if Donald J. Trump can believe free trade is bad for American workers despite his own White House’s announcement of record low unemployment and high trade deficits, then he can believe almost anything. And that is the problem and it’s dangerous.
Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown TV show was one of the best shows on TV. Bourdain’s lyrical musings on cities, countries, and people and their food brought us closer to the rest of humanity. I will miss him. (more…)
The danger of Bernienomics is that Bernie Sanders opened the door of respectability for socialism. In the past calling yourself a “socialist” was political suicide. His “democratic socialism” is not harmless. There is no place in the world where socialism, democratic or otherwise, has not created poverty and, ultimately, repression.
Imagine my shock when I saw Steve Rattner on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS Sunday morning program claim that China’s form of “state capitalism” (rife with 5-year plans) was outperforming our comparatively “hands-off” form of capitalism. He bemoaned our lack of a government economic plan.
Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.
—numerous attributions.
Everyone is demanding their “rights”. If the “rights” they demand take away my rights, are they “rights”?
Being on the libertarian end of the political spectrum (most freedom) I’m all for human rights—do your thing; just don’t make me do your thing or get in the way of me doing my thing.
This begs the question: “What are ‘rights’?”. This is a pretty deep philosophical issue that goes back millennia. (more…)
President Donald Trump just opened the first salvo in a trade war by imposing tariffs (taxes) on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%). It won’t end well. (more…)
The other day President Donald Trump tweeted, “The United States has an $800 billion Dollar Yearly Trade Deficit because of our ‘very stupid’ trade deals and policies. Our jobs and wealth are being given to other countries that have taken advantage of us for years. They laugh at what fools our leaders have been. No more.”
If it is the case that we have been fools to engage in “one-sided” free trade with other countries, then Trump personally entered into a “very stupid” deal resulting in a huge personal trade deficit. (more…)
A movement is taking over America’s colleges and universities that rejects classical norms of reason, logic, and scholarship. This anti-intellectual trend is a road to totalitarianism.
What now passes for erudition in many liberal arts departments would not qualify as good scholarship using the proven tests of critical thinking. Worse, dissent is being shouted down, not debated. And many administrators support this trend making it, in effect, de facto campus policy.
This trend has all the hallmarks of societies that have gone totalitarian. (more…)
It happened here, not somewhere else. This was the shocking thing about Montecito’s tragedy. It’s easy to watch disasters unfolding elsewhere and you think, “Oh, those poor people”. We’ve lived in Montecito for 40 years so there isn’t a lot I haven’t seen on our South Coast. There have been fires and deluges and floods and wind, but no one was expecting these twin disasters. (more…)
A year has passed since Donald Trump became president. 365 days is enough time to assess his presidency and his accomplishments. (more…)
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