Subscribe to Excerpts
Subscribe by Email
This, confirmed by a senior administration official to Jonathan Cohn: Medicare: Raising the eligibility age, imposing higher premiums for upper income beneficiaries, changing the cost-sharing structure, and shifting Medigap insurance in ways that would likely reduce first-dollar coverage. This was to generate about $250 billion in ten-year savings. This was virtually identical to what Boehner [...]
Archive for July, 2011
July 23rd, 2011
Category: Terrorism and its control
Raskolnikov only killed two people in his efforts to become a superman. Today he’d be reading about dirty bombs and fertilizer on the internet.
July 23rd, 2011
Category: Britain, Politics and Leadership
The UK coalition government’s white paper on public service reform has gotten lukewarm reviews even from presumably friendly quarters such as The Economist and the FT. Putting aside substance for a moment and looking at the roll out of the policy, one thing that clearly did not help can be seen here. As Minister Letwin [...]
July 22nd, 2011
Category: Politics and Leadership
I participated in the 2008 campaign because I believed this country had a real chance to pass universal health coverage and achieve other worthy goals. I was positively inspired by Candidate Obama’s intelligence and grace at the top of American politics. I still admire President Obama. But I’m finding a more negative source of motivation [...]
July 22nd, 2011
I admire Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard for promising that 50% of the revenue from her proposed carbon tax will be returned to the Australian people as a tax cut. I’d admire her more if it were 100%, but nonetheless she deserves high marks for recognizing that there is no essential logical connection between reducing [...]
July 22nd, 2011
Category: Terrorism and its control
The atttack in Norway seems to have been the work of a single man, a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, a Mason with a grudge against Muslims. That isn’t good news.
July 22nd, 2011
Category: Crime Control, Drug Policy
Lowry Heussler and I have a piece on “Crime-Minimizing Drug Policy” in the latest Journal of Criminal Justice. Here’s the conclusion: Drug abuse control policy tends to focus on reducing drug consumption, with “supply side” (laws and enforcement) and “demand side” (prevention and treatment) as the means to that end. There seems little reason to [...]
July 22nd, 2011
Category: Uncategorized
I live 150 feet from an elementary school. When this school is in session, we have a crow problem. These attractive birds sing their songs and poop on my front lawn. My wife’s response has been to blast them with owl sounds and to use owl balloons to make our house look scary. Now that [...]