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Link Biscuits: 2.20.2010

Submitted by Matt Lewis on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 17:51
  • NY Times, A Diploma in 10th Grade?: "The Times reported this week that under a program starting next year, some high school sophomores in eight states will have a chance to earn a diploma and head straight to community college. To do so, however, they will have to pass academic tests known as board exams. If they don’t pass the tests in the 10th grade, they can take them again in their junior and senior years. The National Center on Education and the Economy, the nonprofit group that is organizing the program, says that students will have to meet basic requirements before they go to college and that it hopes this will reduce the need for remedial classes in college."
  • Matt Yglesias, The Spending Tug: "I’ve previously mentioned Kinder & Kam’s US Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion but it helps shed some light on this issue. They use National Election Survey data and show that if you restrict your attention to white Americans then ethnocentric views (both in terms of positive views of whites and negative views of non-whites) is correlated with hostility to means-tested welfare programs. The relationship remains statistically significant even when you control for partisanship and for self-described political beliefs regarding egalitarianism and limited government. But if you look at views on social insurance programs—Social Security and Medicare—you get the reverse result. Ethnocentrism is associated with support for increases in Social Security and Medicare spending, again even when you control for partisanship and self-described political beliefs regarding egalitarianism and limited government. And what seems to matter here isn’t dislike for non-whites, but positive solidaristic feelings about other white people."
  • Wall Street Journal, SBA-Backed Loans are Bright Spot in Gloomy Climate: "SBA-backed loans in the past have made up only a small portion of overall small-business loans—around 7% to 8% according to the SBA's estimations, and as little as 1% by other counts. But thanks to stimulus-related measures, SBA loans this year could be "pushing 10% to 15%," according to industry expert Bob Coleman, who keeps a pulse on SBA lending through his independent publication, the Coleman Report. Business owners who have been turned down for conventional loans say they're having better luck applying for SBA loans. Dale McCoy, who owns Lite Metals Company Inc., a foundry in Ravenna, Ohio, says he approached several banks between June and October but was unable to get approval for a $735,000 loan to cover debt on the company's purchase of a small, captive foundry specializing in airplane wheels that is currently profitable."