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    Which way for liberty in the new world? Reflections on Personal Democracy Forum 2008
    POSTED July 2, 11:55 AM

    Personal Democracy Forum panel on "the cross-partisan movement for political transparency and watchdogging government from below:" (Right to left) Panel moderator Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, Matt Stoller of MyDD (mostly obscured), myself,  and W. David Stephenson, who blogs on homeland security issues. (Photo by Robert Cox, Media Bloggers Association).

    It's not often that one gets the opportunity to be among and converse with several hundred of the smartest people in the world, but that is precisely what I was able to do last week as a participant at Personal Democracy Forum 2008 at Rose Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center complex.

    It was my first PDF and, despite only being able to attend the second day, it was a memorable experience because I came away with a heightened sense that we are on the cusp of profound, even revolutionary changes in government and public policy thanks to the Internet. Being a conservative, I don't use that word "revolution" lightly.

    I was in fact continually reminded throughout my time at PDF of Alexander Hamilton's prophetic observation at the outset of The Federalist Papers, America's most important contribution to serious  political thought:

    "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

    It is still a time for choosing. Today, we are witnessing the creation of an incredible array of fantastically effective communication tools made possible by the Internet.  As Clay Shirky says in his new book, "Here Comes Everybody,"  when the way we communicate with each other changes, it inevitably changes the way we relate to each other in society.

    And that means we are heading towards having to make some choices that deserve serious reflection about the place of individual political liberty in the "new modes and orders" that are being shaped by the Internet, those who understand it and those who seek to manipulate it to a multitude of purposes from a broad spectrum of perspectives.

    To illustrate, think Gutenberg, the rise of the printing press and the media it inspired like pamphlets, books and newspapers, the spread of general literacy fueled by the desire to read the Bible independently of traditional religious gatekeepers, and the consequent demands for an analogous independence in the political, economic and scientific realms, particularly in Britain and America.

    The Internet is every bit as revolutionary, if not more so. That point has been well-documented for at least a decade for fields like business, entertainment and media, but the implications of the Internet for government and public policy are only now beginning to appear, dimly, in public discussions.

    Two things struck me most vividly at PDF. First, the sheer magnitude of possibilities is simply staggering. The excitement engendered by pondering widgets, mashups, Facebook, FollowtheMoney.org and APIs today must be akin to what was felt by the first generation of Protestant reformers and their nascent allies in the politics of the day as they realized the possibilities of spreading their respective gospels via the printed page. People do tend to get excited when paradigms shift.

    In the business world, we're talking about an Internet-inspired paradigm shift from the top-down, vertically integrated, proprietarily focused corporate model that succeeds by controlling a product from inception to obsolescence to an outward-facing, collaborative partnering entrepreneurial model that succeeds by creating and focusing value from within and without to produce needed products or services.

    Don Tapscott's "Wikinomics" is the best description of this revolutionary change I've read (FYI: We're probably distant cousins but have never met). Just as the corporate model is being redefined by the collaborative networking made possible by the Internet, government at all levels in America is undergoing massive dislocation occasioned by social unrest, demographics, the lengthening list of quandaries occasioned by the bureaucratic state AKA Big Government, and technology.

    So an era of required reassembly looms, which entails revisiting the classical issues of the appropriate roles of citizen and government in a democratic republic. For those who seek to protect and even expand the realm of individual liberties, it matters a great deal how those issues are to be settled.

    We are only beginning to see and talk about these things in the public policy community, even as the  basic structure of the new business paradigm is rapidly becoming a part of every day life, thanks to eBay, Amazon, Google, and many more companies that look, think and act very differently from giants like General Motors. We don't yet have much of a grip on Government 2.0.

    And that brings me to the second thing that struck me at PDF - Most of the people at an event celebrating a 21st century technology with profound implications for public pollcy came bearing a distinctly 19th century political outlook. They are mostly of the Left, or progressive, or whatever is the favored self-description for those who view the state as the chief agent for achieving social, economic and political justice, however that is defined.

    This is, to put it most simply, Leviathan - the all-powerful central government but harnessed in service of one or more of  the seemingly endless variations on the 18th and 19th century isms that grew out of the fevered brows of Rousseau, Feurbach, Marx, etc, with perhaps just enough classical liberalism rhetoric thrown in to maintain the appearance of an appreciation for some dead white European guy named John Stuart Mill.

    As such, the enthusiasm among PDF attendees for Barack Obama specifically and for the full range of progressive causes was palpable, especially during the morning plenary sessions. Things really got spirited during a speech by social activist and environmental advocate Van Jones, who entertained and inspired the audience with a superbly delivered and fervently argued appeal that stopped just short of jeopardizing PDF's non-partisan status.

    That is not meant as a criticism of anybody. Like the overwhelming majority of newsrooms in the Mainstream Media, it is just a given these days that most of the people who attend events like PDF come from a Leftist  orientation and cannot be blamed for framing their understanding of whatever topics are at hand in familiar terms.
     
    They love government because they see it as the means of achieving societal and individual salvation. Barack Obama, a community organizer-turned politician, does, too, and he gives them hope of winning big-time in November.

    It's not the fault of folks on the Left that folks on the Right have been much too slow to appreciate what is happening right before their eyes on the technology front.  To the credit of the PDF organizers, there were a fair number of folks like myself on the various panels who come from the Right, including Patrick Ruffini, Matthew Sheffield, Chris Kinnan, Soren Dayton and others.

    I am told that the number of PDF attendees has been scant in previous years, but more recently has been growing. We are still a distinct minority but a group of us thought about gathering together and singing "We Shall Overcome" during the concluding session. We prudently let the idea go upon further consideration.

    But here's the point: The Internet and the voluntary collaborative networking it makes possible on scales not even previously conceived is fundamentally opposed to the heart of the Left's conception of the proper relationship that ought to exist among state, society and individuals, with that sequence representing the flow of power in descending order.

    The Left wants always to give Leviathan more power, not less, in order to impose "change," regardless whether the change enjoys popular support.  It also tends to view opposition to its means and ends as evidence of criminally sinister conspiracies to turn back the clock of progress and thus always runs the risk of succumbing to the totalitarian temptation.

    The Internet on the other hand empowers individuals and voluntary groups to be simultaneously independent and networked, and thus able to achieve desirable and productive ends without government direction or favor. Indeed, Leviathan stands opposed to this fundamental nature of the Internet because the former centralizes power and authority inwardly to itself, while the latter redistributes power and authority outwardly to individuals and groups. Glenn Reynolds' "An Army of Davids" does an excellent job of describing this process in a number of realms.

    As Shirky says, "... we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations."

    I wonder if we are about to discover that the Internet empowers the wisdom of crowds operating within the constitutional framework of a democratic republic to expand the realm of individual autonomy and group cooperation, while minimizing and rationalizing government power, much as Adam Smith's invisible hand - the movement of supply and demand in a free market - empowers individuals and groups to pursue mutually beneficial economic activity with a minimum of government restriction.

    But like all tools, the Internet can be used for good or ill. In the context of individual liberty and government,  Mr. Jefferson's maxim  - "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground" - is as on point as ever.

    And Jefferson points to the crux of the coming debate - should the Internet be public or private. To see where it can go in the hands of Leviathan, one need no further than China and Total Information Awareness. With Leviathan, power possessed, sooner or later, becomes power applied.

    Lesson? Keep Leviathan as far from the Internet as possible, then stand back and watch what happens when people are free to choose their own destinies.

    I suspect that I will return to this topic frequently and, being in Washington, D.C., thus reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks.

    Cross-posted at The Next Right.
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    John McCain's three biggest problems - Himself, George Bush and history
    POSTED June 27, 6:09 AM
    Some folks are asking what I meant yesterday on MSNBC during an interview with Chris Jansing when I said that presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain's "three biggest problems are John McCain, George Bush and history, and he's yet to effectively address any of the three."

    To win, McCain must motivate the conservative base of the Republican Party to get out and work, vote and contribute on his behalf at record levels if he is to have any hope of defeating the onslaught of money, media and manipulation coming from Democrat Barack Obama and his allies.

    The problem is McCain simply isn't credible with these voters as a fellow conservative and he has done almost nothing to give them reasons to think otherwise. The lone exception here is McCain's recent emphasis on opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling for oil and natural gas, but even here he blunted the sharpness of his position by continuing to oppose drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

    This mixed message - is McCain a conservative, a "maverick" or just another Washington politician? - is reflected in surveys like the most recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll that found only 58 percent of conservatives are excited about the prospect of voting for the Arizona senator, according to the Times' Doyle McManus:

    "McCain suffers from a pronounced 'passion gap,' especially among conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who described themselves as conservative, 58% said they would vote for McCain; 15% said they would vote for Obama, 14% said they would vote for someone else, and 13% said they were undecided. By contrast, 79% of voters who described themselves as liberal said they planned to vote for Obama.

    "'I'm a Republican . . . but I don't like some of the things McCain voted for in the Senate, especially immigration,' said poll respondent Mary Dasen, 77, a retired United Way manager in Oscoda, Mich., who said she was undecided. 'There's a big chance I might stay home and not vote.'

    "Even among voters who said they planned to vote for McCain, more than half said they were 'not enthusiastic' about their chosen candidate; 45% said they were enthusiastic. By contrast, 81% of Obama voters said they were enthusiastic, and almost half called themselves "very enthusiastic," a level of zeal found in 13% of McCain's supporters.

    "'McCain is not capturing the full extent of the conservative base the way President Bush did in 2000 and 2004,' said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus. 'Among conservatives, evangelicals and voters who identify themselves as part of the religious right, he is polling less than 60%.'"

    These numbers strongly suggest that McCain 2008 is very much like Dole 1996. About the only bright note here is that the energy issue clearly offers McCain a way to define himself to conservatives as the guy who will shake up business-as-usal in Washington.

    President Bush rates as McCain's second biggest problem for the simple reason that the lame duck chief executive is among the least popular chief executives in memory. Worse, Gallup finds Congress gets the lowest confidence rating ever but then McCain has been in the Senate for decades whereas Obama has only been in the Senate for less than one term. The mud sticks to McCain as if he were the incumbent.

    Finally, there is the historic tide against which McCain must struggle. I don't know of any surveys that have yet sought to measure it specifically, but it's clear that a significant part of Obama's support results from a desire to see the country elect a black to its highest office.

    If Obama wins in November, it would be a powerful refutation of the notion that America is a racist society and would go a long way towards encouraging racial reconciliation in the country. Those are significant results and are all but impossible for McCain to address in an overt manner without seeming to be blocking the tide of history.

    Thus, expect to hear much more in the mainstream media and Democrat surrogates along the theme of Obama's recent prediction that the GOP attack machine would come after him by reminding voters that he is black. It is a masterful way of maximizing white guilt about America's past treatment of blacks that recalls JFK's handling of his Catholicism - vote for me to prove you aren't one of those Baptist bigots.

    The recent flurry of 5-4 Supreme Court decisions illustrates better than anything else how important the outcome of the November contest will be to the future course of the country. Even so, it's hard to see how the Republicans could have nominated less likely to bring victory than John McCain.
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    See, the Internet really is changing everything
    POSTED June 13, 7:12 PM
    Interesting piece in Politico by Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej, recalling something they wrote four years ago in which they predicted the Howard Dean phenomenon that appeared to be a failure actually was the forerunner of profound changes in politics, changes that among much else have propelled a candidate like Barack Obama to the brink of nomination for the presidency by one of the nation's two major political parties.

    Sifry and Rasiej offer some useful thoughts on what it all means:

    "If there’s anything we’ve learned about the Internet and politics in these past four years, it is this:

    "1. We’re in a gigantic transition from capital-intensive, broadcast-media-driven politics to something that has almost no barriers to entry, involves millions of people in helping to create messages, groups and campaigns, and is out of centralized control.

    "2. Change is a constant, and as Yogi Berra once said, predictions are hard, especially about the future. Two years ago, no one had even heard of YouTube; now candidates announce their campaigns on that site.

    "3. This isn’t a fad. Voter-generated activism, outside the control of the campaigns, has become a full-fledged political force. People who dismiss online politicking as 'the bar scene from ‘Star Wars' have no idea what they’re talking about."

    Yes, yes and yes. Clay Shirky has an important new book out - "Here comes everybody" - about all this that folks across the political spectrum should be reading. Also worth reading in this regard is Glenn Reynolds' "An Army of Davids."

    In thinking about these issues earlier this week, I was reminded of a column I wrote for Knight Ridder eight years ago in which I offered the following thoughts on how the Internet could transform the relationship between citizen and government:

    "Vital as the FOIA is, the Internet presents new opportunities to advance the public’s right to know. So step two is applying this principle throughout government: Absent a compelling reason to the contrary, such as strictly defined national security considerations, individual privacy rights or law enforcement interests, all documents paid for with tax dollars should promptly be made public via the Internet.

    "Federal departments and agencies signed more than 10,000 contracts last year worth nearly $200 billion, according to the Federal Procurement Data System. With those contracts, the government bought everything from good and bad advice to office furniture, paper clips and the zirconium used in nuclear reactors. Uncle Sam’s chief Internet web portal, FirstGov.gov, provides general information about these contracts but no texts or supporting documentation from the contractors.

    "Why not post on the Internet the complete text and supporting documentation of all federal contracts, grant awards, memorandums of understanding and other legally binding agreements, subject only to the same exceptions that apply to the FOIA? Such transparency throughout the $1.8 trillion federal behemoth could go far in restoring public confidence in government."

    Here we are in 2008 and significant parts of that vision are a reality, most significantly with the USASpending.gov web site that puts most federal spending within a few mouse clicks for anybody with Internet access.  A growing number of state and local governments are following suit, as documented by Americans for Tax Reform here.

    All of these themes and more will be explored at great length June 23-24 at the Personal Democracy Forum,of which Sifry and Rasiej are major movers and shakers. It's been in years past almost exclusively a gathering of folks from the left side of the political spectrum but that is changing.

    Among those on the Right who are scheduled to speak on various PDF panels for 2008 are Mary Katharine Ham and yours truly from The Washington Examiner. Mary Katharine is on a day one panel that will discuss the growth of online journalism, especially the "semi-pros" of the Blogosphere. I will be on a day two panel discussing the growth of the cross-partisanship movement online. Others from the Right include The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini, The Heritage Foundation's Rob Bluey and  NewsBusters' Matthew Sheffield.
     
    The conference is in New York City and is open to all comers. Anybody who is interested in the Internet's impact on public policy, media and government will find attendance at PDF more than worthwhile - it will quite likely introduce you to a whole new world of possibilities.
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    Tim Russert, RIP
    POSTED June 13, 5:30 PM
    No matter how often one experiences the moment, it always comes as a shock to get the news that somebody famous and not yet old has suddenly died. The Examiner newsroom fell silent earlier today when the news was announced by Tom Brokaw that Meet the Press host Tim Russert had died in the NBC Washington Bureau's newsroom.

    I didn't know Russert, though years ago when he was Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan's chief of staff and I was Sen. Orrin Hatch's communications director, he and I occasionally passed in the hall in the Russell Senate Office Building and exchanged the quiet pleasantries that recalled the manners and customs that once enabled partisan warriors to co-exist in mutual respect and dignity.

    Still, it's painful to hear of the passing of someone of achievement with whom you share a profession and a passion, if not friendship. Russert was an old-guard liberal of the New York Irish-Catholic variety, a blue-collarish guy from Buffalo who had that bigger-than-life presence about him.

    Russert was host of Meet the Press longer than any previous person and was the author of two best-selling books, both inspired by his father, "Big Rus." Godspeed to a fine son.

          
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    Bush degrades Medal of Freedom with award to Shalala
    POSTED June 12, 4:08 PM
    This is the kind of thing that happens when a presidential administration is at the end of the rope, nobody is keeping an eye on the store and decisions are made without proper review. President Bush today gave the nation's highest civilian award to a list of highly distinguished and deserving Americans, including Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines (ret.) and Dr. Benjamin Carson of Johns Hopkins University Medical School.

    But there among the honorees is former Clinton administration HHS secretary Donna Shalala. Giving this woman any medal - much less the Medal of Freedom - is preposterous, not because of her tenure working for Slick Willie, but because in the years before and since, when she proved herself to be a devoted enemy of  freedom of speech and intellect on the American campus.

    I would go on, but I am simply dumbfounded that the Bush people have allowed this award to be made. Win Myers at Democracy Project explains why this award simply defies justification:

    Of all the educators in the country to choose from, including those who have suffered under the type of politically correct regimes that Shalala has built up and overseen, the choice of Donna Shalala to receive our nation's highest civilian award is beyond puzzling; it is obscene.

    Shalala was architect of the infamous speech code at Wisconsin which, before it was declared unconstitutional in 1991, was among the most draconian in the nation. She also crafted the "Madison Plan" at UW, through which she mandated quotas for hiring minority professors, doubling the number of minority undergraduates, passed an ethnic studies requirement, and opened a multicultural center.

    And Powerline's Scott Johnson notes two scholars - Professors Thomas Sowell and Harry Jaffa - who have long deserved the kind of recognition this fading, failing administration now so carelessly showers on an opponent of freedom.
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    Shock! Anger! Disbelief! GOP Senators insist that Lieberman-Warner actually be read! Oh, the horror!
    POSTED June 4, 3:15 PM
    So what if it imposes the largest single tax increase in American history without ever calling it a tax? So what if it creates the biggest expansion of the federal bureaucracy since FDR was New Dealing in the White House? So what if it will millions of Americans their jobs and set America's economy back decades?

    Why should the Senate have to actually hear what's in the Lieberman-Warner bill?

    That's the cry of the left as Senate GOPers today refused to allow the Senate to proceed with consideration of Lieberman-Warner without the full text of the bill being read aloud. Here's how the National Wildlife Federation's Jeremy Symons puts it:

    "Senate Republicans are literally throwing the book at this bill to help oil companies block any action on global warming and a clean energy future. By stalling this bill, Senate Republicans can only stall America's economy. We need to jumpstart our economy with action now to invest in new technology and create clean energy jobs.

    "The choice is clear - recharge the economy or let it sit in neutral. Move forward with legislation that addresses an enormous problem while transforming our energy future or stick your head in the sand and hide behind Big Oil propaganda. 

    "America is ready for a new energy future. If opponents succeed in blocking action on climate change, they will block America's path to a new and stronger economy. The Climate Security Act deserves real debate, not Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's procedural trickery and delay tactics."

    Ah, so that's it - it's Big Oil demanding that senators actually read the bill before they vote on it. It's only "real debate" if  everybody just ignores what the bill says and goes ahead and trusts the National Wildlife Federation and the rest of the environmental community that it will all be ok.

    I say every senator and representative should be required to read every bill they are asked to vote on and to sign a statement attesting to the fact they have done so. And the bill text should be read on the floor in public in its entirety and posted on the Internet for at least 72 hours prior to final voting.

    And the smart folks at ReadtheBill.org agree.
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    Left confident as Senate opens Lieberman-Warner debate
    POSTED June 3, 1:56 PM
      

    A National Wildlife Federation spokesman is spinning Monday's 74-14 Senate vote to bring up for debate the Lieberman-Warner global warming proposal as evidence that opposition to the cap and trade nightmare is rapidly falling apart:

    "On Monday, the U.S. Senate opened debate on the Climate Security Act (Boxer-Warner-Lieberman Substitute Amendment, S. 3036). The motion to proceed passed easily on a 74-14 vote, an indication that the vast majority of senators rejected the roadblock approach of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). 

    "Nevertheless, Minority Leader McConnell launched a strategy of delaying the serious debate and votes on amendments to this legislation by forcing 30 hours of debate before the first votes begin. The stall tactics are a sure sign that the minority leader intends to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid choose between a lengthy floor fight on global warming and other pressing senate bills before the Fourth of July recess. 

    "While the debate about the Climate Security Act is still up in the air, with both sides uncertain how close the bill is to the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, one thing is clear: the senators willing to side with Sen. Inhofe, who infamously claimed global warming was a "hoax," is down to 14. Republicans deserted Sen. Inhofe and Minority Leader McConnell in droves.  

    "The 14 senators backing the roadblock strategy were: Byrd, Bunning, Shelby, Craig, DeMint, Hatch, Enzi, Barasso, Sessions, Coburn, Kyl, McConnell, Allard, and Inhofe. For a roll call by state, go here. 

    "The huge number of senators willing to open debate shows how critical this week's amendments will be. Dozens of senators could be swayed. As the National Wildlife Federations Jeremy Symons said, 'The fence is so crowded you can hear it creaking.'"

    Is Grant whistling in the dark or do opponents of Lieberman-Warner face much less encouraging prospects for stopping the measure in the Senate than they profess?

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    Global Warming: Destined to be the new 'Bloody Shirt' in American politics
    POSTED May 30, 1:46 PM
    There were 16 presidential elections between 1868 and 1928 and Democrats won in only four of those contests, with only two candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland. More often, whenever it looked like a Democrat might have a shot at the White House, Republicans would "wave the bloody shirt." End of election story.

    Waving the bloody shirt was as easy as GOP party leaders and candidates simply reminding Northern Republican voters that it was the overwhelmingly Democratic South that seceded in 1861 and ignited the Civil War, the most cataclysmic event in the nation's history. For more than half a century, that fact was an unavoidable and impassable obstacle for virtually all Democrats who nurtured dreams of becoming the nation's commander-in-chief.

    What does this relic of American political history have to do with contemporary politics and campaigns? Well, the phenomenon is about to be repeated in a sense. The Senate takes up debate when it returns from the Memorial Day recess on S. 2191, the Warner-Lieberman bill known as "America's Security Act."

    All three remaining presidential candidates support Warner-Lieberman or variations of it and the proposal has generated widespread enthusiasm in the mainstream media and among environmental activists. The proposal would cap the nation's greenhouse gas emissions - mainly carbon dioxide, which allegedly cause global warming - from combustion of petroleum, coal and natural gas from all sources, then set up a complicated system of "credits" that companies would buy and sell.

    For example, Company A achieves 120 percent of its assigned emissions reduction but Company B only achieves 80 percent of its goal. Company A would be able to sell a credit for the 20 percent it achieved above its goal to Company B. Vast new layers of federal bureaucracies and regulation would be required to administer and enforce the system.

    Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that, if this proposal for combating global warming somehow becomes law, it would be so disastrous for the nation's economy that only something on the order of a civil war would be worse. It would in short be a new bloody shirt for Republicans to wave against Democrats for decades to come.

    The evidence comes from widely divergent sources, including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, MIT and the Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at The Heritage Foundation. The bill would raise energy taxes more than $1.13 trillion in a decade, according to CBO.

    That would translate into gas prices being 42 percent higher by 2020 and the price of electricity being 55 percent higher in 2015, according to MIT. The EPA projects that enactment of Warner-Lieberman would reduce the growth in GDP by as much as 6.9 percent by 2050.

    But those numbers barely begin to tell the whole story of what adoption of Warner-Lieberman would mean for working Americans. The econometric model study recently completed by CDA provides a much more detailed look at the economic catastrophe that adoption of Warner-Lieberman. would be.

    The CDA study used the Global Insight (GI) econometric model of the national economy and applied assumptions that were highly favorable to the proposal, most notably that an as-yet unproven technology known as "carbon capture and sequestration" would be fully commercialized and available from the outset. The GI model also assumes no major economic dislocations during the period following enactment.

    Despite these highly favorable base assumptions, the CDA study notes at the outset of describing the results of its simulations that "since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from these fossil fuels, S. 2191 represents an extraordinary level of economic interference by the federal gov­ernment."

    In addition, according to the CDA study, Warner-Lieberman "promises extraordinary perils for the American economy. Arbitrary restrictions predicated on multiple, untested, and undeveloped technologies will lead to severe restrictions on energy use and large increases in energy costs. In addition to the direct impact on consumers' budgets, these higher energy costs will spread through the economy and inject unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production and consumption--all of which will add yet more financial burdens that must be borne by American taxpayers."

    The burdens break out like this, according to the CDA study:

    "* Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are at least $1.7 trillion and could reach $4.8 tril­lion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
    * Single-year GDP losses hit at least $155 billion and realistically could exceed $500 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
    * Annual job losses exceed 500,000 before 2030 and could approach 1,000,000.
    * The annual cost of emission permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2020 and could exceed $300 billion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
    * The average household will pay $467 more each year for its natural gas and electricity (in infla­tion-adjusted 2006 dollars). That means that the average household will spend an additional $8,870 to purchase household energy over the period 2012 through 2030."

    If these results from an econometric simulation based upon extremely favorable assumptions produce an outlook that includes a lower standard of living for most Americans, millions of lost jobs and the forced acceptance of countless daily inconveniences, the odds are overwhelming that a more realistic simulation would produce results that are truly nightmarish.

    Food will become more costly, people who moved to the suburbs to escape crime and over-crowding will have to move back to the city, commuter congestion will worsen as mass transit is unable to handle significantly increased traffic volumes, productivity will suffer, technological progress will slow or reverse as a result of lost economic opportunities and leverage, the advancement of minorities into the middle class will cease, and social and political conflict and decay will accelerate.

    The growing resistance of the generally more sequaious Europeans after only a few years of experiencing an anti-global warming regimen not unlike Warner-Lieberman is a likely harbinger of a far more dramatic response from independent-minded Americans.

    It's not a pretty picture of America's future to be sure, but the great irony is that the liberals responsible for creating such an unhappy time then are the same people telling us now that we must turn off the air conditioning, give up our cars and stop eating so much.

    In other words, they'll be telling us how happy we ought to be that we've become as miserable, cramped and chained as the rest of the world.

    UPDATE: Re-empowering the Left elite

    Columnist Charles Krauthammer has a superb piece in today's edition of The Washington Post. The whole column is a must-read but here's the core point that makes it so essential:

    "For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

    "Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

    "Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

    "Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

    "Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe."

    That is exactly the point. It's also why The Examiner published this editorial earlier this week on why environmentalism isn't about the environment, it's about power for the elite.

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    Subway bounces home-schooled kids from essay contest
    POSTED May 27, 6:02 PM
    American Thinker's Ned Barnett reports a developing public relations disaster for the Subway sandwich chain. Seems the geniuses in corporate PR decided to host an essay contest for students to write about "Every sandwich tells a story." Sounds like a good topic to inspire aspiring creative writers, right?

    But then somebody decided to bar home-schooled students, allegedly because the winning entry would receive a prize - $5,000 worth of athletic equipment - suitable only for "real" schools. Michael Smith of the Home School Legal Defense Association shot that one down in flames with this letter to Subway officials.

    Barnett estimates Subway may have offended as many as 10 millions Americans, counting the two million students, their parents, grandparents and sympathetic neighbors and friends. However many may actually decide to take their business to Quiznos or some other outlet, you can be certain the impact will be felt, unfortunately, most directly by the Subway franchisers who actually own and operate the stores.

     
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    Coburn: Republicans are in denial
    POSTED May 27, 3:56 PM
    If you read nothing else today, check out Sen. Tom Coburn's oped in The Wall Street Journal. The title is "Republicans are in denail." Subscription is required, of course, but I think the Journal folks are putting this outside their firewall.

    Here's the heart of Coburn's piece:

    "Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

    Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

    The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats."

    How much longer till the GOP's Washington Establishment - finally - gets the message?
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