European Decline
February 12, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Athens is burning tonight, as leftists and others protest against the Greek Parliament’s vote in favor of the measures that are required by the EU in exchange for a 130 billion Euro bailout–enough to keep Greece afloat for now, at least. The rioters have nothing intelligent or constructive to say. They believe, evidently, that Greeks are entitled to consume far more than they produce, forever. Nice work if you can
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December 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
That’s what Prime Minister David Cameron says. He is concerned about his country’s social decline, and invokes Britain’s Christian heritage as an antidote: Britain is a Christian nation and should not be afraid of standing up for Christian values to help counter the country’s “moral collapse”, Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday. In a rare foray into religion by a British premier, Cameron said “live and let live” had too
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December 13, 2011 — Steven Hayward
You didn’t need this morning’s Wall Street Journal headline (“Markets Doubt Europe Deal”) to know that the weekend Eurodeal is not impressing the markets. Beyond the market reaction, this morning’s papers here in the U.S. are mostly fixed on the drama in London, where Prime Minister Cameron gave a spirited defense of his veto of changes to the EU Treaty, while the misgivings of his coalition partner Nick Clegg portend
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December 12, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Thus far in this incipient series I’ve written about some of the political and constitutional aspects of the Eurocrisis, but at the end of day this is mostly a matter of dollars Euros and cents sense. The weak agreement reached last Friday is surprisingly similar to the weak climate agreement reached almost at the same hour down in Durban—large on sentiment, but lacking meaningful specifics or an enforcement mechanism. The
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December 11, 2011 — Steven Hayward
So in Friday’s commentary on the Euro Zone crisis I observed that if the 27 members of the EU couldn’t abide by the precise terms of the EU Treaty, they would find a way to go around it, and mentioned James Madison’s discussion of the “delicate” problem of changing compacts with less than the unanimous consent required by the terms of the compact (in 1787, the Articles of Confederation; in
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December 10, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Another photo for a Saturday morning, from Scotland:
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December 9, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The slow-motion Euro Zone disaster proceeds apace. The lead headline in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is “Tensions Rise at EU Summit.” Seems the Eurocrat crowd can’t agree on what to do. Surprise, surprise. There’s an interesting issue here that is in some ways an echo right out of 1787. The treaty that established the current form of the EU requires the unanimous agreement of all 27 members to amend
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December 4, 2011 — John Hinderaker
This is the kind of news story that makes me think Europe in general, and Great Britain in particular, have no future. Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat who serves as deputy prime minister in David Cameron’s coalition government, promises to “get tough” on private sector executives who earn too much money: The government will publish new proposals to “get tough” on excessive pay in January, the deputy prime minister said.
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November 27, 2011 — Steven Hayward
With only five weeks to go before 2012 arrives, there are several plausible candidates for the “end of the world” that every New Ager has been eagerly anticipating since Mayan calendar fetishism replaced the made-up Kwanza holiday as the favorite diversion of the trendier-than-thou set. Right now the leading threat is the Eurozone crisis. It is looking more and more as if financial Armageddon is inevitable at some point, with
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November 12, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Politics can be pretty prudish here in the U.S.–depending, it seems, on the political party involved. Not so in Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s campaign for president features Putin’s Army, a group of models who vow to “tear their clothes off” for their candidate. Well, it isn’t actually clear how big the “army” is, but it includes this young lady:
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September 30, 2011 — John Hinderaker
In 1969, the United States Supreme Court held in Shapiro v. Thompson that a state’s one-year residency requirement as a condition for receiving welfare benefits was unconstitutional because it burdened the citizen’s right to travel freely within the United States. As a result, for years welfare offices in Chicago offered to buy clients a one-way bus ticket to Minneapolis. While Shapiro and subsequent decisions to a similar effect caused some
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August 28, 2011 — John Hinderaker
At the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that the Merkel government no longer has the votes to bail out the improvident European regimes to the south and west: German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a consitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga. … If the [constitutional] court rules that
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August 14, 2011 — John Hinderaker
That inference is suggested by this chart, showing welfare spending in the U.K. over the last 25 years, courtesy of U.K. Public Spending.com: At a minimum, the facts certainly negate any suggestion that criminals can be kept out of sight and out of mind by being bribed with welfare money.
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August 14, 2011 — John Hinderaker
The riots in London continue to shed light on the unraveling of a once-great nation. The U.K.’s Tory government has proposed to terminate the “benefits”–some of them, anyway–of those who are convicted of participating in the riots. This applies to those who are not sentenced to prison, as inmates are cared for by the state and automatically forfeit whatever benefits they may otherwise have received. This seems like an unobjectionable
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August 12, 2011 — John Hinderaker
A long-time reader and rabid soccer fan writes to comment on recent events in the U.K.: Wednesday saw the cancellation of a soccer match between England and Holland due to the rioting in London. And tomorrow’s season opener between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton has been postponed due to the damage rioters caused in the Tottenham area of North London. 25 years ago, in the heyday of soccer hooliganism, English football
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August 10, 2011 — John Hinderaker
I am an Anglophile compared to almost anyone but my wife, who considers the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen the apex of world literature. So it pains me to see the outpouring of evil that has bedeviled London and other British cities over the last week. My post from last night, Descent Into Evil, will appear in tomorrow’s New York Post as an op-ed, I believe–without the photos, unfortunately. The
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