Happy Birthday, Dear Milton...

Dallas Fed economist and policy adviser, Thomas Siems, writes a guest editorial in the WSJ today (paid link) on the one man whose greatness we all agree on around here.

Thanks to his unwavering support for free enterprise and open markets, Friedman's ideas have elevated standards of living for a rising share of the world's population. More and more people are free to choose their path in the economy, acting in their own self-interest by engaging in mutually beneficial exchange under the rule of law. More and more central banks have followed Friedman's advice and taken control of money growth; indeed, inflation has fallen around the world in developed economies, emerging markets and even among most less-developed nations. And more and more nations are engaged in trade with each other, seeing new markets as a source of greater opportunities and additional resources.

Friedman taught that economic growth comes from innovation and entrepreneurship, by individuals whose minds are open to ideas and by firms engaged in competitive markets open to trade. Friedman saw cooperation in this competition. He saw opportunity in free markets and globalization. And he saw education and the free exchange of ideas as prerequisites to advancing this freedom for the next generation.

Indeed, Friedman once said, "Freedom is not the natural state of mankind. It is a rare and wonderful achievement. It will take an understanding of what freedom is, of where the dangers to freedom come from. It will take the courage to act on that understanding if we are not only to preserve the freedoms that we have, but to realize the full potential of a truly free society."

So as we celebrate Milton Friedman's birthday and achievements, we must continue his legacy and keep making the case for freedom.

A great gift to world, 95 years ago. Hat-tip: Everyday Economist

Veto!

It is accepted that the GOP is in a heap o' trouble in the next election. I do not dispute that. As the FBI raids Sen. Ted Stevens's (R - Leavenworth) house, the GOP will have more seats to defend, the war is unpopular and the base is enervated and split on immigration and trade.

I think quite a few of these could be fixed by a public fight over the farm bill. Yes, Senator Grassley (E85 - Iowa) would likely crumble, but you've got to break some eggs to make an omelet.

The WSJ Ed Page is calling for a veto as well:

The overstuffed farm bill now waddling through Congress -- toward a possible veto by President Bush -- has attracted so much waste that everyone with a genuine interest in agriculture is feeling disheartened. Yet the bill has earned unlikely support from the labor union lobby.

Hmmm. Could this be at all related to a new and unprecedented Davis-Bacon requirement for ethanol construction? Davis-Bacon is the Depression era holdover that forces federal construction contracts to pay a "prevailing union wage" -- determined by the Department of Labor -- rather than a market wage. This anachronism was attached to the bill last week by House Democrats; a staffer tells us he's never before seen Davis-Bacon in a farm bill.

The bill is flush with subsidies to produce ethanol, the corn-based alternative fuel that still can't compete on a free-market basis. More ethanol requires more biorefineries. Democrats plan to mandate Davis-Bacon wages for workers building those refineries. With nonunion builders unable to compete on price, each new refinery could cost as much as 35% more. In many rural areas with little or no union activity, this artificially high labor cost could even make the prospect of building an ethanol plant a net loss.

Because ethanol production would be significantly more expensive under Davis-Bacon -- and because the government requires ethanol in gasoline -- ordinary Americans would foot the bill for this union handout in the form of higher prices at the gas pump. That veto is looking more attractive by the moment.

This could energize the base and differentiate the GOP from the Democrats, who will be led in 2008 by the most pro-big-government candidate since FDR. And it would be the right thing to do.

Find your inner Grover Cleveland, Mr. President!

Dem Clyburn: "real big problem for us"

... if General Petraeus's report on Iraq in September is good.

Allahpundit says

In fairness, by “us” he seems to be referring to the House Democratic leadership, not the left as a whole.

Is that really any better?

The Dems have long staked their electoral successes on a loss in Iraq. The only difference here is that they're admitting to it.

Cal!

John Karol is an independent filmmaker whose latest film is sure to please jk. He discusses his latest film in the NY Sun:

"Make a film on Calvin Coolidge?" When the idea was first suggested to me I barely could muster a yawn. As a "liberal" filmmaker, what little I knew of Coolidge came from New Deal historians who view him as a somnambulant "capitalist tool" whose presidency served only as a prelude to disaster.

"Why Coolidge?"

"Read his autobiography — 250 pages, large print."

I did, and was intrigued. I moved on to his speeches, all of which he wrote himself. A master at delegating duties, Coolidge was not one to delegate beliefs. His speeches read like lay sermons to the American public, revealing fundamental values and ideals any small "d" democrat should embrace. I was hooked.

Coolidge on taxes and farm subsidies:

Harding, Coolidge, and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon sought to kick-start the economy by reducing the top marginal tax rate to 25%. They did. Revenues increased dramatically, presaging Arthur Laffer by half a century. Both presidents ran surpluses in all their annual budgets. By the time Coolidge left office, the national debt had been cut by one-third.

New Deal historians maintain that the tax cuts of the 1920s reversed the progressive tax policies of Woodrow Wilson. Far from it. Exemptions increased so much that by 1927 almost 98% of the American people paid no income tax whatsoever. When Coolidge left office in 1929, wealthy people paid 93% of the tax load. During Wilson's last year in office they had paid only 59%.

Less remembered, and less appreciated by contemporary politicians, was Coolidge's aversion to farm subsidies. At great political risk, Coolidge twice vetoed the popular McNary-Haugen farm subsidy bill. As Coolidge put it:

"If the government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control … and those who are the most adroit get the larger part of it."

We could use a man like Coolidge in 2008.

Time may not exist

Tim Folger tells, in Discover Magazine, that as scientists slice time into smaller and smaller slices, it appears not to exist:

"One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”

No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time.

Hat-tip: Samizdata, one of whom suggests "Remember this next time you turn up late for an appointment. "

Got 'Em

Leaving 6:24 on the clock.

Hat-tip: Club for Growth

Long Tail in Accuracy

Mickey Kaus makes an interesting point. Print editors introduce ambiguity and error when they edit a piece to fit in a restricted space.

We don't kill no widows in these parts: Note to NYT's Andrew Adam Newman: That's my quote, buddy--which explains why Steven den Beste, to whom you attribute it, had those two little marks on either end.... P.S. This is the classic sort of error usually introduced by an editor trying to save space. Print editors do have to save space. But web editors don't. That's a major, unremarked virtue of blogs over newspapers when it comes to the newspaper's alleged unique selling proposition: accuracy. In fact, the need to fit copy to a limited space is a powerful error-creating machine in both dailies and magazines. Harried print editors compress, and get it wrong. Or they fool around trying to simplify attribution and get it wrong. Or they guiltlessly edit quotes within quotation marks and (by definition) get them wrong. ... In cyberspace,, if it takes one more line to get it right, you can take one more line. I haven't killed a widow in so long I've forgotten what it feels like.

People look at the "demand-side" of The Long Tail. Maybe it is the business I am in, but I am more intrigued by what enables it.

The move from scarcity to abundance is the foundation of Long Tail businesses. Wal*Mart has to fight scarcity of shelf space, as does the video store. Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix have an abundance of (virtual) shelf space and can pursue long tail strategies. The blogger likewise has an abundance of column inches.

Individual Health Care

When I saluted the President's plan to provide $15,000 tax deductions, some good objections were raised: would a large deduction encourage over insurance; and, would tax-neutrality really shift people from employer to individual insurance?

The bias toward over-insurance is a good point. Since the plan is just an inchoate idea at this point, I think it is futile to discuss specific amounts.

The efficacy of moving people toward individual policies has two engines: employers and employees. Of course, many employees will want the status quo. If you have a good plan at a stable job, it is pretty attractive. If you worry about keeping your job and concomitantly your health insurance, you may see the wisdom in a portable, self funded plan. Even more likely, employers who are tired of the hassles or unable to afford group plans have every incentive to shift this onto their employees.

The WSJ News Pages (not my crazy friends on the Ed Page) carry the story today of a Utah man who uses the Heath Reimbursement Arrangement as a tax neutral vehicle for employer contributions to personal health insurance. The article is very interesting -- let me know if you'd like me to mail it to you. They have also posted a video with an overview:

I have an HRA type account where I work. It is great, but it requires me to guess my medical expenses every year. If I go under, I do not get the tax break, if I go over, I lose the money "poof -- bye bye!"

There are some problems with the Zane Benefits approach. It is built, explicitly, on the existence of State mandates to cover the uninsurable. I highlight it as an innovation and to show the intense employer and employee advantages to shifting to an individual model. Should this take off or be expanded, we would see unknowable innovations in individual insurance that would change the game.

Good News from Iraq

An op-ed in today's New York Times entitled "A War We Just Might Win" proclaims:

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

I thought Harry Reid already said we lost?

Iraqi Sports News

The WSJ Ed Page says "An old saw has it that the best proof of a man's loyalties lies in the sports teams he roots for." As many Democrats and Republicans have called for splitting Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia nations, the editorial (paid link) uses the pride in the team's 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia to say that Iraq is not "a notional country."

It is easy to get carried away by the symbolism of a single soccer victory. Still, it was remarkable that the winning team -- known as the "Lions of the Two Rivers" -- was Iraqi in the broadest sense of the word. Younis Mahmoud, the team captain who scored the winning goal, is Turkman. Teammate Hawar Mulla Mohammed, who put the ball into position, is Kurdish. Goalkeeper Noor Sabri is Shiite Arab.

No less remarkable were the circumstances in which the team had to train and compete. Coach Jorvan Vieira of Brazil had to move the Iraqi players beyond their political differences. The team, which could not train on home turf, went from match to match in economy seats. (Their Saudi rivals traveled more comfortably.) The celebration of their previous victory, over South Korea, was cut short by a suicide bombing that killed 50.

Yet for everything they lacked, the Iraqis had a powerful if intangible asset over their more pampered rivals: a country to fight for. Perhaps their victory will give all Iraqis a taste of what they may yet achieve together.

Welcome Mister Prime Minister

AP: "It is a relationship that is founded on our common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual," Brown said in a statement. "And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in the years ahead." AP Photo as well.

Cocktail Party Question

A progressive brother-in-law encountered a conservative brother-in-law at a party (they are not related except through me). Prog asks Conz "If you could change one thing, enact one law to make things the way you wish they would be, what would you do?"

Conz answers Prog with a call for consumption based taxation. "That's a good one," thinks I. When the question is asked back, Prog tells Conz "I would investigate every provider of insurance: health, car, fire -- all of them are cheating us."

It's pretty easy for me to choose sides on that one, but it got me thinking of my response. Consumption tax may be the best answer. Education money following students and/or dismantling the teacher's unions would be up there (Prog is a teacher and proud union member, the time would have to be right for me to float that).

After all my bellyaching on Berkeley Square Blog and ThreeSources, I guess I'll have to choose the replacement of the FDA with private counterparts, based on the model of Underwriter's Laboratories, CSA, and VDE. Like the whiners at town hall meetings, that would affect me directly; that would be the difference between MS being cured in my lifetime or not.

It's Sunday, you're granted one legislative wish from jk's brother-in-law. What's your pleasure?

Federalism's Comeback

When was the last presidential election where Federalism was even on the agenda?

I don't know either.

However, it seems to have been coming back this season.

First was Mitt Romney, whose term as Massachusetts' governor taught him some lessons on federal government's mandates.

Fred! has another opinion piece out discussing the topic at length and includes his experience in the Senate.

Federalism is not an 18th century notion. Or a 19th century notion. It retains its force as a basic principle in the 21st century, because when federalism is ignored, accountability, innovation, and public confidence in government at all levels suffer.

It is as true today as it ever was: the closer a government is to its people, the more responsive it is to the felt needs of its constituencies. Too often, however, state and local leaders have to answer to federal bureaucrats first and their constituents second. When the federal government mandates a program that states and localities are forced to implement, or when a federal grant program is created to fund a specific state or community need, it blurs the lines of accountability.

Who answers to the people if a program fails? The federal government will point to state authorities carrying out the program; the states will point to the federal government, which came up with the program in the first place. And in the end no one is more confused than the people the program is supposed to be serving, who can’t even say for sure who is responsible for what. This does not argue against all federal programs but it does require the recognition that there, indeed, are trade-offs.

Back in my days in the Senate, I found myself on the short end of a couple of 99 to 1 votes. They involved issues that had been under the purview of states for over 200 years. I asked why we should federalize what rightly were state and local issues.

Read it all...

It's also coming up as part of Fred!'s speeches on the "stump."

Addressing the American Legislative Exchange Council, Thompson didn't give the typical stump speech, The Morning Call's Brian Callaway reported. Instead, he told them exactly what they wanted to hear: states need more freedom to manage their own affairs. [and that's ok. -ed]

And he clearly didn't say anything too quotable: Neither Callaway nor Philly Inquirer reporter Larry Eichel used a full quote from Thompson in their stories.

Sound boring?

Some in the audience didn't think so. "I think he scored a lot of points," Roman Buhler, a conservative activist from Virginia, told Callaway after Thompson's speech.

Bonds & the Home Run

Hmmm...

In a more enlightened age, when the risks and the costs of these medical miracles come down, we'll look back on Bonds' triumph as a victory for all of us. We'll see our booing of him as symptoms of a silly, Luddite phobia of manipulating our own bodies. I'm sure there was an equal outcry when makeup was invented. And hair dye and the Wonder bra. How our ancestors went on, I have no idea.

Bonds is not using a corked bat, which many players have, just as plenty of pitchers have scuffed balls. He has simply redesigned his body. Like so many of us have. Medicine, surgery and genetic engineering are no more an affront to God than drinking the protein shakes he didn't leave on the vine. And until we accept that, we're going to keep losing to those we call cheaters.

So next week, I'll be watching Bonds with my Lasiked eyes, free of the scar that was laser-pulsed from my nose, while I run a hand through my Rogained hair. And of course I'll be holding -- because it makes me feel better -- a beer.

I'm wondering if the pitch that goes over the fence is going to a sandbagged "i want to be the one that threw that pitch" kind of deal.

Because at least he should work for it.

Second Link

ExcaliburBlog seeks to use an Army of Davids/Wisdom of Crowds approach to military, national security, and counterinsurgency development. I doubt I will be submitting any aircraft designs, but it is an interesting read and a good source for non-mainstream views and news about the War

Hat tip to Terri, who is credited as the first link to the blog.

Review Corner

I gave it away in a previous post, but I'd highly encourage everybody to buy and read Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man.

I don't suspect that we have a lot of "New Dealers" in ThreeSources Land who idolize FDR's economic policies. We fight every day against the New Deal legacy. To look at the US under President Coolidge, where the book begins, is to see a completely different national attitude toward freedom, property rights, and the right to contract.

I recommend this book for two reasons. It has a powerful narrative that few nonfiction books can claim. Even though you generally know the ending of each section, the book is a real page turner. The characters are lit brightly through deed and anecdote. I'm no expert on the period by any means, yet I came away with a clear feel for Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt, as well as losing candidates Alf Landon and (the book's hero) Wendell Willkie. Andrew Mellon, Justice Brandies, Harold Ickes the elder, Rex Tugwell, Samuel Insull, Father Devine, Huey Long, Father Coughlin. It has a large and bright cast that comes to life.

Exciting, yes, but the story was all too real. The other thing I enjoyed was Shlaes's detailing the extent of FDR's collectivist instincts. Call me naive but I was shocked. FDR wanted state control of everything and had the Supreme Court not clipped his wings, we'd be living in a country where Senator Clinton's polity would be considered laissez faire. It is truly astonishing.

Shlaes wears her heart on her sleeve. Heroes and villains are as clear in "The Forgotten Man" as in an Ayn Rand novel. You’ve read Shlaes in the Wall Street Journal; to her and me the collectivists are villans. She doesn't impute bad motives but she shows it as a battle of individualists vs. collectivists -- and she details how FDR's policies made the depression worse and longer. It was WWII that brought the country out, and one component was that President Roosevelt needed to ameliorate his methods and political battles to create a united front to win the war.

We all celebrate FDR's war leadership, and the book ends before Pearl Harbor. His first two terms are scrutinized as are the events leading up to them.

The Publisher's Weekly review says "It's also a thoughtful, even-tempered corrective to too often unbalanced celebrations of FDR and his administration's pathbreaking policies" Me, I give it five stars.

UPDATE: I got a nice thank you from Ms. Shlaes. I'm glad I did not call her a grouch.

Edwards Drivel

John Edwards has officially lost his mind. This speech borders on conspiracy theory.

Also, I hate to trouble him with facts, but someone should tell Edwards that the top 25% of income earners pay 85% of all income taxes. Personally, I think I would classify that as more than their fair share. I wonder what he thinks they should pay. The populist nonsense rolls on...

Immigration Redux Remix

Let the record show that I didn't start it this time.

Former Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, George Melloan, has a guest editorial today (paid link). He contrasts the arresting of workers in Arizona against news that potatoes are rotting in the ground in Idaho because of insufficient labor to harvest them. It's all my arguments that have not convinced anybody around here yet:

Still, the $13 trillion American economy demands labor. Mexico has had a high birth rate (although it is rapidly slowing) and can supply the needed workers, with benefits on both sides of the border. But the U.S. political class can only talk of new barriers. Why is this such a hard equation for politicians? The longer this problem festers, the more likely it will push the Mexican polity to turn away from being an uneasy friend of the U.S. to becoming a troublesome enemy.

But there was a new twist I enjoyed:

The fundamental mistake, one that American politicians have made over and over again, is the belief that the government's police powers can overwhelm powerful market forces. Richard Nixon and the Congress attempted this feat in 1971 with wage and price controls, stalling American growth for a decade. Simpson-Mazzoli was a similar effort to strong-arm a key market -- for labor -- by threatening something that proved to be unenforceable, jail sentences for employers of illegal aliens. Luckily, that didn't shut off the labor supply from Mexico, it just drove it underground. Estimates are that there at least 12 million illegals in the U.S. and that may be far lower than the actual number.

Nixon wage and price controls. Blanket government interference in opposition to market forces. Why not institute a guest worker program instead of a fence?

My friend Robert Halbrook, a retired lawyer living in Tucson, Ariz., is aware that politics are not always logical or even rational, but offers a logical solution nonetheless: Legislators must do away with all the threats and penalties that drive labor and its employers underground. It must be made possible for illegal workers to achieve legal status without fear. That way Mexicans can come to the U.S. to fill jobs and go home safe in the knowledge that when their work is demanded they will be able to come back again. Many will go back with skills learned in the U.S., enabling them to earn a living at home. Most, he believes, do not crave U.S. citizenship. Why should they want to cope with a new language and culture, if they can return home without penalty? They just want to feed their families and try to move up the economic ladder.

Is it too much to ask of Congress that it employ some of this clear logic? Apparently so, judging from the paralysis in Washington.

Immigration Redux

Admitting you have a problem is usually the first step.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he's floating a plan that would grant legal status to the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants, but offer no path to citizenship.

"It might be the equivalent of a green card," Specter said Thursday. "The main thrust is to bring the 12 million out of the shadows," and eliminate the fear of arrest or deportation.

Specter said conservatives who last month derailed a comprehensive immigration bill might accept his plan because it would not allow the 12 million to seek citizenship status.

"We litigated amnesty and that lost," Specter said.

Amnesty? Did he say Amnesty? I thought the previous bill specifically was not amnesty!

Fred! & the Hazelton Decision

Fred Thompson is the first non-Presidential candidate with an exploratory committee to comment on the Hazelton decision.

Let’s be clear about what’s going on here. No matter what some groups may be trying to do to muddy the water and portray Hazleton’s law as something playing to an uglier agenda, this law is not about legal immigration. This law is about dealing with the illegal immigration problem in Hazleton. The town’s mayor and city officials made this clear from the beginning, and it seems like they took a common sense approach.

Our constitutional system allows cities to take reasonable steps to protect their citizens. When the federal government is unwilling to enforce immigration laws effectively, then cities need to be able to act, and take reasonable steps to secure their citizens from the social, financial, and criminal costs of illegal immigration.

No doubt, this ruling will be appealed. And it should be.

The decision sets up the situation where a city or state wants a law enforced but federal law prohibits it, leaving it to the federal government, who don't want to enforce it.

What a Grouch

Jonathan V. Last is a great blogger at Galley Slaves, a superb journalist from the Weekly Standard, and is technically my "sire," as I started watching Buffy mostly on his recommendation.

I was stunned to read his "Casual" column in last week's Weekly Standard (paid link). The casual column is a short piece that runs right after the Masthead and gives writers a chance to cover a light topic or personal reflection. They're frequently fun and a few have stuck with me.

Last's is the first one that has angered me: I think he is at least a few years younger than me, but he thought it was time for a curmudgeonly old fart column:

As if that weren't dispiriting enough, my friend Phillip Longman tells me that progress is actually slowing down. Between 1910 and 1960, indoor plumbing, electricity, and automobiles became common. Jet airplanes were invented, and a space program was begun that in a few short years would put a man on the moon. Nuclear power, plastics, lasers, and computers--the stuff of science fiction in 1910--all had been developed by 1960.

But from 1960 to 2007, little changed. With the exception of the Internet, on which the jury is still out, most of the advances of the last 50 years are merely improvements on existing technology. Previous generations conquered disease, went into space, and split the atom. We came up with the iPhone.

Okay, the Internet crack is a joke. Last is a professional journalist and is uneasy with the blogger/"Army of Davids" culture. Fine.

Galley Slaves has three political writers who do no politics. They discuss Philadelphia sports, pop culture, video games, &c. Last, David Skinner, and Victorino Matus are modern young men and his disregarding the advances of the last 47 years is out of character. To be fair, he is complaining that the futurist visions of his youth have not panned out. There's certainly truth to that.” Where once they dreamed of advanced food pills, we're shopping for heirloom tomatoes at farmers' markets."

To claim the computer was created in 1960 and that his xBox is just derivative achievement is incomprehensible. That a professional journalist doesn't see the value of Google® or cell phones or that the sports fan doesn't mention satellite or HiDef Plasma televisions is dishonest.

Laugh at the iPhone all you want, but take it back to 1965 and show it to a kid who has a black, rotary phone in his home and a color TV in the family room if he is very lucky. I think he'd be pretty impressed. Take the back off and show it to his engineer Dad.

Heirloom tomatoes? That's a sign of wealth.

In the end, that's what gets me. He can make fun of the Internet or the iPhone if he wants, but his derision carries him down the Paul Krugman path of denying that our freedom and innovation have created wealth, better lives, and a foundation for even more incredible achievement.

UPDATE: Ah yes, one advance is the search engine, where anyone you call "a grouch" on the Internet can find you. I received a kind email from JVL, who stands by his point and hopes I am enyoing the Season 8 comic books.

I Can't Even Cancel

Sadly, I let my TNR digital subscription lapse a few months ago. They booted the price up a bit and I was going back and forth whether I would renew. It has lost some of its luster after Peter Beinart left, and the loonies are getting many more column inches than they used to.

Now that "Scott Thomas" has outed himself, I wish my subscription were current. I would love to cancel in high dudgeon. We have not discussed it at ThreeSources, but I bet you've all followed the story. The pseudonymous Thomas wrote "anecdotal diaries" of life in Iraq as an American soldier. In his stories, he and his compatriots disrespected Iraqis and acted dishonorably and unprofessionally. He claimed that he himself had cruelly insulted a woman who had been disfigured by an IED. His friends destroyed infrastructure in their Bradley fighting vehicles and always swerved to kill dogs. He didn't get to "Gengis Khan," but it was only a matter of time.

Now that many military bloggers have disputed his tales, he takes to the TNR blog to out himself and defend his fellow soldiers against charges that they are -- it gets pretty weird here -- charges that they are honorable and decent. It seems those who say the military is not loaded with psychopaths and sadists are chickenhawks.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

We are too psychotic sadists, dammit! How dare you question my lack of patriotism!

Beauchamp/Thomas is a Private and he may have actually done or seen some of the unprofessional incidents he describes, though I suspect some serious hyperbole. Most telling is that TNR -- the least moonbatty of Democratic mags -- chooses to represent our brave men and women by this cowardly example. The commenters on The Plank are all rallying around Beauchamp and ridiculing those who have dared question his perfidy.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt and Dean Barnett have covered this well. Hugh links to a Wikipedia entry on TNR "controversies."

Back to the Caves

Samizdat Jonathan Pearce makes a good point about the "buy local" movement. In addition to its being chosen poverty, localized weather phenomena can threaten food supplies. The current UK floods have devastated crops in East Anglia.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the terrible summer of 1845 led to the Irish famine. In centuries past, bad weather was not just destructive in some ways but it also meant people starved in their millions. That is unlikely to happen now. And one reason for that is that we are no longer reliant on home-grown food. Food production is not only much greater because of modern techniques, drainage, use of fertilisers and machinery, but also because the 60m souls on this sodden island have access to a global market for food.

John Fund, meanwhile, provides the perfect segue. In the Political Diary today, he writes "In case You've Been Missing Teresa Heinz..."

The outspoken Elizabeth Edwards has made headlines by suggesting Hillary Clinton isn't standing up for women sufficiently. She also antagonized many potential crossover voters by calling her gun-owning North Carolina Republican neighbors "scary." Now she is touting her belief that Americans should eat only locally-grown fruit to reduce the "carbon footprint" caused by transporting fruit across state and national boundaries.

"We've been moving back to 'buy local,'" Mrs. Edwards said in South Carolina this week, in support of a trade policy she says would allow Americans to keep their apples but require them to give up other cherished items in the fight against global warming. "I live in North Carolina. I'll probably never eat a tangerine again," she said.

But her husband isn't entirely sure his wife's views should become official campaign policy. According to Politico.com, John Edwards at the same event called for unspecified "sacrifice" to combat global warming, but he was caught up short afterward when asked if he endorsed his wife's, well, fruity views.

Mr. Edwards went out of his way twice to avoid the question, but when finally cornered, he claimed he hadn't made up his mind. "Would I add to the price of food? I'd have to think about that," he said. Of course, there's no way to reduce energy consumption without adding to the price of everything -- which is why most candidate talk about "fighting global warming" is empty. But at least there's one politician in the Edwards family who knows enough to avoid an electoral trapdoor opening under his feet.

I think I'll avoid the "Buy Local" craze. Not only am I philosophically opposed, I really don't fancy the taste of hay.

Tryin' to Reason with Hurricane Season

I was a Jimmy Buffet fan before I discovered jazz. That is one of his many funny song titles.

Germaine today. WSI Corp., a private forecasting entity, was reported to be backing off its predictions for 2007. I meant to post but saw that Terri had beat me to it.

Today, DAWG-deniers' patron saint Dr. William Gray is a little less sanguine. He still looks for an active season with an above average number of major storms. Yet Gray is trying to get out front of the news coverage and dissever links to global warming.

Some scientists, journalists and activists see a direct link between the post-1995 upswing in Atlantic hurricanes and global warming brought on by human-induced greenhouse gas increases. This belief, however, is unsupported by long-term Atlantic and global observations.

Consider, for example, the intensity of U.S. land-falling hurricanes over time -- keeping in mind that the periods must be long enough to reveal long-term trends. During the most recent 50-year period, 1957 to 2006, 83 hurricanes hit the United States, 34 of them major. In contrast, during the 50-year period from 1900 to 1949, 101 hurricanes (22% more) made U.S. landfall, including 39 (or 15% more) major hurricanes.

The hypothesis that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the number of hurricanes fails by an even wider margin when we compare two other multi-decade periods: 1925-1965 and 1966-2006. In the 41 years from 1925-1965, there were 39 U.S. land-falling major hurricanes. In the 1966-2006 period there were 22 such storms -- only 56% as many. Even though global mean temperatures have risen by an estimated 0.4 Celsius and CO2 by 20%, the number of major hurricanes hitting the U.S. declined.

He offers another hypothesis:

My Colorado State University colleagues and I attribute the increase in hurricane activity to the speed-up of water circulating in the Atlantic Ocean. This circulation began to strengthen in 1995 -- at exactly the same time that Atlantic hurricane activity showed a large upswing.

Here's how it works. Though most people don't realize it, the Atlantic Ocean is land-locked except on its far southern boundary. Due to significantly higher amounts of surface evaporation than precipitation, the Atlantic has the highest salinity of any of the global oceans. Saline water has a higher density than does fresh water. The Atlantic's higher salinity causes it to have a continuous northward flow of upper-ocean water that moves into the Atlantic's polar regions, where it cools and sinks due to its high density. After sinking to deep levels, the water then moves southward, and returns to the Atlantic's southern fringes, where it mixes again. This south-to-north upper-level water motion, and compensating north-to-south deep-level water motion, is called the thermohaline circulation (THC).

The strength of the Atlantic's THC shows distinct variations over time, due to naturally occurring salinity variations. When the THC is strong, the upper-ocean water becomes warmer than normal; atmospheric circulation changes occur; and more hurricanes form. The opposite occurs when the THC is weaker than average.

Since 1995, the Atlantic's THC has been significantly stronger than average. It was also stronger than average during the 1940s to early 1960s -- another period with a spike in major hurricane activity. It was distinctly weaker than average in the two quarter-century periods of 1970-1994 and 1900-1925, when there was less hurricane activity.

Dr. Popper would suggest that both theories are exposed to rigorous academic discussion and experimentation. But Dr. Gray points out that it might not work that way.

The warming theorists -- most of whom, no doubt, earnestly believe that human activity has triggered nature's wrath -- have the ears of the news media. But there is another plausible explanation, supported by decades of physical observation. The spate of recent destructive hurricanes may have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases and climate change, and everything to do with the Atlantic Ocean's currents.

But that would reinstate Copernicus and the heliocentric universe. And many men cannot accept that the 'verse does not revolve around us.

Patton '07

(tip to Patrick Ruffini)

Again, Bullwinkle?

That Special Prosecutor trick never works!

But it would be great for l’Affaire Gonzales. AP:

WASHINGTON - Angry senators suggested a special prosecutor should investigate misconduct at the Justice Department, accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday of deceit on the prosecutor firings and President Bush's eavesdropping program.

I choked when I heard Sen. Arlen Specter (RINO - PA) suggesting it. It's a bad idea to begin with (cf Fitzgerald, Starr), but especially worrisome when there has been no crime.

Rudy!

An LATimes editorial calls Mayor Giuliani The Federalist Candidate

Giuliani argues that the best way to reduce tension about social issues is to allow states, rather than the federal government, to take the lead in responding to them. That would allow socially conservative and liberal states to each set rules that reflect the prevailing values inside their borders. Rather than perpetual combat in Washington, he insists, the nation could reach a new equilibrium as different states gravitated to different solutions.

In an interview last week, Giuliani said the key to resolving cultural arguments "where our society on a national level ends up being very divided" is to apply the "principle of federalism." Questions on topics such as gun control, gay rights or aspects of abortion, he continued, "are issues that I think the founding fathers would say should be consigned to state and local governments, experimenting, deciding, having different views, and the federal government having a more limited role."

I'm glad to hear Federalism qua Federalism get good press. The trouble, highlighted in this article, is that everybody has an issue that he or she feels supersedes Federalism. For Hizzoner, sadly, that is gun control. I would argue that the 2nd Amendment makes gun rights supersede Federalism.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

Why Government Can't Succeed.

I read hb's charming post on the success of private efforts to help Katrina victims, complete with his admonition that "the inability to provide ample support is not confined to the administration, but rather to government itself."

Shortly after that, I read this editorial, Union Doozy, in the Wall Street Journal. The contrast is explicit. The State of Indiana contracts with private companies to deliver state welfare services, using the efficiency of the private sector. Unfortunately for AFSCME, the program is a mad success and they have to get their Democratic lapdogs in the 110th Congress to overrule the State law (so much for laboratories of democracy, Justice Brandeis!)

Indiana's goal is to deliver welfare benefits more efficiently to those who qualify for them. Its reform aims to save $500 million over 10 years by moving some 1,400 government jobs to the private sector -- which AFSCME likes to call "domestic outsourcing." But while this could mean fewer dues-paying union members, the state contract with IBM specifically requires that all current employees be offered work on the new system. And what do you know? More than 99% chose the private sector. Adding call centers and online resources will also help reduce welfare fraud: In December, a federal-state investigation found more than 1,000 ineligible drug felons collecting welfare in Marion County alone.

But no effort to make government more accountable goes unpunished. Under the House provision, the Hoosier state would be forced to cancel the $1.16 billion 10-year deal with IBM, while taxpayers would have to shoulder the more than $100 million in additional costs to bring the operation back into the bureaucracy. Worse, the money to make up the shortfall would likely come out of the same purse that's been funding an increasing number of child-welfare caseworkers -- which was another goal of reform.

There are a hundred good arguments against government running things, but the best to me is the Hayekian preference for distributed control and knowledge. Allowing a few Senators to have veto privileges over innovation will guarantee inefficiency every time.

The program is likely safe for now, but won't be under a Democratic administration. And why would the next IBM bother to get involved with such a program?

Overture, cut the lights!

Blog brother AlexC's PA Water Cooler got a nice writeup from Politco.com. Well done!

Two Republicans in Jail

I'll suspend my pragmatism to clean out the stables. The Wall Street Journal news pages report: (paid link)

Rep. Don Young of Alaska, the former chairman of the House Transportation Committee, now is the subject of a continuing criminal inquiry involving possible political favors for a company in Alaska, people close to the case said. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the powerful former chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the longest-serving Senate Republican, is also now under criminal investigation, these people said.

I would trade a Senate seat and a House seat to get rid of those two. You can throw Rep. Jerry Lewis of California in their cell as well.

Summer Jobs in New Orleans

The Times-Picayune reports:

They could just as easily do what young people typically do during their precious summer free time: work various odd or part-time jobs, lounge around a beach or do nothing at all.

But for thousands of young people from across the country - in a few cases, other countries - this summer has been different.

Despite tales of thick, suffocating summer heat and entire neighborhoods still scarred with floodlines and wrecked seemingly beyond repair, young people continue to flock to New Orleans. They come not to revel in the neon glow of Bourbon Street, but to continue the cleanup nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Many of the young volunteers have never been to the city and team up with local organizations, such as the well-established Catholic Charities or the newer Beacon of Hope Resource Center, to fill the voids in neighborhoods where the need for help remains great.

On a recent afternoon, a group of high school students from Westlake, a town just outside Lake Charles, spent part of their day in Mid-City, hand scraping old paint from the porch of a white shotgun double and applying a fresh coat to the inside walls. Even though the house is raised about 3 feet, a waterline remains about 2 feet high on the screen door.

"Something as simple as a fresh coat of paint can do so much," said Sam Turner, 16, who was in town to work with other young members of his church, First Baptist Church of Westlake.

The homeowner, Chareen Black, 41, said the volunteers have made a major contribution.

"Imagine without the volunteers - the house would still be in disarray, and I can't do it myself," said Black, who was welcoming a second group of volunteers to her home. "It's been a big help, a huge blessing."

Those who criticized FEMA and Bush in the same breath fail to realize that the inability to provide ample support is not confined to the administration, but rather to government itself. This story is free of the rhetoric and is a great example of human compassion and the free market.

Dear Mister Taranto:

I'm a big fan of Best of the Web. But, this one time, I think you missed:

How'd They Know Which Was Which?
"Shark Attacks Lawyer Off Oahu"--headline, Seattle Times, July 22

I think the correct meta-headline is:
"Whatever Happened to Professional Courtesy?"

Cheers,
jk

The Dems Debate

David Weigel live-blogged the Democratic Party debate for reason. Here are some highlights:

7:10: Clinton abandons the word liberal, which "used to mean" you cared about the rights of the individual "back in the 19th and early 20th century." Hillary Clinton: Not A Hayekian! In case you were asking.

[...]

7:13: Chuck Hagel shoots his TV.

[...]

7:20: Dodd: Preparations for Katrina "should have been done ahead of time." Good thing you didn't vote to fold FEMA into the DHS, huh, Chris? I mean... uhm...

[...]

7:23: "I'm not running because I'm a woman." No, you're running because you're married to Bill Clinton.

7:24: "When I'm inaugurated it'll send a great message to little girls and boys around the world." That the U.S. is a two-family constitutional monarchy?

[...]

7:28: Kucinich and Dodd would let gays marry. They'll also legalize unicorns. Neither of them will win, everybody.

[...]

7:41: Joe Biden: "I'm so tired of this." The quote of the night. Also, has anyone not been to the Darfur refugee camp?

7:43: Good for Anderson Cooper, nailing down Hillary Clinton on whether she'd send troops to Darfur. She wouldn't, but it sounds like the reason is that they're in Iraq... and they're going to, *cough*, be there a while, probably.

[...]

7:50: I never feel so pessimistic about Iraq as when I hear Democrats talk about how they'll end it.

[...]

7:58: John Edwards, always handy with the chest-pounding answers to the questions no one asked.

There's more here.

More of the same from the Dems. Hillary thinks she's already won (she even said, "when I am inaugurated..."), Edwards keeps telling the same story to sell his points on several different issues, and Gravel is still pounding the podium to get us out of Vietnam.

Perhaps the greatest line was when Kucinich mentioned how no one was standing to the left of him and CNN's Anderson Cooper replied, "I don't think we could find anyone to the left of you."

Bush's Health Care Plan

I guess I don't make enough enemies around here with my GOPragmatism®, I had to go out looking for trouble on other blogs.

Josh Hendrickson at The Everyday Economist is unimpressed with the President's Health Care plan, as expressed today in a WSJ editorial by L. Ron. Allan Hubbard. Hubbard makes a great case for the importance of keeping what's good about American care while trying to repair what is bad.

The problem is straightforward: Under today's tax code, people who are fortunate enough to get health insurance through their jobs get a big tax break -- but those who have to buy coverage on their own get no tax break at all. That is not fair, and it is not wise. It makes it impossible for millions of Americans who work for small businesses or who are self-employed to afford health insurance. And it drives up the cost of coverage for us all.

So President Bush has proposed to level the playing field for health insurance. Under his plan, every family with private health coverage would receive a standard tax deduction of $15,000 -- no matter where they get their health insurance. This deduction would encourage more people to buy their own health insurance, just like the mortgage interest deduction encourages more people to buy their own homes. Some have suggested that a flat tax credit could also achieve the president's goal of leveling the playing field, and he has signaled that he would be open to that option.

I like this plan as a bold step to break the country's dependence on employer-provided care. If that can be broken, a lot of other reforms are enabled. People will demand interstate insurance and other innovations.

Hendrickson provides a generous excerpt, salutes the good parts, then questions both the ability of helping those too poor to buy insurance with a 15,000 deduction, and:

We need to eliminate all tax deductions and credits (whether personal or corporate) and move toward an insurance policy that is much more similar to auto insurance than modern health insurance. Such a plan would bring price back into the equation and limit the administrative costs of HMOs and other managed care organizations. The plan proposed by Hubbard essentially tries — rather unsuccessfully — to give everyone the incentive to over-insure.

I think the President is tilting at windmills here, but I would like to see the GOP take this up as a realistic alternative to HillaryCare. Providing tax-neutrality between employer funded and self funded insurance would be huge. That is the stumbling block that prevents the innovations from auto insurance from arriving in health insurance.

As I commented there, I'd be all for the government getting entirely out of the equation. But this would be an improvement very much worth fighting for.

No War but the Price War

I love these things.

A price war with the Hess station across the intersection at Union Boulevard and Airport Road had seen gas prices down more than a dollar a gallon.

The Wawa and Hess stations were charging $1.94 for a gallon of regular. That was $1.02 below the national average of $2.96, a savings that had long lines of cars waiting to fill up.

So many people arrived, that the crowding became an inconvenience for the very food and beverage customers the low gasoline prices were intended to draw into the stores.

The margins on pump gas are so incredibly low (pennies per gallon to the retailer) that the majority of the station's profit is generated from burnt coffee and old hot dogs.

But losing a buck a gallon doesn't seem like it could go on very long.

Senator Biden on Your 2nd Amendment Rights

I missed the Dem debate last night. If they did not have one every three days...

Here is the Biden clip that everybody is talking about.



I don't know, that will play to his base well enough and I don't think it hurts his chances of becoming our next president in a statistically meaningful way. I was more intrigued by Gov. Richardson: It's not about gun rights, it's really about free child care!

Iraq '09

How come when some CIA functionary gets "outed" by a person in the Bush administration it's a scandal of epic proportions, but when a classified plan gets "outed" it's front page news?

While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. “Sustainable security” is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.

Coincidentally enough, I watched Dr Strangelove last night. First time in a very long time.

One exchange really made me laugh.

Regarding "the Doomsday Machine" which the Soviets have built.

President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers): But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you build such a thing?

Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in [listed with increasing disgust] the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.

Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.

"The New York Times, blabbing since at least 1963."

AT&T Up; Apple Down

You have to appreciate those who can play the game. Wall Street is docking Apple stock because the iPhone missed expectations. AT&T, however, got a nice boost on the last two days of its quarter.

AT&T's Profit Rises On Wireless Growth (Paid link)

AT&T Inc., reported a 61% rise in net income amid recent acquisitions and said it activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers the last two days of the quarter, 40% of whom were new AT&T Wireless customers.

AT&T has an exclusive deal with Apple Inc. to sell the iPhone in the U.S., and it hit the market June 29. Expectations for the device were high and the initial results fell short of Wall Street's forecasts. Shares of Apple, which is due to report quarterly results on Wednesday, fell as much as 5% on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Of course, incredible expectations were priced into the Apple shares already. But it's funny to watch the media coverage and think that the iPhone introduction missed expectations.

Sheehan: Libertarian?

Just in case the Democrats weren't entirely upset with Cindy Sheehan for failing to walk the party line, she decided to write this in the San Francisco Chronicle:

I was a lifelong Democrat only because the choices were limited. The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century, except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal income taxes, not one but two World Wars, Japanese concentration camps, and not one but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan -- all brought to us via the Democrats.

The emphasis is mine. As Don Luskin asks, "Is she some kind of libertarian? In this, she's sounding a lot like Ron Paul."

Potter Mainia

I will accept the silence to my "Any Potter Heads In ThreeSources Land?" as an answer.

Today, Greg Mankiw confesses to being a Potter Head. Yet there is a sentimental attachment of having read them aloud to his son. That adds social points to the series that I have not questioned, but it subtracts literary points that I do. Mankiw links to Megan McArdle who is not onboard. She questions the economics:

There are two ways, I think, that one can present magic: as something that can be done, but only at a price; or as a mysterious force that is poorly understood. So in Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope, women who perform magic must pay the price in blood, their own or that of others.

Those prices provide the scarcity needed to drive the plot forward. In the Narnia books and the Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, magical power has no obvious cost. But we don't need to understand the costs of magic, because the main characters can't perform it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a deus ex machina in a story; your average fiction writer does not need to explain the operation of the law of gravity, or provide a back story for running out of gas at an (in)convenient moment.

But there have to be generally accepted rules. Characters can't get out of the predicament the author is sick of by having the car suddenly start running on sand. Similarly, if your characters will be using magic, they must do so by some generally believable system.

Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary.

I find it hard to rail against the idea of work aimed at younger people. I consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel, to be without question the greatest fictional television programs of all time.

I can name you a few internal inconsistencies from Buffy, as well. But that is the point. After having watched all twelve seasons many times, I can recite a handful of plot integrity issues because they stand out. To match economics speak and Buffy, there is always a scarcity of magic or strength.

I liked the McArdle piece and am going to table my return.

Four in the Morning

I have seen so many excellent TEDTalks. Today, Don Luskin links to Rives's take on oh-four-hundred. It's entertaining and effectively needles conspiracy theories. Cost you about nine minutes.

Happy Birthday

Charisma Carpenter (July 23, 1970) Picture from www.charisma-carpenter.com/

What Friedman Wrought

The one personality that can unite fractious ThreeSourcers is Milton Friedman. Ideas that can unite are that ideas matter and people matter. To celebrate all three, I offer this editorial from Wall Street Journal's Opinion Europe: "Ask Albania." (Paid link)

For a lesson in pro-growth tax policy, may we suggest gazing east, to Albania. This small Balkan country is about to halve its personal income-tax rate, starting August 1, to a flat 10%. The corporate rate is slated to drop to 10% in early 2008.

Albania's flat tax is the latest sally in the intramural tax competition fueling growth in the former communist bloc. It began with Estonia in 1994 -- then-Prime Minister Mart Laar had read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" -- and has since extended to a dozen nations.

Political leaders, such as Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, are aware of the example they're setting. When Parliament approved the most recent tax cut -- made in response to lowered rates in neighboring Macedonia -- Mr. Berisha cheered that "the fiscal revolution" will proceed even "faster than forecasted."

Indeed it may: The Czech government has announced that a flat 15% tax next year is "a certainty." And Montenegro plans to reduce both income and corporate taxes to a flat 9% by 2010.

Bad JuJu

Fred Barnes expressed concern about two data:

1) Democrats Lead By $100 Million In Money Race (Paid link)

WASHINGTON -- With more than a year to go before the 2008 elections, Democratic candidates have raised $100 million more in campaign contributions than Republicans, putting them on track to win the money race for the White House and Congress for the first time since the government began detailed accounting of campaign fund raising three decades ago.

Democrats have taken the lead by exploiting widespread disapproval of President Bush and the Iraq war to develop a more robust online network of new, small donors, as well as to gain traction with deep-pocketed business contributors.

And, 2) Poll: 'None of the above' leads GOP field

More Republicans have become apathetic about their options over the past month.

A hefty 23 percent can't or won't say which candidate they would back, a jump from the 14 percent who took a pass in June.

Barnes put these two facts together and doesn't like the outcome. I saw Senator Even Bayh on FOX News Sunday and thought: there's the next Vice President of the United States. Wonder if there's an intrade contract for that.

Mitt!

Even if it is just rhetoric, you have to love the comments Mitt Romney recently made in New Hampshire:

"Hillary Clinton just gave a speech the other day about her view on the economy. She said we have been an on-your-own society. She said it's time to get rid of that and replace that with shared responsibility and we're-in-it-together society," Romney told the crowd. "That's out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx."

Drilling Ordered to Stop

Newsday/AP

A federal appeals court has ordered Shell Oil to stop its exploratory drilling program off the north coast of Alaska at least until a hearing in August.

The order, issued Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, comes after the federal Minerals Management Service in February approved Shell's offshore exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea.

"Vessels currently located in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas shall cease all operations performed in furtherance of that program, but need not depart the area," the order said.

Opponents contend that the Minerals Management Service approved Shell's plan without fully considering that a large spill would harm marine mammals, including bowhead and beluga whales. They say polar bears could also be harmed, and they question whether cleaning up a sizable spill would even be possible in the icy waters.

Oil is at $75 per barrel in case you missed it.