The Black Ram

Coverage of the Keystone XL Pipeline Sucks

2011-11-11T09:34:00.001-08:00

(http://www.tarsandsaction.org)

Jennifer Dlouhy’s reporting on the Keystone XL pipeline, while already disappointing, reached a new low on Friday, November 11. Her report on the Obama Administration delaying approval/denial of the Keystone extension is a terrific example of everything wrong with contemporary journalism and public discourse.

As with her previous reporting, Dlouhy brushes past the environmental issues at the heart of the pipeline’s controversy. Fears of groundwater contamination, undetected spills, questionable safety assessments, and potentially illegal lobbying on behalf of TransCanada Corp. inform concerns about this project, but Dlouhy only mentions concerns about the Ogalla Aquifer.

Instead, she focuses her article on the political and economic consequences of either approving or delaying the pipeline. President Obama had to choose between what industry called a “shovel-ready,” labor-friendly project and the demands of his environmentalist supporters. Predictably, Dlouhy does not speak to any environmentalists until the final paragraph of her story.

Focus on ‘only one job’?

Instead, Dlouhy allows petroleum industry lobbyists and Republican donors to use her space in the Chronicle to trash talk the President while appearing to quote unbiased experts on the issue. The first not-so-stealth partisan attack comes from Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute:

This [decision to delay] is clearly about politics and keeping a radical constituency [environmentalists] opposed to any and all oil and gas development in the president’s camp in 2012. It appears there is only one job that is being focused on here.

What goes unsaid in Dlouhy’s article is that Mr. Gerard has been an active contributor to the Republican Party and has worked to produce a good bit of President Obama’s job insecurity. Between 2007 and today, as both an individual and with family members, Mr. Gerard has donated $69,500 to Mitt Romney and his Political Action Committee. For good measure, he and his family kicked in another $10,000 for the Republican Congressional Committee in 2011. Dlouhy does not once mention his partisan activism.

Labor groups see jobs

While the estimates for the number of actual jobs has varied over time and among sources, Dlouhy’s reporting on the potential consequences of a potential pipeline relies on these phantom figures to give yet another platform for anti-Obama partisans.

Valero is quoted (corporations are people, too) as saying:

the delay is ‘short-sighted,’ attributing the decision to ‘extremists who fail to realize that fossil fuels will continue to be consumed because they are efficient and economically viable.’

Valero cannot be accused of such short-sightedness because it has invested $644, 000 in hiring lobbyists in Washington. In fact, Valero used its considerable resources to lobby on behalf of H.R. 1938, the North American-Made Energy Security Act.

This is the relevant text of the bill, which was introduced on May 23, 2011:

North American-Made Energy Security Act - Directs the President, acting through the Secretary of Energy (DOE), to coordinate with each federal agency responsible for coordinating or considering an aspect of the President's National Interest Determination and Presidential Permit decision regarding construction and operation of the Keystone XL pipeline (from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, and then on to the U.S. Gulf Coast through Cushing, Oklahoma) to ensure that all necessary actions are taken on an expedited schedule.

Declares the sense of Congress that: (1) the United States must decrease its dependence on oil from countries hostile to its interests, and (2) increased access to Canadian energy resources will create jobs in the United States.

While Valero is presented as a disinterested party looking to promote the national interest, the truth is that it is an influential player in Washington. Dlouhy doesn’t mention Valero’s lobbying efforts or its substantial donations to the Republican Party. During the 2010 election cycle, Valero donated a total of $231,000 to Republican Congressional campaigns, and has thus far donated $80,000 to the same bodies for the 2012 cycle. Valero does donate a small amount of its money to Democrats, though, and Dlouhy includes one of them in the next paragraph of her story.

Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, who has championed the project, said he was disappointed, saying the pipeline already has survived extensive reviews and could provide thousands of jobs.

Dlouhy doesn’t mention that Green may have championed the project because the petroleum industry has consistently championed him: in the 2010 election cycle, Green received $88,600 from the oil and gas industries, and for the 2012 cycle, he has thus far received $26,600. In 2010, Green received $5000 from Valero, and for the 2012 cycle he received $2,500 -- or 15% of all donations to Democrats from Valero. Green was also one of three Democratic co-sponsors of H.R. 1938, next to 34 Republicans.

Green’s assertion that the process has survived “extensive reviews” isn’t true. Dlouhy does not once mention of Professor John Stansbury’s independent review of TransCanada’s questionable worst-case response proposal, which is obvious evidence that the initial reviews were lacking. The claim about “thousands” of jobs is speculative at best, but predictable, considering that the one major union backing Keystone XL, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, has already donated $5000 to Green’s 2012 campaign.

Dlouhy’s article ignores the true controversy, potentially catastrophic environmental outcomes, in order to create a disingenuous story about partisanship. Dlouhy unforgivably omits the partisan activities of the industry representatives she interviews and all but ignores the environmental concerns surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline.

Dlouhy’s failings in reporting this story are indicative of the American public’s larger failure to appreciate both the importance of policy debates and those debates’ interconnectedness with our lives as citizens. TransCanada’s profits ought not to be a major concerns of American policymakers, though American air and water quality should. Citizens cannot begin to appreciate the incestuous relationship between Capitol Hill and industrial lobbyists if journalists don’t show it to them.

The Keystone XL Pipeline Sucks

2011-11-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Dlouhy’s reporting on the Keystone XL pipeline is a misleading and incomplete presentation of the issue. The first half of the story fails to once mention environmentalists’ actual concerns about the pipeline. There are quotes about “dirty oil” and “climate change,” but there is no mention of the specific reasons to be wary of the project.

Environmentalists

Environmentalists are concerned about the potential for spills contaminating major water sources in the American Midwest including the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, Ogalla aquifer. TransCanada Corp., which is requesting permission to build the pipeline, presented a questionable worst-case scenario assessment to the State Department.

John Stansbury of the University of Nebraska conducted his own analysis using more realistic disaster scenarios and discovered that TransCanada Corp. seriously underestimate the possible consequences of a leak anywhere in the Keystone XL pipeline.Stansbury’s analysis shows that TransCanada Corp. vastly underestimated the number of spills one could expect over the pipeline’s lifetime: the official estimate was 11 spills over 50 years, while Stansbury calculated that 91 spills over the same period as a more realistic estimate.

TransCanada assumed that the Keystone XL line would be so well constructed, that fewer spills would be likely -- an assertion that ignores contemporary spill rates along with the effects that particular properties of the diluted bitumen (high temperatures and levels of acidity) will have on the pipes. Stansbury suggests that any gains in safety from better pipe or monitoring technologies will be rendered moot because of the aforementioned properties.Similarly, TransCanada Corp. assumed that it would take no more than 12 - 19 minutes to shut down the pipeline in case of a spill, even though a recent spill (Engbridge) took 12 hours to completely shut off, with oil still being pumped for 2 of those hours.

What’s most disturbing is that in one of Stansbury’s models, TransCanada’s estimates for response to a spill are overly harsh to itself:

According to TransCanada documents, a slow leak of less than 1.5 percent of the pumping rate could go undetected for up to 90 days. However, since pipeline inspections are scheduled every few weeks, it is likely that the oil would reach the surface and be detected before the entire 90 days elapsed.

To recap, TransCanada confidently submitted its proposal to the federal government while it was omitting routine safety inspections from its assumptions, thinking that such a proposal would be accepted.

Based on the potentially illegal lobbying that former Hillary 2008 supporters did in order to favorably position TransCanada for approval, one could forgive the company’s oversight. No mention of this scandal is present anywhere in Dlouhy’s article.

TransCanada largely ignores the different environmental challenges that spills in certain regions could cause. Stansbury notes that since much of the land that the Keystone XL would cross is sparsely populated, it could take extended periods of time to identify spills. Besides the obvious fears of contaminating drinking water, there remains the possibility that the toxicity of diluted bitumen could create unsafe air quality in affected regions.

Lastly, something that seems to be underplayed in coverage of this story is that the terminus for the pipeline is in refineries on the Gulf Coast. Considering the ecological and economic trauma that the region suffered (and continues to suffer) after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, shouldn’t journalists pay more attention to safety issues?

20,000

The repeated insistence that the project would yield 20,000 jobs is not supported with evidence. The United Associations of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbling and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada (UA) does endorse Keystone XL, but their own press release says “This project will create 13,000 good-paying construction JOBS, with proper benefits” -- not 20,000.
TransCanada’s own estimates in its 2008 proposal suggests that construction of the pipeline will employ 3,500 people while utilizing 20,000 “person years.”

Furthermore, the assertion that organized labor is uniformly behind the Keystone XL project is incorrect. The UA claims approximately 300,000 members, 35,000 of them in Canada. The Amalgamated Transit Union, which claims 190,000 workers and retirees along with the Transport Workers Union, which claims 200,000 both oppose the pipelines. Therefore, almost 1/3 as many union members in the United States alone oppose the pipeline while the UA figure conflates American with Canadian workers.

Dlouhy’s article trivializes legitimate environmental concerns and amounts to little more than cheerleading TransCanada’s line. The lack of attention paid to Keystone XL’s possible effects on human and environmental health is contemptible and, sadly, not unpredictable.

Book Review: The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

2011-11-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

Tariq Ali’s The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad is a selectively sourced and analytically unconvincing polemic. Ali is clearly unimpressed with both capitalism and American “democracy.” His starting premise is that the United States, no matter who governs it, is a violent, imperial power beholden to the interests of neoliberal ideologues and the barons of high finance. The book, published before the 2010 midterm elections, is clearly a rushed work, and Ali admits as much:

I intend to update this volume in time for the renomination and the 2012 campaign, but perhaps it won’t be necessary as other books, sharper and more distinctive in tone, take its place, necessary antidotes to the gushing biographies that compete in their worship of power. (x)

The bar for the book’s obsolescence is not a high one.

The Obama Syndrome is less about the Obama Presidency than it is about castigating a centrist Democrat for achieving significant policy goals in right-wing America while rehashing standard left-wing complaints about capitalism, the Black Panther Party (there is in fact a plea for Mumia), and Israel.

Ali opens the book with a quote from Malcolm X:

It isn’t a president who can help or hurt; it’s the system…

A better title for the book, obviously, would be The American Syndrome, because nothing for which Ali indicts Obama is unique to his administration.

Ali’s comments on foreign policy are largely uninteresting and not worth much discussion. He writes, “From Palestine through Iraq to Iran, Obama has acted as just another steward of the American empire…” (56), which demands little more than great big yawn from the reader. In remarks about Obama’s “escalation” of the conflict in Afghanistan, Ali writes:

No world-historical spectacle could be more welcome than the American proconsul fleeing once again by helicopter from the roof of the embassy, and the motley expeditionary forces and their assorted civilian lackeys kicked unceremoniously out of the country along with him. (68)

Really? Nothing? Not a Palestinian state? An end to hostilities in Congo? Uganda? International accord and action on climate change? The unshackling of approximately one half of the citizenry in the Middle East? An end to the Drug War? American failure in Afghanistan is more desirable than all of these outcomes to Ali.

Ali, as I understand, is a secularist, so his enthusiasm for a Taliban victory against American forces is puzzling. I suppose that in his moral calculus, the greatest evil is the Western capitalist imperium, so medieval misanthropic Islamism deserves victory against it. Never mind the men and women who sacrificed their lives to put an end to Taliban rule, or to march to the ballot box, or to send their daughters to school. Their plights matter not.

Ali’s insensitivity to the practical political welfare of places burdened with American intervention is on striking display when he declares

There was no fundamental break in foreign policy, as opposed to diplomatic mood music, between the Bush One, Clinton, and Bush Two administrations; there has been none between the Bush and Obama regimes. (38)

At the time of this book’s writing, that may have been true with respect to American policy in the Middle East. However, events since then demonstrate that Ali’s characterization is wrong.

When considering whether or not to intervene in Libya, Obama considered different points of view, potential benefits and risks to intervention, and ultimately concluded with a rather idealistic rationale for action. Michael Hastings reports in Rolling Stone:

According to one participant's summary, Obama said: Look, the question of who rules Libya is probably not a vital interest to the United States. The atrocities threatened don't compare to atrocities in other parts of the world, I hear that. But there's a big "but" here. First of all, acting would be the right thing to do, because we have an opportunity to prevent a massacre, and we've been asked to do it by the people of Libya, their Arab neighbors and the United Nations. And second, the president said, failing to intervene would be a "psychological pendulum, in terms of the Arab Spring, in favor of repression." He concluded: "Just signing on to a no-fly zone so that we have political cover isn't going to cut it. That's not how America leads." Nor, he added, is it the "image of America I believe in.

Could Ali imagine George W. Bush deliberating whether or not to intervene in a country that is “probably not a vital interest” to the United States? Considering that the Libya operation saw not one American boot on Libyan soil, Obama’s worries about the Arab Spring’s success appear genuine -- if they weren't, American invasion on behalf of "democracy" is conceivable (and was urged in Iran in 2009 by the likes of John McCain). In Libya, the President showed that he may well be both the present steward of an imperialist state but that he was willing, under some circumstances, to prudently use that perch toward moral ends.

In a recent column Ali writes:

The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity, and trying to restore the status quo ante.

Civil society is easily moved by images and Muammar Gaddafi's brutality in sending his air force to bomb his people was the pretext that Washington utilised to bomb another Arab capital.

How penetrating.

Ali’s assertion that there is no change between administrations could be taken either as a truism (in which case his arguments against Obama are moot) or as a falsehood. On the issue of women’s rights, it is quite demonstrably rubbish.

Has Ali never heard of the Mexico City Policy or Global Gag Rule? This Reagan-era relic bans federal funding for any non-governmental organization to even mention abortion services in their work abroad. This policy is contrary to all international standards and practices with respect to family planning policy. President Bill Clinton reversed the policy in 1993; President Bush re-instated it in 2001, and President Obama reversed it again in 2009 . The reproductive health of literally millions of women is saved by this policy’s repeal, and Ali takes no notice whatsoever. United States participation in reproductive healthcare programs through participating in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) further assists women’s development globally, but has recently been withdrawn by the Republican House, not by President Obama. Are these policy decisions inconsequential to Ali?

To be more direct, is the plight of the second sex immaterial to his critique of Obama from the “left”?

When he returns to matters “at home,” Ali’s failures in reporting and analysis are even starker.

Ali’s criticism of the Affordable Care Act is, by far, the weakest point of this work. Ali uses the story of that legislation to demonstrate that the president is an opportunist without any real progressive beliefs. To make the case against Obama in Washington, though, Ali first takes us to Springfield. He cites comments from Obama’s days as a state senator in Illinois:

I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program…And that’s what I’d like to see. but as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Ali rages that by 2009, the Democrats had successfully recaptured all three branches of the federal government, so Obama either punted on a single-payer plan or double-crossed American progressives. While Ali does mention the name Max Baucus, he doesn’t once mention Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), the disputed election of Al Franken (D-MN) or the eventual upset in Massachusetts that ended the Democrats’ nominal 60-vote Senate majority.

Another interview, this one with Joe Klein, aims to showcase Obama’s craven, right-wing nature on the same issue. When asked about an individual mandate for a universal healthcare program, Obama offers the following:

If there’s a way of doing it voluntarily, that’s more consonant with the American character. If you can’t solve the problem without government stepping in, that’s when you make it mandatory.

At no point does Obama say that he personally prefers “small” government or “market-based” ideas -- he is simply observing a trait in purported American political behavior. There is no declaration that “government is the problem” or any such Reaganite blather in these remarks. Ali’s criticism becomes all the more baseless when one considers that the ACA ultimately did have an individual mandate, a testament to the president’s policy making prowess more than to his incompetence or malevolence.

In his first State of the Union Address, Obama stated:

Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why I’m bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week.

I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.

In September of that same year, Obama addressed Congress again:

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.

Would Ali have preferred that Obama retreat after spending a year and incalculable amounts of political capital on the issue because he couldn’t sign a single payer plan? At no point does the President dismiss a single payer plan as unworkable or unwise; he states only that it is presently infeasible. It is infinitely more feasible after the passage of ACA, which will correct some, but not all, of the deficiencies of America’s hybrid system. If the ultimate policy goal is universal coverages, ACA moves toward, not away from that goal. Neither of these speeches and none of these facts factor into Ali’s discussion.

Regardless, Ali argues that there is an “inbuilt pragmatism and brazen opportunism…much in evidence during Obama’s days as an Illinois state senator” (77). Rather than discussing Obama’s temperament as a legislator, Ali spends two pages detailing Obama’s relationship with Rickey Hendon, another state senator from Chicago. The two men had a tense relationship that culminated in some sort of physical altercation. I’ve looked up the details of this incident and have found two reports besides the one Ali reports. Obama doesn’t come off well, but Ali comes off worse.

Hendon claims, in Ali’s version, to have taken issue with Obama’s vote against funding for a project in Hendon’s district, a decision Obama defended in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Obama then verbally attacks Hendon for questioning his motives and threatens him, at which point the two men go to another room where “Fisticuffs ensued and continued till another senator rushed over and dragged them apart” (76).

In David Mendell’s version, Obama voted against Hendon’s project by mistake and sought to rectify his “No” vote, which causes Hendon to call him disingenuous, among other things, culminating in an altercation where Obama needed to be “restrained.”

The Washington Post reports “The two men walked out of the chamber into a back room and shoved each other a few times before colleagues broke them apart, Hendon and other witnesses said.” The Post story also reports that Hendon had been racially antagonizing Obama over his lack of authentic “blackness” for five years by that point. Ali fails to note this harassment, likely because he doesn’t consider it a vice.

The same Post story paints a more complete picture of Obama in Illinois that is not unfamiliar: Obama makes allies, grandstands a bit, makes compromises when he must, and accomplishes what he sets out to do. One of his friends from that era remarks "For somebody who people criticize for being an idealist, I've seen Barack get realistic pretty fast. He understands that it's better to accomplish what you can, take your lumps and move on." The manner of coalition building and seeking consensus appears to have worked well in Springfield; Obama is described as commanding the whole state senate’s respect and awe by the time he completed his tenure there. The rules are, to understate things a bit, a little different in Washington.

Obama could be faulted for naivete in his method of negotiating with Republicans and conservative Democrats, but the evidence from his tenure in Illinois indicates that this manner of operating was successful in the past -- his pragmatism is not born out of fecklessness but out of strategy. Repeated barbs directed toward the president “acting white” or otherwise appeasing unsavory characters are unnecessary: Obama has acknowledged them himself.

The Post piece shows Obama willingly trying to accommodate wary white audiences through his manner of dress and even recreation (he takes up golf and masters the sport in a year). Obama quite consciously learned to “Order regular mustard instead of Dijon; wear simple golf shirts instead of fancy button-downs.” By doing so, he was also able to gain seats on powerful committees, shepherd legislation against racial profiling, and assist other liberals into and through the state senate.

Commentators including Ezra Klein and Jon Chait have been dismissive of the notion that presidents can move public opinion and single-handedly make policy. The absurdity of this notion is evident when liberals want Obama to have a harder edge, be more like Truman. Harry Truman, none of you will recall (because you’re young), ran against a “do-nothing Republican Congress” -- not against poor messaging. Ali takes for granted that America as a world power is beholden to aggressive capitalists and superstitious millenarians (though he does not extend the same courtesy to Iran’s mullahs). At the same time, Ali laments how ineffective Obama has been at enacting pro-social policy domestically, as if the two realms were governed independently of each other. The Obama Syndrome makes much of how many divisions Halliburton has in Iraq or Afghanistan, but pays no attention to its legions of lobbyists in Washington.

Ali does make one penetrating insight about American political culture, though it is incidental and without consequence to his argument. He describes the Democratic Party’s raison d’etre as the competent management of the military-industrial imperial state. Considering the unhinged, arithmetic illiteracy and millenarian superstition of the opposition, it’s not an unfair characterization. Fundamentally changing one of the two major American parties requires both ideological and practical action; Ali’s cynicism will not do. Whether American liberals, leftists, socialists, etc. can alter the country’s trajectory is a question that must respect -- and transform -- structures and institutions. Ali’s book does nothing to advance this work and may well detract from it, considering that Obama has been the best champion for liberal social reform that this country has seen in decades. That truth is a symptom and not a cause of the country’s social-political ills.

Ali ends the book by appropriating the words of the “ultra-Zionist” Rahm Emanuel and dismissing the Obama administration as “fucking retarded.” In the spirit of responsible global citizenship and sustainability, I will do the same in describing Ali’s The Obama Syndrome.

Republicans' Tax Plans Suck

2011-11-02T08:19:00.000-07:00

The analysis of the leading Republican presidential candidates’ budget plans “GOP tax plans compared” (October 30) failed to address serious questions surrounding these proposals.

Both Herman Cain and Rick Perry want to eliminate itemized deductions, though Perry would allow continuing exemptions for interest accrued on mortgages, and state/local taxes paid. The table in the print edition, however, includes itemized deductions throughout. The table estimates each hypothetical taxpayer/family’s net tax but does not inform the reader about what percentage of each taxpayer’s gross income is being taxed. Under Perry’s plan, an unmarried individual grossing $30,000 and a household grossing $1 million ($250,000 from capital gains) pays approximately 19% of the year’s earnings to the federal government. Under Cain’s plan, those same rates are 9% and 11%, respectively.

Besides noting the amount of income from capital gains, the chart fails to attribute a source for the rest of the totals. Are the upper brackets producing goods and/or services of value, or are they speculators gambling with others’ money? How much of this income inherited (the Republicans all oppose an Estate Tax) and therefore unearned? A discussion of which industries are favored in these candidates’ platforms would further help to elucidate candidates’ overall economic agenda.

Perry and Cain want to preserve deductions for charitable giving, in hopes that private organizations will provide for Americans in lieu of the shrinking federal government. Dunham’s piece makes no attempt to explain what effects this arbitrary downsizing of federal services and benefits will have to low and middle income taxpayers.

Chevron Sucks

2011-10-31T06:28:00.000-07:00

Letter to the Editor of the Houston Chronicle:

The Chronicle’s story last Thursday, October 20 “CEO sees affordability as key to energy” was more propaganda on behalf of the petroleum industry than it was a public service to the paper’s readership. Chevron’s CEO, John Watson, is given the space of approximately 600 words to make several unsubstantiated and out-of-context assertions. A little bit of context for his remarks about the size and role of government in the petroleum industry reveals that his comments were disingenuous and oftentimes contrary to his and his corporation’s behavior: Watson and Chevron are major players in the policymaking process; they are not passive victims of federal overreach.

A caption under Watson’s picture states that Chevron would “spend more in the U.S. if it had more access.” This caption is very misleading because Chevron has plenty of access to U.S. markets -- through its sizable donations to American policymakers. Opensecrets.org reveals that the Chevron Employees Political Action Committee has thus far raised $342,753 for the 2012 election cycle, spending $119,500 on Republicans and $17,500 on Democrats. The Chevron corporation donated $65,570 to the Republican National Committee for the same cycle, and Watson himself donated $30,400 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in April, 2011. Furthermore, ChevronTexaco spent $6.9 million in 2011 hiring seven different firms to lobby legislators on Capitol Hill. The results of these efforts are apparent in the recipients’ proposed legislation.

Senator John Barrasso (R-WY, $23,500 from Chevron) sits on the Committees on Energy and Natural Resources, Environment and Public Works, and Indian Affairs. In 2011 he sponsored the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments, which directed the Interior Secretary to enter into agreements in developing biomass energy production on Indian forest lands and in nearby communities. The Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act prohibits any regulation of greenhouse gasses (GHG) at the state or federal level and “Prohibits the President or agency heads from examining or making findings or conclusions for purposes of promulgating or issuing policy, guidance, or regulations to address the impacts of GHG emissions on climate change.” This provision appears to be an outright ban on scientific inquiry. The same act prohibits states from considering clean versus dirty sources of energy production that may be imported into a state.

Watson’s comment that “We need a refreshed policy approach that recognizes the value of fossil fuels and allows a market-driven transition to affordable substitutes over time” is disingenuous. Barrasso’s American Alternative Fuels Act of 2011 requires the Energy Secretary to “make certain substitute natural gas production facilities eligible for loan guarantees.” Chevron’s website mentions specifically that it has purchased the rights to drill in Pennsylvania, though recent reports, including the episode “Game Changer” from This American Life, indicate that drilling may not go forward in this region because of local citizens’ concerns. Furthermore, the same Act insists that a gallon of algae biomass-produced fuel ought to be counted by the federal government as equivalent to 3 gallons of petroleum-based fuel if the biomass fuel utilizes carbon-capture. Chevron has been investing in algae-biomass for at least four years now -- how is this a “market-driven” transition when recipients of Chevron’s largesse are proposing such favorable legislation?

Barrasso’s American Energy and Western Jobs Act urges new federal production goals and sale of leases for the “research, development, and demonstration of oil shale resources” -- a goal that would include Barrasso’s own Wyoming, as mentioned in the Republican National Committee’s 2008 platform: “The Green River Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming offers recoverable shale oil that is ready for development, and most of it is on federal lands.” The Republican Party has explicitly wanted to open protected lands for the better part of a decade now and has its elected members write legislation to ensure that it happens. However, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and its subsequent amendments prevent such projects from being undertaken solely, or even primarily, for private business interests -- a policy that the American Energy and Western Jobs Act challenges by limiting the time during which a judicial review can halt such projects.

Representative William Flores (R-TX, $11,000 from Chevron) has long-standing ties to the petroleum industry. He claims associations with the Phoenix Exploration Company; PetroAlliance Services, Ltd.; Marine Drilling Companies, OneOffshore, Inc.; and Great Western Resources. In 2011 he sponsored not one, but four pieces of legislation that would prohibit the federal government’s purchase of “synfuel” unless its lifetime emissions were proved to be less than those of conventional petroleum sources. While the legislation’s language implies that this act would save taxpayer dollars, it would in fact serve to subsidize fossil fuel production and sales in opposition to supporting alternative energy sources. Flores is clearly serving the petroleum industry in his capacity as a Congressman.

Flores also sponsored the Expedited Offshore Permitting Act of 2011, which “Authorizes the Secretary [of the Interior] to disapprove an application if any proposed activity under the permit: (1) would result in serious harm or damage to life (including fish and other aquatic life), to property, to any mineral (in areas leased or not leased), to the national security or defense, or to the marine, coastal, or human environment; and (2) cannot be modified to avoid such condition.” It further “Requires the Secretary, after disapproving a permit application, if there is no other well on areas subject to the applicable leases capable of production in paying quantities, to pay to the record title holders of any of the applicable leases the amount of any bonus bid paid for the lease plus interest.” This legislation would require taxpayers to reimburse oil companies who are denied exploration opportunities based on an obvious risk to public health.

On Wednesday, October 26 the Chronicle’s piece “BP is ‘regaining momentum’” further demonstrated the misleading nature of the Chevron article. The Chronicle reports that between July and September of this year “BP earned $4.91 billion. A chart from Bloomberg on the same page indicates that BP made over $7 billion during the first quarter of this year. Chevron’s own website indicates that it made $6.2 billion between January and March, hardly a crippling difference against another major petroleum corporation. Watson’s claims that “If we had more access, I would spend more money in this country” is laughable when one notes how much money Chevron has earned over the past year, how much of that money it has spent on buying influence in Congress, and how much it could afford to pay its CEO -- over $16 million in 2010, according to Forbes.

Not one of these germane facts was included in the article about Watson, which amounted to a press release more than an informative article. I hope that in the future, claims made by business elites will be evaluated before they are published.

2008 Primary Endorsement

2008-02-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

This election is supposed to be about change. It’s certainly not about issues, since the Democrats all agree that the sane ought to govern.

I have been drawn to the humorless, taciturn and even “conservative” candidates during elections past (and would be today were Al Gore to run), because I sensed a seriousness in them. The motivation to run and to serve because one is competent and capable is far more attractive than one based on "electability" and other such considerations. Despite my brief flirtations with the John Edwards campaign, for these reasons I never truly warmed to him.

But dry personalties do not require supine candidacies. No, not at all. One of my favorite quotes from Al Gore is this: "You've got to be willing to rip the heart and lungs out of anybody else in the race." Unfortunately, that street-fighting persona never really showed itself on the campaign trail and, as a consequence, we've had eight years of, well, you were there, too. I do not mind ruthlessness in rhetoric or tactics -- especially when stakes is high (sic).

If I may claim foresight in any matter whatsoever, it would be in recognizing the menace the Texas Governor George W. Bush would be to the American republic. Had Al Gore run a scorched earth (har har) campaign against him then, I would have been right on board. It wasn't "just another election" as we've come to see. Generally, however, a spirited but reasoned discussion of ideas and policy differences will do, since most politicians, contrary to lame comedians' claims, aren't horribly venal and worthy of contempt.

Hillary Clinton seems to think that the threat of Barack Hussein (cue the scary music) Obama winning the nomination and presidency against her merits playing hardball. I think that she is mistaken.

I very much respect and in some ways admire Hillary Clinton. In her rather clumsy and opportunistic displays of how her life story is a great example of feminism's success, I commend her. From what I've heard, she's served her adopted state of New York ably in the Senate and has been a policy wonk all her life. Perhaps there is something to be said for baking cookies, but I think Mrs. Clinton has done just fine for herself. She can credibly claim more experience in national politics than Sen. Obama with her 1.5 terms in the Senate compared to his .5. She has put in her time, so to speak.

But elections aren't about who "deserves" to win.

I've often heard the whispers about how wonderful it would be to have a Clinton restoration. Besides countless ulcers they've inspired in Republicans (an accomplishment I laud), what have the Clintons actually done for America -- and the Democratic Party?

You can thank President Clinton for "welfare reform" (quick question, fiscal hawks: Where is more money needlessly wasted -- on new weapons systems and unnecessary wars or food stamps?), school uniforms, "Don't ask, don't tell," and a host of other things not worth mentioning. The Clinton presidency, as Charles Krauthammer recently wrote, is largely undignified (to say the least) and not worth the adoration it receives.

You can thank the President for not helping then-House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt in the 1996 elections, even after his own solid victory was assured. You can also look back fondly on Bill encouraging Americans to join churches and for, oh, you'll love this, my fellow liberals, the Defense of Marriage Act.

Even John Kerry had the backbone to vote against that one.

But it is unfair to dismiss Hillary for her husband's waste of time in office. It's likewise unfair to credit her for any perceived successes during that same period.

Hillary Clinton is focused on covering her ass from being tarred as some wacky pinko man-hater as the Right has (unfairly) done for the past 16 years. If she deserved all of their hate, I would likely be in her corner. But she does not. Hillary is no progressive champion, and she has not been an effective advocate for center-left policies. When was the last time your heart got beating in order to amend the Constitution for some nonsense posturing? If it was for a Flag Burning Amendment, Hill’s your girl.

If anything, a vote for Barack Obama is a vote against the continued noisome influence of the self-aggrandizing, soulless Clintons continuing to wield disproportionate power in the Democratic Party. In a time of war, increasing income inequality and international instability, American citizens deserve a president, and a party, who understands that looking out for number one means looking out for the country – and not themselves.

I endorse Senator Barack Obama in Maryland's Democratic primary.

Book review: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

2007-09-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

One of my most salient memories from college was when my Canadian political theory professor posed to us a question about Kant’s categorical imperative: “Now we’ve all read this, and we all think it makes sense. But is it strong enough to…motivate people to act morally?”

Having always felt the superiority of the ratiocinative to the emotional, I agreed that yes, of course it was. Kant’s maxim lays out the case for a universal morality. It states, more or less, that if you can will all rational beings to behave according to the maxim or rule that motivates your behavior, without contradiction, then it is a proper moral law. The reasoning function is divorced from capricious things like culture and placed squarely within the realm of human capability.

What’s more compelling than reason? One hour later, while sitting in one of my first Sociology courses, I should have easily seen how foolish my sentiments were – culture trumps reason, every time. Social experiments that have tried to perfect humanity for good or for ill have failed, much to the glee of conservative philosophers and politicians who revel in the intractable fallibility of man and the prudence found in tradition. The problem, for liberal thinkers (like me), is that tradition is too often a euphemism for arbitrary tyranny. The most accessible example of this phenomenon would be the plight of women from times ancient to the present.

In Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Princeton scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah tries to reconcile these two conflicting notions, universalism and the appeal of the particular, with mixed results. Cosmopolitanism, or the concept of being “a citizen of the cosmos/universe,” goes back to the Greek Stoics and Cynics and has been co-opted by universalizing religions including Islam and Christianity, from which Appiah cites Paul: “’there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all none in Jesus Christ.’”

Appiah defines two main ideas in modern cosmopolitanism. The first is that human beings have obligations to other human beings – and that these obligations are not restricted by kinship or geography. The second tenet is that “we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance.” Appiah acknowledges that there is a vast pool of difference among persons and that one, homogenous culture is undesirable, since we may all learn from one another. We are all anthropologists now.

Careful to distinguish between a workable cosmopolitanism and a “rootless” variety, Appiah goes on to qualify his vision. Cosmopolitans are accused and often oblige being labeled as those who care not a whit about their cultural and geographical contemporaries out of a regard for far-flung humanity. Not only is that impracticable, it is undesirable, since what makes human life so rich is the bond we share with our intimates. This argument is similar to one against sainthood penned by George Orwell, which similarly dismissed notions of loving humanity through selective misanthropy.

Next, Appiah does go on to do the requisite legwork in making a case for universalism, though not without a few caveats. When he writes, “Whatever our obligations are to others…they often have the right to go their own way,” it’s clear that there is a significant tension to be resolved. Determining when these instances of deference occur, however, is far more difficult than embracing a “love thy neighbor” attitude in ethics. Appiah takes the unenviable task of getting past positivism and its requisite relativism in one of the earlier chapters. Writing that the positivist distinguishes between beliefs, that is, one’s conception of the truth, and desires, what one would like the truth to be, Appiah argues that one influences the other. “Factual judgments are subjective…which ones you will accept depends on what beliefs you have.”

To illustrate this point, Appiah tells one tale about an African village where children were dying at alarming rates because they were consuming impure water. A scientifically trained visitor tells the villagers that there are invisible organisms in the water and that they must boil it to be rid of the disease. Later on, he finds that nothing has changed. He changes the rationale to say that there are evil spirits in the water and that they fly away in the steam produced from boiling it. Voila! The villagers listened. Appiah notes that there’s nothing to sneer at here – how long did it take Western society to accept germ theory? Evolution?

Beliefs influence facts. Children’s lives were saved albeit through a convenient, well-intentioned deception.

While Appiah is careful to note human fallibility as a guard against arrogance, he argues that human accomplishments in the arts and sciences ought to be considered the property of mankind. Rather than assume ownership of cultural artifacts, Appiah suggests that states ought to consider themselves stewards of such treasures. Quoting Terence he writes “I am human: nothing human is alien to me.” However, his desire to have universality applies only to desirable things, such as aesthetic accomplishments, while ignoring what collective ownership or obligation to the less desirable elements of mankind. To Appiah “contamination” is the intermingling of peoples, values and technologies. This is the neoliberal vision of globalization. Appiah, not quite a cheerleader for the cause, doesn’t see Western norms beyond the commercial dominating other parts of the globe; he is more interesting in the ever elusive notion of “understanding.”

Appiah’s essay lists ways in which people discuss ethics with one another. He states that there are serious socio-political conflicts within society’s that share the same broad values, and that understanding what forms opinions and customs is the first stage in engaging or even changing them. Achieving some sort of common ground across cultures ought to lessen the potential for violence. While Appiah acknowledges that there are extremists within even liberal societies, these individuals and groups are most definitely on the fringe. Operation Rescue doesn’t have any seats in Congress.

The problem with human beings is that they don’t stop to ponder the maxims that motivate their actions: “a large part of what we do we do because it is just what we do.” Appiah’s analysis is a statement of (arguably worrying) fact, but it is not an endorsement. When discussing social change, Appiah notes that people simply get used to new social facts, such as women in the workforce, or gays living normal, public lives, rather than reconsidering their arguments and biases against the other group’s inclusion in public life. Ethics must be considerate of behavior in a lot of ways, and not the other way around. This makes one wonder whether moral philosophy is compelling enough for human beings to live by.

“If cosmopolitanism is, in a slogan, universality plus difference, there is a possibility of another kind of enemy, one who rejects universality altogether.”

Here Appiah conjures up the images of Nazis and Stalinist apparatchiks silencing all those outside of the inner fold. He begins by cryptically writing about “rootless” cosmopolitans who strive to better the world with their universal, all-inclusive vision of the Good. However, without tolerance, Appiah claims, universalism quickly justifies murder – the creed of the previously alluded to Islamist menace. Here we have a paradox. Tolerating other peoples’ particular cultural expressions is necessary to come to any understanding between persons. Fine. Understanding between persons is valuable because individual persons are valuable. Fine. But it is impossible to tolerate those who want your way of life exterminated (to his credit, Appiah acknowledges that the other side feels the same way).

I feel that Appiah’s treatment of toleration requires being quoted at length:

Toleration requires a definition of the intolerable.

Then, as I said at the start, we cosmopolitans believe in universal truth, too, though we are less certain that we have it all already. It is not skepticism about the very idea of truth that guides us; it is realism about how hard the truth is to find…One distinctively cosmopolitan commitment is to pluralism. Cosmopolitans think that there are may values worth living by and that you cannot live by all of them.

This does not, however, require, fundamentalists whose purpose in life is to suppress pluralism – in sexuality, speech and identity – to be accepted in civilization in the name of diversity or fallibility. I’ll happily concede that we very well may not have the most perfect moral truths at our disposal right now, and that we may not discover any enduring system of just, ethical behavior, for some time. But that doesn’t also mean that we haven’t figured out which forms of social organization and behavior are wrong.

We can be reasonably sure that persecuting the mentally or physically challenged, the homosexual, female or red-haired members of the human family for those reasons is intolerable. No justification, especially the morally stained concept of action “in God’s name” belongs in civilization. Yet it appears that Appiah’s conciliatory approach to cosmopolitanism requires honoring harmful lies is in the service of a nobler truth.

I am not convinced.

An Affirmative Action Hire? Why Michael Kinsley Is Wrong on Obama

2007-07-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

This is the first post I wrote for a project that may or may not materialize:

Michael Kinsley's latest column in TIME magazine is an unfortunately malodorous contribution to the 2008 presidential race. Kinsley spends about a third of the column discussing the prospects of the next Commander in Chief being from one of two minority groups--women or blacks. This is all good and well, he says, but goes on to argue that identity politics aren't all that important in a president, logically or otherwise ("Even the familiar dodge about seeking 'diversity' doesn't apply in this case: there's only one President.").

His next paragraph makes the common sense case that race/sex shouldn't even be a consideration in voting for someone. So far so good, right? And then the column loses all of its analytic and moral power. Kinsley concedes (yes, concedes) that Senator Barack Obama is "fully qualified to be President," and takes a few digs at President Bush's disastrous attempts at speaking English. Ha-ha. This is where I expected the column to talk about how Obama's gifts and accomplishments ought to be inspiring but provide no false comfort to the obstacles America, and black America, must overcome to become the country we all believe it can be, etc.. But no. Here's Kinsley's backdoor defense of affirmative action:

"So obviously factors other than merit deserve our consideration when we decide for whom to vote. Starting with 'Does he or she share my vision of the country?'...But beyond this, the President is unavoidably a symbol, and a presidential candidate's 'essential qualities' include his or her race or sex."

To think, I could have skipped scores of Sociology classes in college and just read Kinsley's Cliff's Notes on identity politics! While what he says about symbolic quality may be true (and if it is, why is it that liberals seem to always hope for a Good 'Ol Boy white Southern Christian, the exact 'type' that has for so long retarded liberal social goals, to be its next electoral messiah?), it still should have no bearing on how Americans vote. I am not ginning up the Fred Thompson campaign in hopes of seeing a fellow bald man ascend to the top job. That gesture would have the symbolic value of bald solidarity, but poor political judgment and values. Besides, I wish I still had a head of hair like Mitt Romney's, whose jet black locks remind me more of yesterday than John Edwards's chestnut mane.

Concluding that the presidency requires many qualifications, and that "race or gender can be a legitimate consideration," Kinsley balks both at recent SCOTUS jurisprudence and any hope at evolving toward a colorblind society. No, Mike, race isn't an "essential" characteristic of a person -- it's an essential absurdity used once as an oppressive tool and now to garner a wise voter a "pat on the back," as you say. This latest column is a poor example of using very lazy means to make an even more unattractive political point to influence the dolts who wouldn't read it in the first place.

Book Review: The Assault on Reason by Al Gore

2007-07-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

Reviewers of Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, have said that it is a self-serving, demagogic work to be dismissed as so much campaign blather. As usual, the establishment's talking (or in this case, writing) heads are wrong. Gore’s book is not like that at all. First of all, he isn’t a candidate for any office. Secondly, and more significantly, this book is far more cerebral and frank to launch any sort of national campaign. What Gore has written is a carefully reasoned critique of American political culture that warns of dire consequences to our civic health unless certain trends are combated.

In the first hundred or so pages, Gore traces the intellectual history that culminated in America’s founding. Gore’s excitement over the printing press and the democratization of knowledge is palpable. However, with the advent of a now middle-aged electronic media, namely television, political discourse in America is ailing.

Gore introduces his criticism of the media with stories about how advertising became imbued with psychological cues from Sigmund Freud’s nephew during the 1930s, and that techniques to manipulate voters follow this trend. “When the consent of the governed is manufactured and manipulated by marketers and propagandists, reason plays a diminished role,” he warns. Gore engages the reader with a discussion about how the “higher” brain functions – such as critical thinking and the ability to engage in abstract thought – were best served when political engagement took place almost exclusively in a written medium. The verisimilitude that television achieves is so complete that only the lower parts of the brain, namely parts that react to fear, are stimulated. Gore goes so far as to posit that this has may have psychologically dumbed-down the electorate since the mid-20th century. Really?

Gore ties in this primally stimulating critique to the Bush administration’s many efforts to frighten, rather than empower, the American people since 9/11 and how it has capitalized on that fear for its own political gain. Gore is on stronger ground here, but it’s well trodden ground. Furthermore, entire books have been written about the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but Gore methodically makes the case once more against official sanction of those horrid facts. The “few bad apples” rationale that the administration used to excuse the torture scandals remains unconvincing: “Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would no longer observe the Geneva Conventions.” When Gore writes that the world is anxious “not primarily about what the terrorist networks might do, but about what we might do,” it ought to register just how far America has fallen.

Gore’s silence on the 2000 election is well documented, but he does revisit that fateful year to further slam George W. Bush. Governor Bush’s failings as a candidate (and, arguably, a human being) were apparent long before Iraq and his other failures. The most obvious deficit, beside his inability to articulate anything save for childish rage, was in his understanding of foreign policy:

“I vividly remember that during one of the campaign debates in 2000, moderator Jim Lehrer asked … George Bush whether or not America, after being involved in military action, should engage in any form of nation building. Bush’s answer was, ‘I don’t think so. I think what we ned to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. We’re going to have a nation-building corps in America? Absolutely not.”

One of the laments most often heard from former Iraq hawks, liberal and otherwise is that they never would have supported the invasion of Iraq if they knew then what they know now. But throughout the Bush presidency, when the public routinely rated the former governor highly on foreign policy (bellicosity while standing atop rubble replaces a lifetime of incuriosity and poor judgment), these facts about his temperament were known and spoken from his own mouth! I had thought that the necessity of prudence and competence would somehow make them both appear in the war’s execution. Fool me once…

In discussing Hurricane Katrina, Gore draws a very uncomfortable parallel to the failed Iraq War. “What happened was not only knowable, it was known—in advance, in great and painstaking detail,” with less certainty, Gore applies the same treatment to his discussion of 9/11. Katrina, the Bush administration’s third and least forgivable failure, was not a case of failing to “connect the dots,” but rather a demonstration of utter carelessness and disregard.

Gore’s declaration that “It is time to change the nature of the way we live together on this planet” is the most striking evidence that he is not a candidate for political office. Right-wing commentators wound instantly pounce upon yet another utopian, centrally planned scheme to remake men into gods, or at least into Birkenstock-wearing hippies. The American public is largely deaf to what Gore has termed “the climate crisis” or any other number of environmental challenges that await mankind.

Furthermore, asking the fattest country in the world to change its consumption habits when an entire media bloc is devoted to fighting such change (including my one-time employer, the Cato Institute) is unrealistic at best. Gore’s call to arms may or may not be answered, but the gainsaying right-wing press corps are ready to push back. Indeed, they’ve never let up in their fight. Solidarity in the absence of calamity is something yet to be seen in the American consciousness. Forgive me for not being as bullish as Al Gore on American democracy, but that same system provided us (and the world) with six years of unified, ruinous, Republican rule.

Ever the technophile, Gore believes that wider access to broadband access and its developing ability to stream real-time content will complete the evolution of popular discourse from print to television to the internet. He plugs his own current.tv project as one of the innovators of “user-created content,” known to most people simply as the fruits of YouTube. Once technology catches up with the political imagination (or is it vice versa?) American politics will once more be a large, inclusive, democratic conversation rather than a one-way indoctrination of corporate-friendly advertisements and sham campaigns.

While The Assault on Reason is an interesting book from a sober voice, Gore's writing style leaves something to be desired. Gore peppers its pages with quotes from historical figures ad nauseum. Sometimes, this is to great effect, such as his repeated invocation of Solomon: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Other times, however, Gore picks his favorite word out of his argument and repeats it every few sentences. This is the case with “dominance” and likewise with “fear.”

Gore’s an intelligent man and I am confident that a thesaurus would make this an easier read. However, I don’t mean to be entirely unsympathetic to the man I had wished (and wish) were our President. Perhaps after years of suffering through right-wing ridicule and “South Park” parody he is simply doing what he does best: saying the same things over and over until someone listens – and realizes that he’s been right all along.

Book Review: Sick by Jonathan Cohn

2007-05-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to attend a reading Jonathan Cohn gave on the day I purchased his new book, Sick. My lovely and intelligent friend Kristen and I headed down to Politics and Prose a couple of weeks ago to see him. There was a decent sized crowd. There was a national conversation on healthcare finally beginning anew, Cohn said, and it was long overdue. He kept the actual reading short – sharing with us Cynthia Kline’s story of being shuttled between two hospitals while suffering a heart attack and coming to grips with the fact that she would die, rather than receive treatment, due to hospital overcrowding issues.

Cohn did a brief run-down of the other stories in the book and highlighted several of the difficulties facing healthcare reformers. Even Franklin Roosevelt passed the buck on national health insurance, fearing that the business/insurance backlash would doom the rest of his New Deal agenda. Organized labor was even hostile to the idea until insurance through employment systems began to break down. Indeed, providing comprehensive care was a way to engineer competitive advantage in attractive labor. However, a globalized economy did away with this, in part because international competitors didn’t have to subsidize their workers’ insurance – the state did it for them.

Sick runs under 240 pages and could easily be polished off in a single sitting (due to restlessness and other obligations, it took me about two-and-a-half). This observation isn’t to suggest that Cohn’s work is in any way scant. Its brevity belies its density, a fact further obscured by its shocking readability.

Despite the obvious problems with the American healthcare system, one major reason that no comprehensive political solution has gained traction is because it has worked for enough of the (voting) populace most of the time. Cohn deliberately tries to stack the deck against complacency. While a reasoned outrage permeates Sick, Cohn’s presentation of injustice is very selective. There is no room to judge the victims of fraud and bureaucracy – such as the couple in Austin, TX who contemplate sacrificing their marriage in order to use insurance loopholes to provide physical therapy for their son (but end up divorcing once the strain of the struggle grew unbearable anyway) – as undeserving, lazy or simply hard luck cases. Cohn’s mission is not to inform. Cohn's goal in Sick is to engender empathy more than sympathy in its audience. I suspect that most readers picking up Sick will already be amenable to political action in order to remedy the American healthcare system. These stories belong to the same class that Al Gore, accepting the Democratic nomination in 2000, said, “worked hard and played by the rules” but still found the American Dream all too elusive.

During his talk, the specter of single-payer coverage, either ominously or optimistically, was repeatedly brought up. At one point Cohn said that there were any number of ways to do this (achieve universal coverage) -- the choice wasn’t between “single payer or nothing. I’m not one of those people.” However, while Cohn complimented John Edwards’s healthcare proposals, he repeatedly noted that in some ways it was inadequate. Why didn’t the Senator simply propose a single-payer system outright? The academic literature on creating such a network exists, and Edwards has more or less conceded that his proposal is a step in that direction. Сohn emphasized that other options were also attractive and heaped praise on the individual mandates Governors Arnold Schwarzennegger and Mitt Romney enacted in their respective California and Massachusetts. Nevermind that Romney is running away from that plan while he runs for the Republican presidential nomination.

Nevertheless, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the Republicans attempting to enact some meaningful reform as well. In the halls of the Cato Institute, director of health and welfare studies Michael Tanner has been crowing about how the debate needs to be reframed away from achieving universal insurance as a goal. This same gentleman has just written a largely ignored book, Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, about how the Republican Party must bring Reagan back, and reign in the man-eating State. The book's subsequent flop is telling. Perhaps Americans are finally adequately cognizant, or as Cohn said, insecure, to demand bold proposals from their candidates.

Should the U.S. Be More Like Scandinavia?

2007-04-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

This past Monday, the Cato Institute hosted a forum posing the question: “Should the U.S. Be More Like Scandinavia?”. The guests were Johnny Munkhammar, a policy analyst from Sweden, Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and Ezra Klein, writing fellow at The American Prospect. Cato policy analyst Marian Tupy moderated.

After communism failed, Tupy began, the intellectual debate over economics was no longer one between capitalism and socialism, but between different kinds of capitalism. “What is the best economic system?” Tupy asked. The choices were between “dynamic growth” and a “more egalitarian” market system. What he left unsaid, however, was that "dynamic growth" was also synonymous with cultural dislocation and periods of grave economic insecurity. "Egalitarian," in libertarian circles, was simply a code for the prelude to the extermination of landowners and the like. The panel was already stacked against reasonable debate, and was more likely to produce cheerleading for misreading of Adam Smith.

Munkhammar spoke first, beginning by establishing his Scandinavian bonafides. “I like ABBA, IKEA and Bjorn Lomburg’s tennis,” he joked, but wasn’t quite as ardent a fan of the Swedish welfare state. It’s important to note that while ostensibly a discussion about Scandinavia, broadly meaning Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, the panelists focused almost exclusively on Sweden. Indeed, the forum’s inspiration was a New Republic article about Denmark, but there was nary a mention of Copenhagen.

Munkhammar explicitly said that the United States had to learn that Sweden was successful not because of its public sector, but in spite of it. “Don’t copy big government,” he pleaded, “copy the free market.” Sweden, he argued, was open to globalization through free trade, and domestic innovation after it deregulated its telecommunications industry. These were the sources of Sweden’s success – cradle to grave welfare benefits were irrelevant. He cited America’s problems in financing Medicare and Social Security as examples of why more government intervention in the economy would slow, and perhaps even doom, growth.

Mitchell echoed these concerns, joking that unfunded liabilities jepordized America's economic future --"not that I like funded liabilities, either." An expert on tax policies and international tax competition, Mitchell focused mostly on the size of government spending. His talk was heavily reliant on graphs. A functioning economy, he reminded the audience, depended on “the rule of law, property rights, and stable money,” from that foundation you may build whatever you wish. His initial points about civil society and markets were lost on me because I was fixated on the inappropriate knot (a four-in-hand) he wore with a spread collar shirt (a Pratt or full Windsor would have been apt).

Mitchell next discussed quality of life issues. This was a very convoluted portion of his talk. Americans, Mitchell claimed, had close to twice as much disposable income as Scandinavians. Co-panelist Ezra Klein later pointed out that a good chunk of Americans’ income goes toward expenditures such as education and health care costs, which are publicly provided in Scandinavia. Holding welfare spending constant, the U.S. and Nordic countries are comparable in their levels of “economic freedom,” claimed Mitchell. He concluded that since Scandinavia had lower corporate tax rates and some private retirement accounts along with its hefty social benefits, the laissez faire portions of its economy compensated for its excessive benefits. “They became rich first,” Mitchell said. “If your goal is to grow, the welfare state is not compatible with that goal.”

Klein introduced himself as “the poor man’s Jon Cohn,” a health care expert from The New Republic. When he laid out his position, that America needed policy solutions, not because of “a dearth of capitalism,” but because it needed to know how to “mitigate its excesses.” Of course, to a Cato crowd, capitalism has no excesses, and any unfortunate market outcome can easily be remedied by more market activity. The American economy was dysfunctional. During the past several years of growth, poverty and income inequality were on the rise, while the benefits of an expansion did not affect all economic quintiles. In fact, Americans were losing faith in their economy, according to a Pew poll Klein cited, showing 73% of Americans believe that the rich have gotten richer while the poor have gotten poorer. The hold-outs may well be the 20% of Americans who believe that they are in fact in the top 1% of income earners in the country, and who, appropriately, use this misinformation to vote Republican.

Klein did not take this opportunity to remind the audience of the Bush administration’s excesses in domestic and foreign policy, but rather to warn of the backlash against these perceived economic injustices. Klein warned against a “Dobbsian populism,” a term that, as far as I know, he coined on the spot, while referring to the country's most prominent foe of outsourcing and immigrant labor. While he didn’t say so, I suspect that Klein feared such an outcome more for its social costs than its economic ones, a sentiment I endorse.

The Nordic model, Klein argued, allowed room for market experiments in trade and commerce, because its citizens felt secure from the harshest effects of market instability. During a question and answer segment of the forum, Klein posed the question to Mitchell, of whether he thought that perhaps because of the economic/social security Scandinavians felt, they were more open to market experimentation. Mitchell coolly replied “No.” That exchange captured the sentiment of the whole event, and indeed, of forums such as this one, where very smart people sit next to one another and ignore everything the others say.

Munkhammar, consciously or otherwise, echoed Ronald Reagan when he said “They [the government] run your life with your money, this is an ideological question: Wouldn’t you rather run your own life with your own money? Big government is the cause of the problem. Cancer patients on waiting lists…don’t do that!” Klein was visibly amused to hear the Gipper filtered through a Swedish accent. Mitchell, while usually dripping hubris about the market’s possibilities, lamented that big government is likely on its way into our hospitals and clinics, as per what Klein offered. Mitchell’s ideal would be a truly free market health care system, which Klein asserted would be “crueler” than our present system.

The libertarian panelists did not disappoint their fans when they presented absolutely no ideas on how to solve the economic problems plaguing Americans. In fact, there are no problems to solve when you've already got a universalist dogma to propagate. When Tupy introduced Klein, he began by suggesting that someone who did not share the other panelists' boosterism about free markets might be skeptical of the opinions already offered. Klein valiantly stepped up to the task of presenting an actual argument, but he might as well have been a phantom to the audience, which was content in its indoctrination and combative to any challenge.

Following Orders

2007-04-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've often likened my experience in promoting things in which I do not believe -- and that, indeed, I feel are harming the country -- to "just following orders" as a good soldier in the Wehrmacht would. Having said that, whenever I receive a bilious reply to a pitch I send out, I get a slightly masochistic shiver of satisfaction -- I know that there are people out there fighting the nonsense that I am paid to publicize. Today I sent out three particularly odious pitches. One of them argued that stem cell research ought to be safe and legal but not publicly financed. Here's the text:

New York State’s decision to provide up to $1 billion in stem cell funding over the next decade is likely to impede, rather than encourage, scientific progress, according to Sigrid Fry-Revere, the Cato Institute’s director of bioethics studies. In her op-ed “A Scientific Industrial Complex,” published in The New York Times, she writes:

“Governor Spitzer is right to support stem cell research -- but wrong to support it financially. Beneath the characteristically caustic debate between liberals and social conservatives, the truth is that stem cell research of all kinds, whether adult, amniotic or embryonic, accomplishes much more when it is
left up to the private sector, which can pursue it without as many political and financial hindrances.
“Government financing, after all, comes and goes with the politics of those in power. Private money, by contrast, comes and goes depending on the progress of the research and the likelihood of success. Scientists should spend more time seeking private assistance and less time lobbying for government support. If there is a need, and if there is a way, the private sector will do it and do it
much more efficiently than government would.”

Within minutes of sending this out to dozens of the Empire State's finest, I received a withering, if poorly typed, response from none other than Newsweek's Jonathan Alter:

hi, Black Ram and dr. frye-revere..if this philosophy of private development had been followed through the 20th century, we would have no cancer treatments at all. every cancer center and major university relies heavily on federal money, and always has. the private sector simply does not produce results in these areas by itself. there must be a partnership with the government. drug companies are terrific in developing drugs, but they do little basic research. your shocking ignorance of this basic fact of medical (and scientific) history discredits you, and makes you nothing more than a stalking horse for those who oppose stem cell research on moral grounds. you're right that with all of the hinderances now in place, the private sector is the only option. but the goal should be to remove the hinderances!!! why make it an either/or proposition in the name of a free market philosophy that has abjectly failed in this area?
thanks

I actually subscribe to Newsweek and read Mr. Alter's columns, so I was thrilled to have a short note addressed to me, though these were hardly the ideal circumstances ("When can you start?" is closer to my dreams). I sent his response to the policy scholar and around the floor. My boss mentioned that Alter actually fought cancer, which I knew, since this week's cover story is about that topic. This event isn't nearly as bad as the infamous Jon Chait incident, but it served as a good reminder of how thin, if not nonexistent, is the line between professionalism and indecency that I walk.

The plan tonight? More resumes.