Tom Rants

• I haven't ranted much lately. Most of what I've come up with is these Rantlets with (relatively) short thoughts on three or four current topics. Seems like every time I get a good head of steam built up to do a full fledged rant it's as I'm driving to Joplin, with 6 hours before I turn around and drive the half hour back. Inevitably I turn the radio over to the Dennis Miller show and the King of the Rant proceeds to thoroughly assault the topic in a way that would make my own rant anticlimactic, to me at least. And I'm sorry, Dear Reader, but if the ranting isn't satisfying to me, I have to work under the assumption that it will be even worse for you.
• The Ivy League Conservative brings up the topic of Mexican litterbugs, in a post that is «NOT about illegal immigration.» It seems that the Mexicans running across the desert southwest, and the smugglers bringing them across, just dump their garbage as they go and the US taxpayer pays to clean it up. Sounds to me like another argument in favor of massively expanded LEGAL immigration, to encourage people to cross at checkpoints complete with trash cans and maybe even recycling bins. Funny, but with only a couple of exceptions (language and social services) every problem the the anti-immigrant crowd cite would be solved INSTANTLY by expanding legal immigration and shooting at whatever crosses the border illegally. Of course, that might still involve some cleanup. I just hope those Mexican's that dumped that garbage don't get it in their head to join the Army or they may end up with Arlo Guthrie in Group W:
  

  where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
  committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
  looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
  rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
  they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
  bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
  father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
  'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
  and said, «Kid, whad'ya get?» I said, «I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
  $50 and pick up the garbage.» He said, «What were you arrested for, kid?»
  And I said, «Littering.» And they all moved away from me on the bench
  there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
  said, «And creating a nuisance.» And they all came back, shook my hand,
  and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
  father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
  bench.
• I got two emails in the last two days that were kind of serendipitous. The first was from a GOP activist worried that we Bilderberg types faithful Republicans get out the vote at the Missouri GOP convention, as «Libertarians...will try [to influnce] the State Convention.» (This was related to the Ron Paul delegate effort, I ranted about previously.) The second email was from Bob Barr, former Bilderberger Republican turned Libertarian, asking for support for his Exploratory Committee and contained this quote from Ronald Wilson Reagan, Republican hero:
  

  If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.

  I used that in my signature replying to the first letter.

  Fortunately any possibility that I might throw away my effort, money or vote on Bob Barr's effort was foreclosed by this bit later in the letter comparing Hillbama and McCain:

  Do they have any real intention of securing our border to stem the flow of millions of illegal aliens into this nation? NO.

  Wow. Pick one of the few areas where John McCain has a decidedly pro-liberty stance, in line with Reagan's conservative philosophy and policy, in agreement with the policy ideas of the current leader of the GOP, in line with the 2000 primary campaign pledges of George W. Bush (that were one of the reasons I supported him) and expect me to bail out based on that. Sorry Bob. Best of luck with getting that Libertarian nomination - may it be precisely as successful as any previous Libertarian Presidential campaign effort.

• Another shining example of the superiority of the «professional media.» The Washington Post quotes and let's slide this misrepresentation (or error) by Jennifer Hoelzer, a spokesperson for Oregon Senator Ron Wyden:
  

  The Geneva Convention in most cases is the only shield that Americans have when they are captured overseas,

  Sorry, Jennifer and WaPo, you fail. Retake the class. The only shield Americans have in most cases is the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The last time an American was captured as a POW by a Geneva Convention signatory *may* have been during the first Gulf War. I'm not aware of any recent capture of a US civilian during time of war (where the 4th Geneva Convention would apply). US citizens are arrested in foreign countries signatory to the Vienna Convention on a fairly regular basis, I'd guess at least several thousand times more often than the other cases. (I'm not taking a position on the treatment of prisoners by the CIA here - Republican primary voters have spoken, we don't believe in waterboarding anymore and President Bush needs to coordinate with President-elect McCain on this. I'm just pointing out a serious error by the media-government complex.)
  Administration Says Particulars May Trump Geneva Protections

• Turns out John McCain was right on ethanol back when the issue was losing him the Iowa caucus. Corn, used to produce ethanol in the US, has hit record prices. Rice, a close substitute, has hit record prices and experienced supply disruptions and hoarding. And it turns out that making ethanol from corn (at least with current methods of growing the corn, hauling the corn and making the ethanol) probably uses more oil than it saves and produces more greenhouse gases than using gasoline. It also turns out that ethanol and biodiesel are the least water efficient energy sources on a gallons per BTU basis. Natural gas and coal gasification (aka «clean coal») are the most water efficient.

  The issue here isn't that alternative sources of energy are a bad idea, or even that government shouldn't have any role in promoting R & D, but that decisions made by centralized bureaucracies hostile to markets and the individual creativity they unleash are a bad idea. I've written before and I'm sure I'll write again that other than freeing up markets to produce more the only energy policy we need is a tax credit (or, if the income tax were to disappear, a direct subsidy) on domestic production that applies equally to conventional and alternative sources.

• And on the issue of Rice, ABC News is asking this question about a past President and the next Vice President:
  

  Who is telling the truth, Jimmy Carter or Condoleezza Rice?

  I'm not sure the question really matters. Unless the State Department asked Carter to go to the Middle East, he didn't have any business negotiating with Hamas. He's not President anymore. The American people tossed him out of office 28 years ago. The State Department didn't need to explicitly tell him not to act as if he was any more authorized than any other private citizen. When all the State Department has to say is «We didn't authorize it» and they say «We counseled against it,» I'm going with the State Department telling the truth and Carter, at best, misunderstanding.

• For those who may not read comments, Colin Williams of RejectSociety.com shared this yesterday:
  

  'We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.
  On one side, you have a lawyer who is married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a lawyer.
  On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a blonde with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.
  Is there a contest here?'

  And one of the lawyers was even disbarred.

In the latest Capital Commerce, James Pethokoukis questions whether supply siders will support the McCain tax plan's inclusion of a doubling of the dependent exemption, which

creates «tax relief» instead of new incentives for working, saving, and investing...[and] would mean even fewer people paying any income taxes at all—already more than 50 million households pay none—further unbalancing the tax code and breaking the connection between personal income taxes and government spending for more folks.

I commented:

Supply siders who don't like the expanded exemption should think twice. Anything that creates or expands the political will to support tax cuts is supply side politics, if not directly supply side economics.

Like Milton Friedman, I never met a tax cut I didn't like. In 1988 as a young Libertarian-leaning Republican, I had a meeting during the GOP Congressional primary in Missouri's 7th District with Congressman (then candidate) Mel Hancock. He told me that the best way to attack a too powerful government was to cut the purse strings. Of course, when marginal rates are still well on the right side of the Laffer Curve, that's hard to do with marginal rate cuts that only end up increasing revenues. From a supply side perspective, McCain's non-supply side tax cuts should be seen as part of a package that creates the political will to drive the entire package (by electing the man pushing it). From the perspective of expanding liberty, the very reason government's are instituted among men in the first place, the pro-growth, supply side effects of the total package are at best a bonus that could help reduce the debt and lead to more tax cuts in the future.

When it comes to restoring the country to a less regulated, less taxed condition, a choice for any politician is going to involve compromise. Even the puritanical zeal of the Libertarian Party has been watered down by National Committee member (and now Presidential candidate) Bob Barr who, until he apparently walked into a room filled with the wrong kind of smoke at a Libertarian event, was very anti-liberty on a number of issues. And Mike Gravel? Seriously? (Barr has always been a staunch defender of civil liberties and economic freedom, so the compromise makes sense, though it will be surprising if the anarchist contingent that can barely bring itself to vote in the first place goes along.)

For those of us willing to compromise enough to actually change the government instead of belonging to a meaningless debating society, McCain is the right choice. The central policy proposals of his campaign are a package of pro-growth, pro-freedom tax cuts, a package of spending cuts that will reduce federal power and interference with free markets and lead to further tax cuts down the road, a pro-free trade package and a strong national defense. With all volunteer armed forces, the worst that can be said of his defense policy is that it's too expensive, but when spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and «income security programs» are more than twice the budget for securing our liberty against foreign aggression even that is a hard case to make - there are plenty of places to cut before defense.

The alternative? Hillrak Obinton will raise taxes, raise spending, impose trade barriers and gut the national defense, attacking the primary Constitutional and rational reason for the federal government's very existence. Would it be great if John McCain suddenly embraced expanded civil liberties, had a change of heart on campaign finance restrictions and passed the peace pipe with Bob Barr and NORML? Sure, but compared to the threat of foreign aggression, high taxes, a Smoot-Hawley style trade war and vastly expanded federal bureaucracy, the «threat» of spending vetoes, lower taxes, free trade and the status quo in other areas seems like the way to go. I'll take a somewhat freer country with an expanding economy over a less free country heading into deep recession (the contraction is de'pr'ession) any day.

I had missed until today this detail in the pictures of the «evacuation» of children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch in Texas. Note the name on the buses:

A few thoughts.

The picture couldn't make any clearer what is really happening there and what is really at stake. This is an attack on one Christian heresy by another, albeit more established, Christian heresy with the full force of the power of the state behind it.

Europe got past going to war over religion in 1648, but apparently the Land of the Free with its vaunted First Amendment is still struggling with it 360 years later.

Lest anyone think that this is about abuse of women and children and not about religious persecution, read up on Baptists. From the frying pan into the fire.

Perhaps literally. Is the next thing that we can expect from the First Baptist's and Texas Rangers an auto da fe?

• «National polls show the Illinois senator hasn't suffered among Democratic primary voters» from the widespread disclosure of the fact that his spiritual mentor is a racist hatemonger. This should really come as no shock given the Democratic Party's 145+ year history of association with racist hatemongers.

  Obama May Not Have Fully Contained Damage From Ex-Pastor

• Hillary Clinton should have promoted Mark Penn instead of accepting his «resignation» as her chief strategist. Guys like Penn were one of the reason that the Bill Clinton administration was successful. More free trade, less Hillarycare and Bill Clinton would have had a legacy much more memorable than stupid cigar tricks.

  Clinton's Chief Strategist Steps Down

• Do we really need to see John McCain's medical records? He's breathing, he's walking and as recently as 23 years ago he was doing other things. Do we really want to know if he has a Viagra prescription or the details of his last prostate exam?

  Rice Eyeing Ticket? That's News to McCain

• Are the memories of Texas officials really that bad? Is Rick Perry a Janet Reno wannabe? Is another Waco really necessary in the name of protecting young women from...getting married? (And all assuming that the phone call that started it all was not a prank or a setup.) Interesting that the people acting rationally in all this are the horrible, awful people accused of the crime of Abraham and Solomon. If this doesn't end with innocent children being burned alive, it will be because of the restraint shown by the FLDS under un-American religious persecution and not due to any good sense on the part of Texas officials.

  Women, children taken from West Texas town, search continues

Apparently some on the left are trying to blame Phil Gramm for the subprime lending crisis and the ensuing credit crunch. The theory is that somehow the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed most of the Depression era firewall between investment and commercial banking somehow created the runup in mortgage lending and home values.

In an interview with James Pethokoukis, Gramm responds with a great explanation of what actually caused this crisis (hint: it was 100% government action):

The subprime problem came from an extraordinary run-up in housing values beginning in 2000 as we were in a recession and the Federal Reserve cut interest rates; it was a very unusual recession in that investment had collapsed but home building and consumption were strong, so the monetary policy that was aimed at stimulating the economy [also] stimulated an industry that was in boom condition. Housing prices rose faster than at any time except right after World War II, when wage and price controls came off, and that created this speculative demand.

And secondly, America's policy to try to encourage home ownership by making down payments lower and lower and lower until they were practically zero in many cases gave the whole thing a hair trigger.

He stops short of patting himself on the back, so I will. Gramm-Leach-Bliley is actually part of the solution. When Bear Stearns, an investment bank, was on the verge of failure, threatening to completely lock up Wall Street's clearing of securities trades, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department turned to J.P.Morgan, a commercial bank, to buy out the condemned company. Under Glass-Steagall, that simply wouldn't have been an option. The act of Congress that saved the day two weeks ago was passed 9 years ago and it had Phil Gramm's name on it.

Side note: One more point seriously in John McCain's favor. When a candidate admits he doesn't fully understand economics and brings on people like Phil Gramm to fill in the blanks for him, that's head and shoulders above those other two who clearly don't understand economics either and don't care to learn.

The California appeals court that recently ruled that homeschooling parents must have teaching credentials, has agreed to take another look at the matter at the request of another couple who have home schooled 8 children.

«Another look at this case will help ensure that the fundamental rights of parents are fully protected,» said attorney Gary Kreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, the father of the homeschooled children.

Gary shouldn't get his hopes up, though. The court has pretty effectively telegraphed its intention to leave its ruling intact by:

inviting written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers' unions.

In other news, the Treasury Department has hired Jeffrey Skilling to consult on financial regulations in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, the TSA has asked Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to consult on airline security and farmers across the country are asking foxes to guard the henhouse.

California homeschooling case to be reheard by way of A Stitch in Haste.