Posted 2:05 PM by extinct

Peer amid the Pyramids: Your tax dollars at work

Egypt receives something like $2 billion/year, is it, from USA.

"CAIRO -- Crowds of pro-government demonstrators attacked opponents of President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday while police looked on, staining a day of national voting that government leaders had touted as a major step toward democracy."

Or this:

Hossam al-Hamalawy, a news assistant with the LA Times . . . said to him, “Hey what is going on? They are going to slaughter them.” The officer coldly replied, “We have our orders.” Amazed and confused Hossam asked, “Do your orders include having people kill each other in the streets?” The officer smirked and said “Yes”.

Posted 1:13 PM by extinct

Libertarian liberation in Iraq?

I understand conservative interventionists may not mind, but how can allegedly libertarian ones square this stuff as liberation, except maybe to say that it is happening democratically?

"Iraq's interim government revived the death penalty last August for . . . drug trafficking."

But if sharia law were imposed democratically, and it is quite possible in Iraq, would that be liberation too? Under the standard of democratic process = liberation, it would be. Which is why libertarian interventionism is a dangerous crock or near-crock.

Posted 1:02 PM by extinct

Rhymes with Bitch

This court order has not become a great public issue at least yet. "An Indianapolis father," the story runs about divorced Wiccan (whence comes witchcraft) parents, "is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to 'non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.'" Anyone seeing a gray area? Not me. (Via Radley Balko.)

Posted 8:35 PM by extinct

Full of Gas

The Maryland Comptroller in a May 17 letter protests an earlier article in the Washington Post of May 1.

The Comptroller defends Maryland’s gas price control system against a pro-free market author’s claims that the system has helped cause higher gas prices for Marylanders. The law, subject to some theoretically worthy exceptions, basically prohibits retailers from selling gas below cost.

Writes William Donald Schaefer: “[The May 1 article] suggested that Maryland passed a law four years ago to keep gas prices up”.

But he then adds in the next sentence, and I quote (emphasis added):

On the contrary, the law was passed to prevent any retailer from unfairly eliminating competition by selling gas for less than it costs.

The word “contrary” appears to have acquired a brave new meaning.

The operative expression here, minus the purported rationale, is that “the law was passed to prevent any retailer from . . . selling gas for less than it costs.” More narrowly: “to prevent any retailer from . . . selling gas for less. . . .”

Now if the law is designed to prevent gas prices from lowering to where they might want to go, it should be clear that the law has the effect, if not the design, of keeping gas prices UP.

I think the word “consequent” is more appropriate than “contrary”.

Further note: according to the Maryland Comptroller the law is supposed to have the aim of “facilitating competition.” Ah, sorry. The law is, well, to the contrary.

Selling below cost is a classic move of strategic business competition and promotion; prohibiting this is certainly NOT facilitating competition.