What should be done about income inequality? That basic question underlies the arguments hashed out in the supercommittee and promises to be a central issue in the presidential campaign. Supercommittee Democrats argue that income inequality has been increasing and can be at least partially reversed by higher tax rates on high earners. They refused … Read more
We are in the midst of the 11th presidential nominating cycle since party commissions and state laws made primaries the predominant method of choosing national convention delegates in 1972. Over the years, politicians and journalists develop rules of thumb to describe how these things work. In this cycle, some of those rules seem to … Read more
The election of Barack Obama, we were told, would bring new respect and friendship for America in the world. No longer would we be led by a Texas cowboy ignorant of and indifferent to world opinion. Instead, we would have a visionary leader sympathetic to the governments and peoples of the world. But Obama’s best … Read more
It irritates members of both groups when I note the similarities of the tea party movement that swept the nation in the 2010 election and the peace movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But they are similar. Both movements represent the surge in political activity by hundreds of thousands, even millions, of … Read more
Some of my friends in the conservative blogosphere have been ridiculing a New Yorker named Joe Therrien. I want to put in a good word for him. Therrien appears in the lead paragraph of a story in The Nation on Occupy Wall Street. He’s an example, writer Richard Kim wants us to know, of … Read more
Herman Cain, beleaguered by charges of sexual harassment, was all over Washington last week — an odd choice of venue, considering that the Iowa precinct caucuses are now just 58 days away and the New Hampshire primary 65. But as I learned when I sat next to Cain Friday morning during a long-scheduled taping … Read more
Napoleon is supposed to have said that the quality he most valued in his generals was luck. In the current race for the Republican presidential nomination, Napoleon’s favorite would clearly be Mitt Romney. One lucky break after another has helped Romney maintain front-runner status or something close to it in polls of Republican primary voters … Read more
Dead. Kaput. Through. Finished. Washed up. Gone-zo. That, I think, is a fair description of the Obama administration’s attempt to build high-speed rail lines across America. It hasn’t failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects. The Democratic … Read more
President Barack Obama obviously is scrambling in his attempt to win re-election. He has proclaimed himself the underdog and has given up his pretense of being a pragmatic centrist compromiser in favor of harsh class warfare rhetoric. But it’s worth taking note of what he has squandered. In 2008, Obama won 53 percent of the … Read more
Leadership, said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in his press conference Tuesday announcing he would not reverse his decision not to run for president, is something you can’t be taught or learn. “Leadership today in America has to be about doing the big things and being courageous.” No one doubts that Christie has shown this … Read more
Is Herman Cain a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? It’s a question no one in the pundit world was asking until the past week. Cain has never held public office. When he ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004, he lost the primary by a 52 percent to 26 percent margin. He … Read more
Some of society’s most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can’t get a good thing without paying a bad price. A prime example is our public old-age pension system, Social Security. It has been completely successful in wiping out poverty among the elderly. Old ladies no longer have … Read more
As Barack Obama huffs and puffs about his tax plan, which is unlikely to pass in the Democratic-majority Senate much less the Republican-controlled House, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, has provided a much broader view of where the United States stands amid great changes in the world and some useful guidance on what … Read more
Those who consider themselves constitutional conservatives should take care to consider not only the powers that the Constitution confers on the different branches of government and reserves to the states and the people, but also the schedule that the Constitution sets up for sharp changes and reversals of public policy. The entire House of Representatives … Read more
When governments want to encourage what they believe is beneficial behavior, they subsidize it. Sounds like good public policy. But there can be problems. Behavior that is beneficial for most people may not be so for everybody. And government subsidies can go too far. Subsidies create incentives for what economists call rent-seeking behavior. Providers of … Read more
It’s hard to keep up with all the arguments and proposals in the debt limit struggle. But what’s at stake is fundamental. The bedrock issue is whether we should have a larger and more expensive federal government. Over many years, federal spending has averaged about 20 percent of gross domestic product. The Obama Democrats have … Read more
The United States is a country that has been peopled largely by vast surges of migration — from the British Isles in the 18th century, from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century, from Eastern and Southern Europe in the early 20th century, and from Latin America and Asia in the last three decades. Going … Read more
It’s racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That’s the bottom line of a decision issued last Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The case was brought by an organization called By Any Means Necessary to overturn a state constitutional amendment passed by a … Read more
One of the interesting things about our country, the independence of which the Founders declared 235 years ago today, is that we have been a property-holders’ democracy. This is not something the Founders originally advocated. While they protested taxation by a British parliament in which they were not represented, they did not think that … Read more
Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln’s hometown two days before Abe’s birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares … Read more