What the Heck was I Thinking!?

More evidence that the wave of anti-war sentiment that brought in all those anti-war Democrat lawmakers has some significant backwash: Captain’s Quarters blogs about one of Pelosi’s failures selections for a leadership position - Sylvestre Reyes:

Pelosi will undoubtedly have many Democrats making their views very clear on her selection of Reyes, now that Newsweek has reported it. They expected that key chairs would go to Democrats opposed to the war in Iraq, not those who supported an escalation of American involvement.

Captain Ed suggests that there are other reasons for Ms. Pelosi’s selections and non-selections of leadership candidates. These reasons explain her choices, as well as her failures during this run up to the Democrat controlled Congress:

So why did she replace Harman? It seems obvious that the decision had
much more to do with personal issues than with policy. Democrats may
want to rethink her Speakership in light of the series of strange
decisions she has made in the wake of their victory. The rule of
personal whim has just about destroyed their momentum and may have set
up the House caucus for a devastating split at the moment of their
greatest unity in a generation.

Ego. The cult of personality. This will be an interesting two years.

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about big business, Hollywood big business bashing movies, and economics at Thomas Sowell on National Review Online. As usual, he is clear in his thinking, concise in his analysis, and blunt in his criticism:

If economically illiterate Hollywood busybodies and other mindless crusaders succeed in establishing more costly pay scales without regard to productivity, that will undoubtedly lead to fewer jobs, just as similar policies do in other countries. There is no free lunch in the third world, any more than there is elsewhere.

He continues in the article with the following observations and recommendation:

The net result will be people feeling good about themselves in
Hollywood, in academia and in the media, while leaving havoc in their
wake among the third-world people they claim to care about.

What the third world needs are more multinational corporations, not less.

As
more multinational corporations move into a poorer country, the people
there not only get additional economic opportunities, they acquire
skills and job experience that raise their productivity and earnings
potential, even if that outrages the economically illiterate in
Hollywood.

A very interesting article - this is why he’s my favorite economist.

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