Lee on Nov 18 2008 | Filed under: Society
In a Q&A session at the University of the Pacific in October, Dinesh D’Souza was asked about the moral dimensions of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. I don’t agree entirely with the causality he posits exists between irresponsible consumer behavior and irresponsible governance, but it’s an interesting take. Particularly in how he adapts certain complaints [...]
Lee on Nov 14 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs
When you think of the numerous problems routinely facing residents of Mexico City, things like an astronomical violent crime rate, standstill traffic, urban poverty, collapsing infrastructure, chronic water shortages, claustrophobia-inducing overcrowding and toxic pollution might come to mind. Even aircraft falling out the sky might reasonably have joined your list of hazards confronting the city’s [...]
Lee on Nov 06 2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized
Sadly, Myrna Bushell, Bideford (UK) town councillor and stripper/phone sex business owner, is resigning her office due to a lack of respect from colleagues.
But in parting she also cited the time constraints necessary for local councilpeople, concluding that you either had to be wealthy or unemployed to have time and interest in the work. I [...]
Lee on Oct 30 2008 | Filed under: Books, Culture, Lee's Page, Libertarianism
Synova wrote a little post that gets halfway to where I would come down on this perennial parlor game of the John Galt general strike. Sy recognized that to be successful, such a revolt would realistically be a miserable experience for a society, resulting in bloodshed and economic ruin. But she does not depart from [...]
Lee on Sep 10 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Taking his cue from Us Magazine’s five free issue incentive to dissuade subscribers from canceling over their anti-Palin cover story, TennesseeFree proposes Obama should offer five free personalized social programs to every fleeing voter. I’d caution the electorate against any such offer. Even with a beneficiary of only one, don’t underestimate the government’s ability [...]
Lee on Sep 09 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
According to a new Rasmussen survey 62% of Americans believe encouraging economic growth is more important than reducing income inequality. 51% also say the federal government exerts too much control over our economy as it stands. It would be wise of the McCain campaign to emphasize which candidates value which most.
addthis_url [...]
Lee on Sep 08 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs
A survey finds that public perspectives in Russia are turning sharply anti-Western in matters of international relations. But what’s particularly interesting about this, is that such sentiments have grown fastest and strongest in Russia’s most cosmopolitan and urban regions, whereas a pro-Western orientation remains strongest in the Urals and rural Far East of all places.
It’s [...]
Lee on Sep 06 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
A dissuasive argument against government healthcare actually.
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Sphere: Related Content
Lee on Sep 04 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008
Sound recommendation I’d say:
“I should’ve asked a few more questions when Sarah joined the PTA. When my wife starts talking about reform, corruption and making government work for the American people, it’s best to just move out of the way.”
(Political Radar)
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Lee on Aug 30 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Lee's Page
Here at ASHC we get an enormous amount of traffic from people looking for Sarah Palin photographs. My friend Jason over on postpolitical says he’s experiencing the same phenomenon on his blog, and we took to calling it the hunt for “Palinporn.” Toward that, my favorite keyword from this hidden web image search also comes [...]
MikeR on Aug 23 2008 | Filed under: MikeR's Page, Uncategorized
American Daily
The single most important building block of any nation is her families. Destroy that and you can easily lay claim to a nation’s soul.
I agree. I think we have failed to maintain the nuclear family and lost the fundamental building block. Part of the reason so many folks are enticed by government [...]
Lee on Aug 23 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Kim Jong Il as Colonel Sanders by Jonathan Barnbrook (photo: acb | The Null Device)
North Korea is already a formal necrocracy (government by the dead), given that Kim Il-sung –who has been dead since 1994– remains the titular head of state there. But according to Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura in Japan, Kim’s son and [...]
Lee on Aug 17 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Education, Lee's Page
The movement of “ethnic studies” curricula from colleges to public schools, is something that troubles many of us who have experienced such classes in modern times. Ethnic studies programs are often called “multiculturalist,” but since they tend to be monoethnic and extremely political rather than cultural, I prefer the term “ethnostatism.”
In defense of the migration, [...]
ChrisB on Aug 15 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Education, Firearms
A small Texas School district approved a plan to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns on school grounds last October and will see its first school year open later this month with that plan in effect. As far as I know, and as anyone in the article knows this is the first experiment of its [...]
Lance on Aug 14 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Humor, Lance's Page
FROM: Dr Ben Bernanke
Central Bank of United States of America
01-658-555-1234
TO: CEO
Lagos, Nigeria
Dear Friend:
I have been requested by the regional members Federal Reserve of the USA to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Federal Reserve of the USA has recently concluded a large number of contracts for credit derivative investment vehicles “CDIV” in [...]
Lee on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
It seems a sociopolitical threshold of some kind has been passed in Iraq, as the full range of separatist groups are now seeking power and legitimacy through representation in the central government, rather than in armed conflict.
addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fasecondhandconjecture.com%2Findex.php%2F2008%2F08%2F07%2Fthe-shift-to-the-center%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘The+Shift+to+the+Center’;
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Lee on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Sports
Chinese architectural designer Ai Weiwei, who conceived the now famous “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium design for the Beijing games, will not attend the opening ceremonies in protest against Chinese dictatorship. He has some powerful words of explanation in the Guardian today:
We must bid farewell to autocracy. Whatever shape it takes, whatever justification it gives, authoritarian [...]
Lee on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Uncategorized, Urban planning and development
(photo: 2 Dogs)
Modern China has a curious capacity to make otherwise very sensible capitalists instantly forget every experience they’ve ever had with government central planning. The Western businessman on a trip to Shanghai looks up and sees all those gleaming skyscrapers going up on the Yangtze, and he thinks massive state planning must be different [...]
Lee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
The National Women’s Committee of the Yemeni government is finally calling for an end to child brides. Their proposal is to reset the minimum marriage age at 18. The official legal age for marriage is 15 in Yemen, but loopholes have allowed girls as young as 10 to wed.
While in Saudi Arabia, a religious policeman [...]
Lee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Glenn Greenwald's Carnival of Fisking, Lee's Page, Uncategorized
(photo: companyink)
After writing about the Ronpaulist fear mongering of Jordan Page, and then reading Lance’s splendid post on the latest contheorist pandering of Glenn Greenwald, a common insight has reoccurred to me: the absurd amount of cognitive dissonance conditional to political paranoia.
This is something Christopher Hitchens explored quite adeptly last year at the “Four Horsemen” [...]
Lee on Aug 02 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Colombian flower farms (photo: Mike Freedman-Schnapp)
Colombia’s flower farm workers have for some time been benefiting mightily from industrial support communities, which practice heavy nongovernmental social investment in workforce collectives. Many of the workers in these communities outside Bogota and Medellin are essentially resettled refugees from the war in the countryside. The community support in the [...]
Lee on Jul 31 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
The Los Angeles City Council has banned the construction of fast food restaurants in low income areas. Perhaps I’ve lost the ability to be shocked by the abuses of paternalistic government, because my immediate reaction was “figures.”
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Joshua Foust on Apr 30 2008 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Foreign affairs
Cross-posted from Registan.net, your one-stop shop for news and analysis of going on in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Thirteen months ago, I noted the problems caused by the U.S. State Department having dramatically different divisions than the military COCOMs.
The DoD considers Pakistan part of the Central Command, or CENTCOM (which includes the Middle East [...]
Lee on Feb 16 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
There’s editorial sensationalism, and then there’s Keith Olbermann. Consider Mr. Olbermann on Bush recently: “If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You’re a fascist! Get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist [...]
Lee on Feb 13 2008 | Filed under: Lee's Page
photo: Michael Buck
The sole finalist for the new president of the University of Colorado system, is a Republican oil executive with only a bachelor’s degree. You can imagine where this is going:
Campus observers have fiercely protested the selection, which has yet to be approved by regents. A “Boycott Benson” Web site questions the selection process [...]
Lee on Feb 13 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
photo: Chris Dunn
The Moderate Voice takes a good and short look at McCain’s politics and notices a compelling absence of social conservative moral lectures, as well as a preference for stressing the characteristics of conservatism that Americans find most appealing: limited government and national security. Jennifer Rubin might add that McCain’s emphasis on pragmatic realism [...]
Keith_Indy on Feb 11 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page, Technology, energy, regulation
And by eventually, they mean decades down the road.
This is a perfect example of government getting in the way of the innovation we need to dig ourselves out of our fossil fuel dependency.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1362/1/
If you want to build a wind farm in Minnesota right now, you’re in for a nasty surprise. A 612-year nasty surprise in [...]
Lance on Jan 23 2008 | Filed under: Blogs, Developmental economics, Economics, Lance's Page, social science
Hat tip: Tyler.
Chris Blattman has a conjecture, possibly high wages in Africa are holding back growth:
One thing that has always struck me in the African countries I have worked is that the real wages (i.e. wages adjusted for the cost of living) of African formal sector workers seem to be incredibly high, at least compared [...]
Lee on Jan 15 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Mitt Romney appears to be calling for a government directed solution to the American automotive indutry’s woes. Marc Ambinder uses the occasion to point out that save Thompson, interventionist government seems to be a consistent theme for all the GOP candidates. How did this come to pass anyway?
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Lee on Jan 13 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Japan runs the world’s second largest economy with 17 cabinet ministers. Ghana, one of the world’s poorest, currently has 70. Why? Ben Ofosu-Appiah examines the question and argues the need for the dramatic downsizing of African governments. Shakara then offers an interesting counterpoint.
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addthis_title = ‘Minister+for+Kleptocracy’;
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