First Principles

I haven’t done one of these in awhile, because the Earth still won’t stop spinning too quickly for me to do all the things I want to do in a day.  But there was too much good stuff I wanted to include with my latest RGJ column that I just didn’t have the space for. […]

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$5.4 Trillion in additional debt.  23 million un- or underemployed people.  Jihadists taking over the Middle East after the “Arab Spring”.  A trillion dollars (give or take) spent on economic stimulus that resulted in a significantly higher unemployment rate than we were told would result if NO money was spent.  Solyndra and its failed ilk.  […]

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When I was running for the Assembly, I would often say that the good news is that no matter who is elected for any government post, Government will eventually get much, much smaller.  After all its current size and growth is unsustainable, and things that can’t go on forever, don’t. But the choice we have […]

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So there we were, watching a nice PSA on how not to judge or bully our fellow high school kids (or maybe it was Terminator: 90210), and BAM! Sigh. Remember, folks. We borrowed money from China to pay the people who put this together, edited it, and cleared it for the airwaves. Maybe next time […]

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Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as […]

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I tweeted out this Big Journalism story on the trap Republicans were falling into on this whole birth control mandate issue, with the added commentary, “Focus, people.  Focus.”  It drew several questions and comments both on Twitter and Facebook that I felt were worth discussing. The issue is an important one, but it is important […]

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I only got home last night in time to see the second half of the Presidential debate.  I didn’t hear anything unexpected, although overall I thought it was substantive and good.  Will it matter?  Who can say.  But here are my thoughts. ~~~ The most compelling thing to me was in the part I missed, […]

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So – on Superbowl Sunday 41 cops from 8 separate law enforcement agencies stop and harass 2,699 innocent motorists over a period of what I can only assume to be many hours, and they catch… 5 whole drunk drivers? That’s an accuracy rate of 0.00185% of total stops versus stops of people who are actual […]

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I wish this debate had happened sooner.  Although it definitely helped that there were fewer candidates on stage – it’s not an accident that fewer candidates and no absurd timeclock led to a far more substantive debate than we’ve seen in the past. I haven’t seen a lot of the post-debate spin from other people […]

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In a word, no.  That doesn’t mean he was correct – he wasn’t.  But it’s fair to contemplate how the actions of our government officials – and their stewardship of public money – affect our everyday lives. Last week, while the Caughlin Fire(s) were still raging all over Reno, before a cause of the fire […]

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This whole debate over the debt ceiling debate is very welcome, even if the substance has been nothing short of silly.  Really, it’s like arguing over whether or not we should use scotch tape or masking tape to cover up the hole in the Titanic, and whether to use a thimble or a teaspoon to […]

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Via Don Surber, here’s a graph from the Washington Post which demonstrates just how completely, utterly insane the current budget debate in Washington, DC is.  Just keep scrolling:

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Or, An Accidental Admission that “Taxing the Rich” Won’t Help I listen to lefty talk radio sometimes.  No, not NPR – I gave that up awhile ago.  No, I’m talking about the real deal, the hard core lefties who try to out-Rush Rush.  I tell you what – nothing will reaffirm a guy’s conservatism more […]

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