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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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If someone offered you a chance to invest millions of dollars in a business nobody wants, would you take it?

If you’re the U.S. government, the answer is a resounding yes. Since 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—despite major political, social, and environmental headwinds—has poured almost $100 million (PDF) into aquaculture, also known by the more pedestrian moniker of fish farming.

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A note to Dutch innkeepers: If you are going to host a convention of lock pickers, and you promise them free Wi-Fi, it is probably a futile gesture to then require paid access with a password. I learned this one evening a few years ago in the Stay-Okay Hostel in Sneek (pronounced like the serpent), a midsized city in the north of the Netherlands. When I asked a conventioneer if Wi-Fi was complimentary, he said there had been some confusion with the hostel. But not to worry, he said: Someone had clandestinely added an access point. I logged on.

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Democrats, of course. The Party of Corruption since Republicans took their slaves away.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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During the 2016 campaign, Catherine Pugh was one of dozens of Democratic politicians calling for the implementation of a $15 per hour minimum wage.

Since being elected mayor of Baltimore in November, though, Pugh has changed her mind about the merits of forcing employers to pay such a high hourly rate. Last week, Pugh announced she would veto a $15 minimum wage bill passed by city council, citing concerns about how it would hurt the city’s economy, nonprofits and charities working in the city, and the city government’s bottom line.

After doing “some research,” Pugh said at a press conference on March 24, “it is not appropriate at this time that I will sign this bill, so I am vetoing this bill.”

The surprise here is that a Democrat actually ‘did some research’ and acted on the basis of it.

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R.R. Reno’s essay, “A Dissolving Age” (March 2017), raises legitimate concerns about trends in modern American society, but the author is wrong to fix the blame on America’s growing economic ties to the rest of the world.

Reno’s thesis is that globalization?—?which he fairly defines as “the relatively free flow of capital, goods, and labor through most of the world”?—?is one of the principal forces that is dissolving the traditional attachment of Americans to our culture, community, and nation. The author laments “the utilitarian despotism of global capitalism,” which he blames for supplanting the sovereignty of the United States and our patriotic feelings toward our country.

Rather than a point by point response, let me home in on three of the more debatable aspects of Reno’s indictment.

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I have a copy of the first edition. It’s probably worth a lot of money by now.

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Our counter-offer: You can have California. We’ll even pay you to take it.

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One of the things I endeavor to remind people of consistently when I am asked to speak to groups around the country is to consider the possibility that we are led by a pack of idiots. This is not out of any animus toward our leadership class, but borne out of experience. I have seen cabinet secretaries who type with two fingers. I have listened as senior staffers with authority over constructing legislation in a particular scientific field engage in debate on whether or not the moon landing was a hoax. I have seen a man charged with revolutionizing incredibly complex government information technology systems who did not know how to use a thumb drive. I have seen the bill from a highly paid consultant, an incredibly expensive bill, for a PowerPoint deck that I had seen him present for another client with different logos. And, more personally, I have been told at many varied points in my career by accomplished people why the thing I wished to build was impossible, why it would be a failure, and why I should instead join company X, Y, or Z, none of which are relevant or in some cases even exist today. This is why we should never forget the possibility that underneath the façade of government and business, which projects authority and success, there are a host of fools who are just along for the ride and got to where they are by dint of internal politics, a nice resume, and good timing.

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Heh.

Ook Pro Picture Hangers