John's Recommended Articles

Global warming is more alarmist than alarming.
"I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term 'denier' so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.

Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?"

State certification boards are supposed to help consumers. They often stifle competition instead.
"Most of these barriers to entrepreneurship are invisible to ordinary people, who know they can't find a cab or affordable care for their children, but don't realize it's because state regulations make it hard to go into those businesses."

Newt Gingrich's proposal for all Presidential candidates to agree to a series of 9, 90 minute discussions/debates preceeding the next election:
The current political system is not working....

For the most powerful nation on Earth to have an election in which swiftboat veterans versus National Guard papers becomes a major theme verges on insane. I mean, it's just -- and to watch those debates I found painful, for both people. They're both smarter than the debates.

But here's what's happened. We have invented a system where we replace big-city machine bosses with consultant bosses. Read the newspaper coverage. Who's your pollster? What advertising firm have you hired? Who's your consultant? Who did you hire in Iowa? Who did you hire in South Carolina? This is the new Boston.

And what's the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money, to hire the consultants, to do the focus groups, to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.

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There is a world that works and there's a world that fails. And you can see this as a YouTube -- three and a half minutes we did called FedEx versus Federal Bureaucracy. (Laughter.) And it's very straightforward. How many of you have gone online to check a package at UPS or FedEx? Just raise your hand. Look around the room. This is not -- and I want to drive this home for the news media -- this is not a theory, this is not Gingrich having interesting, unrealistic ideas. It is an objective fact in the world that works that if you invest in technology, you reward competence -- there are consequences for incompetence -- you focus on the customer, you have market signals, you have the Toyota production system, Six Sigma, Lee Manufacturing, the writing of Drucker, Deming, Juran and Womack -- it works, right?

Now, UPS tracks 15 million packages a day. A UPS truck has more computing power than Apollo 13. (Laughter.) FedEx tracks 8 million packages a day. That's the world that works. Here's the world that failed -- the federal government. The United States government today cannot find between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants when they're sitting still. (Light laughter.) So just take those two comparisons. My answer, frankly, as a policy proposal, is that we spend a couple hundred million dollars, send a package to every illegal immigrant. (Laughter.) (Applause.) When they deliver it, we'll know where they are. (Laughter.)

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Here's the proposal... I believe that every candidate should be challenged to commit that if they are their party's nominee, they will agree to meet once a week -- and Sunday night would be fine -- once a week with their main opponent, and the two of them would have a dialogue... I'd like to have a time keeper and require that the two candidates to pick the topics and require the two candidates to have a conversation without being interrupted except for fairness on time...

There are two core premises. The first is that it has to be open-ended. You should give the answer the length your answer should be. And the second is, it should be focused on a series of large questions around which people would be expected to bring solutions. And I believe two things would happen. I believe, first of all, an amazing percent of the American people would watch, and in the age of the Internet, all of the dialogue would be cached and people could go back to it. People would analyze it, people would take it apart. I believe, second, that candidates would grow and change.

Why Democrats demonize Rove and Republicans demonize Mrs. Clinton.
"Both political parties offer us a ready-made worldview, a lens through which we can look at our political environment and make sense of it.
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The problem with these worldviews is that they are morally and philosophically simplistic. Here, I am not talking about liberalism and conservatism--the two great American political philosophies. Rather, I am talking about "Republicanism" and "Democratism." These are philosophies as well. Both boil down to the idea that, in the great march of American history, our side is in the right and their side is in the wrong. Our side grasps the Truth--and the other side is filled with the ignorant who do not understand It, or the evil who deny It. Like I said, morally and philosophically simplistic. Accepting a partisan worldview gives us a ready-made answer to any and all political questions we might think to ask ourselves. However, it does not mean that those answers have much grounding in the complicated reality that is American political life.
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The psychological embrace of a partisan worldview is easy and satisfying. Both partisan narratives are easy to understand. Each helps us make judgments about a whole host of things for which we lack direct referents. Each is psychologically satisfying. Few things in life are more pleasurable than righteous anger. However, neither is all that valid on an empirical level. Embracing one might enable us to identify one actor as good and another as evil. It might allow us to feel good about ourselves. But it will not move us any closer to the reality of our politics. In fact, it will move us further from it. "

"Mitt and Rudy make a run at taking over the Lou Dobbs chair.
"Both candidates, however, ignore the reality that more security measures will have limited effect if not paired with a guest worker program that gives foreign nationals more legal ways to access job offers in the U.S. The same goes for the Bush Administration's recently announced plans to step-up "interior" enforcement. Taking U.S. employers to the woodshed won't fix the illegal immigration problem, and it could do real economic harm."

Economic literacy test: High school seniors beat Congress.
"Pop quiz. Which has been most important in reducing poverty over time: a) taxes, b) economic growth, c) international trade, or d) government regulation?"

"Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush. "