“The New York Post is reporting that the New York City sanitation workers deliberately slowed down the snow cleanup as a way to pay back the administration for cutbacks. On the face of it, it’s not implausible–it wouldn’t be the first time that New York City unions chose the worst possible time […]
Archive for December, 2010
Dec23rd2010
“The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless. For instance, there is usually greater inequality of income among both older people and the more highly educated, if only because there is […]
Dec22nd2010
Economist David Henderson, in a book review, states oil economics that many environmentalists lack:
Another problem, state Hubbard and Navarro, is that America’s heavy oil dependence makes our economy far more vulnerable to slower growth and recessions triggered by sudden price increases. But because oil is traded in a world market, we are […]
Dec21st2010
“I don’t know how much money you make. But whatever it is, I wish you and everyone else would work twice as many hours and earn twice as much income. Why? With one exception (discussed below) your earning more money can’t possibly harm me. In three very important ways it will […]
Dec20th2010
The History Of Conservatives Environmentalist Skepticism
Published by in Environment and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsI’m too young to know if this is true or not, but Ross Douthat gives the history:
To understand why, it’s worth going back to the 1970s, the crucible in which modern right-wing politics was forged.
The Seventies were a great decade for apocalyptic enthusiasms, and none was more potent than the fear that human […]
Dec16th2010
A good friend of mine, recently turned lefty, has been harping on the income inequality tune lately. It’s new to him, so he finds it quit convincing. We’ve been going back and forth on it now for some months (see here and here, for example) but he tried to address all of my arguments in one […]
Dec15th2010
Megan McArdle explains:
So the Supreme Court will not hear the eminent domain case involving Columbia University, which finagled the state into seizing local land and transferring it to the school. That means that the landowners who don’t want to sell have no recourse. Worse, it reinforces the precedent of Kelo–that the […]
Dec14th2010
“The Walmart effect. The giant retailer sets sustainability requirements for suppliers and manufacturers. “We find that Walmart is the most powerful environmental regulator in the market,” says Arnold.” — Sharon Begley, writing in Newsweek on the forces that continue to help cut carbon
Dec13th2010
“How do you go from being the targeted victim of an unprecedented information attack to being the victor? Simple: Be revealed to have been working hard behind the scenes to do the right thing. The United States is as imperfect as any nation and guilty of countless missteps as the past decade has shown with […]
Dec10th2010
Daniel Drezner writes:
There are no Big Lies. Indeed, Blake Hounshell’s original tweet holds: “the U.S. is remarkably consistent in what it says publicly and privately.” Assange — and his source for all of this, Bradley Manning — seem to think that these documents will expose American perfidy. Based on the initial round of reactions, they’re […]
Dec9th2010
“I have mixed feelings about a lot of different aspects of this, but there are two key points. One is that the leaker here (presumably Bradley Manning, but that’s not yet been proven in a court of law) has broken the law and needs to be punished. The other is that the […]
Dec7th2010
My Tentative View Of The Dream Act
Published by in Hispanics (Minority Issues), Immigration and ModernPolitics. 3 CommentsA couple of people have asked me privately what I think about the Dream Act so I thought I would post it here as well. This has been my general reply to the question:
“There is a trade off (inverse relationship) between welfare and immigration. The more welfare, the less people are supportive of […]
Dec6th2010
“The problem of the permanent state is a real one, but occasional mass data dumps like the one WikiLeaks just provided, however temporarily satisfying to decentralizers and libertarians, don’t promise anything remotely like reform. Quite the reverse, in fact: The specter of being WikiLeaked will likely exacerbate all of the tendencies that […]
Dec2nd2010
It looks like it’s the union auto industry bailout that was the costliest:
The much-maligned TARP program will cost taxpayers only $25 billion according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s substantially less than the $66 billion CBO estimated back in August or the $113 billion that the Office […]
Dec1st2010
I still haven’t decided whether WikiLeaks is a net good or bad, but I thought this was an interesting perspective:
Anyone who has worked in international affairs would understand (and this goes for Americans and non-Americans) secrecy is an essential element of diplomatic relations. Henry Farrell makes the smart point here that effective […]
