Share the View: Obama Flunks Community College

Share The View

THE LATEST OPINIONS FROM BLOOMBERG VIEW

JANUARY 13, 2015 bloombergview.com

EDUCATION The Editors: "For too long, America's community colleges have been dropout mills. ... President Barack Obama's new answer -- to provide free tuition to all community college students who maintain a C average -- has an appealing simplicity. But it's probably too simple to do the trick." Read more... Megan McArdle: "I suspect that this plan will mostly help subsidize people who could have afforded tuition on their own, while encouraging marginally attached students to stay enrolled." Read more... PARIS ATTACK Marc Champion: "Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made the trip to join the anti-terrorist march Sunday in Paris, whereas U.S. leaders did not. It was the right call for a man and country that have ambitions in both the Middle East and Europe. Yet the one thing Davutoglu couldn't join the marchers in saying was, 'Je Suis Charlie.'" Read more... DECLASSIFIED Eli Lake and Josh Rogin: "Representative Devin Nunes may not be well known outside of his California congressional district or the Washington beltway, but he is about to become one of the most important figures in the U.S. national security state." Read more... WALL STREET Justin Fox: "It's a fun time to be an activist hedge-fund manager. ... Activist hedge funds have outperformed their peers over just about every recent time frame. ... Is the great activist run about to end?" Read more... POLITICS Ramesh Ponnuru: This is a middle-class country. "Unless blinded by ideology, politicians in both parties usually act on that insight. And right now they're increasingly casting off their blinders." Read more... Jonathan Bernstein: Conservative outlet National Review "ran a story describing how notional presidential candidate Ben Carson has fronted for a medical supplement company with a dubious record, including accusations of false advertising. ... We can read this as, first, a communication among Republican Party actors (hey, we may want to be careful about building up this guy)." Read more... Cass R. Sunstein: "On both Cuba and immigration, Obama isn't taking action out of concern for politics or for his legacy. He's taking action because these are things he actually cares about, and time for action will soon start to become scarce." Read more... ENERGY Leonid Bershidsky: "The financial debacle that has befallen Russia as the price of Brent crude dropped 50 percent in the last four months has overshadowed the one that potentially awaits the U.S. shale industry in 2015." Read more... Mark Gilbert: "Oil trading at less than $50 a barrel should nudge consumer spending higher, provided the savings on fuel and other energy costs are passed along. So politicians have an economic imperative to hound suppliers to share the windfall with customers." Read more... HEALTH-CARE REFORM Peter Orszag: "Steven Brill's new book about the process of passing the Affordable Care Act is so meticulously reported, I found myself surprised by many details of a process I myself was deeply involved in." Yet there is "a significant point that Brill fails to acknowledge -- to the great detriment of his thesis." Read more... SPORTS David Kahn: "The New York Knicks and the Milwaukee Bucks travel to London this week to play a regular-season game, which has led to another round of speculation about the National Basketball Association's plans to one day expand to England and the rest of the continent. It will never happen." Read more...