A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Politics

  • Look for the union label

    At a time when it feels like the middle- and working-classes are increasingly under siege, the story of public employees standing up for their collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin (and now Ohio!) is one of the more inspiring things I’ve seen lately on the American political scene. Maybe the example of recent events in the Read more

  • This is what socialism looks like

    Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation’s economy, Uncle Sam’s take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way. And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Read more

  • Beneficiaries of farm subsidies fret about big government

    I didn’t watch much of the Super Bowl, but I did catch this (rather poorly-produced, IMO) ad against the menace of new “food taxes” on things like soda and other sugary drinks. The ad doesn’t specify which taxes it’s arguing against, but supposing that someone is proposing such taxes, I’d like to make a counter-proposal. Read more

  • Small is beautiful?

    Matt Yglesias asks a fair question of Mark Bittman’s food manifesto, specifically his proposal that we shift subsidies away from big agribusiness and toward “small” farmers: It seems to me that what we want from our farms is farms that are as efficient as possible in their use of resources like land, labor, water, etc. Read more

  • Bittman’s agenda

    Speaking of food politics, Mark Bittman has retired his long-running “Minimalist” cooking column in the New York Times dining section and is moving over to the opinion pages, as well as writing for the Times Magazine. In addition to teaching people how to cook for themselves, Bittman has criticized the standard American diet and even Read more

  • What to eat

    Food writer and activist Marion Nestle has a good post parsing the just-released USDA 2010 food guidelines: Here are the take-home messages: Balancing Calories • Enjoy your food, but eat less. • Avoid oversized portions. Foods to Increase • Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. • Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. Foods Read more

  • On the alleged tyranny of requiring people to buy health insurance

    I wish opponents of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) would stop pretending that they think the individual mandate is some unique affront to freedom when it’s obvious they would oppose any scheme of universal coverage, no matter what mechanism it used. Does anyone think they’d be okay with a single-payer system where the government Read more

  • Some links for the weekend

    – Peter Singer on balancing concern for the environment with efforts to lift people out of poverty. – Kevin Drum on the difference between liberals and libertarians. – Bob Herbert on Sargent Shriver: “one of America’s great good men.” – Peter Berger’s blog at The American Interest. (Here’s a piece on recent developments in American Read more

  • Where’s the Left? (continued)

    Here’s a much better-informed and thorough take on the “Where’s the left?” question I posted about here from a labor lawyer and blogger for the site Cogitamus. Read more

  • Ralph Nader and Ron Paul team up?

    Interesting interview with the progressive firebrand and the libertarian congressman (on Fox of all places), talking about the prospects for a left-right coalition: Read more