Sunday, January 22, 2017

Obamacare Be Gone

They will also deal with the difficult political task of reforming a massive expansion of Medicaid (the vast majority of Obamacare’s “newly insured” are actually new welfare recipients). They will have to answer Kristof’s claims that “millions of Americans will lose insurance, and thousands more will die unnecessarily each year because of lack of care.” Republicans will have to convince voters that opening up affordable and competitive markets without coercion is preferable to preserving unsustainable state-run programs that grow in perpetuity.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/06/gop-does-have-a-plan-to-replace-obamacare-thats-what-scares-democrats/

Monday, January 16, 2017

300 Hacked Emails, That Will Leave a Mark

Then, last Sunday evening, during the NFL playoff game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers, the FBI posted on its website more than 300 emails that Clinton had sent to an unnamed colleague not in the government -- no doubt her adviser Sid Blumenthal -- that had fallen into the hands of foreign powers. It turns out -- and the Sunday night release proves this -- that Blumenthal was hacked by intelligence agents from at least three foreign governments and that they obtained the emails Clinton had sent to him that contained state secrets. Sources believe that the hostile hackers were the Russians and the Chinese and the friendly hackers were the Israelis.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/12/andrew-napolitano-why-criminal-investigation-hillary-clinton-is-back-to-front-and-center.html?intcmp=ob_article_sidebar_video&intcmp=obnetwork

Friday, January 6, 2017

Precision in Language

Everyone knows that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but somehow people seem to forget. Endogeneity is a word that can help you remember. Something is endogenous when you don’t know whether it’s a cause or an effect (or both). For example, lots of people note that people who go to college tend to make more money. But how much of this is because college boosts earning power, and how much is because smarter, harder-working, better-connected people tend to go to college in the first place? It’s endogenous. The media is full of stories about how which kind of people stay married, or what diet is associated with better health. Whenever you see these stories, you should ask “What about endogeneity?”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-05/5-economics-terms-we-all-should-use

If things are getting hotter and carbon levels in the atmosphere are rising, does that mean carbon is causing the temperature changes?  Or are warmer oceans off gassing more carbon dioxide?  Hmmm....