Dan Maes Describes Top Five Issues

Dan Maes doesn't have a chance in hell of becoming the next governor of Colorado. This is a guy who lists under his "public service" qualifications: "Boy Scout Leadership as a teen and in his early 20’s." Scott McInnis, on the other hand, served in the state legislature before spending twelve years in Congress. Maes has no political credentials. He has zero chance of winning the Republican primary, and if by some bizarre chance every other possible Republican candidate died first, Maeas would have zero chance of beating Ritter.

Nevertheless, Maes did respond to a question quickly, and that counts for something.

On November 24, Maes sent out the following e-mail:

I was speaking with a county chairperson today and the subject of leadership for the party came up. He expressed his unhappiness with the lack of leadership in the republican party. I do not think he was referring to the state office but rather to our elected officials and candidates. The question is...was he issuing a challenge to me or simply stating a fact?

Lesson one when talking to me, I actually do listen. Number two, I look for those messages one is really trying to communicate. Maybe he was just venting but perhaps there was more to it all especially in light of the so called attempt to provide leadership this week by those without the authority or credibility to do so.

I jumped in this race months before others did. Obviously, I had a lot of catching up to do; but more importantly, I sensed there was a leadership vacuum myself that someone had to proactively fill. That has been my style since I was a teen. When a position needed to be filled or a responsibility taken on, it was not unusual for me to stick my hand up for the job. Ah, you might have thought I was the sucker in the old days but all those rolls prepared me for what I am doing today. Boy Scout Troop Leader, Student Council Member and President, Senior Class President, Captain of the football team, manager and owner of businesses... you get the point. Many ask, why do it? It is just how God wired me I suppose and for better or worse, I am here trying to become a leader for the Republican party.

I will suffer the slings and arrows of those who would rather be leader. That is also part of leadership. I will continue to work hard in my attempt to earn the right to be your leader. Do actions match words?

Dan Maes
The People's Candidate for Governor
www.danmaes.com

Thinking that his campaign is rather Quixotic, I asked, "Hey Dan, I challenge you to describe five *substantive* differences of policy or ideology you have with McInnis. I will be happy to publish your reply on my web page."

This morning he obliged (sort of):

Hi Ari,

Responding to your question regarding differences in me and Scott McInnis is a bit difficult in itself because Scott rarely articulates policy in his forums and speeches. We tend to hear about his family, how long he has been in Colorado, and railing against Bill Ritter. His failure to articulate any real policy was the main reason for the recent Contract for Colorado which had Josh Penry and Tom Tancredo helping his campaign actually develop a message of any kind. Thus, I do not see any connection between this document and his past or future behavior and thus nothing to differentiate myself on.

I will leave the opposition research to you and I will not attempt to articulate where Scott is on any issues. I will tell you where I stand.

1. Pinyon Canyon - I await the facts from the Army. I will seek a mutually beneficial resolution via willing sellers/leasers if at all possible.

2. Taxes - I am a true fiscal conservative and for downsizing government, and reducing taxes to spur growth not just maintaining status quo.

3. Social Issues - I have said consistently that we must stop preaching and start reaching out for a more diverse party yet I stand firm on a pro-life, and pro marriage between a man and woman platform. Some claim to have recent "revelations" and a come to Jesus but do their actions match their words?

4. Qualifications - people confuse experience with qualifications. The Governor's office is an executive office not a legislative one. Legislative experience does not translate into executive experience. Scott has very little to no executive experience. I have 20+ years of managerial and executive experience. This experience is the core qualification for the office and our current president is a great example of a legislator turned executive.

5. Campaign Style - I am becoming very popular very fast because I connect with people and truly care about what is important to them. Ask anyone who has spent a few minutes with me and they can sense the genuine, honest, hard working person who wants to earn their support and work for them. This is not 1994 anymore. People want to be treated like they are the boss. They are more informed and educated than ever before. I recognize that and treat people accordingly.

Ultimately, after all the facts are considered, people perform gut checks and ultimately ask themselves, do I like and trust this candidate. They are discovering more and more that they like and can trust me. Maybe that is the reason the full frontal assault against any choice in this primary has happened so early in this election cycle.

Thank you for the opportunity to address your readers.

Dan Maes
Re-Energizing Colorado's Economy
Republican Candidate for Governor
www.danmaes.com

Perhaps I should upgrade Maes's chances from zero to one. But hell is a pretty big place.

Dear Dean Singleton, Please Charge Me

Westword's Michael Roberts reports that "Dean Singleton... plans to start charging readers for lotsa online content at select MediaNews papers in California and Pennsylvania beginning in 2010." This is relevant to us in Colorado because Singleton also publishes the Denver Post. Are fees for the online Post in our future?

God, I hope so.

Good journalism is hard work. Good investigative journalism is especially hard and time-consuming work. People tend not do do a lot of hard work without compensation. (I imagine Roberts would confirm this.) Thus, journalism needs to pay.

Journalism can pay in one of three general ways: advertising, philanthropic contributions, and reader payments. Advertising can be direct or indirect; for example, Michelle Malkin runs direct advertising, and her entire blog serves to advertise her books. (You'll notice that I advertise my own book, Values of Harry Potter, on my web page. And it makes a fine addition to the tree or stocking!) I would be interested in learning how much of the Incredible Shrinking Westword's revenues come from print versus online advertising. (While the weekly's print edition has gotten noticeably smaller, its online content has expanded dramatically.)

I doubt anybody is going to make a generous gift to the Post.

That leaves reader contributions to supplement advertising revenues. These payments can be by the piece or via subscriptions.

As I suggested earlier, I think papers (and it's funny even to still call them "papers") should give readers a choice: watch an annoying ad, pay a monthly or annual subscription, or pay to read a single article at a time.

How is that not the best of all worlds? Cheapskates can still read content for free, except they have to pay with their time by watching a real advertisement. Regular readers can subscribe, preferably for a low annual rate (I would seriously consider paying, say, $50 per year to read the Post online). And occasional readers who value their time can pay some token amount -- perhaps an amount that varies with the ambition of the piece -- to read a single article. As I also mentioned before, the key to this is to figure out a very-fast way to make micropayments (else there is no time savings).

The fact is that readers who value good content and don't want to waste time looking at ads will be prepared to pay to read that content. I absolutely hate the Post's online ads that pop up, block text, push text down the page, and otherwise annoy the living hell out of me when all I'm trying to do is read a spot of news. I would much rather pay a little than deal with those sorts of ads.

I think it's worth revisiting what Post editor Greg Moore said in September:

In terms of advertising being a means of supporting original [journalism]... right now advertising provides like 85 percent of our revenue. It's still a huge, huge, huge driver. It's a huge source of revenue. It's going to be probably for a while. But I think our survival -- and when I say survival I'm not talking about the newspaper, I'm talking about our ability to do journalism -- I think we'll have to shift to a different model. And I think that model is that the user will have to pay for the content that he or she consumes.

I don't think that the cat is out of the bag. I think that the record industry sort of proved that, the music industry sort of proved that you can change people's behavior. Napster, in the mid-1990s, everyone thought that would just sort of kill everything, and they put those people in jail, put them out of business, and now people pay for music. They do it differently -- they don't buy albums anymore, they buy singles, but they still pay a lot of money for music.

So I think there's still hope for us, that we can sort of reverse this trend. As somebody said, I think the worst decision that was made by the owners of newspapers was to sort of be stampeded into giving away their content for free. But it doesn't mean that it's over.

Unfortunately, rather than quote somebody who knows what he's talking about, such as Moore, Roberts quotes some clueless blog post by Rob Burgess.

Burgess quotes survey results from NewFiction:

80 percent of consumers recently surveyed by Forrester Research say they would discontinue their favorite free print content if they were asked to pay for it. Less than 10 percent of respondents would agree to subscription models; only three percent would opt for micropayments.

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner nicely summarize the problem with this in their new book SuperFreakonomics: "There is good reason to be skeptical of data from personal surveys. There is often a vast gulf between how people say they behave and how they actually behave" (page 7).

If you ask people if they want to pay for something they now get for free, what do you expect them to say? They're going to give you some variant of "no."

But if a person actually has a choice of reading a great article and paying, versus not reading that article, in at least some cases the person is going to pay up and ask for more. (Again, I think newspapers would be smart to offer a third option of spending time watching an ad, probably in the form of a short video. These sorts of ads are already common on a variety of web pages.)

So Burgess's first argument is bunk. Let us turn to his second argument:

You ruined everything in the beginning by starting with giving everything away for free. It has now been almost 15 years since the Internet broke wide and you're just NOW getting around to asking people to pay for your content? I don't blame people for not wanting to pay for it anymore, why should they? Who would pay for something they can get for free?

The options are not "get free content" versus "pay for content." The other option is "get no content," at least as far as investigative journalism is concerned. With that as the alternative, paying doesn't look so bad after all. People "should" pay, and they should be willing to, if that's the only way to get hard-to-produce content they want to read. (Again, easy-to-produce content will remain free, and ads can help pay for hard-to-produce content.)

What Burgess seems to think ridiculous is Singleton's comment, "We have to condition readers that everything is not free." But Singleton's comment is perfectly sensible. Moore uses the example of paying for music online. Today many people pay to receive television stations that they could otherwise get for free, because the reception is better and the broadcast stations are packaged with cable-only stations. Consumers change their behavior all the time, even (or especially) after they say they won't.

There ain't no such thing as free journalism. If journalists aren't willing to work without compensation, philanthropists don't pay, and advertising doesn't pay enough, the only alternative is for readers to pay, if they want the benefit of the product.

Really advertising is a way of extracting a payment of time from readers. Again, I think papers should offer that alternative. I would much rather pay in dollars, as for me that would be the far less costly alternative.

People Vote for Freedom with Their Feet and Effort

The following article originally was published November 23 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

People vote for freedom with their feet and effort

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

"Why are they all running to Colorado? What have they got down there that we haven't got?" So asks a villain in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He complains about Colorado's primitive, lazy government that "does nothing outside of keeping law courts and a police department."

A young worker answers, "Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got."

High taxes, economic controls, and intrusive politicians and bureaucrats kill production. Unfortunately, fearing Colorado's economic stagnation, the politically connected call not for more economic freedom but for more taxes. They act like doctors who prescribe bloodletting for anemia.

A recent Qwest-funded report from the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation bears the title, "Toward a More Competitive Colorado." But some of the report's recommendations would lead to higher taxes, less competitiveness, and a weaker economy.

The report notes that Colorado ranks well in areas of health, education, and investments. Yet, rather than promote more of the Western liberty that made Colorado prosperous, the report worries that politicians aren't spending enough of other people's money on college, preschool, infrastructure (however that's defined), and welfare.

"A Gordian Knot exists in Colorado's Constitution that makes governing a challenge," the report complains. That seems to be code for "gut the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights."

Though especially concerned about education, the report declines to discuss freeing colleges from state controls, expanding competition for K-12, and cutting taxes so families can better afford college and philanthropists can donate more.

The only constitutional change we need is to repeal Amendment 23, which sets education spending on auto-pilot regardless of economic conditions.

Meanwhile, as the Daily Sentinel reported Nov. 17, the Pew Center declared Colorado in "fiscal peril" because, darn it all, people get to vote on tax hikes.

Either people restrain the politicians or the opposite becomes true. The more the political class oppresses the people, the more people move away or reduce their production.

Rand's novel is about the nation's top producers going on strike against oppressive politics, some moving to Galt's Gulch where they can live in freedom. In Free to Choose, Milton Friedman warns that people vote with their feet, moving where they can enjoy the fruits of their labor.

This is true between states. Regarding last year's U.S. Economic Freedom Index, lead author Lawrence McQuillan summarizes, "People are moving to the freest states and fleeing the least free states."

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal declared New York the "tax capital of the world." The paper noted, "According to Census Bureau data, over the past decade 1.97 million New Yorkers left the state for greener pastures -- the biggest exodus of any state."

The same is true around the world: people tend to leave more repressive countries and move to freer ones. Recently we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, built by tyrants to keep an oppressed people from moving away.

Britain suffered a "brain drain" as their doctors sought to escape socialized medicine. When introducing the National Health Service, Aneurin Bevan bought off doctors for their political support, reportedly saying, "I stuffed their mouths with gold." Upon implementing the new system, he declared, "We now have the moral leadership of the world."

Yet many doctors suffered indigestion. Some found that this gold tasted a lot more like thirty pieces of silver. Others rebelled against the new political controls. They wanted no part of the "moral leadership" that put bureaucrats in charge of health. Some of these doctors moved to the United States.

If we go further down England's path, some doctors will move out of our country and cater to medical tourists. Others will retire early.

We've seen examples large and small of people giving up. Higher car fees have convinced some to sell the extra car or put off purchasing a new one. Some work less for taxable income and trade more goods and services (though such exchanges are supposed to be taxed, too).

Chris Edwards recently published disturbing figures at Cato. He writes, "While consumption, exports, and the government sector were up, private investment has fallen through the floor." Fearing more federal political controls, Edwards calls this "the death of private investment in America."

Meanwhile, unemployment nationally has crept over the double-digit marker, despite (or partly because of) President Obama's "shovel ready" stimulus projects. No need to look very far to figure out what it is that Obama is shoveling. An ABC headline illustrates part of the problem: "Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist."

As one of our friends wondered, "You mean taking money out of the private sector, creating money out of thin air, and indebting future generations actually doesn't make us more prosperous?"

If we want to return to prosperity in Colorado and in our nation, we need less political interference and more economic liberty.

Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Environmentalist Clowns Threatening Human Life

Today's Colorado Springs Gazette published my op-ed, "Environmentalist clowns threatening human life," reviewing a November 18 talk by Keith Lockitch. (The online version is dated November 20, while the print date is November 21.)

See also additional quotes from environmentalists.

For the story about the environmentalists dressed up as clowns, see the Denver Daily or Denver Post.

Here is the entire piece:

Environmentalist clowns threatening human life

Climate change threatens our nation. Pollution is the cause. We must reverse course now to save future generations from misery.

Contrary to environmentalist hysteria, the problem is not carbon dioxide warming the earth. Instead, our political climate of freedom suffers the pollution of environmentalist controls of our industrial economy.

On November 18, environmentalists dressed up as clowns rallied at the state capitol to demand that Colorado shut down a coal-fired electricity plant.

That night, Keith Lockitch, an environmental analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, explained in a Denver talk why environmentalist controls threaten human life and well-being.

People need industrial energy to live and flourish, Lockitch emphasized. Indeed, modern energy enables us to respond to climate disasters and weather extremes, natural forces that have always threatened human life.

Throughout human history and still today in undeveloped regions, droughts, floods, freezes, and heat waves have devastated food supplies and caused wide-scale suffering and death. What allows the developed world to largely escape such dangers is our relatively free, industrial economy.

Consider the droughts of the 1970s, Lockitch suggested. While the weather caused massive death and starvation in undeveloped regions of Africa and India, the United States suffered “only minor economic losses.”

Americans respond to freezes by turning up their furnaces. If it gets too hot we turn on air conditioning. If one farming region suffers a freeze, drought, or other problem, we ship food from elsewhere. To learn about potential dangers, including bad weather, we turn on our electricity-powered televisions or computers.

Industrial energy allows us to live longer, healthier lives. If we get sick, we ride in oil-powered ambulances to electricity-powered hospitals. While people in undeveloped regions continue to die from smoke inhalation from cooking fires, we use clean gas or electric stoves. Yet many environmentalists would hamper industrial prosperity.

The political question, Lockitch said, is separable from the scientific question of climate change. Whether or not human carbon dioxide emissions will seriously contribute to harmful warming, free- market capitalism enables us as investors, entrepreneurs, producers, and consumers to respond to problems, whatever their causes.

Don’t environmentalists merely want us to change from fossil fuels to renewable sources? Lockitch pointed out that prominent environmentalists opposed solar farms in the Mojave desert and wind farms off the shores of Massachusetts. Many environmentalists oppose nuclear power. Their goal is to limit human activity regardless of the availability of energy.

Lockitch outlined the problems with wind and solar. Americans currently use around 600 coal-fired plants. It would take 1,000 wind turbines on 40,000 acres of land to replace a single plant. Their production would require enormous costs.

Coal plants can expand or reduce output based on demand. “You can’t turn on the sun, and you can’t turn on the wind,” Lockitch noted. At a coal plant the energy is stored in the coal itself. Wind and solar plants produce electricity at unpredictable times in uncontrollable amounts, and it cannot easily be stored for future use. What happens if you face an emergency during a blackout caused by low wind?

That’s not to say that Lockitch is committed to fossil fuels. He pointed out that Rand wrote a novelized account of a motor with cheap, clean, and abundant energy.

To Lockitch, the question is not ultimately about fossil versus renewable energy. It’s about freedom versus controls. On a free market, people can decide how best to use fossil fuels and what new energy sources deserve research and investment.

Does the future hold advances in nuclear power, solar collection, or some yet-unimagined source of energy? Free-market capitalism spurs productive development.

Environmentalists might enjoy clowning around and imagining a renewable-energy utopia. In the real word, our lives and well-being depend on modern industrial energy production. To protect ourselves we must defend free-market capitalism. That means we must clean up the economic pollution of environmentalist controls.

Ari Armstrong, the author of Values of Harry Potter, publishes FreeColorado.com.

Independence Institute's 25th Anniversary Banquet

P. J. O'Rourke offered a perfectly delightful address at the Independence Institute's 25th Anniversary Banquet, held in Denver on November 19. He mostly blasted leftist policies but saved some of his best lines for Republicans. For example, he said that building a wall between us and Mexico would be a boon to the Mexican ladder industry.

I captured a number of interviews on camera:

Environmentalist Clowns

As environmentalists dressed as clowns protested coal-fired electric plants in Denver -- see the reports from the Denver Daily News and Denver Post -- Keith Lockitch prepared to give a talk at the Auraria campus that evening explaining the profound human need for industrial energy. (More on this soon.)

In the Q&A, Lockitch pointed to two quotes from environmentalists indicating that they don't want cheap, abundant energy, even if it is "clean" and "renewable."

Paul Ehrlich said, "Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."

Amory Lovins said, "If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it."

Family DNA Matching Risks Police Abuses

Earlier this year, I criticized a new law that allows police to take DNA samples from people they arrest for a felony, absent any criminal conviction. As the Denver Post summarized, "The bill was amended to allow police to take DNA tests upon arrest but for the sample not to be processed unless a person is charged. The sample will be destroyed if no charges are filed."

As I noted, the law will "encourage police and prosecutors to arrest and charge people just to get a look at their DNA."

Now that Denver police have advanced a program to match crime-scene DNA to samples on record, it is no longer a question of whether the law will be abused, but when.

Michael Roberts writes for Westword, "Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey... [has] been working with colleagues in the Denver Police Department's crime lab, among others, to prove the efficacy of a method able to connect DNA not in law-enforcement databases to samples from family members..."

Morrissey told Roberts, "We're running [a sample] against the DNA of somebody else whose sample we obtained legally."

Except that obtaining somebody else's DNA legally is now trivially easy. You just come up with some plausible complaint against a person and arrest him. Voila -- a legal DNA sample.

So let's say the police suspect Joe Blow of committing some crime, but they can't easily find Joe Blow. But they know where to find Sam Blow, Joe's brother. If only we could figure out if the DNA we found belongs to Joe! All we need to do is get a look at Sam's DNA. And if Sam isn't feeling so cooperative...

I do not doubt that taking DNA samples from everybody in the population would help solve more crimes. Hell, we could get a database going with every single person's fingerprint, DNA, eye scan, special markings, and so on. We could also install every newborn with a barcode and GPS tracker. Update: CNN also carried the story on the DNA tests. Defense attorney Stephen Mercer told CNN, "If they want to drive down the street and do no-knock searches of homes, they would catch bad guys. But at what cost to our society?"

Or, we could retain our liberties. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

November 25 update: "Panel: British police arrest people just for DNA samples." Coming soon to a Colorado city near you?

Outlawing Low-Priced Books Robs Your Wallet and Freedom

The following article was originally published online by the Denver Post under the title, "Why we should keep selling low-priced books."

Outlawing low-priced books robs your wallet and freedom

by Ari Armstrong

Some stores sell popular books to willing customers at low prices, and they must be stopped! At least that's what the American Booksellers Association (ABA) argued in an October 22 letter to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.*

The letter, signed by the ABA Board of Directors, including Cathy Langer of Denver's Tattered Cover, complains that Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target sell some "hardcover bestsellers," including books by John Grisham and Sarah Palin, for only around $9. Moreover -- horror of horrors -- Amazon sells digital books for only $9.99.

The letter argues that selling low-priced books to people who want to buy them constitutes "illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers."

You might think that "lower prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture," but you would be wrong, the ABA claims. Low-priced books will drive out "many independent bookstores," put book buying "in very few hands," and eventually allow "mega booksellers to raise prices," the ABA asserts.

The ABA's position ultimately is self-destructive. Free speech, and freedom of conscience more broadly, depends on property rights and voluntary association, liberties the ABA undermines.

Writers, publishers, sellers, and buyers have the right to agree to terms they find mutually beneficial. A publisher that wishes to prevent a retailer from selling a book below a certain price may properly set that as a condition of the transaction.

Once a retailer purchases books from a willing publisher without pricing restrictions, the retailer properly has the right to sell the book for any amount it deems proper. If the retailer wants to sell books below cost as a loss leader, give them away, or pay people to take them, that's between them and their customers.

When politicians control the physical conveyance of ideas, they can control the ideas themselves. As a villain in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged explains, "If you breathe the word 'censorship' now, they'll all scream bloody murder... But if you leave the spirit alone and make it a simple material issue -- not a matter of ideas, but just a matter of paper, ink and printing presses -- you accomplish your purpose much more smoothly."

The ABA helps establish the principle that people with guns -- for ultimately brute force is what imposes Department of Justice rulings -- can invalidate people's independent decisions. This same principle opens the door to outright censorship.

The ABA's position also rests on economic myths. Part of the cost savings of large retailers comes from publishers selling books in large orders. The ABA would force publishers and readers to eat the costs of more tiny orders.

Independent bookstores that cannot compete on price should find other ways to attract willing customers if they wish to stay in business. For example, Tattered Cover hosts many public events featuring authors and other speakers. (I spoke at a media panel hosted by the store on September 24.) Tattered Cover also carries a large selection of books that customers can physically look at and buy instantly.**

The ABA's suggestion that "mega booksellers" would eventually "raise prices" higher than what independent stores now charge is laughable. Not only will many competing booksellers remain in business despite low-priced books, but attempts to raise prices inevitably attract new competitors.

The ABA absurdly argues that low-priced books will cut off writers' ability to get published. As a book author, I can attest that writers today have unprecedented opportunities to publish their works. Amazon is particularly friendly to writers and publishers.

Tattered Cover does not carry my book, and if I had to rely on independent bookstores my book never would have been published. Yet I did not seek government action to force Tattered Cover's decisions. Tattered Cover has the right to stock the books it wants at the prices it wants, and it should respect the rights of others to do likewise.

We should expect better from the ABA and from Tattered Cover, often a champion of free speech in Colorado. Ultimately the business of ideas depends upon the integrity of the unforced mind.

Ari Armstrong is the author of Values of Harry Potter and publisher of FreeColorado.com. He lives in Westminster.

* See some of the resulting media coverage.

** November 13 update: As somebody noted in the comments, Tattered Cover now plans to sell used books as well. The Denver Post has the story. Offhand this strikes me as a good idea. The standard fee for shipping and handling for used books at Amazon is $3.99, sometimes more than the price of the book. Tattered Cover can't offer as wide a selection of used books, but the customer can physically examine the used book and get it right away with no additional transport costs.

The McInnis Juggernaut

A number of my friends are upset that Josh Penry has withdrawn from the Colorado governor's race, leaving Scott McInnis as the clear Republican frontrunner.

The word is that a political attack group threatened to hammer Penry if he stayed in the race. Welcome to politics. Such strong-arm tactics are hardly new in the American political arena. They are the norm.

The fact is that Penry trailed in fundraising, name recognition, and polling against Governor Bill Ritter. So, in retrospect, it comes as little surprise that the Republican establishment supported McInnis or that Penry decided to pick a fight he knows he can win.

Some guy named Dan Maes also remains in the race, and he has about the same chance of becoming the next governor of Colorado as I do. There's also been talk of roping former Congressman Tom Tancredo into the race. I think that would be a disaster for the GOP. There are a lot of things I like about Tancredo (as well as a lot of points of disagreement), but he simply isn't governor material. He's too divisive, too polarizing. He always won his conservative district, but he would bomb in the Denver-Boulder corridor.

So that leaves McInnis as the presumptive nominee. Even though McInnis used to serve in Congress, I have little idea what his ideas are.

I find it amazing that his web page features a "Scott on the Issues" button that offers exactly zero direct information on McInnis's views. Instead, the reader is directed to an OnTheIssues.org page. An "ideas" candidate McInnis is not.

So who is Scott McInnis?

Taking abortion as a good indicator of a candidate's relationship with the religious right, Lynn Bartels reports for the Denver Post:

Gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis, for example, entered Congress as a pro-choice Republican, although he exited in 2004 having received a zero ranking from NARAL Pro-choice America, an abortion-rights advocacy group.

"He makes no bones that he changed his views while in Congress," said McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy.

Bartels follows up:

He voted against some abortion measures, supported others and once chaired the national Republicans for Choice.

"I personally don't support abortion," McInnis said in 1996, "but feel the decision shouldn't be made between a woman and the government but between a woman and her doctor."

He said Friday he no longer feels that way, although he has maintained his reputation as a political moderate.

"You grow older and you have kids and grandkids and friends die and you realize how important life is," said McInnis, 56.

At a November 3 event at Colorado Christian University, McInnis said, "I'm 100 percent pro life. I oppose gay marriage," Bartels reports.

(Maes, obviously trying to appeal to the state's social conservatives, added, "Marriage is not a right, it's a privilege, and it is a privilege that is ordained in the Scripture.")

Bartels summarizes McInnis's history with the issue of abortion:

The Rocky Mountain News in 1996 called McInnis a maverick on abortion.

He long had opposed partial-birth abortions and backed parental notification. But he opted to allow for privately funded abortions at overseas U.S. military hospitals, to let federal employees choose health insurance plans to cover abortions and to preserve federal funding for family-planning programs.

In 1995, NARAL tracked 21 roll-call votes. McInnis sided with their issues seven times.

From a civil libertarian perspective, McInnis is mixed, judging from the votes noted by On the Issues. In 2004 he voted against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. But thrice he voted for an amendment banning flag desecration in violation of free speech and property rights.

I'll certainly have some questions for "100 percent pro life" McInnis. Does he want to ban abortion even in cases of risks to the woman's life, rape, incest, and fetal deformity? Does he want to overturn Roe v. Wade? Does he support the "personhood" measure likely to share the 2010 ballot?

Ritter (for whom I voted) is a tax-and-spend, corporate welfarist bungler, no doubt. Yet, even though Ritter also nominally opposes abortion, I don't have to worry about him trying to throw my wife in prison should she need to end a medically risky pregnancy.

McInnis couldn't possibly be any worse than Ritter on economic issues. But, as much as I don't want Ritter in my wallet, I certainly don't want McInnis in my bedroom or doctor's office. It remains to be seen which candidate will least frighten mainstream Colorado voters.

Low-Cost Tech Could Cool Planet

The following article originally was published November 9 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

If planet did warm, low-cost tech could cool it

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

In our last column we expressed skepticism that human-caused global warming will ever amount to much. We have little trust in the politically subsidized computer simulations responsible for most of the fuss. Obviously, natural causes play a major role in climate change, and historically carbon dioxide levels have followed -- not caused -- warmer temperatures.

The "precautionary principle" counsels us to act even if the risk is uncertain. Unfortunately, few environmentalists practice much caution regarding the economy. While the harms of climate change are speculative, the harms of widespread political economic controls are certain and severe.

But what if? What if the earth did warm from man-made (or entirely natural) causes, and what if this caused significant problems for people? If that were the case, then low-cost technology could quickly solve the problem, argue Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in SuperFreakonomics.

Levitt and Dubner have been accused of claiming a consensus for global cooling in the 1970s, misrepresenting other people's work, and other failings. We've read a number of these criticisms, and we've read the book. We conclude that various detractors are smearing SuperFreakonomics to suppress its information. Read the book and reach your own conclusions.

The book devotes the last of five chapters to climate change. However, Chapter 4 sets the stage by describing "cheap and simple" solutions to various problems. For example, better hand cleansing in hospitals dramatically decreased deaths. Forceps have saved the lives of babies and mothers. Fertilizing crops with ammonium nitrate has dramatically increased yields. The polio vaccine wiped out that disease. Seat belts curbed auto deaths.

The final example of the chapter is a proposal to control hurricanes. Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures developed the idea based on a plan of British engineer Stephen Salter. The proposal is to employ a bunch of "large, floating" rings in troubled spots of the ocean. Waves of warm water lap into the rings, pushing the warm water down a tube and bringing cooler water to the surface. Goodbye hurricanes.

The chapter on climate change focuses on two other ideas floating around Intellectual Ventures for cooling the earth. One plan involves pumping sulfur dioxide through a long hose into the upper atmosphere, mimicking the cooling effects of natural volcanic eruptions. This would quickly cool the earth, yet the effects would rapidly disappear if pumping stopped. The other plan is to seed more clouds over the ocean.*

Cooling the earth with sulfur dioxide would cost an estimated $100 million per year, less than what environmentalists spend fear mongering. Dramatically cutting carbon dioxide emissions would cost an estimated trillion dollars per year, or 10,000 times as much.

Moreover, cutting carbon emissions wouldn't accomplish much. Beyond the problem of getting developing nations such as China to curb emissions -- fat chance -- "the existing carbon dioxide would remain in the atmosphere for several generations," Levitt and Dubner point out.

So, given that the sulfur dioxide pump is radically cheaper, safer, and more feasible, many environmentalists conclude that we should only limit carbon emissions instead. Al Gore thinks it's "nuts" to explore geoengineering solutions like the pump.

Environmentalists don't worry that volcanos emit sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, naturally cooling the earth. But many are dead set against humans doing the same thing. Why? Because, to the radical environmentalist, anything "natural" is good, and anything human is bad. Such environmentalists really don't care about the earth's temperature. What they care about is limiting human activity.

While geoengineering is the big take-home point, Levitt and Dubner challenge a number of environmentalist dogmas along the way. For example, "buying locally produced food actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions" because "big farms are far more efficient than small farms."

Myhrvold believes that wind and other alternative energies -- touted by our "New Energy Economy" governor as a pretext for corporate welfare -- "don't scale to a sufficient degree" to replace traditional energy. He adds that solar cells are not perfect: "only about 12 percent [of light] gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat -- which contributes to global warming."

Meanwhile, the authors suggest, we should not forget the benefits of modern energy. Before the gas-powered automobile, people used horses, and this generated a great deal of manure. Imagine vacant lots with manure "piled as high as sixty feet." Imagine manure "lining city streets like banks of snow." Thank human ingenuity for automobiles and the oil that powers them.

In the 1800s, American lights relied on harvesting thousands of whales each year. Our authors write, "The new oil industry... functioned as the original Endangered Species Act, saving the whale from near-certain extinction."

We worry a bit about the book's treatment of a few topics such as altruism. Yet, while SuperFreakonomics may be a fancy title for plain old economics mixed with clever research, it offers a wealth of fascinating insights.

* November 13 update: Here's something not mentioned in the book: one young scientist thinks CO2-eating rocks might help.

Udall Harms Consumers

Senator Mark Udall pushed a law harming consumers, and now he is blaming other victims of his unjust law -- credit card companies -- for the harm that he caused.

As I wrote earlier this year, Udall advocated a law violating contracts between credit card companies and their customers. I summarized, "The new controls will have two main effects. They will ensure that the young and the poor have less access to credit. And they will make it harder for responsible cardholders to negotiate good terms."

I didn't write about another, short-term harm of the bill. Because Udall's controls make it harder for credit card companies to charge irresponsible borrowers higher rates, some of those companies responded by charging some higher rates immediately, before the law went into effect. This is a predictable response. If a credit card company thinks a customer might become a problem, say by getting overextended and missing payments, Udall's bill gave those companies the incentive to take action before the bill limited their ability to act consistent with their contract with the customer.

In other words, Udall screwed customers who might have faced higher rates in the future by sticking them with immediately higher rates.

This is a classic case of a legislator blaming his victims for the harmful consequences of unjust legislation.

So what is Udall's response? Is it to admit his mistake and repeal the unjust law? Of course not. Now Udall is pushing a new law to hasten the implementation of the old law.

Credit card companies have probably already responded to the bill, so the new law will not save anybody from higher rates. Nor will it save anybody from the harms of the initial legislation. Because credit card companies will have a harder time raising rates on irresponsible borrowers, they will be less likely to issue cards to riskier clients. In other words, Udall's bill screws the poor, the young, and those trying to get back on their financial feet. Udall will make sure that, rather than get less-favorable credit terms, some such people will get no credit terms.

As the Wall Street Journal explained on October 29:

But if customers are being taken to the cleaners, it is because U.S. lawmakers like Mr. Dodd sent them there. In May, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which bars rate increases without a 45-day notification. To reduce their risk under this law, banks in the U.S. are rushing to raise rates before it takes effect in February. Thus the Senator's latest political grandstand.

In the unlikely event that Mr. Dodd's new legislation passes, banks would limit their risk in other ways, such as canceling cards or refusing to extend credit to marginal customers. The unavailability of credit can also be a burden on struggling families, not to mention having a depressive effect on the economy.

What's amazing is that, even as he explains how his bill harmed consumers, he can't stop crowing about it or making empty promises to fix it.

In an October 29 e-mail, Udall writes:

The last thing families and small businesses need is their credit card company jacking up rates with no warning - but that's exactly what’s happening. In the first six months of this year - as Congress was writing common-sense reforms - credit card companies raised rates an average of 20 percent, according to one study. It's wrong, families need immediate relief, and that's why I've introduced two bills to put an end to credit card companies' abuses. This is something I've been fighting for since I served in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I'm going to ensure we do everything in our power to prevent credit card companies from taking advantage of consumers. ...

Earlier this year, we passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (Credit CARD Act) to prevent credit card companies from unfairly squeezing their customers with excessive rate hikes and predatory billing practices. That bill gave credit card companies until February of next year to implement many of the reforms. But instead of playing by the rules, credit card companies have been taking advantage of the implementation period to jack up already high interest rates even higher. The result is unfair rates that are further burdening families that were already struggling with debt.

I've introduced two bills to put a stop to this. One bill, which I introduced this week with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, would freeze interest rates immediately, giving consumers some immediate relief. The second, which I introduced last week, would move up the date for reforms to go into effect by more than two months, to Dec. 1, 2009, preventing companies from gaming the system and protecting consumers who play by the rules. This is like the classic story of David vs. Goliath - and I'm happy to take on Goliath.

If Udall wishes to catch a glimpse of Goliath he need look no further than the mirror.

In a November 5 e-mail, Udall continues:

In May, the president signed sweeping new legislation to protect consumers from abusive credit practices.

The bill, which I cosponsored, gave credit card companies until February 2010 to institute common sense reforms, like requiring advance notice of interest-rate increases, banning the practice of universal default, and protections for young people.

Instead of using this "grace period" to update their computer systems and implement the new policies, credit card companies put the squeeze on hard working, responsible credit card users by unfairly jacking up their rates.

Udall issued a media release to the same effect.

Udall is incensed that his bill prompted credit card companies to raise rates in some cases. But he apparently cannot even conceive of solving the problem by repealing its cause: his own bill.

Unfortunately, Udall is not the only legislator playing this game. The November 5 Denver Daily reports:

With Colorado Congresswoman Betsy Markey leading the charge, the U.S. House yesterday voted to move up the deadline for credit card companies to comply with federal credit card reform legislation.

The 331-92 vote came after Markey, D-Fort Collins, expressed great anger and frustration over credit card companies changing agreements — including raising interest rates on consumers by as much as double -- in anticipation of the legislation. ...

"I am appalled at the complete and utter disdain with which credit card companies are treating their customers," Markey said in a statement following the vote.

And I am appalled at the complete and utter disdain with which Senator Udall and Representative Markey are treating their constituents. Udall and Markey should stop hurting people.

Election '09 and the Separation of Church and State

Last year, I argued that the big loser in Colorado's elections was the religious right. Particularly here in the Interior West, Republican candidates who want to ram religious dogmas down people's throats by force of law tend to scare the living hell out of voters, and that's a major reason why Democrats now control all three branches of government in Colorado.

The general approach among Colorado Republicans seeking statewide or competitive congressional offices next year is to talk about the economy and downplay the "social" issues.

While I focus on Colorado politics and largely ignore races elsewhere, the three big races of 2009 may give an indication of where the Republican Party is headed, particularly with respect to the influence of the religious right. The three major results are these:

* In the New Jersey governor's race, Republican Chris Christie beat out Democratic Governor Jon Corzine.

* In the Virginia governor's race, Republican Bob McDonnell beat Democrat R. Creigh Deeds.

* In New York's 23rd Congressional special election, something very strange happened. Initially, the race featured Republican Dierdre Scozzafava against Democrat Bill Owens (not to be confused with Colorado's former Republican governor Bill Owens). But then upstart Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman garnered the support of grass-roots conservatives, prompting Scozzafava to drop out of the race. Owens beat Hoffman 49 to 45 percent.

So what does this mean?

Obviously the elections have implications far beyond the influence of the religious right. To some degree, the two Republican victories signal displeasure with Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress. Just as Obama benefitted last year from many votes against the other guy, so Republicans may be picking up protest votes this year.

But I am particularly interested in the dynamics of faith-based politics. I want to look at a few indicators, not conduct an exhaustive investigation.

Looking at New Jersey, Christianity Today reports that "Corzine targeted Christie in an ad criticizing Christie's support of a constitutional ban on abortion and opposition of funding stem cell research."

The claim about the constitutional ban is a little tenuous; it dates to a 2003 story in the Star-Ledger paraphrasing the former president of an organization that endorsed Christie in a 1997 race.

On his web page, Christie is certainly no friend to a woman's right to choose, but neither does he call for anything like a comprehensive ban. Here's what he has to say about abortion and homosexual couples:

I am pro-life. Hearing the strong heartbeat of my unborn daughter 14 years ago at 13 weeks gestation had a profound effect on me and my beliefs. The life of every human being is precious. We must work to reduce abortions in New Jersey through laws such as parental notification, a 24-hour waiting period and a ban on partial-birth abortion.

I also believe marriage should be exclusively between one man and one woman. While, I have no issue with same sex couples sharing contractual rights, I believe that marriage should remain the exclusive domain of one man and one woman.

It sounds very much to me like Christie endorses legal abortions in most cases and civil unions for homosexuals. His proposed restrictions are bad, but they're a far cry from the worst.

The Star-Ledger confirms this:

In an interview, Christie today outlined his own positions on social issues, saying he evolved from pro-choice to pro-life with the birth of his children but would not use the governor's office to "force that down people's throats." However, he said he favors restrictions on abortion rights such as banning partial-birth abortions and requiring parental notification and a 24-hour waiting period.

He said he favors the state's current law allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions but would veto a bill legalizing same-sex marriage if it reached his desk.

Notably, Christie focuses on "cutting taxes, controlling spending and creating jobs."

An Associated Press article neglects to mention abortion, stating that the race "focused on New Jersey's ailing economy, its highest-in-the-nation property taxes and even Christie's weight." Craig Royer told the AP, "I'm tired of the Democrats. I voted for Chris Christie because he's not Jon Corzine."

In Virginia, "a quarter said their vote for McDonnell was also a rejection of Obama," the AP reports.

McDonnell wants more restrictions on abortion, and he opposes even civil unions for homosexual couples. Yet it doesn't seem that he was particularly keen to run on social issues. McDonnell ran far away from a 1989 thesis he wrote taking a hardline religious conservative stance on a variety of sexual and reproductive matters. The AP believes that "McDonnell dominated the campaign's central issues: jobs and the economy."

Richmond Magazine notes, "The moderator at the July 25 debate noted that neither candidate appeared to want to discuss 'culture war' issues in the campaign."

Of course, the fact that many Republicans are trying to simultaneously appeal to the religious right in the primaries and hide that fact in the generals remains troublesome.

Moving to New York, it's not hard to see why Scozzafava was hated by free market advocates as well as the religious right. Michelle Malkin writes:

There was no fiscal conservatism to balance her social radicalism. It wasn't merely that she was "pro-choice." She was also a proud recipient of a pro-abortion award named after eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

It wasn't merely that she favored higher government spending. It was also that she supported the stimulus, which every single House Republican in office opposed, on top of her support for the union-expanding card-check bill, on top of her ambiguous statements on the energy tax-imposing cap-and-trade bill.

In this case, the AP does see faith-based issues as important, claiming that Scozzafava quit "under pressure from the party's right wing because of her support of abortion rights and same-sex marriage."

So what does Hoffman believe? In his election-night comments, he makes no reference to faith-based issues, choosing instead to talk about "freedom, sound fiscal management and citizen government."

Hoffman's "issues" page deserves some comments.

Hoffman seems to have little idea what a free market is or how to defend it. He opposes the stimulus, which is good, but then he favors "a bill that puts real money in the hands of Americans to spend." So what are we talking about here? Putting the nation deeper in debt to hand out "free" money to people who didn't earn it?

Hoffman's notes on health policy are particularly telling. He writes, "Although universal health care sounds great in theory, we can't afford to do everything at once... I believe our first step should be to bring the spiraling costs of healthcare under control [How?]... Then, as the economy picks up we can work to insure everyone."

So now conservatives agree that it's the federal government's legitimate role to "insure everyone?" Wow.

Hoffman says he'd cut spending. But what would he cut? Entitlements, which threaten to bankrupt the nation? Apparently not. He would cut "wasteful earmarks," an insignificant portion of the federal budget.

Surprisingly, Hoffman is pretty good (from a free market perspective) on immigration, writing, "The answer... is not to put up a wall and stop all immigration. The answer is to create an easier path for immigrants to enter the United States -– and to work here -– while at the same time getting tough on illegal immigrants who commit crimes." He also looks good on gun rights, and he opposes cap-and-trade.

"Where do you stand on the issue of Roe vs. Wade?" Hoffman answers, "I am pro-life, period." Because apparently that's all the commentary the issue merits on a candidate's "issues" page. But is he serious? Does he oppose abortion even if the mother's life is at risk?

At best, Hoffman was a lightweight.

I don't have a good sense of the dynamics of the race or what voters talked about and cared about. The New York Times claims that "grass-roots groups that have forcefully opposed Democratic economic and health care policies... rallied behind Mr. Hoffman."

The sense I get is that, while religious conservatives helped blast Scozzafava out of the race, Hoffman didn't play up the faith-based stuff too much with regular voters.

Interestingly, Marilyn Musgrave, ousted from her Congressional post by Colorado voters tired of her obsession with faith-based issues, played a role in the New York race through the Susan B. Anthony List, reports the Times.

The Hoffman vote, then, was a combination of disgust with the Republican candidate, disgust with the Democrats, and supporters of a variety of issues ranging from tax reform to abortion bans. It's the sort of messy race that allows just about everybody to claim some sort of victory.

Maine is also a curious case. Voters rejected same-sex marriage, which, as I've argued, is for many not a faith-based issue, especially given the alternative of domestic partnerships. At the same time, voters rejected tax restrictions and expanded medical marijuana. So, if you're a conservative, Maine went one for three. If you're a left-winger, Maine went two for three. I'm disappointed with the tax vote but thrilled about medical marijuana.

So what is the upshot? The Republican party remains schizophrenic. Because it is ambiguous about free markets and split on faith-based issues, its hope seems to rest on voters' discontent with the Democrats. And that's pretty pathetic.

Dropping Redbox Over Antitrust

I just upgraded my Netflix account, and I'll no longer use Redbox, the DVD vending service that I've used at the local McDonalds.*

A few days ago I learned about "Redbox’s antitrust case against several major studios." Redbox is seeking to force the terms by which studios sell videos, and that is wrong. A contract properly involves the voluntary consent of both parties. Redbox is trying to replace voluntary consent with political force.

And Redbox will not get another dollar of mine until it drops its antitrust suits. I called Netflix, on the other hand, and was assured by customer service that Netflix is not involved in any antitrust actions.

Redbox relates:

Redbox Files Federal Lawsuit Against Warner Home Video
For Immediate Release: August 19, 2009
Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. – Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, filed suit in Delaware Federal Court against Warner Home Video on Tuesday, August 18, 2009, to protect consumers' rights [sic.] to access new release DVDs. Redbox filed the action in response to new distribution terms imposed by Warner Home Video that would prohibit redbox from providing consumers access to Warner Home Video titles until at least 28 days after public release. ...

Federal Court Rules redbox Can Pursue Antitrust Suit Against Universal Studios Home Entertainment
For Immediate Release: August 17, 2009
Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. – The United States District Court for the District of Delaware announced today that it has denied Universal Studios Home Entertainment's motion to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit filed by redbox. ...

The Obama administration has signaled that it will ramp up antitrust persecutions. Predictably, various unscrupulous business have sought to take advantage of this by trying to get the federal government to step on competitors and suppliers. This is wrong. Businesses should respect private property and voluntary trade, not try to override people's rights with political force.

* I just called McDonalds corporate and was told that that its contract with Redbox has ended, so it's unclear to me whether any or all Redbox machines will be pulled from McDonalds locations. My local McDonalds still has an operating machine. Redbox also operates out of select local Walmarts and grocery stores. Update: I just learned from a local King Soopers manager that Redbox will expand into some of those stores.