Daily Reading

26May/100

These are some items I found interesting today.

According to Mike Shedlock at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis, the most populous state in the nation wants to fund it's budget shortfalls with returnables. Seinfeld jokes aside, when are these jokers going to get it?

Perez calls his plan "unique and creative approach." Governor Schwarzenegger called it "legal gymnastics." I call it "fiscal insanity".
David Hersanyi at Reason.com writes about the controversy surrounding Rand Paul's statements regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I wonder if the mainstream media feels like it found a magic bullet to shoot down libertarian-type candidates by raising questions about their beliefs regarding legislation designed to control how citizens behave, when their behavior might not be politically correct. They're smart enough to know that 99% of the public has no idea what the specifics of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stated, but that most listeners will equate such a statement with thinking that the politician is opposed to civil rights in general. The laughable part of this is that this demagoguery obscures the point that most mainstream politicians couldn't give a rat's rear end about civil rights and the politicians these questions are targeted to discredit would do far more to restore civil rights to this country than any of those crooked hacks currently in office ever would.

Agree or not, shouldn't Americans armed with historical perspective be able to engage in constructive dialogue about the positive consequences—and some of the negative complexities—of legislation from 1964? (I know. Just kidding.)

Some critics eagerly blasted "naive" libertarians, and others, like Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, used Paul's "extremist position" to wring their hands over the coming Republican crusade to overturn the Civil Rights Act—which fits neatly into an arching (and largely imagined) narrative that puts America squarely in the mid-1960s.