From the Village Voice comes proof that lefties have a role to play in stopping Republican-style socialism: “The Bush administration and Senate Republicans want to give billions of taxpayer dollars to the nuclear industry to make high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), which—theoretically—can co-generate electricity and hydrogen, side by side, inside cheap modular reactors. Advocates of the plants say they wouldn’t need the expensive protections required for traditional models.

“Until now, the money-laundering rules haven’t been controversial, and Mr. Sensenbrenner is intervening late in the process,” writes Glenn Simpson in today’s Wall Street Journal. “The rules, which codify the 2001 antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act, take effect June 9 and have been in the works for more than a year.

From the Seattle Times:  “Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Wal-Mart, General Electric and other companies are gaining support in Congress for the right to set up a nationwide banking system that could compete with commercial banks but operate under looser federal rules.  Consumer groups, bankers, some lawmakers and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan have sharply criticized the effort, saying it would create a second, parallel banking system that would result in unfair

“Don Alonzo emerged from the Korean War unscathed,” writes Steve Dunleavy in the New York Post (5/25/03), “but he says Mayor Bloomberg has put a final nail in his coffin.”

He “looked over a sign that was an obituary for his restaurant. The sign read simply enough: ‘Alonzo’s will be closing its business on May 30th. ‘Thanks’ to Mayor Bloomberg!’ 

...or at least for accounting firms.  Bloomberg reports that accounting costs for companies with less than $3 billion in annual sales have more than doubled because of this regulation, according to a study released recently by law firm Foley & Lardner. Overall compliance costs, including public relations, insurance, legal and directors’ fees have increased 90 percent.

In a piece on LewRockwell.com, I analyze Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil as an astute comparison of the market economy to central planning.  For those who have not seen this movie, I think that it is the most libertarian work of popular culture in years.  It is both satirical and terrifying in its analysis of the workings of state power. This movie and many others are reviewed on Mises.org’s Film Page.

A newspaper column consisting almost entirely of quotes from Mises’s Liberalism. Addressing Unreasoning Hatreds,” Gary M. Galles. May this start a trend!

How goes it in Iraq? Well, let’s check those reliable folks who gave us the war in the first place, those googling warriors over at nationalreview.com. Let’s see. Looking now at the front page. Here’s an article attacking the New York Times for their coverage of campus neocons. Here’s a piece on Los Angeles politics.

In his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee on May 21st, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, said that the Fed views deflation as a potential threat to the economy. For the time being, however, the Fed Chairman believes that the likelihood of deflation is not very high. 

New York Time’s critic Jackson’s portrait on the new $20 bill: “The overgrown, right eyebrow has morphed into a giant albino caterpillar crawling to the edge of Jackson’s face. He seems to have acquired a double chin. And his tight-lipped glower has been replaced by a near smile. The glance is ambiguous. One eye seems to be staring almost ahead; the other darts right. The coat has changed, too.