Author Archive | David Bernstein

Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber: “In general, I just don’t agree with Tyler [Cowen]’s implicit view that there’s something illegitimate about making your case forcefully and not giving the kid gloves treatment to people who try to push weak, uninformed or fraudulent arguments against it.” In 2006, Davies falsely claimed in the Comments section on […]

Prof. Thomas DiLorenzo at LewRockwell.com argues that the Ron Paul newsletter scandal was the result of a plot by “beltway libertarians” headquartered at the Cato Institute (where, full disclosure, I am an adjunct fellow, and which is co-publishing my next book), and encouraged by the Kansas-based Koch family (major donors to libertarian causes) to discredit […]

Sensible comments, with which I largely agree, from David Boaz of Cato, former VC contributor Jacob Levy, Prof. Steven Horwitz, Prof. Glen Whitman, “Rightwatch”, and Tim Sandefur. The consensus is, basically, that libertarianism needs to more aggressively disassociate itself from right-wing fringe loonies who use libertarianism as a mask to disguise other agendas, or who […]

This story, about anti- “Big Food” activist Robyn O’Brien, reminds me of the story of Betty Mekdeci. In 1975, Mekdeci gave birth to a son with limb reduction birth defects; the cause of most such birth defects is unknown. Not satisfied with that answer, she began a quest to determine what caused her child’s suffering, […]

For those interested in such inside-baseball, here is a post by Wirkman saying it was widely known in libertarian circles that the newsletters were ghostwritten, and another by former (and disgruntled) Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondero claiming that Paul wrote half the content, and a prominent friend of Ron’s 80% of the rest.

And I thought the Jerusalem Post was an English-language newspaper.

CNN has fascinating exit polls from New Hampshire. One example: who would have thought when the election season began that Ron Paul would most appeal to [male, no surprise for a libertarian candidate] liberal independent under-30s who aren’t religious, don’t go to church, favor civil unions, think abortion should be legal [Paul favored the “Defense […]

Pajamas Media and The New Republic have stories about various racist, anti-Semitic, and generally kooky comments that could be found in some old political and investment newsletters published under Ron Paul’s name. I give Paul the benefit of the doubt on this one [if nothing else, he’s a savvy politician–you don’t get elected to Congress […]

AP: A vocal American critic of Israel met Monday with a senior official from the militant Hezbollah group and visited villages in southern Lebanon that witnessed heavy fighting in the 2006 war between the guerrillas and the Jewish state. Norman Finkelstein, who resigned last year as a political science professor at DePaul University in Chicago, […]

So far, people listing their occupation as “law professor” have donated $18,365 to Republicans, and $149,542 to Democrats. Those who list their occupation as “professor of law” have donated $500 to Republicans, and $34,565 to Democrats. A caution on extrapolating from those data points: on the one hand, the Democratic candidates in general [that is, […]

From a local crime report: FELONY HIT & RUN, 12/04/07, 300 block S. 12 St. On December 4 around 6:45 am, a pedestrian was crossing S. 12 St near S. Clark St in a crosswalk. A Dodge Caravan traveling east on S. 12 St yielded to the pedestrian, but a white sedan traveling west did […]

Really, why does anyone take them seriously, at least on the Republican side? Wasn’t Pat Robertson’s second-place finish with 25% of the vote in 1988 enough to discredit them permanently?

CNN Money: Robert Shiller, a Yale economist who had argued for years that a bubble was forming in real estate prices, points out that one group was on target about where prices would go – investors in a real estate futures market that he helped set up on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Starting in May […]

Kristol has joined David Brooks as a conservative voice on the Times’ op-ed pages. They have a lot in common: Jewish New Yorkers with elite educational and high-powered political credentials, and fellow believers in “National Greatness” (i.e., Big Government) (neo)conservatism. I can’t help but think that the Times’ editors’ thought process is something like this: […]

Frank Nothaft, chief economist, Freddie Mac, toward the end of the bubble: “I don’t foresee any national decline in home price values. Freddie Mac’s analysis of single-family houses over the last half century hasn’t shown a single year when the national average housing price has gone down.” Yahoo News: “The median price of a home […]