The hypocrisy of rich liberals

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent post at NRO entitled: "The Kerry Yacht as a Teachable Moment." A fair argument can be made that rich liberals want us to pay more taxes so they don't have to pay theirs. Or perhaps they just don't care how high tax rates get, because they don't intend to pay them anyway.

Either way, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Nuphedrine

Some constructive suggestions regarding illegal immigration

The big news regarding illegal immigration, of course, is Arizona's law and the federal challenge to it. I have not read the District Court's decision enjoining enforcement of significant provisions of the law. But the Court apparently did not enjoin the provisions of the law prohibiting sanctuary cities in Arizona. The Court also reportedly affirmed that Arizona law enforcement personnel may inquire into a person's immigration status irrespective of the statute. (Indeed, the federal government maintains a call center in Vermont to answer such inquiries from state and local law enforcement officials throughout the country.) In any event, no one can predict the outcome of the appeals that are already under way.

The purpose of this post is to make a couple of suggestions-- one practical, one political -- for improving the enforcement of the laws against illegal immigration. First, Arizona should consider establishing a new website or modifying an existing one to collect and report the facts regarding the immigration status of people arrested in Arizona.

For example, if an arrestee is determined to be in the country illegally, the site could report the date on which ICE was informed that the illegal alien was in custody and whether ICE took that person into federal custody. If ICE declined to take custody, the site could report the date the person was released from state custody. Then, if that person was subsequently arrested for another state crime, the site could reflect the fact that the illegal alien was still here because federal government declined to enforce federal immigration law.

This site could serve as an information resource for the public, for law enforcement officials, and for reporters. If the federal government fails to enforce its immigration laws, the public has the right to know both the extent and the consequences of that failure. I doubt that shame will move the government where duty has failed to do so, but it is worth a shot. And at least it will shed light on what is actually going on.

Second, Arizona and other border states may want to place remotely-triggered dye packs similar to those already used by banks in areas used by illegals to enter the country. A brightly-colored illegal alien would find it difficult to hide or get work on this side of the border. These devices might catch only a small percentage of the illegal aliens crossing the border, but anyone sneaking into the country would have to worry about suddenly glowing a bright color without warning.

More criminal laws will probably have little impact on illegal immigration, even if they survive court challenges. But existing technology may provide inexpensive ways to improve enforcement of the laws already on the books.

Obama's foreign policy in pictures

President Obama promised his foreign policy would be less "arrogant" than George W. Bush's. Several recent pictures illustrate that he has kept part of his promise: he is only arrogant to our allies.

This picture shows President Obama shaking his finger at Stephen Harper, Canada's Prime Minister. I don't know what President Obama was bloviating about, but Secretary Clinton recently criticized the Prime Minister for not inviting Inuits to a conference regarding Arctic resources and for not including sufficient funding for abortions in its foreign aid. The Obama administration has also sternly lectured Israel about construction projects in Jerusalem and threatened the Honduran government for thwarting Manuel Zelaya's attempt to install himself as President for life.

On the other hand, if you are a foreign monarch or dictator, Obama will reflexively bow to you -- groveling is optional.

The late historian Bernard Lewis warned against a foreign policy that made us “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” Unfortunately, President Obama seems oblivious to that danger.

An interesting solar power project

The New York Times recently had an article about a solar power project underway in Florida. Planetgore at National Review has a link to the article.

Florida Power and Light currently operates a natural gas-powered electrical plant in Indiantown, Florida. It occupies 15 acres of land and generates 3800 kWh of electricity. It is building a solar-powered addition that will occupy 500 acres of former swampland and will generate 75 kWh electricity at its peak-- which is only one third of the time and, of course, not at night. According to the Times, the swampland formerly teemed with a otters and wild hogs (and, I strongly suspect, birds).

The cost of this addition is $476 million. When completed, it will be the second-largest solar plant in the world. The solar powered-project uses concave mirrors to focus sunlight to heat oil contained in tubes, which in turn is used to generate steam to power a turbine that generates electricity.

A simple mathematical calculation reveals that over 25,000 acres (approximately 12.5 square miles) of solar collectors would be required to generate the same 3800 kWh of electricity the existing natural gas plant generates using only 15 acres of land. And the solar plant would still require a conventionally-powered plant to provide electricity at night and on cloudy days.

And Obama and his Secretary of Energy think this is our energy future?

Note to environmentalists: another term for swampland is "wetlands."

The unraveling of the case for anthropogenic global warming

I have long been a skeptic regarding claims that man's activities are causing the planet to significantly heat up. The proponents of this theory first tell us that the planet's climate is incredibly complex. Then, seemingly in the next breath, they claim that all this complexity boils down to a simple (simplistic?) equation: higher levels of carbon dioxide equal higher temperatures. Really?

Maybe not. It seems that every week brings new revelations undermining the case for AGW. The tipping point was probably the release of the East Anglia documents -- which include, in addition to the damning e-mails, working files that cast doubt on the data that purportedly support the warm-mongers' dire predictions.

The warm-mongers also stridently insist that the decade-long cooling period we have just witnessed is a temporary aberation. But their computer models didn't predict it and can't explain it, so how do they know?

Now we learn that the Himalayan glaciers will not disappear by 2035 as the UN's IPCC predicted, and that some of the IPCC's supposedly-peer-reviewed claims were based on an article published in a mountain climbing magazine and on an unpublished student dissertation that in turn relied on "anecdotal" evidence. Curiouser and curiouser.

Even mainstream politicians are calling for the resignation of the head of the IPCC -- he is a railway engineer, not a climatologist. And Al Gore steadfastly refuses to debate the merits of his claims with real scientists.

If the case for AGW collapses, so does the entire rationale for the President's cap-and-trade scheme, which he himself admits would "necessarily" cause electricity prices to skyrocket and would bankrupt anyone who built a coal-powered electricity plant (we get over half of our electricity from coal-fired plants).

It is definitely time to hit the reset button on this entire issue.

"Racism" in america.

I have blogged about race baiting in the past. Now Rich Lowry and Mona Charen have excellent articles at NRO discussing the subject in light of the latest Harry Reid flap.

The White House threatens Congress with the EPA

Fox news reported today that a top White House official "warned" Congress that, if it doesn't enact legislation to regulate "greenhouse" gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will assume a "command-and-control" role that could (read will) hurt business (i.e. the economy). This is bizarre.

The last I heard, the federal government only had three branches. The EPA clearly is not part of the judicial branch, so it must either be part of the executive branch or legislative branch (many federal agencies are actually arms of Congress). Yet the President's spokesman portrays the EPA as a rogue elephant threatening to trample the economy -- this may be accurate, but how did it come to pass?

The EPA is, in fact, part of the executive branch. Consequently, the President cannot credibly deny responsibility for its actions and their consequences. And he will have a hard time blaming regulations that haven't been enacted yet on his predecessor (although I wouldn't be surprised if he tried).

Ronald Reagan once famously declared that we are people who have a government and not the other way around. I am beginning to have my doubts.

Is Hamid Karzai more corrupt than Rod Blagojevich?

The President's new-found concern with corruption in the Karzai government is passing strange. The President, after all, is the product of Illinois and Cook County political machines, neither of which is celebrated for its moral rectitude. Those political organizations also produced Rod "pay to play" Blagojevich, who would be serving his second term as Illinois Governor, were it not for certain federal wiretaps. Given his own background, methinks the president doth protest too much.

Moreover, Hamid Karzai was the President of Afghanistan back in March 2009, when president Obama formulated his "comprehensive" strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, after extensive consultations with President Karzai's government, among others. Now he decides that the Karzai government may not be worthy of our support? Who did the president think he was partnering with back in March?

The president needs to wake up and smell the poppies.

Nuphedrine

The AGW debate continues

Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, has an excellent article in today's Wall Street Journal in which he discusses the many unresolved issues and paradoxes in the AGW debate.

The science is anything but settled.

Of boycotts and the news

Boycotts only work when everyone (or nearly everyone) complies with them. Once people start cheating, boycotts typically fall apart.

This principle applies to the news business as well. But the legacy media (also referred to as the mainstream media and old media) do not understand this. The major dailies and the networks ignored the Van Jones story for weeks until his midnight resignation forced them to report on it. Van Jones, of course, was forced to resign as the green jobs czar after cable news and talk radio aired some of the inane and occasionally-racist statements he made. The revelation that he was a truther was the final straw. The legacy media, however, was AWOL until the bitter end.

Now the legacy media is studiously ignoring Climategate. As Bret Stephens explains in his Wall Street Journal article:

"Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU."

Climategate is a huge story that is not simply going to fade away, especially with Copenhagen looming on the horizon. Yet the legacy media (with the obvious exception of the Wall Street Journal) has shown scant interest in it. I have not seen a single story about it in our local paper, the Houston Chronicle. That paper, however, does continue to blithely parrot the dire warnings of the very scientists whose objectivity is now being questioned.

When Abe Rosenthal was the editor of the New York Times, he liked to refer to himself as the "gatekeeper." The decision-makers at many of the major dailies and the television networks still seem to regard themselves as filling that role. What they don't realize is that talk radio, cable news, and the Internet have already filled the vacuum that they are trying to maintain.

No wonder the legacy media is withering on the vine.

The facts behind the energy debate

The experts tell us that we are running out of oil and natural gas. But then they've been telling us that at least since 1914, when the Bureau of Mines warned that US oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. This and many other useful facts can be found in George Will's latest Washington Post collumn.

In fact, we are discovering more domestic reserves of oil and natural gas every year.
Billions of barrels of oil have been discovered during the last decade in the Lower Tertiary trend in the Gulf of Mexico and the Bakken Formation (a.k.a. the Williston Basin), which lies beneath North and South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. The U.S. also has huge reserves of natural gas in various shale rock formations around the country. One formation, the Marcellus Shale in the eastern United States, may contain as much natural gas as the largest conventional field ever discovered. (In addition, the United States also has huge oil shale formations, and Canada, of course, has oil sands thay may contain more oil than Saudi Arabia.) So we are not going to run out of supplies of oil and natural gas any time soon.

Although the left touts solar and wind energy, they comprise only 1/6 of 1% of America's energy consumption. Compare that with coal, which currently provides 54% of our country's electricity (according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is not at all happy about this state of affairs). It is unrealistic to think that wind and solar will supply 20% of this country's energy in the foreseeable future.

The left regards wind and solar technology as new energy sources with vast potential. Unfortunately, that is not true. Wind power has been around for over four centuries (Don Quixote tilted at windmills, remember). The photovoltaic process utilized by solar panels was discovered in the 19th century. Albert Einstein wrote a paper in 1905 describing the nature of light and the photoelectric effect on which solar technology is based -- a paper for which he was later rewarded the Nobel Prize in physics. So neither technology is new, and it would be wildly optimistic to assume that either technology has huge, undiscovered potential.

The only compelling reason to wean ourselves from hydrocarbons and clean coal is the purported threat of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Contrary to the party line, many reputable scientists are skeptical about the fact and/or extent of AGW. And the documents recently obtained from many AGW proponents, including those at the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), strongly suggest that at least some of these proponents may have been cooking, or at least simmering, the scientific books.

Thank heaven the Copenhagen Summit is unlikely to result in anything substantive based on speculative and perhaps even fraudulent science.

Another wind-power demonstration project

The Houston Chronicle reported today that the Energy Department plans to award $200 million in grants for utility-scale energy storage products as part of the stimulus package enacted in February. The inability to efficiently store energy has long been the Achilles heel of the solar and wind power industries. Decades ago, scientists were looking into the possibility of using flywheels to store energy (it didn't pan out). And despite recent breakthroughs in battery design and materials, batteries are not even close to being a cost-effective method of storing energy so that it will be available when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing

One of the applicants is seeking $25 million to build a plant in California that will use compressed air that has been pumped into underground reservoirs to generate electricity when the wind turbines are unable to meet demand. According to the article, when additional energy is needed, "the air is released, heated and used to power turbines."

Apparently, the wind turbines will be used to generate electricity to sell to customers and to power the pumps that compress the air in the underground caverns. The air is then later released, heated (with what, coal, natural gas, oil?) and used to power turbines to generate additional electricity for sale. Can such a complex system possibly be economical? Color me skeptical.

Somewhere, Rube Goldberg is laughing.

Ludwig von Mises or John Maynard Keynes?

We are experiencing a fundamental debate about the economic policies the federal government should pursue. The title of this post summarizes the essential positions of the two main camps: do we follow the theories of Ludwig von Mises or the theories of John Maynard Keynes. These two theories are poles apart.

Ludwig von Mises wrote his seminal work "Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel" ("The Theory of Money and Credit") in 1912. Unfortunately, it was not published in English until 1934.

Mises theorized that credit markets are essentially self-regulating. Left alone, supply and demand will determine both the amount of credit available and the interest rates charged for it. If, however, the government artificially expands the amount of credit (money) available or artificially lowers interest rates, borrowing increases to imprudent levels, spurring unsound investment. Eventually, the level of unsound spending and investment rises so high it causes the economic system to crash. Mises foresaw the economic collapse that led the Great Depression and took steps to avoid its effects. {See the excellent 'article by Mark Spitznagel at WSJ online).

Unfortunately for our country, our leaders in the 1930s (as well as today) have chosen to follow the teachings of John Maynard Keynes. He published "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" in 1936. Keynes essentially argued that the government could and should spend its way out of economic slumps and depressions. His ideas are embodied in current programs such as the stimulus bills, cash for clunkers, and the bailout programs for everyone from financial behemoths to low-income home buyers. Vice president Biden has confidently asserted that the country can spend its way out of insolvency (there is a reason he is commonly called "slow Joe"). Our political leaders are even floating the idea of yet another "stimulus" bill.

A friend once sagely observed that most politicians know as much about economics as a horse knows about algebra. I'm still waiting for our solons to prove him wrong.

Nuphedrine

Victor Davis Hanson on President Obama and the principles of U.S. foreign policy

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian. His October 28 article on the Wall Street Journal's online edition compares the foreign-policy mess that Harry Truman inherited upon unexpectedly being thrust into the presidency with that faced today by President Obama (Truman faced a far worse situation than does Obama). VDH's assessment is that Truman knew less about foreign-policy but learned faster than anyone could have reasonably expected.

The question VDH asks is: "Will an inexperienced Barack Obama, in the fashion of Harry Truman, learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable—best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence in America's historic role galvanizing democratic allies to confront illiberal aggressors?

"Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices?"

No one knows the answer. But as VDH points out: "America awaits this president's choice. The world safety hinges upon it."

We live in hope.

Is Obama the new Nixon?

In my September 29 post, I discussed a few of the campaign promises that President Obama has already broken, namely promises of transparency in his administration, including his promise to post the log of White House visitors on the Web. As I noted then, President Obama could keep these promises simply with a stroke of a pen (perhaps I should have said with the click of a mouse).

In fact, President Obama is downright Nixonian in his efforts to stonewall both the public and the media--see Quin Hillyer's excellent op-ed on this subject in today's Washington Times:

"The administration repeatedly has stiff-armed Congress, the media, outside organizations and even a prestigious independent government commission. It has raised "none of your business" from an adolescent rejoinder to a public policy - to keep the public in the dark."

Why is President Obama flouting his promises of transparency? Apparently to enable the kind of pay-to-play shenanigans that are an integral part of the "Chicago way." Again, according to the Washington Times:

"During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

"High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times."

Now I am not shocked, shocked to learn that politicking is going on at the White House. But the level of hypocracy is rather breathtaking.

Recent developments in Obamaland

This week and we have a trifecta: three excellent columns about recent events in the Obama White House. The first is by Mark Steyn. His reference to "Mao Ze Dunn" is priceless.

Next, Charles Krauthammer weighs in with a column on the Fox Wars.

Finally, Victor Davis Hanson has a column about the rapidly-changing perceptions of, and dwindling support for, our new President (here).

One salient thought occurred to me even before reading these articles: President Obama has the will to wage an unrelenting war against Fox News, but not against the Islamic Jihadists in Afghanistan.

What is wrong with this picture?

Of vaccine shortages and government-run health care

If the federal government effectively takes over the United States health care system, how well will it run it? The current shortage of the H1N1 flu vaccine at a critical time may provide a clue. The issue, however, is complicated.

Vaccines are privately manufactured. But government's role as a major buyer of vaccines has increased dramatically, starting with the Vaccines for Children Program (VFC) in 1994. By 2002, VFC purchases alone were 41% of the total vaccine market, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local governments accounting for an additional 16%. (These figures are from an article by the National Center for Policy Analysis.) Members of the Clinton administration boasted at the time that the VFC was a dress rehearsal for Hillarycare. Since the federal government is now the single largest purchaser of vaccines in this country, it effectively controls the market.

Whether or not caused by government policies, there is a critical shortage of vaccine for the flu caused by the H1N1 virus. A study published on October 15 in Eurosurveillance and reported by the Washington Times predicts that almost two thirds of the population will become infected with the virus (though not necessarily exhibit symptoms) before the vaccine becomes widely available. The study was conducted by professors of Purdue University's statistics and mathematics departments. Canada, which already has the single-payer health system that Obama espouses, is in even more dire straits, because of their government's slowness to approve the vaccine.

Does this mean that the federal government will make a hash of our health care system? No, but it hardly inspires confidence.

The facts about health coverage in America

Senator Moynihan once famously observed that people are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Given the plethora of numbers being strewn about as to the number of Americans unable to get health coverage, Senator Moynihan must be spinning in his grave.

President Obama, himself, has claimed both that 45 million Americans and 30 million Americans are uninsured. That is quite a spread, especially coming from a single source. A recent article sheds some much-needed light on this issue. Jeffrey H. Anderson, writing in the Washington Post (here), analyzed the Census Bureau's numbers and points out the following: while 46 million people are counted as uninsured, 9 million of those are not U.S. citizens. Moreover, the Census, itself, states that about 9 million people under report their coverage. So, according to Census data, 90% of Americans have health coverage.

Of the 28 million uninsured -- whom President Obama claims "cannot get coverage" -- 18% are between the ages of 18 and 34. For many of these young and healthy individuals, health insurance is a poor bargain that they simply choose to forego. Tellingly, almost half of the uninsured make more than $50,000 a year (more than a quarter make more than $75,000 a year). In short, 95% of Americans either have health coverage or could readily afford to purchase it if they chose to.

So President Obama's plan (he doesn't really have one, but, like him, we'll pretend he does) will cover the remaining 5% of Americans, right? Well, no. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 6% of Americans will remain uninsured even 10 years after the $1 trillion Senate Finance Committee bill is enacted into law (God forbid). So, according to the government's own statistics, Obama's proposed trillion dollar government takeover of our health care system will accomplish precisely nothing.

Let the debate begin.

Race baiting, Rush Limbaugh style.

In my September 25, 2009, post, I asked, rhetorically, if race baiting in this country was dead. The answer, of course, was no. Recent events have now demonstrated that race baiting in this country is not only alive and well, it may be worsening.

This week, it was revealed that Rush Limbaugh was a minority investor in a consortium seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams football team. Upon learning this, the Left reflexively jumped offside. CNN, MSNBC, and other purportedly-reputable media outlets rushed to condemn Limbaugh, falsely reporting that Limbaugh had made statements defending slavery on the merits, and saying that Martin Luther King's murderer deserved a medal. This country's premier race baiters, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, also piled on.


Rush has now been dropped from the Consortium.

Not surprisingly, it turned out these "news" reports were false. For starters, Rush has repeatedly said over the years that he, like Martin Luther King, dreams of a country in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Additionally, it beggars belief that Rush made these statements years ago, and no one noticed, much less expressed outrage, at the time.

The fake quotations apparently trace back to a website, which provided no documentation for the bogus quotes. CNN "explained" that it didn't bother to fact-check its story beyond its secondary, undocumented source.

So the legacy media (formerly known as the mainstream media) has sunk to this: CNN will take the time to fact-check a Saturday Night Live skit about Obama, but it won't take the time to fact-check its own news report.

Does CNN understand that it is becoming the new Comedy Channel?

President Obama 's non-strategy in Afghanistan

President Obama says we need a strategy in Afghanistan. Of course we do. But on March 27, he claimed to have forged a "comprehensive" strategy for Afghanistan after a thorough review that included consultations with the military, the leaders of various countries, and key members of Congress. He even appointed a new general to implement his new strategy. (See Charles Krauthammer's excellent Washington Post Article for more details.)

What changed? Nothing changed in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has not changed fundamentally for centuries. That is regrettable, but it hardly explains the President's decision to scrap a comprehensive strategy that he has only begun to implement.

What has changed is the the political landscape in the United States. Obama wanted the government takeover of health care to be completed before the August recess. That didn't happen, and his various schemes are becoming less popular by the week. And a cap and trade bill was supposed to have been passed before government-run healthcare. That bill is moribund. (And gays still can't serve openly in the military, and Guantánamo Bay is no closer to being closed.) In short, Obama is taking a lot of heat from the left, and committing the resources needed to implement a serious strategy in Afghanistan would only make matters worse.

Something had to give, and national security, to which Obama was never committed to begin with, was the obvious choice.