Jim Manzi (political commentator)
Encyclopedia
James "Jim" Manzi (ˈmænzi; born 1963) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 businessman and political commentator. He is currently the chairman and managing director of Applied Predictive Technologies
Applied Predictive Technologies
Applied Predictive Technologies is a software company that provides business analytics software to other businesses, along with support, training, and consulting services for its software. APT's clients include Starbucks, Subway, Royal Bank of Canada, and more than 40 of the Fortune 500 across a...

, a business analytics
Business analytics
Business analytics refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business...

 software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 company, a contributing editor at the National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...

, and a contributor to a variety of blogs.

Education and business

Jim Manzi graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 in 1984 with a B.S.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

. He holds a PHD from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. After college, he worked for AT&T Laboratories
AT&T Laboratories
AT&T Laboratories, Inc. was the research & development division of AT&T Corporation. It was founded in 1925 as Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., following the merger of the research & development divisions of American Telephone & Telegraph and Western Electric.-History:In 1996, most of Bell Labs...

 and at Strategic Planning Associates, which became Mercer Management Consulting and is now a part of Oliver Wyman
Oliver Wyman
Oliver Wyman is an international management consulting firm. Founded in 1984, the firm adopted its current form in May 2007, when Mercer Oliver Wyman joined with Mercer Management Consulting and Mercer Delta to become one firm named Oliver Wyman. Oliver Wyman is headquartered in New York City with...

. He left to found Applied Predictive Technologies
Applied Predictive Technologies
Applied Predictive Technologies is a software company that provides business analytics software to other businesses, along with support, training, and consulting services for its software. APT's clients include Starbucks, Subway, Royal Bank of Canada, and more than 40 of the Fortune 500 across a...

, a statistical
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 business analysis
Business Analysis
Business analysis is the discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy development...

 software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 company, in 1999 with Anthony Bruce and Scott Setrakian, serving as CEO until 2008 and as Executive Chairman thereafter. He is a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...

 and serves on a number of other corporate and non-profit boards
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

.

Political views and commentary

Jim Manzi has written articles for a variety of political publications including the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...

, The Atlantic, and Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...

. He has also contributed to the blogs of those publications and others, such as The American Scene, Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Michael Sullivan is an English author, editor, political commentator and blogger. He describes himself as a political conservative. He has focused on American political life....

's The Daily Dish, and National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

's The Corner. Manzi's writing focuses on science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

, and economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, and he generally advocates a conservative point of view, though with libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 leanings, and has criticized some conservative positions and the current direction of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

. David Brooks
David Brooks (journalist)
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...

 identified him as one of the "reformers" within the Republican Party, and later noted Manzi's National Affairs
National Affairs
National Affairs, Inc. is a U.S. organization which publishes a public-policy quarterly by the same name. It began publishing National Affairs in September 2009, describing itself as "a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society, culture, and political thought...

 article Keeping America's Edge as one of the best magazine essays of 2009. He did not support Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's presidential campaign, though he congratulated Obama after the election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 and praised him as having run a better campaign than Hillary Clinton or John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

.

Specific positions

Manzi has written extensively about climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, which some say manifests as global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

, most prominently in a controversial National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

 cover article in which he argued that conservatives should stop denying global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

 is happening
, which Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...

 attacked. He has said that while climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 may be a real phenomenon, the current evidence does not justify the economic costs required to reduce carbon emissions. In writing about the future of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

, he has argued that the primary challenge for conservatives is to "continue to increase the market orientation of the American economy while helping more Americans to participate in it more equally".

See also

  • Politics of global warming (United States)
    Politics of global warming (United States)
    The politics of global warming is played out at a state and federal level in the United States.-Federal policy:-International law:The United States, although a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, has neither ratified nor withdrawn from the protocol...

  • Media coverage of climate change
    Media coverage of climate change
    Media coverage of climate change has significant effects on public opinion on climate change, as it mediates the scientific opinion on climate change that the global instrumental temperature record shows increase in recent decades and that the trend is caused mainly by human-induced emissions of...

  • Global warming controversy
    Global warming controversy
    Global warming controversy refers to a variety of disputes, significantly more pronounced in the popular media than in the scientific literature, regarding the nature, causes, and consequences of global warming...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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