The above pretty much says it all. I keep meaning to write more on tax reform, and earlier today on twitter, Reihan Salam refernced a link to an article by a group calling itself Citizens for Tax Justice, “Making Work Pay Credit More Effective and Affordable than Other Types of Tax Cuts.” And right now I’m waiting for the network log-in process to complete, so I’ll write out my thoughts. . . As background, “Making Work Pay” was a component... Read more
Very interesting. And reading up on the situation in Egypt is on the to-do list. Read more
Did you know that you can look at household income by census data, mapped? It’s all there in the Census Explorer. Data includes median household income, percent foreign born, percent with at least a high school/college/master’s degree-level education, and percent in the labor force (though the last of these is of ages 16+, so it doesn’t allow you to differentiate between areas with large numbers of labor-force drop-outs vs. those with a disproportionate number of retirees). You could spend hours... Read more
I guess I’m being particularly nerdy lately, what with throwing various kinds of stats at you, and now back to my “book report” style of blog post, which particularly illustrates the multiple purposes this blog serves. (I like to write up little summaries of what I’ve read, if for no other reason that to enable me to pull it up later, rather than “I read a book about that subject once. . . wonder what it was.” Once of these... Read more
Here’s an intriguing table, compiled from data at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy website: Per-Student Revenue by Source (2011 – 2012) Troy Detroit Local 5,398 3,548 State 6,967 8,226 Federal 406 4,493 Total 12,771 16,266 State and Federal only 7,373 12,718 Troy is, as some of you may have figured out by now, my hometown, a thoroughly suburban sort of place, whose claim to fame is the upscale Somerset Mall,... Read more
I believe this isn’t paywalled: “Database: Check your school’s measles immunization rate” — a database that allows the reader to look at vaccination rates by school, for Illinois, as reported to, and then by, the Illinois State Board of Education. Unfortunately, there appear to be problems with this data: for each school, there are data points on total enrollment, total vaccinated, number with religious or medical exemptions, numbers with “vaccinations scheduled,” and a remaining category of “not vaccinated.” Is this category... Read more
Linked to by a second-cousin who’s very big on alternative medicine: “Measles Matters,” published on February 3rd. I wish they [journalists] would actually listen to the testimonials given to me by parents of autistic children who were obviously affected by these vaccines adversely. I wish they would tell parents that the risk of dying from the measles in the United States is around zero. . . .If we discount emotion and fear, we would realize that a child may... Read more
Jeb Bush was the subject of a fair amount of criticism from conservatives (including me) for his flaky comments about immigration back last spring, when he labelled illegal immigration (and that specifically from Mexico/Central America — illegal border-crossers rather than visa overstayers) “an act of love.” I griped at the time that politicians were practically canonizing illegal immigrants, as these wonderfully hard workers dedicated to their families. Now he’s in the news again, or rather in the “news” via a... Read more
Here’s a good article with historical context on the Crusades, referencing a book which I fear I won’t be able to find at my local library, “Inventing the Crusades.” In brief: the Crusaders were not imperialists, and the legend that the Islamic world is still scarred by them is just that, legend. Two key paragraphs: President Clinton is not alone in thinking that the Muslim world is still brooding over the crimes of the Crusaders. It is commonly thought—even by... Read more
The other day, Megan McArdle had a piece on Andrew Sullivan (whom, by way, I’ve never actually read, but I’m told went a little crazy with Palin Derangement Syndrome) and his decision to stop blogging, and on the past and future of blogging, in general. Multiple of the commenters pointed out that Megan’s blog has a particularly engaging comment section, with a diversity of opinion, a fairly civil discourse, and with commenters who contribute in interesting ways. It occurs to... Read more
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