A Hidden Tax On New Cars, NY Times Lies About Veterans And Great Britain Is "Mostly Free"

Remember the Energy Bill that Congress recently passed? Well, what is it going to achieve and what will it cost us? Will is even achieve its own stated goals of higher fuel efficieny standards and lower emissions? Not according to Investor's Business Daily:

The new energy law contains stiff new fuel-efficiency standards for U.S. automakers. But make no mistake: What you got from Congress was a big tax hike. Just ask General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. That's right. The CAFE standards embedded in the Energy Independence Act require fuel efficiency to jump to a fleet average 35 miles a gallon in 2020 from about 25 mpg now. That means you will soon be paying more — a lot more — to buy a car. Maybe this sounds reasonable. To many, these new rules are long overdue. They'll help us cut our reliance on foreign oil, they say, while reducing global warming. Who could disagree with such noble goals? The only problem is, based on what we know now, it'll cost automakers some $85 billion to comply. When all costs are factored in, other estimates put the total cost at about $18 billion a year. Fine, say the populist politicians. Stick it to the automakers. But do they really think Ford and GM will pick up the tab? Of course not. It'll be you, as GM's Lutz made clear in comments Sunday.

Absolutely correct. It will be the consumer who will have to pay the higher prices. And remember that higher prices always have a ripple effect throughout the economy. Higher prices on one commodity lead to higher prices on others. If transportation costs go up, so do the prices of transporting things like food which in turn drives food prices up.

The article goes on:

New fuel-efficiency standards are supposed to clean up the air by encouraging people to drive cleaner cars, saving four million barrels of imported oil a day. This, too, sounds great. But like so many things that sound good in theory, it suffers when translated into reality. In fact, the higher prices of cars will encourage consumers to keep their older, dirtier but cheaper vehicles for much longer. So the actual benefits will be less than forecast. History bears this out. In 1970, just before the first CAFE standards were imposed, the average car on the road was about 5 1/2 years old. By 2000, the average car was 9 years old — thanks to the higher costs of buying and operating new cars, a direct result of higher fuel efficiency and safety standards. That's not the only negative impact. One way manufacturers can more easily meet the tough new standards is by making smaller cars. That's why cars in Europe — cited by many fuel-efficiency proponents as a model for the U.S. — are so tiny. Smaller cars are cute and oh-so-European, we agree. But they're also quite dangerous. That's why cars are so big and heavy today: They have lots of safety equipment and padding that makes them much safer than the econo-boxes of the 1980s.

Of course, no one in the Democrat majority of Congress thought about any of this when they were voting to "stick it" to the automakers, but we've come to expect that from a party that embraces failed left-wing socialist policies.

Finally:

So this is what Congress in all its wisdom has brought us: A 21% tax hike on cars, coupled with an official policy that could kill as many Americans in one year as have been killed so far in five years of the Iraq War. Some energy policy. Yet on the stump, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have all supported the new standards. In doing so, they punish a relatively small group of Americans — new-car drivers, auto industry workers and auto-industry shareholders — to benefit the rest of us. This is unfair. It's also bad economics, which is a typical outcome of congressional meddling. Through shortsighted, feel-good policies and excessive regulation, our government continues to drive up the prices of many things — oil, food, cars and homes among them. Then it blames others — stupid consumers, greedy businesses, shady foreign operators — for the bad results. It's time for some truth. The new CAFE standards, as Lutz suggests, amount to a tax — a rather narrow and inefficient one that will neither reduce our reliance on foreign oil nor curb global warming. It will, however, make us a lot less safe and well-off.

Another Central Planning Policy that will do nothing but make life hard on the average American while Congress enjoys lavish junkets and vacations at our expense.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

The Tax They Didn't Tell You About
Investor's Business Daily
January 14, 2008

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The "Old Gray Lady" must be getting senile and hoping that the average reader is suffering from dementia as well, or at least a short memory. The New York Post exposes the Times for some shoddy journalism and blatent lies about America's military veterans:

Memo to New York Times Public Ed itor Clark Hoyt: Your urgent atten tion is needed on the slanderous 7,000-word front-page article published last Sunday about homicides allegedly committed by US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. ... As our colleague Ralph Peters so adroitly demonstrated on these pages Tuesday, the article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés - the US combat vet as psychotic killer. But on what evidence? None at all. ... The article, said to be the first of several, reports that there have been 121 homicides involving active-duty or recently discharged Iraq/Afghan combat veterans.

But there is one problem. The author's of the Times article didn't really do any research nor did they crunch the numbers or do a proper analysis. Fortunately, the New York Post did:

As Peters noted, "to match the homicide rate of their [nonmilitary] peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007" - six times the number the Times cited. That estimate is borne out by University of Pennsylvania political scientist John DiIulio, who notes on the Weekly Standard's Web site that 749,932 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had been discharged by the end of 2007. Apply that to the 121 killings cited by the Times, and the homicide rate works out to 16.1 per 100,000 - over the entire six-year period. By way of imperfect comparison, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics' most recent numbers demonstrate that the same rate among males ages 18-24 was 26.5 - 65 percent higher - for a single year, 2005. It's not necessary to extrapolate that stat to understand that the Times has slandered some fine young Americans. For none of those numbers appeared among the 7,000 words the paper published. Which means that the numbingly long piece, while loaded with affecting details, contained nothing that would place these cases in any sort of meaningful context.

But then, what did you really expect from a rag that exposes classified programs so that the terrorists can learn what governments like the United States are doing to protect their citizens?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

The Killer Vet Lie
New York Post
January 17, 2008

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And the Telegraph has an interesting piece about the high-tax policies of the British Government. It appears as though Great Britain is sliding down the ranks from a "free economy" to "mostly free economy." (Is that anything like Earth going from "harmless" to "mostly harmless?" according to the Encyclopaedia Galactica?)

Anyway, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has this to say:

Britain has slipped out of the ranks of fully "free" countries in this year's Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, reflecting the sharp rise in the tax burden and ballooning state sector. ... The country has continued to slide down the league under Gordon Brown's economic management, falling from fifth to tenth place over the last two years. It has been overtaken by Canada, Chile, Switzerland, Australia, and the United States. Britain now scores below 80 points on a range of key indicators, dropping into the "mostly free" camp with Germany, Japan, Bahrain, Armenia and Trinidad. Two eurozone shockers are Italy (64), and Greece (80), now ranked lowered than most of the old Communist bloc. The ever harsher verdict on Britain comes as Mr Brown's tax and spend policies begin to reshape the basic structure of the UK plc, transforming it from one of Europe's leanest fiscal states to one of the most bloated. "Total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, are very high. Government spending has been rising since the 1990s and in the most recent year equaled 44.7 percent of GDP," said the UK country report.

The Heritage Index defines economic freedom as "the absence of constraint on the production, distribution or consumption of goods and services beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself".

Many European states, most notably Germany, have been trimming down the government's involvement in private sector economy. Great Britain has been increasing it and now it is beginning to hurt.

No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity, but many have taxed themselves into poverty. Einstein once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting adifferent result. Levying high taxes on the means of production, even though leftists claim it is a good thing, has only led to economic slow-down. So, why do leftists continue to push for high taxes thinking it will help and economy grow?

You don't need to be Einstein to figure that one out.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

High-Tax Britain Booted From Club Of 'Free' Economies
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
The Telegraph
January 16, 2008

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And this is why we don't trust polls:

Democrats In Denial About Iraq, MS-13 Strikes Again And Supreme Court Looks At Lethal Injections

Ever since MoveOn.org completely embarrassed the Democrats with their slanderous ad about General Patreus, the Dems have been very mum and quiet about the War on Terror, in particular, the pacifying of Iraq.

It is no secret that the surge strategy is working now and has been for several months. Where there used to be headline after headline about more U.S. troop deaths in Iraq, the headlines barely mention it anymore. In other words, "if it isn't bleeding, it isn't leading." Old Media will never make front page news out of a situation that appears to be going good, especially if such news makes a Conservative look good. Old Media will instead sniff out stories to make the Conservative look bad.

But they can no longer do that with Iraq. That's why the Dems are quiet. They don't want to admit that they were wrong and Presdient Bush, under advisement of his military commanders, was right.

According to the Review & Outlook section of the Wall Street Journal:

Across the political spectrum, observers have announced the surge a success. This achievement must be a source of enormous pride to the U.S. soldiers and Marines who have pulled it off. So what we take away from the four Democratic Presidential candidates' stunning display of misinformation and false statements about the surge Saturday evening is that they have simply stopped thinking about Iraq. They seem to have concluded that opposition to the war permits them to literally not know what the U.S. or the Iraqis are doing there. As the nation commences the selection of an American President, this is a phenomenon worth noting.

What Barack Obama said is most noteworthy here:

His first assertion echoed what has become a standard line by the war's opponents, that "we have not made ourselves safer as a consequence." What can this possibly mean? In more than six years there hasn't been one successful terrorist attack on the U.S., even as places elsewhere were hit or actively targeted. Then Senator Obama placidly said that the Sunnis in Anbar Province began to help the U.S. "after the Democrats were elected in 2006." What's more, the Democrats' victory showed them they were "going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias." This obviously means the Democrats would abandon them. But the Sunni Awakening, as it is called, with its fall in bloodshed, occurred only after the Anbar Sunnis were convinced that the U.S. troops would not abandon them to al Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni sheiks have said explicitly it was the new U.S. policy of sustaining the offensive against AQI that made it possible for them to resist the jihadists. The U.S. military has supported the spread of these "awakening councils" in other areas of Iraq. It is navel-gazing in the extreme for Mr. Obama to suggest U.S. Congressional elections caused this turn.

Perhaps someone out there will remind B. Hussein Obama that his own leader in the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, was all over the national news screaming, "The war is lost!"

If Obama honestly believes that such an attitude caused the changes in Anbar, then surely the Senator will purchase a bridge is Brooklyn that I have for sale.

More:

Governor Bill Richardson, who touts his foreign policy credentials, in the space of a minute made five false statements about Iraq. He asserted "zero" internal reconciliation, "zero" progress on sharing oil revenue, "zero" regional elections, "no" increased effort by the government to train their own security forces and "no" effort to push back against Iran. One can certainly question what the Iraqis have done in all these areas, but to reduce the last year to a nullity isn't worthy of a serious candidate. "If you look at what happened in Iraq," said John Edwards, you'll see that violence fell after the British withdrew from "where those troops were located." This is precisely the opposite of what happened. The Brits were located in southern Basra province, and their drawdown began last month after what U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the handover ceremony called a "massive" decline in insurgent activity. Mr. Edwards's view that a troop pullout will reduce Iraq's violence is unique among public figures anywhere. In different ways one can explain the views of these three. Senator Obama seems to be talking his way toward believing that eloquence and credibility are the same thing; Mr. Edwards's campaign is aggressively parochial in its interests; and Bill Richardson used the debate Saturday to blow up the remnants of his campaign.

The Dems need a serious reality check.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Democrats In Denial
Wall Street Journal
January 8, 2008

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And in a previous blog entry, we saw how Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13, defaced a Vietnam Veterans War memorial in Connecticut. It seems as though they have struck again.

From the World Net Daily:

Authorities in New Haven, Conn., have launched an investigation into the establishment of the radically violent MS-13 street gang in their city after a second case of apparently gang-related vandalism within a week. ... "This irks me. This hurts me deep to my heart," Vietnam Army veteran Emery Linton Sr. told the station then. Linton, who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972, noted he lost friends there and called the mess on the memorial a slap in the face to veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. "People here respect these names. They gave their lives for everything, for the freedoms they have," Linton said. As WND reported, the El Salvador-based MS-13 operates in 44 U.S. states, according to the FBI. WND reported as early as 1995 the gang reportedly was meeting with representatives of al-Qaida and smuggling operatives into the United States from Mexico.

It should be especially noted here that New Haven, Connecticut is a sanctuary city that provides illegal aliens with driver's licenses so they can access public services at the taxpayer's expense.

And exactly how long will we continue turning our heads in the opposite direction?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

MS-13 Hits Vietnam Vets' Memorial Again
World Net Daily
January 8, 2008

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Finally, we have the Supreme Court looking into the issue of whether or not execution by lethal injection causes pain for the condemned. Check this out:

Several justices indicated a willingness to preserve the three-drug cocktail that is authorized by three dozen states that allow executions. Such a decision would allow lethal injections, on hold since late September, to resume quickly. Justice Antonin Scalia said states have been careful to adopt procedures that do not seek to inflict pain and should not be barred from carrying out executions even if prison officials sometimes make mistakes in administering drugs. "There is no painless requirement" in the Constitution, Scalia said. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also indicated their support for the states' procedures. Other members of the court, who have raised questions about lethal injection in the past, said they are bothered by the procedures used in Kentucky and elsewhere in which three drugs are administered in succession to knock out, paralyze and kill prisoners. The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, a third drug that stops the heart can cause excruciating pain. The second drug, meanwhile, paralyzes the prisoner, rendering him unable to express his discomfort. "I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug is what seems to cause all the risk of excruciating pain, and seems to be almost totally unnecessary," said Justice John Paul Stevens.

I'm terribly troubled by the fact that these murderers caused excrutiating pain to their victims and the victims' families but libs only have feelings for the murderers, not the murdered.

I thought libs were supposed to be sensitive people.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Justices Divided Over Lethal Injections
Mark Sherman
Associated Press via GOPUSA.com
January 8, 2008

Iowa Caucuses, Abusive Power Of The IRS And Oil Prices

There is alot going on in the world right now and only a limited amount of space to write about it. Of course, the big news is news that should be mostly irrelevent to anyone but an Iowan, but the caucuses that were held yesterday are headlines everywhere and we need to pay at least some token attention to it.

Why?

I don't know. It is not as if Iowa and Hew Hampshire are the only states that will determine who will be the Presidential candidates for each party. But it is entertaining and it does allow certain issues to come to the front that otherwise would not have been given any attention at all.

In her most recent column in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan touches on this with her explanation of why Mike Huckabee won:

What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he's an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture. They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs. They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican, and as I have read their letters, I have felt nothing but respect.

Mike Huckabee is not who I would have voted for, but at least his victory in Iowa will bring the social issues back into the Republican Party, and the GOP will greatly benefit as a result.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Out With The Old, In With The New
Peggy Noonan
OpinionJournal.com
January 4, 2008

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Oh! And this is a big one! You have got to read this story. I don't even know where to begin in describing it, so I will just let the excerpts speak for themselves.

From the World Net Daily:

A lawyer who was acquitted by a federal court trial jury of Internal Revenue Service accusations he failed to filed income tax returns for two years now is suing several IRS agents over their alleged improper disclosure of his personal information in the case. A spokeswoman in the office of lawyer Tom Cryer told WND the case was assembled and filed by Cryer between Christmas Day and the end of 2007 and is expected to be placed on the docket in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Last summer in federal court a jury voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of the IRS allegations. He had been indicted on 2006 on government claims he failed to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001. His successful defense was based on a challenge to the IRS to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation's income tax.

You did read that last sentence, right? Read on:

Now his claim against the government's agents, according to a report in the Shreveport Times, explains four IRS criminal investigation division workers tried to destroy his reputation during the course of their investigation in the case. The lawsuit alleges IRS agents Jimmy H. Sandefur, Darrin A. Heusel and Judge Armand, and a trainee, Patrick Potter "entered into a smear and fear campaign to destroy Plaintiff's good reputation and law practice." Cryer alleges the federal workers repeatedly violated federal laws that restrict the disclosure of tax information, release of information about an investigation and publicizing information about a grand jury investigation.

This case will highlight the fact that the IRS possesses an abusive power that they never should have been given in the first place. More:

"I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples' property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever," Cryer said after his acquittal. He said he is dedicated to the truth, and has launched a new Truth Attack website that is intended to build on his victory, and create a coalition of resources to defeat – ultimately – the income tax in the United States.

We, as a people, need to research the case of Tom Cryer and his fight against a Federal Government entity that can only be described as "invasive" and "abusive."

His website can be accessed here:

Truth Attack

And the complete article can be accessed on-line here:

Lawyer Who Beat IRS Sues Agents
World Net Daily
January 4, 2008

This is yet another reason why I am a supporter of the Fair Tax

UPDATE: For those who wish to research this issue further and gather background information on the original case, I found links to certain documents. After Mr. Cryer filed a Motion to Dismiss on March 3rd of 2007:

The Government's Response
Mr. Cryer's Reply
Mr. Cryer's Trial Brief
Proposed Jury Instructions
Proposed Voir Dire Questions

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And finally, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting expose about the price of oil and its relationship to the strength/weakness of the dollar.

From the Review & Outlook section:

Since 2001 the dollar price of oil and gold have run in almost perfect tandem (see nearby chart). The gold price has risen 239% since 2001, while the oil price has risen 267%. This means that if the dollar had remained "as good as gold" since 2001, oil today would be selling at about $30 a barrel, not $99. Gold has traditionally been a rough proxy for the price level, so the decline of the dollar against gold and oil suggests a U.S. monetary that is supplying too many dollars. We would add that the dollar price of nearly all commodities -- from wheat to corn to copper to silver -- are also surging, a further sign of a weakening currency. On Wednesday alone the price of wheat and soybeans increased 3.4% and 2.8%, respectively. That follows a 75% increase in their price in 2007 -- which ran ahead of the oil price, which gained a mere 57% for the year. Neither OPEC nor China caused food commodity prices to rise like this. The main culprit here is a global loss of confidence in Federal Reserve policy and the dollar.

And this interesting tidbit:

A weak dollar has been trumpeted in the business media and especially among manufacturers as a strategy to lower the trade deficit. But this strategy makes imported oil a lot more expensive. The trade figures reveal that a major contributor to the rising trade deficit over this decade has been the high cost of oil imports. We don't worry about the trade deficit -- except in so far as it inspires protectionism -- but those who do might want to consider that the weak dollar policy they are cheering is making fuel very expensive. ... Rising oil prices act like a tax on American consumers. With the economy slowing, the Fed is now under intense pressure to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy and provide liquidity to the banking industry. But if this causes the dollar to continue to weaken, the tax of higher commodity prices will offset much of the "stimulus" from looser money. The Fed will get a lot less bang for its easier buck. The larger danger here, as we've been warning for some time, is that the U.S. seems to be returning to the Carter-era economic policy mix of tight fiscal policy (tax increases) and easy money. Add barriers to oil and natural gas production and you have a recipe for higher oil prices and slower growth. In a word, for stagflation. The Reagan-Volcker policy mix of the 1980s changed all that, but maybe we have to relearn the hard way every generation or so what works -- and what produces $100 oil.

Please read this article and take it to heart.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Oil And The Dollar
The Wall Street Journal
January 4, 2008

Hidden Black On White Crimes, New Deal Economics And Alternative Fuel Woes

On this last day of the year 2007 A.D. (Yes, I say Anno Domini rather than the politically correct C.E.), I have three articles I would like to bring to the front. The first is a column by Dr. Walter Williams:

Whenever there is a case of white on black crime, whether real or alleged, it becomes front-page headline news. But, when it is black on white crime, well, then it is treated differently by Old Media.

Dr. Walter Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Oh yeah, for those of you who didn't know it, he is also a black man.

Here is what he writes about this issue over at TownHall.com:

If you're like I am, you've heard scores of media reports about the 2006 Duke University rape case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black stripper at a wild party at the home of one of the team members. These guys, convicted by the news media and Duke faculty, were later found innocent. It turned out that Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was running for re-election. In seeking the black vote, he concealed DNA evidence that would have exonerated the lacrosse players. ... I don't know about you, but it was just recently that I heard about a gruesome murder in Knoxville, Tenn., that is far worse than the false charges in the Duke rape case and is at least as horrible, if not more so, than the dragging death of James Byrd. Unlike the Duke rape case and the Jasper lynching, the national news media's coverage of the interracial Knoxville murders paled in comparison. On Jan. 6, 2007, University of Tennessee student Channon Christian and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, were carjacked and kidnapped in Knoxville. Both of them were later murdered. According to a 46-count indictment, suspects Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman, all blacks, are charged with committing rape, including sodomy against Christian and Newsom, both of whom are white. After being raped, Newsom was shot several times and his body was found burned along nearby railroad tracks. Christian was forced to witness her boyfriend's rape, torture and subsequent murder before she was ultimately raped, tortured and murdered. The police discovered her body inside a large trash can in the kitchen of the home where the murders took place. Before disposing of her body, the murderers poured bleach or some other cleaning agent down her throat in an effort to destroy DNA evidence. Trial dates have been set for next May.

Dr. Williams rightly asks where the news media is and why they aren't covering this incident as closely and completely as they did the Duke fake-rape case. He also rightly asks why the NAACP doesn't speak out about this as they spoke out against the prosecution of the Jena 6.

Why is this so important to us? Read on:

According to the 2004 FBI National Crime Victimization Survey, in most instances of interracial crimes, the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. In the case of interracial murder for 2004, where the race of victim and perpetrator is known, more than twice as many whites were murdered by a black than cases of a white murdering a black. The failure of civil rights leaders, people like Jackson and Sharpton, as well as politicians to vocally condemn black-on-white crime -- and the relative silence of the news media in reporting it -- is not simply a matter of double standards. It's dangerous, for it contributes to a pile of racial kindling awaiting a racial arsonist to set it ablaze.

The column is short but profound and can be accessed on-line here:

Hiding Black Interracial Crimes
Dr. Walter Williams
TownHall.com
December 26, 2007

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Since 2008 is a Presidential election year, it would be a good idea to start looking at the campaign promises of the various candidates and how those promises reflect on certain relevent issues. Probably the biggest issue is that of the economy. We all know that the market is heading for a massive readjustment pretty soon, probably within the next year. The question will be: how do we respond to it?

Many Democrats have already decided that the solution is to impose New Deal style socialist policies on the United States. But is that really a good idea?

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Amity Schlaes has the following:

Notwithstanding the largest peacetime appropriation in the history of the world, the New Deal recovery remained incomplete. From 1934 on--the period when the spending ramped up--monetary troubles were subsiding, and could no longer be blamed alone for the Depression. The story of the mid-1930s is the story of a heroic economy struggling to recuperate but failing to do so because lawmakers' preoccupation with public works rather got in the way of allowing productive businesses to expand and pull the rest forward. ... People became accustomed to a sort of calculus of frustration. The closer the country got to the prosperity of 1929, the more impossible reaching such prosperity seemed. The 1930s came to be known as the always recovering but never recovered decade. The Dow itself confirmed this pessimistic assessment by stubbornly remaining below 1929 levels through World War II and into the 1950s. The relevant points for today are simple. The famous "multiplier effect" of public spending may exist. U.S. cities do indeed need new highways, new buildings and new roads, maybe even from government. But these needs should be weighed against damage that comes when officials create projects and jobs for political reasons. An emergency such as a Great Depression, a Sept. 11, a Katrina, can serve as a catalyst for an infrastructure project and for job creation too. But the dire moral quality of that emergency does not guarantee that the project undertaken in its name will be more efficient than your standard earmark. In other words, candidates may want to be careful as they climb onto FDR's shoulders. The New Deal edifice may look solid, but it doesn't form a good basis for the American future.

Socialist policies have never succeeded in bringing any nation to economic prosperity. It didn't happen during the New Deal and certainly didn't happen when James Earl Carter unleashed his disasterous policies on the American economy back in the late 70's. So, why are the Dems so intent on inviting that same disaster here in the Y2k's? It would only lead to higher unemployment and more economic dispair which would in turn put a larger burden on the American people.

Free markets are the way to go, not inefficient central planning.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

The New Deal Jobs Myth
Amity Schlaes
OpinionJournal.com
December 31, 2007

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And finally we have another story about alternative fuels and what they are really costing us. Eric Berger, writing for the Houston Chronicle brings us the following:

The recent passage of the mammoth energy bill could have unintended consequences for the Gulf of Mexico that have nothing to do with oil and gas platforms. Under the law, production of ethanol is set to increase five-fold to 36 billion gallons a year by 2020. Some environmentalists are worried that the shift to ethanol — viewed as a home-grown alternative to foreign oil — could enlarge the northern Gulf's "dead zone," an 8,000-square-mile area so devoid of oxygen that fish, shrimp and other sea life cannot survive. Already ethanol, by doubling corn prices since 2002, has driven corn production to its highest levels since World War II. Growing corn requires considerably more nitrogen-based fertilizer than most crops. When the fertilizer runs off fields in the Midwest, it drains into the Mississippi and eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico. "This year's dead zone is the third highest on record, and I think we're already seeing an impact from increased ethanol use," said Donald Scavia, a University of Michigan professor who studies farm practices and hypoxia, or low-oxygen water. Scientists say the Gulf's dead zone has grown larger since its discovery more than 20 years ago. According to Nancy Rabelais, a professor with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who annually surveys the area, the dead zone has been about 15 percent bigger in the last five years than normal.

It is a great truism of the Universe: you cannot get something for nothing. Sometimes the something you get is not worth it.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Ethanol Stirring Coastal Concerns
Eric Berger
Houston Chronicle
December 31, 2007

Liberal Media Demoralizing America And A Gay Man Invites Sex Offenders To Live With Him

This should come as no surprise to those of you who have been following the demise of Old Media. It makes perfect sense though. Leftist newsreaders in Old Media have for years been pushing their agendas rather than reporting accurately and objectively.

Michael P. Tremoglie, writing for the Bulletin in Philadelphia, gives us some really good insights on this:

There is a disputed quote, attributed to North Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, which states the American military would have won the Vietnam War were it not for the efforts of the American media to demoralize the nation. Giap purportedly wrote, "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. ... We were ready to surrender! ... We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields."

But the modern evidence is even more damning:

Recently, the esteemed magazine The New Republic (TNR) published a series of articles, by a soldier serving in Iraq, who claimed he witnessed misconduct by his fellow soldiers. He described horrible incidents such as insulting a disfigured woman, abusing corpses and being cruel to animals. "Conservative" bloggers and the "conservative" media disputed the accounts. Yet, TNR defended the articles. Even after an internal investigation by the military revealed that there was no truth to them, TNR still maintained their validity. They even claimed, in an Aug. 7 statement, that they spoke to military personnel who corroborated the articles. Finally, after months of denial, TNR issued a statement: "After months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in [the soldier's] pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories."

But, leftist newsreaders have always been ready to stand by anti-American characters throughout the world:

Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, resigned after he remarked, in 2005, that American soldiers in Iraq targeted journalists. Mr. Jordan, it seems, was more inclined to falsely report American atrocities than he was to truthfully report Iraqi atrocities since, in 2003, he admitted to withholding information about atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein. The Boston Globe published photos of American soldiers allegedly raping Iraqi women in 2004. The story was false. The photos were common pornography. Then there was the case of Jesse MacBeth, who claimed to be an Army Ranger and Iraq veteran. He said he committed and witnessed atrocities while serving in Iraq. Later it was learned that MacBeth had never been in Iraq. Of course, his accusations were already circulating by that time. During 2004 and 2005 The Associated Press, which provides articles for thousands of newspapers and radio news broadcasts, published atrocity stories by former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, an Iraq war veteran. These too were later proven to be false.

Old Media, in most cases, should not be trusted to police themselves nor to vet their own stories.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Disinformatsya: How Liberal Media Attempts To Demoralize America
Michael P. Tremoglie
The Bulletin
December 13, 2007

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And how militant can homosexual activists become? How about militant enough to offer rooms to murderers and sex offenders? That is what is happening down in Dog River, Alabama where a homosexual activist is threatening to open his doors to sex offenders who may want to rent a room in his house.

From WKRG, Channel 5 CBS affiliate:

Attention sex offenders and murderers: Do you need a place to live? A Dog River couple is getting ready to rent out rooms. They say people in their neighborhood are trying to get rid of them and its payback time. You can't miss the FOR RENT signs. They're posted in the yard and the trees! Bobby White says he's fed up with the neighbors. "I will be here renting out rooms to sex offenders and ex-murderers and ex-thieves! They forced me into this as long as they are not on parole or on paper. I can rent out rooms to whoever I like." ... Their Dog River neighbors like Eleni Tyler says that the signs just popped up one day. "They've got signs up and I'm having to explain to my daughter what this means. The neighborhood is extremely upset about it." It's no secret that Ham was convicted of a sex crime in 1990. Everyone got the notice. Tyler claims an inappropriate comment was made to her 11-year old daughter. "They were cat calling her Hey Baby and their excuse was they were looking for their dog." White says the couple wanted to move but they can't do that either. He says the real estate agents have been harassed too "If they want us to leave so bad, leave our real estate alone." News 5's Tiffany Craig says, "That doesn't make sense! If they don't want you here why would they mess up the selling house process?" White replies, "I have no idea."

White's claim in that last paragraph does seem to be contradictory, doesn't it?

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Sex Offenders And Murderers Welcome
Tiffany Craig
WKRG Channel 5
December 11, 2007

More CNN YouTube Plants Being Uncovered And Glenn Beck At #1

You have to wonder if CNN was just completely ignorant, or completely stupid as to how they handled the GOP YouTube Primary Debate. Those are the two choices and there is no third option.

If CNN was completely ignorant, then they really didn't know that several of the "undecided" voters posing questions to the field of GOP candidates were actually plants from the Democrats' various campaigns because the staff at CNN was too dumb/lazy/incompetent to research and expose them as such. (Bloggers and other New Media institutions got to the truth within mere minutes of the plants appearing in the debate.)

If CNN was completely stupid, then they did know that those "undecided" voters were plants but chose to try and hide that fact in the hopes that you and I wouldn't be sharp enough to catch it. (I saw something wrong from having watched only fifteen minutes of the debate.)

Well, we've found more two "undecided" voters who were plants in the debate.

From Michelle Malkin:

Surprise: Muslim YouTube Questioner Was Former CAIR Intern
Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
November 29, 2007

From Ray Robinson over at the American Thinker:

Another questioner named Mark Strauss of Iowa asked Ron Paul to run as an Independent. Wasn't it a little bit of a tip off to CNN producers that Strauss is not interested in Republican issues when his question was nothing more than an encouragement for a candidate to leave the party? But clearly, CNN likes the idea of a Republican candidate taking Republican voters to the Independent block for the general election. In case you missed it, Nader did this to Gore and Gore lost. Perot did it to Bush, Sr. and Bush lost. Wonder what CNN might have had in mind by promoting this idea at the debate and selecting it out of thousands of questions that actually would have mattered to Republicans? Strauss was not randomly chosen as CNN presented a previous video of his at the Democrats' debate. There is a history between him and CNN. So the "we did not know" defense shouldn't play here any more than it does in the case of Gen. Kerr who had been on CNN previously.

In fact, Strauss has his own website where he wrote (very poorly) the following:

In October 2006, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts came to my door in Iowa, yes, at my house. He was there walking up and down the street with Robby Smith campaigning with him. Man, did he pick the wrong door. What is the Governor of MA doing in IA, with a young rookie running for state house? He is a Republican first-American second...hopefully not our next "decider". ... Mitt asked me what I woud [sic] do in Iraq. I proceeded to explain how we need to get not only the effected nations in the region involved, but strike meaningful discussion and secure true resilution [sic] with the world thru the U.N.. Mitt laughed and called the U.N. a joke. This is the man that wants to be President. Don't we already have a decider in office that considers the other world leaders a joke? I then said "I have no use for you, get off my property", and I closed the door. This guy cannot be elected into office in 08.

Clearly, Strauss was not "undecided" and CNN either knew it, or ignored it. One or the other. But they had knowledge of it.

You can access Mr. Robinson's complete article on-line here:

CNN/YouTube Questioner Kicked Romney 'Off My Property'
Ray Robinson
The American Thinker
November 30, 2007

As a result of all this, CNN should be banned from ever hosting a debate ever again.

From Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters:

In the greatest of ironies, after Democrats refused to participate in debates sponsored by Fox News due to its supposed partiality, CNN has now shown itself in back-to-back debates to be as biased as biased can be. After either participating in or allowing the planting of campaign operatives at November 15's Democrat presidential debate in Las Vegas, it has now become apparent that similar stocking of audience questioners occurred in Wednesday's Republican debate. ... Regardless of whether or not CNN is specifically involved, as this is now the second consecutive incident of such behavior at a debate sponsored by this network, has it now abused the public trust enough to not be allowed to sponsor any more debates in this election cycle?

As I said, either stupid or ignorant. Take your pick.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Should CNN Be Allowed To Host Any More Debates?
Noel Sheppard
NewsBusters.org
November 29, 2007

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Glenn Beck has a new book out entitled An Inconvenient Book. Catchy, eh? But the title is not what I'm interested in here. I am interested in the book's rank on the New York Times Bestseller list. It is #1.

So, you may ask, what of it? Well, NewsMax made a very interesting observation about Beck's book and the previous #1, I Am America (And So Can You) by leftist liberal Stephen Colbert. You see, Colbert had all sorts of publicity, interviews and book reviews with Old Media in order to get his book to #1. Beck had none of that, but still went to #1. What does that say about the differences between Old Media and New Media?

From NewsMax:

Radio and TV talk show host Glenn Beck’s new book has soared to the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list — despite the fact it has been totally ignored by the mainstream press. Beck’s “An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems” (Simon & Schuster) will appear the Times’ list of Hardcover Nonfiction bestsellers that will appear on December 9. The book is already the No. 1 best-seller among all books on Amazon.com. Before Beck’s book hit the top of the Times’ list, Stephen Colbert’s “I Am America (And So Can You)” had been the leader in the Hardcover Nonfiction category for six weeks. But unlike Beck, the liberal Colbert enjoyed considerable attention from the mainstream press. His book was reviewed by, or he was interviewed by, the Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, “Good Morning America,” “Meet the Press,” and David Letterman.

That is a serious question. What does this say about the differences between Old Media and New Media?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Glenn Beck Hits No. 1 On New York Times List
NewsMax.com
November 29, 2007