Demystifying the Koran

Really interesting take from the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542162?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/inthebeginning

Publishing

An excellent article on self-publishing in the WSJ. Comments are also valuable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

This reminds me a bit of the classical music/art world c. 1900. The French Academy dismissed those who turned the rules of composition upside down, preferring instead to reward those who believed in small, incremental change. It is not the names of Louis Leroy or Jules Massenet that we remember today, but those of Claude Monet and Claude Debussy.

Electronic media is turning the insular paper world on its head. Bravo to those who are leading the way.

McDonald's

Anyone else remember when the golden arches declared proudly "Over 10 Million Served?" - and how fast that slogan changed?
Today, the number of countries that don't have the ubiquitous fast-food restaurant can be counted in less than 15 seconds.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/palx/4761347793/lightbox/

Making money in the Capital

One of the big conversations at the Christmas dinner table this year was the discussion of the big pull of the 20something crowd to DC. Why? When we were in college, my sister-in-law (D) and I (I) both agreed, those who went into politics did so with altruistic motives: somewhere there was a desire to change things - to help those in poverty, to alleviate world suffering, to reduce the arms trade. Cynicism came after - when the sordid world of power and deal making exposed itself only to those who played the game.
Now, some 25 years later, all pretext has been dropped, and the name of the game is money. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/growing-wealth-widens-distance-between-lawmakers-and-constituents/2011/12/05/gIQAR7D6IP_story.html?hpid=z2

If the electorate could understand that government does not create jobs, and is, in fact, a hinderance to those who do, there might be a chance that career politicians might cease to exist. Until then, I fear that we are doomed to a re-creation of the court at Versailles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nobility

The Dictator is Dead

Gadhaffi is dead, and the Libyan people are dancing in the streets. Initial commentary is that the world is much better off - and I hope this to be true. No people deserve to live in the horrible conditions that the Libyans were forced to live under for the last 40 years. (Lockerbie and the AIDS trials of the Bulgarian nurses were but small glimpses of the horror that the population had to live with.) But why am I so strongly reminded of Ceausecu and Romania? Is it because Western nations played with the dictator until his acts became so intolerable that he was dropped? Is it just because both dictators were executed in cold blood?
So many stories will remain unknown. I hope the Libyans come out the other side in better shape than the Roumanians did.

Warren Buffet

With his clarion call to Congress asking for higher taxes on "the rich," Warren Buffet has hit the big time - Jon Stewart's Daily Show. The solution to our economic problem is raising more money - without restrictions on spending. However, if we look closer at his words, a question arises.

I pay a lower tax rate on much of my income than my cleaning lady does.

What does that word "most" really mean? Is he really calling for closing the tax loopholes, or is he just asking for higher rates on the uber-wealthy?  And just who would those people be? Could Buffet's reduced tax rate be due to his very high charitable contributions to a foundation that invests in things that he wants to invest in - rather than what the government wants to spend it on? It certainly would be nice to see his 1040...

At the same time, I can't help but thinking this really stinks. Who, after all made a killing on Goldman Sachs last year? Who just made a fortune on buying preferred class Bank of American stock? Neither of these profits would be touched by the current tax changes proposed by Buffet. What is that all about? Smoke and mirrors...

I wonder if his calls to tax the rich aren't a direct attack on those members of the billionaire club who chose not to join the Buffet/Gates foundation. Oh yes, remember a couple of years ago, much was made about a series of luncheons in NYC? Whatever happened to that? It seems that Paul Alen was more interested in getting free money for the Seattle Seahawks (better to spend his money on his yacht), and, well, we won't talk about Larry Ellison of Oracle fame...

OK, well, maybe that last part might make some sense. Bring those guys down to the level of everyone else. And then they can join all the other billionaires, like IKEA owner   in Luxembourg, or in the Seychelles, or in some other tax have.

But for the rest of us, Richard Epstein, of the Hoover Institute has a much better idea. Make government more efficient with the money that it raises, rather than just raising more.  Blogging at Defining Ideas, he points out that

The difficulty with the entire idea of "stimulus" can be explained by looking at the relationship between public and private expenditures. Ideally, a sound social program is one that tries to insure that the last dollar of revenue spent in the public sector has the same value as the last dollar spent in the private sector.  

The only difference between the two scenarios is that the state must now raise either through taxation of borrowing the same $100,000. Those steps would add an extra layer of administrative cost and confusion. I know of no magic alchemy that converts admittedly wasteful private expenditures into smart public ones.

The whole article is worth the read. Much more so than jealousy-permeated op-eds penned under the guise of phony altruism.

The recent decision by President Obama to send troops into Libya is a fascinating one in that the far left is crying for impeachment, and the right, while not going to that extreme, is definitely unhappy that this decision was made without a vote from Congress. In fact, the troops are being sent in thanks to a call from the UN.

Over at Investors.com, Mark Steyn has some very funny comments about the whole situation.

That’s why building this international coalition has been so important,” [Obama] said the other day. “It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally.”
That’s great news. Who doesn’t enjoy volunteering other people?
The Arab League, for reasons best known to itself, decided that Col. Gadhafi had outlived his sell-by date. Granted that the region’s squalid polities haven’t had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired Gen. John Glubb half a century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots?
But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.

The whole article is a must-read.