Recently in International Items Category

Ever since the maudlin meandering of NBC and the diminutive big headed Bob Costas took over Olympic coverage, who knows how many years ago now, I haven't been exactly glued to my seat watching. If you tune in at eight you get twenty five minutes of the American wunder story of the day and by nine you get the event itself, which if Googled, one knows or finds the results immediately before the superficial drama that helps sell the Venus Breeze.

While I kind of felt bad for Marion Jones when she was shackled by the self righteous State for simply lying to it, the whole gotta win attitude coupled with the worship my wholesomeness didn't have my tears caught rolling down a cheek. So when the two young men from Latvia beat the self-assured and spoiled American stars of "beach volleyball" that I happened to actually catch today, I found myself taunting my overly inoculated six year old patriot-USA(!) with chants of 'Latvia ! Latvia !

Dear Professor,

I recently had the opportunity of hearing one your commentaries on a local public radio station. I hope that the transcript, podcast, mp3 or whatever is available soon so I can better determine what you actually said as I drove to my next service call.

While I dropped out of formal education sometime after a bachelor's degree, I do pride myself on being somewhat aware of my surroundings and have managed to survive until the ripe age of forty. While that may not qualify me to take umbrage over issues of the world with someone like yourself, I do question your recent commentary about Al Gore's energy call in the next ten to twenty years.

You see, it's not that I don't believe the world is warming based on carbon emissions, it may in fact be doing so. It's the idea that we somehow have to act collectively to solve this problem. I'm somewhat partial to the school of Austrian Economics, the basis of which were many writings by Ludwig Von Mises. The basic idea is that centralized planning doesn't work and never will. They never taught me that back in seminary and I often resent it.

There are good Ludwigs and bad ones.

Ed Ludwig's recent foray into the oil debate is a ludicrous example of the authoritarian mentality and its relation to real economics. When asking the question as to why oil shouldn't be a public utility he states:

A public utility has been defined as a 'business that provides an everyday necessity to the public at large' - such as water, electricity, natural gas, telephone service, transportation, cable TV and other essentials.

While the logical, historical and practical examples and results of such thinking would make any Austrian based economist cringe, apparently editors and publishers suffer nothing of the sort when they decide to publish such tripe.

According to Mr. Ludwig's loose definition, one might consider food, housing and clothing to be functions of a public utility. Indeed, even the local mechanic who provides a service such as fixing your car is vitally involved with 'transportation'. While I don't receive public water, land telephone service or cable TV, apparently these are necessities that I'm forced to pay for so others can enjoy their necessity.