of our nation's elite research universities focus more on research than on teaching undergraduate students. These universities reward research productivity over teaching-- shortchanging students--the customers they are there to serve.
For example, there were 28 sections
of Composition and Rhetoric (English 104)
at Texas A&M University in Spring 2006.
Twenty-five of them were taught by graduate
students in the English department, while
the remaining three were taught by assistant
lecturers, the latter who are almost certainly
not tenure-track professors. Another example
is Public Speaking communication
203), where across the 29 sections, graduate
students taught at least 23 of them.
Although research generates knowledge that
is often shared across the university community,
the dispersion of knowledge may not be
sufficiently broad.
<entire report>
Let Us Keep All the Tools 
By MARY HORN Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Texas Legislature is moving in a direction that should make all local taxpayers and motorists nervous. There's a growing chorus of voices to slow or eliminate major pots of transportation money, threatening most new road and highway construction in our fast-growing region.
For many years, state and local leaders deliberated on how to ease traffic congestion in the Metroplex without busting state, county and local budgets. This deliberation always focused on how to get more roads built more quickly.
The solutions are pretty simple: Do nothing and let safety and congestion problems get worse; substantially raise the gas tax in hopes of alleviating the problem sometime in the future; or find new non-tax revenue streams to jump-start much-needed transportation projects.
<continued>
 Insider Trading for Political Junkies
by Royal Masset
If you like to follow all the ups and downs of politics as I do, you need to keep one of your eyes focused the Irish bookies. Go to www.intrade.com for the best political intelligence in our universe. In truth this is no longer run by the Irish bookies. In keeping with the times this site is now a “prediction future’s market” where the price of bets “investments” is determined by a market in which billions of dollars is “invested”.
The big news of today, April 3, is that Fred Thompson is surging. On March the 10 Thompson was given a 2% chance of becoming the Republican Presidential nominee for 2008. Right now, at 4 p.m., Thompson is given a 20.1% chance of becoming the nominee. Giuliani still is the frontrunner with a 30.1% probability of becoming the nominee. But three weeks ago he was almost at 45% in a surge that took him well over McCain who was the front-runner during all of 2006. McCain now is in a dead tie with Thompson with a 20.1% chance of becoming the Republican nominee. But if the Thompson trend continues he will move into the second spot this week and will challenge Rudy. Romney is given a very respectable 16.1%. Thompson’s surge has come at the expense of Newt Ginrich. A month ago Newt reached an 8% chance of becoming the nominee, which is good for an undeclared candidate. But right now Newt is at 3.4%.
Because these probabilities are set by people who put their money where their mouths are, they are incredibly accurate. In the 2004 and 2006 elections they were right for every state in the Presidential race and every Senatorial race. I have founds most ballot test polls to be worthless. Pundits mostly spout garbage to help favored candidates. When on election night the entire news media was saying the Mexican presidential race was too close to call, the market for Calderon gave him a 97% chance of winning. Clearly a lot of people connected with the Mexican Election Commission, who understood what the real vote counts were, did business with the Irish bookies that night!
One night I saw the odds of Karl Rove being indicted by Fitzgerald go from 25% to 55% in a matter of hours. This was exactly when a story in the New York Times about Rove being called in for questioning appeared online. Ah ha, I thought! Watch when the New York Times does that again and then buy up the discounted probability before other “investors” do. It did happen again few weeks later. Much to my amazement the Intrade probability numbers moved within seconds. Thousands of people were doing what I tried to do.
These probabilities are cold blooded. I expect Alberto Gonzales to survive as AG. The Intrade investors do not. They give him better than a 70% chance of resigning by the end of September. Chaney is given a 24.4% chance of resigning by the end of 2007. The impeachment of George Bush during his term stands at a 10.2% probability
In the race for Democrat presidential nominee Hilary has a 50,1% chance of winning, Obama is at 29.0% and Gore is at 9.1%. Edwards is at 6.8%, unchanged since his wife announced she had cancer.
The odds of electing a Democrat President in 2008 are 56%. Republicans are given a 43% chance of winning.
The odds of the British hostages being released by the end of April are 59%. This goes to 76.8% by the end of May and 85% by the end of June. The odds of a USA/Israeli overt air strike against Iran in 2007 are 27.2%. On a more positive note, the odds of Salzburg being named the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics are 55%.
RECOMMENDED READING:
- Local leaders rip into toll road bill
More than a dozen regional leaders traveled to Austin last week to speak out against the bill at a Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee hearing.
-
The Senate Budget: A $2,641 Per Household Tax Increase and No Entitlement Reforms
Raises taxes by $900 billion over five years and a projected $3.3 trillion over ten years; Translates into a tax increase of $2,641 per household annually over the next decade; Includes 22 reserve funds that could be used to raise taxes by hundreds of billions more; Increases discretionary spending by nearly 9 percent in FY 2008 and does not terminate a single program; Completely ignores the impending tsunami of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs; Creates rules that bias the budget toward tax increases; and Employs the same gimmicks that Congress criticized the President for using in his budget proposal.
INFORMATION:
Janelle Shepard, Executive Director
Texans for Texas, Inc., 815-A Brazos St #384, Austin, TX 78701-9996.
© 2004 Texans For Texas, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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