Richard Bennett

We all know how money corrupts politics: campaign dollars buy access to powerful elected officials. Out of the access come sweetheart deals uniquely benefitting the contributor, often written by the contributor’s own staff. Sometimes these deals take the form of procurement, such as government contracts for $600 toilet seats or Jesse Jackson outreach grants. Other times, they disrupt markets and create monopolies or near-monopolies. On this week’s McLaughlin Group, the always-humble Dr. connects the dots between Enron contributions to the Clinton campaign and the Kyoto Treaty.

Kyoto uniquely disadvantages the US, aside from what you think about global warming, because it sets pollution ceilings at artificial levels. The UK merely has to stay below the level they were at before they switched from coal to gas for most electricity; Germany has to stay below their level immediately following unification, when much of their electricity was generated by East German coal plants now de-commissioned. But levels for the US penalize us for a relatively cleaner system of generation.

Kyoto would require the US to shut down all of our coal-fired plants and replace them with the only politically correct and practical alternative, natural gas. And guess who was the leader in natural gas-fired electrical plants? Bingo, it was Enron, and evidence suggests they were heavily involved with pushing Clinton and Gore in the Kyoto direction before, during, and after the writing of the treaty.

Kyoto also creates a trans-national system of trading in pollution credits, something Enron was uniquely well-positioned to do. Smoking-gun Company memos touted the benefits that the Kyoto Treaty would bring to Enron

So why fixate on small fry like Paul Krugman when the most massive assault on the American standard of living is staring you right in the face? Wake up, Andrew Sullivan and Virginia Postrel, and smell the money. The Big Money.

Is Marxism a failure because human beings are inherently flawed, or is Marxism itself to blame? Read this article based on the author’s experiences in China: Partisan Review

Democracy is the institutionalization of the fact that disagreement is both inevitable and good. Marx didn%u2019t distinguish between democracy and other political systems. In the Manifesto, he wrote, “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” He was wrong. A philosophy that looks forward to the end of conflict of interest leads logically and inevitably to a society where disagreement is viewed as the embodiment of evil. When individuality was outlawed, individuals themselves were considered worthless. Countries as different as Russia, Ethiopia, and China all developed the same architecture, the same “neighborhood committees,” the same fear of thought. What is even worse, they pursued policies that led to starvation on a catastrophic scale. Such a famine is currently taking place in North Korea. It is no accident, comrade.

Marxism is more a religion than a political philosophy, but we in the West can at least thank it for preventing the the capitalist spirit of China from dominating the world economy for the present.

Jonah Goldberg’s Goldberg File on National Review Online
Nothing needs to be added to this:

The unspoken scandal of the Enron scandal is that the scandalmongers are boring us to death. That’s not to say this isn’t a big, possibly criminal, mess, but until someone can find a little more political there, I’m done with it.

Amen, Brother Goldberg.

Enron gave money to many in Congress (1/15/2002)

Since 1989, the bankrupt company contributed $5.8 million to campaigns of both parties, including nearly half the current members of Congress. Impartiality will be an issue as probes proceed.

There’s an interesting critique of the egalitarianism of Rawls and Dworkin in City Journal. Here’s a highlight by way of Arts and Letters Daily:

Indefensible as it is, Dworkin’s theory usefully illustrates problems that render all versions of egalitarianism untenable. Egalitarians face a fatal dilemma. If they say, as does Dworkin, that individual responsibility really does matter, then they must accept the anti-egalitarian claim that it is wrong to equalize the resources of people who live up to their responsibilities and those who don’t. Conversely, if they insist, as does Rawls, that individual responsibility makes no difference in deciding what resources people should have, then they are committed to the absurd and unjust policy of confiscating the legally owned property of moral, prudent, and law-abiding people in order to benefit the immoral, imprudent, and criminal. The only escape from this dilemma is to abandon egalitarianism.