Petition
supporting Opera House boss surges past 265,000 signatures
LANDMARK
BATTLE:
It’s not often that the public rallies around a public servant, but an online
petition in support of Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron has passed a
quarter of a million signatures.
◾ Michelle
Grattan: The
uncivil Mr Jones and the Opera House stoush
Nunes' Bee stings
It's President Trump vs. the national media, writ small.
Trump's stand-in to slam journalism in this case is Rep. Devin
Nunes, recused and later un-recused GOP head of the House Intelligence
Committee. Nunes, when not under ethics investigation,
is in charge of House efforts to get to the bottom of Russia's election
interference in the 2016 elections. However, Nunes has sought to shield Trump —
and he once implied to GOP fundraisers that fellow Congressional Republicans will have to clear Trump if Jeff Sessions or
Robert Mueller do not.
Facing his toughest re-election battle ever, Nunes chose a
target: The Fresno Bee, the biggest paper in his district. He launched
television advertisements over the summer against the paper, and now he's upped
the ante. His campaign has sent a glossy magazine out to voters in the
district, telling them they cannot trust the McClatchy newspaper, which has
dared to ask Nunes if he plans to have any town meetings again in his district.
(To see the magazine in its entirety, click here.)
The language of the Nunes mailer and the cartoon figures it
uses — bees that appear to be drinking Kool-Aid — were so
strong that they invited ridicule.
"Hey Devin Nunes," tweeted the local chapter of the Democratic
Socialists of America, "the Fresno Bee isn't socialist — we should know.
We're actual socialists!"
Nunes has refused to sit for an interview with the Bee since a
February session when he made it clear he did not like its
questions, the Bee's editor, Joe Kieta, told me.
"Not speaking with The Bee," Kieta said, "seems
to be a calculated decision on his part. But that doesn't mean we won't cover
him or his campaign, which is relevant to The Bee's audience and is of intense
interest. He has taken issue with some of our coverage, but we stand completely
behind our work. We're just doing our jobs as journalists and telling stories
and revealing facts about Nunes and the other candidates."
Bee columnist Marek Warszawski responded by telling readers that the Bee
and the McClatchy Washington bureau are producing the stories that Nunes wants
to hide. Warszawski wrote that each day, reporters pass a framed
reminder in the office that reads: “Our mission: to inform and advocate for the
enhancement of life in the Valley.”
"You don’t want people to know about the limo rides, fancy restaurants,
five-star hotels and courtside seats at Boston Celtics games,"
Warszawski wrote, addressing Nunes. "You don’t want to be constantly
reminded it’s been eight years (!) since you attended a public forum in your
district. Or circulate that grinning photo of you and the guy flashing a white-supremacist sign."
Not to mention the winery he partly owns getting sued after hosting a cocaine- and prostitute-fueled yacht
party for its biggest investors, all men, who drew straws over
which sex worker to hire. Warszawski said the paper would have written about
the lawsuit against the winery whether Nunes or his political
opponent had a stake in the business. Also, it was Esquire, and not the Bee,
that reported that Nunes' efforts to promote himself based on his family farm
were a myth: His family sold the California farm more than a decade ago and moved to another
spread in Iowa.
Lauren Gustus, who edits the Sacramento Bee and heads the
newspaper chain's western papers, backed up the Fresno reporters in a tweet.
Citing Warszawski's column, she wrote: "The Fresno Bee was here long
before Nunes. And it will be here long after."
Root cause of the major Russian intelligence failure.
Root cause of the major Russian intelligence failure.
Why Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize in economics
It is hard to do better than Alex’s video on Romer,
pretty much definitive and Romer liked it too. Most importantly, Romer
won the Prize for seeing how the non-rival nature of ideas can boost
ongoing and indeed “endogenous” economic growth. Romer also showed
mathematically that this process of growth is bounded, namely that it
does not explode without limit, and that the associated mathematical
models were tractable. Previously, economists had feared that
increasing returns to scale models might be impossible to work with.
See the top two links here, for the 1989 and 1990 pieces, with the third piece listed, from 1994, being Romer’s easier to read summary of the work.
David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery, is the book on Romer for the ages, a truly splendid creation on both the science and the person. Romer, by the way, is the son of Roy Romer, former Colorado governor and famous builder of airports. I believe this later influenced Paul’s interest in the importance of economic growth.
Over time, increasing returns models are seen as less descriptive of growth than perhaps they were in the 1990s. The growth rates of many countries have been stagnant or even falling, rather than rising. Nonetheless, for understanding how ideas boost growth, and in cumulative fashion, Romer’s work is essential. If you are wondering “which economist has done the most to help us explain Silicon Valley,” you would turn first to Romer.
This Prize is not a surprise at all, and it has been expected, sooner or later, for many years. (Though I did not think it would come this year. Trump talks so much about his role in boosting economic growth, I feared the Nobel Committee would not at this point in time wish to feed into that rhetoric. I am glad to see they did not hesitate!)
Here is Romer on Twitter. Here is Romer on Wikipedia. Here is Paul’s blog. He is now at NYU, but spent much of his career at Stanford. Previous MR coverage of Romer is quite extensive. Here is the Prize Committee citation, excellent as always. Here are his three podcasts with Russ Roberts. Here is Joshua Gans on Paul. Here is a Sebastian Mallaby profile of Romer.
Romer also in 2000 started and ran a successful business, Aplia, which revolutionized on-line education. In the context of economics, Aplia is most notable for enabling curve-shifting exercises and the like to be done through an electronic portal. It was later purchased by Cengage. So like Nordhaus, Romer also has been a doer, including in the private sector. Yet Paul once tweeted to Ben Bernanke that “Rich is over-rated.” It is too hard to convert money into satisfaction.
Romer recently served as Chief Economist at the World Bank, with a somewhat complicated tenure. You can find numerous articles about this in the media.
Romer has been a central figure behind the notion of “charter cities,” namely an economic region but with external or possibly foreign governance, so as to enforce the rule of law and spur economic growth. The charter cities idea comes rather naturally out of Romer’s work on the economics of growth. Think of Romer as asking “which is the non-rival public good which can be extended at very low cost?”, and wondering if that might be law. Here is his famous TED talk on charter cities. Here is an interview with Romer on charter cities. He was originally slated to work with the Honduran government on charter cities, though he dropped out of the project in 2012. Here is Paul’s account of what happened.
Amihai Glazer and I once wrote a comment on Romer, on his article with Barro on ski-lift pricing, which Glazer and I saw as closely connected to Buchanan’s theory of clubs. Romer later credited this comment with inducing him to rethink what the notion of rivalry really means in economics, and leading to his two best-known pieces on economic growth; see the David Warsh book for more detail.
Like myself, Romer is an avid fan of the guitarist Clarence White, and several times we have traded favorite Clarence White videos by email. Romer believes (correctly) that the role of Clarence White in the success of the Byrds is very much underrated, and furthermore he is a big fan of White’s early work with the Kentucky Colonels. Here is more on Romer’s excellent taste in music, recommended.
Romer also has a well-known survey piece on the importance of human capital for economic growth; human capital of course is where new ideas come from.
Here is a short Romer piece from 2016, suggesting his own work on growth implies “conditional optimism” on climate change, but not “complacent optimism.” This ties together his work with that of Nordhaus.
Romer is also an advocate of regularizing the spelling of the English language, so as to make it more phonetic. He believes this would boost the rate of economic growth, and it ties in with some of his work on economic integration and growth. If English is an easier language to learn, the global economy as a whole in effect becomes larger, and we might expect the rate of ideas generation to rise.
Here is Romer on Jupyter vs. Mathematica. Here is Romer on corruption in Greece, he has very broad interests. Here is Romer on TARP and banking reform. Here is Romer’s recent critique of macroeconomics.
Romer believes (and I concur) that the word “and” is used too much in writing, and in particular scholarly writing. From the FT:
David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery, is the book on Romer for the ages, a truly splendid creation on both the science and the person. Romer, by the way, is the son of Roy Romer, former Colorado governor and famous builder of airports. I believe this later influenced Paul’s interest in the importance of economic growth.
Over time, increasing returns models are seen as less descriptive of growth than perhaps they were in the 1990s. The growth rates of many countries have been stagnant or even falling, rather than rising. Nonetheless, for understanding how ideas boost growth, and in cumulative fashion, Romer’s work is essential. If you are wondering “which economist has done the most to help us explain Silicon Valley,” you would turn first to Romer.
This Prize is not a surprise at all, and it has been expected, sooner or later, for many years. (Though I did not think it would come this year. Trump talks so much about his role in boosting economic growth, I feared the Nobel Committee would not at this point in time wish to feed into that rhetoric. I am glad to see they did not hesitate!)
Here is Romer on Twitter. Here is Romer on Wikipedia. Here is Paul’s blog. He is now at NYU, but spent much of his career at Stanford. Previous MR coverage of Romer is quite extensive. Here is the Prize Committee citation, excellent as always. Here are his three podcasts with Russ Roberts. Here is Joshua Gans on Paul. Here is a Sebastian Mallaby profile of Romer.
Romer also in 2000 started and ran a successful business, Aplia, which revolutionized on-line education. In the context of economics, Aplia is most notable for enabling curve-shifting exercises and the like to be done through an electronic portal. It was later purchased by Cengage. So like Nordhaus, Romer also has been a doer, including in the private sector. Yet Paul once tweeted to Ben Bernanke that “Rich is over-rated.” It is too hard to convert money into satisfaction.
Romer recently served as Chief Economist at the World Bank, with a somewhat complicated tenure. You can find numerous articles about this in the media.
Romer has been a central figure behind the notion of “charter cities,” namely an economic region but with external or possibly foreign governance, so as to enforce the rule of law and spur economic growth. The charter cities idea comes rather naturally out of Romer’s work on the economics of growth. Think of Romer as asking “which is the non-rival public good which can be extended at very low cost?”, and wondering if that might be law. Here is his famous TED talk on charter cities. Here is an interview with Romer on charter cities. He was originally slated to work with the Honduran government on charter cities, though he dropped out of the project in 2012. Here is Paul’s account of what happened.
Amihai Glazer and I once wrote a comment on Romer, on his article with Barro on ski-lift pricing, which Glazer and I saw as closely connected to Buchanan’s theory of clubs. Romer later credited this comment with inducing him to rethink what the notion of rivalry really means in economics, and leading to his two best-known pieces on economic growth; see the David Warsh book for more detail.
Like myself, Romer is an avid fan of the guitarist Clarence White, and several times we have traded favorite Clarence White videos by email. Romer believes (correctly) that the role of Clarence White in the success of the Byrds is very much underrated, and furthermore he is a big fan of White’s early work with the Kentucky Colonels. Here is more on Romer’s excellent taste in music, recommended.
Romer also has a well-known survey piece on the importance of human capital for economic growth; human capital of course is where new ideas come from.
Here is a short Romer piece from 2016, suggesting his own work on growth implies “conditional optimism” on climate change, but not “complacent optimism.” This ties together his work with that of Nordhaus.
Romer is also an advocate of regularizing the spelling of the English language, so as to make it more phonetic. He believes this would boost the rate of economic growth, and it ties in with some of his work on economic integration and growth. If English is an easier language to learn, the global economy as a whole in effect becomes larger, and we might expect the rate of ideas generation to rise.
Here is Romer on Jupyter vs. Mathematica. Here is Romer on corruption in Greece, he has very broad interests. Here is Romer on TARP and banking reform. Here is Romer’s recent critique of macroeconomics.
Romer believes (and I concur) that the word “and” is used too much in writing, and in particular scholarly writing. From the FT:
Circulating a draft of the upcoming World Development Report, Mr Romer warned against bank staff trying to pile their own pet projects and messages into the report. The tendency, he argued, had diluted the impact of past reports and led to a proliferation of “ands”.I have always found Romer to be extremely pleasant and open in my interactions with him, and I am very pleased to have interviewed him (no transcript or audio available) at a summer ideas festival (Kent Presents) the year before this one. The crowd found him very open and engaging.
“Because of this type of pressure to say that our message is ‘this, and this, and this too, and that …’ the word ‘and’ has become the most frequently used word in Bank prose,” he complained in an email.
“A WDR, like a knife, has to be narrow to penetrate deeply,” he added. “To drive home the importance of focus, I’ve told the authors that I will not clear the final report if the frequency of ‘and’ exceeds 2.6%.”
