Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Given my warnings about the dawning age of vaccine passports, it shouldn’t have surprised me when my phone rang over the weekend and an old college buddy asked if I could hook him up with a forged COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card. For the record, I can’t help with that, but plenty of other people can. … Read more
From Hunter Biden’s sham career as a businessman to his new sham career as an artist, from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cattle futures to the billions “Blood and Gore” made from green activism, there is a great deal of profit to be had from standing close to powerful men and holding your nose. Amanda Marcotte, who … Read more
The AAUP reports, In fall 2019, 63.0 percent of faculty members were on contingent appointments; 20.0 percent were full-time contingent faculty members and 42.9 percent were part-time contingent faculty members. Only 26.5 percent of faculty members were tenured and 10.5 percent were on tenure track. If you are a student, the chances that all of … Read more
For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level. Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement that students … Read more
It’s understandable that we’re now paying a lot of attention to Joe Biden’s risky proposals for higher taxes and a bigger welfare state. After all, it’s a very bad idea to copy the economic policies of nations such as Italy, France, and Greece (unless, of course, you want much lower living standards). But let’s not … Read more
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the infrastructure bill will add about $400 billion to federal debt. The debt is already near an all‐time high, and further increases will raise the risks of triggering a financial and economic crisis. Saturday, 18 Republican senators voted to proceed with the infrastructure bill, even though … Read more
Prof. Ed Richards, who specializes in (among other things) public health law at LSU law school, wrote this on a discussion list I’m on, and kindly agreed to let me repost it here: This is a comment about Louisiana, although it applies in varying degrees to other states. If you are a historian of hospitals … Read more
Granting presidents extraordinary powers indefinitely is a recipe for disaster. . . . Since federal emergency-powers law took its modern form during the presidency of Gerald Ford, there have been 71 national emergencies declared — an average of 1.6 every year. Incredibly, 37 of those national emergencies — more than half — are still in … Read more
The worldwide socialist project killed something like 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. But not all of its victims are dead. . . . The socialist strongmen of the 20th century differed in important ways from their progressive admirers in the United States and the rest of the free world, but … Read more
A fast-food CEO calls it a “total nightmare.” Some economists are calling it The Great Resignation. Best just to call it what it is: a tight labor market — and three cheers for it. In late July, the United States had about 9.5 million unemployed people and about the same number of unfilled jobs. The … Read more
Compulsory education and child labor laws only serve to perpetuate an inhumane system. It has often occurred to me that the only reason I was not doped up on a cocktail of amphetamines from an early age like many of my peers is that my mother has always hated medication as a rule. (She would … Read more
The District of Columbia weathered the pandemic with stable tax collections, down less than 1 percent in FY 2020 while recovering above pre-pandemic levels in FY 2021. Yet, even as lawmakers in eleven states have cut income taxes this year, the D.C. Council has responded to surpluses and growth by voting to include substantial income … Read more
A diet of ultraprocessed foods fuels diabetes. The projected prevalence of diabetes among US adults in the coming few decades presents a grim image, as the disease is expected to nearly triple from 22.3 million adults (9.1% of the population) in 2014 to 39.7 million (13.9% of the current population) in 2030, and soar to … Read more
The real “history problem” is that schools have done such a dreadful job of teaching reading that fewer children are able to discover the joys of history on their own. Student test scores in one Baltimore class show that almost half the juniors in high school were reading at second- and third-grade levels, as Project … Read more
Water levels in Lake Powell are at record lows. If levels drop much further, hydroelectric turbines will cease to run. The lake supplies water to 30 million people and irrigation of 5 million acres. . . . Think of Lake Mead and Lake Powell as one big reservoir separated by the Grand Canyon. Both are … Read more
‘The ’70s are back!” declares French fashion magazine l’Officiel. No kidding: Prices are up, crime is up, Iranian kidnapping plots targeting Americans are up. . . . Surely the groovy sounds of disco and a heady whiff of Hai Karate cannot be far behind. My first political memory is feeling pity for President Jimmy Carter, … Read more
During the Trump administration, Democrats raised a ruckus — not without some justification — about favor-seekers and foreign potentates running up big bills at Trump properties, enriching the president and his family. The Trumps might argue in their defense — plausibly — that their business is not like a securities portfolio that can be put … Read more
As Hannah Arendt has pointed out, transforming questions of fact of fact into questions of intent has been the great achievement of twentieth century totalitarians. It is a dangerous achievement that has survived the collapse of both fascist and Communist empires and has become a hallmark of much of the Western intelligentsia. Thomas Sowell, “The … Read more
Following the atrocities of World War II, Europe’s leaders and great thinkers sought to wrestle away authority from governments, which had for too long tended towards tyranny, and place rights in the hands of the individual. The zeal in which legal philosophers promoted the very enlightenment ideas that culminated with the spilling of immense amounts … Read more
Federal agricultural policy has been permeated by political racketeering since President Franklin Roosevelt appointed America’s first farm dictator in 1933. On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed that Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, purchased a South Carolina grain plant from Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM) for a fire sale price shortly after it became clear that Trump … Read more
The end of the Corn Laws 175 years ago sheds light on the challenges facing policymakers today. Taking away special privileges from powerful groups is an eternal struggle. Just as landlords obstructed freer trade long ago, now farmers stand in the way of reform. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy still directs billions in subsidies, … Read more
We shouldn’t live by prehistoric superstition when we have better alternatives, but we shouldn’t sneer at our forebears as primitive — they would recognize us, and we should recognize them and recognize ourselves in them. As James George Frazer argued in The Golden Bough, magic is the embarrassing ancestor of science, the fruit of mankind’s … Read more
Personalized regimes are also bad at recognizing and correcting their failures, for, unlike in open society, there are no other agents, like the free media and civil society, to point out the government’s mistakes. Perhaps most importantly, in a centralized system with an all-powerful dictator assuming an image of infallibility and invincibility, lower level officials … Read more
Three tiers: essential, inessential, and expendable . . . Some injustices of this period have been fought out in a way that makes them harder to repeat. Churches in California at least managed to establish that they could be tyrannized only as much as businesses were, not more so. Spotting an opportunity, Florida’s Ron DeSantis … Read more
During a White House press briefing earlier this week, a reporter asked Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki a most verboten question: Does President Biden believe “that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?” The nerve. Psaki, who is skilled at nothing if not the art of the dizzying pivot, responded, “Are you asking … Read more