Dave is a professional coach and a volunteer advocate for international liberty and international animal welfare.


Financial Diagnosis of State Retiree Health Insurance: Sick

October 14, 2010

We have been learning more about the problem of underfunded pension plans of state and local governments. Another problem now is getting attention—these governments’ unfunded health insurance for retirees. In a New York Post article summarizing a report by the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy, director E.J. McMahon notes, “Governments in [New York […]

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Labor Day 2010: Let’s Not Labor Under Misconceptions

September 6, 2010

Labor Day may serve a useful function as a holiday that commemorates the symbolic end of summer. In view of the myths associated with Labor Day, though, could we rename it? How about just End of Summer Day? Myth: Labor Day Celebrates Labor Consider this from the U.S. Department of Labor website: “Labor Day … […]

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Fed Up With the Fed

August 24, 2010

The August 23, 2010 edition of the Wall Street Journal story, “Fed Split on Move to Bolster Sluggish Economy,” reports on the August 10, 2010 meeting of top officials of the Federal Reserve System. The article advises, “After steering the economy away from another Great Depression, Mr. Bernanke confronts a painfully slow rebound.” Correction: The […]

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Latin America Should End Its Drug War

August 4, 2010

The AP reported today, “President Felipe Calderon [of Mexico] said he would consider a debate on legalizing drugs Tuesday as his government announced that more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since he launched a crackdown against cartels in 2006.” As noted by Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the Cato Institute, in a […]

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Financial Reform Bill: Don’t Bank on Government Regulation

July 25, 2010

President Obama this week signed the financial regulation bill. Our faith in government to make things worse has yet again been vindicated. Government tends to create problems, and then respond by developing new rules that cause even more harm. In this case, government created a housing bubble, and then reacted to the crash by bailing […]

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Scientific Progress Amidst Economic Myth

July 19, 2010

The Wall Street Journal’s July 16, 2010 edition has a review by Jamie Hamilton, “The Lessons of Living Things–How the processes of biology are guiding computer design and purpose,” of the intriguing new book, Natural Computing: DNA, Quantum Bits, and the Future of Smart Machines, by Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere: [The authors profile] scientists who are pushing […]

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Afghanistan: Michael Steele Was Right

July 2, 2010

Often, the truth and importance of a statement is proportional to the uproar over its utterance. We saw this recently when Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP for the White House “shakedown.” Republican leaders immediately forced Rep. Barton to apologize. (“BP Chief on Hot Seat,” WSJ.com, June 18, 2010.) The Republican leadership apparently thought […]

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President Obama’s Oil Disaster Speech: Recycling Myths

June 16, 2010

If you like recycling, you loved President Obama’s speech last night on the oil spill. He reused many tired, old, transparently false myths, including the desirability of “energy independence” and the ability of government to create “clean energy jobs.” These myths, combined with those related to global warming and running out of oil without having […]

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Oil Spill Spillover: The Fallacy of Energy Independence

June 3, 2010

As noted in our May 28, 2010 post, “Gulf Oil Disaster: Privatizing the Gulf for Better Stewardship,” proponents of various political interests are using the disaster to seek support for their views. These interests include the proponents of energy independence. For a concept that is wrong on its face, energy independence has remarkable traction. Democrats […]

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Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster: Privatizing the Gulf for Better Stewardship

May 28, 2010

BP’s oil well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has predictably encouraged various political interests to use the tragedy in seeking support for their views. Environmentalists opposed to oil and gas exploration, and in favor of alternative energy, argue that the incident shows the need to subsidize their favored fuels. Some proponents of the fallacious […]

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