Roger's Rules

Country not (quite) bankrupt yet. The Krugman solution: Spend More!

"Some of us." Don't you love that locution? Smug, cliquish, self-satisfied: it's a perfect rhetorical gambit for "progressive" souls -- you know, people who are just wee-bit smarter and emotionally attuned to the Zeitgeist than you or I. Take The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, for ...

Annals of the Nanny State

Watch that snack, Junior! And you, Mr. School Administrator: thought you would foist off something salty, something fatty, or something sweet on your innocent charges? Think again. Mr. Big Government is here again to stop you from giving the kids what they want. Yes, that's right, folks, just as New ...

Sarah Palin, a modern Cincinnatus?

Like the Denmark of Hamlet's time, the whole kingdom of the fourth estate contracted in one brow of woe at the unexpected news that Sarah Palin was resigning as Governor of Alaska. How could she? And on the day before the 4th of July, when plans to leave town ...

The Washington Post: was anyone really surprised?

What can I say? That Katharine Weymouth, publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, was shocked, shocked to discover that her marketing department was selling places to a series of "intimate and exclusive" political salons at her house? Or, rather, was she shocked and dismayed to discover that her marketing ...

It’s not easy being green

Actually, Kermit the Frog is probably singing a different song these days. After all, what's easier, more fashionable, more excruciatingly politically correct than "being green"? Longtime readers know that I am fond of Harvey Mansfield's formulation that "environmentalism is school prayer for liberals." Most people chuckle when I quote that ...

The Potemkin Presidency meets a moment of sanity in The New York Times (with an observation from Hilaire Belloc and an admonition from Friedrich Hayek)

Let me start with the observation from Hilaire Belloc. In his book The Servile State, Belloc writes that "The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself." I rather doubt that President Obama or any of his inner circle is a student of Hilaire Belloc. But ...

A “green” economy vs. a productive economy, or how America became a third-world country with first-world feelings of moral superiority

The House of Representatives just took a large step towards refashioning the United State into a Third World economy with first world self-regard. The so-called "cap and trade" ("cap and tax" to its opponents) bill, sponsored by Henry Waxman and Edward Markey (remember those names, voters), squeaked by 219-212. (The ...

Nightmare on Main Street, in which we think about some really big numbers

"One of the great follies in legislative history." That's how John Hinderaker at Powerline describes the bait-and-switch -- I mean the cap and trade -- bill that is due to be voted on in the House of, er, Representatives imminently. As with the 1000-page non-stimulating stimulus bill that Obama shoved down ...

The Way it Was: Is Rockefeller Obsolete?

In July 1941, in the course of a radio broadcast appeal on behalf of the United Service Organizations and the National War Fund, John D. Rockefeller Jr. articulated several guiding beliefs or life principles that he and his wife endeavored to follow in bringing up their family. There are ten ...

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, Division of Health Care Legerdemain

"Interesting, if true." That's the motto that the 19th-century British travel writer Alexander Kinglake wanted inscribed on the lintels of all the churches in England. I wish I could impose something similar, if less polite, on the emetic mendacities regularly published by our former Paper of Record, The New York ...