The Audacity of Dope

Caroline Kennedy, like, you know, thinks it would be, you know, fun to be a, um, U.S. Senator. You know?

Talk about a sense of entitlement! What other person with her lack of knowledge and experience would have the gall to undertake a campaign to get herself appointed to fill a prospective vacancy in the U.S. Senate? She has one “qualification” for the office: her last name is, or was, Kennedy.

And a campaign it is, a media campaign. Instead of making an appointment with Gov. Patterson and presenting her case, she hired a political consultant and launched a media campaign to pressure the Governor into appointing her.

Problem is it backfired. Aside from forgetting to vote, even for the office she aspires to, she also forgot that she can barely speak English. In an interview with the New York Post she said “you know” 235 times in the course of a 41 minute interview, breaking up an otherwise constant stream of “ums”.

When asked by a reporter for the NY Daily News if the Bush tax cuts should be repealed, she replied: “Well, you know, that’s something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know, were expiring and needed to be repealed.”

Will the media savage Kennedy like they did the articulate Gov. Sarah Palin? Will Tina Fey avail herself of such easy pickings to extend her fifteen minutes of fame acquired at Palin’s expense? Don’t, um, you know, hold your breath.

If you know someone who would enjoy reading my blog, please forward it along. Thank you.

Here’s wishing you a Happy New Year!

A Failure of Government

In his article, “U.S. Woes Open Door for China” (WSJ Dec.23), Gerald Seib asserts that developing nations may be attracted to the Chinese economic model of central government control over “the American model of unfettered capitalism.” Unfettered?

As Seinfeld might say, “It’s fettered alright!” In fact it’s all the ‘fettering’ that is the core of the problem. A dangerous consequence of the ongoing financial mess and ensuing recession is that anti-free market types are promoting the idea that this is all a result of a failure of capitalism. It was not a failure of capitalism. It was a failure of government.

I’m referring to: 1) the Federal Reserve maintaining negative real interest rates for too long after the bursting of the tech-stock bubble, 2) The Community Reinvestment Act which forced banks to make bad loans and 3) Congress’ incompetence in its structure and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Dems, soon to have nearly absolute control, will inevitably use the “failure of unfettered capitalism” canard to further encumber the free market with increased regulatory burdens. This will only serve to delay the eventual recovery and lead to slower economic growth in the future.

An early portent of this is the appointment of Rep. Hilda Solis as one of the most pro-union Secretaries of Labor ever. She received 3/4ths of her campaign contributions from unions and voted with the AFL-CIO 97 % of the time. She has declared her intention to use her position to increase the power of labor unions.

Ms. Solis is also a supporter of fraudulently named Free Choice Act, which would replace secret ballots in union elections with something called cardcheck. This gives union thugs the opportunity to intimidate workers into signing up for a union in their workplace whether they want one or not.

Let’s hope we don’t see more industries succumb to the same uncompetitive labor policies that have wrecked our steel and auto industries and given us a K-12 education system that consistently puts our kids near the bottom of the developed world.

Screwing America's Youth

Why aren’t the young people demonstrating in the streets? Their futures are being mortgaged away right before their eyes and they don’t seem to care. Maybe the reason the politicians keep harping on the horrors of global warming is to keep the kids from focusing on the real threat to their futures, out-of-control government spending which is going to erode living standards going forward.

Even before the current recession we were headed toward financial calamity with the concurrence of Medicare and Social Security with the aging of the baby boom generation. Even the stupidest politicians know that this is a slow motion train wreck, but none of them have the guts to blow the whistle.

Bush tried to tackle SS a few years ago but the Dems and AARP launched a misinformation campaign which caused a panic amongst seniors who in turn flooded their Representatives with protests, thereby dooming any chance of reform.

Next we had the financial bailout, which was probably necessary to avoid the risk of a full scale collapse, which would have caused widespread suffering. Now the line is forming: auto companies, insurers, states and cities.

Now Franklin D. Obama is promising a new New Deal with a “stimulus” plan that rivals the National Recovery Administration of the old New Deal. If you want to find out how that worked, read “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. But you don’t have to go back that far. Look at the Bush stimulus last year. It hardly increased consumer spending at all.

Stimulus plans are popular with politicians because they show that the pols are caring and are “doing something.” The only problem is they don’t work. (See my Nov. 27 blog, “Bailouts, stimulus & Inflation.”) They do very little to boost the economy, but they increase our National Debt and annual interest burden.

All this money has to be paid back at some point or we keep paying interest on it forever. But, you say, the government can just print more money. Yes, it can and is. But every new dollar created (today they don’t actually print them, they just press a few computer keys) just decreases the value of each and every dollar. That’s inflation.

Investors, mostly foreigners, who we depend on to buy our debt realize that they are going to get repaid in cheaper dollars, i.e., dollars with less purchasing power. Therefore, they demand higher interest rates to compensate for that risk. This increases our interest costs, which increases our taxes and leaves us with less to spend on other things like food, housing, education.

Youth of America, grab some pots and pans and head to the streets!

Obama's Achilles Heel

I take Obama at his word when he says that he had no involvement with the Ebay auction of his former Senate seat by Gov. Blagojevich, but, knowing what an incestuous swamp Illinois Democrat politics is, I find it incredulous that he and Rahm Emanuel did not know what was going on.

Remember Watergate? “What did he know and when did he know it?” If it comes out that Rahm ’n’ Obama knew about this and did not blow the whistle, they will be starting out with a big ethical cloud over them. The best thing about that would be that it would take some steam out of the scary environmental agenda foreshadowed by upcoming energy and environmental appointments.

Soon-to-be Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal in September, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” The average household that now spends, say, $2,500 per year on gasoline would see that triple to about $7,500 or more, dwarfing those promised welfare checks known as “the middle class tax cut.”

Combine him with prospective White House energy advisor Carol Browner and you truly have the makings of an economic disaster. She was EPA head under Clinton (not literally, as far as I know) and is an acolyte of AL Gore. Not only does Browner oppose drilling in the outer Continental shelf, but she wants to let the EPA declare that greenhouse gases endanger health or welfare, triggering regulation of them under the Clean Air Act.

The new EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, is a former EPA enforcer and Browner protégé. Together, this team poses a real threat to the future of the US economy and to Americans’ living standards. They either believe that human caused global warming threatens to destroy life on Earth or they pretend to believe it so they can use it as an excuse to give government more power over human activity.

The argument for global warming is based entirely on elaborately constructed computer models. We all know about “Garbage in, garbage out.” The actual data show no warming for the past ten years. But this is not about facts: this is about ideology. The left has always known that you need the threat of a terrifying crisis to persuade people to trade freedom for security. After the fall of Communism, the threat of nuclear Armageddon no longer worked, but along came global warming to save the day for totalitarians.

Energy and environmental policy may well prove to be Obama’s Achilles heel.

"Hyporkracy"

I’ve been out of action the past week while the Mrs. & I have been transitioning to our winter refuge in The Foreclosure State, Florida.

On yesterday’s “Meet the Depressed” Obama gave a preview of his post-Presidential career, sit down comedy. With a perfectly straight face he made two irreconcilable announcements. The first was a huge new spending program, the largest since the Interstate Highway project during the Eisenhower years. The second was a message to Congress that “the days of pork-barrel spending are over.”

I can see Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi falling down laughing together on that one. With something like a half-trillion dollars of newly printed money being poured into the trough, the pigs will have a feeding frenzy. Former law professor Obama must have forgotten that the Constitution gives Congress the power to spend. Rare is the Member who will pledge a vote for a spending bill without first having a promise of some “pork” (a bridge, museum, road, park, etc.) for his or her district.

Obama also criticized Bush for not doing more to help homeowners who borrowed money they couldn’t repay to buy houses they couldn’t afford.
“I’m disappointed we have not seen quicker movement on this issue by the (Bush) Administration,” he said, adding, “If it’s not done during the transition it will be done by me.”

However, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Barack Obama’s transition team is resisting Bush Administration overtures to coordinate more on the financial-sector rescue…” The Journal also said, “Treasury staff wanted to brief the Obama team on the various proposals the Fed and Treasury were discussing and to gauge their level of interest in doing something to help homeowners… When (the Bush team) finished outlining their proposals, Treasury staff asked the Obama aides for their impressions. The aides demurred, refusing to endorse any of the ideas. When asked …how they envisioned a foreclosure mitigation program working, they were non-committal…”

Obviously, Obama would rather let desperate mortgagees twist in the wind a while longer than have to share credit with Bush for any relief.

Free Joe Biden

Since the election there have been more sightings of Elvis than of Joe Biden. I expect to see his picture on a milk carton any day now. Could it be that
the Obama team is worried about what his next gaffe will be?

Biden was added to the ticket to compensate for Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience. Then he came out with his prognostication that Obama would be tested in his first six months in office by some provocative international incident. We haven’t heard from him since.

In 1988 Texas Governor Anne Richards got tons of press for her quip about Bush the Elder: “Poor George, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
George was Shakespeare compared to Joe.

My favorite was the one intended to criticize W for not acting more quickly to calm the financial crisis. Joe informed us that, when the market crashed in 1929, President Roosevelt went on TV to restore the confidence of the American people. Of course, not only was Roosevelt not elected until 1932, but American households did not begin to get TV until after WWII.

Can you imagine the media frenzy if Sarah Palin had said that?

There’s an old story about a woman who had two sons. One went off to sea and the other became Vice-president: neither was ever heard from again.

The working man’s friend did make the news for renting a $4 million house on Nantucket for Thanksgiving. Sooner or later it will be announced that the VP Elect is heading up some special project of little consequence. In the meantime I’m selling bumper stickers. FREE JOE BIDEN.

Bailouts, Stimulus and Inflation

Obamania is giving way to bailoutmania. We may not have any good alternatives, but the creation of money, unprecedented in magnitude, is setting us up for the next disaster.

When the current recession ends, as it will at some point, we will be faced with only two options, inflation or another recession, this one resulting from the government ratcheting up interest rates to soak up the excess liquidity. For those of us old enough to remember the early 1980s, those photos of Paul Volker looking over Obama’s shoulder are a clue as to which option might be favored.

I expect to see Obama soon sporting a prince-nez on his nose and his cigarette (yes, he does) in a 3 inch holder tilted up at a jaunty angle from a grinning, confident face. The only problem is that it is well known today that Roosevelt’s New Deal extended and exacerbated the Depression and that it was only WWII that got us out.

The Dems are planning a big, new fiscal stimulus package intended to spur a flurry of consumer spending. One-time fiscal stimuli don’t work. If a starving person is given a carton of food during a famine, he will not host a feast and consume it. He will save it and try to stretch it out as long as possible because he doesn’t know when he will get more. The Bush stimulus in May 2008 did nothing to spur consumer spending.

A better way to stimulate spending is with a permanent tax cut. People will spend more because they know they can count on more after-tax income going forward.

We are also being threatened with New Dealesque jobs program replacing bridges and building and remodeling schools. The problem with these is that after the Congressional wrangling over the pork, architectural/engineering work, contract bidding, etc. it will two years before these projects result in jobs. By that time the economy will have already begun to recover. The net result will be even more inflationary pressure.

Then there is the dangerous phenomenon of all sorts of corporations maneuvering for space at the bailout trough. But that is a subject for another day. Suffice it to say that all this money has to be paid back with interest or by substantially devaluing the currency, in other words, printing money. Both options are grim for US taxpayers and consumers.

The American Era: R.I.P.

The past week I have been AWOP (absent without posting). There certainly has been plenty going on. Obama’s announcement of his economic team was actually, to me, somewhat reassuring. Make no mistake (as Obama likes to say), we are going to see a huge expansion of government. Crises such as wars and the Depression have always led to growth in government and this will be no exception. Chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel’s statement, “Never waste a crisis,” is clear evidence that history again will be prologue.

I think Hillary Clinton is a good choice for Secretary of State. I believe she will put America’s interests second only to her own. She’s smart, tough and can put on that big smile while she’s deciding where to plunge the dagger. I like that in a diplomat. None of this Jimmy Carter guilty appeasement for her.

Barack may think that by bringing her on board he has neutralized a Senate enemy. But he may have let the Trojan horse inside the gates. And, to stretch the equine analogy a bit, Obama is getting the stud (“I did not have sex…”) with the mare. Does anyone really think the Clintons have given up on 2012? The clashes between Hillary and Rahm Emanuel will make the war with the Taliban look like a Sunday croquet game. It will be great theatre if we get to see it.

Getting back to economics, we are witnessing the end of the American Era. Our decades of living on credit, as individuals and as a Nation, have caught up with us. In a financial crisis cash is king and we don’t have the cash. As long as oil was north of $100 the Saudis, Russians and Iranians were holding the money bags. But the collapse in oil prices has them scrambling, too.

The Chinese are the cash kings. We’ve been shipping our dollars over there for years in exchange for cheap goods. Plus the Chinese themselves boast a 50% savings rate. Their economy is hurting, too, but they have a couple of trillion in reserves, more than enough to finance their own recovery and take advantage of our illiquidity at the same time.

Instead of the sole superpower, we will now be first among equals. With 25% of the world’s economy, we won’t become a second rate nation overnight. We will, however, have fewer options and a lower average standard of living.

Of greater consequence is the fact that we will no longer be the deterrent to aggression and tyranny that we have been for the past six decades. With the end of The American Peace will come more international conflict and a more turbulent world.

Plans, "Events" & the Bond Market

In his victory speech, Barack Obama referred to The Great Depression, talked about “remaking the Nation brick by brick” and assured us “Our union can be perfected.” Time will tell if this was merely a manifestation of his hubris and self-delusion of whether he was starting to prepare Americans for the major shift to the left that he hopes to impose.

His Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said that the first order of business would be some executive orders to prevent drilling in Utah and restore Federal funding for stem-cell research. Next will be a new stimulus plan. Then would come “the four reforms,” education, health care, energy and taxes.

Education reform does not mean improving results by introducing more competition and choice into the system. It means paying off the teachers’ unions by throwing more money at them. Talk about “the failed policies of the past.”

Healthcare reform doesn’t mean giving more control to Doctors and patients. Nor does it mean tort reform to control ruinous litigation. It means giving more control to Washington bureaucrats and pouring more taxpayer dollars into the industry, thus increasing demand and, therefore, costs.

Energy reform means more restrictions on developing our most efficient domestic sources and subsidizing uneconomical alternative sources like wind and solar that will take decades to begin to replace coal and oil and natural gas. Remember the campaign promises about “reducing our reliance on foreign oil”? This will end up being the big middle class tax increase when fuel and energy prices skyrocket in a few years.

Tax reform means higher taxes for that shrinking percentage that pays taxes. This will lead to a weak economy, declining living standards and, the real point, more reliable Democrat votes from an increased number of people dependent on government.

But the best plans can get derailed. When asked by a reporter what would shape his term in office, former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan replied, “Events, my dear boy, events.” George W. Bush can attest to that, since the 9/11 attacks eight months after he took office set the agenda for his entire two terms.

There’s another reality that will put a damper on Obama’s utopian vision. When Bill and Hillary Clinton were laying out their grandiose plans in 1993, then Treasury Secretary, Bob Rubin, rudely informed them that the bond market would respond with punishing interest rates, causing a recession and assuring Bill of being a one-termer. We can only hope.

What's Good for GM?

In the 1950s then GM President Charlie Wilson was reported to have said, “What’s good for GM is good for America.” What he actually said is “…what was good for America was good for GM and vice-versa.” That was when GM had over a 50% US market share. That was then: this is now. Today GM has a 20% market share and is close to bankruptcy.

Which is where it should go. But it won’t. The government bailout of the banking system, as bad as it was, was probably necessary to prevent a financial calamity on a par with the Great Depression. No capitalist economy can survive without a functioning banking system. But it can survive without a domestically owned auto manufacturing industry.

I say “domestically owned” because the US actually has a thriving auto manufacturing industry, but it is not in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, it is not American owned and it is not saddled with staggering pension and healthcare obligations resulting from years of unholy collusion between auto executives and the United Auto Workers.

In the booming post-WWII years, when cars were selling faster than they could be made, the auto industry agreed to practically every union demand just to keep the factories humming and the money rolling in. Then came the oil shocks of the 1970s and cheap, fuel-efficient Japanese imports. American cars, meanwhile, became unreliable gas-hogs.

Rather than compete by improving quality and fuel efficiency, the American producers prevailed upon their friends in Congress to pass steep import duties on foreign imports. That led the Japanese, and later the Germans, to set up plants in the US, in the South, far from Detroit and from the UAW.

That brings us to the present sad state of affairs. The US companies can no longer compete because the money they should have been spending on new-product development has been going to pensions and healthcare instead. GM is second only to the US government in healthcare spending. GM says bankruptcy is out of the question because nobody will buy a car from a company in bankruptcy.

There are two reasons why the American auto industry will get a government bailout. First, the Democrats will do anything to avoid letting several hundred thousand union jobs disappear. Second, Congress long ago committed the American taxpayer to something called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. There is no way the pols are going to tell the American taxpayers that they are now on the hook for all these union benefits.

The rational option is to let them go bankrupt so they can renegotiate these onerous labor contracts and emerge as viable, competitive entities. Don’t hold your breath.

Socialism and National Security

OK. It is what it is. America has elected the most liberal and least qualified President in its history and large majorities of his party in Congress.

To understand the “change” that’s coming, we need only to look at the Democrat coalition: labor unions, government employees, the environmental lobby, trial lawyers and a huge, catch-all group best described as net tax beneficiaries (people who receive more from government than they contribute). And let’s not forget the haters of America’s economic and military hegemony.

So we can expect bigger government, more spending, higher labor costs, trade protectionism, more regulation of industry, especially energy, more litigation and the much promised increased redistribution of income.

Also, given the recent partial nationalization of our banks (with insurance and auto manufacturing soon to follow), it’s hard to see this Government resisting the temptation to use this newly acquired leverage to indulge the left’s penchant for central planning and social engineering.

As those with a basic grasp of economics know (which obviously excludes a majority of voters), this means higher taxes (maybe not next year, but soon)
for the shrinking number who pay taxes, higher prices for almost everything and, consequently, a lower standard of living for the average American.

For a rough idea of how this will look, think Western Europe, whose average standard of living is about 30% below ours. But even if we were willing to accept such a restructuring in the interests of greater “equality” or “fairness”,
there would be one big problem. The Euros have been able to pursue their welfare state because they’ve had the American military covering their backs ever since WWII. American taxpayers have subsidized European socialism.

The Dems will try to pay for all their new spending by cutting in the only budget category they ever cut, defense. If we are going to be like Europe, who’s going to cover our backs?

Only American military power, when combined with the will to use it, has prevented a major war for 60+ years. History shows that weakness invites aggression. Will we choose socialism at the cost of national security? We can be sure that the tyrants and fanatics of the world are watching.

Pass the Kool-Aid

In my last posting I said it’s going to be close and, at least for the popular vote, there is some recent confirmation. According to Dick Morris, the Friday Zogby poll of 1,000 likely voters put McCain ahead 48-47. And he's closing the gap in Pennsylvania. I’m not going so far as to predict a McCain victory, but the fat lady is just warming up.

Since reneging on his promise to abide by public finance rules, Obama has raised more money than was spent by both candidates combined in 2004.
Newsmax.com reports that 118 donors appear to not be US citizens and hundreds more have “yellow flags” such as no Social Security number or a known US address. Federal law requires donors to be US citizens or permanent residents.

That investigation focused only on donors disclosed by the Obama campaign. But it has taken $218 million from donors it refuses to disclose.
McCain has posted all of his donations on his website.

We’re used to the double standard, but still have to ask, where is the media outrage? Where is the righteous indignation about “buying the presidency” and possible illegal contributions? Well, we know the answer.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with raising lots of money, as long as it’s legal. The problem is that there are legitimate concerns about the legality of some of these donations. Some have been traced to Nigeria, Kenya and Europe.

This brings us back to the question of who this guy really is. Who are his friends? Admitted and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. Rev. “God damn America” Wright. Convicted felon Tony Rezko. A former deputy of Louis Farrakhan says that Obama had “an open line” to the Nation of Islam leader.

How can it be that America appears to be on the verge of electing this man to the Office of President of the United States? Pass the kool-Aid, Rev. Jones.

Election Thoughts

IT’S GOING TO BE CLOSE: The election is going to be closer than most people think. I say this because I believe almost all the undecideds are going to go for McCain and there are more of them this election.

Few if any of the undecideds are Black. The polls show that they already know who they are voting for. Also, Whites for Obama are proud to proclaim their lack of bias. I believe that a large percentage of those who say they are undecided really just don’t want to admit they are not voting for Obama for fear of being thought a racist.

This is not to say that all or even most of them are motivated by race, the so-called Bradley Effect, named for the former Black candidate for the California governorship who lost even though the polls showed him easily winning. After all, there are plenty of good reasons not to vote for Obama. But, they still don’t want pollsters to think that race is the reason.

THE “CHANGE” WE’LL GET: For some clear incite to what an Obama presidency will mean, see Dan Henninger’s column in today’s WSJ. “The real ‘change’” we’re voting on, he says, “is not simply a break from the economic policies ‘of the past eight years,’ but with American economic philosophy of the past 200 years.”

What the Democrats want to do is move us in the direction of Western Europe. This ties in with my blog of Oct. 21, “Freedom & Equality.” The European model heavily favors equality over freedom. This means high taxation, massive redistribution of income, cradle to grave welfarism and a high level of government meddling in the economy to achieve social objectives.

It all adds up to chronic, high unemployment and low productivity rates, resulting in an average European standard of living 30% below the US. If Obama is elected, together with a liberal Democrat Congress, that’s where we are headed.

THE GOVERNMENT WE DESERVE: Tocqueville said, “In a democracy the people get the government they deserve.” What kind of government do people deserve who vote for someone because he promises to give them money confiscated from others through the use the government’s police power?

Kumbaya, Congress & "Taxes."

KUMBAYA; Obama doesn’t have to wait until he takes office to find out the results of his naivete in dealing with our enemies. Although he may be willing to meet with Iran “without pre-conditions,” Iran has already put us on notice that it does have pre-conditions, namely, total US withdrawal from the Middle East and cessation of US support for Israel. So much for the Kumbaya theory of foreign policy.

CONGRESS; Recent polls show this Democrat-controlled Congress with an approval rating of between 9 and 12%. Yet, other polls indicate that the Dems are almost assured of substantially increasing their numbers in both Houses. Do most voters not know that the Dems control Congress or is this more evidence of the well-known paradox that they think Congress is a bunch of crooks but their representative is great?

And if they don’t trust Congress, why would they want to give it more power by electing a President of the same party who is unlikely to use the veto power? Beats me.

OBAMA’S MIDDLE CLASS TAX; I think the reason that Obama is doing so well is that too many Americans are ignorant when it comes to economics. If people don’t understand how the economy works, then it is easy for politicians to deceive them.

Take corporate and business taxes. Many people don’t understand that living standards are directly tied to worker productivity. Capital investment in better machines and technology makes workers more productive. The more productive they are, the more they earn. As FedEx founder and CEO, Fred Smith, said in an interview in today’s WSJ, “the only way to make a blue collar worker earn more is to invest in capital, training and infrastructure. So the more you tax capital, the more you hurt workers.”

Next look at energy and environmental policies. You think everybody understands supply and demand? Apparently not. You’d think that when the Dems talk about severely restricting drilling people would realize that decreasing the supply of energy will increase prices, not just for fuel, but for just about everything they buy.

The there’s “cap and trade.” Under this scheme the government would sell rights to emit carbon dioxide. This is nothing more than another tax on energy and manufacturing. The result will be higher prices on energy and on many products that Americans buy and use every day.

This is why an Obama presidency with large Democrat majorities in Congress will mean higher prices (same as higher taxes) and a lower standard of living, not only for “the rich,” but for all Americans.

Freedom vs. Equality

Freedom and equality are the two ideals upon which this Country was founded, as made explicit in the Declaration of Independence. The problem is that there is an existential tension between the two that gives rise to an irreconcilable conflict in our politics.

If freedom and equality are viewed as the extremes at opposite ends of a continuum, then absolute freedom would be chaos and total equality would be communist-style socialism (except for the party higher-ups who were always “more equal”). Most countries and all but a few nuts in America are somewhere in between.

Of course there is lots of room for major differences in that middle ground. Mother Nature is part of the problem. Obviously, we are not all born equal. Some are smarter, healthier, more motivated or born to more advantageous circumstances.

But it’s not all about nature. History is replete with stories of well-born ne’er-do-wells as well as those with no special gifts who, through hard work, determination and thrift, have achieved extraordinary success.

So the enduring struggle is about how much government should infringe on some citizens’ freedoms in order to achieve greater equality amongst all. One’s answer to that question determines where he stands on the political spectrum.

Today 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of all income taxes and the Federal Governments biggest function is redistribution of income through dozens of programs, the largest of which are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

We already have more net tax-beneficiaries then net taxpayers, a dangerous situation in a democracy where the majority can vote themselves an ever increasing share of the minority’s earnings.

Economics is a science of human behavior. We know from Psychology 101 that what you reward you get more of and what you punish you get less of.

Which brings us to the question, “How far can we continue in this direction before the producers decide to stop producing?” Obama's blatantly redistributionist tax plan makes it clear that he values equality over freedom and that he believes the producers are gluttons for punishment. We may soon find out.

Can Joe save McCain?

Can Joe the Plumber save the McCain campaign? He certainly has injected the biggest boost since the announcement of Sarah Palin as running mate.

It has frustrated me for weeks that McCain couldn’t articulate the obvious deceit in Obama’s “tax cut for 95%” of families. Since about 40% of them already pay no income tax, this was never a tax cut, but a simple transfer of money from taxpayers to non-taxpayers. Calling it a tax cut does not change the fact that it is just a huge, new welfare program.

Finally McCain has picked up on the public response to Joe and is starting to hit this point in his speeches and commercials.

Obama’s portrayal of this income transfer as a tax cut shows his cynicism and contempt for the intelligence of the American electorate. (Unfortunately, this attitude is not entirely without basis.)

Did you ever see one editorial in the dominant, liberal Obamedia debunking this charade? What does it mean for the future of our Country when the overwhelming majority of the media is a branch of one political party? A fair and independent press has always been an essential ingredient of a functioning democracy. (Yes, I know, we’re technically a constitutional republic, not a democracy.)

The media have always leaned heavily portside, but this year they have abandoned any pretense of objectivity. They have become part of the Obama campaign. If he is elected, how can we expect fair and honest reporting on him and his administration?

From Deconstruction to Obama

America appears to be close to electing as President a man about whom we know little and the little we know, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, ACORN, is disturbing. How have we come to this point?

For most of its existence, America knew who it was and for what it stood.
We knew it because we studied our shared history, our founding fathers and the enduring documents they produced which served as the guiding principles of our Republic.

But beginning in the 1960s, we started down a new path called deconstruction. Everything we knew about our Country, we were told, was wrong. The singular, overarching fact about the Founders was not their wisdom, courage or patriotism, but that many of them were slave owners. Judging them by the mores of today rather than those of their own time, this fact was deemed to make irrelevant, indeed, delegitimatize, their virtues and contributions.

American history class became little more than an immersion in the sins of our past. Slavery, Manifest Destiny’s devastation of the American Indians, Hiroshima, these came to define America. The bold idealism of The American Revolution, the price paid for abolition in The Civil War, the blood and treasure spent to defeat aggression and totalitarianism in two World Wars, the spread of American-style freedom and democracy around the world, these are underemphasized at best, distorted at worst.

Then there came the undermining of, among some communities the utter destruction of, the American family by well-intentioned, but, alas, misguided welfare expansion. And, finally, the driving of religion from our schools and other civic institutions.

This deconstruction has left many Americans, especially amongst the young, without a sense of who they are and what America stands for. We Americans are no longer unified by a shared belief in the goodness of our heritage and the soundness of our institutions. Nature abhors a vacuum. That void gets filled by the ideas and images we are inundated with every day, glamour, celebrity, sexiness.

Without a solid framework provided by a proud history, valued traditions and beliefs, it is not surprising that many judge a candidate by the cheap, ephemeral coin of the day.

"Nice Oil" and Obamath

I’m going to touch on several subjects today, starting with the sudden silence about those greedy oil speculators and Big Oil’s excess profits. Three short months ago these market players were the object of daily media outrage. We heard about how they were able to drive up the price of oil for their own selfish gain without regard for consumers’ pain.

Now that the price of oil has been cut in half, back to about where it was a year ago, why aren’t the former villians being lauded for their commendable change of heart? After all, if speculators and oil companies are able to control the price of oil, as we were assured they could, why are they now not be hailed for their generosity and humanitarianism?

A predictable effect from lower oil prices is that there will be less corporate investment in alternatives. This will give government, especially an Obama administration, the cover to plunge into a New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence.

Which reminds me of a factual error Barry committed in the last debate that tells us something about his worldview. In one of his rambling answers, he threw in, Biden like, the claim that the Government invented the computer. Actually, the first real computer, UNIVAC, was developed by a couple of guys at the Rand Corporation. But never mind.

I’m not saying he was lying. (He may have been thinking of the Internet, but, of course, we know that was invented by AlGore.) But I think it evidences a belief that government, not private enterprise, is the fount of all human progress.

Not only does the history of human invention refute this idea, but a President who believes such nonsense, backed up by an equally delusional Congress, is likely to launch an expansion of government, which combined with runaway entitlement spending, would hasten the arrival of our national bankruptcy.

Changing subjects, remember New Math? Well, now we have what I call Obamath. What’s great about Obamath is that it frees us from the discipline of those pesky rules and axioms that those dead white guys like Euclid came up with. They’re soooo yesterday.

Here’s an example: with Obamath you can give a tax cut to 95 % of Americans even though 40% of them already don’t pay taxes. Here’s another: you can increase spending by $800 billion without raising total taxes, even though there is already a deficit. See? Isn’t this a lot better than that old mean-spirited math?

To lend a little perspective, consider that the total net worths of The Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans, $1.57 trillion, would only run the Federal Government for half a year. Yet, under Obamath we can pay for almost a trillion of new spending just by raising marginal rates a few points on the top 5 %. I hope there will be a quiz?

Healthcare Demagoguery

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Denver General Hospital on Wednesday and used the opportunity to once again obfuscate the healthcare issue in her endless push for nationalization of the industry.

After stepping over the bodies of those who had died for lack of treatment, she said, “The most industrialized country in the world should not be refusing healthcare to anyone.” The Speaker speaks nonsense.
Nobody is being denied healthcare, as evidenced by the huge number of Medicaid patients, including illegal immigrants, overwhelming Denver General and other hospitals.

She proceeded to commend DG for providing “high quality, low cost healthcare for all patients.” Low cost for whom? Sure, it’s low cost for many of the patients, but not for taxpayers. And not for people who pay for their own health insurance.

Finally, Pelosi rolled out the familiar and baseless assertion that healthcare is a right. Really? I’d like her to tell us where that right comes from. Our rights are spelled out in the Constitution and healthcare is not one of them. Shelter is a more fundamental need than healthcare, but we don’t have a right to a free house.

Dem. Rep. Dianne DeGette, who accompanied Pelosi, threw in the old canard about the 47 million uninsured. That figure includes 12 million illegal immigrants. It also includes millions of young, healthy people who make a rational choice to forgo health insurance, preferring to spend the money on other things. And millions more of the uninsured are people who are between jobs. This year’s uninsured are not all the same people as next year’s uninsured.

Pelosi, DeGette and others who really want total government healthcare, deliberately blur the distinction between healthcare and health insurance.
Not having health insurance is not the same as not having access to healthcare. Not everyone has health insurance, but, through Medicaid, even the poorest have access to healthcare.

Government's Role in Crisis

As much as I admire Sarah Palin, I can not let stand her answer to a question regarding the financial crisis. “Darn right,” she said, it was all the fault of those greedy Wall Street types. Greed, like the poor, is always with us, but this whole mess would not have happened without the active involvement of the Federal government.

Congress started pressuring Fan & Fred back in 1992 to make more loans to low and moderate income borrowers. In 1996, the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) told F&F that 42% of their loans had to go to borrowers with below median income for their areas. This mandate was increased over the years until it reached 52% in 2005.

Then there was The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, which “encouraged” banks to make more loans to shaky borrowers. Such loans, as a percentage of the total, increased in more recent years with rising home values.

Then there was the Fed, pushing the Fed Funds rate down to 1.25% in 2003 to revive the stock market. This made possible the low “teaser’ rates on adjustable rate mortgages. For more details, see “How Government Stoked the Mania,” by Russel Roberts in the Oct. 3 WSJ, from which facts herein were drawn.

These government intrusions, and others, into the market economy set the stage for the excesses that led to current situation. It is not the proper role of government to pressure private actors in the market economy to violate sound business practices and risk taxpayer (F&F) and depositor (banks) money to achieve a political objective, i.e., increased home ownership.

Also, if the Fed would stick to its role as defender of the currency, instead of arrogantly trying to manage the stock market and the economy, we would not be here today.

I fear that one aspect of the rescue plan may be setting the stage for the next crisis. That is the “temporary” increase in FDIC insured deposits to $250,000. Recall that it was the increase from $40,000 to $100,000 that led to the S&L debacle 20 some years ago. It encouraged depositors to go for the highest rate, ignoring the banks financial soundness. Don’t we ever learn?

Joe "Pinocchio" Biden

There probably are factual inaccuracies, exaggerations and errors on both sides of every political debate. Sarah Palin had a few, including the claim that Obama voted to raise taxes on everyone making over $42,000. That was a non-binding resolution.

But for sheer volume and audacity, Joe Biden surely set a record. Biden just makes up the facts that support his position as he goes along. I guess he figures that if he says it with enough conviction, which he certainly does, people will believe it. And he know that the dominant, liberal media won’t blow his cover.

Following are some of his more egregious “misstatements” from the recent debate. The first 5 deal with foreign policy, supposedly one of his strengths:

· Pakistan has the capacity to launch a nuclear strike against Israel.
Wrong. Pakistan has nuclear weapons but not the missile capability
to reach Israel.

· The US and France drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon.
This is no doubt big news to Hezbollah, who is still there.

· Obama didn’t say that he would meet with Ahmedinijad without preconditions.
Obama did say it and Biden knows that because he sharply criticized Obama for saying it.

· NATO Gen. McKiernan said a surge strategy would not work in Afghanistan.
The Gen. said principles of the surge strategy would work there. Maybe a little Clintonesque parsing of words there, but obviously intended to mislead.

· McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq.”
Biden and McCain both voted for the Iraq War Resolution. But when things got tough, Biden wanted to withdraw in defeat, while McCain supported the surge, which all now agree was successful in turning the war around.

· McCain voted the same way Obama did on a bill that would have raised taxes on the middle class.
Wrong. McCain was not present for that vote.

· The VP’s only role in the Senate is casting a tie-breaking vote.
Actually, as Gov. Palin said, Art. 1, Sect. 3 of the Constitution says the VP shall be “President of the Senate,” which is why the Veep is the “presiding officer of the Senate.”

· At the debate, Joe said “Drill we must!”
He has consistently voted against offshore drilling, characterizing it as “raping the continental shelf.”

· Biden accused McCain of weakening regulation of FNMA and FRMC.
This was an outrageous assertion. McCain co-sponsored legislation to step up oversight of Fan and Fred in 2005 and Dems lined up in droves to vocally condemn the idea as unnecessary and an attempt to deny home ownership to low income Americans.

You probably didn’t get this from the major networks or print media.

Sweden Cuts Taxes

A WSJ editorial today is a perfect follow up to my post yesterday, It’s the Spending. The Journal piece is about how Sweden, the sweetheart of socialist utopians, is cutting taxes to help it’s economy.

The editorial quotes a headline from Agence France-Presse as follows:
“Sweden Announces Income Tax Cuts to Boost Jobs.” They are cutting business taxes, personal income and payroll taxes.

Jan Bjorklund, leader of the Liberal Party said, “The corporate tax is one of the taxes which large companies really study when they plan to set up business somewhere.” Really? The Swedish corporate tax rate will come down to 26.3%, 1/3 lower than the US when combining both state and federal. As stated here before, the US has the second highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world.

Why are they doing this? To compete with Eastern Europe, Asia and Ireland,
which, since lowering its corporate tax rate, currently 12.5%, has seen its economy explode. And to spur entrepreneurialism: only two of Sweden’s 50 largest companies was founded after 1970, while more than half were started
before WW1.

And three years ago, Sweden abolished its inheritance tax.

Could it be that we are about to head down the road that Sweden has already discovered is a dead end?

It's the Spending

One important difference between the candidates in Friday’s debate was that McCain talked about cutting spending while Obama talked about who would be taxed to pay for his new programs.

But what really matters is how much the government is spending, not who pays the taxes, because ultimately everyone ends up paying. Government spending increases the price of everything we buy and reduces jobs and wage growth.

Businesses large and small must recoup all of their expenses if they are to remain viable. Businesses have to pass their taxes on to the consumer, just like rent, advertising, payroll, etc. It’s the same for your doctor, dentist, lawyer, you name it. The government uses the corporation, business owner or professional as the tax collector or conduit, but we all end up paying.

Regarding jobs and wages, Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman taught that every dollar that government spends is a dollar that can not be invested in the private sector to create jobs and increase productivity. Part of this is simple. A dollar paid in taxes can not also be used to pay an employee.

But it goes further. The reason Americans have a high standard of living compared to less developed countries is not because we are smarter or harder working. It is because we have a huge investment in knowledge, technology and machines that allows our workers to produce more per hour worked than workers in less developed countries. Our standard of living is a direct result of what we produce. Every dollar spent on government is a dollar that can not be invested in training, technology and more efficient machines to improve worker productivity. Lower productivity translates into lower incomes and living standards.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said taxes are the price we pay for civilization. Up to a point that is true. But excessive government spending hurts everyone with higher prices, fewer jobs and lower incomes. So forget about who is going to get taxed and focus on the spending.

Pointing the Finger

We all know that in an election year it’s standard practice to blame the current occupant of The White House for all the Country’s ills. The financial mess is no exception. We hear much about Bush and McCain being responsible because of their support of deregulation.

But, as one of those occupants, John Adams, said, facts are stubborn things.
And those facts refute the afore-mentioned accusations and, in fact, demand that the fingers should be pointing at some Democrats.

There is no one cause of the current situation, but, as the principal players in the mortgage market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are clearly at the heart of the problem. With encouragement from Democrats in Congress, F&F executives repeatedly lowered lending standards, enriching themselves and their shareholders while hiding behind the mantra of helping more people achieve the American dream.

As early as 2001, President Bush in his first budget message started warning of the potential problems at Fannie & Freddie. Later, on September 11, 2003, The New York Times reported, “The Bush Administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.” The proposal called for a new regulatory agency to supervise F&F.

In 2005, Senator McCain sponsored legislation to reform Fannie and Freddie. On the Senate floor, McCain argued, “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to…enormous risk…”

What happened to these efforts by Bush and McCain to rein in these out-of-control behemoths? Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, heads of the two Congressional committees responsible for over-seeing F&F, with an assist from Chuck Schumer, blocked every attempt at reform. Sen. Frank’s confidently asserted that F&F “…are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

Campaign contributions and sweetheart loans spoke louder than Republican danger warnings and proposed reform legislation.

Fox Watching the Hen House

Listening to the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Chris Dodd (D), grilling Paulson and Bernanke Tuesday about the financial bailout evoked the hubris and arrogance of Congress.

The panel, appropriately, expressed their deep concern that “the taxpayer will be on the hook” for $700 billion. A legitimate concern, for sure. But, where was their concern when they put the taxpayer on the hook for several trillion dollars for Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac?

Fannie & Freddie are the financial Frankensteins of Congress, quasi-private companies whose debts were implicitly (now explicitly) guaranteed by the Government, in other words, “the taxpayers,” while its stockholders and officers raked in the money. Now they have been nationalized and the taxpayers are indeed on the hook for trillions.

The kicker here is that since 1989, the #1 recipient of contributions from Fannie and Freddie is none other than Sen. Dodd, chairman of the Senate committee responsible for overseeing these entities. Dodd’s total take – over $133,000.

How’s this for a reform idea: members of Congress may not accept contributions from persons or entities whose oversight falls under a committee on which that member sits?

Income, taxes & the economy

A recent WSJ article by Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, based on the latest income and poverty data from the US Census Bureau, refutes the claim
by the Obama camp that only the rich have benefited from the economic policies started by Reagan.

“When all sources of income are included…and taxes paid are deducted,” they report, “households in the lowest income quintile saw a roughly 25% increase in their living standards from 1983 to 2005.” And, since the average number of people per household has declined, these figures understate how well individuals in this group have done. (These numbers are based on real income, which means they are inflation-adjusted to reflect changes in purchasing power.)

Laffer and Moore also address the subject of income mobility. We often hear about “the poor” as if they are the same individuals every year. But 2/3rds of those in the lowest tax bracket in 1987 had moved up to higher brackets ten years later. Many of the poor are people who have recently entered the work force or have retired. If your home and car are paid for, you can live comfortably on an income that qualifies you as poor under government guidelines. In fact, the Census Bureau data shows that only 3% are chronically poor, meaning in poverty for three years or more.

One advantage of our Federal system is that we can learn from seeing how different policies in different states yield different results. This can instruct us on what policies should be pursued on a National level. Another WSJ article, this one by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon, examined the latest Competitive Index issued by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Quoting from the report, “generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working and investing, experience higher (economic) growth rates than states that tax and spend more.” Imagine that!

The three most successful states between 1996 and 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona, gained 3.7 million new jobs while the three least successful, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, lost 250,000 jobs. Also, real per capita income growth in the top group was almost double that of the lowest. It’s interesting to note that the top 3 are all “right-to-work” states, while none of the lowest 3 are. Finally, the laggards all have significantly higher minimum wage laws.

This analysis is important to consider when listening to the policies espoused
by the candidates. Results speak louder than populist pandering.

Government "bailout"

A Rasmussen poll 2 days ago showed that only 7% of people, regardless of political affiliation, supported a government bailout of financial institutions. I think support is so low because the term 'bailout' is so vague and people may not understand the consequences of doing nothing.

These government actions are not gifts to stockholders. The stockholders of Fanny Mae & Freddy Mac were wiped out. Take the most recent case of AIG. This is a solvent company with a temporary cash flow problem, mostly caused by greedy short-sellers. But stockholders were forced to give up 79.9% of the equity. There is a good chance that the taxpayers will end up making money on the deal.

As for the plan now being worked out for the government to buy shaky debt from financial institutions, these assets will be purchased by the government entity at large discounts, as little as 30 cents on the dollar. Not all of these loans will go bad. And they are all backed by houses, which are worth something. Again, the taxpayers could make money on the deal.

Clearly the debt crisis was on the verge of becoming a full-scale panic. If the government had not stepped in, this likely would have spread to the overall economy and very possibly resulted in a worldwide depression.

So how did we get here? I don't have all the answers, but there is plenty of blame to go around.The Greenspan Fed keeping rates too low (1%) for too long: Congress' cozy relationship with and lax oversight of Fanny & Freddy: greedy lenders and stupid homebuyers: securitization of loans, in which the banks/brokers making the loans made their money up front and then sold them, mostly to Fanny/Freddie, which sliced them up & sold them in packages to yield-hungry investors: the SEC's permitting naked short-selling of stocks.

The important thing is that we can be thankful this weekend that we have probably narrowly missed a disaster.

More intellectual elitism

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page had a piece in today's Rocky Mountain News in which he recommends that the Dems "dumb it down." He says he doesn't need to give this advice to Reps because "They've been dumbing it down for years." Then he drags out the old smear from Democratic lobbyist and insider, Clark Clifford, that Reagan was an "amiable dunce." Of course he forgot to mention Clifford's indictment on bank fraud charges that his political friends got dismissed because of his "failing health." Never mind.

Page says it's not that Dems don't share ordinary peoples' values. It's just that they "have a hard time expressing" them. Wrong, Clarence. The people have understood Democrat values and have rejected them. That's why there has been only one two-term Dem President since FDR.
He says the reason Gov. Palin was able to finesse Charles Gibson's question about "The Bush Doctrine" even though "She obviously didn't know much about what Gibson was talking about" is that she just gave a "boilerplate version of Bush's foreign policy...We got to get them terrorists." (Page's words, not Palin's.)

He opines, "That's the kind of answer voters tend to like. Short and strong." This is another example of the intellectual snobbery of liberal elites. What he is really saying is that Democrats need to talk down to the voters because the poor things are just not smart enough to understand these complex matters. Voters are smarter than Page and his ilk think. And they don't like being the objects of liberal condescension.

This morning I watched on TV Sarah Palin deliver a speech before a crowd of 5,000 at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I must say it was electrifying, flawless and she connects with people like no politician I've ever seen. Joe Biden, fasten your seatbelt - you're about to experience some turbulence.

The Republican ticket has found a resonant issue in "reform," and Palin has the track record to make it credible. Before being Governor, while chairing the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, she learned of several instances of unethical conduct of another Commission member. She brought the matter to the attention of the Governor's office and the offending member was eventually forced to pay a $12,000 fine. What makes this story relevant is the fact that the perp was Chairman of the State Republican Party. That is putting principle before personal ambition, something rarely observed in the political cesspool.

Last night someone near and dear to me was advancing the argument that we should be concerned about what people in other countries think about our elected leaders. This I take is meant to favor Obama, since he was the favorite in all 22 countries surveyed, a total of 23,531 people, per the BBC. This might be relevant if he were running for Secretary General of the UN.
But, consider also, as Bret Stephens points out in a Friday WSJ piece, that in another poll, by WorldPublicOpinion.org., in 8 of the 19 countries surveyed a majority did not believe that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Even in Britain only 56% blamed al-Qaeda and 23% of Germans actually blame the US government.

Now that they think the Cold War is over (it's not) and that, therefore, they don't need us to defend them while they're on their 6 week holidays, many Europeans and others feel free to give vent to the envy that animates their anti-Americanism.
We'll choose our own leaders, thank you.

The NY Times, which long ago surrendered what claim it had to being an objective newspaper, has reported that Gov. Palin gave jobs to friends and that her assistant chided an anti-Palin blogger. In the words of another Louie, he of Casablanca fame, I'm shocked, shocked! Whoever heard of a politician appointing friends and supporters to government jobs? Both Carter and the Clintons dragged their entourage of yokels with them to Washington. And where was the Times when the Clintons were not just attacking, but destroying, their critics? Harry Truman was commended, appropriately, for threatening to punch a critic who panned, appropriately, his daughter's singing. For another example of how Palinphobia is causing liberal elites to expose their true characters, read on.

University of Colorado Professor Julian Friedland unmasked the intellectual snobbery and condescenion of liberal elites in a Boulder Daily Camera guest commentary by informing us rubes that Palin's biggest weakness is not her inexperience, but, rather, that she is not an intellectual. You see, unlike What's-his-name, who went to Columbia and Harvard, she was graduated from (picture the smirk covered by 3 fingers on the lips) the University of Idaho.

So, he says, experience is irrelevant "if one doesn't consider the vision and wisdom that comes
(sic) from knowledge itself, i.e., of history, law, geography, philosophy, science, etc." Since the admonition to stop digging when you're already in a hole is not found in the classics, he continues his self-interment by asserting that, in spite of her "thin resume," she would still be an "acceptable candidate" if "she were known as a brilliant mind." You know, like Joe Biden.

This pompous bag of wind assumes the prerogative to judge someone elses knowledge and wisdom based on where she went to college and what degrees she has. The reason he does not realize how this article reveals his breathtaking arrogance is that most of the people in his world think the same way.

This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for later.

Boulder

Boulder works hard at earning it's reputation as 13 square miles surrounded by reality. Prairie dogs are to The Peoples' Republic what cows are to India. But when those plague-spreading little rats leave private property and invade government land, nuff's enough. So the City is going to spend $388,500 to relocate or euthanize an estimated 800 of these rodents. That's $485 per varmint, because as many as possible will be relocated. The City has paid contractors as much as $374 per prairie dog to remove them. Eat you heart out, Berkeley.

But these are people who think animals are at least equal to humans. Longtime Boulder Democrat activist and Boulder Daily Camera editorial advisory board member, Anne Butterfield, takes issue with the strict, anti-abortion stand of Sarah Palin. (You knew it would come back to her somehow, didn't you?) After noting Palin's position on abortion, Butterfield cites Pope Benedict's opposition to capital punishment and Palin's support for managing wolf and bear populations by hunting, including shooting from aircraft.

If Palin has taken a position on capital punishment, I haven't heard about it. But I wouldn't be surprised if she supports it in appropriate cases. So? Why can't liberals distinguish between the life of an innocent, unborn child and that of a perpetrator of premeditated murder?

It gets worse. Butterfield has trouble seeing the difference between human beings and animals. She can't understand how someone can approve of hunting and be anti-abortion. She apparently subscribes to the soulless dictum of PETA's Ingrid Newkirk: "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." Sad and frightening.

Palin and more

The liberal feminists are pulling their hair out. They've been wanting a woman on the ticket since Geraldine and when one finally comes along, she's a gun-totting, moose-hunting, anti-abortion mother of five and, worst of all, a Republican. And she's the biggest sensation to hit American politics since what's-his-name. It's enough to make you burn your bra.

Speaking of What's-his-name, he keeps saying he's going to give a tax cut to 95% of Americans. Leaving aside the fact the the President doesn't have the power to give anyone a tax cut, it's hard to reconcile that promise with the fact that 38% of households paid zero income taxes in 2006 (latest IRS data available). What he really is putting forward is a plan to take money from taxpayers and give it to non-taxpayers. Of course, we already do this with the Earned Income Tax Credit.

He calls these income transfers Refundable Tax Credits, but what it amounts to is a $648 billion, 10 year welfare program. What he's really saying is, "I will use the power of government to do something you can't do legally: I will steal from your neighbor and give the money to you." This is what democracy comes to when you have 10% of the people paying 70% of the income tax and 50% paying 3%.

AWOL in Santa Barbara

I'm in beautiful Santa Barbara this week for my wife's family reunion. Some relatives rented an ocean-view house on the Riviera directly above the Santa Barbara Bowl, where Willy Nelson will be performing tonight as we watch and listen from the deck. Not bad!

As the political season crawls through the final weeks, it is healthy that we visit two recent examples of the hypocracy that power breeds. First, the Democrats' "Greenest Convention in History" leaves behind in a pile 12,000 American flags to be trashed. Now Republicans may not yet have achieved a sufficient level of eco-awareness to win over the Sierra sorts, but we do know a great deal when we see one. So the flags will fly again, this time for McCain/Palin in Colorado Springs.

Then we learn that Charlie Rangel (D), who heads the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which, among other things reigns over the tax code, "forgot" to report rental income from property he owns in the Dominican Republic. He assures us it was just an oversight and, being the stand-up guy he is, blames his wife. (Reminds me of the tax audit advice Steve Martin once gave us: just tell the IRS agent, "IIIIII'm sorry, IIII forgot!")

Is this the kind of "change" we can expect more of? I think the "reform" message resonates better with voters.

Impaling Palin

O the dilemma. How can the Democrats make points against Sarah Palin by throwing her 17 year old daughter to the wolves without alienating their own voters. After all, single Moms and their Moms are primarily a constituency of the the Dems. Obama declared the subject off limits, but, alas, the New York Times and Daily Kos didn't get the message in time.

The media frenzy over a private, family matter has served to remind voters of the stark contrast between the candidates on the subject of abortion. Sarah Palin encouraged her daughter's decision to carry the baby to term while Obama voted against providing medical care for babies who survive botched abortions.

Getting back to the real issues, Obama says he has gained the necessary experience to be President by running his own campaign. Since when do candidates run their own campaigns? Isn't that what Campaign Managers do? Then he compounds the deception by claiming that all Palin did was manage 50 people as Mayor, completely ignoring the fact that she has served as Governor of a state for 20 months.

And then there is the whining that Palin was not chosen because she was most qualified, but rather to win over those disaffected Hilary voters in swing states. Well, of course. VPs are always chosen for what they can bring to the ticket. But the Presidency is an executive position and when it comes to executive experience, Palin, who might have to take over for #1, beats Obama, who is running for #1.

I'm a blogger now

As most of you know I have been firing off emails for quite a while on political and economic issues. For a long time, my daughter, Pamela, has been urging me to start a blog. Well, with the help of Pam and her husband, Mike, I'm taking the plunge.

When I figure out how, I will tell you how to pass my web address along to people you think would be interested in reading my blog. You will receive it as an email, unless you notify me that you have a life and don't have time for my ruminations. Just let me know. No hard feelings, #@*(&>#!

Lou

Taxing the rich

In every Presidential campaign the Democrat rolls out the Party's perennial theme, taxing the rich & corporations to pay for goodies for "working Americans." (Like the people they want to tax are not working Americans). A kind interpretation of this is that these politicians are economic ignoramuses: the less charitable view is that they are charlatans.

The fact is that you can't tax the rich without taxing everyone. Typical net profit margins are around 5-6%. To survive, the corporation, business or professional person must pass along to customers, clients & patients all of their expenses, including taxes, or scale back on staffing, employee compensation or expansion. The corporation, small business & professional person are simply the conduit through which the taxes are extracted from each & every consumer & worker.

Incidentally, we have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world, just a smidgen behind Japan, whose economy has been in the toilet for about 15 years.

The key factor to keep your eye on is government spending. The more the government spends, the more we are all going to pay, one way or another. There's no escaping. So when you here a politician promising goodies at someone else's expense, ask yourself if it's worth jeoparding your income or paying higher prices for the goods & services you depend on.

Spending, that's really the issue.

John Malone (Liberty Media)

Interesting interview with John Malone (Liberty Media) in today's WSJ. On the current economic downturn, he says it's "the scariest one in my business career." He says that if the banking system loses $800 billion and they are leveraged 20-1, that means were going to see $16 trillion of financial values wiped out, not incl. housing.

He goes on:

"America was the place to be. We've kind of frittered that away. We've lived beyond our means as a country & in many cases as individuals. Sooner or later that's going to come back in a compression of standard of living.....The thing that scares me the most is our technological capabilities relative to the rest of the world." Then he goes on about how 70% of the science & engineering students in our university graduate programs are foreigners & that after they get their degrees "we kick them out of the country." Maybe that's why Steve Ballmer (MSFT) says that by 2025 80% of the world's scientists & engineers will be in Asia.

Do you hear any politicians talking about any of this?