The Fairytale of Ethanol

Over at Capitalism Magazine I came across one of Walter Williams' incisive articles from March 12 "Archer Daniels Midland, Big Corn and The Ethanol Hoax". Folks I think we've been hoodwinked by big business in cahoots with government. But then I knew that environmentalists (read Al Gore) and government forcing this ethanol fairytale on Americans instead of allowing the marketplace to work things out would slap us in the face one day. And sure enough now you can stop wondering why prices are so high at the grocery store.

When you take good crop land that once was growing tomatoes, potatoes, cotton, vegetables and fruit and grow corn on it because of government induced incentives to do so, it doesn't take a degree in economices to figure out that the cost of our food would be rising. So now it's not just gasoline prices that are high because the government and environmentalists won't let us drill for new oil, but the very basic necessities of life are gobbling up more and more of our money.

"Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent."

"Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone...

"Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

"It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot...(Read the complete article here)

Using Your Grandma for Political Gain

As soon as I heard Obama's line that his white grandmother was afraid when she crossed a black man on the streets, I instinctively thought - this just did not ring true. At the time this alleged incident occurred he was living with his white grandmother and his white mother in Hawaii. Hawaii? The state with the most ethnically diverse people? Something's not right in the state of Obama's thoughts.

Thomas Sowell has called Obama's Philadelphia speech "a theatrical masterpiece" and it is surely that. The man is a word smith and a crafter of sentences. But should he be the Presidential nominee for the Democratic party? That's a very important question for the Democrats.

"...Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe. Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech -- a theatrical masterpiece -- will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now "move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory. Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful."

"Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks -- especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons. Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago -- even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white -- in Chicago. Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why. But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together..." (READ)

Getting High on Government Bailouts - An Addiction

Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute has a clear, tough hitting article on the WHY of what is happening today to our financial institutions. The question I want an answer to is why our government has not learned it's lesson regarding meddling in the market place?

The main idea? Government meddling in our markets is always bad .

The diseases? 1. An addiction-to taxpayer money worse than crack cocaine
2. government manipulation of interest rates and money supply

The result? Inflation-the devourer of wealth.

Lesson? "Taxpayer bailouts breed market disasters".

Cure? Allow the market the freedom to correct itself by learning the hard lessons of bad decisions - in this case low interest loans to bad-credit borrowers.

"For decades our government has had a semi-official policy that large financial institutions are too big to fail — and therefore must be bailed out when they risk insolvency — a policy that creates perverse incentives for them to take on far more risk than they otherwise would. “Too big to fail” is implemented through a network of government bodies that protect financial institutions from the long-term consequences of their decisions at taxpayer expense — a phenomenon we can observe right now. Consider Bear Stearns! ...

"Consider Countrywide, a major subprime money loser just acquired by Bank of America. Private lenders have not been willing to grant Countrywide the tens of billions of dollars it sought to keep afloat, given the company’s huge and difficult-to-measure subprime exposure. In a free market, bankruptcy would loom — but in our system, Countrywide and others can turn to the government-backed Federal Home Loan Banks for cash; these banks have lent Countrywide over $70 billion so far. According to The Wall Street Journal, these banks specialize in “providing funding where other creditors won’t go” — which they can do because of “a widespread belief the government would bail them out [with taxpayer money] in a crisis.” ...

"Still another item on the bailout menu is provided by the Federal Reserve. Today and throughout history, when major financial institutions are losing money, the Fed uses its power to manipulate interest rates and the money supply so that banks can borrow cheaply — giving them easy money with which to paper over their old mistakes. Again, it is other taxpayers who pay — in this case, through inflation. Inflation depletes Americans’ hard-earned savings; the trend of skyrocketing housing and commodity prices we have witnessed during the last five years is just the latest and most obvious harm done by our government’s inflationary actions. ...

"The combined effect of these and other bailout policies is to make risk-taking less risky for large financial institutions — because true failure is not an option. ... (Read)

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on business issues.

North-West Passage was Open in the 1940's - Oops The Global Warming Crowd Forgot to Tell us That

Roy Spencer has an interesting article regarding the fact that ...

"Contrary to what you have been led to believe, there is no solid published evidence that has ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth – not one peer-reviewed paper. The reason: our measurements of global weather on decadal time scales are insufficient to reject such a possibility. For instance, the last 30 years of the strongest warming could have been caused by a very slight change in cloudiness. What might have caused such a change? Well, one possibility is the sudden shift to more frequent El Niño events (and fewer La Niña events) since the 1970s."

"That shift also coincided with a change in another climate index, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The associated warming in Alaska was sudden, and at the same time we just happened to start satellite monitoring of Arctic sea ice. Coincidences do happen, you know…that’s why we have a word for them.

"We make a big deal out of the “unprecedented” 2007 opening of the Northwest Passage as summertime sea ice in the Arctic Ocean gradually receded, yet the very warm 1930s in the Arctic also led to the Passage opening in the 1940s. Of course, we had no satellites to measure the sea ice back then." Read here and here.

Obama Can't Hide What He Truly is Regardless of a well written Speech

Wright showed the world what he is - a racist and worse a person unwilling to give up America's racist past. He never acknowledged that in earlier times half the world was enslaved to the other half and this included blacks enslaving whites and other blacks! If black America wants to focus on slavery it should not be American slavery, we're past that. They should focus on black on black slavery in Africa and Asian slavery.

The fact that Mr. Obama stayed in Wright's church and considers him his mentor and spiritual leader says a lot about Obama - and it ain't positive. It says that he harbors grudges and thoughts that a President of the United States should not have.

McCain's Gotta Get a Philosophy

Peggy Noonan while always an interesting writer can be a bit verbose. But she poses a very important question...Just what does McCain stand for? And she appropriately asks what is his underlying philosophy that guides his actions. Does he have a philosophy?

...You know what he has in his favor. He's gentleman Johnny McCain, hero, maverick. He has more knowledge on national defense in his pinky than the others will have, after four years in the White House, in their entire bodies. He's the one who should be answering the phone at 3 a.m. ...

...He has positions, but a series of separate, discrete and seemingly unconnected stands do not coherence make. Mr. McCain, in public, does not dig down to the meaning of things, to why he stands where he stands, to what understanding of life drives his political decisions. But voters hunger for coherence, for a philosophical thread that holds all the positions together. (Read)

A MAVERICK is defined as an independent individual who does not go along with the group or party. The etymology of this word is super interesting: Samuel A. Maverick (died 1870) was an American pioneer who did not brand his calves. Well, does McCain have a brand unifying all his actions, just as a rancher has a brand unifying and identifying his property. We'll have to see if he can make a coherent umbrella of thought under which we can predict his actions. I am still hoping to see the leader on the conservative side who stands up for Capitalism, freedom and individual rights on a moral and consistent basis: freedom of speech, freedom from onerous taxation, freedom from government mandates and regulations.

Americans hunger for a man of principle - consistent principles- not the fly by the seat of your pants kind of "principles". Ayn Rand explained the crucial role that principles play in the life of a man or of a nation when she wrote:

"A principle is 'a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.' Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one's long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

"The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

"To make it more grotesque, that haggling is accompanied by an aura of hysterical self-righteousness, in the form of belligerent assertions that one must compromise with anybody on anything (except on the tenet that one must compromise) and by panicky appeals to "practicality". "

Ms Rand wrote this in 1966 in her essay The Anatomy of Compromise in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Not much has changed has it...

The Case for Terrestrial (a.k.a. Nuclear) Energy

by William Tucker (published in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College)

There have been a host of debates this year between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. Many of these candidates believe that among our top priorities is to address global warming by reducing carbon emissions. All or most seem to agree that decreasing America’s energy dependence is another. Yet few if any of the candidates have mentioned that nuclear energy—or, as I prefer, terrestrial energy—could serve both these ends.

Right now there are 103 operating nuclear reactors in America, but most are owned by utilities (which also own coal plants). The few spin-offs that concentrate mainly on nuclear—Entergy, of Jackson, Mississippi, and Exelon, of Chicago—are relatively small players. As for a nuclear infrastructure, it hardly exists. There is only one steel company in the world today that can cast the reactor vessels (the 42-foot, egg-shaped containers at the core of a reactor): Japan Steel Works. As countries around the world begin to build new reactors, the company is now back-ordered for four years. Unless some enterprising American steel company takes an interest, any new reactor built in America will be cast in Japan.

This is an extraordinary fate for what was once regarded as an American technology. France, China, Russia, Finland, and Japan all perceive the enormous opportunity that nuclear energy promises for reducing carbon emissions and relieving the world’s energy problems as reflected in recent soaring oil prices. Yet in America, we remain trapped in a Three Mile Island mentality, without even a public discussion of the issue. As folk singer Ani Di-Franco puts it, the structure of the atom is so perfect that it is “blasphemy / To use it to make bombs / Or electricity.”
It is time to step back and question whether this prejudice makes sense.

Fossil Fuels
All living things exist by drawing energy from their environment and discarding part of it as “waste,” so there is nothing inherently shameful about energy consumption. Almost all our energy derives ultimately from the sun. Plants store solar energy by transforming it into large carbon-chain molecules (the process we call photosynthesis). The entire animal kingdom draws its energy from this process by “eating” this stored solar energy. About 750,000 years ago, early humans discovered that they could also draw solar energy from a chain reaction we call “fire.” When heated, the stored energy in carbon chains is released. This heat energy can break down other carbon chains, which causes combustion. Fire has been the principle source of energy throughout most of human history. When historian William Manchester wrote a book about the Middle Ages called A World Lit Only By Fire, he was describing the world of only 700 years ago.
All this began to change about 400 years ago when human beings discovered an older source of stored solar energy—coal. Our most common fossil fuel, coal is the compressed remains of vegetable matter that covered the earth 300-400 million years ago. Coal is superabundant and we will probably never run out of it. It was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, and it is still the world’s largest source of energy. It is also the most environmentally destructive substance ever utilized. The EPA estimates that it kills 30,000 Americans each year through lung diseases (and in China it is doing far worse). It is also the world’s principal source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oil, another fossil fuel, is rarer and is believed to be the remains of organisms that lived in shallow seas during the age of the dinosaurs. It was first drilled in 1859, but was used only for lighting and lubrication until the invention of the automobile. Now it constitutes 40 percent of our energy consumption and is perhaps the most difficult fuel to replace. American oil production peaked in 1970 and is now declining rapidly—a fact that explains much of our subsequent foreign policy. The Arab oil embargo occurred three years following the peak, when the producing states realized we were vulnerable. The question now is whether world production will reach a similar peak and decline. As Matthew Simmons has written: “We won’t know until we see it in the rearview mirror.” If it does come, it may not look much different from the quadrupling of oil prices we have witnessed in the last three years.

Natural gas is generally considered the most environmentally benign of the fossil fuels. It gives off little pollution and only about half the greenhouse gas of coal. Natural gas was put under federal regulation in the 1950s, so that by the 1970s we were experiencing a supply shortage. Deregulation in the ,80s led to almost unlimited supplies in the ,90s. Then we began the fateful practice of using gas to produce electricity, resulting in a price crunch and the loss of many gas-dependent industries, such as fertilizer and plastics factories, which have since moved to Mexico and Saudi Arabia to be near supplies. Now American gas production seems to have peaked and we are importing 15 percent of our consumption from Canada. Huge gas supplies have been discovered in Russia and the Middle East, but will not do us much good since gas cannot be easily transported over water. Thus China, India and Europe will be able to buy pipeline gas much more cheaply and are already out-competing us on the world market.

Alternative Fuels
Given the precarious state of these fossil fuels, people have begun talking of “alternative” and “renewable” fuels—water, sun and wind. The term “renewable” is somewhat misleading: no energy is “renewable” insofar as energy cannot be recycled (this is the Second Law of Thermodynamics). The term “renewable” usually describes tapping flows of solar energy that are supposedly “free.” But coal and oil in the ground are also free. It just takes work—and energy—to recover them. So, too, solar “renewables” can only be gathered at a cost. They are often limited and may require extravagant use of other resources—mainly land.
What about water? Hydroelectricity is a form of solar energy. The sun evaporates water, which falls as rain and then flows back to the sea, creating kinetic energy. Rivers have been tapped since Roman times and, beginning in the 19th century, dams were built to store this solar energy. Hydroelectric dams provided 30 percent of our electricity in the 1930s, but the figure has declined to ten percent. And all the good dam sites are now taken.

What about wind? Wind energy has captured the imagination of the public and is touted by many as the fastest growing energy source in the world. All of this is driven by government mandates—tax credits and “renewable portfolio” laws that require utilities to buy non-fossil sources of power. The problem with wind is that it is completely unpredictable. Our electrical grid is one giant machine interconnected across the country, in which voltage balances must be carefully maintained in order to avoid damaging electrical equipment or losing data on computer circuits. Wind irregularities can be masked up to around 20 percent, but after that they become too disruptive. At best, therefore, wind will only be able to provide the 20 percent “spinning reserve” carried by all utilities. In addition, windmills are large and require lots of land. The biggest now stand 65 stories tall—roughly the height of New York’s Trump Tower—and produce only six megawatts, or about 1/200th the output of a conventional power plant. In the East, most are sited on mountaintops, since that is where the wind blows strongest.

What about the sun? Solar energy is very diffuse. A square-meter card table receives enough sunlight to run only four 100-watt electric bulbs. At best, solar could provide our indoor lighting, which consumes about ten percent of our electricity. But keep in mind: gathering and storing solar energy requires vast land areas.

Sunshine can be harnessed directly in two ways—as thermal heat or through photovoltaics, the direct production of electricity. In the 1980s, California built a Power Tower that focused hundreds of mirrors on a single point to boil water to drive a turbine. The facility covered one-fifth of a square mile and produced ten megawatts. It was eventually closed down as uneconomical. Last year, when Spain opened an identical Power Tower in Seville, U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story hailing it as a “Power Revolution.” That facility, of course, is completely subsidized by the government.

Photovoltaic cells have more promise. They are thin wafers where solar radiation knocks the electrons off silicon atoms, producing an electric current. At present, an installation about half the size of a football field could power one suburban home—when the sun shines, of course. The problem is that photovoltaics are enormously expensive; using them to provide one-quarter of an average home’s electricity requires investing around $35,000. Their greatest benefit is that they are able to provide electricity precisely when it is most needed—on hot summer afternoons when air conditioning produces peak loads.

Nuclear or Terrestrial Energy
There is one other form of alternative energy often mistakenly grouped with solar: geothermal energy. Geothermal is produced when the natural heat of the earth comes in contact with groundwater. This can produce geysers and “fumaroles”—steam leaks that are now being harnessed to produce electricity.

Where does this heat come from? Temperatures at the earth’s core reach 7,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the sun. Some of this heat comes from gravitational pressures and the leftover heat from the collisions of astral particles that led to the formation of the earth. But at least half of it (we don’t know the precise percentage) comes from the radioactive breakdown of thorium and uranium within the earth’s mantle. This is “terrestrial energy,” and a nuclear reactor is simply the same process carried out in a controlled environment. In order to harness terrestrial energy in the form of uranium isotopes, we mine it, bring it to the surface, concentrate it, and initiate a chain reaction that releases stored energy in the form of heat—the very same process as that used to harness solar energy from coal.

When Albert Einstein signed the letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the discovery of nuclear energy, he turned to some fellow scientists and said: “For the first time mankind will be using energy not derived from the sun.” This possibility emerged in 1905, when Einstein posited that energy and matter are different forms of the same thing and that energy could be converted to matter and matter to energy (as reflected in the famous equation E = mc2). The co-efficient, c2, is the speed of light squared, which is a very, very large number. What it signifies is that a very, very small amount of matter can be converted into a very, very large amount of energy. This is good news in terms of our energy needs and the environment. It means that the amount of fuel required to produce an equivalent amount of energy is now approximately two million times smaller.

Consider: At an average 1,000 megawatt coal plant, a train with 110 railroad cars, each loaded with 20 tons of coal, arrives every five days. Each carload will provide 20 minutes of electricity. When burned, one ton of coal will throw three tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We now burn 1 billion tons of coal a year—up from 500 million tons in 1976. This coal produces 40 percent of our greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

By contrast, consider a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor. Every two years a fleet of flatbed trucks pulls up to the reactor to deliver a load of fuel rods. These rods are only mildly radio-active and can be handled with gloves. They will be loaded into the reactor, where they will remain for six years (only one-third of the rods are replaced at each refueling). The replaced rods will be removed and transferred to a storage pool inside the containment structure, where they can remain indefinitely (three feet of water blocks the radiation). There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps. There is no release into the environment. The fuel rods come out looking exactly as they did going in, except that they are now more highly radioactive. There is no air pollution, no water pollution, and no ground pollution.

Objections to Nuclear Energy
What are the potential problems with nuclear power?
First, some fear that a nuclear reactor might explode. But this is impossible. Natural uranium is made of two isotopes—U-235 and U-238 (the latter having three more neutrons). Both are radioactive—meaning they are constantly breaking down into slightly smaller atoms—but only U-235 is fissile, meaning it will split almost in half with a much larger release of energy. Because U-235 is more highly radioactive, it has almost all broken down already, so that it now makes up only seven-tenths of a percent of the world’s natural uranium. In order to set off a chain reaction, natural uranium must be “enriched” so that U-235 makes up a larger percentage.

Reactor grade uranium—which will simmer enough to produce a little heat—is three percent U-235. In order to get to bomb grade uranium—the kind that will explode—uranium must be enriched to 90 percent U-235. Given this fact, there is simply no way that a reactor can explode.
On the other hand, a reactor can “melt down.” This is what happened at Three Mile Island. A valve stuck open and a series of mistakes led the operators to think the core was overflowing when it was actually short of cooling water. They further drained the core and about a third of the core melted from the excess heat. But did this result in a nuclear catastrophe? Hardly. The public was disconcerted because no one was sure what was happening. But in the end the melted fuel stayed within the reactor vessel. Critics had predicted a “China syndrome” where the molten core would melt through the steel vessel, then through the concrete containment structure, then down into the earth where it would hit groundwater, causing a steam explosion that would spray radioactive material across a huge area. In fact, the only radioactive debris was a puff of steam that emitted the same radiation as a single chest x-ray. Three Mile Island was an industrial accident. It bankrupted the utility, but no one was injured.

This of course was not the case in Chernobyl, where the Soviet designers didn’t even bother building a concrete containment structure around the reactor vessel. Then in 1986, two teams of operators became involved in a tussle over use of the reactor and ended up overheating the core, which set fire to the carbon moderator that facilitates the chain reaction. (American reactors don’t use carbon moderators.) The result was a four-day fire that spewed radioactive debris around the world. More fallout fell on Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from Chernobyl than from Three Mile Island. With proper construction such a thing could never happen.

Another objection to nuclear power is the supposed waste it produces. But this is a mischaracterization. A spent fuel rod is 95 percent U-238. This is the same material we can find in a shovel full of dirt from our back yards. Of the remaining five percent, most is useful, but small amounts should probably be placed in a repository such as Yucca Mountain. The useful parts—uranium-235 and plutonium (a manmade element produced from U-238)—can be recycled as fuel. In fact, we are currently recycling plutonium from Russian nuclear missiles. Of the 20 percent of our power that comes from nuclear sources, half is produced from recycled Russian bombs. Many of the remaining isotopes are useful in industry or radiological medicine—now used in 40 percent of all medical procedures. It is only cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have half-lives of 28 and 30 years, respectively, that need to be stored in protective areas.
Unfortunately, federal regulations require all radioactive byproducts of nuclear power plants to be disposed of in a nuclear waste repository. As a result, more than 98 percent of what will go into Yucca Mountain is either natural uranium or useful material. Why are we wasting so much effort on such a needless task? Because in 1977, President Carter decided to outlaw nuclear recycling. The fear then was that other countries would steal our plutonium to make nuclear bombs. (India had just purloined plutonium from a Canadian-built reactor to make its bomb.)

This has turned out to be a false alarm. Countries that have built bombs have either drawn plutonium from their own reactors or—as Iran is trying to do now—enriched their own uranium. Canada, Britain, France and Russia are all recycling their nuclear fuel. France has produced 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power for the last 25 years. It stores all its high-level “nuclear waste” in a single room at Le Havre.

Conclusion
The U.S. currently gets 50 percent of its electricity from coal and 20 percent from nuclear reactors. Reversing these percentages should become a goal of both global warming advocates and anyone who wants to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil (the latter since a clean, expanded electrical grid could anchor a fleet of hydrogen or electric cars). Contrary to what some critics charge, this would not require massive subsidies or direct intervention by the government. Indeed, the nuclear industry has gone through an astounding revival over the past decade. The entire fleet of 103 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time. Reactors are making money hand-over-fist—so much so that the attorney general of Connecticut recently proposed a windfall profits tax on them! The industry is poised for new construction, with proposals for four new reactors submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and almost 30 waiting in the wings.

The rest of the world is rapidly moving toward nuclear power. France, Russia and Japan are not only going ahead with their own nuclear programs, but selling their technology in the developing world. America, which once dominated this technology, is being left behind. The main culprit is public fear. Nuclear technology is regarded as an illegitimate child of the atomic bomb, a Faustian bargain, a blasphemous tinkering with nature. It is none of these. It is simply a natural outgrowth of our evolving understanding of the universe. The sun has been our prime source of energy throughout human history, but energy is also generated in the earth itself. It is time to avail ourselves of this clean, safe terrestrial energy.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Watch What You Ask For - You might Just Get It: Universal Health Care

It seems to me that too many Americans think that Universal Health Care would be a good thing: but is it? What with the Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton calling for Universal health care let's be sure that we understand what it is they are calling for. An excellent article "Moral Health Care vs Universal Healthcare", by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh at The Objective Standard is a great place to start.

"Government-run health care systems do not and cannot work, because they improperly treat health care as a “right.” Health care, like food and clothing, is a need, but not a right. It is a commodity that is created by the intelligent thought, creativity, and hard work of producers, such as doctors, nurses, allied medical professionals, and hospital administrators. When the government treats health care as a right, it necessarily violates the genuine rights of the providers who produce those goods and should be free to offer them for exchange on whatever terms they see fit, not forced to serve people against their own judgment. And it necessarily violates the rights of consumers, who should be free to trade with providers by mutual consent to mutual benefit. As we have seen repeatedly, good doctors cannot and will not continue working under a system that enslaves them.

"A final (and often unacknowledged) consequence of government interference in medicine is that it leads to violations of individual rights in other areas of life, such as violations of the right to free speech and mandates regarding what people may and may not eat. When the government pays our health care bills, in order to save money, it inevitably demands greater control in how we lead our daily lives. Some of the “universal health care” proposals in Colorado, for instance, include “sin taxes” on foods and products deemed unhealthy. And in Great Britain, the government Advertising Standards Authority recently banned television reruns of some 1950s-era commercials featuring the slogan “Go to work on an egg” on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. Eggs are, of course, legal in Great Britain, but, says the government: “Eating eggs every day goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet. We therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast.”...

"The solution to America’s health care problems is not more government intervention. Government violations of individual rights through government interference in the marketplace are the source of the problems. Government meddling in health insurance has all but eliminated choice, competition, and innovation, and has driven up the cost of health insurance. Government interference in medicine has caused incalculable harm to both patients and doctors, and driven up the cost of health care. Government controls have bred more controls, as politicians and bureaucrats have tried to “solve” the problems created by one set of regulations by imposing another set, and so forth, in a vicious spiral of increased costs, rationing, suffering, and death. Just as a doctor would not attempt to treat a burn victim by exposing him to more heat, so we should not attempt to solve our health care problems through more government intervention.

"The only moral and practical solution to this now-behemoth problem is to acknowledge that government intervention in health care and in health insurance is wrong, and to start in earnest to eliminate all such interference. This is the moral approach to solving the problem because it recognizes that the producers of health care goods and services have an inalienable right to dispose of the fruits of their thought and labor as they see fit, seeking their best interests through free trade in the marketplace. And it is the practical approach to solving the problem because it will lead to high-quality medical care at the prices that make such care possible—the prices on which providers and patients voluntarily agree." (Read the whole article here.)

What's good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

We should hold all people of the world to the same standards the West holds its citizens. We should rush to judge the words coming out of the mouth of any leader no matter from where he spouts them: Free or unfree nations.

The pseudonymous Ibn Warraq writing in City Journal: (Wall Street Journal)

The great ideas of the West -- rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy -- are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.
In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. . . .

[O]ther parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom. Nor would any Western politician be able to get away with the anti-Semitic remarks that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad made in 2003. Our excusing Mahathir's diatribe indicates not only a double standard but also a tacit acknowledgment that we apply higher ethical standards to Western leaders.

Hey McCain! The Business of America is BUSINESS....and PROFITS

I watched the McCain/Romney debates last night and I know who I'm voting for: Mitt Romney. McCain attacked Mitt Romney for being a businessman, sneeringly implying that Romney's business success came from laying off workers. Apparently, McCain is superior and claims that his leadership was "for patriotism, not for profit." With a Republican like that who needs Democrats? We can just place McCain on the left and Romney on the right and hold elections.

Notice to Clinton and Obama: America does not need your candidacy!!!
Here are some of McCain's anti-conservative issues:

1.McCain-Feingold - an attack on freedom of speech.

2.Amnesty for illegal aliens - an attack on the rule of law.

3.His embrace of no-growth environmentalism and the global warming scam - an attack on our wealth and prosperity and our childrens future.

4.His opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - an attack on our independence from foreign oil sheiks.

5.His opposition to President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts - an attack on our right to our property.

There's only one thing we conservatives can do and that is to VOTE FOR ROMNEY because McCain is no conservative - he's in the wrong party.

The Altruist-Capitalist Soul of Bill Gates

It was simply amazing to read "The Wall Street Jr" article on Bill Gates' thoughts on Capitalism:

"In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the
software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market
forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored. "

" 'We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,' Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal."

This is awful coming from such an intelligent man. It goes to show that no matter how smart you are in one area you can be pretty dum in another. He apparently does not know the basic requirements for a system such as capitalism to be able to give fruit. Without freedom, both political and economic, capitalism will not work. The reason why capitalism has worked so far (although it is far from what it could be in the US) is that America was founded by such exceptional men who actually believed in limited government and freedom from coercive government.

Now how does he expect Capitalism to work in third world countries where dictators reign and savagery is the name of the game?

"Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambitioun will carry him. ...When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgement that win in thevery field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living - and of thought - ever higher for all those who take part in mankind's productive activity." (For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand).

The fact that there are very poor countries in the world is no fault of Capitalism. The fact that Capitalism cannot get a toehold in some of these countries is because of the political system they possess mainly brutal dictatorships. Because Capitalism depends on free people who choose to think and act and to live by the best in them is it any wonder that this type of system cannot be found in many places on this earth. In fact, we don't even have pure capitalism right here in the United States. What we have is a mixed economy: statism with a bit of Capitalism i.e. freedom.

So Mr. Gates, please do some reading about the history of capitalism and what it is and what it is not. You can throw as much money as you want in some third world country but if the minds are not there that recognize the awesome power to be unleased by leaving people alone to be creative then what do you expect?

Our Statist, Collectivist, Anti-individualist Neighbors to the North

Is Canada’s Economy a Model for America?
by Mark Steyn (The following is abridged from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on September 29, 2007, at the second annual Free Market Forum, sponsored by the College’s Center for the Study of Monetary Systems and Free Enterprise. (Imprimis)

...Unlike America, Canada is a resource economy: The U.S. imports resources, whereas Canada exports them. It has the second largest oil reserves in the world. People don’t think of Canada like that. The Premier of Alberta has never been photographed in Crawford, Texas, holding hands with the President and strolling through the rose bower as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was. But Canada is nonetheless an oil economy—a resource economy. Traditionally, in America, when the price of oil goes up, Wall Street goes down. But in Canada, when the price of oil goes up, the Toronto stock exchange goes up, too. So we are relatively compatible neighbors whose interests diverge on one of the key global indicators.

As we know from 9/11, the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia use their oil wealth to spread their destructive ideology to every corner of the world. And so do the Canadians. Consider that in the last 40 years, fundamental American ideas have made no headway whatsoever in Canada, whereas fundamental Canadian ideas have made huge advances in America and the rest of the Western world. To take two big examples, multiculturalism and socialized health care—both pioneered in Canada—have made huge strides down here in the U.S., whereas American concepts—such as non-confiscatory taxation—remain as foreign as ever.

My colleague at National Review, John O’Sullivan, once observed that post-war Canadian history is summed up by the old Monty Python song that goes, “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK.” If you recall that song, it begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods. But it ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into a kind of transvestite pickup who likes to wear high heels and dress in women’s clothing while hanging around in bars. Of course, John O’Sullivan isn’t saying that Canadian men are literally cross-dressers—certainly no more than 35-40 percent of us — but rather that a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. If you go back to 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world’s third largest surface fleet, the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the world’s most effective air forces, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes all the secondary impulses of society—welfare entitlements from cradle to grave—over all the primary ones. And in that, Canada is obviously not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the lumberjack song could stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.

Today, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much every party in the rest of the Western world are nearly exclusively about those secondary impulses—government health care, government day care, government this, government that. And if you have government health care, you not only annex a huge chunk of the economy, you also destroy a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher, and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans don’t always appreciate how far gone down this path the rest of the developed world is. In Canadian and Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is now a place where an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like running the health department. And if you listen to recent Democratic presidential debates, it is clear that American attitudes toward economic liberty are being Canadianized.

To some extent, these differences between the two countries were present at their creations. America’s Founders wrote of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The equivalent phrase at Canada’s founding was “peace, order and good government” —which words are not only drier and desiccated and stir the blood less, but they also presume a degree of statist torpor. Ronald Reagan famously said, “We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” In Canada it too often seems the other way around.

All that being said, if you remove health care from the equation, the differences between our two economies become relatively marginal. The Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World 2007 Annual Report” ranks the U.S. and Canada together, tied in fifth place along with Britain. And here’s an interesting point: The top ten most free economies in this report are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, and Australia. With the exception of Switzerland and Estonia, these systems are all British-derived. They’re what Jacques Chirac dismissively calls les anglo-saxon. And he and many other Continentals make it very clear that they regard free market capitalism as some sort of kinky Anglo-Saxon fetish. On the other hand, Andrew Roberts, the author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900, points out that the two most corrupt jurisdictions in North America are Louisiana and Quebec—both French-derived. Quebec has a civil service that employs the same number of people as California’s, even though California has a population nearly five times the size.

In the province of Quebec, it’s taken more or less for granted by all political parties that collective rights outweigh individual rights. For example, if you own a store in Montreal, the French language signs inside the store are required by law to be at least twice the size of the English signs. And the government has a fairly large bureaucratic agency whose job it is to go around measuring signs and prosecuting offenders. There was even a famous case a few years ago of a pet store owner who was targeted by the Office De La Langue Française for selling English-speaking parrots. The language commissar had gone into the store and heard a bird saying, “Who’s a pretty boy, then?” and decided to take action. I keep trying to find out what happened to the parrot. Presumably it was sent to a re-education camp and emerged years later with a glassy stare saying in a monotone voice, “Qui est un joli garcon, hein?”

The point to remember about this is that it is consonant with the broader Canadian disposition. A couple of years ago it emerged that a few Quebec hospitals in the eastern townships along the Vermont border were, as a courtesy to their English-speaking patients, putting up handwritten pieces of paper in the corridor saying “Emergency Room This Way” or “Obstetrics Department Second on the Left.” But in Quebec, you’re only permitted to offer health care services in English if the English population in your town reaches a certain percentage. So these signs were deemed illegal and had to be taken down. I got a lot of mail from Canadians who were upset about this, and I responded that if you accept that the government has a right to make itself the monopoly provider of health care, it surely has the right to decide the language in which it’s prepared to provide that care. So my point isn’t just about Quebec separatism. It’s about a fundamentally different way of looking at the role of the state.

The Two Economies

So, granted the caveat that the economically freest countries in the world are the English-speaking democracies, within that family there are some interesting differences, and I would say between America and Canada there are five main ones.

First, the Canadian economy is more unionized. According to the Fraser Institute report, since the beginning of this century, the unionized proportion of the U.S. work force has averaged 13.9 percent. In Canada it has averaged 32 percent. That is a huge difference. The least unionized state in America is North Carolina, at 3.9 percent, whereas the least unionized province in Canada is Alberta, with 24.2 percent—a higher percentage than any American state except Hawaii, Alaska, and New York. In Quebec, it’s 40.4 percent. If you regard unionization as a major obstacle to productivity, investment, and employment growth, this is a critical difference.
I drive a lot between Quebec and New Hampshire, and you don’t really need a border post to tell you when you’ve crossed from one country into another. On one side the hourly update on the radio news lets you know that Canada’s postal workers are thinking about their traditional pre-Christmas strike—the Canadians have gotten used to getting their Christmas cards around Good Friday, and it’s part of the holiday tradition now—or that employees of the government liquor store are on strike, nurses are on strike, police are on strike, etc. Whereas you could listen for years to a New Hampshire radio station and never hear the word “strike” except for baseball play-by-play.

In a news item from last year, an Ottawa panhandler said that he may have to abandon his prime panhandling real estate on a downtown street corner because he is being shaken down by officials from the panhandlers union. Think about that. There’s a panhandlers union which exists to protect workers’ rights or—in this case—non-workers’ rights. If the union-negotiated non-work contracts aren’t honored, the unionized panhandlers will presumably walk off the job and stand around on the sidewalk. No, wait...they’ll walk off the sidewalk! Anyway, that’s Canada: Without a Thatcher or a Reagan, it remains over-unionized and with a bloated public sector.
Not that long ago, I heard a CBC news anchor announce that Canada had “created 56,100 new jobs in the previous month.” It sounded like good news. But looking at the numbers, I found that of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 were self-employed, 8,900 were in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 were on the public payroll. In other words, 77 percent of the new jobs were government jobs paid for by the poor slobs working away in the remaining 23 percent. So it wasn’t good news, it was bad news about the remorseless transfer of human resources from the vital dynamic sector to the state.

The second difference between our economies is that Canada’s is more protected. I was talking once to a guy from the Bay area who ran a gay bookstore, and he swore to me that he’d had it with President Bush and that he was going to move to Vancouver and reopen his bookstore there. I told him that would be illegal in Canada and he got very huffy and said indignantly, “What do you mean it’s illegal? It’s not illegal for a gay man to own a bookstore in Canada.” I said, “No, but it’s illegal for a foreigner to own a bookstore in Canada.” He could move to Canada, yes, but he’d have to get a government job handing out benefit checks. His face dropped, and I thought of pitching one of those soft-focus TV movie-of-the-week ideas to the Lifestyle Channel, telling the heartwarming story of a Berkeley gay couple who flee Bush’s regime to live their dream of running a gay bookstore in Vancouver, only to find that Canada has ways of discriminating against them that the homophobic fascists in the United States haven’t even begun to consider.

The third difference is that Canada’s economy is more subsidized. Almost every activity amounts to taking government money in some form or other. I was at the Summit of the Americas held in Canada in the summer of 2001, with President Bush and the presidents and prime ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean. And, naturally, it attracted the usual anti-globalization anarchists who wandered through town lobbing bricks at any McDonald’s or Nike outlet that hadn’t taken the precaution of boarding up its windows. At one point I was standing inside the perimeter fence sniffing tear gas and enjoying the mob chanting against the government from the other side of the wire, when a riot cop suddenly grabbed me and yanked me backwards, and a nanosecond later a chunk of concrete landed precisely where I had been standing. I bleated the usual “Oh my God, I could have been killed” for a few minutes and then I went to have a café au lait. And while reading the paper over my coffee, I learned that not only had Canadian colleges given their students time off to come to the Summit to riot, but that the Canadian government had given them $300,000 to pay for their travel and expenses. It was a government-funded anti-government riot! At that point I started bleating “Oh my God, I could have been killed at taxpayer expense.” Say what you like about the American trust-fund babies who had swarmed in to demonstrate from Boston and New York, but at least they were there on their own dime. Canada will and does subsidize anything.

Fourth point: The Canadian economy is significantly more dirigiste (i.e., centrally planned). A couple of years ago it was revealed that the government had introduced a fast-track immigration program for exotic dancers (otherwise known as strippers). Now as a general rule, one of the easiest things to leave for the free market to determine is the number of strippers a society needs. But for some reason, the government concluded that the market wasn’t generating the supply required and introduced a special immigration visa. To go back to President Bush’s line, maybe this is one of those jobs that Canadians won’t do, so we need to get some Ukrainians in to do it. Naturally, the exotic dancers are unionized, so it’s only a matter of time before the last viable industry in Quebec grinds to a halt and American tourists in Montreal find themselves stuck in traffic because of huge numbers of striking strippers. What governmental mind would think of an exotic dancer immigration category?

Fifth and obviously, the Canadian economy is more heavily taxed: Total revenue for every level of government in the U.S. is approximately 27 percent of GDP, while in Canada it’s 37 percent. And yes, that 37 percent includes health care—but you would have to be having an awful lot of terminal illnesses each year to be getting your money’s worth from what you’re giving to the treasury for that.

Canadian Dependence on the U.S.

Yet, having criticized Canada’s economy in various features, let me say something good about it: It doesn’t have the insanely wasteful federal agricultural subsidies that America has. In fact, if a Canadian wants to get big-time agriculture subsidies, he’s more likely to get them from the U.S. government. I’m sure most people here know that very few actual farmers—that’s to say, guys in denim overalls and plaid shirts and John Deere caps with straws in the stumps of their teeth—get any benefit from U.S. agricultural subsidies. Almost three-quarters of these subsidies go to 20,000 multi-millionaire play farmers and blue chip corporations. Farm subsidies are supposed to help the farm belt. But there’s a map of where the farm subsidies go that you can find on the Internet. And judging from the beneficiaries, the farm belt runs from Park Avenue down Wall Street, out to the Hamptons, and then by yacht over to Martha’s Vineyard, which they really ought to rename Martha’s Barnyard. Among the farmers piling up the dollar bills under the mattress are Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson, the oil company Chevron, and that dirt-poor, hardscrabble sharecropper David Rockefeller. But what you may not know is that also among their number is Edgar Bronfman, Sr., who isn’t just any old billionaire, he’s the patriarch of Montreal’s wealthiest family, owner of Seagram’s Whiskey, which subsequently bought Universal Pictures. So the U.S. taxpayer, in his boundless generosity, is subsidizing the small family farms of Canadian billionaires. As a Canadian and a broken-down New Hampshire tree farmer myself, I wondered whether I could get in on the U.S. farm program, but as I understand it, it would only pay me for a helicopter pad on top of my barn and a marble bathroom in my grain silo.

Edgar Bronfman’s dependence on U.S. taxpayers is symbolic of more than just the stupidity of federal agriculture subsidies. In the end, there’s no such thing as an independent Canadian economy. It remains a branch plant for the U.S. Over 80 percent of Canadian exports come to America. From time to time, nationalist politicians pledge to change that and start shipping goods elsewhere. But they never do because they don’t have to—they’ve got the world’s greatest market right next door. So when people talk about the Canadian model as something that should be emulated, they forget that it only works because it’s next to the American model. The guy who invented the Blackberry email device is Canadian, but it’s not been a gold mine for him because he’s selling a lot of them in Labrador or Prince Edward Island. It’s been a gold mine because he’s selling a lot of them in New York and California and in between.

Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. A small news story from last month illustrates this:
A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space. The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500 kilometers to the Montana hospital, the closest in the U.S., where the quadruplets were born on Sunday.

There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more on the day of delivery than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies.

Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.
In conclusion, I’m not optimistic about Canada for various reasons—from the recent Chinese enthusiasm for buying up the country’s resources to the ongoing brain drain—but also for a reason more profound. The biggest difference between Canada and the U.S. is not that you crazy, violent, psycho Yanks have guns and we caring, progressive Canucks have socialized health care, but that America has a healthy fertility rate and we don’t. Americans have 2.1 children per couple, which is enough to maintain a stable population, whereas according to the latest official figures, Canadian couples have only 1.5. This puts us on the brink of steep demographic decline. Consider the math: 10 million parents have 7.5 million children, 5.6 million grandchildren, and 4.2 million great-grandchildren. You can imagine what shape those lavish Canadian social programs will be in under that scenario, and that’s before your average teenage burger-flipper gets tired of supporting entire gated communities and decides he’d rather head south than pay 70 percent tax rates.

So, to produce the children we couldn’t be bothered having ourselves, we use the developing world as our maternity ward. Between 2001 and 2006, Canada’s population increased by 1.6 million. 400,000 came from natural population growth kids, while 1.2 million came from immigration. Thus native Canadians—already only amounting to 25 percent of the country’s population growth—will become an ever smaller minority in the Canada of the future. It’s like a company in which you hold an ever diminishing percentage of the stock. It might still be a great, successful company in the years ahead, but if it is, it won’t have much—if anything—to do with you.

In that most basic sense, American progressives who look to Canada are wrong. Not only is Canada’s path not a model for America, it’s not a viable model for Canada. As Canadians are about to discover, the future belongs to those who show up for it.

Thomas Bowden comments on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY January 18, 2008
Irvine, CA--

“Martin Luther King Jr. Day offers Americans an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to eradicating racism in all its forms,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Ayn Rand once wrote: “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.” The essence of racism, she explained, is “the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced by his internal body chemistry, which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”

“Achievement of a truly color-blind society will require not only that private individuals reject racism but that government policies and programs cease to favor some citizens over others on the basis of skin color,” Bowden said. “The solution to racism in government does not lie in further race-conscious, affirmative action programs that generate de facto quotas, nor in multicultural education that locates personal identity in one’s ethnic group. Because such policies are themselves racist, they are part of the problem.

“A model of good government policy is President Truman’s executive order ending segregation in America’s military services. Issued 60 years ago, Executive Order 9981 declared ‘that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.’

“This official policy exemplifies a government’s proper attitude toward its citizens,” Bowden said. “Every law-abiding adult has an equal right to serve in government, provided he or she can satisfy the position’s objective requirements. In setting standards, government agencies must be forbidden by law from making irrational distinctions among citizens, as by favoring some soldiers over others on the irrelevant basis of skin color.

“In a famous speech, Martin Luther King Jr. eloquently envisioned a world without racism: ‘I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ Americans should be proud of their nation’s historical achievements in ending slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, and many other forms of institutionalized racism. On this holiday, we should embrace the challenge contained in King’s eloquent remarks and recommit ourselves to the task of fully eradicating racism from this nation’s public policies."

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DEMOCRATS: Lower Taxes and Give Us Economic Freedom!

"Democrats in Congress remain committed to raising taxes on grounds that tax rates don't much matter to economic growth, and in any case they only help the rich. They may be the last public officials on the planet to believe this. In recent weeks alone, some of the unlikeliest political leaders have endorsed tax rate cuts in the name of making their economies better." READ (WSJ Opinion Journal).

A partial list of countries that have cut taxes:

1. Spain reduced the corporate tax from 35 to 30% and personal income tax from 45 to 43%.
2. Eleven former Iron Curtain nations have flat tax rates of 25 % or lower.
3. Bulgaria now has a flat tax of 10%, the lowest rate in the world.
4. Kuwait will slash the corporate income tax on foreign companies from 55 to 15%.
5. It appears that 26 developed nations have "either cut personal or corporate income tax rates since 2005".

America has a corporate tax of 35% "one of the few developed nations left with a rate of more than 30%".

Leaders around the world have learned that to be competitive today and to grow their economy, tax rates have to be slashed. Perhaps one of the most amazing stories of a third world country moving to a first world status is Ireland. Where is the United States on this issue? With a very important presidential election this year the Democrats are still stuck in the 70's, mired in big government socialist ideology.

IT'S TIME FOR AMERICA TO GET WITH THE PROGRAM THAT PRODUCES WEALTH:
LOW TAXES AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM!

"Global Warming Seems to Have Stopped - During the Past 7 Years!

The rats are starting to come out to the sunshine. Folks Global Warming is a scam!

"The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly." (READ).

Anti-life, Anti-reason Al-Qaeda Assassins

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” so said Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid.

Adnkronos International reported that the decision to murder Ms. Bhutto was made by the assassin Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No. 2 man. Apparently multiple death squads were formed and so one of these cells succeeded in killing Bhutto the woman who wanted to bring her country and countrymen forward into the 21st century.

Evil has succeeded in quelling a voice for moderation and liberty. But what these low-life killers have to know deep down in their bellies is that they will be annhilated as have other anti-reason, anti-life groups in the past. These people are a pathetic group of men that have taken death as their supreme value. Ultimately they will not defeat the vast majority of people of the earth who love life and want to live it and find happiness here and now not in some made-up world of after life. They will be defeated. They will be defeated.

Yes Bhutto was a precious American asset in the sense that she was one of the few voices of reason to come out of the hell-hole of the Middle East. People who use reason as their means of knowledge will finally get fed up with these monsters who use faith and worship death and defeat them as we defeated the Nazis and the suicide Imperial Japanese army in WWII. These are mosquitos compared to what we had to face 60 years ago. Let's get down to business and do it.

The SCHIP SCAM

Watch this video presenting the SCHIP via sarcasm. It's true our politicians are craven, power lusters who have lost any sense of shame and have not a shred of honor left. To present this as a health care system via using a tax on cigarettes to fund this scheme is beyond incompetence and enters the sphere of the absurd.

Where is it in the Constitution that says that the government's job is to meddle in the health care of an entire nation? Hands off on my health care! We do not want to be another Canada!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qcypRnDcCo

The Real MAN OF THE YEAR

Yup - it is official. The "idiots" at Time hate Bush so much that they ignore the most important man of the year David Petraeus in favor of another creep dictator Putin. Time - you are disgusting...Robert Tracinski, editor and publisher of the INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST says it best:

"The idiots at Time selected Vladimir Putin as their "Person of the Year," demonstrating a complete inability to gauge the scale, size, and significance of world events—and a desperate need to evade the story of the real Man of the Year: General David Petraeus, the architect of the strategy that reversed America's fortunes in Iraq." (Read).

Our Politicians Have Outgrown Their Own Boots

With the war still going on and perhaps continuing far into the future one must not forget the war we are fighting right here in America - the war against an ever growing bloated government and corruption based on pork spending. A trillion dollars of Washington spending looks like it will be a reality fairly soon and with it will come all the waste of American citizen's hard earned money.

Will we as a people be willing to fight to get back to smaller, more responsible government? Our founding fathers intention was to invent a government that would be responsible for safety of its citizens from foreign aggression and from internal criminals and the courts. They never intended for Alaska to get a bridge to nowhere or for farmers (the wealthiest in the world) to get subsidized by other Americans. Yet that's where we are now with our young starting their working lives encumbered by the Social Security retirees of the present. It is insane. Our politicians have outgrown their own boots. Americans need to really think about the who they will vote for in these elections. We must get America back on track - the track to individual freedom from political Washington shenanigans. Maybe Rudi Giuliani is our best hope.

"With economic uncertainty weighing on the minds of many Americans, Congress is preparing to recess after another year of profligate spending, protectionist talk and promises of higher taxes. No wonder some people feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. But I'm optimistic as I look to the future. It's not our country that's moving in the wrong direction -- it's Congress, and Washington's culture of wasteful spending."

"Over the last decade, nondefense spending has increased by 65% -- the federal government currently spends $24,000 per household -- while the number of earmarked pork projects rocketed from close to 1,000 to a height of nearly 14,000. This year, with only one appropriations bill enacted, earmarks already number 2,161.

"A return to fiscal conservative principles can put America back on the right track, while giving Washington a much-needed dose of discipline.

"Fiscal conservatism is based on two fundamental principles -- cutting taxes and controlling spending. In recent years, the Republican Party has successfully cut taxes, but we have fallen short when it comes to controlling spending. The next president will need to strengthen both sides of the fiscal conservative equation, while reforming the culture of wasteful government spending with transparency and accountability. I believe I can do it because I've done it, and in a place that might even be more difficult than Washington.

"We need to keep taxes low for our economy to grow. It's not just a theory for me. I cut taxes 23 times as mayor of New York City with a Democratic City Council and State Assembly, and saw that lower taxes can result in higher revenue. Amid fears of an economic slowdown, now is the time to cut taxes, not raise them. But the Democratic presidential candidates all seem determined to impose an unprecedented $3 trillion tax hike on the American people.

Hitler's Evil Averted in Budapest in WWII

During this holiday time it is inspiring to learn something new regarding the horrible aggression against the Jews during World War II and that sometimes the action of a few men is enough to thwart evil. Just as the West was resolute with the Nazi's of 60 years ago so the West must be resolute with Terrorist states defending a religion gone mad. We must be resolute to fight evil and call it like it is in order to save the good.

Reaching out with an act of courage (Pasadena Star News)
By Randy Jurado Ertll

DECEMBER 16 marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, where the Allied forces turned the tide against Hitler's evil forces in 1944.

Unfortunately, millions of Jews had already been murdered throughout Europe by then.
As we remember the valiant battle against Hitler, we also should note an amazing act of courage that has not received the attention it deserves: The government of El Salvador saved the lives of more than 40,000 Hungarian Jews that same year.

Working through its consular office in Geneva, Switzerland, the Salvadoran government came up with a creative plan. It decided to issue Salvadoran citizenship papers to Hungarian Jews who would otherwise have been sent to Nazi death camps.

The authors of this plan were Salvadoran Consul Colonel Jose Arturo Castellanos and First Secretary/Honorary Consul George Mantello, who was of Jewish ancestry.

Mantello, whose original name was Mandl, spoke no Spanish and never set foot in El Salvador. But he had assisted Castellanos in business, and Castellanos more than returned the favor.
He gave Mantello his honorary position at the embassy. Mantello used it to publicize Nazi atrocities and then came up with the idea of offering citizenship to Hungarian Jews.

Castellanos embraced Mantello's efforts, and Castellanos convinced the the Salvadoran government to give citizenship papers to Hungarian Jews. The Salvadoran government then formally asked the Swiss government to accept this agreement and to obtain approval from the Hungarian government, which it did.

In Budapest, tens of thousands of Hungarians Jews were able to obtain Salvadoran citizenship papers free of charge. These were crucial for escaping the Nazi concentration camps and certain death.

Thanks to Castellanos and Mantello, El Salvador was the only country that offered nationality rights to Hungarian Jews on a massive scale during World War II.

Castellanos and Mantello deserve to be remembered as heroes.

Let us follow their example by assisting those within our own country who face deportation or oppression.

Of course, immigrants in the United States facing deportation are not nearly in the same kind of situation that Jews were in during World War II.

But the example of reaching across nationalities and across religions to assist fellow human beings in need is one that we all can take to heart.

randyertll@yahoo.com
Randy Jurado Ertll is the executive director
of El Centro de Accion Social in Pasadena.

The Mixed Up World of Black and White

The following is attributed to Andy Rooney from "60 Minutes" a few weeks back:

"I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers.. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what happens...Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door."

"People, think!...Search for Your Dreams Under the Rubble..."

It seems that at least the students in Iran are fed up with Ahmadinejad and authoritarianism. Students at Tehran University broke out in protest, crashing down the main gate chanting slogans for freedom including freedom for women.

"Students defied a clampdown on protests in Iran yesterday by tearing down the gates of Tehran university. "

"They chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad and carried placards saying "Live free or die", "No war, no fascism" and "Women must decide their fate, not the state."

"They wrecked the iron-barred gates and threw stones at police, according to Iranian state radio, which said the protest ended peacefully.

"Tehran University is the largest and one of the oldest universities in Iran." (Daily Mail).

For pictures of the students and their banners go to Gateway Pundit. The following are some of their chants and statements on placards:

"People, think! We were once some of the luckiest people in the world; what happened to us? Search for your dreams under the rubble and do not sit for death to come."

"Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran will not become Chile!"

"Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran will not become Chile!"

"The University is the last bastion of freedom!"

All I can say is - IT´S ABOUT TIME THAT THESE PEOPLE DEMANDED FREEDOM!
We´ll see how long this desire for freedom lasts and what they are willing to do to get it. (See Michael Ledeen´s The Corner for video of the protests).

The Hyprocrisy in Our Congress is Stunning

In the Wall Street Journal today in their Review and Outlook section there is an article called "Waterboarding: Congress Knew". (Surprise, surprise!) The orginal article is in the Post Web site.

"One certainly may hold as abhorrent the idea of aggressively interrogating any terrorists ever, either for fear of what they might do to our people, as John McCain does, or because one thinks this violates our values. What one may not do -- at least not if one wants the system to function -- is assent to such a policy in 2002 and then, when the policy is made public, put up the pretense that one is "shocked" and appalled to learn of it."

"This is bad faith. Worse, it risks setting in motion the ruin or eventual criminal prosecution of CIA employees who in 2002 did what the Bush Administration, Congress and indeed the nation wanted them to do to protect the American people from another September 11.

"It has been widely reported by now that waterboarding was used on only three individuals... If Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues want the handling of such terrorists conformed to what they call "our values," then she should define that and put it in an explicit piece of legislation. Then let the Members vote yea or nay, in public, on the record.

"But don't sign off on such a sensitive policy at a moment when the nation's "values" support it, then later feign revulsion when you can't take the heat from the loudest in your political constituency. There was a time when politics at least assumed more backbone than that."

It is beyond understanding how morally corrupt our Washington politicians are. For people like Pelosi to say yes to waterboarding then pretend that they are revolted by it a few years later to fit some political scheme is beyond belief. What kind of people are we sending to Washington to lead this nation? That´s what we should all be asking ourselves. Another question is why can´t we find better.

"Human Caused" Global Warming Scam is Falling Apart

Another report showing that global warming IS NOT caused by human activity has been published in the prestigious scientific journal International Journal of Climatology. Their conclusion is that any attempt to control CO2 levels is totally pointless, costly and counterproductive. The question is are we going to continue to be duped by people who are only seeking a way to cash in on the gullible? I think we are smarter than that. You can read the article at Newsmax.com then go to the Journal itself and other sources online such as Heartland.org.

New Study Explodes Human-Global Warming Story by Philip V. Brennan

"As much of the U.S. is being blasted by vicious ice storms, a blockbuster report published in a prestigious scientific journal insists that the evidence shows that climate warming is both natural and unstoppable and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant"

"Writing in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society, professor David H. Douglass (of the University of Rochester), professor John R. Christy (of the University of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson and professor S. Fred Singer (of the University of Virginia) report that observed patterns of temperature changes ("fingerprints") over the last 30 years disagree with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

"The conclusion is that climate change is "unstoppable" and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

According to Dr. Douglass: “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.” "

" "Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless — but very costly." "

American Conservatism´s Lost Compass of Individual Rights

If you ever wondered why the Republicans look more and more like the Democrats you should read C. Bradley Thompson´s scrutinizing analysis of American Conservatism, both the Neoconservative and the Compassionate Conservative strains. In an article entitled ¨The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" he explains the history of both strains and how the Republicans have moved so far to the left by basically hijacking the left´s premise of self-sacrifice for others but with the religious motif. It is a must read for anyone concerned about today´s political trend to ever bigger and bigger government with all the intrusions in our lives and loss of liberty which it implies. The conservatives have lost their compass, the compass of individual rights.

"Given the moral premises and methodologies of compassionate conservatism and neoconservatism, and given their prevalence today, it comes as no surprise that a Republican-dominated government has ushered in a new era of big government. Let us now take a closer look at just how big our government has become since Republicans took control of the federal government..."

"Americans must remember what conservatives have forgotten (or never fully understood): that the United States was founded on the idea that individuals have unalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are valid only if individuals morally own themselves and are the proper beneficiaries of their own efforts. Each man is a morally sovereign entity. This is why no person is legitimately the master or the slave of another. But this principle, the principle of man’s rights, is the morality of egoism applied to a social-political context. Those who refuse to recognize and embrace egoism refuse to recognize and embrace man’s rights…

"The recognition of individual rights implies three things: first, that each man must accept full responsibility for governing his own life; second, that no man should be coerced into sacrificing his liberty or property in order to satisfy someone else’s needs or wants; and third, that man’s only reciprocal social obligation is a negative obligation—to not violate the rights of others. This is what it means to live in a free and civilized society…

"Conservatives use the notion of “obligation” or “duty” as a moral counterbalance to the individualism connected with the idea of rights. For conservatives, the obligations imposed by rights represent the “duties” we owe to others, to “society,” to the “public interest,” to the “common good.” This means that the individual has an obligation to sacrifice, to give up some part of his life, for others. But to say that “rights impose obligations” is the moral equivalent of saying that food requires poison in order to be nutritious.

"Because of their fear of challenging the morality of self-sacrifice and championing the morality of self-interest, conservatives—more so than liberals—have obliterated the concept of rights in the minds of Americans…

"Capitalism is the only social system that upholds the principle of rights; it is the only system in which individuals are fully free to act on their own best judgment. At the heart of capitalism, then, is the politics of individualism (i.e., the individual free of government coercion, free to pursue his values) and, at the heart of individualism, is egoism.

"Communists, socialists, fascists, and liberals have always understood the integral relationship between egoism and capitalism. They have always known that by demonizing egoism (the ethics of self-interest), they could discredit capitalism (the politics of self-interest). Conservatives, by running from the former, have abandoned the latter…

"Because they refuse to defend capitalism morally, on the basis of egoism, conservatives have compromised and sold-out the rights of the American people. They have ceded the principled high ground to the Left by accepting the moral rationale for the welfare state—altruism and its attendant notion that “need” is a legitimate moral claim.

"Those who value freedom and capitalism must abandon altruism and the fantasy philosophies that support it (including religion). They must embrace egoism and the factual foundation for individual rights. They must defend capitalism—not only because it works better than any other social system—but also, and more fundamentally, because it is the only moral social system." (READ)

The Objective Standard: A journal of culture and politics

A Dangerous World Needs Politicians With Principles and Courage

Dan Henninger has a lucid and important article ¨Still a Dangerous Place¨ in the Wall Street Journal that is a must read for all Americans planning to vote for our next President. Regardless of the "National Intelligence Estimate" and whether you believe what it says or not the reality is that we have politicians who are not guided by a set of principles aimed at protecting our country. They are all pragmatists and in part of my brain I almost think that there are those politicians that really hate America and what she stands for historically and that some even are just plain power-lusters.

As Mr. Henninger alludes to in his article, we in the West live in a hostile world whose goal is our annhialation. No amount of diplomacy and pretending can erase that fact. What we need are politicians who love their life so much that they are willing to make the hard and maybe unpopular decisions that will save us from our destroyers. This is essentially a war to defend reason in a world full of mystical unreason -a war of good versus bad, the individual versus the state.

If we as Americans hold anything dear it must be love of our country and our freedoms and consequently we must resolve to fight for it. For this we need politicians who are honest and can think in principles. This is not the time for diplomacy with maniacal religious martyrs from the 11th century.

"The most disturbing thing about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran wasn't the news itself, but how the episode displayed the wild and manic swings that now characterize American politics. A regular watcher of our politics could be forgiven for feeling that one isn't watching a serious country but a place that conducts its internal affairs like a Saturday morning cartoon show. Thunk! Boooinng!...

"With or without the NIE's opinion of Iran's nuclear program, that world is still a dangerous place."

Henninger next lists all of the military buildup that has happened since 2003 the year that Iran supposedly stopped it´s nuke program:

*2006 Iran performs test flights of the Shabab-2 and Shabab-3 ballistic missiles

*This week the a 1,200 mile missle was built and in September a 1,100 mile'ange Ghadr-1 missile.

*North Korea in July 2006 tested the long-range Taepodong-2, a nuclear payload-capable ballistic missile. North Korea has exported its missile technology to Iran and Pakistan. And of course Hezbollah, in the same month North Korea was testing the Taepodong-2, fired thousands of Katyusha rockets at Israel, re-establishing the operational viability of short-range bombardment.

*China is developing three strategic, long-range missiles --

*In January, after much effort to do so, China successfully used a kinetic-kill vehicle launched from a ballistic missile to destroy a satellite orbiting at 500 miles altitude.

*Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, indeed virtually all the nations of the Middle East are seeking nuclear-power capability.

"One would like more on this than we're getting from the candidates in both parties. But the Democrats especially have tied themselves to the word "diplomacy," giving the impression that the U.S. can literally talk its way out of any bad outcomes that Iran, Syria, North Korea or free-agent terrorists have planned for us.

"Put it this way: Would they, like Israel, have bombed that factory in Syria without pre-discussing it with Bashar Assad or Kim Jong-Il? No candidate's answer to that will make everyone happy. But the more than 100 million Americans who'll vote next year need a better idea than they've got of how the next president plans to deal with the world. Not the cartoon world, but the real world." (READ)

The Creeping Putin Dictatorship

It is amazing how Russia just cannot shrug off tyranny for long. But so long as the thinkers and doers in Russia go about their business acting as if liberty is not worth defending, i.e. the Atlases don't care to shrug, Putin has a wide open road to dictatorship. Gary Kasparov, the former world chess Champion is battling against tyranny with the odds against him for his is a fight to which the world has not tuned in to. It's disheartening that this man cannot get his fellow russian citizens let alone the world to pay attention to the creeping Putin dictatorship. The following is an excerpt of his recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

"First off, the penalty is not the point; the principle is. Are we to have the rule of law in Russia or not? Second, I have no intention of becoming a martyr, or in leading an opposition movement from prison. I had no illusions and now I can confirm it is not a pleasant place to be. And this is not chess, with its cold-blooded calculations. This is about honor and morality. I cannot ask people to protest in the streets if I am not there with them. At the rally on Saturday, I said our slogan must be "We must overcome our fear," and I am obliged to stand by these words."

"It is also essential to point out that these arrests are only the tip of the iceberg. Such things are taking place all over Russia on a daily basis. Opposition activists -- or just those who happen to be in the way of the administration -- are harassed and arrested on false charges of drug possession, extremism, or the latest trend, for owning illegal software.

"There is little doubt tomorrow's parliamentary elections will be as fixed as my trial. The presidential elections on March 2 will be a different sort of performance, more improvised, since even now Mr. Putin and his gang are not sure how to resolve their dilemma. The loss of power could mean the loss of fortune and freedom. Outright dictatorship would endanger their lucrative ties with the West.

"The campaign rhetoric of Mr. Putin and his supporters is genuinely frightening. Here we have an allegedly popular president who dominates the media, the parliament and the judiciary. He and his closest allies are in total control of the nation's wealth. And yet his recent speeches are hysterical rants about "enemies within" and "foreign antagonists" trying to weaken Russia -- language characteristic of totalitarian states.

"So why is Mr. Putin so scared if things are going so well? He is a rational and pragmatic person, not prone to melodrama. He knows the numbers, so why the heavy and heavy-handed campaigning if he knows he and United Russia are going to win? The answer is that he is very aware of how brittle his power structure has become. ..

"So demagoguery it is and demagoguery it will be. A violent pro-Putin youth group, Nashi, has already released a poster celebrating Mr. Putin's "crushing victory" on December 2. It also warns against the "enemies of the people of Russia," myself included, attempting to disqualify the results. These terms jibe nicely with Mr. Putin's own rhetoric of threats and fear. The ground is being prepared for greater oppression.

"The Other Russia will continue our activities because, simply, some things are worth fighting for and will not come without being fought for. All of the "minor differences" between Mr. Putin's Russia and the nations of the free world add up to one very large difference: that between democracy and tyranny."