From Frank Rich’s rehash of Jane Mayer’s recent hit piece on the philanthropizin’ oilmen Charles and David Koch: When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. You might be wondering why the author thinks a campaign that wanted to abolish the FBI and CIA was “to the right of Reagan.” It looks like Rich is just recycling Mayer’s New Yorker story here: Mayer wrote that the Ed Clark/David Koch ticket “was running against Ronald Reagan from the right.” In fact, Clark is pretty much the sole Libertarian presidential nominee to have consciously presented himself as running from the left
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The Cold, Crisp Taste of Koch
Drivers outside Beijing are in the ninth day of a traffic jam that now extends more than 60 miles. The chief cause of the congestion appears to be construction on a parallel road, which has diverted a lot of truck traffic onto the expressway; heavy trucks are reportedly doing a lot of damage to the highway, which I suppose will lead to more construction and more congestion in the future.
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Chinese Traffic Apocalypse
It’s possible to profit from unexpected YouTube fame. Just ask Antoine Dodson, the man whose impromptu rant about the rapist who assaulted his sister was autotuned into ” The Bed Intruder Song .” The New York Times reports that the track has now been seen more than 10 million times on YouTube and reached No
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But Still No Cash for the Star Wars Kid
Of the send-offs to Ted Stevens that I’ve read this week, the most enlightening is probably Charles Homans’ obit at Oil & Glory , which highlights Stevens’ role in making the modern Alaskan economy. Here’s an excerpt: In 1968, shortly before Stevens was appointed to replace the recently deceased Senator Bob Bartlett, geologists for the Atlantic Richfield Company found the largest oil reserves in the United States on Alaska’s North Slope. Crucially, the oil was on state, not federal land — thanks in part to Stevens’s deft Washington maneuvering in the leadup to statehood — meaning the bulk of the royalties would stay in Alaska.
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Ted’s Not Afraid to Die, the People All Call Him Alaska
Over in Slate , Masha Gessen has written a vivid account of life in heat-soaked Russia.
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During a Disaster, Information Needs to Be Free
You may have heard of Shin Sang-ok, the pioneer South Korean filmmaker who was kidnapped by the totalitarian regime in the north so it could have a world-class director of its own. What I didn’t realize until I read this link-rich Metafilter summary of his career is where Shin turned his talents after he finally escaped communist captivity: While in the United States, Shin used the pseudonym Simon S
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The 3 Ninjas Escape Communism
In 1980, the year I turned 10, it seemed like every kid I knew loved Pink Floyd’s ” Another Brick in the Wall ” — and not just because a bunch of us misheard one of the lyrics as ” Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom.” Here was a protest song against something we all actually experienced ourselves, the track’s transfixing power magnified by rumors that children in Africa were singing the line “We don’t need no education” as they refused to go to school. This tale was actually true, though we had no idea of the context: The song had become the anthem of a school strike in South Africa, where the apartheid regime reacted by banning the record
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2010 Is Just a Scrambled Remix of 1980
My kinda feminism : In March, the Indian upper parliament passed a historic affirmative-action bill.
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Born in Flames Meets Gandhi
As Michael Moynihan notes below , there’s an effort afoot to rebrand “capitalism” as “free enterprise.” On the face of it, I like the idea.
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“Capitalism,” It Fails Us Now
BP aims to install a better well cap . Hospital guards beat and tase the nephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The FDA is expected to approve the sale of transgenic salmon .
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Reason Morning Links: Tasers, Well Caps, and GM Fish
