“The way to get people to adopt your product or service is simple: make it compelling. Get the innovators and compel them to pass the word on down the curve. That’s how you grow, and guess what: if you charge from the beginning you can afford to wait (and you can eat more than Top Ramen).”
—I Am Condemning Free on Principle, So Should You — The Brooks Review
April 2012
27 posts
DeMarco: Valentine is the least of Boston's problems →
nbcsports.msnbc.com
Pretty good analysis of the Red Sox.
“This is an unstable situation. At some point, parents are going to decide that $160,000 is too high a price if all you get is an empty credential and a fancy car-window sticker.”
—Testing the Teachers - NYTimes.com
Pushing Daisies →
dailyexhaust.com
Because information is now mostly weightless, there just is no space for an industry that relies on physical media as the lynchpin of their success. When these industries disappear, it won’t be necessary to shed a tear for them because the real product they dealt in, information, will still exist. The delivery method will have changed, that is all.
Bryan goes on to lament the demise of newspapers. I can’t see how newspapers are exempt from the above concept.
“You say, “Williams, the White House and Congress should do something.” The track record of doing nothing is pretty good compared with doing something. None of our economic downturns in the century and a half prior to 1930 lasted as long as the Great Depression.”
—Good Economists - Walter E. Williams - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 2
“Apparently the soaring national debt and the threat of a nuclear Iran are not enough to occupy the government’s time, because the Obama administration is pushing to force Westchester County, N.Y., to create more low-income housing, in order to mix and match classes and races to fit the government’s preconceptions.”
—Mixing and Matching - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1
“According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, by 2050, Representative Paul Ryan’s budget would cut total public debt to 10 percent of G.D.P. Current law would put debt at 42 percent of G.D.P. Under the Obama budget, debt would skyrocket to 124 percent of G.D.P.”
—The White House Argument - NYTimes.com
“Like many good web junkies, I find myself balancing a desire to play with all of my digital shiny objects alongside this strange growing urge to make something a bit more substantial on the web.”
—How To Enjoy Social Media Enough To Stick Around, Michael Schechter
“Okay. Let’s do the math. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new tax would yield between $4 billion and $5 billion a year. If we collect the Buffett tax for the next 250 years — a span longer than the life of this republic — it would not cover the Obama deficit for 2011 alone.”
—Free-lunch egalitarianism - The Washington Post
“
The president is barnstorming around the nation hoping to enrage voters at the injustice that the wealthy pay fewer taxes than the middle class. “Now that’s wrong,” Obama objected, “That’s not fair.”
It also isn’t true. According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2009, the top 1 percent of earners paid 36.7 percent of income taxes. The top 5 percent paid 58.6 percent. And the top 10 percent paid more than 70 percent. Social Security and Medicare taxes fall more evenly on all income groups (except the poor) but are lower. Further, Obama had the opportunity to repeal the Bush tax cuts he claims to find so odious when his party controlled both houses of Congress, but he chose to extend them instead.
” —You Pay for Warren Buffett’s Medicare - Mona Charen - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1
“Conservatives who attack Romney as the “establishment Republican” are behaving like Democrats, giving us epithets in lieu of facts.”
—Ann Coulter - April 11, 2012 - FIGHTING THE LAST WAR
“Recruiters for white hate groups must love President Obama’s demagoguery in saying that a son of his would look like Trayvon but not saying that Melissa Coon’s 13-year-old son, who was set on fire, could have looked like a son of his. After all, the president is just as much white as he is black.”
—Media Dishonesty and Race Hustlers - Walter E. Williams - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 2
Stop perpetuating stereotypes of black males →
indystar.com
I figured the best way to beat the stereotype was to not act like one.
So guess what? I did. I went to school and did well. I didn’t carry myself in a manner where I could be mistaken for a suspect by the police. I never shot anybody. I didn’t have children with anyone I wasn’t married to. I spoke English like it was my first language. I didn’t wear my pants around my knees. I didn’t embarrass my parents or anyone else who fought in the civil rights movement, which helped create opportunities for me to take advantage of. I took personal responsibility for my actions. And I made it a point to look for a wife with a Bluetooth and not a gold tooth. Ironically, I ended up getting more grief from black liberals because my name is Abdul and my politics are more conservative than they feel comfortable with. Go figure.
“New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie said America is “turning into a paternalistic entitlement society” where the federal government is telling individuals to “stop dreaming” and “stop striving,” a message Christie claimed is leading to “a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.”
—Chris Christie | George W. Bush | Paternalistic Entitlement Society | The Daily Caller
“Have you noticed that what modest economic improvements we have seen occurred during the much-lamented “gridlock” in Washington? Nor is this unusual. If you check back through history, doing nothing has a far better track record than that of politicians intervening in the economy.”
—Random Thoughts - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1
“We’ve gotten glimpses of Obama’s intimidating instincts from the beginning. Now as his administration flounders, his aggressiveness is becoming less and less veiled.”
—Obama’s Contempt for Law (Chavismo Comes to Washington) - Mona Charen - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1
The Two Economies - NYTimes.com →
nytimes.com
His work leaves the impression that there are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere. These companies, with the sword of foreign competition hanging over them, have become relentlessly dynamic and very (sometimes brutally) efficient.
On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government. Leaders in this economy try to improve productivity and use new technologies, but they are not compelled by do-or-die pressure, and their pace of change is slower.
“Although Obama is not nearly as well educated as many thought, and he thinks, he surely knows he was absurd when he said last Monday, regarding Obamacare, that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to overturn a “passed law.”
—George Will: Romney veep pick? A heavy hitter
“Obamacare passed the Congress without a single vote from the opposition party — in contradistinction to Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, similarly grand legislation, all of which enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. In the Senate, moreover, Obamacare squeaked by through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation that was never intended for anything so sweeping. The fundamental deviation from custom and practice is not the legal challenge to Obamacare but the very manner of its enactment.”
—Obama v. SCOTUS - The Washington Post
