Nine years ago, way back in 2016, my husband and I started renting out the basement apartment of our house as a short-term rental on Airbnb. We live in a college town and figured we'd get some guests during football game weekends and graduations. We didn't realize at the time how many people come to our town to visit their college kids or check out the school, so we were pleasantly surprised by how regularly we were booked.In 2019, we moved into the house next door and now rent out both floors of the old house as separate units. We love being Airbnb hosts and have had a very successful run of it, with almost 1,000 5-star reviews, Superhost status, and lots of repeat guests. Being regular guests haas helped make us good Airbnb hosts.Photo credit: CanvaPart of the secret of our success? We don't charge a cleaning fee or make guests do check-out chores. In fact, we find both things rather loathsome. What makes us good hosts is that we've been Airbnb guests for years. As a family of five that travels a lot, we've found far more value in short-term rentals than in hotels over the years. We love having a kitchen, living room, and bedrooms and feeling like we have a "home" while traveling. We even spent a nomadic year staying at short-term rentals for a month at a time.When you've experienced dozens of Airbnbs as a guest, you learn what guests appreciate and what they don't. You see what's annoying and unnecessary and what's to be expected in comparison to a hotel. We started taking mental notes long before we started our own rental about what we would want to do and not do if we ever had one and have implemented those things now that we do. Chasing Tom And Jerry GIF by MaxGiphyAs guests, we know the pain of the cleaning fee, so we don't charge one.It helps that my husband has a flexible schedule and grew up helping with his parents' janitorial service, so most of the time he cleans the apartments himself. We could charge a cleaning fee for his time and labor, but even if we were paying for outside cleaners, we still wouldn't put a separate fee onto guest bookings. It makes far more sense to us to just wrap the cleaning fee into the price.From a host's perspective, the one-night stay is where the cleaning fee question hits the hardest. Whether someone stays one night or 10 nights, the cleaning cost is the same. But spreading the cost over 10 nights is a very different beast than adding it to one night, especially from a guest's perspective. On the host side, if we had to pay cleaners without passing that fee onto guests, we've barely make anything on one-night stays. But on the guest side, a $100 a night stay suddenly jumping to $150 or more because a cleaning fee was added is painful, and often a dealbreaker. You can see the conundrum. — (@) The way we see it, and as other Airbnb hosts have found, wrapping cleaning costs into the base price comes out in the wash over time, as long as you have some longer-term stays mixed in with the one-nighters. And it's a much better experience for the guest not to get hit with sticker shock on the "final cost" screen, which is already eye-popping when the platform's service fees and local taxes are added on.(I will say, this may only ring true for smaller units. If you're renting a huge home, cleaning costs are going to be higher just because it takes longer to clean. But I still don't think the full cost should be passed onto guests as a separate fee.) Asking guests to stip the sheets saves almost no time and costs a lot in goodwill.Photo credit: CanvaThere's no reason at all to ask guests to do check-out choresAs for check-out chores—asking guests to do things like start laundry, sweep the floor, take out the trash, etc.—those have never made sense to us. Hosts should have enough switch-out linens that laundry doesn't have to be started prior to checking out, and none of those chores save enough time for the cleaning people to make it worth asking guests to do it. I can see taking out trash if there wasn't going to be another guest for a while, but usually you'd want to clean right away after a stay anyway just in case it does get booked last minute.The only thing we ask guests to do is to start the dishwasher if they have dirty dishes (as a guest, that seems like a logical and reasonable request), lock the door, and have a safe trip home. Don't need to pull the sheets. Don't need to take out any garbage or recycling. Those things don't take that long, but that's just as much a reason not to ask guests to do it. Annoying your guests by asking them to do something extra—especially if they're already paying a cleaning fee—isn't worth the tiny bit of time it might save the cleaning people. Most guests are try to leave the place as they found it, standard cleaning routine aside. Photo credit: CanvaThis approach works very well, because 95% of guests leave the space neat and tidy anyway.In almost 10 years, I can count on one hand how many problems we've had with guests leaving a significant mess. That's been a pleasant surprise, but I think part of the reason is that guests are simply reciprocating the respect and consideration we show them by not making them pay extra fees or do chores on their way out. We're going to have to clean it anyway, so putting work on them is unnecessarily burdensome, even if it's something that doesn't take long. People recognize that. To be fair, it probably helps that we aren't some big real estate tycoon buying up a bunch of apartments and turning them into short-term rentals run by impersonal management companies. People's complaints about how short-term rentals impact local housing economies are legitimate. Our situation is more aligned with the original "sharing economy" model, renting out our home to guests who come through town. And in a small college town with a large university, there often aren't enough hotel rooms during busy weekends anyway, so it's been a bit of a win-win all around.I think us being in close proximity, having personal communication with our guests (but also leaving them their privacy), and not charging or asking anything extra of them makes them want to be respectful guests. From our perspective, both as guests and hosts, cleaning fees and check-out chores simply aren't worth their cost.This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

Both former Vice President Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro launched invectives at one another this week, adding to the squabbling that is consuming the Democratic Party in the aftermath of their electoral defeat. Reviews of Kamala Harris’s new book set to be released next week, 107 Days, have reported that she uses the book to paint Shapiro as a power-hungry egomaniac who had the gall to muse on the art he might display at the vice president’s residence when he was in D.C. to be interviewed for the role. (RELATED: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 160: Kamala Harris Promotes How She Failed in 107 Days) In the book, Harris writes that Shapiro was more interested in how the vice presidency would help him than in how he could help her win. Moreover, she writes that she believed Shapiro could not handle occupying the second-tier spot underneath her. Shapiro, she said, “would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.” Harris even writes that she had to call Shapiro out when he was acting during his vice presidential interview as if they would be equal partners if he were chosen. She proudly writes that she told him: “A vice president is not a co-president.” Harris even said the “vibes” in the interview were not good. Kamala’s confession that she didn’t think Shapiro could handle being No. 2 vindicates the sources who came out last year to say Shapiro had been passed over because Harris feared he would steal the “spotlight.” Shapiro fired back in no less aggressive form. In a podcast appearance, he said Harris would “have to answer” for her failure to speak to the American people about former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. “[S]he’s going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly,” Shapiro told sports commentator Stephen A. Smith. Shapiro stated that he, in contrast to Harris, hadn’t been “in the room” but that he had still been “very vocal” with Biden and “extremely vocal” with Biden’s staff with “concerns about his fitness to be able to run for another term.” Shapiro said, “I was direct with them. I told them my concerns.” And now, a key member of the Democratic Party, one fated to face her in the 2028 Democratic primary, is calling her out on it, in no uncertain terms, and demanding answers. The bigger deal here is Shapiro’s decision to drop the bomb that Kamala can’t defuse. Harris knew precisely how cognitively incapacitated the president was, and yet she kept silent for the sake of her own ambition, without regard for the fact that her silence endangered the country, if not Western civilization. And now, a key member of the Democratic Party, one fated to face her in the 2028 Democratic primary, is calling her out on it, in no uncertain terms, and demanding answers. (RELATED: The Cancerous Lies of the Corporate Joe Biden) The strange thing about this feud is that it should never have been this way. Harris should obviously have picked Shapiro to be her running mate over the doddering Tim Walz. Shapiro would have guaranteed victory in the most important state and had the seemingly perfect profile, as a charismatic and popular governor who fared electorally well in more conservative areas. Yet Harris evidently felt threatened by Shapiro’s confidence and was afraid he would show her up. Ironically, this is exactly what she condemns Joe Biden for. In 107 Days, she faults Biden and his staff for fearing that her success as vice president would make the president look weak. “Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed,” she writes. “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well…. My success was important for him. His team didn’t get it.” (RELATED: Kamala and Joe’s Longstanding Feud Reaches Breaking Point) In 107 Days, Harris begins to make signs of half-hearted regret over what happened with Biden. But she does nothing to really answer the question Shapiro is asking. “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris writes in her book. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.” She went on to say that Biden’s decision to run for reelection “should have been more than a personal decision.” She continued: “The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition.” One of her excuses for why she didn’t tell Biden to drop out is that Biden wouldn’t have listened to her because it would sound “self-serving” coming from her. She writes, “And of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out,” she writes. Of course, Harris is playing a game here. She’s pretending the question is whether she should have, either privately or publicly, called on Biden not to run or told him to drop out. But the sin is not Democrats’ failure to permanently occupy the White House. The sin is them covering up the fact that the president had totally lost it by nearly every cognitive measure. The sin is the fact that they coached him through every word he said from his Botox-altered mouth and every step he made with his shuffling gait — and all pretended together like he was a safe person to have in charge in the event of war with China. Democrats now acknowledge Biden shouldn’t have run for a second term, but the difference between a first term and a second term is a moment. If Biden could be president the morning of January 20, why couldn’t he be president the afternoon of January 20? Notably, when Shapiro said Harris was going to “have to answer” for her failure to speak up, he wasn’t talking about Democrats’ decision to get behind Biden’s reelection bid. He was talking about the coverup of Biden’s cognitive decline, as he made his answer in response to Smith’s question of how Americans should feel “when we hear something that we suspected but wasn’t acknowledged by politicians who were looking for our support, and then we find out later we were right, and they should have spoken up, and they should have shown more courage.” Of course, underneath all of this is the question of whether Harris snubbed Shapiro because he is Jewish and has a record of support for Israel. Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the New York Post last year that, had Shapiro been picked, “The ticket would have been too pro-Israel. Harris doesn’t need a battle over Israel-Gaza.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson similarly concluded, “[S]he was reluctant to put a vice presidential nominee on the ticket with Jewish heritage because they’re having a split in the Democratic Party. They have a pro-Palestinian, in some cases pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party…. Sadly for Josh Shapiro, because of his heritage, I think that is the reason he was overlooked.” Kamala Harris has answered why she was too scared to tell Biden not to run. But she hasn’t given an answer for why she hid Biden’s cognitive decline. Unfortunately for her, her claims that Biden hadn’t lost it aren’t exactly believable. Maybe Josh Shapiro will hold her feet to the fire during the primary. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: The Unspeakable Evil of Christopher Cooprider What on Earth Is Going on at the University of Wisconsin’s Medical School?

Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from ABC feels less like censorship than comeuppance. The comedian who once built his reputation on gleeful political incorrectness now finds himself hoisted by his own progressive petard, pulled off air after suggesting Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer was a Trump supporter rather than what he actually appears to be — a far-left fanatic with a taste for blood. Don’t confuse this for another cancel culture moment. It’s the predictable end of a peculiar American transformation. (RELATED: Pull ABC’s Broadcast License? After the Last Few Days? Hell, Yes!) Kimmel began as comedy’s carnival barker, hosting The Man Show with a beer-guzzling, breast-ogling sensibility that would make a frat house wince. Back then, he was authentically awful. A puerile provocateur who never pretended to possess deeper wisdom. His comedy was crude but consistent, offensive but honest about its own emptiness. Then something shifted. Maybe it was Hollywood’s gravitational pull, or maybe Kimmel simply spotted his opportunity at the peak of cancel culture. He needed an off-ramp from his frat-boy past, and he took it. The transformation was jarring. It was like watching the class clown demand to be valedictorian. One day he was celebrating “Juggies,” the next, he was lecturing America about healthcare while choking up over his son’s surgery. The contrast with his former co-host, Adam Carolla, couldn’t be clearer. Carolla stayed what he always was: a blue-collar contrarian with steady convictions and no taste for respectability politics. Love or hate his rants, he never betrayed himself. He is still the guy fixing cars and griping about traffic, just with a louder microphone. He built a podcast empire on the very authenticity Kimmel abandoned. Carolla may be cranky, repetitive, even reactionary. But he has remained recognizable. The same man, only amplified. Kimmel, by contrast, became something worse. A reformed sinner desperate to flaunt his salvation. Critics often compare Kimmel’s trajectory to Howard Stern’s evolution from shock jock to celebrity interviewer. But this lazy parallel misses crucial differences. Stern may be insufferable in his current incarnation — a disheveled, wild-haired loudmouth turned pampered recluse holding therapy sessions with A-listers. But his slide never felt quite so scripted. The angry young man simply aged into an anxious middle-aged one. His obsessions remained intact even as the scenery changed. Where Stern is trapped in his own head, Kimmel is trapped by his own hypocrisy. Stern’s insufferability comes from self-absorption, not self-righteousness. He is addicted to dissecting his own psyche and, by extension, everyone else’s. He is pathologically narcissistic and neurotically needy. His interviews, however long-winded and soul-destroying, spring from a grating but genuine curiosity about human behavior. That makes him more of a bore than a preacher. Kimmel offers no such consistency. His sanctimony is selective, his sermons opportunistic. Where Stern is trapped in his own head, Kimmel is trapped by his own hypocrisy. When he cries about gun violence or healthcare, audiences can’t tell if it’s raw emotion or a rehearsed performance. Call me cynical, but I’d bet on the latter. The uncertainty is poisonous to comedy, which requires either complete honesty or acknowledged artifice. This fakery is why Kimmel’s political moments land so awkwardly. He wants applause for moral courage while hiding behind the excuse of “I’m just a comedian.” He longs for the freedom to offend and the authority to preach, but in reaching for both, he achieves neither. Medieval court jesters survived by speaking truth to power while hiding behind humor. Modern late-night hosts do the opposite: they speak power to truth while pretending to be outsiders. Kimmel’s suspension shows just how flimsy that pose really is. His remarks about Kirk’s alleged killer captured everything wrong with his act. They were political guesses dressed up as moral clarity, delivered with the smug confidence of a man who mistakes a TV platform for actual wisdom. The tragedy is not that Kimmel was suspended. The tragedy is that he turned into the kind of figure who deserved suspension. The boisterous beer bro at least knew his limitations. The virtue-signaling host apparently doesn’t. And what comes next? In truth, there is no triumphant TV return waiting for him. This is not the age of Johnny Carson or Jay Leno. It is the age of TikTok, livestreams, and podcasts. The networks no longer command the culture. Kimmel might try to claw back relevance by launching his own show on YouTube or a podcast like Carolla’s. But who, I ask, would tune in? Carolla’s listeners show up because he’s still Carolla. Stern’s devotees stay because he’s still, in some fashion, Stern. Kimmel is no longer Kimmel. He is a hack hybrid — half-activist, half-entertainer, full fraud. Only the most deluded could mistake that for a draw. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: The Age of Spiritual Warfare Is Here. Will You Rise or Fall? The Shameless Exploitation of Charlie Kirk’s Murder The Godfather of Global Disorder

Trading Mr. Rogers’ cardigan for Hamas controversy, Ms. Rachel — the YouTube darling of preschoolers whose “Songs for Littles” has garnered more than 14.7 million subscribers — has sparked backlash over what some have claimed to be her promotion of propaganda supportive of Hamas. Platforming Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian journalist who has been considered by Israeli media as “one of the most identifiable voices with Hamas in the digital arena,” Ms. Rachel posted a short video of herself singing about the “letter M” with “my friend Motaz.” Describing himself as a “genocide survivor,” Azaiza has called for “Palestinian resistance” after the October 7 vicious attack on Jews in Southern Israel. Last spring, Ms. Rachel shared content that suggested that Israel was the aggressor in the War, showing photos of emaciated children without noting that, in some cases, these children were suffering from genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis. Last Spring, the StopAntisemitism organization appealed to the American Justice Department to ask U. S. officials to open an investigation into whether Ms. Rachel is serving as a paid propaganda agent. The StopAntisemitism website declares that “Accurso spreads evil propaganda against the State of Israel to more than 20 million followers through multiple accounts, more than the entire population of Jews and Israelis in the world.” Earlier this year, Ms. Rachel ignored the Israeli hostages and Jewish children impacted by the October 7 attack and raised $50,000 through Cameo for Gaza’s children, along with the children of Sudan and Ukraine. Later, she posted on Instagram that Israel had violated the Geneva Convention by halting aid when Hamas broke the ceasefire. The truth is that Israel has overseen the transfer of more than 2 million tons of aid into Gaza on more than 107,000 trucks since the War began after October 7. Ms. Rachel has also used her “Songs for Littles” YouTube channel to convince children and their parents of Israel’s malign complicity in hurting children. While much of her pro-Palestinian rhetoric has been posted on Instagram, Ms. Rachel has also used her “Songs for Littles” YouTube channel to convince children and their parents of Israel’s malign complicity in hurting children. In this heartbreaking video, Ms. Rachel sings one of her viewers’ favorite “songs for littles” with Rahaf, a 3-year-old double amputee from Gaza who had been evacuated for medical treatment by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. In an interview with PBS, Ms. Rachel said that the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund reached out to her when they first saw her advocacy for Gaza and asked her to help. “They told me Rahaf loved the show, and then they said, Would you want to meet her and have her on the show? And I said I’d love to … I’m so honored that I could be helpful or I could provide a moment of relief or joy in the midst of genocide.” Ms. Rachel shared that Rahaf’s father and two baby brothers are still in Gaza, but they have family FaceTime calls with them. But according to BuzzFeed, the family avoids eating during the FaceTime calls because “the family has so little food” in Gaza. Echoing Hamas’s talking points and relying on data from Hamas’s health ministry, Ms. Rachel has shared that 14,000-15,000 children had been murdered by Israel in Gaza since October 7. These figures have been debunked by Hamas itself, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, which claimed that 70 percent of all of those killed were combat-aged men, not women or children. All of this is far from the kind and gentle — and apolitical — Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Refusing to use his platform to promote his politics, Mr. Rogers preached love and acceptance in a period of history marked by turbulent politics, racial tension, and the Vietnam War. Mr. Rogers never tried to tell children that the United States was the aggressor in the War in Vietnam — he simply never spoke of it. Everyone was welcome in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood — including Black children and adults, as well as children with handicaps. As one writer recently observed: “His show tackled grief, divorce, race issues and disability by asking kids what they thought instead of speaking for them.” Mr. Rogers taught kindness — not ideology.  Ms. Rachel’s platforming Hamas sympathizers breaks that trust. Ms. Rachel’s support for Gaza — at the expense of Israel — is just the latest political entanglement to draw backlash to her YouTube channel. In June 2024, Ms. Rachel celebrated Pride Month on her “Songs for Littles” show, posting a video on the first day of Pride Month. “Happy Pride to all of our wonderful families and friends.” And the year before, some parents expressed anger and frustration around her featuring Jules Hoffman, a nonbinary co-star with a nose ring and an ambiguous gender presentation. It is doubtful that Fred Rogers would ever feature a nonbinary co-star like Jules Hoffman or celebrate Pride Month on his Neighborhood of Make-Believe. He knew it would be confusing for toddlers — just as he would have rejected Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library. Mr. Rogers invited children to embrace their God-given identity and to always remember that they were loved “just the way they are.” He even had a song celebrating that called: “I Like You As You Are.” Ms. Rachel’s platform reflects a dramatic departure from the message of love, kindness, and self-acceptance that Mr. Rogers promoted — it is one that calls into question Ms. Rachel’s fitness as a shaper of young minds. READ MORE from Anne Hendershott: Furries Are Having a Dangerous Cultural Moment Speech, Spite, and the Oxford Union’s Shame Illinois Law Mandates On-Campus Abortion Services

It is universally acknowledged that American higher education is in trouble. Enrollment is lower than 15 years ago, college campuses are often in turmoil, and more schools are closing or merging with competitors. I would submit that there is a financial crisis, an integrity crisis, and a leadership crisis. Until major problems in all three dimensions are addressed, America’s universities are likely to remain in trouble. The Financial Crisis After 2010, college enrollments started to decline rather steadily until very recently. Falling demand forced colleges to reduce their tuition fees in a disguised way, leaving sticker prices high but dramatically increasing the discounting of those fees. Simultaneously, the robust historical growth in federal research funds abated considerably. Yet college spending on fashionably woke causes grew robustly, reflected in growing administrative bloat, most notably in the exploding area of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives. (RELATED: College Is Too Expensive These Days to Allow Students to Fail) Trump administration initiatives in recent months demonstrate how vulnerable universities, including highly endowed so-called “private” institutions, are to changing federal policies… Trump administration initiatives in recent months demonstrate how vulnerable universities, including highly endowed so-called “private” institutions, are to changing federal policies — reducing administrative overhead allowances on research grants, more restrictive rules on issuing foreign student visas, expanded taxes on large endowments, and even talk about changing accreditation standards. As polling data show plummeting public support for universities, the political calculus of funding universities changes at both the state and federal levels. Giving more public dollars to universities is moving increasingly from being politically smart to being costly, threatening legislative job security. A likely near-term decline in the rate of economic growth likewise makes maintaining public university funding more problematic. The decline in college interest has been particularly acute among males. In 2022, near the peak of the modern Collegiate Woke Ascendency, 57.2 percent of new male high school completers entered college, dramatically down 10.3 percentage points from the 67.5 percent just six years earlier. For women, the decline was from 71.9 to 66.0 percent, a much smaller 5.9 percentage point decline. The stories of brutish white male aggression accompanying some woke narratives seemed to especially turn off men weary of a new Collegiate War Against Men. (RELATED: Higher Education’s 7 Deadly Sins) To date, the annual college closure list has been measured in the low two digits-maybe 20 schools, but some of those schools are fairly substantial. For example, in 2022, three Pennsylvania state schools, California University, Clarion University, and Edinboro University, with combined enrollment well over 10,000 students, merged to form a new “Pennsylvania Western University.” If the recent Trump administration moves are combined with a recession-induced decline in government revenues and student college interest, the potential for greater college closures is substantial. Short of closure, many institutions, including some prominent ones like the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, have announced significant cuts in programs as the aspirations and expectations of earlier times collide with the reality of today. To cite one example, Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, had 16,393 students 35 years ago (the fall of 1990). This fall, it probably has about 10,000, with some of those being high school students doing a very limited amount of college work. In 1990, it had a history department; today, it has one individual teaching American history — the school has not died, but it seems like it has a cancer that may be terminal. One professor friend of mine there, Jonathan Winkler, likens it to the decline of Sears. Higher endowment taxes, declining public support, falling fertility rates, and a slowing in economic growth all suggest that near-term aspirations of academic expansion or enhanced programmatic excellence are not likely to be realized. Declining Academic Integrity The saddest contemporary trend in higher education, to me, is what I see as a decline in academic integrity and honesty. I have said, only somewhat jokingly, that I would trust buying a used car from a randomly selected name on some big city’s voter registration list than from the typical university president. There are too many lying and misleading narratives happening on campus. Nowhere has academic dishonesty probably been more shocking than regarding funded research. To win grants, achieve tenure, and get national acclaim, you usually not only have to publish in academic journals, but also say something that represents a real advance in knowledge. There has been an explosion in claims of fraudulent research results as well as academic plagiarism. Some journals have been so filled with fictitious results that they have been discontinued. (RELATED: Francesca Gino and the Rot at the Heart of Elite Academia) The long-term problem has arisen largely because, in the late 20th century, wannabe graduate research powerhouse universities turned out large numbers of PhDs, more than was sustainable. This exacerbated the perceived need to “publish or perish,” which led to the creation of an extraordinary number of new journals, etc. Increasingly desperate young researchers started to cheat more, burying uninteresting research results and hyping increasingly false narratives. (RELATED: Let Colleges Fail: Use Creative Destruction) The integrity problem has been building for years, reaching a scandalous level at the undergraduate instructional level with rampant grade inflation, where prestigious elite colleges claim that nearly all their students do superb top-flight work deserving of “A” or, at worst, “A-” grades. This, despite reliable workload data indicating that students on average spend less than 30 hours weekly on classwork. Doing less for more, in the process, lessening the reputation and integrity of the academic community, and the learning of students. (RELATED: The Outrageous Scandal That Should Be Rocking Higher Education) A Leadership Crisis As American universities falter, who is minding the store? Who runs, owns, controls, or dominates universities? That indeed arguably is the root of the problem: there is no clearly defined leader at most universities. The president? The governing board? Prominent donors and alumni? For public universities, the state government and its leaders (governor, legislators, state higher education department or coordinating board, etc.)? (RELATED: Another Ivy League University Living in Woke Fairyland) The murkiness and uncertainty surrounding control of governance often lead to unproductive turf wars, clashes of priorities, etc. There are many different leadership models. There is the Articles of Confederation model: a few universities are like federations of semi-independent academic villages with relatively weak overall leadership. There is the King Louis XIV model: “L’ecole est moi!”, mostly smaller schools led and effectively controlled by a strong-willed president. The governing board at many, probably most, schools is viewed as an honorific group, much like the British monarchy or House of Lords, with lofty theoretical powers but largely meaningless appendages to school administration except when selecting a new president. (RELATED: Remember the College Treachery) Unlike private for-profit businesses, there is no clear bottom line, no universally accepted way of measuring success or failure. Market forces exist in higher education, but public and private subsidies and grants often cushion leadership from the brutal consequences of managerial failure, and they stumble along on a path of mediocracy and even, increasingly, failure and death. (RELATED: Creative Destruction Comes to Universities) There Are Even More Problems This short assessment of higher education ignores many things — the gross waste and inefficiencies associated with campuses fully operating only eight or so months annually, the lack of meaningful accountability and assessment of achievement accompanying a totally dysfunctional and ineffective accreditation system, the increasingly bizarre, irrational, and expensive system of relating higher education to athletic entertainment. New AI technologies that let machines think threaten some forms of employment for college graduates. Perhaps above all, the increasing role of the federal government in trying to govern our universities threatens the potential advantages of high institutional diversity and even eccentricity — an American strength has been that students can find schools for almost any legitimate taste. READ MORE from Richard Vedder: Why Are People Fleeing Highly Educated States? Blue States’ High Tax State-of-Mind Improving Both Federal Finances and Economic Growth Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor emeritus at Ohio University, senior fellow at both the Independent Institute and Unleash Prosperity, and author of Let Colleges Fail.

He sits in retirement: a man of granite-like visage, grim with age and experience. Grey-bearded, he reflects on past glories. He remains active and strong, but the aches and pains and weariness of age are inescapable. Like many a hero, he would need to be coaxed, convinced that his people need him, that only he can slay the monsters that beset them. Like many a hero, the desire to serve still likely burns as an ember in his heart and mind. A call to duty might not go unheeded. Indeed, already he roars in anger and plans a campaign against a usurper who now plans to redistrict — or rather, gerrymander — his supporters into oblivion. But why merely fight the gerrymander? Why not fight the enemy all the way? (RELATED: Will Newsom Rig His Redistricting Referendum?) He once led a great state, after all, a state that in its size and wealth and diversity of peoples was a veritable empire. Now it is a land from which people flee; a plague-land of poverty and crime; a pestilential land of poisonous rulers and self-serving bureaucrats who enrich themselves and corrupt the people through maximized envy and punitive taxation, directed hate and tyrannical regulation. (RELATED: Gavin Newsom’s California Is a Crashing Caliphate of Chaos) Families cannot safely raise their children in this former empire, nor (often) can they even afford to live there. Companies that once formed there, and created jobs and middle-class prosperity there, can do so no longer, moving instead to faraway lands, lands that the state’s nomenklatura regard as barbaric “Red States” that formerly flew a rebel flag and might do so again. But the flag of the former empire itself began as a rebel flag, the bear flag of a self-styled California Republic. Someone, some hero, must restore glory to that flag and save this once great state — a state that boasted, at one time, that it was “Reagan Country,” an optimistic land of dreamers and doers, farmers and ranchers, aerospace and defense engineers, film stars, and a much better version of Disney. There are worthy candidates who would lift a banner of reform and restoration and lead this land. They include a brave man, Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, and a clever man, Steve Hilton, the well-meaning, egg-headed refugee from another decayed empire, that of formerly Great Britain. But neither they nor any other declared candidate for governor is likely to be recognized by the electorate as having the necessary heroic virtue (in this case, name recognition and popular appeal) to win an election and smite the Scylla of Wokeness and the Charybdis of the state employees unions; to put policemen back on the streets and criminals and dangerous crazies back beyond bars; and to wield a vengeful sword against suffocating government regulation and burdensome taxation. Who could possibly achieve this? What heroic man could possibly be elected in a state where reason is largely forfeit, decadent self-destruction appears a goal of the regime, and truth and honor and realism and foresight appear relegated to only a small cadre of the faithful, like Christians in the catacombs of Nero’s Rome? Only one man can save the Golden State, only one man has the strength to bring down the tyranny of the California Democrat Party. There is, of course, an answer. There always is. There is always the essential man — the great man of history who heeds the call and knows his moment — whether that man be George Washington at our nation’s founding or Donald Trump at our nation’s rescue. Only one man can save the Golden State, only one man has the strength to bring down the tyranny of the California Democrat Party. That man is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The task of cleaning out the state’s Augean Stables will require a Hercules — a part Schwarzenegger has played before, both on-screen and in Sacramento as a two-term governor of California, elected during a previous state crisis. There is, however, a problem with this obvious solution. In 1990, the people of California passed Proposition 140, which prohibits candidates from serving more than two terms as governor. So, just as it was a gubernatorial recall election in 2003 that propelled Schwarzenegger into office, it seems that it would require another proposition undoing the failed reform of term limits to return him to the governorship. Or would it? What if Schwarzenegger ran for lieutenant governor and acted as the éminence grise of a Bianco or Hilton administration, campaigning on the slogan, “If you want me, vote for him!” Perhaps the brave Bianco or the clever Hilton could suggest this winning idea. No Republican has served as California’s governor since Schwarzenegger’s departure. But perhaps Schwarzenegger himself could change that. If Californians are fortunate — if America is fortunate — Schwarzenegger will return to Sacramento, ably advising a conservative ally; and all who wish the Golden State well will rejoice to see him crush his Democrat enemies, drive them before him, and hear the lamentations of the Democrat women and their girly men. For the sake of all that is good, let it be so. READ MORE: Newsom Launches Anti-Crime Crusade Governor Newsom Creates a New CDC W. Crocker III is a native Californian, former speechwriter for Governor Pete Wilson of California, and a popular novelist and bestselling historian, including of the recently reissued classic Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, a 2,000-Year History.

I’m writing this with a helmet on, constantly looking around for any signs of them closing in. I’ve just been handed a chilling fact: one in five children gets head lice during the school year. And as you know, the school year is just starting. Nothing terrifies me more than head lice. You might think a hungry bear or a raging lion is more dangerous, but you’d be wrong. There is no wilder creature on Earth than an angry louse. And most lice are angry — among other reasons, because the life of a louse leaves much to be desired. Far from the lofty metaphors of romantic poetry, living inside someone else’s head has never been much fun. Lice wake up in the morning and, out of habit, don’t bother to wash. That’s why they get cranky when the “building” they live in suddenly decides to step under a shower. They try calling the landlord to complain, but he never picks up. Lice can’t really talk to anyone, except fleas. And believe me, no flea on Earth has anything interesting to say beyond: “I’ve just broken my long jump record,” “Looks like I’ll have to change dogs,” or “You’re as fat as a fly” (a very common insult among fleas). In any case, you won’t find anything in basic flea literature that helps solve the domestic problems of lice. It’s true that the life of fleas doesn’t make lice envy them much, but at least fleas spend their days jumping around, which makes them think they’re having fun — though honestly, being condemned to a life of endless hopping must be dreadful. There are days when you just don’t feel like bouncing around like an idiot in the middle of a hiccup. Between leaps, fleas always seem to be searching for a cliff to throw themselves off and escape the torture of not being able to walk like the rest of the creatures in the universe — except for those you already know, the ones that crawl belly-first across the floor and give me panic attacks. When a louse smiles, it’s only because it has just met another louse even filthier than itself. That’s when it decides to celebrate by digging even deeper into its chosen home. Lice like to reaffirm their identity, so the more social life they have with other lice, the more louse-like they become. If more than 50 lice gather on a single head, that’s considered an illegal settlement, and a pest-control specialist must intervene — if The Hague Tribunal doesn’t take the case first. Like most animals — including humans — lice in large numbers are even more dangerous, because they threaten the most basic standards of hygiene, good manners, and peaceful coexistence inside the head they’ve occupied. Anyone carrying a legion of vindictive lice also carries the seeds of a greater disease. That’s why it’s always been recommended to root out the most aggressive lice — especially the really nasty ones, the ones that transmit the greatest number of illnesses. Some trendy hairdressers defend lice, claiming you can’t go against nature. Which only proves that in the 21st century, if you close your eyes and walk down the street, you’re more likely to bump into a fool than into anyone who knows how to spell the word “asshole” correctly. Be careful, by the way, with head-to-head collisions: one in three ends with an unpleasant exchange of lice. And if it’s already bad enough having your own lice in your hair, it’s even more disgusting when someone else’s lice start throwing rooftop parties, inviting the nastiest lice in town, and then pretending not to notice when the rent comes due at the end of the month. Our own lice, on the other hand, are almost like family. They’ve lived with us for years. We’ve watched them grow. And they even seem open to dialogue, as if one day they might give up their stupid condition and turn into something cleaner and more useful — like, say, a nice cut of Iberian pork. But so far, no louse has ever managed to mutate on its own into pork, which is a shame for the louse, the pig, and above all, for us. If lice ever learned how to stop being lice, they wouldn’t really be lice at all, but something more like a devastating adolescence: horrifying, yes, but thankfully temporary. As a child, I never had lice. As an adult, it’s happened to me three times. The first time, I discovered what a nit comb was — a kind of hair broom you use to recover the corpses of lice previously drugged with a stinking gel. The last time, I had so many lice that I asked the tax office for a deduction for hosting the homeless, and I seriously considered setting up a foundation for that purpose. They say teachers are now the ones who spread lice to the adult population the most, simply because their heads are closer to adult height than to children’s. The idea that many teachers pass on lice strikes me as a metaphor far too perfect for postmodern education to be literally true. I’m terribly afraid of lice — but even more afraid of those teachers you and I both know, hiding in the school system like lice, feeding off the most innocent heads. If only there were a comb for this kind of nit. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be (And Thank Goodness) An Immense Ray of Light Pierces the Heart of the West These Are Your Damned ‘Root Causes,’ Vi Lyles