<Jim Bartle:>

This link might work better.

It is funny.

:0)

<Jim Bartle:>

Link still doesn't work. You have to go to Crooks and Liars and scroll down the right side of the page

I sometimes have problems with Wikipedia links too.

Apropos to nothing and everything, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently released its study of global military spending in 2011.

One finding is that:

<World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.>

- http://www.informationclearinghouse...

That's starting to get into some serious money.>

He should know better than to steal money, when you're in politics. Somehow, it always come out into the open at some point.

<<The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. More than 96% of U.S. Chamber members are small businesses with 100 employees or fewer.>>

From May 21-23, 2012 they will be hosting "The Small Business Summit" in Washington DC.

Sowell points out that when liberals attack "trickle down economics" they are actually attacking a straw man (i.e. attacking something that doesn't exist).

In Sowell's words, <<Liberals claim that those who favor tax cuts and a free market want to help the rich first, hoping that the benefits they receive will eventually trickle down to the masses of ordinary people. But there has never been any school of economists who believed in a trickle down theory. No such theory can be found in even the most voluminous and learned books on the history of economics. It is a straw man.>>

Not only that, but Sowell points out that those liberals, who argue tax cuts to boost investment (e.g. capital gains tax cuts) immediately benefit "wealthy" business owners and only later trickle down some benefits to workers and other members of society, have the process backwards.

Business owners who make investments as a result of business tax cuts (e.g. capital gains or corporate tax cuts) are the last and not the first to benefit from such investment.

In Sowell's words, <<Those who imagine that profits first benefit business owners — and that benefits only belatedly trickle down to workers — have the sequence completely backward. When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens.

Money goes out first to pay expenses first and then comes back as profits later — if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.

Even with successful businesses, years can elapse between the initial investment and the return of earnings.>>

<Intellectuals and Society>

<Let’s get my judgment of Thomas Sowell’s new book out of the way first. There is not a single interesting idea in its more than three-hundred pages. Purporting to deal with the role that intellectuals play in society, it offers no discussion of literature, music, and the arts. While containing copious references to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, its index lacks references to Lionel Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Daniel Bell, Jürgen Habermas, Raymond Aron, Mary McCarthy, Michael Walzer, Amartya Sen, and countless others known to have put an interesting idea or two into circulation. It recycles ancient clichés about the academic world and never questions its author’s conviction that those who share his right-wing views are always right. Jonah Goldberg calls it “an instant classic.” Case closed.

The more interesting question is how Sowell managed the task of actually writing the thing. Even jeremiads should have their joys; there is something so wonderful about being a writer and a critic that delivering even bad news can be a source of unbearable pleasure. But Sowell takes no joy in anything he has to say: his tone is as dour and depressing as his conclusions. I understand that the man is a conservative, but can’t he crack a smile? Sowell is such a plodder that even sarcasm, conservatism’s reliable and sometimes amusing old ally, is beyond his reach. This business of dreary writing escapes me. True, writing can be a torment. But then there is the payoff: the unexpected insight, the sly pun, the implication left dangling for the reader to run with. Did Sowell’s research assistants, one of whom has worked for him for two decades, ever hear him shout with joy? Did he ever run into a colleague’s office bursting with enthusiasm about a brilliant sentence that made a whole chapter hang together? I cannot believe it. There is no grandeur in Sowell’s words, no sign of human creativity, no dream or fantasy of immortality. Sowell writes as if called to grim duty. There are people out there who hate intellectuals. His vocation is to tell them why without ever disturbing their complacency. The example of his book certainly will give them no reason to feel otherwise.

Sowell, a syndicated newspaper columnist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes a book a year. His first one appeared in 1971, and he has written forty-six in all. I confess to not having read them all. But I have read enough of them to know that Sowell is not one for changing his mind. Although he claims to have been a Marxist in his youth, his published writings never vary: the same themes—the market works, affirmative action does not work, Marxism is wrong, and, yes, intellectuals are never to be trusted—dominate from start to finish. The right has its share of converts—those, such as the also prolific David Horowitz, who began on one extreme only to shift to the other, and along their bumpy way display at least some genuine vitality—but Sowell is not one of those. The flatness of his sentences is matched by the flatness of his trajectory. Whatever darkness exists in the world does not reside in his soul. He undertakes no bildung and experiences no crises. He learns nothing that does not confirm what he already knew. If he were a character in a novel, it would end on page one.>

Maybe that could work here? The most argumentive individuals could take on their beta noires in fight to the end, filmed with live web cam? We could place bets. Naka fans v. Carlsen fans, Democrats v. Republicans, Anand groupies v. die hard Kasparov worshippers, Fischer fans vs. everyone.

Read that yesterday at work and got some odd looks as I giggled through it.

<Maybe that could work here? The most argumentive individuals could take on their beta noires in fight to the end, filmed with live web cam? We could place bets. Naka fans v. Carlsen fans, Democrats v. Republicans, Anand groupies v. die hard Kasparov worshippers, Fischer fans vs. everyone.>