Sarah has done me a big personal favor by smoking out David Brooks et al., “conservative” mainstreamers who can’t stand her.  Why a favor?  Because it’s given me a whole new reason for dismantling my respect for those hifalutin guys who have been elevated. 

She has been the bird dog who flushed the pheasants — my man Krauthammer among them! — so as to relieve us peasants of our misplaced sense of allegiance, though I’m still a K-hammer fan, using the even-Homer-nods system.

Meanwhile, she’s on the pan in Alaska, though not yet baked, it appears.  No crime but abuse of governor’s power is alleged by allegedly non-partisan commission.  Why am I skeptical?  Partly because I’m partisan and loathe to believe bad things about my candidate, but moreso because Chi Trib and Sun-Times both blasted it out yesterday as front-page items, which I knew they would when I saw the news on the ‘Net the night before.

From one of the lawyers at Powerline Blog:

The report does not convincingly show that the Palins were driven by the desire to obtain a personal benefit, as opposed to the desire to rid the police force of a bad apple about whom they had personal knowledge. However, Todd Palin’s persistence suggests that, at a minimum, there probably was a personal agenda in the mix.

In the end, it seems to me that Gov. Palin did not exercise particularly good judgment in this matter. But the case that she abused her power by violating the ethics statute and/or that she fired the public safety commissioner because he wouldn’t act against Wooten has not been made.

Nonetheless, the weakly reasoned “Troopergate” report may well represent another nail in the McCain-Palin coffin.

Calm reason here?  Powerline people are very sharp and have had doubts about Sarah P. from the start.  See also Wall Street J:

A long-awaited Alaska legislative report concluded that . . . Gov. Sarah Palin, abused her authority and broke state ethics law by trying to remove her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.

But the report also concluded that the Republican governor did not unlawfully fire her public-safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who said he had been pressured to oust the trooper, Mike Wooten. The report said other factors were involved in Mr. Monegan’s controversial dismissal.

New Criterion editor Roger Kimball goes further:

Surgeon General’s Warning: do not drive or attempt to operate machinery while contemplating the just-published 260-odd-page report orchestrated by Hollis French, Alaska legislator and supporter of Barack Obama. French had originally intended to release it October 31, for maximum effect on the campaign. Other legislators prevented that, but the report came out yesterday and guess what? It’s like Oakland according to Gertrude Stein, i.e., there’s no there there, Hollis, no smoking gun, no damning evidence, no nothing except 1) evidence of wasting the taxpayers’ money and 2) engaging in a clumsy smear campaign against Sarah. (Don’t you love the way Team Obama labels every criticism of The Dear One a “smear”: Google “Obama” and “smears”: 1,280,000 items in .13 seconds.)

French hired Steve Branchflower to do the investigating.  It’s his report.  Kimball cites another commentator:

The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn’t been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body.

It’s an “episode of political theater that would make Josef Stalin blush,” says this commentator, one Bill Dyer, “ethics violation alleged by partisan hacks,” says another, one Jules Crittenden.

I find these people on the ‘Net, of course, though I’ve been reading Kimball at least since his landmark study of higher-ed corruption, Tenured Radicals: How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education.  Like Kimball they are thoughtful and literate.

Then we have Chi Trib and Sun-Times, who are in the narrative here, part of it as always.  NY Times and to lesser extent Wash Post and their imitators coast to coast have been alerting us to Palin problems for some time now, breathlessly awaiting “troopergate” news, as if to relive the days when Bill Clinton used his state troopers as procurers. 

Breathlessly they waited, as they did for news dug up about Rep. Barney Frank’s sleeping figuratively and otherwise with Fannie Mae, your friendly government-created mortgage company, the enemy of all that’s fiscally sound, government-created and government-unregulated?  Oh no, much more breathlessly than that.

A capital gains tax reduces potential rewards of investment, I gather from p. 217 of Jude Wanniski’s 1978 book The Way the World Works.  Why wouldn’t it?  If it reduces rewards enough, the investment is not made.  New business is not started.  Jobs are not created.

Obama doesn’t see it that way.  Hearing the news that tax revenue increased during a certain time of reduced taxation, he was surprised but held his ground, opposing reduction for the sake of “fairness.”  He would rather all made less, for the sake of fewer earning more.

“[T]he idea of fairness is at the heart of his whole economic argument. And he goes back to it in almost every public appearance,” says William McGurn.

He talks about it as a general theme: “It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share.”

He invokes it as a solution for Social Security: “[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.”

He points to how it guides his energy policy: “The first part of my plan is to tax the windfall profits of oil companies and use some of that money to help you pay the rising price of gas.”

And he stuck to it on capital gains, even after ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains — which would affect 100 million Americans — would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

In 1969, to continue with Wanniski, in Nixon’s first year, revenues were expected to rise $1.1 billion in 1970.  Instead, Nixon reneged on a tax cut, removed an investment tax credit, and spent on job training — and 1969’s $7.1 billion revenues dropped to an average of $4 billion in the following four years.

Also, hundreds of billions were lost in reduced output — and thus in jobs and overall prosperity.  This was “tax reform” in 1969.

In 1971, Nixon jettisoned his other promise, to balance the budget, and instead purposely unbalanced it for the sake of full employment in 1972 — which didn’t happen.  This gave him (us) a planned deficit to match 1970’s unplanned one. (218) 

Big O. recycled the famous question to voters of 1980 in a talk in St. Petersburg, Florida:

“The first thing I want to do, Florida, is just ask you a very simple question: Do you think that you are better off now than you were four years ago or eight years ago?”

But Reagan did not ask what people thought — much different in the U.S. than the reality.  He asked this:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment…than there was four years ago?”

Small or no difference?  Not at all, since perception is not reality, now matter how often people mouth this popular imbecility.

If Obama wins, we lose?  The market, that satanic vehicle of capitalistic prosperity, is slumping in tandem with his rising as a good bet to make president, notes Stephen Moore in WSJ’s Political Diary.

[I]nvestors are forward-looking and the slide in the dollar and the fall in the market (despite decent corporate profits) have accelerated at the same pace as Mr. Obama’s meteoric political rise over the past nine months.

Yikes!  And he’s still only a senator!

[S]ome smart analysts . . . find a definite inverse correlation between Mr. Obama’s probability of winning the election (as measured by the Intrade political futures market) and the ups and downs of the stock market. Intrade provides a trading market where investors can bet on who will win the election — such betting markets have a record of performing better than polls in forecasting election outcomes.

How so?

Radio host and fund manager Jerry Bowyer notes on CNBC.com that investors would have good reason for wanting to flee U.S. markets ahead of an Obama victory. Increases in capital gains and dividend taxes alone will “mean very large additional levies on investors.” Mr. Bowyer adds: “Of course, this affects stock prices. It is ludicrous to suggest that adding taxes directly on an asset class would have no effect on its value.”

If this guy and U. Mich. economist Mark Perry, maybe the first to spot the correlation are right,

the lousy market in the last few weeks makes sense. Yes, it’s partly a result of Ben Bernanke’s decision not to raise interest rates. But Senator Obama is now trading as a 34% favorite — that is, bettors believe Mr. Obama is 34% more likely to win in November than Republican John McCain. That implies big tax hikes aimed at the returns on investment in the stock market.

It’s O.’s stock in trade, you might say, as a liberal Dem, what Republicans once called tax-and-spenders.  So investors beware.

“If the political winds keep blowing left,” says Dan Clifton of Strategas, an investment advisory firm, “the market is going to tank. In that case, I advise, get out of the market while you still can.”

There’s an answer, of course: McCain can make taxing and spending a major talking point in his campaign and ride it to victory.

Well may we wonder what the heck GW Bush did to produce our energy shortage.  Well consider this:

• On May 25, 2006, the House passed a bill to authorize oil and gas production in ANWR-Pelosi voted no and liberals in the Senate killed it.
• On June 7, 2006 the House voted to expand oil refinery construction-Pelosi voted no and liberals in the Senate killed it.
• A few weeks later on June 29, 2006 the House voted to end the moratorium on offshore oil and natural gas exploration-Pelosi voted no yet again and liberals in the Senate killed it.

That’s what he did, he did NOT stand up in Congress and say “stop.”  Nor did he lie down on the House and Senate floors and kick his feet.  It’s what happens with a Republican in charge.