Entries

Bogus Election Predictions

Like most other systems for predicting the winner of the presidential election using income growth to guess who will win (as Noah Kristula-Green does here ) probably isn’t all that valuable. In fact, no far-in-advance predictor of reelection—not the 13 Keys to the Presidency (which is pretty …

Written by Eli Lehrer on Friday August 5, 2011

Russia's Ugly Spy Tactics

So much for the famed "reset." Eli Lake in The Washington Times reports Russia's campaign of intimidation against American officials, including mysterious break-ins and concocted sex scandals: One example of such intimidation occurred in 2009 against a senior U.S. official in the …

Written by Frum Forum Editors on Friday August 5, 2011

Signs of Progress

Charles Krauthammer endorses abolishing both the healthcare exclusion and mortgage interest deductibility. Add a carbon tax or VAT and you've got a Republican offer enticing enough to gain meaningful Democratic concessions on entitlement spending - while still meeting Republican goals of holding …

Written by David Frum on Friday August 5, 2011

Enough Washington Drama

These certainly are interesting times. The United States is in an increasingly precarious position. Growth at home is anemic. There’s not much in Europe to be up about either. Markets are increasingly skiddish, and yesterday plunged. But America just fought a great battle! The forces of …

Written by Bryce McNitt on Friday August 5, 2011

The Right and Wrong Ways to Cut Defense Spending

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has a column today arguing for defense cuts and lauding the budget deal’s “sword of Damocles” over the Pentagon budget. Zakaria argues that the U.S. military should not be exempt from budget scrutiny and, in that sense, his argument is unobjectionable. But he ignores …

Written by John Guardiano on Thursday August 4, 2011

Economists vs. Economic Commentators

Vince Reinhart is a former director of the monetary division of the Federal Reserve. Now he's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He explains in this video that the debt problem is long term, not immediate; that tax increases have to be considered part of the policy mix; and …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 4, 2011

GOP Climate Stance Could Have Been Different

Citing an essay by D.R. Tucker , Peter Sinclair asks : What if American conservatives had followed their British counterparts and not allowed partisan animus against Al Gore to distract them from the scientific evidence on climate change? Imagine if Reagan had delivered speeches similar to …

Written by FrumForum Editors on Thursday August 4, 2011

Is it 1937 Again?

Ezra Klein asks a good question : Where will the recovery come from? The problem is that no one has an answer. And as one hopeful hypothesis after another is dashed, the markets are beginning to panic. It won’t come from the United States. Our recovery has slowed, and updates to the …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 4, 2011

Why 2012 is the Republicans' to Lose

As we get closer to 2012, there is one chart that pundits and columnists need to constantly refer back to in their writing - a scatterplot that shows how changes in real disposable income correlate with the success of the incumbent party in presidential elections: ( Courtesy of Seth …

Written by Noah Kristula-Green on Thursday August 4, 2011

Obama: Already a Lame Duck?

Politico has a piece discussing the "big drags" on the Obama re-elect effort. Nothing too surprising: there is the lack of economic growth and the bad political map. The usual suspects. What caught my eye was this: A top Democratic strategist who is close to the White House said that Obama’s …

Written by Zac Morgan on Thursday August 4, 2011

The Last Thing Baltimore Needs is IndyCar Racing

On Labor Day weekend, Baltimore City intends to host the Baltimore Grand Prix. The event will not be on a racetrack, it will not even be in an enclosed venue. The racetrack will be the streets of downtown Baltimore. Holding a high-speed car race through the winding streets of any city poses …

Written by Rachel Ryan on Thursday August 4, 2011

The Debt Deal's Biggest Losers

In my new column for The Week I discuss who has lost the most in the new debt deal: The first and most obvious loser: National security. The economist Herb Stein used to advocate a simple model of federal budgeting: a) Decide how much it costs to defend the country. b) Pay for it. …

Written by David Frum on Thursday August 4, 2011

Were Our Enemies Right?

In February 1982, Susan Sontag made a fierce challenge to a left-wing audience gathered at New York's Town Hall: Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader’s Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman . Which …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Not All of Today's News is Bad!

Ukraine to save bears from forced vodka drinking. Of course it's also possible that the bears only said they were forced, after they were caught.

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Mastercard Knows All

There's a lot to learn from this em> Bloomberg story

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Glenn Beck Wants A Whiter Spider-Man

Glenn Beck has a problem with the new Spider-Man, and he thinks Michelle Obama is to blame. In one of Marvel's comic series, Peter Parker has been killed off and the mantle of Spider-Man will be taken up by a new character: Miles Morales, who is half-black and half-Hispanic . On his radio …

Written by Noah Kristula-Green on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Incentives, Not Punishments

... are the best response to the obesity problem, argues David Gratzer in the Washington Times: In the British “pounds for pounds” experiment, about 400 people were paid to lose weight. On average, the program cost about $300 per participant. Forty-four percent of participants finished …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Obama's New Talking Point

The debt deal raises additional hurdles for Republican presidential candidates, argues Ed Kilgore in The New Republic . The big debt limit vote in Congress, it is increasingly obvious, is just an appetizer for the divisive, voter-alienating struggles it has built into the schedule at key …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

Why No Questions for Rick Perry?

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has taken some heat for his low profile during the debt-ceiling debate and then his having-it-both-ways comments afterward. Fair enough. But why no heat at all for Romney's current leading rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry? The Austin American-Statesman …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday August 3, 2011

The Economic Left is Left Out of the Debt Deal

It is probably crass to cite oneself in an article, but I wrote a piece a few months ago in which I stated: Many Democratic voters support the Party because they see it as the party of social liberalism. While they may also support more government intervention in the economy than most …

Written by Mark R. Yzaguirre on Wednesday August 3, 2011