Sotomayor Update: Starr, Catholics & Groves
The Washington Post reports that Kenneth Starr supports the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. In another section, The Post has a short Q & A with Barbara Perry about the history of Roman Catholics serving on the court. (Of the 110 who have served, only 11 have been Catholics and 5 of them are currently serving as justices.) By the way, according to Politico, Sotomayor has now resigned from the Belizean Grove, a group whose membership is apparently open to women only.
It’s a Heartache
Something fun from the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.
(There’s a message in there somewhere, too ;-)
The Future is Here
This 1967 Philco-Ford video was, all things considered, reasonably accurate about what life in 1999 would be like.
~Randy
Not Another Great Depression
Economic historian Price Fishback posted the first of three guest columns on the Freakonomics blog yesterday:
Over the past couple of decades, every time we have experienced a slowdown in the American economy, the media mentioned the possibility that this is the next Great Depression. Maybe this is a natural response to the relative lack of downturns over the past 20 years. After experiencing a downturn once every three to seven years for nearly two centuries, the U.S. economy has been averaging a downturn about once every nine or ten years since the early 1980’s. As declines in the economy have become rarer, perhaps people have become more sensitive to them.
(Check out the links to his earlier guest posts about the chances that a stimulus package will work and the New Deal-era Home Owners Loan Corporation, too.)
~Randy
Quid pro quo?
Ran across a reference to this interesting letter on Hit & Run today:
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson
Big Spring, TennesseeSir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance. Read the rest of this entry »
Great Depression Lessons Learned?
Harvard economics professor Robert Barro answers some questions posed by The Browser about lessons to be learned from the Great Depression. Sample:
B: So your point is that even in the context of massive expenditures in a wartime situation, the multiplier effect of government spending on the economy is less than 1- i.e. it is not a multiplier at all. In other words, fiscal stimulus does not work. I read your WSJ editorial on this. Is that a good way for the layman to understand your arguments? Also on the “Voodoo Multipliers.”
~Randy
Ambiance 