Should Kids Get the Vote?

Here's an interesting thought:

The fact is that the way issues are debated in our national political debates very rarely actually takes the future into account. What’s better, to protect teachers’ jobs or to give kids a good education? What’s better, to avoid a recession today or to avoid inflation tomorrow? We seem to prefer instant to delayed gratification – how, well, childish, ain’t it? This situation exists largely because those who have the biggest stake in the future have no say.

Since I think democracy is wrong in principle I guess this wouldn't make it any wronger and might even improve the system. It's likely, however, that it would simply substitute new absurdities for the current ones

Great quote...

...I was introduced to over at Sipsey Street Irregulars, which is a blog I've been following for the last several months:

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

Whichever Mencken book this is in, I must have missed it but I'll leave the attribution in without bothering to fact-check it for you.

Political maxim #1

Diversity, freedom, security: pick only two.

Graphic illustrations

All these paintings are missing is marshmallow farts.

Crony Finance and the stimulus

Here's an interesting read by Simon Johnson, the former head of the IMF, that compares the current problems on Wall Street with the problems that the IMF continually dealt with in the third world.

The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
One of those little peeves I've acquired over the last year is the continual confusion by pundits on both sides of the aisle between "capitalism" and "free markets" -- terms which are not interchangeable. Capitalism is a legal structure that enables capital to be pooled into a single legal entity. Free markets are simply free to the extent that they are unregulated. Capitalism can be a decidedly unfree system, as Washington is proving once again.