WSJ.com - Barack Obama-san

WSJ.com - Opinion: Barack Obama-san

 

The latest leak puts the "stimulus" at $1 trillion over a couple of years, and the political class is embracing it as a miracle cure. 

Not to spoil the party, but this is not a new idea. Keynesian "pump-priming" in a recession has often been tried, and as an economic stimulus it is overrated. The money that the government spends has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy in higher taxes or borrowing. The public works are usually less productive than the foregone private investment.

In the Age of Obama, we seem fated to re-explain these eternal lessons. So for today we thought we'd recount the history of the last major country that tried to spend its way to "stimulus" -- Japan during its "lost decade" of the 1990s. In 1992, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa faced falling property prices and a stock market that had sunk 60% in three years. Mr. Miyazawa's Liberal Democratic Party won re-election promising that Japan would spend its way to becoming a "lifestyle superpower." The country embarked on a great Keynesian experiment:

 

WSJ.com - Cooling on Global Warming

WSJ.com - Opinion: Cooling on Global Warming

 

Germany and the rest of Europe are getting more rational on climate change. 

Participants at last week's United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland, were taken aback by a world seemingly turned upside-down. The traditional villains and heroes of the international climate narrative, the wicked U.S. and the noble European Union, had unexpectedly swapped roles. For once, it was the EU that was criticized for backpedalling on its CO2 targets while Europe's climate nemesis, the U.S., found itself commended for electing an environmental champion as president.

The Brussels summit symbolizes a turning point. The watered-down climate deal epitomizes the onset of a cooling period in Europe's hitherto overheated climate debate. It may lead eventually to the complete abandonment of the unilateral climate agenda that has shaped Europe's green philosophy for nearly 20 years. 

WSJ.com - The 'Certified' Teacher Myth

WSJ.com - Opinion: The 'Certified' Teacher Myth

Like all unions, teachers unions have a vested interest in restricting the labor supply to reduce job competition. Traditional state certification rules help to limit the supply of "certified" teachers. But a new study suggests that such requirements also hinder student learning.

Unions claim that traditional certification serves the interests of students. But it's clear that students would be better served if the teaching profession were open to more college graduates. Teachers learn by teaching, not by mastering the required "education" courses associated with state certification.

Far from regulating teacher quality, forcing prospective teachers to take a specific set of education-related courses merely deters college graduates who might otherwise consider teaching. That outcome may serve the goals of labor unions, but it's hard to see how it helps the kids. If we want better teachers and more of them, relaxing certification standards would be a good place to start.

WSJ.com - Bankruptcy Doesn't Equal Death

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bankruptcy Doesn't Equal Death

 

This myth begins with the idea that GM, Ford and Chrysler are so huge that if they go belly-up, the livelihoods of a disproportionately large number of workers and suppliers would be affected. At once, the market for their services and products would close. Therefore, the argument concludes, government must prevent any such failures.

Nonsense.

Bankruptcy doesn't make assets -- such as factories, machines, contractual options to buy raw materials, workers' skills -- disappear. If markets still exist for products produced by these firms, Chapter 11 is the best way to discover this. Some workers might lose their jobs and some suppliers might lose their markets, but there would be no industry-wide collapse of the sort portrayed by the bailout's cheerleaders. 

A government bailout of the Big Three keeps huge amounts of productive inputs in firms that can't use them efficiently. Forcing taxpayers to subsidize the continued employment of gargantuan quantities of raw materials, labor and capital goods in unproductive pursuits is a recipe for economic stagnation. 

WSJ.com - Some Carbon Candor

WSJ.com - Opinion: Some Carbon Candor

 

A climate guru rebukes his mates on cap and trade. 

 

...Mr. Hansen also had the honesty to follow his convictions to their logical conclusion, while reproaching his followers -- President-elect Obama among them -- for not doing the same. To wit, Mr. Hansen endorses a straight carbon tax as the only "honest, clear and effective" way to reduce emissions, with the revenues rebated in their entirety to consumers on a per-capita basis. "Not one dime should go to Washington for politicians to pick winners," he writes. 

The risks of fossil fuels remain speculative, but if they really are the apocalypse of Mr. Hansen's prophecies, then the cleanest remedy is a tax. That would raise energy and all other prices as the incentive for new technologies and investments. But a tax would be neutral, eliminating the market distortions caused by subsidies and regulation, and the proceeds could be used to offset other taxes. The transition to a world in which growth is not tied to carbon would still be long and extremely expensive, but a tax would be the least painful way to get there. 

WSJ.com - Economists Have Abandoned Principle

WSJ.com - Opinion: Economists Have Abandoned Principle

Practically every day the government launches a massively expensive new initiative to solve the problems that the last day's initiative did not. It is hard to discern any principles behind these actions. The lack of a coherent strategy has increased uncertainty and undermined the public's perception of the government's competence and trustworthiness.

The Obama administration, with its highly able team of economists, has a golden opportunity to put the country on a better path. We believe that the way forward is for the government to adopt two key principles. The first is that it should intervene only when there is a clearly identified market failure. The second is that government intervention should be carried out at minimum cost to taxpayers.

WSJ.com - Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform'

WSJ.com - Opinion: Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform'

 

We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved. We can point to individual schools and some entire districts that have advanced, but the system as a whole is still failing.  

 

This is a complex problem, but countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education:

1) Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.

2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers.

3) Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments.

4) Increase "time on task" for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year.

Everything else either does not matter (e.g., smaller class sizes) or is supportive of these four steps (e.g., vastly improve schools of education).

[Note: The recommendations in this article are different from the normal call for "school choice" that is often heard these days.  As always, I'd be interested in your opinions; comment on any of my posts at http://wsj-articles.blogspot.com/ ]  

 

 

WSJ.com - Change Our Public Schools Need

WSJ.com - Change Our Public Schools Need

Democrats are fervent supporters of public education, and the party genuinely wants to help disadvantaged kids stuck in bad schools. But it resists bold action. It is immobilized. Impotent. The explanation lies in its longstanding alliance with the teachers' unions...

Democrats favor educational "change" -- as long as it doesn't affect anyone's job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running the system. Most changes of real consequence are therefore off the table....

What should the Democrats be doing? Above all, they should be guided by a single overarching principle: Do what is best for children.  

It all boils down to a simple question. Will President Obama have the courage to unite with the rebels inside his party, champion the interests of children over the interests of adults, and be a true leader who really means it when he talks about change? We can only stay tuned. And have the audacity of hope.

WSJ.com - Obama Should Look Into Putin's Record, Not His Eyes

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama Should Look Into Putin's Record, Not His Eyes

 

How should Mr. Obama deal with Russia's official president, Dmitry Medvedev, and Russia's real leader, Vladimir Putin? The choice is straightforward: Mr. Obama can treat them like fellow democratic leaders or like the would-be dictators that they are. 

 

There is little doubt the most recent elections in Russia had even less value than those in Venezuela and Iran. Russia's own "supreme leader" cannot be treated as a true democratic representative if the new U.S. administration wishes to maintain any credibility on matters of human rights and freedom abroad.

WSJ.com - Let's Have a Real Middle-Class Tax Cut

WSJ.com - Let's Have a Real Middle-Class Tax Cut

[Obama's plan for] tax credits will do little or nothing to promote economic growth because they do not reduce marginal tax rates -- the rate on the next dollar of income -- to provide powerful, meaningful incentives for productive activities such as investment, entrepreneurship and work. A tax credit is effectively a cash grant that can only affect incentives up to the amount of the grant. Indeed, such tax credits would likely reduce economic growth because the credits are phased out as income rises, and so effectively impose higher marginal tax rates over those income levels.

Marginal tax rates for middle-income families in the 25% tax bracket are too high....  Reducing the marginal tax rates for these middle-income earners would lead to income increases for middle-income workers, just as reducing excessive marginal tax rates for higher-income workers did, going all the way back to the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s. 

[A] 40% cut in middle-class income tax rates would provide a powerful boost to the economy, greatly expanding incentives for savings, investment and work. This would be much more effective than Mr. Obama's tax plan with it's $1.3 trillion in redistributive tax credits, as well as yet another so-called stimulus package based on another $300 billion or more in increased government spending.

WSJ.com - Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail

WSJ.com - Opinion: Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail

 

What Congress gives to some it takes away from others. 

Government stimulus bills are based on the idea that feeding new money into the economy will increase demand, and thus production. But where does government get this money? Congress doesn't have its own stash. Every dollar it injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It's merely redistributed from one group of people to another.

Governments don't create new purchasing power out of thin air. If Congress funds new spending with taxes, it is redistributing existing income. If the money is borrowed from American investors, those investors will have that much less to invest or to spend in the private economy.  

 

In reality, economic growth -- the act of producing more goods and services -- can be accomplished only by making American workers more productive.

WSJ.com - Just Say No to Detroit

WSJ.com - Just Say No to Detroit

 

Today, our government is being asked to put tens of billions of dollars in GM, Ford and Chrysler, but we would be much better off if Washington allowed these companies to go bankrupt and disappear.

 

...when a company makes money-losing investments, the cost falls upon all of society. Investment capital represents our limited stock of national savings, and when companies spend it badly, our future well-being is compromised.

 

If the government wants to spend $25 billion to protect auto workers, it would do better to transfer the money to them directly (perhaps by cutting each worker a check for $10,000) rather than by keeping their unproductive employer in business.

WSJ.com - Martian Triumph

WSJ.com - Opinion: Martian Triumph

 

Between August 4, 2007 and this past Monday, the Dow fell by more than 4,000 points, John McCain resurrected his primary campaign from the political ashes, the surge succeeded in Iraq, Russia invaded Georgia and Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.

Oh, and the presence of frozen water was discovered on the surface of Mars, thanks to a 770-pound spacecraft named Phoenix.

Time will tell which of these events proves the most consequential. But surely the 420 million mile voyage of the little Phoenix lander and its five-month sojourn near Mars's north pole deserves a mention.

[Note: For those who didn't know, Phoenix was built by Lockheed Martin at our Denver Waterton Campus.]

WSJ.com - Mischief in Minnesota?

WSJ.com - Opinion: Mischief in Minnesota?

 

When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only 477. As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn't even begun. 

In a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways. Instead, nearly every "fix" has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.

If Minnesota wants to retain its reputation as a state with clean elections, it needs to run an honest recount.

WSJ.com - Nationalizing Detroit

WSJ.com - Opinion: Nationalizing Detroit

 

In the Washington mind, there are two kinds of private companies. There are successful if "greedy" corporations, which can always afford to pay more taxes and tolerate more regulation. And then there are the corporate supplicants that need a handout. 

 

 For decades, Congress has never had a second thought as it imposed tighter emissions standards on GM, Ford and Chrysler, denouncing them for making evil SUVs. Yet now that the companies are bleeding cash, and may be heading for bankruptcy, suddenly the shrinking Big Three are the latest candidates for a taxpayer bailout. 

The financial panic has hit Detroit hard, but its problems go back decades and are far deeper than reduced access to credit among car buyers.  

A bailout might avoid any near-term bankruptcy filing, but it won't address Detroit's fundamental problems of making cars that Americans won't buy and labor contracts that are too rich and inflexible to make them competitive...  While GM has spent billions of dollars on labor buyouts in recent years, they are still forced by federal mileage standards to churn out small cars that make little or no profit at plants organized by the United Auto Workers.

Rest assured that the politicians don't want to do a thing about those labor contracts or mileage standards.

WSJ.com - Five Myths About the Great Depression

WSJ.com - Opinion: Five Myths About the Great Depression

 

The current financial crisis has revived powerful misconceptions about the Great Depression. Those who misinterpret the past are all too likely to repeat the exact same mistakes that made the Great Depression so deep and devastating. ...it is essential that the decisions of the coming months are shaped by the right lessons -- not the myths -- of the Great Depression.

Here are five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression:

- Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting. The truth is more illuminating...

- The stock market crash in October 1929 precipitated the Great Depression. What the crash mainly precipitated was a raft of wrongheaded policies that did major damage to the economy...

- Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.   Following in Hoover's footsteps, FDR concentrated on trying to raise farm income by such tactics as setting quotas on production and paying farmers to remove acreage from production -- even though this meant higher prices for hard-pressed consumers and had the effect of both lowering productivity and driving farmers off their land.

- Greed caused the stock market to overshoot and then crash. The real culprit here -- as in the housing bubble in our own time -- is... a speculative fever induced by excessively easy credit and broken by the inevitable return to more realistic valuations...

- Enlightened government pulled the nation out of the worst downturn in its history and came to the rescue of capitalism through rigorous regulation and government oversight. To the contrary, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations -- in disregarding market signals at every turn -- were jointly responsible for turning a panic into the worst depression of modern times...

WSJ.com - Guantanamo Revelation

WSJ.com - Opinion: Guantanamo Revelation

 

According to the six-year narrative of the press and political class, the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies fall somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Love in "1984." So it was something of a shock to read a remarkable front-page story in the New York Times yesterday, the abridged version being: Never mind.

In their 1,600-word dispatch "Next President Will Face Test on Detainees," reporters William Glaberson and Margot Williams discover that, gee whiz, many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay really are dangerous terrorists.  

As we learned under FDR (internment camps), LBJ (spying on political enemies) and Bill Clinton (rendition to Arab regimes), liberals aren't as punctilious about civil liberties when liberals run the government.  

WSJ.com - Argentina Impoverishes Itself Again

WSJ.com - Opinion: Argentina Impoverishes Itself Again

 

What happens when government meddles with private wealth.

Argentina is a constitutional republic with many historical similarities to the U.S. It has a rich immigrant heritage and an abundance of natural resources. But the U.S. is a rich, advanced country and Argentina is poor.

How did the breadbasket of South America fall so far behind? One explanation goes back some 90 years, when the Argentine Supreme Court began chipping away at property rights as a way of addressing economic inequality. Argentine politicians quickly learned that lawful plunder was their path to power.

This history is still being written, and the latest chapter ought to frighten Americans.

WSJ.com - Most Presidents Ignore the Constitution

WSJ.com - Opinion: Most Presidents Ignore the Constitution

 

The government we have today is something the Founders could never have imagined. 

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt first proposed legislation that authorized the secretary of agriculture to engage in Soviet-style central planning -- a program so rigid that it regulated how much wheat a homeowner could grow for his own family's consumption -- he rejected arguments of unconstitutionality. He proclaimed that the Constitution was "quaint" and written in the "horse and buggy era," and predicted the public and the courts would agree with him.

Remember that FDR had taken -- and either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain will soon take -- the oath to uphold that old-fashioned document, the one from which all presidential powers come.

Unfortunately, these presidential attitudes about the Constitution are par for the course. Beginning with John Adams, and proceeding to Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush, Congress has enacted and the president has signed laws that criminalized political speech, suspended habeas corpus, compelled support for war, forbade freedom of contract, allowed the government to spy on Americans without a search warrant, and used taxpayer dollars to shore up failing private banks.

All of this legislation -- merely tips of an unconstitutional Big Government iceberg -- is so obviously in conflict with the plain words of the Constitution that one wonders how Congress gets away with it.

WSJ.com - The True Meaning of 'Historic Vote'

WSJ.com - Opinion: The True Meaning of 'Historic Vote'

 

Shifting America's animating idea from creation to protection. 

 

The real "change" being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of "the past eight years" but with the American economic philosophy of the past 200 years. This election is about a long-term change in America's idea of itself.  ...the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point.

 

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, prominent Democrats, European leaders in France and Germany and more U.S. newspaper articles than one can count have said that the crisis proves the need to permanently tame the American "free-market" model... The question is: Are the American people of a mind to throw in the towel on the system that got them here? 

 

[The Obama proposals] would transform the animating American idea -- away from creation and toward protection.

Many voters -- progressive Democrats, the asset-safe rich, academics and college students -- regard this as where America should go. They explicitly want America's great natural energies transferred away from unwieldy economic competition and toward social construction.  

An archive of my past WSJ.com articles can be found here: http://wsj-articles.blogspot.com/

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WSJ.com - Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote

WSJ.com - Opinion: Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote

 

They were wrong in 2000 and 2004. 

 

Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. 

 

In truth, however, no one knows for sure what kind of polling deficit is insurmountable or even which poll is correct. All of us should act with the proper understanding that nothing is yet decided. 

WSJ.com - Almost Everyone Would Do Better Under the McCain Health Plan

WSJ.com - Opinion: Almost Everyone Would Do Better Under the McCain Health Plan

His tax credit is larger than the current tax subsidy for insurance.

The McCain health-care insurance tax credit may well be one of the most misunderstood proposals of this presidential election. Barack Obama has been ruthless in his attacks. But the tax credit is highly progressive and will provide a powerful incentive for people to purchase health insurance. These features under normal circumstances should endear Democrats to the proposal.

Consider the current exclusion. Its value rises with how much someone spends on health care, and how much of this spending is funneled through employer-sponsored health-care coverage. This creates an incentive for people to purchase policies with low deductibles, or which cover routine spending. These policies look a lot less like insurance and more like prefunded spending accounts purchased through employers and managed by insurance companies. Consider homeowners and auto insurance policies. Do these cover routine spending on cleaning the gutters or tuning up a car?

The subsidy encourages people to buy bigger policies that cover more, and leads to greater health-care spending. Moreover, lower deductibles and coverage of routine spending dulls consumers' sensitivity to price. Reducing the tax bias should result in insurance that is more focused on catastrophic coverage and less on routine spending.

WSJ.com - The Age of Prosperity Is Over

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Age of Prosperity Is Over

Financial panics, if left alone, rarely cause much damage to the real economy, output, employment or production. Asset values fall sharply and wipe out those who borrowed and lent too much, thereby redistributing wealth from the foolish to the prudent.

When markets are free, asset values are supposed to go up and down, and competition opens up opportunities for profits and losses. Profits and stock appreciation are not rights, but rewards for insight mixed with a willingness to take risk... Good decisions should be rewarded and bad decisions should be punished. The market does just that with its profits and losses.

No one likes to see people lose their homes when housing prices fall and they can't afford to pay their mortgages; nor does any one of us enjoy watching banks go belly-up for making subprime loans without enough equity. But the taxpayers had nothing to do with either side of the mortgage transaction...

Giving more money to people when they fail and taking more money away from people when they work doesn't increase work. And the stock market knows it.

These issues aren't Republican or Democrat, left or right, liberal or conservative. They are simply economics, and wish as you might, bad economics will sink any economy no matter how much they believe this time things are different. They aren't.

WSJ.com - Hatin' Palin

WSJ.com - Opinion: Hatin' Palin

The complaint against the Alaska governor, at its most basic, is that she doesn't qualify for admission to the national political fraternity. Boy, that's rich. Behold the shabby frat house that says it's above her pay grade.

Congress has the lowest approval rating ever registered in the history of polling (12%!). She isn't the reason polls are showing people want the entire Congress fired, with many telling pollsters they themselves could do a better job.

The primary discomfort with Gov. Palin is the notion that she doesn't have sufficient experience to be president, that Sen. McCain should have picked a Washington hand seasoned in the ways of the world. Such as? Here's an opinion poll question:

If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?

My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians.

WSJ.com - Big Labor Does Gay Marriage

WSJ.com - Opinion: Big Labor Does Gay Marriage

Here's a pop quiz: Who's donated the most money to an effort in California to defeat Proposition 8, an initiative on the November 4 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in the state?

A) Gay-advocacy organizations

B) Civil-rights groups

C) The California Teachers Association

If you guessed "C," you understand the nature of modern liberal politics. And if you didn't, perhaps you're wondering what exactly gay marriage has to do with K-12 public education.

Public school teachers of America, take note. This is your dues money at work.

WSJ.com - How to Read the Constitution

WSJ.com - Opinion: How to Read the Constitution  (an excerpt from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas)

 

What is the role of government? Or more to the point, what is the role of our government?

The Declaration of Independence sets out the basic underlying principle of our Constitution. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . ."

The framers structured the Constitution to assure that our national government be by the consent of the people. To do this, they limited its powers. The national government was to be strong enough to protect us from each other and from foreign enemies, but not so strong as to tyrannize us. So, the framers structured the Constitution to limit the powers of the national government. Its powers were specifically enumerated; it was divided into three co-equal branches; and the powers not given to the national government remained with the states and the people...

Since Marbury v. Madison the federal judiciary has assumed the role of the interpreter and, now, final arbiter of our Constitution. But, what rules must judges follow in doing so? What informs, guides and limits our interpretation of the admittedly broad provisions of the Constitution? And, more directly, what restrains us from imposing our personal views and policy preferences on our fellow citizens under the guise of Constitutional interpretation?

...there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores.   

WSJ.com - Get Ready for the New New Deal

WSJ.com - Opinion: Get Ready for the New New Deal

 

Today, the U.S. is in better shape than in 1932. But it faces similar circumstances. The stock market has been in a tail spin, credit markets have locked up, and a surging Democratic presidential candidate is running on expanding the role of government, laying the blame for the economic turmoil on the current occupant of the White House and his party's economic policies.

 

 Democrats draw their political power from trial lawyers, unions, government bureaucrats, environmentalists, and, perhaps, my liberal colleagues in academia. All of these voting blocs seem to favor a larger, more intrusive government. If things proceed as they now appear likely to, we can expect major changes in policies that benefit these groups.

If those of us who favor free markets for the freedom and prosperity they bring are right, the political system may soon put our economy on track for a catastrophe.

WSJ.com - We Don't Need Anyone to Run the World

WSJ.com - Opinion: We Don't Need Anyone to Run the World 

John Stossel Gets It! 

 

Most of life works by spontaneous order. It characterizes how we choose our jobs, hobbies, associates, recreation, etc. When politicians try to regulate the process, they usually make life worse. 

 

But pundits have no clue about spontaneous order. Instead, they talk about who will "run America."

This faith in political solutions thrives in the face of repeated government failure. Big farm bills have raised the price of food and squeezed out small farms. Campaign finance reform made it harder to challenge incumbents. FEMA couldn't deliver water to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans as well as Wal-Mart did. Medicare has a $35 trillion unfunded liability over the next 75 years.

Yet the media and political class call for more government control.  

[Note: The TV special this article refers to "John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics," aired last week, and can be watched online here: http://abcnews.go.com/2020]

WSJ.com - A Liberal Supermajority

WSJ.com - Opinion: A Liberal Supermajority

 

Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933. 

 

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants. 

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.

WSJ.com - A Capitalist Manifesto

WSJ.com - Opinion: A Capitalist Manifesto

Where are the champions of free-market capitalism? Someone needs to remind us all that two great works were published in 1776, both representing game-changing advances in human freedom: The Declaration of Independence, authored by future American president, Thomas Jefferson, and "The Wealth of Nations" by Scottish economist Adam Smith. Both embrace the social wisdom of individual liberty; both extol the importance of personal responsibility.

France's president held out the possibility that all is not lost, that we can fix what is broken. "The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism," according to Mr. Sarkozy. "It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism."

It is a distinction that could make all the difference.

WSJ.com - Obama's 95% Illusion

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama's 95% Illusion

 

One of Barack Obama's most potent campaign claims is that he'll cut taxes for no less than 95% of "working families." He's even promising to cut taxes enough that the government's tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% -- which is lower than it is today. 

It's a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he's also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of "tax cut."

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit."  

WSJ.com - Obama, McCain, and Health-Care

2 related articles on the candidate's Health-Care proposals:

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama and Health-Care Equity

 

All in all, workers would come out ahead with the McCain plan. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, the average taxpayer would see his tax bill drop by $1,241 in 2009. 

 

Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser agrees with the McCain critique of the current system, or at least he once did. "This massive program of tax breaks is ineffective and regressive, wasting money on those who have health insurance while doing little for those who can barely afford it and nothing at all for those without it,"

On choice, portability, quality and especially equity, the McCain health plan is far superior to Mr. Obama's. The Democrat is merely offering Canada on the installment plan.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: McCain Is the Real Health-Care Reformer

Mr. McCain recognizes that a large part of the problem is that the tax code favors employer-funded health insurance. The system, which began as a response to FDR's wage and price controls, is built on tax breaks that allow employers to buy health insurance with pretax dollars.

Mr. McCain doesn't want to scrap employer-based insurance. He would keep part of the tax deduction in place. But he wants to fundamentally change the way the system works and instead give the self-employed and individuals a tax break for buying their own insurance. There are several advantages to this approach:

WSJ.com - About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

WSJ.com - Opinion: About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

 

Mr. McCain could do worse than remind the middle class what happened to them the last time a charismatic Democratic candidate promised them a tax cut. While he's at it, he might also remind them how much more expensive it will be to send Barack Obama to the White House at a time when his fellow Democrats will have a majority in both houses of Congress.

 

Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

 

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise...

 

WSJ.com - America and the New Financial World

WSJ.com - Opinion: America and the New Financial World

This should not be a partisan argument. It is perfectly fair to argue that wealthy corporations should pay a greater share of the tax base than struggling middle-class Americans. Fair, but not realistic. The U.S. government can no longer dictate to global capital. Once, when the U.S. was the engine of global growth, when the world needed Wall Street for funding, capital could be taxed and controlled by the fiat of the U.S. government. No longer. The U.S. may have the will; it does not have the power.

The current debate in Washington gives no indication that this reality is understood. Both sides of the aisle are susceptible to a false sense of American economic sovereignty. Companies and countries flush with cash increasingly view U.S. laws, regulations and attitudes as undue burdens. As consumer activity accelerates outside the U.S. and Europe, and as financial centers spring up elsewhere, there is increasingly less inclination and less need for the world to go either to Wall Street or to Main Street.

 

WSJ.com - Not Everyone Should Own a Home

WSJ.com - Opinion: Not Everyone Should Own a Home

Maybe only a friendly foreigner could say this. But America needs to realize that not everyone can own a home. The American Dream of home ownership for all is a fraud. Politicians who pimped this dream created an unsustainable mortgage industry whose collapse is only surprising because it didn't happen earlier. America's mortgage industry will not recover, nor deserve to recover, unless it is prepared to challenge this politically unpalatable reality.

America has a long and undistinguished history of populist politicians stacking the cards against lenders and in favor of risky homeownership... If socially laudable but economically reckless laws cause entirely predictable problems for lenders, don't be surprised if taxpayers have to bail them out.

WSJ.com - The Tax Issue Still Resonates

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Tax Issue Still Resonates

Most Americans hold an intuitive belief that one of the most effective ways to keep government in its appropriate place is to limit its access to our wallets. They have a well-grounded, experience-based suspicion that if government can take anything it wants from some (high-income) people, it can, and most likely will, take it from everyone else, too. They are unenthusiastic about massive new spending because they understand tax increases both feed government and whet its appetite for more.

The tax issue has lost its political punch in the eyes of some commentators, but not among voters. So the presidential candidates recognize this year's election could hinge on who better convinces Americans that he has the right plan to cut taxes.

 

WSJ.com - McCain Is Right On Interstate Health Insurance

WSJ.com - Opinion: McCain Is Right On Interstate Health Insurance

A recent kerfuffle between Mr. Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain concerned the interstate purchase of health insurance. Mr. McCain wants to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, opposes the idea and seems to believe it would create an unsafe, unregulated health-insurance market.

Mr. McCain backs legislation sponsored by Arizona Rep. John Shadegg. Known as the Health Care Choice Act, it would allow individuals living in one state to purchase health insurance being sold to people living in other states. The policy would still have to meet the regulations of the state in which it is being sold, and would be subject to additional federal oversight.

Creating an interstate option for individuals to purchase health insurance doesn't solve every problem faced by the 45 million Americans who are uninsured. But the choice isn't between a regulated or unregulated health-insurance market. The choice is between an overregulated market favored by Mr. Obama and a regulated market favored by Mr. McCain that provides more options to help individuals afford health coverage. 

 

WSJ.com - Bill v. Barack on Banks

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bill v. Barack on Banks

A running cliché of the political left and the press corps these days is that our current financial problems all flow from Congress's 1999 decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that separated commercial and investment banking. Barack Obama has been selling this line every day. Bill Clinton signed that "deregulation" bill into law, and he knows better.

As for the sins of "deregulation" more broadly, this is a political fairy tale. The least regulated of our financial institutions -- hedge funds -- have posed the least systemic risks in the current panic. The big investment banks that got into the most trouble could have made the same mortgage investments before 1999 as they did afterwards. One of their problems was that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns weren't diversified enough....

Mr. Obama's "deregulation" trope may be good politics, but it's bad history and is dangerous if he really believes it. The U.S. is going to need a stable, innovative financial system after this panic ends, and we won't get that if Mr. Obama and his media chorus think the answer is to return to Depression-era rules amid global financial competition. Perhaps the Senator should ask the former President for a briefing.

 

WSJ.com - Debate Questions for Joe Biden

WSJ.com - Opinion: Debate Questions for Joe Biden

 

Softballs for the foreign policy 'expert.'

WSJ.com - Obama's Leftism

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama's Leftism

 

Nonpartisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Mr. Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Mr. Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.

 

Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action, the dean of liberal advocacy groups, ... Mr. Obama voted to ADA's approval more than 98% of the time.

 

In sum, Mr. Obama comes to us from a background farther to the left than any presidential nominee since George McGovern, or perhaps ever. This makes him an extremely unlikely leader to bridge the divides of party, ideology or, for that matter, race.

WSJ.com - The Public Deserves a Better Deal

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Public Deserves a Better Deal

 

There is a better alternative to stabilize the markets: Invest the $700 billion of taxpayer money in senior preferred stock of the troubled financial institutions that pose systemic risks. Let's call this the "Preferred plan." 

This mechanism -- purchases of senior preferred stock with warrants in troubled institutions -- addresses the problems with the Treasury plan. The financial market is stabilized, companies get recapitalized, failures are avoided, debt securities are supported, and time is gained for illiquid assets to mature.

The institutions continue to function, their cost of funding will decline as equity capital increases, and innocent third parties like bank depositors, broker/dealer clients and insurance-policy holders are all protected. The only difference is that potential losses are kept with the shareholders where they belong.

Under a Preferred plan, the shareholders of the firms who created the problems bear the first loss. Who do you think should pay?

WSJ.com - Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess

WSJ.com - Opinion: Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess

Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely to blame for our current mess.

The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

WSJ.com - Give Me That Old-Time Religion

WSJ.com - Opinion: Give Me That Old-Time Religion

Once we're done imposing Spartan discipline on the dining rooms of Wall Street, how about some of the same for the halls and classrooms of the average inner-city high school? A nation in panic at the sight of banks imploding has yawned for years while the public-school system melted down.

A handful of Supreme Court decisions going back 40 years relaxed standards of oversight for dress codes, comportment, speech and expulsion, and the average school principal or teacher threw in the towel on daily discipline. Not my job.

This election may be won by whichever man looks better riding an economic surfboard the next month, but the campaign's undercurrents are pushing the basics back to the surface.

More than opportunism has landed this presidential campaign in places that represent standards, like Saddleback in California and Messiah in Pennsylvania. People want standards again because they work -- in business, in schools, in daily life.

WSJ.com - Putin Is Ruining Russia's Economy

WSJ.com - Opinion: Putin Is Ruining Russia's Economy

With their reliable business partners in the West, the Kremlin has opened up a lucrative market for what could be called democracy offsets. In exchange for oil and gas from Russia, they provide democratic credentials and pretend Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are elected officials rather than mafia bosses.

Until Russia has a government that is accountable to its citizens, no company or individual will be safe here. The silver lining of the meltdown will be the weeding out of so many of the foreign and domestic profiteers who greedily abetted Mr. Putin's drive to turn Russia into a dictatorship. But there are still many who hope that all will be back to business as usual once the dust settles. Apparently they think the show must go on, even though many of the lead actors have left the stage -- and the theater itself is ablaze.

WSJ.com - Will McCain Waste Palin?

WSJ.com - Opinion: Will McCain Waste Palin?*

The media is turning the news into a presidential video game. "Hurricane Ike" or "Wall Street Meltdown" appears onscreen, and the media boots up Barack Obama and John McCain to see how well they talk the problem. Mostly they are speaking gobbledygook about things they barely understand. Whatever a credit default swap is, I'm against it. The public is left to wonder if they are voting for a commentator in chief or commander in chief.

You say Sarah Palin doesn't have enough "experience" to run Washington? Washington is barely fit to be run.

The problem isn't standard political corruption. The problem is that the $2.8 trillion federal budget is a vast ocean of Beltway pilot fish feeding off scraps from the whale -- lawyers, lobbyists, ex-Members of Congress. No one runs the Sea of Washington. It's too big, too deep.

WSJ.com - Democrats Still Aren't Serious About Drilling

WSJ.com - Opinion: Democrats Still Aren't Serious About Drilling

 

Democrats are back in Washington and claiming that they want to do something about oil prices.  But the problem is that their plan...will not produce a single drop of oil. 

Indeed, incessant legal and administrative challenges make true the Democrat claim that oil from newly opened areas will not reach the market for years. These groups make use of a wide range of laws and regulations to challenge development. And they will make sure that the Democrats' proposal is meaningless.

We're told that the Democrats now favor drilling. That they have seen the light after feeling the heat all summer. What's really happening is we're mid-way through a political hoax.

 

WSJ.com - Comparing Obama and McCain On Public Service

WSJ.com - Opinion: Comparing Obama and McCain On Public Service

Both John McCain and Barack Obama exhorted Americans to dedicate themselves to public service in an appearance at Columbia University on Thursday, to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. But Americans need no lectures from politicians to participate in their nation's civic life. They need them to stay out of the way. Between the two, Sen. Obama is far less likely to do so.

WSJ.com - Bush's Lonely Decision

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bush's Lonely Decision

 

"The War Within," the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's account of the Bush Presidency.

 

As is often the case with the Washington Post stalwart, the reporting is better than the analysis, which reflects the Beltway conventional wisdom of a dogmatic and incurious President. But even as a (very) rough draft of history, we read Mr. Woodward's book as an instructive profile in Presidential decision-making. 

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better. 

WSJ.com - Good Judges Are More Important Than Ever

WSJ.com - Opinion: Good Judges Are More Important Than Ever

Democrats have often caricatured conservatives' concern with judges as part of what they consider an "obsession" with abortion. In fact, over the last 40 years judicial activism has brought the courts to the center of national policy making in virtually all aspects of life.

All nominees must be decent human beings that meet the highest standard of competence, honesty and integrity. But they must judge neutrally, without fear or favor, and without regard to what interests may be before them and their personal feelings for the litigants or the causes they may represent. Justice and the rule of law demand no less. The Constitution and laws must be interpreted as they were written, not as judges think they should have been written.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that the judiciary would be the "least dangerous branch" because the judges commanded neither purse nor sword, and would exercise judgment and not will. In order to keep faith with the Constitution they drafted, all Americans, whatever their policy preferences, should agree that this is the judiciary's proper role, and that foreign and defense policy must be left to the politically accountable president and Congress.

WSJ.com - The Foreign Policy Difference

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Foreign Policy Difference

 

[The Obama candidacy] can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

WSJ.com - Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge

WSJ.com - Opinion: Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge

 

Mrs. Palin's leadership and record of reform stands well above that of Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Palin used her veto pen to slash more local projects than any other governor in the state's history. She cut nearly 10% of Alaska's budget this year, saving state residents $268 million.

Mrs. Palin also killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in her own state. Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation's budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions. Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.

Mrs. Palin's record here is solid and inspiring. She will help Mr. McCain shut down the congressional favor factory, and she has a record to prove it. Actions mean something. You can't just make stuff up.

WSJ.com - The Spending Explosion

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Spending Explosion

 

Here's a prediction: The media will report today that the federal budget deficit is big and getting bigger. What most of them won't report, alas, is that the cause of these deficits is an explosion in federal spending. The era of big government is back, bigger than ever. 

 

We hope Congress and the Presidential candidates don't obsess over the deficit per se, because the real fiscal drag from government comes from how much it spends, not how much it borrows.

The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion.  

The fiscal blowouts have included a record farm bill, notwithstanding record farm income; an aid bill for distressed homeowners, extended unemployment benefits, and more generous veterans benefits....  Rather than sort through priorities, Congress is spending more on just about everything.

Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it.   

As they contemplate their choice for President, voters might want to consider which of the candidates is likely to be a check on Congressional appetites, rather than a facilitator. 

WSJ.com - Herbal Legends

WSJ.com - Herbal Legends

 

Usually, alternative medicine is a harmless distraction. And some treatments actually do offer benefits. But going outside modern medical practice also carries dangers. 

 

 "Alternative medicine is not so much about the treatments we discuss in this book," the authors write, "but about the therapeutic relationship. Many alternative practitioners develop an excellent relationship with their patients that helps to maximize the placebo effect of an otherwise useless treatment." To bring all treatments in line with rigorous science, an "excellent relationship" between doctor and patient is a good place to start.  

WSJ.com - Weekend at Henry's

WSJ.com - Opinion: Weekend at Henry's

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to prop up the walking dead so the world keeps buying their mortgage-backed securities. His action may calm jittery credit markets, and it may get the companies through the current mortgage crisis -- albeit at enormous cost to American taxpayers. The tragedy is that he and Congress didn't act 18 months ago -- when the cost would have been far less -- and that he still isn't killing the Fannie and Freddie business model that has done so much damage. These corpses could still return to haunt us again.

WSJ.com - The Inflation Hurricane

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Inflation Hurricane

New Orleans is still far from being able to withstand a 100-year storm -- in other words, a storm that has a 1% chance of happening next year, a 10% chance in any given decade, and a 30% chance during the duration of a standard mortgage. An individual might accept these odds, but not a rational insurance company for any price most property owners would be willing to pay.

Final liability for more and more of life's risks is being assumed by the federal government, i.e., taxpayers. 

...if homeowners and businesses were expected to pay the full costs of the weather risks they take, we would see a lot more pristine coastline.... What is the function of insurance, after all, but to provide price signals to encourage safe choices over dangerous ones?

WSJ.com - Big Government Is a High-Stakes Affair

WSJ.com - Opinion: Big Government Is a High-Stakes Affair

The stakes are so high in this presidential election for a fundamental reason that doesn't get discussed nearly enough: The federal government is so large and powerful. In particular, any aggressive president and Congress acting together have it in their legal authority -- under our presently elasticized Constitution -- to exercise near complete control over the economy. A long line of judge-made law since the Supreme Court's New Deal era decision in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) says there is almost no limit, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, to the regulatory reach of the federal government.

Thus, a united president and Congress can, as a practical matter, do all or any of the following (plus much more): take your money and give it to someone else; tell businesses what to produce and sell, who to hire and what wages to pay; set all commodity, wholesale and retail prices; control all energy supplies, communication networks and financial markets; replace all private health-care with a government system; prescribe the curriculum for all schools; determine which students get a slot in elite universities; diminish political and other speech; and enroll all citizens above the age of 17 either in the military or in civilian corps for periodic instruction and service. Children could be required to spend the summer in government "youth" camps.

WSJ.com - 'Stop! Or We'll Say Stop Again!'

WSJ.com - Opinion: 'Stop! Or We'll Say Stop Again!'

At a special meeting in Brussels, EU national leaders told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to abide by the terms of a French-brokered cease-fire, including a pullback of Russian troops to their preconflict positions. If he doesn't do so, they warned, they will hold another meeting.

That's all. It's been almost three weeks since Mr. Medvedev signed the cease-fire, and five days since Moscow broke with the rest of the world by recognizing the self-declared independence of Georgian provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Yet Europe's leaders evidently need more time to ruminate over the situation in the Caucasus.

WSJ.com - How the Georgian Conflict Really Started

WSJ.com - Opinion: How the Georgian Conflict Really Started

'Anybody who thinks that Moscow didn't plan this invasion, that we in Georgia caused it gratuitously, is severely mistaken," President Mikheil Saakashvili told me during a late night chat in Georgia's presidential palace this weekend.

"Our decision to engage was made in the last second as the Russian tanks were rolling -- we had no choice," Mr. Saakashvili explained. "We took the initiative just to buy some time. We knew we were not going to win against the Russian army, but we had to do something to defend ourselves."

According to the Georgian president, the Russians had been planning an invasion of his country for weeks -- even months -- ahead of time...

BREAKING NEWS: McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin As Presidential Running Mate

WSJ.com - McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin As Presidential Running Mate

 

This article gives a good overview of Sarah Palin and her background.

WSJ.com - Labor Day Special: 2 Articles on Big Labor's Current Agenda

WSJ.com - Opinion: Big Labor's Comeback

 

One of the most underreported stories at this week's Democratic National Convention is that Big Labor is making a big comeback.  The paradox is that even as union numbers have declined, union political clout has increased, especially within the Democratic Party.

 

More tellingly, rewriting federal law to promote union organizing is now near the top of the Democratic agenda. The main vehicle is "card check" legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation.

 

The question for Americans more broadly is whether a return to widespread unionization is really the way to raise middle-class incomes.

As for the U.S., the states with right to work laws have performed better economically for workers of all types. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has shown that right to work states over the past 30 years have lower unemployment, higher rates of job creation, and faster growth in GDP and per-capita personal income than states with compulsory union membership. Colorado is hoping to get in on this success, with a high-profile ballot initiative this fall that would make it a right to work state.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Bad Labor Law Is a Path to Economic Ruin

Deceptively named the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill would in most cases take away an employee's right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment.

My advice today about the Employee Free Choice Act is the same as I gave in England: You better fight to stop this undemocratic bill. I'm not the only one who thinks the proposed law violates long-established principles of democracy. In these pages, George McGovern, a former Democratic senator and a champion of organized labor, called this bill what it really is -- "a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor."

Those who support the bill claim that it will "protect workers." This doesn't pass the straight-face test. Mr. McGovern saw through the false rhetoric of the bill's sponsors, saying that the measure "runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, [it] risks silencing those who would speak."

WSJ.com - We Need a National Market for Health Insurance

WSJ.com - Opinion: We Need a National Market for Health Insurance

The slide toward a government-dominated, taxpayer-supported health sector will continue unless the 45.7 million Americans who don't have insurance now are given more opportunities to buy private coverage.

States could help by lightening their regulatory burdens to encourage greater competition for more attractive and affordable coverage. The federal government needs to do its part by updating today's tax policies to better fit a mobile, 21st-century economy. 

The cost of health insurance varies widely, but it is closely tied to state regulations and legislative mandates dictating what services and providers must be covered. More regulation and less competition generally mean less affordable coverage, and vice versa. 

Freeing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines would give people more choices in health care. And giving individuals a direct tax break for purchasing coverage would put armies of consumers to work to find affordable policies.

The complex problems in our health sector are best cured by a bigger dose of market competition, not more government intervention. 

WSJ.com - Protect Our Kids from Preschool

WSJ.com - Opinion: Protect Our Kids from Preschool

 

Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. Democratic governors across the country -- including in Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia -- have made a major push to fund universal preschool in their states.

But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them? Not according to available evidence. 

"... the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations."  The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids.

Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents -- the vast majority -- might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.

WSJ.com - Obama Played by Chicago Rules

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama Played by Chicago Rules

Democrats don't like it when you say that Barack Obama won his first election in 1996 by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot on technicalities.

By clearing out the incumbent and the others in his first Democratic primary for state Senate, Mr. Obama did something that was neither illegal nor even uncommon. But Mr. Obama claims to represent something different from old-style politics -- especially old-style Chicago politics.

Mr. Obama has never stood up against Chicago's corruption problem because his donors and allies are Chicago's corruption problem.

Mr. Obama is not the reformer he now claims to be. The real man is the one they know in Chicago -- the one who won his first election by depriving voters of a choice.

WSJ.com - Wind Jammers

WSJ.com - Opinion: Wind Jammers

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats.

To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this energy, utilities need to build transmission lines to connect their electricity to the places where consumers actually live. In addition to other technical problems, the transmission gap is a big reason wind only provides two-thirds of 1% of electricity generated in the U.S., and solar one-tenth of 1%.

...the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.

WSJ.com - We Can't Tax Our Way Out of the Entitlement Crisis

WSJ.com - Opinion: We Can't Tax Our Way Out of the Entitlement Crisis

Given the hearty support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama received in Europe last month, he must have noticed the surprise and skepticism among some Germans when he asked that Europeans contribute more for defense. Many Europeans argue they cannot afford such an additional expenditure.

They are right. And therein lies a cautionary tale for the United States, because continental Europe has been following something like Mr. Obama's plans for spending and taxes. 

Balancing the federal budget without a tax increase is possible, but will require strong fiscal restraint.

We can also secure a firm financial footing for Social Security (and Medicare) without choking off economic growth or curtailing our flexibility to pursue other spending priorities. Three actions are essential: (1) reduce entitlement spending growth through some form of means testing; (2) eliminate all nonessential spending in the rest of the budget; and (3) adopt policies that promote economic growth. This 180-degree difference from Mr. Obama's fiscal plan forms the basis of Sen. McCain's priorities for spending, taxes and health care. 

WSJ.com - The Chinese Want Property Rights, Too

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Chinese Want Property Rights, Too

The protest zones are silent, but the city is simmering with dissent. Preparations for the Olympics led to a level of social disruption unlike anything in recent memory. At the same time, traditional avenues of solving problems have been shut down, and police crackdowns have intensified. This has created an Olympic pressure-cooker. 

For centuries China has had a process of informal appeal called shangfang -- the practice of bringing complaints to the officials who run the country. . .

All this was swept aside by Beijing's Olympics cleanup. Months before the Games began, thousands of petitioners from outside Beijing were sent home or into detention. Across Beijing, suspected dissidents have been placed under increased surveillance. The most prominent were incarcerated. 

WSJ.com - The EMP Threat

WSJ.com - Opinion: The EMP Threat

Imagine you're a terrorist with a single nuclear weapon. You could wipe out the U.S. city of your choice, or you could decide to destroy the infrastructure of the entire U.S. economy and leave millions of Americans to die of starvation or want of medical care.

The latter scenario is the one envisioned by a long-running commission to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The subject of its latest, and little discussed, report to Congress is the effect an EMP attack could have on civilian infrastructure. If you're prone to nightmares, don't read it before bedtime.