Give the New York Times's Ezra Klein credit for identifying a problem with big government institutions. "Our mechanisms of governance have become so risk averse that they are now running tremendous risks because of the problems they cannot, or will not, solve," he tweeted. The subject was San Francisco's attempt to make permanent the parklets, or parking spaces used as outdoor restaurant space, through 60 pages of regulations.
A woman tells the cop who stopped her in a carpool lane she's allowed to drive there because her pronouns are "they" and "them."
Last week, I was invited to testify before a House committee hearing titled: "How the Biden American Rescue Plan Saved the Economy and Lives." I am not making this up. Can you imagine taking a victory lap, given our current conditions?
This month, I've come across two outstanding articles by writers I had not previously known on important trends on the political right and political left.
— Virtually every measurement of public opinion shows that Americans are in a foul mood about their political leaders and institutions. But one group seems to have escaped this wrath: governors.
— State-level job approval polls from Morning Consult show that 92% of governors are “above water” with voters in their states — that is, they have higher approval ratings than they do disapproval ratings. With a handful of exceptions, the data from other pollsters back up the general pattern seen in the Morning Consult polling.
— The polling suggests that several Democratic governors who are considered particularly vulnerable in a Republican-leaning midterm environment have managed to put some distance between how voters see them and President Joe Biden, which could improve their chances of winning reelection.
— The reasons why governors seem to be faring relatively well in this sour environment may have to do with the nature of the most worrisome issues for voters today (which include a number of policies that governors don’t directly control, such as inflation) and relatively flush coffers due to federal aid (which is sparing governors from having to make unpopular cuts or raise taxes).
I've been struck by the opinion divide on the state of the economy between people with real jobs in America and the elite opinions in Washington.
Whether you're contemplating San Francisco voters' recall of left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin or the plight of Democrats nationally as they face voters' dismay at out-of-control inflation, immigration and crime, the question is liable to come to mind: What were they thinking?
-- The new House landscape is fairly similar to the old one.
-- However, there is a notable increase in the number of super-safe Republican seats -- and a modest decline in the overall number of competitive districts.
-- New Hampshire, the final state to complete redistricting, kept its old map basically intact, which means the state should feature a couple of competitive races.
-- Now that redistricting appears to be complete for 2022, we have brought back our traditional House rating tables, which are available at the bottom of this article and at our Crystal Ball House page.
The untold story about "green energy" is that it can't possibly be scaled up to provide anywhere near the energy to replace fossil fuels. (Unless we are headed back to the stone ages, which is what some of the "de-growth" advocates favor).
Politics has increasingly become, for many Americans, the leisure of the theory class. That's a phrase from the early 20th century sociologist Thorstein Veblen, which I turned on its head in a recent column. He was condemning the showy consumerism of the contemporary rich for having no economically practical purpose. I, on the other hand, was describing the political preoccupations of contemporary people, mainly high-education liberals but also low-education populists, as having no practically achievable goals.
Among the nations aiding Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion, America has been foremost. Yet the war interests of our two nations are not identical.
— Senate elections have become firmly yoked to their state’s presidential leanings.
— Democrats now hold a tiny Senate majority in large part because of their superior performance in otherwise Republican-leaning states, a performance they may find difficult to sustain because of deepening partisan polarization.
— Based on the fundamentals of state partisanship, incumbency, and the national political environment, Republicans have a good chance to pick up at least a seat and take back control of the upper chamber. But poor candidates could hurt their chances, as they have in some other recent Senate races.
With President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda in ruins, Democrats want to blame Big Business for the mayhem of high inflation and a collapsing stock market.
Complete and utter repudiation. That's what a record number of Republican primary voters in Georgia administered to former President Donald Trump this Tuesday. The man he blamed for not contesting his narrow 2020 loss in the state, Gov. Brian Kemp, won renomination with 74% of the vote.
Ideology is political religion, said the conservative sage Russell Kirk.
— With the national House map nearly complete, it appears that the overall map still leans toward Republicans.
— However, this GOP bias is not nearly as strong as it was a decade ago.
— We rate and analyze the new Missouri and New York congressional maps.
