Monthly Archives: January 2012

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Political Football

The GOP is split into four overlapping factions: the libertarians, fundamentalist theocrats, pragmatic Republicans and the Tea Party. It would be ideal that a leader would emerge that would unite the factions, but that will be unlikely. What is more

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Ants at a Picnic

Cato‘s David Boaz writes Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue in The Cato Policy Report for Jan/ Feb 2012 Excerpt: The libertarian argument for keeping more of society in the private sector is not that there’s no self-interest or corruption in business; it is that

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Structural Unemployment

Mark Perry analyzes the current Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data is his blog, Carpe Diem, a required daily read for me. Excerpt from Interesting Facts from Today’s Employment Report, 1/6/12: The unemployment rate for workers with a college degree

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Devolving Unions

The history of unions in the American workforce is wrapped up in their quest for political power. Originally unions sought equality in the workforce with the holders of the capital that employed them.  Unifying was a natural choice.  But their

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Fear and Blame

Rick Moran writes in Pajamas Media, The Death of Pragmatism, 1/27/12 In his article about the evisceration of centrism he quotes from the movie, The American President: We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve

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The New Feudalism

The president seeks a fairer distribution of wealth; he claims not to admonish prosperity, but seeks to be sure it is shared.  There is a proven method to this noble objective and it lies under his nose. Instead of promoting

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Unexpected Genius

In 1879 as Karl Marx was becoming popular in Europe Alfred Marshall wrote The Economics of Industry.   Marx was a reaction to the principles of Adam Smith.  Karl Marx focused on the distribution of an existing pie where Adam Smith

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Why the iPhone is made in China

From the New York Times: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER, 1/21/12

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The Whole Picture on Tax Rates

Scott Grannis writes in his blog Calafia Beach Pundit, Effective Tax rates are Highly Progressive, 1/19/12.

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Benjamin Franklin on Venture Capital

Larry Anderson writes for American Thinker, Venture Capitalism Not Crony Capitalism, 1/20/12: Excerpt: The moral difference between a Governor Keith and a Thomas Denham (venture capitalist)  is staggering. Keith made lavish promises (not just to Benjamin Franklin) based on the

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Spoons and Leaf Blowers

With Pelosi explaining that unemployment benefits are the best form of stimulus spending and the President suggesting that further regulation actually creates jobs, it is hard to  conceive of more misguided economic thinking. On a tour in China economist Milton Friedman asked

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Bad Economics is Also Bad Politics

John Taylor and John Cogan write in the Wall Street Journal   Stimulus has Been a Washington Job Killer 10/3/11 Excerpts: Temporary, targeted tax reductions and increases in government spending are not good economics. They have repeatedly failed to increase

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Stimulating Failure

Steve Malanga writes in the Wall Street Journal How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo Four decades of subsidies and high taxes haven’t arrested the city’s decline, but here comes New York’s governor with another billion dollars. 1/14/12 Excerpt: Buffalo may be

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Pro Market vs. Pro Business

Daniel Hannan writes in the UK The Telegraph with Memo to the Occupy Protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think. Point 1: Free-marketers resent the bank bailouts. This might seem obvious: we are, after all, opposed to

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A Better Political Paradigm

The frustration with our deficit and spending is that we focus on the legislature. Massive spending cuts must come from the top down.  Elected representatives are judged by the spending they bring to their districts, not by their efforts to

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The Stimulus Fallacy

Charles Wolf writes in The Weekly Standard,  Where Keynes Went Wrong- What if government spending depresses instead of stimulates? 11/7/11 Excerpt: Keynes assumed that the initial deficient level of aggregate demand would remain unchanged until the stimulative (“pump-priming”) effect of

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Going Newt

Newt may be intelligent, but he is not smart. His recent attack on Romney’s tenure at Bain capital is an embarrassment to his party. A survey at conservative National Review shows 80% of the readers thought Newt’s attack was disgraceful.  It either

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Political Notes 2012 01 09

I still contend that merely ‘going negative’ does not work.  Newt is not dropping because Mitt went negative; he is dropping because of his own comments that sound extreme.  Cain did not drop because of his accusations of sexual misconduct;

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A Different Continuum

This entry marks post # 2,000 on Rebel Yid. When Erick Erickson of Red State spoke at my Rotary Club  in Macon, Ga. 5 years ago, I had no idea what a blog was.  I had filled several notebooks with

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Marginalizing Extremists

Both parties seem to have elements that the other party considers extreme.  For the Democrats it is union thugs, liberal anti-Semites, environmental zealots, and blatant socialists. For the Republicans it is creationists (considered anti-science),  fundamentalist Christians, pro-lifers, and the ethnocentric.

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