I read an interesting article that brought together my concerns both about zoning and land use and religious freedom issues. It seems the City of Palo Alto, California, quite a nice place to live it is said, and the home of the elite Stanford University, is “cracking down on churches” that allegedly violate its zoning […]
Archives
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Churches and Zoning: An Interesting Clash
28 Jul 2017
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The “Better Deal” is Another Raw Deal
28 Jul 2017
The Democratic Party, recognizing that it has lost touch with many of its former constituents, rolled out its “Better Deal” this week in Virginia. We have now had Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Franklin Roosevelt’s more famous (or infamous) “New Deal,” Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal,” and now the latest “deal” for the American people. All of […]
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I realized only this week that last year was the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs, who was born in 1916 and died in 2006. Now some or all of my readers might not recognize the name, but among city planners, architectural scholars, urban historians, urban economists and political scientists of an urban bent, […]
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I just returned from a visit with my mother in my (and her) home city, Huntington, West Virginia. We drove by way of Portsmouth, Ohio. Both cities are in “flyover country” and both have suffered from the heavy (and likely irreversible) loss of manufacturing jobs. To give you an idea of the losses, Huntington has […]
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President Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. I will say at the outset that I support this move. Let’s settle the “legal” issues first. The agreement was not a treaty, and was not ratified by the Senate. It might be classified as an executive agreement or as a simple presidential agreement. The courts […]
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A reader asked me to post something on President Trump’s proposed budget to Congress. Opinions have varied as to whether this budget is the apocalypse on one end or the second coming on the other, and pretty much every nuance in between. As with most budgets–though you may not remember the last one, since it […]
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A Preliminary Look at Health Costs and Insurance
02 Apr 2017
I was asked to address the question of insurance in connection with healthcare, so I am finally mostly over my flu and hopefully can think more lucidly. Insurance, as has been defined by some others, is simply a hedge against the future attained by paying someone (an insurer) who has established a firm that accepts […]
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The Core Problem of Common Core.
26 Mar 2017
I suppose it is time to write about Common Core again, in light of the recent withdrawal of a former Bush administration pro-Common Core staffer, Hanna Skandera, from consideration as an assistant secretary for the Department of Education. This blog is not about her specifically, though she is a member of one of the Common […]
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Update on the American Health Care Act
10 Mar 2017
I want to provide a brief update on the American Health Care Act bill in the House. I also want to add a bit more analysis. Currently the bill has been passed out of two House committees. Democrats are trying to slow it down but aren’t likely to be successful. But if it makes it […]
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A New Beginning or Obamacare Lite?
08 Mar 2017
The House of Representatives has now publicly rolled out its “Repeal and Replace” bill for the elimination of Obamacare and a new health care law. President Trump seems to like it, while Democrats, predictably, hate it, though I cannot see how they have had time to read it, and some Republicans, such as Rand Paul, […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach