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Must-reads for conservatives:

• Newt Gingrich: A decision that must not be allowed to stand
  
• Star Parker: Drive energy policy by markets, not politics
  
• Dr. Arthur Robinson: The Science of the UN
  
• Pat Buchanan: Return of the censors
  
• Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court and terrorists
  
• Flags, Fathers, and the father of our country
  
• Charles Krauthammer: Environmentalists pick up where communists left off
• George Will: When "market-based" is a facade
• Michell Malkin: Planned Parenthood's obscene profits
  
• Mike Adams: Our states' right to kill the rapist
• Ed Koch: McCain wrong to spurn Hagee
  

Bless the speculator
by John Stossel   link to original source

 "I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil. There's a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight."

Those are the words of presidential candidate John McCain. This man is the Republican?

There's more.

"I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. They're making huge profits and that happens, but not to say, 'We're in this so we can over time eliminate America's dependence on foreign oil,' I think is an abrogation of their responsibilities as citizens."

Let me get this straight. A potential president of a putatively free country scolds companies for "obscene profits," failure to invest in competing products, and therefore irresponsible citizenship. Why? Is McCain running for national economic commissar?

This is not the first time McCain has displayed what I would call an anti-capitalist mentality. In an early presidential debate he countered former businessman Mitt Romney's claim to superior executive experience by saying, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism".

Why the put down of profit?

It's clear McCain does not understand how markets work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success.

McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on." He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle. Sen. McCain must have meant it when he said, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues".

I doubt that speculators are responsible for much of the run-up of oil prices. Why didn't they run them up sooner? Besides, there are too many other explanations: increased demand from China and India, the declining dollar and Middle East tensions.

Even if speculators did play a role, what McCain apparently doesn't understand is that speculators perform a valuable service. Most people don't realize this because on the surface speculators don't seem productive. They buy what already exists and resell it. How does that help society?

In fact, the hated speculator is a good guy because his buying and selling reduce volatility and uncertainty in an unpredictable world. He may only be out for his own profit, but that doesn't matter. As Adam Smith wrote, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".

The prices of commodities often change unexpectedly, making business risky. The speculator brings a degree of certainty to otherwise risky ventures. When supplies of a commodity are plentiful and prices low -- but speculators expect the price to rise later -- they buy -- cushioning the collapse of prices. When supplies become scarcer and prices rise, they sell -- easing the shortage and lowering the price. Also, speculators may agree to buy a commodity in the future for a price locked in today. This reduces the risk for an oil producer or farmer who fears investing because he doesn't know what price his product will sell for next year.

As a result of these activities, volatile supplies and prices are evened out over time. Occasionally, speculators increase volatility. Markets are never perfect. (Although they are better than government regulation.) But in general, speculators increase liquidity and keep the market on a more even keel. This makes long-term planning easier for everyone.

It would be nice if McCain would finally learn some economics.

White looters in Iowa
by Mike S. Adams   link to original source

During the week after Father’s Day, I received a number of interesting emails from readers asking me to write about the dearth of looting after the recent floods in Iowa. Specifically, they wanted me to write about the reason there was so much more looting in New Orleans after Katrina hit the “Chocolate City” in 2005. Of course, the problem involves so much more than race – a factor most people are thinking about, even if they won’t admit it.

That people would oversimplify many post-Katrina problems as “race problems” is unfortunate but somewhat understandable. I recall watching a Fox News reporter standing on a bridge in a flooded area of New Orleans just after Katrina. When the first black individual came wading out of the projects the reporter was simply astounded. Like me, the reporter had no idea that folks had been sitting in the projects waiting for someone to come and escort them out of harm’s way.

It was also sad to see that it was one black face after another emerging from the flooded waters. And it was sadder still that the words “we need” were the first spoken into the camera by these citizens – all utterly unprepared to provide for themselves and their families.

But of course the ugliest scenes were yet to come as looters would turn downtown New Orleans into a place more like downtown Baghdad. Some of the looters who would participate in the destruction of their own neighborhoods would later suggest that they were entitled to loot because of years and years of “oppression.”

Of course, talk of historical oppression goes a long way towards explaining why blacks would be more inclined to loot than whites. But it doesn’t go far towards explaining the fact that looters are predominantly male rather than female. At some point, variables other than race have to be written into the equation.

There is another observation that is just as obvious as the fact that black males are more likely than black females to take advantage of the opportunity to loot as a means of eradicating historical oppression. I am referring, of course, to the fact that black females are more likely than black males to take advantage of affirmative action as a means of eradicating historical oppression. In fact, overall differences between blacks and whites - in important areas including income and education – are largely due to the failures of black males relative to everyone else in society, including black females.

Sociologists have, at least to date, failed to grasp what lies behind this problem. This is largely because of their foolish contention that there are no inherent differences between men and women. They continue to believe, or pretend to believe, that gender differences are merely “socially constructed.” I believe otherwise.

A man has as an inherent component of his being a need to be useful in some form of occupation. He also needs to provide for his children if he has any. The man who is able-bodied and does not work does not need to be taught to feel worthless. He feels that way without instruction. That is why a man is less likely to be driven to unemployment by drink than to drink by unemployment. That feeling of worthlessness similarly accompanies the man who does not care for his children. And it need not be taught to him by others. He imagines what people should be saying to him long before the first aspersions are cast.

For some forty years now the government has been providing incentives for (predominantly minority) men not to work and for women not to keep them around to care for their children. This idea that they are not needed as workers or as fathers cuts against their nature as men. It is a very dangerous pair of ideas with a very dangerous pair of consequences – only one of which has been addressed in this short essay.

The violence that is committed in an act of looting is not born of some idea that a man is entitled to the things kept from him by historical oppression. The violence against another man’s place of work is born of his own sense of worthlessness for having not fulfilled his responsibilities as an able-bodied man. This non-sense about oppression is merely an afterthought – a form of rationalization in the Freudian sense. If used often enough it becomes more than an individual malady. It becomes a cultural malady as well.

But the personal violence exhibited by minority men against other minority men is not so easily explained by economic oppression. Enlightened minds can easily grasp the effect of illegitimacy - and I speak here of illegitimate fathers because there are no illegitimate children – on minorities raised in single parent homes. But I believe the separation of fathers from their children explains, not just the transmission, but the genesis of violence in minority communities.

Sociologists write volumes on the scores of black men executed annually in the criminal justice system. But they are silent regarding the thousands of minorities killed at the hands of other minorities annually. Such a thing would not be possible unless black males had come to hold other black males in such low regard. And that is something that, in turn, would not be possible unless they also held themselves in very low regard.

So I am not at all impressed that, on Father’s Day, Barack Obama chose to chastise black men for failing to take care of their children. It takes little courage to state the obvious fact that their absence will make things tougher on the current generation of children raised in single parent homes.

I would be far more impressed were there any indication that Barack Obama understood the impact the War on Poverty has had on the current generation of fathers who have been displaced by government programs. Of course, if he did understand that he might be tempted to admit that he, too, is contributing to a very complex problem. And there is every indication that, if elected president, he will continue to contribute to the problem and force the rest of us to contribute our “fair share” too.

Jeremiah Wright recently found himself embroiled in controversy for suggesting that the government invented the AIDS virus to kill black people. It would have been closer to the truth to say that was the reason they have injected the virus of government aid into minority communities.

Drive energy policy by markets, not politics
by Star Parker   link to original source

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.

What is the most important issue in the 2008 election?
	Health care
	War in Iraq
	Economy
	Abortion
	Gay Marriage
	Tax reform
	Immigration
	National security
	2nd Amendment
	Judges
	Environment
	States rights
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6/12 Mike refutes Obama's attack on McCain


6/13 Anchors talk about Huckabee joining Fox


6/13 Discussing Tim Russert's death