Suppose I say to you, dear reader: "I have a hot tip. Onion futures! If you invest a modest sum of money with me, I will invest it in futures. "You'll really like dem onions. I have a solid inside source at the exchange." If I ever say this to you, then 'I' have gone over to the dark side. RUN. There is no such thing as an onion future on ANY exchange in the US or in Europe or, so far as I know, anywhere on the globe. The US has the distinction of having an act of Congress on the books saying that onions are not to be subject to futures trades. The Onion Futures Act was created at the insistence, back on the 1950s, of one Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan. His district was the epicenter of US onion growing, and he decided early on in his career that futures speculation in the crop was inherently crooked. Ford had standard mid-20th-century laissez-faire opinions on a lot of subjects, but futures trading in onions: N...
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I think if the Democratic Party nominates Biden, they are looking at a loss. This election would end up looking like 1984. Biden has a lot in common with Walter Mondale, who of course defeated a large field of other primary candidates in the period 1983–84 and then lost in the fall as Reagan cruised to re-election. The Democratic Party’s best chance is for this cycle to end up looking NOT so much like ‘84, but more like ‘76. Remember, the Dems also had a large field in ’75 - ‘76. The candidate who emerged from that field was NOT an old familiar figure (not Muskie or Humphrey), but someone who had been utterly unknown to most of the country until the campaigning had gotten underway — Jimmy Carter. Who then defeated Gerald Ford in the general election. The Democrats need a fresh face to emerge from their large field, and then they need to come together behind that fresh face. Tulsi Gabbard (portrayed above) might pull off the Carter role.
I'm thinking about this decision today, though I'm not sure why. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/471/539/case.html That link takes you to Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises , a 1985 Supreme Court decision about copyright and the limits of the "fair use" dissent. So you won't have to follow that link to know what is on my mind, here's the syllabus, pasted. In 1977, former President Ford contracted with petitioners to publish his as yet unwritten memoirs. The agreement gave petitioners the exclusive first serial right to license prepublication excerpts. Two years later, as the memoirs were nearing completion, petitioners, as the copyright holders, negotiated a prepublication licensing agreement with Time Magazine under which Time agreed to pay $25,000 ($12,500 in advance and the balance at publication) in exchange for the right to excerpt 7,500 words from Mr. Ford's account of his pardon of former President Nixon. Shortly before ...
The headline of this blog entry is "Preserver and Rebel." I deliberately don’t say “conservative” or “liberal” or “right” or “left.” Preserver and rebel have fairly obvious (and obviously relative) meanings, such that for example President Ford was a preserver within the Republican Party of themed 1970s, and Ronald Reagan was a rebel. Nothing very complicated or controversial so far I hope. The preserver often has a case. And when he does it is always the same case. Whatever he wants to preserve, he is willing in order to do so to lock out some interests and disdain some passions. The reasons always come down to this: those interests and passions are (a) inconsistent with the existing social equilibrium, and (b) we can not now see our way clear to a better one. But each passion has its champion, and the collective pressure of them helps make way (whether they as individuals wanted this or not is irrelevant) to a broader, more tolerant, equilibrium later. ...