Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto dug this one up from 1999:
Forget Serbia, forget Iraq. "The government we have the toughest time with is the U.S. government," said Eason Jordan, CNN's president for global newsgathering, at the network's annual World Report Conference May 4. Because of trade embargoes, the U.S. government is involved in where CNN opens its bureaus, Jordan said. CNN has been trying for a year to open a permanent bureau in Baghdad, Iraq, and now has permission from the Iraqis, he said. "I've [recently] been thrown out of the White House pleading this case." [Atlanta Business Chronicle, 5/7/99]
(That's the Clinton White House, by the way.) Principles are our means of knowing reality. You could call CNN militantly pro-blindness--and look where it got them. Meanwhile, they haven't wised up any:
The Bush administration took over Iraqi state television yesterday...U.S. officials said that within days, they hope to open a second television channel in Iraq featuring subtitled versions of the three major networks' evening newscasts, as well as PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and Fox News Channel's hour-long politics show, "Special Report With Brit Hume."...CNN declined to have its newscasts included. "As an independent, global news organization, we did not think it was appropriate to participate in a U.S. government transmission," spokeswoman Christa Robinson said. [Washington Post, 4/11/03]
I.e., they'll propagandize, but only for enemy governments. Isn't anybody thinking over there?Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
[A] Manhattan resident can, indeed, get the $53.99 rate [to rent a Dodge Stratus]. But a Brooklyn resident who shows up to rent the same car from the same location gets hit with a hefty surcharge of $76 a day, making the rental rate $129.99--more than twice the Manhattan price. Bronx residents are surcharged $66, and Queens residents, $10....The companies say the policies are needed to pay for huge losses caused by multi-million-dollar verdicts handed out by juries in Brooklyn and the Bronx for automobile accidents involving a rental car. Under New York state's vicarious liability law, rental companies are legally responsible for accidents caused by renters. "For many, many years, our liability costs in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx ran orders of magnitude higher than in New York or in the rest of the country," said Richard Broome, a Hertz vice president contacted by The New York Sun. "We got a lot of suits and large jury verdicts out of those three boroughs." ... The state's trial lawyers, who boast one of the state's most powerful and well-funded lobbying operations, count vicarious liability as a sacred cow to be defended at all costs. "If the state were to get rid of the vicarious liability law,which doesn't exist in more than 40 other states, our rating program wouldn't need to exist at all," Mr. Broome said. [New York Sun, 4/14/03]
Apr 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Do we need more evidence that environmentalism is an anti-human ideology?Consider the environmentalist lawsuits threatening to cut the water supply from New Mexico's urban and rural populations to make it available to the Rio Grande silvery minnow. The environmentalists' attempt to "protect" the silvery minnow at the expense of city dwellers and farmers demonstrates they place less value on human life than on fish life. In fact, the environmentalists' record of "protecting" crocodiles, owls, mice and even insects at the expense of humans shows that they place less value on human life than on *any other* form of life. It even suggests that they place *no value* on human life.
"But wait," you may say, "not all environmentalists are like that. I am an environmentalist and I value human life." To which I reply: If you really value human life, you should reconsider your support of an ideology that, if followed to its logical consequences, will eliminate humans from the face of the earth.
Apr 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The man who assassinated Pim Fortuyn got 18 years for the Netherlands' first political killing in more than three centuries:Prosecutors had demanded a life sentence for Van der Graaf, saying Fortuyn's murder was an attack on democracy itself. Defense lawyers had said the crime should be treated like a "simple murder" and that life in jail was "unthinkable." [Reuters, 4/15/03]
Apr 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Fact finders from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will go to Iraq to assess the hugely expensive costs of reconstruction as soon as it is safe to do so....
The United States had pushed for teams from the two lending organizations to go to Iraq as a way of showing Iraqis they would benefit quickly from the end of President Saddam Hussein's rule. European countries, including some opposed to the U.S.-led invasion, at first blocked the assessment because it appeared to them the United States intended to dominate the reconstruction effort. To resolve the issue, the United States agreed to a new Security Council resolution that would replace sanctions imposed on economic transactions with Iraq. Finance ministers left the wording of a new resolution to their diplomats....
Iraq's needs are expected to be massive, ranging from $20 billion per year for the first several years to $600 billion over a decade. [Associated Press, 4/14/03]
Since when did America all of a sudden become responsible for Iraq's "needs"? And for this we have decided to go back to the UN Security Council for... another resolution!
And all of this is not to mention the fact that if you let the IMF and the World Bank in the door, you might as well kiss your economy goodbye. See, for example, Robert Tracinski's column a year ago last January about how IMF policies ruined Argentina's economy--or David Holcberg's September 2002 article on the IMF's "loans" to Brazil and many other countries--or Andrew West's August 2000 article on the IMF in Asia and his September 2000 critique of the IMF's "World Economic Outlook"--or his April 1999 article on the World Bank's anticapitalistic policies. If this crowd gets its foot in the door, Iraq will be poor for many years to come, oil or no oil.Apr 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Last week I sat across a table from President George W. Bush in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He told me and a dozen fellow economists that "the American economy is a theatre in the war on terrorism." With steely conviction he told us that he intends to win the war to liberate Iraq, and he intends to win the war to liberate the American economy....Nonplussed by opposition in Congress--from those who just can't seem to see how all this will work--Bush said, "Sometimes I think some of these guys just don't like capitalism." ... Capitalism means economic liberty, and Bush understands that you can't run a war of political liberation abroad without economic liberation at home....
The president is very sensitive to the question of whether these tax cuts will increase government deficits. But he thinks that some of the opposition in Congress--particularly in his own party--is taking the concern over deficits too far. Speaking like the Harvard MBA that he is, Bush argues that deficit financing is entirely appropriate when it is for the sake of a valuable long-term investment. What could be of greater long-term value than simultaneously making the world safe from terrorism and reinvigorating the growth prospects of the American economy?
And besides, even the too-pessimistic Congressional Budget Office forecasted deficits arising from the Bush's tax cuts at less than 1% of GDP over the coming decade. I share Bush's frustration when he talks of meetings with Republican deficit-hawks and explaining all this, only them to hear then say, "Well, yes . . . but I just don't like deficits." [Don Luskin, Capitalism Magazine, 4/12/03]
Real economic liberty doesn't mean cutting taxes--it means cutting government spending. The wealth the government spends comes from us one way or the other; it cannot be wished into existence.
I am willing to grant that there are more and less destructive ways of the government's confiscating our wealth to fund its projects. But borrowing is merely a claim on future taxation. The tax cutters' position represents a bet--a bet that the economy will grow fast enough that the proportionate burden of future taxes, when they come, will be lighter than not borrowing and paying the taxes now.
Maybe it's a good bet, maybe it's a bad bet. I don't know. What I do know is that it's a nonessential, and merely shows the extent to which Bush is unwilling to confront opposition and deal with the real issue. When the leftists are convulsing with apoplexy in the streets over George Bush's cruel and inhuman budget cuts, then you'll know real economic liberty is in the offing.