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Barak Millhouse Obama

This is disturbing: Unlike the moves of Mr. Wertheimer and his friends more than 30 years ago, their threats carry official weight. Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson had it right when he told the Wall Street Journal recently that a threat deemed to be coming from a president of the United States or those Full Text

Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!

The City of Great Falls is contemplating the adoption of a cell phone/texting ban for drivers.  I oppose these bans in general because I have been unimpressed with the evidence that suggests talking on a cell phone is any more dangerous than any of the myriad other things we might do while we’re driving. Of Full Text

Chomsky Compliments Palin

Sorry about the obnoxious lead-in ad but I guess someone needs to get paid. Sometimes it seems like it’s a world gone mad. Full Text

Hydrocarbon Deniers

Argue with the science all you want (and I’m sure you will), but you have to love the phrase “hydrocarbon deniers!”  Or maybe we can “say that Saudi Arabia is the America of oil.” John has already noted what ought to have been above-the-fold news in every newspaper last week—the testimony of the GAO’s head Full Text

The disastrous student loan mess

You have to wonder how many other things the federal government will louse up before people demand a return to constitutional limits. The New York Times has published a widely re-printed report about the extent to which federally guaranteed and subsidized college loan programs have driven up the cost of tuition and leaving an entire Full Text

Quote Of The Day

Brought to us from Reid Hastie in Our Gift for Good Stories Blinds Us to the Truth – Bloomberg: So the next time you hear a good story about why the financial recession, or any other economically significant event, was caused by a single collection of bad actors — or how a simple linear narrative Full Text

Behavioral Economics of the Family

Bryan Caplan has an interesting post on the economics of the family and more specifically trends in extra-marital childbearing in the lower ends of the income classes. He quotes Amy Wax. Here’s the bit that caught my eye: Wax writes: hese developments are best understood as the product of moral deregulation. The rise of individualism Full Text

Let The Regulatory Howling Begin

After the close yesterday the head of JP Morgan and Obama financial consiglieri, Jamie Dimon, held a conference call admitting to a $2 billion trading loss caused by a bad position in credit default swaps.  This morning on CNBC the talking heads seem convinced that this will spur Congress to increase regulatory constraints and impose Full Text

High School?

Really? High School? Full Text

Tribune Paywall

The Great Falls Tribune is putting up a paywall, and raising prices. (My first thought when I read this yesterday was that “this eliminates any question whatsoever that KRTV.com is by far the best online source of local news and information.) I can’t blame the Tribune; they have to make a buck just like anyone Full Text

An Interesting Dustup at the Chronicle of Higher Education

Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote a post for Brainstorm, a blog hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. In her piece, she argued that the “most persuasive case” for ending Black Studies programs is the dissertations written by the students: You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent Full Text

Lugar Gets “Primaried” Out

Thanks for your service, Dick. But 36 years makes you the poster boy for term limits. No one is indispensable Lugar doesn’t even have a home in Indiana. Reason enough to send him gently into the night. Reminds me of Max Baucus – only with more brains and a better education. It is, however, long Full Text

Economy

Behavioral Economics of the Family

Bryan Caplan has an interesting post on the economics of the family and more specifically trends in extra-marital childbearing in the lower ends of the income classes. He quotes Amy Wax. Here’s the bit that caught my eye: Wax writes: hese developments are best understood as the product of moral deregulation. The rise of individualism Full Article

Let The Regulatory Howling Begin

After the close yesterday the head of JP Morgan and Obama financial consiglieri, Jamie Dimon, held a conference call admitting to a $2 billion trading loss caused by a bad position in credit default swaps.  This morning on CNBC the talking heads seem convinced that this will spur Congress to increase regulatory constraints and impose Full Article

Tyler Cowen On The EU

I think this is right and a little bit scary: Following yesterday’s elections, including in France, trust among the eurozone nations went down.  That makes the chance of a good outcome less likely, not more likely.  It is painful to admit this, but things still could get much worse and now they are likely to Full Article

Chart of the Day

With all due respect to our economist in residence, I offer you this Chart of the Day, showing the labor participation rate to be the lowest since 1981. With eighty-eight and a half million people out of the labor force, that 8.1% unemployment rate looks even less rosy, that is, if it ever looked rosy. Full Article

Tax the Rich

Yeah, right… Is this another “unprecedented” mis-communication? Full Article

Taking The Bet

I’ve made a lot of bet proposals over the years over speculative things.  Of course, I usually propose some payout that can be felt but won’t disable either me or my counter-party. Today, while I was going over his investment portfolio with a client I brought up the correlation between the front runner and market Full Article

Higher Education And The Fallacy Of Composition

The conventional wisdom states that the more education one has the higher one moves up in relation to others. On average, this is true.  The president has gone so far as to hint that everyone should have at least two years of college/vocational schooling. Of course the problem with this kind of thinking is that Full Article

What Would FDR Do?

Robert Samuelson revisits what FDR had in his original intent for his vision of Social Security.  A couple of things pop out: Discovering that the original draft wasn’t a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: “This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost Full Article

Any More Displays Of This Sort Of Stupidity Might Qualify You For President

Here is Veep Biden on full display: Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that cutting government subsidies could lower tuition costs, but said it would be against the national interest to do so. He argued that decreasing “government intervention” in education would harm the nation by forcing students out of college, despite the decrease in costs. Full Article

It might be a lot of things…

It might be a lot of things, but it isn’t “judicial activism.” While I have usually disagreed with President Obama on policy, I, like many people I suspect, always thought President Obama was a decent guy. I’m starting to wonder, though, if he isn’t a little more disingenuous. Peggy Noonan recently called him an “operator Full Article