Instead of the intellectual vandalism that typifies too much of Paul Krugman’s writing, it would be more useful if he returned to writing about economics…with facts. In a recent column he says: So if you really believed in the logic of free markets, you’d be all in favor of pollution taxes, right? Hahahahaha. Today’s American right doesn’t believe in externalities, or correcting market failures; it believes that there are no market failures, that capitalism unregulated is always right. What evidence does he use to support this cynicism? Krugman points to …
The most recent reminder of the complex relationship dynamics between India and China was the first “Strategic Economic Dialogue” that took place last week. The diplomatic relationship between India and China has been less than warm in the last few years, with simmering border disputes and recent disagreements over China’s much disputed claims in the South China Sea. Many of the countries in the Indo-Pacific region, from India to Vietnam and the Philippines, are deeply concerned about China’s military modernization and intentions in the region. Today, and in the years …
The Acton Institute is leading a new initiative called PovertyCure to help the poor in developing countries. Their approach is to rethink poverty by putting the human person at the center of the discussion. PovertyCure is an international network of organizations and individuals seeking to ground responses to global poverty in a proper understanding of human dignity and flourishing. According to their new Web site: When we put the person at the center of our economic thinking, we transform the way we look at wealth and poverty. Instead of asking …
On September 29, the State Department released a fact sheet that unequivocally asserts that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a “zero-yield” treaty. Under this assertion, the CTBT, once it enters into force, would bar all experiments on nuclear weapons that produce a self-sustaining fission chain reaction. At the same time, the State Department released an accompanying fact sheet that provides past quotes from diplomats and political leaders from all five of the de jure nuclear weapons states (the U.S., China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom) that it …
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D–CA) staff released a chart in May that attempted to illustrate how much past Presidents increased the national debt, it collided with a meticulous critique from Politifact that in turn led to a revised chart. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler weighed in as the original chart resurfaced recently, reporting on its methodological faults and misleading presentation. Even the revised version makes President Obama’s debt accrual appear minor compared to that of past Presidents. The facts show, however, that the Obama Administration is well on …
On October 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a very important case concerning religious freedom. Several religious freedom cases have been in the news lately. Such cases should remind us to take seriously the nature of religion itself. Is religion something only to be preached about and celebrated in seminaries and worship services, or is it something to be practiced in daily life and work? Is religion solely private, or does it also take public form? Our assumptions about the nature of religion—assumptions about what it is …
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat is supposed to stop the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering mail, but can it be saved from mounting debt, plummeting volume, and the not-so-slow-motion postal train wreck coming quickly down the road? Last week, the USPS barely avoided default when Congress extended the due date for a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury for retiree health benefits. It lost $8.5 billion last year, and it expects to lose nearly $10 billion more in 2011. From 2006 to 2010, overall USPS mail volume …
When al-Shabab withdrew its frontline forces from Mogadishu last August, the terrorist group vowed to launch a wave of asymmetric attacks against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the African Union’s Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). On Tuesday morning, an al-Shabab suicide bomber attacked the Ministry of Education, killing 70 and wounding dozens. Among the casualties were young students waiting for notification on their acceptance for a scholarship in Turkey. Though al-Shabab targets primarily AMISOM troops and TFG officials, the group has been known to launch attacks against Somalia’s academic community …
In August, three voters in Wake County, North Carolina, were charged with voting twice in the 2008 presidential election, apparently for President Barack Obama. In April, a member of the executive committee of the NAACP in Tunica County, Mississippi, was convicted on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots and sentenced to five years in prison. She voted in the names of six other voters, as well as in the names of four dead voters. There are pending indictments of city council members and an ongoing grand jury investigation of …
Senate Republicans sought to answer President Obama’s demands for a vote on his jobs plan this afternoon, but were thwarted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who used a parliamentary maneuver meant to block amendments on the Senate floor. Reid then proceeded to accuse Republicans of “obstruction” and engaging in a “political stunt.” Reid used a procedural move known as “filling the tree” – a tactic Reid has perfected during his tenure in the Senate leadership. Filling the tree involves loading legislation with amendments until the limit is reached. …
