Politics is often though of as a line with a Right and Left side and an identifiable center. The center presumably signifies the area of compromise between the extremes…but it is unclear from such a construct what the “center” really is. In actuality, politics is not a line so much as a circle. At the apex [...]
Category Archives: Features
It’s For The Children!
Why is it that when busy-bodies want to control you, they always claim they are doing it “for the children?” Well, that’s just a silly question. Obviously, it’s because this is quite possibly the most powerful argument in history. Every bureaucratic scold holds it in reverence because he knows that nothing can resist it. All [...]
The Lost Tribe of Congress
Pretty much everyone not hopelessly lost in fantasy land admits that the government-run mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were at the heart of the housing bubble that set off the current financial crisis. Even Timothy Geithner, during Senate testimony, admitted that, “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” But then he went on [...]
Privatize Space
It seems that the meaning of national identity has changed over time. It used to be that when people said we did something as a nation, they meant Americans did it. It didn’t matter whether they did it for themselves with their own means or whether they had some official title. What mattered was that they [...]
How “Serve And Protect” Becomes “Harass And Collect”
What happens when you have to go through a bureaucracy any time you want to accomplish anything? In Russia, all activity is so heavily regulated that the only way to get anything done is to bribe someone. A Levada Center poll of 1,600 Russians said they believed that “bribes are given by everyone who comes [...]
Immigrants: America’s Favorite Scapegoat
Americans are increasingly using immigrants as the root cause of all their problems. Being the universal scapegoat is hard work, and perhaps we should pay them for the service. After all, it allows us to completely ignore our real problems while pretending like we are actually doing something to solve them. It is at least [...]
Prohibition: At What Cost?
Michael Vick‘s got nothing on your friendly neighborhood SWAT team. You may have heard about the Missouri family who in February suffered a SWAT team raid that ended in a charge of child endangerment, not against the SWAT team, but against Jonathan E. Whitworth for the possession of a “small amount” of marijuana (never mind that police [...]
We Know Where You Live
When the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue started their new ad campaign to scare people into paying back taxes, they probably thought they would drum up some public support for their cause, and maybe they have (or maybe they just wanted to scare people). But when I saw their new commercial, my first thought was of all the people [...]
Let Them Come
The primary reason that immigration reform is consistently avoided is that immigration itself is actually not the issue. What lies beneath are issues that no one wants to have an honest discussion about, so immigrants (both legal and illegal) become an easy scapegoat and a distraction. One of those issues is entitlements. So lets talk [...]
GM Paid Back TARP!…Sort of…OK Not At All
GM is in the middle of a media blitz touting their recent repayment of their TARP loans, “in full, with interest.” Their media efforts coincide with a press release from the US Department of the Treasury, in which Timothy Geithner himself offers a sound bite in support of the (once private) company. We are encouraged [...]
