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Between 2009 and 2020, Josh published more than 10,000 blog posts. Here, you can access his blog archives.

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2009

Standish, MI Strugged: Town so dependent on closing federal prison, willing to welcome Gitmo Detainees

October 21st, 2009

Poor, poor Michigan. Standish, Mich., is dependent on its prison, which is about to close. It says it still wants the Guantánamo detainees to fill the void, but opponents are pushing to recall members of city council.

From CSM:

A Michigan town may be waffling on welcoming Guantánamo Bay detainees.On Monday, the Standish City Council passed a unanimous resolution expressing interest in having a federal prison at the Standish Max Correctional facility, slated to close Oct. 31 due to budget cuts. But the resolution stripped out all reference to the detainees currently being housed at the US base in Cuba.

While some reports have interpreted the change in language to mean that the welcome mat has been officially yanked, the community 120 miles north of Detroit is not ruling out taking the more than 200 detainees, says Ruth Caldwell, vice president of the Standish Chamber of Commerce.

This state is so hard on its luck, that they are willing to house Detainees from Guantanamo. It seems the only people actually moving into Michigan may in fact be, wait what is Obama calling them nowadays? Well whatever they are, Michigan wants them!

Going Galt in India. Sales of Rand Skyrocket in World's Largest Democracy

October 19th, 2009

via Jennifer Burns on the surprising popularity of a libertarian hero in India | Foreign Policy. (H/T Instapundit)

At tea parties and town halls nationwide, amid outrage over government bailouts of Wall Street banks and Detroit carmakers and the supposed socialization of health care, protesters speak of “going Galt,” refusing to work in what they see as a socialist economy, just as Rand’s hero John Galt did.  But all this makes a certain amount of sense. Perhaps more surprising is the Ayn Rand boom that is building in another mass democracy: India.

Not only do Indians perform more Google searches for Rand than citizens of any country in the world except the United States, but Penguin Books India has sold an impressive number of copies — as many as 50,000 of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead each since 2005, a number comparable to sales there by global best-seller John Grisham.

In a culture that forces the individual to subjugate himself for the good of the collective, Rand’s works tower as a beacon of liberty and sanity. I am not surprised that it is so prevalent now, especially in a culture like Indian.

For many Indians, she is a tonic of modernization, helping to inspire a break with India’s collectivist, socialist past. Rand’s mixture of capitalist boosterism and self-empowerment is an irresistible combination for a range of Indians, from think-tankers to corporate barons to pop stars.

My favorite quote was “Gargi Rawat, a correspondent and news anchor for top tv channel ndtv and a former Rand admirer, says Rand’s theory of the supremacy of reason and the virtue of selfishness adds up to “the antithesis” of Indian culture, which explains the attraction for Rawat in her youth and for many rebellious Indian teens today.”

I’m glad the Gospel of Rand is spreading the World Over.

Update: Thanks to Ilya Shaprio at Cato@Liberty Blog for the H/T.