Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter There’s new research into the magnitude of the decline in children’s achievement that resulted from Covid-19 school closures. Thomas Kane, an economist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, says the learning loss is “far greater than most educators and parents seem to realize.” He’s part of a team from the American Institutes for Research, Dartmouth College, Harvard, and NWEA, an educational assessment non-profit. The team is investigating how student learning was affected by the remote…

Kerby Anderson We find it difficult to clearly see inflation increasing in our world because of what could be called “the money illusion.” Steve Forbes and his co-authors talk about this in their new book on inflation. We tend to misinterpret inflation’s distorted prices by believing that they reflect “real world” values. We like to believe the value of our house is increasing each year when often the value is increasing merely because the dollar is decreasing. The dollar may…

Kerby Anderson Although prices have been going up for years and have been increasing even faster this last year, the reason for most of this price inflation is due to a declining dollar. The US was on a gold standard until 1971. The value of the dollar has been eroding each year. A new book by Steve Forbes and others on inflation provides some ways to measure our declining dollar. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the dollar’s purchasing…

Kerby Anderson A reoccurring topic on my radio program is what is called “stakeholder capitalism.” The phrase was promoted by the founder of the World Economic Forum and is used by many business leaders as well as by progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Former Senator Phil Gramm argues in a recent op-ed that “stakeholder capitalism is a war on the Enlightenment.” Proponents argue that big businesses get more than they deserve. But he reminds us that nearly…

Kerby Anderson What should pro-life Christians do after Roe v. Wade is struck down? John Stemberger tries to answer that important question with “5 Pro-Life Strategies for Post-Roe America.” He put his article together after being asked what the legislature would want him to do. Dissatisfied with his original answer, he put together a series of strategies that all of us need to read and apply. First, to care for women and children. A significant change will be the increase…

Kerby Anderson For more than a century, the Supreme Court and Congress have ruled against any policy that discriminates based on race. Therefore, the current attempt by this administration to pursue such a policy seems at odds with our laws, Supreme Court decisions, and the Constitution. Let’s start with the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It prohibited the federal government from modifying property rights and contract rights solely based on race. The 1964 Civil Rights Act further prohibited discrimination based…

Penna Dexter When are America’s established, successful and reliable corporations going to stop generating PR disasters for themselves by wading into woke gender politics? State Farm Insurance Company operates on the franchise model with thousands of agents serving tens of millions of customers. The company is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Until last week, State Farm’s famous claim, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” seemed a pretty good fit. Then the company made headlines when a consumer…

Kerby Anderson Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill that designates November 7 as “Victims of Communism Day.” But there is much more to the legislation than the establishment press has reported. In fact, you might suspect there is more to the bill given the amount of controversy it has generated. Of course, just about anything he has said or done has been controversial to liberal politicians and the press. In April, he signed a bill attempting to prevent students…

Kerby Anderson Jeff Bezos has been supportive of Joe Biden, but even his support only goes so far. That was evident with the recent verbal back-and-forth between the Biden administration and the Bezos administration. Commentators have begun to call the financial empire of Jeff Bezos an administration because the annual revenue for Amazon exceeds the GDP of most European countries. The Biden administration wants to raise taxes on corporations. But then argued that raising taxes would lower inflation. Let’s see…

Kerby Anderson Why are woke ideas and wokeness more prevalent in some institutions and not in others? One way to answer that, according to Dan McLaughlin, is to understand the phenomenon of bundling. You have experienced this before in the consumer market. Companies will bundle multiple products into a single package. Cable companies offer cable, phone, and the Internet in one package. Insurance companies bundle home insurance with car insurance. A problem arises when a company has a virtual monopoly….

Kerby Anderson More than a decade ago, I did an interview with Mark Bauerlein about his book, The Dumbest Generation. Last week we focused our attention on his new book, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up. The ignorance and faulty logic of young people in college has now made its way into the young adult culture. He reminds us that social commentators predicted that the millennial generation would make a significant impact on society because they were coming of age in…