Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Krauthammer strikes blow for Energy Party

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Only this morning did I remember something I meant to call to your attention Sunday: Charles Krauthammer’s column espousing the central tenet of the Energy Party, which is: When it comes to Energy, Do Everything.

An excerpt:

    But forget the math. Why is this issue either/or? Who’s against properly inflated tires? Let’s start a national campaign, Cuban-style, with giant venceremos posters lining the highways. (“Inflate your tires. Victory or death!”) Why must there be a choice between encouraging conservation and increasing supply? The logical answer is obvious: Do both.
    Do everything. Wind and solar. A tire gauge in every mailbox. Hell, a team of oxen for every family (to pull their gasoline-drained SUVs). The consensus in the country, logically unassailable and politically unbeatable, is to do everything possible to both increase supply and reduce demand, because we have a problem that’s been killing our economy and threatening our national security. And no one measure is sufficient.

How is it that the major political parties are getting away with their usual ideological garbage on Energy in this election — the Democrats refusing to produce, the Republicans refusing to conserve. It is patently obvious to anyone possessed of common sense that — in this particular economic, political and global moment especially — our one hope is to Do It All?

Slight error in Sunday column

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My pastor, Msgr. Leigh Lehocky, gently corrected me this morning. My column said St. Peter’s "Parishioners live in something like 35 ZIP codes." He told me the number is now 46.

I probably remember the 35 figure from back when I was president of the parish council, back in the early 90s. I’ve heard different numbers since then, and consider it one of those wobbly numbers that can never be perfectly correct — even if you give the precise count for right now, based on parish registration, registration itself is a fuzzy thing — not everyone who attends our masses is registered, and some who are registered could have left us.

My point was that it was a bunch of ZIP codes, and I knew I would not be exaggerating if I said 35, so I covered myself by saying "something like." Bottom line, I’m right — it’s a bunch.

Msgr. Lehocky reminded me of something else I’d forgotten. Speaking of The Big Sort, the book that inspired the Robert Samuelson column that inspired my column, he said, "That’s the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago." Monsignor had been reading it, and recommended it to me. All I knew was that when I read the title in the Samuelson piece, I knew that I recognized it from a recent conversation; I had forgotten with whom.

Msgr. Lehocky said the book beats up on churches for the usual MLK thing (about 11 a.m. Sunday being the most segregated hour in America), but agreed that St. Peter’s was something of an exception to that "rule."

"And thank God for that," he added.

And perhaps our parish — and particularly the sub-community of those of us who habitually attend the only Mass that is bi-lingual — is an exception. But it’s the only church community I have, so my point that I don’t have the kinds of associations Mr. Bishop writes of — at least, not in any form that comes to mind — holds true.

Do you hang with people ‘like yourself’? (column version)

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    Yes, you’ve read this before, if you keep up with the blog. There are some editing changes, but it’s about as close as I’ll usually come to a direct copy-and-paste from the blog to the paper. I just post it here in keeping with the theory that some folks will come here looking for the blog version of my Sunday column, and I hate to disappoint.

    While this is an example of Dan Gillmors’ suggestion to  "Make the printed pages the
best-of" what’s been on the Web, it’s slightly more complicated than that. I was thinking "column" as I wrote this on Wednesday, and consciously made sure it had an ending that I thought would work in a column. Unconsciously, I also wrote it to precisely the length of a column, which is remarkable — particularly since, when I’m deliberately writing a column, I always initially write it 10-20 inches too long, and have to spend as much time trimming as I did on the initial writing.

    Obviously, this is a method I should employ more often — at least, I should do so when I don’t feel the duty to write something fresh, and something with added local value. I can let myself get away with musing and riffing off someone else’s column during the Dog Days, but once we pass Labor Day and start interviewing candidates and chugging toward the general election, I’ll feel obliged to do more with the columns.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
FIRST, READ this from a column by The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson, which ran on our op-ed page last week:

    People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the celebration of “diversity,” it’s sameness that dominates. Most people favor friendships with those who share similar backgrounds, interests and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is nearly universal. It’s human nature.

    Then ask yourself this question: Is this true for you?
    What Mr. Samuelson is saying is accepted as gospel, as an “of course,” by so many people. And you can find all sorts of evidence to back it up, from whitebread suburbs to Jeremiah Wright’s church to the book that inspired the column, The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.
    Here’s my problem with that: I don’t know any people “like me,” in the sense under discussion here. I don’t have a group of people who look and act and think like me with whom to identify, with the possible exception of my own close family, and in some respects that’s a stretch — we may look alike and in some cases have similar temperaments, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being alike in, say, political views.
    Oh, but you’re Catholic, you might say. Do you know what “catholic” means? It means “universal.” At the Mass I attend, we sometimes speak English, sometimes Spanish, and throw in bits of Greek and Latin here and there. The priest who often as not celebrates that Mass is from Africa. Parishioners live in something like 35 ZIP codes. There are black, white and brown people who either came from, or their parents came from, every continent and every major racial group on the planet. My impression, from casual conversations over time, is that you would find political views as varied as those in the general population. Sure, more of us are probably opposed to abortion than you generally find, but that’s not a predictor of what we think about, say, foreign policy.
    I may run into someone occasionally who shares my background as a military brat. But beyond a comparison of “were you ever stationed at …,” there’s not a lot to hang a sense of identity on.
I belong to the Rotary Club, which means I have lunch with 300 or so other people once a week. I can’t think of any attitude or opinion I have as a result of being a Rotarian; nor — to turn that around — did I join Rotary because of any attitude or opinion I held previously. Wait — there’s one thing that’s different: I started giving blood as a result of being in Rotary. But I don’t feel any particular identification with other people who give blood, or any particular alienation from others who don’t give blood, the selfish cowards (just kidding).
That’s not to say anything bad about Rotary, or anything good about it. It’s just not a predictor of my attitudes. I suppose people who have an objection to singing the National Anthem and “God Bless America” every week might stay away, but that still leaves a pretty broad spectrum. Rusty DePass, who worked hard for Rudy Giuliani last year, plays piano at Rotary. Jack Van Loan, longtime comrade and supporter of John McCain, is our immediate past president. Another prominent member is Jim Leventis, who is the godfather of Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, the filmmaker Alexandra. Not one of them is any more or less a Rotarian because of his political attitudes.
    Reaching for a generalization, I can point to superficial sameness at Rotary — a lot of members are among the 6 percent of American men who still wear a tie to work every day, although many are not. And the membership is notably whiter than South Carolina, but that seems to correlate demographically with the tie thing. In any case, this is a place where I spend one hour a week; it does not define me.
    Bottom line: I cannot think of five people not related to me, with whom I regularly congregate, who share my “backgrounds, interests and values” to any degree that would matter to me.
    This is a barrier for my understanding of people who do identify with large groups of people who look alike and/or think alike and/or have particular interests in common that bind them as a group and set them apart from others. I don’t see how they do it. If I tried to be a Democrat or a Republican, I’d quit the first day over at least a dozen policy positions that I couldn’t swallow. How do others manage this?
    Maybe I’m a misfit. But the ways in which I’m a misfit helped bring me to support John McCain (fellow Navy brat) and Barack Obama (who, like me, graduated from high school in the hyperdiverse ethnic climate of Hawaii) for their respective nominations. Sen. McCain is the Republican whom the doctrinaire Republicans love to hate. Sen. Obama is the Democrat who was uninterested in continuing the partisan warfare that was so viscerally important to the Clintonistas.
    Coming full circle, I guess I like these guys because they’re, well, like me. But not so most people would notice.
    It’s going to be interesting, and for me often distressing, to watch what happens as the media and party structures and political elites who do think in terms of groups that look, think and act alike sweep up these two misfit individuals in the tidal rush toward November. Will either of them have the strength of mind and will to remain the remarkably unique character that he is, or will both succumb to the irresistible force of Identity Politics? I’m rooting fervently for the former, but recent history and all the infrastructure of political expression are on the side of the latter.

Does Mr. Samuelson’s observation apply to you? Tell us all about it at
thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Do YOU hang with people “like yourself?”

22 Replies

First, read this lead paragraph from Robert Samuelson’s column today:

    People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the
celebration of “diversity,” it’s sameness that dominates. Most people
favor friendships with those who share similar backgrounds, interests
and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations
and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is
nearly universal. It’s human nature.

Then share with us your answer to this question: Is this true for you?

I ask that because what Samuelson is saying is accepted as Gospel, as an "of course," by so many people. And you can find all sorts of evidence to back it up, from whitebread suburbs to Jeremiah Wright’s church to the book that inspired the column, The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.

The thing about this for me is this: I don’t know any people like me. I don’t have a group of people who look and act and think like me with whom to identify, with the possible exception of my own close family, and in some respects that’s a stretch — we may look alike and in some cases have similar temperaments, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being alike, say, in our political views.

Oh, but you’re Catholic, you might say. Yeah, do you know what "catholic" means? It means "universal." At the Mass I attend, we sometimes speak English, sometimes Spanish, and throw in bits of Greek and Latin here and there. The priest who often as not celebrates that Mass is from Africa. We live in, I seem to recall my pastor telling me, 35 zip codes. There are black, white and brown people who either came from, or their parents came from, every continent and every major racial group on the planet. My impression, from casual conversations over time, is that you would find political views as varied as those in the general population. Sure, more of us are probably opposed to abortion than you generally find, but that’s not a predictor of what we think, say, about foreign policy.

Yeah, I might run into someone occasionally who shares my background of having been a military brat. But beyond a comparison of whether you ever were stationed in the same places, there’s not a lot to hang a sense of identity on.

I belong to the Rotary Club, which means I go have lunch with 300 or so other people who also belong to that club once a week. I can’t think of any attitude or opinion I have as a result of being a Rotarian, nor — to turn that around — did I join Rotary because of any attitude or opinion I held previously. I joined Rotary because Jack Van Loan invited me to, and my boss — two publishers ago, now — said he wanted me to join. Wait — there’s one thing that’s different: I started giving blood as a result of being in Rotary. But I don’t feel any particular identification with other people who give blood, or any particular alienation from others who DON’T give blood, the selfish cowards (just kidding).

That’s not to say anything bad about Rotary, or anything good about it. It’s just not a predictor of my attitudes. I suppose people who have an objection to singing the National Anthem and "God Bless America" every week might stay away, but that still leaves a pretty broad spectrum of life here in the Columbia area. Rusty DePass, who worked hard for Rudy Giuliani last years, plays piano at Rotary. Jack, longtime comrade and supporter of John McCain, is our immediate past president. Another prominent member is Jim Leventis, who is the godfather of Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, the filmmaker Alexandra. No one of them is any more or less a Rotarian because of his political attitudes.

(I can think of one superficial way in which an outside observer might see sameness at Rotary — a lot of the men in the club are of the 6% of American men who still wear a suit to work every day, although plenty don’t. And it’s whiter than South Carolina, but that seems to go with the suit thing.)

I’m a South Carolinian, but I’m very much at home in Memphis, and have grown quite comfortable during frequent visits to central Pennsylvania, where the Civil War re-enactors wear blue uniforms.

I cannot think of five people not related to me, with whom I regularly congregate, who share my "backgrounds, interests
and values" to any degree worth noting.

Anyway, my point is that all of this is a barrier for me to understanding people who DO identify with large groups of people who look alike and/or think alike and/or have particular interests in common that bind them as a group and set them apart from others. If I tried to be a Democrat or a Republican, I’d quit the first day over at least a dozen policy positions that I couldn’t swallow. And I don’t see why others do.

Maybe I’m a misfit. But the ways in which I’m a misfit helped bring me to supporting John McCain (fellow Navy brat) and Barack Obama (who, like me, graduated from high school in the hyperdiverse ethnic climate of Hawaii). McCain is the "Republican" whom the doctrinaire Republicans love to hate. Obama is the Democrat who was uninterested in continuing the partisan warfare that was so viscerally important to the Clintonistas.

Coming full circle, I guess I like these guys because they’re, well, like me. But not so most people would notice.

It’s going to be interesting, and for me often distressing, to watch what happens as the media and party structures and political elites who DO identify themselves with groups that look, think and act alike sweep up these two misfit individuals in the tidal rush toward November. Will either of them have the strength of mind and will to remain the remarkably unique characters that they are, or will they succumb to the irresistible force of Identity Politics? I’m rooting fervently for the former, but recent history, and all the infrastructure of political expression, are on the side of the latter.

Noble offers to bet Dawson Obama will win S.C.

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Remember a few weeks ago, when Phil Noble predicted on our pages that Barack Obama would win in South Carolina in November?

There’s been some Republican scoffing since then. So today, I received a copy of this message:

                    July 24, 2008

Mr. Katon Dawson
SC Republican Party
P.O. Box 12373
Columbia, SC 29211

Dear Katon,
    Recently, I wrote an op-ed that appeared in a number of newspapers in South Carolina entitled "Why Obama Will Win South Carolina."
    It seems to have caused quite a stir among some of your Republican friends who confidently dismissed an Obama victory as an impossibility. You have been quoted in newspapers as saying "We’ve got South Carolina taken care of." and the idea of Obama winning was ‘a pipe dream’.
    A ‘pipe dream’?
    To quote Robert Kennedy, "Some men see things as they are, and say ‘Why?’ — I dream of things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’"
    Along with millions of people around the country, we in South Carolina are working to make our dream come true…and it will happen.
    I’m so confident of victory that I would propose a friendly wager — as representatives of our respective candidates — the loser buys the winner a dinner of the finest South Carolina barbeque, with all the trimmings, at any restaurant of the winner’s choice in the state — except Maurice’s.
    I look forward to hearing from you…and having a great dinner on you.

Sincerely,

Phil Noble
President
SC New Democrats

Build a better blog, and they’ll beat a path to your door

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One of the cool things about blogging is that so much of the time, you don’t even have to go look stuff up or ask questions in order to provide relevant content for your readers — your subjects will do it for you.

Increasingly, I find that about all I have to do is wonder aloud about something on the blog, or poke a little fun at something I know little about, and suddenly those involved with the issue will be reaching out to shower info on me from across the nation — info from their point of view of course, but that can be helpful. I don’t even have to contact them; they find me.

For instance, today alone, I:

  • Heard from the campaign of the Senate candidate in Texas who I said might be Energy Party material. Responding to my crack that his position lacked details, his campaign sent me a PDF file with more info. But then, inexplicably, they asked me NOT to post the PDF, urging me just to write about it or excerpt it. I wrote back asking why CAN’T I post it, and I’m waiting hear back on that.
  • Got a mea culpa from the author of the release from musicFIRST about the omission I had joked about.
  • Got a phone message from the OPPOSITE side of that issue — the radio people who don’t WANT to pay those performers what they want. Here’s the audio clip of that.

If anything else interesting comes in with little or no effort on my part, I’ll be sure to share it.

Again, the private sector steps up on homelessness

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A couple of weeks back — when I was in Memphis, in fact — I wrote about how the private sector was once again stepping to the plate to deal with Columbia’s problem with homeless people. The United Way, the Chamber, the Salvation Army and a consortium of other churches had put together a plan for a one-stop service center to deal with the homeless, and the Knight Foundation (with which I was once associated, but no more) had put up a challenge grant of $5 million.

I also reminded y’all of how the Columbia City Council killed the last such effort, and was naysaying the latest one, which did not bode well.

Well, another major nonprofit player in town stepped up this week to commit to the latest effort that is happening in spite of a lack of encouragement from the city:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Central Carolina Community Foundation Presents Midlands Housing Alliance with $500,000 to Fund Homeless Transition Center
Nonprofit Corporation Contributes $100,000 Upfront plus a Four-Year Annual Commitment of $100,000

COLUMBIA, S.C. – July 18, 2008 – The Central Carolina Community Foundation (CCCF), a nonprofit corporation that empowers donors to make effective charitable giving decisions by linking them to different areas of community need, announces its donation of $500,000 to the Midlands Housing Alliance to fund the Homeless Transition Center that is planned for the current Salvation Army site in downtown Columbia.  Today, $100,000 was granted with an annual commitment of $100,000 for the next four years. 
    “Our role as a community foundation is not only to support humanitarian needs in our community,” stated Board Chair David Sojourner, “but also to address strategic issues and to be a catalyst in bringing together leaders, donors and organizations working to resolve community problems.  Our Board of Trustees recognizes that this comprehensive plan is the best approach to break the cycle of homelessness.”
    CCCF will challenge and encourage its donors to contribute to the Alliance and the homeless services center, which was jump-started by a $5 million challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation June 26, 2008.   The grant provides $5 million to fund the development of the center and organizers are seeking approximately $5 million from private organizations and the business community, and an additional $5 million from our local government.
    Board Vice-Chair Mike Kelly said, “I am very enthusiastic about this strategic opportunity and am committed to supporting it both as a board member and personally.  I encourage others in the community to do the same.” 
    The CCCF has long contributed to addressing the issue of homelessness in the Midlands.  As a constituent in the 2004 Blueprint to Address Homelessness and awarding nearly $300,000 to support housing and homelessness in 2007 and 2008, the CCCF believes the comprehensive services center is the next logical step for the Foundation, as well as for the community.
    “Our experience working with the homeless people of New Orleans after Katrina offers clear evidence that the transitional center concept with all services provided in one location is an extremely effective way of working with the homeless,” said board member Samuel Tenenbaum.  “If we can do it for New Orleans, we can do it for the Midlands!”
    Gayle Averyt, a founder and supporter of CCCF, said, “The Knight Foundation’s challenge gift has given Columbia a realistic opportunity to deal effectively with our homelessness problems.  Also no organization has more experience managing all aspects of the homeless problem than the Salvation Army.  It would be tragic if we don’t take full advantage of the Knight Foundation’s challenge gift.  I commend the Central Carolina Community Foundation for making this bold commitment and strongly encourage others to do the same.”

About Central Carolina Community Foundation
Central Carolina Community Foundation is a nonprofit organization serving 11 counties in the Midlands by distributing grants and scholarships and linking the resources of donors, nonprofits and community leaders to areas of need.  For more information about the Foundation, visit www.yourfoundation.org.
                ###

OK, city, how about it? Ready to do your part yet?

What did you think of Al Gore’s speech?

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Gore_electricity_wart

On tomorrow’s page we’ll be running a Tom Friedman piece that holds up Al Gore’s speech as the kind that the actual current president of the United States ought to be making — and the kind that an Energy Party president would certainly make. Here’s how Friedman described it:

    … If you want to know what an alternative strategy might look like, read the speech that Al Gore delivered on Thursday to the bipartisan Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore, the alliance’s chairman, called for a 10-year plan — the same amount of time John F. Kennedy set for getting us to the moon — to shift the entire country to “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” to power our homes, factories and even transportation.
    Mr. Gore proposed dramatically improving our national electricity grid and energy efficiency, while investing massively in clean solar, wind, geothermal and carbon-sequestered coal technologies that we know can work but just need to scale. To make the shift, he called for taxing carbon and offsetting that by reducing payroll taxes: Let’s “tax what we burn, not what we earn,” he said.
    Whether you agree or not with Gore’s plan, at least he has a plan for dealing with the real problem we face — a multifaceted, multigenerational energy/environment/geopolitical problem…

Me, I’m really busy trying to get pages out without Mike, which is not easy, let me tell you. But maybe y’all can go read Al’s speech and tell me what you think. All I know is that what I’ve heard about it — from Friedman and others who have filtered and condensed its points — sounds good. But maybe the devil’s in the details.

What do y’all think?

Wouldn’t World Population Day be a lot more fun without all these darned PEOPLE?

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Just moments ago I received this release from an outfit called "Population Media Center," regarding something called "World Population Day." An excerpt:

    Today as we commemorate World Population Day, Population Media Center and Population Institute pledge their commitment to help bring population numbers into balance with natural resources, so humanity can live in harmony with the earth….

Whenever I hear from folks who are terribly worried about World Population, folks who don’t like "growing population" any more than Mark Sanford likes "growing government," I get more than a little creeped out.

That’s because I can’t escape this suspicion — I’ve had it all my life — that, like Soylent Green, "population" is… people! And the only way to reduce it is to get rid of the, well, people. What do we do when the Whitetail deer population gets out of control? We go shoot ’em — lots of em.

And when we’re talking people, I have a little trouble getting on board with that. Unless, of course, Big Brother is for it, in which case I think it’s just peachy.

What if such energy were used for Good?

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Rovekarl

Karl Rove had an op-ed piece in the WSJ today (he writes for them a lot these days) expressing grudging respect for the "brilliant ground game" Barack Obama’s put together. For Democrats, of course, this is like receiving an admiring nod from The Devil Himself, especially since the Atwater cohort is saying that Obama is using his — Karl Rove‘s — ideas. An excerpt:

    For starters, Barack Obama’s manager admitted to the New York Times that he wanted an "army of persuasion" modeled explicitly on the massive Bush neighbor-to-neighbor "Victory Committee" of ’00 and ’04. Those efforts deployed millions of volunteers to register, persuade and get-out-the-vote….
    Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has harnessed the Internet for persuasion, communication and self-directed organization. A Bush campaign secret weapon in 2004 was nearly 7.5 million email addresses of supporters, 1.5 million of them volunteers. Some volunteers ran "virtual precincts," using the Web to register, persuade and organize family and friends around the country. Technology has opened even more possibilities for Mr. Obama today.
    The Obama campaign is trying to catch up with the GOP’s "microtargeting" program, which uses powerful analytical tools and extensive household consumer information to focus on prospects for conversion and extra turnout help….

All of which emphasized two points: First, people like Karl Rove think this is a "Game," and therefore alternate hitting the opposition as hard as they can with sportsmanlike expressions of admiration when the other side scores a good hit. (Subtext: I’m a professional, not one of this "true-believer" losers.) It’s not about trying to accomplish something for the country; it’s about playing hard and winning.

Second, it makes me think: Why can’t this kind of energy be devoted to accomplishing some good for the country after the hoopla of elections is over? What if we were to enlist millions of motivated and dedicated volunteers to push with all their might for National Health care, or a solution to the coming Social Security crash, or an honest-to-goodness Energy Policy that would improve our economy, our strategic position and the health of the planet?

Or, to think of it another way, what if Mr. Bush, after winning that 2004 election, had put enough boots on the ground in Iraq (the comparison to the army Rove assembled seems apt) to nip the insurgency in its bud, long before he finally agreed to the Surge?

All the money, and all the effort that goes into political campaigns… what a waste, unless an equal or greater effort is mounted after the campaign to accomplish something in office.

But that’s not the way the Game is played, is it?

T. Boone Pickens’ plan for energy independence

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Pickenstboone

Assuming the link works for you, I invite you to go read T. Boone Pickens’ piece in the WSJ today, headlined, "My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil."

Now I know what you’re thinking: Mr. Pickens being an oil man from way back, his plan for independence is likely to be as simple and monolithic as Joe Wilson‘s — specifically, drill.

But while he says, way down in the piece, "Drilling in the outer continental shelf should be considered as well," it plays less of a role in his vision than it does in the Energy Party‘s, if that. It comes after he urges us to "explore all avenues and every energy alternative, from more R&D into batteries and fuel cells to development of solar, ethanol and biomass to more conservation."

TurbinesAll of that follows his exploration of his main idea, which is to convert a large portion of our energy
generation to wind power, which he lauds by saying "Wind is 100% domestic, it is 100% renewable and it is 100% clean." He would use natural gas thereby freed up from power generation to run our vehicles.

All that is great, but I think the best passage in the piece is when he explains why we must take extraordinary measures to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I leave you with that excerpt:

    Let me share a few facts: Each year we import more and more oil. In 1973, the year of the infamous oil embargo, the United States imported about 24% of our oil. In 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, this had climbed to 42%. Today, we import almost 70% of our oil.
    This is a staggering number, particularly for a country that consumes oil the way we do. The U.S. uses nearly a quarter of the world’s oil, with just 4% of the population and 3% of the world’s reserves. This year, we will spend almost $700 billion on imported oil, which is more than four times the annual cost of our current war in Iraq.
    In fact, if we don’t do anything about this problem, over the next 10 years we will spend around $10 trillion importing foreign oil. That is $10 trillion leaving the U.S. and going to foreign nations, making it what I certainly believe will be the single largest transfer of wealth in human history…

The troubles with ethanol

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One reason we need to pursue every potential avenue in trying to achieve greater energy independence (and save the planet) is that some of the things we try are going to fail. Others are going to turn out to be bad ideas. The sooner we know that, the better.

Most of us now know that about ethanol. But in case you thought that the only reason why it’s a bad idea is that converting cropland to growing energy instead of food leads to famine for millions and higher food prices for everybody else (as if that weren’t enough), Venkat Laksmi provided a more complete list for us today on our op-ed page. An excerpt:

    …Ethanol is not a long hydrocarbon chain like gasoline, and as a
result it is only two-thirds as efficient as gasoline. In other words,
a gallon of ethanol will provide two-thirds of the energy of a gallon
of gasoline. Ethanol mixes with water, which is not the case with
gasoline, which means the transportation systems used for gasoline
(i.e. pipelines and trucks) cannot be used for ethanol.

    Additionally,
there is a lot of inefficiency in the production of ethanol. For
example, corn-based ethanol requires 54 percent of the energy to
process the corn into ethanol and 24 percent to grow the corn. As a
result, there is a return of only 30 percent or so of the energy,
making this inefficient as compared to conventional gasoline, which
produces five times the energy required to produce it, and even
biodiesel, with its 93 percent efficiency. Even though biodiesel is
efficient, it has a long way to go for large-scale production….

Samuel notes progress on 55 mph

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Samuel Tenenbaum, author of the Energy Party’s 55-mph plank and ardent advocate of that idea (just ask anyone who’s had a conversation with him in the last year or two), writes a hasty note to inform us of progress on that front:

Senator John Warner has asked the Energy Dept to give him info on 55. Time to write… about it again.I was interviewed on Spart. TV about 55 yesterday ! Have you read "Energy Victory " yet . This is the foremost issue of the time ! We need energy security first, not indepence for that is a long way off . Energy security means getting out of the grip of the thugocracies. 55 mph , flexfuel (M85) mandated that all cars and trucks sold here in 2010 and tax credit to excellerate the trade in of old clunkers . Like if you buy flexfuel car that gets 35 mpg then you get half the price back and have a system that decreases until you hit 26mph which then you add a  $ 1,000 per mpg below . So if I want a Rolls or Hummer , I can pay for its abuse of the planet . You still have the freedom , but it costs you !

Yes, he’s still on me about the book he gave me. It’s on my desk! It’s on my short list of stuff to read! But right now I’m reading The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which my older son gave me for Father’s Day. At least it’s a related subject…

I’m up to the part where Osama and those who agree with him have just been thoroughly humiliated by the U.S. coming into the Arabian peninsula and kicking Saddam’s butt out of Kuwait and back to Baghdad, thereby illustrating their country’s helplessness and utter dependence on the West.

Of course, it’s a symbiotic relationship — or perhaps I should say, mutually parasitic relationship. We’re just as dependent on their oil, which is the condition that Samuel and the rest of us in the Energy Party would like to change.

Charlotte’s success with light rail

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The Charleston paper this morning has this story about Charlotte’s initial success with light rail. Note this excerpt:

The Lynx is an electric light-rail system that started running in
November and quickly exceeded ridership predictions. Near many of the
15 stations along the 9.6-mile line, new condominiums and other
buildings are under construction, and property values are rising fast.

Those of you who believe in the market as arbiter of all things should note that last bit: "property values are rising fast." That’s the mark of success. Me, I’d call it a success if they’d just extend it out to that mess around Lake Norman and relieve it just a little, so it doesn’t feel like I spend half the drive to Pennsylvania dragging through that part. You don’t actually escape the gravitational pull of that hyperdense mass until you’re 50 miles into North Carolina.

Hey, if Charlotte builds on this, and Charleston imitates it, can my Midlands Subway System be far behind?

I keep dreaming the dream anyway…

S.C. reform site seeks constitutional convention

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Still catching up from the past couple of weeks (first, I had a three day week because I was driving to Memphis on Thursday the 26th, then had another three-day week because I drove back on Monday, and the 4th was Friday), and that means this message from Mattheus Mei is a tad late for Independence Day.

But the message has little to do with the Fourth, since it’s about changing the S.C. constitution — something we’ve been pushing for, whatever the day of the year, since 1991. So while we have never gone so far as to call for an actual convention, it’s certainly an option that should be on the table. (You may be interested to know that the impetus for our 1991 "Power Failure" series came from a series of op-ed columns by Walter Edgar and Blease Graham that did call for such a convention; we adopted the reform agenda without the convention part.) Here’s what Matthew wrote to me:

Brad, I’m starting a petition. With all the "change" in the air, isn’t it time we take an active role in changing how things are done in Columbia, or better yet changing the whole darned system itself! Care to sign, and join me in my personal quest to arouse the rebel yell deep within the SC electorate and let our elected officials with their internecine bickering an inability to pass meaningful legislation? I’d appreciate any support or words of encouragement on what is both a quixotic and yet slightly cynical quest of desperation for the plight of our state.

~Matt

And here’s a link to his site.

Neither Obama nor McCain meets Energy Party standard

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.
    They’re also lucky that the Energy Party exists only in my head, because I believe its nominee could tap into a longing, among the very independent voters Messrs. McCain and Obama need to court for victory, for a pragmatic, nonideological, comprehensive national energy policy. This independent voter longs for it, anyway.
    What is the greatest failure of George W. Bush as president? If you answered “Iraq,” you lose. His greatest failure was summed up well by Sen. Joe Biden, who said at the 2006 Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting, “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
    The biggest wasted opportunity was when he failed, on Sept. 12, 2001, to ask Americans to sacrifice, to work together to shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” and “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism.”
    Gasoline was between about $1.40 and $1.50 a gallon then. If we had applied a federal tax increase then of $1 or $2 — as voices as varied as Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Jim Hoagland and Robert Samuelson have urged for years — we’d still have been paying less per gallon than we are now, and the money would have stayed in this country, in our hands, rather than in those of Mahmoud Ahmajinedad, or Hugo Chavez, or our “friends” the Saudis (you know, the ones who underwrite the Wahhabist madrassas).
    And who, on the day after the terrorist attacks, would have refused? Most Americans would have been glad to be asked to do something to fight back.
    We could have used that money for a lot of things, from funding the War on Terror (rather than passing the debt to our grandchildren) to accelerating the development of hydrogen, solar, wind, clean coal, methanol-from-coal, electric cars, mass transit — on something useful. We would have started conserving a lot more a lot faster, reducing demand enough to deliver a shock to world oil prices. Demand would have resumed its rise because of such irresistible forces as Chinese growth, but we would have had a salutary effect.
    But we didn’t. We didn’t do anything to defund the terrorists or the petrodictators, or to reduce upward pressure on the national debt, or to respond to rising world energy demands, or to save the planet. We didn’t do it because we can’t do it individually and have an appreciable effect — it would take a national effort, and that takes leadership. And no one in a position of political leadership — not the president, not his fellow Republicans, and not their Democratic opposition — has stood up and said, Let’s get our act together, and here’s how….
    Getting our act together would require leaders who are no longer interested in playing the Party Game. In Messrs. McCain and Obama, we had an opportunity. No major Republican is less into party than John McCain, which is why so many Republicans wanted to deny him the nomination. And in Barack Obama, Democrats have finally settled on the far-less-partisan alternative.
    But in the energy realm, what have we gotten? Sen. Obama generally sticks to the liberal/Democratic playbook: No drilling offshore or in ANWR. Play down nuclear, play up solar and wind.
    Sen. McCain, at least, is not doctrinaire Republican on energy. For that, you have to look to someone like Jim DeMint, whose op-ed piece on our pages a week ago extolled drilling, but excoriated “cap and trade.”
    Sen. McCain will at least take some items from the left (cap and trade, CAFE standards) and some from the right (let states decide whether to drill offshore), but he’s mushy about it. And any credit he gets for ideological flexibility is overshadowed by his being the author of the biggest pander on energy this year — the proposal for a “gas tax holiday.”
    An Energy Party nominee wouldn’t propose to lower the price of gasoline at the pump, so if that’s what you want — and a lot of you do want that — you can just stop reading now. Making it temporarily easier to buy more foreign oil is in no way in the national interest, and a leader would have the guts to explain that.
    The Energy nominee would increase domestic production in the short term and lead a no-holds-barred national effort to take us beyond major dependence on anybody’s oil. He (or she) would put America at the forefront of both energy innovation and environmental stewardship, and would not let any sort of ideology stand in the way. (We must distinguish, for instance, between an environmental goal that matters, such as global climate change, and the inconvenience of a few caribou.) The Energy nominee would, given the chance:

  • Drill off our coast, something we’ve seen can be done with minimal environmental risk.
  • Drill in the ANWR (which, as detractors note, would not solve the problem, but it would help, and would demonstrate that we’re serious).
  • Prohibitively tax the ownership of SUVs, and any other unconscionable, antisocial behavior.
  • Lower speed limits, and enforce them (use the fines to pay for more traffic cops).
  • Take money away from highway construction, and devote it to mass transit.
  • Build nuclear plants with the urgency of the Manhattan Project.
  • Develop electric cars at Apollo speed.

    We need leadership that respects no one’s sacred ideological cows, left or right — leadership that will take risks to do what works, both for the nation and ultimately for the planet.
    Is that really so much to ask?

Ahmadinejad and libertarian think-tanker: Separated at birth?

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Combo

As I was quickly glancing at some mail before tossing it, my eye fell upon a mug shot of Joseph L. Bast, president of The Heartland Institute. Trying to place the face, I looked up a mug of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In light of my heightened interest in all things having to do with twins these days, I couldn’t help wondering:

Separated at Birth?

Just think — if Mahmoud had come up in a tie-wearing culture, he’d be telling us not to worry about depending on petrodictators for our energy. Hey, wait a minute…

Happy REAL Independence Day!

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Adamsjohn

When I returned from Memphis, the first episodes of the HBO miniseries "John Adams" had arrived from Netflix. I’m saving them for the weekend, but in anticipation, I felt it proper to honor my favorite Founder by noting that, as he said at the time, July 2nd is the day we should mark as the date upon which our independence was declared. That’s the day the vote took place in Congress.

As he wrote to Abigail on July 3, 1776:

    But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
    I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
    You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Declaration_committeeAdams did the heavy lifting that led to our declaration, fighting for independence before the Continental Congress. When the matter was sent to a committee (shown at right) that included him and Ben
Franklin, Adams urged that Jefferson should do the writing of the version for posterity — not because he had done anything to bring it about (Jefferson had sat like a lump through the debates), but because had had style as a writer.

Adams would live to see the wrong day celebrated with "bonfires and illuminations," and Jefferson lionized as the Author of Liberty. Which wasn’t fair then, and isn’t fair now. Short, chunky, irritating, brilliant Adams always deserved infinitely more credit.

Declaration_draft
We people who can occasionally turn a phrase get way too much credit in this life. My moderate skill in that regard enabled me to B.S. my way through school whenever an essay test was given (I dreaded a well-crafted multiple-choice, which measured factual knowledge rather than mere verbal razzle-dazzle), and Jefferson’s has made him way more of a hero than he deserves to be.

So let’s pause today to honor John Adams, who did far more to lead us into nationhood.

Yo! City council? WHO do ya think MADE it ‘fail?’

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Finally, some folks in this community are trying to revive the comprehensive approach to solving Columbia’s homelessness problem, two years after city council arbitrarily killed a similar effort that was well on its way.

Of course, the leadership is coming, again, from the private sector. A broad coalition including the United Way, the Salvation Army, business leaders, and an interfaith consortium, with $5 million from the Knight Foundation, are trying to get the one-stop-shop for dealing with the various pathologies that lead to homelessness. (FYI — the Knight Foundation is an organization that was once upon a time associated with the corporation that owned The State. That corporation doesn’t exist any more, but the Foundation has maintained its commitment to Columbia — which is slightly amazing.)

So what’s the city’s reaction? According to The State‘s Adam Beam, "Council members said they would be hesitant to fund an idea that has failed in the past."

Say what?!?!? The idea didn’t fail. You killed it. And it ranks as possibly the most outrageously irresponsible thing the city has done in the past 10 years, which is no small feat. The city’s feckless efforts toward homelessness since then — the "Housing First" program that addresses only a thin sliver of the problem, the sequel emergency winter shelters, just adds to the insult to all the good-faith efforts the city scuttled. ("Emergency" because each year there for awhile it seemed like a shock to the city that such a shelter would be needed — "What? It’s going to get cold again?")

Here’s some video of some of the members of the new coalition talking to the editorial board about their effort — which is admirable and encouraging, but doomed to fail if the city doesn’t get its mind right and follow where the private sector is leading.

Speaking of Russert, let’s talk media bias

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Russert

This morning I was reminded of the hateful message I got about Tim Russert when I read this piece in the WSJ about how — according to this particular ex-media type who concerns himself with media bias — Mr. Russert was one of the few big-time TV types who shared his concern:

…No, what made Tim Russert different, and better, I think was his willingness to listen to — and take seriously — criticism about his own profession. He was willing, for example, to keep an open mind about a hot-button issue like media bias — an issue that so many of his colleagues dismiss as the delusions of right-wing media haters. (Trust me on this one, I worked at CBS News for 28 years and know Dan Rather personally.)…

Personally, I have to take other people’s word for whether Russert was a good guy or not. When I was introduced to him at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York (by Lindsey Graham, as it happened), I did my best to act like I knew who he was (I looked him up later), just to be polite. Yes, my ignorance of TV news is that complete. I’d heard the name, but that was it. I go to church on Sunday mornings. I will say this about him, though — now that I think about it, he struck me as the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been insulted if he’d known I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t seem like the big-headed type. So that’s something.

But while I don’t have an informed opinion about Mr. Russert’s character, I do have a lot of informed opinions about what is oversimplified as "media bias." Here’s the short version — i’s definitely real, and here’s the form it takes:

Journalists spend their lives in a bubble, largely because of the work they do and the hours they keep. They tend to work with people just like the people they went to journalism school with, and because work doesn’t allow them to go to PTA meetings and otherwise live normal lives around normal people. Take that and combine it with the fact that journalists try to studiously avoid having opinions, and even fool themselves into thinking they are perfectly objective, which causes them to have the most entrenched sort of opinions there are — unexamined ones.

Other people get out of college and hang with all sorts of different people, and form impressions of the world that they are not ashamed to think about in opinionated terms. Journalists pretend to themselves that they are not forming opinions, and therefore their ability to form grownup, evolving opinions about the world gets stunted. So they, and the people around them, go through life with the sort of vaguely liberal inclinations that they bought into as college sophomores.

This phenomenon was touched upon in the WSJ piece:

    Tim understood that without that kind of diversity, journalism would be in trouble. He knew it wasn’t good for journalism or America if almost all the people reporting the news lived and worked in the same bubble.
    "There’s a potential cultural bias. And I think it’s very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the ’60s and the ’70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn’t mean there’s a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."