Morning Fog

Energy: Lots Of Wrong Answers

There is an Environmental Protection Agency decision pending, involving whether palm oil from Indonesia should be qualified as a "renewable fuel" for blending in US diesel gas.  

The answer isn't as obvious as it sounds, since regulations require that such renewable fuels be at least 20% cleaner than the gasoline they're being mixed into.  Current EPA estimates suggest that palm oil doesn't meet that criterion.  Further complicating the issue is that Indonesia is rapidly whacking down forests to clear land for oil palm farming, which may affect greenhouse gases just as badly as, or worse than, burning the unadulterated gasoline.

There is lots of potential profit involved for palm oil producers, distributors, and others, so those folks (can you believe there is actually a lobbying group called the "American Palm Oil Council"?) are throwing up chaff regarding the decision, claiming that the EPA's analysis is based on faulty data and erroneous assumptions.  (We may assume of course that the APOC's data and assumptions are "correct" and "reliable.")  

One palm oil pusher, for example, argues that it's "highly speculative" to try to figure out how production of more palm oil might drive deforestation.   Well no, it's not really so speculative.  Estimates of the extent and effects of deforestation may vary, but it can only go in one direction:  Greater production means more land clearing.

And this, to me, is the crux of the matter.  Biofuels generally have not borne out the predictions their proponents made for them.  Ultimately, it boils down to this:  Biofuels are still fossil fuels.  They may burn somewhat cleaner, and even if they can somewhat mitigate pollution in the short term, their wide cultivation will have long-term consequences (deforestation, reduced land for food crops, and rising food prices) that could far outweigh the short-term benefits.  Do we want gas more than we want food?  There is little need for us to go hunting new forms of fossil fuels that burn only 20% cleaner, when the real issue facing us is to find non-fossil, non-polluting energy sources.

The EPA's estimates are probably correct.  The question is whether they'll be overturned in order to provide short-term profits to a handful of palm oil plutocrats.

In The U.S. Senate, Baby Steps For Oldsters

Senators Carl Levin (Democrat) and Lamar Alexander (Republican) are among a handful who still seem occasionally to consider that the country and its people have interests that may be more important than political party dogma.

So it seems natural that these two would propose an idea to streamline the work of the Senate which might help that body lay aside its partisanship long enough to pass a bill or two.  Put simply, the idea is this: 

When legislation is being considered for passage, why not restrict the proposal of amendments only to those that are relevant to the bill under discussion? 

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!      Good joke, guys!  We should call you Carl "Leave 'em Laughing" Levin and Lamar "Roll 'em in the Aisles" Alexander!  What comedians you are!   Of COURSE we know that in any organization, from our mothers' bridge club, in our own workplaces, and all the way up to ... well, up to the U.S. Senate ... nobody conducts business by entertaining proposals for amendment that are irrelevant to the task at hand.

You say what?  In the Senate they do?  Really?

OK, enough fun now.  Unfortunately yes, as the article linked above states, under "Senate rules" any Senator has the right, for example, to propose to talk about Egypt even if the topic under discussion is the reform of the U.S. Postal Service. 

So perhaps the Levin-Alexander suggestion is not as ludicrous as it sounds.  If baby steps are the only way for these 100 mostly superannuated pols to make headway, let's go for it.

Yet the very fact that Senate rules permit this obviously inefficient procedure (not to mention many other time-wasters) demonstrates the crying need for deep, thorough-going reform of those rules to bring them into the twenty-first century.  Sure, we understand that the Senate's function in our system is to be the reins on the runaway team of horses (the House).  But this has been carried to ridiculous extreme.  It's long past time to fix it, and there is no reason to fear that the Senate's ability to slow down the works will suffer greatly from serious-minded reform of its internal procedures.    

Shared Burdens: Eisenhower And Obama

Not so long ago, I sang the praise of old-time, commonsensical, moderate politicians from the U.S. heartland.  Eisenhower was one of those.  If many people today may view him as a boring, ineffectual boob, the latest biography (Jean Edward Smith's Eisenhower in War and Peace - see right-hand margin) may help change that perception.  In fact, Eisenhower dealt effectively with a wide range of problems and the solutions he put in place are in many cases still with us today.

In reading Smith's book, one thing I hadn't reckoned with was the extent to which Eisenhower, as a moderate Republican, frequently faced (and faced down) extremist conservatives in his own party; people who by their outlook bear striking resemblance to the rightist extremists of today, and who bear witness that regressiveness and reaction are not new.  Here are the examples I noticed, with my own comments, if any, indicated by the "--"

• Writing to his brother Edgar, Eisenhower opined that there was only a "tiny splinter group" in politics who still believed it was possible to abolish the main accomplishments of the New Deal, including social security and labor laws.  -- Splinters can be annoying; sometimes unfortunately for years if not decades.
• Eisenhower ruled out severe cuts in social programs, arguing instead for finding money for them elsewhere, particularly in the defense budget.  He wanted a defense policy that could be sustained over the long run without "sending the country to the poorhouse."  (Smith's words)
• The GOP majority in the 83rd Congress seemed "less interested in grappling with the problems of the day than in repudiating the work of Truman and Roosevelt."  -- Sound familiar?
• One of Eisenhower's initial goals was to set up a health care plan for the nation similar to what everyone had in the Army.   He had to drop it because of near-hysterical opposition.
• Here's a noteworthy statement from Eisenhower himself:  "The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk.  I believe that so emphatically that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it."   -- Today's party leaders might take this advice!
• Ike was not spared encounters with paranoid rabble-rousers.  Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, accused the President of purposely creating a storm over segregation in the south, subtly promoting increased violence, and steering the situation toward the objective his "communist bosses" wanted.  --  If the communists wanted to end segregation, presumably those who tried to preserve it were ... fascists?  And if universal health care is a socialist plot, what does that make those who fight it tooth and nail?

Historian Smith is clearly a fan of Eisenhower (at least as regards his days in mufti) but that doesn't obscure the fact that there is a curious commonality between the goals of the reactionary right in the 1950s and their ideological heirs today, more than 60 years later.  It's been said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it seems very evident that those who want to stop the march of history in its tracks do.   

 

War On Women

As a result of a comment made by some self-styled political "advisor" about Mrs. Mitt Romney, there's been a lot of flap in the media about the "war on women."  This "war" in the political arena is just a subset of the broader war that still seems to rage throughout society between two basic groups characterized by how they view their role in society:  the women who dedicate themselves to a traditional family role [I'll use "women laboring in the home" or "WLHs" for short] and those who take jobs outside the home [I'll use "women employed outside the home" or "WEOs" for them].    

The war is fought over one basic question that takes many forms, but might generically be phrased as "are WLHs inherently more worthy human beings than WEOs?" or vice-versa.  Often, this gets framed, as it did last week, as a question of "work," i.e. whether what WLHs do is "work."  But that's just semantics.  Work can be used in different ways  - it can mean something remunerated by wage or salary; or it can mean effort or labor in general, which may be remunerated only by psychic income, if at all.  We all use terms like "work in my garden" and "work on my taxes," even if the former is the real passion in our life, and the latter is a necessary but unremunerated task.  (Note that my terms for the two groups do not include the word "work.")

It's a "war" that can't be won.  Why?  Because it all boils down to what role a woman chooses to play in society.  In past eras, a woman may not have had much choice, but nowadays, in western societies, it's definitely a choice -- and a strictly personal one.  

Aside:  It's really no different from the men's world, where guys can choose a variety of career paths of different status, from bum, carpenter, or doctor to fighter pilot, street sweeper, or -YES!- even househusband.  These different choices have consequences for how others will view you, and they must be lived with. 

So back to women:  Having made their choice, women should have the confidence to be comfortable in their self-image.  If you're a WLH and sure of your ground, why would it bother you that someone (man or woman) defines "work" differently than you do?  If you're a WEO you shouldn't have gnawing anxiety that others may believe you're not doing right by your kids.  In either case, if these things do bother you, maybe you should reexamine your priorities and commitments.  And having made your choice, you shouldn't be criticizing someone else for theirs.

Is it possible that both sides really share a common outlook?  What if they envy each other, because they really want to be able to do both?  Maybe we should consider the real heroes of this non-war, those women (and men!) who ARE doing both -- raising kids while slogging off to work every day too.  But they're probably too busy to get down in the trenches of this silly "war."  Time to call a truce!     

"Repledge" - A Future Flop

I read an item in the local paper (in my case that's the Washington Post) the other day about an organization called "Repledge," and its plan reportedly aimed at reducing the "amounts of cash sloshing around" in our political system.  Then I re-read it.  And read it once more.  It's really not clear to me how it would have the desired effect of reducing the money spent on political campaigns in the U.S.   

The concept is that supporters of candidates would pledge a certain amount to charity through Repledge and the candidates' support would be balanced off against each other.  So if Obama supporters collectively pledged $40,000 and Romney supporters pledged $70,000, a total of 80,000 would go to charities while only the difference of 30,000 would go to the higher-pledged candidate (Romney in this case). 

This scheme, according to its originator, UCLA law professor Eric Zolt, would provide a "way for donors disgusted with money in politics to keep their cash out of the system," while ensuring that candidates they like aren't damaged along the way.

It sounds complicated, and it is.  The tax treatment of any Repledge donations, for example, would be difficult.  Political contributions aren't deductible; charitable ones are.   Further, the FEC is now considering whether the whole concept is legal, and naturally there are those arguing on both sides. 

Even presuming those hurdles are overcome, however, it's hard to fathom what donors, beyond an idealistic handful, would decide to involve themselves.  If you have money to donate for political causes, what would be the benefit of channeling it to a charity instead?  In the example above, if you're for Obama, you could give him $40,000 directly, or see that money diverted to charity where it would do him no good.  And if he lost, you'd probably be kicking yourself the day after the election.  On the other hand, if you are really upset about the effects of money in our politics, wouldn't the best way to express that be simply not to donate at all?

It looks as if the only group to benefit from this would be charitable organizations.  Good for them, if it works, but it just seems totally impractical to me.

Santorum Throws In The Towel

Candidate Rick Santorum has "suspended" his campaign for the Republican nomination for President.  Most observers think this leaves Romney an open path to the nomination, and I certainly wouldn't dispute that. 

But many observers are suggesting that he quit in order to "preserve his status" in the GOP, and could even become a candidate for President later.  These are far more dubious claims.

Actually, he quit because he was facing an almost certain and serious defeat in the upcoming primary in his home state of Pennsylvania.  So let's credit him with (very belatedly) recognizing the inevitable and acting on it.  

As for status, it's difficult to preserve what you don't have.  It would seem he is bound to lose status among those who supported him most ardently, while among the party regulars and pros, the best review he could get is as a candidate whose appeal was far too narrow to make him Presidentail timber, and who finally got out of the way as they had long urged him to do.   

Another canard is to suppose he could run again in four or eight years with any hope of success.  No denying that Santorum himself might believe, or hope, for that.  Otherwise the politics of it looks hopeless.  The source of the appeal that made him a bit more than a fringe candidate this time around was as the darling of that segment of the electorate who were angry about the Bush recession.  But the economy is finally turning around, and in the cyclical nature of these things it will do so no matter who occupies the White House from 2013 to 2017.   At that point people will forget what they were thinking in 2012 and Santorum will be a horse nobody is willing to bet on. 

So it appears most probable that Santorum will fall back into the oblivion he arose from just a year ago, one that most people -- who recognize that his true "status" is that of "wing nut" -- will concede that he fully deserves.  Perhaps he can become a second Ron Paul, a Stassen or Nader of the right. 

Ultimately, Santorum's most lasting contribution may be the impact he has had on the thinking of the Republican king-makers.  We won't know for a few years what lesson they have taken home, though.

 

Midwestern Values In Politics

It's one of those times when the day's news all seems to fit together somehow into a theme, as if they were pieces of a jigsaw that only needs to be assembled to create a high school term paper.

Richard Cohen wrote an interesting human nature piece reminiscing about a chance meeting with former President Eisenhower at an exhibitof the latter's paintings.  Eisenhower dabbled in painting (he caught the bug from Winston Churchill) but never pretended to deep meaning.  Cohen subtly twitted him about this, to which Ike responded he was fully aware all his paintings would be in the landfill if he hadn't happened to be President.  In other words, we was modest, grounded, and had a sense of the proportion of things. 

More about Ike in a future post, since I recently finished reading the latest biography of him.  But the Cohen piece reminded me:  Yes, I lived in the Eisenhower era (though I was still too young to vote), and having been born in Missouri and passed a few years of my life in Kansas, I've always been aware of the strong streak of no-bullshit common sense, civility, and realism that characterizes the character of people in our heartland.  Politicians from the region, in turn, tended to reflect these values as well.  There were many, but among those who also became, or strove to become, President were Gerald Ford and Hubert Humphrey.  

Now it seems the days of civility and moderation are gone in politics.  The Eisenhowers and Fords and Humphreys have disappeared, for the most part.  President Obama is right to suggest that even Reagan, the hero of the right, would not be acceptable in today's Republican Party.  (I'd say yes there are wing nuts amongst Democrats too, but political studies show they have moved far less from political centrism than their GOP colleagues have.)

One exception is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who hopes to run for another term but will have to win a primary challenge in early May.  For years Lugar was the Republican Party's foreign policy leader in the Senate, one who recognized the truth of the old maxim that "politics stops at the water's edge," and worked tirelessly to maintain a bipartisan, good-of-the-nation focus.   It's nice to see him running, pretty much unchanged it seems.  We could use more like him but even if he wins his bid this time, it's pretty certain he'll be lonely in the Senate.

Of course there were exceptions to the "Midwestern rule."  Not all Senators from the heartland states were of the same caliber or style.  We who recall Eisenhower also recall Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the strident, frightened (and frightening) communists-in-the-woodwork demagogue of the early 1950s.  It's a sign of the times that many of our current crop of incumbents and candidates seem to be working to emulate him.  Incidentally, it's interesting but sad to note - as I found out a couple of years ago in commenting on a newspaper article about McCarthy - that there are wackos and websites out there who believe McCarthy was right and everything we know historically about him is a conspiratorial pack of lies.  You know -- like the holocaust and the moon landing! 

Word Nostalgia

I was just rereading an old Travis McGee novel by John D. McDonald, where I was struck by how much of the vocabulary used seems quaint and antiquated today. One example: "long distance operator." It really puts you back fifty years, doesn't it?

Anyway, it was a sort of handy reminder that languages change - usually imperceptibly, like a glacier or an amoeba. English is no exception. And we have to adjust to those changes or communication suffers.

Take "millionaire," for example. Back in 1964 when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Travis McGee was at the height of his popularity, that word meant someone whose  assets, or "net worth," weres over one million dollars. Now, in contemporary usage (politics and the media) the term is being used to denote someone whose annual income is a million dollars or more. It's a very different concept, but the fact is that nearly anyone who lives in a major urban area and owns a house and a 401K is probably a millionaire in the old sense of the word, so we adapt to a more useful definition.

I am sometimes bothered, though, by the terms that shift meaning while another meaning still exists. Is "tailgating" dangerous driving, or is it a picnic in a parking lot before the football game? It's both. Maybe the reason it's changing is that, from my observation, the former practice has become so common that it's no longer worth mention (?) - everybody does it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Two Types Of Wing Nut

 

 

 

 

Another: The venerable old "wing nut" fastener has been around for maybe a century or more, helping to hold together such items as looms, cribs, the handles on lawn mowers, and a variety of other pieces of things. More recently it has also assumed a political meaning, as an extremist of left or right. (Here again the cynic might suggest we don't really need the term in a political sense these days, since nearly all our politicians seem to be extreme dogmatists).

Well, I suppose, because of context, these double meanings are not usually terribly confusing, but they can conjure up some interesting images sometimes.

 

 

As The Supremes Consider Health Care

I was puzzled by President Obama's remarks a couple of days ago regarding the Supreme Court's consideration of the health care law. It appeared he went a bit out of his way to challenge the Court's apolitical objectivity, and frankly, it seems both out of place and poor political strategy for the President himself to be fueling the doubts on that score which so evidently already exist.

So if he is now walking back the tone of his remarks a bit, that seems a sensible thing to do. Win or lose, the Court's decision will have to be dealt with, but it's probably still best to let the Court do its own thing without public pressure. Should they decide in favor of the existing law, which I suspect after all is said and done that they will, does it make sense to undermine the authority of that decision by having allowed the law's opponents to cry "pressure?"

And if they decide against it, it's only a temporary setback. The mendicant Republican opposition to ideas they themselves introduced a decade or more ago is purely politics-driven. The President and the press alike misstate the opposition as "radical"-minded. In fact, the opponents of health care are regressive. In the long run, as they themselves recognize (that's why they're so scared), history is on the side of universal health care. They may succeed in playing politics with the well-being of the people and temporarily delay its coming, but I doubt Americans will buy into our remaining in third-world status, alone among developed nations, in this regard.

Curiosities Of The Day's News

A recent letter to the editor of the Washington Post discusses attending a "Reason Rally" event aimed at focusing attention on the views of atheists. The writer attempts to explain how both science and religion can coexist in one mind, and concludes, with some reason, that it boils down to a matter of being able to ignore science and even logic to go with what you are convinced of as a belief. He goes a bit too far, though, in suggesting that an appropriate response to "prove god exists" is "prove he doesn't." Even a first-year law student, and many reasonable people besides, know that it's both logically and legally impossible to prove a negative proposition. So on that bit, the atheists have the high ground. Maybe the writer was having a go at an April Fool joke - he signs with the last name "Malarkey."

Last weekend three tickets around the country had the winning numbers in the big Megamillions game. One was in our "national capitol" area, in Maryland. Both local and national media immediately devoted oodles of time to what they called the "search for the winner." Rather silly, I thought, since there didn't seem to be any need to search (the winner would reveal him/herself in time) and in fact it seemed an invasion of privacy, since in Maryland there is no requirement for the winner to announce publicly.

Speaking of local news, I was amused by a "correction" I heard on a local channel yesterday. A few weeks ago, our intrepid reporter announced, they had shown a group photo and reported that one of the people in it was witness to a murder. Now, rather belatedly, they told us that was a mistake - the guy in the photo was NOT the witness. They expressed their regrets for the error, but I had to wonder if the poor schmuck who was mistakenly identified had lived to hear the apology.