Jerry Pournelle: Adam Smith told us that whenever two capitalists get together, their conversation turns to scheming on how they can get the government to restrict entry into their business, and thus reduce competition. The usual method is to introduce regulations that make it impossible to start a competitive business on a shoe string. Over time those schemes create a Nomenklatura that governs all, and makes lobbying more important than productivity or ingenuity.
Attack Cartoons: You're all familiar with the broken clock that is right twice a day. ron paul is like a strange broken clock that is right 23 hours a day. then you get to some foreign policy midnight, and in stead of chiming, it barks and smears itself with poo.
Freedom Twenty-Five: What is the ultimate meaning of Dr. Paul, quite possibly the one decent man left in American politics?
It is this: Future historians will have to conclude that even now, with the United States approaching her nadir, the American people had a choice. The western world’s decision to commit suicide is one that must be continually renewed.
Representative Jesse Jackson (D): "We’ve got to go further. I support what [Obama] does. Clearly, Republicans are not going to be for it but if the administration can handle administratively what can be done, we should pursue it. And if there are extra-constitutional opportunities that allow the president administratively to put the people to work, he should pursue every single one of them."
Craig Ferguson: I don’t think that cynicism is a lack of belief in America. That cynicism is despair at the complications of process and government. It doesn’t have anything to do with the belief in what this post-Enlightenment country is and can be. This is a great idea, and if you mishandle a great idea, you could end up in a lot of trouble. But it doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea. It’s still a great idea. We may disagree on how to handle that idea, and that’s unfortunately part of the great idea.
The Czar: One interesting aspect that many of our readers may not realize is that, technically speaking, Keynesian theory has not been proven a failure by recent events—because under strict rules, it has not even been tried. That is the dirty little secret on both the Right and the Left: Keynes never argued for massive government spending—Keynes merely argued that government spending was an important multiplier for lowering wages and prices. Our Federal government simply assumed that meant an increase in overall government spending...because that is what they wanted to do anyway and made up this justification for it.
Sandra and Woo: These are management consultants, Richard. From IBM Oracle. They don't understand your techno-babble.
Barack Obama: But we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America."
China's Black Market City: Chen Mingyuan has lived here all his life, but he still gets lost every time he drives into Wenzhou. “All the roads in this town were built by businessmen, so none of
them make any sense.”
