September 2010
2 tags
Military Trains for 2nd Civil War? →
Pot Arrests Up, Pot Use Unchanged →
[T]here is no obvious relationship between marijuana arrests and marijuana use. Although arrests have more than doubled since the early 1990s, the number of pot smokers was no lower in 2008 than it was in 1990 and perhaps somewhat higher, even allowing for methodological changes that seem to have boosted self-reported drug use after 2001.
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California rewards child molester →
California is so broke it is being compared to Greece. But the Orange County Board of Supervisors gave away 4.3 million dollars [in a back room settlement] to an illegal Mexican alien, who is also a child molester, [for his having been beaten by other inmates while serving his sentence].
Gun Sales Up, Violent Crimes Down →
Trifle with the government? Just ask Jacob Maged →
The Tea Party and the Value of Craziness →
[T]ea partiers, who may not all agree on gay marriage or birthright citizenship, are united behind a couple of sound goals: curtailing the cost of government and refusing to live at the expense of future generations. Those are goals that, for eight years, had many rhetorical supporters in Washington, but few authentic champions. …
The tea partiers were dismayed to see these [so-called...
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Los Angeles: Home of the $5 Cup of Coffee, $2... →
Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel audits ARRA stimulus spending by two important city agencies and finds that the American people have spent $111,450,000 to retain or create a mere 54 jobs in La La Land.
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Never Yield Your Rights →
U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions. Ultimately, the cops let me go, because there was nothing they could do. A returning U.S. citizen has an obligation to provide proof of citizenship, and the officer has legitimate reasons to investigate if she suspects the veracity of the citizenship claim. A U.S. citizen returning with goods also has an obligation to complete a written ...
Interventionism Left and Right →
When President Obama announced a new $50 billion stimulus plan Labor Day weekend, conservatives scoffed, and rightfully so. Who does this guy think he’s fooling? After a $700 billion dollar TARP bailout, the auto-manufacturer bailout, and an $800 billion dollar stimulus, does this president actually think a comparatively measly $50 billion is successfully going to turn around an economy where...
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ObamaCare: a Downward Spiral of Rising Costs and... →
There's No Need to Get Personal →
Conservatives have an opening to make an uncluttered argument—using the empirical data of a terrible economy—that less spending, less regulation, and less government is the way to create more prosperity. Dragging Third World colonialism into it—and I can say this with near certitude—is a bad idea on a number of levels.
Krugman Wrong, Again →
Stay tuned for more shocking news regarding tomorrow morning’s sunrise and the defecation habits of grizzly bears.
NY Times Spin →
Almost every day, something in the NY Times makes me happy to no longer work at ABC News.
At ABC my colleagues acted as if they were steeped in the Times, like tea bags. They got their entire view of the world from the Times. Anything different was “wrong” or “right wing.” It drove me crazy. Today, I’d have to be institutionalized, were I still at ABC, because the Times is...
The Smoking Ruin Solution →
The Something-for-nothing Quandary →
As the price of something drops, the demand increases. For a growing share of Americans, government services are effectively “free,” so they are demanding even more and policymakers are giving it to them.
As the following chart shows, federal payments to individuals as a share of the economy have reached an all-time high after seventy years of steady growth:
George Bernard Shaw said that...
Lessons of the Koran's non-burning →
Jones’s threat to burn the Koran was ugly and offensive. It deserved to be reviled as an affront to civility, to American values, and to the millions of good Muslims who stand with us in the war against the radicals. But it is never right for the president or his aides to pressure US citizens into silencing themselves or stifling their liberties in order to conciliate violent zealots. If...
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Money Is Not What Schools Need →
Don’t be fooled by “greedy government officials and teachers unions.”
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Cuba Needs A Swift Transition Toward Capitalism →
The Money of Fools →
From Part I (rent control, gun control, war, social justice):
Seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that words are wise men’s counters, but they are the money of fools.
That is as painfully true today as it was four centuries ago. Using words as vehicles to try to convey your meaning is very different from taking words so literally that the words use you and confuse you.
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