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In the NYTimes, Sharon LaFraniere describes bleak living conditions in North Korea.

… A six-day visit to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, that ended last Tuesday offered carefully monitored glimpses of a land where reality and fantasy are routinely conflated. While there were no obvious signs of impending collapse or political intrigue swirling around the fate of North Korea’s ailing leader, the visit offered hints of why the North might be particularly eager now to resume international aid and trade.

For nearly four years, an unrelenting barrage of government propaganda has promised that North Korea will be strong and prosperous by 2012, the centennial of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-il.

That is now 18 months away. And prosperous is the last word one would use to describe North Korea’s shuttered factories, skimpy harvests and stunted children.

Perhaps with that deadline in mind, North Korea’s leaders last week made what might be a bid to reduce their isolation. They offered concessions that could help open up and limit the country’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear program.

And after promising to retaliate militarily should South Korea renew artillery drills near disputed waters, they have reacted — so far — only with words. But North Korea has made conciliatory gestures before, to extract aid at times of economic need or political transition, only to turn hostile later.

Of the nation’s 24 million citizens, the three million in Pyongyang are the most privileged. North Koreans need a special permit to live or come here. Still, signs of hardship are evident. … 

…Economists say coal production is, at best, half that of two decades ago, and Pyongyang has regular power shortages. At the elite Foreign Language Revolution School, students warmed themselves around stoves fed by coal or wood. In much of the city, residents report only a few hours of electricity daily.

…Elsewhere, especially in northern provinces, residents report that child beggars haunt street markets, families scavenge hillsides for sprouts and mushrooms and workers at state enterprises receive nominal salaries, at best. Workers in Pyongyang are said to be much better compensated. …

Jennifer Rubin blogs that liberals still don’t understand why America doesn’t want socialized medicine.

Jill Lawrence writing in Politics Daily personifies liberal cluelessness on the subject of ObamaCare:

The biggest mystery of 2010 may be Democrats’ failure to explain and sell their landmark health law, and the public’s sustained resistance to it despite the popularity of many of its components. …

A mystery? Well, yes, the left can’t fathom why people would be disenchanted with a bill that requires them to buy insurance whether they like it or not, that constitutes another weighty entitlement program, that is now acknowledged not to bend the cost curve downward and that is already causing employers to dump or change their employees’ health-care coverage. But for those of us remotely in touch with the public zeitgeist, it’s no mystery at all.

Moreover, the contention that the Democrats’ problem is a communication one is a persistent fable that underscores just how sheltered the ObamaCare spinners remain from public antipathy toward a program that, among other things, is going to slash Medicare Advantage and impose a raft of mandates on new business. Obama graced us with hundreds of speeches and press conferences, and even a health-care forum. The more the voters heard the less they liked. …

Rubin also comments on Obamacare poll numbers.

…If there is a silver lining for the White House in the CNN poll, it is that although 54 percent oppose ObamaCare, that is down five points from a high in March, while support is up to 43 percent. Yes, those are still rather dismal figures for such an “historic” piece of legislation.

…The House will hold an up or down vote on repeal. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have a problem: does he allow a vote, thereby exposing his members to the wrath of voters? And if so and a number of those moderate Democrats bolt, where does that leave Obama’s argument that there is broad-based support for his legacy legislation?

Last time around, the White House and the Democratic leadership convinced their members to ignore the polls and vote for ObamaCare. But in the wake of a midterm election wipeout, will Democrats again defy the will of the voters? Stay tuned.

In Commentary, Tevi Troy reviews how Democrats forced Obamacare on an unwilling nation.

…The stronger case to be made, however, is that health care did in fact drive the election results. According to GOP pollster Bill McInturff, “This election was a clear signal that voters do not want President Obama’s health-care plan.” McInturff looked mainly at the battleground elections rather than including the heavily Democratic safe districts and found that in the 100 most closely contested House districts, 51 percent of voters described their votes as a message to the president on health care. In addition, more than half of independent voters told McInturff that they were voting against the health-care law. Independents supported Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 18 percent.

Another analysis, by Jeffrey Anderson, found that in “comparable districts, anti-Obamacare Democrats won reelection at twice the rate of pro-Obamacare Democrats.” According to Anderson, this meant that Democratic House members in swing districts who voted for the health-care bill “cut their chances of gaining reelection approximately in half.”

…Republicans are taking over the House of Representatives with a justified belief that the American people have given them a mandate to “repeal and replace” the health-care bill. They can’t succeed at it. Even if a repeal vote passes the House—and it is likely that such a vote will take place early in the year—Republicans will not be able to get that bill through the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Obama would veto it in any event. As a result, House Republicans will have to spend the next two years making the case for repeal, using the tools of the majority—gavels, more staff, and subpoena power—to highlight the case.

There are, however, two possible means of repeal. There is actual legislative repeal, passed by both Houses and signed by the president, which cannot happen until 2013 at the earliest. And there is effective repeal, in which the body politic rejects the substance of the bill, seeks waivers and exemptions, supports defunding important provisions, and challenges it in court, all of which would have the effect of making the whole scheme unworkable. This could be the ultimate fate of Obama’s signature legislation. …

James Delingpole, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, blogs about some global warming conspirators who had predicted no more snow for the UK.

…Here, for example, is a quote from a book published as recently as 2004: (H/T Ishmael2009)

…It was the traditional British winter, everyone’s dream of a white Christmas. And what no one knows – or likes to admit – is that it’s probably gone for good.

I haven’t seen snow like this for over seven years in Oxford, which isn’t too far from where I grew up. … In fact snow has become so rare that when it does fall – often just for a few hours – everything grinds to a halt. In early 2003 a ‘mighty’ five-centimetre snowfall in southeast England caused such severe traffic jams that many motorists had to stay in their cars overnight. Today’s kids are missing out: I haven’t seen a snowball fight in years, and I can’t even remember the last time I saw a snowman.

Like the Christmas snow, the holly and the ivy may soon be distant memories.

The book was called High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis. And it’s by Mark Lynas. This would be the same Mark Lynas who has done very nicely thank you out of advising the Maldives Government on its ‘climate change’ strategy…

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Mark Helprin addresses some of the problems with our declining military strength.

…The president’s point was that despite whatever dangers we may face, the military must wait for the economy. But this is not so. Rather than dragging the economy down, putting the country on a war footing in 1940 revived it. Rearmament was a super-potent organizing principle and engine of production. Between 1931 and 1940 average GDP was $77.5 billion, and average unemployment 19%. By 1944, GDP had increased 271%, to $210 billion, unemployment had dropped to 1.2%, and real personal income had more than doubled. All this despite the fact that by 1945 the country was spending just under 40% of GDP, and 86% of the federal budget, on defense, at a time when a much greater proportion of income was devoted to necessities. And subsequently the war debt was retired with relative ease even as we enabled the rebuilding of Europe and defended it for half a century.

What does this tell us about defense spending? It tells us not only that it is not a poison, it can be an elixir. It tells us that it should proceed, therefore, not according to an ahistorical false premise, but in line with what is actually required to defend the United States. It tells us that, entirely independent of economic considerations, although not a dime should be appropriated to the military if it is not necessary, not a dime should be withheld if it is. The proof of this, so often and so tragically forgotten, is that the costs of providing an undauntable defense, whatever they may be, pale before blood and defeat. As for gauging necessity, we will have to deal with the rise of China, the growing power of Russia, and the nuclearization of fanatic regimes.

The strange, suicidal conviction now fashionable among the elite is that the customary vast reserves of power with which America maneuvers in the international system and, in extremis, wields in its defense, have become irrelevant to security and detrimental to the economy. All across the country, children are growing up who, in the fire next time, may pay for this prejudice with their lives. For a nation that has lost the unapologetic drive to defend itself cannot escape the consequences no matter how deft its self-deceptions or the extent to which, in contradiction of history and fact, error is ratified by common belief. …

Roger Simon points to one item Congress can cut out of the budget – the UN. 

When I was a kid, I thought the United Nations was the most righteous and positively idealistic organization in the world. It was the hope of humanity and I worshipped it. (My father — a doctor — volunteered for WHO and I would accompany him to the New York headquarters about once a month, gawking at the colorful Third World costumes and wishing I could speak French, la langue diplomatique.)

Man, times have changed. I now regard the UN as a kind of global racket with three principal, often related, areas of, in Mafia style, special interest: propaganda for totalitarian countries, massive corruption (e.g. Oil-for-Food) and spying. …

…of all of the despicable malfeasances of the United Nations, nothing surpasses the international body’s mega-Orwellian approach to human rights known as the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” later shortened to the “World Conference Against Racism” (WCAR), aka Durbans I, II and, now, incredible as it may seem, III.

…They are the reverse of what they pretend to be and should be labeled the “World Conference for the Promotion of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” I attended Durban II in Geneva – you can see some reports here and here — and I can say personally that I have never seen anything as quite literally insane. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the keynote speaker of a human rights conference.

The whole thing virtually broke down when several European delegates walked out on the Iranian despot in the midst of one of his predictable anti-Semitic screeds (the US, despite some equivocation, had ultimately declined to go in the first place). UN officials ran and hid from the media after this debacle and you would think they wouldn’t want to repeat such a disgrace but… here they go again with Durban III this September… and in New York, of all places.

…Enough already. When the new Congress comes in in January, they should move to defund the UN if they persist in promoting these proto-fascistic conferences…We elected them to cut the budget. They should start with the UN.

Caroline Glick discusses Hamas and Fatah plans against Israel, and what Israel needs to do to counter them, in the Jerusalem Post.

…The Durban II conference last year in Geneva was supposed to reinvigorate the political war that was launched in 2001. But it was a bust. The only head of state to address the proceedings was Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He used the occasion to again call for the eradication of the Jewish state.

To prevent another flop, last month the Palestinians and their supporters agreed that the 10th anniversary conference will be held in New York during the opening of UN General Assembly. Their goal is to piggyback on that conference to get heads of state that are in New York already to join in their anti-Israel political war.

And they have every reason for optimism. Although Canada and Israel have announced their plans to boycott the conference, the Obama administration has been noticeably unwilling to distance itself from it.

…Israel must also rally its allies to its side. We must ask our friends in the US Congress to defund the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. The PA is a terroristic and criminal syndicate that uses US taxpayer dollars to finance terrorism and pad the pockets of terror masters and apparachiks. UNRWA, which is supposed to be a welfare organization, openly acknowledges that it employs terrorists, allows its schools and camps to be used as jihad indoctrination centers, training camps and missile launching pads. The Congressional Research Service has stated that it is impossible to claim that US funds to UNRWA do not at least indirectly finance terror groups. …

David Harsanyi defends Sarah Palin’s comments on the government telling parents what to feed their kids.

During what I assume was an action-packed episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on TLC, the former vice presidential candidate poked some gentle fun at First Lady Michelle Obama’s ubiquitous children’s health crusade.

…when Palin claims that the Obamas do not trust people “to make decisions for their own children,” she is not unleashing some Bircher hyperbole; she is summing up the driving idea of two years of public policy and paraphrasing the first lady, who recently explained that, when it comes to eating, “We can’t just leave it up to the parents.”

…Now, Sarah Palin may not always be the most sophisticated spokesperson for conservative ideology, but she is right on the money here. With all the sneering about her comments, she might want to turn to one of her favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who also understood that “moral busybodies” who “torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

In Contentions, Abe Greenwald reviews Gallup poll numbers on who Americans most admire.

…Now for the fun part: Guess who has the No. 2 spot. None other than George W. Bush. Normally, there’d be nothing remarkable in the last president being the second-most admired man in the country. But because the anti-Bush attack machine had so doggedly tried to paint him as a frightening historical outlier it’s stunning to see him treated like any American president…Bush only goes up from here.

…Amazing what two years of bad liberal policy will do to sharpen the assessment facilities of the American people. …

…the Democrats’ national nightmare, Sarah Palin, came in second to Hillary. Palin beat out none other than omnipresent cultural goddess Oprah Winfrey, who came in third (Both beat out First Lady Michelle Obama, who came in fourth).

To my mind, the big win goes to Palin. For all the pundit chatter about her not being a viable contender for president, the public admires her more than the most beloved media personality in the country. Like Oprah, Palin channeled her talent to connect with Americans toward its most efficient use.  The Tea Party allowed her to showcase her ability, raise her market value, and serve a cause she believes in: America. Right before the eyes of antagonistic columnists and hostile comics she became the credible face of the most transformative political movement the country has seen in decades. …

Peter Wehner comments on W’s successful book.

According to the UK’s Daily Mail, President George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points, has sold 2 million copies since it was released early last month. By way of comparison, President Clinton’s memoir, My Life, has sold 2.2 million since it was published in 2004. A spokesman for Crown, which published Decision Points, called the performance “remarkable” and said that he could not think of any other non-fiction hardback book that has sold even a million copies in 2010.

…President Bush’s memoir is extremely well done, particularly for a presidential memoir (they tend to be poorly written and not terribly revealing). It provides readers with keen insights into the decision-making process that defined the Bush presidency, from stem cells to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Freedom Agenda to AIDS and malaria initiatives and much more.

As has often been the case with this two-term president, Mr. Bush’s critics misunderestimated him. His presidency is in the process of undergoing a significant reevaluation; the success of Decision Points is simply more testimony to this.

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In the Boston Globe, Yvonne Abraham tells a heartwarming story about a teen’s service to a grateful family.

On Tuesday night, Patty and Rick Parker were in their cramped kitchen with their 8-year-old son Ben. Dinner was over. Bedtime was near.

Ben’s twin brother, Sammy, lay on a cot in the narrow hallway just outside the kitchen. Unable to see or speak or control his limbs, he coughed or let out a little moan every now and then. Rick and Patty took turns feeding Sammy, who has cerebral palsy, through a stomach tube. He cooed when they kissed his face or stroked his cheek, and when they cooed back, he opened his mouth into a wide, joyful O.

A few feet away was the narrow, winding stairway that is the family’s biggest burden lately.

Which is where 17-year-old Rudy’s simple, life-changing act of kindness comes in. …

More good news. In the Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz writes about the damage to the Iranian nuclear operations reportedly created by the Stuxnet virus.

…Last week, The Jerusalem Post interviewed Ralph Langer, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze Stuxnet’s code. It was possible the worm had set back Iran’s nuclear program by two years, Langer said.

…David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Post that during a study of the Stuxnet code, he discovered that the virus caused the engines in Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges to increase and decrease their speed. The report cited an unnamed government official who claimed that Iran usually ran its motors at 1,007 cycles per second to prevent damage, while Stuxnet seemed to increase the motor speed to 1,064 cycles per second.

…Albright said that the number of centrifuges damaged – 1,000 – also appeared to indicate that Stuxnet – if it caused the breakage – was meant to be subtle and work slowly by causing small amounts of damage to the systems that would not make the Iranians suspect that something foreign – like malware – had been infiltrated into their computers. “It could be that Stuxnet was meant to be subtle to disrupt and break more and have less enriched uranium produced,” he said.

Mark Perry and Robert Dell, in the American.com, posit that the recession was due to government failure, and identify six government policies that created the most damaging incentives in the economy.

…To fully explain the banking crisis, one must account for its timing, severity, and global impact. One must also confront a startling historical contrast. … we find that in the period 1875-1913, a period of marked expansion in international trade and capital flows comparable to the last three decades, there were only four banking crises worldwide.1 By contrast, in the period 1978-2009, a period of much more extensive bank regulation, central bank intervention, government protection of depositors and other bank creditors, and government control of mortgage markets, about 140 banking crises occurred worldwide. Of these, 20 were more severe than any crisis from the earlier period of 1875-1913, in terms of total bank losses as a percent of GDP.

In answer to the questions posed above about what specific factors explain the…causes and timing of the banking crisis and the extraordinary departure from historically sound underwriting and securitization standards for residential mortgages, we identify a potent mix of six major government policies that together rewarded short-sighted collective risk-taking and penalized long-term business leadership…

Underlying all these six government policies is the underappreciated problem of government failure, a problem rooted in the absence of incentives to reconcile a policy’s social costs and benefits with the costs and benefits to the policy makers. Therefore, the banking crisis should be understood more fundamentally as a government failure than as a market or business failure.

…The crisis certainly could not have occurred without certain private firms (e.g., Citigroup, UBS, Merrill Lynch) engaging in excessive corporate short-termism (or perhaps “greed”) along the same lines as Fannie and Freddie. But greed is a timeless and universal component of human nature, and it influences the public sphere at least as much as the private sector. As such, greed has little relevance in explaining the timing and crucial facts of the recent crisis—such as why credit standards and due diligence practices in housing finance deteriorated so much more dramatically than in any other credit segment. …

…A more accurate interpretation of the financial crisis as predominantly a government failure could pave the way for real financial reforms that would contribute to both future financial stability and productivity. These reforms would include: 1) the gradual reduction of government intervention in mortgage markets through legislation such as the GSE Bailout Elimination and Taxpayer Protection Act (HR 4889), sponsored by Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas); 2) a reduction in federal deposit insurance and other transparent policy rules to reduce or eliminate creditor expectations of future bailouts, especially the “too big to fail” guarantee; 3) the replacement of elaborate regulatory micromanagement with more equity capital; and 4) a monetary policy rule or quasi-rule to govern the Federal Reserve’s policy making. …

The WSJ editors comment on how Oregon raised taxes and collected less than expected.

Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. The sun also rose in the east, and the Cubs didn’t win the World Series.

…The biggest loss of revenues came from capital gains receipts. The new 11% top tax rate applies to stock and asset sales, which means that Oregonians now pay virtually the highest capital gains tax in North America. Instead of $3.5 billion of capital gains in 2009, there was only $2 billion to tax—43% less. Successful entrepreneurs like Nike owner Phil Knight don’t get rich by being fools with their money. They don’t sell tens of millions of dollars of assets when capital gains taxes go up.

…All of this is an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax. There roughly one-third of the state’s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.

If Salem officials want to find where the millionaires went, they might start the search in Texas, the state that leads the nation in job creation—and has a top income and capital gains tax rate 11 percentage points lower than Oregon’s.

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Jennifer Rubin tells us what the GOP got from the START treaty.

… All of that, along with reporting requirements concerning efforts to modernize our nuclear weapons, is quite a reversal for a president who pledge to “rid the world” of nuclear weapons.

It took a poorly negotiated treaty, a tenacious Jon Kyl and the efforts of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to coax Obama into a reasonable position on nuclear weapons and defense. And if the Russians cheat or withdraw, we will still, if Congress holds the president’s feet to the fire, have a modern nuclear weapons system and a robust missile defense. That’s not nothing.

NY Post editors comment on the Clapper flap.

…. On Monday, Diane Sawyer asked the White House’s top anti-terrorism brains about the fallout from the sweeping arrests of 12 men in the UK early that morning.

Clapper’s response: Silence. Crickets. The sound of one career, well, imploding. Pressed by Sawyer, he admitted he simply hadn’t heard of the matter.

It was a mortifying lapse given Clapper’s position: As DNI, he oversees all 16 US intelligence agencies and serves as chief intel adviser to the president. …

IBD editors too.

James Clapper’s ignorance of a major counter-terrorist success is less distressing than why he got his job as director of national intelligence: to “Obamacize” America’s spy operations.

Why was the nation’s top intelligence official unaware in an ABC News interview this week that Britain had, many hours earlier, foiled an al-Qaida-related plot of multiple suicide bombings targeting Christmas shoppers?

The White House at first claimed Director Clapper was busy all day preventing another Korean War and getting the New START treaty ratified. It was eventually admitted he hadn’t been briefed.

Could the truth be that Clapper is too busy as mega-bureaucrat? Science fiction novelist Jerry Pournelle has an “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”: “In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.”

Worst of all, “The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization.” …

Jennifer Rubin draws important conclusions from the event.

… Putting aside the hapless Clapper, this should raise a more fundamental question: Do we need the DNI post at all? The elaborate reworking of our intelligence structure after Sept. 11 has made the system more cumbersome. But has it made us safer? Well, if it’s no big deal that the DNI missed a significant terror incident, then maybe his job and many layers of bureaucracy can be eliminated.

Michael Barone takes a quick glance at the meaning of new census numbers.

For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau director Robert Groves announced on Tuesday the first results of the 2010 census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.

The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That’s an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 census — the smallest proportional increase than in any decade other than the Depression 1930s but a pretty robust increase for an advanced nation. It’s hard to get a grasp on such large numbers. So let me share a few observations on what they mean.

First, the great engine of growth in America is not the Northeast Megalopolis, which was growing faster than average in the mid-20th century, or California, which grew lustily in the succeeding half-century. It is Texas. …

You may remember in December 16th Pickings the essay by Brooks and Wehner about competing human nature narratives when time was spent debunking the “noble savage” fairy tale from Rousseau and the Marxists. We have a couple of items that perfectly illustrate “nasty, brutish and short” – the concept of natural human life of Thomas Hobbs. First a NY Times story from Northern Spain where the examination of the bones of a Neanderthal family discovers they were cannibalized.

Deep in a cave in the forests of northern Spain are the remains of a gruesome massacre. The first clues came to light in 1994, when explorers came across a pair of what they thought were human jawbones in the cave, called El Sidrón. At first, the bones were believed to date to the Spanish Civil War. Back then, Republican fighters used the cave as a hide-out. The police discovered more bone fragments in El Sidrón, which they sent to forensic scientists, who determined that the bones did not belong to soldiers, or even to modern humans. They were the remains of Neanderthals who died 50,000 years ago.

Today, El Sidrón is one of the most important sites on Earth for learning about Neanderthals, who thrived across Europe and Asia from about 240,000 to 30,000 years ago. Scientists have found 1,800 more Neanderthal bone fragments in the cave, some of which have yielded snippets of DNA.

But the mystery has lingered on for 16 years. What happened to the El Sidrón victims? In a paper this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Spanish scientists who analyzed the bones and DNA report the gruesome answer. The victims were a dozen members of an extended family, slaughtered by cannibals. …

Next item making the “noble savage” advocates look like fools comes from Google. Turns out 45 people have been lynched in Haiti over the past few weeks. They were suspected of being sorcerers who spread cholera. “Nasty, brutish and short”, and ruled by superstition says Pickerhead.

Angry Haitian mobs have lynched at least 45 people in recent weeks, accusing them of spreading a cholera outbreak that has killed over 2,500 people across the country, officials said Wednesday.

The number included at least 14 suspected sorcerers previously known to have been lynched in the far southwestern region of Grand’Anse as local people feared they were spreading cholera with a magical substance. The area has been largely spared by the outbreak. …

Interesting WaPo story about Michael Jordan’s two sons who play for U of Central Florida. UCF was 10-0 at press time and broke into the top 25 rankings for the first time ever.

After sophomore guard Marcus Jordan misfired on a jump shot minutes into a Central Florida game against Miami last Saturday, a fan sitting a few rows from the court taunted gleefully.

“You’re not your father!” the man said. “Did you get a DNA test? Are you sure?”

Heckling rains every time the Knights hit the road, and Jordan’s expression never changes. His head never turns. He knows he lacks his famous father’s size and ability to hover by the rim. He wears silver Air Jordan shoes and a black Air Jordan headband, but this heir Jordan did not get all of his father’s gifts.

In many ways, Jordan isn’t like Mike at all. He sports black-rimmed glasses, a goatee and mustache, and tattoos up and down both arms. …

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Picking’s staff will be off for a bit during the holidays. Be back soon.

We start today with more interesting WikiLeaks, this time on the administration’s attitude toward Honduras. Rick Richman has great commentary in Contentions.

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote that cables released by WikiLeaks show that the administration knew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had threatened Honduran democracy — but supported him in order to offer President Obama a “bonding opportunity” with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a chance to ingratiate himself with Latin America’s hard left.

…I have a simpler explanation — not inconsistent with O’Grady’s analysis but closer to the common theme in Obama’s foreign policy in other areas. The day after Zelaya was removed, Obama pronounced it a “coup.” That snap judgment remained American policy even as more and more facts contradicting Obama’s description emerged. After months pushing a reinstatement that virtually every element of Honduran political and civil society opposed, and even though the proper and practical solution was apparent, Obama still engaged in mystifying diplomacy, cutting off aid to a poverty-stricken ally. …

…Obama brought to the Oval Office a self-regard probably unmatched in American history. He apologized for his country while praising it for electing him. He thought that Iran could be handled with his outstretched hand; that a foreign head of state should receive an iPod with his speeches on it; that a video of him was sufficient for the Berlin Wall anniversary; that a prime minister should be summoned to the White House after-hours without press or pictures; that a Palestinian state would be created because this time they had Him. Russia and China were treated with respect, as was Iran, even as it held a fraudulent election and blew through his successive “deadlines.” But allies such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Israel, and Britain were treated differently.

What was visited upon Honduras last year was of a piece.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady has the in-depth story on Honduras in the WSJ.

“The last year and a half of the [President Manuel] Zelaya Administration will be, in my view, extraordinarily difficult for our bilateral relationship. His pursuit of immunity from the numerous activities of organized crime carried out in his administration will cause him to threaten the rule of law and institutional stability.”

—Charles Ford, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, May 15, 2008

…In the opening summary, Mr. Ford wrote: “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.” The State Department says it does not comment on classified documents.

…Though Mr. Zelaya can be “gracious and charming,” wrote Mr. Ford, “there also exists a sinister Zelaya, surrounded by a few close advisors with ties to both Venezuela and Cuba and organized crime.” He eerily observed what Zelaya opponents would repeatedly allege privately in the year to come: “Due to his close association with persons believed to be involved with international organized crime,” the president could not be trusted. “I am unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement and counter-narcotics actions due [to] my concern that this would put the lives of U.S. officials in jeopardy.”

The insightful diplomat also recognized Mr. Zelaya’s disdain for other institutions. He “resents the very existence of the Congress, the Attorney General and Supreme Court.” That resentment rose to the surface in June 2009 when the Supreme Court ruled that a referendum on his re-election was unconstitutional. Mr. Zelaya responded by leading a mob to break into a military installation where the ballots for his initiative were being stored.

Hondurans were appalled. The Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant, the military deported him, and Congress voted to remove him from office. …

Robert Samuelson writes that state and local governments have been doing fine thanks to the stimulus, but the real fiscal headache that is coming is underfunded retirements benefits.

…All in all, the present squeeze on states and localities is overstated. The truly bad news lies in the future with massive retiree pension and health benefits that haven’t been prefunded. How big are the shortfalls? All estimates are huge, though they vary depending on technical assumptions and coverage.

…Whatever the ultimate costs, they threaten future levels of public services. The generous benefits encourage workers to retire in their late 50s or early 60s after 25 years of service. The health benefits typically provide coverage until retirees qualify for Medicare at 65. To pay for unfunded benefits, government services must either be cut or taxes raised. How much is (again) unclear. Even low estimates by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College indicate that annual pension payments for some states could roughly double. In Illinois, they could go from 4.5 percent of spending to 8.7 percent. Covering retiree health benefits would add to that.

So support for schools, police, roads and other state and local activities is undermined by careless—or corrupt—bargains between politicians and their public-worker unions. Promises of generous future retirement benefits were expedient contract sweeteners, with most costs conveniently deferred. Even when pension contributions were supposed to be made, they were often reduced or postponed when budgets were tight. If these arrangements look familiar, they should. The U.S. auto industry adopted the same model; the costs helped bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler.

What states and localities can do about this is limited. Pension promises to existing employees are probably legally inviolate. Retiree health benefits are apparently less so and should be reduced or eliminated to limit incentives for early retirement. Even if politicians manage this arduous feat, past decisions will burden the future. Along with an unwillingness to curb Social Security and Medicare costs, America’s leaders have created another way to cheat their children.

The Daily Mail, UK, reports on snow and record cold temperatures in the UK. Any quotes from the Climate Research Unit geniuses?

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.

And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910. …

Just to remind everyone how pervasive the greenist conspiracy had once been, let’s take a look back. In 2000, Charles Onians reported on global warming in the Independent, UK.

…Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. …

The Economist reports on an amazing cell phone milestone, and what the future holds.

SOMETIME in the next few months, the number of mobile phones in use will exceed 3.3 billion, or half the world’s population. No technology has ever spread faster around the globe: the mobile phone took less than two decades to reach this degree of penetration. But the ever-restless wireless industry has already set its sights on getting the other half connected. Two recent reports analyse how to add the “next billion” to the subscriber list. …

…Yet even as the industry strives to make handsets and services cheaper, governments keep adding costs—mainly by levying taxes and customs duties. And these are particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report released this week by Frontier Economics, a consultancy, at the behest of the GSM Association (GSMA), an industry lobby. The average ratio of tax payments to operator revenues is 30%. On average the mobile industry, which accounts for 4% of GDP, contributes 7% of national tax revenue.

This enthusiasm for taxation is easy to explain: governments have to tax something, and mobile phones are an easy target, since operators’ billing systems do all the hard work. But treating mobile phones as a cash cow is shortsighted, says Gabriel Solomon of the GSMA, because mobile-specific taxes reduce demand. If governments did away with them and charged only VAT, tax revenues from the mobile industry would be around 3% higher by 2012, the report found, and the average penetration rate would increase from 33% to 41%. (Studies have found that in a typical developing country, an increase in mobile penetration of 10% boosts GDP growth by around one percentage point.)

Whether or not finance ministers are not convinced by such calculations, operators seem to be. Some have offered to guarantee tax revenues if mobile-specific levies are scrapped. …

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Peter Wehner comments on James Ceaser’s appellation for the political change that produced the 2010 election results.

In his excellent essay in the Claremont Review of Books, titled “The Great Repudiation,” Professor James Ceaser wrote

“The results of the 2010 election changed the landscape of American politics. … In fact, 2010 is the closest the nation has ever come to a national referendum on overall policy direction or “ideology.” … There is only one label that can describe the result: the Great Repudiation.”

To understand just how much the landscape of American politics changed, consider (as John does) yesterday’s events — a day in which the Democratic majority in Congress averted across-the-board tax increases and enacted new tax breaks for individuals and businesses and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to pull an almost $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, replacing it (presumably) with a Continuing Resolution.

These were major substantive achievements by Republicans — and enormous substantive concessions by President Obama and his party. We have the Great Repudiation to thank for them.

And here’s James Ceaser’s article, from the Claremont Institute.

…The midterm election is one of the distinctive features of America’s constitutional system. By allowing an expression of voter sentiment separate from the presidential selection, midterms help supply the Congress with concrete political support for checking the president’s power. A check of this kind seems to be exactly what the public had in mind in 2010, ending liberal hopes that Obama’s presidency would inaugurate a “new” New Deal. …

…Elections in America serve two functions: a “formal” function of appointing the personnel for constitutional offices, which takes place in every election; and an “informal” function of signaling what the people want, which takes place only in certain elections, when national public sentiment has congealed into a common message or theme. The situation in Washington reflects a conflict stemming from the results of these two functions. On the formal side, the array of forces puts neither party in full control. Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans now firmly control the House, and the Senate will likely swing in ways no one can foresee. The Democrats, who now derive their power from this formal situation and rely on officials chosen in elections conducted two and four years ago, will emphasize their offices’ constitutional authority. They represent for the moment the conservative position. On the informal side, Republicans boast not just of their seats and numbers in Congress, but of the majority’s weight and power as expressed in the clear message delivered on Election Day. This claim cannot, of course, cancel the formal array of power-we are a nation governed by laws and institutions-but there is nothing amiss in reminding those in office that they cannot stray too far, too long from the majority’s wishes without straining a democratic system’s authority. Although the informal function should not be overvalued, it should not be undervalued either.

The Republicans’ case, resting on this informal claim that can always be disputed, is already under assault. Along with the Democrats’ open campaign to persuade the public that the election did not mean what Republicans thought it did, there is an allied effort underway, far more subtle, to undermine and weaken the GOP position. It comes from a group of self-proclaimed wise men who present themselves as being above the fray. These voices, acting from a putative concern for the nation and even for the Republican Party, urge Republicans to avoid the mistake of Obama and the Democrats of displaying hubris and overinterpreting their mandate. With this criticism of the Democrats offered as a testimony of their even-handedness and sincerity, they piously go on to tell Republicans that now is the time to engage in bipartisanship and follow a course of compromise. The problem with this sage advice is that it calls for Republicans to practice moderation and bipartisanship after the Democrats did not. It is therefore not a counsel of moderation, but a ploy designed to force Republicans to accept the overreaching policies of the past year-and-a-half. It is another way to defend Obama’s “change.” If Republicans are to remain true to the verdict of 2010, the message of this election cannot be merely containment; it must be roll back.

Peter Schiff says that the Fed has no other tricks left to artificially stimulate the economy. Worse yet, the quantitative easing will be bringing us inflation.

…For years, the Fed has been able to prevent market forces from correcting our growing economic imbalances by inexorably pushing rates lower. This happened in 1991, 2001, and most notably in 2008. These easing campaigns succeeded in boosting the economy in the short term by greatly increasing the amount of debt held by both the private and public sectors. As such, these episodes have allowed our economy to delay and magnify the ultimate reckoning.  

Just like a junkie who requires ever-increasing doses of heroine to achieve the same high, the Fed has needed to take rates ever lower to boost the economy after its previous stimulants had faded.

To stimulate after the bursting of the housing bubble (which itself resulted from the low interest rates used to juice the economy following the bursting of the dot-com bubble), the Fed lowered interest rates to practically zero. At that point, rates could go no lower. However, when that stimulus failed, the Fed decided to bring on the heavy artillery in the form of “quantitative easing,” or as it is known in the vernacular, “printing money to buy government debt.”

…However, the Fed’s plan backfired. The selling pressure on long-term bonds is overwhelming the Fed’s buying pressure. Spiking rates (which move inversely to price) are powerful evidence that the bond bubble has finally burst. The Fed threw everything but the kitchen sink at the bond market to force yields lower, yet they rose anyway. If bond prices failed to rise given such a Herculean effort to lift them up, there can be only one direction for them to go: down.

…What lies ahead is a new era of rising interest rates, soaring consumer prices, increasing unemployment, economic stagnation, and lower living standards. Instead of stimulating the economy, quantitative easing and deficit spending will prove to be a lethal combination. …

In Contentions, Michael Totten points out Gideon Rachman’s comment: WikiLeaks dispels many conspiracy theories about US intentions.

Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange deserves a medal rather than prison. “He and WikiLeaks have done America a massive favour,” he writes, “by inadvertently debunking decades-old conspiracy theories about its foreign policy.”

…Rachman points out that many rightists in China and Russia, and leftists in Europe and Latin America, assume that whatever American foreign-policy officials say in public is a lie. I’d add that Arabs on both the “left” and the “right” do, too. Not all of them, surely, but perhaps a majority. I’ve met people in the Middle East who actually like parts of the American rationale for the war in Iraq — that the promotion of democracy in the Arab world might leech out its toxins — they just don’t believe the U.S. was actually serious.

And let’s not forget the most ridiculous theories of all. Surely somewhere in all these leaked files there’d be references to a war for oil in Iraq if the war was, in fact, about oil. Likewise, if 9/11 was an inside job — or a joint Mossad–al-Qaeda job — there should be at least some suggestive evidence in all those classified documents. If the U.S. government lied, rather than guessed wrong, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or if NATO invaded Afghanistan to install a pipeline, this information would have to be written down somewhere. The State and Defense department bureaucracies are far too vast to have no records of what they’re up to. …

In Hot Air, Allahpundit blogs about more beneficial information from WikiLeaks.

No foolin’. So fulsomely slavish to the cause have our progressive icons become that their propaganda now makes even the Castros blush. Keep on rocking, “reality-based community.”

Incidentally, this story comes from a Wikileaks document. Second look at Assange?

[T]he memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room”.

Castro’s government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”…

The cable describes a visit made by the FSHP to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in October 2007. Built in 1982, the newly renovated hospital was used in Michael Moore’s film as evidence of the high-quality of healthcare available to all Cubans. …

Ed Morrissey has a post on an ironic turn of events.

The man who heralds himself as the vanguard of radical transparency has finally found an opacity he can support — himself.  Julian Assange’s legal team has demanded an investigation into the leak of documents from Sweden’s investigation of rape allegations after the Guardian reported on them over the weekend.  This is, of course, a Schadenfreude-tastic moment — but shouldn’t take away from the seriousness of the issue …

…Defendants facing criminal charges have the right to a presumption of innocence.  Nations have the right to expect that their internal systems for communication will remain secure, whether that be for diplomatic or military purposes.  Not all transparency is beneficial, a lesson Assange appears to be learning the hard way.

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Alain de Botton writes in the WSJ about how liberal arts education can help us live our lives.

…My own answer to what the humanities are for is simple: They should help us to live. We should look to culture as a storehouse of useful ideas about how to face our most pressing personal and professional issues. Novels and historical narratives can impart moral instruction and edification. Great paintings can suggest the requirements for happiness. Philosophy can probe our anxieties and offer consolation. It should be the job of a university education to tease out the therapeutic and illuminative aspects of culture, so that we emerge from a period of study as slightly less disturbed, selfish and blinkered human beings. Such a transformation benefits not only the economy but also our friends, children and spouses.

…The claim that culture can stand in for scripture—that “Middlemarch” or the essays of Schopenhauer can take up the responsibilities previously handled by the Psalms—still has a way of sounding eccentric or insane. But the ambition is not misplaced: Culture can and should change and save our lives. The problem is the way that culture is taught at our universities, which have a knack for killing its higher possibilities.

The modern university has achieved unparalleled expertise in imparting factual information about culture, but it remains wholly uninterested in training students to use culture as a repertoire of wisdom—that is, a kind of knowledge concerned with things that are not only true but also inwardly beneficial, providing comfort in the face of life’s infinite challenges, from a tyrannical employer to a fatal diagnosis. Our universities have never offered what churches invariably focus on: guidance.

…Because this situation cries out for a remedy, a few years ago I joined with a group of similarly disaffected academics, artists and writers and helped to start a new kind of university. We call it, plainly, the School of Life, and it operates from a modest space in central London. On the menu of our school, you won’t find subjects like philosophy, French and history. You’ll find courses in marriage, child-rearing, choosing a career, changing the world and death. Along the way, our students encounter many of the books and ideas that traditional universities serve up, but they seldom get bored—and often come away with a different take on the world. …

David Harsanyi comments on where the individual mandate leads.

…At some point in the next few years, the Supreme Court will decide whether coercing individuals to purchase a product is constitutional. That’s when we’ll find out if the document is worth anything at all anymore.

…Yet, if this mandate stands, any political group need only cobble together a majority of elected officials, find some open-minded judges dedicated to “doing the right thing” rather than upholding their oath, and government can be handed unlimited power to control not only what we can buy but what we must buy.

…As Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson, who found the mandate unconstitutional recently, points out, “The same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation.”

Maybe that’s the point. Force someone to buy a gun? Awful. Force someone to buy insurance? A victory for fairness. The limits of this philosophy depend solely on the subjective ideals and imagination of powerful advocates. …

In Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett highlights commentary from Glenn Reynolds on two more “eminent domain” thefts. Kelo v. New London continues to allow government and the well-connected to steal land from others. This time it is Columbia University stealing from small businesses near the school.

The takings clause reads “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” When Kelo v. City of New London upheld the power of takings for economic development, many used the political backlash to that decision as a vindication of “judicial restraint.” See, we were told, this sort of dispute should be left to the political sphere. Now, as Glenn Reynolds notes in his New York Post column, Columbia University has succeeded in its quest to take two businesses to incorporate their land into the university’s footprint:

[T]his week, . . . the last legal barrier (a possible US Supreme Court review) to Columbia University’s efforts to condemn and seize two businesses — Tuck-it-Away Self-Storage and a gas station owned by Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur in West Harlem — vanished.

Columbia said the condemnation was necessary to support the university’s “vision” for a new campus; school President Lee Bollinger called the victory “a very important moment in the history of the university.”

It was an important, if not especially proud, moment for Columbia — but it was surely a bigger moment in the lives of those West Harlem business owners, as their property gets taken away to promote the “vision” of what is, in fact, a multibillion-dollar corporation servicing the daughters and sons of the wealthy, the powerful and the connected.

Traditionally, the “public-domain” power was used to acquire property needed for things like roads and bridges. It’s still often defended in those terms, but the “public use” required for such takings has now been interpreted by courts to include pretty much anything the government wants to do with the property — including handing it over to someone else who just happens to be wealthier or better-connected than the original property holder…

Jennifer Rubin looks at the DC drama last week.

This past week was an extraordinary one for politics watchers. It had the feel of a national political convention week — all the pols, the pundits, the excitement of non-stop news. (START is dead! No it lives! The omnibus spending bill is monstrous! Oh my, that’s dead, too.) But unlike a political convention that simply chooses leaders and quickly fades into the atmosphere (Quick: who were the keynote speakers for the two parties in 2008?), the week had meat — constitutional law (wow, the Commerce Clause might have some bite left in it), ideological watersheds (we are all Bush tax cutters now), social breakthroughs (in a few years, will anyone care about any issue regarding gays?), and foreign policy intrigue (just how desperate is the administration to prostrate itself before the Russians?).

Big things happened. President Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (I typed “majority leader” and had to correct, but he surely seems like the one running the place) may be the next Ronald Reagan-Tip O’Neill political odd couple. ObamaCare, by a combination of judicial surgery (a mandate-ectomy) and a starvation diet (not the Zone Diet, but the DeMint-McConnell-Boehner-Ryan Squeeze), suddenly seemed in peril.

The week’s events also confirmed that Congress, not the preliminary 2012 Republican primary scramble, will be where the action is for conservatives over the next few months. None of the often-mentioned contenders are anxious to get into the race, although preening for the base is very much underway (Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Rep. Mike Pence, unlike Rep. Dennis Kucinich, opposed the tax agreement because you can never say “yes” and impress the hardest of the hardliners.) …

Bill Kristol entertains us with the Beltway version of the Night Before Christmas.

’Twas the week before Christmas, and all through
the House

The liberals were stirring, and boy did they grouse!

While earmarks were hung on the Reid bill with care

In hopes that the public would not see them there,

The “rich folks” were nestled all snug in their bed—

In hopes they’d be spared, like the president said—

While Nancy in kerchief and Bernie in cap

Were hunting for corpses that Congress could tap. …

Michael Goodwin, in the NYPost, looks at all the Christmas presents the country has been receiving.

…From the federal courts to the halls of Congress, the counterattack against Big Government claimed its first victories just in time for Christmas. Casualties were suffered only by those who forgot that majorities still count in a democracy.

Themes don’t get any more American than that.

The bipartisan support for extending the Bush tax cuts was the first big shock wave of the November election, but not the only one.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to withdraw his earmark-larded $1.2 trillion spending bill because he didn’t have the votes.

That will give the new Congress, under public marching orders to trim spending and ban earmarks, its chance to whack away. …

In the WSJ, Kimberley Strassel says that we have Mitch McConnell to thank for the defeat of the omnibus monstrosity, and for keeping nine Republican senators from succumbing to temptation.

…This week Democrats unveiled a $1.2 trillion omnibus, legislation as pure an insult to the electorate as it gets. It was a 1,924-page monstrosity that nobody had time to read. It took 11 spending bills that Democrats couldn’t be bothered to pass individually and crammed them into one oozing ball of pork and bad policy, going beyond even the obscene budget of 2010.

Yet to this legislative Frankenstein Democrats carefully attached the spenders’ equivalent of crack cocaine. To wit, omnibus author and Hawaii Democrat Daniel Inouye dug up earmark requests that Senate Republicans had made in the past year (prior to their self-imposed ban) and, unasked, included them in the bill. He lavished special, generous attention—$1 billion worth of it—on some reliable GOP earmark junkies: Mississippi’s Thad Cochran got $512 million; Utah’s Bob Bennett, $226 million; Maine’s Susan Collins, $114 million; Missouri’s Kit Bond, $102 million; Ohio’s George Voinovich, $98 million; and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, $80 million.

The effect of this dope—just sitting there, begging for a quick inhale—on earmarkers was immediate. Two seconds into the sweats and shaking hands, nine Republicans let Mr. Reid know they’d be open to this bill.

…Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell accomplished a mini Christmas miracle. The Kentuckian devoted yesterday to making the arguments—both principled and political—to the Spending Nine. He was ultimately persuasive enough, and the earmarkers wise enough, to pull back their support. A very unhappy Mr. Reid was forced to yank the omnibus last night. He will now work with Republicans on a short-term funding bill, a process that should give the incoming GOP House far more influence over upcoming spending decisions. …

Michael Barone also comments on the good news from Washington.

…At the south end of the Capitol Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to watch gloomily as her Democrats failed to rally majorities to alter — and probably sidetrack — the deal reached between Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders extending the Bush tax cuts for two years.

Instead, the House voted 277-148 for a measure that the Senate had passed 81-19 earlier in the week. “If someone had told me, the day after election day 2008, that the tax rates on income and capital would not increase for the next four years,” wrote Bush White House staffer Keith Hennessey in his blog, “I would have laughed.”

…Republicans, having succeeded in holding down tax rates, clearly have a mandate to hack away at spending and to defund and derail Obamacare, which is at or near new lows in the ABC/Washington Post and Rasmussen polls. And there does seem an opening, as Clinton White House staffer William Galston argues, for a 1986-style tax reform that eliminates tax preferences and cuts tax rates. …

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David Harsanyi says that there are no brains at “No Labels”.

“We are not labels — we are people.”

So begins the absurd, anti-democratic “declaration” of the soon-to-fail “No Labels” organization. This movement of rejected liberal Republicans and triangulating Democrats (oops, there I go again with the labels) are, unlike partisans and ideologues with bad manners, really interested in solving America’s problems.

“Not Left. Not Right. Forward!” is its motto.

The answer, my friends, is always in the muddled but inspirational middle. And partisanship “is paralyzing our ability to govern” — because, as you well know, Washington didn’t spend trillions and reform a significant sector of the economy in just these past two years. …

George Will also discusses the No Labels outfit.

…No Labels purports to represent a supposedly disaffected middle of the ideological spectrum. Some No Labels enthusiasts speak of eliminating “political retribution,” presumably meaning voters defeating candidates with whose positions they disagree. No Labels promises to police the political speech of the intemperate.

…The perpetrators of this mush purport to speak for people who want to instruct everyone else about how to speak about politics. Granted, there always are people who speak extravagantly, and modern technologies – television, the Internet – have multiplied their megaphones. But blowhards, although unattractive, are easy to avoid. …

…No Labels, its earnestness subverting its grammar, says: “We do not ask any political leader to ever give up their label – merely put it aside.” But adopting a political label should be an act of civic candor. When people label themselves conservatives or liberals we can reasonably surmise where they stand concerning important matters, such as Hudson’s ruling. The label “conservative” conveys much useful information about people who adopt it. So does the label “liberal,” which is why most liberals have abandoned it, preferring “progressive,” until they discredit it, too.

Tony Blankley thinks its time that politicians face fiscal reality before investors force the issue.

…Starting immediately, it is beyond the doubt of rational minds of the right, center or left – (yes, I concede to my fellow conservatives that I am stretching a point combining the words “rational” and “the left”) – that our national destiny requires us to re-establish fiscal balance or let our great history and remaining great destiny rot and fail.

As Alan Greenspan observed recently, we will surely reduce our debt and deficit – “the only question is whether we do it before or after a bond crisis.” And, as we have seen in Greece, Ireland and other parts of the world, a bond crisis doesn’t come slowly. It strikes within hours when the collective judgment of cold and calculating investor minds around the world reach a harsh judgment.

How ludicrous our petty haggling will look to us the morning after. And what a painful and long-lasting economic agony we and the world economy will have if that dreadful day comes.

But as Thomas Paine said and Reagan often repeated, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” And we do. Congress and the president could start now – before Christmas – to begin signaling to the world that Washington is committed to laying the legislative foundations in the next six months for fixing our fiscal crisis. It’s not even a world we have to begin again – just a vaunted American skill we have to reapply.

In Reason, Veronique de Rugy gives an overview of the muni bond bubble the administration increased, and explains how investors have recently signaled a lack of confidence in this market.

…Since 2000 the total outstanding state and municipal bond debt, adjusted for inflation, has soared from $1.5 trillion to $2.8 trillion … The recession didn’t slow the spending.

…Municipal bonds are perceived as safe investments because, like U.S. Treasury bonds, they are backed by the full faith, credit, and taxing powers of the issuing governments. Investors know that states and localities can always raid taxpayer wallets to pay off their debts. 

But in the last two years tax and fee hikes have faced greater public opposition. Last year, for example, Jefferson County, Alabama, was unable to raise sewer fees to meet its sewer bond obligation. Since governments are generally unwilling to cut spending either, the result of resistance to new revenue raising has been substantial increases in states’ and cities’ debt levels. Detroit and Los Angeles have announced that they may have to declare bankruptcy, as have a number of smaller cities. …

…But municipal bonds have not yet lost their low-risk reputation. According to the Investment Company Institute, $84 billion went into long-term municipal bond mutual funds in 2010, up from $69 billion in 2009. And the 2009 level represents a 785 percent increase from the 2008 level of $7.8 billion. Artificial incentives have lured investors into thinking that lending cash to bankrupted cities will be profitable. …

Fred Barnes discusses round one of Delta against the unions, and how the Obami are helping the unions in round two. Makes us want to hop on a Delta flight to show support.

…With the Obama administration on their side, the unions expected to win the elections and end Delta’s status as the only major airline with a largely nonunion workforce. (Delta pilots have been union members for years.) But the AFA and IAM lost in what was not only a shattering defeat for labor, but also a reflection of the sharply diminished appeal of unions for most workers today.

The final election, conducted last week, delivered the most stunning verdict. Delta workers at airports and reservation centers rejected the IAM, 70-30 percent. In November, flight attendants voted against unionization, 52-48 percent. Ramp (or “under the wing”) employees voted not to join the IAM, 53-47 percent. And maintenance workers turned down the IAM more decisively, 72-28 percent. Sensing defeat, labor unions had earlier decided not to attempt to unionize four other groups of employees: mechanics, technical writers, meteorologists, and “simulated technicians.”

It was a clean sweep for Delta and shocking to labor organizers. As a result, 17,000 former Northwest employees who had been union members will become nonunion once the election results have been certified. That may take a while because the unions have filed formal complaints that Delta interfered with the election. They are seeking a new election. Unions do this routinely when they lose an election. They are poor losers.

How did Delta thwart the unions? The company pointed out its pay and benefits are 10 percent to 15 percent above those of unionized employees who had worked for Northwest and have been for years. Higher pay, better benefits, no union dues—that was the argument. And it proved to be compelling. …

In the National Review, Rich Lowry succinctly explains everything wrong with ethanol and ethanol subsidies.

…Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, the Democratic and Republican senators from Iowa respectively, stand at the doors of Congress declaring: Ethanol now, ethanol forever. They have graced the Obama-McConnell tax bargain with an extension of a tax credit for ethanol that costs about $6 billion a year, and with an extension of a tariff on ethanol imports. Ethanol is so uneconomical that Congress supports it three different ways — with a mandate for its use, a tax credit to subsidize it, and a tariff to keep out competitors. Rarely are so many levers of government used to prop up one woeful product.

During the past decade, ethanol enjoyed a good run as a notional part of the solution to global warming. Then, environmentalists began to realize it may actually increase greenhouse emissions. Ethanol releases less carbon dioxide per gallon than gasoline. Once the emissions necessary to convert land to corn production and then grow and process it are taken into account, though, ethanol doesn’t look so green anymore.

So much corn — about 40 percent of the U.S. crop — is feeding into the maw of government-created demand for the fuel, that it could be increasing worldwide food prices. In short, in exchange for not reducing greenhouse emissions, ethanol reduces the availability of food to the poor.

The multiple layers of subsidization have their own perversity. Since there’s already a mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline, the tax credit is giving away money for something that would happen anyway. Environmental groups say this pads the bottom line of Big Oil. Harry de Gorter of the free-market Cato Institute has a more complicated take — the subsidy decreases the cost and therefore the price of gasoline, effectively subsidizing its consumption. Your Congress at work. …

In the Top of the Ticket Blog at LA Times, Andrew Malcolm has a post on Virginia’s AG and the win against the individual mandate.

Ken Cuccinelli has not been a well-known public figure — until now.

He’s the attorney general of Virginia, who wasn’t given much chance of succeeding in his lonely legal challenge to President Obama’s beloved healthcare legislation designed to change whatever you believe in on that subject.

But then, oops, Federal District Judge Henry Hudson on Monday agreed with the Virginia AG, declaring a crucial part of the law unconstitutional. Full details here, including the opinion’s complete text.

…Here’s how the judge put it in a powerful historical footnote: “Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause power to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.” …

CBS – Baltimore reports on a natural resources police officer that needs to get a clue.

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) – They fought to save a life, and now they say they’ll fight the fine. It all revolves around the rescue of a deer trapped in icy water Thursday night.

Alex DeMetrick reports that good deed was rewarded with tickets.

Strangers banded together to pull a deer out of the freezing water of the Patapsco River on Thursday night. “We seen the deer going under,” said Khalil Abusakran. “It couldn’t maintain.  It was starting to freeze, and it was really getting bad.” Abusakran brought a raft, and Jim Hart joined him. “We had oars and shovels to break the ice, for the deer to get out,” Abusakran said. But in the excited aftermath of the rescue, a natural resources police officer on the scene wrote both men a ticket.

“And he didn’t say anything,” Jim Hart said. “We went in and out of the water numerous times.  He didn’t stop us at all.” They say they were ticketed for not wearing life vests, although both are over the age for mandatory use of flotation devices. “No, we didn’t have vests on, but we’re not 16 years old,” Abusakran said. “There were personal floating devices on the boat.” The ticket itself doesn’t check off any specific violation, just a $90 fine. They’ll fight it in court, as they fought for the deer. The two men ticketed say they will fight the citations at the court hearing in Annapolis set for Feb. 18

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We open with a touching Christmas story shared by Andrew Malcolm in the LA Times. Ronald Reagan is in it.

…One day in the middle of his eight years as governor (1967-75), Reagan received a letter from two sisters — Bertha and Samueline Sisco. According to their story, they had promised their dying mother they would always care for their brother, Buzzy who was, as they phrased it in those days, retarded.

The sisters were seeking guidance to some kind of state help in caring for their 43-year-old sibling and the governor’s office steered them toward it.

But Gov. Reagan heard a about the family’s situation and made some inquiries. He discovered that Buzzy had always wanted a rocking chair to sit in with his teddy bear.

…Shortly before Christmas that year California Highway Patrolman Dale Role delivered a rocking chair to the Sisco home, along with a note explaining that it came from the governor’s personal family furnishings and he wanted Buzzy and his teddy bear to be rocking in time for Christmas. …

In American.com, Arthur Brooks and Peter Wehner discuss how society benefits from capitalism.

…The American founders believed, and capitalism rests on the belief, that people are driven by “self-interest” and the desire to better our condition. Self-interest is not necessarily bad; in fact, Smith believed, and capitalism presupposes, that the general welfare depends on allowing an individual to pursue his self-interest “as long as he does not violate the laws of justice.” When a person acts in his own interest, “he frequently promotes [the interest] of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. ”7

…Smith took for granted that people are driven by self-interest, by the desire to better their condition. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,” is how he put it, “but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”9

…Advocates of free enterprise believe that creativity, enterprise, and ingenuity are essential parts of human nature. Capitalism aims to take advantage of the self-interest of human nature, knowing that the collateral effects will be a more decent and benevolent society. Capitalists believe that liberty is an inherent good and should form the cornerstone not only of our political institutions but our economic ones as well.  …

The Christian Science Monitor editors comment on the individual mandate and the Supreme Court.

…Never before has the federal government tried to punish citizens for not engaging in a private activity. This “individual mandate” is a legal innovation, one now being challenged in several courts. On Monday, US District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled that the mandate “exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution].” Two other federal judges, however, recently ruled in favor of the mandate’s constitutionality.

At least one of these cases will probably reach the Supreme Court by 2012. As in many of its decisions, the high court may be split in a 5-to-4 vote. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, as often happens, could be the swing vote and write the majority opinion.

Here is what he may well say – in a layman’s version of arguments – against the mandate…

Thomas Sowell supplies some gift-giving ideas. We highlight a few:

…Among the books I read this year, the one that made the biggest impact on me was “New Deal or Raw Deal” ($10.20; 32% OFF) by Burton Folsom, Jr., a professor at Hillsdale College. It was that rare kind of book, one thoroughly researched by a scholar and yet written in plain language, readily understood by anyone.

So many myths and legends glorifying Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal administration have become part of folklore that a dose of cold facts is very much needed.

…I don’t usually read autobiographical books but two very good ones came out this year. My favorite is titled “Up from the Projects” (34% off) by economist, columnist and personal friend Walter Williams. It is a small book with a big punch. Once you start reading it, it is hard to put down.

“Up from the Projects” is not only a remarkable story of a remarkable man’s life, it is the story of both progress and retrogression in the black community. Everyone wants to take credit for the progress but nobody wants to take the blame for the retrogression.

…My own new books this year are “Intellectuals and Society,” (34% off) an account of another strange and dangerous group of people, and the 4th edition of “Basic Economics,” which is more than twice as large as the first edition. It has been putting on weight over the years, like its author, but the weight is muscle in the case of the book.

“Basic Economics” (38% off) has sold more copies than any other book of mine and has been translated into more foreign languages. Apparently there are a lot of people who want to understand economics without having to wade through graphs and equations.

 David Harsanyi shifts gears and comments on movies versus tv.

…Recently in a Wall Street Journal piece, humorist Joe Queenan made a stinging case that 2010 was the absolute worst year in movies — ever. Queenan contends that Hollywood’s historical mission is to provide “a steady stream of engaging movies to generate a continuous sense of excitement” but also to make us “anticipate” and “talk them up long before their release.” But movies for adults rarely generate any excitement. The medium that produces the most conversation and enthusiasm these days is television.

Take “Mad Men.” The highly rated series set in the 1960s focuses on the escapades of Don Draper, creative director for a fledgling Madison Avenue ad firm. Jon Hamm’s acting is as good anything we’re seeing in movies, and the show is crammed with rich characters and provocative story lines. In the real world, “Mad Men” unleashes a massive post-episode conversation that takes place in thousands of discussion boards, blogs, talk shows, offices and newspapers. What movie can claim anything close to that kind of relevance?

…This kind of care often makes television more akin to reading a novel than watching a movie. It does not shy away from the cerebral. Ask David Simon, the Baltimore Sun crime reporter and co-creator of HBO’s “The Wire,” who explained to Newsweek a few years ago that his standard for Baltimore “was Balzac’s Paris, or Dickens’s London, or Tolstoy’s Moscow.” The realism of that show — which spent each of its five seasons dissecting another area of urban life — had the feel of a documentary.

I remember an FBI agent telling me that “The Wire” was the closest thing to police reality he had ever watched. Certainly, the show’s 21st century newsroom — the focus of the last season — was as authentic as any portrayed in film. …

In the WSJ, Lauren Etter writes about how Chicago is making life difficult for their culinary entrepreneurs who operate food trucks rather than restaurants. 

…Food trucks—essentially restaurants on wheels—have taken off in cities such as Los Angeles and New York, spurred by the weak economy, trendy fare and the proliferation of social media, like Twitter. Food & Wine magazine voted an L.A. food-truck chef one of its “Best New Chefs” of 2010 and the Food Network has a show devoted to such vendors. But in Chicago, one of the nation’s most progressive culinary cities, the trucks are held back by restrictive rules and operate in a legal twilight zone.

…Unlike other cities, where chefs are free to actually cook inside their trucks, Chicago chefs can’t unwrap or alter the food in any way once it’s on a truck. And food trucks aren’t allowed to park within 200 feet of a restaurant. Such roadblocks have kept all but a few chefs from taking to the streets—even as the food trucks fight to change the rules.

…A food-truck operation can get off the ground for under $150,000, while many restaurants spend more than $1 million on real estate and equipment to open their doors. .. 

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Richard Epstein explains Virginia’s win against Obamacare.

…The key successful move for Virginia was that it found a way to sidestep the well known 1942 decision of the Supreme Court in Wickard v. Filburn, which held in effect that the power to regulate commerce among the several states extended to decisions of farmers to feed their own grain to their own cows.  Wickard does not pass the laugh test if the issue is whether it bears any fidelity to the original constitutional design.  It was put into place for the rather ignoble purpose to make sure that the federally sponsored cartel arrangements for agriculture could be properly administered.

At this point, no District Court judge dare turn his back on the ignoble and unprincipled decision in Wickard. But Virginia did not ask for radical therapy.  It rather insisted that “all” Wickard stands for is the proposition that if a farmer decides to grow wheat, he cannot feed it to his own cows if a law of Congress says otherwise.  It does not say that the farmer must grow wheat in order that the federal government will have something to regulate.

It is just that line that controls this case.  The opponents of the individual mandate say that they do not have to purchase insurance against their will.  The federal government may regulate how people participate in the market, but it cannot make them participate in the market.  For if it could be done in this case it could be done in all others. …

The WSJ editors crafted an excellent editorial on individual mandate that is well worth reading.

…Moreover, Judge Hudson says that no court has ever “extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.”

…While Judge Hudson’s ruling is the first to declare part of the law unconstitutional, more than 20 state attorneys general and the National Federation of Independent Business are also suing in Florida. Oral arguments will be heard on Thursday in that case, which we think is the strongest constitutional challenge to the law.

As the Virginia case shows, ObamaCare really does stretch the Commerce Clause to the breaking point. The core issue is whether the federal government can order individuals to do anything the political class decides it wants them to do. The stakes couldn’t be higher for our constitutional order.

David Goldman says get out of municipal bonds and bank equities while you still can.

I’ve been warning for months that a few state and municipal bankruptcies (actually, a few states and a great many city bankruptcies) will be required to slay the beast of government-union pension liabilities. The total size of the muni bond market is about $2.4 trillion. Unfunded pension liabilities (calculated with a realistic discount rate) are almost as high, according to one study. Now comes James Pethokoukis of Reuters to tell us of a “secret GOP plan” to bankrupt local governments and crush the government unions.

…That’s why the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program.  BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31.  And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.”…

I’m not going to trade in Capitol Hill rumors, but whether there is a secret plan or not, the US federal government is in the same position that Germany is with respect to Greece — the creditors (in this case public employee pensions) have to take a massive haircut for the numbers to add up. The delayed effect of the real estate collapse (which is still getting worse) is going to hit local revenues next year due to massive downward adjustment in tax assessments. …

…It’s cities, not states, that live off real estate taxes. Local government was riding the real estate boom along with everyone else but it takes a couple of years for the price collapse to work its way through tax assessments. What’s going to happen is two, three, many Harrisburg bankruptcies. The cities will collapse and the states will push them over the edge (like NY State with NYC in 1974). They’ll make a horrible example of a couple of states — California and Illinois — others will hold the line as the cities go down like ninepins

…There’s a limit to how far they can take this: Banks and insurance companies together have about $700 billion of munis. You can wipe out mom and pop (did so already with the auction securities market) but a 40% haircut would take out about $300 billion of financial institutions’ capital — not pretty.  And that’s not to mention the spillover effect on other markets. That’s yet another reason not to own the banks’ common equity. …

In the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell thinks that the tax deal does not bode well for the US.

…This week’s debate is the latest, and maybe the last, chapter in a woeful deterioration of US budgetary politics. Democrats and Republicans used to understand that tax receipts must equal outlays, and they argued over priorities. For a while after Ronald Reagan, the argument shifted to the size of government, with Republicans arguing for smaller budgets and Democrats for larger ones. But in the decade of George W. Bush, it all changed. Republicans argued for ever-lower taxes, and often had the power to push them through. Both parties agreed on ever-higher spending. This week Mr Obama took a slightly different tack, larding more tax cuts on to the ones he professed to dislike, but the fiscal effect is the same: a social-democratic government on an anarchist budget, with deficits of more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product and a government that pays for 40 per cent of operating expenses by borrowing.

This is evidence of some failure of national character. Perhaps the American moral imagination has been poisoned by those old Hollywood movies about virtuous underdogs, in which the hero’s interests and his principles always point uncomplicatedly in the same direction, and making things easier for oneself is always the right thing to do. Perhaps the failing is an inability to draw boundaries and give straight answers. Everything is provisional in American politics. Republicans, who warned two months ago that “uncertainty” about taxes made it hard for businesses to hire, have happily signed on to a plan that extends that uncertainty for another two years. The two parties have connived to kick every single difficult budget decision down the road. They have collaborated only to give away money. If this were part one of a larger plan to get the country’s fiscal house in order, it might be welcomed. But it is an exercise in wishful thinking. It damps hopes that America can reform before the markets bring it to heel.

The trap that Mr Obama’s angry partisans espy is that events will impose some serious gesture of deficit reduction on the new Congress. There are two ways to balance budgets: Democrats would prefer to assess government’s responsibilities, and then raise taxes to fund them. Republicans would rather measure government revenues, and then slash programmes those revenues do not cover. Mr Obama’s short-term deal makes it more likely that the long-term equilibration of income and outgoings will be done on Republican terms. …

Here’s an ugly collusion: big government, big business, and big unions. Gary Jason, in the American Thinker, explains how the taxpayers and GM’s creditors got screwed in the GM deal.

…First is the news that the “new” GM walked away from the crony bankruptcy proceedings with a huge tax break — one worth up to $45 billion.  It was revealed in the paperwork filed for its IPO that the Obama administration gave the new GM a sweetheart deal: it will be allowed to carry forward huge losses incurred by the “old” GM prior to its bankruptcy.  Of course, the IRS doesn’t allow the new companies that emerge from bankruptcy to write off their old losses.  But the feds decided to waive that rule for companies bailed out by TARP.

Thus, the new GM will save about $45.4 billion in taxes on future earnings, which may allow it to escape taxes for the next twenty years. …

…The UAW was given a big chunk of new GM in the crooked bankruptcy settlement.  To be precise, the very monster that drove GM off the cliff — the UAW — received 35% of the stock in the new company.  With the sale of the stock in the new GM, the UAW earned an immediate $3.4 billion in selling about one third of its shares.

…In fact, the Obama administration screwed the taxpayer just as thoroughly as it pampered the UAW.  The taxpayer put $49.5 billion into GM in the bankruptcy, not to mention all the funds shoveled at the company prior to that.  The Treasury recouped only a wretched $13.7 billion in the IPO, mainly because the Obama administration — in yet another unprecedented gift to the union — announced publicly that it would not sell any more stock for the next six months.  This enables the UAW to dump its shares whenever it wants at a much higher price than it could get if the Treasury were also selling.  The taxpayers will almost certainly get a lower payout, and they will never recoup their forced investment in these dinosaurs — all to enable the UAW to walk away made whole.

…The Obama administration car czar, who engineered the crony bankruptcy — the aptly named Steve Rattner — claims that the secured creditors would have received nothing in a standard bankruptcy anyway.  But his claim is ludicrous on its face: in a regular bankruptcy, the union contracts that caused GM’s and Chrysler’s failure would have been nullified, and the substantial assets of the companies (plants, inventory, receivables, land, patents, etc.) would have been worth a substantial amount to other automakers and investment companies.  The proceeds would have gone to satisfy the bondholders at least to a fair degree. …

We have more from the WSJ editors, this time on the ethanol subsidy boondoggle.

…The public choice school of economics describes how the government and special interests collude against the public good, and it’s hard to think of a better model than the ethanol industry. Despite opposition from an emerging left-right anti-boondoggle coalition, the Senate version of the White House-GOP tax deal preserves the corn fuel’s multiple subsidies. …

…Direct subsidies and trade protectionism, plus mandates that force consumers to buy ethanol: This is the trifecta of government support, and all for an industry that is 30 years old and that even Al Gore now admits serves none of its advertised environmental purposes.

The ethanol extension is the bipartisan handiwork of Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin, who both regularly abandon their professed principles (fiscal conservatism for the Republican and equity for the Democrat) in the service of agribusiness. …

Peter Suderman comments on how the politicians and the people they’ve been paying off are still controlling the ethanol money.

As CEI’s Brian McGraw points out, ethanol subsidies are opposed by just about everyone: researchers, environmental activists, free market wonks, and newspaper editorial writers across the ideological spectrum. Even Al Gore has come out against them.

I say “just about” everyone because of course the ethanol lobby and the farmers it serves still favor keeping the subsidies in place. 

Naturally, the current plan is to extend them for another year. …

In the National Review, Robert Bryce has more on unsustainable fuels. Or fuels that can only be sustained with your tax dollars.

…But the ethanol producers, as usual, can’t get enough of your money, and they are working hard to assure that the fat subsidies (which now total about $7 billion per year) keep flowing. Last month, their main lobby groups — the Renewable Fuels Association, Growth Energy, and the American Coalition for Ethanol — sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them that ethanol has been “uniquely successful in reducing our dependence on foreign, imported oil.” They urged Congress to pass legislation extending the tax credit before the end of the year.

..While oil imports are increasing and the ethanol industry is producing too much ethanol, the wind-energy sector is being garroted by that dastardly opponent of renewable energy:  competitive markets. In late October, the American Wind Energy Association announced that through the first three quarters, just 1,600 megawatts of new wind capacity was installed in the U.S., “down 72 percent versus 2009, and the lowest level since 2006.”

In a press release, the lobby group said the solution for its woes were — wait for it — more subsidies and mandates. The group’s CEO, Denise Bode, said that “the best way to galvanize the industry now will be continued tax credits and a federal benchmark of 15 percent renewables in the national electricity mix by 2020.” Bode continued, saying that those subsidies and a 15 percent renewable mandate “will send a clear signal to investors that the U.S. is open for business.”

…Unable to compete in the free market, the wind industry’s only near-term hope is an ethanol-style mandate. And if given that mandate, perpetual ethanol-style subsidies will surely ensue. Congress, please, just say no.

Jennifer Rubin comments on a Sarah Palin op-ed.

Last week, I criticized Sarah Palin for using Twitter to render an ambiguous, off-the-cuff response to the bipartisan tax agreement. I understand that some of her supporters weren’t too pleased with the suggestion that one of her favorite modes of communication made her seem like a lightweight. But she then followed up in the Wall Street Journal with a robust and detailed endorsement of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R.-Wisc.) Roadmap for America’s Future. After detailing her criticisms of the debt commission proposal, she argued:

“…The Roadmap would also replace our high and anticompetitive corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%. The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission’s proposals). Beyond that, Rep. Ryan proposes fundamental reform of Medicare for those under 55 by turning the current benefit into a voucher with which people can purchase their own care.

On Social Security, as with Medicare, the Roadmap honors our commitments to those who are already receiving benefits by guaranteeing all existing rights to people over the age of 55. Those below that age are offered a choice: They can remain in the traditional government-run system or direct a portion of their payroll taxes to personal accounts, owned by them, managed by the Social Security Administration and guaranteed by the federal government.”

… she’s made a valuable contribution by highlighting and explaining Ryan’s plan. It is a step in the right direction for someone who in some capacity wants to be a player in the GOP.

The Economist reports on a possible new medical use for an old pain reliever.

FOR thousands of years aspirin has been humanity’s wonder drug. Extracts from the willow tree have been used for pain relief in folk medicine since the time of the ancient Greeks. By 1897 a synthetic derivative (acetyl salicylic acid) of the plant’s active ingredient (salicin) was created. This allowed aspirin to become the most widely used medicine in the world.

In recent years its benefits as a blood-thinning drug have led to it being prescribed in low doses of around 50mg to reduce deaths from stroke and heart attack. There were also hints that aspirin may help prevent some cancers. But these were mostly based on observational studies, which can be misleading. …