Free Republic

Attempts to lift the prices of particular commodities permanently above their natural market levels have failed so often, so disastrously and so notoriously that sophisticated pressure groups, and the bureaucrats upon whom they apply the pressure, seldom openly avow that aim. Their stated aims, particularly when they are first proposing that the government intervene, are usually more modest, and more plausible. They have no wish, they declare, to raise the price of commodity X permanently above its natural level. That, they concede, would be unfair to consumers. But it is now obviously selling far below its natural level. The producers...

THE LOBBIES OF Congress are crowded with representatives of the X industry. The X industry is sick. The X industry is dying. It must be saved. It can be saved only by a tariff, by higher prices, or by a subsidy. If it is allowed to die, workers will be thrown on the streets. Their landlords, grocers, butchers, clothing stores and local motion pictures will lose business, and depression will spread in ever-widening circles. But if the X industry, by prompt action of Congress, is saved—ah then! It will buy equipment from other industries; more men will be employed; they...

Those ticket taxes you pay when you fly can really cause the price to jump, but now a new report reveals some of that money is going to airports that only service private planes. An investigation by USA Today reveals millions of dollars in taxes collected from commercial passengers are going to little used airports that only service private planes, including over 50 airports in Kansas....

BRUSSELS (AFP) – The World Trade Organisation has judged European subsidies paid to Airbus illegal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing a source "familiar with the matter". But European sources who declined to be named told AFP that the interim ruling released by the WTO indicated that the US complaint was only partially upheld. The Journal reported from Brussels that the WTO concluded that every launch-aid package given to Airbus for the development of its A380 double-decker long-range airliner was an illegal subsidy. The conclusion was contained in a report of around 1,000 pages, with hard copies only...

Many of the lenders eligible to receive billions of dollars from the government's massive foreclosure prevention program helped fuel the housing crisis by issuing risky subprime loans, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the Center for Public Integrity. Under the $75 billion program, called Making Home Affordable, lenders are eligible for taxpayer subsidies to lower the mortgage payments of distressed borrowers. Of the top 25 participants in the program, at least 21 specialized in servicing or originating subprime loans, according to the center, a nonprofit investigative reporting group funded largely by charitable foundations. Much "of this money...

Farmers in Michigan and six other states are harvesting a bumper crop of tart cherries. But the bounty is turning out to be the pits for farmers whose fruit is rotting in orchards instead of bubbling in cherry pies. Under a Depression-era federal program designed to keep prices from plummeting, tart-cherry farmers are being told by fruit processors to leave up to 40% of their crop unharvested. "It's kind of heartbreaking," said Rob Manigold, a tart-cherry farmer near Traverse City, Mich. Michigan grows about 75% of all the tart cherries in the U.S.

OVER the last two years, it has looked like New York would have to adjust to living without so many golden eggs from the Wall Street goose. But now Wall Street profits are booming again -- so we can relax, right? Wrong. This is an empty boom that's based on government subsidy, not economic reality. Goldman Sachs and the rest are benefitting from conditions that can't last -- the two big ones being zero interest rates and the implicit backing of the federal government in the wake of last fall's bailouts. These conditions let Wall Street make big, speculative bets...

In many ways, our health care system is broken. Even people satisfied with their own care are nervous about losing it, concerned about rising costs, and frustrated by the failure of government to bring about genuine reform. But the reason Congress has so far been unable to fix our health care problems is that Congress is too busy creating the problems in the first place. That’s why the current proposals emanating from the White House and congressional Democrats won’t work either. Those proposals would hand over the most personal, private undertaking of our lives — health care — to the...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

I heard about King Corn when Nora Gedgaudas interviewed Curt Ellis, one of the film’s creators. Ellis and his co-creator Ian Cheney decided to learn about the dominance of corn in our food supply by growing an acre of corn in Iowa, then following where corn goes after it’s harvested. The short answer is: it goes into pretty much everything. People like to blame the big, bad food industry for turning us into a nation of corn-eaters, but it was clear to me (and yes, this fits nicely with my own bias) that the problem is rooted in stupid government...

“Voters want action on energy,� one congresswoman told The Washington Post. “They don’t really care how much it costs.� A Democratic president was on the verge of signing “the most important energy legislation in a decade,� with tens of billions of dollars dedicated to jump-starting a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels and helping the United States achieve “energy independence.� For too long, most analysts agreed, America had put off the hard choices necessary to prevent the next oil shock and wean the country from petrodictators in the Middle East. Now was the time for bold investment and leadership from Washington.The...

Repeating past mistakes has long been a part of Washington's energy policy, but Congress used to wait a while before making the same blunder again. Not anymore. New legislation requiring wind energy closely resembles the ethanol mandate that sparked a backlash just last year. For many years, wind has benefited from generous tax credits and subsidies, but it still provides less than 2 percent of the nation's electricity. By comparison, coal supplies around 50 percent (and with considerably fewer federal incentives). Natural gas and nuclear, meanwhile, account for about 20 percent each. No wonder wind supporters want a federal mandate...

Minnesota should get out of the business of subsidizing the state's ethanol industry, the Legislative Auditor's office said today. In a report on the sometimes-controversial program that pays producers of corn-based ethanol, the office found that the subsidy program fails to maximize the energy and environmental benefits of the fuel. The money, $93 million paid to producers over the past five years, could be better spent on other programs that do a better job of reaching those goals, it concluded. Plus, at a time of crushing state budget deficits, the $44 million expected to be spent on the program through...

Ask most people in America today whether buying a home is better than renting one, and you’ll likely get a response that equates renting with stuffing money down a garbage disposal. The idea of homeownership today is not one that simply evokes the comfort or pride of living in a place of one’s own. Instead, it’s become part of a common investment philosophy. But if you ask Edmund Phelps, the Nobel Prize-winning economist from Columbia University, he’ll proudly declare that he doesn’t own a home. And to him, that’s not a bad thing. “It used to be that the business...

Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson, and David Rockefeller are among tens of thousands of Americans claiming to be farmers who are getting paid by the United States government for NOT growing certain crops. They DON’T grow corn soy, sugar, cotton peanuts and other crops. They don’t grow rice or tobacco and DON’T heard certain animals. Some of these “not growing” deals paid big money to people who are already very wealthy. I say great for them, this is America and we are capitalists! I want my payments too. I don’t own a farm so I can’t make much of a case...

Energy Policy: Obama announces his energy team without mentioning a green source of renewable energy that could create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate a vital manufacturing sector — nuclear power.The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." Except that for these alternative sources there's been a severe...

The Greater Toronto Area needs a gazillion dollars to fund Metrolinx, a mega mega transportation system of light rail, commuter trains, subways, highways, roads, and bicycle paths designed to reach every ward in an 8,000 square kilometre operating region approaching six million people. It will cost more than governments can afford, say its government backers. The answer, the backers say, is a toll road system that extends across the GTA and finances the transit megaproject. I have a better idea. Install the GTA-wide toll road system and scrap Metrolinx. Once roads are tolled, the population growth that is now projected...

A MINORITY VIEW BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008, AND THEREAFTER Destroying Liberty Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government. While imperfect in its execution, the founders of our nation sought to make an exception to this ugly part of mankind's...

WASILLA, Alaska -- The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters. The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla....

California's electrical utilities probably will miss the state's 2010 deadline for increasing their use of renewable power and could face a serious obstacle if Congress does not extend tax credits for wind farms and solar plants, according to a report issued Friday. By the end of 2010, the state's large, investor-owned utilities are supposed to ensure that 20 percent of the power they sell comes from such renewable sources as the sun and wind. Utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have been frantically signing contracts with wind farm and solar power plant developers to meet that deadline. But...

From Mexico to India to China, governments fearful of inflation and street protests are heavily subsidizing energy prices, particularly for diesel fuel. But the subsidies — estimated at $40 billion this year in China alone — are also removing much of the incentive to conserve fuel. The oil company BP, known for thorough statistical analysis of energy markets, estimates that countries with subsidies accounted for 96 percent of the world’s increase in oil use last year — growth that has helped drive prices to record levels. In most countries that do not subsidize fuel, high prices have caused oil demand...

- Jerry Taylor is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Virtually every claim made by T. Boone Pickens to justify the lavish subsidies he is seeking for his wind energy investments is flat wrong. First, oil imports are not the cause of high gasoline prices. On the contrary, oil imports serve to keep gasoline prices down. After all, we import oil for a reason -- it's cheaper than the domestic alternative. If we were to restrict our energy diet to energy produced in the United States, it would make domestic energy producers (like Mr. Pickens) far richer and energy...

Gasoline would be cheaper if countries ended their oil subsidies and let markets rule. In China, the government caps gas prices. Drivers there pay about half of what Americans pay. In many countries, oil prices are held artificially low, either by fiat or subsidy. The result? Consumption keeps rising, boosting global prices. About half of humanity, from India to Chile, now benefits from cut-rate petroleum prices. In 2008, these countries will account for all the growth in world oil demand, or an additional one million barrels a day, according to Deutsche Bank. Their consumption will be the highest in eight...

With grain prices soaring, farm income at record highs and the federal budget deficit widening, the subsidies and handouts given to American farmers would seem vulnerable to a serious pruning. But it appears that farmers, at least so far, have succeeded in stopping the strongest effort in years to shrink the government safety net that doles out billions of dollars to them each year. Influential interest groups -- which had toyed with supporting changes -- cut deals to get their own piece of the action. Lawmakers who supported an overhaul peeled off as the debate moved into the election year....

One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” Let’s look at some of the “wonders” of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline. Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must...

Officials with the Spanish toll road operator Cintra have announced that the company has secured $430 million in loans from the U.S. government to build and operate two segments of a toll road in central Texas. Cintra officials announced the company’s financial plan for the $1.36 billion Highway 130 segments on Monday, March 10. OOIDA Senior Government Affairs Representative Mike Joyce told Land Line that the Association does raise red flags when federal dollars are used to subsidize private investors. Officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are not, however, categorically opposed to a state using future toll revenue to...

AS CONGRESS and the administration wrangle over a new farm bill before the current version expires next Saturday, here are two numbers that may help clarify the issues: $5.74 and $92.3 billion. The former is the price of a bushel of corn on Wednesday, a historic high. The latter is the Agriculture Department's estimate for farm income; it is 4.1 percent above the $88.7 billion farmers made in 2007 and 51 percent above the average for the past 10 years.Yet in this flush time for farmers, House and Senate conferees are contemplating a farm bill that might cost $10 billion...

Problematic Parking: Phoenix proposes to pay dearly for an unlikely “public good” Patrick Gibbons, Goldwater Institute, March 04, 2008 Arizona’s constitution prohibits corporate subsidies by outlawing “any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association or corporation.” Despite this, last year the City of Phoenix awarded a $97.4 million “incentive” to Klutznick Company, the developers of the CityNorth mall in north Phoenix. To stay within the bounds of the constitution and past Arizona Supreme Court decisions, the City has to prove it is buying a public good at an equal market value to the monetary incentive. In...

This is one of my recent columns, addressing ill-advised corn subsidies... From the 10 December 2007 Lockport Union Sun and Journal (Lockport, NY) CORN SUBSIDIES SHOULD GO DOWN By Bob Confer Federal subsidization of agriculture has become a necessary evil, more or less out of its own existence. Such is the outcome when government so greatly interferes in capitalistic endeavors: once the dominoes are set into motion by its "invisible hand" the damage is done and the pieces can never be put back to normal. We cannot go back to a true free market economy in regard to our foodstuff...

If you want to dismay an economist, just mention the phrase "national champion." The phrase won't call to mind great sporting heroes, but wheezing corporate behemoths protected from domestic competition, propped up with generous government subsidies and shielded behind trade barriers. Why would the government ever choose to provide such handouts? The justification is that a "national champion," strengthened with subsidies and protected from pesky irritations like local competitors and creditors, should be well equipped to beat rivals on the global stage. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. "No industrial policy has been more comprehensively discredited than the notion that...

LAVISH subsidies and high electricity prices have turned Britain’s onshore wind farms into an extraordinary moneyspinner, with a single turbine capable of generating £500,000 of pure profit per year. According to new industry figures, a typical 2 megawatt (2MW) turbine can now generate power worth £200,000 on the wholesale markets - plus another £300,000 of subsidy from taxpayers. Since such turbines cost around £2m to build and last for 20 or more years, it means they can pay for themselves in just 4-5 years and then produce nothing but profit. The lucrative outlook has led to a surge in planning...

A monstrous week! From Cloverfield to monster primary campaigns, not to mention the monstrous problem with the economy. The scariest thing isn’t that the economy’s sick … it’s that the government’s playing doctor! Uncle Jay explains the government’s “stimulus” plan to make our economy as secure as our borders. http://www.unclejayexplains.com/

John McCain did America a favor last night and lost the Michigan Primary to Mitt Romney. That was thoughtful of him, because I believe his legislative history on taxation and immigration would make him a potentially detrimental US President. However, I’m bothered by the manner in which he lost last night’s Michigan Primary. John McCain lost because he told people the truth. He explained to Michigan that their political leadership, their unions and their corporate executives had spent the last 30 years trashing the Michigan economy. He told them that they were not going to get back the jobs that...

I never knew that payment of "sales taxes" to state and local governments was negotiable. Business owners may be allowed to keep them for themselves, sometimes. The power of government to cut side deals with the biggest business owners is the theme of this book. It particularly focuses on those deals that don't particularly benefit taxpayers, but aren't often questioned or receive much public attention. Conclusion of the article, cut and pasted: "...as Adam Smith predicted, the pursuit of subsidies is causing business to make decisions that otherwise would be unsound, Johnston writes. “Somehow, we need to break this cycle,...

A multi-billion euro showcase project aimed at getting Europe’s trains to run seamlessly from one country to another is unnecessarily complex and has been poorly managed, prompting a series of costly delays, according to leading figures in the sector. The European Rail Traffic Management System has been hampered by the need to accommodate widely differing operating practices from across the Continent into a single system, according to industry figures who now question whether it was wise for Brussels to press ahead with the venture without first integrating rules. The project is the latest in a long line of ambitious, pan-European...

Kenny Gamble is best known for being "the architect of the Philly Soul Sound."...But Gamble is also the architect of a planned stealth Islamist enclave in Philadelphia where he is better known in Muslim circles as Brother Luqman Abdul Haqq. Gamble has admitted that he intends to bring about the Muslim community in South Philadelphia through his "Universal Companies" and proclaims that his state and federally subsidized funded building endeavors are part of an Islamist blueprint, "We are not down here just for Universal-we are down here for Islam." In 1975 after a personal crisis Gamble converted to Islam and...

sugar tariffs, put in place by law and enforced by the USDA, are so complicated that many people give up worrying about it. After all, paying $2.25 for a five pound bag of sugar is no big deal. Unless you consider that we could be paying as low as a dollar for that five pound bag, and wholesale purchases of sugar by companies like Coca-Cola, Heinz, and Kraft would pay even less. So here's the Sugar Tariff in action: First, USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation lends money each year to sugar cane processors at a specific rate per pound of sugar....

This is the section of the Farm bill that just passed the Senate that provides $30,000,000 in taxpayer money to Asparagus growers. S.2302 Food and Energy Security Act of 2007 SEC. 1852. MARKET LOSS ASSISTANCE FOR ASPARAGUS PRODUCERS. (a) In General- As soon as practicable after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall make payments to producers of the 2007 crop of asparagus for market loss resulting from imports during the 2004 through 2007 crop years. (b) Payment Rate- The payment rate for a payment under this section shall be based on the reduction in revenue received...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Senate on Friday approved a $286 billion farm bill with an election-year expansion of subsidies for growers and food stamps for the poor. The bill, passed on a 79-14 vote, expands subsidies for wheat, barley, oat, soybeans and several other crops and creates new grants for vegetable and fruit growers. It also increase loan rates for sugar producers, extends dairy programs and provide more dollars for renewable energy and conservation programs to protect environmentally sensitive farmland over the next five years. President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation, saying it costs too much and should...

AFTER MUCH arcane political wrangling and procedural disputation, the Senate began debating a new five-year farm bill on Friday. Much of the price tag, projected at $288 billion, is accounted for by food stamps and other nutrition programs, but tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers are included, too. Notwithstanding the fact that crop prices are surging and farmers are doing well, supporters of the bill, both in the Senate and the House, are hoping to enact this gigantic Christmas present with as little fuss as possible. ...Under the pending farm bill, the U.S. sugar industry would get...

The United States produces a great deal of food each year. Actually, it overproduces food. This is the result of federal farm policies that pay farmers by the amount of crop they produce each year. This results in lower prices for grains, not only in America, but around the world. And the rest of the world isn’t happy about it. So why should I care what the rest of the world thinks? The main reason is national security. It takes a while to get there, but stick with me.

There is a combination in Washington that draws fraud, waste and abuse like bees to honey. The combination is free money plus government bureaucracy. The federal farm subsidy program has created some stories that are as unbelievable as they are outrageous.

When they debated economic issues in Dearborn, Mich., most of the Republican presidential candidates talked about how good the economic statistics look. Mike Huckabee was the candidate who offered sympathy for the public’s anxieties. So it has been throughout the campaign. Huckabee, more than the other Republican candidates, understands that even in a time of economic growth Americans are worried about their health care, their wages, and their country’s future. -----snip----- Unfortunately, what Huckabee offers by way of solutions is a mixture of populism and big-government liberalism; the common theme of his policies is that they are half-baked. If an...

Three private groups are now in the hunt to build U.S. 281 toll lanes, but two big foreign companies competing just a short while ago to build and lease a larger toll network here have dropped out. The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority board voted Wednesday to let all three teams submit plans to rebuild U.S. 281 north of Loop 1604 into a tollway with free access roads by 2012. It's the fledging agency's first project. "Goodness knows we have been two and a half years getting here," board member Bob Thompson said. "Maybe it's even more important to see the...

THESE ARE good times for American farmers. Net farm income in 2007 will be more than $87 billion, a record, according to the Agriculture Department's latest projections. And in 2006, the average farm household already earned $80,000, about 20 percent more than the average non-farm family. It would seem time to finally to phase out the costly and irrational system of federal subsidies that props up the farm sector -- all in the name of a "safety net" for beleaguered yeomen. A disproportionate share of the dollars goes to a relative handful of agribusinesses: In 2005, 9 percent of farms...

"EVERYONE does it, so let's be gentlemen and settle our dispute out of court." That's the gist of the arguments Airbus makes regarding the European Union-U.S. dispute over aerospace subsidies. Trouble is, everyone does not do it, if by "it" we mean the use of government "launch aid" to subsidize a private company in a manner that's inconsistent with the rules of the World Trade Organization. [snip]

It is believed, with some cause, that partisanship is the reason "nothing gets done" in Washington. So what if there was an issue, involving the poorest of the poor, on which there was bipartisan agreement, and still nothing got done? Our most battle-scarred readers will guess immediately what is at issue -- farm subsidies! At the moment, the sun and moon have aligned to form a left-right coalition to raise the lot of some of Africa's farmers. Arguably the greatest misfortune to befall these farmers is their crop: cotton. In the U.S., the lords of King Cotton still have the...

MINNEAPOLIS - As the estimated cost of recovering from an interstate bridge collapse surges past $400 million, survivors of the deadly disaster just wish they could get a few thousand dollars here and there to make ends meet. About 30 of the more than 100 people injured in the Aug. 1 collapse, which killed 13 people, meet weekly to talk about the troubles it's caused them. This past week, one man spoke of his struggles with a $41,000 medical bill. Others mentioned missed paychecks. That they've all had such problems getting aid irritated fellow survivor Kimberly J. Brown enough that...

Economics teaches us that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Anyone that tells you differently is probably trying to sell you something. In this case, the “something being sold” is bio-fuels. Bio-fuels, the transformation of corn, sugar, soybeans and other crops into motor fuels, have taken on a new sense of urgency due to, in part, the global warming consensus. Global warming advocates push regulations that mandate ethanol additives in cars, as well as other policies that encourage the U.S. to consume more bio-fuels. Furthermore, these policies are sold as a win-win policy that reduces the country’s...

I received an unsolicited e-mail this week from a neighbor of the Frost family, the family held up by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the entitlement expansionist Democrats. He wrote: They’re good people. Terribly misguided, pathetically leftist buffoons, but still good people. It was a terrible accident and Bonnie is quite beat up with guilt over the events. Lots of neighbors pitched in to cook meals and help out… Bonnie works half time doing freelance editorial work and Halsey, an incredibly disorganized lovable goofball, just can’t seem to hold down a proper job or, when he’s tried, to run a...