Structuralism

A couple people have asked me about my response to prop 8 passing in CA.  I am making an effort not to delve into particular partisan issues and instead focus on higher, meta-issues.  Thus I will point out what I find most interesting in this.
There was $75 million dollars spent on pro-8 advertising.  This, of [...]

Great tactic used against the IRA in the Washington Post::
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow recommended they operate a laundry [...]

Interesting comments from Naked Capitalism. I had wondered what the new influx of T-Bills would do, but here is a better analysis than mine.
Bailout Bill To Make Money Market Liquidity Crunch Worse?
The bailout, I mean rescue plan, can be seen as nothing less than a new Ponzi scheme. It works like this:
Fed as only [...]

I have always doubted that emails or letters to congressmen made any difference. However, on the bailout issue, I actually contacted all of my representatives. Looks like I am not alone. See the following except from a congressional staffer.
“But, on this issue, the calls and e-mails are making a difference. Members and [...]

While I dislike bailouts on principle, the current proposal for buying up bad loans is possibly the worst idea in this entire crisis.  We will be dealing with the negative repercussions of this for decades.  The Washington Post has a great op-ed on better options.
Charles Calomiris of Columbia University and Douglas Elmendorf of the Brookings [...]

Bob Barr is making a great effort to scorch the electoral earth in Texas. He asserts that both the Democrats and Republicans failed to submit their candidates for inclusion on the ballot before the cut-off date specified in state law.  He is suing the state for including them on the ballot despite that fact.  This [...]

Thomas Barnett is a strategic planner for the Pentagon who has some amazing thoughts on the structure of the military vs the nature of the challenges we face. He presents a very compelling argument for a straightforward structure for the military that inherently focuses the right people on the right problems. Highly recommended [...]

I may be speaking on a panel about Open Source in Government next month, and it got me thinking about the issue again. I realized that the interesting question for government is not really about open source vs commercial software, but about open data and open apis.
Open source has two elements to it - [...]