Denver Paid Sick Leave Initiative 300

by Jon Caldara | 12:09 pm, September 23, 2011

It’s Friday night and you know what that means? No, not that lonely Star Trek marathon in your mother’s basement, it’s my public affairs TV show on Colorado Public Television 12. Tonight on the Devils Advocate starring yours truly, we will be discussing Initiative 300 – Denver paid sick leave. Joining me on the pro-paid [...]

Reviewing Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’

by Ari Armstrong | 11:18 am, September 23, 2011

Recently a local reading group I attend reviewed Ayn Rand’s dystopian novelette Anthem. That book served as my introduction to Rand many years ago, and rereading it proved rewarding.In our discussion, we explored a variety of topics:* The romance betwe…

Former Education Policy Center Intern Makes Splash on School Choice Week Blog

by Eddie | 10:49 am, September 23, 2011

Little Eddie finally has a run for his money. What do I mean? In lieu of diving into another deep topic on a Friday, instead let’s take a look at the school reform blogging debut of a recent Education Policy Center intern, Devan Crean. Writing on the School Choice Week blog, she asks the ever-important [...]

Thoughts on Thursday’s debate

by Rossputin | 8:32 am, September 23, 2011

Thursday’s Fox News/Google-sponsored Republican debate showed us a couple of important things despite the overly-loud and overly-frequent clapping by the audience.

Here are some brief thoughts on the performance of each candidate, saving Rick Perry and Mitt Romney for last, and otherwise going from screen left to right (from the viewer’s perspective):

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson will submit a balanced budget if elected president, as he told us in answer to every question. I admire his fiscal discipline, but nobody who proposes an instant 43% cut in defense spending is a credible candidate, and that would even apply to a Democrat. Despite living up to his reputation of having roughly the same stage presence as a cardboard box, Johnson had the best line of the night when he said that his “neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this administration”, but the line had been on the radio earlier in the day. Gotta give him credit for using it, but not for writing it.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has been consistently good in these debates and he was last night as well, getting particular applause from the audience when he took on Rick Perry over the issue of illegal immigration. Santorum also had an interesting exchange with Jon Huntsman over whether we should be pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan; I scored that back-and-forth a draw. Santorum also got loud, persistent applause when replying to a video question from a gay soldier in Iraq about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Santorum’s answer is that he would re-institute that policy, though would not expel from the military any gay soldier whose sexual preference was made known while the current policy is in place. The crowd probably liked this answer better than any other by any candidate during the evening. Santorum is still too much of a moralizer for my tastes, but he is no doubt a smart guy.

Newt Gingrich was as wise as always, and less caustic than usual. He probably remains unelectable because of his personality and personal life. His references to how he actually did balance the federal budget always make me wish we had more talent in our government, not just in the White House, but even among Congressional Republicans. As usual he was the smartest guy on the stage, and as usual it probably doesn’t matter.

Ron Paul was, like Gingrich, predictable in his answers but less caustic than usual. He gave a few good answers, including arguing that abortion and “morning-after pill” policy should be determined and implemented at the state level. It was really the evening’s only question on the issue, and it was more about that pill than about abortion by the time Ron Paul was done answering it. Paul was also, as usual, solid on the 10th Amendment. Nevertheless, Ron Paul remains, for me, disqualified from the presidency for his view that we should have told Pakistan before getting Osama bin Laden and his view that Iran wants a nuclear weapon primarily for its own national self-esteem. Ron Paul is lucky that he didn’t get a question about Israel or he would have been booed off the stage.

Michele Bachmann didn’t get as many questions as usual. She was good enough in her answers, though often had a hard-to-describe look on her face, almost like she had just sucked a lemon. She was briefly on the defensive regarding her statement that linked a vaccine to mental retardation. Bachmann’s answer, which was technically correct if not really satisfying, is that she was directly quoting what someone else said to her, not making that charge herself. But that’s close to a distinction without a difference and it has done much to feed into the reputation of someone whose brain is not always engaged before her mouth is. Early in the debate, Bachmann gave a decent answer to the prior debate’s question of what percentage of a person’s earnings a person deserves to keep. Overall, I thought Bachmann had a less relevant and less visible performance than usual.

Herman Cain had a great night. If he had a chance, you might call him the winner. He had solid answers (even though I’m very wary of his 9/9/9 plan because it implements a national sales tax without eliminating the income tax). His answer that he would eliminate the current EPA and start over was in the top three most-applauded answers of the night. And we learned that he was a survivor of stage 4 liver and colon cancer. While Cain’s claim that he would be dead under Obamacare is probably over the top, I found it interesting that I didn’t know that part of history already. And clearly the audience didn’t know either. The point being that he hasn’t made an issue of it trying to get sympathy. And I think that’s part of the reason the audience reacted with such applause. Cain also came across consistently as having a sense of humor, almost always a little smile on his face, and just seemed likeable. Again, I think he’s our next secretary of Commerce.

Jon Huntsman had a better night than usual though I still find him annoying, patrician, and condescending. His back-and-forth with Rick Santorum over troop withdrawal highlighted a real debate within the Republican Party, and Huntsman held is own in that discussion. He spends too much time saying that “our core is broken”. I continue to believe that overstates the case, and that it’s our president who is our problem, not a fundamental weakness with the American people or our principles. Huntsman was fairly strong when it came to the issue of job creation; it doesn’t hurt that the Wall Street Journal has endorsed his tax plan. Huntsman has had a small jump in his New Hampshire poll numbers, but they remain all but irrelevant, at about 10% versus 41% for Mitt Romney. At the end of the day, Huntsman strikes me, and I’m sure I’m not alone, as not a committed conservative, though his record in Utah is solid. It’s hard to know with this guy, and that’s part of what scares me.

Now to the main event: Rick Perry versus Mitt Romney. Thursday night it was no contest.

People from Texas whom I’ve spoken to have consistently said that while they don’t dislike Perry, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. With every debate, that has been proven clearer to me, with Thursday night the most egregious example of Perry’s intellect simply not being at the level of others on the stage. It’s no coincidence that Perry’s poll numbers have fallen after each prior debate, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Mitt Romney recover the lead in various GOP polls over the next several days following Perry’s disastrous performance.

To be sure, Perry was being attacked from across the stage, though it seemed less than in the prior debate. His problem was two-fold: His answers were mediocre and stumbling, and his attacks on Mitt Romney were deftly thwarted by just two words from Romney: “Nice try.”

Perry has a huge problem on the issue of illegal immigration. He is credible when it comes to the issue of border security, but his opponents talking points on “bi-national health insurance” and subsidizing Texas’ public universities for illegal alien residents of Texas are devastating. Yesterday was the first I had heard of the bi-national health insurance thing, and based on a little bit of reading it seems like a reasonable idea – basically allowing private insurance policies to cover treatments in either country, which could be very useful for people who live on one side of the border and work on the other, of whom there are many in southern Texas. Nevertheless, just the term “bi-national health insurance” will sound terrible to many GOP primary voters who won’t dig any further into what it means.

And that’s the defensible one. Subsidizing education for illegal aliens, even if they were brought here by their parents, is bad policy. It is a magnet for illegals with children to move to Texas. Furthermore – and I can’t believe that two debates in a row no other candidate has mentioned this – an illegal with a college degree is still an illegal, and not permitted to work here. So until our immigration or work visa system were to change to allow that person to work here, the argument for providing a subsidized education to him or her is extremely weak. Perry also made a huge mistake by saying that people who do not support his efforts to help these illegals are “heartless.”

Conservatives are rightly sick and tired of being called things like heartless, much less by a Republican presidential hopeful. After all, it’s the left’s oh-so-heartfelt policies which have sentenced large segments of America to poverty through the chain of the welfare state. That single statement may eventually be looked back on as the death knell of Rick Perry’s campaign.

It’s also worth noting that Perry had the dumbest line of the night: When debating border control with Rick Santorum, in particular the question of a fence versus patrols, Perry said he would “put…the aviation assets on the ground.” I don’t think I need to explain to you why that’s such a poorly worded statement and made me think “moron” the moment he said it.

Perry and Romney went back and forth about what each of them has said or written in the past about Social Security and health care. While it’s hard to put a finger on it, it felt like Romney got the better of those two exchanges. The substance of the charges against each other was fairly similar, but one couldn’t help believing that Romney was probably right in what he said about Perry’s book, with Perry less certain to be right on the facts in his claims about Romney. Romney’s answers were quick, crisp, and confident, and he seemed usually to be looking at Perry when he spoke to him, a move which viewers would take (even if subconsciously) as the behavior of a confident person. Perry on the other hand seemed to have rambling, nearly incoherent answers, and rarely looked at Romney whether criticizing or responding to him. It was the pose of someone unsure of his own words, unsure whether he was in the same league as his competition.

Romney did a fairly good job, for the second time, convincing the audience that Romneycare is different from Obamacare, and that Romney firmly believes that his measure was a state solution only and is not appropriate to be implemented in any similar form at a federal level, in short that health care is not the province of the federal government. He also did something new (at least new to me) when he said that “Our plan in Massachusetts has some good parts, some bad parts, some things I’d change, some things I like about it.” Taking responsibility for a mistake is so different from anything our current president does that it probably struck a strong positive note with GOP voters even while he was admitting a mistake.

Overall, it was Romney’s style that helped him as much as the substance of his answers. He was distinctly presidential, and it was a sharp contrast to the dark and often downward-looking Rick Perry, who looked and sounded overwhelmed. And on the substance, Romney dealt with criticism very well, not just from Perry, but parrying a question from Fox’s Bret Baier about the Wall Street Journal’s criticism of Romney’s tax plan as timid. And indeed it is timid, and Romney stuck with it, arguing for tax cuts for interest, dividends, and capital gains, for people earning under $200,000 a year. This is, at least at where he places the dividing line, something too close to what we might hear from President Obama and plays too much into the left’s class warfare rhetoric, offering comfort to the enemy.

It is part of Romney’s obvious strategy to avoid moving too far to the right to win the primary and then have to swing hard to the middle for the general election. He’s going to play this as close to the middle as possible from the beginning, hoping that he’s conservative enough and perceived as electable enough to win the nomination, leaving him in a position where it’s slightly harder for Barack Obama to call him a right-wing nut or accuse him of flip-flopping (as Romney is already vulnerable on that charge.) Also, Romney probably knows that if his policy actually gets to a Republican-controlled House (and likely Republican-controlled Senate), that they would strip out that threshold and allow him to sign a bill that offers tax relief to everyone, which is to say to include the people who pay the majority of income taxes in America.

Among the people who can’t win the nomination, Herman Cain was probably the debate winner. But there is no doubt that the real winner of Thursday’s debate was Mitt Romney and the real loser was Rick Perry.

In political betting at Intrade.com for who will be the Republican nominee, Rick Perry has dropped more than 5% in the last 24 hours, from nearly 36% to just over 30%, his lowest betting odds since officially entering the race. During that same 24 hour period, Mitt Romney has gone from trading just over 38% to about 41%. This represents a new betting high for Romney, and obviously the biggest gap between the two candidates of the whole campaign. Yes, it is very early, but as we say in the trading business “the trend is your friend” and as of today you’d certainly rather be Mitt Romney than Rick Perry when it comes to achieving your political aspirations.

[UPDATE: As of mid-day Friday, Romney is trading near 44% and Perry is down to 28%. It’s sort of funny that the biggest post-election betting gainer other than Romney is Chris Christie, who I really don’t think is even slightly considering running, and who is now trading 5%. It’s also amusing that the third and fourth place positions in the betting for the GOP nominee are held by people who are not in the race, with Sarah Palin at about 7%, just ahead of Christie. Jon Huntsman is in 5th place at 4.5%, and Michele Bachmann is melting away, now below 2%.]

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

Save Colorado Jobs fights Prop. 103 Colo. tax hike

by Kelly Maher | 7:38 am, September 23, 2011

Victor Mitchell, a businessman and former Colorado state representative, is spearheading SaveColoradoJobs.org, an organization opposed to the $3 billion tax increase on the ballot Nov. 1. Public schools are lacking reform, not funding, said Mitchell.

Seeing Stars: Won’t You Waste My Money?

by PerlStalker | 7:28 am, September 23, 2011

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood
A day for wasteful spending.
Won’t you waste mine?
Won’t you waste mine?
Won’t you waste my money?

From Alamosa, Colorado to Washington, DC, the race to see who can waste more money is on. Who ever wins, the t…

Only a Quarter of Our Students Can do Math? Let’s Build a New Stadium!

by PerlStalker | 8:36 pm, September 22, 2011

I while back, I told you all about Alamosa School District’s bid to raise property taxes in in order to build a new football stadium. The wording of the ballot measure is out was was printed in the Valley Courier on 21 September 2011.

Shall Alamosa …

Is It Really Time to Re-think Education Reform Focus on The Achievement Gap?

by Eddie | 1:20 pm, September 22, 2011

What’s going on in the world of education reform? Every once in awhile, even a precocious 5-year-old like myself can benefit from stepping back to try to get a better look at the big picture. With a penetrating eye and a nuanced approach, the prolific Rick Hess takes on one of K-12 reformers’ sacred cows–the [...]

Matt Welch: The $16 muffin is no joke

by Rossputin | 12:16 pm, September 22, 2011

H/T Shawn Macomber
Here’s a must read opinion piece by Reason’s Matt Welch:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/opinion/welch-sixteen-dollar-muffin/index.htmlLink to Original post at Rossputin.com.

“Dying” for Health Insurance

by Jon Caldara | 11:54 am, September 22, 2011

The Bell Policy Center just sent around a “straight talk on health care” memo claiming that not having health insurance leads to death (for the record, I’d also submit the idea that being alive leads to death. Just sayin’). It said that the Institute of Medicine “found” 18,000 US deaths due to a lack of [...]

Let’s Eliminate the Sales Tax

by Ari Armstrong | 10:00 am, September 22, 2011

As my dad and I argued last year, Colorado should eliminate the sales tax (along with the use tax) even if done in a revenue-neutral way by increasing the income tax rate.Consider a few of the many problems with the tax:* Interstate commerce has create…

Markets shout at Operation Twist

by Rossputin | 7:40 am, September 22, 2011

Following yesterday’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (“FOMC”), the financial headlines were about “Operation Twist”, the risky and destined-to-fail Federal Reserve strategy of “extend(ing) the average maturity of its holdings of securities.” But it was not just this misguided policy which cost stock investors dearly; other aspects of the Fed’s statement pointing to increased economic pessimism roiled the markets, knocking the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 2.5% and the S&P 500 down almost 3%.

Along with the cratering of stocks, the yield on the government’s 10-year note fell to a record low of 1.86%, and the 30-year bond made a stunning fall to under 3% after the Fed said that an unexpectedly large 29% of the securities they would buy would be between 20 and 30 years in duration. Most of the rest will be in Treasury notes of duration from six to ten years.

The panic accelerated Thursday morning with stock index futures pointing to an opening 300-point loss for the Dow Jones Industrial average, and the yield on the government 10-year note plunging to below 1.8%. Meanwhile, oil fell 5% on a blood-red screen of commodity prices.

Let’s start with Operation Twist: Over the next 9 months, the Fed will buy $400 billion of Treasury securities with a duration between 6 and 30 years, and sell an equal amount of securities with maturities of three years or less.

That’s about the only good thing you can say about it. The fact that it is “sterile” means that it’s essentially a fiscal move rather than a monetary move, and there is a good argument to be made that this is something that, if it really should be done – which it shouldn’t, should be done by the Treasury instead of the Fed.

With interest rates this low, it’s a great time for the government to be borrowing long-term, namely selling notes and bonds of 10 to 30 years in duration. But with the Fed buying that same paper, the government is not taking advantage of these low rates; it’s as if the government is loaning to itself, which gives you a clue as to just how effective this scheme is likely to be. (To be sure, rates would not be this low if the Fed weren’t buying long-date paper and expected to buy buying more. Nevertheless, economic weakness this severe would have long-term interest rates quite low without Fed manipulation.)

Please read the rest of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/22/markets-shout-at-operation-twi

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

Seeing Stars: We’ll Miss You, Brooklyn

by PerlStalker | 7:28 am, September 22, 2011

It’s easy to forget how fragile life can be. Then something like this happens. Brooklyn was my niece and very sweet little girl. Her mother, of course, is taking it hard but her sister is having an especially hard time. If you’re of a mind, please keep…

Colorado Proposition 103 opposition flyer

by Brian T. Schwartz | 9:05 pm, September 21, 2011

The Colorado Union of Taxpayers has a nice flyer (pdf) summarizing some positions against Colorado Proposition 103 which would increase state sales & income taxes in the name of “education.” Continue reading →

American moron freed in Iran

by Rossputin | 7:53 pm, September 21, 2011

Upon his release from more than two years in an Iranian prison, American “hiker” Shane Bauer offered this statement: “Two years in prison is too long and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and Iran.”

Seriously? Someone held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison for two years for and released on a half-million dollar bribe (called “bail” for political purposes, of course) after being charged with spying for walking on the wrong side of an undrawn line in the desert is suggesting moral equivlance between those whom America imprisons and those, including hundreds of political prisoners, in Iranian jails, not least Evin?

Given his statement, a little more information about Mr. Bauer will certainly not surprise: He is a freelance journalist working for New America Media which describes itself as “the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations.” A quick scan of the group’s web page shows the left-leaning bias you would expect. And you’ll be even less surprised to learn that Bauer “graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies.”

From this I draw a few conclusions:

The far left really does hate America.
Parents, please don’t let your kids go to Berkeley.
There is absolutely no chance that Shane Bauer is a spy…at least not for the United States.

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

COMPOUNDING PAIN: Job Loss Study Adds Up To Job Losses That Prop 103 Supporters Don’t Want To Face

by ColoradoPeakPolitics | 4:46 pm, September 21, 2011

Recently, the liberals in Colorado have been up in arms over the study by Dr. Eric Fruits of Portland State University that shows, if passed, Prop 103 could kill up to 119,700 jobs in Colorado, claiming "fuzzy" math was used to derive that nu…

There is No “Market” for Green Energy

by Jon Caldara | 3:10 pm, September 21, 2011

“Solyndra” is the latest word to become synonymous with green energy failure. The Solyndra scandal typifies the consequences of pushing for inefficient renewable energy sources – at whatever cost necessary. Our stance here at the Independence Institute has always been one of “energy agnosticism.” We don’t know what energy sources are the best. That’s why [...]

PERA doesn’t trust CO Treasurer, voters

by Amy Oliver | 2:32 pm, September 21, 2011

Colorado’s Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) told statutory board member State Treasurer Walker Stapleton that it would not release information such as annual benefits, age of retirement, former job and zip code of the top 20 percent of pension recipients to him. In an interview with Amy Oliver on News Talk 1310 KFKA, Stapleton said [...]

Utah Lawmaker Charts Bold Plan to Empower Students for Excellent Education

by Eddie | 1:41 pm, September 21, 2011

Over and over again I have said that serious outside-the-box thinking is needed to push American schooling toward excellence that affords families a wide array of challenging and effective options to serve them best. In that light Matt Ladner brings our attention to a bold and visionary education transformer, who just so happens to be [...]

Kopel on State Reciprocity and the Second Amendment

by Jon Caldara | 12:01 pm, September 21, 2011

Concealed carry is a hot topic in the federal legislature now with a bill coming out of the house called the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 (H.R. 822). This bill would extend conceal carry rights across state lines, allowing a legal gun owner who lives in Colorado to freely move about the country with [...]

HICKENLOOPER: Prop 103 Is ‘Probably’ Going To Fail, But Feel Free To Try Anyway

by ColoradoPeakPolitics | 11:14 am, September 21, 2011

At Governor Hickenlooper's first Education Council meeting yesterday, Ed News Colorado reports some interesting exchanges took place over state Senator Rollie Heath's (D-Boulder) $3 Billion tax increase known as Prop 103. While other members of…

Stacking taxes – the Rollie Heath way!

by Kelly Maher | 6:10 am, September 21, 2011

Sen. Heath – whom we’ve anointed “The Taxman” – may think that if people will vote for one tax hike, they’ll vote for them all. Not so…

George Gilder on Israel, supply-side economics, and more

by Rossputin | 5:40 am, September 21, 2011

H/T Jed Babbin

George Gilder penned this article in July. It’s critical to understand today as we watch Palestinian President Abbas, following the lead of and weakness exuded by Barack Obama, press on with a self-destructive quest for unilateral UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

America’s enemies understand deeply and intuitively that no U.S. goals or resources in the Middle East are remotely as important as Israel. Why don’t we?

Israel cruised through the recent global slump with scarcely a down quarter and no deficit or stimulus package. It is steadily increasing its global supremacy, behind only the U.S., in an array of leading-edge technologies. It is the global master of microchip design, network algorithms and medical instruments.

During a period of water crises around the globe, Israel is incontestably the world leader in water recycling and desalinization. During an epoch when all the world’s cities, from Seoul to New York, face a threat of terrorist rockets, Israel’s newly battle-tested “Iron Dome” provides a unique answer based on original inventions in microchips that radically reduce the weight and cost of the interceptors.

Israel is also making major advances in longer-range missile defense, robotic warfare, and unmanned aerial vehicles that can stay aloft for days. In the face of a global campaign to boycott its goods, and an ever-ascendant shekel, it raised its exports 19.9% in 2010′s fourth quarter and 27.3% in the first quarter of 2011.

Israelis supply Intel with many of its advanced microprocessors, from the Pentium and Sandbridge, to the Atom and Centrino. Israeli companies endow Cisco with new core router designs and real-time programmable network processors for its next-generation systems. They supply Apple with robust miniaturized solid state memory systems for its iPhones, iPods and iPads, and Microsoft with critical user interface designs for the OS7 product line and the Kinect gaming motion-sensor interface, the fastest rising consumer electronic product in history.

Vital to the U.S. economy and military capabilities, tiny Israel’s unparalleled achievements in industry and intellect have conjured up the familiar anti-Semitic frenzies among all the economically and morally failed societies of the socialist and Islamist Third World, from Iran to Venezuela. They all imagine that by delegitimizing, demoralizing, defeating or even destroying Israel, they could take a major step toward bringing down the entire capitalist West.

To most sophisticated Westerners, the jihadist focus on Israel seems bizarre and counterproductive. But on the centrality of Israel the jihadists have it right.

U.S. policy is crippled by a preoccupation with the claimed grievances of the Palestinians and their supposed right to a state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. But the Palestinian land could not have supported one-tenth as many Palestinians as it does today without the heroic works of reclamation and agricultural development by Jewish settlers beginning in the 1880s, when Arabs in Palestine numbered a few hundred thousand.

Actions have consequences. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization launched two murderous Intifadas within a little over a decade, responded to withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza by launching thousands of rockets on Israeli towns, spurned every sacrificial offer of “Land for Peace” from Oslo through Camp David, and reversed the huge economic gains fostered in the Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1990, the die was cast.

It’s time to move on.

For the U.S., moving on means a sober recognition that Israel is not too large but too small. It boasts a booming economy still absorbing overseas investment and a substantial net inflow of immigrants. Yet it is cramped in a space the size of New Jersey, hemmed in by enemies on three sides, with 60,000 Hezbollah and Hamas rockets at the ready, and Iran lurking with nuclear ambitions and genocidal intent over the horizon.

Clearly, Israel needs every acre it now controls. Still, despite its huge technological advances, its survival continues to rely on peremptory policing of the West Bank, on an ever-advancing shield of antimissile technology, and on the unswerving commitment of the U.S.

But this is no one-way street. At a time of acute recession, debt overhang, suicidal energy policy and venture capitalists who hope to sustain the U.S. economy and defense with Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, U.S. defense and prosperity increasingly depend on the ever-growing economic and technological power of Israel.

If we stand together we can deter or defeat any foe. Failure, however, will doom the U.S. and its allies to a long war against ascendant jihadist barbarians, with demographics and nuclear weapons on their side, and no assurance of victory. We need Israel as much as it needs us.

Furthermore, Gilder sat down with Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie to talk about Israel, economics, and more. It’s an interesting interview, to say the least:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVjvkVNuM5A

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

Dept of Agriculture Wants to Destroy the Economy of Poor Colorado Counties

by PerlStalker | 10:09 pm, September 20, 2011

The Department of Agriculture wants to take it’s size 47,000 iron boots and stomp all over schools that serve potatoes to children.

PPC’s Re|Education Camp: A Value Proposition

by elpresidente | 3:44 pm, September 20, 2011

Why PPC’s Re|Education Camp you might ask? Simply put–we’re better than the competition. More advanced and thorough than similar digital training camps, yet at a better price. That’s not to say that other training camps aren’t helpful or useful. We’ve been to some of them ourselves, and found them to be good in areas PPC [...]

Colorado Reapportionment Commission adopts final state legislative district maps – Colorado Supreme Court to review

by CTBC Director | 2:23 pm, September 20, 2011

The Colorado Reapportionment Commission (charged with drawing our state legislative districts) yesterday (19 September 2011) approved the final set of state legislative district maps for Colorado, having completed two rounds of hearing public testimony (meetings in Denver from 31 May to 25 July, followed by meetings around the state throughout the month of August) and a [...]

Prop. 103 and Fungibility

by Ari Armstrong | 2:22 pm, September 20, 2011

Proposition 103 is the sole state-wide measure, a tax hike, for the November 1 Colorado ballot. I will have more to say about this elsewhere. For now, I want to investigate one particular aspect of the measure; the potential fungibility of funds under …

Obama Buffett Rule Comments: Are Rich Actually Taxed At Higher Rate Than Middle Class?

by Mr. Bob | 1:33 pm, September 20, 2011

Not often I repost a Huffpo article but this one is right on. We need to be shouting from the rooftops that Obama’s tax plan is based on a lie. Obama is a liar and he knows it. I know it sounds harsh and I have tried to give him the benefit of the doub…

Why Netflix’s Split Business Probably Makes Sense

by Ari Armstrong | 11:30 am, September 20, 2011

[October 10 Update: "Netflix "has abandoned its unpopular plan to spin off its DVD-by-mail service and rename it Qwikster, saying it will continue to offer both services through its flagship web site." From Netflix: "It is clear that for many of our me...