Peace Professor is Dangerous

David Horowitz knows the political left, because he was one of the founders of the "New Left" in the 1960s. He was an editor of influential Ramparts magazine, wrote and spoke; he was a leader. But he didn't like what he was seeing, had a change of heart and mind and turned to the right. He tells his story in Radical Son. His web site is ground zero in watching for bias on college campuses - FrontPageMag.com His most recent book is "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America"

David Horowitz reveals a shocking and perverse culture of academics who are poisoning the minds of today's college students. The Professors is a wake-up call to all those who assume that a college education is sans hatred of America and the American military and support for America's terrorist enemies

Today the Seattle Times is amused that a University of Washington professor is on Horowitz's list. David Barash teaches animal behavior and evolutionary psychology... and peace studies. Peace studies by all appearances is training in leftist propaganda. So any purveyor of it is causing damage to our students. And doesn't it require some historical and economic analysis to make expert comments about the causes of war and peace? How is a biologist in the psychology department qualified to teach on this complex topic? Barash jokes that he was too young and insignificant to make President Nixon's enemies list. David Horowitz was on John Carlson's radio program today and responded "The people on Nixon's enemies list are the ones who undercut and ended the US support for South Vietnam. Because of them millions of people died when the Communists overran Viet Nam and Cambodia." (paraphrasing)

Horowitz said he included Barash because of a book Barash co-wrote called "Peace and Conflict Studies." Horowitz said the book defends violent revolution and incorrectly points to Cuba as a place where people's lives have been improved through such violence.

Barash makes a serious charge against Horowitz in the Seattle Times article:

Barash said his profile in the book is full of misrepresentations and inaccuracies. For instance, it claims he blames the Cuban missile crisis on the psychology of President Kennedy — when in fact his book mentions many factors, including the Soviet Union's missile buildup. "It's just a lie. He either didn't read the book or look it up," Barash said. "The whole thing is just a cartoon."

Horowitz says No, Barash blames the psychology of the American public for the missile crisis stand off, not the Soviets for placing missiles 90 miles from south Florida. And he says he quotes Barash's section of several paragraphs about the Cuban situation. I want to resolve this by checking the original source, but it won't be easy. Peace and Conflict Studies costs $80. And the King County Library doesn't have a single copy!

US Ski Team

What a sorry showing. When no one is paying attention Bode Miller rules the slopes in the World Cup. When everyone is watching he has a great Olympics - by his pitiful standard:

"I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here,'' Miller was quoted by Jim Litke as saying. "... It's been an awesome two weeks. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level."

Partying, not skiing. Why was he there? To party? Is he the same man who in Salt Lake City in 2002, when he missed a gate, climbed up to go through it, so he could finish, even if his time was down with the Jamaican ski team? Gwen Knall in the SF Chronicle reports Miller's defense:

"Look at what happened to (Daron) Rahlves,'' Miller told the AP. "He was holed up in his RV, he's probably the fittest guy out here and he made a point of talking about how important the Olympics were to him. And then look -- a little bad luck and he's got nothing to show for the whole thing.''

And the rest of the team defends him. Ted Ligety, who earned Gold in the combined, and James Cochran:

"The most crazy things he says are usually dead-on,'' Cochran said. Ligety, who was disqualified in the slalom, pointed out that it was Miller's worst event. "It's in the other events, I think he felt the pressure,'' Ligety said

Does US tax funding support such spoiled brats? I think so.

Single-payer health system is breaking down in Canada

Part of freedom is taking responsibility for your own needs. It is easier to let the government take care of everything, but you are not free. And seldom does a government do a very good job. Big-government lovers in the US have long held up Canada's health care system as the ideal. "No one has to worry about paying for their health care. Everything is provided." But we have long been hearing of severe rationing of care - of long waiting periods - of limited infrastructure because the system won't spend for state-of-the-art equipment. And that the United States provides for the gaps - that Canadians cross the border instead of waiting six months - even longer - for critical surgery. The crack in the system came from Canada's Supreme Court last July. It ruled that the ban on private health care is unconstitutional. The New York Times reports:

The country's publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine. .... Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment. But a Supreme Court ruling last June — it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists — appears to have become a turning point for the entire country. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services," the court ruled. In response, the Quebec premier, Jean Charest, proposed this month to allow private hospitals to subcontract hip, knee and cataract surgery to private clinics when patients are unable to be treated quickly enough under the public system. The premiers of British Columbia and Alberta have suggested they will go much further to encourage private health services and insurance in legislation they plan to propose in the next few months. Private doctors across the country are not waiting for changes in the law, figuring provincial governments will not try to stop them only to face more test cases in the Supreme Court.

Good news. Hat tip to Cafe Hayek, though I saw it elsewhere first.

Port Red Herring

This has gone way too far. Foreign companies operate at many, probably most, of our ports. Attacking our allies United Arab Emirates is out of place. How about Saudi Arabia? National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia operates at the following ports:

• Baltimore, MD
• Halifax, Canada
• Newport News, VA
• Houston, TX
• New Orleans, LA
• St. John, Canada
• Houston, Texas
• Savannah, GA
• Wilmington, NC
• Port Newark, NJ
• Brooklyn, NY

Since honorable Senator Chuckie Schumer is racial profiling now, is he fighting tooth and nail against NSCSA? No, the unions didn't tell him to. Via Sweetness and Light.

A Belgian view - The Closing of Civilization in Europe

Paul Belien is a Belgian lawyer and Ph.D. in international studies. He says that Europe's decline is of their own making. He is the chief at the blog The Brussles Journal.

Europe’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture – a process that started with the French Enlightenment – a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle. America’s immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. America’s major ethnic minorities – Blacks as well as Hispanics – are Christian, while the meanstream culture is also rooted in Christianity. In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves. One could also put it in a slightly different way: Europe lacks what America still has, namely the so-called “conservative reserves,” or as the German sociologist Arnold Gehlen explained over 30 years ago, “the reserves in national energy and self-confidence, primitiveness and generosity, wealth and potential of every kind.”

Very good. I will have to watch what Paul writes. I am back home after weather-caused flight cancellations and delays.

Criminalize using your iPod

Yes. The recording industry intends to. The RIAA is now saying it is illegal to rip a CD you buy to store the music on your iPod, despite the fact that last year their attorneys stated in court that it is legal. Ars Technica reports:

If anyone has any doubts about the content industry's resolve to destroy fair use and usher in new ways of charging you for uses that were previously both free and fair, look no further. As part of the triennial review of the effectiveness of the DMCA, a number of content-related industries have filed a joint reply (PDF) with the government on the effectiveness of the DMCA and the challenges that lay ahead for copyright. As you might expect, the document is a celebration of the DMCA, and the industries are pushing for even more egregious abuses of technology to fatten up their bottom lines.

And quoting the RIAA ...

" Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even "routinely" granted, see C6 at 8, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright holders in the Grokster case, is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use." Allow me to translate: just because people have been copying CDs in the past doesn't mean that that they had the authorization to do so, and a general trend does not override such explicit authorization.

I am in Austin, Texas, today.

Yes there is good news but who notices?

Rich Karlgaard passes on from economist David Malpaas at Bear Stearns:

“First quarter GDP growth is setting up to be a blow-out. Consumption, investment, government spending and residential investment are all, at least through mid-February, looking even stronger than our 5% first-quarter growth forecast. . . . [There is a] smooth shift underway from an interest-rate-related emphasis on U.S. housing and consumption to a global-growth-related emphasis on business investment.”

And Larry Kudlow's version. And Karlgaard quoted Tony Blankley's witty summary of this week's news:

“In the absence of any pressing news these days – other than Iran's nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, ongoing worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore's near sedition while speaking in Saudi Arabia, the turning over of our East Coast ports to be managed by a United Arab Emirates firm, the criminal leaking of vital NSA secrets to the New York Times, Mexican military incursions across our southern border, the Iraqi crisis, Congress's refusal to deal with the developing financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare, inter alia – the White House press corp has exploded in righteous fury over the question of the vice president's little shooting party last weekend.”

War Hero Monument at UofW

A student proposal to honor WW II hero "Pappy" Boyington was immediately tossed out because other students didn't want to honor a Marine. Michelle Malkin Now we can directly honor him - through the University of Washington. Again, I learned from Michelle Malkin.

You might be interested to know that we've set up the Lt. Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington Memorial Scholarship Fund through the University of Washington Foundation and have provided a link on the UW Foundation website for folks who want to support this effort. We've gotten a number of e-mails expressing an interest in supporting this fund. This fund will provide scholarships to undergraduate students who are either a U.S Marine Corps veteran or are the child of a U.S Marine Corps veteran.

Contact the UW Fund directly at UW Foundation.

Allowing Small Businesses to Grow

The heart of our economy is the small businesses that start up to fill needs everywhere in almost every market. The Washington Policy Institute has been holding conferences since 2003 on what small businesses need and providing information. Governor Gregoire the Queen keynoted one of the sessions at SeaTac in 2005. Let them talk; they know what they need. Affording health care coverage for their employees is their top priority. They want to, but the State of Washington keeps making it harder. With good intentions the Legislature keeps adding requirements and each one raises the cost and makes it harder to afford. Also at the top - the complicated requirements and procedures of the state workers' compensation and unemployment systems. And there are many more concerns - transportation, taxes, water, tort reform. First, read the press release. Then the full report (PDF). And the Olympian has an article.

Resort blogging: Where's the WiFi? We are going for four days to Whistler, BC, Canada. Great spot.

Still Doesn't Work

President Hugo Chavez is proving again that price controls do not work. Try it again. Same results. Wall Street Journal (paid subscription) reports:

After 21 years in the milk business, Ismael Cárdenas Gil is throwing in the towel. Mr. Cárdenas, who heads Alimentaria Internacional, can no longer make a profit selling imported powdered milk under government-imposed price controls. As a result, he has cut back his imports to "practically zero."

If the government puts on price controls, then suppliers can't stay in business and close. Venzuela is in an unusual position: it can export a lot of oil. So the government can buy food and sell it at a loss. But people don't like taking a loss and can't continue.

Last week, corn growers marched outside the presidential palace, protesting government controls they say have dried up demand for their corn. While the farmers are getting a decent price, processors are refusing to buy the corn because they can't sell it at what they consider an acceptable markup. The country's largest food company, Alimentos Polar, has warned it may have to halt production of corn flour for such reasons. In early December, coffee producers challenged the new price ceilings, paralyzing deliveries and causing an acute coffee shortage for weeks.

Chavez says he is doing this to control inflation. Inflation is now 14%, the highest in South America.

Seattle Web Site Hacked by Muslims - Lack of Care?

Counterterrorism Blog reports a Seattle club had their website hacked by angry Muslims.

On February 8 I posted about the hacking of Danish and Western websites by Muslim cyber-terrorists over the cartoon controversy. Last night I received an e-mail from a knowledgeable CT Blog fan in the Seattle area about the hacking of a recreational website, and I posted the text of that e-mail. This afternoon, that fan sent me a request to change what I posted this morning in order to clarify the situation after a day of investigation, with important new information:

The Muslim Web Hack Attacks have reached Seattle, attacking (of all things) a girls' scooter club. The website has been restored by the web hosting company, Flux Services of Bothell, Washington. Flux Services graciously provided the webpage hacked by "nEt^DeViL" for CT's archives.

One Seattle TV station, KING-TV, and its partner Northwest Cable News, both owned by Belo Corporation, featured a story on the web hack on their Sunday news programs. Due to an error in the domain registry entry (the responsibility of domain owners), KING-TV erroneously reported that the website was hosted by Drizzle, a highly-reputable Seattle Internet service provider (ISP) and web-hosting company with more than a decade of experience. In fact, the hacked website is and was hosted by Flux Services. KING-TV also reported that the FBI was notified about the hack but had not responded to the website owners. There is no independent confirmation of FBI action or inaction.

And his concern regarding who cares:

The list of Islamist web hacks worldwide since the Cartoons hit the fan is now into the tens of thousands. There is no coordinated response from law enforcement. There seems to be a lack of appreciation to the gravity of the matter. These are not just hacks for their own sake, these are probing attacks similar to skirmishing in conventional warfare.

Creators versus Critics

One of the fascinating things about studying history is to see the way in which man's extraordinary creative and inventive faculties are in a continual battle with his critical and destructive faculties. The great historian Paul Johnson writes in Forbes:

If only the first were in operation, humanity would have advanced far more rapidly. We'd now be enjoying living standards we won't reach until 3000 A.D. to 4000 A.D. We'd be making regular trips to our solar system's planets (and exploiting them) and possibly to the stars beyond. But the other aspects of man's nature act as a continual brake on progress. ... our negative propensity to find reasons--especially moral or scientific ones--to oppose the creative forces in the world. A primary example of this was the mid-19th-century reaction to the capitalist Industrial Revolution. Just as a disruptive and painful period of capital accumulation was coming to an end in advanced economies such as Britain's--wages were rising, working hours decreasing and factory conditions improving--along came thinkers like Karl Marx, who argued that capitalism was an unprecedented threat to human happiness. They succeeded in setting up a collectivist counterforce to capitalism that maintained itself intellectually for a century and at one time controlled nearly a quarter of the world's surface area, killed scores of millions and wasted untold trillions of dollars of wealth. This force was not discredited until the late 1980s, when Soviet Communism began to collapse and its Chinese cousin embraced capitalism.

And now the lawyers:

During the 20th century a series of revolutions in technology again made it possible to accelerate the production of wealth and improve the ways in which it is distributed to reach even the poorest enclaves of the world. But once again the negative critical and destructive forces have combined to put the brakes on and, if possible, reverse this process. Clever people calling themselves environmentalists, human rights campaigners, tort lawyers, etc. have played on fears and superstitions and employed ingenious arguments based on science and pseudoscience to mount a counteroffensive against capitalist advances. They have used the courts, media, international conferences and laboratories--all with enormous cunning and effrontery--to win many partial and some absolute victories. One of their biggest successes has been to halt the building of nuclear power plants in the U.S., Britain and other countries. This has seriously increased the destructive impact of the oil shortages brought on by China's and India's industrialization.

Natural and Unnatural Man

Why? Jonathan David Carson asks

Why is it tragic when human activities bring about the extinction of a single species, but natural, that is, benign, when scores of millions of species become extinct in the ordinary course of nature? How can the same result be evil when caused by man and good when caused by Mother Nature? A forest fire started by a discarded cigarette butt does not burn any hotter than a forest fire started by lightning. More than ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever lived are extinct, extinguished by Mother Nature. If we extinguish a species, we extinguish perhaps one hundred-thousandth of one percent of the remnant, perhaps one millionth of one percent. We are dismayed by the human extinction of one species. Why are we indifferent to destruction ten million or a hundred million times greater? Why should human-induced global warming or cooling be a catastrophe when the earth has been warmed and cooled far more without us? According to the January 2000 issue of Scientific American, as “many as four times between 750 million and 580 million years ago…ice as much as a kilometer thick engulfed the earth. Glaciers scoured the nearly lifeless continents, and sea ice encapsulated the oceans—even in the tropics.” Each of these mega ice ages was followed by a “brutal episode of warming,” with a “runaway greenhouse effect….baking the planet.” A man-made episode of global cooling that engulfed the earth with ice a meter thick would be a disaster. Why is a kilometer thick sheet of ice not one?

Washington good government

Today I am watching our Washington State politicians at Sound Politics: Our Democrat-majority Legislature finally found a performance audit they can get whole heartedly behind. They fought performance audits tooth and nail for year after year. Performance audits go beyond the normal accounting that money for fund A got spent on fund A things, to ask did "this program accomplish what it was supposed to do?" When the will of the people got stronger they sought to innoculate the issue by devising "performance audits" where the elected state auditor could only do audits that were approved by an appointed panel. I don't know the exact makeup, but I recall it was dominated by Olympia. Tim Eyman beat them cold by filing Initiative 900 that enables the auditor to do his job with performance audits and provides funding. It passed easily. This week the state house easily passed performance audits - for tax cuts. Those tax cuts had better be effective or they will be embarrassed in the harsh spotlight. The Olympian reports:

However, the Democrats, joined by nine Republicans including Rep. Tom Campbell, did act on one bill that could make the effectiveness of tax cuts easier to gauge. On a 61 to 34 vote, they approved House Bill 1069, which subjects tax breaks to reviews or “performance audits” to show whether they deliver the benefits promised.

Why didn't the Democrats do this years ago for spending?

Not the way to develop Bolivia

The new president of Bolivia Evo Morales promised to promote legal uses of the coca plant. Did you know that he is a former coca farmer? Reuters reports:

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Bolivia's foreign minister says coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are so nutritious they should be included on school breakfast menus. "Coca has more calcium than milk. It should be part of the school breakfast," Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of La Razon. The new leftist government of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has vowed to promote the legal uses of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, which is revered in Andean culture and is commonly chewed or made into tea. Morales, himself a former coca farmer, has pledged to fight the drugs trade but at the same time protect the cultivation of coca in Bolivia -- the world's third-biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.

Could anything go wrong here? Might encouraging the growth of coca result in more available for manufacture of illegal cocaine?

We call that a perfectly predicable surprise. (I am still trying to learn who coined that phrase.) It is the expected side, not an unexpected one.

I hope you don't know anyone addicted to crack cocaine. I wish I didn't. It is extremely cruel.

A coca leaf weighing 100 grams contains 18.9 calories of protein, 45.8 mg of iron, 1540 mg of calcium and vitamins A, B1, B2, E and C, which is more than most nuts, according to a 1975 study by a group of Harvard University professors.

It's as nutritious as some nuts. Are you going to feed it to your kids? I think President Morales should look for other routes to economic development for his country. (Keeping a straight face.)

RI Demos discover lower taxes

In Rhode Island the Democrats have discovered that their state has to compete in the area of taxes. So they are proposing to flatten their income tax. The highest rate is 9.9%; lowest 3.75%. They are proposing 5.5% for everyone. The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) reports:

And listen to how House Speaker William Murphy pitched the idea at a news conference: "The ultimate goal is to put more money directly into people's pockets both by giving relief to those who need it and by making Rhode Island a more attractive place for business that will provide high-paying jobs for more Rhode Islanders." What's going on here? Have the state's liberals all taken Art Laffer happy pill

Their neighbors have lowered taxes and they see their state dropping behind.

In a recent survey by the Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute -- which measured the economic competitiveness of states based on their ability to generate income and growth -- Rhode Island ranked 37th, or well behind Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut, which were all in the top 20. Only two years ago, Rhode Island ranked 22nd in the same survey.

But watch the comical partisanship. Who is against making their state more competitive?

Rhode Island Republicans, including Governor Don Carcieri, were also caught off guard by the Democrats' proposal and now sound like Beltway Democrats in raising objections. House Minority Leader Robert Watson has said he'd like to know how the Democrats "plan on paying for these tax cuts." A spokesman for the Governor had a similar cart-before-the-horse mentality, telling the Providence Journal that "the governor hopes to work with the General Assembly to make the spending cuts necessary to enact real tax relief." But opposing good policies out of partisanship isn't going to make Rhode Island a more attractive place to work and invest. Tax cuts will. Republicans might try congratulating Democrats for their supply-side revelation, and then join them in doing right by taxpayers.

Alaska needs a makeover - not

Alaska's leaders are concerned that people have negative view of their state. So Governor Murkowski who appointed US Senator Murkowski intends to hire a PR firm. Associated Press reports. He thinks the problem is with us - you and me - that we just don't understand, not anything that anyone in Alaska did. He appointed his daughter to the US Senate - squeaky clean, he is. Governor, you might want to look around you. Senator Ted Stevens has one purpose in life - to get all the pork he can for his state and his friends. He is a very senior Republican, so he heads the appropriations committee and has the power. Also the state's only Congressman - Don Young - is in a similar position. Now Alaska does need more federal funds than most states because of its isolated and strategic location. There is a lot of coastline to watch over, though the threat of Russia is much less than that of the Soviets was. But they have so much oil royalty money that they don't pay state taxes. Instead the state paid each man, woman and child $845.76 last year and every year. The pork busters caught Stevens and Young appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars for projecst to benefit very few people. The "bridge to nowhere" would link Ketchican to Gravina Island that has 50 people and their airport. John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Before her father stepped in to ensure the bridge would be built, Sen. Murkowski lamented it was "very difficult to stand here as an Alaskan and not take this [criticism] personally." Indeed, the issue was personal in a sense. It turns out the senator's mother, Nancy, who is also the governor's wife, is co-owner with her three siblings of a 35-acre parcel of land on Gravina Island. Critics charge that the bridge will spur development, increasing the value of the Murkowski property, which is one of the few privately held plots on the island.

Then there is Congressman Don Young's highway:

Another beneficiary of Governor Murkowski's decision to plow the state's share of federal transportation dollars into bridges is a controversial $223 million span near Anchorage that would connect that city with a nearly deserted port. The bridge will be called Don Young's Way after Alaska's lone House member, who also serves as chairman of the House Transportation Committee. It could be Don Young's way in more senses than that. The Anchorage Daily News reports that Art Nelson, Mr. Young's son-in-law, is part owner of 60 acres of what he described as "beautiful property" on land that will be opened up to development by the bridge. "A bridge would change everything," reported the Daily News. "Don Young's Way would . . . make the land much more valuable." Mr. Nelson, told the paper he did discuss his partial acquisition of the 60 acres with Mr. Young. One of the other owners of the land is fisheries lobbyist Trevor McCabe, a former legislative director for none other than Sen. Stevens. Until last October, Mr. McCabe was partners with state senator Ben Stevens, the son of Ted Stevens, in a consulting firm called Advance North that represents salmon fishermen who are regulated by the state Board of Fisheries, which is chaired by none other than Mr. Nelson, Rep. Young's son-in-law.

I support oil drilling and production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which they all want. Now draining the federal budget for their parochial state is bad enough. But they are doing it for personal gain and favors for their friends.

Nuclear is looking better

I am following the situation on the generous pensions for state workers in Washington. The Legislature sure is generous with other people's money. And - a light just went on - most of them get state retirement. So they have a conflict of interest. Back on topic: To break this "addiction to oil" we have to.... No. We need action, but not due to that PC talk. When prices go up you look for alternatives. And sometimes when you find an alternative, the price of the original commodity - oil in this case - goes back down. Julian Simon documented many cases of this cycle - shortage and high price leads to innovation, which leads to the price going back down. Glenn Reynolds, the incomparable Instapunit reviews the current situation with nuclear power:

All of this is combining to make nuclear power look more attractive again. In fact, it's starting to build some bridges across traditional divides, as this oped by former antinuke protester G. Pascal Zachary illustrates:

"I don't regret my youthful opposition to Diablo. Back then, nuclear plants were badly run and uneconomical, and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island exposed nuclear regulations as a sham. But much has changed in the past 25 years, and for a variety of reasons I think nuclear power deserves another chance. "So does President Bush, who on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address highlighted the nation's need to boost nuclear power generation. "I know I've lost a lot of readers already, so let me immediately introduce an important qualification: We can only push an expansion of nuclear power, which today supplies 20 percent of America's electricity, as part of a comprehensive program to limit the production of greenhouse gases, promote renewable energy sources, and dramatically raise the cost of burning fossil fuels in automobiles. Expanding nuclear power is only one piece of the energy puzzle. But it is a piece we cannot afford to dismiss."

We burn oil and coal because we don't have anything better. Nuclear power could have been better -- and I don't cut the antinuke protesters quite as much slack as Zachary cuts himself -- but the technology has come a long way, and I'm willing to let bygones be bygones rather than wonder how much mischief Saudi Arabia and Iran could cause in a world where 70% of American generating capacity was nuclear and electric cars were already common. If we'd kept building nukes in the 1970s we'd know the answer, but now it's time to look ahead, and nuclear is looking better as oil is looking worse.

Glenn links to one promising new design named CEASAR for "clean and environmentally safe advanced reactor." Nuclear can cut greenhouse gases. That's what everyone says we must do. Let's explore it.

Islam Opted Out

I found another source analyzing why some nations made progress in science and technology, but others did not. Tim Rutten writes a column for the LA Times.

"Back in the High Middle Ages the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — reached one of those fundamental forks in the historical road.” [paraphrasing] Judaism (largely thanks to Moses Maimonides) and Christianity (largely thanks to Thomas Aquinas) chose to believe that reason and faith led to the same truth. Ironically, Islam, whose early scholars had preserved the works of reason’s first apostle, Aristotle, “held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were separate and distinct. "It was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress that followed."

Via Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com, an excellent source.

Addicted to Oil? Nonsense

OK. I am a few days slow on this. I didn't like the sound of President Bush's "we are addicted to oil." He chose to pander to the environmental extremists. In so doing he turned away from his past emphasis on supply to the strange world of alternate energy sources. Now I favor research and development for alternate energy sources. I just don't have mystical faith in them. Don't make me use one until it makes economic sense. That is, until it is cheaper. And I notice that the current forceful use of ethanol-added gasoline is pure power politics; the farmers and agribusinesses demand a federal mandate. James Glassman at my favorite TechCentralStation, now called TCSDaily.com, says it better than I can:

America is no more addicted to oil than it is addicted to bread, to milk, to paper, to water, to computers or, in the immortal words of the late Robert Palmer, to love. We use oil -- and other unmentioned but implied addictions like coal and natural gas -- to generate energy that powers our cars, heats our homes, lights our cities, runs our factories. By the standard of what they do for us, fossil fuels are pretty cheap. They provide enormous industrial leverage. But, at least in the short term, they are getting more expensive -- in part because demand is rising (mainly in other nations, like China and India, that want to have standards of living like ours) and in part because supply isn't keeping up.

And the damage this causes:

But maybe I should cut Bush a break. It's just rhetoric, right? In this case, no. The use of the word "addicted" is dangerous. It could end up hiking prices by reducing supply. How? Bush has signaled a new attitude from the White House. If this president can't defend the working of our almost-free market, then who will? If I were in the oil business myself, I would be extremely worried by this speech. One of my responses would be to hold back on planned research and development and capital spending. The three largest U.S. energy companies alone are projected to make capital expenditures of $43 billion this year, up from $33 billion in 2005. But does that make sense if Washington is considering windfall profits taxes, subsidies to alternative fuels and regulatory policies whose guiding principle is that fossil fuels are evil? Instead of concentrating on increasing fossil-fuel supplies at home, the President used all of the energy section of his speech -- four paragraphs -- talking about such exotica as "revolutionary solar and wind technologies," "producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass," and "pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen." Of course, since these alternatives have no commercial viability, the government will have to subsidize them. The latest Carteresque concoction, announced in the speech: the "Advanced Energy Initiative."

That will hurt. Glassman continues with more good facts and analysis. Read it.

Did Christianity Make Possible the Superior Technology of the West?

Historian Rodney Stark of Baylor University has found in his research that Europe sprinted past the rest of the world in science and technology due to the influence of Christianity. He expounds his findings in detail in a recent book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success (Random House). For centuries only Europe had chimneys, eye glasses, heavy cavalry, accurate clocks and the precise navigation they made possible. Why? Why did Europeans excel at metallurgy, shipbuilding, or farming?

The most convincing answer to those questions attributes Western dominance to the rise of capitalism, which took place only in Europe. Even the most militant enemies of capitalism credit it with creating previously undreamed of productivity and progress.... Supposing that capitalism did produce Europe's own "great leap forward," it remains to be explained why capitalism developed only in Europe. ... if one digs deeper, it becomes clear that the truly fundamental basis not only for capitalism, but for the rise of the West, was an extraordinary faith in reason.... A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins.... Even so, capitalism developed in only some locales. Why not in all? Because in some European societies, as in most of the rest of the world, it was prevented from happening by greedy despots. Freedom also was essential for the development of capitalism.

Some reinterpretation of history is necessary:

For the past several centuries, far too many of us have been misled by the incredible fiction that, from the fall of Rome until about the 15th century, Europe was submerged in the Dark Ages — centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery — from which it was suddenly, almost miraculously, rescued; first by the Renaissance and then by the Enlightenment. But, as even dictionaries and encyclopedias recently have begun to acknowledge, it was all a lie! It was during the so-called Dark Ages that European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world. Some of that involved original inventions and discoveries; some of it came from Asia. But what was so remarkable was the way that the full capacities of new technologies were recognized and widely adopted. By the 10th century Europe already was far ahead in terms of farm-ing equipment and techniques, had unmatched capacities in the use of water and wind power, and possessed superior military equipment and tactics. Not to be overlooked in all that medieval progress was the invention of a whole new way to organize and operate commerce and industry: capitalism.

That is Stark's main thesis: Christianity, reason, freedom and capitalism. He also goes into whether the developments took place in southern Europe, which is Roman Catholic, or in northern which is Protestant. Pardon me for compressing his words. There is a magazine article version in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Washington Pension Funds have a Multi-Billion $ Problem

Our Legislators gave a plum called "gain sharing" to the state pension Funds in 1998 that wasn't supposed to cost anything to the taxpayers. Now the latest estimate is that it will cost an additional $9 billion over 25 years. And the proposals to "fix" the problem are very, very generous to the workers, but hard on taxpayers. Seattle Times on the plan:

The Legislature approved a plan that increased retirement benefits for government workers when investment returns exceeded expectations. Basically, the law says that when the average rate of returns exceeds 10 percent over four years, half of that excess profit goes to workers through enhanced retirement benefits. For example, some workers get cash payments into individual retirement savings accounts. The other half of the excess profit gets plowed back into the pension fund to help protect against future downturns in the market. Gain-sharing created several problems for the state pension system, but the biggest one is that it effectively reduces the rate of return from state investments over time. When the stock market is hot, gain-sharing skims off cash that could otherwise offset future losses.

The current estimate is that it will cost an additional $9 billion over 25 years.

The estimates, which deal with the cost of a pension perk that shares stock-market profits with retirees, predict a tab of more than $9 billion over 25 years if the benefit is kept. That's about four times what state officials were contemplating in December. "It's a much bigger price tag than people realized," said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, referring to recent research done by the state Actuary's Office. Late last year, state officials estimated the cost of the benefit, called gain-sharing, at about $2.3 billion. However, at the time, lawmakers were focused on one plan in the pension system, a plan that covers mostly workers who have already retired. The projected cost of gain-sharing ballooned after a new state study took a thorough look at how the benefit affects the entire pension system.

They know they have a problem and are addressing it. I saw pre-session statements by several senator and representatives that tackling pension problems was a priority. I assumed they were talking about this. So what is proposed? First, to do nothing.

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, said House Democrats are mixed about whether to tackle the problem this session or wait until next year. "There's a concern with some folks that we haven't had enough time to cook it and figure out what to do," she said.

The two proposals on the table would also costs billions. First,

Senate Bill 6795 would authorize a pension cost-of-living increase for some workers and a guaranteed rate of return on certain investments for others.... The estimated total cost to state and local governments combined could be close to $2 billion over the same time period. (25 years)

My retirement program has no cost-of-living increase ever. Should we give state employees something we don't get? Now, keep a straight face. The second proposal to get the state out of this fix is early retirement at full benefits. A teacher who starts work at age 22 could retire at age 56 with the pension intended for someone who worked until 65.

Another measure, Senate Bill 6445, commonly referred to as the "rule of 90" bill, would let workers combine their age with the number of years they've worked in government service. If the total reached 90, they could retire with full benefits. That would let some longtime government workers retire in their mid- to late 50s.

That's replacing a big problem with a smaller one. How about returning to what we taxpayers thought we had - a system that gave a comfortable retirement to civil servants who worked until 65? Cross posted at Sound Politics.

Federal Deficit - Our Senators Favor It

The pork busters in DC are amused by our senators' efforts to increase the federal deficit. Senator Patty Murray and Senator Maria Cantwell are holding classes in three Washington cities to instruct government agencies and nonprofits how to get more funding. And these are all in Eastern Washington; they must have many more sessions planned. You might think this doesn't make the deficit worse, that people will be vying for funds from a pot whose size is already determined. But what will happen when some of the worthy applicants don't get funded? They will cry in every public venue how President Bush doesn't care about the projects and people they intend to spend the money on. And that will put pressure on ... more spending ... and more ... and more. Donald Luskin is the Chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment consulting firm. His blog has an unusual title. He covers the details at The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid. Cross posted at Sound Politics

Byrd Amendment Ended

Good news. One of the least-defensible corporate hand outs will end by vote of Congress. The Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act is known for its sponsor former Ku Klux Klansman (that's a fact) honorable Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. It rewards uncompetitive companies with handouts. If a foreign competitor is selling cheaper than you are you have a problem, right? Not if you are favored by Robert Byrd and this law. You are rewarded for not controlling your costs by a generous handout - the Senator smiles and give you money, but the taxpayers pay for it. "Monsters and Critics" reports

Since 2001, the Byrd Amendment has resulted in payments of more than $1.26 billion to U.S. companies affected by low-cost imports. Fully $476 million of that amount has gone to one corporation, the Timken Co. and its subsidiaries. And last year, more than half of all pay-outs went to five companies.

Corporate handouts at their worst favor just a few companies, which always seem to have donated to the big defender. Unfortunately the corporate-welfare defenders managed to delay the repeal:

In a compromise reached between House and Senate conferees, the repeal will be delayed for two years and Byrd Amendment distributions will continue for applications made prior to Oct. 1, 2007.

Support Denmark

Several Muslim countries are demanding that Denmark appologize and stop the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. They are trying to enforce their Islamic law on the rest of the world. The Danes are being subjected to boycotts and threats of violence throughout the Middle East. We oppose the imposition of Islamic law; we support free speech. Let's support Denmark. Buy Danish And the people of Denmark in 1943 bravely stopped the Germans from deporting 7,500 Danish Jews to concentration camps in Germany. Via MichelleMalkin.com. See Cartoons about Mohammed.

Economist puts the spotlight on central planners

Economist William Easterly went straight to the people who are the problem and put the spotlight in their eyes. Central planning was supposed to lead the world, because smart people would get all the data and make the best decisions. Communist economies in the Soviet Union and east Europe were supposed to leave us behind. After all, we had dirt farmers deciding what to plant. How could they know enough? Part of the reason Communism failed was because 1,000 central planners were not as smart as 1,000,000 farmers. Plus the farmers are striving to save their farms, while the bureaucrats have none of their skin on the line. Central planning failed completely. Except countries that receive large foreign aid. Tim Worstall reports at TCS Daily:

[Easterly] opens with this piece of fighting talk: "Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is only one major area of the world in which central planning is still seen as a way to achieve prosperity -- countries that receive foreign aid. Behind the Aid Wall that divides poor countries from rich, the aid community is awash in plans, strategies, and frameworks to meet the very real needs of the world’s poor. These exercises only make sense in a central planning mentality in which the answer to the tragedies of poverty is a large bureaucratic apparatus to dictate quantities of different development goods and services by administrative fiat. The planning mindset is in turn linked to previously discredited theories, such as that poverty is due to a “poverty trap,” which can only be alleviated by a large inflow of aid from rich country to poor country governments to fill a “financing gap” for poor countries. The aid inflow is of course administered by this same planning apparatus."

Worstall covers Easterly's four main points in detail. I will shorten them: The four core beliefs of development economic planners:

1) That there is a financing gap; that more investment is needed (and that there is a direct relationship between the level of investment and growth); and if we sent that extra cash as aid, then it would become that extra investment… As Easterly points out, even the people writing the papers for the World Bank on the issue ... point out that the extra cash strategy is wanting, and that investment-growth correlation is false. 2) That there is a poverty trap; that prevents countries from developing seems unobjectionable. Places might simply be too poor to ever save enough to actually get going. Or, in an alternative formulation: all are so desperately searching for that scrap of food for today that they never have a chance to plan and build for the longer term. There are indeed some statistics that support this contention, but unfortunately they are not very convincing ones: "It doesn’t help the poverty trap story that 11 out of the 28 poorest countries in 1985 had NOT been in the poorest fifth back in 1950. They had gotten into poverty by declining from above, rather than being stuck in it from below, while others escaped. If the identity of who is in the poverty trap keeps changing, it must not be much of a trap." 3) That aid should be of the government-to-government model; That is, that the wise and good of our society should be using the (forced) charity of the citizenry to aid the wise and good of another country, to in turn aid the poor of their country. Such might be fine if those wise and good were, in fact, wise and good rather than whatever group of scumbags that had managed to climb to the top of the dungheap. (The Professor is, of course, a little more diplomatic about it and probably doesn’t share my view that the same is true of our own “wise and good”). But there is little evidence of benevolent, corruption-free dictators: The search for the elusive “well governed low income countries” casts a broad net. The Millennium Project report lists 63 poor countries that are “potentially well governed,” and thus potentially eligible for a massive increase in foreign aid. The list includes 5 out of the 7 countries singled out by Transparency International in October 2004 as the most corrupt in the world: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Chad, Nigeria, and Paraguay. .... (4) That sending in aid is equivalent to actually achieving any of the desired development goals; It’s extremely difficult to find evidence of success outside of the most limited (and specific) programs -- e.g. vaccinations. But in terms of general development aid? There are very few signs of success.

And Easterly reaches the same conclusion.

What Easterly really wants is for people to understand that, in the same way top-down planning didn’t make the Soviet block rich, it isn’t going to make the poor countries rich. Development is a series of very small steps, all of which must be subjected to both responsibility criteria (accountability) and to information feedback mechanisms. Two things that simply don’t exist in any such system of top-down planning.

And Worstall's favorite part: "But clear and concise views on what should be done about development don’t produce the laughter and cheering noted above. No, rather it was where he gave the speech. Easterly castigates the entire structure and organization of the development bureaucracy. The World Bank, the IMF, well-meaning yet muddled do-gooders like Bono and Sachs, just about anyone and everyone who sits in an office and talks about such things. And where does he do this? At the Asian Development Bank -- a part of that very same development infrastructure."

Editing with Ecto - Cartoons about Mohammed

Several countries like Jordan and Syria are threatening Denmark and a newspaper there because they published cartoons about Mohammed. They say the newspaper violated some ban against any image of the prophet Mohammed. Michelle Malkin reports. But no such ban has been enforced for hundreds of year, evidently. Zombie Time blog has a few dozen images that have been published, some from medieval times. A small portion of them make Mohammed's face blank, but most don't. Mohammed images Advanced feature: What I am listening to this very minute on iTunes. This smart software pasted it in: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from the album “Holiday! A Collection of Christmas Classics” by Crystal Lewis. It's a jazz style perfect for walking bass.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: puppy

Google Censorship

Google won plaudits this week for refusing the US Government's request for search phrases. Knight-Ridder News Service. Notice how anything the government bureaucrats do that the media don't like is done by President Bush himself. But anything good is done by your US senator. On the other hand, in China Google is helping the Communist government to repress information. There are millions of Christians in China and they have churches, as much as the Communists allow. But you can hardly find either on Google.cn - that's Googles China search engine. Junk Yard Blog reports:

Specifically, is Google helping Communist China suppress religious freedom on the web? Is an American company jumping at the beck and call of a Communist regime? It’s easy enough to check. Google’s Chinese page for image searches is http://images.google.cn. We’ve been running searches from there and the surprising thing is that you don’t always get the same search results each time you run it. It’s almost as though your own machine’s cache of previous searches is influencing the results you get on subsequent searches. Or maybe Google is still tweaking the filters, so some things slip through sometimes but not at other times. Whatever is happening behind the scenes, it’s beyond argument that Google users in China are not getting the same search results as Google users in the US and elsewhere. The difference in search results can be striking. On a clean search, Google-China turned up 10 hits on an image search for jesus christ. Just like that, no quotes. By comparison, the US version of Google image search turns up 168,000 hits on the same exact search terms. 168,000 versus 10. And this is just an image search. We’re not searching for the teachings of Jesus, just pictures. China’s version of Google significantly filters the search Further, Google-China is even censoring photos of churches for some reason. On the US image search page, a search for church turns up more than 2.8 million hits. On Google-China, church turns up just 723 hits. How about christian? In the US, 2.36 million hits; Google-China nets 819. This is no accident. Google is helping its business partners in Beijing airbrush Jesus Christ right off the Chinese internet. Its cyber dragnet even nets people with the word “Christian” in their name, just to make sure Chinese citizens won’t get religion from their search engine results. Google needs to drop its “Don’t be evil” motto and replace it with something more honest, like “We help evil be evil.”

The article has live links to the searches mentioned. Fortunately the Chinese use arabic numerals. Read it. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin

Links & Free Market Project

Will Hansen at PLU Republicans shines the spotlight on the "great liberal" movies of the year that specifically pushed their agenda; got lots of publicity; lots of money spent on promotion and ... ta ta! ... went bust. Good analysis. Read it. Ann Coulter sees signs in both the NYT and Washington Post that the liberals are starting to push the feminists overboard. At Human Events Lucianne.com is one of my favorite sites. Today they posted the link to a piece in the Toronto Star that just gushed over wonderful Jimmy Carter and all the wonderful work he did bringing peace to the Middle East. The author didn't like the feedback he got and outed his editors - one of the over-the-top phrases he didn't write (just one of many); his editors added it. A screaming match ensued. All dutifully reported entry by entry at Lucianne.com. Work your way down and enjoy it. Lucianne.com Added Free Market Project - a good organization devoted solely to analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media. There certainly is a need for it. How did I miss it? Today... "More than 2 million new jobs were created in 2005 but that wasn’t the story presented by the evening news. The three broadcast networks downplayed strong growth and, instead, emphasized negatives such as corporate layoffs and outsourcing in more than half the stories about jobs or unemployment." Read it at Free Market Project. (But their pages have a text crawler that drives my cpu to 100%.) Added - How to start a fire with a can of code and a chocolate bar If I can stop laughing long enough to type this. Solve this one yourself. Start a real, flaming fire with just those two items. Give up? They have a believable way to do it at Tracker Trail.

2003 Capital-Gains Tax Cut Paid for Itself

It has happened before and now again. A tax cut freed up enough money in private hands that was reinvested and spent and such. The result was more economic growth that resulted in more taxes being collected - due to the tax cut. The Congressional Budget Office predicted a loss of 2-year loss of $27 billion, but the result was a 2-year GAIN of $26 billion. Donald Luskin reports at National Review Online

On Thursday the Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook, [(PDF file)] and buried in one of its nearly impenetrable tables of numbers is a remarkable story that has gone entirely unreported by the mainstream media: The 2003 tax cut on capital gains has entirely paid for itself. More than paid for itself. Way more. To appreciate this story, we have to go back in time to January 2003, before the tax cut was enacted. Table 3-5 on page 60 in CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook published in 2003 estimated that capital-gains tax liabilities would be $60 billion in 2004 and $65 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $125 billion. Now let’s move forward a year, to January 2004, after the capital-gains tax cut had been enacted. Table 4-4 on page 82 in CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook of that year shows that the estimates for capital-gains tax liabilities had been lowered to $46 billion in 2004 and $52 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $98 billion. Compare the original $125 billion total to the new $98 billion total, and we can infer that CBO was forecasting that the tax cut would cost the government $27 billion in revenues. Those are the estimates. Now let’s see how things really turned out. Take a look at Table 4-4 on page 92 of the Budget and Economic Outlook released this week. You’ll see that actual liabilities from capital-gains taxes were $71 billion in 2004, and $80 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $151 billion. So let’s do the math one more time: Subtract the originally estimated two-year liability of $125 billion from the actual liability of $151 billion, and you get a $26 billion upside surprise for the government. Yes, instead of costing the government $27 billion in revenues, the tax cuts actually earned the government $26 billion extra.

You saw it - a gain of $26 billion after the tax cut. Blame Bush.

Busting Pork

Mary Katharine Ham blogs on Hugh Hewitt's blog. I like her observation today. "As a fiscal conservative, I'm beginning to think a good idea in the Senate is one that ticks off the largest possible number of senators. If my hunch is right, then this is a really good idea.

According to Senate aides, Dr. Coburn has notified his colleagues that he intends to challenge every earmark—or pork project—on the floor of the U.S. Senate... Coburn's threat will dramatically slow the appropriations process because he will demand many more votes and more debate than normal on all spending bills. The added debate will allow senators to learn the merits (or lack thereof) of each earmark and affirm or reject.

"Sen. McCain has also signed onto the effort, and the two have shot off a "Dear Colleagues" letter that must have Senate aides clasping to their little appropriating chests the plans for the Central Idaho Celebration of Railroad Conductors Museum. "Appropriators think they can leverage enough pressure to make the Coburn threat an empty one, but I think it's a mistake to underestimate Tom Coburn's desire to shake things up in the Senate. It's equally dangerous to overestimate his desire to make buddies in the Senate. Appropriators beware. Andy Roth: "Memo to Ted Steven’s office: Bring a defibrillator with you to the Senate floor from now on." Roth has the numbers: There were at least 13,998 earmarked projects in last year's appropriations bills. 13,998 voice or roll-call votes! Last year there were only 366 roll-call votes. Good for Coburn and McCain - I am still very cautious about the latter. I can't wait to watch the complaining when their pet projects are out in the day light for everyone to see. But of course they will have fancy words for their cheap tricks.

Making Constitutional Speech Illegal

Senator McCain's biggest accomplishment is making political speech illegal while nude dancing is protected to the point that cities are required - required - to allow it. The US Constitution's primary purpose in protecting speech was to allow political discourse. John McCain is proud that McCain-Feingold does not allow citizen groups to take out advertising that targets a politician in the last 60 days before an election. (Is his goal to protect incumbents? Looks like it.) This has been interpreted by courts to not allow an ad on an issue during those 60 days because the politican running for reelection favors the issue. And one of the lowest acts of the US Supreme Court was upholding McCain-Feingold in McConnell v. FEC in 2003. But there is good news here. The Roberts Supreme Court reopened the door on Monday. Law.com reports:

The Supreme Court on Monday said that its landmark 2003 ruling upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law did not foreclose all First Amendment challenges to provisions restricting pre-election issue advertising. The Court remanded to a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., the case of Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. v. Federal Election Commission, which was argued before the high court Jan. 17 -- a remarkably quick turnaround for a contentious issue.

But the reason I take up this hot-button topic (could you have guessed?) today is an article in the Wall Street Journal today that features the court attack on local talk radio hosts Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson on KVI. A Washington court found - against all precedent and logic - that these talk radio hosts' talking about the initiative to repeal a gas-tax increase was a donation to the campaign. Sound Politics covered this. And here. Highlights of the Wall Street Journal article:

The rise of alternative media--political talk radio in the 1980s, cable news in the '90s, and the blogosphere in the new millennium--has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party's current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media's vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today's liberals quietly, relentlessly and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations. Their campaign represents the most sustained attack on free political speech in the United States since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. Though Republicans have the most to lose in the short run, all Americans who care about our most fundamental rights and the civic health of our democracy need to understand what's going on--and resist it.

Index of Economic Freedom

What makes a country rich? Per P.J. O'Rourke: Is it being smart? In Russia chess is the national sport. Are they smart? Yes. Are they rich? No, they are poor!! Then look at Hollywood. Are those people smart? No, but many are rich. What is the difference? Freedom. If you look at which countries have the freest economies you will see a list of growing, prospering countries. Freedom is the key to prosperity. And you might add the rule of law = enforcing contracts and such. You are headed in the right direction. Every year Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal research the countries of the world and their economic and legal systems to find which are allowing businesses to conduct business without undue interference and in an environment that encourages legal behavior. This year the top eleven countries (there was a tie) are: Hong Kong 1 [1.28]  Singapore 2 [1.56]  Ireland 3 [1.58]  Luxembourg 4 [1.60]  United Kingdom 5 [1.74]  Iceland 5 [1.74]  Estonia 7 [1.75]  Denmark 8 [1.78]  United States 9 [1.84]  Australia 9 [1.84]  New Zealand 9 [1.84] We may be behind Estonia, but there are 149 countries below us. To the report online Tomorrow: More about what factors they use in this ranking.

An Airport for Economic Growth

We have to increase our infrastructure so we can continue to grow. There are a lot of people north of Seattle, but the only airport with service by the real airlines is in Vancouver, BC, 140 miles away and in Canada. Paine Field is the airport in Everett, Washington, 30 miles north of Seattle, where Boeing assembles all its wide bodies - 747, 767, 777 and the 787 is coming. It might be obvious that it has an adequate runway. So it is the natural candidate for more airline service. I would use it. It's about the same distance as Sea-Tac. But I would avoid going through Seattle. So I favor airline service there. The Herald (Everett) reports "Paine Field debate continues"

Opponents stay on the defensive against any potential commercial passenger jet service, but one supporter says it's inevitable. The potential for Paine Field to be opened to commercial air traffic may be lying fallow, but the debate is not. While no formal proposal has been forwarded to expand service at the Snohomish County-run general aviation airport following its mention in county studies as an economic development tool, opponents remain on the offensive. Greg Hauth, vice president of Save Our Communities, the Mukilteo-based group that has led the opposition to passenger air traffic, continues to make presentations to city councils about what the group sees as the drawbacks of the idea. Since last summer, Hauth has visited council meetings in Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Woodway, Mill Creek, Marysville and Mukilteo, giving a presentation that outlines the reasons for the group's opposition. Supporters of Paine Field expansion have been relatively quiet, but Hank Robinett, an Everett-based residential real estate developer, has voiced his support. He has not been shy about his belief that expansion would be good for the region's economy with little or no damage to surrounding communities.

Great Economic News

The US had a very good year in 2005 on the economic front, despite Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (and Wilma and others) that did great damage to our economic infrastructure and production. Janic Parshall hosted Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in a broadcast and a podcast at Beyond the News.

• The US economy grew at 4% over the year. (Preliminary number; will be adjusted later.)
• Employment grew, resulting in an unemployment rate of 4.9%. Twenty years ago 6% was considered full employment; it was thought to be impossible to get lower.
• The average hourly pay was up 3.1%.
• Average take-home pay (real) up 1%, that is, after adjusting for inflation. The Bush tax cuts caused a 1% benefit; without them take-home pay would have been flat.

Let's enjoy it. And, since everything is Bush's fault, Bush get credit for this good news. Fair?

Red tape is turning best firms away from Europe

I am interested in what allows economic growth, what causes it and what prevents it. I take no delight in Europe suffering from its own bullets; I want everyone to succeed. But here is one more lesson on what works. The news is bad. The Telegraph of UK reports

rope's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape, a high-level report said yesterday. The companies that Europe needed to survive were instead investing more money than ever in the United States and Asia, concluded the report, presented to the European Commission in Brussels. The lack of investment was so dire that it threatened Europe's "comfortable" way of life. "Europe has to act before it's too late," said the report's author, Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland.

And they knew 10 years ago that they had a problem and they promised "to quit."

The findings made unsettling reading for the EU leaders, ripping into their pledges to build a "knowledge-based Europe" that would overtake America in 10 years. Perhaps most damagingly, Europe's most important countries were pouring more and more of their technology investment overseas, as they despaired of the European Union becoming "innovation friendly". Unless EU governments took bold action to increase spending on research, freed labour (sic) markets so skilled workers could move more easily, and stopped pouring taxpayers' money into dying industries, Europe's post-war way of life was doomed. The report said: "Europe must break out of structures and expectations established in the post-Second World War era that leave it today living a moderately comfortable life on slowly declining capital.

Is now the time for denial? For France and Germany: yes. But here is an exception:

Mr Aho [of Finland] refused to follow the lead of French or German politicians, who have attacked major corporations for investing overseas and called for more "economic patriotism". He said: "We cannot blame them. They are trying to take care of global competitiveness. Unfortunately, these companies can survive without Europe, but Europe cannot survive without these companies. That is why Europe has to act before it's too late."

Some of the specifics:

• continuing to pour state aid into dying industries such as cars, steel and textiles.
• lack of investment: "As part of the so-called Lisbon agenda of 2001 EU leaders committed themselves to spending three per cent of their gross domestic product on research and development. Halfway through the 10-year Lisbon agenda programme, the EU still spent a meagre 1.9 per cent, far behind the US or Japan.
• productivity: "the report noted that Europe badly needed to extract more productivity from each worker.

And how about taxes?

Encouraging wind energy or just PR?

Whole Foods, a large grocery retailer, announced it is going to voluntarily spend an extra $110 million on energy next year. For wind energy. But they are not going to use the wind energy. How would they get it to their stores. No, they are buying credits. They are paying to lower the cost of wind energy so others can pay the lower cost. Max Schultz reports at TCSDaily.com

Whole Foods, the trendy Austin-based company that prides itself on its environmental consciousness, announced this week that it will make the largest ever purchase of wind energy credits in the United States. The company pledged that in purchasing more than 458,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of renewable energy credits from wind farms, it will offset 100 percent of the cost of its annual energy use. No other Fortune 500 company has done anything like this before.

Will this encourage the development of wind generation? It should. At first it sounds hokey. Just PR. But it is a way of using a market to transfer the benefits. Someone chose to do good by encouraging something desirable by lowering its price. I am a skeptic on the "end of the world" due to running out of fossil fuels. The Earth won't run out of energy until the Sun burns out in 8 billion years; it is bombarded with energy every day. It's just a matter of converting the arriving energy into a form we can use. Wind works. Go for it! The Whole Foods press release

Operation Red Washington

Washington is a very liberal state. Is everyone liberal? No, far from it. Dino Rossi proved that a Republican who is consistent can win the majority vote in Washington - except for Ron Sims's willing mismanagement of the voter registration, poll operation and vote counting. How can we get the majority in other races, issues, etc? Statewide, especially. Timothy Goddard, who blogs at The Flag of the World and Sound Politics is organizing an exchange of information for building a strategy. Operation Red Washington

Welcome to Operation: Red Washington, the only blog on the Internet devoted to turning the Republican Party into a party that can win elections everywhere in Washington state, and to turning the state into one that will willingly elect Republicans. How do we plan to do that? Through the principles of Pragmatism, Patriotism and Personality, plus an open and frank discussion about what the Republican Party needs to do to achieve those goals.

Join them. I am.

China Dissent Spreading

Uprisings against the Communist government of China a widespread, though little reported. Thomas Lifson reports at American Thinker.

Dictatorships wield arbitrary power, so that they look strong to those of us accustomed to the open political struggles characteristic of free societies. But the exercise of arbitrary power does not necessarily make for a robust regime. If he were alive, the former Shah of Iran could comment from experience on this point. China, with 5000 years of history under arbitrary rulers, is the best example of all. Dynasties have risen and fallen. The Communists who rule in Beijing know very well that when the government loses the support of the people, when conditions worsen, and when discontent flares, regimes can be replaced. That is how they came to hold power. The ongoing crisis of legitimacy for the Beijing autocrats is escalating in visibility. Once again land seizures and pollution seem to have sparked rioting, which has met with police violence. Last summer it was Dongzhan Village which received international attention. Now, it is Panlong Village, again in Guangdong Province near Hong Kong, where the regime is attepmting to control news coverage of its people in revolt against the arbitrary rule seizing their land and polluting their environment.

He relays a New York Times story, but the doesn't work for me. My story on December 11, 2005

US and Japan lead in innovation

The Europeans want to be innovative, but they are behind and not catching up.

Scandinavia is the best when it comes to innovation in the EU 25, but offers no competition to worldbeaters America and Japan, according to a new study. The EU's executive arm is concerned. The Nordic countries are the most innovative in Europe but most of the economically embattled continent is failing to catch up with the United States and Japan, the European Commission said Thursday.

Source: Deutch-Weille This isn't creative writing, but the multiple facets required for leadership in technical products - an ares Europe has long taken pride in. It includes 26 criteria such as research spending, access to venture capital and the number of trademark registrations.

Most of the EU's older member states were lumped in the middle of the ranking neither falling behind nor making much progress advancing up the innovation ladder. Europe's poorer eastern countries, many of which joined the EU in 2004, put in a mixed performance. The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia were seen catching up while Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey but also Spain were losing ground. But the commission warned that Europe was broadly not catching up with the United States and that action needed to taken to boost innovation. "Should the trend continue in terms of innovation in the 25 European Union member states the innovation gap we have been seeing in the last year between Europe and United States for example will not close," commission spokesman Gregor Kreuzhuber told journalists.

Japan is doing very well. And when you aren't getting close to the goal you are tempted to move the goal closer: "Last year, EU members states watered down an ambitious programme to boost the EU's competitiveness after they consistently failed to meet the original targets when it was launched in 2000 in Lisbon with the aim to make the EU the most competitive economy in the world."

Cisneros Probe Stirred Worries Of Democrats

The Clinton scandals continue. Clinton's Secretary of Houseing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros paid a mistress to cover up their relationship. When the lying began the web of deceit grew and grew. Clinton's Attorney General Janet Reno "didn't see any problem" when crimes that reflected on her boss were in question. What poor vision she had. And she didn't find anything on Cisneros. An independent counsel was hired - David Barrett. He found a lot. His report says that high Clinton administration officials tried to block his report. They moved the San Antonio regional office of the IRS, then closed it. And much more. Democrats in the Senate have succeeded in blocking the parts of Barrett's report that link to the White House - to Bill and Hillary. What is left of the report will be released on January 19. R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. and BRIAN McGUIRE in the New York Sun have the story today. How about Henry Cisneros? He pleaded guilty of a misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI and paid a $10,000 fine. He was pardoned by President Clinton on Mr. Clinton's final day in office, though he was not a fugitive at the time. The Washington Post has a page of links to key stories on the Cisneros probe. Hat tip to "Webweaver" who posted this at Lucianne.com. I am departing my normal focus on growth and opportunity today because I am disgusted that those being investigated can hamper the investigation of a US independent counsel. And that the Clinton machine is succeeding in preventing the release of what David Barrett found.

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers

I am joining in the following pledge: We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street. We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members. But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process. As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future. Signed, N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com Kevin Aylward, Wizbang! La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber's Corner Lorie Byrd / DJ Drummond , Polipundit Beth Cleaver, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom Stephen Green, Vodkapundit John Hawkins, Right Wing News John Hinderaker, Power Line Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO James Joyner, Outside The Beltway Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com Ed Morrissey, Captain's Quarters Scott Ott, Scrappleface The Anchoress, The Anchoress John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!! See the original at The Truth Laid Bear

US Companies Get Productivity from Info Technology

Productivity in US business has been racing ahead of Europe. And the reason seems to be the use of information technology. The HAL R. VARIAN in the New York Time reports:

Growth in output per hour in the third quarter of 2005 was a striking 5.4 percent. In fact, output per hour has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 3.5 percent over the last three years. These are large numbers by historical terms. From 1974 to 1995, productivity grew at around 1.4 percent a year. Productivity growth in the United States accelerated to about 2.5 percent a year from 1995 to 2000. Since then, productivity has grown at a bit over 3 percent a year, with the last few years looking particularly strong. Unlike the United States, European countries have not seen the same surge in productivity growth in the last 10 years.

What's the difference?

Nowadays, most economists agree that information technology is a significant part of the explanation for the post-1995 productivity surge in the United States. In fact, when you look at productivity statistics by industry, those industries that make and use information and communications technologies intensively in the United States have accounted for the bulk of the productivity growth, with other industries showing little change. The story is quite different in the European Union. In the late 1990's, when productivity growth in the United States was accelerating, productivity growth in Europe was static. But Europe has access to the same information technology that the United States does, at more or less the same prices. Why didn't those countries get the same increase in productivity?

We were telling school people about this in the early 1990s. That businesses didn't get a pay back from computerizing unless they changed the way they did their work. And where they spend the money.

Furthermore, the authors suggest that information technology capital may be a big part of the productivity difference: American companies in Britain use a whopping 40 percent more information technology capital per worker than the average company. Not only did American companies use more information technology, they used it more effectively. According to the economists, "U.S. firms appeared to simply get more productivity out of the same amount of I.T. (this was not true of non-I.T. capital)."

The report by Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics is here.

Good economic news spun wrong by NYT

There is continuing good news on the economy. But the New York Times keeps spinning it negatively. Don Luskin has made a second career pointing out economist Paul Krugman's misuse of facts in his NYT columns. Now he has discovered that a very respected financial analyst is fed up with the NYT - Ed Yardeni. Luskin quotes Yardeni:

It is obvious that the folks at The New York Times don't like the Bush Administration. They are entitled to their opinions which should be based on facts. Otherwise, they run the risk of losing their credibility just as CBS anchorman Dan Rather did because he let his dislike of Bush cloud his journalistic objectivity. My peeve is with the Times' reporting and editorializing on the latest employment numbers released on Friday: (1) In their story on the employment numbers, they felt obliged to observe "that Bush's policies were not the primary reason for the economy's strength." (2) In their January 7 editorial titled "An Anemic Jobs Recovery," they focused on December's "paltry" increase and didn't mention the big upward revision to November. (3) Nor did they mention that first-reported employment data has a long history of upward revisions as shown in the Alert below. (4) Instead, the Times whined that only 2 million jobs were created in 2005, 1.5 million less than at this point in the last recovery. The longer-term comparisons are even "uglier." Job growth in the current expansion "is the worst by far of the four comparable economic upturns since 1960..." There is no mention in the editorial that the jobless rate was only 4.9% in December, matching the 4-year lows hit in August and October.

If respected Wall Street analysts are warning their customers to not believe what they read in the NYT a new day is arriving.

New 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in/on Hawaii

Some of my favorite interests in one of my very favorite places. 'Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii at Hilo will open on February 23. Hilo is on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its name is Hawaii, but that's confusing so they call it "Big Island." For anyone interested in earth science the Big Island is hog heaven - Kilauea volcano has been active since 1983 only missing a few days in 22 years. And the summit of Mauna Kea is the best site in the world for telescopes, both visual and radio and there might be some other classification. You can't just drive to the top, but you can get there on a tour. The Honolulu Star Bulletin has the story:

When the $28 million, 42,000-square-foot 'Imiloa center opens to the public on Feb. 23, people will see more than the sun. They'll see the whole universe, and they'll see it in 3-D, said center Director Peter Giles. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan will have a permanent computer simulation, viewable with 3-D glasses, showing the origin of the universe in the big bang 13 billion years ago and continuing to the present day. Looking at the universe is what astronomy is about. But in the 1990s an awareness grew that astronomers were busy looking at the sky but failing to look at their feet -- at the summit land of Mauna Kea where 13 observatories stand. Awareness also grew that astronomers were looking back 13 billion years to the origins of the universe but failing to look back 2,000 years to the origins of Hawaiian culture. An idea was born to develop a Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center to show how the two cultures relate, how Polynesians from the South Pacific used their voyaging canoes to follow stars to Hawaii and how astronomers use their giant telescopes to follow paths of twinkling light into the distant past.

The 'Imiloa web site My web page on the Big Island.

Good news - Americans' net worth

The net worth of American households is growing. Did you hear that on the news? Jerry Bowyer reports at National Review Online "Would you judge the status of someone’s personal finances without even looking at his assets? Probably not. But that hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from obsessing over the level of debt of the average American family, which they only look at in a vacuum, completely ignoring the growth of family net worth. "According to the Federal Reserve’s “Flow of Funds” report, released last month, the net worth of the American household (measured as assets minus liabilities) stands at a robust $51 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “T.” This isn’t just higher than last year (or the year before that; or the year before that). It’s almost twice what it was in 1995 and over 27 percent higher than it was in 1998 — right in the middle of Clinton’s “economic miracle.” "In other words, American households may be borrowing more today, but they’re acquiring even more assets. And thanks to low interest rates they’re borrowing in an environment that is particularly friendly to borrowing. "The result of all this is the highest level of household wealth in our nation’s history." Update The quote says $51 trillion in net worth. That is assets minus liabilities. It is GOOD news. (As it says.) (I am not receiving commenters email address, so I can't respond directly.)

Abramoff and our Democrats

The Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal involves Republicans most directly. But a lot of Democrats were happy to receive money from groups, especially Indian tribes, connected with him. I wrote an item on this about our Washington politicians and posted it at Sound Politics. We get a bit more traffic there than at this little personal blog.

2005 Best and Worst

The Best political moment of 2005: Iraqi voters waving purple fingers - JOHN J. MILLER of the National Review Online Best political move - US The Republicans in the US Congress saw a bluff and called it. Congressman Jack Murtha - a Marine retiree - called on the "US to pull out of Iraq immediately. The Republicans forced an immediate vote on Murtha's pull out. The Democrats stampeded to vote against their Marine hero and his pull out. Even Murtha voted against himself! Worst political trick by political ally Alaska's Rep. Young and Senator Ted Stevens trying to stealour tax dollars for a bridge to Ketchikan's airport and "Don Young's highway." Stevens promised to "be carried out of here" if he lost his projects. He half lost. He lost the earmarks for these specific projects, but not the huge money they cost. Democrat's most proud political victory of 2005: "We killed the Patriot Act," boasted Minority Leader Harry Reid. He can have his victory. But I know I can't trust the Democrats with our national security. IF they are smart they are trying to turn this around right now. No, they so are focused on defeating Bush that they don't care about security. Worst trick by the media # 1 NY Times discovered that Bush listens to Al Qaeda phone calls. Because they are trying to kill us. And the former newspaper of record sat on the story for one year, so they could get the successful December election in Iraq off their front page. Media #2 - The near instantaneous politicization of the response to Hurricane Katrina. And of course now we know that almost every sensational story out of New ORleans was wrong - a rumor that the media didn't check out before broadcasting world-wide. Shame. Howard Dean highlight - just one of many - "...rich, white Republicans who never worked a day in their lives..." And he was referring to all Republicans, not just the 55 Republican Senators Just one more - "The US will lose in Iraq." He hopes we will lose. But we won't give up.