Utopia, you are standing in it!

Stolen shamelessly from a famous American article published in 1996.

The author, John Tierney, later said that he got more hate mail for that piece than anything else he or anybody ever wrote for the New York Times Magazine.

The article can be found here.

The article starts off with a scene of school kids gathering rubbish and shows the problem right from the start:

Miss Aponte finished emptying the last bag. “We’ve been learning about the need to reduce, reuse and recycle,” she said, and pointed at the pile.
”How does all this make you feel?”
”Baaaad,” the students moaned.
The pile of garbage included the equipment used by the children in the litter hunt: a dozen plastic bags and two dozen pairs of plastic gloves. The cost of this recycling equipment obviously exceeded the value of the recyclable items recovered. The equipment also seemed to be a…

The poll was conducted by Senate Opportunity Fund, a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) organization, to test public opinion regarding congressional bill H.R.1, called The Lower Energy Costs Act.  A national sample of 800 likely voters were contacted by phone during March 21 to 23, 2023, with questions regarding a number of public policy issues.  Responses are shown by self-identified political leanings, and by participants located in battleground states. Note that the final question showed about 80% approval by all cohorts.

While speaking last week at the Acton Institute in Michigan, I responded to a question about the perpetual motion machine of Keynesian economics.

For purposes of today’s column, let’s try to understand the Keynesian viewpoint.

First and foremost, they think spending drives the economy, whether consumer spending or government spending.

Critics like me argue that the focus should be on income and production. We want to increase saving, investment, entrepreneurship, and labor supply. Simply stated, money has to be earned before anyone spends it.

Keynesian economists, by contrast, think it is very important to distinguish between the long run and short run. In the long run, they generally would agree with the previous paragraph.

But they would argue that “stimulus” policies can be desirable in the short run if there is an economic downturn.

More specifically, they argue you can stop or minimize a…

On 22 February 2023,the judgment of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission(‘SIAC’ or ‘the Commission’) was published, upholding the Home Secretary’s decision to deprive Shamima Begum of her British citizenship under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 (‘‘the BNA 1981’’) on the ground that it would be conducive to the public good to do so, because her return to the United Kingdom would present a national security risk.

The present post considers the judgment in relation to the issue of Ms Begum being a victim of trafficking and her rights under article 4 ECHR. There were nine grounds pleaded before SIAC. Particularly relevant to the issue of trafficking are grounds 1 and 2. Ground 1 was that the Secretary of State failed to take into account a mandatory relevant consideration and/or failed to undertake proper inquiries into it – namely that Ms Begum may have been a…

The Nashville Police have released bodycam footage of their officers taking on the woman who invaded a school and shot three adults and three little kids.

It’s an incredible six minutes from the time Officer Engelbert drives up to when he puts down the woman shooter. The last part includes footage from one of the other officers who also fired on the woman.

It’s also a massive, if implicit and unstated rebuke to the gutless Uvalde Police who loitered around for literally hours while little kids were being shot in that school and they talked of the need for body armour. You’ll not that these officers went in without it, knowing the risks but also knowing that time was of the essence.

Actually it’s also a silent rebuke to our crowd who stood around at Albert Park last Saturday watching the Trannies get their rocks off assaulting woman.

As…

What is one to think of a book whose closing line is a quote from John Dowd, who resigned as President Trump’s lawyer in March 2018, that states “the president is a fucking liar.”  The book in question is FEAR: TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE by Bob Woodward, and like his other books it is based on his own reporting, extensive interviewing, gathering information directly and indirectly from other publications and news accounts.  Woodward’s narrative covers the Trump presidential campaign through the resignation of Dowd, and presents, perhaps the most dysfunctional White House in American history.

Recently, the public has been bombarded with books dealing with the rise of the Trump presidency.  What sets Woodward’s monograph apart is the author’s reputation and history of access to sources that others do not employ.  The book presents an administration that Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly describes as “crazy town,” and the…

This week I have tackled Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s exceptional account of the Trump administration, THE DIVIDER: TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE, 2017-2021.  As I was reading the book I tried not to pay attention to the news of an impending indictment of the former president, but it was impossible.  Baker and Glasser’s narrative are almost encyclopedic in its detail and as I pushed on words describing the Trump presidency kept going through my mind; scary, unimaginable, unprecedented, unbelievable, inconceivable, overwhelming, mind-boggling, etc.  Today I find myself comparing events and comments related to the Trump presidency with the barrage of racist, anti-Semitic tropes that the former president is currently bombarding the airwaves and it seems he is willing to foster violence and say or do anything that will protect him.  It is the Roy Cohn playbook on steroids and there is no daylight concerning Trump as president and…