Why America doesn't need the Law of the Sea.
Wall Street Journal
Saturday, November 3, 2007 12:01 a.m.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 Wednesday to approve the Law of the Sea Treaty, meaning it's now up to 34 Senate Republicans to send this giant octopus of a document back where it belongs. To wit, the bottom of the ocean.
The U.S. last disposed of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea--LOST to its critics--when Ronald Reagan was President. This May, however, the Bush Administration reversed course and declared that the Gipper's objections had been fixed by a 1994 amendment. We've since had a debate on these pages over that point, with former Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker in favor, while Ed Meese and William Clark, Reagan's Attorney General and National Security Adviser, remain opposed.
The best arguments for the treaty come from the U.S. Navy, which likes how it creates a legal framework for navigational rights. The oil and gas industry approves of provisions that create an "exclusive economic zone" for the U.S. out to 200 miles. There's also the potential for development (with clear legal title) of resources in the deep seabed, which would be managed by the International Seabed Authority on which the U.S. would be guaranteed a seat. And, in fact, the 1994 amendment did get rid of some of LOST's most obnoxious provisions, such as mandatory technology transfers and other redistributionist nostrums.
Then again, the Navy has been getting along fine by using the "customary law" that has guaranteed freedom of the seas for three centuries. Treaty proponents have taken to arguing that, unless we ratify, Russia will lay claim to oil rights over the Arctic seabed. But Russia's expansive Arctic claims, possibly including the sea floor under the North Pole, are themselves a product of the treaty. We also hear that the U.S. must have its proverbial "seat at the table" in negotiations over such claims. But the nations with a direct geographic Arctic claim ought to be able to cut a deal without giving Cuba or Zimbabwe a seat. America's historic experience with similar multinational bodies (e.g., the U.N. Human Rights Commission) hardly justifies confidence that having a seat will enhance our influence, rather than constrain it.
The larger problem is the treaty's sheer size, with no fewer than 320 articles and nine annexes. These cover everything from "Criminal jurisdiction on board a foreign ship" (Article 27) to "Anadromous stocks" and "Catadromous Species" (Articles 65 and 66) to the "Jurisdiction of the Seabed Disputes Chamber" (Article 187). Much of this is anodyne, but perhaps the Senators should read the fine print before voting. They might be surprised by what they find.
Consider the treaty's potential effects on military activities. The Administration says these are excluded from the treaty and, further, that the U.S. gets to decide what constitutes such activity. But then how to explain Article 20, which states that "In the territorial sea, submarines and other underwater vehicles are required to navigate on the surface and to show their flag." How will this affect the ability of U.S. submarines to gather intelligence in coastal waters or deploy special forces on hostile shores? Last we checked, a $1 billion submarine called the USS Jimmy Carter had been built precisely for that purpose.
The Navy might also ask how its powerful sonars--which some environmentalists say harm marine life--could run afoul of Article 196. This states that countries "shall take all measures necessary to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment resulting from the use of technologies under their jurisdiction or control."
Or take concerns that the treaty's requirements on pollution are a back-door mechanism for forcing U.S. compliance with the Kyoto Treaty and other global environmental pacts. Confronted with the argument, an Administration spokesman told the Senate that the treaty did not exercise jurisdiction over land-based pollution. Replied Republican Senator David Vitter: "If it is . . . not covered by the treaty, why is there a section entitled, 'Pollution from Land-Based Sources'?" A good question, considering that Article 213 notes that countries "shall adopt laws and regulations and take other measures necessary to implement applicable international rules and standards established through competent international organizations" to control such pollution. Note our emphasis.
Critics are also right to be concerned about the powers of direct taxation the treaty confers on the International Seabed Authority. The details of this innovation are buried in Article 13 of the treaty's third annex, and contain a mix of "production charges" and annual million-dollar "administrative" fees. Such measures are all but unprecedented for an international organization and have a potential for corruption, especially when the taxes can run as high as 70% of net proceeds.
Some 154 countries have joined the Law of the Sea Treaty, with the U.S. one of the few holdouts. Critics are being labeled isolationists, or worse. But the U.S. has been abiding voluntarily with the terms of the treaty since 1983, with no ill effect. Twenty-some years ago a former President objected to handing sovereignty over two-thirds of the Earth's surface to another unaccountable international body. Ronald Reagan sank the treaty then; now it's up to 34 Senators to show similar courage.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
U.S. Tax Code Hampers Competitiveness
By Michael Franc
Friday, November 2, 2007
In July, the Treasury Department released a study cataloguing the ways our deplorable tax code restricts U.S. competitiveness. "Our tax system," it said, "disrupts and distorts a vast array of business and investment decisions" that "lowers the productive capacity of the economy and reduces living standards." Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson explained, "our workers pay the price."
Paulson wants lawmakers on Capitol Hill to follow the lead of other industrialized nations and lower U.S. corporate tax rates. He also advocates pruning the corporate code of "complex, targeted provisions; depreciation schedules without clear rationale; taxation of capital income that discourages saving and investment; and, double taxation of corporate profits that can lead to misallocation of capital." Why? According to the Tax Foundation, the top U.S. corporate rate of 39.3% (the combined federal and state rate) is second only to Japan’s 39.5% top rate. This decades-old trend accelerated in 2006 when five large industrialized countries cut their corporate income tax rates further; eight more, including Germany, plan to do so by January.
Paulson’s message must have reached Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who chairs the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, but apparently, it only penetrated the supply side of his brain. Last week he unveiled an ambitious, but schizophrenic, tax-reform plan that is downright Reaganesque (for the most part) on corporate taxation, but succumbs to the siren song of class warfare on individual taxation.
Rangel targets "unfairness" in the tax code, especially the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Created in 1969, Congress enacted the AMT to extract tax payments from wealthy individuals who were using legal deductions to avoid all income tax liability. The AMT cancels many popular tax deductions for high-income filers.
But, because Congress didn’t index the AMT to inflation, it has begun to ensnare more and more unsuspecting taxpayers. Last year, it hit 4 million; by 2010, one in three taxpayers could be paying this "millionaires" tax.
Rangel is right: The AMT must go.
But when tax policy threatens to disrupt the oxygen supply of the modern welfare state, liberals don their boxing gloves. This accidental tax, after all, will accidentally raise close to $1 trillion over the next decade. Liberals won’t return those dollars to the taxpayers without a fight.
Thus, Rangel’s legislative blueprint would keep those dollars flowing to Washington. Rangel proposes to replace the AMT with perhaps the largest tax increase in history - a new 4% surcharge on single and married filers with incomes of $150,000 and $200,000, respectively. The surcharge would be set even higher -- 4.6% -- for those with incomes above $500,000. He also has additional tax increases in mind for savers, investors and entrepreneurs.
Because his blueprint envisions allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, it would effectively increase the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 44.2%. The current tax burden -- i.e., the amount that would be collected if the Bush tax cuts were extended and Congress continued its recent practice of "patching" the AMT -- would explode by $3.5 trillion over the next decade. Yet Rangel doesn’t consider this $3.5 trillion a tax increase. Only Washington liberals can argue that your exploding tax bill isn’t really a tax increase!
From an international perspective, the higher rates move our tax code in exactly the wrong direction. Most countries have abandoned the sort of confiscatory marginal tax rates that prevailed when Ronald Reagan was first elected. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the highest marginal rate in the world today -- Chad’s 65% -- is lower than the top U.S. rate (70%) in 1980.
With our current top rate of 35%, the U.S. ranks 84th in the world, tied with such economic powerhouses as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Azerbaijan. Under Rangel’s proposal, the U.S. would plummet to 132nd, alongside moribund European welfare states such as Spain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. Add in state tax burdens, and the picture darkens: Taxpayers in 29 states face top rates of 6% or more, enough to push their combined federal-state tax rate above 50%.
On the corporate side, though, Rangel donned a rare supply-side hat. He proposed a significant drop in the top corporate rate, from 35% to 30.5%, and the elimination of various corporate tax deductions.
Of course, we could do better. The Treasury study estimates that we could lower the top corporate rate to 27% simply by eliminating special-interest deductions and redirecting those lost revenues to rate cuts.
The rest of the world isn’t waiting. Time to catch the wave.
Friday, November 2, 2007
In July, the Treasury Department released a study cataloguing the ways our deplorable tax code restricts U.S. competitiveness. "Our tax system," it said, "disrupts and distorts a vast array of business and investment decisions" that "lowers the productive capacity of the economy and reduces living standards." Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson explained, "our workers pay the price."
Paulson wants lawmakers on Capitol Hill to follow the lead of other industrialized nations and lower U.S. corporate tax rates. He also advocates pruning the corporate code of "complex, targeted provisions; depreciation schedules without clear rationale; taxation of capital income that discourages saving and investment; and, double taxation of corporate profits that can lead to misallocation of capital." Why? According to the Tax Foundation, the top U.S. corporate rate of 39.3% (the combined federal and state rate) is second only to Japan’s 39.5% top rate. This decades-old trend accelerated in 2006 when five large industrialized countries cut their corporate income tax rates further; eight more, including Germany, plan to do so by January.
Paulson’s message must have reached Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who chairs the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, but apparently, it only penetrated the supply side of his brain. Last week he unveiled an ambitious, but schizophrenic, tax-reform plan that is downright Reaganesque (for the most part) on corporate taxation, but succumbs to the siren song of class warfare on individual taxation.
Rangel targets "unfairness" in the tax code, especially the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Created in 1969, Congress enacted the AMT to extract tax payments from wealthy individuals who were using legal deductions to avoid all income tax liability. The AMT cancels many popular tax deductions for high-income filers.
But, because Congress didn’t index the AMT to inflation, it has begun to ensnare more and more unsuspecting taxpayers. Last year, it hit 4 million; by 2010, one in three taxpayers could be paying this "millionaires" tax.
Rangel is right: The AMT must go.
But when tax policy threatens to disrupt the oxygen supply of the modern welfare state, liberals don their boxing gloves. This accidental tax, after all, will accidentally raise close to $1 trillion over the next decade. Liberals won’t return those dollars to the taxpayers without a fight.
Thus, Rangel’s legislative blueprint would keep those dollars flowing to Washington. Rangel proposes to replace the AMT with perhaps the largest tax increase in history - a new 4% surcharge on single and married filers with incomes of $150,000 and $200,000, respectively. The surcharge would be set even higher -- 4.6% -- for those with incomes above $500,000. He also has additional tax increases in mind for savers, investors and entrepreneurs.
Because his blueprint envisions allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, it would effectively increase the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 44.2%. The current tax burden -- i.e., the amount that would be collected if the Bush tax cuts were extended and Congress continued its recent practice of "patching" the AMT -- would explode by $3.5 trillion over the next decade. Yet Rangel doesn’t consider this $3.5 trillion a tax increase. Only Washington liberals can argue that your exploding tax bill isn’t really a tax increase!
From an international perspective, the higher rates move our tax code in exactly the wrong direction. Most countries have abandoned the sort of confiscatory marginal tax rates that prevailed when Ronald Reagan was first elected. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the highest marginal rate in the world today -- Chad’s 65% -- is lower than the top U.S. rate (70%) in 1980.
With our current top rate of 35%, the U.S. ranks 84th in the world, tied with such economic powerhouses as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Azerbaijan. Under Rangel’s proposal, the U.S. would plummet to 132nd, alongside moribund European welfare states such as Spain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. Add in state tax burdens, and the picture darkens: Taxpayers in 29 states face top rates of 6% or more, enough to push their combined federal-state tax rate above 50%.
On the corporate side, though, Rangel donned a rare supply-side hat. He proposed a significant drop in the top corporate rate, from 35% to 30.5%, and the elimination of various corporate tax deductions.
Of course, we could do better. The Treasury study estimates that we could lower the top corporate rate to 27% simply by eliminating special-interest deductions and redirecting those lost revenues to rate cuts.
The rest of the world isn’t waiting. Time to catch the wave.
Democrats Show Their Partisan Colors on SCHIP
By Congressman Thomas Price
Thursday, November 1, 2007
It has been stunning how quickly Democrat leaders have shown their true colors this Congress, pandering and playing politics to usurp ever more personal and economic freedom. The current debate over the future of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a perfect example.
SCHIP was designed in a bipartisan effort a decade ago to provide health care assistance for low-income children in a household with income that exceeds Medicaid eligibility, but may not be enough to afford private insurance, roughly $42,000 per year today. The program insures millions of low-income children, and Republicans are supportive of continuing it according to the original intent.
Democrats in Congress, however, would not allow for common-sense reauthorization without inserting partisan politics. Democrats have proposed to take control of healthcare away from families and doctors and expand SCHIP to children in households making up to $62,000 per year, a level at which over two-thirds of Americans already have personal health care coverage. They would allow adults to be covered before children and refuse to ensure that illegal aliens do not have access to a taxpayer-funded program.
Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly insisted that this expansion put ten million children on government-run health care, regardless of how many children are forced to leave personal, private coverage for the bureaucratic, government program. It is estimated that under the Democrats’ plan, two million American children who already have personal care would be forced out of private insurance to receive taxpayer-funded, government-run health care.
With an issue as important as our nation’s health care, we must not allow politics to get in the way of responsible policy. This flawed proposal would lead to even greater dependence on the government for health care. As a nation, we should promote the goal of reducing the number of Americans reliant upon government assistance and allow for personal choices in healthcare decisions.
It is amazing how far Congress has come from the bipartisan welfare reform agreement of 1996. A great accomplishment of the Republican-controlled Congress, the reform provided incentives for people to stand up for themselves and lessen dependency on the federal government. Today, this SCHIP proposal offers incentives for Americans to leave the free market in favor of bureaucratic health care. Rather than encouraging personal and economic freedom, we are now encouraging government assistance. This reversal of policy is inexcusable.
Democrats have tried to sell this debate as cost versus compassion. While our budget is clearly out of control, this debate is about more than cost or compassion. It is about who controls medical decisions, some of the most important and personal decisions we make in our lives. As a physician, I know how dangerous government intrusion into health care decisions can be. When Washington has more control over health care, families and doctors have less. I can attest that this dangerous philosophy further erodes and threatens the vital doctor-patient relationship and quality care.
Conservatives should stand for free market solutions to our health care crisis. I have joined with colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senate to introduce an SCHIP solution that honors the intent of SCHIP – to help truly needy kids – while preserving and expanding the purchase of personal health care. The More Children, More Choices Act, H. R. 3888, fully funds SCHIP for the children it was intended to serve. To advance our shared goal of all Americans having health care coverage, the bill also provides tax credits for the purchase of personal coverage for children in households making up to $62,000.
This alternative would reach the same number of children as the Democrat plan, without removing children from personal health care and without any increased taxes! But Speaker Pelosi has no intention of negotiating with Republicans to find a truly bipartisan solution. This debate from the outset to the end will be about scoring political points – no matter who is exploited in the process. Sadly, it is all we have come to expect from Speaker Pelosi’s House of Politics.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
It has been stunning how quickly Democrat leaders have shown their true colors this Congress, pandering and playing politics to usurp ever more personal and economic freedom. The current debate over the future of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a perfect example.
SCHIP was designed in a bipartisan effort a decade ago to provide health care assistance for low-income children in a household with income that exceeds Medicaid eligibility, but may not be enough to afford private insurance, roughly $42,000 per year today. The program insures millions of low-income children, and Republicans are supportive of continuing it according to the original intent.
Democrats in Congress, however, would not allow for common-sense reauthorization without inserting partisan politics. Democrats have proposed to take control of healthcare away from families and doctors and expand SCHIP to children in households making up to $62,000 per year, a level at which over two-thirds of Americans already have personal health care coverage. They would allow adults to be covered before children and refuse to ensure that illegal aliens do not have access to a taxpayer-funded program.
Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly insisted that this expansion put ten million children on government-run health care, regardless of how many children are forced to leave personal, private coverage for the bureaucratic, government program. It is estimated that under the Democrats’ plan, two million American children who already have personal care would be forced out of private insurance to receive taxpayer-funded, government-run health care.
With an issue as important as our nation’s health care, we must not allow politics to get in the way of responsible policy. This flawed proposal would lead to even greater dependence on the government for health care. As a nation, we should promote the goal of reducing the number of Americans reliant upon government assistance and allow for personal choices in healthcare decisions.
It is amazing how far Congress has come from the bipartisan welfare reform agreement of 1996. A great accomplishment of the Republican-controlled Congress, the reform provided incentives for people to stand up for themselves and lessen dependency on the federal government. Today, this SCHIP proposal offers incentives for Americans to leave the free market in favor of bureaucratic health care. Rather than encouraging personal and economic freedom, we are now encouraging government assistance. This reversal of policy is inexcusable.
Democrats have tried to sell this debate as cost versus compassion. While our budget is clearly out of control, this debate is about more than cost or compassion. It is about who controls medical decisions, some of the most important and personal decisions we make in our lives. As a physician, I know how dangerous government intrusion into health care decisions can be. When Washington has more control over health care, families and doctors have less. I can attest that this dangerous philosophy further erodes and threatens the vital doctor-patient relationship and quality care.
Conservatives should stand for free market solutions to our health care crisis. I have joined with colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senate to introduce an SCHIP solution that honors the intent of SCHIP – to help truly needy kids – while preserving and expanding the purchase of personal health care. The More Children, More Choices Act, H. R. 3888, fully funds SCHIP for the children it was intended to serve. To advance our shared goal of all Americans having health care coverage, the bill also provides tax credits for the purchase of personal coverage for children in households making up to $62,000.
This alternative would reach the same number of children as the Democrat plan, without removing children from personal health care and without any increased taxes! But Speaker Pelosi has no intention of negotiating with Republicans to find a truly bipartisan solution. This debate from the outset to the end will be about scoring political points – no matter who is exploited in the process. Sadly, it is all we have come to expect from Speaker Pelosi’s House of Politics.
Science vs. Symbolism
By David Strom
Friday, November 2, 2007
Is Governor Tim Pawlenty looking to get a Nobel Peace Prize by following in the wake of Al Gore?
Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty is reportedly planning a spring trip to the Arctic to dramatize the impact of climate change. He is also planning a series of forums across the State to warn about the impact of climate change on Lake Superior.
Newsflash Governor Pawlenty: Lake Superior was formed by the melting of a massive glacier about 10,000 years ago, and the last glaciers retreated from Minnesota about 9000 years ago. Global warming started about 15,000 years ago, and without it Minnesota would be a vast desert covered in a mile thick layer of ice.
The effect of global warming on Minnesota is pretty obvious: without it there would be no Minnesota to govern.
In some ways, it makes sense for Pawlenty to visit the arctic, if he were to take away the real lesson offered there: without the global warming that has occurred over the last 15,000 years, Minnesota and much of the Northern Hemisphere would be as barren of life as the arctic is today.
But of course, that is not his intent. Instead, Pawlenty seems inclined to jump on the climate change bandwagon while it can still help his political career. Known as a strong fiscal conservative in a state with a liberal bent, he appears to be doing nothing more than burnishing his credentials for those seeking a "moderate."
It would be a matter of little consequence if Governor Pawlenty were just another Midwest Governor seeking the limelight and the approval of the chattering classes, but he is not. As Chair of the National Governor’s association Pawlenty wields considerable power over the agenda of that organization.
Contrary to the scaremongering being pushed by the media today, few credible scientists would stake their careers, no less the world economy, on predictions of disasters due to human-induced climate change. In fact, there is a long list of credible scientists who have staked their careers and reputations on questioning climate change, and their stories can be found in a wonderful series written by Lawrence Sullivan of the Canada Post. Climate change skeptics include even Al Gore’s mentor, Dr. Roger Revelle. When Revelle disagreed with Gore, Gore insisted that he was senile.
Why do these scientists go out on a limb when it would be easier to go along to get along? Just about every testable prediction that climate scaremongers have made has turned out to be false.
Take the current hurricane season, or for that matter last year’s. Both were predicted by the Climate scaremongers to be among the worst in human history, but instead they have been among the quietest.
Contrary to their predictions, Polar Bear populations have been steady or increasing, and are so populous that hunting them is legal.
And most importantly, contrary to their predictions, human life spans are increasing and by any measure human well-being is at its all-time high in human history. In fact, if one were to plot average global temperatures along with human well-being, there is pretty much a one-to-one correlation between a warmer earth and better standards of living and human population growth.
Unfortunately, for politicians the facts are entirely beside the point, because studying the facts would get in the way of those trying to grasp enormous amounts of money and power at the expense of the average citizen.
Governor Pawlenty’s trip to the Arctic this spring is a purely symbolic move. Climate science will not be advanced one iota. If anything, his trip will further the propaganda of those with everything to gain and nothing to lose if their "science" proves faulty.
But it will also, he calculates, advance his political career. Just as the Climate Scare has advanced the careers of Al Gore, the scientists who are enjoying a 10-fold increase in government spending on climate research, and the phony "carbon trading" schemers who are making out like bandits while the rest of us fork over our freedoms to them.
The question Governor Pawlenty should be asking is this: what would the effect on human population of reducing carbon emissions by 80%? In a state with a climate that mirrors Siberia, I would suggest that the consequences would be very grave indeed. Millions of Minnesotans freezing in the dark, unable to travel because their cars have no gasoline, and unable to heat their homes because natural gas and electricity production are far from carbon neutral does not look like a good future to most Minnesotans.
So let me suggest a better trip for Governor Pawlenty than the one to the Arctic this spring: try living a Minnesota winter without the power and heat sources that emit carbon dioxide. Try eating only locally produced food in the middle of Winter. Avoid using the State car and walk to the Capitol some morning when it is 30 below zero outside.
Because that is what life would be like if the policies he is proposing truly were enforced.
Something tells me that asking Minnesotans to truly make those sacrifices might not enhance Pawlenty’s political career quite so much as he thinks.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Is Governor Tim Pawlenty looking to get a Nobel Peace Prize by following in the wake of Al Gore?
Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty is reportedly planning a spring trip to the Arctic to dramatize the impact of climate change. He is also planning a series of forums across the State to warn about the impact of climate change on Lake Superior.
Newsflash Governor Pawlenty: Lake Superior was formed by the melting of a massive glacier about 10,000 years ago, and the last glaciers retreated from Minnesota about 9000 years ago. Global warming started about 15,000 years ago, and without it Minnesota would be a vast desert covered in a mile thick layer of ice.
The effect of global warming on Minnesota is pretty obvious: without it there would be no Minnesota to govern.
In some ways, it makes sense for Pawlenty to visit the arctic, if he were to take away the real lesson offered there: without the global warming that has occurred over the last 15,000 years, Minnesota and much of the Northern Hemisphere would be as barren of life as the arctic is today.
But of course, that is not his intent. Instead, Pawlenty seems inclined to jump on the climate change bandwagon while it can still help his political career. Known as a strong fiscal conservative in a state with a liberal bent, he appears to be doing nothing more than burnishing his credentials for those seeking a "moderate."
It would be a matter of little consequence if Governor Pawlenty were just another Midwest Governor seeking the limelight and the approval of the chattering classes, but he is not. As Chair of the National Governor’s association Pawlenty wields considerable power over the agenda of that organization.
Contrary to the scaremongering being pushed by the media today, few credible scientists would stake their careers, no less the world economy, on predictions of disasters due to human-induced climate change. In fact, there is a long list of credible scientists who have staked their careers and reputations on questioning climate change, and their stories can be found in a wonderful series written by Lawrence Sullivan of the Canada Post. Climate change skeptics include even Al Gore’s mentor, Dr. Roger Revelle. When Revelle disagreed with Gore, Gore insisted that he was senile.
Why do these scientists go out on a limb when it would be easier to go along to get along? Just about every testable prediction that climate scaremongers have made has turned out to be false.
Take the current hurricane season, or for that matter last year’s. Both were predicted by the Climate scaremongers to be among the worst in human history, but instead they have been among the quietest.
Contrary to their predictions, Polar Bear populations have been steady or increasing, and are so populous that hunting them is legal.
And most importantly, contrary to their predictions, human life spans are increasing and by any measure human well-being is at its all-time high in human history. In fact, if one were to plot average global temperatures along with human well-being, there is pretty much a one-to-one correlation between a warmer earth and better standards of living and human population growth.
Unfortunately, for politicians the facts are entirely beside the point, because studying the facts would get in the way of those trying to grasp enormous amounts of money and power at the expense of the average citizen.
Governor Pawlenty’s trip to the Arctic this spring is a purely symbolic move. Climate science will not be advanced one iota. If anything, his trip will further the propaganda of those with everything to gain and nothing to lose if their "science" proves faulty.
But it will also, he calculates, advance his political career. Just as the Climate Scare has advanced the careers of Al Gore, the scientists who are enjoying a 10-fold increase in government spending on climate research, and the phony "carbon trading" schemers who are making out like bandits while the rest of us fork over our freedoms to them.
The question Governor Pawlenty should be asking is this: what would the effect on human population of reducing carbon emissions by 80%? In a state with a climate that mirrors Siberia, I would suggest that the consequences would be very grave indeed. Millions of Minnesotans freezing in the dark, unable to travel because their cars have no gasoline, and unable to heat their homes because natural gas and electricity production are far from carbon neutral does not look like a good future to most Minnesotans.
So let me suggest a better trip for Governor Pawlenty than the one to the Arctic this spring: try living a Minnesota winter without the power and heat sources that emit carbon dioxide. Try eating only locally produced food in the middle of Winter. Avoid using the State car and walk to the Capitol some morning when it is 30 below zero outside.
Because that is what life would be like if the policies he is proposing truly were enforced.
Something tells me that asking Minnesotans to truly make those sacrifices might not enhance Pawlenty’s political career quite so much as he thinks.
Shocking: Scientist Commits Heresy
By Paul Greenberg
Friday, November 2, 2007
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
- John Adams
I almost spilled my coffee. I just stood there, dumbstruck right in my own kitchen. Flipping through the Wall Street Journal the other morning while waiting for the oatmeal to cool, my eye was caught by an article I had to read all the way through - then and there. It was the text of an interview with the latest Nobel Prize laureate. No, not the one named Al Gore.
Few may have noticed, but Mr. Gore shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with a real scientist, or rather a whole slew of them on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That group's work is as unglamorous as its bureaucratic name. It's never even made a horror film (GLOBAL WARNING!) about the earth's being inundated as the polar icecaps melt.
This international panel just plods along trying to find out what's really going on with the climate. Facts are stubborn things, as dour John Adams once noted, and it takes a lot of patient research to find and evaluate them, then suggest an appropriate response. It's about as exciting as bookkeeping.
Being an alarmist is a lot easier; some politicians and pamphleteers make highly successful careers of it. Real scientists may not be pleased by the sensationalism that envelops the whole subject of global warming. But if they speak up, they could be labeled heretics and exiled to the farthest reaches of academic opprobrium. For global warming has become more of a fighting faith than a topic for calm analysis. Disagree and you're liable to be called not just wrong but anti-science. Today it is the ultimate heresy.
One of the scientific dissenters is John Christy, a member of both the UN panel and the University of Alabama's faculty. (He's the director of that university's Earth System Science Center.) In a break with tradition, Dr. Christy declined to perform the traditional pas de deux of mutual flattery when Nobel laureates share the same prize. Not when Al Gore's may be the first on record awarded essentially for the kind of PR that comes too close to being propaganda. It makes you wonder what propagandist will get it next year - Michael Moore?
It turns out there are indeed reasonable things to be said about global warming - and on television at that. I was amazed. The transcript of Dr. Christy's interview with CNN's Miles O'Brien is worth reading: (Just set down your coffee cup first.)
Miles O'Brien: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?
John Christy: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that - I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here - that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities. And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.
O'Brien: So, what about the movie ("An Inconvenient Truth") do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?
Christy: Well, there's any number of things. I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is - well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.
O'Brien: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?
Christy: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing? And when we build - and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets - we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place. For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.
And so heretically on. There are others like Dr. Christy out there in the scientific community who don't believe the best way to approach science is in a panic.
For example, Daniel Botkin of the University of California's Center for the Study of the Environment. His is an opinion some of us mere laymen may share: "My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it."
The planet does seem to be returning to one of its warmer phases, but the extent, cause and response to that phenomenon should be a matter for analysis and discussion, not frenzy.
It's as if we've forgotten that the first qualification for doing science may be a certain skepticism. I come by mine naturally when the subject is global warming, for I can remember being taught in school not that the planet is warming but that another ice age is almost upon us. It was a widespread assumption at the time taught as scientific fact. There was no doubt about it. All the scientists agreed. It said so right there in the book. I must have missed it somewhere along the way.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
- John Adams
I almost spilled my coffee. I just stood there, dumbstruck right in my own kitchen. Flipping through the Wall Street Journal the other morning while waiting for the oatmeal to cool, my eye was caught by an article I had to read all the way through - then and there. It was the text of an interview with the latest Nobel Prize laureate. No, not the one named Al Gore.
Few may have noticed, but Mr. Gore shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with a real scientist, or rather a whole slew of them on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That group's work is as unglamorous as its bureaucratic name. It's never even made a horror film (GLOBAL WARNING!) about the earth's being inundated as the polar icecaps melt.
This international panel just plods along trying to find out what's really going on with the climate. Facts are stubborn things, as dour John Adams once noted, and it takes a lot of patient research to find and evaluate them, then suggest an appropriate response. It's about as exciting as bookkeeping.
Being an alarmist is a lot easier; some politicians and pamphleteers make highly successful careers of it. Real scientists may not be pleased by the sensationalism that envelops the whole subject of global warming. But if they speak up, they could be labeled heretics and exiled to the farthest reaches of academic opprobrium. For global warming has become more of a fighting faith than a topic for calm analysis. Disagree and you're liable to be called not just wrong but anti-science. Today it is the ultimate heresy.
One of the scientific dissenters is John Christy, a member of both the UN panel and the University of Alabama's faculty. (He's the director of that university's Earth System Science Center.) In a break with tradition, Dr. Christy declined to perform the traditional pas de deux of mutual flattery when Nobel laureates share the same prize. Not when Al Gore's may be the first on record awarded essentially for the kind of PR that comes too close to being propaganda. It makes you wonder what propagandist will get it next year - Michael Moore?
It turns out there are indeed reasonable things to be said about global warming - and on television at that. I was amazed. The transcript of Dr. Christy's interview with CNN's Miles O'Brien is worth reading: (Just set down your coffee cup first.)
Miles O'Brien: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?
John Christy: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that - I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here - that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities. And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.
O'Brien: So, what about the movie ("An Inconvenient Truth") do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?
Christy: Well, there's any number of things. I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is - well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.
O'Brien: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?
Christy: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing? And when we build - and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets - we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place. For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.
And so heretically on. There are others like Dr. Christy out there in the scientific community who don't believe the best way to approach science is in a panic.
For example, Daniel Botkin of the University of California's Center for the Study of the Environment. His is an opinion some of us mere laymen may share: "My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it."
The planet does seem to be returning to one of its warmer phases, but the extent, cause and response to that phenomenon should be a matter for analysis and discussion, not frenzy.
It's as if we've forgotten that the first qualification for doing science may be a certain skepticism. I come by mine naturally when the subject is global warming, for I can remember being taught in school not that the planet is warming but that another ice age is almost upon us. It was a widespread assumption at the time taught as scientific fact. There was no doubt about it. All the scientists agreed. It said so right there in the book. I must have missed it somewhere along the way.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Despite the Gloom, More Bush Boom
By Lawrence Kudlow
Thursday, November 1, 2007
If things are so bad, why are they so good?
With all the gloom coming out of Wall Street, the Democrats on the campaign trail and the mainstream media, a remarkable thing just happened: Real gross domestic product, the best summary report of the American economy, came in at a breathtaking 3.9 percent annual rate for the third quarter. In fact, following the 3.8 percent growth rate for the second quarter, the U.S. economy has posted its strongest quarterly growth in four years. The economy actually appears to be speeding up, following the relatively sluggish performance of the prior 18 months.
On top of this, the inflation rate is actually slowing down. The consumer spending deflator is reading 2.1 percent for the past year, compared to over 3 percent six quarters ago. The core inflation rate is down to 1.9 percent, below the Fed's 2 percent target.
Even employment is holding its own. According to Automatic Data Processing's private employment survey, which showed its strongest gain in four months, October looks like it will produce about 125,000 new jobs.
Meanwhile, rising exports of American goods and services are booming to such an extent that the deep housing recession is being cancelled out. And while many continue to predict a consumer collapse because of falling home prices and tighter credit, after-tax inflation-adjusted income is 4.1 percent ahead of last year, for a $344 billion gain, while the purchase cost of energy prices are flat. The little noticed factoid is that consumer energy use per unit of GDP has actually fallen by more than 50 percent in recent decades.
Again: If things are so bad, why are they so good?
The stock market roared after the Federal Reserve cut its target rate on Wednesday by 25 basis points to 4.5 percent. The rate cut was a small insurance policy, just in case the subprime credit crunch and the housing downturn take a larger toll on the economy.
But listening to the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday, you'd think it was 1929 all over again. The litany of scare-talk complaints includes China trade unfairness, globalization, immigration, income inequality, stagnant wages, a shrinking middle class, the sinking dollar and high oil prices.
Yes, there is home deflation on Main Street and loan deflation on Wall Street. It will continue. But what about the rest of the story? When you listen to the hedge-fund short-sellers and the liberal politicians as they attempt to discredit the Bush economic boom, you could almost fall for their bear-market seduction. But the seductress turns out to be an economic harlot -- not a beautiful woman.
The true message of the strong economy is that we're virtually guaranteed of a Goldilocks soft landing or better -- and certainly not a recession.
It's interesting that while the Bush tax cuts of 2003 continue to encourage investment and entrepreneurship, expanding national income and higher tax collections have brought the big bad budget deficit down to $160 billion, or roughly 1 percent of GDP. Using something called the primary deficit -- which extracts net interest on the debt and can be used to measure fiscal stimulus on the economy -- we actually have a 70 billion surplus.
These are all reasons why it would be foolhardy to embrace large-scale tax-hikes to allegedly fight the budget gap.
House tax chief Charlie Rangel's great idea to reduce the corporate income tax is the first pro-growth tax-cut measure from a Democrat in many years, and hopefully his effort will spur a discussion of full-scale tax reform by the Republican and Democratic candidates. But looking to the rest of Rangel's plan, there are ways to eliminate the alternative minimum tax that do not require big tax hikes on the most successful earners and investors.
For example, the Bush administration's tax-reform panel, chaired by former Sens. Connie Mack and John Breaux, proposed a growth-and-investment plan with only three income-tax brackets of 15, 25 and 30 percent. They would repeal the AMT and reduce the corporate tax to 30 percent. Capital gains and dividends would remain at 15 percent.
Or there's the new plan from Wisconsin House member Paul Ryan, which would move to a 10 percent and 25 percent tax system while also eliminating the dreaded AMT.
In other words, there are a lot of ways to gently nudge tax rates lower while broadening the tax base that would keep the Bush boom going well into the future.
The print and broadcast media do not give President Bush much credit for his economic policies. But somehow I have to wonder whether low unemployment, strong growth, negligible inflation and record stock markets do not deserve just a bit of praise.
It is still the greatest story never told.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
If things are so bad, why are they so good?
With all the gloom coming out of Wall Street, the Democrats on the campaign trail and the mainstream media, a remarkable thing just happened: Real gross domestic product, the best summary report of the American economy, came in at a breathtaking 3.9 percent annual rate for the third quarter. In fact, following the 3.8 percent growth rate for the second quarter, the U.S. economy has posted its strongest quarterly growth in four years. The economy actually appears to be speeding up, following the relatively sluggish performance of the prior 18 months.
On top of this, the inflation rate is actually slowing down. The consumer spending deflator is reading 2.1 percent for the past year, compared to over 3 percent six quarters ago. The core inflation rate is down to 1.9 percent, below the Fed's 2 percent target.
Even employment is holding its own. According to Automatic Data Processing's private employment survey, which showed its strongest gain in four months, October looks like it will produce about 125,000 new jobs.
Meanwhile, rising exports of American goods and services are booming to such an extent that the deep housing recession is being cancelled out. And while many continue to predict a consumer collapse because of falling home prices and tighter credit, after-tax inflation-adjusted income is 4.1 percent ahead of last year, for a $344 billion gain, while the purchase cost of energy prices are flat. The little noticed factoid is that consumer energy use per unit of GDP has actually fallen by more than 50 percent in recent decades.
Again: If things are so bad, why are they so good?
The stock market roared after the Federal Reserve cut its target rate on Wednesday by 25 basis points to 4.5 percent. The rate cut was a small insurance policy, just in case the subprime credit crunch and the housing downturn take a larger toll on the economy.
But listening to the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday, you'd think it was 1929 all over again. The litany of scare-talk complaints includes China trade unfairness, globalization, immigration, income inequality, stagnant wages, a shrinking middle class, the sinking dollar and high oil prices.
Yes, there is home deflation on Main Street and loan deflation on Wall Street. It will continue. But what about the rest of the story? When you listen to the hedge-fund short-sellers and the liberal politicians as they attempt to discredit the Bush economic boom, you could almost fall for their bear-market seduction. But the seductress turns out to be an economic harlot -- not a beautiful woman.
The true message of the strong economy is that we're virtually guaranteed of a Goldilocks soft landing or better -- and certainly not a recession.
It's interesting that while the Bush tax cuts of 2003 continue to encourage investment and entrepreneurship, expanding national income and higher tax collections have brought the big bad budget deficit down to $160 billion, or roughly 1 percent of GDP. Using something called the primary deficit -- which extracts net interest on the debt and can be used to measure fiscal stimulus on the economy -- we actually have a 70 billion surplus.
These are all reasons why it would be foolhardy to embrace large-scale tax-hikes to allegedly fight the budget gap.
House tax chief Charlie Rangel's great idea to reduce the corporate income tax is the first pro-growth tax-cut measure from a Democrat in many years, and hopefully his effort will spur a discussion of full-scale tax reform by the Republican and Democratic candidates. But looking to the rest of Rangel's plan, there are ways to eliminate the alternative minimum tax that do not require big tax hikes on the most successful earners and investors.
For example, the Bush administration's tax-reform panel, chaired by former Sens. Connie Mack and John Breaux, proposed a growth-and-investment plan with only three income-tax brackets of 15, 25 and 30 percent. They would repeal the AMT and reduce the corporate tax to 30 percent. Capital gains and dividends would remain at 15 percent.
Or there's the new plan from Wisconsin House member Paul Ryan, which would move to a 10 percent and 25 percent tax system while also eliminating the dreaded AMT.
In other words, there are a lot of ways to gently nudge tax rates lower while broadening the tax base that would keep the Bush boom going well into the future.
The print and broadcast media do not give President Bush much credit for his economic policies. But somehow I have to wonder whether low unemployment, strong growth, negligible inflation and record stock markets do not deserve just a bit of praise.
It is still the greatest story never told.
The California Fires: Where were the Looters?
By Jerry Bowyer
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Did you see any looters on television last week? Neither did I. When New Orleans was flooded two years ago, there were looters all over my TV screen. Men with assault rifles waded through the streets menacingly. At first, I thought I was looking at footage from Somalia, but I looked at the crawl underneath the images - it wasn’t Somalia; it was Louisiana.
What about the rapists? There were rapists at the refugee camp formerly known as the Superdome, but did you see any reports about rapists at Qualcomm Stadium last week? I didn’t. Did the mayor of San Diego cuss and then lash out at George Bush on your TV screen last week? Did Governor Schwarzenegger cry for the cameras? Did he pass the buck?
San Diego had a major fire just four years ago. Did they wallow in their victimhood and demand more government funding? Did they play the race card, claiming that George Bush just doesn’t like Mexicans?
The answer to all these questions is ‘no’. Here’s why: culture matters. San Diego is an entrepreneurial city. It’s a technology savvy, business-friendly region with unusually high rates of self-employment. Few of its citizens are unemployed; few receive welfare. Not many of its employed residents work for government. San Diego has seen its share of troubles. Like Pittsburgh had been a steel town and Detroit had been a car town, San Diego had been built on the defense industry. But when the Berlin wall came down and the defense budgets dried up, it shifted towards the next big thing – biotechnology. These changes have come from the bottom-up; from the marketplace.
New Orleans isn’t any of those things. We can romanticize things all we want. I lived in New Orleans for awhile when I was a child. I have relatives there. I liked everyone that I met there. But let’s be honest, New Orleans is, and has been for many years, burdened by legendarily incompetent and corrupt leadership class. The big economic activities, off-shore platforms and large ports, are essentially colonial operations, run by distant managers, not emerging from the entrepreneurial action of the locals. The indigenous economy is basically a combination of tourism and bribery.
The culture difference is passivity versus self-reliance. Disasters can come to any town at any time, but some react differently than others. How they react depends on what they were the day before the disaster hit. Entrepreneurs are used to thinking for themselves. They’re used to organizing when there’s no playbook available. They have email and they check it often. They’re in touch with a wide range of other people. When the government says to evacuate, they generally do. They don’t stay home as so many people did two years ago, because their government checks were coming and they wanted to make sure that no one stole them. They volunteer to help their displaced neighbors, not loot their stores while they’re gone.
At Qualcomm stadium the line for volunteers who had come to offer help, was often longer than the line of refugees who had come to request help. At one point, the relief workers were forced to tell people, that no more food and water donations were needed.
I don’t remember that happening after Katrina. I remember people, many of whom had been warned to evacuate and didn’t, lashing out at the world for not helping them sooner. I was a talk show host at the time; we suspended normal programming for days to focus on raising money for the people of New Orleans. The frequent and angry denunciations of supposed American greed and racism didn’t make my job any easier.
Critics of entrepreneurial capitalism have long maintained that markets are a destroyer of social capital. Yes, they say, free-markets deliver high standards of living, but their gales of creative destruction unravel the social fabric. This has not been my experience. I used to run a non-profit agency serving at-risk children in certain low-income neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. There was very little capitalism occurring there (excluding drugs and prostitution, of course), but there was even less social capital. We had a tough time trying to keep a database of kids that we were helping, because the addresses were in a constant state of flux. The last names offered no real clue as to who was whom. The phone numbers changed continually, and they were almost never answered. Answering machines were rare – appointments were unheard of. Basically we learned through long experience that it was impossible to contact the parents (or guardians, or aunts, or whatevers) of the children we were trying to help. We just had to open the doors every evening and turn on the lights and see who came. I wonder if a reverse 911 evacuation call like the one that went out to a million San Diegans would have even worked in New Orleans.
I’m already bracing myself for the hate mail. “YOU’RE BLAMING THE VICTIMS!” they will blare. But I’m not blaming them, I’m trying to help them. Poverty stinks to begin with, but it’s even worse when a hurricane or an earthquake attacks. If I told you that today you were going to be hit with a natural disaster, but that you got the pick the city where your family would be when it hit, would you pick a rich one or a poor one? Would you pick one with honest and efficient road construction agencies or patronage ridden ones? Would you pick a town where almost everyone had Blackberries and cell-phones or where almost no one did? Would you pick a town were most people were business owners or where most of them were on welfare?
If you picked the former option in any of the choices above, then you have already implicitly agreed to my premise. Top-down central planning makes people less self-reliant and makes communities less resilient. I’m just asking you to make the same decision for them that you would make for yourself.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Did you see any looters on television last week? Neither did I. When New Orleans was flooded two years ago, there were looters all over my TV screen. Men with assault rifles waded through the streets menacingly. At first, I thought I was looking at footage from Somalia, but I looked at the crawl underneath the images - it wasn’t Somalia; it was Louisiana.
What about the rapists? There were rapists at the refugee camp formerly known as the Superdome, but did you see any reports about rapists at Qualcomm Stadium last week? I didn’t. Did the mayor of San Diego cuss and then lash out at George Bush on your TV screen last week? Did Governor Schwarzenegger cry for the cameras? Did he pass the buck?
San Diego had a major fire just four years ago. Did they wallow in their victimhood and demand more government funding? Did they play the race card, claiming that George Bush just doesn’t like Mexicans?
The answer to all these questions is ‘no’. Here’s why: culture matters. San Diego is an entrepreneurial city. It’s a technology savvy, business-friendly region with unusually high rates of self-employment. Few of its citizens are unemployed; few receive welfare. Not many of its employed residents work for government. San Diego has seen its share of troubles. Like Pittsburgh had been a steel town and Detroit had been a car town, San Diego had been built on the defense industry. But when the Berlin wall came down and the defense budgets dried up, it shifted towards the next big thing – biotechnology. These changes have come from the bottom-up; from the marketplace.
New Orleans isn’t any of those things. We can romanticize things all we want. I lived in New Orleans for awhile when I was a child. I have relatives there. I liked everyone that I met there. But let’s be honest, New Orleans is, and has been for many years, burdened by legendarily incompetent and corrupt leadership class. The big economic activities, off-shore platforms and large ports, are essentially colonial operations, run by distant managers, not emerging from the entrepreneurial action of the locals. The indigenous economy is basically a combination of tourism and bribery.
The culture difference is passivity versus self-reliance. Disasters can come to any town at any time, but some react differently than others. How they react depends on what they were the day before the disaster hit. Entrepreneurs are used to thinking for themselves. They’re used to organizing when there’s no playbook available. They have email and they check it often. They’re in touch with a wide range of other people. When the government says to evacuate, they generally do. They don’t stay home as so many people did two years ago, because their government checks were coming and they wanted to make sure that no one stole them. They volunteer to help their displaced neighbors, not loot their stores while they’re gone.
At Qualcomm stadium the line for volunteers who had come to offer help, was often longer than the line of refugees who had come to request help. At one point, the relief workers were forced to tell people, that no more food and water donations were needed.
I don’t remember that happening after Katrina. I remember people, many of whom had been warned to evacuate and didn’t, lashing out at the world for not helping them sooner. I was a talk show host at the time; we suspended normal programming for days to focus on raising money for the people of New Orleans. The frequent and angry denunciations of supposed American greed and racism didn’t make my job any easier.
Critics of entrepreneurial capitalism have long maintained that markets are a destroyer of social capital. Yes, they say, free-markets deliver high standards of living, but their gales of creative destruction unravel the social fabric. This has not been my experience. I used to run a non-profit agency serving at-risk children in certain low-income neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. There was very little capitalism occurring there (excluding drugs and prostitution, of course), but there was even less social capital. We had a tough time trying to keep a database of kids that we were helping, because the addresses were in a constant state of flux. The last names offered no real clue as to who was whom. The phone numbers changed continually, and they were almost never answered. Answering machines were rare – appointments were unheard of. Basically we learned through long experience that it was impossible to contact the parents (or guardians, or aunts, or whatevers) of the children we were trying to help. We just had to open the doors every evening and turn on the lights and see who came. I wonder if a reverse 911 evacuation call like the one that went out to a million San Diegans would have even worked in New Orleans.
I’m already bracing myself for the hate mail. “YOU’RE BLAMING THE VICTIMS!” they will blare. But I’m not blaming them, I’m trying to help them. Poverty stinks to begin with, but it’s even worse when a hurricane or an earthquake attacks. If I told you that today you were going to be hit with a natural disaster, but that you got the pick the city where your family would be when it hit, would you pick a rich one or a poor one? Would you pick one with honest and efficient road construction agencies or patronage ridden ones? Would you pick a town where almost everyone had Blackberries and cell-phones or where almost no one did? Would you pick a town were most people were business owners or where most of them were on welfare?
If you picked the former option in any of the choices above, then you have already implicitly agreed to my premise. Top-down central planning makes people less self-reliant and makes communities less resilient. I’m just asking you to make the same decision for them that you would make for yourself.
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