Linkfest: Sunday Updates
Time to clean out the aggregator —
ITEM: The New York City Council has repealed term limits, allowing themselves (oh, and mayor Michael Bloomberg) to run for additional terms. The fact that term limits were enacted, twice, by popular referendum, along with the fact that Bloomberg previously described seeking to overturn term limits as — his word — “disgraceful,” were both conveniently overlooked.
ITEM: The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation announced that it has lost almost $5 billion in its investment portfolio as a result of the recent market decline. The agency’s funding shortfall, almost certainly to be closed via an eventual taxpayer bailout, now stands at $15 billion. I repeated my warning about the agency’s policy of holding a non-diversified portfolio and recommended the systemic liquidation of its equity holdings in this post. (But remember: the government will, President Bush assures us, make money on the $700 billion bailout program. And don’t worry about the FDIC’s $150 billion projected shortfall, either — at least not yet.)
ITEM: China’s Communist authoritarians have announced plans to heighten regulation of its lethal dairy industry — complete with the totalitarian fanfare of a public burning of tainted products. Conveniently omitted from the autocracy’s propaganda agency was that the single worst offender was a (majority) state-owned and state-run enterprise, and that a key mechanism to help ensure safety — liability lawsuits — are not available in this supposedly “market-based” regime. Previous post here.
ITEM: Just in time for Election Day and the three bigot amendments on the ballot this year, Professor Larry Solum has revised and reposted his excellent Legal Theory Lexicon entry for the “Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty,” the analysis of those situations in which it is appropriate to check, usually via the judicial branch, the power of the majority to impose its collective will on political minorities. I have been applying Solum’s entry (which is suitable for non-lawyers and should be considered required reading) to the question of gay rights as far back as 2005 — the 2006 version here.
ITEM: For those who entered guesses for this post, the answers were: (1) Key West, and (2) Florida. Thanks for playing, and be sure to watch out for “downtown homosexuals.”
Filed under: Updates