Archive for February 2010
Planting Flowers In a Strip-Mine
But it’s still an improvement, right? And that’s all that matters.
It’s All Rather Simple, Really
Shorter Evan Bayh:
The problem with Democrats is that they’re not Republicans.
Big Pharma Lobbyist’s Resignation “Hurts” Healthcare Reform
Reuters is reporting that ex-Pub Congressman and ace corporate flack Billy Tauzin has resigned as head of PhARMA, the most powerful non-bankers’ lobby in the country. Read the rest of this entry »
De Toqueville and the Tyranny of the Majorirty
Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America isn’t exactly what I expected when I began it. What I had read of it suggested something of a high-minded travelogue, a paean to the United States, that most democratic of democracies, full of insights and admiration. What I found instead is a straight-out political analysis of a form of government with which Europe was largely unfamiliar, an analysis as clear-eyed as it is dense, and only very carefully complementary. It is no more a travelogue than Rouseau’s Social Contract is a business manual. Though he was here for 9 months in 1831 and traveled extensively during that time, he rarely mentions place-names at all and never descends to a personal anecdote or reveals the name of a single person he spoke with. His one and only concern is the subject in the title: how democracy worked in America.
