The 2006 midterm election was a huge “blue wave.” As the night passed, those of us watching the results saw race after closely contested race go to the Democratic candidate. It was a brutal night for Republican candidates in both federal and state elections. And it poses a dire warning for the 2026 midterms.
Category: Authors
Tuesday Links – 7 April 2026
- College matters: Students at Ivy League schools and the similarly selective University of Chicago, Duke, Stanford, and MIT together comprise less than half a percent of America’s undergraduate population. Yet their alumni represent more than 12 percent of all Fortune 500 CEOs, 32 percent of all New York Times journalists, and 13 percent of the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the population.
- Jury verdict against big tech is an example of moral dyad – the tendency to treat one side as if it were a robot devoid of feeling and the other side as if it feels pain but has no agency.
- California’s $20 minimum wage: 18,000 fast food jobs lost plus higher prices.
- Steuerle: the president’s budget message is “Budget Lite.”
Monday Links – 6 April 2026
- We have gone a year without a Surgeon General. Has anyone noticed?
- CRFB solution to Social Security’s financial crisis: Limit couple benefits to $100,000 a year.
- Benefits of multi-year health insurance contracts.
- AI is replacing tasks, not jobs: Employment rates for prime-age workers in the U.S. are hovering near all-time highs.
- The wages of nursing: The median annual income for registered nurses is nearly double that of all occupations, at $93,600 compared to $49,500 …. It rises to $132,050 for nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and nurse anesthetists.
- Hooper and Henderson: In defense of ivermectin. Full journal article.
Saturday Links – 4 April 2026
- How China went capitalist.
- “How is it that the working population is increasingly burdened by health insurance premiums and poorer coverage, while the senior population is shielded from cost increases even as Medicare coverage has improved?”
- New Penn-Wharton study shows per-capita federal spending on each age group:
- Seniors: $43,700
- Children and young adults: $4,300.
- There are three types of primary care. The most wasteful: prevention and screening services.
- Californians pay billions of dollars a year in fuel taxes and vehicle fees to maintain the second worst highway system in the nation.