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Manchester Guardian reports on Zimbawe’s latest disasters.
Zimbabweans are shopping like there’s no tomorrow. With police patrolling the aisles of Harare’s electrical shops to enforce massive government-ordered price cuts, the widescreen TVs were the first things to go, for as little as £20. Across the country, shoes, clothes, toiletries and different kinds of food were all swept from the shelves as a nation with the world’s fastest shrinking economy gorged itself on one last spending spree.
Car dealers said officials were trying to force them to sell vehicles at the official exchange rate, effectively meaning that a car costing £15,000 could be had for £30 by changing money on the blackmarket. The owners of several dealerships have been arrested.
President Robert Mugabe’s order that all shop prices be cut by at least half, and sometimes several times more, has forced stores to open to hordes of customers waving thick blocks of near worthless money given new value by the price cuts. The police and groups of ruling party supporters could be seen leading the charge for a bargain. …
John Fund with a great column.
The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law.
In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration’s budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight.
Although Congress has long insisted on copious reporting by corporations, including the burdens of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, lawmakers have been relatively nonchalant about union reporting. Unlike the quarterly filings of corporations, unions must only file once a year with the Labor Department using a free software program. They don’t have to get an independent certified audit, are only rarely audited by the government, and don’t have to follow standard accounting methods. …
David Brooks sits in on an interview W.
I spent the first four days of last week interviewing senators about Iraq. The mood ranged from despondency to despair. Then on Friday I went to the Roosevelt Room in the White House to hear President Bush answer questions on the same subject. It was like entering a different universe.
Far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored. While some in his administration may be looking for exit strategies, he is unshakably committed to stabilizing Iraq. If Gen. David Petraeus comes back and says he needs more troops and more time, Bush will scrounge up the troops. If GeneralPetraeus says he can get by with fewer, Bush will support that, too.
Bush said he will get General Petraeus’s views unfiltered by the Pentagon establishment. He feels no need to compromise to head off opposition from Capitol Hill and is confident that he can rebuild popular support. “I have the tools,†he said.
I left the 110-minute session thinking that far from being worn down by the past few years, Bush seems empowered. His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency. …
Rich Lowry Corner posts on Brooks’ column.
John Stossel continues reporting his talk with Michael Moore.
Michael Moore loves government.
OK, he doesn’t love a government headed by George W. Bush, but he believes that once the Democrats are in charge, government will do a better job providing health care.
In his new movie, “Sicko,” he praises government-controlled health care systems in Canada and Europe. He suggests that Americans pay more for health care but have a shorter life expectancy than people in other countries because our health care is driven “by profit.”
He is wrong in so many ways.
First, life expectancy is no measure of a country’s medical system. Lifestyle and culture matter more, and Americans are different.
Interviewing Moore for an upcoming health care special on “20/20,” I said, “In America we kill each other more often. We shoot each other. We have more car accidents. Forgive me, more of us look like … you.”
He smiled at that, but still argued that that people live longer in Canada “because they never have to worry about paying to go see the doctor. That means at the first sign of being sick they go right away to the doctor cause they’re not worrying about whether or not they can afford it.”
Please. …
The Captain has the story on how Hillary paid off Vilsack.
Tom Vilsack dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in February, one of the first significant also-rans to acknowledge reality. The former governor of Iowa endorsed Hillary in March, giving her a boost in the key state. However, that seems to have come as part of a quid pro quo, as her backers have piled contributions onto the defunct Vilsack candidacy — and some of the money wound up in Vilsack’s pockets:
The Captain referred to some previous posts which are here also.
Instapundit spotted more Gore hypocrisy.
“ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore’s green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter’s wedding in Beverly Hills.
Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass – arguably one of the world’s most threatened fish species.”
WSJ Editors on Norman Borlaug.
In 1944, when Norman Borlaug arrived in Mexico, the nation was in the grip of crop failure. Cereals like wheat are dietary staples. But in Mexico, an airborne fungus was causing an epidemic of “stem rust,” and acreage once flush with golden wheat and maize yielded little more than sunbaked sallow weeds. Coupled with a population surge, famine seemed in the offing.
Dr. Borlaug left Mexico in 1963 with a harvest six times what it was when he arrived. From acres of arable land sprung a hyperactive strain of wheat engineered by the scientist in his laboratory, fertilized and nurtured according to his methods, and irrigated by systems he helped to design. Mexico’s peasantry was not only fed — it was selling wheat on the international market. …
Mr. Borlaug with an op-ed today.