Adam Doverspike reveals his “our way or the highway” view as he criticizes the attempt among Senate moderates to fashion a reasonable bipartisan approach to Social Security reform. He especially does not like add-on accounts: It seems that some big government Republicans are looking to “add-on” personal accounts, which is another way of saying “raising […]

Ben Stein must pay a lot for gasoline: At my local gas station in Beverly Hills, self-service – yes, self-service – high test is now $3.22 a gallon, so I believe that the concern is real. The day the New York Times published his op-ed, I was purchasing gasoline at a nearby service station that […]

The Conference Board reports some disappointing news: The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted Advertising Index – a key barometer of America’s job market – was unchanged in April. The Index now stands at 39. It was 38 one year ago. In the last three months, help-wanted advertising declined in seven of the nine U.S. regions. Steepest declines […]

CNN reports: WASHINGTON (CNN) – After hours of heated exchanges, the Senate failed Thursday evening to close off debate on President Bush’s nomination of John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations … Two key Democratic senators – Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware – asked their Democratic colleagues Thursday […]

John Tamny tries to argue that a yuan appreciation will not lower our bilateral trade deficit with China: Some might say that any harm brought on less politically connected U.S. business sectors will be made up for by companies allegedly made more competitive by attempts to weaken China. But these people will have not thought […]

This Court ruling sounds reasonable: HOUSTON (Reuters) – Thousands of former Enron Corp. employees will share $85 million in insurance proceeds to compensate for pensions lost when the energy giant collapsed into bankruptcy, a federal judge ruled this week. So the incredibly arrogant part is: U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon formally approved the settlement […]

Peronet Despeignes’s interview with Greg Mankiw was noted by Mark Thoma and Tyler Cowen and was critiqued in part by Brad DeLong. I wish to take on a couple of comments regarding fiscal policy. The first relates to: The policy process worked extremely well. It’s not like one person sits there—like Karl Rove sits off […]

My apologies to all, but I’ll be taking a brief blogging hiatus this week to spend time with my new baby daughter (my second), who was born over the weekend. I’ll be back at work soon… but not quite yet. First my body needs to re-learn how to deal with getting sleep only in 1 […]

Let’s compare two stories. One seems to have Bush admitting he’s a divider: “I fully recognize some in Washington, you know, don’t particularly want to address this issue,” Bush said in an auditorium at Greece Athena Middle and High School. I recognize some of them say, `Well, this is, this is a partisan thing. You […]

Conservative and liberal economists in Blogland have been very critical of the recent announcement from the Commerce Department: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez announced today the initiation of a new system to monitor imports of textiles and apparel products. The system will allow the Department and the public timely access to preliminary textile […]