Heather MacDonald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Are Cops Racist? (Ivan R. Dee)
I Hope...Bush Will Learn the Right Lessons From Alaska
Vernon Smith
One of the last actions of the Clinton administration was to prohibit oil and gas exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). Since directional and other new drilling technologies enable sensitive areas to be developed without environmental damage, the main damage here was to the full development of U.S. energy potential. With more Republican seats in Congress, Bush's support of ANWR development legislation is likely to pass.
Administration action on an Alaskan gas pipeline is also likely. I fear, however, industry pressure for federal subsidies or guarantees of the pipeline, which should not be granted. If industry truly sees the pipeline investment risk as too high, that means it's too soon--energy prices are not high enough--to justify the investment.
These developments are also likely to lower energy costs within Alaska enough to enable major new mining and industrial developments to occur. Since the Alaska Permanent Fund has already set the precedent that public assets belong to the citizens and not just the government, there is the prospect that existing and future Alaskan citizens will benefit directly. May the lower 48 and the rest of the world follow this important precedent.
Vernon Smith is an economics professor at George Mason University, author of Bargaining and Market Behavior (Cambridge University Press), and 2002 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
I Fear...Bush Will Learn the Wrong Lessons From the Election
Glenn Reynolds
"Great election, kid. Don't get cocky." That could be Han Solo's advice to President Bush. But it's not the advice he's getting from either the left or the right. Eager to explain away Kerry's defeat in a way that lets them feel morally superior, many on the left are saying that it was all about "moral values," particularly gay rights and abortion. Eager to expand their power in the second term, advocates for the Christian Right have been swift to agree.
Listening to them would be a big mistake for Bush. There's no question that incidents like the Janet Jackson breast episode have angered a lot of Americans who feel that the entertainment industry doesn't respect their values. And gay marriage polls badly even in the bluest of blue states. But there's little reason to believe Americans eagerly cast their votes in November in the hope that busybodies would finally start telling them what to do.
In their book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge explain how the Republican coalition could go wrong: "Too Southern, too greedy, and too contradictory." Taking the advice of advocacy groups left and right is likely to send the Bush administration in that direction. Is Karl Rove smart enough to realize that?
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, runs the popular weblog InstaPundit.com.
I Hope...Trade Will Be Freer
Daniel Drezner
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