British voters go to the polls today, and it appears likely that they will boot out the party in power for only the second time in 31 years. Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives ousted a Labor government in May 1979, and Tony Blair's "New Labor" party ousted the Conservatives in May 1997.
Within hours after the car bomb fizzled in Times Square, the nonstop noise resumed on Fox News and talk radio, warning that the Barack Obama administration is failing to protect us. Evidently, the president and his aides don't say "terror" and "terrorism" sufficiently often to make it go away, according to the professional noisemakers. If you believe that kind of nonsense, then you are listening too much to the professional noisemakers and may have caused damage to your mental health.
The ink was barely dry on the $150 billion European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout of Greece, when world stock markets tanked on two major fears.
David Obey’s retirement announcement reshuffles the House deck for both parties. Democrats are scrambling to ensure other veteran Democrats do not follow suit, after thinking that the retirement tide had been stemmed. For Republicans the odds of a House majority do not look quite as long now that one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s key allies has sidestepped a November reelection battle.
It was the best possible terrorism outcome: several heroes and no victims. A prime suspect sitting in cuffs, and chinks in the national security armor exposed for correction. But while the attack on Times Square failed, the perpetrator did manage a small psychological victory -- re-stirring the public's fear. We should cut that win down to size.
A little over a year ago, a columnist for the newspaper that once served as the official communications organ of the Central Committee of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had some choice words for what remains of America’s free market economy.
In the opening hours and days of an unanticipated event -- such as the current off-shore oil leak, usually not much can be reliably learned about the details of the intruding event -- but much can reliably be learned about the humans responding to it.
SAN ANTONIO -- It was over frozen lattes three blocks from the Alamo that Lydia Camarillo and I discussed the wave of Latino voters expected to change politics in Texas -- and America. Camarillo is vice president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a group that signs up new Hispanic voters and spurs them to the polls.
"Meg 2010, Building a New California," the glossy 40-plus-page "policy agenda" for former eBay CEO and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, is so slick that it sat on my desk for weeks before I could finish it. I would pick it up, think that, like her candidacy, it is overly packaged, and toss it back on the pile of papers that litter my desk. It does a great job of laying out California's financial woes and suggesting possible reforms -- but it leaves out how she'll get things done in Sacramento.
Left parties are in trouble in the Anglosphere. Here in America, Democrats are doing worse in the polls than at any time in the last 50 years.
President Obama has appointed three new doves to the Federal Reserve Board, thereby taking command of the nation's central bank. But there's a split developing inside the Federal Reserve System: The Reserve Bank presidents, appointed by their own district boards of directors, are increasingly likely to wage a battle royale against the central-bank headquarters in Washington and its free-money, ultra-easy policies.
Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, has become my go-to guy for good-government issues. His wife, Joan, he recently confided, calls him "the Sisyphus of reform."
For months now, this election has been compared to that of 1994, when Republicans scored huge gains and won both houses of Congress. It is a decent model. But given the recent passage of health care reform – something that did not happen in ’94 – this might be a good occasion to look at another midterm election for instruction, that of 1966.
Let me lead with what should be an unremarkable observation: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer did not write federal immigration laws that require permanent residents to carry green cards, employers to check documentation or limits on the number of legal immigrants admitted each year. Washington did.
HOUSTON -- Houston faces a crossroads, or to be more precise, a five-level stack interchange. Is it going to nurture compact walkable neighborhoods? Or is it going to do what it has always done -- stand back and watch developers build anything anywhere?
With a furious majority of American voters demanding security from the depredations of Big Capital, all of the filibustering and bargaining in Congress will inevitably produce a bill described as "financial reform." Partisan sniping aside, neither Democrats nor Republicans so far have proposed a deep and thorough cleansing.
Setting legislative priorities has been one of the chief tasks of American presidents for the past century. Sometimes, they concentrate on changing public policy. At other times, they highlight issues for political reasons, with an eye to the next election.
In its quest to ram perpetual bank bailouts and draconian new government regulations through the U.S. Congress under the guise of “financial services reform,” the administration of Barack Obama and its allies have seized upon a convenient new enemy – Goldman Sachs.
In the last few weeks, I have found myself debating on radio and TV programs whether various financial instruments have any social utility -- any "real world" purpose other than "speculation or gambling." (Disclosure: I give professional advice to a number of financial organizations.)
