This semester feels like double the workload of last semester, yet I’m still having fun.

Last night the Churchill Society held a charity date-auction at Ca’Brea in North Hollywood. Chris Carr, my roommate, transplanted the idea from his undergraduate experience. It was a huge, huge success. I’m also pretty sure Chris lost his voice for the next two months from taking bids. The man channeled his inner preacher.

On Wednesday, I was able to watch as Dean Starr hosted Justice Kennedy in a discussion about his role in the Supreme Court. It was part of the annual William French Smith Memorial Lecture series. Last year Justice O’Connor spoke. For some reason, Dean Starr has a lot of connections. It was a great event – Justice Kennedy was entertaining and brilliant.

I am also about to write my first Kaufman Paper (it absolutely deserves capital letters). 30+ pages on the intelligence failures that led to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. It is due in six days.

Finally, my Google Reader is piling up again. Here’s a snippet of what I found interesting this week.

1) Bryan Caplan on means-testing and forced redistribution. This paragraph made a lot of sense to me:

I understand taxing the rich to help the poor.  What I can’t understand is taxing everyone to help everyone.  Means-tested programs like TANF and Medicaid aren’t crazy; they take from Peter to pay Paul.  Universal programs Social Security and Medicare are crazy; they take from Peter to pay Peter.

He also has recommendations on how to mitigate tradition distortions on incentives. David Henderson weighs in as well.

2) Quite a few posts on President Obama’s proposed budget.

3) China is pushing to build military bases in more foreign countries.

4) Another reason to have faith in U.S. universities.

5) More crackdowns on democracy in Iran and Venezuela.

6) This one ties into my Social Policy class with Professor Hawken. It’s about the impact of foreign aid on leader survival. From the abstract: “Donors are more likely to send aid to leaders facing elevated risks of losing power, but targets’ ability to benefit from this assistance is conditioned by regime type and political processes.”

7) How to painlessly balance the budget. A (modest?) proposal.

We’re not in a recession anymore. Tentative GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was at an annualized rate of 5.7%. Third quarter GDP growth was 2.2%.

Note to the optimists (including me): so far we’re in a jobless recovery. Everything is not hunky dory. But positive GDP growth is much preferred to negative growth, if only for the expectation effects on investment and hiring plans.

David Frum recently spoke in Venezuela about what he sees happening in the next ten years. He outlined three problems he sees: trying to keep dual values for a currency, having a budget process without transparency, and having an executive control the legislature.

It’s an interesting read, partly because calling out Hugo Chavez in Venezuela makes me chuckle.

On a more serious note, I really liked this idea on reducing poverty:

Since 1990, more people around the planet have emerged from poverty than at any time in the whole previous history of the human race. They did so not under red flags and with clenched fists, but by buying and selling in the international economy.

Go capitalism.

Tyler Cowen on Haiti:

Very rapidly, President Obama needs to come to terms with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.

That stopped me in my tracks, mainly because Cowen is not prone to exaggeration. Megan McArdle continues that thought:

But in the longer run, what do you do for a country that already had one of the worst-functioning governments in the world?  Half the budget was provided by foreign aid before the earthquake.  For the next few years, we will effectively hold government power there, whether we want to or not, because we’ll probably essentially be providing all of its funding, and can threaten to turn the taps off unless things go as we demand.

What can you do? This GlobalPost article warns against sending anything but cash. Following the tsunami around Indonesia in December of 2004, people sent so much unusable stuff (like medicine with instructions locals couldn’t read) that a lot of it had to be burned. The government had to pay for it.

This blog councils following the ELE rule for giving effectively, which I echo:

E – The organization is established in the region.

L – The organization employs local individuals and organizations.

E – The organization has experience and a positive track record.

Chris Blattman, who I turn to first on international aid issues, suggests an organization called Haiti Partners that his brother helped start with several Haitians. If you’re willing to help with a small donation, I’m positive it wouldn’t go to waist there.

James Fallows contrasts the lives of Americans to those of the Chinese. Even following the recent recession, which was the worst in decades, the American standard of living is much, much higher.

I really liked this paragraph:

The idea of “finally” going to hell is a modest joke too. Through the entirety of my conscious life, America has been on the brink of ruination, or so we have heard, from the launch of Sputnik through whatever is the latest indication of national falling apart or falling behind. Pick a year over the past half century, and I will supply an indicator of what at the time seemed a major turning point for the worse. The first oil shocks and gas-station lines in peacetime history; the first presidential resignation ever; assassinations and riots; failing schools; failing industries; polarized politics; vulgarized culture; polluted air and water; divisive and inconclusive wars. It all seemed so terrible, during a period defined in retrospect as a time of unquestioned American strength. “Through the 1970s, people seemed ready to conclude that the world was coming to an end at the drop of a hat,” Rick Perlstein, the author of Nixonland, told me. “Thomas Jefferson was probably sure the country was going to hell when John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts,” said Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator and presidential candidate. “And Adams was sure it was going to hell when Thomas Jefferson was elected president.”

People have tremendous capacity. We live in the United States. Ignore those who issue hyperbolic claims of ruin on our horizon.