Given the current political climate, I suppose I should be happy to see an op-ed coauthored by two left-leaning individuals arguing for free trade. However, I must take issue with the central premise of their case.

When trade flares up as a political issue — as it is likely to do in the presidential campaign this year — one aspect of the debate is almost always neglected. There is a fierce competition among foreign countries to sell their products here, in the United States, the largest commercial market in the world.

Moreover, by opening up our market to Muslim countries, we could not only help American consumers, but also serve a larger strategic goal: that of boosting the economies which now produce large pools of unemployed, embittered youth. We can make trade an effective weapon against terrorism.

Our tariff regime puts many nations in the Middle East, whose young people are susceptible to the sirens of Islamic fundamentalism, at an unintended disadvantage. This works against our efforts to stamp out jihadism. Fortunately, the problem is easy to fix.

First off, putting others at a disadvantage is exactly the intention of tariff’s.  But that’s a minor quibble.  My real concern is with the flawed understanding of jihad exhibited in this argument.  The implication is that, if only they weren’t poor, there wouldn’t be so much terrorism.

There is little evidence to support this claim.  The few empirical studies on the matter have indicated no direct relationship between poverty and support for terrorism.  If anything, there’s a reverse correlation.  The 9/11 hijackers were not poverty stricken youths with no opportunity.

They were not born to be soldiers — none seems to have come from a military background — and there was little in their early lives to suggest that they would become what they did. The pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, Atta, came from “an ambitious, not overtly religious middle-class household in Egypt” and had led “a sheltered life” until he arrived in Hamburg, Germany, in 1992 to do graduate study in architecture. The pilot of the second plane, Marwan al-Shehhi, was an amiable, “laid-back” fellow from the United Arab Emirates who had joined the UAE army, “not the world’s most effective fighting force but one of its most generous, paying [its scholarship] students monthly stipends of about $2,000,” which may have been his primary reason for enlisting; this enabled him to go to Hamburg, though there is little evidence that he “had any serious scholarly ambitions.”

Hani Hanjour, the Saudi pilot who flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, “had lived in the United States off and on throughout the 1990s, mostly in Arizona, intermittently taking flying lessons at several different flying schools.” He was, in the view of one of his flight instructors, “intelligent, friendly, and ‘very courteous, very formal,’ a nice enough fellow but a terrible pilot.” He finally got a commercial license from the FAA but was unable to find work here or in the Middle East. As for Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, he was “the handsome middle child and only son of an industrious, middle-class family in Beirut,” a “secular Muslim” family that “was easygoing — the men drank whiskey and the women wore short skirts about town and bikinis at the beach.” At university in Germany he met Aysel Sengün, “the daughter of conservative, working-class Turkish immigrants”; eventually they got married, but he disappeared for long periods, usually without explanation, leaving her frantic.

The benefits of free trade are myriad and, to anyone who bothers to observe the evidence, undeniable; but I see little evidence to suggest that defeating jihad is among them.

Britain shows once again the dangers of an overgoverned society:

A volunteer coastguard crew face disciplinary action after going to the rescue of a teenage swimmer in a boat that had recently been repaired and was awaiting a seaworthiness inspection.

The four crewmen were on duty at Hope Cove in South Devon when the 15-year-old girl was swept out to sea by a powerful rip tide. They braved heavy surf to launch their 17ft rigid inflatable.

The girl was rescued by a diver and the coastguard crew brought her ashore. But within hours their boat had been confiscated and the station officer and his crew had been threatened with disciplinary action.

The boat had been out of service since June and the 11-strong crew, fed up with waiting for it to be repaired by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), spent £2,000 of their own money on the work. But the repairs had yet to be approved and the boat - which has rescued more than 120 people since 2000 – was languishing in the boathouse at the pretty fishing village awaiting a further inspection.

These are the kinds of bureaucrats liberals want running our health care.  These are the kinds of bureaucrats liberals insist are not the cause for our failing schools.  When it comes down to it, these are the kinds of bureaucrats liberals want running all aspects of our lives.

Hat tip: Moonbattery

We’ve been told that we’re in an energy crises. Over and over it’s routinely asserted that any solution will require leadership. Leadership, of course, implies top down direction from governmental elites. It seems few people today think anything can be accomplished without such centrally directed leadership. They are wrong.

High gas prices cut U.S. driving for 8th month: government

Americans scaled back their driving during June by almost 5 percent in response to soaring fuel costs, the government said on Wednesday — a day after announcing the biggest six-month drop in U.S. petroleum demand in 26 years.

The Transportation Department said U.S. motorists drove 12.2 billion fewer miles in June compared to a year earlier, marking the eight month in a row that travel declined in the face of record gas prices as Americans change their driving habits, buy more fuel-efficient cars and switch to public transport.

“Changes in consumer behavior have essentially erased five years of growth in gasoline demand,” the American Petroleum Institute said on Wednesday in a separate report that showed gasoline use during the first seven months of 2008 fell by 2.1 percent to the lowest level for the period in five years.

This is, or should be, the common sense predicted outcome. Consumers adjust their behavior in response to changes in prices. Facing higher energy prices, users will seek more cost effective traveling methods. Knowing this, where is the crisis we hear so much about? What, exactly, do we need leadership for that can’t be accomplished by the dynamic free market? The fact of the matter is there is no energy crisis, but rather a political crisis, otherwise known as a presidential election.

Racists, racists…everywhere!

Why isn’t Obama creaming his rival? Why is he, at best, just a few points ahead, and stubbornly stalled below 50 percent in every national poll?

The commentariat has countless other answers at the ready. Obama is aloof, elitist, lacks the common touch. He has failed to put forward a powerful economic message. He is cut from the same cloth as past Democrats seen as too weak, too effete, too liberal. His calculated dash to the center has left him looking, in the words of GOP consultant Alex Castellanos, like “an ever-changing work-in-progress … as authentic as a pair of designer jeans.”

Yet, as Castellanos admits to me, all these explanations “leave many things unspoken.” Or perhaps just one big thing. Obama, after all, isn’t having trouble with African-American voters or Hispanic voters or young voters. Where he’s lagging is among white voters, and with older ones in particular. Call me crazy, but isn’t it possible, just possible, that Obama’s lead is being inhibited by the fact that he is, you know, black? “Of course it is,” says another prominent Republican operative. “It’s the thing that nobody wants to talk about, but it’s obviously a huge factor.”

You old racist fossils! How dare you not help in the anointment of the Messiah? For shame.

At long last, Mexico is cracking down on those unscrupulous individuals who hop across the border intent on soaking up nanny-state benefits at taxpayer expense.  Fox news reports:

A Mexican border city has begun fining U.S. drivers who cross the border to fill extra drums, tanks or barrels with government-subsidized Mexican fuel.

The city of Ciudad Acuna, across the border from Del Rio, Texas, said Friday that it fined four U.S. residents for carrying extra diesel and would impound their cars until they pay. The fines equal 70 percent of the value of the diesel confiscated.

U.S. drivers can fill up their own vehicles, but carrying extra fuel containers back across the border violates customs regulations and possibly safety rules, a report from the city said.

Mexico, one of the world’s top 10 oil producers, sells diesel fuel domestically at subsidized prices of about $2.25 per gallon, about half the U.S. price.

What, did you think I was talking about Mexicans coming into America?  No doubt similar fines on illegals soaking up benefits in America would constitute a human rights violation.

What Mexico needs is comprehensive diesel reform.  We need to get these diesel-moochers out of the shadows, not intimidate them by enforcing fines and seizures and whatnot.  We must realize that we are not two separate nations, but one interconnected macro-economy, and thus this is not just their subsidized diesel, but the subsidized diesel of all North Americans.  Furthermore, these diesel-moochers, who are the real victims here, should be issued Mexican driver’s licenses, to ease the transition into Mexican society for their brief jaunts south of the border.  They’re just looking for a better life, and to fill the gas tanks that Mexicans won’t.

Barack Obama has a solution to high gas prices: use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Sen. Barack Obama called Monday for using oil from the nation’s strategic reserves to lower gasoline prices, the second time in less than a week that he has modified a position on energy issues, as he and Sen. John McCain seek to find solutions to a topic that is increasingly dominating the presidential race.

…His proposal comes a month after Obama said he would consider using oil from the reserves only in a “genuine emergency,” such as “terrorist acts.” Aides said the plan is not a reversal because he would replace light crude oil in the reserves with less-expensive heavy crude. They also noted that the senator from Illinois last week described the country’s economic conditions as an “emergency.”

So not only is this yet another in a long line of flip flops, it’s also a stupid idea. Granted, it’s not as morally repulsive and economically damaging as his rehashed call for government sanctioned thievery (”windfall profits tax”), but it’s a blatant misuse of the strategic reserve for the purpose of electoral benefit.

The SPR was established in response to the Arab oil embargo. Its purpose is to provide a temporary cushion against physical shortages in the oil supply, thus protecting the economy from excessive damage during emergency situations and also to discourage attempts at using oil as a political weapon. The key point here is that SPR is intended to be used for transient emergencies.

There is no such physical shortage at present. The price of gasoline right now is reflective of growth in global demand, not dramatic decreases in supply. Opening SPR would likely have a depressive affect on gas prices, but it would be temporary and would do nothing to solve the issue that has created those prices in the first place. Unlike the situations SPR was designed for, this is not one we can just wait out. Furthermore, as oil demand grows the size of the reserve that is needed to successfully protect the economy during times of physical disruption increases. Using SPR now would only make it more difficult to protect the economy should a true shortage or interruption arise in the future.

Although the reserve has been used for political purposes in the past (in the nineties some was sold off to trick people into thinking the government had become fiscally responsible), such actions should be opposed. The SPR is not a vote buying slush fund to get Barack Obama elected.

Is there any doubt left that Obama is one of the most cynical political calculators to run for President in recent memory? There shouldn’t be:

Obama says give Fla. and Mich. delegates full vote

Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, he wants convention delegates from Florida and Michigan to have full voting rights at the party’s national convention.

Obama sent a letter Sunday to the party’s credentials committee, asking members to reinstate the delegates’ voting rights when the committee meets at the start of the convention in Denver.

…Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, he wants convention delegates from Florida and Michigan to have full voting rights at the party’s national convention.

The most ardent opponents of seating Michigan and Florida delegates were all Obama supporters and underlings. His website published in April a list of articles and editorials vehemently opposing the seating of delegates, clearly condoning this position. But that wasn’t the Barack Obama he knew.