Monthly Archives: April 2014

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Political Hack Dressed in Economists Clothing

Thomas Piketty’s new book is getting strong approval from the Krugmanites of the left, but the critiques are coming forth as well, This from Real Clear Markets Diana Furchtgott-Roth, The Systematic Errors In Thomas Piketty’s New Book : Excerpts: Piketty

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Extinction by Consensus

Outside the ‘Consensus’–Notes of a Climate Change ‘Denier’ –  by Peter Wood excerpts: Perhaps even more to the point, the signing of both agreements means that the largest university endowment in the world will now be managed more or less in

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Consensus is a Political Act- Not a Scientific Act

Outside the ‘Consensus’–Notes of a Climate Change ‘Denier’ –  by Peter Wood excerpts: In time, scientific controversies get resolved, often by the emergence of new kinds of evidence that no one originally imagined. Views that are maintained, to some degree, by

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Inconvenient Social Realities

Robert Marano and Michael Crouch write in the Wall Street Journal –Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families Excerpts: The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were

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Zingerman’s and Subway

From the Wall Street Journal, Michael Saltsman writes Why Subway Doesn’t Serve a $14 Reuben Sandwich: Start with Costco, whose CEO, Craig Jelinek, is an outspoken advocate of raising the minimum wage. “At Costco, we know that paying employees good

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4,450 Federal Crimes

“The more complicated and vague legislation is created, the more powerful special interests will be interested in having “friends” in government. When the Constitution was first ratified, there were only three federal crimes: treason, counterfeiting, and piracy. Today no one

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97% Bullshit

That’s a 0.3% consensus, not 97% by Joanne Nova Excerpt: We’ve already found enough flaws, but Christopher Monckton analyzes John Cook’s 97% consensus paper and sharpens the scythe. He finds: It should never have been done, it’s an unscientific method

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Reading Meaning into Nature

The real risks of cherry picking scientific data by Matt Ridley and his blog The Rational Optimist Excerpt: The Tamiflu tale is that some years ago the pharmaceutical company Roche produced evidence that persuaded the World Health Organisation that Tamiflu was effective

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Consumptive Inequality

Do people mind more about inequality than poverty? from Matt Ridley at his blog The Rational Optimist Excerpt: If you measure consumption inequality, it is far lower than pre-tax income inequality, because the top 40 per cent of earners pay more

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Reading 2014 04 17

Shortest Graduation Speech  I am officially Media  The New Slavery  Kahan vs Krugman  

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Far More Dangerous Than the Tea Party

From Daniel Greenfield’s excellent blog, Sultan Knish, The Inequality of Access: Excerpts: A thief is still a thief whether he wears a mask, a suit or a t-shirt with a social justice slogan. When people appoint thieves to steal for them,

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Don McNeeley on The Minimum Wage, Optimism for Manufacturing

Don is smartest man I know  in the steel industry.  The relative vs absolute cost of the minimum wage. Bullish on manufacturing because of frustrated demand- not because of legislation, but in spite of it.

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Protecting The Promised Land

The Making of a Libertarian, Contrarian, Nonobservant, but Self-Identified Jew by Randy Barnett Barnett’s father, a strongly identified Jewish atheist, took the lesson of the Holocaust to be that individual rights needed to be protected against the tyranny of the

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Manufactured Consensus

From Daniel Greenfield in his blog Sultan Knish,  The Left is too Smart to Fail. Excerpts: That is why Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for having good intentions. His actual foreign policy mattered less than the appearance of a new

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The Path to Greater Inequality

“For 17 years, I waited in vain for the democratic revolution to come to Soviet Russia to complete the socialist dream. But it did not come. Oh, there was a spring in Prague. But Soviet tanks again rolled across the

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Reading 2014 04 09

Pro Business or Pro Market Democrats Fake Problmes Unpacking Progressivity      

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Rules vs Principles

From The Wall Street Journal – Book Review: ‘The Rule of Nobody’ by Philip K. Howard by Stuart Taylor, Jr. Amid the liberal-conservative ideological clash that paralyzes our government, it’s always refreshing to encounter the views of Philip K. Howard,

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Character and Ideology Counts More than Money

From Barry Casselman- The Prairie Editor The problem with those self-styled idealists in both national parties who want to limit the increasing volume of money in U.S. elections is that they could not, and cannot, devise legislation which would accomplish

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Bribery and Extortion

The concern about money and politics is worthy. But the fixation on billionaires with influence, whether it is the Kochs or Soros, is aimed at the wrong target. The larger problem is the corruption of the political class who rigs the game to extort payments from those who can pay.

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The Immortal Corporation

“Politics is a kind of island in the evolutionary stream—isolated, unchanging, incapable of learning because it is insulated against going extinct. Politics is the last monopoly, the Immortal Corporation. You’ll never see a capitol building with a GOING OUT OF

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