An economist serving on a second-term president's Council of Economic Advisers might expect to weigh in on fundamental issues, restructuring the tax system or making entitlement programs sustainable over the long term. Barack Obama once talked of addressing such issues, and Republican leaders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are doing so.
Airport gift shops throughout New England are piling "Boston Strong" T-shirts in vivid colors. "Boston Strong" became a rallying cry of solidarity after the terrorist bombing last year at the Boston Marathon.
As the anniversary of the attack -- and the next race on April 21 -- approaches, emotional coverage of the event and aftermath is reaching feverish levels. A multipage spread in The Washington Post, "How Boston Stayed Strong," heaves with charged language: "harrowing," "carnage," "horrific."
So it's really odd to see these pained reminiscences alternating with rebukes of a National Security Agency surveillance program designed to prevent such assaults. Actually, the disconnect is something to behold.
Forty years is roughly the length of a working lifetime -- and long enough for history to have taken some unexpected turns. And to have proved that long-term forecasts based on extrapolations of existing trends usually end up wide of the mark.
The list of failed prophecies from the 1970s is rather long. The conventional wisdom of the time was more than usually unreliable.
Foes of Obamacare often frame such health reforms as "redistribution" schemes. They take money from hardworking Americans and give it to the presumably undeserving.
A number of months ago, I engaged in a spirited debate with Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira over whether there were “missing white voters” in the 2012 election upon which Republicans could potentially draw in the future to win elections. We also sparred over whether white voters were trending Republican, potentially offsetting Democratic gains among nonwhites.
If you've been following events in Ukraine closely, you may have seen maps, available at electoralgeography.com, showing how the ethnic Russian areas voted heavily for one candidate and the ethnic Ukrainian areas for another.
It's tax time. I'm too scared to do my taxes. I'm sure I'll get something wrong and my enemies in government will persecute -- no, I mean prosecute -- me. So I hired Bob.
Bob's my accountant. I like Bob, but I don't like that I have to have an accountant. I don't want to spend time keeping records and talking to Bob about boring things I don't understand, and I really don't want to pay Bob. But I have to.
What country do Americans overwhelmingly like the most? Canada.
For a large and bipartisan majority of Americans, the increasing power of money in politics is deeply troubling. But not for the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court, whose members appear to regard the dollar's domination of democracy as an inevitable consequence of constitutional freedom -- and anyway, not a matter of grave concern. Expressed in their decisions on campaign finance, which continued last week to dismantle decades of reform in the McCutcheon case, the court's right wing sees little risk of corruption and little need to regulate the flamboyant spending of billionaires.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1830, he was struck by how many Americans were participating in voluntary associations. It was quite a contrast with his native France, where power was centralized in Paris and people did not trust each other enough to join in voluntary groups.
Tocqueville might have a different impression should he, utilizing time travel, visit the America of 2030. Or so I conclude on reading the recently released Pew Research Center report on the attitudes and behavior of America's Millennial generation.
Election Day 2014 is now almost exactly seven months away, which is both near and far.
On the one hand, more than half of the states –29 of 50 — have passed their filing deadlines for major party candidates (the deadline in a 30th, Tennessee, is today). The late entries of Rep. Cory Gardner (R, CO-4) and ex-Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) into, respectively, the Colorado and New Hampshire Senate races are probably the last major candidate announcements we’re going to see this cycle, barring a late retirement or other big surprise. So the playing field is basically set.
There is something truly spectacular about Sheldon Adelson. Witness the parade of Republican supplicants paying tribute in his Las Vegas lair. They would include Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Did you fill out a March Madness bracket this year? In many states, if you put money in a pool, that's illegal!
The NCAA website warns, "Fans should enjoy ... filling out a bracket just for the fun of it, not ... the amount of money they could possibly win."
Give me a break. Americans bet more money on March Madness this year than on the Super Bowl.
John Stossel is host of Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of No They Can't: Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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The ruckus around the Affordable Care Act rollout has been loud, and Republicans are beefing up the amp to rally voters this November. Democrats, meanwhile, are reverting to bad old habits by using the wind machine as an accurate gauge of public feelings. They fight the wind rather than turn the machine around. And, of course, that's how they lose.
Timidity is a standard operating practice for Democrats fearful of sounding too liberal in what is described as a "right-of-center" country. If Democrats spend more time promising to save Obamacare than trumpeting what's good about it, what they dread will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they don't honor the program, why should the voters
America's two major political parties are inevitably coalitions, forced by the winner-take-all Electoral College and the need of candidates in single-member congressional districts to amass 50 percent of the vote, or nearly that, to win election.
Defending the Affordable Care Act in his memorable nominating speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton did as he often advises his party's elected officials: Don't run away from the argument; confront it directly instead. During his own political career, the former president has done both.
"This is my last election," President Obama said in words caught on an open mic. "After my election, I have more flexibility."
The first shocking headlines after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared revealed that two men had boarded with stolen passports. "Stark evidence of security gap," blared The Christian Science Monitor.
It appears that illegal immigration, not terrorism, was the two Iranians' intention. But media and governments across the globe shook their heads wildly that an airport security system had failed to check an international database for stolen passports.
Barring significant changes in group voting habits, many commentators have argued that “The Coalition of the Ascendant” is positioned to give Democrats a notable edge in elections in the near future. There may be some truth to that supposition: The country is clearly getting more diverse, and nonwhite voters tend to vote strongly Democratic.
We're told government protects us, but protectors quickly become bullies.
Take the Food and Drug Administration. It seems like the most helpful part of government: It supervises testing to make sure greedy drug companies don't sell us dangerous stuff.
