by jpitney | Mar 2, 2025 | Debt, Economic Policy
Bruce Mehlman: The U.S. government spent more paying interest on our national debt than on defense spending for the first time ever in 2024, and will again every year for the foreseeable future. Surely no big deal, right? In fact America’s net interest payments on our...
by jpitney | Mar 1, 2025 | Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine
Ronald Reagan, July 17, 1987: Our Nation offers the world a vision of inalienable political, religious, and economic rights. This vision has always been shared among peoples subjugated by Soviet imperialism; and so has resistance, ever the catalyst of liberty. Today,...
by jpitney | Feb 28, 2025 | Uncategorized
Thanks to everyone for submitting an entry to the Dreier Roundtable op-ed contest. The entries were of uniformly high quality, so the decisions were difficult. Congratulations to the winners: First: Henry Long, “Walter Lippmann and the Problem of Responsible...
by jpitney | Feb 27, 2025 | Appropriations, Congress, Constitution, Elections, Separation of Powers, Transparency, Volunteering
Greg Ip at WSJ: Appropriations bills aren’t glamorous. But they are the one chance Congress gets each year to evaluate and direct the executive branch, said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “That’s why appropriations laws are thousands of...
by jpitney | Feb 26, 2025 | Homelessness, Housing
Ben Christopher at CalMatters: One California law was supposed to flip defunct strip malls across California into apartment-lined corridors. Another was designed to turn under-used church parking lots into fonts of new affordable housing. A third would, according to...
