August 16, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The first filter of any decent analyst of social policy is to be on guard for unintended consequences and perverse results. Most liberal social policy is rife with these effects—energy efficiency mandates that actually increase energy consumption; minimum wage laws that reduce the incomes of low income workers; health and safety regulations that increase risk by failing to account for tradeoffs; anti-poverty programs that increase poverty, etc. Welcome to the ranks another
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August 15, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We passed over the recent ruckus of The Nation magazine apologizing profusely to the Perpetually Offended over a poem they published. Here’s the poem in full, by Anders Carson-Wee: If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl, say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower themselves to listen for the kick. People passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely to comprehend. Don’t say
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August 15, 2018 — Steven Hayward
This week’s edition of the Power Line Show is a couple days late getting posted up because I’m traveling a lot and behind on everything. As previously mentioned, over the weekend I traveled back to Grove City College in Pennsylvania—where I met some loyal Power Line readers!—to participate in a conference of the National Association of Scholars. (Do join NAS, by the way, even if you aren’t an academic. Their
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Back in June we awarded our coveted Green Weenie Award to the Democratic National Committee, which bravely announced that it would no longer accept campaign contributions from oil, gas, and coal companies, or their employees. The resolution for this move was offered by Christine Pelosi, daughter of You Know Who, who declared that “This is going to be the way that we ask people to make some clear choices, so voters
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I noted here last night the desperate attempt of the left to smear Brett Kavanaugh by trolling for possible cellphone photos of him at Washington Nationals baseball games, and hoping that somebody somewhere would be working up some good photoshops fit for the moment, especially since I am too snowed under this week to do it myself. Fortunately faithful Power Line reader Stephen Manning is up to the challenge, and
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It’s barely 10 am out here on the Left Coast, but I have found today’s Winner of the Internet—by John McCormack of the Weekly Standard. This is understated brilliance:
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Got a whole bunch of short items to get off my spindle this morning. • So Elon Musk says the Saudis are interested in financing Tesla to go private. Why would the Saudis want to become the major financial player in an electric car company? I simply can’t imagine. I guess Musk is too young to remember an old Johnny Carson Tonight Show line about an idea being as bad
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August 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It has been previously noted that the media did a FOIA request for the emails of Brett Kavanaugh’s wife, who is a city official in a Washington suburb, and upon finding nothing that could create any embarrassment shrugged and said, “We had to try.” Well now the folks at the explicitly leftist media outlet Pro-Publica are asking people to scour their smart phone pics in case anyone might have caught
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August 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Not that many readers here need to be persuaded that Democrats are deep down in their hearts socialists, but it is nice to see the folks at Gallup release solid new survey evidence for this fact: Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism WASHINGTON, D.C. — For the first time in Gallup’s measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism.
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August 12, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I wrote here a couple weeks ago about my running theme (perhaps to be a book) about what I’m calling the “suicide of the university,” where declining enrollment and the excessive politicization of the social sciences and humanities will destroy many smaller and second-tier schools. My most recent post looked at politically-correct Earlham College, which is slowly eating its endowment to keep going, along with the data of the plummeting
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August 12, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Pop quiz: Which country would you rather live in—Chile or Venezuela? That’s pretty obvious—Chile. That was not an automatic answer until recent years. As recently as 2004 Venezuela had a higher per capita GDP than Chile, but then Chile doesn’t have Venezuela’s oil riches. Today Chile has a higher per capita GDP than Venezuela measured in nominal terms, but with a 30,000 percent inflation rate in Venezuela right now (and
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August 11, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The formal announcement of our new Space Force was definitely the highlight of the week. And having Vice President Race Bannon Mike Pence make the announcement was the perfect touch. I’m guessing this is Trump’s version of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which drove liberals and the Soviet Communists out of their mind. (Funny how liberals and Communists were both upset by SDI. I’m sure it was pure coincidence.) Liberals blundered by calling
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August 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
You may have heard the news that the West Hollywood city council has voted to remove permanently Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, though I am a little vague on this because I’m not sure the city of West Hollywood has jurisdiction over the Walk, but whatever. Trump’s star keeps getting vandalized by calm, reasonable, civilized liberals, and is an expense for someone to keep making sure
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August 9, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Remember the good old days when socialism was “scientific”? Keep in mind that the orthodox Marxism of “dialectical materialism” was understood as a scientific doctrine of history, not advocacy based on the abstract principles of egalitarianism. But then socialism crashed and burned everywhere (except on college campuses), which is why today socialism comes to sight as a religious faith, a trait it always had from the beginning, which is why
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August 8, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I know the job market is red hot right now, and even universities are hiring! Several job ads for tenure-track positions in political science have come my way, and they all have one thing in common. I’ll bet you can guess what it is. Let’s start with the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities department of political science, which wants to hire two professors in political theory. The wanted ad begins with
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August 5, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I’m still away on “vacation” at an undisclosed northwestern location for another day or two (I need to keep it vague to throw the bounty hunters off my track), and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do a regular edition of the Power Line Show podcast with a guest conversation, so I decided to go back to the archive and dust off some unused audio from the long interview
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August 5, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A little noticed detail in Santa Barbara’s recent drive to criminalize plastic straws, which culminated in the Santa Barbara city council taking testimony from a nine-year-old about the planetary menace, has come to light in recent days. During that council session, councilman Jesse Dominguez said the following in response to citizens who asked “what’s next?”: “Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate every aspect of people’s
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