All Blogs / Academics / Political Science / Popular
Assorted links
1. What is the non-shared environment? 2. Why is New Jersey so corrupt? 3. John Gray on Mervyn Peake. 4. Nathan Heller on on-line education, including Amherst. 5. Are there literary novels which cannot be adapted to the screen? 6. Why bullfighting in Spain is dwindling; it has been a $3.3 billion sector yearly. 7. [...]
Jim Manzi on the Oregon Medicaid study
Via Megan, here is an excellent discussion of the study, here is one excerpt: In summary, based on statistically insignificant effects of coverage from the Oregon Experiment: (1) The effects that are closest to statistical significance are that coverage would increase the rate of smoking and damage the cardiovascular prognosis of sick people; (2) the [...]
Thailand book bleg
From Chris Acree: I’m planning a trip which will take me through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I recently began selecting a few books about each country to read to cover the history, culture, or other interesting aspects of the area. In particular, my favorite books in this vein are Country Driving and China Airborne, both [...]
The WaPo Keeps Fighting on Food Aid
Simon Lester A few weeks ago, I blogged about how the U.S. government uses the idea of helping malnourished people abroad as a way to promote domestic agricultural interests. As I explained there, “Instead of simply giving money to people to buy food from the cheapest source, the U.S. Show More Summary
Tolerate “Any” Unwelcome Campus Sex Talk, Lose Federal Funds
Walter Olson My colleague Andrew Coulson has already briefly noted this story, but its constitutional and policy implications — which go well beyond the higher education context — merit a more detailed look. For more than two years civil...Show More Summary
Rothbard in the New Yorker
David Boaz Here’s something you don’t see every day: A discussion of Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism in the New Yorker, in a broader review of books on “anarchism” emerging from the Occupy movement. Author Kelefa Sanneh writes: In...Show More Summary
Did Citizens United Critics Push the IRS to Misbehave?
John Samples Last Friday, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted the agency had targeted various Tea Party and related groups during the 2010 election cycle. Later in the week, an Inspector General’s report will offer an initial look at the facts of this matter. Show More Summary
Tax and Expenditure Limits: The Challenge of Turning Mitchell's Golden Rule from Theory into Reality
Daniel J. Mitchell
The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is toShow More Summary
What Washington State Can Expect From Higher K-12 Spending
Andrew J. Coulson
Just over a year ago, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the legislature was insufficiently funding K-12 education, and ordered it to boost that funding. A bi-partisan consensus now seems to have emergedShow More Summary
Doing Business: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It
Dalibor Rohac and Marian L. Tupy A few weeks ago, we published a piece that defended World Bank’s Doing Business project against its critics. At the time, we didn’t know much about the politics behind the attack on the project – namely...Show More Summary
IRS Lied to Congress about Targeting Tea Party
Michael F. Cannon On Friday, the IRS admitted that when “social welfare” groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriot” in their names applied for 501(c)(4)/tax-exempt status, IRS agents targeted them for extra (and extra-legal) scrutiny to ensure they were not engaged in politicking. Show More Summary
Sebelius Shakes Down Companies She Regulates for Cash to Implement ObamaCare
Michael F. Cannon Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius’ latest abuse of power has strengthened the case for her removal from office. Before discussing her latest misconduct, let’s review some of Sebelius’ past abuses...Show More Summary
Dollarize Argentina Now
Steve H. Hanke Argentina is once again wrestling with its long-time enemy, inflation. Now, it appears history may soon repeat itself, as Argentina teeters on the verge of another currency crisis. As of Tuesday morning, the black-market exchange rate for Argentine pesos (ARS) to the U.S. Show More Summary
Private Schools in Developing Countries
Tina Rosenberg has an excellent piece on private schooling in developing countries at the NYTimes blog: In the United States, private school is generally a privilege of the rich. But in poorer nations, particularly in Africa and South Asia, families of all social classes send their children to private school…. BRAC used to be an [...]
Jeffrey Selingo’s College Unbound
The subtitle is The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, and I read it straight through in one sitting. It is the best book on its topic, and anyone interested in this area should buy and read it immediately.
Catch-up splat
Having been traveling, I neglected some of the more controversial issues of the last week, but here are a few points of catch-up. On the immigration study, I liked Reihan’s recent post very much. It is now the case that 23 student organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School are protesting the fact that the dissertation was [...]
C.S. Lewis on TV cooking shows
Well, in a time travel sort of way. Lewis once wrote this: You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act — that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to [...]
Assorted links
1. Where are Tyler’s favorite restaurants? 2. The most trusted Americans, according to Reader’s Digest. 3. Claims about Doctor Who. 4. New blog on complexity approaches. 5. Knoxville defends its “averageness.” 6. Job market search in Denmark, using windows.
Rising academic salaries for coaches
Even during the recession, salaries for athletic coaches at colleges and universities continued to increase. For instance in the SEC, between 2006 and 2011, “football coaching salaries increased 128.9 percent, from $3,147,149 to $6,928,989.” This is an extreme example but it reflects a more general pattern: That big-time coaches earn more than professors may not [...]
A History of England in 100 Places
This 2011 book by John Julius Norwich is both an excellent travel book and one of the very best ways of learning more about the history of England. It is remarkably wide-ranging and properly treats economic and technological (and artistic) history on a par with political history. Here is one short excerpt: Of all the [...]
