SOME ECONOMICS

The real farm subsidy scandal: "The most enduring political illusion is that farm subsidies are necessary to maintain the small family farmer. ... Small family farmers are not the primary dollar recipients of federal subsidies, however. According to the subsidy watchdog Environmental Working Group, 71 percent of farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy beneficiaries, almost all of which are large farms. In 2002, 78 farms, none small or struggling, each received over a million dollars in subsidies. The bottom 80 percent of recipients average only $846 per year."

The never-ending war on protectionist ignorance: "By the late 1990s, the protectionists --now rechristened "anti-globalizers" to reflect the expanded scope of their agenda-- seemed to have recovered some of their lost ground. Their newfound vocalism made headlines during the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999. Today, however, advocates of globalization are gaining the upper hand again. Bhagwati's strikingly successful defense of open markets in his recent book In Defense of Globalization has been bolstered by another influential pro-globalization voice, that of Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Wolf's weekly columns have already established him as one of the world's most respected economic journalists. Now his ambitious new book, Why Globalization Works, offers a patient and persuasive refutation of many of the arguments most frequently marshaled by critics of trade liberalization".

In defence of price gougers: Imagine a system that could instantly respond to a calamity like Hurricane Charley by mobilizing suppliers to speed urgently needed resources to the victims. Imagine that such a system could quickly attract the out-of-town manpower needed for cleanup and repairs, while seeing to it that existing supplies were neither recklessly squandered nor hoarded. Imagine that it could prompt thousands of men and women to act in the public interest, yet not force anyone to do anything against his will. Actually, there's no need to imagine. The system already exists. Economists refer to it as the law of supply and demand. Unfortunately, too many journalists and politicians call it by a more pejorative and destructive name: "price-gouging."

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ELSEWHERE

From John Kerry's interview with GQ magazine: "GQ: You've never seen a therapist? JK: No. I had some nightmares when I came home, which is not unusual. GQ: Like what? JK: I can't say. To me Vietnam is an old place, an old memory. It is old history, it's gone, it's past. The less I have to talk about it, frankly, the happier I am." He must be the most miserable man alive if that's the case!

Peg Kaplan points out that only 6 out of 100 pages of Kerry's military records have been released and that his discharge was delayed for 6 years. Highly suspicious.

Hold the Mayo has lots on Kerry -- including comments on his old antiwar book that he is now trying to suppress. Lots of documentation here too.

Good comment from a reader: "Kerry's reaction to the Swift Boat Vets (censorship, lawsuits, threats) reminds me of Stalin or Hitler. If Kerry had their power I don't think there is much doubt that he would send his secret police to arrest the vets and throw them in the Gulag or the concentration camp".

Political censorship is a reflex for the Left: "I got an e-mail from a person who identified herself as Melissa Salmanowitz with a group called Media Matters for America. It supposedly is a watchdog on conservatives, and she was wanting me to write about her group's effort to get chain book stores to quit selling Unfit for Command due to accuracy problems. So I e-mailed Salmanowitz and told her that I'd write about their cause to quash the book's examination of John F. Kerry's military record and anti-war activities if they'd make the same appeal to the movie theaters to stop showing Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. ... if Democrats and liberals nationally are going to dish it out, they should accept the consequences. They can't cheer the smear by Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg and Moveon.org, then try to silence the Swift Boat vets. That's too hypocritical, even for presidential politics."

People still escaping the socialist paradise: "A Cuban woman tucked herself inside a wooden crate the size of a small filing cabinet and had herself shipped from the Bahamas to Miami aboard a cargo plane. The woman, whose name was not released, will be allowed to stay in the United States. A cargo crew found her curled up inside the crate after unloading it late Tuesday at the Miami airport. 'Certainly she's lucky to be alive,' said Zach Mann, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. Under the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay, while those who are picked up at sea are sent home. Federal officials released no information on how the woman got from Cuba to the Bahamas. The 180-mile route is flown by a third-party contractor for the delivery service DHL, which said it was investigating."

From a Dennis Prager interview: "I believe that if I took a thousand evangelical ministers... and I took a thousand professors in the liberal arts, I would bet every penny I have that the moral acuity of the thousand evangelical ministers would dwarf the moral acuity of a thousand liberal arts professors. For which reason Lawrence Summers, for example, the president of Harvard, announced two years ago that the seat -- the seat -- of anti-Semitism in America had shifted to the university. The university had also been the seat of support for Stalin. The university in Germany was the seat of the place to get Nazi philosophers."

Dumb Canadians: "A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less, concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical system is badly injured and bleeding citizens' hard-earned tax dollars. The institute compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes. One of the major reasons for this discrepancy is that, unlike the countries in the study that outperformed Canada--Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France, for example-- Canada outlaws most private health care".

"The left takes its vision seriously -- more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep." -- Thomas Sowell

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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