…over 3,000 Americans lost their lives in the worst terrorist attacks ever to take place on U.S. soil. I’ll bet that you can remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. I know I can – it’s one of those events that burn themselves into your memory. I’ll never forget it, just as I’ll never forget hearing the news of the Challenger explosion, or the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated.
Take a deep breath, and think back to that day, and how you felt. Think about the climate of fear in the ensuing weeks, as we all waited for the proverbial “other shoe to drop,” sure that there would be additional attacks. Think about how the fear was escalated by the appearance of anthrax powder sent anonymously through the mail. No one knew then that it was, apparently, a case of domestic terrorism – we all believed that it was one more piece of evidence that our nation was under attack by ruthless murderers who hid in the shadows and struck unexpectedly, killing for the sake of killing and for the disruption it caused. Because, in fact, we were.
A lot of revisionist history has been written in the last seven years – but if you were old enough to know what was going on back then, I want you to remember how it all felt. Everyone – everyone – believed that we would be struck again, and soon, and that the possibility of attack with weapons of mass destruction was very, very real.
Imagine now that you were the President of the United States, and that, as the chief executive officer of the country and the commander-in-chief of its military forces, it was your job to try to keep the country safe. What would you have done?
George W. Bush decided that, as a nation, we could no longer afford to stay with our traditional policy of striking back only when we were attacked. He was not willing to risk the possibility that the next attack might kill tens of thousands of Americans by slipping chemical or biological weapons into a municipal water supply, or that America could lose an entire city if the terrorists got their hands on a nuclear weapon. Instead, he made a fundamental decision to change our foreign policy. He declared war on the terrorists, and stated that we were going to go after them.
He has been greatly criticized for making that decision. Many of the nations around the world, who were quick to offer sympathy and condolences to “America the Victim,” were suddenly outraged when we decided that we would no longer be a victim, but would stand up and fight back. There were many reasons for this change of heart. In some cases, it was because our “allies” were literally on the take – remember the Oil for Food scandal? – but I personally believe that much of the outrage arose from embarrassment because we were doing what they were afraid to do. It’s human nature to be angry at someone who makes you look bad.
The Democrats bang the drum over and over and over and over about the “failed policies” of this administration. But have you noticed that they never actually articulate what those failed policies are or exactly why they are failures? Could someone please explain to me what they are? Because he has not failed at the most important task that he set for himself seven years ago: we haven’t been attacked again. And I don’t think it’s because the terrorists don’t want to attack us anymore, do you? We keep hearing about how the President’s policies are creating more terrorists, and making America less safe – yet we haven’t been attacked again these seven years. And it isn't because they aren't trying.
There are those who believe that if we would just be nice to the terrorists, they wouldn’t hate us anymore. There are those who believe that we should negotiate, without preconditions, with nations who support and advocate terrorism, and who praise those who practice it. There are those who believe that terrorist acts are basically criminal actions and should be left to the police and the court systems. There are those who believe that heinous murderers should be accorded the same protections granted to soldiers who are fighting in the uniforms of their countries. Who believe that they should be brought into the country and granted the same Constitutional rights as American citizens. There are those who believe that everything should be left in the hands of the United Nations (perhaps the most laughable idea of all), and that America should never take any unilateral military action.
Ross Perot is famously quoted as saying, in the aftermath of his departure from GM’s Board of Directors, “At General Motors, when they see a snake the first thing they do is form a committee on snakes. At EDS, when we see a snake, we kill it.” That sounds a lot like the debate over what to do about terrorism. Maybe Ross’ viewpoint is due to the fact that he’s another one of those Texas “cowboys,” but it sure sounds like common sense to me.
People who murder innocents for political gain, who coerce women and even the mentally handicapped to wrap themselves in explosives and blow themselves up in public places, who decapitate journalists and film the process, and who torture people who are unlucky enough to be captured rather than killed, are not “insurgents,” they are not “freedom fighters,” they are not even “enemy combatants.” They are the scum of the earth. They are the snakes. They deserve no mercy and no quarter. Like a cancer, they need to be excised from the rest of the civilized world.
Very bright people differ on how likely another terrorist attack is. Matthew Bunn of Harvard presented a mathematical model, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, that estimates the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack in the next decade to be 29%. Others, such as Graham Allison, the founding dean of Harvard’s modern John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, have argued that the chances are as high as 50%. Can you imagine the effect on our nation – not just of having a city wiped off the map with potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties, but of the ensuing economic and social upheaval that would follow? You think the economic effect of 9/11 was bad?
It’s easy to be a proverbial “armchair quarterback.” It’s easy to criticize someone else’s decisions when the weight of responsibility is not on your shoulders. But I have to ask: if the probability is a mere fraction of what Matthew Bunn or Graham Allison advocate, if it’s just one in ten, or even one in a hundred, of losing an entire city to a terrorist attack in the next ten years, who do you want in charge? The people who want to talk to the snakes and convince them that we’re really nice people so they should be nice to us too? Or the people who want to find the snakes and kill them?
I will never forget where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt seven years ago today. And, God help me, but I don’t think I have it in me to ever forgive either. So, “W,” between now and next January, keep killing those snakes while those of us who have some common sense keep trying to elect someone who feels the same way about them to take over the job.
Thanks for listening.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Double Standard? What Double Standard?
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
Once again, the morning newspaper has left me shaking my head. Not really in disbelief, because I’ve seen too much bias in recent years to be particularly surprised at anything I read – it’s more of a “how can they be so blind to what they’re saying” head shake.
The headline, from the Associated Press, was “Palin disclosures put campaign on defensive.” It was all about how the disclosure that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant was “the latest in a string of disclosures that left the John McCain campaign defending his choice and the thoroughness of the background check of the little-known Alaska governor.”
What were the other disclosures? Well, it seems that she dismissed Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan after she was elected governor in 2006. Not surprisingly, Mr. Monegan wasn’t happy about losing his job. He speculated to a reporter from KTUU in Anchorage that he thought he probably had been dismissed because he resisted pressure from “Palin’s staff and husband” to fire a state trooper who was involved in a “bitter custody battle” with Sarah Palin’s sister after a 2005 divorce. Now, mind you, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law had allegedly fired a Taser at his young stepson and threatened to kill his father-in-law. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe, just maybe, a person who would do those things shouldn’t be carrying around a gun and a badge if the allegations are true. It’s also worth noting that the custody case, and many of the complaints filed against the trooper by Sarah Palin and her husband, predate her election to the governor’s office – when she was still a private citizen.
The result is that the Alaska State Legislature has appointed an investigator to look into the allegations. Sarah Palin’s response to the investigation, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase, was, “Bring it on!” McCain’s campaign has stated publicly that they were aware of the investigation, had looked into it themselves, and were convinced that there was nothing of substance there.
Oh, and the other disturbing disclosure was that Sarah Palin’s husband was arrested for drunken driving 20 years ago. No, I’m not joking. I don’t think they were even married at the time.
So the personal attacks begin. Oh, that’s not the way they’re spinning it – the spin is that the story isn’t about Palin, per se, but about what it tells us about the vetting process (or lack thereof) of the McCain campaign. Bullfeathers. I believe that fair-minded Americans will see this for exactly what it is: a blatant attempt to attack and discredit Sarah Palin. And we will see the attacks increase and escalate, because Sarah Palin represents a huge danger to the Obama campaign, simply because she’s conservative, she’s popular (her approval rating in Alaska is 80%), and she’s a woman.
Once again, the morning newspaper has left me shaking my head. Not really in disbelief, because I’ve seen too much bias in recent years to be particularly surprised at anything I read – it’s more of a “how can they be so blind to what they’re saying” head shake.
The headline, from the Associated Press, was “Palin disclosures put campaign on defensive.” It was all about how the disclosure that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant was “the latest in a string of disclosures that left the John McCain campaign defending his choice and the thoroughness of the background check of the little-known Alaska governor.”
What were the other disclosures? Well, it seems that she dismissed Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan after she was elected governor in 2006. Not surprisingly, Mr. Monegan wasn’t happy about losing his job. He speculated to a reporter from KTUU in Anchorage that he thought he probably had been dismissed because he resisted pressure from “Palin’s staff and husband” to fire a state trooper who was involved in a “bitter custody battle” with Sarah Palin’s sister after a 2005 divorce. Now, mind you, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law had allegedly fired a Taser at his young stepson and threatened to kill his father-in-law. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe, just maybe, a person who would do those things shouldn’t be carrying around a gun and a badge if the allegations are true. It’s also worth noting that the custody case, and many of the complaints filed against the trooper by Sarah Palin and her husband, predate her election to the governor’s office – when she was still a private citizen.
The result is that the Alaska State Legislature has appointed an investigator to look into the allegations. Sarah Palin’s response to the investigation, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase, was, “Bring it on!” McCain’s campaign has stated publicly that they were aware of the investigation, had looked into it themselves, and were convinced that there was nothing of substance there.
Oh, and the other disturbing disclosure was that Sarah Palin’s husband was arrested for drunken driving 20 years ago. No, I’m not joking. I don’t think they were even married at the time.
So the personal attacks begin. Oh, that’s not the way they’re spinning it – the spin is that the story isn’t about Palin, per se, but about what it tells us about the vetting process (or lack thereof) of the McCain campaign. Bullfeathers. I believe that fair-minded Americans will see this for exactly what it is: a blatant attempt to attack and discredit Sarah Palin. And we will see the attacks increase and escalate, because Sarah Palin represents a huge danger to the Obama campaign, simply because she’s conservative, she’s popular (her approval rating in Alaska is 80%), and she’s a woman.
But if you want to talk about the vetting process, let me just mention that the Democrat Party just nominated a Presidential candidate who:
- Spent 20 years sitting in the congregation of a pastor who is on record as spewing absolutely outrageous and hateful lies about his country, and about white folk, among other things. We’re asked to believe that Obama didn’t actually hear any of those particular sermons, and didn't know what was being said.
- Served on a board of directors with, gave speeches with, and has repeatedly been a guest in the home of unrepentant “radical activist” (read “domestic terrorist”) William Ayres. (He held a 1995 campaign event at Ayres' house, and Ayres and his wife, former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, were contributors to one of his campaigns.) Mr. Ayres was a member of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and 1970s, and admitted to participating in the bombings of the New York police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol Building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, although he was never charged or convicted. And before you start telling me that this is ancient history, let me stress that it is the “unrepentant” part that has us conservatives a little twisted up. As recently as September 11, 2001, the New York Times quoted Ayres as saying that he found “a certain eloquence in bombs," and that he didn't "regret setting the bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Furthermore, he believes that America "is not a just and fair and decent place," and his response to the suggestion that America is a great country is that "it makes me want to puke."
- Has been involved in questionable real estate deals with indicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko.
I could go on, but I think that’s plenty for now. Might I suggest that there’s something wrong with the vetting process of the entire Democrat Party? And with media outlets who are just fine with that, but who dig up the fact that Sarah Palin’s husband had a DUI 20 years ago?
The more I read the newspapers and listen to the “alphabet networks” in this country, the more convinced I am that the only reasonable explanation is the one Bernard Goldberg advances in his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. (An excellent book, and one that is definitely on the Leftcoast Blues recommended reading list.) As amazing as it may seem, Goldberg is convinced that his former colleagues honestly believe that they represent mainstream American thought. They spend all their time hanging out with people who think the same way they do, going to the same parties, and reading each other’s work. Their belief system is never seriously challenged, because they simply never interact with anyone who doesn’t share it. Consequently, they really don’t believe that they are biased at all – they truly believe that they are moderate in their political thinking, and don’t understand why people accuse them of being otherwise.
They just don’t get it. Unfortunately for them, we do. Which is why newspaper readership continues to decline across the country, and why the major network news shows continue to struggle to maintain their ratings. But by all means, keep up the attacks - they'll do more to help elect McCain and Palin than any positive news coverage could ever do!
Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Knowing What He Knows Now...He'd Still Prefer to Lose
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at LeftCoastBlues do the heavy thinking on behalf of those who just can’t be bothered.
Everyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the last week or so knows that Barak Obama has finally decided that maybe he should actually go see this Iraq place that he’s been promising to pull us out of. The press has, of course, been covering his every move. But this morning, as I was reading the morning newspaper, I saw a quote that just about made me spew my morning latte across the breakfast table.
As Obama’s visit to Iraq wrapped up, ABC’s Terry Moran asked, “If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?” Obama immediately answered, “No,” then stuttered a little, then observed that these kind of hypothetical questions were “very difficult.” Well, yeah – because you’ve either got to admit that you were wrong, or say something astoundingly stupid. He opted for the latter.
Everyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the last week or so knows that Barak Obama has finally decided that maybe he should actually go see this Iraq place that he’s been promising to pull us out of. The press has, of course, been covering his every move. But this morning, as I was reading the morning newspaper, I saw a quote that just about made me spew my morning latte across the breakfast table.
As Obama’s visit to Iraq wrapped up, ABC’s Terry Moran asked, “If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?” Obama immediately answered, “No,” then stuttered a little, then observed that these kind of hypothetical questions were “very difficult.” Well, yeah – because you’ve either got to admit that you were wrong, or say something astoundingly stupid. He opted for the latter.
Let’s recap for a moment, in case you’ve forgotten the time line:
- In January, 2007, the United States Senate unanimously confirmed General David Petraeus as the new Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Barak Obama was one of those who voted in favor of his confirmation. During those hearings, General Petraeus spoke very candidly about the planned troop surge and about the resources he was going to need to actually accomplish the job he had taken on – with the blessing of Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Ted Kennedy, and Joe Biden, among others.
- The ink was barely dry on General Petraeus’ official orders when the Democrats began opposing the surge. Obama stated, on MSNBC (January 10, 2007), “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
- In March, April, and May of 2007 the Democrats told us repeatedly that the surge had failed – even though it wouldn’t reach its full strength until sometime in July. Harry Reid went so far as to say publicly that the war was lost.
- In July, 2007, just as the surge was finally reaching full strength, Obama stated on the Today show, “My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.” A few days later, campaigning in New Hampshire, he said, “Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked.”
- By last September, it was obvious that the surge was working, and we were making serious progress in Iraq. As time drew near for General Petraeus’ September briefing to Congress, Democrats started desperately trying to spin the situation, culminating in Senator Dick Durbin’s mind-boggling statement, “By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong.” (Italics added.)
- November, 2007 – two months after General Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working, Obama again stated that the surge was actually making the situation in Iraq worse.
- Today, July 22, 2008, it is crystal clear to anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty that the surge has worked. Al Qaeda is on the run. The Iraqi people finally feel secure enough to cooperate with coalition forces, and that’s made all the difference in the world. The Iraqi army is stepping up. The troops are starting to come home. The Iraqi government is feeling secure enough to actually play a little hardball with the US in terms of what kind of long term deal we should have there. By the way, Obama’s campaign team re-worked his Web site last weekend to remove his criticism of the surge. His new plan for Iraq, while still critical of the Bush Administration’s approach, really doesn’t sound that different from it. Despite his continued reference to a 16-month timeline, his plan now states that “The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government…a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel.” (Italics added.) That, I suppose, is just another example of "change you can believe in."
I’m frankly having trouble figuring out if Obama really knows where he stands. He has said repeatedly that he would listen to his “commanders on the ground.” Yet while he acknowledged today that “There’s no doubt that General Petraeus does not want a timetable…I think he wants maximum flexibility to be able to do what he believes needs to be done inside of Iraq,” he also said (again with the characteristic stammering that seems to occur whenever someone bumps him off his script) that deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground say would not be doing his job as commander in chief. Now, personally, when we’re in the middle of a war, if we have a commander in chief who has never served in the military, let alone led troops in combat, I hope to God that he does listen to and follow the advice of his commanders on the ground. Who else should he be taking advice from? Nancy Pelosi?
As we grow nearer to the Presidential election, the Democrats are faced with their biggest foreign policy nightmare: President Bush’s plan is working, and we are winning the war in Iraq. They don’t know what to do about it, so they’re hoping that the economy gets worse so that people will be focused on that instead of remembering that for the last five or six years, the Democrat party has been doing everything it possibly could to get us to declare defeat and go home when it is now obvious to any fair-minded person that the war was indeed winnable…because we’re winning it. Which has to make you wonder how much sooner we could have reached this place if we’d had the support of both political parties all along.
But as you prepare to cast your vote, just remember – even knowing what he knows now, Barak Obama would still have opposed what we now know was a winning strategy. I’m having a tough time understanding how that’s different from saying that he’d rather we had lost.
Thanks for listening.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us!
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at LeftCoastBlues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.
In my last post, I presented my case that the current sky-high gas prices aren’t the fault of the oil companies, and aren’t the fault of the speculators, and promised to tell you whose fault it is. Then I promptly left town for a week. Then it took me a week to find my desk again when I returned. But here we are, ready to reveal the big secret.
Ready? Got a mirror handy? Go look in the mirror, and you’ll see whose fault it is. Yep, it’s our fault…but maybe not for the reasons you think. It’s not our fault because we didn’t conserve enough. It’s not our fault because we insisted on driving our SUVs, or didn’t take public transportation frequently enough. No, it’s our fault for believing our politicians when they tell us that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and then not holding them accountable when it becomes obvious that they’ve lied to us.
We are the only industrialized nation on the planet that has voluntarily placed a large percentage of our own natural energy resources off-limits. For the last ten years or so, we’ve bought the idea that we didn’t need to increase our own domestic oil production, and we didn’t need to build more refineries, and somehow things would magically work out with those alternative energy sources we’ve been pursuing.
What has it got us? Well, $5/gallon gasoline, for one thing. Far greater dependence on imported oil, for another. Oh, and the price of corn is now going through the roof, because so much of it is being consumed to make ethanol. Guess what that does to food prices? Like a good steak now and then? Ever hear the phrase “corn-fed beef?” Ever read the ingredients label on the stuff you eat every day and see how many items contain corn syrup or some other corn-derived product? Not to mention your morning corn flakes. Just be thankful that corn tortillas aren’t your primary staple, like they are for a lot of people in the world who are now finding it difficult to buy enough corn to make them. Yep, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
In April of 2006, when the price of oil was around $70/barrel, Nancy Pelosi issued a press release that said, “Democrats have a plan to lower gas prices…Our plan would empower the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on price gouging to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices, increase production of alternative fuels, and rescind the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies.”
You can read the full press release at http://www.house.gov/pelosi/press/releases/April06/GasPrices.html. I would encourage you to do just that, and think hard about what you’re reading. Back when that press release was issued, gas prices had soared to a national average of $2.90/gallon. And Nancy Pelosi could tell you exactly why: It was the fault of the evil George Bush and the “Republican Rubber Stamp Congress,” who continued to give subsidies to the evil oil companies, who were reaping “gigantic profits” and paying their executives “astronomical compensation.” It was “just the latest example of the wealthy few benefiting at the expense of hard-working Americans under the Bush Administration.” But the Democrats had a plan. If we would just put them in power, they would bring down the skyrocketing gas prices.
That fall, the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. How did that work out? Well, the price of oil has roughly doubled on the world market, and $2.90/gallon now looks like the good old days. What happened to the plan? Guess cracking down on price gouging and increasing production of alternative fuels didn’t quite work the way it was intended. And, of course, according to Nancy Pelosi, it’s still the fault of the evil George Bush and the evil oil companies. One thing is for certain, according to the Democrats: we can’t “drill our way out” of our current situation, because any new oil fields we found would take at least ten years to bring on line. Frankly, that tells me two things: (1) we should have started drilling ten years ago, and the people who prevented us from doing that should be thrown the heck out of office, and (2) we’ll be in a worse mess ten years from now if we don’t start drilling today.
Yet, despite their abject failure to do anything constructive that would actually have a positive effect on energy prices, we now have Democrats in Congress talking seriously about nationalizing the oil industry! Why, in the name of all that’s rational, would we want the government running the oil industry? Because they did so well with Amtrak and the Postal Service? You’ve got to be kidding me…but they’re not – they’re as serious as a heart attack.
A recent Rasmussen poll taken earlier this month found that Congress’ approval rating stood at 9%. That’s the lowest approval rating ever. President Bush’s approval rating – which the media delights in telling us is abysmal – is three times higher. Yet, if historical trends hold true, this fall 80 - 90% of the sitting members of the House and Senate who seek re-election will be re-elected – and that’s what amazes me.
Psychologists use the term “cognitive dissonance” to describe the stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. There must be a lot of cognitive dissonance going around if Congress as a whole has a 9% approval rating, yet individual members of Congress have about a 90% chance of being re-elected.
Folks, it’s time to stop measuring the performance of our Senators and Representatives by how many “earmarks” they can successfully bury in legislation that will bring us our share of the pork, and start holding them accountable for what they actually do about important issues. Because at the end of the day – and I’m speaking specifically of the first Tuesday in November here – the American people pretty much end up with the government they deserve.
In the immortal words of Walt Kelly (the creator of Pogo): “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: Interestingly enough, the price of oil has actually declined more than $10/barrel over the last week. Why? Well, it wasn’t because of anything that Nancy Pelosi – or anyone else in Congress – did. It declined because of concerns that slowing economic growth in the United States, and reduced consumption because of high prices, would reduce future demand for oil. And when demand drops, assuming that supply stays constant, prices fall. That, as we stated previously, is the way a free market works.
In my last post, I presented my case that the current sky-high gas prices aren’t the fault of the oil companies, and aren’t the fault of the speculators, and promised to tell you whose fault it is. Then I promptly left town for a week. Then it took me a week to find my desk again when I returned. But here we are, ready to reveal the big secret.
Ready? Got a mirror handy? Go look in the mirror, and you’ll see whose fault it is. Yep, it’s our fault…but maybe not for the reasons you think. It’s not our fault because we didn’t conserve enough. It’s not our fault because we insisted on driving our SUVs, or didn’t take public transportation frequently enough. No, it’s our fault for believing our politicians when they tell us that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and then not holding them accountable when it becomes obvious that they’ve lied to us.
We are the only industrialized nation on the planet that has voluntarily placed a large percentage of our own natural energy resources off-limits. For the last ten years or so, we’ve bought the idea that we didn’t need to increase our own domestic oil production, and we didn’t need to build more refineries, and somehow things would magically work out with those alternative energy sources we’ve been pursuing.
What has it got us? Well, $5/gallon gasoline, for one thing. Far greater dependence on imported oil, for another. Oh, and the price of corn is now going through the roof, because so much of it is being consumed to make ethanol. Guess what that does to food prices? Like a good steak now and then? Ever hear the phrase “corn-fed beef?” Ever read the ingredients label on the stuff you eat every day and see how many items contain corn syrup or some other corn-derived product? Not to mention your morning corn flakes. Just be thankful that corn tortillas aren’t your primary staple, like they are for a lot of people in the world who are now finding it difficult to buy enough corn to make them. Yep, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
In April of 2006, when the price of oil was around $70/barrel, Nancy Pelosi issued a press release that said, “Democrats have a plan to lower gas prices…Our plan would empower the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on price gouging to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices, increase production of alternative fuels, and rescind the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies.”
You can read the full press release at http://www.house.gov/pelosi/press/releases/April06/GasPrices.html. I would encourage you to do just that, and think hard about what you’re reading. Back when that press release was issued, gas prices had soared to a national average of $2.90/gallon. And Nancy Pelosi could tell you exactly why: It was the fault of the evil George Bush and the “Republican Rubber Stamp Congress,” who continued to give subsidies to the evil oil companies, who were reaping “gigantic profits” and paying their executives “astronomical compensation.” It was “just the latest example of the wealthy few benefiting at the expense of hard-working Americans under the Bush Administration.” But the Democrats had a plan. If we would just put them in power, they would bring down the skyrocketing gas prices.
That fall, the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. How did that work out? Well, the price of oil has roughly doubled on the world market, and $2.90/gallon now looks like the good old days. What happened to the plan? Guess cracking down on price gouging and increasing production of alternative fuels didn’t quite work the way it was intended. And, of course, according to Nancy Pelosi, it’s still the fault of the evil George Bush and the evil oil companies. One thing is for certain, according to the Democrats: we can’t “drill our way out” of our current situation, because any new oil fields we found would take at least ten years to bring on line. Frankly, that tells me two things: (1) we should have started drilling ten years ago, and the people who prevented us from doing that should be thrown the heck out of office, and (2) we’ll be in a worse mess ten years from now if we don’t start drilling today.
Yet, despite their abject failure to do anything constructive that would actually have a positive effect on energy prices, we now have Democrats in Congress talking seriously about nationalizing the oil industry! Why, in the name of all that’s rational, would we want the government running the oil industry? Because they did so well with Amtrak and the Postal Service? You’ve got to be kidding me…but they’re not – they’re as serious as a heart attack.
A recent Rasmussen poll taken earlier this month found that Congress’ approval rating stood at 9%. That’s the lowest approval rating ever. President Bush’s approval rating – which the media delights in telling us is abysmal – is three times higher. Yet, if historical trends hold true, this fall 80 - 90% of the sitting members of the House and Senate who seek re-election will be re-elected – and that’s what amazes me.
Psychologists use the term “cognitive dissonance” to describe the stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. There must be a lot of cognitive dissonance going around if Congress as a whole has a 9% approval rating, yet individual members of Congress have about a 90% chance of being re-elected.
Folks, it’s time to stop measuring the performance of our Senators and Representatives by how many “earmarks” they can successfully bury in legislation that will bring us our share of the pork, and start holding them accountable for what they actually do about important issues. Because at the end of the day – and I’m speaking specifically of the first Tuesday in November here – the American people pretty much end up with the government they deserve.
In the immortal words of Walt Kelly (the creator of Pogo): “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Thanks for listening.
P.S.: Interestingly enough, the price of oil has actually declined more than $10/barrel over the last week. Why? Well, it wasn’t because of anything that Nancy Pelosi – or anyone else in Congress – did. It declined because of concerns that slowing economic growth in the United States, and reduced consumption because of high prices, would reduce future demand for oil. And when demand drops, assuming that supply stays constant, prices fall. That, as we stated previously, is the way a free market works.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
A Second Helping of Perspective
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at LeftCoastBlues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.
The other day I was headed out to lunch with some business colleagues, and the subject turned to fuel prices. I was astounded when one of my colleagues went off on the "obscene profits" the oil companies were making. I was astounded because this person used to work for a consulting company that went into troubled businesses, analyzed their financial statements and business practices, and told them what they needed to do to fix things. Of all the people I know, he certainly understands - at least intellectually - that the percentage numbers are what matters, not the dollars. Yet he was joining in the chorus condemning Exxon Mobile for their Q1 profit number - the biggest ever, as we have repeatedly been told.
Now I understand that people are hurting, and they want someone to blame. Heck, I've got a pretty fuel-efficient car, and I live less than 10 miles from my office, and I'm still not crazy about paying nearly five bucks per gallon for gas. And the oil companies are an easy, obvious target, and it's all too easy for the people who are really to blame for this mess to shift our attention to the big, bad oil companies.
But can we have some perspective here, please?
Exxon Mobile is a publicly traded company. It is therefore required to make its financial statements public as well. You can go to their Web site and download their annual report, along with several other documents that they are required to publish.
In 2007, Exxon Mobile's net income was roughly 10.4% of sales. Of course, sales and other operating revenue totaled almost $400 Billion, so that 10.4% is a huge number. But the revenue number is also huge - almost mind-bogglingly huge - and the income number is only important as it relates to the revenue number. Now a net income of 10.4% is indeed good, solid performance. It's about on par with AT&T, whose net income was about 10%. It's a heck of a lot better than, say, Costco, whose net income in 2007 was only 1.7% of sales, or Fluor Corporation, with 3% of sales. On the other hand, the Boeing Company had net income of 12%. Do we need a windfall profits tax on the obscene profits of the aerospace industry? 3M had net profits of 16.7% - do we need a windfall profits tax there? How about the software industry? After all, Microsoft's 2007 net income was 27.5% of sales! Oracle's was 23.7% of sales! Time for a windfall profits tax on the software industry!
A publicly held corporation exists for one and only one reason: to deliver value to its shareholders. So who are the shareholders of Exxon Mobile? No corporate officer or board member owns more than 0.02% of the company's outstanding shares. We know that, because that's the kind of information a publicly held corporation has to publicize. The rest are owned by...well, by everyone from millionaire investors to the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes. You may own some if you have money in a mutual fund, or a retirement or pension plan. And the corporate officers and board members have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders that can result in them going to jail if it is breached. Remember Kenneth Lay and Enron?
Congress doesn't have the power to repeal the law of supply and demand. If supply is constant or declining, and demand is rising, the price will go up. It's one of the most fundamental laws of economics. If you want to see lower prices in a free, global market - which the market for crude oil is, whether we like it or not - you must either increase supply or decrease demand. And if you control prices by artificially forcing them lower without increasing supply, you will have shortages. Anyone else out there remember the days of the Arab oil embargo and the long lines at the gas pumps back in the 1970s? Want to go back to that? Me neither. Right now gas is expensive, but it's available. That's a good thing. That's how free markets work, if they're allowed to function.
Can someone tell me, please, exactly how a windfall profits tax on the oil companies is going to make the price of crude oil or gasoline go down? Those of you who are in business, imagine a situation where you are told by the government: "Look, you're making too much money on this stuff you're producing and selling. So we're going to pass a special tax that will take away from you any money you make that's in excess of what we think you should make." Is that going to give you an incentive to make more of whatever it is that you produce, or less? Why should you try to make more of it if you aren't going to get to keep the fruits of your labors?
Next in line for blame seems to be "the speculators." Even the Saudis are now blaming "the speculators" for bidding up the price, and denying that the law of supply and demand is responsible. Of course they are. After all, they and their OPEC colleagues are guilty of artificially controlling supply to keep prices high. If you're looking for villians in this situation, OPEC certainly is worth of consideration. So naturally they want to deflect responsibility to someone else - even as they increase the amount they're pumping for fear that the price will go too high, people will seriously start turning to alternate sources of energy, and they'll be hurt in the long run.
But "speculators" are nothing more or less than investors who are trying to figure out whether the price of something is going to go up or down in the long run (no different in that respect from investors in the stock market), and they actually provide a stabilizing effect on long term commodities prices. Suppose you're General Mills, and you need a lot of corn for making corn flakes. It will really help your business planning process to know what you're going to have to pay for corn in the next 12 months or so - particularly when the Law of Unintended Consequences is pushing the price of corn through the roof because...wait for it...demand has gone up because people are now using corn to make ethanol. But I digress. Thanks to the commodities market, you can purchase a contract today for corn to be delivered at some point in the future at a price fixed by the contract. It helps General Mills, because it now knows what it's going to pay for corn. It helps the suppliers, because they now know what they're going to get for their corn.
Here's where you get to play. If you think the price of corn is going to go up, you can buy a contract for a million bushels of corn to be delivered, say, six months from now at today's contract price. You can buy that contract for a fraction of the actual value of the corn. Seeing as how you probably don't have a driveway big enough to hold a million bushels of corn, what you're counting on is that sometime in the next six months, you'll be able to sell your contract to someone (e.g., General Mills) who actually does need the corn. If the price goes up enough, you'll be able to make a profit, and the person who buys the contract from you will still pay less for the corn than if they had to buy the corn at the market price at that time. And the profit can be substantial, because the profit will be the difference in price on the whole million-bushel lot, whereas you only had to put up a fraction of that amount to buy the contract in the first place.
Sounds like a great deal, doesn't it? But if you guess wrong, and the price of corn goes down in the next six months, you're going to end up having to sell your contract for a loss - and it could be a really big loss, because, once again, the loss will be the difference in price on the whole million-bushel lot, meaning that you could lose a lot more money that you put up to buy the contract.
Conversely, if you believe that the price of corn is going to go down, you can sell a contract to deliver corn that you don't actually have yet, in the belief that, before that contract comes due, you'll be able to buy the corn at a lower price than the one you've contracted to sell it for. Once again, if you guess correctly, you can make a lot of money. If you guess wrong, you can lose a lot of money.
It certainly is possible for buyers and sellers in the commodities market to bid up the price of something in the short term, if a lot of people believe that the price is going to keep going up. But it is not possible for them to keep the price up by themselves. At some point, demand will begin to fall off, prices will stabilize or begin to decline, and if you're stuck with the wrong kind of futures contract, you will lose a lot of money.
We're already beginning to see this reduction in demand. Somewhere between $4 and $5 per gallon, gas hit a point where we began to change our behavior to use less of it. We started to drive less. Public transportation ridership is up. We've started buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Hybrid sales are up. It's painful, but free market forces are working, and we are adjusting. Our politicians may not be noticing, but the Saudis are. Whatever you may think about them, they're not stupid, and they didn't decide to increase production by a half-million barrels per day out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because they saw our behavior patterns starting to change, and they're afraid we will find a way to wean ourselves away from our oil dependence, which would, of course, reduce demand even further, which would at some point begin to hurt them financially.
So, if it isn't the oil companies, and it isn't the speculators, who is to blame? That, my friends, will be the subject of our next post - this one is already long enough.
Thanks for listening.
The other day I was headed out to lunch with some business colleagues, and the subject turned to fuel prices. I was astounded when one of my colleagues went off on the "obscene profits" the oil companies were making. I was astounded because this person used to work for a consulting company that went into troubled businesses, analyzed their financial statements and business practices, and told them what they needed to do to fix things. Of all the people I know, he certainly understands - at least intellectually - that the percentage numbers are what matters, not the dollars. Yet he was joining in the chorus condemning Exxon Mobile for their Q1 profit number - the biggest ever, as we have repeatedly been told.
Now I understand that people are hurting, and they want someone to blame. Heck, I've got a pretty fuel-efficient car, and I live less than 10 miles from my office, and I'm still not crazy about paying nearly five bucks per gallon for gas. And the oil companies are an easy, obvious target, and it's all too easy for the people who are really to blame for this mess to shift our attention to the big, bad oil companies.
But can we have some perspective here, please?
Exxon Mobile is a publicly traded company. It is therefore required to make its financial statements public as well. You can go to their Web site and download their annual report, along with several other documents that they are required to publish.
In 2007, Exxon Mobile's net income was roughly 10.4% of sales. Of course, sales and other operating revenue totaled almost $400 Billion, so that 10.4% is a huge number. But the revenue number is also huge - almost mind-bogglingly huge - and the income number is only important as it relates to the revenue number. Now a net income of 10.4% is indeed good, solid performance. It's about on par with AT&T, whose net income was about 10%. It's a heck of a lot better than, say, Costco, whose net income in 2007 was only 1.7% of sales, or Fluor Corporation, with 3% of sales. On the other hand, the Boeing Company had net income of 12%. Do we need a windfall profits tax on the obscene profits of the aerospace industry? 3M had net profits of 16.7% - do we need a windfall profits tax there? How about the software industry? After all, Microsoft's 2007 net income was 27.5% of sales! Oracle's was 23.7% of sales! Time for a windfall profits tax on the software industry!
A publicly held corporation exists for one and only one reason: to deliver value to its shareholders. So who are the shareholders of Exxon Mobile? No corporate officer or board member owns more than 0.02% of the company's outstanding shares. We know that, because that's the kind of information a publicly held corporation has to publicize. The rest are owned by...well, by everyone from millionaire investors to the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes. You may own some if you have money in a mutual fund, or a retirement or pension plan. And the corporate officers and board members have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders that can result in them going to jail if it is breached. Remember Kenneth Lay and Enron?
Congress doesn't have the power to repeal the law of supply and demand. If supply is constant or declining, and demand is rising, the price will go up. It's one of the most fundamental laws of economics. If you want to see lower prices in a free, global market - which the market for crude oil is, whether we like it or not - you must either increase supply or decrease demand. And if you control prices by artificially forcing them lower without increasing supply, you will have shortages. Anyone else out there remember the days of the Arab oil embargo and the long lines at the gas pumps back in the 1970s? Want to go back to that? Me neither. Right now gas is expensive, but it's available. That's a good thing. That's how free markets work, if they're allowed to function.
Can someone tell me, please, exactly how a windfall profits tax on the oil companies is going to make the price of crude oil or gasoline go down? Those of you who are in business, imagine a situation where you are told by the government: "Look, you're making too much money on this stuff you're producing and selling. So we're going to pass a special tax that will take away from you any money you make that's in excess of what we think you should make." Is that going to give you an incentive to make more of whatever it is that you produce, or less? Why should you try to make more of it if you aren't going to get to keep the fruits of your labors?
Next in line for blame seems to be "the speculators." Even the Saudis are now blaming "the speculators" for bidding up the price, and denying that the law of supply and demand is responsible. Of course they are. After all, they and their OPEC colleagues are guilty of artificially controlling supply to keep prices high. If you're looking for villians in this situation, OPEC certainly is worth of consideration. So naturally they want to deflect responsibility to someone else - even as they increase the amount they're pumping for fear that the price will go too high, people will seriously start turning to alternate sources of energy, and they'll be hurt in the long run.
But "speculators" are nothing more or less than investors who are trying to figure out whether the price of something is going to go up or down in the long run (no different in that respect from investors in the stock market), and they actually provide a stabilizing effect on long term commodities prices. Suppose you're General Mills, and you need a lot of corn for making corn flakes. It will really help your business planning process to know what you're going to have to pay for corn in the next 12 months or so - particularly when the Law of Unintended Consequences is pushing the price of corn through the roof because...wait for it...demand has gone up because people are now using corn to make ethanol. But I digress. Thanks to the commodities market, you can purchase a contract today for corn to be delivered at some point in the future at a price fixed by the contract. It helps General Mills, because it now knows what it's going to pay for corn. It helps the suppliers, because they now know what they're going to get for their corn.
Here's where you get to play. If you think the price of corn is going to go up, you can buy a contract for a million bushels of corn to be delivered, say, six months from now at today's contract price. You can buy that contract for a fraction of the actual value of the corn. Seeing as how you probably don't have a driveway big enough to hold a million bushels of corn, what you're counting on is that sometime in the next six months, you'll be able to sell your contract to someone (e.g., General Mills) who actually does need the corn. If the price goes up enough, you'll be able to make a profit, and the person who buys the contract from you will still pay less for the corn than if they had to buy the corn at the market price at that time. And the profit can be substantial, because the profit will be the difference in price on the whole million-bushel lot, whereas you only had to put up a fraction of that amount to buy the contract in the first place.
Sounds like a great deal, doesn't it? But if you guess wrong, and the price of corn goes down in the next six months, you're going to end up having to sell your contract for a loss - and it could be a really big loss, because, once again, the loss will be the difference in price on the whole million-bushel lot, meaning that you could lose a lot more money that you put up to buy the contract.
Conversely, if you believe that the price of corn is going to go down, you can sell a contract to deliver corn that you don't actually have yet, in the belief that, before that contract comes due, you'll be able to buy the corn at a lower price than the one you've contracted to sell it for. Once again, if you guess correctly, you can make a lot of money. If you guess wrong, you can lose a lot of money.
It certainly is possible for buyers and sellers in the commodities market to bid up the price of something in the short term, if a lot of people believe that the price is going to keep going up. But it is not possible for them to keep the price up by themselves. At some point, demand will begin to fall off, prices will stabilize or begin to decline, and if you're stuck with the wrong kind of futures contract, you will lose a lot of money.
We're already beginning to see this reduction in demand. Somewhere between $4 and $5 per gallon, gas hit a point where we began to change our behavior to use less of it. We started to drive less. Public transportation ridership is up. We've started buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Hybrid sales are up. It's painful, but free market forces are working, and we are adjusting. Our politicians may not be noticing, but the Saudis are. Whatever you may think about them, they're not stupid, and they didn't decide to increase production by a half-million barrels per day out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because they saw our behavior patterns starting to change, and they're afraid we will find a way to wean ourselves away from our oil dependence, which would, of course, reduce demand even further, which would at some point begin to hurt them financially.
So, if it isn't the oil companies, and it isn't the speculators, who is to blame? That, my friends, will be the subject of our next post - this one is already long enough.
Thanks for listening.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Second Amendment Dodges a Bullet
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at LeftCoast Blues do the heavy thinking on behalf of those who just can't be bothered.
The big news of the day is that the Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution actually says what it says. The even bigger news, in my opinion, is that four of the nine Supreme Court Justices believed that it didn't.
The issue in question was a 32-year-old ban on handgun ownership in Washington DC. This was, in a sense, an indirect ban: it's a crime in DC to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. So there was no way to legally own one. Dick Heller, a DC special police officer, applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wanted to keep at home, and was turned down - so he sued.
The court struck down the ban, and also struck down the requirement that all firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled.
Here's what the Second Amendment says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Those who oppose private gun ownership do so by claiming that this language only protects the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, points out that "the Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning." It "excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation."
In one of the clearest interpretations of the Second Amendment ever, Justice Scalia wrote: "The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, 'Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed'...other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose...a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause."
He goes on to observe that, "Three important founding-era legal scholars interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings. All three understood it to protect an individual right unconnected with militia service."
Justice Scalia points out that nothing in this opinion should cast doubt on "longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," and that the sorts of weapons protected by the Second Amendment are those "in common use," and that it is not unconstitutional to, for example, ban private ownership of fully automatic military weapons or bazookas.
However, "the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right," and the DC law "amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of 'arms' that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute."
And here's the part I really love: "The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government - even the Third Branch of Government - the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges' assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad...We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country...The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem...But the enshrinemen of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table...it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."
The majority opinion is really quite brilliantly written, and I would encourage everyone to read it in its entirety. You can download it from http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf.
What is truly frightening is that four of the nine justices apparently felt that they could, in Scalia's words, "pronounce the Second Amendment extinct." In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens wrote that the majority opinion "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."
Note to Justice Stevens: Yes! That's exactly what they did! The entire Bill of Rights has the express purpose of limiting what elected officials, or any other branch of the government, can do! These people came from nations where the government could, at a whim, make decisions that would abridge their individual rights, and they had had enough of that. They were rightly concerned about what a central government could and would do if there were not very clear limitations on its power. The Constitution specifies a process by which it can be amended. Existing amendments can be reversed through this process, if the people decide it's the right thing to do - after all, prohibition was reversed through exactly that process. But you, Justice Stevens, do not have the right to circumvent that process because you don't like what an existing amendment says. And the people of the United States should be very concerned that you, and your three dissenting colleagues, apparently believe that you do!
And to my conservative friends, I will say this: if you don't think there's any difference between the Presidential candidates this year, think about the fact that the next President is probably going to get to name at least one, if not two, Supreme Court Justices, and think about the fact that the Second Amendment to the Constitution survived, on June 26, 2008, by a single vote, 5 to 4. If that doesn't get you off your backsides and out to the polls, then I don't know what will. Because after all the votes are counted, the American people pretty much end up with the government they deserve.
Thanks for listening.
The big news of the day is that the Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution actually says what it says. The even bigger news, in my opinion, is that four of the nine Supreme Court Justices believed that it didn't.
The issue in question was a 32-year-old ban on handgun ownership in Washington DC. This was, in a sense, an indirect ban: it's a crime in DC to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. So there was no way to legally own one. Dick Heller, a DC special police officer, applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wanted to keep at home, and was turned down - so he sued.
The court struck down the ban, and also struck down the requirement that all firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled.
Here's what the Second Amendment says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Those who oppose private gun ownership do so by claiming that this language only protects the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, points out that "the Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning." It "excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation."
In one of the clearest interpretations of the Second Amendment ever, Justice Scalia wrote: "The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, 'Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed'...other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose...a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause."
He goes on to observe that, "Three important founding-era legal scholars interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings. All three understood it to protect an individual right unconnected with militia service."
Justice Scalia points out that nothing in this opinion should cast doubt on "longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," and that the sorts of weapons protected by the Second Amendment are those "in common use," and that it is not unconstitutional to, for example, ban private ownership of fully automatic military weapons or bazookas.
However, "the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right," and the DC law "amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of 'arms' that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute."
And here's the part I really love: "The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government - even the Third Branch of Government - the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges' assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad...We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country...The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem...But the enshrinemen of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table...it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."
The majority opinion is really quite brilliantly written, and I would encourage everyone to read it in its entirety. You can download it from http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf.
What is truly frightening is that four of the nine justices apparently felt that they could, in Scalia's words, "pronounce the Second Amendment extinct." In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens wrote that the majority opinion "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."
Note to Justice Stevens: Yes! That's exactly what they did! The entire Bill of Rights has the express purpose of limiting what elected officials, or any other branch of the government, can do! These people came from nations where the government could, at a whim, make decisions that would abridge their individual rights, and they had had enough of that. They were rightly concerned about what a central government could and would do if there were not very clear limitations on its power. The Constitution specifies a process by which it can be amended. Existing amendments can be reversed through this process, if the people decide it's the right thing to do - after all, prohibition was reversed through exactly that process. But you, Justice Stevens, do not have the right to circumvent that process because you don't like what an existing amendment says. And the people of the United States should be very concerned that you, and your three dissenting colleagues, apparently believe that you do!
And to my conservative friends, I will say this: if you don't think there's any difference between the Presidential candidates this year, think about the fact that the next President is probably going to get to name at least one, if not two, Supreme Court Justices, and think about the fact that the Second Amendment to the Constitution survived, on June 26, 2008, by a single vote, 5 to 4. If that doesn't get you off your backsides and out to the polls, then I don't know what will. Because after all the votes are counted, the American people pretty much end up with the government they deserve.
Thanks for listening.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Can We Have Some Perspective, Please?
Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at LeftCoastBlues do the heavy thinking for those who just can't be bothered.
Wow, I didn't realize my sabbatical has lasted this long! And there's so much to catch up on! I've been busy doing some rather tedious research on your behalf that I will be sharing with you over the coming weeks. But first things first.
I popped up my browser a few days ago only to see the following headline: "US jobless rate takes biggest jump since '86!" OMG! The sky is falling! One more piece of evidence that things are terrible! I clicked through to the article to find that the national unemployment rate had soared - soared - from 5% to 5.5%!
Now certainly that's not good news, particularly if you're one of the unemployed. But, as is so often the case, all of the news articles seem to lack historical perspective here.
The fact is that the unemployment rate has never been, and will never be, zero. There are a lot of reasons for this. But economists talk about something they call the "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment," often abbreviated "NAIRU." The theory goes that there is a threshold of unemployment where, if governments try to push the unemployment rate any lower, the inflation rate tends to accelerate. Economists being economists, there is no agreement on exactly what the NAIRU is, and it may in fact be a different number at different points in history, but it is generally agreed to be somewhere between 4.3% and 7.3%.
So...is an increase from 5% to 5.5% a reason for caution? Yes, it probably is. Is it a reason for breathless, "the sky is falling," reportage? No. Particularly when the cost of energy has gone sky high over the last couple of years. It is, I believe, at testament to the incredible robustness of our economy in recent years that we have been able to absorb the spike in energy prices without having the economy go totally into the toilet long before now.
The fact is that over the last 50 years, the national unemployment rate has seldom been under 4%, and has spent most of its time between 4% and 6%. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png) My younger readers may be interested to know the following: Inflation was just over 8% in 1975 - the second highest peak in the last 50 years. It was already starting to fall when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, dipped briefly below 6% in 1978 - his second year in office - then climbed steadily back up through the remainder of his presidency. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, it was already nearly back to 8%.
The popular wisdom, reinforced by most of our media outlets at every opportunity, is that "Reaganomics" - the concept that cutting taxes would actually lead to greater tax revenues through the economic growth that would result from letting people keep more of their own money - didn't work and should therefore never be tried again. But the reality is that after peaking at almost 10% in 1982 (the highest rate in the last 50 years), Reagan's policies took hold, and the unemployment rate fell steadily thoughout the rest of his presidency, and stood at about 5.75% when he left office.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and the economy always has, and always will be, cyclical. President Bush the Elder had the misfortune to take office just as the cycle was turning. During his presidency, the unemployment rate rose from just over 5% to just over 7.5% - leading to the legendary "It's the economy, stupid!" theme of Bill Clinton's successful campaign in 1992. Unemployment was already falling when President Clinton took office in 1993, and, regardless of his other shortcomings, he did manage to not screw up the economy for most of his presidency. In this, he was helped considerably by the fact that the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and prevented the enactment of flagrant new government spending programs, e.g., "HillaryCare."
In the year 2000, the dot-bombs started going off, and the economy started to turn again. After hitting a low of roughly 4% in 2000, it jumped to 5% in 2001. President Bush the Younger was of course blamed for this, although he had little or nothing to do with it. (See my earlier post on the phenomonon of "hysteresis.") Of course, we all know what happened in 2001. The terrorist attacks just greased the slope that the economy was already on. Fortunately, the much-maligned "Bush Tax Cuts" were enacted, and, despite what you may have been told, they worked. After peaking at just over 6% in 2003, the unemployment rate started falling steadily again.
So what should we take away from this history lesson?
Thanks for listening.
Wow, I didn't realize my sabbatical has lasted this long! And there's so much to catch up on! I've been busy doing some rather tedious research on your behalf that I will be sharing with you over the coming weeks. But first things first.
I popped up my browser a few days ago only to see the following headline: "US jobless rate takes biggest jump since '86!" OMG! The sky is falling! One more piece of evidence that things are terrible! I clicked through to the article to find that the national unemployment rate had soared - soared - from 5% to 5.5%!
Now certainly that's not good news, particularly if you're one of the unemployed. But, as is so often the case, all of the news articles seem to lack historical perspective here.
The fact is that the unemployment rate has never been, and will never be, zero. There are a lot of reasons for this. But economists talk about something they call the "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment," often abbreviated "NAIRU." The theory goes that there is a threshold of unemployment where, if governments try to push the unemployment rate any lower, the inflation rate tends to accelerate. Economists being economists, there is no agreement on exactly what the NAIRU is, and it may in fact be a different number at different points in history, but it is generally agreed to be somewhere between 4.3% and 7.3%.
So...is an increase from 5% to 5.5% a reason for caution? Yes, it probably is. Is it a reason for breathless, "the sky is falling," reportage? No. Particularly when the cost of energy has gone sky high over the last couple of years. It is, I believe, at testament to the incredible robustness of our economy in recent years that we have been able to absorb the spike in energy prices without having the economy go totally into the toilet long before now.
The fact is that over the last 50 years, the national unemployment rate has seldom been under 4%, and has spent most of its time between 4% and 6%. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png) My younger readers may be interested to know the following: Inflation was just over 8% in 1975 - the second highest peak in the last 50 years. It was already starting to fall when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, dipped briefly below 6% in 1978 - his second year in office - then climbed steadily back up through the remainder of his presidency. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, it was already nearly back to 8%.
The popular wisdom, reinforced by most of our media outlets at every opportunity, is that "Reaganomics" - the concept that cutting taxes would actually lead to greater tax revenues through the economic growth that would result from letting people keep more of their own money - didn't work and should therefore never be tried again. But the reality is that after peaking at almost 10% in 1982 (the highest rate in the last 50 years), Reagan's policies took hold, and the unemployment rate fell steadily thoughout the rest of his presidency, and stood at about 5.75% when he left office.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and the economy always has, and always will be, cyclical. President Bush the Elder had the misfortune to take office just as the cycle was turning. During his presidency, the unemployment rate rose from just over 5% to just over 7.5% - leading to the legendary "It's the economy, stupid!" theme of Bill Clinton's successful campaign in 1992. Unemployment was already falling when President Clinton took office in 1993, and, regardless of his other shortcomings, he did manage to not screw up the economy for most of his presidency. In this, he was helped considerably by the fact that the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and prevented the enactment of flagrant new government spending programs, e.g., "HillaryCare."
In the year 2000, the dot-bombs started going off, and the economy started to turn again. After hitting a low of roughly 4% in 2000, it jumped to 5% in 2001. President Bush the Younger was of course blamed for this, although he had little or nothing to do with it. (See my earlier post on the phenomonon of "hysteresis.") Of course, we all know what happened in 2001. The terrorist attacks just greased the slope that the economy was already on. Fortunately, the much-maligned "Bush Tax Cuts" were enacted, and, despite what you may have been told, they worked. After peaking at just over 6% in 2003, the unemployment rate started falling steadily again.
So what should we take away from this history lesson?
- The economy is cyclical. It will always have its ups and downs, and it doesn't turn on a dime. It takes a while before the results of any particular economic action will actually show up. This is, in fact, a cause for some concern, because it is entirely possible that the run-up in fuel prices simply hasn't had time to ripple through the entire system yet - we just don't know for sure.
- At the moment, however, the sky is not falling. The 5.5% rate of unemployment is still pretty darned good by historical standards, and is well within the generally accepted range of the NAIRU - although, again, that's not to minimize the hardship if you're part of that 5.5%.
- The historical evidence of the last 25 years shows that "supply side economics" actually does work, and tax cuts actually do spur economic growth, and do increase tax revenues as a result. That should cause at least a momentary pause for thought when you hear the Democrats promising that if they are elected this year they (1) will not increase taxes, but (2) will allow the "Bush Tax Cuts" to expire. This is disingenuous at best, and downright dishonest at worst, because allowing the tax cuts to expire would actually result in a HUGE tax increase, which is NOT what you want to happen at a time when the economy is hitting a rough spot in the road.
- If the economic cycle is indeed turning, then whomever takes office in January of 2009 is going to face a delicate balancing act to avoid a recession. If the Democrats get their way, and taxes do in fact go up, the next four years probably won't be pretty, and, since most of the electorate apparently doesn't grasp the principle of hysteresis, President Obama would get the blame. The Senator from Illinois should be careful of what he wishes for, because I don't think that would be the kind of "change" the American people are looking for.
Thanks for listening.
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