WHAT COUNTRY GETS MORE FOREIGN AID THAN ANY OTHER?
Which country receives the most in total foreign aid from all donors? The official numbers show Iraq at the top with $3 to $18 billion in aid (depending on how you define "aid") and all the other recipient nations of the world at less than $3 billion per year.
However, if you look at which nation benefits most from foreign subsidies, the U.S. would come out on top by a very wide margin.
Yes, I did just say that the U.S. is the world's largest recipient of foreign assistance. Other countries are not sending official government "aid" dollars to help the U.S. but are doing things that have the same effect. For instance, China provides the biggest single subsidy to the U.S.THE WORLD’S BEST (AND MOST POLITICALLY INCORRECT) STEAK
I love the full page ads in the New York Times with a full-size picture of a very large steak knife and the caption: Terrifying Vegetarians Since 1886. Smith & Wollensky's Steak House.
The ad is fun but the truth is, their steaks are not that great (and way overpriced). The best steak in America is the porterhouse at Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. Many international folks think the best restaurant steak in the world is served at La Cabaña in Buenos Aires. But the true best steak in the world cannot be found in any restaurant.
Years ago, I was invited by Reason Magazine to contribute a recipe to The Libertarian Cookbook. There were recipes by Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Tibor Machan, and other libertarian luminaries. I decided to swing for the bleachers.
My recipe was for The World's Best Steak. The world's best steak is made from the nerve of an elephant's tusk.
SKYPE 2.5 (beta)
We first talked about Skype, the software program by which you can make free phone calls most anywhere in the world, last September in Talk Is Cheap.
Last week Skype marked quite a milestone: 100,000,000 registered users. That's just the number of downloads, though-there aren't necessarily that many regular users.
Still, at any moment, several million people in the world are online using Skype whether for free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, instant messaging chat, video calls, or to take advantage of the premium services that actually earn Skype its money. That's impressive by any measure.
As of May 3, 2006, there's a new and modestly improved version of Skype available for download.THE GREAT UN-COMMUNICATOR
You've got to hand it to President Bush. For a pretty decent, straightforward guy, he sure has a knack for making enemies.
The economy is booming. There has been no successful terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Al Qaeda officials acknowledge we're winning the war in Iraq. Yet in the history of polling, only three presidents have had job approval ratings as low or lower than President Bush does now.
They were Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter just before they left office, and Harry Truman after he had fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Mr. Bush is about where Mr. Carter was (34 percent), but still has a ways to fall to reach the nadirs of Nixon (24 percent) and Truman (23 percent). Will he?
The president's popularity problem isn't one problem, but three.SAVING DETROIT
If you live in Washington and you're a guest on Fox News, the producers graciously send a car and driver to take you to the studio and back home after the show. One of the Fox drivers is a colorful character everyone calls "Wolf." He grew up in Yugoslavia (in what is now Bosnia), and he told me a very illuminating story.
Wolf had read The Natural Gas Solution (soon after we first met he became a TTP subscriber) and explained how he knew it was accurate. "I drove a Yugo car when I lived in Sarajevo back in the 70s," he said. "Gas was so expensive and it was rationed. So I, like several of my friends, installed a CNG (compressed natural gas) tank in the trunk, hooked a line up to the carburetor, and ran the car on natural gas. We got such great mileage and the car ran so well, that we could drive to Trieste (in Italy) on weekends."
It was by talking to Wolf that made me realize how the Natural Gas Solution can save Detroit.REPLIES ON GAS AND ETHANOL
Jack,An independent Ph.D. energy economist disagrees with your dismissal of LNG (liquefied natural gas). He claims "it's economic to transport LNG at $3-3.50 mBTU [million British Thermal Units]," and that "if the world price is high enough, it will make economic sense for producers to liquefy it and send it to China." In other words, natural gas (NG) is not "de-coupled" from the world market as you say. He asserts that natural gas is "just as fungible as oil."
John M.
Reply:
John,Could this fellow be shilling for Chevron or some other outfit hyping LNG?
PORTER AND CASEY
No, not Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan's DCI. Casey Stengel. After winning 10 pennants in 12 years including 5 straight World Series managing the New York Yankees, Stengel spent 3 dismal years trying to manage the hopeless New York Mets. They were so inept that at one point, Stengel blurted out the immortal line, "Doesn't anyone here know how to play this game?"
Porter Goss asked the same question of the team he was managing, the CIA - and the team owner fired him.
The saga of the sacking of Porter Goss is one of such gargantuan incompetence on the part of the Bush White House that it finally tears any loyalty conservatives have to this presidency.
THERE IS NO RIGHT TO MEDICAL CARE
In the advertisement "A Renewed American Agenda" (USA Today, May 4, 2006) - placed by The Bedell World Citizenship Fund of Spirit Lake, Iowa - the organization urges us to "Recognize that All Americans Have A Right to Medical Care."
I suppose they mean well but in fact they are perpetrating a gross misunderstanding about individual rights.
Medical care is a value doctors, nurses and other medical professionals would, if they were free men and women, provide to those they would choose as recipients, on terms they regard as acceptable.
These provisions are not owed to anyone. Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals may not be placed into involuntary servitude to those needing their services. The relationships must be voluntary, no matter how vital those services are to the recipients.
The belief that others may justly be placed into involuntary servitude so as to secure funds to pay medical professionals - who then will service those who need their work - is a gross moral error.
THE NATURAL GAS SOLUTION
This week we're going to refine the argument for natural gas as a comprehensive solution to high energy prices, energy pollution, and energy dependence upon foreign producers outlined last week in What Bush Can Do To Get Cheaper Gas.
To summarize: the solution is for Bush to allow oil & gas companies to extract the vast amounts of NG we have within American boundaries, cut state residents in on the royalties, provide tax credits for folks to run NG in their cars, and before his presidency is over the equivalent cost of driving a car will be less than $1 a gallon.
Now for the refinement - of the argument, not NG, which unlike crude oil requires no refining.
Seen those full page newspaper ads placed by Chevron trying to frighten you with the claim that the US only has three measly percent of the world's natural gas supply? Whatever the Chevron's agenda is, it's not about telling you the truth.
MEDIA LUNA: SOUTH AMERICA’S NEWEST COUNTRY
Well, not quite yet, but soon. The funniest headline of the week was "South American Leaders Support Bolivia Gas Nationalization." Yesterday (5/4), at Puerto Iguazo, Argentina, Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner met with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales and promised to "respect" Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's natural gas.
Only folks who are interested in buying bridges in Brooklyn are going to believe that.
As we discussed over a year ago in Bye Bye Bolivia, Brazil gets 60% of its natural gas from Bolivia. Argentina gets 200,000 cubic yards of Bolivian gas a day. Lula and Kirchner are going to tolerate a threat to this from Morales-Chavez about as much as a capybara will let himself be swallowed by an anaconda.