URLs du Jour

2006-07-26

  • Another day, another whiny demand for more government money. Specifically, Sui Lang Panoke, a "first-year graduate student at American University working toward a master's degree in public administration" writes a WaPo op-ed, advocating a "federal need-based grant program for graduate students."

    Read that, then read Neal McCluskey at Cato@Liberty to see Ms. Panoke's argument sliced and diced.

    But I'll add a tidbit of my own. Ms. Panoke states:

    We are failing to redistribute the wealth in America, and the divide between the upper and lower classes is widening.
    But Ms. Panoke's imagined program pretty clearly redistributes the wealth upward, by taking the taxes of ordinary Joes and Janes and dumping them more or less directly into the pockets of university personnel, who are far from the downtrodden "lower classes". Ms. Panoke might herself be vaulted out of the "lower classes" once she gets her MPA, but I'm darned if I can see why this should happen on the taxpayer dime.

  • Via BBSpot, check out the 95 Theses of Geek Activism if you're a geek. Maybe even if you're not a geek, but nevertheless aspire. I don't agree with everything, and you probably won't either, but it's very good anyway.

  • Speaking of geeks: Jeopardy! all-time champ Ken Jennings has a oddball sense of humor that not everyone appreciates. (See, for example, this clue-impaired story at the WaPo. Idjits.) I sympathize, sometimes I find myself in that boat. There is nothing, for example, like having someone take one of your jokes as a grave personal insult, and complain to your boss about it.

    Ken is also very perceptive.

  • Finally, a fish story, as the people of Freeport, Maine are defended against the dread Koi menace. They may want to think about changing their town's name from "Freeport" to "Unfreeport". (Via theAgitator.)


Last Modified 2007-04-18 4:21 PM EDT

Bradley Impresses

Despite getting recent mediocre report cards from the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste and the Club For Growth, my local Congressman, Jeb Bradley, has recently scored a perfect 19-for-19 record voting for the anti-pork "Flake Amendments" as pointed out by Andrew Roth at Club for Growth. He's one of only 21 (by my count) to have gotten a perfect score on this measure. So good for him.

Maybe all that cranky e-mail I've been sending him had some effect.

Anyway, if you'd prefer your own Congressman to vote against pork, check out Andrew's list, and be prepared to cheer, or weep. (And if you blog about it, and you're a shameless link whore like me, you can let Andrew know, and he'll link back to you.)