McGavick for US Senate

Even the liberal Seattle Times thinks Senator Maria Cantwell has done a poor job. They endorsed Mike McGavick for US Senate from Washington. He is very impressive. But am I surprised that they have very strange criteria for their endorsement? Been there.

In six years, Cantwell has grown somewhat in independence and influence, but not as much...

Yes, you have to go against your political party, especially a Republican.

To demonstrate his independence, McGavick has called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He also shows realistic thinking on a range of issues. On the Iraq war, McGavick wants to find a way to win and Cantwell wants to find a way not to lose.

They are off on a strange route again. No difference between winning and not losing? When asked about control of public spending, Cantwell restates her support of the line-item veto, a reform that would require a constitutional amendment and therefore isn't realistic, either. Her actual voting record has not been for restraint. True; she has been one of the biggest spenders. Their bottom line fortunately is competence.

McGavick, in contrast, showed at Safeco that he was able to take on big problems. We think he could make an innovative and influential senator for Washington.

Mrs. Gregoire earns an F

Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics points out that Mrs. Gregoire, who calls herself governor, earned an F for fiscal irresponsibility among the 50 states of the US. The list at Cato puts her near the bottom. But their narrative makes me sick, because it's true:

Christine Gregoire, one of the worst new governors in the nation, was elected in 2004 in one of the closest and most contentious elections in Washington history--a controversial Palm Beach-style recount made her the winner of the gubernatorial race by only 129 votes. Famous for being the lead negotiator in the $206 billion shakedown of cigarette companies known as the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement, Gregoire quickly took aim at state taxpayers upon entering office. She's raised multiple taxes already: the cigarette tax (by 42 percent), the gas tax (by 34 percent), the state's liquor tax (by $1.33 a gallon). And she resurrected the estate tax, too. Gregoire even helped the legislature overturn the law that required a supermajority to raise taxes in the future. All of this to fuel her spending binge, which expanded the general fund budget by more than 8 percent in fiscal 2006 alone. Tax activists have placed a repeal of the estate tax on the ballot in Washington, and Gregoire has already stated her opposition. In the meantime, she was quick to propose new ways to spend the $1.6 billion budget surplus this year. With a legislature controlled by her own party, perhaps the only check on Gregoire's big-government ambitions in years to come will be the usually feisty tax activists in the state.

Good for our tax activists. Tim Eyman, let's keep after them.

Alternate Fuel - Cellulose!

Husks, stalks and leaves have cellulose for their structure. Cellulose has defied attempts to break it down for uses such as fuel. But now researchers are having success. But cellulose has other important uses. It is left in the field to reduce erosion and slowing the release of carbon dioxide. I am in favor of any fuel source that makes economic sense. The Seattle Times on Monday:

A federal Energy Department study concluded that cellulose plant materials could help renewables supply 30 percent of the nation's liquid fuel needs by 2030. But tapping farm fields to produce both energy and food crops also creates new risks for agriculture and the environment. Some cellulose materials — such as the corn harvest leftovers — already play an important role when returned to the soil. As they decay, they help fight erosion, improve the organic matter that is key to soil quality, and slow the release of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Persecution - Christian Pastor murdered in Indonesia

Christians are being persecuted - killed - in Indonesia. By the "religion of peace" - Islam. Monday, October 16: Palu, C Sulawesi (ANTARA News) - Reverend Irianto Kongkoli, secretary general of Central Sulawesi`s Christian church synod, was gunned down by an unidentified man here Monday morning, eyewitneses said. Eyewitnesses said Irianto, the reverend, was shot when he was about to buy building materials in Sinar Sakti shop on Monginsidi street in Palu subdistrict at 8:15 a.m. local time. "Suddenly a gunfire explosion was heard and the reverend collapsed with gunshot wound on his head" said a witness who spoke on the anonymity. The policemen from the Central Sulawesi district office and the Palu police precinct came to the site of the incident and cordoned of the place, the anonymous person said. Irianto and his wife were rushed to nearby Bala Keslamatan hospital on Wood Ward street, 500 meters away from the material building shop. Unfortunately, the reverend died afterwards. There was no official statement from the police but they directly searched for the perpetrators in Palu city. Persecuted Infidels in Indonesia is a blog covering the situation.

Oil price as low as $35

In Alaska they enjoy the windfall of oil revenues - so much that individuals pay no taxes; they receive a check from the state. So they watch the price of oil. And they don't like what they see now. Alaska Journal:

The current slide in crude oil prices could accelerate into a plunge to as low at $35 per barrel next year, ConocoPhillips' chief economist, Marianne Kau, told a group of economists in Anchorage Oct. 11. That's a sobering prospect for the next governor of the state - who will take office in early December - because a dip in oil prices, combined with declining North Slope production, could throw the state budget into a deficit again after two years of surpluses. .... Prices won't dive to $9 per barrel that Alaska saw in 1999, but they could go to $35 per barrel, Kau said. "Given the current slowdown in the economy and high inventories in the market, prices should logically be at $35 per barrel now," she said.

There is something new here ...

What has helped drive prices up is a huge flow of money coming into oil markets from commodity investment funds. These funds are likely to exit the market as prices slide, quickening the downturn, Kau said. "These new financial players are creating a lot of short-term price volatility.

Steve Forbes predicted this last year, but a bit quicker, like by now.

Russia's Dying Population

It's no fun. Their declining population is causing empty towns and stagnant economic nongrowth. The Boston Globe:

Russia is the only major industrial nation that is losing population. Its people are succumbing to one of the world's fastest-growing AIDS epidemics, resurgent tuberculosis, rampant cardiovascular disease, alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, suicide, and the lethal effects of unchecked industrial pollution. In addition, abortions outpaced births last year by more than 100,000.

``nezhiloye" -- depopulated

Antonina Makarova, 78, spends her days watching news and soap operas in her peeling wooden dacha, the only inhabited structure in two lanes of sagging cottages that once were a village. Her nearest neighbor, 80-year-old Maria Belkova, lives in adjacent Sosnovitsy, population 2. But Belkova can't hear anymore, and all in all, Makarova finds the television better company. ``All the houses here were filled with people. There was a cheese factory. But now everyone else has died. God has taken care of them, and he's still making me suffer," Makarova said. ``Even the thieves have disappeared." The Tver region, along the upper reaches of the Volga River 130 miles north of Moscow, is dotted with more than 1,400 villages such as Kstinovo marked ``nezhiloye" -- depopulated. Since 1989, the number of people here has shrunk by about 250,000 to about 1.4 million, with deaths outnumbering births more than 2 to 1.

Madeline Albright toasting North Korea's Kim - video

It's not funny. It's not tragic. It's just stupid. President Clinton sent Honorable Secretary of State Madeline Albright to North Korea to show Kim Jong Il how nice we are. She gave him a Michael Jordan autographed basketball. Clinton continued to send him nuclear material for his power plants - peaceful, you know. So they hoped. They hoped against all experience. Michelle Malkin's Hot Air has a very funny video about Albright's folly. And success of the tactic of being nice to your enemies, so they will like you. It's not tragic; it's stupid. Hot Air Zucker video YouTube is the host site for the video. They blocked access to it, by marking it "inapproprite," though it did not contain objectionable material, except for Clinton worshipers. World Net Daily has the story:

The popular video-sharing YouTube site, which is being purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, limited access to a political ad that mocks the Clinton administration's policy on North Korea, but contains no profanity, nudity or other factors generally thought objectionable. The company announced a "flagging" policy change just this week, about the time that a controversial spoof by Republican filmmaker David Zucker depicting former Secretary of State Madeline Albright as a cheerleader for Islamic terrorists started appearing with a warning page in front, requiring verification that a viewer is 18 before the video will appear.

Watch government spending

Despite "Bridge to Nowhere" Senator Ted Stevens, you can now see where the big bucks go. Who gets it, etc. At Fed Spending.org - Built by OMBwatch.org with funding from Sunshine Foundation. Read about Senator Ted's dirty dealings at The Captain's. He is unbelievably bad. If Alaska had an honest senator they might get what they want, such as oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. All they get now is favors for Ted's family and friends.

Sen. Ted Stevens, considered the Republican king of pork, just before the pre-election congressional recess killed a requirement for the Defense Department to evaluate unauthorized earmarks imposed by members of Congress on the Pentagon. Freshman Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had won Senate passage of the ''report card'' as part of the Defense appropriations bill. The evaluation would show that the military really does not want most of the estimated $8 billion in earmarks added by Congress this year. However, Stevens succeeded in stripping the reform from the final version of the bill before it was signed by President Bush. Coburn intends to try to pass the report card as a freestanding bill during the lame-duck session after the election.

Putin critic murdered

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has continuously tightened his control of the government. He has shut down independent newspapers and television stations. He has arrested independent businessmen. A few brave independent journalists have been digging into areas connected to Putin's past as head of the KGB secret police. One of them, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot and murdered as she walked into her apartment building. Reuters reports:

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow, police said. "According to initial information she was killed by two shots when leaving the lift. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift. Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya. "The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don't see any other motive for this terrible crime," said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, a deputy editor of the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked. Moscow chief prosecutor Yuri Syomin told reporters at the crime scene, a nine-story Soviet-era apartment building in central Moscow, that he was treating the death as murder. Paramedics took Politkovskaya's body, wrapped in a white sheet, out of the building and put it into an ambulance. A middle-aged woman laid flowers at the doors of the building and stood with her head against the wall, crying. Politkovskaya's silver Lada, filled with supermarket shopping bags, was parked outside the apartment block. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a shareholder in Politkovskaya's newspaper Novaya Gazeta, called the killing a "savage crime." "It is a blow to the entire democratic, independent press," Gorbachev told Interfax news agency. "It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us." In the days before her death, Politkovskaya had been working on a story about torture in Chechnya, which was expected to be published on Monday, her newspaper said. DISTRUSTED PUTIN The rebel province has been a constant headache for the Kremlin. Russia sent troops in 1994 to crush an insurgency but after 12 years of bloodshed and the devastation of the province's capital Grozny, sporadic attacks continue. Politkovskaya was a fierce critic of Putin, whom she accused of stifling freedom and failing to shake off his past as a KGB agent. "I dislike him for ... his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies ... for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as president," she wrote in her book "Putin's Russia" which was published overseas but not in Russia.

More at Michelle Malkin's web site.

Carbon Offset Fraud

A good idea in theory is welcomed by rip-off men. The European plan to allow trading of carbon credits is off to a rough start. First, everyone cheated, except the British, I have heard. Everyone grossly overstated the offsets that they had - rain forests and such. Second, people are selling the 21st Century's Brooklyn Bridge. The Guardian in the UK:

.... Francis Sullivan, a carbon offset expert who led attempts by banking group HSBC to neutralise its emissions, said: "There will be individuals and companies out there who think they're doing the right thing but they're not. I am sure that people are buying offsets in this unregulated market that are not credible. I am sure there are people buying nothing more than hot air." The carbon offset market worth about £60m worldwide, up from £20m in 2005. Within three years it is expected to top £300m, as a growing number of organisations and companies race to declare themselves "carbon neutral". Mr Sullivan said: "There are sharks out there who are literally just trying to get money off you. People were offering to sell us large chunks of the rainforest in Papua New Guinea. I don't think it was theirs to sell." Concern is growing that the demand for offsets is allowing projects to claim savings they do not deserve, which are then sold on as "carbon credits". A tree planting or windfarm project reckoned to save up 30,000 tonnes of carbon could sell an equivalent number of carbon credits for about £3 each. To provide a true carbon saving, the developers of such projects must demonstrate that it would not have happened without the investment raised by selling such credits, called additionality. The saving is then worked out against what would have happened, the baseline.

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Senator Inhofe pushes back at O'Brien's use of fiction

Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma took CNN's Miles O'Brien to task for advocating certainty of human-caused global warming and basing his case on a fictional movie! In a Senate press release:

Senator Inhofe also questioned O’Brien about his 1992 CNN report regarding fears of a coming ice age. O’Brien responded by citing the 2004 fictional Hollywood global disaster movie, “The Day After Tomorrow” to back up his science reporting. “This is "The Day After Tomorrow" scenario that we're talking about,” O’Brien said after being confronted by Senator Inhofe on his climate reporting.

Inhofe also pushed back on accusations that his position is the result of donations by oil companies:

But when O’Brien interviewed global warming alarmist James Hansen on several different occasions most recently in August 2006, he failed to inform CNN viewers about Hansen’s partisan funding from Teresa Heinz Kerry’s left-wing Heinz Foundation, or Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of Democrat John Kerry for President. O'Brien also failed to inform CNN viewers of Hansen's partisan ties to former Vice President Al Gore and Hansen’s concession that the use of "extreme scenarios" was appropriate to drive the public's attention to global warming.

And he reminded O'Brien that 12 years ago he was alarmist about global cooling.

INHOFE: And I wonder also, Miles, it wasn't long ago -- you've got to keep everyone hysterical all the time. You were the one that said another ice age is coming just 12 years ago. O'BRIEN: I said that? I didn't say that. [....] INHOFE: You said, in talking about a shift that was coming -- you said, "If the Gulf Stream were to shift again, the British Isles could be engulfed in polar ice and Europe's climate could become frigid. [From CNN Transcript titled Scientists Research the Rapidity of the Ice Age dated December 19, 1992.]" That's another scary story.

Good work, Senator. Keep it up.

Speechless in Seattle

George Will highlights Washington's censoring speech by court order in Newsweek. He is not covering the State Public Disclosure Commission's announcement Thursday that the wrong people are financing campaigns. See Interest groups have taken over elections, panel fears. They are just warming up; watch them. No. He is talking about the successful efforts last year by several cities to shut up talk radio hosts when they threaten tax revenues. Successful? Yes. After the judge ruled that their speech counted as capaign contributions John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur were able to keep talking because I-912 was an issue, not a candidate. There is no spending limit for issues (Will says there is during the last 3 weeks), but there is for candidates. So talk-show hosts are prevented from enthusiastically covering a candidate like Carlson and Wilbur did I-912. And he certainly slowed them down; a court order against one tends to cause caution. Will:

SEATTLE—As the comprehensive and sustained attack on Americans' freedom of political speech intensifies, this city has become a battleground. Campaign-finance "reformers," who advocate ever-increasing government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of political speech, always argue that they want to regulate "only" money, which, they say, leaves speech unaffected. But here they argue that political speech is money, and hence must be regulated. By demanding that the speech of two talk-radio hosts be monetized and strictly limited, reformers reveal the next stage in their stealthy repeal of the First Amendment.

And

This is the America produced by "reformers" led by John McCain. The U.S. Supreme Court, in affirming the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold speech restrictions, advocated deference toward elected officials when they write laws regulating speech about elected officials and their deeds. This turned the First Amendment from the foundation of robust politics into a constitutional trifle to be "balanced" against competing considerations—combating the "appearance of corruption," or elevating political discourse or something. As a result, attempts to use campaign regulations to silence opponents are becoming a routine part of vicious political combat.

Campaign 2006: The Republicans Have a Secret Weapon

Everyone knows the Democrats will win the US House of Representatives. "Everyone knows..." Time Magazine took a deeper look. Mike Allen and James Carny report:

But top Republican officials maintain an eerie, Zen-like calm. They insist that the prospects for their congressional candidates in November's midterms have never been as bad as advertised and are getting better by the day. Those are party operatives and political savants whose job it is to anticipate trouble. But much of the time they seem so placid, you wonder whether they know something. They do. What they know is that just six days after George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, his political machine launched a sophisticated, expensive and largely unnoticed campaign aimed at maintaining G.O.P. majorities in the House and Senate. If that campaign succeeds, it would defy history and political gravity, both of which ordain that midterm elections are bad news for a lame-duck President's party, especially when the lame duck has low approval ratings.

Their report gets into how the Republicans are doing it.

In the off year of 2001, the creators of the 72-Hour program tested it in odd, lower-profile contests, including court races in Pennsylvania. The Bushies picked clusters of precincts where they quietly tried their new methods, then compared those with similar precincts where the campaigns did things the more traditional way. Those experiments helped Republicans develop a handful of precepts that constitute the party's playbook for this fall: .... Low tech can be better Caller ID, TiVo, cable channels and satellite radio all make it harder to reach voters than it was just a few years ago, increasing the importance of person-to-person appeals, the hallmark of old-fashioned, grassroots campaigns that used to connote an amateur or a low budget. "You clearly have to have TV ads," says White House political-affairs director Sara Taylor, "but for a little less TV, you can buy a whole lot of pizzas and phone lines and salaries for young men and women right out of college" to make phone calls, knock on doors and recruit and manage volunteers.

But, of course, they end on a negative note.

How to interview a dictator

Newsweek's Lally Weymouth did it right. While interviewing Iran's Ahminajad she asked him four times about his intent to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. And he weaves and bobs each time. He won't back up his own public statements. But shame on Tim Pagett in Time. Rich Karlgaard, editor of Forbes Magazine, at his blog Digital Rules:

At one point, Chávez tells Padgett, "Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ--who I think was the first socialist--only socialism can really create a genuine society." A remarkable assertion! Padgett's challenge? Nothing. Zippo. Another Chávez whopper: "If you think Chávez is intimidating free expression, just watch television there--my God, 'devil' is the least of things the opposition is allowed to call me on the air." Padgett's follow-up? Nothing again. What a wimp.

Uncompetitive Quebec

Quebec, Canda (the province) is not attracting foreign investment, due to high costs. Taxes are high, pay is high. Plus labor has a tight hold of union membership, which reduces flexibility. The Globe and Mail reports.

Asked 12 years ago if the province is becoming more globally competitive, 70 per cent of the respondents answered Yes, and 30 per cent said No. Asked the same question in the 2006 survey, 33 per cent replied Yes, while 40 per cent answered No and 27 per cent stated they did not know.

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Hope for Electric Cars

An unknown company has announced it has developed a new electricity storage device that will make "A four-passenger sedan will drive like a Ferrari." CNN Money reports:

Forget hybrids and hydrogen-powered vehicles. EEStor, a stealth company in Cedar Park, Texas, is working on an "energy storage" device that could finally give the internal combustion engine a run for its money -- and begin saving us from our oil addiction. "To call it a battery discredits it," says Ian Clifford, the CEO of Toronto-based electric car company Feel Good Cars, which plans to incorporate EEStor's technology in vehicles by 2008. EEStor's device is not technically a battery because no chemicals are involved. In fact, it contains no hazardous materials whatsoever. Yet it acts like a battery in that it stores electricit

Take this with a grain of salt. What is their track record? An electric car call the Zenn that goes the speed of a moped and take hours to charge.

EEStor is tight-lipped about its device and how it manages to pack such a punch. According to a patent issued in April, the device is made of a ceramic powder coated with aluminum oxide and glass. A bank of these ceramic batteries could be used at "electrical energy stations" where people on the road could charge up.

Despite long claims on short experience we have high hopes for alternate energy sources. Though this is not a source of energy, but energy storage, which is necessary also.

DDT can be used to save lives

The worldwide ban on DDT has been lifted. The ban killed tens of millions of people, mostly pregnant women and young children to malaria. Betsy McKay in the Wall Street Journal on 15 Sept 2006:

The World Health Organization, in a sign that widely used methods of fighting malaria have failed to bring the catastrophic disease under control, plans to announce today that it will encourage the use of DDT, even though the pesticide is banned or tightly restricted in much of the world. The new guidelines from the United Nations public-health agency support the spraying of small amounts of DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on walls and other surfaces inside homes in areas at highest risk of malaria. The mosquito-borne disease infects as many as 500 million people a year and kills about a million. Most victims are in sub-Saharan Africa and under the age of 5.

Steven Milloy at Fox news analyzes the announcement:

Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement, however, is the terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead — mostly pregnant women and children under the age of 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion dollars in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.

Who did it?

It was, of course, then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge’s ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment. Ruckleshaus never attended any of the agency’s hearings on DDT. He didn’t read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision. None of this is surprising given that, in a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus said that EPA procedures had been streamlined so that DDT could be banned. Ruckleshaus was also a member of — and wrote fundraising letters for — the EDF. The DDT ban solidified Ruckelshaus’ environmental credentials, which he has surfed to great success in business, including stints as CEO of Browning Ferris Industries and as a director of a number of other companies including Cummins Engine, Nordstrom, and Weyerhaeuser Company. Ruckelshaus currently is a principal in a Seattle, Wash., -based investment group called Madrona Venture Group.

Is there justice for what Ruckleshaus did?

Corporate wrongdoers — like WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski — were sentenced to prison for crimes against mere property. But what should the punishment be for government wrongdoers like Ruckleshaus who, apparently for the sake of his personal environmental interests, abused his power and affirmatively deprived billions of poor, helpless people of the only practical weapon against malaria?

PATH is a Seattle-area nonprofit to bring about solutions to health problems. They are encouraging and funding alternatives to DDT to combat malaria and they recognize the effectiveness of DDT.

While DDT is effective, there are alternatives, including a class of insecticides called synthetic pyrethroids, some of which are used to treat bed nets, says Kent Campbell, program director for MACEPA, a malaria control program at PATH, a Seattle nonprofit organization, and a former malaria branch chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The political debate over DDT impedes its effectiveness in preventing the disease, he adds. "It's extremely effective when used – as long as the discussion is not moved to pro or contra DDT," he adds.

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Hugo Chavez calls Bush "the Devil" to Applause

Hugo Chavez the president of Venezuela Wednesday at the United Nations in New York City called President Bush "the Devil", Associated Press reports:

"The devil came here," Chavez said. "Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of." He then made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if praying and looked up to the ceiling. Chavez's words drew tentative giggles at times from the audience, but also some applause.

The translator just loved repeating his words. She just gushed in emphasis. Chavez was elected president, but he has dismantled Venezuela's constitution to the point that he is now the dictator and cannot be replaced in an election. He is providing the finances for Fidel Castro to spread Communism in the Americas. And he is taking advantage of the poverty of other countries by giving aid to them to increase his influence there, such as Jamaica (via SFGate):

In Jamaica, Chavez has given a $274 million loan for a highway and sports complex and $65 million for a refinery.

An oil industry analyst says such projects make no sense:

"These projects make no economic sense, but they are part of his political megalomania, so normal economic laws don't apply," said Alberto Quiros, an oil industry analyst in Caracas and former president of Royal Dutch Shell's Venezuela operations. "Chavez is willing to pay any price."

No Questions Chavez cut his New York visit short after the speech and skipped a press conference scheduled for Thursday. Why no questions, Mr. Chavez? You can support Chavez's thuggish incursions by buying Citgo Gas; Venezuela owns it. Update Senator Harkin of Iowa agrees with Mr. Chavez via Radio Iowa:

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a democrat, today defended Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's United Nations speech in which Chavez called President George Bush the devil. Harkin said the comments were "incendiary", then went on to say, "Let me put it this way, I can understand the frustration, ah, and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush's policies."

Thanks for telling us, Tom.

Environmental groups are unwittingly destroying forests

In the Washington Times:

Environmental groups are unwittingly destroying forests and killing wildlife with lawsuits. Ironically, they do so while claiming to save them. Activists again file lawsuits to stop forest management, and the government pays them to do so. They craft settlements that pay them handsomely with taxpayer money so they can live well and file the next lawsuit. No wonder they are inflexible. The latest example uses the California spotted owl and Pacific fisher in arguments supporting a lawsuit to stop restoration thinning in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service haven't listed either species as threatened or endangered. These activists claim spotted owls nest in dense forests, so no management should be allowed anywhere the owl might one day live. But, they neglect to mention owls also nest and thrive in managed forests. They ignore the fact owls have to eat, and their prey live mainly in young forests.

And their actions cause conditions that allow wild fires:

Unfortunately, legal action has blocked common-sense thinning to restore forests to their natural diversity and resistance to catastrophic wildfire. Already, many California public forests have grown dangerously overcrowded with 10 to 20 times more trees than is natural. The Giant Sequoia National Monument is near the top of the crowded forest list. It already burned once, and it is certain to burn again. In 2002, the McNally fire blackened 151,000 acres in and around the Sequoia National Monument, coming within a mile of the Packsaddle Grove of giant sequoias. Without active management, it is only a matter of time before another major wildfire hits, possibly destroying all 38 sequoia groves in the monument. Rather than protecting forests and wildlife with lawsuits, activists condemn them to destruction. Massive wildfires move so fast that flames can overtake animals like deer, bears and fishers before they escape. Streams boil and fish die. Ash fills burrows and suffocates ground dwellers. Smoke inhalation kills most animals before the flames reach them. In New Mexico's Los Alamos Fire, 90 percent of the Mexican spotted owl's habitat was lost. Between 1999 and 2002, the U.S. Forest Service identified 11 California spotted owl-nesting sites as lost to wildfire. In 2002, the Biscuit Fire destroyed tens of thousands of acres of spotted owl habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California, including 49 known nesting sites.

The author Thomas Bonnicksen has studied California forests, including the sequoia forest, for more than 30 years. He has published numerous scientific papers on the sequoias and he is the author of "America's Ancient Forests" (John Wiley, 2000), which includes a section on the sequoia forest. Mr. Bonnicksen is a Texas A&M University professor emeritus of forest science, University of California-Davis visiting professor, and a member of the advisory board of the Forest Foundation.

Alaska!

I just got back from a week offline in Alaska. What a great place. Just driving from Anchorage to the next population center to the North (northeast actually) goes for over 20 miles past 3,000-plus-foot mountains rising from sea level. And it gets much better as you approach Mt. McKinley and Denali National Park by highway or train. Denali National Park and Mt. McKinley K2 Aviation (Rust's) has flights to and - at great expense - over McKinley. McKinley Creekside Cabins - at mile 224 on the Parks HIghway, about 12 miles south of the Park entrance. Nice location with great mountains across the highway, though they don't show them on their website. Prince William Sound - We drove from Anchorage through the 2.5 mile single-lane tunnel (an experience) to Whittier for a 5-hour cruise with Major Marine Cruises. We saw bald eagles, Live web cameras - List - I can't link directly; click on" McKinley Park "in this list. It's in the Southeast section if you get the list of quadrants Portage Glacier is a 50-mile drive SE of Anchorage at the entrance to the tunnel to Whittier. Looks pretty good, eh? Active Alaska volcanos - Mt. Augustine webcam from its island. It's also visible from Homer 75 miles across Cook Inlet.

Others - The current active volcanos are at the southwest entrance to Cook Inlet and are very remote.

Offline - I could have been online. McKinley Creekside, which is remote from remote Denali Park, has internet access in the front office. Even deep in Denali Park at Toklat, which is mile 53 on the bus line (no private vehicles allowed), employees have internet access, a friend tells us.

Who hates ABC's "The Path to 9/11"?

The Clinton machine can't stand the light. Previewers tell us that the series to be shown on September 10 and 11 on ABC portrays Sandy "In-His-Pants" Berger as indecisive, Secretary of State Madeline Albright as misguided and CIA chief George Tenet as ineffective. That sounds about right. So there is little argument that the Hollywood types who made this got it, if not perfect, in the ball park. But it doesn't advance Bill Clinton's legacy as the likeable president. His pretty people will stand for nothing short of full-throated praise. After all, 9/11 is about Bill, not the victims, not the threat to our security. It's about Bill. Hugh Hewitt has an excellent article at TownHall.com.

Incomes Unequal, but much higher

The hand wringing about income inequality in the United States is a red herring in the truest sense. It is a false issue intended to divert attention. The poorer people in the United States are at the same level as those in the egalitarian paradise of Finland, which has the lowest income inequality. Tim Worstall at TCSDaily shows us:

In the USA the poor get 39% of the US median income and in Finland (and Sweden) the poor get 38% of the US median income. It's not worth quibbling over 1% so let's take it as read that the poor in America have exactly the same standard of living as the poor in Finland (and Sweden). Which is really a rather revealing number don't you think? All those punitive tax rates, all that redistribution, that blessed egalitarianism, the flatter distribution of income, leads to a change in the living standards of the poor of precisely ... nothing. Such may lead us to a conclusion that the EPI probably wouldn't like: If we accept (as I do) that we do, indeed, need to have a social safety net, and that we have a duty to provide for those incapable or unlucky enough to be unable to do so for themselves, we need to set some level at which such help is offered. The standard of living of the poor in a redistributionist paradise like Finland (or Sweden) seems a fair enough number to use and the USA provides exactly that. Good, the problem's solved. We've provided -- both through the structure of the economy and the various forms of taxation and benefits precisely what we should be -- an acceptable baseline income for the poor. No further redistribution is necessary and we can carry on with the current tax rates and policies which seem, as this report shows, to be increasing US incomes faster than those in other countries and boosting productivity faster as well.

So the poorer people in the US are at the same level as Finland, but everyone else is higher - much higher! So take your choice: move to Finland and be lower income but equal or to the US and have the chance to get ahead - way ahead. Worstall also shows that the data from the liberal Progressive Policy Institute show that the US, as well as being ahead, is moving faster:

Things are actually looking pretty good for the US economy, then -- wealthier to start with, getting richer faster and productivity growth is also highest in the USA, meaning that this trend is only likely to continue.

Via Michael Barone. Follow that link and have your screen filled with pop-ups. Don't.

Welfare reform worked and still does

President Clinton vetoed welfare reform passed by Congress - twice. Then the Republicans passed it again and he signed it and claimed credit for it. Ten years later it has been a rare Washington success. Poverty among black dropped over 1/3 after being about the same for over 25 years. Poverty among children dropped substantially for all racial groups. The economic boom gets some credit, but not all. Washington really changed the rules and people responded. Robert Samuelsom reports at RealClearPolitics:

The 1996 law replaced Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) -- traditional welfare -- with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Congress created AFDC in 1935 as part of the landmark Social Security Act, which also included unemployment insurance and old-age assistance. In an era when few women worked, AFDC was intended to provide modest income support for widows and their children. By the 1980s, it had evolved into something else: guaranteed payments for single, often never-married mothers. Critics argued that the program bred dependence, weakened self-reliance and rewarded out-of-wedlock births. TANF set new rules. It eliminated the automatic entitlement to benefits. To qualify, mothers had to look for work, take job training or both (states set exact requirements). There was a general five-year lifetime limit on receiving benefits.

In a new book, "Work Over Welfare,'' Brookings Institution senior fellow Ron Haskins -- a Republican congressional staffer during the welfare debate -- cites much evidence of success.

Welfare caseloads have plunged. From August 1996 to June 2005, the number of people on welfare dropped from 12.2 million to 4.5 million. About 60 percent of mothers who left welfare got work. Their incomes generally rose. Many qualified for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, which subsidizes low-income workers. Finally, there were intangible benefits: work connections, self-respect. One lesson is that what people do for themselves often overshadows what government does for them. Since 1991, for example, the teen birthrate has dropped by a third. The mothers least capable of supporting children have had fewer of them. Welfare reform didn't single-handedly cause this. But it reinforced a broader shift in the social climate -- one emphasizing personal responsibility over victimhood.

Good for Congress! (with minor assistance by Bill.)

Rumor - US-Canada-Mexico Super State

Has President Bush committed to end the sovereignty of the US and to enable Mexico and Canada to join to form a single "super state"? Some people are convinced. Anthony Wile says he was doing research for a book and found this:

After a year “in the trenches” researching a number of such issues for my new book “High Alert” (High Alert Publishing,) I can tell you in all sincerity that it actually boils down to this: Believe it or not, America’s lawfully elected government is trying to effect the dissolution of the United States of America via a merger with Canada and Mexico. Hard to believe. Imagine if the New York Times carried a front page news article entitled Administration Seeks Merger of the United States with Mexico and Canada to Form SuperState – U.S. constitution abolished, new super government to be formed. Wouldn’t there be an outcry? Well, that’s what’s happening – all except the outcry.

News sources have covered the stories that make the pieces. Wile says he put the pieces together and found the "super state" picture. For example:

2001: Robert Pastor’s 2001 book, “Toward a North American Community,” calls for the creation of a North American Union — “Much of Pastor’s thinking appears aimed at limiting the power and sovereignty of the United States as we enter this new super-regional entity. Pastor has also called for the creation of a new currency which he has coined the ‘Amero,’ a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso.” The Plan to Replace the Dollar With the 'Amero' by Jerome R. Corsi, May 2006, www.Humaneventsonline.com April 2001: President George W. Bush signs Declaration of Quebec City — “This is a ‘commitment to hemispheric integration’ larded with favorite United Nations doubletalk such as ‘interdependent,’ ‘greater economic integration,’ and ‘sustainable development.’” Plan to Integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada, July 2005, www.Eagleforum.org

To his discredit his "links" do not point to each story, but to the top level of the source. Phylis Schlafly is covering this here is one story. I don't know. I will have to follow this.

The Generals' Children

Hebert Meyer at American Thinker 3/18/2005:

With each passing year, it becomes less likely that the order to shoot will be obeyed – which means it’s becoming more likely that revolutions against dictatorships will succeed. This is precisely what has already happened in Georgia and Ukraine. The question now is whether this also will happen in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, and in suddenly-volatile Kyrgyzstan. And will it happen – down the road a bit – in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and – still further down the road – perhaps in Russia, China and even in North Korea. There are several reasons why the generals are growing ever more reluctant to shoot into the crowds, including the presence of television cameras and the very real fear of one day being hauled before the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. But the overriding reason why the generals are growing reluctant to shoot is this: they don’t want to shoot their own children

Ending....

It is late at night in Damascus, or Teheran, or Cairo, or maybe even Moscow, and the general is sitting in his easy chair with his tie loosened, his shoes off and perhaps with a drink in his hand. He is exhausted, but he cannot sleep. All day he has been reading reports of growing unrest, of strikes, of demonstrations against the regime he is sworn to defend. It is getting out of hand, and sooner rather than later he will be given the order to shoot. Scenes of the resulting carnage will be played and re-played on televisions around the world – including the one in his wife’s bedroom. And even if the revolution is stopped, surely it will start again before long and even more blood will flow through the streets. The general finishes his drink, turns out the lamp beside his chair, walks slowly toward his bedroom – and realizes that his two teen-agers aren’t home…..

The perfect system has them waiting

The ideal of the government-can-do-anything crowd is Canada's socialized medicine system. Surely the Canadians agree. Not. The Globe and Mail reports:

Canadians feel they're waiting too long for health care: poll Canadian Press OTTAWA — A new survey suggests more than a third of Canadian households feel they were denied timely access to health care in the last three months. The exhaustive poll by Decima Research says 37 per cent of respondents feel someone in their household didn't get prompt treatment. The survey was wide-ranging — 3,000 respondents were asked whether someone in their home needed care, what kind of care they needed, and whether they felt they waited too long. About three-quarters of Canadian households needed some form of care in the last three months — and half of those reported they couldn't get it fast enough, the survey suggests.

OK. No system appears perfect to the people who rely on it. But 37% is substantial. And this summer, while on our annual vacation in Canada, a woman eagerly collected the contact information for the surgeon who operated on my wife's back. She is willing to travel to the US and pay out of her pocket, because she can't get the care she needs from Canada's system.

If you like high taxes

If you like high taxes then don't wait. Pay more today. Don't wait until tomorrow, double the taxes you pay today. Send your check to:

Gifts to the United States U.S. Department of the Treasury Credit Accounting Branch 3700 East-West Highway, Room 6D37 Hyattsville, MD 20782

Despite the millions who like high taxes they don't receive much. $2 million last year. Tim Worstall has more encouragement at TCS Daily.

Great News Hidden

You don't hear about the booming US economy. Because President Bush would get credit; the news media won't ever do that. Lawrence Kudlow reports:

Following a meeting with his economic advisors at Camp David, the president let 'er rip, stating that, "The foundation of our economy is solid, and it's strong. Because of the tax cuts we passed, American workers and families and small businesses are keeping more of the money they earn. And they're using that money to drive this economy of ours forward." Could he be any clearer?

And how about the distinguished economists? There's no counting how many recessions Times columnist Paul Krugman has predicted, but Mr. Bush was exactly right to point out 4% real GDP growth during the first half of 2006, brisk productivity rates, 5.5 million new jobs over the past three years, and a historically low 4.8% unemployment rate. Mr. Bush's critics say he's whistling past the graveyard. But the president rightly insists that, "The entrepreneurial spirit in the country is strong, and that's good for America."

Bureaucratic Princes Not Civil Servants

Myth: Civil Servants work to serve the public, but receive less pay and benefits than us private-sector workers. Fact: Public-sector work is much more secure than private. Life-time job security is available in many areas of work, not all. Fact: They receive much higher pay - much higher. Paul Jacob reports at Townhall.com:

Average compensation for federal civilian workers last year came to $106,579 — which Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute notes is "exactly twice the average compensation paid in the U.S. private sector." Throw out the benefits and the difference is less, but still a whopping 62 percent more for the federal worker. Of course, past figures used to bolster up the "underpaid civil servant" notion ignore benefits and consider just the nominal wage rate. But today's 62 percent difference is hard to ignore, isn't it? But face it: nominal wages aren't real wages; for a true comparison we must add on all the benefits, as Edwards does: "Federal workers receive generous health benefits during work and retirement, a pension plan with inflation protection, a retirement savings plan with generous matching contributions, large disability benefits, and union protections." Let me put a stop to transcribing here. There's a lot more, and I don't get paid enough to risk carpal tunnel.

His source is Chris Edwards of Cato Institute writing in the Washington Post.

Figuring in all the benefits, Edwards suggests that government employees should be paid less than private sector employees, not more.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis is the source for the original data.

Alaska Oil Production

Good news. New oil drilling and production areas are being opened in Alaska. This is opposed by the people who want the price of oil to keep climbing. The same people who talk about the US being self sufficient in energy. 2,000,000,000 barrels of oil: Lake Teshekpuk is on Alaska's remote North Slope. The Guardian (UK):

Government geologists believe at least 2 billion barrels of oil and huge amounts of natural gas lie beneath the coastal lagoons, river deltas and sedge grass meadows - an area also where caribou give birth to their calves and thousands of geese migrate each summer to molt. Within days, the Interior Department will open tracts in the lake area for leasing, with the winning bids to be announced in late September. The lake and its surrounding wetlands are within the federal National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), a vast area of 22 million acres set aside in 1923 by the federal government for its oil and gas resources. Unlike the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge farther to the east, the NPRA is acknowledged by all sides to be an area for energy development.

The area is limited:

Interior's Bureau of Land Management said that in its upcoming lease offering it will limit the surface areas within the nearly 500,000 acres to protect geese molting and caribou calving areas. The restrictions apply to roads and drilling pads, but not to elevated 30-inch pipelines.

All those opposed sell your car and cut off electricity where you live. Lake Teshekouk is at 70.35 N, 135.30 W. I have to learn how to include a link to Google Earth for it.

Encouraging investment for Retirement

The New York Times is against you receiving investment advice. Huh? The recently passed pension reform bill among many thing has several items aimed at encouraging individuals to save for retirement. Employers will be able to automatically enroll employees in the 401(k) plan. But the NYT discovered the Republican dirty trick. The managers of the 401(k)s will be able to give advice on investment. Good, I mean, bad, says the Times. Most people could use some advice. My observation in the 25 or so years my employer has had the 401(k) is that too many people park their money in a fixed-rate fund that is outperformed by the stock market in the long run. Not every year, but saving for retirement is the long run. They could use some investment advice. But the NYT warns:

But the bill also imperils savers by allowing for potentially biased investment advice. Previous law quite sensibly banned mutual fund companies from offering advice if their funds were among an employee’s 401(k) options, but it did not give employers a legally sanctioned way to provide such advice. For the new bill, some senators had proposed protections for employers to hire qualified independent advisers. Unfortunately, at the behest of securities industry campaign donors, the House majority leader, John Boehner, fought hard for basically lifting the ban, and won.

Donald Luskin's anonymous friend warns about investing in the NYT:

Here are three pieces of solid and unconflicted advice: 1. Don't buy the New York Times; the fools give it away online for free. 2. Do not take their advice -- it is bad and conflicted (meaning: it will fail you and they only have their political interests in mind) 3. Don't buy their stock; let Sulzberger throw inherited money down his drain.

And he has a good question:

Can the New York Times promote...the New York Times? Or, is that a conflict?

"Well, that's different," says Pinch Sulzberger. Sure is, it impacts his fortune. Let's play it straight. Novice investors receiving investment advice will result in more savings. This is good. Anonymous friend again:

If a company which sells investment products and services is free to promote them, more investment products and services will be sold. If this catches on, more individuals will invest in their own futures. Individually and collectively, this could be good. No guarantees, of course, because investments can fail. Some investments, such as shares of the New York Times Company, can perform very poorly. Losing more than half of your investment is worse even than risking a potential conflict from an advisor. Duh.

Who we are fighting

President Bush finally said it - Islamic fascists:

The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

From the White House. It is hard to focus your energy when you won't admit who you are fighting. We were not attacked by Islam; we were attacked by fascists within Islam. Fascist? That's terrible. Consider how Dictionary.com defines fascist: a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. Yes, centralized authority. Under a dictator. Stringent socioeconomic controls. Suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship. That is Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, Ghaddafi's Libya (current signs of improvement), Syria and North Korea. And it is what the British bombing conspiritors want to force on the United States. via Neal Boortz. He also describes the irresponsible response of the US Muslim PR machine. They pounce on President Bush. But they have nothing to say against terrorism.

Investing in oil exploration

Oil companies are investing in exploration and new technologies for extracting oil. You didn't see this on the TV news. They are investing MORE than the amount of their record profits. The Washington Times reports.

Big Oil's record profits attract attention and outrage, but an independent study has found that oil companies do exactly what economic textbooks say they should do with all that money: They invest it in oil exploration and development efforts that eventually should relieve pressure on prices. The top 20 U.S. and Canadian oil companies actually invested 50 percent more than they earned in the past 10 years in efforts to produce more oil ...

Wouldn't you try to perpetuate the business you managed? But they are challenged because the cheap opportunities are gone, so the costs are much higher.

... but adverse geopolitical developments conspired to give them fewer opportunities to expand production while fading oil fields in the U.S. and elsewhere forced them to spend substantially more just to maintain current production, according to the study by the Ernst & Young accounting firm.

"Reinvestment is under way, and it's strong," said Charles Swanson, an energy analyst at the firm, but "average costs to find and develop oil and gas reserves have tripled since 1997, while total reserve-replacement costs have more than doubled."

They invested more than their profits? Yes. 50% more:

The study found that the top companies -- including Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, among others -- took in a mind-numbing $5 trillion in revenue from sales of oil and related products between 1995 and 2005. After subtracting the cost of equipment, leases, labor and other operating expenses, the companies posted whopping profits of $336 billion. Over the same time span, however, the companies spent even more than they earned -- $550 billion -- on oil exploration and development. Some of them went deeply into debt to finance new ventures, especially during times of lean profits. Despite the massive sums of money oil companies spent trying to find more oil for the world's fuel-thirsty consumers, returns on investment over the past 10 years declined sharply because most existing oil fields in the West are in decline and the most promising new discoveries are not available for development, Ernst & Young found.

History for the Global-Warming Fundamentalists - 1930

Yes, this has been a hot summer. Cool Seattle had 3 days over 95F. That's proof that the Earth has heated up. And it's your fault and you have to get out of your car. And watch Albert Gore, Jr. race by in his limousine. If you ignore history, then go ahead and walk a mile or two to the bus. But history has other lessons for us. The hottest year since weather records have been kept in the United States was 1930. CNS News reports.

"From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above" in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. "That summer has never been approached, and it's not going to be approached this year." Between July 19 and Aug. 9 of that year, heat records were set on nine days and they remain unbroken more than three-quarters of a century later. "That's hot," added Michaels, who also serves as professor of natural resources at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

And has AlGore fotten the Dustbowl of the 1930s?

The summer of 1930 also marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th century. In 1934, dry regions stretched from New York and Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to California. A "dust bowl" covered about 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-1936.

The Earth might be getting warmer, but it is not conclusive. My complaint with Prince Albert is that he wants to blame me for it. And he wants to shut down the US economy while he keeps all the privileges he was born to. The Earth goes through cycles of warmer/cooler. There once were farms in Greenland. If we are now on a warmer cycle we cannot conclude that we caused it.

Trade - Signs of Life

Thomas Barnett is convinced that the failure of the Doha round of WTO talks is not fatal. As is often the case, when governments get all wrapped around and do nothing but pose and spend billions, the private sector and individual countries come through. On his blog:

... signs of Doha's revival already here (wow, that took long!). Not surprisingly, the private sector comes to the rescue (an underlying logic of Globalization IV (2001 and counting) is that the private sector is way ahead of the public sector (economics racing ahead of politics, technology races ahead of security)). Doha ultimately succeeds, just like Kyoto ultimately happens, thanks largely to companies and local governments and not national gov's. Now more than ever we live in a world in which the government's main challenge is getting out of the way of markets and sub-national and trans-national actors (the good ones that vastly outnumber and outperform the baddies--corps and NGOs/PVOs rule, terrorists and narcos and rebels drool!) that are doing God's work of spreading the connectivity and rules of globalization (leaving govs mostly to protect the weak and constrain the powerful on the margins, trusting people to do the right thing). So chin up.

I am watching.

Good News - More trade connections

There are more connections between the stable, developed countries and the developing countries. This enables development where it is needed and doesn't hurt the developed countries. It's good news for everyone. It would be better if the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks had succeeded; it failed. But the United States under President Bush is completing free trade accords with individual nations - bilateral accords. Michael Barone reports at Real Clear Politics:

... the zone of free trade continues to expand as the United States, during this administration, negotiates one free-trade agreement after another -- Oman and Jordan, Central America and Australia, Peru and Colombia. All are increasing connectivity and shrinking the gap.

Barone quickly covers US immigration, the spread of Hugo Chavez's Communism, and the growth of China and India:

Third, immigration. The bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, with border security and free-market guest-worker provisions, has some small chance of passing the Senate and House. A law that regularizes illegal immigrants would close the internal gap we have with 12 million illegals. Fourth, Latin America. Venezuela's oil-rich demagogue Hugo Chavez continues to pal around with dictators and tries to stir up trouble. But Latin American voters have been rejecting Chavezism. The victories of anti-Chavez candidates in Peru, Colombia and Mexico in the past few months show that irresponsible demagogy is not popular in the region. Connectivity is increasing, not decreasing, to our south. Fifth, China and India, with one third of the world's population, continue to have scorching economic growth -- 11 percent in China, 8 percent in India. And they're growing increasingly interconnected with the thriving economies of the core. Hundreds of millions of people are rising out of poverty, and despite high oil prices, we have solid economic growth in North America and Latin America and even some growth in sclerotic Europe. The world economy has never been in better shape.

Thomas Barnett has develped the view of the "old core" of developed countries and the "new core" countries and "the Gap" between them. Good news. We could use more, but let's celebrate what we have. Update: Barone's piece is expected in Newsweek on 8/7.

Welfare reform after 10 years

The Republican Congress passed welfare reform for the third time 10 years ago. President Clinton vetoed the first two bills. Facing his 1996 reelection he signed this one. Democrats in Congress assailed the bill has "mean-spirited," etc. Even God was against it according to the Children's Defense Fund, says Ron Haskins of Brookings Institute in the Wall Street Journal:

Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund said that no one who believed in the Judeo-Christian tradition could support the bill.

The big excitement was about ending the entitlement to welfare for single mothers:

Kate O'Beirne, now of National Review, perfectly captured the philosophy of entitlement in 1995 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that the nation's welfare system operated on the principle of "spend more, demand less." Republicans wanted to demand more by breaking the entitlement and making the cash contingent on serious attempts to find work and achieve self-support. After three decades of failed federal "work" programs, Republicans had spent years behind the scenes--under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, Clay Shaw, Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and others--developing ideas about how to encourage, cajole or, when necessary, force mothers on welfare to work. Specifically, Republicans proposed to end the entitlement to cash, impose a five-year time limit on benefits, require mothers to prepare for and search for work or have their cash benefit reduced or terminated, and require states to place half their welfare caseload in programs that lead to employment.

What have been the results? Success.

In the decade that has passed since the 1996 reforms, the welfare rolls have plummeted by nearly 60%, the first sustained decline since the program was enacted in 1935. Equally important, the employment of single mothers heading families reached the highest level ever. As a group, mothers heading families with incomes of less than about $21,000 per year increased their earnings every year between 1994 and 2000 while simultaneously receiving less money from welfare payments. In inflation-adjusted dollars, they were about 25% better off in 2000 than in 1994, despite the fall in their welfare income.

How about poverty? Down.

Over the same period, the child-poverty level enjoyed its most sustained decline since the early 1970s; and both black-child poverty and poverty among female-headed families reached their lowest level ever. Even after four years of increases following the recession of 2001, the child poverty level is still 20% lower than it was before the decline began.

Haskins concludes: The irony of welfare reform is that it firmly implanted the conservative principle of self-sufficiency in federal policy which, in turn, brought the liberal principle of government support for the poor into its most effective form--namely, encouraging work. Above all, welfare reform showed that work--even low-wage work--provides a more durable foundation for social policy than handouts.

More oil drilling

I am watching the sunset on Whistler Mountain, B.C., Canada. Great spot. And it cooled after about 95F on Sunday. Good news: It appears the deals are in place for a US Senate bill allowing resumed off-shore oil drilling. The House has passed a different version, so there will be a conference after the Senate bill passes. Senator Nelson of Florida is slowing things. But they gave him a lot for this deal. Wall Street Journal (paid).

... to allow drilling in some eight million acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which boasts at least 1.25 billion barrels of oil and five trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But his price was a moratorium on any other projects within 125 miles of Florida's coastline, as well as sending 37.5% of certain new federal leasing royalties to the four Gulf states of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. The oil and gas industry is understandably underwhelmed. The bill is still worth passing, however, if only to get to a conference with the House, which last month gave the states authority over offshore drilling up to 100 miles out. The House bill provides for a permanent ban (versus today's limited federal bans) on drilling for the first 50 miles offshore, which could only be lifted if a state legislature explicitly voted to do so. From 50 to 100 miles, states would be responsible for defining what drilling could occur. Anything beyond 100 miles would be the federal government's mandate.

Again the environmentalists seem to care more about big government than the people most affected.

In short, the House bill offers greater protections to anti-drilling states, which would no longer be at the mercy of federal policy whims. Yet this is precisely what seems to worry environmentalists, who hold disproportionate sway in Washington and fret that state voters might actually support more drilling if it were safe and profitable.

Let's hope it passes quickly.

Porkbuster - Stem-cell veto

Red State says that the Stem-cell research bill President Bush signed was pork. I agree. I was offline, so I didn't follow this. But if this research makes as much sense as the sponsors claim, then for-profit pharmaceuticals would be pouring millions into it. ------ Senator Tom Coburn wants to enable you and me to view federal spending online, where it is accessible to everyone. Mark Tapscott reports at Tapscott's Copy Desk, quoting Coburn's letter seeking cosponsors.

This bill would create a single, searchable website with access to virtually all government spending - a publicly-accessible online tool for all Americans to find out how their tax money is spent. As Thomas Jefferson wrote back in 1802, "We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them." According to government statistics, the federal government spends approximately $1 trillion each year on various grants, procurement contracts, and loans. However, there is currently no single searchable website or resource that provides access to information about each transaction. American taxpayers deserve better. As various investigations into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina have shown, a lack of accountability and transparency in federal spending can lead to massive waste, fraud, and abuse. Every dollar that is wasted is a dollar that is unavailable to support our troops and veterans, improve America's global competitiveness, or reduce tax burdens and the federal deficit. Greater transparency and accountability can directly reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, while also enabling us to improve the quality and efficiency of government services and to help those who depend on us.

Update: Senator Obama, the Democrats' hope for the future, is lead cosponsor with Coburn. Tapscott also points to Mary Katherine Ham's article in Washington Examiner on the need to control pork.

On one hand, Porkbusters can highlight the ridiculousness of spending federal money on municipal pool maintenance. On the other, the pork-passive can ask, “Why are we talking about municipal pool maintenance when there are so many more important things going on?” The quick answer is, “No, why are we funding municipal pool maintenance when there are so many more important things going on?” But there are several problems with this argument. One is that it assumes that the American public and Congress can properly talk about the war on terror and other important issues only at the exclusion of all others. This is not the case and can never be the case. In large part because Congress’ power has extended to cover municipal swimming pool maintenance, Capitol Hill is always juggling a thousand issues at a time, debating 67 amendments on the floor, pushing a handful of bills through committee in any given week....

Read it.

Pork Alert - Cash 170 miles from earthquake

Beef and dairy farmers got checks for damage that didn't occur 170 miles from the 2002 Nisqually Earthquake in Puget Sound. KOMO News in Seattle reports:

Jim Zwiers lives 170 miles away from the epicenter in Lynden. In 2001, he owned a dairy farm. He got an application form for a federal payment and thought it was a joke, until his son convinced him to mail it in. Asked if he suffered any any damage from the earthquake he replied, "I don't even know if we even felt the earthquake." But he says he got a check and cashed it.

This is a standard pork technique. The politicians in Congress make a very broad definition for the area affected by a natural disaster, then give benefits to everyone in the artificially defined area. Then the bureaucrats write checks. "But I shouldn't get a check; I had no damage," the beneficiary says. "Congress says you get it; I am doing my job. If I don't give you this check I am violating an act of Congress." This one has a different form. The governor of Washington asked the president to declare every affected county a "disaster." Gary Locke was then governor and this shows how he performed on an intelligence test. President Bush believed Locke and declared every county on Locke's list a disaster including Whatcom County on the border with Canada. More on pork busters

Summer in Puget Sound and British Columbia

We hit a home run on our vacation. In four days at our church's camp we had overcast mornings and beautiful afternoons, evenings. And stars at night. My friends Arthur and John set up telescopes and showed me the sights. The Coat Hanger, too small for the naked eye, but so large we needed to use binoculars, not the telescopes. Ring Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, another galaxy to the lower right of Casseopeia. Now 3 days at the beach, then to Whistler, BC, Canada. Staying at Twin Peaks.

Priority for Nuclear Energy

Energy Crisis? It is President Bush's priority, so he is taking action and working to find energy sources. The Washington Post reports:

If presidential willpower can end eras, the generation-old fear of nuclear energy born in the catastrophes of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl is marked for extinction. The world will move instead into a confident time of nuclear power plants helping to reduce global warming, prevent energy shortages and curb atomic arsenals from being developed by rogue countries. That is a tall order even for the nuclear genie. But the importance that George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin attach to atomic energy as the fuel of the future is already a strategic fact of life. It guides U.S. foreign policy, Russian economic ambitions and cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin on a global agenda.

Good for you, President. Keep it up.

Pray for Jerusalem

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Israel has been attacked on both the Gaza border and from Lebanon. Hezbollah (various spellings) is part of the government of Lebanon and it invaded Israel; they crossed the border and kidnapped two soldiers. That is an attack. Can Israel protect its borders? Kofi Anan's United Nations is "very concerned." But you can bet that wherever Koffe Can lives he is protected. The international rules are different only for Israel. Any other country can protect its borders, but not Israel. Pajamas Media has coverage of developments. For links to bloggers in Israel and the Middle East go to Truth Laid Bear Added.Animated map of cities in Israel being hit by rockets from Lebanon.

Spending your money to elect themselves

Congress is in full porker mode. The Republicans excel at pork appropriations that have no sponsor. There is no one to blame for raiding our tax dollars. But when it passes the Congressman whose district benefits will brag that he/she fought for his reelection, I mean, for the voters he is devoted to. One appropriations bill for labor, health and human services (HHS) has 1700 earmarks. There will others Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, wants to help us! He is threatening to offer amendments strike each of the 1700 earmarks that doesn't have a sponsor identified. Good for him. The Hill reports on a bold Congressman who defends spending tax dollars to benefit himself:

The district-specific projects, totaling about half a billion dollars, are tied to a Democratic minimum-wage increase that is anathema to the GOP, and no proposed solution has taken root. Few lawmakers publicly concede the importance of earmarks to their own campaigns, but several acknowledge the benefit of voting to bring federal money home before the midterms. “I think it’s helpful on the campaign trail,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), whose projects include $600,000 for the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. “It’s important, particularly for members in tight races.”

The politics are thick here, with an increase in the minimum wage involved. Anyone who has studied the effects of the minimum wage knows that it takes jobs away from entry-level workers. Hopefully this mess won't pass before the election in November. It is for the budget year that starts on October 1. So our elected representatives will sit on it until two months after it is due. Tip: Instapundit

"Who's Who" not Rove

The Associated Press is misquoting Robert Novak. Their headline says Karl Rove was Novak's source on Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. That's not what Novak says.

I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."

That is a direct quote from Novak's column today at Human Events. Can the AP tell it straight? It appears not.

Main Street Investors

There are fewer individual investors today than in the past. More funds are in pension funds and mutual funds managed by the professionals. Dominic Basulto writes at TCS Daily.

"The Wall Street juggernaut's in control, and America's 95 million investors are relegated to a footnote in market history, like a museum piece no longer popular, packed away, out of sight, deep in the archive vaults."

It sounds bad. NOT.

Which all might be a bit disturbing, one supposes, if it were actually true. Does anyone really believe that citizen investors are destined to be "powerless non-entities in a land of nothingness," as Farrell suggests? That might have been the case fifty years ago -- or even twenty years ago; but today? If anything, the individual investor is more empowered than ever before. Thanks to Regulation FD, individual investors know as much as "Wall Street insiders" and have access to the same type of information as Wall Street analysts, including real-time access to conference calls and annual shareholder meetings. Moreover, thanks to the popularity of low-cost online trading platforms, it's now possible to do a formidable amount of research on any financial market in the world, all while sitting at your PC in your pajamas at two in the morning.

In the heydey fo the individual trader they were losing much of their investment to transaction costs. Even with "discount brokers" the cost is considerable. But today investors can invest in funds with very low costs, so the gain goes to the individual investor instead of his stock broker. Basulto says it well:

There are hopeful signs that the investment pendulum is swinging in favor of the citizen investor. Technology and innovation are two powerful forces that are helping to empower the citizen investor and erode some of the advantages enjoyed by large institutional investors. While technology is helping to drive down transaction costs for individual investors, innovative new solutions offer these investors a way to experience the magic of compounding returns without, as Bogle calls it, the "tyranny of compounding costs." The future of an ownership society ultimately depends on the empowerment of the citizen investor, and not the enrichment of the professional money manager.

Latin America rejecting socialists

A few months ago it looked like Fidel was conquering Latin America, but he suffered two large set backs in the past few weeks. Hugo Chavez, after being elected in Venezuela, called a Constitutional Assembly which closed the elected National Assembly. Then it "It also increased the presidential term of office from five to six years, allowed for two consecutive presidential terms rather than one, introduced a presidential two-term limit." How convenient for Hugo: instead of being limited to 5 years he could rule, I mean serve, for 12 years. That was just his first year in office. He has done more since to consolidate all power in himself. Chavez embraces Castro openly, saying:

"Fidel Castro's Cuba ... (had) been far more influential in Caracas than George W. Bush's mighty US"

In Peru Ollanta Humala is a leftist who ran for president, but lost last month. And last week in Mexico in a very close election the voters rejected leftist candidate Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, electing Felipe Calderon of the PAN political party of Vincente Fox. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann report:

The Mexican result - driven in part by strong female support for the reform party of Vicente Fox, the PAN - is a sobering indication of the intelligence of the country's impoverished electorate. While the Mexican middle class population has expanded from about one-tenth of the nation in the mid 1990s to about 40% today, more than half of the people still have incomes of less than $1,000 per month. Obrador promised these poor people an immediate increase of 20% in their incomes, as well as free gas and electricity, and a doubling of old-age pensions. But the Mexican voters listened instead to the warnings of Calderon's PAN that Obrador's policies would cause a crippling debt and a renewal of the path to self-destruction that Mexico experienced in the 70's and 80's which led to the peso collapse in the 1990s.

And they say that much credit belongs to President Fox who combined social programs with a tiny touch of capitalism.

But the real lesson of the election is the success of the way President Fox - who boasts a 60% job approval that Bush can only envy - used Mexico's oil wealth to begin to lift his country up out of poverty. With the substantially increased additional national revenues, Fox created successful programs to invest in people, education, and the economy. He began by offering free health insurance to more than a third of the Mexican people who had no coverage at all. His Opportunity program extends micro loans to fledgling small businesses. He vastly expanded scholarship programs and helped to subsidize poor families to allow them to send their children away from the fields and factories and into the schools each day. It was by this merger of free market capitalism combined with vigorous social welfare policies that Fox was able to blunt the leftist offensive. The lesson of Mexico is that wealth will, indeed, trickle down, if it is irrigated and encouraged to do so by well conceived public policies.

And this can work elsewhere:

But the Mexico result shows that sound, solid economic growth, coupled with public education and good social policies, may offer an alternative that could yet save this continent from another round of boom-and-bust. Without such policies, we will soon be facing more Castros and Chavezes in the rest of our hemisphere.

Higher Ed - equal parts meritocracy and mediocrity

President Bush turned to improve K-12 education in his first year with "No Child Left Behind." Now his Education Department is looking into higher education. And there are big concerns, though Washington State might have escaped. The Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued a draft of their report last week. The University of Washington Daily reports:

The online journal Insidehighereducation.com calls it "a stinging first draft." After an initial reference to our nation's Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, "We have found equal parts meritocracy and mediocrity," the report said. The report lists problems with the higher education system much as the No Child Left Behind Act did for the K-12 system. Critical findings include a "woeful lack" of publicly available information about colleges, a lack of access to the higher education system caused by inadequate preparation in high school and a failure to align high school and college standards.

....

Benefit Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan has absolute moral authority because her son died in Iraq. He was an adult and a volunteer, but still any nonsense she puts out trumps any evidence or argument, because of the pain in her heart. Look into her background and you find that she has a record as an extreme leftist. I just scanned Wikipedia for her background, but it conveniently omits her existence before her son's death in 2004. Cindy would rather live in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez than in the United States. She says he has been elected 8 times. But before he was first elected he lead a coup to overthrow the government in 1992. And except for the first, he has been elected like any other dictator, almost unanimously. Cindy wants to move to Venezuela. Let's help her. Michelle Malkin is leading the fund-raising benefit to buy a one-way ticket to Caracas. At Hot Air.

Inflation - Gold or Silicon?

We have a split among supply-side economists over the danger of inflation. Jerry Bowyer at TCS Daily says.

Forbes, Brian Wesbury, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and the New York Sun have tended to side with gold.

Among them Rich Karlgaard says since the price of gold has risen 8% in recent weeks we have to worry about inflation. But others say that we can get so much more out of silicon and knowledge that gold can not longer be "the gold standard."

Arthur Laffer, David Malpass, Larry Kudlow, Alan Reynolds and TCS Daily's Jim Glassman have been more reluctant to depend exclusively on this price signal, and have been much less alarmed about inflation. Some of these guys have been doing some shifting around lately too. ... The good guys are disagreeing with one another for a good reason: the data are mixed. What a pity! For two decades we had markets that spoke clearly and a Fed chairman that didn't. Now we have a Fed Chairman who speaks clearly and markets that don't.

As Bowyer says it:

We're not much better at getting gold out of the ground than we were last century, but we're much better at getting wealth out of electrons. Our economy can now grow at a faster pace, by far, than the mining industry can. Our economy now grows faster than our gold supply. This means that gold prices, reflecting gold scarcity, will be an imperfect messenger. Think of it this way: imagine two economies. One is made up entirely of jewelry stores. The other is made up entirely of iPods. Gold and silver prices would be a great inflation predictor in the jewelry-world. The price of metals would translate fairly directly into rings and chains. Gold would be a terrible predictor of inflation in iPod-world.

Let's watch this. It matters immensely for our financial future.

Independence Day

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ... The Declaration of Independence

Fighting poverty with property rights

Farmers in many less-developed countries cannot own the land they farm. Not because they can't afford to buy it, but because their countries don't have a clear system of titles for real property - land, homes, etc. Not being able to establish ownership of the land messes up the economy. Your family has been farming the same land for 3 generations. But you want to move to another area or stop farming and start a business. How do you sell the land? Who would pay you for the land you say you own when you can establish that you have title to it? So people are restricted from moving. Land has less value; I mean, the land's value is locked up and can't be used. Prof. Roy Prosterman of University of Washington is in the middle of the fight to fix this problem. Rural Development Institute

is an international land law and policy group fighting one of the chief structural causes of global poverty—rural landlessness—with passion, professionalism and great effect. Over the past 38 years, RDI professionals have worked with the governments of 40 developing countries, foreign aid agencies, and other partners to design and implement fundamental legal, policy, and programmatic reforms resulting in large-scale transfers of land ownership or ownership-like rights to the world’s rural poor.

Hernando de Soto of Peru has also worked getting third-world countries' legal systems corrected also. See De Soto's Institute for Liberty and Democracy.

ACLU against speech

ACLU doesn't allow its board members to speak. Unless they spout the party line. Oh, you thought the ACLU defends speech. In certain cases they do. On a rare occasion they defend a Christian or conservative. But the rule is: enforce the liberal party line. The LA Time has the story, told by Wendy Kaminer who left the ACLU's board over this.

Recently, the ACLU again considered censoring its board members, weighing new rules that would prohibit them from criticizing the organization publicly. This startling proposal was the culmination of a bitter internal battle over the organization's integrity and fidelity to principle that has spilled out into the media. Why would such a rule even be considered by a free-speech organization? According to ACLU leaders, some board members had been abusing their right to speak. They were referring to me and my former colleague on the ACLU board, Michael Meyers, so I don't approach this subject as an observer. Meyers and I had been threatened last year with removal or suspension after we publicly criticized the ACLU's reported use of data-mining practices to gather information on members and donors. The effort to punish us was aborted only after a New York Times reporter inquired into it; the board then established a committee on the fiduciary rights and responsibilities of its members in an apparent effort to pass rules that would keep us in line. The committee's proposal, issued in May, was a stunning repudiation of the ACLU's core principles. It included provisions that prohibited board members from criticizing the ACLU board or staff publicly and that disparaged whistle-blowing (conduct the ACLU often applauds when it occurs in other institutions). Individual board members were admonished not to "call into question the integrity of the process in arriving at the board's decision."

That says it. The ACLU was using data-mining techniques to gather information on donors and contributors. Two directors objected. The organization tried to shut them up. It's the old rule: "Do as I say, not as I do." You know "Get in line! We are busy criticizing President Bush for limiting the speech of Al-Qaida."

One Lighthouse

I didn't have to search to find the lighthouse background I use for this page. But I am a lighthouse fan. Not the kind who travels to a distant state or country, then arranges a boat or flight to one. But I am familiar with most of those in Washington - Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound and San Juan Islands - and have seen many of them. Washington now has about 30 picture license plates, including the one I just got: