Children of the Corn
Everybody loves the idea of the self-sufficient farmer — hardy, independent, working his own land to produce what he needs on his own terms. It is a romantic vision, unless you have the experience of...
View ArticleWhere’s Warren?
Where is Senator Elizabeth Warren when we need her? Senator Warren -- whose main mode of political operation is grandstanding during financial-oversight hearings -- recently browbeat some feckless...
View ArticlePublic Health and Public Trust
Congratulations to Texas and the Aggies on becoming the home of a new federally backed center for emergency vaccines. The $91 million project, a joint effort by Texas A&M University, the federal...
View ArticleToday In Government Spending
One of these things is a gigantic waste of money, the other two are just kind of gross.
View ArticleThe Revelries of Baucus
The New York Times on Sunday carried a heavy breathing report alerting the diminished newspaper-reading public to the fact that Senator Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who chairs the committee that shapes...
View ArticleThe One Number You Need to Know in O’s Budget
Here’s the number to keep in mind: $763 billion. If enacted, Barack Obama’s latest budget would mean that in just ten years, interest payments alone on the national debt would begin pushing the...
View ArticleKilling Pollyanna
There has been an unfortunate outbreak of deficit naivety in the past few weeks. Ezra Klein declared the deficit “pretty much solved, at least for the next 10 years or so,” Daniel Gross greeted the...
View ArticleDetroit Defaults
The City of Detroit has defaulted on a portion of its bonds, specifically on payments to unsecured creditors. Those who invested in bonds with dedicated revenue streams attached have been spared, for...
View ArticleToday in Fiscal Foolishness
On the Corner: Delaware considers a bailout for casinos. Texas plans to spend millions of dollars to replace thousands of new computers (via Pratt on Texas). Hey, let's all have a big fight about a...
View ArticleBring on the Draconian Cuts
Hark, unless mine eyes are cheated, it appears that the House has passed a bill -- on energy and water development -- that would spend less money than we spent last year. Indeed, that is the case: The...
View ArticleExtremism Is Not the Problem; Bipartisanship Is
This weekend op-ed from AEI’s Norman Ornstein and Brookings’s Thomas Mann has drawn a great deal of criticism, much of it arguing that, contra the authors’ claims, Democrats are as ideological, as...
View ArticleRomney, Day 1
Mitt Romney has some big plans for Day 1. But where are the spending cuts? TBD, apparently.Mr. Romney has promised a 5 percent cut in non-defense discretionary spending, which is to say: approximately...
View ArticleEmotional Onanism
If I have learned anything over the past few years in my part-time employment as The New Criterion’s theater critic, it is that unless it is articulated with great skill and artistry, there is nothing...
View ArticleDetroit: The Moral of the Story
The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis:...
View ArticleReal-Estate Roulette
Foreclosures are down year-over-year but spiked sharply in May -- up 9 percent. Both home sales and prices have recovered a bit recently, both up about 10 percent year-over-year. What seems to be...
View ArticleWhy I Am Not Too Worried about Obamacare
While I had been hoping for an assist from the Supreme Court, my opinion about Obamacare today is the same as on the day it was passed: Don’t sweat it. We are going to see the law replaced with...
View ArticleThe China-Hating Season Is Upon Us
It must be an election year: Washington has noticed that the brutes in Beijing still aren’t reading their Bastiat, and a World Trade Organization complaint is in the works. I do not think that the...
View ArticleMilton Friedman: An Economics of Love
When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?’ What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together To make money from each other’? or...
View ArticleAnother Fine Moment in Republican Statesmanship
Those of you who have criticized me for being soft on taxes may have a point: Back home, I’m something of a liberal: A Lubbock County, Texas, judge, the panhandle county’s chief administrator, is...
View ArticleMitt Romney Just Helped Create 52,000 Jobs
I’d never heard the name Max Kohl until a few hours ago. But I like the guy.Kohl’s, the department store he founded, is looking to hire some 52,000 or so people in the coming months -- good news for...
View ArticleThe Economic-Policy Debate: Not Rational, but Ritual
One thing that is missing from the debate about economic policy is the critical ingredient of humility. Humility isn’t critical for moral reasons, although humility is a virtue, and we would like our...
View ArticleStimulus Before Keynes
Everything you need to know about the economy and presidential politics, you can learn from Sir James George Frazer and The Golden Bough: OF THE THINGS which the public magician sets himself to do for...
View ArticleThe Crisis of Fiscal Leadership
The prospects for serious fiscal reform in Washington look dire indeed, at least for the immediate future. Speaker John Boehner saw most of his caucus easily reelected, but he clearly was spooked by...
View ArticleObamacare, Taxes, and Wishful Thinking
When Obamacare was being debated, all the bright young things insisted that it would reduce the deficit, or that it would prove at worst practically deficit-neutral. And they still do. And they are...
View ArticleTeachers' Pensions Are a Half-Trillion Short
The habitual overpromising and underfunding of government-employee pensions is a fiscal powder keg in an economy full of sparks -- and a new report estimates that teachers’ pensions alone are...
View ArticleCRA and Risky Lending
I had assumed that the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act were overstated by its critics. This is one of those times when I do not mind being wrong: Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead...
View ArticleDemocrats Raise Taxes on Poor to Subsidize Millionaires
There are basically two ways of looking at the fiscal-cliff deal. One possible headline reads:“Congress does basically nothing.” For all of the operatic angst and wailing surrounding the negotiations,...
View ArticleYou Cannot Raise Taxes on the Rich
Thanks to the fiscal-cliff deal and the Obamacare tax, we now have a tax code that is more “progressive” than at any time since Jimmy Carter was president. It will be interesting to see what long-term...
View ArticleThe Facts about Gas Prices and Oil Profits
Please spare a moment for this hilariously illiterate piece of “analysis” from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which apparently gets its best material from the Union of Half-Educated Sophomores.The...
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