-
Giving Hope and Change A Historical Context
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (6)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Democratic party veteran and wise man Ted Van Dyk provides some useful historic context about the Obama budget, and urges caution as well. His memoir Heroes, Hacks and Fools is well worth reading; I've blogged about it before (can't find link).
-
Colleges Shouldn't Replace Military History With Women's Studies, Crocheting
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's a fascinating disconnect between the history that literate people want to read and the history that academics (by no means all of them literate) want to teach. One example is the replacement of scholars of the colonial and founding period by those into more fashionable pursuits. Another is the replacement of military historians—whose subject matter is of such great interest to literate readers—with academics into women's studies, or crocheting or the like.
-
Corporations Are Already Gaming the Carbon Cap-and-Trade System
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This article on the problems in Europe's carbon cap-and-trade system is instructive. Carbon prices have slumped because of decreased economic demand. Obama budget $643 billion in cap-and-trade revenues, but there is no assurance that the money will be coming in. And like progressive taxes, carbon revenues tend to be volatile and ultra-responsive to the economic cycle, which is to say they slump sharply just when government needs revenue for countercyclical spending programs. Note also that Europe's original system was poorly designed. There's a reason for that. It's hard to design a cap-and-trade system that will be fair and work. And potential market participants are going to work very hard to set terms and conditions which will allow them to game the system to maximum advantage. Corporations in this country are already busy doing this.
-
The Worst Intersections in the United States Are in New York, Chicago and LA
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
What are America's 100 worst intersections? Tyler Cowen at www.marginalrevolution.com points me here. Almost all of them—87 out of 100—are in the extended New York, Chicago and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Exceptions: San Francisco CA (nos. 2, 46, 49, 58, 64), New Haven CT (nos. 22, 51), Honolulu HI (no. 55), Austin TX (nos. 71, 74, 87, 92), Dallas TX (no. 93). After consulting my road atlas and my memory I find, with grim satisfaction, that I have driven through, around, under or over every single one of these 100 intersections. I note with special pleasure no. 100, which is the I-405 exit onto La Tijera Boulevard, a great exit for getting your rental car back to the lot in time for your plane out of LAX. I remember one time leaving the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard just east of La Cienaga, and barreling down La Cienaga, then to 405 and La Tijera, and getting to the rental car lot in just 23 minutes, in time to make my morning flight out of LAX. How many weeks (months?) of my life did I give up in that adrenalin rush to get to the airport in time?
-
Reverse Latino Immigration: 3 Million Mexicans May Be Returning Home
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (39)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Recently I argued in a column and blogposts (here and here) that we may be seeing a reversal of the huge surge of Latino immigration into this country over the past quarter-century. Now here comes an interesting piece in the Foreign Policy blog that projects that 3 million Mexican immigrants may return to Mexico in "the coming months"—far more than I would have thought. Statistics on this subject have a substantial margin of error. We all, whatever our views on immigration issues, need to keep an eye on this.
-
Specter v. Toomey, again? Pennsylvania Will Be Tough For a Conservative to Win
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2009 Comment (28)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Jennifer Rubin notes that Pat Toomey, who got 49 percent of the vote in the 2004 Republican primary against incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, is now saying that he is interested in running against Specter again (after saying for some months that he wanted to run for governor instead). His gripe and that of many conservatives is that Specter voted for the stimulus package.
-
The Political Trends of the late New Deal--and the Republican Resurgence
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2009 Comment (8)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I've written about the political trends in the late New Deal period and the Republican resurgence in the 1938 elections. Here's a piece by political scientist Andrew Busch on the same subject.
-
More Than Anna Nicole Smith's Husband: The Oil-Soaked Life of J. Howard Marshall
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2009 Comment (27)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I suppose the name of J. Howard Marshall will go down in history, as it has in recent popular media, as the late husband of the late Anna Nicole Smith. But he deserves better than that. A relative of his sent me a copy of his autobiography, Done in Oil, published by Texas A&M University Press in 1994, the year when Marshall turned 89. A fascinating book about a fascinating career.
-
Republicans Could Be Poised to Pick Up Upstate New York Gillibrand House Seat
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2009 Comment (1)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Gary Andres in the Weekly Standard's blog describes the campaigning in the special election to replace appointed Sen. Kisten Gillibrand in New York's 20th congressional district. A Siena Poll shows Republican Jim Tedisco 12 percent ahead of Democrat Scott Murphy. This could well be a Republican pickup, though its national implications are limited, for three reasons. (1) It's a Republican-leaning district. Gillibrand won in 2006 only because of late-breaking scandal news about the Republican incumbent. (2) Out parties often win special House elections in the first year of an administration. (3) Tedisco is a well-known politician in metro Albany, which includes most of the district, while Murphy has some tax problems.
-
Chris Dodd Is Ripe For the Picking for GOP in 2010—Sen. Kudlow of Connecticut?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 2, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Here's a link to the always-worth-reading Ironman on the 2010 Connecticut Senate race, in which Christopher Dodd, heading toward his 30th year in the Senate and his 36th year in Congress, seems to be in serious trouble.
