The Vicious Cycle of Environmentalist Policy

I swear to God, the enviro-activist left has really got us playing "Spin The Wheel, Make the Deal". I'll bullet point this to make it really simple.

- Environmentalist lobby pushes for increased production and research into Ethanol.
- Demand for corn goes up, pushes prices skyward.
- Farmers see the gold mine in corn crops, many switch to corn from wheat. This causes the United States to import wheat to meet it's own needs for the first time since the late 18th Century. Thus, the price of anything wheat-based (everything from bread to beer) goes up.
- Increase in corn price increases price of Ethanol itself, along with feed for cows.
- Ethanol-infused gasoline goes up in price due to increase in Ethanol price...price of beef goes up because farmers must pay more to feed their cows.
- Increased gasoline prices force increased shipping costs, which increase the price of ALL shipped goods.
- Shortage of American wheat production causes us to lose favor with all of the 3rd World Nations we would normally export wheat to.
- Democrats state that we are not a good member of the world community because we're not helping to feed the 3rd World...even though the shortage of American food exports is their fault.

Now, let's say this continues, and either Clinton or Obama is elected President. Here's what happens next...

- Media reports about starving children in Africa, state that it is the fault of "greedy rich people".
- Liberal Americans feel guilty, want the Government to "do something".
- Democrats state they will fix this (and everything else) by raising taxes on the "rich"...even though "rich" to them (according to the circulating Dem tax plan post-Bush Administration) is now any single person making over $33,000/year, or any married couple making a combined $45,000/year.
- More Americans in need of financial assistance for various reasons due to increased prices in goods and increased taxes....so the Democrats spend more money to relieve these troubled Americans. To cover costs, they raise taxes even more.
- Increased costs of production, shipping, and taxation force many companies to take jobs elsewhere, forcing millions of Americans into unemployment...thus repeating the previous bullet point.
- Rinse and repeat.

Scary, isn't it?

Fred Thompson on the Bhutto Assassination

View it here. Good answers from Fred.

Kudlow: "President Bush had a very good year"

In a Washington Times column today, Lawrence Kudlow noted that, despite all of the negativity and criticism of his campaign, President Bush has had a good year.

The troop surge in Iraq is succeeding. America remains safe from terrorist attacks. And the Goldilocks economy is outperforming all expectations.

True enough, especially when you look at these numbers...which come despite the subprime crisis and overall housing market downturn.

- Headline inflation - 2.5%
- Core inflation - 2%
- Real GDP growth - 3%
- Consumer spending - 3%
- Jobs increasing at rate of 100,000/month
- Stock market continues to go up despite obstacles

Kudlow also notes Bush's legislative victories, economic optimism, and his crusade against wasteful spending and pork-barrel earmarks.

Mr. Bush's optimism is well-earned, in Congress too. He has stopped a lot of bad legislation on higher taxing and spending. He won on S-CHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) and the alternative minimum tax. He mostly prevailed on domestic spending. And he got much of what he wanted on war funding without any pullout dates.

And he is not yet finished. In the most dramatic statement of his holiday news conference, Mr. Bush said he will not stand for continuing congressional proliferation of pork-barrel earmarks.

"Another thing that's not responsible is the number of earmarks the Congress included in the massive spending bill," said Mr. Bush. "The bill they just passed includes about 9,800 earmarks. Together with the previously passed defense spending bill, that means Congress has approved about 11,900 earmarks this year. And so I am instructing Budget Director Jim Nussle to review options for dealing with wasteful spending in the omnibus bill."

This is huge. The statute of limitations for Republican overspending, over-earmarking, and over-corrupting that caused huge congressional losses in last year's campaign will not run out until the GOP shows taxpayers it again can be trusted on key issues of limited government and lower taxes.

In these matters, Republicans must be holier than the pope. And while President Bush has been doing the Lord's work with his newfound veto pen, he must continue to wage war on earmarks if the GOP is to cleanse the political memory of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

This behemoth spending-bill was porked-up with such essential items as rodent control in Alaska ($113,000); olive fruit-fly research in France ($213,000); a hunting and fishing museum in Pennsylvania ($200,000); a bike trail in Minnesota ($700,000); a post office museum in Las Vegas ($200,000); and a $2 million monument to Rep. Charlie Rangel in New York.

Will Rangel's monument be inscribed with his quote that "Dick Cheney is a real son of a bitch"? Just wondering, since my federal tax dollars are going to support a project like this.

Kudlow finishes with some optimism and advice for how the GOP should go forward in making the economy even better.

Republicans also can take credit for outmaneuvering the Democrats on a patch for the AMT. The Democrats were made to waive the pay-as-you-go budget rule that might have forced tax increases on businesses and investment pools. Stopping this tax hike is a singular Republican achievement, while the AMT will now be indexed for inflation, thereby sparing more than 20 million taxpayers.

Looking ahead, the economy also would benefit from a corporate tax cut for both large and small businesses, including corporate capital-gains. The U.S. dollar would reap the rewards as new investment flowed in from the world. Several recent studies also show businesses would pass on tax-cost savings to the work force, thereby bolstering wages and ultimately creating new jobs.

Hokey ideas for temporary tax rebates? They should be ignored. But if the president and Republicans wipe out earmarks, hold down spending, and pass a bold corporate tax cut, Goldilocks will be nourished and sustained. Come November 2008, Republicans might be back in the driver's seat.

Excuse Me, Could You Say That Into My Good Ear?

From CNN...

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president — Bush's son, George W. Bush.

"Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again," Clinton said in response to a question from a supporter about what his wife's "number one priority" would be as president.

A spokesman for the George H.W. Bush was not immediately available to comment on whether the former president would chip in some diplomatic help after his son leaves office next year.

What in the blue hell...? Either Clinton is lying or Bush Sr. is going senile. The RNC replied to this with a disturbingly benign response.

"In 2009, a Republican president will be working with our friends and allies abroad to continue to keep our nation safe," said RNC spokesman Danny Diaz. "The American people expect our leaders — both current and former — to present serious solutions to the very real challenges confronting our nation."

Ugh...can we get beyond Bushes and Clintons after 2008?

UPDATE: Bush replies by nicely saying, "no chance, Bill."

Huckabee Thin on Foreign Policy

In a world where our foreign policy is one of our nation's keys to success, Mike Huckabee seems to be a bit lean on answers to handling foreign relations, as evidenced in an NRO article yesterday.

Mike Huckabee’s extraordinary rise in the polls means he deserves to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate in a way he hasn’t been all year long. Serious candidates have well-formulated views on foreign policy. What are Huckabee’s?

He hasn’t been asked about them much — reporters prefer to inquire after his views on evolution—but Don Imus, on his resurrected radio show, queried Huckabee the other day about his foreign-policy experience. Huckabee not so humbly invoked Ronald Reagan, who also, according to the former Arkansas governor, ascended to the presidency with no foreign-policy experience. As Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff has pointed out, this is — to say the least — an inapt analogy. Ronald Reagan lived and breathed the global fight with the Soviet Union for decades, and had been an important voice on the right on foreign policy long before he was president.

Mike Huckabee, by contrast, cut his teeth on typical state-level fare in Arkansas and on weight-loss and wellness programs. This is probably why he felt compelled to quip to Imus, “And the ultimate thing is, I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.” (Powerline also points out that he used the exact same line on Imus a year earlier when foreign policy came up.) This won’t do.

Huckabee did give a long speech on foreign policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in September. It combined a superficial rendering of conventional foreign-policy wisdom — which of course included many unfair criticisms of President Bush — with Huckabee’s inimitable folksy delivery. The former governor’s bottom line was that we should be nicer to other countries.

Huckabee has been pretty lean on the foreign policy side of things. He will either need to hire a strong foreign policy adviser or start reading up on his own plans. Huckabee does not seem to have a real plan for America in regards to the rest of the world, and given the current state of things in the rest of the world, that does not bode well for America.

Huckabee better start giving us more than a friendly smile, folksy demeanor, the Fair Tax, and his belief in God if he wants to be President.