Right On Everything

2008-10-13T21:54:00.003-05:00

McCain has squandered an opportunity to win.

He may yet come back, but I doubt it.

The ultimate mistake is that he is not giving voters a reason to vote for him. He gives all the reasons to NOT vote for Obama, but that is not enough. I need a reason to vote for McCain. What is he going to do? What is his vision for America? He gets close with his Maverick talk, but then he gets off track.

Unfortunately for McCain the economy made it so much harder to snatch victory from the Democrats without a very good campaign and vision.

With that opening, I miss posting on this blog. I am not sure that I will post very often, but I wish that I could.

If you are looking for someone to vote for consider Bob Barr (http://www.bobbarr2008.com/splash/?s0820).

2004-08-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

Kerry

I know this is old news but I need to catch up.

Why did John Kerry win the Democratic nomination?
Let's get this clear because this is important to my thinking on the election. John Kerry did NOT win because of Howard Dean's screaming fest. The polls were already trending for Kerry and he won the Iowa caucus BEFORE the Dean scream fest. Essentially the establishment chose Kerry because he was the safe candidate. He had the intersection of all the right things to be the Anti-Bush. He had a war service/hero record (sure we see weaknesses to it, but he was as John McCain as the Democrats could find). He had a moderate view on the war (while Democrate hated this they knew the middle of the road voter would never accept Dean's view on the war). He has a long record of public service (John Edwards is just an infant). And finally he had no embarassing failures (Gephardt while loved, has yet to prove he can win anything big). Kerry was the logical choice of big Democrat money and organization. The party bosses may no longer make decisions at party conventions but do not fool yourself into thinking that they are not involved in the primaries in a definitive way. Kerry was the best Anti-Bush. And here comes the heretical comment by me: Kerry was clever enough to market himself as just that. He has enough of a liberal record to keep the base happy, and meanwhile he can be "nuanced" for the moderate swing voter. One of the mistakes that people make is discounting the power of organization and planning in elections.

For instance, I contend that the election process is a natural selection process that ensures that the best manager rises to the general election in open contest years. Let's look at 2000. There were stories for it seems like two years about Bush having meetings with important Republicans. What was that all about? He ensured that by time the election got going he had all the best people behind him in terms of money and organization. He didn't beat McCain on issues or in the press, he beat him by good old organization and money. Now, I would also contend that 2000 was NOT an open year for the Democrats. Gore was defaulted into the nomination because he was the VP. He lost in November because he was not really as good a manager as Bush. Sure, he may have a higher IQ, but do you really want a Rocket Scientist with his pocket protector as CEO of any of the companies you have your retirement invested in? The point is simply that the ability to manage naturally gets rewarded in an open primary. This year the Democrats had an open primary and Dean was clever and smart, but not as well managed.

2004-08-12T18:34:00.000-05:00

I Must Return

Okay, I have been away too long. I can't stand it anymore. I must return.

While the news is slow, there are things to talk about and I need to be heard. So here is a short list:

Election
Election
Election
and the straw that broke the camel's back? McGreevey resigns.

So I am reading this article about McGreevey. He sets up this news conference to make it sound so sad that he is gay and has to resign because it is a distraction to his ability to govern. What a saint. He is saving the people of New Jersey from distractions. But wait there is more. Turns out his team was under scrutiny for some illegal practices like hiring call girls to embarrass a political opponent. And wait. His resignation is not effective until November 15th so that a special election does not need to be held which might open the door to a Republican victory out of a political backlash--now who is worrying about the people of New Jersey first? And wait, it gets even better. He is doing this because his gay lover is blackmailing him with the threat of revealing the secret affair. Not out of duty, but to trump incredible demands! And wait, there is more. His wife, HIS SECOND wife, is standing next to him being supportive. He has a 2 year old daughter with his SECOND wife. How long have him and his SECOND wife been married? How did it so happen that he has a SECOND wife when he is gay? This man isn't gay or a saint. He is a just a liar and probably a sex addict.

Now do you understand why I need to come back? This is a crazy world and I just need to talk about it.

2003-10-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

Thank You

I am finally getting accustomed to my school schedule and I decided to make a routine inspection of my website. This included the customary inspection of the hit report and email inbox. I am honored that there are still people hitting my site. If that is not a vote of something for my return I don't know what is.

That being said, I am still fairly busy. The biggest challenge is staying abreast of headlines. Actually, bigger than that is staying abreast of all the pundits. I haven't read a Krugman piece for a month--to be honest I don't miss the stuff.

I suppose I should comment on Arnold "The Harasser". I am willing to be equal opportunity on all of this behavior stuff. Before election, I want to forgive. After election, I have no patience. It was this logic that would have made me most likely to let Clinton slide back in 1992 (I was out of country and never had time to read the newspaper back then). George W got a slide for youthful indiscretion as well. Where it is easier to let W go is that he was not a "public" figure yet. Slick Willy and Arnold were. Granted Arnold was not elected, but so what? Just as I said on William Bennet and Kobe Bryant--a public figure should know better, and if not they should suffer. I make no excuses for bad behavior.

When it comes to damage control I advise the W, Bennet, and Arnold approach--admit, admit, admit, and then apologize. That being said the public must make a judgement about whether or not to believe an individual will change. In the case of Arnold I am not convinced.

Republicans should never have fallen for the glitz and should have backed McClintock from the beginning. It is all over, whether Davis or Bustamante, there will be a Democrat in the California Governors mansion at the end of the week.

*My disclaimer is that I may be full of it on my prediction because I have not looked at a poll in a month:)

2003-09-08T07:39:00.000-05:00

More Slacking

I really hate to do this, but I think I am going to have to take a temporary hiatus. When I don't even have time to spend a few minutes last night listening to and analyzing the President's speech then I am sure that I don't have any chance of maintaining this site. I am sure I will return. This site will still be here as a resource, but it might be a while before I am back in the saddle of making timely commentary. To the few faithful I am trully sorry.

2003-09-03T20:42:00.000-05:00

Slacking

I am sorry, I have been slacking. I realize that I need to update the readers of this site. I am about 2 weeks out of date and slipping fast.

The problem is that I have just begun an MBA program. Right On Everything is really more of a hobby--especially since I actually pay to have the privilege to post my opinions. I do hope that at some point Right On Everything might actually cause some editor somewhere to say: 'my goodness, we need this guy to write something for our Op-Ed section!' But reality forces me to realize that I might actually benefit more from serious attention to my studies. My attention to my studies not only cuts into my time to write, but makes it near to impossible to track the writing of others, not to mention read a newspaper. The hard thing is that I REALLY enjoy writing this stuff and I know that I do have a few people who actually keep coming to read my stuff.

What I have decided to do is to keep this site going, but in a scaled down fashion. Right On Everything will become a weekend site--Saturday to be specific. I will give that a try. Come here once a week and see what I have to say. Because of this my writing may turn out to be somewhat more philosophical in nature. Or I may make a general roundup of things that have transpired in the week. I may even finally put my thoughts on conservatism into writing. There is the possibility that as I become accustomed to being a student again I may actually post more frequently. I do have a laptop that I take to class and it is theoretically possible for me to write while ignoring professors. My real goal is to become accustomed to the school routine soon enough to make practical commentary on the Democratic primaries. I will keep you posted on my progress.

I apologize if this is disappointing. If you want to be reminded when I post, or you just want to complain please feel free to drop me a line at james at right on everything dot com.

Otherwise, see you back here on Monday!

2003-08-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

Geoghan

How exactly does the New York Times figure that Geoghan being killed in prison equates to a need for better run prisons? Because it panders to the homosexual movement? Please don't tell me that Geoghan is to Gays what Mandela was to Black South Africans. Did we forget what Geoghan was in for? Hasn't it always been an unspoken expectation that child molesters tend to get wacked in prison? And isn't it sort of accepted that they deserve it? Okay, you may say he wasn't a molester, he was a pedophile. SO WHAT?!?!?! Why give it a scientific name? This guy was a monster. I don't care if you are gay or not, pedophilia is SICK! Which by the way reminds me of a question that I have never seen a good answer on. If a male adult has sex with a male kid, regardless of the fact that this is pedophilia, why is that Male not Gay? Last time I checked, Gay was male on male. Even if the adult male is married to a woman, the moment he has sex with a teenage boy, in my humble opinion, he is GAY! Not to take this on a further tangent, but therefore ALL scout masters who commit pedophilia ARE GAY. Sure it might be argued that the pedophilia came first, not the homosexuality. But don't tell me that pedophiles are not Gay. You might rightly argue that not all homosexuals are pedophiles--fine. But please don't tell me I am hateful for stating the obvious fact that pedophiles are Gay. I am in no way condoning the issue of pedophilia as an excuse for hating Gays. Next unanswered question. If Catholic priests are sworn to celibacy, where the heck is there any room for discussion about pedophilia? As far as I am concerned sex, straight or gay, violates celibacy requirements. This is the real story. When did the Catholic church go all soft on issues of sex?

2003-08-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Affirmative Diversity

I am beginning an MBA program. This week is orientation week. Before arriving I was not sure why we needed seven days of orientation on where the bathrooms were. It turns out that, amongst other things, we needed two days of orientation on why diversity is a GOOD thing. There is the argument that recruiters want to recruit at programs that provide diverse job candidates, there is the argument that recruiters want diverse managers who can understand how to target minority markets, and then there is the argument that since we (yeah the dumb white males) will be working with women and minority managers we need to practice how to not act like racist bigots! Weak. Really weak. This is a private university so I guess I have no place to criticize them since they are not doing it with tax dollars. But it still irritates me because what it shows is that the liberal group think on diversity has taken control of the marketplace. Even in an historically conservative institution, in a department known mostly for teaching how to calculate the bottom line, the liberal BS about diversity is there. And they have me sit there for two days on it because obviously they know that we won't buy it unless they brainwash us with it. It just makes me sick.

2003-08-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

Homosexuality and Pedophilia

All I want to say is here is some interesting reading. The debate goes on.

2003-08-22T16:43:00.000-05:00

And Now for the U.N.

I am watching things unfold after the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq. I am watching to see if this will wake up the UN just the way that the recent bombing in Saudi Arabia supposedly awakened the Saudis. It is the realization than terrorists or Baathists will not see the Saudis or the UN as neutral non-combatants. In fact terrorism is all about attacking the innocent so they never should have had an illusion, but they do. The UN is ignorant--or should I say that countries like France are ignorant. Do they think that the UN can continue to function with a weakened US? Do they think that the UN will still have the authority to enter countries and police truces if the US is not there to back the actions with the threat of force? The UN is not a neutral observer. The terrorists believe that the UN is a tool of the West. The Middle East, India, South East Asia and Africa have only nominal power in the UN. Western powers hide behind the UN as the vehicle for pressing Western values. France is as guilty of this as the US. As for me, I don't mind that we are trying to spread Western values of freedom, but the UN has many members who do not see the bigger picture. They really think that it is some high-minded organization where debate leads to logical conclusions.

This really is best understood if I explain my take on Osama. At the end of the day his goal is to unite all of the Arabs or Muslims in a holy war that places him on the throne of a great empire. He sees the riches of the oil monarchs and wishes it for himself. The reason he, Saddam, the Iranian Mullahs, and the short guy in North Korea will never collude on strategy and thereby give us easy proof of linkage is because at the end of the day they all have the same vain ambitions and each would simply get in the way of others. They are united in purpose and rhetoric, but not in operation. For this reason, success by one is inspiration for the others. No member of the axis of evil can look on the UN as a positive thing. The UN is simply the tool for the US to intrude on Iraqi and North Korean sovereignty. The UN becomes the excuse for taking military action. To say the UN is neutral is no different than saying that the US Congress is neutral.

I wish the UN did not have to suffer this tragedy to realize the obvious, but should they now wake up to reality I will welcome their involvement.

2003-08-22T16:14:00.000-05:00

I Have Heard This Before

"[T]he next election will be the biggest in at least a generation".

That is the theme of a piece by William Kristol. He may very well be correct, but I doubt it. I doubt that even with a Bush victory we will be any further along than we are today.

2002 was supposed to be the biggest election. It would be a referendum on the contested election of Bush and the vision he has for our country. The referendum pretty clearly broke our way and Bush won. As a result what have we seen? Conservative judicial nominees are filibustered in unprecedented fashion. Tax cuts are passed only after slimming them down and Bush begging the same Senate Republicans he put back in power to vote his way. The war on Iraq was delayed in order to appease moderate desires for more negotiation--yet in the end we still went to war and possibly delayed economic recovery by as much as six months.

2000 was supposed to be the biggest election. Everything I said about 2002 applies.

1994 was pretty big. 1996 was key as a follow-up to 1994. 1992 was big. Every election COULD be a big turning point, but rarely is. 2004 could be big, but I doubt it. If a Democrat wins he will declare the major combat of the war on terror complete and look to the remainder of the war as a police operation while focusing on the Liberias of the world while calling them breeding grounds for terrorists. Republicans would likely retain operational control (or at least veto control) over Congress. This would return us to the legislative experience of 1994 to 2000--not a bad thing in fiscal terms, but just a gradual slope towards more bureaucracy as the Democratic President utilized Executive Orders to accomplish the goals of liberal socialism.

On the other hand, if Bush wins he will probably get about 3 more Senators and about 10 more Congressmen. Operationally the House will be the same, especially since none of the new Congressmen would be conservative (all the conservative districts already have Republicans). They would be moderates that would guarantee that Hastert is Speaker, but otherwise willing to bolt with the Blue Dogs on the same type of issues that moderates have done this on in the last 3 years. The Senate would still be filibusterable by Democrats--Zell Miller already votes with the Republican majority so having his seat become Republican is not really any different. Bush will continue to split the difference and avoid confrontation. The major combat operations of the war on terror are for all intents and purposes complete. All that is left is to mop up and continue to define new alliances that will enforce the Bush Doctrine. The only bright side is that tax cuts that are intended to sunset may actually become permanent.

I hope that Kristol's piece provides encouragement to the conservative masses to go to work for this election, but I am not convinced that history will see the election of 2004 as a defining moment.

2003-08-22T15:32:00.000-05:00

Bring on the Doctor

Up until today I had been a little bit ambivalent about the possibility of Howard Dean being the Democratic nominee for President. Not anymore. He wrote an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal and I all I can say is that it had Liberal written all over it with a big L.

His platform contains a logical flaw.

In the beginning of his piece he argues that we need nationalized health insurance in order to save costs: "The task of meeting the needs of American families begins with health care. My plan will not only insure millions of Americans who are without adequate care today, it will reduce costs for small business, states and communities--freeing up funds that can be used to grow businesses and meet other national and local priorities."

This sounds good. Free businesses from the cost of providing an employee health insurance benefit and allow businesses to focus on what they do best. Of course as a well-trained conservative I quickly asked myself: 'if businesses don't pay for it, who will?' Dean was nice enough to answer later in his piece: "Average Americans pay their taxes through withholding or quarterly estimates. Meanwhile, corporations and multinational enterprises take advantage of elaborate tax shelters, and billions go uncollected. The need for reform is obvious and compelling, and I will give tax reform a top priority in my administration."

Sounds like good rhetoric. Take down the big corporations that keep circumventing taxation by using corporate tax loopholes. But, are these not the same corporations that need to be relieved of the burden of health insurance costs so that they can be more productive? If we relieve them of one cost and impose another cost have we freed them up to create jobs or invest in the economy? Dean would say that he wants to free small businesses from health care costs and stop loopholes for big corporations and therefore there is no contradiction. When does a small business become a multi-national corporation? Does a thirty-employee company that is incorporated and exports to Japan count as a multi-national corporation? I once worked for a company like that and they took advantage of all the same loopholes that Boeing uses. Take it the other way, does he really intend to not have nationalized health care cover the employees of big corporations? This is the mindless kind of stupidity you get when liberals try to come up with plans for socializing the economy.

I could also pick on the silliness of nationalized health insurance or his plan to put tax cuts only in the hands of those most likely to spend it or his careful little dance around budget deficits with this quote: "the federal budget must be balanced over the business cycle". I think it is sufficient to point out that he has contradicted his own principles in the very same Op-Ed. Anyone who thinks like that will be easy for Bush to run against. So I say bring on the Doctor!

2003-08-20T09:12:00.000-05:00

A Purple Heart

For about a week I have wanted to find one statistic: the number of police officers killed each year in the United States. I had a theory that they would make the number of deaths in Iraq look small especially since we are not just fighting remnants of the Baathist regime but also policing the country. I must admit the numbers were not quite what I expected but I decided to pull an 'I report, you decide' moment.

Deaths in Iraq as of August 19, 2003: 312. This includes British forces.

Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the year 2001, excluding those killed on September 11th: 70 killed feloniously, 78 accidentally killed while fulfilling official capacities for a total of 148.

And a few other numbers.

Accidental Military Deaths (not in Iraq or any war) for 2000: "113 on-duty deaths (108 deaths in FY 1999) and 322 off-duty deaths (321 in FY 1999)" for a total of 435.

Murders in New York City for the year of 2002: 590.

These are just some numbers that should give perspective. I am not saying that the lives of US servicemen are not valuable. In fact, I cringe every time I hear a report of another death. I also turned into a blubbering basket case one day when I saw an interview of a wife who had just had her baby who would never see his father. What I AM suggesting is that I still believe that this war was justified. I further believe that we must stay until the country of Iraq is stabilized. For that purpose the loss of life is low and we should be thankful for that. We have not even come close to the point where the loss of soldiers justifies second-guessing our mission.

2003-08-19T12:07:00.000-05:00

Regulating Krugman

It seems funny to me that pundits on both sides say: "We still don't know what started the chain reaction on Thursday. Whatever the initial cause, however, the current guess is that a local event turned into an epic blackout because..." (Krugman). I never set out to make this blog a site for spinning for the Right. In my mind part of being conservative is to be honest. Paul Krugman on the other hand chooses to use his New York Times position to spin like crazy. Immediately after his caveat he dives into muck by saying that the problem is because of deregulating the transmission network. He completes it with this whopper: "And the cause of that neglect is faith-based deregulation."

Obviously he has an axe to grind on the issue of deregulation, but it still is somewhat surprising. My big criticism of Krugman is that he waves his PhD in front of you then forgets all his academic integrity in the pursuit of partisan arguments.

The truth about deregulation is that it can work, but does not always work smoothly. Here is an example of a more balanced analysis of deregulation and the problems we see. The truth is that true deregulation will cause prices to rise in some cases and the politicians are afraid of this. For example, true deregulation would make charge people more during peak usage times and allow them to make the self interested economic decision to avoid usage when it is costly. Politically this would cause liberals to scream that poor people are being forced to pay for expensive electricity. First off they are not forced. Second of all if we really feel concerned about them then provide a direct energy subsidy to poor people, don't regulate the entire system.

The really interesting thing about Krugman is that he should have read his own paper before spouting off today. In an article in the business section of the New York Times, Floyd Norris reports: FirstEnergy may be the culprit--"Early reports traced the problem to failures at FirstEnergy transmission lines in Ohio. The company acknowledged that an alarm system had not been working at the time”; and FirstEnergy has been having problems all summer that have been reflected in the stock price and customer satisfaction.

But Krugman says this: "Under the old regulatory system, power companies had strong incentives to ensure the integrity of power transmission — they would catch the flak if something went wrong. But those incentives went away with deregulation: because effective competition in transmission wasn't possible, the companies providing transmission still had to be regulated. But because regulation limited their profits, they had little financial incentive to invest in maintaining and upgrading the system. And because of deregulation elsewhere, responsibility was diffused: nobody had a strong stake in keeping the system reliable. The result was a failure not just to add capacity, but to maintain and upgrade capacity that already existed."

Is it just me or do Norris and Krugman disagree? While this represents significant strides in journalistic maturity at the New York Times, it also demonstrates that Krugman is a liberal cheerleader. Norris ably demonstrates that a utility that ignores the transmission lines suffers. Krugman claims that owners of transmission lines have no market incentive to maintain those lines. I say Krugman needs to read his own paper. The only thing in need of regulation is Paul Krugman—and by the New York Times NOT government.

2003-08-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

Simon Says

I am very captivated by the entire recall election in California. Here is the latest roundup of reading: Field Poll, Don Luskin, Weekly Standard, National Review, and Foxnews.

First off, the most interesting points from the reading.

The poll showing Arnold at 42% was misleading. "Last week's CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, Aug 7-10, was completed after candidate filing closed. But it uselessly included candidates not running... Moreover, it asked respondents if there was a 'good or very good chance of voting for….' In other words, the multiple name numbers added up to 172 percent" (NRO). In reality the Field Poll is more correct because it adds up to 100% and only allowed single candidate choices. Results? "It shows Bustamante, 25 percent; Arnold; 22 percent; etc."

Arnold IS NOT leading. The next interesting fact, from the Field Poll (as summarized by the Weekly Standard, bold by me):
Bustamante 25%
Schwarzenegger 22%
Tom McClintock 9%
Bill Simon 8%
Peter Ueberroth 5%
Arianna Huffington 4%
Peter Camejo 2%
Larry Flynt 1%
Other Candidates 5%
None of the Candidates 5%
Undecided 14%

Everyone points out that Bustamante is at 25% and Arnold at 22%, but then ignore that UNDECIDED is polling at 14%. We have a good old-fashioned political race on our hands with plenty of undecided voters to fight over.

The One Third Strategy
Let's talk about strategy here. California is an interesting state. At least for Republicans. If you look at California electoral history going back to 1996 you see an interesting trend. I am looking at the ballot topping election every two years (Governor or President in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002). The results go like this (I provide the largest third party result).

2002 (Gov): 47.3% Dem, 42.4% Rep, 5.3% Green

2000 (Pres): 53.5% Dem, 41.7% Rep, 3.9% Green

1998 (Gov): 58% Dem, 38.4% Rep, 1.2% Green

1996 (Pres): 51.1% Dem, 38.3 Rep, 7% Perot, 2.4% Green

Do you notice anything? Sure, you might argue that the quality of candidate makes a difference. I disagree. These are very different candidates and elections over four election cycles. The notable trend is that Republicans can't get more than 42% of the vote. Just in case I was wrong about that I took a look at the highest Republican vote getters in statewide elections for the same years. Here it is:

2002: McClintock for Controller got 45.1% of the vote.

2000: Yes, it was George Bush at 41.7%

1998: Quakenbush for Insurance Commissioner got 49% of the vote for the win, Jones for Secretary of State got 47% of the vote for the win, and Fong for US Senate (against Boxer) got 43% of the vote.

1996: Yes, it was Bob Dole at 38.3%

To be fair there are some people who got more than 42%. But I am going to throw out Quakenbush and Jones because both were incumbent holdovers from Pete Wilson days. They held positions where the incumbent should win unless they have really gotten bad publicity for screwing things up. Even then, at no time did anyone break the electorally critical 50%! Furthermore, Quakenbush soon left office under a very dark cloud and Jones opted to avoid higher office because, one can only assume, as the chief election officer he could read the tea leaves. So the real election that year was Boxer vs. Fong. Even against the very liberal Boxer, a Republican candidate could only get 43% of the vote. In deference to McClintock's performance last year, I will say the Republican statewide maximum is 45%. You can only win three way races with 45%!

When a party is in the minority in a bad way the party tends to become more conservative (or liberal depending on the party). I grew up in a one party state (Hawaii), and the only Republicans were conservatives or the really rare and brave political opportunists. The party is conservative because all the young moderates in the state conclude that being Republican or Democratic is like six of one and half a dozen of the other--they just want to be elected. California party rules may serve to exacerbate the problem, but none the less if they could hold majorities moderates would reside and succeed in the party--give me another reason why Pete Wilson won nominations. With the power of moderates on the decline many believe that a moderate can not win the Republican primary in California. Some point at the Republican primary for Governor in 2002 as an example. Even with the backing of the White House, an early lead in polls, and lots of money Riordan lost to the conservative. Granted this may have had more to do with bad campaigning but it seems convincing to many. One must also ask where was Arnold in 2002? Why did he sit out the race? This is really the message that Simon and McClintock should be sending. He sat out the race because he could read the tea leaves as well.

Republicans in California have an electoral problem. While it might be interesting to discuss how they got there (ignore prop 187, the problem is that conservatives like me have left the state for places where gay marriage and high taxes are not problems) the issue for today is what this means for the election.

It is possible that if conservatives had put a moderate like Riordan or Arnold on the ballot against Davis in 2002 that Davis would have lost. But that is a hard case to make. The independent/third party voters went for a more liberal alternative to Davis--Davis WAS the moderate.

If California is anything like the rest of the country 33% of voters are truly conservative, 33% are truly liberal, and the rest can't seem to choose between ice cream and milk with their cake. For this reason the first gamble of the recall was that liberals, conservatives, AND moderates would dislike Davis enough that he would be recalled--I am willing to believe that this was a safe bet. The second gamble was that it could be a three-way race with the Democratic stand in, Riordan, and Issa (or any conservative for that matter). In a race like this the Democratic stand in would go liberal and it would be a contest of whose base has better turnout. I am not sure that the result of this gamble is yet clear.

Smart Democrats saw this equation and wanted a Feinstein who had the moderate credentials to not lose votes there even while going liberal to activate the base. She passed. Bustamante helps the Republican case. But instead of Riordan we got Arnold. Same politics, better marketing. Meanwhile conservatives can't seem to decide on which conservative to back. The problem in choosing one conservative is that both Simon and McClintock understand the high stakes gamble. Neither will withdraw without a guarantee that the other will also withdraw. Because as soon as Simon withdraws his supporters will go to McClintock REGARDLESS of any endorsement of Arnold. The same would be true if McClintock withdraws. At that point the conservative becomes a 20% candidate next to Arnold's 22% and then we have a real race for the undecided voters. Conservatives have two choices to make. First, do they want a guaranteed win, or do they want a fighting chance. Either way they need to narrow the candidate field. The only difference is should they both withdraw and endorse Arnold or does one withdraw and instead of endorsing Arnold endorse the conservative rival. In Option A they ensure a Republican victory with all the perks that this enjoins for the Republican party in fundraising and power--the gamble is over and while technically a loss for conservatives, a positive hedge is in place. In Option B they just might pull off a win, but if they lose they may be in the political wilderness of an eternity and the infighting of the California Republican party will get worse.

All of this discussion may be academic because the third place finisher in the polls right now is someone named UNDECIDED. If the California election data I presented above is any predictor I am willing to bet undecided will mostly break in Bustamante’s favor. Which would give him at least 35% on Election Day--enough to win in a three-way race. That still leaves about 5% to break for Arnold.

All of this being said, I am endorsing a plan that will never happen. Simon and McClintock join forces. Simon is the key to this. As the Republican nominee for governor last time around he has the best claim to rightful candidacy I can see. But he also has had his chance and failed. Simon could bow out tomorrow while maintaining a high profile by buying advertisements advocating a recall of Davis. Or he could become the nominal chair of the McClintock campaign. Either way this makes him the magnanimous savior of the Republican right. Bush could sweeten the deal by offering him a high profile post in the administration. All in preparation for McClintock and Bush endorsing Simon to run against Barbara Boxer in 2004. I think the conservatives have the goods for proving that Arnold is not up to the task and then they would only be running against his fame. If they could demonstrate to Republicans that together they can offer a solid 20% of the vote then Republicans will start to go their way. The Bush White House can have it both ways by encouraging Simon to move yet remaining officially neutral. Since the current electoral strategy is to write off California in 2004, it really would make little difference if Bustamante won or Arnold won while being mad at the White House. Even if Bush backs Arnold what is the pay off? Arnold will not win with a majority of the vote so there will be no coattail to leverage. Regardless of outcome Bush will poll at 45% come 2004. The real question is can a scenario be arranged where Simon might create a nice enough image for himself with moderate voters that he could beat Boxer and thereby improve Republican strength in the US Senate.

At the end of the day it comes down to one thing: what does Simon say?

2003-08-14T08:55:00.000-05:00

Fat

I am fat, not over weight, just fat.

Now I have that out of the way, I want to comment on this article. For a moment I was worried that the article would conclude that there should be a government benefit to cover stomach reduction surgery—but it turns out there already is in some states. Here are the money quotes (bold emphasis by me):

Raechel believes she gained steadily over the years because she's hungry all the time. ''I eat and feel full, and then 20 minutes later, I'm hungry again.'' There are both healthful foods and junk foods in their home, but she admits she frequently eats junk food because it tastes better.

When Raechel was 9, she went with her mom to Weight Watchers at the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) Hall in their hometown. Raechel weighed in and followed the program but wouldn't go to the meetings.

After several failed attempts at losing weight, Raechel says by this summer, she'd basically given up and was eating ''whatever, whenever. I know I eat too much, but I think, 'Why stop now?' "

Gastric bypass ''is a tool. It's not a cure,'' Wittgrove [the surgeon] says. She will have to dramatically change the way she eats and begin exercising more, and his staff will help her do that. His group conducts a nutrition and exercise class for patients a few days after surgery, and they call and check in on them monthly.

Wittgrove says there are several things Raechel needs to do for the rest of her life: drink lots of water, exercise daily, eat protein first at every meal to feel full longer and protect lean muscle mass during the rapid weight loss, take supplements and avoid snacking.

Raechel is following a broth and Jell-O diet this first week, but that's OK because she's not hungry... It's one week since the surgery, and Raechel weighs 308 pounds, a loss of 15 pounds. She's starting to add soft foods back to her diet. Her choices: soft-boiled eggs, cottage cheese and refried beans.

Okay, enough! What am I trying to say? P-E-R-S-O-N-A-L R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-L-I-T-Y!!!!!!!!

I am fat because I love to eat and I hate to exercise. Given the choice of what to do in the evening after work I would choose to eat chocolate anything while watching TV. Raechel is no victim, she is a lazy slob. She goes on and on about how she wants to be a college softball player yet claims that she can't walk for very long. Hmmm. I want to play in the NFL, but am I doing anything about it? No. Do you feel sorry for me? Please don't. Does it matter to me that she is fat? For the most part no. Except there is one little problem. Read this:

Raechel's family has to pay about $3,100 of the total of $28,000 for the surgery and hospitalization. The cost of the laparoscopic operation varies widely. Insurance coverage depends on the severity of the patient's obesity and varies by provider and state. Brenda says that if her insurance agrees to cover it or if she gets the money together, she ''will definitely have it.''

You and I are paying for her surgery! Because she is too lazy to discipline herself we are paying for it with higher insurance rates. Obviously some states have caved to the fat lobby and made it mandatory. Just the simple fact that companies are required to insure employees creates too much demand for unneeded surgery!

I am so irritated by this that I have now lost my appetite for lunch. Great!

2003-08-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

Liberia

This piece is a good starting point for debate. While there may be many reasons to disagree with Fareed Zakaria's conclusion, there is little doubt in my mind that he is correct that Iraq is a rarity while Liberias are to be expected. It would be good to develop an approach and strategy for dealing with these types of conflicts. I am not proposing a Clintonian policeman policy, but I am saying we need a national consensus on what to do--even if we conclude to do nothing. Without a consensus or strategy we are left to react to each new conflict that can be marketed as fertile ground for terrorists or a humanitarian crisis. I suspect this discussion will help us come to grips with what our role in the world should be when obvious national interests are not at stake.

2003-08-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

House of Saud

This is an interesting, even if long, read. I am still pondering the question of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. However, there is one postulation I am certain of. Read this quote first: "SOON AFTER the 9/11 report was published, Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal flew to Washington and challenged President Bush to release the redacted portion. This dramatic gesture notwithstanding, the Saudis will maintain their posture of denial in the near term, regardless of what happens in Washington. If the 28 pages are withheld, the Saudis will claim unfair intrigues based on concealment; if the pages are released, they will complain of false accusations emanating from the Jews." This very well may be the simple explanation about the Saudi interest in releasing the redacted portion, but my theory is this: they want it released so they can figure out who is giving the Americans information. They want to catch the leak and chop his or her tongue off. Rhetoric aside, they know how professional and accurate our intelligence can be and they fear that we might be on to them. What is there to be on to? I think the biggest problem is that the monarchy is weak and divided. There is a fair chance that there could be internal strife in the near future. Unwilling to confront this reality, or force the issue, the Saudis who would be our friends are looking the other way while their rivals court fundamentalists. Again this is my theory, grounded in little fact. But I suggest you ponder the possibility.

2003-08-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Something is Wrong Here

I hate to admit this, but I finally read a Maureen Dowd column I enjoyed AND agreed with. Dowd is a liberal if I ever met one, but she is taking pot shots at most of the Democratic candidates for President--and she did it without once criticizing Bush! I often skip her pieces, but she gave it an irresistible title: "Blah Blah Blog". I was sure this would be a criticism of me (you are supposed to laugh now), but it turned out to be critical of the many phony blogs created by the various candidates for President and even Tom Daschle. Incredible. Maybe pigs can fly after all.

2003-08-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

Introduce a Friend!

It is time to increase the number of readers. I am making a shameless plug for you to promote this site by telling a friend. I'll even make it easy for you. Click on this link and most of the email has already been composed for you:) If you prefer just use the "email this" link at the bottom of each post to refer a friend to a post.

2003-08-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

Buckley Weighs in on Gay Marriage

I will have to let these articles stand alone with little comment for now. But I do think Buckley makes some good points on the issue of gay marriage, from the viewpoint of conservative principle, here and here. For the conservative it would be preferable to not change existing laws or amend the constitution. But faced with the intent of the gay marriage movement and the reality of current interpretations of the constitution by the Supreme Court conservatives are faced with a choice of accepting gay marriage or amending the constitution. To be honest, I am still undecided on the issue of an amendment so I find these pieces worth reading in my own decision making process.

2003-08-11T12:53:00.000-05:00

Oops, You Didn't Do Your Research

I hate to call a liberal pundit into question for his facts. But so much of his piece in the Wall Street Journal rests on an incorrect fact. Who am I talking about? Peter Beinart. He states, in reference to Howard Dean, that: "The mystery of the 2004 Democratic campaign isn't that a governor has caught on--that happens in most presidential years. The mystery is that there is only one governor in the field, and that he comes from such a tiny state." OOPS!!!! Not only was Bob Graham a Governor, but he was Governor of FLORIDA! It is really hard for me to slam on Peter too much since I like the way his piece blames Clinton for the destruction of the Democratic Party. But he is either not paying attention to the campaign, OR he is flying loose and free with the facts. I guess he might just be buying the Dean line that Graham is not a major candidate. I suggest that this calls into question Peter's premise that Dean is doing well because he is a former governor and the only one available to the Democrats. Dean is doing well because he is new and original.

2003-08-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

Religious Litmus Test

Here is a piece by Robert Novak about the Democratic litmus test on the issue of abortion. This is an issue that warrants some fair discussion in American politics. If I firmly believe because of my religion that abortion is wrong, is it acceptable for me to stand on that issue politically? More appropriately, is it acceptable for a judge to be influenced by deeply held religious convictions? To turn the issue on it's head, if I was a scientist in the field of space travel and therefore had firm views that there was no life on Mars worth worrying about would this disqualify me to work at NASA? Sure you might say, this is a straw man, but my point is simply that he would or would not qualify depending on my own view of researching life on Mars. Like it or not, abortion is a highly charged political issue AND religious issue. There is no way to remove the influence of religion from thinking on the issue of abortion. I think Democrats are making a mistake. They should be honest and say that they want no judges that favor the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. Stop attacking deep personal beliefs as evidence of the wrong temperament for the court. Surely Democrats would not disqualify, for reasons of judicial intemperance, a judicial nominee with deeply held beliefs about abortion being a right for women?

2003-08-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

NY Times Over Dramatic

Today the NY Times has this article, which essentially says: Halliburton is getting a sweet deal thanks to Dick Cheney. As I read it I was concerned. Not that Halliburton is getting a great deal, but that the reporter was not telling the entire story. The story says that Bechtel is withdrawing from bidding for an oil field project in Iraq because: "competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton". One reading the article gets the serious impression that Bechtel is in the same business as Halliburton and that Bechtel is getting NO work in Iraq. This seems to be incorrect from my impression of older stories. So in the interest of self education I went to the corporate sites for Halliburton and Bechtel. The first thing that strikes me is that they are definitly marketing very different services. Halliburton is focusing on the needs of the petroleum industry--all needs. Bechtel is a big construction company that claims as one of it's most recent big projects the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transist system and the Chunnel. And then the big whopper. Go ahead, read it for yourself. That is right. Bechtel is already in Iraq rebuilding infrastructure. Did they bid for that? I don't think so. They got a quick deal to rebuild roads that will be subject to future bidding just like the Halliburton deal. Why? Because they are the best at doing the job they got hired to do and we don't want to wait around for bids while the infrastructure of Iraq suffers. Sort of the same reason Halliburton is rebuilding the oil industry. Shame on the New York Times for implying that Bechtel was being screwed by Dick Cheney.

UPDATE: I have just posted an abridged version of these comments on Reductio Ad Absurdum

2003-08-07T16:19:00.000-05:00

Arnold

Why not? He is an improvement over Gray and he can not run for President.

The issue hinges on the question of an old and over used truism: 'As California goes, so goes the country' (something like that). Ever since Californians lead a tax revolt and provided the country with Ronald Reagan people on both sides of the political divide have been wringing their hands and lamenting that California dictates national trends. But there is far too much anecdotal evidence that this is NOT true. California made services to illegal aliens, well illegal, but you haven't seen other states clamor to codify such a move. California made it illegal to use affirmative action in college admissions and the Supreme Court sure didn't listen on that one. California overwhelmingly voted for Gore in 2000--any questions? California inspects your car for fruits and plants before allowing you into the state--nope they don't do that in Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, etc. California made gay marriage strictly against the law--maybe someone should send a copy to Vermont and Massachusetts, huh? California has a state budget crisis but Utah does not. My point is that California does not define the fate of our nation.

So it is not logical to conclude that every state with a budget crisis will recall their governor. For example, the laws for recalls are unlikely to be identical, Representative Issa lives in California, no state has a budget crisis as bad as California's, and not every governor got elected with only 47% of the vote. In fact, look at the same data and ask how many states gave a total of 10% of the vote to independent candidates? California is unique, every state is unique.

Even if the country did follow why would it matter? One can only assume that it is because it scares the heck out of politicians. It is as if Rep Issa broke the code of all politicians--'never, ever, make things harder for everyone.' You see if there is anything learned by voters everywhere it will be that recall is a great way to remove politicians who don't keep promises. Davis promised to take care of the problem and voters gave him a chance. After 9 months at it there is little evidence he is living up to the deal. Why not set a precedent that politicians need to deliver quickly? Why not keep them nervous?

Then there are the Republicans--which brings us back to Arnold. Arnold will win--count on it. This will be a coronation thanks to Rep Issa. The only question at this point is how Arnold will show his gratitude to Mr Issa. Republicans are mad. The rules of the recall grant the governors office to the person with the most votes. There is recent evidence that in statewide races California Republicans face a ceiling of 42% (the only exception was McClintock in 2002 at 45%). It is worth pointing out that because of the strength of conservatives in the California Republican Party, these candidates are overwhelmingly conservative. If the conservatives could have created a scenario where one solid conservative--Simon, Issa or McClintock--ran while a Democratic safety candidate like Cruz Bustamante ran and while the uninspiring moderate Richard Riordan ran it was a safe bet that a conservative could hold 40% of the vote. The only challenge would be to find a way to make sure only Simon, only Issa or only McClintock ran (looks like Issa is already off the list). Democrats realized this was the strategy and this is why they are crying "undemocratic" while hoping that all three would run and trying to get Feinstein to run. Arnold upsets the entire formula. Because he is not uninspiring like Riordan, because he and Riordan agreed to not run against each other, and because he was smart enough to wait long enough to not give Democrats enough time to respond. Why should conservatives care? Because Arnold is not a conservative, but he can draw conservative votes because he plays a tough guy who fights for right against wrong in the movies and he can win. Enough conservatives love that combination to fracture the conservative 40% block.

Should conservatives be concerned? Yes only because Arnold will be governor with no help from us (except Issa of course). He won't owe conservatives anything. But on the other hand I would prefer a Republican of any stripe to the existing Democratic monopoly in California. With that said, the optimal strategy for conservatives might be to convince Simon and McClintock to bow out and back Arnold.

2003-08-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

Bush Not Nixon, But Not Conservative Either

This post appears as a comment on Reduction Ad Absurdum as part of my contribution efforts on that blog. I have made minor edits to improve readability here.

Conservatives need to wake up to one very serious reality: Bush is conservative when it makes for good politics. When it doesn't make for good politics he could care less.

Kevin Whited has commented on a piece by Bruce Bartlett. Bruce Bartlett thinks that Bush is little different from Nixon--i.e., not a conservative. Kevin disagrees. While I do think that Bruce exaggerates the similarities, I think it is worth pondering whether Bush is truly a conservative. I am not saying that I agree with Bartlett's final conclusion. And I even question some of his points. But I am saying that Bush has a problematic record. Here are the points that Kevin makes and my comments.

1) Campaign Finance Reform: Clearly Bush abandoned even his own campaign statements to sign the legislation. To excuse this because it should eventually be found unconstitutional does not excuse Bush from his own responsibility to uphold the constitution. At the end of the day Bush signed it in order to neuter McCain--a political consideration.

2) Education Bill. Bush promised education reform and to be fair he fulfilled a campaign promise. Any smart person would have predicted that Bush would not get all that he wanted. But at the end of the day he compromised a lot more than intended in order to remove a perennial Democratic issue.

3) More trade protectionist than anyone since Nixon. I think Bartlett is making an assertion here that is somewhat exaggerated. Bush's actual acts of protectionism have been limited. But, once again, political consideration was the motive--not principle.

4) Prescription drug plan. Sure there was a campaign promise to make this part of his domestic agenda, but did that mean he had to abandon conservative principle? Even Kevin admits that it is politics before principle: "This issue will be removed as one that can damage the President and the GOP. Granted, at the expense of sacrificing some purity."

5) War on terror. This is where I draw the line and think that Bush finally demonstrates principle. He leans against the wind, ignores critics, and refuses to compromise.

Four out of five are proofs that Bush places politics before other considerations. At the end of the day he is concerned about electoral victories. He does not go out on the limb for ideology. His appointment of judges is not enough proof for me, because while the fights have been controversial Bush has seemed distant and unwilling to make a fight. One might cynically conclude that the strategy is to offer conservative judges that Schumer will fight against in order to look good with the base, but not actually play the political hard ball necessary to get them approved. The admirable part is that Bush has co-opted Schumer as his assistant in solidifying the conservative base.

My problem with Bush is his spending. As I see it there are a few pillars of conservatism: tax cuts, spending cuts (less government), protecting cultural values, and protecting America. When it comes to actions a President can control he has done fine on tax cuts and protecting America. I often conclude there is little the President can do about cultural values other than speak to the issue and appoint judges. But when it comes to spending there is much a President can do. Bush has failed. While it may be unfair to make a strong comparison to Nixon, it is fair if you consider that they are both political animals willing to cut deals and use government in order to solve problems. They are government activists.

Which brings me to my real point. I really have no problem supporting a Republican politician who is a politician first and a conservative second. For this reason I will go to the polls and vote for Bush. I will even advocate his re-election on Right On Everything. However, I am not willing to defend him as a conservative. Bush is a politician. If conservatives expect him to take more conservative positions we must stop giving him passes on issues of principle and hold his political interest by challenging him to serve our interests. It is in that light that I (mostly rhetorically) make a general call for a conservative challenger in the Republican primaries. Is anyone interested?

2003-08-06T09:20:00.000-05:00

August

August is traditionally the time when the White House, Congress, and the Press take vacation. Interestingly enough people do as well. Somehow the news stories quiet down and everyone except the junior replacements at the news networks hope that nothing big happens. Personally I am in the midst of several life transitions. As such I may be a little spotty on posts for the next few weeks. One of these transitions is an experiment of sorts. I have recently discovered Kevin Whited, editor of Reductio Ad Absurdum. He has given me the opportunity to contribute on occasion to his blog. I am inclined to see if I can juggle that and maintaining Right On Everything. It will enable me to have an interactive and public discussion with other conservatives. I will not make posts at his blog without also providing the same content here. What you will get if you read my post there is the dialogue with other contributors to Kevin's blog. Please feel free to give me feedback as usual.

2003-08-04T13:39:00.000-05:00

Go Figure

I am not one to say that all Congress Persons need to read every piece of information. I agree with the contention that they hire good staff to do this. However, if I was a Congress Person who intended to be critical of President Bush for taking us to war and claim in the process that the President used faulty intelligence I would at least review the intelligence made available before opening my big mouth. This story is very irritating.

2003-08-04T09:33:00.000-05:00

Fences

Normally I find a lot to agree with when I read the Wall Street Journal editorial page or anything by Robert Novak. But I find myself at odds with them on the issue of the Israeli fence around the West Bank.

The Wall St Journal says that:

if Mr. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expect Mr. Abbas to rise to the challenge, they will need to take steps to strengthen his political position. This will have to include addressing the issue of the unpopular Israeli security fence, which is being constructed well inside the borders of the West Bank and the existence of which is incompatible with any realistic vision of a permanent settlement.

Robert Novak says that:

[Bush's indifference on the fence is] profoundly depressing for those Republicans, in the administration and Congress, who have prayed that Bush would capitalize on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by insisting on a Middle East settlement including a Palestinian state. They think the president's intent is pure, but that he is overpowered by the combination of Sharon and DeLay.

I say: poppy-cock!

Let's use a hypothetical news story to make the point.

Today conservatives called on President Bush to tear down the wall around Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. It has been just a year since it was concluded that Al Qaeda was only located in a small mountain province. Since that time the US has responded to international calls for restraint by not invading or bombing the area. However, since Al Qaeda has continued to allow citizens of the mountain province to secretly leave the area in attempts to set off bombs in the major cities of Afghanistan the US administration has begun construction of a security fence. An annonymous source in the administration says that we should invoke the words of The Gipper by calling on the President to "tear down this wall!"

Do you see how ludicrous that sounds? Ignoring the issue of US interests for a moment let's just discuss whether the Bush administration official cited by Robert Novak who wants to use the words of Reagan is even competent. It is obvious to me that he or she was not paying attention in world history class or had a liberal professor that was too persuasive. The Berlin wall, while officially built to defend East Germany from the encroachment of the capitalists, in reality served the purpose of imprisoning East Germans. Reagan called for Gorby to tear down the wall in order to free the people of the Eastern Block. Let's make it simple: Russia built the wall to imprison their own people. Russia was not a democracy. Now let's move to Israel. Israel IS a democracy AND the fence is more analogous to a fence we have along parts of the border with Mexico. Israel is not trying to contain the people of Israel, it is trying to keep OUT illegals!

To be fair, although I think the dishonesty of Novak and the WSJ on this issue does not merit fairness on my part, these opinions are not driven by anything more than realism about US foreign policy. The reality is that Israel does not make sense. What I mean is that being the ally of Israel at such great cost is not logical. Israel has no significant natural resources, they are not an irreplacable trading partner, and other than proximity to the Suez canal there is little that is strategic about their location. In fact, it is our friendship with Israel that provides the greatest proof that Bush's foriegn policy is not about OIL. You see, if oil was all that mattered we would have abandoned Israel and have made friends with Saddam. So why are we allies?

I often ponder this question to no strong conclusion. But I do have a few ideas. It is a matter of history and familiarity. In the years immediately following World War 2, Israel served our interests in keeping the Suez canal open and out of European or Soviet control. During the Cold War Israel was our beach head in the Middle East. And some how we came to see ourselves as the protector of democracies. The clincher however is the holocaust. When it comes right down to it Americans feel an emotional responsibility to protect the down-trodden. There is something in US politics that is very powerful about policy that seeks to protect those who suffer. Over time these things have been reenforced by simple familiarity with Israel as an ally we can trust.

All along this has created a great conflict for America. On the one hand we care about things like right and wrong, but on the other hand we need oil. So we try to walk a tightrope. Novak and the WSJ propose continuing on the tightrope for as long as possible. Bush instead recognizes that Israel is simply trying to protect itself. I do not think that this is some conspiracy of Neo-Conservatives deceiving the President and I do not believe that the absence of a fence will strengthen Mr Abbas' position in Palestine. But I am sure that a fence will lessen the liklihood of bombs in Israel. The real statement that Mr Bush should make is: "Mr. Arafat, stop those bombs!"

2003-08-01T01:32:00.000-05:00

See You on Monday

I will not likely be posting again until Monday. I did stay up late Thursday night (Friday morning) posting just to be sure you would all have something to read. Please enjoy.

If you are hoping for a comment on the economic data, here it is: Hooray! I haven't time to read Paul Krugman yet, but just the title convinces me he is really out in left field. I am just appalled that rather than admit that the numbers look good and that he is wrong, he looks for the only dismal issue in the nation--California--and tries to extrapolate some greater meaning. I will read the article and comment in detail when I return.

2003-08-01T01:26:00.000-05:00

The Gay Marriage Issue

One argument often cited against gay marriage is the slippery slope. Most recently, the slope towards polygamy and polyamory. In and of itself I think that a slippery slope argument is not strong enough to win a debate--any debate. In fact, if I was an opponent of a slippery sloper I would simply offer a compromise--agree to let X go and agree to ban Y. Thus the slope disappears. The gay movement may want to consider doing just that.

So, I feel we need a more compelling argument.

The gay movement also has a weak argument. They keep trying to argue that they are denied a "right". When it comes right down to it the right that they are concerned about is the right to express love in any way they feel. Besides the point that there is an irony to the sexual revolution now wanting to embrace the actual institution it once rejected, serious people should wonder why this is a right and why the gay movement thinks that this is the ultimate way to express love. To be fair this is not the only argument for gay marriage, but it is the only one that can not be legislated away. All other arguments are for economic benefits that simply require an update to laws to allow for any two persons regardless of sex of the parties to enter into mutual agreements for the receipt of benefits such as Social Security.

In making the argument for love, the gay marriage movement actually sets good terms for debate. What they raise is the question of the nature of marriage. What is marriage for? Is it for love? Is there no other reason for marriage? Tell the Indian programmer who just returned to India for his arranged marriage to a woman chosen out of a newspaper that marriage is for love. Tell the Filipino mail order bride that marriage is for love. I will admit that in the West love has become an important condition for marriage. Our culture glorifies love in marriage. We also glorify some concept of destiny. We embrace the fairy tale of Cinderella and more recently The Princess Bride. What is the line? "Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together--today. Marriage--that blessed arrangement. That dream -- within a dream." That dream--within a dream. Our culture idolizes the entire process. Who can blame the gay person for feeling that life has excluded them?

Why the fairy tale about marriage? Why any fairy tale? Let's try another fairy tale to make my point. How about the most discussed (according to this website): Little Red Riding Hood. If you read through the entire piece (or at least scan as I did), you will find this quote: "Other interpretations range from a focus on the idea that it is a simple cautionary tale, to a plethora of psychoanalytically based interpretations which generally radiate from a sexual / initiation source..." (emphasis mine). I am willing to discard all the gobbledy gook of all the PhDs who need to justify their degrees in literature by defining some new meaning in the red cape and focus on the cautionary tale. Simply put it was meant to scare the bejesus out of little kids in order to keep them from getting too close to wolves and asking dumb questions about their ears and eyes. Parents needed to keep their kids safe.

What does this have to do with marriage? The cultural fairy tales about marriage as the romantic end all of life are there to get us to marry. If the tales really told about how the couple argued on their honeymoon, or how child birth was so painful, or any number of things about marriage that are arduous do you think anyone would get married? If they didn't get married what would their fate be? Why do you think Cinderella's wicked step sisters couldn't get married? They are in the story to make the point that only selfish and mean girls can't get married so be nice.

Why did culture evolve such fairy tales? One might conclude that marriage had other benefits. If the fairy tale made it easier to get the young couple to agree to marriage then all the better. Just as the benefits of keeping children away from wolves justified scaring children, the benfits of marriage, protection from economic and social instability, justified making marriage seem romantic.

Does this still apply today? The welfare state has come pretty close to making it seem as if it does not. But I believe that it still does. Why? Because it still protects children. Ultimately there is no kind of homosexual sex that might result in child birth. Try as they may, there will be no accidental birth. However, in a heterosexual relationship this is possible for all except presidential interns. The ideal is marriage in order to protect children--not for love. Gay people need to understand this and embrace it. They need marriage to work in the traditional way just like I do. They need children to be born in to stable two parent families rather than grow up in single parent homes as wards of the welfare state. As for expressing love, they can do that in their rooms and in contracts and in the way they live.

The real slippery slope has already been slid down--it is the slope of forgetting why culture has certain traditions. It is in forgetting why these traditions are of value to all. Forget polygamy and polyamory and forget expressions of love. Instead focus on the real tradition and ask if the value that each tradition provides for our collective society is worth maintaining. In the case of marriage, I believe that it is.

2003-08-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

Oil Out of Crap

Thanks to Nick Schulz for this and this post on The NRO Corner today. Just to sum it up for you. There is an article in Discover magazine that reports on a company that has developed a process whereby they can convert anything containing Carbon into Oil while producing mineral and water as by-products. Nick, who edits a technology magazine, asks if any experienced scientists can vouch for the legitimacy of this process.

He has received some comments from engineers on the article. Some sceptical, and one very positive.

I offered Nick an alternative point of view. The economic one.

You see, I am convinced that most science is like computer programming which I know a little about. The question is not if something is possible, but rather how long it will take and at what expense--more specifically, is it worth it. Let's use a simple example. An electric car is possible, but each car costs SO much money that it is not economically feasible. What is obvious to me from the article is that the interviewer did not ask the hard detail questions on costs. Sure, I realize that he did have some lines about costs, but let's look at them. First quote:

"We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process.

Please note the future tense there. Right after the reporter got done listing the $50 million invested by individuals and government just to do the research. Further in the article you will read that the first plant cost $20 million to build. Next quote:

It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil [a day]

600 barrels of oil which will sell on today's market for $30 a barrel for a total of $18,000 a day. At that rate it will take him three years just to cover the cost of building the facility. Not too bad so far. Final quote:

And it will be profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in Philadelphia, we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there."

That is where he exposes himself. You see the reporter should have asked why the costs will go down. Is that because turkey guts will get cheaper, or he will have written off the fixed costs, or is it because he is assuming that more people will adopt the technology and he will be able to spread the costs over multiple locations? I think he is only talking about the variable costs of turkey guts and keeping the lights at the factory on. He is not including the initial investments, or the reality of how much more his oil cost in terms of the opportunity cost of the natural gas he claims to pump back into the system. The real give away that they might be using rosy estimates was that the "authority" on how good an investment this is was the venture capitalist--you don't think he has an agenda, now do you?

I love technology. I am very excited about things like this. I really believe that scientists will make drilling for oil a non-issue long before it runs out. But I am not so excited that I think it will happen tomorrow. I would guess that this guy has really discovered a spectacular process, but I would also guess that it is more costly than he lets on. All new technology tends to be. Will it get cheaper? You bet it will, but can the idea last long enough for the idea to get cheaper? How long will it take to get cheaper? Many great ideas fail for reasons unrelated to the greatness of the idea, let's hope that this is not true of turning turkey guts into oil.

2003-07-31T12:19:00.000-05:00

Bush Press Conference

President Bush held a press conference yesterday at a time of day when few people could watch. Just for fun go to the White House home page and see if you can find any reference to the press conference. What is wrong with this White House? Okay, I know that President Bush is not the best public speaker, but he is worse quoted than he is live. The few clips I have seen were great. He showed emotion and a sense of humor. He clearly is comfortable with reporters and willing to joke with them from reading the transcript. I think these are the things that the American people need to see live in prime time rather than reading the quotes that make him sound dumb. Karl Rove set the man free!

Speaking of which there were some really great comments in the press conference. Some reality expressed about how long it will take to establish democracy in Iraq, more directness about the '16 words', and a comment about gay marriage.

What I want to know is whether people are going to eat crow now about the '16 words'. After all, a lot of people have been going on and on about the President not being willing to take personal responsibility. I still contend that he has done that all along. Maybe they will be happy that he did it live at a press conference. I doubt it! The strategy is to weaken Bush through a thousand pinpricks. And, if Karl Rove is listening, this is the reason that Bush needs to be live in prime time. Because when people hear Bush speak they see the simple cowboy and they like it.

What I really am interested in is his comment about Gay Marriage. No, I am not going to take credit for this one. But I am happy to see him finally address the question in a way that indicates that he is taking it seriously. I am not sure that some of the headlines were appropriate. But he did imply that legal proposals are on the way. I would like to see what he has in mind. Regular readers will recognize that I have strong feelings on this issue. I am not in favor of gay marriage. I am, however, nervous that Bush will continue his track record of overdoing the government role in any solution.

Fundamentally there is a cultural debate that needs to be held, which is bigger than just gay marriage. The initial question of that debate is: 'Do Christian values have a place in our society?' President Bush obviously believes there is. I agree. The challenge is how best to do that without disturbing the rights of people to believe and worship however they choose. The real problem is that so much of western cultural tradition is rooted in Christianity. Why do you think American's feel this moral obligation to help poor war-torn countries like Liberia? Where does that come from? There is no self interest involved; yet there is a lot of compassion. Why do we value the life of an individual soldier? Why do we object to ideologies that imply that some are better than others are? Whether we like it or not many of these concepts are linked to or influenced by Christianity. If Christian values have a place then President Bush's complete statement is very appropriate and goes very well with what I have argued. The problem with gay marriage is that gay persons feel ostracized by people who look down on the gay lifestyle. Bush exhorted all Americans to be better Christians towards gay persons. And then he pointed out that being better Christians did not require accepting the legalization of gay marriage. Can you see that one with out the other would have been a contradiction? Can you see that you can't call on Christians to observe the higher ideals of Christianity while kicking the institution of marriage? Or stated the opposite way, we can't defend traditional marriage and at the same time be callous to the feelings of gay persons.

Because this and other issues are so important I return to my original point: put Bush on in prime time and let him be a bigger part of the debate on each and every issue that is important in this country.

2003-07-30T14:05:00.000-05:00

What Is Bush Really Hiding? NOTHING!

That is the real question to ask about the blacked out section of the 9/11 report. Not some question about motives. I guess the President still has political capital on store with me because I don't believe he is just trying to cover and maintain some cool relationship with the Saudis. Furthermore, I think there is fair evidence that this adminsitration does not try to coddle unwilling or unneeded allies. Our success in Iraq makes the Saudis both unwilling and now unneeded.

What is really going on?

The first possible explanation is that this is just another example of what I will call 'intelligence caution'. I think spies are like any other technician in any other job where their word can mean the difference between trust and losing a job. For instance, in my line of work I am often asked if we can make some modification to a computer system so that users can do something special. The most important question I ask is 'who is the user?' This affects my answer. At a simplistic level the change the user requests can always be done, the real question is how LONG will the change take. If the user is someone who can get me fired then I prefer to sound optimistic but in my actual estimates I err on the side of caution. If it will likly take one day to make the change I hedge and ask for two days. If I am done early all the better.

What does this have to do with spies? I think they are in a similar position. They are always being asked to assess risks. If they underestimate the risks, as they did previous to 9/11, they will get burned if the worst case scenario comes to pass. However, if they over estimate risks, as some think they did with Iraq, at the worst we will eliminate a threat that was not as bad as thought, but nonetheless a threat. So when a report about all the details of 9/11 comes along then the spies and investigators ask themselves what are the risks of everyone knowing every thing that we know. In the worst case a bad guy gets spooked and runs or the Saudis are able to figure out who is the spy in the upper reaches of the royal family. Granted the bad guy may never read the report and the Saudi royals may be too dumb to figure it out, but why take the risk?

I want to know WHO blacked out the sections. Did the CIA? The FBI? The NSC? State? Or was it a White House political operative?

I am going out on a limb here, but I think it was some technician who wants to avoid risk.

What of the Saudi desire to see it released? The Saudis are honestly concerned about public image, but only when Washington cameras are focused on them. Once again I am going out on a limb here, but when all is said and done I think the Saudis want to know who in the royal family keeps telling Washington about all their dirty laundry. This is the second possible explanation for keeping the critical sections of the report blacked out.

It is clear to me that Bush irritates the Saudis. Why else would you have quotes about Bush Sr calling the Prince to tell him that Jr's heart is in the right place? Why else would the Prince storm away from a week at the ranch without holding a joint news conference? Bush Jr sees black and white, and if there is one thing I like about him it is that he is not afraid to identify it. There is no doubt in my mind that he is leaning on the Saudis and they don't like it.

So while I would love to read the report contents, I am actually satisfied that Bush is not giving the Saudis a pass on being bad, so I don't care. Now can the press and the Democrats move on to another story?

2003-07-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

Tax Cut

I just got my $800 tax rebate check! Besides now knowing I have at least two kids and the possible range of my income you can also be assured that I love tax cuts in any form.

At a theoretical level I don't really care who gets the tax cut. At the end of the day all I am interested in is the total size of the tax cut. There are two reasons for this. First of all the total size of the tax cut has a direct effect on the ability of politicians to justify the total amount of spending. Remember it is the spending that causes the deficit, not the tax cut. Secondly, the larger the total tax cut the greater the total effect on the total economy. And the real stimulation for me is that if the economy turns up companies start hiring and all kinds of nice things happen. With this type of logic it would be really no difference if we just gave Bill Gates the entire tax cut or we spread it around.

Granted at a personal level I really enjoying being a part of the tax cut. Furthermore, I feel it is my civic duty to spend a fair portion of the money thereby stimulating the economy. To that end my wife and I intend to go out for a nice sit down dinner and tip lavishly! I love getting some of it.

The reason to spread the tax cut around is to keep me voting for Bush. It is sold as fairness, but if it is the economy we are concerned about, then giving Bill Gates a check for $100,000,000 can be just as effective as giving 100,000 families a check for $1,000 not to mention much simpler to administer. This is the segway to the first Democratic lie about tax cuts. That is that tax cuts need to go to the people that need them the most. I don't dispute that poor people would really appreciate the break, while Bill Gates wouldn't miss the money if we in fact raised his taxes a little bit. The real problem is that it is hard to cut the taxes of a person who doesn't pay taxes. The Earned Income Tax Credit for example effectively removes the poorest Americans from tax liability. The last time I qualified I actually made money from the credit! Therefore if I want to cut the total tax burden in the country by $1 billion then I am going to cut taxes even for the people who don't need it. If the real objective is to make poor people better off then forget tax cuts and write them a check--oops! I forgot I just explained how we already do that.

The other lie about tax cuts is that they cause deficits. When is a Democrat going to be honest and tell us what they really mean? Sure, they wouldn't get my vote, but they aren't going to get it anyway. What they mean is that without higher tax revenues, at some point, someone will have to cut spending. Democrats don't want to cut spending on precious programs and therefore they are against any tax cut.

Heres to happy sit down dinners all over America!

2003-07-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

Senate Judiciary Committee

Last night I watched C-Span. It was the July 23rd vote on referring William Pryor to the full Senate for a vote on his nomination to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Setting aside the debate about Mr. Pryor, it was just fun to watch. Democrats and Republicans were at each other's throats. The Democrats tried to raise questions about Pryor's honesty to the committee and request more time to investigate. The Republicans countered that plenty of investigation had been done and nothing turned up. The Democrats tried to invoke Rule 4, which they felt allowed for a filibuster within the committee. Chairman Hatch declared that he had the sole authority to interpret the rule and declared that it could not be invoked in this case. The Republicans upheld his interpretation and then they voted on Pryor along party lines. Political high drama--good TV.

2003-07-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

Quick Roundup

I am on a business trip and so instead of posting this morning, I was on an airplane. Rather than provide one of my normal lengthy posts I thought I would share my thoughts about the things I read in the newpapers while flying--as well as some general in flight observations. I read both the Wall St Journal and USA Today. I know that there is a big difference in the prestige and quality of these papers, but I think that they provide some different things which I value.

Airport Screeners
But before the papers. I went through airport security in a midsize airport. The lady behind me complained about the length of the security line. I don't get it, the line only took 5 minutes. Forget all the things that can be said about airport screening good or bad and recognize that at a minimum the screeners try their best to make it a quick process. I will say that I have observed that airport design does limit the ability of screeners to affect the flow. For instance it is no surprise to me that some of the longest line times are experienced in Atlanta where ALL people go through one central security checkpoint

In Flight Movie
It was that movie with Steve Martin and Queen Latifah. That movie made use of every stereotype about racist white people and hip hop black people and still managed to be funny without making me feel uncomfortable. I think that took courage to just have fun.

USA Today Gay Poll
The biggest thing that caught my attention was the poll results about how people feel about Gay Rights. Now either the pollsters made a mistake a couple of months ago, a mistake this time, or there has been a DRASTIC change in attitudes in just two months. I am convinced that my website has single-handedly made the difference--okay, maybe not;)

Tom DeLay
Things that USA Today thinks you and I should know about Tom DeLay.

Rod Paige in the Wall St Journal
Rod Paige, President Bush's Secretary of Education, made a case (link requires registration) for the use of school vouchers in the Washington, D.C. school district. He was doing fine on the general issue. Where he lost me was his statement that he and President Bush believe that an education is a "Right". What? It might be good policy, but it is not a right! Add this the list of proofs that Bush is a politician, not a conservative.

Barry McCaffrey
Am I the only one who thinks that his editorial (link requires registration) was pointless? I would much rather have preferred a piece where he admits that he was a fool in saying that we didn't have enough troops to win the war. He said that months ago. Now he thinks we don't have enough troops to win the peace. I wonder if he thinks we have enough troops anywhere? He may be right, but his credibility is sure shot.

Pilots Have All The Fun
Sitting next to me was an off-duty pilot. On the other side of him an attractive 18 year old girl. Let's just say that the pilot and the girl talked up a storm while I wondered why I didn't choose to become a pilot.

2003-07-28T20:29:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow!

I have previously sited Veronique de Rugy as a good analyst of the out of control spending that the Bush White House is allowing to take place. Today she has a piece on National Review and I was thinking: 'I can guess what it says, I'll read it later'. And then I read it.

HOLY COW!!!!

I had to stop reading when I hit this quote: "Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than ten years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 percent and 65 percent respectively." Okay, okay, I know the education numbers are not a surprise to any conservative who was attentive when Bush and Teddy passed their version of education reform. But seriously, what does the Labor department do? Is that just because of unemployment checks? NO. I decided to check things out at the Department of Labor website. Sure the administration is planning on bringing Labor spending down for 2004, but what were they doing in 2001, 2002, and 2003? I might let them slide on 2001 since Clinton wrote that budget, but what gives?

It gets back to my point that this administration is not willing to confront anyone. If the Democrats want to investigate the President for making bad decisions they should forget about Iraq and focus on spending. The problem is that they would like to spend that much money as well. The administration does not want to defend spending cuts on the Sunday news shows. They do not want to confront the Teddy Kennedys and Robert Byrds of Congress.

Send Bush a check and he will sign it. W: it is time to get a stiff back bone on spending. Conservatives: I am afraid that the only way that W will listen is if we offer up a sacrificial lamb to challenge him in the primaries. Anyone interested?

2003-07-28T11:18:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage Debate

There are many interesting articles to sight today. First, reference my original comments to see where I stand. I have refined things a bit since the original comments, and followed up with this and this. I do intend to continue refining my views and continue making the case that gay people don't really need marriage. If expressing a commitment to love is so important there is nothing preventing them from writing a contract, creating a will, and taking out a full page ad in the local newspaper.

One of the more interesting people I have stumbled upon in my reading is Maggie Gallagher--because she generally agrees with my approach to the issue. I don't think she knows who I am, oh well the suffering of the small-time blogger. But, I am interested in getting a copy of her book and I recommend her brand new site MarriageDebate.com. I first discovered her on July 14th of this year (just so she doesn't think I am just a copy cat my original statement was made on July 1). She has just had her views included in the Weekly Standard. Good job Maggie.

What is really interesting is that National Review is now adopting the same line of reasoning. At the risk of admitting laziness I admit that it is possible that National Review has had this position for a while. What is really exciting to me is that Andrew Sullivan has finally begun to respond to the presentation of this argument. Here is his response to National Review today. While Andrew Sullivan can ignore me, as he has done since I have made every effort to let him know that I was debating his view on gay marriage, he cannot reasonably ignore National Review.

Like National Review I am hesitant to envision amendments to the constitution. As a conservative I am inherently opposed to changes for the sake of change. The problem is that without any action we are faced with a change. There is no doubt in my mind that if conservatives simply opt to keep arguing that marriage be left as is, within five years we will have gay marriage nationally. Cynically one might fairly wonder: "so what, the whole thing is going into the gutter anyway", but I am willing to fight. There is a clear cultural risk to further abandoning marriage. One need only ponder the question from the perspective of why there is little proof that gay marriage has ever been the part of any culture--Christian or not. All these years of cultural tradition cannot be all bad. And to say that because liberals have already weakened marriage over the last 40 years so gays cannot really make it worse is really just a distraction. Because B made A weak does not mean we should ignore the possibility that C will make A even weaker.

To be fair to Andrew Sullivan I am willing to accept his premise that gay people feel ostracized in society. He hopes that marriage will change that by allowing gay persons to express love in the same way that heterosexuals can. However, the love expressed in marriage is only the expression of my willingness to accept the consequences of sex with you through a commitment. I guess in a sense gay persons may mean the same thing. The difference is that gay sex will never produce unwilling third parties that also need the parties of marriage to express a commitment. Andrew Sullivan has done some research to counter the argument that marriage is only for the children. He has found some statutes in Wisconsin and Arizona that allow incestual marriage if parties are infertile or too old to bear children. I don't dispute that these may be examples of marriage for love, solely. But that doesn't mean that marriage was not originally institutionalized to protect children. It just means that some legislators felt bad for incestual couples and made an exception. Which brings me to a tangential point. Andrew Sullivan criticizes the National Review for not being truly conservative in supporting a constitutional amendment on marriage. His premise is that the true conservatives would defend the right of states to decide for themselves. Andrew, I've got news for you. You are the true charlatan. A true conservative, gay or not, would be opposed to court mandated gay marriage and instead favor allowing the voters or their elected representatives to decide the issue. The last time I checked the voters do not like gay marriage. Even Californians, in the home of the gay capital of the world clearly went on record against gay marriage.

I hope that we can return to being sensible on the issue. Let's fix marriage and make it consistent for the sake of confirming the family institution. Meanwhile let's also recognize that gay persons do not deserve to suffer. Expose the real suffering and let's eliminate it. As for the insurance that marriage provides, with few exceptions, which can be easily remedied, everything that gay persons need may be provided by a contract, a will, and a newspaper ad.

2003-07-26T15:27:00.000-05:00

Conservatism Bleg

I understand that the term for inviting blog readers to submit information is: 'bleg'. I am now blegging. Actually I am feeling pressure. You see for a while I have been alluding to a future blog to explain my own personal take on defining conservatism. I am by no means delusional to the point of thinking that conservatism has never been defined. I just want to put into words what it means to me. Along the way I have occassionally posted things that are part of that greater discussion, but I really intend to put it all together in the mother of all blogs. Of course this assumes that Blogger, my wonderful host, won't crash;)

I have been putting it off, but yesterday I got an email from a reader providing me with a link to a site that he thought might be helpful in my attempt at defining the Unified Conservative Theory. I REALLY appreciated that. It made me feel a little pressure to realize that a reader ACTUALLY is waiting to read what I have to say. Then it gave me an idea. Since there is no way for me to ever single-handedly compile every thing that has been said in defining conservatism maybe readers would be willing to help me out. I know I don't have a large readership, but the few and the proud could be helpful. So, if you do see something out there in an article or the blogosphere send me a link; if you wrote an essay in a college political science class send me a copy; and if you have a recommended reading list send it to me. I can't promise to process or include everything, but I will make sure that you get a thank you.

I can be reached as always at james at rightoneverything dot com.

Thanks!

2003-07-25T13:50:00.000-05:00

Damned if you do and damned if you don't

That is the message we are getting about using the intelligence provided by all the spooks out there.

2003-07-25T13:01:00.000-05:00

Krugman vs. Greenspan

Today Paul Krugman decided to take on Alan Greenspan. To begin with let me make a disclaimer: I have mixed feelings about Greenspan and see no reason to defend him since I think he stands on his own record well enough. But I do think this is another example of Paul Krugman waving his PhD in Economics in front of you and I while not being honest about economics.

You see the problem with Greenspan is that he is a sincere economist. Let me tell a story to make my point. I was once a teaching assistant for an Economics Professor teaching Economics 110--yes, the general introductory course. Just so people know who I am talking about the professor was Jim Kearl. He had just finished a week or two of lectures that made it very clear that government was BAD. Some student walked up to Dr. Kearl after class and said something to the effect of: 'I love you and now I have another reason to hate the government and taxes.' To which Dr. Kearl said something like: 'Not so fast, next week I will be talking about the inefficiencies of the free market and you will see that government is not always bad'. Dr Kearl did not disappoint. You see Dr. Kearl is a PhD in Economics with academic integrity.

What does that mean? The biggest problem with learning economics was that for a while I felt paralyzed by all that I now know. You see the biggest lesson in economics is summed up by the statement: 'There is no such thing as a free lunch'. The more you learn about economics the more you realize that there is nothing that happens independently. Economists analyze each thing independently in order to understand it better, but at some point it all gets put into play as one big system. So, for instance, if I cut taxes without cutting spending then I will have a larger deficit which might cause interests rates to rise, but at the same time there will be increased spending by consumers who now have more disposable income and greater savings by those same consumers and corporations selling them stuff which would bring down interest rates as a countering force to the deficit... This can keep going on endlessly since there are so many things that can be affected. At some point serious economists perform studies in order to assign actual numbers to the actual effects and it is true that some effects are greater than others. But it can get very complicated very fast. So an honest economist, like Alan Greenspan is unwilling to go on record just saying: "Tax cuts are good". Instead he qualifies and points things out. He says that tax cuts need to be accompanied by spending cuts in order to be effective.

Which brings me back to Paul Krugman. He is dishonest. He would have you believe that the tax cut is the cause of all evil in the economy. This is simply untrue as demonstrated by when the tax cuts took effect and when the downturn began. Krugman would also have you believe that tax cuts are the reason for the current deficit size. This can also be seen as untrue when one considers how much of the tax cut has actually taken effect already. But just in case you think I am being overly critical of Krugman why don't you read the entire text of Greenspans testimony to Congress and see what he really said.

2003-07-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

Bush Conservatism Questioned Long Ago

Here is a link to an opinion piece by Veronique de Rugy of Cato. Long before Andrew Sullivan claimed to have been the first to say that Bush may not be all that conservative, long before George Will questioned it, and long before I started getting that sick spot in the pit of my stomach, Veronique pointed out that Bush was no conservative.

What is W? W is a politician. A pretty damn fine one at that. On top of it he is a political strategist who studies history. I am looking for the quote, but way back during the election of 2000 there was a story that pointed out that when Bush Sr was running for office W was very involved in the day to day political campaign operations. In fact, he was the guy who would go to the bar with the press corps after a long day on the campaign trail--presumably he drank 7-up. It was obvious to the reporters that he had a great handle on what was going on. Again, what I have just said is unsubstantiated until I can find the quote--readers?

But, what I can assess is his track record. Ever since I became aware of George W Bush I contended that he was smart. My reason for believing this was his clear election strategy. W looked at each of the errors of the previous candidates for President at least as far back as Reagan/Carter and made sure his strategy would avoid previous pitfalls. To use a saying usually applied to the military: he fought all the previous elections. Every failure by the Bush strategy team has always been in areas that they could not have anticipated--brand new ground. In fact, I am convinced this is why the smart liberals are so afraid of Bush--they assume that he will not make the mistakes of the father on things like Supreme Court nominations. Back to the election.

W’s strategy for winning momentum in the primaries was clearly aimed at Steve Forbes. Forbes had really been the greatest problem for Bob Dole in the Republican primaries in 1996. It was a safe assumption he would return. Forbes was a darling to economic conservatives, but most of us realized he was a nerd that could never win. When W came along and made tax cuts his biggest campaign issue Forbes was dead. Furthermore, W made sure he had a sound campaign organization in the early states that Forbes had done well in. The next thing Bush did was most clever. After Dole had been through a bruising primary he was out of money and limited by public campaign finance spending limits that applied because he had accepted public funds. This hurt him in the months after the primaries were settled but before the Republican convention. He could not spend. Meanwhile, Clinton and the DNC coordinated a series of ads that positioned Dole at a time when Dole could not respond. George W Bush took a gamble that if he could make it to the end he needed to have the flexibility to spend money to respond if and when the DNC tried this tactic again. Back to my point, the thing that caused W the greatest challenge was that McCain came out of nowhere to be his biggest opponent. Even then, his team pulled out the old Lee Atwater playbook and went into South Carolina intent on burying McCain for once and for all. It worked. No idiot could have pulled that off.

The biggest lesson W learned from studying Reagan, his father, and all the unsuccessful Republican suitors over the last 20 years was that you needed to sound like Reagan. Once again I cannot find the quote yet, but in a Time magazine interview of Bush Sr in the mid 90s Bush Sr lamented that Reagan raised specific taxes several times and no one screamed, yet Bush Sr only did it once and all the conservatives panicked. Admittedly Bush Sr's tax cut was a lot more reported on and sweeping in scope without any offsetting tax cuts, but his complaint is fair. W learned the lesson well. So if you hear him speak he sounds like Reagan. Tax cuts at all costs, for instance. And the war on terror was ready made for a Reagan Cold War Redux.

But Bush is still a Bush. A family with individuals who I have always felt LIVED the life of a conservative even if they failed to understand the actual policy implications. Family values matter to the Bushes. Discipline matters to the Bushes. Public service, charities, the nation, and family are more important than the selfish pursuit of ME. They also believe that government should be about doing things. And this is where they stop being conservatives and reveal their Rockefeller roots. They are good people who think that we can all just iron out our differences and work for the better of our nation. The most revealing fact is Bush's unwillingness to veto. Who can forget Reagan telling Congress "over my dead body" as he threatened a Presidential veto? This is where Bush is unwilling to sound like Reagan. He is willing to sign anything that Congress has hashed out. He may try to slow it down and sway votes on the hill, but he is unwilling to force a confrontation.

That wouldn't be a problem if the only things that got to his desk were good sound policy. But there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case.

George W, it is time that us conservatives send you a message. It is time that we start complaining and it is time for a conservative challenger in the Republican primaries. I don't really care who, I just want W to have to pull his playbook out again and figure out how to make me happy again.

2003-07-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Bush's Questionable Conservatism

Andrew Sullivan thinks he discovered it first. But he is not the first. For instance, I have pointed it out here, here, and here as early as June. And others have pointed it out for example here as early as March of this year.

Without a doubt there is good evidence that Bush is not a real conservative in terms of policy. He says the right things and he lives the right way, but too often in the interest of civility and eliminating democratic election issues he is willing to negotiate away. At the end of the day the only issues he has trully been firm on are tax cuts and the way in which he has pursued the war on terror. He is unwilling to fight the battles of the culture war and he is unwilling to cut spending. He is not a true believer in supply side economics, he is unwilling to stand against affirmative action, and he seems particularly silent on the issues of abortion and gay marriage. Mr Bush what are you thinking?

2003-07-24T15:59:00.000-05:00

Rumsfeld and Bremer

Secretary Rumsfeld and Ambassador Bremer held a press conference at the Pentagon today. CNN was good enough to carry it live. I am as yet unable to find a transcript, but there should be one available here by tomorrow. I recommend that informed people read the transcript. The press is looking for details for the stories they think are hot, and so far most stories are ignoring some of the more interesting things mentioned.

For example, Paul Bremer pointed out that the last few weeks have been very successful for the people of Iraq--a new currency has been created and an independent board has been organized to manage the currency to name one item. Mr Bremer continually referred reporters to the governing council for future announcements on critical issues, stated that there are timelines and goals, and never once demonstrated an inability to work with Rumsfeld. In fact, until today I had reserved judgement about Bremer. Even I was fooled by the media filter. Not that the media has been critical of Bremer, but rather that they have not been willing to give him the correct amount of attention. Bremer is a great man, there is a plan which is on track, and he and Rumsfeld looked very comfortable with each other. But that is not the story you will hear from the press conference.

2003-07-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

Uday and Qusay

Dead. I guess it is always in bad taste to celebrate the death of a person, but I just can't seem to keep myself from smiling. These men were thugs and I am not sure that anyone sensible will mourn their death.

Generally I am critical of the press. Mostly because I think there are a lot of dumb reporters. I don't mean that they are not talented. There is a big difference. Even news people I like demonstrate on occasion that they are clearly news people because they present themselves well (TV types) or write coherently (print type), not because they are smart enough to get the bigger issues in play. What does this have to do with Uday and Qusay? For the most part I think the media has gotten this right. They have made a big deal of the story. There is little need for bloggers like me to wonder why they are downplaying the story.

Why is it such a big deal? Because so much of war is about perception--at least for Americans. The story is that we really can catch and find hidden things. These henchmen had not left the country but were sitting right there under our noses. It took time and a reward offer, but we found them. No countries were willing to take them. And the most interesting aspect? There were not very many people guarding them. It should give us hope that we will find other things that are hidden. It should make it clear that we do have good intelligence in many situations. We thought they were there and we acted on it.

Now let us hope that we can catch the other two thugs out there: Saddam and Osama.

2003-07-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

Oh No!

Berkeley researchers have figured me out! What shall I do?

2003-07-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

Updates

I know it is not used by many readers, but I do maintain an index of articles by topic. I essentially link to my larger comments and ignore all the little comments. This way I can give you a way to find everything significant I have had to say about Paul Krugman for instance. I update the index about once a month and last night was the time for that. Please find it here. I also maintain a link to it in the left margin.

By the way, I have also added a Blog Roll. I really have only one qualification for addition to my Blog Roll: I have felt like going to the website at least once and there is current content. To be fair there are some blogs that I enjoyed more than others. And there are even blogs whose content I do not always agree with. But then again that is one of the things that makes the exchange of ideas on the internet so exciting. You can find the Blog Roll in the left hand margin right after the Reading section.

2003-07-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

Krugman Truth Squad

If you are looking for my comments on Paul Krugman go here and here.

2003-07-22T10:57:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine and Joe Klein

Check this out.

Liberals just don't get George W Bush. They don't even get Clint Eastwood.

Joe Klein says that Bush should have just said: "Yep. My fault. Some hard-working guy at the National Security Council got a little overenthusiastic and stuck in that sentence. I didn't take it out. Won't do that again." Forget for now that Bush did get out in front of the issue and say this: "But when I gave the -- when they talked about the speech and when they looked at the speech, it was cleared. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it in the speech. " (here) and had his press people say this: "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." (here). Forget that Joe Klein could have done some research and represented all the facts a little more honestly (it only took me 5 minutes).

The strategy that Klein proposes is a defensive strategy that would fail. It DID fail. The press simply became more interested. Funny thing once Bush got some backbone from having Tony Blair at his side the story changed and now appears to be dieing. It has no traction. The British stand by their intelligence, the CIA just wanted to hedge since they couldn't confirm it, the vote for war came long BEFORE Bush made the State of the Union speech, and the veracity of the uranium purchase claim was debated before we ever went to war. To bring it up again is simply politics. It is meant to do one thing: call into question whether Bush has good sound judgment.

Which is really Joe Klein's point. And regardless of whether the President gave a mea culpa or a Clint Eastwood answer (which by the way was what he really did, Clint would not apologize, but simply state the bigger issue of good and bad as Bush did), Joe Klein and his friends at Time would still think he had bad judgment. The answer that Bush finally gave at the press conference with Tony Blair was the correct answer: "I take the responsibility for making the decision...to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein...” At the end of the day, Saddam was a threat. Intelligence may not have been perfect in all cases, but 20 years of history has clearly shown that Saddam was a bad guy who clearly opposed the interests of the free world, oppressed his people, and in both cases was seeking the means of WMD to pursue these purposes.

Joe give me a break!

2003-07-22T10:23:00.000-05:00

Twin Towers Update

Every so often my writing leaves something to be desired. Yesterday I had a post like that. I actually appreciate a reader who called me on this.

I hope at some point to give my general definition of conservatism. Why? Because I feel attracted to the conservative view on almost every issue. Yet I wonder if there is a simple definition that makes it possible to predict the conservative view point. I have some notes jotted down and intend to get to publishing them someday when I have ample time.

Meanwhile I see people who should be, or claim to be, conservative who really favor a libertarian viewpoint. I think it is a shame. On the one hand they are people attracted to a much more simply defined ideal (libertarianism), and on the other hand they are willing to abandon tradition (misguided conservatives).

The twin towers, or pillars, of conservatism seem to be economic freedom and defense of traditional culture. What is the relationship? Simply that economic freedom functions best when people are honest and the only way to insure that honesty is by respecting the institutions of traditional culture. On the one hand libertarians seem unable to grasp this relationship, and on the other some conservatives seem willing to capitulate and abandon culture since they don't know how to defend it.

An example of where this leads us is seen in the debate on gay marriage. And therefore my rant yesterday took the drivers seat on a post initially meant to demonstrate the error of abandoning traditional culture.

2003-07-21T15:03:00.000-05:00

Twin Towers of Conservatism

What makes a Conservative not a Libertarian? Conservatives actually think that culture can say that certain behaviors are frowned upon. If that culture says that homosexuality is not a sufficient condition for marriage, then why should there be a change to the institution? To be fair, I think there are many people attracted to libertarianism for the economic reasons, which I agree with, and then feeling a need to be simplistically consistent refuse a role for culture in the laws of the land. They hope that cultural institutions will independently encourage a good culture. What is the mistake of this? If there were only conservatives and libertarians in the world they would be safe in this assumption. However, the problem is that there are liberals.

For instance, Andrew Sullivan gleefully quotes Dick Cheney's comments from the 2000 VP debates:

"[P]eople should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into... [Marriage] is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area."

Where Sullivan is mistaken is that he forgets to tell us that Cheney has a lesbian daughter and that the question on gay marriage was meant to trap him. He evaded the question by using the Bush spin also applied to the Confederate flag in South Carolina: 'these are state questions that have no bearing on the office I seek'. The proof that Lieberman was a bad candidate was that he should have take Cheney to task for this evasive answer. Here is the problem. Do you think that Cheney meant he was in favor of gay marriage? No, he just didn't want to make that the focus of his candidacy. If he were Governor of Wyoming would he be in favor? The answer is no. He hoped that gay marriage could be contained at the state level since there was no indication that any states at the time had the political will to sanction gay marriage. He gave an evasive answer in hopes he would never have to deal with the question. But, what is the reality? If one state legalizes it then all assumptions go out the door. Not because the original premise is wrong, but because of liberals. You see I too have no real problem if New York and California want to do the trendy thing and let gays marry--as long as I don't live there. But when in California I did my part to support the ballot proposition defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Regardless of our efforts the liberals march on in the state. Is Andrew Sullivan supportive of California voters for doing this? In spite of the proposition I believed at the time that liberal Democrats would find ways to circumvent the law. At the time I left California Governor Davis was expressing a desire to avoid the spirit of the law. So, when some state finally legalizes gay marriage what will the liberal response be? Will they say: thank goodness for federalism, all our gay friends can now move to Massachusetts? I doubt it. They will then insist that gay "rights" be extended to all people in all states. Because after all, when heterosexuals travel to other states they are respected for their marriage contract from another state, why should gay people be second class citizens?

What is my point? If liberals respected federalism then Cheney is right. Libertarians are right. If liberals respected a limited role for the Federal government then libertarians are also right. But liberals, starting in the Sixties, began pushing their utopic vision on the country. The way the laws seem to work, they are allowed to foist their religion on my children using my tax dollars--they don't call it a religion, but I do. I am not a conservative that wants to force prayer in school, or other activist concepts. I am just one who thinks we need to stop trying to change everything that has existed for many years just because the trendiest group of our day doesn't like it. As I have said before, marriage was supported by the state to tax and to protect children, not to grant some "right".

Now, Andrew Sullivan makes another comment about how it is crazy to defend marriage as being for the protection of children (yet he doesn’t have the courage to recognize sources of that view with a link). His main argument? "Tell that to Pat Buchanan, who has no kids, or to the hundreds of thousands of childless couples who consider themselves rightly married." Andrew is once again ignoring the need to report all the details. Did we write the law yesterday to protect children? No. Sure, today I would guess technology is good enough that we could screen all couples and ensure that marriage was only required for, and using Andrew's logic--only available to, those who were genetically capable of procreation. But these tests were not available when marriage became an institution. Let's go a step further; marriage was really a protection for women and their parents from the weak position a woman might find herself in if she became pregnant. Parents could teach chastity in hopes of avoiding the risk of illegitimate children without a man willing to "pay the bills". Marriage is a contract that protects the weak. How is there anyone "weak" in a homosexual relationship? I don't buy it. If technology is really great, what it is then is an argument for women to check fertility first before exercising the marriage option. Not for allowing non-traditional marriage. Besides, how many people do you know who have a fertility check before marriage? Come on Andrew get serious!

2003-07-21T13:37:00.000-05:00

Kobe Bryant

I like stories like this since it allows me to make some points about views I generally have. To begin with I am a lifetime LA Lakers fan. And I am a fan of Kobe. Not because he is supposed to be a role model, but because he is a spectacular athlete. Now, having said that, just as I said with Bill Bennett and Sammy Sosa, Kobe should have known better! Is he really so dumb that he thinks that women, even consensual women, want to have sex with him in some hotel and have no intention of taking advantage of him? Even if we believe his story about it being consensual, he is wrong that his only mistake was adultery. His other mistake was STUPIDITY! Where does that come from? I am not sure. NBA stars are notorious for sex with different women in every city they travel to. Some are even infamous for the number of children they have sired. There is also no doubt where Magic Johnson picked up HIV. Usually these things are settled in civil courts or quietly as the woman seeks money. But, now a new angle is being tried--that is if you believe Kobe. I don't. Because even if consensual and she decided to play the money game it all could have stayed quiet, he didn't have to let it get out of hand. What is more likely is that he tried to end the relationship, she threatened to go public, and he got mad. In which case there are all kinds of things that could have gone bad. Big shots like Kobe need to learn that they are the least immune to bad publicity. Kobe, you better get on the phone with her and work a deal if you want to continue playing basketball. And other stars, get your act together--people are watching.

2003-07-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks!

A great big thank you to Don Luskin for linking to my blog concerning Paul Krugman. Don Luskin has done a fine job of tracking Paul Krugman's lies and I encourage him to continue the effort. At the end of the day the problem with Paul Krugman is that he is far too attracted to the bright lights of fame. He will say anything to be cool with the trendy liberals that he runs with.

2003-07-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

Another Lie Continued

Yesterday I took Paul Krugman to task for misleading readers on the comparison between Argentina and the United States. Soon after publishing I received an email from Don Luskin who provided me with an interesting link and a challenge to obtain more detail about Argentina. The link was to a piece by Paul Krugman showing that even Krugman felt that the Argentina problem was all about a bad currency arrangement. Boy is it nice when Paul Krugman proves himself wrong!

I still decided to do a little more research—something that Paul Krugman seems either unwilling to do, or unwilling to tell readers about. Be forewarned, I am about to provide a massive data dump (if you just want the conclusion scroll to the last paragraph).

The first link is from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and it makes clear one other thing. The reason that the debt in Argentina was so bad was that: “(a) the stock of government paper held by banks, part of which was "forced" on their balance sheet by the government, and (b) the significant proportion of dollar-denominated loans extended to borrowers with peso-denominated income.” Clearly these are not true in America. Read here.

Next I looked to The Economist since it is always a trustworthy source. Unfortunately people will have to register and pay to read the article I have found. This article proposes solutions, but implies the bottom-line that the currency peg to the dollar was a mistake for the reasons that the AEI sites. Here it is.

I found this essay, likely by college student, which makes the conclusion that pegging to the dollar was the real problem. While the source is dubious, the message is clearly stated and consistent with what I have found elsewhere.

I was confident at this point in the bad comparison by Paul Krugman. However, in reading I discovered that one consistent message about Argentina did show up. There WAS too much foreign debt. In fact, Argentina was in debt to foreigners to the tune of 50% of GDP. I wanted to be sure that this would not be a problem in the US. Interestingly enough, US debt held by foreigners IS on the rise. And recent numbers are not great. But here is the interesting thing—the trend started long before Bush came to office.

I found this research paper from the New York Federal Reserve Bank that shows that US foreign debt increases began under Clinton (1999 to 2001), and at least one third of the explanation is a strong dollar policy at the time—which we all know is not the case anymore. That is one third of the effect, another third of the effect is attributable to changes in current accounts—it’s the TRADE deficit stupid!

And just in case you want some data on the trade deficit. What this data says to me is that the trade deficit was going the wrong way long before Mr. Bush took office: here and here. Two more related links about the current accounts problem which clearly started under Clinton: here and here.

That all being the case, back to Argentina. In yet another NY Fed article the case is made that the financial crisis in Argentina cannot be solely explained by a deficit since Argentina still had the assets to pay off the debts. This article blames it on panic on the part of lenders.

What is the point of all this research? Can any conclusions be drawn?

The fundamental differences between Argentina and the US center on the nature of the debt in each country. The difference, to be more blunt, is between the Peso and the US Dollar. Here is an article that sets out to show what limitations there are on data about who owns American debt. In doing this, the author provides some interesting insight. The US dollar is not truly comparable to the Peso. When Argentina incurred debt it was in dollar denominated accounts. This meant that in order to repay the loans, Argentina would need to convert Pesos to Dollars while maintaining a Peso to Dollar exchange rate. When the economy began to look bad, no one wanted to buy Pesos with US Dollars at the pegged rate. This left Argentina with a tough choice: devalue or default. How is this different from the US? US debt is denominated in US Dollars. No matter the exchange rate with other currencies, the money we owe is in US Dollars. Therefore, foreigners and citizens holding US debt are in the same boat. They all need the same thing to happen. They all need the US Dollar to remain stable in order to repatriate the investment. The interesting thing is that many foreign nations use US debt as a way to manage the value of their own currency against the Dollar. Do you think anyone is using Argentina’s debt as a currency rate management tool? To put it another way, what was the big fear, that so many made a big deal about in the 1990s, of paying off all of the US debt? That the Federal Reserve would no longer have a strong way to manage the money supply. What do I mean? The US Treasury issues bonds to borrow money. The Fed manages money supply by buying or selling these securities. There are other ways to manage the supply, but this is the preferred method. Since the Fed can print money, they simply print more when they want to purchase more bonds. When they want to tighten the money supply they sell the bonds they own and burn the money. How does this apply to other central banks? They do a similar thing. When they want to strengthen their currency against the US Dollar they sell US bonds for their currency and burn the money. As I asked earlier—do you think anyone was doing that with the Argentina Peso? The answer is conclusively no. And this is the fundamental difference that Paul Krugman hopes that you will not figure out. Shame on Paul Krugman!

2003-07-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

Another Lie?

Paul Krugman accuses President Bush of telling another lie in his state of the union speech:

Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations."

The premise of the accusation is that large budget deficits ARE passing things on to future generations and burning a hole in the social security "surplus".

I will give Krugman this: spending needs to be reined in. We are out of control and it is time to stop the free spending that goes on. However I think that Krugman is playing that familiar game of "I have a PhD in Economics so just believe me."

He is wrong. Let me explain. To begin with he makes a faulty comparison between Argentina and the US. He says: "Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argentina into crisis." What really plunged Argentina into crisis? One argument is that Argentina used a faulty premise for money supply. They made the issue of money supply independent of elected officials by pegging it to the dollar. While it is a good thing to take money supply away from politicians, the peg to the US dollar may have been faulty. Argentina does NOT share a common economy with the US and consequently this was inefficient. This may not be the definitive answer, but my point is that a responsible economist should know that the issue is still open to research and debate.

But this is not the only problem with the comparison. Let's make some economic comparisons (all of my facts are from the 2002 CIA World Fact Book).

GDP:
    Argentina: $391 Billion
    US: $10 Trillion

GDP growth rate:
    Argentina: -14.7%
    US: 0.3%

GDP composition
    Argentina:
       agriculture: 5%
       industry: 28%
       services: 66%
    US:
       agriculture: 2%
       industry: 18%
       services: 80%

Population Below Poverty Line
    Argentina: 37%
    US: 13%

Unemployment
    Argentina: 25%
    US: 5%

Budget
    Argentina (2000): $48 billion with $44 billion in revenue
    US (1999): $1.7 trillion

Import/Export
    Argentina
       Imports: $20.3 billion
       Exports: $26.7 billion
    US
       Imports: $1.148 trillion
       Exports: $723 billion

What is the point of all this data? To prove that Argentina does not equal the US for more reasons than the reason that Krugman gave: "The reason we don't face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order." The reason people invest in America includes a good track record, but it also includes the robustness of the US as an investment. This is the strongest, healthiest, most dynamic economy in the world when assessing the last 50 years of economic history.

A few other faulty comparisons: When people pull their money out of Argentina, where do they park the money? The most likely target is the US. Argentina is a borrower from the IMF, the US IS the IMF. Argentina is politically unstable--when was the last time there was a coup de tat in the US, or a military junta ruling the country? The world financial centers are New York, London, and Tokyo—none are located in Argentina.

Krugman sounds like the doomsday forecasters of the 1980s. They predicted that there was no way to end deficits. Then, miraculously, in the 1990s the budget balanced. I prefer the optimistic view that the economy of the US is incredibly dynamic and we should free it to do it's thing. Sure, I do think Bush and Republicans are irresponsibly spending too much, but tax cuts are not the problem.

There are other problems with Krugman’s piece, but in general he makes the mistake of using his liberal/socialist worldview to interpret events. While it is true that debt is always paid in the future, if that debt is thanks to spending us out of a recession that if ignored could become a depression (though I doubt it), then it is not a bad thing to run debt for. Krugman just wants a new angle for criticizing tax cuts and I refuse to allow that to go unanswered.

UPDATE: I have a follow-up to this piece available above.

2003-07-18T08:46:00.000-05:00

This Guy Gets It

If you are still not sure about the entire Iraq deal then you needed to see Tony Blair's speech to Congress yesterday. In case you missed it, all I am going to say is read the speech!

2003-07-17T11:20:00.000-05:00

Drugs--The Legal Kind

Robert Novak never fails to get good reporting into his editorial pieces. It is for this reason that I make him a regular read. Today he has a piece on how the pharmaceutical industry seems unable to get the votes they need to win on current legislation in spite of large donations to Republicans.

There are two completely unrelated points to be made about this article.

First, this is the proof that money does NOT control all politics. In reality perception of voter interests is far more powerful than money. That is the real news in the story. I can remember Al Gore making a big deal during the 2000 Presidential campaign about "Big Pharma" and the control that it has on Republicans. This story is enough proof for me that John McCain and Al Gore must be high on drugs.

Second, there is an ironic twist that proves that some conservative politicians do not understand the free market. Here is the revealing quote:

Demand for re-importing American drugs, at a dramatically lower cost to consumers because of Canadian price controls, is no longer confined to Democratic politicians from northern border states. The bill pushed by Emerson is sponsored by Rep. Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican with a 95 percent lifetime American Conservative Union rating.

Now pay attention because you have to think to get this. The argument is that if the drugs are this cheap in Canada, let's force the drug companies to be more competitive with pricing here by allowing arbitrage to have an effect (arbitrage is the process whereby capitalists take advantage of gross price disparities to make a profit and thereby bring the overall market into equilibrium). Sounds good? But the reason the prices in Canada are lower is NOT because of the free market, but because of "Canadian price controls"! If you don't know what price controls are then you need to go back to watching the Jerry Springer show and stop voting! It is a liberal back door to price controls in America! Since they assume that the public would never vote for a price control out right, they instead promote a system for allowing the Canadians to set the prices. Shame on conservatives for joining in!

2003-07-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

Recession Long Gone

The National Bureau of Economic Research has determined that the recession is over. I have long being saying that the economy is fine. The problem is that the people who ARE unemployed are the educated and talented and this is disconcerting to friends and family. Furthermore it is the white collar middle class that accounted for the biggest increase in new investors in the stock market during the 1990s. Consequently it is this same group that still hasn't returned to the stock market in droves and therefore keeps the value of the market down.

2003-07-16T21:06:00.000-05:00

Republicans are Wimps

Republicans and the White House need to stop running scared on the issue of Iraq and weaknesses in the arguments for war. Instead of looking like we are afraid to answer the questions we should turn the table.

PRESS: You have not yet found conclusive WMD proof, what do you have to say?

WHITE HOUSE: Has anyone ever had any proof that there was NOT a WMD program? We believed there was, and Saddam had every chance to prove to the world that he was willing to play by the rules of the international order--he blew it and we have no regrets. Next question.

PRESS: But aren't you embarassed?

WHITE HOUSE: Aren't the Democrats embarassed that Saddam fell so fast? Aren't the French embarassed that there is evidence they were signing oil deals with Saddam? Aren't the opponents of war embarassed that they never raised doubts about the WMD intelligence but only argued that it was not our right to overthrow a dictator? Next question.

2003-07-16T21:01:00.000-05:00

Albright on Iraq

Albright said on the Newshour (I paraphrase without a transcript): 'I always understood the why for war with Iraq, I just didn't understand the why NOW...'

With all due respect Madame Secretary, did you miss 9/11?

This is my point about Iraq and the axis of evil and what it all had to do with Osama. The statement attributed to Osama is that when people are faced with a choice between a strong horse and a weak horse they will pick the strong horse. Osama believed that he would be the strong horse. I think we have mostly put that to rest.

2003-07-16T20:18:00.000-05:00

Nuke the SOTU Controversy

State of the Union speech delivered January 28, 2003.

The IAEA makes its report to the United Nations Security Council that the claims by British Intelligence about purchasing Uranium from Niger are "not authentic" on March 7, 2003.

War begins in Iraq on March 19, 2003.

Exactly how does the faulty Uranium claim become THE justification for war with Iraq?

2003-07-16T11:14:00.000-05:00

Iraq

I have just posted comments on 9/11, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. My point being to place comments on Iraq in perspective.

I agree with those who say we will be in Iraq longer than implied and that this will require more soldiers than was initially hoped for. I don't feel that this is a criticism of going to war with Iraq.

I agree that the Uranium mistake looks bad. Examples of intelligence errors can be found throughout history and consequently I am unwilling to translate the current snafu into a conspiracy. Do we really want to bring out the lists of mistakes? It appears that our intelligence people underestimated Osama bin Laden before 9/11, does anyone for a moment believe that we let that happen? Or have we forgotten the stories a while back about Bush being briefed in August of 2001 about the possibility that terrorists might try to hijack airplanes? We can take these intelligence failures back through every presidency. Mistakes of judgment? Happens all the time.

But where I differ is the implication that this somehow means that we made a mistake in going to war with Iraq.

In my opinion the war was always about one thing: the axis of evil. And for me the axis was always something different than the way it came to be spinned. Yes, I am saying that Bush got it right by accident. The real thread that binds the axis of evil is a willingness to defy US policy in a way that defies all civilized conventions while holding hostage the economic interests of the world.

To make my point lets actually discuss why others failed to make the axis list. Syria is clearly a sponsor of terrorism. They make life really hard for Israel. If Syria were gone the Israelis and Palestinians would settle out of court. Yet, Syria has been very adept at not channeling these actions towards the US. In fact, they make efforts at diplomatic overtures to the US all of the time. How about Libya? After Reagan scared the bejeezers out of Khadafi he began singing a new tune. He has handed over the accused in the Lockerbie case and offered a settlement to the families. He wants to rejoin the civilized world. How about Cuba? Without a doubt they are a thorn in our side. But beyond long speeches by Castro, they have been relatively benign since the end of the Cold War.

Members of the Axis have clearly done the equivalent of telling the US to go fly a kite. Iran is the truest sponsor of terrorists in the tradition of Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan. The mullahs have clearly rejected any attempts by moderates to try and reenter the civilized world. In essence Iran is the pattern for what Osama would like to establish in Saudi Arabia. They are openly building a nuclear power plant in spite of having free flowing natural gas; they sponsor various terror groups, and destabilize the region. North Korea adheres to a similar pattern. They defy the trend of the fall of communism. They refuse to enter the normal world. They openly build missile technology that finds it way to some of the most troublesome countries (Iran and Iraq to name a few). And on top of it all they seem determined to make the US the focus of their rhetoric. How about Iraq? You fill in the facts. But the point is that the fact that Uranium was or was not purchased was not the reason for war. The reason was to make clear that we would act against countries that were openly defiant of international norms, demonstrated a rhetorical desire to confront the US, and backed up the rhetoric with actions. In this sense Iraq's unwillingness to fully cooperate with inspectors was enough. It was not necessary that the inspectors would have discovered anything.

Why does this defiance matter? It encourages the likes of Osama bin Laden by demonstrating that US power and influence can be defied without repercussion. This emboldens Osama to defy the US in the same way.

It is also interesting to point out that there is an element of national economic interest involved that is not just a matter of safety. I don't deny that Iraq and Iran clearly have an influence on the safety of the world oil supply. And what of North Korea? Forget that they are trying to make missiles that can reach the US and realize that they already have missiles that can strike Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Why don't you explain the world economic interest involved? While this is not enough to justify action by itself it is the reality that puts the argument for action over the top.

And how about human rights? This is the icing on the cake. And just to be clear, I love icing--I am like Homer Simpson when it comes to icing. But I would be satisfied with my cake, and generally I need some cake with my icing. I will leave it at that.

The justification for war with Iraq was legitimate. Saddam posed a clear and present danger to the stability of the international order. Let's stop trying to score political points and work together to get Iraq on it's feet so we can come home.

2003-07-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

Afghanistan

Am I the only one who as noticed that the stories on Afghanistan have gone away? Is this because Iraq is more interesting? Or is this because things are really improving? Take a look at this compilation of Afghan news stories and this one. On the one hand the news is good in the sense that there really is an absence of significantly bad news. Yet, on the other hand a US soldier did die in late June and it went unnoticed. It is possible that Afghan news stories have gone away because Iraq provides much more to talk about. It is also possible that Afghanistan is improving and opponents of President Bush would prefer to ignore the story.

I believe that Afghanistan has become nothing more than a policing operation. There is still room for things to fall apart, but it has been a success. We have denied terrorists the comfort of free movement. We have removed a destabilizing presence. And we have made it clear that we will act to protect our interests.

2003-07-16T10:06:00.000-05:00

Vietnam

It is time to put the ghosts of Vietnam to rest. Why did we lose the war? We failed to take the war to the enemy.

I propose as reading (the movie was terrible) the book We Were Soldiers Once...And Young. Even in this story, at the very beginning of the war it was obvious that we failed to do this. Unfortunately you sort of need to read the entire book until the end to get the import of this claim.

We never invaded North Vietnam. Why? We were afraid that China or Russia would become involved. That is the real history lesson. Why did Russia fail in Afghanistan? They were unwilling to invade Pakistan for fear that we would become involved. In this sense each was really a battle in a greater Cold War.

If you are unwilling to eliminate the power broker it is unlikely that you can break the will of the soldier. Because new soldiers will be found. Money is available for arms and advisors are available to train. The book implies that there is often ignored evidence that the Chinese actually had soldiers operating along side the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Even this was ignored so as to avoid official direct confrontation.

I don't dispute that the lack of public support back home was significant, or that the press made it sound much worse than it was. But, I think we do ourselves a history lesson disservice by not recognizing the role of the defend only strategy. We extrapolate the wrong lesson and wring our hands over the wrong issues in the case of the war on terror.

2003-07-16T09:53:00.000-05:00

September 11th

I am going out on a limb here, but the underreported story is that there has not been another terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. Why is it underreported? Because you have to go out on a limb to report it. If there is an attack tomorrow then I look like a fool. But even if there was an attack tomorrow, I still feel that we are getting to the point that we can safely say this: something is working. Osama, if alive, is on the run. The best he could do is bomb a target in Saudi Arabia using the old method of driving up in a truck. What does this mean? I think it means that the Bush strategy on terrorism is working. What is the strategy? 1)Make things at home more secure, 2)Take the war to the enemy.

No matter the conflict in history there are nations involved. Ultimately these nations need to be held responsible.

2003-07-11T18:15:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage

Can I just ask one question? If legalizing Gay Marriage doesn't serve to make people any less disgusted with Homosexuality, what will the Gay and Lesbian movement do next? If most Americans still look down on the behavior, what will be the next government policy to remedy this problem?

The gay movement assumes that marriage is some magic elixir that will end prejudice. In fact it will not. It may enable entitlement to social programs that should never have been there in the first place, but it will not end prejudice.

Recently there has been a proposal by Michael Kinsley that we get the government out of the business of sponsoring marriage. A follow-up by John O'Sullivan proposed a modified alternative of Kinsley's proposal.

Now back to my question: will this solve anything? No. The real problem, as I have stated before, is that homosexuals are upset with prejudice. The rest of the rhetoric doesn’t make sense. Sometimes the argument is that the benefits of marriage are a right, but that doesn’t hold water either. What right?

Kinsley actually gives the most honest assessment and proposal I have seen in a while. He clearly identifies why government is involved. There are certain points of the marriage contract that allow the greater society to benefit from the marriage contract being legally enforced by a third party. If there were an independent entity that could have that legal weight (namely churches, which would present a particular constitutional problem) I would not object to the privatization of marriage. Kinsley is correct that each of these things could be separately contracted and legalized. For instance we could begin to involve the government in the protection of children regardless of marriage. In fact, this is already happening because of people living together. Similar discussions could be had on each of the other points.

O’Sullivan follows up with a version that places church marriages in competition with civil marriages and partnerships to determine a winner. Churches would be free to define marriage however they wanted to. Besides raising the constitutional question of who defines a legal “church”, there is actually Supreme Court precedent that currently limits the rights of churches to marry whomever they please. This gets messy really fast. Does this precedent go away? Even if the government is out of the marriage business, do they still declare who churches can and can not marry?

The problem is not that this is necessarily a bad idea, but that it doesn’t solve the real problem. Let’s just assume for a second that we ‘privatize’ marriage as proposed under either proposal. And for the sake of argument let’s just say that we can all agree that polygamy, polyandry, incest, and weird stuff done with animals would still be banned. What will the gay movement do when they realize that people still look at a gay man with that odd look that denotes prejudice? What will they do when some teenagers in Wyoming kill a homosexual teenager in a cruel and horrible way? What will they do when prejudice doesn’t go away? Will they force churches to recognize gay marriages? What will be next?

I wish individuals like Andrew Sullivan would address this question.

There is a lot of tense debate about what is marriage and whether marriage would destroy the basis of society. But I think the real question is to ask how marriage will really achieve the goal that the gay movement has.

The gay movement advocates that marriage is a right. Okay, which of the Declaration of Independence rights does this “marriage right” fit under? Life? No, I think gay men are free to be alive. Liberty? There is no reason to believe that the founding fathers were talking about gay marriage, or any marriage for that matter. The same man who gets all the credit for the Declaration of Independence also gets much credit for the Bill of Rights—anything in there about marriage? Nope. Freedom of speech, religion, the press, bearing arms, from unreasonable criminal procedures maybe, but nothing about marriage—gay or straight. Pursuit of Happiness? This must be the one. Since marriage will make me happy I must have a right to it. Okay, jokes about married men not really being as happy as they thought they would be aside, we need to address this. Jefferson was modifying what John Locke really said. Pursuit of Happiness was originally Property. I for one think he did a great disservice by changing the words. I also think this was a subtle recognition, on his part, that slavery would be inconsistent since slaves were denied this basic right. Of course there are those who simply think that he was trying to spin the words and meant the same thing—pursuit of happiness only being possible by means of possession of property. On the issue of property I think gay couples have the best argument. After all many of the contractual advantages of marriage that government can grant are related to property and economics. Tax filing status and inheritance laws are two simple examples. But domestic partnership legislation in many states already attempts to address these inequities. If this is the only reason to pursue equal protection through marriage then maybe we should simply remove the government from this particular aspect of marriage or grant the same economic benefits to anyone who wants to contractually share financial liabilities. Even with all of that said, as a married person I am not sure that there are all that many property rights to get all that excited about. Tax filing status? It can be argued that in some cases I might be better off if I didn’t share the liability of my spouse. Inheritance? How about the flip side, inherited liability? I am convinced it is a wash. Not to mention that a simple will can achieve the same inheritance protection—therefore nothing is denied.

The real “right” is some nebulous right to share and express love or to be “normal”. As so many heterosexual couples who live together like to argue a certificate is not necessary to express love. Since I actually disagree with these couples, I admit that it does conjure up a level of commitment that is non-existent without the social pressure of marriage. But, where is the social pressure coming from?

The social pressure comes from established cultural tradition that says that marriage means some life long contract that is hard to break. Where did that tradition come from? The same religion and culture that says that homosexuals have no part in marriage! How can the homosexual movement advocate for access to a cultural norm that is so tightly bonded with a belief that homosexuality is a sin? Am I the only one who sees that there is something very illogical about all of this?

Which brings me back to the original question: what is next? Gay marriage will not cause people like myself to stop seeing homosexuality as a sin. While I agree that I cannot legislate MY morality, what will happen when my morality doesn’t change just because the government allows gays to marry? Will gays be satisfied? I personally doubt it. Some honest individuals may very well close up shop, but the movement leaders will never be satisfied. Name one civil rights movement that has declared victory and closed up shop. While individual gays may be satisfied, the gay movement will not.

2003-07-11T10:44:00.000-05:00

Mr. Optimism

Every time I begin to fret about the economy I just go and read some commentary by Larry Kudlow or watch his show Kudlow and Cramer. His website links to his commentary, but I generally read him here or here.

2003-07-10T11:41:00.000-05:00

Write the Check and Bush will Sign!

I like this piece comparing Bush to Reagan on the issue of spending. The comparison reveals the truth about Bush being a big spender on anything Congress wants to spend on. I have made this point before right here. In fact, he is so bad I am beginning to disbelieve the argument that he does not want to embarass fellow Republicans.

2003-07-10T10:54:00.000-05:00

Should Conservatives Leave the GOP?

National Review has raised the question of whether conservatives should leave the GOP. They raise some very good concerns. Regular readers will recognize that I am similarly concerned. The Republican Party is as close as we get to a Conservative party in American politics, but it fails to be Conservative when it counts. I have always believed that the key to the American political system is that the major parties attempt to build coalition parties by appealing to as many disparate interests as consistently possible. When I was in school my professors of political science liked to make comparisons between the proportional parliamentary systems of Europe and the American system. Often I found this comparison seemed to reveal a preference for the European system since it tends to include lesser parties. However, I found this somewhat ignorant of reality. In the end the European result is no different than in the US. The view of the lesser party is still negotiated away in a governing coalition. So if the compromise is before the election or after the election is there really a difference? I don't think so. The American system is admittedly a little more gradual, but the effect is the same. So when a Ross Perot comes on the political scene what was the response? Both major parties moved to seize the Perot issues that they felt were most naturally their issues—this resulted in a move to the middle of American politics. Is it any wonder then that in 2000 the significant third parties were on the fringes? Perot's party became a party for an extreme version of Conservatism with the nomination of Pat Buchanan, the Greens produced an extreme brand of liberalism, and the Libertarians arguably mixed the individual liberty extremes conservative and liberal ideals. Where will the next move be? If the parties are smart they will try to compromise to bring in those extremes. There is evidence that the Democrats are doing just that. Green activists frustrated by electoral failure are returning to the campaign of the most liberal Democratic candidate—Howard Dean. I admit I am over-generalizing, but the trend is in this direction. Republicans on the other hand are still fighting the Ross Perot threat. Bush is moving to the middle in a way that carries a very high risk that conservatives will break away if he is not more careful. He hopes to keep them in place by cutting taxes, spending on national defense, and making statements against abortion. For me the chink in the armor is the spending. But there is the potential for more problems as the National Review points out.

Is there a solution? One of the problems that conservatives have is that if we left the GOP we would have a hard time organizing. Greens have a clear vision, as do Libertarians. How do you start a party around the ideology of: 'keep it old'? There are parties out there that have tried by focusing on one issue or another (peruse this list to find many of the parties). The interesting thing is that National Review founder Bill Buckley has established a pattern. As I understand the history, he was key to organizing the Conservative Party of New York State. Election laws in New York allow the Conservative Party to be on the ballot for every election for every office. Many times they simply nominate the Republican candidate to be their candidate and the votes for the candidate are summed across various party nominations in order to determine the vote. This has the effect of allowing the party influence to be known while still allowing the election to gain a consensus. It also has allowed the Conservative party to threaten to nominate another candidate if the Republican candidate ignores all conservative issues. Of course it still means that you end up with moderate Republicans but at least it is understood what the stakes are. Unfortunately, not all states have written their election rules in such a way as to make the New York model work everywhere. If conservatives are frustrated with Republicans, then we should make it our cause to replicate nationally what has been done in New York. Along the way we need to define Conservatism and find a way to include existing fringe Conservative parties if possible. And like the Conservative Party of New York we should recognize that the party we will most often negotiate with would continue to be the Republican Party. I challenge National Review to put their heart where their words are and start the effort—take the Conservative Party national.

2003-07-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

Buzz Charts

I like this chart about the lack of inflation coming after cuts in income taxes (I also think it is worth taking a look at the website of the chart creator). Let me give my take on the real problem with the economy right now. Take a look at this article first. The problem is that the people who have lost jobs are disproportionately high-income college graduates. This has a numbing effect on the rest of the country. To begin with these people are disproportionately stock market investors who belong to the classification called 'upper middle class'--their stock market investments are largely retirement accounts. They have college degrees. They mostly jumped into computers in some way or another and their family members consider them the 'smart ones'. They earned high incomes and now that they are out of work they are willing to eat up savings, or run up debt, in order to wait for the right job rather than work at Wal-Mart. What impression does this behavior give family members? If my most successful sibling can't find a job, what should I conclude? How about the friend from high school who was doing well and now is unemployed? Is it any wonder that the stock market was hit so badly? The scary thing about this is that the fate of the economy can swing based on what economists call expectations. Simply put, if we all 'think' there is a recession our fears will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And on the political front? Because the actual unemployed people are already mostly Republican they are being patient with Bush. But if a Ross Perot appeared on the stage you can be sure that Bush would lose a lot of votes thus ensuring another Democratic minority mandate.

2003-07-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

Term Limits

About a month ago I read a piece by David Frum where he mentioned how he had come to be in favor of Congressional term limits. He credited a policy paper from the Cato Institution for his conversion. I took the invitation and read the paper--a very LONG paper. I agree that the paper is enlightening, but not to the same conclusion that it lead David Frum. The paper argues FOR term limits in order to increase Democracy, however I think the arguments used are weak.

A little background. Term limits, put simply, limit the number of terms an elected official can serve in the same office. My own journey on the issue of term limits really began when I realized that Ronald Reagan was term limited and Republicans would have to choose from a less than stellar field of candidates for replacement. It seemed the bitter fruits of a constitutional amendment after FDR's four terms. Politicians had reacted to FDR's virtual control on all power with a new rule to make it never happen again. While I am not sure of the historical arguments made at the time it would have been helpful for the policy paper to go back and contrast the history of that movement.

Admittedly, the policy paper only focuses on legislators by making the simple point that there is something inherently different about the executive and the legislature. I first started thinking specifically about Congressional term limits when Newt Gingrich included it in the Contract With America. As a Conservative Republican I was all for it. In my opinion it was a subtle rhetorical tool within the Contract. The message implied: 'throw the bums out!' And as a bonus, if we lost the 1994 Congressional Elections the message would be clear that had the rules of term limits been in place we would have won. This would further embolden party activists to stay involved. I was for it. I was tired of Democratic control of Congress. There seemed no way to defeat them in an election so I wanted a way to force the power brokers from power. But then we won the election.

In the years since many Congressional Republicans have retired because of a campaign promise they made to term limit themselves regardless. The irony to me has been that these have been the best, brightest, and most conservative members. Conservative in the sense that they understood that the power of the Federal Government and it's officials needed to be controlled. They understood that their word meant something. Yet, it was like unilateral disarmament. No career politicians retired out of shame to match the standard. And these great leaders have mostly disappeared into think tanks or Corporate America. Enforced term limits would have, of course, leveled the playing field and removed the career politicians but I stand by this: do we want to discard the good ones in order to rid ourselves of the bad ones? I for one do not.

The problem is clearly identified in the paper: entrenched legislators appear to wield a disproportionate influence on the outcome of legislative action. But, after reading the paper I am no longer convinced that term limits are the solution.

You see there is the possibility that the facts as presented are misleading. Sure there is no problem with the emotion that we should 'throw the bums out', but I am not convinced that the empirical data as presented proved any adverse effect to the voter electing the legislator.

The main data could be summarized as follows. Legislators seem to get more money appropriated as their length of service in legislative bodies increases. Further this increase is not just straight line—it appears to be exponential. On top of this there is evidence that long serving legislators fail to have strong opponents at election time in spite of not necessarily representing the true political position of the majority of voters they serve. Today we can see anecdotal evidence of both findings. Robert Byrd gets way more spending directed at West Virginia than is to be proportionately expected. Senators Kennedy, Helms, Thurmond, and Hollings might be examples of long serving legislators at political extremes relative to voters. And while the study did not take it this direction, one might sight choices like the choice voters made in South Dakota in 2002 in order to hopefully keep Senator Daschle in power in spite of being a Republican state.

The problems I see in the paper are as follows. It ignores the political reality of voter turnout. It does not address the question of whether or not term-limited legislatures have actually produced a result of less spending. It ignores the effect of one party states. And the argument is that the primary goal is to produce electoral egalitarianism, yet I wonder if this is really as democratic as argued.

The reality is that the electorate does not necessarily reflect the results of polls. If I ask all people if they favor X without asking the same people if they are voters I might distort the outcome. Furthermore, if I ask only the registered voters the same question without qualifying the likelihood that they actually WILL vote I once again can be in error. But, even if we assume that good methodologies were used in this respect, is it really inconsistent of a voter to want to get rid of the bums yet vote for their own legislator? This behavior can actually be consistent with the concept of acting in my own self-interest. Removing my ability to act in this way limits my freedom. Even ignoring this the political reality is that many voters are not aware of the positions of a politician. In fact, they vote based on the encouragement of political organizations that they trust. The ability of a politician to manipulate these organizations is most significant in legislative races where the district is not covered by natural media markets.

If term limits will produce less pork barrel spending then why not show actual evidence of this? In 1998 there may not have been enough data. But, today there should be evidence. I suspect that the data would not prove the hypothesis presented in the paper. Why? I think two seemingly unrelated points in the paper give us the answer. In one place the author argues that term limits will bring fresh faces into politics because more seats will be openly contested. This seems like a populist idea that I can favor. Yet, in another place in the paper the author responds to the complaint about losing experienced politicians to term limits by pointing out that experienced politicians simply exchange seats in different bodies when term limits take effect. Is there a contradiction here? Yes. Each body has fresh faces, but in terms of the overall political map the faces are all the same, only the offices have changed. This implies to me that there would be no difference in the pork barrel effect since party power and lobbyist power is a continuing effect regardless of particular office. It may be a little more complicated but I still can influence spending by calling in favors that extend over multiple offices served, thereby capitalizing on my experience. In effect the career politician is still a career politician. If this were not true there would be a strong disincentive for politicians to make office switches in spite of no term limits.

What about one party states or districts? This distorts the analysis in a way that the author failed to address. Something like 20-30% of politicians on either side of the aisle may be a believer in ideological principles. The other 40-60% of politicians are in politics because they love the stuff (my numbers are not empirical, but there is likely some true proportion like this). No matter what the 40-60% of politicians that are true believers will join the party most likely to reflect their views and will only be elected if they are either really charismatic or happen to live in a district that disproportionately has the same political views. The other politicians make a choice at some point in life. They choose a party based on the likelihood of election. In a two party state this means that they come down about half and half and you get interesting politicians who sometimes have a mixed bag of political views. These are prime targets for party jumping. In a one party state these politicians join the party in power in mass. This causes political distortions. The biggest distortion is that the party in power has greater influence on controlling the competitiveness of elections. The party can keep back strong primary challengers by awarding alternative positions of power from which to gain name recognition for future challenges. Meanwhile there is no hope for the opponent from the opposition party since there is little organization and voter registration follows the same pattern as the registration of politicians. Much analysis of Congressional elections shows that the reason incumbents do so well in reelection is because the party disproportionately controls that district and is able to control the internal competition. Very few districts have equal party registration and therefore are unlikely to offer a high level of competition. Because of this long serving incumbents are more than likely from a district that is non-competitive. The paper avoided looking for data on this. Short serving incumbents, the ones with the competitive elections, are more than likely from districts that are drawn to be competitive. The point being that a 98% reelection rate for House members is somewhat misleading. If anything it is not a case for term limits, since the party distribution would be the same and therefore ensure the same favors taking place, but a case for changing the way that we draw Congressional districts (I offer the contrast of Senate party control with that of House party control as evidence).

Which brings me to what is the real purpose of term limits. I will be honest. I was in favor in 1994 for one reason: I wanted to get rid of Democratic control of Congress by any means available. And more recently, until I read this paper, I was opposed since I like having Republicans in control (at least more than Democrats). No other reason. Nothing idealistic about that. But now I have a reason. The case in the paper is that it is needed to level the playing field for the voter. If we all have term-limited legislators then we will all have the same access to things like pork barrel and influence since there will not be experience disparities. But if that is the case why not adopt the model of one term only? Why not one political office during any citizen’s lifetime? Why is three terms in the House appropriate? The real argument is egalitarian in nature. I reject the notion that I can’t choose to accept a legislator that is not in 100% agreement with me and not be making a good decision. At the end of the day even blacks voted for Strom Thurmond. Why? Because they concluded that the issue of race was a big enough issue that Strom would never have enough power to independently influence, but he could have enough power to bring back the pork to South Carolina. Voters do this all the time. Why take away the freedom to make this choice? Why take away the advantage that this can offer to my district? When the paper was written in 1998 California had yet to complete the transition to term limits. Does anyone want to use their fiscal crisis today as an argument that term limits worked in either the legislature or the governorship? I personally think that term limits were irrelevant in this crisis, but what is relevant is that spending patterns did not trend downward with term limits, and I would guess pork barrel spending was no lower than without term limits. Furthermore, I would guess that there are still disparities, but that the disparities are more consistent with party distribution than with individual districts.

The case for term limits is a good one when you are left out of power. In power it is harder to buy. Is this hypocritical? Yes. I admit it. But, on principle a true conservative or libertarian should ask the question of why the founders left out a term limiting provision. They surely could see that long serving Members of Parliament and Prime Ministers in England had as bad an effect as the King. Surely the problem we see today is not a new problem for a Republic. I think that they believed that the separation of powers would solve this problem well enough. Or maybe they felt it was a necessary evil. Whatever the case may be the arguments in this paper are not compelling enough of a reason to undo what the founders put in place.

2003-07-08T10:58:00.000-05:00

Democracy

There is often a quip made about how democracy is like sausage -- if you saw how it was made you wouldn't eat it. I think this gets thrown around far too often without anyone really pondering the metaphor. Would I really not eat sausage? Okay, they grind up meat, fat, ligaments, cartilage, and just about anything that is left over after they make all the expensive cuts of beef, pork, turkey, etc. They then take that meat and stuff it in a cleaned out intestine after adding whatever seasoning and coloring is necessary to make it have it's final appearance and taste. Now it is demystified, do you really not want to eat it? I still eat it. The point is that I don't mind looking under the hood (oops, I'm mixing metaphors). I realize that there is a process of give and take that produces final results. In fact, understanding the messy process that politics is, makes me more patient with some of the dumb compromises that are produced. Sure, like some kinds of sausage, I do not like some of the outcomes, but that doesn't make me sick about the process.

Let's take for example the current legislation on Medicare reform and a prescription drug benefit. At the end of the day this can only pass if there is a compromise with some Democrats. The thing is a mess. I don't like it. But, I don't like it because I long ago decided that it didn't matter what the flavor of the sausage was, I would not like Medicare reform. Too many Conservatives are bemoaning the process when in reality it is the flavor of sausage that is bad.

Why? Because it is a mistake.

The government should never have been in the business of ensuring medical coverage to anyone. Sure, we don't want old SICK people wandering the streets. But, medical coverage was once a pay as you get sick proposition, then someone came up with the idea of insurance against the bad things, and somewhere along the way it was discovered that it was not a good financial proposition for businesses to sell insurance to old people. After all, they tend to get sick and suffer from bad things like cancer and heart problems at relatively high rates. People felt bad for the old folks and decided that we should care for them. While not a bad motive, it was a bad idea. A young person like myself wonders: 'how did all the old people get along before Medicare?' It appears that they simply passed away, skipping the expensive procedures, or relied on family members to care for them.

Does the government have to solve everything? That is the real problem. At least Liberals are honest--they want the government to solve everything and they campaign on this. Granted many of them lose the vision and try to act like they care about deficits or personal liberties or something else. But at the end of the day they want to solve problems with government solutions. They are convinced that they can fix anything with a law and some money.

I attended a high school that was famous for having some really rough and tough students. Our football team would literally kick ass every year, as did our wrestling team. Sports that did not depend on brute force, like baseball and men's volleyball, were somewhat less successful. Granted we were also famous for our high school marching band, but we had to do something with all the nerds. Anyway, after one particular football game, where we beat the snot out of the opponent, some dumb students decided to stone the opposing teams bus. They also stoned the other teams band bus. Some kids got hurt. Existing rules were put into place to punish our school. Most notably, we were banned from playing night games. It all seemed appropriate and the principle suspended the offenders (who by the way were mad because they had been kicked out of the game by school officials for drunkenness, etc.). The State Representative from the district where the stoned high school was from proposed legislation to require that the state guarantee the safety of all students. Students from the victimized high school appeared to testify for the bill. I was a legislative intern and organized some of our own students to testify against this measure (yes, all the band nerds). I give the entire back-story to make two points. The State Representative was desperate to look like she was doing "something" to protect the people of her district. There was a problem, and she was going to solve it. But the problem was already dealt with. There was no need to do anything. Fortunately, the legislation died.

Like Bob the Builder, if there is a problem Liberals can fix it. This was the crux of the liberal democratic coalition that FDR used to build his tent. LBJ successfully added new groups under the tent with the only requirement for entry being suffering at the hands of tradition. Medicare is the offspring of the orgy in that tent. I may be mixing all kinds of metaphors again, but the point is simply that Medicare was meant to fix things.

Politicians like to show voters that they are doing something. This is why Liberals and being lifelong politicians are such a natural match. The problem is for Republicans. Conservatives don't think that government should try to fix every problem. We realize that there will be some suffering along the way, but we hesitant to disrupt existing systems. We elect Republicans, but we are not enough in numbers that the Republican politician can simply sit in Congress and vote no on every measure and hope to be reelected. The swing moderate voters out there would interpret that as Republicans doing nothing.

This was the electoral secret to Newt Gingrinch's Contract with America. It was a plan for doing SOMETHING. For 30 years voters went to the polls and were faced with a choice. Liberal Tom says he will do something, Conservative Bob says there is nothing to do. But I would like to see the freeway expanded and that takes money... hmmmmm... I guess I will vote for the Liberal and hope that he doesn't get out of control. It goes a lot deeper than this, but let's go on. Newt came along and proposed an agenda for doing SOMETHING. Voters now had a reason to vote for Republicans and the landscape changed.

Let's look at another example. Why are Republicans so sure that Ross Perot voters would have mostly voted Republican? Because Ross Perot was not pushing a Liberal agenda, but an agenda period. He wanted to do something, but he seemed grounded in much of the same vision that the Contract with America espoused.

Consequently, the smart Republicans find a way to appear active in doing SOMETHING. Today Bush is ready to sign anything on Medicare so that come election time he can prove that he has done SOMETHING. Tax cuts are something as well. His tax cuts have never been about sound theory, just about doing something. Organizing the Department of Homeland Security? Doing something.

The problem is that there are consequences to doing something. There are costs. Which brings me back to the real point. Medicare was a bad idea to begin with. To make changes to the system here or there is just like debating whether to build a skyscraper with 50 stories or 60 stories. If the skyscraper is a bad idea it doesn't matter how many stories it has.

Medicare is bad idea because it distorts the economy. It distorts the investment in medical research. A simple example of this distortion. There would be little discussion about Do Not Resuscitate orders and assisted suicide if there was no Medicare. Simply put, many elderly people would conclude that their time has come and they would simply not go to the hospital. Is this harsh? Absolutely. But by making the point to spend as much as possible to save the oldest people we then created a new moral dilemma about when to stop. Why not remove the distortion and allow the individual to conclude that it is not worth the financial burden to family? As it is there is no reason for an elderly person to worry about a burden on people they love since the costs are diffused to the point that the family considers the Medicare a right.

And what does this have to do with the sausage? I can't expect President Bush to resist the temptation to improve the sausage. But at the end of the day I don't like the sausage--no matter the flavor enhancement.

2003-07-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

Independence Day

I love this country.

Two days ago I met a co-worker who left the Former Soviet Union 12 years ago and came to America. She misses home and made the comment that somehow her mind likes to only remember the good things about Ukraine. But, is she happy here? An emphatic yes.

My wife is an immigrant. A few years ago we attended her swearing in ceremony. The hall was filled to capacity with new Americans with their family and friends in attendance. When the National Anthem was sung my wife noticed a new citizen near her crying--he was not the only one.

A few years ago I was putting my garbage and recycling out. A Vietnamese man came along on a bike and asked if he could rummage through my recycling. I said sure. We talked and he introduced himself as a former officer in the South Vietnamese Army. What did he think of America? He loved it.

I was in a taxi once with a taxi driver from the Sudan. In his motherland he was the CFO of a company. In America he is a taxi driver--he loves America.

Each of these stories are about people who have voted with their actions to declare that America is a great place. I know from witnessing my wife's experience that it is not easy to leave familiar surroundings and come to a new country. But, I also know that there is a lot about this country to like.

When I think of what America is, I see a country where ideals and dreams are able to become reality. We are wealthy and we are free. I am grateful to be here and I hope that I can do my part to share the blessings of this country with the rest of the world. Pursue your dream and you too will improve this country and improve the world.

Happy Birthday America!

2003-07-03T09:46:00.000-05:00

Republican Party Coalition in Trouble?

That is the opinion of Todd Lindberg. This caused a small spattering of comments on National Review's The Corner last night.

Ignore for now his mistaken grouping of Affirmative Action with abortion as being important to the same group. At a general level Lindberg is wrong and right.

He is wrong that serious Republican candidates will no longer fight on the issues of Affirmative Action, abortion, or Gay marriage. These so called social issues carry important significance to quite a few significant Republican leaders.

Where he is right is that Social Conservatives, a significant force in the Republican party, may have reason to feel frustrated. Afterall, seven of nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans Presidents, yet Conservatives can only reliably depend on three Conservative votes. Of the remaining four Republicans only two are sometime swing votes in favor of Republican issues. This is frustrating. There appears little chance of changing the status quo.

What Social Conservatives, and really any activist on any issue, need to come to grips with is that Republican, and Democrat, politicians are politicians first, Republicans second (if that even means anything), and Conservative third. What many people easily forget is that a politician generally has one motivation: winning elections. They may generally have some ambition about making the world a better place and thereby securing a prominent place in history for themselves, but at the end of the day this all equates to a desire to be electable. It can get confusing since electable leads to history book placement which feeds back to electable. However, it still is based on the conept of being electable in one way or another. Let's talk through some interesting examples.

Zell Miller. He has no intention of running for reelection so his party doesn't matter--he is not as concerned about electability since he is done. Of course there is the factor of historical ambition. The voters in his state like Republican policies. They have voted for Republican Presidential candidates. He must assume that bucking the Liberal Democrats will ensure him a place in the hearts of Georgians who will remember him for years to come.

Jim Jeffords. He goes down in history for swinging the Republican's out of control of the Senate. The press made a big deal about his independence. My big issues at the time were: 1)He always voted with Democrats anyway so why was this so special? 2)If he was so committed to ideal he should have made this change before he was a big powerful committee chair and only one vote divided the Senate. Bottom-line? He did it for electability reasons. His state is trending liberal and there was no way to be sure that Howard Dean wouldn't run for the US Senate. He chose an opportune time when he could exact political promises from the Democratic party. In reality his personal power in the Senate realized no real improvement, but his electability did.

The politician needs the party to help his election. In some cases the party is not helpful so the politician bucks the trend. The party has only one purpose--control of power. If there is no power then the party has no favors to reward with. Power allows the party to hand out jobs in government and deliver blocks of votes. This in turn makes the party able to extract donations and organize campaign volunteers. These two things snowball and reenforce each other. New politicians have a choice and must decide where to align themselves. If they are serious about being elected they will find some way to rationalize a position in the most powerful party in their local area or region.

So, why should Republicans be Conservative? The Republican party only needs to be Conservative enough to keep Conservatives from forming a third party. The Social Conservatives, in this case, would never win election on their own and thereby lose the power that can be derived from what is essentially a coalition within the Republican Party. The exchange is a trade of power for support. Republican party needs people to walk the streets and pass out fliers, they call the right to life people. The right to life people need conservative judges they ask the Republicans. This same type of compromising goes on in the Democratic party.

This means that the extreme views on issues can rarely attain complete success. If Republicans on the one hand need Conservatives, but on the other end of the voter spectrum they need women voters then a compromise on abortion arises. The same thing with Affirmative Action and minorities. And what of Gay marriage? If enough of the Ross Perot type of voter thinks that Gay marriage is okay you can bet the Republicans will find a way to compromise on this issue as well.

What Todd Lindberg fails to see is that this is the natural order of American politics. President Bush is a politician. Bush wants to be an electable and effective President first, Republican leader second, and Conservative ideologist third. He has concluded that being contentious on too many issues is not wise. So, he secures the issue of taxes and conducts a strong foriegn policy. On most everything else he finds a way to cut the difference and put the issue to rest. That is why he had nothing too negative or too loud to say about any of the court decisions that didn't go his way last week. Instead it is easier to move on.

The Republican Party will survive and it will continue to be the best home for Social Conservatives. But Social Conservatives must assess the landscape and determine a strategy for the next round of fights. We need to redefine the issues and do a better job of broadcasting our message so that pure politicians will have more reason to allign more closely with our views.

2003-07-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

Unemployment - What It Means and Does NOT Mean

Today it is being reported that unemployment is up to 6.4%, the highest in 9 years. But maybe we should put on our thinking caps and evaluate this.

9 years ago places us at 1994--not a recession, in fact those were economic good times if you ask Democrats and Bill Clinton. It is instructive to compare this with historical numbers. The numbers show interesting things. From 1981 to 1986 when the Reagan economy was doing well the lowest rate was 7.0% in 1986. It was not until 1987 that the rate finally beat current rates.

Next, honest economists will admit that 0% unemployment is not attainable or even desirable. In fact, a healthy rate of unemployment is at something like 5-6%. Granted 6.4% is above that. But you need to realize that unemployment rates tend to lag behind economic growth. How come?

Easy. Unemployment rates are a measure of how many people are actively searching for a job. If I am unemployed, but not looking for a job I do not count. So, when the economy begins to improve invariably unemployment should have a momentary jump as people respond to positive reports by looking for jobs again.

The next thing, these are monthly numbers that will have to be averaged against the other months in the year to produce the actual annual rate at the end of the year. Sure, the trend is scary, but it should only concern us if it continues for more than a few months.

Finally, I think the New York Times and the AP are due for criticism. The following paragraph from the AP story ran in the New York Times is misleading:

While recent economic indicators point to an economy struggling toward recovery, the latest report demonstrated that America's job market was still very much in a state of recession last month.

Using the word recession implies to the reader that the economy is in recession. By economic definition a recession only applies to GDP growth that is negative for more than 2 quarters. Applying the term recession to unemployment figures creates a false impression that we are in a state of recession when in fact we are not. It would be more appropriate to say that the job market is still weak.

2003-07-01T18:14:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage

Simply put, I don't understand why Gay marriage is so important to Homosexuals. As far as I can tell the primary arguments are: 1)To grant homosexual couples the same privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy--the "equal rights" argument, 2)To "normalize" the Gay population. Yes, sure, but I still don't get it.

Andrew Sullivan, a Gay man who purports to be a Conservative on so many issues, makes both of these arguments quite forcefully. However, Sullivan and friends are mistaken if they think that they are Conservative. If a Modern Liberal looks to government to solve problems, then a Conservative thinks that government should leave things alone and allow the cultural institutions to define the moral. By this definition, activism for legalizing Gay marriage seems quite Liberal.

The real problem is that the Gay movement is confused. The Gay movement really wants one thing: the end of prejudice about what they are and what they do. Not that anyone should blame them. In spite of polls that show increasing acceptance of homosexuality, the Gay person knows that they are still abnormal, or at least presumed to be.

Interestingly enough, it might be argued that the reason for rising acceptance is that Gays have come out of the proverbial closet. This simple strategy, more so than government allowance for Gay Pride events, has caused the mainstream heterosexual to come face to face with the reality that friends, family, and colleagues are Gay. It is no surprise therefore that more and more people are coming to view Gays more sympathetically.

If the Gay movement wants to overcome prejudice a continued effort to present individuals as normal contributing members of society will be far more successful than to agitate for government recognition through marriage. Afterall, marriage is not really applicable to a Gay person. I don't understand why they would want it. From what I can tell marriage has only two possible roots. Either you believe it is rooted in religion or in traditional culture. The involvment of government is further explainable for reasons that do not relate to Gays.

Roots Of Marriage

While I can't speak too clearly about all religions, I am clear enough about Christianity. Either God meant it right from the start when he joined Adam and Eve, or Moses made it up, but one way or another it is clear that the roots of Christianity teach followers to marry as man and woman. There was no requirement for matrimony for those who would choose alternative life styles. From this perspective Gays and even the government should likly stay away from marriage all together. Why would God command such a thing? Does it matter for the political debate? Only if this is the only reason for marriage where the government is involved, in which case the agenda should be to stop government involvement in marriage.

There is, however, a cultural legacy. Let us assume for the moment that we are not Christian, would we have reason to sanction marriage? The Chinese culture is instructive on this note since it is very hard to know for sure where Christian influence begins and ends in Western civilization. As far as I can tell the religions of China have nothing much to say about homosexuality. There is anecdotal evidence that homosexual acts were even practiced in the Imperial Court. Yet, marriage in Chinese culture is quite clearly between man and woman. Granted it seems to allow for polygamy and tolerate extra-marital adventure, but nonetheless marriage is male to female. Why? Could it be because marriage was the best contract for ensuring economic survival in traditional societies? For instance, culturally it is understood that sons will care for geriatric parents--there is no need for retirement planning. Daughters? They become, quite literally, the daughters of their in-laws. Because of this the marriage agreement involves a transfer of money from the groom's family to the bride's family. Marriage is the defining contract that guides these family relationships.

Government Sticks It's Nose Under The Tent

So why do governments become involved? Historically there appears to be a need to tax--not that this has gone away. Government wants to know where you are and what household you are a part of. In exchange government granted a few conveniences along the way. Sure, many of these "privileges" have been expanded in the last century and treated as if they were "rights", but at the end of the day they are simply rewards for following the government preferred track for marrying. Interestingly enough the early progressive movement seems to have manipulated the government role in order to achieve one other purpose: protection of the members of the contract. This made sense when women appeared to be the lesser in an unequal relationship. And today it makes sense for children who are not free and willing partners to the contract. But, the last time I checked the Gay argument was all about letting consenting adults do what they want to do--if this is the case then who needs to be protected?

Conclusion

All of this being the case, it is hard to understand the need for Gay marriage. In essence the Gay movement hopes that by forcing the "privilege" of marriage that prejudice will go away. It may very well go away, but it will not be because of marriage vows. I am not willing to believe that Gay marriage would somehow destroy the institution of marriage, unless you mean that it will make it all seem a ridiculus sham. What I am willing to argue is that Gay people have no need for the institution of marriage. If it is "privileges" that are wanted then we should design contractual supports to enable things such as shared property. Just leave marriage to be what it has always been.

2003-07-01T16:45:00.000-05:00

Kaus on Medicare

If you scroll to Thursday, June 26, 2003 at this link, you will see a question raised by Mickey Kaus about Conservative arguments concerning the Medicare debate. In case you can't find it here it is:

Kf on drugs: I'm confused!

1) I understand why, as Holman Jenkins Jr. argued in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, drug companies need to make big profits on successful drugs if they are going to finance the risky research to discover new drugs, which involves following a lot of false leads.

The occasional gusher provides investors a return on all the money thrown down dry holes.

I also understand why, if there's a drug benefit within a government-run Medicare system (what Democrats want), the government might use its massive buying power to demand low "dictated prices that don't cover" the costs of discovering those new and better drugs.

2) And I also understand why, as Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation argued in the New York Post yesterday, "new entitlements always wind up costing far, far more than initial estimates," and the Medicare drug entitlement is likely to be no exception. I understand why, under the alternative, partly-privatized program initially proposed by President Bush, in which you could choose from a variety of private health plans, "[m]arket pressures" would "control costs."

3) What I don't understand is how both these right-wing critiques of the Senate's prescription drug entitlement can be true at the same time. How does the partly-privatized plan give more money to drug companies (solving problem #1) while simultaneously being cheaper (solving problem #2)? I should think that, as a crude first approximation, controlling costs through "market pressures" would involve controlling the cost of drugs (substituting generics, bargaining down prices, making sure treatment is warranted, etc.)--which would mean less money for the drug companies to use to reward investors and fund risky research.

Either the drug companies get more money or they get less money, right? A system that sends them more money will be more expensive, no? Or is the miracle of the market even more miraculous than I thought?

I would like to help explain it to Kaus:

The two arguments he sights seem contradictory.

The negotiated plan provides a socialized drug benefit (arguably part of the compromise legislation). If I focus on the drug prices to be negotiated by a powerful customer, I would conclude that the government may deprive the drug companies of research cash by driving down the cost of the drug to the consumer (Wall St Journal point).

At the same time if I instead focus on the ADMINISTRATIVE costs that bureacracies entail then I might believe that the overall entitlement cost will be out of control even if individuals experience a cheaper drug price (Heritage point).

So, yes, the government may negotiate better prices (assuming Senators from Conn and NJ don't press for sweetheart deals) which will be passed on to the consumer, but the bureacratic costs of negotiating will be passed on to the taxpayer. Or put another way, will the government calculate pill prices to include government adminsitrative costs?

Ultimately, per unit costs are lower to the consumer, marginal changes in actual demand take place, and the government buereaucratic cost of maintaining the program gets passed on to general tax payers as it grows out of control.

You see there is a misconception amongst Liberals that Conservatives are mean (therefore we might try to lie about how a prescription drug benefit would work). But, what we really are is realistic. The Wall St. Journal focused on a component, while the Heritage Foundation focused on the overall cost. We realize that the government coming in to be a large mover in the marketplace is not cost free. Invariably there will need to be administrators, regulators, policy paper writers, a building, janitors, a new department head, and on and on. Sure, insurance companies will have similar staff to process claims, but why not put the same market powers to work on the administrative staff that the plan already places on drug companies?

Just think about it.

2003-06-30T11:23:00.000-05:00

Personal vs. Principle

Much of politics can be defined by the contrast of personal views with views based on principle.

The New York Times has published an Op-Ed by Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In this piece, Mr. Fish tries to demonstrate that Clarence Thomas may actually be speaking out of principle, not some obtuse personal emotion about racial preferences.

As I read this piece I pondered the difference between personal and principle. Let me give some examples.

If I was Black, I could personally benefit from racial preferences. I would know that I could apply to prestigious schools and be more likely to be accepted and possibly offered nice scholarships. If asked if I am in favor of the specific preference I would most likely be since it is to my personal advantage. However, if asked in the abstract if I prefer benefits to accrue to any individual for reasons of race I might be against such a system.

I have two mentally handicapped siblings. On a personal level I prefer that the government provide special transportation options so that they can get to work without the help of my parents. Furthermore, on a personal level, I prefer that the government continue to provide them with a social security check in order to provide for their basic day-to-day expenses. There is no practical way that they will ever be able to contribute to society at any level that matches their cost of maintenance. However, if asked in the abstract if I prefer programs to provide free public transit and financial stipends to those who can't seem to be productive in society I might be against such a system.

Dick Cheney was all ready to run for the Republican nomination for President in 1996. One of his daughters informed him that she was Gay. He decided to avoid the publicity this would cause for his family and did not run. I suspect that there was a bigger issue. He knew that his own views about Gay marriage and other Gay issues would be thrown in his face if he ran and it came out that his daughter was Gay. Since this was a sure bet, he knew he would never be able to discuss more important issues that really mattered to him. By time he joined the Bush-Cheney ticket for 2000, he had decided to neuter his stance on Gay marriage and other issues. The personal had overridden the principle.

My son has a genetic disorder. He can essentially live a normal life if he receives regular medical treatment for his ailment. One problem, the treatments can run into the millions of dollars. While my child has been fortunate enough to not require high levels of treatment, we have met families where by the age of three, their child might properly be called a "million dollar man". All but the largest employer insurance programs will not cover treatment. Putting aside the debate about how insurance can distort market prices for drugs, at a personal level I prefer that insurance companies be forced to cover this and that government programs provide coverage when I can't get insurance. On a personal level I prefer things like COBRA and Medicaid when I need these benefits. However, if asked in the abstract whether I should have to pay taxes and higher insurance premiums so that every rare malady can be covered and paid for I might be against such a program.

What is my point? People who are concerned about political ideas can become conflicted. Either we personally experience the emotional or we hear the stories and understand the emotional. For instance, there are many emotional stories about Gay couples that just want to express their mutual love through the vows of marriage. This is the emotional. The interesting thing is that we live in such a rich country that we can worry about trying to fulfill the wishes of every little group. We say: "Are you suffering? We can fix it!" And, in a sense, we can. And so individuals extrapolate from the personal to define the principle. The irony is that the people of poor third world countries can't afford to worry about these things. Is there public transit for handicapped citizens in Guatemala? Do they debate Gay marriage in Bangladesh? Does the government protect those with genetic disorders from disfigurement or death in Rwanda? Do they worry about Affirmative Action in any of these places? If yes to any of these questions, they often do it to the detriment of the entire country.

Clever politicians like Clinton and even Bush 2 have discovered that the secret to election is to focus people on their personal wants and avoid principle. So why did the Bush brief to the Supreme Court look for compromise? So that Blacks would feel that Bush was concerned about getting them into school, while assuring Whites that they had been wronged by the existing system at Michigan. Clinton State of the Union speeches were virtual laundry lists for every possible beneficiary group. Each group concluding that as long as MY personal need is fulfilled then I don't care who else gets something.

Is there a problem with this approach?

There are all kinds of problems. At a high level it is worth wondering if the sacrifice of principle is really a position of integrity. In this sense Clarence Thomas becomes the ultimate in integrity, not ingratitude as Maureen Dowd would argue. Sure, Justice Thomas has benefited from political affirmative action that looks for diversity candidates to balance the political makeup of things like the cabinet and the Supreme Court. But since integrity is an individual issue it is really not of a macro importance that need concern too many of us.

The largest issue is inefficiency. How many innovative ideas are being sidelined in order to afford handicapped transit or universal medical coverage? Put another way, when was the last time a great new invention came out of a heavily socialized economy? Unfortunately, the issuance of benefits does not come without cost. Sure, the actual amount of any individual's taxes that go to provide free transit for my siblings is fairly low. But, if we took that aggregate amount and freed it up for invention what would the aggregate effect be?

Unfortunately, I fear that America is rich enough that we have no way out of the trap. The nature of politics will continue to make the interest of the small groups paramount in the mind of the politician. Campaign finance reform, term limits, or any of your other garden-variety political reforms will make no difference. We are stuck in an ever-rising bidding war for the affection of the focused and energized interest groups. I take my hat off to Clarence Thomas, and others, who are willing to overlook personal benefit and search for, and define, the ideal.

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For the record, I am not in favor of socialized programs for the handicapped, socialized medicine, Gay marriage, or Affirmative Action.

2003-06-27T08:53:00.000-05:00

Thurmond and Segregation

On the passing of Strom Thurmond there are many articles expressing the traditional condolences and eulogies. Without a doubt Strom has been an important figure in recent American political history. I will allow the more talented and mainstream press to fill in the details of the eulogies. I would prefer to use this as an opportunity to point out how Strom reflects one of my deep felt beliefs about racism.

There are two ways to consider Strom and his views on segregation. Either he really was a racist that reformed, or he was a politician that said what it took to be elected--in which case his electorate reformed. Not that the civil rights movement ever embraced Strom, but according to the well researched eulogies many Blacks did. Either way, Strom changed.

I believe that the real solution to racism will take 100 years. You can start the clock back at the 1957 Civil Rights Act that Strom filibustered for over 24 hours. Over time new generations have come on line that are not saddled with the racist baggage of the past. Over time old stalwarts of racism will die. Over time other old stalwarts will change. And with these changes racism towards Blacks will die as surely as racism towards other groups has died over time. It will take longer for Blacks than many other groups since the problem was much greater and more ingrained in culture than any other group has experienced. But, it will end. For all my criticism of Sandra Day O'Conner's recent court decision, she is right that in 25 years the need for "remedies" should pass away.

Here is to hoping that racism and all the negative things that have resulted because of it will pass away.

2003-06-26T16:34:00.000-05:00

My First Contributer

One of the goals for my blog is to be more than a normal blog. I know that may not mean much since blogs can have many forms. Let me explain. Initially I had a vision for creating an online magazine. I would write stuff, and invite others to also create content. My hope would be to have amateur opinion holders express their views. Of course, I would create a lot of the content myself and use it as a reference to submit my own articles for further publication. I shared my thoughts with a couple of friends. One of them simply replied: "Oh, you mean a blog?" To be honest I was not for sure since I only had a passing sense of what blogs were. I did a little research and concluded a blog was the way to go, but with a link to an index of articles by subject. Even then, I don't want my blog to so much focus on the rapid fire approach as much as thoughtful pieces. For example, I am currently researching a piece on term limits--not timely at all, but possibly a significant issue.

The blog is in place. I am still learning things. Like how to keep a regular schedule. I still have typos and I am not sure that all that many people read it. Up until now the index has only had stuff from me. I realized as I created the index that I could simply point right back to archived blog entries. This may also be the avenue for including the submissions of others--by the way, I invite all readers to submit articles. To that end I have received my first submission.

This piece, in an unemotional way, offers an alternative method for evaluating the issue of abortion. Based on the idea of Pascal's Wager, this approach poses the question: are you willing to bet that abortion is not murder? This is close to what has often been my personal conclusion. Since I can not be sure exactly when a new life begins, and since technology continues to push the envelope on how early a baby can survive outside of the mother's womb, I must err on the side of protecting the unborn child. In essence I am willing to gamble that abortion is murder. I hope readers will enjoy this as I have.

The Abortion Wager

2003-06-26T13:40:00.000-05:00

Sodomy

I intended to ignore this issue. To be honest I just think it is a non-issue unless you are gay. Presumably I could venture the entire 'this is a legislative issue that the courts should have stayed out of' argument. But, at the end of the day conservatives still need to decide where we stand when the legislative battle takes place. Not to go off on a tangent, but it seems that sometimes we get caught up in arguing the legalities of venue when we might just want to confront the issue.

I confess to being an avid reader of National Review Online's The Corner. I tell you this because I am essentially posting my reactions to posts from The Corner. And NRO. There has been much banter about an Op-Ed piece that Jonah Goldberg published which essentially made the case that conservatives have lost the cultural war on gay issues and should negotiate a surrender.

Today, Jonah had this to say:

But what about the drug war? As I've written several times, when I asked some of the editors whether NR would be opposed to the drug war if they thought it was winnable, they said "Hmmmm, great question. I'm not sure." In other words, the conservative-libertarian case against the drug war is not that the intent of the drug war is immoral but that the costs of the drug war are immoral compared to the benefits.

Now I don't think the two things -- gay rights and the drug war -- are all that similar. But for those of you who believe that "giving up" or compromising is always wrong, you might think about this a bit.

This is what I sent to Jonah in an email about the similarity:

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They are not all that dissimilar. Both are frowned upon by religious belief and social norm, yet offer the clear argument that what I do as a consenting adult is my choice. As a moral issue they both are bothersome. While I am not aware of studies on this, it might be argued that both are addictive. Sure, people may find one more repugnant than the other, but from an ideological agenda perspective they are equal.

As conservatives we are essentially stuck on the same old arguments in both cases. We just feel it is wrong to do these things. Cultural norms need to be respected and if a community of people want to legislate community values where does the constitution rightfully get in the way of this?

Of course one might argue that we are bigoted against the druggie and the sodomizer.

Conservatives really only split when we wonder if legislation should reinforce cultural norms. For me, the real concern is tools for teaching my children. I think this is what legislated cultural values ultimately are about. How do I explain to my kid that sodomy and drugs are bad him? I should be able to give educated explanations about lower life expectancy in both cases, but how much harder is it for a kid to understand that it is bad in spite of being legal? Has anyone tried to think how illogical all the anti-smoking and anti-drinking campaigns sound? "I can do it but you can't." "Why?" "Because I am old enough to know what I am doing." I never bought that as a teenager--not that I am addicted to anything.

This may be weak, but at the end of the day I like the cultural norms we have and I would kind of like to keep them around.

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And I think it would be interesting for readers to read my reply to the original Goldberg Op-Ed piece:

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Your facts are correct. We ARE losing the fight. But the question is why? And can we turn it around? We are losing because it has been effectively painted as a religious conservative nut issue. And to be honest, arguments about slippery slopes are hard to prove and only represent fear. We need to change the debate points and rethink our approach.

As long as the debate is fairness vs. slippery slopes then we lose. We lose because we also believe in fairness and the slope from 10 years ago to today has not been all that hurtful (or so we think). It is not that I deny the slippery slope, it is that it is not a persuasive argument.

At the end of the day, the real objective of Sullivan and friends is to no longer have someone look at them and think: "you faggot!" They falsely assume that social prestige items like parades, marriage, and parts in sit-coms will change this. For many it may. But, from what I can see what has had the greatest effect is that as gays have come out publicly more and more people discover they "know" someone who is gay. I personally have a cousin and high school buddy. This makes me unwilling to be "unfair" and willing to stop thinking: "you faggot!"

The real argument against gay marriage has nothing to do with slopes. But to point out two things: 1)Natural cultural progression is already normalizing gays and in the finest conservative tradition doing nothing will overcome the bigotedness. 2)State sanctioning of marriage has a cultural/libertarian reason unrelated to religion. Married people make decisions that affect the lives of others (namely children) and so society has a compelling reason to become involved. Gay sex will NEVER produce a kid without any contractual protection, BUT heterosexual sex may. Are there any illegitimate children from gay weekends in the Poconos? No. The state has no compelling reason to sanction the marriage. All the other "rights" that the state has attached to marriage by default can be attached by alternative measures or private contract since there are no accidental parties to a gay union. Adoption? Simply stipulate in the adoption agreement what role the state plays in the adoptive relationship.

Too many people, including heterosexuals, mistakenly view marriage with romatic notions about status. Maybe within a church this may be true, but I can stick to a religion that rejects gay unions and marriage as status only. The state is involved for one and only one reason. Gays need not apply.

2003-06-26T11:34:00.000-05:00

Natalie and F.U.T.K.

Thanks to a friend I got to see a tape of a Country Music Television special on the feud between Country Music stars Natalie Maines and Toby Kieth. In the interest of full disclosure I am not a Country Music fan and would otherwise have missed the special. Furthermore, I am still legally a Texan and I am proud that the President comes from Texas.

One simple observation--hopefully Natalie Maines will someday grow up and look at the tapes of her interviews and realize how childish she has been. Sort of like when I read entries from the first journal I ever kept. She just doesn't get it. Maybe she never will.

She needs to understand that just because you are free to speak does not mean you are free from the repercussions of your speech. Afterall, everyone else is free to dislike what you have said.

2003-06-26T11:23:00.000-05:00

More on Affirmative Action

It is interesting to me how both sides try to spin the court decisions. But, for all of Justice O'Conner's smarts she essentially said: we don't know what to do. There is not much to spin in that. I honestly wish there was. But, in essence we are right back where we were before the decision.

While looking for something completely unrelated, I found this. For the most part the piece was quite fair and for the first time gave me a reason for Affirmative Action that was not hyped. To simplify it, the argument is that if Blacks had not been historically held back (slavery), then logic would conclude that in an undistorted contest for admissions that they would be admitted in more representative proportions. Therefore, holding back a deserving white boy in order to reward a rich black boy is not even an unfair concept.

If this is really where the Left is coming from, then we need to talk through this argument.

Keep in mind, like I said above, this is the most persuasive approach I have yet to hear. Diversity doesn't hold water, and the piece says it well enough (in fact, it was this level headedness on diversity that helped in part to make the Affirmative Action argument persuasive).

For the sake of argument, let's accept the premise that 'yes, Blacks got screwed for a long time and historical institutions are keeping them down.' But, how long does the measure of keeping you down have to go back? My first ancester to America changed his last name to sound English in order to avoid obvious identification as an Irish immigrant. Sure, he came here by choice, but nonetheless this name change reflected a legitimate concern for prejudices about his ethnicity. Has the negative effect of being Irish already worn off? I think it has. The Pilgrims were religiously persecuted before coming to America. Surely there was a negative impact on them because of the religious life they chose. Sure, they chose, but what of their children? Is there a negative legacy for them to overcome? On the west coast the railroads were built by Asian indentured servants. Surely there is a negative legacy for them? How about the Japanese in WW2 iternment camps? How about the Vietnamese boat people? Canadians? Okay the last one is a joke, but how many Canadians get tired of jokes about being the 51st state? I grew up in Hawaii and saw other groups similarly impacted by one or another historical event.

The irony is that as long as your group successfully takes itself by the bootstraps and pulls itself up, you are out of luck. So, the indentured servants of today (Indian and Chinese programmers) will never get a chance for preferences since their kids are really smart and do well in school. The argument is that only groups still suffereing, for one reason or another, need special help. Ultimately the Liberal approach wants to judge people by groups and find ways to equalize all groups. One wonders if this means that some day they will declare everything fair and announce that the starting line is tomorrow for all free competition. I doubt it.

I don't dispute that Blacks as a group are in a bad position. I don't even object to marketing efforts to encourage Blacks to apply to schools. I think I can even tolerate scholarships to poor Blacks. But, I am not sure that it will ever be possible to have anything be completely fair. It is one of the unfortunate realities of a free society that some people will fail. And sometimes they will fail because of things out of their control. But mostly a free society will offer them options to overcome or mitigate the things out of their own control.

My Dad grew up a farm boy. He was a simple government civil servant. He never invested in the stock market. I can remember sitting in a college finance class and having no idea what a stock option was. Future's markets? What is that? Yields? Bonds? I thought those were just the things I got from my Elementary school for being a good student. The rich kid next to me in class understood it all and could deal with the questions easily. I had to work at it. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me, but my point is that maybe we should focus on individuals. If a Black kid wants to make the case in his application essay that he is better for facing the adversity of coming from a poor Black family with a single mother, I want to hear that case. And if the college admissions committee reads that essay and concludes that this is a person who deserves a break, then great. I am just not convinced that we need to calculate group status and assign prejudiced rewards in hopes of changing the results of the group calculus equation.

2003-06-26T10:29:00.000-05:00

Sorry

The company who hosts my blog performed an upgrade adn left me postless for a bit. Do not fret, I will soon put some good content up.

2003-06-24T09:30:00.000-05:00

The Supremes

Two men get their shotguns and go to a pond. They each set up camp in something ostensibly called a duck blind. The first man watches for ducks and aims his shotgun at ducks. Which if he hits, he retrieves to take home and stuff in one way or another. The second man blindfolds himself and shoots randomly into the air. At the end of the day he looks around on the ground to see what he hit. If he sees any ducks he takes them home and stuffs them. I ask you: who is a duck hunter?

Yesterday, as far as I can tell from the way CNN is reporting the decision, the Supreme Court essentially said that using race as an automatic condition is not okay, but using race as a final determinant on an individual basis would be okay. That to me seems like saying if it is okay to look at race, just not too soon--and thus my duck hunter metaphor. If I look at race now or later does not make race a non-issue?

Let me try to make clear my view on affirmative action, race and all related problems.

To begin with I think that as conservatives it is not weakness in our argument to admit that many studies seem to confirm that certain minorities tend to have less opportunity. It is fair to say that part of what America is about includes opportunity for all. I have no reason to want to keep any minority "down". I am just not convinced that Affirmative Action is any truer to the American ideal than was slavery. I am even willing to go one step further in the interest of respect--let's just stipulate that Affirmative Action has done some good things. The original conception was a short-term shot in the arm to stimulate the participation of blacks in the cultural aspects of society that create wealth. The hope was to create a healthy middle class in the black community that could then provide the strength for the rest of the community to succeed. Where it fell apart has nothing to do with race, but with the same problem that plagues ALL attempts at government programs to solve problems. Eventually the program comes to have a life of it's own and can never be eliminated. Those who have a stake in the survival of the program invent new arguments and expand the program along the way. And so, Affirmative Action becomes "diversity".

Yesterday the court made a mistake. Some conservatives, including President Bush will try to spin the best out of the decision. But at the end of the day, the court said that Michigan's methodology was bad, but that the goal of "diversity" was acceptable. Conservatives should be disappointed.

What should the strategy be? I think conservatives win the day when we stick to bedrock principles. Efficiency in anything is best achieved when we remove distortions. We need to forcefully make the case that no one benefits from programs that target certain racial profiles in a freshman class, not to mention government contracts. Do we need an approach that gives the economically disadvantaged an extra chance? We can consider that compromise since it is essentially fairer than using race, but at the end of the day we should focus on limiting the power, scope and influence of government. Maybe government should simply stop asking the race of contractors and student applicants. Public Universities could still have an essay that asks applicants to detail some personal adversity they have faced and how they have overcome this in life. If the applicant wants to focus on overcoming racism or being poor then that is their choice. I have no problem with a desire to have a freshman class that includes individuals who have overcome great challenges and may not have high grades to match those efforts. I also have no problem with efforts to encourage under-represented groups to apply to schools through marketing efforts. There is an opportunity cost and a fair amount of cynicism associated with these efforts, but I am willing to compromise for the sake of demonstrating good faith on the issue of race.

Finally, understanding conservative ideas generally requires the patience to take a long-term view. While Blacks are still poorer than Whites, there is fair evidence that the Black middle class is growing. Why not remove the stigma of group welfare and wait a couple of generations to see how the growing Black middle class affects the profile of America in 25, 50 or 100 years? I believe that as old racists die off and successful Black role models increase in numbers that opportunities for Blacks will increase. Furthermore, the tools for wealth creation will increasingly be shared by all.

2003-06-23T11:02:00.000-05:00

Bitter Democrats

David Brooks makes the point that Democrats are in trouble. They are out of power and feeling the pain. This is great for high fiving and talking about in Conservative or Republican circles, but as David Brooks himself points out we are not really in power--only the Democrats think we are. As I have said with Hillary, don't be fooled--there are plenty of smart Democrats out there who have plans. Frustration with Bush does not translate to complete powerlessness.

What Conservatives should get out of the Brooks piece is an anthropological understanding of how Democrats really think. He gives several examples of which my favorite is the recent attempt to turn the table on the argument about what type of bias the mainstream media has. But to my point, this is the strategy. Say it enough times and the 20% of the electorate that matters will eventually believe it--they will believe that the media is conservative, they will believe that Bush is a crook and a fascist, they will believe that Bush is cutting spending. They will not have time to read all the blogs and listen to Rush and watch Foxnews. They will simply conclude that all the Conservative criticisms of the Democrats are nothing more than the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Hillary told them all about. And come 2008 they will elect a Democrat. Conservative have our work cut out. We must debate the issues and take our message to the 20%. We need to explain to them why we need a Republican. And then we need to explain to Republicans why they need to be Conservative. High five tonite with your friends and then get back to work tomorrow.

2003-06-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

Bill Gates on Spam

So, the other day I got forwarded that old time favorite email about Bill Gates giving money to all the people who forward that same dumb email to test the size of the internet. Is Bill going to pay up or not? I know it is a hoax and my point is simply that there are a lot of irritating things that come through my email inbox--and some of it from people I like. Recently the discussion of what to do about spam has gotten some more attention. Today, Bill Gates gives his opinion in the Wall Street Journal. In the interest of full disclosure: I use Microsoft products and make all the trendy complaints about Microsoft's power in the marketplace. That being said, I was doing fine with everything Bill had to say until he got to the end. He pointed out that there are legitimate costs in productivity. He also made a pitch for how Microsoft is both finding technical solutions to offer customers and collaborating with competitors to fight spam. But, as I said before, he lost me at the end. Here is the quote: "Congress could help by providing a strong incentive for businesses to adopt e-mail best practices. Our proposal is to create a regulatory 'safe harbor' status for senders who comply with e-mail guidelines confirmed by an FTC-approved self-regulatory body." I have no problem with industry leaders coming together to develop standards, but I am not in favor of coersive government incentives. Bill, please stick to the things you can do yourself and keep the government out of it. And back to my story about the chain letter: what comes after Spam is regulated? Chain letters also create productivity costs. Are we going to have a subject label called "CHN"?

2003-06-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

It's the Spending Stupid!

Ed Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation, has a piece on National Review Online making the case that the cause of the deficit is federal government spending growth. I think he is correct in identifying this as the problem. He points out that by simply slowing the growth of spending from 5.6% to 4.6% the budget could be balanced by 2008 even while spending on political favorites. He says: "The balanced budget that results would include a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare recipients, would fully fund the president’s defense requests, would pay for the recent war in Iraq, and would still allow Congress to enact a bigger tax cut than the one that took effect in May."

Let me first make very clear: I agree! However, I think Mr. Feulner misses a great opportunity to take the right people to task. As I have said before, I think Bush is great, but he has never met a spending bill he didn't sign. Bush is afraid to confront congressional spenders with the same black and white view with which he confronts the evil doers. Why? I think he is making a political calculation. If he allows Congress to spend what they want then his only critics will be in the Democratic party. Even then, they will get little traction since there will be no hard evidence that Bush has cut ANY program (outright or in terms of growth rates). The bottom-line is that Bush does not want to confront politicians on spending. To be fair, Mr. Feulner correctly takes Congressional deficit hawks to task, but he should have named names. I am willing to chance a bet that if all the proclaimed "deficit hawks" voluntarily gave up all federal spending in their own state or congressional district that we could also balance the budget by 2008. Do you think the Federal government spends money in Maine, Arizona, or Ohio? These are all states with two Republican Senators where at least one of them is a very vocal deficit hawk, yet they all tout spending they have secured for their state. Bush and Congressional Republicans need to get serious about balancing the budget. And I think if Mr. Feulner is serious about a balanced budget his organization needs to take Bush and Congressional Republicans to task.

2003-06-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

Neocons, Libertarians, and other political movements

Andrew Sullivan has provided an interesting link to this site that gives a theory on who the father of the Neo-Conservative movement is. The verdict? Jimmy Carter. Essentially the case is that as necessity is the mother of invention so was Jimmy Carter the drive that caused the rise of the Neo-Conservative.

This is really not a bad premise. In fact, political leaders of today should consider the lesson carefully. It really can be argued that politics is simply a history of reactions. Why did Republicans flock to George W Bush? After Clinton's Oval Office escapades they hoped that Bush 2 would learn from his father to reverance the office. Why did Democrats elect Clinton, a Southern Democrat? Because the solid South was trending away and the only moderate voices in the party came from the South. Why did they need a moderate voice? Because Reagan had successfully made the case for Conservative principles. Clinton has few achievements, but NAFTA and welfare reform were clearly Conservative approaches that he took in order to capture the middle. And how about Reagan? Yes, he would likely not have been possible had Carter not been such a fool. Reagan essentially ran on the platform of Barry Goldwater. Granted Reagan was a much better public speaker and came from an important state, but there was nothing new to WHAT he said. Reagan was not possible until the Democrats had lost the vision of JFK and old school Republicans like Nixon had ruined the Rockefeller wing of the party. I am generalizing, but the connection is there.

What does this mean for today? I am of the opinion that people choose political inclinations in part as a reaction to the world they come of political age in. How many old people from the Great Depression insisted on being Democrats long after the Democratic party represented their world view? How many liberals gritted their teeth through Bill Clinton? Is it possible that Republicans could make similar misteps? After Bush 1 there was a reaction. How else do you explain the success of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot who are both personality dumb bells? Conservatives of one stripe or another were disappointed in the direction of the Republican party. Today the reaction is in favor of the Libertarian movement. Conservatives who really have no reason to support ideas like the Libertarian view on abortion are driven to the general philosophy in search of something untainted by the political corruption of power which inevitably taints original principles. This is not a bad thing, but it is the reality that faces a politician like George W. Bush. The smart politicians seem to react. So you see Bill Clinton as a reaction to the realization by Democrats that a Liberal first agenda sunk Modale and Dukakis. The Democrats suffer as well--why else did Ralph Nader get so much attention? In fact, George W Bush was supposed to be the answer to Republican slipping in Congress and recent Presidential stumbles. He was commited to the Reagan pillars of tax cuts, less government, a strong defense, and simple moral issues like the right-to-life for the unborn. Sure, he campaigned with a few other messages in order to counter Gore. He has held true to 3 of the 4 issues--really the same way Reagan did. They both fail on the mark of smaller government. They both use the excuse of winning a war and a recession, but where Bush will find himself in trouble is that he can not blame a tax and spend Democratic Congress. I think young Neo-Conservatives forgave Reagan for government growth since most of it was in defense and the rest was part of the political trade-off required with the opposing party controlling congress. But who can Bush blame? Young people of today who are choosing political ideologies will make a tough choice. Do they go Libertarian and abandon social issues that matter or go Conservative and accept larger government than they want? Some make a third choice. They say: "I am a Conservative, not a Republican." While I agree with the sentiment that is expressed by this statement (and actually say this myself), I do sometimes think it is a weak choice. What are we really saying? I think it translates to the same answer any boy gives after kissing an ugly girl: "I don't like her, I was just kissing her." The problem is that for a neo-conservative, in the tradition of what Goldwater and Reagan campaigned for, there are no pretty girls to kiss. When it comes to election time we are Republicans whether we like it or not. If George W Bush wants a lot of kisses he better stop the growth of government or he will lose not because the Democrats offer a compelling choice, but because enough Neo-Conservatives will conclude that they are willing to trade moral conservative issues for less government and make statement votes for Libertarian candidates.

2003-06-19T08:43:00.000-05:00

Hillary

Conservatives: be afraid, be very afraid.

First let's talk about my Mom. My Mom is an immigrant. She didn't steal across any border in the dark of night, but she nevertheless carried a green card around for years (actually I think it was lost somewhere in her filing cabinet, but you know what I mean). She married the cute American we call Dad and got on some ship to America. She came from Australia, though actually a British Subject by birth. While not my topic for the day, she is now a US citizen and it was a very emotional event to see her become a citizen. Anyway, Mom (or as the Aussies would say: Mum) is essentially a moderate Republican. She is more moderate than Dad or me. I don't think she is so much a liberal as she is just not as conservative as we are. She just feels bad for the little guys in the world and thinks that someone needs to help them out. As long as I have cared to know her political choices she has indicated a preference for the Republican candidate for President--granted until a year ago she couldn't vote so it mattered little. Apparently Mom reads my blog because I got a comment from her on my recent post about Hillary Clinton's book. My Mom had this to say:

I was interested in what you had to say about Hillary. You are probably right, and yes she is a smart cookie. Can you believe it dad bought me her book? It is interesting so far, I have only read the part about her childhood. The thing is I identify well with that time period so I find it interesting to read. I used to think of her as stuck up and snotty but now I am changing my mind. I can see where she is coming from.

Conservatives command at most 40% of the vote. We can't stand Hillary. In polls only the 40% of hard core liberal democrats like Hillary. Right now, the remaining 20% essentially dislike her but are not sure why. I would propose that Mom fits into that category--"but now I am changing my mind"...

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Michael Barone mistakenly thinks that Hillary has an electoral ceiling. Republicans would be mistaken to take current polls to the bank. As I said before, Hillary is putting together one of the best long term campaign plans ever devised. She may not act on it (sort of like a Colin Powell), but she will be able to choose. The 20% in the middle are the target of the book. The shrill attacks by conservatives about her dishonesty make her look the victim while helping to promote her book. Then when the reader reads the book they are impressed and start to see her just the way she wants to be seen.

I think Hillary is very able. If ever there was a woman who had the personal qualifications Hillary is that woman. If we are going to beat her we need to confront her on the political issues of the day and simply accept her account of how she found out the truth about Monica. We need to show the 20% that even though Hillary is a smart, even likable, person that she is on the wrong side of issues that matter.

2003-06-18T13:37:00.000-05:00

Public Transit

A few months ago a friend asked me for my take on public transit. I have cleaned up my response to him and am making it available to you. Which by the way prompts me to point out that most of my long posts can be found by topic by following this link. As always, I welcome feedback on this and other topics.

2003-06-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

This Makes Me Sick!

Abortion statistics for the United States.

2003-06-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

More on Conservatives

Interesting reaction to Jonah Goldberg from his National Review colleague Ramesh Ponnuru.

2003-06-17T09:42:00.000-05:00

Are Conservatives Still Conservative?

Interesting piece by Jonah Goldberg. It is in response to a piece by Chris Caldwell on spam (not the canned variety).

To begin with, I was puzzled that Chris Caldwell could get that piece published in a conservative magazine. I suppose he and his editors thought it would be a broadside against information system libertarians that would inspire conservatives to unite against libertarians. While I do intend some day to make my argument about why libertarians and modern conservatives will one day wake up and realize that they are very different (I know some libertarians already have), I was not taken in. In the interest of full disclosure I am an information system conservative--I have written more than a few lines of code. With that out of the way, let me state that Caldwell is wrong for the policy he proposes. Goldberg is right that Caldwell and the libertarians are each taking fairly extreme views and that conservatives need to reconsider what it means to be conservative.

Is spam a problem? I suppose there can be an economic argument made for the externalities that spam creates. Inboxes are just the beginning. Email servers require much more ability than would be required without it. Not to mention the opportunity cost of computer programmers developing anti-spam software when they could be coding the next generation of artificial intelligence or palm pilots that read your mind. This is all calculable stuff that I am sure some serious PhD in Economics has studied and published. So, the case could be made that somehow the spammer needs to be made to pay for the cost he or she imposes on the efficiency of the internet as a whole. But, that does not mean there is a need for government regulation.

I use a free email service provided by Yahoo!. From time to time my email inbox is inundated. Yet, Yahoo! has provided me with tools whereby I can fight spam. To some extent they do work. Sure, it is irritating. And, more importantly, Yahoo! could likely provide even better free services if they were not screening spam for me. But so what? Has government regulation stopped telemarketers from calling me and wasting valuable telephone bandwidth? Has government regulation stopped junk snail mail from filling my mail box and slowing down normal mail delivery? No. It simply changes the environment for mass marketing and forces the marketer to devise a new strategy. In spite of the externalities which I agree exist, I would prefer that Yahoo! continue to help me screen rather than the government. And since Yahoo! is big enough to feel the financial impact why don't they simply sue the spammers? I know enough to know it is hard to track spammers, but I am sure there are smart programmers figuring out how to overcome that right now. I could point out that the free market is not solving the problem perfectly, but on the other hand maybe we should allow it a chance just to see how it turns out.

Caldwell is a breed of conservative that concerns me. 25 years ago Conservatives were desperately fighting a battle to stop the growth of the liberal-social state. With the election of Reagan we put our views in the driver seat. We have yet to be forcefully removed. One might logically see that Clinton was a Democratic reaction to the reality that only a Southern Democrat with the appearance of moderate views on issues could win against the conservative movement, but that would be a tangent. My point is that we are approaching a time where there are young conservatives who are unaware of what the real Reagan vision was. Either that or they are becoming intoxicated with the political power of Republicans running the government. Regardless they have somehow come to forget that government is not the answer to all our problems. They miss the vision that Reagan had and will end up alienating true conservatives should it continue. In essence, they forget to be conservative.

2003-06-17T09:03:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman Exposed

After reading the latest Paul Krugman whopper, I have a theory about Krugman. Really, a theory about Krugman and his fellow travellers. And let me state up front that this is probably very obvious to all other people out there. But, it finally occurred to me that Paul Krugman does not really care about honesty. Granted there are all kinds of spin masters on either side of the political divide who participate in similar dishonesty, but these days Krugman gets my attention.

Paul Krugman attacks Bush for not being serious about fighting terrorism. I initially started to think of ways to debate the points he made. I could have made my entire rebuttal focus on the liberal belief that dollars spent equals level of seriousness about an issue--a ludicrous view on many levels. I could have made this about how Afghanistan is really in no worse shape than Bosnia was after only 18 months of our involvement--proving that a Democrat would likely have done no better. I could have rehashed the debate about the war with Iraq and pointed out that there was much more to the war than WMD and a link to Al Qaeda. I could have gone down the path of why the lack of WMD does not mean that Iraq was not a threat on the issue of WMD.

As I pondered an appropriate response to Paul Krugman I recalled something I saw Saturday night. CNN replayed a February Larry King interview with former President Bill Clinton. Beyond Larry King's regular habits that annoy me, I enjoyed most of the interview. I don't want to dwell on the details (you may read them for yourself). I want to focus on the general sense that I got when Clinton was asked about Iraq. Clinton did not dispute the presence of WMD or the threat that Iraq was to the world. In fact, he even argued that the US did not need a further UN resolution to meet the requirements of international law for invading Iraq, but might want it for public opinion purposes. As I listened I realized that Clinton understood the case for war--Saddam presented a clear and present danger to the US and the world. There was no question about the objective in his mind, simply a desire to have Bush be patient in making the diplomatic effort. I am sure that we could dig up transcripts on many a Democrat who made similar points. In fact, some are now running for President. But, that is not my point.

I want to get back to what this means about Paul Krugman. Krugman is not trying to validate arguments he once made. In fact, he is not willing to debate important issues in a substantive way. At the end of the day he is trying to find anything to weaken voter confidence in George W. Bush. Krugman is looking for any mole hill that he can find so he might turn it into a mountain. Each week it is something new. Tax cut, deficit, WMD, terrorism, aircraft carrier landing, and later this week it will be Israel. This time it is management of the war on terror. Instead of lobbing accusations why not debate the issue? There is a fair discussion to be had about how best to fight terror. Is it a military fight or a police effort? Is it about starving terrorists of money, bases, or ideological support? Or like Clinton we can debate the mechanics of how best to gain the support of the world. These are debates that strengthen our country and help people think for themselves. It makes one wonder if Krugman is about anything more than attacking Bush. In a sense I guess I am doing the same thing to Krugman. I am looking for weakness in every piece that he writes. And that is why, for today, I instead have focused on confronting his general approach. Krugman is obviously an educated man who would likely contribute to a productive discourse on the direction of our country if he just chose to.

2003-06-16T07:54:00.000-05:00

DeLay, Columbine, and Evolution

In response to my post on Friday about Paul Krugman I received the following observation by Jacob who provides his recollection of what Alan Keyes had to say about the same topic:

The theory of evolution teaches us that the natural order of things is the survival of the fittest. The strong are superior to the weak. This theory leads us to things like abortion, where the will of the strong must take precedent over the will of the weak. Couple that with the teachings of Dr. Kevorkian that sometimes life isn't worth living, that suicide is sometimes the best thing, even the noble thing. You've just concocted a recipe for Columbine. If the strong weren't better than the weak, there's no justification for the slayings. If suicide wasn't okay, there would be no easy way to avoid the consequences. If any of these pieces wasn't in place, Columbine wouldn't have taken place.

Thank you Jacob. This is one of the essential chains in the religious conservative view on evolution. My way of viewing the issue probably goes like this:

If we set up a scenario where we cause young people to seriously doubt that there could be anything like a God then what have we accomplished? Eventually they will come to the conclusion that everything that our society is foundationally based upon is illegitimate. Granted, as long as we keep all the young people dumb enough they will never figure it out anyway, but that is a discussion for another day. The point being that there may be a point where the majority of the culture wakes up and says: If no God, then why does a law against suicide exist? Why a law against murder, rape? And why a principle that all men and all women are created equally? Yes, I know religion has been used as an excuse to ignore these very concepts in certain settings, but why do we all look upon those historical uses as bad? Because there is a moral conception that helps most of us realize that bad people twisted moral principle to suit their own ends. Religious conservatives conclude that this is why we are in trouble on the issue of abortion. There are not enough people who conclude that there is something morally wrong with killing the unborn child. It is instructive to see all of the discussion about whether or not Scott Peterson murdered his unborn child (assuming he is guilty). The abortion rights people have to realize they are caught at a cross roads. On the one hand do they advocate for the protection of women and children from the apparent violence of a spouse? Or do they, for the sake of avoiding judicial precedence, advocate that the unborn child deserves no consideration? They have to realize that if Scott, or whomever, is found guilty of murdering an unborn child that the connection can be made that abortionists are doing the same.

All of that being said. While I think the logical connections can be fairly made, I don't think this requires us to no longer teach evolution in schools. A responsible citizenry is an educated citizenry and to be educated no one can fairly ignore evolution. I have no desire to leave young kids ignorant of science. Instead, the solution is to counteract this knowledge and cultural influence with equal or greater amounts of foundational strengthening.

I was personally baffled by Columbine for two reasons. First, that the school principle had the gall to seriously say that the perpertrators were "good" kids. Obviously he either lacked any willingness to make fair moral judgements or he was unwilling to admit it since he fears being sued by the families of victims. Either way he lacks a moral foundation. Second, that few focused on the obvious conclusion that parenting had failed. The real counterweight to the teaching of evolution in schools is for parents to do things like take their kids to church on Sunday and make them sit through Sunday School. A variation of this worked for me and has worked for many others. There is no need for a government program that enforces this, but we should start talking about it. Something is wrong in this country when it comes to religion--we are walking away from it in too great a number. The religion of faith in a God is being replaced by the religion of participation in Sunday soccer tournaments. Instead of taking our kids to hear the word of God, we take them to play in a game. Do we really think they learn more about how to treat their fellow men by kicking a ball around?

2003-06-13T09:45:00.000-05:00

Krugman vs. DeLay

Paul Krugman has decided to go after Representative Tom DeLay. I am not the biggest fan of DeLay, but I do think he is an able Congressman who represents the issues I support. More importantly though, I think Krugman has a very distorted view of DeLay and is trying hard to portray DeLay is an extremist. Krugman uses such odd reasoning that a Freudian might wonder what it is exactly that Krugman is repressing.

To begin with Krugman claims that even liberals mistakenly think Tom DeLay is less radical than Newt Gingrich. Funny thing, that statement. I am pretty certain that the opposite is true. A Google search for the words: tom, delay, and radical retrieves an estimated 27,500 hits. Look here, here, here, and here. In fact, my inability to swoon over DeLay, in spite of his support for many positions I promote, is because he so often is quoted and characterized as so extreme and embarrassing.

Krugman falls into his normal pattern of not citing sources so it is hard to prove that he may be taking Tom DeLay out of context. But, let's just apply some logic to the quotes that Krugman attributes to DeLay.

"Mr. DeLay has described the Environmental Protection Agency as 'the Gestapo.'"

The Gestapo looked over people's shoulders and arrested people for just the appearance of a mistake. Hmmm. Can anyone see any parallels to the EPA? Even people in favor of regulations protecting the environment should be honest enough to see that the EPA has extraordinary powers to shut down a business with little due process. Sure, the EPA doesn't throw people in concentration camps. But, then again it is liberals like Krugman who say or imply that Conservatives are modern day Nazis. The irony here is that Nazism was about Socialism and the Gestapo was used to enforce Socialism--maybe DeLay is more correct than Krugman wants to admit.

"Above all, expect to see the wall between church and state come tumbling down. Mr. DeLay has said that he went into politics to promote a 'biblical worldview,'"

Okay, what is a "biblical worldview"? Could it be that it is a worldview that embraces the concept of right and wrong? Or how about the concept that there is a God? Western law is already firmly based on this world view. Where did we get laws against murder and theft? Why does the government get involved in marriage and divorce? Why do you think we hold parents responsible for the behavior of children? Forget that the whole point of separation of church and state was meant by the founders to mean that they didn't want an American version of the Church of England. A biblical view is not advocacy for the Baptist or Methodist church as the state religion--that would be a Baptist worldview, but simply a recognition that in order to preserve the very culture that promotes freedom and prosperity in this country there is a need to preserve the biblical foundation of western culture.

"How about the schools: after the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay called a press conference in which he attributed the tragedy to the fact that students are taught the theory of evolution."

If this is true, then DeLay is kind of obtuse. My guess, since I have no idea what the source for this is, is that DeLay said something a lot more detailed. He probably made some statement about how schools are in trouble and how Columbine was one example, but that there are many other problems to include: teaching the theory of evolution. Now, I am not one who wants to keep my children from learning about evolution. I learned about it in high school and college and concluded it was useful for predicting micro changes and that on macro changes much still needed to be researched. I intend to challenge my own children to ponder this exact issue. That being said, when DeLay and other social conservatives decry evolution what they really are saying is that they see evolution as a pillar in the religion of athiesm/agnosticism and that they resent that it is taught as fact while Biblical, and even Eastern, religions are taught as fiction or an opiate of the masses. Krugman and other liberals should stop poisening the water of school reform by making unfair allegations about a legitimate public concern.

"Many of those who minimize the threat the radical right now poses to America as we know it would hate to live in the country Mr. DeLay wants to create. Yet by playing down the seriousness of the challenge, they help bring his vision closer to reality."

This is the concluding statement in Krugman's piece. The one thing I am missing, at this point, is exactly where Krugman found the details of Tom DeLay's "vision". Krugman seems to be aware of some master plan that DeLay has for reinventing America. I looked at Tom DeLay's website and could not find any details about the master plan. If a true "vision" I would suppose that Tom DeLay would promote it. If a secret agenda, exactly how did Krugman figure it out? While Tom DeLay is not my favorite Republican to quote, I think Krugman is grossly unfair to a hard working and serious Congressman.

2003-06-11T08:32:00.000-05:00

The Government Program Conundrum

I often observe with a grin that bureaucrats, Congress persons, most Democrats, and some Republicans are often befuddled to discover that a government program meant to solve a problem has failed. Foxnews.com reports that the Head Start program is not as successful as hoped. A little background is offered in the article, but I will summarize: Head Start is a federal program for low income children to recieve pre-schooling so that they can compete with the rich kids when they arrive in kindergarten. Initiated in the 1960s, this program is meant as a solution to a bad problem. There is little reason to dispute that poor kids tend to do worse in school. Grades, test-scores, and behavior lag norms. It is a tragedy in many respects. What is mistaken is the assumption that it can all be fixed by some government program. Here is the problem. As the parent of a child that was not poor enough to attend Head Start, I didn't want my kid to fall behind so I opted to pay for her to attend a private pre-school. At a minimum I made it impossible for poor kids to close the gap. Which points to the source of the conundrum--too many "government can fix the world" types don't make dynamic calculations. In other words they do not anticipate the unintended incentives they create. There are all kinds of examples.

Sticking with education here is another example. What is the consequence of lowering standards in public schools? The goal is to make sure that no one feels left behind or emotionally rejected. The hope is that as the mediocre students are encouraged to stay in school they will be grow by mixing with the 'smart' students. So what does a parent who understands the importance of high standards do? They home school or find a private school. What do the treachers who understand that some students can handle greater rigor do? They create gifted and talented programs that remove the 'smart' students from the normal classroom and create an achievement segregated school within a school. Consequently the smart kids still get the best teachers and the mediocre students struggle with the unqualified. College admissions committees learn to recognize the signs of smart kids even if the SAT scores lose relavence. If you are home schooled, privatly schooled, or in a gifted program then you must be smart. Ultimately, the mediocre student ends up with little to show for a lot of government spending.

So, back to Head Start. There are other problems related to educational achievement amongst the poor that should be studied and reviewed. For instance, is the real problem that poor kids are poor because the parents are dumb and genetics can not be overcome? I went to high school with many children of college professors and rarely were the children 'dumb'. Is it possible that the reverse of this phenomenon is true on the opposite end of the smarts spectrum? Liberals have often argued it is because of lack of funds in a poor family to send kids to private schools--thus Head Start funding. That may be true, but does Head Start attract the best teachers? Or do the best pre-school teachers prefer to work at private institutions with the children of wealthy parents who are willing to pay well for services and are available to volunteer at the school? Is it possible that there are other immutable factors? Studies show that a young person is more likely to get a college degree if the parents have a college degree. Why is this? Is there a family commitment to education? Or maybe nerds raise nerds.

Many in government will look upon the report cited by Foxnews.com and conclude that we need to spend more money. In fact, the article already notes a proposal to reform the system to allow State flexibility while providing more money. Ultimately, the real solution may be to scrap the Head Start program. Is there a case for helping poor kids have a chance? Sure. But, is the Head Start program giving them that chance? I don't think so.

2003-06-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

Iraq, WMD, and editorialists that do not get it

On the editorial pages of today's New York Times Paul Krugman had this to say: "I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war."

Since this is the concluding sentence of his piece I can only conclude this is his most important point. While I am clearly surprised that we don't have more WMD evidence at this point, I am not sure that it equates to "misleading the nation into war." Krugman and his left wing colleagues were opposed to the war regardless. They are not disappointed so much as they are trying to score points after the game.

Before the war with Iraq these opponents tried every strategy to raise doubts and discourage support. First they tried the 'this is all about oil and Bush's oil buddies' argument. It didn't stick--it didn't add up. Next they tried the Vietnam quagmire argument. Essentially trying to make the case that just like our opponent in Vietnam the Iraqis would prove a determined and fierce force that would resist defeat. It didn't stick--American's felt the lessons of Afghanistan and the previous Gulf War were more consistent and appropriate. Next they tried the 'it is not right to start a preemptive war' argument. It didn't stick--Americans could easily make the connection that if we had preempted previous despots like Hitler we could have saved ourselves a lot of suffering. This strategy of trying a new fear each week continued relentlessly. There were the arguments about lack of world support, no UN mandate, the fury of the Arab street, no direct link to Al Qaeda, North Korea being more pressing and on and on. There were no principles except distrust of George W Bush's motives. It raised in my mind the following question: "Had Al Gore won the Presidency, and after 9/11 he had concluded that we needed to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein for once and for all, would the war opponents sing the same song?"

What Krugman and others do not get is that Americans understand the president's strategy. They understand that it is not just about WMD. It never was. I have a friend who was not at all excited about the war, but he understood and liked Bush. He thinks Bush is a cowboy, and he thinks this is what makes him great. What is a cowboy? Pick your favorite western and make some popcorn. There is good and there is bad, and everyone knows the difference. Sure, the good cowboy is sometimes weak for whiskey or women, but at the end of the day he is willing to risk all to save the town from a bunch of bad guys. He has no problem picking out the bad guys since they do bad things and clearly look out for each other. The point being that he sees right and wrong. For people who are unwilling or unable to see the difference between right and wrong such a world view is disturbing and frightening. They make arguments such as: 'the Arab right and wrong is different than the American right and wrong, so who is right?' But, this just proves that they don't get it. When Iraqi's pulled down the statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad Iraqis proved that they saw right and wrong the same way we did. Saddam was a bad man. The proof included many things. One of these was WMD. Interestingly enough, before the war there was never any question that he had WMD, but rather a question of whether or not he would ever use them against us or provide them to terrorists. Americans understand this. Americans understand that this is a war about right versus wrong. "You are either with us or against us" is a statement that carries a lot of meaning and seriousness. In one sense the reasons for war were complex--threats to strategic balance in the middle east, WMD, threats to humanity, potential relations with established terrorist groups, and even threats to the world oil market. But in another sense the reason for war was simple. Saddam was a bad man, we have known this for a long time and should never have tolerated him for so long. If there was an error it was that we waited so long.

After the war it became obvious that this was true. People were released from prisons, they rejoiced, and the regime quickly crumbled under the weight of selfishness. Opponents of the war were distraught for they had been embarrassed. Rather than admit that Saddam was trully a bad man and join in building a better future for the people of Iraq, the opponents have begun a new chorus: 'We were mislead into war'. We were not mislead or brainwashed or duped. All along we knew the terrorist links were weak and that WMD was a threat that might be years away, but what really scared us about Iraq was the track record of Saddam being a bad guy.

Ultimately, this is what still makes North Korea a problem. And what of Iran? In all cases we have no problem with the people of these nations. Do we hate Iraqis? I don't think so. And we do not hate Koreans or Iranians. But we do have a problem with Kim Jong Il and the Mullahs of Iran. These are bad people who are diametrically opposed to the interests of the United States, not to mention basic human rights. These are the people who look on the success of Osama bin Laden and get bad ideas. Are there other bad people out there? Yes. Do they seek after the means to militarily confront the interests of the United States? Not yet. Should we eventually concern ourselves with these dictators? Yes. But first let us concentrate on the nexus of bad guys who want to kill us, not to mention their own people. Maybe tomorrow we can get on to the other bad guys who just kill their own people. Afterall a cowboy can at most shoot only two guns at a time.

And as for Krugman and his cabal of left wing ninnies? Could you please stop trying to mislead Americans? Thanks.