Most of us want to be fair, in the sense of treating everyone equally. We want laws to be applied the same to everyone. We want educational, economic or other criteria for rewards to be the same as well. But this concept of fairness is not only different from prevailing ideas of fairness among many of the intelligentsia, it contradicts their idea of fairness. Continue reading
Thomas Sowell: The fallacy of ‘fairness’: Part 3
Posted in current events, education
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‘Brown Effect’ aligns tea party movement with moderates
Scott Brown’s victory spoils the fable of a death struggle pitting tea party populists and angry conservatives against moderates and the Republican hierarchy. That myth foresaw conservatives refusing to support candidates with even the slightest of moderate tendencies, dividing the party, and ruining its chances in the 2010 elections.
In Massachusetts, conservatives preferred victory to purity. Brown is not a social conservative. He’s pro-choice and, while supporting traditional marriage, believes “states should be free to make their own laws in this area.”
Yet conservatives and tea partiers joined moderates and independents in the Brown coalition. This was actually one of the smaller manifestations of the Brown Effect. Continue reading
Posted in elections, party politics
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Haiti’s deeper tragedy
Some expect Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, about eight times more violent than Haiti’s, and cost 3,000 lives.
As tragic as the Haitian calamity is, it is merely symptomatic of a far deeper tragedy that’s completely ignored; namely self-inflicted poverty. The reason why natural disasters take fewer lives in our country is because we have greater wealth. It’s our wealth that permits us to build stronger homes and office buildings. When a natural disaster hits us, our wealth provides the emergency personnel, heavy machinery and medical services to reduce the death toll and suffering. Haitians cannot afford the life-saving tools that we Americans take for granted. President Barack Obama called the quake “especially cruel and incomprehensible.” He would be closer to the truth if he had said that the Haitian political and economic climate that make Haitians helpless in the face of natural disasters are “especially cruel and incomprehensible.” Continue reading
Can Obama hold Teddy’s seat?
I’ve been out of the country for a couple of days, so let me see if I’ve got this right:
America’s preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of Good King Barack the Hopeychanger’s reign by electing a Republican?
In Massachusetts?
In what the tin-eared plonkers of the Democrat machine still insist on calling “Ted Kennedy’s seat”? Continue reading
Stealth Propaganda
An obscure 2008 academic article gained traction with bloggers over the weekend. The article was written by the head of Obama’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. He’s a good friend of the president and the promoter the contradictory idea: “libertarian paternalism”. In the article, he muses about what government can do to combat “conspiracy” theories:
…we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies … will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. Continue reading
California Dreamin’ (on someone else’s dime)
This past Friday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for the federal government to bail out the taxpayers of his state to the tune of some $6.9 billion. The request comes amid efforts to close a $19.9 billion gap in his proposed $82.9 billion 2010-2011 fiscal budget. We hear daily news stories of governors all over the United States struggling to close similar gaping holes in their states’ budgets. By what rationale is California more deserving than others? Schwarzenegger argues his case on two fronts. First, he points out that Californians pay far more in federal taxes than they ever receive in federal disbursements. Second, he suggests that the burden of complying with unfunded federal mandates is one of the chief culprits bankrupting his state. Let’s take each of these arguments in turn. Continue reading
