Republicans’ “Pledge to America”: lacking credibility, full of intensity
Last week House Republicans announced their “Pledge to America”, which promises to restrain government spending. But the fact is, despite all their puffed up rhetoric, Republicans lack credibility when it comes to deficit reduction.
Two useful articles published today make this point. First, Jacob Sullum in Reason argues that Republicans’ vows to restore more ...
The “small schools are better” dogma
At times it seems that everyone in the education debate is in favor of smaller schools and class sizes. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions to break up bigger schools. A new movie, Waiting for Superman, extols the benefits of charter schools with smaller-than-usual student numbers. As commensensical ...
In the Tea Party debate, who’s really acting crazy?
Liberal activists’ dismissal of the Tea Party as “insane” only shows how cut-off they are from the American masses.
Read my spiked article in full here.
This week’s articles of note
“The Connecticut country-club crackup,” The New York Times Magazine, by Matt Bai
“America’s true history of religious tolerance,” Smithsonian, by Kenneth C. Davis
“The ‘Freedom’ agenda,” The New York Times, by David Brooks [On Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom]
“The non-economist’s economist,” Wall Street Journal, by James Grant [Essay on John ...
Read science fiction for “the most interesting thought about human society”?
Historian Walter Russell Mead thinks so:
At a time when many academics have become willfully obscure, political science is increasingly dominated by arcane and uninspiring theories and in which a fog of political correctness makes some forms of (badly needed) debate and exploration off limits, science fiction has stepped forward to ...
Mapping segregation in New York and other cities
An interesting map of segregation by race in New York City, by Eric Fischer. Red is for Whites, Blue is for Blacks, Green is for ...
Liberals are blind to what drives the Tea Party
Calling the Tea Party “crazy” is just liberals’ way of saying they are aloof and clueless
Over the past week, US politics has been dominated by talk of the Tea Party. Its favored candidates won upsets over more moderate Republicans in some primary elections last week: most notably, for the Senate ...
Promising start to Boardwalk Empire
Last night saw the opening in a new HBO series about Prohibition-era Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire. It was a promising start. With Martin Scorsese directing, and lots of ...
The recession is over: time to move on
The National Bureau of Economic Research announced today that the recession officially ended in June 2009. Starting in December 2007, the 18-month period was the longest recession since the Second World War.
No big deal? Well, first of all, as Barry Ritholtz points out, the news from the NBER ...
This week’s articles of note
“How the Tea Party organizes without leaders,” National Journal, by Jonathan Rauch
“How Obama thinks,” Forbes, by Dinesh D’Souza
“The slump goes on: why?” The New York Review of Books, by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells [Review of three books on the economic crisis]
“The limits of science,” More ...