Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Bad Gun-Control Law

12 Comments

What’s the rush?

Of course, gun-control laws are mostly bad. And mostly unconstitutional.

Disclosure: the authors are my legal counsel in the Mann lawsuit.

[Update a few minutes later]

Why Obama is losing on guns:

…Democrats could have threatened to primary these Democrats or withhold campaign funds, but that’s not very realistic in states in which these moderates may barely hang on in an election in which the Democrats could lose their majority. The White House can try to ply them with pork, although that’s a lot harder to do these days since it isn’t clear there will even be a budget. And the president’s not very popular in many states, so an offer to campaign with and for these Democrats isn’t very enticing. For now it seems the Democrats may try to water down the Toomey-Manchin amendment and try to wean away a few red-state Democrats. It is a sort of legislative limbo in which the bar gets lower and lower, but in this case it’s not clear the red-state Democrats want to play the game at all.

It is a misnomer, then, to blame the “gun lobby” for the difficulty in passing legislation. The red-state Democrats, like most of their Republican colleagues, are reflecting their own constituents’ views. If you polled specifically in the states where these Democrats come from, I bet you’d find gun regulation and bans a whole lot less popular than the nation at large. (I imagine some of them are in fact polling.) If the president were more popular in red states or more able to induce enthusiasm, then that might have made a difference.

And it is still possible that the needle can be threaded. Unfortunately for the president, whatever passes will bear scant resemblance to his desired legislation.

Of course, he’s losing on guns for the same reason that he loses on many things — his agenda is not that of the public. They continue to want real jobs, and he continues to ignore their wants.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Wreck Of The Euro

7 Comments

It has already failed, and is a dead currency walking:

…we’re in an interesting situation. The crisis is crippling the south, but the south has no power to resolve the crisis. The crisis isn’t comfortable for the north but still looks less painful than the solution. So the north, which has the ability to resolve the crisis, doesn’t have the will to do it and the south, which has the will, lacks the ability.

And meanwhile everything in Europe gets worse. As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s. Politicians in Europe thought they were living in a post-historical period in which mistakes didn’t really matter all that much. They were horribly wrong, and the wreck of the euro is blighting lives and embittering spirits on a truly staggering scale.

An “interesting” situation in the same sense as the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Racism In Higher Education

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And they can’t even see their own problem:

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Ivy League and other top-notch schools practice such ugly discrimination. After all, they had similar practices in the 1920s to ensure their schools did not have “too many” Jewish students. Today, they just want to make sure they don’t have “too many” Caucasians or Asians on campus. All they have done is change the groups targeted for discrimination.

Suzy Weiss and many other high-school seniors across the United States are being discriminated against because of their skin color or because they have an epicanthic fold in their eyes. Such racial and ethnic discrimination is morally wrong, and neither “diversity” nor anything else can justify it.

And yet they continue to attempt to do so, while calling us racists.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The GOP Problem With Minorities

24 Comments

It’s not that they’re for small government — it’s that they’re inconsistently so:

Consider Indian Americans: More than 85 percent voted for Barack Obama, and 65 percent generally vote Democratic. This despite the fact that, like Jews (another anti-Republican minority), Indian Americans are wealthier and less likely to receive government support than the overall population. What’s more, Indian Americans should be natural allies of limited-government politicians, given how much government dysfunction they’ve witnessed back home.

So how do Republicans manage to alienate nearly every minority? By applying limited-government principles very selectively. During the last 50 years the GOP has opposed welfare handouts, racial preferences, and multiculturalism. Yet the Party of Lincoln has looked the other way when the government has oppressed minorities through racial profiling, discriminatory sentencing laws, and, above all, immigration policy.

America’s immigration laws are an exercise in social engineering that should offend any sincere believer in limited government. They strictly limit the number of foreigners allowed from any one country, largely to prevent America from being overrun by Hispanics and Asians.

We definitely need immigration reform, but not the kind being worked on by the Gang of Eight.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space

An Authentic Screed

39 Comments

That is to say, a righteous screed about suburbia and authenticity,and our intellectual betters (just ask them!) in the “studies” departments, by Lileks, unleashed by the not-to-be-lamented death of Paolo Solari.

You know, it strikes me that these snotty urbaphiles should love the idea of space colonies, at least in the regard of their being planned communities.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Obama’s Budget

6 Comments

That is, its failure:

Let’s start with the bottom line. Obama proposes to spend $3.78 trillion dollars in FY2014, the highest level of spending ever. Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards calculates this against the budget that preceded Obama’s term in office, the FY2008 budget that was the last to get a signature from George W. Bush. Obama’s proposal increases spending by 27 percent over those six years and by 8 percent over the last normal-order budget for FY2010.

This increase comes despite Obama’s promises to introduce budget and deficit discipline, and in defiance of voters who want the federal government to reduce spending. It comes after the initiation of the budget sequester, which was supposed to lop off a mere $85 billion in spending each year for the next decade, which would have been just 2.3 percent of last year’s budget. Instead, this proposal would increase spending by $154 billion, almost twice what sequestration was supposed to save taxpayers.

So much for a multi-year approach to fiscal discipline! Obama’s budget bypasses the very sequester his White House demanded and got in 2011. AEI’s Jim Pethokoukis pointed out that Obama’s own budget office projected that the new budget proposal would lead to a balanced budget by … 2055. That assumes, of course, that whatever savings Obama claims to make in this budget will last 41 years longer than the sequester savings did.

Needless to say, Republicans on Capitol Hill were not impressed.

Well, his gall is impressive.

And then there’s the criticism from the nutjob left: