Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2620

Why Not Raise The Retirement Age? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Bruce Bartleet makes some valid points:

[R:]aising the normal retirement age won't do much good because 62
become the de facto normal retirement age. We will have to raise
early retirement age if we want to save money this way.

There aretwo other points I didn't have space to make that are important. First,I think many people who take early retirement foolishly have ause-it-or-lose-it attitude; they don't realize that benefits rise thelonger one waits. I think many also...

Dropout Factories

by Patrick Appel

Leonhardt recommends The Washington Monthly's new college rankings system. In a related article, Ben Miller and Phuong Ly report on colleges with the worst graduation rates:

These colleges make up 15 percent of the total and disproportionatelyserve working-class and minority students. They are akin to the 15percent of high schools Barack Obama and other would-be reformers havedubbed "dropout factories" for having scandalously low graduation rates— on average about 50 percent...

People As Pack Leaders, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A notable alternative to Millan's methods:

Dissing Your Dog - watch more funny videos
















Multimedia - Development Frameworks - Recreation - Flash - LP record

Pseudovariety, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Hannaford is conflating a lack of choice in *producers* with a lack of choice in *beverages*.  That's stupid.  It's like saying there's no variety in Jelly Bellys because there's only one producer of Jelly Bellys.  And yet I stand there in front of the "Jelly Belly bar" at my local gourmet grocer's and see 30 or more varieties of Jelly Bellys, and that's with only a single producer and no effective competition within that market segment.  Choices in beverages ...

Too Liberal For Cato?

by Chris Bodenner

Weigel wonders why Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson are both suddenly leaving the libertarian think tank:

[Y:]ou have to struggle not to see a political context to this. Lindseyand Wilkinson are among the Cato scholars who most often find commoncause with liberals. In 2006, after the GOP lost Congress, Lindsey coined the term"Liberaltarians" to suggest that Libertarians and liberals could worktogether outside of the conservative movement. Shortly after this, helaunched a...

Mormons On The Mosque, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I just wanted to point out that the opinions of Mitt Romney and Harry Reid do not necessarily tell you something about the opinions of Mormons at large on this issue.  There are a lot of factors that can affect people's opinions on these sorts of matters, and in this case I think it is worth noting that Romney and Reid are both trying to win over conservative constituencies that have very particular ideas on this issue. I think you might find much more varied...

No Offense

by Patrick Appel

Krauthammer tsk tsks defends of the Park 51 project. Kinsley goes another round:

Constitutional rights are
requirements. We do not all have to carry guns just because the
Amendment says we are allowed to. Just as we all have the right
build a mosque near Ground Zero, we also all have the right not
build one. We even have a First Amendment right to attempt to
other people to give up the exercise of some constitutional right.

ImamRauf and his followers, ...

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

By far the best Inception parody out there:

Parodies - Recreation - Humor - Mental health - Health

Did Ron Paul Matter?

by Patrick Appel

In response to my thoughts on Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, Bernstein asks a couple important questions:

Really, what's striking about the Paul campaign is how little apparentsuccess it had in affecting the Republican Party.  I'm not aware of anyRepublican nominees in 2010, at least not at the statewide level, whohave adopted Paul's unorthodox stances on foreign policy.  It's truethat some strains of Tea Partyism seem libertarian, but mostly it'sjust standard-issue GOP rhetoric...

Competing for People

by Conor Friedersdorf

Reihan Salam has two interesting posts up, one defending the FDA from a Wall Street Journal editorial [correction: the FDA post is actually Avik Roy], and the other musing on the United States and its ability to retain ultra-rich citizens:

Bashing the rich has a powerful political and emotional appeal for many people. For people on the left, tax exiles are profoundly unattractive figures -- economic Benedict Arnolds, to evoke a phrase popular in 2004. I think about this...