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Glenn Reynolds, who we know as Instapundit, writes for the WSJ on today’s tea parties.
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing “flash crowds” — groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each other.
In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves. …
Good time to bring back the awesome graph from Instapundit displaying the out of control federal government.
Robert Samuelson writes in WaPo on the misplaced priorities of this administration.
President Obama has made no secret of his vision for America’s 21st-century economy. We will lead the world in “green” technologies to stop global warming. Advancing medical breakthroughs will improve our well-being, control health spending and enable us to expand insurance coverage. These investments in energy and health care, as well as education, will revive the economy and create millions of well-paying new jobs for middle-class Americans.
It’s a dazzling rhetorical vista that excites the young and fits the country’s mood, which blames “capitalist greed” for the economic crisis. Obama promises communal goals and a more widely shared prosperity. The trouble is that it may not work as well in practice as it does in Obama’s speeches. Still, congressional Democrats press ahead to curb global warming and achieve near-universal health insurance. We should not be stampeded into far-reaching changes that have little to do with today’s crisis.
What Obama proposes is a “post-material economy.” He would de-emphasize the production of ever-more private goods and services, harnessing the economy to achieve broad social goals. In the process, he sets aside the standard logic of economic progress. …
Pickerhead has made no secret of his disdain for the NY Times and its far left agenda. Pinch Sulzberger, the man who is leading the Times down the road to oblivion was treated to a lengthy profile in Vanity Fair. We have it in two parts concluding tomorrow. Can you spell schadenfreude?
I was in a taxi on a wet winter day in Manhattan three years ago when my phone rang, displaying “111-111-1111,” the peculiar signature of an incoming call from The New York Times.
“Mark? It’s Arthur Sulzberger.”
For weeks I had been trying to talk with Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the publisher and chairman of the New York Times Company. We had met once before, on friendly terms, and sometime after that I had informed him that I was hoping to write a story about him. I figured he was calling now to set something up. Instead he asked, “Have you seen the New Yorker piece?”
The article in question, just published, was bruising. It had surely been painful for him to read. Among other indignities, it featured a remark by the celebrated former Times man Gay Talese, the author of one of the most popular histories of the newspaper, The Kingdom and the Power. Speaking of Arthur, the fifth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger dynasty to preside over the paper, Talese had said, “You get a bad king every once in a while.”
I told Arthur that I had not yet fully read the story. “Well, I’m getting out of the business,” he said. Startled, I gazed through the window at the cars and people shouldering through the cold rain, the headline already forming in my mind: publishing scion resigns! “Wait, Arthur,” I said. “Is this a major scoop? Or are you just saying that you aren’t talking to writers anymore?” He laughed his high-pitched, zany laugh. “The latter,” he said.
Now, I respect people who avoid the spotlight, and a reluctance to be publicly vivisected is a sure sign of intelligence. But ducking interviews is an awkward policy for the leader of the world’s most celebrated newspaper, one that sends a small army of reporters—approximately 400 of them—into the field every day asking questions. Still, I could understand Arthur’s decision. After presiding or helping to preside over a decade of unprecedented prosperity, the publisher and chairman of the Times had recently begun to appear overmatched. Two of his star staffers were discovered to have violated basic rules of reporting practice; he had been bullied by the newsroom into firing his handpicked executive editor, Howell Raines; and he had spent much of the previous year in a confusing knot of difficulty surrounding one of his reporters and longtime friends, Judith Miller. For an earnest and well-meaning man, the hereditary publisher had begun to look dismayingly small.
He has been shrinking ever since. In 2001, The New York Times celebrated its 150th anniversary. In the years that have followed, Arthur Sulzberger has steered his inheritance into a ditch. As of this writing, Times Company stock is officially classified as junk. Arthur made a catastrophic decision in the 1990s to start aggressively buying back shares ($1.8 billion worth from 2000 to 2004 alone). This was considered a good investment at the time, and had the effect of increasing the stock’s value. Shares were going for more than $50. Now they are slipping below $4—less than the price of the Sunday Times. …
This is an appropriate time for a Power Line post on the Times’ worst columnist.
It’s a tough competition, of course, but it’s hard to imagine that any columnist in America could be more inept than Paul Krugman. I used to enjoy beating up on Krugman, but haven’t read him for a long time–life is short. But today I happened to notice this column, which attacks the Republican Party and the tea party movement.
I’d rebut Krugman’s arguments, only he doesn’t make any. Does he ever? Krugman doesn’t argue, he just vents. This is what we used to call “mailing it in.” If Krugman spent more than 20 minutes writing this column, I’d be shocked. …
American.com treats us to the latest government idea for curtailing our freedoms. California is thinking of limiting the size of televisions. All for the environment of course.
… The most recent example comes from (where else?) California, which is considering a proposal to ban big-screen TVs. The unelected bureaucrats who comprise the state’s energy commission are working up new efficiency regulations aimed at big-screen televisions, which are condemned as energy hogs.
Big-screen televisions require more energy than smaller ones, and really big plasma TVs can suck more power than your refrigerator. That’s hardly surprising, but it upsets regulators all the same. The California proposal—which could be adopted this summer—would forbid retailers from selling TVs that require what state officials think is too much power. Proponents claim they are mandating energy efficiency, and who could object to that? The practical effect, however, would be to remove TVs with screens 40 inches or bigger from the market.
Regulators cite global warming and note that big-screen TVs are extremely popular among Californians. Soaring sales mean a greater demand for electricity, and more electricity use means increased greenhouse gas emissions. In a state devoted to fighting global warming (though one that has outlawed construction of new nuclear power plants that emit no greenhouse gases), that is unacceptable.
Another problem is that California is notoriously averse to adding electricity capacity, which explains the rolling blackouts earlier this decade. Forecasts of increased energy demand put state officials on the spot. Rather than take steps to build more power plants to meet consumers’ needs, California regulators would force residents to settle for products they do not want.
Last year, the California Energy Commission floated a proposal giving it authority to remotely regulate or even shut down homes’ thermostats via radio-controlled devices at the government’s discretion. It did not get far, but did reveal a bureaucratic desire to dictate appropriate levels of consumption rather than leave consumers to decide what they want and will pay for. The move to ban big-screen TVs is just another version of this bureaucratic power grab to control how other people power their lives. …
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