8-15-15 Hodgepodge

Drown 'Em All!

Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute makes an apt analogy for Bernie Sanders and the inane leftist campaign against "inequality:"

... Imagine two people are thrown into a lake: a kid who can't swim and Michael Phelps. What would you make of someone who said, "There is something profoundly wrong when we've seen a child drown while an Olympic gold medalist easily swims to the shore"? Take Phelps out of the picture, and the kid is still drowning. The only reason to mention Phelps is if your goal is not to help the kid, but to smear the athlete.

So it is for the inequality alarmists. They don't want to guide everyone to dry land. They want to drown the best swimmers.

Actually, it's even worse than that since the wealthy, by earning or investing their wealth, directly or indirectly improve the lot of the less-well-off. This could be a wrongly-implied obligation on the part of Phelps in such an analogy. "The rich" largely do this, and especially when acting in their own self-interest -- not that this is why they should be left alone, or that it should serve as the purpose of their actions.

Weekend Reading

"The government harms patients when it prevents doctors from learning truthful information about a possible new benefit of an already legal use of a drug." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Free Speech 1, FDA 0" at Forbes

"How could anyone think that it's a good idea to negotiate with an openly hostile regime that fuels jihadists and seeks our destruction?" -- Elan Journo, in "Iran's Faux Multiple Personality Disorder" at The Federalist

"The blame also lies with the environmentalist movement, but it was aided and abetted by a populace lulled into complacence by unrealistic expectations." -- Gus Van Horn, in "Jerry Brown Condescendingly Tells Californians It's Raining" at RealClear Markets

"[I]t's important to remember that you should first nurture your sense of self before you donate your time or money to the many causes out there." -- Michael Hurd, in "There's No 'I Love You' Without the 'I'" at The Delaware Wave

"If you think about it, who says we're supposed to retire?" -- Michael Hurd, in "Life Requires Purpose All the Way to the End" at The Delaware Coast Press

A Note of Thanks

I thank reader Steve D. for his helpful comments on two earlier versions of my last column.

Our Regulators as (Once-) Frustrated Satirists

I used to joke that I was trapped in a satirical novel:

In advance of Independence Day festivities, here is a strange-but-true American fact: It is a crime to be in possession of eagles and eagle parts other than for the purposes of [Amerindian] tribal ritual, down to a feather.

But, you may be asking, what if I just happen to come across a dead eagle in the wild? [link dropped]

Or: Yes, there really is a "National Eagle Repository."

-- CAV