Category Archives: Politics

Politics, Socialism

Hypocrisy

Radley Balko one the hypocrites supporting the “living wage” . . . for everyone else.

I’m reading Do as I Say, Not As I Do right now, which catalogues a lot of these instances. I’ll post a full review over at Amazon. I’m not terribly impressed with the book, actually, since a lot of it reads as Moore-eque “gotchya” style of poking through a multi-millionaire’s portfolio and finding objectional investments or bad behavior by a company they are absentee shareholders in.

Not to mention lots of rumor-mongering.

But more on that later.

Politics, War on Terror

Imagine That

Last night, we had a political grandstandfest, er, debate. And there was an actual, you know, exchange of views.

The thing is that both men are right. We do have an obligation to try to fix Iraq and we do have an obligation to leave if it can’t be fixed.

We need more moments like this. I feel a tide turning in this country — away from buzz words, one-liners and demagoguery to serious discussion. Or discussion anyway. Thank God for people like Ron Paul who’ve had the temerity to mix it up and the eloquence to do in a way that can’t just be sound-bitten away.

Politics

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong?

Jonah Goldberg reminds us of how the media screwed up Katrina:

But there was one thing missing from the coverage of this natural, social, economic and political disaster: the fact that Katrina represented an unmitigated media disaster as well.

Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were “bands of rapists, going block to block.” Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was a “A City of Despair and Lawlessness,” insisting in an editorial that “looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant.” Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were “all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews.”

TV reporters raced to the bottom to see who could moralistically preen the most. Interviewers transformed into outright scolds of administration officials. Meanwhile, the distortions, exaggerations and flat-out fictions being offered by New Orleans officials were accelerated and amplified by the media echo chamber. Glib predictions of 10,000 dead, and the chief of police’s insistence that there were “little babies getting raped,” swirled around the media like so much free-flowing sewage.

Do you think they’ll ever own up to their hysteria? Don’t count on it. The media never do wrong.

Politics

Africa

I recently happened to see Blood Diamond at the same time that I was reading Ismael Baeh’s riveting but disturbing A Long Way Gone. Both are concerned with the horrendous civil war that wrenched Sierra Leone.

I, of course, had known nothing about it. African civil wars, genocides and massacres are extremely under-reported in this country. Everyone has heard about Darfur but has anyone heard of the Congo war that wiped out three million people? Where are the Hollywood celebs tossing away their iPods because of the coltan?

Of course, whenever I read about Africa, I keeping coming back to the obvious question: can it be saved? Is the continent doomed to be the perpetual stomping ground of the Four Horsemen?

It’s obvious that foreign aide isn’t working as we’ve poured billions in it for no apparent effect. It’s obvious Bono isn’t working although maybe if we keep sending him there, someone will shoot him. The various ism’s of socialism and islamism are only making things worse, as we could have expected. What can we do? Invade? Yeah, that’ll work. Throw in more money? Yeah, more money always solves complex problems.

I’m just an egghead astronomer who likes to read, not an expert on Africa or poverty or warfare. But given the track record of people who are experts, I don’t see that detailed knowledge is necessarily helpful. Perhaps if a million monkey decendants type on a millions blogs, someone will create the perfect plan to save Africa.

So here are my thoughts. At the very least, I can’t be stupider than Bono.
Continue reading Africa →

Politics

Merck

I noticed the hatchet job the NYT did on Vioxx a couple of weeks ago, made a not to comment on it and forgot. Well, Point of Law does the job for me.

So the NYT write a poorly informed Page 1 article castigating the eevil Merck is dragging its feet paying out people who can’t actually prove that they had heart attacks because of Vioxx. No, no bias there. Move along. Nothing to see.

Fair Tax, Politics

No Pay Raise

I’ve been having a nice debate in the comments on the impact of the Fair Tax. It’s helping me focus and refine my arguments, always a good thing.

I thought I’d put up two links to bolster my point that the Fair Tax supporters are being deceptive when they tell you:

a) Prices won’t rise under the Fair Tax
b) You will get your whole paycheck.

This is mathematically impossible. CNN talks about it here (search for Daniel Shaviro) and Boortz himself admits it here. Hopefully, he’ll put this front and center in his next Fair Tax book.

Politics, Science and Edumacation

Nothing to See Here

Bainbridge on John Edwards’ hypocrisy, doing that oh-so-liberal thing of telling us all to conserve while he drive SUVs to his energy-gobbling and hideously ugly mansion.

I don’t expect more from Edwards. He’s an intellectual flyweight. But, jeez, do you think the people crowing about Senator Craig’s hypocritical bathroom adventures could spare a moment for Edwards?

Fair Tax, Politics, Taxes and Spending

More Fair Tax Nonsense

6 Comments

See if you can spot the flaw in Boortz’ argument that it will be easier to buy a house under the Fair Tax.

Memo to Neal: house are not purchased based on one year’s earnings. If my marginal tax rate is under 30%, then by the “logic” you’ve used, I’ll be worse off.

Of course, neither makes a difference. The problem with the Fair Tax is not that prices will go up. It’s the transition shock of some prices going up (because the employers can’t cut employee gross salaries down to the current net) and others not going up (because they can). The problem is the hideous black market that is almost guaranteed to appear — which is why Bartlett favors a VAT. The problem is that we won’t “get rid of the IRS” but simply infest it in every business and every home in America. The problem is that we’re going to have to create a massive agency to figure out the welfare prebate amounts for every person in the country (since only a batshit insane person would advocate equal “prebates” for people in New York City and New Braunfels).

So much easier to bash Bartlett’s Scientology straw man and fulminate over the pointless inclusive-exclusive argument than to address substantive complaints.

Politics

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Not exactly news for Friday, but CNN has apprently discovered the Soviet Union’s long sordid history with nukes. Too bad the MSM wasn’t terribly interested in talking about the horrors of communism when it might have made a difference.

(And before you make a moral equivalence to our bombing of Japan, let me remind you that we were at war.)

All socialist systems make these sort of calculations. How much would it cost to evacuate these people against the benefits of seeing what radiation does to babies? We’ll be seeing a lot more of these drive-by incidents as our own system gets more socialized and people become assets of the state rather than individuals.

Politics, Taxes and Spending

Blue Dog Night

Remember how the blue dog Democrats were supposed to be centrist? Eh, not so much.

Voting records from recent years confirm that the blue dogs are less than consistent spending hawks. The National Taxpayers Union did some checking and found that the blue dogs had an average fiscal score of 24 out of 100, earning them a grade of D as a group. It also found that last year the blue dogs sponsored $145 of new spending for every dollar of budget reductions, for a net spending increase per member of more than $140 billion.

There is one important caveat here — Bush is President. A lot of this might be pandering or going along with the party knowing it will be vetoed.

Still, it takes a certain reprehensible kind of spinelessness to go along with that nonsense. It’s like when Republicans pass laws they know the Supreme Court will bounce (McCain-Feingold for example). I understand the reasoning but it’s still playing Russain Roulette with the law. And sometimes, as in the case of McCain-Feingold, the gun goes off and we’re all screwed.