Mark Cuban, the man behind watchdog site BailoutSleuth.com is being sued for insider trading, which if allowed, would have helped prevent (or lessen the severity of) both the current crisis and the Enron/Worldcom debacle, thereby alleviating the need for BailoutSleuth in the first place.
I have always liked the "Department of Hole Digging and Filling" analogy for make work fiscal stimulus.
This is a nice hole related analogy for the bailout.
In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?
I will have plenty of time to evaluate Obama's proposed policies as they unfold, but I want to comment on the perceived and actual significance of the occasion. Likely because I am too young to have lived through segregation and grew up in too liberal of a neighborhood to have witnessed real racism, I have trouble seeing the historic first as a particularly important thread in the narrative. As I listened to CNN pundits point out that it was a monumental event and that we have transcended race and then proceed to discuss the event without reference to his politics, or any other substantive point, but instead focus on his race (or half of it), I couldn't help but remember a conversation I had with my mom when I first learned what affirmative action was. I was in 5th or 6th grade but the thrust of my question remains pretty clear in my memory: "I thought what race people are isn't supposed to matter?" Commenter Cynical in CA on The Agitator put it nicely into libertarian terms:
The fact is, the variation within a given group is far larger than the variation between groups. To say that his election represents a great leap forward for the African American community while many African Americans' face difficult circumstances they will find little improved today is frustrating. It’s more frustrating still that 95% of African Americans voted for him despite his seeming willingness to continue rewarding a broken public education monopoly which limits their opportunities and to increase funding for a drug war which is incarcerating them for consensual crimes at draconian rates.
On a somewhat unrelated note, how is this for an unintended consequence?
Daisy (my girlfriend) has informed me that many of her friends, most of them Smith graduates, believe me to be a "radical republican" based on my outspoken views on the election. Given my vocal opposition to the expansion of government, our large military, non-defensive wars, the war on drugs, legislating morality, protectionism, nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, . . . the list goes on; this is incredibly comical to me. Then again, because I consider the vast majority of my acquaintances intelligent, yet find that the vast majority of them seem to be completely enamored with Barack Obama, a politician so vile and self serving I would hesitate to allow him near my children or relatives let alone vote him into a position of power over me; I do tend to harp more on the failings of the left than the failings of the right. Recognizing this necessary bias, here is some more evidence of my radical republicanism: I agree with Todd Zywicki's defense of Sarah Palin's intelligence. His central point:
I think this can be fleshed out a little more. Many on the left went to colleges and universities dominated by leftist professors. They learned to parrot the views of their professors without thinking deeply about the views they had adopted. At the same time they came to the conclusion that their view were a result of this education. That they believed the same things as their professors, and their professors were really thoughtful, even if their understanding of the arguments involved were only sufficiently developed to return an A-/B+ on the final exam, was evidence that their views were the intelligent ones. The corollary is that those with whom they disagreed, weren't as much in opposition as ignorant. That if only those in the flyover states had read the books they have read, or had received the education they had received, there would be no disagreement.
If this is the position from which one approaches politics, the glib BS artist will sound more intelligent. By forming academic sounding sentences, using adverbs, and uttering vaguely progressive sounding words, the BS artist is able to bring the thoughtless leftist back to his or her college days. "Ah, this is the person I should parrot, they have thought about their views and sound intelligent, this is the right point of view to adopt and pass off as my own." One moment from last weeks debate struck me as particularly illustrative of this point. In response to a question about appointing judges in the context of Roe v. Wade, Obama uttered the following nonsense:
To be clear, Roe v. Wade was NOT decided on moral grounds. It was not decided that the unborn were not rights-bearers in the moral sense. The court in fact decided not to answer the moral question at all and instead decided to rule on privacy grounds. If one believes that abortion is a moral issue, and that abortion is morally permissible, the emanations and penumbras from which the court fashioned the right to privacy would be the WRONG way to decide the case. For a constitutional law professor, the inability to answer this one without mixing up the facts of one of the most important cases of the last century is damning evidence of incompetence or agenda.
Then again, if you are the type of coastal elite leftist who I describe above, the answer would be great comfort. "He holds similar views to my own on abortion, he speaks confidently, and uses words like 'referendum', he is intelligent and his views are the ones I will adopt." Unfortunately, for those who can see through the BS, in this case those who might have actually read Roe v. Wade, his willingness to spout nonsense is evidence not of his intelligence, but an impeachment thereof.
Update:
So, now that the election is over, more stories come out. I still think Zywicki's points regarding the difference between being smart and being glib apply to Biden and to a lesser extent Obama. Also, I think we need to take these charges from the staffers of a recently routed campaign with a grain of salt (I can't believe she didn't know whether Africa was a country or a continent). Notwithstanding all of that, to the extent this is true it says very little of whoever was managing McCain's campaign.
I am exhausted by my rage, both over the last post, and the debate. Here are my initial reactions:
McCain
He knew the notes (tax cuts, free trade) but when it comes to defending freedom, the music isn't that beautiful. This is not surprising considering, with the exception of his support for free trade, he hasn't demonstrated any deep affinity for freedom.
Obama
I really believe he is a socialist. There is just no way he is pandering, because there is no way the body politic has shifted this far to the left. He demonstrated an enthusiasm for:
- Supporting dieing inefficient industries and engaging in trade wars with countries which can provide to us for less the goods those industries produce
- Choosing which industry "should be the driver of our economy for the next century" and using taxpayer dollars to support that industry
- Denying domestic consumers access to cheaper foreign goods to protect uncompetitive domestic labor
- Requiring national service from all children aged 11 to 18
- Increasing taxes on the most productive 5% while reducing taxes on the rest in order to facilitate "spreading the wealth"
Considering that he is as far in the lead as he has been, and his rhetoric is as hostile to freedom as ever, I am pretty scared for what he might do without opposition in congress.
Coming from Illinois, one of the many states that has exclusively used citizen flaggers for years without a public safety crisis, this footage makes froth at the mouth.
Lets be clear, this isn't about public safety. It is about the fact that the police want to go on receiving $40 of our money per hour rather than giving $15-$19 per hour to civilians to do the same job. If they are so in love with flagging, these officers could get a job as civilian flaggers to occupy their time off as their flagging did in the past. They just can't have tens of thousands of our dollars to do it.
I can't help but think back to this blog's namesake who challenged striking Boston police officers saying:
My views on unions are a subject for another time, but suffice it to say, I believe employees have the right to form unions (without government opposition or assistance) in the private sector where unions will be held in check by competition from non-union employees and union employers will be faced with pressure from employers of non-union employees .
However, in the case of government employees, Cal was right on; strikes (and collective bargaining more broadly) among public employees are an entirely different matter. Public sector unions (teachers, police officers, etc) will always hold undue sway with politicians. If your vote determined your salary and the conditions under which you worked, you would do all you could to hijack the political process too. As a consequence of this influence, unionized public sector employees mercilessly predate on the taxpayer without exception.
Hopefully the politicians on Beacon Hill have the courage to stand up to these goons. While it would be a great way to demostrate that taxpayers are valued beyond the wealth public sector employees can extract from them, I am not holding my breath. In the mean time, I am going to call the departments whose officers were involved in the protest (Arlington, Medford, Everett, Stoneham, and Woburn) to enquire as to when I can appear at their places of business and heckle them for the wealth they have taken from me using the political process.
If you are a MA resident as sickened as I am, I suggest you do the same.
Arlington PD:
781-316-3900
Medford PD: 781-391-6404
Everett PD: 617-389-2120
Stoneham PD: 781-438-1215
Woburn PD: 781-932-4510
Cheye Calvo's story includes all the worst of what is, unfortunately, no longer a surprise for those of us who have followed the war on drugs and the concomitant militarization of police. Here is a short clip of his talk at the Cato Institute:
William F. Buckley, who by no means approved of drug use, had it right:
“Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night.
Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress
medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes
every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value,
marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than
marijuana ever could.”
Oh, and if Mayor Calvo's story doesn't give you nightmares, check out Cobb County, GA's Police Department's new toy:
GMU's Don Boudreaux is spectacular in his ability to shatter the common wisdom with metaphors that are both funny and perfectly apt. Two recent examples, first on public choice:
Among the articles of faith of "progressivism" is the theory - which never yields to experience - that you can fill the sea with enormous quantities of fresh red meat and then, Moses-like, successfully command the sharks not to devour it.
As long as Uncle Sam continues to stock the Potomac by ripping from the body politic such enormous quantities of flesh and muscle - now more than three trillion dollars worth annually - sharks and vultures will inevitably swarm throughout Washington in a competitive struggle to gorge themselves on this unfortunate feast.
Second, shattering an argument often used to advance socialized medicine:
If Dionne is correct that the efficiency of American businesses would generally be improved if government paid for all workers' health insurance - that is, if government paid part of firms' costs of employing workers - then is it also true that the efficiency of American businesses would be further improved if government paid firms' full wages bill?
George Mason economist Bryan Caplan gets it right for 20/20(he starts at 2:37):
I doubt many people will stay home given the excitement this election has generated among young voters; but in hopes that they would:
