Aug
5
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-08-05

  • Jonah Goldberg notes a growing appreciation for the 161-year-old insights of Frédéric Bastiat in relation to the Clunker-Cash program.

    David Harsanyi doesn't credit Bastiat explicitly, but he's certainly in the same groove:

    Here's an idea: Let's give $50,000 to anyone looking to upgrade to a brand-spanking-new, environmentally friendly home. All we ask in return is that you burn your previous residence into a heap of smoldering cinder.
    I'm sure that would be wildly popular, and any number of idiots would declare it a major success.

  • At Cato@Liberty, Michael F. Cannon neatly demonstrates why I long ago stopped subscribing to the Boston Globe. Read the story of how they badly misrepresented a report from the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation and see if you can come up with a different conclusion:
    I submitted [a refuting] oped to The Boston Globe. They sat on it for a week, then rejected it. Which is fine. (FYI, the oped has been accepted at The Providence Journal.)

    But it also means that they were aware that what they were printing was disinformation before they printed it. I have a very high threshold of evidence before I'll accuse someone of lying. But this seems to fit the definition.

  • Neat Chicago Tribune article describing life at their local Netflix facility. Secrecy and calisthenics involved.

    After switching from Blockbuster to Netflix a few months back, I'm mostly satisfied except that I've had Gran Torino at the top of my queue since the DVD was released in early June. It's been marked "Very Long Wait" all that time. Guys, here's some advice: buy some more copies of Gran Torino, and maybe fewer of Paul Blart, Mall Cop.

    Not that you care. Just wanted to get that off my chest.