ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER BLOG

I have started reading the blog associated with the Orange County Register newspaper recently. Like a lot of newspaper blogs it is more conservative than the paper it is associated with. With less managerial censorship hanging over their heads, even journalists can be surprisingly down-to-earth sometimes. I reproduce below a few recent excerpts that I liked. The headings are mine:

Health Fascists

"The American Lung Association, one of those mammoth, anti-freedom charities, now is pushing to ban smoking in your own apartment. The ALA "will roll out plans today to make smoke-free complexes more widespread." The article notes that apartment complexes already are offering more non-smoking areas. So why the campaign? Because these sorts of health campaigns always end up with legislation mandating no-smoking areas, then total smoking bans. Indeed, an L.A. councilman is sponsoring legislation to mandate non-smoking apartments. Pretty soon, tobacco is going to be as illegal as crack cocaine".

A good summary of FDR

"Today marks the 60th anniversary of one of the world's worst tyrants: Franklin "D. for Dictator" Roosevelt." Elected on a 1932 platform that promised to end the Great Depression with cuts in taxes, tariffs, government programs, and regulations, he did the opposite -- and extended and deepened the Great Depression. In 1935, he imposed on America a German- (as in Third Reich by way of Bismarck) retirement scheme, Socialist Security, which to this day has plagued young famlies with strangulating taxes and soon will go broke. In World War II, Franklin "D. for Dictator" allied closely with his good friend, Josef Stalin, affectionately dubbing him "Uncle Joe," to defeat Uncle Joe's own former close ally, Hitler. At the Yalta conference, FDR "gave" Uncle Joe Eastern Europe -- enslaving those people until the Berlin Wall fell.

Unions destroy business again

It's not just taxpayers who are footing the bill for out-of-control union pensions, but car buyers. Today's Wall Street Journal had an excellent column by Holman Jenkins Jr. on why GM cars are so awful and show no sign of getting better (except for Cadillac). Outdated engines, old-style transmissions, horrible styling, dreadful performance -- that summarizes GM. Only Caddy got a huge new infusion of dollars to allow it to compete with other companies. GM, according to Jenkins, dropped its plans for the new Zeta platform because it has to spend the bulk of its money paying up for pension deals that are busting the bank. GM isn't a car company, argues Jenkins, but a social welfare agency dedicated to providing benefits to retired union workers. And GM's market share fades away. A well deserved fate. Unfortunately, in the public sector, the taxpayer rather than the shareholder has to pay up to deal with monumental overpayments to government workers. Note that San Diego is facing bankruptcy because of pension deals, and city attorney Aguirre last week called for new taxes.

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