URLs du Jour

2009-05-04

  • Last week I mentioned a central tenet of the Statist faith: spending (or "investing") taxpayer money is an effective method to achieve worthy goals. The natural corollary: if you're not getting the goals you want quickly enough, the only possible problem is that you're not "investing" enough taxpayer money.

    Adherents to the faith have no problem with taking a turn to the ghoulish, as a recent interview with ex-Republican Arlen Specter demonstrates, in talking about government funding of medical research:

    Mr. Specter continued: "If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine."
    Specter is a true, childlike believer in the magical abilities of the State. Push more money in this end, cancer cures come out the other! Also ponies!

  • Mickey Kaus has a short post about how teachers' unions make it near-impossible to get lousy teachers out of the classroom. Via Mickey, the LA Times has a great pictorial of the maze of procedures that must be invoked to dismiss teachers accused of misconduct. It's jaw-dropping.

  • As one of his throwaway pearls of wisdom, Lileks remarks:
    […] the three most confusing words in the English language are "previously, on Lost."
    So true.