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A great philosopher writes in the New Republic: Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner just published a major book, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. The book is excellent in explaining the misconduct of executives who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack. Yet it goes off the rails by overstating [...]
Archive for August, 2011
August 27th, 2011
Category: 2011 Democratic Agenda, Conservatism, Debt ceiling, Economics, Elections 2010 and 2012, Republican Party, Rhetoric and Framing, Stimulus, Taxation
Keith Humphreys’ thoughtful post called to mind some thoughts I wanted to jot down after re-reading Drew Westen’s NYT piece on Obama and Jonathan Chait’s blistering response to Westen in the New Republic. Westen is surely a primary target of Keith’s scorn, and I agree with both Chait and Keith that Westen grossly exaggerates what [...]
August 26th, 2011
Is one of you prepared to stand up and say the Rick Perry is unfit to be President? And why not? He is, and you know it.
August 26th, 2011
Category: Uncategorized
This UCLA study surprised me. Medical researchers should seek to identify those interventions that significantly improve a patient’s survival rate (abstracting from quality of life). The benefits of taking a drug hinge on two parameters. Consider a heart medication. If I take it, how is my survival rate affected? Intuitively, what would my probability of surving [...]
August 26th, 2011
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Built Environment, Health Care, Higher education, Illinois, Law Notes, NonProfits, Supreme Court, Taxation, Urban policy
When Harold Pollack wrote about the recent Illinois Department of Revenue decision to withdraw property tax exemptions from three hospitals, he naturally focused on the impact of the decision on health care. But those of us who work in other areas of the nonprofit sector are worried by the decision as well–or, if we aren’t, [...]
August 26th, 2011
Category: Handbasket, world going to hell in, Teaching
Professor who closed the laptop of a student surfing the web during class acquitted of battery–and fired.
August 26th, 2011
Category: Drug Policy, Latin America
… apparently as part of the turf battle between the Golfo group and Los Zetas. Current policies incentivize violence. We need a new enforcement strategy to make the drug traffickers afraid of acting scary.
August 26th, 2011
Is the health of European royalty expensive?
August 26th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
Listening just now to a radio report of the counter-clockwise spinning Irene hurricane called to mind a night some years ago when I was lost in the Surrey darkness, trying to find the house of an English friend. My friend called me and said that I had made a mistake by turning left at the [...]