It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mayor in possession of a problem must be in want of a policy. But not all policies are created equal, and almost none are as silly or as counter-productive as the one that London mayor Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday: Children will be barred from watching shooting events at the 2012 London Olympics… ›› Read on National Review Online

In keeping with that very modern desire to find complex solutions to problems that don’t exist, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed his desire on Monday to put cameras on “every corner of the city” to enforce observance of red lights and, eventually perhaps, speed limits. And so, in the same year that the Los Angeles City Council considered the evidence from its trial run and unanimously voted to do away with L.A.’s camera system, explaining bluntly that the “program did not work as anticipated,” Mayor Bloomberg is blithely seeking to expand New York’s camera network… ›› Read on National Review Online

As we now know from Rahm Emanuel, one should never waste a good crisis. It is in this practical spirit that some in the United Kingdom have leapt onto their soapboxes and, like Cassandra finally released from her curse, happily proclaimed, “I told you so.” On the BBC’s Newsnight show on Monday evening, socialist former mayor Ken Livingstone directly linked the criminality of the thugs in London to the austerity measures introduced by the Conservative-Liberal coalition. (Which, as with most “cuts,” only slow the rate of growth.) The rioting, he said, is “the fault of the government because basically, you go all over London, I was up in Tottenham. Tottenham has had a 9 percent cut nearly in its government grant. The youth centers are closing, people are seeing all the sort of things they used to rely on going.” ›› Read on National Review Online

In the past couple of weeks, as the fight over the debt-ceiling careered toward the breaking point, we heard a familiar refrain: “The system is broken!” It is a sentiment echoed by Paul Krugman in Monday’s New York Times. Krugman argues that what the Republicans have “gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question.” Such doubts will undoubtedly be music to the ears of Tom Friedman, who in 2009 infamously extolled the virtues of a system in which “one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.” Friedman was referring to China, but one cannot help wondering whether he would be as happy as his colleague Krugman to see the Republicans done away with too. That way, America could finally be run by those lucky enough to be “reasonably enlightened.” ›› Read on National Review Online

The “reputation” of the United States, along with its “credit rating and compassion,” has not been damaged by a balanced budget, or by spending within our means, but by a public debt so large that it is incomprehensible to the people in whose name it has been amassed. (Many of whom are incapable of such comprehension precisely because they have not yet been born.) Eyes from around the world were trained on America this week because the consequences of such wildly irresponsible spending and borrowing could have been globally catastrophic. Had a budget surplus been announced, rather than a plan to borrow yet more money, there would have been little interest. America Takes In As Much As It Spends would not make a good summer blockbuster… ›› Read on National Review Online