I have been reading quite a bit on the travails of the City of Detroit and I find this is an opportunity for me to rant about one of my favorite topics: economic development efforts in cities, or what is also called urban renewal, better labeled “urban removal.”  These wonderful programs (note the sarcasm please) […]

Late this afternoon Gov. Snyder of Michigan authorized Detroit’s emergency manager moving Detroit into Ch. 9 bankruptcy.  I have not seen the details of this proposal (and much more is coming out tomorrow), yet what we do know is encouraging from the perspective of the people of Detroit.  Detroit is an utter disaster in many […]

I am very, very late to this particular issue, but for those who have not done so, I encourage you to read Will Saletan’s excellent piece at Slate on the Trayvon Martin shooting and the Zimmerman verdict. While I do not agree with all he has to say here, he strikes a good tone and […]

Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Ginsburg see the Constitution quite differently. When it comes to the most salient issues (like gay marriage, abortion, and racial preferences), the antipodes verbally combat and vote on opposing blocs. Scalia is wedded to original understanding, a philosophy that emphasizes both text and historical context, while Ginsburg is more organic, […]

Politics has many definitions. My personal favorite breaks the word down in its parts: poly–many tics–blood-sucking parasites Yes, it is an old joke, but I love it so much I just cannot part from it. Politics is ‘the art of the possible,’ according to Otto von Bismarck. David Easton calls it ‘the authoritative allocation of […]

From atop Olympus, which now sits at the corner of First and East Capitol in Washington, D.C., Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his infinite wisdom, let loose his latest thunderbolt, United States v. Windsor. In the majority opinion, Kennedy decreed Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (1996) to be unconstitutional, thereby rendering the federal […]

Director Kirk Jones brought the award winning British actress Emma Thompson to American screens in a humorous and funky children’s tale entitled Nanny McPhee back in 2005. The context of the story is a widower with several untamed children who go through nannies like babies go through diapers. McPhee shows up announced. She is a […]

Much is being made of the D.C. city council’s 8-5 decision to impose a “living wage” of $12.50 on Wal-mart.  Wal-mart has announced cancellation of three planned stores and a review of 3 stores being built now.  Mona Charon over on NRO correctly highlights the harm this decision will have on its citizens: Vincent Orange […]

There is little doubt the Fed’s easy money policy, and especially the deliberate QE of buying long term instruments, has resulted in speculative flows investing in those assets.  As we related last week, the Fed’s discussion of tapering has resulted in immense turmoil, as speculators are wondering if capital needs to be redeployed away from […]

If you think Keystone XL is a risk, can you please repeat after me:  Deepwater Horizon (or even Exxon Valdez)? Bret Stephens has a piece on this today in the WSJ, par excellence.  Extreme environmentalists, for whom environmentalism is their religion, do not understand the inevitability of tradeoffs in the fallen world we live in.  […]