AnchorageDailyPlanet.com

toon 5/30/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:46:39 +0000

williams 5/30/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:33:21 +0000

Our nation's future

By WALTER E. WILLIAM

Our nation is rapidly approaching a point from which there's little chance to avoid a financial collapse. The heart of our problem can be seen as a tragedy of the commons. That's a set of circumstances when something is commonly owned and individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest produce a set of results that's inimical to everyone's long-term interest. Let's look at an example of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon and then apply it to our national problem.

Sowell 5/29/11

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:39:19 +0000

Meaningful work

By THOMAS SOWELL

"Education" is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

brennan 5/27/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:52:48 +0000

FCC is shafting small telephone companies in rural America

By TOM BRENNAN

There is a crisis hanging over the heads of rural America but few people know about it — primarily because the issue is so complex.

I’m talking about the decision by Barack Obama’s Federal Communications Commission to bleed the telecommunications companies serving small communities and replacing them with large companies waiting in the wings.

toon 5/26/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:25:50 +0000

cato 5/28/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:05:53 +0000

Drones pose a threat to Americans' privacy

By GENE HEALY

"Don't drone, me, bro!" — that's one way to sum up Charles Krauthammer's heated reaction to last week's news that the Federal Aviation Administration had loosened restrictions on local police departments' use of surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

"Stop it here, stop it now," Krauthammer exclaimed on Fox News's "Special Report" Monday, "I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home... I'm not encouraging, but I am predicting that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that's been hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country."

cato 5/26/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:00:52 +0000

Baby budget hawks of the GOP

By MICHAEL D. TANNER

The conventional wisdom, pushed for very different reasons by both Republicans and Democrats, is that Republicans in Congress, controlled by radical tea-partiers, have been slashing government spending. Thus it becomes a little hard to understand how, in the few short months since last year’s debt-ceiling deal, the federal debt has increased by more than $1.5 trillion, roughly $13,000 per household. If Republicans are such great budget cutters, how come we continue to spend more, run more deficits, and accumulate more debt?

The latest evidence suggests that it is because, contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans still aren’t such radical budget hawks after all.

prude 5/25/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:49:05 +0000

The dark arts of race-baiting

By WESLEY PRUDEN

Race-baiting is an ugly art. But a struggling candidate is often tempted to practice the dark arts. We’re doomed to see a lot of those dark arts between here and November.

Barack Obama and his friends in the mainstream media, so called, can’t believe that anyone could vote against someone as wonderful as he is (and as they are). Only a bigot would vote against such a wonderful president. We’re getting a scary preview of the wrath to come in the reaction to this week’s presidential primary results in Arkansas and Kentucky.

sowell 5/24/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:20:07 +0000

A book for Republicans

By THOMAS SOWELL

Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of "tax cuts for the rich" - for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, when the top tax rate was brought down from 73 percent to 24 percent

What was the difference then?

williams 5/23/12

pauljenkins@gci.net (Paul Jenkins) — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:14:27 +0000

Should black people tolerate this?

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims.