Daily Archives: October 11, 2004

Stros finally conquer the Braves

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Carlos Beltran hit two key yaks and then Bidg and Bags keyed a five run outburst in the seventh to put the game away as the Stros beat the Braves 12-3 in the fifth and deciding game of their National League Divisional Series on Monday night at Turner Field in Atlanta.
For the first time in their 43 year existence, the Stros now move on to the next playoff series, which is the National League Championship Series against the Cardinals. The first two games are Wednesday and Thursday nights in St. Louis, and then the next three games will be in Houston at the Juice Box on Saturday through Monday. I expect Pete Munro and Brandon Backe to pitch Games 1 and 2 in St. Louis, so the Stros need to keep their hitting shoes on.
Roy O battled like the gamer he is on three days rest and left the Stros with a 3-2 lead after five innings on the strength of Beltran’s first yak and two runs that were keyed by JK‘s second inning double.
However, this game was won in the sixth inning and the top of the seventh after the Braves had closed to 3-2 in the bottom of the fifth. First, in the top of the sixth, Beltran answered the Braves rally with his second solo yak to extend the Stros lead to 4-2. Then, in the bottom of the sixth, Chad Qualls came back from the trauma of blowing the Game 4 lead and put down the Braves in order for the first time in the game.
In the top of the seventh, Bidg keyed an incredible two out rally with a two strike single to plate a completely juiced Viz from second, who knocked down Estrada, allowing Bidg to race around to third when the throw to the plate got away. Beltran promptly knocked in Bidg for a 6-2 lead, and then Bags lifted the burden of failed playoffs past with a massive two run tater to left to give the Stros an insurmountable 8-2 lead. The Stros tacked on three more in the eighth (including Beltran’s fourth and fifth RBI’s) just to make sure that the Braves knew that their prior playoff dominance of the Stros was over for good. The Stros ended up with 17 hits as they continue their remarkable late season run to the next stage of the playoffs.
I have been a Stros fan for all the time I have lived in Houston, which is over 32 years now, and I have been a season ticket holder for the past 20. I get up on Tuesday mornings at 3 a.m. to help cook for a large Christian men’s breakfast group at my church in The Woodlands, but I found myself watching this game until the very end at almost 11:00 p.m. despite my early wakeup call and the fact that the game was already well in hand. When the final pitch made the win certain, I called my older son at college — who is a lifelong Stros fan and was watching the game just as intently as I was — and we laughed with each other on just how good it felt for Bags, Bidg and the rest of the Stros finally to win a playoff series after we had pulled for them together for so many years.
That one magic, joyous conversation between a father and a son made enduring every disappointment of the Stros’ past failures well worth it.

Iraq Oil-for-Food Probe hits Houston

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This New York Times article reports that federal investigators are focusing on four American oil companies and three U.S. citizens with Houston connections who allegedly received vouchers for oil from Saddam Hussein as he sought to flout United Nations sanctions.
The U.S. companies include Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp. and Houston-based El Paso Corp. Exxon, El Paso, and Chevron previously confirmed that they were among companies to receive subpoenas. The Times also reported that the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan is investigating corruption allegations against the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan.
The companies and the individuals were identified in the Central Intelligence Agency‘s 1,000-page report on the Hussein regime’s campaign, although the names were redacted from the publicly released version. While confirming that sanctions had prevented Iraq from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, the report by arms inspector Charles Duelfer’s report describes efforts by the Hussein regime to manipulate the Oil-for-Food program in its favor by circumventing U.N. mandates and federal law. Others identified in the Duelfer report as receiving the vouchers include Bayoil, a closely held Houston oil company, and three individuals who campaigned to end the Iraq sanctions, including long-time Houstonian Oscar Wyatt. Together, the Duelfer report alleges that the companies and individuals received vouchers from the Hussien regime valued at 111 million barrels of oil.
The U.N. Security Council blocked Iraqi oil sales to punish Hussein following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. During the 1990s, U.N. Security Council members such as France and Russia sought to end sanctions by contending that they were primarily harming Iraq’s civilian population. As a compromise, the U.S. and Britain agreed to the Oil-for-Food Program, which was intended to allow carefully monitored sales of Iraqi oil to pay for humanitarian supplies.
Consequently, the allocation of vouchers — which are negotiable instruments that could be traded for Iraqi oil — was not necessarily criminal in nature and that no one has been charged with a criminal offense in connection with the investigation. However, a May 2002 Wall Street Journal ($) article reported that the Hussein regime had skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars and that several U.S. companies had been major consumers of Iraqi oil.
Relying on captured Iraqi documents and interrogations of Mr. Hussein and other Iraqi officials, the Duelfer report estimates that the Hussien regime illegally collected $11 billion through selling the oil below market price and receiving the difference through kickbacks. The report alleges that Mr. Hussein peddled influence through giving oil vouchers to powerful foreigners and foreign organizations.
Major oil companies have been under increasing pressure to line up new supplies as reserves in more-stable regions have declined, and this search often puts them in contact with countries with rampant corruption and unstable governments. As a result, it is not unusual for such companies to receive subpoenas and be the subject of such investigations.
The Duelfer report lists hundreds of foreign companies and individuals who allegedly received Iraqi oil vouchers — including Mr. Sevan — but not the U.S. companies and citizens. However, the names were included in versions sent to congressional committees and officials have confirmed their accuracy. Many of the names were disclosed in January when documents purportedly taken from Iraqi oil-ministry files were published in an Iraqi newspaper.

The Purpose of the Sword

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As readers of this blog know, I am not enamored of many Bush Administration policies, but I am a supporter of the Administration’s overall policy in prosecuting the war against the radical Islamic fascists despite the fact that the Administration has made tactical errors and not always presented the proper case for the war. Apart from the disingenuousness reflected by his his questionable record on defense matters generally, my sense is that Mr. Kerry’s criticism of the Administration’s war policy is somewhat akin to sniping at FDR’s decision to invade North Africa early in World War II rather than opening up the key European front or confronting the Japanese directly in the South Pacific.
However, what really underlies Mr. Kerry’s criticism of the war against the radical Islamic fascists is the belief that this is not truly a just war. Addressing that issue head on in this recent review of Jean Bethke Elshtain‘s book, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, one of my favorite political philosophy professors — the Reverend James V. Schall of Georgetown University — persuasively refutes those who argue against the morality of the Bush Administration’s decision to wage war on the radical Islamic fascists:

The last time we were up in arms, so to speak, about “just war” was when we were all overly wrought about nuclear proliferation, piously denying that deterrence could not work. Little did we know at the time that this nuclear worry, with all its subtle distinctions, would not be our most pressing war problem a few decades later?unless the terrorists get nuclear weapons, which they well might. The latter possibility makes it even more immoral not to do all we can to stop them now.

Professor Schall then addresses the muddled thinking of those who rationalize inaction in the face of pure evil:

A surprisingly few determined Muslims, none poor or uneducated, have made every airport and public building in the world a potential inferno, one at a time. They have made every airport and train station, most public buildings, small armed camps on constant look out for disaster. The “suicide bomber” turns out to be more dangerous by far than Soviet missiles. And instead of international outrage at the very idea of religious sources encouraging this suicide weapon, we even have those who claim it might be “justified” for sociological reasons. We are in danger of losing sight of common-sense principles: “The best preparation for peace,” it used to be said, “is to prepare for war.” The trick is to know what kind of a war is before us. All nations have a record of preparing diligently for the last war. This book warns against that sort of preparation.

. . . [C]ertain types of ideological and religious mind will not stop their aggression unless their minds are changed voluntarily or unless they are taken out before they carry out their plans. We do not like to hear this. We are little prepared with our own tolerant ideology even to imagine such minds. But they exist and to deny it is a form of blindness. Elshtain does not deny their existence. We are “ecumenical” at our peril when we fail to engage in debates about suicide bombings. The killing of the innocent by this terrible method is more than just the killing of the innocent. It is the bankruptcy of a theology that supports it, a proof that it cannot be true.

Professor Schall notes that the main problem is in the nature of Islam itself, something that the liberal West is loathe to admit:

This endeavor requires a much more careful look at Islam and its long, disturbing record than many would like to face. It is not that there are no “peaceful” Muslims, but as Elshtain recognizes, even the peaceful ones are under threat in their own world from those more bent on pursuing the ancient Islamic goal of world domination usually by military means. What most of us, with our more liberal bent, are loathe to admit, is that any historical movement can seek century after century to pursue a single goal of world domination. Our memories are shorter than many Muslim visionaries.
Belloc, in his writings on Islam, understood this likelihood, this persistency over time. We have to have a certain begrudging admiration, as well as fear, for this determination. But it is an aberration and needs to be called such. Moreover the lack of freedom and independence within actual Muslim societies needs to be much more honestly faced and described. Few are willing to recall that Europe is not Muslim today because it was stopped in France and before Vienna by the sword. At bottom, the Crusades were classic defensive war against an aggressive power, without which Europe would have been absorbed centuries ago.

And although good intelligence is the first line of defense, the will to exercise force remains the key to overcoming “the determined wrath of wrongdoers:”

But though the first line of defense is intelligence in the sense of knowing the enemy, the situation, we need force. We cannot doubt that some individuals and movements cannot be stopped except by force. Force means army, navy, air power, technology, and above all will and brains. But it also means intention. It cannot be lost in legalities or institutions that prevent action on an immediate danger. If there is anything new about this situation, it is found in the very title of the Elshtain book, Just War Against Terror. Something can and must be done about terror, beginning with its proper identification as to its source and cause. This “doing something” requires that potential threats be stopped where they are by armed force acting justly.

Professor Schall concludes by noting that, lest we forget, another 9/11-type attack can happen:

[More radical Islamic terrorist attacks] can happen again, are intended to happen again, and that they not only can be stopped, but can be stopped morally. The fact is, since 9/11, because of our military and security efforts, terrorists have been stopped. All we do not know is the full record of this success that has saved things we cannot imagine, as we can now imagine the World Trade Center destroyed. This prevention, after all, is the purpose of the “sword”?”he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.” Jean Elshtain understands this use of mind and force and her book is a comfort for those who, in honor and justice, have to carry out, often at the cost of their lives, the rugged work that prevents the determined wrath of the wrongdoers from falling on us all.

Read the entire piece. And here is Professor Schall’s website.

Nice primer on health care finance

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For those of you looking for an explanation of the sometimes numbing concepts used in discussions of health care finance issues, check out this useful Introduction to Health Economics.

On the politics of income taxes

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Count me as one who is skeptical of John Kerry’s position that soaking the rich with more income taxes is the way to relieve middle class tax rates and to reduce the federal government’s deficit. Similarly, I am not particularly sanguine about the prospects for income tax reform and simplification in a second Bush Administration. However, it is somewhat galling to listen to Mr. Kerry decry income tax “loopholes” for wealthy Americans while, at the same time, taking advantage of those loopholes personally.
In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth takes dead aim at the hypocrisy of Senator Kerry’s position on the income tax:

According to the Kerrys’ own tax records, . . . the couple had a combined income of $6.8 million in income last year and paid $725,000 in income taxes. That means their effective tax rate was a whopping 12.8%.

Under the current tax system the middle class pays far more than the Kerry tax rate. In fact, the average federal tax rate — combined payroll and income tax — for a middle-class family is closer to 20% or more. George W. and Laura Bush, who had an income one-tenth of the Kerrys’, paid a tax rate of 30%.

Of course, there is delicious irony in the Kerry family tax-return data. Here is the man who finds clever ways to reduce his own tax liability while voting for higher taxes on the middle class dozens of times in his Senate career. He even voted against the Bush tax cut that saves each middle-class family about $1,000.
The Kerrys have unwittingly made the case for what George W. Bush says he wants to do: radically simplify and flatten out the tax code. Dick Armey and Steve Forbes have persuasively argued over the years that America should have a flat tax with a rate of 17% to 19%. John Kerry has consistently opposed a flat tax, because he says it would be a tax break for the rich. But the truth is with a 19% flat tax, some rich people with lavish tax shelters, like John Kerry, would pay more taxes. I calculate that the Kerrys would pay another $500,000 of taxes if we had a flat tax.

Meanwhile, Steven Pearlstein in this Washington Post op-ed takes a look at the current corporate tax bill in Congress and throws up his hands:

It remains a mystery why Congress feels such a need to reduce corporate tax burdens even further. Despite what you hear from politicians and the National Association of Manufacturers, there is precious little economic evidence linking reductions in corporate profit taxes to job creation. Struggling firms don’t have profits, while successful ones with ample cash flow are likely to base hiring decisions on whether the new employees will generate new profits.
This is largely a Republican bill reflecting the majority party’s tax-cutting philosophy and increasingly strong corporate ties. But it says something about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of congressional Democrats — and their lack of political imagination — that they haven’t rallied behind a Senate filibuster of this legislative abomination. If, at a time of record federal budget deficits, a self-proclaimed “party of the people” can’t take a principled stand against the biggest corporate tax giveaway in a generation, maybe it doesn’t deserve to be the majority party.

And finally, check out Professor Maule’s analysis of the candidates’ statements in regard to taxation policy, a part of which follows:

Listening to these two candidates spar over taxes was unpleasant. They toss about sound-bite phrases but I would be shocked if they really understood the underlying issues.
Though each candidate tried to paint the other?s tax philosophy as bringing a significantly different approach to the table, neither one persuaded me that they get it. Both hold philosophies that complicate the code. Neither one addressed the flaws inherent in taxing capital gains and dividends at lower rates; the plans advocated by each candidate would continue to treat these types of income as less deserving of taxation than are wages.

Update (10/12-13/04): Trent, a reader of the blog, points us to this Kerry-Edwards Campaign press release from May of this year regarding Ms. Heinz-Kerry’s tax return, and Buster points us to another site that purports to refute Mr. Moore’s analysis.
The press release and the website analysis are both somewhat ambiguous because they make assertions that cannot be verified without reviewing the actual tax returns (or at least having an independent expert review them). However, Trent fairly points out that the Mrs. Heinz-Kerry paid taxes equal to a more reasonable 32% of their taxable income, and that Mr. Moore’s 12.8% rate appears to be based on total income, which includes non-taxable income. The other website’s analysis — i.e., that the Kerrys’ lower taxable income was purely the result of the Kerrys’ charitable donations — is not at all clear to me from the available information.
However, the fact remains that the Kerrys take advantage of loopholes in the tax laws by sheltering roughly half of their income in tax-exempt investment vehicles. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with this as the Kerrys are simply doing what our antiquated tax laws allow. Nevertheless, Mr. Kerry would be more credible to independent voters such as me if he would advocate reasonable income tax reform and simplification — an area in which the Bush Administration has failed miserably — rather than engaging in divisive demagoguery regarding tax loopholes while enjoying the benefits of those same loopholes.

The sad life of Ken Caminiti ends

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Former Stros third baseman Ken Caminiti, who was a unanimous pick for the 1996 National League MVP while playing with the Padres, died Sunday at the age of 41 of a heart attack in the Bronx. Caminiti is survived by three daughters from a marriage that ended in divorce several years ago.
Caminiti had a .794 career OPS (on base average + slugging percentage), compared to his league average of .746, and 154 RCAA in 1760 games (RCAA explained here), mostly with the Astros and Padres, from 1987-2001. His best year was a .621 SLG, .408 OBA, 1.028 OPS, and 66 RCAA with the 1996 Padres.
The three-time All-Star led often a troubled life the past few years after retiring from baseball in 2001. Last Tuesday, he admitted in a Houston criminal court that he violated his probation by testing positive for cocaine. State District Judge William Harmon sentenced Caminiti to 180 days in jail for violating his probation, but gave him credit for the 189 days he already served in jail and a treatment facility since he was sentenced to three years probation for a another cocaine arrest in March 2001.
In May 2002, Caminiti generated national media interest when he told Sports Illustrated magazine that he had used steroids during his MVP season and speculated that half of the Major League Baseball players were also using them.
Caminiti was beloved by his teammates for his strong work ethic and willingness to play hurt, but he was a poster child for the professional athlete who knows of no other way to live than to play the game in which they excel. Once Caminiti’s abilities eroded below the Major League level, he became lost and was never able to find his way into a meaningful way of life after baseball. His death will weigh heavily on Bags and Bidg, who played with Cammy for many years in Houston.