Politics

SALES TAXES AND THE DEFICIT….Apparently some California legislators are proposing that in order to tackle our $35 billion budget deficit we should expand the state sales tax to cover services as well as goods. In today’s LA Times, professional tax fighter David Doerr says that’s a bad idea: it would be an administrative nightmare, it’s […]

NATIONAL SERVICE….New York congressman Charles Rangel decided to finish up 2002 by proposing that we reinstitute the draft: “I’m going to introduce legislation to have universal military service to let everyone have an opportunity to defend the free world against the threats coming to us,” Rangel said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” ….”I think, if we […]

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL….Megan McArdle reviews Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel today. She likes it but has a couple of complaints. I liked it too, and I don’t even have the complaints she does. It was, simply, a terrific book, with a truly eye-opening and compelling explanation for why Eurasian civilizations were the ones […]

DEPARTMENT OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES….A friend of mine tells me that some local residents where he lives complained about a dangerous stretch of road a few years ago. The city finally agreed to put in a light, which was installed two years ago. But it turned out that people didn’t know the light was there, so […]

NORTH KOREA….David Adesnik of OxBlog wants to talk about North Korea, and points to his contribution to the debate here. So let’s talk. What are the options for dealing with North Korea? There are three: A military strike. Clinton considered this eight years ago, but backed off for obvious reasons. And quite aside from a […]

YOU CELEBRATE YOUR WAY, WE’LL CELEBRATE OURS…. How did you spend New Year’s Day? If you’re a human, you spent it recovering from a hangover, watching football, eating leftovers, or engaging in some other activity requiring higher intellectual skills. If you’re one of my cats, you spent it proving that nature really is red in […]

2002 BOOK REVIEW….Recommended books from my 2002 reading: A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar. I read the book after I saw the movie and was genuinely shocked that the movie was essentially completely fabricated: aside from the fact that it’s about a mathematician who goes crazy and then eventually wins a Nobel Prize, there’s barely […]

THE FREEDOM TO BREATHE….Ah, the eternal struggle between principle and self-interest. Looks like self-interest might be getting the upper hand this time. And by coincidence, the source of Megan’s inner conflict was the subject my first ever blog post! My advice: just relax and wallow in a bit of pure unprincipled selfishness. Hell, everyone else […]

STRATEGY VS. EXECUTION….IT’S EXECUTION BY A LANDSLIDE!….Charles Murtaugh, in his year-end wrap-up, recommends this article from the New Yorker titled “The Talent Myth.” It’s a good piece and makes a point that too few people pay attention to these days: it’s important to hire smart people, but it’s more important to have a good organization […]

TIME MAGAZINE: PAWN OF THE REPUBLICAN CENTRAL COMMITTEE?….With all due respect to my fellow liberals, can someone tell me why the lefty blogosphere has been obsessing over this Time/CNN poll showing that Bush’s approval numbers have now dropped to 55%? I mean, it did appear in Time magazine, and as much as we internet-savvy bloggers […]