Quote of the Day
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries,
it has been owing more to patient attention
than to any other talent.
Isaac Newton
$500 Billion Over 10-1/2 Years,
Almost 2,000 U.S. Lives Lost
and Now This:
Had Enough, America?
"These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there's little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave," Joshua Foust, of the nonpartisan America Security ProjectHearing the news this morning was surreal; I had a sense of déjà vu, like reviving the media reports of My Lai. (Before I go further, the circumstances and the nature and extent of Vietnamese village atrocities at My Lai were significantly different, involving hundreds more casualties.) One can only speculate if these soldiers thought they were taking revenge for recent murders of American soldiers over the Koran burning protests.
According to Reuters (my edits):
Sixteen Afghan civilians, including nine children and 3 women, were shot dead [and several others wounded with soldiers later accused of pouring chemicals over dead bodies and burning them], in what witnesses described as a nighttime massacre on Sunday near a U.S. base in southern Afghanistan. [No military operations were taking place in the area.] A U.S. staff sergeant from a unit based in Washington state had burst into three homes near his base in the middle of the night, later turned himself in to base security, and was in custody. Multiple other laughing and drunk soldiers were allegedly involved.US authorities are attempting to portray this as the act of a single rogue soldier, but villagers allege that (at minimum) other soldiers aided and abetted in these acts of murder; murders of civilians are considered war crimes, in fact, crimes against humanity. These crimes are unworthy of anyone wearing an American uniform. These men represent the United States of America, and the US abides by the rule of law--soldier are not to be held to a lesser standard of behavior. We will not tolerate any excuses for a professional soldier blowing away a scared 2-year-old toddler in the middle of the night. Events like these undermine all the constructive things that the American military has sought to do over the past decade.
I am calling on President Obama to take full responsibility for the atrocities, offer an unconditional apology to the Afghan people, pay full reparations to the victims' families, including all reasonable funeral and health care service costs for the victims, and court-martial all participants to the fullest extent of the law. Whitewashes are not acceptable.
I applaud GOP candidates Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich for publicly questioning the realistic nature of the Afghan military self-sufficiency criterion: it's time we stop throwing away good American lives and treasure. If the Afghans haven't learned how to ride a bike without training wheels after 10 years, they never will. It is moral hazard to prop up a corrupt piece of work like Hamid Karzai.
To Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: I don't see any progress over these last 4 years in Afghanistan under Obama, and it's time that you hold him responsible for that. Instead of pushing Obama on whether exits will be premature, it's time that you take another look at the situation: if locally situated countries like the defunct Soviet Union couldn't resolve Afghan politics, what hubris is it that a nation $15T in debt can EVER do it from halfway around the world? It's time to distance yourself from the Bush/Obama War...
Lynne Kiesling,
"Regulating Monopolies:
A History of Electricity Regulation": Thumbs UP!
I was fascinated by some of the adversarial comments to this video, particularly those whom seemed to think Lynne Kiesling was arguing in favor of so-called natural monopolies. In fact, she's trying to provide an overview to explain how we ended up with today's regulatory environment and specifically points out later in the video some of the dysfunctional unintended consequences of what I would call corrupt bargains between government and Big Utilities. Consider the following excerpt from the liner notes to the video, which other video viewers should review:
Most people view regulation of monopoly, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, as one of government's core responsibilities. Kiesling challenges this notion, and finds that government regulation of monopoly actually stifles innovation and hurts consumers.One of the thing, for instance, Kiesling talked about was a flat vs. dynamic pricing plan where utilities find themselves dealing with volatile demand. I wrote a recent commentary about a new tollway in the collar of Maryland counties surrounding DC where toll rates are higher during rush hour. Kiesling points out that regulators are often stuck with obsoleted regulatory models. Not to mention what incentive is there to streamline costs, say, in the context of a no-competition cost-plus structure? After all, why did the Justice Department for one of its seminars buy $16 muffins and $8 cups of coffee? No doubt they knew it would get covered under the budget; I would have argued that a budget that allows for $16 muffins and $8 coffee isn't doing a very good job.
We see politically motivated decisions on so-called monopolies all the time. We had the split-up of AT&T several years ago over anti-trust concerns; we had the notorious long distance battles between AT&T and MCI. Today people are giving up their landline phones for unlimited cellphone plans; in fact, many cellphone customers in India, China, and Brazil never had a landline, and domestic long distance is free on many, if not most digital or cellphone call plans. AOL dominated dial-up Internet services just a decade or so ago and is no longer a serious competitor in the ISP market. Sirius Radio/XM almost went bankrupt waiting for merger approval, despite emerging competition from Internet or cellphone music (or even digital audio players).
In the field of utilities, we've seen hugely expensive solar farms, with government guarantees of power generation purchases, rolled out in California--just as the shale natural gas boom has brought kwh to a mere fraction of the cost. And yet the myopic progressive believers cry for protection from the free market against Big Business abuse. They don't have the slightest clue that Big Business uses government regulation to protect it from the free market.
Another reason I wanted to bring this topic up is because one of my favorite Austrian School economists Thomas J. DiLorenzo (I directly or indirectly referenced some of his work in recent commentaries on economic fascism and and questionable status of Lincoln as one of our top Presidents) has written a very good essay "The Myth of Natural Monopoly", which suggests some of the economic scale arguments used to justify monopolies were actually revisionist in nature and points out some of the problems for "excess" competition (e.g., tearing up streets to, say, lay new/competitor cables) was due to artificially low prices for street access. DiLorenzo argues that the marketplace is always competitive but the idea of a monopoly was self-serving spin for companies seeking crony government protection from new market entries. After watching the video below, I recommend reading the DiLorenzo essay as he quickly demolishes the populist nonsense over monopolies and early twentieth century trust-busting.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and
Return of Tire Gauge Energy Policy
One of the most amusing parts of the 2008 election campaign was when (I'm being serious here) Barack Obama started implying that preventive auto care would go a long way to resolving our oil deficit. [I can just see it now: meter maids not only checking the parking meter but your tire pressure....] This was so utterly clueless that the McCain campaign decided to have some fun with it and distribute tire gauges stamped with "Obama's Energy Policy" on them to modest campaign donors. (Unfortunately, I don't think I ever got one.) There is no doubt that some cars are not well-maintained and they waste fuel. But if $4.50/gal gas doesn't motivate a motorist to do it intrinsically, I seriously doubt that Obama's condescending lectures are going to work. The problem of auto maintenance, however, has very little to do with the structural problem which is the fact there is a worldwide boom in vehicle purchases--even though we use less gas as a nation than 10 years ago (which Obama never notes because it doesn't fit into his talking points: the inconvenient fact we've been slowly cutting our fuel use for a number of reasons long before he became President).
Obama has this talent for pushing trite suggestions on the American people or businesses. It's not just he tries to tell us that the real problem we have a gas price problem is because of poorly maintained vehicles (versus, say, over 100 million vehicles on the road, long suburban commutes, little Jimmy's activities after school, etc.) Just like Obama feels the need to bring to health insurance companies' attention it's cheaper for them to pay $1000/year on birth control (if you shop where Sandra Fluke buys birth control--you can already tell she is born to be a government lawyer--she will not only buy muffins at $16 each, but she pays nearly $100/month for birth control versus paying the $5/month cost for a month's supply from Walmart--no wonder Obama called her...) than $7600 for the pregnancy experience to term. [Well, until you point out that women were paying for birth control long before Obama volunteered the insurance companies to pick up the check...]
Okay, let me get to the point. Wasserman-Schultz recently scoffed at GOP proposals meant to expand the amount of oil domestically or from friendly nations like Canada--she suggested new auto mileage standards implemented by a Democratic Congress and passed into law by a Democratic President would make up for the new oil.
EXPLETIVE DELETED! Did this lady ever take a business or economics class while in college? Where does this completely misleading and uninformed propaganda come from? Let's go through some basic facts: TECHNOLOGY CHANGES ALL THE TIME. Not because some freaking progressive politician declares it by fiat (like he or she has anything to do with it!) The computer I use today is several times more powerful, with much more memory than I even dreamed possible when I started teaching at UH. And guess what? It all came to by without a single Obama or other progressive law directing Intel to increase the capacity of its CPU! Somehow Cisco, JDSU and other vendors have vastly increased the speed and capacity of our networks--without a single progressive law to help them along the way! Companies live in a changing environment where past business success doesn't imply future success. They are constantly on the move to improve their wares.
There's a recent BusinessWeek article out looking at slumping hybrid auto sales--EVEN WITH $5/GAL GAS! Consider this excerpt:
When Doug Hacker decided he needed a car that was light on gas, he figured a Toyota Prius hybrid was the way to go. Many of his co-workers at Procter & Gamble’s soap research lab in Cincinnati drove Priuses and bragged about getting more than 50 miles per gallon. After a little research of his own, Hacker made a surprising discovery: While more costly hybrids still win the mileage competition, he could save more money by buying a Ford Fiesta powered by a technology that’s been around for 151 years—the internal combustion engine. That’s because the efficiency of conventional engines has improved so much that the mpg gap is closing, making it harder to justify paying more for gas-electric hybrids. “I was surprised to see that cars like the Fiesta were actually about a nickel cheaper to run per mile than the Prius,” says Hacker. He bought a Fiesta for $16,400 instead of a $23,015 Prius.
Progressives have this irritating habit of comparing apples (yesteryear's obsolete oil pipelines) and oranges (today's tougher, more spill-proof technology). No, let the President crack his whip and disingenuously take credit, like he recently did for increasing domestic oil production--even though the facts show fewer permits issued, etc., under his Presidency.
I'm not saying there weren't some incompetent people running auto companies--"we're building what Americans want--big gas-guzzling trucks and SUV's". When I was traveling around the country in 2008 working for an college ERP software company, I ended up having to take an SUV rental because other travelers got to the passenger cars first and I was stuck. (It was a rental company where you could pick any available vehicle in the designated aisle.) In the past I've even driven subcompacts to save money for my clients. Nobody likes to feed their car at the gas station. Other people are the same way--I remember when diesel VW Rabbits were the rage--there were news reports of cars following trucks loaded with new Rabbits into Volkswagen dealerships.
No, it won't be because Obama decides that he wants to buy a Volt or endless presumptuous rules and regulations trying to micromanage the auto industry. It will be because of a worldwide flood of cheap dollars pushing up imported oil prices, not to mention millions of new middle-class auto drivers around the world and supply straining to keep up with demand.
Yes, we'll need improving fuel technology--but we aren't going to replace over 100 million gas-guzzlers overnight. But until we develop more and more domestic supplies in the short term, we remain subject to the price effects of a global oil squeeze, not to mention seemingly permanent unrest in the Mideast habitually spiking prices with potential supply interruptions anywhere. MONEY IS FUNGIBLE: got it, Debbie?
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Cars, "Just What I Needed." Yesterday's post marked the end of my Wings retrospective. (I will cover McCartney as a solo artist in a future series.)
