This is not a John Grisham novel but the real situation the Obama administration finds itself confronted with.  The Russians secured an agreement with the communist Cuban government in mid 2009 to begin drilling in Cuba’s economic zone (which Jimmy Carter ceded to them).  Estimates put the available amount of oil around 5 billion barrels in this area.  While not a windfall like Alaska’s discovery in Prudhoe Bay of 25 billion barrels, the field is comparable to Brazil’s deep water discovery in 2007.  Russia stands to expand its influence in the western hemisphere at the expense of the United States.  Russia’s agreement with Cuba could significantly lessen the burden of the Cuban government by allowing Cuba to import far less oil than it currently does today.  Most significantly, it strikes an economic blow to American interests in our backyard.

Pundits like Sarah Palin  and others have speculated that the Obama administration’s new endorsement of off shore drilling is a nothing more than an attempt to curry favor for his carbon cap and trade scheme.  But this seems unlikely.  Palin’s position is like assuming that untying a captive’s right hand will allow him to accept cutting off his left.  It simply makes no sense.  Instead, it appears that the President fears the growing Russian presence in our hemisphere. He is right to.  Permitting offshore drilling in and around areas where the Russians are present sends a message that while the president generally disapproves of offshore drilling, he is unwilling to sit back and let Russia expand its petro-carbon empire in to the Gulf without a response.  It is subtle, but it won’t go unnoticed by the Russians, the Chinese or even the Brazilians.  Sure, they can drill in Cuban waters, but if the U.S. wanted to, it could make that ultimately unprofitable by sucking much of that oil up itself.

If Obama was serious about currying favor for his carbon cap and trade legislation or about energy independence he would have opened the door for slant drilling from existing platforms off the coast of California.  But he didn’t because the Russians’ energy empire poses no encroaching threat there.  Obama’s move provides very little benefit to the United States and does little more than put a slightly larger U.S. presence in and around the Russian platforms.  But this, I posit, is his point.  Look at us, we are here and if we desire, we can have it all.  Don’t be fooled, Sarah et al.  While the president will move forward with his cap and trade agenda, this move is simply more weak finger-wagging foreign policy from B-rock.

Now, it’s perfectly reasonable for Clinton to protest China’s hacking of American companies’ networks, using them to spy on Chinese users’ communications, and the theft of their intellectual property. But it’s another thing altogether to invoke cold-war rhetoric in an explicit call to undermine foreign governments:

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.

While it’s unclear what this speech signifies beyond escalating rhetoric, it seems that Hillary is trying to enlist American companies to protest or undermine foreign governments’ Internet policies, á la Google’s stand in China.

This goes to show that despite the neocon characterization of Obama as some sort of a fuzzy-headed dialogue-with-your-enemies conciliator, his administration is actually in thrall to the same the democratist ideology that characterized the Bush years. Sorry, but Web censorship and surveillence in China from seeing is surely outrageous to right thinking people the world over, but it’s not anything close to a core American national security interest.

Am I some kind of apologist for the Chinese dictatorship, or something? No, I’d like nothing more than to see China’s government undermined and thwarted at every turn by Chinese dissidents and their supporters all over the world. The Chinese aren’t stupid, and they’re figuring out ways to circumvent the Great Firewall. They also continue to use traffic anonymizers such as Tor despite their government’s attempts to suppress them, and we — as private individuals — can help them by supporting such projects with our time and money.

And if Hillary is so keen on using her position to protect individuals from the arbitrary whims of the national-security state, there’s plenty that she can do right here at home.

If she’s so worried about Internet surveillance, maybe she should find out what’s going on with that secret room in San Francisco that AT&T built to route all if its Internet traffic and phone calls through to NSA spies.

If she’s worried about China looking at its dissidents’ e-mail, maybe she should focus on how the NSA “routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants,” a program that was “still in operation” as of June 2009.

Or she could make some noise about the FBI, which couldn’t even be bothered with creating the self-issued subpoenas provided for under the Patriot Act when snooping on thousands of Americans’ phone records.

If she’s so exercised about civil liberties, maybe she could call on Obama to make sure that new government powers under the Patriot Act are only used for terrorism investigations. Or better yet, she could call for its repeal.

Finally, if Hillary is worried about openness in government, maybe she should call for an official investigation of the three Guantanamo prisoners who were apparently tortured to death by their interrogators, and whose deaths were passed off as suicides.

Tortoise: I trust you will take a check from me, my friend?

Achilles: Of course, Tortoise. You and I go way back. Into antiquity you might even say. In any case, I could really use the money.

Tortoise: Are you still looking for work?

Achilles: Yes. It seems there is very little call for heroic Greek warriors in today’s economy. If only we would declare war on Turkey. I could probably round up any number of Greek warrior heroes for that war.

Tortoise: Maybe you could get Norman Podhoretz to put a bug in Obama’s ear. Just remind him the Turks are Muslim. That should be reason enough for him to advocate for a war. And, at the same time, think of all the jobs that would be created for idled Hellenistic soldiers.

Achilles: I wish I knew what went wrong. I thought for sure the government stimulus would lead to prosperity. I kept hearing that every dollar of deficit spending would create $1.50 of expansion in the economy. Maybe we should have spent more.

Tortoise: That is one way. Or, we could learn from our failure and try something different. Can I ask you a question, Achilles?

Achilles: Of course.

Tortoise: Where does all of the money that the government spends come from?

Achilles: Why, it comes from taxpayers. You should know that.

Tortoise: And who does the government give the money to?

Achilles: Other taxpayers who will spend the money. That’s how jobs are created.

Tortoise: What you are saying then is that the government takes the money from one taxpayer and gives it to another to spend. This seems to be a recipe in spinning one’s wheels. Why would we do that?

Achilles: Well, Tortoise, the people from whom the government takes the money are those who are savers and the people who they give to are spenders. The government just wants to make sure that the money is being used. That way, new money is injected into the economy. It is really quite elementary, Tortoise.

Tortoise: Let me see if I understand. It is your position that saving money is unproductive whereas spending it is a productive use of capital.

Achilles: Precisely! And that is why I am having such a hard time understanding why the economy hasn’t come roaring back and why there are not jobs for everyone.

Tortoise: Well, Achilles, let me propose to you another way of thinking about the problem. Suppose you are one of those savers that are destroying our economy. What will you do with that check I just handed you?

Achilles: Easy. I’ll put it in the bank for a rainy day.

Tortoise: Wouldn’t you want to at least draw some interest on the money?

Achilles: Oh sure. Maybe I’ll buy a CD or something like that.

Tortoise: And do you suppose the bank will take your money and put it in the vault until the day you come back to retrieve it?

Achilles: I never really thought about that. I suppose so.

Tortoise: Well then, let me ask you this. How does a bank make money?

Achilles: They write loans to people.

Tortoise: Loans to open businesses, buy cars, houses and such, right?

Achilles: Exactly.

Tortoise: And whose money do you suppose they use to write these loans?

Achilles: Ah, I see where you’re going. They use the money I placed in their vault.

Tortoise: Precisely. They use yours and all the other depositors’ money to make loans on which they then charge interest.

Achilles: What did you expect? Even a greedy evil bank has to make money, Tortoise.

Tortoise: The people who take those loans out of the bank, they buy things with the money and open businesses, right?

Achilles: Yes. Probably all of those things.

Tortoise: And I think you alluded to it before, but those people who take the loans, the spenders as I think you called them, are putting that money to productive use. Are they not?

Achilles: Yes, I suppose they are.

Tortoise: Just so we’re clear. The spenders are taking the money that you saved and making it productive. In other words, saving is not unproductive, is it?

Achilles: I see what you mean. But, surely with the saving and the government money, that is all to the good.

Tortoise: Ah, but didn’t you say a few minutes ago that the government takes that money from the savers to give to the spenders?

Achilles: Well, yes. I did say that.

Tortoise: Doesn’t that seem to mean that if you take money from the savers and give it to the spenders, the only people you’ve hurt is the banks who no longer get to charge interest on the money. But, in the end, the same amount of money is available to the spenders?

Achilles: Now you put it that way, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Tortoise: Why is that, Achilles?

Achilles: Well, from what you’ve said, taxing people can never result in injecting new money into the economy.

Tortoise: That’s true.

Achilles: But, what if the government were to just print the money and spend it?

Tortoise: Well, they could do that. I purposely left out the Federal Reserve – that is who would do such a thing. If the Fed were to print money, they would simultaneously be forced to raise interest rates to stave off inflation. In the end, spenders would be more reluctant to borrow money at the higher interest rates and the economy would slow down.

Achilles: So printing money wouldn’t even work.

Tortoise: I’m afraid not, Achilles.

Achilles: I’ll never get a job at this rate. It seems that every time I get halfway to a job, I still have to traverse half the remaining distance and so forth, so that I never actually arrive at my job.

Tortoise: I agree it seems to be a paradox.

Achilles: Is there no way to inject new money into the economy and spur job growth?

Tortoise: There is no way to do it with government spending because there is no such thing as idle savings. However, let us discuss what would happen if government spent less. Suppose the government decided to collect less money from taxpayers. What would be the result?

Achilles: Well, as we discussed before, the spenders would spend it. And the savers would save more of it. And, as we saw earlier would make even more money available to the spenders through loans.

Tortoise: That is part of the story. Government would spend less money though. In the end, government would have to let some of its workers go. It is difficult to say that less government workers would lose their jobs than the private economy gains.

Achilles: It seems there are no good options.

Tortoise: I’m not saying that cutting taxes is a bad option. I’m just pointing out that the good comes with some bad – if you count less government workers as bad. I suppose if you were a government worker…But, I digress. In fact, cutting marginal tax rates and slashing regulation has worked before and it has the added benefit of promoting work, saving, and investing. If one receives more of the value of his labor for every hour that he works, he is likely to work more. And, as he rakes in more money through more work, he will have more money to save and invest.

Achilles: Well that seems all to the good.

Tortoise: In the end the only thing government can do is move money from one person to another – it can redistribute the wealth. It cannot create new wealth. Only increasing productivity and an expanding work force can do that.

Achilles: I must have gotten sucked in by the slogan.

Tortoise: Which slogan is that?

Achilles: “Yes, we Keynes.”

Tortoise: No, you Keynte and you shouldn’t even try.

With apologies to Homer, Carroll, Hofstadter, and Riedl (from whose article this month in NR I drew heavily).

The United States must end the cycle of supporting tyrants in Latin America.  Zelaya is/was a socialist and a dictator in the making.  This was no coup, the military in Honduras arrested the president after he illegally solicited assistance from the dictator Chavez to illegally hold a referendum which would have allowed him to run for election indefinitely.  Furthermore, the military arrested Zelaya upon request from the Honduran Supreme Court after its judgement was dismissed by the would-be dictator Zelaya.  Zelaya actively attacked a military installation with leftist supporters.  His goal was to distribute illegal ballots in an attempt to forever control the nation.  Only the legislature can call for a constitutional referendum. 

So, the legislature condemned Zelaya, the Supreme Court condemned him and the military defended democracy and the rule of law by abiding by the constitution and the wishes of the other two branches of government by arresting the hack. 

And Obama calls for a return of the socialist would-be dictator in defiance of democracy and the rule of law.  Mr. Obama, one’s character can be determined by the company he keeps.  Fidel and the mini-communists in this hemisphere are not good company.

Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (ugh), said “There’s reason to believe they (North Korea) may respond in an irresponsible fashion to this.”  Hmm, more irresponsibily that the Obama administration?  Rice said the administration was “very pleased” with the sanctions. She called the new resolution, which was supported by China and Russia, an “unprecedented” position by the Security Council.  Right, unprecedented because Russia and China did not veto new sanctions.

Rice also said Obama’s wagging finger should scare the Hell out of Iran.  “I imagine that they have been following this closely.”  She said Iran will observe that “the response from the international community has been very clear, very firm and very meaningful.”  Oh, indeed.

UPDATE:

It appears the United States Navy has encountered its first suspect ship!  Start wagging, Mr. Obama.  I am sure the NoKos wont threaten Hawaii…AGAIN.  Looks like we might have to santion North Korea.  God, I am sure they aren’t ready for that!

Initially, Admiral Anthony Keating suggested that the U.S. Navy was in a position to shoot down the rogue state’s threat.  “We’ll be prepared to respond,” he said, adding that “the United States has the capability” to destroy any missile.  Then the Obama administration, Via Secretary Gates, said “...we’re not prepared to do anything about it. If we had an aberrant missile, one that looked like it was headed for Hawaii, we might consider it, but I don’t think we have any plans to do anything like that at this point.”

Let me get this straight, if the missile looks like it will hit Hawaii we may do something about it?  This is ludicrous and dangerous.  The DPRK is calling this a communications satellite launch and if it is, we should not shoot it down.  But the very second it looks as if it will land on Earth, we ought to shoot it out of the heavens.  We have pandered to this totalitarian menace for too long.  Its time we used our defenses to demonstrate to Kim Jong-Il that his missile program and his nuclear development are useless.

Instead of ending the threat, Obama will allow the DPRK to advance their technological know-how.  Hell, maybe we should just send them a series of Titans.  Show some backbone Mr. President.

What’s more, the Great Enemy of the East, China, seems open to the idea as well. Need I say more?

Two conclusions necessarily follow from these disturbing developments.

1. Ron Paul and his followers are fascist sympathizers and possibly traitors. They should be watched closely at the very least.
2. We need to invade Russia as soon as possible.

But Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, said that changing the buying habits of the American public is going to be difficult in the face of low gas prices, and it’s going to be up to the Obama administration to create an energy policy that gets people interested in buying fuel efficient vehicles.

Did he really just say that he thinks Obama should raise taxes on every American to force them to purchase electric vehicles? What makes him think the Japanese won’t kick the Big Three’s asses in that segment too? It never ceases to amaze me that so many people think the way out economic malaise is through taxation. With idiots like Mr. Lutz in the management of General Motors, it is my fervent hope that Congress rethinks its foolish desire to bail these people out.

Not surprisingly, President Bush is considering Pelosi’s demands. However, before acceding to the demands of Pelosi, Levin, and Gettelfinger, Bush should consider the long-term costs to the economy of allowing the carmakers to escape their poor management and the union’s rapaciousness. It is acknowledged that this is to be only a bridge “loan” meaning that everyone fully expects to be back in this same position at a later date when the carmakers blow through the money. Bush should also consider whether caving in to the Democrats will make Michigan any redder, whether the Unions will switch allegiances or if, politically, it will only serve to save the bacon of a number of Democrat representatives.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but it seems that diverting funds that Congress approved for the finincial markets and repurposing them to bail out the automakers may be impermissible under the Constitution’s clear rule that only Congress has the authority to spend. Congress last night rejected further spending for the purpose of bailing out Detroit. It would be violation of the separation of powers for the executive branch to conduct an end run around that inconvenient fact. Another breach of contract seems to be in the offing.