Skip to main content

Two coming attractions (or repulsions)

Today was light to non-existent blogging because my daughter had a soccer tournament in New Jersey, and frankly I'm exhausted.

But as inspiration fails to strike for something new tonight, I am working on two new posts for the next few days.

At Delaware Watch Dana is happy about the success of Cash for Clunkers, and believes it almost singlehandedly slays the beliefs of small-government ideologues:

Great news all around, right? But, reader, if you hear a note of weeping in the national celebration of this program's success, it's those economic conservatives who, for entirely doctrinaire reasons, simply cannot admit they were wrong. A government stimulus program worked—in fact, it exceeded expectations—and that must be denied at all costs. You see, if they admit that a government stimulus program worked here, then they'll have to admit that such programs might work in other aspects of the economy as well. Too bad for them. Reality is rarely kind to dogmatists.


This is an interesting point, worthy of an extended response. While I don't necessarily share Dana's enthusiasm for the outcome of CFC, I'm going to spot him as a starting point that he's right--the program succeeded. But, if so, does that mean what he thinks it means? Stay tuned. I'll take a shot at that, and the good part is that Dana will fire back. This is only fun when it is a competitive sport.

My other project has the working title of Do we matter? or perhaps How much do we matter?, and tries to think about the question of just how much impact this blogging thing has--at least in local terms. Are we collectively making some sort of discernable difference, or are bloggers in Delaware merely part of a self-referential community engaged in mutual mental masturbation?

And if we do make a difference, how do we magnify that difference?

Stay tuned.

Comments

Libertarian in Colorado said…
If it makes you feel any better. I'm nowhere near Delaware. I'm just happy that I found another sane person out there on the planet that can write Libertarian leaning non-spittle filled blog posts.

Please keep the blog going. This is my refuge from the stupid.
Anonymous said…
who is shocked to discover that the government was able to give away money? or that people lined up to get their free money?

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?