June 20, 2013
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Commentary
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Aging, Economy, Population
A shift in demographics to relatively smaller cohorts of young people is almost never viewed as presenting an opportunity, just as the challenge of how to successfully support a greater percentage of older people without lower living standards either for them or their younger compatriots is virtually never viewed as one worth facing and winning.More
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Government services, Media, Politics
The way a recent New York Times/CBS News poll framed the issues, and the way the poll omitted key policy choices, meant the results invariably stayed within the bounds of a relatively narrow range of policy options, rendering a broader spectrum of policy choices invisible.More
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Government services, Taxes
It’s hard to find a big-state governor who is not sounding a call for “shared sacrifice." It’s even harder to find one who really means it. At the same time we’re told that real sacrifice requires real pain, we also have to accept that businesses must be exempt from any pain. Instead, states must compete to beg for their favors.More
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Civil rights, Federalism, Housing
Opposition to lawful federal authority has had a long and ugly history, from South Carolina’s secession 150 years ago this week, to massive resistance to integration in modern day America (in both the South and the North). It's not just a thing of the past. In Westchester County — one of the official poster children for limousine liberalism — it turns out that there is open, deliberate, and organized violation of a lawful desegregation order right now. And the Obama Administration is not lifting a finger.More
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Taxes
Either I give in or “folks” get hurt, says the President at his Pearl Harbor Day press conference. There was no other way the President could get any stimulus, say those desperately trying to find a silver lining to a plan that would give 25% of all tax cut benefits in 2011 to the highest earning 1 percent of taxpayers.
These “realists” apparently believe that the GOP has developed magical or superhuman immunity to public pressure. Panicking, they substitute ominous warnings about “protracted political combat” leading us over a cliff for a sober assessment of either what a late-day offensive would entail or what the landscape would look like over the cliff (or beyond the horizon).More
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Environment
The same people who brought us all-knowing, fail-safe markets insist that the real problems in developed countries are a birth rate that is too low and populations that are getting too old. So, they say, keep on producing new earners and consumers. It won’t work on any level.More
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Income inequality, Politics, Taxes
If one side gives up when it has maximum leverage, and the opposition says only that it will keep fighting for its original position, it's more apt to use the term 'surrender' or 'fecklessness.'More
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NYC, Politics
In 2008, New York City's Mayor and City Council collaborated to overturn the term limits law that had been put in place by voters. This year, a Charter Revision Commission appointed by the Mayor offers a term limits modification, but denies voters the chance to return immediately to the pre-2008 term limits law. Whatever voters decide, City officials will spin the result as ratifying their power grab.More