Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Thomas Sowell on American Collapse: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Journalism Warning Labels (via Rachel).
Caroline Glick’s excellent recent column on Iraq, Iran and US strategy.
Baseball Crank on deficits and spending. This is very well done.
The National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America are lobbying Congress to have the government require that FM receivers be built into cell phones and other portable electronics devices.
The squandering of resources that would required by this proposal, should it become law, would not be as visually striking as 20 miles of railroad track filled with unused lumber cars, but would be real nonetheless.
How much of America’s economic output and growth potential is being wasted on politically-driven but economically-irrational subsidies of one kind or another? The number would be hard to calculate, but it is surely large, and certainly growing very rapidly.
Related: Apparently, more than half of Britain’s wind-power farms have been built in places where there is not enough wind. Anyone want to bet that there is nothing similar happening here?
FM-receiver link via Code Monkey, lumber-car link via Instapundit, wind-farm link via Maggie’s Farm.
There is a great piece in the American Spectator about Paul Ryan and his “Road Map.” Ryan lacks Gingrich’s Machiavellian talents, and therefore isn’t in the running for taking over the party. Of course, Ryan doesn’t seem to have any of Newt’s devastating character flaws either.
The fact is that Ryan is a talent that is being wasted in the slow-witted and slow moving Republican Party. He’s a policy guy trying to save the nation while the party is run by idiots running the stupid “Pelosi Fright Wig” strategy. We all understand the trade off in winning elections. The GOP is once again choosing the wrong path, using the supposedly easier path of winning power by vacuity over running on ideas and then actually having a mandate to govern.
In this cycle, we could actually win an honest mandate for change by following Ryan. Instead, we are wasting the opportunity to put in a gaggle of intellectually flaccid graymeat who will do what Boehner tells them to do. This is a strategy for disaster.
The amount of flack being directed at Ryan and his “Roadmap” has been rapidly increasing. Former White House budget director Peter Orszag, who should know better, trashed the Ryan plan in his farewell lecture at Brookings. This from the man who, as noted by the Wall Street Journal, “presided over record deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009-or 9.9% of GDP-and an expected $1.5 trillion in 2010.” Cheeky fellow.
Jon Ward of the Daily Caller observed that this high-profile critique of Ryan “shows the seriousness with which Obama and his top advisers take Ryan’s alternative vision for the country’s future, as well as the vehemence with which they disagree.” Ward mentioned that the Orszag attack was the same day the Democratic National Committee attacked the “Roadmap.”
Note that the left takes Ryan more seriously than the leaders in his own party.
You can live with enemies in politics, but you can’t survive without friends. Ryan needs more than intellectual or moral support from conservative intellectuals, commentators, and even honest liberals, as important as they are. He and his “Roadmap” need the heartfelt support of his party, its leaders and its candidates across the country who must take the argument to the people in this watershed election year.
The stakes are too high for the Republicans to simply stand by, quietly, hoping the Democrats will self-immolate. The GOP needs to embrace a big, visionary idea, something like Ryan’s “Roadmap,” which addresses the most important political challenge of the age: the runaway costs of entitlements which were irresponsibly put on autopilot under both Democratic and Republican governments.
As many readers here might know, I put forth a much bigger, better, and more visionary idea here a few days ago. While I laud Ryan as true thinker, leader, and one of the few hopes for a brain dead party, my idea is a better roadmap.
Much concern has recently been raised, and appropriately so, about the sleazy practices engaged in by many for-profit colleges…practices that often leave students with large student-loan balances that will never be paid, and training whose value is highly questionable. A study cited in this post indicates that only 36% of the for-profit graduates actually repay their loans. (What does “repay” mean in this context? Repay in full, or does some level of partial repayment count?) But the repayment rates at conventional colleges are nothing to brag about, either–54% for public colleges and 56% for private nonprofits…and many conventional colleges graduate an alarmingly low percentage of their students in four, five, or even six years.
Read all about it here.
The US retail chain of Target made a donation to a business friendly group that endorses Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota. This has gotten Liberal groups in a tizzy, particularly groups that supposedly support equal rights for people who lead alternative lifestyles.
Why would LGBT advocates get upset about this? Mainly because they claim that Mr. Emmer has made some disparaging remarks about gays in the past. (Since I have not heard of Mr. Emmer before today, I cannot say if their claims are accurate or not.)
So a group which supports pro-business candidates receives a donation from Target, and then Target is pilloried by the Left because one of the people endorsed by that group doesn’t support their agenda?