A Vote To Watch

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is readying a bill for Senate consideration that would freeze US biofuel mandates at their current level, ending the mandated increases in biofuel production through 2030.

The reason for Hutchinson's bill -- a bold one, given the amount of grain production in Texas -- is simple: Artificial, government-set mandates for biofuels are a key component of food staple price increases that have driven people to hunger around the world. Writes Hutchinson in IBD,

Nearly all our domestic corn and grain supply is needed to meet this [biofuel] mandate, robbing the world of one of its most important sources of food.

We are already seeing the ill effects of this measure. Last year, 25% of America's corn crop was diverted to produce ethanol. In 2008, that number will grow to 30%-35%, and it will soar even higher in the years to come.

Furthermore, the trend of farmers supplanting other grains with corn is decreasing the supply of numerous agricultural products. When the supply of those products goes down, the price inevitably goes up.

Subsequently, the cost of feeding farm and ranch animals increases and the cost is passed to consumers of beef, poultry and pork products.

Since February 2006, the price of corn, wheat and soybeans has increased by more than 240%. Rising food prices are hitting the pockets of lower-income Americans and people who live on fixed incomes.

The UN has called the current situation a global food crisis, and this time they just might be right.

So let's see what happens to Hutchinson's bill. Two predictions:

First, despite the extremely negative fall-out of yet another poorly conceived government mandate, the farm lobby can be expected to fight it.

And second, the obvious companion piece to this legislation, opening up North Slope lands for production, will go nowhere.

Hutchinson begins her piece with a quote that's a good wrap-up for this post:

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." -- Milton Friedman

hat-tip: RCP

Happy? Earth Day

I remember the first Earth Day back in the 70s, when we worried about the imminent risk to the earth caused by pollution. Now, nearly four decades later, we are supposedly still worried about the imminent risk to the earth caused by pollution.

The pollution has changed; the worry has not, even though it's clear there are lessons to be learned from year after year of hysteria: The earth works on its own long cycles, not our headline-grabbing short cycles; the earth is a lot more resilient than Greenie fundraisers would like you to believe, and finally, Greenies have gotten more successful at promoting environmental hysteria.

The evidence for each of the three is self-evident and needs no further explanation here. Instead, I'd like to praise the Greenies for a moment.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan, primarily because from top to bottom, the movement knowingly sensationalizes and distorts for self-benefit, which appalls me since I believe public discourse requires the level playing field truth provides. Worse, their solution is always larger government. They are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and completely untrusting in the character of man, trusting instead in the fumbling, power-corrupted auspices of government.

Yes, capitalism lead the world into the industrial revolution and pollution, but government went along with it and in time communism proved itself far more capable of blindly destroying natural resources than capitalism. The Greenies have forgiven government and big social programs, but have never forgiven capitalism, even though today it is the leading force that's creating the technologies that are taking us away from our polluting past.

But I still praise the Greenies because at their core they are conservationists, as am I. Conservationism is a biblical concept rooted in God's decree that we be stewards of his creation, and it holds as true today as it did with Adam and Eve. So while I make a living fighting environmentalists who try to stop new homes and infrastructure, and think their positions in these battles are untenable and do not represent stewardship, I look at the results of the fights and am not too upset at all.

My firm has been involved in programs that have set aside over 350 square miles of open space in return for development rights. That's more open space conservation than any environmental group has accomplished, as far as I know. Today, I'm working on one project that will preserve 1,600 of its 3,000 acres, another that will build on just under 12,000 acres and preserve just over 12,000, and a third that will permanently protect 21,000 acres, building on just 5,000 acres.

And the built environments within these projects are becoming quite green. Extra work is done to give more houses south-facing orientations for active and passive solar, and Energy Star appliances are required. Recycled water is used to irrigate lawns and parks, and low-flow fixtures are mandatory. Transit is given high priority, and walkability is incorporated in the design to reduce vehicle miles traveled and improve quality of life.

These are dramatic changes from the old model of subdivisions as far as the eye can see, and it's come about for two reasons: regulation and marketing.

The Greenies celebrate regulation on Earth Day and call for more, but there's more than enough, at least here in the USA. Land is preserved to protect endangered species, streams, oaks and rare plants. Carbon footprints are reduced to comply with new laws and regs.

But more important, consumers are starting to prefer green communities and are willing to pay a bit more to have open space nearby and energy efficiency everywhere they look.

So this Earth Day, my prayer is that we get down to earth and celebrate the fact that we're doing enough. There's no need for more political grandstanding on Greenie causes; the balance has been struck in America, and if anything, it favors the earth more than the people who live on it.

Now we are in a position where the free market can take over, working within the regulatory process, and create communities that take care of human needs while stewarding the resources God gave us.

Some related reading:

• For the whacked-out MSM view calling for a complete retooling of the economy a la WWII to tilt at windmills fight global warming, read this essay in Time.
  
  
• For a counterpoint, read this essay by Dennis Prager, who says, "It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil."
  
  
• For a much more logical approach than Time's, in which we apply technology to conserve, rather than appease the hysterics, see this essay by Glenn Reynolds in the NY Post.
  

hat-tip for links to Real Clear Politics

Whoa! Reform, Cuban Style!

Change is sweeping over Cuba since Raul took over from Fidel. Riiiight.

HAVANA (AP) - Raul Castro's government opened luxury hotels and resorts to all Cubans Monday, ending a ban despised across the island as "tourist apartheid" and taking another step toward the creation of a consumer economy in the socialist state.

Cuba has made a series of crowd-pleasing announcements in the past few days. Cubans with enough cash will be able to buy computers, DVD players and plasma televisions starting Tuesday [that's a big "with"], and soon they'll even be able to have their own cell phones—consumer goods only companies and foreigners were previously permitted to buy.

Wow! Hey, Raul, how about giving them a vote in a free, open, multi-party election? No? Ya think cell phones will be enough to appease the masses?

Anyway, it's a lesson in how repressive totalitarian states can be (be they Communist or Islamic or dictatorial). Here we see the granting of freedoms so basic we don't even think about them in free America being positioned as huge news in Cuba.

Making Billions Off The Housing Slump

Ever heard of John Paulson? Me neither, but George Washington sure has, since Paulson made three or four billion Washingtons last year -- and his hedge fund made $15 billion -- by betting against housing. While others wallow in misery as their over-leveraged houses go into foreclosure, or as they look for new jobs outside the mortgage industry, Paulson is luxuriating in their misery.

WSJ subscribers can read the story here (non-subscribers can read an NYT piece on Paulson here). Here are the basics:

In early 2006, while most thought the housing market and its closely affiliated mortgage market could suffer a downturn but not a collapse, Paulson saw things differently and decided to bet on a collapse.

In several interviews, Mr. Paulson made his first comments on how he made his historic coup. Merely holding a different opinion from the blundering herd wasn't enough to produce huge profits. He also had to think up a technical way to bet against the housing and mortgage markets, given that, as he notes, "you can't short houses."

Among the ways Paulson accomplished this were to "short risky CDO slices" and to "buy the credit-default swaps that complacent investors seemed to be pricing too low." Got it? I don't.

Paulson's been a successful investor for a long time, and he did what investors do. Most of us prefer folks who see a market need and fill it more than we like those who see a market weakness and exploit it, but it's all capitalism.

As he has before with earlier, smaller, killings, Paulson will invest his winnings back into the market. I suggest he use a part of it to help lift the housing market back up. That won't only benefit a lot of people, it will also allow him to pull off the nifty trick of profiting off a market as it falls, and again as it recovers.

Quote Of The Day: Dark Green Edition

"What is at risk is not the climate but freedom…I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
-- Vaclav Klaus

Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic knows a threat to freedom when he sees it, and he calls this one right. If given power, Greenies won't just tell us how to live (meager, drab, constrained lives), they'll tell us where to live as well (crammed into dark and dangerous urban cores, while nature again takes over the beautiful spaces).

My only gripe with Klaus' quote is his use of "ambitious environmentalism," because "ambition" is not an inherently negative word. I would substitute "radical," "doctrinaire," or -- just to get their goat -- "fundamentalist."

Hat-tip: Mark Steyn via Hatless in Hattiesburg

Questionable Quote Of The Day

"Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls. And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys."

That's Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's Vice President of Worldwide Operations apologizing to Li Changjiang, China's chief of product safety.

At one level the apology is deserved, but at another it is troubling.

As you'll recall, many of the Mattel recalls involved a small magnetic clasp that was poorly designed, so it could break free and cause a choking hazard. That, Mattel now lately acknowledges, was their problem, not China's.

But the company also recalled toys with lead paint -- paint that had lead levels as high as 110,000 parts per million, or nearly 200 times higher than the accepted safety ceiling of 600 parts per million.

It is uncalled for to apologize for being over-cautious when dealing with lead and children -- especially if toys are from China, which has had a recent history of lead in toys.

Li was not nice to Debrowski. The AP article says Li "upbraided" the Mattel exec, but only provides us with this quote:

Li reminded Debrowski that "a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China.

"This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents," Li said, adding that Mattel should "improve their control measures."

Not exactly a rant, but still, it stinks as bad as the back door of a Shanghai greasy spoon (chopstick?). There is an implied threat in there: "A large part of your annual profit comes from your factories in China ... (and unspoken at least at the photo session) and remember who controls how long it will take for shipments from those factories to be cleared for export."

China does not appear to be responding to the toxic toy crisis by tightening its controls as much as it's response is tried and true Commie: Shut up the mouths of the complainers.

It's what we can expect from our economic dance with this brute. Our toes will get stepped on, not his.

What The Left Excels At: Censorship

I may be a bit late to the party on this one (vacation and all), but it's apparent the Left has been up to a game it plays quite well: infringing on others' freedom of speech.

It's going on at the incorrectly named Americablog, which apparently has a campaign going against Home Depot for (allegedly) advertising on the Bill O'Reilly show. Banging on the old drums of distrust and conspiracy, A'blog posts emails from Home Depot saying the don't advertise on Fox, or any programs "that express strong opinions or political views," then posts another saying they do, in fact, advertise on O'Reilly.

Perhaps Home Depot is doing "run of network" ads that appear across the FOX networks, with FOX choosing which shows the ads run on.

A thoughtful explanation, but don't expect the Left to play nice.

A lot of companies like to use this kind of advertising to claim that they don't advertise on particular shows - it's a smoke screen and a lie. If this is the case here, then Home Depot needs to specifically inform us that they have asked FOX not to run any Home Depot ads on The O'Reilly Factor.

Having said that, Home Depot has some explaining to do if it thinks Hannity is any better than O'Reilly. FOX, across the board, smears gays, blacks, attacks the environment, and more. Home Depot needs to dump the hate network now, across the board.

What gives this pig the authority to tell a corporation where to advertise? Has he not realized that Fox has trounced all other cable news networks and therefore can hardly be the hate-mongers he tries to dismiss them as?

If A'blog (which, come to think of it, is a nice moniker, reminding me of another A abbreviation) really thinks Fox "smears gays, blacks, attacks the environment, and more," then why not provide some links with each of the allegations?

Is providing debate on gay marriage "smearing gays?" No, it is free speech on topical issues.

Is questioning the motives of Jackson and Sharpton "smearing blacks?" No, it is free speech on topical issues.

Is running stories that raise issues about global warming or the economic viability of alternative fuels "attacking the environment?" No, it is free speech on topical issues.

It is clear that A'blog's big fight is with free speech, differences of opinion, and anyone that isn't bullied into goose-stepping along with A-blog and the party line. Were it not so, wouldn't A-blog be demanding that Home Depot not advertise on Keith Olbermann and MSNBC because he "smears Christians, the military, Capitalism, and more?" Wouldn't A'blog be demanding fairness from the networks, with their milquetoast anti-conservatism? Wouldn't A'blog be chiding the NYT, WaPo and the rest of print for their bias?

No, of course not. It's OK to be biased left, but it's not OK to be biased fair or conservative.

Home Depot has a right to advertise anywhere it wants to. If the rabid readers of A'blog decide to take their (probably scant) dollars elsewhere, let them. That's a free market, not the sort of bullying the Left is prone to do when facing something that dissatisfies them.

If you'd like to encourage Home Depot to continue to support free speech and their right to advertise wherever they feel is best, A'blog was kind enough to provide us with some email addresses:

Ron Jarvis, Vice President of Environmental Innovation
ron_jarvis@homedepot.com

Frank Blake, Chief Executive Officer
francis_blake@homedepot.com

Carol Tome, Chief Financial Officer
carol_tome@homedepot.com

hat-tip: memeorandum

Caution: Uncle Sam Is In Your Shower

Children, leave the room. Women, cover your eyes. Men, don't stare. That's the Nautilus II from Zoe Industries, and it's a bad, bad thing. Uncle Sam himself says so.

Its manufacturer, Zoe Industries should win a Freedom Medal for the Nautilus II, but instead, they're only winning the wrath of a pea-brained bureaucrat, Al Dietemann, head of conservation for the Seattle Water Board.

Al does not want you to long for that long-ago day when a shower meant something ... a flood of water washing over you, enough pressure to pound that knotted spot out of your back, a great big American indulgence of feel-good excess.

Like 3 or 4 gallons per minute. That kind of sensual yumminess.

Yumminess? Hah! Al whips out his Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 guidebook, and jabs his finger at the mandate that "all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi."

Then he swivels in his ergonomically correct desk chair and pulls out the Department of Energy bible that lays down the law for consumers and manufacturers alike: "Federal regulations mandate that new showerhead flow rates can't exceed more than 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at a water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch (psi)."

Sure, you might have missed it, but Uncle Sam has micromanaged exactly how much water should come out of shower heads from sea to shining sea. He knows what you want more than you do: Washers that don't clean, cars that crumble, toilets that don't down brown in a single flush, and showers that just don't feel good.

Enter Zoe. In a white-hot flash of entrepreneurial brilliance, the good, capitalistic, free market folks at Zoe realized that the rules applied to a shower head, but did not say how many shower heads one could put on a single fixture. Check out their Shower Buddies site: dual heads, triple heads, a water glutton's delight!

Jeffery Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Auburn, Alabama of all places, lets us know in his article, The Bureaucrat in Your Shower what Al did when confronted with a Nautilus II in all its glory:

Al ordered some products and sent them to BR Laboratories in Hungtington, California, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And sure enough, Bureaucrat Al gained enough data to report Zoe to the feds, accusing Zoe of "blatant violations of environmental protection laws." Now the heat is on.

BR came back with some rather interesting results: The Nautilus II was cranking out an unbelievable -- as in I really don't believe this -- 12.7 gallons a minute! (Remember, the feds don't want you to experience anything beyond 2.5.)

Tucker takes us to the frightful conclusion of this episode:

But then what can the government do about the length of showers? After all, there is no real way to regulate how much water we use (and pay for). Maybe the shower heads have to have timers on them. And maybe the feds need to put up little monitors in our showers to make sure that we have stopped and started them.

And what happens to shower offenders? One can see federal S.W.A.T. Teams screeching up to your house, black-clad men pouring out, securing the perimeter, and shouting through a bull horn: "Drop the soap and come out of the shower with your hands up!"

There is a better way, and regular C-SM readers know what it is: Let the market decide. If the combination of high water bills and massive public disdain causes someone to re-think the watery bacchanals they're enjoying in the shower, then they will go out and buy the Holier Than Thou Industries Ultra-Saver Tricklehead II.

But if the combined pressure of market pricing and social pressure doesn't quite equal the intense jollies of showering in a simulated monsoon, then the Nautilus II stays.

High-Efficiency Woes

I just put a load of towels and a cap-full of outrageously expensive high efficiency detergent into our new Whirlpool Cabrio washing machine like the one on the right. It's a top-loader, but it behaves like a front-loader: Water efficient, power efficient ... and so lousy that my wife won't even use it.

Fortunately, we kept our old workhorse set, which is now plumbed in the garage, and Incredible Wife does her laundry on our 10 year old, $250 washer instead of our new $900 unit.

I bring this all up simply because our Whirlpool Cabrio is just another example of Big Brother and Big Green teaming up to make our lives of lower quality than they were before.

The promise of these new units was that new technology would allow us to have clothes just as clean -- cleaner even -- but with much greater efficiency. Similar promises have been made for cars, light bulbs, water heaters and all sorts of comfort products, with similar results.

And it's not just me who thinks so; even the NY Times science writer John Tierney has opined on the matter:

In the battle against global warming, there is no more beloved phrase in Washington than “energy efficiency.” Mandating energy-efficient appliances costs nothing in the budget and sounds painless to voters. Who could be in favor of energy inefficiency? Congress is working on legislation now to tighten standards further — and touting all the money that consumers will save.

But if these efficient appliances are such a great deal, why do people have to be forced to buy them? The usual justification is that consumers are too shortsighted to factor in the energy savings — and you can support that with theoretical arguments from behavioral economists. People can indeed make dumb short-term decisions about long-term investments.

But when it comes to picking washing machines, it looks as if consumers are less shortsighted than the energy experts in Washington. Thanks to new federal standards, washing machines are using less energy — but as a result they cost more and clean less, as Consumer Reports concludes in its new issue:

Not so long ago, you could count on most washers to get your clothes very clean. Not anymore. Our latest tests found huge performance differences among machines. Some left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing. For best results, you’ll have to spend $900 or more.

Which is precisely what Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute predicted six years ago when the Bush administration enacted the new efficiency standards with promises that new technology would clean clothes better and save money. Mr. Kazman forecast dirtier clothes and pointed out the dubious assumptions in the cost calculations, but he was no match for the coalition of environmentalists and manufacturers eager to mandate expensive new machines.

Mr. Kazman and CEI are now urging consumers to register their displeasure by sending their underwear to the Department of Energy. But it would take a lot of underwear to prevail against the forces on Capitol Hill currently working to impose still higher energy-efficiency standards on washing machines and other appliances — and on the biggest target of all, the automobile. (a belated hat-tip to fellow Watcher Soccer Dad for the clip.)

Look for more of this sort of stuff in the future. It will be hard to find a toilet that can "down brown" in one flush, or more importantly, a car that can withstand a serious impact without causing severe injuries or death to its occupants. That's right: Dying for energy efficiency.

The same motivation that drives forced front-load washers is driving Congressional demands for tighter CAFE standards that would put decisions about fuel economy into the hands of Congress instead of the hands of consumers. The only way the car industry will be able to meet these standards is smaller, lighter cars ... cars that kill, according to the Heritage Foundation:

In any case, to meet higher CAFE standards American manufacturers will be forced to produce more smaller, lighter and therefore less safe cars. As it is, the current CAFE standards result in as many as 3,900 additional highway deaths per model-year fleet. The higher CAFE standards sought by the Bryan bill would force Americans truly to pay in blood, increasing the number of highway deaths attributable to CAFE by as much as 8,600 per model-year fleet.

My big German V8 (which gets 18.9 miles per gallon) surrounds me in a cocoon of 3,737 pounds of security, as opposed to 2,290 pounds for a Toyota Yaris (which gets about double my mileage). Weight, any physicist will tell you, translates to safety in cars. (Not that small cars can't be engineered well -- see this video of a Smart Car hitting a concrete barrier head-on at 70 miles an hour. It appears the occupants, had their been any, would have survived. But I doubt their legs would have.)

There is an alternative to all this, of course. Let the washer-makers with their high efficiency units compete on a level playing field without government programs requiring greater efficiency. Let gas prices, personal economies and personal preferences drive automobile purchases. Don't put false incentives or penalties on our purchases of light bulbs or refrigerators.

The market will move towards efficiency, I'm sure, and let's be honest here: If we're really all that concerned about energy efficiency, then why isn't government de-incentivizing the purchase of powerful computers and high-def flat screen TVs? We don't hear hollering for that, do we?

Why aren't we? Because the internal combustion engine is the spiritual enemy of the Greens because it is powerful, industrial and beloved. They will attack it with passion and without ceasing. And because if you take away Al Gore's three big monitors and Joe Six Pack's big screen TV, there are political consequences.

And, of course, because demanding we put up with stains on our laundry primarily angers a bunch of housewives (sorry, but it's true). Our oh-so-brave politicians therefore aren't afraid to mandate what goes on in the laundry room.

And if you think for a minute that the Greens will have any sympathy with any point I've raised here, think again. Just ask Kim, who left this comment on Tierney's article about the foolishness of high-efficiency washers:

Take a little more responsibility for your words and learn about the scientific data behind environmentalists who are trying to preserve and protect our natural resources for generations to come. Perhaps, by taking [off] the money bag blinders before your eyes, you’d see that there are more important things in this life and in this world than “dirty underwear” versus saving an entire planet (which would take much more than money to duplicate.)

Ah, the compassion (and close-up stink) of the Left!

Science Once Again Laps The Warmies

When NASA didn't budget for a round of scientific satellite missions to measure global warming indicators, the Warmies howled.

But wait ... I thought the debate was over. If it is, then do we really have to apply science to down- to- the- micron measurements so Warmie scientists can argue over the climate equivalent of the number of angels on the head of a pin?

If (and that's a HUGE if) the science is settled on climate change, then what role should science play? Apparently the Warmie answer is that science should exist so grant applications can be written. A far better answer is this: Science should exist to solve the problem.

And, if there is a problem, science is solving it. Here are two recent examples, first from the U.S. Dept. of Energy:

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.

“Reaching this milestone heralds a great achievement for the Department of Energy and for solar energy engineering worldwide,” Assistant Secretary Karsner said. “We are eager to see this accomplishment translate into the marketplace as soon as possible, which has the potential to help reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil and increase our energy security.”

Now that's where the government science budget is better spent, don't you think? Sure, we could have gigabytes of new data from space on temperatures, with each byte endlessly debatable -- is it accurate, is it distorted, can we conclude this, can we conclude that -- or we can actually, you know, build something that works.

Next, let's turn to that respected journal of the scientific community, Car & Driver, in which editor Csaba Csere writes (not on-line; buy the July issue) about a smart application for E85 ethanol fuel. (There are plenty of bad applications of E85, which you can read about here.)

Csere notes correctly that E85 isn't particularly fuel efficient, but that doesn't stop a scientist, it merely challenges him. And Csere's got a friend/scientist who has found an answer: Take advantage of ethanol's high octane and low burning temperature, using it as an intermittent fuel.

The idea is to take a small engine, give it an insanely high compression ratio and lurid turbo boost, enough to shred a gasoline-fired engine. But this engine would use gasoline only when the engine is humming along as engines usually do, then kick in ethanol from a separate tank only when some serious horsepower is wanted.

That means cars could have high performance with smaller, more efficient engines:

To replace a conventional gasoline engine, one would employ a smaller EBS [Ethanol Boosting Systems] engine. To see how, imagine using this technology instead of a modern 3.5-liter V-6. Such a V-6 produces about 260 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque.

Motivated by 22 psi of [turbo] boost, an EBS engine of perhaps 1.8 liters, barely half the displacement of the V-6, could easily achieve such output. The beauty of this approach is that modern cars and trucks rarely use their full power. Instead, they are loafing down the highway working at one-fifth or less of their peak output.

When asked to deliver 25 to 50 horsepower, a 1.8-liter EBS engine would be running with no boost, consuming no E85, and most important[ly], burning much less gasoline than the 3.5-liter V-6 it replaced.

Once again, the free market trumps the command and control mindset of the Warmies. They should just stand back, stop imposing their expensive will on the world, and let us get on with living smarter by making smarter stuff.

Vegas' Green Bust

No, Vegas' green bust isn't the latest titillating show on the strip; it's the latest lesson in why we should let the market establish prices and buying decisions. Will politicians ever learn?

In one of today's most-emailed WSJ stories, the tale is told of high-minded Nevada legislators who thought that the construction of green buildings -- buildings that conserve energy and energy, and use earth-friendly building materials -- should be incentivized.

Now, one would think that in a desert city where the temperature routinely reaches 300 degrees or so, developers would need no incentive beyond lower electric and water bills to build green buildings. But legislators didn't get this, so here's what they cooked up:

In 2005 the Nevada Legislature unanimously approved a measure that cut property taxes up to 50% for 10 years and lowered sales taxes for building supplies to 2% for energy-efficient construction. ... Original estimates put state abatement costs at just $250,000, though no one can say how that figure was conjured.

The $250,000 cost was just a wee bit off -- the ding to the state in lost tax revenues is approaching $1 billion. Green buildings already in the pipeline got meaningless incentives and new buildings got decked out in the greenest shades of green, when a lighter shade of green might have been sufficient.

Nevada has no income tax, so when its sales and property taxes flatten, there's no back-up plan for funding schools, road and infrastructure projects except the General Fund. So, and I can't say this any better than WSJ did:

... late last week the Nevada Legislature, already facing budget shortfalls, worked out a retroactive compromise and essentially asked for a mulligan.

The details of the roll-back aren't important; the lesson of the roll-back is. If there's a good product that offers benefits to the market, the market will buy it. The market is smarter than the legislators, every time.

But if the legislators followed this wisdom, how would they keep themselves busy?

Let's Have Fun! Let's Not Learn From The Soviets!

The Soviet economy, such as it ever was, resides now in the dustbin of history, sharing space with Hitler's dream of an Aryan world and Napoleon's plan for the defeat of Russia.

But someone forgot to drive the ash stake through its heart. The Soviet economic system lives on, thanks to "I go crazy, Hugo crazy" Chavez in his Socialist playground of Venezuela. (In the photo, Chavez is shown holding the food his Socialist reforms are bringing to his people.) From BBC:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has threatened to nationalise stores that sell meat above a government-set price.

The government says supermarkets have been artificially boosting prices of basic foods by manipulating stockpiles. But critics blame regular food shortages on prices imposed four years ago, forcing shops to sell at a loss.

Many privately-owned supermarkets have suspended sales of beef, milk and sugar after one chain was temporarily closed for pricing meat above allowed levels.

The government has already seized goods that it says are being hoarded to drive up prices.

Since the early 1900s, the world has basically had two economic models: Free market and communist/socialist. Measured by prosperity, freedom, satisfaction of the people, or any other measure than "wealth of the tyrant," the free market capitalist societies won. Yet Chavez and the leaders of a handful of other nations continue to force failed socialism on their people.

And when their "reforms" fail, instead of blaming socialism, they blame corruption by the businesses they are brutalizing. Lenin would be proud. Stalin would beam.