The American Spectator

attack. Huffington’s book should have been entitled Winning Through Intimidation .

On global warming, there is no basis whatsoever for saying the science is settled. Indeed, the better argument is now on the side of those who argue against the idea that man is causing catastrophic warming, with most scientists appearing to be skeptical of the global warming thesis. The left embraces global warming not because of the science, but because global warming is a tremendous justification for a massive expansion of government and a takeover of the private economy, which they ideologically prefer.

THE BIG PROBLEM for the left on global warming is that there has been no significant warming to date. (I don’t consider warming of less than one degree over the last century significant.) Even the left now admits that there has been no warming over the last 10 years, and that there will be no warming for the next 10 years either. Indeed, a slight cooling trend has developed in the last few years and if this continues it will soon completely offset the very slight warming we have seen.

With the temperature data showing no significant warming, it makes no sense for global warming advocates to point out this or that supposed effect of global warming. To have global warming effects, you first need actual real global warming, which we do not have yet.

Another problem is that the left is in the completely untenable position of arguing for a regulatory takeover of the private economy, when the only scientific consensus that exists is that if global warming were real their regulatory schemes would not stop it. The cap and trade legislation pending before the Congress would impose a trillion dollars a year in unnecessary costs on the economy as businesses would have to pay for costly permits to emit supposed greenhouse gases in producing products and services for the American people. Yet, even global warming advocates admit such legislation would reduce global warming by only a tiny amount.

On health care, pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that save lives, cure diseases, and relieve pain. That’s more than anyone at the Huffington Post has done to promote the public health. Yes, the public rightly demands a basic safety net so no one suffers without essential health care when needed. Just as in global warming, the left is trying to use this as an excuse for massively expanded government power and a takeover of the entire health care sector. But as I showed in a recent column here, such a safety net can be maintained while actually making government smaller,

Huffington argues for just expanding Medicare to everyone to achieve universal coverage. She is apparently completely unaware that we can’t afford all of the entitlement promises we have already made, and trying to expand Medicare in this way would be foolhardy, a subject that was also recently fully explored in one of these columns.

WORST OF ALL, Huffington and her lefty colleagues suffer complete naivete about the dangers of big government. Will all be peace and happiness and in the public good when the government rules the entire health care sector? She shows no recognition of the problems of rationing and loss of freedom of choice and control over health care that we have seen uniformly when governments in other countries have adopted socialized medicine. Indeed, every one of these programs begins by promising free health care to everyone, and ends up establishing a bureaucratic monolith with the mission of denying health care, to control costs.

The left is sadly naive about the failure of big government on domestic issues across the board. They protest harshly about alleged failures and misjudgments in military and foreign policy. But on domestic issues suddenly government bureaucracy will make everything perfect.

p>Huffington goes on to blunder in regard to tax policy as well. She quotes Paul Krugman, an academic version of the Huffington Post brown shirts, saying, br> /p>

The reality is that the core measures of both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts mainly benefit the very affluent. The centerpieces of the 2001 act were a reduction in the top income tax rate and elimination of the estate tax — the first, by definition, benefiting only people with high incomes; the second benefiting only heirs to large estates. The core of the 2003 tax cut was a reduction in the tax rate on dividend income. This benefit, too, is concentrated on very high income families.