Category: Politics & Economics

Politics & Economics

“I’m sure the panel did what it was asked to do, but it was asked to do the wrong thing.”

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Quote of the Day for Friday, Dec. 3rd, 2010: J.E. Dyer, posting in the Green Room over at HotAir (cross-posted here), on the misplaced priorities of the Presidential Debt Commission, in an article titled: Debt Reduction Versus Government Reduction: Members of the public who object to the proposed measures will be denigrated as whining and irresponsible. Some of them probably are. But that’s not the point. The point is that, in the debt-reduction panel’s plan, gouging American households to pay down the debt is being done instead of reducing the size of g...

Politics & Economics

“And the real problem is us.”

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Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn (R), addressing his fellow members of the President’s Deficit Commission, as they wrapped up deliberations Wednesday: As a physician, I’m trained to find the real problem… What’s the real problem – not the symptoms, but what do the symptoms and signs lead me to is what is the real disease. And he real disease is we’ve abandoned the concepts of our founders. We’ve created reliance instead of depending on self-reliance; we’ve created government programs that are unaffordable; we̵...

Politics & Economics

“Mr. Ambassador, enter the Orient Express and go back to Istanbul, your wonderland!”

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, Dec. 2nd, 2010: Maybe Europe is not a lost cause after all? Perhaps my disillusionment with the post-modern political and cultural character of the Old World has been unduly overwrought? Between this dressing down by Austrian MP Ewald Stadler and the Nigel Farage tirade in Brussels the other day, perhaps I should be holding to a firmer hope for a European future worthy of its past. Not that I have any illusions about these guys representing majorities, but: Who woulda’ thunk? An MP on the floor of a 21st century European Pa...

Politics & Economics

Where the Streets Have No Shame

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, Dec 1st, 2010: Elizabeth Scalia, posting an “On The Square” piece yesterday at First Things called Rationing Bono & Other Gaia-Saving Ideas, asking why the planet’s room mothers and former Vice-Presidents, who jet off to fancy places to hold “Save the Earth from the Earthlings” summit meetings on a regular basis, never seem to suggest solving the crisis of our impending planetary doom by outlawing things like sporting events, and rock concerts – like the current obscenely indulgent U2 tour, for example: As we read the ...

Politics & Economics

the M stands for “magic”

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Quote of the Day for Monday, Nov. 29th, 2010: The ever-delightful Ed Morrissey over at HotAir, commenting today on Keynesian economics: Think of it as a Cash for Clunkers economic plan on a larger scale.  The intention is to fool people into spending money in order to give the illusion of growth, and have that illusion somehow become reality through a process best known as FM; the M stands for “magic,” and you can guess what the F means.  The problem is that the interventions run out of steam quickly without addressing the actual issues of inco...

Politics & Economics

“We Want the Whole Thing Consigned to the Dustbin of History”

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

Perusing Fausta Wertz’ blog this afternoon after posting the Warren Buffett link, I came across a fabulous screed from the proceedings of the European Parliament. Honestly, I have no idea who this bloke is. Fausta identifies him as Nigel Farage, MEP. But, whoever this Brit is, may God bless him and his family forever! Our stodgy Congress could use a bit of this kind of seriousness. There may be no Emperor, but he still has no clothes:   One really important thing Mr. Farage seems to me to get right is his assertion that the faux universality and cor...

Politics & Economics

Waiting for Permission to Do Good?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

So, the uber-wealthy Warren Buffett is complaining again that he pays too little in taxes: “I think that people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes; we have it better than we’ve ever had it.” Buffett on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour The duplicity in all this is just staggering. As a commenter at HotAir noted, Warren Buffett makes a significant amount of money selling tax shelters, such as life insurance, through his Berkshire Hathaway vehicle, and would stand to make an additional personal fortune should t...

Politics & Economics

Subjectivism’s Necessary Appeal to Juridical Power

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Quote of the Day for Saturday, Nov 20, from Georgia Warnke, in Justice and Interpretation (MIT Press, 1994): MacIntyre insists that the "only rational way in which these disagreements could be resolved would be by means of philosophical enquiry aimed at deciding which out of the conflicting sets of premises, if any, is true."  But within the liberal tradition, not only can individual claims to what the good life is for human beings not be understood or appear as validity claims in the sphere of public discussion; the same restrictions appl...

Politics & Economics

Out, Off, End… Goodbye

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Quote of the Day: West Virginia Democrat Senator John (Jay) Rockefeller IV: I hunger for quality news. I’m tired of the Right and the Left. There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX, and to, to MSNBC: “Out, off, end… Goodbye.”  [It would] be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress — and to the American people to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government, and in their  – more importantly – in their future. (U.S. ...

Politics & Economics

Partisanship & Compromise

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Marveling after the recent election at how, as usual, every single candidate or question I supported on my election day ballot went down to defeat, I was doing a little post-election pundit reading, and was struck by another glaring contrast – one that got me thinking about the competing political visions that dominate our public conversation. This time, it was the tone of a pair of where do we go from here ruminations. The first was from Michelle Malkin: the mischievously entitled “Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It, Democrats”. I find Malkin to be cle...