Archive for May, 2009
Obama’s next terrible idea: Cyber Czar
Sunday, May 31st, 2009There is no possible way this can end well. Obama continues to reveal his true authoritarian colors for all to see with his announcement of a new cyber security office to be headed by a "Cyber Czar". Like everything else the government touches, this will be bad for everyone involved ...
Proposals for Baltimore’s vacant lots
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Um, it's called squatting. Libertarianism took care of this issue more than a century ago.
The Chrysler takeover and the rule of law
Monday, May 25th, 2009Joshua Claybourn summarizes why the Obama regime's management of the Chrysler bankruptcy is worse than just more government intervention. It violates the most important aspects of a sound legal system: the sanctity of contracts and the rule of law. Under these long standing bankruptcy laws—enacted and enforced by the federal government ...
Obama stimulus plan fomenting trade war
Sunday, May 24th, 2009The Obama regime's short-sighted but typical "buy American" stimulus policies are beginning to foment a trade war between the United States and other countries. Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting ...
If another recession follows, then the economy never recovered
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Robert Gordon of the Business Cycle Dating Committee says our recession has just ended. He bases his proclamation on some pretty strong precedent, as Donal Luskin explains in the linked article. Gordon looked at the statistics for claims for unemployment benefits during the last several recessions and noticed that, historically, ...
Quote of the day
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009The law? Commander, laws change depending on who's making them. Cardassians one day, Federation the next. But justice is justice. —Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "A Man Alone"
Toy guns aren’t weapons
Saturday, May 16th, 2009I have difficulty believing anyone actually supports zero-tolerance policies and extreme political correctness anymore—anyone, that is, except government bureaucrats. By "extreme" I mean atrocities such as this, which any sensible person would be outraged at: NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. -- The latest case of zero-tolerance at the public schools has a 10-year-old ...
Inequality is fatal?
Thursday, May 14th, 2009In the April 30 issue of Nature, the new book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is reviewed. Some excerpts from the review: Why are our chances of reaching a great age so affected by wealth and status? The obvious ...
Star Trek can’t calculate
Monday, May 11th, 2009I like Star Trek a lot despite its absurdly unrealistic vision of the future of humanity. In what is probably the funniest drama ever made, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Admiral Kirk goes out to lunch with a woman in 20th-century San Francisco, and when the waiter brings the ...
Obama stimulus plan provides bubble for green jobs
Thursday, May 7th, 2009MSNBC reports, "Stimulus plan provides boost to green jobs" and Obama's "green adviser" has said, "Everyone is predicting growth in this sector." See? It's happening! The green bubble is expanding! The Imperial Federal Government is diverting resources from one bubble and pushing them into another. The Obama regime thinks it can ...
Austrian business cycle theory in action
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009The comments in this thread were pretty funny. In response to the video of half-built homes being demolished so that the building company could cut its losses in post-inflationary-boom California, commenter RWW said: A commenter in the YouTube thread says: wouldn't destroying homes help the housing market? the banks can take the ...
Political quizzes
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009I recently took this political-spectrum quiz that actually seemed somewhat worthwhile and substantive, unlike a few quizzes of the same type that I've taken before. The same site has several more political quizzes that I haven't taken and don't plan to, but some of them also looked like they had ...