Archive for 2012
April 1, 2012
FREE ON KINDLE: With Fire and Sword An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia.
A FOLLOWUP ON THOSE “TAX CHEAT” BILLS: The other day I asked for sightings in the wild. A reader sends this:
I own a car wash and see a lot of currency. “Tax cheat” is very rare but always good for a smile. Let’s say it breaks down like this:
Allocation of stamped bills:
“Tax cheat”: 0.1%
“I grew hemp” cartoon bubble: 0.1%
“Ron Paul” related craziness: 1.0%
www.wheresgeorge.com : 98.8%
So the “tax cheat” guys are fighting the power as effectively as the hemp hippies at this point. You bet that if a couple cash businesses got that tax cheat stamp and really went to town you’d notice in your community, but someone would have to be really motivated to do that. I’m more motivated to fight the very cumbersome dollar coin.
Please no names—it is a bad idea to give your name after a digression about all the cash you see.
Good point. And reader Donald Barnhardt writes:
Glenn – here are a couple of Timmies I got in change recently. These two appear to be rather ‘enthusiastically’ stamped. Maybe the stamper had just finished his taxes.
Plus, a cautionary note from reader Jed Skillman: “Whoa! George Washington is the Father of Our Country…He is not a tax cheat! Who ever is stamping ‘Tax Cheat’ on Tim Geithner bills needs to circle Geithner’s name and draw an arrow to it so the point is made clear to the most casually informed among us.” For the ones I’ve seen it’s been pretty obvious, but a fair point.
And several readers point out that the Tax Cheat Stamps guy is still in business, apparently undeterred by being audited shortly after their introduction.
HOPE AND CHANGE: Democratic mayors challenge teachers unions in urban political shift. No, really: This change represents a new hope for public schools.
UPDATE: Reader Brian Cragin writes: “Gov. Chris Christie does this and he’s a bully. Dems do it and we get an honest analysis of the value of unions. Taking on unions is positive progressive, unless you’re republican.”
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VIRGINIA POSTREL: Where Are David Brooks & HuffPo’s William Bradley Getting Their Story Ideas? And why are lefties pushing a (recent) gay-baiter?
WORST EMAILER IN THE WORLD? Keith Olbermann’s Angry Email Trail Traces Breakup With Current TV. “Olbermann never came close to the more than 1 million viewers he had averaged at MSNBC, but his Current show was drawing more than 100,000 in the prized 25-to-54 age group last summer—and that gradually dwindled to 30,000.” Dude.
PETER WOOD: How to Ask A Question. “Events open to public response these days are swamped with people who don’t know how to ask questions. College campuses present some of the worst spectacles of faux-questioning prolixity and inconsequence. In principle, students and faculty members should have long since mastered the art or know enough not to display their incompetence. But no, they seem more and more possessed with a demon of self-expression that has recklessly discarded restraint.”
LOWER EDUCATION UPDATE: Detroit High School Protest: Students Suspended After Demanding ‘An Education.’
SO I MISSED THE EMAIL until it was just un-buried, but Stephen Gordon’s blog post, In The Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop, got turned into a more-polished op-ed for The Boston Globe.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Did Law Schools Underreport Student Debt?
March 31, 2012
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: My dinner with Nick Denton.
PALIN TO COURIC: Game On! Well, it was Andrew Breitbart who said that Sarah Palin should be the Red State Oprah.
CELEBRATING HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT HOUR: Stately InstaPundit manor is so brightly lit you can see it from space.
UPDATE: Reader Ross Wolfe writes: “Your house is so bright it can be seen from space? And yet you’re still not using up as much energy as Al Gore is at his house.” I don’t ask strange women to release my chakras, either.
TOM MAGUIRE exercises skepticism.
HARTNOLL BROTHERS UPDATE: After eight years, the return of Orbital.
JOURNALISM NARRATIVE MANAGEMENT: Tom Maguire critiques CNN: “CNN pretends to reprise the witnesses to the Trayvon Martin shooting and aftermath. They paint a picture of a ‘fair and balanced’ effort but omit ‘John’, the most important eyewitness to the scuffle that preceded the shooting. John says Zimmerman was on the ground getting beaten and calling for help; odd that CNN missed that.”
It’s still unclear exactly what happened on that night, but it’s pretty obvious what’s happening in the press now.
ANN ALTHOUSE CONTINUES TO CALL OUT RACISM WHEREVER SHE SEES IT. Plus, from the comments: “I really get the sense that last week’s SCOTUS arguments gave lefties a dose of cognitive dissonance that’s taking them a long time to rationalize away. In the meantime, all they have to fall back on is invective.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, THE MEDIA WOULD BECOME PRUDISH AND MEAN — AND THEY WERE RIGHT: Newspaper Fires Writer Sarah Tressler Because She Also Worked As A Stripper.
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Reader Dave Lange writes:
Re: your post on the proposed Clery Act expansion.
Ever notice how, in all the Administration’s posturing about reducing college tuition costs, the subject of eliminating all of those Federal mandates that greatly contribute to universities’ expenses never comes up? Of course, the diversity machine is the biggest part of that, but things like this don’t help.
I don’t know if diversity is the biggest single part or not, but yeah. Here’s more on that, and here’s John Leo on how even broke universities won’t cut diversity programs.
UPDATE: Reader Robert Rogers writes: “I don’t know what schools Dave Lange is familiar with, but in my experience diversity is a drop in the bucket compared to the compliance costs for things like federal grants and accreditation. Yes, a lot of administrative bloat is of our own making, but a huge portion is thrust upon us. (And don’t get me started on how most compliance exercises are completely ineffective.)”
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HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: NBC News Charged With Misleading Editing in Zimmerman 911 Call.
In the NBC segment, Zimmerman says: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”
The full version, though, unfolds like this:
Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”
Zimmerman: “He looks black.”
It’s as if they’re pushing a predetermined narrative regardless of the evidence or something.
UPDATE: Reader Michael Costello emails: “ABC did the same thing. Aren’t these the same people who accused Andrew Breitbart of deceptive editing?” Yeah, go figure.
NICK GILLESPIE: Stop Panicking About Bullies. “I have no interest in defending the bullies who dominate sandboxes, extort lunch money and use Twitter to taunt their classmates. But there is no growing crisis. Childhood and adolescence in America have never been less brutal. Even as the country’s overprotective parents whip themselves up into a moral panic about kid-on-kid cruelty, the numbers don’t point to any explosion of abuse. As for the rising wave of laws and regulations designed to combat meanness among students, they are likely to lump together minor slights with major offenses. The antibullying movement is already conflating serious cases of gay-bashing and vicious harassment with things like…a kid named Cheese having a tough time in grade school.”