The Iraq war and the jihad in nearby Anbar and Baghdad were on the margins of Saudi life. Four or five years after 9/11, after the (usual) speculations about the troubles of the Saudi state, the ship had been steadied. There was that Arabian luck which had seen this realm through many a crisis, and it would come in the nick of time. In the summer of 2005, the ailing King Fahd, incapacitated for the full length of a decade and barely conscious of his surroundings, died and was succeeded by his half-brother Abdullah.
The United States is an outlier in the distribution of prosperity. As figure 1 shows, there is a small group of countries with per capita incomes above $40,000 that stand out from all the others—and the United States, with a per capita income of nearly $66,000, stands out even within this small group. How can it be that the United States has a per capita income roughly 50 percent higher than that of Britain, its former colonizer?
While COVID-19 attacks our immune systems and our economy, it also gives rise to attacks on American individualism. If the pandemic is spreading here, many argue, rugged individualism is at fault. It keeps people from wearing masks, prevents them from helping each other, and is downright dangerous.
"Fintech can come out of the shadows" is the title that Wall Street Journal editors gave to Brian Brooks and Charles Calomiris' oped last week. I have not in a long time seen a title that more utterly contradicts the content of the essay. For what they advocate is exactly the opposite: Fintech in chains, hemmed in by the sort of regulatory stranglehold that fintech was created to escape.
Iraq struggled to find opportunities to expel Iranian influence, until Mustafa al-Khadimi. Since taking office in May 2020, al-Khadimi has shown promise in engaging with the United States on foreign policy issues, particularly on Iran.
About 18 months ago we met for a day at Harvard Law School to map out a planned book on the history of the White House counsel’s office, which Bauer had headed during the Obama administration and with which Goldsmith closely worked when he was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration.
Almost lost in election stories about voting by mail, possible election fraud, and drama surrounding the Electoral College is a small, but important, series of initiatives to allow 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote. The question, in one form or another, is on the ballot in California and Colorado, as well as in some municipalities.
by James Jay Carafano, Kiron K. Skinnervia The National Interest
Friday, August 28, 2020
The State Department has scores of talented career officials and political appointees, but it is not enough. Any successful future diplomacy, by this or another administration, will require both greater support from within the State Department and greater interagency backing.
Don Boudreaux, over at CafeHayek, has been posting about his debate with Branko Milanovic over whether middle class stagnation is a myth. I have some thoughts to add to that debate. I’ll do so at the end. But reading Milanovic’s comments reminded me of something he wrote in 1996 that I challenged in an article co-authored with my then colleague Robert McNab and my former student from Hungary Tamas Rozsas.
Every election cycle I report political donations and votes cast by thousands of faculty, staff, and students living in housing on the Stanford campus (zip code 94305). Political donations are reported to the Federal Election Commission and are reproduced on Open Secrets.
The latest EconTalk interview is with one of my favorite people, Bob Chitester. It’s well worth listening to, especially his story about how he, a manager of a small-city PBS station, decided to make the series that made him famous and made Milton Friedman even more famous than he was: Free to Choose
The Hoover Institution hosted A Conversation with Representative Bi-khim Hsiao and Hoover Senior Fellow Larry Diamond on Friday, September 11, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. PDT.
Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses presidential nominee Joe Biden and Hanson thinks Biden is being held hostage by the Democrats as a political strategy.
interview with Lanhee J. Chenvia Crossing Lines with Lanhee Chen
Monday, September 14, 2020
Hoover Institution fellow Lanhee Chen discusses with Zac Moffatt, the digital director of the 2012 Romney campaign and Founder of Targeted Victory, some of the ways that the 2020 campaigns are using digital media and trends to watch for over the last several weeks before the election.
The Hoover Institution Press will publish Crosswinds: The Way of Saudi Arabia, an incisive look at the evolution of Saudi Arabia’s political culture at the turn of the 21st century, written by the late senior fellow and world-renowned scholar of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami.
If the coronavirus pandemic has proved anything it is that most Americans and their leaders are more concerned with their safety than with preserving their freedom.
THE LOSS OF ACADEMIC learning due to schools closing to stem the spread of the coronavirus could cost the U.S. economy between $14 trillion and $28 trillion if they remain closed for in-person learning much longer, according to a new report from economists that evaluates the long-term economic ramifications of remote learning.
"While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called 'systemic racism.' Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities." — Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University.
There is an organized and growing effort to push back against the cancel culture on college campuses. Thousands of conservative and libertarian scholars and academics are standing up and issuing a ringing endorsement of academic freedom.
Michael Smerconish talks with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School about COVID-19 and the re-opening of schools.
