Fear-mongering; Third party

The Nightly Build...

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Fear Mongering, Bad. Green Weenies, Good

Trey Garrison, in a Points essay in The Dallas Morning News, references some fear-mongering by politicians -- Sen. John Carona's (R-Dallas) bid to outlaw pre-paid cell phones to combat drug dealers; Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway's bid to limit how much of a store's window space can be taken up with ads, supposedly to maximize visibility into the store from the street; and Dallas city staffers' bid to sidestep the Landmark Commission in their bid to tear down crack houses.

So far, so good. It's been said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. If so, the second last is law-and-order.

Trey Garrison, in his own blog, points readers to a second Points essay by Stanley Fish, a kind of paean to pollution. Garrison says:

"Also, be sure to check out this column from Stanley Fish about how we need to get real about our attitude toward pollution. It’s not a moral sin. It’s a fact of life. It’s the cost of people making things. And the materialist, capitalist system so many green weenies decry is what provides better efficiencies in industry and the technologies to clean up the messes we made."

Personally, I say three cheers for the "green weenies" who lobbied and pressured business and government to hold the polluters to account, to make the people making things responsible for the "cost of people making things" instead of spreading the cost to the rest of us, the people who have to breathe the air and drink the water polluted by those people. It's funny, but when the costs can't be passed off to others, the people making things get pretty innovative and find ways to reduce those costs. So, here's to the green weenies, may they ever be vigilant.

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A Third Party in 2012

Scott Burns, who criticizes financial advisors who recommend complicated investments that benefit them more than their customers, really lays into Wall Street this week. Burns declares "'Wall Street wisdom' is a new oxymoron, right up there with 'riskless investment.'"

Burns makes a few predictions. We're near a bottom. The recession won't be deep. And, most surprising, there'll be a rise of a third political party before the 2012 presidential election. Even though both major party candidates are running as the candidate of change, Burns says neither the Democrats nor the Republicans "get it." He condemns both parties for bankrupting our future. Burns is probably wrong about a third party. The future doesn't vote.