Harold Pollack

If you want to know what’s really surprising in economic policy, it’s sometimes helpful to listen to what people are saying. It’s sometimes much more helpful to watch what people are buying and selling with real money. On this, liberal and conservative economists are presumably in real agreement. Thus, I’m really ticked off at Matthew […]

Suppose you are in business offering people advice about some important products. You have a problem, though. The correct advice pretty much fits on a single sheet of paper that is available for free at the public library. Moreover, the products one should recommend buying are inexpensive, and are widely-available at leading websites. Thus the […]

Two years ago, I put myself in hot water by making the simple (admittedly somewhat hyperbolic) claim: Because it is so easy to find bad reporting and public stupidity, it is easy to overlook something. Press coverage of health care reform was the most careful, most thorough, and most effective reporting of any major story, […]

I had an online op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, lamenting Rick Santorum’s efforts to make intellectual and developmental disabilities yet another front in the culture wars. My wife and I–like millions of other caregivers–are indescribably insulted by the argument that liberals disdain the disabled, favor amniocentesis to reduce health care costs, or look […]

I admit that I’ve found Mr. Santorum’s unlikely rise rather amusing. He would self-immolate in the general election. I’ve never expected him to do more than make mischief for Romney. Of course he’s made any number of odious statements about LGBT people. Yet his comments on this front are so self-parodic and self-defeating, I found […]

Via Doctors for America [Cross-posted at The Reality-Based Community]

My daughters’ high school plays football every year against Eisenhower High School in nearby Blue Island. I’m guessing that not too many Eisenhower voters still live in this economically embattled south-suburban community. Eleven years ago, one of Eisenhower’s fine players, Rocky Clark, was rendered quadriplegic by a mishap on the gridiron. For years, his mother […]

I just encountered yesterday’s column by Ross Douthat: Today, we are less divided over race, but more divided over sex and reproduction. In a country that cannot agree whether fetuses are human beings, even questions like how to mourn and bury a miscarried child are inevitably freighted with ideological significance. Likewise, in a country where […]

I missed the chance to chime in on the Ron Paul controversy during the Iowa caucuses. Congressman Paul’s unfortunate newsletters should not blind us to the deeper message of his candidacy. I find this deeper message is almost as objectionable as the various bigotries published under Paul’s name in is cheesy newsletter. Not that one […]