Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Creative resume
Isn’t this the coolest, and most original, resume? One thing for sure, he is going to get more than enough exposure.
(Via Michael Eisenberg)
Wasting someone else’s money
The wall street journal has an important article about earmarks and their devastating effects. In its base earmarks funding bypassing proper public examination, proper legislation and is, by nature, against the spirit of the constitution .
Earmarks allow lawmakers to fund projects fast, with little public scrutiny. These days, their use is mushrooming. Congressional leaders are using them to help vulnerable junior colleagues curry favor with home-state constituents to boost re-election efforts. Earmarks grease the skids for important legislation — bills loaded with spending provisions that benefit numerous congressional districts tend to garner more votes. In recent years, Republican leaders have offered lessons for newly elected lawmakers in how to get earmarks.
In the 1980s, President Reagan vetoed a transportation authorization bill because it contained a few hundred earmarks. Last year’s version included more than 6,000, including $223 million for a bridge to a sparsely populated Alaskan island — the oft-mocked "Bridge to Nowhere." In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2005, there were 15,818 earmarks in all federal spending bills, up from about 3,034 in fiscal 1996, according to the research arm of Congress, the Congressional Research Service.
As always, such process - the ease of spending someone’s else money, is invitation for corruption. An invitation that is not remain un answered:
Earmarks made up about $40.8 billion, or 4%, of the roughly $1 trillion that Congress allocated in the 2005 fiscal year. Federal prosecutors in Washington, Los Angeles and San Diego are looking into potential abuses, including whether lawmakers have added earmarks to benefit political contributors, former staffers and friendly lobbyists. At least four congressmen, including Rep. Jerry Lewis, the current chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, are being investigated for their roles in earmarking or their ties to lobbyists specializing in earmarks.
A while ago CBS’ 60 minutes had a short segment about earmarks, watching it (you will need to scroll down to the segment: "Buried in the fine print") is a scary demonstration of how far we departed from the ideas of restricting government’s power and corruption.
I only hope that the pendulum start to swing back from this craziness soon.
Technorati Tags: Big Government - Earmarks - The Free Market - Libertarianism
New alliance?
A lot of Libertarians wondering should they shift their support to the Democratic party and replace the alliance with the conservative movement with a new alliance, this time with the Liberals. Accepting the reality that small government is only an ideal that cannot be achieved the Libertarian should form alliance with the party that will create the least damage and that will limit the growth of government and its intrusion on individual freedom.
Theoretically this is not a bad idea for Libertarian to become a swing power between the two parties and effect the national agenda by forming ad-hoc alliances with candidates that will commit to preserve individual freedom. However Libertarian voters have to be vigilant and make sure they are not being fooled to support a party, instead of specific candidates. Supporting someone a party my imply support to a candidate that still promote socialistic agenda of nationalize health care and other measures, under the slogan ” It takes a village…”. It is not different than supporting a party which choose as its candidate a compassionate conservative.
At the end of the day Libertarian should choose the better candidate not the lesser evil. And if both parties cannot nominate one that is a better Libertarian candidate there is always a third option.
Technorati Tags: Libertarianism - Swing votes - Clinton - Bush - Compassionate Conservatism
Nice feeling
It is very nice feeling to see that a blog post of yours is being linked to by the New York Times.
Technorati Tags: The NY Times - Old Media - Love Links
Uncured appeasement
If you ever wondered what Chutzpa is, here is a great example:
Former President Jimmy Carter said on Friday the Bush administration was partly responsible for North Korea’s decision to test a nuclear device by isolating the Asian country, and he urged Washington to change course and talk with Pyongyang.
“Obviously most of the blame is on North Korea but it is U.S. policies that have brought us to this status,” he told Reuters while riding between campaign stops for his son Jack who is running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada.
What Carter forget to mention is the fact that the sanctions established after North Korean simply tossed previous agreements, including those who brokered by Carter, and announced that they are developing nuclear weapon. Carter, as always, don’t let facts to confuse him…
Technorati Tags: appeasement - North Korea - Carter - Nuclear Weapons
Older man’s rant
When I was a child, and I noticed lately was pretty long time ago, Tabernacles Feast booth was a fun holiday. We, the children in the apartments complex we use to live in, used to gather and build the sukkah by ourselves; The older children did the actual assembling and the younger were busy with decoration. The end result was always somewhat shaky, but we loved it. The families of the complex then brought their food and it was a wonderful feast. Until today I’m missing laying at night in my sleeping bag in the sukkah looking at the stars and enjoying sleeping "outside".
Nothing that money can buy can recreate the magical spirit of this holiday; Nothing that money can buy can reflect the meaning of the holiday, reminding us the nomadic period of our ancestors, wondering in the desert on their way to the promised land. But apparently I’m just an old man, dwelling on his lost childhood, if I cannot understand why younger people need to express their spiritual life by spending up to $5,000 for sukkah:
Now, amid the do-it-yourself home-improvement craze and a movement among young Jewish families to integrate more ritual into their lives, families around the country are toting tools and prefab sukkah kits into the backyard.
One nationwide prefabricated sukkah manufacturer has sold out of its top-of-the-line model. It is made in China with pressed-wood walls and can be ordered with a bamboo roof and fake stained-glass windows. It sells for as much as $2,600. A Chicago Judaica company has sold 150 sukkah kits that range in price from $300 to $2,000 — nearly twice as many as it sold two years ago. Last month, a Home Depot in Oklahoma City sponsored its first sukkah-building seminar.
Technorati Tags: Old times - Holidays - Materialism - What money can’t buy - Tabernacles Feast booth
Happy faces
I like YouTube. I used it as a method to deliver clips of the girls to my family and friends for a while now. It is also nice to see two entrepreneurs so happy
Technorati Tags: Youtube - Video clips - Google
Another spark?
It seems like it is coordinated with previous remarks. It will be very interesting to see how it is going to fold, mostly considering Mr. Straw’s constituency.
Technorati Tags: Buy Danish - clash of civilizations - Western Values
The last straw?
Is this the last nail in the republican mid-term elections coffin? I certainly hopes so. Not only that the republicans didn’t promote any of the smaller government agenda I hoped for, they did the opposite.
With the slogan of “Compassionate Conservatism” they promoted conservative big government ideology making the choice only between socialism big government and conservative big government. The results , as we found last week, are pretty scary.
Loosing the majority in both houses will be a good thing for Republicans. It will force self-examination and understanding that what brought them into power was Reagan and his approach, not Karl Rove’s.
Technorati Tags: Compassionate conservatism - Libertarianism - Liberties - social conservatism - Karl Rove - Reagan - Mid-Term Elections - corruption - GOP
Too vague
While reading the Military Commission Act of 2006 it seem to me that it wasn’t a well drafted law, many paragraphs and definitions are too vague. It accurse to me that the vague language isn’t a mistake nor is a sloppy drafting, it was done purposely - and it is even more scary.
One of the most disturbing examples I found laying in the definitions of crimes triable by military commission, specifically in paragraph 950v(25):
WRONGFULLY AIDING THE ENEMY.—
Any person who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States or one its co-belligerents shall be guilty of the offense of wrong fully aiding the enemy and shall be subject to whatever punishment the commission may direct.
The vagueness of this paragraphs is so obvious that no law maker possibly noticed it, but they left it as is. And the vagueness of the definition of who is falling under the category of one that doesn’t enjoy the right of habeas corpus is simply too dangerous. Even if we agree that for the duration of the war the right of habeas corpus can be suspended, and I do not agree, it should have been extremely limited and very well define. However the way that this law drafted opening the gate for further abuse of personal freedom and further braking of the checks and balances that secured these liberties. Judging from past comments of the administration about people that didn’t agree with its policy about fighting terrorism as aiding the enemy, including similar statements after Liberman lost the CT primaries, many of us falling under category 950v(25).
Technorati Tags: human_rights - habeas corpus - liberal_democracy - congressional_hearing - libertarianism - liberties - the Military Commissions Act of 2006