January 31, 2004

The Tax-And-Spenders Attack TABOR

The Tennessean has come out against a proposal in Wilson County for a local Taxpayers Bill of Rights provision that would require a refendum on future property tax increases. No big surprise - the paper favors higher taxes and bigger government budgets. But the editorial makes it clear the paper's editorial board really hasn't investigated the Taxpayers Bill of Rights concept in depth and learned how it has worked at the local level in places where it has been tried. Here's a snippet of the editorial:

Proponents of the change say that allowing public referendums on property taxes amounts to local control, yet the proposal could lead to local chaos. Every time Wilson County needed additional money for education, roads, employees or any number of services, it would have to hold a referendum with no guarantee that property tax funds would be there. And guess who pays the bill for referendums: county taxpayers.

Referendums are a lazy way to govern. They require no thought, no debate, no energy. Just a ''no'' vote. This is exactly why the founding fathers saw fit to create a representative democracy so that voters choose representatives, like county commissioners, to make government decisions.

For more than a decade, Colorado's state constitution has included a Taxpayers Bill of Rights that applies at both the state and the local level - making Colorado a laboratory for how such provisions actually impact local government finances and politics.

Let's consider the data, first.

According to the Colorado Municipal League, since the Taxpayers Bill of Rights became law in Colorado in 1993, there have been 413 local referenda across Colorado - in big cities, suburbs and rural towns, on raising taxes, and voters have voted 224 times to allow their local government to raise taxes - a 54.2 percent pass rate.

Futhermore, voters have approved increases in public debt and allowed their local governments to keep and spend surpluses well more than half the time, as I documented a few days ago in this post.

A decade and hundreds of local elections acorss Colorado prove the people will allow government to increase spending and taxes more than half the time if they are given the right to vote on it. A a provision requiring refendums on tax increases in Wilson County does not mean taxes won't go up. It WOULD mean, however, that the county commission would have to make a strong case to the people for such a tax increase. And that brings me to the political impact of a Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Again, we should look to Colorado to see how it has worked there.

A few years ago, when a Taxpayers Bill of Rights was on the ballot in the state of Washington, the Rocky Mountain News - which had initially opposed Colorado's amendment back in 1992 - published an editorial urging Washington staters to support their amendment. The reason: by giving voters a say in tax increases and such, it fosters more grassroots political involvement.

Here's what the Rocky Mountain News said on Nov. 7, 1999:

Maybe it's time that opponents looked on the bright side. If they will give their new tax initiative a chance, they might find it actually strengthens the political process, rather than destroys it. That's clearly what has happened in Colorado since the passage of TABOR. Here, shifting responsibility for taxes from politicians to the public hasn't resulted in automatic rejection of every spending plan.

But while TABOR hasn't straitjacketed government, it has accomplished a number of good things. It has heightened interest in elections and government policy; it has given public officials mandates they otherwise would have lacked; it has shrunk voters' sense of helplessness over the use of their hard-earned taxes; and last, but hardly least, it has strengthened the fiscal responsibility of state and local government.

I can't help but believe The Tennessean's editorial board would agree that heightened interest in elections and government policy and more governmental fiscal responsibility would be a good thing - and that it would be good for politicians and public to be on the same page on taxes and spending.

That's what the Taxpayers Bill of Rights creates.

Before they write about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights again - and they will as the movement to enact such provisions at the local and state level is growing - the paper's editorial board ought to learn more about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights - how it really works and why it is right for Tennessee.

Well... Yeah

Here's a report on how the growing economy is helping state budgets. And an interesting bit of info given how Tennesseans were told during the four-year Income Tax War that the income tax better reflected economic growth than the sales tax:

Some tax revenue sources will track economic growth more closely than others, however. "Sales taxes closely follow economic growth," said Chris Edwards, a fiscal policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Other state taxes, like those levied on personal and corporate income, take longer to reflect improved economic growth.

Excellent Taxpayers Bill of Rights Information

The Heartland Institute has published the first two parts of a three-part in-depth series on tax-and spending limitation laws (TELs) such as Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Part 1 is titled State Budget Problems Lead to Renewed Interest in TELs and begins this way:

Thoughtful leaders in many states are fed up with the fiscal roller coaster they have experienced during the past decade and want to smooth out the ride. The result in many states is new interest in constitutional tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) and efforts to improve limits where they currently exist. States are paying a heavy price for allowing rapid tax revenue growth during the 1990s to fuel an unsustainable expansion in spending. Between fiscal years 1990 and 2001, state tax revenue grew 86 percent. Inflation and population growth grew at a combined rate of 55 percent during that same period.

If states had limited spending growth to the rate of increase in inflation and population, according to analysts from the Cato Institute, state budgets would have been $93 billion smaller by FY01 than they actually were. The savings are roughly twice the size of today’s state budget gaps.

In the 1990s Colorado experienced one of the most rapid rates of economic growth in the country. But state revenues increased even faster than the growth in personal income. Before TABOR kicked in, the state went on a spending spree, building highways, prisons, university buildings, and other projects at an unsustainable rate.

When TABOR was triggered that spending spree came to a halt. Over the three years from 1997 to 2000, TABOR limited spending growth to inflation and population increases, generating more than $3 billion in surplus revenue that was used for taxpayer refunds, rebates, and tax cuts.

Memo to Tennessee media: You should read it. The Taxpayers Bill of Rights movement is growing fast in Tennessee.

In the News

Yours truly is mentioned in a Knoxville News Sentinel story about the Instapundit, a/k/a University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds. The story - front page in the print edition - is the latest from that paper's reporter Michael Silence, a reporter who actually "gets" the blogging phenemenon and makes an effort to report on it accurately. I spoke with him at length yesterday about how web traffic is measured.

Reynolds said blogs will continue to grow, with more video and coverage of local issues, and that will further challenge local and national media outlets.

January 30, 2004

Kerry: Terrorism Threat "Exaggerated."

John Kerry, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, says the threat of terrorism is an exaggeration."

Does this look like an "exaggeration" to you?

Now you know why we absolutely can not trust John Kerry with the presidency. Defeating terrorism is the single most important task facing America. We must continue to have a president who understands that.

Good commentary at PowerLine and Blogs For Bush. No comment yet from the 3,000 people who died on September 11, but experts believe they would all disgree with Sen. Kerry.

Never forget. Never give in. Never stop the War on Terror until all the terrorists are dead, and all the rogue regimes that support or enable them are gone. We owe that to the people who died on September 11 - the workers in the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the passengers and flight crews, the firefighters and NYPD - and to the families they left behind. And we owe it to our children.

Remember?

Leveling the Playing Field

Robert Cox says the Blog Revolution is about holding journalists' feet to the fire, in a long piece that explains the nuts-and-bolts of doing so in the blogosphere:

In an age of media consolidation, anonymous sources, and sensationalism, readers represent the last bulwark against the journalistic fakery, sloppy editing and media bias which have emerged as the biggest threats to the integrity of the fourth estate. The Internet offers the average reader the tools needed to identify misquotes, distortions and lies - and the newest corner of the Internet, the blogosphere, provides an outlet to raise the alarm.

How many times do you read something in the newspaper you just know is hooey? You tell your spouse about it on the way out the door in the morning. Maybe you tell your co-workers or friends over lunch. You even consider calling into that talk radio show you hear on the commute home every day. But the day goes by, and you move on to other things, and another lie enters the collective consciousness unchallenged. Besides, what could you have done?

If you have Internet access, a sense of adventure and a bit of time on your hands, the answer is: quite a lot. The Internet - particularly the blogosphere - has leveled the playing field, making it possible for anyone to hold media outlets accountable for what they publish or broadcast.

Incidentally, Cox edits TheNationalDebate.com, a blog that takes on
Maureen Dowd and The New York Times over misquotes in Dowd's column., and also politics, policy and media.

EconomyWatch: Solid GDP Growth

The Commerce Department's initial estimate of the economy's growth rate in the fourth quarter: 4 percent. In anyone's book that's solid economic growth if not an outright economic boom.

The CBS headline on the CBS/AP story: U.S. Economy Downshifts.

Meanwhile, USA Today explores why different government surveys on the labor market "increasingly tell different stories."

A survey by the Labor Department of businesses showed there were 62,000 fewer jobs in December 2003 from a year ago. But a door-to-door survey of households showed there were 1.957 million more jobs in December from the prior year. Other data from private surveys only increase the confusion.

Not surprisingly, CBS' story about the economic growth rate includes only the employer-survey data, not the household data.

No matter. The Bush Boom is rolling along, even if CBS News wants you to think otherwise.

January 29, 2004

Cable Companies May Try to Keep Your Tax Refund

Cable television companies who have been forced by the state of Tennessee to collect an illegal tax from their customers for the past nine years may try to avoid refunding the money to customers, even though the state is making revenue from the last three years available for refunding to taxpayers. At least that's the indication from this story from Knoxville. The cable companies might also try to increase rates to keep the tax cut you should be getting in the future, by tacking on some new fee.

Memo to cable companies: Nobody really likes you. Don't make it worse by helping the state keep our money. And don't cheat us out of our tax cut. There are alternatives, as you know.

UPDATE: Why did cable industry sue to stop the illegal tax if they don't want to return the money to customers and cut their rate? Oh. Never mind.

Why don't people like cable companies such as Comcast? Because they pull stunts like this. [Hat tip: Instapundit]

CORRECTION Jan. 30, 2004: Editor's note: This is too important to be left only as a response to a commenter below. Bloggers should correct their errors within the body of the errant post and so I shall: I completely misread the Knoxville newspaper's story and, in my head, morphed the ISPs in the story into cable companies. That's what I get for writing and posting late at night w/out benefit of coffee.

The story does NOT indicate the big cable companies are going to try to stiff customers by keeping the refunded tax money (though I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them did). The story talks about the difficulties the state's refund process is creating for small Independent Service Providers.

My only question now is why does the ISP operator in the story claim he'll have to raise prices to reflect some other tax now that he no longer has to collect the illegal tax? I've seen nothing from the state that indicates they're levying a new tax to replace the illegal tax. What I am missing?

But Jason, the commenter below, is right - it is wrong of the state to have created a difficult process for refunding the illegally collected tax money to consumers. The state knows which ISPs and cable companies paid the tax, and how much - down to the last penny - that they paid. It could, tomorrow, cut checks to refund the money to the companies, which could then refund customers on their next bill - or mail checks to former customers.

It is the state that is trying to hang on to millions of dollars of revenue from an illegal tax, by shifting the burden of the refund process to the ISPs. That's wrong.

Your Digital Freedoms Are At Stake

New legislation has been filed that would rewrite the offense of communication theft, punish offenses as theft, provide civil remedies and statutory damages, and include the present offense of cable television theft. It is sponsored by a different group of legislators than last year's onerous legislation - written by the Motion Picture Association of America and backed by the cable television industry - that would have given the cable industry the authority to ban you from connecting any device to the cable outlet in your home that they did not "authorize." Further, any "unauthorized" connection would be consider slam-dunk evidence of the crime of intent to defraud the cable television industry. The Tennessee Digital Freedom Network took the lead in opposing that legislation last year, and it was shelved, though the MPAA and the cable industry remain committed to controlling how you use your cable service and their movies. Many of my posts on this topic last year are collected in my Internet & Technology category.

HobbsOnline will monitor this developing story...

A Warning to Iran?

NationalSecurityBlog, which is going on my blogroll, has some interesting comments on Iran, because of this Reuters report and a story in Jane's Intelligence Report indicating the U.S. may soon strike at Hezbollah terrorist camps in Syrian-controlled southern Lebanon. Iran is the godfather, financier and ideological patron of Hezbollah.

Writes John Little at NationalSecurityBlog:

Striking Hezbollah would be the right thing to do. But I don't expect overt military action to occur before November. I suspect that this story was floated to send a message to Iran. If Bush is reelected and Iran continues to support Hezbollah into 2005 then all bets are off. However, the fact that Bush has shown a willingness to disregard the the political implications associated with direct action in the war on terror has to keep Hezbollah and their supporters off balance. Anything is possible.

Taxpayers Bill of Rights Town Hall Meeting

Sen. Jim Bryson, author of the proposed Taxpayers Bill of Rights amendment to the Tennessee constitution, has scheduled a town hall meeting for March 2 .

Bryson's proposed amendment has three major provisions that would:

Limit the growth of state government spending to the growth of inflation plus the growth in population.

Require any surplus tax revenue over that spending growth cap be returned to the people (after first funding an emergency/rainy day fund).

Require voter approval (a referendum) in order to raise taxes or implement any new taxes.

Bryson's town hall meeting will include an appearance by Colorado legislator Sen. John Andrews, president of the Colorado State Senate, who was one of the leading proponents of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights in Colorado.

The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., Tuesday, March 2, in the Davidson Room at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Nashville.

Be there or be... overtaxed.

Let the People Decide

A county commissioner in Wilson County, one of Nashville's fastest-growing suburban counties, wants state law changed so the county can allow the people to vote on proposed property tax increases. Details here from today's Tennessean.

Colorado voted in a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, also known as TABOR, as a state in 1992. Supporters say it helped increase personal income and the gross state product. Critics, however, have said that in its wake public services are poor and funding shortfalls exist for education.

The Tennessean doesn't tell you - perhaps because they haven't done the research - that, since TABOR went into effect in 1993, there have been 459 local referenda on supluses, and voters have voted 406 times to allow their local government to keep and spend the surplus - an 88.5 percent pass rate.

The Tennessean doesn't tell you - perhaps because they haven't done the research - that, since TABOR went into effect in 1993, there have been 289 local referenda on increasing the public debt, and voters have voted 96 times to allow their local government to issue new bonds and increase the public debt - a 67.8 percent pass rate.

The Tennessean doesn't tell you - perhaps because they haven't done the research - that, since TABOR went into effect in 1993, there have been 413 local referenda on raising taxes, and voters have voted 224 times to allow their local government to raise taxes - a 54.2 percent pass rate.

How come I know this and the Tennessean doesn't? Because I did actual journalism. I contacted the Colorado Municipal League and asked if they had such data. Sure enough, they did, and research associate Emma Arguelles sent me several files listing the details of each local TABOR referendum, and the results, like this file listing all the local elections on proposed new taxes and tax rate increases, plus one on debt increases and one on surpluses.

Then I wrote about it in this white paper.

The Tennessean also mentions that "supporters" of TABOR in Colorado credit it with increases in personal income and the size of the state's economy. They didn't have to source that to "supporters." Again - it is possible to do actual journalism and find out. I did. It turns out that, since the Taxpayers Bill of Rights amendment went into effect in Colorado in 1993, Colorado's economy has far out-performed Tennessee's by most any useful economic measure.

It's not just "supporters" who say the Taxpayers Bill of Rights has helped grow Coloradan's personal income and the state's economy - it's the economic data.

What's happening in Wilson County is part of a larger statewide grassroots movement to bring the Taxpayers Bill of Rights concept to Tennessee both at the local level and also at the state level, where state Sen. Jim Bryson has proposed a good Taxpayers Bill of Rights amendment to the state constitution. As this grassroots movement gains steam - it's already passed a local TABOR in Spring Hill - you can expect the pro-higher-taxes Tennessean to attack TABOR by reporting second-hand what "critics" say about it. Don't believe what the "critics" say and certainly don't rely on second-hand newspaper reports to form your view of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

Editor's note: The election results data cited above differs from that in the white paper I linked to above, for the simple reason that I wrote the paper a year ago, and just got updated numbers from the Colorado Municipal League in the last week or so. I plan to rewrite the paper with updated numbers and economic data in the weeks ahead and will let you know when that is finished and posted.

Spring Offensive?

The Los Angeles Times has more details on the plans for a Spring offensive against al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Let the Readers Do It

A writer for The Village Voice says Big Media needs an online "Department of Corrections." The writer examined how major online news sites such as Slate, The Washington Post, and The New York Times handle corrections of errors and suggests Big Journalism adopt some consensus standards for online corrections. The the writer also suggests the web needs a single universal corrections web site - suggested name: AllCorrections.com - that offers "one-stop shopping for researchers, a complete inventory of all corrections, all the time" and would "link daily to every media outlet's internally generated corrections, with separate pages for editors' notes, ombud blogs, and independent criticism." Ideally, it should be a non-profit.

Yeah. The web should be used to fact-check Big Media, highlight errors, make corrections, provide proper context, add depth, and such. Oh. Wait. Right. The blogosphere is already doing that.

January 28, 2004

Bush AWOL? Google It

I ran a Google search for the phrase Bush AWOL, five minutes ago, to see what popped up.

Well, whaddya know. I found this.

Go ahead and try it - see what you find.

Tennessee Ends Illegal ISP Tax

Tennessee's illegal sales tax on Internet access has been suspended, and you may be due a refund if you've paid for Internet access in Tennessee in the last three years. However, the state doesn't really want to give the money back, so they're making it difficult for you to get it. You have to ask your Internet service provider for the money, and then they have to ask the state. Additionally, some ISPs did not pass the tax on to their subscribers. Check your Internet service provider bills.

The state had argued that Internet service was a taxable telecommunications service. That required the ISPs to collect a 7.5% state sales tax on business customers, and state and local taxes totaling 8.5% from residential customers. The ISPs said they were providing an information service and thus were not subject to the tax.

That'll save a dial-up user about $1.70 a month, and a broadband user about $3.75 a month. It'll cost the government ... oh, who cares how much it will cost the government. They have been collecting the tax illegally since 1996, but state law - a law they wrote - provides a three-year statute of limitations on tax refunds. If you live in Tennessee, you've paid the illegal tax for nine years, but will only get three years of it back. The government is not losing revenue. It is being allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars it illegally took from you.

Here's what I want to see: Some pro-taxpayer legislators in the state House and state Senate file legislation ordering the Department of Revenue to automatically refund every dime of the illegal tax collected since 1996 to the Internet service providers, and requiring the ISPs to refund the money to the consumers that paid it. If our government is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people, such legislation ought to pass without opposition. If such legislation did not pass, at least we'd know, then, which legislators favors government more than the people, and opposes returning money to people from whom it was illegally taken. We'd know who our friends are.

Warning al Qaeda

The Chicago Tribune has published a report of planning underway for a new spring military offensive against al Qaeda inside Pakistan, thus alerting al Qaeda to the surprise attack.

I agree with Matthew over at Blackfive.net - publication of the story is an egregious move on the part of the Trib.

The Tribune should have titled it - Hey Osama, Watch Out! This makes my blood boil...You think that this is going to be a surprise attack? Not anymore thanks to the stellar reporting at the Tribune! And you all know someone who is heading over there and will certainly be part of any offensive in the area.

UPDATE: Darren Kaplan has a different perspective on the Trib publishing the story that merits your attention. Kaplan's blog merits your attention regularly - I can't figure out why he's not a star of the blogosphere already.

New World Blog

World magazine, a Time/Newsweek-like newsweekly written from a Christian perspective, has a (fairly new) blog (launched in November) with contributions from World editor Marvin Olasky and several of the magazine's other editors and writers. They've linked to HobbsOnline twice - thanks Marvin! WorldMagBlog is going on my blogroll, though I'm not sure yet which category.

Blogs Monitor The Politicans ... and the Journalists Too

James Lileks says weblogs "make it tough for candidates to sell falsehoods, because there will always be a hundred dozen foes ready to feast on the lie."

In the modern election cycle, we're used to seeing these candidates on the tube 24/7, and they have to say something when the camera's rolling. Forevermore now, there'll be someone watching who can tease an offhand remark however he pleases, post it to the Web and join the roiling conversation. ... It's not the e-mail. It's not the blog. It's not the Web sites. It's the computers, and the people behind them, connected like never before. They won't control the buzz this year. But in 2008? Count on it.

For years, web-based writers have fact checked, scrutinized and generally taken the mainstream press out to the woodshed. But the objects of online ire have usually been pundits and columnists. Putting a magnifying glass to the everyday beat reporters covering the presidential campaign - and, maybe, influencing their writing in the process – "that's something new," said Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute.

January 27, 2004

Thank You

Thanks to each of you who have either donated via PayPal or my Amazon tip jar in recent days, or purchased something from Amazon. (What strange books and CDs y'all are buying!) As always, I'm grateful for any support you give this blog.

Incidentally, HobbsOnline has had 14,988 unique visitors since opening at this new website on Jan. 1. The most popular single blog item has been this one: The 'Jobless' Recovery Isn't Jobless, viewed 3,912 times, followed by Bush AWOL? FactCheck.org Says No (2,731 times), and the Was Bush Awol? category page, viewed 2,320 times. Not bad for my little corner of the blogosphere.

I think I'm having an impact. I know I'm having fun. I hope you are too.

UPDATE: As of Wednesday, Jan.28, HobbsOnline has now welcomed 16,456 unique visitors since Jan. 1.

Here Come the Jobs!

Accelerated job creation is imminent. That's the nutshell version of today's report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. The JEC says "Job markets are strengthening" as initial claims for unemployment benefits "have fallen repeatedly and substantially over the last eight months to levels not seen since before the recession." Indeed, initial claims have recently averaged less than 350,000, which the JEC says indicates "labor markets are improving and ... job growth should accelerate."

Last week, the JEC said an array of economic data indicated the economy had strong momentum.

It's all good news for consumers, whose confidence is soaring, though they remain concerned about the labor market.

"Consumer confidence is now at its highest level since July 2002, when the Index registered 97.4," says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center. "Growing optimism about the overall health of the economy continues to bolster consumers' short-term outlook. But consumers' assessment of current conditions, which strongly hinges on improvements in the labor market, remains both weak and volatile."

Down the Memory Hole

Remember Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV - the guy whose wife, Valerie Plame, had her idendity as a CIA covert op revealed in the press? Remember how Wilson claimed to have no partisan motive in pushing that story because he was 'apolitical' regarding the Iraq war? Remember how I debunked that claim by providing you links to two speeches he gave? Well, one of those speeches has been scrubbed from the Internet by the leftwing Education for Peace in Iraq center, attempting to remove evidence of Wilson's decided non-apolitical stance regarding the war and Bush administration policies vis a vis Iraq. The links to the speech in this post and this post no longer work. Ah, but there's good news. First, I transcribed much of that speech, and posted it in the second of those two posts. Second, a speech Wilson gave at UC-Santa Barbara, which I linked to in this post, still works. And I downloaded it in case it, too, is "disappeared" from the Net by UCSB.

It's worth remembering Wilson's political statements - despite some attempts to erase them - as the Democrats seek to gain partisan advantage by hyping the Plame Name Blame Game scandal.

UPDATE: I found new links to the EPIC speech - and also downloaded it to preserve it forever. Here is the new link.

The Lies of John Kerry

In 1971, Vietnam War vet and aspiring politico John Forbes Kerry testified to Congress about widespread atrocities in Vietnam. Mackubin Thomas Owens, a professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. - who led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969 - writes:

His speech, touted as a spontaneous rhetorical endeavor, was a tour de force, convincing many Americans that their country had indeed waged a merciless and immoral war in Vietnam....

Kerry began by referring to the Winter Soldiers Investigation in Detroit. Here, he claimed, "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Today, Sen. Kerry appeals to veterans in his quest for the White House. He invokes his Vietnam service at every turn. But an honest, enterprising reporter should ask Sen. Kerry this: Were you lying in 1971 or are you lying now?

Dean's Echo Chamber

Pejman Yousefzadeh assays the impact of weblogs on politics in a perceptive piece about Howard Dean's poor showing in the Iowa caucus. Yousefzadeh says Dean's third-place finish in Iowa - after much media hype for his Internet and blog-fueled campaign - says less about the Internet and blogs than it does about Dean's message. In politics, it's the message that counts – blogs are just the medium.

Obviously, the use of the Internet and blogs is no cure-all for basic campaign mistakes. From his statement that he didn't care where Osama bin Laden would be tried if captured, to his comment that Saddam Hussein's capture failed to make America any safer, Dean succeeded in turning off many of his campaign supporters.

… Some of Dean's wounds were self-inflicted and quite apart from his reliance on the web to help carry forth his message. But if Dean's mistakes were not Internet-inflicted, the next question is whether the Internet augmented the seriousness of those mistakes. Over at the Dean blog, some commenters argued that the blog only served to insulate the campaign from having to do anything more than preach to the choir, and forget about actually trying to get votes on the ground, or appeal to undecided voters.

And an unpaid restaurant tab.

RELATED: I missed the first seven, but here's the eighth installment of Duck Hunt over at Sean Hackbarth's rather fine blog The American Mind

A National ID Card Requirement for Net Access?

Some are saying Howard Dean actively supported a national ID card as recently as 2002 - and a requirement that it be used to gain Internet access so that identification information could be tracked on line. Rightwing conspiracy theory? Nutjob tinfoil hat stuff? No. Solid news reporting from Blogs for Bush, sourced from tech journalist Declan McCullagh at CNET News, and a copy of a Dean speech, which I downloaded in case it gets "disappeared" from the Net. Here's are excerpts from McCullagh's report and the B4B report:

McCullagh:

Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers' licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart "cyberterrorism" and identity theft, Dean claimed. "We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints," Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans."

Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time--making the Internet safer and more secure."

Dean proposed, in his speech for Wave Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, that this national ID card would be required to receive any government services, presumably including Social Security and veteran's benefits. He also wanted this card to be equipped with "smart card" technology, allowing it to retain information as to when and where it was used so that a profile could be built from each card about the person's travel and purchasing habits. Requiring the ID card to be verified prior to each Internet session would guarantee that everyone's web-surfing habits and e-mail traffic could be stored in databases without a court order or any probable cause. And he's complaining about Bush curtailing civil rights?

The national ID card died a natural death after the panic of 9/11 wore off and cooler heads prevailed. However, Howard Dean has never explained his support for the most radical of the ID-card proposals. McCullagh has tried to get an answer to this from the Dean campaign for the past ten days, to no avail. This is yet another indication that Dean is far from being the straight-talking Everyman he purports to be; instead, he is a loose cannon, grabbing onto the idea of the moment to ride its popularity. Such a man would be a disaster in the Presidency, even if he were temperamentally suited for the job.

Digital Copyright News

The New York Times had an interesting story Sunday, The Tyranny of Copyright?, exploring how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is short-circuiting your First Amendment freedom of speech rights.

Here's an excerpt from the Times article...

Not long ago, the Internet's ability to provide instant, inexpensive and perfect copies of text, sound and images was heralded with the phrase ''information wants to be free.'' Yet the implications of this freedom have frightened some creators - particularly those in the recording, publishing and movie industries - who argue that the greater ease of copying and distribution increases the need for more stringent intellectual property laws. The movie and music industries have succeeded in lobbying lawmakers to allow them to tighten their grips on their creations by lengthening copyright terms. The law has also extended the scope of copyright protection, creating what critics have called a ''paracopyright,'' which prohibits not only duplicating protected material but in some cases even gaining access to it in the first place. In addition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the most significant piece of new legislation is the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, which added 20 years of protection to past and present copyrighted works and was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. In less than a decade, the much-ballyhooed liberating potential of the Internet seems to have given way to something of an intellectual land grab, presided over by legislators and lawyers for the media industries.

TDFN is actively battling efforts to enact a mini version of the DMCA at the state level.

Struggles With the Truth

Howard Mortman, producer of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, has written a rather funny look at the paranoid ramblings of some of the wackos who infest Howard Dean's campaign blog.

For the 2004 presidential campaign, Howard Dean has picked up that theme. Us vs. them - with "them" being the media. These days, when he's not shrieking war whoops into a microphone, Dean talks of "the struggle between us and the Washington politicians and the established press. And they have attacked us for months, every time they have an opportunity, but we're stronger than they are."

The "struggle" theme may not be of Marx and Engels' class proportions, but it's there nonetheless. And Dean supporters are fighting the struggle against the press every day in the trenches - the Internet trenches. That's where you'll find the Dean campaign’s "Blog for America," and its abundance of theories (paranoid or not) about the established press' attacks on poor 'ole Howard Dean. Those theories predate the media piling on Dean after his nationally broadcast exuberance (irrational or not) at the news that he came in a disappointing third in Iowa.

The right has made a franchise out of identifying and attacking media bias. Now it seems the left wants in on the action. Now they're blaming the media. This reversal is one of the most fascinating quirks of the 2004 campaign - and the entire Howard Dean phenomenon.

January 26, 2004

On to Syria?

Belmont Club has an interesting post suggesting Syria may soon become the next combat zone in the War on Terror. That's a Blogspot link, so if you don't go right to it - look for the Thursday, January 22, 2004, entry titled The Cedars of Lebanon. Lots of links to credible reports from The Jerusalem Post (reporting on a story in the authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly), The Washington Post, and more. Not to be missed.

What David Kay Said

The media is going nutso over David Kay's latest statements on the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. As I see it, Kay said three important things. 1. It now appears that Saddam Hussein's regime did not have large stockpiles of WMD before the war. 2. We must examine why our intelligence services (and indeed most of the world's intelligence services) believed he did retain significant WMD. 3. There is evidence some of Iraq's illegal weapons were shipped to Syria before the war.

The press, the Bush-haters and the Democrats running for president are focusing on the first, barely mentioning the other two.

Here are some things to consider.

1. Saddam failed to comply with numerous UN resolutions regarding WMD. He acted as if he had the weapons, and as if he refused to willingly disarm. 2. The intel on WMD that the Bush administration used to justify the war was, largely, identical to intel on which the previous administration used to justify its policies and actions toward Iraq. Indeed, former President Clinton said two weeks ago in Portugal that he believed Saddam retained WMD right up to the start of the war. 3. Kay is not the only expert to believe Saddam may have sent WMD to Syria in advance of the invasion. 4. Kay's survey team found ample evidence of ongoing WMD programs - the existence of which alone justified military enforcement of UN Res. 1441.

The WMD issue illustrates a couple of things. 1. Our intelligence services need a thorough overhaul. 2. The Democrats who demanded Bush go to the UN before confronting Iraq were wrong to do so.

The first is, I think, self-evident. As for the later, remember, it was the Democrats in Congress who demanded Bush take his case to the United Nations to gain international approval. It was the Democrats in Congress who refused to give the president the authority to act in the interest of U.S. national security without first going to the UN. So, for a year, the Bush administration sought to convince the UN- more accurately, the French and Russians because of their veto power on the UN Security Council. For a year, Saddam had time to hide his weapons or ship them to Syria - if they existed and Saddam wasn't just being lied to by Iraqi WMD scientists and bureaucrats too scared to tell their maniac ruler that they hadn't carried out his orders to build more weapons of mass destruction.

Going to the United Nations also narrowed the focus of the debate over Iraq. Before Congressional Democrats demanded Bush go to the U.N., Iraq's WMD were only a part of the reasoning given for confronting Iraq. But as WMD was the central focus of the UN's resolutions regarding Iraq, so going to the UN meant focusing on the WMD issue almost to the complete exclusion of all others.

That was a mistake. After 9/11 there was a good and solid reason to topple Saddam that had little or nothing to do with ending his WMD program, disarming him, or even ensuring he didn't provide WMD to terrorists to use against America. After 9/11, it was clear that decades of American policy that aimed for "stability" in the Middle East had produced a region that was a breeding ground for terrorists. After 9/11 it was clear that merely topping the Taliban and smashing al Qaeda's training camps would not significantly change the region nor significantly enhance our security.

Only by reversing the political direction of the Middle East away from dictatorship, oppression, religious wacko fundamentalism and kleptocracy - and toward more political and economic freedom, prosperity and religious tolerance - would we have a chance of fostering a new Middle East that would be America's friend rather than an endless source of suicide bombers.

Regardless of the WMD issue, that hasn't changed. Iran, with its theocratic fascist mullahs seeking nukes and backing Hezbollah, must be changed. Ba'athist Syria, which harbors Hezbollah terrorists and may have secreted Saddam's weapons, must be changed. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two allies in the War on Terror, must undergo broad democratic and economic reforms, so that their large, youthful and underemployed populations do not find al Qaeda or its successor alluring.

Having forced Bush to go to the UN - even though it gave President Clinton a pass when he deliberately avoided the UN in the decision to intervene in the Balkans - Congressional Democrats narrowed the focus to Iraq's WMD. Now they complain the war was not justified because, it seems, Iraq had little or no WMD. They may be right about Iraq's WMD, but they are wrong about need to go to war.

The war in Iraq was not supposed to be about WMD. It was supposed to be about dealing Islamofascist terrorism an ideological death blow by changing the face of the Middle East the way the U.S. changed the face of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

The way to defeat Islamofascist terror is to defeat it ideologically - not by treating it as a global crime wave, nor by treating it as a localized problem that can be solved by lancing a boil called Afghanistan and draining it of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Defeating Islamofascist terror means draining the entire Middle Eastern swamp in which it breeds and fertilizing the dirt with the seeds of freedom and prosperity.

Even if Saddam did not have WMD, it was in our national security interest to get rid of him. The debate about WMD is and has always been beside the point.

UPDATE: Justin Katz found something very interesting in what David Kay said.

UPDATE: Don't miss Paul Miller's analysis and commentary, which I found via Instapundit.

The Truth Deficit

The press is trumpeting the latest Congressional Budget Office deficit forecast, claiming the U.S. faces a "record" budget deficit this year because of the Bush tax cuts. Only problem: it isn't true. To be a record in the modern era (since 1940) the federal budget deficit for this year would have to top $3.49 trillion.

What the press - and Democrats seeking to unseat Bush - will be discussing in the hours and days ahead is the CBO's projection of a $477 billion deficit for the year, which is, in fact, larger in actual dollars than any previous year's deficit.

But discussing the deficit in simple dollar figures is a poor way of analyzing the data. The honest and useful way to look at debt is to compare it to income - specifically to the national gross domestic product, the measure of the size of the U.S. economy. After all, it is the economy that produces the revenue that funds the budget and pays the debt-service.

The Democrats have an excuse for not presenting a meaningfully accurate analysis of the CBO projection - they're spinning the data to try to wrest the White House from President Bush. But the news media has no excuse. Either they are journalistically lazy - I found the truth via Google in about 20 minutes - or they are deliberately spinning the story to favor the Democrats and make the Bush administration look bad.

Here are the facts: The $375 billion deficit in 2003 was the highest in dollar terms ever, topping the $290 billion in 1992. This year's deficit is projected to hit $477 billion. Now, I'm no fan of deficits. I'd prefer Congress just take the budget and slash $477 billion in spending, and balance that sucker in one year. But it's simply not true that the deficit is, in any meaningful way, a "record."

Here's why: The deficit is smaller than it was in the 1980s as compared to the size of the U.S. economy.

Consider this: If you made $24,000 this year, and spent $34,000 by putting $10,000 on your Visa, your "deficit" would be $10,000 - and would be a rather large problem. But if, say, 10 years later, your income had risen to $100,000 a year, and you spent $120,000, your deficit would be larger in real dollars but smaller as compared to your ability to finance it.

The 1992 deficit equaled 4.7 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to historical tables in the White House's official 2004 budget document (see page 25 of this PDF file). That was not a record. During the Reagan era, the largest deficit as a percentage was 6 percent in 6 percent in 1983. That was not a record. In 2002, the deficit was a mere 1.5 percent of GDP.

In the modern era, the largest deficit on record occurred in 1943, during World War 2, when the deficit equaled 30.3 percent of that year's $180.1 billion GDP.

In 1945, the federal debt of $260 billion equaled 117.5% of GDP

You can find historical GDP data on page 182 of the document I linked to above, incidentally, and the federal debt data starting on page 116. It's worth looking it - because, for all the hand-wringing about the federal debt these days, it's clear from the data that the debt is not anywhere close to a record.

In 1992, GDP was $6.218 trillion. That year's deficit was 4.7% of GDP. The accumulated debt of $4.001 trillion was 64.4% of GDP.

In 2002, GDP was $10,336.6 trillion. That year's deficit was 1.5% of GDP. The accumulated debt of $6.198 trillion was 60.0% of GDP.

In 1981, the federal debt stood at 32.5 percent of GDP. It grew to 36.3 percent during the Reagan years - and continued growing right through the first Bush administration and into the Clinton years, reaching 67.3 percent in 1996 before starting to decline. It dropped to 57.6 percent in 2001. It rose in 2002 and the federal debt - though larger in real-dollar terms than ever before in history, stood at 60.0 percent of GDP.

Ironically, the federal debt today is almost as large as the national economy was just 12 years ago. Specifically, the nation's $6.198 trillion debt in 2002 is about the same as the entire size of the national economy in 1992 - $6.218 trillion. But the economy has grown much larged since 1992 - GDP reached $10.33 trillion in 2002. The result- although the debt grew more than 50 percent - it was $4 trillion in 1992 - the debt shrank from 64.4 percent to 60.0 percent of GDP. Sure, the debt is growing. Yes, deficits are in general worse than balanced budgets. But the nation's ability to finance debt - i.e. the economy - is growing, too.

So... back to the question of the 2004 deficit projection. Just how big would the 2004 deficit - projected to be $477 billion - actually have to be in order to be accurately considered a record for the modern era? Well, it would have to be at least 30.3% of GDP.

The Congressional Budget Office's most recent forecast predicts 2004 GDP of $11.629 trillion. The projected $477 billion deficit will amount to 4.1 percent of GDP.

In 1943, the deficit was 30 percent of GDP. If Bush proposes a budget that has a deficit of $3.525 trillion - not likely - you could legitimately claim he is proposing a "record" deficit. Somehow, I don't think he's going to propose a budget with a $3.525 trillion deficit.

Fiscal conservatives are right to dislike rapidly rising federal spending. But it's worth noting that the deficits we are racking up today are partially because of the our need to spend what it takes to win the War on Terror for the long term by spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle East.

We deficit-spent to win World War 2 and the value of that investment is beyond question. We deficit-spent to win the Cold War - and the value of that investment is beyond question.

Years from now, we'll look back and say, yeah, we deficit-spent to defeat Islamofascist terror and bring democracy and real prosperity to the Middle East, and the value of that investment also will be beyond question.

Home-Schooling Under Attack in Tennessee

Homeschooling is under attack in Tennessee, via what looks to be a very simple proposed change in the law. But the proposed change is not so simple - it actually would put Tennessee in violation of the federal No Child Left Behind act.

The Home School Legal Defense Association comments:

House Bill 2163, recently introduced by Representative Mike Turner, would require all non-public high school students to take the Gateway end-of-course tests in order to graduate from high school. This bill would not only mandate testing of all homeschool and church-related high school students but would also effectively require them to conform their curriculum to match that of the public schools.

Currently, only eight states require testing as the only means of evaluating a home instruction program, and no state requires homeschool students to be tested on state content standards. Furthermore, studies have shown that increased state oversight of homeschooling does not result in higher academic achievement.

Another problem with enactment of this legislation is that it will result in a violation of federal law, since it will require homeschool students to take the same tests by which the state complies with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Among other things, this federal law requires states to test public school students in the areas of mathematics, reading or language arts, and science at certain grade levels in order to measure their achievement of state academic content and achievement standards. However, HSLDA added into this federal law a provision which specifically excludes homeschools from the testing
requirement:

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to affect a home school, whether or not a home school is treated as a home school or a private school under State law, nor shall any student schooled at home be
required to participate in any assessment referenced in this chapter.

If you'd prefer to call or write Rep. Turner, his contact info - and that of the rest of the Tennessee legislature - can be found here. Tell 'em you saw at it HobbsOnline.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest installment of the weekly Carnival of the Capitalists, a round-up of business and economics blog postings, is up at Winds of Change.

January 24, 2004

Rev. Artillery Weighs In on Bush AWOL

Don't miss Donald Sensing's excellent piece examining the charge that President Bush was AWOL or a "deserter" from his duties in the Texas Air National Guard. Sensing takes on both Wesley Clark, anti-Bush blogger Mark A. R. Kleiman, and the ever-idiotic Michael Moore. Sensing explains what "desertion" is - and it isn't what Kleiman claimed.

January 23, 2004

Landslide?

Thanks to Michael J. Totten, I found a blog that, based on current polls, projects a Bush landslide victory in November. The blogger is a North Carolinian with a passion for politics and a lifelong fascination with numbers. His current projection has Bush winning the states in red:


Also, be sure to read Totten's explanation of why he lives in a red state now. He quotes Roger L. Simon, who's absolutely correct.

Bush AWOL? FactCheck.org Says No

FactCheck.org, a project of the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes the facts and concludes Michael Moore - leftwing lying filmmaker and celebrity endorser of Wesley Clark - is wrong to call President Bush a "deserter" in reference to Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Says FactCheck:

The fact is Bush was honorably discharged without ever being officially accused of desertion or being away without official leave. After graduating from Yale in 1968, Bush escaped conscription and possible combat duty in the then-raging Vietnam War by getting into the Texas Air National Guard. During the next four years Bush served the equivalent of 21 months on active duty, according to the Globe account, including more than a year of flight training. The Globe quoted Bush’s flight instructor, retired Col. Maurice H. Udell, as saying "I would rank him in the top 5 percent of pilots I knew."

Are you a pro-Bush blogger who'd like to help stamp out the Left's lie that Bush was AWOL? Send me an email and I'll tell you how you can help.

Editor's note: Darren Kaplan, who publishes one of the nicest and best blogs I've ever seen, alerted me to the FactCheck.org posting on the Bush AWOL story, and offered to let me post on it first because it's one of the key topics of my blog. I appreciate that. Now... go visit his blog!

Democrats "On the Wrong Side of History About Iraq"

Don't miss Victor Davis Hanson's latest column. No excerpts this time, bucko. Just go read the whole thing.

Clark: Bush Might Have Been AWOL

Wesley Clark has endorsed the wacko Left's lie that President Bush was "AWOL" from the Texas Air National Guard back during the Vietnam war. As Edward over at Zonitics says: "I see that Wesley Clark has been sucked into the depths of the conspiracy swamp."

Clark indicated he doesn't disbelieve the charge during an exchange with moderator Peter Jennings, who twice gave Clark the chance to distance himself from filmmaker Michael Moore calling Bush a "deserter." Moore has endorsed Clark. Here is the