From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Entitlements: Cash welfare caseloads declined dramatically in the years immediately after welfare reform and have continued to hold at about half their pre-reform levels, despite the 2001 recession. That's the good news.
The bad news is that the welfare state, like mercury, never really goes away; it just changes form.
Welfare benefits, once the domain of the Health and Human Services Department, are now imbedded in the tax code as an IRS giveaway called the EITC, or earned income tax credit. More than 20 million will claim it this tax season.
At the same time Washington limited the number of low-income Americans eligible for cash assistance, it greatly expanded the number who could qualify for the refundable "credit," which was originally intended to subsidize low-income working families.
As a result, more Americans now participate in the EITC than any other social welfare program. The program is ripe for abuse and wildly out of control.
Here's what the politicians don't tell you as they pat themselves on the back for supposedly reforming the welfare system:
Twenty-six percent of the population receives benefits from EITC. That compares with 18% from Medicaid, 8% from food stamps, 5% from HUD, 3% from Supplemental Security Income and 2% from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or cash).
The EITC provides recipients up to $4,300 a year in cash. This costs taxpayers who don't participate in it $35 billion annually.
The program is among the federal government's fastest growing. It has surged 170% since former President Clinton first expanded it in 1993.
It's also one of the most abused and defrauded programs. As much as 30% — or well over $10 billion — in EITC benefits are wrongly claimed each year.
A large share of immigrants take advantage of EITC. The refund is also based on family size. Even illegal aliens sometimes receive it. The IRS makes it easier for those who speak Spanish by providing EITC information in that language through brochures and toll-free recordings under the heading: "Credito por Ingreso del Trabajo."
Claimants get advance payments against future EITC refunds. They are also encouraged by the IRS to apply for food stamps and other welfare.
Unlike most federal credits, the EITC is refundable — that is, if the amount of the credit exceeds what's owed, the taxpayer will receive a direct payment from the U.S. Treasury for the difference. Tax preparers call it "free federal money."
In many cases, folks who haven't paid any income tax get refund checks, making the EITC a pure government handout — welfare by another name. And huge loopholes in the program have made it a boon for tax cheats and rip-off artists.
The way the tax code is written, the EITC program fails to effectively target the intended low-income working families. For instance, a part-time lawyer who works 100 hours a year at $100 an hour can get the same benefits as a fry cook who works 2,000 hours a year at $5 an hour, notes the Joint Economic Committee.
Even a wealthy Beverly Hills divorcee who gets hundreds of thousands in alimony, yet earns less than $10,000 in income, can qualify, while a family of four with an income just above $30,000 will pay the taxes that ultimately pay the divorcee's benefits. And these are examples of people who receive the benefits legally.
It's plain the program needs to be reined in. Unfortunately, it has widespread support in Washington. Annual EITC outlays have soared even under President Bush.
He and Republicans on the Hill talk a lot about reforming the tax code. They can start with the EITC — specifically by repealing the Clinton expansion of the program that allowed taxpayers with no qualifying children to receive the credit for the first time. That resulted in a large and growing number of people who did not fit the traditional EITC profile to get benefits.
With a booming jobs market providing cover against the welfare statists and their friends in the media, Republicans really have no excuse not to slow the growth of the EITC program right now.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Sense Of Urgency
What really grinds me is that for the most part; be it taxation, energy policy, education or Islamic terrorism, we have been cleaning up the messes created by Jimmy Carter while he tours the world lamenting about how "we've lost our American Values". Since when have military weakness, illiteracy, foreign dependency and a totalitarian government ever been American Values?
From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Nuclear Terror: Iran's intent is now clear: It means to build a nuclear bomb, no matter what the rest of mankind thinks. And once it has one, it'll use it. A world that stands by and lets this happen deserves what it gets.
Fortunately, spines are already starting to stiffen in response to Iran's announcement that it has used a "cascade" of 164 centrifuges to produce 3.5% enriched uranium — not quite bomb grade, but close.
Japan, Australia, the EU, Britain and France have all joined the U.S. in condemnation. And in a surprising and heartening development, Russia and China — the two nations that have the biggest financial stakes in Iran — have also criticized the Islamic Republic.
Diplomatic condemnations, however, are one thing; actions to halt proliferation are quite another. And in Iran's case, it's getting a bit late in the game.
Iran hopes to have 3,000 centrifuges operating by year-end and 54,000 sometime after that. That many could easily create enough fuel for a handful of bombs far larger than those that decimated Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We simply cannot let that happen.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has played a clever game. Most forget he was identified as one of the radical Islamic "students" who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Our lack of resolve and refusal to retaliate under President Carter no doubt were two great lessons of Ahmadinejad's young life.
Ahmadinejad and his cohorts got away with kidnapping American citizens on the equivalent of American soil. Now he's sitting back, carefully watching how we respond this time.
Surely he knows that Europe, no matter how much it may bluster, can do nothing except stop buying Persian rugs and pistachios. As for Russia, it is strapped for cash and owed an estimated $8 billion by Tehran. It also has its fingers in dozens of Iranian projects, including a nuclear plant in southern Iran. China? After a flurry of recent deals, guess what country is its top energy supplier?
Nor can we count on U.N. chief Kofi Annan. His advice to the West in the wake of Iran's disclosure: "cool down the rhetoric." Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, is in Tehran this week. Don't expect any great breakthroughs.
Iran has threatened Israel with extermination and considers the U.S. the "Great Satan." Yet in response to its progress in developing a weapon of mass destruction, Democrats in Congress counsel that we have "more time" before responding (note that this is the same thing they said in 1980 after the Iranians took all those Americans hostage).
Well, Iran has already been given "more time." It supposedly had until early March to end its enrichment program. That deadline came and went, and a new one of April 28 has been imposed.
U.N. threats, in other words, don't seem to be working any more on Ahmadinejad than they did on Saddam Hussein.
The world, says John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., needs a "sense of urgency." We couldn't agree more. Ahmadinejad, an extremist who believes he's been sent to earth to bring about the salvation of Islam, is watching. Will we do nothing — again?
Iran's Second Front
As those who would like to kill us watch our useless politicians spend more time circle-jerking their way through what was once a winnable war on terror, one wonders how long before the world realizes that America is ripe for destruction and begins the process. It's just a matter of time, especially if the Democrats make any gains in Congress.
From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Axis Of Evil: In any military confrontation with the West over its nuclear weapons program, Iran has the option of unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. We may yet pay for failing to fully implement U.N. Resolution 1559.
Israel's Northern Command has concluded a three-day exercise along its border with Syria and Lebanon to test "operational readiness" to face "possible threats in the Golan and terrorist acts that Hezbollah may stage from Lebanon."
Southern Lebanon is a long way from the Strait of Hormuz, the oil transit chokepoint that Iran has threatened to close in any confrontation with the West, and where it has demonstrated new military capabilities in recent exercises.
But Lebanon's 70-mile frontier with Israel could be one place Iran retaliates through its surrogate, Hezbollah, if either the U.S. or Israel takes military action against Iran's nuclear sites.
In a recent interview with World Net Daily's Aaron Klein and ABC Radio's John Batchelor on Batchelor's national radio program, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, head of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, said Lebanon "is being used by the Iranians as a front which could be used if the Americans retaliate against Iran's nuclear facilities."
Jumblatt's statement comes after a report in London's Daily Telegraph stating that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now deployed at posts along the Israeli border. A senior Israeli Defense Forces commander told the Telegraph that these posts are "Iran's frontline with Israel."
It's been about a year since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon under international pressure after the Syrian-orchestrated assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri prompted mass demonstrations that cut across religious and ethnic lines in the Middle East's first multicultural democracy.
In addition to the withdrawal of Syrian forces and Syrian intelligence operatives (who are believed to be still active in Lebanon), U.N. Resolution 1559 called for "disbanding and disarming all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."
This, presumably, includes Hezbollah.
Hezbollah refuses to disarm, contending it's a legitimate political party that has seats in the Lebanese parliament and is merely defending Lebanese sovereignty against Israel. But its loyalties are open to question, and its legitimacy as a political party brings to mind Hitler's National Socialist Party in Nazi Germany.
Hezbollah is in fact an Iranian creation supported financially and militarily by Tehran. When not waving Lebanese flags for gullible Western media, Hezbollah sports a yellow and green flag depicting a fist brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle, posed against a globe and advocating "an Islamic revolution in Lebanon."
Hezbollah reportedly has an inventory of between 12,000 and 16,000 conventional short- and long-range missiles that are pointed at Israel's northern border and that can reach Galilee and other parts of northern Israel where 20% of its people live.
According to Michael Herzog of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hezbollah has also been supplied by Iran with a considerable number of long-range rockets. These include the 240 mm Fajr-3 with a 26-mile range and its big brother, the Fajr-5, with a 43-mile range. They can reach Haifa and other Israeli cities with potentially devastating results.
Iran's Mad Hatter, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has announced his intention to wipe Israel off the map and fancies himself the instrument chosen to usher in the reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi'ism's version of the Messiah.
While we're trying to deal with his nuclear ambitions, it would serve us well to focus on disarming Hezbollah and removing its threat to northern Israel where, in the Valley of Megido, a Biblical prophecy says the battle of Armageddon will be fought.
From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Axis Of Evil: In any military confrontation with the West over its nuclear weapons program, Iran has the option of unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. We may yet pay for failing to fully implement U.N. Resolution 1559.
Israel's Northern Command has concluded a three-day exercise along its border with Syria and Lebanon to test "operational readiness" to face "possible threats in the Golan and terrorist acts that Hezbollah may stage from Lebanon."
Southern Lebanon is a long way from the Strait of Hormuz, the oil transit chokepoint that Iran has threatened to close in any confrontation with the West, and where it has demonstrated new military capabilities in recent exercises.
But Lebanon's 70-mile frontier with Israel could be one place Iran retaliates through its surrogate, Hezbollah, if either the U.S. or Israel takes military action against Iran's nuclear sites.
In a recent interview with World Net Daily's Aaron Klein and ABC Radio's John Batchelor on Batchelor's national radio program, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, head of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, said Lebanon "is being used by the Iranians as a front which could be used if the Americans retaliate against Iran's nuclear facilities."
Jumblatt's statement comes after a report in London's Daily Telegraph stating that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now deployed at posts along the Israeli border. A senior Israeli Defense Forces commander told the Telegraph that these posts are "Iran's frontline with Israel."
It's been about a year since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon under international pressure after the Syrian-orchestrated assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri prompted mass demonstrations that cut across religious and ethnic lines in the Middle East's first multicultural democracy.
In addition to the withdrawal of Syrian forces and Syrian intelligence operatives (who are believed to be still active in Lebanon), U.N. Resolution 1559 called for "disbanding and disarming all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."
This, presumably, includes Hezbollah.
Hezbollah refuses to disarm, contending it's a legitimate political party that has seats in the Lebanese parliament and is merely defending Lebanese sovereignty against Israel. But its loyalties are open to question, and its legitimacy as a political party brings to mind Hitler's National Socialist Party in Nazi Germany.
Hezbollah is in fact an Iranian creation supported financially and militarily by Tehran. When not waving Lebanese flags for gullible Western media, Hezbollah sports a yellow and green flag depicting a fist brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle, posed against a globe and advocating "an Islamic revolution in Lebanon."
Hezbollah reportedly has an inventory of between 12,000 and 16,000 conventional short- and long-range missiles that are pointed at Israel's northern border and that can reach Galilee and other parts of northern Israel where 20% of its people live.
According to Michael Herzog of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hezbollah has also been supplied by Iran with a considerable number of long-range rockets. These include the 240 mm Fajr-3 with a 26-mile range and its big brother, the Fajr-5, with a 43-mile range. They can reach Haifa and other Israeli cities with potentially devastating results.
Iran's Mad Hatter, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has announced his intention to wipe Israel off the map and fancies himself the instrument chosen to usher in the reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi'ism's version of the Messiah.
While we're trying to deal with his nuclear ambitions, it would serve us well to focus on disarming Hezbollah and removing its threat to northern Israel where, in the Valley of Megido, a Biblical prophecy says the battle of Armageddon will be fought.
'Burn In The USA'
The answer to the Springsteen question below is simple, the Left only blames America. When terrorists strike, or threaten us to either "convert to Islam or die" somehow it's our fault. My question, if they regain power, raise all of our taxes and sell us out, will they allow us a tax credit for prayer rugs?
From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Terrorism: Would-be 9-11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui is using his trial to taunt and slur America. But all he does is remind us just how evil our adversaries are.
As yet, there's been no reaction from Bruce Springsteen to the terrorist conspirator's courtroom crooning of "Burn in the USA" to the tune of the rocker's "Born in the USA."
During breaks in the trial, Moussaoui has also yelled things like "God bless Osama bin Laden and "God curse America." His reaction to photos shown to the jury of burnt corpses from the attack on the Pentagon was: "Burn all Pentagon next time."
And earlier this month, when the jury found him eligible for execution, Moussaoui shouted on his way out of court: "You'll never get my blood. God curse you all."
It's up to the jury to determine if Moussaoui's crime of concealing evidence that could have saved thousands of lives warrants the death sentence. Judge Leonie Brinkema has tried to save Moussaoui from the death penalty by way of technicalities, but she's been overruled on appeal.
A Bill Clinton appointee to the federal bench, Brinkema again demonstrated her prejudices this week. She warned prosecutors they're on "shaky ground" for presenting emotional material like the cockpit recording of United flight 93, in which passengers fighting back against the hijackers saved another Washington target from being hit.
Videos of the hijacked planes hitting the Twin Towers, and choked-up testimony from those who lost loved ones, as well as from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also were presented.
This misguided judge should be asked how exactly emotions like grief and anger can be separated from an act of war that annihilating thousands of innocent people.
The death penalty is itself an emotional response, reserved for the most gut-wrenching offenses. So as they weigh their decision, why shouldn't jurors be presented with real-life illustrations of the emotional magnitude of the loss of life that took place on 9-11?
As the jurors, and all Americans, witness the foulness of Moussaoui's courtroom antics, we must remember we're looking straight into the eyes of the hate that threatens us.
Moussaoui isn't some street thug or drug addict who decided to shove a knife into someone in a dark alley. He is an emissary of evil, the envoy of an organized, far-flung movement that aims to commit acts of terror that make 9-11 look like a Sunday picnic.
If we allow his sneer of "You'll never get my blood" to come true, we'll only embolden his hate-filled comrades.
From IBD:
Posted 4/12/2006
Terrorism: Would-be 9-11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui is using his trial to taunt and slur America. But all he does is remind us just how evil our adversaries are.
As yet, there's been no reaction from Bruce Springsteen to the terrorist conspirator's courtroom crooning of "Burn in the USA" to the tune of the rocker's "Born in the USA."
During breaks in the trial, Moussaoui has also yelled things like "God bless Osama bin Laden and "God curse America." His reaction to photos shown to the jury of burnt corpses from the attack on the Pentagon was: "Burn all Pentagon next time."
And earlier this month, when the jury found him eligible for execution, Moussaoui shouted on his way out of court: "You'll never get my blood. God curse you all."
It's up to the jury to determine if Moussaoui's crime of concealing evidence that could have saved thousands of lives warrants the death sentence. Judge Leonie Brinkema has tried to save Moussaoui from the death penalty by way of technicalities, but she's been overruled on appeal.
A Bill Clinton appointee to the federal bench, Brinkema again demonstrated her prejudices this week. She warned prosecutors they're on "shaky ground" for presenting emotional material like the cockpit recording of United flight 93, in which passengers fighting back against the hijackers saved another Washington target from being hit.
Videos of the hijacked planes hitting the Twin Towers, and choked-up testimony from those who lost loved ones, as well as from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also were presented.
This misguided judge should be asked how exactly emotions like grief and anger can be separated from an act of war that annihilating thousands of innocent people.
The death penalty is itself an emotional response, reserved for the most gut-wrenching offenses. So as they weigh their decision, why shouldn't jurors be presented with real-life illustrations of the emotional magnitude of the loss of life that took place on 9-11?
As the jurors, and all Americans, witness the foulness of Moussaoui's courtroom antics, we must remember we're looking straight into the eyes of the hate that threatens us.
Moussaoui isn't some street thug or drug addict who decided to shove a knife into someone in a dark alley. He is an emissary of evil, the envoy of an organized, far-flung movement that aims to commit acts of terror that make 9-11 look like a Sunday picnic.
If we allow his sneer of "You'll never get my blood" to come true, we'll only embolden his hate-filled comrades.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Lost In Peru
While everybody is focused on the Middle East, right below us Latin America is turning Communist one country at a time. Rich in Natural Resources, these defacto dictators will have the ability to stay in power for decades while they accumulate personal wealth that Castro could only dream of.
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Latin America: It looks like Peru's election will bring a new leftist strongman to the region. That's sad, given how much progress Peru has made in recent years.
There's still tallying to do. But if trends continue, the winner will be far-left Ollanta Humala, followed by Peru's disastrous ex-president, Alan Garcia. The unpromising pair will face off for a final round in May. Hard to say which would be worse.
Humala's a verified human-rights violator who tortured peasants as an army officer in the 1990s. He's also an admirer of dictators, like Peru's last one, Juan Velasco, remembered in the U.S. for holding U.S. tuna boats hostage. More serious still, he's in the pocket of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who's made no secret of his desire for a new ally. He plans to follow Chavez's model for consolidation of power.
Humala has loads of crazy ideas; the worst is his plan to nationalize Peru's mineral resources by breaking contracts, and then use the cash to finance pork-barrel spending for a new welfare class.
Peru's copper and other mineral exports have helped spark at least 40 straight months of economic growth, around 5% since 2001. Hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investment have been attracted, much of it fleeing the confiscating hand of the leftist government in Bolivia. With foreign investors about to be declared the enemy, Peru is about to see how fast investment can exit. Peru's markets — stocks, bonds and currency — already are tanking on the prospect.
Garcia is a former Peruvian president who already destroyed Peru's economy once. As president from 1985 to 1990, he brought in 7,000% hyperinflation and defaulted on Peru's national debt. His mismanagement also brought Peru a near-death experience, with the murderous Shining Path Maoist guerrillas nearly taking over.
What's saddest is that third candidate Lourdes Flores, who probably won't make the runoff, was a genuine free marketer with a realistic plan to create opportunities and cut regulations for small businesses to empower the poor. A believer in free trade, she sought to make Peru a credible rival to the Asian tigers of the Far East.
Her Cabinet chief was to be the great economist Hernando de Soto, whose world-class work has shown how property rights can become the basis for access to capital and the rule of law. That team would have made Peru a shining star on the world stage.
The problem with Humala and Garcia is that they actually believe Peru's wealth lies in its natural resources. What they fail to grasp is that the real treasure lies in the development of its people. Not as state dependents, but as value creators.
That's never going to happen with land confiscation, contract breaking and welfare programs. With years of such leadership ahead, Peru will be the loser.
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Latin America: It looks like Peru's election will bring a new leftist strongman to the region. That's sad, given how much progress Peru has made in recent years.
There's still tallying to do. But if trends continue, the winner will be far-left Ollanta Humala, followed by Peru's disastrous ex-president, Alan Garcia. The unpromising pair will face off for a final round in May. Hard to say which would be worse.
Humala's a verified human-rights violator who tortured peasants as an army officer in the 1990s. He's also an admirer of dictators, like Peru's last one, Juan Velasco, remembered in the U.S. for holding U.S. tuna boats hostage. More serious still, he's in the pocket of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who's made no secret of his desire for a new ally. He plans to follow Chavez's model for consolidation of power.
Humala has loads of crazy ideas; the worst is his plan to nationalize Peru's mineral resources by breaking contracts, and then use the cash to finance pork-barrel spending for a new welfare class.
Peru's copper and other mineral exports have helped spark at least 40 straight months of economic growth, around 5% since 2001. Hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investment have been attracted, much of it fleeing the confiscating hand of the leftist government in Bolivia. With foreign investors about to be declared the enemy, Peru is about to see how fast investment can exit. Peru's markets — stocks, bonds and currency — already are tanking on the prospect.
Garcia is a former Peruvian president who already destroyed Peru's economy once. As president from 1985 to 1990, he brought in 7,000% hyperinflation and defaulted on Peru's national debt. His mismanagement also brought Peru a near-death experience, with the murderous Shining Path Maoist guerrillas nearly taking over.
What's saddest is that third candidate Lourdes Flores, who probably won't make the runoff, was a genuine free marketer with a realistic plan to create opportunities and cut regulations for small businesses to empower the poor. A believer in free trade, she sought to make Peru a credible rival to the Asian tigers of the Far East.
Her Cabinet chief was to be the great economist Hernando de Soto, whose world-class work has shown how property rights can become the basis for access to capital and the rule of law. That team would have made Peru a shining star on the world stage.
The problem with Humala and Garcia is that they actually believe Peru's wealth lies in its natural resources. What they fail to grasp is that the real treasure lies in the development of its people. Not as state dependents, but as value creators.
That's never going to happen with land confiscation, contract breaking and welfare programs. With years of such leadership ahead, Peru will be the loser.
Taxes Still Bite
In the face of a crumbling Social Security and Medicare system. More and more retirees will be looking to dividend income and capital gains to supplement their savings withdrawals and maintain some semblence of a comfortable life style. But as usual, the Left, who considers the "rich" to be anyone making $50,000 or more have targeted these two areas for considerable tax increases through the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts.
Why?
Simply because they fear miilions of voters who are not dependent on Social Security to live on. If these people are not dependent on a government program for their survival, then they cannot be manipulated by politicians the way our Seniors have been over the last 30 years.
The goal of Leftism is power through the creation of the dependent welfare class who will keep them in power out of fear of losing the governmental life-line.
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Taxes: Hillary Clinton ducks a question and sends a signal to any Republican sharp enough to see it: Americans don't want Washington taking more of their money.
As she travels across the land laying the groundwork for 2008, Sen. Clinton has become a sort of political compass — pointing from the left, her old ideological home, to the center, where she wants to be accepted. So it's interesting what she did not say, when given a chance, about taxes.
In a Monday interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt, she was asked whether she thought George W. Bush's tax cuts — specifically the cut to a 15% maximum rate on capital gains — should be rolled back. The exchange (according to an unofficial transcript from the Chicago Sun-Times) went like this:
Hunt: I know that you and most Democrats advocate rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. Do you think a 15% capital gains tax rate, then, is too low?
Clinton: You know, Al, I think we have to look at the whole package. You know, I obviously am an adherent to the Clinton economic policies. I believe in fiscal responsibility, and I know there are some who come on your shows and say, "That's outdated — we don't need it." I think that's a very dangerous position to take. We need to figure out what is it we're trying to achieve and then we have to look to see on both the spending side and the taxing side how we get there.
Elsewhere in the interview, Clinton sounds the standard Democratic Party theme that "the rich are getting richer" and everyone else is "marching in place." She calls for a "national conversation about health care," which (given her own past) could fairly be read as a call for bigger government. Such talk might well have the goal of whetting the public's appetite for more spending, for which higher taxes naturally would be needed.
But Clinton's shuffle on the question of whether to hike a specific tax — indeed, a tax that largely hits the rich — suggests that she doesn't see the public in a tax-me mood just yet. It wasn't in such a mood when John Kerry went down to defeat in 2004 while proposing to roll back the capital-gains cut. And even as the media routinely describe pending tax increases as the mere expiration of tax cuts (as if the taxes somehow don't go up), we have a feeling the public isn't fooled.
And what of the Republicans? The party that controls both houses of Congress still can't get a bill passed to extend the current capital-gains and dividend rates. Arcane budget procedures are partly to blame. But the GOP would be able to get the job done if it were less timid and had a better sense of its own (as well as the nation's) interests. After all, voters still look to Republicans to keep taxes down. If Republicans can't do that, then they lose their best, and maybe last, selling point.
Why?
Simply because they fear miilions of voters who are not dependent on Social Security to live on. If these people are not dependent on a government program for their survival, then they cannot be manipulated by politicians the way our Seniors have been over the last 30 years.
The goal of Leftism is power through the creation of the dependent welfare class who will keep them in power out of fear of losing the governmental life-line.
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Taxes: Hillary Clinton ducks a question and sends a signal to any Republican sharp enough to see it: Americans don't want Washington taking more of their money.
As she travels across the land laying the groundwork for 2008, Sen. Clinton has become a sort of political compass — pointing from the left, her old ideological home, to the center, where she wants to be accepted. So it's interesting what she did not say, when given a chance, about taxes.
In a Monday interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt, she was asked whether she thought George W. Bush's tax cuts — specifically the cut to a 15% maximum rate on capital gains — should be rolled back. The exchange (according to an unofficial transcript from the Chicago Sun-Times) went like this:
Hunt: I know that you and most Democrats advocate rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. Do you think a 15% capital gains tax rate, then, is too low?
Clinton: You know, Al, I think we have to look at the whole package. You know, I obviously am an adherent to the Clinton economic policies. I believe in fiscal responsibility, and I know there are some who come on your shows and say, "That's outdated — we don't need it." I think that's a very dangerous position to take. We need to figure out what is it we're trying to achieve and then we have to look to see on both the spending side and the taxing side how we get there.
Elsewhere in the interview, Clinton sounds the standard Democratic Party theme that "the rich are getting richer" and everyone else is "marching in place." She calls for a "national conversation about health care," which (given her own past) could fairly be read as a call for bigger government. Such talk might well have the goal of whetting the public's appetite for more spending, for which higher taxes naturally would be needed.
But Clinton's shuffle on the question of whether to hike a specific tax — indeed, a tax that largely hits the rich — suggests that she doesn't see the public in a tax-me mood just yet. It wasn't in such a mood when John Kerry went down to defeat in 2004 while proposing to roll back the capital-gains cut. And even as the media routinely describe pending tax increases as the mere expiration of tax cuts (as if the taxes somehow don't go up), we have a feeling the public isn't fooled.
And what of the Republicans? The party that controls both houses of Congress still can't get a bill passed to extend the current capital-gains and dividend rates. Arcane budget procedures are partly to blame. But the GOP would be able to get the job done if it were less timid and had a better sense of its own (as well as the nation's) interests. After all, voters still look to Republicans to keep taxes down. If Republicans can't do that, then they lose their best, and maybe last, selling point.
Iran's 'Good News'
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Terror State: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country has succeeded in enriching uranium and warned of "everlasting hatred" if the West intervened. Hitler couldn't have put it better.
'We want nothing else than to be left in peace," an elected leader once said. "We want the possibility of going on with our work. We claim for our people the right to live, the same right which others claim for themselves."
Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? In fact, it sounds a lot like Ahmadinejad lately, who's been claiming Iran has as much right to nuclear energy as the U.S., Japan, India, Pakistan and the dozens of other countries with nuclear reactors.
But the words above were spoken by Adolf Hitler at Weimar, Germany, on Nov. 6, 1938, the month after Nazi troops occupied the Sudetenland and three days before Kristallnacht.
If we learn one thing from the history of appeasement, it should be that aggressors are usually also liars. So when Ahmadinejad says he has a message of "good nuclear news," and then announces that "Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," and when he calls on Western democracies "not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians" by forcing Iran to halt its nuclear program, it would be foolish to take his words at face value.
It must also be noted that Ahmadinejad spoke before an audience that included military commanders. And the setting of his nationally televised speech was Iran's second largest city, Mashad — meaning "place of martyrdom." To Shiites, it's the holiest site in Iran because the Iman Reza was poisoned there in the ninth century.
Clearly, one of Ahmadinejad's aims was to drum up popular support for his theocratic rule by linking Iran's nuclear program with national pride. And judging from the fists raised by some in the audience, he succeeded. As the protege of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Ahmadinejad will always find a bogeyman like the U.S. handy in quelling Iranians' resentment against lack of freedom or economic hardship.
The timing of the announcement was impeccable. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace laureate who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrives this week to broker a deal between Iran and the West. ElBaradei has been dovish when it comes to Iranian nukes, and he seems to think that letting Iran run a small nuclear-enrichment program is a viable compromise.
Now he'll arrive in Tehran to find just that up and running.
ElBaradei won his Nobel Peace Prize for "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes." He also wants the U.S. to scrap its nukes.
"A clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established," he wrote in The New York Times two years ago. "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security."
That's pacifist utopianism in the era of terrorism.
When it comes to the free world dealing with an evil that is paired with destructive power, things are no different now than they were in Europe in 1938: Compromise can be no option.
Posted 4/11/2006
Terror State: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country has succeeded in enriching uranium and warned of "everlasting hatred" if the West intervened. Hitler couldn't have put it better.
'We want nothing else than to be left in peace," an elected leader once said. "We want the possibility of going on with our work. We claim for our people the right to live, the same right which others claim for themselves."
Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? In fact, it sounds a lot like Ahmadinejad lately, who's been claiming Iran has as much right to nuclear energy as the U.S., Japan, India, Pakistan and the dozens of other countries with nuclear reactors.
But the words above were spoken by Adolf Hitler at Weimar, Germany, on Nov. 6, 1938, the month after Nazi troops occupied the Sudetenland and three days before Kristallnacht.
If we learn one thing from the history of appeasement, it should be that aggressors are usually also liars. So when Ahmadinejad says he has a message of "good nuclear news," and then announces that "Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," and when he calls on Western democracies "not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians" by forcing Iran to halt its nuclear program, it would be foolish to take his words at face value.
It must also be noted that Ahmadinejad spoke before an audience that included military commanders. And the setting of his nationally televised speech was Iran's second largest city, Mashad — meaning "place of martyrdom." To Shiites, it's the holiest site in Iran because the Iman Reza was poisoned there in the ninth century.
Clearly, one of Ahmadinejad's aims was to drum up popular support for his theocratic rule by linking Iran's nuclear program with national pride. And judging from the fists raised by some in the audience, he succeeded. As the protege of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Ahmadinejad will always find a bogeyman like the U.S. handy in quelling Iranians' resentment against lack of freedom or economic hardship.
The timing of the announcement was impeccable. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace laureate who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrives this week to broker a deal between Iran and the West. ElBaradei has been dovish when it comes to Iranian nukes, and he seems to think that letting Iran run a small nuclear-enrichment program is a viable compromise.
Now he'll arrive in Tehran to find just that up and running.
ElBaradei won his Nobel Peace Prize for "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes." He also wants the U.S. to scrap its nukes.
"A clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established," he wrote in The New York Times two years ago. "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security."
That's pacifist utopianism in the era of terrorism.
When it comes to the free world dealing with an evil that is paired with destructive power, things are no different now than they were in Europe in 1938: Compromise can be no option.
Depositing Wal-Mart
From IBD:
Posted 4/11/2006
Regulation: Gales of creative destruction in the financial services industry have bankers asking Washington to help them hold onto their hats.
The industry, however, should not be immune to what economist Joseph Schumpeter saw as a strength of capitalism: that economic progress results when entrepreneurs and innovators are allowed to destroy the old ways of doing business.
But in a hearing room in Arlington, Va., on Monday, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and consumer groups all moaned about Wal-Mart's effort to get into the banking business.
It was the first time in U.S. history that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. held hearings on an application. That such an unprecedented event was reserved for Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is fitting. Other than perhaps drug manufacturers and oil producers, it is the most demonized company on the planet.
Though Wal-Mart has the potential to make a significant, and likely useful, impact on the industry, its banking ambitions appear to be modest. It wants to open its own bank mainly to process credit cards, debit cards and other electronic transactions to cut its costs on the fees it pays to third-party processors. No branches. No loans.
Yet the industry fears the Arkansas-based company will open branches and compete with banks at the local level. And Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart — profitable and consumer-friendly — its banking foes fear the competition. So they dredge up the same muck — like charges of low pay and poor health-care benefits — that unions have long used in their ongoing campaign to poison the public's perception of the company.
The relative merits and shortcomings of Wal-Mart's pay and benefits may be arguable. But there's no denying the company is able to keep its prices low in large part because it closely watches payroll and health-care costs.
As for the consumer groups that oppose Wal-Mart's entry into banking, they should be defending the company — if, that is, they're really looking out for the welfare of consumers (especially lower-income consumers) and don't have some other agenda.
That said, Wal-Mart's payroll and health-care benefits have nothing to do with its ability — and right — to run either an industrial bank, as proposed, or a full-service commercial bank in every city in the U.S.
Nor should the issuance of a charter rest on the retailer's unpopularity with special-interest groups or would-be competitors. In this case, however, we fear that might be the case.
A bigger fear is that such rejection of a charter would not be met with the outrage it deserves.
Posted 4/11/2006
Regulation: Gales of creative destruction in the financial services industry have bankers asking Washington to help them hold onto their hats.
The industry, however, should not be immune to what economist Joseph Schumpeter saw as a strength of capitalism: that economic progress results when entrepreneurs and innovators are allowed to destroy the old ways of doing business.
But in a hearing room in Arlington, Va., on Monday, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and consumer groups all moaned about Wal-Mart's effort to get into the banking business.
It was the first time in U.S. history that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. held hearings on an application. That such an unprecedented event was reserved for Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is fitting. Other than perhaps drug manufacturers and oil producers, it is the most demonized company on the planet.
Though Wal-Mart has the potential to make a significant, and likely useful, impact on the industry, its banking ambitions appear to be modest. It wants to open its own bank mainly to process credit cards, debit cards and other electronic transactions to cut its costs on the fees it pays to third-party processors. No branches. No loans.
Yet the industry fears the Arkansas-based company will open branches and compete with banks at the local level. And Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart — profitable and consumer-friendly — its banking foes fear the competition. So they dredge up the same muck — like charges of low pay and poor health-care benefits — that unions have long used in their ongoing campaign to poison the public's perception of the company.
The relative merits and shortcomings of Wal-Mart's pay and benefits may be arguable. But there's no denying the company is able to keep its prices low in large part because it closely watches payroll and health-care costs.
As for the consumer groups that oppose Wal-Mart's entry into banking, they should be defending the company — if, that is, they're really looking out for the welfare of consumers (especially lower-income consumers) and don't have some other agenda.
That said, Wal-Mart's payroll and health-care benefits have nothing to do with its ability — and right — to run either an industrial bank, as proposed, or a full-service commercial bank in every city in the U.S.
Nor should the issuance of a charter rest on the retailer's unpopularity with special-interest groups or would-be competitors. In this case, however, we fear that might be the case.
A bigger fear is that such rejection of a charter would not be met with the outrage it deserves.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Hybrids Bigger Energy Waster Than SUVs?
Next time a hybrid owner gets smug with you, tell them this:
From Newsmax:Is it an indictment against hybrid vehicles or a press release from General Motors?
You be the judge after checking out a new study by Oregon-Based CNW Marketing Research that claims hybrid autos consume more energy over the lifetime of the car than a Chevrolet Tahoe SUV.
"As Americans become increasingly interested in fuel economy and global warming, they are beginning to make choices about the vehicles they drive based on fuel economy and to a lesser degree emissions," says the study. "But many of those choices aren't actually the best in terms of vehicle lifetime energy usage and the cost to society over the full lifetime of a car or truck."
CNW claims it has spent that past two years digging up data on automobile energy usage from "concept to scrappage." In other words, they're referring to energy used on things like plant to dealer fuel costs, employee driving distances, electricity usage per pound of material used in each vehicle and literally hundreds of other variables.
The study labels such criteria as "dollars per lifetime mile," or the energy cost per mile driven.
What will surely rankle hybrid drivers is CNW's findings that the much-heralded "fuel efficient" vehicles cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles.
"For example, the Honda Accord Hybrid has an energy cost per mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18," says the study. "Put simply, over the "Dust to Dust" lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50% more energy than the non-hybrid version."
And while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 per mile, the Hummer H3 (an SUV) was only $1.949 per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civic at $2.42 per mile.
CNW says that among reasons hybrids cost more than non-hybrids are the manufacture, replacement and disposal of such items as batteries and electric motors (in addition to the conventional engine), lighter-weight materials and complexity of the power package.
"If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy because of family budgets or depleting oil supplies, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high-fuel-economy vehicles," says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, Inc. "But if the concern is the broader issues, such as environmental impact of energy usage, some high-mileage vehicles actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime."
"We believe this kind of data is important in a consumer's selection of transportation," says Spinella. "Basing purchase decisions solely on fuel economy or vehicle size does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue."
Hybrid cars have seen a rise in popularity for the past few years because of environmental concerns and lower gas mileage.
U.S. car sales figures appear to back up the anecdotal evidence. Sales of GM's Envoy and Chevrolet Tahoe fell more than 50% in September 2005 compared to September 2004, while Toyota's Prius sales increased by 90% from the same period.
From Newsmax:Is it an indictment against hybrid vehicles or a press release from General Motors?
You be the judge after checking out a new study by Oregon-Based CNW Marketing Research that claims hybrid autos consume more energy over the lifetime of the car than a Chevrolet Tahoe SUV.
"As Americans become increasingly interested in fuel economy and global warming, they are beginning to make choices about the vehicles they drive based on fuel economy and to a lesser degree emissions," says the study. "But many of those choices aren't actually the best in terms of vehicle lifetime energy usage and the cost to society over the full lifetime of a car or truck."
CNW claims it has spent that past two years digging up data on automobile energy usage from "concept to scrappage." In other words, they're referring to energy used on things like plant to dealer fuel costs, employee driving distances, electricity usage per pound of material used in each vehicle and literally hundreds of other variables.
The study labels such criteria as "dollars per lifetime mile," or the energy cost per mile driven.
What will surely rankle hybrid drivers is CNW's findings that the much-heralded "fuel efficient" vehicles cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles.
"For example, the Honda Accord Hybrid has an energy cost per mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18," says the study. "Put simply, over the "Dust to Dust" lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50% more energy than the non-hybrid version."
And while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 per mile, the Hummer H3 (an SUV) was only $1.949 per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civic at $2.42 per mile.
CNW says that among reasons hybrids cost more than non-hybrids are the manufacture, replacement and disposal of such items as batteries and electric motors (in addition to the conventional engine), lighter-weight materials and complexity of the power package.
"If a consumer is concerned about fuel economy because of family budgets or depleting oil supplies, it is perfectly logical to consider buying high-fuel-economy vehicles," says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, Inc. "But if the concern is the broader issues, such as environmental impact of energy usage, some high-mileage vehicles actually cost society more than conventional or even larger models over their lifetime."
"We believe this kind of data is important in a consumer's selection of transportation," says Spinella. "Basing purchase decisions solely on fuel economy or vehicle size does not get to the heart of the energy usage issue."
Hybrid cars have seen a rise in popularity for the past few years because of environmental concerns and lower gas mileage.
U.S. car sales figures appear to back up the anecdotal evidence. Sales of GM's Envoy and Chevrolet Tahoe fell more than 50% in September 2005 compared to September 2004, while Toyota's Prius sales increased by 90% from the same period.
McJobs? Maybe Not
From Newsmax:
You often hear the argument that the types of jobs being created these days are more quantity than quality. Therefore, even though the unemployment rate is going down, American's standard of living will eventually fall.
But The Christian Science Monitor today refuted that argument, saying that the economy "isn't just producing jobs these days, it's producing good jobs."The paper points to quality job opportunities from companies such as Honeywell, which plans to hire workers at $40k to $100k to work in a data-storage center, AFB International, which is looking for technicians at $30k to $40k and PhD scientists at $80k to $100k.
Also railroads in Southern California are offering positions at $35k to $70k a year.The Monitor says that the availability of these types of jobs indicates "movement in a positive direction" for the employment situation in the U.S.Plus, the Monitor points to jobs in the management and professional occupations category tracked by the Labor Department.
The category is "employing 1.2 million more people this month than a year ago - or about 1 in 3 new jobs in America." The highest-paying category tracked by Labor, the median paycheck for full-time workers is $937 a week, far above the median of $651.
In addition, the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks the ratio of higher-paying to lower-paying jobs, reports that the ratio has turned positive this year for the first time since 2001.
That means, according to the Monitor, the new jobs tend to bring the average wage up, not down.Overall, the U.S. added 211,000 jobs in March and 590,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year. The unemployment rate is currently 4.7%.
Just think how much better the data would be if food producers had to pay market wages instead of using illegals to do their picking.
You often hear the argument that the types of jobs being created these days are more quantity than quality. Therefore, even though the unemployment rate is going down, American's standard of living will eventually fall.
But The Christian Science Monitor today refuted that argument, saying that the economy "isn't just producing jobs these days, it's producing good jobs."The paper points to quality job opportunities from companies such as Honeywell, which plans to hire workers at $40k to $100k to work in a data-storage center, AFB International, which is looking for technicians at $30k to $40k and PhD scientists at $80k to $100k.
Also railroads in Southern California are offering positions at $35k to $70k a year.The Monitor says that the availability of these types of jobs indicates "movement in a positive direction" for the employment situation in the U.S.Plus, the Monitor points to jobs in the management and professional occupations category tracked by the Labor Department.
The category is "employing 1.2 million more people this month than a year ago - or about 1 in 3 new jobs in America." The highest-paying category tracked by Labor, the median paycheck for full-time workers is $937 a week, far above the median of $651.
In addition, the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks the ratio of higher-paying to lower-paying jobs, reports that the ratio has turned positive this year for the first time since 2001.
That means, according to the Monitor, the new jobs tend to bring the average wage up, not down.Overall, the U.S. added 211,000 jobs in March and 590,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year. The unemployment rate is currently 4.7%.
Just think how much better the data would be if food producers had to pay market wages instead of using illegals to do their picking.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Noncrimes And Punishment
From IBD:
Posted 4/7/2006
Politics: The latest media and Democrat "gotcha" is that President Bush authorized a "leak" of classified information to the press. But how can a president who determines what is classified and what is not "leak" anything?
According to reports based on what is supposed to be secret grand jury testimony, Scooter Libby — former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney — testified to the grand jury investigating his alleged lying about who told him Valerie Plame was a CIA employee that he got approval for leaking unrelated "classified" data to the press from Cheney after Cheney checked with President Bush.
To which we say, so what?
In a court brief filed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby testified that Bush and Cheney declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the president receives, allowing Libby to use that information to defend administration policy on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction that was under attack by Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, and others.
As Cheney told Fox News in February, a standing executive order first issued in 1982 gives the president and vice president authority to declassify information.
Much of the data contained in an NIE is not classified anyway. Theoretically, the president could decide what he had for lunch that day was a state secret.
According to the documents filed, the authorization to discuss the NIE led to the July 8, 2003, conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate."
Fitzgerald and the Democrats seem to think this is further proof that Libby was part of a Bush administration "plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson," as the filing states, rather than an attempt to get the facts out — facts that Wilson, a proven serial liar, misstated in his infamous New York Times op-ed piece asserting that Bush lied in his State of the Union address about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium in Africa.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was "troubled by news reports that President Bush may have authorized Mr. Libby to disclose intelligence information to support the administration's case for war in Iraq."
Funny, but Pelosi wasn't troubled on Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before the "leak," when the Bush administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the request of Senate Democrats Dick Durbin, Carl Levin and Diane Feinstein.
This little factoid did not keep Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid from huffing and puffing that "President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leak of classified information." And the brief does not specify exactly what the "certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate" was.
There has been no charge filed by Fitzgerald or anyone else that a crime was committed in disclosing what was in fact common knowledge — that Valerie Plame was a CIA desk jockey, not a covert agent, and that she was Joe Wilson's wife.
Nor does this "leak" of declassified data unrelated to what Libby is charged with, having a different recollection of who told what to whom than certain reporters, which Fitzgerald has cleverly morphed into "lying to investigators."
Unlike the actions of the media — which have leaked truly classified data, such as the existence of the NSA warrantless surveillance of terrorist operatives — neither Bush, Cheney nor Libby has done anything wrong except defend this country in time of war.
Posted 4/7/2006
Politics: The latest media and Democrat "gotcha" is that President Bush authorized a "leak" of classified information to the press. But how can a president who determines what is classified and what is not "leak" anything?
According to reports based on what is supposed to be secret grand jury testimony, Scooter Libby — former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney — testified to the grand jury investigating his alleged lying about who told him Valerie Plame was a CIA employee that he got approval for leaking unrelated "classified" data to the press from Cheney after Cheney checked with President Bush.
To which we say, so what?
In a court brief filed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby testified that Bush and Cheney declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the president receives, allowing Libby to use that information to defend administration policy on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction that was under attack by Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, and others.
As Cheney told Fox News in February, a standing executive order first issued in 1982 gives the president and vice president authority to declassify information.
Much of the data contained in an NIE is not classified anyway. Theoretically, the president could decide what he had for lunch that day was a state secret.
According to the documents filed, the authorization to discuss the NIE led to the July 8, 2003, conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate."
Fitzgerald and the Democrats seem to think this is further proof that Libby was part of a Bush administration "plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson," as the filing states, rather than an attempt to get the facts out — facts that Wilson, a proven serial liar, misstated in his infamous New York Times op-ed piece asserting that Bush lied in his State of the Union address about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium in Africa.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was "troubled by news reports that President Bush may have authorized Mr. Libby to disclose intelligence information to support the administration's case for war in Iraq."
Funny, but Pelosi wasn't troubled on Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before the "leak," when the Bush administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the request of Senate Democrats Dick Durbin, Carl Levin and Diane Feinstein.
This little factoid did not keep Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid from huffing and puffing that "President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leak of classified information." And the brief does not specify exactly what the "certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate" was.
There has been no charge filed by Fitzgerald or anyone else that a crime was committed in disclosing what was in fact common knowledge — that Valerie Plame was a CIA desk jockey, not a covert agent, and that she was Joe Wilson's wife.
Nor does this "leak" of declassified data unrelated to what Libby is charged with, having a different recollection of who told what to whom than certain reporters, which Fitzgerald has cleverly morphed into "lying to investigators."
Unlike the actions of the media — which have leaked truly classified data, such as the existence of the NSA warrantless surveillance of terrorist operatives — neither Bush, Cheney nor Libby has done anything wrong except defend this country in time of war.
Old-Time Religion
From IBD:
Posted 4/7/2006
Environment: From high on his Olympian perch, Al Gore no longer sees global warming as the subject of mere political debate. It is now a moral issue of its own.
The step is a natural one for Gore, who appears with Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Robert Kennedy Jr. on a celebrity-salad cover of Vanity Fair's May "Green Issue." There hasn't lived a tent-revival preacher who could surpass the former vice president's talent for sermonizing.
But those preachers were concerned with the eternal. Gore's concerns and those of his pals in Annie Leibovitz's cover shot are most certainly ephemeral. In fact, they border on plain silliness.
It takes a big serving of cheek to talk about global warming in the context Gore used last week in a speech in — where else? — the San Francisco Bay Area.
"This is not really a political issue," Gore said. "It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue." But what's moral, we wonder, about forcing the world into a restricted lifestyle based on an unproven theory?
Don't be fooled. The real reason Gore and others keep hectoring us about climate change is they want to be the controlling moral authority. They loathe capitalism and its comforts and conveniences. But they recognize its power, and so want to command it.
The case for grabbing such power hangs on a rather slender reed: the claim that the Earth is rapidly warming up, and it's all humankind's fault. What's most surprising about this is how little hard science is used to make the case.
We noted last week there has recently been a flood of new books, magazine cover stories and lengthy articles in the media on the threats posed by warming.
Yet those stories rarely include reasonable scientific objections to global warming, if they do at all. Not surprising. When thousands of geoscientists and climatologists signed a petition questioning the Kyoto global warming deal a few years ago, it was all but ignored by the media.
For instance, most estimates — including those of proponents — show that the amount of warming that can be prevented by curbing greenhouse gases is, at the most, a third of a degree.
Yet doing this will cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars, according to U.S. government estimates. (By the way, the estimates we're referring to were made during the Clinton administration, when Gore was vice president.)
Much of the global warming movement's cultlike belief system revolves around projections that the Earth will heat up by two degrees or more over the next century. Yet those forecasts come from a statistical model that has come under repeated attack by scientists for its inaccuracy and lack of mathematical rigor.
Even using today's supercomputers, scientists can't tell you with certainty what the weather will be like in two weeks. Think they'll be any more accurate going out a century or so?
Don't ask us why we're so cynical or accuse us of shilling for oil companies. Instead ask Gore and the editors of Vanity Fair or Time or other mainstream media outlets why they no longer exercise routine journalistic skepticism.
Posted 4/7/2006
Environment: From high on his Olympian perch, Al Gore no longer sees global warming as the subject of mere political debate. It is now a moral issue of its own.
The step is a natural one for Gore, who appears with Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Robert Kennedy Jr. on a celebrity-salad cover of Vanity Fair's May "Green Issue." There hasn't lived a tent-revival preacher who could surpass the former vice president's talent for sermonizing.
But those preachers were concerned with the eternal. Gore's concerns and those of his pals in Annie Leibovitz's cover shot are most certainly ephemeral. In fact, they border on plain silliness.
It takes a big serving of cheek to talk about global warming in the context Gore used last week in a speech in — where else? — the San Francisco Bay Area.
"This is not really a political issue," Gore said. "It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue." But what's moral, we wonder, about forcing the world into a restricted lifestyle based on an unproven theory?
Don't be fooled. The real reason Gore and others keep hectoring us about climate change is they want to be the controlling moral authority. They loathe capitalism and its comforts and conveniences. But they recognize its power, and so want to command it.
The case for grabbing such power hangs on a rather slender reed: the claim that the Earth is rapidly warming up, and it's all humankind's fault. What's most surprising about this is how little hard science is used to make the case.
We noted last week there has recently been a flood of new books, magazine cover stories and lengthy articles in the media on the threats posed by warming.
Yet those stories rarely include reasonable scientific objections to global warming, if they do at all. Not surprising. When thousands of geoscientists and climatologists signed a petition questioning the Kyoto global warming deal a few years ago, it was all but ignored by the media.
For instance, most estimates — including those of proponents — show that the amount of warming that can be prevented by curbing greenhouse gases is, at the most, a third of a degree.
Yet doing this will cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars, according to U.S. government estimates. (By the way, the estimates we're referring to were made during the Clinton administration, when Gore was vice president.)
Much of the global warming movement's cultlike belief system revolves around projections that the Earth will heat up by two degrees or more over the next century. Yet those forecasts come from a statistical model that has come under repeated attack by scientists for its inaccuracy and lack of mathematical rigor.
Even using today's supercomputers, scientists can't tell you with certainty what the weather will be like in two weeks. Think they'll be any more accurate going out a century or so?
Don't ask us why we're so cynical or accuse us of shilling for oil companies. Instead ask Gore and the editors of Vanity Fair or Time or other mainstream media outlets why they no longer exercise routine journalistic skepticism.
More Damning Documents On Saddam
From IBD:
Posted 4/7/2006
Origins Of War: The latest in a stream of eye-opening Iraqi documents shows Saddam Hussein's regime was planning suicide attacks on U.S. interests six months before 9-11. Why won't Washington get the word out?
Last month the Pentagon began releasing records captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Among the documents is a letter dated March 11, 2001, written by Abdel Magid Hammod Ali, one of Saddam's air force generals.
According to an unofficial translation, Page 6 of the letter asks for "the names of those who desire to volunteer for suicide mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American interests."
Assuming the document's accuracy, this shows that Saddam's regime was not only providing aid and support for terrorist organizations of other countries. It was also planning its own bombings directed at U.S. facilities and personnel.
As counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling wrote last week on the Weekly Standard's Web site, that would mean Russian intelligence services under Vladimir Putin were better informed about Iraq's terrorist abilities than the U.S. spy community.
Though little noticed by the press, during a July 2004 visit to Kazakhstan the Russian president said that between 9-11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received . . . information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the U.S. and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations."
This new document, said Darling, "would seem to refute a long-standing contention among members of the U.S. intelligence community that Iraq ceased its involvement in international terrorism after its failed 1993 plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush." Darling cites former National Security Council official Richard Clarke's book "Against all Enemies," which contends that the NSC, the CIA and the FBI all agreed Iraq posed no terrorist threat to the U.S.
Equally embarrassing to our spies is another newly released document from 1999 detailing plans for a "Blessed July" operation.
According to the English translation on the Foreign Military Studies Office's Joint Reserve Intelligence Center Web site, Saddam's older son Uday ordered 50 members of the fanatical "Fedayeen Saddam" group to stage bombings and assassinations in Iraq and Europe — including London, where 10 people were assigned.
Excerpts from a long, recently declassified report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Iraqi Perspectives Project will be published in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. Looking at the "Blessed July" document, Foreign Affairs notes this "regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West (was) well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."
The Pentagon has obviously been sitting on a treasure trove of paper incriminations against Saddam's regime. So far, just a minuscule amount of the more than 3,000 hours of tape recordings of Saddam and 48,000 boxes of intelligence documents has been translated and deciphered.
What has come out so far has confirmed Americans' worst fears about Saddam's evil regime. To review:
Saddam is heard on a 1997 tape predicting terrorism would soon be coming to the U.S., while his son-in-law — who was in charge of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — gloats about lying to U.N. weapons inspectors to hide the extent of Iraq's WMD program.
Saddam, in a tape made in 2000, talks with Iraqi scientists about his plans to build a nuclear device. He discusses Iraq's plasma separation program — an advanced uranium-enrichment technique completely missed by U.N. inspectors.
An Iraqi intelligence document, released just two weeks ago, describes a February 1995 meeting between Saddam's spies and Osama bin Laden. During that meeting, bin Laden offered to conduct "joint operations" with Iraq. Saddam subsequently ordered his aides to "develop the relationship" with the al-Qaida leader.
A fax, sent on June 6, 2001, shows conclusively that Saddam's government provided financial aid to Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf is an al-Qaida offshoot co-founded by bin Laden's brother-in-law.
These are just a few of the revelations about Saddam and terrorism to be found in a handful of documents and tapes. When all are fully translated, we're betting the terror links will be clear, damning and irrefutable.
At present, we're relying too much on translations by bloggers and other amateurs. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., says the White House has been dragging its feet for fear of embarrassing supposed allies (such as Russia) whose links with Saddam would come under scrutiny.
These documents make it even plainer who our enemies are and why we're at war. The administration should move to get out accurate translations so Americans can better understand why we fight.
Posted 4/7/2006
Origins Of War: The latest in a stream of eye-opening Iraqi documents shows Saddam Hussein's regime was planning suicide attacks on U.S. interests six months before 9-11. Why won't Washington get the word out?
Last month the Pentagon began releasing records captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Among the documents is a letter dated March 11, 2001, written by Abdel Magid Hammod Ali, one of Saddam's air force generals.
According to an unofficial translation, Page 6 of the letter asks for "the names of those who desire to volunteer for suicide mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American interests."
Assuming the document's accuracy, this shows that Saddam's regime was not only providing aid and support for terrorist organizations of other countries. It was also planning its own bombings directed at U.S. facilities and personnel.
As counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling wrote last week on the Weekly Standard's Web site, that would mean Russian intelligence services under Vladimir Putin were better informed about Iraq's terrorist abilities than the U.S. spy community.
Though little noticed by the press, during a July 2004 visit to Kazakhstan the Russian president said that between 9-11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received . . . information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the U.S. and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations."
This new document, said Darling, "would seem to refute a long-standing contention among members of the U.S. intelligence community that Iraq ceased its involvement in international terrorism after its failed 1993 plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush." Darling cites former National Security Council official Richard Clarke's book "Against all Enemies," which contends that the NSC, the CIA and the FBI all agreed Iraq posed no terrorist threat to the U.S.
Equally embarrassing to our spies is another newly released document from 1999 detailing plans for a "Blessed July" operation.
According to the English translation on the Foreign Military Studies Office's Joint Reserve Intelligence Center Web site, Saddam's older son Uday ordered 50 members of the fanatical "Fedayeen Saddam" group to stage bombings and assassinations in Iraq and Europe — including London, where 10 people were assigned.
Excerpts from a long, recently declassified report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Iraqi Perspectives Project will be published in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. Looking at the "Blessed July" document, Foreign Affairs notes this "regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West (was) well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."
The Pentagon has obviously been sitting on a treasure trove of paper incriminations against Saddam's regime. So far, just a minuscule amount of the more than 3,000 hours of tape recordings of Saddam and 48,000 boxes of intelligence documents has been translated and deciphered.
What has come out so far has confirmed Americans' worst fears about Saddam's evil regime. To review:
Saddam is heard on a 1997 tape predicting terrorism would soon be coming to the U.S., while his son-in-law — who was in charge of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — gloats about lying to U.N. weapons inspectors to hide the extent of Iraq's WMD program.
Saddam, in a tape made in 2000, talks with Iraqi scientists about his plans to build a nuclear device. He discusses Iraq's plasma separation program — an advanced uranium-enrichment technique completely missed by U.N. inspectors.
An Iraqi intelligence document, released just two weeks ago, describes a February 1995 meeting between Saddam's spies and Osama bin Laden. During that meeting, bin Laden offered to conduct "joint operations" with Iraq. Saddam subsequently ordered his aides to "develop the relationship" with the al-Qaida leader.
A fax, sent on June 6, 2001, shows conclusively that Saddam's government provided financial aid to Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf is an al-Qaida offshoot co-founded by bin Laden's brother-in-law.
These are just a few of the revelations about Saddam and terrorism to be found in a handful of documents and tapes. When all are fully translated, we're betting the terror links will be clear, damning and irrefutable.
At present, we're relying too much on translations by bloggers and other amateurs. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., says the White House has been dragging its feet for fear of embarrassing supposed allies (such as Russia) whose links with Saddam would come under scrutiny.
These documents make it even plainer who our enemies are and why we're at war. The administration should move to get out accurate translations so Americans can better understand why we fight.
Back To Basics
From IBD:
Posted 4/7/2006
Illegal Immigration: Now that the Senate's grand compromise has fizzled out, it's time to get practical. What the nation needs is workable law, not "comprehensive" schemes that look good only on paper.
With all due respect to the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, there was a point last week when the senators' zeal for a deal got the better of their realism. That was when leaders of both parties came up with their grand compromise plan to deal with the status of America's 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants.
It was elegant in its way. It split the illegal population into three groups — based on time lived in the U.S. — to determine eligibility for legal status and, politically, to placate both advocates of legalization and opponents of amnesty. But it also was unenforceable.
Former U.S. immigration chief Doris Meissner called it a "throwback" to the 1986 reform law, which also tried to sort amnesty-ready long-term illegals from deportable short-timers. The idea didn't work then. It was just too easy to forge evidence to document past residency. For the same reasons, it wouldn't work now.
The senators shelved the plan on Friday after it failed to muster enough voters to protect it from amendments. They have since left for their two-week Easter break, which would be a good time for them to see how America's immigration laws work in practice.
This exposure is needed badly. The laws work poorly, if at all, and the system for enforcing them is already overwhelmed. It's not ready for the demands Congress seems willing to put on it.
Washington has a history of ignoring workplace realities. Since 1986, for instance, it's been against the law to hire illegal aliens. Yet that hasn't stopped them from finding work. Blame employers who knowingly break the law. But honest businesses also get little help; most firms don't have the time or money to check documents related to past residency.
A small voluntary program enables employers to check Social Security numbers and information against a federal database. With enough time and money, it could be built into a reliable nationwide system that employers could use. But it's not there now. The House bill gives some idea of the work still needed, giving employers all of six years to verify that their workers are here legally.
And if anyone sees the worst of the immigration system, it is those would-be U.S. residents who play by the rules. The government has made progress in whittling down its backlog of applications, but it is has some way to go before meeting its stated goal of getting the average processing time for a green card down to six months.
Now imagine the impact of dumping millions of new cases — including full background checks and verification of residency at some previous point — on a bureaucracy struggling to catch up with its current workload.
There is already too much incentive to avoid the hassle of legality and sneak in or overstay a visa. Unless Congress is willing to spend what it takes to bring the system up to speed, long waits will get longer and the law-abiding will lose.
At some point Congress does need to decide how to deal with the huge population of illegal immigrants here now. President Bush is basically right in calling for a "comprehensive" plan. But because it fosters contempt for the law, a plan that neglects the basics of enforcement is worse than none at all. Whatever reform is ultimately enacted, it must be more credible than the laws we have now.
Posted 4/7/2006
Illegal Immigration: Now that the Senate's grand compromise has fizzled out, it's time to get practical. What the nation needs is workable law, not "comprehensive" schemes that look good only on paper.
With all due respect to the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, there was a point last week when the senators' zeal for a deal got the better of their realism. That was when leaders of both parties came up with their grand compromise plan to deal with the status of America's 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants.
It was elegant in its way. It split the illegal population into three groups — based on time lived in the U.S. — to determine eligibility for legal status and, politically, to placate both advocates of legalization and opponents of amnesty. But it also was unenforceable.
Former U.S. immigration chief Doris Meissner called it a "throwback" to the 1986 reform law, which also tried to sort amnesty-ready long-term illegals from deportable short-timers. The idea didn't work then. It was just too easy to forge evidence to document past residency. For the same reasons, it wouldn't work now.
The senators shelved the plan on Friday after it failed to muster enough voters to protect it from amendments. They have since left for their two-week Easter break, which would be a good time for them to see how America's immigration laws work in practice.
This exposure is needed badly. The laws work poorly, if at all, and the system for enforcing them is already overwhelmed. It's not ready for the demands Congress seems willing to put on it.
Washington has a history of ignoring workplace realities. Since 1986, for instance, it's been against the law to hire illegal aliens. Yet that hasn't stopped them from finding work. Blame employers who knowingly break the law. But honest businesses also get little help; most firms don't have the time or money to check documents related to past residency.
A small voluntary program enables employers to check Social Security numbers and information against a federal database. With enough time and money, it could be built into a reliable nationwide system that employers could use. But it's not there now. The House bill gives some idea of the work still needed, giving employers all of six years to verify that their workers are here legally.
And if anyone sees the worst of the immigration system, it is those would-be U.S. residents who play by the rules. The government has made progress in whittling down its backlog of applications, but it is has some way to go before meeting its stated goal of getting the average processing time for a green card down to six months.
Now imagine the impact of dumping millions of new cases — including full background checks and verification of residency at some previous point — on a bureaucracy struggling to catch up with its current workload.
There is already too much incentive to avoid the hassle of legality and sneak in or overstay a visa. Unless Congress is willing to spend what it takes to bring the system up to speed, long waits will get longer and the law-abiding will lose.
At some point Congress does need to decide how to deal with the huge population of illegal immigrants here now. President Bush is basically right in calling for a "comprehensive" plan. But because it fosters contempt for the law, a plan that neglects the basics of enforcement is worse than none at all. Whatever reform is ultimately enacted, it must be more credible than the laws we have now.
American Ingenuity Marches On
If Marxist wackos like Putin and Chavez think that oil will be the new weapon in the cold war, America will have an answer....provided the politicians in this country stay out of the way.
Posted 4/7/2006 in IBD:
Virus adds new spark to batteries
MIT scientists altered viral genes, hard-wiring the viruses to coat themselves in cobalt oxide molecules and gold particles. The viruses are then lined up to form the wires that power ultrathin lithium-ion batteries. They can be cloned endlessly. The batteries generate three times the energy typical for their weight and size. The researchers say the technology has wide-reaching applications. If used to create car batteries, the lighter batteries could effectively out-compete gas-powered autos.
Posted 4/7/2006 in IBD:
Virus adds new spark to batteries
MIT scientists altered viral genes, hard-wiring the viruses to coat themselves in cobalt oxide molecules and gold particles. The viruses are then lined up to form the wires that power ultrathin lithium-ion batteries. They can be cloned endlessly. The batteries generate three times the energy typical for their weight and size. The researchers say the technology has wide-reaching applications. If used to create car batteries, the lighter batteries could effectively out-compete gas-powered autos.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Famous Last Words (They hope You've Forgotten)
“The world’s climatologists are agreed [that we must] prepare for the next ice age.” Science Digest, February 1973
“[Glaciers] have begun to advance […] growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter […] the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.” Source: “Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 1974
“A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. [The Northern Hemisphere’s climate] has been getting cooler since about 1950.” The Times, May 21, 1975
“[Glaciers] have begun to advance […] growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter […] the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.” Source: “Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 1974
“A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable. [The Northern Hemisphere’s climate] has been getting cooler since about 1950.” The Times, May 21, 1975
An Oily Mess
Every place in the world the US gets oil from is a complete mess.
I’m not just talking about the Middle East. In fact, dangerously unstable relations with Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria or Sudan could lead to an energy crisis, What kinds of problems do these countries pose?
Let’s start with Iran. The country is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Its desire for the destruction of Israel as well as its crystal-clear disdain for the Great Satan in the United States could very well throw a wrench the size of Texas into its oil trade and rain down the negative aftereffects here at home. (As it is, a few videos of rockets fired during an Iranian military exercise can push oil prices up five bucks a barrel in a single day.)
Just this past month, Iran’s economy minister warned the world that any effort to punish his country for resuming nuclear research and testing could lead to higher oil prices. Any country that imposes sanctions on Iran, he said, would send oil prices “beyond levels the West expects.” The UN council that would decide on sanctions is made up of countries who love to sell the mullahs arms and nuclear technology, or keep pumping “developmental aid” into Tehran no matter what.
Up north, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his cronies are making a ruthless power play to control the Russian oil market. Russia’s oil reserves are conservatively estimated at 70 billion barrels - more than double those of the United States.
Production of Saudi Arabia oil, on the other hand, not only remains shrouded in mystery, it is a state secret. That means no one really knows when the country will hit peak oil (the half life of oil production). Some reports suggest that could occur in five to ten years. With some of the largest oil fields in the world dropping dramatically in production, Chris believes we could see oil soaring to US$150 a barrel.
Then there’s Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez has transformed the democratic system that had been in place since 1958 by introducing a new constitution, a new legislative assembly and supreme court, and a new electoral oversight mechanism.
Despite considerable domestic opposition and an attempted coup in 2002, President Chavez has gained complete control within Venezuela. Washington officially views Chavez as an unfriendly leader, and Chavez in turn has threatened to cut off oil supplies to the United States. Yesterday, he reneged on long-standing contracts with multinational oil conglomerates, all but nationalizing Venezuelan oil production.
These are just three the scenarios. He suggests that any one of these situations could send crude oil has high as US$300 a barrel. That might sound crazy, but not when you realize that five years ago crude oil was priced at US$12 a barrel. Today, it’s over US$60 a barrel. That’s five times the price in five years.
No matter which one of these situations causes oil to rise, here’s a question: how do you profit?
When oil goes above US$80 a barrel, alternative energy looks very attractive. No longer do solar energy, wind energy, or even bio-based energies look economically unattractive. The time has finally come for these alternatives to light the way.
THE WORLD’S GREATEST ADDICTION – IS IT GOOD FOR YOU…?
By Dr. David Eifrig Jr.
April 09, 2006
The first coffee house opened in Constantinople in 1475.
There are examples of people drinking coffee before this time (an Arabian physician Avicenna is credited with brewing the first cup around 1000 AD) but the earliest concrete evidence of commercial coffee was found in Constantinople.
English coffee houses opened in the 1650s. They were called penny universities – the price for a cup was a penny.
By 1800, in Italy, the strong dark drink was considered a miracle “cure-all.” Even the pope approved of the drink although the church originally thought it the “drink of the devil.” Perhaps linking the drink to the ‘dark one’ was good marketing: by 1765 there were close to 300 coffee houses in Venice.
Starbucks – coffee on every corner – is not a new idea.
The wild popularity of coffee and the dedication seen in the people who drink it are evidence of human addiction – to the caffeine that’s found in the natural variety.
In a cup (8 oz.) of Maxwell House, there is 110 mg of caffeine. But in the same size cup of coffee you buy at Starbucks, there is 250 mg of caffeine. Trade secret: in Starbucks’ large (16 oz.) “decaf,” there is 10 mg of caffeine. No wonder people seem to prefer Starbucks, right? [Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest]
It’s well known that caffeine is addictive. But... is coffee bad for you?
Natural coffee is a mix of many substances, some of which contain anti-oxidants. And, although many anti-oxidants are poorly understood, here are a few of the things coffee has been shown to do:
What about the nearly ubiquitous conventional wisdom that coffee is bad for you? Fear of coffee stems from late 1970s. Studies were done showing coffee was associated with bladder cancer. However, well-controlled studies attempting to duplicate the association failed to confirm any of the earlier reported studies. The reason? The studies finding harm were done before Mr. Coffee and the ubiquitous paper filters, which are now thought to remove several of the toxic volatile oils that may be related to disease.
The other main concern doctors – read western medicine – have with coffee is the potential danger of caffeine.
But, there is very little evidence that caffeine, in moderate doses, is harmful. Just the opposite in fact: numerous studies show caffeine benefits in memory, learning, and even athletic performance.
The exception to this generalization is if you suffer from thyroid disease. If you have intolerance to temperature changes (if you feel hot or cold all the time) or if you suffer from severe dry skin frequently, you may have thyroid disease. Studies remain inconclusive, but my hunch is that some people with a predisposition to thyroid disease aggravate the condition by consuming caffeine. If you have these symptoms, I suggest a trial of no caffeine. You may see a substantial decrease in the severity of your symptoms.
Taking my own medicine, I went cold turkey on coffee and caffeine for the month of July.
I can report that my mind and body felt clear for the first time in a while. Now that I am back on the stuff and feeling a little sluggish, I will be attempting another month long trial this spring.
But… I may miss out on some of the incredible benefits in coffee if I stop…
Bottom Line: Beware of too many French Press Coffees or too many of those machine drinks made pressed with steamed water. Also try an occasional decaf or do what I do and order mostly half-cafs!
April 09, 2006
The first coffee house opened in Constantinople in 1475.
There are examples of people drinking coffee before this time (an Arabian physician Avicenna is credited with brewing the first cup around 1000 AD) but the earliest concrete evidence of commercial coffee was found in Constantinople.
English coffee houses opened in the 1650s. They were called penny universities – the price for a cup was a penny.
By 1800, in Italy, the strong dark drink was considered a miracle “cure-all.” Even the pope approved of the drink although the church originally thought it the “drink of the devil.” Perhaps linking the drink to the ‘dark one’ was good marketing: by 1765 there were close to 300 coffee houses in Venice.
Starbucks – coffee on every corner – is not a new idea.
The wild popularity of coffee and the dedication seen in the people who drink it are evidence of human addiction – to the caffeine that’s found in the natural variety.
In a cup (8 oz.) of Maxwell House, there is 110 mg of caffeine. But in the same size cup of coffee you buy at Starbucks, there is 250 mg of caffeine. Trade secret: in Starbucks’ large (16 oz.) “decaf,” there is 10 mg of caffeine. No wonder people seem to prefer Starbucks, right? [Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest]
It’s well known that caffeine is addictive. But... is coffee bad for you?
Natural coffee is a mix of many substances, some of which contain anti-oxidants. And, although many anti-oxidants are poorly understood, here are a few of the things coffee has been shown to do:
dilate blood vessels (wine does this, too)
remove oxidants via palmitates which enhance enzymes in the gut
decrease the risk for gallstones
reduce LDL oxidation (the so called BAD cholesterol)
act as an enema for the GI tract
decrease risk for Parkinson’s disease
decrease risk for Alzheimer’s disease
lower the risk of liver cirrhosis (good to know for the high alcohol consumers)
decrease risk for colon cancer (decaf doesn’t do this)
lower the risk for diabetes type 2
What about the nearly ubiquitous conventional wisdom that coffee is bad for you? Fear of coffee stems from late 1970s. Studies were done showing coffee was associated with bladder cancer. However, well-controlled studies attempting to duplicate the association failed to confirm any of the earlier reported studies. The reason? The studies finding harm were done before Mr. Coffee and the ubiquitous paper filters, which are now thought to remove several of the toxic volatile oils that may be related to disease.
The other main concern doctors – read western medicine – have with coffee is the potential danger of caffeine.
But, there is very little evidence that caffeine, in moderate doses, is harmful. Just the opposite in fact: numerous studies show caffeine benefits in memory, learning, and even athletic performance.
The exception to this generalization is if you suffer from thyroid disease. If you have intolerance to temperature changes (if you feel hot or cold all the time) or if you suffer from severe dry skin frequently, you may have thyroid disease. Studies remain inconclusive, but my hunch is that some people with a predisposition to thyroid disease aggravate the condition by consuming caffeine. If you have these symptoms, I suggest a trial of no caffeine. You may see a substantial decrease in the severity of your symptoms.
Taking my own medicine, I went cold turkey on coffee and caffeine for the month of July.
I can report that my mind and body felt clear for the first time in a while. Now that I am back on the stuff and feeling a little sluggish, I will be attempting another month long trial this spring.
But… I may miss out on some of the incredible benefits in coffee if I stop…
Bottom Line: Beware of too many French Press Coffees or too many of those machine drinks made pressed with steamed water. Also try an occasional decaf or do what I do and order mostly half-cafs!
Friday, April 07, 2006
Reform? Spare Me!!!
From IBD:
Posted 4/6/2006
Politics:
Did you hear? Congress has taken stern measures to clean up its act. Last week senators limited lobbyist influence. This week representatives capped spending by those dreadful "527s." That ought to do it.
But do what, exactly? That depends on your idea of an objective. If you're thinking the politicians have made themselves more angelic, well, then, not so much. But if you're a Republican member and want to project the appearance of Doing Something in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, you might be pleased.
There's a subtext: If you're a GOP member and want to disadvantage Democrats in the coming races, you're grinning lobe to lobe. That's because the Democrats have made much better use of so-called 527s — named for a tax code provision — that have benefited from the McCain-Feingold campaign reform.
That 2002 legislation, incomprehensibly upheld by the Supreme Court, lets soft money flow unlimited into politically motivated nonprofits. Though groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 benefited the Bush-Cheney campaign by attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record, Democrat-leaning groups such as MoveOn.org actually raised more money.
As IBD's Sean Higgins reported Thursday: "In the 2004 election cycle, about $420 million was raised and spent by the 527 groups . . . mainly benefiting Democrats. Liberal financier George Soros alone donated $23 million."
Republicans started to worry that their large donor database was no match. So late Wednesday, in a party-line vote, the House voted 218-209 to limit 527s to the same donor limit imposed on political action committees, $5,000. At the same time, just to add confusion to the campaign finance muddle, it removed limits on what parties could spend on candidates.
If you're Rep. David Dreier, a normally level-headed California Republican, you might feel the satisfaction of getting even. Dreier opposed McCain-Feingold in part because it left soft money in its advantageous role of political grease. Wednesday night's legislation, he imagines, "restores balance and fairness to the system."
We're not the first to point out the rich irony, maybe even the hypocrisy, of the House Republicans' efforts. If the Democrats can limit Americans' participation in politics, goes their thinking, why, we Republicans can do it too. So there.
An unedifying spectacle, to say the least. Apparently, when the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, the House majority gave up on the prospect of starting over.
Why not scrap McCain-Feingold, which created this mess? Not only did that "reform" simply redirect political money into a more sophisticated shell game, but it also — preposterously, outrageously — bars soft money from buying television issue ads in the last days of a campaign.
If the court forgot about the First Amendment, then maybe Dreier and his colleagues should stand up and restore it.
What sensible Americans want most in political reform is simple enough: transparency. Let the rich and poor translate their passion into money, contributing to candidates and causes of their choice. Make them report what they've given and to whom. Let voters decide whether an elected official has been purchased.
That's reform enough and should inoculate us against the next effort of politicians to paint themselves as angels.
Posted 4/6/2006
Politics:
Did you hear? Congress has taken stern measures to clean up its act. Last week senators limited lobbyist influence. This week representatives capped spending by those dreadful "527s." That ought to do it.
But do what, exactly? That depends on your idea of an objective. If you're thinking the politicians have made themselves more angelic, well, then, not so much. But if you're a Republican member and want to project the appearance of Doing Something in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, you might be pleased.
There's a subtext: If you're a GOP member and want to disadvantage Democrats in the coming races, you're grinning lobe to lobe. That's because the Democrats have made much better use of so-called 527s — named for a tax code provision — that have benefited from the McCain-Feingold campaign reform.
That 2002 legislation, incomprehensibly upheld by the Supreme Court, lets soft money flow unlimited into politically motivated nonprofits. Though groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 benefited the Bush-Cheney campaign by attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record, Democrat-leaning groups such as MoveOn.org actually raised more money.
As IBD's Sean Higgins reported Thursday: "In the 2004 election cycle, about $420 million was raised and spent by the 527 groups . . . mainly benefiting Democrats. Liberal financier George Soros alone donated $23 million."
Republicans started to worry that their large donor database was no match. So late Wednesday, in a party-line vote, the House voted 218-209 to limit 527s to the same donor limit imposed on political action committees, $5,000. At the same time, just to add confusion to the campaign finance muddle, it removed limits on what parties could spend on candidates.
If you're Rep. David Dreier, a normally level-headed California Republican, you might feel the satisfaction of getting even. Dreier opposed McCain-Feingold in part because it left soft money in its advantageous role of political grease. Wednesday night's legislation, he imagines, "restores balance and fairness to the system."
We're not the first to point out the rich irony, maybe even the hypocrisy, of the House Republicans' efforts. If the Democrats can limit Americans' participation in politics, goes their thinking, why, we Republicans can do it too. So there.
An unedifying spectacle, to say the least. Apparently, when the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, the House majority gave up on the prospect of starting over.
Why not scrap McCain-Feingold, which created this mess? Not only did that "reform" simply redirect political money into a more sophisticated shell game, but it also — preposterously, outrageously — bars soft money from buying television issue ads in the last days of a campaign.
If the court forgot about the First Amendment, then maybe Dreier and his colleagues should stand up and restore it.
What sensible Americans want most in political reform is simple enough: transparency. Let the rich and poor translate their passion into money, contributing to candidates and causes of their choice. Make them report what they've given and to whom. Let voters decide whether an elected official has been purchased.
That's reform enough and should inoculate us against the next effort of politicians to paint themselves as angels.
The Culture Of Hypocrisy
Let's face it, the Federal Government has become a joke. These are neither the best nor brightest who are "giving back" to this country through public service. They are a mixture of power-hungry marxists, greedy opportunists and spoiled, trust fund babies who couldn't hold a real job if it was handed to them.
From IBD:
Posted 4/6/2006
Scandal: Democrats plan to campaign on the GOP's "culture of corruption" even after the retirement of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. But before throwing stones, they should board up their own glass house.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn't come to praise Caesar when on Tuesday she released a statement on the resignation of Rep. Tom DeLay, saying:
"Mr. DeLay's departure from Congress is one piece of the changes needed to end the Republican culture of corruption. This Republican corruption continues to cost the American people at the pharmacy, at the gas pump and in their home energy bills."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has echoed these talking points, saying earlier this year:
"The American people have paid the price for the Republican culture of corruption over the last five years, and the president's budget proposes more of the same."
Let's leave aside for the moment the lawsuits from the Democrats' very own special interest, the trial lawyers, that have raised the cost of health care and drugs. Or the fact that Democrats have led the parade in blocking development of domestic oil and natural gas in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf and on federal lands in the West. Or that Democrats have their share of the "earmarks" slipped into budget bills that bloat the deficit.
Let's consider the ethics of those casting these rather large stones. Conspicuously absent from media coverage of DeLay's alleged transgressions is Pelosi's very real election law violations.
For example, House and Senate leaders are allowed one so-called leadership PAC in addition to their own campaign committee, the purpose of which is to make contributions to other candidates. Pelosi had two.
In early 2004, the Federal Election Commission fined both PACs associated with Pelosi, the second making $5,000 contributions to 36 campaigns that had already received the maximum $5,000 allowed by law from the first.
And when it comes to cashing in on family connections, DeLay's relatives can't hold a candle to Reid's family.
In June, 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that in the prior four years firms employing Reid's sons or sons-in-law earned more than $2 million in lobbying fees from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D.-Ill, head of the Democrats' effort to retake the House and make Pelosi speaker, said "the power of the special interests, the control the powerful lobbyists continue to hold, tells the American people everything they need to know about Tom DeLay's departure — that DeLay may be gone, but nothing has changed."
Emanuel has seen corruption and malfeasance firsthand, having served as a senior adviser in the Clinton administration, famous for the White House coffees, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, and Johnny Chung showing up at the White House with a $50,000 check he handed to Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, among other questionable things.
The 2000 campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who would be our president, recently conceded filing false FEC reports, understating in-kind contributions by nearly $722,000, including those of three-time convicted felon Peter Paul.
As we have noted, Reid got $70,000 from sources linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom Democrats tried to hang around DeLay's neck like a political albatross. John Kerry got $100,000, and Senate campaign committee chief Chuck Schumer got nearly $30,000. Schumer in 2003 quietly paid a $130,000 fine plus $120,000 in refunds to 77 donors for violations in his 1998 campaign.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows that since 1990, Democrats have taken in nearly 10% more in campaign contributions from lobbyists. In 2005, the GOP received 55% of lobbyist contributions, but in the 1990s during the Clinton administration, Democrats got 70%.
The "culture of corruption," apparently, is bipartisan.
From IBD:
Posted 4/6/2006
Scandal: Democrats plan to campaign on the GOP's "culture of corruption" even after the retirement of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. But before throwing stones, they should board up their own glass house.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn't come to praise Caesar when on Tuesday she released a statement on the resignation of Rep. Tom DeLay, saying:
"Mr. DeLay's departure from Congress is one piece of the changes needed to end the Republican culture of corruption. This Republican corruption continues to cost the American people at the pharmacy, at the gas pump and in their home energy bills."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has echoed these talking points, saying earlier this year:
"The American people have paid the price for the Republican culture of corruption over the last five years, and the president's budget proposes more of the same."
Let's leave aside for the moment the lawsuits from the Democrats' very own special interest, the trial lawyers, that have raised the cost of health care and drugs. Or the fact that Democrats have led the parade in blocking development of domestic oil and natural gas in Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf and on federal lands in the West. Or that Democrats have their share of the "earmarks" slipped into budget bills that bloat the deficit.
Let's consider the ethics of those casting these rather large stones. Conspicuously absent from media coverage of DeLay's alleged transgressions is Pelosi's very real election law violations.
For example, House and Senate leaders are allowed one so-called leadership PAC in addition to their own campaign committee, the purpose of which is to make contributions to other candidates. Pelosi had two.
In early 2004, the Federal Election Commission fined both PACs associated with Pelosi, the second making $5,000 contributions to 36 campaigns that had already received the maximum $5,000 allowed by law from the first.
And when it comes to cashing in on family connections, DeLay's relatives can't hold a candle to Reid's family.
In June, 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that in the prior four years firms employing Reid's sons or sons-in-law earned more than $2 million in lobbying fees from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D.-Ill, head of the Democrats' effort to retake the House and make Pelosi speaker, said "the power of the special interests, the control the powerful lobbyists continue to hold, tells the American people everything they need to know about Tom DeLay's departure — that DeLay may be gone, but nothing has changed."
Emanuel has seen corruption and malfeasance firsthand, having served as a senior adviser in the Clinton administration, famous for the White House coffees, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, and Johnny Chung showing up at the White House with a $50,000 check he handed to Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, among other questionable things.
The 2000 campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who would be our president, recently conceded filing false FEC reports, understating in-kind contributions by nearly $722,000, including those of three-time convicted felon Peter Paul.
As we have noted, Reid got $70,000 from sources linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom Democrats tried to hang around DeLay's neck like a political albatross. John Kerry got $100,000, and Senate campaign committee chief Chuck Schumer got nearly $30,000. Schumer in 2003 quietly paid a $130,000 fine plus $120,000 in refunds to 77 donors for violations in his 1998 campaign.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows that since 1990, Democrats have taken in nearly 10% more in campaign contributions from lobbyists. In 2005, the GOP received 55% of lobbyist contributions, but in the 1990s during the Clinton administration, Democrats got 70%.
The "culture of corruption," apparently, is bipartisan.
Returning To Work
Going back to my definition of Liberal (give them fish) and Conservative (teach them to fish), we have this from IBD:
Posted 4/6/2006
Welfare State: The welfare rolls in New York City are down to 1964 levels — extraordinary proof that welfare reform has worked there as elsewhere. That's good news for all except true believers in big government.
Those getting welfare in the Big Apple now number about 400,000, the city's Human Resources Administration reported this week. That's a big drop from the city's peak of close to 1.2 million welfare recipients in 1995.
New York achieved this shining success because former Mayor Rudy Giuliani converted the government culture of entitlement into one that demands that the able-bodied work — a policy Mayor Michael Bloomberg has continued, though with a lower profile. Briefly, here's how it works: Those getting benefits are scrutinized, and those abusing the system are removed from the rolls.
To do this, welfare offices were changed into job-search centers; case workers became "job opportunity specialists"; and welfare recipients were required to get used to work through the city's Work Experience Program.
Never letting a silver lining ruin a gloomy day, The New York Times notes these cuts in government dependency occur "amid concerns about income inequality . . . and new signs that poor families are having a harder time meeting housing and food costs."
Welfare reform at the national level shows success is greatest where people are most responsible for solving their own problems.
Miami, for instance, cut off all cash aid after only two or three years when recipients refused to work. As a result, from 1993 to 2002 the welfare caseload in Miami-Dade County plunged 75%.
An analysis of welfare and jobs data by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. found that after 1996, "there was a sudden and significant increase both in the percentage of welfare recipients who became employed and in the duration of their employment."
When welfare reform was reauthorized in February, the get-tough strategy was bolstered. "States will now be required to look at their welfare cases and see who's participating," Kirk Johnson, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told us.
Far from being an "attack on the poor," as some have argued, welfare reform has been an amazing success — on the national and local levels. This success is so resounding, and so clear cut, that some even contemplate the end of welfare itself.
"The welfare state produces its own destruction," Charles Murray argues in a new book, "In Our Hands." "The process takes decades to play out, but it is inexorable."
We hope Mr. Murray is right. We think he is.
Comment:
While the results are not perfect, they are still moving in the right direction. Who has a better chance of improving their position in life, those that are in the job market albiet at a low paying job, or those who sit at home and wait for their monthly check from the big government?
Perhaps those agricultural states can tie their programs in with the local farming industry and relieve the "need" to employ illegal aliens to get the strawberries picked!
Posted 4/6/2006
Welfare State: The welfare rolls in New York City are down to 1964 levels — extraordinary proof that welfare reform has worked there as elsewhere. That's good news for all except true believers in big government.
Those getting welfare in the Big Apple now number about 400,000, the city's Human Resources Administration reported this week. That's a big drop from the city's peak of close to 1.2 million welfare recipients in 1995.
New York achieved this shining success because former Mayor Rudy Giuliani converted the government culture of entitlement into one that demands that the able-bodied work — a policy Mayor Michael Bloomberg has continued, though with a lower profile. Briefly, here's how it works: Those getting benefits are scrutinized, and those abusing the system are removed from the rolls.
To do this, welfare offices were changed into job-search centers; case workers became "job opportunity specialists"; and welfare recipients were required to get used to work through the city's Work Experience Program.
Never letting a silver lining ruin a gloomy day, The New York Times notes these cuts in government dependency occur "amid concerns about income inequality . . . and new signs that poor families are having a harder time meeting housing and food costs."
Welfare reform at the national level shows success is greatest where people are most responsible for solving their own problems.
Miami, for instance, cut off all cash aid after only two or three years when recipients refused to work. As a result, from 1993 to 2002 the welfare caseload in Miami-Dade County plunged 75%.
An analysis of welfare and jobs data by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. found that after 1996, "there was a sudden and significant increase both in the percentage of welfare recipients who became employed and in the duration of their employment."
When welfare reform was reauthorized in February, the get-tough strategy was bolstered. "States will now be required to look at their welfare cases and see who's participating," Kirk Johnson, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told us.
Far from being an "attack on the poor," as some have argued, welfare reform has been an amazing success — on the national and local levels. This success is so resounding, and so clear cut, that some even contemplate the end of welfare itself.
"The welfare state produces its own destruction," Charles Murray argues in a new book, "In Our Hands." "The process takes decades to play out, but it is inexorable."
We hope Mr. Murray is right. We think he is.
Comment:
While the results are not perfect, they are still moving in the right direction. Who has a better chance of improving their position in life, those that are in the job market albiet at a low paying job, or those who sit at home and wait for their monthly check from the big government?
Perhaps those agricultural states can tie their programs in with the local farming industry and relieve the "need" to employ illegal aliens to get the strawberries picked!
Thursday, April 06, 2006
They Really Think We're Stupid
Just got done watching our elected officials in the Senate fall all over themselves to announce the "Landmark Compromise" for handling illegal aliens living in our country.
The bottom line, if you got in here illegally and avoided the law to now, YOU WIN!!!
During this whole debate, I have had the following issues remain un-answered:
Why is this framed as an immigration issue? An immigrant is someone who comes to this country in order to become a citizen. While leaving out the word citizenship, Merriam-Webster defines immigration as "coming to a foreign country and taking up permanent residence". Based on our existing laws, you have to become a citizen in order to stay here permanently.
These people are coming here to work, many of them send their earnings back to their native country and many intend to go back some day. The people marching held up more Mexican flags than US flags and many of the speeches and even the interviews were in spanish, not english. Doesn't seem like people looking to become permanent US citizens to me.
So if they are not immigrants, what are they? By definition, they are invading our country and taking up occupation, not unlike what the left says we're doing in Iraq since 100,000 plus service men and women are certainly a minority there.
If we cannot keep track of these people for the purpose of rounding them up and deporting them, then how do we know that there are 11 million of them? Where did that number come from? Why not 2 million or 50 million? How do they know if they're helpless to do anything about them.
How is any guest worker program enforceable? Why would anybody come forward and admit that they're here illegally if there is no upside for doing so? If you deny Drivers licenses as they tried in Wisconsin without proper documents and then deny benefits to anyone who doesn't have a valid drivers license or state issues ID. Then you make it tougher to move through our society. But I see nothing being done to force compliance.
What does "strengthening the border" mean? Unless there is some kind of impassable physical barrier be it a wall of people or concrete, nothing is going to stop this 11 million number from doubling or tripling in a few short years. Besides keeping us right where we are today, the bigger issue I see is the idea that Islamic terrorists see entry through our southern border as an open door to get at us, and with such "Heroes" as Arlen Spector trying to kill any terrorist survellience program we have, it will only be a matter of time before innocent American citizens are once again killed because of the folly of the very people they put in office.
I say that it is time to become anti-incumbent. Conservatives must become activists in the primaries and defeat any incumbant that supports this nonsense, then work like mad in the national election to get that candidate elected.
Democrats won't do this for fear of angering Moveon.org., so an anti-incumbent sentiment with real conservative challengers can really send a message for change back to Washington.
The bottom line, if you got in here illegally and avoided the law to now, YOU WIN!!!
During this whole debate, I have had the following issues remain un-answered:
Why is this framed as an immigration issue? An immigrant is someone who comes to this country in order to become a citizen. While leaving out the word citizenship, Merriam-Webster defines immigration as "coming to a foreign country and taking up permanent residence". Based on our existing laws, you have to become a citizen in order to stay here permanently.
These people are coming here to work, many of them send their earnings back to their native country and many intend to go back some day. The people marching held up more Mexican flags than US flags and many of the speeches and even the interviews were in spanish, not english. Doesn't seem like people looking to become permanent US citizens to me.
So if they are not immigrants, what are they? By definition, they are invading our country and taking up occupation, not unlike what the left says we're doing in Iraq since 100,000 plus service men and women are certainly a minority there.
If we cannot keep track of these people for the purpose of rounding them up and deporting them, then how do we know that there are 11 million of them? Where did that number come from? Why not 2 million or 50 million? How do they know if they're helpless to do anything about them.
How is any guest worker program enforceable? Why would anybody come forward and admit that they're here illegally if there is no upside for doing so? If you deny Drivers licenses as they tried in Wisconsin without proper documents and then deny benefits to anyone who doesn't have a valid drivers license or state issues ID. Then you make it tougher to move through our society. But I see nothing being done to force compliance.
What does "strengthening the border" mean? Unless there is some kind of impassable physical barrier be it a wall of people or concrete, nothing is going to stop this 11 million number from doubling or tripling in a few short years. Besides keeping us right where we are today, the bigger issue I see is the idea that Islamic terrorists see entry through our southern border as an open door to get at us, and with such "Heroes" as Arlen Spector trying to kill any terrorist survellience program we have, it will only be a matter of time before innocent American citizens are once again killed because of the folly of the very people they put in office.
I say that it is time to become anti-incumbent. Conservatives must become activists in the primaries and defeat any incumbant that supports this nonsense, then work like mad in the national election to get that candidate elected.
Democrats won't do this for fear of angering Moveon.org., so an anti-incumbent sentiment with real conservative challengers can really send a message for change back to Washington.
That's Enough!
Once the number of citizens paying taxes drops to less than 50%, any hope of real "progressive" (as in good for the country, not the Jimmy Carter kind) tax reform will be dead.
From IBD:
Posted 4/5/2006
Taxes: Remember former Rep. Tom Daschle's stunt where he used a Lexus and a muffler to try to show the Bush cuts went primarily to the rich? We said he was wrong then. Five years later, the data confirm it.
Standing before a fully loaded 2001 GS 300, Daschle, then a Democratic congressman from South Dakota, claimed: "If you're a millionaire, under the Bush tax cut you get a $46,000 tax cut — more than enough to pay for this Lexus. But if you're a typical working person, you get $227 — enough to get a new muffler for your car. And if you make $25,000 a year, you get a goose egg."
While he might have been close on the numbers, Daschle was making a dishonest argument. A millionaire gets a $46,000 cut because he's paying far more in taxes than the typical working person and will naturally get a larger cut in terms of dollars.
And the fellow getting the goose egg? It's unlikely he pays a penny in federal income tax anyway. So it's impossible for him get a cut.
Yet there was Daschle, intentionally misleading the public for political reasons: to poison the badly needed tax cuts, which at that time were merely a proposal.
Thanks to those tax cuts, a record number of Americans are in the goose-egg bracket. For the 2006 (current) tax year, the Tax Foundation estimates that 43.4 million returns, representing 91 million Americans, will have a zero or negative tax liability. That means that as a share of all filers — 136 million of them — those who pay no taxes will hit 32%, a virtually unprecedented number.
That percentage has been climbing steadily since President Bush took office after holding relatively steady during the Clinton years (see chart) when taxes were actually raised. Sort of puts a different light on the perception that Democrats are more concerned about the plight of the working poor than Republicans when the data show that a GOP president working with a GOP Congress has been more successful in wiping the working poor off the tax rolls.
And while it's not bad news that fewer Americans are paying federal income taxes, it isn't necessarily good, either. As the Tax Foundation points out, real tax reform requires broadening the tax base, rather than narrowing, as the Bush tax cuts have done.
Unless the base is wide, overall rate cuts, which must be part of any reform, will be hard to get. As the number of Americans paying no federal income taxes grows, there'll be fewer people to support reform. Indeed, many who don't pay taxes will oppose reform because it puts them back onto the tax rolls.
While it might evoke warm feelings to remove the federal income tax burden from those at the lowest income levels, an economy where a shrinking few pay the income tax isn't sustainable.
Rather than doing the things that make them rich — things that keep the economy growing — many will simply elect to drop into the no-tax bracket. Even Tom Daschle could see the harm in that.
From IBD:
Posted 4/5/2006
Taxes: Remember former Rep. Tom Daschle's stunt where he used a Lexus and a muffler to try to show the Bush cuts went primarily to the rich? We said he was wrong then. Five years later, the data confirm it.
Standing before a fully loaded 2001 GS 300, Daschle, then a Democratic congressman from South Dakota, claimed: "If you're a millionaire, under the Bush tax cut you get a $46,000 tax cut — more than enough to pay for this Lexus. But if you're a typical working person, you get $227 — enough to get a new muffler for your car. And if you make $25,000 a year, you get a goose egg."
While he might have been close on the numbers, Daschle was making a dishonest argument. A millionaire gets a $46,000 cut because he's paying far more in taxes than the typical working person and will naturally get a larger cut in terms of dollars.
And the fellow getting the goose egg? It's unlikely he pays a penny in federal income tax anyway. So it's impossible for him get a cut.
Yet there was Daschle, intentionally misleading the public for political reasons: to poison the badly needed tax cuts, which at that time were merely a proposal.
Thanks to those tax cuts, a record number of Americans are in the goose-egg bracket. For the 2006 (current) tax year, the Tax Foundation estimates that 43.4 million returns, representing 91 million Americans, will have a zero or negative tax liability. That means that as a share of all filers — 136 million of them — those who pay no taxes will hit 32%, a virtually unprecedented number.
That percentage has been climbing steadily since President Bush took office after holding relatively steady during the Clinton years (see chart) when taxes were actually raised. Sort of puts a different light on the perception that Democrats are more concerned about the plight of the working poor than Republicans when the data show that a GOP president working with a GOP Congress has been more successful in wiping the working poor off the tax rolls.
And while it's not bad news that fewer Americans are paying federal income taxes, it isn't necessarily good, either. As the Tax Foundation points out, real tax reform requires broadening the tax base, rather than narrowing, as the Bush tax cuts have done.
Unless the base is wide, overall rate cuts, which must be part of any reform, will be hard to get. As the number of Americans paying no federal income taxes grows, there'll be fewer people to support reform. Indeed, many who don't pay taxes will oppose reform because it puts them back onto the tax rolls.
While it might evoke warm feelings to remove the federal income tax burden from those at the lowest income levels, an economy where a shrinking few pay the income tax isn't sustainable.
Rather than doing the things that make them rich — things that keep the economy growing — many will simply elect to drop into the no-tax bracket. Even Tom Daschle could see the harm in that.
Hugo Wants Your Vote
It seems that it is just a matter of time before we'll need to confront this wacko who seems hell bent on ruling the world, using Venezuelan oil money to finance his activities. At what point will the people of his country realize that they are not benefitting from his master plan?
From IBD:
Posted 4/5/2006
Elections: If 9-11 taught us anything, it was to be wary of asym- metrical threats from hostile entities no matter what size. We might just get ambushed again if the Venezuelan government ends up controlling our elections.
Don't think it can't happen. A Venezuelan-linked company called Smartmatic has bought out a U.S. electronic voting device firm called Sequoia, which holds contracts for elections in Chicago and elsewhere.
U.S. foreign investment bureaucrats aren't worried because no military secrets are involved. But that kind of thinking can blindside our democratic institutions as we look for threats to our hardware.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the foremost meddler in foreign elections in the Western hemisphere and has been accused of secretly financing candidates in Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Mexico. Why wouldn't he be interested in influencing vote outcomes here?
He's already trying to influence our politics through a congressional lobbying effort and a cheap fuel program for welfare recipients explicitly linked to congressional participation.
These and other shenanigans signal interest in influencing perceptions in the U.S.
There's plenty of domestic white noise about electronic machines to cloud the issue. But the problems Chavez could cause are in a different league.
Even as regulators dismiss security threats, the performance of Smartmatic in Venezuela's own elections raises questions.
For example, 82% of voters there sat out last December's Smartmatic-operational congressional race on shattered confidence in the system.
The Smartmatic machines are capable of controlling the speed at which votes are transmitted, creating long lines to discourage voting. They can also instantaneously tally as results come in, giving favored sides information to manipulate turnout.
Mathematicians accuse them of flipping results. And combined with fingerprint machines, they can match votes to voters, violating ballot secrecy.
There may be no problem with Smartmatic working U.S. elections, but just wait for a close call and see how credible the result will be. With as many problems as U.S. elections have seen, the one thing it doesn't need is to import Venezuela's electoral wreckage.
From IBD:
Posted 4/5/2006
Elections: If 9-11 taught us anything, it was to be wary of asym- metrical threats from hostile entities no matter what size. We might just get ambushed again if the Venezuelan government ends up controlling our elections.
Don't think it can't happen. A Venezuelan-linked company called Smartmatic has bought out a U.S. electronic voting device firm called Sequoia, which holds contracts for elections in Chicago and elsewhere.
U.S. foreign investment bureaucrats aren't worried because no military secrets are involved. But that kind of thinking can blindside our democratic institutions as we look for threats to our hardware.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is the foremost meddler in foreign elections in the Western hemisphere and has been accused of secretly financing candidates in Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Mexico. Why wouldn't he be interested in influencing vote outcomes here?
He's already trying to influence our politics through a congressional lobbying effort and a cheap fuel program for welfare recipients explicitly linked to congressional participation.
These and other shenanigans signal interest in influencing perceptions in the U.S.
There's plenty of domestic white noise about electronic machines to cloud the issue. But the problems Chavez could cause are in a different league.
Even as regulators dismiss security threats, the performance of Smartmatic in Venezuela's own elections raises questions.
For example, 82% of voters there sat out last December's Smartmatic-operational congressional race on shattered confidence in the system.
The Smartmatic machines are capable of controlling the speed at which votes are transmitted, creating long lines to discourage voting. They can also instantaneously tally as results come in, giving favored sides information to manipulate turnout.
Mathematicians accuse them of flipping results. And combined with fingerprint machines, they can match votes to voters, violating ballot secrecy.
There may be no problem with Smartmatic working U.S. elections, but just wait for a close call and see how credible the result will be. With as many problems as U.S. elections have seen, the one thing it doesn't need is to import Venezuela's electoral wreckage.
Appeasing Iran
From IBD:
Posted 4/5/2006
Terrorism: Intelligence officials are worried that Iranian agents could wreak havoc around the world if we step in against Iran's nuclear program. But should we wait for the day when they can wreak nuclear havoc?
The Washington Post reports that U.S. intelligence officials were spreading the word that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would result in Iran deploying operatives to conduct terrorist attacks in Iraq, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. The anonymous intelligence sources refused to discuss the evidence for their suspicions, claiming it was classified.
Just as disturbing, Iranian negotiator Javad Vaeedi, speaking in Vienna, Austria, last month, said of the U.S.: "It may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll."
Here again we have the surreal spectacle of intelligence officials — whose job is to collect and protect state secrets — going to the newspapers with information to which they're privy with the aim of undermining White House policy. Do these nameless contacts ever consider that no one elected them to the positions they hold?
Or that they serve at the behest of an elected commander in chief?
Now that America's spying agencies serve under the authority of a director of national intelligence, and it's harder for their competing bureaucracies to play petty turf wars, it appears that intelligence officials with gripes feel entitled to go to the press instead.
Truth is, Iranian and Iranian-backed operatives are already at war with the U.S., and it's been that way for a long time. Iran may have had a role in the Golden Dome mosque bombing in the Iraqi town of Samarra in February. The obvious motivation was to plunge Iraq into civil war and cause our mission there to fail.
Iranian agents are also working against U.S. interests in Pakistan. And let's not forget that it was the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah that truck-bombed the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983, killing 241 Americans.
If they've been doing all this against us for nearly a quarter-century, appeasing them today won't stop them; it will only embolden them. The last thing the world can do is sit by and let the enemies of civilization who run Iran build nuclear weapons.
If America's spy agencies disagree, they should be presenting their evidence to their boss — the president — not the Washington press corps.
Posted 4/5/2006
Terrorism: Intelligence officials are worried that Iranian agents could wreak havoc around the world if we step in against Iran's nuclear program. But should we wait for the day when they can wreak nuclear havoc?
The Washington Post reports that U.S. intelligence officials were spreading the word that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would result in Iran deploying operatives to conduct terrorist attacks in Iraq, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. The anonymous intelligence sources refused to discuss the evidence for their suspicions, claiming it was classified.
Just as disturbing, Iranian negotiator Javad Vaeedi, speaking in Vienna, Austria, last month, said of the U.S.: "It may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll."
Here again we have the surreal spectacle of intelligence officials — whose job is to collect and protect state secrets — going to the newspapers with information to which they're privy with the aim of undermining White House policy. Do these nameless contacts ever consider that no one elected them to the positions they hold?
Or that they serve at the behest of an elected commander in chief?
Now that America's spying agencies serve under the authority of a director of national intelligence, and it's harder for their competing bureaucracies to play petty turf wars, it appears that intelligence officials with gripes feel entitled to go to the press instead.
Truth is, Iranian and Iranian-backed operatives are already at war with the U.S., and it's been that way for a long time. Iran may have had a role in the Golden Dome mosque bombing in the Iraqi town of Samarra in February. The obvious motivation was to plunge Iraq into civil war and cause our mission there to fail.
Iranian agents are also working against U.S. interests in Pakistan. And let's not forget that it was the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah that truck-bombed the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983, killing 241 Americans.
If they've been doing all this against us for nearly a quarter-century, appeasing them today won't stop them; it will only embolden them. The last thing the world can do is sit by and let the enemies of civilization who run Iran build nuclear weapons.
If America's spy agencies disagree, they should be presenting their evidence to their boss — the president — not the Washington press corps.
Blue-State Surprise
Here is a different take on the forced-healthcare bill that is about to become law in Massachusetts from IBD. While I am against government dictation of any aspect of our lives other than deliberate criminal offenses (murder, stealing, deliberate dumping of industrial toxins into the environment), it is naive to think that any government will refuse to bail out the irresponsible of our society with so many lib's in power. This move at least is being done at the State-level which is always preferred over a federal regulation:
Posted 4/5/2006
Health Care:
Massachusetts lawmakers have passed a universal-coverage bill. Republican Gov. Mitt Romney plans to sign it. Has Romney flipped? Not at all. He has won a victory for market-based reform.
That victory might not look so impressive, say, in a deep red state like Utah. But in a state dominated by liberal Democrats, where the governor likens himself to a "red dot" in a liberal sea, the bill that passed on Tuesday with huge, bipartisan majorities has to be seen as a big step forward.
Remember, Massachusetts is Ted Kennedy country, the state most inclined to go toward single-payer (government-run) health care. Under Romney's leadership, it's been playing against type.
Its universal-coverage plan, which Romney has said he'll sign with some tweaking, could serve as at least a rough model for market-based, consumer-driven reform of health care nationwide.
The headline feature of the Bay State scheme is its insurance mandate aimed at the financially able. State experts estimate that some 200,000 of the roughly 550,000 uninsured in Massachusetts make enough money to buy coverage in the private insurance market without government help. They will face rising tax penalties if they don't have a policy by July 1, 2007.
Most of the remaining uninsured will get means-based subsidies to buy employer-based or other private plans, with children covered by Medicaid. The legislation also requires employers not providing health insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee, but Romney says he may veto that part of the bill.
The plan is not cheap, and states that do not already spend liberally on health care or that have a higher share of uninsured residents may have trouble matching Massachusetts' subsidies.
But the idea of requiring insurance of those with the ability to pay does not require lavish state aid. By making young and healthy people buy insurance, it directly attacks the problem of adverse selection — the buying of insurance only by the highest-risk customers (or in the case of health insurance, the sickest and oldest).
It also prevents the free-riding that forces taxpayers and providers to pick up the tab for unreimbursed care they provide to the uninsured. Such coverage basically covers everyone, but in the most expensive way possible — at hospital emergency rooms rather than doctors' offices, for instance — and the costs are borne disproportionately by individual hospitals and by taxpayers.
Some might argue, perhaps rightly, that an insurance mandate is in a sense an infringement on personal freedom. It also requires people to act responsibly and pay their way. If everyone were doing so now, such a rule wouldn't be needed.
The Massachusetts plan isn't perfect, and needs improvement. Already, the employer fee looks like a political sop to liberals rather than a needed element. Also, the state faces a challenge in making an inefficient private insurance market transparent for hundreds of thousands of new customers who will be shopping for policies.
The key point is that the plan relies on consumers in a market, underdeveloped as it is, rather than seeking to replace private insurance and dictate private care through government fiat. Mittcare, if that's what it is to be called, is a far cry from Hillarycare.
That counts as progress, especially in the bluest of blue states.
Posted 4/5/2006
Health Care:
Massachusetts lawmakers have passed a universal-coverage bill. Republican Gov. Mitt Romney plans to sign it. Has Romney flipped? Not at all. He has won a victory for market-based reform.
That victory might not look so impressive, say, in a deep red state like Utah. But in a state dominated by liberal Democrats, where the governor likens himself to a "red dot" in a liberal sea, the bill that passed on Tuesday with huge, bipartisan majorities has to be seen as a big step forward.
Remember, Massachusetts is Ted Kennedy country, the state most inclined to go toward single-payer (government-run) health care. Under Romney's leadership, it's been playing against type.
Its universal-coverage plan, which Romney has said he'll sign with some tweaking, could serve as at least a rough model for market-based, consumer-driven reform of health care nationwide.
The headline feature of the Bay State scheme is its insurance mandate aimed at the financially able. State experts estimate that some 200,000 of the roughly 550,000 uninsured in Massachusetts make enough money to buy coverage in the private insurance market without government help. They will face rising tax penalties if they don't have a policy by July 1, 2007.
Most of the remaining uninsured will get means-based subsidies to buy employer-based or other private plans, with children covered by Medicaid. The legislation also requires employers not providing health insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee, but Romney says he may veto that part of the bill.
The plan is not cheap, and states that do not already spend liberally on health care or that have a higher share of uninsured residents may have trouble matching Massachusetts' subsidies.
But the idea of requiring insurance of those with the ability to pay does not require lavish state aid. By making young and healthy people buy insurance, it directly attacks the problem of adverse selection — the buying of insurance only by the highest-risk customers (or in the case of health insurance, the sickest and oldest).
It also prevents the free-riding that forces taxpayers and providers to pick up the tab for unreimbursed care they provide to the uninsured. Such coverage basically covers everyone, but in the most expensive way possible — at hospital emergency rooms rather than doctors' offices, for instance — and the costs are borne disproportionately by individual hospitals and by taxpayers.
Some might argue, perhaps rightly, that an insurance mandate is in a sense an infringement on personal freedom. It also requires people to act responsibly and pay their way. If everyone were doing so now, such a rule wouldn't be needed.
The Massachusetts plan isn't perfect, and needs improvement. Already, the employer fee looks like a political sop to liberals rather than a needed element. Also, the state faces a challenge in making an inefficient private insurance market transparent for hundreds of thousands of new customers who will be shopping for policies.
The key point is that the plan relies on consumers in a market, underdeveloped as it is, rather than seeking to replace private insurance and dictate private care through government fiat. Mittcare, if that's what it is to be called, is a far cry from Hillarycare.
That counts as progress, especially in the bluest of blue states.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
The Truth Behind the Myths
Junk Science - The deliberate manipulation of data in order to forward your own agenda without regard for the truth.......
By Michael Masterson
A Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study of more than 36,000 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79 found that calcium has just a small effect on bone density and no significant effect on the rate of fractures. This contradicts what we've been told for decades.
Last month, another WHI study reported that low-fat diets do not protect against breast cancer or heart disease. Two years ago, the same group found that hormone treatment after menopause does not protect against heart disease. In fact, the study suggested, its risks outweigh its modest benefits.
I asked Dr. Sears (a contributor to ETR) what he thought about these findings. This is what he said:
"In all three of these cases - the calcium myth, the HRT myth, and the low-fat myth - there were major financial incentives for distorting the hard evidence.
"The modern epidemic of osteoporosis isn't caused by a lack of calcium. Hormones, not calcium, regulate bone strength. In fact, too much calcium (above 1,500 milligrams per day) will actually make the problem worse. For women, progesterone and testosterone control how much calcium stays in the bone. In the West, these hormones are out of balance (mostly because of estrogens we put in our food).
"The idea that fat causes heart disease is a myth that's hard to put to rest, partly because of the huge industry promoting the very high-profit low-fat foods. Prototypical hunter-gatherers have always eaten much more fat, and without heart disease or obesity. We are eating much more carbs ... partly because that's where the money is.
"I find a similar institutionalized bias in traditional "hormone replacement therapy." These things aren't hormones at all. Hormones, by definition, are produced in your body. These chemicals are drugs. And, you're not "replacing" anything by experimentally introducing these drugs into your body.
"In my own practice, I've been using real hormones for many years with amazing results. Unfortunately, doing this is currently under attack by the drug industry. "But right is right. Over time, voices like our's, not afraid to confront convention, will win out."
Mass. Insanity
On the radio, I heard a news report out of Massachusetts describing the state legislature’s latest attempts to control it citizens’ lives. Thanks to a new law, anybody without health insurance by July 1, 2007 will receive a fine.
The next time a cop pulls you over and asks for your license and proof of insurance, you may have to ask him which insurance. This is good news for insurance companies, bad news for you and me.
Not only does it give the government even more power of us, but imagine what it will do to insurance prices. If prices are high now, I can’t begin to think what they will be like when there is no choice but to buy insurance.
Massachusetts’ legislature used the argument that all cars must be insured, so it only makes sense that humans be insured. After all, we are more expensive to fix.
There are so many flaws in that logic my head spins. But for starters, how about nobody forces us to buy a car? If we can’t afford car insurance we can go without a car.
Don’t forget, skipping a few trips to the doctor does not cause financial damages to a victim. Getting in a car accident does. This law is just plain stupid.
I smell a Supreme Court case.
Andrew Snyder
The next time a cop pulls you over and asks for your license and proof of insurance, you may have to ask him which insurance. This is good news for insurance companies, bad news for you and me.
Not only does it give the government even more power of us, but imagine what it will do to insurance prices. If prices are high now, I can’t begin to think what they will be like when there is no choice but to buy insurance.
Massachusetts’ legislature used the argument that all cars must be insured, so it only makes sense that humans be insured. After all, we are more expensive to fix.
There are so many flaws in that logic my head spins. But for starters, how about nobody forces us to buy a car? If we can’t afford car insurance we can go without a car.
Don’t forget, skipping a few trips to the doctor does not cause financial damages to a victim. Getting in a car accident does. This law is just plain stupid.
I smell a Supreme Court case.
Andrew Snyder
A Bet on the Future
France buried its planned youth labor reforms on Friday in a way that has “Jacques Chirac” written all over it. Chirac, with the demeanor of an undertaker, signed the law that would give employers the right to fire first-time workers under 26 years of age within the first two years of employment.
At the same time, he suspended the application of the law.
With a single act, he thus not only acquiesced in the second largest EU economy remaining mired in a mid-20th-century welfare state. He also knocked the pegs out from under his protégé, the equally unpleasant neo-Bonapartist Villepin, and made sure that his potential successor, free-trade, pro-business advocate Nicholas Sarkozy, will face an uphill battle in the next election.
This in itself is a picture-book example of a lack of principles and political integrity. But it has bigger implications. Because the French electorate is already on record as refusing to adapt to the conditions posed by the competitive environment created by the enlarged EU. Not quite a year ago, they resoundingly rejected passing a EU constitution. Last month’s retrograde labor disputes and the accompanying general strike exceed the usual French insanity by a solid margin.
Based on the populist rejection of competition in a global environment, the next French government may well turn out to be a throwback to the socialist welfare state that has already left the French economy in shambles. This is a fundamentally bearish factor for the future of the European Union and its single currency, the euro.
With the pictures and videos of French youth rioting for a static work environment in mind, the contrast couldn’t have been greater: Last Saturday, my oldest son’s Boy Scout troop could be found doing the leg, back, and arm work of their recent “Mulch Sale Fundraiser.”
It sounded innocuous enough. But I wasn’t prepared for the view as I pulled into the mall parking lot that served as our staging ground. There it was, pallet after pallet, each seven feet high, four dozen fifty-pound bags to the pallet… over 11,000 bags in all.
A veritable Chinese Wall of double-shredded hardwood mulch. In between a small front-loader and a forklift, operated by two fathers, loading six box trucks and a flotilla of pickup trucks, forty boys in various stages of soiled clothes were navigating and piloting deliveries all over town, loading and unloading trucks, schlepping one, two, four mulch bags at a time to pile them neatly in driveways and back yards.
I drove a “chase car” with four high school boys. And I have to admit that I have never seen a group of boys their age work in a more focused, determined fashion. The chatter inside the car died down after the first load - six pallets - had been delivered, and yet there was no shirking or laziness even after the fourth load.
There was one moment that made me especially proud: When the father who had my own son attached to his truck told me that he was impressed by how hard the boy was working. Good to know he can rise to a challenge when it counts.
If these boys represent the future of America, I know whom I put my money on!
J. Christoph Amberger
Executive Publisher and
The Taipan Group’s 247-profits e-Dispatch Team
At the same time, he suspended the application of the law.
With a single act, he thus not only acquiesced in the second largest EU economy remaining mired in a mid-20th-century welfare state. He also knocked the pegs out from under his protégé, the equally unpleasant neo-Bonapartist Villepin, and made sure that his potential successor, free-trade, pro-business advocate Nicholas Sarkozy, will face an uphill battle in the next election.
This in itself is a picture-book example of a lack of principles and political integrity. But it has bigger implications. Because the French electorate is already on record as refusing to adapt to the conditions posed by the competitive environment created by the enlarged EU. Not quite a year ago, they resoundingly rejected passing a EU constitution. Last month’s retrograde labor disputes and the accompanying general strike exceed the usual French insanity by a solid margin.
Based on the populist rejection of competition in a global environment, the next French government may well turn out to be a throwback to the socialist welfare state that has already left the French economy in shambles. This is a fundamentally bearish factor for the future of the European Union and its single currency, the euro.
With the pictures and videos of French youth rioting for a static work environment in mind, the contrast couldn’t have been greater: Last Saturday, my oldest son’s Boy Scout troop could be found doing the leg, back, and arm work of their recent “Mulch Sale Fundraiser.”
It sounded innocuous enough. But I wasn’t prepared for the view as I pulled into the mall parking lot that served as our staging ground. There it was, pallet after pallet, each seven feet high, four dozen fifty-pound bags to the pallet… over 11,000 bags in all.
A veritable Chinese Wall of double-shredded hardwood mulch. In between a small front-loader and a forklift, operated by two fathers, loading six box trucks and a flotilla of pickup trucks, forty boys in various stages of soiled clothes were navigating and piloting deliveries all over town, loading and unloading trucks, schlepping one, two, four mulch bags at a time to pile them neatly in driveways and back yards.
I drove a “chase car” with four high school boys. And I have to admit that I have never seen a group of boys their age work in a more focused, determined fashion. The chatter inside the car died down after the first load - six pallets - had been delivered, and yet there was no shirking or laziness even after the fourth load.
There was one moment that made me especially proud: When the father who had my own son attached to his truck told me that he was impressed by how hard the boy was working. Good to know he can rise to a challenge when it counts.
If these boys represent the future of America, I know whom I put my money on!
J. Christoph Amberger
Executive Publisher and
The Taipan Group’s 247-profits e-Dispatch Team
Iranian Oil Bourse Is History...But Oil's Still Dangerous For Dollar
This commentary is by Kathy Lien & Boris Schlossberg, editors of The Money Trader.
On March 21st Iran was scheduled to launch the world's first oil trading exchange that would have set prices in euros rather than dollars. Many analysts feared this would have spelled disaster for the greenback since oil is the world's most popular commodity and requires most nations to hold vast reserves of dollars in order to purchase it. If oil were to be suddenly settled in euros, the global need to hoard dollars would diminish considerably, eliminating one of the key supports for the US dollar in the currency market.
The doomsday scenario did not come to pass, as Iran failed to construct the necessary infrastructure for a successful launch of the exchange. It is still insisting on opening a Persian Gulf oil bourse with the southern Iranian island Kish as its base of operations according to a report by Iranian state-television on Saturday. 'The issue has already been agreed upon and the oil ministry has been instructed to open this bourse in the Persian Gulf island of Kish,' Economic and Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari said.
However, at this point, the issue of an Iranian oil exchange to challenge the New York and London markets appears to be more of a P.R. stunt rather than a viable competitive threat. Even if the Iranians managed to open up for trading, the key question remains: who would trade with them?
Given the recent antagonistic rhetoric of the country's political leaders, many investors would likely shun the bourse for fear of not having their trades honored. Successful financial markets require trust and cooperation and Iran's antagonistic actions over the past several months (especially their insistence on developing nuclear capabilities) have engendered little goodwill in the world community.But dollar bulls should not be so quick to breathe a sigh of relief....
Dollar Dodged a Bullet, But Not the Firing Squad
While the immediate threat of the Iranian oil bourse may have disappeared, the greenback remains highly vulnerable to rising oil prices. Indeed the irony of the matter, is that despite the failure of the Iranian oil bourse, crude itself is trading higher now than when the issue of the Iranian oil bourse first gripped the attention of the financial markets.
Political instability in Nigeria and ever growing demand from China have put an ironclad bid underneath the commodity. To understand why, one only needs to look at the report of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. It noted that China produced 11.2% more electricity in Jan-Feb period of this year than last. But China's crude oil output only rose 2.5%. Since electric power generation demands energy to get the turbines going, this means China is experiencing a massive deficit and therefore increased demand for crude on the world's markets.
T Boone Pickens-a man whose hedge fund generated over $1.5 Billion in profits over the past 5 years-projects that very soon world demand for oil will increase to 87 MM barrels per day while world supply will only be able to produce 85 MM barrels per day.
In fact, as China continues to grow, oil analysts calculate that it will create demand for an additional 20 MM barrels per day if it simply matches the current per capita energy consumption of Mexico. As we drove the highways of Southern Florida this weekend, we couldn't help but notice that gasoline prices - which only a few weeks earlier were near the $2.50 gallon level - were now inching towards the $3.00 barrier. We believe that the $3.00/gallon gasoline will have a serious negative impact on US consumer spending going forward and that in turn will weigh heavily on the US dollar.
Finally, while the Iranian oil bourse is history, the country's destabilizing effect on the oil markets may just be beginning.
Just this week, Iran announced that it has successfully fired a high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines. The Iranian-made missile has a speed of about 350 kilometers an hour underwater, claims the Iranian navy. If this is true, it means the missile can travel three or four times faster than a torpedo and according to Iranian navy the missile has a " very powerful warhead designed to hit big submarines...even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed.
Even more dramatic, Iran tested this missile in the Straight of Hormuz - the narrow passageway in the Persian Gulf that borders Iran and through which 25% of the world's oil supply flows. This is also a very provocative move given that the UN gave them 30 days starting last week to stop their nuke program. More turmoil in both the oil and the currency markets is the likely bet.
Kathy Lien & Boris Schlossberg Editors, The Money Trader
On March 21st Iran was scheduled to launch the world's first oil trading exchange that would have set prices in euros rather than dollars. Many analysts feared this would have spelled disaster for the greenback since oil is the world's most popular commodity and requires most nations to hold vast reserves of dollars in order to purchase it. If oil were to be suddenly settled in euros, the global need to hoard dollars would diminish considerably, eliminating one of the key supports for the US dollar in the currency market.
The doomsday scenario did not come to pass, as Iran failed to construct the necessary infrastructure for a successful launch of the exchange. It is still insisting on opening a Persian Gulf oil bourse with the southern Iranian island Kish as its base of operations according to a report by Iranian state-television on Saturday. 'The issue has already been agreed upon and the oil ministry has been instructed to open this bourse in the Persian Gulf island of Kish,' Economic and Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari said.
However, at this point, the issue of an Iranian oil exchange to challenge the New York and London markets appears to be more of a P.R. stunt rather than a viable competitive threat. Even if the Iranians managed to open up for trading, the key question remains: who would trade with them?
Given the recent antagonistic rhetoric of the country's political leaders, many investors would likely shun the bourse for fear of not having their trades honored. Successful financial markets require trust and cooperation and Iran's antagonistic actions over the past several months (especially their insistence on developing nuclear capabilities) have engendered little goodwill in the world community.But dollar bulls should not be so quick to breathe a sigh of relief....
Dollar Dodged a Bullet, But Not the Firing Squad
While the immediate threat of the Iranian oil bourse may have disappeared, the greenback remains highly vulnerable to rising oil prices. Indeed the irony of the matter, is that despite the failure of the Iranian oil bourse, crude itself is trading higher now than when the issue of the Iranian oil bourse first gripped the attention of the financial markets.
Political instability in Nigeria and ever growing demand from China have put an ironclad bid underneath the commodity. To understand why, one only needs to look at the report of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. It noted that China produced 11.2% more electricity in Jan-Feb period of this year than last. But China's crude oil output only rose 2.5%. Since electric power generation demands energy to get the turbines going, this means China is experiencing a massive deficit and therefore increased demand for crude on the world's markets.
T Boone Pickens-a man whose hedge fund generated over $1.5 Billion in profits over the past 5 years-projects that very soon world demand for oil will increase to 87 MM barrels per day while world supply will only be able to produce 85 MM barrels per day.
In fact, as China continues to grow, oil analysts calculate that it will create demand for an additional 20 MM barrels per day if it simply matches the current per capita energy consumption of Mexico. As we drove the highways of Southern Florida this weekend, we couldn't help but notice that gasoline prices - which only a few weeks earlier were near the $2.50 gallon level - were now inching towards the $3.00 barrier. We believe that the $3.00/gallon gasoline will have a serious negative impact on US consumer spending going forward and that in turn will weigh heavily on the US dollar.
Finally, while the Iranian oil bourse is history, the country's destabilizing effect on the oil markets may just be beginning.
Just this week, Iran announced that it has successfully fired a high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines. The Iranian-made missile has a speed of about 350 kilometers an hour underwater, claims the Iranian navy. If this is true, it means the missile can travel three or four times faster than a torpedo and according to Iranian navy the missile has a " very powerful warhead designed to hit big submarines...even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed.
Even more dramatic, Iran tested this missile in the Straight of Hormuz - the narrow passageway in the Persian Gulf that borders Iran and through which 25% of the world's oil supply flows. This is also a very provocative move given that the UN gave them 30 days starting last week to stop their nuke program. More turmoil in both the oil and the currency markets is the likely bet.
Kathy Lien & Boris Schlossberg Editors, The Money Trader
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