Blogs > Linked! > Author > J. Lawrence Scholer
Fukuyama on World Bank reform.
If an international organization were truly serious about tackling the problem of corruption, however, sitting on aid is precisely what it would have to do. This is why the single most successful effort to spread good governance around the world is the European Union?s accession process. Unlike the Bank and its loans, the EU?s member states are not eager to expand membership in their club. This means that their conditionality is properly back-loaded: no one gets the big plum of EU membership until they have satisfied its governance criteria. This has put countries like Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey under the gun in a way that the Bank could never do.
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Tax squeeze for British youth.
Young people could face a massive squeeze on their finances in the next few years, according to a report from the political think tank Reform. Taxes, repayment of student debt and compulsory pension contributions may produce an effective tax rate of 48% for some of them, the report says.
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Fascinating.
Cyclists may be safer wearing a long-haired wig than a helmet, new research suggests. In England, a Bath University study found drivers gave a wider berth to cyclists with long hair than those wearing helmets.
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The legislation, which is expected to go to the House floor for a vote on Thursday, would require construction of two layers of reinforced fencing along stretches of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are considered among the most porous parts of the border. It would also require officials of the Department of Homeland Security to establish ?operational control? over all American land and sea borders by using Border Patrol agents, fencing, satellites, cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles.
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But he said that protectionist sentiment was preventing China from doing more to open itself up to competition, and was in turn breeding protectionist sentiment in America. ?Ironically,? he said, ?this protectionist sentiment comes from many quarters in those nations ? including in the United States and China ? which have benefited the most from the economic growth generated by global competition.? Mr. Paulson said the United States would not ?heed the siren songs of protectionism and isolationism,? but that China had to do its part by changing its heavily subsidized industries and farms, allowing capital to flow freely and guiding Chinese to spend more and save less ? a step that economists say would increase imports.
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Click through for video.
This afternoon the House Republican Study Committee held a rally on the front steps of the Cannon House Office Building to express support for a proposed House rules change that would change the culture of earmarking on Capitol Hill.
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A reaction to Fukuyama's 9 lessons of 9/11.
Fukuyama has done some brilliant work in his career, but when it comes to national security his notions are surprisingly simplistic and often marred by omissions of basic analysis. And it shows in this post; he would have been better off not writing it.
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What happened to the line-item veto?
Failure to enact the line item veto this year is an epithet to contemporary American politics--a world where "who does the asking" trumps the substance of the request. When President Clinton supported a line item veto in 1996, a strong bipartisan majority of voters, both Democrat and Republican, approved of the idea. A decade later, as President Bush posits an even weaker version of the line item veto, voters are divided on partisan lines, as with so many issues on today's public policy landscape.
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First horsemeat, now salt.
Now the nation?s largest doctors? group, the American Medical Association, is going after the government and the food industry to reduce what it sees as a persistently high level of salt in many processed foods. At its annual meeting in late June, the medical association recommended that the Food and Drug Administration limit the amount of salt that food companies are allowed to add to products.
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A defense of pork.
But is pork really that bad? Since the age of Jefferson, members of Congress have been earmarking money in spending bills for local projects that might not otherwise receive attention from federal agencies--and doing it to win votes back home. (James Monroe warned that pork would be "productive of evil.") And, while it's easy to see why small-government conservatives and knee-jerk deficit hawks dislike earmarks, there's a liberal case for supporting pork. It's not because pork projects are defensible on the merits, although they sometimes can be. It's not because they create jobs, although they can do that, too. Rather, it's because, without pork, activist government would wither and die.
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Historical use of Churchill should be more closely tethered to his understanding of statesmanship. Honest doubt about a complex scientific forecast of the future, or the prudent precautions to take against it, is surely different in character from the moral evasion that mislabels or misunderstands political malevolence.
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Tory leader David Cameron on U.S.-U.K. special relationship.
And [Cameron] called for a "rebalancing" of the US/UK special relationship, criticising Tony Blair for "losing the art" of being a sometimes critical ally of America. His speech, which reasserted Tory support for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but contained a sustained criticism of both Mr Bush and Tony Blair's actions, came on the day a predecessor of his as Conservative leader, Lady Thatcher, stood shoulder to shoulder with Dick Cheney, the US vice president, in Washington at a 9/11 memorial service. With none of the caveats of Mr Cameron's thinking, she declared that Britain stood with the US "in the front line against Islamist fanatics who hate our beliefs, our liberties and our citizens". "We must not falter. We must not fail," she said.
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The Gruber-Hungerman paper - titled "The Church vs. the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?" - finds that after blue laws are repealed by a state: ? Religious attendance drops about 5 percent overall on average. ? About 15 percent of those who had been attending religious services weekly no longer attend so regularly. "Individuals are not dropping out of churchgoing altogether, but rather ... they are simply going less frequently," the authors write. ? Religious contributions decline 13 percent, or about $109 per person per year. Spending by religious institutions falls by about 6.3 percent. ? Drinking rates by youths go up. Before repeal, about 40 percent of nonreligious youths (those in their late teens and 20s) reported having had six or more drinks at one sitting sometime in the past month. About 30 percent of youths defined as "religious" because of their church attendance reported such episodes of heavy drinking.
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Fukuyama on 9/11 lessons
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Christine Rosen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center on blogs.
In effect, the blogosphere has become a crude form of the techno-humanism that Reynolds celebrates--technology now permits thoughts to be constantly published in more-or-less real time, as if the blog were an extension of the brain. And, even if the blogosphere could foster a more reflective discussion, it hugely privileges the instant response and the explosive rant on the issue of the moment. This may be valuable in certain circumstances. Blogging has undeniably made it much easier for people to share opinions and information and to find like-minded souls. Patches of good writing exist out there, as well as impeccable argumentation. But it's nothing more than old-fashioned techno-utopianism to assume that the blogosphere could adequately supersede the old media order or to believe that traditional institutions can be so easily and casually jettisoned.
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