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Another day, another whiny demand for more government
money. Specifically, Sui Lang Panoke, a "first-year graduate
student at American University working toward a master's degree in
public administration" writes a WaPo op-ed, advocating
a "federal need-based grant program for graduate students."
Read that, then read Neal McCluskey at Cato@Liberty to see Ms. Panoke's argument sliced and diced.
But I'll add a tidbit of my own. Ms. Panoke states:
We are failing to redistribute the wealth in America, and the divide between the upper and lower classes is widening.
But Ms. Panoke's imagined program pretty clearly redistributes the wealth upward, by taking the taxes of ordinary Joes and Janes and dumping them more or less directly into the pockets of university personnel, who are far from the downtrodden "lower classes". Ms. Panoke might herself be vaulted out of the "lower classes" once she gets her MPA, but I'm darned if I can see why this should happen on the taxpayer dime. -
Via BBSpot, check out the 95
Theses of Geek Activism if you're a geek. Maybe even if you're not a
geek, but nevertheless aspire. I don't agree with everything, and you
probably won't either, but it's very good anyway.
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Speaking of geeks: Jeopardy! all-time champ Ken Jennings
has a oddball sense of
humor that not everyone appreciates.
(See, for example, this clue-impaired story at the
WaPo. Idjits.)
I sympathize,
sometimes I find myself in that boat. There is nothing, for example,
like having
someone take one of your jokes as a
grave personal insult, and complain to your boss about it.
Ken is also very perceptive.
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Finally, a fish
story, as the people of Freeport, Maine are defended against the dread Koi
menace. They may want to think about changing their town's name from
"Freeport" to "Unfreeport".
(Via theAgitator.)
URLs du Jour
2006-07-26
Bradley Impresses
Despite getting recent mediocre report cards from the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste and the Club For Growth, my local Congressman, Jeb Bradley, has recently scored a perfect 19-for-19 record voting for the anti-pork "Flake Amendments" as pointed out by Andrew Roth at Club for Growth. He's one of only 21 (by my count) to have gotten a perfect score on this measure. So good for him.
Maybe all that cranky e-mail I've been sending him had some effect.
Anyway, if you'd prefer your own Congressman to vote against pork, check out Andrew's list, and be prepared to cheer, or weep. (And if you blog about it, and you're a shameless link whore like me, you can let Andrew know, and he'll link back to you.)