Washington Times endorses Gilmore

The editors of the Times simply cut through the fog of Mark Warner's rhetoric and looked at the truth:

. . . Mr. Gilmore is strongly opposed to the $700 billion mortgage-bailout bill passed by Congress earlier this month; Mr. Warner supported it.

Mr. Gilmore favors making permanent the federal tax cuts enacted by Congress in 2001 and 2003. Mr. Warner, by contrast, has suggested repealing tax cuts on persons whose family income exceeds $250,000 a year.

. . .

Mr. Gilmore favors offshore oil drilling in Alaska and off the Atlantic Coast. Mr. Warner opposes drilling in Alaska and says more study is needed before drilling is permitted off the Atlantic Coast. Mr. Gilmore opposes and Mr. Warner favors the Orwellian-titled Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much easier for labor unions to coerce workers into joining.

As governor, Mr. Gilmore is best known for his work to repeal the oppressive car tax. Mr. Warner's major political achievement as governor was his success in pushing a $1.4 billion tax increase through the General Assembly in 2004. Only weeks after passage of the tax increase (which Mr. Warner asserted was essential to balance the budget), state officials acknowledged that Virginia was actually running a budget surplus. (In other words, Mr. Warner's dire warnings of imminent fiscal collapse had been proven false.)

It's easy to see why - as the Times put it - "Mr. Gilmore would be the superior choice."

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Does Mark Warner agree with Joe Biden?

The Democrats' Vice Presidential nominee announced his party energy policy: "No coal plants here in America."

I have the details here, but check out this quote:

We’re not supporting ‘clean coal.’ Guess what. China’s building two every week. Two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the United States. It’s causing people to die . . . No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them over there make ‘em clean because they’re killing you.

Remember, guns don't kill people; coal plants kill people.

So Mark, you're part of the "we," right? Biden is your candidate for VP, right?

Do you agree with him? Do you support "no coal plants here in America"?

Mark?

More economic illiteracy from Mark Warner

As the question of oil supply continues to dominate the U.S. Senate campaign here, Mark Warner expressed his skepticism on Jim Gilmore's assertion that drilling for oil - even if it would take years for the oil to get to market, would reduce its current price (Daily Press):

"There's no serious policymaker or economist who predicts that," Warner said. "I
know it's political season, but some of this is basic math."

Actually, Mark, it's about economics, but you've already proven you know nothing about that, so you might want to pay attention.

Like most commodities, oil not only has a current price, it also has future prices. One of the biggest drivers in the current price of oil has been the surge in its future price (if a gap is created between the two, an investors can sell the higher and buy the lower, ensuring a nice profit until everyone else catches on and the two prices return to rough equal). The future price of oil is driven by several factors - turbulence in the Middle East, the rise in demand from Communist China and India, and no major exploration moves by the United States.

So the idea that a decision to drill more now would have no effect on oil prices is based on pure economic ignorance. How can I say that? Take a look at this (Larry Kudlow, NRO - The Corner):

In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch
moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his
new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the
congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil
futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as
Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

. . .

Traders
took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the
market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell
us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on
falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and
expectations can turn on a dime. The congressional ban on offshore drilling
expires September 30, so that becomes a key date.

Indeed.

President Bush's lifting of the ban does two things: removes a barrier to future drilling, and all but ensure the Congressional barrier is gone as of October 1 (unless Congress can override a Presidential veto on maintaining the ban - highly unlikely now).

So, not only did the market react to future drilling (contrary to Warner's claim), it actually reacted to expected future drilling. Not only has this happened "before a single new drop of oil," it happened before anyone could even begin drilling by law.

Imagine how far it would fall if, say, the candidate in Virginia who made support for oil drilling his signature issue was elected to the U.S. Senate!

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Mark Warner is economically illiterate, and dangerous

I was looking forward to firing up the Warnerese-English translator for Mark's recent statement on energy, until I realized he may actually mean what he says. It just goes to show you, just because a guy can make millions via insider trading on cell-phone licenses (Riley) doesn't mean he actually knows how an economy works (Washington Times):

Make no mistake about it: what has happened over the past few months has not been the result of the market. Actually, driving demand in the United States and consumption have fallen and we've seen record increases in the price of gas.

Why yes, Mark, the price has risen and demand has fallen here in the United States, but that did not mean demand has fallen worldwide. We can't simply control the price of oil by fiat here.

So why would I simply analyze something so ridiculous without breaking out the translator? The answer is his audience - "a group of technology investors" - in other words, folks that Warner likes to think are "his people," as opposed to the mountain folks he's managed to hoodwink into voting for him all these years. He's not likely to go into Warnerese with that crowd.

In other words, Warner really doesn't understand how international markets work. He thinks the United States can just close itself off from the rest of the world.

Even worse, he sees millions of ordinary investors and mutual fund managers looking for long-term gains in the commodities markets as "predatory speculators." The last time I heard that kind of talk was when the market destroyed Great Britain's attempt to join the pre-euro Exchange Rate Mechanism at a badly overvalued currency rate. The Tory government (led by John Major) had the same hysterical reaction to "speculators." Voters knew better, and the Conservative Party hasn't been elected to power since.

So what would Warner do? Take a look at this nonsense:

Quicker relief, he said, would result from federal action against speculators who have made billions by inflating crude oil prices on overseas markets, from aggressively using U.S. trade leverage to pressure oil cartel nations to increase production, and from "enforcement action" against nations and corporations that collude to drive up oil prices.

In other words: locking up every individual investor who decides to put their money in oil or oil companies, repeatedly begging Saudi Arabia to increase production, and retaliatory trade tariffs that could spread the fuel inflation to every sector of the economy and bring back the Smoot-Hawley Great Depression days of old.

Again - and I can't emphasize this enough - Warner really believes this stuff. That's why he cannot be elected Senator. Nonsense like this is merely a hop, skip, and a jump away from Maurice Hinchey's demand to "nationalize" oil production.

I only wish I had paid more attention to this when it first came out three days ago. Mark Warner is no longer just a shifty politician who plays fast and loose with the truth. The man is actually dangerous.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal