Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Disturbing as it was to hear Milo Yiannopoulos describe then-president Trump as “Daddy” a few years ago, it’s even more alarming to hear much more mainstream media figures referring to Joe Biden as our new national dad. Thinking of the president as America’s sole controlling authority, in whom all power and decision-making rest, is a … Read more
Democrats have made a living recently with political attack ads fallaciously accusing Republicans of secret plans to destroy Medicare and Social Security. In one famous TV ad, then-Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan was depicted as shoving an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. Well, Republicans may want to reprise that ad — and … Read more
Crime is surging in American cities, but the official data leave out the most frequent source of highway robberies. More than 400 cities have set up red light cameras that are institutionalized racketeering that subverts public safety. Tens of thousands of American drivers have been injured and many people killed as a result of reckless … Read more
Families looking for alternatives to battlefields of the culture war have a bonanza of educational options. It’s too early to know whether the pandemic-fueled surge in homeschooling will continue in the coming year, but the early indicators are that do-it-yourself education is here to stay as a popular choice for families from all sorts of … Read more
Corporate Welfare: Where’s the Outrage? – A Personal Exploration by Johan Norberg – Full Video Other People’s Money See “Corporate Welfare: A Documentary” Let student money follow the student. Educational choice! And stop eating sugar and sugared foods – break the addiction. Related PostsG.K. Chesterton (Ohio) House Bill 6 exemplifies the dangers of … Read more
When people ask me why I’m a libertarian, I rarely mention high taxes and wasteful spending. Nor do I make philosophical arguments about the non-aggression principle. And it’s also unlikely that I’ll cite Ayn Rand. Instead, I point out that all decent human beings should be libertarian because unconstrained government has the power to abuse … Read more
We are at war. And no, I am not referring to Afghanistan. There is a fight much closer to home and the enemy does not wear, for the moment, burqa nor turban. This enemy has an official car and is determined to raise your taxes and destroy your culture. Wait and see. This week we … Read more
Thwarted politicians rant, pout, and are outraged by anybody who pushes back. The closest approximations to eternal toddlers in our society may be government officials told there are limits on the extent to which they can screw with human lives. They rant, they pout, and sometimes they even vow to poke and prod others anyway, … Read more
Indeed, I’m a big fan of federalism in large part because good fiscal policy is more likely when state and local governments are forced to compete for jobs and investment. People can “vote with their feet” by moving from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions, and politicians are less likely to misbehave when they realize taxpayers … Read more
Joe Biden must have thought he was finally due for a run of good luck. After a Senate career that resembled the Rio Grande — long but shallow, and grand only in name — he was a figure of fun in the Obama administration and slid immediately into obscurity. He didn’t even run for the … Read more
A federal court so holds, applying Maryland’s Riot Act, and quoting the Mayor’s famous line that the City “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.” From Chae Bros. Limited Ltd. Co. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, decided yesterday by Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher (D. Md.): Plaintiffs, consisting primarily of small … Read more
Andrew Potter writes, the need for our beliefs to connect or respond to reality has become increasingly unimportant. We are free to believe literally anything, from the wildest alt-right QAnon political conspiracies to the wackiest Gwyneth Paltrow health-nut fantasies of the contemporary wellness movement. None of it really matters—the lights still come on in your … Read more
Many of us have spent the last week glued to our televisions watching the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. A marauding and medieval religious cult, the Taliban are famous for banning education for women, forcing young girls into marriage and vicious corporal punishment or worse for those who fail to adhere to the strictures … Read more
Bay Area politicians want federal infrastructure dollars but can’t keep the rails or streets safe. The promise of federal money never fails to move San Francisco Bay Area politicians to action. With the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill likely to pass, the mayors of Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco penned an open letter arguing … Read more
What motivates the tax-and-spend crowd? Why do they want high tax rates and a big welfare state? The most charitable answer is that they don’t want anyone to suffer from poverty and they mistakenly think big government can solve problems. But there’s another answer that may be more accurate. As Margaret Thatcher observed about three … Read more
I’ve just learned I may be a terrorist. On Aug. 13, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a statement warning about an increase in domestic and foreign terrorism. At the end of the document’s summary were these words: “Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health … Read more
I’ve been asked why I periodically mock politicians. The simple answer is that they often deserve our scorn. It’s not that they’re evil or bad people, but their incentive structure generally leads them to make shallow, short-run, and self-serving decisions. Such as setting tax rates so high that they even backfire on politicians (i.e., by … Read more
The tuition isn’t setting itself In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Elizabeth Warren issued an ultimatum to opponents of her proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If the CFPB was not crafted to her liking, Warren would opt for “no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.” The … Read more
As students return to school, pay attention to Baltimore City Public Schools and their 20,500 students. It was recently discovered 41% of Baltimore high school students earned a grade point average below 1.0. Even as the students in her system fail so badly, Dr. Sonja Santelises, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, has a … Read more
Having previously covered the record surge in rents (here and here) which represents a dramatic reversal from last year’s rental plunge, overnight Bloomberg did an in-depth look into the rental market, and its findings – which won’t come as a surprise to anyone – can be summarized as follows: “soaring prices, competition, desperation” as the … Read more
The 2021 Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ annual reports are 138 days late and counting. The law requires the Board of Trustees of Social Security and Medicare to submit to Congress annual reports on the financial condition of these vital programs by April 1. This requirement has been in place since 1967. The board now … Read more
COVID-19, which seems likely to morph into COVID-21 and so on, is involved in many factors affecting home-based care. It forced everyone to spend time at home. Once there, we liked what we saw, and have been pouring enormous sums into fixing up and expanding our homes. Home-centric life isn’t going to change anytime soon. … Read more
Lots of Republican politicians claim to support responsible stewardship of the nation’s finances. Far too few of them act like it. Republicans in Congress always talk a good game when it comes to deficit spending. Early last week, 46 GOP senators, led by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, signed a pledge noting their opposition to … Read more
Scott Alexander writes, In this model, we end up with Woke Capital because Apple and Amazon are run by programmers, by managers who used to be programmers, and by MBA finance people – and all of those groups are highly educated and therefore liberal. I am pretty sure that the “woke” in Woke Capital comes … Read more
Freedom flows not from remaking each other, but from loving one another. My father-in-law, Alexander Guttmann, was an erudite Talmudic scholar. He was trained in academic critical scholarship (what that once meant before CRT and its friends came along), as well as in the more ancient Jewish version of disciplined study. From those perspectives, he … Read more