Cheney prods Obama to make a decision on Afghanistan

Cheney at Center for Security Policy dinner

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Obama is amateur in chief, but you knew that, didn’t you?

After Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden said in 2008 that Obama was not ready to be president, after Obama’s supporters said again and again and again that they could not name a single accomplishment that Obama had made prior to running for president (but they loved his speeches), the truth is beginning to show, and Obama doesn’t like it. Republicans stated a good point as well during the campaign last year: The presidency is not appropriate for on-the-job training.

Sure, every new president has to get up to speed about what the job entails, but most of the presidents we’ve had had some grounding in how to manage their end of the political process, which lowered the slope of the learning curve for them. Obama doesn’t have that. He’s made some mistakes, and he’s continuing to make them, but he doesn’t want to admit it. He wants the public to believe that everything has gone to plan. He’s trying to distract us from the truth by making Fox News the whipping boy. It’s what incompetent bosses do. I know, because I worked under one.

It’s also clear that Obama seeks to “right wrongs”, “to bring justice” to situations he thinks need to be corrected. He sets himself against “foes” that he feels he must defeat, and they come from all corners. He does a poor job of picking his battles in the public’s interest. Before long, if he keeps this up, he will feel beset by enemies, not to mention the American people.

Instead of coming clean, saying he’s made some mistakes and he’ll try to serve us better, he’s picking on an organization that in terms of power is beneath him, Fox News. This speaks to his own internal sense of inadequacy, which must be eating at him. He’s a bully, plain and simple. Obama is clearly worried that he’s losing credibility with the American people, so he’s doing what bullies always do (because they have nothing else): They pick on someone defenseless, who’s an easy mark, to make themselves look more powerful and prestigious to those who will buy the ruse.

Obama began going against Fox in August, at the beginning of the health care debate in the public. Instead of strengthening his position his actions are showing that he’s not up for the job. He’s making political mistakes that past administrations have already made, which he should’ve learned from.

I appreciated O’Reilly’s analysis of the situation. If the Obama Administration believes it’s productive to go to war with Fox News “they are dunderheads,” he says. Well…they’re showing themselves to be just that, unfortunately.

Krauthammer’s conclusion about Anita Dunn’s use of Mao Tse Tung in her speech to high school students is the same as mine. Apparently she’s ignorant of who he was and what he did, and her subsequent actions vis a vis Fox News have shown her to be an immature fool.

I say these words of criticism in frustration. I’m not saying these things to bring the Obama Administration down. As far as I’m concerned they’re doing that to themselves. I’m just adding an exclamation mark to what they have put out, which speaks for itself.

I would not be the least surprised, based on this obvious attempt to distract, and cover for incompetence, if down the road Obama does something criminal against one of his opponents and attempts to cover it up. Why do I say this? It scares me that Obama is this thin skinned. Think about this. We have another 3 years to go with him, and he’s already paranoid that his incompetence will be revealed for all to see.

He has already taken actions to intimidate other news organizations, basically suggesting that they continue their adulation of our “dear leader”, as they did during the campaign of 2008, for their own good. Here’s the thing. All of the news networks have a bottom line. If they do as the Obama Administration suggests, they will be committing suicide. Many of them are self-destructing already. Are they really going to deny themselves an audience on purpose, and further sacrifice their credibility? I think this speaks to the Obama Administration’s total lack of understanding of how markets work, and there is a market for credible, reliable information. People will go along with propaganda so long as it doesn’t affect them, but Obama is a fool to believe that people will deny themselves information on things that affect their lives, for his benefit. People in Chicago may be ignorant and co-dependent enough to do that, but America is not Chicago.

I’ll end with Maynard’s take (at tammybruce.com) on the White House’s war on Fox News, because he adds some insights.

How Democrats see the current health care system

I heard about Rep. Alan Grayson’s slam on the “Republican health care plan” yesterday:

As luck would have it I was going through some old college newspapers I had saved from years ago and I happened upon this ad for a horror movie that came out in 1992, called “Dr. Giggles”:

Note the teaser: “If you’re from Moorehigh and you get sick, fall on your knees and pray you die quick”…just like Rep. Grayson says in his speech.

This seems like a perfect parody of how Democrats view the current health care system. In one scene the demented doctor finds a victim under some sheets in bed, and says just as he pulls out his scalpel (weapon), “I hope you have protection”. What delicious irony!

Now, this is yet another attempt by the Democrats to take the attention off of their own infighting, and demagogue the Republicans. It’s the oldest Democratic trick in the book: It’s all someone else’s fault. But the pretext to this attack is a Democratic conceit: The health care system is a money-grubbing business that will eat you alive if you fall into its clutches, and the Democrats are here to save you from this evil system.

But who created this evil system? If you really look at it from a systemic perspective, the problem was created by a mindset which believes that the government and big institutions should ensure that we all have access to health care, while at the same time making it open season on this medical system in our courts. It has in fact been an example of why planned economies don’t work. While they have promised access for all, what they neglect to tell us are the consequences of this scheme: Increasing demand for an artificially restricted resource, and increasing pressure on this resource from people who want to play “jackpot” in the courts. It’s also restricted our choices in health insurance, creating captive markets that are easy to exploit. It contributes to higher costs for all who participate in the medical system.

What the Democrats ultimately seek to do is to create a “political economy”, one where prices for precious commodities like health care are not determined by a competitive market where supply and demand are constantly balanced against each other, but rather by what interest groups think medical care should cost. You heard me right. This is a big “camel’s nose under the tent” for price controls. Never mind what doctors or medical suppliers think. According to the Democrats they’re part of the problem!

At the root of it all is a belief that capitalism has failed (another Democratic conceit: Blaming capitalism for the failure of their own initiatives!), and that government should take its place (want some more??). This is the same belief system that prevailed during the Great Depression under FDR. Price controls came into existence and persisted into the 1970s. Finally in the 1980s price controls were seen as the failure that they were, and were abolished. It remains to be seen if we will remember our history and reject such failed policy regimes. This returns us to an old “Reaganism”: Government is not the solution to the problem. It is the problem!

And freedom cries out!

I saw this on Fox News last night. I love this woman!

Catherine Bragg spoke out at a recent town hall meeting on health insurance reform with Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D) 6th congressional district of California. She said what I have been saying for more than a month: If you’re worried about the cost of health insurance let insurers compete. Stop restricting the health insurance market on a state by state basis. Bring in tort reform to stop frivolous medical lawsuits.

I would add: Let health care institutions expand as market demand increases. Do not allow government to quash small health care providers in favor of big ones.

I’ve heard someone else suggest this and I think it’s a good tactic. When proponents of government-run health care complain about the “free market” in health care just ask, “What free market?” There’s limited competition in health care. The competitive aspect is regulated by various government institutions and this can only drive up costs. I want government to regulate the quality of care. I do not want government to control access to care directly by limiting when and where health care providers can expand to meet demand, by severely limiting the coverage options in health insurance, nor indirectly by limiting which insurers can operate in which states. Freedom and open competition are the best salves for this problem.

Oh. My. God. They really are this crazy — Part 2

This is a sequel post to Oh. My God. They really are this crazy.

I just happened to find this from Fox News today, thanks to BreitBart TV:

Say what?? Van Jones signs a petition saying that former president George W. Bush probably knew about the 9/11 attacks and allowed them to happen. For those of you who don’t know, Van Jones is President Obama’s “green jobs” czar. He’s an advisor to the President…and he at the very least entertains conspiracy theories. At worst, he believes them. I think Charles Krauthammer is right. This is a serious matter. This isn’t the first time that a public official in our government has had paranoid delusions. President Nixon believed that the Democratic Party was undermining his administration and therefor the U.S. government (funny how he put those two together, eh?). He used this as justification for the Watergate break-in that he ordered and then tried to cover up, roping the FBI and the CIA into his scheme before it was all over. We should not tolerate this in our government. Granted, Van Jones is not someone with a lot of power, but the President needs people around him who will give him their sound judgment and accurate information. Based on his actions, Jones cannot be counted on to serve the President well in either capacity. He should go, or rather, be replaced.

Sarah Palin resigns as governor

This was shocking news to me yesterday, though not entirely unexpected. I was hearing a month or two ago that the legal bills of the Palin family were rising, due to political opponents filing lawsuits against them on a regular basis. Some wondered how long she could hold on to her job since the lawsuits were draining the family’s finances, and it looked like they could go bankrupt. Her brother said that Palin confided to him that she and her staff were spending 80% of their time fighting ethics complaints filed by her opponents. Fifteen ethics complaints have been filed, and dismissed, obviously frivolous. Ironically, her opponents used an ethics law that Palin championed against her. She said in her speech that it costs nothing for anyone to file an ethics complaint, according to the law. She innocently handed her opponents all the weaponry they needed to bring her down.

I thought about this yesterday, and while I admire her and hate the fact that she’s been besieged by vicious political opponents, I have to say that this result causes doubts for me about Palin’s prospects for higher office in the near term. She walked into a political trap and the only way she could find her way out of it was to resign. This does not speak well for her political judgment. She can learn from this and learn to avoid this sort of thing in the future, but she needs to become more politically savvy before she can even think about being president someday, if that’s what she wants to do.

Minnesota puts a “kick me” sign on its back: Al Franken wins the Senate

I heard on Wednesday, July 1 that comedian and radio talk show host Al Franken won the election for senate in Minnesota over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman on a close recount. Actually I think this result should’ve come sooner, even though I don’t like the outcome. I was feeling in May that the legal wrangling had gone on too long and Minnesota deserved to have two senators representing it. Just get it overwith. It was looking like any further legal action on Coleman’s part was futile, but he went forward with it anyway. I guess he was carrying water for the Republicans in their effort to disable the Democrats a little bit. It doesn’t look like it worked. You’ve got to have a better strategy than that, guys.

In terms of government experience, Franken is like Hillary Clinton was when she became a senator from New York. Both have degrees from prestigious universities (hers from Wellesley College, his from Harvard), and both had no government experience before coming into office. Clinton turned out fine as a senator, as far as I can tell. I didn’t hear any complaints. The one complaint I had was, like with Obama, sometimes she would say things that made no sense to me. It was always a comment that was clearly (to me) out of context with the situation at hand. The fact that she and Obama can get away with doing this shows how little the public is paying attention to what’s really going on in our government.

I think there’s definitely a difference in temperament between Clinton and Franken. I watched this panel discussion (video–click on the link and then click on the “f” in the red circle on the right side of the page to watch) at BookExpo America on C-SPAN back in 2003, and I thought it was very revealing about Franken. He was there along with Bill O’Reilly and Molly Ivins. Franken had just come out with his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. He had a picture of O’Reilly on the cover and said he had a small chapter on him in the book. He may very well have gotten his facts right about what he says. I have no way to judge, but what I particularly noticed was how he relished trying to humiliate O’Reilly who was sitting right there. O’Reilly was restrained while Franken was prodding him with delight. O’Reilly got irritated (who wouldn’t have in that setting?) and threw some barbs Franken’s way at the end of Franken’s part of the presentation. The back and forth between O’Reilly and Franken escalated, and Pat Schroeder, the host for the event, clearly thought it might come to blows despite the fact that both O’Reilly and Franken stayed in their seats. She came between the two of them nevertheless.

O’Reilly and Molly Ivins had a spirited but thoughtful debate about the role of government and the private sector. I enjoyed watching them both. Franken acted as an agitator–more like a child–trying “to be heard” as if he deserved it. Ms. Schroeder probably didn’t manage her role as moderator as well as she should have. Franken got out of his chair and came over to where O’Reilly and Ivins were sitting to try to interject his infinite wisdom.

At one point Franken said, “Unlike Molly I’m a liberal,” after she had just associated herself as a liberal. She just didn’t like being lumped into a faceless “Left”. Franken did comment about the whole “government vs. the private economy” debate, but it was not up to O’Reilly’s and Ivin’s level of discourse. The best he could put forward was a story about a family that at one time was down on its luck and how thankful they were for government assistance. O’Reilly had already said he liked the idea of a government safety net, but Franken characterized his position as being in opposition to O’Reilly’s on that issue, when it really wasn’t.

I agree with O’Reilly when he said that Franken is vicious. I thought it was quite obvious from this video. Franken has a way with wit and rhetoric, and I can tell he is sharp, but he tried to parlay this into a persona that’s “knowledgeable”. On careful examination one can see that despite the mirage he was outclassed in the discussion, and was really no better than acting as an interesting side show in the whole thing.

I think Minnesota and the U.S. Senate can look forward to more of the same from Franken. I don’t think he has it in him to be anything more than he has already shown himself to be, despite the judgment of Minnesota’s voters.

“The rule of law will save us”

It saves us from chaos within our own country. It will save us from jihadists who seek to kill Americans and destroy us. So say the Democrats. Lanny Davis said today that “The rule of law is the basis of our security.” Former President Bill Clinton couldn’t have said it better himself. Anyone who has had to deal with the police when seeing a crime committed will see how laughable that statement is. Police usually show up after the crime has already long since occurred. Nothing against them. Just clearing up a misconception.

The law in its best form provides social stability. Nothing more. It’s a compact among us all about restraints we agree to place on ourselves so that we do not unduly distress or hurt each other, and provides compensation, criminal or civil, for harm that one party has done to another. This is designed to promote social harmony. I can agree that this promotes general security, because we won’t be threatening and killing each other to save our own skins, but in terms of addressing threats who have no regard for social harmony to begin with, it has nothing to do with security. The law in most cases can only address them after they have hurt someone. It’s only in the lucky cases where law enforcement manages to catch a criminal before they cause harm.

But the Democrats will say we will be ever vigilante against terrorist threats, but our vigilance will be restrained by our sense of civility. “We will not compromise our sacred values.” They believe in a social scientific sort of way that by showing the world that we live by our “values” (as they define them) at home and abroad the jihadists will not be able to recruit as well as they did under Bush, because we will be less hated, and we will gain the support of countries around the world in gathering intelligence on Al Qaeda’s plans. That may work in Europe (though I’m not counting on it), but I doubt it will work in the Middle East. What, you think the jihadists don’t have a better hold on the imaginations of like-minded Muslims than we do? The truth doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what we do to make ourselves look good. It’s a political campaign. You think Democrats care how much Republicans try to make themselves look good? They’re going to try to find a way to make Republicans look bad no matter how much they try to look agreeable to Democrats, and vice versa. Get a clue! It’s all about PR, though in the Middle East we’re dealing with a very different cultural context.

What galls me is that if one were to really look at what Obama is responding to, both complaints about Guantanamo and “torture” were, like the myth of CO2 causing global warming and the “hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq”, an anti-American PR campaign mounted by certain NGOs and European governments. They never had a basis in reality, but it doesn’t matter. The point was to make us a whipping boy for their own domestic politics, and in some ways to try to influence us to conform to their values. They have succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest dreams.

The so-called “torture” techniques are the same ones we use to train our own soldiers to resist harsh interrogation! If you believe we have tortured our detainees then you must believe we torture our own soldiers. I have heard from a few soldiers who have subjected themselves to this training–one of them was former Col. Oliver North–and they say flat out it’s not torture. What a joke! I’ve seen one of Fox News’s own correspondents be waterboarded by our military to demonstrate what it really is. He clearly looked uncomfortable, but not in danger of being killed, or in fear of his own life. Now ask yourself, would a sane person volunteer to subject themselves to torture? What if he had been offered, “How about we demonstrate on you how you pull out someone’s fingernails?” You think the reporter would’ve volunteered? Not on your life! Think about this. It’s infuriating that people are getting away with calling our enhanced interrogations “torture” like they’ve succeeded in making people think that our cars, trucks, factories, and the very things we use for energy (not to mention our own breath) cause global warming! These are our new urban legends, and what’s shameful is that our own government is promoting them. Be under no illusions. We live in an age of irrationality.

Today I heard Craig Silverman on the Caplis & Silverman show on 630 AM talk about the “torture” issue. He asked callers “Should the Denver Police Department waterboard criminal suspects?” trying to equate our wartime detainees to “criminals”. I also heard Sen. John McCain say that Abu Ghraib was a situation where we tortured people. Abu Ghraib was not torture, at least as far as I could tell from the pictures. True, the “techniques” used were inappropriate, intimidating, and humiliating, but that’s not what torture is. It was criminal behavior, because the “interrogators” (some weren’t even trained as such) were violating U.S. policy. Torture is doing things to a detainee that cause excruciating pain and bodily injuries. That was never sanctioned by our enhanced interrogation policy and I hate seeing people with a straight face and conviction promulgate this lie. They either don’t know what they’re talking about, but are convinced they do, or they are carrying out a diplomatic feint to appease certain allies. In either case I consider it short-sighted and it risks our national security.

Both Silverman (today) and McCain (in the past) have brought up the history of waterboarding. Silverman said it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition. Both Silverman and McCain have brought up how it was used by the Japanese in WW II, and that we accused the Japanese of torture because of this practice. There’s a problem with this argument. The Japanese form of waterboarding was not the same as ours. They’d pump water into the victim’s stomach until it was full, and then press down on it, causing the water to go up the esophagus (throat) and down the trachea (windpipe), and was potentially deadly.

From what I could see of the Fox News demonstration, water is poured into the victim’s mouth until he reacts, raising his torso and arms, and shaking his head. At this point the water flow into his mouth is stopped, and he is allowed to clear the water from his mouth and throat. It’s a repetitious process designed to induce stress, but not to cause bodily harm. As was stated in the official documents which revealed our full catalog of formerly sanctioned techniques a medical doctor was always just a few yards away in case something did go wrong and the detainee’s life was in danger.

Liberals always pipe up that we violated the Geneva Convention. No we didn’t. The Convention is a pact between governments about rules of war. The reason we made the agreement was to make war a little more civilized. The people we captured did not fit the qualifications for Geneva Convention protection. This whole…(sigh) Overseas Contingency Operation (barf!) is uncharted territory. Even so, we have shown restraint.

People, we need to get real. War is a rough business. It disgusts me that there are still a lot of people who haven’t figured this out yet. We have shown restraint in this war. Our enemies have not. The idea that we’ve violated international law is a lie as far as I can see. I’m open to reasonable argument, but I have little patience for political games being played with our national security.

Obama is the law

In “The liberal/conservative divide explained” I talk about an interview with Thomas Sowell from October 2008. The interview is on his new book called A Conflict of Visions. The unconstrained vision describes Obama and the Democrats to a tee. I revisited this interview in light of the recent situation with Chyrsler.

Thomas Sowell had these relevant words to say.

From his book, A Conflict of Visions:

The constrained vision sees market economies as responsive to systemic forces, the interaction of innumerable individual choices and performances. The unconstrained vision argues that this is not how the economy operates, that it is currently obeying the power of particular interests, and should therefor be made in the future to obey the power of the public interest.

In the interview Sowell followed this up with:

They imagine that they can define what’s in the public interest, by themselves. Whereas in a market, each individual defines his own interest himself, and acts accordingly, interacting with other people and accommodating other people, and competing with other people.

I didn’t understand the significance of the situation with Chrysler until a couple days ago when I read Michael Barone’s article on it (h/t Tammy Bruce).

Barone grew up in Detroit, and said he was saddened by Chrysler’s plight…

But my sadness turned to anger later when I heard what bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria said on a WJR talk show that morning. “One of my clients,” Lauria told host Frank Beckmann, “was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.”

Lauria represented one of the bondholder firms, Perella Weinberg, which initially rejected the Obama deal that would give the bondholders about 33 cents on the dollar for their secured debts while giving the United Auto Workers retirees about 50 cents on the dollar for their unsecured debts.

This of course is a violation of one of the basic principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured creditors — those who lended money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they’d get specific property back — get paid off in full before unsecured creditors get anything. Perella Weinberg withdrew its objection to the settlement, but other bondholders did not, which triggered the bankruptcy filing.

After that came a denunciation of the objecting bondholders as “speculators” by Barack Obama in his news conference last Thursday. And then death threats to bondholders from parties unknown.

To the untrained reader one might get the idea that Barone is saying that the Obama Administration is breaking the law, but that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that the Obama Admin. has in effect sidestepped the part of the bankruptcy law that would normally apply in a case like this, by coming to Chrysler before it went into bankruptcy, with a pre-packaged deal, with most of the other bond holders signing on to it. Barone talks about how all of the partners that have signed on to this deal are banks who have received TARP funds, and suggests they were pressured to go along. Some of the bond holders (hedge funds), who are not TARP recipients, objected, citing the same rule that Barone talked about, and their fiduciary duty to maximize their return for their stockholders. In other words, they’re acting the way a corporation would normally act. The others are not.

The Obama Admin. wanted to get everyone to sign on before Chrysler went into bankruptcy, but that didn’t happen. The issue was going to go to bankruptcy court, but I saw an interview with Lauria today saying that the last bond holder has caved, and the Obama Admin. deal will be accepted.

What’s being violated by this deal is the spirit of the law. The bond holders lent money to Chrysler under explicit conditions in a contract that spelled out what would happen if Chrysler went into bankruptcy. This is called secured debt and if this had been decided in bankruptcy court the judge likely would’ve said the secured creditors must be paid back first. The Obama Admin. has managed to convince the bond holders to forfeit their contractual claims and take a loss, which in most circumstances would seem real odd, because normally they would have a fiduciary responsibility to seek the maximum return they’re allowed in the interest of their stockholders (and in the case of the banks which are using TARP funds, that’s us, the taxpayers!).

Michael Barone gets to what is really troubling about this deal, and he’s the only one I’ve heard talk about it:

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party.

…

Obama’s attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants “someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,” he said, but someone who has “empathy.” In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

The Chrysler negotiations will not be the last occasion for this administration to engage in bailout favoritism and crony capitalism. There’s a May 31 deadline to come up with a settlement for General Motors. And there will be others. In the meantime, who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies if the government is going to take their money away and give it to the union? We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government. It is likely to be part of a continuing series. [my emphasis in bold italics]

A commenter to Barone’s article, named Pablo Panadero, made a good point:

It will be interesting whether Ford is allowed to oppose the deal. If the UAW actually is rewarded a piece of Chrysler, Ford will then have a union that is substancially invested in their competition. Thus Ford’s union employees will have a vested interest in seeing success by their competition. By any reading of the anti-trust laws, this is clearly a violation.

Ford should be front and center on this issue. Just imagine what will happen come bargaining time. UAW will of course select Chrysler as the strike target, and the investors (re:Obama) will be quick to grant their demands to protect the “investment”. Thus Ford will be completely screwed when they come to them for a contract. The best thing for Ford to do is then move all of their production outside UAW’s reach. 

This has all the makings a true financial disaster. But is this really Obama’s agenda? Makes me start to wonder.

Obama acts like the hedge funds are just out for themselves. They are out for themselves. That’s part of the idea, self interest, but one in which there are other people who benefit, people with pensions, people’s retirements.

In the interview I cite above, Thomas Sowell says that in the unconstrained vision the “right leaders” are put in place (“The One”, etc.), and what ends up happening is the leader becomes the law. Rather than a nation of laws we become a nation of people with all of their prejudices and foibles holding sway. The Founders of the U.S. intended for the people’s voice to be heard, but for it to be tempered by a system of competing institutions and competing interests, and a specific process that allows those interests and institutions to set the rules of the road. Obama’s regime of governing violates this idea. Instead of respecting the intent of the laws which were formed by the people’s (and business’s) representatives, he decides what principles of law will be respected. President Bush had some characteristics of this as well. Given how our structures were effectively “hacked” on 9/11 I excused his bending of some rules to help fight the jihadists.

I am making a value judgement here, because I think that the UAW and its members are in denial. They are clinging desperately to what they have left. They have their prize today, but it will continue to slip away from them. They cannot continue the way they have in the past. It is unsustainable. In the process they will continue to destroy value in our economy, and until the government turns off the spigot we the taxpayers will pay for their denial.

Any way you look at it Obama is distorting the market to fit his vision, and in the process he is distorting people’s expectations about the law as well. Obama is taking steps to try to politicize the economy, but it’s going to fail, as all attempts to do this have. Dyed-in-the-wool leftists have believed for generations that if money was directed to the right places, determined by them, that the right people (their constituents, the ones they deem to be the downtrodden) will prosper. Capitalists will be allowed some prosperity, but not as much as they’d like. Historically the end result is one that nobody is happy with. Workers do not end up prospering, and while the wealthy aren’t too happy, because they can’t find as many investment opportunities as they’d like, and they feel pushed around by the government, they end up being relatively better off than anyone else, because they’re smart about their money. Trying to direct “the unseen hand” of the economy always fails. It’s a fool’s game.

It’s true that there are capitalists who take actions that destroy value. I agree that government in its “traffic cop” role should put in prudent regulations that limit value-destroying activity as much as possible. What I see happening is that Obama is also taking actions that destroy wealth-creating activities. Part of maintaining a healthy economy is creating a consistent playing field where capital investors can count on certain conditions, not a capricious economy whose rules change depending on which way the political winds are blowing. They can’t count on a positive return for their money (in most cases), but they can count on certain rules applying to their investments. That’s something that’s needed, and we’re not getting it.

Edit 5/16/09: George Will wrote a column talking about the same subject.

I’d like to close with a couple videos that I think show the fallacy of the political actions of the Obama Admin. Whenever I’ve seen cases of an interest group vying for government help or favoritism, this episode of The Twilight Zone (1980s) comes to mind for me, called “Button, Button”. I can see the point of this story was to show what people will do for money, greed. That’s part of my point here. Obama is replacing one party’s greed for another. The key part of the story for me is where the mysterious man (think of him as representing the government) talks about how the couple’s decision will affect people “they don’t know”, and in the end reveals the catch: The same deal will be offered to someone else, and it will be somebody who does not know them!

“Button, Button”, Part 1:

Part 2:

Excuse me for breathing

I heard over a week ago that the EPA has finally pulled the trigger and declared CO2 a pollutant that needs to be regulated. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. What gets totally neglected here is the fact that plants (that grass growing in your yard, for example) feed on CO2. It is actually healthy for the environment. It’s not like CO (carbon monoxide), which is poisonous to most living things. I feel like a broken record saying this, but CO2 is in such low concentrations in the atmosphere that it doesn’t really matter to the climate, and the observational data shows that at these levels it follows temperature. It does not cause temperature to rise. The EPA is acting on pseudo-science.

In addition the EPA has declared other greenhouse gases as pollutants that need to be regulated: methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.

Methane is emitted by us humans when we “pass gas”. One of the largest sources of methane is animals: cows, pigs, etc. So I’m waiting with a bit of a chuckle to see what the EPA is going to do about that. The thing is of all the greenhouse gases, this is the most innocuous. It doesn’t stay in the atmosphere long and its concentration is extremely small, less than CO2.

I did some research on Wikipedia for the others.

Nitrous oxide is commonly referred to as “laughing gas”. It’s used in medical settings as a mild sedative. It’s also used in rocket engines.

Hydrofluorocarbons are the latest in a line of refrigerants used in air conditioners. We went from freon, a chlorofluorocarbon, to hydrochlorofluorocarbons (which were seen as more environmentally friendly, but are now being phased out), to hydrofluorocarbons. Now the EPA says this is bad stuff, since it’s supposedly a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. So who knows what’s going to happen with air conditioners. Well heck, they’ll probably come after our air conditioners just because of the amount of power they use (CO2, remember?)

Perfluorcarbons are used in medical applications, and in the production of aluminum.

Sulfur hexafluoride is used in electricity production facilities.

The EPA’s ruling recommends regulating “smokestacks” and “tailpipes”. I assume the latter refers to our vehicles. There’s been talk that even though the Senate took out Obama’s cap and trade program from the 2010 budget, that it may reconsider it given this ruling. I fully expect that some sort of tax is going to be placed on our vehicles for the CO2 we emit, whether it’s a gax tax or mileage tax, or something along those lines. They’re considering such a thing in Oregon right now.

I’m not surprised by this, just disappointed. Energy is going to get more expensive. That’s the bottom line. Other things we use may be affected, such as air conditioners, but it’s hard to say at this point.

I am suspicious of this ruling since at least a part of it I know is not based on sound science. There may very well be cause for concern about hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. I don’t know anything about them except what I researched for this post. It seems to me that the ruling is targeted primarily at two things: factories and farming. And it would not surprise me if EPA guidelines end up reducing the number of both in the long run in this country. I read comments in the Christian Science Monitor article I link to saying that this will accelerate the movement of factories to Asia, particularly China. So much for Obama’s plan of saving jobs.

As Robert J. Samuelson recently wrote, the “new energy” economy Obama says he has planned does not look to be a net jobs creator. It is likely to reduce employment.

Another thing to get distressed over is a bill that was recently passed in congress, which allows those “affected” by global warming to sue corporations who have been deemed to have “contributed” to the problem. Low on cash? Sidle up and suck the teat of manufacturers and energy companies for some “carbon damages”. I see resort areas taking advantage of this one, just as my home town of Boulder did not too long ago when they sued the federal government for this.