I hate to do this, but I’m going to just do links for one more night. I’m working hard to finish a magazine internship application due this Friday, so please bear with me.
- Der Spiegel: for me, this was the biggest headline of the day–Theo Albrecht, the younger of the two reclusive German billionaire brothers who had each pioneered and headed up their own division of Aldi, died. I loved Aldi much more before I cut processed foods out of my diet, but it’s still an incredible store with some killer, common sense business techniques–shopping cart rentals (no cart pushers), bag fees (green and efficient), simplicity of choice (usually only one in-house brand per item for sale) and merchandise stocked directly on its pallets. North American consumers should be especially sad because though Karl’s Aldi Sued division operates the Aldi stores here, it was Theo who owned Trader Joe’s.
- Jacob Sullum at Reason: Congress takes a sensible step toward fixing the ridiculous crack cocaine vs. regular cocaine sentencing disparity. They should both be outright legalized and if you’re going to stick with the status quo, decriminalizing use or at least equalizing the sentences 1:1 would make sense, but any step Congress takes in the right direction is worthy of some praise. Under the current system, 5g of crack gets you the same mandatory minimum sentence of five years as 500g of cocaine powder. Arbitrary justice is the best!
- NYT: federal judge blocks parts of the Arizona immigration bill. I haven’t had time to read the specifics, but anything that weakens that bill is a good thing in my book. I couldn’t help but think of the Arizona bill as I read this story about Cincinnati Reds farmhand Daniel Ray Herrerra, a Hispanic who was arrested for public intoxication yesterday for doing what sounds like nothing more than walking around whilst drunk and not white. We don’t need this sort of vileness in the land of the free.
- The Corner: Andy “I love torture” McCarthy calls David Cameron a “disgrace” for his honest remarks on Gaza yesterday. I guess calling an open-air prison like Gaza by a fitting term like “prison camp” is just as offensive for McCarthy as calling human rights violations like waterboarding a fitting term like “torture.” If he complains long and loud enough, maybe the NYT will decide to avoid political controversy and call Gaza whatever McCarthy wants.
- People’s Daily: so much for stories last weekend about the Great Firewall loosening up and more porn sites operating in China–the Chinese shut down or blocked 19,000 porn sites today. I don’t find much to like about the crazy evangelicals and Andrea Dworkinite feminists who rail against porn in the U.S., but at least they tend to focus their efforts on persuasion, education and boycotts, not the iron-fisted violations of free speech favored by their atheist, chauvinist Chinese comrades in thought.
- NYT: cash-strapped Russian government looks to sell off minority stakes in nationalized industries to generate revenue. The bottom line in this story is that almost twenty years after the fall of the USSR, Russia still has a deeply unhealthy and unreformed economy that was able to masquerade as a nascent power this past decade because high natural resource price levels. You’d think they would’ve learned a lesson from seeing how the tanking oil market of the 1980s laid bare the weaknesses of the Soviet economy and did more to drive the country to ruin than any burning tanks in Afghanistan. Also, if you’re an investor, why would you want to invest in these companies? Sure, they have access to incredible resources, but you’re choosing to trust a Russian government that hasn’t hesitated to renationalize companies before. My guess is that most investors will get involved to curry favor with the Kremlin.
- Juan Cole: the good doctor reacts to news that the Pentagon can’t account for more than $8 billion worth of Iraqi aid money. Cole came up with a pretty good quote: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was wrong when he declared in 1840 that ‘property is theft.’ But I can offer a more solid and more consistently true aphorism: ‘War is theft.’ And not only of money; of supposedly inalienable rights, as well.”
- Via Peter Suderman at Reason, WaPo: end the ethanol subsidies. They’re bad for the environment, they’re bad for price levels in agricultural commodity markets, they’re bad for pandering in the Iowa caucuses, they’re bad for the budget and most of all, they’re just not morally justifiable. Ethanol tax incentives cost the country $6 billion in 2009.
- The Corner: it doesn’t get much dumber and unoriginal than calling John Kerry a fake leftist for trying to avoid paying a yacht tax. It’s cute to see someone who is probably not a materialist using materialist, class interest arguments against Kerry.
- Der Spiegel: forget China’s military, worry about their international influence. I agree that the international influence is far more worrisome, but I think Der Spiegel has bee just as influenced by Chinese propaganda as anyone else. China isn’t about to take over the world, even by soft power. China is living atop a tremendous bubble right now. They are the guy with his foot on a landmine. Let’s not rush to call this the Chinese century until China proves it can successfully integrate waves of newly-prosperous people into a dictatorship.
- National Post: review of what sounds like a cool book on everyday life in North Korea. I put it on my list. North Korea is so mysterious and secretive that I’m dying to know what things are like. Hopefully the regime will have met its deserved end before I have time to get around to reading the book.
The Country Estate 