Weekend Linkorama

  • From the WTF File, the Dallas school district had cage fights between unruly students. Thank God e haven’t privatized the schools. I bet those private schools can’t even afford cages.
  • Obama is committing $2.4 billion to develop electric vehicles. This is the exact wrong way to go about energy policy — having politicians dictate investments in technologies that may or may not be feasible. Pouring that money into energy grants would be a far better idea.
  • I’m all in favor of making google block out people’s faces and stuff on their maps. But I find it ironic that it’s Britain — land of a million closed-circuit cameras, that’s pushing for this privacy measure.
  • BBC has a series on legalized prostitution in New Zealand. But there’s a part of me that says, screw the facts even when they’re on my side. To me, this is about who owns your body and what consenting adults are allowed to do. Imagine if the resources we devote toward busting hookers went to cracking down on genuine sex slavery and child prostitution.
  • Cato again makes the case against high speed rail. It’s pissing in the wind at this point. There are too many special interests and too much economic and environmental ignorance lining up behind high-speed rail. Hell, to be honest, I kind of believe in high-speed rail myself. I link to these articles because they contradict my personal view. If I could take a bullet train from Philadelphia to Atlanta, I’d be delighted.
  • Not a link, but a random thought caused by several RSS posts. The reason Dick Cheney and others are saying Obama’s abolition of torture is making America unsafe has nothing to do with America’s safety. They know that we will get hit by another terrorist attack at some point, no matter what Obama does. What they are doing is setting up the narrative. When the next terror attack hits, they will say, “See, I told you so!”.
  • The latest update on the Massachusetts healthcare reform. I haven’t put up another “Myth” post this week. But there will be one at some point arguing that the only way to cut healthcare costs is to cut healthcare. When you commit to “universal coverage”, you commit to more spending.
  • Card check gets worse all the time, although Ambinder is saying that big business and labor are working out a compromise — which probably means that small business will get screwed. Again.