Global Warming Skeptic to Lead the EU

Now with the Czech President Vaclav Klaus set to lead the EU, a vocal skeptic of human-induced climate change is about to become highly visible, and hopefully influential in questioning the massive increase in state power that cap-and-traders want to impose on western economies.

Here's a good summary in Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald. It quotes geologist and University of Adelaide (Australia) professor Ian Plimer:

Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.

We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.

Of course, science is based on skepticism. Human global warmning, as I've said in previous posts, has become an article of faith among its adherents and advocates, so much so that they've taken to labelling skeptics "deniers," an outrageous likening of legitimate inquiry to those who believe the WWII Holocaust never took place.

Seeing the skeptics emerge now is especially encouraging in light of the new governmental powers being accumulated by western democracies to save us from worldwide economic collapse. Taken together, a resurgence of statism to fight the twin economic and environmental panics would erode our freedoms far more than the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 reforms.

In a time like this, it's worth reading (or re-reading) Thomas Sowell's best book, The Annointed, in which he observes a familiar and recurring post-WWII political theme in the USA. To paraphrase him: First there is a crisis, a crisis about which only certain annointed people understand. They tell us that unless the rest of us adopt their solutions, we are all doomed. Those who dispute their solutions, or their premise, are derided is wildly out of touch, or worse, agents of the crisis itself. We adopt their solutions, the crisis worsens, but rather than accept responsibility for ineffectiveness of their solutions, the annointed point to a new crisis as the cause. And the cycle repeats.

Sowell describes an old political trick, the use of fear to galvanize public support for state power that would otherwise not be tolerated. It's been used as an organizing principle for state welfare programs, purges of immigrants and Communists, wars, and now "saving the environment."

This tactic often uses crisis as a mere vehicle -- a Trojan horse -- to implement the real agenda of its proponents, an agenda that would on its own be too unpopular to win support in a democratic society.

For example, the underlying motives of the most radical global warming alamists -- shifting the value system of western economies away from economic growth to local cummunitarianism -- has never been scratched or sufficiently aired. Most people have never spent time on Earth First's web site, or read Bill McKibben's thoughtful books, but if they wish to see where the global warming crowd wants to take us, they should. Were "saving the planet" not available as a useful vehicle, I think these same people would be advocating their ideas about capitalism, market-based economies, and American culture on their stand-alone merits, saying, for example, that they believe it is better to can your own food for the winter rather than have fresh food trucked in from California in January.

Of course, the planet isn't going anywhere for a few million years. The debate is really about human quality of life and existence today, and so far it hasn't been a debate at all -- just a fearful capitulation to the annointed. Maybe Vaclav Klaus can stir things up from the other side of the pond.

In Praise of Bankruptcy

A number of columnists and industry experts have stepped up in the last week to remind an amnesiac Congress and public that the legal process to deal with companies that become insolvent (dare I say its name?) does not spell instant doom.

For example, most of the major airlines have declared bankruptcy at one time or another. The days and months after they filed Chapter 11, their planes still flew, their employees still got paid. Of course, people eventually lost their jobs in layoffs, some took pay cuts, some vendors didn't get paid for services delivered -- whatever was necessary to make the company profitable again, or attractive to investors or buyers. It's a process that's worked time and again..

And kudos to Obama's economic team for considering it as a possibility. Bloomberg reports that the team is studying a "pre-packaged" bankruptcy deal where GM would file for Chapter 11 protection with government financial backing in hand, allowing it to accelerate the restructuring process from the usual 5 years to perhaps as little as 2.

Unlike an outright grant or loan from the feds, Chapter 11 protection would allow GM to re-negotiate its labor and vendor contracts, a key element of making their cost structure more competitive.

If Obama champions such a deal, who would stand in the way? Again from the Bloomberg article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that Democrats reject bankruptcy as an option.

In or out of court, automakers will have to submit a viable business plan to gain government funds, Peter Peterson, senior chairman of Blackstone Group LP, said in an interview.

``Unless they can show us the plan, we can't show them the money,'' Pelosi said yesterday.

Pelosi is very pleased with her "show them the money" sound bite, but in all honesty, would you trust her to evaluate a business plan? Sure, Congress will hire experts, but can Congress be as objective about evaluating a business plan as, say, a venture capitalist?

And isn't it odd that Pelosi, Frank, Reid and others went on the record two weeks ago in favor of a bailout before seeing a plan? Why, all of a sudden, are they talking about business plans? It's as if they caught up in the enthusiasm of trying to save GM, and forgot the check the numbers.

Perhaps it has something to do with that fact that they don't have the votes to throw money at GM. And perhaps that has something to do with public opinion, and the possibility that taxpayers who earn average wages working for healthy companies don't want to subsidize other taxpayers who earn twice the prevailing wage in their industry -- while their companies lose money!

Don't be resentful, you say. Well, how about being fair? If GM were profitable, nobody would care how much they paid their employees, or whether their execs flew coach or in private jets. But they are not profitable, and show no signs of becoming so. Their business model is a sieve, and it's a fact that their cost structure is a big part of the problem. So drastic changes are in order. That's what Chapter 11 is for.

Obama talked about fairness a lot on the campaign trail. Here's a great opportunity to demonstrate what it means.

More Skepticism About Global Warming

The Irish Times reports today that a new documentary is taking on "global warming alarmism" and will do for Al Gore what "Fahrenheit 9/11" did for George Bush.

A new Irish film claims that climate change guru Al Gore is an alarmist and that those who think they are saving the planet are only hurting the poor... IN BRIEF, THEIR other main assertions are: there has been no global warming since 1995; the polar bear population is not under threat from climate change but from human hunters; they also say that the Arctic and Greenland glaciers have been receding since 1850, long before the invention of SUVs; and, finally, that the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) takes issue with Al Gore's contention that sea levels will rise by 20ft (more like 19 inches, says the IPCC)...

The views are certainly contrarian. But there are some eminent scientists among the contributors, including Dr Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Centre and Prof Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist from MIT, both of whom are sceptics.

Both Lindzen and Akasofu know far more about climatology than Al Gore. Despite being outspoken over the last few years, most US media consumers have never heard their names.

That's because man-made climate change is a topic that can't be rationally discussed or debated. It has been politicized, made a shibboleth in our politically correct culture. Originally a Maoist concept, "political correctness" holds that certain points of view are simply beyond critique, and anyone who does so is immediately labeled a pariah (or worse), whatever their credentials.

All us skeptics ask is to concede that 1) the theory might be wrong and 2) the law of unintended consequences be considered in deciding what we do. In response to skeptics, Gore & friends dismiss this humble request with ad hominem attacks and claims that man-made global warming is "settled science" -- itself an oxymoron.

One reader emailed me today with another interesting criticism of skepticism, using an updated version of Pascal's Wager: "Why not combat global warming? If it is wrong, you still improve the planet and our quality of life."

Opposing global warming alarmism and the rash, statist measures being advocated as its solution does not mean that one opposes conservation and environmental protection. We should do all we can to economize on our use of natural resources, reduce pollution, and live more self-sufficiently. Those are just good ethical practices, and very much in our self-interest, too.

But let's also stipulate that doing so will require trade-offs (e.g., wind turbines kill birds, nuclear power may be necessary to sustain our economic growth as the move away from fossil fuels requires more and more electricity). And let's avoid new taxation and regulatory schemes (e.g., Cap-and-Trade, Kyoto) that will disrupt the economies of the world and people's livelihoods.

For example, I wonder if any of the "eat local" advocates who want to regulate what foods can be imported to certain regions of the country have a solution for the thousands of truckers, food growers, import/export copmanies, and restauranteurs who would be damaged or put out of business?

Ah yes, of course they do: Re-train them for "green jobs."

Global Fudging

Over the past year, the press is starting to report that there are people -- sane people -- who are skeptical about whether man-made carbon gas is warming the planet, or even whether the planet is now warming at all, and that evidence exists to support their claims.

Today we have an account from the UK Telegraph that NASA fudged its numbers, at the direction of the man who has been one of global warming's chief proponents.

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand... So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The story was scarcely reported at all in the USA, owing perhaps the to the nearly religious orthodoxy that global warming has become, so much so that those who doubt it, even with evidence, are called "global warming deniers," a phrase that compares scientific skeptics to those who deny the occurrence of the Jewish Holocaust. What editor in the US press would dare report stories that question the Gospel According to St. Al?

Similar stories that call into question the assumptions of man-made climate change, such as NASA's report from 2006 that surface temps on Mars have been warming, go by the wayside with nary a comment.

This is the first time I've seen evidence of deliberate falsification of data, a crime in the world of science akin to that of plagiarism in the world of letters. If he falsified data to promote his own theory, Dr. Hansen should resign. And if he does not resign, he should be cashiered, regardless of his past accomplishments or reputation.

Science has no meaning as a means of discovering truth if its practitioners see fit to falsify data or rig experiments to prove their point. The objective is to design experiments to test and challenge theories.

I don't have an MS and I didn't learn this professionally; I learned it in the eighth grade from Mr. Owen, a fantastic public school science teacher who put it in our heads that science has one essential principle: Truth to Data.

Personally, I am skeptical about any scientific theory that is based mostly on computer models, rather than data. Computer models cannot reliably predict the price of cattle futures, let alone planetary climate. All scientific theories deserve challenges and tests; that's what science is all about. Fraudulent practice should called out, and frauds discredited.

Does Dr. Hansen's lie mean that global warming is a fraud, too? No. But it does put a light on the very unscientific ardor with which global warming has been advanced as a truth, one that does not require the usual scientific scrutiny because, dammit, we just don't have the time! We must enact broad taxes, regulations and give new power to governments to deal with the problem!

The broad claims made by the climate change alarmists, and their world-changing prescriptions, call for good evidence, and real debate about the merits of their arguments.

To make another allusion to my childhood, I remember reading the book, The Population Bomb, by Dr. Paul Ehrlich, then and now of Stanford University. It stated that a vast explosion of population outstripping the world's natural resources would plunge the entire planet into regional wars over food and fuel -- and that millions would starve to death in the 70s and 80s -- unless something was done. Something like strict new laws spreading birth control and regulating the number of children per family.

China, of course, adopted that law, and perhaps Dr. Ehrlich would tell us that this saved the planet from his dire predictions in 1968. But he is too busy promoting the new generational crisis, global warming. See a pattern here?

Like Ehrlich, the deep environmentalists and their kin would like to change this culture's value system and its dependence on economic growth as a means of advancement and progress. They advocate slow growth or no growth policies as a means to combat global warming, but one wonders if they have created global warming to promote no-growth economics, and re-cast the culture in a communitarian ideal.

Not content to live their own lives this way, the greens believe they must bring the rest of us along to save the planet. What better way to do it than behind the respected and apolitical banner of science? No one will dare to dispute the self-appointed experts, led by the Vice President from Harvard.

But all they have done is to politicize this corner of the scientific world, and Dr. Hansen has given us all good reason to doubt him and his movement's scientific credentials.

Praise for Kucinich

Finally! A member of Congress who gets it. I was scanning some blogs this morning and saw this from Michelle Malkin:

Believe it or not, I am going to say something nice about Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich. He voted against the bailout every time. In a ready-for-YouTube exchange, he snorted when Kashkari said, (paraphrasing here) “taxpayer money shouldn’t be poured into businesses that are going to fail.” Kucinich retorted that Kashkari would be hearing that line played back to him for the rest of his career.

I haven't heard it stated more clearly. Goes to show you, too, that fiduciary responsibility is not a left or right issue. It is, by definition, apolitical.

The discussion in Congress should be about how to support GM, its workers and their communities as it goes through the bankruptcy process, so that they emerge from bankruptcy as a solvent enterprise, as many corporations do.

Charles Krauthammer describes what a bankruptcy scenario means in real terms. He seems to think that certain Congressional Democrats actually want to own to force the production of "green" cars, as well as to rescue the UAW contracts that have given GM a cost per worker nearly twice that of their Japanese competitors.

Government has no successful record of running auto companies. That is the business model that brought us the Yugo and the Trabant, cars that eastern Europeans stopped buying as soon as they were no longer forced to do so. And also Fiat, which hasn't been able to compete in the world for decades. I wonder what kind of car Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank will design?

Echoing Krauthammer weeks ago, former GE CEO Jack Welsh explained in an interview on CNN that rescuing the credit markets was tolerable because it these markets are part of the underlying infrastructure on which the global economy runs, but he drew line at bailing out manufacturers. He gave two reasons: The slippery slope of choosing who among thousands of companies are entitled to government largesse, and the fact that the market and our bankruptcy process is well equipped to deal with failed companies, either by killing them outright for asssets or rescuing them through restructuring of debt, opex and capex, to attract new investment.

And for my liberal friends who accuse me of surfing too many Krauthammers and Malkins, even the venerable Nicholas Von Hoffman, writing in the Nation today, notes:

Nevertheless, the projected $25 billion loan may only be a postponement of the inevitable. If the car companies continue to use up cash at the current rate, this loan will be used up in a year, after which GM, Chrysler and Ford will be back asking for another loan--unless you believe that the three will have righted themselves in the next twelve months and come close to breaking even. That is not a reasonable business assessment.

Since there is a high probability that the automakers will be in the same condition a year or so after this infusion of public money, the Obama administration will have to decide if the industry gets another loan and then another after that, and so on. Each successive loan will be justified as saving the jobs of the hundreds of thousands of people dependent on the automobile industry.

None of this, of course, should have to be explained, and is not really controversial at all. It's basic economics and business sense. But with a near filibuster-proof Senate, will union-beholden Democrats listen to reason?

Still Ignoring the Issue

Another day of headlines on why the automakers need some of that bailout money, and still very little from anyone about how to fix the business and turn these money-bleeding dinosaurs into profitable companies.

Even on the Drudge Report, Republicans as well as Democrats are kissing the unions' butts:

"They should take every step possible, including cutting executive salaries and bonuses, and exhaust all alternatives before coming to the taxpayers for tens of billions of dollars in help," Charles Grassley of Iowa said.

Presumably, that would include renegotiating labor and vendor contracts that keep their business uncompetitive, no matter how much money we throw at them.

I'm waiting for some honest reporter to write about the bankruptcy option. People need to understand that, contrary to what Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi think, the big three will not vanish the moment they declare bankruptcy. In fact, filing for Chapter 11 protection will allow these companies to prioritize their debts, void their expensive union and vendor contracts, and rebuild their business. That's why bankruptcy laws were created.

Which do you think the politicians are more concerned about right now: The financial performance of the automakers, or the possibility of a very big union losing some big perks for its membership?

And then ask yourself, which is better for the country, and for the creditors, shareholders and employees of GM, Ford and Chrysler?

Barney Frank Picks a Winner

Barney Frank is beginning to remind me of a nearsighted, uncoordinated child who just can't figure out how to hit a baseball off a tee. He keeps swinging and swinging, and each swing is an embarrassment. First his cap falls off, then his glasses, then he hits himself in the rear end with the bat, breaks the t, and now the the bat is about to fly out of his hands and really hurt someone. Undeterred by the fact that he can't hit worth a damn, and smiling like a fool, he's swinging again..

In July Barney told us that FNMA was a sound long-term investment. Not satisfied with contributing to the wreckage in the mortgage industry, Barney is now leading the charge in Congress to siphon off $25B of the $700B approved to deal with the financial crisis to purchase a stake in the "ailing auto industry". From the AP today:

The legislation being drafted by Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, would dip into the $700 billion Wall Street rescue money approved by Congress last month for the auto aid. President Bush is cool to that idea, although the White House says he is open to helping the troubled industry... [The bill] would send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered auto industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

Congress is demonstrating the behavior that has so outraged the public that its approval ratings have been consistently below George Bush's. First they charge the taxpayers $700B for a bailout that is justified, they say, by extraordinary circumstances in the credit markets.

Then, with the ink not even dry on that agreement, they are finding other uses for the money.

Coupled with this, Paulson publicly questions how best to use the $700B. Our saviors in Washington spent two months convincing us of the necessity to draw this money, and now they don't know what to do with it? Is it any wonder why the equity markets are in a state of confusion and panic?

Right in front of our eyes, we're seeing the complete lack of discipline -- no, an impulsive fiduciary recklessness -- that is simply in the DNA of this institution, with the executive branch its slavish accomplice.

If anyone in my business were caught pulling such a bait-and-switch, they would be summarily dismissed, or depending on the scale of the malfeasance, prosecuted. Barney himself would haul the villains before a Congressional hearing, and howl about corruption and "corporate greed."

All of this doom-saying about the auto makers, but not a mention about fixing the business; all this talk about getting GM to build "green cars," but not a word about bringing the UAW to the table, nothing even about securing the funds with loan guarantees, as was done with Chrysler three decades ago. Aside from Cal Thomas' piece in our Must Reading section, can you find anything in the mainstream media that speaks to the real problem with the big three, apparent to anyone willing to look at its balance sheet?

I'm now convinced of the suspicions in my previous post: This looks like a post-election payoff to the unions, straight out of the pockets of US taxpayers. The evidence is purely circumstantial, but if you're the UAW hoping to avoid a Chapter 11 situation which would nullify your lucrative contracts, there's serious upside to this deal. Without a host, the parasite will die. And harsh as it sounds, labor agreements that make a business unprofitable are, in fact, parasitic.

Making the US government a shareholder in GM will not increase GM's sales or its profit margin, lower its cost of goods sold, sell off its long-term debt, or anything else that will make a difference in its bottom line. And if the bottom line does not improve, then the US government will lose its "investment" in this dinosaur of a company, along with the few remaining shareholders stuck with this stock. Most shareholders, of course, have run from big three stock this year. Only Barney & friends want to buy.

But what about helping those auto workers who stand to lose their jobs? They will do no better in this deal than the low income homeowners who bought homes with Barney's FNMA-backed, CRA-inspired teaser rate loans.

Unless, of course, they agree to negotiate new contracts and benefits that are competitive with Honda, Toyota, and the big three's other major competitors. As we've seen with other over-unionized, ossified businesses like the newspaper industry, textiles, etc., no amount of investment can turn around a broken business model. The model, itself, must be changed first.

Can Obama Draw the Line?

Now that the election is over, the American auto companies, with GM in the forefront, have come to Washington with their hands out. Their message is the same as their predecessors' in the financial services industry, Donald Trump's to his creditors over a decade ago, and Chrysler's to Congress in the 80's: You can't afford to let us fail.

But that's debatable. Bailing out the banking and credit industries was justifiable to restore the circulation of credit throughout our economic system. Bailing out manufacturers who, after 30 years of foreign competition, can't make profitable cars, is just throwing good money after bad.

How can a car company make money when, according to their own spokesmen, $1500 of every card sold pays for retiree benefits? How can they be competitive when their cost structure is so out of step, not only with their foreign competitors, but with other industries?

Most American workers in private industry today have to rely on 401K plans and other thrift-based instruments to fund their retirement. They don't have the benefit of private pensions that pay a percentage of their highest salary -- let alone a percentage above 50%.

Wouldn't it be nice? Sure, but not if such benefits killed the golden goose. Sometimes, unions don't understand that they, too, have a stake in the success of a business.

Who's next to belly up to the bailout bar, the newspaper industry? I had a front row seat at the demise of that institution, another situation where entrenched unions conspired with over-confident owners to ride a successful business model into obsolescence.

I am sad that the newspaper industry is in demise. But they are suffering the consequences of their own business decisions and strategies, and it is unthinkable that they would ask the American taxpayer to bail them out.

But lots of things were unthinkable a few months ago.

Perhaps Uncle Sam should have bailed out the buggy whip business too, blunting the creative destruction of markets that transformed the transportation industry into something much more prosperous. Now GM has come to its own precipice.

When Lee Iaococa came to Washington 28 years ago to request government-backed loans (yes loans, not cash) to bail out Chrysler, he went to the unions and extracted concessions. He was quoted in the papers as saying something like, "It's a new game, boys." Columnists wondered if Ronald Reagan had gone soft. But he hadn't.

Here is Obama's first test: Can he tell them, "Cut a deal, or pound sand"? If the government helps GM, will GM fix the unsustainable cost structure at the heart of its business by putting its pensions and benefits in line with its competition - not to mention building cars that people want to buy? Can he compel them to do that, or will he payoff his union campaign supporters by subsidizing their failure in the marketplace? Or blame GM's failure on the lack of national health insurance, and use their bailout as an excuse to drive that agenda?

Here's how Jackie Calmes put it in the International Herald Tribune today:

"As the auto industry reels, rarely has an issue so quickly illustrated the differences from one White House occupant to the next. How Obama responds to the industry's dire straits will indicate how much government intervention in the private sector he is willing to tolerate. It will also offer hints of how he will approach his job under pressure, testing the limits of his conciliation toward the opposition party and his willingness to stand up to the interest groups in his own."

Going bankrupt would at least permit GM to renegotiate its union contracts -- and put some of the pressure on the UAW to keep its cash cow alive. Perhaps, over time, they would become solvent and sell out to an actual money-making enterprise. But Obama's apparent preference is to fuel GM's bottomless tank with bailout money -- money that was intended, as far as most voters know, to right the financial system. The result would be nothing more than an indirect transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to GM's management and unions, via the federal government.

Bush does not get off the hook here, either. Before setting the precedent for unsecured bailouts using taxpayer cash, he should have thought about how that power would be used by his successors -- and the temptation to expand its uses beyond the current crisis.

For a good read on GM's situation, check out the Post article in Must Reading, or click here

The Washington Snakepit

How peaceful Sarah Palin must have felt to see the tarmac in Anchorage last night, when for the prior 24 hours, her boss's handlers were tripping over each other to snipe at her and attempt to blame her for the election loss.

This is perhaps the most disgraceful and revolting spectacle of the campaign's end game -- even more so because it comes from the Republican inner circle. It is a reminder of how sordid national power politics is, has always been, and always will be. It is proof of how lost-in-the-wilderness the Republican Party is right now.

Carl Cameron of Fox News reported the anonymous leaks from the campaign, from high-level staffers who described her as a hopeless, spendthrift, shopaholic, ignorant rube who shocked them by appearing at her hotel door in a bathrobe, fresh out of the shower, when they came to collect her one morning for the day's activities. These anonymous, un-corroborated statements were picked up and amplified by ABC and others, without comment yet from Palin or her staff.

Shocking! Funny; they didn't mind photos of Cindy McCain in a bathrobe appearing in her daughter's campaign blog. Of course, anyone who's even traveled with an athletic team knows how silly this is. And one can only deduce from it that McCain's handlers are desperate not only to place the blame elsewhere, but also to destroy any possibility of Palin appearing on a national ticket again. In this, they are curiously aligned with their Democratic opposites.

Why?

Because these professional politicos are now unemployed and looking for re-employment in our political quagmire, and they know that if Palin does become a leader in the Republican Party, they will not get those "good jobs at good wages," as Mike Dukakis used to say. Heck, they might have to get real jobs where they are accountable for success or failure.

People to politicos: Deal with it. Get a life. And leave the woman alone.

Putting Bradley Behind Us

The historic nature of last night's result is unquestionable. But in turn it questions the conventional wisdom that race is a huge barrier in American life, at least as it pertains to leadership.

The New York Times this morning led with a 5-column banner headline: "Racial Barrier Falls in Decisive Victory." I may be going semantic on this, but the headline, IMHO, misses the real point - that the racial barrier wasn't really there at all. It melted away over the last 40 years, the inevitable result, day by day, of 40 years of legal reform and cultural integration.

Turns out, the polls were right. They didn't need to be handicapped by 5 or 10 points, by the notion that people may tell you they're voting for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth their internal racist impulses compel them to do differently.

Obama ran against a viable candidate. True, he didn't win the white vote, but he won key segments of it; he won seniors, and he won Hispanic voters 2-1. If a black candidate, even one who had a racist preacher as his spiritual mentor, can attract a majority of white voters with his rhetoric, skills, and positions, doesn't that say that voters care more about the candidate's substance than the color of his skin?

A piece from one of Australia's leading newspapers makes the same point -- and a larger one, that the left's hyper-critical view of US culture as racist and imperialist is and has always been distorted.

Certainly, depending on where we live or work, racism may be a larger or smaller barrier to achievement for the rest of us.

But can we at least put the Bradley Effect, and its suggestion that deep in the hearts of most white people lurks a racist devil, to bed?

Rich Enough Not To Work

McCain was mocked for saying sarcastically that, for the purposes of his income tax policy, he would define as rich as "say, $5 million a year." His greatest weakness as a candidate has been an inability to explain his positions tangibly using real world examples. Krauthammer noted this after one of the debates by commenting that he speaks "almost telegraphically" -- blurting out a sound byte or a slogan without explaining what it means to people.

Meanwhile, it appears that Obama has successfully sold voters a platter of tax increases by re-marketing them as a "tax cut for 95% of you." Of course, those who get a tax cut (including those who currently pay no income tax and will get checks) will do so as a result of tax increases on "the rich," and by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, which itself is a tax increase.

Who are the rich? According to Obama, any household making over $250K/year (though he has said on other occasions $200/year. In fact, Biden and New Mexico Governer Bill Richardson have mentioned $150K and $120K respectively). In 1992, I was appalled when Richard Gephardt said it was 75K/year.

Anyone who thinks a household of income of $150K per year is being rich needs to try raising a family with that income in any American city -- without a trust fund. Why they get no grief for throwing out numbers like this, I'll never understand.

No matter, the media has rarely brought the discussion down to that level of detail, and so the candidates get away with sheer cloudy vagueness on the issue, free to say as they enter office, as Bill Clinton did of his middle class tax cut pledge in 1992, "Gee, that last President left things so messed up, we're going to have to do this a little differently."

Expect it.

But I have three major problems with the whole premise of the debate:

1. Using yearly income to define rich. My definition of rich is having enough wealth so that you don't have to work any more, if you don't want to. That means assets, not just income. Using income this way punishes the many people, including salesmen, sole proprietors and others, who deal with periodic job loss, or have good years and bad years. A lot of people Bill Richardson defines as rich are 4-8 paychecks away from penury.

2. Stealing the tax base from the states. The more the federal government taxes income, the less choice states have in raising their own revenue. This really hurts high-cost-of-living states and cities, where $120K a year of household income is modest. The ideal thing, from my point of view, would be have a very low federal income tax, with states free to define their scope of government power and largesse on top of it.

3. There is a line between progressive and confiscatory taxation. Today, over 30% of taxable households pay no federal income tax. It's often quoted now that the old 80/20 rule is in full effect with respect to the income tax burden. Over the years, our income tax has already become quite progressive. If we get to the point where more than half of the population has no "skin in the game" of federal spending, what's to stop them from viewing elections as opportunities to confiscate money from "the others" to keep their government benefits going -- and expand them? At what point do the haves simply start moving their wealth or income into protected shelters, where they are neither taxed, spent, nor put to work?

Sound like Europe, or like the USA in the '70s? I hope it doesn't happen here.