I saw the mom and her two little kids camped out in the shopping center parking lot. She held a sign asking for help to feed them. I bought some oranges and bananas for them. Imagine if someone from the government had swooped in to explain that my bag of fruit was hardly sufficient to […]
Commenting on this recent post — a post that argues that there is no good economic reason for government to provide retraining or other benefits to workers who lose their jobs because their fellow citizens take advantage of enlarged opportunities to purchase imported goods and services — Zuying Gao writes: Ricardo’s theory is probably going to work in […]
In the world of banking, a “holiday” means you can’t get your money. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen that happen in any developed world economy, but that is exactly what the Greek government is doing, starting now, to stop a massive bank run. Greece owes the International Monetary Fund a payment of […]
Stop calling it fair housing law. If it was ever a matter of fairness, it isn’t now. Under today’s 5-4 Supreme Court holding in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, you can be held liable for housing discrimination whether or not you or anyone in your organization intended to discriminate. Instead — […]
If you remember the famous 1938 fight for the world heavyweight boxing title between Detroit’s Joe Louis and Germany’s Max Schmeling, you’ve been around awhile. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about it from your father or grandfather. It was a rematch that Louis, known as the “Brown Bomber,” won in just […]
After Salon.com stopped being interesting, they needed a way to drive traffic. Competition for eyeballs is tough, after all. In the dog-eat-dog world of attracting eyeballs, you’ve got to find clever ways to pull in new readers. One way to drive traffic is to poke people you know disagree with you. And by poking, I […]
The Supreme Court has voted 6-3 (with Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority opinion, joined by Justice Kennedy and the four liberal justices) to uphold the subsidies the IRS is distributing for health insurance plans purchased on the federal insurance exchange. This ruling sets a dangerous precedent, and its reasoning is, as Justice Scalia wrote in […]
Last week I was contemplating a post having to do with driverless cars when, wouldn’t you know it, I received word that the Bank of England had just started a new blog called Bank Underground, and the first substantive post on it had to do with — you guessed it — driverless cars. As it turned out, […]
“Think of liberalism … as a collection of ideas or principles which go to make up an attitude or ‘habit of mind.’” – Arthur A. Ekirch In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was keen to observe that “once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well or ill founded, nothing is more difficult […]
The AP reports some good news out of Texas over the weekend: A long-standing Texas law that has sent about 100,000 students a year to criminal court – and some to jail – for missing school is off the books, though a Justice Department investigation into one county’s truancy courts continues. Gov. Greg Abbott has signed […]
“…Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” – Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution On Monday, I wrote about the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Horne v. USDA, in which the Court ruled almost unanimously against the government’s attempt to confiscate a third of California raisin farmers’ crops without paying them a dime […]
Evolution works by killing. Sometimes the death is slow — starvation or exclusion. Sometimes it’s outright murder, bloody and face-to-face. But make no mistake: natural selection means that some things survive, and others die. The things that survive may not be “better” than the ones that die, but they are better suited to their environment. […]
California raisin farmers Laura and Marvin Horne will finally get paid for the 600,000 pounds of raisins the feds tried to steal from them over 10 years ago. The Supreme Court delivered its opinion today in the case of Horne v. Department of Agriculture, and it is a big win for property rights and stinging […]
With time running out on his administration, President Obama has embarked on a sort of “apology tour” to disillusioned supporters. They are frustrated that he hasn’t delivered on many of their favored policies, from gun control to single-payer health care to carbon controls. With candidates queuing up to replace him — many with very different […]
The memo told me to get rid of my printer — or the college would confiscate it. The sustainability director — let’s call him Kermit — is an enthusiastic and otherwise likable fellow whose office is next door to mine. Kermit had decided it would be better if the centralized network printers in each department […]