Free Republic

Joel Kotkin reports from Davos that things are not well with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. Says he: The growing irrelevance of what Adrian Wooldridge has labelled “the progressive aristocracy” can even be seen in the less than enthusiastic press coverage. Politico describes the contemporary Davos crowd as a “smart set” which “sounds dumb.” Then he sticks in the shiv: The grandees don’t have to travel far to see the results of their “reset” as nearby Germany’s industrial machine collapses, with even its last solar panel plant about to go belly-up. But then there was Javier Milei’s rousing speech in...

And Mussolini made the trains run on time . . . On today's Morning Joe, Adrian Wooldridge, a columnist at The Economist, said that unlike the United States, China passes the "good government" test. Wooldridge made his comment in the context of discussing the way various countries have dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, but offered no qualifier as to his "good government" praise of China. To the contrary, Wooldridge said that the advantage of good government is moving from the West "to the East. We have to wake up to this fact that government matters, and that we’re falling behind...

THERE ARE MANY THINGS that can be said against Michael Moore. An odd combination of Howard Stern and Paul Krugman, Moore is the king of all left-wing media, from films to books, who specializes in trashing everything that conservative America holds dear. For Moore, businessmen are always trampling on the faces of the poor, Republicans are always the tools of sinister vested interests, and America is always up to no good in the world. But say this for the pudgy auteur, he has his uses as a timesaver at dinner parties in hyper-partisan America. If the woman next to you...