I am very curious how the Supreme Court of the United States will deal with the McCain-Feingold restriction on corporate-funded (or even remotely funded) ban on election related publications, films or television. While I would never claim to be a lawyer, it would seem to me that the First Amendment to the US Constitution should …
Category Archive: American
Sep
09
On Obama’s Health Care Speech
Barack Obama, the POTUS, spoke this evening to Congress on the Health Care Reform proposals being evaluated by the House and Senate and getting a lot of coverage in the press and blogosphere. I wanted to comment on one section of his speech where I think he is either naive or nefarious. Let me — …
Sep
09
Why does Friedman suddenly surprise?
Thomas Friedman wrote yesterday in the Old Gray Lady: One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society …
Sep
01
Wrong prescription Diane
Diane Francis, after her stint at Harvard, once again proposes the wrong answer to the financial mess in which the US Government finds itself. Yes, the United States has run deficits for too long using foreign lenders as a source of funding for US government programs. But the solution is not more taxes on Americans …
Aug
07
Why protectionism bites
Protectionism is particularly bad for economic recovery because of how intergrated the world economy has become, and how complicated technology is compared to 50 or even 20 years ago. The National Post has a good story about the problems for US stimulus projects with shortages of materials because of “Buy American” rules. The fundamental problem …
Jun
23
Wrong again Diane…
On Monday, Diane Francis attempted to defend the actions of the Obama administration by casting aspersions on the free market: free enterprise was nearly murdered by Wall Street, AIG and other reckless financial institutions. They did not meet their defined responsibilities. They bent the law to bypass rules governing their behaviour. Many of them abandoned …
Jun
01
On the GM Bankruptcy
Here are a number of things wrong with the GM bankruptcy and bailout package: The Canadian Taxpayer is putting in $10.5 Billion, which the government now admits we will likely never recover. In return we get $1.7 Billion in GM debt (so they owe us MORE money), and 12% of the stock in the company …
Dec
11
Is the auto bailout the new Smoot-Hawley?
Back in 1930, US President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law, in an attempt to stem imports and protect American jobs. The end result was that after other countries retaliated, world trade fell by 33% from 1929 levels to 1934, with disastrous results for the world economy. Unemployment in America rose to …
Nov
02
On NASA and the Ares Project
NASA has a problem. In 2005, Michael Griffin became the NASA Administrator and his pet-project idea of using old Shuttle parts for a disposable launch system became NASA’s plan for getting back to the Moon. The basic premise of the Ares program (as it became known), is that getting Americans back to the Moon (and …
Sep
21
Let the credit binge continue???
A per my previous post on why bailing out the banks is a bad idea, I see a note today in the Globe and Mail (I’m sure it’s in other news sites as well): Mr. Paulson and President George W. Bush have argued that the alternative would be credit markets that remain frozen, meaning that …