“The Paperwork Reduction Act was enacted to reduce unnecessary paperwork and improve policymaking. But it fails to effectively realize these goals. This paper explains how we ended up with a statute that perversely undermines its purposes, what goes wrong (and right) in the status quo, and how to design a better Paperwork Reduction Act.” (04/16/25)
“[Rumeysa] Ozturk is one of the most high-profile seizures that Trump’s DHS has made of students who criticized Israeli policies in Gaza. Hundreds of student visas have been revoked and the Trump administration has floated proposals to prohibit all foreign students from attending American universities that fail to fully suppress criticism or protests against Israeli policies. It would be the height of folly for Americans to presume they face no peril from entitling the feds to seize boundless power to punish students’ speech.” (04/16/25)
“Last week, the news of the dire wolf’s de-extinction was everywhere. It didn’t take long until calmer voices pointed out that these are not really dire wolves, which weren’t even wolves, just gray wolves genetically altered to have what someone believes were some dire wolf traits. The kind of liberty most people offer is similar. It’s not real liberty; it’s authoritarianism with a few tweaks of what some politicians believe real liberty might be like. They’ll claim to support liberty to get votes — until it threatens government power. This isn’t liberty at all, but a watered-down version where government allows you to do some things you already have a right to do, as long as you don’t bother government too much.” (04/16/25)
“Trade deficits could arise because Americans are living beyond their means, habitually borrowing more than they save. But even good economists habitually overlook a competing story: Trade deficits arise because foreigners think the United States is a fantastic place to do business. So fantastic, in fact, that they would rather invest in the American economy than consume American products. The noble Don Boudreaux has been cogently defending the latter view for years, repeatedly pointing out that — contrary to the ‘living beyond their means’ story — Americans’ net worth has rapidly grown since 1975, the last year the U.S. ran a trade surplus. If you’re skeptical, consider the fact that the U.S. has another, even more durable, deficit: the migration deficit.” (04/16/25)
“Shattered by a war with Israel last year and a six-year depression, Lebanon recently opened a new wing in the National Museum of Beirut. Yes, amid both war and economic destruction, the tiny Mediterranean country decided that showcasing Lebanese modern art was one way to create a common identity in a religiously diverse and torn nation. The new exhibit serves as ‘a reminder that there is something healing about remembering what is still good, what we still have,’ said Juliana Khalaf, co-director of the Beirut Museum of Art, which collected the works for the new space. Lebanon is now in the midst of an urgent identity-building process ever since a Nov. 27 ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah that dominates the minority Shiites.” (04/16/25)
“The Economist has a very interesting set of articles on recent trends in western culture. The first one is entitled Aging disgracefully, and documents a major increase in promiscuous sex and drug use among the baby boom generation. (Yes, that’s my generation.) The second article notes a dramatic decease in this sort of behavior among the younger generation …. If you live long enough you see all sorts of surprising trends, and this is certainly one that I never would have imagined. I had always thought of wild behavior as being a province of the young, whereas elderly people tended to be more conservative in their lifestyles. I’m not in favor of drug prohibition, but if we must have restrictions on drug use then perhaps we should replace the minimum age for pot smoking with a maximum age.” (04/16/25)
“What is it about politicians in Washington that they just can’t stand progress or the thought of anyone getting rich? That’s the attitude of many Democrats in Congress as they try to cripple the private equity and venture capital industries with higher tax rates. These financers are some of the most dynamic risk-takers on the economic playing field. They are disrupting the old stodgy banking and Wall Street financing networks. The PE and VC track records in funding small businesses and turning them into the future gazelles is almost a uniquely American success story. But now, thanks to the industry’s winning track record in saving companies and jobs and making people rich, Washington thinks they are doing TOO well and wants to raise the tax rate on the industry by nearly 50%..” (04/16/25)
“For all the problems in his reasoning, [Oren] Cass is correct on one thing: These tariffs are like D-Day in that many Americans are finding themselves in the crosshairs of a failed, statist ideology. Rather than sending wave after wave of good, honest, hardworking American manufacturers to their doom with no greater payoff in sight, we should instead focus on what actually works, and what Trump himself promised in his Address to Congress: deregulating manufacturing for export, lowering taxes, and education reform.” (04/16/25)
“Michelle’s client [a government agency] typically ordered widgets on a roughly quarterly basis. And then came in the new secretary and the DOGE clowns, who had more important things to do than running the agency. And so she ended up getting a panicked call from the No. 2 guy in the department, telling her that they were down to their last couple of boxes of widgets and instructing her to ‘move heaven and earth’ — at whatever cost — to get them some more. … Michelle did a little old-fashioned scrambling and finagling to get the materials she needed from a supplier other than her usual one and got the agency those widgets post haste. At which point the agency — utterly predictably, this being The Trump Show — refused to pay.” (04/16/25)
“This week was the week that our 2024 taxes were due in order to fund the fiscal year 2025 federal budget and thus our nation’s priorities. This year’s budget represents the final Biden budget. It comes at a time when our country is in a deliberate state of chaos instituted by the current administration. Under the non-elected efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency and current cabinet, we find punitive and seemingly random disjointed cutting of essential services and vital programs in addition to international aid that cuts to the core of who America is. U.S. Congress has just passed a budget resolution requiring $1.5 trillion in savings to be realized over the next 10 years. Ultimately, budgets are moral documents. How do the current cuts, in addition to planned cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, address our needs and follow a moral compass?” (04/16/25)
