Now that Detroit has officially declared bankruptcy, the next big battle in the Motor City will be fought over the future of city pensions. It’s generally agreed that massive pension liabilities are a major part of the city’s financial difficulties, but there is a significant argument over how big the problem is and, in some […]

The delay of the employer mandate isn’t stanching the economic bleeding created by Obamacare, according to Reuters. Yasmeen Abutaleb reports on how public schools across the country are responding to the ACA: In Pennsylvania’s Penn Manor School District, Superintendent Mike Leichliter said there is no room in its constrained budget to provide additional employee insurance…. “When […]

The California Supreme Court has ruled that public schools can give insulin injections to students without bringing in nurses. Prior to the ruling, some schools in the state required that shots only be given by licensed professionals, but the skewed nurse-to-student ratio was hampering children’s ability to get routine care. Parents with diabetic children sued […]

Japan’s foreign policy, Gideon Rachmann writes in the Financial Times, “hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister.” A handful of mistakes and gaffes in recent weeks by Abe administration officials has irked South Korea and China and encouraged them to grow friendlier with one another at Japan’s expense. The same ludicrous diplomacy has embarrassed Washington, […]

I have not previously dragged out an issue from one post to the next, but I will this time. I just came across two news items that further illustrate a point I made in my most recent post. Most of that post dealt with the persecution of Christians in many countries, compared with which some […]

Elon Musk has a dream: shuttling people, inside a tube much like the one you use at the drive-thru window at your local bank, from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. At 700+ miles per hour. If that sounds like a science fiction concept, that’s because it is. But if anyone is capable […]

In what will likely be looked back on as a watershed moment for Mexico, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled his promised reforms to the country’s state-owned oil and gas monopoly yesterday, reforms that could have Mexico joining the North American energy revolution. The bill, which is expected to get the two-thirds majority it needs to […]

Obamacare isn’t the only huge, potentially dangerous transformation of our health care system currently underway. The NYT reports that the pace of hospital consolidation has rapidly increased in the last several years, rivaling the centralization frenzy of the 1990s: Hospitals are merging faster and in greater numbers than they have in years. After holding steady […]

Air pollution contributed to the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people in China in 2010, and it costs the country nearly six percent of its annual GDP in health care costs, material damages, and premature deaths. Beijing’s air quality is “crazy bad“, and the country’s toxic smog is driving China’s urbanites out of its megacities. […]

As the Western military role in Afghanistan winds down, Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba are turning their focus to India. The border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir has been unusually violent in the past few weeks, and an attempted attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad last week was a “message from the ISI” […]