Is Obama stumbling toward the right policy in Libya?

Over the last few days, we’ve been hearing that President Obama – along with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy – are considering arming the anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya (Reuters via Yahoo); already, a presidential finding is in place to make it happen (Reuters).

About two weeks ago, I made the case for just this policy. I still consider it the best option: it makes the anti-Qaddafi forces more dependent upon us; it can be limited initially to keep them viable, but not triumphant, until we figure out who among them are our friends; by steering the military aid to our friends, once we’ve determined who they are, we can ensure Qaddafi is replaced by pro-American forces instead of pro-al Qaeda ones. The policy worked like a charm in Ethiopia, where over a decade an anti-American Marxist rebel group was turned into a pro-American force that won the civil war in 1991 and made Ethiopia one of our best allies on the African continent. It can work again here.

By contrast, the air campaign has been far more indiscriminate (pro-American and anti-American rebels are both helped) and continues to risk American personnel. This would be the case even if the air campaign was properly explained to the American people – which, to date, has not been the case.

What we need now is to set a benchmark for the air campaign, meet it, and withdraw our forces. Let Libyans willing to fight Qaddafi do so, with weapons from us targeted towards boosting the pro-American forces within the resistance. If they don’t exist, arm the resistance enough to keep Qaddafi busy, but not to win until it improves its opinion towards us.

There is still a chance to get this right. I hope the president takes it, even accidentally.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Thank you, Governor McDonnell

While nearly everyone has been focused on the proposed district maps, Governor McDonnell did a very brave thing and vetoed the bill to raise medical malpractice caps (Washington Post).

Thank you, Governor, for doing what I asked about a month ago. I know it wasn’t easy.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

I’m still in the 4th!

Much to my surprise, Edd Houck chose not to extend his district eastward, and thus I’m still in the 4th State Senate District under the Senate Democrats’ map.

Yes, I know, Janet Howell has her name on it, but I have always presumed Edd could draw whatever district he wanted (being as his was the most Republican district represented by a Dem) and the caucus would simply graft it onto whatever they were doing.

Houck’s precision was surgical. He took out any precinct he lost in 2007; held on to his best precincts in Culpeper, and stretched out to a piece of Albemarle.

Yet he did not take a single Spotsylvanian from McDougle.

For more on the Spotsy situation, see here.

Cross-posted to On the Spot and VV

Our policy towards Syria is embarrassing

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke for the Administration, stating why we’re flattening Libya but doing nothing to help the anti-Assad forces in Syria. The answer is nauseatingly ignorant (Commentary):

There is a different leader in Syria now, many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer

Madame Secretary, one follow up question, please . . .

ARE YOU HIGH?!

This nonsense is mind-boggling on several levels: the current “leader” of Syria’s Ba’athist regime – Bashar Assad – has been in power since Mrs. Clinton was still First Lady (for the mathematically challenged, that’s eleven years ago). Moreover, whatever various ”members of Congress of both parties” might say (BTW, if she means Arlen Specter, he was indeed a member of both parties, but he’s not in Congress anymore so he doesn’t count), this “reformer” has done the following since he inherited the job from his bloodthirsty father:

• Turned his country into a haven for the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime
• Allowed his country to be a way-station for the above remnants, al Qaedites, and anyone else looking to kill Americans in Iraq – along with any Iraqis unwilling to succumb to would-be tyrants of Sunni or Shia stripe
• Cement ties with Hezbollah
• Assassinated Lebanon’s elected Prime Minister
• Move heaven and earth to undermine the anti-Syrian majority in Lebanon (successfully as of earlier this year)

This is no “reformer.”

I understand that we have few options when it comes to helping the Syrian people take their country back, but we do have some (Reagan managed to get aid to Solidarity during the 1980s). For this Administration to be so feckless as to claim that Assad – an Iranian stooge and enemy of the United States – as a “reformer” is maddening and embarrassing.

Cross-posted to BD

New district lines could come down tomorrow

If Tyler Whitely is to be believed (note to Tyler: that’s just a rhetorical flourish, not an integrity question), “Virginia lawmakers could introduce redistricting plans for the House of Delegates, Virginia Senate and Congress as early as Tuesday” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

This could – stress, could – mean that Edd Houck will unofficially swallow up the part of Spotsylvania County outside of his 17th State Senate District by this time tomorrow.

Now, as much as the rumors of a primary challenger to Houck would be fun to follow, I sincerely hope that I and as much of eastern Spotsy as possible can remain in the 4th District. It has been a real privilege to be served by Ryan McDougle, who among other things called the EPA to the carpet when it fudged stormwater data.

If I can stay in McDougle’s district, I will be thrilled; if not, I wish him well.

Cross-posted to On the Spot

“Their money was already there”

Voters in what is now the “eurozone” (the group of nations using the Euro as their currency) have never been consulted about it – largely because those voters who have been consulted have kept themselves out of the eurozone. Still, when they get the chance, it can be painful for the elites that dragged them into it and are insisting they stay there, as Germany’s Angela Merkel found out this weekend (AFP via Yahoo).

FWIW, I’ve been skeptical about the Euro from the start, in part due to my view of how large economies work. When I was in grad school, one of the discussions was whether economies had “monetary dominace” (i.e., the central bank could force governments to dial down deficits and debt) or “fiscal dominance” (i.e., governments could force the central bank to buy up its debt – the modern version of printing money to cover it). I’ve always believed the latter, and I extended that to mean that in a multinational currency, the weakest nation will force everyone else to devalue.

Well, it’s getting more difficult to determine which eurozone member is the weakest (Portugal, Ireland, Greece . . .) but it’s pretty clear that the Germans are desperate to prove me wrong by propping up every weak link – because to do otherwise would acknowledge that the Euro was a failure.

Moreover, because the European Union includes members outside the eurozone, the Germans have been able to convince non-eurozone members to kick in as well – provided they don’t have to face those pesky voters. As such, reports are that any attempt to secure the latest round of bailouts will have to wait until Finland gets their election out of the way (Economist): “Asking Finland to reach again for its credit card before the election would only boost the True Finns.”

True Finns is a relatively new, euroskeptic party in Finland. They have apparently been whacking the bailouts repeatedly; their leader, Timo Soini, was the author of this post’s title (Andrew Stuttaford – The Corner):

According to a Finnish friend who watched a recent pre-election debate on TV, Mr. Soini suggested that Finns should take their holidays in Greece ‘as their money was already there’.

Ouch.

Cross-posted to VV

Attention Fairfax: Any rate above $1.07 is a tax increase

It’s budget time in county courthouses throughout Virginia (my county – Spotsylvania – has its public hearing tonight), and in Fairfax, there is talk of reducing the current tax rate of $1.09.

To which I say this: there’d better be.

Fairfax assesses its real estate annually, so each year, the county’s equalization rate (i.e., the rate at which the government doesn’t get any additional revenue from the taxpayers) changes. When values rise (as they did this year), the equalization rate is lower than the current rate. In other words, holding to the current tax rate of $1.09 is a tax increase.

Given the state’s method for calculating the equalization, it comes to $1.07 for Fairfax. Therefore, any rate above $1.07 is a tax increase on Fairfax property owners.

Before anyone starts warbling about the effect on the county budget, keep this in mind: by their own admission, county staff presented a budget with $30 million extra “for the Board’s deliberations” (according to the WaPo, it’s as high as $34.7 million).  A two-cent cut in the real estate tax would reduce revenue by $38.1 million, meaning, at most, only $8.1 million would need to be cut: that’s a reduction of less than ¼% of the county budget.

I find it hard to believe Fairfax would suffer from a budget coming under that lathe.

There are, if memory serves, three Republican Supervisors (out of 10) on the Fairfax County Board, and Dranseville Democrat John Foust is open to lowering the rate from $1.09 (WaPo again). However, the benchmark shouldn’t be $1.09, but $1.07. Any rate above $1.07 is a tax increase.

Cross-posted to VV

Uh oh, eh?

Does anyone else out there get a sense of deja vu reading this from Macleans (emphasis added)?

David LePoidevin isn’t the first person to suggest Canada’s roaring housing market is headed for a U.S.-style crash. But he is a rare breed of money manager for daring to point a finger at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the country’s biggest mortgage insurer. In a fall 2009 note to his clients, LePoidevin questioned what was underpinning the country’s skyrocketing home prices, aside from rock-bottom interest rates. “The stock market was sure not providing huge capital gains to the masses,” he wrote. “Did the banks all of a sudden open up the lending spigots? In fact banks have actually reduced the number of their mortgages held from the peak of third quarter of 2008. The smoking gun is the CMHC and its securitization policies.”

As mainstream economic commentary in Canada goes, it was damning stuff. And it provided ammunition to critics who argue the Crown corporation’s policies have inflated a housing bubble. The CMHC is arguably the most influential player in Canada’s $1-trillion housing market. Its main function is to provide mortgage insurance for prospective homeowners who put less than 20 per cent down on their houses, protecting the banks in the event of defaults. The CMHC also helps to spread risk by finding investors to buy CMHC-insured mortgages that have been pooled together into so-called mortgage-backed securities. All of this is guaranteed by the government. 

I swear I’ve seen this movie before – and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

I’m not the only one (same link, emphasis added again):

It’s a familiar-sounding story to American ears. “The Canadian government mortgage apparatus echoes uncannily our experiences down here with Fannie and Freddie” says Jim Grant, author of the widely read Grant’s Interest Rate Observer newsletter. “CMHC has distorted the housing market by making homes, especially ones that are on the pricier end of the spectrum, more affordable and encouraged a lot of people to get in over their heads.”

Grant and other critics argue the CMHC’s balance sheet looks strikingly similar to both Fannie and Freddie . . .

Oh dear.

Now, it should be noted that Canada is also riding a resource boom (the Great White North is our largest source of imported oil, by far – to the tune of nearly double what Saudi Arabia sells us), but oil has fluctutated wildly over the last two years, and no one in the summer of 2008 expected the commodity to lose half its value by Christmas.

Even if that doesn’t happen again, Canada’s housing market – which ironically was praised as being a far safer bet in 2008 than ours – could do the same damage north of the 49th that we have seen here on the south side of the border.

Stay tuned.

Cross-posted to BD

And they call it “green energy” . . .

We’ve all heard about the wonders of wind power, that supposedly green technology that can provide energy without pollutants.

Why do I say, “supposedly”?

Here’s why (Daily Mail, UK):

Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

How bad is this deadly by-product of this “renewable energy” cherished by lefties? This bad:

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.
For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

. . .

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

Nice to know that Communist China remains the paragon for accountability that it’s always been.

Keep this in mind whenever you hear about how wonderful “green” energy is, or how advanced the ChiComs are in this field.

Cross-posted to VV

Watch Syria

Iran’s puppet regime is facing a (small) popular uprising. Its reaction, frankly, stuns me (BBC, emphasis added):

Demonstrators in the southern Syrian city of Deraa have set fire to several buildings during a third consecutive day of protests, witnesses say.
One report said the buildings targeted included the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party.

. . .

The protesters are said to be in control of the centre of the city and to have turned a mosque into a field hospital.

. . .

Protests were also reported in other parts of the country on Friday and Sunday, and human rights activists said the authorities had been arresting those who took part.

. . .

The BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones reports from neighbouring Lebanon that Syrian authorities are using a combination of force and concessions to try to prevent further protests.

A combination of force and concessions?

The fellow who currently runs Syria – Bashar Assad – inherited the job from his farther, Hafez al-Assad. In 1982, Papa Assad faced a similar uprising in Hama. He reduced the city to rubble, executed anyone he could find there (about 20,000-40,000 people, depending on the source), and erased Hama from the map. Every Syrian who was alive then knows what happened, and has been quaking in fear ever since.

Unless Assad the younger decides to erase Deraa (and soon), the Syrian people wiil quickly conclude that he has less resolve and strength than his father – at which point, all hell breaks loose.

So keep an eye on Syria. It is the lynchpin of Tehran’s region hegemon strategy. If it goes into turmoil – or actually falls to an anti-mullahcratic resistance - the region will never be the same.

Emphasis on “if,” mind you, but it’s still well worth watching.

Cross-posted to BD