Think Tank West

This morning’s Commerce Department report on second-quarter GDP contained what passes for good news these days: the U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of only 1.0 percent in the April-to-June quarter. And in the twisted logic of conventional thinking, a drastic fall in international trade was supposedly part of the good news. An Associated [...]

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More evidence, in case you needed it, that a new “Fannie Med” is designed to suck all Americans into a single government-run system:

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Over at The New York Times‘ Economix blog, health economist Uwe Reinhardt has a fun post about the fundamental irrationality of American voters when it comes to health care reform: To be responsive, then, to the “simple common sense” of the American people, any proposed health reform must not reduce the revenues of hospitals, lest [...]

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In the battle of the Race-to-the-Top editorials, the Wall Street Journal beats the New York Times, hands down. Yesterday, both papers ran editorials about the so-called “Race to the Top Fund,” a pot of $4.35 billion over which U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was given control under the  ”stimulus” law. Last Friday, as I reported, Duncan and President Obama staged [...]

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Many people who care deeply about the Henry Louis Gates incident will steer clear of it because of the racial component and the high dudgeon. Maybe I’m not so wise.  At the risk of sounding  ”I know what it’s like . . . .” I’ve been harassed by police for idling my car outside of a grocery [...]

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Key House Democrats have just proposed a new plan for regulating our Nation’s derivatives’ markets.  While the heart of the plan mirrors the Obama Administration’s proposal to require standardized derivatives, such as credit default swaps (CDS), to be traded over a centralized exchange, the House proposal also goes further, raising the possibility of banning “naked” positions [...]

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Via MLive.com, here’s House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) pooh-poohing the idea that members of Congress should read legislation before they vote on it. He is under attack for it — attacks he can deflect because they’re partisan and because he’s a from a quintissential safe district. So instead of gulping the too-potent elixir [...]

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So President Obama is going to host Professor Gates and Officer Crowley today at the White House.  Much has already been said about the controversial arrest for “disorderly conduct.”  IMHO, it seems like a false arrest.  I wasn’t there, but it is not a crime for someone to be obnoxious to the police (and that is basically the cop’s version of the [...]

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One of the frequent tropes of recent years is the notion that the United States is in decline, and America is plunging from being the only great power in the system to a status merely as first among equals.  A veritable slew of books have come out in recent years making this argument.  You also [...]

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The Kauffman Foundation has produced an interesting study about the background of entrepreneurs.  They create businesses for many reasons, including to make money and work for themselves, and play a major role in generating the economic growth that benefits the rest of us.  Too bad politicians, who create so little of value, so often stand in [...]

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