In this blog, I have but one question, regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has just been made available for one’s reading pleasure. Here is my question. For an agreement that is touted as a free trade compact, why do we need a 5, 500 page document (parts of which I have read)? If we […]
Archives
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The 5,500 Page Behemoth
10 Nov 2015
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Another Modest Proposal: Part 2
03 Nov 2015
In my last post I put forth a proposal for what a new president might do to reduce regulations in the bloated “administrative state.” I will now add more fuel to the fire by suggesting what actions the new president might take to eliminate whole agencies. Yes, I did say entire Federal agencies. I won’t […]
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Another Modest Proposal
02 Nov 2015
As we watched the Democratic and Republican Party presidential debates, I have heard some, but not nearly enough, discussion of the problems of the “regulatory state,” that is, that “Fourth Branch” of government affectionately called bureaucracy. Since this is a national election, I will confine my comments to the Federal agencies such as EPA, FCC, […]
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There is an interesting new book on higher education, William G. Bowen and Eugene M. Tobin, Locus of Authority, in which the authors argue that more authority must be given to presidents and administrators, given the new environment in which universities operate. The argument runs that faculty tend to be “conservative” about change, that is, […]
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The European Disease
07 Sep 2015
If there is anything more representative of the immense waste, bureaucratic elitism and arrogance, it is this report of the erection of a new, decorative statue of a tree outside the new European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. The statue, ostensibly of a Walnut tree, cost about $1 million in American dollars. The tree […]
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I just finished reading two articles on higher education, one by Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest and other in National Review Online, the latter which goes nicely with a third article entitled “New Analysis Shows Problematic Boom in Higher Ed Administrators” in the Huffington Post. Together these articles paint a discouraging picture, especially […]
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Reason.com of August 16, 2015 has a very interesting article on occupational licensing by J. D. Tuccille. Occupational licensing is the requirement that individuals desiring to enter certain lines of work or service first obtain extensive and expensive training and also pay a licensing fee, sometimes quite high, in order to legally enter. Failure to […]
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Technocracy and Human Flourishing
03 Aug 2015
During the Obama administration, and especially the last five years after the passage of Obamacare, we have seen numerous attempts, some successful and others still in the process, to impose more Federal top-down regulations on all sorts of human activities. Besides Obamacare and its 15,000 pages of regulations, we have the massive regulatory scheme flowing […]
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Some Questions to Ponder: Just Asking
15 Jul 2015
I have a few questions for thought today. I am not answering them, though the reader may well have some idea where I am on them. So just read and ponder. Please feel free to comment too. I have not read the Iran nuclear deal yet, but I understand it will aid Iran in developing […]
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The latest session of the United States Supreme Court is finished. It was both busy and momentous (not always in a positive way). A few decisions were good. many were not. But the Supreme Court did get one important case right this term. That was the last case it handed down, the case of Michigan […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach