“We got the business phone put in and I gotta run by Insty-Print to pick up my business cards,” Smitty said. “My wife is working with her uncle at XYZ Insurance to get the workers’ comp policy and our bond.…
Month: February 2003
Zombie airlines are operating among us!
Zombies. The Un-Dead. Few economists ever mention them, but they exist and they are around us. In fact, many Minnesotans take flights to places like Detroit, Fargo and Tokyo without realizing their life is in the hands of one of…
Plowing into storm’s lessons
Like most Minnesotans, my mood has been lifted over the past few days by news stories and photos showing people in the eastern United States struggling with a snowstorm. There is nothing that strokes our sense of Minnesota superiority than…
Alan Greenspan doesn’t owe the president anything
With all the bad things going on, it’s refreshing to come across a news report that makes you spontaneously laugh. That happened to me Thursday when Reuters quoted a White House spokeswoman saying President Bush “has a great deal of…
Ask the economists
What am I, chopped liver or something? I was deeply hurt when I read Monday that 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists and 400 others signed a statement opposing President Bush’s tax proposals. I gladly would have signed it, and I think…
Sure, we’ll help the poor, if they follow our rules
Gov. Pawlenty wants poor Minnesotans to be prevented from using food stamps to buy candy and other junk food. He’s reflecting society’s broader ambivalence about charity: We generally want to help the poor, but we don’t trust people to use…
So many ag TV ads and so few farmers
Here’s another sign this winter is an anomaly: We got our first major snowfall just as the TV commercials for agricultural chemicals were starting up again. In winters when major snowfalls started in October, commercials for weed and insect killers…
Taking a shot at the question of compulsory vaccination
The Minnesota Legislature last week heard poignant testimony from parents who believe their children died of adverse reactions to common and quasi-mandatory vaccinations. Their accounts illustrate one of the harsh ironies of modern medicine. Vaccines that save the lives of…