A SURPRISING PARALLEL between Justice Breyer and Justice Rehnquist.
Plus, a violation of Bernstein’s Law.
Archive for 2011
June 24, 2011
THE TAX CONSEQUENCES of being paid for a date.
GAS PRICES FALLING, but food keeps going up. “While gasoline is off more than 5 percent over the last month, prices for coffee, fruit, bacon, pasta and a slew of other food items have registered gains over the past year as high as 40 percent.”
MR. KELLY GOES TO WASHINGTON: “I’m trying to understand the criticism of Mr. Ryan’s budget from the side that didn’t even have the courage to pass a budget. . . . As a guy who has had to pay his own way his whole life I am greatly offended by the idea that somehow somebody in Washington knows how to spend my money better than I do.” Video at the link.
LOTS OF MINOT FLOOD COVERAGE at SayAnything.
BYRON YORK: Huntsman Tries McCain Model, But He’s No John McCain. And even if he were, is that what GOP members want for 2012? It didn’t work out so well in 2008. . . .
TIM CAVANAUGH: Public Pays For Half-Million Dollar L.A. Tourism Salary. “Although excessive public-employee salaries are getting close attention in California, many ostensibly private officials – including a tourism bureau boss who makes almost $500,000 a year – are paid mostly or entirely from public money. In some cases, these compensation packages are higher than the pay of public employees who have been the focus of public outrage.”
WASHINGTON POST: Can Liberals Start Their Own Tea Party? Well, we’ve had the Coffee Party, the Brownbaggers, The Other 95%, A New Way Forward, the One Nation Movement — am I leaving any out? I can’t remember — and none of them has gone much beyond a spot of initial positive coverage from the NYT. So, probably not. But apparently, Van Jones is going to try again with the “The American Dream Movement.” I hear he’s got a catchy slogan, too: From Each According To His Abilities, To Each According To His Needs. Or maybe it’s Death to the Kulaks! I’m not sure . . . .
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Liberals have their own Tea Party. Witness the events in Madison, Wisc. and other state capitals earlier this year. Liberals were able to gather significant numbers of passionate protesters in a short period of time. Public sector unions are the liberal Tea Party. The problem for liberals is that they need to extend their appeal beyond that narrow base. The Tea Party’s success is driven by the fact that it has gathered people with diverse viewpoints and united them on the single issue of government spending and taxes. As long as the battle lines are public sector unions vs. everyone else, liberals will continue to lose the debate.
Indeed. And another reader emails: “You left out the ‘No Labels’ crowd. A bigger bunch of liberals would be hard to find.” Oh, right. It’s hard to keep track.
Meanwhile, from Jim Treacher, my favorite Coffee Party headline: The schism in the Coffee Party is so bad, they split up into two different booths at Denny’s.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Richard Samuelson writes: “But can the Left, which for a couple of generations now, has argued that progress ought to be made by officially sanctioned, government approved and organized organizations take on a movement that is truly voluntary, truly spontaneous, and not organized from above? If part of the fight is civil society v. central planning, then, by definition, the Left is going to have a hard time competing for the grassroots, outside of unions, democratic activists, and the rest of the professional Left.”
HMM: Christmas Gloom For China Toymakers as Orders Shrivel. “After wrenching change that saw hundreds of toy factories in China shut down in the 2008 financial crisis, hopes were high for a rebound. But Europe’s debt crisis and a sluggish U.S. economic recovery are curbing Western demand, while cost and labour pressures within China are mounting.”
TREVOR BURRUS: One Generation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is Enough. Holmes, Jr. is overrated. Holmes, Sr. is underrated.
But here’s the key: “In all, more than 60,000 people—including 7,600 in North Carolina—were forcibly sterilized in the United States in the name of ‘progress.’ Progressives of the time lauded the decision in Buck. Individual rights, they firmly believed, should not be allowed to stand in the way of collective progress.” Related item here.
And here’s what Holmes Sr. said after quitting law school for medical school: “I know not what the temple of law may be to those who have entered it, but to me it seems very cold and cheerless about the threshold.” He did, however, receive an honorary degree from Yale Law School, which recognized quality.
UPDATE: Reader David McCune writes:
Don’t you get the sense that one reason Buck v. Bell is not nearly as infamous as it ought to be is that, if they are honest, progressives aren’t _that_ ashamed of eugenics and government control of reproduction, as long as we are talking about reproduction by the “wrong sort” of people? Is it really so difficult to imagine a case restricting the reproductive rights of the fourth child of a fourth child, with Justice Albert Arnold Gore, Jr, writing “Three generations of excessive fertility is enough?”
Before he returns to his greenhouse-unfriendly mansion on the beach. By private jet.
ALCEE HASTINGS TALKS ABOUT SEX.
Related: Hastings Maintains His Innocence During Sexual Harassment Probe. “Congressman Alcee Hastings, Florida Democrat, continues to maintain he is innocent of the ethics allegations against him by a former female staffer who claims she was sexually harassed.”
STACY MCCAIN on teen brides.
A FLIP-FLOP ON foreign ships and oil. It’s all a question of priorities, and re-election is priority #1!
AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.
MORE ON THAT ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL: How the Obama Administration Conned the Washington Post.
JASON EPSTEIN: Why I Was Arrested Yesterday at a D.C. Taxi Commission Meeting.
Let me just add that the conversion of DC’s highly functional and inexpensive taxi system to a medallion system is almost certainly the result of corruption, and even more certain to result in higher costs, worse service, and decreased opportunities. In other words, it’s like much of what goes on in DC.
RALPH NADER: Pay higher dividends to shareholders. “The consumer advocate’s motives are far from altruistic.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO MADE SYMPATHETIC NOISES ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE BUT DID NOTHING — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Weak: Obama punts on gay marriage at NY LGBT fundraiser. Plus this: “You owe it to yourself to watch these two clips, not because you’ll learn anything but because you’ll be watching a B.S. artist at the very top of his game. Check out how close he gets to endorsing gay marriage without ever quite endorsing it. All the rhetoric about equality and discrimination and progress and change that would have seemed impossible a few years ago sounds like a prelude to the big announcement — but he never quite arrives there.”
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? “This is really just the cherry on top of the sundae that is our Libya mission, isn’t it? First, the guy who became famous for opposing ‘dumb wars’ launches a new mission in Libya. Then he fights tooth and nail to avoid getting congressional approval, going so far as to ignore his own lawyers as to whether operations there are legal. Then his own secretary of state — who spent years trying to make amends to the anti-war crowd for voting to invade Iraq — turns around and kinda sorta questions the loyalty of administration critics. What’s next, MoveOn.org running ads needling Boehner for being a hippie?”
Libya is a “dumb war” — because it’s halfhearted, half-assed, and run by committee, and the President can’t even articulate the national interest involved. Obama the candidate said he was smarter than that. Obama the President is proving the candidate wrong.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Inspector General: 100% of Tested IRS Databases Are Vulnerable to Hackers.
FROM STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE TO STRATEGIC POLITICAL RESERVE: Is Obama’s Oil Dump A Political Ploy? “This looks a lot more like a blatant effort to manipulate oil prices globally, using U.S. resources. Frankly, the president doesn’t have a right to do that.”
Of course it is. And it’s a sign of desperation that they’re playing this card so early. Perhaps they hope that this will hurt some speculators and that that will have longer-term effects, but I doubt it. LBJ tried the same thing when he dumped government aluminum stockpiles on the market, but without the desired effect, as Joe Califano recounts that price pressure just moved into other commodities. LBJ wound up being a one-termer. Will that be Obama’s fate? He seems to have no better understanding of markets than LBJ had.