Sowell slyly tries to educate Obama on the virtues of markets

The people who ran central planning agencies usually had more advanced education than the population at large, and probably higher IQs as well.

The central planners also had far more statistics and other facts at their disposal than the average person had. Moreover, there were usually specialized experts such as economists and statisticians on the staffs of the central planners, and outside consultants were available when needed. Finally, the central planners had the power of government behind them, to enforce the plans they created.

It is hardly surprising that conservatives, such as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain and President Ronald Reagan in the United States, opposed this approach. What is remarkable is that, after a few decades of experience with central planning in some countries, or a few generations in others, even communists and socialists began to repudiate this approach.

As they replaced central planning with more reliance on markets, their countries' economic growth rate almost invariably increased, often dramatically. In the largest and most recent examples-- China and India-- people by the millions have risen above these countries' official poverty rates, after they freed their economies from many of their suffocating government controls.

China, where famines have repeatedly ravaged the country, now has a problem of obesity-- not a good thing in itself, but a big improvement over famines.

This has implications far beyond economics. Think about it: How was it even possible that transferring decisions from elites with more education, intellect, data and power to ordinary people could lead consistently to demonstrably better results?

One implication is that no one is smart enough to carry out social engineering, whether in the economy or in other areas where the results may not always be so easily quantifiable. We learn, not from our initial brilliance, but from trial and error adjustments to events as they unfold.

Obama runs away from ACORN at home but helps ACORN spread its radical message and techniques overseas

While the Obama administration runs away from ACORN here in the United States it is quietly embracing ACORN overseas.

The Obama administration is using U.S. government resources to help the embattled radical advocacy organization spread the gospel of left-wing community organizing in India.

President Obama’s ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, recently lent his name and the prestige of the U.S. government to ACORN India’s efforts to organize rag-pickers in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). Roemer is a former Democratic congressman who represented an Indiana district.

The website of the U.S. embassy in India displays a photograph from May 11 in which Ambassador Roemer is shown meeting with rag pickers in Dharavi, a slum in the suburbs of Mumbai. The official caption accompanying the picture indicates Roemer was discussing “ACORN India’s local waste management and recycling program.”

The Indo-Asian News Service confirmed in a report that day that Roemer spent time at the ACORN facility and met with ACORN India representative Vikram Adige.

The U.S. consulate in Mumbai, headed by Consul General Paul A. Flombsee, also co-sponsored a water conservation event on March 22 with ACORN India. Flomsbee is listed as the expected guest of honor at the event on ACORN India’s website.

ACORN India reports to ACORN International, which now goes by the name Community Organizations International. ACORN International serves as an umbrella organization for the various national organizations conducting ACORN’s business outside the U.S. ACORN International’s Facebook page describes the group’s mission as “building community groups in low income communities across the world to organize for power.”

ACORN International is active in Argentina, Canada, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mexico, and Peru.

One of the reasons the group was created was to allow ACORN to apply its corporate shakedown techniques against Western corporations as they expand into rapidly developing markets such as India.

ACORN India’s website declares that the group was created to help defend the “socialist legacy” of Jawaharlal Nehru, a leftist who was prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964. That “legacy” is “now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism,” according to the website.

“Countries like India are the next frontiers of significant market expansion for multi-national corporations; and these corporations are now starting to apply extreme pressure on the government of India for unfettered access,” according to ACORN India. “[The] Indian market is facing an onslaught of both foreign and domestic corporate retailers, the most notable of which is Wal-mart.”

China and India slyly endorse remedies for climate change, now that cap-trade is a dying enterprise

Still doubt that China is the most sure-footed of the world's national giants?

Here's my answer: "China formally signed up on Tuesday for the climate accord struck at the Copenhagen summit, the last major emerging economy to endorse a plan strongly favoured by the United States.

An official letter to the Bonn-based UN Climate Change Secretariat said that it could “proceed to include China in the list” of countries supporting the deal reached at the summit in December.

Earlier Tuesday India agreed to formally associate itself with the climate accord."

Timing is everything. In this case, the global warming alarmists have been reduced to ridicule by their own crooked "science," and over-zealous social engineering.

Cap and trade, the current remedy for global warming, is all but dead in Washington, D.C.

In short, it's a perfect time for China and India to endorse the corpse of the climate change campaign and reep the benefits without suffering any economic harship as a result.

China's performance is, in fact, so impressive that the the radically chic Obama administration would be wise to emulate the example. Instead of talking nonsense while trying to install socialism in the U.S., do what the Chinese do: Pay lip service to socialism while running away from it - at least economically - at top speed.

Cllimate change extravaganza is "doornail dead"

...the movement to stop climate change through a Really Big and Comprehensive Grand Global Treaty is dead because there is no political consensus in the US to go forward. It’s dead because the UN process is toppling over from its own excessive ambition and complexity. It’s dead because China and India are having second thoughts about even the smallish steps they put on the table back in Copenhagen.

Doornail dead.

Chicago man implicated in terrorism in Denmark, India

It started as an odd case of the FBI raiding a meat packing plant with hundreds of agents and now it's morphed into something much bigger. I've been telling you for weeks this was coming. I guess it just seemed too hard to believe that an American was involved.

Originally David Headley was only charged with plotting to blow up the newspaper in Denmark that published the Mohammad cartoons. That plot seemed rather amateurish and was thought of as aspirational. But it soon became obvious to any one paying attention that Headley also had a hand in India's worst act of terror this decade.

The importance of this being that radical Islamists are now using their American passports to bypass suspicion that would normally be put on them if traveling under, say, a Pakistani passport. They are using their American citizenship to plot and execute terrorist plots abroad.

And this is not too fine a point to make either for Headley was originally born Daood Gilani and only changed his name to make it sound less Muslim and more flyover country American. He also admits he did this to make international traveling easier.

India, China move to quiet global wartming alarmists

On October 22, an accord was signed by Xie Zhenhua, China's vice minister at the National Development and Reform Commission, and Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, in New Delhi. The memorandum provides an alternative framework to counter pressure from America and Europe to adopt mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions in a new UN treaty. The two Asian powers will collaborate on the development of renewable power projects and improved energy efficiency programs, while rejecting any outside mandates that would slow economic growth.

The United Nations has been holding forums around the world to build support for a new climate treaty to be drafted in Copenhagen in December to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto document did not require the developing countries to do anything about reducing emissions. The United States and European Union have been trying to find some formula that would persuade the developing countries to sign on to the new treaty. China and India, along with Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, have been adamant about staying out of any global requirement. By forming regional alignments that keep policy in the hands of national governments, the developing countries expect to be able to resist Western and UN pressure.

It is easier to stay independent of the climate paranoia if one does not believe the planet is in peril. Xiao Ziniu, director general of the Beijing Climate Centre, told the British Guardian newspaper recently that "There is no agreed conclusion about how much change is dangerous....Whether the climate turns warmer or cooler, there are both positive and negative effects....In Chinese history, there have been many periods warmer than today." He disputed the disaster warnings of the UNIPCC, saying, "The accuracy of the prediction is very low because the climate is affected by many mechanisms we do not fully understand."

Russia and India to collaborate on stealth, supersonic cruise missile system

From Sweetness & Light, via Russia’s Izvestia and Pravda:

Russia and India will start the development of a new supersonic missile nearly invincible to interception. No army in the world has anything similar to it. The sum of the investment has not been defined yet, but it can be expected to reach billions of dollars.

The missile is to become a successor of the supersonic missile BrahMos (known as Yahont in the Russian army) that is now installed on ships, land missile complexes and may soon be installed on Su-30 MKI fighter jets and submarines. This possibility was discussed on Tuesday at the meeting of an intergovernmental committee on military and technical collaboration that took place in Moscow and was chaired by Russian and Indian Defense Ministers, Anatoly Serdyukov and Arackaparambil Kurien Antony…

It is unique since it’s the only cruise missile in the world that can be launched both as a single unit and a group. Its highly intelligent operational system allows the missile to reach the speed of Mach 3.0, which is three times faster than the speed of the subsonic American Tomahawk cruise-missile). BrahMos can engage any sea target, and a group of these missiles can destroy an entire ship formation.

Free markets get little respect from Obama but are killing major planks of his big government platform

Despite the best efforts of the silk stocking radicals who have laid siege to Washington, the market system is stubbornly working its will and is now on the verge of burying two of the Obama administration's most valued objectives.

A government run health care insurer, designed to compete with existing private insurers, has been dropped. The rest of the health care agenda is largely window dressing, which will not discourage the White House from claiming a monumental victory when it is enacted.

What was important was the attempt to place the U.S. government at the table where health care issues are decided, a place that would have allowed government bureaucrats to enlarge again and again their role in health care.

The architect of Russian communism, Vladimir Lenin, regarded control of health care as vital, saying, "Medicine is the keystone of the socialist arch."

For the White House, Canada became a major problem because Americans have been reading and hearing for years about the long waits and bureaucratic procedures that patients encounter. Many seriously ill Canadians come to the United States for treatment at their own expense.

In recent months, opponents have exploited Canada Care's history, as well as recent revelations, in an effective campaign against socialized medicine. American voters, seldom fans of big government, became more and more outspoken in opposition to the Obama plan.

As if on cue, the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association said Monday that Canada's health care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig said patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Because of Canada Care's obvious liabilities, more than half of Americans say they would prefer no health reform at all to a reform that places government at the table, according to polls.

The free market has spoken. Obama has dropped the government option.

The other top-priority issue, global warming, remains on the table, but is, at best, on life support.

The House passed a cap and trade bill, effectively a tax on energy, before the August recess, but the Senate did not.

Shortly thereafter, China and India essentially blew off suggestions that they join the global warming hysteria and enact controls on carbon emissions.

China and India are developing rapidly and are heavily reliant on international trade. Handicapping their exporters with energy taxes would slow their development. They are tailoring their laws to suit international markets, not international elites or global warming careerists.

In doing so, China and India have checkmated the Obama administration. If the White House resumes its push for cap and trade, and pushes s bill through the Senate, it will be forcing American exporters to raise prices, damaging their ability to compete in international markets.

The recession would deepen. More workers would be unemployed.

Even if the vaunted $787 billion stimulus were to begin to work, cap and trade likely would halt any improvement.

Then, the Bush recession would be wholly owned by the White House.

Cap and trade is, for all practical purposes, dead.

Cap and trade, from feel good remedy to noose

One month after Democrats ramrodded cap and trade through the House, the measure is beginning to look like a noose around the necks of those who voted for it.

The list includes 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans.

The purpose of the bill was to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, pleasing global warming alarmists who had ignored the inconvenient truth that global warming vanished a decade ago.

Then, in short order, two more inconvenient truths materialized: China, a huge and rapidly growing industrial economy, declined to participate in either global warming hysteria or the remedies, and India soon followed suit.

This means that, even if the U.S. drops cap and trade, which is unlikely, China and India will continue to undercut American producers in international markets while their economies continue to outpace ours.

That's the rosy scenario.

If the administration abandons cap and trade, it will look weak and irresolute on an issue that the Democrats created and nurtured.

The third scenario is the hellish one. It is also the one that seems most likely to materialize. Determined to stick with his agenda, Obama continues to pursue cap and trade in the Senate.

In that event, Obama will be demonstrating a willingness to cripple U.S. companies in international markets, where their products would bear the added cost of carbon control and become even less competetive on price.

The net gain for air quality? zero.

National atmospheres are not stovepipes. Seal flatulence in Greenland will eventually find its way to Florida. Air sullied by coal dust from new power plants in China will eventually make its way to Camp David.

Cleansing the air over one's own country, at great expense, while other countries continue to pollute, is a fool's errand.

The three-alarm president must now pay the price of his alarmism. Two hundred and nineteen members of the House may share the experience.