Minor Thoughts from me to you

It amazes me that American liberals trust the U.N. to do a good job managing international crisises and other countries, but distrust the United States when it tries to do the same. It amazes me because the U.N. is an incredibly incompetent organization. Liberals are horrified by the perceived incompetency of the Bush administration. Yet the Bush administration is far, far more competent, capable and law-abiding than the vast majority of the U.N.

Take, just for example, the performance of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. Michael Totten recently reported on the situation.

There is no love for the United Nations in Kosovo.

Kosovo is the fourth country I've visited where the UN has or has had a key role, and in only one of them - Lebanon - is the UN not despised by just about everyone. In Lebanon the UN has so little power to make a difference one way or the other that any anger at the institution would largely be pointless. In Bosnia, though, UN "peacekeepers" stood by impotently while genocide and ethnic-cleansing campaigns were carried out right in front of them. The UN's Oil for Food program was thoroughly corrupted by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq at the expense of just about everybody who lives there. Kosovo, meanwhile, declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, but the elected government is still subordinate to the almost universally despised UN bureaucrats who are the real power. Many Kosovars insist the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is actually a dictatorship.

UNMIK is the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. It has been the de-facto government of Kosovo since the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade lost control at the end of the 1999 war. Kosovo has its own nominal government, but it has little power.

"So you have UN rule," Kurti continued, "which is not leaving, and you have the ICO and EU-elects about to come. They are doubling the bureaucracy here. And we are stuck because we depend on their consensus. That means we depend on their lowest common denominator. What they care about is stability, never development or progress. For them, a crisis is only an explosion of crisis. If there is huge unemployment, poverty, they don't care."

"So if the EU is administering Kosovo's government," I said, "what does that mean for Kosovo's government? Will they be subordinate to the EU or operating in parallel?"

"They will be subordinate," he said, "because Peter Feith will have the right to sack our ministers and change our laws. So he is going to supervise the government. Peter Feith hopes he will not be challenged to use his powers where he can simply dismantle the parliament, call new elections, change a certain minister, or say this law is not good after it has been passed in our assembly. They are hoping for self-censorship from our government in order not to be challenged and not to use those powers which would unmask them as the dictatorship they really are. It is a dictatorship, but they do not want to be seen as one, so they say we are here only to supervise. They talk a lot with our prime minister and ministers, do this, do that, in order not to be seen in the background as a sort of monarchy."

"What is their reason for wanting to do this?" I said.

"They mediate between Prishtina and Belgrade after overthrowing Milosevic," he said, "and they simply don't use any more sticks, only carrots. Serbia is very aggressive, and in order to make sure that Serbia is not going to be indignant, they say Yes, Kosovo is independent, but don't worry, it is us there. That is one reason I think they are here.

"Second," he continued, "every bureaucracy seeks self perpetuation. A lot of people here have very high salaries, and they are like big fishes in a small pond. And they are more or less all of them into this process of privatization. Because we cannot touch them legally, they have free hands to do whatever they want. Many of them got very rich. 80 percent of the money from the international community that was poured onto Kosovo in these nine years went for technical assistance, seminars, conferences, and so on. A lot of money is in their hands this way. They direct it. It's an authoritarian law. So I think this is another reason why they're here."

"What kinds of things have the EU and the UN done here that are bad, specifically?" I said. "I get your general point, but what are the practical results of all this?"

"No economic development at all," he said. "Zero. No factories. No industry. Nothing. The fiscal policy is terrible. They promised us a market economy, and we ended up in a market without an economy. Then there is the internal division of Kosovo. The North is divided from the rest. The red is Serb areas, and here are new municipalities about to be created by Ahtisaari's plan where the soft partition is strengthening itself."

Now the vast majority of people think very poorly of UNMIK. If you talk to a person from Kosovo about UNMIK they might say it is not that bad, but if you drink a beer with that person they will tell you what he really thinks."

I didn't have to drink beer with Kosovars to hear uniformly and relentlessly negative opinions of the United Nations. I didn't meet a single person who approves of the performance of the UN. Anti-UN and anti-EU graffiti is common, and it sharply contrasts with the pro-American graffiti that is almost as common.

All the graffiti I saw about the UN and the EU was negative. All the graffiti I saw about the US was positive, without exceptions.

Not only that, many of the U.N. officials and employees are flat out incompetent.

"I was going to go to Macedonia," he told me, "and a UN guy from Ghana on the border asks for papers. I gave him random papers that weren't documents, just to joke with him, and he said Thank you sir, good day, you can go. I said give me your supervisor. So a guy from Germany comes up and says can I see your papers. I said those are my papers in your hand. He said These papers are nothing! I said I know, and this guy was going to let me go through with just a 'good day!' The German guy went crazy. When you send a mission to a troubled country, you have to send people who are educated, who will create the rule of law. But to send idiots - I swear to God, I was so mad. They came from Africa and got their drivers licenses in Kosovo. There were several kids who were killed by these guys crashing into them. Nobody cares. The UN is mad."

The Kosovars were stunned to hear about how well the Americans have treated the Iraqis.

"The government of Iraq has more sovereignty than you do," I said.

That shocked them. Iraq is in vastly worse shape overall than Kosovo. And yet Iraq regained much more of its sovereignty in a shorter amount of time, even while fending off a ferocious insurgency and civil war.

Right now, the Kosovars would love to have been occupied by the United States. If they had, they'd have more control over their own country, they'd have a functioning economy, and the Americans would have sent trained and competent administrators. Not only that, the American administrators would have been eager to pass their expertise and knowledge along to the Kosovars.

Why does the American left hate American interventions but love United Nations interventions?

Researches keep moving along with solar power advancements. The latest advancement is a new antireflective coating that allows solar panels to absorb more sunlight.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

"To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky," said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university's Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. "Our new antireflective coating makes this possible."

... An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it -- meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

After a silicon surface was treated with Lin's new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it -- meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.

That's exciting stuff. Of course, there's a while to go yet before we have solar panels on our houses. The comments on the original article point out some of the remaining issues. For instance, this new coating requires 7 new layers on top of the solar cell. How expensive are these layers? Does the additional energy offset the additional manufacturing cost? What about converting that extra sunlight into electricity? The sunlight isn't necessarily converted into electricity just because it's absorbed by the panel. What about conversion efficiency? Existing panels convert sunlight to electricity at around 30% efficiency. New panels with this coating will collect more light but still convert it with ridiculously low efficiency.

To have a viable solar infrastructure we need panels that can absorb nearly 100% of the incoming sunlight, convert nearly 100% of the incoming sunlight, and convert the sunlight with much better efficiency. More than that, the final panels need to be relatively cheap or no one will be able to buy and use them. We're not there yet. But we are getting closer. And I look forward to the day that I can power a significant portion of my home's energy needs with solar energy.

A free market economy is always generating new ideas, finding new ways to use people and materials, finding new ways to cut waste and improve lives. For today's example, look no further than the grass on next Sunday's football games. In most cases, that's not grass that's FieldTurf. It's not just a clever product. It's a product that was unimaginable a generation ago. It's a product that FDR's bright boys never would have dreamed up, but that many organizations wouldn't want to do without.

What is FieldTurf?

FieldTurf's inventors were sportsmen - not carpet makers. Former players and coaches, not turf salesmen. They approached the challenge from a completely different perspective. They wanted to develop a synthetic system that offered the beneficial biomechanical properties of natural grass, combined with the best attributes of a durable synthetic system: all-weather playability, low maintenance, and unlimited playing time.

The idea was simple. Looks Like Grass... Feels Like Grass... Plays Like Grass. But the technology to make it happen was not simple at all. After several years of hard work, after trials, tests, consultations with players, coaches, trainers and doctors, sample plots, equipment modifications, and countless formulations, FieldTurf was born.

FieldTurf is fundamentally different from all others. Stable, firm not spongy, non-abrasive and uniform in traction, FieldTurf is engineered to play and feel like natural grass. On FieldTurf, players perform with confidence - and never experience the accelerated fatigue and muscle / joint stress associated with lightweight, rubber- filled systems. Like blades of natural grass, FieldTurf's fibers are soft and easy to slide on. They are surrounded and stabilized by FieldTurf's patented, heavy fill - the «artificial earth» that so clearly sets FieldTurf apart. Composed of smooth, rounded silica sand and cryogenically frozen and smashed rubber particles, FieldTurf's patented infill is engineered to stay «in suspension» providing years of proper biomechanics, shock absorbency and durability. A patented process of precision layering ensures infill uniformity. The result is a stable, resilient, predictable place to play - grass-like performance of the highest quality.

FieldTurf revolutionized the turf industry, and in many ways, the entire world of sport.

Why is FieldTurf so vital to so many organizations?

Installation of a FieldTurf field eliminates the use of harmful pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides, while at the same time, removes over 40,000 tires from landfill sites.

FieldTurf requires no mowing, fertilizing, reseeding or watering. A typical soccer / football field can use between 2.5 million and 3.5 million gallons of water per year.

FieldTurf saves a billion gallons of fresh water every year. Coupled with reduced labor costs related to maintenance, equipment and elimination of costs for supplies such as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, many of our clients report a reduction in maintenance costs of as much as $30,000 to $60,000 per field, per year.

"The safety of athletes and communities is, and always has been, the number one priority at FieldTurf," said FieldTurf Tarkett CEO Joe Fields. "Our commitment to the environment ensures that our products are constantly being tested to ensure safety. The FieldTurf system has worked wonders for organizations all over the world as a product that reduces water consumption and pollution caused by chemical use, while increasing playing time, reducing injuries and promoting a healthy lifestyle." The installation of FieldTurf eliminates the use of harmful pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides and fungicides, while at the same time removes thousands of tires from landfill sites. FieldTurf requires no mowing, fertilizing, reseeding or watering. FieldTurf helps organizations earn the necessary points needed for U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification. FieldTurf's reused rubber content and water use reduction, among other factors, can contribute up to 10 points towards LEED certification.

I love this! It allow organizations to cut down on the usage of lawn mowers -- and all of the gasoline and pollution that go along with them. It allows organizations to cut down on fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. This not only saves wear and tear on the environment, it also saves money. Not only that, it allows athletes to play sports in the desert. This is important for everyone in the deserts of California, Nevada, and Utah, where water is scarce.

What about that rubber content? Well, check out the rubber re-use.

The FieldTurf infill contains three times more material than any of our competitors. That's 560,000 lbs. more infill per field! ... Our infill is layered to deliver perfect biomechanical performance. A stabilizing ballast of silica sand enhances vertical drainage. Multiple layers of sand and cryogenic rubber follow, which provide energy restitution, proper cleat penetration with quick twist and release and improved Gmax. A final top layer of larger sized cryogenic rubber granules completes the system.

FieldTurf is taking tons of tire out of landfills every year and putting it into American sports facilities. What a great country.

I imagine the FieldTurf company is getting filthy rich off of their product. And why shouldn't they? Their engineers have designed a product that's better -- and more environmentally friendly! -- than real grass. Whodathunkit? It's worth repeating that this entire industry would have been unimaginable 100 years ago. While we're busy worrying about today's economy, somebody somewhere is thinking up the next great idea. Whatever it is, it's something that we can't imagine.

Politicians of all stripes are talking about preventative medicine. They claim that if we catch medical problems earlier, we can fix them for less. By paying a little more now, we can save a lot more later. The only problem? It doesn't work.

It boils down to encouraging the well to have themselves tested to make sure they are not sick. And that approach doesn't save money; it costs money.

Increasing the amount of testing for an ever-expanding list of problems always identifies many more people as having disease and still more as being "at risk." Screening for heart disease, problems in major blood vessels and a variety of cancers has led to millions of diagnoses of these diseases in people who would never have become sick.

Likewise, recent expansions in the definitions of diabetes, high cholesterol and osteoporosis defined millions more as suddenly needing therapy. A new definition of "abnormal bone density," for example, turned 6.8 million American women into osteoporosis patients literally overnight.

These interventions do prevent advanced illness in some patients, but relatively few. Any savings from preventing those cases is dwarfed by the cost of intervening early in millions of additional patients. No wonder pharmaceutical companies and medical centers see preventive medicine as a great way to turn people into patients -- and paying customers.

Early screening is like the "check engine" light in your car. It can alert you to problems that need to be fixed, but too often it picks up trivial abnormalities that don't affect performance, like one sensor's recognizing that another sensor isn't sensing.

And if we look hard enough, we'll probably find out that one of your check-engine lights is on.

What's wrong with that? Getting extra -- possibly unneeded -- medical care can't hurt, can it?

It's hard to ignore a "check-engine" light. Some mechanics reset them and see if they come on again, but often they lead you to a repair. And you may have had the unfortunate experience that a repair makes matters worse.

If so, you have some feel for the problem of overdiagnosis. Almost everybody with a diagnosis undergoes treatment. And all of our treatments have some harms. From 1 to 5 percent of patients die after major surgery, and as we are all increasingly aware, prescription medicines carry real risks. Recent experiences with hormone replacement (breast cancer) and Vioxx (heart attacks) are potent reminders that our "best" new treatments may harbor unpleasant surprises.

Oh. Not only is "preventative medicine" more expensive, it's also riskier. Maybe I'll stick to going to the doctor only when I actually feel sick.

Hate flying? Don't blame it on the evil "free-market", "private" airlines. There are huge chunks of the system that they don't control. There are also many decisions that they don't get to make, thanks to government regulations. Add air travel to the list of hated things that government is partially responsible for screwing up. Scott McCartney writes about some of the details in the Wall Street Journal.

Last year, nearly one-quarter of all U.S. airline flights were delayed, and the average delay was 55 minutes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Passengers lost 112 million hours of time spent waiting, according to estimates compiled by GRA Inc., a consulting firm, based on Department of Transportation data. That's 12,785 years worth of waiting time.

And that doesn't count the delay already baked into airline schedules. On average, U.S. airline flights were scheduled 15 minutes longer in 2006 than in 1997, based on the same distances, according to a study by researchers Steven Morrison and Clifford Winston. Compare current airline schedules to old timetables and you'll find that it apparently takes 25 minutes longer to fly from New York to Los Angeles than it did 10 years ago.

Delays cost airlines $8.1 billion in direct operating costs in 2007, mostly burning extra fuel and paying crews for the extra time. That's more than the U.S. industry has ever earned in a year. Cutting delays can boost productivity, help the environment, reduce foreign oil imports and make the airline industry more financially stable.

More than 1,600 flights last year sat for longer than three hours waiting to take off, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

How is that the government's fault? Well, they control the old, out-dated, and insufficient air traffic control system.

The root of most of the travel problems is a creaky air-travel system run by the FAA that struggles to meet today's demand and certainly can't handle future growth. It's basic national infrastructure in need of modernization. The skies are our interstate highway system and we need new freeways.

The current time-table for modernizing air-traffic control covers 20 years, and the history of the effort is filled with delays. What's needed is a full-court press.

Former FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey says the transformation to a modern system can "absolutely" be sped up. She says the FAA can quickly put in more departure and arrival routes that take advantage of advanced navigation equipment already on a lot of newer aircraft, and if the government makes a bigger commitment to modernize, it will rev up improvement even further by spurring bigger investments by airlines. So far, airlines have been cautious about buying new equipment before the FAA can put it to good use.

"A bigger government commitment in this area, though modest by most standards, makes the business case work for the airlines to equip much of the rest of their fleet," Ms. Blakey said.

Many industry watchers would like to see the FAA split into two parts: a safety regulator for airlines, airports and air-traffic controllers, and a separate air-traffic-control system run in a business-like manner by a not-for-profit entity, not government.

One major reason to split the FAA is that the agency today is both the safety regulator and the operator. In air-traffic control, the FAA regulates itself, leading to potential conflicts of interest.

Dorothy Robyn, a principal of Brattle Group and the White House transportation adviser in the Clinton administration, says the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations in which air-traffic control is still operated and regulated by the same agency. This summer she proposed that a split would enhance safety and at the same time yield faster progress on modernization.

"The problems of the air-traffic-control system are the predictable result of flawed public policy," Dr. Robyn says.

Air-traffic control is a high-technology business these days, requiring lots of investment in new equipment and lots of focus on productivity and service. Traditional government agencies aren't particular good at that, especially when constrained by federal budget rules and sometimes micromanaged by Congress, which often dictates which town will get a new control tower or runway.

Just one more reason why I'm thankful that we have a government to watch over us and protect us. Or not.

Everything you know about stretching is probably wrong. So say many sports researchers.

When Duane Knudson, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Chico, looks around campus at athletes warming up before practice, he sees one dangerous mistake after another. "They're stretching, touching their toes. . . . " He sighs. "It's discouraging."

If you're like most of us, you were taught the importance of warm-up exercises back in grade school, and you've likely continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes' warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds -- known as static stretching -- primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg's muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements.

A few days ago I said that we shouldn't be afraid of the future. It's impossible to predict where the next round of innovation will come from, but it always comes. Economists love to talk about "creative destruction" -- the idea that the market will destroy old, inefficient, unneeded businesses and create new, efficient, needed businesses instead. But how does creative destruction work? How can a business failure of a business slump lead to a new business?

Let's look at Bonobos. Not the primates, the pants company. Here's how they describe themselves.

Bonobos exists to solve two problems we had ourselves. (1) Men's pants do not fit well; they are either baggy, frumpy, and unflattering. Or way too tight. We make pants that fit and look better, on most gents and especially on guys with athletic builds. The second problem (2) is retail. How could we enjoy paying 120% markup to try on clothes in an uncomfortable public environment where sales associates--who are total strangers--either scrutinize our figures, or pay no attention to us at all? Meanwhile, pricing games are no fun. We're tired of waiting for sales... but paying full price makes no sense when inevitably everything will go on sale. We got tired of the traditional retail shopping experience. So we are building a different kind of clothing company, one that offers a fantastic customer experience, innovative low-cost distribution, and a stylish product that fits well.

Their pants are sold only online and at a steep discount, compared to traditional mens' pants. Now, $100 a pop is still too expensive for me (I tend to dress sloppy because I can), but it's cheap for the market they're entering. And they're definitely being helped by the lousy economy. Check out Smart Money's recent profile of the company.

Turns out that even in a downturn, the number of business start-ups is pretty constant, hovering at around 640,000 a year. Economic slumps typically last six months, so they don't tend to affect entrepreneurial plans that have been years in the making. Nor is the start-up success rate hurt by the vagaries of the business cycle, says Brian Headd, economist at the Small Business Administration.

There are actually advantages to starting up in tough times. You get a year or two to iron out kinks before the buying climate picks up, notes Bob Goodson, president of YouNoodle, a San Francisco-based entrepreneurial networking site. Overhead costs are lower, commercial space is easier to find, and there's less competition for talent. Bonobos, for example, was able to save up to 15 percent on salaries for junior staff, and found associates willing to work 30-day trial periods without permanent job offers -- which would have been impossible in a hot economy.

Jobs are being destroyed in the banking, investment, and construction industries. In exchange, jobs are being created in other industries. New companies are hiring the newly available talent and investing in the suddenly cheaper resources around them. New companies and new ideas will grow out of the ashes of our current crash & burn economy. Just wait and see.

Barack Obama and the Democrats have been hammering the Bush tax cuts ever since they were signed into law. Over the last 6 years we've heard an endless litany of complaints about the tax cuts. Most complaints center around the claim that Bush cut taxes for the wealthy, gave away huge amounts of money to the rich, and left the rest of the country to rot.

How well is that claim holding up? Not so well [Warning: PDF.].

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data show that the total effective federal tax rate of the middle fifth of households declined after 2001 to its lowest levels since at least 1979, Congressman Jim Saxton, ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, said today. Under the 2001 and 2003 tax relief legislation, the income tax as a share of income for the middle fifth also has fallen to its lowest levels in decades.

Huh. Boy, I'm sure glad that we'll finally be rid of President Bush's failed economic policies.

Australia has socialized its medical services. Australian friends tell me that providing basic medical care for free is the only fair and just thing to do. Well, how fair and just is this?

A German doctor hoping to gain permanent residency in Australia said Friday he will fight a decision by the immigration department to deny his application because his son has Down syndrome.

Bernhard Moeller came to Australia with his family two years ago to help fill a doctor shortage in a rural area of Victoria state.

His temporary work visa is valid until 2010, but his application for permanent residency was rejected this week. The immigration department said Moeller's 13-year-old son, Lukas, "did not meet the health requirement."

"A medical officer of the Commonwealth assessed that his son's existing medical condition was likely to result in a significant and ongoing cost to the Australian community," a departmental spokesman said in a statement issued Thursday by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

"This is not discrimination. A disability in itself is not grounds for failing the health requirement -- it is a question of the cost implications to the community," the statement said.

This is the end result of socialized medicine. Everyone will be judged based on how much they cost the community. Do you cost too much? Goodbye, nice knowing you. It's impossible to preserve individual human dignity and worth as long as the community has to pay for that individuals. Communities will quickly find ways to exclude the costliest people and include the cheapest people. A system that was supposed to remove the "indignity" of making people pay their own quickly degrades to a system that values people solely on the basis of a cost / benefit analysis.

Ironic, no?

Quote of the day.

Obama laughs off the charge of socialist behavior -- and to be fair, socialism isn't the precise term to affix to his ideas. It's more like Robin Hood economics. On a recent campaign stop, Obama joked that, by the end of the week, McCain would be accusing him "of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten."

A funny line. But, of course, Obama's lofty intellect must comprehend the fundamental difference between sharing your G.I. Joe with a friend and having a bully snatch your G.I. Joe for the collective, prepubescent good. It's the difference between coercion and free association and trade. In practical terms, it's the difference between government cheese and a meal at Ruth's Chris.

Now, I'm not suggesting Obama intends to transform this nation into 1950s-era Soviet tyranny or that he will possess the power to do so. I'm suggesting Obama is praising and mainstreaming an economic philosophy that has failed to produce a scintilla of fairness or prosperity anywhere on Earth. Ever.

• If it redistributes like a duck... - The Denver Post

It's popular among the Christian left to talk up the "Old Testament" values of social justice: caring for the poor, paying fair wages, not perverting justice, etc. They're fond of the Old Testament prophets and the prophets jeremiads against wealth and privilege.

Increasingly, the Christian left is also fond of promoting Democrat candidates and talking about how Republican candidates only look out for the rich and powerful. The exact people that the Old Testament prophets inveighed against. Ergo, the Old Testament prophets hated Republican ideals and all good Christians will vote against Republican ideals.

If that's true, what should we make of the Democrats record on free trade? After all, the poor in America are far richer than the poor in the third world. By any just standard, the America's poor are rich. They're poor only if they're exclusively compared to other Americans. Free trade is the biggest and best "social justice" platform in existence. Free trade spreads the wealth around the entire world and gives opportunities to billions of people in the third world.

If we do as the Democrats demand -- if we restrict free trade -- we remove opportunities from billions of impoverished people. "Fair trade" would take jobs away from those that need them the most. "Fair trade" would raise prices for those that can least afford to pay them. "Fair trade" would benefit rich Americans (that is, all Americans) at the expense of the global poor.

Is that Christian? I don't think so. But don't take my word for it. India has good reason to fear a Democrat government.

So, pressures will mount for protectionist measures and beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the US, hurting countries like India. Apart from erecting import barriers and subsidising dumped exports, US politicians will seek to curb the outsourcing of services to India. Visa curbs will slow the movement of skilled workers and their dollar remittances back to India.

[Obama] has voted against trade barriers only 36% of the time. He supported export subsidies on the two occasions on which he voted, a 100% protectionist record in this regard.

In 2007, he voted to reduce visas issued to foreign workers (such as Indian software engineers), and to ban Mexican trucks on US roads. He sometimes voted for free trade - he supported the Oman Free Trade Act and a bill on miscellaneous tariff reductions and trade preference extensions. More often he voted for protectionist measures including 100% scanning of imported containers (which would make imports slower and costlier), and emergency farm spending.

In 2005 he voted to impose sanctions on China for currency manipulation, and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He voted for the Byrd amendment, a disgraceful bill (later struck down by the WTO) that gifted anti-dumping duties to US producers who complained, thus making complaining more profitable than competitive production.

Obama says the North American Free Trade agreement is a bad one, and must be renegotiated. He has opposed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement on the bogus ground that Colombia is not protecting its trade union leaders from the drug mafia. In fact, such assassinations have fallen steadily from 205 in 2001 to just 25 last year. Obama is cynically twisting facts to woo the most protectionist US trade unions. This cannot but worry India, which may also be subjected to bogus slander and trade disadvantages.

Unlike Obama, McCain voted against imposing trade sanctions on China for supposedly undervaluing its currency to keep exports booming and accumulate large forex reserves. India has followed a similar policy, though with less export success than China. But if indeed India achieves big success in the future, it could be similarly targeted by US legislators and, will need people like McCain to resist.

Obama favours extensive subsidies for US farmers, hitting Third World exporters like India. This has been one of the issues on which the Doha Round of WTO is gridlocked. McCain could open the gridlock, Obama will strengthen it.

Obama also favours subsidies for converting maize to ethanol. The massive diversion of maize from food to ethanol has sent global food and fertiliser prices skyrocketing, hitting countries like India. But McCain has always opposed subsidies for both US agriculture and ethanol. While campaigning, he had the courage to oppose such subsidies even in Iowa, an agricultural state he badly needs to win if he is to become president.

I want to help the poor. I want the poor to succeed and become rich. I don't want to protect the rich at the expense of the poor. That's why I support open borders, free trade, and no import / export tariffs. That's why I'm surprised that so many people who talk so much about helping the poor consistently support policies that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Life is full of risk. No matter how hard we try, we can't eliminate that risk. Nor should we. Risk leads directly to rewards. Not all of the time. Sometimes risk leads to failure. But those failures teach us what we need to know in order to reach the rewards. More than that, it's impossible to reach a reward without taking a risk along the way.

Each crisis that comes along gives us a chance to learn a lesson and reach for a bigger reward. But we have another option. Instead of striving forward, we can cower in fear of what's around the bend. Instead of striving forward, we can attempt to stay exactly where we are, praying that things don't get worse.

That's where we are with this election. Michael Barone wrote today about Obama's vision for the country. It's a vision of fear. It's a vision that says we need to freeze things where they are, before they get any worse. It's a vision that seeks to remove all risk by franctically holding tight to what we have. It's a vision that just may prevent us from getting poorer. But it's also a vision that we'll ensure that we don't get richer.

Is this the vision you want?

The purpose of New Deal legislation was not, as commonly thought, to restore economic growth but rather to freeze the economy in place at a time when it seemed locked in a downward spiral. Its central program, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), created 700 industry councils for firms and unions to set minimum prices and wages. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the ancestor of our farm bills, limited production to hold up prices. Unionization, encouraged by NRA and the 1935 Wagner Act, was meant to keep workers in jobs that the unemployed would have taken at lower pay.

These policies did break the downward spiral. But, as Amity Shlaes points out in The Forgotten Man, they failed to restore growth. Double-digit unemployment continued throughout the 1930s; despite population growth, the economy failed to rebound to 1920s production levels. High taxes on high earners (a Herbert Hoover as well as Franklin Roosevelt policy) financed welfare payments ("spread the wealth around") but reduced investment and growth.

Obama seems determined to follow policies better suited to freezing the economy in place than to promoting economic growth. Higher taxes on high earners, for one. He told Charlie Gibson he would raise capital-gains taxes even if that reduced revenue: less wealth to spread around, but at least the rich wouldn't have it -- reminiscent of the Puritan sumptuary laws that prohibited the wearing of silk. Moves toward protectionism like Hoover's (Roosevelt had the good sense to promote free trade). National health insurance that threatens to lead to rationing and to stifle innovation. Promoting unionization by abolishing secret ballot union elections.

Roosevelt in the 1930s had some extremely competent social engineers, like Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes and Fiorello LaGuardia, who could enroll 750,000 people on welfare in three weeks and build an airport in less than a year. But even they could not spur the economic growth produced by utterly unknown and unconnected people, as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were in 1970.

Reject social engineering. Reject the temptation to believe that somewhere out there is some One that can lead us into a brighter tomorrow. No One person can understand the American economy well enough to plan a brighter tomorrow. We only have one hope. And I won't lie: it entails risk.

We must place our hope in the thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs that will create the world of tomorrow. We don't know who they are. We don't know what they'll create. We don't know where they'll come from or where they'll take us. But if American history teaches us one thing, it teaches us this. The American entreprenurial spirit will take us somewhere we never expected, somewhere we never could have imagined, but somewhere far better than we dared dream. Just contrast the world of 1908 with the world of 2008. Wasn't it worth a little risk? Even with a Great Depression in the middle, didn't it turn out far better than our great-grandparents would have ever dreamed?

Reject fear and embrace hope. Reject those who would tie our economy down with new rules, with new regulations, with new concepts of "fairness". Embrace change, embrace risk, and look forward to the future with confidence. Looking back, I see no reason to fear looking forward.

Elizabeth Edwards thinks you're dumb.

Edwards - who has battled breast cancer since 2004 - said McCain's plan fails in all important areas by leaving the decision-making process up to individuals, who can frequently "make stupid economics decisions."

That's why we should put individuals in government in charge of your health care decisions. Because everyone knows that once an individual moves from the private sector to the public sector, her decision making ability increases dramatically.

Sorry Elizabeth. I disagree. I'm not leaving my family's decisions up to some government bureaucracy. They don't know what I need better than I do.

I've said before that McCain's healthcare plan is one of the few proposals he's made that I actually like. Robert Carroll explained some of the benefits in the Wall Street Journal.

The McCain health-care insurance tax credit may well be one of the most misunderstood proposals of this presidential election. Barack Obama has been ruthless in his attacks. But the tax credit is highly progressive and will provide a powerful incentive for people to purchase health insurance. These features under normal circumstances should endear Democrats to the proposal.

There has been a lot of rhetoric and misstatements, but what exactly does Sen. McCain have in mind? He would replace the current income tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance with a refundable tax credit -- $5,000 for those who purchase family coverage and $2,500 for individual coverage. Mr. McCain would also reform insurance markets to stem the growth in health insurance premiums.

What many may not realize is that the federal government already "spends" roughly $300 billion to $400 billion through the tax code to encourage people to pay for their health care through employer-sponsored health insurance. This subsidy takes the form of the exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance from both income and payroll taxes.

Consider the current exclusion. Its value rises with how much someone spends on health care, and how much of this spending is funneled through employer-sponsored health-care coverage. This creates an incentive for people to purchase policies with low deductibles, or which cover routine spending. These policies look a lot less like insurance and more like prefunded spending accounts purchased through employers and managed by insurance companies. Consider homeowners and auto insurance policies. Do these cover routine spending on cleaning the gutters or tuning up a car?

The subsidy encourages people to buy bigger policies that cover more, and leads to greater health-care spending. Moreover, lower deductibles and coverage of routine spending dulls consumers' sensitivity to price. Reducing the tax bias should result in insurance that is more focused on catastrophic coverage and less on routine spending.

By replacing the income tax exclusion with a fixed, refundable credit, the McCain proposal reduces the tax bias for large insurance policies. Because the credit is for a fixed amount, regardless of how much you spend on health care, it helps break the link between the existing tax subsidy and how much is spent on health care. This improves incentives in the health-care market by reducing the bias that has contributed to such a high level of health-care spending.

Moreover, the credit provides a powerful incentive for people to purchase insurance. The two tax provisions -- the new credit and the repeal of the income tax exclusion -- on net provide a substantial tax cut of $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Not only do most Americans receive a tax cut under the McCain proposal, but the tax cut is directed toward low and moderate income taxpayers.

What is striking about this picture -- and contradicts Mr. Obama's public comments -- is that the McCain tax credit for the purchase of health insurance exceeds the value of the current exclusion for all income levels shown. Indeed, it generally provides more resources to purchase health insurance than the existing exclusion. The total subsidy for health care would rise from about $3.6 trillion over 10 years today to roughly $5 trillion under his proposal.

Will the insurance that is purchased be a generous plan with first dollar coverage or low deductibles? It is much more likely to be a plan with higher deductibles that is more focused on providing true insurance against catastrophic losses rather than a more generous plan that includes a lot of prepayment for routine and predictable medical expenses. But this is precisely one of the objectives of the policy: to reduce the current tax bias that encourages people to funnel routine health expenses through insurance policies.

The elimination of the income-tax exclusion should reduce private health-care spending; to the extent this reduces the cost of health care, it should also put downward pressure on the growth of Medicare and Medicaid costs. Thus, by removing the tax bias for more generous health coverage, the McCain health credit also has the potential to provide important dividends to the entitlement problem down the road.

To be clear, I'm not wild about the subsidy that McCain's plan excludes. But I love the way it changes the current health insurance incentives. It not only gives people the motiviation to spend less on healthcare -- it also gives them the means to do so.

Too bad it has no chance of being passed into law. Even if McCain wins the presidency, the Democrat House and Senate would never pass this plan.

Do you want to join a union? In Barack Obama's America, you may be forced to. Obama has promised to sign the Employee Free Choice Act, if elected President. What would the Employee Free Choice Act do? Well, take this example.

The Union targets Joe's employer for unionization. There are 100 employees in the proposed bargaining unit, so under EFCA the union only needs to convince 51 of them to sign authorization cards for the union to be certified as the collective bargaining representative for all 100.

The Union leaders are pretty sophisticated at organizing. After all, it's what they do. Pretty quickly they identify both the employees most receptive to unionization as well as those most opposed. Joe falls into the latter group so the Union never even attempts to get him to sign a card. In fact, since most of the pro-union employees work a different shift, Joe's not even aware a union drive is going on.

The Union gets 51 employees to sign cards and gets certified by the NLRB as the collective bargaining representative for all employees -- including Joe, who had absolutely no say in whether he wanted a union.

The Union and Joe's employer begin negotiations but can't get an agreement within 120 days. Under EFCA, a government-appointed arbitrator then writes the "contract". The arbitrator puts a union security and dues check-off clause in the "contract", thereby requiring Joe's employer to deduct $45 a month from Joe's paycheck and remit the amount to the union. The arbitrator also orders Joe's employer to pay a 5% wage increase -- an amount that squeezes the employer's margin. The employer considers lay offs to avoid losses. Joe is near the bottom of the seniority list.

Under EFCA, the arbitrator's order is binding for two years. Joe and his co-workers can't reject it. Joe's company can't reject it.

Let's review: Joe had no choice in being represented by the union. He had no choice in paying union dues. He had no choice in accepting the arbitrator's order that might lead to his lay-off.

Joe concludes that the correct title is the Employee No Choice Act.

How do you like that? I sure don't.

Obama, 7 years ago, lamented the fact that the Civil Rights movement wasn't able bring about more wealth redistribution.

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I'd be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. ...

I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn't structured that way.

A sign of things to come?

The DC Examiner reminds us that already proposed in the House (HR 808) is the creation of a new, multi-billion dollar, cabinet-level monstrosity: The Department of Peace & Non-Violence. (Thanks to Dr. Andy Bostom for calling this to my attention.)

The DPN-V would house such vital new agencies as The Office of Peace Education & Training, the Office of Domestic Peace Activities, the Office of International Peace Activities, the Office of Technology for Peace, the Office of Arms Control and Disarmament (ACM -- notwithstanding that Barnie seems to have that covered already), the Office of Peaceful Co-Existence and Non-Violent Conflict Resolution, and, of course, the Office of Human Rights and Economic Rights. (Emphasis added.)

Orwellian much?

The Wall Street Journal recently provided a history lesson about a Democrat President and his promises of tax cuts:

Mr. McCain could do worse than remind the middle class what happened to them the last time a charismatic Democratic candidate promised them a tax cut. While he's at it, he might also remind them how much more expensive it will be to send Barack Obama to the White House at a time when his fellow Democrats will have a majority in both houses of Congress.

The Clinton years hold some good lessons on both these scores. Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

In an October presidential debate, then-Gov. Clinton laid out the marginal-rate increase he wanted and some of his plans for the revenue that would be brought in. He followed with a pledge:

"Now, I'll tell you this," he said. "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs."

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.

On page one of the New York Times, the paper described the fate of the middle-class tax cut this way: "Families earning as little as $20,000 a year -- members of the 'forgotten middle class' whose taxes he promised during his campaign to cut -- will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President's plan."

Oops. Can we trust Senator Obama more than we trusted Governor Clinton?

Seriously?

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can't vote in the battleground state.

A dozen staffers - including Obama Ohio spokeswoman Olivia Alair and James Cadogan, who recently joined Team Obama - signed a form letter asking the Franklin County elections board to pull their names from the rolls.

These jokers needed a prosecutor to prick their consciences before realizing that this might not be a good idea? What happened to the integrity of democracy? What happened to fair play? Guess none of that matters when an election is on the line.

How important is good theology? Pretty important. Not only can bad theology give people a wrong picture of God, it can also cause them to do some pretty stupid things in the here and now. Take the "prosperity gospel" and the recent mortgage crash, for example. Time recently reported on the intersection between bad theology and bad economic decisions.

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants -- and hence, victims -- of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise -- that God will "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life -- had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

... Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are "worthy of having more and doing more and being more." In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.

But Walton suggests that a decade's worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity's bloodstream. "The economic boom '90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message," he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. "Narratives of how 'God blessed me with my first house despite my credit' were common. Sermons declaring 'It's your season to overflow' supplanted messages of economic sobriety," and "little attention was paid to ... the dangers of using one's home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations."

It's sad. Americans have been richly blessed by God. America is the richest country in the world and our poor are wealthy than most of the "rich" in Africa. Our poor are fantastically well off compared to the poor in Asia, South America, or Central America. The Bible also has much to say about contentment. Rather than teaching their congregations to be both thankful for what they have and content with what they have, these pastors have been encouraging people's natural greed, covetousness, and discontent. As a result, many of these people have been directly hurt by the mortgage crash.

Not that these pastors need to be worried about my opinion. Ultimately, they will answer to God for how they've led His people. That's enough for me.