…has gone from The Nation to Cato. That should make for some interesting economics discussions around the water cooler.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Why Government Can’t Run A Business
This isn’t really news, of course, but apparently, the lesson has to be relearned over and over.
I heard an interview a couple days ago with the Democrat who’s planning to challenge Chris Dodd in the primary, and he pointed out that he had started and managed several successful businesses, whereas Dodd had done nothing but be a politician his entire life. I wonder what he thinks of the Democrat president and vice president…, neither of whom has run so much as a lemonade stand? Or maybe Obama did when he was a kid, and his communist mother subsidized it?
A Bill Of Federalism
This is long overdue, I think. I’d sure like to see it go somewhere.
The People Have Spoken
“In talking to different organizations that did focus groups and polling throughout the process and also organizations that did exit polling afterwards, it was really clear that voters were giving us a very specific message– This is too complicated. We don’t want to vote on it. We are fatigued with the number of elections we’ve had especially special elections and we want you to go back to Sacramento and resolve this.”
The problem, of course, with this self-serving theory, is that it doesn’t explain the single “Yes” vote to deprive these looters of their pay raises if they can’t balance the budget. I’m going to go with Occam here — the California voters are fed up with spending and taxes. I know that I was when I lived there, and that was five years ago. It’s only gotten worse since.
Related bonus: another good reason that newspapers are dying.
How About That Net Spending Cut?
I continue to be amazed that people think that this president is honest, when there is such a huge ongoing gap between words and deeds. Who was foolish enough to believe that he would actually cut the federal budget? Of course, as was the case with many of his campaign promises, I assume that his supporters just assumed and hoped that he was lying.
Journalism, Then And Now
I think, sadly, that Mickey is right:
I had a revealing argument with a politically sophisticated friend–call him “Max”– when the “game changer” charge first surfaced. Max’s argument: Suppose it were a scandal sufficiently big to sink Obama. Any red-blooded Times reporter would be proud to publish it and tack Obama’s scalp to the wall. To have taken down a presidential nominee–that would be a professional achievement, maybe a Pulitzer. They’d be high-fiving in the newsroom.
I think my friend is right about the culture of the newsroom–about 45 years ago. As for today, I think he’s living in a dreamworld. Even if the Times had published such a story, Times reporters would certainly not have high-fived the colleague who’d cost Obama the election. Not after two terms of Bush. And I have no faith the paper would even have published it (before allowing the reporter to slink out of the building). In part, that’s because I have no faith that I’d publish it. The old adversarial ethic–I play my role and let the system take care of the moral consequences–rightly went mostly out the window with the ascension of the Sixties cohort.
Yes, the cohort that thinks it won the Vietnam war (not the one to keep South Vietnam to go communist, but rather the one at home against the Amerikkkan fascist pigs who thought that not going communist was a good idea). And now they work to make sure that America never again wins a war, and that people who favor free minds and free markets never win elections.
Lileks Versus Mastercard
…and creeping, creepy ecofascism:
Isn’t it interesting how Dad looks like the sort of delayed-adolescent types most likely to be already concerned about these things, and spending his day working on developing websites for sustainability, hosted on servers powered by methane captured from pig excreta? For that matter, who would like this ad? Wives who regard their husbands as overgrown boys in need of the Moral Guidance of those who will inherit the earth, perhaps…
…One more thing: if the kid didn’t learn these steps to righteousness at home, where did he get them?
The state knows best.
Where’s My Flying Car?
And what happened to my space colonies?
Yes, it was never a mass movement, and even with the merger of NSI and L-5, I don’t think that NSS has ever had more than a hundred thousand members. I do think, though, that it is sufficiently appealing to a sufficient number of people that when we break out of the NASA paradigm, and the supply actually responds to demand, some people will live in space in the future.
[Evening update]
Clark Lindsey responds to Dwayne Day’s dyspeptic space colony post:
In the 1970s space had become a niche topic little noticed by the general public. Within that niche area one could search around and find a tiny sub-niche dealing with in-space orbital space colonies. Sure, there were the occasional articles and a handful of books about O’Neill space colonies and a small group of people had a high interest in them. However, you could say the same thing about a million other topics as well. Orbital space colonies never came close to being a topic that most people were aware of, much less considered in any thoughtful way.
If in 1980 you asked a randomly selected group of a thousand people what they thought about space, a thousand would say, probably in the first sentence, that space was wildly expensive. If you asked them if they had read an article about space colonies in the past decade, I doubt even fifty would say yes. And most of those fifty would say such colonies might be a great idea but are impractical while space travel is so wildly expensive.
Yes, as is the case of much of space policy, it’s all about information and perspective. (I’ve added “Media Criticism” to the categories for this post, and bumped it…)
The Left’s Conundrum
How to blame George Bush for Europe’s recession:
Do you notice anything funny about these numbers? Here is what I notice: the recession in the US is milder than that of Europe. Every country on this list had more economic shrinkage from 2008 to 2009 (Q1 to Q1) than did the US.
How could this be? Did they all have George Bush for President? Did they all succumb to free market ideology in the last eight years? Did they all repeal part of Glass-Steagall? Did they all spend wildly on an unnecessary war in Iraq? Did they all bankrupt themselves with out-of-control defense spending?
It’s a mystery.
Fascist Democrat Thuggery
Apparently, these people are impervious to irony:
We were outraged to read in today’s New York Times that you are actively opposing our efforts to achieve a diminuation in foreclosures by voluntary efforts… We have set a hearing for November 12, and we invite you now to testify. We believe it is essential for our policymaking function for you to appear at such a hearing, and if this cannot be arranged on a voluntary basis, then we will pursue further steps.
So let me get this straight. Barney Frank, Maxine Waters et al are trying to get banks to do something “voluntarily” by threatening them with “further steps.”
But we shouldn’t worry about threats of tax audits.