Why $5 Gas Is Good for America

I came across an article in the Dec '05 issue of WIRED which argues that high oil prices should be welcomed, not feared, and that the market will provide the answers without any help from government subsidies. All of the companion pieces ("As Prices Rise, Technologies Emerge", "$20-$30", "Digital Oil Fields", "$30-$70", "Ethanol", "$70 and up", "Oil Shale") which can be reached from "Plus" section of the initial article are worth the read as well. You guys will love it.

Faster Please.

How about this idea from Ronald Aronson at the Nation?
The Left Needs More Socialism

It's time to break a taboo and place the word "socialism" across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls--and how to find them again.

I can hear tongues clucking the conventional wisdom that the "S" word is the kiss of death for any American political initiative. Since the collapse of Communism, hasn't "socialism"--even the democratic kind--reeked of everything obsolete and discredited? Isn't it sheer absurdity to ask today's mainstream to pay attention to this nineteenth-century idea? Didn't Tony Blair reshape "New Labour" into a force capable of winning an unprecedented string of victories in Britain only by first defeating socialism and socialists in his party? And for a generation haven't we on the American left declared socialist ideology irrelevant time and again in the process of shaping our feminist, antiwar, progay, antiracist, multicultural, ecological and community-oriented identities?

Insiders Disease

Interesting post at MyDD about something called "Insider's disease."

My thesis about Barack Obama is that he suffers from what I'll call 'insider's disease'. Obama is a progressive, he does understand the massive constitutional crisis we're in right now and does want to get beyond the entrenched interests that are weighing down our country. At the same time, he doesn't believe that the American people will support him if he stands up for these beliefs, so he says different things to different people. There is no better illustration of this than his endorsement of Lieberman. Take these two statements. One is in front of the Connecticut Democratic Party. The other was on Al Franken's show (the podcast is available here):
Statement one:

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he said.

Statement two:

"We should work on a bi-partisan basis. Joe Lieberman and uh, the rest of the Republican Party." The crowd went "oooh" and Franken said "I- I got the joke..."

Either Barack Obama believes that sending a Republican to the Senate is a good idea, or he's being inconsistent on purpose for political reasons because he doesn't think that his progressive principles are politically useful. Unfortunately, if we don't win elections using progressive methods, we cannot govern in a progressive manner. Senator Lieberman helped scuttle Clinton's health care plan in 1993-1994 - endorsing him now isn't going to help the cause of universal health care, for instance.

Obviously insider's disease affects both sides. For Republicans its things like a simple tax policy, less government spending, immigration reform, etc.

A little remission got us two decent judges in the Supreme Court, Roberts and Alito. But other things?
Two Senate races come to mind, Toomey vs Specter and Laffey vs Chafee.

Insider's disease all the way.

The Marches

Just a few pictures from this week's marches.

mexica-movement.org

Our signs helped to counter the American flags. Our people expressed their agreement with our message.

...

Racist Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R of California 4th district) of red-neck Orange County said that he didn't care how long people had been in "this country" illegally, if they were here illegally for 5 or 50 years that they should be deported. Fine! Europeans have been here illegally since 1492, START THE DEPORTATIONS NOW! First one to go should be this Nazi Rohrabacher!

Sensenbrenner, Schwarzenegger, Rohrabacher, funny how they all have Germanic names! .....No, it's not funny at all!

stolencontinent.org
aztlan.net

What does the immense success of "La Gran Marcha" mean to Mexicanos and other Latinos? It simply means that we now have the numbers, the political will and the organizational skills to direct our own destinies and not be subservient to the White and Jewish power structures. It means that we can now undertake bigger and more significant mass actions to achieve total political and economic liberation like that being proposed by Juan José Gutiérrez, President of Movimiento Latino USA. Juan José Gutiérrez is proposing that the coalition that organized "La Gran Marcha" meet in Arizona or Texas on April 8 to "organize a mass boycott (huelga) against the economy of the USA" to take place on May 1, May 5 or May 19.

(tip to NRO)

Victor Davis Hanson (read the whole thing)

If many thousands of illegal aliens marched in their zeal, many more millions of Americans of all different races and backgrounds watched--and seethed. They were struck by the Orwellian incongruities--Mexican flags, chants of "Mexico, Mexico," and the spectacle of illegal alien residents lecturing citizen hosts on what was permissible in their own country.

If the demonstrators thought that they were bringing attention to their legitimate grievances--the sheer impossibility of deporting 11 million residents across the border or the hypocrisy of Americans de facto profiting from "illegals" who cook their food, make their beds, and cut their lawns--they seemed oblivious to the embarrassing contradictions of their own symbolism and rhetoric. Most Americans I talked to in California summed up their reactions to the marches as something like, 'Why would anyone wave the flag of the country that they would never return to--and yet scream in anger at those with whom they wish to stay?' Depending on the particular questions asked, polls reveal that somewhere around 60-80% of the public is vehemently opposed to illegal immigration.

Walmart vs Food Stamps

I can't believe people like this really exist. It's like a caricature or something.

"I do whatever it takes to survive and live a socially conscious life," said Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.

Part of that survival — or so he thought — included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children. Then his discussions about Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him.

Back to another of his bumper stickers: "Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes destiny."

Powell put the brakes on his actions. Shopping at Wal-Mart? This is a place that encourages employees to get social services because it does not provide adequate health insurance or wages; sells goods made in sweatshops; and upsets entire communities by undercutting the downtown stores, then raising its prices when the locals go out of business.

"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health insurance for staffers. "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."

He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart any longer.

Let me see if I understand this.

1) Liberal doesn't like Wal-Mart because it "encourages" people to go on the dole.
2) Liberal goes on the dole because he doesn't want to shop at Wal-Mart.

No, this wasn't an Onion article.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a large cloud of smug around this guy.

(tip to Club for Growth)

Government in our Bedrooms

Not another abortion post -- I'm talking about alarm clocks.

Only government could spend 90 years tinkering with the clocks, with no proof of efficacy

Michael Downing has written a book, and a guest editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. He considers Daylight Savings Time "a cynical substitute for sensible energy policy. Even if we all eat breakfast in the dark in March and November, we won't save much oil because less than 5% of domestic electricity is generated by oil. We will consume more gasoline. When Americans go to the ballpark or the mall, we hop in our cars."

While ThreeSources farmer JohnGalt came out for it last year, Downing claims it was a political triumph of city merchants over rural farmers, who hated it.

They used morning light to stimulate their dairy and dry dew off their cereal crops. When sunrise arrived an hour later, opening times for city markets didn't change. Farmers had one less hour to deliver the goods. Along with coal miners and clergymen, they complained that daylight saving severed our connection to the sun and God's time.

To appease the rural interests, Congress repealed daylight saving in 1919. Only another world war persuaded Congress to try it again. The Roosevelt administration claimed that War Time -- the year-round daylight saving that lasted from January 1942 until September 1945 -- reduced energy consumption by many kilowatts. This was harder to substantiate, however, than newspaper photographs of schoolchildren waiting for buses at trafficky intersections on dark winter mornings. And the farmers still hated it. Congress did not dare to pass a peacetime daylight saving law until 1966.

New York City was not cowed. Urban merchants had profited by daylight saving, and Wall Street wanted it after World War I because London had it, which put London six hours ahead of New York. Stock markets in both cities were open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Without daylight saving, their trading hours didn't overlap, and they had no opportunity for arbitrage.

I had always though Silence's hero, Ben Franklin, was to blame, but his name or century fail to come up in this account:

William Willett proposed the idea of falsifying clock time in 1907. A golfer, hunter and horseman, Willett was trotting through London at dawn and noticed that windows were shuttered, blocking the summer sun. He wanted to shift that unused hour of daylight from morning to evening, when people could spend it on leisure, including increased "opportunities for rifle practice." Parliament repeatedly shouted down Willett's proposal. But in May 1916, with World War I underway, Germany adopted daylight saving, hoping later sunsets would reduce demand for electric illumination. In response, Britain immediately passed the 1916 Daylight Saving Act as an austerity measure. It wasn't easy to squeeze a lump of coal out of a clock, but this siphoned the fun from Willett's idea.

President Nixon brought it back full time for two years, now they're at it again. If nobody can show any proof that it works, should we not just leave the clocks alone?

Borders

We disagreed on Google around here. How about Borders Books? Dale at samizdata is Throwing down the gauntlet

The 'blogosphere' is alive with the recent announcement you will not stock the Free Inquiry issue with the Danish cartoons.
We abhor your cowardice in the face of the enemy and your lack of moral fibre to stand up for the First Amendment in the face of those enemies.

Our publication, Samizdata, has joined the Borders boycott call which is spreading amongst other high profile network publications.

I resisted an MI:3 boycott last week and was shown to be wrong. I came out for Google when the blogosphere wouldn't and still stubbornly believe I am right.

But Borders I am ready to whack. Yeah, they own the store and can stock or not stock what they choose. While I concede that, I am deeply troubled by the chain’s capitulation to groups who would stifle speech. Borders makes a very public show of opposition to censorship with its celebration of "Banned Books Month."

Rabble-based violent censorship is better than gub'mint censorship, but it still keeps free people from selling and buying what free people want. I’m an Amazon guy myself (someday I'll do a post on Internet shopping for the handicapped) so I don't think I'll feel the pinch, but I am disappointed that an American bookstore chain is kowtowing to thuggish pressure..

Howdy!

Hello Comrades! Ooops! Hello fellow bloggers. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Trip Segars. I was invited to participate by JK with whom I've worked and played hockey with in the past. JohnGalt is another ex-Mambo King (our hockey team). I'm exposing my true identity as insurance - if I am ever so foolish as to run for office, I'm hoping that I will be confronted with my posts here and forced to withdraw from the Political Correctness Czar contest. I'm forty-one, have a six year old son, and am divorced but getting married in June. I work as a software developer.

My moniker is LatteSipper because latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating liberal takes too long to type. I'm a liberal (if you haven't figured it out yet) and wonder why the richest nation in the world chooses a military budget that dwarfs that of the rest of the world yet trails much of the developed world in areas such as poverty and infant mortality. I do believe that government can be used as a tool to improve the general quality of life and standard of living, but agree with Silence Dogood that many of our social programs are inefficient or don't produce results at all. The same could be said of our military expenditures, agriculture subsidies, tax loopholes; the list goes on and on. I do not, however, believe that simply shrinking the government is the answer. I think a new approach is called for, one that involves evaluation of what our collective, national priorities are and evaluating which investments, if any, move us towards our goals. It would require wiping the slate clean and starting anew, with no guarantees for any special interest groups, neither welfare mothers, retirees, farmers, CEOs, defense contractors or our elected representatives. Perhaps I am flailing at windmills, but I am not yet so pessimistic or cynical to believe that things can't change for the better.

I've come here on JK's recommendation looking for good discussion and hoping to challenge my beliefs and broaden my understanding ... and to find out if Dick Cheney really is a baby-eating cyborg. Cheers!

Voting Machines

You might remember last november when I was elected Judge of Elections for my precinct. It only took one vote (my wife's), and I'm in.

The next election isn't until May 16th, so there's still some time, and presumably I get some training on the operations of the machines.

The "new" machines, that is.

Montgomery County’s machines have to be upgraded to comply with new federal law. The upgraded technology was tested for two days this week in order to be certified by state election officials, but problems were discovered.

Michael Shamos, the certification examiner, says the manufacturer had to make modifications like adding technology for blind voters and then had to update the central tabulation system to accept votes from the all the different equipment the company makes:

"And the central tabulation software has bugs in it and those bugs became evident during the examination."

Shamos says the company will work on the problem with an eye toward more tests in mid-April.

If these machines aren't up to snuff, they still have the ability to fall back to the previous machines.

... and as of this writing, I'm scheduled to be on the ballot for a two year term on the county GOP committee representing my precinct.

Death of the conservative GOP?

Tim Chapman

Last week, Senator Arlen Specter declared the death of a conservative Republican Party. After the Senate approved an amendment he offered to bust the budget by $7 billion for more domestic spending, Specter rejoiced. The Pennsylvania Republican bragged to reporters, “The Republican Party is now principally moderate, if not liberal!�

Specter’s comments may be truer than many Republicans would like to admit. But conservatives in the Senate have not disappeared. There are some left, like the junior Senator from Nevada, John Ensign.

Read the whole thing.

Security & Immigration

With 11 million undocumented people in this country how many are anti-American? Would it be possible that perhaps as few as say, 19 are the really dangerous trouble makers?

... and it fully 3% of people on American soil are here without the consent of the nation, how long before a group hostile to our interests gets a few of their compatriots in?

The immigrants who come to work in this country for the opportunities, I really don't worry too much about. They understand and appreciate America for what it is. The land of boundless opportunity for those with sufficent motivation.

It's the ones that come for the opportunity to do damage that you can lose sleep over.

The Other

Heh...

Fritter and Waste

ALa @ Blonde Sagacity writes regarding the opinion of FISA judges that President Bush was within the law on the NSA wiretapping.

So Sorry Senator Feingold but it seems your "censure" call was just a colossal waste of time -and probably tax payer money.

C'mon now. When does any party in Washington care about not wasting money? It's not theirs. They didn't earn it. They don't care about spending it.

Plus, it was a cheap way to get blows in against the President. There's no dollar amount big enough to prevent that in that city.

South Park

Even K-Lo at the Corner can't stop watching. She links to GOP Vixen's description of the Second Episode:

In the episode, Kyle's dad buys a hybrid car (called a "Pious") and starts getting environmentalist ego, putting fake tickets on all the gas guzzlers. When the rest of the town gets angry at him, he decides South Park just isn't enlightened enough and moves the family to San Francisco. Stan misses Kyle and tries to lure the Braflovskis back by encouraging everyone to buy hybrids. After Stan writes and performs a "gay little song" about ecofriendliness, everybody buys hybrids. Then local weather officials freak out because South Park is becoming covered in smug generated by smug eco do-gooders. This combined with the No. 1 smug region in the nation -- San Francisco -- will soon be combining with the smug front generated by George Clooney's Oscar acceptance speech and forming a destructive smug storm.

I haven't seen it yet but have it on TiVo. I have some extremely smug relatives with a new Hybrid. I can't wait...

Lifting boats

In the past four decades, open economies (mostly from Europe, East Asia, North America) have fared far better than closed ones (Africa, Latin America, parts of Eastern Europe). Economists Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found that from 1970-1989 average annual growth in open developed economies was 2.3%, compared with 0.7% in the closed. In developing countries, those numbers were 4.5% and 0.7%. That trend hasn't changed much as trade and foreign investment have powered global growth.

As befits the dismal science, not to mention the dismal profession of politics, this evidence hasn't settled the intellectual argument. So New York Senator Chuck Schumer and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin can make their case for "economic patriotism," to use the Frenchman's phrase, with a straight face.

Some weird guy once mentioned in an Elevator that classical liberalism was very effective. He had an odd haircut and I was glad when he got off the elevator. But the Wall St Journal Ed Page seems to think he was right.

Such a direct correlation and so many years of correlation, yet the blind do not see. The editorial also talks up one of my favorites:

The real star pupil is Ireland, which went from the bottom of the EU league tables in GDP per capita to the top in a generation by slashing taxes and barriers to investment. Of the OECD countries, Ireland has the highest share of foreign-controlled affiliates in terms of employment (nearly 50%) and turnover (78%). In Portugal, which puts up higher obstacles to foreign investment, it's 15% and 8%. Portugal is today the poorest country in Western Europe.

Gosh, it almost makes one think that lower taxes and freer trade might make us wealthier over here.

Men of the People

A bit of fireworks happened on the radio between Sean Hannity and Alec Baldwin recently. I don't listen to Hannity's shows (too much yelling and Medved is much more cerebral), but I saw this and had to laugh.

Alec Baldwin was on a show that Sean Hannity called in to, culiminating in Baldwin walking out.

HANNITY: Alec, I wanted to give you an official WABC welcome considering you were supposed to come on my program last week and you didn't show up. What happened?

BALDWIN: No, I wasn't supposed to come on your program, Sean Hannity.

HANNITY: No, actually you were supposed to come on the program because a deal was made with your agent that if you were going to come on with Brian, first you'd come on with me.

BALDWIN: I wouldn't dream of coming on your program, Sean Hannity. I'm here with Brian. I'm here with a really talented broadcaster.

HANNITY: [Crosstalk] that you are, you don't tell the truth.

BALDWIN: Why would I want to come on the show with a no-talent, former construction worker hack like you?

What's wrong with being a construction worker? He acts like changing careers is a bad thing.

Alec Baldwin pretty much finishes up with this line...

BALDWIN: You're a no-talent, ignorant fool from Long Island. You should go back to building houses in Hempstead.

So what's the problem with the building trades? Baldwin acts like it's beneath him.

It shouldn't be. He's a former busboy.

Upward mobility for liberals is one thing, but for a conservative, it's a different thing altogether.

Look For The Union Label

Only a union job.

John Stossel detailed a program in the NY Public Schools in which child molesters were paid to show up and watch TV and read magazines, because it is all but impossible to fire a union teacher and it is the only way to get dangerous people away from kids.

Now, The Everyday Economist points to a NY Times article about the UAW job bank. EE sys "The Jobs Bank essentially pays employees full wages and benefits to show up for work even when production is shut down or there is nothing for the workers to do. The program was supposed to last six years, it has lasted twenty-two."

For some reason (you think maybe incentives matter?) it appears to be a "tough sell" to offer a buyout package to a worker who gets full scale for nothing. Times:

Each day, workers report for duty at the plant and pass their time reading, watching television, playing dominoes or chatting. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry's best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.

The Jobs Bank is one critical burden that G.M. has to carry as it embarks on one of the biggest challenges — and biggest balancing acts — of its corporate survival. To become a leaner, more profitable company, it needs to persuade the right number of workers to take the buyouts, without chasing away its best people. If not enough people leave, G.M. is stuck with excess workers, who will swell the ranks of the Jobs Bank.

But in factories like the one in Oklahoma City, where workers were first interviewed on a visit last month and over the next several weeks, the buyouts could be a hard sell.

I guess. To be fair, such a job is one of Dante's rings of hell to me (Purgatorio might be a better description) but then, I think I lack the Union spirit.

Immigrant Economics

Thomas Sowell, a perennial Threesources favorite asks, "Guests or Gate Crashers?"

Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing. Phony arguments and phony words are the norm in discussions of immigration policy.

It starts with a refusal to call illegal aliens "illegal aliens" and ends with asking for "guest worker" status for people who are not guests but gate crashers. As for the substantive arguments, they are as phony as the verbal evasions.

What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market.

Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses?

He then lashes out on sugar surpluses and our domestic subsidies of it.

He ends...

One of the most bogus of all the bogus arguments for a "guest worker" program is that it is impossible to find all the millions of illegal aliens in the country, so it is impossible to deport them.

If tomorrow someone came up with some brilliant way to identify every illegal alien in the country, it would not make the slightest difference. Right now, those who are identified as illegal, whether at the border, in prisons, at traffic stops or in any of our institutions, face no penalty whatsoever.

Identification is not the problem. Doing nothing is the problem.

If Not Kyoto, What?

Missed Pete DuPont's piece in the Journal yesterday (free link).

Like me, Pete (a man who might have been President of the United States had mom not named him "Pierre...") is not going to concede that global warming is man made. He makes some of my favorite skeptic arguments: The ice-age scare in the 1970s, plus that it is happening on Mars, as well, where SUV sales have been slow. If true, he is not a fan of the Kyoto solution as a possible remedy:

We also know that the Kyoto Treaty will do little to solve the carbon-dioxide problem. Masquerading as a global environmental policy, Kyoto exempts half of the world's population and nine of the top 20 emitters of carbon dioxide--including China and India--from its emissions reduction requirements. It is in fact an effort to replace the world's markets with an internationally regulated (think U.N.) global economy, perhaps better described as a predatory trade strategy to level the world's economic playing field by penalizing the economic growth of energy efficient nations and rewarding those emitting much greater quantities of noxious gasses. Which explains why in 1997 the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 to oppose the signing of any international protocol that would commit Western nations to reduce emissions unless developing countries had to do so as well.

As The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, almost none of the nations that signed on are meeting Kyoto's requirements. Thirteen of the original 15 European signatories will likely miss the 2010 emission reduction targets. Spain will miss its target by 33 percentage points and Denmark by 25 points. Targets aside, Greece and Canada have seen their emissions rise by 23% and 24%, respectively, since 1990. As for America, our emissions have increased 16%, so we are doing better than many of the Kyoto nations.

He then discusses a study by two Princeton profs detailing what would be required to cut emissions if the reduction of C02 were necessary: replace all incandescent bulbs; two million wind turbines; Liquid Natural Gas docs and pipes; an India-sized parcel of land to grow sugar cane for ethanol (get Arizona and Texas hooked on ag subsidies?); build 700 noocyooler plants.

Other than the light bulbs there are committed opponents to every plan -- and the Sylvania lobby has not been heard from yet. DuPont doesn't say it, but I don't think any of them have a strong economic basis either. I suspect that if regulations could be lifted, that nuclear and LNG might pay for themselves, but it's a no go.

The solution is technology: improvements in generation and efficiency will eventually get us out. I have to add a Silence point here from a recent coffee klatch. He can describe it better, but he is interested in micro-generation. An Army of Davids solution, with photovoltaic solar tiles, personal windmill power. Technology is making these economically viable. A Hayekian power grid with lots of producers and consumers instead of one producer and many consumers would be very cool.

Consumer Confidence

Reuters

U.S. consumers perked up in March as economic activity gained momentum, sending an index of sentiment about the economy to its highest in almost four years, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The Conference Board, a private research firm, said its measure of consumer sentiment spiked to 107.2, up from an upwardly revised 102.7 last month and well above Wall Street's median forecast for a slight gain.

That's great... but it wouldn't be an economic story without a "but." And it's a doozy.

The report painted a mixed employment picture, however. The proportion of consumers saying jobs were hard to get edged up to 20.7 percent from 20.2 percent, while those saying jobs were plentiful also climbed to 28.4 percent from 27.4.

Pardon my language. What the fuck?

When did we start measuring this number?

"Jobs hard to get?"

I guess there is always a dark cloud somewhere.

NYTimes Ed Page: Bastion of Free Trade

Pinch me. The NYTimes Ed Page takes :a whack at Senator Schumer for his protectionism. Senator Graham is deservedly caught in the crossfire

The good news is that Senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer have started to inch away from their misguided attempt to club China for its currency policies. At the end of a fact-finding trip last week, Mr. Schumer told reporters he was no longer sure he would push for a vote to impose tariffs on Chinese imports into the United States. "The jury is out," he said. But, he said, "we are more optimistic that this can be worked out than we were in the past."

Maybe the chance to talk face-to-face with Chinese on their home turf is what it took to make Mr. Graham and Mr. Schumer realize that just as trade is a two-way street, so too are sanctions. If lawmakers actually went ahead with the Schumer-Graham bill, which would impose 27.5 percent tariffs — a staggering amount — on Chinese goods, they would be accomplishing little to cut American unemployment, while hurting poor Americans who rely on inexpensive goods and poor Chinese whose livelihoods depend on making those products.

There's always hope! Hat-tip: Everyday Economist

Listening In

We join this conversation in progress... I have been discussing FISA wiretaps with Silence Dogood and an anonymous source who started the email thread by mailing me a copy of an Atlantic Monthly article, Big Brother Is Listening. (Paid link)

After a few emails, Silence suggested that I get this on the blog. I will start by excerpting the original article, trying to be fair. The article states that the listening is more prevalent and more sophisticated than most imagine, and that it is easier than you might think to get on the watch list:

It used to be that before the NSA could place the name of an American on its watch list, it had to go before a FISA-court judge and show that it had probable cause-that the facts and circumstances were such that a prudent person would think the individual was somehow connected to terrorism-in order to get a warrant. But under the new procedures put into effect by Bush's 2001 order, warrants do not always have to be obtained, and the critical decision about whether to put an American on a watch list is left to the vague and ubjective "reasonable belief" of an NSA shift supervisor. In charge of hundreds of people, the supervisor manages a wide range of sigint specialists, including signals-conversion analysts separating HBO television programs from cell-phone calls, traffic analysts sifting through massive telephone data streams looking for suspicious patterns, cryptanalysts attempting to read e-mail obscured by complex encryption algorithms, voice-language analysts translating the gist of a phone call from Dari into English, and cryptolinguists trying to unscramble a call on a secure telephone. Bypassing the FISA court has meant that the number of Americans targeted by the NSA has increased since 2001 from perhaps a dozen per year to as many as 5,000 over the last four years, knowledgeable sources told The Washington Post in February. If telephone records indicate that one of the NSA's targets regularly dials a given telephone number, that number and any names associated with it are added to the watch lists and the communications on that line are screened by computer. Names and information on the watch lists are shared with the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign intelligence services. Once a person's name is in the files, even if nothing incriminating ever turns up, it will likely remain there forever. There is no way to request removal, because there is no way to confirm that a name is on the list.

The next paragraph details a French businessman, who attracted the attention of US, Australians and UK intelligence with a $1.1 Million transaction with Iran. It turns out that the sale was legal, and Bamford is concerned that this person, now on the watch list may be monitored closely, denied entry, or face some other consternation when he committed no wrong and faced no due process.

The article takes a very interesting look at the size, scope and secrecy of the FISA court.

On the first Saturday in April of 2002, the temperature in Washington, D.C., had taken a dive. Tourists were bundled up against the cold, and the cherry trees along the Tidal Basin were fast losing their blossoms to the biting winds. But a few miles to the south, in the Dowden Terrace neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, the chilly weather was not deterring Royce C. Lamberth, a bald and burly Texan, from mowing his lawn. He stopped only when four cars filled with FBI agents suddenly pulled up in front of his house. The agents were there not to arrest him but to request an emergency court hearing to obtain seven top-secret warrants to eavesdrop on Americans.
[...]
The court's job is to decide whether to grant warrants requested by the NSA or the FBI to monitor communications of American citizens and legal residents. The law allows the government up to three days after it starts eavesdropping to ask for a warrant; every violation of FISA carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Between May 18, 1979, when the court opened for business, until the end of 2004, it granted 18,742 NSA and FBI applications; it turned down only four outright.

I commented that security and privacy were tensions in balance and that the tale of the French businessman, while regrettable, was a fair trade when compared to the fact that FBI agents did not search Zacharias Moussaoui's laptop for lack of a FISA warrant and probable cause. Disrupting terrorism, I claimed was too important.

Some good things were said on both sides, to be lost to the ether. But the political view of privacy and civil liberties on the right were questioned against the defense of President Bush from me and other Republicans. I asked if my emailer was so keen to give the 105th Congress more authority at the expense of President Clinton. He didn't say it, but would I have been keen to give more authority to Clinton/Albright?

I rested my final case on Federalist #10 and #64, highlighting the importance of executive power in national security. I don't want the dim bulbs on either side of either house mucking too much up with real-time defense decisions. Here's the thread in progress:

Friend X: No, I didn't ask for the Republicans to increase Legislative power in the 90's, nor am I asking Republicans who control congress or the Democrats who fear being branded "weak on security" to increase Legislative power today. I'm asking congress to exercise their oversight responsibilities and look into why the President ignored the existing FISA law. If I recollect correctly, the administration's two supporting arguments for the legality of the warrantless surveillance are that 1) Congress authorized it in the Joint Resolution of Sept 14, 2001 with the words "the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force", and 2) that in his role as Commander-in-Chief the president can do whatever he feels is appropriate. The first argument is silly. It in essence says that the Congress authorized the President to do anything. Prison camps? Why not? Door-to-Door searches? Why not? Is it ok for Bush to initiate these measures? The Joint Resolution does not prohibit these far-fetched measures any more than it prohibits warrantless surveillance. The language of the Joint Resolution as well as the language of the constitution leaves a lot open to interpretation. This is why it would be totally appropriate for Congress to have in-depth hearings on what is a very controversial action by the current administration.

I understand that you're ok with the balance the administration has struck between security and civil liberties concerns. I think this will always be a subject for debate. Are you saying that someone who is not comfortable with the president's approach and would like congressional investigation into the matter is simply being a partisan hack?

Another thought (this is a big day for me) -- I have a problem with the argument that it's ok if the government is spying on you only when you're communicating with someone overseas. The president has claimed he can do this because it's his prerogative as commander-in-chief. At what point does he cross the line of what's appropriate and what isn't? Wouldn't it be appropriate for our representatives in Congress to discuss this? If not, when is it appropriate to investigate? Can Congress ever do this? I share your lack of confidence in the players on both sides of the aisle in both houses, but that in no way means I believe in giving a president carte blanche, be he or she a Democrat or Republican.

Here's the last question:

Silence Dogood: explain to me how the same red state crowd that stridently defends their right to bear arms, and avoid government licensing of weapons because when the government goes bad, the first thing they will do is track down and confiscate weapons is so willing to give up their right to private communication? When the government goes bad it will track you down for your ideas before your weapons. Imagine how colonial America would have progressed if communication was monitored and the printing presses serialized by the British. I consider freedom of speech to be the most basic right in a free society, but take away the right to anonymity and speech will be less free, I think it is as basic as that.

I admitted that I was radically unconcerned. That I was involved in a business headquartered overseas and did not necessarily consider my conversations with foreign nationals protected by the Constitution. I was a lot more worried about McCain-Feingold which limits exactly the speech that the First Amendment seeks to protect.

How 'bout it right wingers and liberty freaks? Are we silently giving away fundamental rights because we agree with the administration?

The Immigration Rallies

Mickey Kaus did great reporting on the pro-immigration rallies in L.A. He predicted an anti-immigrant backlash and caught the LA Times papering over the large numbers of Mexican flags in the parade. In the spirit of fairness, I provide a link to this coverage.

In Kaus's spirit of fairness, he provides a link to a Marc Cooper posting that disagrees. Much as I dig the Mickster, I have to go with Cooper on this one.

I'm struck by several aspects of this story. Primarily by the way neither party can properly get a hold of this issue. Demographics and global economics are simply racing ahead of any practical political response. The Republicans are deeply divided over the issue. Even as the half-million or so were marching in the streets Saturday, President Bush was on the radio more or less endorsing the protestors' two key demands: that a legal channel be created for the immigration already happening and that some legal acknowledgement be given to the 12 million "illegals" already living here. Viva Bush!

The Democrats are less divided and generally more inclined toward reform. But can you name even two prominent national Democrats who have taken up this cause in a serious way? (One is Ted Kennedy who along with John McCain has co-authored the most sensible reform proposal currently under consideration).

The other point is that I refuse to back away from my contention that compromise is possible. I think you can increase enforcement and provide a legal channel and make most of the people happy.

In the Kausian spirit of fairness, I will include another link. Arnold Kling, whom I respect greatly, seems to minimize the economic benefits of immigration (which I claim). Kling is not against me by any stretch, but he is not quite so sure about the economic benefits:

I believe that illegal immigrants bring relatively little economic benefit and cause relatively little economic harm. I believe that there are substitutes readily available for the work done by illegal immigrants. Legal residents could do some of the work. Other labor could be replaced by capital or by alternative production techniques. By the same token, because there are many substitutes available for unskilled labor, the salvation of American workers does not lie in immigration restrictions.

Kling says "The Battle of the Borders is a distraction. While he is on my side on immigration, outsourcing, and foreign ownership of US Assets, (for all three), he thinks other issues are more worthy of effort -- on both sides.

A Defense of Chef

I'm not a Scientologist, and I don't play one on TV. But we have enjoyed some fun around here at the expense of Scientology and Mr. Isaac Hayes. Hayes, of course, left the cast of "South Park" because of a show that he felt was unfair to Scientologists. His character, Chef, explained painful truths to the children in South Park. I think Chef may be teaching us his last lesson.

Insofar as Hayes was coerced into leaving his position by powerful Scientologists, that is no doubt a problem. Rumors abound of a powerful cabal of Scientologists who "run" Hollywood. Considering all the other problems Hollywood has, I can't lose too much sleep over this.

Somebody suggested a boycott of Mission Impossible 3 (MI:3) over this. as Tom Cruise is a powerful Hollywood Scientologist. But if Mr. Hayes is acting on his own volition, I would call this a shining example of market forces and conscience. He is willing to turn down employment for his beliefs.

I'd suggest Christians consider this counterfactual: if South Park had done an episode talking about how Jesus rose from the dead, complete with the caption "Christians really believe this" and an actor had voluntarily quit the program, I would gather that actor would be hailed as a hero.

Parker and Stone will no doubt be more ruthless on Scientology, which is their right, too. I will enjoy those shows. The self-correcting market will carry on.

Review Corner

Glenn Reynolds's "An Army of Davids" was very good. I just finished it and recommend it highly.

I am astonished at how little politics is in it. (though the section on the Martian constitution was interesting) and yet the implications of the book are deeply political. On the lines of my Elevator Talk, the story is certainly individual empowerment, even a capitalist shift to Marxist desire that "workers own the means of production." I don't remember Hayek's being mentioned by name, yet it vividly describes distributed knowledge and responsibility as taking over from top-down Keynesian enterprises.

Missing from my elevator talk is my belief that these ideas are taking form outside of politics. James Surowecki (holy cow, he writes for The New Yorker), Mary Katherine Ham's description of Craig's List founder Craig Newmark's keynote address that I blogged about and "Army of Davids" all point to an individual empowerment that is happening completely outside the realm of partisan politics. This intrigues me as a common ground that I might find with non-Republicans.

Yet I don't think it's fair to forget partisan politics, even though it does give an author an opportunity to double his or her target audience. Reynolds does address the perils of government interference in nanotech and life-extending medicine. He hopes Leon Kass (his personal bete noir) does not get the opportunity to kill research that will significantly extend human life, yet he ignores the effects that lawyers can have. The lawyers have a better excuse than the luddites (we love profit motive at threesources!), but they both retard the progress of development -- especially in Medicine.

Reynolds contends that we may reach "escape velocity" in our lifetimes, postponing death while we're still alive to enjoy it. Reynolds worries about Mr. Kass, I worry about Senator Edwards and that execrable Republican trial lawyer that got the big Vioxx settlement. He thinks death will be cured in our lifetime (an unfair paraphrase, read the whole thing [heh]) . It hit me last week that if they discovered a cure for MS tomorrow, I would not live long enough to see it. By the time the FDA studied safety and efficacy, and drug firms felt confident that the tort bar could be deflected from their profits, it is not likely I'd be around to try it out. The procedures and advances in this book will be fought by luddites and lawyers, and will take more than our lifetime to reach the market.

But that's a minor quibble in a good book: thought provoking and a great read. Definitely grab this one.

Thomas Sowell

A threesources.com favorite is undoubtedly Thomas Sowell.

OpinionJournal.com has an interview with him up on their site.

Asked why classical economics--and economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Mill and Marx--continues to deserve attention, Mr. Sowell replies that "if classical economics is relevant, than Mill and Marx are relevant. Why is classical economics relevant? I guess it's relevant because there are people who study it, and if they're going to talk about it they ought to know what they're talking about, which is a requirement sometimes overlooked."

Free-market economics, a legacy of the classical school, is thought of as an old conservative doctrine. But Mr. Sowell explains that it was in fact one of the most revolutionary concepts to emerge in the history of ideas. Moreover, "the thinking of the classical economist was not only a radical break from landmark intellectual figures like Plato and Machiavelli but also from mainstream thinking to this day." The notion of a self-equilibrating system--the market economy--meant a reduced role for intellectuals and politicians, he says. "And even today many still haven't accepted that their superior wisdom might be superfluous, if not damaging."

SPAM

An emailer wants me to trade links. He says

I have found your website threesources.com by searching Yahoo for "abc news story on gary attorney for id theft as giant slayer". I think our websites has a similar theme, so I have already added your link to my website.

No way pal, maybe if you offered NATALEE HOLLOWAY PICTIURES, then I'd believe our websites has similar theme. As it is, I suspect you're a spambot.

Easter Bunny Gone!

Star Tribune

A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.

The display - a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter'' - was put up by a City Council secretary. They were not purchased with city money.

Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director, asked that the decorations be removed. Terrill said no citizen had complained to him.

The city hall was Saint Paul Minnesota's City Hall.

2008 Contenders Fiscal Rating

The National Taxpayers Union came up with a ranking of every roll call vote on fiscal and budgetary issues for the leading contenders for 2008.

The best scoring Democrat? Russ Feingold with a D.

Worst scoring Republicans had B+'s. The downside?
Their names are Allen, Brownback and Frist.

On top of the Rs are Hagel and McCain with As. (Yes, I know).
But they're also joined by Gingrich and Tancredo.

Meta Thought for the Day

Ignore ideology for a moment.

How do you know you aren't brainwashed?

Is there a question you can ask or be asked that would answer that question correctly?

"Am I a free thinker?" Obviously isn't.

"Can I have free will?"

Iraq - al Qaeda

ABCNews

A newly released pre-war Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995 after approval by Saddam Hussein<