The Angry Bear

In a recent post I argued for political pragmatism, which I described as follows: I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints.  Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and win elections, the status-quo bias in public opinion, low levels of political trust, and the limited...

Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned. The rule of law might have been; The Washington Post, Erwin Chemerinsky Dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky; “The majority was mute on the right to privacy, abandoned its constitutional role and held, indirectly but unmistakably, that the Constitution is a mere inconvenience that states are at liberty to violate if they can come up with cunning statutory...

Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary)They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No revolving door, no financial interests other than avoiding US Treasury default on salary, pension, interest and...

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a program to study the health effects of climate change, especially on disadvantaged communities (NYT): The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which the administration announced on Monday, will be the first federal program aimed specifically at understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels also affect human health.  It will fall under...

Coronavirus dashboard: the Delta wave starts to recede in the South, and migrates North Ultimately, that I have to continue to post this material is depressing. At least 80% of all US adults and most teenagers should have been fully vaccinated by now, with the threat of mass outbreaks, even from Delta, retreating into the past.So let me begin with the best graphic representation I have seen so far of where the resistance to vaccination is coming...

John Oliver had a great segment a while back on vaccine hesitancy, in which he shows Tucker Carlson asking absurdly loaded questions about the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines.  You can see the clip here, the Tucker Carlson bit is around 6:15 to 7:45. I bring this up not to praise Oliver or dump on Carlson, but to point out that Carlson’s disingenuous schtick has a name – “just asking questions”, or JAQing off: Just asking...

A fundamentals-based look at the consumer indicates the expansion is in good shape for now I was going to update the Coronavirus dashboard today, but since half of the States no longer bother to report over the weekend, Monday is basically useless. There may be a few interesting things happening … but let’s wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, I see where Bill McBride posted a graph of spending on gas as a percent of total consumer...

Via Boudreaux, over at Reason, we can read this – evidence, Boudreaux tells us, of “covid hysteria”: Amherst College in Massachusetts is welcoming students back to campus by implementing some of the most restrictive COVID-19 mitigation efforts anywhere in the country.  Administrators will now require students to wear two masks while indoors, get tested every other week, eschew large social interactions, and generally refrain from leaving school...

by Dale Coberly (Dale has been posting on AB on Social Security for over 12 years…some of his work and Bruce Webb’s can be found under our new category Social Security) Social Security Trustees Report OutCRFB Lies About It When is a not-a-lie really a lie? When the liar gives you a part of “true information” and leaves out “the whole truth” in order to lead you to a false conclusion.  Or worse, to lead you to do something that hurts you....

I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints.  Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and win elections, the status-quo bias in public opinion, low levels of political trust, and the limited policymaking capacity of our institutions.  (In the words of political scientist...