First Principles

Raise a glass, ladies and gentlemen – if you vote for Republicans, your opportunities for boozing it up will greatly improve! Well, that SHOULD be the case, anyway, and will be if GOP legislators read my latest RGJ column, and heed my exhortations. As always, please enjoy some additional citations, information, digressions, and other thoughts, […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

Here’s a roundup of some of the happenings of Nevada’s blogosphere over the weekend, in case you were off having a life or something. ~~~ Will NPRI’s separation of powers lawsuit continue forward?  There are clearly grounds for moving forward, even if the original defendant is no longer directly impacted, and eventually, a sitting legislator […]

[Read more →]

This little cartoon is fantastic – all of our kids need to see it once.  Our politicians need to watch it about once a week, I think.  It was as true in 1948 as it was in 1910 and as it is in 2010. What I really love about this video is that it shows […]

[Read more →]

Well, no big surprises.  He made the same promises that he made a year ago, and the only difference is that now we can be even more sure he won’t keep any of them. The big takeaway from me on this was just how unserious this speech was. 

[Read more →]

I just got home from Reno’s Tea Party, and it was great fun.  What better way to spend America’s Birthday than to talk and think and debate and celebrate the founding ideas of the United States! There was certainly anger in evidence, and rightfully so.  But that was a small undercurrent in what (to my […]

[Read more →]

What do you call it when a gift is forced on you, “for your own good” as well as the good of your family and neighbors? And then what happens when you try to give that gift back, and aren’t allowed to? What happens when the response to the attempt to give that gift back […]

[Read more →]

The debate over the economic stimulus package gets dumber and dumber.  No one knows how this package will actually “stimulate” the economy.  No one even really knows what that means.  At least, no one in Congress or in the White House. And so in their ignorance, they seize on the only direct metric they can […]

[Read more →]

Who would have thought that a socialized medicine program would result in free riders, reduce the quality of care, and break the bank to boot?!?  Hawaii just got done learning the hard way: Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said […]

[Read more →]

Our message to Wall Street is this: the party is over. The era of golden parachutes for high-flying Wall Street operators is over. No longer will the U.S. taxpayer bailout the recklessness of Wall Street. Said Nancy Pelosi, right before she voted to force the U.S. taxpayer to bailout the recklessness of Wall Street.  Fortunately, […]

[Read more →]

Imagine if you inherited a business that couldn’t fail. Not just that you had a solid business model, but that you were backed by an inexhaustible trust fund which guaranteed you would never to go out of business.  No matter what you did, no matter who you hired, no matter how poorly you managed your […]

[Read more →]

Today I had to go get my car smog checked.  It’s an annual requirement here in Nevada before you can get your license plates renewed, and considering the temperature inversions that can keep a lot of choking pollution at ground level here in the Truckee Meadows, I think it’s not a bad one.  Your individual […]

[Read more →]