So this is a companion to what I wrote yesterday on big-time college athletics, and I have 10 minutes to type this before I start work.  But I was thinking about this some more, and there’s another angle, besides the cartel issue:  it’s a tax issue. When a non-profit engages in activities that are clearly profit-oriented (even if the profits are put to charitable use), then that subsidiary entity is no longer exempted from tax.  A non-profit hospital with a... Read more

So the Old Testament reading at church on Sunday was Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit, paired with the tempatation of Jesus in the desert from the New Testament. So this is my brief observation: Have you ever given any thought to the fact that the story about Adam and Eve is one of sin? We kind of take it as a given, because we’re just used to it. We use it to criticize believers as too focused on... Read more

So I really shouldn’t be talking about this, given my plan to write only what I know, and the fact that this isn’t even timely.  But I already ventured into the subject on Saturday, and that got me thinking about this some more, so I thought I’d ramble about this some more in a thoroughly (or mostly) unresearched way. The NCAA is a cartel.  College football and basketball are very profitable for its member schools, at the top tier, and... Read more

That the administration will extend the open enrollment period that’s set to end on March 31st? This is really just a question at this point:  I’m curious what readers think. Read more

So the football players at Northwestern are trying to get approval of a players’ union, with the testimony from either side wrapping up a couple weeks ago.  I didn’t weigh in on it at the time because I don’t know enough about labor law to know whether they had legitimate grounds or not.  The players say they are basically obliged to “work” (= games plus practices plus conditioning) full time, are at risk of losing their scholarships if they’re injured,... Read more

Things I am not writing about: 1)  The lawsuit in which a girl is demanding parental support even past the age of 18.  (From Inside Higher Ed, linked to by instapundit.com a couple days.)   Some of it is flaky, like demanding they pay her living expenses, but other parts are actually not unreasonable:  mom and dad have stopped paying her high school tuition (which I would expect they’re contractually obliged to pay, unless the high school has a flaky payment... Read more

Whoa. I’ve never been a big fan of the push to bring the Obama library to Chicago.  Obama’s being polarizing doesn’t just mean that the GOP hates him, but also that he’s got a large number of people for whom “adulation” is too mild a word — and I dread the presidential library, the way these things tend to end up, effusive in its praise of his policies and carefully whitewashing anything else. But still — I’d always figured that... Read more

That’s what Zeke Emmanuel says, in an article in The New Republic, which is itself a book excerpt.  In Emmanuel’s world, the ACA is going to transform healthcare delivery and health insurance into a set of vertically-integrated healthcare providers.  I promised my son I’d back crescent rolls with him (yeah, from a crescent roll tube), so I’m not going to go into too many details, but he basically envisions all healthcare providers becoming the equivalent to Kaiser Permanente, that is,... Read more

That’s one of Megan McArdle’s big themes, as she blogs and especially in her new book that I’m partway through (and will blog about when I’m done):  failing, and learning from your failure, enables you to truly succeed, in a way that being insulated from failure doesn’t.  A couple weeks ago, she wrote “Go ahead, let your kids fail.” And I just spent last night, and this morning, making sure my 5th grader did NOT fail — that is, taking... Read more