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Monthly Archives: May 2014

State Knew Benghazi Terror Facts Right Off

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

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AlQaeda, Benghazi, Cover-Up, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Sharyl Attkisson

arrest youtuber

Sharyl Attkisson reports that the State Dept. knew the truth and “immediately attributed the Benghazi attack to a terrorist group…. The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks. They often maintained that an anti-Islamic YouTube video inspired a spontaneous demonstration that escalated into violence.”

With the presidential election less than two months away, the administration was seeking cover for Obama’s claim that “Al Qaeda was on the run” and a tragic security lapse that could have been avoided. They even arranged to have law enforcement make a show of arresting the man who made the video (and he is still in jail for a minor parole violation).

We now have a cover-up of a cover-up. Unlike the Ben Rhodes email, which was withheld by the administration for 20 months despite a subpoena, Congress has had this email since August under a restriction that it not be made public, but this week’s revelations prompted its release.

Ending Hardship the Old-Fashioned Way

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

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incentives, Poverty, unemployment

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Jobs are the best way to fight poverty. Most of the impoverished are unemployed and many of those have stopped seeking work; very few are employed full time. More often than not, government policies erect obstacles to employment (e.g., taxes, wage floors, licensure, regulations, mandates, and negative work incentives created by many aid programs). Reversing those entanglements is imperative if we are to foster broad self-sufficiency.

Like so many other areas in which government attempts to intervene, vast spending on anti-poverty programs does little to address the underlying problems. “Throwing more government dollars at this problem won’t solve it. Despite record spending on programs to help the needy, a record 46 million Americans were in poverty in 2012.”

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Defame ‘Em

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

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charter schools, competition, monopoly power, Public education, Thomas Sowell

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Can public and charter schools peacefully coexist? “Demonizing the Helpers” wouldn’t be a theme of so many posts if it wasn’t such a common defensive strategy adopted by entrenched interests. In this case, Thomas Sowell notes that “charter schools provoke the ire of those who have failed students up to now.” It’s good to reflect on the actual goals of our educational system and to weigh every option that could help to achieve those goals. Real outcomes show that changes in public education are sorely needed, and charter schools have proven that they can be part of the solution. Instead, stakeholders in the failing public education monopoly have sought only to protect their turf, engaging in a systematic campaign to vilify charter schools and their supporters. 

Net Neutrality: A Tangled Web

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

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Internet, Net Neutrality, Telecom regulation

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Net neutrality probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. It would essentially dictate that heavy network users, capacity hogs that often slow your access speeds, could not be charged a premium by providers to rationalize their usage. It would reduce incentives to increase network capacity and speeds. It would lead to less innovation on the internet. There are many other nuances that make net neutrality an awful proposition, including denial of the simple notion embraced by libertarians that private parties should be free to price their resources as they choose, and exposing the evolution of the internet to the manipulative hands of government regulators. If you want government control of the internet, then you want net neutrality.

Internet capacity is not like the air we breath. Providing network capacity is costly, and existing capacity must be allocated. Like any other scarce resource, a freely-functioning price mechanism is the most effective way to maximize the welfare surplus to be gained from this resource. Net neutrality would eliminate that solution. To those who fear corporate owners of the internet backbone, it should be noted that the market for backbone services is highly competitive, and network effects are so strong that it doesn’t make sense for them to price anyone out of the market.  

Here are two instructive links:

How Net Neutrality Hurts the Poor is a fairly short blog post explaining how non-neutrality serves the best interests of the poor in less-developed countries and in the developed world. The author explains a simple truism (“Low-quality Scotch is part of the optimal stock of Scotch”) and applies it to internet access. As I’m fond of reminding my spouse on Saturdays, “Low quality repairmen are part of the optimal stock of repairmen,” and she agrees!

Here’s a good piece with additional background on the issue: Neutralism: The Strange Philosophy Behind the Movement for Net Neutrality

Hating Poverty and Incivility

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

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Civility, Juan Williams, Poverty

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Getting Past Name-Calling to Talk About Poverty is a Juan Williams op-ed that is right on target. I don’t often find myself in agreement with Williams on matters of public policy, but the thoughts he expresses here about the poverty debate should be welcomed by anyone who cares about the real issues. He welcomes the interest in dialogue from Republicans about reforms to anti-poverty programs. Williams calls for an end to the absurd accusations of racism that have been hurled at conservatives expressing interest in the debate, recognizing that the invective does nothing to advance the cause of ending poverty. Existing poverty programs at best provide funds to blunt the effects of low income; they do little to lift the impoverished out of the cycle. 

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Passive Income Kickstart

OnlyFinance.net

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The Future is Ours to Create

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

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A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

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How economics, morality, and markets combine

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Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

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Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

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Gallery of Life...

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Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

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Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

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(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

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