You know, you stop reading the news for a week to help your mother move, and the world goes to heck in a hand-basket. I saw in the paper this morning that the government was seizing WaMu (with a name like that it’s no wonder they are having problems), that the Bush Administration has [...]

I know that the recent Wall St. turmoil sounds complicated. And it is. To understand all the details, you need to be an expert in the intricacies of investment banking… or at least that’s what people a lot smarter than I am say. But at it’s essence, this financial collapse is basically [...]

It’s an awful word, but I couldn’t resist using it. In any case, if you have any interest at all in the upcoming presidential election, you should read this article on what Obama’s economic priorities are. Obama has been characterized as both a conservative and a socialist, and the article attempts to explain [...]

Drug legalization (and I will include the addictive mood altering chemicals tobacco and alcohol here as well) is a hard question. On the one hand, it’s not really government’s job to protect people from themselves. On the other hand, issues like addiction, second-hand smoke, “roid rage”, public financing of emergency rooms, drunk driving, [...]

Energy policy is one of those tough topics to talk about intelligently. The problem is that everybody knows what the problems are (fossil fuels are bad for the environment and have a finite supply), everybody agrees what the ultimate solution has to be (we need to find new sources of cheap, plentiful energy), and [...]

Clinton had a Stephen Colbert moment yesterday. It doesn’t suit her. Here’s the transcript from This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

I’m generally for treating animals with respect and kindness. But laws like those the Swiss are implementing are ridiculous! It may sound noble to make sure that guinea pigs are never kept alone in their cages, but it misses an important point. Humans are different from and more important than the animals they keep. When [...]

I had thought a McCain presidency would be bad. Until today, I had hoped that it would be a significant improvement over the Bush Administration. And then, in in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, McCain released his economic plan. Here are his proposals, minus the stump speech, along with my commentary:

The last assumption is simple and intuitive: individual companies must have incentives to succeed. The wealthy retiree who runs a used book shop on weekends as a hobby isn’t going to respond to market forces, no matter how well informed and numerous his customers or how cut-throat the competition from other book stores in [...]

I saw a commercial on one of the cable news channels today urging people to call their members of Congress to oppose FDA regulation of the tobacco industry. Why? Because the FDA already has too many “plates in the air” and they don’t have the time or the resources to effectively manage or [...]