As we already know, there is foreign ownership of many of our roads already, Indiana, for one.
Margie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 7:32 AM
By: Paul M. Weyrich
The Reason Foundation estimates that states of the Union are facing a $9 billion a year shortfall to deal with infrastructure, mainly roads.
Governors aren’t sure what to do about the problem. The public is intolerant when it comes to raising taxes. From the public’s point of view, tolls are taxes, so raising tolls is also politically radioactive. As a consequence, more and more governors are turning to so-called private/public investments.
The latest to turn to this “solution” is Pennsylvania’s Gov. Edward G. (Ed) Rendell. At least he has been popular. But what of his announcement that the Albertis Group of Spain was the winner of major competition to lease portions of the Pennsylvania Turnpike? The multiyear lease could bring in as much as $18 billion, depending on how much of the turnpike is leased.
It would appear that the public does not like private interests leasing infrastructure. When the leasing agent is from a foreign country the opposition goes off the charts. When the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, upon which I served, took up the question of private/public investments the recommendation only passed when commissioners agreed that no foreign government or private consortium should be the leasing agent.
In other words, if states are to make a deal let it be with fellow Americans and not a foreign country.
The public, having paid for the building of toll roads, feels as if they own these facilities and they just intensely dislike foreign entities owning them. One libertarian economist who favors such partnerships said when asked about public reaction, “Well, if it gets to be a problem we can always nationalize the facility."
I suppose so but that is highly unlikely to happen, especially when the United States would then be nationalizing facilities belonging to an ally. Or if an ally becomes an enemy, then what? Do we want enemies holding key properties in this country?
The problem is not simple. Revenues from the highway trust fund are declining and will be out of money in only a few years. And as people drive less (this last Memorial Day we saw the first decline in people going on trips since 9/11) tolls produce less revenue.
If a private/public partnership owns the toll road it can raise tolls any time without public hearings and without being subject to the political pressure that any current plan to raise tolls would have.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels got in hot water for leasing portions of the Indiana Turnpike to a foreign entity. His opponent this November is making that lease an issue.
Only Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who leased the Chicago Skyway for $1.8 billion to a consortium consisting of Macquarie and Cintra from Spain, may have survived politically. Gov. Rendell claims that his $12.8 billion deal with bring in 13 percent more revenue than the state is able to collect.
He said without the tolls that the private/public partnership will bring in the toll revenue from state ownership would be only $450 million annually compared with $1.7 billion needed for infrastructure expenditures over the next 10 years. It now costs $22.75 to cross Pennsylvania. Next year there will be a 25 percent increase in tolls. And inflation increases will be permitted at 2.5 percent per year. At the end of a 75-year lease, Dennis Enright, a principal of New Jersey-based NW Financial Group, told The Wall Street Journal, it would like cost $176 to cross the state.
That is exactly what citizens of Pennsylvania fear, although very few current drivers would be behind the wheel at the end of the lease.
My father always said when a deal appears too good to be true it probably is. Foreign money for infrastructure looks tempting but it may not be worth the political grief to those who propose it and put it through.
Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Obama Needs a Quick Refresher Course in Cold War History
May 22, 2008
Obama Needs a Quick Refresher Course in Cold War History
KT McFarland
Recently, Sen. Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, among other rogue leaders, without preconditions, suggesting his approach would be consistent with the best, and strongest, American foreign policy of the past century.
"Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries," said Obama. "That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao."
Not so fast. I was in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and I can attest that those Presidents understood the danger of prematurely forcing top-level meetings without sufficient preconditions. Neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan would sit down for face-to-face meetings with their counterparts in enemy nations until America had some realistic - and playable - bargaining chips. They recognized that negotiating without leverage isn't negotiating, it's begging.
Nixon and his brilliant national security adviser Henry Kissinger knew that to end the Vietnam War, they would have to cut off North Vietnam's supply chain, which came from the Soviet Union through China. What leverage could Nixon get with the Soviets and the Chinese? China needed training and technology to enter the modern world - as well as breathing space from foreign threats in order to modernize its economy. Nixon calculated that, taken together, these were more important to China than fighting a proxy war in Vietnam.
Nixon also recognized the Sino-Soviet Communist alliance was cracking, and we could exploit it by being China's great power counterweight to the Soviet Union. The threat of a loose Sino-American alliance gave us the leverage we needed to get the Soviets to the negotiating table on arms control. Nixon met with Mao Zedong only after he had the leverage needed to negotiate.
Similarly, Reagan waited until his second term to deal with the Soviets. He used the first term to line up the leverage necessary to negotiate from a position of strength. He rebuilt America's defenses, which had atrophied after Vietnam. He reached out to allies in Europe and strengthened our alliances worldwide. He knew the Soviet economy was a sham; the Kremlin was heavily dependent on hard currency from selling oil abroad. So Reagan worked to drive down the international price of oil, which weakened the Soviet economy from within.
And when all those elements had been put in place, Reagan delivered the coup de grace and introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense plan that challenged the Soviets to a nuclear arms race Reagan knew they could neither afford nor win.
Obama said recently that Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev "led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall."
He's got it turned around. Reagan built up the leverage first, and then negotiated. He didn't believe we could talk the Soviets into anything they didn't want to do, nor trust them without verification. Reagan was a man of considerable persuasive powers, but he didn't defeat communism and win the Cold War because he was able to charm and cajole Gorbachev during direct negotiations. He won it because by the time he sat down to negotiate, America held all the cards.
I don't disagree that the next President needs to talk to the Iranians. Dealing with them will be an essential step in ending the war in Iraq, stabilizing the Middle East and pressing Iran to dismantle its nuclear program.
The question is who, when and how. We all have the right - indeed, the obligation - to ask exactly what leverage a President Obama would carry with him to the negotiating table, and how he plans to get it.
Obama Needs a Quick Refresher Course in Cold War History
KT McFarland
Recently, Sen. Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, among other rogue leaders, without preconditions, suggesting his approach would be consistent with the best, and strongest, American foreign policy of the past century.
"Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries," said Obama. "That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao."
Not so fast. I was in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and I can attest that those Presidents understood the danger of prematurely forcing top-level meetings without sufficient preconditions. Neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan would sit down for face-to-face meetings with their counterparts in enemy nations until America had some realistic - and playable - bargaining chips. They recognized that negotiating without leverage isn't negotiating, it's begging.
Nixon and his brilliant national security adviser Henry Kissinger knew that to end the Vietnam War, they would have to cut off North Vietnam's supply chain, which came from the Soviet Union through China. What leverage could Nixon get with the Soviets and the Chinese? China needed training and technology to enter the modern world - as well as breathing space from foreign threats in order to modernize its economy. Nixon calculated that, taken together, these were more important to China than fighting a proxy war in Vietnam.
Nixon also recognized the Sino-Soviet Communist alliance was cracking, and we could exploit it by being China's great power counterweight to the Soviet Union. The threat of a loose Sino-American alliance gave us the leverage we needed to get the Soviets to the negotiating table on arms control. Nixon met with Mao Zedong only after he had the leverage needed to negotiate.
Similarly, Reagan waited until his second term to deal with the Soviets. He used the first term to line up the leverage necessary to negotiate from a position of strength. He rebuilt America's defenses, which had atrophied after Vietnam. He reached out to allies in Europe and strengthened our alliances worldwide. He knew the Soviet economy was a sham; the Kremlin was heavily dependent on hard currency from selling oil abroad. So Reagan worked to drive down the international price of oil, which weakened the Soviet economy from within.
And when all those elements had been put in place, Reagan delivered the coup de grace and introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense plan that challenged the Soviets to a nuclear arms race Reagan knew they could neither afford nor win.
Obama said recently that Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev "led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall."
He's got it turned around. Reagan built up the leverage first, and then negotiated. He didn't believe we could talk the Soviets into anything they didn't want to do, nor trust them without verification. Reagan was a man of considerable persuasive powers, but he didn't defeat communism and win the Cold War because he was able to charm and cajole Gorbachev during direct negotiations. He won it because by the time he sat down to negotiate, America held all the cards.
I don't disagree that the next President needs to talk to the Iranians. Dealing with them will be an essential step in ending the war in Iraq, stabilizing the Middle East and pressing Iran to dismantle its nuclear program.
The question is who, when and how. We all have the right - indeed, the obligation - to ask exactly what leverage a President Obama would carry with him to the negotiating table, and how he plans to get it.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Republican Leaders Must Resign
Viguerie: Republican Leaders Must Resign
The Republican Party must replace its leadership or conservatives will continue to withhold support and the GOP will face “disaster” in November, leading conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie declared.
“Republican Party leaders must resign,” said Viguerie, publisher of ConservativeHQ.com and the pioneer of political direct mail.
“Leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed — or outright betrayed — the conservative voters who put them in their positions.
“The result is that the Republican Party’s brand has become a negative to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps even worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover.”
Viguerie made these points:
- The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is soaring.
- Contributions to Republican candidates and committees are way off, while donations to Democrats are "setting records."
- In this year’s primaries, votes for GOP candidates at all levels are running far behind the Democrats.
- In recent special elections, Republicans lost House seats in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi that had long been in GOP hands — all in districts carried overwhelmingly by President Bush. A single election can be a fluke, but when Republicans lose three seemingly safe seats in a row, “disaster is looming.”
“The hard work of the last 50 years by millions of conservative campaign workers, donors, candidates, writers, intellectuals, and activists has been trashed,” he said.
“The conservative movement has been set back 10 to 20 years — possibly even permanently — by politicians consumed by power.”
He named a number of prominent Republicans, including President Bush, Karl Rove, party chairman Mike Duncan, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt.
“Some deserve more of the blame than others, but they are all part of an establishment that has brought the Republican Party down,” added Viguerie, whose latest book is “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big-Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.”
“For things to change, for conservatives to be justified in once again giving our contributions, our volunteer efforts, our energy, and votes to the GOP, the party must clean house. The party leadership should resign immediately.
“Republicans are doomed to wander in the political wilderness until this generation of weak-kneed, no-vision, inarticulate, afraid-of-the-liberal-media politicians are replaced with principled conservatives in the mold of Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.”
Viguerie has this message for the current GOP leadership: “For the future of the Republican Party, for America, and the cause of freedom: Go!”
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Obama's 143 Days of Senate Experience
Posted By Cheri Jacobus On May 5, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Just how much Senate experience does Barack Obama have in terms of actual work days? Not much.
From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.
After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan.
143 days -- I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.
In contrast, John McCain's 26 years in Congress, 22 years of military service including 1,966 days in captivity as a POW in Hanoi now seem more impressive than ever. At 71, John McCain may just be hitting his stride.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Republicans and Blacks,
Dr. Thomas Sowell's recent column, "Republicans and Blacks," (April 10, 2008) pointed out the foolhardiness of Republican strategy to secure more black votes. He pointed out that it is a losing strategy to reach blacks through the civil rights organizations and black politicians. It's like a quarterback trying to throw a pass to a receiver surrounded by a bunch of defenders. The second losing strategy is to appeal to blacks by offering the same kinds of things that Democrats offer -- token honors, politically correct rhetoric and welfare state handouts. Sowell suggests that Republican strategy should be to highlight the liberal Democratic agenda that has done great harm to the poorest of the black community. Among those he mentions is the environmental agenda where "tens of thousands of blacks who have been forced out of a number of liberal Democratic California counties by skyrocketing housing prices, brought on by Democratic environmentalists' severe restrictions on the building of homes or apartments." Since 1970, San Francisco's black population has been cut in half.   New York subway hero Wesley Autrey points toward U.S. President George W. Bush during an event celebrating African American History Month at the White House in Washington February 12, 2007. Autrey jumped onto subway tracks last month to pin down a stricken stranger just in time to allow an oncoming train to pass over them. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES)
Then there are the liberal judges and parole boards who have turned criminals loose to prey on black communities. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, between 1976 and 2005, while 13 percent of the population, blacks committed over 52 percent of the nation's homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer. The Democratic leadership gives unquestioned support of teacher unions that have delivered near criminally fraudulent education. Professors Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom's book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," reports that the average black high school graduate performs a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography. Black education is the worst in cities where Democrats, both black and white, have held the reigns of political power for decades and in cities spending the largest amount of money on education. Washington, D.C., ranking third in the nation in terms of per-pupil expenditures, is a classic example. At 12 of its 19 high schools, more than 50 percent of the students test below basic in reading, and at some of those schools the percentage approaches 80 percent. At 15 of these schools, over 50 percent test below basic in math, and in 12 of them 70 to 99 percent do so. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which conducts periodic testing, defines "below basic" as not having any of the knowledge and skills to master a subject. Both Democratic and Republican leaders give support to economic agendas harmful to poor black people. A particularly egregious example is New York City's taxicab licensing law that requires that a person, as of May 2007, pay $600,000 for a license to own and operate one taxicab. Then there's the Davis-Bacon Act that mandates "prevailing wages" be paid on all federally financed or assisted construction projects. The Davis-Bacon Act is a pro-union law that discriminates against non-unionized black construction contractors and black workers. In fact, that was the original intent of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. During its 1931 legislative debate, quite a few congressmen expressed their racist intentions, such as Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., who said, "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." While today's supporters of the Davis-Bacon Act talk differently, its discriminatory effects are the same. If a politician had the guts to take on these issues, it's stupid to address them through the black civil rights or education establishment, or the black political structure. The reason is that blacks who are members of, or are served by, these establishments have an interest in the status quo. |
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
Friday, May 2, 2008
If there are natural cooling cycles...........
My own thoughts are:
If there are natural cooling cycles, doesn't it stand to reason there would be natural warming cycles?
************
Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 30/04/2008
Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.
Weather Channel boss calls global warming 'the greatest scam in history'
Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Global warming may stop, scientists predict The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen Melting icebergs: The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen
The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.
This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.
However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that."
He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.
The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.
Today's paper in Nature tries to simulate the variability of these events and longer cycles, such as the giant ocean "conveyor belt" known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which brings warm water north into the North East Atlantic.
This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again.
# Global warming forecast predicts rise in 2014
Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming."
The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office's Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.
Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic.
"Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"That emphasises once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades."
But he said the use of just sea surface temperatures might not accurately reflect the state of the MOC, which was several miles deep and dependent on factors besides temperatures, such as salt content, which were included in the Met Office Hadley Centre model.
If the model could accurately forecast other variables besides temperature, such as rainfall, it would be increasingly useful, but climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain, he added.
If there are natural cooling cycles, doesn't it stand to reason there would be natural warming cycles?
************
Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 30/04/2008
Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.
Weather Channel boss calls global warming 'the greatest scam in history'
Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Global warming may stop, scientists predict The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen Melting icebergs: The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen
The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.
This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.
However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that."
He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.
The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.
Today's paper in Nature tries to simulate the variability of these events and longer cycles, such as the giant ocean "conveyor belt" known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which brings warm water north into the North East Atlantic.
This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again.
# Global warming forecast predicts rise in 2014
Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming."
The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office's Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.
Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic.
"Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"That emphasises once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades."
But he said the use of just sea surface temperatures might not accurately reflect the state of the MOC, which was several miles deep and dependent on factors besides temperatures, such as salt content, which were included in the Met Office Hadley Centre model.
If the model could accurately forecast other variables besides temperature, such as rainfall, it would be increasingly useful, but climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain, he added.
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