Free Republic

At a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California, MIT Professor Dr. Daniel Nocera announced that a research team had achieved a long -sought-after for goal of artificially copying photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn sunlight into energy, to create electricity easily and cheaply.

With their non-stop utterance of “create new jobs”, politicians and their enablers in the commentariat seemingly suffer from a verbal form of Tourette’s. Though both professions are almost to a man oblivious to the truth that the quickest path to slow job creation lies in attempts to create them, we can at least say their hearts are in the right place. Back in the real world, logic and empirical reality tell us that the best way to create jobs is to ruthlessly destroy them. Producing more with less in the way of human labor input is the definition of productivity,...

Tea Party’s War on America By JOE NOCERA You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took. Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise....

Remember that infamous meeting last October at the Treasury Department, the one where then-Secretary Henry Paulson locked the chief executives of the nation’s nine largest financial institutions in a room, and wouldn’t let them out until they agreed to accept billions of dollars in government bailout money — whether they wanted it or not? O.K., that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I was reminded of that meeting on Thursday night when I was shown a letter that the administration had just sent out calling for yet another big meeting at Treasury with yet another sector of the financial industry....

...By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction. Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news. ... How is the political reaction to the crisis making it worse? Let us count the ways.IT IS DESTROYING VALUE During his testimony on Wednesday, Mr. Liddy...