Dec
8
2008

URLs du Jour

2008-12-08

  • P. J. O'Rourke reports on Disneyland's House of the Future, past and present. Basically: in the past, the future was better. That's the way I see it too.

  • But there's trouble elsewhere in the park too…
    Disneyland management has fired four actors who portrayed swashbuckling pirate Jack Sparrow, but Disney officials deny charges that the pirates were replaced by Tinker Bell fairies, it was reported Saturday. One former cast member says Disney officials were worried that the swashbuckling actors were causing young female parkgoers to flash more than their riggings and yardarms late at night.
    (Via, of course, Dave Barry.)

  • Rich Lowry points out the free-lunch fallacy of "green jobs" as pushed by Obama and other powerful Democrats by citing an economic thinker we've been citing quite a bit ourselves:
    The "green" jobs enthusiasts are making a classic error illustrated by the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat. When a railroad was under construction from France to Spain, someone in Bordeaux suggested that there be a break in the tracks to boost the town's economy with all the extra work for porters to cart luggage between trains, etc. Bastiat pointed out that if breaks in the tracks were such an economic benefit, every town should have one and France should build a "negative railroad" consisting entirely of interruptions.
    Rich winds up with a point we've made a time or two as well:
    It's always a mistake to believe that government can "create" jobs. It only creates jobs by taking resources from the economy, and therefore destroying jobs out of sight. It should attempt to create a favorable business climate and leave the rest … to the market.

  • If you're a parent, or an ex-child, of the correct age, you'll recognize the literary work on which If You Give the Federal Government $700 Billion is based:
    If you give the federal government $700 billion, it will just ask for more.

    When you say you're not sure about more and ask what the money will be used for, the federal government will stamp its foot, tell you you're too dumb to figure it out, and then ask you for a handkerchief to cry in because it now hates you.

    The handkerchief will remind it of …

    It's a lot more credible than the last 300 Paul Krugman columns, so check it out.

  • Speaking of stupid ideas, here's one that I hadn't seen yet: resurrecting FDR's Federal Writers Project.

    Proposed by, guess what, a writer.

    Because there's just not enough unread writing around; it needs subsidy.