White Cities
White elites, shockingly, seem to enjoy cities where the culture is dominated by white elites. Aaron Renn breaks the news. Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 24, 2009 08:39
Brevity is the Soul of Wit
Heebie-Geebie offers some sage advice on story-telling and blogging: First, cut way more details than you want to. Cut almost everything. Cut so much that you're staying ahead of the person listening. Only fill in extra details if they're still fascinated and you're going back to flesh out the situation. Second, if your audience isn't quite captivated, don't hang on to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 21, 2009 10:10
Obesity: Nanny State Solution
Ezra Klein enjoys cooking and endorses "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver's notion that we'd be a healthier society if we cooked our meals at home rather than eating so much high calorie fare at chain restaurants. Still, he notes, The problem is that the evidence suggests meals aren't driving the rise in obesity -- snacks are. A 2003 paper by economists David ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 13, 2009 09:48
9/12 Protests
Yesterday, somewhere between "tens of thousands" and "two million" people flooded the nation's capital to protest somethingoranother. Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government (Jeff Zeleny, NYT) [caption id="attachment_41802" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Amanda Lucidon for The New York Times"][/caption] A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 13, 2009 07:57
The Money Value of Time
Matt Yglesias points to a recent IBM study trying to map much people hate commuting to work and points to this interesting chart: From this, Matt concludes that all manner of government policies could be framed as a way of reducing the pain of commuting: higher gas taxes, congestion pricing, and so forth. I simply don't believe the numbers. Matt's commenter Paulie ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 11, 2009 13:24
Obama’s Education Speech
Matt Yglesias takes mock exception to President Obama's assertion to our nation's schoolchildren that "You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it." He notes that, "My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 8, 2009 14:12
SAT Scores and Family Income
A debate is raging in the blogosphere about this graph, which shows that "Generally speaking, the wealthier a student’s family is, the higher the SAT score." Alex Tabarrok gets us up to speed on the debate thus far: Greg Mankiw pointed out that the effect is unlikely to be purely causal because there may be an omitted variable bias, IQ for example. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 30, 2009 08:39
Petraeus Air Force Joke
[caption id="attachment_41252" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, lectures in San Francisco. Justin Sullivan / Getty"][/caption] General David Petraeus made a funny at the expense of the Air Force in his remarks at the Marine Corps Association Foundation dinner last month: Come to think of it, in fact another bedrock element of the Marine Corps is unquestionably having ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 27, 2009 08:12
Who’s Reading What
Matt Yglesias notes that bloggers and others who write for the Web lack a luxury of those who write for print: "nobody has any idea who’s reading them." Whereas there are detailed metrics about pageviews on the Web, all print has to go on is circulation figures. So they can blithely assume that their long features and hard news and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 25, 2009 17:19
Taxing Our Way to Good Health
A bit over a year ago, Brad DeLong (who is a doctor but not a medical doctor) proposed "An Unrealistic, Impractical, Utopian Plan for Dealing with the Health Care Opportunity," the crux of which is: 20% Deductible/Out of Pocket Cap: The IRS snarfs 20% of your family economic income. 5% of it is an increase in taxes (but that replaces your ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 21, 2009 09:47
Two Political Blogospheres
Two blogging conventions, Netroots Nation (the successor to Daily Kos) and RightOnline, are being held in Pittsburgh this week. As Timothy McNulty reports for the Post-Gazette, they're different in ways other than politics. The RightOnline conference starting tomorrow morning at the Sheraton Station Square will have about a quarter of the 2,000 attendees at the liberal conference in the convention center, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 13, 2009 10:47
Insurance: You Keep Using That Word…
The Obama Administration is pushing an 8-pronged list of "Health Insurance Consumer Protections." No Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history. No Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses. No Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care Insurance companies must fully ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 11, 2009 13:58
Planning: USA vs. China
Matt Yglesias notes that Shanghai has a long-term plan for expanding their subway system and laments that we're not so forward thinking here in America. What’s striking is the extent to which we don’t operate like that here in the United States. I think everyone believes that over the next couple of decades the Washington, DC metro area will continue to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 12:48
Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional?
Matt Yglesias cites a 15-year-old essay by Hendrick Hertzberg arguing that the filibuster is unconstitutional: It’s true that the framers did not specify that the Senate would do its normal business by simple majority vote, but that’s because it didn’t occur to them that they had to specify it, any more than it occurred to them to specify that senators should ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 6, 2009 11:58
Federalism and Democracy
Continuing a long-running theme at his blog, Matt Yglesias laments that Senators from small states wield so much power. The latest fuel is a NYT feature on six moderates who are supposedly the linchpins to putting together a bipartisan health care deal and who routinely hash out the details of same over snacks. [V]ast power is being wielded by people who, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 28, 2009 14:37
