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Podcast Description
Articles from Reason.com and Reason Magazine
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Conservatives Against Consumption 03.29.12 | Republican presidential hopefuls, who are strenuously trying to outdo each other in defending family values, may be overlooking a chief cause of modern moral and social decay: increased fossil fuel use. That was the surprising suggestion recently made by a couple of conservative intellectuals, Georgetown University political philosopher Patrick Deneen and American Conservative blogger Rod Dreher. The two were provoked by conservative columnist George Will. “A specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance,” Will declared in his final syndicated column of 2011. Progressives, he asserted, “crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing—by them—that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Job Killers 03.29.12 | Politicians say they “create jobs.” In fact, only the private sector generates the information needed to create real, productive jobs. Since this current post-recession job recovery is the slowest in 80 years, you’d think that even know-it-all politicians would want to sweep away the labyrinth of government regulations that hinders job creation. Successful job creators like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Staples founder Tom Stemberg tell me there are so many new rules and taxes today that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to create the thousands of jobs they once made. The feds now have 160,000 pages of rules. Does anyone read all that? I doubt it. (Members of Congress don’t read the bills they vote on.) Do the rules make life safer? No. A few new rules are useful, but most are not. Their sheer volume makes us less safe and less free. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why the Health Insurance Mandate Is Immoral and Unnecessary 03.29.12 | The Obama administration argued to the U.S. Supreme Court this week that people must be compelled to buy medical insurance (designed by the government) or the national medical-insurance market will fail. Thus, Obamacare advocates say, the insurance mandate is consistent with the powers delegated under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The argument, however, contains a fatal flaw. If the medical-insurance market would indeed fail without a mandate, it’s only because of other mandates the government has already imposed. Thus the government has created the rationale for an extension of its own power. The administration foresees two problems in the absence of the mandate. First, uninsured people will avoid routine and preventive medical care and go to hospital emergency rooms when they can’t delay care any longer, raising costs to others. Second, some people will apply for insurance only after they are seriously ill. As a result, the insurance market will be dominated by sick people, making it unviable. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Better Off Dead 03.28.12 | A stainless steel casket with cherry veneer inserts can set you back more than a foreclosed townhouse in the exurbs of Las Vegas. Then there’s the embalming, the funeral service, the cemetery plot, the headstone, the charge for digging a grave, the charge for filling that grave back up, the eternal lawn-mowing and weeding fees. These days, millions of us can’t afford to die, much less spend our afterlives slumbering in a suitable memorial property of our own. Instead, in this age of widening income disparity, all that most of us can hope for is two and a half hours in an 1,800 degree oven, then a time-shared hereafter on the living-room mantels of our surviving relatives, homeless for eternity in a discount keepsake urn. This, at least, was the spin The New York Times gave to the rising popularity of cremation in a December 2011 article titled “In Tough Times, a Boom in Cremations as a Way to Save Money.” According to the Cremation Association of North America, an industry trade group, 41 percent of the approximately 2.4 million people who die each year in the U.S. choose cremation over a traditional burial. The Times suggested the poor economy was partly responsible for this trend. To support this conclusion, the article quoted a handful of funeral directors and cited a “national telephone survey of 858 adults” that the Funeral and Memorial Information Council, an industry group, commissioned in 2010, finding that “one-third of those who chose cremation in 2010 said cost was a primary factor, up from 19 percent in 1990.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is the CIA in Your Kitchen? 03.28.12 | If this question had been asked by a fictional character in a spy thriller, it might intrigue you, but you wouldn't imagine that it could be true in reality. If the Constitution means what it says, you wouldn't even consider the plausibility of an affirmative answer. After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was written to prevent the government from violating on a whim or a hunch or a vendetta that uniquely American right: the right to be left alone. Everyone wants, at some point in the day, at some places in the home, to be left alone. The colonists who fought the war of secession from Great Britain were no different. But that war and the wish to keep the government at bay had been heightened by the colonial experiences involved in the enforcement of the Stamp Act. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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California Kills Redevelopment 03.20.12 | It’s been a few years since California was considered a national leader in anything except decline. But with a law signed last year by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and upheld by the state’s Supreme Court in December, California has set an example the rest of the country should follow: abolishing redevelopment agencies. The state has 425 redevelopment agencies (RDAs), urban renewal fiefdoms empowered by eminent domain and catering to political hacks, connected land barons, community organizers, and Chamber of Commerce flunkies. All 425 must now unwind themselves and liquidate their land holdings. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Ryan-Romney Budget 03.26.12 | The burst of attention devoted to Congressman Paul Ryan’s 2013 federal budget seems to have passed, at least momentarily, but don’t be deceived: the plan rolled out last week by the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee is going to be important for a long time to come. If Mitt Romney wins the presidential election, the budget, which he endorsed, is a good guide to what he will try to accomplish. If Mr. Romney loses, the budget is a good guide to what Mr. Ryan might try to run on as a Republican presidential contender in 2016. And it’s certain that President Obama and his allies will try to use the plan to attack the Republican candidates in the upcoming election. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Just What America Needs: More Red Tape 03.20.12 | Adding another aphorism to the English language, George Will recently observed that “as government expands, its lawfulness contracts.” Will offered two examples, concerning the UN and education. But he has fallen short of the First Law of Journalism, which states: Any three anecdotes make a trend. He needs a third case study. Here it is. The IRS has taken upon itself a task no one asked it to do: regulate small, independent tax preparers. And like any federal regulation worthy of the name, its rules are byzantine, unnecessary, redundant, legally dubious, and hostile to free enterprise. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Case Against Rent Control 03.13.12 | The handsome five-story brownstone located at 32 West 76th Street in Manhattan doesn’t look like it belongs at the center of a contentious legal struggle. But that impression changes when you learn about the recent activities of its owner, 68-year-old James D. Harmon Jr. Harmon, a former federal prosecutor who once served as chief counsel to President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Organized Crime, has filed a powerful legal challenge asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down New York City’s four-decades-old rent stabilization law. At first, New York officials thought so little of Harmon’s challenge that they waived their right to file an opposing brief with the Supreme Court. But those officials got a rude awakening when the Supreme Court asked them to respond to Harmon’s petition anyway, signaling that somebody at the Court took the legal challenge seriously. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is It the Illegality—or the Immigration? 03.13.12 | “What part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand?” has become the rallying cry—the rallying cliché, even—of immigration hawks across the land. Its point is to underscore what hawks incessantly insist: that they are not opposed to immigration per se. It’s the law-breaking that yanks their chain. But that veneer is wearing thin. Take a video produced by the nation’s largest immigration advocacy group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “With 14 million Americans out of work, attention is finally turning to the millions of illegal workers in the country,” says a man standing amid block letters that spell the world ILLEGAL. “It’s about time. But what about these workers?” he asks, indicating the LEGAL. “Legal foreign workers: more than 1 million legal immigrants and temporary foreign workers our government admits every year. They take good jobs in places like Ohio—no matter how many people are out of work, or how ‘ILL’ our economy gets. We need to slow legal immigration until Ohio is working again.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Newt's Despicable Gasoline Price Promise 03.13.12 | Former House Speaker and current Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised voters that gasoline will be $2.50 per gallon after he becomes president. In fact, Gingrich thinks he may even be able to get the price down to $1.20 per gallon. "His promise to go the moon is easier to achieve," says Michael Lynch, president of the oil consultancy Strategic Energy and Economic Research. "We may see $2.50 per gallon gas again, but not because of anything that any president does." Gingrich’s pitch is attractive to consumers who are confronting pump prices that average $3.83 per gallon and which are expected to go even higher later this year. Why doesn’t Gingrich promise free daily ice cream and cake for everybody while he’s at it? Sadly, Gingrich has apparently gotten some traction among voters with his specious promise. After all, who does not hate high gas prices? A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll reports that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how President Barack Obama is handling the gasoline situation. In addition, only 38 percent approve of his energy policies, down from 55 percent in August 2009. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Feds Pay $10 Million for $50 Light Bulb 03.09.12 | In 2007, when Congress passed legislation that would gradually ban old school incandescent light bulbs, they added a carrot to the pile of sticks: A $10 million dollar prize to encourage the development of a cheap, green, domestic light bulb to replace the dearly departed Edison model. Five years later, that bulb is coming to a hardware store near you. It will cost you 50 bucks. It also fails to meet many of the original prize specifications. The winner, Dutch electronics company Philips, was the one and only entrant, suggesting that the prize failed to stimulate widespread additional private spending on R&D. The portion of the LED bulb made in America is less than initially envisioned. And the guidelines for pricing were utterly ignored: The goal was $22 price tag in the first year, falling rapidly to $8 by year three. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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California Refuses to Fix Public-Sector Pensions 03.08.12 | Serious people know that California faces a serious financial problem because over-sized compensation packages for the state’s public employees are consuming every public dollar in sight and imposing a long-term debt on future taxpayers. Unfortunately, one won’t find many serious legislators in the state Capitol, especially in the majority party these days. Faced with depressing fiscal numbers, the Sacramento brain trusts have decided that the best way to deal with unfunded pension liabilities is not to reduce the benefits that are causing the problem. Their idea is to create yet another program that would boost pensions for private-sector workers after first deducting 3 percent of workers’ paychecks to fund it. In the view of the Democratic leaders who propose this goofy idea, government pensions are fine. The real problem is the stingy private sector. And they have a new government program to fix it. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/10/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Vulture Capitalism 03.08.12 | Now that Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican nominee, we can expect new attacks on his “vulture capitalism.” That’s how Rick Perry characterized his private equity work. Newt Gingrich’s supporters ran an ad about Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, that said, “Their greed was only matched by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits.” Give me a break. “Greed” means you want more for yourself. Fine. If you obtain it legally, without force or privilege—say, by buying a business and making it more efficient, or shifting resources to where consumers prefer them—that is a good thing. “Creative destruction” makes America richer. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Women vs. the State 03.08.12 | March is Women’s History Month. As schoolteachers across America lecture students about how women fought for the right to own property, vote, and control their own bodies, another important lesson will be neglected: Women are still suffering from overly intrusive government. Improving the lot of American women means lowering marginal tax rates, abolishing many workplace regulations, increasing the number of low-skilled immigrants, and ending the drug war. In the past, women suffered because the state treated them differently than men, out of either a misplaced sense of chivalry or outright misogyny. An assault wasn’t necessarily an assault if it was a man beating or raping his wife, for instance. That’s one reason the women’s movement pushed for equal treatment under the law. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Mitt Romney's Fake Policy Plans 03.07.12 | After last night’s Super Tuesday victories, Mitt Romney’s longstanding lead in the GOP primary looks increasingly solid. His policy plans, however, are as flimsy as ever. Indeed, exploring his economic policy proposals is rather like touring a Hollywood backlot. Like a street façade on a movie set, Romney’s economic plans are designed to project an outward appearance of functionality. But when you look behind their cleverly made-up fronts, there’s nothing to see. Romney’s policy offerings on taxes, spending, and entitlements consistently lack crucial structural details; his campaign seems intent on emulating the outward appearance of policy proposals without providing anything that’s actually workable. Take Romney’s proposed overhaul of the tax code. Vague on details and short on substance, it’s more like a press release than anything resembling an actual plan to rewrite the country’s massive, complex tax code. The few details it does reveal tend to focus on the goodies Romney would like to offer and less on their price. Romney proposes an across the board tax cut along with cuts to the corporate rate and various other reductions, including a repeal of the alternative minimum tax. Combined, the Manhattan Institute’s Josh Barro estimates that Romney’s proposals would reduce federal tax revenues by up to $5 trillion over the next decade. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Spies in New Brunswick 03.07.12 | On June 2, 2009, a janitor in an office building in New Brunswick, N.J., noticed what he thought was terrorist-related literature and sophisticated surveillance equipment in an office he had been assigned to clean. He told his boss, who called the local police, who notified the FBI. Later in the day, the FBI and the New Brunswick police broke into the office and discovered five men busily operating the equipment. Four of the men were police officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD), and the fifth was a CIA agent. The conundrum faced by all of these public servants soon became apparent. Who should arrest whom? Should the FBI agents and the local cops arrest the NYPD and the CIA agent for violating the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions, both of which prohibit searches and seizures without search warrants, and for violating federal and New Jersey laws against wiretapping and surveillance? Should the NYPD and the CIA agent arrest the FBI agents and the local cops for breaking and entering and obstructing a governmental function without a search warrant? Did the FBI and the local cops even have a search warrant? Was the NYPD/CIA surveillance a lawful governmental function? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Pentagon Plays Drug Regulator 03.01.12 | Apparently, I am lucky to be alive. That is, at least, according to the paramount health authority in the United States: the Pentagon. News came out this month that the military has forced GNC and other vitamin stores operating on military bases to stop selling dietary supplements that contain DMAA, also known as dimethylamylamine. They made this decision after two soldiers died from heart attacks last year during fitness exercises. Both had DMAA in their systems. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Out of Afghanistan Now! 03.07.12 | Memo from the people of Afghanistan to the United States: Get out! Now! The mass demonstrations in Afghanistan, punctuated by anti-American violence, carry a clear message: After more than a decade, the U.S. empire should pack up and leave. It’s long past time. The news media, in its typically shallow fashion, attribute the current popular outrage to the “inadvertent” burning of Korans in a trash pit at Bagram air base. For most pundits and politicians, history always begins the day before yesterday. But it’s more sensible to look at the Koran-burning as the last straw. Consider Bagram. The U.S. government has a prison there—sort of a Guantanamo East—where men are held indefinitely without due process. The detention center is “worse than Guantanamo,” writes Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First. Things have only gotten worse under Nobel Peace Prize-winner President Obama: “There are now 3,000 detainees in Bagram, up from 1,700 since June (!) and five times the amount there when Barack Obama took office,” writes John Glaser. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Struggle for Individual Liberty Never Ends 03.06.12 | For supporters of limited government who are closely following the 2012 presidential race, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is the "Cult of Obama" is dead. A recent Reuters story explores the Obama campaign's marketing difficulties, and the headline says it all: "Obama's Slogan: Looking to Replace 'Hope and Change.' " The article then delicately explained that "a new tagline will have to reflect a new reality." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Blunt Amendment Didn't Go Far Enough 03.06.12 | Here’s a little thought experiment. Suppose a lot of companies in the U.S. started offering car insurance as a benefit of employment. Then suppose Congress passed a law requiring all companies to do so. And then suppose the White House decreed that, under the new law, employer-provided car insurance policies must cover the full cost of preventive maintenance, including replacing worn-out brake pads for free. You could make a case for the brake-pad mandate. You could say it would prevent collisions, save lives, and lower medical expenses. You could point out that brake pads are not a frivolous luxury, like leather upholstery, but a vital necessity. You could cite surveys showing that fully 100 percent of motorists rely on brake pads to keep from getting hurt or killed on a daily basis. And you could note that brake pads cost a fair amount of money, so paying for them puts a dent in a driver’s budget. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Rush Limbaugh's "S**t" Comment Is a Red Herring 03.05.12 | The press and President Obama have been all over Rush Limbaugh for the words he used to criticize a Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, who spoke on February 23 at a meeting of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. There’s been less attention paid, alas, to the details of Ms. Fluke’s testimony, which, when you get into them, help explain why Mr. Limbaugh was worked up about the issue. Here is some of what Ms. Fluke said: From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Symbolic Presidency 03.05.12 | In late January, President Barack Obama made one of his occasional forays into a simulated social-media free-for-all, taking pre-submitted questions from the common people on Google+. A 29-year-old Texas Republican mother of two asked the president about the wisdom of immigration visas for high-skilled workers, given that her husband, a semiconductor engineer, was unemployed. “If you send me your husband’s résumé, I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there,” Obama told her. “The word we’re getting is somebody in that high-tech field, that kind of engineer, should be able to find something right away. And the H-1B [visa] should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field.” When the Google+ “hangout” was about to end, the president revisited the subject. “I mean what I said,” he said. “If you send me your husband’s résumé, I’d be interested in finding out what’s happening.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Oil Sanctions and the Pretense of Knowledge 03.02.12 | “U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran’s crude oil exports and its central bank were not supposed to affect either the volume of oil available or its price, provided markets reacted ‘rationally,’” Reuters analyst John Kemp reported this week. Who didn’t suppose this? A biased party: the “sanctions advocates at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington” in a report called “Oil Market Impact of Sanctions Against the Central Bank of Iran.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Saving the Earth, One Fraud at a Time 03.02.12 | If the theory of man-made global warming were such a self-obvious truth, the result of scientific consensus, then why do advocates for this idea keep committing frauds to advance it? Even more disturbing, why are some writers willing to defend this behavior? Peter GleickThe latest embarrassment for global-warming activists came on Feb. 20 after Peter Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, admitted that he committed fraud to obtain documents he thought would embarrass a conservative think tank that has been a leading debunker of some of the overheated claims of the climate-change Chicken Littles. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Will the Mustache Subsidy Be the Next Solyndra? 03.02.12 | The line separating real life from parody is so exceedingly thin that it can be hard to tell which is which—especially in Washington. So let’s stipulate right at the outset that the American Mustache Institute’s pursuit of a $250 federal tax deduction for men with mustaches is a joke. Yet like all good satire, its humor contains serious comment. On April 1—April Fool’s Day—the Institute will hold a Million Mustache March in D.C. to champion its cause: the Stimulus To Allow for Critical Hair Expenses Act, or STACHE Act for short. In the meantime, it is following the template inscribed by other interest groups seeking special treatment from Washington. It has a Facebook page, celebrity endorsements, a media campaign, and even a congressional backer. Maryland Rep. Roscoe Bartlett has referred the measure to the House Ways and Means Committee for study. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What America Can Learn From Portugal's Drug War Reforms 03.01.12 | Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled!. “Frequently,” he said. “That was the point.” People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking weed. Yet those same politicians oversee a cruel system that now stages SWAT raids on people’s homes more than 100 times a day. People die in these raids—some weren’t even the intended targets of the police. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Antonin Scalia's ObamaCare Problem 03.01.12 | When the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments later this month on whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which requires all Americans to buy or secure health insurance, oversteps Congress’ lawful authority to regulate interstate commerce, the Obama administration will be drawing heavily from the legal arguments of a surprising ally: conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. That’s because in 2005, when the Supreme Court last heard a major Commerce Clause challenge to a federal regulation, Scalia sided with the liberal majority and wrote a sweeping opinion in favor of federal power. In that case, Gonzales v. Raich, the Court held that the cultivation and consumption of medical marijuana entirely within the confines of the state of California still qualified as “commerce...among the several states” because this intrastate use of medical pot “substantially affects” the interstate black market in the drug. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Say Goodbye to the King-Sized Snickers Bar 02.29.12 | In 1998, a Colorado handyman was snowmobiling in the mountains outside of Steamboat Springs when he got swept up in an avalanche that buried his vehicle and left him stranded in a blizzard. Provisioned with nothing more than two butane lighters and a Snickers bar, the man endured 40 mph winds and near-zero temperatures for five days and four nights as rescue teams struggled to locate him. Luckily, the Snickers bar he’d carried was the king-sized version. Every one of its 510 calories helped him persevere through the course of his ordeal. In the future, anyone caught in similar circumstances better hope for a faster search and rescue team. Mars Inc., the manufacturer of Snickers and many other convenience store treats, has decided to phase out chocolate products that exceed 250 calories per portion. By the end of 2013, consumers will no longer be able to purchase king-sized Snickers bars. Instead, they’ll have to make do with a product that Mars introduced in 2009, Snickers 2 To Go, which features two 220-calorie bars in a single “resealable” wrapper. In addition, Mars will also need to reduce the size of a standard Snickers bar. It currently contains 280 calories and thus exceeds the new calorie cap by 12 percent. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/1/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Virginia GOP Pulls a Pelosi 02.28.12 | Republicans in Richmond should not be terribly proud that they are one small step above Nancy Pelosi. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” Pelosi said about Obamacare in 2010. GOP lawmakers evidently did not know, until it was pointed out to them by noted medical experts such as comedian Jon Stewart, what was in the ultrasound bill they were poised to pass last week: that it would force many abortion-seeking women to submit to a transvaginal procedure against their will. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/28/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Vanguard Founder John C. Bogle Is Wrong on Taxes 02.27.12 | The founder of the Vanguard group of mutual funds, John C. Bogle, who says he is a lifelong Republican, is calling on Congress to raise capital gains taxes to the rates that apply to ordinary income. "As a general policy, equalize the taxes, raise the taxes on capital gains," Mr. Bogle said earlier this month in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu. "I look at this position as just simply logic, with maybe a touch of concern for our fellow human beings who aren't doing as well as we are all doing." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/28/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Washington’s Lousy Real Estate Portfolio 02.27.12 | These are tough times for government real estate policy. In December the Securities and Exchange Commission indicted six former executives from the failed government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including former Fannie CEO Daniel H. Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard F. Syron, on charges of fraud, alleging that the GSEs misled investors and the government in statements claiming they had minimal holdings of low-quality and subprime mortgage loans. Throughout the housing bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Freddie and Fannie, which guarantee mortgage loans and thus provide a substantial interest rate subsidy, had been concealing the large portions of their portfolios consisting of risky investments such as alt-A, subprime, and negative amortization loans. Fannie Mae finally copped to the deception in the third quarter of 2008, long after the housing crash and its attendant recession were in full swing. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/28/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Politicians Fiddle While Fiscal Crisis Looms 02.23.12 | Imagine this family budget: Last year, you earned $24,700. But you spent $37,900, incurring $13,300 in debt, and you were already $153,500 in debt. So you say, “I promise I’ll spend $300 less this year!” Anyone can see that your cutback is pathetic and that you need to spend much less. Yet if you add eight zeroes, that’s America’s budget. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/27/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tears of the Son 02.24.12 | On December 28, North Koreans bid a formal farewell to Kim Jong-il with a massive, regimented display of ritualized grief. Photos and video of bawling mourners flooded the state-run media, usually the only source of images from inside the Hermit Kingdom. Western observers were intrigued: Was all this hysteria over the death of one of the world’s worst totalitarians the product of fear, social pressure, or—perhaps most confusing of all—sincere grief expressed according to Korean tradition? Amid the uniform sobbing, one person’s sadness looked less theatrical. At his father’s funeral, the newly dubbed Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un had the ugly, blotchy face of someone who has truly been crying. And why not? Like his father before him, Kim, who is about 27 years old, has inherited dictatorial control over a bleak, starving nation whose all-powerful military may or may not bless his rule. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/27/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Totalitarian Ethics of California’s Public Sector Unions 02.24.12 | In my last column, I documented how California’s pro-union Attorney General Kamala Harris provided an unfair and dishonest title and summary to a pair of pension reform initiatives submitted to her office, thus effectively killing the measures. Last week the unions tried—and almost succeeded—with an even nastier stunt designed to undermine democracy. In San Diego, unions are fearful of a new pension reform measure referred to by supporters as Comprehensive Pension Reform, or CPR, that has qualified for the June 2012 ballot. Instead of simply gearing up to fight this political battle, the unions petitioned one of those ridiculous commissions that most Californians have never even heard of, the Public Employment Relations Board, which is unfriendly turf for taxpayers. The union said placing the initiative on the ballot amounted to an unfair labor practice, and PERB called for an injunction to stop the election until it could complete its sham proceedings. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/27/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why World Leaders Call On Celebrities to Do Their Dirty Work 02.23.12 | If you thought Sean Penn's victory over Mickey Rourke at the 2009 Oscars was weird, then how about his recent PR victory over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and its dwindling colonies? Penn recently condemned Britain's "colonialist, ludicrous, and archaic" attitude towards the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which Britain has claimed dominion over since 1833, and hinted that maybe it was time to hand the islands back to Argentina. Cue much fury in British media and political circles, where Penn has been branded "egotistical", "an idiot," "a fool," and a "vainglorious and ill-informed Hollywood actor" who should be "fed to crocodiles." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Greece Defaults 02.22.12 | The second round bailout of Greek debt is just delaying the inevitable—Greece is going to default. As details have emerged on the European Central Bank, European Financial Stability Facility, and International Monetary Fund joint agreement with private creditors and the Greek government on providing money to make sure Greece pays a March debt bill, it is increasingly clear that this deal will not be enough. In broad strokes, the agreement will provide a EU130 billion ($172 billion) loan to Greece from Eurozone nations so it has cash to pay its pending debt bill and money to complete a bond swap with private creditors that will help reduce Greece's overall debt by EU107 billion. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Unblocking the Box 02.22.12 | Twenty years ago, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes were virtually the only politically acceptable way to add freeway capacity. But now it is becoming politically palatable to add capacity with high occupancy toll (HOT) or express toll lanes, which are open to toll-paying vehicles and usually some form of high-occupancy vehicle—bus, vanpool, or carpool. The success of HOV-to-HOT conversions, and the demonstrated ability of private firms to raise large sums based on projected revenues from such projects, has stimulated activity in several of the most congested metro areas. Here is a sampling of the projects: Atlanta. After several years of study, the Georgia Department of Transportation in December 2009 adopted a $16 billion plan to add express toll lanes to nearly all the metro area’s freeways. The first project, built by a public-private partnership similar to those adding capacity on the Capital Beltway and in Dallas/Fort Worth, will be on the I-75 and I-575, just outside the I-285 ring road (known locally as the Perimeter). Separately, the local toll agency is converting HOV lanes into HOT lanes on a 15-mile stretch of I-85. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 Ways to Take Birth Control Out of the Presidential Race 02.22.12 | In the heat of a presidential election season, The Washington Post disingenuously asks, "Birth control as election issue. Why?" The title is disingenuous (methinks) because it's clear that the main reason why we are talking about this is the rightly controversial mandate in President Obama's health care reform plan that virtually all employers, including those for whom contraception is religiously proscribed or not a core business focus, give their employees free-to-them contraceptives. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Underwear Bomber Proves Obama Was Right 02.21.12 | Something remarkable didn’t happen last week: Nobody blew up Detroit. This is a stunning development. It is stunning because Detroit is the city where, on Thursday, a federal judge sentenced Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to life behind bars. Abdulmutallab is the infamous Underwear Bomber – the man who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in 2009 in a suicide mission for al-Qaida. Four months ago he pleaded guilty to the charges. In civilian court, in Detroit. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Silly Panic Over a Minority White Nation 02.21.12 | “Whites will become a minority of the American population by midcentury if not sooner,” states America Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray in his fascinating new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010. In repeating this claim, Murray (likely unintentionally) furthers a misconception about the country's shifting racial makeup and what it means for the future of the United States. Murray's likely source is the much-ballyhooed 2009 U.S. Census report [PDF] that parsed certain immigration trends and fertility trends to reach that conclusion. But the claim that “whites” will be a minority in America by 2050 implies an invidious view of the importance of ethnicity and race. “Whites,” by earlier definitions cherished by nativists, are already a minority in this country and have been for many decades. The successful amalgamation of previously scorned "races" is a testament to the ever-broadening inclusive tolerance of the American social project. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How to Save a Tree House From a Zoning Board 02.20.12 | The Swiss Family Robinson, shipwrecked builders of what may be history’s most famous tree house, were lucky their arbor of choice was sited on an uninhabited island. Had pirates chased the Robinsons ashore in Northern Virginia, a massive structure like the one immortalized in the 1960 Technicolor classic and later transformed into a Disney theme park attraction surely would have attracted unwanted attention from the local zoning board. When Spc. Mark Grapin returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Army National Guard in 2011, he promised his sons—Sean, 9, and Eric, 11—that he would build them a tree house before he shipped out again. Grapin told reason.tv he drew and redrew plans for the tree house “a hundred, if not a thousand, times.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/21/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Big Government Mandates 02.16.12 | A question arises from the recent controversy between President Obama and the Catholic Church that aches for an answer: If Catholic institutions have a right to abstain from paying for what morally offends them, why don’t the rest of us? The initial ObamaCare rule held that all employers, in fulfilling their new legal requirement to provide health insurance to their employees, must include contraception (and other “preventive” health services) in the coverage at no cost. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is sinful. The Department of Health and Human services was willing to exempt churches but not church-operated institutions that pursue a broader mission than religious teaching, such as colleges, hospitals, and charities. This brought protests from Catholic officials, who claim that their religious freedom would be infringed by a mandate that they buy services that they teach are morally abhorrent. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/21/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Capitalism Isn't Going Anywhere 02.20.12 | At the height of the financial crisis in late 2008 and early 2009, a wave of articles declared the end of capitalism. A half-dozen reporters writing about the issue called Allan Meltzer, who since 1957 has been teaching about capitalism at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Five of the calls he answered. The sixth was from a reporter of Die Zeit, the German weekly, who, as Professor Meltzer recalls it, asked, “Professor, what do you think about the end of capitalism?” Professor Meltzer replied that that was the stupidest question he’d been asked in 50 years. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/21/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Pro-Union Activism at the California Justice Department 02.20.12 | We expect all sides to fight hard in politics given the stakes involved, but our system rests on the broad acceptance of a set of fairly applied rules. We know, for instance, that no matter how nasty the coming presidential election that the loser will ultimately cede power after the final count is in. This isn’t a kleptocracy where the only redress for the losing side is to take to the streets in a violent revolt. Unfortunately, California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ recent misuse of power to provide a dishonest title and summary to proposed pension-reform initiatives she opposes comes right out of the totalitarian playbook, where those wielding power recognize no rules of decency or fairness. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/21/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Culture Warriors Resort to Propaganda 02.17.12 | “We are in a war,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius told NARAL Pro-Choice America last October. Since the first casualty in war is the truth, it is no surprise to see a great deal of deceit and dissembling—on both sides—in the culture clash over abortion and contraception. Exhibit A: The Virginia General Assembly’s passage of bills requiring an ultrasound and waiting period before an abortion. Proponents pretend the measure is merely about medical safety: It is a “precaution for the health and safety of women,” says Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, sponsor of the Senate bill. It will protect “the safety of the mother,” says the Family Foundation’s Victoria Cobb. It will “enhance women’s health,” according to Del. Mark Cole. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is Harrisburg's Nightmare America's Future? 02.16.12 | The city of Harrisburg is Ground Zero for America's municipal debt crisis. Pennsylvania's capital city has liabilities estimated at $610 million, which is nearly 10 times its annual budget. The city is so deep in the red that last year it attempted to file for bankruptcy. Reckless spending did more than ruin Harrisburg's balance sheet; it crowded out private industry and distracted from the city's core functions. Today, Harrisburg is a dangerous, poverty-stricken city, with failing schools and a shrinking population. Harrisburg's fiscal nightmare may be a harbinger of things to come for American cities. In the mid-'90s, local governments embarked on a spending binge, bringing total municipal debt in the United States to more than $2.8 trillion. Along with Harrisburg, Jefferson County, Alabama, Vallejo, California, and Central Falls, Rhode Island have filed for bankruptcy in the past few years. Several more cities are on the brink of default, largely thanks to taxpayer-financed stadiums, museums, housing, commercial complexes, other misconceived economic development projects, and runaway public sector salaries, pensions, and benefit packages. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Never Trust Government Numbers 02.16.12 | President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.” That was reassuring. The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction”—about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, Obama misleads. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Aliens vs. Bureaucrats 02.15.12 | If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is elected president, she promises to install two security fences wherever the land of the free meets the land of the willing-to-work-for-less-than-minimum-wage. And just in case you doubt Bachmann’s commitment to redundancy, she says this double shot of steel-and-concrete contraception will cover “every mile, every foot, every inch” of our border with Mexico. Another GOP hopeful, Newt Gingrich, is doubling down on a border fence too, and like Bachmann he promises to complete it by 2013. You can understand the urgency. In fiscal year 2011, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended just 340,252 illegal immigrants, a mere 20 percent of its catch in 2000, when the agency nabbed 1,676,438. It was the lowest total for alien snatching since 1971. In April 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that parts of the border have gotten so tranquil that agents are “encouraged to walk around or take coffee breaks” to keep from nodding off on the job. By 2014 there might not be enough aspiring day laborers to justify even one fence, much less two. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Santorum Is Severely Wrong 02.14.12 | "I am severely conservative," Mitt Romney told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday. Way to sell it, governor! Clearly the Romney-2012 Presidential Unit still has a few bugs in its pandering software. The former Massachusetts governor's robotic awkwardness helped propel Rick Santorum to a string of victories in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado last week, and a new Pew Research Center poll has him with a slight lead on Romney among Republican voters nationally. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Step Away From That Cookie and Grab Some Air 02.14.12 | “It may be better to live under robber barons,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep...but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Now there was a fellow who knew a thing or two. Lewis would not be surprised by a recent jeremiad in the journal Nature, arguing that sugar is just as bad for you as tobacco and alcohol, and we all ought to be forced to eat a lot less of it. The authors think it would be grand if the government slapped hefty taxes on foods with added sugar, and outlawed the sale of sugary drinks to minors, and kept sugary-drink-selling stores away from schools and any place inhabited by people who are poor and fat and therefore, presumably, stupid. (Well—“low-income areas plagued by obesity” is how the news stories put it. But we all know what they meant.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Misguided Birth Control Mandate 02.13.12 | The firestorm rages on over the Obama Administration rule under which all employee health insurance plans, including ones at religiously affiliated institutions such as Catholic charities and schools, must include full coverage for birth control. A proposed compromise that would exempt such institutions from paying for such coverage but require insurers to extend it to their employees for free has not appeased critics. The battle has been framed as one of religious freedom versus reproductive rights. But it also illustrates two troubling phenomena unrelated to religion: intrusive micromanagement of insurance options under the new federal health care law, and the redefinition of contraception as a public good rather than a personal choice. The stated purpose of health care reform was to address the problem of uninsured patients who either face bankruptcy due to exorbitant bills, or rely on the free emergency care hospitals must provide. But the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) does far more than require Americans to be insured for catastrophic illness and other major medical expenses. To be approved under the ACA, an insurance policy must include extensive coverage for routine care. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Obamacare Won't Hurt Insurance Companies 02.13.12 | What got President Obama’s contraceptive compromise into the headlines was the religious angle. What deserves to keep it there is the economic angle. After Catholic organizations complained that the federal government wanted to force them to include free contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans, the White House announced a compromise. As the White House described it, “if a woman’s employer is a charity, hospital or other religious organization that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, her insurance company – and not the hospital or charity – will be required to reach out and offer her contraceptive care free of charge.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Insuring the Uninsurable 02.10.12 | Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s proposed (and later modified) mandate that all employers—including Catholic hospitals and universities—include free contraception in their employee health insurance policies. Catholic officials object that since their church forbids contraception, the decree violates the First Amendment’ s protection of religious freedom. Others have joined in the protest, prudently anticipating that this violation of freedom of conscience could spread to other matters and other faiths. Those raising the objection have an unimpeachable case. The precedent apparently set in the more than two dozen states that already have similar mandates is irrelevant. What’s immoral does not become moral simply by precedent. The principle that no one should be forced to finance that which he or she finds abhorrent is sound. In fact, it should be generally applied. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Making State Officials More Accountable in California 02.10.12 | There are few things messier and more depressing than dependency court, where judges look at issues of child abuse and neglect and make decisions that can remove children from their homes and tear families asunder. These courts and the entire children and family services systems are plagued by controversy and allegations of mismanagement and corruption. In few areas of American life do government officials have so much unchecked power, yet are allowed to operate in nearly complete secrecy. Maybe there’s a connection there. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Are State Colleges Ripping Us Off? 02.10.12 | “You can observe a lot just by watching,” said Yogi Berra. A national group has been watching Virginia’s colleges and universities, and much that it has observed is not flattering. Grumpy old skinflints and youthful Occupy protesters alike should take note. A new report by ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, notes research indicating nearly half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years. Yet GPAs have been trending upward. Colleges, says ACTA, are giving “more credit for less learning.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ObamaCare's Medicaid Mandate 02.09.12 | Can a technically voluntary program also be coercive? The 26 states challenging the federal government’s expansion of Medicaid called for by ObamaCare are going to the Supreme Court to argue that it can. When the Supreme Court hears the state challenge to ObamaCare later this year, most of the attention will likely be on the challenge to the law’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance and its implications for the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. But in a somewhat unexpected move, the Supreme Court has decided to allow for a full hour of oral argument regarding another part of the case: the expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for the poor and disabled, which is expected to account for half of the law’s health coverage expansion. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/10/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government Can’t Make Us Happy 02.09.12 | In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn’t think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive. Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the right to pursue happiness has been perverted into a government-backed entitlement to happiness. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/10/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Gospel According to Obama 02.07.12 | George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda—and no one even blinks. We are in “the fourth year of the ministry of George W. Bush,” cracked novelist Philip Roth in 2004. By then, several million gallons of ink already had been spilled warning that Bush’s “faith-based presidency” was “nudging the church-state line” (The New York Times) and was “turning the U.S. into a religious state” (Village Voice) and was “arrogant” and “troubling” (St. Petersburg Times) and was “pandering to Christian zealots” (Salon) and “imposing its values on the rest of us” (too many to name). From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/8/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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(Eli) Manning’s Law 02.06.12 | The victory of the New York Giants in the National Football League’s Super Bowl is the latest in a series of recent news developments that underscore a principle that might be called Manning’s Law, after the Giants quarterback Eli Manning: The predictions of “experts” are often wrong. You can look it up. Sports Illustrated, the venerable, highly profitable jewel of the Time Warner Corporation’s magazine empire, employs a veteran sportswriter named Peter King. The magazine describes him as “one of America's premier pro football writers.” He’s written at least three books about football, and he’s been covering the sport professionally for more than 30 years. He’s on the board that picks members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Next Bailout 02.03.12 | Take yourself back to the good old days of 2006, when the Azzurri rightly ruled the football world and Lana Del Rey had not yet taken icicle form. With a good paying job, and only two more years of the Bush administration in sight, you decide to buy a summer home on Miami Beach. It is a good investment, you reason, until the real estate market collapse and leaves you several hundred thousand dollars underwater. And even though you’ve rented out the home since 2006 and kept your well-paid job, with about 20 percent of homes in America worth less than their mortgage it has been almost impossible to get a modification or refinance the mortgage to buy something more affordable. Until now. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/4/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Can Scientific Censorship Stop Bioterrorism? 02.01.12 | Today the U.S. National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended that the journals Nature and Science restrict publication about controversial new research relevant to the transmission of avian flu between humans. The fear: Would-be bioterrorists are combing the pages of the journals for tips on how to wreak havoc. The H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 60 percent of the 600 or so people known to have come down with it since it was first identified in 1997. For comparison, seasonal flu in the United States kills about 0.1 0.003* percent of those who catch it. So far the H5N1 virus has not become easily transmissible between humans. But recently two research teams, one in the Netherlands and another in Wisconsin, reported that they had succeeded in transforming the virus into versions that are transmissible via respiratory drops through the air between mammals. In the normal course of scientific research, the teams approached the journals Science and Nature about publishing their results. Publication is the way that scientists get credit for their achievements and enable fellow researchers to benefit from and build upon their work. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/3/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Central Planning at the Federal Reserve 02.01.12 | While it is understandable that inflation hawks keep a close watch on the Federal Reserve’s money-creation activities, an equally worrisome Fed activity is taking place right under their noses. Whether or not the Fed is expanding the money supply, it has undoubtedly moved into a new activity under cover of addressing the financial crisis and recession: central planner of the allocation of credit. As San Jose State University economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel points out in The Independent Review (Spring 2011), Fed chairman Ben Bernanke “has so expanded the Fed’s discretionary actions beyond merely controlling the money stock that it has become a gigantic, financial central planner…. [The] Fed that emerged from the crisis is no longer the same as the Fed before the crisis.” It did not even have to expand the money supply to assume its new role. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/3/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The TSA's War on Innocent Travelers 01.31.12 | "Rand Paul has got to be on the 'Top 10 People TSA Would Be Smart to Leave Alone' list," National Review's Jonah Goldberg tweeted when news broke of the senator's run-in with the Transportation Security Administration at Nashville International Airport last week. Kentucky's junior senator missed his flight when he refused a pat-down after a body scanner showed an "anomaly" on his knee. Someone with a conspiratorial mind-set might suspect a little payback for the grilling Paul gave TSA Administrator John Pistole last summer over the agency's policy of giving the "freedom fondle" to innocent 6-year-old girls. But that assumes the TSA has enough on the ball to carry out even a minor conspiracy. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Glories of Capitalism 01.30.12 | The glories of free-market capitalism are capacious. It has lifted hundreds of millions of people from bare subsistence to astonishing wealth. It has given us life-saving medical marvels, grocery shelves groaning with plenty, and phones that let you dial long-distance in the middle of a cornfield. But its glories are not limitless. And the outer boundary of capitalism's blessings stops just shy of the dill-pickle potato chip. You might differ on this. To you, some other product might better demonstrate how market economics' blessings are mixed: The DeLorean. Harley-Davidson perfume. The Apple Newton. British TV's Heil Honey, a short-lived sitcom about (no kidding) Adolf Hitler and his Jewish neighbor. The Kardashian franchise. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/31/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Peacenik Republican 01.30.12 | So far in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has more than doubled the number of votes he received in Iowa in 2008, more than tripled his vote count in New Hampshire, and nearly quintupled his vote count in South Carolina. To achive this, the libertarian-leaning Paul has had to become more slick and political in his campaigning, while retaining credibility by sticking to his specific plan to chop federal spending by $1 trillion dollars. Despite the disappointment many felt about Paul’s third-place finish in Iowa, and Paul's current last-place polling in Florida, Paul has said he's not going anywhere. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Jerry Brown's Failed Vision for California 01.20.12 | Years ago, after starting to report and editorialize on news events in an old factory city in Ohio, I was quickly dubbed a “negative” for pointing out the disastrous government spending, housing, and tax policies embraced by city leaders—policies that were keeping a nice place wretched. Anyone who made similar criticisms was dismissed as a nattering nabob who didn’t care about the future of the city. I’ve come to expect local officials to treat their critics this way, but was surprised to see Gov. Jerry Brown embrace this approach in his State of the State speech on Wednesday. Brown referred to the growing chorus of Californians complaining about a brain drain to Texas and other states with more favorable tax and regulatory climates as “declinists” with dark visions of the future. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Don't Trust Your Instincts 01.19.12 | Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote. Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Fatal Conceit, it's a problem that in our complex, extended economy, we rely on instincts developed during our ancestors' existence in small bands. In those old days, everyone knew everyone else, so affairs could be micromanaged. Today, we live in a global economy where strangers deal with each other. The rules need to be different. Hayek said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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End of the Line for the Bullet Train 01.19.12 | The way high-speed rail projects have been collapsing around the world, you’d think they were corrupt, outrageously expensive, fiscally ruinous, poorly planned government efforts to build a 19th century means of transportation for which there’s no demand. The Obama Administration’s bullet-train dream is dead. Florida Gov. Rick Scott last year rejected $2 billion in federal funds rather than commit the Sunshine State to such an expensive project. California’s high-speed rail effort is in turmoil, recently suffered a purge of top management, and is unlikely to meet its September deadline to break ground on a federally mandated leg universally termed the “train to nowhere.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Space on Earth 01.17.12 | The sight is a wickedly thin line of shimmering and vibrant pale green. The sensation is a warm pulse. The sound is muffled to insensibility by high-grade ear protection. On my tape recorder later, however, I hear it: a sharp-edged roaring whoosh that strains my speakers to the breaking point. It’s an honest-to-goodness rocket engine, designed to shift a spaceship floating in weightless suborbit in order to give a passenger a different viewpoint, or to position the craft for safe re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere and gravity well. It’s burning a proprietary, nontoxic fuel mixture. I’m at the Mojave Spaceport—the private general aviation airfield where SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to zip twice between space and back, first took off in 2004. That’s the same year that Mojave became certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the nation’s first private “spaceport,” certified to send vehicles and people out of this world. Seven years later, more than a handful of commercial space companies operate out of this sprawling complex of runways, hangars, and airplane bits, and it’s no longer the only private spaceport in America. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/19/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cancel the War and Fix the Wounded 01.17.12 | Never let anybody tell you Americans like to get drunk. That is not accurate. The truth is that Americans like to get not just a little giddy, not just mildly intoxicated, but draaauuuwwwwwnk. Loud, slobbery, try-to-sit-down-and-miss-the-couch drunk. So reports the Centers for Disease Control, which says one in six Americans go on a binge at least once a month. This is 2 percentage points higher than the CDC found the last time. Even so, the new figure is probably a “substantial underestimate,” says the head of the CDC’s alcohol program, Robert Brewer (!), because people tend to under-report their own misbehavior. (No word on whether the study is weighted to account for those poor sots so hung over they couldn’t even pick up the phone.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/19/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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After 2008's Hope and Change, It's Sober and Sane for 2012 01.17.12 | Mitt Romney's relentless rise continues as an InsiderAdvantage poll released Sunday has him 11 points ahead of his nearest rival in South Carolina. The former Massachusetts governor looks likely to seal the deal in Saturday's primary—dashing Tea Party hopes for a nominee who's sincerely committed to smaller government. Get ready for a "passionless presidential race," Robert Reich warned recently on salon.com. Liberals will support President Obama "without enthusiasm," conservatives will pull the lever for Romney only grudgingly, leaving the country "with two presidential candidates who don't inspire—at the very time in American history when Americans crave inspiration." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/19/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Skyscrapers As Spaceships 01.16.12 | America’s first spaceships were lumbering beasts made of iron, steel, and fireproof terra cotta. One of the earliest prototypes was manufactured in Chicago in 1885. It had no engine and remained firmly rooted to Earth for all of its 46-year existence. But this trailblazer allowed its occupants to spend long stretches of their day at the dizzying, almost incomprehensible height of 138 feet, and in 1885 that qualified as space travel. It was the 10-story Home Insurance Building, often described as the world’s first skyscraper. (Though purists insist that its lack of a complete steel frame, a primary characteristic of skyscrapers, invalidates that claim.) In the late 19th century, as ever-taller buildings began to lift man closer to the heavens in Chicago, New York, and other American cities, they inspired awe, envy, and, of course, regulatory efforts to impede their development. As Keith D. Revell, a professor of public administration at Florida International University, notes in an essay that appears in the 2005 anthology The American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories (Cambridge University Press), early skyscrapers were charged with “rampant individualism,” “robb[ing] pedestrians of light and air,” and even threatening public health by “blocking the salubrious rays of the sun.” In 1891 Boston outlawed buildings greater than 125 feet in height. In 1904 Baltimore set the limit of architectural aspiration to a measly 70 feet. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Romney and Hancock 01.16.12 | To understand the presidential bid of the 70th governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it’s useful to remember the career of the first. John Hancock, like Mitt Romney, was one of the richest men of his time. Hancock had a three-story, 56-foot-wide granite mansion atop Boston’s Beacon Hill, complete with a ballroom and stables. Mr. Romney reportedly has a $12 million beachfront house in La Jolla, Calif., and a $10 million lakefront house in New Hampshire, as well as a Massachusetts townhouse. In 2009 the Romneys sold their 9,500-square-foot Utah ski house for $5 million and their Belmont, Mass., home for $3.5 million. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Pain of Bain Falls Mainly on Romney’s Campaign? Not Quite 01.13.12 | Believe it or not, Newt Gingrich is doing Mitt Romney a favor. Gingrich has spent the past week attacking Romney’s tenure as the head of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney helped found in the 1980s. Through his own words and a propagandistic documentary produced by Winning Our Future, a well funded pro-Newt Super PAC run by a former campaign aid, Gingrich has attempted to paint Romney as a heartless, out of touch, capitalist monster—the King of Bain—whose firm made millions through mass firings and layoffs. The campaign, however, has mostly backfired. Gingrich has united the conservative chattering class against him enough that Winning Our Future's major financial backer, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has distanced himself from the documentary, and Gingrich has called for its producers to either edit the film or "pull it off the air and off the internet entirely." In the process, Gingrich has managed to generate the one thing that the Romney campaign has failed to win or buy for itself: sympathy. But what’s good for Romney may be bad for the rest of us. Gingrich’s attacks aren’t just helping to unite conservatives in defense of Romney, they’re distracting from the very real flaws in Romney’s record. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/16/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Another Way California Wastes Taxpayer Dollars 01.13.12 | California legislators never have enough time, and always lack the vision, to deal appropriately with the state’s pressing budget and infrastructure problems. But they are great at self-aggrandizement and at catering to the special-interest groups that assure their re-election. One would think, for instance, the Assembly Transportation Committee would be deeply concerned with the massive predicted cost overruns for the proposed High Speed Rail system, or with planning cost-effective ways to meet the transportation needs of a growing population. Yet the committee spends nearly a third of its time on a task that few readers would consider of vital importance: naming highways. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/16/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The GOP Field: Theocracy, Michary, & Ambiguocracy 01.13.12 | Remember when pundits accused the GOP of abandoning its big tent—the one big enough to include a broad diversity of views? You can kiss that meme goodbye. This year’s presidential candidates span the political spectrum. They are both pro-abortion and anti-abortion. They have both embraced and opposed bans on assault weapons. They have both accepted and rejected the idea of human-induced climate change, both promoted and derided a government takeover of health care, supported both amnesty for illegal aliens and building a giant wall on the border. And that’s just Mitt Romney. We haven’t even touched on the rest of the field yet. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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For Richer and for Poorer 01.12.12 | The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or so the saying goes. Thousands of people have been sleeping outside in tents for months as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement in large part because they believe this statement is both accurate and important. But while there is a nugget of truth there, this critique obscures the great news that income mobility is actually alive and well in the United States of America. There is plenty of evidence that the richest Americans are richer than the richest Americans of the past. For instance, the top 1 percent of income earners in 1990 made 14 percent of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), or pre-tax income, versus 23 percent in 2007—the second highest figure on record. The top 1 percent of households in 2007 made 275 percent more money adjusted for inflation than the top 1 percent in 1979, according to an October report from the Congressional Budget Office, while incomes in the bottom 20 percent increased by just 18 percent. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/13/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Putting Faith in Champions of Freedom, Not Politicians 01.12.12 | It’s election season, and so once again people look for heroes. Is Ron Paul one? Maybe. He’s fought a long, lonely battle to limit the power of government. As government grows, I yearn for champions of freedom who fight back. Rep. Paul has done that. But it’s a mistake to look for heroes in politics. It’s too ugly a business. My heroes are people like Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand. Damn—they’re all gone. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/13/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Supreme Court Fails to Protect Economic Liberty, Again 01.11.12 | Does the Constitution protect the right to earn a living free from arbitrary and unnecessary government interference? James Madison, the document’s chief architect, thought it did. “That is not a just government,” Madison wrote, “where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations.” Rep. John Bingham (R-Ohio), the author of section one of the 14th Amendment, which forbids state governments from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” thought so too. According to Bingham, the 14th Amendment secures the right “to work in an honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of your fellowmen, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.” So why does the Supreme Court keep refusing to protect economic liberty? On Monday, the Court declined to hear a powerful legal challenge filed by the Institute for Justice against the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2011 decision upholding Florida’s requirement that all interior designers carry an occupational license from the state. Not only do 47 other states currently permit unlicensed interior design without any accompanying risk to innocent civilians, Florida’s own attorney general’s office even admitted in a joint pretrial stipulation that “neither the defendants nor the state of Florida have any evidence that the unregulated practice of interior design presents any bona fide public welfare concerns.” This isn’t unlicensed brain surgery, after all. So why did the 11th Circuit let this blatantly unnecessary law stand? “A statute survives rational basis review even if it ‘seems unwise...or if the rationale for it seems tenuous,’” the 11th Circuit declared. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Goodnight Moonshot 01.09.12 | “Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon,” President Barack Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union speech. “The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.” Was the president rising to the challenge of some new technology that America’s adversaries were mastering? Was he doubling down on the vague, far-off promise by his predecessor to send a mission to Mars? No. He was talking about government loans for solar panels, federal spending on research, and the even more prosaic work of getting his preferred budget passed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Romney Riddle 01.09.12 | One of the strange things about America—a country founded on a revolution against a hereditary monarchy—is that so many of our politicians seem to inherit their professions. John Adams begat John Quincy Adams. Senator Prescott Bush begat President George Herbert Walker Bush, who begat President George W. Bush. Senator Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee begat Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. Governor Brown of California, Sr., begat Governor Brown of California, Jr. Even the ties between Barack Obama, Sr., the Harvard-educated Kenyan socialist, and Barack Obama, Jr., the Harvard-educated incumbent president, are the subject of much discussion and debate. Whether one believes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, or whether one believes sons rebel against their fathers, there’s a power to the notion that the careers of the fathers can tell us something about the characters of the son. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ideas Have Sex, and We’re Better for It 01.05.12 | An idea walks into a bar. She meets another idea. They get together, and nine months later (or maybe it’s nine minutes or seconds? It’s not clear how it works with ideas), a new idea is born. A baby idea with the best traits of both parents. When this happens a lot, everyone gets smarter and the world gets better. Did you know that ideas have sex? It’s a weird concept, but the more I think about it, the more right it seems. I learned it from British journalist Matt Ridley, a recent guest on my Fox Business show. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Victory for Property Rights in California 01.09.12 | I’m still giddy after the California Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 29 that the state had every right to shut down those noxious enemies of property rights and fiscal responsibility known as redevelopment agencies. Better yet, the state’s high court ruled that another law that allowed those agencies to come back into existence was unconstitutional. As of February, anyway, redevelopment is dead in California, the victim of an absurdly arrogant legal and political strategy pursued by redevelopment’s chief defenders. This is wonderful news, made even better by the teeth-gnashing of public officials who have routinely abused their powers under redevelopment law. Cry me a river. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama Finally Does Something Right on Immigration 01.07.12 | Since 2009, the Obama administration has broken up tens of thousands of American families in which one or more members was an undocumented immigrant. In many of these cases, the government forced the undocumented spouse or child of a legal U.S. citizen to return to their home country before allowing them to apply for residency in the U.S. Upon leaving this country, however, many of those immigrants were then barred from returning for a period of up to 10 years, a consequence of their having resided in the U.S. without documentation. A new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy will change that for a select few immigrants. Current immigration policy says that immigrants who have spouses or parents who are U.S. citizens, and who can prove that their absence will create a hardship for their American families, may qualify for a “hardship waiver” from the 10 year rule. The policy currently requires these immigrants to “touch back” on the soil of their home country to fill out the hardship application and wait there until it is approved. The term "touch back" is deceptive, however, as applicants often spend anywhere from several months to several years carefully navigating the U.S. immigration bureaucracy via satellite from an American embassy while waiting for DHS to determine if their presence is in fact necessary to their American family's survival. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/8/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Who’s Worse—Romney or Environmental Regulators? 01.06.12 | Pop quiz: Which has done more to ruin other people’s lives—Mitt Romney, or federal energy and environmental policy? To liberals the answer is clear. They have already begun to portray Romney as a “vulture capitalist” whose work at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded, often left destitution in its wake. That’s not the story Romney tells, of course. He contends his skill at turning lifeless companies into profit volcanoes is just what a weak and battered country could use right now. But liberals—along with Romney’s GOP rivals—tell a different story. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/6/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Chicago Crosses the Line In Trying to Maintain Property Values 01.05.12 | If you live in Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas, or Phoenix, you've seen an abandoned home or six in your neighborhood. In countless other cities across the country, empty homes are a visual symbol of the nation’s economic malaise. Many of them have weeds the height of their former occupants, paint chipping off the sideboards, and broken windows that have resulted in dangerous neighborhood conditions, blight, and decreased property values for residents living nearby. What to do? Las Vegas recently passed a law requiring banks to register properties with defaulted mortgages at fee of $200 each. Research by the American Financial Services Association has found over 460 city ordinances around the country trying to address the abandoned property issue, though few are as harsh as a Chicago ordinance first passed last summer. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/6/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Flawed Exit Strategy for Iraq 01.04.12 | In his official remarks about the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, President Obama told an assembly of troops: The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries—from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you—men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11. You’d never know that a signature of Obama’s 2008 campaign was his assertion that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a terrible mistake. (Actually, it was a crime, but let that go.) This was the main way he sought to distinguish himself as a candidate from his rival, Hillary Clinton, who had voted to authorize George W. Bush to use force against the Iraqi people on the thinnest of pretexts. True, you didn’t have to scratch very deep before discovering a waffle: At one point in 2008, Obama said he didn’t know how he would have voted on the authorization of force had he been in the Senate at the time. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Postenvironmentalism and Technological Abundance 01.04.12 | Environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus famously proclaimed The Death of Environmentalism in 2004. Now they're back with an ambitious new collection of essays titled Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Their goal is to dismantle the neo-Malthusian environmentalism of sacrifice and collapse and replace it with a new environmentalism that celebrates human creativity and technological abundance. Hooray! In their introductory essay, Shellenberger and Nordhaus make the case that technological progress and economic growth is the road to salvation, not the highway to ruin. They acknowledge that global warming may bring worsening disasters and disruptions in rainfall, snowmelts, and agriculture. However, they add, there is little evidence it will end civilization. “Even the most catastrophic United Nations scenarios predict rising economic growth. While wealthy environmentalists claim to be especially worried about the impact of global warming on the poor, it is rapid, not retarded, development that is most likely to protect the poor against natural disasters and agricultural losses.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ron Paul Reaches Out to the Youth of Occupy Wall Street 01.04.12 | Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) may have placed third at the Iowa caucus on Tuesday, behind a tied-up Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, but he did so while pulling 58 percent of caucus goers under the age of 30, according to MSNBC. Paul's popularity with young people is legend, and last night's showing reveals that it extends to conservative Iowa. (Students at West Des Moines Valley High School, where an appearance by Paul yesterday morning nearly brought down the house, elected the Texas congressman president in a mock election last month.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/5/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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On Reflection, I Might Not Be Absolutely Right About Everything 12.30.11 | If progress is defined as making the same mistake less often, or making new mistakes of a higher caliber, then by that one narrow measure this column was slightly better than it was last year. Or at least slightly less awful. A review of the past 12 months’ output turns up only a couple of real wincers. One of those is from a piece on transportation early in 2011, when I wrote that “drivers pay 98 percent of the cost of roadways through gasoline taxes.” There is much disagreement about how much automobile travel is actually subsidized, and you can get into a lively debate about Table HF-10 from the Federal Highway Administration’s annual report on highway statistics if you want to. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Libertarian Year Ahead? 12.29.11 | As 2011 draws to a close, I wonder: Is freedom winning? Did America become freer this year? Less free? How about the rest of the world? I'm a pessimist. I fear Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." That's what's happened. Bush and Obama doubled spending and increased regulation. Government's intrusiveness is always more, never less. The state grows, and freedom declines. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Congress, Obama Codify Indefinite Detention 12.28.11 | In yet another reversal of his professed commitment to the rule of law, President Obama says he will sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which formalizes his authority to imprison terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. Where is the “progressive” outrage? George W. Bush and Obama both claimed that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) empowered them to have the military hold people merely suspected of association with al-Qaeda or related organizations without charge for the duration of the “war on terror.” It didn’t matter if the suspect was a foreigner, a U.S. citizen, or a legal resident. It also didn’t matter if the alleged offense was committed inside or outside the United States. The battlefield encompassed the whole world. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Modest Proposal: Let’s Ban All Sports! 12.30.11 | Isn’t it about time America banned soccer? Not because of British hooligans or the vuvuzela that has now made it into your local dollar store, although Heaven knows soccer has plenty to answer for on both those scores. No, the question at hand is whether soccer should be banned because of the other costs it imposes on society. This comes up thanks to a little story from a few weeks back about a new study finding that “heading” a soccer ball can lead to traumatic brain injury. The damage is not so severe that players will need to be institutionalized. At worst, some of them will end up talking like George W. Bush. This is still not something to be wished on anyone. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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On Christmas, Escaping the Well-Lit Prison 12.23.11 | The Hinkle household is a blended one, which is to say that half the management is male and the other is female. This usually works out fine until around Christmas, when certain politically incorrect gender stereotypes exert themselves. At the time of the merger several years ago, the male half’s holiday décor consisted of whatever Christmas cards came in the mail. Pick out a festive one, tape it to the front door, and voila! – you’re done. The female half of the enterprise came with several large storage tubs filled with tree trimmings, lights, stockings, garlands, advent calendars, ribbons, bows, wreaths, and so on. This admittedly amps up the holiday atmosphere by several notches, but somebody has to haul it all out and put it all up. So the male half of the household hauls it out and then waits for instructions. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Arresting Judges: It Just Makes Sense 12.22.11 | Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is finding, again, that people don’t really trust him to be our country’s king. But with his flair for saying what nobody knew they were thinking, Gingrich shows why he’s eminently qualified to be America’s deformed court jester. In a chat with CBS' Bob Schieffer a few days ago, the blustery former Speaker of the House happily called for the arrest of judges whose decisions fall foul of a president and Congress. Gingrich wants Congress to issue subpoenas to bring judges in for congressional interrogations. “How would you enforce that?” Schieffer asked. “Would you send the Capitol Police down there to arrest him?” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is Obamacare Stopping Businesses From Hiring? 12.22.11 | President Obama says his health care “reform” will be good for business. Business has learned the truth. Three successful businessmen came on my Fox Business show last week to explain how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama and Congress Bring the War on Terror to Your Doorstep 12.20.11 | Last Thursday—which happened to be the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights—the Senate passed a defense bill that demonstrates just how cavalier Congress can be with our fundamental liberties. Given the opportunity to clarify existing law and confirm that American citizens are not subject to indefinite military detention at the order of the president—Congress punted. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Electric Car Aid Goes Bust 12.20.11 | If Tolkien was right that the burned hand teaches best, then a question arises: Will President Obama ever learn? In a recent appearance on 60 Minutes, Obama traded in his old analogy about the car in the ditch for a new one, about a ship in rough seas. No matter how well the captain—Obama—steers it, if the ship is being tossed about with violent abandon, then the passengers will not enjoy the ride. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Remembering Kim Jong-Il's Victims 12.19.11 | The pictures accompanying the news of the leadership change in North Korea are those of the dead dictator, Kim Jong-Il, and his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-Un. But there are some other Koreans whose names and photos, though absent from the front pages, tell the real story. Ri Hyon Ok was a 33-year-old mother of three who was publicly executed by the North Korean government on June 16, 2009, for the crime of giving away bibles. Her husband and children were banished to North Korea’s vast political prison system the day after she was killed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Fixing California's Broken Legislature 12.19.11 | The approval rating for the job the California Legislature is doing remains pitiful, ranging in the past year or so from a record-low 9 percent to 16 percent. That percentage of Californians will no doubt support any possible idea you place before them on a public opinion poll, which should put in perspective the quality of support for the work done in the state capitol. Many proposals to solve California’s problems build on this understandable disdain for the state’s legislators. For instance, some Republicans are promoting a “citizen legislature” idea that would turn California’s full-time Legislature into a part-time body. If we can’t get rid of them, we might as well put up with them only half of the year. Unfortunately, such an approach, while offering an appealing poke-in-the-eye, will end up empowering the executive branch and lobbyist class. Something will fill the void while legislators are home earning a living. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Never-Ending Budget Battle 12.18.11 | This year, for the first time in modern history, the Senate failed to pass a budget. That sounds dramatic, but last year the House failed at the same task. A few years before that, the House and the Senate each wrote their own budgets, but failed to agree in conference. Each time, the president ended up signing massive omnibus spending bills—at ever-increasing expense to taxpayers. The budget process is broken, and public interest in reforming it is keen. But changing the budget rules alone is unlikely to fix our fiscal woes. Even properly designed constraints, in order to be effective, would require credible external and internal enforcement backed by public opinion. Good luck with that. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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I, Panel 12.20.11 | I am a solar panel—not the ordinary flat solar panel familiar to all boys and girls and adults who hope for greener energy sources. I’m actually much more sophisticated and much less useful than those. I’m a cylindrical-tube panel manufactured by Fremont, California-based Solyndra LLC. According to my creators, I offer a unique advantage over the traditional solar panel—I don’t need to be repositioned throughout the day to absorb maximum sunlight. Solyndra says that I “capture sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface capable of converting direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight into electricity.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Job Creators Fight Back 12.15.11 | Some politicians claim that politicians create jobs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, “My job is to create jobs.” What hubris! Government has no money of its own. All it does is take from some people and give to others. That may create some jobs, but only by leaving less money in the private sector for job creation. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Manufacturing Consensus 12.13.11 | The Aspen Institute, an international public policy nonprofit founded in 1950, describes itself as a “convener.” Rather than push for a specific ideological agenda, the organization brings together elite politicians and journalists in a “neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues.” What happens in Aspen (and Washington, D.C., and other cities where the institute facilitates debates) does not stay in Aspen; the whole point is to influence policy wherever it is discussed and manufactured. So it was with keen interest that I received an invitation to attend an October 27 Aspen Institute confab in D.C. on “The Role of Government in the Economy.” Libertarians, after all, tend to hold the view that the greater the role of government, the worse the economy. Of even keener interest was the lineup: on the left, recently departed chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden Jared Bernstein; on the right, former Bush administration Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation executive director Bradley Belt, and moderating between them the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington bureau chief and former economics columnist David Leonhardt. Surely there would be some wide-ranging disagreement on the federal government’s role in precipitating and exacerbating the economic malaise of the past four years. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Despite Its New Diet, Virginia State Government Is Fatter Than Ever 12.13.11 | To hear some folks tell it, budget cuts in Virginia over the past three to four years have been so savage it’s a miracle there’s any state government left. We long ago cut out all the fat and hacked through the muscle; now we’re sawing deep into bone. Localities are scared stiff that the state will stiff them come January. And it’s only going to get worse. Gov. Bob McDonnell has had state agencies prepare plans cutting 2 percent, 4 percent, and 6 percent from their budgets. The stories have grown numbingly familiar. Yet at the same time, we’re told “State Revenue Up 3.1 Percent in October.” That Times-Dispatch news story from a couple of weeks ago related how tax collections for October, 2011, were higher than collections from October the year before. Moreover, this October “marked the 19th month out of 20 that collections had exceeded those of the same month in the preceding year.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Teddy Imitation Falls Flat 12.13.11 | or an increasingly uphill re-election battle in which he'll have to "go negative," I'd figured President Obama would imitate Harry Truman in '48, railing against a "do-nothing Congress." But it turns out he'll be running as Teddy Roosevelt instead. Obama wrapped himself in T.R.'s mantle in a much-hyped speech last Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas. There, in 1910, ex-president Roosevelt proclaimed a "New Nationalism" that would involve "far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had." He'd go on to challenge President Taft for the Republican nomination, and then run as a Progressive when that failed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Jerry Brown's Disastrous Plan for California 12.12.11 | Gov. Jerry Brown last Monday released “An Open Letter to the People of California,” in which he called for the state’s taxpayers to approve tax-raising initiatives to “fix” the state’s structural deficit. Here is the letter and my translation of what Brown really meant to say. Brown: When I became governor again … California was facing a $26.6 billion budget deficit. It was the result of years of failing to match spending with tax revenues as budget gimmicks instead of honest budgeting became the norm. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Drug War’s Mission Creep Hurts Farmers 12.9.11 | Every war produces collateral damage, including America’s war on drugs – whose manifold victims include any number of farmers in Virginia. Jim Politis has a plan to help them. But first, he will have to get it past Congress. Politis is a retired businessman who now sits on the Board of Supervisors in Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech. He wants Washington to let farmers grow industrial hemp. That should be an easy sell. Once upon a time, hemp cultivation was not only permitted, but required: An act of Virginia’s General Assembly in 1623 mandated hemp-growing. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. It remained a popular source of fiber for rope, clothing, and many other products until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which pretty much killed off domestic hemp production. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Kyoto Protocol Is Dead, Long Live the Kyoto Protocol 12.9.11 | Durban, South Africa—The U.N.’s climate change conference here in South Africa winds down today. As usual with these conferences, as the end becomes nigh negotiators turn elusive and rumors run rampant. At the moment, it looks like the negotiators will approve a new mechanism for distributing climate reparations to poor countries, the Green Climate Fund. At earlier Conferences of the Parties (COP-15 and COP-16) in Copenhagen and Cancun, rich countries promised to distribute $30 billion in aid to poor countries by 2012 to help them adapt to climate change. The rich countries further promised to send $100 billion in such aid to poor countries annually beginning in 2020. The preferred options of the poor countries for funding the Green Climate Fund in the draft negotiating text state that COP-17 “decides that all adaption finance shall be provided in the form of grants and wherever possible, through direct access” and “decides that the main or/major source of funding will be public sources.” Poor country politicians are very anxious that the climate change adaptation aid comes directly from the taxpayers of rich countries and is sent directly to their governments’ coffers. About the Green Climate Fund, U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern said, "I have a fair amount of confidence this is going to get done in a positive way.” Frankly, the sad, decades-long record of the failure of trillions of dollars in foreign aid to spur economic development in poor countries does not provide much optimism that developing country governments will handle climate change aid any more effectively. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama Takes Off the Gloves 12.8.11 | Finally! "In Kansas," the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized this week, "Obama finally found his voice." By theatrically following Teddy Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" footsteps in Osawatomie, Kansas, the president had "finally seize[d] the moment," Michael Tomasky enthused at The Daily Beast. "With this speech, the President finally brings long-sought thematic and programmatic coherence to his many proposals and policy initiatives," Cornell University law professor Robert C. Hockett offered in an "expert available" press release. The scent of sweet release wafted all over the media. "Obama appears finally to have recognized the fruitlessness of trying to govern in the post-partisan mode on which he campaigned for president," Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green wrote. Former Bill Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich spoke for many when he said: "Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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America Is Just One Decade Away From Turning Into Greece 12.6.11 | When Greece blew up, its government debt was 126 percent of gross domestic product. Ours is on track to exceed that in about 10 years. If we haven’t learned from Greece, might we learn when other countries blow up? That may be about to happen, says Daniel Hannan, author of The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America. Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament, says, “The consequences of the better part of 40 years of reckless borrowing have caught up with us.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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California's Public Pension Disaster 12.5.11 | As the pension and health-care benefit crisis sweeps across the nation, some states are seriously dealing with these multibillion-dollar problems that threaten public services and treasuries. And other states remain in deep denial. California, to no one’s surprise, is moving stridently in the wrong direction. The tiny state of Rhode Island, for instance, faced enormous pension liabilities. Its state system was about 40 percent funded and on the brink of collapse. The Legislature and governor last month reformed the pension system by shifting to a hybrid pension plan (rather than a pure defined-benefit plan), suspended cost-of-living raises for retirees and boosted the retirement age. The reforms reduced benefits for current employees. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Anchor Babies Away? 12.2.11 | President Barack Obama’s administration said in July that it would give immigration officials more leeway to choose not to deport people who came here illegally, but have lived in the United States for most of their lives, committed no other crime, or have family here—particularly those who are active duty service members. Republican soup of the day Newt Gingrich has promised something similar: A “path to legality” (but not citizenship) for illegal immigrants who have “deep ties to America, including family, church and community ties,” plus jobs, English skills, and their own health coverage. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How The Government's War on Street Vendors Keeps People Poor 12.1.11 | Have you noticed how often government takes sides against the little guy? Street vending has been a path out of poverty for Americans. And like other such paths (say, driving a taxi), this one is increasingly difficult to navigate. Why? Because entrenched interests don't like competition. So they lobby their powerful friends to erect high hurdles to upstarts. It's an old story. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Thirteen Steps For Making U.S. Child Care As Horrible As U.S. Health Care 11.29.11 | Thirteen Steps For Making U.S. Child Care As Horrible As U.S. Health Care From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Sky Is Falling Less? 11.29.11 | Last week, Science published a new study by Oregon State University researcher Andreas Schmittner and colleagues who found that an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may result in less warming than predicted. The researchers declared that their results “imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought.” Has the global warming apocalypse been called off? Researchers know from physics that added carbon dioxide tends to increase the temperature of the atmosphere because it blocks the escape of heat from Earth into space. The term climate sensitivity conventionally refers to how much warming can be expected from a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. It is generally agreed that by itself, doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above pre-industrial levels would boost the average global temperature by about 1.2° Celsius (2.2° Fahrenheit). However, many climate researchers believe that other feedbacks (water vapor, clouds, etc.) add to the effect of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases). From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Weathering Man-Made Climate Change 11.22.11 | A new United Nations report projects man-made global warming will boost the damage caused by heat waves, coastal floods, and droughts as they get worse by the end of the century. In a press release about the report, Special Report for Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change Co-Chair Qin Dahe expressed high confidence that temperatures have increased due to man-made global warming. The study further expressed medium confidence that droughts had increased in some areas as a result of man-made climate change. However, the researchers could not draw firm conclusions about the effects of climate change on any trends in hurricanes, typhoons, hailstorms, or tornadoes. (The full report detailing the scientific work behind the study will not be released until February.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Virginia Dems Try to Thwart the Will of the People 11.22.11 | Democrat Dick Saslaw, the (former) majority leader in the State Senate, says Republicans “are trying to overrule the will of the people and claim a majority they did not earn” because “half the state voted for Democrats.” Is he right? Absolutely not – in fact, precisely the opposite is true. It’s the Democrats who are trying to thwart the voters’ clear wishes. On Nov. 8 Virginians elected 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans to the State Senate. Because Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling presides over the Senate and can cast tie-breaking votes, the GOP has claimed a majority, and is refusing to establish a power-sharing arrangement like the one the Senate operated under the last time it was evenly divided, in the mid-1990s. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Good Riddance to the Super Secret Supercommittee 11.21.11 | The idea was laughable to begin with—that a “supercommittee” including Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) would be able to do what President Obama and the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, had failed to do in months of negotiations, and come up with a workable plan to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion. Enough people fell for it back on August 1, though, that Congress was able to rush through an increase in the federal debt limit of $2.1 trillion. Everyone was so inspired at the time by the return of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) to cast her vote in favor of the debt increase that they failed to focus on whether the spending cuts promised in exchange would actually materialize. Even the page of the House Web site that lists the roll call vote is an illustration of what frauds our politicians are. Instead of describing the vote as “Borrow $2.1 trillion against a promise that a ‘supercommittee’ including John Kerry will come up with some cuts sometime in the future,” the House describes it as “To make a technical amendment to the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Bipartisan War on Liberty 11.18.11 | To outward appearances, it might seem as though the left and right have never been more at odds. And for the average man in the street, drawn to the Tea Party on one side or the Occupy movement on the other, this might be true. But it is not so true for elite opinion. The nation's high and mighty may be divided about many things, but on one point they often agree: Americans are still too darn free. For example: Not enough people exercise their right to vote. Problem, right? Well, William Galston of the Brookings Institution has a solution: Force them to. The other day he took to the pages of The New York Times to explain why we should be "Telling Americans to Vote, or Else." (It doesn't seem to have occurred to Galston that making people exercise a right takes that right away, by turning it into an obligation.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Politics of Campus Sexual Assault 11.17.11 | Nearly two years ago, in February 2010, University of North Dakota student Caleb Warner was thrown out of school with a three-year ban on reapplying after a campus disciplinary panel found he had violated criminal laws by sexually assaulting a fellow student. In fact, Warner was never actually charged with a crime in the justice system—but his accuser, Jessica Murray, was. In May of the same year, the Grand Forks, North Dakota police department formally charged her with filling a false report after concluding its investigation. (Murray now resides in California and has never appeared in court to answer the charge.) Yet Warner remained banned from campus until last month, when he was finally reinstated after the indefatigable FIRE—the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- interceded to publicize his plight. Now, some in Washington are pushing for measures that would create more such travesties. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Wenzhou, a Town Built on Failure 11.17.11 | Wenzhou, China, is certainly having a hard year. The city, which has grown from a backwater into an economic juggernaut in the past 30 years, has recently seen its largest export market, Europe, collapse, and local money markets have been forced to adjust to post-stimulus realities. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the city of three million is “unravelling,” while The New York Times claimed that its entrepreneurs are “running scared.” Their evidence? Ninety (out of 400,000) factory owners are known to have fled the city, after a brief but sharp adjustment in Wenzhou’s traditional credit markets. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The FDA Kills Smokers 11.17.11 | "The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health." That's what the Food and Drug Administration tells us on its website. My intuition makes me grateful that the FDA is there to protect me—to make sure that every drug is proven both safe and effective—but "protection" kills people. Last week, I discussed how the FDA kills by keeping useful medical devices off the market. Now, we learn the FDA threatens the health of cigarette smokers who want to quit. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Now We Know Why Children Are Getting Dumber 11.15.11 | A great scientific mystery has been solved. It happened the weekend before Election Day, so you might not have heard about it amid all the campaign noise. Good news: Now's your chance to catch up! Here's the mystery: Why, you probably have been wondering, are young people today so dumb—especially compared to people of earlier generations? After all, when those of us in The Middle Years (or even older) were in our teens and twenties, we knew utterly everything, whereas the Youth of Today know almost nothing. This holds true despite the fact that they can look up anything almost instantly, whereas those of us who came along before wireless Internet access had to acquire knowledge by any number of arduous means, including walking to the library or even, if all else failed, asking an Old Person for help. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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In Search of Free Will and Moral Responsibility 11.15.11 | In Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain, University of California, Santa Barbara cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga sets off in search of free will. After four chapters of digging for a useful theory of mind among the neurons, his results are disappointing. Far more impressive, however, is his intriguing and persuasive treatment of the moral implications of modern neuroscience. Metaphysics aside, what is really important is that people believe we have free will. Gazzaniga convincingly argues that morality is an emergent property of minds (brains) interacting with one another. His discussion of the evolution of human sociality is fascinating. Over the eons humans have changed their physical and social environments, which in turn has shifted the sorts of genes, behaviors, and brains that successfully reproduce in a generally more cooperative direction. Gazzaniga cites the hypothesis of primatologists Brian Hare and Michael Tomasello who suggest that humans may have undergone a process of self-domestication in which overly aggressive or despotic individuals were reproductively weeded out—by being ostracized or killed by the group. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Terror Fairy Tales 11.11.11 | Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of Democracy, by Susan N. Herman, Oxford University Press, 296 pages, $24.95 “If you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” This phrase is destined to be with us for all time, kept alive by the same people who cheerfully volunteer that they are willing to trade some “liberty for security.” Susan N. Herman’s new book, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of Democracy, provides a sharp rebuttal to this compliant mind-set that gave the government more power over the rest of us. Herman is president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at Brooklyn Law School. She specializes in constitutional law, criminal law, and terrorism law, and most of her written work since 2001 has dealt with aspects of the still-outrageous Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools for Intercepting and Obstructing Terrorism Act, or the USA PATRIOT Act as its better known. The book is her 10th anniversary present to the Act, an accounting of its achievements in regulating us, which are deplorable, and our achievements in regulating it, which are negligible. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From Poverty to Prosperity? 11.10.11 | The homepage of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) declares, “Our generation can end extreme poverty.” In 2005, the Project began its 10-year effort to do just that—in a group of 11 African villages, at least—through a comprehensive package of foreign aid focused on sectors like education, business, agriculture, and health. The Project has expanded since it's inception to cover 14 village clusters that are home to about half-a-million people across sub-Saharan Africa. George Soros recently pledged $27.4 million to the Project, after giving $50 million in 2006. The Project estimates that the portions of the initiative it funds cost $300,000 to $400,000 per village per year. Local and national governments, partners like non-governmental organizations and corporations, and local communities are supposed to fund the rest. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The High Price of Republican Hypocrisy 11.11.11 | Republicans are hypocrites about sex, it is sometimes said, and Democrats are hypocrites about money. It is true that GOP politicians keep getting caught with their pants down, while limousine liberals are free with other people's money and misers with their own. But this is not the whole story. Republicans are hypocrites about both sex and money. Take the recent Newsweek story on "The Tea Party Pork Binge." The only time GOP politicians stop criticizing government handouts, it seems, is to ask for them. Which happens a lot. The story leads off with Virginia's Eric Cantor, who sought billions for high-speed rail in the Old Dominion while he was blasting a similar project in Nevada. (Cantor's office told the mag the House majority leader has since changed his mind.) It's the same with Fred Upton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He's currently investigating the Energy Department's sweetheart loan guarantees to Solyndra. Two years ago, though, he was seeking millions from the department for projects in his home state of Michigan. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Twelve Apathetic Men 11.10.11 | Recently I spent the morning in a large room at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice along with several hundred others watching Ideals Made Real, the world’s least convincing infomercial. A 14-minute anesthetic that the state of California administers to anxious citizens to ease the pain of imminent empaneling, Ideals Made Real is filled with photogenic flags, close-ups of the Constitution, and candid disclosures from sedately enthusiastic jury duty survivors. “It’s often a deep and moving experience to be on a jury,” a robotic female narrator eventually concludes, and yet few in the audience seem sold on this premise. Young, old, rich, poor, as demographically diverse a cross-section of the public as the court system’s computers can randomly generate, the great overwhelming bulk of them share the last common bond uniting America: They want to escape jury duty. Desperately. When a judge enters the room and asks those who aren’t planning to plead hardship of one sort or another to stand up, only a couple dozen of us rise to our feet. At a time when sentiments against government overreach animate the land, this ennui is, if not exactly puzzling, at least ironic. Trial by jury isn’t merely a Hollywood plot device. It’s a mechanism designed to prevent government oppression and to disperse the state’s power into the hands of the common man. It’s the ultimate embodiment of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Just one problem: The people don’t seem all that interested in the job. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Pension Reform Goes Nowhere in California 11.07.11 | Despite some encouraging details in California Gov. Jerry Brown’s recently announced pension-reform proposal, there’s virtually no chance the state will seriously reform—or even seriously attempt to reform—a system creaking under the weight of about $500 billion in unfunded liabilities. The proposal isn’t bad. It doesn’t go far enough to fix the problem even if implemented in its entirety, but it goes further than most pension reform advocates had expected from a Democratic governor who, to date, has governed as an extension of the public-employee unions that elected him to office. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Protecting Consumers from Themselves 11.07.11 | “Holly Petraeus gets it” was the subject line of an email I (and probably several million other Americans on the White House list) got from Vice President Biden. The email linked to her testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Ms. Petraeus, who started in January as the head of the office of servicemember affairs at the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told senators that her father served in the military for 36 years, and her husband, General David Petraeus, recently retired after 37 years. Her son and two of her brothers also served in the military. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The FDA Kills 11.10.11 | It would be nice if politicians and regulators left us alone. But they don't. They always want to do more. Recently, there have been shortages of some medicines. Cancer patients can't get drugs they need. Why not? One reason is that a big drugmaker shut down for a year in part to meet Food and Drug Administration rules. The FDA makes it so expensive and difficult to sell drugs that there isn't an eager pack of companies rushing to the fill the gap. The free market would provide that, but government intervention, such as low Medicare reimbursement, strangles it. So people suffer. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bailouts for Me, but Not for Thee 11.07.11 | About one week before the Occupy Wall Street protests really started taking off nationwide, longtime consumer crusader and third-party perennial Ralph Nader enthused to reporter (and reason contributor) Michael Tracey that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and the movement he spearheads represent a “foundational convergence” with the progressive left. “Libertarians like Ron Paul are on our side on civil liberties,” Nader told Tracey. “They’re on our side against the military-industrial complex. They’re on our side against Wall Street. They’re on our side for investor rights.…It’s not just itty-bitty stuff.” A couple of days later, Ron Paul offered Tracey some qualified solidarity with the protesters in Lower Manhattan: “If they were demonstrating peacefully, and making a point, and arguing our case, and drawing attention to the Fed, I would say, ‘Good!’ ” It seemed like the sporadic dream of a progressive-libertarian alliance was cycling back into the realm of possibility. Then protesters released their first official “Declaration.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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America Waking to Light of Chinese Sun? 11.04.11 | It’s hard to spot all the absurdities in the death spiral of the U.S. government’s green energy policy. But here’s a big one: A group of solar equipment makers is trying to lock inexpensive products out of the United States, and the argument of these subsidized companies is that subsidies create an unfair market. Late last month the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM), a group of seven domestic solar equipment makers led by SolarWorld Industries America Inc., petitioned the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission (ITC) over crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells (whether or not assembled into modules) from the People’s Republic of China. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The School District Is Dead, Long Live the Schools 11.04.11 | Last week the Oakland Unified school district voted to close five elementary schools as part of a restructuring plan as the district grapples with a huge budget deficit caused in part by too many schools and not enough students. In the past six years student achievement in Oakland Unified has improved faster than any urban district in California. The district has operated through a charter-like school-choice process called “Options” where a student can enroll in any school in the district and the “money follows the child” to that school. Yet from a parent’s perspective this charter-like process has not been enough. The district continues to bleed students to charter schools. In 2010, more than 21 percent of Oakland kids were enrolled in charter schools. The Oakland story is a case in point for the monumental shift in education governance taking place across the United States. For Oakland the school closures come on top of the previous news that the faculty at two other high-performing district elementary schools has voted to split from the district and become charter schools. As The San Jose Mercury News reports, the faculty has “voted to break away from the district and convert their schools into independently run charters, a move that could cost Oakland Unified more than $4 million. Teachers and principals at ASCEND and Learning Without Limits say that as charter schools, they will have far more control over who they hire, what they teach and how, and how they spend their money.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Disturbing Agenda of Occupy Wall Street 11.04.11 | The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, obsessed with fairness, has benefitted from the lack of it. The protesters don't think so—but that is because many of them have not thought enough. The demonstrators resent disparity. So consider the disparity in coverage of OWS and the Tea Party. A single (still unsubstantiated) allegation that someone in the crowd at a 2010 Tea Party rally in Washington hurled a racial slur at Rep. John Lewis sufficed to prove the entire movement a kissin' cousin of the KKK. But that "Google Wall Street Jews" guy? A lone nut. As for the signs calling for the "death of capitalism" and telling Wall Street bankers to "Jump, you [expletives]" and declaring "capitalism can't be fixed—we need revolution"? Unrepresentative, surely. Ditto the 5:30 Oakland seminar on Marxism 101, and the dude in the Lenin T-shirt, and. . . . From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Stupidity of "Buy American" 11.03.11 | One sign of economic ignorance is the faith that "Buy American" is the path to prosperity. My former employer, ABC News, did a week's worth of stories claiming that "buying American" would put Americans back to work. I'm glad I don't work there anymore. "Buy American" is a dumb idea. It would not only not create prosperity, it would cost jobs and make us all poorer. David R. Henderson, an economist at the Hoover Institution, explained why. "Almost all economists say it's nonsense," he said. "And the reason is: We should buy things where they're cheapest. That frees up more of our resources to buy other things, and other Americans get jobs producing those things." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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School Competition Rescues Kids 10.27.11 | In the wake of Apple CEO Steve Jobs's death—and in the midst of the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" protests—came an ominous report from Bloomberg News last week: "Beltway Earnings Make U.S. Capital Richer Than Silicon Valley." According to the latest Census figures, Washington, D.C. is now the wealthiest metropolitan area in the United States. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Washington's Parasite Economy 10.25.11 | For years, American education from kindergarten through high school has been a virtual government monopoly. Conventional wisdom is that government must run the schools. But government monopolies don't do anything well. They fail because they have no real competition. Yet competition is what gives us better phones, movies, cars—everything that's good. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Great Depression 10.25.11 | Last week the White House picked a Virginia fire station as the venue for the president's principal campaign stop—er, legislative sales pitch. The choice was apt. At roughly the same time the president was lamenting how "cities and states like Michigan and New Jersey . . . have had to lay off big chunks of their forces," Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid declared, "It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers." Oh. Guess you can go home now, Wall Street occupiers! All those unemployment reports? False alarms. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Politics of Personal Destruction 10.21.11 | Politics is the systematic organization of hatreds, said Henry Adams, whose statement is true but incomplete. Sometimes it’s not all that systematic. Take the contest currently underway in Virginia’s 32nd Senate District. Patrick Forrest is running against incumbent Janet Howell. Forrest is a Republican, which everyone knows. He is also gay. Not everyone knows that, but some Democrats in Northern Virginia—including Howell, Forrest says—are trying to educate them. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ron Swanson vs. the State 10.21.11 | Who orders all the bacon and eggs in a restaurant, believes that child labor laws are ruining the country, and thinks public parks should be sold to Chuck E. Cheese? Who gives a fourth grader a land mine to protect her property? It’s the majestically mustachioed Ron Swanson, the libertarian director of the parks department of Pawnee, Indiana, played by Nick Offerman on NBC’s critically acclaimed comedy Parks and Recreation, now entering its fourth season. Swanson’s foil is Leslie Knope, the department’s deputy director played by Amy Poehler, who finds nothing nobler than public service. She enjoys running public meetings where citizens shout at her about how she and the parks department “suck,” which she delusionally describes as “people caring loudly at me.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Miracle of Oil From Sand 10.21.11 | Fort McMurray, Alberta—Standing on the edge of the immense and spectacular pit of an oil sands mine for the first time, I was surprised by a sense of exhilaration. Later, seven stories up, equipped with earplugs and clad in bright blue overalls, I marveled at the cascades of black bitumen froth bubbling over the sides of a separation cell like a giant witch’s cauldron. The scale of the enterprise and the sheer ingenuity involved in wresting value and sustenance from the hands of a stingy Mother Nature provoked in me a feeling close to glory. Yet as I stood at the edge of the mine, I understood that lots of people viewing the same sight would be horrified by it—and outraged by my enthusiasm for it. They would, instead, see the pit as a deep wound in the earth, amounting almost to a desecration. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 Myths About Healthy Eating 10.21.11 | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to stay out of the Republican presidential race means that the American people will be spared months of discussion about his ample waistline and the bad example it sets. Nonetheless, with first lady Michelle Obama urging everyone to get moving, obesity remains a political hot potato, or maybe a tater tot. Below, a helping of skepticism about the causes of Americans’ poor eating habits—and the effectiveness of political fixes. 1. People in poor neighborhoods lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Walk into nearly any supermarket in the United States, and you are immediately confronted with abundance—bok choy, mangos, melons and avocados from across the globe—where a couple of varieties of apples and carrots once struggled to fill shelf space. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Occupy Wall Street Is Half Right 10.20.11 | What's there to say about Occupy Wall Street? The answer isn't so simple. Some complain about taxpayer bailouts of businesses. Good for them. In a true free market, failing firms would go out of business. They couldn't turn to Washington for help. But many protesters say they're against capitalism. Now things get confusing. What do they mean? If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too. But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Latest Military Adventure 10.18.11 | Friday afternoon, in a letter to Speaker John Boehner, President Obama announced that he'll be deploying 100 combat-ready U.S. soldiers, mostly special forces operators, to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Congo. So much for Dinesh D'Souza's pet theory that "Kenyan anti-colonialism" is the secret motivation behind everything the president does. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is Transhumanism Coercive? 10.18.11 | Berry College political scientist Peter Lawler wants you to be afraid of biotechnology. Very afraid. “We will lose autonomy over our very beings," he warned during our debate concerning the ethics of radical life extension at Wheaton College in Massachusetts last week. Lawler, a member of President George W. Bush's controversial Council on Bioethics, tried to make the case that using technology to radically extend human lifespans, and boost human intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities, will end in coercion. Those who don’t want to take advantage of the kinds of enhancements that biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cognitive technology will offer, argues Lawler, will ultimately not have a choice about using them. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Justice for All 10.13.11 | The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial will be formally dedicated this Sunday in Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama will be on hand, as will a cadre of politicos, celebrities, and luminaries of the civil rights movement. The controversy surrounding the memorial, however, may dampen the occasion. The complaints vary in substance and kind. There's the grumbling about the appearance of one less-than accurate quotation attributed to King, as well as some unflattering headlines revealing payments of more than $750,000 to King’s estate for the use of his words and likeness. More significantly, some representatives of organized labor have condemned the memorial’s Chinese artisans and their use of white Chinese granite. It’s apparently galling that the memorial stones were imported and that certain masonry jobs weren’t reserved for American workers. Scott Garvin, a regional executive of the International Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers, told The Washington Post that the use of foreign labor was “a thumb in the eye.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Stop Funding College Sports 10.13.11 | Last week Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell handed down a tough directive to state agency heads: As you start putting together your budgets for the next biennium, look hard for places to cut—and don't spare anything. Programs that bring matching federal funds? On the table. Programs required by current state law? On the table. We can always change the law. Given these stark realities, perhaps now is the point at which Virginia leaders should give college athletics a long, hard look. Why? Two reasons: (1) They cost a gawdawful lot of money, and (2) they have nothing to do with the purpose of a university. Most college athletic departments are a net drain on the budget. Three years ago, the NCAA issued a report that found most athletic departments operate in the red. A more recent analysis by Bloomberg found the same thing: 46 of the 53 schools it looked at subsidized their sports programs. The money usually comes from sources such as student activity fees, such as that charged at Virginia Commonwealth University. Earlier this year VCU jacked up its fee by $50 to help fund the Rams basketball program. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government the Job Killer 10.13.11 | President Obama says government will have to build the nation out of the economic trough. "We're the country that built the intercontinental railroad," Obama says. "So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads?" Ironic that he mentions the Chinese. Progressives used to complain that to build the railroad, bosses abused Chinese workers—called them "coolies" and treated them badly. Now this is big success? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government Makes Us Poor 10.6.11 | Here's my fantasy: Libertarians are elected to the presidency and to majorities in Congress. What would happen next? Well, if libertarians were "in charge," you'd have more freedom and prosperity. Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you'd have been called crazy. There's got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules. Society would work the same way—and does to a large extent even today. "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government," Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. "It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. ... Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Operation Fast and Furious Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg 9.30.11 | Last February the U.S. extradited the son of one of the most powerful cartel leaders in Mexico to stand trial in Chicago for cocaine trafficking. The capture of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, son of Sinaloa cartel leader Ismail "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, is the DOJ’s highest-profile catch in years and a nominal drug war victory. But in July, Zambada turned the tables on his captors by claiming that he had “public authority” to traffic cocaine into the U.S. over a span of five years in exchange for providing intelligence on his rivals. For nearly two months the Justice Department declined to comment, fueling speculation that “Operation Fast and Furious,” a gun-smuggling operation conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, was part of a trend of state-sanctioned law-breaking. The DOJ’s eventual response, filed September 11, did little to assuage those concerns. Prosecutors admitted that Zambada’s lawyer in Mexico had been a confidential informant for the DEA, supplying intel that the Sinaloa cartel had gathered on its competitors to U.S. law enforcement. Prosecutors also admitted that Zambada’s lawyer had in fact arranged a meeting between his client and the DEA in 2009, but that the meeting was supposed to have been cancelled at the last minute. “The agents who met with defendant were expressly ordered by the highest ranking DEA official in Mexico not to even meet with (Zambada-Niebla), and no official with actual authority, namely the United States Attorney General or a United States Attorney, authorized agents to promise defendant immunity,” the filing read. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Stop Coddling Warren Buffett 10.3.11 | The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, who is one of the richest men in America, does so many interviews as part of his campaign to raise taxes on his competitors that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Just last week, for example, he talked to the Fox Business Network, The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and Charlie Rose. All, basically, to push a tax increase that Mr. Buffett has been flogging since at least 2007, and which he has been advancing this year since his August 15 New York Times op-ed piece that appeared under the headline “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Butter Battle 9.27.11 | When someone predicts that “our soils will become barren” and “the dairy industry will be destroyed,” you might think a wrathful god is unleashing a cattle plague. But in 1886, the year those threats were registered in the Congressional Record, the source of deadly danger was no deity. It was margarine. The cheap alternative to butter was taking France by storm. Fearing froggy competition, the American dairy lobby warned that the margarine menace would rob the red-blooded American public of “life promoting vitamins…without which human infants cannot continue to live.” Congress was thus persuaded to pass the Margarine Act of 1886. Butter alternatives became more expensive, thanks to high taxes and limited access to licenses for legal production, which remained in place until 1950. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Extremism In Defense of Extremism Is No Vice 9.30.11 | "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads," Woody Allen once said. "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Americans face a similar crossroads now. On the one hand, they can vote for the most extreme, dangerous bunch of radicals ever to appear on a ballot in an election year. Or if they prefer, they could vote for the most radical, dangerous bunch of extremists ever to—well, you know. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Scratch and Win 9.29.11 | In California, in Arizona, all across the U.S., in fact, people are feeling extremely lucky and optimistic. And also more desperate than ever. In other words, it’s business as usual for humanity, and good times for America’s lotteries. Forty three states, along with Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia, conduct lotteries now, and according to the Chicago Sun-Times, 17 out of the 41 lotteries that ended their fiscal year on June 30 established sales records in 2010. In addition, 28 of those states topped their earnings from the previous year. The Sun-Times was quick to cast these stats as evidence of hard times. “Despite a struggling economy—or perhaps because of it—lottery ticket sales have surged across the country, including in Illinois.” Three years earlier, The New York Times published a similar story. “Many state lotteries across the country are experiencing record sales, driven in part…by people…who are trying to turn a lottery ticket into a ticket out of hard times,” it read. “Of the 42 states with lotteries, at least 29 reported increased sales in their most recent fiscal year. And of those 29, at least 22, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, set sales records.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 10/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Governments Don't Create Prosperity 9.29.11 | Politicians say they create jobs, but they really don't. Or rather, they rarely create productive jobs. Government has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and give them to another. The pharaohs might have claimed they created work when they ordered that pyramids be built, but think how much richer (and freer) the Egyptians would have been if they'd been allowed to pursue their own interests. It's individuals in the marketplace who create real jobs—when they have the protection of life and property under the rule of law. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Abolish the Department of Homeland Security 9.27.11 | Two years ago this month, the federal government broke ground on what was supposed to be a massive new headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security. Situated on the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus in Southeast Washington, the $3.4 billion project was designed to bring together some 15,000 employees of our newest Cabinet department, which in less than a decade has become notorious for waste, mismanagement, and inflicting pointless humiliation on airline travelers. Depending on your sense of humor, you may get a mordant chuckle out of the fact that, before the government adopted the St. Elizabeths moniker in 1916, the property was known as the Government Hospital for the Insane. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Elizabeth Warren's Voodoo Economics 9.27.11 | Elizabeth Warren is cheesed off. Received wisdom says conservatives are the ones driven by anger—Republicans took the House last year because 2010 was another “year of the angry white male,” and all that. But in August remarks about class warfare that have gone viral, the Democratic candidate for a Senate seat from Massachusetts is visibly seething. That’s okay; everyone gets worked up now and then, and most of us are lucky enough not to be caught on camera at the moment. Funny thing is, Warren’s comments—her rage and resentment and sarcasm—have made her an overnight heroine. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Solyndra and the GOP 9.26.11 | Republicans have been celebrating the bankruptcy of taxpayer-funded solar energy company Solyndra as a scandal that will taint the Obama administration and its “green jobs” push. But it’s not just Democrats who are entangled in this one. Solyndra’s director of government relations since October 2010 was Victoria Sanville. According to her Linked In profile, she had spent the previous seven years working as a congressional staffer for three Republican congressmen, John Sweeney, Peter Roskam, and Michael Graves. Another Washington-based Solyndra government-relations professional was Joseph Pasetti; his Capitol Hill experience came as an aide in the office of Alfonse D’Amato, a Republican senator from New York. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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In Search of the Real Sarah Palin 9.26.11 | In an America where a whopping 66 percent of adults hold an unfavorable view of 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (according to a recent Bloomberg poll), author Joe McGinniss has done something truly remarkable. He actually makes the short-serving former Alaska governor and widely panned reality TV star a slightly more sympathetic character, at least for the regrettable time one wastes reading The Rogue, his sketchily sourced compendium of low blows and inconsistent accusations. McGinniss, who came to prominence 40 years ago with his groundbreaking study of political marketing, The Selling of the President 1968, serves up any and all rumors and calumnies about Palin, the more salacious the better. His hope, he admits, is to cut short whatever is left of her political life, a spectacle he likens to “the cheap thrill of watching a clown in high heels on a flying trapeze.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Zoning Bigots 9.22.11 | “Blacks,” Baltimore’s progressive mayor J. Barry Mahool said in 1910, “should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.” Mahool was not just sowing some of the seeds of the race hatred that bloomed in Charm City throughout the 20th century. He was also laying out the logic of planning and zoning that applies to the present day. The zoning ordinance Mahool stumped for in 1910 became a model for New York City’s landmark 1916 Zoning Resolution, which established the international habit of imposing “setback” requirements for tall buildings and limiting height based on lot size. In a June New York Times op-ed piece, architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen applauded the Big Apple’s zoning resolution, which in its current form is 3,411 pages long and includes detailed prescriptions for the operation of cotton gins, tight restrictions on placement of “tot-lots,” and 4,351 instances of the word permit. (If you placed all those permits end to end, you would get four articles as long as the one you’re reading.) Goldhagen views this unwieldy document as a victory for “urban dwellers” who “realized that developers…would never reliably serve the public interest.” She believes this leap forward in urban planning created vibrant contemporary cities, despite occasional reversals when “populist, antigovernment sentiment among voters began to shift power back into private hands.” And she hopes to head off future episodes of revanchism by empowering “design review boards, staffed by professionals trained in aesthetics and urban issues and able to influence planning and preservation decisions.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Do Animals Have Rights? 9.23.11 | Earlier this month Onyx, a one-year-old black lab, was hit by a car. Hard. The impact shattered his pelvis and mangled his left hind leg. According to authorities in Kern County, Calif., the owners allegedly did what any knuckle-dragging idiot without a lick of moral sense would do: They hacked off the leg themselves without anaesthetic, then left Onyx to suffer in agony. When animal-control authorities rescued the dog, his stump was crawling with maggots. Fortunately, Onyx has received proper medical care and is doing much better now. But if the story turns your stomach—and well it should—then perhaps it is time to take a second look at the notion of animal rights. That is what Roscoe Bartlett has done. Bartlett, a Maryland congressman, used to experiment on chimpanzees as a physiologist at the Navy School of Aviation. He has since had a change of heart and introduced legislation to outlaw experiments on the great apes and retire the 500 now in captivity to sanctuaries. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Goodnight Irene (and Other Natural Disasters) 9.23.11 | More than 40 people in the northeastern United States died during Hurricane Irene. Many more lost their homes. Thousands were flooded and more were without electricity. Tropical Storm Lee continued the havoc, including forcing over 100,000 from their homes in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, area when the Susquehanna River broke its banks. Earlier this year, a series of tornadoes wrought death and devastation from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Joplin, Missouri. Wildfires have burned over 3.5 million acres in Texas. And across the world in Somalia, tens of thousands of children are reported to have died of starvation and millions of people are acutely malnourished following a drought. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Great Basketball Swindle 9.23.11 | In December 2003 Bruce Ratner, a real estate tycoon and part owner of the New Jersey Nets, held a press conference in New York City to announce his latest project, a 22-acre “urban utopia” called the Atlantic Yards. The idea was to transform downtown Brooklyn by erecting 16 office and residential skyscrapers, a fancy 180-room hotel, and a new basketball arena for the Nets. Standing by Ratner’s side was the architect Frank Gehry, who said he was particularly excited “to build a whole neighborhood practically from scratch.” It was a revealing statement. After all, the Atlantic Yards wasn’t going to be built on top of empty land. More than half of those 22 acres were privately owned, with the properties ranging from small businesses and modest brownstone apartment buildings to luxury condos that sold for $500,000 or more. To build the Atlantic Yards from scratch meant you first had to wipe part of an existing neighborhood off the map. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Tax Hikes 9.20.11 | Leave it to President Obama. On September 8 he announced a $450 stimulus consisting of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts. On September 19 he announced he wants a $1.5 trillion tax increase. The president tried to ease the whiplash by dividing the tax cut and the tax increase into two separate speeches, and by separating them by 11 days. And to some degree the approach fits with Keynesian economic and political orthodoxy. The idea is that the economy needs a short-term boost to end the recession, but that longer-term the focus should be debt and deficit reduction. This has the added political virtue for the president of giving voters a tax cut going into the 2012 election, while delaying any tax increase until after the election. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Does Disease Cause Autocracy? 9.20.11 | Greater wealth strongly correlates with property rights, the rule of law, education, the liberation of women, a free press, and social tolerance. The enduring puzzle for political scientists is how the social processes that produce freedom and wealth get started in the first place. Many political theorists have linked liberal democracy to the rise of wealth and the establishment of a large middle class. “Growing resources are conducive to the rise of emancipative values that emphasize self-expression,” write political scientists Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and Christian Welzel of Jacobs University in their contribution to the 2009 book Democratization, “and these values are conducive to the collective actions that lead to democratization.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Pimp Your Ride 9.20.11 | If you get in line early enough at 99 Cents Only on a day when it’s celebrating a new store opening or some other special occasion, you can get a new Philips flat-screen TV for a buck and change. During the holiday season last year, Volkswagen sold three factory-fresh Jettas for just $5,995 each on Gilt.com, the Web’s leading site for deeply discounted designer goods. In the age of Groupon, everything’s always at least 50 percent off. It’s never been easier to own stuff, and yet for millions of consumers, ownership is becoming as obsolete as newspapers. The costs are too high, the benefits too negligible. Zipcar, the urban car-share pioneer, tripled membership numbers in 2009. But as fast as car-sharing is growing, it’s failing to keep pace with bike-sharing, which is reportedly the fastest growing form of transportation in the world. New Yorkers renting out spare space in their homes are making upwards of $1,600 a month. These factoids come from the 2010 book What’s Mine Is Yours, in which business consultant Rachel Botsman and serial entrepreneur Roo Rogers rebrand “renting” and “sharing” as “collaborative consumption” and position it as the cure for “outdated modes of hyper-consumption” that have left America with seven times more personal storage facilities than Starbucks outlets. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Too Smart for Our Own Good 9.20.11 | Could using technology to enhance our cognitive functions make people too smart for our own good? The problem, as Oxford University philosophers Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson see it [PDF], is that enabling people to become smarter via drugs, implants, and other biological (or genetic) interventions will speed up scientific and technological progress which in turn will increase the ability of smart evil people to make and deploy novel weapons of mass destruction. “We may not have yet reached the state in which a single satanic character could eradicate all life on Earth," they rather dramatically write, "but with cognitive enhancement by traditional means alone, we may soon be there.” The only thing we have to fear is ourselves. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Power Grabs 9.20.11 | It never fails. Every time a president's popularity tanks, you get a new cycle of media hand-wringing about an enfeebled, "shrunken" presidency. Politico provided the latest installment in this timeworn genre with its recent cover story on "The Incredible Shrinking President." Noting President Obama's recent political setbacks, the authors declare that "a once-muscular presidency is undergoing a dramatic downsizing in terms of its power, popularity, prestige and ambition." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Thought Police 9.20.11 | To whatever high school intern probably came up with the idea, the White House's "Attack Watch" website and Twitter account must have seemed a spark of genius. After all, they yoked together two trendy ideas—rapid response and crowd-sourcing—in service to the president. Give people the opportunity to report false and malicious things others are saying about Obama, so the administration and its supporters can fight back. What could possibly go wrong? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi! 9.15.11 | Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi! There, I said it. To the extent people believe there are trust funds with their names on them, Social Security is absolutely a Ponzi scheme. So is Medicare. People need to hear it. Many people think that when the government takes payroll tax from their paychecks, it goes to something like a savings account. Seniors who collect Social Security think they're just getting back money that they put into their "account." Or they think it's like an insurance policy—you win if you live long enough to get more than you paid in. Neither is true. Nothing is invested. The money taken from you was spent by government that year. Right away. There's no trust fund. The plan is unsustainable. Medicare is worse. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Use the Tiny Tiles—And Other Tales from the Stimulus 9.14.11 | Here’s how fiscal stimulus is supposed to work: The federal government injects a few hundred billion dollars into a sluggish economy through federal spending. That spending sparks additional consumer demand. And that additional demand drives new economic activity that results in a multiplier effect, in which a dollar of initial government spending creates more than a dollar of economic activity, spurring economic growth and job creation. That was the basic stimulus theory, as explained by Lawrence Summers, who chairs President Obama’s National Economic Council, at the tail end of 2008. The story was convincing enough: In 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)—an $830 billion stimulus package—into law, promising “unprecedented transparency” in tracking how the money would be used and how many jobs it would create. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Renewable Energy Boondoggle 9.12.11 | Last month Glen Besa, the director of the Sierra Club's Virginia chapter, rebuked Dominion Virginia Power for failing to "jump-start the clean, renewable energy industry in Virginia. ... Offshore wind, which is plentiful off Virginia's coast, could create 10,000 jobs in the commonwealth. It is time for Dominion to make major investments in wind and solar in Virginia and bring these jobs to Virginia." Others concur. Beth Kemler, state director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, notes that Dominion has proposed two new 1,300-megawatt gas-fired power stations. Bad idea, she says: "While natural gas may be cheap now, its price has fluctuated greatly in the past and is expected to rise in the future. Wind, on the other hand, is a free natural resource. So building a wind farm includes no fuel price risk." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Phantom Menace 9.12.11 | In a country starved for good news, we should be celebrating the fact that, after Sept. 11, 2001, we've gone 10 years without a major follow-up attack on American soil. But some folks just refuse to be cheered up. At last week's GOP debate, Newt Gingrich helpfully reminded everyone that "there are people out there who want to kill us." Therefore, we need a Department of Homeland Security with the "capacity to respond to massive events that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in one morning." That's a tall order for an institution whose core competence seems to be groping preschoolers on security lines. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Poverty of Nations 9.12.11 | On September 13 at 10 a.m., the Census Bureau will release its annual report for 2010 on “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States,” and, to judge by the way the bureau is handling the announcement, it’s going to be less than smashingly good news. “There will be no physical event,” the bureau’s advisory to reporters announces. Just a conference call, in a departure from the Bush administration’s practice. I could be wrong, and the Census could announce dramatic reductions in child poverty, dramatic increases in family income, and dramatic increases in the numbers of Americans covered by health insurance, not to mention report signs that the planet is beginning to heal. But I think that somehow, if that were coming out, the Obama administration would manage to figure out a way to devise a “physical event” with pictures sufficient to help get the word onto the evening news broadcasts. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Era of Big Government Is Not Over 9.9.11 | President Barack Obama’s big jobs speech last night was long on rhetoric and short on useful specifics. But then who expected anything different? Despite lofty pledges to “stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy,” this is still the same president whose administration has prosecuted, harassed, or otherwise mistreated law-abiding businesses in the midst of an economic downturn. Consider the federal government’s misguided lawsuit against Boeing. In April the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged the airline manufacturer with illegal actions “inherently destructive of the rights guaranteed employees” after Boeing decided to open a new production line for its 787 Dreamliner aircraft in South Carolina instead of building near its existing Dreamliner production facility in Washington state. According to the government’s theory of the case, Boeing opened up shop in right-to-work South Carolina in order to punish its unionized Washington workers for going out on strike. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Ten Years After 9.8.11 | After 9/11, the U.S. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. America went to war, overtly and covertly, in several countries. Nearly $8 trillion was spent on what is called "security," Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project estimates. Was it worth it? Yes, in many ways, says author Ann Coulter. No, says Reason magazine editor Matt Welch. Both will be guests on my Fox Business show tonight. There's no reason at all that the bureaucratization of security is going to make us any more safe," Welch said. "All we have to do is go on an airplane ... to see that there's a difference between security and security theater, between federalizing a problem and actually solving the problem." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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An Economic Lesson from 9/11 9.6.11 | In the week ahead you will see a lot of September 11 anniversary columns about terrorism, about heroes, about war, about loss. This is a September 11 column about the economics of cities and how free-market capitalism is the best disaster recovery method ever invented. On September 11, 2001, some partners and I were in the middle of starting a new daily newspaper in New York City. The closing of the deal to create the company to bring out the paper had been scheduled for that day, and it was delayed for a few weeks by the attack. But that fall the initial few staffers of the New York Sun were out looking for office space in Manhattan. Some of us had wanted to be downtown to begin with—closer to City Hall and the courthouses, closer to staff who lived in Brooklyn, closer to the city’s historic Newspaper Row where the original New York Sun had had its printing press generations earlier. The attack more or less sealed the location issue. Of all the far-reaching and grave consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it seems almost irreverent to mention that all of a sudden lower Manhattan real estate was a buyer’s (or, in our case, renter’s) market. But so it was. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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State of the Union 9.5.11 | President Obama's approval rating of the American public has fallen to an all-time low, according to a new Gallup survey of White House residents and employees. Fewer than one in 10 Americans earned the president's favor, according to the president. That is down sharply from six in 10—the percentage of Americans Obama approved of shortly after his election in November 2008, and the lowest level yet for his administration. "They're not doing a very good job, frankly," said the president. "Most of them, I mean. Some are. But not many." Obama's job approval for how Americans are performing has fallen in every category, from the economy to health care and the environment. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Damn This Recession! 8.29.11 | Only in a leisure-hating country like this one could unemployment become as stressful and exhausting as a full-time job. When she was laid off from her position as a financial analyst in July 2008, Westminster, Colorado’s Kelly Wiedemer expected the path back to her well-worn career track would be quick and easy. And as a gadfly for non-workers who have exhausted unemployment benefits, Wiedemer believes she is speaking for many who felt the same way when the recession began. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Gay Marriage Debate 9.1.11 | Six states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Most so-called liberals are happy about that. Most conservatives are not. As a libertarian, I think all consenting adults who want to commit to a life partner ought to be treated the same way. To air this issue on my Fox Business show, I invited Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage and David Harsanyi, libertarian columnist at The Blaze. Brown says gay marriage threatens marriage between a man and a woman. I asked him to explain. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Hurricane Irene and the Financial Crisis 8.29.11 | Watching Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York order businesses to close and citizens to evacuate their homes in advance of Tropical Storm Irene reminded me of the actions taken by President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis. The similarities are striking. In both the financial crisis and Irene, the government actions taken were exceptional and involved depriving people of private property without the due process required under the Fifth Amendment. In the financial crisis, Bush and Paulson seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in what Paulson later described as an ambush. They did in essence the same thing at AIG, without shareholder approval, in what AIG’s former chairman Maurice Greenberg, a large shareholder, has called a violation of the law of Delaware, in which AIG was incorporated. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 9/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Russia's Struggling Democracy 8.25.11 | As Muammar Gaddafi's rule crumbles in Libya, the anniversary of another revolution is passing by almost unnoticed. In August 1991, a cabal of Kremlin hardliners moved against Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms they saw as weakening state power and giving too much autonomy to the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Gorbachev was detained on a Crimean vacation and officially declared to be taking a health-related leave of absence, with an eight-man State of Emergency Committee taking the reins of power. After three tense days that saw tanks in Moscow's streets and a deadly clash between Soviet troops and pro-democracy protesters, the coup failed, and the fallout helped hasten the end of the communist regime and the Soviet empire. The defeat of the coup was seen as a stirring victory of freedom over tyranny. The magnitude of this triumph became clear on Aug. 24, when television audiences worldwide watched the statue of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky in front of KGB headquarters being taken down to cheers and applause from a massive, jubilant crowd. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Laughing Matter 8.26.11 | If you're looking for laughs, the nation's capital probably isn't the place to start your search. But you can still find reasons for levity if you try. Take immigration. About a year ago, elite opinion was choking on its own rage over Arizona's harsh new immigration law. Much of that law simply recapitulated federal policy at the state level, but certain parts went beyond federal statute. Well. This was something up with which one must not put. And one did not. The Obama administration swiftly filed suit in order to defend the principle of federal supremacy. States, said the administration, had no business deviating from federal policy on immigration, which was a federal matter best left to the federal government, on account of its being a federal deal and all. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Almost Everything We're Taught Is Wrong 8.25.11 | We grow up learning that some things are just bad: child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they're not. What I love about economics is that it can show that what seems harmful is actually good for society. It illuminates what common sense overlooks. This was the subject of my Fox Business show last week. It was inspired by the eye-opening book Defending the Undefendable by economist Walter Block. Most people call child labor an unmitigated evil. But my guests, David Boaz of the Cato Institute and Nick Gillespie of Reason.tv, said that's wrong. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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China Derangement Syndrome 8.23.11 | The 1979 book, Japan As Number One: Lessons for America, by East Asia scholar Ezra Vogel stoked fears that the United States was about to be outcompeted by the land of the rising sun. And why not? The United States had just suffered through a decade of stagflation and was about to enter what was then the worst recession since the Great Depression. By the late ‘80s, the case seemed ironclad. “I don't mean to be an alarmist, but I get the uneasy feeling that America is history,” wrote Robert Kuttner, then the economics correspondent for The New Republic, in the Los Angeles Times in May 1988. Kuttner supplied evidence for his concern: “The total value of stocks listed on the Tokyo stock exchange is now $3.54 trillion dollars, compared to $2.34 trillion for the New York Stock Exchange.” In his 1988 book, Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It, former Reagan administration trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz warned, “The power behind the Japanese juggernaut is much greater than most Americans suspect, and the juggernaut cannot stop of its own volition, for Japan has created a kind of automatic wealth machine, perhaps the first since King Midas.” (I confess that I was a producer for the national weekly PBS television program American Interests at the time on which we regularly featured Japan alarmists.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Airport Security vs. The Constitution 8.16.11 | You wouldn't think Aaron Tobey and Donald Rumsfeld have much in common. Tobey is the guy who stripped down to his shorts at the Richmond, Virginia airport last December. Rumsfeld is the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush. Tobey, who was protesting the invasive airport screening practices that have outraged a good portion of the traveling public, is a stickler for constitutional rights. Rumsfeld? Not so much. The two of them, however, are united by a common case: Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The other day a federal appeals court said two Americans who claimed to have been tortured by U.S. armed forces in Iraq can sue Rumsfeld for violating their constitutional rights. The court relied on the Bivens precedent. Bivens just happens to be the hook Tobey is hanging his hat on in his lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Myth of Pristine Nature 8.16.11 | “Nature is almost everywhere. But wherever it is, there is one thing nature is not: pristine,” writes science journalist Emma Marris in her engaging new book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. She adds, “We must temper our romantic notion of untrammeled wilderness and find room next to it for the more nuanced notion of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden, tended by us.” Marris’ message will discomfort both environmental activists and most ecologists who are in thrall to the damaging cult of pristine wilderness and the false ideology of the balance of nature. But it should encourage and inspire the rest of us. Marris begins by exposing the vacuity of the notion of the ecological baseline. “For many conservationists, restoration to a pre-human or a pre-European baseline is seen as healing a wounded or sick nature,” explains Marris. “For others, it is an ethical duty. We broke it; therefore we must fix it. Baselines thus typically don’t act as a scientific before to compare with an after. They become the good, the goal, the one correct state.” What is so good about historical ecosystems? I too have noted that ecologists when asked this same question become almost inarticulate. They just know that historical ecosystems are better. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The High Cost of Low Fuel Bills 8.11.11 | It was so weird, though... NYC was kind of deserted yesterday. Vaguely post-apocalyptic, actually From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Great 9/11 Dust Debate 8.9.11 | Federal scientists exhibited rare bravery this summer when they stated that there was no evidence the dust kicked up in the World Trade Center attacks caused cancer. But instead of applauding the exhaustively thorough review of the available data by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)—the first of a series—members of New York's congressional delegation and other interest groups are trashing the science of the very federal researchers they appointed to do the analysis. At stake are billions of dollars from the controversial James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which set aside money for 9/11 rescue workers and survivors with health claims. The Zadroga Act allows people who worked, lived, or attended school near Ground Zero to claim compensation for a broad range of diseases, from asthma to depression, without a requirement to demonstrate that the diseases were caused by dust from the terror site. But the bill, which came with a hefty $4.3 billion price tag, passed only after proponents agreed to the utterly reasonable requirement that compensation for cancer be justified by a causal link. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 8/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Death to the Living Constitution 7.22.11 | How should progressives approach the U.S. Constitution? Is it a living document, designed to evolve with the changing times? Or does it have a fixed meaning, one that may sometimes support progressive political outcomes? Those were the central questions debated earlier this week at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., which hosted a debate on “Progressive Visions of Jurisprudence.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Natural Gas Flip-Flop 7.21.11 | The world’s projected natural gas supplies jumped 40 percent last year. Until a decade ago, experts believed it would be technically infeasible to exploit the natural gas locked in 48 shale basins in 32 countries around the world. Then horizontal drilling, combined with hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, was introduced. The shale gas rush was on, and last year the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) dramatically raised its estimate of available natural gas. The ability to produce clean-burning natural gas from shale could transform the global energy economy. Right now we burn about 7 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas to generate about 24 percent of the electricity used in the United States. The U.S. burns a total of 23 TCF annually to heat homes and supply industrial processes as well as produce electricity. Burning coal still produces about 45 percent of U.S. electricity. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The TSA's Invasive Search Contest 7.8.11 | MEMORANDUM To: All TSA Personnel From: Paul Witchowski, American Federation of Government Employees General Secretary and Past President and Steward of AFGE Local 277, Barnstable, MA. Dear Fellow Officers, Many of you have written to ask me about the status of our Invasive Search Contest. Knowing this is a subject of great interest to all of you and that there has been a lot of rumors and innuendoes going around the "grapevine," I have decided to use this week’s newsletter to fill everybody in on the latest developments. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Minnesota's Misguided Cigarette Tax 7.8.11 | There is a sense of bitter irony in Democratic Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s new cigarette tax proposal, which is aimed at bridging the Gopher State’s budget gap. In 2005, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty used an increase in cigarette taxes—which he called a “user fee”—to solve a state budget crisis that had shut down the government. Yet today Minnesota finds itself right back in state finance hell. With his government ground to a halt for a week now, Gov. Dayton’s proposed $1 per pack increase on cigarette taxes was offered as an alternative to an income tax surcharge on millionaires, but state Republicans rejected it anyway, on the grounds that any tax increase was off the table. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Smoked Out 7.6.11 | Arizona has a major public health problem: Too few people are smoking. That’s not the only fiscal problem the state faces. But it’s one of them. Like many states, Arizona’s public finances are in miserable shape. And much of the state’s budget trouble can be attributed to a decade-old decision to finance an expansion of low-income health insurance coverage with revenue dependent on tobacco industry profits. A little more than a decade ago, the state grew its low-income health insurance rolls, claiming the new enrollees would be paid for by revenue from a deal with tobacco industry. Now, with smoking rates (and tobacco industry revenues) falling, a budget crisis brewing, and a growing number of individuals eligible for Medicaid, the state has chosen to pare back its health coverage for low-income adults. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Give Peace a Chance 7.5.11 | Boy, those sure have been some mighty peaceful protests against government budget cuts in Greece, haven’t they? You bet they have—at least if you ignore the rock-throwing, fire-setting, window-smashing, and blood-spilling. Which, it seems clear, a lot of major news organs would like to do. According to one story in The Wall Street Journal, the demonstrations "began peacefully." According to another, last week Constitution Square in Athens "seethed with indignant, but peaceful, demonstrators." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 7/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Money Hole 6.17.11 | America is falling deeper into debt. We're long past the point where drastic action is needed. We're near Greek levels of debt. What's going to happen? Maybe riots—like we've seen in Greece? We need to make cuts now. Some governors have shown the way. You know about Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, John Kasich, etc. But you probably don't know about Luis Fortuno. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Suicide Pact 6.17.11 | Earlier this week the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published one of the more astounding documents of our age. It was written by Joaquin "the Hatchet" Zapata—a notorious enforcer for the Zetas drug cartel, which controls much of the cocaine trade across the border of southern Texas. Resembling nothing so much as an army field manual for mules and midlevel traffickers, the "Instrucciones" on shipping cocaine include a lengthy section on what to do if captured by U.S. authorities. Going into great detail about the legal rights of criminal defendants in America, it advises couriers to clam up, ask for an attorney, claim irregularities in the search (the exclusionary rule won't allow tainted evidence in court), and so on. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Prison Math 6.8.11 | In 2009, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,524,513 prisoners in state and federal prisons. When local jails are included, the total climbs to 2,284,913. These numbers are not just staggering; they are far above those of any other liberal democracy in both absolute and per capita terms. The International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London calculates that the United States has an incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 people, compared to 325 in Israel, 217 in Poland, 154 in England and Wales, 96 in France, 71 in Denmark, and 32 in India. America’s enormously high incarceration rate is a relatively recent phenomenon. According to a 2010 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), U.S. incarceration rates between 1880 and 1970 ranged from about 100 to 200 prisoners per 100,000 people. After 1980, however, the inmate population began to grow much more rapidly than the overall population, climbing from about 220 per 100,000 in 1980 to 458 in 1990, 683 in 2000, and 753 in 2008. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Declare Defeat and Go Home 6.7.11 | "The war on drugs has failed," declared the editors of National Review in 1996, back when the nation’s foremost conservative periodical promoted ideas more intellectually rigorous than cheerleading for the Republican Party. "It is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction. . . .It is wasting our resources, and . . . it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We [here at NR] all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far." In the decade and a half since then, the federal government has shelled out more than $100 billion—vastly more, by some estimates—fighting the scourge of illegal drugs. How’s that workin’ out? Not too good! Last Thursday the Global Commission on Drug Policy, an international panel that included such sober souls as former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, said the U.S.-led war on drugs "has failed." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Does Disease Cause Autocracy? 5.31.11 | Greater wealth strongly correlates with property rights, the rule of law, more education, the liberation of women, a free press, and more social tolerance. The enduring puzzle for political scientists is how do the social processes that produce freedom and wealth get started in the first place? Many political theorists have associated democracy with the rise of wealth and the establishment of a large middle class. As Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, and Christian Welzel, a political scientist at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany explain in the 2009 edited volume Democratization, “Growing resources are conducive to the rise of emancipative values that emphasize self-expression; and these values are conducive to the collective actions that lead to democratization.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Separating Charity and State 5.27.11 | Shortly after taking office, George W. Bush created an office of faith-based initiatives, making it easier for religious groups to receive federal funds in order to minister to the poor, conduct emergency relief operations, and perform similar good works. Social conservatives cheered. But many liberal skeptics objected on constitutional grounds. His efforts were "a bold assault on the separation of church and state," wrote Ellen Willis in The Nation. Bush had "punched a dangerous hole in the wall between church and state," argued The New York Times, declaring that the "initiative runs counter to decades of First Amendment law." Church/state groups sued. Progressives fumed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 6/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Plentiful Fuel 5.19.11 | I just learned I'm going to save money! My apartment building in New York will switch from heating oil to cleaner natural gas. Gas is much cheaper than oil now because energy companies found ways to get more of it out of the ground. Even more astounding is that by using this technique, America won't run out of natural gas for 100 years or more! Time to break out the Champagne? Not so fast, say environmentalists. To get gas out of the ground, companies use pressurized chemicals to blow up rock. It's called hydraulic fracturing—fracking. An Oscar-nominated movie, Gasland, says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Difference Between a Tax Break and a Subsidy 5.17.11 | Should American taxpayers stop subsidizing big oil companies? How about abortions? There seems to be a lot of confusion on the issue. In part, that's because there's a lot of confusion about what a subsidy really is. To hear liberals talk, it's scandalous that Americans are forking over their hard-earned tax dollars to prop up Big Oil. Former Virginia Gov. and DNC chairman Tim Kaine, now running for Jim Webb's Senate seat, last week called on his opponents to join him in opposing "government giveaways for big oil companies," as he put it. "Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) Defends Fairness of Giving Billions in Oil Subsidies to Exxon," snarled the liberal ThinkProgress last week. " In March, the group groused that "House Republicans unanimously voted to continue big oil subsidies worth billions of dollars a year, even as oil companies are enjoying windfall profits from skyrocketing prices." On Thursday, Virginia Democratic Party executive director David Mills said the oil companies were "getting free money from the government." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How to Spot a Terrorist Mastermind 5.16.11 | A number of U.S. officials have expressed skepticism that Osama bin Laden could have been hiding in plain sight for years in Pakistan without the government's knowledge. Abbottabad, where bin Laden was hanging out, is home to three army regiments. The military swings a lot of weight in Pakistan. Moreover, the Pakistani government is not exactly looking over its shoulder in fear of a stern letter from the ACLU. Freedom House's annual "Freedom in the World" report on Pakistan is filled with terms like "excessive force," "arbitrary detention," "collective punishment for individual crimes," "impunity for human rights abuses," and "extrajudicial killings." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Eat Your Veggies 5.6.11 | It has become known as the Broccoli Hypothetical. In oral arguments over whether ObamaCare violates the Constitution by forcing people to buy insurance, federal Judge Roger Vinson asked, "If they decided everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli makes us healthy, they could mandate that everybody has to eat broccoli each week?" This is the reductio ad absurdum: a means of disproving X by showing that if X is carried to its logical conclusion, then the result is absurd. If Congress can make you buy insurance—not as a condition of exercising a privilege, such as driving, but as a condition of merely being alive—then it can make you buy anything, including broccoli and GM cars. But it would be absurd for Congress to make you buy broccoli or a car. Therefore, it can't make you buy health insurance, either. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Blowback 5.6.11 | It took nearly a decade after 9/11 to catch and kill Osama bin Laden. During that time, America launched two wars and a new cabinet-level security agency while funneling money into the defense budget at record levels. This was the United States government’s response to bin Laden, yet very little of it contributed to his capture. We know what bin Laden cost us: thousands of American lives, a sense of safety and security for millions more. But now, with bin Laden finally dead, America and its leaders must also come to grips with what we have chosen to spend reacting to his acts of terror—and the sad fact that most of it wasn’t worth the price. In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has added roughly $950 billion in additional base spending to the defense budget. That’s not total spending; it’s merely the increase over the baseline versus if we’d held military spending constant starting in 2000. Nor does that number include the cost of two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—almost $1.3 trillion as of March 2011—or the $359 billion spent on the Department of Homeland Security, a sort of meta-agency created in 2002 to help coordinate the federal government’s tangled web of security initiatives. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Dead or Alive 5.5.11 | Speaking before the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in August 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made no secret of his willingness to order the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden or any other key member of Al Qaeda, no matter where they might be hiding out at the time. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorists targets and [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama declared. As the world learned on Sunday, Obama kept his word. He ordered a team of Navy SEALs to carry out “a targeted operation” inside the Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound where the infamous terrorist leader had been discovered. “After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” the president said. According to a poll conducted by Rasmussen, 86 percent of Americans think Obama made the right call. Several prominent civil libertarians, however, aren’t so sure. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gas Prices and the Market 5.5.11 | The speculators are ripping us off! "The skyrocketing price of gas and oil has nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, and has everything to do with Wall Street firms that are artificially jacking up the price of oil in the energy futures markets. ... (T)he same Wall Street speculators that caused the worst financial crisis since the 1930s through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior are ripping off the American people again by gambling that the price of oil and gas will continue to go up." Here we go again. That quote was Sen. Bernie Sanders doing what some always do when the price of oil spikes: complain about speculators. Now, President Obama says he'll investigate them: "We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain." I assume that his new Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group, like its predecessors, will uncover nothing untoward. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Grandstanding Attorney General 5.4.11 | What does Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli hope to find in the files from climatologist Michael Mann’s tenure at the University of Virginia? Presumably something subtle, such as an e-mail from Mann reading, “I can’t believe Virginia was dumb enough to give me state money on the basis of that pack of lies I wrote about global warming.” It’s doubtful Mann’s files contain such a smoking gun. And from a legal standpoint, the hunt for one reveals the weakness in Cuccinelli’s case. Recently the ACLU of Virginia and three other groups filed an amicus brief in the case. In it, they reiterate a point made by the Albemarle, Virginia judge who first turned down Cuccinelli’s request for Mann’s papers: “The court noted that the Attorney General’s own counsel could not clearly identify the ‘nature of the conduct constituting the alleged violation’ ” of the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. In short, Cuccinelli has not said how Mann supposedly broke the law. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Air Traffic Controllers Fall Asleep on the Job 5.2.11 | Between the aborted landing of Michelle Obama's plane at Andrews Air Force Base and a rash of sleeping air traffic controllers, air travelers must be wondering what's going on. The number of "operational errors" in which Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aircraft-separation standards were violated has nearly doubled since 2009. Controller fatigue is obviously a major factor. The FAA has known about the problem for decades but has repeatedly swept it under the rug. Finally, on April 17, the FAA implemented changes to scheduling practices that will allow controllers more time for rest between shifts. But the changes only address part of the fatigue problem. And they don't face up to the reason for the FAA's repeated failures to deal with the issue. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Cost of Getting Bin Laden 5.4.11 | As the world reacts to the death of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, important questions should be asked about the impact his life had on America’s liberty and financial security. It’s too soon to say whether bin Laden’s demise will make America safer or prompt a backlash of anti-American violence, but it’s clear that the federal government’s unprecedented response to his terror attack on September 11, 2001 has come at a steep price to citizens and taxpayers alike. Given the thousands of American lives that have been lost and the mountain of borrowed money that has been spent financing our country’s so-called war on terror, a simple question needs to be asked: Was it all worth it? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 5/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government Creates Poverty 4.28.11 | The U.S. government has "helped" no group more than it has "helped" the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, "Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans." Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cyberwar Is Harder Than It Looks 4.25.11 | In wartime, combatants often attempt to disrupt their enemies' supply systems, generally by blowing them up. Modern life is made possible by a set of tightly interconnected systems supplying us with electricity, water, natural gas, automobile fuels, sewage treatment, food, finance, telecommunications, and emergency response. All of these systems are increasingly directed and monitored through the Internet. Would it be possible for our enemies to disrupt these vital systems by "blowing up" the Net? The Obama administration is worried that they will. In May 2009, the administration issued its Cyberspace Policy Review, which described threats to the Internet as "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st Century." A year later, the U.S. Cyber Command was launched with the aim of protecting American information technology systems and establishing U.S. military dominance in cyberspace. A January report by the U.K.-based market research firm Visiongain identifies cyberwar preparedness as the "single greatest growth market in the defense and security sector," forecasting that global spending will reach $12.5 billion this year. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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If You Love Big Bird, Set Him Free 4.22.11 | The good news for public broadcasters is that Congress has failed to defund them. The budget deal reached earlier this month didn't include the House Republicans' rider to remove all subsidies to National Public Radio Inc., let alone the earlier proposal to zero out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The bad news: Those broadcasters would be better off in the long run if Washington really did pull the plug. The same federal money that underwrites their work makes it easier for politicians to interfere. Just as advertisers can exert influence over commercial programming, government officials have used their power of the purse to pressure public broadcasters. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Jubjub Hole 4.22.11 | In the kingdom of Whatsis, on the Island of Ooze, Lived a gaggle of Spendits of two different hues. Each Spendit was feathered, each Spendit was plump, Each walked with a kind of galumpety-lump. They all looked alike, although it is true Some Spendits were Red, and others were Blue. But regardless of color, they all loved to eat The fruit of the jubjub: It was juicy and sweet — Like an orbulus orange, but tastier yet And filling, and wholesome, and wetter than wet And it gave them a case of the all-over yummies As soon as a bite of it tickled their tummies. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Watch the Watchmen 4.21.11 | I believe in the right to privacy. Yet I can think of someone who deserves very little privacy—a policeman making an arrest. Unfortunately, in some states it's a crime to make a video of a policeman doing just that. People recording police have been threatened, detained, or arrested. Some were jailed overnight. That's wrong. Police work for the public, they're paid with tax money, and most importantly, they have tremendous power. They've got the legal right to pull guns, detain us, lock us up and, in some cases, shoot us. The potential for abuse is great. So it's a good thing that modern video cameras are now so commonplace. Any abuse of police power in a public place is likely to be recorded. Why should that be a crime in some states? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Whole Foods Fight in Boston 4.19.11 | Aida Lopez has been an involuntary resident of Jamaica Plain since 1970, the year she was forced out of Fidel Castro's Cuba. She settled in this largely Hispanic Boston neighborhood because of the low rents and familiar language. But in her years in J.P.—as the neighborhood is known locally—Ms. Lopez has watched it transform from a mostly ethnic enclave to a mix of Latino immigrants, grad students, gays and lesbians, and bearded hipsters, all seeking cheap housing in one of the country's most expensive cities. As Jamaica Plain's demography has shifted, so too have the community's retail needs. For 47 years, the Hi-Lo grocery store provided J.P. residents with staple items and a vast stock of Latin American products. But when Knapp Food group, the Massachusetts-based owners of Hi-Lo, decided that they had had enough of the supermarket business, they pulled out of Jamaica Plain, shuttered a local landmark, and negotiated a 20-year lease with Austin, Texas-based grocery giant Whole Foods. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Debt Wrong 4.14.11 | “From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity,” President Barack Obama declared in a speech at George Washington University yesterday. “More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.” Judging by yesterday’s speech, that’s a skepticism Obama doesn’t share. The president’s solution to the growing cost of government turns out to be more government. The speech was the president’s most comprehensive look at the country’s mounting fiscal troubles, and it painted a stark picture of the nation’s unsustainable fiscal trajectory. America’s “rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy,” the president said. And that necessitates action: “Doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option. Our debt has grown so large that we could do real damage to the economy if we don’t begin a process now to get our fiscal house in order.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Conservatainment 4.12.11 | "I got worried about the future of the country," says country music singer and 11-time Grammy nominee Ray Stevens. As a musician, Stevens wasn't too sure what he could do about the problems he saw. But he had a thought: "Maybe I can produce some records that will help get across conservative points of view." And so Stevens set to work recording an album he describes as "full of patriotic songs and songs of political satire." By February 2011, a video version of his anti-illegal-immigration sing-along "Come to the USA"—in which Stevens dons both a cheap sombrero and an Arab headdress that appears to have been made from a sweatband and a kitchen towel—had been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Bankrupt Option 4.12.11 | The 50 states, as we have seen recently in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are in serious fiscal trouble. Total state debt is estimated at more than $1 trillion, and that doesn't include another $3 trillion in unfunded liabilities from pensions and other obligations. We can afford neither a federal bailout of this sum nor the precedent it would set. But how about giving states the option of filing for bankruptcy, as municipalities can do via Chapter 9? University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel, a specialist in corporate finance and bankruptcy, thinks that's a good idea. Writing in The Weekly Standard last November, he argued that a procedure for bankruptcy could instantly reduce states' bond debt and chop the fat out of bloated contracts with public employees by allowing states in default or in danger of default to reorganize their finances free from their contractual obligations. In January former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed the concept in the Los Angeles Times, arguing that a new law could give states a chance to reform their unaffordable and underfunded pension systems. In "a voluntary bankruptcy scenario," they wrote, "states, like municipalities, will have every incentive to file a reorganization plan that protects state bondholder claims and their ultimate recovery." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Free Speech for Terry Jones! 4.7.11 | Terry Jones, the crackpot Christian cultist with the Lemmy Kilmister mustache, was “hateful” and “intolerant” when he burned the Muslim holy book last month, said Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Afghanistan. Mark Sedwill, NATO’s ambassador to Afghanistan, denounced Jones’s stunt as “an act of disrespect to the Muslim faith and to all peoples of faith.” Faced with crowds of braying and baying religious fanatics, it’s doubtless true that countless soldiers and diplomats feel the same. It would be nice if Petraeus and Sedwill would spare a word for the immutability of freedom of speech, no matter how lunkheaded or convoluted the “message” from Jones, but their reactions—merely attempts to calm the crowds—are both understandable and necessary. When a press-hungry lunatic, whose appetite for television time is consistently satiated by self-righteous members of the media, is providing violent lunatics with a pretext to behead civilians, it is hardly unreasonable to point it out that his “political statement” is “disrespectful.” But in a media culture that demands apportionment of blame, so mindlessly displayed after the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, it’s rather important to confront those who hold the non-violent fundamentalist responsible for the actions of the violent ones. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gun Owners Have a Right to Privacy 4.7.11 | If you own a gun in Illinois, take precautions. The state attorney general, Lisa Madigan, wants to release the names of guns owners in response to an Associated Press request. Publication of that list would tell the criminal class where the guns are, which could be useful to two different sorts of lawbreakers: gun thieves who want to know where the guns are and burglars who want to know where they are not. New York City released its list recently at The New York Times' request. It included "dozens of boldface names and public figures: prominent business leaders, elected officials, celebrities, journalists, judges and lawyers," the Times reported. It then named names. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Spook Racket 4.5.11 | On July 13, 1930, an audience of nearly 6,000 crowded London’s Royal Albert Hall to spend a few hours with the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The world-famous creator of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had also been an outspoken believer in ghosts, Ouija boards, ectoplasm, and other dubious forms of paranormal activity. “That I am perfectly certain is surely demonstrated by the mere fact that I have abandoned my congenital and lucrative work, left my home for long periods of time, and subjected myself to all sorts of inconveniences, losses, and even insults, in order to get the facts home to the people,” Doyle wrote in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures. Who better to deliver a public message from beyond the grave? So joining Doyle’s widow and assorted relatives onstage was the medium Estelle Roberts, who previously claimed to have made contact with the late King George of Greece. “He is here!” Roberts finally shouted to the restless crowd waiting for a sign from the renowned author. “He is here!” Lady Arthur Conan Doyle later said she was convinced, though a reporter covering the event for the Saturday Review wasn’t so sure. “I should like to have heard Sherlock Holmes examining the medium at Albert Hall last Sunday,” he wrote, “for the methods that were employed were hardly reminiscent of Baker Street.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Arab Spring 4.5.11 | In October 2010, best-selling New Yorker essayist Malcolm Gladwell published a piece titled "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," a derisive attack on the notion that social networking websites would ever play a major role in fomenting meaningful nonviolent resistance to authoritarian regimes. "If you're taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy," Gladwell argued. "Think of the ceaseless pattern of correction and revision, amendment and debate, that characterizes Wikipedia. If Martin Luther King, Jr., had tried to do a wiki-boycott in Montgomery, he would have been steamrollered by the white power structure." Less than six months later, a series of mostly nonviolent and nonhierarchical protests drove longtime Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak out of office, part of a transnational wave of pro-liberalization protest that is remaking North Africa and the Middle East. One of the most influential Egyptian activists was a young Google executive named Wael Ghonim. The tide arguably turned against Mubarak when he tried to shut down the Internet. "Our revolution," Ghonim told 60 Minutes, "is like Wikipedia, OK?" From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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But Is It Art? 4.5.11 | Some years ago Spy magazine punctured the pretensions of the art world with a simple prank. It took a bunch of paintings by preschoolers and hung them in a Soho gallery, then recorded the remarks of art aficionados who showed up and said the gassy sort of things people generally say about modern art. The episode offered some vindication for anyone who ever looked at a modern painting or sculpture and scoffed, "My kid could do that." But last week the art world enjoyed a few minutes of vindication itself, thanks to a study by two psychologists at Boston College. Angelina Hawley-Dolan and Ellen Winner paired genuine works of art by famous abstract impressionists with drawings made by children, chimpanzees, and elephants. Sometimes they labeled the paintings correctly and sometimes they switched the labels around or omitted labels altogether. Then they asked study participants which works they preferred and why. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Students Who Get It! 3.31.11 | I went to Princeton in 1969, where they taught me that government could solve the world's problems. Put the smartest people in a room, give them enough taxpayer money, and they will fix most everything. During those years, I heard nothing about an alternative. How things have changed! I recently spent time with several hundred college-aged people at a Students for Liberty conference in Washington, D.C. Here were hundreds of students who actually understand that government creates many of the problems, and freedom—personal and economic liberty—makes things better. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Carbon Rationing by Other Means 3.29.11 | Plan A was to get Congress to adopt a massive cap-and-trade carbon rationing scheme. The idea was to impose mandatory cuts on U.S. emissions of the greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, that are thought to be warming the atmosphere. Six months after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, a cap-and-trade bill managed to squeak through the House of Representatives—once it was larded up with billions in pork. But attempts to get cap and trade through the Senate foundered last July when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) admitted he could not muster the votes. The midterm elections, in which the Republicans took control of the House and increased their membership in the Senate, ensured that Plan A was off the table. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Theocracy in America 3.29.11 | America faces the clear and present danger of a takeover by theocrats who want to impose their religion on everyone else. The only problem is, we don’t know which religion. If you get your news from conservative sources, then it’s pretty clear the threat is Islamic. Conservatives point with alarm to indices such as the case of Safoorah Khan—a Berkeley, Ill., math teacher whose request to take three weeks off so she could make a pilgrimage to Mecca was denied. The Obama Justice Department is now suing the school district on her behalf. Activists on the right also are exercised by a recent ruling from Florida Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen in which he said part of a dispute should be settled by Islamic law. As the St. Petersburg Times reported, "Nielsen said he will decide in a lawsuit against a local mosque, the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, whether the parties in the litigation properly followed the teachings of the Koran in obtaining an arbitration decision from an Islamic scholar." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Book of Mormon 3.23.11 | There are a number of elements in The Book of Mormon, the new musical from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that have almost certainly never before been seen or even approximated on a Broadway stage. A luckless companion-animal called the F**k Frog, for instance—I’m pretty sure that’s a first. And a musical number featuring a sort of singing clitoris—that’s a new one, right? I won’t bother trying to explain what Darth Vader is doing wandering around in the midst of such rude doings, but there is a reason he’s there—along with many, many much-ruder doings. The show is breathtakingly funny. One of the guys with whom I saw it in previews said he laughed so hard he was blowing stuff out of his nose. Especially when the subject is organized religion, you expect a full-frontal assault from Parker and Stone, and while the show is more thoughtful—and more charming—than you’d anticipate, The Book of Mormon doesn’t disappoint. The story begins with a group of freshly-minted young Mormon missionaries being paired off for their first foreign assignments. Two of them draw France; another duo gets Japan. But the odd couple of Elder Price (stalwart Andrew Rannells) and Elder Cunningham (stubby Josh Gad) are informed that they’ll be going to Uganda. When they arrive in East Africa, with their fresh shirts and ties and their little Mormon gospels and blinding evangelical smiles, they find a country devastated by murderous tribal warlords and an unending epidemic of AIDS. This is not the land of The Lion King. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is the Great Stagnation Real? 3.22.11 | In his new book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, George Mason University economist and New York Times columnist Tyler Cowen argues that our current economic woes are the result of running out of cheap land and big technological breakthroughs, and the faltering of public education. As a result, Cowen claims the United States’ economy has been essentially stagnating since about the 1970s. In addition, he identifies three areas of the U.S. economy in which productivity has likely been getting worse. Specifically, Cowen makes persuasive arguments that productivity in the government sector, public education, and health care have stagnated or fallen since the 1970s, dragging down the average performance of the whole economy. As his chief evidence of stagnation, Cowen cites the fact that the growth in median American family incomes dramatically slowed down around 1973. After World War II, median family income had doubled in real terms by 1973. Since then it had increased only 22 percent by 2004, and now has fallen during the recent economic crisis. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government's Work Is Never Done 3.22.11 | "When," humorist P.J. O’Rourke has asked, "can we quit passing laws and raising taxes? When can we say of our political system, ‘Stick a fork in it, it’s done’?... The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop." Alas for O’Rourke and those who sympathize with him, the project of contemporary liberalism is never done. You might look upon the vast expansion of the regulatory state over the past couple of decades and conclude that government could afford to take a breather—maybe even a three-day weekend. Wrong. To the liberal or progressive eye, the remarkable thing is not how much government does—but how much it has yet to do. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Failing Upward in Criminal Justice 3.22.11 | When the SWAT team came for Richard Paey in 1997, officers battered down the front door of the Florida home he shared with his wife and their two children. Paey is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair after a car accident and a botched back surgery. He also suffers from multiple sclerosis. Paey was accused of distributing the medication he used to treat his chronic pain, even though there was no evidence he had sold or given away a single pill. Thanks to Florida’s draconian drug laws, he was eventually convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Paey’s prosecution was an outrage, and it generated significant media attention. In 2007, after Paey had served nearly four years of his sentence, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist gave him a full pardon. Yet Scott Andringa, who prosecuted the case as an assistant state attorney in New Port Richey, has never expressed a hint of remorse. In fact, Andringa, now a defense attorney in private practice, brags about his efforts to imprison Paey on his professional website, noting that he “was the prosecutor assigned to a controversial drug trafficking case that was later profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and in the New York Times.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How Drug Cops Go Bad 3.21.11 | If you browse the website of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), you will notice a conspicuous theme: The war on drugs is corrupting America's cops. LEAP, a group of current and former cops, prosecutors, and judges who oppose the drug war, lists "police corruption and misconduct" as one of the four main topics covered by its speakers. The profile of former Portland, Oregon, Det. Donald Dupay, for example, says he "witnessed the unintended consequences of the war on drugs that caused some of the officers in his department to become corrupt." The profile of former Oakland, California, prosecutor James Anthony says his opposition to drug prohibition stems in part from observing "the negative impact of the 'War on Drugs' on the integrity of the police force." The profile of Fred Martens, a former undercover narcotics cop with the New Jersey State Police, says he saw the drug war "corrupt innumerable law enforcement officials." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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An Overreaching Attorney General 3.21.11 | Last fall Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told an audience in Rocky Mount that in his lawsuits against ObamaCare’s individual mandate and the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases, he is fighting "an out-of-control and overreaching federal government." He has not won the lawsuits, but merely by filing them he has won the admiration of many a member of Tea Party nation. Yet those who cheer him on might be less enthusiastic if they knew he believes the states may do what he says the feds may not—"order you to buy a product," through the police power that is the states’ traditional prerogative. And they ought to shrink—though many do not—from his pursuit of climatologist Michael Mann. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Nuclear Power's Unchanging Plight 3.21.11 | Just as congressional Republicans and the Obama administration had been pushing nuclear power, the disaster in Japan arrived to complicate matters. Proponents of atomic energy fear an unfair, crippling backlash. But the crisis only confirms that in this country, nuclear is the fuel of the future—and always will be. Over the past 40 years, plenty of things have happened that should have worked to its advantage. There was the energy crisis of the 1970s. There was the threat of climate change brought on by fossil fuels. There were clean air laws that raised costs for coal-burning plants. There have been huge oil spills and more price spikes in the petroleum market. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Dysfunctional Fix to a Dysfunctional System 3.18.11 | Nearly six months after banks were caught rubber stamping foreclosures and wrongly evicting families from their homes—a scandal since dubbed "robo-gate"—state attorneys general have indicated that an agreement on restitution could be near. But a devil lurking in the details of the settlement agreement with the major mortgage servicers could make a housing recovery much further off than it needs to be. Earlier this month the state regulators, in association with federal regulators, outlined in pinprick detail how they want the mortgage service industry to be run. From how to handle foreclosure notifications to letting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) review economic models for determining the value of a home, a 27-page proposed set of standards would have regulators micromanaging the entire servicing industry. Not exactly inspiration for investors to jump back into the housing game. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Business of the Court 3.18.11 | Does the Supreme Court have a pro-corporate bias? Many liberals would like you to think so. “The Corporate Court has displayed a clear pattern of overreach and ideological bias,” claims Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice. Chief Justice John Roberts has inaugurated “a clear trend in which big business always prevails,” writes Dahlia Lithwick in Slate. “During the first years of the Roberts court, it has consistently ruled in favor of corporate power,” argues UC Irvine’s Erwin Chemerinsky. “The pattern of pro-corporate decisions made by this Court is unmistakable,” asserts People for the America Way’s Michael Keegan. “Americans who care about our Constitution and our democracy should be deeply disturbed by this trend." Scary words, to be sure. Thankfully, the reality isn’t so shocking. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The $6 Billion Scam 3.18.11 | At what point does a public institution move beyond mere self-interest or ineffectuality and become actively evil? Two proposals in California Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011–12 austerity budget provide a useful comparison. With his plan to ax the state’s system of “enterprise zones” and related tax credits, Brown wants to do away with a program whose history of failure can be charitably blamed on bad luck or miscarried good intentions. But by trying to kill the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies (RDAs), the governor is taking on—and robustly criticizing—a gang of thugs whose activities closely resemble those of a criminal enterprise. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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End the Drug War, Save Black America 3.17.11 | One key to getting past the race issue in America is to end the war on drugs. John McWhorter says it's the most important thing we could do. Cato's Letter features a lecture by McWhorter, who will be a guest on my Fox Business show this week, in which he calls for an end to the war on drugs. (It's really a war on certain people.) McWhorter, the former Berkeley linguistics professor and now senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, specifically indicts the war on drugs for "destroying black America." McWhorter, by the way, is black. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Resilient Japan 3.16.11 | An 8.9 earthquake, a 33-foot tsunami, a series of crises at their battered nuclear plants: The people of Japan have withstood the last week with admirable tenacity. There's no shortage of lessons the rest of the world can learn from what we've been seeing. Here are three of them. 1. People are resilient. Disaster movies and disaster research might as well come from different planets. When Hollywood shows you an earthquake, an eruption, or a towering inferno, you see mass panic, stampeding crowds, maybe a looting spree. When sociologists study real-life disasters, they see calm, resourceful people evacuating buildings, rescuing strangers, and cooperating nonviolently. How cooperative can people be? "At a convenience store in one battered coastal prefecture," The Washington Post reported shortly after the Sendai quake, "a store manager used a private electric generator. When it stopped working and the cash register no longer opened, customers waiting in line returned their items to the shelves." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Malls of a Certain Age 3.16.11 | In the 1980s and ’90s, enclosed malls were the supermodels of American commerce: youthful, gorgeous, and incredibly seductive, the people’s choice for Best Place to Spend Disposable Income on Candlesticks. In 2011 they’re America’s retail cougars, doing everything they can to stay sexy while competing with younger, fresher shopping paradigms. In Cleveland the Galleria at Erieview now features a tomato garden in its food court—or as the mall describes it, with a touch of hopeful pathos, a “resource center for sustainability education.” Others resort to more radical facelifts and tummy tucks. Nearly 40 percent of the square footage in the Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, is now owned by Austin Community College. The Tri-County Mall in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, is now home to the Beech Park Baptist Church. It has been five years since a new enclosed mall opened in the United States. Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, estimates that 10 percent of the nation’s 1,006 malls are on the verge of failure. The genre’s last great hope, the Meadowlands Xanadu Mall in New Jersey, sits unfinished after eight years of development, a poignant, 2.4-million-square-foot monument to cost overruns, a bad economy, and investors’ waning faith in the idea that the best way to beguile shoppers is to stuff movie theaters, bowling alleys, and as many Hot Topics and Capezios as you can fit into a massive, windowless container. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Nuclear Disaster in Japan 3.15.11 | The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants continues. Amazingly, a 40-year-old power plant built to withstand a 7.9 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale shut down automatically as designed when the Earth began shaking. In fact, it stood up to an earthquake that released more than 40 times the amount of energy the plant was designed to survive. At the moment it appears that the 33-foot tsunami that knocked out its backup diesel generators for its coolant pumps was the plant'sundoing. Two earlier explosions were hampering attempts to keep the reactor cores inundated with seawater, and a third explosion yesterday may have uncovered some of the spent fuel rods in a cooling pond at one of the facilities. The explosions appear to be caused by a buildup of highly volatile hydrogen gas within the facilities. After this latest explosion, radiation levels increased outside the facilities and residents within a 12-mile radius of the stricken plants have been evacuated and those living within 19 miles have been advised to stay indoors. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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U.S. Stung By Latest Undercover Sting 3.15.11 | The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O'Keefe since 2007. The long-running hoax is the most elaborate yet in a series of recent sting operations by primarily right-of-center gadflies that have embarrassed organizations including ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and National Public Radio. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Getting Forensics Right 3.14.11 | After countless scandals in recent years, the problems with America's forensics system are finally getting some national attention. In December, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill to reform the country's crime labs. In January, ProPublica and Frontline teamed up for a year-long investigation into the ways criminal autopsies are conducted across the country. In North Carolina, the state legislature is considering reforms to that state's crime lab, which was rocked by a damning 2010 investigation commissioned by the state attorney general and a follow-up report by the Raleigh News and Observer that uncovered widespread corruption, hiding of exculpatory findings, and a pro-prosecution bias among crime lab workers. All of this comes on the heels of a congressionally commissioned 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences that found expert witnesses in many areas of forensics routinely give testimony that is not backed by good science. So the good news is that we are starting to see some skepticism, even some outrage, about the way forensic science is used in criminal cases. The bad news is that the solutions politicians and policy makers are proposing, while better than nothing, do not really address the primary problem. That problem is perverse incentives. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Enemy of My Enemy 3.14.11 | Watching recent events in Egypt I have had a sense of both surreal distance and of personal connection. Distance because it is hard to imagine that American “friend” Hosni Mubarak, recipient of more than $45 billion of U.S. military and economic aid, has finally been called out for his acts of brutal repression. Connection because one of the people Mubarak imprisoned was my brother-in-law. Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian academic sociologist and democracy activist. He is also married to my step-sister Barbara. In 2000 Saad was arrested by the national police, and charged by the Mubarak regime with embezzlement and defaming Egypt’s image. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Who Is the Real Enemy? 3.11.11 | "Our real enemy is not Islam or Muslims. The enemy is extremism and radicalism and radical ideology." So says Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam for the planned Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center. So says the Obama administration, too. So said George W. Bush the week after 9/11, when he declared, "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace." The sentiment has become a shibboleth. Nevertheless, yesterday Rep. Peter King gaveled into session hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims and the extent of Islamic complicity in terrorism. Some have noted with a touch of asperity that King is a fine one to talk, given his former support for the Irish Republican Army. (He once termed that terrorist group a "legitimate force" and compared the leader of its political wing to George Washington.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Green-Jobs Fantasy 3.10.11 | Anyone who understands basic economics already knows that President Obama's $2.3 billion green-jobs initiative was snake oil. Now, thanks to Kenneth P. Green, we have statistics as well as theory to prove it. In a new article, "The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience," the environmental scientist and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute writes, "Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Social Security, Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog, & Alan Simpson: Ultimate Enema Man Remix 3.10.11 | It's easy to laugh at former Sen. Alan Simpson's bizarre malapropisms on Your World With Neil Cavuto. The Wyoming Republican appeard on the Fox News show earlier this week in his capacity as co-chairman of Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Early on in the segment (watch the whole interview here), Simpson went on a tear about the kids these days, claiming that grandchildren now don’t write a thank-you for the Christmas presents, they’re walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg... From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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To the Shores of Tripoli! 3.9.11 | It is reasonable to conclude that if John McCain had won the presidency, the United States military would be at this moment engaging in war with Libya, by enforcing a no-fly zone over the embattled country and probably arming the anti-Qadaffi rebels. After all, that's what the Arizona Senator has been advocating for the past two weeks. But in fact an alternative-universe McCain presidency could have put us on war footing with Libya as early as January 2001, had he beaten George W. Bush in the Republican primaries back in the days of federal budget surpluses. After all, it was McCain during the 2000 campaign who was advocating pro-active regime change in Tripoli, asserting during one presidential debate that he would "revise our policies concerning these rogue states—Iraq, Libya, North Korea—those countries that continue to try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them," and then "institute a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback.' I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically-elected governments." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Oil Price Shocks and the Recession of 2011? 3.8.11 | Oil prices surged to near $107 per barrel yesterday and regular gasoline is going for $3.51 per gallon. Last March oil sold for around $80 per barrel and gas cost about $2.79 per gallon. The uprisings throughout the Middle East are in part responsible for the recent uptick in prices. For example, the fighting in Libya has reduced global oil production by about one million barrels per day. On the other hand, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are boosting their output by a similar amount to make up for the shortfall. Democrats in Congress are calling upon President Barack Obama to damp down prices by selling off oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Of course, the global oil market is pricing in worries that production could be disrupted if protesters in other major OPEC producers such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran began to demand greater freedom. What would happen to the U.S. economy if petroleum prices continue their rapid rise? University of California, San Diego, economist James Hamilton noted in a recent study that 10 out of 11 post-World War II recessions [PDF] in the United States were preceded by a sharp increase in the price of crude petroleum. The only exception was the mild recession of 1960-61 for which there was no preceding rise in oil prices. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Against ‘Incitement’ 3.5.11 | When a significant portion of the commentariat decided in early January that enough hyperbolic, martially themed political rhetoric was enough, that it was time for journalists to purge words like “battleground” from their election reporting and certainly long past time for the Republican Party to erase such eliminationist modifiers as “job-killing” to describe Democratic legislation like Obama-Care, not a single member of the newly cautious caucus pointed a cautionary finger at Chris Hedges. Chris Hedges, if you haven’t heard of him, is a Pulitzer-winning New York Times war correspondent turned apocalyptic essayist for the lefty website Truthdig.com. He is someone who, after Greek protesters burned banks and murdered innocents in 2010, wrote: “Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country.” Around that same time he wrote a piece titled “This Country Needs a Few Good Communists.” And as many commie nostalgics tend to do, Hedges has repeatedly claimed that the modern U.S. is comparable to Hitler’s Germany. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Adjustment Bureau 3.4.11 | Does the fate of the world hang on the chance meeting in a men’s room of an aspiring politician and a saucy ballerina? Yes. Well, maybe. Anyway, it does in The Adjustment Bureau. The movie is based on what I’d say was a hurried reading of an old Philip K. Dick short story called Adjustment Team. Dick’s story featured a talking dog. Watching the movie, I missed that dog. He could’ve been fun. But this is a film in which fun is not overabundant. Fortunately, it does have Matt Damon, keen and likable as always, and Emily Blunt, to whom sauciness is second nature. They go well together; they have chemistry. He’s David Norris. He was running for the New York State Senate before an embarrassing incident from his college days surfaced (dredged up by the damn New York Post, naturally), and he had to withdraw. She’s Elise Sellas, modern-dance star on the rise, and just moments after meeting in that men’s room (please don’t ask), she and David are wrapped in a full-face embrace. Then she has to run off. Can David find her again? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Has Anybody Seen Jimmy Carter Lately? 3.4.11 | Veiled within the news that Ronald Reagan handily topped a recent Gallup poll of Americans’ favorite presidents is a pretty clear mandate: We want somebody to make the 1970s end. This is not the swinging '70s of fond memory (a period during which the nation actually experienced a surge in nostalgia for the 1950s) but the brutalizing fiscal '70s of stagflation, soaring gas prices, President Jimmy Carter’s national “malaise,” and then-California Gov. Jerry Brown’s “era of limits.” Where have you gone, Arthur Burns and/or George Schultz? With a Carteresque president, a scolding yet permissive Federal Reserve chairman who inspires even less confidence than Nixon-appointed Fed chief Arthur Burns, and Jerry Brown himself back in charge of the Golden State, the United States is experiencing a grim and pleasureless sensation of '70s nostalgia. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Does Federal Law Trump an Oath to the Constitution? 3.3.11 | It’s not every day that the Obama administration borrows a page from the conservative legal playbook. But that’s what happened last week when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would no longer defend the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court. According to a letter Holder sent to Congress, DOMA’s requirement that the federal government recognize only heterosexual marriage “violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment” and should therefore be struck down. “This is the rare case where the proper course is to forgo the defense of this statute,” Holder wrote, though he noted that the administration will continue to enforce the law and will provide Congress “a full and fair opportunity” to assume DOMA’s legal defense. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ObamaCare’s Unreasonable Insurance Regulations 3.3.11 | Last week, as part of the ongoing implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $150 million in grants to help states develop rules to regulate “unreasonable” health insurance rate increases. At a press conference last December, Sebelius said these grants would give the government “powerful new tools with which to keep insurance companies honest.” The new rules will certainly give the government more power. But they end up creating more questions than answers, starting with the obvious: How does one define what unreasonable means? Under the PPACA, Sebelius is required to create a system whereby “unreasonable” premium hikes are reviewed in conjunction with state regulators. In response, it declared that insurance hikes of more than 10 percent would be subject to a review process intended to determine if the hike was excessive. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Brian Aitken’s Mistake 3.1.11 | Sue Aitken called the police because she was worried about her son Brian. She now lives with the guilt of knowing her phone call is the reason Brian wound up sitting in a New Jersey prison. If it weren’t for a commutation of his sentence from the governor’s mansion, he would be stuck there for the next seven years. Aitken was sentenced in August for felony possession of a handgun. Before his arrest, Aitken, the owner of a media consulting business, had no criminal record. By all appearances he made a good-faith effort to comply with the stringent New Jersey gun laws that eventually proved his undoing. Even the jurors who convicted him seem to have been looking for a reason to acquit Aitken. But the judge gave them little choice. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Political Economy of the End of Tyranny 3.1.11 | We live in interesting times. Long-standing autocracies in the Arab world are collapsing like overcooked soufflés. The urgent question is: What happens next? The collapse of authoritarian regimes is not all that unusual. Between 1945 and 2002, 316 authoritarian leaders across the globe fell from power through nonconstitutional means, according to a 2009 study [PDF] in the American Journal of Political Science by University of Illinois political scientist Milan Svolik. By nonconstitutional means, Svolik includes any exits that were not the result of natural death, a constitutionally mandated process like an election, a vote by a ruling body, or a hereditary succession. Of the 303 despots for whom Svolik could unambiguously ascertain how they lost political power, it turns out that only 32 tyrants were removed by a popular uprising. Another 30 left under public pressure to democratize, e.g., Chile's Augusto Pinochet. Twenty were assassinated, e.g., Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, and only 16 were removed by foreign intervention, e.g., Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The remaining 205 were ousted by other government members or by members of the security forces—that is to say, by classic coups d’etat. Uneasy indeed lies the head that wears the crown, general’s cap, or keffiyeh. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Golden State Is Made of Lead 2.28.11 | “We’ve been living in Fantasyland,” incoming California Gov. Jerry Brown announced in a December forum on the state’s dire budget situation. “It is much worse than I thought. I’m shocked.” Amid lengthy budget crises and nationwide snickering, you might not think anybody in the Golden State could still be shielded from harsh reality. After all, spending for the current fiscal year is a mere $86.6 billion, only $300 million more than in the previous year—an increase former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described as “essentially flat.” State spending is down almost $20 billion from its 2008 level, but that’s still not nearly enough to get Sacramento’s fiscal house in order. In December, less than two months after signing a putatively balanced budget that had initially come in with a $19 billion deficit, lame duck Schwarzenegger—supported by Gov.-elect Brown—convened an emergency session of the legislature to close an additional $6 billion gap that became apparent after the budget was enacted. Evidence for California’s looming insolvency is all around: a state of fiscal emergency in Stockton, a potential municipal bankruptcy in Los Angeles, a government bond rating that is the worst among the 50 states, unfunded pension obligations that could run as high as $500 billion over the next decade. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 3/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Does Government Suppress Information? 2.24.11 | Sunday night is Oscar night! Think you know who's going to win? Want to make a bet? The Hollywood Stock Exchange allows people to bet on which movies, actors, directors, etc. will take home Academy Awards. You can also bet on how much money a movie might make. It's called a prediction market ... except unlike other prediction markets, bettors can't use real money. What fun is that? It's not only less fun, it's also makes the prediction market less accurate. People are more careful when they have real money on the line, and the chance of losing money weeds out the frivolous guessers. Prediction markets are valuable for predicting all kinds of things because the prospect of making money attracts people with knowledge, judgment, and a good sense of the future. More information is better than less. The people most confident in their information bet the most. That's why speculation is a sound market institution. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Reality Bites 2.24.11 | In the United States alone, reports Jane McGonigal in her new book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, there are 183 million people who spend an average of 13 hours a week playing video games. In the seven years that World of Warcraft has existed, its acolytes have collectively spent 5.93 million years playing it. In 2009, McGonigal writes, a journal called Cyberspsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking reported that “61 percent of surveyed CEOs, CFOs, and other senior executives say they take daily game breaks at work.” These factoids may sound like the opening salvo to the latest anti-gaming screed, but in fact they’re the opening salvo to a slightly rarer beast, the pro-gaming manifesto. McGonigal is the director of Game Research & Development at a Palo Alto, California think tank called the Institute for the Future, and she believes that we can use the game play techniques that keep millions of people awake all night slaying blood elf bandits to score epic wins over real-world problems like climate change, food insecurity, and rising rates of depression. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Down with Gene Tyranny! 2.22.11 | The idea of using genetic engineering to enhance human beings scares a lot of people. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center for Bioethics and Society, testified that “enhancement technologies would quickly be adopted by the most privileged, with the clear intent of widening the divisions that separate them and their progeny from the rest of the human species.” Deploying such enhancement technologies would “deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,” exacerbating “tendencies towards xenophobia, racism and warfare.” Hayes concluded that allowing people to use genetic engineering for enhancement “could be a mistake of world-historical proportions.” Meanwhile intellectuals with a more right-wing bent such as Nigel Cameron, president of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, worry that “one of the greatest ethical concerns about the potential uses of germline interventions to enhance normal human functions is that their availability will widen the existing inequalities between the rich and the poor.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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This Is What a Broke Democracy Looks Like 2.23.11 | As of this writing, the Wisconsin budget/union standoff hasn’t been settled. While the state assembly debates, Democrats are offering amendment after amendment to slow things down. The state Senate still lacks a quorum, with 14 Democratic senators having fled the state (and who might lose their paychecks if they don’t come back). Now the show is hitting the road. Ohio’s capital is also filling with demonstrators angry over an attempt to restrict public employee union collective bargaining powers. Indiana legislators are fleeing the state to scuttle a private sector right-to-work bill prohibiting companies from forcing people to join or pay dues to a union in order to work. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How Public Employees and Taxpayers Got Scammed 2.24.11 | Public employees have been cramming the Wisconsin state Capitol to protest the governor's plan to cut their take-home pay and gut their collective bargaining rights. You can't blame them for objecting when the state reneges on a deal. But they should have been protesting years ago, when politicians and union leaders struck a bargain that was too good to be true. Government workers have long accepted a tradeoff. They get lower pay than they might get in the private sector, but better retirement benefits. They give up some current luxuries for more security later on. The great majority of them have pension plans with guaranteed payouts—an option that has largely disappeared from the private sector. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The End of a Libyan Crime Family 2.15.11 | As of this writing, it’s reasonable to assume that the 42-year reign of Muammar Qaddafi, the craggy-faced lunatic who long ago stole Libya, is coming to an end, though not without an astounding level of brutality. Having retained power through coercion, terror, and violence, it was almost assured that Qaddafi’s response to the uprising in Benghazi—which has now spread across the country—would draw upon the wrong lessons of history. As he is discovering, Green Square in 2011 isn’t Tiananmen Square in 1989. The higher the corpses pile, the more likely the kleptocratic thugs in Tripoli will end up, if they are lucky, house guests of Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Reports that Qaddafi fled the country he destroyed to the one Chavez is currently destroying have proven premature. Though we do know that members of the Libyan air force have absconded to Malta with two Mirage F-1 fighter jets, refusing to fly missions against their fellow citizens (while plenty of other pilots abrogated moral responsibility and carried out Qaddafi’s orders). And we know that Libyan ambassadors in Sweden, the United States, and China, and representatives to the Arab League and United Nations, have either resigned in protest or demanded that Qaddafi stand down. The country’s border with Egypt is now controlled by anti-government forces and reports suggest that the regime has completely lost control of Benghazi, the country's second-largest city. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Losing the Brains Race 2.15.11 | In November the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its Program for International Student Assessment scores, measuring educational achievement in 65 countries. The results are depressingly familiar: While students in many developed nations have been learning more and more over time, American 15-year-olds are stuck in the middle of the pack in many fundamental areas, including reading and math. Yet the United States is near the top in education spending. Using the OECD data, Figure 1 compares K–12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As you can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the U.S. spends the most in the world on education, an average of $91,700 per student in the nine years between the ages of 6 and 15. But the results do not correlate: For instance, we spend one-third more per student than Finland, which consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Spontaneous Order 2.10.11 | You are our Ruler. An entrepreneur tells you he wants to create something he calls a "skating rink." Young and old will strap blades to their feet and speed through an oval arena, weaving patterns as moods strike them. You'd probably say, "We need regulation—skating stoplights, speed limits, turn signals—and a rink director to police the skaters. You can't expect skaters to navigate the rink on their own." And yet they do. They spontaneously create their own order. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The C-Word. 2.9.11 | In early January, the British medical journal BMJ completed an investigation into one of the most notorious articles in recent history: Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study in The Lancet claiming that the MMR vaccine, designed to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella, causes autism. The Lancet had already retracted the piece in February 2010 (following a partial retraction in 2004), and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license three months later. BMJ concluded that Wakefield consciously distorted the medical histories of each of the 12 patients on which he based his study. “The MMR scare was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud,” Editor in Chief Fiona Godlee wrote. Such “clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare.” Since the original article was published, vaccination rates have tumbled in the U.K. and U.S., while measles rates have shot up. Certainly Wakefield and The Lancet shoulder some responsibility for the damage done to public health. But bad information does not spread and trigger action (or, in this case, inaction) without a willing audience. The vaccine/autism link has been debunked repeatedly since 1998—by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine, and the British National Health Service, among many others. Yet the myth persisted. Why? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Go Down, Pharaoh. 2.4.11 | What a pathetic old brute Hosni Mubarak has become. Here he is telling ABC that he'd love to give up power, really he would, but he's afraid Egypt would collapse into chaos without his steady hand at the wheel. Meanwhile, the country has been doing a pretty good job of keeping order while Mubarak's state withers away, as neighbors band together to direct traffic, clean the streets, treat the wounded, and protect lives and property. It's Mubarak and his mobs who have been the fountainhead of chaos: Again and again, protesters have captured a looter, a vandal, or a stone-throwing, machete-wielding goon, only to discover he was carrying police ID. If you're looking for violence on the rebels' side, the worst that you can definitively say is that when Mubarak's heavies attacked the demonstrators camped out in Cairo's Tahrir Square, many of the campers fought back. And can you blame them for that? Nonetheless, Mubarak is posing as the foe of the disorder he did more than anyone else to unleash. He has also sacked some ministers, promised to leave office later in the year, and detained the chief of the secret police. All this as his allies beat and bully reporters and seize or destroy their equipment. It's a disorienting combination of heavy-handed coercion and tentative concessions. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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He Loves the Mandate, He Loves It Not. 2.2.11 | There’s an old game played by love-struck teenagers trying to figure out what the object of their affection thinks of them. Take a flower and pull the petals off one-by-one. For each petal, alternate between saying “she loves me” and “she loves me not.” Whichever refrains corresponds with the final petal supposedly reveals the truth. Those attempting to make sense of President Barack Obama’s record on the individual mandate—a provision in last year’s health care overhaul that will require most Americans to either purchase health insurance or pay a federal fine—might try a similar exercise. “He loves the mandate. He loves it not.” But there’s no need to pull the final petal to find out the truth; they’re both correct. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bioethicists Can't Handle the Truth 2.1.11 | “A final lesson from the history of bioethics is the consensus that if you can't offer a patient anything to prevent or to ameliorate a terrible disease, why test for it?,” writes University of Alabama at Birmingham bioethicist Greg Pence in a heartfelt op/ed in the Birmingham News. Pence is specifically concerned about burgeoning availability of tests for the brain- and personality-destroying horror that is Alzheimer’s disease. Just last week, an expert panel at the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the agency approve a new test developed by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals that can detect the presence in the brain of plaques of the amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The test uses a radioactive dye that attaches to amyloid plaques. That dye can then be detected with positron emission tomography (PET) scans. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What’s the Matter with Provincetown? 2.1.11 | Barack Obama the hard-left bomb thrower is gone. I miss him already. Yes, I know. The president routinely depicted by detractors as the demon seed of the ’60s counterculture is in fact an establishment figure who blocks efforts to end federal discrimination against gay people, supports immunity for federal agents who illegally engaged in warrantless wiretapping, declines to withdraw on any front from either the war on drugs or the war on jihad, made insurance giganticorps the centerpiece of his health care law, failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and helped deliver hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of insolvent bankers and industrialists. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Anti-Cop Trend That Isn't 1.31.11 | Between January 20 and January 25, 13 police officers were shot in the U.S., five of them fatally. Two officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, were killed while trying to arrest a suspect accused of aggravated battery. Two more were killed in Miami while trying to arrest a suspected murderer. An officer in Oregon was seriously wounded and another in Indiana was killed after they were shot during routine traffic stops. The Indiana assailant had a long and violent criminal record. The suspect in Oregon is still at large. In another incident, four officers were injured in Detroit when a man about to be charged in a murder investigation walked into a police station and opened fire. Some police advocates have drawn unsupported conclusions from this rash of attacks, claiming that they are tied to rising anti-police sentiment, anti-government protest, or a lack of adequate gun control laws. Media outlets also have been quick to draw connections between these unrelated shootings. While these incidents are tragic, the ensuing alarmism threatens to stifle much-needed debate about police tactics, police misconduct, and police accountability. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Grade Inflation 1.28.11 | When it comes to reforming Big College, give the federal government a C+. Throughout 2010, grade grubbers in Congress, the White House, the Department of Education, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) worked hard to investigate and regulate the booming for-profit college sector. Among other sins, they accused the schools of predatory recruiting practices, inflating grades to keep students eligible for federal aid, and charging too much for degrees that ultimately have little value in the workplace. Given that the approximately 2,000 for-profit colleges in the U.S. rely on federal aid for a huge portion of their revenues, such scrutiny is clearly warranted. Still, the $25 billion in federal grants and loans that flows to them each year represents just a fraction of the $113.3 billion the government made available to higher education as a whole in 2009–10. And not all of the $89 billion or so that non-profit institutions collected in federal aid went toward teaching the nation’s youth such career-enhancing skills as how to deconstruct soap operas from a Marxist perspective. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 2/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Islam and the Intolerance Problem 1.25.11 | While the attempted murder of an American Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, has prompted an outpouring of grief and soul-searching, the fatal shooting of a prominent elected official in another country around the same time has provoked a very different reaction. After Salman Taseer, governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab, was murdered by his own bodyguard, there was a wave of support for the murderer—from religious figures and ordinary citizens, from several political parties, and even from a group of lawyers. The reason? Taseer had spoken out against Pakistan's blasphemy laws and in support of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Such harrowing stories cannot be ignored in the discussion of Islam and religious tolerance. Last year, the controversy over Cordoba House, the planned Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, turned into a debate about Islam and "Islamophobia." There is no question that some of the rhetoric in that debate crossed the line into anti-Muslim bigotry—the portrayal of all or most Muslims as "the enemy"—and that the self-proclaimed "anti-jihadists" who spearheaded anti-mosque campaign, such as bloggers Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs and Robert Spencer of JihadWatch, routinely traffic in gross caricatures of Islam as inherently and uniquely evil, oppressive, and violent. But all too many in the pro-mosque camp argued as if violent extremism in Islam today was as much of a fringe phenomenon as in Christianity or Judaism. This month's events in Pakistan remind us that is simply not the case. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Government Pills 1.25.11 | Government expands on failure. All too often, government failure is treated as evidence that we need more government. Instead, government failure indicates that we should look for alternative results in the competitive marketplace. Unfortunately, the creation of the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is a near perfect example of how government failure leads to further government interference with markets, in this case the market for new medicines. Over the past 15 years the number of new drugs that have been making it to patients’ bedsides has been falling. In addition, after rising steeply for many years, research spending by large drug makers has recently declined. “I am a little frustrated to see how many of the discoveries that do look as though they have therapeutic implications are waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to follow through with them,” said Francis Collins in The New York Times. Collins, as head of the National Institutes of Health, is spearheading the creation of the NCATS. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Cops Aren’t Whistleblowers 1.24.11 | While awarding Barron Bowling $830,000 last September for the beating he suffered at the hands of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson went out of her way to acknowledge another victim in the disgraceful affair: Kansas City police detective Max Seifert. In January 2003, Bowling was on his way to fill a prescription when Timothy McCue, an on-duty DEA agent, tried to pass him illegally on the right side of a wide one-lane street. Bowling accelerated to prevent McCue from passing, and the two cars collided. After the collision, McCue and another agent got out of their car. McCue drew his gun, threw Bowling to the ground, and beat him to the point of inflicting brain damage. McCue later justified the violence by saying Bowling “resisted arrest” when he lifted his head from the pavement. According to witnesses, McCue threatened to kill Bowling, whom he called “white trash” and a “system-dodging inbred hillbilly.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Science of Libertarian Morality 1.20.11 | Libertarians are often cast as amoral calculating rationalists with an unseemly hedonistic bent. Now new social science research upends that caricature. Libertarians are quite moral, the researchers argue—just not in the same way that conservatives and liberals are. The University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of work in the past probing the different moral attitudes of American liberals and conservatives. With time he realized that a significant proportion of Americans did not fit the simplistic left/right ideological dichotomy that dominates our social discourse. Instead of ignoring the outliers, Haidt and his colleagues chose to dig deeper. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Will the Republicans Cut Government This Time? 1.20.11 | The Republicans promise less intrusive, less expensive government. But will they deliver? In the past, they have said they would shrink the state, but then they came into power and spent more. Consider George W. Bush's eight horrendous years: The budget grew 89 percent—from $1.86 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Two Republican House members, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, No. 2 on the budget committee, and Bill Huizenga, a freshman from Michigan, say that they really mean to cut. "I sure plan to," Garrett said. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Cyberwar Is Harder Than It Looks 1.18.11 | Modern life is made possible by sets of tightly interconnected systems, supplying us with electricity, water, natural gas, automobile fuels, sewage treatment, food, telecommunications, finance, and emergency response. In wartime, combatants have traditionally sought to disrupt their enemies’ supply systems, generally by blowing them up. Nowadays, many of these systems are increasingly directed and monitored through the Internet. Would it be possible for our enemies to disrupt these vital systems by “blowing up” the Internet? The Obama administration is evidently worried about this possibility. In May 2009, the administration issued its Cyberspace Policy Review [PDF] which declared, “Threats to cyberspace pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st Century for the United States and our allies.” A year later the U.S. Cyber Command was launched with the aim of protecting U.S. information technology systems and establishing U.S. military dominance in cyberspace. A new market research report identifies the cyberwar sector as “single greatest growth market in the defense and security sector,” forecasting that global spending on cyberwarfare will reach $12.5 billion this year. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Weapons of Mass Consumption 1.14.11 | The good times are killing us, Daniel Akst suggests in We Have Met The Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, but at least he believes there are steps we can take to keep ourselves from having too much fun. Compared to other critics of American affluence, this qualifies him as an optimist. His general take: Cheap food, easy credit, overwhelming consumer choice, lax social mores, and all the other virtues that bedevil us here in the land of the alarmingly unrestrained may stack the deck against us, but if, like Odysseus, we’re willing to bind ourselves to the mast whenever our own personal Sirens start trilling their irresistible melodies, we may yet escape complete ruin. In Akst’s estimation, saying “no” to modern life’s immersive temptations is our culture’s “biggest and most enduring challenge,” and he’s got some compelling statistics to bolster this contention. According to a Harvard study he cites, extending medical coverage to all Americans would save approximately 45,000 lives a year. Meanwhile, nearly half of the 2.5 million Americans who expire each year could postpone their demises if they could only summon the strength to forsake punitively taxed cigarettes and Jersey Shore marathons. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Political Discourse and the Tucson Shootings 1.14.11 | Should the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely wounded in a shooting spree that left 14 injured and six dead, become a "teachable moment" about hate and polarization in American political discourse? Yes—not because of the shooting but because of its aftermath. First there was the blame game on the left, with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and others jumping with indecent haste to pin the shootings on right-wing and Tea Party rhetoric. In fact, the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, turned out to be a severely disturbed man whose delusions weren't even on the outer edge of mainstream politics, left or right. The Krugman spin? Just because Loughner is psychotic does not mean he wasn't influenced by the hateful political climate—despite the lack of any evidence that he was. In other words: Don't confuse me with the facts. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Just Your Typical Would-Be Assassin 1.11.11 | “Students of assassination in the U.S. have generally seen assassins and attackers of political leaders either as possessing ‘political’ motives or as being ‘deranged,’” notes a 1999 comprehensive study [PDF] of the 83 known and would-be attackers in modern American history. “This is a narrow and inaccurate view of assassination." “There is no profile of an American assassin,” forensic psychologist Robert Fein and his co-author Bryan Vossekuil, former head of the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, emphasize. But the Tucson attacker, Jared Loughner, is pretty typical. Of the 83 attackers analyzed, 71 were male, 63 were white, 41 had never married, 47 had no children, about half had some college education, and about half were unemployed at the time of their attacks. “Almost all subjects had histories of grievances and resentments,” note Fein and Vossekuil. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Prohibitionists: Leave Us Alone! 1.6.11 | Sometimes I drink Scotch and then, to wake myself up, I drink coffee. So what? Many people consume mixtures of caffeine and alcohol in drinks like rum and Coke. Again, so what? But recently some college kids started drinking pre-mixed combos of alcohol and caffeine with names like Four Loko and Moonshot '69. Moonshot '69 is a pilsner beer with less than a coffee cup's worth of caffeine. Until recently, Four Loko contained 12 percent alcohol—about the same as wine—and as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. A few students, after drinking Four Loko, landed in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Naturally, hysterical news reports followed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Defending the Right to Offend 1.6.11 | On December 9, 2010, the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine,Reason.com, and Reason.tv, held an event celebrating free speech at New York City's The Box and commemorating adult filmaker John Stagliano's victory over federal obscenity charges (go here for our coverage of that spectacular waste of taxpayer dollars). The idea behind the event was to draw attention to Reason's ongoing work in defense of free expression and to call for a new free speech movement that reaches beyond traditional categories of left and right. What follows is a text written for the occasion by Michael C. Moynihan. Living in an era that forces editorial cartoonists into witness protection, in a culture that barely bats an eye when the federal government prosecutes "indecent" films, the free speech battles of the past seem almost quaint by comparison. Recall that in 1968, a jury huffed that I Am Curious: Yellow, a plodding Swedish film that succeeded in making sex unsexy, was "utterly without social value." The decision was soon overturned on appeal, the forecasted moral collapse failed to materialize, and Swedish embassies across Christendom were left unmolested. Andres Serrano’s photograph "P**s Christ," the Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensation” exhibit, Robert Mapplethorpe’s bullwhip all provoked pickets, editorials, angry letters—and they all provoked debate. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Dignity Doesn't Fly 1.5.11 | That the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has saved a single life is unproven and doubtful. But it did something good for the country last fall by provoking a long overdue reaction against bureaucratic bullying. The TSA has been rolling out more of its “Advanced Imaging Technology” scanners, with the goal of having 1,000 in service by the end of 2011, covering around half of the security lanes at our nation’s airports. These machines demand more of us than just striding through, as with the traditional metal detector. That can be done with some semblance of dignity. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Please Stop "Helping" Us 12.30.10 | Last year, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act. It was supposed to really end the alleged abuses perpetrated by the credit card companies. The law forbids some penalties and interest-rate increases on existing balances. It is one of President Obama's proudest achievements. "Enough's enough," he said. "It's time for strong, reliable protection for our consumers." Reform, he said, would not come at the expense of honest businesses. "Unless your business model depends on cutting corners or bilking your customers, you've got nothing to fear." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 1/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Never-Ending "Business of Centralization" 12.22.10 | On May 27, 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in the case of Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. At issue was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, a centerpiece of the New Deal’s first 100 days hailed by President Franklin Roosevelt as “the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress.” FDR wasn’t kidding about the law’s reach. Through the creation of more than 500 “codes of fair competition,” the NIRA sought to micro-manage even the smallest and most local aspects of the American economy, mandating everything from the price of food to the cost of having a shirt hemmed. As justification for this unprecedented power grab, Congress cited its constitutional authority to “regulate commerce...among the several states.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Space Cheese and Other Breakthroughs 12.17.10 | If you had been onboard the Dragon capsule last week as it was launched into orbit and then quickly retrieved after a Pacific Ocean splashdown, you would have enjoyed “a very nice ride” according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk. But the occupants of this test flight—the first successful launch and recovery of a pressurized capsule by a commercial space company—were limited to some ballast weights, souvenirs for the crew, and this wheel of Le Brouère cheese. The cheese was sent along as a Monty Python joke. NASA took cheese into space long ago, of course. It looks like this now. The success of SpaceX’s venture comes just after the conclusion of a debate within government about how to handle the future of space. With the final flight of the U.S. shuttle fleet set for 2011, a new way of doing business in low earth orbit is evolving. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Face the Flag 12.16.10 | To patriotic beverage entrepreneur Don Sessions, the Pledge of Allegiance is more just than the Pavlovian mantra of sleepy six-year-olds. It’s a virtual law every American should abide by, a sacred text. So when federal regulators at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) reportedly told him he’d have to change it if he wanted to slap it on a can of beer so star-spangled it makes the average Fourth of July fireworks display look positively funereal, he stood his ground. “In the Pledge, it says, ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag,” the 75-year-old gadfly explained to Fox News last month. “They wanted me to change that to ‘I pledge allegiance to my country.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no, I can’t change the words to the Pledge. To me it would be like changing the words to the Bible.’” Others haven’t shown as much restraint as the Barnumesque beer salesman. In the recently published The Pledge: A History of the Pledge of Allegiance, authors Jeffrey Owen Jones and Peter Meyer explain how it took 62 years of editing for the 31-word oath to achieve the form we know today. And even now, though it has remained unchanged since 1954, when by official Congressional decree the phrase “under God” was inserted to help distinguish the United States from its godless Communist foes in the Soviet Union, would-be editors of the American experience dream of tailoring it to their own visions of democracy. Atheists want to strike God’s mid-century cameo. Those who oppose abortion would like to append the phrase “born and unborn” to the end of the current Pledge. Some women’s rights advocates, Jones and Meyer write, would like it to read “with liberty and justice for all men and women.” For 118 years, the Pledge has functioned as a paradox, binding us all in indivisible groupthink and promising individual liberty in a single sentence. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Our Leaky World 12.15.10 | We've read so much in the last few weeks about Julian Assange, it's easy to forget the WikiLeaks story isn't ultimately about Julian Assange. It isn't even really about WikiLeaks, any more than Watergate was a story about a hotel. This is a story about a new era—one where, in the words of the security specialist Bruce Schneier, "the government is learning what the music and movie industries were forced to learn years ago: it's easy to copy and distribute digital files." If WikiLeaks shut its doors tomorrow, disgruntled soldiers or secretaries or bankers or bureaucrats or cops or managers or their nosy spouses could still send secret documents to Cryptome instead. Or perhaps to OpenLeaks, a forthcoming site in the same genre. Or to any of the other operations of this sort that may appear in the coming years. Or they could just release the information directly to the world, emailing items anonymously to the media or releasing big chunks of data as a torrent. If you have access to secrets you'd like to share, you no longer need to persuade Bob Woodward or Seymour Hersh to be your intermediary. And the larger the institution with secrets to keep, the more opportunities for leaking there will be. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Obama's Obesity War 12.14.10 | As President Barack Obama signs the new federal child nutrition bill, flanked by anti-childhood-obesity crusader Michelle Obama, the culture wars have devolved into a food fight—literally. Yet it is a battle in which the political lines are not easily defined. Unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin has led the fray. In a radio talk show appearance in November, the former vice presidential candidate derided the first lady's "Let's Move" initiative—"the anti-obesity thing she is on"—as practically un-American: "She cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat." Earlier, on a visit to a private school in Pennsylvania, Palin assailed the state's planned school nutrition guidelines that would encourage healthier snacks and fewer classroom birthday parties; she brought a batch of 200 cookies to protest "a nanny state run amok." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The SWAT Team Would Like to See Your Alcohol Permit 12.13.10 | In August a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. There were more raids in September and October. According to the Orlando Sentinel, barbers and customers were held at gunpoint, some in handcuffs, while police turned the shops upside down. A total of nine shops were raided, and 37 people were arrested. By all appearances, these raids were drug sweeps. Shop owners told the Sentinel police asked where they were hiding illegal drugs and weapons. But in the end, 34 of the 37 arrests were for "barbering without a licence," a misdemeanor for which only three people have ever served jail time in Florida. Two arrests were for misdemeanor marijuana possession. Just one person was arrested on felony drug and weapon charges. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Watching What You Eat 12.13.10 | Possibly the only cultural phenomenon that had a bigger year in 2010 than Justin Bieber was the needs-based entitlement program formerly known as Food Stamps. Now dubbed the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program, or SNAP, it enrolled more than 40 million people for the first time in March 2010. By August that number had grown to 41,836,300. At that point, nearly one in seven Americans were receiving monthly payments of approximately $133, for a monthly government outlay of more than $5.5 billion. “Nothing tells the reality of this economy better than this,” Bloomberg Television news anchor Margaret Brennan uttered solemnly in January 2010, setting the tone for a year’s worth of coverage. In May, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution told the tale of an entertainment attorney who’d once earned $250,000 a year resorting to food stamps to feed his two kids. In June, NPR featured the story of a former restaurant critic who was now dining on Uncle Sam’s dime. Even Newt Gingrich bought into SNAP’s rapidly expanding girth as a telling metric of economic stagnation. “Which future do I want?” he wrote in an October memo sent to Republican candidates. “More food stamps? Or more paychecks?” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Do the Poor Stay Poor? 12.9.10 | Second Amendment lawyer Alan Gura filed an appeal this week in the case of Ezell v. Chicago, challenging the city's ban on gun ranges. It's likely to be one of the first important appeals court decisions to define the new shape of Second Amendment jurisprudence. Gura is already the most important lawyer in that field, with his one-two punch of Supreme Court victories in 2008’s D.C. v. Heller (which established that the amendment protects an individual right to own weapons, at least for self-defense in the home) and 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago (which established that that right applies to states and localities as well as the federal government). From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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You Must Get Gun Range Training. But You Can’t Get Gun Range Training. 12.9.10 | Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don't build businesses, or if they do, they don't expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe, and Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., they don't lift themselves out of poverty. Why not? What's the difference between them and us? Hernando de Soto taught me that the biggest difference may be property rights. I first met de Soto maybe 15 years ago. It was at one of those lunches where people sit around wondering how to end poverty. I go to these things because it bugs me that much of the world hasn't yet figured out what gave us Americans the power to prosper. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Cold War Relic 12.7.10 | A specter has been haunting Washington, D.C.—a Cold War-era ghost known as the START treaty. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April to replace the previous treaty which expired a year ago, is now at risk of being stalled by Republicans in Congress. The ostensible issue is mainly procedural—GOP leaders assert that other items on the agenda of the lame-duck Democratic majority have left too little time to debate the pact in the remainder of this session—but Obama supporters charge that the Republicans are simply hell-bent on thwarting the President. High dudgeon-prone Atlantic.com blogger Andrew Sullivan calls this "close to organized vandalism." Other START champions such as former CIA covert operations officer and Bush Administration critic Valerie Plame Wilson insist, in less vehement language, that scuttling the treaty will harm both national and global security, undercutting efforts to curb nuclear weapons and reversing important improvements in U.S.-Russian relations. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Permanent Nongoverning Minority 12.7.10 | Two weeks before Republicans took control of the House and eroded the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, I was backstage at the Fox Business Channel watching the great libertarian host John Stossel fence with longtime Democratic political strategist and former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. Trippi made an analogy between the Tea Party movement of 2010 and the grassroots-fed Dean insurgency of 2004. The crowd groaned in disbelief, but Trippi was right. American politics is now at a stage where every two years the political establishment gets rocked anew by the sight of alienated citizens banding together in a decentralized manner to alter national politics in unexpected ways. There is emerging a permanent, though highly fluid, nongoverning minority of independents and disaffected party members who will unite to punish incumbents when the alienation becomes too acute to bear. Wherever you see a strong American political tradition being ignored and even flouted by both major parties, you see the kindling for the fire next time. It won’t always produce the desired results for freedom-loving people, but it makes the two party system profoundly uncomfortable. That can only be a good thing. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The WikiLeaks Debate 12.3.10 | In the latest example of a society allergic to measured responses and shades of gray, the reaction to the WikiLeaks dump has been embarrassingly in the red. Julian Assange is a hero, a freedom fighter, a speaker of truth to power. Or he's a traitor, a r****t, a thief. Publishing the catty chitchat of American diplomats is either a courageous stand against the machine (even braver than Ellsberg because he's got no psychiatrist) or a cowardly flight from Johnny Law. The hysteria had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who would have thought she's such a chatty Cathy after all these years of manufactured public appearances and staged press conferences?—saying that this leak endangers thousands. It doesn't. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com | 12/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 301 Episodes |
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