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POPSFrom Goldwater to McCain "The American right has come full circle in 44 years, with two allegedly maverick senators from Arizona playing bookend roles, one at the beginning, one perhaps at the end"
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POPSBranded: Who You Callin' A Maverick The real Mavericks have an interesting family history. Read the article to learn more. Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats Fontaine Maury Maverick lost his bid for re-election in 1938. Notice how the Liepublicans called him a "communist." Notice how their dirty lying tricks haven't changed: Obama - terrorist, socialist, Marxist, black nationalist, and on and on ad naseum.
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POPSCoercion and Freedom if you were to ask, say, the average senior citizen whether Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug subsidies should be continued, he would probably answer yes. The same would be true if you asked a college professor whether higher education should continue to be subsidized, or a farmer or a dairyman whether their products should be subsidized, or a manufacturer whether there should be tariffs and quotas on foreign products that compete with his product. The problem with congressmen producing favors and privileges to all interest groups is that it creates what none of us wants: massive control, numerous dictates and micromanagement of our lives.
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POPSCrisis, is a friend of the "State" Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as "showing leadership," so we're surely in for a new round of government interventions. Watch for the equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. There'll be much posturing about how the new regulations "will keep this from ever happening again," but that's more nonsense because the root problem is not lack of regulation. It's government social engineering of the housing market, which will be unchanged. This is the path to stagnation and poverty. As Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek taught, markets are too complicated for planners to know enough to plan them. The relevant information, scattered unspoken among billions of market participants, is beyond the bureaucrats' reach. We do need protection from reckless businessmen. But there is only one way to provide that: market discipline. That means: no privileges, and no bailouts.
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POPSPrivate Sector Caused This Mess, The Government Has To Get Us Out
from government bondage. Right. There's also a bridge to the Kremlin they'd like to sell you. Which brings us back to the current subprime mortgage crisis. When we strip away all the complexity, we discover that social planning largely led to this debacle. Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. I don't pretend to have enough information or expertise to know whether the Bush-Paulson bailout proposal, or some iteration of it, is necessary to avert a horrifying financial meltdown, but apparently, many experts, including conservative ones, do. Now the stability of our entire financial system is said to be at risk. It's so bad that even conservatives are considering supporting an unprecedented plan None of this would be half as troubling to me if I believed both political parties would address it in good faith.
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POPSChina Goes Out With a Bang....... ........ and The Whimper of the Oppressed is Barely Heard........ I wonder, though, if anyone oohing and aahing over the fireworks in Beijing gave thought to the thousands of Chinese peasants who will die because their government took their water away so it could produce the fake beauty of the Olympic compound. Maybe we’ll see that story show up in an NBC news report, do you think? I’m sure the network will get right on that as soon as it gets up off its knees and straightens up its clothing.
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POPSThe End of The Fairy Tale by Ralph Peters Putin went to war and the American president went to a basketball game--reinforcing the Kremlin's conviction that it could do as it pleased and get away with it. (Bush's gravest flaw is that he's a dreadful judge of character, stubbornly trusting undeserving men, from Iraqi schemer Ahmed Chalabi , through the incompetent Alberto Gonzales , to Vladimir Putin , who played Bush for a fool.) French president Nicolas Sarkozy, well-intentioned and inadequate The Putin regime was perfectly willing to let Monsieur le President return to Paris with a signed piece of paper. The Russians have drawn the lesson from Western efforts to negotiate with Iran and other rogue states that Europe can be narcotized with empty agreements and nebulous promises and that Europe has become a continent of bureaucrats who much prefer paperwork to reality. And there are no penalties when the agreements prove worthless.
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POPSComputers and education Do we need another research centre to find obvious answers? Only when schools are prepared to embrace the information Age/Knowledge Economy paradigm and look afresh at what 'education' is, will we advance. 21st Century tools do not sit comfortably in 19th century institutions, run by unimaginative, autocratic 20th century bureaucrats.
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POPSBureaucrats Need a Cluebat Within three hours of rescuing the 13-year-old schoolgirl last Tuesday the boat was towed away by a senior MCA officer and is now locked away. 'We have identified a serious breach of health and safety procedures and they are currently being investigated. 'The boat has been stood down for a further eight weeks while we investigate the possibility of repair or replacement.' Stupid is as stupid does...
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POPSBureaucrats Try to Quash Blues Prodigy's Talents Well, the law prohibits it, and the Legislature enacted the laws to protect the health, safety and welfare of all children. "T-Man" Latz has a reason to sing the blues http://www.comcast.net/articles/music/20080812/Blues.Kid/
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POPSFree Speech A Casualty Of 'Hate' Powers What had happened is that one of the chapters of Steyn's New York Times' (and for that matter Canadian) No1 bestseller America Alone had been excerpted and published by Canada's largest weekly magazine. The Canadian Islamic Congress, through the agency of three law students, brought complaints against Steyn and the magazine before the federal human rights commission, and also before two provincial ones. (That's another Orwellian aspect to all this; there is no rule against double, triple or any other multiple jeopardy, as there is no limit to how many complaints can be lodged before different tribunals for the same words.) Since then more has come out that makes these Canadian tribunals or commissions seem even more like kangaroo courts than they already did, which is saying an awful lot. The Canadian Human Rights Commission it would not go ahead with the Steyn prosecution (though the Canadian Islamic Congress has just indicated it will appeal that decision)
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POPSFair-Weather Civil Libertarians In January, Greenwald reports, Olbermann delivered an unhinged rant in which he called the immunity provision a "shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of fascism"--and in case you thought he meant the nongenocidal Italian kind, he also likened proponents of immunity to "the bureaucrats of the Third Reich." "But that was five whole months ago" Greenwald observes: Now that Barack Obama supports a law that does the same thing--and now that Obama justifies that support by claiming that this bill is necessary to keep us Safe from the Terrorists--everything has changed. . . . Olbermann invited Newsweek's Jonathan Alter onto his show to discuss Obama's support for the FISA. There wasn't a word of rational criticism of the bill. Instead, the two media stars jointly hailed Obama's bravery and strength--as evidenced by his "standing up to the left" in order to support this important centrist FISA compromise.
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POPSTime to end waste at the Pentagon These are complex problems that will require multifaceted solutions. A good way to start would be by slowing down the “revolving door” that allows high-level Pentagon bureaucrats and military officers to go to work for major defense contractors. The problems with the revolving door are twofold. First, officials looking forward to employment in the arms industry may favor certain companies in hopes of getting lucrative job offers after leaving government service. Second, once they have moved into the private sector, these former government employees can use their specialized knowledge and inside contacts to give an unfair advantage to their new employer. It's a shame that we have to put up with this crap every year and nothing changes except the scum make MORE $$$$
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POPSThe Real 'Inconvenient Truth' "The real inconvenient truth about global warming is that the science is not yet settled and that policies are likely to be put in place prematurely as a result. And when the bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for a job well done in saving the planet from global warming, in the real world the average Joe will be stuck wondering what happened to his job and worrying about how he is going to scrape together the cash to pay his increasingly expensive bills."
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POPSOpen Season on Canadian Water "What Canadians need to know is that this year, from March 2008 to March of 2009, eight lakes are going to be subject to being put on Schedule Two, which is just about every mine that is going ahead this year is looking around, looking for the nearest lake to dump its waste into.” Un. Frickin. Believable! :mad: Time for this government to fall! C'mon, Dion, DO SOMETHING!
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POPSAbusing Freedom In The Name Of The Planet … But to argue, as it is done by many contemporary environmentalists, that these questions have already been answered with a consensual yes and that there is an unchallenged scientific consensus about this, is unjustified. And not only unjustified, it is also morally and intellec itual deceptive, and this is bureaucrasomething that I can’t live with. Like their predecessors , they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past, it was in the nature of the masses or of the proletariat, this time in the name of the planet. Structurally, it is very similar. The current danger, as I see it, is environmentalism, and especially its strongest version, climate alarmism...
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POPSHaving the right connections "We're all in it together kid" The Plumber/Heating Engineer From Brazil, Terry Gilliam's dark tale of a not so distant future...Some time next year, with any luck a Monday..about 4am. A great clip for anyone who has been frustrated by bureaucrats, has considered arguing with their plumber, or hates Bob Hoskins.. With a special guest appearance by Robert De Nero as the Plumber/Heating Engineer
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