Bush Resolves to Dramatically Change Course According to the New York Times, Bush is promising that in a second term he will do exactly the opposite of what he’s done in his first term: WASHINGTON, July 21 – President Bush on Wednesday set out the broad principles that he said would guide his domestic agenda […]

Lying Liars Visiting Pandagon, I re-encounter a crazy story that I’d heard before but never got around to posting about. No, Pandagon is not the source of the story, they just link to it, and also point out that it’s crazy. Via Yahoo News: Republican officials expect the Democratic ticket — Kerry and running mate […]

Religion in the US The Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting story about how dramatically the religious composition of the US has changed over the past decade. The results are summed up in this table: The Sun-Times article focuses on the fact that Protestants will probably comprise less than 50% of the US within another year […]

Divergent Opinions on the Economy This week’s survey of consumer confidence by ABC News and Money Magazine showed no changes from the previous week. What I found really interesting about this survey, though, was how very different the opinions on the state of the economy were depending on the political affiliation of the person surveyed. […]

Political Markets I’ve referred to the Iowa Electronic Markets on political futures in past posts. The exchange creates contracts that pay either $0 or $1, depending on what happens. For example, a George Bush Presidential election contract will pay you $1 for each contract that you own if Bush wins, and will pay you zero […]

Greenspan the Optimist In his testimony before Congress today, Greenspan indicated that he is not worried about a slowdown in the economy in the second half of this year. Some revealing excerpts from his testimony: [I]n light of the considerable uncertainty surrounding the anticipated evolution of price pressures, the FOMC emphasized that it will respond […]

Breaking Promises   Could this sort of story have anything to do with the NAACP’s antipathy toward the Bush administration?  I guess in a way it seems only fitting that our government has no qualms in reneging on a promise made to a segment of our society that it has always treated poorly in the past. […]

Tax Cuts, Round Four The Bush administration is pushing hard on its friends in Congress to get some tax cuts passed for the fourth summer in a row.   This time most the things that they are looking for are extensions of some of the tax cuts passed in 2001 that are set to expire in […]

CEO Compensation: A Demand = Supply Model   Calpundit challenged the presumption that the 7X increase in (nominal) CEO compensation since 1980 can be explained by a demand = supply model.  AB thesis suggests that the increase is explained by factors that deviate from the traditional model.  My comments will be limited to the traditional […]

Gay Marriage Ban, Revisited I think Mark Schmitt has, not surprisingly, the right take on how badly the vote on the gay marriage ban went for conservatives: There is no doubt that on gay marriage, the administration at least would rather have the issue than have the ban. That’s because they don’t actually give a […]