Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 3:49 pm:

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When governments create and run businesses that is called "socialism." When private citizens create and run businesses that is called "free private enterprise." Someone who believes the people are better off if major businesses are publicly owned are called "socialists." OK, based on these definitions:

How many of you consider yourselves "socialists"?
How many of you would say that you are supporters of the "free private enterprise system"?
Now let me ask you free private enterprisers this: How many of you, in driving over here today, drove a part of the way on Interstate 80?

How many of you even realized at the time that you were riding on a socialist highway? Now that you know, does that bother you? Does that make you feel like a hypocrite? Were you disloyal to your ideology? Should you have walked, or searched for a privately-owned road?

Many of you attend socialist schools, ride socialist buses, go to socialist libraries, swim in socialist swimming pools, and vacation in socialist state and federal parks. You may believe that some of those services can be improved. You may even want to abolish some of them. But do you want to do it just because the label, "socialist," can be applied to them?

Or let's talk about "federal regulation." Are you opposed to federal regulation? Then let me ask you this.

Does it bother you that, wherever you drive on an interstate highway throughout this country it will be the same width, the exit ramps will look the same, the overpasses will be the same height above the road, the signs will be similar -- as a result of which there are fewer traffic accidents and deaths?

Why is that? It's a result of, horrible of horribles, "federal regulation."

Throughout my experience in government, politics, public policy and law, I have never found labels -- like "liberal" and "conservative," "regulation" and "deregulation," "states rights" and "federalism" -- very useful. It has been my experience that ideology -- indeed, generalizations of any kind -- just get in the way of problem solving.

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For an ideologue of the right, once you say something is "socialism" all further consideration ceases. For an ideologue of the left, "the marketplace" is an equal conversation stopper.

Tell a pragmatist that if airplanes aren't properly maintained they will fall out of the sky and kill people, and she will see why "federal regulation" is necessary. It sure makes more sense than asking states and cities to regulate the safety of the airplanes as they fly overhead.
On the other hand, a pragmatist would likely conclude that it makes more sense to have a city government employee replace the light bulbs in street lights when they burn out. Not much point to a federal agency doing that.
If we're going to have a uniform interstate highway system it's going to have to be built and maintained as a federal enterprise. A mish-mash of competitive, "marketplace," highways probably wouldn't make a lot of sense. The pragmatist doesn't care if you want to call that a "socialist" highway system or not. Federal standards, and federal dollars, are the most pragmatic solution to a practical problem, and that's all that matters. (The same thing goes for those socialist public schools, libraries, buses, swimming pools and parks.)
On the other hand, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have the federal government take over the grocery store business. Not if you have enough grocery stores operating in your community, and the antitrust laws are vigorously enforced. Marketplace competition will probably provide a wider choice of products and lower prices.

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Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 3:59 pm:

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The Interstate Highway System was the biggest public-works project in history. It outranks even the public works of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the Caesars of Rome, and the most powerful totalitarian dictators of the 20th century.

Did it provide jobs? Yes — for those who were among the politically privileged. The beneficiaries of the governmental largess were all of the special interests who built the highways — the engineers, contractors, cement companies, and the like — and, of course, the automobile industry itself.

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And with the taxes, congestion, and pollution which it brought in its wake, the Interstate Highway System is as big a failure as socialist schemes all over the world.

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Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:51 pm:

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do you think an airline that maintains their fleet and has a good safety record wont let you know?

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Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 10:50 pm:

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One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025. But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

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