The government got it wrong again. Ethanol produced from corn, or any other substance, is not the answer to the world fuel shortage and the high prices the shortage generates. An MSNBC article and a Fox News column fill in the details. Using corn for fuel is not expected to alleviate the fuel shortage, but it has and is expected to continue to cause a world food shortage. Some even say that we should start hoarding nonperishable foods.

This is a prime example of what can happen when the government interferes in the market. Without the government ethanol mandates and subsidies the diversion of corn from food to fuel would not have proceeded at the current pace and we wouldn’t be facing a food crisis.

On the other side of the coin the federal and state governments are shutting off cheaper sources of fuel and other energy. They are restricting the exploration and development of new oil supplies and are restricting the building of new nuclear power plants. They won’t allow us to tap the massive supply of oil in the lower Gulf of Mexico because some Florida beach might get a few dark spots. All the presidential candidates have said they won’t allow the extraction of the huge oil reserves from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because it might upset a few animals.

What good is a pristine stretch of beach in Florida if you can’t afford to drive there to enjoy it? How much food can you grow on a white sand beach? The Florida tourism economy is likely to be hurt as much by high fuel prices as spoiled beaches. Do you think the ANWR animals might choose to learn to live with a few oil wells and pipelines rather than be slaughtered for food?

We should be reducing government interference in energy, food and other markets instead of calling for more controls. National and world markets are too complex for a few officials to be able to manage them effectively. Consider the orange juice market. The Juice Authority sets the price of a gallon of OJ at X dollars. The JA then has to (1) issue a specification for the quality of OJ to prevent its producers from watering it down, (2) establish an inspection agency to see that the specification is met, (3) set prices for the oranges and other supplies that are needed to produce the OJ, (4) set prices for the seed, fertilizer and equipment needed by the orange growers, (5) set prices for the supplies needed by the orange growers’ suppliers, and on and on down the chain.

So, setting the price of OJ means that the price of steel must also be set, because it is needed to build the equipment used by the orange growers. The price of fuel must be set, because it is used in large quantities by the orange growers and the truckers that haul the oranges to the OJ producer’s plant. If all these and other prices aren’t set correctly the OJ production process will break down and no more OJ will be produced — unless Congress also gives the JA the additional power to force the OJ producer and all the suppliers to continue the process at a loss. Then we have socialism in all its faded glory. And this is what Barack Obama wants to give us if he becomes President.

The talking heads are excited this morning that Barack Obama threw his long-time pastor under the bus yesterday. We should remember though that he is still an extreme left-wing socialist.

A CBS News headline: Audit: Millions Wasted in Iraq Contracts. Another reason we shouldn’t entrust our health care to the government.

This morning I heard Jeremiah Wright on TV saying that a lot of people from different parts of the country use bad English but only black people get criticized for their bad English. Say whut?

He mimicked Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in some of their more transport moments as an example. He amused me and I’m sure his audience thought it was hilarious. But like a lot of successful entertainers’ material, it is simply not true. White people from Boston and Texas are constantly ridiculed for the way they talk. White people from Maine and Indiana are ridiculed for the way they talk. People from one region are always making fun of people from another region because they talk funny — black or white. Blacks from the North make fun of blacks from the South and vice versa.

I remember when a colleague and I were on a business trip to Boston about thirty years ago. My colleague was from Mississippi and I’m a Florida Cracker. When my colleague started to order dinner one evening the waiter stopped him and called out to the other restaurant staff to “come listen to this dude talk.” We both thought, “these people think we talk funny?”

I’ve said in this blog that John Edwards, a fellow Southerner, talks like his mouth is full of grits. There are a lot of dialects in this country — among whites and blacks. Most blacks that I know talk more like me and other whites in the area than like the hip-hop generation in the big cities.

The point of the criticism that Wright is alluding to is that if, for example, a young black man wants to become a TV commentator he will have a better chance of success if he learns to speak standard English. This of course applies to a young white man as well.

Fresh out of college I went to work at Eglin Air Force Base. It was culture shock from the outset. Even though the base is only thirty miles from where I grew up, many of the people I had to work with were from different locales and backgrounds. I saw right away that I had to listen and learn and adapt. Most of the blacks working there were in the same boat with me, and they adapted too.

There’s a lot of talk about uniting the country these days. One way to do that is to maintain a common language. How can we have a nationwide conversation on race if we can’t understand one another?

Legal challenges to the raid on the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas are starting to pile up. MSNBC and AP report:

The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect’s ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.

But the broad sweep — from nursing infants to teenagers — is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family’s children.

I believe that before this is over it will deal a severe blow to aggressive child protection agencies across the country. I don’t mind the government taking custody of children that are clearly being abused, but taking them when there is merely potential for abuse is a bit over the top. And there’s the question about what kind of care the children will get in foster homes. Just a few years ago there was a case in Florida where a foster parent of about a dozen children essentially had them enslaved and imprisoned in her home.

Up until about 70 years ago it was not unusual for 15-17 year-old girls to marry. And some of them weren’t shotgun weddings. One of my relatives married at 15. I know someone whose mother married at 14. My wife and I got married in 1961 when she was 18. I don’t have the statistics at hand (and I’m too lazy to look them up) but I’ve read that a large percentage of 16-year-old American girls have had sex, and practically none of them belong to the FLDS sect. None of this though is an argument that it is acceptable to force teenage girls into marriage and a sexual relationship.

On another note, I’m curious about the outcome of the DNA testing that the court in Texas has ordered for all the children in their custody. One of the reasons given for the testing is that the children aren’t forthcoming with information about their identities and parentage. In other words they can’t depend on the children to tell the authorities who they really are. My question is this: Are the Texas authorities going to brand each of the children as they are tested. Are they going to tattoo a number on their wrist? Are they going to depend on photographs or that the children will give their correct names? If not, how then will they match a set of test results with a child when the analysis is complete? Do they expect that the children will suddenly become cooperative?

Related post: Government Overzealousness in Texas — Again

Someone has suggested that to ensure that our tax rebate checks stimulate only the US economy we should spend all the money at yard sales.

Barack Obama insists that the vast majority of Americans are “beaten down” by the economy and that he will fix that if he becomes President. If this is true and these people are his primary supporters, how is he able to raise a lot more money than his opponents? Could there be more than a few “special interests” lurking in the background?

Barack Obama talks a lot about hope but he doesn’t seem to understand it. Hope is what you resort to in a situation over which you have no control. If a friend’s daughter is seriously ill you say to him that you hope that the treatment she is undergoing will work and that she will make a full recovery. Your friend would probably be looking for another doctor if the doctor said to him, I hope I’ve diagnosed your daughter’s problem correctly and prescribed the right treatment.

Obama is peddling false hope. He is telling voters that if they elect him he will give them hope that their lives will turn around. Hope is okay but it’s not sufficient. He should be telling voters that all the hope they can muster won’t make any difference if they don’t take some action to change their lives themselves. A wise, but coarse, man once told me to hope in one hand and defecate in the other and then see which hand fills up first.

Perhaps Obama is confusing hope with opportunity. More opportunity for training, education or employment would be more likely to help people than mere hope. But opportunity is harder to deliver. On second thought, maybe Obama does understand the hope thing. Hope is harder to measure than opportunity. It will be hard to hold him to account for not delivering the promised hope.

And how do you measure change? This dude is one clever demagogue!

In Texas, do they arrest every man in town when an anonymous caller claims she was beaten and raped by her husband? Or round up all the women in town and place them in protective custody? I think not. Do they collect all the children in town based on a tip that one has been physically abused? Well, probably not — yet. But that is essentially what the Texas government did at the FLDS compound in Eldorado.

I’m going on record. The FLDS raid will blow up in the Texas Child Protective Service’s face like the Waco raid did in Janet Reno’s face — but maybe not literally this time.

It’s not apparent that they have any real specific evidence of abuse other than the existence of pregnant teenage girls. But what town can you go to in this country and not be able to find pregnant teenage girls? Even if the authorities are holding some evidence, what is the likelihood that it applies to every child (or adult) in the compound?

The state took custody of all the toddlers. Did they think the toddlers were in imminent danger of being taken to the (spiritual) marriage bed? The state took custody of all the boys. Did they think the boys were any more likely to be abused than any other boy in the state? (I’d be surprised if the FLDS tolerates homosexuals.) Did they justify taking them because they thought the boys were being trained to become abusers?  If so, a raid on any church in the state that, for example, teaches boys that they will be the head of their households and that a woman’s place is in the home is not that far away.

How can Texas apply such a broad brush to this problem without violating the individual constitutional rights of the children and their parents? I can see that Texas had the right to investigate the call from the 16-year-old girl. But even if they found some evidence of abuse of specific children during the investigation, I don’t see how they could legally take children that weren’t being abused. I see lots of law suits coming.

Don’t get me wrong. I have little sympathy for the adult members of that cult. I’m thinking about all those little children who have been torn away from their parents. I don’t believe the stories about the kids not knowing who their parents are. They’ve been taught to keep details of their lives secret. Anyway, if what we hear in the news is correct, kids not knowing their daddies is becoming the norm across the country.

Update: This has happened before, and it turned out pretty much like I’m thinking this incident will. Read CNN’s account of a similar raid in 1953.

This morning it’s 33 degrees in Florida. Al, I’m still looking for some of that warming you promised us.