Yearly Archives: 2013

Archive of posts published in the specified Year

The Naked Emporer

Dec. 05, 2013

Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe, Majority rules on climate science? Excerpts: Why would so many scientists have relied on models that turned out to be so wrong? The authors propose several plausible explanations — volcanic eruptions? solar irradiation?

Read More

The One Percent Now Live in DC

Dec. 05, 2013

Read More

Academic Fragillity

Dec. 05, 2013

“Overconfidence leads to reliance on forecasts, which causes borrowing, then to the fragility of leverage. Further, there is convincing evidence that a PhD in economics or finance causes people to build vastly more fragile portfolios. George Martin and I listed

Read More

The Amazon Phenomenon

Dec. 03, 2013

I think that the Amazon model may be as significant a step in commercial innovation as the assembly line or the department store. One Click shopping is just absolute genius. My most recent purchases: A wisk broom- an old fashioned

Read More

Health Care and Global Warming

Dec. 03, 2013

The utter failure of the ACA website roll out is just a cover for the fact that the real failure is the plan itself. The shitty website does not explain the cancellations and the painfully higher costs. But the disaster

Read More

The Corruption of Consensus

Dec. 02, 2013

from Mark Steyn in The National Review Online, Ice Everywhere, But No Hockey Sticks: Global warming will kill us. Global cooling will kill us. And if it’s 54 and partly cloudy, you should probably flee for your life right now.

Read More

An Inadequate Governing Philosophy

Dec. 02, 2013

from the Editors of National Review- Core Incompetency: The Department of Health and Human Services blames “inadequate management oversight and coordination” — in a word, leadership— for these problems. Whose “inadequate management oversight”? HHS does not seem to want to dwell

Read More

American Capitalism and Charity

Dec. 01, 2013

Jeff Jacoby writes ‘Tis better to give, but some give more in The Boston Globe: Excerpts: WHEN IT comes to charitable giving, America is a world-beater. According to Giving USA, an annual compendium of national data on philanthropy, Americans last

Read More

The Pope and Capitalism

Dec. 01, 2013

Pope Francis offered his judgment on modern capitalism in his 50,000 word address, Evangelii Gaudium: Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and

Read More

Dissolving Government Limits

Nov. 29, 2013

***** Jay Cost writes in The Weekly Standard The Real Price of Politics. Excerpts: Too often, debate over what government should do takes place in the abstract. But the particulars of the American system are relevant. Our government was never

Read More

A Hollow Modernity

Nov. 28, 2013

Daniel Greenfield writes in his excellent blog Sultan Knish, Government is Magic. Excerpts: Modernity has to be built. It has to be constructed brick by bit by rivet by cable by people who know what they are doing. Modernity without competence is

Read More

Statism and Pragmatism

Nov. 27, 2013

Words like communism, socialism and fascism are most likely to be used pejoratively: to criticize in such a way as to intentionally anger the object. While there are a few elements of socialism and fascism in our government it does

Read More

Lying For Justice

Nov. 24, 2013

Mona Charen writes in The National Review, The Lies That Sold Obamacare. Excerpt: Remember Obama’s mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with the vow, “If you like your plan . . . ,” I keep remembering Obama’s account of his mother being denied coverage

Read More

At the Crossroads of Capitalism

Nov. 24, 2013

Michael Novak writes in The National Review, Democratic Capitalism The prospering of free societies depends on certain moral and cultural practices. Sept 24, 2013 Excerpt: What I have been trying to bring out in these brief remarks on the economy and

Read More

The Real Minimum Wage

Nov. 21, 2013

Kevin Williamson adds some clarity to the minimum wage debate in The Minimum-Wage Myths in The National Review Online. Excerpts: The purpose of this fight is not to hash out economic questions related to low-income people. The purpose of the fight

Read More

Unhealthy Medical Economics

Nov. 21, 2013

“As with the Connecticut parking spaces, we have through the entitlements (and through the tax preferences given to employer-based medical benefits) done a great deal to encourage the consumption of health-care services while doing nothing to encourage the production of

Read More

The Smartest President Ever

Nov. 19, 2013

From Thus Spake Obama by Mark Steyn in National Review. I love when humor enters politics. I love it when arrogance meets reality. I love it when we mix the two. Excerpts: Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day after his

Read More

A Time To Gloat

Nov. 19, 2013

Jonah Goldberg writes Obamacare Schadenfreudarama in National Review Online: But as a political and ideological matter, this is beyond fantastic. For years we’ve been told that Democrats were more “reality-based,” that “facts have a liberal bias,” in the words of Paul Krugman,

Read More

Insincere Apologies

Nov. 18, 2013

Daniel Greenfield writes in The Sultan Knish, Apologies from Utopia. Excerpts: This state of affairs is presumed to be so terrible that any change would be an improvement. Like trying to fix a thoroughly beat up car, the left doesn’t care

Read More

Uninhabitable Utopias

Nov. 17, 2013

“There is a price to pay for being wrong in politics, but the effects are widely dispersed and time-delayed. And the pain of being wrong in politics is likely to fall on somebody other than the politician. Partly this insulation

Read More

← Newer posts

Older posts →