FreedomTalks

The Senate takes up the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill today, and Robert Samuelson nicely lays out the primary problems with its approach to regulating carbon emissions:
The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade — a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases — is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. [...]

Gallup also reported last month that many Americans assume recent jumps in gas prices are permanent.  But that’s not necessarily true. As Steve Chapman points out today, there are credible experts who believe that oil prices could well go down by more than 30%.  Lower demand as a result of high prices is part of [...]

Here’s an interesting statistic: According to the latest Gallup poll, a majority of Americans support Congress allowing oil companies to drill in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits. With oil prices hovering around $4 a gallon in most parts of the country, this is hardly a surprise. Worldwide demand is on the [...]

Michael Franc in NRO today:
Conservatives on the Hill want to believe they’ve started on that long road to recovery. Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) unveiled an exquisite and ambitious reform agenda he calls “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” In it, Ryan sets forth a credible way to address the fiscal catastrophe sure to [...]

The farm bill is pretty obviously a bipartisan debacle, one of those only-in-Washington mutual spendathons limited only by the — wait, at $700 billion over the next ten years, it appears to have been limited by basically nothing.
Well, at least it’s money well spent, right?  America’s farmers deserve our support.  Maybe, but not like this. [...]

Earlier last week Representative Barney Frank made the following statement in an interview with the New York Times, addressing the housing bailout he’s been pressing aggressively through Congress:

“The notion that this bill doesn’t keep people out of foreclosure is true,” he said. “It doesn’t combat global warming. It [...]

I hit up the Reason magazine forum on libertarianism yesterday. (Mike Gravel was there! How could I resist?) As expected, it was pleasantly entertaining and somewhat silly – but didn’t offer much hope for more practical-minded limited-government advocates. Much of the discussion got sidetracked on ancillary issues (Is it better to work in a factory [...]

Yesterday, I listened in to a blogger conference call with Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of Chevron’s board. Much of the call naturally centered on gas prices and, of course, the basic issues of supply and demand which drive pump prices. I can’t say I agreed with his statements about the need for biofuels (I’ve been [...]

So reports USA Today:

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That’s nearly $500,000 per household.
When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 [...]

Dean Baker thinks we shouldn’t bother with free trade because it’s not really free trade — it only affects low-income workers, right? — and because IP rights for things like pharmaceuticals are a Big Bad Conspiracy to keep poor people sick.  Too bad that, as Megan McArdle points out, this is pretty much nonsense.