A SILVER BULLET FOR OBAMA?

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

Sunday, June 29, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bosto...

    When it comes to gun control, the Democratic Party is a house divided against itself. That helps explain Barack Obama's dizzyingly inconsistent positions on District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment case decided by the Supreme Court last week.

     As a candidate for the Illinois Legislature in the 1990s, Obama had supported legislation to "ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns," so it wasn't surprising that he endorsed the gun ban being challenged in Heller while campaigning for president. In November, for example, his campaign told the Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional." In February, when a questioner during a televised forum said, "You support the D.C. handgun ban," Obama readily agreed: "Right."

     By March, however, his spokesman would no longer say whether Obama considered the gun ban constitutional, and when the senator was asked about it during a debate in April, he refused to give a clear answer on the grounds that "I obviously haven't listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence." Still, when the court issued its 5-4 ruling last Thursday, Obama claimed that his views had been vindicated. "I have always believed," his statement began, "that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms." On the other hand, reported the Associated Press, "the campaign would not answer directly . . . when asked whether the candidate agreed with the court."

     This is not just the customary political choreography whereby Democratic presidential candidates dance to the left during the primary election season, then pirouette back to the center for the general election. (Republicans twirl the other way.) Guns are a particularly thorny issue for Democrats, who have long been the party of gun control, and whose strong left wing detests firearms and looks down on the "gun nuts" who enjoy them. Liberal Democrats have generally seen the Second Amendment as an embarrassing constitutional anachronism, not a guarantee of essential liberty. They nurse a singular loathing for the National Rifle Association. And they are sure that more guns in private hands can only mean more death and violent crime.

     The problem for Democrats is that such views put them well beyond the American mainstream. There may be as many as 283 million privately owned firearms in the United States, and nearly half of all US households own at least one gun. Even before the Supreme Court ruling, a large majority of Americans -- 73 percent, according to Gallup -- believed the Second Amendment guaranteed the right of private citizens to own guns. Nearly 7 in 10 opposed any law making handgun possession illegal.

     Given such widespread pro-gun sentiment, a political party inclined to demonize guns or gun owners can expect to alienate many voters. In 1994, within months of enacting a ban on assault weapons, Democrats lost their majorities in both houses of Congress -- majorities it would take more than a decade to win back. Their "inability to consistently win elections in places where gun shops outnumber Starbucks," the respected political analyst Charlie Cook wrote in National Journal during their long exile, "is a big reason the party controls neither the House nor the Senate."

     Some Democrats have worked to shed the image as the party of gun-haters. Running for president in 2004, Senator John F. Kerry made a point of donning orange and hoisting a shotgun for a very public day of duck hunting in southern Ohio. When Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana ran for reelection two years later, their TV ads depicted them using guns. (Schweitzer, an avid hunter, likes to say he has "more guns than I need but not as many as I want.") More than 60 Democrats were endorsed by the NRA in the midterm election of 2006 -- the election, perhaps not coincidentally, in which their party regained control of Congress.

     Still, for many Democratic liberals, the antigun animus is reflexive. Senators Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein wasted no time deploring the court's ruling in Heller last week; Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago denounced it as "very frightening." Over the years, such attitudes have been a political boon to Republicans, helping them paint Democrats as out-of-step elitists who hate something millions of Americans love. John McCain's statement hailing the decision pointedly referred to Obama's infamous statement that Middle Americans "cling to guns or religion" when "they get bitter."

     All of which makes it ironic that the impact of last week's decision may be to deprive the GOP of a valuable political weapon. By ending the debate over whether the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns, the justices have just made it safer for gun owners to vote Democratic. McCain cheered the court's ruling, but Obama may prove the biggest winner of all.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) 

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I moved into this house 19 months ago and with it came a new phone number.  Over the course of time I've received phone calls from bill collectors on a regular basis for a Guillermo Saryevo (sp?) and a Summer Saryevo.  Maybe Sarjevo...I dunno.  The calls are always automated and a couple of time I tried to call back to get them to take my number off the list.  No success because it would usually switch me back to another automated messages. 

The kicker is that the message person, in a VERY British accent, would say that if the party stayed on the line that it was assumed they had the right party.  How do you tell your answering machine to hang up if it's that bill collector bunch?

There was a message on the machine yesterday.  Then at 8 am this morning the phone rang again and it was the same message but this time I wrote down the number and called back.  For once I got a real live person (with an accent) and told him to take my phone number off the list immediately or I would report it to the authorities (probably a useless bluff) and that there was no one here by that name and never had been..yadda yadda.  The he asked "Are you done?"  I asked "done what?" and he replied "Are you done talking?"  I thought my head would explode.   I yelled that he'd better just get my number off his list immediately and he told me to have a nice day and hung up.    British accent..hmm..outsourcing?   Shotgun tactic to see if they can shake someone loose?  I don't know but I'm sick of being called constantly over a bill I don't owe, about people I don't know, from bill collectors I don't know, from numbers I don't know.

A WORLD WITHOUT CHILDREN

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

Sunday, June 22, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bosto...

Second of two columns

     In 1965, the population of Italy was 52 million, of which 4.6 million, or just under 9 percent, were children younger than 5. A decade later, that age group had shrunk to 4.3 million -- about 7.8 percent of Italians. By 1985, it was down to 3 million and 5.3 percent. Today, the figures are 2.5 million and 4.2 percent.

     Young children are disappearing from Italian society, and the end isn't in sight. According to one estimate by the UN's Population Division, their numbers will drop to fewer than 1.6 million in 2020, and to 1.3 million by 2050. At that point, they will account for a mere 2.8 percent of the Italian nation. 

     Italy isn't alone. There are 1.7 million fewer young children in Poland today than there were in 1960, a 50 percent drop. In Spain 30 years ago, there were nearly 3.3 million young children; there are just 2.2 million today. Across Europe, there were more than 57 million children under 5 in 1960; today, that age group has plummeted to 35 million, a decline of 38 percent.  

     The world's population is still growing, thanks to rising longevity and deep reductions in infant mortality. But fertility rates -- the average number of children born per woman -- are falling nearly everywhere: in the West and the East, in advanced countries and the Third World, in democracies and dictatorships. More and more adults are deciding to have fewer and fewer children. Worldwide, reports the UN, there are 6 million fewer babies and young children today than there were in 1990. By 2015, according to one calculation, there will be 83 million fewer. By 2025, 127 million fewer. By 2050, the world's supply of the youngest children may have plunged by a quarter of a billion, and will amount to less than 5 percent of the human family.

     The reasons for this birth dearth are many. Among them:

• As the number of women in the workforce has soared, many have delayed marriage and childbearing, or decided against them altogether.
• The Sexual Revolution, by making sex readily available without marriage, removed what for many men had been a powerful motive to marry.
• With the increased expenses of a higher quality of life, many parents have opted to spend more of their resources on fewer children.
• Skyrocketing rates of divorce have made women less likely to have as many children as in generations past.
• Years of indoctrination about the perils of "overpopulation" have led many couples to embrace childlessness as a virtue.

     Result: a dramatic and inexorable aging of society. In the years ahead, the ranks of the elderly are going to swell to unprecedented levels, while the number of young people continues to dwindle. The working-age population will shrink, first in relation to the population of retirees, then in absolute terms.

     Now a determined optimist might take this as good news. In theory, fewer people in the workforce should increase the demand for employees and thus keep unemployment low and the economy humming.

     But the record tells a different story. In Japan, where the fall in fertility rates began early, the working-age population has been a diminishing share of the nation for 20 years. Yet for much of that period, unemployment has been up, not down, and an economy that for a while was the envy of the world -- the Japanese Miracle, it was called -- ran out of gas more than a decade ago.

     "Similarly, in the United States, the number of people between the ages of 15 and 24 has been declining in relative terms since 1990," demographer Phillip Longman observed in the Harvard Business Review. "But the smaller supply has not made younger workers more valuable; their unemployment rate has increased relative to that of their older counterparts."

     Far from boosting the economy, an aging population depresses it. As workers are taxed more heavily to support surging numbers of elders, they respond by working less, which leads to stagnation, which reduces economic opportunity still further. "Imagine that all your taxes went for nothing but Social Security and Medicare," says Longman in Demographic Winter, a new documentary about the coming population decline, "and you still didn't have health care as a young person."

     Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics who appears in the same film, emphasizes that nothing is more indispensable to growth of any society than "human capital" -- the knowledge, skills, and experience of men and women. That is why baby booms are so often harbingers of economic expansion and vigor. And why businesses and young people drain away from regions where population is waning.

     A world without children will be a poorer world -- grayer, lonelier, less creative, less confident. Children have always been a great blessing, but it may take their disappearance for the world to remember why.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

-- ## --

As always, my allergies have kicked up along with the pollen count and I never go anywhere without a full box of tissue.  This year however, there's a new twist.  What I thought were three little bites low on my left shin turned into a rash that caused swelling, itching, and stinging.   It spread up my shin and onto the side of my leg while also attacking my left elbow.  Both knuckles started itching too. 

A trip to the doctor and three vials of blood later, the doc's PA told me I didn't have any autoimmune issues other than allergies.  Take Benadryl, use Benadryl cream.  Mix it with hydro-cortisone cream.  That was it.  Now the splotches have moved to my back and the other elbow.  Apparently hives which I have NEVER had before.  Luckily they don't all attack at once, only one area at a time.

Anyone ever have this?  If I take Benadryl I can't stay awake and have what my grandson calls "Benadryl hangovers."   The creams are very temporary.

Anyone know of a decent place to live in Antarctica?  I'm pretty sure there's no pollen there.

Just got a call saying a helicoptor is circling south of Arvin and two highway patrol cars flew by with sirens blaring.  Anyone have a scanner?

NO PROFITS, NO OIL

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bosto...

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     With Americans steaming over $4-a-gallon gasoline and ExxonMobil reporting first-quarter earnings of nearly $10.9 billion, the temptation to grandstand about "obscene" profits and "greedy" oil companies is one too many politicians cannot resist. On Monday, seven Senate Democrats proposed the "Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008," the centerpiece of which is a 25 percent windfall-profits tax on US oil companies. This, the senators declared in a press release, will "address the root causes of high gas prices."

     Just how it would do that they never quite make clear, perhaps because rattling class-warfare sabers is higher on their priority list. "Oil companies are racking up obscene profits left and right while American families are stretched to the limit by skyrocketing gas prices," growls New York's Charles Schumer. "It's time for Big Oil to pay its fair share so Americans can see a little relief."

     Also aboard the windfall-profits bandwagon are presidential competitors Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "We’ve got to go after the oil companies and look at their price-gouging," proclaims Obama. "We've got to go after windfall profits." Clinton derides oil-company profits as "Dick Cheney’s wonderland" and evidence that "there is something seriously wrong with our economy."

     There is something seriously wrong, all right -- the economic shallowness of politicians who believe that when oil companies prosper they should be penalized. Or who imagine that the way to bring gasoline prices down is to jack the oil industry’s taxes up. Or who actually think that earnings of 8.1 cents per dollar of sales -- Big Oil’s profits over the past five years, exactly equivalent to the overall US manufacturing average (excluding autos) -- constitute a "windfall."

     Oil is a boom-and-bust business. Sometimes profits soar. Sometimes there are no profits. Today a barrel of light sweet crude fetches more than $125, but it wasn’t that long ago that the price fell below $20 -- with, for many, excruciating results.

     "I worked for a large oil company in the early '80s," a reader wrote to me the last time Congress and the media were in a swivet over oil-company earnings. "I lost my job, along with 150,000 other engineers and geologists, when the price of oil dropped from $36/barrel to $10/barrel in 6 months."

     The hope of reaping big profits is the incentive that impels Exxon, Chevron, and other oil companies to take enormous risks and spend immense sums -- a single offshore drilling platform can cost as much as $1 billion -- to discover, extract, and refine new supplies of petroleum. Profits earned in the boom years make it possible for the industry to persevere through the bad years. Diminish those profits and you diminish that perseverance -- oil companies won’t invest as much, won’t explore as much, and won’t produce as much.

     We've been down this road before. Under a windfall tax signed into law by Jimmy Carter, domestic oil production plummeted by an estimated 795 million barrels, while imports of foreign oil surged. Congress had anticipated windfall tax revenues of $393 billion. The actual take: just $80 billion. Like so much else associated with the Carter era, the windfall-profits tax was a counterproductive flop. Do Democrats really believe a new dose of Carternomics is going to make today’s economy stronger?

     If you want to see a  *real* windfall, take a look at what Big Oil pays in taxes. The 27 largest US energy companies forked over $48 billion in income taxes in 2004, $67 billion in 2005, and more than $90 billion in 2006 -- an 87% increase. Since 1981, the Tax Foundation calculates, the oil industry has earned a cumulative $1.12 trillion in profits -- but it paid a cumulative $1.65 trillion in taxes (add another half-trillion to account for taxes paid to foreign governments).

     For most of the 25 years between 1981 and 2006, says foundation president Scott Hodge, taxes collected from oil companies by federal, state, and local governments were nearly double the industry's profits in any given year. For all the clucking over ExxonMobil's $10.9 billion in profits last quarter, little attention was paid to its total tax bill in the same period: more than $29 billion.

     So who is the real "profiteer" here -- Big Oil or Big Brother? And who is likelier to keep energy abundant -- the profit-seeking entrepreneurs who pull it from the ground, or the politicians who demonize them when they succeed?

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Their, Thier,  or There? 

I doubt there's a person on here that hasn't made on or more of those mistakes and if they say they never have, well then, we'll have to add prevarication to one of our many deadly blog sins.

Lots of things bug me, but not to the point that I make an issue over them.  One is the misuse of me and I.   Even newscasters do it and, since it's a family pet peeve, we've been know to all correct them at the same time.  Another is using "mute" when they mean "moot."

Sometimes, when a person is particularly obnoxious I'll snidely bring up a grammatical error they made.  But, on the whole, I grit my teeth and ignore it.  In my upbringing, it was considered impolite to correct peoples speech, although that doesn't stop some other people.

On blogs it's easy to get careless or slip up typing.  Too fast, too quick in the keyboard.  Those are just typos and we all have done that.  We have a fairly good spell check available and it just takes a second to see if we've made any typos or misspellings.

Not everyone is a good speller or good at composition so it doesn't hurt us to recognize those who are a little lacking in those areas and who is jut being lazy or careless.  With me, I tend to go too fast and get dyslexic. 

In any case, the blog won't succeed or fail based on our grammar, spelling, or proficiency on the keyboard so a little more tolerance and a little less criticism really is in order here.  People I know for a fact are extremely bright make mistakes and my guess is that it's just not that important that they correct those mistakes before hitting the submit button.  While it's not earthshaking, it is a fact that people perceive you by the way you present yourself.

Now..I'm fair game having put my two cents worth out there.  Take your best shots at my post regarding the above mentioned points.  AND, share your pet peeves with the rest of us.

No religious talk allowed here.  After you view the video look to the right and click on Hannity and Colmes interviewing the young graduate.

Today the mail brought me an offer to sign up for the smart rate program.  I'm still sifting through it but the gist seems to be that I will be charged a higher rate for electricity for no more than 15 days this summer between the hours of 2-7 pm.  For that I will be charged a somewhat lower rate the rest of the time?

Anyone else get their offer?  Any thoughts on it?