October 2 Roundup

Sorry for the 3 week long delay on posts. Frankly, I have very little excuse save a painful set of attacks on us at Calvary Church that caused us to waste a whole bunch of time and energy. (Mt 5:11-12)

Here are the stories that I'm currently following and thinking about:

Venezuala and others try to restrict oil output and push oil prices back up. Basically they are continuing to try and manipulate the market using their illegal cartel. Time to take OPEC to task and challenge them to drop the pretenses of "protecting" the economy and stop manipulating the markets.

Gaza hooligans throw rocks at government cars and buildings in a protest that their salaries still weren't paid. But, do they really work? What do they do? The size of the entire Gaza Strip is smaller than the state of Rhode Island and they have 10 times the number of government employees per capita ... it's basically a socialist society with no market economy or stable tax system. When they run out of cash they go begging to other countries with the plea "we won't be able to stop the terror attacks if you don't give us cash."

Tax Research Project suggests what supply siders have said for decades, tax cuts benefit all tax payers. In this most recent round the $100-500,000 income earners are paying more of the total tax burden, that should make the class warfare types happy. The economy though is being assisted by more dollars staying in people's own hands. Here's the challenge: How does Congress gain the guts to eliminate the death tax and capital gain tax and simplify the tax code to three tax brackets with less exceptions? Will any Congress ever have the guts?

Blogger suggests that "play" at work is important, strictly speaking he uses a different definition of the word.

I missed this story originally, I guess a couple Americans decided to go over to Afghanistan and do their own search for terrorists and set up a private prison. They were arrested there by local authorities and sentenced to three years, and then released this weekend. Interesting questions, are they terrorists? Are they part of the war on terror? Are they CIA operatives?

An American company was awarded the contract to build the highway connecting Albania and soon to be independant country Kosovo. Is this reverse out-sourcing?

Interesting article that suggests that 15 years after Islamacists take over a country and kill millions of people in civil war and hatred, then democracy and liberty can kick back in. The article spotlights Algeria but suggests the same could happen in Iran soon.

Local county commisioner Bob Harper doesn't like the law ... well maybe it's time he get out of government then.