Tag: McCain

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Common Sense

The Pump Price of Politicians

Before closing Congress in order to block a vote to allow more domestic oil drilling, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Funny, Pelosi hasn’t stopped using oil but wants to stop drilling for it.

Some time after Congress’s 35-​day vacation, she hopes to find a renewable energy source.

There’s that audacity. Or insanity. You pick.

Presidential candidates, meanwhile, get no vacation. They’re busy producing new energy plans.

Lots of folks, Obama included, blame the oil companies. Not me. They don’t owe me fuel. Just because we don’t like the price of gas doesn’t mean we’re allowed to fill up and drive away without paying. Yet that seems to be the spark plug of Barack Obama’s latest. He’d offer a $1,000 tax credit to taxpayers to be paid for with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. That is, rob Exxon to pay Paul.

McCain says drill, drill, drill. And Obama has already started to cave on many energy stands, though both he and McCain continue to oppose drilling where we know there’s oil, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Beware of politicians with plans. Let markets react. Let the private sector do its job.

As for more drilling on government lands, like up in desolate ANWR? Why not let voters decide? Put it on the ballot this November.

Now that would provide a paradigm’s worth of difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

X Prize Marks the Spot

Presidential candidate John McCain has proposed that a $300 million prize be offered to whomever develops a car battery to make electrically powered cars more feasible.

It’s not a half-​bad notion.

Like the profits that serve as “prizes” for succeeding in markets, such a huge incentive would foster innovation a lot more effectively than flinging subsidies and regulations at people. For one thing, you only pay if somebody solves the problem.

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle suggests that if the government had simply offered a huge prize for a moon landing in the 1960s, “we might not have built an enormous standing army of development scientists who conceived the Shuttle as full employment insurance.”

But why is John McCain talking about this? We don’t need taxpayer dollars to fund exciting advances. The first prize offered by the X Prize Foundation, the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private space flight, was underwritten by an insurance company. The company didn’t think there would be a winner. So the foundation got a great deal on the premium.

Next thing you know, Burt Rutan’s team, financed by Microsoft co-​founder Paul Allen, flew 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, twice in two weeks.

More than $100 million had been invested on new technology by the competitors. Not government money, private money. And even the non-​winners learned new things in the process.

Now that’s outta sight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

The Muddle Men

There are two competing visions of the social hierarchy:

1. The Elitist View: The people are fools needing to be led by experts.

2. The Populist View: The people have common sense while their leaders are generally fools or knaves or both.

You can guess which one I tend to favor. But recently, I’ve seen some evidence suggesting a third position …

3. The “It’s All a Muddle” Theory: The people are prone to conspiracy theories and outrageous nonsense while their leaders fan the flames of folk paranoia just to get ahead.

This third view fits the current energy debate. Every time fuel prices rise, I get inundated with conspiracy theories and cockamamie economics. The current notion? That gas prices are rising because of speculators.

It doesn’t make much economic sense, and it flies in the face of good supply and demand reasons that everyone should know about. But a lot of people buy into the finger-pointing.

And so do our leaders. Senator Barack Obama has called for two departments of the federal government to investigate the influence of speculation on pricing. Senator John McCain has made similar — if less clear — rumblings on the same theme.

Just as the major presidential candidates talk about “change,” they strike the usual politician’s pose — as demagogues.

Look folks, we need middlemen, like futures traders. But we don’t need “muddle men,” like Obama and McCain.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

A Wish for Presidential Transparency

The blogger Alaskan Librarian has a list of things he’d like done by the next president. I share at least one of his wishes, “to see policy formulated in the open.”

Specifically, he wants candidates to sign the Reason Foundation’s “Oath of Presidential Transparency.” The pledge has two parts. The first endorses “effective management, accountability, transparency, and disclosure” of federal spending. The second is a commitment to enforce the Federal Funding and Accountability Act, passed by Congress in 2006.

This legislation was introduced by Senator Tom Coburn. Both Barack Obama and John McCain signed on as co-​sponsors. It requires all recipients of federal funds to be fully disclosed on the Web. And hey, they even set up a website.

Obama has already signed the Oath of Presidential Transparency. I have to wonder who is asleep at the McCain camp, given that their candidate has yet to add his John Hancock. Same goes for Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and the Green and Constitution Party nominees.

But since we’re all in agreement here, let’s demand more.

Like what? Like real-​time updates about budget items, allowing citizens time to protest particular pork projects and other prodigalities. Like forbidding the last-​minute stuffing of earmarks into reconciliations bills.

Maybe we need a new compact with our government, one where, as Leslie Graves of the Lucy Burns Institute suggests, there would be “No taxation without information.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.