Presented without comment

October 3, 2007 10:24 AM by Lisa Casanova

Senator Norm Coleman, quoted in the NYTimes:

"Government is about first-class service. It is certainly not about first-class lifestyles."

Link post | Digg it | Other posts by Lisa Casanova | Comments (3)

People don't kill people, the lack of socialized medicine does!

August 22, 2007 8:42 AM by Lisa Casanova

If I see another citation of this story as proof that we need national health care, I'm going to vomit. Supposedly, this man killed his wife because he couldn't afford her medical bills. People on discussion boards like this one are sure that it's because we don't have one of those magical government systems that gives everyone all the health care they need. See, it's because we're too selfish and backward to have socialized medicine that a man in America deserves sympathy for throwing his sick wife off of a balcony to her death (of course it's not possible that he was tired of caring for her or anything. After all, people always tell the truth about why they kill other people). This is the level we've fallen to- we actually believe that people deserve sympathy for committing cold-blooded murder because the government didn't do enough to take care of them.

Link post | Digg it | Other posts by Lisa Casanova | Comments (39)

Forget price floors. Can we have an "ignorance floor"?

June 29, 2007 10:40 AM by Lisa Casanova

I frequently come across writings on economic issues that make me think, "If I wrote that, the people who taught me economics would slap me upside the head." That crossed my mind as I read about the Supreme Court wrestling with the question: Are price floors good or bad? The NYTimes article on the SC decision presents it as a binary choice:either the court must decide that price floors are unequivocally "bad", or courts must examine every case of every business from now until the end of time, deciding which price agreements are "good" and which are "bad". When economic questions come before a court, they are treated as simplistic, good or bad, fair or unfair, with one magic answer a court can hand down from on high.

Continue reading "Forget price floors. Can we have an "ignorance floor"?" »

Link post | Digg it | Other posts by Lisa Casanova | Comments (4)