by jpitney | Nov 26, 2020 | Thanksgiving, Washington
Yuval Levin and Adam J. White at National Review: Each Thanksgiving calls to mind early Thanksgivings — at Plymouth in 1621, of course, but perhaps also in the nation’s capital in 1789. In October of that year, just months into the nation’s new constitutional...
by jpitney | Nov 25, 2020 | Immigration
Anthony Blinken, on his nomination to be Secretary of State: For my family, as for so many generations of Americans, America has literally been the last best hope on earth. My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia and made a new life in America. His...
by jpitney | Nov 24, 2020 | Debt, Economic Policy
Some policymakers think that the federal debt is a free lunch: growth rates will always exceed interest rates, allowing growth itself to reduce the debt. This theory is badly flawed, explain Sita Slavov and Alan Viard at The Hill: There is always a chance that the...
by jpitney | Nov 23, 2020 | China, Civility
Alexander Hamilton, Feberalist 6: A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt, that if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have...
by jpitney | Nov 22, 2020 | Debt, Economic Policy
From the Congressional Budget Office: In fiscal year 2020, which ended on September 30, the federal budget deficit totaled $3.1 trillion—more than triple the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2019. Much of that amount was the result of the economic effects of the...
