Lincoln biographer Thomas DiLorenzo on the real cause of the Late Unpleasantness

The Greatest Presidential Reflection Since Lincoln? by Thomas DiLorenzo:
"The neocons have spun into fits of Lincolnite hysteria over President Bush’s inaugural speech, in which he promised to rid the planet of tyranny."

After a paragraph citing examples of neocon praise for George W. Bush's second inaugural address, DiLorenzo segues into the short version of the real reason behind Southern secession and Mr. Lincoln's War. Hint: it wasn't slavery.

Reviewing, in a longish column on LewRockwell.com, material that occupies whole chapters in his books, DiLorenzo reminds us of facts that are almost never cited in American history textbooks.

The history books typically discuss, in a rather unenlightening way, the recurrent controversies over the extension of slavery in the west as territories were organized and new states admitted to the union, disputes over enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, and the Dred Scott decision. Occasionally, one sees mention of tariffs in passing, but the moment of high drama is usually Bloody Kansas and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry which puts the focus squarely back on slavery.

DiLorenzo reminds us that not only had Lincoln and the 1860 Republican platform promised to leave slavery undisturbed, but the new Congress in 1861, under Republican leadership and after the departure of Senators and Representatives of seven Southern states, had proposed a constitutional amendment specifically authorizing the continuance of slavery.

On the other hand, the same Congress had passed, and lame-duck president James Buchanan had signed, the Morrill tariff which, at a single stroke, had doubled rates across the board. Moreover, Lincoln and his party were committed to further tariff hikes to finance subsidies for their favored railroad and construction industry constituencies.

Lincoln was proposing nothing less than to bleed the South dry to pay for public works and railroad subsidies which would mostly benefit the North. And he threatened armed invasion to collect the tariff. The South was back where it had been during the Nullification controversy of the early 1830s under President Jackson, except that now the Northern interest had a much larger share of the votes in the national legislature. Secession was, reluctantly, the only choice available to the South.

A letter to a Yankee newspaper

I was quite surprised to hear (via the Southern Heritage News & Views news list) that a columnist for a Connecticut newspaper reported that he was "shocked to see Confederate flags flying in many yards" in North Carolina. Apparently, this member of the fourth estate only expected such displays in the Deep South. This is an edited version of a letter I sent to the paper.

I fly not only the Confederate Battle Flag and the Bonnie Blue Flag, but also the Bennington Flag and the Stars and Stripes as the spirit moves me at my second home in SC. It is an important part of my heritage.

In my estimation, celebrating Southron heritage is an affirmation of the founding principles of the USA which were reiterated in the founding of the Confederacy. It certainly has nothing to do with slavery. In my direct paternal line in SC (my mother was from Indiana), there were no slaves in our households in any census from 1790 through 1860, yet all four of my great-grandfather's elder brothers went to Virginia to fight for the Cause and only two came home. They weren't fighting for slavery.

Lee freed his wife's slaves before the war while Grant's family owned slaves during the war. Which of them was fighting to perpetuate slavery?

Professor Thomas J. Jackson of VMI (later known as "Stonewall") broke the law every week to teach Black children, both slave and free, to read and write in Sunday school - he broke the civil law in obedience to God's command to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all men, regardless of color of legal status. Even during the war, Gen. Jackson continued to send money for Bible and other books for the Black children in his Sunday school class. Was he an enemy of the Black race?

Folks in the North need to take a serious look at that awful period in the history of the US (1860-77), its causes and its effects, and not rely on mere political slogans to understand it.

This is especially true for those in Connecticut. Remember that it was a convention of New Englanders meeting in Hartford which broached the topic of secession from the Union in disgust over the War of 1812. It was only British acceptance of the Treaty of Ghent that intervened to prevent the remonstrances of the Hartford Convention being debated in Congress in 1815.

Expressions of disunion sentiment were also heard in your part of the country in reaction to the Mexican War in the 1840s. And I won't even go into the profits of the slave trade, run from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, much of which found its way to Hartford through the insurance business.

It has been well said that, for many of the people of the South, the war not only isn't over ... it isn't even in the past. One of the reasons is the utter incomprehension in the rest of the country about what the war and its aftermath meant to our section. As Thomas Jefferson admonished the press of his day, "Give light, and the people will find their own way." I urge you and your writers to give more light and less heat, for all our sakes.

NYCLU says academic freedom is only for the professoriat, not the student body

village voice > news > Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff :
"The New York Civil Liberties Union has blundered into the growing controversy at Columbia University about charges by students in Middle East studies (MEALAC) that they are bullied and silenced in classrooms by certain professors who are vehemently anti-Israel. Professors have the right to compare Sharon with Goebbels or to declare Israel not to be a legitimate state—but do dissenting students have no academic freedom to question those professorial views in class? The NYCLU says that's up to the professor."

Nat Hentoff is one of those essential men. He calls the plays based on the rulebook, not on whose team is winning. Here he delves into the growing controversy at Columbia University's Mideast studies department and defends the right of students to dissent from professorial views in class.

There's enough pressure on students to keep their mouths shut to protect their grades without giving professors a formal carte blanche to shut down dissent from their political posturings in the classroom. After all, the students (or their parents or the government on their behalf) are paying the bills; so, they ought to be entitled to some say in the content of the classroom discussion.

I have read that many years ago the great German universities were organized on a very different principle. The faculty admitted a doctoral candidate as a recognized peer and that gave him the license to teach there, but it didn't guarantee him an income. Students paid for the professor and class they wanted and the professor leased the lecture hall from the university. If an arrogant fool wanted to treat the students like dirt, he'd better be damned entertaining while he was at it or he would starve. A system like that might help our universities.

Karl Rove as Machiavelli in the view from the Village Voice

village voice > news > Inauguration 2005 by Rick Perlstein :
"Forcing a guy who knows he's dirty but knows his bosses are dirtier to sweat out a congressional hearing is a perfect way to test his loyalty. It's also a great way to test Congress's mettle—to probe just how atrophied the opposition party's willingness to oppose has become. What's more, once you've got them through the ordeal, you've stockpiled one more scapegoat to toss into the fire in case Congress ever gets hot on the trail of the higher-ups who issued the orders. And it establishes a record for a future defense: Once Congress has confirmed a Gonzales or a Chertoff, how can it then turn around and call the things done by a Gonzales or a Chertoff unlawful?"

One doesn't like to say that maybe the other side has a point, but there is much to ponder here. Karl is smart, tough and bold. Whether he is all those things in sufficient measure to have engineered the sequence of events described by Rick Perlstein is something you will have to decide for yourself.

Speechwriter extraordinaire Peggy Noonan on Bush's Second Inaugural

Salon.com Politics:
"The speech led Noonan to wonder if the Bush White House didn't 'have a case of what I have called in the past 'mission inebriation.' A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts. One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.'"

"Mission inebriation" - what a marvelous phrase, and how apt for the fool's errand on which we are embarked in the Middle East and Central Asia. While we must wish for success in Iraq and Afghanistan because failure would ill serve America, it would be foolhardy, indeed, not to recognize the very long odds we face.

Perhaps all that can be done at present is to pray that the Iraqi election process will go forward next Sunday relatively smoothly in the regions dominated by the Shia Arabs, the Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians. If meaningful results can be obtained in any of the Sunni Arab districts, that will be as icing on the cake.

There is so much that needs to be done, one can only hope that the adventure in nation building can be halted where we are now committed. We have neither the manpower, the treasure, nor the will to take on significant new challenges of the sort we have on our plate now.

Lee-Jackson Day

Today, January 21, is the birthday of Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson. It comes just two days after the birthday of Robert Edward Lee. Also born in January were two other prominent Confederate generals, Longstreet and Pickett.

A friend of mine in South Carolina has suggested that Southerners use the federal holiday on the third Monday of January as a memorial to Confederate generals. As an unreconstructed Confederate myself, I endorse that idea and propose that we call it Lee-Jackson Day.

An insight into the state of democracy in Red China

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China urged to review Tiananmen:
"China is facing calls to reassess its suppression of the 1989 student protests after the death of purged Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang."

The BBC informs us that Zhao had been continuously under house right up until his death, never being seen in public since his tearful request on May 19, 1989 for the demonstrators to leave Tiananmen Square. His secretary, Bao Tong, who served seven years in prison and is still under police surveillance, was among those calling for democratic reforms in the wake of Zhao's death. The government, leaving nothing to chance, has suppressed news of Zhao's death and increased security at his home and Tiananmen Square to discourage any memorial demonstrations.

As has been mentioned before in this space, these are turbulent days in Red China. Demonstrations, riots, and arson - sometimes involving civilian casualties and even fatalities to members of the security forces - have increased in frequency in recent years. These things make the authorities nervous, and anxious to distract the attention of the masses from this embarassing subject of democracy.

Being materialists, communists should believe that people are motivated solely by material forces. Yet, in practice, they learn to distract people from their economic troubles with appeals to family, tradition or imperial glory.

The opportunities to raise the living standards of the people are limited by the Party's insistence on maintaining their currency pegged to the dollar so that, no matter how low the dollar falls relative to the euro, pound or gold, there is no pressure to abate the US-China trade imbalance. Moreover, the rising pile of dollars in the hands of the central bank while foreign exchange remains tightly controlled assures that the Party controls the relative investment in production for domestic use vs. that for export in a manner which limits improvement in living standards.

The answer for the regime is a mix of restoring the national honor by becoming more of a player on the world stage and public works projects. China is in desperate need of improved road, rail and power infrastructure to bring jobs to the interior of the country and remove some of the pressure on the coastal cities which have been inundated with rural people seeking jobs with consequent strain on housing and other municipal services. There is also the strategic value of dispersing industrial facilities and population.

The Daily Reckoning, a financial newsletter, in a recent issue, noted that China accounted for over one half of the world's consumption of cement last year. China also consumes 40% of the world's steel output and a fifth of its copper and aluminum. And that pace is likely to continue.

In 1989 China had less than 200 miles of modern highways, but had raised that total to 18,500 by 2003 and plans to reach 51,000 miles by 2008. (That compares to about 46,000 in the US Interstate highway system.) China also plans to build 27 new nuclear power stations in the next 15 years. And its needs for expanded rail and air transport are similarly urgent. They are busy electrifying railways, building gas pipelines, expanding irrigation of farmland - in short, they are trying to do in about two generations what took nearly two centuries in the rest of the developed world. It has taken the US 50 years to build our present Interstate highway system and China expects to complete a larger system in only 20 years.

What sort of place will this new and more powerful China be? Will it be a typical democratic monstrosity absorbed with providing bread and circuses for its masses? Or will it continue to be a Communist Party dictatorship combining the old communist dream of a world-wide dictatorship with the desire to restore China to her mythic place at the center of the universe? From where I sit, my money is on the latter.

Entrepreneurs risk fines and jail in NYC

HoustonChronicle.com - Mechanics eke out a living on New York streets:
"The men saunter up and down a littered block of Third Avenue in the Bronx, casting glances at passing cars. When the cars slow down, the men mouth silent promises of a cheap fix. When the drivers pull over, the men scan for cops before sliding up to the curb."

The "cheap fix" described here is not drugs, but auto repairs. Mechanics with tools but no shops, wait with their tools on a short stretch of Third Avenue in the Bronx where auto parts stores abound. They dodge the cops who hand out $100 tickets and occasional two-day stretches in jail to offer cut-rate mechanic services curbside. In the country we have "shade tree mechanics" plying their trade at their homes, but in NYC they are called "street mechanics."

The desire for independence, the willingness to struggle against unfeeling bureaucracy, the ability to make one's way on one's own terms, all seem to be alive and well in NYC. And, some of these fellows manage to make $40,000 per year on a job that doesn't start most days until noon.

Bush's SS crisis plan explained to Canadians in a TIMEly manner

TIME canada.com

TIME's online Canadian edition offers a comprehensive and reasonably balanced analysis of the Social Security system, its future financial prospects and various possibilities for reform. The story's main point, though, seems to be that Bush is wrong about the urgency of the crisis.

There is, of course, one sense in which the TIME piece is totally fatuous. "Though policymakers talk of Social Security as a trust fund (or, in the imagery that Al Gore and Saturday Night Live made famous, “a lock box”), it was enacted as an insurance program in which current workers pay for older generations. Today more than three-quarters of payroll taxes go to pay benefits."

The law was titled the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, but that doesn't make it insurance. Who ever heard of making "contributions" for insurance? You pay premiums for insurance. It was just a PR gimmick to avoid calling what it was and still is - welfare. It's not like property and casualty insurance where everybody who is covered pays in and those who have losses collect benefits. It's not like whole life where all premium income is invested and all payouts come from the income earned by those investments. It's not like any kind of insurance at all. At least TIME is right in saying there is no Trust Fund or Lock Box.

Which brings us to the really screwy part of the TIME analysis. They point to the fact that current tax receipts will cover current payouts through 2014 (so far so good), but that the accumulated surpluses will fund the current account shortfall until around 2040. That's nonsense. Or, to put it another way, they are saying the shortfalls for a generation will be made up from the accumulated surpluses in the system. Those accumulated surpluses would be in the Trust Fund that does not exist, wouldn't they?

A more honest, that is to say a less TIMEly, way to put it would be that after 2014 we have a crisis. Assuming that SS benefits can't be cut and it will be a little late to start adjusting the retirement age, some hard choices will have to be made from among these unpleasant alternatives:
1) Increase SS taxes (some combination of raising the SS taxable base and raising the rate of the payroll tax);
2) Increase some other taxes, probably the income tax, maybe even extending the taxability of SS benefits;
3) Cut non-SS federal spending; or
4) Increase the current account deficit through new borrowing.

So, there is a real crisis coming and it will begin to be felt in 2014 and will rapidly worsen as the last of the Baby Boomers (my generation) start to collect benefits.

IFF, it means "Identify, Friend or Foe"

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Japan hopes for Israel arms halt:
"Japan has asked Israel to stop selling arms to its regional rivals, the country's foreign minister said during a visit to Jerusalem."

IFF is the system used by our combat air controllers which reads aircraft transponder signals and assigns them as combatant or not and as friend or foe. It's fairly straightforward, an aircraft squawks friend or it is foe. It is harder to sort out friend from foe in international politics, even the brightest people in the world (our government and other peoples' governments) seem to have trouble doing it. In particular, Israel seems to have trouble in this regard.

Without US support at critical junctures, Israel might not exist today. And, what we have done for Israel has been at considerable cost politically as well as economically. Yet we find Israel continually provoking one crisis after another in our bi-lateral relationship.

As this story from the BBC notes, there was a recent controversy with the US over Israel selling pilotless aircraft technology to Red China. Previously we had to stop Israel from selling an AWACS-type system to the Chicoms. Now we find, not surprisingly that Japan - our key ally in East Asia - is also concerned about the cozy relations between Israel's arms industry and Japan's likely regional adversaries.

Libertarianism as a religious faith

Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America by Jacob G. Hornberger

The link above is to an article on LewRockwell.com, a leading libertarian website. In it, Hornberger makes the case that conservatives are a much greater danger to American liberties than those on the left. He rehearses the period of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile as an analogy to contemporary American conservatives' attitudes toward civil liberties. This quote summarizes his point nicely: "Pinochet’s 'war on terrorism' entailed all the features of the Bush administration’s 'war on terrorism' – torture, murder, sex abuse, denial of civil liberties, indefinite detentions, 'renditions,' and disappearances of suspected terrorists."

Curiously, I have never known big government, and the abusive power that entails, to be a feature of American conservative political philosophy. Hornberger is not alone in this, I pick up similar thoughts from other libertarians famous and otherwise. I would sum up the defects of his argument in two points: (1) George W. Bush, whatever his virtues, is not a conservative; and (2) communism was, and remains, a real and potent enemy of freedom in the world.

Compassionate conservatism is nothing more than a warmed over version of Rockefeller "me, too" liberalism. Bush, Rove and Hughes pulled off their own version of "triangulation" to get the nomination for Bush and to elect and re-elect him. In this they were mightily assisted by the Democrats who managed to field a Southerner who couldn't carry the state he had represented in Congress and a Northeastern fringe liberal who couldn't carry anything in the South. To say that Bush's policies are conservative just because he manipulates that label for his own purposes is absurd.

Communism is treated by some of these libertarians as cavalierly as it is by the liberals. Somehow they seem to forget that countries that succumb to communism, whether it comes in via the ballot box or by armed struggle, experience a denial of human rights that dwarfs anything done by Bush or Pinochet. I have written elsewhere of my admiration for Pinochet, not because he is or was a conservative but because he was a very effective anti-communist. In Chile in the 70s, as in Spain in the 30s, the choice was not between conservative and liberal politicians devoted to democratic processes and human rights, but between internationalist communism and liberal authoritarianism. Neither sort of regime is one that I would find particularly attractive, but if those two represent the only choices, then I'll take the latter every time.

So what has all this to do with libertarianism as a religious faith? It seems to me that there is a tendency in libertarianism which chooses to pretend the world the rest of us know does not exist. This is a religious attitude, not serious politics. The world is a dangerous place and it cannot be made less so by saying you just want to be left alone.

I have frequently criticized the unconstitutional excesses of the US government under various administrations including this one. In particular I am offended by the claim that the executive can suspend habeas corpus. This was wrong when it was done by Lincoln and it is just as wrong when done by Bush. But, there are real terrorists who can best be combatted elsewhere by different rules than we use at home.

As for communism, I have never seen a libertarian argument that self-defense was not permitted against an oppressive government. Most libertarians seem to accept the justice of the cause of the colonies in the American Revolution. So, the question becomes how many people does the government have to murder before I can act? Ask the victims of Pol Pot in Cambodia if it would not have been prudent - ultimately less costly in blood and treasure - to keep the communists out of power in the first place?

Is communism still an issue? Look at my entry for December 19, 2004, on the new Havana-Caracas Axis.

Thoughts on the nature of the GWOT

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

The above link is to a Robert Scheer story from the January 11, 2004 edition of the LA Times and reproduced at CommonDreams.org, a "progressive" website. It was sent to me by an acquaintance and my comments to him are reproduced below. The material in quotes is from the referenced article, my comments follow:

"Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?"
Yes, it is conceivable. It is even highly likely. Al Qaeda means, roughly, The Base. It appears to be less an operational entity than a support mechanism. It provides a theoretical religious and political justification for terror, it propagandizes, it facilitates contacts. All of this aids recruitment and building support for operational elements. This is part of the reason why Bush & Co. have made the very sound decision to concern themselves less with putting UBL's scalp on their lance and more with playing Whack-a-Mole in Iraq.

"• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?"
At the risk of sounding like Big Bill, it depends on what the definition of "hard" is. If UBL were not one of the big cheeses of the Islamofascist movement, his every word would not be blared from the rooftops by Al Jazeera, Al Manar, and other Islamic media outlets. Ditto for the frequent positive references to Sheikh Usama, his fatwas and other public statements by other Islamofascists and their apologists. Have we captured a nifty little organizational chart with UBL in a box at the top and lots of solid and dotted lines connecting other boxes with names like Jemaat Islamiyah and Muhammad Atta? No, we have not; and we never will. It is a huge error, in my view, to regard Al Qaeda as a government, corporation, political party or other such organization with UBL as its president, CEO, or chairman. The administration's statements tend to do this, but I think at least as much by bad choice of analogy and the need to keep it simple to tell the story to the masses as to deceive anyone including themselves.

"• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?"
This question reminds me of something said several years ago by a police detective who specialized in occult ritual crimes. He said knowledge of various occult belief systems was exceedingly helpful in investigating and solving such crimes, but that every effort should be made to keep the occult connection out of the prosecution in court because it really was not a part of the legal definition of the crime and would only confuse the issue of personal guilt of the defendant. Terrorism cases are sort of like that, so are espionage cases and even organized crime cases; but in addition you want to reveal as little as possible in court about your knowledge of the enemy while still getting a conviction. Sometimes, prosecutors forego a case entirely because pressing forward would do more harm (by revelation of sources and methods and/or the extent of the government's knowledge) than good (by punishing an individual defendant).

"• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?"
Because a whole generation has grown up with a pathological fear of all things nuclear (How many people have heard of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? How many of those can articulate any significant differences between the two incidents?) and virtually no real knowledge of the subject - this includes journalists. Radiation = Ratings. QED

"• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?"
As Rick said to Maj. Strasser when asked why he came to Casablanca, he said he came for the waters. "But," Maj. Strasser objected, "Casablanca is in the desert." To which Rick replied, "I was mis-informed." I suspect Rummy, like Rick, was mis-informed.

"Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks."
Curiously, that last clause is in fact the least clearly true. Lev Nazrozov, writing at NewsMax.com on February 4, 2002, has made out a rather persuasive case that UBL had no direct connection to 9/11. Navrozov's article "Who Is Osama bin Laden, and Does He Have Anything to Do With the Sept. 11 Attack?" can be found in the commentary archives of NewsMax.

"But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda."
That's one possibility. Another might be that the GWOT was cooked up by the neocons (who are neither new nor conservative, but really old leftists) as a red herring to distract attention from the continuing efforts of international communism, led by Russia and China and including numerous client states, to achieve world domination. Or maybe its just a smokescreen to get the US positioned between Israel and the only country in the region able to seriously challenge it - Iran. This game is too easy. Can't we just say that different folks reach different conclusions from the same facts?
_____

I would like to see the documentary in question. I have read other reports about it besides this one, and it seems to tackle an important and complex topic in a serious way. Sometimes another point of view, even one you don't find persuasive, helps to clarify your thinking about things.

When is 62% not a mandate?.

Haaretz - Israel News - A Palestinian turnaround?:
"... it is too early to start opening the Champagne. Sixty-two percent support for Abu Mazen, says [Prof. Khalil] Shikaki, does not in any way reflect 62 percent support for stopping the intifada."

This quote catches the cautiously optimistic tone of remarks by Prof. Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, as reported by Akiva Eldar in Friday's edition of Haaretz.com. Last Sunday's lopsided victory of Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, to head the Palestinian Authority does not necessarily mean an overwhelming mandate to renounce violence nor to make peace on terms that will be easy for Israel to accept.

For the time being, Abu Mazen will likely concern himself with plans for reforming the PA to make it more amenable to central control. The fractured nature of important parts of its governmental machinery, especially the security forces, was useful to Arafat as a way to keep any one rival from getting too powerful. Mazen knows he needs to centralize control to be in a credible position to negotiate with Israel. The other key to those negotiations on the Palestinian side will be the outcome of the Legislative Council elections to be held in July.

Shikaki points out that his research shows a genuine desire for peace in the sense that few Palestinians are hopeful that continued armed confrontation will produce any benefits. On the other hand, many remain emotionally committed to the struggle and admiring of the sacrifices that have been made for the Palestinian cause.

For his part, Abu Mazen, the reformer, the fresh face, the hope for peace, is not going to make things easy for his negotiating counterparts. His public stance is based on the 1967 borders with minor adjustments, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, and repatriation of Palestinian refugees. From Arafat, this sort of outline would look like a non-starter, but this is a new game with new players.

As an indication of the complexity of the current situation, consider that only a third of Palestinian Arabs support the present Israeli government's plan to unilaterally pull Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. Most would prefer to see such a step as part of a wider agreement and some fear that removing the IDF troops guarding the settlers will leave a void that will be filled by street gangs.

Should the intoxication standard for driving apply to patrons in a bar?

Salt Lake Tribune - Utah :
"'... you don't take the law of the street and bring it into the bar unannounced.' A bigger worry, added [defense attorney Pat] Shea, is that 'if we have spies in the state looking at our drinking habits, we don't live in a democracy.'"

As reporter Mike Gorrell explains clearly in this story from the Salt Lake Tribune, the issue before an administrative law judge of Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is whether the .08 BAC level applicable to drunk drivers applies to patrons in a bar. It seems like a stretch to me; after all, the authorities in many jurisdictions promote such ideas as the "designated driver" and cut-rate cab fares on the implicit assumption that the crime consists in the operation of a vehicle rather than the mere fact of substantial intoxication.

Attorney Shea's lament about democracy is ill-founded. Democracy, the idea that the majority can do as it likes and the government expresses that unfettered will, is precisely how we get into a mess like this. In a republic founded on individual rights - there used to be such a place, it was called the United States - there would have to be some showing of actual or at least imminent harm to justify getting some bureaucrat between a peaceful citizen and his bartender.

Much more troubling to me is the prosecutor's statement, as reported by Gorrell, that "despite Teazers' efforts to run a good operation, ..., 'strict liability applies here because it affects public safety.'" It appears club security did right by tossing out two men, one of whom dropped his pants and another who pinched a woman's bottom, but somehow were remiss in not dealing with three young women who sloshed some beer on the dance floor while walking arm-in-arm. Being an economist, I have a weakness for thought experiments. Try this one: Line up three young women stone sober but well into the evening, ask them to hold glasses of beer, then lock arms and walk in killer heels across a room. Don't you imagine that, more often than not, some beer would spill?

If we are going to criminalize having a good time in a bar, the least we can do is make that clear before we start charging bar owners, employees and patrons. On that point, Teazers' attorney Pat Shea is absolutely right.

Finding the job you love

Speaker tells Palo Alto students that stripping can be lucrative:
"The school has asked [management consultant William] Fried to give his 55-minute presentation, 'The Secret of a Happy Life,' for the past three years."

It appears that this year several students asked questions about the profession of stripper/exotic dancer, one of the 140 careers on Fried's handout to students which included more conventional choices like accountant and spirit medium. Fried rather unwisely offered the observation that bust size was positively correlated with income and that annual earnings could top $250,000.

Although the AP story predictably focuses on the sex angle, the interesting part is the first complaint to the principal was from the mother of a boy who came home and announced he wouldn't be going to college and would pursue a career in fishing. No word on whether holding a fishing pole pays as well as pole dancing, nor on whether gut size is positively correlated with income on the professional angling circuit.

Letter to a libertarian

"Do you believe political solutions are capable of regaining our lost liberties in this lifetime?" A week or so ago, a libertarian net acquaintance asked me that question in an email exchange. The response I gave him is reproduced here with some slight revisions like replacing his name with an ellipsis (...) and in like manner removing some very personal references as well as some spelling corrections.


The trick here, ..., is that there aren't a lot of good tactical options. And, there is no "one thing" that will do the trick. There are multiple things that need to be done but the list you pull from depends on whether you are an optimist or pessimist, a pacifist or revolutionary.

One thing that seems to me to be essential for any strategy is education. Overcoming the statist bias of our Prussian model education system will expand the numbers of people who recognize the problems. Frontal assault on the schools is not too useful, although educating teachers may help. But encouraging alternative education structures - private schools, religious schools, homeschooling - would help. For this reason, tactical support for vouchers (if they are set up in the relatively hands-off manner of the GI-Bill education benefits) may be very helpful in the longer term, even though ending government education funding would be more pleasing philosophically (it certainly is not attainable at this time). Other educational efforts aimed at the younger generation include essay and scholarship contests on libertarian and constitutional themes, youth-oriented web sites dealing with suitable topics from lib or con perspectives, participating in forums and chat rooms, etc.

Adult education efforts would add to this increasing the reach of magazines, web sites, etc. with congenial philosophical orientations, getting some telegenic spokesmen on the rolodexes of the media, etc.

What one does besides education depends on how far gone the situation is. If they are coming to get you next month, emigrate. If they are coming to get you next week, head for the hills. If they are at your door, some more desperate - that is to say, suicidal - action might seem appropriate. By definition, these are all rather unappealing alternatives or else one would have implemented one of them already. That is why we try education first - to have more support in the struggle, to put off the crisis, or to turn it around.

There are two possibilities for turning things around. One involves conventional politics. It is tedious, boring, and messy, but not hopeless. After all that is how we got into this mess, so we might get out the same way. Political action requires a lot of hard work and compromises - incrementalism, to reverse the Fabian socialist method that has been used against our liberties for over a century.

The other way to turn things around is revolution. Frankly, I do not think things are anywhere near that far gone that one could possibly be justified in advocating something as drastic as blood in the streets. This is not to say that the proximate outrages of the British Crown in in the 1760s and 70s were not much less than we put up with today, but there was this huge difference - our forebearers had no participation in the British Parliament that authorized those outrages whereas we do have full participation in the US Congress.

Something you wrote a while back ... seems to indicate that you think the state will somehow whither away. While I don't think this will happen; I will say that, if it does, the next government will be formed by whichever group is best organized and most willing to shed innocent blood. I doubt that will be you and your friends, ..., nor will it be me and mine.

So, to answer the question you asked, are "political solutions ... capable of regaining our lost liberties in this lifetime?" I don't know. But politics is what I know and argument is what I still have to offer, so that is the path I must take. I know only a little of violence, but enough to know that I would prefer to avoid it and won't be much use at it any more. I honestly don't see any other option that doesn't involve giving up and moving away ....

Illegal immigration - a classic problem of externality

Illegal immigrants inundate hospitals:
"New Jersey's escalating population of illegal immigrants is placing an ever-growing burden on the state's hospitals, which expect to lose $200 million this year on care to the underground community. ...
"'New Jersey hospitals generate about $15 billion in total annual revenue ...' said Sean Hopkins, the senior vice president for health economics at the NJHA.
"'However,' Hopkins said, 'even with all those revenues, the hospitals in this state expect to generate a total net surplus of just $78 million, and some 40 percent of the hospitals in the state expect to lose money.'"

As this story from The Times (Trenton, NJ) shows, illegal aliens aren't just bankrupting health care facilities in the southern border states. The US government estimates the illegal alien population of New Jersey at 135,000 while Seton Hall U. Institute on Work estimates 500,000. This puts the hospital loss at anywhere from $400 to $1,500 per illegal alien.

How much is this problem costing the whole country? It's a bit hard to say. This article points out that such costs for Los Angeles amount to $350 million. The Census Bureau counted eight million illegals in the US in 2000 - and they say the count was low by 10 percent, others place the figure up to around 15 million, so the national cost, just for hospital care, is likely well over $4 billion and could well be several times that amount. Federal reimbursements currently cover only three to four percent of the loss. Federal reimbursement for charity cases runs nearer half of costs, but most illegals refuse to provide to hospitals all the information required to process a claim under that program.

Add to the healthcare costs the costs of schooling their children and incarcerating their criminals, and the cost to the US economy runs into many billions of dollars annually. Remember that the next time some bureaucrat condescendingly explains to you that we just can't afford to control the border, let alone repatriate illegals to their countries of origin.

In economics, there is a concept called externality. Costs are said to be externalized when they are borne by others than those who reap the benefits. A relative few employers reap very substantial benefits by employing illegal immigrant labor, but they do not bear the full cost of employing these people, they externalize those costs on the rest of us. We pay for this in higher costs of medical care, insurance, schools, prisons, etc.

Looked at another way, if hospitals controlled the borders, they could put several billions into border enforcement and save money on treating people who cannot pay. But the costs and benefits are shared asymmetrically.

The bottom line is that we are, as a society, already paying a very heavy tax imposed on us by the Congress in the form of illegal immigration. They assume that, because they don't send us a bill for this "service," we will not be smart enough to figure it out. So, when some congressman tells you we can't afford several billion dollars to control immigration, tell him we not only can afford it, we would save money by doing so.

Immigration reform needed, but not the Bush crypto-amnesty proposal

GOP torn on immigration:
"The issue pits some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington against their president and against an agricultural community that depends more and more on foreign workers."

The link is to a good discussion from the Birmingham News of the way the immigration issue is playing out in heavily agricultural, and Republican, Alabama. I must admit I have little sympathy for the sod farmer discussed in this article who legally imports Mexicans to work ten months of the year; nor do I have a lot of sympathy for the mushroom operations in Pennsylvania which have come to depend on illegal Mexican labor; but for those farmers who need short-term help to hand pick fruits and vegetables, a much more compelling case can be made.

Although I haven't seen anyone else mention it, part of the problem seems to be that there are too many restrictions on child labor and kids have ready access to money that is easier to come by than agricultural labor. When I was a kid, I had cousins in Indiana who lived in town but worked seasonally in agriculture detassling corn. And one of my college roommates, also not a farm kid, picked citrus near his home in Florida all through high school and college vacations.

There is another reason why this problem has developed, and that is through the direct intent of the US government. Back in the 60s, as a part of the Kennedy-Johnson era War on Poverty, the government set up within the Office of Economic Opportunity a migrant farmworker services program. What began as an effort to provide educational services to migrant worker's children and preventive health services in the migrant camps was transformed into an organized effort to convince migrant workers to settle permanently in places where the bureaucrats could more readily lavish attention on them as permanent resident welfare clients and organize them politically for the benefit of the Democrat Party. At the same time, the "bracero" program was importing farm labor from Mexico to make up for the lack of migrant labor exacerbated by the migrant farmworker program.

"It's a compassionate way to treat people who come to our country," Bush said, referring to his crypto-amnesty plan to let illegals stay here, sign up for a renewable three year work visa and then be fast-tracked for permanent resident status. I wish Bush were more compassionate toward Americans who were born here and toward those who have been anxiously waiting for years for legal permission to enter the US rather than rewarding law breakers.

The administration frequently points to an unemployment rate in the five to six percent range as evidence of its successful economic stewardship. But, they know full well that we have inner city neighborhoods where the unemployment rate for young African American males is perennially in the double digits; and we have Indian reservations where the overall unemployment rate is even higher. We ought to do something for these folks whose families have been here for centuries and millenia before we sell American citizenship to a large segment of the population of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for a few years of low wage employment.

I'm not saying there is no room for temporary workers, especially in agriculture. But we need to look for ways to employ Americans first. Bush's plan, to have employers put an ad in the paper or file a job announcement at the local employment security office and then self-certify that no American wants the job they need to fill, does not go nearly far enough to put Americans to work in America and for America.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

CBC News: German garbage collectors trash outdoor sculpture:
"A German museum is offering art appreciation lessons to Frankfurt's sanitation workers, after garbage collectors lugged away a public art sculpture recently and sent it to the incinerator."

It seems to me that Frankfurt's sanitation men may already know art when they see it. Their boss points out that they did not disturb other odd bits of public art in recent months including a bathtub tethered to a tree with a dog leash and a car filled with sand. They did, however, cart away a piece composed by Michael Beutler consisting of yellow plastic sheeting of a sort commonly used on construction sites. This displays either discriminating taste or an unwillingness to lift heavy objects.

In typical elitist liberal fashion, however, the assumption has been made that the tastes of the masses need to be informed by the classes. Thus, Beutler's alma mater, the Stadel Museum, will be offering monthly classes titled "Check Your Art Sense!" so that sanitation workers can give up their day of rest to learn from their betters.

If this educational campaign doesn't succeed in ruining the sanitation workers' finely-honed BS detectors, I'd like to propose turning them loose on certain public spaces here in the USA. First stop, Allentown, Pennsylvania, home of some of the ugliest public art in America.

Eminem sees himself a political force and we thought he was just a religious leader

Eminem regrets releasing anti Bush single late!:- - Entertainment News - Webindia123.com:
"According to Rate the music, Eminem released 'Mosh' just before the election, but he fears he could have swung the vote against the President if the track was released two weeks earlier."

As reported in this space earlier, rapper Eminem was honored recently for his work for world peace by appointment as a high priest of the Realian UFO cult. Now he thinks he is to blame for Kerry's loss of the 2004 election. I think this young man, whatever his considerable talent for separating adolescents and young adults from their money, is taking entirely too much responsibility on himself. The nations of the world are quite capable of going to hell in handbasket with or without the help of young Mr. Mathers. And Kerry did so much to screw up his own campaign, it is hard to see how a rap song and a clever video would have saved his bacon.

Sen. Frist's political paranoia bill - NOT!

The Swift Report: Conservatives Push for Psychiatric Diagnosis of 'Loony Leftists':
"Democrat or just demented?
"Now a group of Republican lawmakers is hoping that they can do something about the problem. When the 109th Congress convenes in Washington in January, Senator Bill Frist, the first practicing physician elected to the Senate since 1928, plans to file a bill that would define 'political paranoia' as a mental disorder, paving the way for individuals who suffer from paranoid delusions regarding voter fraud, political persecution and FBI surveillance to receive Medicare reimbursement for any psychiatric treatment they receive."

Thus writes Hermione Slatkin, medical correspondent, at the Swift Report. It's not true of course. The Swift Report seems to be a site dedicated to satire (remember Jonathan Swift?), but some folks are picking this up and spreading it around as truth.

The Swift Report goes to some lengths to make a story look like ordinary news reporting - by-lines, datelines, headlines, photos, human interest angles, quotes from official spokesmen, etc. Mixed in with a lot of genuine news items given a satiric slant, however, it appears that some folks have assumed that there must be a real story behind this. Besides, it sounds just like something those awful Republicans would do. Other recent stories at Swift include a report on Bush administration plans for continuity of government following the rapture and Christmas Eve entry about a teen-age girl claiming a virgin birth.

This story came to me third hand from a libertarian web acquaintance who apparently took it seriously, which was almost understandable since his source played it as straight news. Here is the version of the story published at Another Day In The Empire: Life In Neoconservative America - Opposing Bush: A Form of Mental Illness. Still, it looked fishy to me and I told him so.

Then, this morning, it turned up on the daily Freedom Watch letter (a Topic.A discussion forum). I tried Snopes.com and did not find it there, I searched Thomas (Library of Congress) and Sen. Frist's website and found nothing on topic. Around lunchtime today, I called the Majority Leader's Office and the lady I spoke with confirmed that not only was the story untrue, there was no one working for Frist named Rick Smith (named as the senator's spokesman in the story).

One reason this story might sound reasonable to some is that right after the election there were news reports of Democrats seeking counseling and psychotherapy to deal with Kerry's loss. See my blog entry for November 10, 2004: Another New Category for the DSM?

Part of a broader problem - we need to rethink the force structure

MSNBC - U.S. reserves nearly 'broken,' says chief

Lt. Gen. James Helmly, who heads the US Army Reserves, has raised complaints that the protracted deployments (currently 52,000 of the Army's 200,000 reservists are on active duty, 17,000 in Iraq and 2,000 in Afghanistan) and poor management of personnel are impairing the ability of the reserve component to meet other mission commitments including some related to Homeland Security.

Helmly's complaints need to be considered as part of a broader rethinking of how much and what kind of troops we require at this point in history and going forward. The regular Army is itself severely stretched at this time and the National Guard is suffering from similar problems. A great deal of effort has gone into bringing the reserves and guard units up to spec with the active force, having the same weapons, vehicles, etc. rather than cast-offs and obsolescent materiel that characterized much of the Cold War era. From what I have read, it appears that this effort did pay off in deploying large contingents of part-time soldiers to take a significant share of the load in the GWOT. But it may be time to re-examine the force structure.

After the elections scheduled for the end of this month in Iraq, there should be a slight reduction of troop strength in that theater, mostly units which had been planned to rotate back home last fall but were held over due to the increased tempo of the insurgency. But there will be a continuing need for large US forces there for several years.

As the Iraqi police and border guards are fleshed out, US forces can pull out of the cities and greatly reduce their interaction with the civilian population, putting "an Iraqi face" on the fight to consolidate the hold of the new Iraqi government. But, this is a dangerous neighborhood and it will take years before an indigenous Iraqi army and air force are ready to defend their country against possible threats from Iran and Syria. We have taken an important step in this direction by sending an Army reserve training division to Iraq.

The most important question, but seldom asked even by this administration's critics, is "What is the mission?" You can't do everything you would like to be able to do, certainly not all those things at one time, but is the 2.5 war scenario or something similar an adequate baseline? What commitments are we prepared to keep, what commitments might we be able to jetison.

Europe
My personal preference would be to get all US troops out of the Balkans. If the French, Italians, Germans, etc. can't keep a lid on it by themselves, maybe we ought to force them to try. This is not a renunciation of NATO, just an acknowledgement that the Balkan adventure was not the sort of thing the Senate had in mind when the North Atlantic Treaty was ratified. There are other strutures like the WEU or OSCE which could be used to organize it. In any event, we have a lot of investment in facilities in Europe and we will have a lot of troops there for a long time.

East Asia
For all the bluster from Kim Jong-Il, the chances are slightly higher that he will invade South Korea than that we would invade his hermit kingdom. The last time I checked, we had about 38,000 personnel in S. Korea including the joint US-ROK headquarters. We don't have the troops in theater to even think about an invasion and it would require a long build-up to get to that point - somebody would notice. That's the practical barrier, but the political barrier is even greater. The ROK is not going to risk devastating their economy and the massive civilian, as well as military, casualties that would result. There are, I believe, something like 10,000 artillery tubes in range of the South Korean capital of Seoul. Not only that, but Japan would not countenance an invasion of North Korea without extreme provocation because ports and airbases in Japan are critical to any sustained operations on the peninsula and Japan is in range of North Korean missiles. Since we no longer have a significant fighting force in Korea, as we did for decades after the 1953 Korean War armistice, it would be just as well to cut our forces there further. We also need to convince the ROK to move the joint HQ to Pusan or some other point more defensible than Seoul. Could we abandon our commitment to defend ROK? That would be a great mistake.
The other significant flashpoint in this region is Taiwan. We do not have troops there, and our contribution to the island's defense may well be limited to air and seapower assets. Better to sink PRC transport ships and shoot down their airplanes before they get to Taiwan than to fight them on the beaches.

Africa
This is an area that includes large zones of perpetual chaos and a few places that have strategic significance. Of greatest interest are the oil production of Nigeria and Angola, and possibly in the Bight of Benin. There has been discussion in some quarters of seeking an island base in this region which would function as a secure base for air operations in the South Atlantic as Diego Garcia does in the Indian Ocean.

Latin America
The war on drugs intersects the GWOT in many places, but none more so than in Latin America. Although there are places like Haiti where peacekeeping troops in limited numbers may be needed from time to time and there are ongoing drug interdiction and counter-insurgency training needs, there seems to be little prospect at present of any general war in this region that would require the US to even consider intervention. This might change, though, if Castro and Chavez are serious about their new Bolivarian revolutionary project. (See my earlier entry on the Havana-Caracas Axis.)

Homeland Security
Now we are back to Gen. Helmly's concern about not being able to meet Homeland Security related missions. Remember that there is more to the DHS mission than the GWOT. Not only does the department include customs and immigration functions, it also includes the disaster response functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Army assets, especially in the National Guard have an important role to play in those plans and if a major portion of a state's guard units are overseas when a disaster strikes, it is hard to see who will pick up the slack. In the current state of things, it might make more sense to leave the military out of those plans entirely since they cannot be relied upon to be there when needed.

My Recommendations
First, we ought to restore a constitutional militia according to Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 16. The Congress should provide that the militia may not be sent outside the country. There are important roles in disaster response, riot control, etc. where the states and localities rely on what we now call the National Guard and they ought to be organized in such a way that they will always be available if needed. The numbers may or may not need to be as large as at present. It may be prudent to shift some resources from the current Guard to the Reserves.
Second, The Army ought to be larger. How much larger is a matter for the experts, but we need a force that is large enough to do what we want it to do with only brief and infrequent resort to the reserve elements.
Third, we ought to go on record that Iraq is the last exercise in nation-building we will ever embark on. We ought to make a few points clear to people everywhere: (a) that in future we are only going into places where our interests are directly and immediately impacted, (b) that citizens of other countries should keep their own rulers on a short leash because pulling this lion's tail is dangerous for the fellow doing the pulling and anybody standing nearby, (c) we will no longer invade countries to arrest their leaders we will just destroy their ability to harm us. These principles will reduce future drains on our resources.

Follow the money

Mexican government publishes "how to" comic book for illegal immigrants:
"Remittances - the money Mexicans in the U.S. send back to their relatives in Mexico (sic) - are now at about $18 Billion dollars a year, account for more income to Mexico than any source other than PEMEX, the state owned Petroleum Company."

Considering that there are still about 100 million folks in Mexico who haven't crossed our border yet, remittances amount to about $180 for every man, woman and child in Mexico, or about 2% of GDP. This, and the political value of sending the discontented north where they won't disturb the status quo south of the border, helps to explain why the Mexican government plans to distribute 1.5 million copies of their guide for how to cross the border illegally and stay here unobtrusively.

I have a great idea. Why don't we print up comic books explaining to Guatemalans how to enter Mexico illegally and meld into the Mexican economy?

Another female teacher alleged to have sex with male students

NBCSandiego.com - News - Teacher Accused Of Having Sex With Students Appears In Court:
"'Our investigation indicates that the teacher initiated the sexual contact, and that this contact took place over a period of several months,' [Sgt. Dave] Hill said. 'We're looking at events that spanned several months throughout 2004 ...'"

Sarah Suzanne Bench-Salorio, 28, has been suspended from her middle school teaching job by the Orange County Unified School District after being charged with lewd acts on a child under 14 involving two of her male students. If that weren't bad enough, while she was molesting her students, her husband Christopher Salorio, 30, was running for a seat on the school board and polled 45% of the vote in November.

You have to wonder, since this is the third case of its type in recent years, if there isn't a lot more of this going on. It's bad enough that schools don't do much of a job educating children, you shouldn't have to worry about their safety and morals when you send them off in the morning.

Starting young in the family business

Mother used tot as lookout during burglary - Local News - publicopiniononline.com:
"When Brenda Neiley and Robert Lehman returned home the night of July 12, they didn't expect to see a woman and her pint-sized accomplice in their house.
"Neiley told police that Joann Monica Epperson, 29, St. Thomas, had her 5-year-old son, Austin, stand watch.
"'Tell me when they are coming,' Neiley said she overheard Epperson tell the boy as she and Lehman walked up to the house.
"'They're here, they're here,' the child said."

Sad to say, this sort of thing - moms drafting their children into participation in their crimes - is not all that unusual. And, as this case shows, it isn't just as lookouts on drug corners. In my constable days, I knew a woman who had used her daughter to distract store clerks while she shoplifted. When the daughter was old enough to know it was wrong and not a game, her mother would beat her if she refused to help until the daughter got too big for that to work, then the woman turned to using her son.

This Sunday is PA election day

Haaretz - Israel News - Abbas or bust:
"An East Jerusalem journalist who saw a photo of Abbas with the caption 'Welcome the Hero' reported that his family members simply burst out laughing. Abbas a hero? Nonetheless, they will elect him. Why? 'Because the whole world wants him; America, the Arab countries, Europe, Israel - you want him, you can have him, and we'll see what happens,' he says."

It appears democracy is just as messy in Palestine as anywhere else. In fact, this little vignette describing less than overwhelming enthusiasm for the front runner Mahmoud Abbas reminded me of the scene in Doug Adams' Hitchhiker Trilogy where Arthur Dent is told about a planet with a democracy that always elects lizards even though the people who elect them hate lizards. The reason? If they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get elected.

There is still the formality of the election and some speculation that the ur-rejectionist Dr. Mustafa Barghouti might pull an upset if Hamas adds its endorsement to that of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; but this is, mercifully, an unlikely outcome although the strength of Barghouti's vote may influence how far Abbas can go in his professed willingness to put the "road map" on the table as the basis for serious, good faith negotiations.

It seems that all are agreed that Abbas, whatever he lacks in the heroism department, is the man of the hour. Can he and the new grand coalition government in Israel succeed in making peace?

Soaking the rich only works if they don't get out of the rain

The Wednesday, December 29, 2004 issue of THE SOVEREIGN SOCIETY OFF-SHORE A-LETTER carried some interesting analysis of IRS data on how much of the income tax burden is borne by the highest income Americans. The 1% at the top in income paid 33.71% of all federal income taxes in 2002 (the most recent year for which this data is available), but they only accounted for 16.12% of income earned. Compared to a flat tax rate on all taxable income, the top 1% paid 2.09 times their fair share. The last time the ratio was that high was 1996 when it was 2.01. It went down slightly until 1999 and has climbed steadily since 2000. So much for the "rich" getting off light under Bush, by this measure they fared better in Clinton's second term.

The article goes on to note that, according to the Census Bureau, 363,000 citizens and permanent resident aliens left the US permanently in 2002. Not all of them were among the 1,283,000 who comprise the top 1% of earners, but doubtless some of them were. Of course, the Sovereign Society has an axe to grind since it shows people how to invest overseas, retire overseas, acquire second passports and dual citizenship, etc.

The point of going through this? Soaking the rich only works if they have no chance to get in out of the rain. If they have to go to some other country to be safe and dry, many of them will. This is one of the reasons why there are limits to how much revenue you can squeeze out of the most productive class.

Canadian firm tips ATF to possible ANFO bomb plot

Boston Globe Online: Print it!:
"The suspect also made several Internet email inquiries to vendors seeking to buy between 500 to 1,000 metric tons of the explosive a quantity larger than McVeigh used to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995 but smaller than amounts companies typically might buy in bulk for construction, explosives or farm work."

It's not clear from the story whether that reference to quantities "... smaller than amounts companies typically might buy in bulk for ... farm work" refers to wholesale trade, although that seems to be the implication. Noodling around on several US and Canada ag sites indicates typical application rates for AN in the range of 100 to 500 pounds per acre. That would put the quantities inquired for as suitable for 2,000 to 20,000 acres depending on lots of factors relating to soil conditions, climate, crop, etc. Actually, at the lower end, that could be an order for a single large corn operation in the Midwest.

It's hard to imagine this was a serious attempt by terrorists to acquire explosives. Why use a "Middle Eastern name" and allegedly phony construction company to place inquiries about "fertilzer grade" AN? It seems like somebody trying to set off alarm bells, maybe probing to see how the system responds, or just jerking our chain to get investigators chasing a chimera. If they were serious, there would be a genuine construction company, a plain vanilla name and they would be inquiring about "exposive grade" AN which is what a construction company would buy. In the alternative, you pose as an ag company and ask for "fertilizer grade" AN. Either can be made explosive, the differences being things like particle size, coatings, and consistency. For professional blasting operations, it is critical that the bang is the same from one batch of AN and fuel oil mix as the next. For the farmer, some variability is not as critical whether he is using it to grow more corn or blast tree stumps out of a field.

What's in store for 2005?

The world enters a new year, and this blog enters its fourth month. My record as a prophet is not too good already, but this seems like a good time to stick my neck out a bit farther.

Social Security reform is dead for the present. There will be some more shouting and wailing, maybe even Congressional hearings, but nothing will come of it this year.

Tort reform is dead.

Immigration control is not going anywhere, either.

The housing market will slow significantly if it doesn't collapse altogether. At the very least, trendy urban areas that have seen annual appreciation 15% or higher for the last few years will see declines and the rest of the market will show prices remaining nearly flat.

Depending on how bad the housing situation becomes, unemployment will be flat to slightly higher.

The dollar will continue to drift lower relative to the euro. It would plunge, but things aren't that good for the euro either.

The new Palestinian Authority leadership will find something on which to agree with the new grand coaltition government in Israel just to make sure the US taxpayer keeps propping up both sides in this interminable conflict. But, whatever it is will not lead in any significant way to a permanent resolution of the conflict.

The Iraq election will take place in about 80 to 90 percent of the country. The business of drafting the constitution will go forward with some sort of appointed representation for areas where elections could not be held.