Month: November 2004
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Cultivating disaster
Here’s a useful rundown of some of the problems with our insane agricultural policies, which provide massive, inefficient and unnecessary subsidies to corporate agribusiness at the expense of small farmers and consumers. Even worse, these policies impoverish millions of developing world farmers (as the excellent New York Times series Harvesting Poverty documented), retarding development, destabilizing
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Idiotic celebrity alert
Why oh why does Linda Ronstadt think we care about her views on the war in Iraq? “I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don’t know anything about the Iraqis, but they’re angry and frustrated in their own lives. It’s like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy
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What is Andrew Sullivan talking about?
This is ridiculous: I guess I should say that Condi Rice’s race and gender are not the most important things about her career and abilities. But I’m still amazed at how little credit this president gets for promoting a black woman to such a position, and, more importantly, by his obvious respect and admiration for
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The wrong interpretation of campaign finance “reform”
Al Hunt claims (subscription required) that the vast amounts of money raised by the parties from small donors in 2004 proves that critics of McCain-Feingold were wrong. And to a certain extent they were – the parties did raise a lot more from small donors than anyone anticipated. But it’s likely that the parties would
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From the world of little-known facts…
1. Social Security’s long-term fiscal imbalance is relatively small and can be addressed through a series of relatively modest changes in rules, eligibility, etc. 2. Private accounts actually make the Social Security imbalance worse, not better, in the short to medium term. Transition costs are estimated at $1-2 trillion. In addition, there are many difficult
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Goo-goo politics
Here’s a classic example of David Broder’s fetish for bipartisan cooperation. He frequently decries irresponsible deficit spending at the federal level, but the Era of Good Feelings in California has him swooning for Arnold: A year after he took office, following the voters’ recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger is riding high in
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Dispatches from the fiction-based community
In a New York Times story on the GOP leadership rule change, Tom DeLay tells us that
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Hubris alert
Wow. There is just no way that the administration is going to be able to get rid of the employer tax deduction for health insurance. See Jonathan Rauch on Demosclerosis — the interest groups will eat you alive when you start taking on sacred cows like that. (Hat tip: Atrios.)
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Thanks Tony Blankley!
After a discussion of the ways the bureaucracy tries to subvert elected officials, the Washington Times commentary page editor offers another suggestion that George W. Bush’s political opponents are traitors: This is the trifecta that President Bush has chosen to compete in: Fight our foreign enemies, stand by the convictions he expressed in the election
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Irony alert
Headline in the Duke Chronicle yesterday: Hunger to be discussed at banquet…