Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

Bob Schaffer was interviewed for the PolitickerCO web site and did a great job fending off an attempt by the "reporter" to continue with the Denver Post's smear campaign about the so-called issue of Schaffer's trip to the Marianas Islands.

You can read the interview here:
http://www.politickerco.com/jeremypelzer/1019/monday-morning-politicking-bob-schaffer

Nearly as interesting as the article are the comments to it, nearly all of which appear to be an organized anti-Schaffer campaign both criticizing him for not being "pro-life enough", something which is patently ridiculous to anyone who knows him, including me and I'm pro-choice and continuing to attack him on the fabricated "problems" of the trip to the Marianas.

Mr. Menezes from the completely dishonest group Colorado Media Matters also offers his worthless two cents. I'll be doing a piece shortly to set some more of the record straight, even though I thought Schaffer had already done a good job of doing just that. If only the media would listen as well as they listen to union and Democrat activists who want to smear him.

I'll be guest-hosting for Amy Oliver on Wednesday, April 30th on Newstalk 1310 (AM) KFKA in Greeley, CO. You can listen online at http://www.1310kfka.com and you can call into the show at (877) 353-1310. Note, that's an (877) number, not an (800) number.

The show is from 9 AM to 11 AM Mountain Time.

I hope the leftists at Colorado Media Matters will be listening in for the basic facts which they like to call misinformation. (Of course, they are the most dishonest group in Colorado, so what else would you expect?)

[Previously posted on the Gang of Four blog...]

In his April 24th article about Democrats “backing off health care promises”, David Sirota makes the same incorrect analysis of socialized medicine that most of the liberal elite makes. Namely, he assumes that America truly supports the leftist vision of government-provided “single-payer” health care.

Here’s the problem for the socialists: Americans, like any other people, love the idea of a free lunch, especially a good one. But once the details of their plans emerge, it turns out that the lunch, rather than a free steak sandwich at a fine restaurant, is more like an old Spam sandwich with a big price tag from a “roach coach”.

There’s a reason that “HillaryCare” never even got a vote in Congress. People…and I (just barely) include politicians in that category…realized that socialized medicine is so obviously not a free lunch that they wouldn’t be able to sneak it by the voters.

Similarly, there’s a reason that California’s recent attempt to create a state-based socialized health care system was killed by Democrats in the legislature. They realized that what is required to implement such a plan is so far from what even economically-illiterate voters would accept that it would be a political disaster for them to move forward.

After all, it’s no accident that Hillary has said she would garnish wages if necessary as part of her plan.

Voters would probably take the Spam sandwich if it were free, but not for more than a good lunch would cost, and that’s the situation with socialized medicine, which offers not better care but rather long lines, rationing, and all the other negatives which make residents of Britain and Canada want to come here for their health care.

Life expectancy following a cancer diagnosis is a particularly telling statistic. Quoting from a National Center for Policy Analysis paper about international care for cancer patients:

Overall Cancer Survival Rates. According to the survey of cancer survival rates in Europe and the United States, published recently in Lancet Oncology:
• American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women.
• American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.

Results for Canada. Canada’s system of national health insurance is often cited as a model for the United States. But an analysis of 2001 to 2003 data by June O’Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, and economist David O’Neill, found that overall cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Canada:
• For women, the average survival rate for all cancers is 61 percent in the United States, compared to 58 percent in Canada.
• For men, the average survival rate for all cancers is 57 percent in the United States, compared to 53 percent in Canada.

David Sirota and his socialist allies want a “movement” to socialize medicine. Instead, why don’t we just start a movement to increase cancer rates, decrease our access to medicine, force us all to stop exercising, or put any other requirement on Americans which will simultaneously reduce our overall healthiness while expanding the size, intrusiveness, and cost of government? And don’t think for one second that when socialized medicine begins to fail, as it must, that Sirota and friends won’t come back to us, the same way liberals do with public education, saying that it could all be fixed if only we would just accept higher taxes.

No, David, we don’t need a movement to keep us all sick and poor. We need people to learn, even if you and your friends never will, that the best thing government can do for American health care is to let the market function. In particular, we need to be able to buy health insurance across state lines, such as with car insurance. And we need people to be able to opt out of mandates which force up the cost of health insurance. Why should government force me to buy insurance that covers fertility treatments, mental health coverage, or hair transplants if insurance without those coverages would save me money every month?

The liberals’ lamentations about the stagnation of their drive to wreck our health care system shows that while voters may not spend a lot of time thinking about politics, they’re at least aware enough of the damage and cost that socialized medicine would cause that politicians are hesitant to continue down that road to medical serfdom.

Liberals claim care oh-so-deeply about the poor, not just in America (in fact not primarily in America, depending on the liberal group), but then take positions on economic policy which are deeply antithetical toward low-income people. Three such positions are liberals’ opposition to Social Security reform, their attacks on WalMart, and their hostility to free trade. While one might be tempted to think that liberals are simply economic idiots, and certainly many are, the motivation behind their leadership’s positions is much more basic to politicians: The desire to gain and maintain power.

Opposing Social Security reform is one such position, as Social Security is a major factor in keeping poor people poor; it's the largest tax low-income workers pay, and its not inheritable so when someone dies, the government just keeps what workers often think was some sort of retirement plan. (If the dead worker has a spouse, the spouse can either claim the worker's Social Security or his/her own, but not both, so the only way the government doesn't win if someone dies is if the surviving spouse had never contributed a penny to the pyramid scheme.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama not only oppose the creation of privately-owned Social Security accounts, despite the fact that the current system is going bankrupt, but they also do not understand some of the system’s most basic flaws.

Clinton, for example, says on her web site that “Social Security benefits are dependable and protected by law.” In fact, they are neither. Social Security has already seen increases in the retirement age at which a person can begin to collect. As the system goes forward, we’re likely to see a big push for means-testing, so that people who have paid in their whole lives but who have the misfortune of having succeeded economically will have their Social Security payments reduced.

Even more importantly is the “protected by law” concept, which is absolutely false. In 1937, cowering from FDR’s court-packing threat, the Supreme Court ruled that Social Security is constitutional, but that the taxes paid into it are simply general revenue “and are not earmarked in any way”. The Supreme Court has ruled specifically that Social Security is not insurance and that the government has no legal obligation to spend Social Security taxes on Social Security benefits. Those benefits are hostage to political winds. It may be likely that politicians won’t try to substantially modify Social Security benefits, even as the system collapses, but it should be frightening enough that they can.

Without going into too much detail about the economic arguments for personal accounts (which are compelling), it should be noted that current contributors will see a “return” on their “investment” in the system somewhere around 0%. Over any long period, even including a substantial stock market downturn, the stock market outperforms this. Opponents of Social Security reform play up fears of stock market volatility, but that not only ignores the fact just mentioned but also assumes, incorrectly, that private accounts would have to invest in the stock market. They could just as easily invest in government bonds, bank CDs or an other in a wide range of principle-protected assets, guaranteeing a better return and inheritability.

The reason liberals oppose Social Security is not because they believe it’s better but because it’s a great issue to buy and keep votes, especially votes of senior citizens (even though proponents of Social Security specifically say that current and near-term retirees could stay in the current system and would not lose a dime of benefits.) One reason that conservative politicians have been so reticent to support reform, in addition to being afraid of attacks by the AARP, is that government has been spending the Social Security surplus (more being taken in through payroll taxes than being paid out to retirees) on other government programs, thus masking the true size of the Federal deficit. Social Security reform would bring much needed sunlight on to our bloated budget and the tricks used to maintain it.

Attacking WalMart is another anti-poor position taken by liberals. WalMart shoppers have a low average income. WalMart employs about as many people as the military has soldiers. According to George Will, “Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion). People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart -- it has one-fifth of the nation's grocery business -- save at least 17 percent.”

The “problem” is that WalMart refuses to unionize, knowing that it will force up their cost of doing business, force them to raise their prices, and cost them and their customers substantially. Liberals talk about WalMart as if it’s a predator on its employees. If that were the case, why are there generally thousands of applicants for a few hundred jobs at new WalMart stores? Are Americans just stupid? Liberals must think so.

As often happens, other businesses, such as unionized supermarket chains try to use government to attack their competition…which is simultaneously attacking the American consumer. Union activists and their lackeys are running public relations interference while attacking WalMart, either trying to convince people not to shop there or trying to prevent it from opening stores, for the real goal of getting more money into unions which they could then spend on those Democrats’ political campaigns. It’s a vicious circle with the American consumer as the victim.

A third issue, and probably the most important, on which Democrats take a truly dangerous (and anti-poor) position is their opposition to free trade. Tyler Cowen (of George Mason University) notes in a NY Times article how restrictions on trade in rice are substantially exacerbating high food prices and therefore hunger in developing countries. It’s not just food, however, and not just outside America where Democrats’ anti-free trade positions are damaging. Protectionism is widespread, as are its negative effects. (And I should note that if the product being traded has a concentration of industry in a particular state, you’ll often see Republicans go along for the protectionist ride.)

For example, in trying to protect textile workers, the country slaps tariffs on imported shirts and underwear. All the rhetoric in the news is that the domestic textile industry needs protection. What it really means is that the politicians from those states need protection, and they’ll buy that protection with the money you spend on t-shirts and underwear which cost you more than they would have, had there been a free market.

The value to the consumer, i.e. to the entire American population, is almost never mentioned. For some reason, it is less important whether we have to spend millions of extra dollars on shirts, sugar, or anything made with steel, than to protect the jobs of workers who are not efficient enough to compete as foreign producers modernize. Also, the media never talks about the fact that people can and do get retrained, and on average end up with better paying jobs, though there are without doubt losers from free trade. We must remember that a free trade loser almost always represents a victory for consumers. I don’t cheer for people to lose their jobs, but I cheer even less for government to support policies which increase my family’s cost of living simply so politicians can buy the votes of the out-dated union worker who believes he has a right to his job.

Imagine the outcry if white collar workers, maybe accountants, complained to the government that they were being forced to lower their prices or change jobs because of competition from internet-based service providers overseas. Imagine they argued that Americans should all have to pay more to get their taxes done so that they could keep living the way they’ve become used to living. Nobody would feel sorry for them, and nobody would think it is reasonable to ask millions of Americans to spend more on tax preparation so that a few thousand accountants can be protected from competition.

Yet that’s the same theory behind most protectionism of commodities. Indeed, the things which we do protect are things which lower income Americans are much more likely to need. The poor could certainly use lower sugar prices more than lower tax preparation bills, but instead we “protect” our sugar industry. Some people argue that we must protect vital national interests, but those arguments fail for a variety of reasons. Those claims are only made to distract us from what’s really happening: Democrats (mostly) are opposing free trade in order to garner political power from unions and special interests by forcing tens of millions of consumers to spend more for things we use every day, leaving us less with which we could raise our standards of living, improve our children’s educations, get better health care, or simply take a vacation.

I can not think of an economic issue on which Democrats take a position based on sound economics or even sound basic principle. They oppose liberty, free markets, and the best interest of consumers and the poor at every turn, while covering their cynicism with empty rhetoric about market risk, mean employers, or unemployed steel workers. Unfortunately, given that most of our students learn (or don’t) at government schools, far too few people understand the damage that’s being done to them.

This note is a bit long, and is personal in the sense that it's about an attack on me by another blogger, rather than me writing about a national or local issue of the day. You may find it interesting, but you may not as well. I leave it to you, as always...

Over at The Colorado Index lives a bitter man who decided to attack me on his web site about my writing style and a presentation I gave in Denver (which he did not attend). I will do him the courtesy of not disclosing his name, as he has requested of me in the past, even though he's been nothing but a son-of-a-bitch to me on his own web site.

The note that I'll post here is the e-mail I sent him after reading his attack. I also submitted it as a comment on his site, but the last time I posted a comment to an outrageous attack on me by him, he refused to post the comment. [For the record, I post all comments to my site that aren't advertisements or spam, even if they disagree with me.]

I would note that another Colorado blogger, Ben DeGrow, who did attend the Samsphere presentation, posted a note on his own site saying that the Colorado Index posting is wrong:
http://bendegrow.com/2008/setting-the-record-straight/

And just for fun, let me share with you a note I received from someone who reads my site and the Colorado Index site. For the record, I haven't spoken or e-mailed with this person in more than a month:

Ross,

I have come to the conclusion that (xxx?) or whatever his name is that writes the Colorado Index, is perhaps bi-polar. He has some kind of mental disorder. He is nuts.

Maybe he has delusions of grandeur, like a "Jesus complex" or something like that. I have followed the hateful things that he not only writes about you, but also of other blog sights as well. It really makes no sense, his writing makes no sense.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth. I am going to show xxxxxxx some of "crazy man's" blogs. I don't think he has ever read any of his stuff. See if I can get my man all worked up to respond to some of it!

Hope your cute little family is doing well!!

Take care,

xxx xxxxx

Of course, I have to tell this person that the bitter guy at Colorado Index will, if history is any guide, refuse to post comments which criticize him. As we used to say, "he can dish it out but he can't take it".

The guy sent me an e-mail after I sent him the note below, saying that he thought I should "examine (my) own style" and "looking down (my) nose at (other Colorado bloggers" (have I ever done that???) and to "decline to participate in panels", and that he plans to "be critical of me" until I do those things. Wow, what an utter ego-maniac!

It was fairly amusing to hear him say that he's "one of the most effective bloggers in Colorado" as, from the data I could find, he has less traffic than most and less traffic than my site, not to mention my outlets beyond these pages.

In any case, I told him to do what he thinks he needs to do, and, in a moment of sarcasm, I suggested he stay on his medication.

He responded that he wrote what he believed to be true, to which I responded that basic integrity required him to do a least a hint of fact-checking before writing such attacks. He just didn't care.

In my final e-mail to him, I said that I hoped he were man/gentleman enough to issue a correction/apology, given that I proved that everything he had said about me, other than the fact that I don't promote a lot of other blogs (so what?) was false. I knew he would not, because he's just too stubborn and pompous to ever admit being wrong, and he proved me right in that assumption.

So, here's the first e-mail I sent him in response to his lunacy:

XXX, what was the point of slamming me on your web site, especially with such a complete absence of facts behind you?

What I talked about at Samsphere is that in my view the conservative blogosphere isn't well enough organized to compete effectively against the left, although the situation has improved somewhat. I talked about the views of a leading leftist blogger commenting on why the conservative blogosphere has trouble having the kind of influence that the left does, and I suggested that his thoughts were fairly accurate and provided an interesting hint of a road map to how the conservative/libertarian movement could improve its effectiveness. All stuff I would have thought you would applaud. In fact, you mentioned that Samsphere taught that effective blogging is a team sport. That was also in my talk, in terms of suggesting (in addition to better organization) that people who want to blog but don't have time to do a good blog by themselves should get together in a small group blog so they can have fresh content more frequently.

I hardly mentioned my blog or anything else I write...I believe they were just mentioned when I was introduced, though maybe I had one sentence about me in my presentation. I also didn't talk about "cross-posting" or anything along those lines; I don't know if anyone else did who spoke when I wasn't there.

It's sort of funny to hear you commenting about Samsphere so repeatedly when you didn't go to it. Why don't you ask XXXX what I said before you start lobbing bombs my way and completely misstating what I talked about? Furthermore, you have no idea what I was supposed to talk about at Samsphere because you weren't copied on the e-mail discussions about that, maybe because I, not you, were invited to speak.

Exactly how am I a "self-promoter"? Is anyone who tries to reach more people with his writing a "self-promoter" by definition? I certainly did not spend more than 10 seconds talking about myself in my Samsphere presentation. In fact, the other two people on my panel spent almost all their time talking about their own sites...but I think that was great. There's nothing wrong with trying to increase your readership, but I would re-emphasize that that's not what I did at this event. I'd bet that I spent less time "self-promoting" than any other blogger who spoke.

Of course, your ignorance is further confirmed by your statement that Samsphere "has come and gone and no one recorded the lessons for your review". That is wrong. The Samsphere video is available on the web. Yet another incorrect assumption from a person who shoots from the hip, and misses wildly.

As far as noting that a piece on the Gang of Four blog is cross-posted with my site, I do that because I was told to by the Gang of Four editor. I would point out to you that the couple essays I've had on the Gang of Four so far are about the same length as everybody else's essays on that site. I would also point out that I frequently have short essays on my site. But most importantly, I'd point out that your blogging "elements of style" critique are the signs of an egomaniac. Why don't you just do your thing the way you want to and leave it at that? There's a reason I didn't ask for your opinion on my writing.

Oh, another reason for the length of some of my essays is that some are written as potential newspaper or other columns, such as my writing for HumanEvents. (Did you see my story on the cover of the current print issue?) In any case, what you call a "long essay" is simply the same length as newspaper opinion columns, which, whether you like it or not, seem obviously to be a fairly successful product for newspapers and probably a reasonable length for some of my content. More of my own writing is much shorter, as they're written frequently as letters to the editor. So, your claim that I'm addicted to long essays is silly, even though I disagree with your fundamental claim that short writings must invariably be better than long.

Didn't it even occur to you to ask me about any of this stuff before making yourself look stupid by writing so many things that are just wrong?

What else?

I read conservative blogs about as much as liberal ones these days. Indeed, I read your blog more often than just about any other Colorado site, believe it or not. The only reason I even knew there was an article about me on ColoradoPols is that a liberal who knows me gave me a heads-up about it.

As far as how to write short versions on one site and long versions on another, I do that on occasion, and I most certainly don't need such lessons from you. But the bottom line is that it's much faster to put the same article in two places, so I do that when my main goal isn't about that one article. For example, even though noting the "cross-posting" on the Gang of Four site wasn't my idea, at this time I expect the benefit not to be that there would be a different version of the same article on my site but that my site has a lot more content. I post only a small part of my Rossputin.com stuff at the Gang of Four, so there's a chance that a link from the latter to the former would bring readers to other content they'd read. Again, you act as if you know everything about my activities without even talking to me, and I still can't believe you spent so much time talking about Samsphere when you weren't there...basically everything you claimed was wrong.

Next...

Of course I knew that some left-wing site would go after my global warming piece. And of course I expect a hostile response on their site. But on an issue like that where conservatives already agree with me (mostly), I think it's more useful to try to get at least a couple of liberals to actually look at the facts which oppose their baseless beliefs. I don't think it was a waste of time to respond to them, though I might have taken slightly less time doing it. Only a "leftie" or a person who's just bitter (like you) would have thought that the liberals got the better of me in that debate. I understand that you for some reason don't like me and don't want me to succeed. I can't help that, but luckily it's not important to me.

Also, I find some benefit to a debate in that sort of leftist blogging environment because it sharpens one's skills for conversations with liberals in real life. I know you think it's stupid to even look at left-leaning sites, but I think it's important to know what and how the enemy thinks.

I should also note that the "Blogger Extraordinaire" tag was added by Samsphere, not me, and that as soon as I saw it in an e-mail, I contacted them immediately and told them to get rid of that wording. Unlike you, I'm not the biggest ego in the room, and I most certainly didn't and don't call myself by terms like "blogger extraordinaire".

XXX, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about yet you speak as if you're omniscient. Half of what you accuse me of is false, and the other half of what you say I do is stuff that it fine to do whether you like it or not. It's not as if you're some grand poobah of blogging, some fount of wisdom whom we should all bow down before. No, you're just another conservative blogger (with a bigger opinion of himself than most of the rest of us) doing what he thinks he needs to do. Stick to your knitting, I'll stick to mine, and with luck at least one of us will be able to make a difference against the liberals. I don't, and never will, assume that you know better than I or other experienced bloggers what "style and tactics" will be most effective (or most fun for the author, a factor which I consider even if you don't.)

I've thought for a while, and now you've absolutely convinced me, of a great parallel between you and a person more well-known: You are a blogging version of Douglas Bruce. Namely, you are smart and have some good ideas, but you're so frequently a bastard, even to people on your side, that you're just intolerable even to people who should be your friends. It's too bad, but there's no way your personality is going to change now, so I guess you're a lost cause. As a friend of mine likes to say, ideas aren't responsible for the people who believe them.

The Wall Street Journal has added Mr. Thomas Frank as a regular to their opinion pages. His first piece, called "Obama's Touch of Class" is a perfect example of liberal inanity. Here's my letter to the Journal after reading Mr. Frank's article:

I am pleased to see the addition of Thomas Frank to the Journal’s opinion pages. He does indeed represent the left in nearly perfect stereotype. Ending his first “full-time” contribution with the idea that he wants a president who “will help restore the land of relative equality (he) was born in”, shows perfectly the anti-capitalist, anti-liberty nature of the American Left.

How many lessons of international history can the Democrats whistle by which prove that the only way to make people equal, economically, is to make them equally poor. How many lessons of domestic history can they ignore which point to the American people not supporting the politics of class envy? When will they realize the massive risk of interfering in free trade? And how long will it take the Left to realize that government has tremendous ability to damage our economy and prosperity, but very little ability to improve them other than by simply getting out of the way?

Indeed, it’s great to see Mr. Frank’s writing as it reminds your economically literate readership just how illogical, ideological, and dangerous his thinking is. Now if we could only get the cynical or “limousine liberal” hedge fund multi-millionaires to stop donating money to politicians who believe their donors are the cause of all things wrong with our great nation.

Thanks to my father-in-law, Bob, for this joke. Even my (blonde) wife thinks it's funny.

A blonde is driving a little too fast down her street when she sees police lights behind her, pulling her over. The uniformed officer walks over to her car window, and it turns out that the officer is also a blonde.

The policewoman asks the driver for her license, and the driver says "it's been so long since I've gotten it that I don't remember what it looks like." The officer says "it's a rectangle with your picture on it". The blonde driver fishes around in her purse and pulls out a small rectangular make-up mirror, looks in it, sees her picture, and hands it to the cop, saying "this must be it."

The blonde cop takes the mirror, looks into it, and says to the driver "I'm going to let you off with a warning. You weren't going all that fast, and I didn't realize you're also a police officer."

On Tuesday, Bill Ritter “celebrated Earth Day” (to quote a Denver Post article) by showing us that he’s part of the same crowd that thinks we can save the planet by burning our food.

In typical imperial Ritter style, governing by Executive Order rather than through the legislature which at least might represent the will of the people, Ritter is trying to force the state to cut overall emissions by 20% in just over a decade, and by 80% by 2050.

The Executive Order can be read HERE.

Not only is this close to impossible, it’s reckless. The headlong rush by liberal elites in the US and the EU to the use of ethanol is now causing food shortages and riots in the Third World, and bringing zero benefit to the environment.

All the recent data that I’ve seen from reliable sources such as NASA show that the planet has been cooling slightly for much of the past decade. This past winter was the coldest and snowiest in recent memory, and the Arctic sea ice regained more than everything it lost in the prior summer (despite claims from climate alarmists that the world was going to come to an end.)

A new report by fifteen climate scientists shreds the alarmist propaganda of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, showing that they intentionally misrepresent or simply ignore data that does not fit with their pre-programmed political goal.

And, worst of all, Bill Ritter will be long gone…maybe even no longer living…by the time his precious 2050 target date comes around, leaving Coloradoans holding the bag of an economy and standard of living far worse than it should have been.

Beyond the silliness of current global warming hysteria (actually, they call it “climate change” now, because the data doesn’t support that we’re warming anymore), don’t think for one minute that unions and Democrats won’t use this sweeping mandate as an excuse to expand the size and scope and cost of government.

Some good news can be found in a recent Gallup poll which shows that “only about one-third of Americans say they worry a great deal about global warming — roughly the same percentage as in a similar poll 19 years ago.”

And while short-term data points should not be used to determine the accuracy of theorized long-term phenomena, I still can’t help a little smile when I read stories like the one about Earth Day in Edmonton being “crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations.”

Bill Ritter’s executive order represents everything wrong with the Ritter administration: A lack of respect for the people, pandering to the left, avoiding reason and rationality, expanding government at every opportunity, and doing everything he can to make himself look like a real governor when he is in fact one of the great “do-nothing” politicians in recent years. For that, I suppose, I should be grateful since we most certainly can’t afford his doing even more of what he has done so far.

Cross-posted at "Gang of Four" blog

see "Both Obama and Clinton camps claim lead in popular votes", AP, 4/23/08
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gddKleD2qYirWThIy2QEDnn5Z1TAD907Q61G0

Hillary Clinton is on the campaign trail claiming that she leads Barack Obama in the popular vote. To get there, she's including the vote counts from Florida and Michigan, the latter of which did not even have Obama's name on the ballot.

The AP notes that even if you accept Clinton's counting method (which of course nobody does, but I'm glad she's trying), her lead is not likely to last long since she's likely to lose North Carolina by a wide margin and will probably not be able to make up that gap with the small contests after North Carolina.

The reason this is so beautiful for non-Democrats is that it adds to the somewhat legitimate arguments Clinton can make to the "super-delegates", trying to convince them to swing the nomination to her.

She does have a serious argument about her winning the big "blue states", whereas Obama has won a lot of caucuses in states which are likely to go for McCain anyway. If she could claim, even in a tortured Clintonesque way, that she won the popular vote, that would tremendously damage Obama's perceived inevitability, though I believe he's still inevitable at this point.

I and others have written about it before, but it bears repeating: There's simply no way the Democratic super-delegates can give the nomination to Clinton without costing the party the Black vote that they can not win without...and maybe costing them that vote for the next two or three federal elections.

The beauty of the situation is two-fold. First, the better Hillary believes her case is, the more likely she is to fight all the way into the Denver Convention. Second, the better she can make her core voters, especially single women, believe her case is, the more likely they will not support Obama when he eventually gets the nod.

The type of voters who supported Hillary in Pennsylvania, for example, including particularly "Reagan Democrats" who like their churches and guns, are far more likely to vote McCain than Obama. There is a similar demographic in Ohio, and in parts of Florida which the liberal media don't even know exist. In other words, in crucial states for the Democrats, Obama really is the far weaker candidate. But no matter how weak he is not, it will never bother me to see him tarnished even further, decreasing his chances of being our next president.

[For those of you who haven't been reading my work for a long time, let me make very clear that my problem with Obama and Hillary has nothing to do with their race or gender, but with their utter lack of respect for liberty, free markets, or our Constitution.]

Finally, some people are recognizing the damage without any corresponding benefit that our rush to ethanol-the-energy-savior is causing. Read about it in my article for Human Events:

see "Do-gooders and Politicians Support Faulty Ethanol Policy", Ross Kaminsky, HumanEvents.com, 4/22/08

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26141

As if nature itself is conspiring to crush the cult of Algore, the same day I learn of the report referenced in my other article today comes this great piece from the Edmonton Sun:

see "No heaven on Earth Day
Wintry blast cools global warming fervour"
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2008/04/21/5343616-sun.html

For today's reading, I offer this must-read document for anyone who realizes that the debate about climate change is, despite the cries of Al Gore, Tony Blair, and even John McCain, certainly not over.

Don't let the 50 page length scare you...you only really need to read to page 27. It's well worth your time to intellectually vaccinate yourself against the propaganda you're subjected to every day.

see "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate"
Abstract: http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?artId=22835
PDF file: http://www.heartland.org/pdf/22835.pdf

I'll be guest-hosting for Amy Oliver on Newstalk 1310 KFKA in Greeley, Colorado from 9 AM - 11 AM this morning (mountain time).

Please listen in, and call in if you want to discuss any of the topics of the day.

You can listen online at http://www.1310kfka.com
and you can reach the studio at (877) 353-1310

I'm pleased to announce that this is my first posting in the Denver Post's "Gang of Four" blog, which resides in their Politics West section. You can read the blog, which includes me, John Andrews (conservative Republican), Nancy Watzman (who appears to be a liberal), and David Sirota (who appears to be a socialist and whom I particularly looking forward to debating and debunking). The Gang of Four blog can be found at:
http://www.politicswest.com/blogs/gang_of_four

In Saturday’s Denver Post, Bob Ewegen makes many of the same standard liberal arguments against “TABOR reform”, by which he actually means “removing substantial restrictions on the growth of taxes and government”, that we’ve heard before from those who want to dig their hands even deeper into our pockets.

There are so many flaws with the original pro-Ref C argument, but since the issue is rearing its ugly head again, let’s tackle a couple old ones and add a couple new ones.

First, some of the same old problems:

Liberals argue, using Ewegen’s words, that “real growth is the reason mankind no longer lives in caves”. We are supposed to infer from that statement that the words “of government” should be present just after the word “growth”. But if growth of government were beneficial to improvements in the human condition, the situation for the average person in India and China…and even in “civilized” Europe...should have improved faster than ours has. Instead, it’s the places with the most economic freedom, including the US, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, where people make the biggest gains in standard of living, essentially each and every generation.

Tax raisers argue that they’ll use the money for very particular projects, usually roads and schools. But what ends up happening is that they funnel the money into new government projects, adding only a fraction of what they promised to the areas which voters expected to get the lion’s share of their confiscated earnings when they reluctantly approved the tax increase. Then, because the money went to new projects and the old problems were largely neglected, the politicians and their big-government supporters in unions and the media come back to us saying “If we don’t take even more of your money, the roads will crumble under you and your kids won’t get any school lunches.” It’s a tired old story and people should stop falling for it.

A couple of relatively new issues:

Ewegen argues that TABOR hits Colorado government especially hard now because of inflation, so that the state needs to take more of our money to keep doing whatever it is that they plan to spend our money on. However, this ignores the fact that individual citizens are also facing at least the same inflation problem as the government is. We’ve all seen the price of gas, of a loaf of bread, of a gallon of milk, rise at the fastest rate in decades. But how many of us are seeing our incomes rise to keep pace? I dare say just about none of us. So, we are all making choices about what things we should cut back on in order to make ends meet within our family budgets. Cut back on the vacation in order to afford food. Cut back on milk in order to afford school.

The tax-raisers argument is that we should all have to cut back even more on everything so that politicians don’t have to make the same hard choices we do. You and I should eat less, drive less, and enjoy our lives less so that the State government does not have to cut back on handouts to unions, trial lawyers, and “the children” (the default beneficiary of government spending because, apparently, people just aren't fit to be their own kids' parents). The Senate’s budget increased the state’s personnel head count by 1,334 jobs…just at a time when many private companies have to downsize because of a slowing economy. I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in feeding the ravenous and never-satisfied desires of government to buy votes with my money, and particularly not during a time when I am being financially squeezed from every direction.

Ewegen argues that TABOR causes the government to shrink as a percentage of the state economy…as if that’s a bad thing. One of the key aspects to success of a large corporation is the idea of economies of scale. As a company gets larger, they can increase their output of a product (at least up to some point) at a lower cost per product. For example, Dell can make computers much cheaper than I could if I tried to do so because they have 1) much more efficient processes in place for assembly, 2) the ability to buy the CPUs, disk drives, and memory at much lower prices than I do because they buy so much at one time, and 3) over time they’ve learned the key dos and don’ts that keep them from making costly errors that I might make. The idea that government should stay the same size, as a percentage of the economy, implies that the government can never get any economies of scale. We should require our government to get more efficient, and in particular to use more competition in bidding for jobs, large and small, so that taxpayers are not constantly held hostage to the unions who, unfortunately for the rest of us, own our state’s Democratic Party.

It implies, for example, that the bloated of bureaucracy of our public education system has to grow as rapidly as the number of students. And I’m not talking about teachers, but rather about the levels of management bureaucracy which the Colorado Education is so anxious to protect even though all evidence shows that spending more money on public education doesn’t improve outcomes…precisely because the unions do not want to realize economies of scale! It implies, for example, that the cost of public transportation can’t gain from scale…that if we spend $100/person to build the system initially, we need to continue to spend $100 plus inflation adjustments for each person…even though the tracks and infrastructure are already built. No, Mr. Ewegen, your suggestion that government should not shrink as a percentage of a growing economy is exactly wrong. A reduction in the relative size of government as the state gets more prosperous is exactly what we would expect if you replaced “government” with “management” and replaced “the state” with “a business”, and it’s exactly what we should demand, rather than let liberal politicians suck us dry with scare tactics.

And finally (for today), I’d point out that we’ve heard all this before. Supporters of Referendum C told us that it would take care of our problems, that we would see the good things which happened because we sacrificed our financial well-being to feed the gaping mouth of the state. And now, not even two years later, they’re already telling us that it’s not enough. You know the old saying about "Fool me once..." (not that they fooled me the first time.) It’s time to tell the money-grabbers to take a hike. It’s time to just say no to another huge tax hike. And it’s time to elect a majority in state government who will actually practice some fiscal responsibility.

Today I am speaking at Samsphere Denver.

So I offer for your reading enjoyment the testimony by my friend Brian Wesbury, a brilliant economist even if somewhat more optimistic about the medium-term future than I am, to the House Financial Services Committee. Brian addressed the "housing crisis" and the role of government (failure) in causing economic problems.

Bastiat would be proud of Brian's words...

see "Economic, Mortgage and Housing Rescue Bill
Testimony to House Committee on Financial Services"
Brian S. Wesbury, Chief Economist, First Trust Portfolios LP, April 9, 2008

http://www.ftportfolios.com/Commentary/EconomicResearch/2008/4/16/Brian_Wesburys_Testimony_to_House_Committee_on_Financial_Services

Throughout the Cory Voorhis case, radio talk show host Peter Boyles, who did a tremendous amount of good for Voorhis and for justice by championing Voorhis in the case, never missed a chance to attack Bob Beauprez, accusing him of abandoning Voorhis in his time of greatest need.

I was on the air frequently with Boyles because of my "investigative reporting" about the case, and each time when I was trying to talk about how the justice system was persecuting Voorhis at the at-least-implied behest of Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Boyles found a way to attack Beauprez, and each time I responded to Boyles that I believed he would be proven wrong about Beauprez.

I know Bob Beauprez a little bit and he has always struck me as an honest and honorable man. I supported him in his campaign for governor, but was not blind to the fact that the campaign wasn't very good and he wasn't likely to win.

It makes the recent news revelation that much more relevant.

Bob Beauprez has released on his web site a letter which he received from Cory Voorhis in which Voorhis acknowledges and thanks Beauprez for offering assistance 18 months ago, at the beginning of Voorhis' ordeal.

You can read the letter at Beauprez's web site here:
http://www.alineofsight.com/a-letter-from-cory-voorhis

Voorhis' attorneys turned down the offer because they did not want to risk the case appearing to be about partisanship. Beauprez said nothing publicly and was pilloried in the media, particularly by Peter Boyles, yet maintained his silence even though making his prior offer public would have been much better for him personally.

Just as many people owe apologies to Cory Voorhis for assuming him to be guilty, those who attacked Beauprez without giving him the benefit of the doubt as to his honor should offer Beauprez the praise he has earned at great personal expense to his reputation.

I was very pleased to hear that Bob Beauprez joined Peter Boyles in studio this morning and Boyles offered Beauprez an apology.

You can hear the clip from the radio show here:
http://www.hipcast.com/export/P3532f5ee0e58923da22455d4e912a225Y1lwS1REYmNz.mp3

It raises my opinion of Peter Boyles, though I have to say I wish he were as fair to Beauprez throughout the Voorhis case as he was to others. Indeed, the real villain in the case, Bill Ritter, seemed to be treated better by Boyles than Beauprez was. In any case, I'm sure the apology wasn't an easy thing for Boyles to do, and I very much appreciate that he offered it.

Here's my article at Human Events about yesterday's Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the 3-drug procedure used by Kentucky (and several other states) for execution by lethal injection:

see "SCOTUS Upholds Constitutionality of Lethal Injection Executions", Ross Kaminsky, HumanEvents.com, 4/17/08
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26072

In the interest of full disclosure: I know Jeff Crank personally and have contributed to his campaign. I do not live in the 5th Congressional District, and support Jeff because I believe he's the best man for the job.

see "Lamborn’s mail bill bigger than most" (CO Springs Gazette, 4/16/08)
http://www.gazette.com/articles/lamborn_35288___article.html/mail_district.html

Members of Congress have a "franking privilege", allowing them to send mail to constituents without paying for postage. Of course, there are perfectly reasonable uses for franked mail, such as answering direct questions from citizens.

An interesting study of the franking privilege, including a description of its costs and criticisms was released by the Congressional Research Service just a few months ago:
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34274.pdf

We now have news that Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn spent over $135,000 on franked mail, by far the most of any Colorado congressman, in 2007.

The report in the Colorado Springs Gazette notes that while franked mail gets approved by a congressional committee (I'm sure they're sooooo strict), some of the mailed pieces look very much like campaign material rather than the sort of constituent communications which are appropriate for franking.

There has been some academic research suggesting that the franking privilege offers an advantage to incumbents. And one would obviously expect an incumbent to believe that, if he can send campaign-like material to voters without cost while challengers pay for postage. An interesting conclusion in one study of franking was that "in 2004 Democrats and Junior Members felt most vulnerable in upcoming elections as they sent more franked mail than their Republican and Senior counterparts." To be clear, it is hard to know whether Democrats spent more than Republicans in that year because Republicans were in the majority or because Republicans actually are more fiscally responsible. Some years ago, I would have bet on the latter, but given the GOP performance in the past 6 years, I'm not so sure.

In any case, Lamborn's abuse of the franking privilege is an embarrassment for a congressman who has a good voting record on fiscal and tax issues. Indeed, it is yet another in a string of embarrassments for Lamborn in his home district and another reason I believe the Club for Growth made an error in endorsing him despite Lamborn's solid record on Club issues. I continue to believe that Jeff Crank will be just as good on these issues, and would be a far more effective representative of his district. Lamborn simply doesn't have a good enough grasp of major issues for the district, especially military issues. And even after Lamborn's two years in Congress, Crank almost certainly has a better understanding of how to work through the bureaucratic maze to get things done (since Crank worked for many years in the office of Congressman Joel Hefley who retired in 2006.)

From my own research, I do not believe there is any official central repository of the information about which members of Congress frank how much mail. However, with some delay due to the tremendous amount of work involved, the National Taxpayers Union does publish this type of information. As of today, the most recent compiled data is for 2005.

Here's an interesting comment from a friend at NTU: "As for 2007 data, we constantly caution the media (sometimes to no avail) that the data in the printed volumes is extremely volatile. In most years, $25 million or more of "adjustments" are made to House Members' records by the lawmakers themselves, often 6 months to a year after the fact. That's why we usually wait for at least two additional quarters of data released subsequent to a given year before we are sufficiently confident in the accuracy of the numbers to make them public. In other words, we would want to receive the 1st and 2nd quarter books of 2008 in order to look for corrections to records of 2007."

The lack of franking information easily available to the public implies that it's information Congress doesn't want us to have. A Roll Call article from October, 2007, give some hints why that may be true:

Almost three decades of Members mailing glossy newsletters and legislative updates to their constituents has cost taxpayers more than $1.4 billion — and most of it was spent during election years....

But the CRS report suggests that Members don’t use franking to just send updates to constituents throughout the year. Instead, franking costs skyrocket during August of election years — right before the 90-day period prior to an election when Representatives aren’t allowed to send mass mailings. There’s also a spike in December of odd-numbered years, suggesting a scramble to get out mail on lawmakers’ accomplishments over the year. In December 2005, close to $6 million was spent on official mail, while in August 2006, more than $4 million was spent. This pattern implies that franking has become a campaign tool, said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

Indeed, the fact that the Senate and House each have (different) rules about not using franked mail within some time period before an election is strong evidence that they realize the privilege is being used for campaigning, despite the theoretical existence of a process to approve franked material.

As for Lamborn, some of his glossy mailings seem obviously like campaign material...things like "Lamborn on family issues" (according to a CD-5 resident who has received these mailings), talking about Lamborn's positions on issues rather than anything he's actually done.

Other questions arise about Lamborn: What mailing lists is he using? Are the mailings going to all CD-5 voters, just Republicans, or just a subset of Republicans (such as people who voted in the last election, party delegates, etc)? Unfortunately, I do not believe this information will be easy to get. And since I have to earn a living doing things other than investigations, I'll have to leave that leg-work to a motivated reporter.

For comparison, I contacted the office of Senator Wayne Allard and was informed that Allard has never done a franked mass mailing, and has only used franked mail to 1) answer constituent questions, 2) send letters to federal agencies, and 3) notify constituents (who had specifically requested such notification) of upcoming town meetings.

Lamborn's apparent abuse of the franking system represents more than a small departure from fiscal responsibility. Instead it shows a continuing willingness to tread the line, or maybe cross the line, in both the ethics and the law regarding political campaigns.

Here's an interesting video interview of Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) with a warning about the big (huge) government implications of the Lieberman-Warner "cap and trade" energy proposal.

see "Video report -- Sen. Corker discusses concerns over a piece of global warming legislation", Kingston (TN) Times-News, 4/11/08
http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9005919

Like every other piece of legislation aimed at the "problem" of climate change, it is really just a not-so-well disguised attempt to enlarge the size and intrusiveness of government and to redistribute income. The difference with this bill is that it would result in one of the largest redistributions ever, on what would almost certainly be the largest tax other than income-related taxes which Americans have ever seen.

One we let government get control of deciding what energy sources are OK and what aren't, they'll destroy our economy in much the same way that socialized medicine has destroyed health care in many countries...it is still incredible that the Democrats want to bring that health care destruction here, and now they want to do the same to energy.

The only reason that cap and trade hasn't destroyed Europe is that they issued so many credits that the system doesn't actually reduce carbon emissions (not that that should be a huge priority anyway). The system does, however, transfer plenty of money from consumers and companies to traders and banks and other companies who have learned how to game the system. This lesson has not been lost on American companies, which is why Senator Corker mentions CEOs of big companies wandering the halls of Congress to make sure the game is defined in a way that benefits their companies...and penalizes you and me.

I would even suggest that "cap and trade", as a step toward a socialist energy economy, is more dangerous than socialized medicine. While HillaryCare and things like it are getting a lot of attention, I fear that most people don't understand the ramifications of Lieberman-Warner and therefore won't oppose it as aggressively as they should.

I urge my readers to learn what Lieberman-Warner would really do to us, both from the points of view of economic and political liberty, and to share that knowledge with your friends and encourage as many people as you can to contact their Congressmen and Senators, urging them to oppose the bill.

In response to a Denver Post article suggesting that the outcome in the Cory Voorhis case has negative implications for "privacy issues", I wrote this letter to the Post:

Felisa Cardona’s article about “privacy issues” uses the same incorrect and irrelevant information and references as did the incompetent prosecutor in the Voorhis case. First, the article mentions “Voorhis’ decision to turn over records to a political campaign.” Voorhis made no such decision; he contacted John Marshall because he believed, based on a description in a Denver Post article, that Marshall was a “spokesman for Congressman Beauprez”, and it became clear in court that Marshall never clarified to Voorhis that he actually worked for Beauprez’s campaign for governor.

Second, laws are already in place to protect privacy. The limited information Voorhis disclosed was A) explicitly not protected by privacy laws, B) required to be disclosed to a Congressional office if they requested it, and C) in furtherance of Voorhis’ job description and oath to uphold and enforce the laws of the United States.

Voorhis has said all along that his actions were not partisan. His prior history (as a private citizen) of contacting and opposing Republican politicians whom he thought took incorrect positions on immigration demonstrate his commitment to the issue, not a party. So, because Voorhies knew that (Denver District Attorney) Bill Ritter’s office was obstructing justice and endangering the public safety, Voorhis gave non-protected information strictly within legal limits, in an attempt to force the DA's office to enforce the law.

Claims that the Voorhis verdict has implications for medical records or tax records are a red herring. There is no such implication. Someone who tries to make a connection, and the reporter who lets him, simply demonstrate their utter ignorance of the Voorhis case and the law.

So Barack Obama wants to talk about bitterness??? How's this:

Just as I tell my wife how difficult the past year has been financially, not least what I think is happening to the value of our home (although I believe we're in a demographically desirable location), I get an e-mail from my accountant telling me to send 5-figures of my hard-earned money to the government(s).

I don't object to funding my "fair share" of the legitimate functions of government.

But boy do I feel bitter about graduated, aka "progressive" tax rates, where for some reason I get to pay not only more tax, but a higher tax rate, than someone who earns less. And boy do I feel bitter about being forced, upon pain of prison, socialized medical, socialized retirement, socialized drugs for old people, and various pet projects of politicians who use my money to buy votes for themselves.

I don't know what's going t