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.  […]

Bloomberg reports that the current Congress is on pace to produce far less legislation than previous Congress’s, and suggests the problem is due to Republican ideology.  But is this a problem?  Or is the Bloomberg report itself rather a reflection of a differing ideology?  Brookings Scholar Thomas Mann says, The 113th Congress is on track […]

At least that’s my take, based on this summary from Politico. Republicans get what they want, ~20,000 more border police, with 700 more miles of fence.  Democrats get what they want–more democratic voters (or at least that’s what they think they’re going to get; I’m not so sure).  Do we really want more of a […]

Many critics of Austrian economic theory on the causes of business cycles suggest that the lack of significant CPI-based inflation shows the Austrians are all wrong.  Yet, as I have argued earlier, CPI inflation is NOT what Austrians are concerned with.  Rather the central banks artificially lowering interest rates leads to malinvestment and a distortion […]

Over on the DC publication The Hill, we find that the head of the IMF suggests climate change is the new growth engine for jobs! Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Thursday that climate change will drive job creation.  “Climate change will create jobs. It will create disasters before it […]