Links and Thinks for Feb. 18th, 2013

Figures compiled for Germany’s new National Weapons Registry reveal that there are 5.4 million legally owned guns in the country, making it the world’s fourth most-armed nation per capita.

In the UK, however, my son informs me that even hunting magazines are banned to under-age buyers because they might be traumatized by images of food being dressed for the table (i.e. deer and rabbits and such being skinned and butchered). [Note: My son misunderstood-  the largest news agent in the country banned the sale of hunting mags to kids 14 and under - the reasons remain irrational and silly- see the comments to this post for more]

White House confirms that Obama shamefully did nothing on Benghazi.

Van Jones wants to make electricity more expensive and thinks this will result in making it less expensive. No, I don’t get it, either.  Neither do I understand why the left protests ethical oil production.

ObamaCare and how it violates the religious freedom of American citizens:

It ultimately comes down to the freedom to live out one’s religious beliefs free from government coercion. These regulations fail to respect that right, the requirements of the First Amendment notwithstanding.

It’s high time the Republican party returned to a minimalist view of the Presidency:

But Coolidge’s minimalism did not represent weakness. Sometimes it takes more strength to be small than to be big, and that was true in Coolidge’s case.

As I recently noted in these pages (“Calling Cal,” August 13), Coolidge’s modesty was an expression not of uncertainty but of an obsession with avoiding the corruption of office. By 1929, when Coolidge left Washington, he had completed the legislative tasks Harding had only started. His 50 vetoes had held back the Progressives; his federal budget contained less spending in 1929 than it had in 1924. The harmony between Coolidge’s modest goals and his modest comportment lent the whole undertaking credibility. He restored the reputation of the presidency and the federal government, wiping away the damage of Harding’s tenure.

Unfortunately, the small presidency did not last more than a few weeks beyond Coolidge’s departure from office in 1929. Even before the stock-market crash later that year, his successor, Herbert Hoover, was making big plans. “There is another atmosphere around there [in addition to] the Coolidge atmosphere,” wrote the journalist William Allen White. “It is the Roosevelt atmosphere, stepped down through a vast transformance, but still Rooseveltian, muffled but quite as vigorous. At the table Hoover lets the conversation die. Roosevelt never did. But at the desk, I fancy, Hoover gets more done than Roosevelt. And both are going in the same direction.”

My sense is that many Republican political failures, long-term or short-, can be blamed on the party’s unwillingness to try out the small presidency again.

It won’t happen, though. Americans are too entrenched in our entitlement society. Everybody wants their slice of the pie, and we have a nation of dependents rather than adults. Read the comments on the links to see more wisdom as to how and why we are currently doomed to continue down this same path.

A public school recently sent out a missive offering after school tutoring to all students except for those of one particular race. The principle is now back pedaling furiously, but you have to marvel at the mindset that allowed the principle to send out such a blatantly discriminatory missive without any internal warning bells ringing before the backlash started. And if you can’t easily guess the race of the children being discriminated against, you need to recalibrate your own internal discernment radar.

For fans of an increase in the minimum wage: why not increase the minimum wage to $20/hour? Why not $50? That’s the question Dave Schuler asks (and answers) here.

Jesse Jackson, Jr, born with a silver spoon, and a pathway to success paved with gold.

And then he threw it all away. Starting in 2008, Jackson Jr. all but disappeared from public view, ducking the rumors and allegations that he had schemed to buy a Senate seat from Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Now, on Friday, the feds busted him for good. They filed charges, to which he has agreed to plead guilty, that he broke the law by mispending $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use.

That’s a lot of money. That’s no oversight, no accident, no bookkeeping error.

This was Jesse Jackson Jr.’s problem: He grew up the favored son of a favored man. He was a somebody while still in the cradle. And he treated himself like a favored son, with a misplaced sense of entitlement. There was, according to the charging documents, the $4,600 Michael Jackson fedora. The $43,350 Rolex watch. The $10,105 in Bruce Lee memorabilia. The $2,775 in Jimi Hendrix memorabilia. The $1,500 cashmere cape — that must have been for somebody else.

“New” research shows that margarine causes heart disease, but butter is healthy. Why, again, do we think government should have a say in health care? This information was available back when the government first started telling people to replace butter with margarine or shortening!  Doubt we can blame that fiasco on the government?

…when reports of problems began to appear—problems like increased heart disease, increased cancer, growth problems, learning disorders and infertility—P&G worked behind the scenes to cover them up.⁴ One scientist who worked for P&G, Dr. Fred Mattson, can be credited with presenting the US government’s inconclusive Lipid Research Clinics Trials to the public as proof that animal fats caused heart disease. He was also one of the baleful influences that persuaded the American Heart Association to preach the phony gospel of the Lipid Hypothesis.

  This is the sort of boondoggle that is inevitable when government and business are too much in each others pockets.  If government were less meddlesome, businesses would have less incentive to influence the government and entangle themselves in government policies:

…there wouldn’t be research to support it [the lipid hypothesis] until after the government gave its stamp of approval (and offered grants). There are and always have been independent scientists who disagreed with the government approved position on the lipid hypothesis (which was never derived from sound research in the first place):

Pete Ahrens, whose Rockefeller University laboratory had done the seminal research on cholesterol metabolism, testified to McGovern’s committee that everyone responds differently to low-fat diets. It was not a scientific matter who might benefit and who might be harmed, he said, but ”a betting matter.” Phil Handler, then president of the National Academy of Sciences, testified in Congress to the same effect in 1980. ”What right,” Handler asked, ”has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?”

Nonetheless, once the N.I.H. signed off on the low-fat doctrine, societal forces took over.

That’s the problem with crony capitalism.  Unfortunately, too many progressives are woefully uninformed and do not know there is a difference between crony capitalism and a real free market.

Speaking of crony capitalism, Carbon taxes will do nothing for the environment but will cause a lot of harm to jobs and economic growth and cost a ridiculous amount- 15 time more than leaving ‘global warming’ alone.

The myth of global warming consensus

Bill McKibben and Bill Moyers are both paid for their activism by advocacy groups.  Not that big of a deal, except Moyers works for PBS and ought to state his bias and conflict of interest and McKibben of .350 organization has insisted he is *not* a paid activist.

Thousands and THOUSANDS of unsold Girl Scout cookies get trashed every year in California instead of donated to the disadvantaged.

Very interesting- gene therapy cures diabetic dogs.

The NYT begins to notice that being green isn’t all that affordable.

Doesn’t much matter when you budget the way the government does:

I wish I could budget the same way the government does. Step 1: I’ll declare that I plan to spend a million dollars on a new summer home next year. Step 2: I’ll check my bank account and realize that my large debt and two hundred dollar checking account won’t support that kind of expenditure. Step 3: I’ll declare the million-dollar-house project defunct. Step 4: I just saved a million dollars off of next year’s budget! I’m an economics genius!

I did not realize these guys were still around.

Do not miss the Gates of Vienna newsfeed for more newslinks.

Watt’s climate and energy news round up is also informative, for those who prefer information over brainwashing…