Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter House Republicans proposed the Limit, Save, Grow Act as an attempt to pair modest reductions in spending growth with approval of an increase in the debt limit. The legislation includes requirements that able-bodied adults work if they are to receive welfare such as food stamps and Medicaid. This is not angry mean Republicans “cutting benefits.” The Wall Street Journal points out that both SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, and Medicaid “were turbocharged in pandemic measures, including higher food stamp benefits…

Kerby Anderson This administration is choking cryptocurrency. That is the conclusion that members of Congress and former prosecutors have mentioned. A few weeks ago, I quoted former member of Congress Barney Frank who alleged that regulators seized Signature Bank (where he served on the board) “to send a message to get people away from crypto.” Katie Haun worked for more than a decade as a federal prosecutor pursuing organized crime, political corruption, and terrorism. In her final years, she focused…

Kerby Anderson Bill Gates recently announced that “the age of AI has begun.” Elon Musk along with more than a thousand industry experts have written an open letter calling for a pause in developing systems that are more powerful than the newly launched ChatGPT. The term artificial intelligence was coined in the late 1950s by researchers who hoped to build a machine that could do anything the human brain could do. Progress was slow for many decades but has expanded…

Kerby Anderson Dr. Leonard Sax holds a PhD in psychology and has been a family doctor for nearly 34 years. He said he never saw a connection between politics and parenting, until now. “Left-of-center parents were no better and no worse parents, on average, than right-of-center parents.” He has now documented that children of politically liberal parents are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety and a lack of sense of life meaning and have substance abuse issues. He…

Kerby Anderson Earlier this month, the Social Security Board of Trustees released its 2023 report on the financial status of the Social Security Trust Fund, While the report did warn that finances had worsened slightly, news reporters rushed to reassure the public. They claimed that the Trust Fund still has about $2.7 trillion and won’t be depleted until 2033. Dr. Merrill Matthews asks a troubling question: “Isn’t the Social Security Trust Fund already broke?” He reminds us that the $2.7…

Kerby Anderson My commentary ten weeks ago on classified documents focused on the government’s problem of over-classification. The US government creates approximately 50 million classified documents each year. One expert I cited explained that there are very high penalties for under-classifying or mishandling classified information. Thus, the default has become, “when in doubt, classify it.” We now have discovered another problem. Too many people have access to classified information. The most recent illustration of that was the arrest of a…

Penna Dexter School choice: an idea whose time has come. Finally. It took Covid school closures that lasted way too long. Students lost ground in reading and, to a greater degree, in math. Remote schooling brought surprises for parents who learned that their kids were being taught to hate their nation because it’s racist and — by the way — so are they. It came to light that schools were aiding and affirming students in adopting transgender identities and intentionally…

Kerby Anderson Mercedes Perez crashed her car into another car on a street in San Antonio. She then jumped out with her gun blazing away at neighbors who came out to see what happened. She killed the other car’s owner and wounded his wife and son before another neighbor grabbed his gun and was able to kill Perez. This was a tragic story but illustrates what most people would consider to be an example of how a “good guy with…

Kerby Anderson “The global discussion about climate change has become quite hysterical.” That is how Bjørn Lomborg begins his commentary on “Life after Climate Change.” He has always said that climate change is real and a man-made phenomenon, but he laments that the catastrophic narrative is drowning out relevant facts about climate change. He provides eight graphs that provide a message that needs to get out to the public. If you have been listening to my commentaries, you have heard…

Kerby Anderson One of the standard clichés surfacing these days when a controversial topic is mentioned, is that we need to have a national conversation about (fill in the blank). Christian Schneider instead says, “We Need a National Conversation about National Conversations.” He is correct. An article in the New York Times years ago noted that the term “national conversation” was already being used three times as much as in previous years. My quick Google search of the phrase brought…

Kerby Anderson What is the future of America’s cities? The question is relevant because of a recent election and a recent article. Two weeks ago today, Chicago voters elected Brandon Johnson as their next mayor. Chicago has many social, economic, and political problems, but as a very progressive politician, Johnson plans to “double down” on these failed policies. Urban problems in many cities are why one writer declared in the Atlantic that Chicago’s dysfunction is evidence that large American cities…