FreedomTalks

No. Really. Looks like French President Nicholas Sarkozy thinks he can argue away his country’s dismal economic reports by measuring the, um, national happiness.  ‘
What price happiness? French President Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking an answer to the eternal question so that happiness can be included in measurements of French economic growth.
He’s turned to two Nobel [...]

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both proposing so-called economic stimulus packages worth more than $100 billion.  James Pethokoukis has the details, but they pretty much boil down to, “Here, let me mail you a check for a couple hundred bucks.”  That’s a recipe for hours of fun at a fine local establishment, no doubt, [...]

One of the (many) great advantages of the Internet is that it can deliver digital content — software, music, movies, etc. — right now. Thanks to downloading and digital distribution, you don’t have to go to a store, don’t have to parking and traffic, annoying packaging or unhelpful store clerks — and you you don’t [...]

Environmental advocates regularly pontificate about the need to adopt alternative energy sources.  But when you press them, they offer up such non-solutions as wind and solar power which is unlikely to provide for more than a small percentage of our current energy needs. (Solar power, for instance, currently accounts for a measly 0.04% of the [...]

Just when I thought I couldn’t be more disappointed with the GOP presidential nomination race, I read Mitt Romney’s comments about “bringing back” manufacturing jobs to Michigan.
The Washington Post reports,
As part of his plan, Romney said he would back spending an additional $20 billion over five years to federally fund research on energy, fuels, automotive [...]

Lots to note in the news today. Time for bullet points!

“Democrats Create Pessimism About Trade Prospects (Sallie James, Detroit News): The Democrats approach to trade seems unconcerned with promoting he free exchange of goods between people who want to sell them and people who want to buy.
“Unions Pouring Resources Into Nevada Caucus Fight” (Steven Greenhouse, [...]

Our comments section has been pleasantly lively recently, and one of the subjects that has come up is a certain confusion over the notion of “freedom.” Now, it would be easy to spend all day (or all year) discussing the myriad concepts of what freedom is and what it entails, but since this isn’t a [...]

There’s still not been an announcement from the Bush administration about whether or not it will, as we all hope, issue an executive order to wipe out the majority of the earmarks in the most recent omnibus.  But the big news in the earmark battel right now is that Jeff Flake, earmark-killer par excellence, has [...]

The New Yorker on Google’s move into the Washington policy world:
 Google still faces obstacles from publishers and authors and television networks; search competitors like Yahoo! and Microsoft; so-called vertical search engines that rely on human experts; advertising agencies and telephone companies. One senior executive at Time Warner, who did not want to be identified, because [...]

This is sort of hilarious — and completely depressing. MotherJones environmental blogger Jennifer Phillips looks upon China’s authoritarianism favorably … at least when deployed in service of policies she likes. In a post titled “If China Can Ban Plastic Bags, Why Can’t We?” she writes:
Communist governments may be oppressive to American eyes, but they [...]