Inside the Beltway

Where’s the beef?

Dealing with mad cow disease has been headache enough for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Now they have People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) surfing down their necks.

PETA, a pro-vegetarian bunch never short on surprises, somehow has obtained the Internet site Beef.com — which is very similar to the cattlemen’s popular online address, Beef.org.

In other words, rather than feasting eyes on a juicy New York strip, Internet users who mistakenly surf into PETA’s site get to see a foaming-at-the-mouth cow.

Washington PETA official Bruce Friedrich, who steered Inside the Beltway to Beef.com, is encouraging Americans from here to Walla Walla, Wash., to throw away all frozen meat for fear it’s contaminated.

As for the domain name Beef.com, it’s owned by Michael Fischer of Michigan, who has allowed PETA exclusive use of the address — free of charge — for one month. After that, it’s for sale — $2.5 million is its current price tag.

Trading leaders

Explaining that “politics is now a tradable commodity,” the firm Trading Exchange Network — parent company of intrade.com — actually has launched an exchange for trading the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.

CEO John Delaney says with almost $1 billion changing hands since the network’s inception in November 2001, “hedging political risk is the next frontier in asset management.”

“Since the dawn of insurance, we’ve learned how to protect ourselves from unexpected or unwanted events,” he says. “This is one way to protect our assets from a change in leadership.”

Unlike political polling, adds the network’s Mike Knesevitch, politicians — through data obtained from the network’s 25,000 members — can better assess their state-by-state potential and allocate resources accordingly.

“This will transform the way campaigns are managed,” he predicts.

Any election take thus far?

“It’s interesting to note that the recent capture of Saddam Hussein hurt the nomination chances of [Democrats Howard] Dean and [Wesley] Clark, but boosted the market’s outlook for [Richard A.] Gephardt, [Joe] Lieberman and [John] Edwards,” says Mr. Knesevitch. “This was primarily due to the antiwar stance of Dean and Clark. At the same time, we saw the market trade higher for George Bush’s re-election chances.”

The latest intrade.com Electoral College numbers show President Bush securing as many as 274 votes at this early date, with as many as 264 votes going to the Democratic candidate. A total of 270 electoral votes are needed for election.

By the way, Mr. Delaney predicts “about a 25 percent probability” of capturing Osama bin Laden by June.

Improving, but …

Economically speaking, George W. Bush is sitting pretty.

“Often, criticism leveled at policy-makers is well-founded. I certainly have offered up my share,” writes American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John H. Makin. “But as 2003 ends and 2004 begins, we find ourselves at a point where the performance of the U.S. economy is about as good as it gets.”

Mr. Makin observes that the stock market is up 20 percent, inflation and interest rates are low, productivity growth is high, and U.S. exports are rising strongly.

Now, if Congress and the White House would only sit down and tackle the nation’s skyrocketing overall debt, which has just broken the $7 trillion threshold — a record.

’No-man zone’

Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s Republican opponent in New York is pushing a program designed to protect the country’s 47,000 critical infrastructure facilities — reservoirs, dams, pipelines, oil refineries, chemical plants, ports and power stations — from terrorist attack.

Addressing how one guards so many facilities and thousands of miles of shoreline and borders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week “without calling up millions of Americans to serve on foot patrol,” Senate candidate Michael Benjamin says look no further than inexpensive video cameras, or webcams.

The small cameras, or “US HomeGuard” system, would be installed throughout all critical infrastructure facilities and monitor areas where no person (or vehicle) should ever be — a “no-man zone.”

(The ACLU would obviously be happy because by monitoring only “no-man” zones, there would be no violations of personal privacy).

Every five seconds, the candidate explains, each webcam would send an encrypted photo via the Internet to a central processing center. Pictures also would be sent whenever the webcam’s heat or motion detectors are triggered. The entire process, including alerting local authorities to possible breaches of security, is completed within a matter of seconds.

Mr. Benjamin has been a securities trader on Wall Street since 1998.

• John McCaslin, a nationally syndicated columnist, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.