Justin Katz
Hot in the emailbox: The House of Representatives voted unanimously today to approve a $6.89 billion budget for the 2009 fiscal year. The proposal, which will now head to the Senate, will reduce state spending by $85 million from the current year to address the state’s deficit. The savings will be achieved without raising citizens’…
Paul Bovenzi’s response to an excellent op-ed by Bill Wilson raises an interesting question. On the one hand: Also, there are jobs (teaching and otherwise) that are not Union. People have a choice. They can work for a private school if they are completely opposed to being in a Union. Maybe the reason they don’t…
Maggie Gallagher gives the impression of one exasperated with the same-sex marriage debate: What about polygamy? Is that the natural next step? When people ask me this, my stock answer has become, “I don’t know, go ask the guys in the Harvard Law School faculty lounge.” Because if the California decision stands, there simply is…
One hates to see children harmed, but we must face the consequences of our policies: Among the 2,800 already removed from RIte Care, just under half are illegal immigrants. But the other half have the right to be here. And all of them are children. Some, in fact, are very sick children. Neighborhood Health Plan…
Something has seemed forced — in a “just a bit too perfect” way — about the promise of “green jobs” as some sort of savior of our economy. Ben Lieberman suggests that, even if such jobs do proliferate, they don’t match up with the number of jobs lost to the larger ecological zeitgeist: According to…
As one who flirts often with the edge of burnout, I hear the hum of truth in this: Burnout has been long associated with being overworked and underpaid, but psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter found that these were not the crucial factors. The single biggest difference between employees who suffered burnout and those who…
Peter Schweizer offers a very interesting read on studies finding that conservatives are happier, friendlier, more charitable, and more likely to hug their children, while liberals are… ahem… otherwise: Much of the desire to distribute wealth and higher taxation is motivated by envy – the desire to take more from someone else – and bitterness.…
I have to admit that NEA head Bob Walsh’s proposal to give the public sector pension system “equity” from the state lottery instead of this year’s cash contribution confused me. Most prominently, I don’t see how a government that habitually spends hundreds of millions of dollars over its revenue can be presumed to need a…
Here’s a question, which I present without insinuation in any direction: What can one glean from the fact that none of Tiverton High School’s top 10 students are going to Ivy League colleges? Does it say something about the school system? About Ivy League schools? About the increasing difficulty of getting into top schools lately?…
Yes, it does seem that leftward politicos do seem to have a better grasp economics when they are directly affected by a policy: Feinstein, head of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, was forced to deal with reality. “It’s cratering,” the Washington Post quoted Feinstein as saying [referring to the government-run Senate dining services].…