Brookfield Basics

The market always works.  For centuries legislators have tried to control it, but the laws of economics are immutable, and stand well beyond the reach of their rhetoric.

The price of corn has tripled in less than eighteen months.  While it is fair to say there are a few factors causing this, there is a primary cause - and that is the well-funded and horribly misguided rush to legislate ethanol fuels. 

So why the title of this column?

My family spent Memorial Day Weekend in Iowa County, in the lush valley of the Wisconsin River.  Amongst other things, this is big dairy country.  Beautiful farms adorn the rolling hills, and milk production is a 24-7 operation.  For obvious reasons, dairy farmers have little use for bull calves, and for years have sold them to people who would raise them for beef.  But do you know what they are doing with them now?

They are shooting them.

That' s because most farmers are frantically selling corn to ethanol processors, and the ones that aren't can barely afford to feed it to their livestock.  So the market for bull-calves is shrinking, and instead of selling them, many dairy farmers are merely taking them for a walk behind the barn and introducing them to a bullet instead of a nipple. 

Instead of the bleating of calves in this lovely area of our State, one can now hear random gun shots - then silence.  Perhaps we will see P.E.T.A. add its name to the ever growing list of organizations on both the political right and the left that are condemning our government's dysfunctional ethanol binge.    

The work of the market isn't always pretty.

But it gets done.

While reading the news of President Bush's inept appeal to the House of Saud to increase its oil output, I was listening to an obscure Rolling Stones song called Sweet Black Angel, from the 1972 double-album Exile on Main Street.  Recorded under surreal conditions, with the band mired in the downward spiral of guitarist Keith Richards' heroin addiction, the album remains one of the seminal works in all of rock.  Angel is a tribute to the 1960's radical activist Angela Davis, and the lyrics include the "n" word - rightfully shocking in its raw and forbidden impact.  The combination of the song and the news got me thinking about another "n" word that, unlike the one in the song, we should all be talking about.

The discussion of energy policy in this country is dysfunctional.  Politicians who know nothing of economics blather about lower gas prices, trying desparately to believe they hold power over the law of supply and demand.  Many others demand a decrease in carbon emissions, while others still remain steadfast in their refusal to allow exploration or drilling ANYWHERE in the United States, despite growing evidence of significant U.S. reserves.  And of course EVERYONE wants to be less dependant on mid-East crude.  Yet somehow this is all supposed to just happen of its sweet accord?!   

It is time to bring  the "n" word out of its long-standing banishment.  It is time for us to come out of the energy closet, and join the rest of the world in the twentieth, much less the 21st Century.  It is time to have a serious national debate about nuclear power. 

It is certainly not the entire answer, but it has to be part of the discussion.  How are we to even approximate any of the aforementioned goals without making this part of our policy debate?   

I'll write in more detail on this subject soon.

Do you remember?? 

Eighteen years ago today our City was hit by a blitzkrieg.  About 3 AM heavy rain turned to snow, and by daylight nearly ten inches of the heavy wet stuff covered most of Waukesha County.  Trees, shrubs and all manner of plant life were devastated by the crushing weight, and though it would melt by the afternoon, the damage was done.  We spent a good part of that summer cleaning up from the storm, and the sound of chain saws reverberated throughout our city for weeks.

But sixty-eight years ago today HISTORY'S Blitzkieg was unleashed, as Adolf Hitler's Wermacht invaded France.  It is impossible today to grasp the stunning impact of this action which ushered in the greatest conflagration in history, re-wrote the world’s geopolitical landscape, and ultimately left FIFTY MILLION dead.  Throughout the 1930’s Europe's intellectual and political elite had coddled Hitler, ignoring Winston Churchill’s insistent and graphic warnings.  They watched as he swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia, and even acquiesced to his invasion of Poland in 1939.  As long as Hitler gazed eastward - towards Communist Russia, his actions were tolerated, even encouraged.  But on this day his forces lunged westward across the Meuse River, and poured into France.

The French, who for months had been mired in defeatism and denial, awoke to their peril and along with their British Allies, rushed into Belgium to meet the German troops.............. BUT - the Germans weren't there.  The Nazi General Staff had revolutionized warfare with the introduction of their mechanized Panzer Divisions, and they used their mobility to swing far south of Belgium.  There they penetrated the Ardennes forest, out-flanked the Maginot Line, and cut like a scythe through the countryside of France, achieving the most rapid conquest since the days of Alexander.  In six short weeks the Swastika would be hoisted over the Eiffel Tower, plunging La Vielle de Lumiere into the darkness of foreign occupation.

The Allies were stupefied by the pace and depth of the Nazi advance.  In command of the lead Panzer units, General Heinz Guederian defied the frantic pleas of his superiors in Berlin, who begged him to wait for the slower moving German infantry.  The grim tank commander knew better, and growled, “We move or we fail.  Approve the advance or relieve me from command”.  Reflecting on those frenetic days of mayhem and death, Churchill would later say, “The Germans were everywhere – and everywhere were victorious”.

The Nazi occupation of France, while reprehensible, would not even approximate the savagery of their Eastern occupations. England, protected by her Channel, would finally turn to the one man she had long scorned. In London the sixty-five year old Winston Churchill’s time had finally come, and he would stand astride the pages of history like the lion he was.   

For months he would confront his fascist adversary with the only weapons he had - soaring prose and an indomitable will.  His broadcasts originated from an underground London bunker, and were carried to the listening world via the BBC. They stand today as some of the most stirring orations in history, and a profile in political leadership.

Last December I wrote a blog with this same title.  It addressed my thoughts on some fundamentally different approaches to Mid-East peace, and my desire that one of the Presidential candidates would make it a major foreign policy discussion of their campaign.  This posting will deal with the same desire but on a different issue - The United Nations. 

I would love to see one of the three candidates launch a comprehensive debate on the role of the United Nations, and what part the United States can or should play in it.  I believe it is time to acknowledge and understand how hopelessly flawed this body is.  No matter how noble and lofty its self-ascribed goals may be, the UN has proven to be little more than a geopolitical eunech, unable to perform or discharge any of its responsibilities.   For decades it has stood on the sideline flapping its self-righteous jaw and watching as atrocities ranging from the Cambodian Killing Fields of Pol-Pot, to the on-going genocide in sub-Saharan Africa, occured under its very nose.  Can't we bring ourselves to articulate what forty years of evidence has so clearly demonstrated?  Can't we have a political leader that will state the obvious - that the United Nations is simply incapable of conducting meaningful action or change?

In the interests of fairness I will acknowledge that the UN is good at something.  And what it does very well is foster corruption - and I mean corruption on a global, multi-billion dollar scale.  Can any candidate or member of Congress take a breath from the volcanic rhetoric they spew towards the oil business long enough to turn some scrutiny towards the UN? 

The "Oil for Food" scandal which ocurred under the watch of former Secretary General Kofi Anon, was so eggregious and widespread that even he was forced to some mild action.  Anon commissioned former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to lead an investigation, the conclusion of which was a recommendation for sweeping and systemic reform of the UN's management and oversight systems.  Former United States Ambassador to the UN John Bolton was nearly hounded from office just for trying to bring the suggested reforms to a vote before the UN Budget Committee.  Ultimately, and to his great credit, Bolton was successful. 

Now here is something that we need to pay attention to - and it's a ready made issue for any of our three Presidential Candidates:

The Budget Committe of the United Nations voted by a margin of two to one AGAINST allowing a system of outside auditing to help manage and oversee its affairs.  The countries who voted IN FAVOR of these audits supply ninety-percent of the UN's funding.  The countries voting against the audits supply ten percent.

After the vote John Bolton commented witheringly, "this tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how the UN operates".  Can you even conceive of the tsunami of condemnation that would pour forth from the Beltway if the Chairman of Exxon was to suggest an end to public audits of his company? 

There are many grounds of political philosophy on which one can debate the merits of the UN.  But the biggest reason to oppose it is a practical one - it simply does not work.  By any objective measure one would choose, it is hopelessly dysfunctional, inneffective and corrupt.

I believe this issue is a latent gold mine for any one of the three Presidential candidates.  And it's past time to have an open and comprehensive debate with the American people regarding this institution that we pay for.