Army Post Road

     Publius at Obsidian Wings has a different take on both the recent Democratic Presidential Primary Debates and the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
     Thanks to Megan McArdle again for the pointer.

     Megan McArdle had another spot on post today. She’s even more libertarian than I am (the majority of people with post-secondary degrees in economics usually are) and aside from what she’s implicating about getting the government out of our bedrooms and ending the war on drugs, she put my feelings into words perfectly.

     The headline says it all. Yesterday I finally enlisted into the Regular Army. Next month I’ll ship to Ft Benning, Georgia to train for six weeks to become an Infantryman. I won’t have my first duty station until sometime in May or June. It’s a very daunting idea but I’m excited.

     Sen. John McCain has come out with his tax and appropriations plan. On the first glance, it looks like a good plan. Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy has a good post on it.

     Megan McArdle has her own tax plan quotes Jane Galt’s plan that’s even better.

     I don’t know what this portends for the rest of the day but I have another post about beer.
     In the Volokh Conspiracy post I linked to below they link to the Beer Advocate. Excellent website. They have a great review of some new spring seasonal brews.
     Don’t forget to Respect Beer.

     Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy enlightens us with a few comments about the proposed raise in beer taxes in the State of California.

*The title is a quote of Benjamin Franklin’s.

     I’ve come across a new blog this evening that is quite riveting. It’s called Going Private, written by a woman who goes by the nom de plume of ‘Equity Private’. The about page and the very earliest posts in 2006 are excellently written and quite entertaining.

     I happened to notice on Wikipedia tonight that it’s article about the “bulge bracket” has completely removed any reference to Bear Stearns already.

     For the year 2007 I effectively paid the state of Iowa no income tax. One of the good things the state has done since the start of Operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Iraqi Freedom is to make all military pay received because of those two operations exempt from state income taxes. Even though half of my income last year (housing allowance, subsistence allowance, meal per diem) was non-taxable by any government, the state of Iowa has gone one step further and said none of my income in their eyes is. Because of that, sometime in the next 4 days I should be getting my $1,178 interest-free loan to the state back.
     With that, and with any luck, hopefully I will be able to avoid getting a job before I get back on active-duty. It’s not that I don’t want a job (and what follows may just be excuse-making on my part) but these have not been the best of circumstances for me to get one under. For the first week to ten days that I was here I didn’t have much of any plan on how long I was going to be here in Des Moines or where for sure I wanted to go after that. Once I decided to get back on active-duty one way or another (join the Regular Army or get re-mobilized) then that basically eliminated anything that would be something resembling a career choice (i.e. that’s why I didn’t apply to be a Des Moines cop). After talking to the recruiter and getting the likely timeframe of when I could and (hopefully) should be back on active-duty, I’d spend almost as much time in interviews as I probably would actually working and then I’d just have to quit the job. I didn’t want to go through that and I didn’t want to put any employers through that. Plus, I doubt I’d get that first paycheck very long at all before my first one back on active-duty. Having a job would be nice. Having a reason to wake up before noon (besides to see Erin Burnett on CNBC) would be nice.

     As many of you know, I recently moved home to my parents’ house very unexpectedly. Originally, my plan was to make a seamless transition from being mobilized with the Army Reserve to the Regular Army (more commonly known as active-duty). Like so many other things in life, it didn’t happen that way. The Army gave me some unacceptable choices as to what jobs I could have on active-duty so I turned them down and chose to come home. That choice was made at 5:30PM on Tuesday, March 11. I had to be moved out of my barracks at Fort Riley and back home by midnight on Friday, March 14.
     So I got moved home and this is where I’ve been since. I’ve made a few trips to Iowa City, I went out for St Patrick’s Day, we celebrated Lars’s first birthday. It’s been an interesting time. I am, however, attempting once again to get back on active-duty. Hopefully by no later than this time next week I’ll know whether I’m putting my uniform back on full-time.
     If all that doesn’t work out I don’t really want to start pondering the alternatives. The lead one (which my entire family is most in favor of) is to go back to school at Iowa. Anything beyond that I don’t even want to ponder right now.

Professor Greg Mankiw related the following quote from the Adam Smith Institute on his blog:

“Need” now means wanting someone else’s money. “Greed” means wanting to keep your own. “Compassion” is when a politician arranges the transfer.

Joseph Sorboran