It’s rather hard to be optimistic about the economy these days, since the common consensus around the world is that the best way to cure the economy is to drain it of blood until it has none left. Lots of people have been harping on this for years now, but it’s not getting better. In… Continue reading Stupid or Evil?
Readings
I’ve read a few books in the past few months. It’s been awhile since I did a good book post, so why not today?
Everything’s Fine!
I’m pretty much blatantly ripping off Atrios for this one, but it is what it is: just incredible. Guy steals $69,000 of money that isn’t his, he gets arrested and charged with felonies. Guys steal $1.6 billion of money that isn’t theirs in essentially the same way, and everybody just sits around hemming and hawing.… Continue reading Everything’s Fine!
The Roulette Wheel
Lots of digital ink has been spilled about JP Morgan’s $2 billion trading loss. I don’t want to add too much more, except to call out one issue that I think has been downplayed through all of this: the notion that JP Morgan “lost” the money.
Another One Bites The Dust
I was a Political Science major in college. One of the classes I took was on state government, and as part of that class, everybody had to do a report on the politics of a randomly-assigned state. I happened to have been assigned Indiana. So I dug into the books in the library (back when… Continue reading Another One Bites The Dust
Being Right
There’s a lot of commentary about the French and Greek elections this week. Some of it is rather apoplectic (more deserved in Greece than France), but for all the talk of extremism, a lot of the debate misses the mark. What really matters, and what is just as applicable in this country as elsewhere, is… Continue reading Being Right
My Fantastic Stadium Plan
Watching the legislative session from the sidelines, instead of being in the trenches, is an interesting experience. It’s certainly been fun to watch the fecklessness, especially with regards to the stadium issue, which reached a new low yesterday when the super-secret GOP plan to pay for the stadium with general obligation, a.k.a. taxpayer bonds, was… Continue reading My Fantastic Stadium Plan
Words Mean Things
This past weekend, I went up to my hometown in Central Minnesota to visit some friends. This being Central Minnesota (also known as Michele Bachmann’s district), all sorts of fun political signs were in abundance. There were the old standbys, like hand-painted anti-abortion signs on farms and “U.S. out of the U.N.” graffiti so old… Continue reading Words Mean Things
Privacy Around Me
There has been a lot of ink spilled about the Girls Around Me app that was introduced, and then pulled from the iPhone App Store. For those who are unaware, the app used the geolocation aspects of existing websites, such as Foursquare and Facebook, to show the user where women were located close to them.… Continue reading Privacy Around Me
On Mandates
Part of the argument against Obamacare is how terrible and freedom-hating and un-American the insurance mandate is. I mean, being forced to pay for something you don’t want, or don’t need? Being forced to enter into a contract? Ridiculous! Inconceivable! If the government can mandate paying for that, what can’t they mandate paying for? Ad… Continue reading On Mandates