by Beverly Mann Justice Kennedy’s Hard-Right Turn After (and Because of?) Citizens United Anyone who watches the Supreme Court closely surely recognizes that Justice Kennedy last year took a hard-right turn, effectively removing himself from the role of swing voter and siding nearly always with the Court’s four-member rightwing bloc in ideologically determined cases. This […]
I want to open a pizza place. I find an available space; a previous pizza place that went out of business. The only catch is that there are four other pizza places nearby, none of which is overcrowded, except at the peak of peak hours. One–a block or two away, on another street–is the oldest […]
Wisconsin Supreme Court election update They seem to have gone to sleep over in Wisconsin. I did too but now I’m awake.The current state of the supreme court election is that 3,596 of 3,630 precincts have reported and the incumbent conservative Walker ally is Prosser is ahead of the challenger Kloppenberg by 733,074 to 732489, […]
Health Care Thoughts: ACO Draft Regulations On March 31st the Obama administration issued the draft regulations for Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). ACOs are to eventually be the centerpiece of cost savings for the entire US health care system. This is the first peak at how the ACOs might be defined. In the “they never […]
The point of this article is to demonstrate that Germany has enjoyed increased ‘competitiveness’ as measured by productivity levels and relative prices. But the clarity of Germany’s ‘competitiveness’ cannot be established by using German data in the form of a black box – a bird’s-eye view of the region is the only way to see […]
OMB Watch reports here and here on the Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives : Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives and testimony here. OMB Watch recommends six changes Congress and the Obama administration should make to USAspending.gov, the government’s spending website which is based off of one of their websites, FedSpending.org. Making […]
It’s no secret I’m not a fan of the birth-death adjustment to the employment serieses: not from a necessary belief that they’re biased, but rather because they give the lie to the illusion of accurate monthly data. But imagine for the moment that there had been no adjustment before the January data release. The headline […]
I don’t remember seeing any of this type of story last year. But this year, Socialism stories abound from the Midwest. My ex-roommate* sends this link to a story about Butler Bulldogs’s Senior Matt Howard’s family being able to attend the NCAA Finals tonight in Houston (video link here). Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated covered […]
Invictus at The Big Picture notes that, as recent recoveries from recessions go, the current “recovery” has the best private-sector hiring of the past three. Source: St. Louis Fed Expansion Charts via The Big Picture Go read the whole thing.
by Mike Kimel Deficit numbers for CEA chair signatories on the deficit letter Cross-posted at Presimetrics Title updated I’m kind of late to this, but apparently ten ex-chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors decided to share their opinion about the national debt with the rest of us. There’s been commentary here and there […]