We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Because of the deadweight costs of taxation itself, costs that are not included in the propaganda we are increasingly being fed, we might well find that there is in fact, overall, no saving of money.
President George W. Bush concocted the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq invasion. Now President Barack Obama is concocting an equally fantastical theory to justify a de facto government takeover of health care.
Ms. Feinberg recalled one 15-year-old boy from Long Island who told her: “Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’ ”
"World cooling is here to stay and the new round of climate alarmism just announced by UK Government ministers and the Met Office of more extreme weather and warming in coming decades driven by mankind has no merit and is defied by the facts and front-line science”, said Piers as his forecast from three weeks ahead was confirmed for the formation of the first East Pacific typhoon of the season off Mexico.
Did Krugman come to prominence when standards and competence meant nothing? Suggesting that Obama needs assistance from hapless Republicans in making his administration a failure is just stupid. Many Americans do indeed still care. Government doesn't do anything well except perhaps spend money irresponsibly on the path to its next failure.
"Government doesn't do anything well except spend money irresponsibly on the path to its next failure."
Unfortunately, there is no reliable mechanism to extinguish failed government programs. In the private sector, businesses are ultimately disciplined by finances. Liquidity dries up and cash runs out. The mechanism for eliminating failed enterprises is bankruptcy, liquidation and/or asset sales - unless there is government intervention.
The only reason government programs do not "fail" is because losses can be funded indefinitely by extorting additional taxes from the citizenry.
The deadweight costs of taxation means that government programs will not save money as promised. However, the bad news is that the cost of delivering the program (e.g. health care) will actually exceed the cost of the private sector system.
The fact that the deadweight loss can be quantified only drives home the point that government is the least efficient means of providing [fill in the blank].
When will the average American learn the first rule of economics? There is no free lunch!
I wish Den Beste were still doing political analysis, and other types, too. He was damn good and had a huge influence on me opening my eyes and seeing the world as it is after 9/11.
Re Holden Caulfield, "Teachers say young readers just don’t like Holden as much as they used to. What once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as “weird,” “whiny” and “immature.”"
I never cared much for the guy. Didn't hate him but liked him only in so far as I saw my own adolescent self as weird, whiny and immature. It seemed like an honest picture but a pointless place to dwell. Tom Sawyer was more to my liking. But then I somehow (thank God) missed having either book as "assigned reading" so I didn't get the "benefit" of being "educated" as to what was so wonderful about either of them.
Holden is writing the book from a mental hospital. The story takes place over three days and covers his breakdown. At the time of its publishing, Salinger broke ground by letting us live in Holden's head as he spiraled down. Remember in the first chapter, he's leaving school after flunking out, and he recalls a little kid from the school who had borrowed one of Holden's sweaters.......... the kid was pushed or had fallen out of a dorm window to his death. Holden saw him lying there - in his sweater - and the others boys on campus just walked by. Nobody he meets from that point on seems real except for Phoebe. When he sees her on the merry-go-round happy and 'real', he loses it.
Don't know why I felt the need for the very incomplete answer. Just the way I am, I reckon. Hell of a book and I've always wondered why people made fun of it.
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Krugman