Monthly Archives: April 2011

How Crazy Are They? This Crazy

PowerShift 2011 is a far-left astroturf “environmental” organization financed by–who knows?–that has been uncritically embraced by the Obama administration. How crazy are these left-wing youngsters, and the Obama administration officials who egg them on? This crazy: There is no such thing as a respectable left. There is only a stark raving mad left. »

Communicating With Employees? The Horror!

The Nation joins the Koch-bashing that has become obligatory on the Left with an “expose” of the fact that last year, Koch Industries sent information to some of its employees on the November elections that included identification of candidates that the company thought would help to create a positive economic environment. This gives The Nation the vapors, but why? Most employees understand that their interests are closely tied to those »

Obama as political historian

Barack Obama is a creature of the modern university and therefore an amazingly shallow man. I have written about his historical howlers in the New York Post column “Anti-terror oops,” in the Weekly Standard column “The Kennedy-Khrushchev conference for dummies,” and in the Power Line post “Obama veers into the Daily Ditch.” Obama’s historical ignorance could be a full time beat for somebody who does this work for a living, »

Happy Earth Day (PT. 2): The Almanac of Environmental Trends

For the last 15 years or so on every Earth Day I have put out the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, a project I conceived at the Pacific Research Institute. It was inspired by Bill Bennett’s fabulously successful Index of Leading Cultural Indicators he put out back in 1993, which consisted of simple time-series charts on the data about welfare dependency, crime rates, school test scores, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, »

A worthy Pulitzer Prize

The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Rago was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for his editorials opposing Obamacare this past year. The Journal has collected links to the award-winning editorials. Rago is a Dartmouth alum. The campus newspaper salutes Rago this morning in an informative article, reminding readers that Rago is past editor-in-chief of the rival Dartmouth Review. The Review notes Rago’s Pulitzer here, while Dartblog’s Joe Asch »

The Tao of Jerry

Except for the Kennedys in Massachusetts, no family in modern times has dominated one state’s politics more than the Browns of California. In the gala tenth anniversary double issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here), William Voegeli recounts the long history of Jerry Brown with the state, as well as that of father Pat Brown, who served two terms as governor beginning in 1959. Pat Brown was a »

“Amazon.com Is Doomed!”

Tom Friedman isn’t the worst pundit at the New York Times. On the contrary, in that group he may be above average. Still, Friedman must be one of the most overrated people in the world. At Ricochet, Rob Long resurrects a 1999 column in which Friedman predicted the demise of Amazon.com: …if you really want to be ”concerned” about the levels of some of these profitless Internet stocks, such as »

Greetings From Minnestanbul

We recorded Episode 5 of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience on Saturday. Brian was out of commission for the weekend, so I recruited Claire Berlinski to serve as a guest co-host. I was live from Minnesota, Claire was live from Istanbul. We talked about Turkey, the Middle East and the Minnesota State Fair, among other things, and were briefly interrupted by bagpipers. We concluded by naming the Loon of the Week. A »

Asleep at the Switch

Michael Ramirez: our President is sleeping through the entitlements crisis. Click to enlarge: »

Gettin’ piggy with it

The Teamsters SEIU is apparently attempting to unionize drivers serving Target in Los Angeles, or seeking to bully Target in negotiations. I’m not sure what the problem is — have they won an election? In perhaps the weakest showing ever in support of the Teamsters SEIU, they sent some some mostly obese women over to rip it up in front of the cash registers and interfere with consensual transactions at »

Happy Earth Day! (Pt. 1)

This Friday is Earth Day . . . wait, what’s that? You don’t have it marked and circled on your calendar? You’re not planning to wear hemp-cloth and (recycled) ashes this Friday? You have this Friday marked down as Good Friday? Don’t yet get it man, Earth Day is the post-modern Easter! Anyway, you can be forgiven for forgetting about Earth Day, as it appears more and more Americans are »

Clarity in Chile

Chile has squelched a constitutional amendment affording public employee unions collective bargaining rights and a “right” to strike. Even some of the lefties who dominate the senate didn’t want to touch it. Perhaps the thugs at work in Wisconsin have tarnished the supposed “right” to collective bargaining for public employees. In any event, Chile has dragged itself up from the third world to the first in the last three decades »

Ronald Reagan at 100

The Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here), is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a gala double issue that has just been published. The CRB is my favorite magazine and the powers-that-be at the magazine have traditionally afforded me the opportunity to pick a few of my favorite pieces to have placed online for presentation to our readers. The tradition holds with the tenth anniversary issue, even though it has been »

Surviving Hell: A personal note

Today is the official publication date of the paperback edition of Surviving Hell by Leo Thorsness. I’ve been writing about Leo and the book for the past week. I want to conclude this series on a personal note. Leo was awarded the Medal of Honor for a mission he flew over North Vietnam in April 1967 the week before he was shot down and captured by the Communists. He was »

Support the Freedom Club!

I am a member and past president of the Freedom Club, a group of Twin Cities businessmen and women who have had a significant impact on the politics of my home state over the last 20 years. The club supports conservative political candidates with PAC donations and also makes independent expenditures on their behalf. In November 2010, Republicans took control of both the Minnesota House and the Minnesota Senate; many »

Funded Vs. Unfunded

Arnold Kling makes a good point about the current economic crisis: I don’t think of the long-term budget fight as being between Democrats and Republicans or between rich and poor. I look at it as a fight between people with funded retirements and unfunded retirements. If I have saved enough to support my lifestyle in retirement, then I have a funded retirement. If my neighbor who teaches in public school »

S&P Debt Warning: It’s A Good Thing

Today Standard & Poor’s ratings division lowered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative,” based on S&P’s assessment that “there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium-and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013.” This more pessimistic assessment translates into a one in three chance that S&P will lower its rating of U.S. government debt from its current »