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It's not the rich you should be afraid of, it's the politicians .

There has been a lot of negative talk recently about immigrants and how they effect the United States. Stephen Green, writing for the Tech Central Station, has an article rebutting some of those negative comments and brings up other points often ignored in the discussions. He concludes, The New (Nuevo?) America won't be the one we're used to -- but neither was the old one, or even the America we knew just twenty years ago. Latin America will also continue to change, as we all become increasingly intertwined politically, economically, and culturally. In return for losing some control of a culture we never really controlled in the first place, we get to live with neighbors who, for the most part, are increasingly free and prosperous. For that, we can all be thankful, and maybe even a little less afraid.

Many liberals claim that Bush's tax cut went primarily to the wealthy. Tavares Forby, a good friend of mine who runs blackpundit.com , created an easy to read graph detailing the before and after tax brackets to show how this tax cut was implemented. He writes, Many liberals claim that the Bush tax cut only benefits the wealthy. Anyone with basic math skills can prove this is not true. Actually, “President Bush tax cut” cuts the most on the lowest income bracket. The graph clearly shows how in terms of percentage the poor benefited much more than the rich. A worth while read.

The Economist comments on the current poverty line report just released, it writes, Whatever crude logic it possessed at the time, the Orshansky poverty line is by now quite arbitrary. Its originator calculated the cost of meeting a family’s nutritional needs and then multiplied this figure by three, because families in the early 1960s spent about a third of their income on food. The Census Bureau does not repeat this exercise to determine today’s poverty line; it does not recalculate the cost of an adequate diet or remeasure the share of income spent on food. It simply adjusts Ms Orshansky’s figures for inflation. Thus today’s dollar thresholds do not tell us how much a family or individual needs to get by in today’s America; they simply restate the cost of feeding a family in the 1960s in today’s prices, and multiply it by three. The Census Bureau has already experimented with such measures, and is probably itching to finally retire the Orshansky line. But its political masters in t...

Economist Don Boudreaux has two very informative blogs. The first one deals with prices and how they are the true equalizer. In direct contradiction to those who use the poor as an excuse for price controls. He writes, Any practical, realistic method apart from rationing by price hikes will involve arbitrariness at least as great (I think greater) than whatever arbitrariness there is in income distribution. One great advantage of rationing by market prices is that they reduce to a minimum the role of arbitrariness. Price are, in other words, a great equalizer. Anyone who is willing to pay the market price for a good or service is just as likely to get that good or service as is the seller’s mother, neighbor, or bowling buddy. The second one addresses the often misunderstood 'trade deficit'. He writes, But the trade deficit is no cause for concern. It reflects foreigners’ preference to invest in American assets rather than to cash out all of their dollar holdings immediately f...

Colorodo is currently deciding on whether to split its electoral votes to be distributed as a proportion of the voters vote, instead of winner takes all, like is currently the case. Personally, I think it's a bad idea. Especially , for the small states. Here is a good article explaining why . Update: Other arguments to be against it.

I am the first member of my family born in the United States. Most of my family comes from a small town in Guerrero, Mexico. This area of Mexico is extremely poor. The farm that my father grew up on doesn't even have hot water or very much electricity. Needless to say, this has always puzzled me. How could a country with so many natural resources be so poor? Don't get me wrong, I've heard the general answers, answers like "there needs to be more Capitalism", or "there is too much corruption" etc. But I want more specifics. I want actual legislation problems or specific things that can be done. That is why I was thrilled to find out that Tyler Cowen , Professor of Economics at George Mason University, is in Mexico and occasionally finds time to blog about Mexico specific things. You can find his blogs on his observations in Mexico at Marginal Revolution . A couple that I found interesting is the most recent one of his visit to a small town in my Fathe...

It is little known among Americans that in the United States abortion is legal for all nine months of pregnancy. A women can decide to 'terminate' her unborn child for any reason she desires, at any stage in the pregnancy. All with the full consent of the law. Republicans were finally able to pass a common sense ban that prohibited late term abortions. A ban that if the Democrats had controlled any part of congress, or the presidency, would have never allowed to pass. In fact, this partial birth abortion ban, named after the gruesome method the abortion is performed, was voted against by more than half of the Democrats in the senate . Republicans had to control all three houses of congress, the House Of Representatives, the Senate, and the Presidency to have a chance to pass it. Well now that ban has been struck down , twice. The article writes, Louise Melling, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said her group was thrilled by the ruling. U.S. District Judg...

If you asked the average person on the street how the Economy was doing, what do you think his response would be? Probably negatively. Economists call this a late indicator, meaning that by the time the average joe on the street changes his perception of the economy, it is because the economy has already been performing well for quit sometime. This is the case today. For example the unemployment rate in the United States is at about the same level that it was when Bill Clinton was running for re-election, and Bill Clintons economy didn't have 9/11 and two wars behind it. So it is clear that with all things considered, this economy is doing great. Than whats with all the bad news lately? Well USA today has an article putting them in context. The article states, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently snuck out a telling confession beneath everyone's radar: Its flagship payroll survey is likely undercounting hundreds of thousands of jobs. In his July 20 testimony to C...

You will constantly hear the media and Kerry claim that nobody from the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth served on Kerry's patrol boat during the war. That all the people who served with Kerry endorse him, and these Vietnam Vets running ads against him are people that weren't with him in combat. That is a lie. In fact, Steve Gardner, a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, served on one of Kerry's patrol boats during the war. He claims to have spent more time on his boat than anybody else . To dispel this lie the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth have come out with another ad . The Swift Boat Vets For Truth also consists of 17 of the 23 officers who served with Kerry, most of his chain of command, and most sailors. In fact, even by pure numbers the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth win. Kerry could only produce 14 Vietnam Veterans supporting him for Presidency. The Swift Boat Vets For Truth have 254 Vietnam Veterans that say Kerry is a fraud. It would be a lot harder to get ...

One of the arguments against social programs like welfare is that whenever government steps in, the private sector steps out. And since everybody knows that the private sector is much more efficient than the government, you are left with an overall net loss for the people in need. That is why it is so great to see organizations like "Modest Needs" helping those in need. There is an article in Fox News detailing their work, Modest Needs was conceived, built and still operates on simple concept — a small investment to help an individual or a family with a utility bill, rent check or health-care invoice reaps huge rewards if it keeps its recipient employed or prevents an eviction. Proponents of laissez-faire capitalism often point to organizations like Taylor's when arguing against the need for social safety nets such as welfare and Social Security. It's in our own self-interest to look after one another, the thinking goes, and in the absence of a state-funded social ...

The greater lesson to be learned in this election, with all the 527’s (named after the part of the tax code under which they operate) attacking each candidate, is that all those people that supported the Mc Cain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform have egg on their face(including GWB for not vetoing it!). As predicted by those who were against it, Campaign Finance Reform will not stop soft money, it would just push it back one more step , to 527's. So now, thanks to 'Campaign Finance Reform', we have a scenario where soft money is pouring into the campaigns, but now through unaccountable 527's, and giving the contributors a tax break where there was none before, all in all, creating a worse scenario. There is no way to stop soft money. If you try to fix the current problem by regulating 527's, than you start trampling on religious freedom and all that goes with it. The most one can do is make all contributions known and documented. And let them flow where they may. ...

The Washington Times writes , "John Kerry's own wartime journal is raising questions about whether he deserved the first of three Purple Hearts, which permitted him to go home after 4½ months of combat. " That would make it 2-0, Swift Boat Vets. You would think by now that the Swift Boat Vets For Truth would have earned enough credibility to at the very least have their claims investigated. However, instead of investigating the merits of the claims the media seems to be focused on who is funding who. Does the media honestly think that Democrats would fund the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth? Than why are they surprised when they discover its people with Republican leanings? And as for who is working for who, the answer is clearly that everybody seems to be working for the 527's of their own political party, for example the Washington Post writes , ...two prominent Democratic lawyers are doing the same thing. He said Robert Bauer, the top legal counsel for the Kerry ca...

John Kerry has been trying desperately to prohibit the public from getting a hold of the book, The New Soldier, that he wrote right after coming back from the Vietnam war. However, due to the miracles of the internet, a copy of the book can be found online . Enjoy.

I have blogged on here before about how the elite left is still obsessed with Karl Marx and thinks he should be given another chance. This fact is even more mind boggling when you consider that economically speaking Karl Marx is seen as a complete failure. A simple basic economics course will dispel any hope that Karl Marx can be successfully implemented. He is such a failure that a couple economists are having a hard time listing his positives. To see this exchange read Brad Delongs post , Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. He asks simply for five one-sentence bullet points listing his positives. Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, tries to list some positives here . Although he concludes with, Of course marxism, as a political program, remains dangerous nonsense. Marx's blind spots were enormous, and I still cannot understand how generations of the intelligentsia were taken in by the whole thing. Can somebody please convey this message to those ...

As I have posted on this blog before , The Swift Boat Vets against Kerry have already caught Kerry in at least one lie; the claim that he was in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968. Joshua Muravchik, writing in the Washington Post explains why that lie is so significant, he writes , After his discharge, Kerry became the leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Once, he presented to Congress the accounts by his VVAW comrades of having "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires . . . to human genitals . . . razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan . . . poisoned foodstocks." Later it was shown that many of the stories on which Kerry based this testimony were false, some told by impostors who had stolen the identities of real GIs, but Kerry himself was not implicated in the fraud. And his own over-the-top generalization that such "crimes [were] committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...

Young Americans are pushing their own generation to the political right of their parents. The article writes , Cultural and political observers have been declaring a conservative groundswell for at least 15 years. A 2001 survey done by the University of California at Berkeley found that young people today are substantially more likely to support conservative social initiatives such as prayer in school, federal support for faith-based charity, and limits on abortion. Of 1,250 people aged 15-92 surveyed, 60-70 percent of college students and teenagers supported such initiatives, compared with about half the adults surveyed.

The happiest people surround themselves with family and friends, don't care about keeping up with the Joneses next door, lose themselves in daily activities and, most important, forgive easily. That is the formula for happiness, according to a new breed of psychologists .

The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be. . . . Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question. ----John Kerry, questioning President Bush's military-service record, February 8, 2004. So begins an article by the Wall Street Journal demonstrating how John Kerry brought the recent criticism by swift boat vets upon himself. The article states, A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas ! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them. What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes"--as he did...

I am planning a trip to Chicago in November and in the process of getting good deals on the internet I stumbled across a few unconventional travel websites that I found to be very useful. They give good deals compared to the conventional ones everybody knows about(Orbitz, Travelocity, etc). These are the ones I liked the best, http://www.sidestep.com http://www.farechase.com http://mobissimo.com http://qixo.com Enjoy!!!

The New York Times has a good article by a soldier in Iraq giving you his perspective of the war. A worth while read.

The Friedman Foundation, run by the Friedmans with Milton Friendman winning the Nobel Prize in Economics, sponsored the survey . The survey also shows how radically different the answers will be depending on how you ask the question.

This is what motivates the swift boat vets, What seems to offend the Swifties, as well as other Vietnam veterans, is that after having made his political debut as an anti-Vietnam War activist, Kerry is now playing the hero, pointing to his Vietnam service as the reason he should be president, and campaigning with his "band of brothers." This is hypocrisy of the highest order. As I said on National Review Online back in January, If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. Who can be proud of committing war crimes of the sort that Kerry recounted in his 1971 testimony? But if he is proud of his service today, perhaps it is because he always knew that his indictment in 1971 was a piece of political theater that he, an aspiring politician, exploited merely as a "good issue." If the latter is true, he should apologize to every veteran of that war for slandering them to...

The Boston Globe has a very good article in defense of 'price gouging'. Update: More on Price Gouging . Update-9/7/04: I found several other articles on 'price gouging' . Update-9/16/04: Even more on price gouging . Update-3/8/05: The eclectic econoclast has more . Update: Angry Economist has more . Update: Mises has more and more . Update: More here , here , here and here . Update: More here , here and here . Update: More here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here and here . Update: Becker and Posner have more here , here , here and here .

In the same fashion Castro used Carter, the Wall Street Journal(free subscription) writes . Update: Carter responds to these charges.

Alex Tabarrok , Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, gives a (supposedly) simple economics test over at Marginal Revolution, one that he is giving to his students, he writes, There is in the law what is called "a nonwaivable warranty of habitability," which is a fancy way of saying that a dwelling must have certain features such as heating, hot water, sometimes even air conditioning, whether or not such terms are in the lease and even if the lease explicitly excludes such terms. I ask my students who is made better off and who is made worse off by a legal doctrine that says tenants must have hot water? ...Think about it and then read the extension for more. If you think you know the answer read the rest of the article to see what the correct answer is. By the way, I got the answer wrong. :-( Oh, and if you got that answer correct, and want to try for a bit more difficult challenge, check out his follow up question . Update: Professor Tabarrok answe...

For those that haven’t seen the new ads against Kerry by Vietnam vets, here is the latest one . Update: Deans World has a good blog tracking the Democrats reaction to the Vietnam vets. He writes, You can smell the fear in the Kerry camp: a huge collection of John Kerry's band of brothers hates his guts, including men who served on his Swift Boat, the commanders of the boats that served alongside his, several people who were in combat with him, and every single officer in his chain of command during Vietnam. More and more people are learning of this, and the best Kerry can do is ask Bush to make them shut up!

...wait to see what happens if Kerry gets elected. Kevin Hassett , the chief economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2000 presidential campaign, writes that "Kerry's proposals will add up to between $2 trillion and $2.1 trillion over the next ten years". Yes, that is trillions, not billions!! Ouch! A must read article .

Eric Engen has an interesting article explaining how the markets react inversely to the Kerry Presidency. The article states, The accompanying chart plots the trading price of futures contracts for Sen. Kerry's share of votes along with the value of the S&P 500 composite index since March 3, the day after the Super Tuesday primaries. When the expected vote share rises and thus the implied probability of Sen. Kerry winning the election increases, the S&P 500 index tends to decline sharply. The pattern is consistent and significant. Given the negative response of the stock market index to increases in his electoral prospects, this suggests that a Kerry victory, or its inevitability in the run-up to the election, could cause a significant stock market decline. The correlation is apparent even when the lackluster response to Sen. Kerry and the Democratic convention depressed the value of the Kerry futures contract, and the stock market simultaneously rallied. The stock market...

Chávez wins Venezuela’s Presidential race. The Economist (Paid Subscription) reports , Furthermore, the president has remained popular among Venezuela’s poorest, despite the way his policies have impoverished the country. Since he was first elected six years ago, Venezuelans’ average income has fallen by around a quarter. The recent surge in oil prices has showered the government in oil revenues, allowing Mr Chávez to introduce some populist social programmes that may have swung him the vote. But these handouts are unlikely to compensate fully for years of steep economic decline, nor for roaring inflation (around 30% last year).

One would think that it is impossible for a school to perform worse than our public schools. However, the New York Times reports that charter schools are actually performing worse. Could that be true? Remember what they say, always trust your initial instincts. And this is no exception. The Wall Street Journal has an article (free subscription)* by researchers in the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard detailing the shortcomings in the New York Times article. Well worth the read. *If you absolutely refuse to (free)subscribe to the Wall Street Journal Editorial section, the article can also be found from the Harvard University webpage here . Update:9/14/04: Heritage Policy Weblog has more .

" Remember that opposition to torture in Brazil does not become a religious moral position just because that opposition is now being led by the Catholic Bishops" - Dr. Baruch Brody, Rice University bioethicist and philosophy professor(1978) One of my pet peeves in abortion discussions is for someone to refer to abortion as a 'religious issue' as if you must be Christian, or have some form of 'faith', to see abortion as wrong. I do agree that there are certain things that are 'religious issues'. Examples of those are the mandate to go to Church every Sunday or seeing the bible as the inspired word of God. However, abortion, unlike any of the above examples, deals with human life. It deals with what used to be called "natural law". It falls within the same category as theft, murder, and betrayal; things that are of themselves wrong. I do grant that religion helps you see these evils more clearly, but that doesn't make them religious issues....

About a week and a half ago I was at a friend's wedding in Burbank California. This friend, and his family, have known me for almost ten years now. They know that I am very interested in politics and that I have strong opinions on the subject. Because of this, as soon as the celebrations started, I was informed by a couple of the family members that one of the guests at the wedding was a Political Science Professor and thought that we could probably have a good conversation on the topic. What resulted was a confirmation of the stereotype I have of "elite" liberals. The high level liberals that I believe run the Democrat Party. These characteristics are, Very weak understanding of basic Economics When I asked her what capitalism was she replied, "Greed". When I asked her what the main objective of the study of Economics was, she had no idea. She would say stuff like, "Greed", "Power", or even "To Make Money". Not once did she m...

Thomas Sowell writes extensively on black issues, nonetheless, his points have a close relevance to hispanic issues, giving the close political ties of our cultures. Thomas Sowell writes , August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his "War on Poverty" program in 1964. Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those who had fallen by the wayside, and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions. What was the result of these social programs? The article goes into specifics , but based on historical economic experience, I can already guess what the results were.

And this time he is black . Tavares Forby, founder of BlackPundit.com, has just joined the group of internet bloggers. Tavares and I share several life experiences, including both of us growing up in Compton California. Throughout the years we have dialogued on several issues and I can vouch for his clear thinking and important point of view on everyday topics. Feel free to stop by and welcome him to the internet world, or simply add his link to your blogs.

A Florida appeals court ruled yesterday that Vouchers can not be used to send kids to private schools. The court said , The two judges in the majority said the "central issue" in the case was whether the OSP "violated ... the so-called 'no-aid' provision [of the Florida Constitution], which mandates that 'no revenue of the state ... shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid ... of any sectarian institution.' "There is no dispute in this case that state funds are paid to sectarian schools through the OSP vouchers. Thus, we hold the OSP unconstitutional under the no-aid provision to the extent that the OSP authorizes state funds to be paid to sectarian schools," wrote Judge William Nortwick, supported by Judge Larry Smith. The case now goes to the Florida Supreme Court for appeal. An important point to note here is that this is with regard to Florida law, not Federal Law. The United States Supreme Court already ...

Presidential Candidate John Kerry has claimed several times that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 not in Vietnam but in Cambodia. The reason this is significant is because he used that as a basis to impugn the integrity of those who waged the Vietnam War. The Wall Street Journal Writes , This is how he[John Kerry] described it to the Boston Herald in 1979: "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies. . . . The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real." In 1986 Mr. Kerry argued on the Senate floor against U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras, again citing the 1968 Christmas in Cambodia and "the president of the United States telling the American people I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me." In a 1992 interview with the Ass...

Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's Chief Political Advisor, has a good article on how partisan politics could jeopardize our national security. The most recent example being the charge that the Bush administration is manipulating the terror warnings for political advantage. He writes, America is not helped, and is badly hurt, when our partisans do not observe common sense and the paramount necessity of defending the national interest in their political rhetoric. Words have consequences, and the excessive Democratic partisanship now - like the vitriolic Republican partisanship in the Clinton years - harms the national interest in clear and apparent ways. Besieged by critics who claimed that it was raising the terror threat to staunch Kerry's momentum as he emerged from his convention, the Bush people felt obliged to release the fact that the British and Pakistanis had arrested al Qaeda computer guru Mohammed Nasin Noor Khan in Pakistan on July 13. This unfortunate release of informati...

With the recent resignation of Democrat New Jersey governor, announcing his homosexual affair , and the recent California Supreme Court decision voiding homosexual certificates I thought it a good time to discuss Presidential Candidate John Kerry's view on homosexual marriage. A few months ago there was a bill going through the senate that would have created a constitutional ammendment defining marriage as only between a man and a women. Kerry used the states right argument to argue against it. Arguing that we should let the states decide instead of forcing at the federal level. That's odd he would use that argument because when a bill came through the senate pushed through by Bill Clinton, called the Defense of Marriage Act, arguing for the exact same thing, Kerry voted against it . A bill that was passed with 85% of the senate voting in favor of it, with both Democrats and Republicans voting for it. However Kerry, being the extreme liberal that he is, voted against it. In c...

The Wall Street Journal wrote a very informative article dispelling some of the myths involved in the embryonic stem cell research debate, the article writes, ...far from banning embryonic stem cell research, George W. Bush is the first President to expand federal funding for it. The nearby table shows that, as a result of his decision, federal funding went from zero in 2000 to nearly $25 million today--and this doesn't include the many tens of millions more being spent by the private sector. As Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson points out, the supply of embryonic stem cell shipments available is today greater than the demand. In other words, this is not, as Ron Reagan characterized it during his prime time slot at the Democratic convention, a battle between "reason and ignorance." It's an argument about taxpayer money and how to draw the lines around it. The issue is federal subsidies. The need for a Presidential decision arose from an appropriation...

Not if you look at the numbers. The Washington Times has an article doing just that. The article states, State and local spending for kindergarten through 12th grade education more than doubled since 1990, while federal taxpayers' share rose by more than a third to $41.1 billion, or 8.2 percent of total spending in President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget, according to the booklet being distributed across the country by officials of the Education Department. Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican and committee chairman, says Title I spending has increased $3.6 billion, or 42 percent, since January 2002. "We are pumping gas into a flooded engine," he said. "The federal government has increased federal education spending so rapidly that many states haven't even been able to spend down the money we appropriated for them two years ago." At the beginning of this year, according to a House committee report, states were "sitting on $5.75 billion in federal...

We all agree that the USA has areas of improvement when it comes to immigration, but there is one fact that should not be forgotten in any discussion involving immigration. Compared to the rest of the world the USA is the most pro-immigrant. The Washington Times, in discussing the current immigration bill before congress, documents this , Ronald Reagan once said a foreigner can go to Germany and never become a German, to France and never become French, to Britain and never become English. America is the only nation where a person can move and become an American. No nation has widened its gates to newcomers with greater generosity than the United States over the past 25 years. Over that period, we admitted nearly 20 million new Americans — from every part of the globe. That is more immigrants than were admitted by all other industrialized countries combined. The percentage of Americans not born here has risen from 6 percent in 1970 to 11 percent today. That is a lot of additional p...

Michael Novak seems to think Bush, and he lists seven reasons why . Here's a list of the ones I found most interesting, No one — neither his colleagues nor his wife nor his supporters nor he himself — has anything good to say about John Kerry except that he served bravely in Vietnam. The nearly 30 years since then have generated few boasts on his part, few commendations from others, few successes anyone can seem to remember. The Democratic elite sitting in convention cannot present themselves as they are to the American people, but must stifle their deepest feelings, be silent about their most passionate aims, and hide their turbulent loathing of George Bush Republicans (lest it frighten independents with its ferocity). The Democratic elite is saying as little as possible about same-sex marriage. And guns. And very little about abortion. And not a word about total withdrawal of American troops from Iraq — quite the opposite. Democratic elites do not want the people to know wha...

Presidential candidate John Kerry conceded that he would still have supported the war with Iraq knowing everything we know now. If you read the article you will see that his differences with Bush are not based on disagreements with the basis for the war, but the logistics of it. So essentially all the arguments against the Iraq war that are based on finding no WMD's, is it a pre-emptive strike war, or Iraq not being an imminent threat have now went out the door. There is no difference between the two candidates for president on those issues. As for his reasons for denying the funding for this war, he says, Kerry has said he voted against that measure because it would have financed the war with borrowed money. He voted for a defeated alternative that would have rolled back some of Bush's tax cuts to pay for the conflict. So let me get this straight, the reason Kerry refused to fund the troops fighting a war he agreed for in principle was because it left tax cuts in place? Does ...

In an interesting twist of events, Illinois is in the midst of a senate race featuring two African Americans. What makes this race even more interesting is that both members are highly educated, Harvard Grad's, and are both considered to be on the far side of their party. Alan Keyes is considered a far right Republican, and Barack Obama, a far left Democrat. So the debates should showcase highly educated arguments for their respective sides. In other words, it's a clash of two world views, presented in the most thought out fashion. And when the issue turns to abortion, Alan Keyes, the Republican Pro-life candidate, doesn't disappoint, he says , The conservative former diplomat said Obama's vote against a bill that would have outlawed a form of late-term abortion (search) denied unborn children of their equal rights. Both candidates — one an outspoken conservative and the other a favorite of party liberals — are black. "I would still be picking cotton if the coun...

There is a good article in the NYT about the changes going on in Mexico Politics. And the hope that brings.

You hear complaints about the unemployment rate among Hispanics, or how this other group lost their jobs, and everybody's immediate reaction is to blame the Presidents. What is left out of discussions like these is the question of exactly how much power does a President have over the Economy? Not much says Russell Roberts , professor of Economics and the Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He writes, The President hardly even runs the government. He certainly cannot direct the fortunes and failures of millions of workers, managers, investors and entrepreneurs. The quickening pace of our times creates an impatience with delay. We want our food fast and our email messages now, on our phone. We want everything yesterday if we can have it that way. The idea that we can do very little about stimulating the economy in the short run is simply unacceptable. Surely there is some policy lever, some economic button to push that can speed things up....

Not those in the United States. According to this article , roughly 90% of Vietnamese in the United States are supporting George Bush over John Kerry. The article writes, Back in the United States, however, residents like Pauline Tran in Fairfax, Va. said that she would vote for Bush. Kerry, she said, was an anti-war activist and was part of the reason why South Vietnam was defeated. Others said they will vote for Bush to punish Kerry. Dung Nguyen, who lives in the United States, says that he supports Bush because, "He is against dictatorship, helped Vietnam fight AIDS, and he is anti-human trafficking." Minh Nguyen said that Kerry doesn't deserve his vote because "Kerry did not support the U.S. resolution against human rights violations in Vietnam." In a Cali Today poll, 90 percent of Vietnamese Americans said they would vote for Bush, and only 10 percent said they would vote for Kerry.

Forbes Magazine has a good article explaining the causes and effects of high priced oil.

I have always believed that the solution to the rising cost of health care is to do two things. First, eliminate health insurance companies and replace them with "Health Crisis Insurance companies" which insure you for only the most costly procedures. Second, instead of giving Health Insurance coverage, companies should stop offering them and just give the employees a larger income. This will make patients pay for the small, non-crisis type medical necessities out of pocket. Both of these solutions will eliminate unnecessary costs, give patients more power to shop around, thereby driving competition up and establishing a direct link between medical costs and medical decisions. Well now Health Savings Accounts move us much closer to that. Steve Forbes, from Forbes Magazine, has an article detailing the advantages of this new method of savings, he writes, The premise of HSAs is to once again put the patient, i.e., the consumer, in charge of the health care market. HSAs allow...

I mentioned earlier how the Democrats had appointed a religious advisor that believed 'Under God' in the pledge of allegience should be removed. Well the religious advisor just resigned, apparently she didn't like the attention she was getting. The Washington Times writes , The Democratic National Committee's director for religious outreach resigned after 13 days on the job because of "negative publicity" about her backing of a U.S. Supreme Court case seeking to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The article also touches on what a problem this is for the Democrats, considering a significant amount of their base dislikes religion, the article continues, "I don't think the Democrats or the Kerry campaign quite know what to do with religion," said John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron who does extensive polling on religion and politics. "There is a certain fear on the part of t...