Brian Gongol



Someone stole $60,000 in cigarettes from a trucking company practically before the ink was dry on the new tax. Pigovian taxes have their limits -- especially when a black market can become involved. Also not a shock: The Iowa Values Fund is almost completely unaccountable for any results.




And Iowa's going to lose a seat in Congress

It's just another evolution in the continually-changing world of online security threats. Another new threat: attacks on animated icons.

The notion of "culture war" is so far overblown, it's almost impossible to take it seriously. Either you believe in human liberty or you don't. That's about as far as it can go.



That's only enough for a "C" based on the long-term GDP growth gradecard. Regardless of relative performance, 2.5% growth is much too slow. The US needs to grow considerably faster than that in order to stay ahead of China's economy.


Much funnier than last year's

Group is launching a massive effort in Iowa to put heat on Presidential candidates on health-care and retirement-savings issues. But since the group has been inexcusably wrong on both subjects (backing the completely unaffordable prescription-drug plan and opposing private accounts for Social Security), all they're probably going to do is pressure the candidates into doling out socialist platitudes about issues that demand market answers instead. Few of the 2008 Presidential candidates are sufficiently free-market.


Interesting audio slide show simply reinforces the observation that the whole problem comes down to economics: If government does too much, it depresses private enterprise. If private enterprise is depressed, people are bumped into unemployment. And large groups of unemployed people are a scary political and social force.

Tony Blair is getting fed up with the Iranian government on the issue. It hardly seems possible that the people of Iran are being served by a government that behaves like this.

(Video) The Onion is now producing video spoofs, including a hilarious one promising "faster, scarier" news

There are people who will fly thousands of miles round-trip just to say they were aboard an airline's inaugural flight on a new route. Their enthusiasm for flight for its own sake is the kind of enthusiasm we'd be much better-off with if displayed by more people for other technologies, too.

(Video) If there's something funnier than a bunch of chimps dancing to disco, there's no telling what it might be