Jun
19
2013

URLs du Jour — 2013-06-19

  • Stop Anti-Catholic Bigotry Sad news out of New Hampshire on Monday, as Strafford County Superior Court Judge John Lewis ruled that the state's new education tax credit for businesses that donate to scholarship funds can't be used to send kids to "religious schools".

    The Cato Institute has a good review of the decision and the reactions. Especially noteworthy is that Judge Lewis's decision was based on the NH Constitution's "Blaine Amendment", adopted in 1877 as an anti-Catholic measure.

    Granite Grok notes Judge Lewis is the guy that overturned a new law last year that would have tightened up residency requirements for voting.

  • In other unintentionally hilarious New Hampshire news, a bunch of out-of-staters came up to Concord to yammer about Kelly Ayotte's vote against the Manchin-Toomey "background checks" back in April. One of the too-earnest speakers against "gun violence" went a name too far, as Matt Lewis relates:

    During the rally, supporters of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns read the names of those “killed with guns” since the Dec. 14 Newtown shootings — and Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name was reportedly memorialized among the names of the dead. (Tsarnaev, of course, was killed in a police shootout.)

    There was also a lot of bickering, and a tasing. The Union Leader provides the details, including the observation that the bus the rally organizers drove in on bore Texas plates.

  • Speaking of New Hampshire, our Governor’s attempt to place a casino here is looking shaky. Kevin Williamson notes that Delaware, which had that bright idea awhile back, is now thinking about diverting $8 million tax dollars to a casino bailout.

    The popular argument for gambling is a lot like the popular argument for marijuana: Legalize it and tax the stuffing out of it. (I embrace one half of that policy.) The problem with that is that casino “taxes” are really more accurately described as profit-sharing arrangements, making states in effect business partners in gambling operations, a recipe for crony capitalism, favoritism for politically connected businesses, and, now, to no one’s great surprise, bailout considerations. And there are as always real economic limits to how much you can tax any given enterprise: Delaware’s casinos face an effective tax rate eight times that of establishments in Las Vegas, and they do not have the cultural infrastructure that Nevada has developed since legalizing gambling in the 1930s. Nobody says mischievously: “What happens in Wilmington stays in Wilmington!”

    My guess: we dodged a bullet; I hope we’re smart enough to realize that we did.

  • There's an election down in MA for the US Senate seat previously held by John Kerry; competing are Democratic hack Ed Markey and newcomer GOP Gabriel Gomez. The collateral damage is that innocent TV viewers in New Hampshire can get pelted with ads.

    But this one from Gomez I thought was pretty funny. Enjoy:

  • Back in the day, I knew some PDP-11 assembly language. It's nice to know there's a job waiting for me up in Canada.


Last Modified 2013-06-26 7:48 AM EDT