So, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Has he done more than anyone else to promote peace in the world? No. Am I pleased that he won? Yes. Will the award have much of an effect in the world? I doubt it.

I think we lose sight of just how much the rest of the world hated and feared the Bush administration’s approach to foreign policy. Lots of loud, belligerent talk. And, when there was action, it was poorly thought through and betrayed a preference for force over persuasion.

What Barack Obama has accomplished is to win the Presidential election (no small achievement) and begin charting a different course on U.S. foreign policy. The ship is enormous and the change is consequently slow. Obama might not disengage from war or ultimately promote human rights as much as I would like, but the trajectory of the country’s approach to these things has changed. Obama won the election — something Bob Barr couldn’t do — and turned down the heat on the United States’ attitude toward the rest of the world — something John McCain wouldn’t do. Given the magnitude of the U.S. influence in the world, a small change in our foreign policy has a greater impact than more dramatic achievements in other contexts.

If I were awarding a Nobel, I would have looked elsewhere. But, the prize is most interesting as a sort of Rorschach test for domestic commentary. How you see the award depends almost entirely on your existing perception of Obama. From my side, you get the “probably he hasn’t earned it yet, but . . .” commentary. From the other side, you get the reverse of last week’s cheering about the U.S. not getting the Olympics. There was quite a bit of bemoaning that a particular worthy person didn’t get the prize, but the moaning was coming from people who generally don’t care in the slightest about who gets the prize. And, almost comically, I’ve seen a few attempts at “winning the Nobel Prize is the worst thing that could have happened to Obama.”

America wants health care, and it doesn’t care about procedures, processes, or personalities or if a health care bill gets 51 votes, 60 votes, or 83 votes in the Senate. America cares that people are going bankrupt for want of insurance and dying for lack of health care.

[W]hat’s at stake here is life and death, enormous amounts of money, and people are counting upon us to move ahead. America understands what’s good for America. America cares about health care, America cares about jobs, America cares about education, about energy independance, America does not care about processes politicians or personalities or anything like that.

Andy Gammill, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article about allegations of teacher sadism. The article has quite a lot of detail about allegations that a teacher severely mistreated a seven year old autistic student with peanut allergies. The most significant incident alleged that the teacher intentionally gave the kid a peanut candy bar so that he would get sick and not be able to go on a field trip to the zoo.

Horrifying allegations. Most teachers are good people with your child’s best interests at heart. But, occasionally stories like this come along that remind you that often you’re entrusting your child to strangers. Of course, special needs children are harder work to care for, and sometimes I suspect that fields requiring people to care for special needs children sometimes attracts people with an inclination to abuse the powerless.

On “Morning Joe,” this morning they had a piece with Tom Brokaw talking to a small town newspaper – it was apparently famous for its founding editor who was a confidante of Presidents, but its name escapes me. The newspaper industry is obviously struggling. But, they mentioned two smart things that I think will help that newspaper survive if any of them can.

First, they are focused on local news. That’s important. That’s value that isn’t so easily duplicated by online sources. Wire feeds and international news are generally the same to you no matter where in the country you live. So, getting that information from a local newspaper doesn’t really matter. Local news is, by definition, tied to place; so it’s more stable.

The second thing, related to the first, was their focus on putting a lot of local names on the front page. People are going to buy papers to read about themselves, their friends, and their neighbors. Hopefully this can be done in a non-cynical manner. I had a friend who worked for an Indiana business magazine which seemed to have as a business model writing about companies for the sole purpose of selling copies to those companies. Still, writing about people in the area is going to make people more inclined to buy the local paper.

Of course, this sort of thing is fairly labor intensive and not easily scalable, so mega-companies like Gannett probably aren’t so interested in this kind of business model. I presume they want a product they can create using few people and sell to as many people as possible. That’s understandable but not, I believe, a sustainable long-term business model in the news industry. Seems to me that Gannett is extracting the value from old newspapers and will, sooner or later, abandon their used up husks like a played out mine.

A doctor friend of mine who is decidedly anti-public option just posted an item expressing unhappiness about his experience at the BMV and suggested everyone consider their last experience at the BMV when contemplating more government involvement in health care.

Seeing as how I am my own biggest fan when it comes to the funny, funny things that I say, I wanted to share my response:

My last trip to the BMV was actually fairly efficient. Given my bias against Gov. Daniels, I didn’t want it to be; but it actually seems to be one of the things he’s done more or less correctly.

On the other hand, if it were a pay-per-service operation, I probably would have gotten a boat registration, an In God We Trust plate, a Lincoln plate, and a standard plate along with my driver’s license renewal. These services would have been lumped together in inscrutable groups for purposes of billing, and it would be impossible to tell what rates the auto dealers and the trucking fleets were getting for the same services.

(In the same thread, T observed that his last trip to the BMV was a lot more efficient than his last telephone call to Anthem.)

David J. Allen, an Indiana attorney, who seemed to be everywhere in state government at times has passed away at the age of 74. (My headline comes from the in-joke at LSA confusing him with the comedian of the same name who was notable for jokes about his missing left index finger.)

To my knowledge, I had only one real encounter with the late Mr. Allen. I don’t even recall what the particular legislative issue was, only that I gave him an explanation of the statute involved and that he left expressing an intent to take various administration employees to the woodshed . . . and I was convinced he was about to do just that.

His accomplishments were legion. Among other things:

During his career in public service, he served as Administrative Assistant to Governor Matthew E. Welsh (1961-1965); counsel to Governor Roger D. Branigin (1965-1969); Transition Counsel to Governor Edgar D. Whitcomb (1969); University Counsel, Indiana State University (1969-1970); a member of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (1972 1975); counsel to the Indiana Speaker of the House (1975-1976); Special Counsel to the Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore (1977-1978); counsel to the minority party Indiana House and Senate (1979-1988); legislative counsel to Governor Evan Bayh (1989); and special counsel to Governor Frank O’Bannon (1997-2003). He was honored with the highest award given in Indiana and made a Sagamore of the Wabash by each of these Governors as well as Governor Joe Kernan.

Rest in Peace, sir.

Via Lafayette Online, Brian Wallheimer reports on a projected a squeeze in agricultural margins next year. Input prices such as fertilizer are likely to come down, and there may be some bargains on fertilizer, but futures prices are down for corn and soybeans meaning that overall profit margins are likely to be down again from where they were in 2007 and 2008.

At the time these estimates were prepared, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group futures indicated that fall 2010 cash prices were near $3.30 per bushel for corn and $8.40 for soybeans. These prices are lower than what was used in the 2009 budget estimates by 70 cents for corn and 30 cents for soybeans.

At the moment, I won’t get into any great detail, but I’ve been mulling over what my guiding philosophy (philosophies?) are when thinking about politics. I think I’ve mused before about the battle in my mind between libertarianism and utilitarianism. In my younger days, I had a Rorschach like commitment to liberty (“never compromise, not even in the face of Armageddon”). I’m clearly no longer in that place.

It’s becoming clear to me that, more than anything else, I value liberty for its utility. In other words, letting people do as they will, by and large, leads to more happiness. But, where it doesn’t, I’m coming to believe maybe we shouldn’t make a fetish of liberty, valuing it for its own sake in those instances where, on the whole, it leads to more misery than happiness.

So, am I just a geek? Do other people spend time thinking of such things. What kind of guiding philosophies do you folks have?

Charles Lemos has a post over at MyDD discussing an article in the New York Times about the struggles of the super rich in this economy.

Mainly what caught my eye were some of the figures Lemos quotes about how the super rich families prospered in the last 20 years of the 20th century:

Lax regulations of financial markets allowed old money to turn serious money into some rather serious money. Between 1982 and 2000, the Rockefellers went from $3.3 billion to $8.5 billion, the Mellons from $1.6 billion to $10 billion, the Phippses from $1.2 billion to $7 billion, the Pritzkers from $1.0 to $10.0 billion, the Mars from $1.2 billion to a very robust $16 billion, the Hearsts from $500 million to $7 billion. The ‘financialization’ of the economy coupled with the low tax regime has been very good to them. If in 1981, the top one percent accounted for 9.3 percent of the national income by 1997 that share had grown to 15.8 percent.

Compare that to any figure about the standard of living and wealth of the middle class you care to choose for the same period, and the difference will be significant. Reaganomics were good for these families. And it’s these people who are the prime beneficiaries of the fierce battles to repeal the estate tax during the first part of the Bush administration. (Due to Congressional accounting shenanigans, next year is the best year for you to have your super rich relatives die — the estate tax disappears for a year only to reappear in 2011.) This repeal was never about small businesses and family farms. Name any estate exemption in the single-digit millions you care to, and chances are you’ll have broad Congressional support. But, it’s the estates worth 10s of millions, 100s of millions, and billions that are paying for the lobbying on this movement. A crappy $10 million exemption is a rounding error to some of these families.

Say what you will about the evils of taxation, but the fact is that it has to exist. Now we’re just haggling over the price. I have yet to hear any rational justification for preferring the rights of an heir in an estate to the rights of the working man in his paycheck at the end of the week. So, I can’t see repealing the estate tax before we’ve worked out a way to eliminate payroll taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, and the rest of the taxes that affect people who have done more for their money than simply luck into the right set of parents or grandparents or great grandparents or however far back the dynastic wealth goes.

And, at the end of the day, it’s fair that these folks pay more for the government since the government protects more of their stuff. Our courts legitimize more contracts for them, our police protect more of their houses and bank accounts, our roads carry more of their products, etc. (Not to say that the little people should be entirely exempt from taxes even if that was possible — I think there is value to having citizens be invested in their government.)

Just another of my periodic rants that the estate tax (or “death tax” if you prefer the propaganda approach) is one of the more justifiable taxes in a world where some form of taxation is necessary. The dead don’t need their stuff anymore, and heirs have less of a claim to that stuff than workers have to their paycheck.