Monthly Archives: July 2011
July 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
The Census Bureau tells us that more than 30 million Americans are living in poverty. This is routinely denounced by liberals, and sometimes even by conservatives, as a great moral scandal. However, hardly anyone knows what living conditions are characterized, these days, as poor. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation point out that in 21st century America, most “poverty” is what would until very recently have been
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July 18, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Is there any chance at all that the environmental movement could be reformed from within? Are there any environmentalists who could play the role of Martin Luther in 1517, nailing 95 Theses to the (green) church door and setting off an analogous reformation of the corrupt green establishment (which comes complete with its own form of medieval indulgences called “carbon offsets”)? It may sound implausible, but in the last print
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July 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Generation Opportunity recently commissioned a poll of young Hispanics (ages 18-29). The survey was conducted in April and has a margin of error +/- 4%. The results are striking: young Hispanics, like young Americans generally, want opportunity and understand that opportunity comes from the private sector: * By nearly a 3:1 ratio, Hispanic young adults prefer “reducing federal spending” (69%) to “raising taxes on individuals” (27%) in order to balance
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July 18, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Tomorrow is the official publication date of Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, by Tim Groseclose. Groseclose is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He holds joint appointments in the political science and economics departments. The publication of Professor Groseclose’s book — previewed here by Paul Bedard at USNews and here by Professor Groseclose himself — is a signal event. To the vexed
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July 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson
On this coming Tuesday St. Martin’s Press will publish Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, by Tim Groseclose. Groseclose is a distinguished professor of political science. He is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He holds joint appointments in the political science and economics departments. He has held previous faculty appointments at universities including Stanford and Harvard. He is not, shall we say,
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July 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Default is one of the risks of excessive sovereign debt, but a relatively remote one. Much more immediate is the damage that excessive debt can do to a nation’s economy. Republicans like to cite a study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff which found that once sovereign debt gets to 90% of GDP–a level we are rapidly approaching–economic growth is significantly impaired. Last Wednesday, Reinhart and Rogoff authored an op-ed
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July 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
It is hard to say which is worse, for Republicans: appearing on the Sunday morning news shows, or not appearing on them. If they stay away, the Democrats have the airwaves to themselves. If they participate, they function mainly as targets at which hosts can hurl the day’s Democratic Party talking points. For the Republican to come out ahead, he has to be exceptionally skilled, like Marco Rubio. Rubio was
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July 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
In this week’s The Week That Was, Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, offers a concise explanation of why global alarmism, as represented by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is not science: In an interesting opinion piece in The New York Times entitled “On Experts and Global Warming,” Gary Gutting, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, argues that
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July 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Eventually we will find out how the Sarah Palin documentary, The Undefeated, performs, but early returns on its debut were diverse, to say the least. Palin remains a polarizing figure, especially in the news media. Yahoo News headlines: “Big Opening for ‘The Undefeated’ Has Implications for Possible Palin Presidential Run.” [B]y all accounts, “The Undefeated,” the Sarah Palin biop, which was placed in limited release in ten screens across the
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July 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Debt limit talks are going on in Washington. The Democrats, led by President Obama, want a “big deal”–that is, they want to put together an agreement with Congressional Republicans of which raising the debt limit is only a small piece. Of course, they don’t want just any “big deal.” They will only make such an agreement if it goes a long way toward locking in liberal governance for the next
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July 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson
This past November the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Review section carried Steve Oney’s moving joint profile of Laura Hillenbrand and Louis Zamperini, the subject of Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Zamperini competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and then served in the Army Air Corps during the war. David Margolick concisely summarized what happened next: In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying
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July 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Some Americans have warm and fuzzy feelings toward socialized (“single payer”) medicine. God knows why; the fact that they haven’t experienced it no doubt explains a lot. In the U.K., they have experience with the real thing, which means elderly patients left screaming in pain: A dossier compiled by major charities says desperately sick elderly people have been left screaming in pain, with others given the wrong drugs, while families
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July 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
…toward a pass-fail system. Actually, they are pretty much there, as a new study cited by the Tax Prof finds that 43% of all college grades are A’s. (Via InstaPundit.) So in today’s academia, an A basically means “pass.” And you thought your kids were doing well… This is, presumably, a symptom of the higher education bubble. Professors and administrators don’t want to rock the boat lest someone start questioning
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July 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t posted much for the last few days, mostly because I have spent a lot of time working on the Power Line Prize contest. The deadline for submissions was midnight last night. As we expected, a torrent of entries came in during the last 48 hours. I don’t have an exact count on the number of entries, but they are in the hundreds. More important, many of them are
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July 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
If you follow polling data, you know that year in and year out, self-described conservatives outnumber self-described liberals in the general population by 1 1/2 to 2 to 1. Yesterday’s Rasmussen Reports adds another useful way to look at the data as they relate to likely voters as opposed to all adults. We generally think of those who are conservatives on both fiscal and social issues as “solid conservatives,” while
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July 16, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Let’s update a few items from this week. Carmageddon has begun in Los Angeles, and it looks like my prediction that this would be a big nothingburger of an event has come true already. Glenn Reynolds kindly linked to my long post on gay marriage, homing in on the paragraph about the demographic implications of polygamy, but concluding that I should relax because “fembots” are on the way, after which
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July 16, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Gretchen Moregenson is the New York Times business reporter and columnist as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning alumna of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and of Forbes. She is also the coauthor (with Joshua Rosner) of Reckless Endangerment, one of the most important books out about the origins of the financial crisis. Robert Reich’s review of the book provides a convenient summary. The book was the subject of an
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