f/k/a . . .

  John Steele is hyper-steamed about a Washington Post article 

on Starbuck’s coffee and law school debt.  “Javanomics 101: Today’s Coffee is

Tomorrow’s Debt,” June 18, 2005).   A career counselor at Seattle U. Law Schools says

a five-day-a-week $3 latte habit on borrowed money can cost $4,154, when repaid over

10 years.   The “Stop Buying Expensive Coffee and Save Calculator” shows that

making your own coffee rather than buying a $3 latte daily for 30 years, could

save $55,341 (with interest).  John’s right that expensive coffee alone does not

create the massive law-student debt that so limits career choices.  However, it

is a very representative symbol for a generation whose spending habits are so

impractical and uncessarily expensive, that they price themselves out of a lot of

career options – refusing to accept cheaper alternatives for food, entertainment,

transportation, housing,  and more, that would be perfectly acceptable to about

90% of the adults in Western Europe.   Why, when I was a . . . .

 

  Over at his Dude Ranch, Al Nye has taken a transparent approach to the

Blawg Review #11 submission process — revealing secrets along with links to some

good weblawg reading options.

 

  I drove back today from visiting my Dad for Father’s Day.  I learned that a

politics can look very different from the other end of Upstate New York.  For instance,

the lead story today in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle is about the possibility of

local billionaire Tom “PayCheck” Golisano running for governor as a Republican (with

George Pataki choosing not to run), even though Golisano ran in the past 3 gubernatorial

elections at the head of his own Independence Party.  Since Golisano uses his own cash

for his campaigns, some think the NY GOP will swallow hard and accept Golisano, so that

fundraising can be  targetted at defeating Hillary Clinton.   It is expected that Eliot Spitzer

will be the Democratic candidate for NYS governor.

 

  Steve Bainbridge — a/k/a ProfessorBillboard — is suspicious of Marci Hamilton’s

conservative bona fides, because her new book God vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of

Law, has been praised by folks he tars as being not just liberals, but “Worse yet,  . . . the type 

of left-liberal who wants to drive religion out of the public square.”  I think Prof. B continues

to confuse not wanting the symbols of religion (especially any specific religion) “in the public

square,” with wanting to ban religious values and perspectives from politics and government.

Icons are not what is important about religion, and acting as if they are cheapens the meaning

of religion.  Steve’s attitude — along with his smug notion that there can be no meaningful moral

code outside of established religion — suggests that the Religious-Iconophiles want a particular

kind of religion, with a particular restrictive view of morality, “established” in stone within our

political system, and etched in stone in our public square.  Like, Steve, I’m no Religion Clause 

scholar, but I plan to draw my own conclusions about God vs. The Gavel, rather than seeing 

who lines up for and against it.