Probably not permanently, but the economic policy excerpts from Rahm Emanuel’s stump speech last Saturday could lead one to believe that: . . . we cannot ask taxpayers for more when families are struggling to stay afloat in this economy. We cannot price Chicagoans out of their homes, their schools and communities. This is no time to even talk about raising taxes. Our first responsibility is to make the tough choices that have been avoided too long because of politics and inertia. Whether or not the call for austerity measures …
“Facts are stubborn things,” wrote Mark Twain, “but statistics are more pliable.” Jonathan Alter amply demonstrates this truism in last weekend’s New York Times Book Review. In regard to income inequality—a perennial favorite among the media and liberals—he opines: Over the last three decades, the top 1 percent of the country has received 36 percent of all the gains in household incomes; 1 percent got more than a third of the upside. And the top one-tenth of 1 percent acquired much more of the nation’s increased wealth during those years …
Maybe international treaties do send perfectly good jobs overseas after all; it’s just that these treaties do so by regulating commerce at home rather than facilitating it abroad. The Kyoto Protocol is evidence of this fact. Less than a week ago, as the European Environment Agency was celebrating reducing carbon production by close to 17%, the Guardian reported that, based on consumption of carbon rather than production of it, European greenhouse emissions actually increased significantly over the past decade: The original 15 EU member states who signed Kyoto have dropped …
