More Sowell

TOM SOWELL ON peace in the middle east:

"One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

'Peace' movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called 'peace' movements -- that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent."

I guess he offers commentary on our education system as well.

Sowell on Middle East

Clear thinking by Thomas Sowell:

"There is no concession that will bring lasting peace to the Middle East because the terrorists and their supporters are not going to be satisfied by concessions. The only thing that will satisfy them is the destruction of Israel.

Pending that, they will inflict as much destruction and bloodshed on the Israelis as they can get away with at any given time. This brutal reality is not going to vanish through verbal sleight of hand.

The terrorists have spoken in words and in deeds, including suicide bombers. They have what Churchill once described in the Nazis as 'currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.'

We saw that on 9/11 -- or should have seen it. But many, especially among the intelligentsia, are determined not to see it.

Of all the Western democracies, only two have no choice but to depend on their own military forces for their survival -- the United States and Israel. The rest have for more than half a century had the luxury of depending on American military forces in general and the American nuclear deterrent in particular.

People who have long been sheltered from mortal dangers can indulge themselves in the belief that there are no mortal dangers. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran or North Korea -- and, through them, in the hands of hate-filled terrorists -- may be all that will finally wake up such people. But that may be tragically too late.

Those who keep calling for an end to the 'cycle of violence' are what make such violence more likely. 'World opinion' in general and the United Nations in particular can always be counted on to counsel 'restraint' in response to attacks and 'negotiations' in response to lethal threats.

What that means is that those who start trouble will have a lower price to pay than if those they attacked were free to go all out in their counter-attack. Lowering the price to be paid by aggressors virtually guarantees more aggression."

TR's Monopolies

Time Magazine's cover is a picture of Teddy Roosevelt. Time's story is about how "Teddy" invented modern America. Tom Sowell offers a more critical look:

"Monopolies are much harder to find in the real world than in the world of political rhetoric. Monopolies raise prices but, in the big industries supposedly dominated by monopolies -- oil, steel, railroads -- prices were falling for years before Theodore Roosevelt entered the White House and started saving the country from 'monopoly.'

The average price of steel rails fell from $68 to $32 before TR became president. Standard Oil, the most hated of the 'monopolies,' had in fact innumerable competitors and its oil prices were not only lower than those of most of its competitors, but was also falling over the years. It was much the same story in other industries called 'monopolies.'

The anti-trust laws which Theodore Roosevelt so fiercely applied did not protect consumers from high prices. They protected high-cost producers from being driven out of business by lower cost producers. That has largely remained true in the many years since TR was president."

We Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident

Today we remember and we celebrate July 4, 1776:

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that amoung these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed . . . . .

[ . . . . ]

We, therefore, the Representives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

I wonder, today, how many in this country still hold these truths to be self-evident? How many understand government to be created to secure certain unalienable rights? I do hold these truths as self-evident, and I too understand this to be the primary (perhaps only) purpose of government.

Some 56 political leaders signed this Declaration of Independence and pledged "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." How many of our political leaders today would be able to make such a pledge with respect to the words in this Declaration? How many in the Legislative Branch of government? How many in the Executive Branch of government? How many in the Judicial Branch of government? I'm afraid I think relatively few would, today, pledge their lives and their honor (not to mention sacred honor) to the principles of government that form the foundation of this Declaration of Independence.

I'm not suggesting that many, perhaps most, would not pledge themselves to our system of government today. Certainly many would, and many have because they have served as members of our Armed Forces. Instead, I am suggesting that a great many of our leaders have a far different view of the purposes of government than did those 56 leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Winning the Iraq Wars

Victor Davis Hanason on Winning the Iraq Wars:

For all the propaganda of al Jazeera, the wounded pride of the Arab Street, or the vitriol of the Western Left, years from now the truth will remain that our soldiers did not come to plunder or colonize, but were willing to die for others’ freedom when few others would. Neither Michael Moore nor Noam Chomsky can change that, because it is not opinion, but truth — something that the Greeks rightly defined as “not forgetting” or “something that cannot be forgotten ” (alêtheia).

I think VDH is right on. Our American volunteers fight for our freedom as well as the freedom of others. It is a shame that such a small part of our public debate seems to accept this.

I think VDH is also right on target with the rest of his commentary:

Finally, we are witnessing a larger existential war, in which Iraq is the central, but not the only, theater. Put simply: will the spreading affluence and liberality of Westernization undermine the 8th-century mentality of the Islamists more quickly than their terrorists, armed with Western weapons, prey on the ennui of a postmodern Europe and America — with our large gullible populations that either don’t believe we are in a real war, or think that we should not be?

Americans know exactly the creed of the Islamists and what they have in store for us nonbelievers. Yet if we are not infidels, can we at least be fideles? That is, can we any longer articulate what we believe in, and whether it is worth defending?

The problem is not that the majority of Americans have voiced doubts about the future of Iraq — arguments over self-interest and values happen in every long war when the battlefield does not daily bring back good news.

Instead, the worry is that too many have misdirected their anger at the very culture that produced and nourished them. Sen. Kennedy could have objected to Abu Ghraib — so far the subject of nine government inquiries — without comparing the incident to the mass murdering of Saddam Hussein.

Sen. Durbin might have had doubts about Guantanamo — the constant site of Red Cross and congressional visits — but there was no need to tie it to the fiendish regimes of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Cindy Sheehan could have recanted her initial favorable remarks after meeting George Bush without later labeling him the world’s greatest terrorist.

The New York Times might have editorialized about the dangers of stealthy government security measures without publishing sensitive, leaked material in a time of war. It is precisely this escalation from criticism of the war to furor at our elected government and civilian-controlled military that is so worrisome — and so welcomed by the enemy, as we see when it cleverly regurgitates our own self criticism as its own.

The military is doing its part. It defeated Saddam Hussein, and prevented a plethora of terrorists from destroying a fragile democracy abroad and the contemporary world’s oldest here at home. Despite the caricature and venom, the original belief of the 2002 Congress that there were at least 23 reasons to topple Saddam remains valid and is reaffirmed daily, especially as we learn more of the ties between al Qaeda and Iraqi Baathist intelligence and slowly trace down the footprints of a once vast WMDs arsenal. And the effort to ensure a democratic denouement to the war, both in and beyond Iraq , is the only solution to wider Middle East pathology.

No, our problem lies in two more abstract but just as important struggles over Iraq . Either we did not communicate well the noble purposes of sacrifices abroad, or, after Vietnam , an influential elite has made it impossible for any president to do so.

We can correct that first lapse, but I am not so sure about the second.

The State of Higher Education?

Washington Times:

"It is impossible to know when exactly a student learns about the Constitution and the basic workings of the three branches of the federal government. But surely it has to be some time before a student earns her doctorate, especially in political science.

But considering Mrs. Roberts' Monday op-ed in the Charlotte Observer on the flag-burning amendment (which was recently defeated in the Senate) that might not be the case.

Following the Supreme Court's 1989 decision upholding one's right to burn the flag, she writes, 'Congress passed the Flag Protection Act just months after the ruling. Wasting no time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Flag Protection Act was inconsistent with First Amendment freedoms and thus unconstitutional.'
Then she says, 'It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would now uphold an amendment prohibiting flag burning, even with the change in the court's composition.'

For those who don't have a junior high degree, the Supreme Court can't overturn constitutional amendments. Mind you, 'Dr.' Roberts is an associate professor of political science at Davidson College — arguably one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.

I used to think such a story would be hard to believe. Not any more.

Why China Stagnated

Cafe Hayek: Why China Stagnated:

In his compelling lead article in the Spring 2006 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, economic historian David Landes wonders why the industrial revolution didn't happen first in China. His answer is unequivocal: although it had lots of genius, China had neither the institutions nor the culture to transform this genius into widespread prosperity.

Almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major contributory cause to the Industrial Revolution in north-western Europe was also present in China [some 500 years before the wealth explosion that began in Europe in the 18th century].

So why, specifically, was there no industrial revolution in China?

Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explanations. Those that I find most persuasive are the following:

First, China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interere with private enterprise -- to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes [p. 6]."

Liberty.

Church & State

Michael J. Totten interviews a northern Iraqi:

"'Qutb was wrong,' he said, parting ways with Osama bin Laden on the most elementary level. “Compare Islam and Christianity. In the Middle Ages, Christians were burning scientists. Then Muslims had a great civilization. The Christians were theocratic then. Muslims were not. We do not believe in a theocratic government that rules the people in the name of Allah. Power should come from the people. Christianity wasn’t weakened because it was separate from the state. Christianity was weakened when it supported oppressive states. The same thing is happening in Iran. Iranians are turning against the religion itself along with the theocratic oppressive state.'"

Simple, yet insightful, eh? It seems to me that for a person's religious faith to be authentic it must be chosen freely. It also seems to me that government is inherently coercive. Therefore, theocratic government can't be good for religion, and it can't make for a good government.

What Does The 1st Amendment Mean?

Michael Barone:

"The Supreme Court today ruled by a 6-to-3 margin that Vermont's stringent limits on campaign expenditures and contributions are unconstitutional infringements of the First Amendment.

Hurray! Alas, there were six separate opinions filed. Chief Justice John Roberts may be trying to winnow down the number of separate concurring and dissenting opinions, but in this case he did not succeed (though he filed no opinion himself). But rightly so, in my view; I think Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, got it right in his separate concurrence. Thomas argues that the 1976 precedent of Buckley v. Valeo, to the extent it allows contribution limits, is an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment. But Thomas didn't have five votes, and so our First Amendment jurisprudence still stands for the proposition that the Founding Fathers intended to give blanket protection to nude dancing, student armbands, and flag burning—but not to political speech. If only we could channel James Madison and ask him if that was what he had in mind"

Right on.

Freedom of our Founders

NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has written a letter about a recent story reported in the NY Times. I think he has an odd understanding of our Constitution:

"It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor."

I specifically point to the idea that Mr. Keller says the founders gave freedom to the press, and that the press was given some power. I'm guessing he is referring to the First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law. . . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . ."

The language here is neither a grant of freedom, nor a grant of some power. The founders did not give freedom to the press. Nor did government give freedom to the press. The language found in the First Amendment says that Congress (and government more generally) cannot make a law that abridges freedom of speech or freedom of the press. These freedoms are inalienable rights of individuals that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence. Those who drafted and ratified the Constitution did not give individuals the right of free speech or of a free press. Instead, they wrote that Congress was specifically not being given the power to constrains these inalienable rights of individuals.

I think this is an extremely important distinction to make and to hold to. Writing as Mr. Keller does makes it far to easy to think we get our individual rights and liberties from government, that somehow government is gracious and giving to us. It seems to become easy to think that government has it all, and that we get what we have from the good graces of a good democratic form of government. This is not the view which is the foundation of our constitution, and I think the constitutional foundation is much, much better. Government gets what it gets from We the People, and it is not supposed to constrain our individual liberties unless we make specific grants of such powers to Congress in our written Constitution.

Senator Byrd -- King of Earmarks & Pork?

Michael Grunwald has commentary on Senator Byrd:

. . . He is one of the last of the 'old bulls' who controlled congressional purse strings when the Senate was a true gentlemen's club, and his top priority hasn't changed in a half-century: shoveling pork into his home state.

Is that so terrible? Byrd once promised to be 'West Virginia's billion-dollar industry,' and he has more than kept his word, dotting his state with the Robert C. Byrd Bridge, the Robert C. Byrd High School and the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies, where academics can research how Congress came to give West Virginia six technology centers, two community centers and about two dozen additional projects named for Robert C. Byrd. One man's pork is another man's 'domestic infrastructure,' and Byrd savors his reputation as the King of Pork. His memoir details hundreds of his earmarks in loving detail, along with gleeful tales of moving Navy and Coast Guard offices to his landlocked state. Appropriately, he moved the Bureau of the Public Debt to West Virginia, too.

This is why Byrd was named "West Virginian of the 20th Century," and is revered as the savior of an impoverished state. But even after Byrd's half-century of largesse -- new prisons, new labs, new subsidies for fish farms, dairies and steelmakers -- West Virginia is still an impoverished state, ranked 49th in per-capita gross state product. "Those earmarks haven't solved West Virginia's problems," says Michael Hicks, an economist at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. "I'm trying to be careful here -- I like my job -- but after 40-odd years, we're still at the bottom of every economic indicator." Byrd was ahead of the curve on welfare reform, complaining as early as 1965 that "relief has become a way of life for some people." But he never noticed that relief could become a way of life for his state. West Virginia is now a ward of the federal government, dependent on Robert C. Byrd.

Lately it seems our Congressional leaders have been wont to hide their earmarks from public view. Perhaps Senator Byrd does so these days as well. But, with his practice of having his name put highways, bridges, high schools, research centers, technology centers, and community centers (is that all?), at least Senator Byrd doesn't seem to hide his love of pork projects for home.

Perhaps pork is just what legislatures do best, eh?

Corrupt Government?

I've posted several times recently about the Congressional practice of earmarking. I know many people seem to think individual members of Congress should be able to earmark budget monies, but I tend to the conclusion that the practice of earmarking suggests our Congress has been corrupted. There are more stories in the news all the time that point in this direction as well. Here's something from one story in the Washington Post:

"House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds.

A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year's highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that he co-owns.

In all three cases, Hastert and Reps. Ken Calvert and Gary Miller say that they were securing funds their home districts wanted badly, and that in no way did the earmarks have any impact on the land values of their investments. But for watchdog groups, the cases have opened a fresh avenue for investigation and a new wrinkle in the ongoing controversy over earmarks -- home-district projects funded through narrowly written legislative language.

Here's something from the Wall Street Journal ($$$):

"More broadly, the Lewis episode underscores the link between Member-steered earmarks and the opportunity for corruption. Convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff openly boasted that earmarks were his political currency and he called the Appropriations Committee that doles them out a 'favor factory' for lobbyists. Duke Cunningham parlayed earmarks into a Rolls Royce in his driveway, until his greed landed him in the pokey. We also now know that one of the major beneficiaries of the most notorious earmark from last year -- the $300 million Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska -- is a relative of GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski.

This spring, House Republicans elected new leaders and promised to restrain earmarking. But this week the House is busily approving a $68 billion Treasury, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill stuffed with more than 1,500 new earmarks at a cost of some $900 million.

They include $500,000 for a scenic trail in Monterey, California; $1.5 million for the William Faulkner Museum in Oxford, Mississippi; $500,000 for a swimming pool in Columbus, Ohio; and $500,000 for an athletic facility in Yucaipa, California. Several of these projects, including the athletic facility, have been promoted by Bill Lowery's lobbying firm -- the very firm in the middle of the Jerry Lewis probe.

Yesterday, Jeff Flake of Arizona and other Members offered amendments to strip the earmarks, but they lost those floor votes by a wide margin. Our favorite: a $500,000 earmark for renovating a swimming pool in Banning, California. The same pool had already received a $250,000 earmark in each of the previous two years. Mr. Flake's floor proposal to strike the swimming hole subsidy got all of 61 votes.

The Washington Times has an interesting editorial regarding Congressman Murtha:

"Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported how the ranking member on the defense appropriations subcommittee has a brother, Robert Murtha, whose lobbying firm represents 10 companies that received more than $20 million from last year's defense spending bill. 'Clients of the lobbying firm KSA Consulting -- whose top officials also include former congressional aide Carmen V. Scialabba, who worked for Rep. Murtha as a congressional aide for 27 years -- received a total of $20.8 million from the bill,' the L.A. Times reported.

In early 2004, according to Roll Call, Mr. Murtha 'reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco.' Laurence Pelosi, nephew of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, at the time was an executive of the company which owned the rights to the land. The same article also reported how Mr. Murtha has been behind millions of dollars worth of earmarks in defense appropriations bills that went to companies owned by the children of fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep. Paul Kanjorski. Meanwhile, the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog group, lists Mr. Murtha as the top recipient of defense industry dollars in the current 2006 election cycle. "

In this last "clipping" I almost forgot to mention House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi along with Congressman Kanjorski. I think by some accounts in the news and commentary industry the corruption resides only on the Republican side of the isle, but of course, as this story suggests both sides of the political isle probably have excellent examples to offer.

And, from Bloomberg we have:

"Representative Alan Mollohan helped funnel at least $179 million in U.S. government contracts over the last six years to companies that gave to the West Virginia Democrat's family-run charity, tax records and other documents show.

The money went to 21 companies and nonprofit groups that contributed $225,427 to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation in 2004 -- almost half of the charity's revenue, according to the documents. The congressman, an Appropriations Committee member whose finances are under federal investigation, is the secretary of the foundation, which is named for his father.

The charity, which distributes scholarships to West Virginia students, raises most of its money from corporate sponsors of an annual golf tournament attended by Mollohan, 63. The event gives company executives an opportunity to meet with him in a casual setting without having to report the donations as lobbying expenses."

Man, this is starting to get depressing. How many more stories are there? Well there is this from The Washington Times:

"When most people hear the word 'Enron,' they mentally complete the phrase by adding the word 'scandal.' As reporter Lester Holt of NBC's 'Today' put it in a Jan. 1 story, 'Enron has been the poster child, if you will, of corporate scandals.'
It isn't the only one, though. There's $40-billion scandal with most of the same elements -- even connection to prominent politicians. Just don't expect to see much about it on TV. After all, the top people involved here are Democrats.
Welcome to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage giant. As part of a scandal that's been running nearly two years, Fannie Mae has 'misstated earnings' to the tune of $10.8 billion. That's some tune.

So far, the Fannie fiasco has cost Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and several other top executives their jobs. The stock has dropped from nearly $80 a share to around $50 -- roughly $30 billion in lost value. And the company recently settled with the federal government and agreed to pay $400 million in fines, stemming from allegations the firm fiddled with the books to ensure bigwigs got performance bonuses. "

It's not about Congress (unless we can wonder about Congressional oversight responsibilities), but it is still about our national government. It may not be corruption, but it sure doesn't look like good government.

Let's not forget the Executive Branch of government. This from the Washington Times:

"A jury found former Bush administration official David Safavian guilty yesterday of covering up his dealings with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Safavian was convicted on four of five felony counts of lying and obstruction."

Maybe this isn't pointing to a corrupt national government, but it sure isn't what I want in Washington. How about you?

Self-Serving Profiteering

Instapundit quoting from one of his readers:

What the NY Times has essentially done is open up to the terrorists the trails of all their transactions and how the banking procedures of money laundering was done for them by the system. They have essentially stopped dead the ability to track this money and keep it from being put in the hands of our worst enemies. Whether the terrorists might have guessed that their money was being transferred is a moot point. The NY Times had told them that their worst fears have been realized and that they need to find another way to move money around the world. They know it for sure now. Thank you, Bill Keller, and when the nice young man or woman from down the street is killed by one of these terrorists I can thank you for that as well.

And the instapundit commentary:

When big companies dump toxic waste into rivers to enrich themselves, they're criticized by the press. But this is the same kind of thing -- self-serving profiteering at the public's expense.

Rapanos: Victory for Property Owners

TIMOTHY SANDEFUR interviews Reed Hopper, an attorney in the Rapanos case. Here are some of the questions and answers I find interesting:

1. Do you see Rapanos as a victory for property owners, or as a victory for government regulators?

I see this case as a victory for property owners. While Mr. Rapanos did not get what he hoped—a clear delineation of federal authority under the Clean Water Act—he did get what he asked—a majority of the court rejected the agency view that it can regulate any area over which water flows and reversed the Sixth Circuit decision. Property owners have at least some protections now from unlimited federal regulation.

2. Why did you take Mr. Rapanos' case?

We took the case to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act and to ensure constitutional safeguards against federal overreaching are maintained. In this case the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA assumed they had a blank check to define their own authority. They simply went too far. In 2001, the Supreme Court told these agencies it could not regulate every wet area in the country and that the language of the Act is controlling. But the agencies ignored that decision. We took the Rapanos case so that the Supreme Court could affirm that it meant what it said.

5. Linda Greenhouse says that the Rapanos case "came close to rolling back one of the country's fundamental environmental laws." Is that right?

Well, it's odd to say the court is "rolling back" the law when the justices are simply reading the act as written.

The challenged provision does not even mention wetlands, and the Corps has not been regulating drainage ditches until recently. In fact, the Corps has publicly affirmed time and time again that it does not regulate drainage ditches. But it did so in this case, without so much as a formal rulemaking.

But I think we came close to rolling back the country's fundamental charter—the U.S. Constitution. Had the dissent had its way, federal agencies would have had a green light to define their own jurisdiction no matter what their statutory authority said. In other words, federal agencies could have been authorized to become a law unto themselves. This was a near miss.

6. What do you say to people who portray Scalia's decision as "anti-conservation," or say it will destroy the government's power to protect the environment?

Nonsense to both. It is not anti-conservation to require federal agencies to comply with the law. If the environment is worth protecting—and it is—it's worth protecting by legal means. Enforcing the rule-of-law protects us all from arbitrary government. Liberty has a price. Justice Scalia, as well as Justices Thomas, Alito and Roberts, should be commended for remembering that. And, of course, in this case the price would have been small both because the majority would have placed only a constraint on federal Clean Water Act authority, not a prohibition, and because the states have authority to fill in any regulatory gaps.

Iraq & the Media

Gay Patriot:

They’re killing their own people to make it appear that we are losing. And the Western media is helping them make their case. In the very AP article on the murder of the U.S. soldiers, the reporter writes that “Violence was unabated Tuesday, with at least 18 people killed in attacks nationwide, including a suicide bombing of a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.

[ . . . . ]

To the terrorists’ fighting our troops and the Iraq people, indiscriminate murder is merely a means of manipulating the media.

[ . . . . ]

Al Qaeda’s remaining leaders in Iraq know that by murdering innocent civilians and relying on a compliant Western press, they will make it appear that despite numerous successes, U.S. and Iraqi forces are unable to control the situation in Iraq. Thus, Al Qaeda attacks the targets they can most easily attack, not the ones with any strategic value in a traditional military sense. That’s because their strategy is getting headlines and winning this one not on the battlefield, but in the U.S. media. And to that end, it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis they murder.

The barbarity of the murder of Pfcs. Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Lowell Tucker shows the evil nature of the opponents we face. These terrorists show no respect for conventions of warfare or for human life. And no respect for the dead, booby-trapping bodies in order to use them to kill even more people. It’s just too bad that some bloggers are using the murders of these servicemen as just another excuse to attack the Administration.

Once again, we see the evil of our enemies in Iraq for what it is. As our hearts go out to the families of these two brave young men, let’s not mince words and call their murderers what they are. And do what we can do defeat them.

Rapanos

I just started reading Justice Scalia's opinion in Rapanos v. United States, and had to stop to make this short post. I had not followed this case, nor any of the commentary prior to the opinion, nor have I really read any commentary after the opinion was issued. I must say that my reaction to the opening paragraph of Justice Scalia's opinion is utter disgust. Here is the opening paragraph:

In April 1989, petitioner John A. Rapanos backfilled wetlands on a parcel of land in Michigan that he owned and sought to develop. This parcel included 54 acres of land with sometimes-saturated soil conditions. The nearest body of navigable water was 11 to 200 miles away. . . .Regulators had informed Mr. Rapanos that his saturated fields were 'waters of the United States'. . . . that could not be filled without a permit. Twelve years of criminal and civil litigation ensued.

The entire set of circumstances indicated in this opening paragraph I find appalling. Twelve years of criminal and civil litigation over a property owner developing his own property because government told the owner his property represented waters of the United States. Oh my. How would a person ever come to be owner of "waters of the United States" if it were really true that his land was not land but instead water? Oh, I forgot, Congress can't just regulate waters of the United States, the water in question must be navigable water, at least according to the Constitution. Oh my. . . .sometimes saturated land = navigable waters!!!!!

Note it is now some 17 years of litigation later than the United States Supreme Court cannot even today see that Congress should have no constitutional power to regulate the use of Rapanos's land. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT LAND. WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT NAVIGABLE WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Can government really be more unjust than this? 17 YEARS. How is it possible that our system of political economy could be so messed up? Apparently there are learned justices, learned attorneys, and learned law professors who by some means can come to think it is legitimate in a system of political economy such as ours to cause so much trouble for a property owner because they somehow find it rational to conclude that "sometimes saturated land" is the same thing as "navigable waters."

How disheartening.

Eminent Domain Jokes

I linked to a news story over at Eminent Domain Institute about an interesting use of the power of eminent domain. Here is how the story sounds to me:

If I understand the story line here, I'm thinking someone is telling a joke: 'You see, there was this guy in Framingham. He's the guy who owns Ken's Steakhouse, but his name isn't Ken. It's Timothy. Over 10 years ago now, government told Tim that it was going to take his property over on Worcester Road because it needed it for a Turnpike or a parking lot or something. Tim got kind of mad at the idea so he took government to court to try to keep his land from being taken. Of course, the court was a government court, and the court said Tim couldn't stop government from taking the land, that it was important for the Turnpike Authority to have his land for a parking lot or whatever the Turnpike Authority thought it was important to have the land for. So Tim's land got taken by government for the Turnpike Authority to own. Now after that, the Turnpike Authority built a parking lot, but almost no one ever uses it. And, there is an old 'historic' building called the Rugg-Gates house that no one uses either, and that the Turnpike Authority doesn't even try to keep up. It just sits there now, on what used to be Tim's land. So, Tim carries this grudge about all of this over the years. And, now, over 10 years later Tim gets a bright idea. He goes down to city hall and asks the city to take the property by eminent domain from the Turnpike Authority, and then give it back to him (the rightful owner of course). After all, there is an old blighted building on the property, and almost no one ever parks in the lot. Tim promises that if the city government will take his property back from the Turnpike Authority that he will pay out of his own pocket the amount of money the city has to pay in just compensation for taking his land back. But there's more, Tim promises economic development because if the city takes his land back he will build a new restaurant on his old land, land that almost no one makes any use of right now. He's thinking he might call this new restaurant Tim's Steak House. . . . .'

Half-Empty Media?

INSTAPUNDIT:

"MORE BAD NEWS FOR BUSH: 'Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in half in 2006 — three years early.'

The New York Times headline: 'Bush deficit reduction plan falls off-schedule.'"

Huh? Nice, accurate headline, eh? Should we say the New York Times is the half-empty media?

The Fuller Court & Economic Prosperity

Mancur Olson suggests there are 2 necessary conditions for economic prosperity: (1) strong protection of property rights, including enforcement of contracts, and (2) minimum economic predation or rent seeking. I've posted on Olson's necessary conditions before, e.g., here and here. I'm interested in looking at the Supreme Court's opinions from the perspective of theses necessary conditions for economic prosperity. I think the so-called Lochner era of Court constitutional jurisprudence got many opinions correct from the point of view of economic prosperity, and that means the Lochner opinion is one of my favorites.

It was the Fuller Court (1888-1910) that decided Lochner in 1905. Today, many in the judiciary, as well as many in the law schools, see Lochner as a foolish mistake. Many even assert that not only the Lochner opinion, but more generally the Fuller Court’s general jurisprudence regarding regulation of the economy was either a radical departure from earlier Court jurisprudence or was primarily an effort by the Court to protect the interests of the business community.

James W. Ely, Jr., explains in The Fuller Court that neither of these negatives views of the Fuller Court make sense. Most importantly from my perspective, the Fuller Court was not a departure from the past, nor was it a political court seeking to protect a specific segment of our system of political economy:

Fuller and his colleagues built upon a constitutional tradition that assigned a high value to property rights, private economic ordering, and limited government. Recall that protection of property rights had been a central concern of the Court under Chief Justice John Marshal (1801-1835). Closer to Fuller’s era, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite . . . also manifested its willingness to uphold the rights of property owners. . . .

The Fuller Court, therefore, represented not a sharp break with the past but a flowering of time-honored themes of constitutionalism. . . .

An essential element of Fuller Court jurisprudence as the traditional Anglo-American premise that the law should safeguard private property in the name of liberty. For Fuller and his colleagues property and liberty were inseparable, and both were closely related to freedom of contract and private economic ordering. Like most Americans of the age, the justices of the Fuller Court tended to define liberty primarily in economic terms. . . .The Fuller Court championed private property and contractual freedom in order to limit the reach of government and thereby protect liberty.

The Fuller Court’s solicitude for the rights of property owners stemmed from utilitarian considerations as well as philosophical imperatives. Investment capital was vital to finance economic development. Associating the security of private property with industrial growth, Fuller and his colleagues persistently sought to protect capital formation. . . . (189-190)

I think it is important to note that the Fuller Court’s jurisprudence, as described by Ely, fits very well with Olson’s necessary conditions for economic prosperity. Specifically, the Fuller Court’s jurisprudence emphasized the protection of economic liberty by safeguarding property rights and enforcing the freedom to contract. Further, it seems that a reason for such commitments to property and contracts was an interest in securing the types of property rights that would encourage saving and investment, and the development of the capital markets that would allow people to look to the future. In addition, because the Fuller Court represented a “flowering of time-honored themes of constitutionalism,” one reads in Ely’s book an indication that the Constitution, as well the opinions of the Supreme Court, was consistent with the institutional framework for a system of political economy that would promote and encourage the economic choices of people that allow the development and enjoyment of economic prosperity over time.

But, there was also an interesting tension in the Fuller Court’s opinions between the protection of property rights and a commitment to federalism also found in the Constitution.

. . .Consistent with its dedication to a limited federal government, the Court was anxious to preserve the traditional distribution of power between the national and state government. Consequently, Fuller and his colleagues tended to defer to state governance of criminal justice, race relations, and public morals. This belief in federalism also led the justices to reject an expansive application of the Bill of Rights to the states.

. . . .Not only were most state business regulations upheld, but the justices hoped to maintain a balance between federal and state authority over the economy. . .

. . . . In the late nineteenth century state legislatures, acting under their police power to advance public health, safety, and morals, took the initiative in seeking to harness the new economic forces transforming America. Such exercises of state authority often impinged the prerogatives of property owners and employers, stimulating a stream of legal challenges. (190-191)

It seems to me that while the Fuller Court protected economic liberty well against the United States Congress, it did not do well in general with respect to state legislatures, and this is really the tension Ely notes. Perhaps this tension between what appears competing values might seem a “natural” tension found in the Constitution itself, but I think the tension may result from a definition of police power that was not consistent with government’s role as the protective state. The quotes above from Ely’s discussion point to where I think the problem can be found, i.e., in defining police power so broadly as to include public morals as well as public health as involving issues that are really private rather than public.

Many issues can and should be left to state legislatures, and this is surely the point of principles of federalism for the organization and structure of government in our system of political economy. Saying this does not preclude the Court constraining state legislative power when economic liberties are threatened by state legislatures. Police power should be defined primarily from the perspective of individual liberty by saying that such state government power involves using force and coercion to reduce or minimize the actions of some that harm the person or property of others. I do not see “public morals” as fitting within this definition. I suggest there are only private or individual morals. The term “public morals” has been used largely in ways that amounts to some in the community trying to enforce their own view of moral behavior on others in the community. The term “public health” has been used in similar ways, not just when the policy issue involves risks to life and health from communicable diseases.

My sense is that while the Fuller Court was quite good with respect to Congress in constraining the national legislature’s efforts to infringe property rights, and in constraining the national legislature’s efforts to embrace rent seeking legislation, it’s federalism encouraged state legislatures to infringe property rights and contracts, and it encouraged states to engage in rent seeking legislation. Some may argue that this is indeed the constitutional structure for state versus national governments in our system of political economy, I suggest a more sound and consistent definition of the police power reserved for state governments would have strengthened the institutional foundations for economic prosperity.

Kennedy Special Interest

In the Washington Post:

"More than 130 wind turbines are proposed for the hilltops of central Wisconsin, but that project and at least 11 others have been halted by the Defense Department as it studies whether the projects could interfere with military radar.

Wind farm developers, Midwestern legislators and environmentalists say the farms pose no risk, noting that there are already numerous wind farms operating in military radar areas. They say a renewable, domestic source of energy such as wind is crucial to energy security and independence.

They say their wind turbines are victims of the ongoing dispute between Cape Cod residents and developers of the proposed Cape Wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The Defense Department study was put in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act -- inserted, say wind farm developers, by senators who want to block Cape Wind."

I wonder which Senators might want to block Cape Wind? I've read in the past that the Kennedy family was opposing the project. Should we guess that Senator Kennedy was involved in inserting the study in the defense appropriation bill?

I wonder if the news article even mentions Senator Kennedy? Yes, here is the mention:

"Critics of Cape Wind, including Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), have said that the 130 proposed turbines about six miles offshore would hurt views, tourism and migratory birds."

But, I still wonder which Senator or Senators inserted the study in the bill?

Supreme Court justices are supposed to recuse themselves from matters bearing on their personal interests. Perhaps members of Congress should have to recuse themselves from participating (proposing studies) in issues bearing on their personal interests, unless of course we want members of Congress to essentially be their own personal special interest group, eh?

Corruption

GLENN REYNOLDS points to what looks like more earmark corruption.

What They Fight For

Scott Adams:

Al-Qaida issued a statement saying, “We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.”

Death Tax Deceivers

Yesterday, a Democrat filibuster in the Senate continues the death tax. Here is an except from WSJ.com commentary ($$$):

"But special credit belongs to four Democratic Senators who voted against repeal yesterday after they'd run for office pledging the opposite. They are Evan Bayh of Indiana, who perhaps had in mind Democratic Presidential primary voters, not the home folks who elected him; Mary Landrieu of Louisiana; Mark Pryor of Arkansas; and Ron Wyden of Oregon. These flip-floppers voted not only to retain the tax but to increase it -- from zero in 2010 back to 55% in 2011 and forever after.

Mr. Pryor's Web site says he 'supports the permanent repeal of an estate tax.' No word as to when that comes down. Ms. Landrieu and her colleague Maria Cantwell of Washington were so torn on the vote that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wouldn't let them out of his sight until it was over. These Democrats no doubt fear the fate of former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, another Dem who supported the tax in 2004 and was dispatched to private life by current Senator John Thune, a Republican. In 2008 South Dakota voters will get a crack at Tim Johnson, their other Senator, who cast his vote for the death tax.

And an honorary flip-flop award goes to New York's Hillary Clinton, who during her 2000 Senate campaign declared: 'You ought to be able to leave your land and the bulk of your fortunes to your children and not the government. . . ."

I agree, don't you? You ought to be able to leave your land and any remaining fortune to your children and not to Congress. Too bad these 5 politicians can't agree with themselves on this.

Ethanol Efficiency?

Many have pointed to ethanol as an alternative to "our dependence on foreign oil." The interest in ethanol as an alternative energy source has led to many studies, and apparently a significant dispute over whether ethanol requires far more energy in production than is returned for use as a fuel. The Wall Street Journal ($$$) has an interesting discussion of this issue written by Carl Bialik, "The Numbers Guy". He makes the following observation:

"It can be disorienting to discover that reputable researchers can so seriously disagree on a single number. In an article last month, the Toledo Blade counted studies, as if that might help settle things. The newspaper noted Prof. Pimentel's work, and added, 'Five other researchers have done studies and agree. Thirteen other studies, including one paid for by the Department of Energy, show the opposite.'"

I guess I don't find this disagreement surprising. After all, I've written here on numerous occasions that when science and politics meet, politics wins.

Perhaps in this issue we can once again see the beauty in the economic analysis of public policy. A sure way of discovering if ethanol is "efficient" is to let the market test the hypothesis.

Noonan on Immigration Politics

PEGGY NOONAN has an interesting commentary on politicians and the immigration issue:

"A thought today about complexity and politics.

The American people right now are not in a mood to trust any political plan, proposal or policy that seems complicated--highly involved, technical, full of phased-in elements and glide paths and Part C's.

They are against complexity not because they don't think life is complex. They know it's complex. They know it because they live it every day. They assume public policy issues are also complicated. They know there are facts they don't know, which probably have to be factored in as policy is developed. But more and more they recoil from complicated, lengthy, abstruse proposals.

Why?

Because they think--they assume, at this point, reflexively--that slithery, slippery professional politicians are using and inventing complications to obfuscate and confuse. They think politicians are using complexity to create great clouds in which they can make their escape, like a cartoon character, like Road Runner.

They think modern politicians hide in complexity. They think politicians evade responsibility with it. We can't do the right thing, it's too complicated! Americans don't trust 'comprehensive plans,' because they don't trust the comprehensive planners.

This, I think, is the essential problem with Congress's immigration proposals. All the phased-in-partial-assimilation-glide-paths-to-guest-worker-status stuff seems like a big 500-page con. It's all too complicated to be understood by anyone who's not a tenured political science professor with a second degree in accounting.

What people will trust, and understand, is this: We will close the border tomorrow, and then figure it out from there."

I agree with her that many of our fearless leaders in Washington hide behind assertions of "complex" issues. I'm not so sure she is correct in suggesting that people see the assertions of complexity for what they really are.

CONTEXT -- MUST READ

Michael Yon's essay offers context for Haditha. Here are a couple of excepts I hope will capture your attention so you will read his entire piece:

The enemy rammed a car bomb into a Deuce Four Stryker in Mosul while kids were all around. They could have just as easily attacked our men a few blocks away from the kids. Instead, they cruelly wounded 15 children and killed two of them. I saw American soldiers furiously trying to save one little girl named Farah. One American officer, Major Mark Bieger, actually took Farah and her family in his Stryker and raced them all to the hospital. We needed that firepower at the scene in case of follow-on attack — we were in fact attacked there the next day — yet Major Bieger and his section, with permission from LTC Erik Kurilla who was on the scene, raced through the streets of Mosul to the hospital. Unfortunately, Farah died, and on that day some of our soldiers cried.

[ . . . ]

Ben was the first up the stairs, and he took four bullets. Only then did his buddies throw flash-bangs and eventually shot down the terrorist who killed Ben. All the Iraqi kids were fine. But Ben Morton died. Soldiers cried that night.

[ . . . ]

I visited their grave. We lost two fine Americans, and their parents lost their children, because our people are taught to control their fire.

[ . . . ]

Until the facts are released by the investigating authorities, we might benefit from a new sign:

WARNING
Speculating is Strictly Forbidden —
Violators Will be Fined

What They Fight For

Zeyad:

"Why don’t they just blow up the city and erect tents instead? It would make life much easier. We could go to school or work riding on camels. We could sit at the mosque all day, stroking and scratching our filthy beards and waiving flies away, while our women recline in their harems.

In short, they are trying to take us back to the 7th century, so we can experience the simple life of the prophet and his pious companions. We should abandon everything and anything that was not available at the time of the prophet in order to be true Muslims.

Yet the followers of this simplistic, backwards ideology have no problem with using hi-tech explosives, IEDs, machine guns and RPGs. According to their sick creed, it is not against Islam to detonate a car bomb at a bustling market or to shoot a kid twice in the head because he had gel on his hair. No, that is okay in Islam."

More Sowell on Immigration

TOM SOWELL:

"Far from 'controlling the borders' as advertised, this bill reduces our existing control of the borders. Under a provision inserted at the eleventh hour by Senator Arlen Specter, the Senate bill forbids the federal government from building a fence without first consulting with the Mexican government.

In fact, state and local governments are also forbidden by this bill to take any border control actions without first consulting with their Mexican counterparts. In other words, if the city of San Diego wants to put up any sort of barriers, it would have to consult with the municipal authorities in Tijuana before doing so.

This legislation was never about border control. The laws already on the books at this very moment allow us to control the borders, to build any fence we choose, without consulting the government of Mexico.

The laws already on the books allow any illegal alien to be arrested and expelled. Those laws are simply not being enforced. If a Los Angeles policeman arrests an illegal alien and reports him to the federal authorities, it is the Los Angeles cop who will be in big trouble."

What is going on with our fearless leaders in the Senate? Talk, talk, talk, and so much of their public talk seems aimed at fooling us.

It seems to me the first thing the current immigration policy debate should be about is "enforcing our borders," or can we just say, enforcing our laws. The fundamental purpose of government is as the protective state, and the government in Washington seems to simply be trying to avoid that fundamental responsibility.

Sowell also writes:

"In other words, we have make-believe border control and the current Senate legislation will weaken even that, all the while talking about "tough" enforcement. That "tough" enforcement is a promise but legalizing illegal aliens is immediate and irrevocable and its consequences irreversible and lasting far into the future.

"Border control" is just political cover for legalizing illegal aliens. The two things are put together in a package deal that is like horse-and-rabbit stew, whose ingredients are one horse and one rabbit. Border control is the rabbit.

The word games played about "amnesty" deliberately confuse the issue of violations of American law with the issue of acquiring American citizenship.

The fact that the Senate bill has requirements -- described as "tough," like everything else -- for acquiring citizenship is irrelevant to the question of letting the violations of law go unpunished."

Senate Unconstitutional

Now here is something interesting. Robert Novak discusses recent secrecy and unconstitutional actions by the Senate:

"On May 23, as the Senate raced toward passage of the comprehensive immigration bill before their Memorial Day break began, Sen. Charles Grassley moved the adoption of a new Title III to the measure. It passed easily without anybody mentioning that the amendment raises revenue, which was a violation of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that all such measures originate in the House of Representatives.

That adds another new obstacle to the formidable task of reconciling seemingly irreconcilable Senate and House immigration bills. To surmount the constitutional problem, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in effect, must pass a new bill -- either under a procedure requiring unanimous consent or starting over with a bill subject to amendment. Considering the negative comments about the bill that senators heard from constituents last week, this may encourage new legislative attempts to control immigration.

There is no sign that Grassley intentionally sought to sabotage the immigration bill. Rather, what happened May 23 appears an extension of his normal procedure as Senate Finance Committee chairman to keep what he and his staff are doing shielded from colleagues, not to mention the public. While Grassley was amending the immigration bill, it also became known for the first time that he had quietly enacted -- and President Bush had signed -- a retroactive tax increase on Americans living abroad.

The Grassley touch on taxes may seem distinctive, but it fits the pattern of secrecy in the 21st-century Senate. When I told a senior Senate staffer last week that as a reporter I had no idea of what was happening to legislation, he replied that he had trouble keeping up himself even though this is his full-time occupation."

I think it is bad enough the Senate explicitly violated the Constitutional provision that revenue increasing measures must originate in the House. But what are we to make of Novak's reference to "the pattern of secrecy in the 21st-century Senate?" Do the fearless leaders in our Senate seek to serve their constituents? Or, do they seek to serve themselves at the public expense? If our Senators tend these days to a "pattern of secrecy" perhaps many of them no longer seek to serve their country nor their constitutents?

Protests Iran

Read Gateway Pundit for some of the details.

Tyranny

Dan Murphy & Awadh al-Taee:

"Former resident Aqeel says once the insurgents moved in, his neighbors began joining their ranks.

0ne Sunni Arab neighbor had joined the insurgents, and explained their choices of targets, he says. 'This guy told me that 'if we focus on the Americans they grind us into dust,' ' says Aqeel. 'So they prefer to hit the Iraqi police, Shiites, translators, people they think are too secular. That's easy for them.'

Aqeel decided to move his family to a Shiite district after going to buy groceries on Public Works Street one afternoon in early February. While there, a white Opel with four gunmen screamed to a halt at that corner, pulled a bound man from the trunk, shot him twice in the head and sped off.

And, more often than not, Shiites were the ones targeted.

'They started killing Shiites, just one every couple of days, in November 2004,'' says Harith, who remembers his first neighbor killed was Umm Saad. The 70-year-old widow ran the small grocery that he and his classmates used to crowd into after school when they were kids.

'Then this year it expanded. You'd see bodies on the streets all the time. A policeman was left dead in his car on my street for 24 hours, until I went to the National Guard and told them to collect the body.'

"I now see that, little by little, Amariyah was falling under takfiri control,'' he says, using the popular pejorative term for Sunnis who share Al Qaeda's vision of an intolerant and violent Islam.

In late April, the neighbors to the right of his home, also Shiites, made the mistake of bringing a moving truck when they decided to abandon the neighborhood, and were gunned down before they reached the highway.

In early May, his neighbor in a small house to the left - a divorced mother of two and a Sunni who worked as a maid, was gunned down. "She had been warned to stop working." Harith and his family fled soon after - leaving all their possessions behind."

Read the whole thing.

[Via The Mudville Gazette]

Efficiency & Pollution Victims

TIM HABB explains that the revenue from a corrective tax should not be used to compensate the "victims" of pollution:

"So what happens if we compensate the victims according to how much pollution they are exposed to? The costs of staying are reduced and the cost/benefit ratio shifts in favor of staying. That is, the victim is willing to bear more pollution costs to stay--the demand for pollution increases! This is a classic moral hazard problem. The solution to the problem actually creates the incentive for more of the problem.

So are there anyways to compensate victims of pollution using revenues from a pollution tax without distorting the incentives? Sort of. A lump sum payment to all victims--that is a payment independent of the amount of damages the victim incurs--will not distort the victims' incentives. By simply making a payment of $100 to each victim, the victim still must bear the additonal (marginal) cost of each unit of pollution. The marginal damage from the last unit of pollution is the relevant cost in the benefit/cost decision. A lump-sum payment doesn't change that cost."

I believe the conclusion is correct, but I don't think using the term "victim" fits with the normative analysis of efficiency.

If the normative criterion for evaluating the allocation of resources is pareto optimality, then I don't think there is a victim when there is market failure. Rather there is just an inefficient allocation of resources. This normative perspective then suggests there may be an explicit role for government to play in the economy, and this role is not to make things "right" for the victims of the market failure. Rather, the role is to achieve an efficient allocation of resources. The normative framework of economic efficiency seems to me to be intended to take a specific "social point of view" with respect to economic activity. As such, I don't think efficiency can identify specific "victims." Instead, the "victim" of an inefficient allocation of resources is some concept that relates to the entire economy and not to specific identifiable people. When we use efficiency to discuss pollution, we might ask who is at fault for causing the external cost. Such a question seems to me to fit with the "victim" terminology, but I think this too is a use of language that is off the mark for efficiency analysis. The fault is not the actions of any specific individual, even if he or she is a polluter. The fault is found, for efficiency analysis, in an institutional structure that does not internalize the entire marginal social cost of resource utilization decisions.

I would suggest that the term "victim" is much more appropriate to the normative perspective of individual liberty. In this case, we would be looking for harm caused to some individual (or to a set of individuals), which results from the actions of another or others. If there is harm caused by the actions of another or of others, then it would seem quite natural and appropriate to say that the person harmed is a victim of the actions of another or of the actions of others. Further, on this normative perspective the idea of having those causing harm compensate those who are harmed (the victim or victims) is quite direct and obvious.

I suggest that using terms like "victim" when discussing efficient policy with respect to pollution really amounts to adding a second normative framework to the discussion. Or, using such terms perhaps is the result of paying too little explicit attention to the nature of the normative framework which is being used to evaluate environmental policy alternatives. Often times efficiency and liberty are normative frameworks that point to the same policy choices, but there are some policy issues for which these normative frameworks point to different policy choices. It seems to me that pollution is one of the issues where these normative frameworks point to different policies. For example, getting an efficient level of pollution (generally greater than zero pollution) is really not going to satisfy the normative perspective of individual liberty since the efficient pollution will mean there is still uncompensated harm to some which is caused by the economic behavior of others. And, as Tim essentially points out with his explanation, if "victims" are compensated with the revenue from a corrective pollution tax, then the result will be inefficient. The result in other words would actually be more consistent with the normative perspective of individual liberty, and it would not be consistent with efficiency.

Sowell on Congress & Immigration

THOMAS SOWELL:

"Of all the insults to our intelligence in the current discussions of immigration legislation, the biggest insult is the claim that border control legislation and legislation on the illegal immigrants already in the country must go together.

Why? What will happen if they are done separately? And who will be worse off?

The claim that the two pieces of legislation must be passed at the same time has been repeated endlessly. But endless repetition is not a coherent argument.

At the heart of this issue is the question whether Congress and the Bush administration are serious about controlling the borders and about letting the number and kind of immigrants allowed into this country be decided in the United States, not in Mexico.

Whatever number and kind of immigrants the United States wants to admit into this country, that decision means nothing unless that limit is enforced at the borders. Nor is there any way to know in advance how effective any particular method of border control will turn out to be in practice.

The only way to know whether fences, national guardsmen or anything else will work is to wait and see before issuing blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, virtually guaranteeing that millions more will follow, as has happened in the past.

A Congressional package deal is not about border control. It is about trying to get the Hispanic vote without losing the votes of other Americans. It is about allowing politicians to vote on both sides of this issue to cover themselves politically."

Yes, this is right on the mark. Many of our fearless leaders in Washington are indeed trying to get the Hispanic vote while not losing the votes of Americans, and their strategy is to try to trick We The People. Shameful, eh? It is the responsibility of Congress and the national government in general to enforce our laws, to enforce our borders, to devote their attention to our security. They haven't been doing this, and instead of turning to the responsibility today and in a forthright manner, so many of them are trying to trick us.

I'm with Sowell:

"Some say that the Democrats would filibuster a bill that offered border control separately. Fine. Let them!

Let them show their true colors in an election year and then go face the voters in the fall.

Of course, those Republicans who are either weak-kneed or who share the Democrats' views would also lose the political cover of being able to vote on both sides of the immigration issue.

But the country would be better off not to commit itself to guaranteeing the permanence of millions of illegal aliens and all their descendants thereafter without getting anything more than pious hopes about controlling the border."

Make them vote yes or no on enforcing the border!!

Unconstitutional Supreme Court?

RANDY BARNETT:

"JunkYardLawDog: Yes, indeed courts can act unconstitutionally in their rulings. One virtue of originalism is that it provides a benchmark external to case law by which to judge judicial behavior. As the first sentence of Restoring the Lost Constitution states, 'Had judges done their job, this book would not need to be written.' Allowing precedent to trump original meaning (where that meaning is clear), which is supported by all ideological stripes when it is convenient, actually puts the rulings of judges above that of the Constitution."

I think this is an important point. I have heard and read others who do seem to think the Supreme Court cannot make unconstitutional rulings, because "the constitution means what the Court says it means." If that is a person's view, then indeed it must be clear that the Court cannot amend the Constitution or act unconstitutionally. In my view, the Court can, and has done both. In my view, when the Court decided to read the Takings Clause as "public purpose" instead of "public use" we have just one clear illustration that it has done both.

I also had not thought of the point Barnett makes about precedent, but it seems correct.

Wal-Mart Predators?

Apparently a city in California is thinking about taking 17 acres of land from Wal-Mart. I have a short post on this over at Eminent Domain Institute

Katrina -- The Real Story?

LOU DOLINAR:

"Let's try that again: The cavalry wasn't late. It didn't arrive on Thursday smoking a cigar and cussing. It was there all along.

The National Guard's response to Katrina was even more robust than I suspected in my reporting for RealClearPolitics in September, and in more detail for National Review, where I revealed for the first time that rescue operations saved up to 50,000 lives, with perhaps an equal number making their way to shelters on their own.

Fifty thousand New Orleans residents were in danger of death from drowning, heatstroke, dehydration and disease. That was a tough one to get through the media reality-distortion field, but the numbers have since been confirmed by Congress, the White House, Louisiana state officials and the relevant agencies themselves. If anything, I understated the size of the rescue effort. What I didn't understand was the critical role the Superdome headquarters played."

After Katrina I posted several comments that were based upon what I could read and hear from the news industry. The essay I point to above paints a much different story than I got then, and apparently it is more likely the accurate story of what happened after Katrina had passed New Orleans. Apparently there were significant rescue efforts that saved many, many people.

Perhaps I should take this as a reminder that the news industry, on the whole, is not a very good source for information that leads to true understanding.

Sprawl's Paradox

Robert Bruegmann:

"When asked, most Americans declare themselves to be against sprawl, just as they say they are against pollution or the destruction of historic buildings. But the very development that one individual targets as sprawl is often another family's much-loved community. Very few people believe that they themselves live in sprawl, or contribute to sprawl. Sprawl is where other people live, particularly people with less good taste. Much anti-sprawl activism is based on a desire to reform these other people's lives."

The paradox? Everyone says they are against sprawl, but many (perhaps most) of us are pretty darn happy living in it. This seems paradoxical. Yet, the important paradox may be seen in trying to figure out why being "anti-sprawl" seems to be good politics? I would hope that in this land of liberty the last sentence quoted above was not the case, but alas, I'm afraid it is.

Earmark Reform? Not!

On the Editorial Page of the Wall Street Journal ($$$):

"Under the House bill, all earmarks inserted into appropriations during the conference committee stage must identify the earmarker -- unless, we now discover, the earmark goes to a federal agency, as nearly half of them do. Another notable earmark exception has been carved out for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that are political honey pots for the Members. As far as we know, the two companies have never received an earmark before -- which raises the question of whether they are about to become a new earmark shelter for the Members to disguise their pork-barrel habits.

Oh, and earmarks directed to state and local governments are also exempt from the requirement under some circumstances. How big a loophole is that? 'It could be as big as the appropriators are clever,' Representative Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) told us. 'And they're pretty clever.' Congressman Flake has been fighting the earmark tide since long before it became a cause celebre, and he's hoping the loopholes can be narrowed when the House and Senate sit down to agree on a common version of the bill." ["Earmark Loopholes," The Wall Street Journal, Friday, May 19, 2006]

Isn't there an old adage that goes something like "watch what they do, not what they say?" Many of the Washington politicians may talk a good game, but when I read things like this I wonder why I shouldn't conclude that Washington these days is rife with corruption. What do you think? Can you give me specific reasons not to reach this conclusion?

Latest NSA Old News

NEWSBUSTERS:

"Even though it’s largely been reported before, today’s USA Today “bombshell” seems too good for the Bush-bashing networks to ignore."

You should read the entire piece which provides a detailed "replay" of stories about this same story from about 6 months ago. Do you suppose those members of the news media reporting now simply forgot they reported the same story earlier? Are there any medications we can give the media for this condition?

Taxes

The Joint Economic Committee released a report on our federal income tax system. Check out the chart at TaxProf Blog that shows the distribution of taxes paid. The bottom 50% in adjusted gross income pay only 3.46% of the total income taxes paid, which leaves 96.54% paid by the upper 50% of adjusted gross income. What's more is that the top 5% in AGI pay over 1/2 of the federal income taxes, and the top 1% pay over 1/3.

It seems to me that a fair and efficient tax system cannot be a tax system with 1/2 the population paying essentially nothing for the goods and services provided by the national government.

Who's a No-Think Economist?

DON BOUDREAUX:

"Roberts’ mode of argument is so disingenuous, his name-calling and innuendo so unscholarly, and his economics so madcap, that I’m tempted to ignore him in much the same way that I ignore the antics of Lyndon LaRouche, Louis Farrakhan, and others who scream from the fringes.

But I resist the temptation."

It's worth a look.

Economics Summer Reading

Summer reading suggestions by Arnold Kling and Greg Mankiw. I would concur with: Easterly, Harford, Lomborg, Blinder, and McMillan.

Iran

Amir Taheri:

"President Bush can learn from the Kennedy, Carter and Clinton models by not repeating their mistakes. What the U.S. needs is an open, honest and exhaustive debate on what to do with a regime that claims a mission to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East, wipe Israel off the map, create an Islamic superpower, and conquer the world for 'The Only True Faith.' The options are clear: retreat and let the Islamic Republic advance its goals; resist and risk confrontation, including military conflict; or engage the Islamic Republic in a mini-version of Cold War until, worn out, it self-destructs.

With the options clear, Messrs. Carter, Brzezinski and Clinton along with other 'engagers' would have to tell us which they favor and, if they like none, what alternative they offer. Calling for talks is just cheap talk. It is important to say what the proposed talks should be about. In the meantime, talk of 'constructive engagement' is sure to encourage President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's intransigence. Why should he slow down, let alone stop, when there are no bumps on the road?"

Taheri's commentary is important, and I think he is probably right. At this moment, our political leaders should be engaged in an honest, open, and frank discussion of what our policy should be with respect to a country that espouses the goals Iran espouses. As well, the attention of We The People should also be turned to these issues. I think we should be very concerned about any policy response, or non-response, that allows the Islamic Republic to advance toward it's goals.

Tyranny

A. Yasmine Rassam:

"One torture technique favored by Saddam's henchman and his sons involved raping a detainee's mother or sister in front of him until he talked. In Saddam's torture chambers women, when not tortured and raped, spent years in dark jails. If lucky, their suckling children were allowed to be with them. In most cases, however, these children were considered a nuisance to be disposed of; mass graves currently being uncovered contain many corpses of children buried alive with their mothers.

During Saddam's war with Iran, nearly an entire generation of Iraqi men were killed, injured or captured, leaving a dearth of men of military age in Iraqi society. As a result, Saddam launched 'fertility campaigns' that forcibly administered fertility drugs to school girls as young as 10 in an effort to drive up the population rate.

After the Gulf War--particularly after crushing the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings of 1991--Saddam reverted to tribal and 'Islamic' traditions as a means to consolidate power. Iraqi women paid the heaviest price for his new-found piety. Many women were removed from government jobs and were not allowed to travel without the permission of a male relative. Men were exempted from punishment for 'honor' killings--killings carried out on female relatives who had supposedly 'shamed' their family. An estimated 4,000 women died from honor killings in the ensuing years. By 2000, Iraqi women, once considered the most highly educated in the Middle East, had literacy levels of only 23%.

Under the pretext of fighting prostitution in 2000, Saddam's Fedayeen forces beheaded 200 women 'dissidents' and dumped their head on their families doorsteps for public display. These women obviously lost whatever 'rights' granted to them once they got in Saddam's way.

Saddam Hussein was an equal opportunity killer who tortured, raped and gassed men, women and children alike. From Dujail in the South (the murder of hundreds of villagers for which he is on trial now) to the chemical obliteration of Halabja in the North, all Iraqis bore the brunt of the tyrant's wrath."

Manhattan Gasoline

Washington Post:

"Gas stations are an endangered species in Manhattan, shoved aside by luxury developments and spiraling commercial rents. A cluster of stations sit on prime real estate that has already been rezoned from industrial to residential.

In the past few months, at least four stations have been shuttered. That means there are no more than 54 stations left to service the estimated 830,000 cars, delivery trucks and various other gas-consuming vehicles that crawl through Manhattan's urban canyons each day. It's come to the point that the city's Planning Department is examining strategies to keep the remaining stations in business.

'I don't think they will disappear completely, but I don't see stations being built because of the expense,' said Ralph Bombardiere, executive director of the New York State Association of Service Stations and Repair Shops. 'I don't see anyone putting that kind of investment in it.'

The numbers tend to bear this out. The island is 23.7 square miles of real estate, home to about 1.5 million people. Add to that the tens of thousands of daily commuters, and land in Manhattan becomes what water is to Los Angeles: precious regardless of looks, smell or location.

Scarcity explains, in small part, the borough's astronomical gas prices, says Bombardiere. Fewer stations equals less competition."

Now there's some solid economics: fewer stations equals less competition. But I suppose there is a bigger picture. That is, the fewer stations are the result of ever greater competition for parcels of land.

The article seems to suggest that over time there are fewer and fewer gas stations because there are different economic uses for the land the gas stations now sit on that are willing to bid far greater values for the land than are the gas stations. The story also suggests that government is considering whether to adopt some policies to "correct" the situation:

The city's Planning Department, which makes recommendations for rezoning and tracks demographic shifts, plans to examine strategies for preserving critical services, such as gas stations, in Manhattan, according to Rachaele Raynoff, a department spokeswoman. One option is to provide special zoning protection to gas stations, repair shops and other industrial-age service centers.

Might New York one day protect gas stations because they provide a public service?

Cornelius Burns thinks so. "You absolutely need gas stations," he says. "You would need to do something to protect it."

I'm not sure this makes much economic sense. It seems to me we can't really expect the dynamic adjustments of this urban economy to be characterized by any source of market failure. I also suspect that using some "special zoning protection" will itself introduce inefficiency into the location of economic activities within this urban area. Am I missing something here?

I suppose some may think it is obvious that "you absolutely need gas stations," but perhaps that is not really the most significant concern. Imagine what the price of a gallon of gas might have to be in order for a gas station to be able to out bid the other potential economic uses of the land.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget to point out that we learn from this news story that big oil wins again:

"The winners often turn out to be the oil companies, said Bombardiere, of the gas station association. They typically own the land and set the gas prices. And when they're ready to sell, the companies reap the rewards."

I suggest it doesn't really matter who owns the land. As this urban area continues to grow and prosper and increase in density, the competition for parcels of land will continue to grow and bid up the amounts economic activities will pay for land. Those who own the land now will be the people who benefit from the increasing scarcity values of the land, regardless of the economic nature of the owner.

They Fight For Liberty

Marine Corps 1st Sgt. Bradley Kasal:

"In November 2004, while serving with Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Kasal rushed into a house in Fallujah where Marines were trapped in a small room. They were pinned down by Iraqi insurgents firing into the house from a higher and superior position.

The first time, after being shot and crawling to safety, Kasal went back out into the line of fire to rescue an injured Marine.

'I knew I was gonna get shot (again),' he said.

Now, after having suffered seven gunshots, Kasal decided to again put his life at risk.

He would use all of the available field dressings to help stop the bleeding of a gunshot wound suffered by a fellow Marine. He decided not to use any of the dressings for himself and instead 'bleed out.' It just made sense that one of them should survive.

Finally, the insurgent, knowing the injured Marines had no way out, lobbed a grenade into the room. Kasal saw the grenade, and using his own body as a shield, leapt onto his fellow Marine as the grenade exploded.

'I thought the chances of surviving were zero,' he said.

But survive he did, his right leg and buttock riddled with bullets and his body stung by shrapnel."

Corruption

Glenn Reynolds on Congress: "It's as if there's nothing going on but graft and shakedowns."

Bolivia Predator

Reuters.com:

"President Evo Morales ordered the military to occupy Bolivia's natural gas fields on Monday after nationalizing the industry and threatening to expel foreign companies that do not recognize state control."

[ . . . . ]

Morales became president in January on vows to exert more state control over natural resources, reflecting a growing backlash against free markets and foreign investment in Latin America.

The president chose Labor Day, May 1, to announce the nationalization, which stipulates companies will have to leave Bolivia unless they sign contracts within six months recognizing state control.

"This is just the start ... tomorrow or the day after it will be mining, then the forestry sector, and eventually all the natural resources for which our ancestors fought," Morales told a jubilant crowd in La Paz's main plaza.

[ . . . . ]

The government decree says "the state recovers ownership, possession and total and absolute control" of hydrocarbons.

This means the state will own and sell these resources, relegating foreign companies to operators. Previously, Bolivian law said the state no longer owned the gas once companies extracted it from underground.

[ . . . . ]

South America's poorest nation, Bolivia has reserves of some 48.7 trillion cubic feet and exports most of its gas to Brazil and Argentina. Foreign companies have invested more than $3 billion in the last decade, much of it in exploration."

I haven't studied Bolivia's sytem of political economy, but I have to guess that a significant reason Bolivia is "South America's poorest nation" is likely to be a government that embraces economic predation.

Fuel for Thought

Don Boudreaux suggests an interesting way to think about the recent increases in gasoline prices:

"Note that in 2005 our cost of complying with federal-income-tax regulations was $53.7 billion more, in real 2005 dollars, than the extra amount we're now spending compared to 2004, on an annual basis, for gasoline.

And Congress has the gall to pontificate about the alleged unacceptability of the higher prices now charged by oil companies."

Father of the Bush Doctrine

Daniel Henninger writes about his interview with former Secretary of State George Schultz. Here is one interesting passage:

"I wonder out loud whether this view made people nervous back then. GS: 'President Reagan thought it was OK, but there were a lot of people that didn't.' DH: 'Now it's part of the Bush doctrine.' GS: 'I think the idea that you would do everything you can to prevent what is coming at you by way of something very disruptive -- a 9/11 -- it's a no-brainer.'

Was a no-brainer. President Bush's approval rating is in the dumpster, and much of the public is discomfited by the violent reports out of Iraq, which ironically are the product of the same mentality that killed the Marines in 1983. The Iraq war may or may not turn out well, but clearly now it is in a dark moment. When I put this to the former secretary of state, his response, characteristically, is optimism: 'I think this is the most promising moment, almost, in the history of the world -- a time when the information age has made it clear to people what it takes for them to get ahead in their lives and succeed, to have prosperity, to have growth, and it's a critical matter not to have that great opportunity aborted by a wave of radically inspired terrorists. So we have to confront this, and we have to do it on a sustainable basis because it's going to take a long time.'"

Isn't this an interesting point, and one worth much contemplation? It is possible in this day and age to understand the conditions necessary to experience economic prosperity. While it is possible, it seems that even in our own prosperous country it is a lesson relatively few have come to understand.

Mommy, Why are gas prices so high?

Why are gas prices so high? This is the policy debate in a nutshell.

[Hat tip: Arnold Kling]

Say It With Me: Supply and Demand

Charles Krauthammer:

"Supply is down. Start with supply disruptions in Nigeria, decreased production in Iraq, and the continuing loss of 5 percent of our national refining capacity because of damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Add to that the mischief of idiotic new regulations. Last year's energy bill mandates arbitrary increases in blended ethanol use that so exceed current ethanol production that it is causing gasoline shortages and therefore huge price spikes.

Why don't we import the missing ethanol? Brazil makes a ton of it, and very cheaply. Answer: the Iowa caucuses. Iowa grows corn and chooses presidents. So we have a ridiculously high 54-cent ethanol tariff and ethanol shortages."

I think his commentary is very helpful in putting the oil prices in perspective. The ethanol tariff is something I have not discovered before. Very interesting observation. But, who would ever think that Congress would take a consistent approach to law and policy?