Looks like this is becoming a recommended reading list. The American has another good article, The Buck Starts Here, on the history and role of money.

A man has a sign in front of his business that says: A tax-payer voting for Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. He could substitute poor-person for tax-payer. In the long-term Obama’s policies will hurt the poor more than they will help the poor.

My wife just returned from the supermarket “shocked” at having to pay $15 for a gallon of Mazola corn oil. This is a direct result of Congress’ decision to subsidize the diversion of corn to the production of ethanol for fuel. Thanks to those geniuses we now have high-priced fuel and cooking oil.

It’s kind of ironic that all those people I’ve heard about who have converted their cars to run on cooking oil may now have to convert them back because gasoline is now probably less expensive than used cooking oil.

This is one more piece of evidence that the government can’t run the economy. Every time it tries to fix one thing it breaks something else. Congress is now trying to throttle back the oil speculators. Who knows what kind of chaos that will cause? Gasoline prices may swing up and down by a dollar or more over the course of a few weeks, causing every vehicle operator to become a speculator. Do I fill up all my cans this week or wait one more? Do I start using my reserves now or fill up again from the pump?

If you don’t appreciate the complexity of our economy you should read this essay: I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read. After you’ve read it consider the likely outcome of 535 politicians trying to improve the process of manufacturing pencils.

Never in my lifetime have we been offered such a lousy choice for President as the current choice between Barack Obama and John McCain. Maybe the next four years will convince the losing party — and perhaps the winning party — that it has to do a better job of nominating candidates.

People today seem to think divisiveness is always bad. Some oppose making English the official language of the United States of America because they feel it would be divisive. Did these same people oppose the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s because they feared it would be divisive? Have they not heard of the “divide and conquer” strategy?

The civil rights movement was extremely divisive initially but eventually resulted in more unity than existed before the movement. I believe that encouraging immigrants to learn English would result in less divisiveness in the long term, and improve the ability of the immigrants to thrive in this country.

Our system of government pretty much guarantees that any action taken by Congress is going to be divisive, at least in the short term. Some will like it and some won’t. It will help some and hurt others. The government itself is divided by design. You won’t total unity? Move to Zimbabwe.

That some action will be divisive is not a valid argument for or against the action. It’s certainly not a sufficient argument against it. A proposed action should be judged on its expected final results more than its potential inconveniences during implementation.

I recommend that you take the time to read an article by Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel. He thinks “energy independence” is an unrealistic goal and believes that we should strive for “energy resilience” instead. He might be right.

Hillary Clinton has a problem. Barack Obama needs something from Hillary. Together they have come up with a plan to circumvent the law and get what they both want.

Hillary’s campaign for president is millions of dollars in the hole and her big-money supporters have already given to her all the law allows ($2300 from each donor). Barack wants Hillary’s help in convincing her supporters to switch over and support him now that Hillary has ended her quest. Federal election law allows individuals to contribute the maximum to more than one candidate, so the plan is for Hillary to ask her big-money people to ante up to Barack and for Barack to use that money to pay off Hillary’s debts. In exchange then Hillary will throw her support to Barack and ask her followers to do the same.

This smells like money laundering to me. Under this plan some of Hillary’s backers will effectively be contributing twice the legal amount to her campaign.

In an article on drilling activity off Florida’s Northwestern shore the AP quotes our bonehead senator:

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who has led opposition to offshore drilling among the state’s Congressional delegation, criticized the governor for reversing his position, accusing Crist and McCain of putting oil company profits before protecting the state’s $65 billion annual tourism industry.

“Oil companies and their allies are using the shockingly high price of oil and gasoline, which largely is the result not of a supply problem but speculative fever, to scare the public into thinking coastal drilling offers a real solution to our dependency on oil,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

Where do I start?

How does Nelson know that Crist and McCain are putting oil company profits before protecting the state’s tourism industry? I would guess that they might be thinking of taking some action to mitigate this energy crunch somewhere down the road, instead of bowing to the environment prophets several times a day.

I suppose it hasn’t occurred to Nelson that tourists need lots of fuel to get to Florida’s attractions. Higher and higher priced fuel will kill the tourism industry a lot quicker than a few oil spills. Anyway, when did the government become responsible for protecting the tourism industry?

So, Senator Bill thinks there is no oil supply problem and that the “shockingly” high prices are due to speculation. It would be great if he’s right. That would mean that the market will collapse soon and prices will fall dramatically. How does he think speculators can sustain control of a gargantuan market in which supply exceeds demand? They might be able to do it for a short time but the wealthiest people on this planet would eventually have an overwhelming cash flow problem, including the oil producing monarchies and dictatorships. After hearing talk in the US about opening up oil exploration the Saudis reversed themselves and agreed to increase production; the slightest hint of less demand for their oil spurred them into action.

The power and influence of speculators is way oversold. Look at what just happened in the housing industry. Yes, they helped drive up the price of homes, but they couldn’t sustain it. Eventually the market collapsed and they lost their shirts. Look at what happened in the high-technology industry in the late 90s. Speculators went crazy investing in start-up companies but the market couldn’t accommodate their fervor, so many of them went bankrupt. Listening to the leftist media you would think that all speculators are guaranteed wealth. Not so. Even the successful ones lose money almost as often as they make money.

Coastal drilling may not offer “a real solution to our dependency on oil” and it may not offer a complete solution, but I think it would really help a lot while we look for that real solution. What doesn’t help is for one of our supposed leaders to keep spewing politically convenient crap when others are trying to seriously debate the viability of proposed solutions.

The Washington Post complains that the bad ol’ Bush administration is making it easier for some big landowner to develop some of his property. What’s most interesting to me is this reaction:

Environmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside.

“Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we’re kind of missing the loggers,” said Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit that studies land management in the West. “A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that’s going to be that way forever.

“It’s kind of the ugly face of the new economy.”

Almost two years ago I wrote about a paper production company that was converting its tree-growing land into residential and commercial development. Development became more profitable for them than growing trees for paper. Perhaps that was partly due to environmentalist campaigns to reduce paper consumption.

My point was that quite often these feel-good activities end up producing the opposite of the desired results. Looks like they’re discovering this to be true in Montana.

CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson: “For many, Independence Day means having to get by – without depending on Congress.” She thinks that’s just awful. I think it’s great.