Treason?
There are strongly opposing views and opinions on the “cap and trade” bill. Supporters claim that dissenters are committing “treason,” while dissenters are calling supporters “traitors.”
Cafe Hayek links to two responses to liberal author Paul Krugman’s charge that dissenting opinions regarding the bill are tantamount to “treason against the planet.”
LGF conveniently ignores the wild statements of Krugman and, instead, Charles Johnson cites a blog entry that criticizes other anonymous bloggers who call supporters of the bill “cap and traitors.” Johnson and the author of the post to which he links must think that a few dissenters are more troublesome and warrant more attention than Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.
Meanwhile, in the real world, influential writers, e.g. Nobel Laureate Krugman, are calling dissenters traitors and big blogs, e.g. LFG, are ignoring this abuse of influence.
Zotero/GMU Update: Judge Dismisses Case
Earlier this month:
A Virginia Circuit Court judge dismissed a lawsuit… against George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media.
The lawsuit was, of course, over the Endnote/Zotero dispute between Thompson Reuters and GMU. Here’s another related link.
Controlled Substances
Thinking about selling your worn-out copy of Guitar Hero: World Tour on eBay?
Think again.
In America, and most other so-called “Capitalist” societies, 
private individuals are free to buy and sell products and services in an open market with a short list of general and democratically determined exceptions, some examples include:
- Certain drugs are illegal for individuals under a certain age, others are illegal for everyone
- Certain chemicals are regulated because they may be harmful to the environment
- Architectural structures must meet certain specifications in order to be deemed safe for occupancy
- And of course, transactions involving fraud are illegal.
So why on Earth do people think the U.S. court system should step in and tell companies what they can and can not do?
This is exactly what folks think about Chrysler:
Three Indiana state pension and construction funds want the Supreme Court to block Chrysler’s sale to Fiat so they can pursue an appeal in hopes of getting a better deal.
Also filing emergency papers at the high court Sunday were lawyers representing consumer groups and individuals with product-related lawsuits.
An appeals court in New York approved the sale Friday, but gave objectors until Monday afternoon to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Chrysler LLC wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat Group SpA as part of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection.
…
The Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher’s Retirement Fund and the state’s Major Moves Construction Fund claim the deal unfairly favors the interests of Chrysler’s unsecured stakeholders ahead of those of secured debtholders such as the funds.
The funds also challenged the constitutionality of the Treasury Department’s use of money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to supply Chrysler’s bankruptcy protection financing. They say the government did so without congressional authority.
…
Chrysler had hoped to close the sale by the end of this past week.
Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler has maintained that the sale must be completed quickly to save the automaker from complete collapse. If the deal doesn’t close by June 15, Fiat has the option of pulling out. Production at Chrysler’s manufacturing plants remains halted pending the closing of the sale.
So, let me get this straight. Obama and the Dems keep a dying company, Chrysler, alive with tax dollars or borrowed money that will have to be paid back with tax dollars. Obama and the Dems stipulate that the life-support will stay on as long as Chrysler finds a foreign (who knows why?) company to be BFFs with. Chrysler finds FIAT and a deal is in the works, but, Obama and the Dems say that if the deal isn’t done by the ides of June, then they pull the plug and all the tortuous hours that execs at Chrysler put in trying to please Obama and the Dems will have all been in vain. However, since the precedent of Big Government intervention has already been set regarding the operation of Chrysler, people are crawling out of the woodwork trying to get U.S. courts to decide how the company should be run. Basically, Obama has been keeping a company in its death throws alive with tax-payer money when anyone with half of a brain could have predicted the consequences and the inevitable failure of Big Government-run company (Cf. Fannie and Freddie).
Is Obama a Sadist?
But more importantly, since this whole ordeal is basically arbitrarily directed against the way one company (Chrysler) does business, who’s to say that similar meddling won’t soon be in store for other private individuals or companies providing, selling, using, and buying services and products in America? What will prevent these mobs from using the U.S. courts to stop the sale of Guitar Hero to the highest bidder because they hope to negotiate a better deal with the seller?
An Offer He Could Not Refuse
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford did not want to take the money. After all, it is not at all clear that the “stimulus” is actually working as Big Government has planned. However, Sanford has been issued “a writ of mandamus, which orders the governor to apply for the money” by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
How dare Gov. Sanford defy The One?
Lebenswelt
In the early 20th century Edmund Husserl developed a new way of thinking about the world, he called his style of thinking “Phenomenology” as opposed to philosophy or science. Husserl wanted to grasp the phenomena that we encounter from a pre-reflective, pre-scientific point of view. This is because, of course, we have been conditioned by theoretical science to understand phenomena with an outlook that fits nicely with the “world of science and theory.” If we follow Husserl, then we will gain access to “the life-world,” in German “Lebenswelt.”
Here’s a cartoon about the practicality of suspending judgment on the validity of science while exploring “the life-world.”
Comics and cartoons | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.
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