Classically Liberal, Politically Pragmatic

For the first time since April, crude oil is below $100 USD a barrel.

This is huge news as the past summer has been characterized by sky-high oil prices, putting pressure on everything from consumer spending to food costs to job layoffs.

The market has responded favorably to a slash in consumer demand as people have sought ways to limit their use of oil. Even traffic fatalities are down for the first time in decades as people are driving less.

More importantly (arguably), is the impact that this has in November.

Democrats have been railing against their conservative opponents claiming it was their fault for the downturn in the U.S. economy. This changing pattern of oil costs, however, will take a significant amount of steam out out of the liberals’ sails.

Once again, the subtle hand of paternalism is creeping into our lives. This time, Uncle Sam is also taking over our menus.

Everyone knows fast food isn’t good for you. This isn’t a stretch to say. Over the course of the past decade, information on the dangers of a high fat, sugar, and salt diet combined with a sedentary lifestyle have filled the public media. Whether it was Super-Size Me, the critically acclaimed documentary following frequent consumption of McDonalds, or the Verb, It’s what you Do! campaign targeted at America’s youth, American’s have been urged to eat better and work out more. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.

*Shockingly*, most haven’t listened. According to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, adult obesity rates are at 33.3% for males and 35.3% for females.

It would seem as though they have passed this trend on to their children as well. According to the New York Times on May 28, 2008, children are not immune to the rapid increase in obesity with a full 13% of school children overweight and 19% more obese.

Such high rates of obesity, especially in children, have created nothing less than a full on panic here in the U.S. Schools have pulled out vending machines, physical education classes have become mandated curriculum, and hot lunches have been greatly revised.

While childhood obesity is certainly a problem, it seems as though some people are confused about the cause of larger children.

A Chicago Tribune article: “Study says restaurant kids’ meals loaded with fat, salt and calories”.
This is quite a deep insight from the Tribune. It isn’t as if people thought fast food was bad for us. Oh wait, we know what we are eating. So do our kids. It seems like simple school-enforced education and denial isn’t enough.

But where are the parents?

In the entirety of these articles, there is no mention of parental responsibility in monitoring what their children eat. If everyone knows that fast food isn’t good for you, why do parents still let their kids stuff their greedy little faces and arteries?

The disease of obesity has led to a host of other symptoms, the most prominent being a dramatic increase in the amount of government control over citizen’s lives.

The Washington Post reports that Jan Perry, the Democrat who represents the city’s overwhelmingly African American and Latino District 9, wants to place a moratorium on new fast-food establishments.
According to Perry, 29% of the children in her district are overweight, compared to 23% countywide.
While this concern for her constituents is understandable, she oversteps her authority as an elected official by attempting to legislate what her constituents can and cannot eat.

This is just another flagrant abuse of government power used, an increase in unwarranted paternalism.

People need to step up and act like adults. Parents, take care of your children. Adults, act like it. You and only you can take care of yourself. Don’t expect Uncle Sam to do it for you.

11 Reasons why America’s a Socialist Economy by Paul B. Farrell.
Very interesting read. While I don’t agree with everything he says, I feel he has correctly identified many of the problems facing America today.

Over the past week, the price of a barrel of oil has plummeted. Falling from around $144 to 127.14 (at the time of the post), it appears that some of the inflationary pressure of high fuel costs has relented.

As a result, the price of a gallon of gas has also started to wane. Price cuts have led, in some places, to price wars, as lower input costs to the producer are carried through to the consumer.

With the market working as it should, it still amazes me how some politicians want to have tax holidays.

It is tough to get published. Even for John McCain.

The New York Times rejected his rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq‘ on the basis that it did not “mirror” Obama’s.

A little liberal bias perhaps?

Now, please do not mistake me for a huge supporter of McCain. I am not. However, I feel as though it would only be fair and proper to let the conservative candidate respond to liberal opponent.

Since the New York Times will not publish it, the full text is as follows:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City?actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war?only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

There you have it folks. Enjoy.

Today around 1:25 pm CST, about 125 SEIU members wearing purple Obama t-shirts and carrying signs decrying KKR & Co began protesting on the corner of Wacker and Washington.

The protesters were organized as to block traffic on the eastern sidewalk and were beating drums and yelling to get their message across. But what message was there?

In order to understand why they were doing this, I went to their website. From this all I was able to understand was that they want to elect Obama. Nothing new, just minorities in unions supporting a democratic presidential nominee.

This “rally”, if it can even be called that, simply disrupted traffic and caused a disturbance for residents of the City of Chicago during their lunch break.

Looking into what they are complaining about, I went to their site for todays “action”.

At first, it looked as if they were complaining about corporate pay. Of course they didn’t offer any facts to support this, because this was’t really their goal.

They really wanted to put McCain in a corner for supporting tax breaks for large corporations. I tried to follow their rational, but, without any infomation to support such claims, I am left confused.

It would be one thing if a union had a legitimate complaint about corporate pay. It is another to bother workers during their breaks with nonsense and poppy-cock about McCain trying to surprese workers’ wages.

I doubt SEIU has even looked into Obama’s corporate supporters (which included corporations that have screwed poor Chicagoans in providing affordable housing). But of course this isn’t important.

Try again SEIU.

MillerCoors is coming to Chicago.

They are bringing 300-400 HQ jobs with them.

It only cost the taxpayers of Illinois $20 million.

Is this cost justified by such a small contribution to the overall Chicago economy?

Very funny.

Twitter, a microblogging site now is host to at least 2 Congressman.

Congressman John Culberson of Texas 7 and Bob Latta of Ohio 5 both are engaging their constituency directly through Twitter, instantly sending free messages to all their followers. This is in an effort to increse the level of transparency between Congress and taxpayers.

John Culberson is also using Qik, a free video-streaming site that lets users stream footage from their cell phones.

This seems to be a refreshing change where citizens dont need to file a Freedom of Information request to find out what is going on in Congress.

Hopefully this will let a little more light in politics.

Edit:

Apparently there was a story on this by CNN on Tues 07/15 (yesterday). Discover Magazine also covered CNN’s story here.

Edit 2:

The Wikinomics Blog has also picked this up. Another interesting perspective on politicians of Web 2.0.

Yesterday, the Chicago Housing Association suspended the management contract of Urban Property Advisors, the management firm who is running the construction at Cabrini-Green.

This comes less than two weeks after code violations caused the death of 3-year-old Curtis Cooper after a rusted gate fell on him at Cabrini-Green. This code violation occured after Chicago’s Department of Buildings requested a structural engineer inspect all gates on the Cabrini-Green property. The Chicago Housing Association owns this property and is managed by UPA.

According to the Chicago Tribune,

Curtis’ mother filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Tuesday against Urban Property, alleging the firm was negligent because faulty hinges caused the gate to fall on the child.

Indeed, further investigation yielded answers. According to Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Buildings:

A tall, rusted steel gate that fell and crushed a 3-year-old boy to death at the Cabrini-Green public housing complex failed a building code inspection.

Believe it or not, this tragedy has strong connections to City Hall and Barrack Obama.

Urban Property Advisors is run by a son of Allison Davis who is a close ally of Mayor Daley.

Barrack Obama is receiving millions from the same housing developers that are allowing these atrocities to continue.

Chicago, enough is enough! What kind of change is this canidate offering if he is taking money from irresponsible and corrupt construction firms?