Study Reports the Obvious: Vote for Drilling Now Reduces Prices Now

Newt Gingrich has a very telling note on his website.

When we consider drilling for more oil to increase supply and bring down gas prices, liberals love to wail and moan that we won't have that oil for 10 years. They've been rolling out this same protest for 10 years, so you do the math and figure out whether we'd have more oil now if we'd ignored them as they deserved 10 years ago.

But there's another reason we should move to drill NOW: because it would bring down prices NOW, even though the new oil wouldn't start flowing for several more years.

It's a well-known reality of market forces that new supply on the horizon has an effect on commodity prices NOW. At least it's well known to people who embrace our free market; apparently those who favor a Marxist economic model are spending so much time bashing the free market that they missed this reality.

Professor R. Morris Coats of Nicholls State University in Louisiana submitted a study of this effect to the Energy Journal to demonstrate how it works.

The Energy Journal, however, declined to publish the study. They declined, not because it was flawed or unfounded or bad science, but because it was so obvious.

Professor James Smith at the Energy Journal said that this had already been demonstrated by the 1960s, and that "It is our policy to publish only original research that adds significantly to the body of received knowledge regarding energy markets and policy."

I guess it's like saying we don't need a new study to tell us that finding out help is on the way lifts your spirits now, even before the help actually arrives. It's something pretty much everyone understands.

The report summarizes how this works in the energy market:

Since future prices are expected to be lower, future profits are also lower, so the value of oil not produced now, but held for future sales, is lower, making it more profitable to go ahead and produce and sell now instead of waiting for future profits. Using oil now reduces the amount of oil available for the future, which involves the opportunity cost of forgone future profits, which are sometime called the marginal user costs or scarcity rents.

So you see that not only is the liberal anti-energy policy myopic (as it was 10 years ago), it also passes up an opportunity to lower gas prices today.

And drilling now will also have more substantive and long-lasting effect than any tire inflation strategy.

The Republicans aren't perfect, but they are the ones spending their vacation in the House, demanding a vote on drilling for more oil. They aren't the ones whining, "We can't do anything except penalize someone else. Waaaaaaaaa. Waaa, waaaaaaaa!"

Remember that when you get to the ballot box in November.

HT to Free Republic.

Freedom Fighter Solzhenitsyn Dead at 89

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author and freedom-fighter, has died at 89.

The Associated Press has some excerpts from the works of this man who suffered under the brutal Soviet system, spending several years in the gulag.

I read Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" many years ago. It was a tough read, filled with the stifling cloud of human oppression and hopelessness. If I had ever had any doubts about the evil of the inhuman Soviet system...

CNS News also has an extensive writeup on Solzhenitsyn's life and works.

Solzhenitsyn was not only a freedom fighter but a moral crusader as well. He saw the dark path of hedonism and materialism that many in the West are on, and saw that it, too, can lead to destruction. Any time we forget God and elevate selfish desire, we flirt with doom

Solzhenitsyn said in his Templeton Address in 1983:

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’

“Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval...

...But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’

For those who believe personal freedom is too great a burden to bear, or that capitalism is a brutal economic system, they would do well to read about Solzhenitsyn's works and his life--and his moral admonitions.

Perhaps if they did, they would not be so discontent with the most free and most fair society the world has ever seen. They might also not work so hard to remove God from our public square.

And just maybe, they'd rethink their embrace of Marxist philosophy...and where it leads.

Drive energy policy by markets, not politics

BY STAR PARKER
FOUNDER & PRESIDENT
COALITION ON URBAN RENEWAL & EDUCATION

Energy is too important to be left to businessmen and markets, right? We need people who we really can trust to get things under control.

Like politicians.

I'm looking at Carpe Diem, the blog of Dr Mark J. Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. He compares prices of gasoline from 1919 to today against price changes of a first class postage stamp.

At four dollars a gallon, today's gasoline price is sixteen times higher than its price in 1919, 25.5 cents. Over the same period, first class postage went from 2 cents to 42 cents, a 21-fold increase.

And postage prices never went down. Only up.

From 1970 to 1980 there was about a 10-fold increase in oil prices. However, by the mid-1980's prices had dropped by two-thirds and remained relatively unchanged for the next 15 years. Now prices are up by six-fold since 2001.

History, particularly near-term history, is not difficult to access. Search newspaper and magazine articles of the late '70s. The headlines were about the "energy crisis." The world was supposedly running out of oil. We were at the alleged beck and call of Arab oil producers who stood at any moment to use the "oil weapon" against us.

Oil companies were being attacked, as they are now, for the amount of money they were making. When prices sharply dropped in the mid-1980s, these same firms had to cut back, lay off folks, and oil towns like Houston went into depression.

Politicians who want to punish firms with a "windfall profits" tax when prices go up don't propose "loss subsidies" when prices go down.

Our real crises occur when we believe those who challenge what makes this country work -- people, markets, and freedom.

Back to Perry's blog. He shows that with the 10-fold increase in oil prices in the '70s, our energy consumption patterns changed dramatically. Today we consume half the energy to produce $1 of output than we did in 1970. We're now twice as energy efficient as we were.

Yes, markets work when we let them.

Think the guys who drill in 10,000 feet of water offshore looking for oil and gas earn too much?

According to a BusinessWeek survey, median compensation for the CEOs of the 12 largest oil firms in 2007 was $15.4 million. The CEO of the largest, ExxonMobil, earned $21.7 million. Top earner was the CEO of Occidental Petroleum at $33.6 million.

All chump change when we look at the Celebrity 100 list published by Forbes Magazine.

Over the last year, for example, Oprah Winfrey earned $275 million, rapper 50 Cent $150 million, Steven Spielberg $130 million, and Beyonce Knowles $80 million.

With oil prices more than doubling in the last year, we are going to get a market response both with supplies and with how much we consume if we keep politicians at bay.

The "energy independence" goal is pure political baloney. As renowned energy economist and MIT professor emeritus Morris Adelman writes, "It does not matter how much oil is produced domestically and how much is imported." It's a global market and new supplies from any source will depress prices.

Although we import two-thirds of our oil, it comes from well over twenty countries. And despite conventional wisdom, our two largest suppliers are Canada and Mexico.

Appreciate that environmentalism belongs to the Hollywood elite who make their millions and then contribute to Democrats who tell us we shouldn't invest in carbon-based fuels.

Climate change is politics, not science. As environmental scientist S. Fred Singer recently wrote in the New York Sun, 30 percent of climate scientists surveyed were "skeptical" of claims about global warming caused by human activity. "More than 31,000 scientists" have signed a petition questioning the UN's science on all this and opposing the recent "cap-and-trade" legislation in Congress.

Tens of millions of working folks need cheap fuel for their homes, their cars and their trucks.

Yes, drill offshore, drill in Alaska, mine oil shale, and build nuclear plants. Leave all options open.

But let free markets and businesspeople drive these decisions. Not politicians.


Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education and author of the new book White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay.

Prior to her involvement in social activism, Star Parker was a single welfare mother in Los Angeles, California. After receiving Christ, Star returned to college, received a BS degree in marketing and launched an urban Christian magazine. The 1992 Los Angeles riots destroyed her business, yet served as a springboard for her focus on faith and market-based alternatives to empower the lives of the poor.

Are Oil Profits Obscene?

I don't enjoy paying $4.00 a gallon for gas any more than the next guy. But I also don't enjoy hear a bunch of Marxists and pseudo-Marxists bellyache about the free market.

The market does a far better and far smarter job of controlling prices than the government has ever done with it's nationalization schemes and price controls. In fact, government interference has a lot to do with the current cost issues, since government has strangled the oil industry's ability to produce new product and refine that product for sale. We haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years, and our refining capacity is about maxed out.

We hear lots of complaining about "obscene oil profits," and the oil companies do make a hefty profit. But then, they sell a hefty amount of product. Common sense says if you sell a lot of something, you're going to make a lot of profit, all things being equal.

But are these profits as "obscene" and out of kilter as the liberals would have us believe?

Karl Rove has a piece at the Wall Street Journal today which provides some much-needed perspective on "Big Oil" profits.

While the oil industry makes about 8.3 cents per dollar profit...

- Electronics make 14.5 cents per dollar.
- Computer equipment makers take in 13.7 cents per dollar.
- Microsoft's margin is 27.5 cents per dollar of sales.

- Oil and gas companies made $86.5 billion in profits last year.
- The financial services industry took in $498.5 billion in profits.
- The retail industry walked away with $137.5 billion.
- Information technology companies made off with $103.4 billion.

Since these other industries are making even more obscene profits than the oil industry, maybe we should impose windfall profit taxes on the computer or retail industry...and watch the price of goods go up even more.

The knee-jerk reaction of liberals to blame private industry for all our problems is tired, myopic, Marxist and un-American.

The American thing to do would be to get the government out of the way, open up new areas like ANWR for oil production, and streamline the regulatory process for new refineries. Let capitalism do the work of prosperity that it's proven over and over that it can so admirably do.

HT to the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Housing Crisis: Vacant and Wasted

by Carrie K. Hutchens

A few years back, I saw an enormous amount of upscale housing being built. My question was, "Where are all these people working?" Then I heard about the new fangled loans where one merely pays on the interest for so many years and I knew what was going on. I predicted then that there was going to be a major problem and it wasn't long before I was proven right.

And now?

I think we are headed towards still another major mistake that will merely complicate the original blunder and serve no good purpose.

Holding people accountable can get very complex when considering the housing mess and like crisis. After all, who is the most guilty? The consumer that came to believe the sales pitch (given by a professional) that he or she or they could afford the dream house or the professional who should have known better? Top that off with a bank or mortgage company willing to enter into the loan agreement and a consumer is given even more confidence that the deal is safe and their financial abilities and the economy is up to the challenge. What a shock it must have been when reality came rushing home a few years down the road and many found themselves without the original options and no alternative plans or finances to turn to.

One question is...

If experts didn't see the foreclosure epidemic on the horizon, how can average consumers be expected to have seen it?

There are people that carelessly enter into financial agreements, but there are also people who, in good faith, enter into agreements that turn out to be flawed. Agreements that rely upon outside sources and events that the person has no true control over, like job security, promotions and bonuses. Though perhaps due, the consumer cannot readily MAKE the right thing happen just because it was promised and earned. Life is funny that way.

Now, people are being foreclosed upon and here are all these houses that have no immediate buyers. Houses that are easy targets for vandalism and prone to early decay that seems to travel frequently with vacant homes. So what is the point? What is the benefit to any or all? Is there a benefit?

It is one thing to foreclose upon people who had no intent of honoring the agreement(s) set forth, however, what about those who were deceived by the professionals or hard hit because of the crisis they didn't create? How about the people who most likely would have been able to refinance as planned, if the housing boom hadn't imploded, which, I might add, was through no personal fault of their own? What about those people?

It seems to me that rather than leave those houses sitting idle to punish those who innocently got caught up in the housing movement (that appears to have been little more than a legalized scam), it would make more sense to figure out a plan to keep as many people in their homes as possible. It would make more sense for financial institutions to be bringing in some money, rather than no money on foreclosed houses. After all, how does the latter help the mortgage holders, people or the public (who will most likely pay indirectly)?

Get courts and lawyers involved and up goes the amount due. Put a judgment against people and what are the chances they will be able to borrow and if they can't borrow how are they supposed to pay back the amount in question? And while they are unable to borrow to pay the required amount, the interest and penalties keep growing and growing, and as the vicious circle goes -- because they can't pay -- they can't borrow -- so the penalties keep mounting and so does the hopelessness of the situation. Who, then, really benefits beyond lawyers, collection agencies and the like?

One additional irony to this crazy mess is that mortgage companies may get stuck with receiving pennies on the dollar, especially after paying court fees, collection fees, lawyers and collection agencies. Why are some of these companies so willing to pay such people and the collection costs involved, but often not as willing to work diligently to give the consumer the benefit of those same amounts? Why are they not willing, especially when doing so would give everyone a fresh slate to work on and chance for both to come out with a fair and honest result?

There may have been a day and time, between the depression and now, when the majority of people who failed to live up to their agreements did so through their own fault, but I don't believe that is the case today. Today, I think there are situations where the majority of fault in failed outcomes rests with big business and a system that fails to face it, muchless deal with it. A system that often fails to hold the big business as accountable as the individual. If the system is going to be involved at all, then it should be involved with "true" fairness to all.

It is one thing for people to mis-spend their money, or be otherwise careless in their financial dealings. It is quite another for them to be sold a bill of goods by experts and professionals that should have known better even before this whole housing fantasy (crisis) became a twinkle in someone's eye. And maybe... just maybe... those people that had the twinkle in the eye that turned out to be so blindingly wrong, ought to think about a better fix to the mess they created, than foreclosure that punishes the consumer (regardless of their degree of personal fault), and leaves so many houses vacant and wasted.

Vacant and wasted -- can our economy afford the price tag hanging on the housing crisis?


Carrie Hutchens is a former law enforcement officer and a freelance writer who is active in fighting against the death culture movement and the injustices within the judicial and law enforcement systems.

Producing A Generation of Air-Heads Or Is It Heartless Greed?

by Carrie K. Hutchens

It's bad enough walking through China-Mart, I mean Wal-Mart, trying to find something that isn't made in China, when you have a fondness for buying American made products, but that bad has gotten even worse.

China's products made our pets sick. Then they made our kids sick. Now information is coming out that medicine (or the ingredients) are also coming from China? Whose air-head idea was that one?

I cannot believe that people in the power think it is a good thing to out-source our jobs to places like China. We take away jobs here to get products cheaper so the now unemployed workers will be able to afford them? Guess that makes sense to someone, since that is what it looks like is happening. But it doesn't make sense to me. I see it as a deadly game. I see it as offering our citizens up for the sacrifice and slaughter for the almighty dollar or some silly idea of how if we give them all our work and our money -- China might like us and be nice.

KMBC has an interesting article on this matter, "China Makes Many Drugs Sold In U.S. - Blood Thinner Heparin Linked To Deaths" (Kansas City, MO - POSTED: 4:50 pm CST February 21, 2008. UPDATED: 9:57 pm CST February 21, 2008). An article that should be an eye-opener to people who are naively thinking the high standards for our meds, food and products are still in place.

I, too, feel that China isn't all that concerned about it's own citizens. It's irrational to think they are going to be overly-cautious with products for us and give all the sub-standard to their own. So the question becomes, "Why in the world would anyone in this country think they would be more concerned about us -- a people that they seem to merely tolerate for the opportunities, money and jobs they can take at our expense?"

I'm not sure if we produced a generation of air-heads or simply one with some pretty heartless and greedy people, but the craziness of this all ought to be getting pretty obvious to the American people. Made in China products should no longer be considered a mere annoyance. It should be taken for what it truly is -- a matter of national security! A matter of China destroying America by America's own defect -- air-heads and the heartless greedy!

We teach our children that they should say "no" to drugs. Maybe we should teach our society to say "no" to drugs from China. Maybe we should go one better than that. Maybe we should say "no" to anything made in China and to the stores that overwhelming sell their products rather than Made in the USA ones. Maybe it is time for our voices and our concern to be heard and responded to.

As consumers, we do have the power to make a difference. A difference the air-heads might not grasp, but the heartless greedy will be scrambling to get the profit margin back up and that is to our advantage. I think it is about time we take advantage of that advantage and stop the China frenzy. Stop the dangerous imports that threaten our lives and our livelihood, and the dangerous export of our jobs that threaten to totally destroy our economy! It's time to take our market and, therefore, our country back! It's past time to say "NO" to China and "YES" to the USA! Why not say it today?

Heritage 2008 Index of Economic Freedom

Ever wonder why conservatives consider economic freedom so important? It's not just a matter of fairness and justice, which are important in their own rights, but also has numerous practical benefits to society as a whole.



Why are we so prosperous in America? The relative lack of governmental controls over our economy has a lot to do with it.

A Respected Man

James Dobson Family Minute

Psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson observes that behind every great man is a great woman — who respects him.

Click here to listen

From OnePlace.com

'Living Wage' Bill Introduced in South Dakota Legislature

Well, Senator Tom Katus (Dist. 32) has introduced that "living wage" bill he promised Saturday.

SCR 3 says that

state agency, any municipality, or any other unit of government which offers a tax break, a grant, or other subsidy using state and local tax dollars to require any business which employs more than ten employees as a condition of receiving such governmental assistance to pay its employees at least the same wages and to offer its employees health benefits comparable to those the state agency, the municipality, or other unit of government supporting the new business development offers to its entry-level employees.

I wonder how prolific "tax break, a grant, or other subsidy using state and local tax dollars" situations are. With TIFs and numerous other smaller tax breaks and incentives, I would imagine it's fairly widespread.

I suppose it's a sad reality that if you accept government money, you accept the government strings that come with it. So it's not as egregious as a blanket mandate on all businesses would be.

But I think this is the wrong message for the government to send to the business community, and the wrong attitude for the government to take.

So how do we define what a "living wage" is? I might say it takes $40,000 a year to properly live. Another person might say you can do it on $20,000. Still another might say it takes $120,000 to constitute a "living wage."

This bill defines that loosely as "the same entry wage and health benefits standards as the governmental entity supporting the new business pays and gives its entry-level employees." So does this mean that every time this government agency gives it's employees a taxpayer-funded raise, the business is required to give it's employees a raise? Every time the government agency provides a new taxpayer-funded health benefit, the business is likewise required to add this benefit for their employees?

While the government can essentially increase it's revenue at will (tax hikes), it's not always so easy for businesses. Yes, they can raise the price of their goods or services...but if their competition isn't also raising their prices, guess who's going to get all the customers, and who's going to go out of business?

Will this keep businesses from coming to or opening offices in South Dakota, if they know they might have to pay $2.00, $3.00, $4.00 an hour more than they otherwise might--especially if such a difference would move them from the green into the red?

And what if the employee's labor is only bringing $7.00 an hour in revenue to the business? Can the business afford to pay $11.00 or $12.00 an hour (Katus mentioned a figure of $11.00 and change on Saturday) plus benefits when his employees are only bringing $7.00 an hour in revenue into the company?

And how long is this in effect? Is it only until the "tax break, grant or other subsidy" is exhausted, or is it for the life of the business?

When you add it up, is the "tax break, grant or other subsidy" that the business is receiving from the government going to add up to be worth potentially paying out several more dollars per hour than they might otherwise pay? Than the employee's labor might otherwise be worth?

And if the business is receiving a continual subsidy from the government, and if the extra wages are equal to the amount of this subsidy, then it essentially becomes the government subsidizing a private employee's wages. It becomes more wealth redistribution, since taxpayer dollars are being taken from some taxpayers and given to another taxpayer.

You might be able to make the case that an employer, based on a healthy profit margin, morally should be paying a higher wage because his valuable employees are contributing to that healthy profit margin.

But morally should and legally should usually part ways when no one is being hurt or deprived; morally I should tell my children I love them regularly, but should we pass a law to guarantee that? And since an employee and employer (unless there's government interference) mutually agree to a wage, and an employee is free to leave and go work somewhere else, it can't reasonably be argued that he's locked into a system of deprivation like a slave or serf.

It's wrong for government to be in the business of placing value on the labor of an individual who isn't doing work for the government. The proper parties for establishing the value of labor are the employer and the employee who accepts a certain wage to work for a business. If the employee wants more money than an employer will pay, he can go somewhere else for a job. If the employer needs the labor and expertise a job candidate offers, and he needs it bad enough, he may have to pay a higher wage to get the candidate to agree to work for him. That's how things work in a free market--and in a free society.

This bill is fundamentally wrong and un-American. America was and is based on the idea of limited, minimal government. It is also based on a free market, the freedom of a business to determine the value of labor, and the freedom of people and businesses to negotiate willingly with one another.

This bill uses the power of government to squelch that freedom and force a business to pay compensation based on what the government, which is not involved in the operation of the business, says is right and just and fair.

Huckabee and the Reagan Legacy

Yesterday, Investors Business Daily featured an editorial on "21st Century Reaganism" which had this to say about Mike Huckabee:

Yet most of the GOP presidential hopefuls have refused to act as across-the-board Reaganites. There would be nothing, for instance, to stop a one-time Southern Baptist minister from claiming the mantle of Reaganism. But erstwhile man of the cloth and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose appeal among evangelicals has raised him to within striking distance in Iowa, has continually attacked the Club for Growth, a major champion of conservative economic policies, as the "Club for Greed."

Calling capitalists Scrooges is straight out of the liberal Democratic playbook. A more helpful retort from Huckabee would be to address the Club's concerns about his approving an income-tax surcharge in Little Rock.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, on the other hand, has managed to gain the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee (a key stamp of approval from social conservatives) while at the same time espousing the boldest of economic solutions on both Social Security and tax reform.

The editorial appears to be pro-Fred Thompson, but echos what I have seen and heard about Huckabee from several quarters.

The economic engine of this great nation was built on private enterprise. We should encourage morality and ethics in the business world as in any facet of life. But bashing the free market and hinting strongly at more government meddling in privately owned businesses sounds more like Marxist Democrats than someone who wants to claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan.

HT to Tax Hike Mike.

Schlafly on Huckabee: Destroyed Conservatism in Ark.

If you've read this blog for long, or talked to me personally in recent weeks about presidential candidates, you know I'm not the adoring fan of Mike Huckabee that many of my "values voter" friends are.

Today, John Fund's Wall Street Journal column reveals more of why I am not:

But I also know he is not the "consistent conservative" he now claims to be.

Nor am I alone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once "his No. 1 fan." She was bitterly disappointed with his record. "He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal," she says. "Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don't be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office."

Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, is even more blunt. "He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles," she says. "Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us on George W. Bush as a 'compassionate conservative' are now trying to sell us on Mike Huckabee."

Phyllis Schlafly is a hero and icon in conservative circles; I saw powerful people stand in awe of her over the weekend at the Washington Briefing. I hope they will listen to her on this.

Also consider this:

"He has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement," says Blant Hurt, a former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine. "He's hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate."

I'm not a big fan of "free trade" myself, preferring something like "fair trade" where American businesses and workers aren't left high and dry in the global market. But I most assuredly am not a tax-and-spender as Huckabee appears to be.

Even Rick Scarborough, who supports Huckabee, admits in the article: "Mike has always sought the validation of elites." I believe this adolescent tendency by many in politics is why the Left enjoys so much dominance--so many are seeking the approval of Leftist elites.

And finally:

Many Huckabee supporters have told me their man should be judged by what he's saying on the campaign trail today. Fair enough. Mr. Huckabee was the only GOP candidate to refuse to endorse President Bush's veto of the Democrats' bill to vastly expand the Schip health-care program. Only he and John McCain have endorsed the discredited cap-and-trade system to limit global-warming emissions that has proved a fiasco in Europe.

"What he's saying on the campaign trail today" is exactly what we SHOULDN'T be judging Huckabee on. Words are cheap; deeds are what count. For Huckabee to trash immigration controls in practice, then come on to values voters last weekend like he just arrived from a Minuteman seminar was not only disappointing, it ticked me off pretty good. I can stand disagreeing with someone, but if you lie and pander to me, that's a quick way to get on my bad side. (I told a friend Saturday night that, oddly, I walked away from Giuliani's speech with far more respect and good will than I did Huckabee's--but I still won't support Giuliani).

We've had far too much big-spending and Leftist compromise out of George Bush. It sounds like Huckabee is cut out of that mold, and then some. We don't need more of that. We need a candidate that's going to lead this nation in the right direction, and while Huckabee would undoubtedly be better than any of the Democrat candidates, are we really looking for a "better than so-and-so" candidate?

Or are we looking for someone who will lead the United States boldly back to the values and solid foundation of fiscal and personal responsibility that built the greatest nation on earth?

'Free' Health Care Brings Long Waits, Pulling Own Teeth

The National Center for Policy Analysis points out that despite the huge amounts of money the Canadian government is throwing at socialized medicine, wait times are getting even LONGER:

- The average wait between being referred to a specialist and receiving an elective operation was 18.3 weeks in 2006, up from 17.8 the year previous.

- Ontario had the shortest average surgery wait time, 15 weeks while Saskatchewan had the longest, at 27 weeks.

- The time between being referred by a general practitioner and seeing a specialist grew to 9.2 weeks from 8.8 weeks in 2006, while the second stage of waiting -- between seeing the specialist and getting the operation -- edged up from nine to 9.1 weeks.

- Waits in the internal medicine specialty, gynecology, urology and radiation oncology were all up by varying amounts.

NCPA also points out an article from the UK Independent that asks "What is so wrong with NHS dentistry that people are pulling their own teeth?"

One in 10 – 500 people – said they did not have a dentist at all and almost one in five said they had gone without treatment because of the cost. A patient in Lancashire said he had removed 14 of his own teeth himself. One in Harrow said: "Because I could not afford the treatment cost, I had to extract my own tooth on one occasion." Another in Wiltshire said: "I took most of my teeth out in the shed with pliers. I have one to go."

NHS claims there are more doctors than ever before in the government system, but people still can't get access to them. Those that can afford it go to a private dentist, but with British people paying a stunning amount of taxes to support their socialist system, not many can afford that. What's the problem?

Dentists will often choose private because the pay is better. They also say the higher rates they can charge means that they can spend more time with patients and do better quality work, which is more satisfying.

Many who think "free" health care in the United States is a good idea need to look at other socialist countries and think long and hard about that. Our system is far from perfect, but do you really want to wait more than two months to see a specialist or 4.5 months for surgery? Or would you like to pull your own teeth?

Or should we instead look for some American-style free market solutions and get the government out of health care altogether?

Free Market Health Care

A recent Washington Times article examines an ongoing market-driven health care option, in contrast to the grossly inefficient socialized medicine system of Canada:

In the U.S., we have a market-based response to the problem. A rapid expansion of retail health clinics in the United States is taking place in what the Department of Health and Human Services has designated as medically underserved areas. Take MinuteClinics, a division of the drugstore chain CVS, which offers walk-in health care centers for common medical problems such as strep throat, sunburn, mono, flu, ear infections and sinus infections, and offer vaccinations, checkups, etc. People can pay cash or use their regular insurance. Most visits are 15 minutes or less with no appointment needed. In many cases, MinuteClinics are often affiliated with local hospital or physician practices, and will refer customers to a primary care doctor if they don't have one. Additionally, the center generates an electronic medical record that customers and doctors can access through the phone, fax or Internet.

There are 200 MinuteClinics across America. Most are in federally designed medically underserved areas providing immediate care, referrals and electronic medical records for about $50 per person. Other private companies are involved in this trend as well and have been joined by the American Academy of Family Physicians in an effort to improve access to health care for millions Americans.

A great deal of why our current health care system in America is so broken is that we have for the last 50 years progressively taken more and more of the free market out of the system, while increasing more and more government intervention (Medicare, Medicaid, government regulation, etc.). Our current system is not truly a free market system, with the government paying roughly have of the medical bills in this country, but neither is it yet a fully socialized medicine setup because the government still isn't regulating or centrally controlling the vast majority of the system.

It's time to swing back to the free market that helped build the economic dynamo that has traditionally been the United States.

HT to the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Hillary Says She Doesn't Want Socialized Medicine

As liberals almost always do, Hillary Clinton is trying to hide her intentions and claim she's been misrepresented.

This time, she's trying to tell us she's not for socialized medicine, despite having made the biggest push for socialized medicine in American history back in the early '90s.

From the Washington Post:

During a forum at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Las Vegas, Clinton was asked why as a candidate for president she is "still insisting" on bringing "socialized medicine" to the United States, when people are "pulling away" from similar systems in Canada and Great Britain. Worse, the questioner said, such systems hurt rather than help poor people.

"That was a string of misrepresentations about me and about the systems in other countries," Clinton started. "Number one, I have never advocated socialized medicine, and I hope all the journalists here heard that loudly and clearly because that has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years."

If you have a system where the government owns or controls the industry, you have socialism.

Capitalizing on the ignorance of the average American, and the fact that the average American (like the frog) has been in the ever-warming pot for a long time already, then asked

"Do you think Medicare is socialized medicine?" Clinton asked her inquisitor, who did not identify himself.

Can you say "absolutely"? A program mandated by the government and regulated by the government and paid for by the government, even if individuals do have some small say in the whole process, is socialized medicine. You're smoking something--and it isn't medicinal--if you think Medicare is free market health care.

She then made the outrageous claim that health care in countries such as Canada, where you may have to wait 18 weeks for treatment, is better than we have here. They have a fully socialized health care system in Canada, Britain and other countries, yet Clinton thinks it's better than we have here. So she's told us through her admiration of socialized medicine in other countries, even though she denied it above, that this is what she wants.

Nothing has changed. The Clintons still think we're all stupid.

Gov't Drives Up Cost of Services

CNS News has a story about how federal aid is driving up the cost of a college education:

"College enrollment over the last 20 years has gone dramatically up because of [federal] subsidies," Tim Carney, a columnist for the Washington Examiner, told the conservative Young America's Foundation conference in Washington, D.C.

Carney said colleges have grown accustomed to receiving federal dollars, which he said enables schools to continually raise prices without hurting students' ability to pay.

"Some students will win, all taxpayers will lose and many students will lose as well," he said.

Carney noted that every year since 1982, tuition has increased at a higher rate than inflation, and from 1983 to 2003 federal aid increased more than 500 percent, to $122 billion.

As it happens, this is exactly the same thing that's happening with health care. Since the government subsidizes about half of all health care expenditures (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), more people take advantage of the system, which drives up demand for services, just as with education.

And as with any system involving finances, the system gets used to the free-flowing dollars from the government, which drives up costs for everyone, whether they have insurance or not.

Costs were not so insane before government and insurance blanketed the market. My mother-in-law gave me a copy of the hospital bill for the birth of my wife and her twin sister about 39 years ago. It was something like $68. Yes, sixty-eight dollars. That's about $10,000 less than my last child cost four years ago.

We need to get government OUT of health care and Rep. Joel Dykstra told me recently, get the individual back as the actual health care customer.

Free Market Needed to Keep Health Care Healthy

Economist Dr. Walter E. Williams' TownHall.com column yesterday points out another important reason why government health care isn't the answer to our medical woes:

There's absolutely no mystery why our greatest complaints are in the arena of government-delivered services and the fewest in market-delivered services. In the market, there are the ruthless forces of profit, loss and bankruptcy that make producers accountable to us. In the arena of government-delivered services, there's no such accountability. For example, government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what's the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It's nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills.

This is something I alluded to Tuesday.

Gov't Pays Dead Men to Farm

From the Washington Post:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report.

In a selection of 181 cases from 1999 to 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that officials approved payments without any review 40 percent of the time.

The report cited a 1,900-acre soybean and corn farm in Illinois that collected $400,000 on behalf of an owner who lived in Florida before his death in 1995. The company did not notify the government of the death but certified each year that the dead shareholder, who owned 40 percent of the company, was "actively engaged" in managing the farm.

Paying dead men to farm is about as odd as paying farmers not to grow something. I remember a comedy routine from several years ago by Brian Regan about this: A guy asks a farmer what he does for a living. The farmer replies, "Well, I don't grow corn."

This is just one of the many reasons we need to move away from this government-run Marxist-style farming system and get back to a free market system. The fraud, waste and abuse is staggering.

Shutting Down the Engine of America

I noticed on page 3 of Dan Scott's speech notes posted at the Dakota Watercooler, he briefly addresses the environmental extremist group that quickly popped up to oppose the "gorilla project" Elk Point refinery.

It so happens my column in the Rapid City Journal yesterday was about that subject:

Once completed, they expect to employ about 1,800 people.

But even though project executive J.L. "Corky" Frank says Hyperion plans "the most environmentally sound energy center in the United States," environmental groups are nevertheless already throwing monkey wrenches at the project.

Save Union County Committee, a new environmental group with ties to the San Francisco-based National Refinery Reform Campaign, is already expressing "concerns."

From the anti-industry rhetoric on the group’s website, I wouldn’t look for them to say anything favorable about this project. They apparently see any refinery as an engine of planetary doom.

We may be getting a first-hand lesson on why our gas prices are so high and why America’s energy policy has been crippled, right here in our home state: Radical liberals who interfere with anything that makes America stronger.

If it goes through, this refinery could bring lots of jobs and economic benefit to South Dakota, not to mention providing some much-needed refinery capacity to our over-stressed petroleum industry. But some on the Left so despise industry, free market and anything that makes America stronger, they're willing to throw all that away.

What Conservative Isn't

Spurred by a fundraising letter from Governor Mike Rounds, Sibby has an insightful post on his blog.

Governor Rounds talks about conservatism and electing conservatives to government, but as Steve points out

Sounds good, but I don’t remember any tax cuts during the Rounds administration so far. And in regard to "less government" and "disciplined spending", I think this April 1, 2007 post reveals the true Mike Rounds:

State government has swelled under Gov. Mike Rounds - both in spending and employees.

Depending upon whom you ask, it represents either steady but needed growth or an aggressive surge in the public payroll in an era when local governments and other states have curtailed costs.

From fiscal year 2003, the final year of former Gov. Bill Janklow's last term, to fiscal 2007, the end of the Republican Rounds' first term, the overall state budget grew from about $2.5 billion to a budgeted $3.2 billion. The just-passed general appropriations bill tops $3.3 billion.

I found it ironic that for the first several months of 2007, many of the weekly columns I wrote for the Rapid City Journal took issue with some initiative or another being pushed by Rounds. From taxpayer funding to vaccinate young girls against STDs to a minimum wage increase to taxpayer funded preschool..I wouldn't exactly put these in the category of conservatism, which usually means smaller government, free market, and personal responsibility.

Governor Rounds has been better than the alternative, but too often his policies have served as examples of what conservatism is NOT.

Downhill from the Great Depression

Following in the subject of which I posted yesterday, that FDR wasn't the economic savior that dominant history says he was, Ben Shapiro writes today on "The big lie about the Great Depression."

He references Amity Shlaes new book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression":

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

My folks, who came through the Depression as dirt-poor farmers, worshipped FDR as some kind of demi-god like most people, even though they believed in self-reliance in the face of adversity. That was what the intelligentsia told them they should do, and back then, average people still had faith that their leaders were basically decent people like themselves. It was hard for them to fathom that a national leader might intentionally subvert the United States Constitution. They also couldn't conceive of how his give-away programs might have actually made the Depression worse.

I searched my bookshelves last night for a couple of books I've read several years ago that goes into this in more detail, but couldn't find them. My book collection has years ago overgrown my book shelves, and they are certainly somewhere buried in the bowels of this house.

But I did find a book I read just a couple of years ago by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist called "The Supreme Court." It's a history of the Supreme Court written by Rehnquist, somewhat in biographical format covering each of the chief justices who have shaped the court.

Rehnquist points out that FDR and his Democrat cohorts in Congress were passing many laws for their New Deal (aka the Raw Deal) that were blatantly unconstitutional. In fact, the Court's ruling against FDR and the Frazier-Lemke Act was one of the decisions that led FDR to try packing the court with socialist stooges like himself that would rubber stamp his New Deal whether its provisions were constitutional or not. Having 12 years in the White House helped him to do this.

FDR and the New Deal is where Big Government truly came to life in free America. It's where socialism got its foothold in our free country. It's where America began to move away from a Constitutional government of the people to one of government authority and oligarchy. And its where America began to move away from depending on God to depending on government, from a Christian nation to a secular one.

There are many reasons--big reasons--why the Founders wrote so much about the perils and evils of government, and so little about business (and yes, there were big businesses back then, too). I won't list them here, but go back and read the writings of the Founders: you'll find that over and over again, they warned of the damage government can do when unrestrained. That is why they set up the free and limited government they did, with a system of checks and balances to help keep a leash on government. Even then, they knew that our form of government, as good as it is, depends on an informed and active citizenry, and certainly a moral citizenry, to stay healthy and in check.

Business may commit immoral acts and business may abuse its power. But government has authority over even business, making it the ultimate power in the land. And when government takes a notion to hammer you, you have no higher authority--except God through prayer--to appeal to.

That is why government above all other organizations must be restrained.