Recently in Economics Category

I just finished the book "An Act of State", detailing William F. Pepper's claim that the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a government-arranged assassination, rather than the act of a single racist. Beyond that, Pepper suggests President Lyndon Johnson had a mistress (and mother of his only son) who worked in Jack Ruby's Vegas club - suggesting the possibility of a link to the assassination of President Kennedy. Specifically, President Johnson is quoted by the alleged mistress (Madeleine Brown) as saying, at a party reportedly also attended by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and future President Richard Nixon the night before the Kennedy assassination "After tomorrow, those [deleted] Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat, that's a promise."

It was also interesting to read Pepper's description of the U.S. Army having a secret unit on hand as a backup plan in his claimed assassination plot against Dr. King.

Later in the book, the author goes off on a rant about the evils of the post-9/11 administration, in terms that are very familiar to me from working at a University, but inadvertently makes an important point many (including Pepper) appear to have missed, namely that election of a Democrat as President may actually make such matters worse, rather than better. Specifically, the New York Times, which has been such an eager watchdog against Republican misdeeds in recent years, is described in the book as helping the government hide the truth of what really happened to Dr. King. And though I lived through all those events myself, this is the first I've ever heard about President Johnson having a mistress, let alone one with a possible connection to the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

I feel sure the author and I would disagree about a great many subjects, but I was particularly impressed by his understanding of what Dr. King was attempting to do for poor people in 1968 - which Pepper considers the reason for Dr. King's death.

Here is his analysis of Dr. King's thought (see pages 163-168):
"The Copernican revolution, which postulated the thesis that the earth was only one of the planets revolving around the sun and that the sun itself was one of countless living stars in the universe led to a confrontation with the prevailing perception that divine revelation, not science, was the most valid source of knowledge about life and how it should be lived. The intellectual and moral authority of the church was weakened and gradually eclipsed by the elevation of materialism. Matter emerged as primary with physical measurement and only things suitable for scientific study deemed capable of providing explanations to issues, problems, or events. Scientific inquiry and reason were the fonts of all knowledge.

After reading this chapter, I finally began to understand the anti-globalization movement. I don't agree with it, but do at least now understand its concerns.

But what really got my attention was Pepper's 2003 prediction of the current market meltdown: "It is interesting to note that the growth of margin debt - debt incurred by stock investors - had risen on February 29, 2000 to the level it was on October 1, 1929..."

Pepper foresaw a silver lining in such a cloud: "Should an economic disaster similar to that of 1929 engulf this nation and the wold, there may emerge an opportunity to rebuild this great Republic with a vastly different set of values and priorities...

Should the unthinkable occur it would certainly be a challenge. Whether we as a people would be up to meeting it without the likes of Martin Luther King in the vanguard is another question, but I have always been amazed at the resilience of human beings of whatever race, culture, station or stripe."

Finally, Pepper reminded me of Dr. King's challenge for such a time as this: "Through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools."

You know things are running amuck when the only difference between the response of San Fransisco Democratic Senator Pelosi and Texas Republican President Bush to Detroit automakers lining up for a bailout too is in deciding which particular taxpayer-provided funds should be used to do the bailing.

A pox on all their houses! The farther we get into this fiscal mess, the worse our government decision-making is getting regarding it!

Frankly, Detroit is beyond being able to be bailed out. And I'm highly offended at the very idea of helping the big 3 U.S. carmakers continue to pay their workers more per hour than I or most other taxpayers funding any such bailout make ourselves, particularly since it would only help them build more cars I'd never be willing to buy at any price.

Update:
This article explains precisely WHY bailing out Detroit automakers costs jobs rather than saving them.
" Making bad, uneconomic investments in failing industries does not, on balance, preserve jobs; it tends to destroy more jobs - and more good jobs - than it saves.

Anyone who thinks that giving money to a company losing 2-3 billion dollars a month -- with overpaid workers and overpaid executives - would usually save jobs in the long run, rather than lose them, doesn't understand economics."

Here's a short article by Roger Kimball about my home area of Chicago that suggests serious trouble both now and in the near future:
"* In the last six months, 292 people were murdered in Chicago.
* In the same period, there were 183 Americans casualties in Iraq.

* The Illinois State pension fund is $44 billion in debt. That's the worst in the country. Thanks, folks!
* Cook County, wherein Chicago sits, not only put JFK in the White House back in 1960 by encouraging everyone, dead or alive, to vote early and vote often, but it also has the highest sales tax in the United STates: 10.25 percent.
* Meanwhile, the Chicago school system is one of the worst in the country."

I've been joking that Illinois will go for Obama even if every dead person in Chicago has to vote five times. Behind that is a conversation I had as an election judge a few years ago with a fellow election judge about how he had personally been sent out to graveyards on election day in 1960 to find hundreds of votes for JFK. He could tell me that freely because the statute of limitations had run out. So far as I can tell, nothing in our area has changed since to prevent a recurrence.

I'm definitely finding other places to shop, now that my county has the highest sales tax in the country, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

I wonder where those missing pension dollars will be found, given that they are guaranteed by the Illinois constitution? There's no point blaming most of the state employees; they put up their share of pension contributions. It's our state government that never actually got around to funding pensions properly, even back when Republicans were in charge in Springfield.

There's also been some obvious abuse by entities goosing up the last year of pay of favored state employees, since the pension is somewhat based on the final salary. There was an effort this year to require such entities to personally kick in any added pension costs for such goosing, but I don't recall that reform effort succeeding.

One recent ray of hope in IL was State Senator James Meeks' effort this fall to bus poor kids from the south side to rich northern suburbs to call attention to the educational plight of city kids. I haven't seen any actual results from the campaign yet, but it's great to see even some Democrats now see school choice as good for kids otherwise forced into the worst schools.

We fostered one of those kids last fall, and it was amazing how much better he did in a suburban school When he arrived in October, he was a second grader who couldn't count to ten. Two months later, he'd advanced a year educationally - doing first grade level work, but the most telling fact for me was that when he went back into Chicago schools they put him in an honors class in his original grade! If that's typical, no wonder Meeks wants those kids educated anywhere else.

While discussing proposals for the Federal government to act immediately to resolve the current financial crisis at lunch today, a light went on in my head. We're told we must approve a rescue plan immediately, or disaster will result. Yet, in any other financial situation where I'm told the same, I've learned that's precisely when I must sit on my wallet and not act. Anytime a salesman tells you a special is "today only", experienced consumers realize it isn't really, and in all likelihood isn't something you'll be happy later to have bought.

Yes, there are real emergencies in life, and sometimes you have to act quickly. But in general, when people you have no reason to trust insist loudly that you must trust them immediately, that's a deal breaker, whether it's regarding a used car, a time-share in Florida, or the current credit crunch.

I will be very surprised if Congress is able to pass anything to resolve this matter before the November election, and no matter the risks if they don't, I'd prefer they take however much time they need to fully understand what they are voting on and improve the solution enough that it actually solves some problem rather than just setting fire to even more money and rewarding those who rightfully should instead be punished.

In my opinion, it's still way too early for any of us to be either for or against the current bailout plan. We simply don't know enough yet to make an informed decision, and I expect the same is true of our representatives. So, no need to stick our heads in the sand and avoid a probably-serious issue, but also no reason for us to be immediately writing blank checks to some of the same people who wasted previous funds.

Update 2 days later: No change in my opposition to quick intervention yet. Interestingly, opposition is extremely bi-partisan. Both fervent lefties and fervent righties agree in having NO interest in asking Main Street to bail out Wall Street. I have yet to hear ANYONE here speak in favor of the bailout.

Frankly, what can be done quickly is already being done. That's monetary policy, which isn't exactly the free market we remember and love, but mostly works most of the time. Its main virtue is speed, and its main weakness is that it can only do so much to steer the economy.

The other potential control mechanism is fiscal policy, which is what Congress is arguing about now. Fiscal policy takes time - never less than the couple of months earlier this year to get taxpayers sent a stimulus check. The problem there is that fiscal policy is determined by politicians, very few of whom have ever taken even one college class in Economics. Sadly, that includes both McCain and Obama.

I think the real game here on the part of those seeking a deal most urgently is to protect incumbents, because they are at least as unpopular as President Bush.

Several economists from U of Chicago & Northwestern weighed in to oppose the bailout this morning. As a college Econ major myself forty years ago, that impressed me, though whenever I'm tempted to take economists too seriously I remind myself that "Economists predicted three out of the last one recessions -- They don't call it the dismal science for nothing." (source unknown.)

IF there's any truth to the urgency claims, we could be in for a recession soon. But recessions come and go. To get and sustain a depression takes government interference.

Another excellent discussion is here (especially the comments.)

By the way, for anyone wondering about the title of this post, its source is unknown, but possible sources from Jesus to Ronald Reagan are discussed here.

Update2: Over the weekend, Congressional majority party leaders and the President came up with a "deal", then failed to sell it to enough members of the House of Representatives among either conservative Republicans or liberal Democrats. Personally, the deal that failed seemed better than either the original proposal or the initial suggested revision from Congress. It doesn't, however, seem worthy of support yet. (It's kind of a first when both Rush Limbaugh and International A.N.S.W.E.R. agree on opposing the same thing.)

Thus, we need new ideas for a solution. And here's an interesting one, from the F.D.I.C. chair during the last such crisis in the 1980s. (Who knew the solution might be as simple as undoing recent changes in accounting rules?)
"we must take three immediate steps to prevent a further rash of financial failures and taxpayer bailouts. First, the SEC must suspend Fair Value Accounting and require that assets be marked to their true economic value. Second, the SEC needs to immediately clamp down on abusive practices by short sellers. It has taken a first step in reinstituting the prohibition against "naked selling." Finally, the bank regulators need to acknowledge that the Basel II capital rules represent a serious policy mistake and repeal the rules before they do real damage."

Update3: I like Instapundit's take on this: "WITH SWEETENERS: The bailout bill has passed the Senate. Before it's all over, we'll probably wish that Monday's bill had passed instead -- giving Congress more time to add their gimmes probably hasn't produced a better bill."

Here's an example, found by a prof here:
"From page 300/301 of the Senate's version of the bailout bill:
SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROWS
DESIGNED FOR USE BY CHILDREN.
(a) IN GENERAL.Paragraph (2) of section 4161(b) is amended by
redesignating subparagraph (B) as sub- paragraph (C) and by inserting
after subparagraph (A) the following new subparagraph:

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.The amendments made by this section shall apply to
shafts first sold after the date of enactment of this Act."

Personally, I still have to wonder why standing by while our entire economy collapses and giving Congressional porkers who were a major cause of the problem even more pork to play with have to be our only choices. Not buying that yet myself, and thinking increasingly that we need a 1994-size clean sweep of incumbents from Congress, though I
don't expect to see that this year.

Update4: Fabius Maximus (a blog previously unknown to me), on the other hand (hat tip Instapundit), thinks we have to accept the bailout, and more - that a BIG recession is coming soon, no matter what Congress passes this week.
"All too small, too late. Incremental and reactive, responding to critical problems of last month -- irrelevant to the current situation. This is a recipe for disaster. Like in the US 1929-1933 and Japan 1989-1996 -- delaying the necessary large-scale response until the problem was no longer manageable.

This is just first aid. The recession is coming. None of these measure will speed its end or lay a foundation for an economic expansion afterwards."

Update5: Well, who cares what we think? Congress passed and President Bush signed the fully-larded Senate version of the bailout, even though the Constitution requires financial bills to start in the House.

What can we do? As suggested earlier, throw the bums out! According to this Rasmussen poll, 59% of American voters would like to do precisely that.
"If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17% would vote to keep the current legislators in office."

Here's the thing. The only way that can happen is if those who feel that way vote down their own current member of Congress, even if they are of your preferred party. I know that's a tough one, as my member of Congress has been pretty moderate and relatively honest fiscally. But he did vote for the bailout, both times. Guess I'll have to look into how his opponent feels about fiscal integrity...

One other pearl of wisdom from the Rasmussen article is that the our founders designed our system to have high turnover in the House of Representatives, and some stability in the Senate.
"When the Constitution was written, the nation's founders expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms). For well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.

In the twentieth century, turnover began to decline. As power and prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer and fewer Members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, Congressional turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever and it has remained very low ever since."

In my opinion, many of our current financial troubles started when members of Congress stopped being Citizen legislators for a season and started being career politicians (and recently almost a hereditary aristocracy.) Incumbency is the problem, and voting out incumbents after eight years, as proposed by the 1994 reformers is the solution.

One of the folks at the University asks "at what point did the Washington Crowd - which I have to assume means the Republican Party, since last I checked they held the Office of President for the past 8 years, and the Congress for 14 or the last 16 years (recall Newt Gingrich and Republican "take-over" of Congress back in 1994?) - at what point did they quit being the party of Main Street, and become the party of Wall Street?"

My answers would be:
1) starting in about 2004. Many of us who consider ourselves "Porkbusters" figure the "outside reformer" Republicans elected to Congress in 1994 became indistinguishable from the corrupt porkers they were elected to replace after about a decade in DC. Though many DC Republicans still pretend not to believe it, that corruption had a lot to do with their being routed in the 2006 elections (not that Democrats proved any less fond of pork.) John McCain's continuing reputation as a small government fiscal conservative is a big reason traditional Republicans support him (despite differences with him on other issues) over anyone else from the DC establishment this year.

2) My impression is that Wall Streeters are at least as likely to be throwing money at Democrats as Republicans. One of the interesting things about the current crisis on Wall Street is how hard it is proving for the usual suspects to howl about evil Capitalists due to their own involvement via campaign contributions, advisors, etc.

It may be that Republicans are no longer the party of Main street. It's certainly also true that they are no longer the party of the rich.

3) Personally, I think the problem may be with DC itself - full of unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists whose behavior changes remarkably little as which party is in power changes. A book I once read by Hugh Hewitt "In but not of" suggests most of the power in this country is concentrated in three cities: New York for money, Washington DC for law, and Los Angeles for culture. I remember thinking as I read those words, that we might be better off without all three.

4) In short, I'm not interested in trying to blame this on one party. Rather, I merely want to ensure there is a market solution to this market problem. I don't mind if the Federal Reserve facilitates things, as happened last week, but will very much mind if our government ends up using my money to bail out everyone who placed bad bets on the economy, just as I will mind if all the corrupt politicians whose greed led them to fail in their role of fiscal oversight survive the current crisis.

Mark Satin has just written an extremely interesting and insightful article for his Radical Middle Newsletter on this non-obvious premise: The Bible is our one essential political book - and we need it now more than ever.

In his article, Mark describes his own recent first and second reading of the Bible, and what he sees of value in it for all of us.

Right away, Mark lists five reasons for the importance of the Bible today:
-- It asks all the important questions that need to be asked (and answered) before we can move wisely into the 21st century. . .
-- It provides a place where left and right can meet, dialogue, learn.
-- It tells difficult truths about human nature.
-- It reminds us of our positive human potential.
-- It calls us to new and better political perspectives.

Further, Mark is sure he's not alone:
"According to Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow, traditional forms of community may be disappearing - but support groups are arising to take their place. About 40% of American adults are involved in support groups at this time . . . and about 44% of those are involved in groups that are described by participants partly or entirely as 'Bible study groups.'
In other words, 17.6% of all American adults - about 40 million people - are engaged in Bible study at this time.
Support groups 'seldom make the headines,' Wuthnow says. 'They are not the stuff that reporters care much about.' But that doesn't mean they're not out there, deeply influencing the culture - including the political culture"

Mark continues with many profound specific insights. Here's one I found particularly interesting, having just read an entire book about the Exodus that neglected to make this simple and (once you think about it) obvious point:
"John Buehrens, former head of the Unitarian Universalist Association, summarizes one take on Exodus as follows:
1. Wherever you live, it is probably Egypt [i.e., Bad - ed.]
2. There is a better place, a world more fair, full of promise and hope
3. The way to it is through the wilderness. There is no other way to get from here to there except by the hard way, being tested as we go "

As always, read the whole thing. And while you're at Mark's site, be sure to also look around for other gems, such as this one from four months ago.

I see my Catalog Choice request to Pier 1 Imports to get off their catalog list has been "refused" by Pier 1 imports. Oh well. Guess that means I'll similarly "refuse" to shop there any more. Not that I did often anyway. Apparently, they grabbed the one time in recent years I bought something there via credit card and have been spamming me with catalogs ever since. I wonder how long it will take them to lose in mailing costs whatever profit they made from the $12 I paid for that basket?

A recent opinion column by David Ranson in the Wall Street Journal explains something I've long suspected: You can't soak the rich. You can try, mind you, but you can't succeed, at least not often and not for long.

Ranson explains this as "[Ken] Hauser's Law", namely "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP."

The explanation continues: "The federal tax 'yield' (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to the present 35%. This is what scientists call an 'independence theorem,' and it cuts the Gordian Knot of tax policy debate.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue. That's a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice."

Ranson explains: "What makes Hauser's Law work? For supply-siders there is no mystery. As Mr. Hauser said: 'Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide and underreport income. . . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation.'

Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly, and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax-intolerant."

In other words, we now have somewhat scientific evidence for readily-observable facts, such as that for all their talk about being unfairly under-taxed, both ultra-rich Bill Gates and ultra-rich Warren Buffet actually act so as to minimize their tax obligation. And so long as our laws are enacted by politicians who are both affluent themselves and dependent on other affluent citizens for their continuance in office, it is beyond silly to expect any legislation to become and remain law that seriously inconveniences the affluent. Robin Hood is a good story, but here in the real world, the only way the poor end up getting more is if the non-poor do too.

The only exception I can think of is voluntary charity. Again using Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as an example, they give more away voluntarily to help the truly poor peoples of the World than our government could ever manage to take from them involuntarily, let alone channel so effectively to areas of real need.

So, the next time a politician promises to take from the rich and give to you, just remember Hauser's Law guarantees it'll never happen, not in this fallen world.

It just hit me again today how many of our currently-serious national problems could be easily and cheaply resolved by the same simple solution: eating less and exercising more.

Pollution, Global Warming, High gasoline prices, Gridlock? All easily helped by riding a bike. We each need about 45 minutes a day of aerobic exercise, and biking quickly enough to be aerobic covers at least 7 miles in that time.

High food prices? Eat less. The middle wife and I were amazed to discover our grocery bill dropping in half after we started eating appropriately. We virtually eliminated our dining out costs too, as it's hard to find appropriate meals outside the home.

Aches, pains, high medical bills? Many diseases of middle age are optional, and can easily be avoided or ameliorated by eating only what we should and working out the way we should.

Nothing good on TV? Turn it off and get moving. There's better fare, and all for free, at the public library only 3 miles away.

Our bikes can carry two bags of groceries, and we have five grocery stores within two miles of our home. So why on Earth would we need to power up a one ton vehicle for the same purpose? When I can walk to the dry cleaners in 15 minutes, tell me again why I should drive there instead.

I can understand why folks don't want to be outside when the weather is lousy (though enjoying the outdoors even then is simply a matter of dressing for the occasion), but for the next half year, the weather will usually be very pleasant at least part of most days, so why not do our health, our budget, folks elsewhere (who need food and fuel a whole lot more than we do), and the planet itself some good today?

Folks in Oak Park, IL are upset that Fannie Mae has reinstated a policy requiring home buyers to put down a 5% larger down payment in a "declining market" than would otherwise be required. As far as I can tell via Google, this will only affect folks trying to buy a home with a down payment of less than 5%, and it seems to me that these days all real estate markets are declining. According to Zillow, my own home lost $2K of value last month, and is now worth less than when I bought it 4 years ago.

Because this new policy has been deemed to apply to their ZIP code, folks in Oak Park feel unfairly targeted, and are calling the new policy redlining, a term from the racial integration battles of the 1960s. They feel the new policy will have a disparate effect on "communities of color" (their term) and "low-income communities" (which Oak Park certainly is not, so far as I can tell.)

I applaud Oak Park for long-term success in remaining racially-mixed since the '60s. A memory from back then was hearing Saul Alinsky in the nearby Austin neighborhood of Chicago happy because two neighborhood groups, one for and one against integration were both meeting in the same building at the same time. Alinsky didn't care that the groups had conflicting goals; he was just happy to see folks getting organized. Up to that point, "white flight" had been converting all-white neighborhoods on that side of Chicago into non-white neighborhoods at a rapid clip, but that stopped in Austin as Oak Park integrated successfully.

Why would anyone in today's market be approved for a home loan with less than a 5% down payment? In a market declining nation-wide, there's simply too much risk a buyer with a lower down payment and their lender would quickly find themselves with a home no longer worth what it cost. There's no way I would make such a loan, either now or in the recent glory days of appreciating home prices.

If I wouldn't make such a loan myself, on what basis can I expect Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) to do so? Although government-sponsored, Fannie Mae is not government-funded and not a charity, so ultimately its financial decisions have to at least break-even or it goes out of business.

It's painful when you're buying a home and prices go South instead of North. But that happens in real estate, about once every twenty years. We've experienced it twice before ourselves, and had to sell our home in the midst of the downturn both times. The first time, we were happy to break even. The second time we sold for a loss but also bought a home sold at a loss at the same time, so we figure we again came out even.

i remember how hard it was to round up the funds for a down payment. But in declining markets, if you can't round up even a 5% down payment, perhaps this year it would be better to continue renting and saving toward a larger down paymen, ideally 20%, though we only managed to save up 10% when we first bought a home ourselves.

Similarly, adjustable rate mortgages are just too risky to recommend for anyone planning to keep a home more than 2 or 3 years. And anyone NOT planning to keep a home that long is probably better off just renting. Once you factor in the costs of selling, it's extremely difficult to make money on a home you keep for under 3 years, even in a rising market.

Unfortunately, that advice affects more "low income communities" than rich ones, but my preference would still be to help folks learn good financial habits, rather than take on risky loans. What good is it to help folks "buy" a home they end up not being able to keep?

As much as I've spent on Netgear stuff in the past couple of months, you'd think it might bother them just a bit to stiff me on a $40 rebate. But nope, buying almost $2K of their gear since Christmas wasn't sufficient reason for them to honor their recent rebate on Gigabit switches.

What really got my attention was the reason for disallowing the rebate: "Invalid Purchase Location", given that one switch was bought at Best Buy, and the other at Amazon.com, from whose Web site I printed the rebate form in the first place!

Netgear hereby joins my growing list of firms that won't get future business

Repeat business is much more important to company survival than whatever can be saved by cheating customers out of rebates. People are very good at remembering who has cheated them. And over the decades almost all such firms have eventually gone under.

Update: I just got an update Email from Netgear, saying they have approved my $20 rebate. I suspect that means they have reconsidered and now agree one of the two places I bought from is an authorized dealer. Nice of them to figure that out, since I had no way to contact them and ask them to do so other than by updating an Amazon review, which I did do. So thanks may also be due to whoever at Amazon read that review before posting it.

Either way, it's really good news, as I was NOT looking forward to having to find an alternative supplier for the products I've been getting from Netgear over the years.

After the Chicago Transit Authority more or less set fire to all its funds in recent years and then had the gall to ask the State to bail it out, our state legislators have faced the unenviable task of finding some way to keep public transit operating now and in years to come.

Having just done so, their reward was to have our state governor amend their bill to make it also provide free mass transit to senior citizens, no matter how wealthy they may be, and with no provision for paying the added cost of his "generosity."

If the governor gets his way, in a few years I too will qualify for an entirely-free ride, rather than the reduced fare I'd previously have already qualified for. Meantime, I'll have lots of new taxes to pay to partly make up the difference.

What really bugs me about this is:
1) This idea could and should have been debated by the legislature this Fall, rather than being sprung as a last-minute surprise by the governor.
2) There are a lot of wealthy Senior citizens. Why do they need help, rather than for instance, DCFS kids and the handicapped?
3) Once Metra is entirely free for any group, homeless members of that group will use it as a daycare center, much as they already use the CTA - riding around the system all day long for a single fare.
4) Somebody eventually has to pay for giveaways. Since the presenting problem is that the CTA is out of money, proposing to make it give away even more seems DOA. Fortunately, one thing both parties in our legislature seem to agree on lately is halting the governor's latest follies.

Update: I was too optimistic - the Governor won.

AT&T (aka SBC and Ameritech) has been the landline phone provider at our home for several years, but perhaps not for much longer. In mid-December, our home phone suddenly stopped working. After determining the outage wasn't caused by anything inside our home, the Middlewife asked their repair service to look into the matter, and was assured there would be no charge unless the problem was inside our home. A day or two later, the phone began working again. So far, so good.

But the new phone bill that recently arrived lists a $71 charge for a repair on 12/15, even though no one ever communicated that we'd done anything to justify such a charge, let alone how to avoid doing so again if the repair were somehow our own fault.

Then began a round of phone calls by the Middlewife. Different people had different messages, of which our favorite was the lady who insisted that if we didn't want to be charged for service work outside our home, we need to add AT&T's inside wire maintenance program for $4.95 a month (up from $3 a month the last time they tried to foist that on us, back when Consumer Reports was strongly advising against adding that "service") and that otherwise we'd always be charged for all repairs, whether or not they were in any way our own fault. Other reps assured the Middlewife that wasn't the case, but she was left having to file a protest of the charge, with no assurance anyone would ever do anything about the protest, let alone remove what we consider a spurious charge, or at least explain to us what AT&T thinks we did wrong to deserve the charge.

As the old Saturday Night Live joke goes "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Except now, thank God, they are no longer the only phone company. We also have cell service through Sprint that has recently improved in quality here at home, and our excellent cable supplier (Wide Open West) would also love to be our local phone service provider.

Given that most of the action on our AT&T phone is unwanted political and fund-raising calls, why exactly is it we are still paying them at all, let alone whatever they feel like charging for whatever excuse occurs to them?

If the charge remains without an adequate explanation, the home phone will either be switched to a new supplier or disconnected.

The funny thing about this is that we were just thinking of switching our cell service from Sprint to AT&T (aka Cingular.) No longer!

In short, AT&T may succeed in confiscating an extra $71 repair bill from us one time, but only at the cost of permanent loss of all present and future business from us, not to mention the possibility readers of this message may take warning from our experience.

I don't expect them to care; MCI didn't, a decade ago when one of their reps decided to up our monthly bill with them without authorization, and the company refused to rectify the matter. I'd been with MCI for over a decade, but Sprint got our business the next day and has kept it for the decade since. I must have received a hundred mailings from MCI wanting me back afterwards, but none of them ever offered to do even the tiniest thing to make things right again.

Is Sprint better? Maybe not. I'll never believe a Sprint cell phone rebate promise again after they unilaterally decided to reduce the promised rebate on our Treo 650s in half for no reason. Their 2 year service agreement just ended, so there's a good chance I'll eventually switch from Sprint for cell service too, but not to AT&T if that repair charge remains.

I'm not surprised when Goliath companies behave badly. I'm just determined not to reward them for such behavior. Thank God I still have options. Thirty years ago, there were none.

Here's a suggestion to boycot companies who donated to the other side in the last election.

Shopping Your Politics
By Alan Abramowitz

[WITH Republicans]:
WalMart, $467K, 97% to republicans;
K-Mart, $524K, 86% to republicans;
Home Depot, $298K, 89% to republicans;
Target, $226K, 70% to republicans;
Circuit City Stores, $261K, 95% to republicans;
3M Co., $281K, 87% to republicans;
Hallmark Cards, $319K, 92% to republicans;
Amway, $391K, 100% republican;
Kohler Co. (plumbing fixtures), $283K, 100% republicans;
B.F. Goodrich (tires), $215K, 97% to republicans;
Proctor & Gamble, $243K, 79% to republicans;
Coors, $174K, 92% to republicans; (also Budweiser - sd)
Brown-Forman Corp. (Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, Bushmills, Korbel wines - as well as Lennox China, Dansk, Gorham Silver), $644, 80% to republicans;
Pilgrim's Pride Corp. (chicken), $366K, 100% republican;
Outback Steakhouse, $641K, 95% republican;
Tricon Global Restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), $133K, 87% republican;
Brinker International (Maggiano's, Brinker Cafe, Chili's, On the
Border, Macaroni Grill, Crazymel's, Corner Baker, EatZis), $242K, 83%
republican;
Waffle House, $279K, 100% republican;
McDonald's Corp., $197K, 86% republican;
Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Bahama
Breeze), $121K, 89% republican;
Mariott International, $323K, 81% to republicans;
Holiday Inns, $38K, 71% to republicans

To this, I would only add that the above guide works for both parties. Remember P.J. O'Rourke's economic advice "You get what you pay for", meaning whatever we reward by buying tends to become more prevalent than what we fail to reward by ignoring. For instance, I never donate anything to folks soliciting in the middle of busy highways, as I certainly don't want anyone else to have to stand in such a dangerous location, as they most certainly will if doing so raises more money than other strategies. So by all means, let your purchases be guided by your principles this and every season.

Update: The above was originally posted after the 2004 election, but as of today, for those who still have a serious wish to boycott companies on the basis of political contributions after the 2006 elections, there is now also a choice of tailored mutual funds, described here.

Much though I like the idea of the estate tax, as a way to take my money only from my cold, dead hands, I intenseley dislike the idea that the estate tax as currently implemented in the United States falls mostly on middle-class people who lack tax shelters, rather than also on the obscenely-rich.

It seems to me that we need an alternative minimum estate tax at least as much as an alternative minimum income tax, in order to ensure that so long as middle class people have to pay income and estate taxes at hefty rates, so too must the obscenely rich.

It particularly galls me when the truly wealthy, such as Warren Buffet, oppose getting rid of the estate tax, yet act in ways intended to ensure it will not be paid on their own estate.

That to me is as offensive as when Senator Ted Kennedy touts the benefit of higher taxes, while having paid a lower tax rate on his income than I have every year of my adult life.

If you believe in the benefits of government funding, then put your own money where your mouth is.

Here's a small example: I'm a big supporter of mass transit. Part of that support is that I buy a monthly Metra pass each month. As it happens, I will get almost no use from my Metra pass next month, and could save about a hundred dollars by not buying it for that month. However, because I believe in supporting mass transit, I am paying for that pass anyway.

I wish there were more examples of the truly rich doing the same, rather than talking big about government solutions while pinching every one of their own pennies.
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A full page ad in yesterday's New York Times warns that Congress may soon consider getting rid of the penny. The advertiser, Virgin Mobile, sees this as a bad thing, and is organizing protests.

I, on the other hand, have hated pennies for years, avoiding them whenever possible. Now that each penny costs our government more than a penny to make, it seems obvious the penny's time has come and gone. A dime today is worth about what a penny was when I was a boy, and inflation will only make it worth less in future.

Time to retire the penny.

A friend just sent me an Email advocating a boycott of only Exxon and Mobil gas stations, to force them to cut gasoline prices back to $1.30 a gallon. This was my reply:

Better yet, drive a Toyota Prius, and get 40-50 miles per gallon. We've had one for 4 years now, and still love it. I also ride the Metra to work daily, and ride my bicycle several miles a day to and from the Metra station when weather permits. That both helps me lose weight and saves oil.

To the extent that high gas prices reflect collusion among oil companies, consumer action might bring results. If we use less gas, its price will drop. But switching companies without cutting usage wouldn't work because it's too easy to swap gas between companies. If Mobil oil refineries supplied Shell stations, as they easily could and perhaps already do, a boycott of only Mobil stations would thereby be defeated, having no effect on oil companies but perhaps harming individual Mobil service station managers.

The cheapest gas I've found in our area has for years been the Mobil station on Algonquin Road near Willowcreek. The "boycott only Mobil and Exxon" plan would punish that station for its good prices.

Also, to the extent that high gas prices reflect high costs paid by the oil companies, any company that didn't charge the higher costs it was paying would go bankrupt. China, for instance, is using a lot more oil than ever before. So is India. That part isn't Exxon's fault.

Another problem is that a lot of the oil in the world is in countries that don't like us, usually because we advocate freedom and they are run by dictators. Sudan, for instance, which still practices genocide and slavery, is unlikely to become our friend any time soon (and who would want such a friend?)

The good news is that if prices stay at current high levels, producing gas from oil shale becomes economically feasible, and there is enough oil shale in the U.S. and Canada to meet all our needs for centuries.

Another good option is nuclear power plants, which have the added benefit of not contributing to global warming. If we ever get hydrogen-powered cars, the most feasible way to make the hydrogen fuel would likely be with electricity from a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plant designs have improved greatly since the last one was built in the U.S. - much safer now.

But there's still the problem of where to store the waste, so in my opinion using less gas is still part of the solution.

I don't ever recall the Dogbert character in Dilbert sounding stupid before, but in this strip he does. Here's the dialogue:
Dilbert: I'm thinking about buying a more fuel efficient car
Dogbert: Why?
Dilbert: It's my patriotic duty to reduce this country's dependence on foreign sources of oil
Dogbert: Why?
Dilbert: Because then the countries that hate us will have less money to fund terrorists
Dogbert: Actually, developing countries would buy the oil you saved, thus adequately funding those same terrorists.

OK, let's pause here, because Dogbert has just made a major error. When one customer stops buying a product, the supplier is not guaranteed another customer at the same price. The reason we are able to buy oil now that developing countries would buy if we didn't, is because we outbid developing countries for that oil, or it would already be going to them. If we no longer bid for that oil, sellers either accept the (lower) bids of their other potential customers, or sell less oil. Normally, both would happen - the price would drop, and the quantity offered at the lower price would also drop.

While the remaining income flow might still be diverted to terrorists, less income to the seller leaves less to divert to terrorists too.

In the rest of the strip Dogbert goes off on an irrelevant tangent about oil being fungible, as if that were somehow relevant to the discussion. (If Dilbert had been trying to avoid buying oil from only Iran, for example, Dogbert might have had a point.)

The intended point of the strip seems to be that we can't do anything useful about our energy dependence, so why even try? Fortunately, the strip is completely wrong in that conclusion. If each of us does a few simple things to limit our usage of oil, the combined impact will be much better for us all than if we don't try.

Personally, I think breaking this nation's dependence on imported oil should be a top priority, similar to the World War II era effort to break our dependence on natural rubber (achieved by the invention of Nylon.)

If we are truly serious about such an effort, we must take another look at nuclear power. My generation loves to hate all things nuclear, while at the same time also disparaging all potential alternatives for causing other potential ills such as global warming.

Yes, nuclear energy has its perils and costs, such as what to do with the resulting waste. But it is becoming abundantly clear that all other forms of energy also have their perils and costs, whether that be diversion of oil profits to terrorists and dictators or birds killed by wind turbines.

I'd love to see hydrogen cars with exhaust containing nothing but water. However, separating the necessary hydrogen requires lots of energy, so at best it moves the source of pollution, unless the source is a new ultra-safe pebble bed nuclear power plant, such as will soon be built in South Africa. Such plants are physically incapable of a core meltdown so can never become a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

If such thoughts still leave you uncomfortable, energy conservation also helps. It is now easily possible to double the gas mileage of a typical American car, either by choosing not to drive a behemoth any more, or by at least making sure the behemoth is a hybrid. Similarly, it is easy to double the efficiency of a typical older home's furnace and air conditioner.

Just don't stupidly assume, like Dogbert, that there is nothing we can usefully do about our current national addiction to imported oil.

I'm just back from most of a week in Waveland, Mississippee, as part of a church team helping Katrina survivors.

We've all heard horror stories of government aid in the wake of Katrina. What hasn't been as clear is just how much better charity worked than government in helping survivors.

Beyond that, it is now clear how much more effective the aid of one well-trained and prepared man was than the aid of our entire huge church in the crucial first days after the disaster.

Here's the story, as I understand it: Last year Hurricane Ivan struck the coast of Alabama, and churches throughout the South provided assistance. In response, the people of Christian Life Church in Orange Beach, Alabama decided to become a church that helps others in future hurricanes.

Their pastor (Rick Long) is involved in homeland security preparedness, so one day after Katrina, he and a team in 2 trucks arrived in Waveland, MS, "Ground Zero" of the worst damage from Katrina, though you'd never know it from all the media coverage of New Orleans. How bad was it? A 30' wave destroyed everything (and I do mean everything) up to ten miles from the shore.

He found people camped out in a Kmart parking lot, having lost everything and fearing for their lives, sure no one would ever care about their small (pop. 7.500) town.

In response, the church team set up grills and started cooking. On realizing the need was greater than their ability to handle alone, they also placed two phone calls, one to a pastor friend at Heartland Church in Rockford, IL, and the other to our senior pastor at Willowcreek.

In the long run, our church was a great help. It raised $860K, paying for a huge tent now used to house volunteers coming to help, and also for other tents to hold food and clothing and serve 3 hot meals a day to thousands of people. It has also sent at least 7 semi loads of new clothing and supplies, and two teams of volunteers per week.

But it took a couple of weeks for us to get moving. Meanwhile, our smaller partner churches were already there in force, doing what needed doing, including using all of Christian Life Church's $1.2M building fund to help, and turning the abandoned J.C. Penny store at Heartland's planned new building site into a sorting center for donations of used clothing. Folks in Waveland are sure the death toll there would have been much higher otherwise.

Eventually the government showed up, both state and federal, and is doing some good, such as supplying FEMA trailers to the few residents lucky enough to live on the only 3 streets in town that have electricity, potable water, and working sewers 2 months after the hurricane.

FEMA also sends trucks around to pick up the debris from the hurricane, but only after residents place it by the side of the road. For many folks that's reasonable. But part of our team had to assist an 80 year old couple, who would otherwise never have been able to clean out what's left of their home.

Many people today (including politicians of both major parties) assume that no matter the need, the Federal government needs to be involved. Yet, the founders of our nation intentionally rejected that idea, knowing that wherever the Feds step in to "help", they eventually also step in to control.

The failure of the Russian economy under Communism was partly due to attempts by bureaucrats in Moscow trying to micromanage economic details throughout the nation. Communism was also plagued by all the usual flaws of spending "other peoples' money". (To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, if I'm spending other peoples' money on myself, I need the gold-plated version, but if I'm spending on other people, any old thing will do.)

I think it's great that government is helping in Waveland, doing those things it is best at doing. I also think it is great that churches and charities and their volunteers are involved, because frankly, they do many things better and faster than they can be done by even the best government.

One final note: Katrina will be with Waveland for 4-5 years. That's how long the coast may take to rebuild. We too need to be there, not only for a few days, but as long as we are needed.

Right now, prayers are needed, to help discern what that aid needs to look like, as the owner of the shopping center parking lot on which the aid tents are set up asks for the church tents to be moved somewhere else so reconstruction of the shopping center can begin.

Update: Blog entries by volunteers who have served at Kamp Katrina can be found here. As bloggers always say, read the whole thing! Our pastor often says the local church, when it's working right, is the hope of the World, but rarely has that been more literally true and visible than at Kamp Katrina. As I wrote a friend today: "The Church was a Huge force for good there, and by that I mean the big Capital C Church, not just Willow. For instance, while I was there, a caravan of 9 cars of Mennonites arrived from the Pacific Northwest loaded with handmade quilts for the victims. There were over a hundred volunteers from at least a dozen churches on site, all functioning as one harmonious body. You had to be there to believe it possible this side of Heaven."

OK, two more stories to close:
1) One item in high demand and short supply in the Camp Katrina clothing store was sleeping bags. Many folks in Waveland are still sleeping in tents, and will likely do so all this winter.

Our last sleeping bag in stock one day went to an African-American woman. On seeing her receive it, a Caucasian man came up and asked if he could get one too. Our volunteer apologized that no, this was the last one we had. At that, the woman with the sleeping bag looked at him and asked, "Where you sleepin'?" Then, after his reply, she handed him the bag, saying "Here, you need this more'n me."

2) One thing I love about such trips is the way God shows up, with exactly what's needed, at just the right time. We desperately needed large mens' shoes, in sizes up to and beyond 13. We prayed for it our first day, and found some a few minutes later. Then, just as we left on our last day, 3 huge boxes of mens' shoes showed up, including lots of big ones. It's a real faith-builder to see God move in such ways.

Update2: It turns out there are two blogs with entries labeled "Waveland Report." Here's a link to the other Waveland Report. (Scroll to the bottom to see Kylene Fritz's report - her blog doesn't appear to support permalinks.) Though we are from different parts of the country, and were in Waveland a week apart, we slept in the same tent, and the folks on our team were VERY appreciative of the efforts of her team, because they were the toilet cleaners. She also mentions us as "a church in Chicago that has crews coming down every week..." (Actually, it's two Chicago area churches, but close enough.) Her report adds a lot of useful detail about events in Waveland, so be sure to read the whole thing.

Every time I read a newly-arrived privacy notice, with one exception it essentially ends up saying you have no privacy. We'll do whatever we want with your personal information, and you can't do a thing about it.

The exception is Vanguard, an admirable provider of low-cost mutual funds. I hereby offer Vanguard thanks and praise for protecting my personal information, and encourage everyone to invest with Vanguard.

Not an exception is Yahoo, which recently helped the Chinese government prosecute Chinese journalist Shi Tao by providing IP address information about the computer used to post a message to a Yahoo email account, which in turn posted an anonymous message to a New York-based Chinese-language Web site. Since that IP address was shared by many users, the Yahoo-provided information may have been essential in identifying the sender. Full details here.

Yahoo presumably feels it has to obey the laws of the countries in which it has chosen to operate, even those of a totalitarian dictatorship known to imprison and torture folks who speak too freely. Yahoo's first mistake may have been in agreeing to operate according to such laws.

I strongly advise anyone using a Yahoo account anonymously to seek a different Email service provider - someone with more fiber in their backbone. (Geek pun intended.)

Although the U.S. Supreme Court sometimes sees a privacy right in the "penumbra and emanations" of the U.S. Constitution (Justice Douglass in Griswold v. Connecticut), such rights do not yet appear to protect individuals from commercial (as opposed to governmental) violations.

Update: The usual suspects, yearning for another impeachment, are newly indignant that NSA programs descended from the Clinton era ECHELON project continue to data mine telecommunications, and are further offended that Post-911 radiation monitors drive past mosques. The rest of us thank God and government for vigorous national defense in time of war.

Given that what is being rumored to be monitored in both cases is accessible to anyone, it is futile to claim any associated right of privacy. Data gathered thereby may not be admissible in court, but scanner fans, hackers and amateur radio (ham) operators worldwide access such information constantly.

The U. Penn college coed who The Fire reports recently engaged in sexual relations 3 days in a row while standing in front of a picture window, yet filed a sexual harassment claim against a photographer who eventually noticed needs to get a clue and shut the drapes.

The rest of us need to remember cell phone conversations and Emails are no more private than postcards. Speak and write as though there are no secrets, because in the end, there aren't. As Shakespeare once said, "The truth will out."

Update2: Web site "cookies" have been re-discovered, by those who wish to complain about their privacy implications when used by government Web sites. I agree the site settings for the use of cookies are horrid in many such sites, but frankly they are no better at the sites of some of the complainers.

This is even a debate I've had with my church, which for a time wouldn't allow a visitor to visit even the home page of its Web site without requesting permission to download and install Macromedia's Flash video viewer. I pointed out that such a request might drive off precisely the untrusting newcomers the church most wanted to attract, but at the time that comment fell on deaf ears.

Personally, I've found a cookie solution that works well. I use the Zone Alarm firewall, and set its privacy defaults to allow unlisted Web sites only temporary session cookies, automatically expiring and deleting them as soon as the browser is closed.

I then manually add additional cookie rights for specific sites that I do want to be able to save cookies longer and use private headers. If necessary, I also permit sites I trust to run mobile code. Only very rarely do I permit a sites to use third-party cookies, and I never permit Web bugs.

Sadly, many useful sites fail to operate at all unless the site is allowed to set cookies. It would be better, in my opinion, if users stayed away from all such sites, as that would eventually force such sites to repent and change their ways, much as updated browser default settings recently forced most Web sites to give up the use of pop-up and pop-under ads.

In response to the expected high costs of coping with Hurricane Katrina, leading lights in the blogosphere are asking bloggers to each identify at least one local pork project that might well be foregone in order to cope with Katrina damage. (Details here.)

That seems an extremely sensible goal. After all, when disaster befalls any of us in our personal lives (such as my suddenly having to replace a furnace last December), we limit other purchases until the debt is repaid. The Federal government can do the same.

Even very sensible investments in infrastructure that will be important someday may not be feasible to pay for this year along with Katrina's costs. They'll still be needed in another year, and can be done then, or after the end of the War on Terror.

One of my pet peeves about Viet Nam is that President Johnson refused either to raise taxes to cover the costs of that war, or to reduce social spending on his "Great Society", leading to the horrendous inflation of the 70s. Johnson's slogan was "Guns and Butter", which anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows is simply impossible.

Much though I appreciate President Bush's leadership in the War on Terror, I wish he weren't so fond of big Federal budgets. Who would have thought that the first president never to veto a spending bill would be Republican?

I hope that devotion to more and more Federal spending doesn't return to bite us in a few years with "stagflation" as in the 1970s. But speaking as one with a degree in Economics, Guns versus Butter remains an either/or choice.

In the spirit of porkbusting, here's a project I support, but am very willing to see delayed for a few years in order to meet emergency needs without busting the Federal budget:

Citizens Against the Sprawlway suggests taking $207 Million currently budgeted to start a 35 mile link from I-88 to I-80 known to its supporters as the Prarie Parkway, and using those funds to repair the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

Until now, I've been quite offended by the Sprawlway folks, as stereotypical short-sighted NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard.)

One of the smartest things the State of Massachusetts did, decades ago, was to build I-495 in the middle of "God-foresaken nowhere" as bypass around Boston. At the time, Route 128 was the edge of town, but by building I-495 another hour further out when land was cheap, needed infrastructure was already there when further growth happened decades later.

Much as I support the Prairie Parkway, for the same reasons as I-495, it really won't matter if it is delayed a few years until Katrina and the War on Terror have been fully resolved.

So the Prarie Parkway is my suggestion of a project I support in my area that I nonetheless offer to delay in order to balance the Federal budget.

I also support three other already-offered suggestions:
1) Senator McCain (R-AZ) suggests scrapping the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. (It is already expected to cost double its original estimate, and has won no thanks from beneficiaries.)
2) a moratorium on all new pork (projects not approved via usual budgetary processes.)
3) Cutting all non-defense and non-emergency response discretionary Federal spending by a few percent.

Update: We must also be extremely wary of waste and corruption in the use of government funds sent to help victims of Katrina. Some of their misery is due to misuse of previously-provided funds. Let's not just throw money at the same folks who wasted it before.

For instance, the moment I heard evacuees were to be given $2K debit cards, without any hint of helping folks use the funds wisely, I knew there would be trouble. And there was. At least one person reportedly used one to buy an $800 purse in Atlanta, and others used them in liquor stores.

But bad though such stories are, I'm much more concerned about other reported instances of waste, such as taking money granted to strengthen levees, and using it to buy riverboats for gambling.

I oppose all assistance and reconstruction aid, no matter the resulting harm to victims, unless such obvious fraud and corruption can be avoided, not because I don't care, but because such stories lead donors to close wallets, as misplaced funds fail to reach and help intended recipients.

Update2: Peggy Noonan, as always, has excellent thoughts on this subject.

Update3: Cox and Forkum demonstrate anew the power of a picture.

Update4: One response to Republican spendthrifts is a "Not One Dime More" campaign, refusing to donate any more money to the political campaigns of those who aren't facing the necessary hard decisions about allocating resources among competing needs with our government's existing revenue streams from all our pockets.

Seems right to me. Unfortunately, it now all makes sense that President Bush has never vetoed a spending bill. I'm all for compassionate conservatism, just as I'm all for fiscally conservative liberals. We in the richest country in history do need to care about the poor and downtrodden. But even the richest country in history cannot do everything simultaneously, and via the Federal government is often not the best way to do even things that very badly need to be done.

All that's left to repeat his father's most obvious failings as President is for "W" to support higher taxes to pay for all this pork.

Ross, where are you now that we need you again?

Update5: We got another Republican fundraising letter today. Needless to say, our reply was "Not one dime more!"

According to this story, "Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and Orbitz LLC have acknowledged using adware." It's great that NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (AKA "Sheriff of Wall Street") plans to do something about spyware and adware. But for me, he already has, by identifying Netflix and Orbitz as vendors who support what I consider malware. It will now be a cold day down under before I deal with either of those firms, both of which would otherwise have been likely to capture business from me soon.

Remember the BSR X-10 home remote control devices that used to appear constantly in pop-up ads? Same deal: much as I would have enjoyed buying their product, the sales method ensured I never shall.

Same thing now with University of Phoenix and its pop-under ads. What kind of fool registers at a college whose sales method is to annoy potential customers? And who would hire the grads of such a place?

Same thing with advertisers who run the same ad multiple times in the same hour of entertainment. Their goal is to get my attention. My goal, once they use such methods, is to never buy their product.

The general principle applies to all voluntary purchases -- if the only reason I know the name of a company is because they annoy me, that's sufficient reason to avoid their products.

Update: There's also the possibility of liability for damage to PCs to consider for big companies thinking of letting their products be promoted by adware, according to this article, which ironically was both written by Yahoo, and names Yahoo as one of the companies whose wares are used by spyware.

Other firms named in the article as potential boycott or lawsuit targets include: J. C. Penny, Capital One Financial Corp., Vonage Holdings Corp., Monster Worldwide Inc., Priceline.com Inc, Expedia Inc. and Orbitz.LLC (both owned by Microsoft IIRC), Sprint, Sony, Circuit City.

On the bright side, both Dell and Mercedes Benz have fired folks who arranged for their products to be promoted by adware. Verizon also reportedly abandoned adware last July, perhaps somewhat regretfully. Spokesman John Bonomo: "it was effective." The article also suggests Netflix may have reformed.

The article quotes Dave Methvin regarding a solution: "If a big company advertising on the Internet makes all of its suppliers down the chain sign a statement (and agree to penalties for breaking the rules), quickly the problem would go away."

A Powerpoint from a friend today advocates "Living wage" as a matter of justice. According to Thomas Sowell's book Basic Economics, which I am currently reading, this is a code phrase for a minimum wage high enough to support a family of four.

On the surface, this certainly sounds nice, and Sowell agrees that it is nice, in the short run, for those who already have jobs and whose companies don't go under as a result of the increase.

But there's the rub -- artificially raising the minimum wage above what a worker would otherwise earn does not magically make that worker's work worth more than before. Rather, it ensures workers whose efforts are not worth the higher wage will not continue to be employed, either by losing their jobs directly or through the eventual failure of employers who pay workers more than their labor is actually worth.

Worse, raising the minimum wage removes much of the penalty for racial and other improper discrimination by employers. At the original wage level, even disliked groups were hired, because at that wage no one else was available as an alternative. But once the wage rises, more applicants are available for every job, making it easy for an employer to discriminate against some groups and in favor of others, yet still be able to hire as many employees as they wish.

In the long run, mechanization of work tasks helps to bring the value of minimum wage workers up to what they cost. But here too there is a price. The mechanizaton allows the work to be done by fewer persons, thereby preventing some who would previously have been hired at the lower wage from being hired at all.

Sowell provides a very graphic illustration of how minimum wage laws, despite the best of intentions, have harmed black teens:
"Even though 1949--the year before the series of minimum wage escalations began--was a recession year, black male teenage unemployment that year was lower than it was to be at any time during the later boom years of the 1960s. The usual explanations of high unemployment among black teenagers--inexperience, lack of skills, racism--cannot explain their rising unemployment, since all these things were worse during the earlier period when black teenage unemployment was much lower.

Taking the more normal year of 1948 as a basis for comparison, black male teenage unemployment then was less than half of what it would be at any time during the decade of the 1960s and less than one-third of what it would be in the 1970s. Moreover, unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed itself but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers. In the early twenty-first century, the unemployment rate for black teenagers exceeded 30 percent."

I too was a teen in the 1960s, and well remember how difficult it was to find anyone willing to hire me to work for minimum wage. And frankly, with no one to support but myself, I didn't need a wage sufficient for a family at all, let alone a family of four. How sad that something done for the best of reasons has so harmed those it most hoped to help.

Update: This is to join a Friday linkfest at Outside the Beltway.

In December our 18 year old furnace started cycling way too often. A temporary cure was to replace the 3M Ultra Allergan filter we'd used for the past year (replacing the media quarterly, of course) with the cheapest spun glass filter we could find. Unfortunately, with allergies in the family, that wasn't a good long-term solution. Further investigation determined our furnace had been installed incorrectly when the house was built, and what was truly amazing was that it had ever worked properly with over 2/3rd of its airflow blocked by improper installation.

That led to replacing the whole thing, and since I'm kind of an Eco-freak, our only real option was whatever was most energy-efficient with continuous air flow for an electronic air cleaner. Being a gadget-lover, its having a computerized thermostat was also a plus. And of course it had to have a computerized humidifier. However, having had lots of maintenance problems with one of the first 90+ furnaces a decade ago, we made sure this one had a ten year factory warranty.

The real question was whether it would ever repay its high purchase cost in energy savings. We now have an early indication that it just might. Three months after installation, our level pay gas bill just dropped 60%, enough to pay for the furnace in 7 years.

Our new air conditioner hasn't been installed yet, but will be soon, and is similarly efficient. We'll see how its economics work out this summer, but one advantage is almost certain. It is promised to be far quieter than the former air conditioner, which matters as it is located right next to our deck. It also has a new non-Freon refrigerant, which should cut maintenance costs in years ahead as Freon is progressively banned.

In related news, we've just replaced both showerheads at home with water-conserving new ones. Where we used to live, water was not metered, but here it is. Further, long showers by more than two persons within a one hour period were using up our new last year 40 gallon water heater, and its installer said we lacked room for a larger one. We haven't had guests since, so we'll have to see how this works, but I expect it will meet our goals for the change.

I've not bothered with brand names or models here, as I suspect several alternatives would have worked equally well. If you're interested in that, let me know and I'll fill you in on the details.

Update: OK, it's a Carrier - their top of the line model, bought because with a rebate at the time it was a bit cheaper than the next model down. I'm still thrilled with everything about it except the hefty price, and an annoying constant reminder from the computerized thermostat that I need to replace my non-existent air cleaner media (we have an electronic air cleaner instead, and I clean it regularly, with no effect on the thermostat message.)

Our dealer has tried to make the message go away without success. He claims other customers are not having this problem, but hasn't yet acted to replace the thermostat under warranty as I have twice now requested. Needless to say, the two recommendations I've given to others to buy from that dealer will be the last until this is resolved.

It was 105 degrees here today, but the AC had no trouble keeping the house cool, and did so without objectionable noise. Our latest electric bill also shows improvement over last year. Despite significantly warmer (+6 degrees) average temperatures this year, usage is down 15%.

Update2: The thermostat was eventually replaced under warranty, and all has been well since. Our furnace may a a tiny bit undersized for the coldest and windiest days, but not enough to bother us. And with natural gas prices higher again this year, getting that new furnace sure is looking like the right decision.

Mark Minasi's 1999 book "The Software Conspiracy" (legally available for free here) points out the vulnerability of our software industry to competition from nations whose software vendors are legally required to sell reliable software. So long as consumers are not offered reliable software, vendors can get away with buggy products, protecting themselves with so-called licenses that are actually more like anti-warranties.

The problem is that laws allowing software vendors to get away with this in the U.S. do not exist everywhere. Some places actually expect programs to work, and hold vendors legally responsible for resulting problems when known software defects are not promptly fixed.

Once consumers realize reliable software exists and can be purchased, American software firms may be in as much trouble as American auto makers.

Minasi says it better: "American software firms currently make most of the world's software and as a result the software business contributes more to our international trade balance than any other industry. But once that was true of the American automotive industry as well, and the U.S. lost that lead to other countries by shipping low-quality goods. This could happen to software as well, and sooner than we expect."

American software vendors, for your own sake, please step away from the Jonestown (sweet but poisoned) Kool-Aid of using legalese to protect yourselves from the consequences of buggy software.

I've been jaundiced about the Federal tax system ever since President Reagan's 1980s attempt to simplify income taxes made them more complex instead. At the same time, I've also been very intrigued by one idea from Steve Forbes' Presidential campaign a few years ago -- that the Federal income tax could again become so simple it could be completed on a postcard.

Another intriguing idea is to stop taxing production and only tax consumption. I suppose that's the idea behind the VAT (Value Added Tax) in Europe. It is a national sales tax, imposed incrementally at every level of production. I don't know how well it would have worked alone, but it seems the Europeans merely added it on top of most if not all of their already-high taxes, and their economies have done poorly compared to ours ever since.

Such ideas are normally pipe dreams, with no chance of passing and becoming law, because someone's ox is always gored whenever the current system is changed, and those who feel they are losing something make a lot more noise than those who merely have something to gain from a change.

With Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, such hard problems can perhaps now be tackled with hope of success, just as President Johnson was able to tackle the tough problems of civil rights in the mid-60s when the Democrats similarly controlled all branches of government.

Unfortunately, even the best ideas don't always work out as intended. Johnson's "Great Society" wasn't so great for all the poor folks then warehoused in high-rise public housing.

Thus, any attempt now to make Federal taxes simpler and more fair:

1 has a better chance of success than any other time in my lifetime

2 must be done clearly and transparently in order to convince those of us who suspect it will really just be a way to raise taxes. This means no closed door sessions a la "Hillarycare" (Clinton's proposed nationalization of health care.)

3 absulutely must improve things for the poor rather than mostly for the already rich. As I've written before, it really bothers me that I paid a higher tax rate last year than Teresa Heinz Kerry.

4 should be so simple to understand that no two accountants will disagree about the amount due, as nearly all of them do about test cases now

5 should have no exceptions offering room for lobbyists to turn into new loopholes and unfairness

6 ideally, should also solve such looming problems as social security, health care and growing deficits, preferably in such a way as to discourage future Congresses from ever again promising too much to too many

If you find this topic of interest, read more here.

Update: Tom Maguire asks, sensibly, in my opinion:
...is there a Dem out there who can tell me (with a straight, non-botox enhanced visage) that if Social Security did not exist today, Dems would propose it with the current structure? Of course not - the benefit side may be fine (or not, but we can come back to means-testing later), but would any Dem anywhere propose a flat, regressive tax on wages as the financing method? Never.

His solution (for Social Security)?
Get rid of the tax on work, switch it to a tax on consumption - this should reduce dis-incentives to both work and savings. I understand that if the barriers to consumption are made too high, eventually both work and savings are also discouraged, except in Japan. However, the US seems to be a long way from having a problem of too little consumption, so I think we can take a chance here.

Update2: Democrat Mickey Kaus takes Tom Maquire up on the above offer here:
Suppose centrist Democrats did what was necessary to fix regular ol' Social Security, and then did what was necessary to create add-on private accounts. Would the result look all that different from what the Bush plan will actually look like?

Dems would insist on today's Social Security benefits as a minimum guarantee. And so they should! But couldn't that floor could be provided by a stringently means-tested old-style Social Security system--one that gave full guaranteed benefits only to seniors who really needed them? The idea would be to prevent future seniors who misinvested theirprivate accounts from living in poverty.

Ben at my office forwarded me a simple solution for fixing all that is wrong with Social Security: make it the retirement plan for members of Congress--with the same features for them as for everyone else, rather than them continuing to have a separate plan.

I've just noticed a wonderfully-titled essay "What Would Jesus Spend?" by UIC prof Deirdre McCloskey in the Wall Street Journal.

Briefly, contrary to popular opinion, we do not have to buy things we don't need just to keep the wheels of industry turning. In the short run it would be bad for workers at the Hummer plant if all consumers suddenly decided to buy only sensible cars. But in the long run those workers would work instead on sensible products, most of which would still be needed in a greed-free world.

"In the new, luxury-less economy it would still be a fine thing to have light bulbs and paved roads and other fruits of enterprise, and more of these would be better than less. "In equilibrium"--a phrase with resonance in economics similar to "by God's grace" in Abrahamic religions--the economy would encourage specialization to satisfy human desires in much the same way it does now. People would purchase Bibles in koine Greek and spirit-enhancing trips to Yosemite instead of paperback Harlequin romances and package tours to Disney World, but they would still value high-speed presses for the books and airplanes for the trips.

The desires of people who followed Jesus--or Mohammad or Amos, or for that matter Buddha--might well become different from those they typically now indulge. But that doesn't change how the system would work best. It would get the high-speed presses for printing Bibles by fostering a system of private property in which people's ideas and their labor seek their best employment in printing--what the blessed Adam Smith called the "simple and obvious system of natural liberty." And it would get the airplanes to Yosemite by allowing alert consumers to seek reasonable deals in travel, what Smith called the propensity to truck and barter."

We often hear, from many directions, how awful things are for us and our world, and how doomed we all are unless we change. And yet, despite all our problems, has there really ever been a better time in which to live than now, or a better place to live than here?

A page from the closing summary of Bjorn Lomborg's excellent book "the Skeptical environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World" puts it all in perspective:

"This civilization has over the last 400 years brought us fantastic and continued progress. Through most of the couple of million years we have been on the planet we had a life expectancy of about 20-30 years. During the course of the past century we have more than doubled our life expectancy to 67 years.

We have more leisure time, greater security and fewer accidents, more education, more amenities, higher incomes, fewer starving, more food and a healthier and longer life. This is the fantastic story of mankind, and to call such a civilization "dysfunctional" is quite simply immoral."

Lomborg wrote the above lines in response to Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance", of which he says "Gore's Litany about 'a dysfunctional civilization' and the loss of a 'direct experience with real life' reveals both a scary idealization of our past and an abysmal arrogance towards the developing countries of the world."

Though Lomborg's views are often attacked by other environmentalists, he began his efforts as a member of Greenpeace. Lomborg merely wants the limited funds available for solving the various remaining environmental problems of our world to be spent in the most effective way. He doesn't deny, for example, that the Earth is warming. He merely prefers to deal with resulting problems in a way that maximizes well-being for future generations, especially in the Developing World.

Highly recommended!

According to MSNBC News here, in a new "Eighth Annual World Wealth Report" published by investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co and consulting firm Capgemini, the word "millionaire" reportedly only appears twice--in the footnotes.

Instead, those who used to be referred to as "rich", are called HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals.)

There were reportedly 7.7 million millionaires in 2003, up half a million from 2002.

Seventy Thousand individuals worth over $30 million are called "Ultra-HNWIs". And those worth half a million also got a new name: "mass affluent."

One implication of such a story is that the economy is improving, at least for NNWIs.

But in a more important sense, every one of us has always been an Ultra High Net Worth Individual, whether we have a penny in the bank or not. We are each of infinite value to the one who created us and continues to love us without limit.

Ultra HNWIs, as measured in dollars, are strictly temporary. As our pastor often says, the rate of mortality is still just about 100%.

But Ultra HNWIs, as measured by God are eternal. Again, as our pastor often says "You are a beloved child of the most high God."

Bankers coined the term HNWI as a way to gain the business of folks with lots of money. Jesus, on the other hand, suggested "Don't store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal." Instead, "Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves." (MT 6:19-20 NLT)

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent solution to our current high oil prices.

By the mid-1980s, the World overcame the oil crisis of the 1970s, through more efficient cars, appliances, passenger jets, better insulated homes, and various other entirely rational responses to high energy costs.

Unfortunately, most Americans forgot all about that in the booming 90's, again choosing vehicles with horrible mileage, while simultaneously opposing all attempts to either drill for more oil in the U.S. or even build new refineries to process oil from elsewhere.

Now those among us who drove Hummers to anti-drilling rallies are reaping the equally rational consequences of our decisions. My last fill-up of our Prius cost me $14.55, good for over a week of driving. But whoever filled up just before me paid $40.

Krauthammer's cure? Raise the tax on gasoline to a total cost of $3 a gallon, but make it variable, so that when prices drop, the tax increases, to keep the price at $3 a gallon. That way we can't forget today's lessons when oil is cheap again. Note: our UK house guest this week reports gas there is $5 a gallon.

Like Krauthammer, I don't want that tax money kept by the government. He suggests returning it to taxpayers in Income tax cuts. I, on the other hand, would let some of it pay off the deficits incurred thus far in the War on Terror, and use any remainder to reduce the cost of public transit.

I would also make tollway tolls variable, higher as the roads get crowded, again using the added tolls collected to reduce the cost of public transit. That would have a dual benefit: the arrogant jerk who wants to drive his Beemer to work at 70 MPH rather than poke along at 5 MPH could do so, for say $10 a trip rather than the current $1. And all the folks priced off the tollway at rush hour to make that possible could instead ride to work for free on Metra.

Everybody wins except OPEC, and who wants to reward them?

Here's the rest of Krauthammer's column.

Update: A year later, it's a lot easier to believe gas prices might occasionally reach $3 a gallon even without added taxes. The underlying reason seems to be growing demand for oil in China and India as their recently-freed economies grow. For those of us who believe God loves all people, rather than just Americans, this is a good thing, and to be encouraged, even if it costs us more weekly at the pump.

A recent Thomas Sowell column points out correctly that most proposals to cut the cost of medical care or make it universally available do not even attempt to reduce the true underlying costs of medical care. They merely attempt to reduce the money paid toward those costs, by such means as trying to import drugs from Canada.

What's wrong with this picture is a simple matter of supply and demand. If the underlying costs of our current level of medical care are not somehow paid, then in the long run less medical care will be offered. If doctors don't make a good living and repay their school loans, fewer will choose to become doctors. If drug companies don't recover their costs in developing new drugs, new drugs will no longer be developed.

There are ways to reduce underlying costs of medical care, such as reducing the effort needed to get a drug approved for sale, or easing the barriers to entry into the profession of physician, but no one seems to be proposing such solutions yet.

Read the whole thing.

Update: This was the main topic of a chat with my brother and his wife today after a doctor visit. We agreed on three changes to our system that would actually make more medical care available, as opposed to merely arguing about who should be stuck with the bill.
1) lower the barriers of entry to the career of physician. As an illustration that this can work, J. pointed out that doctors now make house calls again in New York City. Many immigrant physicians want to live in New York, but can't afford an office and all its equipment. So instead, they make house calls with a black bag, as in the old days.

2) reduce the cost of malpractice lawsuits. A. has a background in law, so commented that only about 10% of lawyers bring most such suits, and end up keeping a lot of the proceeds. Somehow the idea has become accepted that if anything bad happens to anyone, then it must be someone else's fault, and the victim should become an instant millionaire at the expense of that someone else. Anything that reduces the incentives of ambulance-chasers to file frivolous lawsuits would help, including limits to awards for non-economic losses such as pain and suffering, and such principles as "loser pays" to make it more dangerous to file and then lose a frivolous lawsuit. (Under "loser pays", common in English law, the loser of a lawsuit must pay the legal costs of the winner.)

3) Along with ending the war on drugs (see this related post), which we appear to have no realistic hope of ever winning, change the role of the Food and Drug Administration, from deciding what drugs may be sold at all to merely certifying, like Good Housekeeping or Consumer Reports, which drugs are known to be safe and effective. This immediately reduces the cost of bringing new drugs to market by removing most of the hoops through which a company must now jump before being allowed to sell new drugs.

The benefit of all three of these proposals is that they reduce the actual cost of medical care, no matter who pays for it, and thereby increase the total supply of medical care possible.

Update2: Jeff Jacoby has another good idea for reducing health costs -- restore consumer awareness of actual costs of their medical expenses.

"Hospitals and physicians rarely advertise their rates because patients rarely care to learn them. For the majority of Americans under age 65, medical bills are something insurance companies take care of. Few patients have any incentive to focus on price, so few health care providers have any incentive to compete on price. Result: ever-higher health care costs, leading to ever-higher insurance costs.

For more than 60 years, federal law has excluded the value of employer-provided health insurance from the employee's taxable income. Buy your own health insurance, and you pay for it with after-tax dollars. Get health insurance through your employer, and it's tax-free."

Update3: Arnold Kling points out that all our discussions regarding the potential economies of single-payer government health insurance ignore that they can only affect the 10% of health care costs attributable to insurance paperwork and corporate greed. He points out that that would be like saying all the calories in a cake on its icing.
"The cost of health insurance has been rising, leading to well-publicized problems in the employer-provided health insurance system and increasing numbers of uninsured. But blaming insurance companies for that is like saying that the calories in a double-fudge chocolate cake are all in the icing.

The reality is that re-doing the icing will not have much effect on the cake, as the icing is not the reason that the cake has so many calories."

One of the two schools I consider worthy of regular contributions is Hillsdale College. Although I don't like quite everything about it, I love its independence from government-imposed political correctness, devotion to the ideals that made this nation unique, and its monthly free newsletter "Imprimis", available here.

The April 2004 issue of Imprimis contains a wonderful article by Maurice P. McTigue, on how New Zealand recently succeeded in completely rethinking its government. Although the article focuses on how government was reduced, much of the article is still valuable even if you think government needs to be bigger. Liberal or Conservative, I have yet to meet anyone who thinks we need a more inefficient or more corrupt government.

Imprimis allows anyone to freely reprint all or part of the article, so long as I add that it is reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College.

So here's an abbreviated version, with the best bits marked by me in bold-face. The whole thing is here.

Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand

What about regulations? The regulatory power is customarily delegated to non-elected officials who then constrain the people's liberties with little or no accountability. These regulations are extremely difficult to eliminate once they are in place. But we found a way: We simply rewrote the statutes on which they were based. For instance, we rewrote the environmental laws, transforming them into the Resource Management Act, reducing a law that was 25 inches thick to 348 pages. We rewrote the tax code, all of the farm acts, and the occupational safety and health acts. To do this, we brought our brightest brains together and told them to pretend that there was no pre-existing law and that they should create for us the best possible environment for industry to thrive. We then marketed it in terms of what it would save in taxes. These new laws, in effect, repealed the old, which meant that all existing regulations died - the whole lot, every single one.

This is a follow-up to my ealier post about the Radical Middle.

The idea of a renewed draft has recently been suggested by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, and previously by Democratic Representative Charles Rangel. Hagel thinks we lack enough volunteers to win in Iraq, and Rangel thinks a draft would help get us out of Iraq.

The military draft, back in the Viet Nam era was a lottery. Each birthday drew a number, and men turning age 18 got drafted into the military starting with those whose birthday drew #1, and continuing until enough had been drafted.

There were lots of exceptions. For a while I was deferred as a college student, then as a seminarian, but eventually I was 1A, meaning draftable, except that my number didn't get called that year.

Had I been drafted, as a contientious objector to that war but not necessarily all wars, I would have served as a medic -- still in battle, just not armed.

That whole system seemed unfair to me, primarily in that only some had to serve, and those who did tended not to be the children of the rich and powerful. In other words, the lottery was rigged, not directly, but in who was actually subject to it in a particular year.

What I considered a much better idea at the time, and still do, is Universal Service, the idea of having every 18 year old take time off between high school and career or college to do something useful to help others, hopefully returning with a better idea of what they want to do in life. In Universal Service, the armed forces are only one of several options, but all seek to focus teens on service to others. There's a lot that needs doing that never seems to get done, but just might if a year or more of national service ever became a normal part of becoming an adult, as it already is in some countries.

Although I still tend to be in favor of the idea of universal service, regardless of what war we are or aren't in at the moment, there's no way around compulsory service being involuntary servitude that increases the overall size of government, no way I could support a plan that lacked a civilian service option for those opposed to war, and I'll be uncomfortable with plans that let anyone escape serving, or that lack options for folks of other ages who have not already served to serve later, perhaps in retirement.

A powerful argument against the idea of a draft, written by a politically-centrist United Methodist minister who served in the military is posted here.

Interestingly, though there has been a lot of heated discussion about the draft at the university, even those who almost always and those who almost never agree with me had no comment at all about this proposal. I'm guessing that's either because it doesn't advance the argument they want to have now, or it's too centrist, and therefore too far off their radar even to see as worthy of discussion.

Update: Last night I received an Email claiming "The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed..." referring to Rangel's bill to revive the draft.

As I responded to the presumably-innocent-but-misinformed current sender, "The legislation mentioned was sponsored by a prominent Democrat, Charles Rangel, who would never willingly carry water for the Bush administration. Yes, it's a real bill, but no, it is not supported, quietly or otherwise, by the Bush administration. For the Email message to claim otherwise seems intentionally dishonest, in hopes of scaring votes away from the President this Fall."

When I was in high school, I believed in the War on Poverty. I wanted to end world hunger. Now, almost 40 years later, Charles Krauthammer reports we finally truly know how to do it. Except it turns out there's a cost, to us, and suddenly those historically associated with the war on poverty are no longer willing to pay the cost of achieving their goal.

When I was a young child, I'm told I once was so impressed by a church lesson about feeding the starving children of Hong Kong that I went door to door to collect donations from our neighbors to save those children.

India and China were also badly in need of aid at that time. But no more. All of those places have since figured out how to dramatically reduce hunger and poverty among their people -- through free enterprise.

The cost to us? Outsourcing. And it turns out that a lot of good liberal advocates for helping the poor are unwilling to support the one method proven to truly help -- letting the World's poor compete freely with us in the open market.

The worst single example I can think of at the moment is our high tariffs on imported sugar, most of which comes from impoverished Caribbean islands, and mostly protect rich corporate farmers in America, not American consumers.

Another example is when folks complain about wanting foreign workers to enjoy the same labor and environmental standards as American workers, even though no one else in those countries enjoys such standards, and even though imposing such standards would eliminate the only way those workers can compete effectively with ours--through lower costs.

Did Mexico benefit more from NAFTA than the U.S.? I certainly hope so. Most folks there still lack things nearly all U.S. citizens take for granted. As E. pointed out in on our drive home tonight, most homeless people in our area have cars! Poor people in the U.S. would be considered rich in most other countries. So why shouldn't we be willing to benefit less from trade agreements than poor countries?

As Krauthammer points out, 40 years ago leading Democrats like Hubert Humphrey were in the vanguard of anti-poverty efforts. And even as recently as President Clinton, some Democrats still understood the importance of free trade in helping the poor.

So how come now only Republicans still care about helping poor people in third world nations in the only way proven to actually work?

Krauthammer said it better, here.

Update: In the wake of the recent Asian tsunami, Rev. Donald Sensing illustrates how Europeans donate to the poor while simultaneously extorting money back.
"While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft."

Update2: We are now an important important step closer to resolving this problem, with the passage of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) in the U.S. House of Representatives today. Sadly, even though the primary purpose of this act is to help several of the poorest nations in the World, and no one is hurt other than the U.S. sugar industry, almost no Democrats voted for it. When did the Democrats become the party of the reactionary rich and the Republicans the party of ideas that help the little guy?

Genn Harlan Reynolds, the Instapundit has posted a great paragraph on whether the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in the U.S.:

"There is no question that statistics show a rise in inequality. The main reason: America welcomes more immigrants - legal and illegal - than all the other countries of the world combined. These newcomers typically start on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Exclude them from the statistics, calculates Easterbrook, and the increase in inequality disappears. Indeed, for the nine out of ten Americans that are native born, inequality is declining. And here is the reason that will surprise America's critics: the decline in inequality is due in good part to the rising affluence of African Americans."

(Reynolds attributes the quote to Gregg Easterbrook, as summarized by Irwin Stelzer.)

"America" is largely based on shared ideas, rather than similar background or appearance. One such idea is that those who work hard get ahead. So if class inequality increases in America, it is important to know whether that's only due to immigration. Otherwise, such statistics would suggest working hard doesn't bring progress. And if that were true, why would poor Americans continue to support America, rather than revolt against it?

I'm relieved to read that inequality among lifelong Americans is decreasing, and thrilled that rising affluence among African-Americans is why.