“Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely.”
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“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
In 2008, Republican insiders in a number of states worked mightily to ensure that presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul met with no success. So, this time around, his campaign has trained supporters in the caucus states to act like insiders.
What’s the secret?
“There were no actual delegates rewarded in last Tuesday’s voting,” Greg Gutfeld clarified on Red Eye, his late-night Fox News show. 
The votes reported on caucus night are not the votes that count, the ones that elect delegates. Instead, the delegates — who go on to pick other delegates to go to the state convention and then the national convention, and ultimately choose the GOP candidate — are picked later, after many caucus attendees have gone home for the night.
Ron Paul’s supporters stick around. And vote themselves in as delegates.
“We do have to remember,” Ron Paul has gloated, that “the straw vote is one thing, but then there’s one other thing called delegates, yeah!”
News sources consistently report caucus night straw vote totals, but rarely mention that such caucus polling is relevant only for perceptions of “momentum.” The actual candidate selection mechanism? Something else again.
Indeed, it looks like a majority of Minnesota delegates, as well as surprisingly high percentages in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada, may actually end up supporting Ron Paul for President.
Un-democratic? Paul supporters are unashamed of their strategy, as campaign senior advisor Doug Wead happily explained to Rachel Maddow. As they see it, they are only acting according to the rules that usually serve to favor insiders in the GOP boys’ club.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Video: The Broken Window Fallacy
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Nelson Mandela
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
“But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”
In which industries do prices and costs rise fastest? Those in which government is most involved.
The process is no mystery. Regulate supply by limiting entry into the business — to “increase quality,” of course — will raise prices, as producers behave oligopolistically. Government does this with health care providers, and have done so increasingly for the last century. If, at the same time, you subsidize the consumption, that amounts to increasing demand, which also puts upward pressure on prices. This has been accelerated in America since the beginning of Medicare, and with each additional healthcare program.
Typical government intervention double whammy.
Higher education is also not exempt from the play of supply and demand. One policy advocate’s explanation of this, which you can read excerpted, online, at National Review’s site, is worth considering. He explains what happens as vendors rake in profits under a regulated-and-subsidized system: they
sponsor crowd-pleasing sports events on weekends, building public goodwill. Other profits are used to hire professional lobbyists to plead for both more subsidies and more freedom to set prices. You also convince the government to allow you and other incumbent . . . sellers to form a private organization with the authority to decide whether new sellers can become “approved . . . vendors” for the purposes of receiving public subsidies. Unsurprisingly, few new sellers are approved.
Predictably, the analysis is followed by halfway measures that don’t lead to a free market in education at all. That’s just too radical.
Education policy wonks, like educators themselves, seem never to learn . . . economics.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Two Forms of Subsidy
Ronald Bailey, online at Reason.com, quotes a press release from a group of renewable energy outfits whining and moaning to keep their huge tax breaks. It’s all for the good of the country, they say.
But Bailey notes that when such tax credits go to businesses not favored by environmental activists and the New York Times, they get branded subsidies.
What is the difference?
A. Barton Hinkle, also working in the vineyards of Reason, clarified one such kerfuffle last year, showing that most of the allegedly shocking subsidies accruing to Big Oil were, in actual fact, general tax rules applicable to all sorts of companies. Hinkle readily concedes that maybe
these are dumb rules. Maybe they need changing. But in no sense can they be called subsidies—i.e., money taken from Smith and given to Jones. The failure to tax Exxon more does not increase your payment to the IRS by one red cent.
Hinkle concludes that if partisans, left or right, are going to treat tax breaks as subsidies, then they should do so across the board, without ideological cherry-picking.
And yes, there is an argument for calling all tax breaks “subsidies.” The lobbying for them looks about the same. They favor some businesses (or, more often, industries) over others. Politicians get the benefits from the special interests in the exact same way.
Perhaps we should define two broad categories of subsidy: Direct benefits and negated detriments. A tax sure is a detriment to the taxpayer. A tax credit or other break is a “negated detriment.” That is, an indirect benefit.
And those negative detriments sure can affect the bottom line.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thomas Paine
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their county; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”
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Guadalcanal won
On Feb. 8, 1943, Japanese troops evacuated Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. In August of 1942, U.S. Marines landed on the island as the Allies’ first major offensive against Japanese-held positions in the Pacific. A series of bloody battles ensued in the tropical heat as Marines engaged Japanese troops on land and the Navy has seven major battles in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal. American casualty estimates were 1,600 combat dead, 2,000 died of disease and 4,000 wounded, while roughly 24,000 Japanese perished. The American victory paved the way for other wins in the Solomon Islands.