Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
This subject is getting some traction these days, so I'd like to repeat something I posted a long time ago about the non-economic objectives of trade unions. The consequences of these are, IMHO, the biggest argument against them. Trade unions and the labour movement in general have always loomed large for me. Our family business …
Continue reading "The Non-Economic Objectives of Trade Unions"
It's a Marxist's dream: Class, the Industrial Revolution’s great political dividing line, is enjoying Information Age resurgence. It now threatens the political future of presidents, prime ministers and even Politburo chiefs. As in the Industrial Age, new technology is displacing whole groups of people — blue- and white-collar workers — as it boosts productivity and …
Which is more than one can say about Bill Kristol: Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele was absolutely right. Afghanistan is Obama's war and, judging by other recent Democratic ventures in military affairs, isn't likely to turn out well... Our troops are the most magnificent in the world, but they're not the ones setting military …
Secularists love to hold up the Scandanavian countries as models of economic and social excellence, but if they're members of a teachers' trade union, they may want to think twice: But this is Sweden, willingly taken as an example by policies introduced in 1992. Its education reform was "to improve the quality of its system, …
Continue reading "The Swedes Spread the Love Around in Education"
Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post is worried about the receding state of "democracy" in the world: As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, …
Continue reading "If You Want Democracy to Succeed Elsewhere, You Should Make It Work Here First"
And no one in the Republican party wants to admit it: Top Senate Republicans on Sunday stopped short of asking Michael Steele to resign for his suggestion last week that the war in Afghanistan could not be won, seeming to signal that the ever-embattled Republican National Committee chairman will survive his latest self-inflicted wound. Sens. …
Continue reading "Michael Steele is Right About the War in Afghanistan"
In his clumsy, populistic way, Senator Tom Coburn (R,OK) has hit on something really important: Since it's clear Kagan is not an originalist (although it's not clear what she is), it's not surprising that natural rights strike her as a distraction from the proper work of a Supreme Court justice. When she says D.C. v. …
Ari Berman at The Nation worries: But Democrats, beset by internal dysfunction and legislative gridlock, also run the risk of throwing their majority away. “Their chief challenge now is governance, which is daunting in its own right,” Teixeira writes. “They have an ambitious agenda in areas such as health care, financial reform, education, energy, and …
Continue reading "It's Easier to Have a Permanent Majority When You Know What You're Doing"
The recent arrest of a "ring" of Russian spies in the US brings back memories of the Cold War--well, for those of us who were alive and aware at the time. Readers of this blog know that I have a lifelong interest in Russia that ended up with some interesting business and other types of …
Continue reading "Russian Spying: "It Didn't Do Us Much Good""
E.J. Dionne is sounding awfully triumphalistic these days: This week's hearings over Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court will mark a sea change in the way liberals argue about the judiciary. Democratic senators are planning to put the right of citizens to challenge corporate power at the centre of their critique of activist conservative …
Continue reading "Kagan's Confirmation: Getting the Judiciary to do the Legislature's Job"
Positive Infinity 