Do Ideas Follow Money?

The free market stipulates that money follows opportunity, not the other way around. This came to mind the other day when I was reading an amazon review of a book I was considering. The book is The Forgotten Man A New History of the Depression by Amity Shlaes. I have not read the book although I did purchase it, and I know nothing of the person Bill Edley who describes himself as a "Former Illinois Legislator".

In his review he starts out with "Funded by a corporate elite Think Tank". The phrase "funded by" and then some organization is supposed to tell us that that person is not independent by beholden to some entity. Those of us that understand and follow economics know that that is not possible except in people that are already corrupt. We may have a few of those people in public life but I don't believe that is the norm.

The reviewer does not tell us what think tank funded her, which I believe is telling in itself. Even if he did and it is true what is the harm of that. Think tanks are what they say. They are paid to think of solutions and policy. They are funded by people that agree with them. Free market believers fund free market think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Liberal think tanks include American Progress Action and The Rockridge Institute.

I want to stress here, these people on both sides have no power to legislate, no power to regulate. They do have some influence on legislators, but again this is not because of money it is usually because the legislators agree with them. What is wrong with them funding projects they agree with? I say nothing, it is the market at work. The more successful a think tank is depends on how many projects they come up with that encourage people to give them money. That sounds like market economics to me. The problem here is too many people have been conditioned to believe that money in politics equals corruption. The sponsors of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill in Congress signed by President Bush went beyond inferring that many times. We now have enough time gone by to see that this law did nothing to curb money, to the contrary it increased money in politics. Instead of the money being given to candidates it now goes often to 3rd party entities called 527 groups. The best know being MoveOn.org and on the right The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, although the latter existed primarily as an anti John Kerry group where the former is a left wing action group. Left wingers at this time dominate this market. Personally I would rather have the money going to candidates. They are beholden to someone, the people who elect them. MoveOn.org is only beholden to their contributors. While there is free market at play, the national interest may or may not be. This is the case with all 527's I don't mean to disparage MoveOn alone. They ideas do that all by themselves.

This belief is a fundamental misunderstanding of how money works in markets. This is not surprising given the misunderstanding we see daily in the media. A real life case in point of money not changing policy is Enron. Ken Lay was a major contributor to President Bush before and after he was elected. When Enron got into trouble President Bush was asked and refused to bail out the company. It has always been my believe that a President Gore would have bailed it out. I don't believe that money would have been a factor, I believe he would have done it to try to help our the people that lost their jobs. I believe if that had happened it would have set a bad precedent. Once again money ahead of ideas does nothing.

I will read this book and when I finish I will give me thoughts on it even though I am not a legislator nor an expert on the Depression.

An Election Based on Clarity

The last election has been debated at length. The change of power from Republican to Democrat has been labeled many things. One of the most important things that happened is that the ruling elites (Democrat elites) now feel increasingly comfortable telling us what they believe.

For years the leftists in the leadership of the Democratic party, were socialistic in their beliefs but were a little shy about telling the country how they believed. Their pronouncements were usually to friendly crowds. When the spotlight of national cameras was on them the message was decidedly centrist.

This year the message from the Presidential hopefuls is decidedly left. Part of this is because that is where their money comes from. MoveOn.org, and the Michael Moore crowd seem to be a major part of the Democrats funding now and are demanding action. The money men are already edgy that Congress is still funding the war.

All of the candidates are openly advocating for national health care of some kind. All are pushing hard to pull out of Iraq. All are explaining some sort of 'leveling of the playing field' which equates to bringing the middle class and wealthy down to the level of the poor. All of these are decidedly left wing ideas. Call it socialistic. None of these people are socialists, they don't advocate for taking of private property or other Marxist ideas, but they certainly see government as the white knight. I have never seen them so bold.

What this means is that the Republicans should have an easy sell. Explaining why socialism is a bad thing is not that difficult. The problem here is that I'm not sure how many Republicans believe that any more. A good percentage do to be sure, but they are not vocal enough. This is why it makes for an interesting election. I have believed for all of my years following politics that if capitalism is run against socialism it is a no-brainer. Now that it seems to be happening, I am a little concerned. We need a few capitalists to even it out. What lies in the balance is our Republic. Another bad loss can put us drastically in the area of a European socialists Republic. That is not exactly the end of the Republic, but take it from me, what I saw in Canada last week, I don't want to live under.

What I learned on my Summer Vacation

This week I packed up the family and went north. We went on vacation to Toronto and Niagra Falls. We experienced the normal family vacation things. The kids whined, the wife spent and spent and spent, and I sweated (yes the first part of the week was very hot).

It has been eight years since my wife and I have been to Canada. It is a nice place to visit, if you have a lot of money. The unfavorable exchange rate (2.5 cents when we got there) makes it very hard to make ends meet since the cost of living, at least in the areas we were is much higher than in Ohio. It always was, but in the past the favorable exchange rate made it easier to tolerate.

Along the way we nearly got to experience the health care system that many of our politicians want to give us. On Tuesday my daughter fell on her wrist and was in great pain. I asked at the front desk of the hotel about where to go for health care. They told me there were several clinics nearby but if an x-ray was needed we could only go to hospital. He warned me that since I was from the US I would have to pay cash which I expected, but also that the standard wait in the emergency room was about 4 - 8 hours. That I also expected. In our good fortune there was a man checking in that had some experience with emergency first aid and took a look at her and assured us it was only a sprain and with some ice and Motrin would be fine soon. He was correct and two days later she didn't feel it at all.

Contrast that with what would happen here . Of course someone out of the country would still have to pay cash, but here they would be able to go to an urgent care center, there are several in our vicinity. This would make it much cheaper than going to a hospital. Whether at an urgent care or at the hospital the wait at the worst is going to be 2 - 3 hours. This experience backs up what I believe will happen if we let the socialistic politicians carry the day.

Lets look into the future a bit. If the Dem's win and pass a national health care initiative I believe it will be much like Canada's. Everyone will gave a basic health care package. Beyond that private employers can and will provide more. You can bet the employers that are not providing care today will not be providing care then. The government provided plan will put price caps on drugs, which will mean of course that the older drugs will be provided with no problems, but any new drugs that will save lives but are expensive will not be available to this plan. The net effect will be that the wealthy and middle class will still be getting much better care than the poor. This of course will be a rallying cry for the class warriors and they will work on making the government plan more and more inclusive. For that to happen more and more will have to come out in taxes. This will cause less and less businesses to expand here, to move here and to in source here. Our economy will slowly shrink and become much closer to socialism that it is not.

Don't let Michael Moore fool you. National Health care is not the way.

Misapplied Principles

Political enthusiasts like to use principles to describe their positions. It simply sounds better to say you are following a principle than to say it is best for my political side. This like many of misapplied words degrades the state of political discourse in our society.

I am referring of course to the decision made by President Bush to commute the sentence of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby. People are already using the reasoning to oppose it by saying lying under oath is always wrong. Conservatives including myself used the same reasoning to explain why President Clinton should have been impeached and convicted.

Liberals that herald principles to explain why this is wrong but President Clinton was not so much wrong. Likewise conservatives en masse think what happened to Libby was wrong from the beginning but the impeachment of President Clinton was completely correct. Liberals don't agree with impeachment and conservatives don't agree with the conviction of Libby. Who is correct?

Well in a word everyone. First of all we are all wrong as well. Using principles to explain a political position in this case is a weak case to make. First of all, the cases are not similar. Clinton clearly lied to avoid being held liable in a civil case. Libby was being investigated for something that was never a crime, the prosecutor knew the answer and whether Libby knew his statement was wrong is not clear. The overwhelming point I am making is that there is no principle at stake here, it is a debate of a political issue. While President Clinton did lie, did it rise to high crimes and misdemeanors. That has been debated to death and the winning answer to my mind is that reasonable people can disagree. Reasonable people cannot disagree about something that truly is a principle. Should Libby have been convicted? Once again that is truly up to debate. Principles are not debatable.

Political topics should be argued and argued passionately. Principles are more static (although never completely static. They can change over time). Lying is bad, Murder is evil, Honesty is to be practiced to the best of our ability. These are principles.

For my belief there is a perfectly good argument to be made to commute the sentence of Lewis Libby. There is even a case to be made to pardon him. Likewise we there is a reasonable case to be made either for or against impeaching Clinton. Right or wrong the voters did not buy the Republican case for it and punished them in public opinion and at the ballot box. Ultimately that is where these political issues are best decided.