Sunday, May 30, 2004

Ha! Yet more proof of Bush Administration Corruption!

Here's the AP on yet another scandal: A single New Mexico family and a dozen big oil companies, including one once headed by Commerce Secretary Don Evans, now control one-quarter of all federal lands leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States despite a law intended to prevent such concentration, federal records show...Since 1997, mainly as a result of mergers and acquisitions, six companies have exceeded the legal limit of 246,080 acres in lease holdings on public lands in states other than Alaska. But the Bureau of Land Management in charge of enforcing the 1920 law, has chosen to extend compliance deadlines for years. Just stop and think for a moment what's being said. Regulations on industrial concentration written in the 1920's are being relaxed as compliance deadlines are extended. And as a result, thirteen companies now control 25% of federal land leased for oil development. Sounds serious, no? UPDATE: If you can stand it, read the article carefully and ask yourself "what is the point?" Am I missing something? All I can find is a collection of unconnected slurs which only hold together as significant only to those already convinced Big Oil is fundamentally evil. More and more the basic religious struggle seems not Western Civilization vs. Islamism, but rather American Capitalism versus New Age Environmental Transnational Progressivism.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:35 PM

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Doh! Wish I'd said that...

Milt Rosenberg's blog has a new feature. He announces it with these evocative words: Milt's File now enables comments from all visitors. We welcome--indeed, we urge--that you chime in with your commentary whenever one or more of our items stirs some responsive thought or mere spasm of emotion. I feel about as articulate as Homer Simpson whenever I'm around this guy.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:20 AM

Thursday, May 27, 2004

EconoPundit on WGN Radio Tonight

Tonight, from 9-11pm central I will be sharing the microphone with Robert Reich on Milt Rosenberg's great WGN talk show Extension 720. I think the show is available live over the internet here. So where else in the world could an obscure manufacturer/blogger/professor get on the radio for two whole hours with Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor. I mean, is this a great country or what? But seriously folks, consider for a moment what Extension 720 represents and what it can offer to anyone unfamiliar with it. Milt hosts genuine conversational talk radio. Not sound byte radio, not say-your-piece-and-let's-go-to-the-next-topic radio, but real dialogue. This is no easy task, talking to people about real ideas for two hours a night. Perpetually stalking the shadows, hovering over there in the darkness just a few inches beyond view of announcers, guests, and engineers, is the horrifying ever-present spectre -- genuine conversation, even about great ideas, can sometimes be boring. What risks Milt takes! Like a tightrope artist performing night after night without a net, this man faces dangers no media personality has been willing to undertake for a full quarter-century! Think of all the greats -- countless radio personalities whose names we don't remember or know, and the TV figures whose names are known by everyone: Edward Murrow, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett -- all martyrs to the great idea if you allow enought time to talk carefully and intelligently about worthwhile things, others will listen. UPDATE: And while you're at Milt's weblog follow this link to Fareed Zakaria's new Newsweek report of the recent Arab Summit. To those convinced history has a genuine structure tending to move all nations towards Western-style modernity, Zakaria's work is always interesting.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:06 AM

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Nuance...

Al Gore: Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens -- sooner or later -- to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:15 PM

On Kerry, Truman, and the '48 Convention

Every undergraduate learns (or used to learn) the dividing line was F.D.R.'s decision to attend the '32 convention. (Check out Vol.1 of Schlessinger for a typical discussion.) Kerry's little history lesson could be forgiven and quickly forgotten if it weren't so typically sanctimonious and if it hadn't contained the words "Once again, the Republicans don't know history, and they don't know facts..." Can it be Kerry doesn't know Truman came after F.D.R.? Via Glenn Reynolds. UPDATE: Or maybe the training wheels fell off.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:28 AM

To those who are still confused: he's the son...

Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley ...scolded Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry Tuesday for making a wisecrack about the bicycle accident that scraped the face, hands and knees of President Bush... Kerry was having a conversation with reporters that he apparently believed was off the record when he reportedly asked, "Did the training wheels fall off?" Daley, who ripped the skin off his kneecap during a bicycle accident a few years ago, said the joke was disrespectful. "When someone falls . . . you should not wish ill upon anyone. It's not right. . . . You just don't do that. Let's have some respect for one another." Interesting, no? At this point in time everyone who's ever fallen off their bike has one less reason to vote for Kerry.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:47 AM

Which side tries to impose its religion on others?

I've been brooding on Robert Reich's charge the "radcons" want to impose their religious beliefs on everyone. This article in this publication is one of many confirming what EconoPundit contends is the most serious critique of modern environmentalism -- that it fills a yawning need for spirituality and comforts of religion with a pseudo-scientific promise of absolute purity at zero cost, and a bland, pre-chewed, nonsectarian new age mysticism. As an economist I've long argued environmentalism fails because it denies the importance of opportunity costs. I am slowing coming to believe this denial may be religious in nature. UPDATE: Many have come to the same conclusion from different directions. Michal Crichton, for example, sees it as new eschatology. (We've linked to this before.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:01 AM

This just in! Uh, wait...

Spitbull has just now identified a prominent blogger passing on misinformation about two-year-old stuff being "new" (and even "interesting"). Wait. The Spitbull story is from last Friday. Sorry.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:45 AM

Issue Interruptus...

The 9/11 attack knocked cold any resolution of ongoing controversies and seriously declining relations between the US and the UN. Involved were US constitutional disputes as well as UN mismanagement and outright general corruption unrelated to what we now know as the oil for food scandal. Here's background: Kirkpatrick went on to say that the administration made a decision "to move the peacekeeping function and its funding from the State Department and the State Department budget to the Pentagon," where "new financial resources" were obtained. Peacekeeping, she charged, had "gained access to the accounts which were established for other purposes, which were authorized by the Congress and appropriated by the Congress for other purposes, such as the training of our military forces and the acquisition of spare parts and necessary military equipment."... Confirmation that such an approach was being pursued was provided by a top Clinton administration official, then-acting assistant secretary of state for international organizations George Ward, in an appearance before the United Nations Association in 1995. In discussing the so-called U.S. debt to the United Nations, Ward admitted, "We've provided an awful lot from the defense budget to the United Nations." He explained, "In 1994, when we were assessed $1.2 billion for peacekeeping, our nonassessed but voluntary contributions to peacekeeping--which almost all came from Defense Department resources--amounted to $1.5 billion."... The context in which those remarks were made, to a pro-UN audience, suggests that Ward was trying to make the case that the administration was supporting the United Nations despite congressional opposition. In effect, the administration decided to transform the Department of Defense into a military arm of the United Nations. That had the effect of frustrating the will of Congress, which had decided to withhold money to the United Nations to spark UN reform. Indeed, the administration's approach could help explain why that pro-reform strategy ultimately failed. From the UN's point of view, why should the world body reform as long as the administration was providing the financial resources supposedly denied by Congress? None of this will go away. It is all waiting to resurface during the Presidential debates. UPDATE: And then there are all those new objections to the UN, including UN peacekeepers who trade food for sex.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:40 AM

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Who really owns Iraqi oil?

In considering how one should think about this story, I want to revisit a paragraph in the Robert Reich essay we examined a few days ago: Even if you're a billionaire, it's not just your money. You earned it because you live in America. President Theodore Roosevelt made the case in 1906, when arguing in favor of continuing the wartime inheritance tax. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government," he said. It's your country. And right now your country needs every American to sacrifice, in fair proportion... If, as Reich says, implicit obligations automatically attach to wealth earned in a larger national context, who is to say similar obligations do not apply to wealth earned in a larger, international setting? The new Post-Saddam Iraq generated neither the technology, the capital, nor the political context that now lend it ability claim oil resources within its borders. Why does it not owe part of oil rent revenue to circumstances of the larger context? Why does it not owe something to the World and, more specifically, to that part of the world called the United States?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:46 AM

Chinagate revisited...

There's a new must-read at Frontpage: As the 9/11 Commission tries to uncover what kept intelligence agencies from preventing September 11, it has overlooked two vital factors: Jamie Gorelick and Bill Clinton. Gorelick, who has browbeaten the current administration, helped erect the walls between the FBI, CIA and local investigators that made 9/11 inevitable. However, she was merely expanding the policy Bill Clinton established with Presidential Decision Directive 24. What has been little underreported is why the policy came about: to thwart investigations into the Chinese funding of Clinton's re-election campaign, and the favors he bestowed on them in return...Nearly from the moment Gorelick took office in the Clinton Justice Department, she began acting as the point woman for a large-scale bureaucratic reorganization of intelligence agencies that ultimately placed the gathering of intelligence, and decisions about what -- if anything -- would be done with it. This entire operation was under near-direct control of the White House. In the process, more than a dozen CIA and FBI investigations underway at the time got caught beneath the heel of the presidential boot, investigations that would ultimately reveal massive Chinese espionage as millions in illegal Chinese donations filled Democratic Party campaign coffers.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:21 AM

What's the value of one speech?

The Bush speech last night seems to have raised his probability of being elected by 1 point, according to the value of the Intrade Bush Reelection Contract. Interesting to see how stable the number is, and how it changes as more of the fabled "six speeches" or "events" finally take place.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:04 AM

Severe weather watch...

Patrick J. Michaels on "Day After Tomorrow": "Did you know," says the site, that there were more tornadoes recorded in May 2003 than in any other month? I looked up federal tornado statistics, and indeed they're going up, and there was a peak in May 2003. Then I determined the number of radar stations and their type. When our first radar-tracking network was established in the 1960s and '70s, the number of tornadoes rose proportionally, then leveled off until the new Doppler radars came online in 1988. It took a decade to put this system in place, and the number of reported tornadoes went up accordingly. Then I plotted the number of severe tornadoes. If anything, it's going down. So the flashy Doppler radars are merely detecting more weak storms that cause little, if any, damage. The Web site also implies that global warming is making hurricanes worse. Christopher Landsea, the world's most aptly named hurricane scientist, has studied the maximum winds in these storms as measured by aircraft and finds a significant decline. Global warming? Some scientists think climate change strengthens El Nino, the large atmospheric oscillation responsible for a variety of weather -- both good and bad. El Ninos are known to rip apart hurricanes. So it's more likely that climate change is weakening these storms than enhancing them. Yeah, sure, but I don't care what they say I'm going to get in line to see this movie the first week it opens. Love those CGI effects! Via Drudge.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:59 AM

Sunday, May 23, 2004

The more we drill the more we find. But you have to drill...

Don Luskin is not worried about our running out of petroleum. And while we're on the subject: Charles Krauthammer (surprisingly!) argues back in the eighties we lost our chance to get everything under control by not adopting a Canadian style National Energy Programme. The difference between a Canadian and American N.E.P., however, is the sheer size of the American economy. Because the US economy is so big an A.E.P. (American Energy Programme -- keep the Canadian spelling to celebrate the origin of the idea! Hooray!) would serve to stabilize world prices on a more or less permanent basis: The idea is for the government -- through a tax -- to establish a new floor for gasoline, say $3 a gallon. If the world price were to rise above $3, the tax would be zero. What we need is anything that will act as a brake on consumption. Since America consumes 45 percent of the world's gasoline, a significant reduction here would bring down the world price. But the key is to then keep the tax. Indeed, let it increase to capture all of a price reduction. Consumers still pay $3, but the Saudis keep getting lower and lower world prices. The U.S. economy keeps the rest in the form of taxes -- which should immediately be cycled back to consumers by a corresponding cut in, say, payroll or income taxes. Keep gasoline prices high and American consumers will once again start demanding and buying lighter and more fuel-efficient cars -- exactly as they did in the late '70s and early '80s. Prices will continue to drop, and the U.S. economy will capture the difference. I love it. I especially like that if we were to implement an A.E.P. now, we could make the transition smoother and less painful by playing with world price (on a short term basis) through manipulating of stocks going into/and/or/ coming out of the SPR. UPDATE: Lots of disagreement here. For example: Don't do it!!!! Every government run debacle started out as an elegantly simple, well intended idea very similar to Krauthammer's NEP. Its never the intended consequences that get us, it is the unintended mess that is always created when our elected officials start pandering to every constituency out there and smarmy bureacrats turn a good idea into a hopelessly complex fee generator for trial lawyers. Free market capitalism is pulling millions of people in India, China, Russia etc out of poverty. It is the most magnificently simple and effective path to effective resource utilitzation ever discovered by man. I beg of you...don't get the idiots at EPA involved....they will take a good idea and screw it up beyond recognition and every environmental wacko group will sue and on and on and on. PLEASE, let the market work...........now see what you've done. I have to have my 5:00 drink at 3:00!! :-)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:49 AM

Big Oil: it may be bigger than you think...

Have you ever heard of the abiotic theory of oil formation? Did you know petroleum may not be compressed dinosaurs? That petroleum may actually be as abundant as iron ore, or bauxite, or any of those important minerals we simply drill for, find, mine, and use? That predictions arising from this theory apparently resulted in the previously thought-impossible Russian oil industry? That the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has scheduled a conference in July 2004 to review the evidence supporting this and other theories about the formation of oil? Heck, don't listen to me. Check it out yourself!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:13 AM

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Chew carefully before you eat, especially if the food is dry...

At the Passover Seder three years ago I caused some of my relatives to choke on their matzos by arguing less conservation, more SUVs, and higher oil prices would be beneficial, because they would increase the economic incentives for finding feasable long-term substitutes for nonrenewable fuels. At that time there weren't enough editorials like this one to explain some of the basics of petroleum economics: [T]he issue is not whether the world is running out of oil. The debate concerns a theoretical milestone called Hubbert's peak, after which output from any given field slows and becomes more costly to produce long before the last drop is lifted. Half of Saudi Arabia's oil comes from the giant and venerable Ghawar field; much of the remainder comes from four other aging giants that may be at or near their Hubbert's peak. What's true of a single field must, at some point, become true in aggregate of the world's inventory of productive oil fields. Various authorities have been sounding the SOS for the past year, their debate hosted in the pages of the Oil & Gas Journal. How much oil is left is far less significant than how quickly and cheaply it can be extracted, especially from a relative handful of large, cheap-to-produce fields that have carried industrial man for a century. Some believe that getting much above today's 80 million barrels a day would be horrendously costly if not impossible. If they're correct, two billion Chinese and Indians, right now beginning to trade their bicycles for Toyotas, would be stuck trying to achieve modernity by outbidding the rest of us for a share of the world's current rate of oil production rather than benefiting from additional output. All this has some petroleum engineers predicting resource wars, famine and pestilence, preventable only by a massive effort of central planning to shift the world to a less hydrocarbon-intensive lifestyle. If so, we might as well pass around the cyanide caplets right now. Such global planning is certainly beyond the wisdom and power of politicians to manage. Yet the unwillingness of doomsayers to credit price signals with eliciting changed consumption behavior, new technology, a thousand substitutions and other adaptive responses is more than a little peculiar here. Oil companies have held back from investing in deep-water searches, Canadian oil sands and Venezuelan bitumen for fear oil prices will plummet to $15. Shareholders have kept Big Oil on a short leash, tolerating only low-risk investment projects that will generate cash flow in a small number of years. Won't this change now if higher prices seem a permanent feature of the landscape? Motorists might or might not be willing to swallow price hikes, but what about other industries that use petroleum as feedstock? They're price sensitive and would be expected to adapt in ways that aren't all easy to foresee from today's vantage. Scare talk is a hardy perennial in the global petroleum business, a passport to fun and attention from the media. Industrial society is frequently painted as a fragile, vulnerable machine, yet all the evidence suggests the opposite: It's a machine that has grown more resilient and adaptable the more complex and interdependent the world becomes. In short, as long as the price mechanism is allowed to work, mankind seems likely to muddle through. Hallelujah, then, for higher oil prices.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:38 AM

Friday, May 21, 2004

Where do you begin?

As a means of getting my own thoughts in order (will explain why soon) I am going to Fisk the following essay -- "The right-wing trifecta -- morality, prosperity, and patriotism -- and how to fight it" by Robert Reich. Bold typface indicates Reich is talking, regular typeface is EconoPundit. In my view, being a liberal is something to be proud of. Yet for more than 20 years, liberals have been on the defensive and conservatives ascendant. Radical conservatives -- "radcons," I call them -- are taking over the public agenda. Radcons are revolutionaries. For them, ends justify means. They'll do whatever it takes to win. Yes, I think I understand what you're talking about. Listen to Paul Weyrich, prominent radcon founder of The Heritage Foundation and coiner of the term "moral majority": "We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of the country. " And they are meeting with woefully little resistance. And there is also a liberal media elite, a vast right wing conspiracy, a military industrial complex, a power elite, yadda yadda yadda. Lots of evidence for each one of them. Tell me about social policy, not conspiracies. To understand their radicalism, you need to understand their notion of evil. To radcons, the major threat to the security of our nation, the stability of our families, our future prosperity, and the capacity of our children to grow into responsible adults is a dark, satanic force. It exists within America in the form of moral deviance -- out-of-wedlock births, homosexuality, abortion, crime. It potentially exists within every one of us in the form of sloth and devastating irresponsibility. It exists outside America in the form of "evil empires" or an "axis of evil." There's no compromising with such evil. It has to be countered with everything we have. Religious faith and discipline are the means of redemption. Punishment and coercion are the only real deterrents. Fear is the essential motivator. This is interesting. I never knew I was so bad. You seem to describe people who believe in evils as...well, uh, evil. Maybe I'm missing something. The radcons' dominance is due in part to their money, discipline, and tactics. But the most fundamental source of their dominance has been their capacity to shape the public debate around this idea of evil. Put simply, radcons have offered America a set of ideas that celebrate "us" and condemn "them." Unless "our" values prevail, "they" will triumph. So if I object to the beheading of Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Berg I'm celebrating "us" and condemning "them." Ohhhkay.... The Radcons' arguments are organized around three themes: morality, prosperity, and patriotism. The radcon version of morality seeks to impose private religious norms about sex and the family on the entire nation, transforming matters of private morality into law. Lots of Americans think abortion is murder. I don't agree with them but I respect their beliefs and their right to hold these beliefs. Do you? Don't you worry about vilifying those who, like your former boss President Clinton, strongly oppose abortion on the private level but still accept Roe v. Wade? But radcons are looking in the wrong direction. America is facing a moral crisis, but it is abuses of authority at the highest levels of America that are stacking the deck against average working people and small-scale investors, not to mention undermining public trust in the entire economic and political system. The real public moral breakdown is at the top, where too many powerful and wealthy people are abusing their authority. We are defining deviancy down. Whoa! What's all this "us" and "them" stuff? This is starting to sound like you think those powerful and wealthy people at the top are, uh, what was that word? Was it evil??? Even in the early 1990s, before the stock market soared and then plunged, before the corporate scandals, CEO pay in America was "deviant" in the sense that it was far higher than the pay of CEOs in other countries. Was this a violation of some international CEO-pay-treaty? I thought we were allowed to pay people more here. And by the way, watch that "deviant" stuff. People might think you believe in -- what was that word -- was it evil??? Then it grew even more wildly out of line -- going from 42 times an average hourly worker's pay in 1980 to 85 times as much in 1990 to more than 280 times as much now. Wait -- I'm going to check my economics textbook to find exactly which multiple of the average hourly worker's pay the average CEO's salary is supposed to be. Can't find it. Can't seem to find it anywhere. Hmmmm... Still looking... But what had once been disturbing came to be expected. Then, what became expected became acceptable. Finally, what became acceptable began to seem appropriate. Hey, maybe we're all -- what was that word -- was it evil??? The problem isn't just a few "rotten apples." We need moral as well as legal limits on rapacious CEOs, accountants, lawyers, brokers, and investment bankers. Liberals should lead the charge for reforms, as they have done twice over the last century, in the early 1900s and in the 1930s. Both times, liberal reformers were accused of interfering in the free market. But in both instances, liberals prevailed by appealing to public morality and common sense. Didn't they also demonize their enemies as you are doing now? The radcon version of prosperity rewards the rich, gives almost nothing to the middle class, and penalizes the poor. It is based on a market-fundamentalist faith that has deep roots in American history. So the market system itself is fundamentally exploitative. It perpetually rewards only the rich while taking away from everyone else. Do I have that right? Few Americans living today have read any of Herbert Spencer's writings, but they had an electrifying effect on America during the last three decades of the 19th century. To Spencer, the marketplace was a field for the development of personal character. Only the fittest were able to prosper, because only they were able to muster the necessary resources to maintain themselves and their offspring. It was Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." It's almost startling to find how exactly Spencer's views are echoed by today's radcons. Right. And also the views of Friedman, Hayek, Coase, etc., etc., not to mention classical thinkers on international trade like David Ricardo and current strong exponents of expanded global trade like yourself. The America of the late 19th century went through a technological revolution. Today's social problems differ in many ways but the upheaval caused by today's technological revolution is no less dramatic. If you hypothetically ignore the rest of America, the poorest people here are the richest people in world history. The majority of those living at the official poverty level own color televisions and air conditioners. Many have illegally crossed a border so they can work to send money home. I agree -- very dramatic indeed. The radcons are dead wrong about how to grow the economy. Their solution is to raise the level of savings and reduce consumption in order to create more capital. But the real way to do it is by widening the circle of prosperity to include Americans who have been falling behind. Rather than cut taxes on the rich in order to generate more financial capital, we need to use those tax revenues instead to improve the productivity of all Americans. In a world where financial capital moves across borders at the speed of an electronic impulse, our people -- our human capital -- are the one asset that's uniquely American. Shared prosperity isn't incompatible with growth; it's essential to it. In other words: don't create more wealth, just redistribute it. Everyone in the world -- hey, even economists in Europe -- agree more capital means higher growth and higher per capita income. I've never heard anyone claim redistribution increases economic growth. Until now, that is. But in the post-September 11 world, patriotism has arguably emerged as the area in which radcon rhetoric has proven most effective. It has certainly been the most intimidating to Democrats -- and infuriating to liberals. I understood Nancy Pelosi was mad but I never knew she was intimidated. The radcon version of patriotism is downright dangerous. I call it "negative patriotism" because it stifles dissent at home and insists that America be so much stronger militarily than any other nation that we can bully others into submission. Before I call in the storm troopers to shut you up, I want to know one thing. Is it your position the US ought to become weaker than other nations so it can't "bully" them into submission? What is the role of patriotism in an age of terrorism? Radcons emphasize pledging allegiance, showing the American flag, and singing the national anthem. They label as "traitors" anyone who criticizes the president or questions any detail of America's "war on terrorism." Their goal is to keep America the most powerful nation on earth and force into submission any other nation that might threaten us. Their patriotism is all about expunging "evil" outside our borders. Terrorism is another evil that must be eliminated through discipline and force. And the war on terrorism is another example of us against them -- if you're not with us, you're against us. This is instructive. I thought we favored Democracy, Islamists favored submission to theocratic state, and Madrasas teach kids they should slay the infidel wherever he is to be found. I guess I'm just reading too much Radcon propaganda. The radcon version of patriotism requires no real sacrifice by most Americans, nor does it ask anything of the more fortunate members of our society. Radcons don't link patriotism to a citizen's duty to pay his or her fair share of taxes to support the nation. And they don't think patriotism requires that all citizens serve the nation. Theirs is a shallow patriotism that derives its emotional force from disdaining foreign cultures and confronting foreign opponents. As such, it imperils the future security of America and the world, for reasons I will outline in a moment. Your authoritarianism is showing. We can now see you're just itching not only to soak the rich, but also to re-institute the draft. Maybe it's just better to let people alone? Yet many liberals have been silent about patriotism. They seem wary of it or, at best, embarrassed by it. Perhaps that's because, in recent decades, patriotism has so easily morphed into crass "America first" chauvinism. But that's not the only form patriotism can take. Liberals must promote a "positive patriotism" that stands tough against terrorism and genocide, yet doesn't need a foreign enemy to define itself or in order for it to flourish. At its best, the American tradition of liberal internationalism has reflected our drive to expand our founding ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy. Or maybe the Democratic Party is now an unstable alliance between a weak centre and a tiny but extremely loud/activist radical Left Wing that hates America and supports Europe and even Islamism? Among my earliest memories is my father telling me what a wonderful place America was and what a privilege it was to live here. Even though he worried about making enough money to support our family, he always thought of America as a land of wondrous opportunity. My father was a patriot, but that didn't stop him from being critical of America or of the people who led it. He thought that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a villain, and, years later, that Lyndon Johnson had deceived the nation about Vietnam. He was the first person I heard say that Richard Nixon was a crook. Most Neocons had dads just like yours. I know I did. Dad's patriotism was grounded in American ideals. He got upset when he noticed a wide gap between those ideals and what actually occurred. And in these moments he was participating in the very essence of Americanism. That gap is still with us and always will be. The ideals are just that -- ideals. They're goals and aspirations. But unless we acknowledge the gap, we can't even begin to close it. If we accept the radcon view that good citizens should keep their criticisms to themselves, we won't ever be able to mobilize the political will to do better. A childhood friend of mine, Michael Schwerner, went to Mississippi during the summer of 1964 to register black people to vote. Mickey was in his 20s, brimming with optimism and courage. He was murdered, along with two other civil-rights workers, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, by racist thugs. What motivated the three of them to participate in "Freedom Summer" was that they loved America enough to risk their lives for it and were determined to help close the gap between American ideals and American practices. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were true patriots. Aren't you worried this sounds too self-congratulatory? The average reader might even think you are working yourself up into a mood of moral superiority. You should watch that. Lots of people participated in the Civil Rights movement. Even some Neocons. But most of all, a truly positive patriotism asks sacrifices of Americans. What should be asked of individual American citizens in a time of emergency such as ours? Radcons don't ask much more than uncritical support for their policies. I listened recently to a radcon radio talk-show host fulminate against liberal "anti-American traitors" who criticize American foreign policy. Within a minute, he was on to another one of his favorite topics: taxes. "It's your money," he thundered, repeating the radcon line we've heard so many times before. "It's not the government's money!" He bloviated on about why it was perfectly OK for citizens to use every tax dodge they could find to avoid paying Uncle Sam. Why is it a "line" to say taxes are paid out of income earned by taxpayers? The argument clearly upsets you, but you're not really confronting it. "It's your money" makes it sound as if citizens have no duty to support America. But how can we afford to fight terrorism if everyone tries to avoid paying taxes? What kind of patriotism is this? Real patriotism requires real sacrifice. Those who honestly love America feel a strong sense of responsibility to it. Displaying an American flag is easy. Paying your fair share of the cost of the nation requires some sacrifice. No, "it's your money" makes is sound like it's "your money" -- which, after all, it is. I don't pay taxes out of money I've stolen from anybody. Do you? And by the way, our "duty to support America" isn't some objective thing hanging out there in space that wise priests like yourself must interpret to us. It is exactly what we vote for and collectively decide on every two to four years. If we've got a tax cut it is because we've voted for one -- remember? With all due respect, your essay is starting to sound very much like a religious sermon. Isn't the minister supposed to establish moral superiority in one paragraph and immediately move to making demands on the congregation -- usually for more funds? We don't know exactly how much the fight against terrorism will cost in the years ahead, but it's bound to be far more than the $400 billion now budgeted annually for the Defense Department. I remember a White House meeting years ago when the president's national-security adviser asked for billions of dollars more than had been budgeted for the Defense Department in order to go into Bosnia. It struck me as odd. I'd assumed that the whole reason for spending hundreds of billions each year on defense was so the military could take military action. But it turned out that the purpose of the defense budget is to be ready for military action. Military action itself costs much more. "Battles are extra," I remember him saying. Careful. You're starting to lose the congregation's attention. We have to spend hundreds of billions more rebuilding Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries we've pledged to help. We'll need to spend a bundle policing against terrorism around the world, even if other nations are pitching in, too. Helping Russia and other nations secure all nuclear-fissile materials will be a further major expense. Add to that the substantial cost of beefing up homeland security. As I've noted, exercising true world leadership is also expensive; it will require far more money, as well as attention, than we devote to it today. Okay now you've got our attention. It's your money? It's your country! If you weasel out of what you owe in taxes, either someone else has to pay more taxes to make up the difference or there's less of what's required -- roads, hospitals, troops, cops, safety inspectors, teachers -- to keep it great. Now we're back into H & R Block territory! This is just silly. "It's your money" does not equal "you should break the law and not pay taxes." Please. No wonder you guys lose elections! Traditionally during wartime, taxes were raised on top incomes to help pay for the extra costs of war. The estate tax was imposed by wartime Republican Presidents Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley. It was maintained through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War. Only in 2001 did radcons start to phase it out. During World War I, the income-tax rate on the richest Americans rose to 77 percent. During World War II, it was greater than 90 percent. In 1953, with the Cold War raging, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower refused to support a Republican bill to reduce the top rate, then 91 percent. By 1980, the top rate was still at 70 percent. Then Ronald Reagan slashed it to 28 percent. I think a picture is starting to emerge. Actually, the congregation doesn't need to worry. Only the rich members will be forced to pay more. Because Reagan kept spending record sums on the military, the federal deficit ballooned. A few years after that, the Berlin Wall came down, ending the Cold War. We congratulated ourselves -- and then faced the largest budget deficit since World War II. And prosperity followed. Now we're back at war. But instead of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for it, the radcons want to cut those taxes. Pardon me for asking, but where, exactly, is the patriotism in this? Whoa! Wait a few seconds -- aren't we missing a few things here? Don't you want to talk about the significance of the Berlin Wall coming down? About the revolutionary world-historic movement from central planning to markets? About globalization -- you know, that new global economy you used to talk about? The one where markets seem to work better than central planning? Liberals must do the arithmetic for the American public. Compare the after-tax earnings of families in the top 1 percent with the after-tax earnings of families in the middle. Between 1980 and 2000, the after-tax earnings of families at the top rose more than 150 percent, while the after-tax earnings of families in the middle rose about 10 percent. The Bush tax cut of 2003 raised the after-tax incomes of most Americans by a bit more than 1 percent, but raised the after-tax incomes of millionaires by 4.4 percent. Apparently, in this time of national emergency, the wealthy have less of a patriotic duty to provide for the financial support of their country than do families of more moderate means. We need a new jingle for the Democratic Party. Something with really bouncy, cheerful music and words something like "Victims, you're all victims, and the Party's here to help you get along..." The intellectual core of the argument is right here. We can do percentages, statistics, argue about panel studies and mobility, get everyone's eyes to completely glaze over -- but it boils down to this: the Democratic position is that the system is inherently unfair, and Liberals must expose this unfairness by doing the arithmetic for the American public. Liberals will blind you with science. They will do the arithmetic for you to prove just how much you've been exploited by the system. Even if you're a billionaire, it's not just your money. You earned it because you live in America. President Theodore Roosevelt made the case in 1906, when arguing in favor of continuing the wartime inheritance tax. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government," he said. It's your country. And right now your country needs every American to sacrifice, in fair proportion. Liberals embrace this sacrifice. Radcons want to evade it. Let's do a little arithmetic for the American public. Right now. We don't even need a blackboard. Just imagine how many small, prosperous, stable family businesses existed during President Theodore Roosevelt's administration -- you know, those one-generation-to-the-next reliable little yeomen of capitalism? The answer is, there were lots of them. And how many there are now? Very few. Virtually all have been replaced by McDonalds, 7-Eleven, and other franchise operations. You can explain why by looking at how many adjustments for inflation the inheritance tax has gone thru since President Theodore Roosevelt's time. How many millions in value-of-business can you pass along to your family after your death now, in other words, and how does this compare with the numbers during Teddy Roosevelt's time? If you answer that question you may understand why we buy our lunches and groceries at franchise operations rather than small independent family businesses. Professor Reich argues "radcons" are ideological -- but isn't it a tad ideological to claim a millionaire in Teddy Roosevelt's time (when root beer cost five cents) is exactly the same thing as a millionaire in the year 2004 (when root beer costs $2)? In the battle for America, liberals shouldn't recoil from morality, prosperity, and patriotism. The radcon versions imperil our future. But unless they're met head-on by a bold, liberal alternative, radcons win by default. Liberals have reason on our side. But that's not enough. To win, we also need fire in our bellies. Passion is necessary to gather resources, build organizations, and energize participants. I believe that another era of liberalism is on its way. The most important thing for each of us to know is that we're not alone in all this. There are tens of millions just like us -- Americans who have had enough of the radical conservatives. Liberals will indeed win the battle for America because we are closer than radcons are to the true American ideals. I would very much like to be able to go back to the days when I was a Liberal. I'm sorry to say this, but nothing in the above essay is much help. UPDATE: A reader sends this in: You know, I used to think he was relatively realistic...Personally, after spending many years in poverty (literally) and working hard to make myself more useful, I now find myself in a nice house and earning (just) in the top 10%. Is Reich going to do something about all those years I was in the bottom 10%? Like maybe send me enough of his stash to even me out for those 30 or so years? Shouldn't take more than a few hundred thousand. Peanuts for him. EconoPundit adds: So you're one of the folks in this study's chart: Lots of mobility, but my experience is both sides can draw evidence and claim vindication from these same data. Here's the way Daniel Gross describes the numbers: The slowing mobility was evident at both the bottom and the top. In the 1970s, 49.4 percent of those in the poorest quintile were stuck there at the end of the decade, while 24.5 percent had moved up to the second-poorest quintile. But in the 1988-1998 decade, 53.3 percent of the bottom quintile stayed put while 23.6 percent rose one quintile. Among those in the top income quintile at the beginning of the 1970s, 49.1 percent remained there at the end of the decade; in the 1990s, 53.2 percent did. Of the richest fifth in the 1970s, 72.8 percent ended up in the top two income quintiles; in the 1990s, 79 percent did. When inequality rises -- as everyone concedes it has -- and mobility falls, American society becomes much less fluid, much more stratified. As a result, "Compared to 30 years ago, families at the bottom are poorer relative to families at the top and also a bit more stuck there," Katz and Bradbury conclude. Keep in mind that inequality rose and mobility decreased in the 1990s, when taxes were raised on the wealthiest. Bush administration policies -- sharply reduced marginal rates, a gradual abolition of the estate tax, a reduction in the dividend tax -- will surely amplify the trend. To borrow another phrase from Schumpeter, our bias in recent years has switched from creative destruction toward creative preservation. The rich have figured out how to use the federal government to help them stay that way. Personally, I don't see a shift from 49% to 53% as demonstrating dramatically lowered mobility. Nor do I agree "everyone" has conceded inequality has risen. (Just as you have to take mobility into account, so must you adjust for little details like massive changes in illegal immigration!) Folks like Daniel Gross and Robert Reich disagree. But here's the most important point: that the numbers can be interpreted so differently undercuts their claim that "maldistribution of income" and/or "low income mobility" is somehow settled economic science.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:06 AM

Who knows...

The most serious possible charge (or smear?) delivered in the most effective way.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:59 AM

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Another Kerry Gaffe?

Here are the closing stanzas of the original, rather bitter Langston Hughes Poem Let America Be America Again (the Kerry campaign's new slogan): Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again! Pretty strong material. Does John Kerry really goes along with all this leeches, rape, rot, graft, lies, and gangster stuff? Did Kerry approve of this message? Via Crushkerry.com. UPDATE: And this just in from Andrew Sullivan: [T]he cover story in Sunday's New York Times Magazine is a Susan Sontag essay. Yes, she's going to write about Abu Ghraib. And -- yes! -- the headline is: "The Photographs Are Us."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:11 PM

I suppose I should have known...

I've heard of the expression "Kafkaesque" and have served as an articulate and passionate proponent of the additional "Kafkaic," but never did I suspect there was a "Kafka" law that addressed the issue of Big (capital B) European Bureaucracy (capital B).

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:22 AM

Yeah, but what about the exchange-rate adjustment?

Don ("EconoGonzo") Luskin speaks out on Tim Noah, Slate, and the (constant-dollar) price of gasoline. Great graphic, but...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:57 AM

What they're saying (in Arabic) about Abu Ghureib...

MEMRI.ORG has a new collection of excerpts from Arabic editorials -- all on Abu Ghureib and the aftermath. A must read. Example: Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, wrote: "The names of all the thieves of the Oil for Food [Program], who took the oil money while the food never reached the Iraqi people, were documented [in a list] of perk recipients, and no one in the Arab media asked that they be punished or show their shame. Their crimes are much more serious than the Abu Ghureib prison scandals, because for years they stole medicine for the sick and for hospitals in Iraq and sold it on the Jordanian and Gulf markets. The historical significance of this website can't be stressed enough. Prior to MEMRI it was easy (and commonplace) for Arab politicians to say wildly contradictory things in English on the one side and Arabic on the other. MEMRI makes this strategy somewhat less reliable. UPDATE: And there's this as well.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:47 AM

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Who's got the power?

Let's get some of these numbers straight: With Saudi Arabia already calling for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the major oil-producing cartel, to increase output by 1.5 million barrels a day, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Tuesday that he would meet with Saudi officials during a conference of major oil-consuming and -producing nations later this week in Amsterdam. So while Spencer Abraham and Saudi Arabia cajole, make public statements, beg OPEC to please consider increasing output by 1.5M bpd, George W. Bush, thirteen days after the stroke of his pen can increase world crude availability by a sloshingly huge 4.3M bpd guaranteed. Let's make sure we understand this. In terms of short term capabilities the President of the United states has considerably more power than does OPEC. Perhaps the time has come for him to use this power. UPDATE: Nope. Won't consider it. Does anyone know any friends of advisors or staff? This may be a big mistake -- kinda plays into the hands of the "he's inflexible and ideological" crowd? UPDATE: Contrary opinion continues to be expressed.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:42 AM

Yeah. Why not, anyway?

On Fox News Special Report last night Cato's Jerry Taylor rather quietly agreed with the Democrats on sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). It seems to me these points have to be considered: 1. Is the SPR really "strategic" or not? Are its 659.5 million barrels of genuine military value? Could the 4.3 million barrels per day that can be drawn down from the reserve following 13 days from appropropriate Presidential decision be easily replaced -- even in time of war, as Jerry Taylor seems to argue -- by new purchases on the world market? 2. What are the transactions and other possible hidden costs if oil is sold off from the SPR? The average price that was paid for oil in the SPR is less than $30/bbl. At a capacity of 700 million bbl and current inventory of almost 660M bbl, it seems to make at least intuitive sense to liquidate some of this inventory under current conditions -- assuming, of course, reservations raised in (1) above have been answered. 3. Can the news media and Congress finally grow up about the energy issue and accept that "Big Oil" is (a) a fiction, really comprised of lots of different businesses with many competing interests, and therefore (b) not evil? Even more pertinent: maybe now is the time to drill for new oil reserves anywhere we think they can be found? Estimates of ANWAR production go to 1.4M bbl per day. Barbara Boxer is now earnestly showing she "cares" about the American public by demanding mean-spirited old George W. Bush release 1M bbl per day from the SPR. Can she finally be coaxed to "care" about the American public enough to allow exploration, development, and production in ANWAR (and elsewhere) so required extra production on this order of magnitude can ultimately be pumped in the US by US workers earning US salaries paying US taxes? Huh? How about it, Barb, huh? UPDATE: Just came back from interview at CNNfn where I crossed swords with Jerry Taylor himself. Less to disagree about than I originally thought. He's all for selling off the whole SPR, or at least he sounds like it thru those tinny static-laden earphones they give you. Then there are opinions like this: There is little President Bush can do immediately to mitigate this problem. John Kerry's quick-fix suggestion that the strategic petroleum reserve be opened is simply another example of political opportunism; he made more sense in 2000 when he opposed opening the reserve.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:47 AM

And still more sophomoric humour from EconoPundit...

Drudge really bad headline: ABCNEWS: 'COVER-UP' AT ABU-GHRAIB Follow the link to find the unfortunate wording arises with ABC News, not Drudge.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:37 AM

Pwogwess...

Here's chartoftheday.com pointing out we've finally "broke even" in the jobs lost/jobs created-since-the-recession-ended calculus. Of course this calculation is a bit different from EconoPundit's standard jobs lost/jobs gained-during-the-Dubya-administration question, but it is related.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:49 AM

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Some surprises here...

Run a Google search on the term "Arab oil embargo" and you get lots of good background info like this. Interestingly, even though prices are much higher than anybody anticipated a year ago, few if any of the catastrophic predicted consequences now seem likely. And with regard to mainstream jouralism what do you suppose this tells us? UPDATE: Continuing, we find lots of interesting factoids here. For example, this is worth some thinking about:

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:54 PM

and after all that fuss...

Bruce Bartlett explains why outsourcing is no longer something to worry about.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:51 PM

Monday, May 17, 2004

More...

In addition to everything I complained about this morning, weapons of mass destruction have now been found in Iraq. And Milt Rosenberg has changed his blog's template. UPDATE: Nope. Sorry, my mistake. Two former weapons inspectors -- Hans Blix and David Kay -- said the shell was likely a stray weapon that had been scavenged by militants and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles of such weapons. (As far as I know, however, Rosenberg is still using the new template.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:10 PM

Indicates upcoming inflation?

Bill Hobbs has information on emerging labor shortages.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:33 AM

Models, maintenance, mileage, lots of other things that start with "m"...

Want to enjoy all the pleasures of Car Talk without all those bad associations you get a you tune your radio to (aaarrrgh!!!) -- NPR? Then check out Joe Sherlock's new blog The View Through the Windshield. Lots of great car stuff, business news, and politics!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:25 AM

Mama said there'd be days like this...

Izzedin Salim has been assasinated, Asian stocks are posting disorderly declines in price, and the international price of crude is reaching record nominal dollar highs. Meanwhile the intrade.com Bush re-election contract seems poised to test new lows. Am I the only blogger worried the assasination of Salim is a signal for a major Al Qaeda attack elsewhere?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:57 AM

Friday, May 14, 2004

Read it to find the prediction...

Don Luskin has a great post on Ray Fair and his presidential vote equation.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:31 PM

The Anthropomorphic Corporation

Rahm Emanuel's obvious hostility to and suspicion of corporate America undercuts any credibility he might otherwise generate: A recent report by the nonpartisan General Accounting Office shows that Enron's massive tax avoidance was more the norm than the exception. The GAO found that 95 percent of U.S. corporations pay 5 percent or less of their income in taxes and 63 percent paid no federal corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000. These trends have accelerated in the past three years, with corporate tax revenues falling last year to a post-Depression era low of $132 billion--down 36 percent since the year 2000. To make matters worse, some of this tax avoidance is perfectly "legal." Perversely, as tax shelters grow more sophisticated and difficult to detect, Congress has slashed the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, less than one percent of business tax returns were audited last year. Where does one begin? I suppose to anyone who sees corporations as large evil entities in need of perpetual discipline thru taxation, this all makes perfect sense. But the numbers -- these may speak clearly to true believers, but to the rest of us they remain mostly mysterious. 95% pay 5% or less of their income in taxes? Are we supposed to be scandalized these add to 100? A 36% decline since the year 2000, a post-Depression era low, the tiny sum of just $132 billion. Perhaps, we might ask timidly, these big bad corporations' profits have gone down, causing them to pay lower taxes? And then there's the legality question. Some of this is perfectly "legal," says Emanuel. What does this mean, to put the word "legal" in quotes? That it really isn't legal even though it is legal? Some kind of code understood by some readers but not by others? There are some words you just don't put in quotes. Some things either are or they aren't. Like pregnant: a woman is either pregnant or she isn't pregnant. She is never "pregnant". Is it too much to ask of someone whose job it is supposed to be to write laws to avoid saying things like "legal"? And finally regarding the economics -- I suppose the best thing to say is the following. It is stupid, misleading, and politically opportunistic to treat corporations as if they were very large individual proprietorships whose ownership and control are jealously passed down from one wealthy generation to the next. True, America's richest families own lots of shares of major corporations -- but directly as well as through pension funds and insurance policies America's less-rich families own lots of these shares as well.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:25 AM

The New State and Local Finance

Even as we're told the record lull in interest rates (and its consequent housing boom) have induced a permanent rise in property taxes, we're also warned the new role of US as global military opponent of terror will finally force economic behavior at the state and local level. Funny how these things sometimes work out, no?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:52 AM

Non hyperventelare...

At one place after another in the blogosphere World Bank corruption is being touted as yet another Oil for Food scandal. Uh, actually, I don't think so. If the entire case against the World Bank (for "criminal lending"?) is as weak as the reasoning in this interview -- which seems slightly warmed over anti-globo combined with, let's say, a somewhat limited understanding of banking and its problems -- there's simply no there there. UPDATE: Bruce Bartlett disagrees, and provides a valuable link to the original study so you can make up your mind for yourself. This is a link I couldn't manage to find anywhere. (How does Bartlett get these things anyway?)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:51 AM

Thursday, May 13, 2004

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it"...

George Will seems to be calling for Rumsfeld to resign.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:24 PM

The particpant observation problem...

Things like this explain why I prefer political contracts to sports betting.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:34 AM

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

The vanguard...

At the highest altitudes of current advanced left thought stands this uncompromising reasoning by Robert Meeropol: [T]he War on Terror, sharing the same epic nature as the struggle against Communism his parents were clearly on the wrong side of, has sent him over the edge. At his University of Maryland appearance, he went so far as to compare his parents case with that of the man who would have been the 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, and to describe Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act as modern day equivalents of the 1950s Red hunts... "It's an unfortunate reality that 2003 reminds me of 1953 in so many ways," Meeropol recently told The Socialist Worker. "We don't have the Korean War. We have the war on terror -- Afghanistan, Iraq, whoever's next. In some ways, the war on terror has replaced the Cold War. The specifics of who we were opposing in the Cold War is analogous to whatever particular countries we're trying to confuse with the war on terror today. Instead of J. Edgar Hoover, we have John Ashcroft. Instead of the McCarran and the Smith Acts, we have the USA PATRIOT Act and USA PATRIOT Act II." This sort of thinking constantly nips at the heels of the Democratic Party -- demanding attention, requiring obsequience, recycling ancient hatreds of Ronald Reagan and what they saw as that foolish, pointless stuggle against the permanence of World Communism and global economic planning. History asserts itself. Maybe not this week, but sooner or later Kerry is going to have to explain exactly what he thinks of Communism and The Cold War.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:38 AM

We're entitled to our own opinions, not facts...

Arnold Kling offers eight fact-based reasons why Don Rumsfeld should definitely not resign.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:16 AM

Among other problems...

Air America seems to be having trouble keeping sponsors: During a day of torture by radio, I heard ads for Hewlett-Packard, Greyhound and, especially, General Motors. I asked GM why it appeared in such shows...Gyndee Carney, GM's manager of marketing communications, said the ads were wrongly picked up from an earlier deal with WLIB. She said the station was ordered to "cease and desist" yesterday, and added: "GM will not advertise on any Air America affiliates."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:19 AM

Odd metaphor...but apt

Here's how Reuters summarizes what's happening: The beheading of an American hostage in supposed reprisal for abuses by U.S. soldiers has injected new venom into Washington's project in Iraq just as threats of widespread insurrection appeared to be fading. The language prods us to remember exactly which members of the animal kingdom "inject" venom, but the idea of "poisoning" the US Iraq project may be wishful thinking. Trading price of the Bush re-election contract reversed dramatically yesterday around the time the beheading was announced. This price (and, theoretically, the probability of President Bush's re-election) now appears to be moving upward. UPDATE: On this check out Jonathan Gewirtz's thoughts in ChicagoBoyz. He points to price stabilizing at around 58 -- a modest (theoretical) decline from a 60 to 58% re-election likelihood.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:40 AM

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Musings in a gloomy mood...

From some world figures on capital punishment in 2003: America 65 (64 injection, 1 electrocution) Saudi Arabia (53 beheadings) Wonder what these would look like per capita, no wordplay intended.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:59 PM

Monday, May 10, 2004

How do you say "pre-emption" in Hebrew?

In a recent post we documented Iran's all-but-official first nuclear strike policy as against Israel. Jerusalem Post is reporting (rather matter of factly one might add) US rumors of an upcoming possible Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear installations. Given Iran's first strike policy, if it takes place this strike can only be called pre-emption.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:26 PM

There's no such thing as a free operation...

Kerry's health care numbers seem to need lots of work. First, there's a problem with the basic contention "Total family premiums have increased by $2,777 in the last four years." Is this figure annual or a four-year total? The latter seems most likely since it works out to a roughly 7% annual rate of increase in employee plus employer contribution to health insurance premiums -- about right as an overall average for the past four years. But here's where the numbers get weird. One new estimate puts "uncompensated" health care spending at $41B per year -- this is doctor+hospital care that was uncompensated by insurance or government, meaning those without insurance got the care and those with insurance paid for it. $41B per year (depending on how many households the US population divides into) amounts to roughly $850-$1,000 per household -- on the same order of magnitude, or possibly even greater, than the annual increase Kerry complains about. Hillary Clinton's work on health care accomplished one important thing -- it popularized, to some small degree at least, the concept of "cost shifting." It would be wise for the Kerry team to review the work done by their counterparts during the first years of the first Clinton administration. They don't seem to have much of a grasp of this important issue.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:20 PM

World stock prices as of 11:52 am central...

As of 11:52 am central time, and calculated without weighting for volumes but merely as the average of numbers reported on this page, world stock prices have lost nearly 3% of their value this trading day.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:51 AM

What Bush Might Do

In light of the last post, we might speculate on what Dubya might do this week to turn the mood (and his poll numbers) around. Think about the basics of what went on last week. Among first principles one can find in John Locke's treatment of humanity's rights is the idea we enjoy legitimate property in our own person. Since Locke, Smith, and other moral philosophers of the time all subscribed to the basic labor theory of value, they saw all the fruits of human labor as legitimate private property of the individual. But what preceeds the act of mixing effort with matter to produce legitimate private property is the simple fact we all have a legitimate claim to the integrity of our own person. Depriving prisoners of their clothing's implicit protection is a violation of this basic integrity. Is it too much to hope George W. Bush could ask his speechwriters to put this in language even NYT readers could understand, and then go on television and explain it all the the American public? We need someone to explain why we find all this so abhorrent.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:21 AM

Polling versus voting with dollars...

John Zogby all but yields the election to Kerry: The President's problem is further compounded by the fact that he is now at the mercy of situations that are out of his control. While the economy is improving, voters historically do not look at indicators that measure trillions and billions of dollars. There is less concern for increases in productivity and gross domestic product and more regard for growth in jobs and maintaining of health benefits. Just 12 years ago, the economy had begun its turnaround in the fourth quarter of 1991 and was in full recovery by spring 1992 -- yet voters gave the President's father only 38% of the vote because it was all about "the economy, stupid." The same holds true for Iraq. Will the United States actually be able to leave by June 30? Will Iraq be better off by then? Will the US be able to transfer power to a legitimate and unifying authority? Will the lives lost by the US and its allies be judged as the worth the final product? It is difficult to see how the President grabs control of this situation. This week it will be interesting and informative to compare Zogby -- and all his polling inforation -- with the intrade.com Bush re-election contract. My basic market theory tells me all available information is crystalized the current selling price of this contract. The trend since mid-April has been downward but recently price seems to have stabilized. Zogby, not to mention my vehement anti-Bush pals, seems to be predicting the bottom will fall out this week. What else is possible? Already-existing bad news may have tested the bottom of this market, meaning anything Bush does to reverse declining re-election probabilities -- if he goes on TV to condemn the prisoner abuse, for example -- must cause a rally in price. There may be a profit opportunity here, in other words. Keep in touch. UPDATE: Anyone who's confused by the previous three paragraphs should remember markets like the one we're talking about (in theory at least) not only take into account all current information but also fully discount the most likely near-future course of events. UPDATE II: (Ahem!) Uh, after three hours of trading the price seems to be sinking to within one point of its lifetime low. Okay. We shall see what happens... UPDATE III: Good thing nobody really listens to EconoPundit. The contract is now selling for less than its previous lifetime low. Not good. No, really not good. A nice thing about these contracts is they're arranged so you can read them as probabilities. A price of 56 means the market judges a 56% probability of Bush presidential election victory. Fill in your own margin of error. I'd put it at something higher than 6%. Like I said, not good. UPDATE IV: A rally? I'm no expert in markets like this, but it appears things are stabilizing at 58. Today will be interesting indeed.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:03 AM

Saturday, May 08, 2004

Just in from DEBKAfile -- believe it or don't...

The US presidential campaign has...taken an unexpected turn. DEBKAfile's Washington sources report exclusively that, as recently as ten days ago, Senator John Kerry's campaign staff had resolved to drop Iraq as its focal issue after receiving startling new intelligence data. North Korea, the Democratic team had discovered, did not have only two nuclear bombs as generally believed but eight, all operational. Kerry would have argued that the Bush White House, because of its obsession with Saddam Hussein's overthrow and Iraq -- where no WMD was found, had neglected a front far more hazardous to the security of the United States and its allies, i.e. North Korea's expanding nuclear arsenal. The development of the Iraqi prisoner crisis persuaded the Democratic presidential contender to abandon his North Korean strategy. The imagery from Abu Ghraib has proved even more radioactive in its effect on America than eight North Korean nuclear bombs.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:13 PM

Friday, May 07, 2004

RUMSFELD -- at the hearings

America's not what's wrong with the world!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:43 PM

Quick list...

Here is a list of inaccuracies, falsehoods, and incomplete or misleading statements in today's Paul Krugman NYT column:: KRUGMA