Op-eds worth checking out

Why the Ron Paul Campaign is Dangerous 
JB Williams, The New Media Journal...

Paul supporters have worked diligently to convince voters that their candidate is the “real deal” constitutionalist conservative in the ’08 presidential race and that he has a real chance of winning. But the facts simply don’t support either of these claims and pointing this reality out seems to drive Paul supporters into a fit of unbridled rage.

The fact is, though Ron Paul himself is no threat to anyone or anything, his campaign is on a track that is very dangerous for America and the conservative movement in particular. Although he is highly unlikely to win anything, his campaign is increasingly likely to cause real trouble for the legitimate Republican nomination process....

In an interview with [former Ron Paul aide and founder of the Libertarian Republican Caucus, Eric] Dondero[, who also founded MainstreamLibertarian.com and hosts blogtalk radio show Libertarian Politics Live], he emphatically complained; “Please refrain in the future from using the label "Libertarian Republican" in describing Ron Paul. Call him what he is: Some sort of populist leftwinger.”

Dondero continued, “Since 9/11 Paul has become a complete nutcase conspiratorialist quasi-Anti-Semitic leftwing American-hating nutball.”

These were strong words from a former aide to Mr. Paul (from 1997 – 2003) and words worthy of investigation in my mind. So I decided to investigate, which in politics always means, follow the money.

How to limit home ownership for the poor
Star Parker, Townhall.com...

The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007 has passed out of Chairman Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee. It's now headed to the full House for a vote. In the name of protecting the poor from market predators it will in actuality protect the poor from wealth.

This is yet a new chapter in the grand liberal tradition that advances the illusion that government micromanagement of private lives and markets will make us better off. We already have laws against fraud and theft. But for liberals, government isn't there to enforce the law. It's there to run our lives. ...

In a recently published article in the Cato Supreme Court Review, Professor Marcus Cole of the Stanford University Law School discusses the fallout of lending laws in Illinois....

Cole reports the following: "Instead of protecting hardworking would-be homeowners from predatory lending, the new law protected them from credit. Within just a few months more than 30 mortgage lenders refused to lend on homes purchased in the targeted zip codes. Those lenders determined to service these communities saw a rise in their costs, which translated into higher interest rates on their loans."

The purported cure was worse than the disease. Cole goes on to note that, "home sales in the designated zip codes dropped an average of 45 percent in just one month after the bill took effect. Home prices plummeted, draining relatively poor but hardworking people of what little equity they had in their homes."

Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox?
By Noam Cohen, New York Times...

Part of Firefox’s appeal was its origins as a nonprofit venture, a people-powered revolution involving the most basic Internet technology, the Web browser. Also, because the core code was open, Firefox could tap into developers’ creativity; they are encouraged to soup up the browser, whether by blocking ads from commercial Web sites, a popular add-on, or by creating “skins” to customize the browser’s appearance.

But in trying to build on this success, the Mozilla Foundation has come to resemble an investor-backed Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog. Siobhan O’Mahony, an assistant professor at the School of Management of the University of California, Davis, calls Mozilla “the first corporate open-source project.”...

“The Mozilla community has been a bit hybrid in terms of integrating public and private investment all along — its history is fairly unique in this respect,” Professor O’Mahony said....

Yet lately, the concern among Firefox users and developers about the Mozilla-Google relationship focuses more on what would happen if Google were to walk away, create its own browser or back another, like Safari. This discussion of life after Google represents an unexpected twist: the fear is that instead of being a proxy for Google, Mozilla may have become dangerously reliant on it.

The piece points out that while Mozilla has amassed over $74 million in assets, it's spends little, except for the fairly opulent salaries of it's top echelon. However It think the following statement in the piece was way, way understated...

The browser’s other, unstated advantage, shared with other open-source projects, was A.B.M: Anybody but Microsoft.

I contend that ABM is Firefox's main lure, not a secondary one.

Posted by Danny Carlton at November 12, 2007 7:01 AM