KABUL, Afghanistan — The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication, pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest.

From Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on down, the military’s position is clear: “U.S. forces no longer eradicate,” as one NATO official put it. Opium is the main livelihood of 60 to 70 percent of the farmers in Marja.

If this policy makes sense in Marja (which it does), why not in the entire country? Destroying farmers’ livelihood can only drive them away from U.S. allegiance and into the arms of the Taliban.

An even better policy, of course, is to legalize opium farming. This brings the activity entirely above ground.

And legalizing opium is not the same as legalizing heroin.  Opium production or poppy cultivation is already legal in numerous countries, including Australia, Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Macedonia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.  The opium or poppy straw from this production yields the morphine, codeine, and other alkaloids used in medical provision.

The main effects of legalizing opium production in Afghanistan, therefore, are to help Afghani farmers and eliminate a profit source for the Taliban.  Sounds like a plan to me.

[Not long ago], Ms. X, Mr. Y, and Ms. Z signed onto a lawsuit … [against] using the maneuver known as “deem and pass.”

Who were Ms. X, Mr. Y., and Ms. Z?  Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Louise Slaughter.  Read the full story here.

I take no stand on the constitutionality of “deeming.” I simply note that hypocrisy in Washington knows no bounds.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The former top United Nations official in Afghanistan said that recent arrests of high-ranking Taliban figures by Pakistan have severed important secret communications between the Taliban and the West meant to foster peace negotiations.

This is just one illustration of how misguided it is to think we can engineer peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

WASHINGTON—Democrats made a final sprint toward a weekend vote on their health-care bill, pressuring wavering lawmakers as the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the legislation at what party leaders see as a politically palatable $940 billion over the next decade. …

On Thursday, the nonpartisan CBO said the bill would extend health insurance to 32 million Americans now without coverage, while reducing the budget deficit by $138 billion over 10 years.

Is it really possible to reduce the deficit by adding trillions of dollars in government expenditure?

 Of course not. The health care bill is really two bills: one that creates all the expenditure, and one that (allegedly) raises even more revenue via taxes, fees, and cuts in Medicare.

The first lie is that the policy changes in the two bills need to be linked; specifically, that we need the subsidies, mandates, and insurance regulation to obtain the Medicare savings.

Not true. If we have ways to make Medicare more efficient, that’s great. But we can and should do that independent of expanding subsidies or further regulation of health insurance. The Democrats have linked the issues because they know the public would never vote for expanded subsidies straight up.

That brings us to the second lie, which is that we can reduce Medicare expenses without reducing care. No one disputes that Medicare spends money on care of dubious value. But designing a better system is incredibly hard. If policymakers or economists had a solution, we would have adopted it long ago. The reality is that efficiency is impossible in a huge, complex, command and control systems.

We do have ways, of course, to reduce Medicare expenditure: a higher age of eligibility, higher co-pays and deductibles, or rationing.

The first two changes are good ideas and will reduce expenditure, but by reducing the amount of care. Rationing is more problematic, although it might be better than the status quo; regardless, it reduces expenditure by reducing care.

It is incomprehensible to me that anyone can support a bill whose supporters claim it reduces the deficit by spending trillions of dollars. The fact that people say this with a straight faces merely convinces me not to trust them.

Are we really going to adopt this insanity?

Passed along by a friend:

1 . Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.

2.. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private Employer, and most speak English.

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

8. During this same period, 31 supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 Years ago.

11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur At a Wal-Mart store. (Earth’s population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.

You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to Fix the economy.

A college-student acquaintance is spending a semester in Cuba as part of his film program.  He writes this:

You may have heard that it is a socialist country – this is true. What that means, however, is very complicated. I was coming home at two AM one night from filming a show in the city and I stopped to get some chicken at a small stand. The man working there was very friendly and explained to me what Socialism meant for him. “You want to know what socialism is? I have a degree in engineering and I’m selling fried chicken at two AM, that’s what socialism is.”

I’ve heard similarly frustrated sentiments from many different Cubans who complain that even if you can make money there is not very much you can do with it because its very difficult to get permission to use it for anything as expensive as a car or a house.

The way to make money, it seems, is to work for and around tourists, because the dual economy gives all the power to the CUC dollar which is what tourists can most easily buy and spend, and is worth 24 times that of the Cuban dollar. To put it in perspective a cab ride in a fancy tourist taxi will cost about 5 CUC, and the Cuban average income is about 10 to 20 CUC a month. If you can get a job related to tourism you basically have it made. More on this later.

There is virtually no violence here; Havana is the safest city I’ve ever visited or heard of. This means that there are police around almost every block, but Cubans have a much different relationship with the police than we do. They’re not thrilled about their presence, but many of the police officers and security guards were assigned their jobs as part of the year of military service required of all men. Everyone has an uncle or brother who is or was a police officer so people don’t think of cops as any different than firemen or teachers or any of the other jobs that are government assigned and regulated.

There are also virtually no homeless, a very low illiteracy rate, and a tolerance towards homosexuality and womens rights that parallels the US’s.  (Which is totally absurd when compared similar countries in Latin America and the rest of the world.)

But at the end of the day you do here a lot of complaining along the lines of – why should I work when I have no motivation to do better? Why can’t I control my own business? etc. Not to mention this country is plagued by somewhat absurdly over the top propaganda, cameras and censorship that makes the island feel like a chapter out of 1984.

Whether it’s a correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights — or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing — are on a roll.

Views on states rights are a great ligthening rod for overall political preferences.

Conservatives tend to support states rights when it comes to guns, gay marriage, or abortion, but not medical marijuana. Liberals the reverse.

Libertarians support states rights across the boards. That is, libertarians believe virtually all policies should be conducted at the state rather than federal level, if intervention occurs at all. National defense is the only significant exception.

Leaving policies to the states does not guarantee perfect policy choices, but it allows variety, flexibility, and experimentation. Federal imposition of one policy on everyone generates a polarized society, embittered society.

Federal regulators detailed a $20 billion, 10-year plan to ensure all U.S. households access to high-speed Internet service.

What could possibly justify federal or any government action in this arena? Private companies have ample incentive to expand internet service when the revenues exceed the costs. This FCC plan is just a transfer to rural households.

Headline from today’s Washington Post:

House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it.

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio — President Obama, declaring that “every argument has been made” on his health care overhaul, sought to seal the deal with Congress and the American people on Monday by focusing on a single patient: a self-employed cleaning woman who had dropped her costly insurance plan, only to discover she had leukemia.

This example illustrates perfectly why ObamaCare - specifically, the provisions that require insurance for everyone at the same price, regardless of pre-existing conditions – will drive up health insurance premiums.

Under the proposed regulation, this woman can avoid paying for health insurance until she gets sick, and even then pay the same premium as everone else. So insurers collect few premiums from the healthy to balance their expenditures on the sick, and premiums sky-rocket.

If the President wants to argue that taxpayers should fund all health care under all circumstances, he is entitled to that view.

But he should acknowledge that this implies massive redistributions across taxpayers and enormous inflation of health care costs.