Posts in: Politics
- Canada has better healthcare
- Canada has shown it is possible to provide universal, publicly funded lifetime coverage, achieve better overall health outcomes and reduce health disparities while spending substantially less than the United States. From an economic standpoint, a system such as Canada’s makes sense. Canada’s universal health care and the Canadian social safety net combine efficiently to generate [...] [25 Feb 2010]
- Immigrant crime is B.S.
- The evidence presented here powerfully refutes the widespread popular belief that America’s Hispanics have high crime rates. Instead, their criminality seems to fall near the center of the white national distribution, being somewhat higher than white New Englanders but somewhat lower than white Southerners. Taken as a whole, the mass of statistical evidence constitutes strong [...] [24 Feb 2010]
- On ‘Looting’
- [T]hose with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities. … Two things go on in disasters. The great majority of what happens you could call emergency requisitioning. Someone who could be you, someone in [...] [1 Feb 2010]
- On the Supreme Court’s paid speech decision
- This is certainly a more powerful threat to democracy than terrorism. It may well be a more powerful threat to democracy than was the fatally-flawed Soviet Union. Because to the extent to which politicians depend on donations to remain in power, they are inevitably influenced by those who have the most money. Not surprisingly, corporate [...] [23 Jan 2010]
- On Fear and Conservatism
- And sophomores and juniors with high social dominance orientation and system justification scores became more politically conservative as seniors. In other words, there was a process in which threats and anxieties led students to adopt particular political beliefs that helped them to deal with those threats and anxieties. From Can Threats and Living in a State [...] [21 Jan 2010]
- On Haiti, Part 3 and Post-Katrina New Orleans, Part 1
- Regarding the U. S. Marines’ presence is Haiti, holding M-16s, no less: Here is — they had no business being there. Sure, if there’s some way where you have an army of bandits, which we haven’t seen, on any mass scale going and attacking, maybe you might bring in some guys like that. But right now, [...] [21 Jan 2010]
- On fishing, fish oil, and the commons
- For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden. The perniciousness of menhaden removals has been widely enough recognized that 13 of the 15 Atlantic states have banned Omega Protein’s boats from their waters. But the company’s toehold in North Carolina and Virginia (where it [...] [17 Dec 2009]
- On Climate Change: Rich Nation, Poor Nation
- One of the key principles behind the Kyoto protocol is that of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’. That is, the principle that those who created the problem (rich nations) should be the ones to fix it. The draft negotiating text departs from this principle, instead decreeing that rich countries should be able to emit more per [...] [8 Dec 2009]
- Geography Is the New Finance
- Or something like that. The point is geography, both the physical and environmental aspects in addition to the political one, is surprisingly important, relevant and interesting. BBC News still maintains a rather 19th-century perspective on what’s happening in the world, seeing politics as a clash between opposing views that might be resolved through elections, summits and [...] [8 Dec 2009]
- How to fix our mess
- The economic crisis we’re in didn’t fall from the heavens. It resulted from 30 years of Wall Street pressing government to free it from critical regulations. By last year, Wall Street was far removed from the responsible lending practices that helped recycle savings to small businesses and home buyers. It resembled a vast casino without [...] [8 Dec 2009]