In speaking before the Senate of its recent inability to pass legislation, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said that the Senate is "constipated" and could use some laxatives.  Then, to be filed under the heading of "You Can't Make Up Something This Good", he said the following (seriously):

"The Senate needs to function just like our intestinal system functions."

I would submit that in speaking words truer than he imagined, he aptly described the government in general.  Unfortunately, all too often it does function "just like our intestinal system", with outcomes similar in value.

Oilman T. Boone Pickens has been touting his new energy plan on TV and the internet, promising that implementing his ideas would remove out "reliance on foreign oil".  One part of that plan involved moving from gasoline to compressed natural gas as the main fuel for automobiles; that was discussed in Slim Pickens, Part 1.  The other main component of the "Pickens Plan" is to convert approximately one-fifth of our electricity generation from natural gas to wind power (thus freeing up the natural gas for use in automobiles).

Pickens claims that "the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power", and that "building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States".  But here's the kicker:  by Pickens's own admission, building the wind turbines necessary to produce 20% of our electricity would come at a cost of $1 trillion.  Yes, that's "trillion" with a "t".  He calculates an additional $200 billion in cost to build the transmission capacity to get the provide the electricity to consumers.  I don't know if he's including in these costs the amount of property that would have to be confiscated from private individuals, but even if that is included in his financial cost, there is a serious landowners' rights issue there.

Pickens claims that even at $1.2 trillion dollars, his plan for wind turbines is a "bargain" because we currently spend so much money on "foreign oil" (he claims $700 billion annually).  But in making this claim, he seems to forget that good economics implies finding the most efficient allocation of scarce resources.  He is making an argument similar to that made by those who try to claim that destructive disasters (e.g., hurricanes, terrorists attacks, etc.) can actually a net positive economic impact because they can spur investment in otherwise cash-strapped areas.  This argument was made, for example, about New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  What this argument ignores is that the money invested in such enterprises has alternate uses.  Instead of "investing" $1.2 trillion in wind energy, buying property, building turbines, and laying the infrastructure to transmit the energy, perhaps some other entity can use the money saved by purchasing the cheaper current petroleum-based energy system to find a more efficient and effective alternative energy source.  Wind power is simply not economically feasible without considerable government subsidy and tax credits; were it the best alternative, the market would be moving in that direction in order to reap major profits, rather than having to be goading by government carrot and stick.

Ultimately, that's the main problem with all these alternative "plans" periodically proposed by self-identified elites:  the economics don't work without government interference.  Oil and gas became the backbone of 20th century energy and industrialization because they quite simply provided the best, most effective, most economically efficient alternatives, and the market thusly responded.  While we can't "drill our way out" of our current situation, we can go after the resources we know we have -- oil and gas in such locations as the Outer Continental Shelf and northern Alaska, among others -- while entrepreneurs continue to attempt to develop the energy and industrialization backbone for the next 100 years.  Mr. Pickens is obviously a successful business man; he should understand better than most that the best alternative to "foreign oil" will more likely come from someone seeking a profit motive than from a government program.

Summer blockbuster movies are famous for enormous over hyping leading up to a movie that is perhaps high on entertainment value but largely mindless escapism.  Rarely does such a movie provide more than superficial entertainment value — typically there's a lot of action and special effects, perhaps even good cinematography, but not much substance in the acting or dialogue.  The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second installment in his re-imagining of Batman, is no typical summer blockbuster and no typical comic book adaptation.  What Nolan has provided is a summer blockbuster with all the hype, action, and special effects, but he succeeds in countering these with a complex plot and characters that are reminiscent of a Shakespearean tragedy, albeit one injected with an extra dose of darkness and intensity.

Nolan's followup to his brilliant reboot of the Batman franchise in Batman Begins was destined for the hype machine hitting overdrive, but the death of Heath Ledger pushed it to new levels and added a new layer of macabre fascination.  Before the movie was even released, Ledger was being breathlessly suggested for a posthumous Oscar nomination.  Unbelievably, however, he lives up to the billing.  Ledger's Joker is haunting, chilling, psychotic, and pure evil more befitting of a horror movie than a comic book story.  My thought after leaving the theatre was that performing this role, that getting into the character of the Joker in the way Ledger was able to do, surely must have contributed to his death.

Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhardt are also good in their portrayals.  Bale is solid as Batman and Bruce Wayne, although I think the disguising he does of his voice as Batman is overdone.  Wayne is a serious man with obvious demons he is trying to exorcize, yet he builds a facade of being a typical billionaire playboy to assist in keeping his alter ego a secret.  Eckhardt is solid as Harvey Dent, a courageous, confident District Attorney who is seen as a white knight for his crime fighting efforts in Gotham City.  Fans of Batman know that he suffers a psychotic break and becomes the schizophrenic villain Two Face; the nature of his psychotic break is setup during the course of the movie and becomes central to the conclusion.

While the Gotham City mob and villain Scarecrow (the antagonist in Batman Begins) play a role, the former more prominently than the latter, the movie is at its core an Armageddonesque battle between Batman and Joker.  The complexity of their characters makes their yin/yang cat-and-mouse interplay amazing to watch.  The Joker doesn't just enjoy killing people, he loves to do it in ways that not only expose the victim to excruciating pain (he remarks that he loves using knives because the victim dies more slowly and shows his true character; at one point he taunts a police guard with the fact that some of the guards own friends died at his hand and were cowards in facing their own mortality) but also puts him in a moral and ethical quandary.  The Joker loves chaos, and he loves bringing out society's worst demons, setting person against person.  One could see this Joker reveling in Lord of the Flies or the Donner Expedition; he would undoubtedly be Hannibal Lecter's favorite patient.  Ledger nails the psychopathic nature brilliantly, offering up contradictory explanations for his facial scars as he mocks his victims.  He doesn't kill for money, he kills because he enjoys it; he enjoys watching people die, enjoys inciting terror, and he is willing to sacrifice his life if necessary to seduce Batman to succumb to this movie's equivalent to the "dark side".

The movie isn't perfect; I thought there was a little too much car chase, I didn't like the Two-Face look, and the movie went on a bit long (I think maybe 15 minutes could have been cut from some of the chase scenes, and that would have been about perfect).  However, every important detail is seemingly spot on.  Of course, some suspension of disbelief is always necessary in an action movie, but this one brings such a rich complexity and intensity that even some of the most outlandish effects are acceptable.

The Dark Knight is not just a movie you watch; it draws you in and makes you a part of it.  I wouldn't recommend attending any functions where clowns might be present for at least a few days after viewing it, and be warned that it is one of the most intense and dark movies you will see for a while.  But film noir is always compelling when done well, and The Dark Knight is film noir at its best.

T. Boone Pickens is an oil man.  So he tells you in his new commercial plan to decrease “our dependence on foreign oil”, a problem from which “we can’t drill our way out”.  His plan entails moving from gasoline to compressed natural gas (CNG) for fueling our vehicles, and building a vast array of windmills to generate electricity, replacing natural gas-fueled electricity generation.  Mr. Pickens’s plan has many flaws, some of which are obvious, others that are not (although no less egregious).  This post will focus on the topic of switching from gasoline to CNG for fueling automobiles.

 

CNG already is an option in use on some vehicles in the United States; Mr. Pickens’s website claims 150,000 in the US and over 7 million worldwide.  Several cities use CNG-powered public transportation, and occasionally while traveling on the interstate I’ve seen travel information signs pointing out “alternative fuel” stations that include CNG.  Natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline, with fewer pollutants, including so-called “greenhouse gases”.  The US has great stores of natural gas, and it is easier and safer to process than petroleum.  There’s already an extensive pipeline system for natural gas.

 

However, Pickens’s plan would require a mass-scale retrofitting of millions of automobiles in the United States to allow for use of CNG, as well as dramatic changes in automobile production in the future.  Who would pay for these changes?  Obviously the answer is the consumer, either through a direct cost for the retrofit or the new car, or through government subsidy (and therefore through increased taxes).  There are also potential safety issues with CNG; remember:  the “C” stands for “compressed”, and natural gas under high pressure is potentially explosive.  A gasoline leak or spill is fairly easy to see and clean up; a natural gas leak is less obvious (which is why natural gas pipelines have foul-smelling mercaptan additives – natural gas itself is odorless).  Would a widespread conversion to CNG vehicles be less safe than the current system?  I don’t know, but neither, I suspect, does T. Boone Pickens.

 

There are many potential alternatives on the horizon to gasoline-powered cars:  gas/electric hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel, methanol, ethanol, electric, and others.  Companies are currently spending research and development dollars attempting to find the best, most effective, most economic alternative.  Pickens would bypass this research, and instead use government force to make the choice for us.  Rather than having the market decide on the next generation automobile based on cost and efficiency, he’s made his decision and is willing to foist that decision on us.

 

Of course, Pickens’s plan isn’t that brazen.  Companies would still be free to develop other alternatives to gasoline, including those mentioned above; however, government subsidies and incentives tend to distort the market.  Just as current ethanol subsidies have incentivized farmers to divert former food products to ethanol production and change their product mix (thus causing a global increase in food prices), a full-bore effort by the government to decree CNG as the alternative of choice would divert resources from other alternatives that potentially would be better in the long run.  The top-down, command-control approach has been proved wrong time and again:  the wisdom of the market, of individuals acting in their own self interest, is much more efficient than the decree of the elites.  If you doubt this fact, some refresher training on the fate of the Soviet Union would be helpful.

 

What would be the total cost of a large-scale conversion to CNG-fueled vehicles?  Pickens is not forthcoming with this estimation.  Even if he were, any estimate would be rife with conjecture at best, and more likely inaccuracy.  Such factors as the potential safety impacts mentioned above would be difficult to calculate, and of course the Law of Unintended Consequences always rears its head when the government attempts a massive government restructuring of the market.  Remember:  we use gasoline to power our cars because even at over $4 per gallon, gasoline is the most economically feasible method.

 

“Reliance on foreign oil” has become a negative buzz phrase of late, and with national security concerns, instability in the oil-rich Middle East and Venezuela, and the growing hysteria in the media about “Global Climate Change” and “carbon footprints”, often-disparate interest groups are scrambling for a more domestically-centered alternative to petroleum-based products.  Pickens, as a man who made his wealth in the petroleum industry, commands a certain respect that will surely convince some otherwise would-be skeptics that his plan is a solid alternative.  It does not, however, hold up to closer scrutiny.

 

The next post will look at the other aspect of the Pickens Plan:  the conversion to wind-based electricity production.

I’ve been a subscriber to XM Satellite Radio for over 5 years, and I think it is a great service; I’ve often called it the best $12 I spend a month.  I get access to a wide variety of great music stations, with pretty much something to fit every mood, with artists and songs that often aren’t played on “conventional” radio for months, if ever.  In addition to music, XM has a great comedy station talk radio (conservative, liberal, and a mix of financial and other formats), as well as CNN, Fox News, CNBC, ESPN, and other news and information stations.  In my car, XM has largely replaced conventional (or “terrestrial”) radio by my choice, because I find regular radio to be boring and restricted in terms of choices.
 
While XM’s subscribers seem to like the service, the company has been unable to post good earnings.  They have, in my opinion, overpaid for multimillion dollar deals with people like Oprah Winfree and Ellen Degeneres, and sports leagues such as Major League Baseball.  XM’s satellite competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio, has likewise hemhorraged money in signing expensive deals with the NFL and Howard Stern.  Their competition provided more choices to consumers, but was tearing both companies apart.
 
The solution?  A merger between the two services.  It was something nearly everyone saw coming, and they agreed to such a deal in 2006; they have been working the legal details since.  This spring, the antitrust division of the Justice Department gave its blessing, declaring that an XM/Sirius marriage was not a monopoly on radio programming.  This seemingly is self-evident, with a myriad of talk and music radio stations nearly everywhere on the radio dial (and the internet), but the government faced heavy lobbying from the terrestrial radio stations – big corporations like Clear Channel who did not want to face the competition from an improved satellite offering.
 
Now the XM/Sirius deal requires only authorization from the Federal Communications Commission to complete the deal.  Like the Justice Department, the FCC is facing intense lobbying pressure from the big corporations who want to be protected from competition at the cost of consumer choice.  Congress has gotten involved as well, with several Democratic Senators, all who accept campaign donations from companies like Clear Channel, pressuring the FCC to impede the merger.
 
The FCC already has a list of promises from XM and Sirius to provide leasing of programming channels as well as set-asides for “noncommercial, educational, and informational programming” such as African American and Hispanic interest stations.  Democratic Senators John Kerry, Benjamin Cardin, and Claire McCaskill wish to increase the amount of requirements for set asides and programming that they (and their special interest supporters) think subscribers should pay for.  They also insist that the new XM/Sirius company provide receivers that will allow service of HD and regular radio – satellite radio’s competition.  At least one of the FCC commissioners has gone on the record for increased requirements before giving support to the merger, and many people are still complaining about the “monopoly” that the merger would supposedly create.
 
The great thing about XM is that I voluntarily choose to subscribe because I find the service worth my money.  Sure, there are many stations that don’t interest me on XM, but I definitely get my money’s worth, especially since I spend a lot of time in my car.  I am under no contract, however; if XM stops providing programming that I believe is worth the subscription price, I can easily cancel the service.  There is plenty of competition from the regular radio stations that are not fee-based.  I am not being defrauded or coerced into paying XM each month. 
 
Yet this is not enough for the self-serving government officials who wish to micromanage my entertainment.  Each requirement that they add to the list creates an expense for the satellite service; at some point, they could be forced to either raise my fees, or else potentially drop programming that I like in order to provide the government-mandated items.
 
If there’s a market for a channel on, say, quilting, or Hispanic interest, or auto racing, obviously XM, Sirius, or the new combined company, is welcome to provide it.  If my interests are not economically justified for the service, I have no problem with a business decision that leaves me behind – I realize they are in business to make a profit, not to cater to my every whim.  In this case, however, it is government intrusion into the marketplace that threatens my entertainment choices, doing so in the name of the public interest but with the financial support of the special interests in mind.
 
The FCC should immediately approve the merger, and the Democratic senators should keep their noses out of my radio.  Once again, individual choice should rule the day.

To little fanfare and hardly any press coverage, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama has unveiled a new senior campaign adviser over the past couple of weeks.  In a move consistent with both the messianic tone of his campaign and the "forward to the past" mentality of his platform, Obama has moved beyond the land of the living for his new adviser:  former President Richard M. Nixon.

It was Nixon who described the formula for a successful Presidential run as a Republican:  run to the right as far and as quickly as possible in the primaries, then run back to the center as quickly as possible in the general election.  Nixon's formula was unsuccessful in his 1960 endeavor, but the primary system was not yet supreme, as most states still chose delegates based on a more closed, convention-type, back room procedure.  In 1968, however, Nixon was able to beat back challengers like Nelson Rockefeller and even Ronald Reagan, among others.  Nixon then won a hard fought battle against then-VP Hubert Humphrey to win the Presidency.

In advising Obama, Nixon tweaked his advice to apply to a Democratic candidate:  now the formula is to run as far and as quickly to the left in the primaries to win the Democratic primary voters, then move toward the center now that he's clinched the nomination (barring something incredible happening at the Democratic National Convention in August).  The moving left part was easy:  National Journal rated Obama as the Senate's furthest left member (ahead of self-proclaimed Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont).  In both the United States Senate and the Illinois State Senate, Obama established himself as a reliable vote for leftist, statist policies; he's supported higher income and business taxes, late term abortions (even if a mistake occurs and the child is born alive), subsidies to farmers and foreclosed homeowners, handgun bans, and more government programs while opposing the war in Iraq, wiretapping of terrorists, and Social Security reform.  Running to the left was the easy part.

With Clinton defeated, the moderation began.  On the war, a strict timetable for withdrawal and a promise to "end this war" and criticism of the troop surge as ineffective has taken a different tone:  whereas once Obama promised to meet with his senior military brass and command them with a new mission, now he promises to consult with them and "refine" his policy to fit actual conditions on the ground in Iraq.  Whereas Iran was once a "little bitty country" who posed no threat to the United States security, now he calls Iran a "grave threat".  The promise to meet without preconditions with leaders like Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il is now being hedged.  Support for handgun bans in his own handwriting on a candidate questionnaire is dismissed as the work of staffers, and previous support for the District of Columbia's handgun ban is cast aside in light of the (politically popular) Supreme Court decision overturning it in favor of a Constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.

The list continues.  Particularly while campaigning in the "Rust Belt" state of Ohio, Obama spoke out against free trade and globalization, promising a moratorium on free trade deals and even the renegotiation of current deals like NAFTA, which he unequivocally opposed.  That unequivocal opposition has become equivocation, as Obama dispatched a top economic adviser to reassure the Canadians, our top trading partner.  Now, while still decrying globalization, he is less critical of trade deals, although he still opposes the deal with Colombia to keep his labor union support in line.

Some moves are hard to square with his voting record.  As President, Obama promises a tax plan that doesn't raise taxes "one cent" on anyone making under $250,000 per year; however, Obama has not withdrawn his support for the Democratic budget plan calling for the repeal of all the so-called "Bush tax cuts", even though doing so would raise taxes on ALL taxpayers, even the most poor, as well as hurting the competitiveness of American business.  He proposes increasing the top tax bracket -- the tax on the so-called "rich" -- even though 85% of the top bracket is paid by small businesses filing individual returns.  He proposes raising taxes on "big corporations", even as he promises to promote competitiveness of US businesses and create jobs.  He recently supported the Senate bill to extend Presidential authority to wiretap communications from overseas terrorists into the US, even though he pledged to continue to filibuster any bill which contained lawsuit protections for American businesses.

Obama still has a long trip to make if he truly wants to campaign as a centrist.  He still promises a Big Government health care plan that includes providing the estimated 10-20 million illegal immigrants in the US with taxpayer-funded health care.  He still promises to increase the capital gains tax in spite of every previous increase resulting in lower revenues.  He still opposes free trade with Colombia, even though increased trade would open new markets for US goods as well as bolster a US ally against Venezuela's anti-American dictator Hugo Chavez.  However, as long as he keeps listening to his newest adviser, it seems he'll keep moving to the center as quickly as he can.

A recent poll ironically shows that when asked to name one word that best describes the two candidates for President in November's election, those polled identified Barack Obama with "change" and "outsider", while they recognize John McCain as "old".  This is ironic because if there's a "forward to the past" candidate, a campaign based on a familiar formula and rehashed ideas, it's Obama's.  His platform proves the axiom that "there's nothing new under the sun", tracing a line back nearly a hundred years.

To find the most recent example of Obama's "forward to the past" campaign, one needs only to think back a mere 16 years to the candidacy of then-Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas.  Along with "It's the economy, stupid", one of Clinton's central working campaign themes was "Change versus more of the same", and he spoke nearly incessantly about bringing a fresh approach, new ideas to the government.  Like Clinton, Obama has based his campaign on getting "the rich" to pay more in taxes and railing against "tax cuts for the rich" enacted by predecessors in spite of the fact that Clinton's opponent, George Bush, had himself raised taxes on "the rich" in the famous 1990 budget deal with Congressional Democrats, and under the tax cuts enacted by both Reagan and George W. Bush the share of income taxes paid by the top wage earners actually increased.  Still, the idea that someone is getting rich and needs to be punished is a theme played to the hilt by Democrats in the 20th and 21st centuries:  John Kerry in 2004, Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Walter Mondale in 1984 all rode the "soak the rich" platform.

Unlike Clinton, who sold himself as a "New Democrat" who was breaking with the standard statist, leftist politics of Democratic predecessors, Obama is embracing even the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, particularly in foreign policy and energy policy.  Like Carter, Obama believes that increased taxation of oil companies and greater government intrusion into the economy is the right prescription for energy independence, actual evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.  Where Carter equated national government-centric energy policy as the "moral equivalent of war", Obama uses less martial terminology in favor of a more messianic tone, claiming that once he's elected the "earth will heal".

While the parallels of Obama's statist agenda are obvious compared to LBJ's Great Society and FDR's New Deal, and even Woodrow Wilson's World War I socialism, a more interesting parallel exists between Obama's campaign themes and his economic policies in the face of a faltering economy and those of a Republican President:  Herbert Hoover.  While hard to comprehend in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight and history, Hoover's campaign in 1928 was one based on a cult of personality; he had gained fortune as a mining engineer, then fame and admiration for his work in Woodrow Wilson's wartime Food Administration and later helping provide food for post-World War I Europe.  He later increased his standing with the public due to his work coordinating relief efforts for the Mississippi River flood of 1927, the first real federal government disaster relief effort.

Hoover campaigned and governed as a self-proclaimed "Progressive", denouncing laissez-faire economics and believing that the economy could be effectively managed by government regulation -- that he could engineer continued prosperity that was the hallmark of the 1920s under President Coolidge.  His campaign even had a reconciliation aspect:  while Hoover himself was of course white, his running mate, Charles Curtis, was part Native American.

But it is Hoover's response to the economic crisis that became the Great Depression which draws the closest parallels with the platform on which Obama is running in 2008.  Hoover proposed sweeping government programs to promote public works, bail out homeowners facing foreclosure, and subsidize farmers.  More important were his actions on taxes and trade.  Hoover increased taxes on the "rich" -- the top income tax rate was increased from 25% to 63% -- just as Obama promises to do.  He increased the corporate tax rate and raised the estate tax -- just as Obama promises to do.  And, just as Obama has campaigned on the theme of government restriction of trade, opposing a free trade agreement with Colombia, proposing a "moratorium" on new trade agreements, and promising to "renegotiate" the current free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico (our two biggest trading partners), Hoover implemented the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.  Smoot-Hawley dramatically increased tariffs on imported goods in the name of protecting American jobs, in spite of the warning of over 1000 economists.

The old axiom about the refusal to learn from history dooming a society to repeat it seems especially poignant during the election of 2008.  We've seen it all before:  the impacts of Obama's agenda writ large on the bread lines of the 1930s and the gas lines of the 1970s.  There truly is nothing new under the sun in terms of substance; only the packaging changes.

The 2008 Presidential election is shaping up as historical in many senses -- the first minority candidate, the oldest candidate, a gripping primary battle, the backdrop of a faltering economy and an unpopular war.  But could both candidates be defined more by the baggage they carry than their vision for the future?

The McCain baggage is the easy story.  The "R" for Republican could just as easily mean "Radioactive" after the debacle of the 2006 election and the special elections that have already occurred this year.  In 2006, Democrats swept to power across the nation, in normally safe Republican congressional districts and such upsets as the defeat of a Maryland governor with a 60% approval rating.  Already in 2008, three high-profile special elections have proved that the Republican brand is still in bad shape.  Any Republican running for President bears the scarlet letter of the party, as well as the 25% approval rating of the current occupant of the Oval Office; President Bush seems to be a lead anchor around McCain's neck.

Historically speaking, the odds would be against McCain, even if Bush weren't a toxic drag on the ticket.  Rare are the third terms of a party.  President Bush the elder was the exception, not the rule, when he succeeded the two Reagan terms in the 1988 election:  it was the first "third term" since FDR succeeded his own two terms with an unprecedented third term.  In the meantime, Gerald Ford, Hubert Humphrey, and Richard Nixon failed to extend their respective party's reign beyond 8 years; this concept was, of course, reinforced in the 2000 election.  There just seems to be a reflexive urge for change following two terms of a President's (or a party's) service.

But McCain is by no means unique in being possessive of drags on his campaign.  The Democratic Congress that swept into control in 2006 and seems likely to solidify its gains is even less popularly approved than President Bush -- the current Congressional approval ratings came in at a dismal 11%.  Since the Democrats came to power offering to "drain the swamp" of corruption, at least two members, including Chris Dodd, former DNC Chairman and current Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, have been discovered to have received corrupt sweetheart deals from Countrywide Financial Services -- the company demonized in the housing credit crunch and subprime mortgage meltdown of the past year.  Promising "change" in 2006, the Democrats have seen the economy falter, unemployment increase, and gasoline prices double on their Congressional watch.  Not exactly the kind of change voters were expecting, I think it's fair to say.

But the Democratic Congress and its incompetence is not the only drag on Obama's campaign.  The cornerstone of Obama's campaign is slew of tax increases:  on investment, on businesses, on income, on payrolls.  Where most of the industrialized world is cutting taxes and improving competitiveness, Obama and the Democrats are seeking to increase them.  Of course, the normal bogeyman of "the rich" is being used as a justification for the massive expansion of government, but so far Obama and the Democrats have been voting to raise taxes on all taxpayers, even the lowest income Americans -- the so-called "Bush tax cuts" applied to every tax bracket, including the lowering of the bottom bracket from 15% to 10%, and capital gains tax increases impact pensions and retirement plans.  Tax increase advocacy has not exactly been a recipe for success for Presidential candidates -- just ask Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry.   Raising taxes during a period of faltering economic news seems an especially bad idea.

Obama has other drags as well on his candidacy, although he has benefited to some extent from getting them out in the open in the primary battle with Hillary Clinton.  His associations with corrupt businessman and convicted felon Tony Rezko, admitted and unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, and controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright have already played out and are most likely non-issues in the fall campaign when most voters become engaged.  And, unfortunately, Obama has been the subject of internet smear campaigns that unfairly distort his statements, actions, and history to suggest some sort of "Manchurian candidacy" fantasy.

Hopefully, voters will base their decisions on actual facts, not innuendo.  But there are real concerns about an Obama presidency:  higher taxes, a near unprecedented expansion of government, and (ironically given his message about the future and change) failed policies from the Great Society and the New Deal that threaten American competitiveness and individual liberty.

Ultimately, this November's election may be decided less by people voting for a candidate than it is about who gets pulled under by the weight of his own negatives.  The election could be more about drag than about propulsion.