Thomas Sowell:
At what cost?

"True zealots say that 'if it saves just one human life,' any measure for the sake of safety is worth whatever it costs. But what if its costs can include other human lives?

"Wealth saves lives. The miners who were trapped underground in Pennsylvania would have been dead in many Third World countries, because the costly technology and the highly trained specialists who rescued them would simply not have been there, and could not have been gotten there in time over dirt roads or through jungles.

"An earthquake that kills a dozen people in California will kill hundreds of people in a less affluent nation and thousands in a truly poor country. Not only does wealth enable buildings and other structures to be built to more earthquake resistant standards, wealth also provides more advanced rescue equipment and more elaborately equipped hospitals with more highly trained personnel to treat the injured."

More evidence that our "brilliant" politicians are once again derailing commerce...this time it's the availability of Virginians' choice for electricity supppliers.
It seems that a politican never met a businessman he didn't like...to regulate.

Let the Competition Begin?
Dominion Virginia Power faces no rivals as deregulation comes to Richmond

"At his committee's last meeting in June, Norment asked an SCC official whether the regulatory atmosphere in Virginia might be deterring competitive suppliers from entering the market. The question was pointed because the SCC, by state law, regulates the utilities.

But while some power plant developers have been unhappy with the SCC's environmental review of new power plants, the biggest barriers to the development of competition appear to be certain provisions in the state's deregulation law and the lack of an independent, regional organization to manage access to Virginia's transmission lines."

"Competitive energy suppliers and organizations representing companies that own or are building competitive power plants in Virginia said the lack of an independent transmission organization, which would ensure fair access by competitors to power lines, is a major obstacle to competition.

Moreover, the Virginia Energy Providers Association, which represents companies planning to build power plants, said the need for those additional plants, which could provide electricity to competitive suppliers, is also a barrier to competition. The group criticized the SCC for taking actions that discouraged the construction of new plants in Virginia."

"Another barrier to competition is the current caps on the electric rates charged by incumbent utilities, said some competitors and at least one incumbent Virginia utility, Allegheny Power. The rate caps, which the General Assembly put in place until mid-2007, should be allowed to rise to create room for competitors to enter the market, Allegheny said."

Charles Krauthammer has a good column on how liberals and conservatives see each other.
Stupid vs. Evil?

"To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."

Jeff Jacoby's latest column - the success of Reaganomics and why we need to do it again.
Bring back Reagan's Rx

The Washington Post published my letter to the editor today:
Ralph Nader's Solution

Click here to go to my website and read the editorial to which I am responding as well as the unedited version of my letter:
Ralph Nader's Fascism

Thomas Sowell's latest column:
Indignation, Inc.

"The sad irony is that it is the self-righteous activists who are exploiting Third World people -- politically -- and the much demonized employers who hire them who are providing the poor with much-needed income.
According to The Economist magazine, multinational corporations typically pay about double the local wages in Third World countries. These wages are usually still well below what workers receive in wealthier countries. So is the productivity of Third World workers.
A study by an international consulting firm found that the average labor productivity in the modern sectors in India is 15 percent of that in the United States. In other words, if you hired an average Indian worker and paid him one-fifth of what you paid an average American worker, it would cost you more to get a given amount of work done in India than in the United States."

"Higher wage levels do not just happen. Workers are paid more where their output is higher. "

"Differences in labor productivity are not just a matter of how hard people work. Workers in more affluent countries typically have more and better machinery, training and managerial organization. To the extent that multinational corporations come in and introduce more advanced ways of producing, Third World people not only have more jobs today, but more experience in modern methods that can pay off for the country as a whole in the future."

John Leo has an excellent column on the cultural relativism and subjective moral values that are prevalent in today's universities. Another reason why the war for the future must be fought on the battlefield of ideas. The universities are the first place to start.

At Postmodern U., professors who see no evil

I tend to agree with Jeff Jacoby 99 percent of the time. And he's got it right again:
"Crooked businessmen have been much in the news lately, and if some of them end up behind bars, I won't complain.
But the current business scandals should not be allowed to eclipse an important fact about the relationship between capitalism and moral virtue: They usually reinforce each other.
As a rule, it is not possible to make money in a market economy without providing a service to others. You benefit yourself when you benefit your customer; when he is rewarded, you are rewarded. Capitalist societies tend to be prosperous not only because of economic forces, but because of moral forces, too. Without honesty, sympathy, trust, cooperation, and concern for the needs of others, markets cannot work - at least, not well.
Does that mean that all businessmen are ethical paragons? Of course not, no more than all politicians or journalists or entertainers are. But the necessities of business tend to encourage exactly those traits that the moral order depends on. That is more than can be said for politics or journalism or show business."
Random musings

"The problem with the White House's position on climate change is simple. It has abandoned the scientific debate to focus on what it believes is its strength: the economic debate. Only it doesn't marshal the important economic points either. "
Bush's Climate Echo
"The administration believes it can abandon the scientific debate because even if it doesn't have the environmental science on its side, that's no problem because it has economics on its side. That's why President Bush never discusses the science of climate change and instead maintains he won't do anything that will harm the American economy. The problem with this tack is that after abandoning the science, the administration's economic arguments have become muddled as well."

Jack Kelly's column has some great arguments against the International Criminal Court...
The ICC tramples on rights Americans take for granted
(you can check the bottom of his column for his archived columns)

Last week, there was an arrest of some pilots who were drunk in the cockpit. Why have we not heard calls from Congress for hearings and more regulations on pilot drunkenness? Isn't it the government's job to "restore confidence" in the airline industry?
Or maybe Ted Kennedy felt this was an issue that was too close to home.