Joel E Lewis

Policy is about what would make society best (“best” being entirely subjective and open to argument).  Politics is about who is in power and how they share power and the benefits that power brings.  You can argue about policy all you want, but the team that plays better politics makes the policy.  Politics can constrain [...]

Politicians and economists rail against business executives who profit off risky moves, collect big bonuses, and then leave the house to crumble on top of the next guy. One common solution is to have clawback provisions and other deffered compensation. Reading this NYTimes article about how state governments are engaging in shady accounting to balance [...]

I couldn’t agree more: I hate competing against other people directly, so I’d rather simply go around them. via Your College is Not a Technical School | I Will Teach You To Be Rich. If you haven’t read his blog yet, start now – its usually insightful and always entertaining.

Most popular posts so far: 3. College Football Means Business 2. A Look inside the Tea Party 1. Volcker Agrees with Me

The Economist has a special report on how Data and the tools and technologies we use to understand are changing our lives at an accelerating pace.  For example: Google applies this principle of recursively learning from the data to many of its services, including the humble spell-check, for which it used a pioneering method that [...]

Imagine a world where when you leave a job, instead of telling you to pack your desk, they tell you to: … deposit your ideas at the door before passing through the brain scanner to make sure you aren’t taking any ideas with you. And don’t forget to leave any thoughts you brought with you [...]

Good overview on what buzz is, what it isn’t, and what to watch about it.  Most perspective shifting part for me: Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter? A: It already is: While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to [...]

Interesting talk about the technology revolution’s ability to remake government, from the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. What really strikes me looking around the world today is that information technology has remade retail and remade media consumption, but there are still huge industries it hasn’t begun to touch – Finance, Health Care, Energy, Education, and [...]

Another sign of mainstream recognition of political polarization in the United States – From the Economist: The supermajority rule [60 votes in the Senate] would be no bad thing if it forced the majority party to reach out to the other side. The Democrats themselves have often been glad of it, for example to block [...]

The NYTimes has a must read article on the tea party movement.  For me there were three key takeaways: The Tea Party movement is redefining and enlarging the radical right, which could have significant impact in the primaries. People strongly believe ideas that to put it bluntly, I find completely nuts. This movement is being [...]