Immigration Ain't That Easy

I've got a window full of tabbed articles I will never have the time to write about. So you're going to get them in linked bullet points.

• First, a little bit of classic Mark Steyn. From 2003. His characterization of Democrats resonates and truly today as it did back then.

• This blogger's favorite columnist, Bret Stephens, had a piece in the latest Foreign Affairs magazine about President Obama's Middle East policy. It is fantastic, natch.

• Stephens also wrote a column about the importance of truthful history. As you can imagine, this one resonates with me.

• Public intellectual, Rush Limbaugh, wrote a piece for the WSJ wherein he defended the Tea Party movement against their media antagonists. Given liberal hysteria and hyperbole in response to AZ immigration law, this one is timely. (Mind you, I'm not saying I agree with AZ policy, just pointing out liberal hypocrisy.)

• Daniel Henninger documents the massive shift in public opinion away from Obama's vision of America and towards a more limited vision of the role of government. This shift has occurred in a very short period of time. Like, a year.

• This is the Bret Stephens show. This time he takes aim at the idea of "peace processes" which are, of course, a friggin' joke. Stephens (I think rightly) calls those who derive benefit therefrom "wicked."

• When it comes to immigration, I tend toward the WSJ line rather than the National Review one. Looks like Jonah Goldberg agrees. Also, Byron York does some good political reportage on the Arizona law particulars.

• Thomas Sowell, another favorite, on the misuse and abuse of history to serve political ends--in this instance, race and slavery.

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Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Wednesday

(My other post was getting too unwieldy)

5:22pm: WSJ Op-Ed on the GOP way forward:

A new President nearly always gets what he wants on his top legislative priority, especially when he has such big majorities in Congress to work with. Republicans nonetheless managed to keep their Members together, turn public opinion against the bill despite nearly unanimous media support for it, and in the end came a few votes short. They would have won if Mr. Obama and Nancy Pelosi hadn't been so willing to put so many of their Members at risk by pushing a partisan program and flouting normal Congressional rules.

The GOP's goal now should first be to remove some of the uglier parts of the bill in Senate reconciliation. Then they need to focus on taking back as many seats as possible this fall. Rather than publicly crowing that ObamaCare will deliver them the House—a hard task and a risky expectations game—they'd do better to concentrate on continuing to educate the public about what ObamaCare is going to do to insurance premiums, federal deficits, taxes and the quality of medical care.

Many Republicans are already calling for "repeal" of ObamaCare, and that's fine with us, though they should also be honest with voters about the prospects. The GOP can't repeal anything as long as Mr. Obama is President, even if they take back Congress in November. That will take two large electoral victories in a row. What they can do now is take credit for fighting on principle, hold Democrats accountable for their votes and the consequences, and pledge if elected in November to stop cold Mr. Obama's march to ever-larger government.

This strikes me as a reasonable approach. The public debate about this bill was won before its passage, but we cannot quit fighting now. Conservatives need to continue to hammer on on Obamacare's worst features and challenge every Democrat who voted in favor.

5:06pm: One of my heroes, Thomas Sowell, on what the passage of Obamacare could mean:

The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other "historic" changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

What will it matter if Obama's current approval rating is below 50 percent among the current voting public, if he can ram through new legislation to create millions of new voters by granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? That can be enough to make him a two-term President, who can appoint enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp further extensions of his power.

When all these newly minted citizens are rounded up on election night by ethnic organization activists and labor union supporters of the administration, that may be enough to salvage the Democrats' control of Congress as well.

The last opportunity that current American citizens may have to determine who will control Congress may well be the election in November of this year. Off-year elections don't usually bring out as many voters as Presidential election years. But the 2010 election may be the last chance to halt the dismantling of America. It can be the point of no return.

Whatever else you may say about the guy, Bush's "tax cuts for the rich," Patriot Act, Iraq War Resolution, and No Child Left Behind all enjoyed bipartisan support. Obama's (the post-partisan) signature piece of legislation was passed without a single Republican vote and against the will of the American people.

Democrats have revealed themselves as the hyper-partisans they always accused the Republicans of being. This is concrete evidence of that fact.

There is nothing moderate about the Democrat Party.

2:43pm BST: In the NYT's "Room for Debate" blog, James Capretta, Michael Tanner, Gail Wilensky, Joseph Antos, Megan McArdle, and Keith Hennessey all opine on the GOP's next move.

At Pajamasmedia.com, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Victor Davis Hanson, had this to say about Obamacare:

President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan. . . .

No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we "are leveling the playing field" and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law. . . .

[W]e are in revolutionary times in which the government will grow to assume everything from energy use to student loans, while abroad we are a revolutionary sort of power, eager to mend fences with Syria and Iran, more eager still to distance ourselves from old Western allies like Israel and Britain.

There won't be any more soaring rhetoric from Obama about purple-state America, "reaching across the aisle," or healing our wounds. That was so 2008. Instead, we are in the most partisan age since Vietnam, ushered into it by the self-acclaimed "non-partisan."

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Of Wal-Mart, Health Care, & American History

Sometimes I get so burned out from reading talking about nothing but slavery and the poor treatment of Native Americans and women in the American History seminar I teach (I have to stick to the syllabus) that finally reach my limit and lash out.

Mind you, America is not perfect. The aforementioned Big Three sins were real. But they aren't all there is to American History. And it doesn't help that we are teaching practically nothing more than those three plus the British hobby horse (class warfare) to British freshers who hardly even know who George Washington was.

Just in case the supervising professor on my course (or anyone else from my university, for that matter) read this post let me say up front: I don't blame them; this is the state of academia.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, sometimes I reach my limit and go on an I-love-America-liberty-markets-free-trading-are-awesome rant.

Like yesterday. We reviewed a bunch of reading that characterized the increased interdependence, division of labor and specialization of the American economy in post-Reconstruction America as horrible because it made the rich richer and the poor poorer and so on and so forth. One article we read trumpeted "economic independence" as an ideal that was somehow lost or never was or some other such nonsense.

That is, in the New South, capitalists from the North built factories to process raw cotton and tobacco and mine and coal and extract and refine iron (later steel) because it was closer to the source (reducing transportation costs) and laborers in the South were much less likely to unionize, thus resulting in lower labor costs.

And all of this was bad, bad, bad.

Missing is the fact that all of these developments brought jobs to the South (where there had been, prior to the Civil War, a lack of industry) and a higher standard of living. The fact that there were now stores near every railroad depot (another feature of post-Reconstruction America) selling goods people hadn't even imagined before was not a good thing, it was bad because people went into debt to the bad Northern capitalists who produced these goods and duped the stupid poor Southerners into buying them.

The post-Reconstruction period in America is widely considered by economists to be a Golden Age of commerce. Standards of living increased significantly. But the historical narrative is one of worker exploitation, etc. etc.

So I took a moment and tried to teach something about the power of competition and how it both reduces prices and improves quality.

Now the Wal-Mart & Health Care part of the blog post title: Stephen Spruiell made the point last Friday at The Corner that the mere presence of Wal-Mart in the health care industry would improve quality and drive down costs--even for those who never went to Wal-Mart for their open-heart surgery. He's right. This, my friends, is the power of markets in health care.

Because other people would have to compete with Wal-Mart in supplying health services to individuals, the quality would go up (just as there is Nordstrom) and the price would go down (think of the many different price-comparison websites on the internet).

Unlike Europe, we ought not care about the difference in income between the richest and the poorest so long as the poorest can become richer and the richest aren't ensconced, by some government diktat, as the ruling class. Indeed, though the spread between richest and poorest may increase, America remains the country where the most people are able to move between the five infamous quintiles on the income scale. By and large, the poorest do not remain the poorest and the richest die like everyone else.

In Europe, regulation, law, and other preferential treatments have resulted in fairly static class organization. The middle class remain the middle class and the upper class remain in the upper class and this continues on, ad infinitum, generation after generation. The modern European welfare state has created, as I point out to my friends who will listen (or at least act as though they are listening) a permanent underclass. In France, for instance, this underclass is populated mostly by Muslim immigrants who, despite the ever-increasing benefits being thrown their way by the French liberal elite, continue to burn cars.

They burn cars not because they want another 10 Euros a week to pay their mobile phone bill, but because the barriers to getting a job and generally breaking into civilized French society (for instance) are for all intents and purposes, impenetrable.

The same is basically true, to a greater or lesser extent, in every other modern welfare Western European state.

This is essentially what liberal utopia (aka social democracy) looks like. The Great Society largely reversed several generations of gains by African Americans (from the Emancipation Proclamation through the Civil Rights movement). Thomas Sowell has shown how African Americans income, education, standard of living, etc., increased right up until liberal good intentions destroyed the African American family and made them America's permanent under class.

African Americans now vote, practically en masse, for liberal Democrats who, in turn, promise them an expansion of welfare programs which do nothing more than make them, as a people, more dependent on the state and the "good will" of liberal elites.

How to wrap this up? Eric Foner, of all people, wrote about Frederick Douglass's concerns regarding liberal paternalism in his article, "Rights and Black Life in War and Reconstruction."

Frederick Douglass himself had concluded in 1865 that the persistent question "What shall we do with the Negro?" had only one answer: "Do nothing.... Give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!" Douglass realized that the other face of benevolence is often paternalism and that in a society resting, if only rhetorically, on the principle of equality, "special efforts" on the freedmen's behalf might "serve to keep up the very prejudices, which it is so desirable to banish."

America need not make the same mistake as our friends in Europe. Liberty and responsibility are inextricably tied together and our government laws and policies--whether health care or welfare or whatever--ought to reflect that relationship.

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Universal Health Care Sucks

I've often said that the egalitarian impulse towards universal health care--broadly, socialized medicine--is pleasant sounding rhetoric that really means everyone's health care will suck equally.

Thomas Sowell, as he is wont to do, makes a better point about the difference between health care and medical care. At first brush, it seems like a splitting of hairs, but it is not.

To wit:

Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care.

We often hear the number--40 million--of uninsured people in the United States as though this were itself a problem begging for a solution. It almost never occurs to anyone that many of these people choose to go without health care--for whatever reason.

The bottom line is medical care. But the rhetoric and the talking points are about insurance. Many people who could afford health insurance do not choose to have it because they know that medical care will be available at the nearest emergency room, whether they have insurance or not.

This is especially true for young people, who do not anticipate long-term medical problems and who can always get a broken leg or an allergy attack taken care of at an emergency room — and spend their money on a more upscale lifestyle.

This may not be a wise decision but it is their decision, and there is no reason why other people should lose the right to make decisions for themselves because some people make questionable decisions.

Enough Sowell-quoting. Read the column for yourself. Universal Health Care isn't about bringing down the costs of health care. I don't care at all that the UK or Sweden or wherever spend less on health care than the United States. We spend more because (and I know this is going to shock some of you) we want to spend more on health care.

Sure, if you want the country to spend less on health care, give over control of it to government bureaucrats who will ration whatever limited medical options they make available--fewer MRIs, surgery only for the young, 1 drug option instead of unlimited, money for research for drugs which most successfully lobbied members of Congress.

And this is just a short list of things that occurred to me at 1:43am.

I'm not going to argue that US health care is the best it could be. I would argue that though flawed, it is the best in the world and further, that deregulation and simplification of insurance markets and de-coupling health care from employment, etc., etc., would make it even better. Socialization/universalization of health care would make it worse.


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Thomas Sowell On RNC Chairman Michael Steele

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite thinker-writers. An economist by trade, he has applied his many skills and ability to explain things in simple terms to the problems that afflict America.

Also, he's African-American and conservative, so liberals hate him.

Either one of those reasons (wicked smart or enemy of my enemy) would be enough for me to read him regularly, it's nice that he has both of them on lock-down.

His recent praise and appraisal of Michael Steele, the newly elected RNC chair, is dead on.

Too many Republicans don't even seem to understand the need to talk. They seem to think it is something you have to go through the motions of doing but, really, they would rather be somewhere else doing something else. . . . Michael Steele not only knows how to talk, but also seems to understand the need to talk. In his appearances on TV over the years, he has been assertive rather than apologetic. When attacked, he has counterattacked, not whined defensively, like too many other Republicans. When criticizing the current administration, Steele won't have to pull his punches when going after Barack Obama, for fear of being called a racist.

I pulled for Steele to win the Maryland Senate seat back in 2006. It was a tough year for Republicans and Steele (obviously) lost.

2+ years later, he's making lemonade and I'm glad to have him as RNC chair.

(from WSJ Political Diary, h/t Scott L.)


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Thomas Sowell On 'Intellectualism'

This stuff is pure gold:

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending “the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life.”

He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics.

Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are “interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity,” people who “read the classics.”

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But, half a century later, facts paint a very different picture.

Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.

What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him.

Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin.

Similarly, no one ever thought of President Calvin Coolidge as an intellectual. Yet Coolidge also read the classics in the White House. He read both Latin and Greek, and read Dante in the original Italian, since he spoke several languages. It was said that the taciturn Coolidge could be silent in five different languages.

The intellectual levels of politicians are just one of the many things that intellectuals have grossly misjudged for years on end.

During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model — all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food.

New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for telling the intelligentsia what they wanted to hear — that claims of starvation in the Ukraine were false.

After British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge reported from the Ukraine on the massive deaths from starvation there, he was ostracized after returning to England and unable to find a job.

More than half a century later, when the archives of the Soviet Union were finally opened up under Mikhail Gorbachev, it turned out that about six million people had died in that famine — about the same number as the people killed in Hitler’s Holocaust.

In the 1930s, it was the intellectuals who pooh-poohed the dangers from the rise of Hitler and urged Western disarmament.

It would be no feat to fill a big book with all the things on which intellectuals were grossly mistaken, just in the 20th century — far more so than ordinary people.

History fully vindicates the late William F. Buckley’s view that he would rather be ruled by people represented by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard.

How have intellectuals managed to be so wrong, so often? By thinking that because they are knowledgeable — or even expert — within some narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns, that makes them wise guides to the masses and to the rulers of the nation.

But the ignorance of Ph.D.s is still ignorance and high-IQ groupthink is still groupthink, which is the antithesis of real thinking.

(emphasis added)

Just remember: Conservatives are stupid and anti-intellectual and liberals are smart and debonair.


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Barack 'Ego' Obama

Would it surprise anyone to know that the teenaged girl-like adoration the Obamaniacs have shown The One has gone to his head? I didn't think so.

The Obamaniacs have fueled the egO-maniac

Thomas Sowell:

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise— whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team— is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama’s trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges— very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in the real world.

The signs of Barack Obama’s self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.

The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.

(emphasis added)

I wish Sowell were on the ballot tomorrow--though not, as some of my euro-phile friends wish, as 3rd party candidate.


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Surveying The Case For McCain (& Against Obama)

NRO Editors, 2 columns by Thomas Sowell, 1 by Rich Lowry, & 1 by Charles Krauthammer:

NRO editors:

This election does not present Americans with a straight-up choice between conservatism and liberalism. This is not so much because John McCain is a moderate, although he is, as because liberals are likely to have effective majorities in both houses of Congress. Thus the choice we face is, in most respects, between a liberalism that is checked and one that is not.

We have no doubt that if McCain is president we will find much to criticize. But we will be confident that we have the right commander-in-chief and that liberals do not have a free hand to remake our country. In this election we support Senator McCain and urge all conservatives to do so as well.

Thomas Sowell - "Obama, Powell, & Popularity":

Among the reasons given by Secretary Powell for supporting Barack Obama is that Obama can restore America’s standing with foreign countries.

The idea that the United States must somehow rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the United Nations or NATO or “world opinion” is staggering, even though it is an idea very popular in the mainstream media.

The first duty of a President of the United States is to protect American interests — of which survival is number one — regardless of what others may say.

[...]

Despite the media hype that we need to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the world, the United States of America remains the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.

Even when dozens of governments around the world join the United States in coordinated efforts to fight international terrorism, the media will call our actions “unilateral” if some demagogues in France or Germany spout off against us.

The American nuclear umbrella has enabled Western European nations to escape responsibility for their own military survival for more than half a century.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be “citizens of the world.”

Needless to say, I don't buy this argument about "rehabilitating America's image abroad." They don't hate us any more now than the "Peace Movement" of the 1980s hated Ronald Reagan. These are the fruits of playing policeman of the world.

Charles Krauthammer - "Further Left than LBJ":

McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved — the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush. But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing.

Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment — a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.

An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.

I have a lot of so-called "moderate" friends. They have always complained about the supposed extreme right-wing nature of Republican politics. Alright, guys, you got what you asked for. John McCain is the most moderate candidate since Bill Clinton. He's the Republican party's equivalent of Bill Clinton, minus the womanizing.

Will you vote for him?

Rich Lowry - "Redistribution You Can Believe In":

Obama proposes a dog’s breakfast of tax credits, including a $500 refundable work credit that applies even to people who owe no income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service would cut them a $500 check every year. This essentially is a government payment dressed up as a tax cut. It will be partly funded by new taxes on the top 5 percent. So Obama is redistributing wealth, but in an eminently salable way. Call it “redistributive change we can believe in.”

Obama’s plan wouldn’t, like cuts in marginal tax rates, increase the incentive to work, invest or save. In fact, the opposite. As tax credits phase out, they increase marginal tax rates. But for Obama, his plan is a matter of justice rather than economics.

When in a Democratic primary debate Charlie Gibson of ABC News pointed out to Obama that increasing the capital-gains rate in the past has initially reduced revenue, Obama replied that he wanted the increase “for purposes of fairness.”

But how unfair is the American tax system? It’s already steeply progressive. IRS data show that the top 1 percent of filers paid 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2006. The top 5 percent paid 60 percent. The top half paid 97 percent.

Robbing the rich to bribe the poor. This is Obama's idea of "social justice." Social justice is a joke.

True justice is not taking money from those who earned it and giving it to those who did not.

Thomas Sowell - "A Perfect Storm":

Policies that he proposes under the banner of “change” are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries — and failed repeatedly in other countries.

Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That’s been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.

The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of “change.”

Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.

Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.

Higher taxes to “spread the wealth around,” as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.

Open your eyes, folks.

If you think you've got it bad now under Bush, just wait until you see the craptastic future Obama has in store for you.


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Nobama: An Appeal To Reason

Among my friends who support Barack Obama, there are very few who can actually name or describe in any detail, his admittedly few policy prescriptions. In most cases, I know more about what he has said he would do than they do. For them, a vote for Obama, in addition to being a vote for "change" and "hope," is also a feel-good vote.

Thomas Sowell put it pretty well:

Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.

It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don’t want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts.

An e-mail from a reader mentioned trying to tell his sister why he was voting against Obama but, when he tried to argue some facts, she cut him short: “You don’t like him and I do!” she said. End of discussion.

When one thinks of all the men who have put their lives on the line in battle to defend and preserve this country, it is especially painful to think that there are people living in the safety and comfort of civilian life who cannot be bothered to find out the facts about candidates before voting to put the fate of this nation, and of generations yet to come, in the hands of someone chosen because they like his words or style.

Whether that feelgoodedness comes from the collective cool transferred to them by the Obama camp (another way Obama is a collectivist) or because they believe the hype and the rhetoric or perhaps even because they think electing Obama will somehow help America get past its history rather than Presidentializing a racial grievance monger--whatever reason they feel good about voting for Obama, my sense is that it's going to turn into a feel-bad outcome.

What little we know about Obama--his foul associations with racist, hate-monger Reverend Jeremiah Wright, commie-terrorist Bill Ayers, slum lord Tony Rezko--does not match his airy rhetoric and campaign promises.

Why should we believe a man who promises to cut taxes when, at every opportunity, he has voted to raise taxes or opposed tax cuts?

Why should be believe that a man has any respect for human life when he voted against protecting those babies who, against the odds, survived the abortion procedure and were born alive?

Why should we believe a man will successfully lead our armed forces and protect America when he has demonstrated that politics--winning an election!--is more important than winning a war?--A man who refuses to acknowledge the success of The Surge and would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Why should we believe that Barack Obama will ever do anything that is unpopular politically for the good of his country, when all he has ever done is voted present?

Why should we believe that Obama will do anything to change the way government is run when, after receiving over $100,000 in campaign donations, he so willingly went along with the Fannie Mae train wreck, opposing any attempts at reform. If you believe Obama will change anything in Washington with respect to earmarks, corruption, kickbacks, etc., you are woefully mistaken.

We have no reason to believe--no rational, logical reason to assume--that Barack Obama will actually do what he has promised or be able to do what millions of people have hoped. Those who vote for Obama, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, cast aside all logic and reason and ensconce themselves in a willfully ignorant, padded room of feel-good platitudes.

Unless you are a far left liberal, then you may be pleased with what you will get.


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Mark Steyn On Barack The Benign

From last Saturday's column.

This is why I don't want the U.S. to turn into just another European nation. Because their status quo is unsustainable. And because, when I look north, I see what happens when a North American country plays euro-wannabe.

Would that all conservative pundits stood strong (Parker, Noonan, Buckley) like Mark Steyn.

[...]

McCain vs Obama is not the choice many of us would have liked in an ideal world. But then it’s not an “ideal world”, and the belief that it can be made so is one of the things that separates those who think Obama will “heal the planet” and those of us who support McCain faute de mieux. I agree with Thomas Sowell that an Obama-Pelosi supermajority will mark what he calls “a point of no return”. It would not be, as some naysayers scoff, “Jimmy Carter’s second term”, but something far more transformative. The new president would front the fourth great wave of liberal annexation — the first being FDR’s New Deal, the second LBJ’s Great Society, and the third the incremental but remorseless cultural advance when Reagan conservatives began winning victories at the ballot box and liberals turned their attention to the other levers of the society, from grade school up. The terrorist educator William Ayers, Obama’s patron in Chicago, is an exemplar of the last model: forty years ago, he was in favor of blowing up public buildings; then he figured out it was easier to get inside and undermine them from within.

All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?

In his first inaugural address, Calvin Coolidge said: “I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” That’s true in a more profound sense than he could have foreseen. In Europe, lavish social-democratic government has transformed citizens into eternal wards of the nanny state: the bureaucracy’s assumption of every adult responsibility has severed Continentals from the most basic survival impulse, to the point where unaffordable entitlements on shriveled birth rates have put a question mark over some of the oldest nation states on earth. A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable”.

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

“People of the world,” declared Senator Obama sonorously at his self-worship service in Germany, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”
No, sorry. History proved no such thing. In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people — the Barack Obamas of the day — were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because “the world stood as one” but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing. Senator Obama’s feeble passivity will get you a big round of applause precisely because it’s the easy option: Do nothing but hold hands and sing the easy listening anthems of one-worldism, and the planet will heal.

To govern is to choose. And sometimes the choices are tough ones. When has Barack Obama chosen to take a stand? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he sat for 20 years in the pews of an ugly neo-segregationist race-baiting grievance-monger? When he voted to deny the surviving “fetuses” of botched abortions medical treatment? When in his short time in national politics he racked up the most liberal – ie, the most doctrinaire, the most orthodox, the most reflex — voting record in the Senate? Or when, on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged it and voted merely “present”?

The world rarely stands as one. You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting “present”, you can stand down.

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from “community organizer” to the world’s President-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

See also Pete Du Pont on the "Europeanization" of America and what an Obama presidency might look like.


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Links! Links! Links!

Climate Change

- More Bjørn Lomborg. This time, you can read him in his own words in an op-ed he wrote for The Guardian, a British newspaper. Our opinion on Climate Change pretty well matches his--it's reasonable, empirical, and realistic.

- Lomborg Part II - Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review Online editor, interviewed Lomborg on the intersection of Climate Change and politics. Very interesting read.

Miscellaneous

- Jason L. Riley, member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and pro-immigrationist, wrote about the problem of multiculturalism. Check out, Keep the Immigrants, Deport the Multiculturalists.

- In probably the best article we've read this year on the conservative outlook, Roger Kimball wrote an article entitled Conservative Gloominess. From that article:

Progressives cannot wrap their minds (or, more to the point, their hearts) around this irony: that “reform” so regularly exacerbates either the evil it was meant to cure or another evil it had hardly glimpsed.

- Looking for responsible energy policy? Larry Kudlow weighed in against cap & trade and tentatively in favor of a carbon tax.

- We wrote about it earlier this week when we quoted Pres. Bush's speech to the Knesset and asked readers to find "Barack Obama" in the speech. No one has succeeded yet. Mark Steyn, as usual, does a better job lampooning Obama and his Democrat apologists for their foreign policy idiocy--an idiocy which is even more indefensible in this instance than usual (no mean feat).

- Re: The appeasers in the Democratic party (and those among the Republicans): This, quote of the day:

Liberals think the way to deal with dangerous tyrants is to send in a sensitive president who will make Ahmadinejad fall in love with him. They imagine Obama becoming Ahmadinejad's psychotherapist, like Barbra Streisand in "The Prince of Tides.

- This next article, written by David Ranson, head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc., wrote about tax policy, much-maligned supply-siders, and the state of economic research. (subscription required, email us for a copy)

- Naomi Schaeffer Riley interviewed Roger Hertog about philanthropy and the cause of conservatism in higher education. Very interesting read.

- From the Seattle Times, a newspaper we usually only read for their sports coverage, on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. This is quite the plane requiring a whole new style of production.

- Our fav. economist, Thomas Sowell, gave his recommended summer reading list.

- Finally, Dan Henninger, the other columnist we read without fail each week, on China and Burma and why non-democratic countries suck. It's summed up in the title, Democracies Don't Let People Die, but there's more to it than that. This is push-back against multiculturalists who think all governments, societies, and cultures are equally good, with no one better than the other.

*UPDATE 7:50pm MST: Pendulum Politics

- buruboi on the European demographics. This is a topic that interests us greatly. We'll leave it to buruoi to explain, but European demographics are such that their massive entitlement/welfare state programs are wholly unsustainable. This, combined with unemployment rates that are sometimes double the U.S.'s combine to create a dismal prognosis for Europe's economic future--Western & Northern Europe that is.

Countries in Eastern Europe and Ireland have produced low tax, pro-growth policies similar to the U.S.'s which should help them avoid the future pit and pratfalls of their euro-neighbors.

- RD on Moderation in U.S. politics. We read his post as an economic critique on the policies of the left and right. As in, apply a systematic way to value the priorities of both sides--his examples are the environment & abortion--and then compromise. This seems like wise counsel.

His critique of advocates on the right, so-called pro-lifers, is unfair and unsupported by empirical evidence. He says that the Right cares more about the lives of the unborn than it does people in less-developed countries. The truth is that religious organizations and self-described conservatives donate hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to charities and humanitarian philanthropies organizations around the world every year. Donations in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami are an illustrative example. (see the list of NGO donations).

RD, we agree with your call for moderation, but your critique of the pro-life right's motivations is not accurate.

**UPDATE 22 May 10:31am MST: Ben's assertion regarding a supposed contrast between Reagan, Nixon, (Olmert) responsible diplomacy and Bush's "chest beating" is inaccurately characterized--not least of all because liberals in the '80's used to bash Reagan for being a cowboy (Evil Empire, ramped up military spending, Star Wars, Iran-Contra, etc.).

The meme Ben (and Obama) willfully misread into Bush's comments is that we should never engage in diplomacy. But Bush never said that. This was not the point of Bush's Knesset speech.

It was that Obama's tea-with-Tyrants and Carter's handholding-with-Hamas/Hezbollah is irresponsible and ignorant of reality. Meeting without precondition with tyrants and rogue terrorist states gains American nothing while lending prestige and legitimacy to thugs who kill American soldiers and threaten America and her allies.

When Nixon went to China, it was the result of 134 secret meetings, 18 months "behind-the-scenes" discussions by Henry Kissinger, and another 7 months of diplomatic hard work. (h/t: S. Lybbert)

Similarly, Olmert has not personally met with the Syrians--neither has the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni. We (OL&L) and the U.S. may not like the result or tenor of the talks between the Israelis and the Syrians, but they are low-level meetings (thanks Kurt M.) with preconditions--not direct, POTUS-to-thug meetings w/o preconditions as Obama naively suggested.

Like Ben, we are frustrated with the Bush Administration's failure to stop Iran from killing American soldiers in Iraq and their continued nuclear development. To a lesser extent, we're frustrated with North Korea's continued belligerence.

But these failures do not invalidate Bush's Knesset speech, nor do they mean that the next President should meet with every two-bit terrorist in the world. There are lessons to be learned from Bush's failures, but Obama's is the wrong one.


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Weekend Links

It's not much of a link post--just three articles. But all three are very good.
(edit: 5 articles)
(2nd edit: 6 articles)

- First up, "Why $70 Million Wasn't Enough." This was maybe the most entertaining article we read last year. It's tangible proof of something we've discussed with the guys at Pendulum Politics--specifically, that CEO pay has to compete with the guys in hedge funds and private equity.

- Next, an enlightening article about Bill Cosby and black conservatism. It's good and informative, but reader beware w/regards to the author's interpretation of African American history.

James Q. Wilson has shown that slavery caused by far the greatest damage to the black family. And Thomas Sowell's research has proven that African American families were gaining ground economically on white families prior to Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and some of the other bad policy to come out of that era.

- Finally, from Commentary magazine, an in depth look at "the anatomy of The Surge."

*UPDATE 11 May 11:58pm MST: (hat tip: S. Lybbert) A friendly reminder for those who still think we should/could exit Iraq and everything would be hunky-dory. Popular historian Arthur Herman wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the lives lost after the US withdrew its support in Cambodia and Vietnam. Democrats can close their eyes and plug their ears but it wasn't pretty.

In other news, we still fail to understand the logic of those who argue for intervention in Darfur, but want the US to immediately withdraw from Iraq. Uh, ok.

**UPDATE 11 May 11:59pm MST: (hat tip: Matt Lybbert) We're not experts, but we are economically literate. Check out this article by David Leonhardt in the New York Times on the future potential of economics to solve social problems. (yes, that New York Times)

***UPDATE 12 May 1:03pm MST (h/t: Matt Lybbert): Which of the three remaining candidates is least populist? We think that award should go to John McCain. You see, McCain remains in favor of Nafta and is one of the few and definitely the most visible politician arguing for the virtues of free trade. Check out this article, another from the NYT.


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Provo City Council vs. BYU Students - The Parking Kerfuffle

Lots of news and events this week for our BYU readership.

Our friends organizing the "resistance" to the Provo City Council's ignorant parking program sent us the following email. Read it and attend the upcoming meeting to register your distaste for their new plan.

Most of the city council is now ready to vote to implement the new parking program south of campus (University Ave to 900 E and Campus to Center St). It is important that as many people come as can to voice their opinions. Please read the information found at http://parking.provo.org so you have an idea what is going on.

There are required to hold a public hearing and to allow the community to speak. Please come and speak. Please come prepared. I will have voter registration books on hand for those ready to register to vote in Provo. YOUR VOTE MATTERS.

If they pass this law, I will get a referendum set up for people to sign to put it on the ballot in November. Only locally registered voters signatures are counted. Provo City is pushing us around and trying to run out the little guys. Help us stop them. My landlord is already selling his house because of all the legislation the council has passed that is asinine. They don't want families to stay they want developers. They want to regulate student life so that we don't interfere with their lives.

Please come and support those that will speak out even if you don't want to say anything.

Provo City Council has consistently acted without regard to the student population. We understand why they do it--students aren't registered as voters in Provo so they have nothing to fear when they cross them.

But this parking proposal--regulating parking in areas dominated by students--goes way beyond anything they have done before. The areas they propose to regulate have more students than permanent residents by more than 10-1. They propose to punish, really, a huge student population--several thousand--for the benefit of a few hundred residents.

This follows their recent theme of limiting the student population in the name of protecting permanent resident property rights. This blog consistently argues in favor of protecting property rights. Provo City Council's proposals are not that--they are not simply protecting property rights. They are abusive and dictatorial and violate the property rights of non-resident owners who want to rent their properties to students.

The result? Housing/rent costs for students and other non-permanent residents far above what they should be. The Provo City Council is doing what Thomas Sowell has criticized Bay Area residents for doing for years--making property decisions that punish new and poor residents by causing property prices to rise. These people wont buy the property themselves, so they pass legislation to limit the property rights of those who do want to buy it.

From "Property Rites" by Thomas Sowell:

Many restrictive land use laws in effect turn a chance that someone paid for into a guarantee that they did not pay for, such as a guarantee that a given community would retain its existing character.

In the normal course of events, things change. Land that is not nearly as valuable as farmland as it would be for housing would be sold to people who would build housing. But restrictive laws prevent this from happening.

Such laws help preserve the existing character of the community, at the expense of farmers and others who would gladly sell their land to builders if they had a chance to do so. Because they can't, their value of their land is reduced drastically.

The biggest losers are those families who are deprived of housing and those families who are deprived of the standard of living they could have if they did not have to pay for sky-high rents or home prices due to an artificial scarcity of housing.

The biggest winners are existing homeowners, who see the value of their property go up by leaps and bounds. Also benefitting are environmentalist groups who are able to buy up farmland at a fraction of its value because there are so few alternatives for the farmers.

When long-time Provo residents purchased their property, they didn't purchase a guarantee that any future building would be limited to certain area or certain types of residents (read: not students). They only purchased the right to their own property. Their continued insistence to limit the rights of anyone who came after them through the legislative authority of the Provo City Council is abusive and ignorant of property rights.

Provo City residents have a pretty sweet deal with students. They receive sales tax and rent tax far above what they would otherwise plus all the tax benefits of BYU itself to say nothing of the jobs provided by the presence of BYU or the students. Unlike many other college towns, they don't have to deal with the usual negative aspects of having a large student population--rowdy drinking and riots. Instead, BYU students provide a cheap, educated workforce and literally hundreds of thousands of hours of community service.

In return, Provo residents through the Provo City Council reward BYU students with greater and greater restrictions on how and where they can live (BYU hasn't helped out much there) and how and where they can park. And their reach extends even to areas overwhelmingly dominated by students. We cannot come up with enough adjectives to describe our outrage and many of the ones we'd like to use are not appropriate for this family-friendly blog.

One last appeal: go to the Provo City Council meeting and register your disgust with the council members. Do not be apathetic or lazy and leave the fight to others. Take the fight to them yourself.


Time and Place

Date: Tuesday, 5 February 2008
Time: 7-9:00pm
Location: City Office Building
Street: 351 W Center St.
City: Provo, UT


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Give These Guys Gore's Oscar!

Are you like our friends who insist the debate about global warming is over? Do you believe all scientists agree that human created CO2 is causing global warming? Have you convinced yourself the Kyoto Protocol (or something like it) may actually affect global temperatures?

Think again.

Our brother Matt turned us on to a column by Thomas Sowell which referred to a movie entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Our old man quickly followed with a link to the movie. Thanks Dad.

From Mr. Sowell:

Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

Please, dear lemmings, you owe it to yourselves to watch this movie and listen to a voice of reason before you follow Al Gore and the rest of the Apocalyptic Church of the Holy Environment off the edge of a cliff.

The religious parallels don't end with doomsday predictions as we documented here and here. They even sell indulgences!!! This time, from Charles Krauthammer on carbon credits:

In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.

But don't worry, we're sure zealots like the hypocritical, private jet-flying, Tennessee mansion energy-burning, Mr. Gore will cook up another environmental crusade you can feel morally superior about and persecute others for not joining.

**Update: At the request of some of our more sensitive readers, we've toned down the pejorative language of this post. Thus, "deluded" has become "convinced" and "whack job" is now "zealot." We apologize that "lemmings" remains in this draft. Our search of the thesaurus could not produce a satisfactory substitute.


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Warming Dissent - Part III

Global Hot Air: Part III
By Thomas Sowell

If you take the mainstream media seriously, you might think that every important scientist believes that "global warming" poses a great threat, and that we need to make drastic changes in the way we live, in order to avoid catastrophes to the environment, to various species, and to ourselves.

The media play a key role in perpetuating such beliefs. Often they seize upon every heat wave to hype global warming, but see no implications in record-setting cold weather, such as many places have been experiencing lately.

Remember how the unusually large number of hurricanes a couple of years ago was hyped in the media as being a result of global warming, with more such hurricanes being predicted to return the following year and the years thereafter?

But, when not one hurricane struck the United States all last year, the media had little or nothing to say about the false predictions they had hyped. It's heads I win and tails you lose.

Are there serious scientists who specialize in weather and climate who have serious doubts about the doomsday scenarios being pushed by global warming advocates? Yes, there are.

There is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who set up the American weather satellite system, and who published some years ago a book titled "Hot Talk, Cold Science." More recently, he has co-authored another book on the subject, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years."

There have been periods of global warming that lasted for centuries -- and periods of global cooling that also lasted for centuries. So the issue is not whether the world is warmer now than at some time in the past but how much of that warming is due to human beings and how much can we reduce future warming, even if we drastically reduce our standard of living in the attempt.

Other serious scientists who are not on the global warming bandwagon include a professor of meteorology at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen.

His name was big enough for the National Academy of Sciences to list it among the names of other experts on its 2001 report that was supposed to end the debate by declaring the dangers of global warming proven scientifically.

Professor Lindzen then objected and pointed out that neither he nor any of the other scientists listed ever saw that report before it was published. It was in fact written by government bureaucrats -- as was the more recently published summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is also touted as the final proof and the end of the discussion.

You want more experts who think otherwise? Try a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Patrick J. Michaels, who refers to the much ballyhooed 2001 IPCC summary as having "misstatements and errors" that he calls "egregious."

A professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, David R. Legates, likewise referred to the 2001 IPCC summary as being "often in direct contrast with the scientific report that accompanies it." It is the summaries that the media hype. The full 2007 report has not even been published yet.

Skeptical experts in other countries around the world include Duncan Wingham, a professor of climate physics at the University College, London, and Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University.

The very attempt to silence all who disagree about global warming ought to raise red flags.

Anyone who remembers the 1970s should remember the Club of Rome report that was supposed to be the last word on economic growth grinding to a halt, "overpopulation" and a rapidly approaching era of mass starvation in the 1980s.

In reality, the 1980s saw increased economic growth around the world and, far from mass starvation, an increase in obesity and agricultural surpluses in many countries. But much of the media went for the Club of Rome report and hyped the hysteria.

Many in the media resent any suggestion that they are either shilling for an ideological agenda or hyping whatever will sell newspapers or get higher ratings on TV.

Here is their chance to check out some heavyweight scientists specializing in weather and climate, instead of taking Al Gore's movie or the pronouncements of government bureaucrats and politicians as the last word.

Thomas Sowell, distinguished economist, is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.


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Warming Dissent - Part II

In his comment on yesterday's post, Matt hinted at an interesting point we've been thinking about for some time. Namely, that because Thomas Sowell is African American and conservative, it puts him in a unique commentary position.

Nevermind that the left, in their patronizing way, believe that he is betraying his race (or, for that matter, Michael Steele Republican candidate for Senator in Maryland, or Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, etc.).

However, what's most important about Messer's Steele and Sowell isn't so much their race, but that they are shaking the largely left-imposed politics that they (the left and mainstream media) believe are inextricably tied to their race. Consider Gagdad Bob's observations on this, and other, simliar issues:

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, here is another thing that disgusts us about the liberal media, the idea that we care that she is a "woman." Only a liberal could think that one's reproductive equipment is more important than one's ideas. Likewise, it disgusts [us] -- it literally makes us want to vomit -- to repeatedly hear about Obama's skin color, for we are so far beyond race that it doesn't even occur to us that he's half white. Rather, we only notice that he is halfwit. That is the only thing that matters to us.

Since liberals, with their perfect myopia, have no ideas but instead obsess over things like race, class, and gender, there is much talk that this is the year of potential "firsts." First black president, first female president, etc. But to a [us], they might as well be saying "first chick president," "first n***** president," "first dago president" (Giuliani), "first baby killer president" (McCain), "first cult president" (Romney), for it is no less disgusting to our ears.

Besides, I thought negroes already had a president, Al Sharpton. Isn't he the "black leader?" That's what I heard from the liberal media. "Al Sharpton, Black Leader."

Imagine the bottomless contempt you must have for blacks to presume to appoint them a leader, much less a lowlife like Al Sharpton. Consider for a moment the racial condescension in imagining that, unlike any other Americans, blacks require a "leader" selected by the white liberals who know what's best for them. Sick, sick, sick.

By the way, ladies, who's your chick leader, anyway, Hillary or Pelosi? And where do you get your chick news, from Katie Couric or from the View? And if Tom Sowell is my leader, does that make me black?

We read Mr. Sowell because he's smart and an excellent writer. We appreciate his application of pragmatic economic principles to the issues that we face. This next article, part two in this series, is yet another example of that.

_____

Global Hot Air: Part II
By Thomas Sowell

Propaganda campaigns often acquire a life of their own. Politicians who have hitched their wagons to the star of "global warming" cannot admit any doubts on their part, or permit any doubts by others from becoming part of a public debate.

Neither can environmental crusaders, whose whole sense of themselves as saviors of the planet is at stake, as they try to stamp out any views to the contrary.

A recent and revealing example of the ruthless attempts to silence anyone who dares question the global warming crusade began with a "news" story in the British newspaper "The Guardian." It quickly found an echo among American Senators on the left -- Bernard Sanders, an avowed socialist, and John Kerry, Pat Leahy and Dianne Feinstein, who are unavowed.

The headline of the "news" story said it all: "Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study." According to "The Guardian," scientists and economists "have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report."

It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest. Here they dispose of scientists who are skeptical of the global warming hysteria by depicting them as being bribed by lobbyists for the oil companies.

While such charges may be enough for crusading zealots to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the mantle of virtue, some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to know the actual facts.

In this case, the fact is that the American Enterprise Institute -- a think tank, not a lobbyist -- did what all kinds of think tanks do, all across the political spectrum, all across the country, and all around the world.

AEI has planned a roundtable discussion of global warming, attended by people with differing views on the subject. That was their fundamental sin, in the eyes of the global warming crowd. They treated this as an issue, rather than a dogma.

Like liberal, conservative, and other think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute pays people who do the work of preparing scholarly papers for presentation at its roundtables. Ten thousand dollars is not an unusual amount and many have received more from other think tanks for similar work.

Enter Senators Sanders, Kerry, Leahy, and Feinstein. In a joint letter to the head of the American Enterprise Institute, they express shock, shock, like the corrupt police official in "Casablanca."

These Senators express "our very serious concerns" about reports that AEI "offered to pay scientists up to $10,000 for questioning the findings" of other scientists. The four Senators express how "saddened" they would be if the reports are true, "by the depths to which some would sink to undermine the scientific consensus" on global warming.

If the reports are true, the Senators continue, "it would highlight the extent to which moneyed interests distort honest scientific and public policy discussions" by "bribing scientists to support a pre-determined agenda."

The Senators ask: "Does your donors' self-interest trump an honest discussion over the well-being of the planet?" They demand that "AEI will publicly apologize for this conduct."

As the late Art Buchwald once said about comedy and farce in Washington, "You can't make that up!"

If it is a bribe to pay people for doing work, then we are all bribed every day, except for those who inherited enough money not to have to work at all. Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists who produced the recent report that politicians, environmentalists, and the media tout as the last word on global warming.

The trump card of the left is that one of the big oil companies contributed money to the American Enterprise Institute -- not as much as one percent of its budget, but enough for a smear.

All think tanks have contributors or they could not exist. But facts carry little weight in smears, even by politicians who question other people's honesty.

Thomas Sowell, distinguished economist, is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.


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Warming Dissent - Part I

Has there ever been a more effective propaganda machine/echo chamber than the political left and mainstream media? We think not.

That's part of the reason you'll rarely have the opportunity, nay privilege, of reading an article by Thomas Sowell. With the passing of Milton Friedman last year (RIP), we're glad we have Mr. Sowell to carry the common sense torch of basic economics. In this article, and the two to follow, Mr. Sowell applies his background in economics to the hysteria of global warming. Read on.

_____

Global Hot Air
By Thomas Sowell

The political left's favorite argument is that there is no argument. Their current crusade is to turn "global warming" into one of those things that supposedly no honest and decent person can disagree about, as they have already done with "diversity" and "open space."

The name of "science" is invoked by the left today, as it has been for more than two centuries. After all, Karl Marx's ideology was called "scientific socialism" in the 19th century. In the 18th century, Condorcet analogized his blueprint for a better society to engineering, and social engineering has been the agenda ever since.

Not all the advocates of "global warming" are on the left, of course. Crusades are not just for crusaders. There are always hangers-on who can turn the true believers' crusades into votes or money or at least notoriety.

Whether the globe really is warming is a question about facts -- and about where those facts are measured: on land, in the air or under the sea. There is no question that there is a "greenhouse" effect. Otherwise, half the planet would freeze every night when there is no sunlight falling on it.

There is also no question that the earth can warm or cool. It has done both at one time or another for thousands of years, even before there were SUVs. If there had never been any global warming before, we wouldn't be able to enjoy Yosemite Valley today for it was once buried under thousands of feet of ice.

Back in the 1970s, the environmental hysteria was about the dangers of a new ice age. This hysteria was spread by many of the same individuals and groups who are promoting today's hysteria about global warming.

It is not just the sky that is falling. Government money is falling on those who seek grants to study global warming and produce "solutions" for it. But that money is not as likely to fall on those skeptics in the scientific community who refuse to join the stampede.

Yes, Virginia, there are skeptics about global warming among scientists who study weather and climate. There are arguments both ways -- which is why so many in politics and in the media are so busy selling the notion that there is no argument.

If you heard both arguments, you might not be so willing to go along with those who are prepared to ruin the economy, sacrificing jobs and the national standard of living on the altar to the latest in an unending series of crusades, conducted by politicians and other people seeking to tell everyone else how to live.

What about all those scientists mentioned, cited or quoted by global warming crusaders?

There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.

Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report -- or even saw it before it was published.

One of those very distinguished climate scientists -- Richard S. Lindzen of MIT -- publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that.

In short, there has been a full court press to convince the public that "everybody knows" that a catastrophic global warming looms over us, that human beings are the cause of it, and that the only solution is to turn more money and power over to the government to stop us from our dangerous ways of living.

Among the climate experts who are not part of that "everybody" are not only Professor Lindzen but also Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, whose book "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years," punctures the hot air balloon of the global warming crusaders. So does the book "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, which contains essays by others who are not part of "everybody."

Thomas Sowell, distinguished economist, is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.


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