Linkfest: Sunday Updates
---
Time to clean out the aggregator --
ITEM: Congressional leaders appear to have reached a consensus on a five-year, $300 billion farm bill. The bill continues to distort crop markets via biofuel subsidies and continues to provide taxpayer money to high-income farmers (a population that is growing, incidentally, as commodity food prices continue to rise). As I noted previously, the disproportionate representation of low-population agricultural states in the Senate makes meaningful agricultural policy reform difficult if not impossible.
ITEM: Congressional leaders also found time, in between sessions debating how best to distort the agricultural markets, to demand that the Federal Trade Commission use its recently conferred authority to investigate distortions in the gasoline market -- which they call "gouging." Economists, and I, call it nonsense.
ITEM: Yet another report that the Army, unable to fill recruitment quotas and unwilling to ask Congress to revisit Don't Ask, Don't Tell, is more frequently waiving the "no criminal record" requirement for potential recruits. No update though on how many grandmothers or idiots the Army has recruited recently.
ITEM: Speaking of the military, a U.S. soldier in good standing was sent home early from Iraq due to threats of violence from his fellow servicemen after he disclosed that he was an atheist. The soldier is suing the Department of Defense for failure to enforce the First Amendment's separation of church and state within the military. As I noted previously, that can be hard when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time was himself an unrepentant theocrat and anti-atheist bigot.
ITEM: Speaking of former generals, CIA Director Michael Hayden, a/k/a General Michael Hayden, has announced that he will finally give up his uniform and retire from the Air Force. I noted the impropriety of a military commander serving in a high-profile, civil-liberties-threatening, civilian post here.
ITEM: Speaking of long-overdue resignations, Mayor Bloomberg's Buildings Commissioner has resigned in disgrace after several construction accidents and the disclosure of widespread mismanagement of the building permit process. But remember that safety is "too important to leave to the private sector." Somehow. Previous post here.
ITEM: Congressional leaders appear to have reached a consensus on a five-year, $300 billion farm bill. The bill continues to distort crop markets via biofuel subsidies and continues to provide taxpayer money to high-income farmers (a population that is growing, incidentally, as commodity food prices continue to rise). As I noted previously, the disproportionate representation of low-population agricultural states in the Senate makes meaningful agricultural policy reform difficult if not impossible.
ITEM: Congressional leaders also found time, in between sessions debating how best to distort the agricultural markets, to demand that the Federal Trade Commission use its recently conferred authority to investigate distortions in the gasoline market -- which they call "gouging." Economists, and I, call it nonsense.
ITEM: Yet another report that the Army, unable to fill recruitment quotas and unwilling to ask Congress to revisit Don't Ask, Don't Tell, is more frequently waiving the "no criminal record" requirement for potential recruits. No update though on how many grandmothers or idiots the Army has recruited recently.
ITEM: Speaking of the military, a U.S. soldier in good standing was sent home early from Iraq due to threats of violence from his fellow servicemen after he disclosed that he was an atheist. The soldier is suing the Department of Defense for failure to enforce the First Amendment's separation of church and state within the military. As I noted previously, that can be hard when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time was himself an unrepentant theocrat and anti-atheist bigot.
ITEM: Speaking of former generals, CIA Director Michael Hayden, a/k/a General Michael Hayden, has announced that he will finally give up his uniform and retire from the Air Force. I noted the impropriety of a military commander serving in a high-profile, civil-liberties-threatening, civilian post here.
ITEM: Speaking of long-overdue resignations, Mayor Bloomberg's Buildings Commissioner has resigned in disgrace after several construction accidents and the disclosure of widespread mismanagement of the building permit process. But remember that safety is "too important to leave to the private sector." Somehow. Previous post here.
Posted by Kip on
27 April 2008
To comment on this post, please visit the new blogsite.