You may recall when this blog began in April that I said this was the Marketplace of Ideas blog’s temporary location.
Well, this is the last Marketplace of Ideas blog item you’ll read here. Beginning today, Marketplace of Ideas can now be found at the Marketplace Web site, www.marketplacemagazine.com, and, for those who want to bookmark, http://www.marketplacemagazine.com/blogs/blog2.php.
Along with Marketplace of Ideas, Marketplace Today, our breaking news site, is also moving to www.marketplacemagazine.com, and, for those who want to bookmark, http://www.marketplacemagazine.com/blogs/blog1.php.
Go over there now, and you won’t miss a thing.
August 21, 2008
Analysis of the (Sun)day
Sunday's New York Times Magazine will include this in-depth exploration of Barack Obama's economic beliefs. Writer David Leonhardt has "spent much of this year trying to get a handle on what is sometimes called Obamanomics and have come away thinking that Obama does have an economic ideology. It’s just not a completely familiar one. Depending on how you look at it, he is both more left-wing and more right-wing than many people realize."
The piece begins with what it calls the Democratic Party's, and Bill Clinton's, "two Bobs" — Robert Rubin, Clinton's secretary of the treasury, who focused on reducing the budget deficit, and Robert Rubin, Clinton's secretary of labor, who "argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class." Put the two together, and what do you come up with?
There's also another spot where Leonhardt is just plain wrong:
There's a bigger issue here, and one that Leonhardt doesn't address. What exactly can you believe in what Obama says? His well publicized flip-flops on trade, capital gains taxes and other, smaller issues make you wonder what exactly he does believe in, other than getting elected. And this, remember, is someone who, as Leonhardt's otherwise fawning piece admits, has "never run any government entity — no state, no city, not even a municipal agency — and he may not prove to be good at doing so."
The fact that Obama's economic mishmash may sound good, and probably is in fact better than other Democrats of the tax-and-regulate-everything-that-moves school of politics, is not a compelling reason to vote for him.
The piece begins with what it calls the Democratic Party's, and Bill Clinton's, "two Bobs" — Robert Rubin, Clinton's secretary of the treasury, who focused on reducing the budget deficit, and Robert Rubin, Clinton's secretary of labor, who "argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class." Put the two together, and what do you come up with?
Obama’s agenda starts not with raising taxes to reduce the deficit, as Clinton’s ended up doing, but with changing the tax code so that families making more than $250,000 a year pay more taxes and nearly everyone else pays less. That would begin to address inequality. Then there would be Reich-like investments in alternative energy, physical infrastructure and such, meant both to create middle-class jobs and to address long-term problems like global warming.Nothing about that paragraph will assuage those who believe the budget deficit is the biggest problem we face. And if that seems like a disjointed set of proposals to you, there's more:
Labor unions, in particular, would prefer more trade barriers than many other Democrats. During the primaries Obama nodded, and at times pandered, in this direction. Since then, he has disavowed that rhetoric, to almost no one’s surprise. Yet his zig-zagging on the issue did highlight the biggest weak spot in his, and his party’s, economic agenda. He still hasn’t quite figured out how to sell it. For all his skills as a storyteller and a speaker, he has not settled on a compelling message about how to put the economy on the right path.Leonhardt claims that Obama's economic thinking has been influenced by the University of Chicago school of economic thinking, but there's not much evidence that Obama actually believes in free markets (he is, however, a veteran of the Chicago school of corrupt politics); he only seems more market-friendly compared with, for instance, his primary opponent Hillary Clinton:The lack of such a message has contributed to several of his worst moments over the last year. Most recently, the campaign has come out with a series of small-bore, populist energy plans — a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, a crackdown on speculators, a partial opening of the strategic oil reserve — that seem more political than economic. The most glaring misstep on this score was his comment this spring about bitter rural voters clinging to guns and religion. It was, in effect, an admission that his own message about the economy hadn’t yet broken through.
“The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,” Obama told me. “And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.” But, he continued, “there are certain things the market doesn’t automatically do.” In other words, free-market policy isn’t likely to dominate his agenda; his project would be fixing the market.No New Democrat there. And, by the way, Barack, markets generally resist getting "fixed" to meet political priorities; his "fixes," whatever they are (for instance, his desire to reduce the gap between "rich" and poor by sticking higher taxes on the right) are likely to lead to Obama's lesson number one in the Law of Unintended Consequences.
There's also another spot where Leonhardt is just plain wrong:
The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign. ...What's wrong with this analysis? How about this: Poor people do not own businesses, poor people do not employ other people, and poor people do not drive the economy. Business owners, most of whom live in households that bring in more than $118,000 a year because they are successful — do. And business owners will get a big fat tax increase out of Obamanomics, not because it will bring in more tax revenue (less than they think, of course), but because Obama and his minions believe in "fairness":
All told, Obama would not only cut taxes for most people more than McCain would. He would cut them more than Bill Clinton did and more than Hillary Clinton proposed doing. These tax cuts are really the essence of his market-oriented redistributionist philosophy (though he made it clear that he doesn’t like the word “redistributionist”). They are an attempt to address the middle-class squeeze by giving people a chunk of money to spend as they see fit.
He would then pay for the cuts, at least in part, by raising taxes on the affluent to a point where they would eventually be slightly higher than they were under Clinton. For these upper-income families, the Tax Policy Center’s comparisons with McCain are even starker. McCain, by continuing the basic thrust of Bush’s tax policies and adding a few new wrinkles, would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners — those making an average of $9.1 million — by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year.I don't believe that Obama actually will cut taxes on the non-"rich." You may recall that Clinton proposed a middle-class tax cut during his first campaign, only to throw it away when he let Rubin talk him into increasing everyone's taxes instead. The result was that taxes reached a record 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2000, helping push the economy into the 2001 recession, even though no one noticed it at the time. Since most Democrats seem to believe that government can spend your money better than you can, Obama will have to convince congressional Democrats to do something they seem constitutionally incapable of doing.
There's a bigger issue here, and one that Leonhardt doesn't address. What exactly can you believe in what Obama says? His well publicized flip-flops on trade, capital gains taxes and other, smaller issues make you wonder what exactly he does believe in, other than getting elected. And this, remember, is someone who, as Leonhardt's otherwise fawning piece admits, has "never run any government entity — no state, no city, not even a municipal agency — and he may not prove to be good at doing so."
The fact that Obama's economic mishmash may sound good, and probably is in fact better than other Democrats of the tax-and-regulate-everything-that-moves school of politics, is not a compelling reason to vote for him.
August 20, 2008
18 reasons
At last, reality has made a tardy appearance into the debate about the role of drinking in our society.
A group of college presidents has signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, a public statement that “the 21-year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses. ”
Why? As the presidents’ statement notes, “Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students. Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer. By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.”
The presidents call upon elected officials to “support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age,” including “whether the 10% highway fund ‘incentive’ encourages or inhibits that debate,” while seeking “new ideas about the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.”
The 21-year-old drinking age requirement — tied to federal government blackmail that takes 10 percent of highway funds away from states that don’t have a 21-year-old drinking age — is ineffective in reducing underage drinking, in colleges and in the places where it was supposed to inhibit underage drinking, high schools. When college freshmen arrive in their dorm, either they have no experience with alcohol if they’ve been following the law, or they’re used to breaking the law. Away from home for an extended period for the first time in their adult lives, in most cases, with no parents telling them not to drink, they start drinking, sometimes to excess and sometimes with tragic results.
Advocates of the 21-year-old drinking age claim that 1,000 lives have been saved each year by the higher drinking age, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Amethyst Initiative quotes Choose Responsibility as noting that more than 1,000 18- to 24-year-olds “die each year of alcohol-related causes other than traffic accidents," and that the 21-year-old drinking age has not prevented deaths, but delayed them — “every claim of an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old life ‘saved’ as a result of Legal Age 21 is offset by the number of 21-, 22-, or 23-year-old lives lost.” If that is true, then the 21-year-old drinking age is an abysmal failure for that reason alone. Choose Responsibility also points out that “Four factors have combined powerfully (and dramatically more than Legal Age 21) to the decline of driving fatalities associated with alcohol: safer cars, higher awareness by drivers of all ages, greater utilization of a ‘designated driver,’ and more vigorous law enforcement.”
What’s more, as Choose Responsibility notes, “Legal Age 21 has created an environment of excess consumption and goal-oriented drinking. While fewer individuals aged 18–20 are drinking, those who choose to drink are doing so at dangerous and alarming rates. … Brain development is complete around age 25; therefore, 21 is not a magic number. What puts individuals at greater cognitive risk is binge drinking, whose rates have only climbed.”
To no one’s surprise, suggesting that the drinking age may be too high is tantamount to mandating drinking until you’re comatose to such anti-alcohol types as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The PR NewsWire headline for MADD’s news release: “Some University Presidents Shirk Responsibility to Protect Students from Dangers of Underage Drinking.”
“It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD, which, according to the Associated Press, is “even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.”
That’s an interesting statement (not to mention a neat bit of character assassination), given that every one of the 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, who drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, according to an Associated Press study, died in a state with a drinking age of 21. Actually, it’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age is not enforceable at any campus except where there’s almost as many security personnel as students. So much for the “informed and dispassionate debate.”
Then again, there is no such thing as an “informed and dispassionate debate” when it comes to the issue of alcohol generally and drunk driving specifically. (See the aforementioned PR Newswire headline.) We as a society lose all proportion whenever the subject of drunk driving comes up, as the show of police force called “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest” under way until Sept. 1 with $50 million of your tax dollars, demonstrates. (On Sunday I noticed within a one-mile stretch of U.S. 18–151 that goes through a village of 1,100 people west of Madison, one Wisconsin State Patrol squad car, one county sheriff car, and one village police car. None appeared to be doing anything other than sitting on the side of the road trolling for potential drunk drivers, around 6 p.m. On Tuesday, two state troopers were similarly trolling for drunk drivers on Calumet Street in Appleton at 3 p.m.)
Driving under the influence of alcohol means your senses are partially impaired from your ability to give full attention to driving. That also occurs with drivers on some kinds of medication, drivers who notice their car interior is too warm or too cold, cellphones, car audio systems, car navigation systems, cars that flash instrument panel warning lights, passengers, other cars, and drivers who are thinking about anything else besides driving. Some impairments are more serious than others, obviously, but to assert that, as a Colorado MADD chapter president, Penny Wagner, said, “Once you’ve consumed your first drink, you’ve lost that ability to make a sound judgment,” calls into serious question the credibility of the organization sponsoring that point of view. (Then again, MADD supports an absolute sobriety standard for all drivers.)
How serious is drunk driving? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the number of drinking drivers involved in fatal crashes totals 0.127 percent of all drivers. Note the word “drinking,” not “drunk,” because the NHTSA counts every driver with any blood alcohol content in that percentage. (If you drink one beer and then are killed in a car crash in which the other driver was sober, then you died in an alcohol-related crash, according to the federal and state DOTs.) That is how the state Department of Transportation can propagandize that “alcohol-related crashes in Wisconsin killed 337 people and injured 5,552” without saying how many of the dead and injured were in fact legally or factually intoxicated. (And about that last point, “legally or factually intoxicated,” few people notice that a legal intoxication level creates a crime based on a state of being, rather than a state of doing, or, put another way, a state of mind instead of an action — in this case, bad driving.)
Like other laws created to make politicians look good or constituents feel good without producing actual results, the 21-year-old drinking age serves to encourage disrespect for the law. I’m still waiting for someone to give an actual logical rationale countering the presidents’ observation about how people are legally considered adults at 18 except when it comes to alcohol use. (Recall the words of Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”) It is also another example of how laws can serve to deter personal responsibility. The 21-year-old drinking age is also an example of power triumphing over reason — why can’t you drink before you’re 21? Because we said so!
MADD and its allies will not tell you this, but the vast majority of people who used alcohol before their state said they legally could are not drunks and in fact use alcohol responsibly after they reach the legal drinking age. If that were not the case, the drunk driving and drunk-driving death rates would be an order of magnitude higher than they are. (Then again, MADD is well known for playing fast and loose with the facts, liberally using junk science, or generating all kinds of inaccuracies.)
To date, in Wisconsin only the president of Ripon College has signed on to the initiative. Northeast Wisconsin’s other college presidents and chancellors should too. So should the proponents of the 21-year-old drinking age agree to engage in “an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.” Don’t hold your breath.
A group of college presidents has signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, a public statement that “the 21-year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses. ”
Why? As the presidents’ statement notes, “Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students. Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer. By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.”
The presidents call upon elected officials to “support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age,” including “whether the 10% highway fund ‘incentive’ encourages or inhibits that debate,” while seeking “new ideas about the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.”
The 21-year-old drinking age requirement — tied to federal government blackmail that takes 10 percent of highway funds away from states that don’t have a 21-year-old drinking age — is ineffective in reducing underage drinking, in colleges and in the places where it was supposed to inhibit underage drinking, high schools. When college freshmen arrive in their dorm, either they have no experience with alcohol if they’ve been following the law, or they’re used to breaking the law. Away from home for an extended period for the first time in their adult lives, in most cases, with no parents telling them not to drink, they start drinking, sometimes to excess and sometimes with tragic results.
Advocates of the 21-year-old drinking age claim that 1,000 lives have been saved each year by the higher drinking age, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Amethyst Initiative quotes Choose Responsibility as noting that more than 1,000 18- to 24-year-olds “die each year of alcohol-related causes other than traffic accidents," and that the 21-year-old drinking age has not prevented deaths, but delayed them — “every claim of an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old life ‘saved’ as a result of Legal Age 21 is offset by the number of 21-, 22-, or 23-year-old lives lost.” If that is true, then the 21-year-old drinking age is an abysmal failure for that reason alone. Choose Responsibility also points out that “Four factors have combined powerfully (and dramatically more than Legal Age 21) to the decline of driving fatalities associated with alcohol: safer cars, higher awareness by drivers of all ages, greater utilization of a ‘designated driver,’ and more vigorous law enforcement.”
What’s more, as Choose Responsibility notes, “Legal Age 21 has created an environment of excess consumption and goal-oriented drinking. While fewer individuals aged 18–20 are drinking, those who choose to drink are doing so at dangerous and alarming rates. … Brain development is complete around age 25; therefore, 21 is not a magic number. What puts individuals at greater cognitive risk is binge drinking, whose rates have only climbed.”
To no one’s surprise, suggesting that the drinking age may be too high is tantamount to mandating drinking until you’re comatose to such anti-alcohol types as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The PR NewsWire headline for MADD’s news release: “Some University Presidents Shirk Responsibility to Protect Students from Dangers of Underage Drinking.”
“It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD, which, according to the Associated Press, is “even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.”
That’s an interesting statement (not to mention a neat bit of character assassination), given that every one of the 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, who drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005, according to an Associated Press study, died in a state with a drinking age of 21. Actually, it’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age is not enforceable at any campus except where there’s almost as many security personnel as students. So much for the “informed and dispassionate debate.”
Then again, there is no such thing as an “informed and dispassionate debate” when it comes to the issue of alcohol generally and drunk driving specifically. (See the aforementioned PR Newswire headline.) We as a society lose all proportion whenever the subject of drunk driving comes up, as the show of police force called “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest” under way until Sept. 1 with $50 million of your tax dollars, demonstrates. (On Sunday I noticed within a one-mile stretch of U.S. 18–151 that goes through a village of 1,100 people west of Madison, one Wisconsin State Patrol squad car, one county sheriff car, and one village police car. None appeared to be doing anything other than sitting on the side of the road trolling for potential drunk drivers, around 6 p.m. On Tuesday, two state troopers were similarly trolling for drunk drivers on Calumet Street in Appleton at 3 p.m.)
Driving under the influence of alcohol means your senses are partially impaired from your ability to give full attention to driving. That also occurs with drivers on some kinds of medication, drivers who notice their car interior is too warm or too cold, cellphones, car audio systems, car navigation systems, cars that flash instrument panel warning lights, passengers, other cars, and drivers who are thinking about anything else besides driving. Some impairments are more serious than others, obviously, but to assert that, as a Colorado MADD chapter president, Penny Wagner, said, “Once you’ve consumed your first drink, you’ve lost that ability to make a sound judgment,” calls into serious question the credibility of the organization sponsoring that point of view. (Then again, MADD supports an absolute sobriety standard for all drivers.)
How serious is drunk driving? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the number of drinking drivers involved in fatal crashes totals 0.127 percent of all drivers. Note the word “drinking,” not “drunk,” because the NHTSA counts every driver with any blood alcohol content in that percentage. (If you drink one beer and then are killed in a car crash in which the other driver was sober, then you died in an alcohol-related crash, according to the federal and state DOTs.) That is how the state Department of Transportation can propagandize that “alcohol-related crashes in Wisconsin killed 337 people and injured 5,552” without saying how many of the dead and injured were in fact legally or factually intoxicated. (And about that last point, “legally or factually intoxicated,” few people notice that a legal intoxication level creates a crime based on a state of being, rather than a state of doing, or, put another way, a state of mind instead of an action — in this case, bad driving.)
Like other laws created to make politicians look good or constituents feel good without producing actual results, the 21-year-old drinking age serves to encourage disrespect for the law. I’m still waiting for someone to give an actual logical rationale countering the presidents’ observation about how people are legally considered adults at 18 except when it comes to alcohol use. (Recall the words of Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”) It is also another example of how laws can serve to deter personal responsibility. The 21-year-old drinking age is also an example of power triumphing over reason — why can’t you drink before you’re 21? Because we said so!
MADD and its allies will not tell you this, but the vast majority of people who used alcohol before their state said they legally could are not drunks and in fact use alcohol responsibly after they reach the legal drinking age. If that were not the case, the drunk driving and drunk-driving death rates would be an order of magnitude higher than they are. (Then again, MADD is well known for playing fast and loose with the facts, liberally using junk science, or generating all kinds of inaccuracies.)
To date, in Wisconsin only the president of Ripon College has signed on to the initiative. Northeast Wisconsin’s other college presidents and chancellors should too. So should the proponents of the 21-year-old drinking age agree to engage in “an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.” Don’t hold your breath.
August 19, 2008
Today's sign of your advancing age
Beloit College released its annual Mindset List today, reminding all of us who have already graduated from college about the lives of today's college freshmen:
Some of the more amusing ones (well, you may find them amusing; then again, you may not, particularly the last one):The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.
It is a multicultural, politically correct and “green” generation that has hardly noticed the threats to their privacy and has never feared the Russians and the Warsaw Pact.
- Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
- As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”
- WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
- IBM has never made typewriters.
- Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the National Anthem again.
- Caller ID has always been available on phones.
- Soft drink refills have always been free.
- They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”
- The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
Analysis of the Day
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlhearn notes that his car's driver has never gone on strike, unlike Racine bus drivers and (back in the late '70s, I remember) Madison bus drivers. Nor, I would add, do they race through the first half of their route and then sit for several minutes, making some passengers miss their bus and others late, as Madison drivers have been known to do.
Gas prices and Madison
Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Appleton) must be breathing sighs of relief now that gas prices have slipped around 40 cents a gallon from their record highs of earlier this year. (Must be that nasty antitrust lawsuit against OPEC.)
Which does not mean that gas prices are no longer an issue for voters. That is what Randy Melchert, a Republican candidate in the 24th Assembly District in southeast Wisconsin, believes.
Melchert has a three-pronged way to reduce gas prices in the Milwaukee metropolitan area by 10 percent, and to reduce gas prices in the rest of Wisconsin as well:
The gas tax is no longer indexed to inflation, so at least it's not automatically increasing every spring. Then again, the transportation fund is decreasing thanks to Gov. James Doyle's repeated raiding of the fund to balance the state budget. The transportation fund seems to be, in the words of another observer, the payday loan store of state government.
As for Doyle’s position on the minimum markup law, he seems to emulate the death penalty dance of former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Thompson said publicly that he would sign a bill reestablishing the death penalty if it reached his desk. However, a death penalty bill never reached his desk because, despite the repeated efforts of state Sen. Alan Lasee (R–Rockland), Republican legislative leaders prevented it from coming to a vote since they didn’t support the death penalty.
Similarly, Doyle has said publicly that he would sign a bill ending the minimum markup law if it reached his desk. No such bill has reached his desk, in part due to strange votes of people like Sen. Glenn Grothman (R–West Bend), who in 2005 voted in committee against ending the law over concerns that gas stations wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of credit card transactions. It’s not clear what part of the state Constitution stipulates that legislators’ duties include monitoring gas station credit card transaction fees.
For that matter, setting (or effectively setting) gas prices is not the role of government, period. Many Republicans wrongly favor the minimum markup law on the premise that eliminating it would eliminate smaller gas stations in favor of the behemoths of Big Oil. As stated here before, evidence of predatory gas pricing is nonexistent, and as it is, consumers don't usually know or ever care about the source of their gas (with the exception of Citgo, owned by Venezuela and its vile "president," Hugo Chavez).
On the other side of the aisle, do not assume that the drop in gas prices is a success of the Democratic Party. It may well be that gas prices aren't going to drop to the levels (about $2.30 a gallon) that preceded Democratic control of Congress. It is a 100 percent guarantee that, next spring at the latest, they will increase with a President Obama and Democratic-controlled Congress, since Obama and most Democrats believe that oil companies should be saddled with windfall profits taxes and, anyway, we need to be weaned from our cars and "cheap" energy. (I'll believe that the next time I see any Democratic member of Congress on a Washington, D.C., bus.)
Then again, perhaps there's less urgency about gas prices in Madison because ... gas prices are (as of today) lower in Madison than in other metro areas of Wisconsin.
Which does not mean that gas prices are no longer an issue for voters. That is what Randy Melchert, a Republican candidate in the 24th Assembly District in southeast Wisconsin, believes.
Melchert has a three-pronged way to reduce gas prices in the Milwaukee metropolitan area by 10 percent, and to reduce gas prices in the rest of Wisconsin as well:
- Eliminate the state’s minimum markup law.
- Reduce the state gas tax to the national average.
- Eliminate the federal mandate requiring use of reformulated gas in the Milwaukee area.
The gas tax is no longer indexed to inflation, so at least it's not automatically increasing every spring. Then again, the transportation fund is decreasing thanks to Gov. James Doyle's repeated raiding of the fund to balance the state budget. The transportation fund seems to be, in the words of another observer, the payday loan store of state government.
As for Doyle’s position on the minimum markup law, he seems to emulate the death penalty dance of former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Thompson said publicly that he would sign a bill reestablishing the death penalty if it reached his desk. However, a death penalty bill never reached his desk because, despite the repeated efforts of state Sen. Alan Lasee (R–Rockland), Republican legislative leaders prevented it from coming to a vote since they didn’t support the death penalty.
Similarly, Doyle has said publicly that he would sign a bill ending the minimum markup law if it reached his desk. No such bill has reached his desk, in part due to strange votes of people like Sen. Glenn Grothman (R–West Bend), who in 2005 voted in committee against ending the law over concerns that gas stations wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of credit card transactions. It’s not clear what part of the state Constitution stipulates that legislators’ duties include monitoring gas station credit card transaction fees.
For that matter, setting (or effectively setting) gas prices is not the role of government, period. Many Republicans wrongly favor the minimum markup law on the premise that eliminating it would eliminate smaller gas stations in favor of the behemoths of Big Oil. As stated here before, evidence of predatory gas pricing is nonexistent, and as it is, consumers don't usually know or ever care about the source of their gas (with the exception of Citgo, owned by Venezuela and its vile "president," Hugo Chavez).
On the other side of the aisle, do not assume that the drop in gas prices is a success of the Democratic Party. It may well be that gas prices aren't going to drop to the levels (about $2.30 a gallon) that preceded Democratic control of Congress. It is a 100 percent guarantee that, next spring at the latest, they will increase with a President Obama and Democratic-controlled Congress, since Obama and most Democrats believe that oil companies should be saddled with windfall profits taxes and, anyway, we need to be weaned from our cars and "cheap" energy. (I'll believe that the next time I see any Democratic member of Congress on a Washington, D.C., bus.)
Then again, perhaps there's less urgency about gas prices in Madison because ... gas prices are (as of today) lower in Madison than in other metro areas of Wisconsin.
August 18, 2008
Prince Charles: “Let them eat cake”
Why, one might ask, did our Founding Fathers fight for independence from Great Britain?
One reason is so that we would not be the subjects of twits like His Royal Highness Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As he waits … and waits … and waits to succeed Queen Elizabeth atop the United Kingdom, he feels free to enlighten us commoners about the dangers of genetically modified foods, as reported in the London Daily Telegraph:
I’d be curious about what Charles considers to be “working against nature.” Irrigation? Fertilizer? Insecticides and herbicides? Hybrid crops? Use of tractors and combines? Metal silos? Lights? Electricity?
It’s not clear if Charles is really as ignorant or as insensitive to the problems of the world outside Clarence House as this makes him appear, or if he’s been listening to Jeremy Rifkin too much. (Bonnie Prince Charlie says we have, as of now, 15 months to reverse global climate change, assuming global warming is actually occurring.) It’s pathetic to see one of the world’s (alleged) leaders succumbing to superstition over science, similar to opponents of nuclear power. It’s also pathetic to see the next leader of the country and kingdom that produced Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Wilberforce, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher become vaguely socialist. That, or he’s channeling his inner Marie Antoinette.
One reason is so that we would not be the subjects of twits like His Royal Highness Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As he waits … and waits … and waits to succeed Queen Elizabeth atop the United Kingdom, he feels free to enlighten us commoners about the dangers of genetically modified foods, as reported in the London Daily Telegraph:In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with nature which had gone “seriously wrong.”
The Prince, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, also expressed the fear that food would run out because of the damage being wreaked on the earth’s soil by scientists’ research.
He accused firms of conducting a “gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong.
“Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?”Relying on “gigantic corporations” for food, he said, would result in “absolute disaster.
“That would be the absolute destruction of everything … and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future,” he said.
“What we should be talking about is food security not food production — that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.
“And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.” …
In the interview the Prince, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate, held out the hope of the British agricultural system encouraging more and more family run co-operative farms.
When challenged over whether he was trying to turn back the clock, he said: “I think not. I’m terribly sorry. It’s not going backwards. It is actually recognising that we are with nature, not against it. We have gone working against nature for too long.”
Let’s see here. Our planet, whose population is growing (except in Europe), has starving people. There is also an effort to replace oil imported from the Middle East with ethanol from corn or other plant sources. Genetically modified plants have never been proven to harm nature or people. (Our sample size: 8.5 million farmers on more than 100 million acres of cropland in 21 countries, as of 2006.) In fact their genetic modifications can eliminate or reduce the need for pesticides and herbicides. Modifications can increase cold and drought resistance. Modifications can also increase the nutritional value of crops.
I’d be curious about what Charles considers to be “working against nature.” Irrigation? Fertilizer? Insecticides and herbicides? Hybrid crops? Use of tractors and combines? Metal silos? Lights? Electricity?
It’s not clear if Charles is really as ignorant or as insensitive to the problems of the world outside Clarence House as this makes him appear, or if he’s been listening to Jeremy Rifkin too much. (Bonnie Prince Charlie says we have, as of now, 15 months to reverse global climate change, assuming global warming is actually occurring.) It’s pathetic to see one of the world’s (alleged) leaders succumbing to superstition over science, similar to opponents of nuclear power. It’s also pathetic to see the next leader of the country and kingdom that produced Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Wilberforce, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher become vaguely socialist. That, or he’s channeling his inner Marie Antoinette.
August 17, 2008
Fun at the Weather Service?
A regular reader caught this on the National Weather Service's forecast page for Rosendale Saturday night:
Overnight: Cloudy.
Sunday: Cloudy.
Sunday Night: Cloudy.
Monday: Cloudy.
Monday Night: Cloudy.
Tuesday: Partly sunny. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind between 70 and 80 mph.
Tuesday Night: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind 90 to 95 mph increasing to between 110 and 115 mph.
Wednesday: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind 115 to 120 mph increasing to between 155 and 160 mph.
Wednesday Night: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds.
Thursday: Cloudy.
Thursday Night: Cloudy.
Friday: Cloudy.
Overnight: Cloudy.
Sunday: Cloudy.
Sunday Night: Cloudy.
Monday: Cloudy.
Monday Night: Cloudy.
Tuesday: Partly sunny. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind between 70 and 80 mph.
Tuesday Night: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind 90 to 95 mph increasing to between 110 and 115 mph.
Wednesday: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds, with a east wind 115 to 120 mph increasing to between 155 and 160 mph.
Wednesday Night: Cloudy. Strong and damaging winds.
Thursday: Cloudy.
Thursday Night: Cloudy.
Friday: Cloudy.
August 15, 2008
Skål
I’ve been the editor of Marketplace on and off since the end of January 1994. If I had to point at one thing that points at quality of life in the preceding 14 years, it would be …
… the growth of breweries and wineries in Northeast Wisconsin.
The former of those two facts makes sense, given our heritage as a brewing state. The latter is less self-evident, since no one thinks of Wisconsin as having a good grape-growing climate. Some snobs claim that apple or cherry wines aren't really wines at all. But one of the great facets of free enterprise is the opportunity to make your own choice of what food and drink to drink. (At least for now, though some wish to restrict our food and drink choices.)
(This has nothing to do with the latest Department of Transportation anti-drunk driving campaign, “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest” campaign that starts today and runs through Sept. 1. Anyone with an ounce of responsibility should know that impaired driving — to the point where you can’t safely operate a vehicle, not based on a legislatively determined number — is indefensible. It might have more to do with the Wall Street Journal’s weekend “Tastings” and “How’s Your Drink?” columns, the only problem with which is that if you followed their purchase advice, half of your house would be your liquor cabinet and your wine cellar.)
Wisconsin’s historically predominant ethnic group is German. Our German ancestors did unfortunately bring large government and high taxes with them, but they also brought beer. (An interesting tradeoff.) Other Europeans brought wine with them, since they came from countries with poor-quality drinking water. Within 50 years of a wave of mid-19th-century German immigration, brewing had become the fifth largest industry in the U.S., according to Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.
Beer and wine have been more durable than government, having survived “progressive” and anti-alcohol efforts to wipe it out during Prohibition. (One anti-alcohol type wrapped temperance and World War I anti-German sentiment by proclaiming, "The worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller.") Beer and wine are also more durable than newspapers, specifically the Gannett efforts to shame all of us into stopping drinking. (And, yes, that is exactly the goal of the Gannett series, any denials of theirs notwithstanding; had they wanted to focus exclusively on drunk driving, they certainly could have.)
One of the more interesting classes I took at the University of Wisconsin was a class in UW’s Botany department, “Plants and Man.” Besides being one of the first users of multimedia presentations (he used two slide projectors during lectures), the professor, Tim Allen, talked about, of all things, brewing and winemaking:
Old Style, of course, was brewed by the late G. Heileman Brewing Co. of La Crosse, which also brewed my first favorite beer, Special Export. (Both Old Style and Special Export are now brewed by Miller for Pabst, the labels’ owner. Pabst also owns Blatz, Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, Olympia, Pearl, Rainier, Schaefer, Schlitz and Stroh’s.) Special Export was the beer of choice at home when I reached legal drinking age, so I drank it until the formula changed sometime around 1990.
(Interesting side fact: Several beer Web sites actually “card” users — if you’re not 21, you can’t get into their Web site, I suppose because of the national 21-year-old drinking age. At 18, you can vote, marry, sign legally binding contracts and die for your country, but until you’re 21 you can neither drink nor access beer Web sites.)
I come from a long line of brandy drinkers, which shouldn’t be a surprise in Wisconsin. My grandfather drank brandy and cola. My father drinks brandy and seltzer. My Polish Minnesota relatives were shot-and-a-beer types, although the shot was brandy and not whiskey. I drink the official mixed drink of Wisconsin, the brandy old fashioned made with sweet vermouth. (Except during my in-laws’ large Christmas celebration, where the order of the day is their brandy slush.) The black sheep of the family are my aunt and uncle, who make the world’s greatest Bloody Marys.
My alcohol choices are influenced heavily by my sweet tooth. (Call me a philistine, but my wine preferences lean toward sweet whites.) As I’m finishing this column, for instance, I’m drinking a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, beer with a lemonade taste. (I’ll pause to wait for the snickering among some of you to stop.) I also like wheat beers, red beers, and even dark beers when I’m feeling, well, brilliant. I was going to replace the Summer Shandy with Leinie’s Apple Spice this fall, but Leinie decided to discontinue Apple Spice and replace it with Fireside Nut Brown. (We’ll see.) I have yet to delve into the world of home brewing, because I have enough to do in my life as it is. (More power to those who brew at home.)
There is great irony in the purchase of Anheuser–Busch, brewers of Budweiser, by InBev of Belgium. Some argue that Budweiser helped wipe out dozens of regional brands; others argue that Budweiser helped wipe out dozens of regional brands that were almost indistinguishable from Budweiser. Ogle (who has a beer blog) points out that, after Prohibition, per capita beer consumption didn't reach pre-Prohibition levels until the mid-1970s. Edward McClelland wrote on Salon.com that, while in 1960 this country had 175 traditional (not micro) breweries, within 45 years (45 years of beer on the wall?) there were just 21 breweries.
Anyone 10 years or older than I am can regale you with interesting stories as the answer to this question: What is the worst beer you’ve ever had? McClelland points out that Anheuser–Busch’s attaching itself to television and sports took it from number four to number one among U.S. breweries, wiping out smaller competition in the process. An honest appraisal, though, might make one think that the survivors were those who didn’t just have more financial, distribution or marketing horsepower, but made a better, or at least more consistent, product than many smaller labels. (You walk into any McDonald’s restaurant in the U.S., and you will get the same Quarter Pounder as at the next McDonald’s, or a McDonald’s 1,000 miles away.) A good tipoff is when a beer is known not for its quality, but its lack thereof.
The trend in the reduction of traditional breweries has been countered by the rise of the microbrewery, or “craft brewery,” including, in Northeast Wisconsin, Fratellos and Fox River Brewing Co., Hinterland, Stone Cellar, Titletown and others. (McClelland notes that the U.S. had eight microbreweries in 1980; 25 years later, the number had jumped to more than 1,300.) The parallel trend is the rise of the small winery, including, in Northeast Wisconsin, Captain’s Walk, Door Peninsula, Kerrigan Brothers, LedgeStone, Orchard Country, Parallel 44, Red Oak, Simon Creek, Stone’s Throw, Trout Springs, von Stiehl, Woodland Trail and others. (The winery list, incidentally, has doubled since I did a story about Northeast Wisconsin’s wineries in June 2001.)
At this point, those readers who don’t drink (and you are perfectly within your rights to abstain) might look at this as an exercise justifying drinking, as if those of us who enjoy the taste of alcoholic beverages or enjoy the stress-relieving effects of adult beverages are less moral or less pure of heart. That belies the reality that stress-relieving activities, of which drinking is one, have existed as long as stress has existed.
Washington Post columnist George Will, not a writer noted for humor, wrote perhaps the second funniest thing he has ever written (the first was his suggestion that football combines the two worst features of American culture — violence and committee meetings) when commenting on Investors Business Daily’s report on InBev’s purchase of Anheuser–Busch:
There is something viscerally satisfying about a good wine accompanying a good meal, or a bottle of beer in the company of friends. Taverns, after all, were where much of the business of the beginnings of this nation were conducted. And if you’re a parent, it is absolutely essential that your children see you and your spouse enjoying adult beverages responsibly.
Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as approving of both beer and wine as “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” The actual quote is: “We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” Then again, he certainly enjoyed ale from time to time.
Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, pointed out, “Beer, if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.”
Cheers. (Or perhaps, for our German ancestors, “prost.”)
… the growth of breweries and wineries in Northeast Wisconsin.
The former of those two facts makes sense, given our heritage as a brewing state. The latter is less self-evident, since no one thinks of Wisconsin as having a good grape-growing climate. Some snobs claim that apple or cherry wines aren't really wines at all. But one of the great facets of free enterprise is the opportunity to make your own choice of what food and drink to drink. (At least for now, though some wish to restrict our food and drink choices.)
(This has nothing to do with the latest Department of Transportation anti-drunk driving campaign, “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest” campaign that starts today and runs through Sept. 1. Anyone with an ounce of responsibility should know that impaired driving — to the point where you can’t safely operate a vehicle, not based on a legislatively determined number — is indefensible. It might have more to do with the Wall Street Journal’s weekend “Tastings” and “How’s Your Drink?” columns, the only problem with which is that if you followed their purchase advice, half of your house would be your liquor cabinet and your wine cellar.)
Wisconsin’s historically predominant ethnic group is German. Our German ancestors did unfortunately bring large government and high taxes with them, but they also brought beer. (An interesting tradeoff.) Other Europeans brought wine with them, since they came from countries with poor-quality drinking water. Within 50 years of a wave of mid-19th-century German immigration, brewing had become the fifth largest industry in the U.S., according to Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.
Beer and wine have been more durable than government, having survived “progressive” and anti-alcohol efforts to wipe it out during Prohibition. (One anti-alcohol type wrapped temperance and World War I anti-German sentiment by proclaiming, "The worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller.") Beer and wine are also more durable than newspapers, specifically the Gannett efforts to shame all of us into stopping drinking. (And, yes, that is exactly the goal of the Gannett series, any denials of theirs notwithstanding; had they wanted to focus exclusively on drunk driving, they certainly could have.)
One of the more interesting classes I took at the University of Wisconsin was a class in UW’s Botany department, “Plants and Man.” Besides being one of the first users of multimedia presentations (he used two slide projectors during lectures), the professor, Tim Allen, talked about, of all things, brewing and winemaking:
“You learn about biological processes, you learn about infections, you learn about being careful, being clean—all things that are crucial to science,” says Allen. “As well as learning a useful skill. Brewing is legal and a wholesome activity.”One thing he said that stuck in my mind during the adult-beverage lectures was to look for quality over quantity — that two bottles of a really good beer are preferable to a six-pack of lesser beer. (That’s also the reason I don’t drink light beer.) I meet no one’s definition of a beer or wine snob, but I avoid the more common beer labels (i.e. Miller Genuine Draft over Miller Lite, and Michelob over anything with “Bud” in its name), particularly Old Style beer (the most common contents of the college party quarter-barrels I attended), of which I drank enough to resolve to never drink it again after graduation. (I also vastly prefer bottles to cans.)
Old Style, of course, was brewed by the late G. Heileman Brewing Co. of La Crosse, which also brewed my first favorite beer, Special Export. (Both Old Style and Special Export are now brewed by Miller for Pabst, the labels’ owner. Pabst also owns Blatz, Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, Olympia, Pearl, Rainier, Schaefer, Schlitz and Stroh’s.) Special Export was the beer of choice at home when I reached legal drinking age, so I drank it until the formula changed sometime around 1990.
(Interesting side fact: Several beer Web sites actually “card” users — if you’re not 21, you can’t get into their Web site, I suppose because of the national 21-year-old drinking age. At 18, you can vote, marry, sign legally binding contracts and die for your country, but until you’re 21 you can neither drink nor access beer Web sites.)
I come from a long line of brandy drinkers, which shouldn’t be a surprise in Wisconsin. My grandfather drank brandy and cola. My father drinks brandy and seltzer. My Polish Minnesota relatives were shot-and-a-beer types, although the shot was brandy and not whiskey. I drink the official mixed drink of Wisconsin, the brandy old fashioned made with sweet vermouth. (Except during my in-laws’ large Christmas celebration, where the order of the day is their brandy slush.) The black sheep of the family are my aunt and uncle, who make the world’s greatest Bloody Marys.
My alcohol choices are influenced heavily by my sweet tooth. (Call me a philistine, but my wine preferences lean toward sweet whites.) As I’m finishing this column, for instance, I’m drinking a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, beer with a lemonade taste. (I’ll pause to wait for the snickering among some of you to stop.) I also like wheat beers, red beers, and even dark beers when I’m feeling, well, brilliant. I was going to replace the Summer Shandy with Leinie’s Apple Spice this fall, but Leinie decided to discontinue Apple Spice and replace it with Fireside Nut Brown. (We’ll see.) I have yet to delve into the world of home brewing, because I have enough to do in my life as it is. (More power to those who brew at home.)
There is great irony in the purchase of Anheuser–Busch, brewers of Budweiser, by InBev of Belgium. Some argue that Budweiser helped wipe out dozens of regional brands; others argue that Budweiser helped wipe out dozens of regional brands that were almost indistinguishable from Budweiser. Ogle (who has a beer blog) points out that, after Prohibition, per capita beer consumption didn't reach pre-Prohibition levels until the mid-1970s. Edward McClelland wrote on Salon.com that, while in 1960 this country had 175 traditional (not micro) breweries, within 45 years (45 years of beer on the wall?) there were just 21 breweries.
Anyone 10 years or older than I am can regale you with interesting stories as the answer to this question: What is the worst beer you’ve ever had? McClelland points out that Anheuser–Busch’s attaching itself to television and sports took it from number four to number one among U.S. breweries, wiping out smaller competition in the process. An honest appraisal, though, might make one think that the survivors were those who didn’t just have more financial, distribution or marketing horsepower, but made a better, or at least more consistent, product than many smaller labels. (You walk into any McDonald’s restaurant in the U.S., and you will get the same Quarter Pounder as at the next McDonald’s, or a McDonald’s 1,000 miles away.) A good tipoff is when a beer is known not for its quality, but its lack thereof.
The trend in the reduction of traditional breweries has been countered by the rise of the microbrewery, or “craft brewery,” including, in Northeast Wisconsin, Fratellos and Fox River Brewing Co., Hinterland, Stone Cellar, Titletown and others. (McClelland notes that the U.S. had eight microbreweries in 1980; 25 years later, the number had jumped to more than 1,300.) The parallel trend is the rise of the small winery, including, in Northeast Wisconsin, Captain’s Walk, Door Peninsula, Kerrigan Brothers, LedgeStone, Orchard Country, Parallel 44, Red Oak, Simon Creek, Stone’s Throw, Trout Springs, von Stiehl, Woodland Trail and others. (The winery list, incidentally, has doubled since I did a story about Northeast Wisconsin’s wineries in June 2001.)
At this point, those readers who don’t drink (and you are perfectly within your rights to abstain) might look at this as an exercise justifying drinking, as if those of us who enjoy the taste of alcoholic beverages or enjoy the stress-relieving effects of adult beverages are less moral or less pure of heart. That belies the reality that stress-relieving activities, of which drinking is one, have existed as long as stress has existed.
Washington Post columnist George Will, not a writer noted for humor, wrote perhaps the second funniest thing he has ever written (the first was his suggestion that football combines the two worst features of American culture — violence and committee meetings) when commenting on Investors Business Daily’s report on InBev’s purchase of Anheuser–Busch:
The story asserted: “The [alcoholic beverage] industry’s continued growth, however slight, has been a surprise to those who figured that when the economy turned south, consumers would cut back on nonessential items like beer.”That’s not columnist hyperbole. Will refers to Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, about a cholera epidemic traced to the drinking water in a particular London neighborhood:“Non what”? Do not try to peddle that proposition in the bleachers or at the beaches in July. It is closer to the truth to say: No beer, no civilization.
So the next time you order beer, just tell your companions that nature wants you to drink beer. (I drink gin — always Tanqueray — and tonics in the summer due to my fear of scurvy and malaria. A bartender once told me that Tanqueray doesn’t cause hangovers, and so far, he’s been right.) Or repeat this quote attributed to John Ciardi: “Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.”“The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol.”
Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol — in beer and, later, wine — which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, “Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties.” Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process.
Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter–gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.
To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had — what Johnson describes as the body's ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying goes, “hold their liquor.” So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol’s toxicity or from waterborne diseases.
The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors — by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. “Most of the world’s population today,” Johnson writes, “is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol.”
There is something viscerally satisfying about a good wine accompanying a good meal, or a bottle of beer in the company of friends. Taverns, after all, were where much of the business of the beginnings of this nation were conducted. And if you’re a parent, it is absolutely essential that your children see you and your spouse enjoying adult beverages responsibly.
Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as approving of both beer and wine as “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” The actual quote is: “We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” Then again, he certainly enjoyed ale from time to time.
Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, pointed out, “Beer, if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.”
Cheers. (Or perhaps, for our German ancestors, “prost.”)
August 14, 2008
The correct corporate tax rate
National Democrats are in high dudgeon over a General Accounting Office report that two-thirds of U.S. corporations do not pay income taxes — that is, do not have income tax liability at the end of their fiscal year.
“It’s shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country,” harrumphed U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D–North Dakota), who requested the GAO report with U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D–Michigan), who you might think has better things to worry about, such as the deteriorating state of the state he represents. “The tax system that allows this wholesale tax avoidance is an embarrassment and unfair to hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes. We need to plug these tax loopholes and put these corporations back on the tax rolls.”
Well, there’s (at least) one problem with Dorgan’s spleen-venting. As page 13 of the report points out:
The dudgeon fades further when you read this from the Associated Press:
I’m going to repeat myself and point out that businesses should not have to pay taxes other than what funds strictly property-based services. In addition to the savings for companies in the cost of complying with our tax system, the savings from not paying corporate income or personal property taxes could go in one or more of three directions — more investment in the company, more pay for employees, or more dividends for shareholders. Any combination of those three is preferable to giving state government and our elected officials, including Dorgan, more money to waste. The benefits any business provides the areas they’re in, beginning with providing jobs, far exceeds whatever taxes a company pays. And every dollar a business is taxed is one more dollar in the price of a product, one less dollar that can be spent on the company (including employee pay), or one less dollar that can be passed on to shareholders.
I’ve also said this before, but it too bears repeating:
What’s the correct corporate tax rate? Zero.
“It’s shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country,” harrumphed U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D–North Dakota), who requested the GAO report with U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D–Michigan), who you might think has better things to worry about, such as the deteriorating state of the state he represents. “The tax system that allows this wholesale tax avoidance is an embarrassment and unfair to hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes. We need to plug these tax loopholes and put these corporations back on the tax rolls.”
Well, there’s (at least) one problem with Dorgan’s spleen-venting. As page 13 of the report points out:
… The overwhelming majority, about 79 to 80 percent of both large [foreign-controlled corporations] and [U.S.-controlled corporations] that reported zero tax liability in 2005, established it on line 28 where they reported zero taxable income before net operating losses. This means that their reported current-year deductions more than offset the positive current-year total income reported on line 11.In other words, in order to pay income tax, corporations have to have net income, as defined by federal tax law. Dorgan therefore is venting about the wrong thing — instead of venting about companies paying no taxes, perhaps he should be bold enough to support, instead of a corporate income tax, a corporate gross receipts tax, where taxes are based on revenue, not income (revenue minus expenses). Dorgan then will have to explain why it will be a good thing when corporations reduce employment and R&D spending, dividends to shareholders (which, by the way, comprise half of Americans), and such niceties as donations to nonprofits once they have tax liability they don’t currently have.
The dudgeon fades further when you read this from the Associated Press:
The fact is that, contrary to what Dorgan thinks, no business escapes from taxes. Every employee, including those allegedly excessively paid CEOs, pays income taxes, Social Security taxes, capital gains taxes if they own stock, state and local sales taxes, and so on. Corporations also pay taxes covering their share of the Social Security taxes of their employees, unemployment and Worker Compensation taxes, property taxes on their properties and sales taxes (to excess, in many cases) on business-related items that aren’t exempt from the sales tax. The only way a corporation can escape taxes is to have no employees, facilities, equipment or purchases.An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called “S” corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.
“Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code,” Edwards said.
I’m going to repeat myself and point out that businesses should not have to pay taxes other than what funds strictly property-based services. In addition to the savings for companies in the cost of complying with our tax system, the savings from not paying corporate income or personal property taxes could go in one or more of three directions — more investment in the company, more pay for employees, or more dividends for shareholders. Any combination of those three is preferable to giving state government and our elected officials, including Dorgan, more money to waste. The benefits any business provides the areas they’re in, beginning with providing jobs, far exceeds whatever taxes a company pays. And every dollar a business is taxed is one more dollar in the price of a product, one less dollar that can be spent on the company (including employee pay), or one less dollar that can be passed on to shareholders.
I’ve also said this before, but it too bears repeating:
What’s the correct corporate tax rate? Zero.
August 13, 2008
Be on the lookout …
From the National Weather Service in Sullivan:
From the National Weather Service in Ashwaubenon:
...FUNNEL CLOUDS POSSIBLE TODAY...
FUNNEL CLOUDS HAVE BEEN REPORTED TODAY NEAR WATERTOWN AND NEAR WESTFIELD IN MARQUETTE COUNTY. THE FUNNELS CLOUDS OCCURRED WITH SCATTERED SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS THAT ARE MOVING ACROSS SOUTHERN WISCONSIN. NO TORNADOES HAVE BEEN REPORTED.
THE MOIST ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS TODAY AND RELATIVELY COLD AIR ALOFT ARE SUPPORTIVE OF BRIEF FUNNEL CLOUDS. THE THREAT OF SEVERE WEATHER IS VERY LOW. IF ANY FUNNEL CLOUDS TOUCHDOWN...THEY ARE EXPECTED TO BE VERY BRIEF AND WEAK WITH VERY LIMITED THREAT TO THE PUBLIC. SCATTERED SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH THE AFTERNOON WITH FUNNEL CLOUDS POSSIBLE.
From the National Weather Service in Ashwaubenon:
...FUNNEL CLOUDS POSSIBLE TODAY...
AN UPPER LEVEL DISTURBANCE WILL PRODUCE WEATHER CONDITIONS THAT ARE FAVORABLE FOR FUNNEL CLOUDS THIS AFTERNOON. IN FACT...A FUNNEL CLOUD HAS ALREADY BEEN REPORTED NEAR NEW HOLSTEIN...IN SOUTHEAST CALUMET COUNTY.
THESE RELATIVELY WEAK FUNNELS TYPICALLY FORM FROM A SMALL SHOWER OR THUNDERSTORM...AND RARELY TOUCH THE GROUND. THEY NORMALLY EXTEND A FEW HUNDRED FEET DOWNWARD FROM THE BASE OF THE CLOUD...AND LAST A FEW MINUTES BEFORE DISSIPATING.
ON OCCASION...THESE FUNNELS CAN TOUCH THE GROUND AS A TORNADO...BUT THEY ARE USUALLY QUITE WEAK. THESE TYPE OF TORNADOES ARE MUCH LESS VIOLENT THAN TORNADOES THAT FORM WITH STRONG THUNDERSTORMS OR SUPERCELL THUNDERSTORMS.
IF YOU SEE A FUNNEL CLOUD APPROACHING YOUR LOCATION...SEEK SHELTER INDOORS.
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