Tag: Elevated

  • Public to Private is a One Way Economic Street

    photo credit: taberandrew A post entitled The New Robber Barons got me thinking about what happens when public and private enterprises compete in a marketplace. Thinking about that led to some interesting observations. The first of which is that progressives are right in their assertion that public and private enterprises can compete without eradicating each…

  • Your Employer: Competitor or Collaborator?

    photo credit: Trypode This question is framed in terms of employer sponsored health care benefits, but it really applies to any employer/employee interaction. Are you working with your employer, or are you competing with your employer? To put it another way, is your employer working with you, or simply working you? I ask this because…

  • Too Rich to Go Bankrupt

    photo credit: Stowe Boyd By “too rich to go bankrupt” I don’t mean someone so rich that they never will go bankrupt. What I mean by that is someone so rich that them going bankrupt would destabilize our economy and thus they deserve a bailout if bankruptcy ever threatens them. (Think Bill Gates plus Warren…

  • What Are Your Fundamental Assumptions?

    photo credit: quarksteilchen In the midst of a recent comment the author revealed a fundamental assumption that he and I don’t share that clearly explains why we have differing views on government: Federal mandates are about the only power the government has to prevent a race to the bottom. . . THE only way to…

  • A Fundamental Difference Between Conservatives and Progressives

    photo credit: Marcin Porwit Late in October a comment by Jason sparked my brain to recognize a subtle but fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives. Perhaps it should have been obvious simply by comparing the definitions for “conservative” and “progressive” but the implications seem to be  both subtle and profound. The word “conservative” can be…

  • A Short-Term Vision of “Purity”

    photo credit: David Reeves It’s never safe to focus so much on the present that we lose sight of the future. This seems to be what is happening with the push by some to codify a purity test within the GOP. If you have not heard about this I would sum it up like so…

  • Stretching Our TARP

    photo credit: wolfheadfilms When the TARP bill was first being discussed I made a statement that I would like to repeat about the TARP money: [T]his should not be used as a windfall by Congress to fund some pet projects. We have come to the point now where Congress is faced with the question of…

  • Phony Federalism

    photo credit: estherase Gene Healy wrote about what he called Obama’s phony federalism but what he was really talking about was a relatively universal perspective on federalism: Not yet a year into his administration, Obama’s record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He’ll let the states have their way when their policies please blue…

  • Political Cultures

    photo credit: www.charlietphoto.com There are two political cultures that we need to change in order to have a healthy “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in this country. The first is the culture among the voters as defined by how thy perceive those who hold political office. The second is…

  • Why Life Imprisonment is Wrong

    photo credit: BlatantNews.com When I read Jay Hutchinson’s post about Why Capital Punishment is wrong I could not sit still without sharing the opposite perspective so that some people can recognize that the issue is not one sided or clear cut. I am not one who believes in excessive punishment and I would not argue…