Remembering Buckley

Much is being written today in honor and remembrance of the great conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley, founder of The National Review, was a towering intellectual and the father of the modern American conservative movement. He will truly be missed.

"Erudite" seems to be a word that followed Buckley around. But, that seemed proper as Buckley was the kind of fellow who made large and arcane words cool.

Over at The Corner there is a lively and emotional conversation regarding Mr. Buckley's passing.

WFB gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in 2005. A nugget:

"My view is unorthodox," Mr. Buckley says of the violence roiling the French suburbs. "It seems to me that a very hard dose of market discipline would distract the attention of the young revolutionaries from their frolics, traditional and otherwise, and my sense is that if they had to worry about how to eat, and buy food, they would stop screwing around and face reality. If these people didn't wake up in the morning thinking about what cars to burn -- instead of work -- they might not be having these problems."

Buckley is the one who put the "move" in the convservative movement.

More on the Laffer Curve

The FDC has talked about the importance of the Laffer Curve and the role tax rates play in tax revenue. Today, Larry Kudlow has posted on the National Review's blog, The Corner, a video explaining the Laffer Curve.

The video is presented by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute.

Lessons for Liberals:

1. The Laffer Curve does exist (this is likely new territory for our liberal friends)
2. Tax policy does affect the economy, and there's often be increased revenue with tax rate cuts

Lessons for Conservatives:

1. Many, but not all tax cuts pay for themselves.

Oil is a "fossil fuel"? Maybe not.

The National Review's Planet Gore blog points out today that an article in this month's Science Magazine (which The FDC points out is a "peer-reviewed general-science journal"), shows that oil may not be made up of dead dinosaurs as most of us believed.

Unbeknownst to many (excluding The FDC) there are two competing theories about how oil and natural gas is created:

1. Biogenic (the "fossil fuel" theory): Oil is created by the compression and chemical changes in the remains of biological organisms over centuries or millenia.


2. Abiogenic: Oil is created by chemical changes in carbon in the earth's mantle.

Although both theories have been around a long time, the biogenic theory became CW.

The Science Mag article concludes that:

"Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat."

This article will doubtless inspire more study, and if it is found to be fact will likely drastically change where oil exploration is taking place. The Peak Oil movement will be nervously looking on, and preparing their spin. The FDC believes that the Peak Oil theory is a bunch of hooey, and that subject will be covered here in future posts.

Who knows? Maybe an oil rig will be coming to your backyard, and help you send your kids to college.

"...politicians have predicted nine of the last five recessions."

So says the National Review's editorial today.

And eventually the politicians will get it right. So, just in case they do get it right, something must be done, and since we are in the midst of a presidential primary...let the cash hand outs begin!

The National Review's Rich Lowry gets it right on these so-called "stimulus plans" to "jump-start the economy". The FDC loves that Lowry cited Milton Friedman's (one of our heroes) "permanent income hypothosis" that Lowry boils down to: "You can’t fool people into thinking that they are richer than they really are. "

Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, praises the hand-outs. Krugman disregards the lessons he learned earning his undergraduate economics degree at Yale and his Ph.D. at MIT, to wallow in what Lowry calls the "the lowest common denominator of sophomoric economic policy".