Yet another state has caught the pension bug. This time it’s Massachusetts which is struggling with a raft of underfunded pension programs. An op-ed in the Eagle-Tribune spotlights a Pioneer Institute report which ranks cities and towns according to the health of their pension system, with rather alarming findings. According to the report, nearly one-quarter of all […]

BUNOL, SPAIN – AUGUST 28: Revellers celebrate covered by tomato pulp while participating the annual Tomatina Festival on August 28, 2013 in Bunol, Spain. An estimated 20,000 people threw 130 tons of ripe tomatoes in the world’s biggest tomato fight held annually in this Spanish Mediterranean town. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)According to Egyptian Salafist […]

The New York Times recently profiled a major Maryland hospital, Western Maryland Health Systems, that it says “could leave a more profound imprint on the delivery of health care than President Obama’s reforms.” Shocking! How is it pulling off this magical feat? Over the last three years, the hospital has taken its services outside its walls. It has […]

Call it a variant on retail therapy: Detroit’s preferred method for dealing with fiscal crisis appears to be to double down on boondoggles. First, it pushed forward with a $450 million taxpayer-funded stadium. Now, Michigan Live reports that the city is still going through with a $140 million light rail project—that only covers 3.3 miles: The federal government signed […]

In many ways, the debate whether MOOCs will succeed is premised on an exceedingly narrow idea of what a MOOC is or can be. An article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates just how early it still is to be proclaiming how this new technology will be impact higher education: Two University of Texas at Austin professors this week launched […]

There is little to quarrel with in President Obama’s speech—beyond the usual observation that telling your opponents that your military attacks will be limited and short term is probably not the wisest course. Otherwise, he was clear. He is not letting the paralysis of the United Nations Security Council define his options and he has […]

European Judaism is under the threat of extinction. That’s the piece of a long, fascinating, and ultimately tragic piece in Mosaic Magazine on the past, present, and future of European Jewish communities. The author, Michel Gurfinkiel, argues that for over 50 years after the second World War Jewish communities thrived in Europe: Israel was popular, the Jewish […]

Rhode Island has seen better days. With a massive pension crisis, a long battle between the state government and its unions, and one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, the Ocean State is struggling to recover from the worst crisis it has seen in decades. Fortunately the state is actively looking for ways to […]

In at least one respect, the ACA completely reverses the status quo of the insurance industry: under Obamacare, the riskier patients pay less. The WSJ breaks down the numbers, showing that younger, healthier patients will end up paying more for insurance than older ones, like 62 year old Robert Wengrow. To us, this looks like a […]

Germany’s “green revolution,” or energiewende, was supposed to be a proof-of-concept for renewable energy policy. The green movement, for its part, holds Germany up as a successful example of how much can be accomplished—how many gigawatts of solar and wind energy capacity can be installed—if governments just ditch dirty fossil fuels and get on the […]