I only check out Vermont Tiger if I’m feeling uninspired to blog, as there’s always tons of material there. Unsubstantiated claims supported by discredited or mischaracterized links generally, but sometimes they’re just silly:

If Texas asks us not to mess with ’em, perhaps they will let us copy some public policies that seem to have worked so well […] There’s a reason why Texas has the 2nd-largest Gross State Product in 2008.

Yeah, there is a reason. It’s that Texas has the 2nd-largest state population. California has both the highest population and (predictably) the highest gross state product. I suspect the VT Tiger folks wouldn’t have us emulate California.

A more helpful (but still inadequate as a standalone) metric might be to look at per capita, gross state product, where mighty Texas drops waaaaaay down to #22 – that would be right after #21 – Vermont. Oops (Oops, indeed – as apparently this relative ranking is no longer current – see comments – although Doug, your link doesn’t work…).

For our friends at Vermont Tiger, then, I offer the following that has been making the rounds on the internet (ht fdl):

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.