There has been some rumbling in Washington D.C. that the best way forward for tax reform would be a bipartisan bill that would implement a permanent reform to the tax code. Chris Edwards, the Cato Institute’s director of tax policy studies and a friend of mine from our meetings at Cato events, says Republicans should […]
Archives for August 2017
The US Military is on the Verge of a Major Upgrade
The U.S. military is on the verge of stepping out of the 1970s and into a new era of computing. Researchers at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) along with Dr. Binoy Ravindaran, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, have developed a proof-of-concept operating system called Popcorn Linux. The new OS will be more powerful, […]
McMaster Fires the Iran Hawks
There’s been an ongoing purge in the National Security Council, led by National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster. Getting booted from the administration have been some of the most ardent Iran hawks. Daniel Larison writes of the purge: Trump’s National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, has recently been cleaning house: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the 31-year-old hired by retired […]
How Tiny Switzerland Faced Down Hitler and The Nazis
The Nazis never invaded Switzerland. Stephen P. Halbrook in The Swiss and The Nazis explains to readers that Switzerland had “a unique system in which every able-bodied man served in the army and was well trained in firearms. Every male on reaching the age of 19 was enrolled in the militia army and issued a military […]
RIP Judith Jones
In 2011, at the Key West Literary Seminar “The Language of Food,” Dick and I met Judith Jones. Judith, along with many other food luminaries, was there to discuss the changing attitudes toward food in America over the past 50 years. For Judith Jones, Julia Child played a seminal role in this transformation. Judith worked […]
America’s Doctor Shortage and Aging Population Are About to Collide
Around 75 million Baby Boomers have recently retired or will soon at a rate of about 3 million per year. As these people reach their golden years, they will inevitably require more medical care. There are so many Baby Boomers they will change the balance of young and old people in America. By 2029, the […]
President Trump Seeks to Transform U.S. Immigration Policies
The president is joining members of the Senate in a push for a radical overhaul of the nation’s legal immigration policies. Trump gave his support to a bill proposed by Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue that would eliminate the green card lottery and drastically reduce the number of visas granted to family members. Ted […]
Why Won’t Americans Move to Find Work?
Despite being descended from pilgrims and pioneers, Americans today are the least mobile they’ve ever been. Even when they want to move to cities that are thriving from areas that aren’t, they can’t seem to make it happen. Lower mobility of labor is a problem for any economy. In a special column for the Wall […]
Can Ex-Blackwater CEO Turn the Tables on Russia Alarmists?
Erik Prince, former Blackwater CEO and retired Navy SEAL, joins Donald Trump in advising that we can work with Putin to defeat a common enemy, Islamic fascism. Putin is large and in charge in Russia. He is enormously popular with the Russian people, because the country had drifted, post-Soviet communism, kind of off into the […]
Will Sanctions on Russia Just Make Things Worse?
The history of success, or lack thereof, from sanctions put in place by America’s government would indicate that they don’t do much good. They may even do some harm by exacerbating tensions with already belligerent nations. Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at Cato Institute and a regular contributor to The American Conservative, writes that […]