The Most Chaotic Week in Ottawa Since February 1963 Chrystia Freeland resigned as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister in spectacular fashion on Monday, 16 December 2024 mere hours before she would have delivered the Fall Economic Update in the House of Commons. She revealed that Trudeau had informed her the previous Friday that […]
Eric Crampton writes: This week, the Treasury barred representatives from the Council of Trade Unions and the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union from attending its restricted briefing for the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update. Treasury said the briefings provide time to consider materials before public release. The aim is more accurate reporting and greater “transparency and accountability […]
You’ve heard of Big Oil, Big Tech and Big Pharma. Now it has been revealed that there is another player in this game: Big Ice Cream: San Francisco’s new consultant on “weight stigma” is a pro-fat activist promoted by the food industry. On Monday, Virgie Tovar, the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat, announced the new role […]
If you haven’t already done yours here is a helping hand from Hobsons Pledge so now you will have no excuse not to get to it. SUBMISSIONS CLOSE AT 11.59PM ON 7 JANUARY 2025!!!!! You can use the following as a guide – I am going to – but, use your own words and under […]
Below is my column in The Hill on the rising rage of the holiday on the left as we approach the second Trump inauguration. From looking forward to harassment at restaurants to the purchase of Antifa-themed Christmas gifts, some appear to be planning for a hate-fest in the New Year. Here is the column:
Sent in a few minutes ago. Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill I thank you for the opportunity to make a Submission on this very important Treaty Principles Bill which I support very strongly for a number of reasons – not least of those being the undemocratic way the the Labour Government in the […]
As an academic and a legal commentator, I have sometimes disagreed with the United States Supreme Court, but I often stress the good-faith differences in how certain rights or protections are interpreted. One case, however, has long stood out for me as wildly off-base and wrongly decided: Kelo v. New London. The case allowed the […]
Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that President Joe Biden is seriously considering preemptive pardons for political allies. In granting what I have called “White Knight pardons,” Biden would achieve more of a political than legal purpose. Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump […]
The Herald reports: The Supreme Court has ruled the majority of the Court of Appeal “erred” in a major decision that ultimately eased the test for Māori to gain customary rights for use of the foreshore and seabed. Its just-issued ruling allows an appeal by the Attorney-General against the Court of Appeal’s decision last October, at a time the […]
Support for the bill 1. I support the bill. My primary reason is the need for robust affirmation of the twin pillars of our constitution: New Zealand’s commitment to the rule of law and to the sovereignty of Parliament (Senior Courts Act 2016, s 3(2)). I wish to be heard in support of my submission.…
High profile US Economist Paul Krugman has written a New York Times article in which he shows in one graph the incredible resilience and performance of the American Economy. The dark blue line below tracks the pre-pandemic long-run trend in Real GDP. Meanwhile the orange line is actual real GDP. Krugman remarks that now, in…
The case is straightforward: Google pays firms like Apple billions of dollars to make its search engine the default. (N.B. I would rephrase this as Apple charges Google billions of dollars to make its search engine the default–a phrasing which matters if you want to understand what is really going on. But set that aside […]
Most plastic simply cannot be recycled – Greenpeace, October 24, 2022 I posted about this matter a couple of years ago, based mainly on 1996 article in, of all places, the NYT, that trashed the whole concept. The writer of that original article, John Tierney, says he got more hate mail for it than any […]
The just resigned Chair of the NZ Green Investment Fund (NZGIF) and Chancellor of Auckland University, Cecilia Tarrant, previously worked at Morgan Stanley Bank in New York, starting in 1997 and finishing in 2009. She’s a very nice person, a lawyer by training, and Structured Products expert, in particular on Mortgage Backed Securities. The collapse of…
This graphic from Nate Silver is fascinating. Up until 2010, Democrats were mainly seen as representing the working class, but now they are mainly seen as standing for marginalised groups and only 11% now identify them as representing the working class. This partially led to Trump winning white working class voters in 2016, and a…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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