West Michigan Diary: I, iPhone
Recently I spent several weeks in western Michigan, the part of the world where I lived the first 30 or so years of my life. Today starts the first of a series of commentaries based on that visit. If a geographic region is going to thrive, it needs to “export” something to the outside world. For metro Detroit, it’s been cars. One thing that western […]
The Daily Grope: TSA flouts federal court
Was it an act of civil disobedience, or simply a bad decision? I’m going with the latter, but a man, upset at the treatment he receives from TSA screeners, stripped naked at the Portland International Airport earlier this year. While I’m all for calling attention to the numerous problems of the TSA, I’m not sure that getting naked in front of your fellow travelers is the right […]
A Dark Day
This is a dark day for the American ideal of representative democracy within a republican form of government. The Court has said that neither the judiciary nor the Constitution is a barrier to government expanding as fast and as far as politicians think they can get away with. The only barrier now is the political culture–a powerful though not entirely trustworthy force. We will likely […]
Should business efficiency trump political principles?
Here’s my belated comment on the deal that Gov. Snyder struck with Canada. Some politicians talk; others get things done. To put it another way, some are show horses, some are work horses. It’s easy to dismiss the show horse, the politician who is often on the losing end of a 440-1 vote in the U.S. House (I’m looking at you, Ron Paul), or is […]
The Daily Grope: TSA employee forgets to make sure the machine is ON
Oops! Hundreds (thousands?) of people went through a TSA metal detector at an airport in New York City before the employee realized that the machine … wasn’t plugged in. Inconvenience for passengers ensued, according to the New York Post
iPhones and the dangers of government experts
Ever since LBJ’s “Great Society,” laws have been enacted and government programs established on the belief that we (politicians, bureaucrats, “stakeholders” in government, etc.) are smart enough to fine-tune life. In other words, experts will save us. Witness, for example, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), by which the federal government (and to a much lesser extent, state governments) will overhaul one-sixth of the U.S. economy. […]
Government union amendment draws national attention
The American Spectator, a conservative opinion website, is just the latest media outlet to publicize the fact that the government unions-v-the people battle has moved from Wisconsin to Michigan. At issue: A proposed constitutional amendment called “Protect Our Jobs.” The proposed amendment is “already being billed as an anti-right-to-work measure, but the major impact would be the reversal of reforms to government union privileges.” So says […]