No Oil for Pacifists

I previously reported on "official multiculturalism" creeping south from Canada to Michigan. Turns out that some Canadians also disapprove--including a Canadian Muslim:

Mahfooz Kanwar, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, says he has some better ideas.

"I'd tell them, this is Canada, and in Canada, we teach music and physical education in our schools. If you don't like it, leave. If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole country you came from or go to another hellhole country that lives under sharia law," said Kanwar, who is a professor emeritus of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

That might be putting things a little more forcefully than most of us would be comfortable with, but Kanwar says he is tired of hearing about such out-of-tune demands from newcomers to our country. "Immigrants to Canada should adjust to Canada, not the other way around," he argues.

Kanwar, who immigrated to Canada from Pakistan via England and then the United States in 1966, says he used to buy into the "mosaic, official multiculturalism (nonsense)."

He makes it clear, that like most Canadians, he is pleased and enjoys that Canada has citizens literally from every country and corner in the world, as it has enriched this country immensely. But it's official multiculturalism -- the state policy "that entrenches the lie" that all cultures and beliefs are of equal value and of equal validity in Canada that he objects to.

"The fact is, Canada has an enviable culture based on Judeo-Christian values -- not Muslim values -- with British and French rule of law and traditions and that's why it's better than all of the other places in the world. We are heading down a dangerous path if we allow the idea that sharia law has a place in Canada. It does not. It is completely incompatible with the idea and reality of Canada," says Kanwar, who in the 1970s was the founder and president of the Pakistan-Canada Association and a big fan of official multiculturalism. Kanwar says his views changed when he started listening to the people who joined his group. They badmouthed Canada, weren't interested in knowing Canadians or even in learning one of our official languages. They created cultural ghettos and the Canadian government even helped fund it.

"One day it dawned on me that the reason all of us wanted to move here was going to disappear if we didn't start defending Canada and its fundamental values." That's when Kanwar started speaking out against the dangers of official multiculturalism. He has been doing so for decades.

Agreed--except that Britain has abandoned British legal tradition.

(via Doug Ross, via Creeping Sharia)

As recently as 2008, the New York Times' average weekday circulation was over 1.1 million. By the third quarter 2010, it had dropped to 876,638. So, no wonder:

The New York Times Company reported a sharp drop in net income in the first quarter as the print advertising market remained stubbornly depressed for newspapers.

The company said net income fell 57.6 percent, to $5.4 million, compared with $12.8 million in the quarter a year ago.

The weakness in print advertising, coupled with an unexpected drop in revenue at About.com, led to earnings of 4 cents a share before special items were excluded, compared with 8 cents a share in the period a year ago.

How long before the Times ownership is outsourced to Mexico?

The Economist:

When we talk about the debt crisis in Europe, we tend to focus on the specific details--a relative loss of peripheral European competitiveness, accumulation of debt, rising bond yields and contracting economies. But the bigger story is a simpler one: The euro zone's political institutions did not keep up with its economic institutions.

It's the EU's "democracy deficit," and it's skyrocketing.

(via Instapundit)

President Obama, April 21, 2011:

Last month I asked my Attorney General to look into any cases of price gouging so we can make sure nobody is being taken advantage of at the pump. Today, I’m going to go a step further. The Attorney General is putting together a team whose job it is to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that nobody is taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gain.

President Obama's Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, April 12, 2011:

Because taxes and retail distribution costs are generally stable, movements in gasoline and diesel prices are driven primarily by changes in crude oil prices and wholesale margins. Crude oil prices that differ from our forecast would be reflected in the price of motor fuels. Each dollar per barrel of sustained change in crude oil prices relative to the forecast translates into approximately a 2.4 cent-per-gallon change in product prices, absent the consideration of factors specific to the gasoline and diesel fuel markets.

Retail price projections reflect higher prices for the refiner acquisition cost of crude oil, expected to average $112.50 per barrel this summer compared with last summer's average of $74.70 per barrel. EIA expects wholesale gasoline margins (the difference between the wholesale price of gasoline and the refiner acquisition cost of crude oil) to average 53 cents per gallon this summer compared to 36 cents per gallon last summer, largely brought about by continuing strength in world-wide liquid fuels consumption.

Powerline's John Hinderaker:

[T]he price increase since last year breaks down like this: one barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons [19.36 gallons actually] of gasoline, so the increase in the price of crude oil from $74.70 per barrel to $112.50 per barrel corresponds to $1.89 per gallon. The increase in wholesale gasoline margins (which includes the oil refiner's profit as well as the cost of refining) is only 17 cents per gallon. So Obama's beating up on the oil companies is pointless.

Gregory Millman, Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Futures and Options Markets:

[F]utures market speculation provides an important social good, namely liquidity. If it were not for the presence of speculators in the market, farmers, bankers, and business executives would have no easy and economical way to eliminate the risk of volatile prices, interest rates, and exchange rates from their business plans. Speculators, however, provide a ready and liquid market for these risks--at a price. Speculators who are willing to assume risks for a price make it possible for others to reduce their risks. Competition among speculators also makes hedging less expensive and ensures that the effect of all available information is swiftly calculated into the market price. Weather reports, actions of central banks, political developments, and anything else that can affect supply or demand in the future affect futures prices almost immediately. This is how the futures market performs its function of "price discovery."

Conclusion: President Obama still doesn't read his own Administration's footnotes. And he doesn't understand economics.

English teacher Mary Grabar at Minding the Campus:

After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested in teaching students to write and communicate clearly. The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the meeting’s 500 panels as I could, is devoted to disparaging grammar, logic, reason, evidence and fairness as instruments of white oppression. They believe rules of grammar discriminate against "marginalized" groups and restrict self-expression.

(via neo-neocon)

According to the New York Times:

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service is in emergency triage mode as it struggles with an avalanche of petitions and lawsuits over the endangered species list, the chief tool for protecting plants and animals facing extinction in the United States. Over the last four years, a few environmental groups have requested that more than 1,230 species be listed, compared with the previous 12 years in which annual requests averaged only 20 species.

Some environmental groups argue that vastly expanded listings are needed as evidence mounts that the world is entering an era of mass extinctions related to destruction of habitat, climate and other changes. Such threats require a focus on entire ecosystems, they say, rather than individual species.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the barrage has paralyzed the listing process. Last month, the agency asked Congress to intervene and impose a limit on the number of species it must consider for protection, setting the stage for a showdown.

"The many requests for species petitions has inundated the listing program’s domestic species listing capabilities," the service wrote in its 2012 budget request. Already it faces a backlog of 254 species.

The agency's proposed solution?: Cap what it can spend processing any given petition. Great idea!--can similar regulatory ceilings be applied to EPA greenhouse gas regulation? Perhaps conservatives could propose tailpipe-by-tailpipe investigations. . .

(via Volokh Conspiracy)

President Obama, interviewed last Monday by Brad Watson of WFAA in Dallas:

Texas has always been a pretty Republican state, for historic reasons.

The Legislative Reference Library of Texas lists 45 governors since statehood. Five were Republicans.

(via Wizbang)

Liberal Kevin Drum talks about spending restraint, but the centerpiece of his plan is raising taxes:

letting the Bush tax cuts expire in a couple of years and then raising tax rates by about four or five points of GDP over the next 20 or 30 years. Done reasonably and fairly, I just don't believe that an increase this gradual would be wildly oppressive.

Now, as risky as it may be, I'm willing to increase some taxes in order to close the Federal budget deficit. But the Atlantic's Megan McArdle shows why Drum's plan would be a disaster (footnotes omitted):

But looking just at the federal income tax makes no sense. In order to raise taxes to the 25% of GDP that Kevin wants, all taxes need to rise by at least a third, not just income taxes: excise taxes, corporate income taxes, payroll taxes. And we're talking about rising from the Clinton level, not from the current effective tax rate level. That's going to be a lot more than 5%. . .

So our baseline would be returning effective tax rates on the top quintile to around 28%; effective tax rates on the middle quintile to 17%; and effective tax rates on the bottom quintile to 6%. Then we raise each tax rate by a third to 37%, 23%, and 8%, respectively. The current tax rates? We don't know exactly (the data only go up to 2007), but a rough estimate is 25%, 14%, and 4%.

In other words, for the poorest 20% of Americans (who make less than $20,000 a year, with an average income of $11,500), taxes go from about $460 to about $920. For the middle quintile (making an average of $50,000 a year), taxes go from around $7,000 to over $12,000. For those in the top quintile, with an average income of $167,000, taxes jump from a $41,000 to $62,000.

Turn it around and look at the effect on incomes: after tax incomes drop from $11,040 to $10,580, in the lowest quintile; from $43,000 to $38,500 in the middle quintile; and from $125,000 to $105,000. And the higher you go, the stronger the effect is; for the top 1% (which starts at AGI of $400,000), you reduce their minimum income from a bottom of roughly $275,000 to perhaps $210,000, either through taxes, or through lower capital income as a result of higher corporate income taxes.

Can this be done? Maybe. Probably, at least on the lower tiers, who don't respond to tax rates the way the wealthy can. But it won't be easy or moderate. I'm sure there are a number of people in my readership where two spouses take home $125,000 between them. How easily can you guys chop $20,000 out of your budget? And though the percentages are lower, in practical effect it's even worse for the bottom: if you're making minimum wage, $460 is several weeks worth of paychecks.

As Instapundit says, "How many people, given the choice between massive cuts in the federal budget, and cuts like these in their own budgets, would choose to cut their own?" But they don't really want to cut spending. . .

Assistant Village Idiot is right: There's a new coolest website ever. It's Communications From Elsewhere's Post Modernist Generator: each time you surf, it produces a new, jargon-laden and footnoted, post-modernist article.

The fine print warns that the "essay you have just seen is completely meaningless." Just like all post-modernism--even proponents can't tell scholarly from scam.

UPDATE: Warren Meyer in Forbes says it better.


In the Washington Post, Chuck Lane details "China's train wreck":

As minister of railways, Liu [Zhijun] ran China’s $300 billion high-speed rail project. U.S., European and Japanese contractors jostled for a piece of the business while foreign journalists gushed over China’s latest high-tech marvel.

Today, Liu Zhijun is ruined, and his high-speed rail project is in trouble. On Feb. 25, he was fired for "severe violations of discipline" -- code for embezzling tens of millions of dollars. Seems his ministry has run up $271 billion in debt -- roughly five times the level that bankrupted General Motors. But ticket sales can’t cover debt service that will total $27.7  billion in 2011 alone. Safety concerns also are cropping up.

Faced with a financial and public relations disaster, China put the brakes on Liu’s program. On April 13, the government cut bullet-train speeds 30 mph to improve safety, energy efficiency and affordability. The Railway Ministry’s tangled finances are being audited. Construction plans, too, are being reviewed.

Liu’s legacy, in short, is a system that could drain China’s economic resources for years. So much for the grand project that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times likened to a "moon shot" and that President Obama held up as a model for the United States.

Rather than demonstrating the advantages of centrally planned long-term investment, as its foreign admirers sometimes suggested, China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow -- without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.

The fact is that China’s train wreck was eminently foreseeable. High-speed rail is a capital-intensive undertaking that requires huge borrowing upfront to finance tracks, locomotives and cars, followed by years in which ticket revenue covers debt service -- if all goes well. "Any . . . shortfall in ridership or yield, can quickly create financial stress," warns a 2010 World Bank staff report.

Such "shortfalls" are all too common. Japan’s bullet trains needed a bailout in 1987. Taiwan’s line opened in 2007 and needed a government rescue in 2009. In France, only the Paris-Lyon high-speed line is in the black.

Agreed. Though a centerpiece of President Obama's recent stimulus plans, even the WaPo editors label high-speed rail "a lost cause."

Most proposed new passenger rail systems would require massive subsidies. Florida turned back Federal funding for fears of the necessary state spending. Wisconsin rejected high-speed rail funding, asking instead for reduced Federal monies to improve existing train service. California's high-speed rail -- mandated by a 2008 state ballot measure -- will bankrupt the state.

As George Will writes:

Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.

Perhaps that's why the mainstream media -- including (former) economist/columnist Paul Krugman -- ignore the actual numbers (which favor freight, not passenger, trains).

Coyote Blog's Warren Meyer calls high speed rail and mass transit modern "cargo cults" -- "great cities of the world have large mass transit systems so therefore if our city builds a rail system we will become great." Another example of liberals preferring the pretty over the proven.

(via reader Doug J., Krugman-in-Wonderland, reader Warren, Right on the Left Coast, The Antiplanner)

Contrary to lefty complaints about the Chamber of Commerce, cap-and-trade didn't fail because conservatives out-spend liberals:


source: Dr. Matthew Nisbet, Climate Shift

See also Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold: Big Green lobby isn't gone, it's just not as scary anymore.

(via reader Warren)

Boeing's next generation passenger aircraft will be the 787 "Dreamliner." The company opened its 787 "final assembly plant in Everett [Washington] in May 2007." That facility makes several types of aircraft, and employed almost 28,000 in 2007.

Despite serial setbacks and delivery delays, Boeing has 835 unfulfilled orders for the Dreamliner jets. Back in October 2009, Boeing announced creation of a separate 787 final assembly facility in North Charleston, South Carolina -- in part because of "labor disruptions" at the Washington state facility. According to the Wall Street Journal, unions have "shut down Boeing's commercial aircraft production line four times since 1989, and a 58-day strike in 2008 cost the company $1.8 billion."

The South Carolina plant is nearly ready, with production scheduled to start this July. Boeing has hired over 1000 employees for that facility. Meanwhile, back in Washington state, Boeing has increased employment by 2000 workers.

Last week -- eighteen months after Boeing selected South Carolina! -- the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint seeking (see pages 7-8) to force Boeing to locate its second Dreamliner final assembly plant in Washington state. The NLRB claims Boeing violated Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Law ("Taft-Hartley"), which preserves employee rights "to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively," and Section 8(a)(1), which prohibits employers from interfering with that right.

Why? Because the South Carolina plant will be non-union, and, according to the NLRB, Boeing's decision was motivated by "anti-union animus." This is despite the fact that Section 14(b) of the labor laws give states the rights to prohibit compulsory union membership as a condition of employment. Some 22 states have such "right to work" laws, including South Carolina. Still, the NLRB says that choosing South Carolina for a second assembly facility was unlawful retaliation for union agitation in Washington state.

Boeing says the Supreme Court hasn't allowed labor laws to intrude on business judgment. But, precedent in this field is specific to the facts. Yet here, even assuming anti-union motivations, the Washington state assembly facility still operates and employs. So the NLRB is asserting a virtual union worker veto over where companies choose to expand. At the same time, it's punishing states for passing laws that attract investment--instead, they become stuck in unfavorable states. Megan McArdle correctly observes:

Boeing does not seem to have claimed that it was trying to break the union; it said it was moving to seek a more amenable labor force. As far as I know, that's not against the law, even if unions wish it were. Companies have been moving south for decades to get a better tax and labor environment. For the NLRB to declare that companies have no right to move would be tantamount to declaring that they are legally captive to whatever the local unions and governments care to dole out.

So much for the free movement of goods in interstate commerce--rights the Obama Administration is defending in other contexts. As Claire Berlinski says, "All that's missing are the words 'Five Year Plan.'"

Questions: Doesn't the NLRB's position read the "right to work" exemption of Section 14(b) out of the labor laws, substituting Federal fiat? And, if the NLRB prevails, why would any multinational decide to invest in new U.S. manufacturing, to the detriment of job creation? Or might the issue not be jobs but union dues?

Tired--nothing today. Still, at least the Caps made it to the second round.

I can remember losing game seven to Billy Smith and Pat LaFontaine of the friggin' Islanders in 1987. What I most remember is leaving the arena about 2am on Easter Sunday.

From CEI's Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State (2011):


source: CEI Report at 8 via SBA Report

Indeed, government spending plus the costs of regulatory compliance total 35.5 percent of our economy.

How much does regulation drain compared to other expenses? A lot:


source: CEI Report at 11

As CATO's Doug Bandow says:

Regulation is one of the most important economic battlegrounds. Unreasonable federal mandates do as much as high taxes to strangle the economy.

Naturally, President Obama wants to deflect blame for his policies. He recently penned an article proclaiming his determination "to strike the right balance" between "placing unreasonable burdens on business -- burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs" and protecting "our safety, health and environment." . . .

Economists Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain figured that total regulatory costs ran about $1.8 trillion in 2008. Most are for compliance, about $1.752 trillion. Federal enforcement budgets are tiny in comparison, "only" $56 billion.

Unfortunately, compliance costs are even higher today, given the flood of Bush-Obama regulations. Notes Crews: "the current tabulation doesn't include recent regulatory interventions related to the various stimulus and bailout programs and regulatory costs associated with the recent health care and financial reform legislation. Given that indirect costs -- such as the effects of lost innovation or productivity -- are notoriously difficult to determine, such figures can further understate the total regulatory burden."

Of course, federal rules create benefits as well as costs. A basic legal framework is necessary for markets to operate. But issuing agencies have an incentive to inflate the claimed pluses. Moreover, many of the purported advantages, such as creating "green" jobs, remain inefficient and artificial creations of government. The new financial regulations actually reinforce existing problems such as "too big to fail." Thus, the benefits are limited, and only ameliorate the economic harm resulting from regulation.

The losses are enormous. Regulation accounts for roughly 12% of the GDP, about half of total federal spending, more than this year's record deficit, and twice total individual income tax collections. Add regulatory costs to spending and the federal government is absorbing 36% of our economy. Wonder why the economy isn't growing faster? The real question should be: why is it growing at all?

(via Daily Caller via reader Warren)

Remember Monday's S&P warning on U.S. debt? It caused a 140 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrials. Well, Natasha Lennard explains in the liberal Salon why Americans "shouldn't worry about it":

[T]he effect of S&P's decision is certainly political and S&P's move has to be taken seriously simply by virtue of the fact that, despite its cataclysmic failures in recent years when it came to rating subprime mortgages, Wall Street still relies on the rating agencies. And a downgrading of the U.S. sovereign debt, however unlikely, would impinge on the country's ability to borrow at low prices.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that, as James Fallows pointed out in the Atlantic (citing economist James Galbraith), the U.S. can print its own money, and the cost of doing so is less than the cost of default.

In other words, lefty economists' response to the Federal budget imbalance is "don't worry, be happy."

Somehow, I'm not comforted.

The best and most comprehensive review of recent union politics is Mark Hemingway's Unionsdämmerung in the April 25th Weekly Standard:

The second existential threat to unions is the imminent pension crisis. When union pensions are discussed, invariably public sector unions get the most attention, simply because the numbers are impressively large. (California has $535 billion in unfunded state pension liabilities, or more than the annual GDP of Saudi Arabia.) There’s much uncertainty as to how the shortfalls will be addressed. The options run the gamut from the aforementioned tax increases and legislative restraints to the creation of a path for state bankruptcy, and these have been hotly debated.

What is rarely discussed is that the pension problem is actually more acute and immediate among private sector unions. This has to do with the unique nature of private sector union pension plans. There are about 1,500 "multi-employer" pension plans in the United States covering 10.1 million workers. In these plans, several unionized businesses join together to provide a single, collective retirement plan for all their employees. Unlike 401(k)s and other defined-contribution plans, which belong to the individual and so encourage labor mobility, defined-benefit plans are typically tied to the job. Multi-employer plans were created to allow for some degree of labor mobility within unionized sectors.

The catch is that multi-employer plans are governed by what’s known as "last man standing" accounting rules. Here’s how they work: If there are five companies in a multi-employer plan and four of them go bankrupt, the fifth has to assume the pension obligations for all of the employees from the four bankrupt companies, known as "orphans."

Getting a handle on multi-employer pension liabilities has always been notoriously difficult, and concern about their viability has grown as American union membership has dwindled in the face of globalization and technologically driven gains in productivity. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that as of 1998 the number of union members paying into the plans was equal to the number of retirees receiving benefits. The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently noted in a press release that a "study of over 100 multi-employer plans, including the largest plans in the country (as measured by assets), indicated that in 2008 those plans were collectively underfunded by over $160 billion (approximately 44 percent of their collective plan liabilities)."

The Teamsters union plan alone has four times as many retirees drawing benefits as employees paying in. Which is why, in 2007, UPS coughed up a staggering $6.1 billion to buy its way out of the Teamsters multi-employer pension plan, figuring this was cheaper than assuming the unions’ collective pension liabilities later on. (Trucking company YRC, one of the largest remaining Teamster employers, publicly asked the federal government for $1 billion in TARP funds to cover pension obligations in 2009. The company eventually withdrew the request.)

UPS’s withdrawal from its multi-employer plan also highlighted the issue of transparency. Previously, it was assumed that UPS’s pension liabilities were around $4 billion, and Wall Street analysts were stunned when it turned out they far exceeded that figure. Then in 2009, the Street was shocked again when the grocery chain Kroger disclosed in a footnote to its SEC filing that it had $1.2 billion in pension liabilities.

Until now, companies have been required to disclose only their contributions to multi-employer plans. But ratings agencies and financial markets have started insisting on transparency​--and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which has de facto statutory authority from the SEC, is set to enact a rule in the second quarter of this year that requires disclosure of multi-employer liabilities.

Adding these liabilities to the balance sheets of union employers could make it nearly impossible for them to get loans, lines of credit, bonding, and the kind of financial assistance that is the lifeblood of many unionized sectors such as construction.

How are unions reacting to the prospect of this new rule? "The blind panic is un-frickin'-believable," says Brett McMahon, a longtime union critic and vice president of Miller & Long Concrete Construction. The rule could well accelerate bankruptcy in many union businesses or force companies to scramble out of the yoke of unionized employment.

Regardless, the problem of bankrupt union pension plans is not going away. It’s more than likely a number of big union pension plans will go bankrupt. All of a sudden, union employees who were expecting generous pension plans will be dumped onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government-sponsored enterprise that backstops pension plans. The maximum payout is just under $13,000 a year, or "dog-food money," notes McMahon.

That’s when things are likely to get really ugly. Multi-employer pension plans are by law governed by boards equally divided between employer and union representatives. There’s already no love lost between rank-and-file union members and the class of political consultants and executives that has come to dominate union leadership. Both of the SEIU’s national pension plans issued "critical status letters" to their members in 2009​--​the Pension Protection Act requires such letters to be issued when funds can cover less than 65 percent of their obligations. The SEIU, however, maintains a separate pension plan for its national officers that was funded at 98.3 percent, according to the latest data.

Expect waves of class action lawsuits over pension mismanagement aimed at recouping money from the employers and unions responsible. This could well bankrupt unions. And when union pension plans begin failing, unions will be deprived of perhaps their biggest selling point​--​job stability with unrivaled retirement benefits.

For some time now, big labor has been convinced that it needs a bold political solution to its existential woes​--​either something that radically alters labor laws to allow unfettered forced unionization or a bailout that could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

In the hope of achieving the former under Obama, organized labor rallied around the Employee Free Choice Act, popularly known as Card Check. Despite its Orwellian formal title, this bill proposed to end the right of an employer to demand a secret ballot election of employees before the employer must recognize a union. Under Card Check, organizers could form a union by getting workers to sign cards declaring their support for unionization. This would allow unions to identify publicly workers opposed to unionization and use coercive tactics against them.

While unions hoped that Card Check would rapidly reverse the decline in their membership, the scheme was also meant to help fix their pension plans. Once companies were unionized, the power of collective bargaining could force them to join foundering multi-employer plans, shoring these up. Accordingly, the AFL-CIO declared Card Check legislation "the number one priority of America’s union movement."

With Democrats controlling Congress and a labor champion in the White House, unions seemed confident Card Check would pass. The legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress in March 2009, and Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis all made public statements in support of it.

Then .  .  . nothing. Card Check stalled as business interests such as the Chamber of Commerce became increasingly vocal in their opposition.

Big labor pursued other political solutions. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania introduced the Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010, which was criticized as a bailout of multi-employer pension plans. It was actually worse than that. The bill would have essentially created a new entitlement by requiring taxpayers to backstop union pension plans in perpetuity. Casey’s bill went nowhere​--and, adding insult to injury, Representative Earl Pomeroy, the North Dakota Democrat who’d sponsored the bill in the House, was defeated last November.

As it became clear last year that a Republican takeover of the House was inevitable, some feared that Democrats would make a truly radical move in the lame duck session of Congress to save their biggest campaign donor. Just weeks before the election, Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) exploring Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, or GRAs. These are a union-backed plan to create a national retirement system that would in effect force Americans to stop putting their retirement savings into private 401(k) accounts and to send their money to the government instead.

But the lame duck session came and went without any bold Democratic move to save the unions. Democrats were thumped in November, and Republicans took control of the House of Representatives with a 48-seat majority. In a radio interview on March 22, Senator Sherrod Brown, a pro-union Democrat from Ohio, confirmed what many suspected. Card Check was "not going to happen now," he said. If Card Check was dead, the American labor movement’s biggest reason for hope had been snuffed out.

It's a long article, but read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A comparison between tax year 2000 and tax year 2008.


Last week, President Obama denounced tax cuts for the wealthy and yearned for the "fiscal discipline during the 1990s." Were he right, you would expect the share of taxes paid by the rich to have declined since then. Has it?

We know that the top 1 percent earners pay a greater share of Federal income taxes than the bottom 95 percent. But did you realize that the proportion of Federal income tax paid by that top 1 percent actually was higher in the Bush years than under Clinton? It's true: using historical data from the Tax Foundation, I calculate that the top 1 percent paid 32.75 percent of Federal income tax from 1993 through 2000, as compared with 37.06 percent from 2001 through 2008. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the rich are paying more.

Yes there are other Federal taxes--though only the top quintile pays more to the Feds than its share of income. My point is that it wasn't the Bush tax cuts. It wasn't discrimination against the poor. It was spending -- especially entitlements -- approved by both Democrats and Republicans for decades.

This is related to Friday's post about corporate taxes. The quote is ancient -- it's from an April 16, 2008, Presidential debate broadcast on ABC -- but it's telling nonetheless:

[CHARLES] GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Got that? Obama would raise capital gains taxes, even though that reduces receipts, just to soak the rich.

Remember President Obama's Inaugural Address vow to "restore science to its rightful place"? Neither do I.

From the April 10th Telegraph (U.K.):

What happens when the great fantasies, like wind power or European Union, collide with reality?

There's a pattern in the unravelling of make-believe projects, whether it's wind power or the euro, says Christopher Booker.

It might seem strange to link global warming and the futility of wind farms with the ongoing collapse of the euro. But in several directions at the moment we can see the unfolding of one of the hidden patterns shaping human affairs, which years ago I called "the fantasy cycle". It is a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history -- and in storytelling.

When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the "dream stage". But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a "frustration stage" as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a "nightmare stage" as everything goes wrong, culminating in an "explosion into reality", when the fantasy finally falls apart.

After discussing the recent report excoriating the inefficiency of Scottish windmills, Booker continues:

Another, in its own way even greater fantasy has been the colossal project taking shape over the past 50 years to take away the power of the nations of Europe to govern themselves and to hand it over to a weirdly dysfunctional new system of government centred in Brussels. No single element in that project was more ambitious or seen as symbolically more crucial than the wish to integrate Europe’s economies around a single currency.

Back in the 1970s, when this was first talked of, Sir Donald McDougall, a senior Treasury official, was commissioned by Brussels to produce a report on "The Role of Public Finance in European Integration". He warned that economic and monetary union could only work if Europe was in effect given an economic government, with the power to dispose of between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of Europe’s GDP. This was because, as he foresaw, one of the core problems would be that if weaker countries were deprived of the power to set their own interest rates or to devalue, they would require a massive injection of resources from richer countries. Which, of course, is just what we now see being acted out in the desperate efforts to bail out Portugal, following in the wake of Greece and Ireland -- with Spain, bigger than all three put together, possibly to follow.

As McDougall and many after him warned, the single currency could only work on conditions which the builders of a united Europe blithely chose to ignore, in pursuit of their make-believe. As a result, its collision with reality is now coming about, threatening a disintegration of the eurozone that could tug much of the European dream after it.

Talk about tilting at windmills.

(via Maggie's Farm)

Paul Krugman in the January 8, 2011, New York Times:

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Paul Krugman in the April 16, 2011, New York Times:

Civility is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels

[T]he main point is, what are we supposed to have a civil discussion about? The truth is that the two parties have both utterly different goals and utterly different views about how the world works. . .

So what is there to talk about?

See also Washington Examiner editorial:

Mean streak: Obama is not as nice as he looks

(via Don Surber)

For years I've warned of the coming tipping point of the American economy:

What happens when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes?

WaPo economic columnist Robert Samuelson says we're there:

Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

What next? Nothing good, he concludes:

The concept of "vital national interest" is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. . .

[G]overnment can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.

Samuelson has a point. But -- especially after Standard and Poor warned about the U.S. debt outlook -- we need a solution short of the China-like "one-party autocracy," New York Times columnist Tom Friedman preferred a year and a half ago--that merely was an attempt to steamroll those on the right who dispute Friedman and other liberals. That starts with actual, not imaginary, budget numbers, and dumping fantasy. But, in our democracy, we need more than just a technocrat's Disney Land. President Obama clearly isn't delivering any solutions--and the Republicans, while better, still shun fixing Social Security. So, what to do?

Try embracing log-rolling. Accept cuts in both entitlements and defense--even though the former is the root of the problem with no end in sight. And start considering some tax increases, paired with privatization--of Social Security as a minimum, health insurance too. Put everything on the table.

And then, my suggestion: overcoming the projected deficit over a decade requires over $7 trillion. Calculate the cumulative savings necessary to balance outlays and revenues by then, and the annual contribution required. Then take that number, cut it in two, and let the Senate (controlled by Democrats) and the House (controlled by Republicans) choose the combination of reduced spending and raised taxes appropriate to cover each half. Marry the two and shut up.

People say politics makes deficit reduction difficult. But in our constitutional democracy, preventing politics is flatly impossible. Harness it instead.

From the Abu Muqawama blog at the Center for New American Security:

Here's the way this read in today's Washington Post:

"The Americans have the numbers of planes, and the Americans have the right equipment," said Francois Heisbourg, a military specialist at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

Here's the way this should have read in today's Washington Post:

"The Americans have the numbers of planes [because the European states neglected to buy them], and the Americans have the right equipment [because the Americans actually designed and then manufactured the right equipment]," said Francois Heisbourg, a military specialist at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

The NATO coalition over Libya appears to be paying the price for the way in which the United States has subsidized European defense budgets since the end of the Second World War and especially since the end of the Cold War. The problem with being a free rider is that if you ever decide to you need to drive someplace yourself, you realize quickly that you no longer have the means to do so. Hopefully this intervention in Libya will convince European leaders to either stop talking so tough regarding military interventions or to re-invest in truly independent military capabilities.

P.S. The United States should be happy to continue to subsidize European defense spending, of course, as long as the European states in turn subsidize U.S. health care and education.

P.P.S. That A-10 that proved so useful? It was developed in the early 1970s, Europe. So you've had almost four decades to buy a few of them for yourself.

Agreed--twice.

(via reader Warren)

First Switzerland, then Ecuador--now, Bolivia's about to become the third country to grant plants "human rights":

Bolivia is set to pass the world's first [sic] laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

"It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all", said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. "It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration."

Imagine legislating starvation. But wait, there's more. What's created in Bolivia might become compelled worldwide:

Bolivia is drawing up a draft UN treaty which would give Mother Earth the same rights as humans, including the right to life, to pure water and clean air.

The South American country wants the UN to recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to 'dominate and exploit'. . .

Bolivia's ambassador to the UN, Pablo Salon, says his country seeks to achieve harmony with nature, and hinted that mining and other companies would come under greater scrutiny.

Crazy or addled, right? Yes--but consistent with the radical environmental agenda says lawyer/blogger Wesley Smith:

I can think of fewer ways to subvert human exceptionalism and destroy human prosperity than to give "nature" co-equal "rights" with humans. And remember, possessing rights implies personhood. So as the story said, this is about personalizing nature and the earth.

It's all part of progressives' plan to return civilization to the stone age--which doomsayers imagine as paradise lost.

(via Planet Gore)

From the Daily Mail (U.K.):

Guard of dishonour: King of Norway's personal soldiers hid under beds when his distress alarm sounded

When the King of Norway's personal guards heard an emergency alarm earlier this week, rather than rushing to the aid of their ruler at the Royal Palace, they hid under their beds.

The distress alarm is sounded to warn the King's Guard that a member of the royal family is in danger.

But instead of running from their barracks to the nearby Royal Palace, some of the men hid under their beds and in the bathroom so they wouldn't have to report for duty.

(via reader Ken R.)

President Obama, in last week's deficit reduction speech:

[W]e will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services that seniors need.

Obama was referring to the new Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), established by the Obamacare law. Starting in 2015, the IPAB will develop specific detailed proposals to reduce Medicare spending, which must be implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services absent adoption of alternative laws with equal or deeper cuts. The IPAB famously was labeled a "death panel" by Sarah Palin.

The IPAB supposedly was central to Medicare cost cutting. So how much will IPAB reduce the growth of Medicare spending? Through 2019, the Congressional Budget Office first said $28 billion, then paired its estimate to under $15 billion.

Just last month, CBO again revised its estimates (page 2 note (d)):

CBO's projections of the rates of growth in spending per beneficiary in the March 2011 baseline are below the target rates of growth for fiscal years 2015 through 2021. As a result, CBO projects that, under current law, the IPAB mechanism will not affect Medicare spending during the 2011-2021 period.

That's right: IPAB saves nothing. Zero.

As National Review's Kevin Williamson observes, touting the IPAB in the face of the Administration's own numbers must mean Obama assumes "nobody’s reading the footnotes." Not even the President.

Busy week--posting will be even lighter next week.

Like yesterday, today's quote comes from President Obama's deficit reduction speech on Wednesday:

The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code, so-called tax expenditures.

Since when does raising taxes mean "reduc[ing] spending"? As Bryan Preston says on Pajamas Media:

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, cutting someone’s tax rate does not equal an increase in spending, in the tax code or anywhere else. It’s simply money the government doesn’t take in. Therefore, getting rid of their tax cut does not equal eliminating a 'spending reduction' in the tax code. Or anywhere else.

I’d like to commend President Obama for his backhanded honesty on this, though. He has finally admitted that he thinks the money that you work for belongs to the government before it belongs to you. He just had to utter the most Orwellian phrase ever spoken by an American president to get the admission out there.

Still, as PoliPundit quips, "at least he’s not calling them 'kinetic spending action.'"

(via Instapundit)

From Thursday's Telegraph (U.K.):

World's first carbon neutral bra

The world's first carbon neutral bra, made in a factory run on solar panels, has been launched onto the fashion market with hopes that all clothing will be more environmentally friendly in future.

The Marks and Spencer (M&S) lingerie set, that will be available online, was made in an 'eco factory' in Sri Lanka where energy has been reduced a third through measures like making sure all lighting is from the sun or low energy light bulbs.

It is powered by hydroelectricity produced on a nearby river and solar panels on the roof.

The rest of the carbon dioxide produced in making the bra will be offset by planting 6,000 trees in the community every year.

Odd how liberals shift the language: as Anthony Watts observes, isn't an Asian low-illumination factory "just code for 'sweatshop with no lights'"?

Mark Steyn on this week's deficit reduction speech by President Obama:

[The President] more or less declared to the world that this administration has no plan, and has no plan to plan on getting a plan anytime soon. But America is not Greece. There is no Germany to bail us out. Only we can do it. And the president just signaled to the world that that’s not going to happen. Here’s one example of his and his speechwriters’ hideous laziness:

If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them . . . South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science.

That last bit is true -- but it’s nothing to do with money. According to the most recent OECD figures (2007), the Koreans spent $5,437 per primary-school pupil; we spent $10,229. For education as a whole, the Koreans spent $7,325 per pupil; we spent $14,269. They not only "outpace our kids in math and science"; they do it by only spending half as much.

That’s the problem, and whichever hack speechwriter put those ridiculous words in the president’s mouth surely knew it. As did the president. We spend more than anyone but the Swiss on education, and by any rational measure at least half of it is entirely wasted: That model is why this country is dying, and the president just went on TV and bragged to the world he has no plans to change it.

Agreed--both as to educational spending and Obama's un-serious budgets.

(via reader Doug J.)

The New York Times report that General Electric paid no federal taxes last year -- for the second year in a row -- rekindled the debate about corporate tax rates. Never mind, for the moment, the fact that GE did pay federal taxes for 2010 -- it paid estimated taxes throughout 2010; it just won't owe much additional tax today. Never mind that much of the tax reductions stemmed from carry-forwards of huge losses incurred during the financial crisis. And never mind that what GE did apparently was lawful.

Fittingly for April 15th, the question is what's the real question about corporate taxes?

Conservatives say U.S. corporate tax rates are too high. They cite data showing that America has the second highest corporate tax rate among OECD nations:


source: NOfP chart based on 2010 OECD data

Conservatives also note the tax on new investment is particularly high--and thus a barrier to economic growth.

Liberals counter that tax rates are meaningless--exceptions and deductions in the tax codes means that few American corporations pay the top rates. Indeed, they say, correctly, that Federal revenues from corporate taxes are far less than from individual taxes--and are lower, as a percentage of GDP, than most other developed countries.

President Obama long has wanted to close supposed corporate tax loopholes--to raise revenues. Conservatives respond that the Treasury Department estimated that more than 60 percent of the corporate tax burden falls on employees via pressure on wages.

So who's right? Both sides. The tax code, including corporate taxes, is riddled with exemptions intended to encourage whatever behavior Congress favored that week. GE, for example, took full advantage of green energy credits that lefties typically like. So, though conservatives are correct that U.S. tax rates are nearly the highest in the world, few acknowledge that the honeycomb of exceptions make the tax code indefensible.

For their part, most liberals fail to recognize the fact that high tax rates encourage U.S. multinationals to move abroad--so raising corporate taxes might both reduce receipts and snowball job loses in America. Plus, the fact is that corporate tax "loopholes" are only a bit over half the size of the deduction for employer-sponsored healthcare that I'm desperate to delete. (At the same time, the U.S. is one of the few jurisdictions that taxes overseas income even when taxed abroad, one of those details that make the true tax situation difficult to judge.)

In sum, most of the back-and-forth about corporate taxes misses the point. Tax rates are too high; there are too many exceptions--though most corporate tax exemptions are not industry-specific.

The solution is neither rate hikes nor tax cuts. It's tax simplification. The system's too complicated. Try a flat tax -- or something close; keeping the home mortgage and charitable individual deductions, and accelerated depreciation for at least some corporate investment. And otherwise, quit using Title 26, U.S. Code, as an ever-expanding depot for the pet promises of politicians.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal picks up the story, and digs out the UN's old "climate refugee map," since deleted from its website.


A headline on the BBC last week screamed:

New warning on Arctic sea ice melt

Yet in 2005, the United Nations predicted that rising sea levels and shrinking freshwater would "create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade." As Gavin Atkins asks:

What happened to the climate refugees?

[A] very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world.

Why don't the media or the liberals remember yesterday's false predictions when sounding the alarm bells about tomorrow?

(via Global Warming Policy Foundation)

P.J. O'Rourke's Wall Street Journal review of the new film of Ayn Rand's famous novel:

Atlas shrugged. And so did I. . .

In "Atlas Shrugged-Part I" a drink is tossed, strong words are bandied, legal papers are served, more strong words are further bandied and, finally, near the end, an oil field is set on fire, although we don’t get to see this up close. There are many beautiful panoramas of the Rocky Mountains for no particular reason. And the movie’s title carries the explicit threat of a sequel.

But I will not pan "Atlas Shrugged." I don’t have the guts. If you associate with Randians--and I do--saying anything critical about Ayn Rand is almost as scary as saying anything critical to Ayn Rand. What’s more, given how protective Randians are of Rand, I’m not sure she’s dead.

The woman is a force. But, let us not forget, she’s a force for good. Millions of people have read "Atlas Shrugged" and been brought around to common sense, never mind that the author and her characters don’t exhibit much of it. Ayn Rand, perhaps better than anyone in the 20th century, understood that the individual self-seeking we call an evil actually stands in noble contrast to the real evil of self-seeking collectives. (A rather Randian sentence.) It’s easy to make fun of Rand for being a simplistic philosopher, bombastic writer and--I’m just saying--crazy old bat. But the 20th century was no joke. A hundred years, from Bolsheviks to Al Qaeda, were spent proving Ayn Rand right.

To be clear, I'm no fan of Rand's novels. But I believe in not what merely sounds good, but rather sticking with what works--and individual self-determination expressed through market capitalism works.

UPDATE: Mark Perry: "Almost 90% of health care costs are paid with 'other people's money.'"


From the Daily Telegraph (U.K.):

Cash-strapped health authorities are doubling the effective cost of medicines for some patients with long-term conditions.

They are urging GPs to reduce the number of pills on a given prescription, which now cost £7.40 a time in England. In some cases the number of pills per prescription has halved.

While health authorities say the guidance is to help reduce the NHS bill for wasted medicines -- estimated at up to £300 million a year -- there is suspicion that health authorities are increasingly resorting to the measure for financial reasons.

The Daily Mail (U.K.) calls it a "stealth tax on the sick." If so, good--the problem with the NHS is that it's free. As I've said, this sort of thing inevitable -- both in socialized medicine Britain and in the United States. So long as patients pay little of the costs of their healthcare, they will over-use the system (both doctor visits and prescriptions). Increasing the amounts individuals are responsible for their own healthcare -- and thus choose to pay or conserve -- is the best answer.

(via DrugWonks)

The question is prompted by a two month-old post called "Who Armed Egypt?" My answer then was: America. But, regarding Libya, there's no clear answer.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Arms Transfers Database, Libya imported next to no foreign arms recently (Ukraine sold $145 million worth in both 2001 and 2003, but the numbers since then -- from France and Italy -- are trivial). Yet, Russian-made SA-24 Grinch anti-aircraft missiles were spotted on the battlefield last month -- despite "no mention of it in official sources, such as the United Nations Arms Registry." Wired magazine's Adam Rawnsley speculates that the weapons flowed through Venezuela, which re-sold them to Gadhafi.

For his part, Venezuelan despot-for-life Hugo Chavez certainly has supported Gadhafi. He also condemned the coalition actions in Libya. But so did professional crank Andrew Sullivan. Wait a minute--perhaps a conspiracy?. . .

So, in sum, I don't know who armed Libya. Other than it wasn't the United States--a decade ago, President Bush persuaded them to abandon nukes and President Obama's now trying to disarm Gadhafi.

(via reader Warren)

The District of Columbia fire chief is worried that the acronym for his department -- "DCFD", which also appears on the uniforms of his personnel -- didn't sufficiently highlight the emergency services his group also provides:

Chief Kenneth Ellerbe wants more consistency and to make "EMS" more prominent. So he’s chosen to follow the example of other District agencies, not to mention Kentucky Fried Chicken, Blackwater Worldwide and other corporations: He’s decided to rebrand.

Ellerbe wants the department to begin using FEMS exclusively and to simplify the seal that appears on uniforms and equipment. In late March, he issued an order that would require firefighters to wear gear marked FEMS, not DCFD.

Unsurprisingly, most of the department balked:

D.C. Firefighters Say They Are Not FEMS

[B]ureaucrats have no clue about what it means to respond to fires and shootings and fumes that might kill you. Like Marines or Navy Seals or D.C. cops, firefighters put themselves in harms way; they are woven into a chain of command and a culture where what you wear matters. Its part of the esprit de corps. After the 9/11 attacks, could you see people wearing a NYFEMS hat?

The fact is that our firefighters have adapted to their new roles. They are trained to respond to calls for medical emergencies. They show up and perform well.

Everyone knows they are firemen. They should be able to wear DCFD, if they want. They have earned that right.

Only in the District: please, don't ever let us become a state.

(via The Weekly Standard)

Think there's a relationship?:


source: New York Times



source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

As even the New York Times reports:

[W]ith food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.

This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially "throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty," the World Bank said.

Soaring food prices have caused riots or contributed to political turmoil in a host of poor countries in recent months, including Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh, where palm oil, a common biofuel ingredient, provides crucial nutrition to a desperately poor populace. During the second half of 2010, the price of corn rose steeply -- 73 percent in the United States -- an increase that the United Nations World Food Program attributed in part to the greater use of American corn for bioethanol.

Told 'ya so.