Almost fifty years ago, when the Mead family migrated to London for a year to investigate life on the far side of the pond, a neighboring family came for Christmas dinner.  They had one of those typically hobbity English last names; call them the Snogdens.  They came in the early afternoon for the lavish midday […]

After a morning of meetings in Washington DC, I am preparing to travel with the Grand Matriarch and the Venerable Mead to the storied home of the Philadelphia Meads for the Thanksgiving vacation.  With two nieces, three nephews and an assortment of siblings, in-laws and others, not to mention an unconscionably large supply of holiday […]

The era of the municipal bankruptcy is now upon us, but we may soon be entering the age of entitlement bankruptcies. An excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal spotlights major financial and administrative problems in Social Security’s disability program: But many of the doctors haven’t practiced outside their specialty in decades, if at all, […]

This is the week in which the parrot stopped pining for the fjords; the British Guardian newspaper has given up hope for a global climate treaty taking effect before 2020.  The worthless and deceptive Kyoto Protocol will expire next year, and it will be replaced by… nothing.As the left-leaning, pro-green paper writes despondently: Governments of […]

Egypt so far is one of the Arab countries where the Arab Spring has not led to a revolution; the Mubarak family is gone but Scaf, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, lives on.  Scaf is what Turks would call Egypt’s “deep state” institution, the structure behind the structures of the state, and the armed […]

The weekend has come and gone, and China still has yet to respond to America’s diplomatic onslaught in Asia last week. This is partly due to the time it takes for a transitioning Communist Party to reach important decisions, but a new piece in the FT spotlights another reason: worries about the country’s (and the […]

It is the old and now familiar story.  In Europe, a paralyzed political establishment is watching the steady deterioration of the financial system like the proverbial deer in the headlights.  In the US, the oncoming train wreck of entitlement spending elicits the same response: fatalistic passivity. Add growing worries about the Chinese and Indian financial […]

The public sector labor wars are heating up all over, and both parties are fighting the unions.  In California Governor Jerry Brown is cutting union pensions; further wage cutbacks for state and local workers are clearly on the way.  The events in Wisconsin and Ohio are well known, but in Detroit and Chicago Democratic mayors […]

Neutrinos aren’t the only things that seem to be moving faster than light these days; the revolution in American education is also moving at warp speed.  Already this fall there have been stories about large new financial interests getting into the world of online education and about the rapid growth in online high schools.Now comes […]

Bases in Australia, opening to Myanmar, uranium deals between Australia and India: the hurricane of China-balancing activity in Asia last week was one of the rare sets of events that can truly be called historic.And now, as it turns out, it isn’t over.  Not only did all but two of the Asian nations present at […]