There are two kinds of people who choose to run for President of the United States. There those individuals who either hear a calling to public service or have it thrust upon them, and there are those who were born to run. If you’ve read many presidential biographies you know that quite a few guys who end up in that office have sought it their entire lives. Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and LBJ are examples of the latter kind who actually got elected. Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are also of that type, they just haven’t been able to get there yet. Those who were “called” include Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower and Truman. JFK and George W. Bush had it thrust upon them. The most telling characteristic of the born-to-runs is their very early entry into politics, usually as soon as is possible. Bill Clinton went straight from law school to being a law professor at the University of Arkansas. He held that position for a mere year before mounting a campaign for Attorney General of that state. Richard Nixon ran for congress as soon as he was discharged from the Navy after WWII, getting elected in 1946 at the age of 33. LBJ told people he was going to be president while he was still a teenager. John Kerry arrived in Vietnam and promptly told his commanding officer that he was the “next JFK.” He also took an 8mm film camera to collect future campaign footage. Al Gore was raised to be president, period.
Some would include JFK in that group, but it was actually his older brother Joe who was the designated future president in his family. Jack was allowed to be a cavorting playboy up until Joe died during WWII. It was only then that Jack was expected to pick up the baton.
So, what’s the point? For the born-to-runs, winning the prize is what it’s all about. Anything they say or do is merely the vehicle that gets them to the White House. And in general, there is little they won’t say or do to get there. Bill Clinton was the epitome of a finger-in-the-wind politician. His triangulating was masterful. Of course it helped immensely that he had a third candidate (Perot) off which to triangulate, but he might have won anyway. He co-opted conservative issues like welfare reform, NAFTA and the death penalty, wisely recognizing they were not enough to piss off his liberal base. Plus he had the charisma and smoothness to make his flip flops seem consistent. They didn’t call him Slick Willie for nothing. Hillary, on the other hand, only has the ambition.
But the guys who were called (or called out) actually have a sense of duty and honor. I shouldn’t let it get to me, but the most annoying thing that liberals say to me is when they insist that George W. Bush is driven by the vilest motives that they can come up with. If he’s not “rewarding his buddies in the oil business,” then he’s plotting with Osama Bin laden to start a war and give no-bid contracts to Haliburton. But the truth is that, in his family, public service is considered an obligation and an honor, not a prize. When I look at George these days I wonder that if he knew then what he knows now, would he have run? My guess is not, but he understands his duty now and will carry on regardless of the slings and arrows.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Shortages and Pinheads
My favorite writer on economic matters is Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute at Stanford. He always says that whenever an economist hears about shortages, he immediately asks about price controls. Unfortunately this connection is apparently only made by economists. Ask anybody who doesn’t really know economics why we had gas shortages back in the late 70’s and they will tell you it was Big Oil or perhaps OPEC who were just busy making “obscene” profits. But the fact is it was price controls that created that shortage, and our Governor, Jim Doyle is trying to get one going again.
It’s weird to me why this connection is never made, it’s really so logical and avoidable. Let’s say you are Marathon Oil. You have oil and gas to sell. The Governor of Wisconsin declares that he wants a tax on oil. No big deal, every state has a gasoline tax. Ah, but this law has a new wrinkle. This law says that you are forbidden from “passing along” any price increase to the consumer. This tax must come directly from you, Marathon Oil. You must eat this tax, and we’d really like to see you grimace when you pay it because, we really hate you and all the things you do. We’d like to be assured that it hurts. This tax is meant as punishment, pure and simple.
So what are you going to do? I mean Wisconsin is the only state where you sell gasoline isn’t it? It’s not? You mean there are other states where you can sell your oil and not face lower profits and risk jail? Hmmmmmmmmm.....let me think about this for a minute, I want to make sure I understand this. I can sell my oil in Minnesota or Iowa and not pay the tax. I can even make up for the lost volume by lowering the price a couple of cents in those other states and I’ll still come out better than if I sold it in Wisconsin.. Sure there will be gasoline shortages in Wisconsin, but hey, they should take that issue up with their Governor. It’s their problem.
That is essentially what happened over the weekend. Marathon Oil announced that if this tax is passed, they will simply sell less oil in Wisconsin. This was not a threat, just a statement of obvious fact. They didn’t have to give this a lot of thought. In today’s market, the oil companies are going to sell all the oil they have to sell. It’s just a matter of where and to whom. If you can sell it there and make more than if you sell it here, which are you going to do? You can call it a tax, but it’s effect is more like a price control and it will have the same result as a price control; shortages. But maybe Governor Pinhead will come up with a law to make Marathon sell their oil in Wisconsin. Yeah, that’s it, we’ll make them sell us the oil, and we’ll tax ‘em into oblivion. After all, they are truly bad people who do nothing but take money out of our pockets.
UPDATE: May 30, 2007
Yesterday I posted this rant. In today's Wisconsin State Journal the AP had a story repeating Doyle's talking points but thankfully included a comment from an oil company executive pointing out that it is absurd to cite a company's world wide profit and then compare it to the amount of income tax the company paid to the state of Wisconsin. After all the only thing they do in Wisconsin is sell gasoline to retailers, which is a pretty insignificant part of their operation. But an executive from Murphy Oil made this observation:
"Dave Podratz, a Murphy Oil executive, said the company had financial losses after Hurricane Katrina damaged its production facilities in the South. A Wisconsin tax on oil company profits would be an incentive for Murphy to try to sell more of its gas in Minnesota, he said."
Wow, who could have predicted that?
It’s weird to me why this connection is never made, it’s really so logical and avoidable. Let’s say you are Marathon Oil. You have oil and gas to sell. The Governor of Wisconsin declares that he wants a tax on oil. No big deal, every state has a gasoline tax. Ah, but this law has a new wrinkle. This law says that you are forbidden from “passing along” any price increase to the consumer. This tax must come directly from you, Marathon Oil. You must eat this tax, and we’d really like to see you grimace when you pay it because, we really hate you and all the things you do. We’d like to be assured that it hurts. This tax is meant as punishment, pure and simple.
So what are you going to do? I mean Wisconsin is the only state where you sell gasoline isn’t it? It’s not? You mean there are other states where you can sell your oil and not face lower profits and risk jail? Hmmmmmmmmm.....let me think about this for a minute, I want to make sure I understand this. I can sell my oil in Minnesota or Iowa and not pay the tax. I can even make up for the lost volume by lowering the price a couple of cents in those other states and I’ll still come out better than if I sold it in Wisconsin.. Sure there will be gasoline shortages in Wisconsin, but hey, they should take that issue up with their Governor. It’s their problem.
That is essentially what happened over the weekend. Marathon Oil announced that if this tax is passed, they will simply sell less oil in Wisconsin. This was not a threat, just a statement of obvious fact. They didn’t have to give this a lot of thought. In today’s market, the oil companies are going to sell all the oil they have to sell. It’s just a matter of where and to whom. If you can sell it there and make more than if you sell it here, which are you going to do? You can call it a tax, but it’s effect is more like a price control and it will have the same result as a price control; shortages. But maybe Governor Pinhead will come up with a law to make Marathon sell their oil in Wisconsin. Yeah, that’s it, we’ll make them sell us the oil, and we’ll tax ‘em into oblivion. After all, they are truly bad people who do nothing but take money out of our pockets.
UPDATE: May 30, 2007
Yesterday I posted this rant. In today's Wisconsin State Journal the AP had a story repeating Doyle's talking points but thankfully included a comment from an oil company executive pointing out that it is absurd to cite a company's world wide profit and then compare it to the amount of income tax the company paid to the state of Wisconsin. After all the only thing they do in Wisconsin is sell gasoline to retailers, which is a pretty insignificant part of their operation. But an executive from Murphy Oil made this observation:
"Dave Podratz, a Murphy Oil executive, said the company had financial losses after Hurricane Katrina damaged its production facilities in the South. A Wisconsin tax on oil company profits would be an incentive for Murphy to try to sell more of its gas in Minnesota, he said."
Wow, who could have predicted that?
Friday, May 11, 2007
Big Oil Update
UPDATE: The Wisconsin Department of Revenue today sheepishly confirmed what I said before. They were careful not to appear as opposing Doyle's hairbrained "can't-pass-it-on" tax, so they just put out a statement that their analysis showed that it would inevitably raise gasoline prices as much as $.05 per gallon. They also declared that such a law would be almost impossible to enforce. Trust me, this won't faze the pinheads in the least. It will be full speed ahead.
UPDATE II (5/11/07) Well, Department of Revenue be damned! Apparently the fact that it will raise gasoline prices and the fact that they can’t enforce such a law are not enough to stop Jim Doyle from being a demagogue on this issue. His press conference was pathetic. The highlight was when he invoked poll results as justification for going after “big oil.” (BTW, does that mean “little oil” is off the hook? You know there are small oil companies.) He declared that this is a good tax because “the majority of people in Wisconsin support it.” All I could think of was a quote I recently read in a Jonah Goldberg column. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” proclaimed William Jennings Bryan. “I will look up the arguments later.”
I wonder how the poll question read. I’m thinking it went something like, “Would you favor taxing the crap out of the big oil companies, as long as we can guarantee they can’t pass it on to you?” I think it would be hard for the typical high school drop out to answer that any way but “yes.” By the way, they would also answer “yes” if you asked them if they’d like to get a free Playstation 3, but that doesn’t mean we should give them one. He launched into a bit about how oil companies benefited form the roads we build here and then generously offered that he doesn’t expect for them to pay for ALL the roads, just a portion. And of course he couldn’t let a microphone pass by without mentioning big oil profits.So I’m going to point out, again, that the typical profit, industry wide, on a gallon of gas is between 8 and 9 cents. While the Wisconsin tax alone is 32 cents per gallon. So whatever profits they make in Wisconsin, the state is making four times as much (which apparently is not enough.) And keep in mind that the oil companies actually do something. They find, pump, transport and refine that oil into gasoline before shipping it to Wisconsin. On the other hand the state of Wisconsin does nothing other than collect their cut.
UPDATE II (5/11/07) Well, Department of Revenue be damned! Apparently the fact that it will raise gasoline prices and the fact that they can’t enforce such a law are not enough to stop Jim Doyle from being a demagogue on this issue. His press conference was pathetic. The highlight was when he invoked poll results as justification for going after “big oil.” (BTW, does that mean “little oil” is off the hook? You know there are small oil companies.) He declared that this is a good tax because “the majority of people in Wisconsin support it.” All I could think of was a quote I recently read in a Jonah Goldberg column. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, and I am for free silver,” proclaimed William Jennings Bryan. “I will look up the arguments later.”
I wonder how the poll question read. I’m thinking it went something like, “Would you favor taxing the crap out of the big oil companies, as long as we can guarantee they can’t pass it on to you?” I think it would be hard for the typical high school drop out to answer that any way but “yes.” By the way, they would also answer “yes” if you asked them if they’d like to get a free Playstation 3, but that doesn’t mean we should give them one. He launched into a bit about how oil companies benefited form the roads we build here and then generously offered that he doesn’t expect for them to pay for ALL the roads, just a portion. And of course he couldn’t let a microphone pass by without mentioning big oil profits.So I’m going to point out, again, that the typical profit, industry wide, on a gallon of gas is between 8 and 9 cents. While the Wisconsin tax alone is 32 cents per gallon. So whatever profits they make in Wisconsin, the state is making four times as much (which apparently is not enough.) And keep in mind that the oil companies actually do something. They find, pump, transport and refine that oil into gasoline before shipping it to Wisconsin. On the other hand the state of Wisconsin does nothing other than collect their cut.
Monday, May 7, 2007
The Logical Conclusion
You could see this coming; it was only a matter of time. Once the global warming crowd had a chance to sit down and think about all the ways that we supposedly contribute to their theory of climate change, they were inevitably going to arrive at the conclusion that living is bad for all of us.
One guy has decided that mankind is simply a “virus in shoes.” A British think tank has declared that having children is “bad for the planet” and should be frowned upon the same as “long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags.” And finally, a travel writer has decided that “ travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday.” He compares the travel industry to big tobacco, and wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. I suppose that means little warning signs like the ones on a pack of cigarettes.
“WARNING: Taking this cross country flight may put New York City underwater!”
And Sheryl Crow is back on the scene. She got all sorts of grief heaped upon her when she made a suggestion about limiting toilet paper. So the public ridiculed her for a couple of days and she issued a statement that she had been joking, of course. But it had the same feel as the Keith Richards fiasco when he stated that he had snorted his father’s ashes and then said he was just joking. I think they were both caught saying something that only sounded incredibly stupid to them when they heard it the next day. That’s when it became a “joke.” But Crow has now written about how galled she is by the “arrogance” of those who don’t see it her way. That’s funny because “arrogant” is exactly how I would describe Crow and her cohort, Laurie David. They are so sure they are right. You’d think that when somebody is in the business of predicting the future, they might couch their words or at least choose them carefully. These people talk as if they are looking back on history with 20 20 vision.
Who knows, maybe they’re right. But if they are, then I think we need to follow this train of thought to it’s logical conclusion. For example, it should be obvious to everybody that it is a frivolous waste of energy to travel around the country putting on concerts, even in a bio diesel bus. Bio diesel may put out less greenhouse gas than regular diesel, but it’s not zero. And what about all the concert goers, are they only riding bicycles to the show? If Sheryl Crow doesn’t come to town, all those people wouldn’t fire up their hybrid SUV’s and take yet another unnecessary trip across town. Her music can be delivered over the internet. There is no valid reason to go on tour any more, even to “raise our awareness.” There aren’t enough light bulbs to change that could make up for the waste a full fledged rock tour could produce. And don’t give me this crap about how you’re doing it in such and such a way that produces less greenhouse gas. Let me know when it’s zero.
And hey, Leonardo DiCaprio, what’s with the movie making? Talk about a frivolous waste! I wonder how many flights on a private jet you take during each film? And that’s just you. I’m sure Martin Scorcese and Jack Nicholson make a few runs for golf on the weekends. The budget on some of these films is in the hundreds of millions. How much gasoline and coal might that entail? And all for what? So teenagers will have someplace to drive their dates on Saturday night? Hardly seems like a crucial economic function to me. We don’t need movies.
One guy has decided that mankind is simply a “virus in shoes.” A British think tank has declared that having children is “bad for the planet” and should be frowned upon the same as “long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags.” And finally, a travel writer has decided that “ travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday.” He compares the travel industry to big tobacco, and wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. I suppose that means little warning signs like the ones on a pack of cigarettes.
“WARNING: Taking this cross country flight may put New York City underwater!”
And Sheryl Crow is back on the scene. She got all sorts of grief heaped upon her when she made a suggestion about limiting toilet paper. So the public ridiculed her for a couple of days and she issued a statement that she had been joking, of course. But it had the same feel as the Keith Richards fiasco when he stated that he had snorted his father’s ashes and then said he was just joking. I think they were both caught saying something that only sounded incredibly stupid to them when they heard it the next day. That’s when it became a “joke.” But Crow has now written about how galled she is by the “arrogance” of those who don’t see it her way. That’s funny because “arrogant” is exactly how I would describe Crow and her cohort, Laurie David. They are so sure they are right. You’d think that when somebody is in the business of predicting the future, they might couch their words or at least choose them carefully. These people talk as if they are looking back on history with 20 20 vision.
Who knows, maybe they’re right. But if they are, then I think we need to follow this train of thought to it’s logical conclusion. For example, it should be obvious to everybody that it is a frivolous waste of energy to travel around the country putting on concerts, even in a bio diesel bus. Bio diesel may put out less greenhouse gas than regular diesel, but it’s not zero. And what about all the concert goers, are they only riding bicycles to the show? If Sheryl Crow doesn’t come to town, all those people wouldn’t fire up their hybrid SUV’s and take yet another unnecessary trip across town. Her music can be delivered over the internet. There is no valid reason to go on tour any more, even to “raise our awareness.” There aren’t enough light bulbs to change that could make up for the waste a full fledged rock tour could produce. And don’t give me this crap about how you’re doing it in such and such a way that produces less greenhouse gas. Let me know when it’s zero.
And hey, Leonardo DiCaprio, what’s with the movie making? Talk about a frivolous waste! I wonder how many flights on a private jet you take during each film? And that’s just you. I’m sure Martin Scorcese and Jack Nicholson make a few runs for golf on the weekends. The budget on some of these films is in the hundreds of millions. How much gasoline and coal might that entail? And all for what? So teenagers will have someplace to drive their dates on Saturday night? Hardly seems like a crucial economic function to me. We don’t need movies.
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