Donkey Path

Republicans Fighting for the Heart of the Republican Party

2012-01-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

Santorum won the Iowa caucus after all, despite some alleged last minute shenanigans by the Romney supporters. But Romney clearly won New Hampshire, which is basically in his backyard. And, surprise, Newt Gingrich may pull out a squeaker in South Carolina. It's only January, and already there's been three primaries and possibly three different winners. We'll know the results by Saturday night... hopefully. The good news is that Republicans are trying to redefine their party. The bad news is that a lot of Republicans want a candidate who's as far to the right as possible.

It's clear the Republican party, after years of blunders and incompetence by George W. Bush, needs to go back to the drawing board. More important, the conservative ideas of the last thirty years simply don't work anymore. To put it bluntly, the Republican party needs to reform itself.

Of course, the notion of a Republican reformer is still a bit of an oxymoron. As so often happens in Washington, yesterday's right wing Republican vanguard is today's establishment. As an example, Santorum was a rebel when he was elected Senator from Pennsylvania. After two years, he became an establishment Republican protecting the business as usual interests of wealthy conservative Republicans, bankers and Wall Street high rollers. Hey, it's lucrative being a member of the establishment. And now, Tea Party favorite Eric Cantor is pulling the same stunt: after only one year this time, a Republican rebel has once again discovered the advantages of being part of the Republican establishment. Listen to what he says on TPMLivewire:

At a time when the Republican presidential nomination contest is growing increasingly nebulous, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) urged his party to “coalesce around a single vision with a nominee.”

It's not hard to read the tea leaves in Cantor's words. Instead of supporting an open primary process, he's telling voters to support the establishment candidate—meaning: someone who might be able to get elected. Everybody knows that neither Santorum or Gingrich is electable. Santorum represents a draconian right wing vision and Gingrich's reckless behavior does not make him fit for the oval office.

So the tea party big shots, who stopped mentioning the name of George W. Bush in 2008, want to continue Bush's policies by supporting Mitt Romney. Yep. Just what the country needs, two Republican businessmen in a row making decisions in the Oval Office according to what the hot shots on Wall Street want.

Hang on to your seats, folks. Until the leaders of the GOP reform the party, it's going to be a wild ride.

A Contrarian Post on the Keystone XL Pipeline

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

I'm going to say some things in this post about the Keystone XL Pipeline that are likely to irritate liberals and conservatives. So let me begin with some premises about what's going on in the world.

1) Global warming is a real threat. Exactly what will happen in the next 100 years is not certain at this time. Maybe global warming won't be so bad. Maybe it will be our worst nightmare. The potential downside, however, is enormous if we do not take steps to control global warming. I'm reminded that we were told by industry experts and hotshot conservatives that nuclear energy poses no significant problems. The accident at Fukushima was supposed to be a once in a thousand year incident. It's rather odd how once in a hundred year events or once in a thousand year events keep happening. The worst case scenarios for global warming are too dangerous not to be taken seriously.

2) The fossil fuels we're using today are not only more expensive, but they are much dirtier and more prevalent than they were sixty years. Even if global warming were not an issue, it is pretentious to think that pollution from fossil fuels is not an issue. The growing acidification of the oceans is a major issue. The sulfurous clouds hanging over Asia are also an issue. These issues concern everyone, particularly the U.S.

3) The exploitation of tar sands, despite many measures taken to address environmental concerns, is proof that we're in trouble if we have to turn to such a dirty and expensive fuel. Light sweet crude is in decline and has been for several years.

4) The oil industry has convinced millions of Americans that global warming is not real, that alternative energy is a job killer and that oil can continue indefinitely to solve our energy needs. All three assertions are lies and are propaganda paid for by the oil industry, with considerable help from the people who control the Republican party.

5) The hour is late. We have put off the inevitable since the 1970s. Given the lateness of the hour, it will take an enormous amount of investment and work to create an economy based on alternative energy. And it will take time. I have seen very little that puts a number on how long it will take to cut our use of fossil fuels worldwide by 50%. Here I do not have the facts, but my guess is that it will take 15-30 years.

6. To power the transition, we will need a strong economy. It very likely will take the burning of more fossil fuels to power the transition to that economy. If we abruptly stop burning fossil fuels, the transition probably will not happen. Of course, as the use of alternative energy goes up, the use of fossil fuels can go down, but the consumption of fossil fuels cannot decline too fast.

7. The use of fossil fuels may possibly drop rapidly due to declining reserves of usable fossil fuels. Though the oil industry is beginning (just barely) to admit that fossil fuels other than coal will soon become much more difficult to bring to market, we again have wasted decades by not turning to alternative fuels sooner.

8. If by chance, or through incompetence of the far right, the economy of the U.S. collapses, or even if it simply declines, it is likely more fossil fuel will go to power the economy of Asian countries. Countries like India and China show no signs that they will be cutting the use of fossil fuels any time soon. The leadership role, by default, goes to the United States. It's true that Europe can be helpful but the continuing monetary crisis in Europe shows how difficult it can be for the Europeans to lead. Keep in mind, however, that over the last thirty years, Europeans have done a much better job than the U.S. of turning to alternative energy. But they are vulnerable to swings in the oil and natural gas markets. Europe has twice the population of the U.S., and if one does not count Russia, their oil reserves are considerably less.

Okay, here it goes.

I have very mixed feeling about the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite everything, we may need it. Republicans have handled our energy problems with such extraordinary incompetence that they have threatened our future.

I find it curious that some proponents and critics of the pipeline say the building of the pipeline won't significantly bring down the price of oil. Actually, the pipeline will bring down the price a small amount—not necessarily something to cheer about. It is politically not feasible, but I believe we need to make sure the price doesn't come down too far. Better yet, we need to slowly raise prices to match the real cost of oil, including clean up and CO2 emissions. We need to stop passing on the real cost of fossil fuels to our children and grandchildren. And Republicans need to stop indulging in the fantasy that some scientist will come up with some magic solution—this is ironic given how little Republicans have faith in science and how little they are willing to pay for major buildup in research. Right wingers cannot keep cutting the budget for science while expecting miracles.

Republicans have been bad-mouthing Detroit for almost four years, but Detroit is actually moving more and more toward efficient cars. What Republicans fail to understand is that Americans need both jobs and more efficient cars and transportation (don't anyone pretend that the pipeline will create a huge number of jobs; they will create some, but that's all). That the current Republican leadership would let Detroit go under says a great deal about the incompetence of Tea Party Republicans and other right wingers.

It is ridiculous, as some 'experts' have argued, that the building of the pipeline will make us dependent on Canada. Oil from Canada is a far safer bet than depending on keeping the Straits of Hormuz open. Yes, our navy can keep the straits open and probably will have to continue to do so. But having a secure supply of oil should not be discounted. There are going to be energy disruptions in the next twenty years. I despise the tar sands, but we may need those reserves to fuel the transition.

Now I'm going to really be contradictory. To a large extent, I support the protests against the pipeline. It is disgusting that we are relying on tar sands and talking as if oil is forever and that global warming is of no concern. The protests are a sign that Americans are at last waking up to concerns about our future. The obstructionism and incompetence of Republicans will continue for some time to come until somebody starts rebuilding the party on more pragmatic lines. In the meantime, I would like to see the protests geared more towards actually getting more green energy projects installed. But no one should pretend that we can quickly go without oil.

In some respects, I find it more urgent to start going after coal. Coal is tar sands in its worst form. If Congress had any sense, no more coal plants would be built. Again, it will take time to transition, but coal plants that go offline should not be replaced. This is where green organizations should be focusing. Not just closing coal plants, but replacing them with green energy. The money is potentially there. If progressives can raise money for political causes, they can raise money to build windmills, solar roofs and other forms of alternative energy.

The Sociopaths on Wall Street

2012-01-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

The ideal corporation through most of the 20th century was one that pursued profits while being reasonably responsible toward workers, the community, and consumers. Since about the 1960s, corporations have also, at least in theory, been more responsible when coming to the environment.

However, since the 1980s—some would argue sooner—there has been a deterioration in corporate ethics in many sectors. Certainly the S & L crisis, the ethical failures of the Exxon Valdez episode and the deaths and lack of financial responsibility associated with the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster—all three occurred in the 1980s—makes it clear that the interpretation of deregulation in that era was far too often synonymous with ethical lapses in the executive suite. From the end of the Reagan era until the end of George W. Bush's time in office, the interpretation has only gotten worse. Actually, in very little time, deregulation went from a need to adjust regulations to make them fairer and more sensible to becoming an outright license to break the law and defraud people in various sectors of society.

There have always been lapses among corporation and there has been debate about how much or how little a corporation should do. There have also been corporations, all along, that cut corners in order to gain an advantage over other corporations. A general rule of thumb in business is that competent people can always make money as long as everybody plays by the same rules. Unfortunately, people who are not very honest or competent or both are generally the first to look for short cuts, including favors from politicians.

The reality is that both parties are susceptible to influence peddling. Unfortunately, Republicans have pretty much made deregulation, as well as other ethically challenged ideas, pillars of their political philosophy. In addition, if an ethically-challenged business executive makes enormous profits, many Republican politicians, are notoriously slow to recognize that there is a problem (e.g., Kenneth Lay and George W. Bush). The most telling sign is that when a rational and honest Republican prosecutor tries to uphold the law, that prosecutor may find himself without a political future in the Republican party.

One of the problems with today's business world is the number of ethically challenged people who are allowed to rise to the executive suite in the first place. In Bloomberg, William D. Cohan has an article that discusses a theory by Clive R. Boddy about Wall Street psychopaths:

Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of [people who] ... "lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

(snip)

He says [psychopaths] seem "to be unaffected" by the corporate collapses they cause. These psychopaths "present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened..."

It worth recalling that John Dean has written a book called "Conservatives without Conscience." Dean was not talking specifically about psychopaths, and certainly not corporate psychopaths, who are basically a class of very smart criminals who are much more sophisticated than ordinary criminals without conscious (who in any case frequently end up in prison). But Dean was very much talking about people who are authoritarian by temperament. I would also add that people like Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush strike me as extraordinarily narcissistic and are clearly among the type of people Dean talks about. For both Bush and Gingrich, life is all about them.

But today's Republican party has other other problems as well. What is it about the Republican political class that they look the other way when a Republican politician obviously lies? And why is it that they refuse to set the record straight when others obviously lie about Barack Obama (birthers) or lie about John Kerry (swift boaters)? And why is it that the Republican political class failed to notice the obvious economic disaster we were heading for as Wall Street and the banks were allowed to engage in reckless behavior?

Here's the scholarly link to Boddy's paper.

And here's a link that provide a more accessible version to Boddy's paper.

The Republican Establishment Is Weighing In

2012-01-04T00:08:00.001-08:00

It looks like the Republican establishment—the bankers, the Wall Street people, the billionaires, multinaires and the privileged—are going to nail the nomination down for Romney. Or least try. These are the same guys who backed George W. Bush and supported all his policies. The guys who got us into the worst recession since the 1930s want to get back to business as usual: more jobs to China, even lower taxes for the rich, money for defense toys we don't need, and nickel and diming the middle class for those million dollar bonuses.

Already the money is beginning to pour. The establishment finds elections a little more expensive than lobbyists, but from their point of view, buying a few hundred million dollars worth of ads is still a bargain.

It almost doesn't matter which Republican gets nominated: they will all pretend that Barack Obama is the one we need to fight against. Here's a reality check: the more Obama tried to compromise, to stabilize the economy, and stabilize the country, the more Republicans revealed how right wing and out of touch they are becoming. We need pragmatists in Washington, not obstructionists, not extremists, and certainly not the type of people who got us into the mess in the first place.

Bizarre Comment By Mitt Romney

2011-12-29T17:56:00.000-08:00

Some politicians are tone deaf. I came across an item in Talking Points Memo that Romney made a bizarre comment in Iowa today at a campaign event:

...Mitt Romney took on President Obama for saying the economy could be worse, saying: “When the president’s characterization of our economy was, ‘It could be worse,’ it reminded me of Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake’”...

Wow. Never mind the awkward phrasing. It was a weird thing for Romney to say, given that he owns the cake.

The Three Words That Define 2012: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

2011-12-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

At the end of the day, in most years, Americans are pragmatists. I say most years because it's not always certain that pragmatists win the day. For example, one definition of a pragmatist is that if something doesn't work, you try something else. A classic example in the last thirty years is trickle down economics, which argues that if you give more money to the rich, they'll create more jobs. Reagan tried trickle down economics in the 1980s. No matter what you think of Reagan, trickle down doesn't work. It never has. But, for some reason, Republicans keep trying it. They try trickle down economics this way, that way and every which way—and it still doesn't work.

Whoever becomes the Republican nominee is virtually guaranteed to try trickle down economics if elected. Cutting taxes and doing cute favors for the wealthiest Americans is more important to Republican politicians and lobbyists in Washington than creating jobs. That is a fact. One only has to look at their record. No doubt business as usual Republicans will put a good spin on it and tell a good story but it'll be trickle down economics. Trickle down sounds a lot better than what Republican economics really is: protecting the wealthiest Americans at all costs, regardless of how much it hurts our country, our democracy and millions of our fellow Americans.

Of course, there have always been four kinds of wealthy people: the kind who really know what they're doing (Jobs, Gates), the kind who inherit wealth (Paris Hilton as well as oil, lumber and tobacco heirs), the kind who are basically crooks in business suits surrounded by lawyers (Michael Milken and Bernie Madoff), or those who sort of stumble into it (Sarah Palin and any number of failed CEOs given golden parachutes of millions of dollars despite a dismal bottom line). Keep in mind that the first kind knows how to make money and doesn't need help creating wealth. And keep in mind that most wealthy people of the other three types usually don't help the economy much.

There's also a special fifth category that achieves wealth initially through the other routes mentioned but that guarantee wealth for themselves and their heirs through any number of devices that can only be defined as protecting privilege. They pay a lot of money to state legislatures and Congress to guarantee their wealth, and year after year the payoffs for their "investments" are lucrative. As just one example, one of the most lucrative scams during the Bush years was very low taxes on stock market, real estate and commodities speculations. Sorry, but speculation, to a large extent, is simply a legal way of skimming billions of dollars from tens of millions of Americans without actually producing healthy economic activity. (There is some need for prices to find their level but the massive gyrations of the markets have become a hindrance rather than a help to the economy. Count me in as one of those who think all such transaction should include a very modest tax).

Does anyone really doubt that Republicans are dominated by the 1%? Does anyone doubt that the 99% (which include tens of millions of ordinary Democrats, Republicans and independents) has legitimate reasons to be concerned about a power structure in this country that leaves so many people behind? Look, there are many responsible people among the 1%. We all know that. As some commentators point out, we're often talking about the .1% and generally those who abuse our economy to enrich themselves in ways that are unhealthy and unsustainable in the long term.

One of the things I personally have disliked over the last twenty years is the idea that many businesses seem to have that I am just a consumer, a human cow to be milked, bled and sometimes skewered. But I'm not a consumer. I'm an American. I'm sure millions of people feel the same way.

I know, I know, "consumer" is a word that sometimes has to be used in economics to explain how things work. I accept that on a certain level. But the politicians, aggressive sales people and the bottom line corporate takeover artists make a huge mistake of forgetting that consumers are Americans. People who lose their homes or jobs because of big biz financial shenanigans are usually decent people who have been treated as if they don't exist. Nothing is more disgusting to me than a corporation that buys a company with a good reputation and bleeds every dime out of that corporation and forgets the consumers, employees and the community and then, to add insult to injury, sells a product no longer worthy of the company's reputation. That is not the kind of capitalism that made America great.

Nick Hanauer is technically a member of the 1% and has written an article suggesting that taxes need to be raised to ensure that consumers, the real job creators, have money to spend:

Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent.

(snip)

[But]...there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men.

(snip)

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

Raising taxes on wealthy Americans is only one step that needs to be taken. Much will have to happen to move our country in the right direction. Americans are unlikely to have that extra $13,000 any time soon. Mistakes have been made. Not enough has been spent on scientific research, one of the key activities that has always stimulated our economy. Not enough has been done to fix bridges, streets, hospitals and schools. Too many jobs have been sent overseas.

In the end, what Americans need are more jobs, not more budget cuts that do nothing more than cut jobs. For two years, Republicans have been complaining about the economy and for two years they have hardly lifted a finger to create jobs. Not in Washington. And not in state capital after state capital. Already, at the election approaches, Republican politicians, Republican pundits and even Republican think tanks are changing their rhetoric to tell Americans what they want to hear. But keep in mind that to date the only thing Republicans have done is cut jobs and ignore the poor and even the middle class. The recession started in early 2007. Where have the Republicans been? At least Democrats have been trying. They would have accomplished a great deal more if not for Republican obstructionists in Washington and in state capitals.

Nick Hanauer is a member of the 1% but not exactly in the sense that has been discussed in recent weeks. The 1% (or .01%) that everybody is talking about are people like Mitt Romney (who's comfortable making $10,000 bets) and Newt Gingrich (who pretends he's not a lobbyist). One was born into the 1% and is making it clearer day by day what his values really are. And the other became wealthy by shilling for the 1% for the last 30 years.

At the end of the day, we need to reelect President Obama and put more Democrats in Washington. But we also need two parties in this country. The Republicans in the GOP leadership need to become pragmatic again.

Circus Atmosphere Among Top Republicans: Donald Trump to Host Presidential Debate

2011-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

The Republicans running for president are so bad that a phrase left over from the George W. Bush era comes to mind: shock and awe. Hey, it's a circus with lots of stunts, much swinging back and forth in the polls, and an embarrassing number of splats.

I suppose it began with Sarah Palin who "earned" millions by never really declaring herself a candidate for the 2012 presidential election. When Palin quit halfway through her term as governor, anyone paying attention figured she was doing it for the money. Conservatives considered that observation cynical and shoveled piles of cash into her coffers. If Palin had been serious about a presidential run, she at least could have used some of that cash to remake her image. Karl Rove showed that was possible with George W. Bush.

The first attempt by Newt Gingrich to run for president last spring was a disaster simply because he tried to calibrate himself to the right of Romney and to the left of some of the right wing fruitcakes trying to grab onto the Tea Party movement. The irony is that Gingrich is a reactionary and has been trying to pull the Republican party to the far right for more than twenty years. Over the summer, he had to take a long vacation before coming back as Gingrich II.

One of the oddest candidates initially was Donald Trump. He tried to pump a lot of hot air into the silly birther craze that conservatives kept going out of a stubborn desire to create "reality" by huffing and puffing their fantasy into some sort of straw house that was ridiculously easy to blow down. So what was Trump doing? Had his political advisers told him that being ridiculous sells? Oh wait, time and time again in American politics, the ridiculous sells quite well. The problem for Donald Trump is that throughout his life he has frankly always sounded like a blowhard. More on him in a moment.

Rick Perry has crashed. It was so painful to watch that it's probably better to simply move on.

Michelle Bachmann has made so many gaffes that I keep thinking of the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962. She would have closed our embassy in Iran.

Herman Cain is a circus barker. He is also crashing in the polls. But at least
he's been entertaining. I've never seen a candidate find so many ways to twist in the wind because of his own comments. Trump and Cain have been the two circus barkers on the Republican campaign trail. They're both the equivalent of high-priced used car salesmen. Americans haven't seen too many salesmen types in presidential contests before. The first may have been George W. Bush. Bush's only claim to fame before becoming governor of Texas was that he was a president's son and that he had a knack of parting wealthy investors from their money for oil projects that never went anywhere.

But Gingrich is back—as Gingrich II. Or maybe it's Gingrich III, Gingrich IV.... One loses count. It's hard to say how far Gingrich will go. How do you predict the fortunes of such a person when Newt's claim to fame began on C-Span when he would hurl phony charges at Democrats in an empty chamber at one or two in the morning. It was a joke, a charade, a misuse of special orders, a desperate attempt for a mediocre politician to get attention. Using special orders to get something off your chest is fine. But attacking your House colleagues without telling them that you're attacking them is a sore point with a long history in Washington. But conservatives thought it was cute and Gingrich finally had a career as a politician known for his....what? Can anyone name something useful that Gingrich has done in the last thirty years?

Okay, there are still people left in the campaign and more debates. The debates, of course, have been bizarre. Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the war in Iraq and the person responsible for the image of Americans being welcomed with flowers, parades and cheers, was allowed to ask a question. This is a guy who was wrong on about one or two dozen predictions he made about Iraq. Two months after we arrived in Iraq everything that Paul Wolfowitz said about Iraq was essentially thrown out the window as useless. Wolfowitz was a cold war warrior who didn't know what to do with himself after the fall of the Soviet Union. So to stay in business and to stay cozy with conservatives, he essentially made up bullshit about places like Iraq. Some foreign policy. And a strange choice to be asking questions.

But the weirdness of the Republican run for the White House has not ended. It probably won't end until November 2012. At the end of December, for some unfathomable reason, Donald Trump has been asked to be the debate moderator. If anyone symbolizes the reckless avarice of the 1% (some say the .1%) that brought on the Great Recession, it's Donald Trump. Trump was born rich. He inherited his real estate company from his parents. I don't know how many times Donald Trump has come to the brink of bankruptcy but it appears he's never really has had to worry about losing his fortune. Why? Because the banks always bail him out. Not because he's competent, but because...well, that's just what they do. Long before President Bush had to bail out the banks, the banks for twenty years had been bailing out Trump. Donald Trump is a bona fide member of the privileged 1%. He's not a banker, but long before the banks expected to automatically be bailed out, Donald Trump was already leading the way. And he's asking the questions.

Gingrich Advocates Third World Status for the United States

2011-11-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich lives in a strange universe. Unfortunately, it's the same universe other Republican politicians have been occupying lately, such as Bachmann, Perry and Palin. Before I go further, let's look at one of Gingrich's ideas that has been appearing in various places such as the Los Angeles Times:

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said. "OK, you say to someone, 'You shouldn't go to work before you're 14, 16 years of age.' Fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school." Mr. Bumble from "Oliver Twist" could not have said it better.

What Gingrich fails to understand is that in many poor neighborhoods the janitor's job is one of the more decent jobs available. For more than forty years, corporations generally have been moving out of poor neighborhoods, not in. And millions of those jobs have simply been sent overseas. There have been exceptions in poor areas, usually organized by Democrats such as Bill Clinton, though a handful of Republican governors have managed to buck the right wing politics of their party and done a few useful things (don't include Rick Perry in that crowd—he's done nothing).

Actually, given that today's radical Republican politicians want to either end or cut social security, medicare, medicaid, student loans and various other programs, it's truly surprising they're doing as well as they are in the polls. At some point, it's going to dawn on a large majority of Americans that the vast majority of Republican ideas these days are about cutting jobs. There is nothing in any of their plans about creating jobs.

Newt Gingrich always has ideas that boomerang on Americans. He was certainly one of the people a few years back who supported the call by George W. Bush that social security should be privatized. Under privatization, people could set aside the money they put into social security and use the same money to invest in the stock market. It's one of those ideas that's great for people who are already rich, such as bankers and Wall Street stock brokers, but it's a lousy idea for everybody else.

If George W. Bush had gotten his way on the privatization of social security, tens of millions of Americans would have lost their shirts in the 2008 stock market debacle. The damage done by George W. Bush, as well as others with the same philosophy as Gingrich, can still be seen in the stock market. Quite literally, the blunders that occurred under Bush for eight years are still unfolding. Republicans have done nothing to help Obama deal with those blunders. Instead, they have obstructed him every step of the way. Republicans want to cut jobs, not create them.

If Gingrich became president and did what many Republicans really want to do, he would outright cut social security. Millions of seniors would suddenly not have enough income to be on their own. They would have to live the way old people did it in the 19th century: move in with their children. Of course, Gingrich is either ignorant of what's happening to America's middle class—not to mention the poor—or he doesn't care. For example, right now, thousands and thousands of middle class families in their fifties and even early sixties, are already hosting older children who either are having trouble getting jobs in the current economy or don't earn enough yet to live on their own.

These are not kids who are slackers. For the last 11 years, the total number of available jobs in the U.S. has been falling. The jobs simply aren't there. Republicans have worked hard for thirty years to game the system for the wealthy. One of the consequences is that Republicans have created conditions that could turn the United States into a third world country.

Here's a simple list of six things to keep in mind:

1. Republicans rarely create jobs. They see their job as protecting the rich, while throwing crumbs to various conservative groups to get enough votes at election time.

2. Democrats are job creators. Just look at Bill Clinton's record. Obama's hands have been somewhat tied by the large number of Republican governors cutting jobs and by 30 years of sending jobs to China. But Obama is also a job creator.

3. When it comes to cutting livable wages, the Republicans are the outright winner. The recent attacks on unions absolutely guarantees lower wages for everyone.

4. When it comes to benefits, who's the first to cut them? Republicans.

5. When it comes to banking costs and loans, who's the first to defend bankers instead of middle class Americans? Republicans.

6. When it comes to higher and higher health insurance costs, who resists reform the most? Republicans. When a fat cat insurance executive gets a $20 million bonus, who does he write most of his checks to? Republicans.

Do Americans really want crazy ideas from the 19th century brought back to life again? We'll find out in November 2012.

Republican Newt Gingrich: A Grand Poohbah of the 1%

2011-11-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

He's back. Sometime presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has flown in from his vacation in Greece, Switzerland or Hawaii to assert himself in one of the weakest lineups of Republicans in years.

Newt Gingrich is a lobbyist who denies being a lobbyist and refuses to register as a lobbyist but is a lobbyist nevertheless. Although he receives money from various sources, including Freddie Mac, his real job is much broader. Gingrich believes in the right sort of 1%, the anything goes 1%, the movers and shakers 1% sucking the blood of American workers so they can buy one more estate or one more Lear jet or one more 80 foot yacht. He is a friend of Texas billionaires willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to make a buck, including taking down the American economy. Gingrich believes in a government for the rich and by the rich and will do and say anything for the party of people he serves and considers himself a member of. He is indeed a lobbyist, a bona fide lobbyist for the selfish 1% who are uninterested in democracy and uninterested in the problems of average Americans.

Personally, I think Newt Gingrich would be quite happy to be another Dick Cheney. Like the former vice president, he's discovered that it's actually easier and more fun to operate in the shadows. Would Gingrich deny himself the presidency if it were offered to him? Of course not. But in his heart of hearts he would be happier operating in the shadows.

Pay attention to what's being said in the article in The New York Times about Gingrich:

The payments were far more than had previously been known, or than Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, had acknowledged.

(snip)

Not only is Freddie Mac a longtime conservative whipping post, but the extent of his consultancy for the mortgage giant seemed to be at odds with his own statements about his work there. He has also blamed it for the collapse of the housing market, saying that at least one Democratic supporter should be jailed, and, in 2008, that President Obama should give back any money his campaign received from its executives.

The news of the full extent of his Freddie Mac contract put him on the defensive all day. And all of his corporate work, in energy, health care and other industries, is now sure to be scrutinized by the news media and his opponents.

I have no idea why Gingrich is climbing in the polls. He is a strange character. Here's a guy who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie Mac but he was one of those behind the mythology that Freddie Mac caused the economic meltdown. Freddie Mac like so many other financial institutions was not innocent but it was a follower of the debacle, not one of the leaders that caused it.

Let me repeat: Freddie Mac did not cause the meltdown. But keep this in mind: President Bush was in charge during those years when regulation was lax, including at Freddie Mac. And if Republicans like Gingrich were advising Freddie Mac, do these clowns really want to put the blame on Freddie Mac?

There is very little logic or rationality in the Republican Party these days. Guys like Karl Rove work with focus groups to find out what nonsensical narratives might work on potential Republican voters. But why don't Republicans use narratives connected to the real values of the 1% that control the Republican Party? The answer is that those values don't connect with voters. Americans don't want to destroy social security and medicare. They don't want to destroy the unions, though they sometimes have gripes with unions. They don't want to see jobs sent overseas. They don't want to see the bottom line dominate everything in our country for the sake of a little extra profit for the next quarter that goes into the pockets of an increasingly smaller number of Americans.

When business corporations first appeared in America, they were allowed to exist so long as they contributed to the public good. Probably most American corporations continue to serve the public good though most of these same corporations could do a better job. A lot of the breakdowns involve the financial sector, the health insurance sector, the Alice in Wonderland world of expensive and sometimes worthless defense contracts, and corporate sectors who profit from the right to pollute in our country and to pollute in a country overseas without paying cleanup costs. There are many exceptions in all areas. For example, investors who are predatory have found it much easier since the early 1980s to buy a legitimate company and basically raid its assets for their personal use. There are articles that have been written about the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Dodgers and how their assets were stripped by their new owners. The same has happened to many other corporations.

Gingrich is an historian who knows these things. Or at least he ought to know. But he's infatuated with conservative economic ideas that no longer work and never did work, except for a very small number of Americans. He's a fossil. He's also an elitist in reality, if not by labeling in the media. When a self-important official threatens to shut down the government because he didn't like his seating on a presidential plane, that sounds like one of those self-important Dukes or Barons from the 18th century. We used to call such people Tories. We rebelled against them in 1776. We're a generous country. Guys like Gingrich, with nothing real to offer to a majority of Americans, ought to pull out of politics and enjoy his retirement.

Fossilized Leaders Mislead Americans About Fossil Fuels

2011-11-09T23:46:00.001-08:00

Most Republican leaders and a few wayward Democrats fail to recognize several straightforward facts:

1. Fossil fuels are no longer cheap.

2. Besides fossil fuels no longer being cheap, if we take away subsidies from fossil fuels, Americans would really feel the cost.

3. But it gets worse. If we include the total costs of the damage that fossil fuel development and burning has on our country, and also the planet, the real cost of fossil fuels is in fact prohibitive. Our children and grandchildren will be paying the costs for generations to feed today's dangerous hunger for high profits by the fat cats in the fossil fuel industry.

4. If the United States began tomorrow on a massive alternative energy program, it would probably be decades before the United States would stop producing coal, natural gas, and oil. Why? Because it will take time to build up the alternative energy infrastructure. It takes time to build the factories, hire the people, train them as the technology changes, mine rare earth metals essential to alternative energy and again hire the people who will do the mining.

5. Jobs in the fossil fuel industries will take years to disappear. Why? Because as alternative energy grows, the jobs that will be lost are not the ones here at home but the ones overseas. The first thing that alternative energy will do is make the U.S. more energy secure and less dependent on the volatile politics of international oil.

6. And this is the most important: while fossil fuels are becoming more expensive, alternative energy is becoming less expensive.

Mary of The Left Coaster points out that high technology companies are increasingly turning to alternative energy. The trend towards alternative energy, despite the political fossils in Washington, is underway.

Paul Krugman in a recent column in The New York Times points out that that the costs of alternative is dropping. It's economics folks. It's capitalism the way its supposed to work.

For all the noise that Republicans make on Fox News, on the Rush Limbaugh comedy hour, and in Congress, they no longer much care about the kind of capitalism that made America great. Keep in mind this isn't the first time our country has lost its way. We lost our way in the 1890s and we lost our way at the end of the 1920s. When capitalism no longer works for a majority of Americans, something has gone very wrong.

Republicans, the ones who run the Republican Party, are the party of bankers and the wealthy. They have lost sight of why Americans usually like capitalism. Usually, and it certainly hasn't happened lately, capitalism is at its best when people pay less and less for more. Lately, for perhaps 30 years, or more, Americans have been paying more and more for less. Capitalism as today's conservative Republicans define it has failed.

Think of it: the cost of alternative energy is generally falling. Solar panels are cheaper. Windmills are cheaper. Batteries are cheaper. The price of alternative energy will continue to fall for many years to come. That's capitalism at its best. But the cost of most of other things, the real cost, including fossil fuels, are climbing—and the money that pours into the pockets of the top 1% gets larger and larger while jobs get sent to foreign countries. That is not capitalism at its best. If our democracy is to remain relevant, Washington needs to focus a great deal less on the privileges and wealth of the top 1%, and a great deal more on the creation of more jobs, productive jobs, jobs that ensure a future for a large majority of Americans.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Decline of the Republican Party

2011-11-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

Republicans have a hard time accepting responsibility for their blunders. Charles Krauthammer, for example, is still trying to justify the war in Iraq years after it became obvious that the war was a perpetrated fraud, a war that was utterly unnecessary and irrelevant to the capture of Osama bin Laden and the dismantling of al Qaida. The United States wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, with billions quite often unaccounted for. That does not include the ultimate cost of the war.

And Republicans wonder how we got into the deepest economic slump since the 1930s.

Years of deregulation by Republicans and a few of their Democratic friends left the financial sector as about as unregulated as a gambling saloon in 1880s Tombstone, Arizona. The reckless beneficiaries of Republican deregulation were investment bankers on (gasp) Wall Street. Do Republicans really not know what Occupy Wall Street is about? To this day, most of the people responsible for the meltdown have not been held accountable.

The phony rage of the Tea Party movement, largely financed by the 1%, and for the 1%, is largely a resurrection of the John Birch Society (one of the founding members of the John Birch Society is the father of the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers who own Koch Industries). In the 1960s, the John Birchers saw communists under every rock and were radically right wing. Like the John Birchers, the Tea Party folks also have trouble dealing with facts. For example, the debt the U.S. has run up in the last 11 years was not because of welfare, medicare, social security, or student loans. The debt was the result of Republicans refusing to fund two major wars. In twenty of the last thirty years, it has been Republicans not Democrats who have recklessly driven up America's debts. For eight years, Clinton had a surplus. Republicans who consult sources other than Fox News and Rush Limbaugh know this.

Look, I know plenty of hardworking Republicans who vote for Republican politicians—those same Republican politicians are glad to take their votes and money without giving much back. It's a weird world. What people need to remember about the power brokers of the Republican Party is very simple: the Republican Party is the party of bankers and privilege. There aren't that many people who are bankers and who have sweet heart deals courtesy of Congress, state legislatures, and Republican presidents. So in the spirit of P. T. Barnum, Republican leaders cajole a lot of people with odd promises that they half-heartedly keep.

People like Charles Krauthammer work hard to make us miss the obvious. In a recent column, he wrote:

To the villainy-of-the-rich theme emanating from Washington, a child is born: Occupy Wall Street. Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over.

These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause.

Krauthammer lays it on thick—stereotypes, mythologies and all the rest. I'm almost sorry that he doesn't work for our side. Except that over the years he's become a little loose with the facts. It's the only way a conservative can operate these days. There was a time when a conservative could be rigorously factual and argue effectively. William F. Buckley was such a conservative. But Buckley, despite all the debates he so infuriatingly won—at least on debating points—had a weakness, and he knew it. But he exploited the decency of his opponents who either didn't think in certain terms or were too classy in that era to point out the obvious weakness in Buckley's arguments. That the underpinning of Buckley's philosophy was a shameless selfishness. William F. Buckley did not care if the system that so benefited the rich was unfair. He was, however, a little embarrassed by the underpinning of his philosophy. When cornered, he would admit that selfishness was essential to his type of conservatism, but he would say it quietly, in few words and move on quickly. That is the underpinning of the philosophy that dominates the Republican Party. Remember: I'm not talking about Republicans who are farmers, fire fighters and shopkeepers, etc.; I'm talking about high-powered bankers and the privileged, the people who game the system (I'm not talking about George Baily who ran a decent savings and loan; I'm talking about the other guy). The reality is that the Republicans who control the Republican Party care a great deal about the law, as long as it benefits them, and includes a lot of zeroes in the checks they receive.

Krauthammer truly doesn't understand what he's saying. He invokes Steve Jobs, an entrepreneur and job creator (though Jobs loses points in recent years for sending a fair number of jobs overseas). No Democrat I know has a problem with real job creators. Republicans relish creating mythologies about make work projects by Democrats, but Republicans are the ones who create phony jobs for party hacks like 'heckuva job' Michael Brown of Katrina fame and the private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ironic that Krauthammer rails against an English degree. He himself began with a political science degree (though he moved on). That kind of silly name calling doesn't get us anywhere. In any case, isn't name calling an old-fashioned method for changing the subject?

The subject is that Wall Street not only screwed up the economy but no one has been held accountable for the fraud that was committed with the financial derivatives that were based on mortgages and ultimately the fraudulent system of bonuses, commissions, and paybacks for pushing as many home loans on Americans as possible regardless of the creditworthiness of the home owners or the credit worthiness of the banks, investment bankers and mortgage companies peddling the worthless derivatives. The financial collapse did not have to happen. It was not a product of an economic cycle. It was purely a product of lax government control, greed and fraud.

What was pathetic is that in early 2007, when it was clearly possible to do something, reasonably responsible Republicans—who nevertheless bought into the conservative economics of the last 30 years—stood like deer in the headlights, hapless, clueless and incompetent. The Tea Party Republicans are clearly not an improvement.

The people paying for the financial fiasco on Wall Street are not the banks, not the 1%, not the people with privileged government connections, and certainly not the Republican lobbyists doing all they can to protect their wealthy clients. The people paying for the fiasco are the 99% trying to earn a living.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

2011-10-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

The man was insanely brilliant.

Here's a timeline that includes most of his accomplishments.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: All the Rest Is Noise

2011-09-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep this short. For the last year, Republicans in Congress and the media have wasted everyone's time.

There is only one issue: Jobs.

Actually, there's a choice.

If you're a Republican and you believe the best days of America are behind us, keep doing what you're doing.

If you believe the United States still has a future, that the United States is still a going concern, then borrow money with a purpose. Don't borrow money for wars that don't do us any good. And don't throw money at incompetents and cronies like Heckuva job Brownie.

Republicans say the United States is like a business. You're damned right it is. If you want your business to expand, borrow. But borrow with a purpose. Borrow with a plan in mind to create jobs. Jobs in education. Jobs in new energy. Jobs in research. Jobs rebuilding a long neglected infrastructure.

Earthquakes and Nuclear Reactors: The Industry Pushback

2011-09-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

The modern world has a problem. Nuclear reactors are only a small part of that problem. The fundamental problem is that we do not have in operation a truly safe and truly sustainable energy system for the type of modern civilization enjoyed by much of the world in the year 2011. Keep in mind that the technology that defines the modern world has only been around since roughly 1920, and that innovations have occurred in nearly every decade since then, so that what we define as the modern world has become increasingly complex and increasingly energy hungry.

I have no longstanding beef with the nuclear industry. In the beginning, it seemed promising, but it seems significant problems keep coming to the attention of the public and cannot be ignored at a time when the world is looking for other sources of energy to replace fossil fuels. Currently, there are over 400 reactors in the world. Before the nuclear disaster in Japan some months ago, it was common to hear discussions about vastly increasing the number of nuclear reactors worldwide. No specific numbers were consistently discussed but one can imagine we were talking about maybe 4,000 nuclear reactors being in operation fifty years from now. The chances of so many reactors being built are far less now than before the Japanese incident.

Advocates of nuclear power tend to be financially tied to their optimism about nuclear energy. If nuclear energy has any chance of succeeding in the long run, it would be helpful if there were informed advocates who did not have a financial stake. In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of nuclear energy is that safer reactors can be built but there is little commitment to do so. Why? Because our civilization is based on the bottom line. And the bottom line can be manipulated by powerful interests. The real cost of fossil fuels is far greater than what we pay at the pump. The cost of nuclear energy is far greater than the monthly bills we pay to a power company. Whenever possible, corporations, partly out of bad habit, partly out of greed, simply put off real costs to future generations.

At Forbes.com is an AP article that is appearing in a number of places. The article discusses nuclear safety in light of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March and the recent earthquake that hit Virginia and was felt by much of the east coast. The article in Forbes notes:

The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

That's 24 times higher than previously thought. Isn't this the way of America's business-as-usual crowd? The business-as-usual crowd always underestimates risks when there's a profit to be made.

Keep in mind that the accident in Japan is just one of the biggest of the past 60 years. Nuclear accidents have many other causes. An earthquake is only one possible cause. Back in March, The Guardian provided a list of 33 nuclear accidents since the early 1950s. These are most of the known incidents, though there have been others. The incident in Japan has since been raised to a Level 7 incident. Now notice the number, 33 accidents. And that is almost certainly an under count. Nevertheless, that's one accident every two years since 1950.

Let's go back to the AP article:

The average risk to U.S. reactors of core damage from a quake remains low, at one accident every 500 years, according to the AP analysis of NRC data.

Nuclear power generators have only been around since 1950. Japan immediately lost 3 reactors to the earthquake and the tsunami that followed. Then 3 more went permanently offline due to the extreme radiation. Yes, the accident was in Japan, but the design came from the U.S. and despite all the second-guessing, Japan is just as safety conscious and technologically adept as we are (meaning, of course, not safety conscious enough).

The NRC and the industry are playing games with the 500 years statistics (the 500 year figure, by the way, is after the NRC seems to have recognized the greater earthquake danger, 24 times more likely. Wow, so a year ago the odds were one in 12,000 years? These clearly are never-neverland statistics). There are times when statistics actually mean something. But this is not one of them. Also keep in mind that a single incident like the one in Japan is a very serious accident, far greater than if a coal power plant toppled to the ground or a few windmills got blown over.

Incidentally, I give Forbes credit for cutting one part of the AP article. In my paper, there was an odd and muddled reference by AP that according to one perspective the risk of an accident from an earthquake to a single reactor was only one in 30,000 years. No doubt, even Forbes likes to maintain its credibility (the editors of my paper simply reprint things without much proofreading or thought, like far too many papers in America). Apologies for the discussing the numbers, but when an accident like the one in Japan occurs, we see why it's important to be skeptical of such rosy industry assessments of nuclear safety. To keep things in perspective, it's important to remember that Virginia experienced only a 5.9 earthquake. Despite the small size, at least one nuclear reactor had things move several inches that shouldn't have moved at all. In the last 250 years, the east coast and the middle of the United States have experienced much bigger earthquakes.

Is nuclear energy dead? For now, probably. Today's reactors will continue producing energy but new projects are pretty much dead. In the long term, it may depend on whether Europe, Japan and the U.S. can commit to major new research in nuclear energy designs that are much safer and are cost effective. Keep in mind, that safer reactors can be built right now but the nuclear industry has shown no inclination to do so. Keep in mind that the fossil fuel industry has a similar problem. There are ways right now for recapturing CO2 and sticking it safely somewhere in the ground. But there is no commitment on any kind of serious scale to do so.

It is entirely possible that the best way forward in the next 50 years is to put fossil fuels and nuclear energy out of business. And the best way to do that is to commit to job-creating green energy and massive amounts of job-creating research for better, cleaner and more sustainable source of energy.

North Dakota Oil: Reality Beginning to Settle In?

2011-08-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

Just one of the many things that gives tea party Republicans away is their smugness over North Dakota's considerable oil play. The tea party people seem to believe that North Dakota proves some point that puts Democrats at a disadvantage. That's curious, because I cheer the fact that the extra oil helps our economy. In fact, it might help us switch to alternative energy a little sooner. Switching to alternative energy is expensive but necessary. The fortunate side effect of alternative energy is that it will create a considerable number of new jobs. And in the meantime, buying less oil from other countries because of North Dakota can help our economy and make it easier to pay for new energy projects, ones that will be sustainable and that won't fuel global warming. Of course, as recent events have shown, tea party Republicans are not rational.

If a majority of today's Republican politicians were rational instead of off in never never land trying to recreate the 1920s, they would agree that we face major issues.

They would agree that the first priority of Americans in 2011 is the creation of new jobs. They would also agree that global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels are also major issues that cannot be ignored.

They would not fantasize, as some business people do, that someone will invent the way out of our problems at any moment using a trickle of narrowly focused corporate research dollars (the situation is so bad that in the last six years, scam artists have played on such beliefs with gullible business investors willing to put their money in new types of energy projects, except the schemes turn out to be bogus or produce only a very small amount of energy gain).

A Republican Party controlled by rational pragmatists would see that major research dollars are needed for our society to move forward. They would see that we are running out of time to make a difference. We need major, intensive research now to dig our way out of our problems. Rational Republicans, if there were enough around, would be joining with Democrats to find a way to fund those research dollars in today's troubled economy. They would know that delay is not an option, for things can only get worse if we wait.

Rational Republicans would see the oil play in North Dakota as a bit of luck that is buying us time (and jobs to boot) to get our act together. They would not fantasize as so many radical Republicans do that global warming is somehow a left wing conspiracy and that the oil and gas projects around the country are going to save our energy future.

Democrats like me have no serious problem with the North Dakota oil play. I admit I'm unhappy with the problems associated with fracking but 80% of all energy technologies in use today are problematic. That's an additional reason we need a major research initiative in this country. But we need to be able to fund that initiative while there is still time. I'm a realist about North Dakota and the other oil and gas plays. These projects are not a game changer as some conservatives so desperately want to believe (they would object to the word 'desperately,' but they have little idea just how much in denial they have become). But as we transition to alternative energy, I would far rather see gas and oil burned than coal. Nearly everything we burn produces CO2, but no fossil fuel produces as much carbon dioxide than coal. Coal is the planet killer. Make no mistake, every green energy project is a step in the right direction, and the faster we can transition, the better. But I'm a realist, as I said. It is going to take time.

U.S. oil production is way off from what it was back in the 1970s. We were fortunate, in a way, that we had oil from the North Slope of Alaska to mitigate the fall in US oil production. There was even a brief upward blip from that production, though we came nowhere close to the maximum production we reached in the early 1970s. Since the North Slope reached its maximum production in the late 1980s, total American oil production has continued to decline in most years. The maximum production of oil in Alaska was 2.2 million barrels a day.

In North Dakota, using the new fracking method, oil production has been increasing dramatically since early 2008. Despite the good news, there's a small problem: production may be on the edge of leveling off. We don't know yet. In May, 2009, oil wells in North Dakota produced 205,995 barrels of oil per day. By May, 2010, the number of barrels produced per day increased to 298,975 barrels of oil, an increase of 93,000 barrels. Oil production has continued to rise. In May, 2011, 361,438 barrels a day were produced. Not bad, though nowhere close to the North Slope. Some argue that production will continue to rise. No doubt it will, but it will not surpass or even approach the maximum production from the North Slope. Unfortunately, there's that worrisome difference to note from the figures above: the increase in May production from 2010 to 2011 was only 63,000 barrels a day.

All along, there has been strong suggestive evidence all along that North Dakota is not going to be a replay of Alaskan oil. It's a help, but already the falling increase suggests a leveling off of oil production. It's entirely feasible that oil production will be much greater next year, but the production of individual oil wells in North Dakota tend to fall off rapidly after the first year. The long-term prospects are not good, though the Bakken oilfield in North Dakota will remain an important source of oil for some time to come.

Again, North Dakota is a good oil play (though admittedly, the fracking problems are unsettling). But all the Bakken oilfield can do is buy us time. We need to use that time wisely. Instead, we have watched tea party Republicans waste an entire year that should have been spent creating jobs instead of destroying them. We need to create jobs where they matter most: alternative energy projects, major research projects to deal with global warming and energy issues, and modestly increasing the number of teachers instead of firing them. We need an educated and creative population, not a road map to third world status courtesy of tea party Tories.

S & P Rating Games: A Quick Mention

Let's just say I'm very skeptical about the S & P downgrading of US debt, particularly after the fiasco by the tea party Republicans where they got more than any other debt conscious group of politicians in history. Both Moody's and the S & P lost considerable credibility during the financial meltdown in 2008. Both rating firms were giving high ratings to banks and Wall Street firms that not only contributed to the financial meltldown but that were, in many cases, the explicit and gloriously crooked cause of it. When such institutions do not have the money to pay off on bad loans, why should they have such high ratings? Was the 2008 election part of the reason for the high ratings? I don't know.

It is a historical fact that in June of 2007, a frigid wind of reality blew through the banks of the world. Everybody in the financial sector knows what happened. Everybody discovered in that month that the complex diced and packaged financial instruments they were holding were probably worthless (banking executives should have known earlier but they were too busy counting their fat commissions and fat salaries to take the trouble to understand the financial fraud they were a part of; actually Moody's and the S & P should have known earlier). And yet, despite the discoveries, despite the enormous shudder that went through all the markets, the high ratings continued for more than a year. Are we seeing a replay of recklessness? And why now? Why the downgrading after rather than before the vote? I don't know. We'll see. But I remain skeptical.

Republican Fiasco: Choice Is Between Bad and Very Bad

2011-07-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

The Republican pragmatists refuse to stand up. For all practical purposes, the pragmatists are politically dead in the Republican Party. By blackmailing the American people, the tea party Tories are about to give us either a bad deal (a compromise where Republican right wingers get most of what they want) or a very bad deal (where Republicans get almost everything they want). That's assuming the tea party zealots don't simply cause the US to go into default, in which case, it's anybody's guess what will happen next.

Even the wealthy billionaires who paid for the tea party movement are beginning to wonder what they have unleashed.

Healthy economic activity in the modern world depends on pragmatism and it depends on reasonable expectations. Do not expect the economy to do well if Republicans create chaos while also killing jobs and the economy.

Tea Party Tories vs. Republican Pragmatists

2011-07-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

The Plain Dealer carries a Washington Post article that briefly mentions one of the most despicable acts I've ever seen by the U.S. House of Representatives:

The Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.

The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans...

In Washington, there are very few Republican pragmatists left. Over the years, I have often disagreed with Republican pragmatists, but—this has to be said bluntly—at least they're not nuts like the tea party Tories. Of course, there are different kinds of Republican pragmatists. Some are moderates, some are conservative. But they're not totally nuts.

There were conservative pragmatists during the Reagan era who listened to the conservative radicals of the era but refused to throw millions of poor and middle class Americans under the bus. The conservative pragmatists did damage but at least the damage was limited.

There were moderate Republican pragmatists during the 1960s. Some of them were courageous. Despite putting rules in place for this and limitations on that, they helped pass important legislation of the era that ultimately benefited a large majority of Americans.

For those of us who were paying attention, there were certainly radical conservatives in the 1960s who were totally nuts. Some followed an angry George Wallace. Some were members of the ridiculous and much caricatured John Birch Society (I have previously written how John Birch members would hand out dimes on Halloween along with right wing leaflets for children to give their parents).

To repeat the above, on July 19th, 2011, the nuttiness of the tea party Tories manifested itself in a vote in the House to cut the US budget by $6,000,000,000,000. Pardon the zeroes, but to simplify, and repeat once more, that's $6 trillion dollars 'trimmed' from the US budget. Right wing Republicans in recent years have found all kinds of cute ways to make something unreasonable sound just fine. Cutting $6 trillion is not fine. There are two issues here. The first one, which is actually the more critical issue in the long run, is that such a budget cut would increase the power of the super wealthy and decrease the power and well being of everyone else. It would continue the erosion of democracy that we have seen in the last ten years.

The second issue is the one that hits home if voters bother to think about it. Cutting the budget that severely means putting a lot of people out of work.

If you don't have money for teachers, you put a lot of teachers out of work.

If you don't have money for law enforcement, you put a lot of police officers, agents and investigators out of work.

If you don't have money for fire trucks and overtime during fire season, that's a lot of fire fighters out of work and lot of property destruction.

If you don't have money for highways, you put a lot of highway workers out of work and you pay a lot of money and repairs for tires and vehicles.

If you don't have money for research, you put scientists and engineers out of work who are needed to make the US competitive.

If you cut down the number of people in the military, you put tens of thousands of soldiers on the street without a job because the budget for helping them get the necessary education, health care and housing is too pitiful to do them much good, since all of the above people would also be out of work.

Since early 2007, when Bush was still president and failing to mind the store as banks and financiers ran amuck, most Americans have experienced economic troubles that our country has not experienced since the 1930s. Those troubles will continue if Republicans keep cutting jobs at the state and federal level. Private industry cannot absorb the number of people who would be out of work if the tea party Tories at the state and national level continue to have their way.

In the end, the tea party folks are phonies. They have far more in common with Kenneth Lay, Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump than they do with average Americans. The tea party folks don't care about you and I. They care about the wealthy, the privileged, and the well-connected. Real American patriots in 1776 were fighting against the rigged and gamed system that the British Tories were pulling on Americans with the substantial help of George III. A rigged and gamed system is exactly what tea party Republicans want more of.

The Senate, with the help of the White House, appears to be leading the way to a less onerous bill (with a crucial nod from some pragmatic Republicans), though that bill is not likely to help us move forward through what is likely to be a difficult period in the next few years. But it is preferable to the bill tea party radicals want to pass. 'Preferable,' but largely useless in terms of what our country needs.

In the end, thanks to the tantrums of the tea party radicals, we're in trouble. There is no way for our economy to continue to move forward without serious attention to our infrastructure and considerable reform of business as usual.

Tea party folks are business as usual Republicans. They make noise, but at the end of the day, they shovel billions into the pockets of those who need it the least and those who continue to ship American jobs to other countries such as China. We cannot solve our economic future by leaving it to corporations that make useless toys, finance costly scams, or treat Americans as easily manipulated cash cows, while leaving millions of people out of work.

Rupert Murdoch: The Kingmaker and Political Manipulator

2011-07-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

Rupert Murdoch is a Republican politician. He doesn't hold office, but he's a politician, nevertheless. He doesn't sit in the House of Lords but he acts like a Lord with all the privileges and powers that go with office. But not a Lord in the British House of Lords as its been in the last 100 years or so. He's from the House of Tories, circa 1776. He's tea party. Except, of course, the tea party Republicans are really Tories defending lies, corruption and privilege to the hilt. They want to kill Medicare, but pretend on Tuesdays and Thursdays that they don't. They want to kill Social Security but pretend on Mondays and Wednesdays that they don't. They want the economy to fail under Obama, but pretend that they don't on Thursdays and Saturdays.

They do, however, admit that they want to cut the budget to the bone. And that makes them job killers seven days a week.

But I digress, though Lord Murdoch is certainly a tea party Tory if there ever was. He was a Tory in Australia, where he was born and inherited a small newspaper empire—and privilege. He was a Tory in the U.K., where he began to accumulate wealth—and privilege. Being greedy, he moved on to the U.S. and remains a Tory both in the U.S. and the U.K.

I sort of met Rupurt Murdoch once. We were invited to the same event along with many other people. I never said a word to him, nor did I have any desire to do so. But I watched as he entered with his entourage and his enormous ego, dripping with disdain, not only for his sycophants but even for those at the event. I watched the sycophants vie with him for attention, nervously and aggressively, while Murdoch played a kind of power game with them. The group and their 'Lord' went to the farthest corner away from everyone else and did not pay the least bit of attention to the event they were invited to. They were all more important than the rest of us. These were people from Fox News and, who knows, perhaps there were two or three people from the British tabloids that Murdoch owns.

All too often the ethics of organizations reflect the ethics of the owners. The tabloid scandal in the UK undoubtedly flows from Murdoch's values (see Carl Berstein's article in Newsweek). It's apparent he likes to twist arms, particularly if he can make a lucrative deal. He was hoping for a lucrative deal through British Sky Broadcasting. But he appears to have overreached. Here's just a small taste, from the BBC:

Under pressure from the entire British political establishment, Mr Murdoch has also dropped plans to buy out the rest of British Sky Broadcasting.

And on Friday he saw Rebekah Brooks resign, the chief executive of his UK newspaper business News International - the very executive who he explicitly wanted to keep in the job.

Now Mr Murdoch's business faces investigations in the UK and potentially the US and Australia, risking further revelations that could harm his reputation.

Make no mistake. Mr. Murdoch is a bean counter. There is no way that he could have failed to notice where the money was going for some of the illegal activities of his so-called 'reporters.' To get 'scoops' as often as his reporters did can only happen in a corrupt environment where reporters feel free to break rules not so much for newsworthy, need to know stories, but largely as an instrument of power.

Anyone who doesn't think Murdoch is willing to throw his weight around to get what he wants, take note of this story on The Huffington Post:

Under assault in a phone hacking scandal, News Corp. has met a self-imposed deadline for reporting its 2011 political contributions online.

(snip)

The company's board approved a new disclosure policy for its political giving in April after two donations by Rupert Murdoch, the Australian mogul who controls the company, raised concern among shareholders. Murdoch gave $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and $1.25 million to the Republican Governors Association.

That's a lot of money for a political campaign from a single donor. I strongly oppose the rich and powerful being able to make such huge contributions. You cannot have a democracy for long if wealthy 'Lords' have that much power. The real patriots of 1776 felt that way. They were being hindered by the Tories in America and the Tories in Britain who acquired their power through birth, privilege and corruption. And those Tories didn't mind breaking their own rules to accumulate more power and wealth.

Some might argue the the scandal in the UK has nothing to do with Murdoch's behavior here. Think again. Here's another story, from the AP:

The AP is reporting that the Justice Department is looking into the allegations that News Corp. hacked into the cellphones of 9/11 victims. We're told to expect a statement from DOJ shortly. More when we have it.

These days, the leadership of the Republican Party is trying to turn the United States into a third world country. The rich get richer and everyone else falls further and further behind as consumers get screwed and jobs get sent to China and elsewhere. There's no excuse for this behavior. We are a democracy and though it doesn't feel like it sometimes, we're still a free people. For the hundreds of millions who live in third world economies, they barely manage the necessities of life and they rarely feel free. Instinctively, without knowing what a third world economy was, the patriots of 1776 were fighting the very policies that even today would turn us into vassals of the rich and powerful.

The paragraph above makes the essential point of this post. But it's worth noting one last point. The scandal in the UK is proof of what many of us have know for some time: Fox News is the product of the best bullshit that Mr. Murdoch's money can buy.

The Priorities of Republican Politicians Are Not Yours and MIne

2011-07-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

There's nothing ethically or politically pure about either major party in the United States. But the Republicans these days make a point of specializing in protecting the super wealthy, largely because they want to enjoy some of the same privileges themselves.

Talking Points Memo has the story:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

I don't mind talented people making money. But giving wealthy people money they don't need by cutting Medicare, privatizing Social Security, cutting jobs and cutting back on services is outrageous. Where is the sense of outrage in this country?

Do people realize that corporations are holding billions of dollars in reserve that could stimulate the economy and create jobs? Where is the outrage? If these guys are going to sit on that money—a good percent of it is Bush's bailout money, by the way—then yes, we ought to tax it to get the economy moving again.

Do people realize that global warming is real and most of these fat cats are sitting on their asses doing nothing so they can have a few more bottles of $350 wine and swing a few more sweetheart deals with the help of politicians like Paul Ryan? Where is the outrage?

Paul Ryan doesn't care about people like you and me. Neither do most of the other politicians in the Republican Party. What they care about are the people who can buy that $350 bottle of wine and fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

When is it going to dawn on people that the tea party folks are Tories? They're the folks we fought in 1776 who wanted to rig the system for the rich and powerful and the privileged few?

Job Killer: Just Another Republican Politician

2011-05-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

It's starting to dawn on Americans that Republican politicians are so obsessed with tax cuts for the wealthy (so they can buy more plants in China), that they're killing jobs during the worst unemployment America has faced since the Great Depression.

The Washington Monthly has the story on the Republican governor of Florida:

Florida’s wildly-unpopular far-right governor, Rick Scott (R), traveled to a retirement community in Central Florida yesterday known for being the most Republican retirement community in the state. Scott was there to sign his new state budget, which helps demonstrate his priorities and commitment to looking out for his most vulnerable constituents.

(snip)

All told, Scott’s budget throws 4,500 Floridians out of work as a way to help lower unemployment. No, I don’t understand it, either.

If the unemployment rate gets stubborn about falling in the next few months, just remember Florida governor Rick Scott (R) and a dozen other governors who don't care if they throw people out of work. Their job is to help the people who pay their bills: wealthy conservatives who could care less what's going on in America.

Obama Accomplishes What Bush Failed to Do at Tora Bora

2011-05-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

The mass murderer Osama bin Laden is dead. I have no idea where things will go from here. In 2002, George W. Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan and started transferring resources to the Persian Gulf. I still have no idea why we went to Iraq and wasted 2 trillion dollars on an ill-conceived enterprise.

I recognize that most Republicans will never come to terms with the Iraq blunder. The reality is that the United States has more serious problems than a two-bit dictator who clearly wasn't worth 2 trillion to get rid of.

But putting Osama bin Laden and al Qaida out of business was obviously something we needed to do and Bush didn't finish the job. He bamboozled all the Republicans and about half of the Democrats into signing off on Iraq. The lies of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are now part of history. What's done is done.

Juan Cole of Informed Comment has some good commentary on where things now stand in the Middle East. Here's his concluding paragraph:

Now that Obama has eliminated the monster Usama Bin Laden and vindicated the capability of the United States to visit retribution on its dire enemies, he can do one other great good for this country abroad. He can get us out of Iraq altogether. The US military presence there is the fruit of a poisonous tree. It will always provoke Iraqi Muslim activists, whether Sunni or Shiite or secular nationalist. And it angers the whole Arab world.

The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields. The new generation of young Arabs in Egypt and Tunisia has a shot at a decent life. Obama has put the US on the right side of history in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya (where I see crowds for the first time in my life waving American flags). People might want a little help from a distance, but they don’t want to see Western troops deployed in fighting units on their soil.

If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

I wish President Obama would pay more attention to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. It's good to be a unifier but it's also important to be a pragmatist and an upholder of values that some on the far right keep forgetting.

I recognize that rational Republicans are not the problem in today's politics, I acknowledge that some rational Republicans voted for Obama out of protest against the tilt to the right by the Republican Party. I have no doubt that Obama's success against Osama bin Laden was helped by those in the military, CIA and foreign policy establishment who are indeed rational Republicans. But keep in mind that during World War Two, Roosevelt had many rational Republicans working for him as well. And yet Roosevelt pushed for such things as the end of colonialism, the building of the middle class and the curbing of the enormous power of America's wealthiest individuals.

I repeat what I've said before: right wing Republicans have no solutions, only bellyaches about things they don't like. It's time to take on the challenges our nation is facing.

Newt Gingrich: The Classic Right-Wing Republican

2011-04-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Unlike most right-wing Republicans, Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, is actually smart. Of course, that has not translated into a trip to the White House. The reason that Gingrich has not fulfilled any number of ambitions is largely due to the lack of a moral compass. That's actually another way of saying that he doesn't really believe what he says.

One of my favorite sites, The Mahablog, has a post quoting Mr. Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia, who manages to tie himself up in knots with his own words:

A lot of people are snickering about this pronouncement from Newt –

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

As Joe Klein said, “There is genius in this: no other human had located the secular humanist wing of radical Islam before.”

My goodness, Newt uses all the popular devices in that paragraph. He mentions his grandchildren, patriotism, atheism, Islam, secularism and a slight reference to "My Struggle," otherwise known as Mein Kampf.

No doubt touching all those bases is required after reading any number of reports by Republican right wing focus groups. But Newt has a problem. He's never been able to make up his mind which group should be the scapegoat used for enabling his political ambitions. Should it be unions? Gays? Immigrants? Muslims? Socialists? Rational people? All of them?

Newt Gingrich became a politician when communists and Russians were the convenient scapegoats—convenient indeed given the behavior of the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union fell, the life of the right wing conservative became difficult. It required work to figure out who to blame from month to month.

Mind you, like most right wing Republicans running for office, Newt Gingrich has no solutions. Perhaps it requires empathy to actually care about the people of the United States and then to identify the problems real people are facing. And then to think about what might be done about them besides looking for a convenient scapegoat, which incidentally has never been particularly successful at improving people's lives, though it usually works out well for the wealthiest Americans since their taxes usually get lowered and the government throws more money their way, even if they don't need it. Most right-wing Republicans know exactly who their real customers are and who's paying the bill. Like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich is raking in the dough.

Is Newt Gingrich's quote above cynical? Of course it is. This is a family man who handed his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital. This is a responsible politician who shut down the government because he didn't like his seat on Air Force One. This is a moral crusader who tried to impeach a president for having sex with an intern, while he himself was having sex with an intern. This was a brave young politician who hurled accusations on the House floor against Democrats who refused to answer him back, largely because Newt was talking at 1 in the morning to an empty House on C-Span. Moral crusader indeed!

And yet, after all is said and done, it is a mistake to underestimate Newt Gingrich. I don't believe he's really running for president. But he just might be running for Vice President, with thoughts of being another Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney and George W. Bush drove the U.S. economy into the ditch. Today's Congressional Republicans are doing their best to kill jobs (with lots of help from right wing Republicans in places like Wisconsin).

The Tea Party folks, of course, are completely out of their minds. It's pitiful that they misunderstand the American Revolution. United we stand, divided we fall, is not about politicians saying my way or the highway but about cooperating on our common problems in a pragmatic way. Most average Republicans I know are just as patriotic and American as other folks. But the Tea Party people, for all the noise they make, sound like British Tories trying to protect the corrupt privileges of the wealthy and well-connected than average Americans trying to move forward into the 21st century.

The GOP: Angry and without Solutions: Part II

2011-02-20T20:59:00.001-08:00

The betrayal of the American people by the governor of Wisconsin is another bizarre event in our nation's recent history. Here's a pathetic comment by the governor, according to Reuters:

Fourteen state Democratic senators have left the state to deny the Wisconsin legislature a quorum needed to consider the controversial proposal.

Those senators have "failed to do their jobs," Walker said on Fox Network's "Fox News Sunday."

The Republican governor seems to be confused about the economic trouble in Wisconsin and elsewhere in America. It was Republican George W. Bush and his friends in Congress who destroyed the economy, not Democrats. It is Republican crony capitalism that is undermining the income of 90% of Americans. It is Republican leaders who are doing their best to make sure Republican plutocrats and the corporations those wealthy people control become even more wealthy. And what what will those plutocrats do with their money? Believe it or not, they'll create jobs....in China.

The unions know these are hard times and are willing to negotiate concessions. That's not the issue. The issue is that workers have rights and a governor or a political party cannot wish them away. That's the line in the sand that if Americans allow Republicans to ignore, it will end America as we have known it all our lives. Republican Governor Walker thinks destroying the middle class is a solution. A solution to what?

Update: The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire who is the sugar daddy for a lot of right wing Republicans. Murdoch doesn't care much for American workers. So it's insulting to American workers when The Wall Street Journal runs a cute survey for its mostly conservative readers:

Should state employees have collective-bargaining rights?

Ohio and Wisconsin are considering a bill which would strip state's public employees of most collective-bargaining rights. What do you think? Would the end of collective bargaining for public workers means new savings and efficiencies for taxpayers? Or would it be unfair to state worker.

The question is a con job. It is designed to divide American workers against one another. The real question is whether American workers still have rights, period. That is the only question that is important. Has anyone notice the unemployment rate lately? Has anyone noticed that Republicans are cutting jobs and putting people out of work? Has anyone noticed that Republicans have been giving more and more rights to corporations and that more and more corporate rights hamper the rights of working Americans?

Unions were started for a simple reason: people noticed that conservative employers overvalued what they did for their employees and undervalued what their employees did for them. We either return to a greater degree of fairness in the workplace or the United States becomes a third world country. If you care about your family and your children, stop supporting Republicans who take their paycheck from Republican billionaires.

If All the Earth's Population Could Fit into Texas...

2011-01-23T17:59:00.000-08:00

Sometime this year, according to National Geographic, the number of humans on our planet is expected to reach 7 billion. The prediction, of course, assumes it hasn't already happened. Now I'm perfectly aware that when one drives across Nevada or eastern Oregon or west Texas, it sure doesn't feel like a crowded planet. But I'm also aware that 7 billion people are a lot for a planet to absorb, particularly as more and more societies try for an American lifestyle, as China is so quickly learning to do. One obviously cannot object to such lifestyles if one has been personally benefiting from such economic ascendancy for a number of decades. But one can notice trends, and increasing difficulties that are dangerous to ignore.

In National Geographic, writer Robert Kunzig doesn't exactly ignore population issues but one could argue that he may be a little too much on the optimistic side. Given predictions since the time of Malthus, the odd are actually in Kunsig's favor. To ease the reader's mind, however, he offers an illustration that supposedly puts things into perspective (pg. 61-62; January 2011):

At the PAA [Population Association of America] meeting, in the Dallas Hyatt Regency, I learned that the current population of the planet could fit into the state of Texas, if Texas were settled as densely as New York City. The comparison made me start thinking.... If in 2045 there are 9 billion people living on the six habitable continents, the world population density will be a little more than half that of France today.

The part about France is a bit warm and fuzzy but it's complicated to explain why it's so wrong. So let's stick with the Texas side of it. Of course, Kunsig is in no way advocating some kind of sci-fi removal of the Earth's population to Texas. But to see what the image means or doesn't mean, let's take it seriously and have some fun with it.

In our sci-fi depiction of the world of humans, we'll skip the absurdity of how to talk 7 billion people into jamming themselves into a mega-mega city in Texas with the density of New York City. First, let's look quickly at New York. No farms and very few manufacturing plants can be found these days in New York City. Everything is virtually brought in. And every night tons and tons of material is taken out, including everything such as waste products from shredded Wall Street documents and wrappings for hot dogs sold by street vendors. No major power plant within city limits fuels the heat, air conditioning and electricity for the city. And by the way, I don't know how true it is of other cities but a number of books have been written about how New York would literally fall apart within days if the infrastructure were not constantly repaired, maintained and in some cases fueled. If the power goes on the blink in some suburbs around the U.S. for a week a two, it's very inconvenient but the suburbs wouldn't necessarily fall apart. Unfortunately, without backup generators and significant technological help, New York would.

And then there's Texas. The western third is mostly desert. The middle third has some rain but is mostly on the dry side. The eastern third is wet (see a rain map here). And no matter where you are in the summer, it gets hot. New York City already has a knack for being hot in the summer despite being somewhat in the north. Imagine what a citified Texas would be! Now the fact is, no matter where you put a Texas-sized home for the human population, no location is likely to be perfect. But keep some of these factors in mind as we imagine some serious problems:

1. Where is all the steel and cement going to come from for all those skyscrapers? China is currently in the middle of a big building boom but even the Chinese could never find the cement and steel to cover all of Texas. And you can't take that material from existing buildings. Not all that many people on Earth live in high rises.

2. Where is the water going to come from? Particularly in west Texas, there isn't that much water for the population that already lives there. In fact, no place on Earth has enough water closeby to slake the thirst of 7 billion people in a place the size of Texas. Alas, you need pipelines—lots of them. And that still might not be enough. Special shipping ports would have to be built on the coast of Texas just to accommodate the tanker ships filled with water.

3. Farmers are going to have one hell of a commute. Somebody has got to grow the food. I suppose in our sci-fi adventure we could invent some robots but—except in the movies—robots are not that cheap to make or run, and not that good. And oh, by the way, where do we get all the extra metal and parts for them? Once again, special ports will have to be built along the Texas coast to accommodate all the food shipments. I suppose some fresh truck farm produce can be grown in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Missouri, and maybe a dozen other states (and maybe part of Mexico) and put on trains to the mega-mega city, but one faces the same problem all over again: how are humans going to get to all the truck farms and back home in one night? And where are the refrigerator cars going to come from and how are you going to get them in that big city of Texas?

4. The same problem goes for fisherman, loggers, miners, oil riggers, etc., etc. Mind you, it's cheating the illustration if everybody lives near where they work. If coal miners need to go to Manchuria, they're going to need supersonic jets every night. And those jets are going to need super-airports because there's going to be a lot of commuters to fly and one hell of a rush hour in the skies. Oh, wait a minutes, the states surround the mega-mega city are being used for truck farms. Where would we put the airports?

5. And exactly where would all the manufacturing plants go? And who mans them? Well, we could once again conjure those magic all-purpose robots we find in so many sci-fi movies, but where are the metals, parts, computer chips and fuel going to come from for those things? And aren't robots cheating, anyway? And how would we get human workers to those plants without more supersonic jets? Or at least hi-speed rail? Maybe we need to build those manufacturing plants before we build the truck farms (not to mention all the other farms for not so fresh food).

6. Where would the energy come from for the mega-mega city and the manufacturing plants? If we use coal and natural gas, who's going to make sure the power plants get fed? And how are you going to feed the electricity from the Yangtze River energy project all the way to Texas? How do we hook up all those nuclear power plants from France? And that's an awful lot of power lines around the world zeroing in on our mega-mega city in Texas.

7. If we were to turn on 7 billion air conditioners on a hot Texas afternoon, what would that do to the grid?

8. I want to keep this polite but what would happen to all the dog poop in a city of 7 billion? And the cat and parakeet poop? And what would happen to all those flushed toilets and all that leftover food dumped into the garbage disposal? Sooner or later, it would end in the Gulf of Mexico. Would anyone along the Texas coast go into the water? Or any river more than twenty miles south of the Oklahoma or New Mexico border? Would we need sewage pipelines to California and the Great Lakes?

9. Just where would everybody go in a hurricane? Or a tornado? Or a flood? Actually, how would we keep the mega-mega city and all those asphalt streets from flooding during a spring time shower? Hey, where would we get all the asphalt for that city landscape, anyway?

10. And sometimes strange things just happen in a mega-mega city. Over the last number of years, Texas has been developing sinkholes. That brings us back to National Geographic and a story about a 600-wide sinkhole. How wide at the base is the Empire State Building again? Isn't Yankee Stadium about the size of that sinkhole? Not to be overly macabre or anything, but where exactly would the people of the mega-mega city be buried? And if 195 countries were crammed into the mega-mega city of Texas, how many countries would you have to cross before saying goodbye to your relatives? Actually, how would the living residents of 195 countries get along? Would you need a visa to take out the garbage?

The absurdities as one can see pile up. If any reader can think of other problems with 9 billion people in an area the size of Texas, feel free to add them in comments. To be honest, I don't know how much longer the Earth's population can continue to grow. But whatever carrying capacity the entire world might have for a human population with the kind of technology and affluence generally found in the west, that capacity was probably passed some time ago.

Many in the West believe technology can always find a way to keep the world population growing. Many of these same believers once talked about hover cars and fusion being just around the corner. But the task of dealing with an ever larger population is becoming more complex, and complexity carries with it a risk that is becoming more and more difficult to ignore.

Pessimistic experts have been wrong about population for decades. I hope they continue to be wrong. But the odds are not good. Actually, if the pessimists ever turn out to be right, we're going to need optimists, lots and lots of them in the times that follow.

President Obama Has a Good Night and So Does the Nation

2011-01-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

President Obama did an excellent job at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting. Watching 26,000 people at a memorial was a little strange at first but very moving by the end. The intern, Daniel Hernandez, simply amazes me (quick, somebody get his resume!).

And then there's Sarah Palin and her strange video. The Duchess of Wasilla, with her 20-foot scorpion tail and her $14 million yearly income, is claiming victimhood. Meanwhile, six people are dead, a number of others are wounded, and Rep. Giffords has suffered major injuries that will impact her for the rest of her life. Sarah has a strange definition of what a victim is.

On the far right, a great many people in the last two and a half years have engaged in rhetoric that goes far beyond arguing a point. There have also been deliberate attempts by conservative leaders to stir up the anger, fear and hate of their followers. It is no accident that violent, threatening imagery has been part of the package. It is clear that many on the right, not just Palin, do not understand the real concerns many Americans, including liberals, have about the kind of rhetoric that keeps surfacing. In a comment on his blog to a commenter named Paine, S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion makes those concerns quite clear:

We’re bleeding-heart liberals over here, Paine. We really do care about people who’ve been killed and injured. We really do want to see to it more aren’t hurt and killed. We’re not insisting the radical right go away or sit in the corner being quiet from now on. This isn’t an election year, and when the next one rolls around the most strident on the far right will have trotted out two years’ worth of fearmongering and distractions, so that this horrible incident will have faded to the background.

What we want, for everyone’s sake, is for those who allude to using guns, to using force; those who depict our government and leaders as devious, dishonest, without conscience or a shred of decency, to cut it out. Just stop it. If your position is strong, your ideas worthy, your candidates suitably attractive and persuasive, you can win elections without doing those things. Your side always gets plenty of money for that purpose, no matter what else is true. So, your side doesn’t need to keep dishing out the red meat, the angry, resentful tirades, the racism and the hate talk.

Give S.W. a read. He's been around awhile and knows what he's talking about. By all means, there should be vigorous debate, but violence and the rhetoric of violence has no place in a democracy.

The Shooting of U.S. Rep. Giffords

2011-01-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

If Rep. Giffords survives her injuries, and hopefully she will, it will be because of the brave actions of her staff. Democratic aides around the country have been concerned for over two years about the violent rhetoric that has been coming from the Republican right wing. There have been acts of violence and even Giffords' office was attacked early last year. And yet I notice three things:

1. Many members of the media are somewhat whitewashing the violent rhetoric and calling it just 'normal' politics.
2. A number of Republicans, though with significant exceptions, are also denying a relationship between the rhetoric coming from the right and the violence in Tucson.
3. A number of Tea Party people are saying they will continue using the same rhetoric.

Of course, a fourth thing is going on. The attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, is painted as mentally unstable, meaning somehow that he's not really responding to the violent rhetoric of the last two years. And yet, why should anyone be surprised when those who first respond to violent rhetoric are mentally unstable? Certainly millions of Americans are not surprised. Certainly the hundreds of Democratic aides around the country are not surprised. Certainly law enforcement officials are not surprised.

Look, there's a brutal truth about violent rhetoric in this country: the rhetoric of fear and anger, which is just a step short of violent rhetoric, has always worked well for Republicans. Fear and anger pushes many moderates and independents to the right, and it pushes conservatives even harder to the right. Hardball Republicans like Lee Atwater knew this. Today, Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich know this.

In the case of Gingrich, have people so easily forgotten the militias of the 1990s? And of course, there are fools like Sarah Palin who cranks up the rhetoric more than most. People like Gingrich appreciate the Palins of the Republican Party since they make him look so much more, well, statemanslike?

In days like these, we need more Edward R. Murrows who can state the plain truth and not worry so much about their careers.

One of our smartest journalists is E. J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post. Here's what he has to say:

In an interview last March, the Arizona Democrat anticipated almost everything being said now and explained why what happened on Saturday is a violation of our national self-image as "a beacon." Our pride, she said, is that "we effect change at the ballot box" and not through "outbursts of violence."

Read the whole article.

The GOP: Angry and without Solutions: Part I

2010-11-18T23:50:00.000-08:00

The Republicans have taken back control of the House. The Democrats still control the Senate but just barely. Of course the president is still Democrat Barack Obama. And the Supreme Court is still the most conservative court in decades. It's a tangled picture and it's not clear how well it serves the American people.

The Republicans and their conservative allies in the Democratic party have pretty much had their way since January 1981, but reading and listening to various conservative commentaries might lead many people to believe otherwise. When the new Congress sits, liberal, progressive or socialist Democrats, whatever one prefers to call them, will have only been in charge for 4 years out of the last 30: 1993-1995 and 2009-2011. These numbers are not difficult to check.

For 26 of the last 30 years, conservatives have been in charge, and don't have much to show for it. And yet Republicans keep returning to office. Why? Largely because they are very effective at tapping into anger Americans have been feeling since the 1970s. Sometimes that anger has been forgotten but whenever the Republicans get into trouble, they tap into that anger, they renew it, and they squeeze it.

In January, a very angry group of Republicans will be arriving in Washington and they have no solutions. It's not even clear whether or not they will be interested in bipartisanship. We will see. There are times when bipartisanship, however, is vital.

Since the 1940s, bipartisanship has been essential for America's foreign policy. Never mind that mistakes, sometimes serious ones, have been made by both parties. It has been apparent for some time that a number of issues cannot be handled in real world terms without cooperation when the government changes hands. A good example is in the news today. Here's the story from Mike Shuster of NPR:

The United States and the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan have completed moving some 100 tons of highly radioactive material from a Caspian Sea port in the country's west to a safe storage site in northeastern Kazakhstan.

The shipments included enough dangerous nuclear material for nearly 800 nuclear weapons.

Years in the planning, the project took a year to move the material by rail and road 1,500 miles across the country. The last of the shipments was delivered Monday.

One of the reasons the material was moved is that it was too exposed to potential terrorists, particularly by way of the Caspian Sea. The country of Kazakhstan is one of the products of the breakup of the former Soviet Union. To this day, not all the nuclear materials of that era have been rounded up and secured. Keep in mind that the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 when Bush 41 was president and concern was raised then about the fate of various nuclear materials, including what was in Kazakhstan. The actual project got under way during the Clinton years, continued under Bush 43 and has now been completed under Obama. It took 20 years and four presidents to get the job done. Sometimes bipartisanship is absolutely necessary.

Republican Senator Dick Lugar is one of the most respected foreign policy experts in Washington. Lugar has been concerned about nuclear proliferation for years and applauds what was done in Kazakhstan. He knows nuclear issues are sensitive and need to be handled carefully.
He has been a voice of reason when some Republicans have called for bombing Iran's nuclear projects without understanding the likely consequences. I don't always agree with Lugar. He's a conservative Republican and I'm a progressive Democrat. But I respect him.

This week, Obama is trying to set the ground for the passage of a new nuclear arms deal with Russia. Here's the story from Daniel Dombey in the Financial Times:

On a visit to the US Capitol to drum up votes among recalcitrant Republicans, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, warned on Wednesday that failure to ratify the new Start treaty this year would put the country at risk from the “continuing threat” posed by Russian nuclear weapons.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, later added he was “extremely concerned” no treaty was yet in place.

The deal is at the heart of President Barack Obama’s nuclear non-proliferation agenda and his initiative to improve relations with Russia. Its collapse could also sap confidence in the president’s ability to conclude international agreements.

Whatever one thinks about the Republican victory this November, the arms treaty is a big deal. Again, since the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been efforts to deal with nuclear proliferation and disarmanant issues since the first President Bush. For various reasons, probably because of prodding from Dick Cheney, the second Bush put some of these issues on the back burner. That move was considered by many foreign policy experts to be a mistake.

Now it is crunch time. Dick Lugar favors the START treaty and wants it passed:

Strong words today from ranking Repblican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dick Lugar, insisting that ratification of the New START treaty should be voted on during the lame-duck session, despite Sen. Jon Kyl's announcement yesterday of his opposition to a vote (not to the treaty). His exact words: "We're at a point where we're unlikely to have either the treaty or modernization unless we get real." Translation: 'amateur hour is over.'

We're about to find out if a majority of Republicans can focus on solutions or whether they truly are committed to two years of playing games. If Republicans do not focus on solutions, problem after problem that have been festering for 30 years are only going to get worse.

Republican Con Job May Succeed

2010-10-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush is responsible for bailing out the banks and Wall Street. He was also responsible for the economic meltdown because of a laissez faire ideology that got out of hand during the real estate bubble. Fraud was being committed and Bush looked the other way. This is a fact and it's quite obvious that everyday Republicans aren't much interested in the facts these days. Hence, the economic crisis of the last three years (actually five, if we go back to Hurricane Katrina) is somehow being blamed on Obama. The same business types who created the crisis and cheered the laissez faire policies of Bush are handing hundreds of million dollars to Republican candidates who claim Obama handed billions of dollars to Wall Street and somehow caused our economic troubles.

Let's put it another way: Republican hypocrites who are railing against Wall Street are in fact being financed by Wall Street. Cute game, and Republicans may get away with it for the simple reason that millions of Americans can't be bothered by facts these days.

Here's another reality check: Obama might have pulled us out of the recession a bit faster if he had behaved more like a Democrat and less like a Republican. The idea that Obama is a socialist is essentially laughable. The healthcare reform bill, as an example, fell far short of what a proper healthcare program should do. In the meantime, Republicans kid themselves that health insurance companies actually care about the American people. Many executives of the big insurance companies have the equivalent of monopolies in their states and are not shy about milking Americans for the same type of fat corporate paychecks that both rank and file Democrats and Republicans complain about in reference to Wall Street. It doesn't matter where the insurance companies are located. They are Wall Street, listed by the brokers on Wall Street and are in cahoots with the ethically challenged individuals who seem to dominate Wall Street.

And Republicans are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from, you guessed it, Wall Street.

More Voices Say Oil Production Not Sustainable

2010-09-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Over time, facts slowly but surely go mainstream. We're not quite there yet but a growing number of voices recognize that worldwide oil production is not sustainable in the short term, meaning any time between now and the next 15 years, depending on who's doing the talking.

Now it may happen that oil production could surpass the 2005 high mark or even the 2008 high mark in the next two to eight years. But no one knows if that will happen. But one thing is certain: the age of cheap oil is gone. It's history.

Oil prices will continue to vary. They may even collapse temporarily as they did in 2008, thanks to the worldwide economic meltdown. We're on a roller coaster ride that will last for decades and it's not certain how things will look on the other side of a new age, an age of shortages and shifting dynamics. Of course, the more the United States and other parts of the world have their head in the sand, the more difficult it will be.

A few years ago, the conventional wisdom was that there was still plenty of oil. In a trivial way, that's true, but what there is no longer a lot of is accessible oil. Nor is there enough easy to reach oil to produce in sufficient abundance to offset the declines of older oil fields. Here's an interview from Forbes Magazine using a word many people would like to ignore: peak oil:

Charles Maxwell: The use of petroleum in the world is now up to about 30 billion barrels per year. The rate at which we have found new supplies of petroleum over the last 10 years has fallen to an average, of only about 10 billion barrels per year.

Charles Maxwell is a mainstream energy analyst. He says what others have noticed simply by looking at the facts: for some years now, the world has been using far more oil each year than it is discovering. The current shortfall is about 20 billion barrels a year. If you think of oil as a bank account, it's clear that the account is being drained.

As Maxwell points out, greed and blunders by producers are creating even more problems:

What's happening is that the increase in the world's population and greater use of oil in transportation, particularly in the emerging countries, is working to lift oil demand, and that spurs us to drain a field more quickly, but not necessarily to get a higher proportion of oil out of it. So we have technology improving production capability, but actually taking the oil out faster rather than getting much more out.

What Maxwell is saying here is that we're making poor use of our technology in an effort to sustain business as usual. But we already know that such thinking is not sustainable.

In the past year, a majority of Democrats tried to pass an energy bill that would deal with climate change while also addressing America's growing need for alternative energy. But a minority of Democrats and almost all the Republicans opposed the legislation. In the meantime, according to CNNMoney, the alternative energy sector in China is creating jobs:

China has already surpassed the United States in the amount of wind turbines and solar panels that it makes. China is also gaining on the United States when it comes to how much of their energy comes from renewable energy sources.

The country that leads in the renewable energy industry, is opening the door to more home-grown jobs.

Whatever one may think of the Chinese, American conservatives are handing them the future. Keep in mind that oil will continue to be produced in the United States for many years to come. But we are continuing to buy more and more foreign oil. This is precisely where the lie of conservatives is so obvious: foreign oil does not create American jobs. But jobs in alternative energy in the U.S. would create tens of thousands of jobs. That is a simple fact. And we ignore that fact at our own peril.

Realities of the North Dakota Oil Boom

2010-09-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

An oil boom is underway in the western part of North Dakota near Williston. If one takes the long view, eastern Montana and adjacent parts of Canada are considered parts of the same boom involving the Bakken Shale oilfield. No doubt a combination of factors make western North Dakota easy pickings for the moment. For one thing, oil rigs are hitting few dry wells. That is, as long as they use the fracking system developed in recent years by Halliburton. The consequence is that a lot of oil, money and jobs are available in these fields. From all over the country, young unemployed Americans are heading to the area to see if they can land a job. In a bad economy, a lot of people see the boom as a good thing. For many people, it is.

But there's a lot of hype and excess associated with what's going on in North Dakota. Here's an article by Tamsin Carlisle in, of all places, The National, an Abu Dhabi newspaper:

It contains hundreds of billions of barrels of light crude oil and thousands of wells and should be scaring the pants off any oil exporter needing high crude prices to balance its budget.

It is the Bakken Shale oilfield, which sprawls across two Canadian prairie provinces and two western US states including North Dakota, under 500,000 square kilometres of land.

Its US portion is described as the country’s largest oil deposit outside Alaska. With its biggest and most accessible part in Canada, the Bakken could prove to be one of the largest oilfields in the world.

That's a lot of oil and a lot of hype. The title of the article by the way is "A New US oil rush could rock OPEC." The article is worth reading and it's important not to dismiss everything that is said about the Bakken field. But we have here a newspaper in an OPEC country where things are not always what they seem. OPEC countries, ideally, want two things: they want the oil age to last as long as possible and they want high prices as long as possible. The theory is that the more the world switches to alternative energy, the faster the price of oil will drop and the more difficult it will be to fund expensive oil projects. So, it's supposedly in the interest of OPEC to convince their biggest customers (including the U.S. but also countries like China) that the world is still awash in oil. Of course, it isn't. At the very least, the age of cheap oil is largely over.

The implication of much of the hype around Bakken is that it's a game changer that will help take care of America's oil needs for years to come. There are claims that the field holds up to 500 billion barrels of oil. However, even if the figure is accurate (probably not), the only figure that matters is the amount of recoverable oil. So what is recoverable? The USGS puts the amount at 4.3 billion barrels. That's enough to supply the oil needs of the United States for eight months. At the end of the day, that's not much of a game changer.

But let's say the Bakken oilfield is the same size as the greater Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska. As of 2005, Prudhoe Bay had produced some 11 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates put the remaining amount of oil to be produced after 2005 at around 2 billion barrels of oil. That's 13 billion barrels for a field said to contain 25 billion barrels (it's a fact of life that not all oil can be economically recovered).

Production at Prudhoe Bay started in 1977. So it took almost 30 years to reach 11 billion barrels. How can we put that into context? Well, let's look at a graph of U.S. oil production (courtesy of the U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - click on it to enlarge):

In 1970, U.S. oil production reached an all-time average high of 9,637,000 barrels per day. In the graph, you can see how U.S. oil production then dips down until 1977, the year Prudhoe Bay started producing. After that, U.S. production began to rise for several years, but production never caught up to 1970. By 1986, even with the help of the production at Prudhoe Bay, U.S. production started dropping again. Ironically, from 1986 to 1998, oil production at Prudhoe Bay continued to grow until it reached 2 million barrels per day. Think of this for a moment: 2 million barrels a day was not enough to reverse declining American oil production.

So what's the oil production in North Dakota? According to this website (and other sources), production in North Dakota has grown, as of June 2010, to 315,282 barrels a day. Production at the Bakken field is expected to grow for some time, but for now 315,282 barrels a day is less than 16% of Prudhoe Bay's maximum production in 1998 and that 2 million barrels a day could not stop declining U.S. production.

Today, the U.S. is producing not 9,637,000 barrels a day, as it did in 1970, but only 5,361,000 barrels a day. That's a considerable drop that has to be made up by imports. Total consumption of crude oil by Americans is somewhere around 15 million barrels a day (total consumption of all petroleum products is around 18-20 million barrels a day, depending on what exactly one is measuring: if this sounds confusing, blame the oil companies and their lobbyists who want as much confusion for consumers as possible so that the reality is not that clear).

Clearly we import far more petroleum than we produce. Clearly, oil production continues to decline. Even if North Dakota and Montana combined were miraculously able to ramp up and produce 4,500,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of twenty years (it takes time to build up production), we would not pass the maximum oil production of 1970. Why? Because in those twenty years, production in older oilfields would still be declining, just as older oilfields were declining during the buildup of Prudhoe Bay's maximum production years.

In the meantime, during those twenty years, the population of the U.S. would also be growing and we would be importing more oil than ever.

One can argue that the Bakken oilfield is, for the most part, if we ignore certain issues, helping the American economy. If the Bakken oil field does nothing more than help sustain the American economy for just a few years more, then the extra time must be used to help transition an economy to something that isn't heavily dependent on oil or other fossil fuels. People will still be drilling oil for some time to come. But oil is no longer the future and no longer enough to sustain our economy.

The oil barons, whether they live in the Middle East, Texas or elsewhere, don't care much about the future or much about the world. They care about grabbing the maximum for themselves. It's no way to run a civilization.

Republicans Organize Grassroots for the Wealthy and Flirt with the 19th Century

2010-08-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

The tea party mad hatters are threatening to take the United States back to the 19th century—but, the way things are going, these folks may be flirting with the 17th century when emperors, kings and various aristocrats forced average people into fighting for them so that the emperors, kings and various aristocrats could have a little more power and wealth for themselves and their heirs. In the Thirty Years War alone, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people died for the sake of a few hundred powerful people. It took ordinary people two or three generations just to get back to where their grandparents had been.

Timothy Egan has a post on the growing irrationality of a large number of Republicans (but is it irrationality or simply a stubborn refusal to do some homework?):

It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who are notorious for uttering facts more by accident than by design, are only partially responsible for the current state of affairs. Certainly people like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove manage to time their utterances to add kindling to the fire of right-wing anger. Never mind for a moment the damage news outlets not owned by billionaires like Murdoch are doing by not pointing out the outright lies. The fact is that the tea party people are being organized and some curious people are paying the bills. Here's a post from The Mahablog:

Kate Zernike writes for the New York Times that the “tea party” movement is largely being organized and funded by FreedomWorks, which isn’t really news.

FreedomWorks staffers are going around the country training the teabaggers how to be useful political tools and get out the vote for FreedomWorks candidates. It is this organizing that is behind the several upsets in recent Republican primaries, in which “tea party” candidates upset long-entrenched Republican incumbents.

(snip)

FreedomWorks itself evolved from another organization, Citizens for a Sound Economy, created in 1984 by the Koch Foundation with help from Big Tobacco. Joshua Holland of AlterNet has called FreedomWorks a “Wall Street front group,”, although I think it’s probably more accurate to call it “astroturf for hire.” FreedomWorks works with a number of PR firms to manipulate public opinion for a number of right-wing special interests.

According to SourceWatch, its funders in 2007 included –
Armstrong Foundation, $20,000
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, $80,000
Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, $100,000
Sarah Scaife Foundation, $200,000
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation, $20,000
In other words — grassroots, my ass. What’s behind the “tea parties” are the same mega-wealthy familiy trusts that bankroll everything else that’s right wing in America.

The New Yorker has an article on a particular pair of right-wing billionaires who are behind the tea party folks, the Koch brothers:

[The Koch brothers own] virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. ... Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill....

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups.

Many Republicans, when they aren't complaining about immigrant and Muslims, continue to believe that the biggest danger to America is big government rather than big business. The Koch brothers show how unproductive that belief can be. Keep in mind that if the United States takes global warming seriously and turns to alternative energy in a major way, the oil giants will still be pumping oil and the coal giants will still be mining coal for many years to come. Switching to alternative energy is going to take time. There is still a lot of money that big coal and big oil can make, and a lot of work for those in those industries (however, very rapidly, there will also be many workers needed in alternative energy and the infrastructure projects). Rationally, the billionaires and other big investors who own coal and oil ought to know all this. Business is supposed to be rational, right? But greed and power do funny things to people. It seems people like that can never have enough. It's clear that right-wing billionaires have an itch to throw their weight around.

In the meantime, people who deal with facts are getting uneasy. I live in Northern California and I learned something new about global warming this month. All over the world, we have been seeing record heat this year. Russia, still an important breadbasket for various nations, had record heat and drought that has drastically affected its agricultural output (I know, the Republican with his head in the sand is complaining that this has nothing to do with him).

But we have also been seeing other things. We have seen record floods in Pakistan and China. And yet, despite the record heat around the world, a very few places like the western counties of Northern California have experienced a very cool summer. Cool? Yes, and there's a reason for it. And it does not contradict the climate scientists. The interior counties to the east are experiencing long periods of record high temperatures and when the conditions are just right, the heat rising in the interior areas is allowing the marine layers to flow farther inland.

There is a reason the scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming. Most of the effects in the years to come will be rising temperatures but there will be any number of weird side effects around the world. We are seeing these things far earlier than we thought we would and it's only 2010.

Climate scientists are doing a lot of modeling trying to understand what is happening. The science is powerful but it is not exact. An example of powerful science was the development of the atomic bomb. In the beginning, no one knew exactly how much the first nuclear weapons would yield. Before the first explosion at White Sands, the scientists did their calculations and came up with a range. A few calculations suggested nothing might happen. One or two calculations suggested the Earth's atmosphere might catch on fire. The great bulk of the calculations were somewhere in between. But even the calculations near the actual power of the bomb had quite a range. It turns out the actual explosion was a little bigger than most thought it would be. We know nuclear weapons are real. Only a fool would say they're not.

Climate science is a less accurate science than physics but not by as much as one might think. Still, the calculations the climate scientists have made so far have not been entirely correct. So far, they have been underestimating the effect and speed of global warming. Some scientists are trying to get ahead of the curve and taking more seriously the possibility of worst case scenarios. For an article on the growing odds of worst case scenarios, check out this post at Early Warning on the probability distribution of various temperature scenarios.

In the Guardian, Bill McKibben has some thoughts on the record summer heat:

But this is no longer an environmental battle. As this summer demonstrates, if you're concerned about development, climate change is issue No 1 (how much development is going to go on in Pakistan, now that its bridges are all gone?). If you're concerned about war and peace, climate change is issue No 1 (when Russia stops sending grain to Egypt and Nigeria, and when wheat prices start to rise, what do you think comes next?). If you're concerned about the future, then climate change is issue No 1 – because this summer is a tiny taste of what the future is all about. So far we've barely raised the earth's temperature a degree, and that's caused all that we've seen so far. But climatologists assure us there's four or five degrees more by the century's end unless we work with incredible speed to end the fossil fuel era.

The Tea Party crowd is determined to turn the Republican Party into the American Taliban. If by Taliban we are talking about fundamentalism, xenophobia, self-righteousness, a turning away from rationalism toward authoritarianism and an inward turn toward the past, there can be no doubt the United States has a problem. The question this fall is whether enough Americans will join right-wing Republicans to form a majority or whether Americans will turn away from the kind of nonsense that has never done our nation any good.

After 75 Years, Social Security Still Threatened by Republicans

2010-08-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

The Democrats are celebrating the 75th anniversary of Social Security. At a time when Republicans are doing their best to kill pensions for workers, social security is more important than ever for widows, the elderly and the disabled. These are the hidden citizens of America, most of whom have worked hard all their lives. These are the people Republicans would like to forget. Democrats know better. Here's the story from The Boston Globe:

“Social security was something that my grandfather viewed as a key part of his legacy, just as universal health care is going to be a key part of President Obama’s legacy,” said [James] Roosevelt in a conference call Friday afternoon with reporters and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.

Roosevelt and Kaine pledged to protect Social Security as a public program, especially in light of cries for privatization this election season from Republicans like Sharron Angle of Nevada and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

As far as I can tell, the primary reason Republican politicians are pushing for the privatization of social security is that they want campaign contributions from conservative stock brokers who would obviously have a piece of the action. This, of course, is not about helping the American people. This is about raw politics, power and greed. Nothing more.

I have no idea what to make of people like Sharon Angle. Here's an AP article where she's peddling Republican talking points:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and that it was done before in the South American country of Chile.

What does Sharon Angle know about Social Security? Does she know the history of workers in our country? How do people like Sharon Angle get nominated? She has repeatedly said things in the past few months that reveal a lack of knowledge across a wide area of subjects. So obviously, after a series of blunders, she's now being stage-managed by her Republican advisers at this point. Who's advising her? At two or three removes, I suspect sociopaths like Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich are peddling this stuff. If the word, 'sociopath,' seems strong, note that Gingrich's ex-wife quotes Gingrich's staff as saying "he's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath" (It's not the only time the word has been tied to Gingrich). Is that what people want? Republican puppets who spew all the talking points without having the foggiest idea what they're talking about?

I hate to be harsh but I recently had to read a paper by a young person who got bamboozled by a lot of nonsense being posted on the Internet. This person has no stake in the social security 'debate' and simply used the Internet for research. If one simply Googles the words, 'is social security bankrupt,' the problem quickly becomes apparent. The sky is falling crowd of Republicans has dozens of papers attempting to scare people into believing that social security will go bankrupt in 2010, 2012 or 2016. Again, I would prefer to take a more thoughtful approach, but when you read the stuff, it's just fraud, lies and nonsense.

One could argue that the Great Recession that was brought to us by George W. Bush might have been deep enough to damage Social Security. But in fact Social Security has weathered the crisis fairly well. Here's a story from the Los Angeles Times about the recently released annual report of the Social Security Trustees:

In recent years, during which conservatives have intensified their efforts to destroy one of the few U.S. government programs that actually works as intended, the report's publication has become an occasion for hand-wringing and crocodile tears over the (supposedly) parlous state of the system's finances.

This year's report, which came out Thursday, is no exception. Within minutes of its release, some analysts were claiming that it projected a "shortfall" for Social Security this year of $41 billion.

(snip)

Before we get to the bogus math behind that statement — which doesn't actually appear in the report — let's look at the encouraging findings by the agency's trustees, who include the secretaries of Labor, the Treasury, and Health and Human Services.

The trustees indicated that the program has made it through the worst economic downturn in its life span essentially unscathed. In fact, by at least one measure it's fiscally stronger than a year ago: Its projected actuarial deficit over the next 75 years (a measurement required by law) is smaller now than a year ago.

When one sees crocodile tears from Republicans, be sure to look closely for the dollar signs in their eyes. They keep thinking of the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars that might flow in from those stock brokers wanting to cash in on the privatization of social security.

Now these guys won't set up those private accounts for free (why do you think they're salivating?). But they were certainly ready to charge their fees back in 2005—except that Bush wasn't able to pass social security privatization. Too bad. Think of all that money investors might have made between late 2007 and early 2009 during the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Those are funny folks who run the Republican Party these days.

Republicans Are Trying to Kill Me

2010-08-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the snarky title to this post. Unfortunately, it's true. I don't mean that the average everyday Republican is trying to kill me. On the other hand, many very conservative Republicans who go to the polls every election aren't paying too much attention to facts these days. Nor do these same voters recognize how few good ideas their leaders have had for many years now.

Let's begin with a fact that came close to killing me: health care is broken and has been for twenty years. Republicans leaders in Congress could care less about this simple fact. For one thing, they have too many wealthy campaign contributors who work for the insurance companies and those contributors don't want their cash cow disturbed.

So what does this have to do with me? Simple. I work as a free lance writer and editor. It's never been easy to get health insurance even in the best of times. Sometimes I have lucked out simply because sometimes I have gotten health insurance through my wife's employer. She's in a profession where it's common to change employers from time to time. For technical reasons I can no longer get health insurance from her latest employer. So I tried to apply for health insurance through a company that had a deal with the AARP. I thought it was a straightforward application. Little did I know. A few weeks after I got the application, I got a letter from the insurance company that said I had to call such and such a person. The person was a nurse working for the insurance company. She asked some detailed questions about my health history. Two weeks later I received a letter denying me health insurance because of a preexisting condition that has now existed for over 30 years. That condition has probably cost me less than $3,000 over the 30 year span and most of the money was spent on periodic blood tests. I kept thinking back on the nurse and how little regard she seemed to have for her profession. She was working for bean counters instead of people who believe in providing a good service for their clients.

Nearly two years later—last month—my wife and I decided to move to a little larger rental. We decided to hire movers this time but there was still a lot of work to do. Being a writer, for example, it's natural that I have a lot of books. Boxes of books can get in the way during a move, so I rented a small storage space to store the books until after the move. Our last place has stairs and I found myself getting a bit winded after taking down a load to my car and going back up the stairs. Sometimes my left shoulder started getting sore. If I simply stopped, the shoulder pain went away. I tried to be more careful and started taking my time. I thought maybe I was beginning to show my age, but otherwise I was fine. Or so I thought. I was wrong.

At one in the morning, I finished an editing job and got ready for bed. I'm a night owl but normally I finish my jobs around midnight. But it had been a long day and I had been a bit sluggish. I got ready for bed and a bunch of acid suddenly erupted up my esophagus. I get acid reflux sometimes, though an over-the-counter medication I take usually does a good job of controlling the problem. My shoulder also started hurting a lot, particularly around the chest.

I couldn't sleep, so I went in the living room to sit in a chair, thinking that might help. It began to occur to me that maybe I had a bigger problem, that maybe more than acid reflux and a sore shoulder was going on. I didn't want to think about it. It was early Saturday morning and no place I could think of was going to be cheap. And besides, that pain I felt when I went up the stairs always went away. And I thought a glass of water and some Tums and a little patience is all I needed and I would be fine.

But after a couple of hours the chair grew uncomfortable. I went back to bed, lay there awhile, and broke out in a sweat. I threw off the blankets, sat up and finally my wife asked if something was wrong. I explained about the pain. She trusted my explanation since I usually know my body pretty well. But I wasn't being honest with myself. For one thing, I hate false alarms. For another, I couldn't even think where to go. I couldn't afford to go anywhere. I simply couldn't afford to have a problem. So I waited.

If Republicans had not stalled and played games on health care, if a few Democrats—behaving like Republicans— had not waffled for so long, I might have had insurance by now. I would be paying several thousands dollar a year for it, just like everybody else. Health care should have been passed a year ago. Insurance for preexisting conditions might have become available by this past January. Republicans literally might not have been trying to kill me on the night I had a heart attack and waited and waited because I had no insurance.

My wife finally drove me to the emergency room. Luckily, it was less than a mile away. Luckily, they have a first-rate heart clinic. Luckily, they got to me in time, pumped me with heparin and wheeled me into the heart clinic where I received a stent. I stayed in the hospital for three days. I was lucky, my new doctor thinks I'll heal, though it's not exactly going to happen in a hurry. But the bill? I don't want to even talk about the bill. It's big. I try to watch my money. I try to save. But I've never seen a bill like that. Actually, there are several bills and they haven't stopped coming.

I don't want to hear from Republicans that I'm fussing about nothing, that I just have to know how to manipulate the system. That's bullcrap. It's a full admission that health care in our nation is broken. Will the new health care program work? Maybe. It needs to be stronger than it is but Republicans and the few Democrats who behave like Republicans watered it down too much. They lied to the public too much. They are still lying to the public too much. These days Republican leaders are paid to lie. The theme of Republicans this year is that our country is failing. It's an insulting proposition, particularly given the games that have been played in the last thirty years. Think of it: they want President Obama to fail. They want our president to fail. That is tantamount to wanting our nation to fail.

I have Republican friends who are horrified by what happened to me. I have one friend who worried that an argument we had back in June might have contributed to my heart attack. I had to assure him that it didn't. But I don't know what to think. You can't keep sending jobs overseas, you can't keep buying oil from foreign companies, you can't keep letting American economic sectors run amok (think oil and coal), you can't ignore the paramount importance of developing renewable energy sources, you can't play one group off another, you can't shovel buckets of money into the hands of people who are already wealthy and expect a majority of Americans to do well. It isn't going to happen. But that's where we're headed if Republicans get back into power. They have no ideas except old ideas that have not worked.

A few days ago, I put my name on an email list to receive an application for insurance for those people with preexisting conditions. I guess I have two preexisting conditions now. Needless to say, I need the insurance. And today's Republican leaders have done nothing to assure me that they're not trying to kill me the next time I have a serious health issue.

I'll say it one last time: I know I was lucky. But I keep thinking of the ones who waited too long, the mothers and fathers, the hardworking people who had no insurance. This is not the way our country should be. We need to start moving forward again, not backwards.

The Gulf Oil Spill: A Social Fiasco

2010-06-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Some of the best analysis I've seen on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has taken place on The Oil Drum. One of the main bloggers is Gail the Actuary and she recently wrote a post on a subsidiary of the site called The Oil Drum: Campfire. Here's the opening section with four questions:

It seems to me with the BP Horizon Blowout, we may be hitting a turning point in belief systems, in more than one way:

• Can businesses really be expected to regulate themselves, with minimal oversight?

• Can technology solve all our problems?

• If there are technological solutions, can they be expected immediately?

• Can we really depend on the oil supply that everyone has told us is here?

Let's take a quick look at these questions in light of recent events, including the growing size of the spill. The spill is so large that everyone is having trouble figuring out the exact size. But it is clearly far larger than the first estimates made to the public. It appears the larger estimates are not that far off from what BP said in its own internal estimates within the first few days of the accident. BP also had a range of the possible size and the high end of that range was around 2.5 million gallons a day. Surprise. All we can say for sure is that this is the largest oil spill in our nation's history and is now one of the largest in recorded history—and it is still growing. Tens of millions of gallons have poured into the gulf because BP decided to take shortcuts and had no backup plan if things went wrong.

Now Gail the Actuary asks: 1. Can businesses really be expected to regulate themselves, with minimal oversight?

I'm not being cynical when I write that this is the wrong question. The right question in the year 2010 is simply this: can large corporations be trusted, period?

When 10,000 people in Bhopal, India died back in the 1980s because of a chemical accident/blunder at a Union Carbide plant in India, the chairman of Union Carbide accepted full responsibility—for about a week. It took the chairman that long to learn what it meant to accept responsibility and to receive dozens of calls from angry major stockholders who were themselves unwilling to accept responsibility for what had happened. The chairman went into public relations mode mixed with a large dose of stonewalling.

In some respects, Congress should also include major stockholders in their hearings. Of course, some major stockholders include pension funds, retirees and foundations. Responsibility has a way of being deferred rather effectively down the road with the help of an army of lawyers and public relations flacks.

Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, has perhaps taken the procedure a step further as we see in this Houston Chronicle article:

In response to question after question, Hayward calmly insisted that he did not know what motivated key decisions about the blown-out well's design, frustrating House members who complained that his answers were evasive and overly legalistic - as if drafted by lawyers mindful of the flood of negligence lawsuits facing the company.

Tensions spilled over less than 20 minutes into the hearing.

"You're not taking responsibility," said Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "You're kicking the can down the road and acting as if you had nothing to do with these decisions."

"I'm not stonewalling," Hayward responded, over the clicking of cameras documenting his inaugural Capitol Hill testimony. "I simply was not involved in the decision-making process."

I can guarantee that every executive in America is taking notes. It doesn't matter one bit that BP is a British corporation. Most corporations around the world are in the same racket: maximizing profits, socializing losses and denying responsibility.

Without getting into a long history, the answer to the question is this: no, corporations cannot be trusted unless they are regulated, held to a high standard and clearly see that cheaters and lawbreakers are punished no matter how many lawyers they have.

2. Can technology solve all our problems? This is a sad question, particularly given the optimism around 1960 or so. In real time, given the real conditions of the world, the answer is a pathetic and resounding no. Most technology problems are usually social problems. This means that if a technological solution exists, it is only temporary because the social problems begin to intrude again. The green revolution, for example, increased world food supplies but it also led to a large increase in the number of humans in the world and meant diminished resources per person in the world.

The more pertinent question, perhaps, is this: can science solve all our problems? Maybe, but only in conjunction with a profound understanding of human nature that we are far short of achieving to this date. In fact, what we have achieved so far leaves far too much out of the "equation," though if we survive this century, we may develop tools that begin to give us some of the insights that we need. But the vision of science will have to grow much larger than it is now. What we need is a bit more wisdom and science does not have an abundance of that.

But back to the question. We are running out of cheap oil and it is beginning to have a major impact on the world. There are solutions, and maybe eventually there will be cheap solutions, but there are no cheap, quick technological solutions and it would be a disaster to continue with business as usual. We are either heading for major change that will allow a large majority of humans to survive, or we are heading for a disaster too large to imagine if we continue on our present course, as if we have no choice or better visions. Alternatives exist, but we are running out of time if we think leaving things to companies like Exxon, Enron, Halliburton and BP is somehow a viable option.

3. If there are technological solutions, can they be expected immediately?

Not give today's business standards and the Republican laissez faire deregulatory philosophy that has existed since Reagan took office. We are destroying our resilience and reserves for the sake of a few extra bucks. If there is an emergency, we have no backups. This is a national security issue where right wing Republicans have dramatically failed. Right wing Republicans are the kind of people who cut a fire fighting budget by $50,000 and then are nowhere to be found when there is a $500 million fire. We allow too much of our critical military equipment, our infrastructure, our technology and our business tools to be made outside the United States. We allow insurance companies to sell policies without the cash to pay off those policies. We allow banks to operate who do not have the resources to handle bizarre financial instruments when those instruments collapse. We do not have the equivalent of a fire house and equipment when a truly major oil spill occurs. We have taken our comfortable way of life so utterly for granted that we do not realize the danger we have put ourselves in.

4. Can we really depend on the oil supply that everyone has told us is available?

The answer is no. It's been no since the 1970s. It has always been no. It will remain no. It will become increasingly obvious that the answer is no. When we start burning a lot more coal in the cities, we will be reminded why we turned to oil and natural gas in the first place. Question four is stupid. It requires a large number of ignorant people to even exist. And they do exist. Oil companies are heavily dependent on the ignorance of a majority of Americans. If a large enough majority of Americans truly understood what we're facing, there would be change. There should have been change 30 years ago.

Oil Spill: It's Bigger Than the Exxon Valdez

2010-05-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

It's not official but there can be no doubt at this point that the oil spill from Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exceeds what happened in 1989 with the Exxon Valdez. And the oil is still leaking.

No one knows exactly how much oil is flowing into the ocean but it far exceeds the 210,000 gallons a day that has been estimated so far. Here's the first story by way of the Los Angeles Times:

BP's success at drawing oil from a leaking pipe has proved that official estimates of the size of the Gulf of Mexico spill have been too low.

The company effectively admitted as much Thursday when it said that a tube inserted into the broken pipe connected to its blown-out well is collecting as much as 5,000 barrels of oil and 15 million cubic feet of gas a day, even as a live video feed shows large volumes continuing to billow into gulf waters.

The government has underestimated the size of the spill. Then again, BP has done almost nothing to help gauge the size of the disaster it caused. I have personally seen NOAA do a terrific job of handling a small oil spill but that was back in the 1990s, before President George W. Bush watered down some of NOAA's effectiveness (I once sat through a boring speech by a Bush appointee who prattled on about Ronald Reagan who was not exactly a friend of NOAA). Like many agencies, NOAA suffers the same problems as many corporations: people who are competent are overseen by people with an agenda. Maybe this disaster will make it clear to President Obama that real reform cannot occur while bending over backwards to please Republicans who are not interested in reform—or reality.

Here's another story, this one from the Houston Chronicle, which has done a reasonably good job of reporting:

BP said on Thursday it is capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day from a leaking pipe in the Gulf of Mexico — a double-edged progress report that showed that the company and government have been understating the scope of the spill for more than a month.

(snip)

BP would not estimate how much oil is still evading a collection tube inserted into the larger of two breaks on the riser pipe that once connected the Macondo well to the Deepwater Horizon rig a mile above.

BP has said the larger break is believed to be gushing 85 percent of the oil escaping from the ruptured well 40 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The oil spill in the gulf has not happened in a vacuum. Less than two years ago, Republicans like Sarah Palin were shouting: "Drill, baby, drill."

In recent years, there have been three kinds of Republicans: opportunists, pragmatists and know-nothing right-wingers like Sarah Palin. Republican pragmatists used to arrive in Washington in larger numbers but they are having a hard time staying in office because they are under assault by the know-nothings and the opportunists.

The Republicans, of course, have no monopoly on opportunists since Democrats have them too. However, in Congress, Democratic pragmatists far outnumber Republican pragmatists, who seem a bit shy about asserting themselves these days. For once, a little progress in Washington is being made, but not fast enough.

The big problem in Washington and the country is the coalition of Republican opportunists and know-nothings who try every trick in the book—don't hold your breath—to make sure Congress and anyone else in government does as little as possible. Why would they do that? Because they receive a lot of money from companies like BP as well as other oil companies, coal companies, chemical companies and anyone else looking for a favor or an administration willing to look the other way. This, of course, has to change or we will have even more oil spills like the one at Deepwater Horizon. Why? Because oil has become expensive and there are certain people in the world who, despite the risks, cut corners. The bigger the risks and the bigger the profits, the more chance there is that someone will cut corners on a project like Deepwater Horizon. Keep in mind that deep sea oil drilling is high technology. It is expensive and there is little margin for error.

I don't know precisely what kind of Republican Bobby Jindal is. Maybe he's the opportunistic kind. Maybe not. Maybe he's just doing his job. Here's a New York Times article on the oil now coming ashore:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said Wednesday that sheets of heavy crude oil from the offshore spill had seeped deep into the delicate marshes around the mouth of the Mississippi River. He called on the federal government to approve a plan to build sand berms to protect the bayou country.

“These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil,” Mr. Jindal told reporters on a pier here, holding up a plastic bag full of sticky brownish liquid, after taking a helicopter and boat tour of the area. “What we are seeing yesterday and today is literally this heavy oil coming into our wetlands.”

Finally, here's a link to pictures of the oil spill and reactions in other places courtesy of The Huffington Post. I have no doubt we will be seeing many more pictures.

If the reader notices that some of these sites seem progressive or at least not conservative, they're right. A number of conservative news outlets are still in denial about what is happening or engage in silly theories as the oil rolls ashore and spreads deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Mexico. Such conservative news outlets are useless as a source of reliable information.

I want to say it one more time: this is not a 'tiny' spill as BP CEO Tony Hayward suggested a few days ago. No one knows how much the oil spill will cost us. But we now know that the oil spill is much larger that we thought just a couple of days ago. For now, it is still growing.

Size of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

2010-05-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is a quick look based on combining two NOAA graphics (click on the map to get a larger view):

If this looks like a patch job, it is. It's a combination of this NOAA file near Louisiana and this NOAA file covering a larger area of the Gulf. The total picture is a forecast for Thursday, May 20, 2010.

The blue represents the mapped areas of the oil spill and the larger area enclosed by the dark line represents possible areas currently affected by the oil spill but it's not known for certain where else the oil may be, either on the surface in thin patches or below in thicker plumes.

Regardless of what BP says, this is a large spill and although there are signs that the spill is no longer growing at the pace it has been, it is in fact still growing for now.

Here's an updated map that was not available earlier.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Continues

2010-05-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

No one knows for sure how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. But pictures of the size of the spill show the impacted area growing every day. If 210,000 gallons a day are leaking from the well at Deepwater Horizon as BP says, we already have a spill of over 5,000,000 gallons. Keep in mind that a number of scientists believe the spill may be much larger.

No one knows when the leaking oil will be capped. But the oil executives—who seem to get to the top based on their public relations skills—are getting egg on their faces as they point fingers at one another and trip over their feet as more and more mistakes, blunders and misguided shortcuts are revealed. And then there's Tony Hayward, CEO of BP who told us the other day than fighting the oil spill is a bit like landing at Normandy. But now, according to The Guardian, he's telling a little different story:

Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is "relatively tiny" compared with the "very big ocean".

In an bullish interview with the Guardian at BP's crisis centre in Houston, Hayward insisted that the leaked oil and the estimated 400,000 gallons of dispersant that BP has pumped into the sea to try to tackle the slick should be put in context.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said.

Hayward is apparently an idiot who receives a very large paycheck every year. One has to be amazed at these things. Here's a graphic from NOAA that shows the size of the oil spill (bigger maps are available on NOAA's webpage):

That's a spill that potentially stretches along half the Louisiana coast, all of Mississippi's coast and as far east as Mobile, Alabama. The blue areas, the core of the spill, just continue to grow every hour.

Now Tony Hayward says that the gulf is very big and the spill is rather tiny. Let's take a look at the Gulf of Mexico:

The first thing I notice is that the water of the Gulf of Mexico is surrounded by land—lots of it. Along the shore are beaches, marshes, shipping, breeding grounds, hatcheries, fishing marinas, industry and lots and lots of wildlife and habitat. Hayward is a fool and doesn't know what he's talking about.

Unfortunately, the longer the oil spill goes on, the more potential there is for enormous damage. As a news story from Reuters reminds us, hurricane season is approaching:

Meteorologists say that climate conditions are ripe for an unusually destructive hurricane season, the storm-prone period that runs from June 1 to the end of November in the Gulf. Oceanographers say that could hurt the clean-up.

"If a storm comes into this situation it could vastly complicate everything," said Florida State University oceanography professor Ian MacDonald.

"All efforts on the shoreline and at sea, the booms and structures and rigs involved in clean-up and containment, could stop working."

One doesn't have to be a scientist to see the potential problems. If nothing else, a hurricane can shove oil ashore. But no doubt the public relations departments of the oil companies—as well as their Washington lobbyists—will continue to be 'bullish' about the clean-up and the future of offshore drilling.

In reality, though, it doesn't take much homework to discover that the big oil companies know truths that many Americans would rather not know. The simplest truth is that oil is no longer cheap. The second truth is that beyond the next ten to twenty years, the oil companies have no business plan to maintain worldwide oil production and they have no solution to the diminishing reserves of oil throughout the world. The third truth is that it will take ten to twenty years to develop a robust infrastructure for renewable green energy. The fourth truth is that the American taxpayer is paying to subsidize the obscene profits of the oil companies when those tax dollars should be spent protecting our future with a huge investment in green technology.

Admittedly, some oil companies are slowly getting into alternative energy. But I would not be comfortable letting the Tony Haywards of the world be involved in the new economy we need to build. In fact, that would be a mistake. In the last three years, Wall Street, the big banks and big oil have shown us how not to do business. We need change. Maybe Obama is finally understanding that change is not a political slogan but a necessity.

Republicans: Drill, Baby, Drill

2010-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

The title for this post might seem a bit unfair. But no one is more associated with "Drill, baby, drill," than Sarah Palin. The Countess of Wasilla, alas, is just as dim as ever. She seems to be upset with the 'foreigners' who created the mess. Here's the Daily Telegraph story in The Vancouver Sun:

Sarah Palin has added to growing anti-British sentiment over the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster by saying "foreign" oil companies such as BP were not to be trusted.

The former Alaska governor and potential presidential candidate attacked the British oil company over the recent Deepwater Horizon spill and a previous one in her state in 2006.

She made the comments despite the fact that her husband Todd worked for BP for 18 years as a production supervisor. He left the company last year.

The hypocrite from Wasilla fails to note that many Americans as well as a number of American companies have been involved in the project, including Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton. The idea that American companies are somehow exempt from oil spills is a fantasy. During Hurricane Katrina, it's estimated that at least a million gallons of oil were spilled along the Louisiana coast and out among the oil rigs.

Now BP is certainly not exempt from blame. For some years they have benefited from a green image that was not exactly justified. For example, they did a poor job of maintaining pipelines in Alaska (hey, maybe Todd can tell us about that!). I know enough about the oil business (I've been fortunate to know a handful of people who know a great deal more) to have an idea of the kind of people involved. Like many other fields, there are people who know what they're doing (usually the oil workers, specialists, geologists and most engineers), people who push the envelope in pursuit of the bottom line (usually alpha types or narcissists who bend the rules and don't care much what happens if things go wrong, largely because they have the last group on their side) and finally the bullshitters who are skilled at talking their way out of difficulties (usually amoral lawyers and public relations flacks).

Now I don't know much about Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, but here apparently is a taste of how he talks, at least according to Clifford Krauss of The New York Times:

"It’s only one of the battle fronts,” said the chief executive, Tony Hayward, as his leased Sikorsky helicopter hovered 1,000 feet above the spot where the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded...

(snip)

Mr. Hayward said he was convinced that his oil company would eventually get the growing spill under control using a variety of tools, from a flotilla of skimmers to the spraying of chemical dispersants and the drilling of relief wells to plug the leaks on the sea floor. “This is like the Normandy landing,” he said. “We know we are going to win. We just don’t know how quickly.”

Normandy? It's not difficult to figure out which type Mr. Hayward represents, is it?

As of Friday night, May 7, no one really knows how big the oil spill is. The main attempt to seal one of the leaks is going on as I write, but no one knows if this attempt will work or how long it will work or how much oil it will stop from leaking if it does work. What is going on at Deepwater Horizon is deep water technology and that technology is just as much art as it is science. My hunch is something like this has simply been waiting to happen for some time. No doubt mistakes were made but every project like this seems to have a series of mistakes that are made, just not enough to create a major oil spill.

The BBC has a graph showing the different sizes of various oil spills over the last 43 years. It claims the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is small compared to other oil spills—well, so far. The number they give is 7,000-10,000 tonnes of oil. That's equivalent to somewhere between 2 million to 2.86 million gallons of oil. The spill from the Exxon Valdez was over 10,000,000 gallons and that spill is still regarded as one of the smaller oil spills. But much depends on what an oil spill does. The Exxon Valdez damaged one of the richest biological areas in the world and the damage is still visible to this day.

The Vancouver Sun carries a Reuters story that suggests that BP's spill is much larger:

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill may already be bigger than the massive Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and could have dumped as much as 13 million gallons (49 million litres) of crude into waters off the U.S. coastline, a Florida oceanographer said on Friday.

Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, said official estimates that 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) have poured into the Gulf each day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded two weeks ago were much too conservative.

The real flow rate from the undersea well, based on aerial images of the oil slick and estimates of the thickness of the oil itself, is probably closer to 25,000 barrels (1,050,000 gallons) per day, MacDonald said in an interview.

I'm sure other figures are probably around. If we only take the figures from the BBC and Reuters, the spill is somewhere between 2 million to 13 million gallons. No matter how you cut it, that's a lot of oil. The truth is that 2 million gallons of oil can do considerable damage and the effects should not be minimized, particularly since the oil is still leaking. But if it's 13 million gallons, the damage along the Gulf coast is going to bite for at least a couple of decades.

Now it's been several days since the leak started. What bothers me is that there's good methods and protocols for measuring the size of an oil spill (and it worries me that the oceanographer above is probably aware of those methods). We need hard numbers and I'm curious why it's been so hard to get those numbers. Warnings from BP that the numbers might be larger are not reassuring.

Now what about future offshore drilling? Let's first state the obvious before I proceed: oil is getting costly and will continue to get more costly. There are alternatives, solar and wind being the most obvious choices in addition to major improvements in the efficiency of the technology we already use. But even if the United States took on a Manhattan-sized project to produce 80% of our energy through green technology, it will probably take 15-20 years to accomplish. And it probably cannot be done without burning oil to fuel the transition. We have a problem.

If we drill for oil the way Republicans want to drill, without bothering with green technology, and without bothering to regulate the oil companies more tightly, our economy will go into the ditch rather quickly because we simply cannot overcome the fact that U.S. oil production will continue to fall. We use too much of the stuff. The world uses too much of the stuff. And this says nothing about the effects on the world climate. And nothing about using dirtier and dirtier fossil fuels.

We will have to continue to drill. But hopefully with tight regulation of the oil companies and slowly enough so that we can measure what drilling is doing not just to our environment but to us as well. And also slowly enough to allow green technology to thrive.

Whether we like it or not, oil is subsidized. It costs considerably more than what we pay at the pump. Republicans and oil states in general are all too happy to have the government pick up the tab. The government has been bailing out the oil companies for decades and that's a fact. Here's another fact: alternative energy is now very competitive with oil, but this requires understanding that oil has become far more expensive than anyone on Wall Street, in Washington or in Houston is willing to admit. The age of oil is slowly coming to an end and we need something to replace it. And because we have dawdled for more than thirty years, we have no choice but to continue to burn oil to pay for the transition to green technology.

Greenspan Rewriting His Legacy—With Help Perhaps?

2010-03-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

For more than two years, Republicans, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, have been working overtime to buff up their legacy, usually with imagination and some departure from the facts. The latest p.r. effort is by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Instead of offering a four or five page apology for his blunders, short-sightedness and his adherence to market voodoo, Greenspan offers a 66 page tome of excuses, might-have-beens and who-could-have-imagineds.

In the fall of 2008, Alan Greenspan was honest for a few minutes in a hearing before Congress. Let's remind ourselves what Greenspan said:

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” ...

At the time, Greenspan was clearly on the right track. He was beginning to recognize the colossal failure of a 28 year experiment in deregulation. But he waffled a little even then by saying he did not fully understand what happened. Hence, Greenspan now treats us to 66 pages of what is largely Republican nonsense. So much for the dismal science, at least according to the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman crowd.

Fortunately, there are economists who not awed by Greenspan. Here's what James K. Galbraith writes in The Huffington Post (and just why aren't more of his views in places like The New York Times or The Washington Post? He certainly has more credibility that the conservative think tanks sponsored by Rupert Murdoch.):

In 66 pages [pdf], Mr. Greenspan fails to use the word "responsibility" even once. The word "blame" does not appear. The word "mistake" occurs once; financial firms made them. The word "failure" appears 14 times. None of them are self-referential. To have expected the phrase "mea culpa" would of course be asking too much.

(snip)

The most telling omission in this paper is that the word "fraud" does not appear. But the world knows that the collapse of the financial system had, at its core, the largest financial fraud of all time. That fraud was in the origination, the rating, the underwriting and the issuance of credit default swaps against sub-prime mortgages issued largely by private originators and securitized by the largest banks.

The FBI knew this in 2004, when it warned in public of an "epidemic of mortgage fraud."

So, do we have financial reform yet? For all their jawboning and waving their arms and jumping up and down, we can expect no reform from Republicans any time soon. They might have seized the initiative during the Bush years since they had the votes but they chose, like the president, to sit on their hands and let the good times roll, as corrupt as they were with little oversight. At the end of the day, all Republican politicians are really interested in is lowering taxes for their rich clients, including the same people who created the crisis.

We might expect reform from the Democrats but that's not always a sure thing. It's not easy bucking the conservative economic bromides and myths of the last thirty years, particularly when Democrats aren't exactly as liberal as they once were—say back in the 1960s. Even many older Democrats have a hard time understanding that it makes no sense to tinker with failure by making minor changes in an economy that is still far more deregulated than it has any business being. Even under Republican presidents, it is possible to get businesses to follow the law, but only if the law exists in the first place and only if there is a degree of oversight reasonably free of political interference (and it would help to have a Supreme Court that doesn't so quickly genuflect to big corporations).

Paul Krugman is worried. It seems Barack Obama is not the only one who tries too hard to be bipartisan. Krugman writes on his blog:

So what does this have to do with financial reform? The pre-1980 system was, I’d argue, pretty robust. Bank regulators didn’t have to be all that smart, because the rules were simple — and besides, the large franchise value of banks, the fact that they faced limited competition and were almost guaranteed to be profitable, made bank executives unwilling to take big risks of killing the goose that laid golden eggs.

By contrast, the regulatory proposals now on the table ... rely on regulators identifying systemic risk and the actions to combat it. The Frank (House) bill is more [robust] than the Dodd (Senate) bill, in that it sets some firm, nondiscretionary limits on leverage and other stuff; there’s an awful lot of leaving things up to the judgment of the Fed and others in the Dodd proposal.

Others? Those others included any number of people appointed by Bush to make sure as little as possible was done to protect the American people from the predations of Wall Street and the mortgage brokers.

Between now and the fall elections, Obama and other Democrats need to do three things. First, stimulate the economy in a way that creates real jobs. Second, they need to cut Wall Street down to a manageable size that works for the American economy and not against. Third, make it absolutely clear to the American people that the bright Republican ideas of the last thirty years do not work, they are profoundly flawed and they are directly responsible for the meltdown and the high unemployment rate.

If Republicans return to office in their current mood, we are going to see more economic nonsense such as the privatization of social security, more bonuses for rich bankers by way of tax cuts and more loss of jobs overseas. These are not slogans or propaganda. They are on the Republican agenda.

Let's return to Greenspan for a moment. He endorsed John McCain during the 2008 election. McCain was erratic during the economic crisis. He had no idea what he was doing. So much for Greenspan's judgment. But the Countess of Wasilla, she of the $150,000 wardrobe, $100,000 speeches and $10,000 a plate dinners, is campaigning for McCain, buffing up his right wing creds. Does anyone believe that the Countess does anything for free? Like so many Republican leaders these days, she sees dollars signs for herself and not much for the American people. But she would like to lead. The Democrats already have somebody better, not just in the White House, but in both houses of Congress.

Republicans: Leading US to the 19th Century

2010-03-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

These days Republicans in Washington aren't just conservative, they're outright reactionary. Now Republicans want to strip voters of some of their right by calling such a move a return to states rights. Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo has the story:

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is calling for a strong re-assertion of states rights against Congress -- in the form of a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the direct popular election of Senators, and go back to the pre-17th Amendment setup of state legislatures appointing them.

It seems Republicans are launching a campaign to return to the late 19th century when the rich were filthy rich and pockets of the middle class found itself slipping into poverty and the really poor were living in slums in every corner of the land. One of the problems Republicans have with health care is that it's likely to ruin some cozy state monopolies that some insurers have thanks to their political friends. Keep in mind that history doesn't talk much about the late 19th century, a period dominated by Republicans and corruption as well as extremes of wealth and poverty (it got so bad that it took a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, to clean it up).

Ironic how much today's Republican leaders talk about free enterprise while rigging the game in smoke-filled back rooms. Uh, isn't that one of the reasons the 17th amendment was passed? To take the selection of senators out of smoke-filled back rooms and give the choice to the people?

Democrats aren't perfect. No one should pretend they are. But our country is in bad need of reform. With Democrats, our nation has a chance of moving forward. With today's Republican politicians, we have none. Proof? With the backing of many Republicans currently in Congress, our nation went backward under George W. Bush. We can't afford more Republican failures.

Republicans Still Pushing Social Security Privatization

2010-03-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

For all the noise that Republicans make about the health care bill that just passed, the truth of the matter is that today's Republican leaders care far more about their rich friends than they do ordinary Americans. Oh sure, at election time Republicans like to drive around for a few minutes in an old pickup during a political rally. Of course a half hour after the rally, they go back to their Mercedes a few blocks away and head home. Then these Republicans get on the phone with their rich friends and ask what they can do for them before the bushels of money arrive.

The problem is that rich Republican donors are not only getting more conservative themselves but a pile of money now comes in from rich folks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh who multiply their effect by having their legions of listeners stuff envelopes with enough money for a politician to stay in business for years, in or out of office. Hey, look how much Sarah Palin is making these days now that she's no longer governor of Alaska.

Republican politicians on the airwaves are very good at stirring up fears and making lots of irrelevant noise, but they have swung so far to the right that they're now a bit fuzzy on reality. It's amazing that they're still trying to peddle social security privatization. In Hawaii, here's a story about Charles Djou, a GOP candidate:

...he said that President Bush had the right idea by addressing Social Security, and said the concept of voluntary personal accounts “deserves examination,” but wasn’t willing to say he supported a specific plan because he said that Democrats would take him out of context and attack him for wanting to destroy Social Security.

Uh, Republicans want to destroy social security but don't want Americans to think that's what they're doing. Gotta love that logic.

Paul Krugman is always worth reading since he easily and quickly cuts through a lot of Republican flim flam. Economists like Krugman deal in real numbers as opposed to fictional numbers written down on a cocktail napkin (this actually happened during the Reagan years). The word 'privatization' is a public relations nightmare and Republicans are doing their best to sell the same privatization idea while using language that's warm and fuzzy and fraudulent. Here's what Krugman says about Rep. Paul Ryan who likes attention and loves playing with numbers and words for the Republican cause:

...Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security [has a bit of] history here.

Back when the Cato Institute first began pushing for individual Social Security accounts, it called its push, well, The Project on Social Security Privatization. As the Bush administration got ready to make its privatization push, however, it became clear that “privatization” polled badly. So the project was renamed The Project on Social Security Choice. And Republicans began bristling at any suggestions that they were proposing privatization, calling that a slander. Really.

Wait, it gets better. Cato engaged in Orwellian tactics — deleting the term “privatization” from older web posts and even from records of old conferences. But they were sloppy; there were traces of the true history throughout. I don’t know if they’re still continuing the practice.

In any case, Ryan’s attempt to deny that what his own movement used to call privatization is, in fact, privatization should settle the question of his sincerity.

Right wing politicians are always sincere, until they're caught making things up. But then there's another route when doing politics. Act confused. Former moderate Republican Chuck Grassley had this to say about social security privatization:

(Caller) LONA: Senator Grassley, I am a Democrat who has voted for you many times. I appreciate your service to our state. I want to know if you still support privatizing Social Security?

SENATOR GRASSLEY: I was never in favor of privatizing Social Security, but I was in favor of giving people a choice. People could, uh, could, uh, under what we are talking about, although it never got into a bill, so I can’t, you can’t, you can’t tell me, you aren’t telling me, I mean I just want to say generically that I introduced a bill to do any of this stuff that I am telling you, but we were trying to negotiate in 2005 where people could stay in traditional Medicare, not Medicare, Social Security as it has always been, continue down that road, or they could take 1 percentage point, 2 percentage points of the taxes they pay in and they could have the government put that in a separate account for them, say like the federal employees do with their 401ks, for example. But the federal government would manage it. When you use the word privatize, it means that we would not have the government running Social Security and we wouldn’t have Social Security, I have never been for that.

Got that? But it still sounds like a giveaway to stockbrokers on Wall Street. If privatization had been passed by Republicans in 2005, America would have lost its shirt in 2008.

The more I read about today's Republican leaders, the more obvious it is that Americans need to send more Democrats to Washington. Republicans need to reform their party, push out the lunatic right and start advocating real solutions. Until then, the Republican Party is not fit to lead.

America Enters the 21st Century at Last: Health Care Passes

2010-03-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

I have a pre-existing condition but it's always been my firm belief that it's really nobody's business. Unfortunately, because I tried to get insurance on my own a few years back, the insurance industry knows more about my health than most of my friends and colleagues. That offends the hell of my me. These days I worry a lot more about big business than I do my government (that is, when it's not overly controlled by business interests and cronies, which happens every time the Republicans get elected).

For many reasons, I have not devoted as much time to the health care debate as I would have liked. For one reason, our nation faces some bigger issues that can't wait much longer such as jobs, revitalizing our economy, energy and climate change. But health care reform has passed and I rejoice. Despite the obstruction, the spin, the foot dragging, the lies, the stunts, the name calling and the 1001 shameful acts of the Grand Ostrich Party and its ridiculous leadership, America is moving forward again and we have a health bill.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has it right: the only thing everybody is going to remember ten years from now is that health care reform finally passed in March of 2010. Here's a bit of what he says:

Then the debate dragged on over many months. The pace slowed in the early summer. Then there was the town hall Crazy (tm) of August. And from there we know the rest -- the ugliness, close calls, the shuddering collapse of morale after January 19th. But the truth is, nothing matters but the final result. No one remembers the politicking in advance of Medicare or Social Security or really anything else. There's either a reform law or there's not. That's why, even though it's still a momentous event in political circles, the 1994 run at Health Care Reform might as well never have happened.

Even over the last two days you've seen a shifting of perspective as all the drama and angst of recent months recedes before the reality of final passage. There's no denying this is certainly the biggest and by almost any definition the first major social legislation in the United States in almost five decades. (Congress passed Medicare in 1965.)

Today, when David Frum wrote that this was turning out to be the GOP's Waterloo...

I don't know if this is the Republican Party's Waterloo or not. They have nothing to offer these days but games and tricks and lies and tons of money from their corporate friends. I still have Republican friends and I shake my head that they can't see what their leadership has become. They cannot accept that Bush and his cronies almost destroyed the economy out of sheer stupidity and greed. For twenty years, elected Republicans have been swinging further and further to the right. That is a fact. The obvious clue are the number of Republicans in the leadership who felt Reagan didn't go far enough. Some feel that Bush did not go far enough. A ridiculous few are sorry Dick Cheney wasn't president.

I root for Obama because if he fails, we're in for rough times. Even if Democrats remain in power in Congress, Republicans are hoping the Supreme Court can cause trouble. The Supreme Court has already shown its willingness to believe that corporations are more important than people.

Corporations are fictions designed to limit liability. There's nothing wrong with that in theory, as long as corporations act in the public interest. But the latest economic crisis that began in 2007 was a direct result of corporations who could care less about the public interest. They lied and bullied their way to wealth and many of them are unrepentant.

Any person who thinks the Republican Party is going to tackle the people who got bonus money is a fool. Republicanism has always been the same as big business. In recent years, they have incorporated and manipulated people on the far right while laughing all the way to the bank. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were two of them.

The United States does not need more corporatism and it does not need more from the American Taliban. We certainly did not and do not need an unholy alliance between the two.

What we need is to stop making excuses. Our economy has slipped. We have made mistakes. Now we have done this from time to time in the past. One of our great strengths is recognizing when we have made mistakes, correcting those mistakes and moving on again. We are in danger of losing that capacity to move forward. If we are not careful, we could start falling rather swiftly if we don't grab reality by the horns, with both hands, with our eyes open and our minds clear.

There's still work to do.

Thanks to Republicans, U.S. Leadership Is Eroding

2010-02-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

China continues to make smart economic moves while the U.S., even with a Democratic president, continues to dither. In other posts I have discussed some of China's problems, including human rights failings, corruption, pollution and its growing nationalism. But, for twenty years, China has been making savvy economic moves that go beyond the cheap labor it supplies for the production of many products that once were produced elsewhere, including in the United States.

No one can argue that China's acquisition of oil has been one of its top priorities. The rise of China's economy is one of the reasons oil went up to $147/barrel in the summer of 2008. But China is also focusing on alternative energy, so much so that it is leading in areas where the U.S., by all rights, should be dominant. We are the inventor nation but we are no longer the industrial superpower we once were. For pennies on the dollar, we have been selling our ingenuity to the Chinese and others.

And it continues. The price of alternative energy is falling while the cost of producing fossil fuels is getting more expensive. Include the cost of pollution and climate change and the real cost of fossil fuels has been prohibitive for the last three decades. But facts hardly get in the way of know-nothing Republicans. Here's a story from Arizona:

Arizona was one of the healthy energy states, with a requirement for 15% renewable energy by 2025. But now a Republican state representative in the Arizona state legislature is challenging the right of the Arizona Corporation Commission to set a requirement that utilities add more renewable energy, with a bill that would strip them of the responsibility.

(snip)

The legislation the state lawmaker Carl Seel introduced is the next step in an anti-renewable energy campaign mounted by the conservative think tank; the Goldwater Institute, on behalf of several customers of the state’s largest utility, and is aimed at overturning the ruling on renewable energy.

Keep in mind that Republican policies have little to do with free enterprise. They love their no-bid contracts, monopolies, cartels and cronyism too much to practice what they preach. In reality, neither the Chinese nor Americans are practicing anything like true free markets. But there is thinking behind the moves the Chinese are making as opposed to the bizarre notions of Republicans and, unfortunately, a few Democrats. Although the Chinese will have to install conventional power plants for some time to come, they clearly have a long-term vision of not only using alternative energy but being the leading builder of such equipment:

Renewable energy industries in China are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China's economy than for the environment. China is on track to pass the United States in total power generation in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will be from coal, which is forecast to represent two-thirds of China's capacity in 2020.

As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world's largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing

$45 billion in 2009 alone. China's top leaders are focused on energy policy: On Jan. 27, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of Cabinet ministers as a "superministry" led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China's biggest advantage might be its domestic demand for electricity, which is rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will. As a result, Chinese producers of generating equipment enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

There's no guarantee that China's economic growth will continue at its current pace or that China can avoid a number of pitfalls in the next 20 years related to other problems it has. But given the behavior of politicians in Washington and our increasing reliance on China's products as well as its loans, I wouldn't bet against Beijing.

In category after category, U.S. leadership has been eroding for some thirty years. It's ridiculous that some 40% of our economy now depends on financial services that in turn largely depend on little more than our good name. Financing the purchase of fossils fuels from oil producing countries or financing alternative energy equipment built elsewhere only succeeds in killing American jobs. That pattern cannot be sustained.

A Dose of Economic Reallity from James K. Galbraith

2010-02-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

The is the weekend of the Mad Hatter Tea Baggers who started off their weekend with Tom Tancredo who gave a racist speech which he proceeded to explain wasn't racist but anti-immigration. Perhaps it was Tancredo's attempt to kill two birds with one stone. Something like that. What Tancredo has to do with the original revolution is beyond me.

Saturday night, Sarah Palin spoke as a member in good standing of the know-nothing club. At one point she may have been looking at her left hand to read crib notes. Maybe that was an accurate perception of her and maybe it wasn't but it is utterly consistent with what we know of the way she operates. In the meantime, when the tea baggers are almost coherent they advocate many of the very same policies that caused the economy to fall off the cliff in the first place.

The problem with the presidency of George W. Bush was obvious 15 months before he took office. In 1999 Republican candidates were dropping out of the race for one simple reason: George W. had the big conservative money as well as corporate money locked up before the first primary. Have the Tea Baggers forgotten so quickly that one of Bush's biggest boosters was Kenny Lay of Enron? Lay drove Enron over a cliff. George W. Bush drove the nation over a cliff. What did Kenneth Lay do that Bush didn't do for eight years?

We have had corporate presidents before—a handful have been Democrats—but Republican presidential candidates have always been the favorite candidate of big business and big favors. For some reason, the Mad Hatter Tea Baggers don't want to notice. Admitting failure, I suppose, is a hard thing to do even for a political party, a.k.a., the Gilded Age Party (GAP), that once prided itself on pragmatism. Far right Republicans are no longer able to recognize when their own ideas don't work. (I wish that Obama would keep that in mind; if you're a pragmatist, stop turning to a Republican leadership bought and owned by businesses always looking for a favor to give them an edge over their American competitors; how many soldiers, for example, have to be electrocuted by Halliburton's incompetence before a better contractor can be found?)

I may be overdoing it but I want to quote extensively from a German interview with James K. Galbraith, an American economist who actually ties economics to the real world and not to some ideological fantasy about pie-in-the-sky market forces philosophy. It's easy, by the way, to spot people with reactionary pie-in-the-sky notions: explain to them just one of the growing problems the world is facing and they'll tell you that at any moment rising prices will encourage someone to invent a magic bullet. Often the magic bullet is some new form of energy or maybe some huge new oil discovery in Dreamistan. Mind you, I've been hearing this stuff for decades, and that was before India and China started demanding their share of the world's energy supply.

Anyway, here's part of the interview with Galbraith:

In a recent interview for MMNews, Hans-Olaf Henkel, who was once the head of the Federation of German Industries as well as IBM Europe, said two things that I would like to confront you with because Mr. Henkel is an influential opinion-maker here in Germany.[v] The first thing he said was that basically no one saw this crisis coming and that he laughs himself to death whenever someone says that this crisis was foreseen. Can you give Mr. Henkel some names in this respect? How about Dean Baker for example?

I’ve written a long article on not just the individual economists, but groups of economists who saw the crisis coming very clearly.[vi] Dean is one certainly with a strong claim. Dean follows a very simple method. He looks at critical ratios, such as the ratio of house prices to rental rates. When these deviated very far from their historical norms, that generates an expectation that they would revert. People should have been looking at that evidence and taking Dean’s predictions far more seriously than they did. But on the other hand, what Dean is pursuing is a very simple method and couldn’t be described as a school of economic analysis.

There are at least three traditions in economics that were warning about what was coming in ways which were very coherently related to a formal analytical program.

There is a group associated with the Levy Economics Institute and led by Wynne Godley, former senior advisor to the British Treasury. This group was working with national balance sheets -- with the national income accounts -- and warning very emphatically that the debt-burden of the household sector was unsustainable..

There are people working in the tradition of Hyman Minsky, who of course were trained to expect financial instability. They were making similar points from a substantially different conceptual basis.

And then there are people working broadly in the tradition of my father, who look at the structures of economic power, and who were warning that the supervision of the banking system was going to cause an epidemic of fraud. There was a group of what we call “white-collar criminologists”, who were examining these issues, and they are developing a new political economy of crime.

This group had the experience of what happened in the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980’s, when certain patterns of behaviour, which are relatively standard in criminal financial activity, were very clearly present. These patterns re-emerged in the early 2000’s in the Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco scandals, and they were re-emerging again in the housing sector. To these people it was entirely obvious that a massive problem was developing.

So, Mr. Henkel needs to read a little bit more, He needs to broaden his definition of what constitutes economic analysis, and needs to recognize that the problem is precisely a group of people who insist that nobody outside of their very narrow circle has any insight worth paying attention to. That’s a preposterous position. It’s a completely indefensible position. It reflects fundamental narrowed-mindedness and, as I may say, incompetence which is really on display for anybody to see. So I do not need to hammer the point too hard.

The other thing that I want to know with regard to Mr. Henkel’s statements is this: He said that this crisis was caused by a certain type of “do-goodism” among American politicians who wanted to make sure that every American citizen would have a home of her/his own. What do you think when you hear such a thing?

It is an amusing interpretation of the motives of someone like George W. Bush, who represented one of the most aggressively predatory tendencies in American politics ever to reach the White House. This was a president who turned over regulation -- not just in finance but in everything he got his hands on -- to the most reactionary elements of the business community, to the most anti-regulation elements, so that regulatory structures were run down everywhere. They were run down in consumer protection, they were run down in worker protection, they were run down in trade, they were run down in ways which have significantly degraded the quality of life in the United States.

So, to suggest that this was some naïve altruism on the part of that extraordinarily reactionary Republican administration is, I must say, a view that no one who has actually lived through this period in the United States would recognize.

Now, Mr. Henkel is probably thinking about institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which were, in fact, private firms. Fannie Mae had been privatized for forty years, and it had, indeed, become a bastion of Washington cronyism. I think that’s fair to say. Those institutions were drastically mismanaged by the overpaid appointees who were running them, no doubt about that. Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association, which was not privatized, did not have the same problems.

But the truth is: this crisis emerged largely first of all in the private-label mortgage sector, that is to say in purely private entities like Countrywide, Washington Mutual, or IndyMac. The loans were securitized through private banks, vetted by private ratings agencies. The point here was not to put people in homes. It was clear to the lenders that the people that they were putting in homes would not be able to stay there.

The point was obviously to do two things. One was to create an enormous stream of revenue for these financial firms -- who were in many cases friends and political supporters of the administration. Second, it was to create a temporary burst of economic activity that would be to the political benefit of the Bush administration. So, to the extent that you had political forces that were explicitly driving the process, those were the motivations. It was certainly not some broad altruism toward a part of the population in which the political leadership of the country at the time never had any interest whatever.

(snip)

And what do you think about the plan of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to abolish the legal right to redeem money market accounts?[ix]

Do I have a comment on it? I’m not on top of that one.

At the end of “The Predator State” you are explaining the consequences of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement by Richard Nixon in 1971. May I summarize my reading of it?

Sure.

Well, in the chapter “Paying For It” you explain that according to the system established in 1944, the U.S. current account deficit – and by extension its public budget deficit – was limited by an obligation to exchange foreign-held dollars for gold. Richard Nixon abolished that arrangement. You are arguing now that since the early 1980s, the world has held the T-bonds that the U.S. chose to issue. You acknowledge that the system is neither robust nor just, but you insist that so long as it lasts, it doesn't discipline the U.S. budget and therefore doesn't constrain U.S. government spending in any way. Is this right so far?

Correct, sure.

I mention this because this is basically, at least as far as I understand it, the financial backbone of the stimulus package you want to see taken place? And if this is the case how would then a stimulus package look like if you could have it your way?

First of all, it’s very clear that the United States government is not constrained externally, and it’s clear that quite apart from the stimulus package, the automatic stabilizers and the financial rescue, which greatly ballooned the public debt of the United States, have had no effect on the ability of the United States government to fund itself and no effect on the interest rates that the government pays. So, it, I think, follows from that logically and straight-forwardly that we have nothing to fear from additional efforts as long as they are necessary. And they’re obviously very clearly necessary. So the question is: what should be the structure of those efforts?

I’ve always taken exception to the constant reference to “stimulus” as the policy objective, because implied in that word is the idea that all one needs to do is to undertake one or more relatively short term spending sprees, on whatever happens to be available at the moment, and that this will somehow return the economy to its pre-crisis state, putting it on a path of what economists like to call “self-sustaining growth.” I maintain that in the present environment there is no such thing as a return to self-sustaining growth. There will be no return to the supposedly normal conditions, which were in fact, from a historical point of view, highly abnormal, of the 1990s and 2000s.

What one needs is to set a strategic direction for renewal of economic activity. We need to create the institutions that will support that direction. Those institutions are public institutions, which create a framework for private activity. This is the way it is done. It is the way countries have always developed in the past and, to the extent that they are successful, they will always do so in the future or they won’t succeed. Seventy years ago when we were in the Great Depression, they built a national infrastructure: roads, airfields, schools, power-grids – this kind of thing was the priority. In the post-war period, the creation and maintenance of a large middle class with social security, with medical care, with housing programs, universities – these were the priorities of the post-war period.

Now we clearly face an enormous challenge with energy and climate. It’s a challenge that requires us to think in very creative ways, in very ambitious ways about how to change how we live, so as to make life on the planet tolerable a century or two centuries hence. This is a huge challenge. It requires design, planning, implementation, something with enormous potential for providing employment because things have to be done, enormous potential for guiding new public and private investment because one has to provide people with the means of making it realistic for individual activity to support this larger objective. And that is the way to move toward a renewed economic expansion. This strikes me very far from being a stimulus proposal. It is a proposal for setting a new strategic direction for the economy and doing so over a relatively long time horizon with a view that you’re sustaining effort for 15, 20, 30 years. That’s the way I think you need to think about this.

Just to wrap up a long answer to a short question: Why can’t we go back to the pre-crisis period? The answer is that restructuring of the private household debts is an enormous task which necessarily takes a very long period of time. During that time, the pre-crisis pattern of increasing debt will not resume. The asset against which the American household sector collateralized its debt for 15 to 20 years, its housing, has radically fallen in financial value. The houses are still there but you can’t sell them for nearly as much as you could have three years ago. And that is a structural impediment to returning to the previous pattern of economic expansion. And that impediment isn’t going to be removed in any short period of time for the simple reason that the houses remain there as an excess supply on the market and they remain therefore as a drag on housing prices.

Our country has an army of Mr. Henkels who memorize their right wing talking points but who otherwise cannot see the blunders of the last thirty years. The rank and file Tea Baggers are unable to see that they do not represent solutions but only business as usual, the same stuff that has been undermining our economy and the middle class since Reagan became president. As a result of the policies of George W. Bush, the middle class is at its lowest point in decades.

Update: Multiple sources and photos have confirmed that Sarah Palin was using her palm as a high school crib sheet. In a bizarre twist, Fox News says Palin was trying to draw attention to Obama's use of a teleprompter, of course ignoring Obama's masterful non-teleprompter handling of issues in the GOP lion's den. In the meantime, Europe is in a tailspin, we have no real energy policy, joblessness remains high, health care is stalled and the obstructionist GOP has no solutions, no understanding of today's rapidly changing world and no desire to let the Democrats get some real work done. For some time, it has been perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that the Republicans are actively seeking the failure of the Obama presidency. This is unprecedented in American politics.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress have forgotten how to lead and are shadows of the Democratic giants who once led the House and Senate. Leadership will have to come from the Oval office. While I appreciate Obama's efforts to seize the initiative, more may be required, including staff changes at the White House.

At the same time, the reality-based community has its work cut out for it. One election will not change this country and it was foolish to think it ever would. But reform has come before and it can come again. But only with persistence.

The American Crisis Deepens

2010-01-21T21:22:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court decision that essentially gives corporations unlimited power through campaign spending is a danger to American democracy and a danger to every citizen. It is no joke.

I was tempted to title this post: The GOP Sells the United States to the Chinese Communist Party. The consequences of unlimited campaign spending by corporations means the person with the most money wins. Since anyone outside the United States can invest in our corporations, it will now be legal for the Chinese, Saudis and Russians to influence American elections. Even Osama bin Laden, if he uses enough corporate shells, can now influence American politics directly.

George W. Bush appointed two corporatist judges to the Supreme Court. If we're not careful, the legacy of the worst president in our nation's history will now be intact.

I expect many posts around the country to focus on today's judicial fiasco. Here's a post from Firedoglake:

If you had any doubt about the corruption that has infected the very bloodstream of American politics, look at today’s ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to influence the outcome of elections.

(snip)

Teabaggers, do you get it now? You are outraged by your powerlessness. Can you now see the real source of that powerlessness? It is not government. Government has been turned into the handmaiden of the corporate oligarchs.

I’m compelled to repeat something else: I’m a fan of entrepreneurship and responsible capitalism. But it’s not the so-called heavy hand of government that is the enemy. It’s the corporate monopolists.

Here's a post from Kevin Drum who almost always has some of the most thoughtful posts:

I confess that I've become more sensitive to First Amendment concerns about the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law over the years. But treating corporations as mere "associations of citizens"? Color me skeptical. That's just not what they are, and this is a decision that we're probably going to live to regret. After all, it's not as if lack of ability for corporations to influence the political process has historically been a major problem in the United States.

I've been saying it for some time now and I'll say it again: something has to change.

How Much Oil Will Iraq Produce?

2010-01-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

If the purpose of invading Iraq was about oil, the results have been disappointing. Although Iraq has had a few good quarters in the last two or three years, they have not been able to put together a year of production equal to pre-invasion levels. And it's been three decades since Iraq reached it maximum output. Wars, corruption and incompetence share blame for Iraq's poor performance.

Of course the oil is still sitting in the ground. Everyone agrees there is still a sizable reserve. Here's the latest concerning Iraqi oil:

Head of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, Falah Alamri, said that the country plans to start crude oil shipping operations in March and prepares to export larger volumes of crude in the future, Reuter reported.

Another site carries the same Reuters story. They have a picture that may or not be contemporary and yet it seems to fit what I know of Iraq's petroleum industry for the last thirty years.

It's hard not to be skeptical. Stuart Staniford has a post in The Oil Drum that's also skeptical but he explores the possibility of Iraqi oil production rising from a little more than 2 million barrels/day in 2009 to 12 million barrels/day by 2017. Here's an excerpt from Staniford's post:

At this stage, it seems too soon to say the Iraqis definitely will succeed. But the scenario that they might seems worth serious consideration.

(snip)

There doesn't seem to be too much dispute that Iraq has enough reserves to support far higher production than has actually occurred in the past.

(snip)

Iraq held two rounds of auctions for oilfield management contracts in 2009 that the large international oil companies have responded to. The first round, in June, were for fields that were already in production and set up contracts in which companies get paid a fee per barrel for all production over the existing level. The second round, last month, were for fields not yet on stream. The Iraqis seem to have driven hard bargains - the oil companies are being paid a flat fee per barrel that is generally under $2/barrel in the safer parts of the country, and thus will not benefit from high oil prices - all price risk/reward remains with the Iraqis. Nonetheless they were able to attract some bids from large competent oil companies with a track record - the likes of Shell, Exxon, Statoil, and Lukoil, and have been signing preliminary contracts with them. According to the oil ministry, the total contracts awarded amount to 12mbd of production, and this could be achieved within six years.

Staniford always has good graphs. Below is just one of the them:

It's simply not possible these days to post such a story without checking to see if the Chinese are paying attention. They are:

Iraq's oil exports amounted to 1.97 million barrels a day in December 2009, an increase of 950,000 barrels over November, the preceding month, according to latest statistics from the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. And a significant change in the volume of exports fully reflects the rapidly-rising momentum from an aspect of current oil production in the country.

In line with requirements for its government to sign a contract with foreign energy firms, Iraq would increase its crude oil to 12 million barrels a day from the current 2.5 million barrels in the next six years; at the same time, its gas production would increase to 144 million cubic meters from the present 48 million cubic meters. Representatives of some OPEC member nations, however, regard that Iraq’s practice for a large-scale increase of oil production is inconsistent with the OPEC’s current strategy for "limited production and oil price protection", and this could cause volatility on the future global oil market.

Admittedly, the article doesn't say all that much, but it's in the opinion section of the People' Daily Online. That means it's news China wants to be noticed. Despite the optimism of Iraq's oil sector, China and Stuart Staniford agree: there may be increased production from Iraq but we're also likely to see increased volatility in the world's oil markets.

In the long run, a plug-in or hybrid car not only sounds like a bargain but may also offer peace of mind.

The Growing Complexity of Dealing with China

2010-01-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

Fifty years ago the United States would send government officials or business executives to small third world countries with a checkbook. Whenever such a checkbook was opened, such countries listened. At least for a while.

Now it's China that seems more active about using a checkbook to build relationships. In Africa, the Chinese have been buying up resources; one might argue that this is a new kind of imperialism, 21st Century style. Actually, other arguments can be made but the real point here is that the world is growing more complex and China is now very much part of that complexity.

China is often criticized for its human rights record—and rightfully so—but things are no longer as black as white as they were even fifteen years ago. I've been writing about China lately because a number of key issues cannot be dealt with unless China is part of the picture. Dealing with problems like global warming, fossil fuel depletion, the environment, the economy and American job losses are not going to happen without cooperation with China. Of course American companies who have their products made in China are also part of the picture. As an example, Reuters reports that GM saw its sales improve last year:

GM sold a record 1.83 million autos in China last year, the company said in a statement Monday. The auto maker expects to top that this year, though it sees slowing growth. Kevin Wale, president and managing director of GM China Group, "The industry outlook is strong and we expect more growth, albeit on a somewhat slower pace."

Whether Americans like it or not, we are tied to the economic performance of China. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because we're also economically tied to the performance of oil producers in the Middle East. With apologies to Laurel & Hardy, "It's a nice pickle we've gotten ourselves in."

Free trade is great if you're on the receiving end of profits but it's not so great if it means losing middle class jobs to cheap labor. Right now, China and the U.S. are increasingly two-tiered societies with a small wealthy class on one side and everybody else on the other. The wealthy of the current generation are too often not interested in the consequences of their behavior . When mostly Republican commentators in The Wall Street Journal praise the Chinese, they're not praising Chinese workers, they're praising Chinese business owners who share their own values.

Like the U.S., however, the Chinese have different factions with different ideas about the future. Obviously an authoritarian Chinese government has low tolerance for different views. But in spite of recent prison sentences, Chinese wanting democratic reform will continue to find ways to make their views known.

Keeping in mind that the Chinese can sometimes change direction on a massive scale—Deng's pro-capitalism moves is one example—the Chinese are slowly moving in fits and starts towards a more open form of journalism. There are certainly steps backward but we're getting news out of China that was unthinkable twenty years ago. We're hearing about coal mine disasters, earthquakes and protests and we're also hearing about Chinese foreign policy moves, new business ventures and sometimes detailed government policies.

Americans themselves need to be more nuanced when they read or comment about news from China. One of today's stories out of China is about a diesel spill; here's the story from a Chinese news site:

A diesel spill from a ruptured pipeline in northwestern China has seriously contaminated two rivers that finally flow into the Yellow River, the country's second longest waterway, a local official said Monday.

The Chishui and Weihe rivers were seriously contaminated after some 150 cubic meters of diesel leaked early Wednesday from a ruptured pipeline belonging to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country's top oil producer, Li Xiaolian, vice director with the Shaanxi Provincial Environment Protection Administration, said at a press conference.

However, contamination to the Yellow River remained under control and its water quality was still within the state standard, he said.

By the time the reader goes to the link, there may be updates but the point here is that earlier in the day the news, accurate or not, is that the spill had not reached the Yellow River. Later in the day, a website called Clean Skies was quick to note an emergency water decree downriver:

The warning contradicts earlier reports from the pipeline's owner, China National Petroleum Corp., that the contaminated water was contained after workers dug diversion channels and used floating dams and solidifying agents to stop the spill.

It's not a bad article though I wish they had given their sources. It gives the impression that China National Petroleum Corp. was trying to minimize the consequences of the spill. It may very well be the case. I note that the spill occurred on Wednesday and it's now five days later. What was that delay about?

But the Chinese in general were not hiding the story. The story can now be found in various places and the details suggests either Chinese government officials or government officials are talking to the media. Here's a BBC story with more details:

Pollution from a broken oil pipeline in northern China has now reached one of the country's major water sources - the Yellow River, state media say.

(snip)

The official Xinhua news agency said: "At present, cities along the river in Henan province have sufficient water resources."

About 150,000 litres of diesel poured into the Wei river in Shaanxi province after a construction accident on Wednesday, state media reported.

It's possible company officials and local officials initially attempted to downplay what happened. I've talked earlier about corruption being a collusion between company officials and local government officials. On the other hand, there was an attempt to control the problem with floating dams, etc. What might then have happened is that the national government became aware of what was happening and the story hit the news agencies.

But the diesel spill is actually only a small part of a much bigger story: the Yellow River has for years been an environmental disaster story of international proportions. It is heavily used and heavily polluted. For some months a year it does not even reach the sea. Wait. This is our story too. The Mississippi and the delta it pours into has become increasingly polluted. It is the story of the Rhine. It is the story of the Nile. It is the story of the Ganges.

It used to take weeks, months, even years to get news out of China. I suppose we can criticize it if it takes more than a few hours for a story to hit the internet. I have no doubt government officials hold off on some stories. I have no doubt it takes time to do an English translation. I have no doubt that those translations sometimes have to get official clearance. But news is coming out of China. And it's often our news, even if, in a country of 1.3 billion people, it's sometimes on a larger scale.

Happy New Years From Mack the Cat

2009-12-31T23:45:00.001-08:00

Mackie is an old guy who will celebrate the New Year in his own style. He will open his eyes precisely at midnight, yawn, stretch his legs for five seconds and turn on his other side before greeting the new year with another cat nap.

Rare Earth Metals in China: A Case of Corruption Leading to Pollution

2009-12-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

Lately, the government of China has been talking about honoring Chinese tradition. It's fine when societies, including our own, honor the best parts of our traditions but actual practices don't always match our publicly declared policies. China, in any case, is a bundle of contradictions. One could easily argue that the red octopus above represents the strange fusion of red communism and acquisitive capitalism that today is indicative of China. (Come to think of it, I ought to use the octopus later to represent Republican members of Congress and Washington lobbyists who wish to snarl up and otherwise obstruct useful legislation in Washington. It's a great image!)

For some time, China has been talking about cleaning up its pollution but not much happens. It is a sad fact that sooner or later China is going to have its Love Canal. But multiply that times ten given the pollution problems China already has.

I recently did a post on rare earth mining in California's Mountain Pass Mine in the Mojave desert. Even during its worst days, Mountain Pass seems to have been handled better than the Chinese mine discussed in the following New York Times article:

Here in Guyun Village, a small community in southeastern China fringed by lush bamboo groves and banana trees, the environmental damage can be seen in the red-brown scars of barren clay that run down narrow valleys and the dead lands below, where emerald rice fields once grew.

Miners scrape off the topsoil and shovel golden-flecked clay into dirt pits, using acids to extract the rare earths. The acids ultimately wash into streams and rivers, destroying rice paddies and fish farms and tainting water supplies.

Lovely. So much for 5,000 years of sustainable agriculture.

I don't want to minimize the environmental damage that has been done by the United States in the last 200 years but the worst stories that have come out of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe make the United States look rather green by comparison. There are growing concerns that China is repeating some of the worst damage done during the Cold War. The problem is that the dynamics are far too similar: despite China's commitment to capitalism and the loosening of strict authoritarian control, the government is over-centralized, overly authoritarian, and overly paranoid about a free press. On top of that, there is far too much corruption in government as well as in business.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabo seem bent on curbing corruption but they have the same problem the emperors had from the beginning: the inability of the central government to control events in distant provinces as well as in large cities such as Shanghai. Premier Wen has apparently found it useless to announce personal appearances around the country since that only leads to Potemkin moments as local officials try to put on a good but fraudelent show. Now Wen arrives unannounced and is not pleased with what he finds. And as noted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, not nearly enough is done to enforce laws against corruption:

Though the Chinese government has more than 1,200 laws, rules, and directives against corruption, implementation is spotty and ineffective. The odds of a corrupt official going to jail are less than three percent, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity. Even low-level officials have the opportunity to amass an illicit fortune of tens of millions of yuan.

Still, despite problems, we need to be careful not to underestimate what the top Chinese leadership can do. There are indications that the global warming deal in Copenhagen wasn't as bad as some on America's far right and far left have claimed. Having any kind of deal that involves China and the United States is better than anything we've had in the last nine years. But no one should kid themselves. Not China. And not the United States. In a real sense, a number of American corporations have been sending their pollution to China for almost thirty years. Further, it's been apparent that many U.S. corporations don't have the kind of quality control that all of us took for granted back in the 1970s—instead too much money seems to go to public relations and Washington lobbyists. In the meantime, a lot of crap is put on the American market by American companies that shouldn't be sold.

A real climate change agreement will only be possible as the U.S. and China build up mutual trust and respect. Eventually mutual inspections will be needed and those inspections will have to extend beyond just the U.S. and China. I know, these things will be difficult but they are necessary and not impossible. And they will take time.

The Rise and Fall of the Age of Oil: Opportunity or Endgame?

2009-12-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I read a book on the rise and fall of several periods of Chinese history. Some emperor would fight a few wars, unite a few more provinces than the last emperor, and his heirs would thrive for a few generations.

But the collapse of a dynasty often followed a similar pattern. As the population grew during the good times, the amount of tilled acreage per family dropped while taxes kept rising since the wealthy demanded more and more to keep up appearances. Sooner or later, corruption grew, more demands were placed on peasants and the emperor found himself unable to control events as easily as before.

Of course discontent would grow, generals or talented peasants would take advantage of the discontent and rebellions would flourish, forcing the emperor to impose harsh crackdowns. Meanwhile, people on the borders would notice the lack of troops in the usual places and would encroach on Chinese territory. And the encroachments would give an emperor an opportunity to use foreigners as a distraction while perhaps gaining some more territory and more taxes with it.

But eventually the emperor's army would find itself overextended with rebellions and external enemies. Throw in a famine or an epidemic along with a war that doesn't go well and collapse would soon follow. China of course never fully collapsed during these troubled periods but they sometimes could lose as much as 10-50% of their population. Suddenly, after all the troubles, there would be more acreage per family available and the period of rise would begin anew.

Such rises and falls of course are not unique to the Chinese. But about four to five hundred years ago the pattern began to change, particularly in Europe and later in the United States. First the British and Europeans found coal and better ways to burn it and use it. And Americans discovered an entire continent of virgin forests that provided firewood for over two hundred years. In the middle of the 19th century, American industry exploded with the growing use of coal and the discovery of oil.

Oil meant energy. Oil meant every acre of a 160 acre farm could be used for food and profit. Acreage for horses was no longer necessary. Oil also meant kerosene and light for longer days. It eventually meant fuel for farm tractors, industries, electrical power plants and so on.

In his book, Feeding the Fire, Mark E. Eberhart covers some of the history of coal and oil and reminds us that the British, Europeans and the United States might have had a very different history if coal and oil had not been available in such abundance for the last three hundred years. The subtitle of Eberhart's book is: The Lost History & Uncertain Future of Mankind's Energy Addiction. Offhand, it sounds like the kind of book others have written on Peak Oil, climate change, environmental concerns, the need for abundant alternative energy and so on in the early 21st century. There is some of that in Eberhart's book but he sounds more like someone in the corporate world who's reluctantly and gently sounding the alarm and providing deep background. Actually, despite some reservations I have about the book, I found Eberhart's approach refreshing since he provides a host of material I have not seen before. I don't agree with some things he says but I have learned a lot. On page 183, he writes:

Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules. You might think of these as strands of hairy pearls, where the pearls are carbon atoms and their hair is made of hydrogen atoms. Each pearl in the strand has two hairs, except the ones on the end, which have three. This molecular jewelry comes in different lengths, from a strand with one carbon pearl, which is methane, to strands with thirty or more carbon atoms. The number of carbon atoms controls the properties of the molecule. For example, if the strand has fewer than five carbon atoms, the molecule is a gas at room temperature; five to eighteen, a liquid; and nineteen or more a solid. The most volatile components of crude are called naphthas, which are used as solvents and dry-cleaning fluids and are characterized by strands of five to seven carbon atoms. Gasoline is the component of crude with strings of 7 to 11 [carbon] atoms in length. Kerosene is the portion containing strands of 12 to 15; diesel, 15 to 17; and lubricating oils are made of hydrocarbon chains of more than 17 carbon atoms. The 20-atom-plus range is where paraffin, tar and asphalt are found.

Eberhart explains that one of the things that so quickly made oil so efficient to use is that the heavier oils can be 'cracked' by baking heavy crude at high temperature under high pressure (not unlike how the shorter carbon chains are created in hot pressures found deep underground. Of course light sweet crude doesn't require as much treatment (or 'cracking') as sour heavy crude. So part of today's energy picture requires that people understand that throughout the world, the volume of heavy crude going through the refinery process (requiring additional processes, time and equipment not necessary for light sweet crude) is growing.

What I want to emphasize is that these processes are energy intensive and expensive. Expensive in terms of cost and expensive in terms of lower net energy. Sour heavy crude, however, is still preferable in many ways to coal. And the production of coal is rising dramatically, particularly if we take China into account. Regardless of what one thinks about climate change, pollution, peak oil or the environment, we have already entered a different age and it's already a harsher reality, largely because the United States for the last thirty years has failed to act. There is still time but we can no longer afford illusions.

More on Coal

2009-12-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

I've been reading more about coal since my post on pollution and the illusions of clean coal. Because 50% of our electricity is generated by coal, it's simply not going to disappear overnight. But the U.S. government needs to get real, not ten or twenty years from now, but in the coming months.

Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute has a few observations that need to be taken into consideration as the United States and the world plan an energy future:

America's coal resources are indeed vast—none of the studies claims otherwise. However, during the past century, coal reserves (the portion of total coal resources that can be mined profitably with existing technologies) shrank much faster than could be accounted for by the depletion of those resources through mining. That is because geologists are doing a better job now of taking into account "restrictions" that make most coal impractical to mine—factors having to do with location, depth, seam thickness, and coal quality. In recent years, some nations have reduced their booked coal reserves by 90 percent or more on the basis of new, more realistic surveys.

(snip)

We also know how to store carbon: the petroleum services industry routinely injects CO2 into old oil wells to make it easier to extract the remaining crude. But the quantities of carbon dioxide sequestered this way are trivial when compared with the amounts spewed from coal-burning power plants annually. Gathering and storing two or three billion tons of carbon each year from hundreds of geographically scattered coal power plants will require the construction of an enormous system of pipelines, compressors, and pumps.

(snip)

According to the most recent estimate (from Harvard University's Belfer Center (5), at least 30 percent of the energy produced by burning coal will be needed to run the system for capturing, compressing, pumping, and burying CO2. Therefore any efficiency benefit from gasifying coal at IGCC power plants would be canceled out.

(snip)

How high could coal-based electricity prices go? During the period from 2006 to 2008, prices for some grades of US coal doubled. This year the economic crisis has lowered demand for electricity and thus for coal, and so prices have softened. However, recent experience shows that, even in the absence of serious shortages, coal prices are increasingly subject to dramatic swings.

All energy experts, including Heinberg, talk about low hanging fruit as a useful metaphor. Energy that is the cheapest to pick off the tree is the energy that gets used. In the year 2009, the key is not that we have run out of conventional energy but that we are running out of the low hanging inexpensive fruit that we have grown accustomed to picking for over a hundred years. Even without considering global warming or pollution, coal, along with oil, will only get more expensive. Meanwhile, the cost of wind and solar is getting cheaper and the bang per buck is climbing. The sooner we move toward solar and wind, the faster technological advances will be made and the faster we will move to a far more sensible future.

Even more than oil, coal is the critical issue. More than eighty years ago, the industrial world made the transition from the age of coal to the age of oil. There was a reason: oil was cheap, easier to use, easier to transport and had the advantage of polluting less than coal. Look around. We are blundering back into the coal age. A lot of wealthy, well-connected people think that's grand because of the profits they'll make and because they don't have to live near the coal plants.

One of the ironies of windpower and solar power is that anyone can buy a wind turbine (there are models you can mount on a roof) and anyone can buy a solar panel (Lowe's hardware is bringing out a do-it-yourself solar panel kit—okay, you still need to know what you're doing and there may be some paperwork). Why some Republicans, who pride themselves on their self-reliance and individualism, want to support big impersonal power companies is beyond me. I know, I know, we'll still have big power plants for years to come but relying exclusively on big power plants is a paradigm that is becoming less and less tenable. Like millions of Americans, I don't like it when my power goes out because some speculator is playing games with a power company hundreds of miles away. We need a paradigm that's more reliable, redundant and dispersed.

If we are to change, here's a simple fact: we have hundreds of coal powered plants throughout the country. These plants have a lifetime of 20 to 50 years. Taking these facts into mind, every time a coal plant reaches the end of its life cycle, a conventional coal plant should not be built to replace it. For every two coal power plants that go offline, only one at the same rating should be allowed to be replaced and only by a coal gasification plant or similar technology with carbon capture and storage.

During the coming transitional era, a power plant using natural gas should be built whenever it's difficult to get windpower or solar power to replace the second offline coal power plant. But those gas power plants will also need carbon capture and storage. Because the age of electric cars and plug-ins is coming, probably faster than most people realize, we're going to need more power plants. All the new ones that aren't simply replacing old power plants should be based on alternative energy.

Al Gore, who some people love to vilify largely because they don't handle change very well, suggests that it may be time for a carbon tax. I'm all for it. Eleanor Clift in her Newsweek column notes a poll that suggests people favor a carbon tax over cap and trade by a margin of two to one. Why? Remember those speculators I mentioned above? They're pretty much the same Wall Street characters that Clift mentions.

I suspect the smart thing to do, particularly given the current economic climate, is to institute a carbon tax on the low side and slowly work it up over the next ten to twenty years. Everyone building a new power plant is going to see the future cost of carbon and they'll find that economics will favor other power solutions. In the meantime the government is going to have to do a better job of subsidizing wind and solar projects until the technology and infrastructure is up to speed. Sure, that means borrowing but it'll pay for itself just like a smart business investment pays for itself.

A Whodunit at Port San Luis

2009-12-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

About 18 months ago my wife and I took a trip down to Pismo Beach along the Central Coast of California. A short distance away to the north is Port San Luis, a small harbor with a working pier. A good pier is irresistible and my wife and I kept trading the camera back and forth. I can't tell you which one of us took the picture above or even which ones of those we took later. In any case, as anyone can see, some guys were moored at a working dock conveniently located just beyond the side of the pier.

Last month we returned to find some changes. It's a beautiful area and it's rather cool to see that wildlife is thriving these days. In the picture below you can see some pelicans being followed around by sea gulls and on the right you can see the pier we were heading for. Between the small boat by the pier and the large boats in the distance you can see the working dock, sort of.

Now the next photo just gives an idea of what the area looks like. My wife and I are on the pier looking toward the large boat shown above on the far left side (it's the bait boat and there's a tank next to it). Everything in the picture below, including the bait boat, looks normal. Now the working dock is on the right and out of view. We'll get to that in a second.

Okay, like I said, wildlife has been doing well in the area. Pelicans are recovering from the DDT fiasco of four decades ago. Sea lions are no longer being hunted into extinction. The sea lions are doing so well in fact that people have to be careful. All those blobs stretching out on the working dock in the picture below are sea lions. Obviously, the working dock has been rendered temporarily unavailable.

Now here's a closeup of the sea lions and a sign that gives an indication of what the problem is:

P.S. You can click on the pictures to get a bigger view.

How Many Pollutants Come From Coal?

2009-12-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

There's been so much talk about clean coal in the last year or two that I can only shake my head. There's no such thing, not even close. One could argue that there's such a thing as slightly cleaner coal but that's it.

I find it curious that Republicans use clean coal jargon quite often, but a website for the coal industry doesn't seem to use the phrase as much. What the World Coal Institute talks about is carbon capture and storage. Worldwide, despite all the hype, there appear to be only seven operational sites in the entire world with none in the U.S. (when you go to the site, click on the 'show operational projects' bar). There are several test sites in the U.S. and a number of projects that are planned but the numbers are still low, though the graph maker doesn't miss a trick to make it look like more.

Given that coal is used to generate about half the electricity in the U.S., how many sites are actually going to have carbon capture and storage? And how many of these sites are actually going to work?

Years ago my father was in chemical packaging and some of the finished products were sent to underground storage tanks that were installed in the 1950s. Those tanks were standard for the era and were supposed to last a hundred years. They lasted about 25-35 years before they began leaking into the soil. So who will be around a hundred years from now to make sure the captured carbon dioxide isn't escaping? It's far better to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the first place than to bank on permanent storage.

In a way, with all the focus on carbon dioxide, global warming is helping to create a myth about coal. Take a look at the following paragaph from the World Coal Institute:

The deployment of all energy generating technologies invariably leads to some degree of environmental impact.

(snip)

The use of coal for power generation is not exempt from these impacts and has been associated with a number of environmental challenges, primarily associated with air emissions. Coal has demonstrated the ability to meet such challenges in the past and the expectation is that it will successfully meet future environmental challenges.

Isn't that wonderful? Actually, I've read worse propaganda. Good propaganda admits there's a little bit of a problem but, gee whiz, coal producers are just folks like you and me and they're doing their best.

And yes, I'm perfectly aware of the people who earn a living from coal. In fact, the coal problem is so huge it's not controversial to say coal will continue to be used for many years to come and most people will remain employed for all those years. But there are other jobs and other ways to make money that don't cause the damage that coal does.

Coal is the dirtiest fuel there is, period. "Some degree" of impact doesn't cut it in terms of the history of coal and the damage it does and the enormous damage it will continue to do if we do not develop clear plans to switch to alternative energy.

Let me quote another section from the Institute:

Mined coal is of variable quality and is frequently associated with mineral and chemical material including clay, sand, sulphur and trace elements. Coal cleaning by washing and beneficiation removes this associated material, prepares the coal to customer specifications and is an important step in reducing emissions from coal use.

Coal cleaning reduces the ash content of coal by over 50% resulting in less waste, lower sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions and improved thermal efficiencies, leading to lower CO2 emissions. While coal preparation is standard practice in many countries, greater uptake in developing countries is needed as a low-cost way to improve the environmental performance of coal.

Yes, developing countries should do a better job of using coal (or perhaps not using it if they can find better alternative energy sources), but those same countries use only a fraction of what the U.S. and China use. But let's focus on the sleight of hand encompassing 'coal cleaning'. What is used to clean the coal? Water. Where does that water go? Into our rivers, water tables and oceans. The pollution involved is not small.

Where I come from, trained physicians who are concerned about the impact of pollution have far more credibility than politicians in Washington, Beijing and Copenhagen who take money from Big Coal and Big Oil. Physicians for Social Responsibility is one group of doctors who have made an issue of coal. They have published a medical report, "Coal's Assault on Human Health." They point out that coal impacts health from mining to transporting it to power plants to the actual process of burning to the disposal of the ash. Not pretty. If you go to their site, you can download the full report report (pdf file). Here's a section from Chapter 2: Life Cycle of Coal:

It is dring the combustion phase of coal's lifecycle that our dependence on coal energy exacts the greatest toll on human health. Coal combustion releases over 70 harmful chemicals into the environment and contributes significantly to global warming (see Table 2.2). This section describes the pollutants emitted by coal combustion.

Coal combustion creates both solid and gaseous byproducts. Gas byproducts are emitted into the atmosphere through smokestacks. Some solids go into the atmosphere as well. Other solids are left behind at the plant as solid waste, also called coal ash. Some of the pollutants entering the air stay in the atmosphere for long periods; others fall to the earth and in turn pollute soil and water bodies. Some substances are not directly harmful but undergo chemical reactions in the atmosphere that create harmful secondary pollutants.

(snip)

Notwithstanding local differences in pollutant composition, coal combustion causes pollution nationwide. Though coal supplies roughly 50% of the nation's electricity, it produces a disproportionate share of electric utility-related pollution. Coal plants emit approimately 87% of total utility-related nitrogen oxide pollution, 94% of utility-related nitrogen oxide pollution, and 98% of all utility-related mercury pollution. ... Coal combustion is also responsible for more than 30% of total U.S. carbon dioxide pollution, contributing significantly to global warming.

Uh, what was that again about "...all energy generating technologies invariably leads to some degree of environmental impact"? Coal clearly has far more impact than any other energy producing sector. It's dirty. And always will be. Even without considering global warming, burning coal for our electricity is dirty. Add in global warming and we should be closing down coal plants as alternative energy begins to grow. Not only do we need to get the government to help grow alternative energy faster than our population growth, we need to switch to natural gas as a transition fuel since it burns far cleaner than coal.

Some years ago I was shocked when I learned how much coal is being burned in the United States. An unnoticed irony over the last sixty years is that the use of coal was actually dropping during the 1950s despite the early years of the baby boom and our rising population. There was also a lot of talk in those days about new sources of energy. The United States—and China—need to start walking the talk.

China Needs More Ambitious Alternative Energy Policy

2009-12-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

For all their flaws, the Chinese are now one of the big global players. And yet, allthough they're the third largest economy in the world, they still think of themselves as a third world country—at least when its convenient. Although their earnings per capita are still on the low side, they're burning coal and oil like a modern industrialized country. I'm surprised, therefore, that their energy policy is not more ambitious in terms of lowering emissions and turning more to alternative energy. I've written posts about some of the good things they're doing in the alternative energy field but it's apparent that it's still not nearly enough, at least if I'm reading some statements on their energy policies right. Here's the story from the China Daily:

Han Wenke, director-general of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, said: "By 2050, over one third of the country's total primary energy consumption should come from renewable energy. This is in line with the country's goal of fundamentally changing its energy consumption structure. This will contribute a great deal to environmental protection and help combat climate change."

(snip)

By 2020, the country, through vigorously developing its renewable energy resources, should be able to supply the renewable energy equivalent of more than 600 million tons of standard coal to fuel its robust economic growth. This renewable energy should account for about 15 percent of the country's total primary energy consumption.

Keeping in mind that much of what counts for renewable energy in China is hydroelectric power, 15% renewable by 2020 isn't nearly ambitious enough and taking 30 years to go from 15% to 33% is pathetic. Of course China is growing fast, perhaps too fast to think things through for the future. It can't continue to burn coal at the rate it does and expect to be taken seriously when it talks about limiting global warming emissions.

If a Reuters article is to be believed, the Chinese seem to be claiming that they may be installing too much windpower at the moment:

Wind power generating capacity has surged so fast that policy planners now warn of severe overcapacity in the sector, and dam after dam piled on Chinese rivers distorts water flow, endangers fish and poses a potential earthquake hazard.

First, if windpower is generating too much electricity, they can shut down some power generation from coal (the coal will still be there for the future). But more important, they are going to need more electrical capacity as the world's automotive fleet increasingly converts to hybrids and electric cars. Of course part of the problem with windpower is that it needs some backup system for when wind levels are low. Perhaps during periods of high wind the Chinese can use windpower to pull hydrogen from water and use hydrogen-powered fuel cells to even out the energy use. They could also, for that matter, use windpower to desalinate water for their vast deserts.

While I'm at it, here's a story from Canada the Chinese should give some thought to:

The natural gas industry — long the bedrock of Alberta’s economy — faces major threats amid a fundamental shift south of the border.

Massive stores of shale gas, once beyond the reach of engineers, are now being successfully squeezed out from under Texas and other U.S. states.

Now Medicine Hat, the unofficial heart of Alberta’s natural gas industry for more than a century, is being battered by this shale storm, along with dozens of other Alberta communities.

With all the money the Chinese have these days they should help build a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to Canada's west coast and ship natural gas to China. That way they can use less of their coal and emit far less greenhouse gases since natural gas is much cleaner than coal and emits about half the amount of carbon dioxide.

Wait a minute! There are already natural gas pipelines from Canada to the U.S. Why aren't we using that natural gas to close down some coal plants ourselves? Make sense to me.

More on Journalism and Blogging: Murdoch and Huffington

2009-12-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

Arianna Huffington had an excellent post the other day discussing the Internet and its relationship to a revolution in news. I'll get to that in a moment.

One of the reasons many of us took to the Internet beginning with the 2000 election was the failure of the big newspapers and networks to keep up with the news and actually report it.

Of course it continues even today. Chris Matthews after Obama's speech showed clearly that he misunderstood Obama when the President said, "...we are not as young—and perhaps not as innocent—as we were when Roosevelt...." Matthews during his 'analysis' exploded that he personally didn't feel guilty about anything. Uh, poor Chris didn't seem to get that Obama was not talking about innocence and guilt, he was talking about the greater naivete, inexperience and idealism we as a nation once had.

Now I would rather have Chris Matthews around than not—not even counting Fox News, there are worse journalists out there—but a lot of us need more perspective, more voices and at times we need to locate the reporter in the room who actually has the facts rather than an opinion (Chris Matthews also blundered by calling West Point the enemy camp. It was such a stupid comment that he's apologized).

But besides inadequate analysis, there's also a sea of noise out there. Steve Vockrodt of True/Slant has a great headline that doesn't require reading much further: "WHICH WINS WEDSNESDAY NEWS BATTLE: TIGER WOODS ADMISSION OR OBAMA AFGHANISTAN POLICY?"

The other ridiculous news story of the week, which has received far more news than it's worth, is the story of the publicity seeking White House gate crashers. There are, unfortunately, news sites who want me to pay for reading such silliness.

Look at these headlines for December 3 2009 that I found on the Internet:

"Somalia Graduation Day Suicide Attack"

"Putin Drops Hint About Run for Russian Presidency"

"Gates: Afghanistan Surge Could Require More Than 30,000 Troops"

"Blast Hits Iranian Pilgrims' Bus in Syria"

"Rabbi Urges More Tolerance for Muslims in Europe"

"US Envoy to Visit Pyongyang on Asia-Russia Tour"

"Bhopal: 25 Years of Poison"

There are more headlines out there but how many of just these stories will appear in local newspapers or on the late news? Not many. In fact my local paper has gotten so thin that my wife and I decided to subscribe to The New York Times three days a week. Keep that in mind when Arianna Huffington is talking about Rupert Murdoch's parochial thinking about the Internet. Here's an excerpt from Arianna's post but it's worth reading the whole thing:

In his speech this morning, Rupert Murdoch confused aggregation with wholesale misappropriation. Wholesale misappropriation is against the law -- and he has legal redress against that already. Aggregation, on the other hand, within the fair use exceptions to copyright law is part of the web's DNA. Period.

At HuffPost, aggregation goes along with a tremendous amount of original content including original reporting and over 250 original blog posts a day. And we love it when someone links to one of our posts, or excerpts a small amount and links back to us.

Most sites understand the value of this and the way the link economy operates. It's why HuffPost gets hundreds of requests from news outlets asking us to feature their material and link back to their site. They understand that the web is not a zero-sum game and that consumers love the freedom to be able to follow where their interests -- and the offshoots of a story -- take them.

I suspect Rupert Murdoch is more motivated by wealth and power than he is by good journalism. Yes, he's a conservative but there are conservative news outlets out there that don't pursue nonsense with such glee. I once saw Rupert Murdoch in New York surrounded by his sycophants trying to get his ear. It was apparent he was thriving on the arrangement. He's partially responsible for the tabloid journalism we've seen for some years now and it's good the Internet provides a way to push back while also getting informed.

I'll add one last point: I find it exhausting to read everything that's on The Huffington Post. That's okay because I don't have to. I take a quick look at it in the morning—that's how I found today's post—and move on to my other favorites. If I missed something hot, somebody somewhere will have a post on some must-see offering on HuffPost. That's the new paradigm.

The Peugeot BB1 Four-Passenger Electric Car

2009-11-30T22:44:00.000-08:00

My Italian correspondent and frequent technology adviser, BT, says if he had the money he'd be tempted to buy the new Peugeot Electric Car which is now being produced in France. He's an avid user of trains and bicycles so I'm not all that sure how much he needs a car. Then again, he's a photographer and maybe hauling around all that equipment year after year is wearing thin.

Here's a link to some photos and videos of the new BB1. Even before I read the description, I thought it looked like two scooters bolted to a frame with some metal wrapped around. But it's clearly a head turner.

Now the BB1 is a four-passenger vehicle but the Smart electric car has been around for a year or so (it looks like it's based on the two passenger Daimler Smart car). I've spotted four or five Smart cars around the Bay Area (there's a gasoline version but at least two I saw are confirmed electric types). I've been tracking down information on the Smart car and I'm surprised there isn't a whole lot available, though here's an article from Forbes and here's something of a fan site.

Hybrid Technologies has been responsible for making successful conversions and sales but Daimler appears to be going ahead with its own version of the Smart electric car, though it won't actually sell them until probably 2012.

I notice a number of car companies are testing electric cars in various markets. Whether electric cars are made in Europe, the United States or East Asia, I hope they get support, particularly from various governments. Actually all of this is going to take time to sort out. The smaller electric cars are probably going to be replaced by medium-sized vehicles in five to ten years. True hybrids will also be in the mix. A lot will depend on battery technology (that is improving very rapidly), improvements in electric grids and undoubtedly the price of oil.

We're entering a new era and it might be a close call. But there's some room for optimism. A hundred years ago, in 1909, the auto industry was just gearing up for the modern age—a lot of improvements were made in ten years.

Sarah Palin Is Consistent....Sometimes

2009-11-30T15:41:00.000-08:00

Since there are more important things to talk about than Sarah Palin, I promise this will be the last post discussing her for a bit. The problem is that watching Sarah Palin is often like watching a train wreck. Of course for eight years George W. Bush was something of a train wreck so one can't entirely ignore Palin.

What caught my eye over the weekend is this story on Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin dropped out of a 5k race on Thanksgiving Day in Kennewick, Wash. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor quit the race because she wanted to avoid the crowds that were waiting for her at the end...

For all I know Palin's reason for quitting the race is legitimate. But the word that caught my eye was 'quit.' Every time she fails to show up for an event, every time she drops out, every time she ditches an interview, even every time she changes her mind, the tag of quitter is going to follow her.

And yet a politician should have the right to change his or her mind. It would have saved our nation a great deal of grief and trouble if George W. Bush had changed his mind a few times.

What Sarah Palin and George W. Bush have in common is an unwillingness to engage the world as it is rather than as what they believe it to be based on the extremes of their ideology and prejudices. Part of the reason President Bush lasted eight years is that he had enormous power at his disposal. Given all the issues that Bush should have been dealing with, he was a bit like an incompetent general who has such overwhelming force at his beck and call that his many blunders left him weaker but still standing at the end of eight years. Make no mistake, Bush left our economy weakened and our position in the world weakened through his steadfast refusal to change his mind at critical junctures.

Thanks to Karl Rove, George W. Bush was able to put the far right into his corner and get them out to vote. Sarah Palin, despite her many shortcomings, doesn't need Karl Rove. She has her own radar for right wing nonsense. That alone is enough to make her dangerous. That's why she was selected by John McCain. It's ironic, by the way, that McCain got deservedly labeled as erratic when in fact he's considerably more steadfast than Palin.

The bottom line is that despite all the jokes and silliness surrounding Palin—often invited by her actions, words and lack of knowledge—there is a possibility she will be the next president of the United States. If by some fluke she is elected and continues her pattern, she will be feckless and erratic while her handlers will insist she has a plan and knows her mind. And our country will drift yet another four years.

It would be easy to dismiss Palin out of hand except for one thing: many American progressives are exhausted. They have been fighting for eight years to restore at the very minimum some sense of balance in our system. Many progressives are acutely aware of what has been lost under Bush. For many, Obama is not, so far, the beacon of light many hoped he would be. It would be a mistake, of course, for progressives to throw in the towel. This is a generational fight, one hardly understood by a media fascinated more by how much their colleagues are going up or down in the pecking order than by the vast changes now going on in the world.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace notes that vast changes are already underway:

The world’s economic balance of power is shifting dramatically. By 2050, the United States and Europe, long the traditional leaders of the global economy, will be joined in economic size by emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. China will become the world’s largest economy in 2032, and grow to be 20 percent larger than the United States by 2050.

If the United States cannot get its act together, we may see that change moved up to 2020. China has made a number of smart economic decisions in recent years but they are still generations away from making smart decisions on human rights and other issues as well. It may not seem like it at times but progressive politics will matter for many years to come.

Taking On Right Wing Mythologies

2009-11-24T14:47:00.000-08:00

Are there still rational conservatives? Yes, you can sometimes see them on TV: they have a look of astonishment, they chuckle as if they're not hearing right, then their jaw drops open followed by a bout of spluttering until they can't help themselves and say, "You can't be serious..." to some right wing talking head. Of course they then worry about getting a call from Rush Limbaugh or some other right wing enforcer. It is an unfortunate fact that rational conservatives have allowed themselves to be shoved aside by the right wingers who clearly are dominating the Republican Party these days.

I'm always astounded at the mythologies on the far right. Sarah Palin's admirers, for example, look at her as if she's some sort of savior. I noted some months ago that she probably quit her job as governor of Alaska in order to avoid ethics problems and otherwise cash in. And that's exactly what she's doing.

Why is it so hard for so many Americans to recognize that Sarah Palin likes two things: attention and money? For her, governing Alaska was obviously a bit of a bother. So she quit. Nevertheless, she is taken seriously by the far right as a potential candidate for president. Why? Largely because she effectively feeds their mythologies and is never particularly bothered by facts .

One of the more shameless charges made by Sarah Palin was the fiction that death panels would be the result of passing health care reform. The reality for some time has been that if you do not have health insurance and you have a health problem, the odds of your survival are already diminished without any panel of any sort being convened. Health insurance companies used to be focused on providing service. Now they're focused on money. That of course is something Sarah Palin can understand.

Given all the politics that has gone on, Sarah Palin is a mere sideshow compared to all the other mythology surrounding health care reform. And the right wingers conveniently ignore who is supplying much of that mythology: insurance companies and others making obscene profits. Naturally any number of lobbyists, pundits and political consultants are trotting out slick conservative arguments, many of which were used against Medicare in one form or another more than forty years ago. Fortunately those arguments did not succeed in the 1960s. We can only hope those arguments will not succeed in the current environment.

S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion does a terrific job of addressing some of this. Here's just one part of his response to a right wing commenter trotting out a familiar and misleading argument about moral hazard:

Did Social Security cause people to quit saving/investing on their own for retirement? If you think so, explain the explosive growth in mutual funds and 401k’s over the last 25 years. Has the fact Medicare gives most of the 65-and-older set a chance to buy health insurance they can begin to afford ruined insurance companies’ chances to make money off these people? Hardly, as all the supplementary and Medicare Advantage plans make clear.

Give his post a read.

Obama, China and the American Press

2009-11-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush left the White House a failure. He also left the nation in free fall. There are many things I wish Obama would do and many things I wish he would do faster. But he faces problems. First, he faces an obstructionist Republican Party. Even within his own party, there are moderates who have fallen behind in their understanding of how much things have changed and how much we need to do.

Day after day, Obama must deal on the one hand with millions of Americans who are angry at what happened in the last eight years and on the other with millions who are angry period. He also faces an American press that is barely in touch with what is going on out in the real world.

The truth is that the United States has not faced so many problems since World War Two. Another truth is that many of those problems are of our own making or have worsened from years of neglect. Bush's go-it-alone foreign policy was based on fantasy but it was pursued for eight years and cannot be undone in a matter of months, though Obama has done much to repair the damage done by Bush.

I was disgusted this week that so many news sources spent more time talking about Sarah Palin and her book than Obama's trip to Asia. Sarah Palin knows nothing and has accomplished nothing but her tour trumped Obama's tour.

Now I realize that for the last twenty years news stories on foreign policy trips usually start out with the phrase, "Although producing no breakthroughs on key issues...." But talking eventually does lead to results and not talking usually leads to deterioration in relations. The reality is that private talks always clear away misunderstandings and facilitate future cooperation. The above quote, by the way, is from an AP story about our ambassador to China, a reasonably rational Republican. Here's what Jon Huntsman said:

"I attended all those meetings that President Obama had with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao," Huntsman said, referring to the Chinese president and premier.

"I've got to say some of the reporting I saw afterward was off the mark. I saw sweeping comments about things that apparently weren't talked about, when they were discussed in great detail in the meeting."

Although the Chinese stagecraft their news, one important aspect of Obama's visit is that it was the top story in China. Obama's visit was taken seriously by the Chinese even if many American journalists preferred to minimize what happened or prefer to say that Obama isn't effectively dealing with China, whatever that means.

I have no illusions about China. It is still an empire, it has a poor human rights record, it is nationalistic (one shouldn't ignore the symbolism of its pageants at the last Olympics), it is often plagued by corruption and it is still an autocratic system even if it is more benign than it once was. In addition, China is sometimes paternalistic toward its minorities, sometimes indifferent but there is never equal footing for minorities. At the end of the day, however, through deliberate policies, blunders and inattention, we are tied to China as never before. For one thing, they own a significant portion of our debt. And they make a great number of our goods, often through contracts with American manufacturing companies.

But at the end of the day, the United States is still the most powerful country in the world. Some quick graphs can be found at the BBC comparing the U.S. and China. Note, for example, that U.S. military spending is more than 5 times what China spends.

James Fallows at The Atlantic has a series of posts on Obama's visit. In one post, he talks about Chris Matthews who seems too often to follow the mood of grumpy pundits rather than finding out what actually happened:

...people have sent clips of today's talk show by my friend and former colleague Chris Matthews, which went in super-heavy for the "Obama humiliated in Asia" line. With all good will to Chris, I fear that this show today, notably the comments by the Washington Post's reporter from the Asia trip, will be the new symbol of exactly the kind of instant-analysis that, in my view, fundamentally misrepresents what happened on the trip.

In another post, Fallows writes:

...the before-and-after analyses from a private client newsletter by Damien Ma, Divya Reddy, and Nicholas Consonery of the Eurasia Group, reinforcing the idea that what actually happened on the trip was almost exactly what informed observers expected to happen, and not some humiliating disappointment.

It shouldn't be overlooked that the operative word in Fallows post is: informed.

To be honest, Obama could do a better job of courting the press—one of the many books of Roosevelt's press conferences would make great night reading. But the press has a responsibility to get out of the 24 hours news cycle and actually do news. Our country is sagging in large part because too many people simply don't understand what's going on. Let's face it, it's easier and cheaper to follow Sarah Palin around than to keep up on foreign policy and do some behind the scenes reporting.

It's ironic that there are writers who write because they want to better understand the world around them. It takes attention, a bit of reading and experience, lots and lots of practice and a bit of thought to use writing as an analytic tool. When I was younger I thought I noticed journalists that operated that way. Certainly Edward R. Murrow was like that.

Murrow was probably the last major journalist who could effectively analyze and explain things to Americans; he did an amazing job during the crises of the 1930s and 40s. We have journalists who can do that but they're not always in a position to be heard. Even very good journalists like Rachel Maddow can sometimes get distracted putting out fires instead of explaining the world, though I'm happy to see that she's getting better at that on her program. (I'm not a journalist, by the way, though I've been writing for forty years and have been working of late to add more tools to my utility box.)

I'm going to borrow from Fallows one more time but it's just a quote from Obama—from his opening statement at the controversial Shanghai Town Meeting:

...America will always speak out for these core principles around the world. We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles that we stand for are unique to our nation. These freedoms of expression and worship -- of access to information and political participation -- we believe are universal rights. They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities -- whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation. Indeed, it is that respect for universal rights that guides America's openness to other countries; our respect for different cultures; our commitment to international law; and our faith in the future.

Contrary to the opinions of the usual pundits, this does not sound like a "humiliated" or "humbled" president. We are in interesting times. I write often of the American Crisis. That crisis did not begin last year with the economic meltdown. It's been building for years. It was blatantly apparent during Hurricane Katrina on multiple levels from the effect it had on oil supplies to the dismal response to fellow Americans in distress.

Like many Democrats, I worry about how Obama is doing. From time to time, he surprises me and I realize, okay, he is paying attention. I'm going to stick my neck out and say maybe there's more to the Asia trip than meets the eye. Consider the following story from Bloomberg:

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said Chinese growth is likely to be hurt by an absence of consumer demand from trading partners such as the U.S.

“The Chinese, I suspect, will have a bubble of their own to confront,” Gross said...

At the moment, the fates of the United States and China are tied together. China has been hearing conflicting advice from around Asia but they recognize that they and the U.S. have mutual interests. Whether we like it or not, we need each other. Let's see where events lead in the next few months. I'll have more to say.

Ronald Reagan Was Wrong about Health Care---in 1961

2009-11-19T18:08:00.000-08:00

I can't help emphasizing that I've known honest Republicans all my life. But with people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rudy Giuliani and a hoard of Congressional Republicans in the back pocket of the health insurance industry, honest Republicans are a bit overwhelmed these days.

One of my favorite commentators on the national scene is Cynthia Tucker. She quotes Nicolas Kristoff today but she also added old video of Ronald Reagan railing against Medicare. Little do people remember.

I know Ronald Reagan was charismatic and many voters found him reassuring but the truth is that he often didn't know what he was talking about. America's economic decline can be traced to Reagan's first year in office.

The Politics of Alternative Energy

2009-11-13T23:06:00.000-08:00

Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin has written a book. Unlike Barack Obama, Sarah Palin rarely knows what she's talking about. When Rachel Maddow does a major segment on Palin's bizarre interpretation of her own history, there's not much to add. I only mention Palin because she is proof of concern raised recently in a Newsweek article by Daniel Lyons when he wonders aloud whether the U.S. is doomed to drift along in the Twilight Zone:

It's not because our scientists aren't brilliant. They are. But look at what they're up against: a noisy babble of morons and Luddites, the "Drill, baby, drill" crowd, the birthers, and tea-party kooks who have done their best to derail health-care reform and will do the same to any kind of energy policy.

The real danger of course is that the United States will fall behind in technology after leading in numerous fields for most of the last hundred years or so. Yes, we still make technological advances but there are danger signs, the biggest being how little the federal government has spent on basic scientific research in the last thirty years. We spent more as a percentage of our GDP from 1940 to 1980 and it paid enormous dividends.

We also used to pay more money to improve our infrastructure. We were willing to think of the future and build roads and decent schools. We have also from time to time been able to rise to the occasion in the face of changing conditions. In the 1970s we knew we were facing a long-term energy problem and we actually took steps to deal with it. Then Ronald Reagan was elected and we turned to the fantasy that the markets always know best. And we did very little to improve our energy situation with sustainable solutions.

The Wikipedia map on the right shows how Europeans responded to the energy crisis. Today, a far greater percentage of their energy infrastructure is in the form of alternative energy than it was in 1980. Germany and Denmark, in particular, seem committed to converting completely to alternative energy over the next 20 years.

Technically, the U.S. produces about 7% of its energy from several forms of alternative energy, but most of it is either hydropower or biomass. For the most part, hydropower was harnessed decades ago and there's very little room for expansion in terms of conventional dam projects (harnessing tides may be another story though).

As for biomass, it has a useful role but U.S. production methods are inefficient and sometimes lead to more carbon dioxide production than simply using gasoline. If we only count windpower, solar power and geothermal, alternative energy in 2006 accounted for less than 1% of U.S. energy use. Things are improving but not nearly fast enough.

Clearly one way to address our growing energy problems as well as global warming is to cut down on the use of fossil fuels for driving cars. Hybrids, plug-ins and pure electric cars are all a step in that direction. But of course there's a problem as pointed out in a post on earth2tech:

“Without a doubt,” the group writes, “electric and plug-in hybrid cars can help reduce CO2 emissions and oil consumption.” But surprise!: Electric vehicles won’t solve climate change. The cars don’t produce tailpipe emissions (thus, the common shorthand of “zero emission vehicle”), but they are only as clean as their electricity supply.

Electric cars powered by coal-burning power plants are still more efficient than gasoline but this is no long-term solution. Even the potential of natural gas from shale is not a long-term solution though it is likely to provide time for transition. The real danger at the moment is a return to the complacency of the early 1980s. Then again, it is sobering to realize that we would be far along the road to energy sustainability if from the 1980s to the present we had taken our energy problems more seriously—as the Europeans did.

Poor People and the Price of Water

2009-11-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

Lima, Peru is the 13th largest city in the world and yet it gets under 5 inches of rain a year. So poor people still get water, right? At least a little? Uh, not exactly. At least a million residents have no running water.

In a mostly feel good article about one lucky neighborhood that received assistance with installing plastic water catchers—nets that catch water drops from the fog—I was struck by this sentence:

Buying water, trucked in by resellers, costs nine times what it does in richer urban areas, precisely in places where no one can afford it.

I repeatedly come across a wide range of sources that note how expensive some things can be in the poorer neighborhoods of Third World countries. Actually, I come across the same kind of statistics in rich countries. A classic example are poor neighborhoods in the U.S. where residents without transportation have to buy food at small markets or liquor stores where prices are inflated compared to large supermarkets in middle-class suburbs. It's a strange world.

A Thought Experiment on Global Warming

2009-11-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

Hard numbers tend to put people to sleep. But numbers can tell a story. Imagine a warlord of some faraway country who's awakened in the middle of the night and told his enemy has sent 100 soldiers across the border. "You awakened me for a hundred soldiers? Take care of it and don't bother me!" says the warlord before falling back asleep. An hour later, another aide comes in and wakens the warlord to tell him 500 soldiers have crossed the border. "What? Can't my pitiful generals take care of 500 soldiers? Wake me when a real army comes or I'll have your head!" Three hours later a third aide comes in. "How many?" growls the warlord. "One million, sir." The third aide finally has the full attention of the warlord.

The scenario, by the way, has happened in the past. It pretty much happened to Stalin in 1941 when Hitler sent his troops across the border. Stalin first refused to believe the early reports and pretty much panicked hours later when he realized how big the invasion was. Stalin eventually threw the Germans back but without the help of the United States, it is highly probable that Hitler's invasion would have succeeded.

Today many people can't believe global warming is real. One part of the problem is that numbers are clearly putting people to sleep. But another part of the problem—besides coal and petroleum companies with vested interests—is that there are people who can't believe humans can have that much impact on the environment. I find this odd since there are plenty of examples of human impact if one simply takes a good look around. I've seen, for example, large deforested areas that once held logging communities back in the 1930s. Those communities are now ghost towns so old and neglected there isn't much left of them.

My grandmother many years ago showed me any number of areas in Southern California that used to be wetlands before they were drained and turned into large housing developments. It takes willful ignorance to pretend that we haven't had a major impact on biological life. We have driven many species to extinction or near extinction. We have now been over-harvesting the world's oceans for a number of years. But even by the 1960s, the average person ought to have known we were having an impact on fish populations. Why? Because many types of fish people were catching were considerably smaller than the ones caught in the 1920s.

In California, it's almost startling to realize that many of the mining areas famous during the Gold Rush haven't produced significant ore for over a hundred years.

Actually humans have been having an impact for a very long time. The pyramids have been visible from space for thousands of years. Today, from space, one can see smog covering many large areas around the world.

For some reason, many examples of human impact get ignored. So I'm going to suggest a thought experiment that might suggest just how much influences humans have on the earth. Thought experiments are just illustrations and after I present the following thought experiment, I'll add some sensible qualifications.

First, we have to start with some numbers. In 2008, humans consumed at least 474,000,000 terajoules of energy. Other estimates are in the same ballpark but this number comes from various published sources (though it does not include minor sources of energy such as burning firewood). The important thing to know is that 80-90% of the consumed energy has come from burning various kinds of fossil fuels. It's not a quaint metaphor to say we live in the age of oil.

Now there are 6.8 billion people in the world and maybe it's not all that amazing that so many people would produce so many terajoules. But consider this: the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 produced some 60 terajoules of energy. That's a tiny fraction of the energy humans now produce in a year. The largest hydrogen bomb the United States exploded was a bit more than 45,000 terajoules but that's still a very tiny percentage of yearly energy production.

Let's look at this another way. At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union had in excess of 20,000 nuclear weapons. The yield of the weapons ranged from 1 kiloton up to something like 15-45 megatons of dynamite. If we assume an average size of 100 kilotons, the destructive yield of 20,000 nuclear weapons is 6,000,000 terajoules. That is still less than 2 percent of the energy humans produce and consume in a year.

Now many global warming naysayers say humans don't have enough impact on the climate to affect global warming. So now for the thought experiment. It's actually just the reverse of a thought experiment that was done some thirty years ago. Scientists asked what if 20,000 nuclear weapons were released in a massive all-out nuclear war. The affect on the climate was interesting. It was argued at first that all-out nuclear war would lead to a nuclear winter lasting two years. The reason was diminished sunlight as a result of all the dirt and debris from the explosion thrown up in the air as well as all the smoke from the ensuing fires. However, later calculations showed that the result would only be a kind of nuclear autumn lasting a few months. Nuclear war of such size of course would create an unimaginable level of destruction. Notice that exploding 20,000 nuclear weapons would not raise the temperature of the earth in the ensuing days (at least not at first). That's because most of the heat would be radiated into space but the debris would have the effect of blocking out sunlight.

As it happens, heat is also supposed to escape into space when we release all that heat from burning fossil fuels. To a large extent that's exactly what happens even now. Except that greenhouse gases are trapping a certain percentage of escaping heat and reflecting it back to earth.

There is a possible though far-fetched way that humans could accelerate global warming with only a tiny percentage of our annual energy production—not that anybody in their right mind would do it. But we're talking about a thought experiment. If 20,000 nuclear weapons were sent to Greenland for use in late spring or summer, a geologist with knowledge of glaciers and the specific underlying drainage basins working together with a demolition expert could probably figure out where to explode the weapons to release somewhere around a third of the ice pack. This would be sufficient to raise the world's sea levels by seven feet. Even if the released radiation is discounted—which of course it can't—the result of the higher sea level alone would be devasting within days, if not hours. In addition, there would be very little in the way of fires and most of the material that would enter the atmosphere would be water. It is probable that the remaining ice would melt at an accelerated rate thus eventually raising sea levels even further.

Now this is just a thought experiment to show how just a tiny fraction of the energy we use every year could be channeled so that the physically world would dramatically change. Just as no one in their right mind would launch an all-out nuclear war, no one in their right mind would send 20,000 nuclear weapons to melt a third of Greenland ice sheet. When we understand the possible consequences of our actions, there are certain things human beings do not do. Let me repeat that: there are certain things human beings do not do.

Every year the evidence of global warming grows stronger, not weaker. When any corporation talks about cleaning up the environment, find out if they're simply exporting their excess carbon dioxide or even their pollution to a third world country. Most global warming naysayers are funded by coal companies and the oil corporations. These are the same people who have taken years and years to clean up their own pollution in other areas involving their operations. When there are oil spills, the first response of many oil companies is to call the lawyers before they call the clean-up specialists. The climate doesn't pay much attention to lawyers. If humans do certain things, there are consequences. That's just the way it is. It is the early 21st century and it's time for all of us to bite off some responsibility. It begins by agreeing there are certain things human being do not do.

Curious Swift Boat Article about Cato Economist

2009-10-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

If the United States had spent the last thirty years converting to alternative energy and maximizing energy efficiency, we would now be in excellent shape. But a majority of American voters in 1980 decided Ronald Reagan and his emphasis on deregulation and laissez faire economics were the answer to our problems.

Of course there were many contradictions in Reagan's policies. As an example, Reagan pretty much ignored enforcement of antitrust laws, which in turn dampened competition. As a result, we saw a feeding frenzy of mergers and monopolistic behavior in the 1980s. Needless to say, a number of companies "too big to fail" were created (though more of that came later).

Of course Reagan's policies could never change the fundamental fact that America's oil reserves are finite. Despite a boost from Alaska's North Slope, oil production in the United States continued to fall and these days we now pay an onerous premium for foreign oil. Somehow it rarely gets mentioned that 99% of our taxes stay at home but the same can't be said of our payments to foreign oil producers.

Some Republicans who ought to know better suggest we ought to "drill, baby, drill." It's now 2009 and we have considerably less oil than in the early 1970s when our domestic oil output reached its maximum. We can't significantly reduce our payments to foreign oil producers by trying to increase our own oil production. Even if it were technically possible to increase our production significantly, that would simply delay for a few years a dramatic increase in payments to those same foreign oil companies.

The only way we can ensure our future energy security is to launch a massive number of solar and wind projects on a scale somewhat comparable to the number of planes and ships we built during World War II. We can certainly manage in ten to twenty years what we managed during five years of wartime.

It's pathetic that we insist on developing tar sands when most wind turbines now being manufactured provide far more energy on initial energy invested than do tar sands. Not only are Republicans insisting on extending the horse and buggy age, but the horse and buggies they're protecting are expensive. In fact, oil continues to have a double cost: the expensive cost we pay today, and the expensive cost we'll be paying in the years ahead to clean up the mess left behind.

In 2009, conservatism is dead as far as having any significantly useful ideas but Republicans still have a noise machine and there are still millions of Americans with short memories. Swift Boaters like Jerome Corsi take advantage of people who either don't (or can't) do their homework or who want very much to engage in wishful thinking.

On the conservative site, World Net Daily , Corsi has an article about Julian Simon, an economist at Cato (nowadays that's not much of a recommendation). I'm just going to quote two paragraphs which give the gist of what passes for serious thinking:

Oil remains so abundant that it is unlikely the world will ever run out, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

(snip)

"Simon's energy resource analysis essentially maintains that we will be running automobiles with nuclear batteries long before we run out of oil," Corsi wrote. "Another point consistent with Simon's analysis is that technologies have been developed permitting the clean burning of coal, while coal resources in the United States yet remain among the most abundant on the earth. In the final analysis, nuclear power is the final inexhaustible energy resource.

Right-wing thinking never takes long to contradict itself. Oil will last forever. Uh, if it doesn't, we'll have nuclear batteries.

Needless to say, we need real energy policies, not fantasies.

Global Warming, Polls and Know-Nothingism

2009-10-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

Poll numbers go up and down. During last year's presidential elections, poll numbers could vary by ten points in the last six weeks before the election. In addition to fluctuations due to sampling size, polls can vary because of what candidates do, events in the world, what methods and questions pollsters are using and sometimes simply because of the contrariness of respondents. But most polls showed that Barack Obama was going to win the presidency. It's not hard to argue that in politics, polls matter.

Admittedly, when it comes to polls about such things as whether or not one believes in global warming, the truth is that the physical world doesn't pay much attention. The ice keeps melting, the average temperatures keep climbing.

Fortunately, although most scientists believe humans are causing global warming, they also have good reason to believe that humans may be able to do something about it. Here, polls matter. A majority of Americans still believe global warming is real. That's a good thing if we are to head off disaster in coming years. If you believe there's a problem, and you discover you have the capacity to deal with the problem, you might be able to stop it or at least slow it down. Of course, the longer we go without doing much, the more difficult it will be to deal with global warming.

So we ought to be concerned that a recent poll suggests global warming naysayers may be having an effect. Here's the story from The Boston Globe:

The number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the earth is warming is at its lowest point in three years, and the number who see the situation as a serious problem has also declined, according to a survey released yesterday.

And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the United States and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.

This is important news since it tells us Congress, President Obama, newspapers and various other news outlets need to find better ways to get the message across that global warming is a major threat and that it requires global cooperation and leadership. It is a fact, at least for a few more years, that the only leader out there that can provide world leadership is the United States.

But there's a segment of our population that wants to play ostrich on a wide range of issues, including global warming. Actually, one of the disappointing things about this era are the number of people who offer up trivial arguments or who clearly show they haven't done much homework before issuing an opinion. Here's an example that by the end borders on the silly:

If there is no arctic ice the Northwest Passage opens up for shipping, at least it will be open in the summer if professor Wadhams is to be believed. This will cut from one to two weeks off the travel time for shipments of material goods traveling between Europe and Asia. Rather than having to round the Cape of Good Hope or weather the Magellan Straits, vessels can sail a more direct and shorter route across the north pole.

The author has a point but the point ignores the larger picture. We'll get to that in a moment, but here's something the author said in an earlier article:

The news reports are full of it: arctic temperatures are the highest in the last 2,000 years – big hairy deal, and probably incorrect to boot.

I call this the Fox News style of argument: the news is not important and even if it is, it's probably not accurate. Technically, it's an example of two kinds of denial (with a little attitude thrown in) but mostly it's muddle. There are other kinds of denial and they are found frequently on the far right, and on Fox News.

Let's go back to the author's most recent article:

Oh but the alarmists say that sea levels will rise if the arctic ice disappears. Not really. The arctic sea ice floats on water. Any melting of this ice will have no effect on sea levels. You can check this out in your own kitchen. Put an ice cube in an empty glass and then fill the glass to the brim with water. Wait until the ice cube melts. Did any water spill out of the glass? No, so why should we expect different results from melting the floating sea ice in the arctic?

The problem with this argument is that it pretends to counter an argument that in fact does not exist. No reputable scientist and no one who has bothered to inform themselves on the arctic ice cap and its relationship to global warming say that the melting of the ice cap alone will raise ocean levels. But the melting ice in the ocean is direct evidence of warming, at least as it is measured over a number of years. Obviously, if the Arctic Ocean is warming, so is the atmosphere and the surrounding land.

When scientists speak of the risk for rising sea levels, the immediate focus is on places like Greenland. Three-fourths of Greenland is in the Arctic Circle. And it is generally growing warmer. The ice sheet on Greenland is enormous. If the glaciers melt and all that water ends up in the drink, it will raise the level of the ocean. That's a physical fact you can bank on.

Yes, the melting arctic ice appears to be giving the world a new ocean route, but the price will be extraordinarily disruptive if it also leads to Greenland losing much of its ice. Even if the ocean rises only two or three feet, tens of millions of people around the world will have to move. Trillions of dollars of damage will be done to economies around the world, including the United States.

One of the problem I have with global warming naysayers is that the evidence for global warming in the last three years has grown stronger, not weaker. If the models are correct, the last thing we need to do is throw even more carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But that's exactly what we're already doing. The world is turning increasingly toward heavily polluting heavy crude, tar sands and coal. We're at a crux and we need more people who can explain what's going on.

Here's an interview with Henry Pollack, a scientist who, along with others, shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore. I'll end today's post with just one question and answer:

You talk at one point about the argument some have made that CO2 will boost agriculture, make winters shorter, and generally make life better. You call that argument "parochial and simplistic." It seems to me that many of climate contrarians' talking points similarly seize on part of the story to appeal to a kind of know-nothingism. How can complicated data win out over these efforts?

You have to create analogies that help people understand better. In the "contra" mentality, they see science as a long chain of evidence and that if they can break one link in the chain, the whole thing is going to collapse.

But it's not a chain with links in it; it's like a web hammock: Even if you snap one strand, the hammock doesn't fall apart, it's still filled when many other strands of evidence.

Some people say, "This must be part of a natural cycle." Well, that's true, there certainly was climate change in before there were people. But that doesn't mean that all climate change today is due to natural causes.

The analogy that I use is to ask the question, Were there ever forest fires before there were people? We know that lightning can cause forest fires, but that does not imply that all forest fires today are caused by lightning. And, just because there are natural causes [for climate change], it does not mean that today those are the only factors that are operating. There are almost 7 billion of us now; collectively, humans are the largest agents of geological and climatological changes. We're moving earth, we're clearing forests, we're changing ocean chemistry, and, incidentally, we're also changing the climate.

Alternative Energy: Beware the Gee Whiz Factor

2009-10-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

There are several areas in the United States that lead in energy research. Three that come to mind are Massachussetts, California and North Carolina (see last post). If we are to deal with the real threats of fossil fuel depletion, increasing pollution and global warming, we not only need useful new ideas and technology, we also need to see those ideas implemented in the real world.

I would like to think President Obama gets it when it comes to the need for alternative energy. Earlier today, he gave a speech on alternative energy at MIT. The Boston Globe has the story:

“Extraordinary energy research is being conducted at this institute,’’ he said, mentioning windows that generate electricity, viruses engineered to build batteries, more efficient lighting systems, and “innovative engineering that will make it possible for offshore wind power plants to deliver electricity even when the air is still.’’

(snip)

“From China to India, from Japan to Germany, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to produce and use energy,’’ he said. “The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.’’

Obama has already done far more for alternative energy than his predecessor. Of course that isn't saying much since both the previous president and vice president were oil men with a narrow view of the universe and little interest in science.

But I guess I'm becoming a worrier. The end of the Boston Globe article ended with a paragraph that might be called the gee whiz factor:

Today, the state is on track to have roughly 30 megawatts of wind generating capacity, or enough to power nearly 7,900 homes, and 40 megawatts of solar generating capacity, enough to power from 6,000 to 8,000 homes, installed by the end of Patrick’s term.

Okay, I have to admit I'm a sucker for gee whiz statistics. Nevertheless, a reality check is necessary here and I'll get to it in a moment. I just want to point out that installing wind turbines and solar farms is important whether it's a single homeowner doing it or a major corporation. Every bit helps and I mean that. No matter what happens in the next five, ten, twenty years, every new alternative energy project will add a resilience factor to our nation.

But here's the problem. Let's say Massachusetts manages to go the extra mile and installs enough power for 16,000 homes in four years. That's power for 4,000 homes a year. The population of Massachusetts is about 6.5 million people. Let's fudge and say there's a million homes in the state. At that rate, it's going to take over 200 years to wean the state from fossil fuels to alternative energy. That's way too long.

Our nation needs to get much more ambitious.

Making Sure Green Technology Is Green

2009-10-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

We already know that it's becoming harder and harder to satisfy the world's thirst for oil. In addition, with the rise of China's economy, the world is rapidly becoming aware that resources for all the new technology being developed, including some parts of green technology, may not be adequate to meet demand in the coming years. Today's technology often requires rare earth metals that are not easy to come by. New sources of such metals, at a reasonable cost, are going to be needed. In some cases, old sources need to be revived.

Now in this post I'm pursuing a slightly odd story that requires a little background. Here's a story from last month in The New York Times:

Chinese officials said on Thursday that they would not entirely ban exports of two minerals vital to manufacturing hybrid cars, cellphones, large wind turbines, missiles and computer monitors, although they would tightly regulate production.

China produces more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of dysprosium and terbium, two rare minerals essential to recent breakthroughs in high-technology industries.

Although it's good that China is not going to tighten restrictions as much as originally thought, it should be noted that they are using their hard cash to acquire all kinds of resources throughout the world, including shares in various mines and oil facilities. The United States, Europe and other countries can hardly afford to be caught flat-footed. Fortunately, for the United States, there is an economically viable source for some of the rare minerals that are needed. Here's a story in the Los Angeles Times about a mine in California:

Fear of a shortage of rare-earth metals used in high-tech military and industrial products has spawned global efforts to reopen abandoned mines, including the formidable Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert.

(snip)

...Molycorp Minerals in Colorado, has just begun a two-year effort to restore Mountain Pass to its former role as a leading global producer. Those plans were given a boost recently amid fears that China was poised to ban exports of some of the scarcer rare-earth metals and to sharply limit shipments of others.

Effort to restore? Uh-oh. In such cases, it's best to read the rest of the article. Down further we learn that Mountain Pass Mine was closed in 2002 for environmental reasons. Before we go further, let's stop and think for a moment. If 99% of some of these minerals are mined in China and the price on those minerals is acceptable to various corporations, what are the odds that China's famous mine has environmental problems as well? And what are the odds that at least some companies who buy from the Chinese are aware that the Chinese mine has environmental problems? Ah, but we still, for the most part, live in an era of laissez-faire capitalism. Anything goes.

Fortunately, there are people concerned about the environment in the U.S. (and more so in some states). So what was the problem with Mountain Pass? Here's an informative article from David Danelski in February 2009:

...while the mine was producing vital elements, it also was polluting the soil and groundwater.

Wastewater from processing the rare earths was pumped to unlined evaporation ponds, where nitrates and other salts leached into underground water on both sides of Mountain Pass...

(snip)

Unocal owned the mine from 1976 to 2005. In the 1980s, the company began piping wastewater as far as 14 miles to evaporation ponds on or near Ivanpah Dry Lake, east of Interstate 15 near Nevada.

The pipeline repeatedly ruptured during cleaning operations to remove mineral deposits called scale. The scale is radioactive because of the presence of thorium and radium, which occur naturally in the rare earth ore.

(snip)

In all, about 600,000 gallons of radiological and other hazardous waste flowed onto the desert floor, according to federal authorities.

Again, visualize what is probably happening at that mine in China! But, hey, their prices are good. Now it appears that the previous owner Unocal and the new owners of Mountain Pass decided to clean up the mining operation. They have passed environmental inspections. They have made various improvements, etc., etc. This is all to the good. Rare earth metals have a role to play in green technology and it's that much less embarrassment if Mountain Pass is cleaned up.

But I keep thinking of that radioactive pipeline. Obviously it has to be taken apart and disposed of and that apparently is happening. Pipelines interest me because I had a great-uncle who built a natural gas pipeline from Wichita, Kansas to Chicago back some eighty years ago. A lot of Eurasia politics now revolve around pipelines running from Western Europe to Russia and from Russia to China and along many other routes as well. Who cleans those pipelines? Who cleans the spills? Anyone?

If you're still with me, bear with me a little longer. I know, it's an odd subject today! But I also keep thinking of the British Petroleum pipeline in Alaska that became a major polluter along its route because of improper maintenance. At the time, the news was a bit ironic since the then president of British Petroleum, what's his name, had a major reputation for being green. The green tag turned out to be more hype that reality.

Of course those of us who have noticed ads by the oil companies since the first oil shortages of the 70s have always been skeptical of their claims of how green and environmentally concerned they are. Sometimes, there's some truth to their claims, but most times whatever little good oil companies do for the environment has been more than offset by so many other things they do that are not good. The Exxon Valdez obviously comes to mind. Even if global warming were not a concern, pollution by companies dealing with fossil fuels has been a reality long before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

The oil companies of course are not alone. Over this past weekend, ads have been appearing for Clean Coal. As it happens, there currently is no such thing as clean coal. If one tweaks definitions and ignores how much cleaner natural gas and even light sweet crude are (not to mention solar and wind energy), there is such a thing as cleaner coal—barely. And there is a potential, at considerable expense, for perhaps sequestering the carbon dioxide and other pollutants put out by coal. But coal is the dirtiest fuel there is. Here's what Greenpeace says:

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s greenwash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal.

“Clean coal” technology (CCT) refers to technologies intended to reduce pollution. But no coal-fired power plants are truly ‘clean’.

“Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another which are then still released into the environment. Any time coal is burnt, contaminants are released and they have to go somewhere. They can be released via the fly ash, the gaseous air emissions, water outflow or the ash left at the bottom after burning. Ultimately, they still end up polluting the environment.

The article continues on making other points against clean coal. Ah, yes, Greenpeace is that leftist whale-hugging environmental group. So, what does a moderate-conservative magazine like Time magazine say?

If you paid any attention to last year's Presidential campaign, you'll remember ads touting the benefits of "clean coal" power, sponsored by the industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. (The ads featured lumps of coal plugged into an electrical cord.) Designed in part to respond to the growing green campaign against coal power — which accounts for about 30% of U.S. carbon emissions — the ads promised high-tech and eventually carbon-free power, emphasizing coal's low cost compared to alternatives, its abundance in America and its cleanliness.

The "clean coal" campaign was always more PR than reality — currently there's no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. But now the idea of clean coal might be truly dead, buried beneath the 1.1 billion gallons of water mixed with toxic coal ash that on Dec. 22 burst through a dike next to the Kingston coal plant in the Tennessee Valley and blanketed several hundred acres of land, destroying nearby houses. The accident — which released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster — has polluted the waterways of Harriman, Tenn., with potentially dangerous levels of toxic metals like arsenic and mercury, and left much of the town uninhabitable.

I guess the coal industry didn't place enough ads in Time. I shouldn't be sarcastic though. Coal has a friend in oil and it might not be much to ask for Exxon or Aramco to buy a major share of Time Warner.

I started this post by mentioning China. When people talk about limiting coal by turning to alternative energy, the cynics point to China. How will China's use of coal be limited? The statistics, in fact, are grim. According to Worldwatch, China's consumption of coal has more than doubled in the last nine years and now exceeds that of the United States.

I suspect, however, that the more the U.S. switches to green technology, the more China and other developing economies will follow. There are signs that this may already be happening. Unlike many members of Congress, the Chinese leadership seems aware that the age of abundant fossil fuels is coming to an end sooner than expected. We will continue to use fossil fuels for some years to come. It's unavoidable because of the time it will take to build an infrastructure based on alternative energies. But, if we're smart, healthy change will come, though not without troubles that we have already set in motion. If we continue to blunder and put off what needs to be done, we will undoubtedly face catastrophes we cannot fully appreciate at this time.

In the end, much will depends on the American people and how much they're truly paying attention. For now, I keep thinking of those pipelines and how much work it takes to keep them functional. I saw a program recently on the Monterey Aquarium in California. The aquarium brings in sea water by pipeline from Monterey Bay. It takes work to keep things from growing at the entrance to the pipeline as well as inside its walls. Is this relevant? It depends. The world's population exceeds 6.6 billion people and water is another resource that is getting scarce as populations increase and as many areas of the world turn into desert from overuse. Where will future water come from? From the sea through desalination?

In California, such a desalination facility has opened in Carlsbad, a city a few miles north of San Diego. Such facilities will need pipelines and they too will have to take environmental concerns into consideration if we are to avoid even further problems. Even green technology is going to require careful environmental thinking—but the promise of green technology is real.

And the alternative, as we are finding, has probably already set in motion catastrophes that will take enormous resilience and resourcefulness to overcome. It is only the year 2009 and the tasks for the rest of the 21st century are already difficult. Today, the task immediately at hand is to avoid making the problems insurmountable. A small step in that direction is making sure green technology is green.

Thoughts on Pakistan and Foreign Policy

2009-10-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't necessarily know it given what passes for journalism on TV and in many of our newspapers, but there's considerable worldwide activity in foreign policy going on these days. Much of that activity is coming from the United States and much of it is happening elsewhere.

It's probably the most foreign policy activity since the Berlin Wall came down. Why is this? I shouldn't have to ask the question but in the absence of news coverage, it may be time to remind people of the obvious: for eight years (but particularly in the first four) George W. Bush did enormous damage to America's foreign policy and enormous damage to the world economy.

Since January of this year, Barack Obama and his advisers have been working to repair the damage. Worldwide, other leaders are readjusting their foreign policy and increasingly, as was happening in the last two or three years of the Bush presidency, pursuing their own agenda.

Here's just one example of foreign policy going on elsewhere:

Russia and China are closing in on a mammoth energy deal which could insure that Beijing has the fuel to run its factories and cities and Moscow has a vast new market for its natural gas empire.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday wrapped up a three-day visit to the Chinese capital, during which Russia signed dozens of commercial pacts worth $3.5 billion and set the framework for a separate, multibillion-dollar agreement to build two natural gas pipelines to China from gas fields in Russia's Far East.

But the Russians and Americans are also busy at work. Here's a story from a few days ago:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invited U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to his private residence in suburban Barvikha for a discussion Tuesday on a broad range of issues in what one senior State Department official called a "relaxed setting."

Issues on the agenda for the two-hour meeting include the next steps on Iran, the Mideast conflict, cooperation on Afghanistan, possible joint work on a missile defense system, Russia's "neighborhood" and climate change.

Talking Points Memo has a set of photos covering Hillary Clinton's trip to Europe and Russia that ought to lay to rest that she's not an active Secretary of State (which was one of those inane stories from a media not paying close attention).

We now live in a turbulent era. In the past, the answer to turbulence was violence. Barack Obama knows this and most foreign leaders know this. No war exemplified such violence more than World War Two. It's not certain that George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had much clue about the current era. In many ways, as so often happens with conservatives, they were fighting the battles of the past.

It's hard to believe that officials like Cheney were pursuing policies aimed at nothing else but creating some sort of American empire. The idea of preemptive war, unilateralism and even the notion of nuclear bunker busters that Bush proposed in June 2002 still feels alien to me when I come across the terms. In 2003, it sent a chill down my spine when a Bush official cheered the start of the Iraq War and bragged that 'we' had crossed the Rubicon. And yet, as they did with Reagan, there were right-wingers who felt George W. Bush had not gone far enough. One of those was Dick Cheney, particularly after 2004. It takes my breath away when I recall how much American policy went off the tracks during the Bush presidency.

And still there are right wingers who want more of that nonsense. Rush Limbaugh put himself on the side of the Taliban in denouncing Barack Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. I know for years it has been something of a convention to consider Rush Limbaugh a clown. When he jumps up and down, he certainly looks like one. But he is dangerous. In many ways, most Americans do not share his values, though it should be pointed out that in the early 90s he had a rather large audience. The key to Limbaugh is simple: he is very angry and he wants to dominate. He is a classic example of a very aggressive social dominator.

I bring up Limbaugh because he is good at enabling some Americans to forget the disaster of the Bush years. It should not be controversial news that Bush did enormous damage to our nation. It will take years just to repair the economic damage. During the Bush years, crooks had a field day simply because no one was minding the store. But what did more damage was a business as usual approach by Bush that ignored changing conditions in such areas as energy, the climate, an excessive loss of jobs, stagnant wages, and particularly new financial instruments that greatly aggravated the economic downturn.

In foreign policy, Bush was in Afghanistan for more than seven years. And yet some people seem to have forgotten that Bush should have been out of Afghanistan by the 2004 election. But he was more interested in Iraq and put Afghanistan on a back burner. We are still there and we are tangling with problems that affect not only Afghanistan but Pakistan as well. Now I believe we need to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as we can. But there's a problem and I haven't fully sorted it out yet so I'm not comfortable with arguments from those in a hurry to leave. The problem is Pakistan and the fact that it has nuclear weapons. Here's one story from Islamabad that disturbs me:

Pakistan has sought to protect its nuclear weapons from attack by the Taliban or other militants by storing the warheads, detonators and missiles separately in facilities patrolled by elite troops.

Analysts are divided on how secure these weapons are. Some say the weapons are less secure than they were five years ago, and Saturday's attack would show a "worrisome" overconfidence by the Pakistanis.

While complex security is in place, much depends on the Pakistani army and how vulnerable it is to infiltration by extremists, said a Western government official with access to intelligence on Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Bush and some of his advisers like to point to Pakistan as one of their successes. In reality, they never fully dealt with a wide range of issues. Through incompetence, they nearly encouraged Pakistan to go to war with India back in 2002 (Colin Powell, to his credit, cleaned up the mess).

Of course, stories like this one about the Taliban and al Qaida also concern me:

Pakistan – Teams of gunmen attacked three law enforcement facilities in Pakistan's cultural heart of Lahore on Thursday, killing 18 people in an escalation of audacious terror strikes as the Taliban try to keep the government from waging a planned offensive on the militants.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik vowed not to let the attacks deter the government in its pursuit of Taliban and al Qaida fighters. "The enemy has started a guerrilla war," Malik told a local television station.

Afghanistan is going to require constant reevaluation. Of course, the sooner we can get out the better. But the last thing we need, remote though the chances seemingly are (and are they really that remote?), is to see the Taliban and their friends in al Qaida somehow in control of Pakistan. It's not likely to happen but I for one am cutting Obama some slack until we see a better picture.

In other areas of foreign policy, I see many signs that Obama is moving forward. He is moving away from the unilateralism of Bush and returning to international discussions. We're still the only nation that can truly lead and after eight years of neglect serious and difficult issues are being tackled. Success in many areas are going to be difficult to achieve but that's far better than what we had during the Bush years when so many people in Washington couldn't be bothered to even try.

No one should imagine that Barack Obama can undo all the damage done during the Bush years, but I'm going to make a prediction: when Barack Obama gives his State of the Union in January, many Americans are going to be surprised at the useful things that have been done both domestically and in foreign policy. Of course, we'll still see the same nonsense from the news. One day Obama will be described as all talk and no action. And the next day, pundits will whine that he's doing too much. We're in an era where readers still have to do a certain amount of their own digging.

Bunker Buster Bomb Back in the News

2009-10-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

In Washington, there is no such thing as putting something quietly into a bill, even if there is little prior discussion of an inserted item. But ABC News may be jumping the gun with a headline that reads: "Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?" Here's the ABC News article:

Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. ...

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

The first thing to keep in mind is that back in 2002 President Bush advocated building nuclear bunker busters. It was one of the lamest ideas of the Bush Administration since it risked lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Since that time the thinking has moved toward the development of a conventional weapons system to penetrate a bunker where the development of nuclear weapons is likely to be taking place. That's what being discussed in the article above. By the way, just to broaden the thinking a bit, bunker busters can be used for other purposes than disrupting a nuclear program. But let's stick to the nuclear angle for now.

The two potential nuclear renegades at the moment are Iran and North Korea. Given the feeble world economy, using a bunker buster on Iran would probably drag us into a war that would put much of the oil in the Persian Gulf at peril and sink what little economic recovery the world is seeing so far (In 2006, the idea pushed by Cheney and others to bomb Iran was a lame idea even then). Perhaps Obama and the Pentagon see the bunker buster mostly in terms of pressure on Iran, though the weapon wouldn't be ready, supposedly, until 2010.

As for North Korea, the issue has always been—and remains—the fact that North Korea has artillery weapons that can do enormous damage to Seoul before an effective response can be mounted. Negotiations and sanctions are still the best way to go with North Korea.

So who does that leave? UPI quotes a Pentagon spokesman:

After winning congressional approval, the Pentagon said this week that it had awarded Boeing's McDonnell Douglas a $51.9 million contract to "enable B-2 aircraft" to carry the bomb.

"The threats have been developing over the years," a Pentagon spokesman was quoted saying to U.S. media. "There are, without getting into any intelligence, there are countries that have used technologies to go further underground and to take those facilities and make them hardened. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one."

Even under Obama, nothing in Washington is ever straightforward. So, what countries does the anonymous spokesman have in mind? First, it should be noted that the bunker buster proposal was put forward over the summer. In the last six months, we have seen nasty developments in Iran and nasty developments in North Korea. In both cases, the nastiness has seemingly died down. Yes, I realize there is this notion sometimes of needing more options. But sometimes having more options simply complicates rather than simplifies the picture. If nothing else, perhaps the bunker buster is intended as a shot across the bow of Ahmadinejad's ambitions (this includes, of course, Iran's more conservative clergy).

Sooner or later, there will be other nuclear pretenders. And some of those pretenders may succeed in building functional bombs. There are several organizations, including the Arms Control Association, who keep track of who has what and who has ambitions. Syria, for example, is an example of a country that may still have ambitions—or not. Actually I don't mean to single out Syria since there are others to consider. Burma, for example? One of the insanities of our era is that nuclear weapons give status to a country and there are a number of leaders who want that status.

For the moment, the real question is whether conventional bunker busters that can do the job help diplomacy or hinder diplomacy. I don't know the answer. I hope someone in Washington does.

Conservative Supreme Court Gives Big Oil a Windfall

2009-10-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing we can say with certainty is that the 5-4 conservative majority favors business as usual and it favors privilege. Here's a story on how the Supreme Court may have just handed the oil industry $19 billion:

The Supreme Court rejected on Monday an Interior Department appeal of a ruling that the government says will likely cost it at least $19 billion in lost oil royalties from energy companies.

The justices declined to review a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC.N) did not have to pay about $350 million in royalties for drilling on federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico issued between 1996 and 2000.

Maybe the bankers who received their $10 million bonuses despite the economic meltdown are in the wrong business.

The Grasshopper and the Ant: The U.S. and China

2009-09-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

We're the grasshopper: for years, we've been outsourcing jobs, burning gasoline, building gambling casinos, buying video games and fantasizing that our real estate values were earned. The Chinese are now the ant (we were the ant once when we were building a nation in the wilderness).

The Chinese look at the size of their population, the scarcity of many key resources in their country and the growing resource problems of the world. From their point of view, they need to secure resources for their growing economy. And they've been doing just that. They now consume more iron and coal than any other country. That's the clearest evidence of the economic dynamo they have created in the last thirty years.

Although China has more than 4 times the population of the U.S., they are still far short of our consumption levels in some resources such as oil. Nevertheless, they seem to see the future and they are locking in contracts and also building reserves. Here's an Associated Press story:

Since crude oil and other commodity prices plunged last year - oil tumbled from $147 last July to nearly $33 in December - China has been rushing to build up stockpiles at bargain prices, economists say. That motive, more than a revival in actual industrial demand, has driven its recent import boom of oil, copper and other metals.

(snip)

Ultimately, China aims to have about three months of supply in national reserves. It now has about a month's worth, or about 38.6 million tons of crude oil in both commercial and state reserves, according to state media reports.

The United States also has taken advantage of the drop in oil prices to buy crude for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is far bigger than China's.

The U.S. reserve is about 730 million barrels. China's reserve will be about 170 million barrels. I'm struck by the fact that our reserve, if we include domestic production, is intended to last about 70 days. China's reserve is supposed to last 90 days.

Although one can easily argue that China is making it harder for the U.S. to find oil (along with deliberate production cuts by some members of OPEC), Chinese purchases have helped the price of oil recover. Obviously when oil is $147 a barrel, the price can cripple economies. But a price of $65 to $75 is important. A lot of the oil that is still being found in the world is expensive to produce. If the price of oil falls too low, some of these projects cannot be developed.

The truth is that no one quite knows what's going on with the world's resources—or the world economy for that matter. The Chinese are taking no chances and are planning for the future. In contrast, the free marketeers, including many in the U.S., claim that high prices will naturally develop more resources or at least substitutes. But while we've been waiting for dreamosol to fuel our cars since the 1970s, the events of the last four years tells us that we are in a new era of volatility, an era that means a lot of old thinking and old habits have got to go out the window. With adjustments, capitalism will probably survive. But we have to stop thinking that the markets are some magic bullet. They aren't, as we have seen all too often.

Some people are paying attention and it's not a pretty sight. Here's Paul Volcker's recent comments:

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker said the rise of China and other emerging economies has underscored a decline in the comparative economic and intellectual leadership of the U.S.

“I don’t know how we accommodate ourselves to it,” Volcker, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose taped yesterday in New York. “You cannot be dependent upon these countries for three to four trillion dollars of your debt and think that they’re going to be passive observers of whatever you do.”

Part of the rage of the right wingers over the last year is that they don't understand why the good times don't just keep rolling on (never mind that the good times have been something of an illusion for some years). They blame the government but our government for the last 30 years has not taken the lead. The business sector has and it is failing us. And it will continue to do so until there is real reform in Washington. For too long, the grasshoppers have ruled.