LOL…Remember that fence they were talking about building on the Mexican border? Texas mayors and business leaders filed a class-action lawsuit Friday alleging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff hoodwinked landowners into waiving their property rights for construction of a fence along the Mexican border. Members of the Texas Border Coalition said Chertoff did not fairly negotiate compensation [...]

by Ron Paul The House passed two bills attempting to rehabilitate the housing and mortgage market this week. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of criticism and blame for the bad decisions, and rightly so. Lenders and banks do...

Republicans running scared after special election losses
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/us/politics/15repubs.html?em&ex=1210996800&en=5cb3725262e6dd07&ei=5087%0A

Childers thanks God, family
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=273360&pub=1&div=News

AFL-CIO reveals McCain voting record on issues related to working families
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain.cfm

April sees sharp rise in food prices
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/food_prices.html

What are Democrats doing right ? Recent elections wins prove the viability of socially conservative Democrats
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3504

Edwards supporters swinging to Obama
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/15/edwards_supporters_start_to_sw.html

America's fading military industrial base
http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/news_item.asp?nid=3205426

Progressive Prescriptions for a Healthier America
http://www.americanprogress.org/projects/healthprogress/pdf/prog_prescriptions.pdf

Winning the White Working Class
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3682/winning_the_white_working_class/

Jim Webb's new book
A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America "presents a clear-eyed, hard-hitting plan of attack for putting government to work for the people, rather than special interests, and for restoring the country's standing around the world."
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/05/14/a_time_to_fight.html

Bloggers view Webb as leading VP possibility
http://www.slate.com/id/2191477/ Baptist Press interview with Congressman Heath Shuler D-NChttp://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=28033

California Supreme Court ruling likely to impact 2008 election
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/gay_marriage_ruling_is_electio.html
Good News for Gays, Bad News for Democrats
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/05/good-news-for-g.html

Hat tip to Gruntled Center http://gruntledcenter.blogspot.com/ - The link below has nothing to do with politics but rather a study of generic names for soft drinks by county. A really useful collection of survey data !
http://bp0.blogger.com/_0jmD5DKgr64/RypcFEPkTpI/AAAAAAAAACk/TyW-JsXiJZ0/s1600-h/total-county.gif

Still timely America First video from last year by country great Merle Haggard. Let's fix America first ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrHPjm4qKM

-Watched “Jim Rome is burning” a lil bit ago. While talking to David Stern in reference to the ongoing O.J. Mayo saga over alleged NCAA violations, Jim suggested the one-year-and-out players triggered by the rule banning straight out of high school players from future NBA drafts was to blame. Attempting to make a [...]

Shorter Bush: “Don’t take after my Grandpa.” Sometimes I wonder if we’re in an alternate reality because of crap like this. Seriously, Bush comparing someone to Nazi appeasers passed the laugh test for his speech writers?

by Micah Tillman On Monday, John McCain delivered a major talk on global warming. At a Danish wind-energy firm. In Portland, Oregon. Surely the irony of a South-Western Senator, who spends so much of his time on the Eastern Seaboard,...

Not Surprised: some idiot, after having seen someone win 200 bucks, decides to assault and rob them. Surprised: the victim won that money in a freestyle battle rap contest in Atlanta.

Robert E. Wright, Ph.D., historian and curator for the Museum of American Finance, reveals in ONE NATION UNDER DEBT: Hamilton, Jefferson and the History of What We Owe (McGraw-Hill: March 2008) the political and economic battle behind early America’s first national debt and its continued legacy today.

http://www.mhprofessional.com/?page=/mhp/content/press_room/releases/products/One_Nation_Under_Debt.html

Republican panic in Mississippi - will Democrats take open Congressional seat ?
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/18891229.html

American Legion backs Webb G.I. Bill: This Would Encourage Young People to Join Our Military
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/12/american-legion-webb/

Florida Democratic lawmakers warm up to vouchers
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article500372.ece#

Australian writer John Heard argues that gays and lesbians in his country are disinterested in the idea of same sex marriage.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23687597-5000117,00.html

Kevin Phillips explains how the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the financial services industry has hurt the American economy.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=bubble_and_bail Don't fuel the anti-ethanol bandwagon
http://www.mlive.com/business/grpress/index.ssf?/base/business-0/1210485904188750.xml&coll=6

Immigration enforcement bill splits Democrats
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/05/09/20080509immig0509.html

How Obama can connect with grassroots values
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055622112284133.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


Support Congressman Heath Shuler's SAVE ACT to remove the illegal alien job magnet.
http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/attrition.html All 3 major Presidential candidates back nuclear powerhttp://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/07/business/nuke.php Democratic leaders call for Cabinet-level authority to fight life-threatening diseases
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/may/08/democratic-leaders-could-cure-what/ Chinese nuclear base causes international concernhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Chinese_nuclear_base_causes_global_concern/articleshow/3026625.cms

Democrats for Life celebrate pro-life win in Louisiana
http://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=355&Itemid=2

The Evangelical Manifesto
Restoring the good name of American evangelicals
http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/index.php

Remembering Frank Sinatra - 10 years later
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=438v-0z4IvE

Diana Krall video - one of the most talented singers in America today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBvyJyzSGCE

Josh Bivens of the Economy Policy Institute http://www.epi.org/ takes a look at the impact of globalization on U.S. jobs and wages. Despite all of the propaganda from the corporate media about the benefits of "free trade," Bivens concludes that public fears about the impact of globalization are justified.

Bivens writes in a newly released issue brief from EPI:


A wide gulf exists today in American politics. On one shore are voters increasingly anxious about globalization and its effect on their jobs and communities. On the other are economists, policy makers, and pundits who maintain that trade is good for the economy, that the wider public is simply misguided about its benefits, and that politicians who sympathize with those concerned about globalization are pandering to special interests at the expense of the wider economy. This latter group relies heavily on the suggestion that “all economists believe” globalization is good for the vast majority of American workers.

This reliance is odd given that mainstream economics actually argues that there are plenty of reasons for concern about globalization’s effect on the majority of American workers. This primer highlights two issues in particular that should worry American workers about globalization: job losses stemming from growing trade deficits; and downward wage pressure for tens of millions of American workers. These problems are not unexpected consequences of expanded trade; quite the opposite, they are exactly what standard economic reasoning predicts.

Trade and jobs

Job loss is by far the most visible and easily understood way that international trade can affect American living standards. The effect of trade flows on American jobs is actually pretty complicated and so requires a bit of untangling. First, trade creates new jobs in exporting industries and destroys jobs when imports replace the output of domestic firms. Because trade deficits have risen over the past decade, more jobs have been displaced by imports than created by exports.

THE TRADE DEFICIT AND FUTURE AMERICAN LIVING STANDARDS

In a sense, a trade deficit is the difference between a country’s production (exports) and its consumption (imports). Each year that the United States runs a trade deficit is a year that it must borrow from abroad to finance this excess of consumption over production. This borrowing leads to growing foreign debt that must be paid, with interest. In 2007, U.S. borrowing was on the order of $2 billion every day.Australia provides a cautionary tale on the consequences of such borrowing. In recent years, the Australian trade deficit has averaged around 2% of gross domestic product, yet Australia’s total deficit of international credits over debits reached 6% of GDP. The 4% gap between the trade and total deficitwas debt service (i.e., interest) paid on the borrowing to cover previous years’ accrued trade deficits. This large income flow leaving Australia to pay interest on accumulated foreign debts should be a red flag for the future of the U.S. economy.

There are, however, some possible offsets to this job loss resulting from trade flows. As the trade deficit grows, dollars piled up by our trading partners come back to the U.S. economy, and this increases the supply of funds available for U.S. business and households to borrow. This increase drives down the price of borrowing (interest rates), just as an increase in supply in any other market drives down prices. Lower interest rates spur job growth in interest-sensitive industries (like housing); and these can offset some of the job losses from trade. Can these jobs created through capital inflows completely balance jobs lost to growing trade deficits? It is possible, but unlikely.

Of course, other macroeconomic influences may push an economy to full-employment even in the face of trade deficits. In the late 1990s, for example, manufacturing jobs were lost to trade while construction jobs (at least partially spurred by foreign capital inflows) boomed. In the early 2000s, conversely, manufacturing hemorrhaged jobs due to trade faster than any other industry (even interest-sensitive industries) could replace them.

The Economic Policy Institute and other researchers have examined the job impacts of trade in recent years by netting the job opportunities lost to imports against those gained through exports. One criticism of these studies is that they do not try to estimate the jobs gained from capital inflows. However, this criticism misses the point of these studies: estimates of jobs displaced by growing trade deficits are not a declaration of exactly how many more jobs the economy would have today if these deficits had not grown. Rather, they are a conservative measure of the involuntary job displacement caused by these growing deficits and an indicator of imbalance in the U.S. labor market and wider economy. These studies also provide an indicator of how trade has affected the composition of jobs in the U.S. labor market.

Economists may cheerfully label it a wash when the loss of a hundred manufacturing jobs in Ohio or Pennsylvania is offset by the hiring of a hundred construction workers in Phoenix, but in the real world these displacements often result in large income losses and even permanent damage to workers’ earning power. Lastly, and importantly, even if trade deficits and capital inflows were to fight to a draw and there was no effect on the total number of jobs, job quality could still suffer. Manufacturing jobs (disproportionately lost to trade) tend to pay more and have better benefits, especially for workers without a four-year degree.

Trade and wages

While job-loss caused by rising trade deficits is the most visible effect of globalization, its impact on wages is a concern to an even much larger number of workers. Even if trade flows begin to balance and there is less job loss in the future, the integration of the U.S. economy with those of its low-wage trading partners will pull down wages for many American workers, and will contribute to the ever rising inequality of incomes in the U.S. economy.

TRADE AGREEMENTS AND AMERICAN JOBS

The ongoing dispute over the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the U.S. economy raises a narrower issue than addressed above: do trade agreements (and not just trade flows) impact American jobs and wages? As described in this overview, increased trade flows affect jobs and wages in the United States. Given that a key purpose of trade agreements (like NAFTA) is to increase these trade flows—and all evidence indicates that they have succeeded—it is safe to say that trade agreements have indeed increased pressure on American jobs and wages by increasing trade flows.

It is, however, hard to disentangle the precise influence of trade agreements apart from all othereconomic influences. Given this difficulty, researchers (and editorialists) frequently compare trade levels and other economic outcomes in periods before and after the implementation of trade agreements to assess their impact. While these “before-and-after” comparisons are assessments of the impact of increased trade generally, not trade agreements alone, this general method of assessing the outcomes of trade agreements is essentially an industry standard employed by nearly all commentators in the debate over trade agreements.

While global integration is usually “win-win” between countries, it can still translate into steep losses for tens of millions of workers in the U.S. economy. Crucially, this wage-loss is not restricted to just workers in sectors exposed to trade, but is experienced by all workers who resemble those displaced by imports in terms of education, skills, and experience. Many of these workers probably do not even know that they are being affected by globalization, but they are. Landscapers may not get displaced by imports, but their wages do indeed suffer from job competition with import-displaced apparel workers.

Take the case of China and the United States. Reducing trade barriers allows each to specialize in what they do more efficiently, and this specialization generally leads to national-level gains for both countries—that is, increased efficiency, worldwide production, and total consumption. This is essentially chapter one in trade textbooks. However, a later chapter in the textbook points out that, when the United States exports financial services and aircraft while importing apparel and electronics, it is implicitly exchanging the services of capital (physical and human) for labor. This exchange bids up capital’s price (profits and high-end salaries) and bids down wages for the broad working and middle-class, leading to rising inequality and wage pressure for many Americans.

In the textbook’s index, this is called the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem. (For those more convinced by appeals to authority, the text box Interpreting Wage Impacts provides some quotes from standard economics texts.) How big is this impact on wages? A reasonably cautious estimate is that between 1973 and 2006, global integration lowered the wages of U.S. workers without a four-year college degree (the large majority of the U.S. workforce) by 4%. College-educated workers saw 3% gains from trade, so inequality increased in this time as well.

Four percent might not sound like that big a deal, but to put it in some perspective, wages of workers without a college degree rose by only 2% over the entire 1973-2006 period. If not for the effects of trade, then this group’s wage increase could have been 100% larger. An honest debate on globalization American workers are perfectly rational to worry about what globalization means for their living standards, and actually have a much better grasp of the underlying economics than do the elite policy making class who routinely tells them otherwise.

Furthermore, the globalization status quo is at least as stingy to the poor trading partners of the United States as it is to American workers. It is time we had a national debate that acknowledged these facts and treated views dissenting from the elite consensus on globalization with the respect they deserve. This debate needs to include responses to globalization that match the scale of the economic insecurity, the wage losses, and the re-distribution it leaves in its wake. Simply put, this scale is not appreciated or acknowledged in today’s globalization debate, and policy responses reflect this failure.

INTERPRETING WAGE IMPACTS

The first thing to note is that the losses described above are not the unemployment spells suffered byworkers displaced by imports. These unemployment costs are not even considered in most trade theory, although in the real world they obviously should be. Rather, the biggest losses are the permanent wage cuts resulting from America’s new pattern of specialization made possible by globalization. These wage losses, it should be reiterated, are suffered by all workers who resemble import-displaced workers in education, skills, and experience.Second, the wage losses discussed in this overview factor in the ability of all workers to buy cheaperimports or find new job opportunities in expanding export sectors. Too often even professional economists imply or even state outright that cheaper imports or expanding opportunity in export sectors make the net outcomes of globalization for American workers impossible to predict. This is wrong. Third, the channels described above are, of course, not the only way trade affects U.S wages.

Just the threat of substituting foreign labor and imports for U.S. workers (made more credible as globalintegration proceeds) reduces the bargaining power of U.S. workers—even of high-wage, high-education workers who are generally helped by the effects described above (e.g., college-educated accountants buying cheap imported shirts at Wal-Mart). These threat effects are all but impossible to measure, but are nevertheless important. Finally, for those more convinced by appeals to authority on the issue of trade and wages, below are two quotations, one from Kenneth Rogoff, economics professor at Harvard and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and another from a standard undergraduate international trade textbook authored by Paul Krugman and Maurice Obtsfeld:

“From a policy perspective, the major result of [the SST] was to confirm the intuitive analysis of Ohlin about who wins and who loses when a country opens up to trade. The answer, as we now well understand, is that the relatively abundant factor gains, and the relatively scarce factor loses, not only in absolute terms but in real terms. Thus if capital is the relatively abundant factor (compared to the trading partner), then an opening of trade will lead the return on capital to rise more than proportionately compared to the price of either good, whereas the wage rate will fall relative to the price of either good. International trade has a powerful effect on income distribution….This means that international trade tends to make low-skilled workers in the United States worse off —not just temporarily but on a sustained basis.”


http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib244

Who makes up these rules anyway? by Fred E. Foldvary Sometimes governments act so ridiculous that they clarify the true role of the state. Government chiefs claim they want to reduce environmental damage and promote energy conservation, but in practice,...

Of all the problems with the State as an institution, the most obvious one could be argued as the true root of all the others: by definition, it has to assume unanimity. As a monopoly of “legitimate” force, tolerating secession is suicidal to government, it must at the end of the day operate as [...]

The phrase “a candid world” is one you don’t hear very often. Its one notable occurance in history to date has been very notable, though. That occurance is as the addressee of a letter, if the US Declaration of Independence is thought of as an open letter of explanation from the Colonies regarding why they [...]

The Boston Globe seems to be the only MSM outfit featuring this gem from Bob Barr's presidential campaign announcement press conference today (hat tip to Crazy for Liberty):

In a news conference, Barr said "only a fool" would specify a date and timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But he said it's "extremely important" and in the best interest of national defense to draw down dramatically the US troop presence in Iraq and decrease the military and political footprint in Iraq.

There are only two reasonably likely outcomes in Iraq: An orderly withdrawal on an announced timetable, or a "last helicopter out of Saigon as the embassy is overrun" scenario. Barr has now publicly positioned himself -- and, if he receives its presidential nomination, the Libertarian Party -- in support of the latter.

As for the third possible outcome, "victory" in Iraq, well, I don't think that is possible ... but just to accommodate any hawkish readers, if it is, it won't be achieved by Barr's proposal to "draw down dramatically the US troop presence in Iraq." It would require a much larger, and much longer, "surge." So Barr's not appealing to the "victory" crowd either.

I just don't see what voter bloc Barr thinks he can appeal to with a "don't withdraw, but draw down" Iraq plank. The hawks aren't going to buy it; and neither are the majority of Americans who favor withdrawal; nor especially are the Ron Paul voters who will be looking for a candidate to support after the GOP's national convention. Whom, exactly, does a weak-sister version of McCain's "100 years in Iraq" nonsense make Barr look good to?

I started off reserving judgment, and willing to be enthusiastic about a Barr candidacy if at all possible. But as the negatives -- especially the conflict of interest inherent in his continuing financial support of Republican candidates, including the loathsome chickenhawk Saxby Chambliss, while sitting on the Libertarian National Committee -- mounted, so did my skepticism.

Still, until today I held out hope that if he announced, Barr would hit hard with a strong Libertarian policy platform -- a "road to Damascus" turnaround story that would position him, and the party, as a real alternative this November.

Instead, he came out with yet another round of timid, milquetoast policy pronouncements guaranteed to enthuse nobody who hasn't already bought in to his candidacy on the basis of his personal stature. With apologies to Aaron Tippin: Instead of standing for something, Barr seems to be betting that the Libertarian Party will fall for anything.

Richard Kahlenberg presents a strong argument in the May 12 edition of Inside Higher Ed http://www.insidehighered.com/ that Barack Obama could bridge the racial divide, win the Presidential election and unify working class America by embracing economic class-based affirmative action.

Kahlenberg writes:

Affirmative action is a highly charged issue, which most politicians stay away from. But nothing could carry more potent symbolic value with Reagan Democrats than for Obama to end the Democratic Party’s 40 years of support for racial preferences and to argue, instead, for preferences — in college admissions and elsewhere — based on economic status.

Obama needs to do something dramatic. Right now, while people inside and outside the Obama campaign are making the RFK comparison, working-class whites aren’t buying it. The results in Tuesday’s Indiana primary are particularly poignant. Obama won handily among black Hoosiers, but lost the non-college educated white vote to Hillary Clinton by 66-34 percent. Forty years earlier, by contrast, Kennedy astonished observers by forging a coalition of blacks and working class whites, the likes of which we have rarely seen since then.

On May 6, 1968, the day before the Indiana primary, Kennedy participated in an iconic motorcade through industrial Lake County, with black mayor Richard Hatcher sitting on one side of Kennedy and boxer Tony Zale, the native son hero of Gary’s Slavic steelworkers on the other. On primary election day, running against Eugene McCarthy and a stand in for Hubert Humphrey, Kennedyswept the black vote but also white working-class wards which four years earlier had supported Alabama Governor George Wallace’s presidential bid. Author Robert Coles told Kennedy, “There is something going on here that has to do with real class politics.”

Of course, Obama’s skin color may have made it more difficult for him to attract these voters than it had been for Kennedy. But in some ways RFK had it harder: The May 1968 primary came on the heels of widespread urban rioting spawned by Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April. Bluecollar whites and blacks were at each others throats, and Kennedy was the one national politician most closely associated with black America.

In Obama’s campaign to win over working-class whites, pundits have pointed to two key obstacles: his 20 year association with the angry and race-obsessed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s condescending comments about the bitterness of small-town white working-class voters. Some working-class whites appear to believe that Obama is not on their side — worried that he may favor black interests over theirs, and at the same time that he looks down his nose on people like them. The image may be unfair, the result of a single comment he made, played up by his political opponents, but the notion could stick nonetheless.

Obama is right to talk about shared concerns of all working people, such as better health care and schools. But to catch the attention of working-class whites, he needs to do something striking, which further distances himself from the Rev. Wrights of the world, who view life through the lens of race, and also signals to working-class whites that he understands that they deserve a helping hand too. Switching the basis of affirmative action policies from race to class would do just that.

Thus far, Obama has hinted that he’s ready for the shift. While Obama has in the past been a strong supporter of race-based affirmative action, in his debate in Philadelphia with Hillary Clinton, he said in response to a question that his own privileged daughters do not deserve affirmative action preferences, and that working-class students of all colors do. He needs to make this explicit, to spell out the new policy, and explain why he is shifting away from his traditional reliance on race-based policies.

Supporting a shift to class-based affirmative action would be the logical policy manifestation of his well received speech on race in Philadelphia back in March. In the address, Obama made clear that this nation needs some form of affirmative action to address the legacy of discrimination in America. He noted that legalized discrimination in FHA loans, for example, prevented blacks from borrowing to purchase homes, leaving older blacks with little accumulated wealth to pass down to today’s generations. And he observed that many African Americans continue to attend to attended inferior segregated schools, to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, and to grow upin single parent households, all of which are connected to some degree to discrimination.

On the other hand, Obama acknowledged many of the arguments made by opponents of affirmative action, who say that while such policies might have once made sense, it is now time to move on. Obama faulted Rev. Wright for failing to recognize that significant racial progress has been made, and he urged the country to “move beyond our old racial wounds.” Then, amazingly for a Democratic politician, he observed: “Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel they have been particularly privileged by their race.... As far as they’re concerned, no one handed them anything.”

Resentment builds, Obama said, “when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed.” These resentments, he said are not “misguided or even racist,” but rather are “grounded in legitimate concerns.”

Class-based affirmative action reconciles both points of view. It avoids the explicit use of race that working-class whites resent, moving us beyond the “racial stalemate” Obama described. But a carefully conceived economic affirmative action program would also try to capture the full legacy ofdiscrimination of which Obama spoke. It would be colorblind but not blind to history. Discrimination has economic manifestations, and college admissions officers could give a leg up to smart students who overcome various obstacles which disproportionately affect African Americans: growing up in a low-income household, one headed by a single-parent, a family lacking in accumulated wealth, and residing in neighborhoods with concentrated of poverty, and attending low quality schools. Under such a program, low-income and working-class kids of all races would benefit — people like the young Barack Obama or John Edwards — but not students like Barack Obama’s own children.

Moving to class-based preferences would at once remove a terrible source of division and instead reinforce the common interests of working-class voters. And it would do more than just help Obama get elected. Reviving the old RFK coalition would give Obama a mandate to enact the type of far reaching change than hasn’t been fully entertained since Kennedy’s death.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, is author of The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/12/kahlenberg

UPDATE: The post below is misplaced criticism, wrongly directed at David Gordon due to my own misinterpetation of what he was saying at the end of the piece discussed. After the second of Gordon’s comments below, I’m satisfied that my reading of the piece was in error. I am sorry, Mr. Gordon. David Gordon’s “The Kochtopus [...]

I was reviewing some stuff and noticed where I had promoted on Digg a recent book review by Kevin Carson. There was one key passage in the piece that seemed particularly apt for explaining the overall left-libertarian approach as I see it. “…[M]ost people who display egalitarian reactions against existing inequalities and concentrations of wealth may [...]

by Paul Jacob Banned! First alcohol prohibition, then other drugs. Now candy. Yes, candy is now banned on many school campuses. Why? Refined sugar is so bad for you it’s wicked. I’m sure you know many of the major bad...

Libertarian Public Service Announcement: -When we talk about state failure in terms of “who regulates the regulators?”, this would be an example of what we mean: The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public government employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into [...]

President Bush said that Cinco de Mayo is an opportunity to recognize the strong ties of family, economy and culture that bind the United States and Mexico. That was nice. Yeah. Then the president said, "Now, let's get back to...

While I’m not sure that I’ll definitely find it useful, I’ve been persuaded to try Twitter. Those interested can follow me there[RSS] or get a consolidated activity feed[Atom]. Share This