The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
Harry Neuwirth writes from Salem, Oregon.
In 1925 while I was still mastering the intricacies of infancy, it was not yet reasonable to calculate health care's percentage of gross domestic product, but it was surely less than five percent. We almost never visited a doctor and went to the hospital only for such things as ruptured appendixes and massive injuries. Only the wealthy had a doctor, and as for home remedies, the same bottle of nasty tasting stuff apparently served to relieve sore throat, upset stomach, and earache; it cost little, and lingered in the medicine cabinet for years.
Health care was primitive, but through the 20th century, only modestly inhibited by government, medicine transformed into a highly effective, sometimes miraculous practice: people today having their hearts replaced when necessary. During the period of transformation society redefined health care as a valuable commodity necessary to a happy life, while only recently have politicians made it a government benefit. During those decades of improvement -- and intrusion -- the real benefit of healthcare has grown until its dollar cost is calculated to be sixteen percent of GDP.
No one suggests that we go back to less prosperous days. Costs have gone up as we have the means for longer, more comfortable, enjoyable lives.
There is legitimate complaint over the cost of medical care with Congress ostensibly working hard to make healthcare at its best and most expensive available to everyone. Congress is agitated with the notion that only a bureaucratically managed healthcare system can provide an acceptable level of care to everyone. But the fact is that our legislatures, federal and state, have been, and still are directly responsible for most of the excessive cost and inefficiency of healthcare.
Most if not all states do not permit out-of-state insurance companies to offer health policies. So, while we pride ourselves on the competitive nature of business in America, it just isn't true of the insurance industry. I cite the example of my wife's and my own experience here in Oregon in 2009 where her Medicare supplement costs $2991.69 annually, while my own coverage, unavailable to her because she applied after Oregon slammed the door on out-of-state coverage, is $1935.87. That $1055.82 annual disparity has bled our modest substance for many years now. Congress could overcome state selfishness by applying the interstate commerce provisions under section eight of the Constitution to the insurance industry. Competition would reduce the insurance increment of healthcare costs significantly as surely as it does for the lipstick and motor oil companies. It would inspire insurance companies to develop better, more flexible policies as well.
Similarly, tort reform could address several problems. It will surprise no one to learn that the huge jury awards in medical suits benefit attorneys far more than the clients they profess to represent as they drive medical practitioners into a financial corner by requiring them to carry more and more expensive malpractice insurance as an act of professional self-preservation; doctors have to run unnecessary tests on expensive equipment to meet unrealistic demands. The attorneys resort to snake oil advertising in the media to attract the gullible. Eliminate waste by means of tort reform? Congress could do it in a minute.
Divorcing health insurance from employment would be another great help to citizens in need of health insurance sold competitively. But Congress insists that only employers receive tax privileges in establishing coverage, providing insurers with breadth and depth of coverage; pools that could just as easily be formed by occupational groups (such as the United Commercial Travelers which Oregon denies to my wife), neighborhood alliances, church affiliations, etc. Such allegiances typically travel with members through life, unlike employees who are frequently laid off or who seek more appropriate employment, while voluntary associations reinforce social stability and establish insurance pools.
We ought not be concerned over an industry that is absorbing an ever-greater percentage of GDP so long as that increase is the result of customer demand coupled with progress without waste, misappropriation, or congressional legerdemain.
Why hasn't Congress raised a stabilizing hand over a burgeoning society with legislation that would not have disrupted free choice nor laid an unconscionable tax burden upon us, and our grandchildren? They might also have, as an increment of qualification for grants and funding, laid a restraining hand upon society through the schools and the other myriad grantees by asking them to inspire and educate Americans in the pursuit of healthier lifestyles.
Politicians are driving talented people away from becoming doctors and nurses; talented people who would have been assets to the profession and have provided a downward pressure on costs. Congress has claimed an undeserved reputation for hard work on behalf of their constituents when in fact Congress, past and present, is the culprit whom we continue to reward at election time! *
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51
John D' Aloia Jr. is a retired navy captain and submarine commander. He is a columnist for several newspapers in Kansas.
Have you ever thought about how many taxes you are paying when you buy a product or a service? An amount is obvious when a sales tax is tacked on, but is that the only tax included in the price you pay? You know the answer -- of course it is not, but the remaining taxes are out of sight, out of mind.
The Center For Fiscal Responsibility (www.fiscalaccountability.org), is a project of Americans for Tax Reform. As stated on its website, the mission of the Center is:
. . . to shed a light on government expenditures, and to promote transparency, accountability, and restraint in government finance.
It has taken on this mission in acknowledgment
. . . that the American people and its economy can best thrive and prosper when the role of government is limited and subject to the scrutiny of taxpayers.
The Center has calculated the percentage that represents the hidden taxes paid for by each dollar spent for 13 commonly purchased goods and services. The Center's analysis included: excise taxes, "sin" taxes, telecommunications taxes, taxes on tourists, common purchases sales taxes, corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, workmen's compensation taxes, and other payments businesses must make to federal, state, and local governments. The results of the Center's analysis shows that taxes represent the following percentages of the price:
Soda -- 37.6 percent; Cell Phones -- 46.4 percent; Gasoline -- 51.2 percent; Meals Out -- 44.8 percent; Hotel Stays -- 50 percent; Landline Phones -- 51.8 percent; Firearms -- 45.6 percent; Domestic Airfare -- 55 percent; Car Rentals -- 60.6 percent; Cable -- 46.3 percent; Beer -- 56.2 percent; Distilled Spirits -- 79.6 percent.
And a drum-roll please for the taxes in the price of the 13th product: Cigarettes -- 81.3 percent.
Another Center project is to calculate the "Cost of Government Day" for the federal government and for each state. The Cost of Government Day is defined as "the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by government at the federal, state, and local levels." The 47-page long 2009 Cost of Government Day Report is available for reading via a link on the Center's website.
The national average date to pay off governments is August 12th. Kansans have it a bit better. For Kansans, the date is August 4th. In comparison, the shortest period of indentured service is served by Alaskans who are free of working for government on July 11th. The longest period falls to citizens of the Nutmeg State -- Connecticut residents work until September 7th to settle with all the government demands to which they are subjected.
The Report shows the impact of the explosion of federal government spending in 2009. For the period 1999 through 2008, the number of days the average citizen had to work to cover federal spending increased from 79.62 days to 89.94 days; in 2009, the number of days jumped to 110.88.
An interesting graph in the Center's Report displays the number of pages in the Federal Register each year from 1977 to the present. The number system starts at zero each year; the total given is the number at the end of the year. The Federal Register is published daily telling you what the Federal government is doing for you and to you. The more pages, the more regulations are being written to tell you how to live; the more pages, the larger is Leviathan's appetite for power and your wallet.
During the Reagan years, the average number of pages per year was 53,000. For the last seven years, the average number of pages has been 78,000. As of December 18th, this year's Federal Register has 67,800 pages and counting, including 64 pages devoted to a proposed rule titled: "Nutrition Labeling of Single Ingredient Products and Ground or Chopped Meat and Poultry Products" and a 425-page notice "Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Quarterly Listing of Program Issuances -- July Through September 2009." I wonder how much these 425 pages enhanced medical care. More than likely, the principal effect was an added paperwork and compliance burden on doctors and hospitals.
Thomas Jefferson did not foresee the Federal Register, but he foresaw its ultimate impact when he wrote in his autobiography: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
Get out and work hard -- The Clerks are depending upon you. *
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45
Murray Weidenbaum is the Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also serves as honorary chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy.
The future of energy policy in the United States depends on a host of actions to be taken in the years ahead. All of these developments are difficult to forecast. The challenge facing any forecaster is that energy policy is a constantly changing amalgam of economic, political, environmental, military, and foreign policy concerns.
For starters, the underlying world energy situation is neither benign nor stable. A fundamental mismatch exists between the location of energy suppliers -- so much of our oil comes from the most unstable regions of the world -- and the location of major energy consumers. The overall outlook is truly dynamic so that it is necessary to frequently review the key assumptions that underlie current policy.
For example, a substantial rise in the cost of producing energy from conventional sources creates an opportunity to develop new energy sources. Such price increases also strengthen the desire to enhance the efficiency of existing production. Simultaneously, increases in energy prices make more attractive the use of less energy-intensive forms of production and consumption.
However, as we have recently experienced, at times the prevailing prices of energy decline abruptly. This change can pull the ground out from under the developers of new energy sources, which suddenly become uneconomical. Similarly, sharp changes in government environmental policies affect the mix of fuels used to produce energy. Thus, producers of coal continually reassess the likelihood that anti-coal talk will soon be converted to anti-coal action. Investors in coal companies learn about this problem the hard way.
In the short run, the unusual phenomenon of a worldwide recession has reduced the overall demand for energy. At least for a while, the global downturn has brought the price of oil down substantially. However, several conflicting forces are becoming more visible -- notably the continuing prospect that the United States will be importing a rising share of the energy that we consume domestically. Simultaneously, global warming concerns are reducing the long-term prospects for coal, oil, and natural gas as the nation's major energy sources. Nevertheless, the speed with which unconventional types of energy such as wind and solar become widespread is limited by their high cost structures and by a new array of environmental objections.
Thus, over the next decade, fossil fuels likely will continue to dominate the U.S. energy sector. Most of the cars on the road during this period will be gasoline-powered. Renewable energy -- hydroelectricity, wood, biofuels, wind, solar, geothermal, and so on -- now provides much less than one-tenth of the nation's energy. Even optimistic projections show that approximately nine-tenths of energy used in the United States will come from oil, natural gas, and coal over the coming ten years.
Meanwhile, an important long-term development may generate other adverse effects. A new set of "seven sisters" is dominating global energy markets. They are not the traditional American and European companies. ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP account for less than one-fourth of global oil production and barely one-tenth of worldwide oil reserves.
Seven government-owned enterprises are now the major oil suppliers, notably Saudi Aramco, Petro China, and several Russian instrumentalities. The global importance of these companies will be enhanced as reserves of Western oil companies are depleted or cannot be developed because of environmental constraints.
These new "seven sisters" provide their government owners with an opportunity to use energy market power to help achieve a variety of other governmental objectives, especially in foreign policy. However, their advantages may be offset by a variety of public policies unrelated to energy. A key example is the forced diversion of their revenues to other government purposes. Other problems faced by government-owned enterprises include the deferral of needed investment in more modern production facilities in favor of social programs. In addition, expensive government-imposed employment requirements may be imposed for reasons related more to income redistribution than economic efficiency and competitiveness.
Looking beyond the coming decade, the future of American energy companies will be more difficult and surely more challenging than today. Although the details are being debated in the halls of Congress, it is likely that government tax and regulatory policies will increasingly discourage the use of fossil fuels. However, because of the many difficulties involved in generating alternative energy supplies on a large scale and at competitive costs, government policies will continue to be inconsistent in their structure and uneven in their application. Pressures from interest groups will not lessen. In fact, with rising governmental intervention in the energy area, the incentive will rise for the various interest groups involved to increase their participation in public policy debates and decision-making.
New technological advances will be necessary to bring the costs of new energy sources down to a level that would make them economically feasible. However, public support in the abstract can quickly become opposition in specific cases. Consider the effort to harness the wind power of the Cape Cod area. Many of the residents, who otherwise boast of their environmental credentials, vehemently oppose this "unnatural blight" on the beauty of the region. In other areas, opposition to wind projects is based on concern over the birds that may be hit by the blades. In the case of solar power, and other new energy sources, the lack of a distribution network is a limiting factor where producers of energy are distant from major consumers.
How all this works out over the years ahead will depend on a host of decisions by government policymakers and private decision-makers. The outcome is, by its very nature, uncertain. However, managers of companies that produce and distribute energy will continually face the challenge of adjusting their plans and resources to unanticipated changes in markets and government policy.
On balance, the long-term price of energy consumed in the United States is likely to rise, although at a fluctuating rate. As a counterweight, the American economy will continue operating at a declining level of energy intensity, as it has since responding to the energy embargoes of the 1970s. Thus, forecasting future trends in energy will surely be a hazardous occupation, but not one covered by government safety regulations. *
"I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington
Timothy Francis Ball heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Friends of Science, an organization skeptical of human-caused global warming. This article is republished with permission from the web site of the Heartland Institute.
Global Warming is often called a hoax. I disagree because a hoax has a humorous intent to puncture pomposity. In science, such as with the Piltdown Man hoax, it was done to expose those with fervent but blind belief. The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.
Someone hacked in to the files of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia. A very large file (61 mega bites) was downloaded and posted to the web. Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, has acknowledged the files are theirs. They contain papers, documents, letters, and e-mails. The latter are the most damaging and contain blunt information about the degree of manipulation of climate science in general and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in particular.
Dominant names involved are ones I have followed throughout my career including: Phil Jones, Benjamin Santer, Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Jonathan Overpeck, Ken Briffa, and Tom Wigley. I have watched climate science hijacked and corrupted by this small group of scientists. This small, elite, community was named by Professor Wegman in his report to the National Academy of Science (NAS).
I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of CRU, Professor Hubert Lamb, considered the Father of Modern Climatology, on a couple of occasions. He also peer-reviewed one of my early publications. I know he would be mortified with what was disclosed in the last couple of days.
Jones claims the files were obtained illegally as if that absolves the content. It doesn't and it is enough to destroy all their careers. Jones gave a foretaste of his behavior in 2005. Warwick Hughes asked for the data and method he used for his claim of a 0.6C temperature rise since the end of the 19th century. Jones responded:
We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
He has stonewalled ever since. The main reason was because it was used as a key argument in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports to convince the world humans caused rapid warming in the 20th century. The e-mails obtained are a frightening record of arrogance, and deception far beyond his 2005 effort.
Another glimpse into what the files and e-mails reveal was the report by Professor David Deming. He wrote:
With publication of an article in Science (1995) I gained sufficient credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing e-mail that said. "We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
The person in question was Jonathan Overpeck and his even more revealing e-mails are part of those exposed by the hacker. It is now very clear that Deming's charge was precise. They have perverted science in the service of social and political causes.
Professor Wegman showed how this "community of scientists" published together and peer reviewed each other's work. I was always suspicious about why peer review was such a big deal. Now all my suspicions are confirmed. The e-mails reveal how they controlled the process, including manipulating some of the major journals like Science and Nature. We know the editor of the Journal of Climate, Andrew Weaver, was one of the "community." They organized lists of reviewers when required making sure they gave the editor only favorable names. They threatened to isolate and marginalize one editor who they believed was recalcitrant.
These people controlled the global weather data used by the IPCC through the joint Hadley and CRU and produced the HadCRUT data. They controlled the IPCC, especially crucial chapters and preparation of the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). Stephen Schneider was a prime mover there from the earliest reports to the most influential in 2001. They also had a left wing conduit to the New York Times. The e-mails between Andy Revkin and the community are very revealing and must place his journalistic integrity in serious jeopardy. Of course the IPCC Reports and especially the SPM Reports are the basis for Kyoto and the Copenhagen Accord, but now we know they are based on completely falsified and manipulated data and science. It is no longer a suspicion. Surely this is the death knell for the CRU, the IPCC, Kyoto and Copenhagen, and the Carbon Credits shell game.
CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. As I expected now it is all exposed, I find there is no pleasure in "I told you so." *
"No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave." --Alexander Hamilton
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, arrived in Copenhagen, Demark, to "make certain the 191 countries attending the (Copenhagen climate-change conference) would not be deceived into thinking the U.S. would pass cap-and-trade legislation." This article is from his official web site.
--December 17, 2009
Copenhagen attendees, I want to turn back the clock to December 2003, when the United Nations convened the "9th Conference of the Parties" in Milan, Italy, to discuss implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. At the time, I was leading the Senate delegation to Milan as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Fast forward to December 2009: the UN is holding its 15th global warming conference -- and the delegates are haggling over the same issues that were before them in 2003. I know this because I was there. Recently, with the Copenhagen talks underway, I reread the speech I delivered in Milan. I found that the issues at stake in 2003 are nearly the same as those in 2009. In short, nothing has changed and nothing has been done.
So let's go back to 2003. In my speech, I told the conference that the Senate would not ratify Kyoto. Here's what I said:
The Senate, by a vote of 95 to 0, approved the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which warned the President against signing a treaty that would either economically harm the United States or exempt developing countries from participating.
I went on to say this:
Both those conditions then, and still to this day, have not been satisfied. So, it's worth noting that even if President Bush wanted to submit the treaty to the Senate, it couldn't be ratified.
That was 2003.
Is that still true today? Of course it is. And yet here we go again: China, India, and other developing countries want nothing to do with absolute, binding emissions cuts. China and India have pledged to reduce the rate of growth, or intensity, of their emissions. But that's not acceptable to the U.S. Senate. Moreover, China is opposed to a mandatory verification regime to prove it is actually honoring its commitments.
Beyond that, developing countries are demanding billions of dollars from the U.S. and other developed countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. President Obama has offered $1.3 billion in 2010. Developing countries think this isn't enough; I think it's too much. In any case, with 10 percent unemployment, American taxpayers won't be pleased that their tax dollars are going to help China fight global warming. They would probably ask, "We are going to give China $1 billion to fight global warming, and they own $800 billion of our debt? I don't think so."
So the Copenhagen talks are stalemated. It's clear to all that developing countries don't want burdensome regulations to stifle their economies. I don't blame them. Well, that's the way we feel right here in America. That's why no global warming treaty that causes serious harm to the U.S. economy, or that doesn't include equal commitments from the likes of China and India, will ever be ratified by the U.S. Senate. In 2003, after mentioning Byrd-Hagel, I talked about the recent vote in the Senate on the McCain-Lieberman bill. Now remember, this was the first time cap-and-trade came to a vote on the Senate floor. What happened? Here's what I said to UN delegates in Milan:
All told, supporters mustered 44 votes, falling well short of a majority. But this doesn't tell the whole story. In the U.S. Senate, a senator or group of senators can block legislation through what's called a filibuster. . . . Breaking a filibuster requires 60 votes. As is obvious, McCain-Lieberman supporters, even with a bill full of holes and exemptions -- in other words, a pale shadow of its former self -- didn't even come close to crossing that threshold.
They needed 60, they got only 44.
Here we are six years later, and nothing has changed: cap-and-trade failed in 2003, it failed in 2005, and it failed in 2008. As we look ahead, an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill stands no chance of passing. I want to be sure the 191 countries understand this: again, an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill stands no chance of passing.
One of the reasons cap-and-trade is doomed in the Senate has to do with the science. In Milan in 2003, I discussed the so-called "hockey stick" graph. Some may remember this graph: it showed a relatively straight line starting in 1000 AD and then a sharp curve, or blade, shooting upward in 1900. To some, that proved the catastrophic global warming hypothesis. The problem was that, as I pointed out in Milan, the methodology used to create the hockey stick was suspect, to say the least. In any case, after its flaws were exposed, that once-influential work was thoroughly discredited.
Six years later, and the hockey stick is shattered beyond repair. We are talking about it today because of Climategate. Many here are familiar with it; it has dominated the news, and it's a huge deal. Don't take my word for it; just do an Internet search and here's what you'll find from:
* The Guardian (George Monbiot): "Pretending this is not a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Phil Jones has got to go."
* The Atlantic Monthly (Clive Crook): "The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering."
* UK Telegraph (Christopher Booker): "This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation."
* Financial Times (Michael Schrage): "Secrecy is at the rotten heart of this bad behavior."
This was redeeming to me, because I gave a speech on these very issues four years ago.
But along came Climategate. Emails were leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which compiles one of three global temperature data sets -- so it's important, its work is used by the UN's Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These emails apparently show the world's leading climate scientists manipulating data, violating information disclosure laws, and blocking publication of research contrary to their own. I could go on and on reading the emails, but it would take hours to finish. So here's one example:
* "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1980 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (From Phil Jones)
Of course he means hide the decline in temperatures, which caused another scientist, Kevin Trenberth, to write: "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming, and it's a travesty that we can't."
Again, these are IPCC scientists. Their work provides a principal basis for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) endangerment finding, which EPA announced just last week. Now the credibility of the IPCC and its work -- which I have criticized in speeches since 2003 -- has collapsed.
And here's how all of this relates to Milan. In 2003, scientists told me the hockey stick was fatally flawed, and I believed they were right. Well, we were right: the hockey stick has been totally debunked. And now Michael Mann -- author of the hockey stick -- is at the center of the Climategate scandal and under investigation by his employer, Penn State University.
Now this is important for all of you in Copenhagen. Even without Climategate, cap-and-trade will still be soundly defeated.
But because of Climategate, Kyoto's most ardent supporters are retreating on the science. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, issued a rather confusing statement yesterday. Here's his take:
It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn't need to be.
He then went on to say:
What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity.
But then in another nod to the view that the science is uncertain, Blair said the world should act to address global warming "purely as a matter of precaution." So a cost of $300 to $400 billion a year for the U.S. -- this is "purely as a matter of precaution"?
The problem with Blair's precautionary principle is the massive economic costs involved. This was a topic I raised in my speech in 2003. I noted the economic analysis of Kyoto by Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates (WEFA). Here's what Wharton found and what I mentioned in my Milan speech:
* According to WEFA economists, Kyoto would cost 2.4 million U.S. jobs and reduce GDP by 3.2 percent, or about $300 billion annually, an amount greater than the total expenditure on primary and secondary education.
* Because of Kyoto, American consumers would face higher food, medical, and housing costs -- for food, an increase of 11 percent, medicine, an increase of 14 percent, and housing, an increase of 7 percent. At the same time an average household of four would see its real income drop by $2,700 in 2010, and each year thereafter.
* Under Kyoto, energy and electricity prices would nearly double, and gasoline prices would go up an additional 65 cents per gallon.
Today the cost of cap-and-trade bills before the House and Senate bear striking resemblance to those of Kyoto. Take the Waxman-Markey bill, for example. A government study by the Energy Information Administration concluded that the Waxman-Markey bill destroys up to 2.3 million jobs in 2030 and destroys up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs in 2030 -- and, I should note, those figures include new green jobs, so they are net job losses.
And in September, under pressure from a Freedom of Information Act request, the Obama Administration released a per-household cost estimate of the President's cap-and-trade program. The cost per family was over $1,700 per year. Again, that would be the largest tax increase in history.
Finally, a top issue in 2003 was the extent to which developing countries -- that is China, India, and others -- would address global warming. As I noted earlier, the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which the Senate approved 95 to 0, stated that the Senate would not ratify a global warming treaty unless it:
. . . mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period.
At the time, China and India were adamantly opposed to accepting binding emissions reductions. So what are they saying now?
Well, it's deja vu all over again. Consider this from India's Environment Minister, delivered on June 30:
India will not accept any emission-reduction target -- period. This is a non-negotiable stand.
China said very much the same thing recently. This is from the spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry:
It is natural for China to have some increase in emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding or compulsory target.
Now some believe China's commitment announced a few weeks ago to reduce its greenhouse gas intensity by 40 to 45 percent and India's to reduce theirs by 20 to 25 percent was a significant step forward. For example, Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, said, "[China's and India's intensity target] shows that international engagement on climate change can produce real results." Yet the reality is quite different -- that's because China's, and India's, emissions would continue to increase on an absolute basis. Just consider China: under their offer, they could increase emissions by 250 percent by 2020.
Todd Stern, President Obama's top climate negotiator, said on September 2 that China's intensity reduction is:
. . . not an absolute reduction below where they are right now, because they're not quite at that point to be able to do that. And in that respect, developed and developing countries are different.
Even if China proposed mandatory reductions, President Obama should not make any pledges or commitments when he goes to Copenhagen. That's what I believe -- and apparently so do some Democrats in the Senate. Senator Webb of Virginia, for example, sent a letter to the President on November 30, in which he wrote:
Although details have not been made available, recent statements by Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern indicate that negotiators may be intending to commit the United States to a nationwide emission reduction program. As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.
I agree with Sen. Webb that the Senate must have a role in ratifying a global warming treaty -- or any treaty for that matter. Nevertheless, I don't think we here in the Senate have much to worry about. There will be no agreement in Copenhagen. It has failed. The intractable issues on the table in Milan in 2003 haven't been resolved, and they won't be this week either. So it's clear that nothing has changed. The Copenhagen party is about over, the caviar is about gone.
And the American people have caught on. Just look at the polls.
According to Rasmussen, after the Climategate scandal broke, 59 percent of Americans say that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Just 26 percent take the opposite view. Or take the Pew Research Center poll this past January. When asked to prioritize a list of 20 public policy issues, respondents put climate change dead last. And the Senate has responded. At most there might be 25 votes in the Senate for a cap-and-trade bill, and they need 60.
My stated reason for attending Copenhagen was to make certain the 191 countries attending COP-15 [the Copenhagen climate-change conference] would not be deceived into thinking the U.S. would pass cap-and-trade legislation. That won't happen. And for the sake of the American people, and the economic well-being of America, that's a good thing. *
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." --George Washington
John A. Howard is a Senior Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society. He is also a veteran of the D-Day Landings of Normandy.
Bob Herbert followed up the Fort Hood slaughter with a New York Times column about the unbearable emotional stress upon American combat troops.
I spent some time . . . interviewing doctors and researchers studying the enormous problem of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with some form of mental health disorder, most commonly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The caseloads are off the charts, and very often are accompanied by substance abuse, problems with anger management, domestic violence and family breakdown.
In our tank battalion in World War II, it was drilled into our minds that preventive maintenance was of utmost importance. Herbert ignores the fact that humans, like tanks, also need preventive maintenance.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote:
Among all my patients in the second half of life, there has not been one whose problem has not been finding a religious outlook on life.
Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles wrote:
Many adolescent suicides . . . make a statement about the kinds of lives these kids have been brought up to live. . . . what leads them to self-destruction is the underlying festerings of self-centered, unchallenged rootless lives.
In our First Infantry tank battalion in WWII, there were few cases of combat fatigue through the eleven months of combat from D-Day to V-E Day. Most of our troops belonged to a church or a synagogue. They were emotionally sturdy. The religious mooring was their preventive maintenance. *
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." --Thomas Jefferson
George Friedman is an analyst with Stratfor Global Intelligence. This article is republished with permission of Stratfor.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced the broad structure of his Afghanistan strategy in a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009. The strategy had three core elements. First, he intends to maintain pressure on al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world. Second, he intends to blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of NATO troops he hopes will join them. Third, he will use the space created by the counteroffensive against the Taliban and the resulting security in some regions of Afghanistan to train and build Afghan military forces and civilian structures to assume responsibility after the United States withdraws. Obama added that the U.S. withdrawal will begin in July 2011, but provided neither information on the magnitude of the withdrawal nor the date when the withdrawal would conclude. He made it clear that these will depend on the situation on the ground, adding that the U.S. commitment is finite.
In understanding this strategy, we must begin with an obvious but unstated point: The extra forces that will be deployed to Afghanistan are not expected to defeat the Taliban. Instead, their mission is to reverse the momentum of previous years and to create the circumstances under which an Afghan force can take over the mission. The U.S. presence is therefore a stopgap measure, not the ultimate solution.
The ultimate solution is training an Afghan force to engage the Taliban over the long haul, undermining support for the Taliban, and dealing with al Qaeda forces along the Pakistani border and in the rest of Afghanistan. If the United States withdraws all of its forces as Obama intends, the Afghan military would have to assume all of these missions. Therefore, we must consider the condition of the Afghan military to evaluate the strategy's viability.
Obama went to great pains to distinguish Afghanistan from Vietnam, and there are indeed many differences. The core strategy adopted by Richard Nixon (not Lyndon Johnson) in Vietnam, called "Vietnamization," saw U.S. forces working to blunt and disrupt the main North Vietnamese forces while the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would be trained, motivated and deployed to replace U.S. forces to be systematically withdrawn from Vietnam. The equivalent of the Afghan surge was the U.S. attack on North Vietnamese Army (NVA) bases in Cambodia and offensives in northern South Vietnam designed to disrupt NVA command and control and logistics and forestall a major offensive by the NVA. Troops were in fact removed in parallel with the Cambodian offensives.
Nixon faced two points Obama now faces. First, the United States could not provide security for South Vietnam indefinitely. Second, the South Vietnamese would have to provide security for themselves. The role of the United States was to create the conditions under which the ARVN would become an effective fighting force; the impending U.S. withdrawal was intended to increase the pressure on the Vietnamese government to reform and on the ARVN to fight.
Many have argued that the core weakness of the strategy was that the ARVN was not motivated to fight. This was certainly true in some cases, but the idea that the South Vietnamese were generally sympathetic to the Communists is untrue. Some were, but many weren't, as shown by the minimal refugee movement into NVA-held territory or into North Vietnam itself contrasted with the substantial refugee movement into U.S./ARVN-held territory and away from NVA forces. The patterns of refugee movement are, we think, highly indicative of true sentiment.
Certainly, there were mixed sentiments, but the failure of the ARVN was not primarily due to hostility or even lack of motivation. Instead, it was due to a problem that must be addressed and overcome if the Afghanistan war is to succeed. That problem is understanding the role that Communist sympathizers and agents played in the formation of the ARVN.
By the time the ARVN expanded -- and for that matter from its very foundation -- the North Vietnamese intelligence services had created a systematic program for inserting operatives and recruiting sympathizers at every level of the ARVN, from senior staff and command positions down to the squad level. The exploitation of these assets was not random nor merely intended to undermine moral. Instead, it provided the NVA with strategic, operational, and tactical intelligence on ARVN operations, and when ARVN and U.S. forces operated together, on U.S. efforts as well.
In any insurgency, the key for insurgent victory is avoiding battles on the enemy's terms and initiating combat only on the insurgents' terms. The NVA was a light infantry force. The ARVN and the U.S. Army on which it was modeled -- was a much heavier, combined-arms force. In any encounter between the NVA and its enemies the NVA would lose unless the encounter was at the time and place of the NVA's choosing. ARVN and U.S. forces had a tremendous advantage in firepower and sheer weight. But they had a significant weakness: The weight they brought to bear meant they were less agile. The NVA had a tremendous weakness. Caught by surprise, it would be defeated. And it had a great advantage: Its intelligence network inside the ARVN generally kept it from being surprised. It also revealed weakness in its enemies' deployment, allowing it to initiate successful offensives.
All war is about intelligence, but nowhere is this truer than in counterinsurgency and guerrilla war, where invisibility to the enemy and maintaining the initiative in all engagements is key. Only clear intelligence on the enemy's capability gives this initiative to an insurgent, and only denying intelligence to the enemy -- or knowing what the enemy knows and intends -- preserves the insurgent force.
The construction of an Afghan military is an obvious opportunity for Taliban operatives and sympathizers to be inserted into the force. As in Vietnam, such operatives and sympathizers are not readily distinguishable from loyal soldiers; ideology is not something easy to discern. With these operatives in place, the Taliban will know of and avoid Afghan army forces and will identify Afghan army weaknesses. Knowing that the Americans are withdrawing as the NVA did in Vietnam means the rational strategy of the Taliban is to reduce operational tempo, allow the withdrawal to proceed, and then take advantage of superior intelligence and the ability to disrupt the Afghan forces internally to launch the Taliban offensives.
The Western solution is not to prevent Taliban sympathizers from penetrating the Afghan army. Rather, the solution is penetrating the Taliban. In Vietnam, the United States used signals intelligence extensively. The NVA came to understand this and minimized radio communications, accepting inefficient central command and control in return for operational security. The solution to this problem lay in placing South Vietnamese into the NVA. There were many cases in which this worked, but on balance, the NVA had a huge advantage in the length of time it had spent penetrating the ARVN versus U.S. and ARVN counteractions. The intelligence war on the whole went to the North Vietnamese. The United States won almost all engagements, but the NVA made certain that it avoided most engagements until it was ready.
In the case of Afghanistan, the United States has far more sophisticated intelligence-gathering tools than it did in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the basic principle remains: An intelligence tool can be understood, taken into account and evaded. By contrast, deep penetration on multiple levels by human intelligence cannot be avoided.
Obama mentioned Pakistan's critical role. Clearly, he understands the lessons of Vietnam regarding sanctuary, and so he made it clear that he expects Pakistan to engage and destroy Taliban forces on its territory and to deny Afghan Taliban supplies, replacements, and refuge. He cited the Swat and South Waziristan offensives as examples of the Pakistanis' growing effectiveness. While this is a significant piece of his strategy, the Pakistanis must play another role with regard to intelligence.
The heart of Obama's strategy lies not in the surge, but rather in turning the war over to the Afghans. As in Vietnam, any simplistic model of loyalties doesn't work. There are Afghans sufficiently motivated to form the core of an effective army. As in Vietnam, the problem is that this army will contain large numbers of Taliban sympathizers; there is no way to prevent this.
The Taliban is not stupid: It has and will continue to move its people into as many key positions as possible.
The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can't carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence to bear, but that does not compensate for human intelligence. The only entity that could conceivably penetrate the Taliban and remain secure is the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This would give the Americans and Afghans knowledge of Taliban plans and deployments. This would diminish the ability of the Taliban to evade attacks, and although penetrated as well, the Afghan army would enjoy a chance ARVN never had.
But only the ISI could do this, and thinking of the ISI as secure is hard to do from a historical point of view. The ISI worked closely with the Taliban during the Afghan civil war that brought it to power and afterwards, and the ISI had many Taliban sympathizers. The ISI underwent significant purging and restructuring to eliminate these elements over recent years, but no one knows how successful these efforts were.
The ISI remains the center of gravity of the entire problem. If the war is about creating an Afghan army, and if we accept that the Taliban will penetrate this army heavily no matter what, then the only counter is to penetrate the Taliban equally. Without that, Obama's entire strategy fails as Nixon's did.
In his talk, Obama quite properly avoided discussing the intelligence aspect of the war. He clearly cannot ignore the problem we have laid out, but neither can he simply count on the ISI. He does not need the entire ISI for this mission, however. He needs a carved out portion compartmentalized and invisible to the greatest possible extent -- to recruit and insert operatives into the Taliban and to create and manage communication networks so as to render the Taliban transparent. Given Taliban successes of late, it isn't clear whether he has this intelligence capability. Either way, we would have to assume that some Pakistani solution to the Taliban intelligence issue has been discussed (and such a solution must be Pakistani for ethnic and linguistic reasons).
Every war has its center of gravity, and Obama has made clear that the center of gravity of this war will be the Afghan military's ability to replace the Americans in a very few years. If that is the center of gravity, and if maintaining security against Taliban penetration is impossible, then the single most important enabler to Obama's strategy would seem to be the ability to make the Taliban transparent.
Therefore, Pakistan is important not only as the Cambodia of this war, the place where insurgents go to regroup and resupply, but also as a key element of the solution to the intelligence war. It is all about Pakistan. And that makes Obama's plan difficult to execute. It is far easier to write these words than to execute a plan based on them. But to the extent Obama is serious about the Afghan army taking over, he and his team have had to think about how to do this. *
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson
We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 11/9/2009 to 1/15/2010): William P. Anderson, Ariel, A. D. Baggerley, Douglas W. Barr, George & Margaret Barrett, Gordon D. Batcheller, Betty Beatty, Bud & Carol Belz, Charles Benscheidt, Aleatha W. Berry, Floyd A. Bishop, Charles L. Blilie, Erminio Bonacci, Peter Boosalis, Wesley Borntrager, Audrey C. Branch, Jan F. Branthaver, Mitzi A. Brown, Patrick J. Buchanan, Robert M. Buchta, Barton Bulman, Terry Cahill, Mark T. Cenac, N. J. Christianso, William D. Collingwood, John D'Aloia, Betty G. Davis, Nancy W. Davis, Dianne C. DeBoest, Peter R. DeMarco, Jeanne L. Dipaola, Donald R. Eberle, Neil Eckles, Edith E. Ellwood, Nicholas Falco, Joe Fetzer, Edwin J. Feulner, Joseph C. Firey, Nansie Lou Follen, The Anderson Foundation, Reuben M. Freitas, James R. Gaines, Donald G. Galow, John B. Gardner, Robert C. Gerken, Gary D. Gillespie, Philip Gilmore, William B. Glew, Lee E. Goewey, Mart A. Grams, Hollis J. Griffin, Alene D. Haines, Violet H. Hall, Weston N. Hammel, James E. Hartman, David L. Hauser, Thomas W. Haverkorn, Winchell T. Hayward, Bernhard Heersink, Jaren E. Hiller, John A. Howard, Thomas E. Humphreys, Marilyn P. Jaeger, Guy O. Johnson, Robert R. Johnson, Steven D. Johnson, Warren W. Johnson, Charles Johnson, John H. Johnson, Louise H. Jones, Edgar Jordan, Robert E. Kelly, Robert E. Kersey, Joseph D. Kluchinsky, Gloria Knoblauch, Charles B. Koehler, Robert M. Kubow, John S. Kundrat, Mark S. Laboe, Allyn M. Lay, Donald G. Lee, Alan Lee, Eric Linhof, Herbert London, Cary M. Maguire, James G. McFadden, John F. McLaughlin, Eugene F. Meenagh, Woodbridge C. Metcalf, Robert P. Miller, Albert D. Miller, David P. & Barbara B. Mitchel, Henry M. Mitchell, Jerry W. Moore, Joseph F. Newhall, John Nickolaus, David Norris, King Odell, Michas M. Ohnstad, David Olsen, Harold K. Olson, Fred Peipman, Arthur J. Perry, Frederick P. Pfau, Donald J. Povejsil, Gregory J. Pulles, Richard O. Ranheim, Seppo Rapo, Mark Richter, Richard P. Schonland, Joseph Schrandt, Harry Richard Schumache, Richard L. Sega, William A. Shipley, Dave Smith, Thomas E. Snee, John C. Spurrier, Carl G. Stevenson, Lee Stoerzinger, Clifford W. Stone, Frank T. Street, Michael S. Swisher, Paul B. Thompson, Merland D. Tollefson, Elizabeth E. Torrance, Jack E. Turner, F. F. Valenzuela, Thomas Warth, Thomas H. Webster, James J. Whelan, Robert L. Wichterman, Gaylort T. Willett, Robert F. Williams, Max L. Willliamson, Eric B. Wilson, Charles L. Wilson, Piers Woodriff.
At the time of this writing no one outside a select group of Democrats knows what will be in the final healthcare bill, but enough is known to draw some conclusions. It relies on pay-offs, mandates, price controls, and accounting gimmicks. Without special deals reform would not be possible.
Whether Senator Ben Nelson's (D-NE) gets to keep his deal, whereby the federal government picks up the cost of new Medicaid patients in Nebraska, is beside the point. "The Cornhusker Kickback," as Nelson's deal has been dubbed, enabled the bill to be passed through the Senate.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) was favored with funds to pay for Medicare Advantage benefits. Medicare Advantage presently allows private insurers to contract with the government, but the program has been targeted for elimination by Democrats. Without Medicare Advantage millions of seniors will see their premiums go up, and their services restricted -- but not in Florida.
It took all sixty Democratic senators to pass the bill out of the Senate. Ben Nelson's and Bill Nelson's votes were paid for with special deals; taxpayers in states with poorly connected senators will be subsidizing benefits in Florida and Nebraska.
A mandate requiring that every American buy "approved" health insurance is essential to Obamacare. Individuals would be fined $750 if they don't buy the type of insurance Democrats think they should have. The Congressional Budget Office has written that the mandate would be an "unprecedented form of federal action." The Heritage Foundation questions whether the mandate is constitutional, as the authority to force individuals to buy a product is not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution. The mandate may also be an unconstitutional taking of private property described by the Fifth Amendment.
According to the Heritage Foundation, over half of the new coverage comes from the expansion of Medicaid:
Medicaid was chosen to do the bulk of the health insurance expansion under Obamacare because it is cheap. But as Americans instinctively know: cheaper does not mean better. The President's own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have warned that the lower Medicaid reimbursements will mean those who gain insurance under Obamacare through Medicaid will have a very difficult time finding doctors to treat them.
The federal government under Obamacare will be offloading the cost of coverage to state governments. Governor David Patterson says that Obamacare will leave New York $1 billion in the hole, and Governor Schwarzenegger says that reform will cost California $3 to $4 billion annually -- even these free-spending governors have reached their limits. It's not a hard job for Congressional Democrats to decide that state governments should bear the burden of increased costs.
And there will be new taxes: on high cost health plans (40 percent), on insurance companies that will be passed on to everyone with private insurance, on medical devices, tanning beds, and brand name drugs. Other taxes could well emerge as the leaders of the House and Senate reconcile their plans behind closed doors.
These taxes are designed to be invisible to taxpayers, and they will go into effect at the passage of the bill. However, the benefits of Obama care are not scheduled to begin until after the 2012 presidential election. The delay in benefits allows the Democrats to pretend that the costs of Obama care will not increase the federal deficit. Ten years of tax increases pays for six years of benefits -- this is not honest accounting.
There are many broken promises. President Obama said that reform would increase access to healthcare -- not for people with Medicare or Medicaid: doctors will stop seeing patients because of cuts in reimbursements. President Obama said the healthcare costs would go down -- young people will subsidize the elderly; people buying outside of large pools will see higher premiums. President Obama said that people will be able to keep their doctors and present insurance if they like them -- it will be cheaper for employers to pay fines than to cover higher premiums, so many employees will see their coverage dropped.
President Obama said that he wanted to change business as usual in Washington, that his would be a transparent government, and that there would be no place for special interests.
Without payoffs this bill could not be achieved. Harry Reid crafted the Senate bill in secret from his office -- not even Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two Democrat in the Senate, knew what was happening. Instead of having an open Conference Committee to reconcile House and Senate bills, as is tradition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are making secret deals out of public view.
President Obama promised that negotiations on the final bill would be bipartisan and open, televised on C-SPAN.
What is likely to emerge is a dense, 2000-page bill. Considering the methods Democrats used to pass the $787 stimulus bill, and the House cap-and-trade bill, Representatives and Senators will be given mere days, or hours, to debate the bill before voting. *
"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." --Benjamin Franklin
Some of the quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.
The following is a summary of the December 2009 issue of the St. Croix Review:
In "Civilized Behavior," Angus MacDonald writes, "Of all the animals of earth, man is the most intelligent and the most uncivilized . . ."
Robert M. Thornton, in "A Teacher's Plight in a Public School," writes that our schools suffer from parental neglect of children and bureaucratic stupidity.
In "A Man Apart," Herbert London sees Barack Obama as Albert Camus' "stranger" -- a man who is estranged from the American spirit and history; in "The New and Old Socialism," he asserts that in the various incarnations of socialism, including the new American version, each envies the successful, and all view the pursuit of wealth as sinful; in "Losing Liberty," he describes decades of wear and tear on American institutions; in "The Race Ploy," he relates his personal experience of being labeled a "racist," and calls on President Obama to repudiate this harmful tactic; in "No Taxation With Representation," he points out dire consequences to follow from having a small minority of Americans paying a vast portion of the tax burden.
Mark W. Hendrickson, in "Cap-and-Trade Update," covers the latest science casting doubt on the dangers of CO2, and the horrendous Boxer/Kerry bill in the Senate; in "Gold Geopolitics, and the Carry Trade," he explains why "gold is warning us that our country is on the wrong track"; in "Monetary Madness," he writes about the disintegrating value of Federal Reserve notes; in "No Laughing Matter," he relates how people in other countries view our free-spending ways.
Allan Brownfeld, in "The $90,000 in Rep. Jefferson's Freezer Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg of Congressional Corruption," examines everyday, underhanded dealings in Washington D.C.; in "Big Business and Free Enterprise: Which Side Is It Really On?" he shows how Republicans and Democrats have worked with corporations to limit competition; in "False Allegations of White Racism Are Widespread While Black Racism Is Tolerated: It's Time to End the Double Standard," he cites well- and little-known examples to make his case.
Paul Kengor, in "The Philosophy of Mao and Mother Teresa?" examines why Obama's communication director praises Mao; in "The Nobel Committee Dishonors Itself," he writes that the committee's purpose is to help Obama pursue a leftist agenda -- and Paul Kengor is pleased by the committee's act.
In "Long-term Impacts of Obama Economics" Murray Weidenbaum considers the implications of the huge growth of government, regulation, and taxation.
David Bean, in "Left and Right -- but No Center?" asks whether our differences are reconcilable.
How the fact that Social Security is unsustainable has been denied for so long is revealed by Chuck Blahous in "Social Security Myths."
In "Not Quite Understanding the Word Mandate," Ed Morrissey asserts that the Constitution does not grant Congress the authority to force Americans to buy health insurance.
Robert Wichterman, in "Intolerant Secularists," relates how secularists are exerting new leverage over religions in America.
In "Politics and Culture," John Ingraham puts his finger on why the left is winning the cultural war: Conservatives have been absent from the fight.
John J. Fry discusses the writing of and motivation behind the famous writer's books in "The Politics of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
In "Willa Cather: A Quiet American Voice", Jigs Gardner writes about her ability to evoke the American landscape, and to find "the meaning in common things."
The V&V Q&A is an e-publication from The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Laura Ingalls Wilder is the famed author of Little House on the Prairie. Dr. Paul Kengor, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, interviews Dr. John J. Fry, professor of history at Trinity Christian College in Chicago.
Dr. Paul Kengor: Dr. John Fry, welcome to V&V Q&A.
Dr. John J. Fry: Thanks, I'm very glad to visit with you.
Kengor: How did you first get interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder?
Fry: Well, I hadn't read the Little House books as a child, but my wife Paula got me to read the books with her after we were married. So, my first time reading the books was her fifth or sixth time. Several months after I finished, I began graduate work in History at Duquesne University and had to begin writing research papers based on primary sources. Most of the other graduate students in Pittsburgh were doing urban history or labor history of some type, but that didn't interest me at all. It was Paula who suggested that I write about Laura Ingalls Wilder. I ended up writing several papers on Laura. I also discussed her in my book, The Farm Press, Reform and Rural Change, 1895-1920.
Kengor: So, who was Laura Ingalls Wilder, where and when was she born, where was she raised, who were her parents?
Fry: Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born on February 7, 1867 to Charles and Caroline Ingalls in western Wisconsin. Her early childhood was spent in a log cabin in Wisconsin, except for one year that her family spent in Kansas where they squatted on land in the Osage Indian Reserve. When Laura was six, the Ingalls moved about 200 miles west to Walnut Grove, Minnesota, where she spent her middle childhood, again with a one-year sojourn in another state, in Burr Oak, Iowa. Then, in 1879, the family moved to a homestead near DeSmet in South Dakota, where she finished school and taught in several one-room schoolhouses. In 1885, she married Almanzo Wilder, a homesteader originally from New York.
Laura and Almanzo struggled for four years against bad weather, poor crops, and debt, but eventually lost their homestead to the bank and moved to town. During those years, they had a daughter they named Rose and a son that died in infancy. In 1894, they moved to a farm in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri near Mansfield, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Almanzo died in 1949 at age 92. Laura died in 1957, three days past her 90th birthday.
Kengor: Laura Ingalls Wilder is famous because of her Little House books. Describe those books, and when they were written.
Fry: Laura was first published in 1911, when she started writing for the Missouri Ruralist, a regional farm newspaper. She wrote for the paper until 1924. In the late 1920s, Laura sat down to write her autobiography. Her daughter Rose, who by this time was a fairly well-known journalist and author of magazine fiction, typed the manuscript and sent it to her agent in 1930. Rose also separated out some of the stories from Laura's childhood and sent them separately to a friend in children's publishing. Her agent couldn't get any magazines interested, but one publisher's children's department asked for the stories to be expanded into a book for beginning readers. The resulting Little House in the Big Woods was published in April 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, and received glowing reviews.
During the next 11 years, Laura wrote the other seven Little House books, with assistance from Rose. On average, a book appeared every other year. Farmer Boy, published in 1933, described Almanzo's boyhood in upstate New York. Little House on the Prairie chronicled the Ingalls's sojourn in Kansas. On the Banks of Plum Creek described life on the farm outside of Walnut Grove. By the Shores of Silver Lake told of their move to the homestead outside DeSmet. The struggle to survive the hard winter of 1880-1881 took center stage in The Long Winter. Little Town on the Prairie described how Laura became a teacher. Finally, These Happy Golden Years, published in 1943, told of Almanzo and Laura's courtship and marriage.
Kengor: Now, here's where this gets especially interesting: Why did Laura Ingalls Wilder write and publish these books? Did she have a political motivation?
Fry: Well, primarily she published these books because she wanted to tell the stories of her and Almanzo's childhoods. And she wrote them to help make ends meet during the Depression. But the books constantly emphasize the self-reliance of the Ingalls family through the hardships they faced: wild animals, locusts, blizzards, and crop failures. The books also consistently criticize the federal government for interfering in the lives of Westerners. It's pretty clear that Laura wrote this way because she was a vocal opponent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.
Kengor: You've mentioned Rose a number of times already. Haven't I heard somewhere that Rose should be credited with the best parts of the books? Or that she was in some way a ghost-writer?
Fry: That idea has been around since the early 1990s, when William Holtz, a literature professor at the University of Missouri, published a biography of Rose titled The Ghost in the Little House. He argued that Laura remained an amateurish writer to the end and that the best elements of the books came from Rose's efforts with them. It's true that Laura and Rose collaborated on the books. Rose typed the manuscripts and edited them. But several other scholars have looked at the evidence and concluded that Holtz went too far in his assessment. The idea of Rose as the real brains behind the books returns periodically, however, most recently in a New Yorker article from August of this year.
If Rose had been the driving force behind the books, they might have been even more anti-government. By the 1930s she had become a radical individualist or libertarian. By the end of her life, she was corresponding with Herbert Hoover, Ayn Rand, and Hans Sennholz, an economics professor at Grove City College. She was also a mother-figure of sorts to Roger Lea MacBride, the Libertarian candidate for President in 1976.
Kengor: Hans Sennholz? That's really interesting. We should note that Laura started in politics as a Democrat. I assume she believed that the New Deal was pushing Americans away from self-reliance; that it encouraged people to look to the federal government instead of to themselves, their families, their faith, as she and her family had always done? She saw a long-term danger to the country in this?
Fry: Exactly. Laura and Almanzo both felt that New Deal programs that gave money to individuals and expanded federal control were bad for the country and especially bad for rural areas. In 1938, an agent from the USDA stopped to talk to Almanzo and inform him of some new federal regulations. Almanzo told him to get off his land or he would get his shotgun. Laura believed that New Deal work-relief programs had made farm labor scarce and called first term Democratic Senator Harry Truman "a liar" in 1939. As one biographer put it: "Laura ultimately believed that anyone with gumption and wit and a little persistence could make it without having to take government charity."
Kengor: Would we today consider her a "conservative?" Was she a social conservative, a religious conservative, an economic conservative?
Fry: I think that we should see her as a conservative. Even when she was a Democrat, it was mainly because the Democratic Party was the party of limited government at the turn of the 20th century. She didn't have a major problem with government having a role in encouraging people to do the right thing. That changed with the New Deal, which she saw as the government going way too far. Then her concern for limited government really took over. She was certainly an economic conservative.
I think that a lot more attention might be given in the literature to the exact nature of her religious beliefs. She grew up in Congregational churches and was always active in a local church. But when she moved to Missouri and there was no Congregational church, she and Almanzo attended a Methodist church in Mansfield but never became members. Her description of organized religion in the Little House books sounds pretty critical to me, though other scholars haven't really picked up on it.
Kengor: What really made her famous in recent times was the decision to turn her books into an extremely successful TV series in the 1970s. Whose decision was that? Was this the effort of the star of the series, the late Michael Landon?
Fry: Little House on the Prairie, the television series, was set in Walnut Grove, Minnesota (in the series, the family never moved), and ran for over 200 episodes between 1974 and 1983. It was indeed the brainchild of Michael Landon, who directed most of the episodes and wrote about a quarter of them, as well as starring as Laura's "Pa." However, one should note that the Little House books had already become incredibly popular in their own right by the 1970s. They were translated into Japanese and German by the U.S. government after World War II to spread American values to the people of those countries. Public schools used excerpts from the books in reading texts, and teachers fashioned entire units around the books. And historic sites in seven different states had already become pilgrimage destinations for those who loved the books.
Kengor: Michael Landon was a conservative, wasn't he? And, if so, did he, like Laura Ingalls Wilder a generation earlier, have a political motivation? Perhaps Landon was fighting LBJ's 1960s Great Society, as Laura had battled FDR's 1930s New Deal?
Fry: Yes, it's my understanding that Landon was a conservative. It may be that he was politically motivated like Laura; that he was reacting to the Great Society like she was to the New Deal. My expertise is in the books themselves; I've actually never watched an episode of the television series. But it's also my understanding that there was a broader movement in American culture during the 1970s and 1980s that called for a return to simpler times that both capitalized on and was encouraged by television shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. Colonial furniture was very popular, and one could even buy lumber to make the facade of a home a log cabin.
Kengor: Do Laura and Almanzo have any heirs alive today?
Fry: In fact, no. I mentioned earlier that they had a son who died in infancy. Their daughter Rose was married to Gilette Lane for several years during the 1910s and also had a son who died in infancy. After their divorce she never remarried or had more children.
Kengor: Finally, what's the political relevance of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series right now, especially if we're seeing under President Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress a third great thrust by the big-government/progressive left, a picking up of the torch from FDR and LBJ?
Fry: I think that conservatives who seek to oppose this latest round of government expansion can turn to Wilder's books to provide cultural and narrative support for their views. The books certainly encourage individual and family self-reliance and a skepticism of government solutions to people's problems.
Kengor: Dr. John Fry, your research is fascinating. Thank you very much for talking to us. *
"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the object of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained." --James Madison