26 June 2009

Fixing the Health Care System, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

I cannot improve on Dr Kling's observation:
"I love it when people who have never managed anything more than a government grant are convinced they can manage one sixth of the economy."
Fixing the Health Care System, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

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Instapundit on IDB on Waxman-Malarkey

And recall that Smoot-Hawley knocked over European banks like ten-pins. Specifically, German banks. And the resulting social unrest led to a government led by and evil genie -- arguably the evilest genie -- that was very expensive, in both blood and bucks, to stuff back into the bottle.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY ON WAXMAN-MARKEY: “The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump.”

25 June 2009

22 June 2009

Robert J. Samuelson - Both Corporate, Public Welfare Are Endangered - washingtonpost.com

The U.S. welfare state is weakening; insecurity is rising. The sensible thing would be to decide which forms of public welfare are needed to protect the vulnerable and to begin paring others. Our inaction poses another dreary parallel with GM. It was obvious a quarter-century ago that GM the auto company could not support GM the welfare state. But the union wouldn't surrender benefits, and the company acquiesced. Inertia prevailed, and the reckoning came.
Robert J. Samuelson - Both Corporate, Public Welfare Are Endangered - washingtonpost.com

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Mobilizing World Opinion Against the Government: How the Irish Did It and Won

From the History News Network (HNN) comes an interesting post on the role of the Press in the 1919-1921 Irish revolution, along with a very timely query:
In his preface to Michael Massing's pamphlet on the American press and Iraq, Now They Tell Us, Orville Schell asks "what had happened to the press's vaunted role as skeptical 'watchdog over government power'?"


There is, however, a rather puzzling assertion:
"The Anglo-Irish war of 1919-1921 was an international historical landmark: the first successful revolution against British rule..."

Really? I coulda swored our late-18th-century dust-up with the Brits counts as a successful revolution.
Mobilizing World Opinion Against the Government: How the Irish Did It and Won

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