The Art of Political Power, with Robert Caro and William Hague
09 Mar 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - USA Tags: LBJ
Just about everyone has a gun in the Midwest
04 Mar 2018 Leave a comment
in law and economics, politics - USA Tags: gun control
Changing times
02 Mar 2018 Leave a comment
in discrimination, politics - USA Tags: political correctness
Hillary Clinton on sexual assault issues: Crusader or hypocrite? | FACTUAL FEMINIST
23 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, economics of education, gender, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election, political correctness
Is @SenSanders happy that lithium could not be patented?
19 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - USA, property rights
Lithium is a naturally occurring substance so it is not possible to patent it. In consequence, there is no way of recovering any investments in working out how to handle its sometimes toxic side effects.
The first patients treated with lithium in 1949 were well within 2 weeks. Their discharge from the asylum where they had been living for years was delayed for a couple of months just to make sure that the medicine lithium was actually working. It was such a stunning success that their doctors had to check. The inability to patented lithium delayed its commercial availability by over two decades.
From Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cade
Learnt a new word today: virtue out-bidding
18 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: political correctness
Sarah Haider on Apologism, Human Rights & Islam
04 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, politics - USA Tags: political correctness
The latest instalment in the withering away of the proletariat
01 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - USA, poverty and inequality
The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate
30 Jan 2018 2 Comments
in constitutional political economy, politics - USA, Public Choice
Boston Mayor Curley had the rare distinction of winning his first election from prison and his last while under federal indictment for corruption which he was soon convicted of while in office.
Curley won his first election in 1904 as an alderman on the slogan “he did it for a friend”. He sat a civil service exam for a friend to get him a job. He quickly then handed out 700 patronage jobs once he once he got out of prison to serve as an alderman.
In 1945, he was re-elected mayor. Truman commuted his 6 to 18 month sentence after 5 months in 1948 at the behest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and later (1950) granted him a full pardon.
Curley was then defeated by the acting mayor during his prison term in the subsequent Democratic party primary in part because of the high taxes under the Curley regime. Naturally, during his lame-duck period, Curley granted many tax abatements to sabotage the public finances of his successor.
Alan Dershowitz to Democrats “Face it We Lost!”
27 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice
The Post was a lot better than I anticipated
20 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, movies, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: Vietnam war, World War II
Second movie this week on it is heroic (Darkest Hour), treasonous (The Post) to fight on in a war you can’t win against murderously evil monsters in the hope something might turn up.
Illegal Immigration: What Liberals Used to Say
18 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in international economics, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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