Minor Thoughts from me to you

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.

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.

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.

I always like a story that points out how supposedly wise government employees manage to destroy the very thing they're trying to protect. Today, the Wall Street Journal fingered the Federal Reserve for much of the turmoil of the last year.

But the larger story is that the global economy is fast popping its latest monetary bubble, the one over the last 14 months in commodity prices and non-dollar currencies.

The original bubble was in housing prices and mortgage-related assets, which the Federal Reserve helped to create with its negative real interest rates from 2002 into 2005. This was Alan Greenspan's tragic mistake, not that the former Fed chief will acknowledge it.

As for the second bubble, this one began in August 2007 with the onset of the credit panic. This is Ben Bernanke's creation. The Fed chose to confront the credit crunch as if it were mainly a problem of too little liquidity, not fear of insolvency. To that end it flooded the economy with money, while taking short-term interest rates down to 2% from 5.25% in seven months. The panic only got worse, and this September's stampede finally led the Treasury and Fed to address the solvency problem by supplying public capital and numerous guarantees to the financial system.

The Fed's liquidity burst nonetheless sent markets for a 14-month loop, as the nearby charts indicate. The Fed created a commodity bubble of record proportions, with oil doing a round trip in a single year from $70 up to $147 and back down to $69 yesterday. The dollar also plunged along the way against most global currencies, notably the euro, as the bottom chart illustrates.

The dollar price of oil and the dollar-euro exchange rate are probably the two most important prices in the world. They represent a huge share of global commerce, sending signals that shape trade and capital flows. When those two prices move up and down so sharply in so short a time -- based more on fear and expectations than on economic realities -- they distort price signals and can lead to a misallocation of resources. Commodity prices have now fallen back to Earth, as the reality of global recession hits home and the Fed can't ease much further. Meanwhile, the euro has fallen from the stratosphere as Europe heads into recession and the dollar becomes a safer haven in a world of fear.

I said earlier today that I don't really trust McCain on economic issues. Slate quotes McCain's hero, Teddy Roosevelt, on taxes.

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. ... The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and ... a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

That's the same type of thing that McCain has been known to spout, when he forgets that he's running as a Republican. And it's another reminder of why I won't be voting Republican for President this year.

Fred Thompson gave a great speech this morning, exhorting Republicans to get out the vote. It's just unfortunate that his candidate is John McCain. While John McCain might be better than Barack Obama on economic issues, I'm not really convinced that he would be. McCain is a deficit hawk who would be comfortable raising taxes in order to pay for the recent bailouts and his proposed increases in defense spending. McCain is an economic populist who hates profits and "greedy" businessmen. McCain is an economic populist who believes the government needs to buy mortgages to bailout homeowners.

No thanks.

But this speech is great motivational material for anyone thinking of voting for Bob Barr. An excerpt:

All of this is important, because how we respond to our economic challenge is more important than the crisis itself. For the last 25 years the United States, and indeed the world, has enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. You wouldn't know it from listening to Obama, but worldwide over 1 billion people have been able to lift themselves out of poverty. This is due to America's influence, from our defense of freedom in World War II to the Cold War, to the ascendency of our free-market capitalism, the adoption of open trade policies, and globalization. Yet some say our current financial difficulties are evidence that we should turn our back on our founding, free market principles ... that it's time for big changes.

But in a world that is increasingly inter-connected by jobs, trade and global finance, how our economy is viewed by the rest of the world is extremely important to America's economic well being. The worst thing in the world we could do is appear to be unfriendly to investment and trade with an economy constrained and made uncompetitive by layers upon layers of new regulations, and bogged down in the divisiveness of class warfare. Yet if you are to take them at their word this is precisely the direction that an Obama administration and a Democratic Congress would take us, turning a short term recession into a long term economic decline for the United States.

And while our regulatory regime needs to be examined and improved, we should be clear: capitalism is not the cause of our nation's economic challenges. The subprime mortgage crisis was not rooted in lack of regulation, but in bad policies made by Democrats in Congress that forced banks to give mortgages to people who could not afford the houses they were buying. These are the same politicians who protected the excesses and fraudulent conduct of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are the same ones who now want to control the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars to solve the problem they helped create, and who tried to slip $200 billion into the first bailout bill for their political cronies in ACORN, the organization that is now systemically perpetrating voter registration fraud around the country. This record, Obama and the Democrats say, entitles them to total control of all of the levers of power in Washington.

Under an Obama-Reed-Pelosi scenario nothing will restrain them from making the secret ballot in union elections be a thing of the past. The so called "fairness doctrine" will likely be passed, restricting free speech on talk radio, possibly even the Internet.

For years I've repeated the following story about Thomas Jefferson. Now I've finally seen the source. I see that I had a few of the details wrong, but had the basic gist right.

"In a few moments after our arrival, a tall, high-boned man came into the room. He was dressed, or rather undressed, in an old brown coat, red waistcoat, old corduroy small-clothes [breeches] much soiled, woollen hose, and slippers without heels. I thought him a servant, when General Varnum surprised me by announcing that it was the President." --Thomas Jefferson receiving guests at the White House, from the Life of William Plumer.

One of the things that has continued to disturb me about Senator Obama is the gap between his rhetoric and his actions. He continually talks about changing politics for the better. But every time he has the ability to actually change things, he votes for keeping the status-quo. Earlier, I wrote about his endorsements of Chicago machine politicians. Yesterday I read that he's endorsed thuggish Kenyan politicians.

National Review's Andy McCarthy summarized a Washington Post story about Senator Obama's connections to unsavory Kenyan politicians.

Odinga evidently has a very close relationship with Obama. He is native of Kenya's Luo tribe, the same one to which Obama's father belonged. In fact, in early 2008, Odinga told the BBC he is Obama's cousin (i.e., that Obama's father was Odinga's "maternal uncle").

Like other Obama connections -- Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, and Mike Klonsky (about whom I have an article today) -- Odinga is a socialist. He was educated by Soviets in East Germany, he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro, and his father was the leader of Kenya's Socialist opposition.

The former Kenyan government of Daniel Arap Moi was pro-American. (ACM -- I can attest to this personally, having worked with Kenyan authorities extensively during the investigation of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, which was carried out by the jihadist cells al Qaeda established in Kenya in the early Nineties.) Odinga served eight years in jail because he was implicated in a violent coup attempt against Moi's government in 1982.

Odinga sought the presidency in Kenya's December 2007 election. In 2006, Obama came to Kenya and campaigned for him, simultaneously voicing sharp criticism of the pro-American government. His comments will sound familiar to Americans. As Hyman writes, Obama declared, "The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials[.]... Kenyans are now yearning for change." Obama's visit, the culmination of consultations with Odinga that had gone on for years, vaulted Odinga's candidacy.

(ACM -- the outraged Kenyan government issued a rebuttal, greatly disturbed that Obama had represented that he was coming to Kenya to nurture Kenya/U.S. relations but, in fact, had used the trip as a platform to lecture to Kenya about social justice. Obama's interference in a foreign election, transparently designed to topple a government cooperative with the United States, comes close, to say the least, to violating the Logan Act, 18 U.S.C. 953.)

Are any of Obama's supporters the least bit concerned about this display of hypocrisy? Are any of them even aware of it?

I agree with Congressman Jeff Flake.

Ethanol plants may be the next beneficiary of a federal bailout and Mesa congressman Jeff Flake is among those opposed to that idea.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said the federal government is considering outlays of as much as $25 million to help ethanol plants, which have been hit by volatile commodity prices.

Flake, a fiscal conservative, panned the plan Wednesday saying federal promotion of ethanol production is the problem. "The federal government's ethanol policies have driven up the price of corn," said Flake. "But rather than reforming the policies that have caused a spike in corn prices, the federal government wants to bail out ethanol producers who speculated on the price of corn. Only the U.S. Department of Agriculture could dream up a policy like this."

I didn't need any more reasons to dislike John McCain. But I have another one anyway. Continuing his general theme of believing that government employees are just plain better than regular folk, he wants copyright law to favor politicians over everyone else.

(Via McCain seeks special 'fair use' copyright rules for VIPs.)

John McCain's presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate's campaign videos were pulled from YouTube.

McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a "fair use."

However, instead of calling for an overhaul of the much hated law, McCain is calling for VIP treatment for the remixes made by political campaigns.

McCain's proposal: complaints about videos uploaded by a political campaign would be manually reviewed by a human YouTube employee before any possible removal of the remix. The process for complaints against videos uploaded by millions of other Americans would stay the same: instant removal by a computer program, and then possible reinstatement a week or two later after the video sharing site has received and manually processed a formal counter-notice.

Just one more reason to vote for Bob Barr this year.

Georgia state officials have begun an investigation into Primus Industries and the alleged voter fraud committed by one or more of its employees. Jack Justice attends the adult day care provided by Primus for mentally-challenged individuals, and one or more Primus aides took them to an early voting event without permission from their families. Once in the booth, the aide cast the ballot for Barack Obama over Justice's protestation.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama supporter steals vote from disabled man.

If true, this is pretty horrifying.