Category: Government

Conservatives Still Read Books, Despite Book Industry Slump

(p. B1) Of all the headaches of her current book tour — the declining sales, the constant travel, the interviews that generated unkind headlines about her family’s wealth — this one may sting Hillary Rodham Clinton the most: Her memoir, “Hard Choices,” has just been toppled from its spot on the best-seller list by a sensational Clinton account by her longtime antagonist Edward Klein.
. . .
. . . : the conservative book-buying public, . . . has continued to generate sales despite the industry’s overall slump, . . .

For the full story, see:
AMY CHOZICK and ALEXANDRA ALTER. “A Provocateur’s Book on Clinton Overtakes Her Memoir in Sales.” The New York Times (Fri., July 11, 2014): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date JULY 10, 2014, and has the title “A Provocateur’s Book on Hillary Clinton Overtakes Her Memoir in Sales.”)

Future Pope Showed an Interest in the “Higher Forms of Piracy”

(p. 158) A decade older than his apostolic secretary Poggio, Baldassare Cossa had been born on the small volcanic island of Procida, near Naples. His noble family held the island as its personal possession, the hidden coves and well-defended fortress evidently well suited to the principal family occupation, piracy. The occupation was a dangerous one: two of his brothers were eventually captured and condemned to death. Their sentence was commuted, after much pulling of strings, to imprisonment. It was said by his enemies that the young Cossa participated in the family business, owed to it his lifelong habit of wakefulness at night, and learned from it his basic assumptions about the world.
Procida was far too small a stage for Baldassare’s talents. Energetic and astute, he early displayed an interest in what we might call higher forms of piracy. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Bologna–in Italy it was legal studies rather than theology that best prepared one for a career in the Church–where he obtained doctorates in both civil and canon law. At his graduation ceremony, a colorful affair in which the successful candidate was conducted in triumph through the town, Cossa was asked what he was going to do now. He answered,” To be Pope.”

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

“The Metric System Can Be Our Operating System Without Being Our Interface”

(p. C6) The outcome was perhaps foreshadowed, as Mr. Marciano points out, when President Ford, using a customary unit, noted that American industries were “miles ahead” when it came to adopting the metric system.
Mr. Marciano tells his story more or less without editorializing, until the end. Surveying the centuries of fights over measurement, he finishes on a rather intriguing point: Standardization no longer matters that much.
. . .
. . . , with the computerization of life, we don’t have to worry about converting from one measurement to another; our software does this for us. We can still speak in pounds or feet, even if everything in the world of manufacturing and technology is really, at bottom, done in the metric system. In the evocative terminology of Mr. Marciano, “the metric system can be our operating system without being our interface.”

For the full review, see:
SAMUEL ARBESMAN. “Liters and Followers; Gerald Ford once proudly declared the country was ‘miles ahead’ in converting to the metric system.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 2, 2014): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 1, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Whatever Happened to the Metric System?’ by John Bemelmans Marciano; Gerald Ford once proudly declared the country was ‘miles ahead’ in converting to the metric system.” )

The book being reviewed is:
Marciano, John Bemelmans. Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2014.

Rollin King Found Legal Way to Avoid Fed’s Regulations

(p. 25) Rollin W. King, a co-founder of Southwest Airlines, the low-cost carrier that helped to change the way Americans travel, died Thursday [June 26, 2014] in Dallas. He was 83.
. . .
The concept for Southwest came to Mr. King when he noticed that businessmen in Texas were willing to charter planes instead of paying the high fares of the domestic airlines.
At the time that Mr. King first proposed the idea to Mr. Kelleher over drinks, the federal government regulated the fares, schedules and routes of interstate airlines, and the mandated prices were high.
Competitors like Texas International Airlines, Braniff International Airways and Continental Airlines waged a protracted legal battle before Southwest could make its first flight. By not flying across state borders, Southwest was able to get around prices set by the Civil Aeronautics Board.

For the full obituary, see:
MICHAEL CORKERY. “Rollin King, 83, Pilot Who Helped Start Southwest Airlines.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., June 29, 2014): 25.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date June 28, 2014, and has the title “Rollin King, Texas Pilot Who Helped Start Southwest, Dies at 83.”)

Notaries Were Useful in a Contractual Society

(p. 111) Notaries were not figures of great dignity, but in a contractual and intensely litigious culture, they were legion. The Florentine notary Lapo Mazzei describes six or seven hundred of them crowded into (p. 112) the town hall, carrying under their arms bundles of documents, ” each folder thick as half a bible.” Their knowledge of the law enabled them to draw up local regulations, arrange village elections, compose letters of complaint. Town officials who were meant to administer justice often had no clue how to proceed; the notaries would whisper in their ears what they were meant to say and would write the necessary documents. They were useful people to have around.

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Human Freedom and Dignity Lived in Florence

(p. 125) Ancona was, like Florence, an independent commune, and Salutati was urging its citizens to revolt against the papal government that had been imposed upon them: ” Will you always stand in the darkness of slavery? Do you not consider, O best of men, how sweet liberty is? Our ancestors, indeed the whole Italian race, fought for five hundred years . . . so that liberty would not be lost .” The revolt he was trying to incite was, of course, in Florence’s strategic interest, but in attempting to arouse a spirit of liberty, Salutati was not being merely cynical. He seems genuinely to have believed that Florence was the heir to the republicanism on which ancient Roman greatness had been founded. That greatness, the proud claim of human freedom and dignity, had all but vanished from the broken, dirty streets of Rome, the debased staging ground of sordid clerical intrigues, but it lived, in Salutati’s view, in Florence. And he was its principal voice.

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)

U.S. Constitution Reflects Lockean Natural Rights

(p. A13) Over the past three decades, Richard A. Epstein has repeatedly argued–with analytical rigor and astonishing erudition–that governments govern best when they limit their actions to protecting liberty and property. He is perhaps best known for “Takings,” his 1995 book on the losses that regulations impose on property owners. Of late, he has exposed the flaws of a government-administered health system.
In “The Classical Liberal Constitution,” Mr. Epstein takes up the political logic of our fundamental law. The Constitution, he says, reflects above all John Locke’s insistence on protecting natural rights–rights that we possess simply by virtue of our humanity. Their protection takes concrete form in the Constitution by restricting the federal government to specific, freedom-advancing and property-protecting tasks, such as establishing a procedurally fair justice system, minting money as a stable repository of value, preserving a national trade zone among the states, and, not least, guarding the rights listed in the Bill of Rights.

For the full review, see:
JOHN O. MCGINNIS. “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘The Classical Liberal Constitution,’ by Richard A. Epstein; Our understanding of the Constitution lost its way when we embraced the idea that rights are created by a benevolent state.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., March 23, 2014): A13.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 23, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘The Classical Liberal Constitution,’ by Richard A. Epstein; Our understanding of the Constitution lost its way when we embraced the idea that rights are created by a benevolent state.”)

The book under review is:
Epstein, Richard A. The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

The Vagueness and Regulatory Discretion of Dodd-Frank Is “a Recipe for Cronyism”

(p. 218) Aaron Steelman has an “Interview” with John Cochrane. On Dodd-Frank: “I think Dodd-Frank repeats the same things we’ve been trying over and over again that have failed, in bigger and bigger ways. . . . The deeper problem is the idea that we just need more regulation–as if regulation is something you pour into a glass like water–not smarter and better designed regulation. Dodd-Frank is pretty bad in that department. It is a long and vague law that spawns a mountain of vague rules, which give regulators huge discretion to tell banks what to do. It’s a recipe for cronyism and for banks to game the system to limit competition.” On how to stop bailing out large financial institutions: “You have to set up the system ahead of time so that you either can’t or won’t need to conduct bailouts. Ideally, both. . . . The worst possible system is one in which everyone thinks bailouts are coming, but the government in fact does not have the legal authority to bail out.” . . . Econ Focus, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Third Quarter 2013, pp. 34-38. https://www.richmondfed
.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2013/q3/pdf/interview.pdf.

Source:
Taylor, Timothy. “Recommendations for Further Reading.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 235-42.
(Note: italics, and first two ellipses, are in original; the last ellipsis is added.)

Salutati Defended the Independence of Florence

(p. 124) The independence of Florence–the fact that it was not a client of another state, that it was not dependent on the papacy, and that it was not ruled by a king, a tyrant, or a prelate but governed by a body of its own citizens–was for Salutati what most mattered in the world. His letters, dispatches, protocols, and manifestos, written on behalf of the ruling priors of Florence, are stirring documents, and they were read and copied throughout Italy.

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

“The Lone Commando Who Answers to No One and Breaks Rules to Save Patients Is No Longer a Viable Job Description”

(p. D5) A keen sense of loss permeates “Code Black,” an affecting love letter from a young doctor to his hospital. Over the years, plenty of similar romances have been immortalized in book form, but this may be the first to play out as a documentary, and is surely the first to emerge from our newly reformed health care climate. You’d think you’d be in for some celebration.
But not in the least. In fact, among all its familiar themes, the film’s most striking is the profound sense of estrangement between the young doctors on the screen and all the recent efforts at improving the health care system. The spirit that brought them to medicine and keeps them there, they say over and over, was never even part of the national discussion.
. . .
. . . , as their department chairman points out, the day of the cowboy doctor is over; the lone commando who answers to no one and breaks rules to save patients is no longer a viable job description. Newly smothered in paperwork and quality control, many of these young doctors grieve for a self-image that has ridden off into the sunset.

For the full review, see:
ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.. “Saving Lives and Pushing Paper.” The New York Times (Tues., July 1, 2014): D5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JUNE 30, 2014.)