When everyone was talking about avian flu, I got my doctor to write a Tamiflu prescription that I could get filled before the rush. I just sent off my order for a satellite phone ($1000 including 300 prepaid minutes good for one year). I told them not to hurry so the flood victims could get theirs first. That’s also going to be my present to my dad come December since he lives in Florida–don’t spoil it for him, it’s a surprise. By bidding up the price of goods well in advance of disaster, manufacturers will make more of them.
The best shortage prevention technique known to Man (and provably the only one that always works) is raising prices. Rand brought this up. Now WSJ has joined the act with their piece “In praise of ‘Gouging'”.
We’re already up to Tropical Storm Ophelia, which is dumping a lot of rain on my house in Boca Raton, and it’s just the beginning of September. There are only six names left to use as we move into the heaviest part of hurricane season.
I’m listening to Neil Cavuto let Deepak Chopra make an ass of himself on Fox News right now, about how New Orleans is our fault, from global warming, etc.
If you only read the head on this story, you’d think that Neil Armstrong is claiming that a Mars mission is easier than a lunar one. But he’s not comparing a future lunar mission to a future Mars mission–he’s comparing a future Mars mission to Apollo. Based on the headline, though, it’s not at all clear that the reporter understands that.
[Update at 2:50 PM PDT]
It occurs to me that I’m too hasty to blame the reporter. Headlines are usually the copy editor’s responsibility.
The corruption at the UN is even more wide spread than most imagined (though I’m not surprised at all):
Procurement and budgeting corruption may escape Volcker’s scrutiny, but they are central to the mandate of Annan.
This scandal touches on almost everything the secretary-general is supposed to control. It is by way of procurement contracts, for goods and services ranging from cappuccino and paper clips at U.N. headquarters, to air freight services and food rations for peacekeeping troops worldwide, that the United Nations spends the billions contributed every year by member states
The corruption at the UN is even more wide spread than most imagined (though I’m not surprised at all):
Procurement and budgeting corruption may escape Volcker’s scrutiny, but they are central to the mandate of Annan.
This scandal touches on almost everything the secretary-general is supposed to control. It is by way of procurement contracts, for goods and services ranging from cappuccino and paper clips at U.N. headquarters, to air freight services and food rations for peacekeeping troops worldwide, that the United Nations spends the billions contributed every year by member states
The corruption at the UN is even more wide spread than most imagined (though I’m not surprised at all):
Procurement and budgeting corruption may escape Volcker’s scrutiny, but they are central to the mandate of Annan.
This scandal touches on almost everything the secretary-general is supposed to control. It is by way of procurement contracts, for goods and services ranging from cappuccino and paper clips at U.N. headquarters, to air freight services and food rations for peacekeeping troops worldwide, that the United Nations spends the billions contributed every year by member states
Tim Cavanaugh knows where to find the money to rebuild southeast Louisiana:
Nobody, however, made out on the highway bill quite like the state of Alaska and its ravenous political class. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, bragged to his constituents that the transportation bill (which Young loves so much he named it after his wife) was “stuffed like a turkey” with handouts for his state, and he was not exaggerating. The $721 million in tundra spending includes: a $2 23 million “bridge to “nowhere,” connecting the 8,900-person town of Ketchikan to an airport on Gravina Island, whose population is 50; a $200 million bridge connecting Anchorage to a rural port so insignificant even the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce tried to block the project; and $15 million in seed money for a 68-mile, $284 million access road to Juneau. (This last one is opposed by not only the Environmental Protection Agency but a majority of the area’s residents.)