PUTIN'S KAMIKAZE GOVERNMENT
Around 2015, Putin ordered the destruction of all food originating from countries that had imposed economic sanctions on Russia. At the...
BUTTERFLY EFFECT OF WORDS
On this New Year's Day, it makes perfect sense to me that I reflect on the book I started in 2017 and will finish in 2018: The...
AN IDEOLOGICAL LABEL IS JUST THAT
Ideological labels are misleading. Republican, Democrat, Neo-Liberal, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Alt-Right, Socialist. The...
NIXONCARE? WHO'D A THUNK?
Before Obamacare, there was Nixoncare and Romneycare. All three proposed insurance market exchanges, mandatory participation and...
THE THIRD RAIL OF TAX REFORM
The mortgage interest deduction is a political sacred cow. Mention of abolishing it is the political equivalent of touching the...
SABOTAGE IN IRAQ
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously stated that "stuff happens" when asked about the death and destruction that followed...
X-RAY MACHINE MANIA
When Medicare was first established in 1965, the payment terms established by Congress were overly generous to the medical industry,...
THE ORIGINS OF COMBATIVE COMMENTARY
The origin of televised combative political commentary dates back to the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries of 1968. The...
THE OUTER LIMITS OF POLITICAL POSSIBILITY
At the beginning of the 1970s, Canada and the U.S. were both spending 7.5% of GDP on health care costs. By the end of the 1970s, Canada...
BIG GOVERNMENT BY ANY OTHER NAME
The term "Public-Private Partnership" (or its catchy acronym "P3") is very much in vogue in political circles. While the term may be...
HEALTHCARE: 40 YEARS AND COUNTING.
Nixon 1969: "We face a massive crisis in [medical care]". Business Week 1970: "[Healthcare is] the $60 Billion Crisis". Fortune 1970 :...
THE REAL DEAL
In an earlier post I talked about the myth surrounding what we commonly call "public-private partnerships". In this post, however, I...
NOT MY TAX CREDIT
The tax code is convoluted, inconsistent, incoherent and inequitable. Nobody would argue with that. The question is how do we fix it. ...
WELFARE BY ANY OTHER NAME
When we use the term "welfare", we generally mean payments made by the government to a class of individuals living in poverty. The...
OIL COMPANIES ARE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY.
In an earlier post, I explained that if the price per barrel drops below $50, drilling is generally unprofitable. And when it is no...
