The Review
(
Review) Arab leaders are shocked -- shocked! -- to find out that YASSER ARAFAT has been embezzling aid money.
Arab leaders will now be turning their attention to unconfirmed reports that the earth is actually an oblate spheroid.
(
Review) Law Professor JONATHAN TURLEY writes in the LA Times about lawsuits over fatty foods.
A couple of years ago, while I was discussing the anti-tobacco movement on my radio show, I predicted that, since Big Tobacco had gotten blasted into submission, the Perennially Concerned would start going after foods that weren't healthy enough for thier tastes. I discussed this with the host of the morning show, George Gamble, and we predicted that the next target would either be caffeine, or fatty food. Of course, everybody thought we were fools to even talk about it. But, of course, here we are, 7 years later, and, surprise, it's fatty foods that have become the chief villain.
The Trial Lawyers -- and their aggressive lapdogs in the Democratic Party -- are already counting the ways to use the law to go after fatty foods, just like they did to Big Tobacco.
Shakespeare was right.
(
Review) MICHAEL RUBIN writes that Iran in nearing the boiling point.
(
Review) For all the talk about Republicans being the party of special interests, MORTON KONDRACKE says, nobody seems to notice that the Democrats are joined at the hip with the trial lawyers, and the teacher's unions.
Two groups, by the way, that, in my opinion, have done more to damage the country than any other.
(
Review) RYAN LIZZA says that W has tied his fate to that of the stock market.
But staff difficulties notwithstanding, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the biggest problem in this bleak political season has been Bush himself. With the vice president hobbled by the Halliburton investigation and the Treasury secretary afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease, the president has become, by necessity, his administration's economic point man. Every time he has spoken off-the-cuff about the economy during the last few weeks, however, his fortunes have worsened. He resisted attempts by aides, according to Time magazine, to properly prepare him for the hostile questions he faced at his July 8 press conference, and the session turned into a debacle. During comments in Minneapolis a few days later, he seemed to dismiss the corporate scandals decimating the stock market as a distraction from what really matters in life. "This corporate America stuff, is that important?" Bush asked himself. "Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself?" Over the last week the White House was finally returning to a more disciplined message of avoiding comment on the markets; but in Illinois on July 22 Bush scuttled the momentum with six minutes of incoherent banter about the value of stocks while speaking to reporters. If you read his remarks carefully, Bush simultaneously suggested that investors should pull their money out of stocks and put it into bonds ("their portfolios are better than those who have stayed only in equity"); that they should return to the stock market ("values will be available for those who invest in the market"); and that they shouldn't heed his advice at all ("But, listen, I'm not a stockbroker. I'm not a stock picker"). The Dow dropped 235 points that day, and much of the effort White House aides had made to stop reporters from connecting Bush's remarks to the markets was undone.
Well, maybe. Of course, the second that bombs start falling on Iraq, I suspect that stock market worries will start to slide into the background.
(
Review) ANN COULTER may be...well...a bit...strident sometimes, but she is usually good for a quote or two:
Liberals' comprehension of corporate scandals is like the Woody Allen joke about what he knew about "War and Peace" after taking a speed-reading course and reading it in 20 minutes: "It involves Russia."
George Bush and Dick Cheney's involvement in corporate corruption consists primarily of the media's capacity to mention their names in the same sentence as "corporate corruption" 1 million times a day. Liberals think their capacity to say someone's name in an accusatory tone of voice is sufficient to impute criminality to Republicans. Since Republicans are intrinsically evil, merely mentioning their names suffices to make any point liberals want to make. Bush and Cheney have bought and sold stock. The swine!
Whenever the media start intoning darkly about "perceptions," "the full details," "unanswered questions," and -- most pathetic -- "the shadow of Enron" -- you should smell a big, fat commie rat (Gen. Buck Turgidson, "Dr. Strangelove").
Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, you gotta admit, it's pretty well done.
(
Review) KATE O'BIERNE says "just say no" to the Department of Homeland Security:
Since 9/11, there have been over 150 hearings — in the House alone — on homeland security. None of the current problems that have been discovered in the intelligence community, the INS, or airport security will be solved by a change of address for ineffectual agencies. Nor is there any guarantee that there will be a cohesive security policy just because there's a new department. The Department of Energy was created over two decades ago, ostensibly to create a cohesive national energy policy; thankfully, perhaps, it has never succeeded.
Finally, despite its billing, the proposed reorganization is neither comprehensive nor cohesive. The administration estimates that over 100 different government offices currently share responsibilities for homeland security, so the hastily proposed transfer of 22 of them leaves the majority outside of DHS. And some of the agencies slated for this new home actually bring unrelated responsibilities into it. In addition to being charged with protecting the homeland, the new secretary will be responsible for responding to natural disasters, search-and-rescues at sea, immigration and naturalization, thwarting counterfeiters, and fighting drug smuggling.
Tom Ridge has told lawmakers that only maximum flexibility for DHS managers will make the new agency "greater than the sum of its parts," and that if it's not, "it would obviously not be worth creating." He's right.
So is Kate.
(
Review) LARRY ELDER on Inglewood, AL SHARPTON, police, racism, and rioting.
(
Review) BEN SHAPIRO is tired of hearing about civilian casualties. Frankly, I am, too. Having been there and done that, I can tell you that civilian casualties, while tragic, are pretty nearly unavoidable. And, in many cases, in such places like Afghanistan the line between "civilian" and "non-combatant" is pretty blurry. I mean, what with a decade of civil war and all, and with 120% of all male adults being armed. Maybe 150%.
By the way, does Ben Shapiro have his mommy's permission to write a column? What is he? Eight?
(Note to the easily outraged: Yes, I know what percentages are. It's a literary device.)
(
Review) ED FEULNER explains how COngress usues "static" scoring to predict how tax changes will affect revenues. He also explains what such scoring is completely loopy -- except for partisan political purposes. it's actually pretty simple to understand: People respond to incentives. As Feulner explains:
Say you own a grocery store. You notice that six-packs of a particular soft drink are selling briskly at $2 each, which brings you a modest profit. A friend says you should sell them at $4—which, he suggests, would double your profit. Would you do it? Probably not. You don’t need an MBA from Wharton to realize that dramatically hiking your price would cause many customers to shop elsewhere. Sure, you’d be making more money per six-pack, but you wouldn’t sell nearly as many.
People respond to taxation in the same way. Congress pretends like they don't. That's why much of what comes out of Congress appears to have been created in FantasyLand.
(
Review) MATT WELCH observes that Post-911 comity has come to a screeching halt.
(
Review) GLENN REYNOLDS weighs in with some cheery thoughts on the War on Terror, and the government's competence to wage same. After all, he writes, just look at the bang-up job the government has done on the War on Drugs.
Unable to endure the continuing evidence of drug-war failure, the drug warriors are lashing out, hoping that the ignorant will be convinced that they're earning their pay. Congress is playing along because, basically, Congress isn't up to the job of riding herd on the massive drug-war bureaucracy.
The drug war has been a massive failure: a waste of money, of lives and of time. It's also been accompanied by extensive inroads on traditional American freedoms: property forfeitures, "no-knock" searches, expanded wiretap authority, and the destruction of financial privacy, to name just a few.
These are inroads that have served the agendas of bureaucrats but that haven't done anything to solve the problem that was claimed as their justification. And the drug war's combination of intrusiveness, corruption and ineptitude calls into question the government's ability to carry out the war on terrorism.
Will the drug war serve as a model for the war on terrorism? Some within the federal bureaucracy seem to think it should, and it's easy to understand why: The drug war may have been a disaster for America, but it has been a three-decade gravy train for bureaucrats. And if Congress can't ride herd on the drug war bureaucracy, it probably won't be able to oversee the terror-war bureaucracy either.
Thanks for the ray of sunshine, Glenn.
(
Review) JIM HOAGLAND writes about the US, Russia, their developing Global Entente.
I'm actually kind of peeved to see this article, since I just submitted my column on the same subject to TechCentralStation yesterday. I'm even more peeved that Hoagland came up with some good thoughts that didn't even enter my empty little head.
America's war on terrorism and Russia's pursuit of economic engagement with the West reinforce each other and now dominate world politics. Only a decade after the end of the Cold War, American and Russian leaders move toward an era of global entente that will reduce the strategic influence of Europe, China and Japan on Washington and Moscow.
This chilling thought has begun to take form in Europe's major capitals, where it is seen as a deeper and even more unwieldy phenomenon than American unilateralism. Concern also surfaces in statements from Tokyo and Beijing. A world long fearful of the consequences of superpower nuclear war now frets about the effect of deepening cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin.
If Global Entente replaces the Cold War, one metaphor will survive the transition. It is still useful to see the Americans playing poker while the Russians play chess.
Vladimir Putin has become George W. Bush's hole card with the Europeans. Bush is Putin's queen on the chessboard, to be moved into a position of rescue or of domination at decisive moments. They play different games, but intersecting goals and interests put them on the same side of the table.
Remember JERRY POURNELLE and the Co-Dominium?
(
Review) Comedian LARRY MILLER takes a look inside the State Department as they try to unravel the riddle of the LAX shooting. Why on earth would HESHAM MOHAMED ALI HEDAYET open fire on those people at the El Al airline counter?
We may never know.
(
Review) JAFF JACOBY says we need to bring back Reaganomics. Except that this time, we should cut spending, too.
(
Review) Is your portfolio tanking? Blame LEE IACOCCA. Evidently, the current wave of corporate scandal is all
his fault.
At least, that's what JAMES SUROWIECKI says in
Slate today.
(
Review) GOP lawmakers are starting to get hysterical about the upcoming election, according to JOHN FUND.
Many Republican House members pleaded with their leaders to rubber-stamp the Senate bill cracking down on corporate wrongdoing, without even convening the traditional conference committee to resolve differences between the two houses. Even veterans were sounding retreat; Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, "There are not enough differences [of opinion] that we ought to risk a conference on this bill in this environment." In the end, Speaker Dennis Hastert was able to insist on a conference, but only over the strenuous objections of much of his rattled caucus. Some members openly said that all they cared about was being able to fly home for the August recess clutching a piece of paper they could wave in front of constituents and thus claim they did something.
Fund's advice: Don't panic, hit back:
Some Republicans are distressed their party broke and ran as quickly as it did, given that the groundwork for many of the corporate scandals was laid during the Clinton years. They blame the Bush administration for refusing to point out a share of the blame belongs to its predecessor. Polls suggest the public would be receptive to the message; a July 18-19 Newsweek survey found that while 47% of the public blames President Bush either "a lot" or "some" for the corporate scandals, 54% blame Bill Clinton. And while 25% say Mr. Bush bears no blame for the scandals, only 20% say the same for Mr. Clinton.
Despite the public's attitude, key Democratic figures have largely gotten a pass from both the media and Republicans on their involvement in the corporate scandals. Global Crossing, a company whose spectacular collapse rivals that of Enron, used cozy relationships with the Clinton administration and a lack of government oversight to send its stock price soaring to $64.25. Much of the company's value turned out to be built on phony accounting. Terry McAuliffe, the 1996 Clinton-Gore finance chairman, who is now head of the Democratic National Committee, rode Global Crossing's rise and turned his $100,000 investment into $18 million.
Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, says that if President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are to answer every conceivable question about their business dealings, it's high time that someone ask some questions about the Clinton years. Yesterday, he took to the House floor to ask that subpoenas be issued for the testimony of Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, and Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration. Mr. Corzine was chairman of Goldman Sachs when it was touting Enron stock. After he retired in 1999, he spent $60 million of his fortune to win his Senate seat the following year.
Mr. Rubin had an even more direct connection. Citigroup, which he has headed since 1999, played a central role in concealing Enron's growing debts from investors and regulators. Last November Mr. Rubin phoned Peter Fisher, a Treasury undersecretary, and asked him to intervene with credit-rating agencies that were about to downgrade Enron's status.
My observation, however, is that the Republicans are too soft to play hardball on this, just as they are on almost everything else.
The truth is that this really isn't a political issue. It's about money and greed, things that Democrats are no more immune to than Republicans.
(
Review) BYRON YORK lays out the facts -- at least, as far as we know them now -- on DICK CHENEY and Haliburton.
(
Review) White supremacist leader William Pierce, author of
The Turner Diaries, has died.
Good.
(
Review) WARREN BUFFET has the real skinny on how corporations cook the books to increase earnings, and how they do it in perfectly acceptable and legal ways.
(
Review) JOHN McWHORTER explains why blacks no longer need "black leaders":
During a recent CNN special marking the tenth anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, playwright Anna Deavere Smith asked, “Why is it that there has not arisen a single young black leader in the past 30, or even 40 years?” You hear that question often among blacks. Truth is, though, never again will there be a “Black Leader” in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—and this is a heartening sign of progress. Black America has done so well since the big victories of the civil rights era that it no longer needs the kind of leadership that was vital in those years of struggle. These days, most blacks are way beyond the injustices of the past and are taking advantage of the opportunities of the present.
(
Review) DICK MORRIS says that the 2002 election will swing towards the Democrats.
But then again, he says a lot of things, doesn't he?
(
Review) Daniel Pipes writes that Iran is approaching a crisis:
Militant Islam is on the ascendant almost everywhere around the globe - except in the nation that has experienced it longest and knows it best. In Iran, it is on the defensive and perhaps in retreat.
This situation has vast potential consequences. It derives from the fact that (putting aside the exceptional case of Saudi Arabia), militant Islam first attained power in Iran in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah. Twenty-three years later, Khomeini's aggressive, totalitarian project has left Iranians deeply disillusioned and longing for a return to normal life.
We can only hope, and be there to try and help them build a modern, pluralistic, secular state if the ask for help.
(
Review) If anybody deserves a good fisking, it's ROBERT SCHEER for today's slanderous attack on GEORGE W. BUSH in the LA Times. Maybe I'm not the best guy to deliver such a fisking, but, what the hell, let's give it a shot.
The public's love affair with the Bush administration is souring. Polls show that voters are deeply worried about its handling of the economy, although they still claim to like George W. Bush as a person. It makes sense, of course, since who doesn't enjoy the company of a charming confidence man?
Yeah, everybody loves a confidence man. They enjoy giving him wads of money to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. They'll pay him thousands of dollars just visit their Buddhist temple for a fundraiser that, while unethical, falls outside the bounds of any "controlling legal authority." Even foreigners, like the Chicoms, who aren't supposed to be involved the the US election process at all are willing to give hundreds of thousands to a good confidence man.
Oh, wait a minute. That was
your guys wasn't it Bob?
In the movie, a rakish George Clooney can play him, winking and smirking and flirting as he hatches corporate scams, squanders his friends' money and rides a friendly Supreme Court into the White House.
Yes, completely unlike AL GORE, who attempted to ride a friendly Florida Supreme Court into the White House on the back of selective recounts, made only in highly Democratic counties. Of course, as we now know, Bush won anyway. It was close, but after recount after recount, Bush still won. But Bob, of course, isn't honest enough to admit this. That's because he's embarked here on a pure bout of character assassination, not a journalistic search for the truth. It's always more exciting to slip the knife in between the fourth and fifth rib than deal with inconvenient facts.
Americans are up against the reality that while the son of old vet Poppy might make for an interesting dinner guest, telling family war stories and all, like his father he lacks the seriousness of purpose required to manage daily life in the real world. And should we really expect more from men who never had to take out the garbage, let alone worry about paying the mortgage? Men for whom the making of money was a game without real risk or purpose? Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing? Heck, what's the big deal? When a big corporation goes under, those with connections get tipped off long before Joe Shmoe and his pet portfolio. If a Bush loses liquidity, friends will come running, checkbooks open, as they did for George W. to pay for his string of failed Texas investments. Besides, the family trust fund is where the "real" money is kept.
Global Crossing? Uh, wasn't Democratic National Committee Chairman TERRY McAULIFFE the guy who made bank off Global Crossing, and then bailed just before the share price plunged into the dirt? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Terry's deal, not W's. I guess you thought maybe we wouldn't notice if you slipped it in. Oh, and by the way, how much money did W have invested in Enron? Or Worldcom? What did you say? None?
Hmm. Well, that kinda makes you a lying bastard, doesn't it Bob? I mean, especially since it was your boy Terry who who turned $100k into $18 mil as part of the Global Crossing deal.
Oh and speaking of Enron, what did they get when they asked their pal W for help? They got a "drop dead" in return. Funny, isn't it, how much that cozy relationship helped them with W? Even having former Treasury Secretary ROBERT RUBIN plead Enron's case didn't get them a hearing in the Bush Administration.
Oh, wait a minute, Rubin is one of
your guys too, isn't he Bob?
The Bushes are, as a matter of breeding, terminally irresponsible. And while being a loose cannon can sometimes be useful in making war, it is stability and pragmatism that breed prosperity.
Well, the examples of irresponsibility above concerned a) a case where the profiteer was the Chairman of the DNC, b) a case where W told a corporate contributor to go suck it, and c) a case that W had no ties to at all. So, that whole irresponsibility argument isn't working out for you very well so far.
And as far as George Sr., he was so irresponsible that he volunteered for combat duty in WWII, and was the Navy's youngest aviator. Got shot down by the Japanese during a bombing run, and didn't even try to get out of trouble until he had dropped his bombs on his target, by which time, it was too late.
Those damn Bushes. Always putting their own needs before those of the county's.
The Bushes' contempt for government regulation of capitalism has allowed corporate piracy to drive the nation toward financial ruin. The American public now stares in disbelief as our infamous boom-Bush cycle wreaks havoc on its retirement plans and endangers its jobs. Meanwhile, yet another President George seeks to distract us with patriotic-sounding gibberish.
Ah. Presumably the senior Bush contrived in his maniacal way to get Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. After all, he was the head of the CIA, so he has magical powers.
The
Bushes' contempt? I got a calendar around here that indicates that all this corporate malfeasance was going throughout the '90s. Maybe my memory's a little dim here, but wasn't
your guy president back then? What did the Clinton Administration do about corporate bookkeeping fraud? Or Enron? Or Global Crossing?
Answer: Not a damn thing.
Well, that's not quite true. Clinton buddy Terry McAuliffe made $18 million off of Global Crossing.
"I believe people have taken a step back and asked, 'What's important in life?' " said the president two weeks ago in Minneapolis. "You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff--is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself?"
Consider the deep cynicism of that statement from a president who spent most of his adult life milking that "corporate America stuff" for all it was worth, just as his super-rich ancestors had always done.
Evidently, having run out of ostensible facts with which to try and weight his argument, Bob has just decided to slip into pure character assassination. Bob assumes the president can't actually care about community or service, since he just a boated plutocrat, so he must just be cynical. How Bob picked up these amazing psychic powers is not adequately explained.
Not that he has to. It's nothing more than the standard leftist characterization of wealthy people. It's just as stupid now as it was when KARL MARX penned it a century and a half ago.
Diffident in the face of the traumas of ordinary Americans, George W., like his father before him, will make the times extraordinary. War against Iraq is the president's much-planned-for answer if the oft-rumored "economic recovery" doesn't sustain his popularity.
That's what all this talk of Al Qaeda sleeper cells, homeland security and knocking off Saddam Hussein is about: a backdrop for the theater of war, a necessary distraction to a set of domestic policies that has failed miserably. The massive tax cut brought us nothing but soaring national debt, Alan Greenspan has been revealed as an impotent Wizard of Oz and the Republican magic bullet of monetarism has proved a bust.
You see, SADDAM HUSSEIN isn't
really trying to get weapons of mass destruction. He doesn't
really give money, intelligence or arms to terrorists. He's a patsy; a fall guy. Just a poor innocent little lamb who isn't a threat to anybody. Listen to Bob's argument very carefully, because it is in essence this: "George W. Bush will send American boys to their deaths for no other reason than to bolster his popularity. He doesn't care about principle, he doesn't care about terror. He will kill your sons and daughters to win an off-year election. George W. Bush would kill your son if it meant that the Republicans keep control of the House."
You know, this is just like the time when he was about to be impeached, and he cruise-missiled that aspirin factory.
Oh, wait, that was
your guy, wasn't it, Bob?
But while the end of Hussein's tyranny would certainly be a cause for cheers, the harsh truth is that the most exhaustive investigation in human history hasn't found a single credible thread connecting him with our current troubles.
That isn't what the government of the Czech Republic says. I don't know why the CIA doesn't want to hear it, but the Czech government has repeatedly and vehemently said that MOHAMMED ATTA
did meet with a known Iraqi intelligence agent last year.
Not that it matters, anyway. There are hundreds of other reasons why Saddam should go, not the least of which is his well-known support of terrorists elsewhere.
In fact, if we are honest, the closest we can come to an identifiable foreign enemy is Saudi Arabia, where the Bushes love to do business and from whence the men and money came to destroy the World Trade Center.
I don't belive that Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US, either. I suspect however, overturning the government of Iraq --
pour encourager les autres -- might go a long way towards ameliorating some of the problems there, as well.
The president should heed the call of Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, who said on Sunday, "We've got to wage a war against terrorism in the boardroom, against misleading investors." But to wage that fight, Bush would have to get rid of the corporate hustlers who dominate economic policy in his administration.
Uh, am I crazy, or hasn't he been doing that? He has repeatedly called for new legislation regulating corporate finance. He repeatedly assured us that when he gets such legislation, he will sign it. He's only the freakin' president, for gosh sakes! It's not like there's a lot he can do. When he get's legislation he'll sign it. News to Bob: That's the system of government we have. Congress passes laws, the president signs them. No, really.
It's in the constitution and everything, Ass.
So get out the yellow ribbons and cheer those fireworks over Baghdad.
After all, a victory party might take some of the sting off the fact that your hard-earned retirement chest is nothing but a wistful memory.
Unlike Bob, I have a little more faith in both our system of government, and economics. Eventually, the market will come back strong. Eventually, Saddam Hussein will be lyin' in de cold, cold groun'. Evidently, Bob thinks that the market is gone forever.
But that's because, in case you hadn't noticed by now, Bob's a moron.
The sad thing is that this type of character assassination, this web of cynical speculation and intellectual dishonesty, is what passes for political argument on the left these days.
(
Review) JANET YELLEN writes about the "binge mentality" of the Federal Budget. Being a good liberal, she places a fair amount of blame on the "unaffordable" tax cuts "mainly for the rich" that GEORGE W. BUSH got Congress to implement.
Ms. Yellen is an economist, so presumably she knows a few simple facts. For example if we define "the rich" as the top 1% of taxpayers, we learn that they pay about 30% of all income tax revenues. The top 10% pay almost 70% of all income tax revenues. So almost
any tax cut will mainly be for "the rich" since they are the ones paying the lion's share of income taxes.
It's funny, though, that Ms. Yellen doesn't seem to concentrate on
spending as the problem. The reason that Social Security will be bankrupt in a few decades is not that taxes weren't high enough. The problem is that all that Social Security Trust fund money has already been spent by the federal government.
But, of course, eliminating huge swathes of government spending would excessively upset those, like Ms. Yellen, who turn to government as the first resort for solving problems that disturb them.
(
Review) Economist ROBERT BARTLEY takes on TED KENNEDY's claim that Drug companies are greedy corporate crooks, who overcharge us for drugs out of selfishness:
Pharmaceuticals are of course a global business. In recent trade negotiations the U.S. has made a big issue of intellectual property, trying to prevent foreign producers from stealing U.S. patents or copyrights. But with drugs this is a bit beside the point, since foreign governments deign to let the U.S. companies produce and sell their wares, but simply impose price controls. Naturally, the controlled price typically ends up near the marginal cost.
But this is only about 30% of total costs, according to the Wharton School's Patricia M. Danzon. Her 1997 AEI Press book, "Pharmaceutical Price Regulation: National Policies Versus Global Interests," tells this story well. European price controls left the American consumer financing drug research for the whole world. The U.S. accounts for 45% of new drugs sold globally, compared with 14% in the United Kingdom, 8% in Switzerland and 33% spread around the rest of the world.
People like Ted Kennedy see high profits and immediately think "corporate greed". That's because they're economic morons. The thought that these companies might have high sunk costs that must be paid for by production never even enters their minds. Not does the thought that high rates of return might be required to offset a higher risk to investors. (Ask the owners of Dow-Corning if investment in that whole breast implant deal turned out to be a bit risky.)
This is not to say that corporate greed doesn't exist. Clearly, the last few months have shown that it does. But there are other economic principles besides excessive greed.
Not that the left is interested in any of them. It's easier to parrot the standard Marxist critique of the free market, which relives them of the responsibility for any actual investigation into the facts.
(
Review) BRENDAN MINITER, writing for the Wall Street Journal, presents a rather nasty political eulogy for JIM TRAFFICANT.
Ah, Jim, we hardly knew ye.
I'll miss his buffoonery. And of course, the hair.
(
Review) The editors of the Washington Post write the following:
Each murderous attack by Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers tends to be followed by a conspicuous act of retaliation or military escalation by the Israeli government. The reaction is understandable, and when directly aimed at preventing further attacks, often justified. But just as often the reaction to a blow also tends to worsen the chances for peace, by escalating the overall conflict and driving moderates and would-be mediators to the sidelines.
What they mean, of course, is that reprisal just creates a never-ending "cycle of violence". And since that is so, Israelis should stop doing it. What the Israelis should do, in the opinion of the Post's editors is this:
That is how the cycle works, and it is past time for Israel to begin to work with the Bush administration and its partners on stopping rather than feeding it. Mr. Sharon's government can do that by working expeditiously with CIA Director George Tenet on a plan for returning control of Palestinian towns and other areas from the Israeli Army to Palestinian forces, by allowing humanitarian and economic aid to flow to Palestinian civilians, and by fully committing itself to President Bush's goal of a two-state solution. Such steps would stand a better chance than further raids and collective punishment of saving Israeli lives.
The trouble with this argument is that it assumes that if these steps are followed, the Palestinian attacks would stop. And, of course, the inconvenient fact that the Israelis already did this after the Oslo accords, and it didn't seem to work out to well for them.
The trouble is that extremist organizations like Hamas, or the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade don't
want a Palestinian state. Or rather, they do want a Palestinian state, but only one which occupies the space currently inhabited by Israelis. They want the whole schmeer, and pretending that they will be satisfied with a Palestinian state that consists of the West Bank and Gaza is the same sort of unrealistic delusion that fueled the Oslo process.
The trouble with violence is that, opinions of the Post's editors aside, it
doesn't take two to tango. If society A wishes to destroy society B, then society B has a problem, whether it wishes to acknowledge it or not. Pretending that society A has some other aim than the destruction of society B doesn't go very far in solving the problem, because society B has literally nothing to offer society A as a means of placating it. For example, in 1938, Neville Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany on a plate, in order to avert a second Great War. Germany was perfectly happy to take Czechoslovakia, but that wasn't really what Germany wanted. What Germany wanted was
all of Eastern Europe, all the way to the Urals, so the granting of Czechoslovakia did precisely nothing to appease Germany. Additionally, the USSR tried to appease Germany by sending it vast amounts of materials, oil, and agricultural products that it could ill-afford to lose. But, Germany wanted Russia in its entirety, not just the thin cream of its products. Which meant that, in the end, that the USSR was unable to avert the German attack of June 22, 1941.
Those who think like the editors of the Washington Post tend to proclaim, in their moral smugness, that violence doesn't solve anything. Of course, you might want to ask your grandfather whether he thinks violence helped eliminate that pesky fascism problem back in '45.
But that sort of violence isn't an option to the Israelis. To end the fascist violence, we had to bomb German cities into rubble, utterly defeat their fighting forces, and execute their leaders. Israel's response is limited to tearing down a few houses, and occupying some villages.
I suspect that won't be enough to do the job.
