A Test For The World's Cop

OK, my interventionist friends. Is Russia's bombing of Georgia important enough to warrant US intervention? Move the troops from Iraq and call up a hell of a lot more? Kick Putin's ass and let him know that war doesn't happen while on the USA's watch?

I say 'NO'. It isn't our problem. Our isolation from this area would be splendid.

I can't wait for statements from Obama, McCain, and Barr on this.

OK, Today It's McCain

Er, wait. I think it was McCain that torqued me off last time, so, it's still McCain.

Can you believe the depths some candidates will go to in order to 'salt the mine'? On McCain's website, the reader is urged to 'spread the word', as a spammer- using cut & paste talking points to load into blog comment sections.

Heh- he's even awarding points for successful spamming.

I can't stand McCain. With legislation bearing his name, he'll restrict the politcal speech of people who are forthright. For his campaign, the slimiest, lowest forms of signal jamming are a-ok.

(h/t Reason Hit & Run)

Trade Horses!

Some folks think the Republicans are full of nerve, asking Libertarians to withdraw from close races. I don't see it as a slap in the face, so much as an opportunity. From Foolocracy:

To no one’s surprise, except Hupp’s and whichever Republicans she conspired with, the Libertarians refused to drop from the race. It is surprising that she considers the Libertarian Party as a Republican lapdog to rollover as needed. Third party candidates rarely have expectations to win, but they do believe in elections as a forum. Hupp may do well to check out the differences in the two parties’ platforms next time.

One of the Libertarians said that while Hupp did not directly offer board seats on local commissions, it was left open as a possibility. Hupp denied anything of the sort.

Wes Benedict, head of the Libertarian Party for Texas, dismissed the Republican requests for Libertarians to drop out. “Republicans need to earn those votes,” Benedict said.

If I were the Texas LP state chair, I'd make a deal: We'll drop out of these three races, AFTER, the Republican Party drops its candidates out of up to six races that are two-party contests, Libertarian vs Republican, at the same level: state house. No appointments. No swapping state office for county office. Straight up. Electoral contests for electoral contests. But since they're asking and I'm in the driver's seat, my price is high. As a state chair, I'd take six sure electoral wins.

Elections are indeed great forums for discussing ideals, but hardly the best thing going. Nothing beats elected office as a forum for implementing the ideals, which is what really matters.

Budgets and Relative Belt Tightening

When the budget gets tight at the Kole house, the vacation budget is eliminated. It's a 100% budget cut, until such time as we can afford it. We eat out 75% less. Entertainment is little more than a trip to the library. New clothing purchases are halted. Etc. In sum, the cuts are pretty harsh.

Elected officials are therefore hilarious in comparison. They whine and moan about 3% or 4% budget cuts. Boo-friggin'-hoo!

Here's an interesting bit from Cato's David Boaz:

Time to stop spending, eh? That would be most people’s response to an unprecedented deficit. And they do mention “irresponsible spending” later in the piece. But somehow, it appears that the governors thought that was a good lead for an article in the Washington Post demanding more federal spending to subsidize state governments.

They lamented the the plight of the state budgets; New York, for instance, asked state agencies “to slash their state budgets by 3.35 percent.” Now, if I had to cut my budget for a new sofa, say, from $1,000 to $966.50, I don’t think I’d call that a “slash”; it’s more like margin of error.

Hilarious. And there are some who make it out that Grover Norquist has won the day, that fiscal conservatism has triumphed, with taxes almost nil, and the federal government shrunk to the size of that of the Polk Administration.

Reason has picked up on this willful ignorance, also, noting how some fans of larger government are tying the downward slide of the Republican Party to the idea that said slide is proof of the failure of fiscal conservatism. I took Balloon Juice to task on this just last week. From Reason's Matt Welch:

"...a strain of curious left-of-center analysis I'm seeing more and more this election: That the Republicans are losing because limited-government ideas don't work, and are no longer popular.

This critique requires a significant leap of logic − that George W. Bush, and his would-be GOP successor John McCain, practice and/or believe in limited government principles."

Fiscal conservatism wasn't even tried out by the Republicans. Tax cut, borrow and spend simply isn't a fiscally conservative ideal. McCain thinks cutting earmarks is a slash, just as NY's governor thinks a 3% nick is a draconian reversion to primitive barbarism.

At the Kole house, and I'm quite sure at many others across the land, when the money isn't there, we radically cut our spending, by as much as 40%. We don't take out loans so that we can keep spending. We don't commandeer from our neighbors under the premise of 'the common good'. We cut spending.

Want To Trade?

My garden is going nuts. It's a problem to have, but my family simply cannot eat all of what we are producing.

If you want to trade, here's what I have ready to go right now:

Cilantro
Italian Basil
Lemon Basil
Simpson Leaf Lettuce

If you are near Fishers and have bell peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, or other lettuce varieties, and want to trade, email me at mikekole (a) comcast.net .

In about a week, I'm going to have 50 or more cucumbers. Wow.

Today, It's McCain

It seems that McCain and Obama take turns irritating me. Today, I am irritated with John McCain and his campaign. Can you believe this presumptuous crap?

Dear John- You don't have my support. You have a commitment against you, however. Kindly fade into obscurity.

I've gotten some fairly presumptuous stuff from Obama before, back in April '07 in fact, and it irked me then. I was the Libertarian Party's candidate for Secretary of State in '06, for crying out loud. I'm a Libertarian partisan! It's not too hard to look up, and it suggested to me that Obama would make the kind of president that wouldn't be too interested in details or facts, just getting the win. I really don't like that.

Well, I like this less. This one came with a letter, addressed to me, not to 'occupant' but to me by name, and identified me as a 'grassroots leader'. It targeted me as one with 'conservative principles'- which is correct, insofar as 'conservative' relative to change means, with lineage to Thomas Jefferson. So, the McCain campaign must have looked me up enough to know that I kind of have some grassroots political involvement.

.

McCain is the co-author of McCain-Feingold, the badly misnamed campaign finance 'reform' law. I don't know the full scope of McCain-Feingold, but I do know this: It's illegal to troll campaign finance reports for potential donors. I'm not saying that's what the McCain campaign is doing when it lands a targeted beg package like this in the lap of a guy like me, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

.

I really don't like that in a president, either.

.

The letter reads, "I know that before I ask for your support, I must earn your respect."

The McCain 'honor' stuff has worn more than thin. It's a load of bunk. If you want my respect, call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold, reverse your Iraq policy, apologize for your FISA vote, up the call for budget cuts from measly earmarks to something substantial like 5% across-the-board, and maybe just fold your campaign. that would be a start towards earning my respect.

Excellent Game!

Funny enough, I nearly sat out last night's hockey, due to a broken 'pinky' toe, but I decided to play anyhow, figuring I could sit out if it started bothering me enough, or that I could shy away from contact if it was suspect. Turns out it felt fine, and I had a great game, scoring a goal on a redirection, and helping put a play together to get a winning goal with 45 seconds left in the game.

It was very satsifying. I've been noticing that with regards to my exercise, I tend to allow circumstances get in the way of consistent effort. I made up my mind that I was going to do everything I could to not let an understandable circumstance interfere. A busted toe is about as good an excuse as one could find.

Here's what a redirection looks like. I get in front of the goalie to screen his vision. A teammate shoots the puck, and as it approaches, I use my stick to deflect the puck. It changes direction, leaving the goalie little chance to stop it. Redirections are my favorite goals to score, because they're very hard to pull off. You have your back to the net and the goalie when you do it.

Hyper-Inflation in Zimbabwe

I'm happy to say that I have no experience with hyper-inflation. I do have a growing concern about our growing inflation, so it was interesting and frightening to hear a man from Zimbabwe tell what it is like to deal with money that loses value as the minutes pass.

We're all feeling the pinch with marginal increases in inflation. Can you imagine going to the store for something, being interrupted by errands, returning to the store only to find the price has gone up 4x? Can you imagine that as a daily occurrance? This is life in Zimbabwe, where inflation is on a genuine runaway course.

Check out the Cato Daily Podcast for July 29, 2008, titled, "How Inflation Robs Zimbabwe". Link to Cato's podcast archive.

While most of the Federal Reserve's tinkering fixes one thing while creating other problems, one thing it can do well is to help keep inflation at bay. We need to stop borrowing money from foreign nations, and stop printing more money.

Intellectual Dishonesty

I can't stand it when libertarians are linked with George W. Bush, lumped together as fiscal conservatives. George W. Bush is not a fiscal conservative. He is a borrow & spend fiscal liberal. No president has increased spending at a faster rate than George W. Bush- not FDR, not LBJ, no one.

So the post on the blog Balloon Juice, "Fiscal Conservatism, Part Two" made me go to the garage to hammer the heavy bag for a few minutes.

The Bush economic record is a disaster, for taking a surplus and turning into a monstrous deficit. It was due to spending into a tax cut.

That's where the intellectual dishonesty comes in- blaming the tax cut while putting the blinders on for the increased spending Bush signed into law.

Libertarians, who are fiscal conservatives, have been beating up Republicans for their out-of-control spending for the better part of the 8-year Bush Administration. He didn't use his veto pen for a single appropriations bill while the Republicans had control of Congress. I must have had 20 posts on the subject by myself.

I thought people on the right were suckers for accepting this batch of Republicans as fiscal conservatives. But that people on the left apparently also accept them as such indicates to me that nobody really has a grasp of what a fiscal conservative stands for. Either that, or there is widespread engagement in intellectual dishonesty.

So, allow me to fill the breach.

Fiscal conservative: lower taxes, lower spending
Fiscal liberal, tax & spend variety: higher taxes, higher spending
Fiscal liberal, borrow & spend variety: lower taxes, higher spending, higher borrowing, higher taxes tomorrow

George W. Bush, the Republican leadership of the 108th and 109th Congress- all are of the latter stripe. Libertarians having nothing to do with that.

By the way, now that the 110th Congress is in power, and writes the law, including the budget, it could aggressively attack the deficit by cutting spending. But that's something it is unwilling to consider. To Democrats, the only way to balance a budget bloated by spending is to tax more.

More than one way to skin a cat, folks. Cutting spending balances the budget, too.

If Democrats don't know where to start, allow this Libertarian to give you some hints:

Iraq
Iraq
Iraq

and, Iraq. At least live up to your rhetoric- even if Bush didn't live up to his on fiscal conservatism.

Old Kole posts on Republican spending, at various levels of government:

1-14-2006
9-29-2005
7-10-2005
6-29-2005
3-22-2005
1-18-2005

And, last but not least, here is my post from November 28, 2004. It was printed as a column in a few Indiana newspapers. It was a post-election analysis, on the Republican sweep, both nationally and here in Indiana. I warned fiscal conservatives that they would not be happy with the result of electing Republicans, hoping for spending cuts.

But, behind some of the grins, there is a group within the broad spectrum of conservatives that is gritting its clenched teeth behind a half-hearted smile. While excited for the possibilities Republican majorities bring, this group shares a great deal of the anxiety liberals have in anticipation of the first wave of new policy that will soon greet us. This group is the fiscal conservatives.

It was not a series of referendums on capping budgetary growth that swept George W. Bush to re-election. It was a series of referendums on gay marriage.

snip

If Republicans won't do the job of reducing spending this year, with their majorities at home and in Washington, fiscal conservatives will know that it is time to look for a new political home. They will have no choice but to conclude that if spending won't be cut this year, it never will so long as Republicans are in charge.

Republicans didn't cut a thing. Grover Norquist got nothing. I got nothing... except a bigger share of a deficit, for money spent on things I generally don't approve of. And, I have liberals calling George Bush a fiscal conservative, sullying the good name of fiscal conservatism?

You want to come over and kick my dog, too?

Change In Perception

There was a day back in the early 90s when I really thought living off the grid in some very isolated place, being as fully self-reliant as possible. This was before I knew what a libertarian was. Two things have changed since then: Turns out that I like living near people and interacting with them. Also, this notion has gone from being thought of as kook stuff, to being thought of as environmentally responsible.

It came to mind as I encountered a copy of 'Backwoods Home' magazine at the barber yesterday. There were tips on composting, small family farming and canning, cloth diapers, solar energy, survival and weaponry.

An interesting mix of crunchy granola and the militia frontier, oddly, happily coexisting- some 80 or more acres or so apart.

It was interesting to see how many of these things we've been doing on our suburban property: composting, raising an organic vegetable garden, and looking into alternative energy like solar panels. We did cloth diapers, stopped buying paper towels and napkins, and went to the flourescent bulbs long before there was a law about it. These things aren't merely more environment-friendly. They're cheaper!

Take Away My Gridlock?

Gridlock. It's my only hope for limiting the otherwise rampant growth of government. Talk of eliminating it is talk of taking away my one last realistic hope for the 2008 elections at the federal level. We saw how destructive and government-growing one party rule was under a nominally 'smaller government' party. What's it going to look like if the plainly bigger government Democrats get their wish for their own brand of one party rule?

No sooner had I stuffed the McCain business reply letter full of newspaper, did I get an Obama mailing. Obama has as a new objective the elimination of gridlock.

So, that's the audacity of hope? Hell, that's the elimination of hope for me. I can't vote for McCain or Obama, since neither of them is pro-smaller government. Barr isn't likely to win. Gridlock is the best I can hope for, but Obama wants to squash my hope.

Thanks for nothing. Here- have your own envelope full of shredded newspaper.

Worried About China?

I'm not, even though it seems to be poised to surpass the USA in so many meaningful ways, with GDP being just one such. To me, the meteoric rise of the Chinese economy is an fine example of what even a little capitalism can do to raise the standard of living anywhere- even within a farily totalitarian regime.

It should be a stark lesson to us, and easy to see: More capitalism = more wealth. More government = less wealth.

There is an interesting Washington Post article today that gives many reasons not to worry about China, despite our huge trade deficit with that country. Here's one:

One important nuance we keep forgetting is the sheer size of China's population: about 1.3 billion, more than four times that of the United States. China should have a big economy. But on a per capita basis, the country isn't a dragon; it's a medium-size lizard, sitting in 109th place on the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database, squarely between Swaziland and Morocco. China's economy is large, but its average living standard is low, and it will stay that way for a very long time, even assuming that the economy continues to grow at impressive rates.

Remember what kept that economy down- the Communist regimes, beginning with Mao, and to the present.

I don't like the conclusion in the quote, though. The USA was once in the position China was, relative to Britain, as an economic power. The US was the up and coming low-tech, cheap production underdog, while Britain was the high-tech economic ruler of the day. The British once scoffed at America's position in the world, confident it would never be surpassed. The USA kept producing cheaply and innovating, eventually becoming the high-tech producer of the world.

Why was Britain surpassed by the US? Two things. The UK became increasingly regulated, and Britain had a worldwide empire. "The sun never sets..." That took enormous effort to sustain, and proved unsustainable. The British choked off innovation in their industries, via regulation.

Here we are in the USA, repeating the mistakes of history. We hyper-regulate our industry, driving the business to other countries. We are trying to play the world's cop, intervening in affairs that don't affect us directly, paying for bases and operations in most of the world's nations.

The US built its wealth under relative 'isolation'. Notice that China, once greatly involved in funding revolutionary forces in SE Asia, now is relatively isolationist itself. How about that? Increase capitalism, reduce interventionism, and China begins to assert itself as a growing financial power.

China is hardly perfect, but in some important ways, they are going in the right direction, while here in the USA, in those same important ways, we are going in the wrong direction.

IPS - Worst in the Nation

According to yet another study on the subject of public school graduation rates, Indianapolis Public Schools graduate 19% of its' students.

19%. From the Indy Star report:

Only about a quarter of public schoolchildren in Indianapolis attend IPS. And the district -- by big-city standards -- is not especially large, with 35,000 students, and shrinking.

It is shrinking, in part, because parents increasingly are sending their children to charter schools. Others move from the district or, in affluent neighborhoods, send children to schools outside the district.

It's pretty simple. If you have any means, and any hope for your children, you get them out of IPS. You move, you send them to private school- anything but send them to IPS.

This constitutes a near wholesale rejection of IPS. 75% of students and parents reject IPS. But of the 25% who settle on IPS, another 81% fail to graduate from it.

So, IPS graduates 4.75% of Marion County students. (19% of the 25%) That's about as dismal as could be imagined. Why does all this money continue to be sent down a rat hole? For this, the elderly are being displaced from their homes in the property tax war?

If 75% of Marion County rejects what is being given to them for free, and another 81% of the students who stay in IPS later reject what is being given to them for free, isn't it time to start questioning whether or not it is the great benefit it's touted as, and as importantly, should be given?

I think at this point, IPS should be scrapped entirely. If it should survive, then tuition should be charged. The people who value education will pay for it. Those who don't, well, 75%, plus another 81% percent of the remaining 25% are rejecting it for free anyway.

Here's a link to the Schott Foundation's most recently published study.

Human Nature Never Changes

One thing that irks me is to hear someone say, "Non-interventionist foreign policy may have been fine 200 years ago, but this is a different day and age.

Horsefeathers. I was reading Doug Masson's latest blog entry, called "War is a Racket". It featured a couple of lengthy citations about war, and the motive to transfer wealth from the Treasury to the businesses making war materiel.

This war in Iraq is foolish. Iraq was a threat to the USA? Iraq was hardly a threat to Iran, let alone the USA. It certainly wasn't planning to do anything to us, which is why we should have left Iraq alone. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a nasty, brutal dictator. That's our problem? Not a chance.

The longer this drags on, the more I begin to wonder why we're there.

Anyhow, Masson's quotables are from WWI, and Mark Twain. The idea of cashing in on war is not new. Human nature doesn't change. That's why ideology can be applied across eras, and why pragmatism is more like sticking your finger up in the air to see which way the wind blows.

I was also reminded of the great Dead Kennedys bit "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Round".

Marion County Homicides in July

Last summer, in the run-up to the mayoral election in Indianapolis, then-Mayor Bart Peterson was widely assailed by critics for the astonishing murder rate in Marion County. The critics were largely Greg Ballard backers.

Well, here we are one year later, and the murder count in Marion County is once again astonishing. As of yesterday, 22 days, 15 murders, one associated suicide. Link to Indy Star article on the latest atrocity, with list of July homicides.

So, one new mayor really doesn't make a difference.

I'm sure there will be some petty partisan sniping, regarding the failure of the new Mayor to reverse the course. Certainly the Peterson critics set the table for that. But it wouldn't be any different today had Peterson been re-elected, had Libertarian Fred Peterson been elected instead, or had Ghandi been resurrected and made mayor.

There is a mindset within Marion County, and other major American urban centers that says that violence is the answer to problems. That has to change.

I am not calling for the banning of guns. Removing the legality around the ownership of a particular piece of machinery does not change the mindset. Besides, as we saw in Washington DC, guns were still being used in the commission of crimes there. DC's ban failed to make it a safer place.

I am not calling for the banning of hip-hop, which often glorifies gun violence. Removing the music and videos won't eliminate the angst and dissatisfaction in the minds of those who turn to violence Besides, even societies who explicitly have been in command of their people, such as the Soviet Bloc, had underground avenues through which counter-cultural materials were obtained.

This is going to require an unravelling of what made the mindset in the urban center. That is a task of such broad reach, that it's not worth going on in depth in with a blog post. I must confess that I am not part of the solution. I fled the city. (Not just Indy, but Cleveland before.) It's far easier to just vote with your feet and get out, especially when you feel like you have ideas to contribute that are rejected out of hand. 

I don't see it getting better in Indy any time soon. The election of a new Mayor and a new majority in the City-County Council is not akin to the waving of a magic wand. 

Foreclosure and Attendant Intellectual Bankruptcy

Another thing Steve forwarded to me was a link to a recent item by Bill Moyers on PBS, regarding foreclosures and sub-prime lending. It was of interest to him and to me, because we both once lived in Cleveland in the St. Hyacinthe neighborhood, which sits adjacent to Slavic Village. Friends always mistakenly referred to our home as Slavic Village. Turns out that Slavic Village has been hit harder by foreclosures than any other place in the US. The item infuriated me.

The bias shown by Moyers and so many others is astonishing. The rush to blame capitalists is profound. I understand they are blinded by their anti-capitalism ideology, but how can you miss that there are two parties in any given loan agreement?

Moyers refers to 'predatory lending'. I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to mean, although it is clearly an attempt to paint a picture of the savagery by a powerful agent of a feckless innocent.

I call bullshit.

The person obtaining the loan knows his situation. He knows if he can afford to make payments or not. So, if someone knows the chances are good that they cannot make payments, and they take the money anyway, isn't that at the very least an act of fraud? Nobody forces the borrower to sign the documents. Certainly, nobody forces them to spend the money. They do this happily.

Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis gives two illuminating passages.

You'd tell them, "I don't have any money." "No problem, we don't, you don't require a down payment." Or, "I have a horrible credit score." "No problem, we're not gonna let that get in the way." "But I don't even have job." "No problem. We're not gonna document your income."

A couple of things come to mind. Collusion. Fraud. Two guilty parties who should go to jail. More Rokakis:

And the real victim here is the person that lives on that block, that person who pays their taxes, plays by the rules, has done nothing to deserve what they're facing today, which is a devastated neighborhood, with their most valuable asset, their home, now worth virtually nothing. That's the victim.

Government does have a legitimate role to play here- protecting the innocent homeowners Rokakis describes. I believe in the free market, but I no more support this savagery than I support warlordism on the basis of a 2nd Amendment defense.

Let those who took bad loans suffer the consequences fully. Let those lenders who issued bad loans also suffer the consequences fully. No bailouts for these bad actors. If the lenders have any assets left, that's where you turn to restore the properties, to the extent it can be done, in the name of protect the innocent neighboring property owners who did nothing wrong.

So, let's not merely call it 'predatory lending'. Let's also call it 'fraudulent borrowing', or even 'predatory borrowing'. It takes two to tango on this one.

Here's the piece. Try to stay with it, through all of the BS rhetoric. It ain't easy.



The item treats this area as though it was doing great, and then the sub-prime lending started, and suddenly the neighborhood began to ring the bowl. Nothing could be further from the truth. Slavic Village began it's decline immediately after WW2, when the Ferro Motor Company shuttered and moved out to suburban Brookpark, as did much of the increasingly affluent population. Slavic Village became an area of 'starter homes'- a place you bought your first home, but also a place you left as soon as you could trade up.

I left St. Hyacinthe in 2000- long before the sub-prime phenomenon was in anyone's awareness. I was offered the opportunity to buy the house across the street from me in 1998, as I was interested in working to build the neighborhood up. I declined. The asking price? $11,000. The problem was the horribly sunken foundation.

There was another house down the street I looked at. It was a double. I was told I couldn't go upstairs. Why? There was a family squatting there. I also couldn't go into the basement. I was told this right as I nearly fell down to the basement floor- because the staircase had collapsed, and silly me, I expected it to be in place. The living room floor was hard wood, but it had a hole in it about 3' in diameter. It looked like a cannon ball had been shot through it. But this wasn't the HMS Indomitable. What in the world caused that?

The asking price was $5,000. I laughed at the realtor and told her, "You can pay me $5,000 and I'll take it."

That realty check might have been nice, you know, to make the piece seem like it was dwelling in the real world, just a bit. In infuriated me to watch, knowing that millions of American views would be sitting and watching, going, "wow, look how the lenders wrecked that place". It just isn't true. It was largely wrecked already. that's why I gave up and left in 2000 for the suburbs myself.

Shoddy, shoddy journalism. Yet still of interest.

On a more positive final note, good to see my old college radio buddy Brian Davis. He's long had a passion for helping the homeless that I respect greatly.

Rex Bell's Excellent Travels

Being that I just got back from a week in the Yellowstone Park area, it's hard to imagine that I could possibly have travel envy for anyone, and yet I have just a bit for my friend Rex Bell.

It seems he just did a tour of Washington with other Indiana Libertarian candidates. Rex is a candidate for Indiana House, District 54, and he journeyed with Congressional candidate Dr. Eric Schansberg (9th District), Indiana Senate candidate Steve Keltner (District 30), and former Libertarian state chair Mark Rutherford.

Among those Rex and the group met with was Dick Heller, he of Heller vs DC, the landmark 2nd Amendment case just heard by the Supreme Court. Then he met with folks from the Cato Institute, the Libertarian Party's national HQ, David Weigel of Reason Magazine, and more.

Check out Rex's full post!

I kind of knew that Rex had met with Reason, thanks to a post on Reason's 'Hit & Run' by Weigel, mentioning the possibility of Bob Barr campaigning in Indiana in tandem with Hoosier Libertarians like Rex, Keltner, and Schansberg.

Whatever envy I feel just shows that no one vacation can satisfy every facet of one's being, great though the experiences may be. Congrats, Rex!

New Linkage

My friend Steve has been avidly reading on water policy, and has turned me on to some interesting reading- such as the book Cadillac Desert, which chronicles our disastrous western water policy.

Another great read is the Aguanomics blog, by economist David Zetland. He's a free-market economist, and lately, he's been showing example after example of how the government monopoly utility method of water allocation is ensuring environmental disaster. He believes markets would inject higher prices, which would be a good thing, for it would cause people to be less wasteful and more judicious in their water usage.

The link has been added, at the right.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Candidates

Two candidates have campaign staff with ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the form of lobbyists for the lenders. Two candidates have been guarded in their comments about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One has not.

Bob Barr had this to say about the lending collapse:

Oklahoma City, OK -- The latest financial crisis involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee home mortgages, demonstrates yet again how government intervention in private markets almost always comes to grief. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are nominally private, but were created by Congress and enjoy significant advantages over truly private companies, including cheaper borrowing, lower capital requirements, and an implicit federal guarantee.

As a result, the two organizations behaved irresponsibly, confident that they were “too big to fail.” They own $5.1 trillion in mortgage debt, almost half of the nation’s total. With the sub-prime lending crisis in full swing, their losses are up, their capital is down, and their ability to borrow is falling. Immediate privatization is difficult because the markets doubt the organizations can survive without government support. Insolvency and a forced asset sale would roil both the housing and financialmarkets.

These problems are almost entirely the fault of the federal government. Congress created programs to artificially inflate the housing market, established Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be exempt from normal scrutiny, oversight, and competition, and expanded their activities in response to the sub-prime lending meltdown. Government must get out of the mortgage business, but must do so in a way that least harms taxpayers and the economy.

Link to full Barr statement.

Today, the Washington Post treated its' readers to a rare piece of actual journalism, wherein the campaign team members for Obama and McCain who have also lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are named. This is not small-change lobbying, by the way:

That payroll has cost Fannie and Freddie nearly $200 million in lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade, according to lobbying reports and Federal Election Commission disclosures. It has also won them plenty of protection from calls for greater regulation, less federal protection, and even nationalization.

$200 million. That's a lot of money to syphon away from the core business in order to buy special favors.

McCain the Maverick. Omaba the Agent of Change. Bullshit!

Reviving The Call For A Greenway

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization is bent for leather to build a light rail starter on the old Nickel Plate rail corridor, which runs northeasterly from Indianapolis to Castleton, Fishers, and Noblesville, roughly parallel to Allisonville Road. It is the trackage that the annual Fair Train runs on, from the Fishers station to the Fairgrounds.

I have long maintained that this isn't even the best possible use for the corridor. Make it a greenway, like the Monon.

You'll note that nobody is clamoring to re-track the Monon. Why is that?

Well, it runs through Carmel, for one thing. Wouldn't want to upset their apple cart. After all, they have enjoyed a significant boost to their property values thanks to the Monon Trail. There are other benefits that light rail cannot provide: The greenway encourages a healthy lifestyle. People actually use it. It gobbles far fewer tax dollars to create than a light rail line will.

I can't help but believe there are politically connected contractors waiting in the wings, hoping this light rail boondoggle gets built on the Nickel Plate. There is a lot of money to be made in restoring and improving the trackage, supplying locomotives and passenger cars, building fences, landscaping, etc.

I know that the price of gasoline has pinched everyone. It hurts. But let's not throw good money after bad. Most people aren't going to ride the rails, despite chatter to the contrary. It's only one line, and is unlikely to take the rider to their ultimate destination. Congestion on I-69 isn't very heavy at all. (Drive in Chicago, for comparison.) Parking downtown is plentiful and cheap.

Build the Nickel Plate Greenway!

Comment can be posted to the MPO.