URLs du Jour

2019-08-30

  • We lead off today with Mr. Ramirez, sketching one of the folks Blaming Big Pharma for the opioid crisis.

    [Breaking Bad]

    … so let's sue 'em.


  • At National Review, Michael Tanner writes on the National Debt: Moral and Fiscal Consequences.

    How did we get here? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it wasn’t the Republican tax cut. In fact, when compared to 2018, tax revenues went up 3 percent in the first nine months of fiscal year 2019. Would they be even higher in the absence of those cuts? Maybe. But the real problem, as usual, is out-of-control spending.

    The CBO estimates that federal outlays in 2019 will total $4.4 trillion, a $300 billion increase in nominal spending since 2018. Discretionary spending is up. Defense spending is up. Entitlement spending is up. There is no effort to prioritize or make the difficult choices of governing, there is only . . . more.

    Vote against incumbents unless they can convince you they're going to press for spending cuts. And be very hard to convince.


  • The WSJ has a perhaps paywalled editorial describing Jim Comey’s Higher Virtue.

    Beware the righteous man with power. That’s the great lesson of James Comey, as the 79-page report released Thursday by the Justice Department Inspector General makes clear. The former FBI director willfully violated multiple rules as he sought revenge against Donald Trump while pursuing his own self-interest in the name of higher virtue.

    The report focuses on how Mr. Comey handled seven memos he wrote in 2017 about his interactions with Mr. Trump. IG Michael Horowitz finds that in treating his memos as personal documents rather than official FBI records, improperly storing them at home, failing to inform the bureau he had them, or leaking them to the press, Mr. Comey ignored FBI and Justice protocols and broke his employment agreement.

    If you want to read a weak defense of Comey, there's one at the Bulwark. But I warn you: it ignores and excuses a lot of bad behavior; I assume the reason is: that bad behavior was used against Trump.


  • At the Federalist John Daniel Davidson describes how Paranoid Attacks On The Koch Brothers Turned Into Mainstream Tactics. A particular fact-ignoring attack from earlier this summer from (who else) the New York Times:

    As for the Kochs, the left isn’t done with them. As recently as June, The New York Timesran a breathless piece explaining how “the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government.” Why would the Kochs oppose public transit? Because “One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seat belts, tires and other automotive parts.” See the connection?

    Americans for Prosperity, that shadowy Koch-funded cabal, was implicated in the Times’ coverage of a failed $5.4 billion transit plan in Nashville. In an effort to educate voters on the cost of this transit boondoggle, AFP went knocking on doors and making phone calls, as grassroots groups are wont to do. But as Kyle Smith noted, AFP only spent a measly $10,000—a fraction of the $1.2 million spent by all opponents of the plan, which was far less than the its $2.9 million its proponents spent. In the end, Nashville voters overwhelmingly rejected the plan, 64 to 36 percent.

    Plenty other examples of double standards, obvious bias, and simple bad reporting at the link.


  • Finally, Scientific American, asks the big question:: Can We Rely on Our Intuition?.

    My gut initially says no way! But then I realized that was unreliable.

    But:

    Although researchers have been debating the value of intuition in decision-making for decades, they continue to disagree.

    Ah. What would we do without researchers?


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:52 AM EDT