The Day after Tomorrow: Why This Election Won’t Change Anything

There is a tremendous amount of excitement and exuberance about the American elections tomorrow, but the trends, and recent history in particular, indicate that this excitement is perhaps undeserved. Over the last half century, the United States government has become less and less capable of actually governing the country and doing things, and there is no better example of the trend in action than what the last two years of divided government have produced. Of course, these are just empty assertions without evidence, but evidence we have indeed.

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Misconceptions: “The Election is a Dead Heat”

I’m not one to get mired in election cycle coverage often, but then I saw “news” stories like this one claiming that the presidential election is actually close. This is not true. Barack Obama is almost certainly going to win this election, and his margin in the electoral college is probably going to be more than a couple of states large. Here’s why.

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Romney and Disaster Relief

In the wake of the recent hurricane, new attention is being paid to this clip from the primary debates in which Romney condemns federal funding for disaster relief:

While the hurricane has drawn attention to this quip, its intellectual value, positively or negatively, is independent of this particular situation and deserves to be judged on its own merits, and that is precisely what today’s post is all about–the merits of the notion that the federal government should do less.

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Misconceptions: “Obama has Vastly Increased the Size of the Government”

It is a commonly held belief that the Obama administration has been spending money all over the place, increasing the size of the government and the number of people it employs. There is a bit of a problem with this, though–it is factually inaccurate. Today I intend to illustrate and prove that this belief is not in line with reality.

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The War on PBS

During the recent presidential debate, Mitt Romney said the following:

I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like you too — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for.

Since the debate, the left has made Romney out to be someone who hates Sesame Street and PBS, and the right has made Romney out to be someone who takes spending cuts seriously. Both completely miss the point. This statement from Romney actually tells you quite a lot about the candidate. This is a statement with far-ranging implications that matter a great deal more than even PBS’ defenders realise.

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