Tuesday, October 28, 2003
TO GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE
The two space shuttle disasters caused a lot of people to stop and reconsider America’s space effort. We are expending a great deal of money for the privilege of watching a few individuals spend a limited number of hours in orbit around this planet. What’s it all about? Why are we doing this? What is the benefit? There are plenty of scientists who disapprove of man’s role in the space program. Professor Robert Parks from University of Maryland, for example, wrote some time ago in Ad Astra, the...
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Saturday, October 25, 2003
WHY I BELIEVE - AND WHAT
First, a bit of background. I was born in 1942 to fundamental Pentecostal missionaries on leave in Eastern Montana for the duration of World War II where they pastored a small Assemblies of God church. They had served in German Poland before the War, and they returned to West Germany in 1950, which was as soon after the war as possible. Thus my younger sister and I grew up in war-torn Germany, where I learned to speak German fluently, where I went to school, and where I developed my early...
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Thursday, October 23, 2003
A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE BUDGET DEFICIT — AND WHY IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN
Our nation is facing the largest national debt in its history. Our annual budget deficit is overwhelming — we’re swimming in red ink. From time to time, when the Democrats control things, Congress imposes new taxes on Americans in a demonstration of “fiscal responsibility.” When Republicans control, they reduce taxes to “stimulate” the economy, in order to lower the deficit. Why? What’s really going on? The late J. Peter Grace, Democrat Industrialist, was commissioned back in 1984 (ironically)...
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003
FOREST SERVICE PRICING—OR WHY THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK (EXAMPLE TWO)
We have already examined Randal O’Toole’s criticisms of Forest Service cost accounting in Forest Service Accounting—Or Why the Government Doesn’t Work. In his book, Reforming the Forest Service, published by Island Press, he also examines several other aspects of Forest Service operations. How the Forest Service determines prices is especially interesting. To illustrate the process, O’Toole creates a conversation between an imaginary former chief of the Forest Service and the Chrysler governing...
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Sunday, October 19, 2003
FOREST SERVICE ACCOUNTING—OR WHY THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WORK
In 1988 Randal O’Toole wrote Reforming the Forest Service, published by Island Press. Although the Forest Service probably does not consider O’Toole a friend, he makes several very cogent points. A literary device he uses is to juxtapose Lee Iacocca and an imaginary former chief of the Forest Service. Suppose, writes O’Toole, that Lee Iacocca sells $100,000 of Chrysler stock and purchases timber stock on the advice of the former chief. A year later this investment has dropped from $50 to $30 a...
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003
The LEFT exposed...and...The TRUTH revealed
Here is the full sequence of posts that comprise my ongoing discussion with DamonLeigh. Read this and draw your own conclusions: These comments follow my Thrawn Rickle post, Third World Economic Aid - A Fair, Workable Solution Posted by DamonLeigh on October 07, 2003 at 3:16 AM Some Interersting Ideas......but fatally flawed. For a start, cheap labour is just one of the reasons transnational corporations (TNCs) set up facilities abroad. They are also attracted by laxer laws around pollution and...
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Monday, October 13, 2003
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing BUT the Truth...
DamonLeigh and I have been having an ongoing discussion following my earlier post Third World Economic Aid — A Fair, Workable Solution, and then continuing in the comments section of Bombs in Baghdad. Here is a direct link to that comments section. I am writing a specific post on this because it is critically important for the BN membership to understand how untenable ideas become entrenched in our thinking. DL and I had been discussing my Third World Aid post, and he brought up what he...
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Sunday, October 12, 2003
World's Smallest Political Quiz
Right…Left…Conservative…Liberal…what do these terms really mean? The political spectrum here on BN covers the entire waterfront. I thought you might be interested in taking a short quiz that can help you “place” yourself in the political spectrum. This quiz is anonymous, will take only a minute or so to complete, and it is scored right on the website. It is actually quite clever in its ability to give you a fairy accurate picture of where you fit within the overall picture. Obviously, labels are...
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Friday, October 10, 2003
We’ve always done it that way
(This article is compiled from information of unknown origin that I received over the Internet.) The distance between railroad track rails is called the railroad gauge. The U.S. standard railroad gauge is 4 ft 8 ½ in. Now that’s an odd number. Why, you might ask, is the U.S. standard railroad gauge 4 ft 8 ½ in, instead of 5 ft or 4 ½ ft or 1 ½ meters? Why exactly 4 ft 8 ½ in? The simple answer is we’ve always done it that way; that’s how they built them in England, and—for the most part—English...
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Monday, October 6, 2003
Third World Economic Aid — A Fair, Workable Solution
Christmas 1994 in Mexico could have been better. In less than a week the Mexican peso lost over one third of its value. It went something like this. With NAFTA in place, trade barriers between Mexico and the United States substantially disappeared. Mexican citizens went on a foreign products buying binge that upset Mexico’s balance of trade to the tune of nearly eight percent of its gross national product. By comparison, at its most negative, the U.S. trade deficit never exceeded about 3.2...
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