” These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with… The goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination “ - Pat Robertson

I read this and was pretty shocked. He must have been trying to shock and awe, because coming out and saying something like this obviously isn’t politically correct. When referring to Muslims, he states that “Islam is not a religion of peace.”

I will agree that many extremists are really crazy and are definitely not interested in any peace. There are tons of people out there that are begging for somebody to kill Americans, and this is wrong, but there are tons of American Muslims that are perfectly chill.

And Mr. Robertson, a Christian, is basing a lot of his “facts” on the Koran. Yes, it does say some pretty violent things in there, but if you look in the Bible (I don’t really feel like digging up the facts), there are some pretty violent things too. The moral of the story is, don’t take scripture literally, and don’t globalize. That does nothing but piss people off.

The Virginia Gerneral Assembly just passed a bill to lower the cost of college textbooks for students. Well, in theory.

The bill requires public schools to give guidelines to professors and bookstores, encouraging professors to limit use of new editions of books and to acknowledge that they are aware of the cost of their assigned books. Bookstores are told to order books without extra supplementary material that is not needed.

In theory, this is fine, but it doesn’t get to any of the roots of the college textbook problem. First off, many of my professors already acknowledge how much the books cost, and they do so by telling us: “sorry, your books for this class are going to cost you hundreds of dollars for this semester.” So I don’t think acknowledging is going to do anything.

Secondly, regardless of whether supplementary materials are shipped to the bookstore or not, college bookstores jack up prices so high, in particular Barnes and Noble at William and Mary, our only college bookstore, that I have been able to find books online that are often half the cost of in the bookstore. I regularly save hundreds of dollars every semester by ordering online, yet even with this method I pay hundreds each semester for books.

The Washington Nationals are homeless no more. Major League Baseball and the DC City Council have reached an agreement to begin construction on a brand new ballpark in Southeast. Nevermind the sign outside of RFK Stadium declaring it to be “The Home of the Washington Nationals.” That stadium is old. How is baseball supposed to sell the Nats off to new owners without a deal in place for a brand new stadium? No investors will want to buy a team without a stadium. I mean a new stadium. If Washington wants to keep the team, the city will just have to build a new stadium for them.

RFK is an old stadium, and certainly could be replaced, but there’s really no urgent reason to build a new stadium now, before the owners are even selected. Well, no urgent reason other than the profits that the other Major League Baseball owners stand to make from the sale of the team.

The Nationals are collectively owned by Major League Baseball. In moving the team from Montreal to Washington, the DC City Council signed an agreement with MLB in which they promised to publicly-finance a brand new stadium for the team. I’m not interested in debating whether or not DC got a good deal in this specific case. The City Council must honor its commitments, regardless of whether or not the deal was in the city’s best interests.

A recent study came out that said the average American savings rate in 2005 was negative. Yup, that’s right, on average, people came out of 2005 with less money than they came in with. The last time the savings rate was negative was during the Great Depression. Nearly 80 years later, our savings rate is -0.7%. In the 70s and early 80s, the savings rate was 10% of disposable income. That’s a pretty healthy number. It has gradually declined since.

Why is this? Did the economy crash? No… things have been fine. The stock market was up, growth was normal, and everything was pretty much fine.

Some argue that the reason the savings rate is so low is because people are using the wrong numbers to calculate savings. Even so, they’re still using the same numbers today as they did in the 70s. If these numbers are wrong, it still shows a dramatic decline in SOMETHING that we used to call savings. I don’t think we can play a numbers game here and claim that we’re saving an adequate amount no matter which figures you look at.
I personally believe the savings rate is way too low. People really need to be concerned about how much money they are saving, because who knows when the next big emergency will strike and people will have to dip into savings?

Apparently, scientists would like to see a tax placed on soda. Soda, if you haven’t noticed, is a pretty darned big source of empty calories because of the high sugar content. The idea is a basic economic concept: upon market failure, government intervention can help eliminate the negative effects of an externality. In this case, the externality is that soda causes people to become fat and increases medical costs for everyone, and thus, the government can reduce the consumption of soda by raising its price, and thus eliminate the externality.

I don’t really think this is going to make much of a difference. An overall healthy lifestyle, which includes moderation in food, exercise, sleep, etcetera is the most important thing. You can avoid soda all you want and still be unhealthy. Perhaps the tax will reduce consumption of soda, but maybe then people will just start overconsuming diet coke and die of cancer, or start drinking water, but supplementing their sugar fix with candy bars.