Onfoot

Just Money and Finance

2012-01-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

The global financial crisis that began in the US with the housing bubble (or was it $4 gasoline?) is well into its fourth year now with no end in sight. In October the Vatican Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace decided to, well, pontificate on the subject. They published a serious reflection on the implications of globalization generally and especially for the world’s economy, the impact on the poor, the need for more effective regulation, and a broad outline for what reform should look like. It isn’t light reading but it is a worthwhile treatment of a poorly understood topic that affects us all, and how Catholics might look at it from the perspective of our faith.

As have Popes at least since Paul VI, the Council advocates a new system of governance that will move us beyond the arrangement of sovereign nation states that has prevailed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. They are suggesting it is time to yield some of that sovereignty in favor of a global authority, one that will govern in a spirit of solidarity and subsidiarity that sounds a lot like federalism on a global scale, a scale that should include every country on the planet. The efficacy of every law and regulation would be weighed in light of the common good, with of course an appropriate preference for the needs of the poor. The new authority would step in only where individual states are unable or unwilling to adequately address the issue at hand.

The Council has a strong case, pointing out the increasing interdependence that has brought the world so much prosperity since the end of WWII. They think that is a good thing, though not without its flaws and dangers, not least in the evolving monetary and financial systems. There are still billions who have not prospered and the risks have become increasingly evident. In the 1970s we had the shock of a spike in oil prices that sent national economies reeling. Then came regional financial crises in Mexico and Asia. This one is different, spreading from America to Europe and around the world with the potential to do more damage than anything we’ve seen in decades.

The institutions established at Bretton Woods in 1944 are no longer adequate to control the enormous growth in credit and the massive flows of capital, often in the form of complex financial instruments no one fully understands or adequately regulates. Financial markets have exploded, far outstripping the growth in “real” economies, the underlying production of goods and services. The result is a vulnerability to economic collapse the world cannot long tolerate, and of course the effects are felt worst among the poor. The Council’s solution is a global authority with the power to regulate international and perhaps intranational financial transactions.

The Council is right but I can’t imaging there will be much talk of a new global “authority” in this year’s American presidential elections. If there is it will be one candidate accusing another of some sort of dark international conspiracy to undermine the US Constitution. We need to start the conversation though. We are all on this planet together and there are now seven billion of us. We need mechanisms in place to manage the risks and opportunities all those people represent. They need to be implemented for the common good, and without unnecessarily usurping the rights of regions, nations, communities, and families to govern themselves.

This new Vatican document didn’t get much publicity. The Global financial crisis didn’t make it into Faithful Citizenship, the US Bishops’ quadrennial review of issues for Catholics to consider in the election cycle. It should have.

All Things in Moderation

2012-01-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

When did moderate become a four letter word? Republicans in red states have been running on the “I’m more conservative than you are” mantra for a while now. Rick Perry used it in the last Texas gubernatorial primary and it was enough to beat Kay Bailey Hutchison. In the general election no Democrat not named Attila stood a chance. I can’t remember another talking point in the Perry campaign and I suspect I am not alone. It seemed he couldn’t string three sentences together without using the word conservative. In the presidential race he still can’t, and neither can a half dozen other candidates vying for the label.

Now it’s being taken to a new level. Newt Gingrich is in New Hampshire accusing Mitt Romney of being a moderate, as though the offense if not intrinsically evil is at least a venal sin. And I’m seeing attack ads on television with the same charge against Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, citing newspaper excerpts as evidence.

Politics is often described as the art of the possible. I remember when pragmatism was a virtue in a politician. Nowadays any compromise is selling out to the devil. Is anybody that conservative on every issue? I don’t see how. How can you be pro-life and pro-death penalty? How can you call yourself Christian and advocate deporting 12 million undocumented aliens? How do you save Medicare and cut payment rates to the point where doctors can’t afford to accept it? It’s committing intellectual suicide.

This is not a good thing. I’m criticizing Republicans because with the only contested presidential primary they are more in the news with their appeals to mindless ideology. Democrats are just as bad, and just as inconsistent with their calls for income equality to be achieved by making everyone poorer. Do they really think they can save the planet by dismantling the industrial revolution? Did anyone else notice they supported war in Iraq at the beginning, then turned against it when the going got rough? We have become so polarized that even the science of global warming is a political issue. You can pretty much tell a person’s party by whether he or she thinks it is man made.

We’ve got serious issues to deal with. We need thoughtful people to deal with them. And we need a reasoned national discussion to work out responsible approaches to them. Nothing is likely to satisfy everyone. There is no perfect solution to illegal immigration, entitlement reform, the debt crisis, or a dozen other urgent concerns. We may never reach a national consensus on gay marriage, abortion, health insurance, global warming, free trade, or even school choice. But shouting at one another over hard drawn left/right battle lines isn’t going to help.

Some pundits have commented that Barack Obama’s presidency is failing because he has tried to govern a center right nation from the left. There is probably some truth to that but I doubt that countering with a hard right strategy is any way to win an election.

Barry Goldwater famously said “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Lyndon Johnson used the quote to paint him as a war monger, beat him in a landslide, and promptly led us into war in Vietnam. I voted for Goldwater and supported the war in Vietnam but it’s time we let our politicians know once again that sort of rhetoric is not acceptable. Moderation, pragmatism, and civility in public discourse are indeed virtues where they serve to advance the cause of justice. Extremism is always a vice when it leads to unnecessary and damaging conflict, even in defense of liberty.

Poverty in Plano

2011-12-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

Our mayor likes to say that Plano has the highest median income of any US city with a population over 200,000. I wish he would stop. The factoid reinforces a false but persistent notion that we don’t have poverty here. The truth is a lost job can move a Plano family from lavish lifestyle to the poorhouse in a thrice, just like anyplace else.

I count at least 27 food pantries in our city, mostly run or supported by churches, synagogues, and mosques. There is no shortage of need. Minnie’s Food Pantry, the one my parish supports, makes the news occasionally when their shelves go empty. It isn’t unusual to see someone drive up to Minnie’s in a Cadillac Escalade to pick up the family’s food for the week. The salary that was to have paid for the car is gone and they may be on the verge of losing their home. We lost a lot of those salaries in the Y2K telecom bust and in the heavy rounds of layoffs that have continued ever since. More than a few homes have been lost too. Samaritan Inn, the one shelter in the county that can accommodate families, turns away fifty or so people every week, about a third of them children, many from Plano.

The Plano school district sends a bus to McKinney every morning to collect children enrolled in our schools, but living at Samaritan Inn. Just because they are in a homeless shelter doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in school, or necessarily have to change schools right away. Over 20% of school children in the district qualify for the free or discounted breakfast, lunch, and snack programs. That means their families have incomes no more than 185% of the federal poverty level. They tell me Mondays and Fridays are the days with highest attendance because the schools also have a back pack program so the kids don’t go hungry over the weekend. If they don’t bring in the empty back pack on Monday they can’t expect the school to fill it on Friday.

Then there are the free clinics. The one I’m most familiar with is the Collin County Adult Clinic which operates three facilities, one in Frisco and two in Plano. Like the official county program, which pays for emergency room visits at Primacare for eligible, enrolled patients, and for a new program that allows them access to volunteer physicians in the doctors’ regular offices, the Adult Clinic accepts county residents who have incomes no more than 200% of the poverty level and no insurance. Unlike the official county programs they don’t check immigration status. They see about 1100 patients 5000 times per year at the two Plano facilities, most of them apparently legal, all of them residents of the most affluent major city in the country. I don’t see any statistics on the web site for the county health department which operates the taxpayer funded programs.

The point of all this is there is more poverty here than most of us realize. Some of it is chronic, some is associated with undocumented immigrants, but a lot of it is among people who have hit a rough spot in life and just need a little time and assistance getting back on their feet. The false perception they aren’t here gets in the way.

We know there is a need for a second homeless shelter for families. We also need more and better workforce development programs for people who don’t have skills needed for jobs offering living wages and career paths that will allow them to support families. We know we have food insecurity here and we know our indigent health care programs still have shortcomings. Maybe with better data we can dispel some false notions and begin to think about doing mare about these issues. First we all need to understand the poverty is real, right here in well to do Plano.

BRIC a BRAC

2011-12-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

When former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk went to Washington as US Trade Representative, some wag suggested he take along a good book. It was an apt comment. It did look like he would have some time on his hands. International trade was going nowhere. Agreements negotiated during the Bush administration were gathering dust, the Doha round of WTO talks was stalled with no progress expected, even NAFTA was threatened. There really didn’t seem to be much to negotiate and in fact not much happened for two and a half years.

But over the last couple of months there has been a startling resurgence in trade developments. First a ban on Mexican trucking in the US was lifted, at least temporarily, and Mexico dropped a number of retaliatory tariffs. Then long dormant agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia were approved by congress and signed into law. At a meeting in Hawaii President Obama announced he expects to complete negotiations early next year for US participation in the eighteen nation Trans Pacific Partnership. Japan applied to join shortly after. Canada may soon follow. In two weeks Russia will almost certainly be invited into the WTO and, lastly, the US has entered into talks for a deal with the European Union. I hope Mr. Kirk finished his book.

Free trade purists and advocates for the poor like me would prefer all this be done through the WTO in part because, with the exception of Russian accession to the WTO, none of it involves the BRICs, the four major emerging economies that many expect to be the juggernauts of the new century. But maybe there is a silver lining here. Brazil, Russia, India, and China all have to be apprehensive at being excluded from trading blocs that account for so much of the world’s commerce. And a major reason Doha stalled is that under developed members balked at additional reforms required to move it forward. The majors are essentially saying OK, we will do it without you. If that prompts some rethinking among the BRICs, so much the better.

I wish the church had more to say on this. The USCCB Pastoral Letter Economic Justice for All dates from 1986 and, aside from setting out a few principles and expressing special concern for the poor, it hardly mentions trade. Other than an endorsement of fair trade practices, the bishops have had little to say on specific trade proposals. Fair trade’s potential to overcome poverty is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Looking back over the years since WWII, expanding international trade has had a great deal to do with the emergence of untold millions from abject poverty into the middle class. It looks to do it again over the coming decades. If we are as concerned about the plight of the poor as we claim to be, we should be at the forefront on this issue. We have an opportunity to do real good and instead we sit on the sidelines.

It seems to me increased integration of the world’s most developed economies, and a significant number of the not so developed, would provide powerful incentives for BRICs and others to join in, and to adopt market, legal, and social reforms entry would require. That would be good, right? It is exactly what happened with the WTO and, imperfect as it is, WTO has been a healthy development for all its members. By actively promoting such arrangements the church would be in a better position to influence terms, and to help protect the interests of the poor who are often the most vulnerable to increased outside competition, at least in the short term. Shouldn’t we be doing that rather than be left complaining about negative effects after the fact?

Withdrawing from the World

2011-11-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

The pro-life boycott of the Susan G. Komen Foundation is growing. There are now about a dozen (of 195) Roman Catholic Dioceses in the US that have notified Catholic organizations within their jurisdictions they should not support the Race for the Cure. As far as I can tell none of them ban individual Catholics from participation. That is left to personal conscience. Most dioceses take no official position.

The objecting bishops differ with Komen over what they consider serious moral issues, essentially maintaining that support for Komen can amount to cooperating with evil. I would counter that the boycott itself works to deprive the world of an unequivocal good (fighting cancer) to no discernable benefit.

The issues mostly have to do with Komen’s financial support for breast cancer screening and educational services provided at Planned Parenthood facilities, denial of any proven link between induced abortion and increased risk of breast cancer, and refusal to rule out stem cell research involving destruction of human embryos.

Komen responds that they have controls in place to ensure all funds go to breast cancer related purposes specified in grants. There is no evidence any of their money has gone toward morally objectionable uses. They do not warn women of abortion related cancer risk because neither the American Cancer Society nor the National Institute of Health, nor any other major health organization acknowledges such a link. And so far they have not funded any embryonic stem cell research, though some of their research is done at institutions where other projects do involve embryos.

The boycott is a mistake. It makes the pro-life community, and by extension Catholics in general, appear narrow minded and dogmatic. Some of what I see on the internet is more than just narrow minded. Much of it is not true. Some of it is slander. In singling out Komen the boycott pits us against an almost universally respected institution and one of the most widely supported charities in the country, one against whom most reasonable people would reject charges of ties to abortion. Komen is about breast cancer, not abortion. To equate the foundation with evil is over the top. Shrill voices don’t win a lot of friends.

After all, the State of Texas funds breast and cervical cancer services for eligible women through private clinics in every county. In Collin County there are three, all of them Planned Parenthood. Do I stop paying my taxes? No but I can and have lobbied elected officials to find other providers. Abortion is far more prevalent in China than here. Even forced abortion is common. Every time I turn on the lights I use electricity produced in part from wind turbines made in China. Do I sit in the dark? No but I do advocate using trade ties to pressure the Chinese to improve human rights practices.

The number of dioceses participating in the boycott remains small, but the trend is worrisome. Some dioceses haven even stopped supporting Catholic Campaign for Human Development on grounds they work with groups they don’t approve of. That’s a mistake too. The anti-poverty CCHD does a lot of good work and, like Komen, is very careful to see to it their money goes where it is intended.

The church is a powerful voice on all sorts of important social issues, including right to life, poverty, immigration reform, school choice, the family, and a host of others. To be effective we have to work in this world with people we sometimes disagree with on serious matters. Otherwise we will never accomplish much that’s worthwhile.

Seven Billion People

2011-11-18T06:17:00.000-08:00

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, may be the greatest hero of the twentieth century that most people never heard of. Mention of the Green Revolution today would most likely conjure up images of solar panels and wind farms. But world hunger was the great social issue of the 1960s. It still is, or should be and Dr. Borlaug did more to relieve it than maybe anybody else ever did. The world of 1960 could not feed its population of 3 billion people. The world of 2011 can comfortably feed the 7 billion now on the planet. Where hunger exists today the reasons are political.

Dr. Borlaug was an agronomist doing research in Mexico during the 1940s where he developed new high yield and disease resistant varieties of wheat. The new varieties combined with improved farming techniques enabled Mexico in 20 years to go from importing more than half its wheat to a net wheat exporter. The success prompted an explosion in agricultural research funded by governments and private foundations around the world. A better diet allowed the average Japanese to grow a foot in stature in a single generation. Improved food supplies made it possible for who knows how many millions to move from subsistence farming into the middle class.

But there are still over 900 million hungry souls out there. Why so many? Poverty mostly; wars explain some of it, rampant government corruption in places like India and Africa contributes its share, and of course poverty and hunger go hand in hand in a vicious cycle. Malnourished people don’t make good workers. Hungry children don’t develop properly. They are more likely to get sick, the illnesses they get are more serious, and so it goes. My maternal grand parents both died in their 40s of tuberculosis. Their doctor thought it was because they had weak constitutions from a poor diet as a young couple, saving money so they could start a business. He may have been right.

Access to clean water and an adequate, secure food supply are probably the most important prerequisites to those most basic of Jeffersonian human rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And both are achievable, now. We can do a lot to help. It wouldn’t even have to cost us much, maybe not anything. We could start with eliminating these insane ethanol mandates. They cost us a lot of money, distort markets for grains and other food stuffs going well beyond corn prices, and have precious few benefits. That alone could shave a few million off the list of the undernourished. There are other things we could do here at home too, like make sure no child ever goes to bed hungry. We’ve made progress there, with Head Start, subsidized school lunches, and back pack programs to see to it children have food for weekends. But that food doesn’t always reach every child. We should make sure it does. The return on investment could be enormous.

We could do more with trade policy as well. Trade can be a powerful tool for encouraging foreign officials to clean up their own acts. Whatever China’s sins may be, they have had to play by certain rules to get and maintain membership in the World Trade Organization. The result has been epic economic growth for that country. A more prosperous China is not likely to tolerate the famines once common in that long suffering place. Mothers here can no longer use starving Chinese children to motivate kids to eat their vegetables. Improved trade ties with third world countries ought to be a priority in our foreign policy. A good opportunity would be to restart the stalled Doha Round of World Trade Talks. Any trade unionist raising a protectionist voice in protest ought to be sent to bed without his supper.

Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven

2011-11-18T06:14:00.000-08:00

Most of us have forgotten why we observe Veterans Day on November 11. This might be a good year to remember. Until 1954 the holiday was called Armistice Day, a day set aside to honor the veterans of WWI. The Armistice ending the War to End All Wars was signed in French Marshall Ferdinand Foch’s railway car at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, hence the date. The word armistice connotes a cease fire serving as a prelude to a negotiated peace.

When I was a child ladies in our town would stand on street corners on Armistice Day, handing out poppies to be worn on lapels. The poppies signified the fields in Flanders where some of the most bitter fighting took place. The tradition ended with the name change after the Korean War.

The Armistice was followed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles formally ending the war and spelling out terms for peace. The terms were harsh but Germany was in no position to resume hostilities and, facing a possible allied invasion, was forced to sign. We would soon come to regret that. Germans resented the loss of sizeable chunks of territory. They resented the forced abdication of the Kaiser. Above all they resented the infamous “War Guilt Clause,” the requirement that Germany admit to full responsibility for starting the war and make reparations far in excess of what they could actually pay. Germans felt wronged. Their army hadn’t been defeated in the field and they hadn’t started the war. A Serbian assassin in Sarajevo did that. It all contributed to the rise of Adolph Hitler 15 years later. The results were catastrophic.

Horrific as WWI was with its 8.5 million or so dead soldiers and another 21 million wounded, the next war would be far worse. We read a lot about the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews, but it is estimated that between 1939 and 1945 20 million people died in Russia alone, most of them civilians and a lot of them from starvation. George Marshall’s insistence that American recovery assistance in Europe be extended to Germany and Italy, and Douglas MacArthur’s decision to treat the Japanese with dignity and conciliation during the post war occupation of Japan contributed heavily to those countries remaining essentially at peace for the next 65 years, and most likely for another 65 to come. Both men learned the lessons of a bad peace and applied them sensibly despite a lot of pressure to repeat the old mistakes. MacArthur never even got a Nobel.

WWI didn’t end war and it isn’t ended yet but that may be closer to reality than it has ever been. With the Cold War over most nations don’t face any existential threat, and none seems likely to appear. Tiny Israel does but the prospect of devastating retaliation is a powerful deterrent. The wars we have seen so far in the 21st century don’t remotely compare in carnage or scope with those of the 20th. Let’s hope they stay that way, and that they become increasingly rare.

Pope Paul VI could have been thinking of The Armistice when he famously said “If you want peace work for justice.” Veterans Day is a day to honor veterans, not to dwell on the mistakes of their leaders. But this year, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the eleventh year of the millennium, it would be worth remembering that historic day almost a century ago, and what went wrong. It would be a great time to pray for peace and justice, and for a little guidance on what we might be able to do to help bring them about.

Keystone Kops

2011-10-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

Keystone XL is a proposed pipeline to transport Canadian crude oil from a supply hub in Alberta to delivery points in Oklahoma and Texas. It has emerged as a major political headache for the Obama administration. It is being pitched by its backers as a jobs bonanza, creating over 20,000 jobs directly during the construction phase, and 118,000 indirectly. Once complete it will provide feedstock for Gulf Coast refineries and reduce reliance on less friendly foreign suppliers. Its detractors are calling it an environmental catastrophe. The issues aren’t just political. Thus framed, they pit two themes of Catholic Social Teaching in opposition to one another, the call to care for God’s creation, and the human right to meaningful work at a living wage.

The case for jobs is pretty solid. We know what it takes to build a pipeline. Several unions have already signed contracts with the proposed construction company. These are good jobs at union scale. The ripple effect that will produce the indirect jobs is also well understood. I have not seen an analysis of the long term impact but I should think a stable oil supply will be a good thing for the foreseeable future.

The environmental reasoning is dicier. There are concerns about the route, it passes over the Ogallala aquifer, but we have a good safety record with pipelines and the builder has offered extra risk containment measures. The oil is to be extracted from oil sands. That process looks more like strip mining than conventional drilling but there again there are reclamation processes that can minimize any long term damage.

The real issue is Jim Hanson’s claim that, if fully developed, Canadian oil sands will release so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the damage will be irreversible. Not even a complete shutdown of coal fired power plants will offset it. Global warming will be catastrophic and unavoidable.

Dr. Hanson is well known for his dire warnings about carbon dioxide and global warming, perhaps second only to Al Gore. His Keystone argument rests on a complicated carbon life cycle analysis of the crude. Heavy crude from oil sands is higher in carbon content than conventional petroleum. The end products are the same so we are talking about carbon to be released in the extraction, transport, and refining processes.

I’m not competent to challenge Dr. Hanson’s calculations and I really don’t want to rehash the arguments about whether or how much man-made carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Alarmists and skeptics abound to take both sides of that debate. But it seems to me the sands will be developed whether we build the pipeline or not. If we don’t buy the oil someone else will, most likely India or China, neither of them noted for their concerns about carbon emissions. Like King Canute standing on the shore commanding the tide we will have sacrificed all those jobs in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable. And we will still have to get our oil from somewhere.

The responsible course is to develop our energy resources as cheaply and cleanly as we reasonably can wherever we can find them, and use the supplies to promote economic growth around the world. That will provide rewarding work for millions more people, maybe billions more. The resulting prosperity will enable us to mitigate climate change when, where, and if it comes.

Environmental activists aren’t having any of it. They are energized and planning another round of noisy demonstrations at the White House next month. I don’t expect riot police to show up in funny hats and bumper cars but this should be entertaining.

Heartless

2011-10-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

I wish Rick Perry were a better debater. I will likely vote for the Republican nominee in next year’s presidential election but one thing I don’t like about the current crop of candidates is all this immigrant bashing. One of Perry’s more defensible acts as Governor was his signing of a bill to offer in-state tuition at state universities for Texas residents regardless of immigration status. When challenged about it he accused his rivals of being heartless. It was a mistake. The several million Americans who disagree with the policy were needlessly offended.

Governor Perry apologized for the remark but the damage was done. It was probably already impossible to pass serious immigration reform under the current administration, or in this congress. Perry’s ham handed charge may well have helped make it impossible in the next. And we need the reforms. I know it. The governor knows it. His opponents know it. We all know it. But cutting through the technical complexity and all the emotionally charged issues associated with illegal immigration will require a level of leadership, bipartisanship, and pragmatism that we haven’t seen in many years. Some of us thought we saw it in Barack Obama three years ago. We have been disabused of that notion, but frankly I don’t see it in any of his likely successors either.

We pretty much know what reform should look like. It probably includes some sort of temporary work program and a path toward permanent residency, even citizenship. It certainly includes equal protection of the laws. Even our prison inmates have that. As we have done in the past with immigrants we should include measures to encourage family reunification, and to see to it children are in school. We should review and expand policies on refugee status, especially for those subject to persecution for supporting us in Iraq and Afghanistan, shame on us for not doing that already.

And of course we should get control of our borders. No one seriously disputes our right to determine who enters the United States and who does not. But we have to find more effective and humane ways of doing it. That we have allowed often cruel human smuggling operations to flourish on our southern border is unconscionable.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops insists we should address root causes. Those would be principally economic. People who have access to decent jobs in their own countries have far less incentive to emigrate. We can influence that through our trade policies at net benefit to ourselves.

Comprehensive reform isn’t going to happen in the current political climate but maybe we could do some small things. Toning down the rhetoric would be a good place to start, on both sides of the debate. Our pastors could help, not with noisy protests but with calm voices of reflection. The pulpit can be a wonderful platform for getting people to think seriously about what they already know to be right. After all, most of us are Christians and there is no clearer message in the Gospel than the mandate to welcome the stranger. Maybe we could even revisit the DREAM Act, the US senate bill that would have provided a way to citizenship to certain students who arrived here as minors. That had bipartisan support for a time before positions hardened. It made sense to a lot of people. Nobody really wants to send those kids back to homes that are no longer theirs. The bill is still alive in the Senate but not going anywhere at the moment.

One thing immigration reform does not include is mass deportation. That would be a humanitarian catastrophe. Americans don’t have the heart for it.

Better not to Know

2011-10-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it is certainly counterintuitive. A government panel recommended last week most men no longer be tested for elevated PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) levels in their annual physicals. The same panel recommended two years ago most women in their forties and fifties not have annual mammograms. They reason the tests don’t save many lives, create unnecessary anxiety, and often lead to over diagnosis and inappropriate treatments. With all the angry debate about pulling the plug on Grandma in the lead up to passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare if you prefer) it’s worth a little discussion on this panel and their recommendations.

The US Preventative Services Task Force is not a product of the ACA, it does not set government policy, and its members are not federal employees. It was created by congress in 1984 to review scientific evidence on the efficacy of various preventive medicine measures and make recommendations to the health care community. Anybody can nominate a member. You can nominate yourself. There are sixteen current members serving four year terms. I count thirteen MDs, two nurses, and one public health PhD who is neither a nurse nor a physician. Most are academics.

Over the years the panel has issued recommendations on screening and preventive measures for everything from hearing loss to scoliosis. The Department of Health and Human Services uses these recommendations in formulating implementing regulations for ACA, so they are relevant to Obamacare. DHHS doesn’t use the revised standard for breast cancer screening issued two years ago. They use an earlier standard issued in 2002 which recommends mammograms every 1-2 years for women over 40. No word on whether DHHS will adopt the new recommendations for PSA testing.

The new panel logic goes something like this. If you get back test results suggesting you might have cancer you may have an overanxious reaction. You might want more testing when there is no need to worry. This is where the panel logic breaks down. Of course you would want more testing. When a spot showed up on my CAT scan last year I went to see an oncologist about it. She compared it to an earlier scan and didn’t see anything to indicate cancer. I regularly send her a copy of my blood work and that’s it. I don’t even talk to her about it. She will let me know if there is anything new.

But three years ago a spot also showed up on a scan for my wife. Her surgeon recommended a biopsy and that’s what we did. The panel seems to be saying the biopsy might have been negative and it would have been better to let it alone. No scan, no spot, no biopsy, probably no harm. But the biopsy showed cancer. The surgeon recommended removing a swollen lymph node and some surrounding tissue. Two oncologists agreed so we did the surgery. We never actually found a cancerous tumor. There is a possibility we were seeing residue from a cancer that was no longer active. Nevertheless, the oncologists recommended chemotherapy and radiation so we did that too.

If we hadn’t done the original scan I don’t know when we would have found the cancer. Maybe never, never had that terrible sinking feeling when we first thought she might have cancer, never been so frightened as when we knew it was cancer, never had to go through that awful chemotherapy. But what if we hadn’t? She had stage two cancer. What if we had waited until it progressed to stage three or four? What then?

The panel seems to have the numbers right. A lot of people are overreacting to scary test results. But stop doing the tests? Not me. I would rather know.

Take No Prisoners

2011-10-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about the two recent high profile extrajudicial killings in the War on Terror. On the one hand, as you will have already noted, I do not consider this a law enforcement issue, one to be addressed through police work only after crimes are committed. Terrorism can and should be combated with all reasonable means and that includes military means. Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Alawki were waging war with the United States and had made themselves legitimate military targets. On the other hand it would appear that we had the option of taking both men prisoner and chose to kill them instead. I’m not sure that was the case but that’s how it looks. We wanted them dead.

Bin Laden appears to have been unarmed when he was killed. I would not second guess a navy seal who shot first and asked questions later but with the president and his staff watching a live feed, and the speed with which his body was taken to an aircraft carrier and disposed of at sea, it would seem reasonable to assume that all went according to plan. Circumstances were different with al-Alawki but news reports suggest a Marine Expeditionary Unit was prepared to go in on the ground. I wouldn’t criticize a decision not to put American troops unnecessarily at risk but it seems likely the intelligence to be gained would have been priceless had al-Alawki been taken alive. Or maybe not, water boarding would be out.

I can think of some very good reasons why the Obama administration wouldn’t want either man in custody. Bin Laden at Guantanamo would have been a public relations nightmare. He would have been headline news every night for months, maybe years. Pressure for a public trial would have been enormous. I can only imagine the spectacle that would have been. It would have probably been impossible to confine al-Alawki at Guantanamo. His citizenship would have entitled him to trial in a civilian court with all the constitutional protections that entails. The two men could conceivably have been more trouble as captives than as fugitives.

All of that said, I would rather we had taken them both alive, used any and all interrogation techniques likely to have been effective, and stood up to whatever political heat might have come. The idea that we may have killed them to avoid the complications of capture, if that is what happened, just doesn’t sit well. The position that harsh interrogation measures are morally indefensible in all circumstances, and killing is justifiable as a matter of preference is absurd. If water boarding has the potential to save innocents from wanton murder then we should water board. If there is valuable information we could have had but don’t because it was simpler just to kill these two men, then we have acted irresponsibly.

I know I’m putting a fine point on this. Many argue that terrorism should be treated as a police matter. A case can be made for that but I wouldn’t want those people in charge of the common defense. Others will argue that the men were enemy combatants and therefore fair game. A better case can be made for that but we can and commonly do disarm our enemies and take them prisoner. Where that can be done without undue risk to our own troops or to their mission it should be done, even with the likes of these two. Like I said, I have mixed feelings. Had I been Commander in Chief I don’t know what I would have done

Comparative Advantage in Education

2011-10-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Economists like to say that nations fare best in international trade when they focus on what they do well. It makes sense. None of us would be very successful if we tried to build careers around things we aren’t very good at. In America’s case one area where we have a comparative advantage is higher education. We have the finest university system in the world. Every year we produce large numbers of very well equipped graduates in all sorts of fields, ready to contribute to society to the benefit of us all. We ought to be building on that for all we are worth. But we are neglecting the input side of the equation. Our primary and secondary schools haven’t been up to the task. They have been mired in the near monopoly of government run public schools where innovation is stifled and education often takes a back seat to social engineering. Too few of our best and brightest are matriculating with the tools to succeed at the highest levels.

Lately there have been some interesting developments. Last June Newsweek published their ranking of the best high schools in America. Two of the top five were Dallas magnets. That’s great news for a school district that has been a train wreck for most of the nearly four decades I’ve been in North Texas. Magnet schools are not for everyone but their existence alone is innovative. It is encouraging to note that they are at least sometimes successful. So are charter schools. A number of them have been able to raise literacy and numeracy levels among groups of children who have traditionally lagged far behind. Voucher programs have helped some children get into better schools where they have tended to do well. More and more parents are opting for home schooling and even home school cooperatives. And the internet is making possible things like virtual classrooms with the potential to revolutionize education from top to bottom.

Last Sunday’s opinion section in The Dallas Morning News was devoted to fixing what’s wrong with the city’s schools. Incredibly they didn’t mention any of these things, preferring instead to devote space to establishment educators who promote ideas that sound distressingly obvious. We need better teachers, more accountability, inspired leadership, and social services. Well, duh! One thing they all agree on is the need to close the so called achievement gap, the unacceptably low reading and math scores that have been a fact of life in some neighborhoods and ethnic groups for generations.

There is nothing wrong with paying special attention to the neediest children. God’s preferential option for the poor is a theme of Catholic Social Teaching. It is in all our best interests to see No Child Left Behind succeed. But nowhere does it say the option is exclusive, that God cares only for the needy. The law has come with unintended consequences. It has frequently been implemented at the expense of our more talented children who need broader curricula and a faster pace in order to fully develop. It has promoted more than a few instances of fraud. Too many unqualified students have been shoe horned into advanced placement classes where they cannot succeed. We are improving performance at the lower levels too often by depressing performance overall.

It’s bad Christian stewardship. We have responsibility for all creation and that includes the society we live in. We are charged to tend it and make it productive. We are instructed to invest our talents and make them grow. To the degree that we neglect the children who have the most potential to give back to society we fail in that responsibility. We are not taking full advantage of this wonderful university system we have built and we are all the worse for it.

There is real danger in this. Few things are more important to most parents than their children’s education. If they begin to see public schools as welfare programs and laboratories for social change, if they see their own children getting short shrift, they will do whatever they can to remedy it and that will often mean flight. DISD has first hand experience here. Federal judges took control of Dallas schools in the civil rights era and implemented programs that drove middle class families out of the city in droves. We don’t want to see that again.

But there is opportunity as well. If parents have choices, and increasingly they do have choices, competition will force change despite establishment resistance. Parents also have better access to more information. A concerned mother looking for answers can find them on the internet. Parents are discussing this information among themselves and with their friends, and they are making their own decisions. That’s a good thing too, even if some of them make bad decisions. Another tenet of Catholic Social Teaching is that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education, and after all, public school administrators are making bad decisions for them today.

I expect to see accelerating change, though I doubt most of it will come from the public sector. Entrenched interests are powerful. But so is the technological revolution going on around us. Despite a setback early in the Obama administration with cancelation of the District of Columbia’s school voucher program, voucher use is slowly growing. As districts come under more and more budget pressure vouchers will become even more attractive because they are less expensive. And as more light shines on the negative effects of disproportionate attention at the lower end of test scores, there will be demands to restore discontinued classes at the upper end, and maybe add a few new ones.

On balance I am sanguine about the future. No Child Left Behind is good public policy. We can fix the problems with it and when we do ours will be a more prosperous and more just society. And with more top level students this magnificent university system of ours will be better than ever.

Free Trade Fair Trade

2011-09-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

International trade is critical in addressing a lot of the world’s problems and I try to follow the news on it. Unfortunately in recent years most of the news has been bad, for Americans anyway. George W. Bush was the last president to negotiate a serious trade agreement, three of them actually, with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, all signed in 2007 and all still pending approval. Congress and the administration may finally be ready to ratify them but a lot of time has been lost, despite a consensus among economists they will create thousands of jobs. In an economy where new jobs have been scarce as hens’ teeth it is disheartening there is not much else in the pipeline.

The Obama administration seems to have engaged in only one new initiative, the Trans Pacific Partnership, and it is not clear it is going anywhere. It is multi-lateral, with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. If you are like me and think the more trade the better that’s good. It would be better still if another major economy like Japan were included but so far no. As always with trade talks there is a fair amount of opposition, from unions who routinely oppose trade deals for protectionist reasons, from environmentalists, some of whom would dismantle the industrial revolution if they could, from people who think the United States always gets the short end in these deals, and from fair trade advocates who think they tend to further disadvantage the poor, especially in third world countries or emerging economies.

It’s this last I would like to address, fair trade. The term needs some explanation. It is one of those phrases that has been co-opted from the language to mean something fairly specific and very different from its more general, accepted meaning. Sometimes it simply describes policies of a luxury goods manufacturer who restricts sales outlets to retailers who agree to charge a minimum price. Increasingly it refers to the charitable practice of paying higher than market prices for goods from disadvantaged producers. The idea is to see to it the producer is fairly compensated. At its best the practice can help break the cycle of poverty. Typically the producers and their goods are certified by a charity or Non-Governmental Organization to meet certain economic, environmental, and labor standards. The NGO organizes cooperatives, sets wages and prices, and provides services such as marketing, training, import/export management, and strategic planning. Some countries regulate the process. Some don’t. You can find the label on everything from oriental rugs to chocolate. I have a number of friends who look for it. My church serves fair trade coffee. The US Catholic Bishops have endorsed the practice. Catholic Relief Services operates a well regarded fair trade program.

I have mixed feelings about it. I understand and approve the sentiment. If it really does “break the cycle of poverty” then charity has led to justice. But if it keeps people mired in industries and jobs where they can never be competitive then that is an injustice, however well intended. I wish there were better oversight. I know who CRS is and trust them. But who are some of these other people claiming to be engaged in fair trade? It seems to me there is substantial potential for abuse. But mostly I worry that it is a trade barrier. If the concept is used to oppose trade, as it often is, then it works against the long term prosperity of us all. I am enough of a history student to know the enormous economic progress in so much of the world since WWII has been due in large part to expanding international trade. The world has become not just more prosperous but safer. Freer trade can be made more equitable. It is not in our best interest to see it stopped.

2011-09-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

Green Madness

As the Solyndra scandal continues to unfold I’m beginning to think it may finally begin to bring some sanity to this quasi-religious push for green energy. If you haven’t been following it in the news, Solyndra is the solar panel maker that got a $500+ million government loan guarantee, used the money to build a huge new factory, and promptly filed for bankruptcy. Turns out it was costing them $6 a pop to build panels that were on the market for less than $2. It was obvious before they got the guarantee that their business plan wasn’t viable. At least it was obvious to any analyst who bothered to look.

Colossal waste has become a familiar theme in the green energy business. We pour billions into obscenely expensive technologies that don’t work, are known to be unreliable, and have undesirable economic and ecological side effects. Often justified as jobs creators, what few jobs materialize are either overseas or come with eye popping costs. Solyndra is just one spectacular example.

Another one that should be getting more attention is the Texas wind boondoggle. Texas has more wind generating capacity than any other state, a lot more. Our politicians have been falling all over themselves to promote it. Boone Pickens invested a fortune in it. Boone learned his lesson but taxpayers (and rate payers) continue to invest. Drive down I 45 toward Houston and you will see a steady stream of trucks hauling turbine blades north, all of them imported by ship from China, the same China where the $2 solar panels are made. But a funny thing happened. We had a brutally hot summer in Texas. Air conditioning demand peaked at levels dangerously near grid capacity. Where was the wind-generated electricity? It wasn’t. As happens in summer heat waves, the wind fell off. But we pay for it in our electric bills whether the turbines spin or not. And never mind that the things are killing off eagles, we’ve still got to build transmission lines to get the power to where it is needed when the turbines do spin.

Then there are the ethanol subsidies and mandates. Remember ethanol? It was the renewable fuel that would end our reliance on foreign oil and fossil fuels. This may be the worst of them all. I could write a book on all that’s wrong with it. It’s corrosive in engines and, as mandates increase, more and more of us will have to buy new automobiles we wouldn’t otherwise need, or foot major repair bills. It gets lousy mileage but that hasn’t stopped the little green men from forcing through increased mileage standards. We may actually be about to end the subsidies (I’m not holding my breath) but between still increasing mandates and sky high gasoline prices that probably won’t end the massive diversion of cropland to corn with it’s concomitant runoff into the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. Two years ago people even began to notice ethanol was making the world hunger problem worse.

And so it goes. Everywhere you look in the modern environmental movement there is another bad idea and misplaced priority. But nowhere is it written that the crazies always have to get control. And there are some things we could do that make sense. Maryland seems to be making progress cleaning up the Chesapeake. Maybe we could start to do something about the dead zone, an environmental catastrophe in the gulf far far worse than any oil spill ever was.

Maybe we could even put a few people back to work, really. There are jobs going begging because companies can’t find people qualified to fill them. They come with career paths and benefit packages. They are opportunities for rewarding work over many years. They aren’t necessarily in new industries either. They are often in well understood fields like nursing, vehicle maintenance, even trucking and they don’t all require many years of training and experience to develop the needed skills. Our community colleges and trade schools know how to prepare people for them and it doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per job. Why in heavens name aren’t we addressing this? There are even a few work force development programs that have proved effective. Let’s identify them and get the right people into them. A few more people buying homes and paying taxes would work wonders. But first we have to stop the madness.

Justice Denied

2010-07-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

“…laymen are not only bound to penetrate the world with a Christian spirit, but are also called to be witnesses to Christ in all things in the midst of human society.” Gaudium et Spes: The Church in the Modern World (43)

One of the central themes of Catholic Social Teaching is a call to family, community, and participation. It is the foundation for any work for peace and justice and it is everywhere. The prophets railed about it. Jesus preached it. Paul’s letters are filled with it. It runs through church literature in papal encyclicals, the catechism, and episcopal documents. Go to the web site for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and you will be inundated with it.
Today it is under assault from of all places inside the church, particularly that last bit, participation. More and more Catholics and even a few bishops are finding more and more reasons to withdraw from the world, to refuse to cooperate with more and more groups they find objectionable. They can find fault with almost anybody of course, and they appear willing to let the common good go wanting rather than work with them. I think it’s a threat to the faith. We are called to work for justice and I fail to see how we can do that without rubbing elbows with a few sinners now and then. I don’t want to spill any secrets here but I have sinned myself a time or two.
If I go to a crowded meeting on say, immigration reform, I can be reasonably sure there will be abortion supporters in the room. Do I just not go? I can’t go to Mass and be sure the person kneeling next to me doesn’t oppose school vouchers. Do I refuse them the sign of peace? The Texas Department of State Health Services funds breast and cervical cancer screening for low income women in every county. In my county it is offered through three clinics, all of them run by Planned Parenthood. Do I stop paying taxes?
OK, maybe these aren’t the best examples. Try this. Several US bishops have recently announced that on moral grounds they will no longer support the anti-poverty Catholic Campaign for Human Development. CCHD is an agency of the USCCB, is overseen by one of its subcommittees, its grants must be approved by the local bishop where the recipient is located, and recipients are required to certify that they do not engage in activities contrary to Catholic moral teaching. Some grants have been defunded when USCCB determined that the recipient was indeed engaged in such activities. It’s not enough. Altogether about 5% of the 195 US dioceses don’t contribute to CCHD, mostly for financial reasons, the recession has hit everyone pretty hard. But a small number objecting on moral grounds represents an alarming trend. CCHD represents one of our most effective means for addressing one of our most central missions, helping people, and not just Catholics, out of poverty.
The argument is that CCHD cooperates with other agencies engaged in illicit activities and is therefore complicit, no matter how just the cause or remote the banned activity. The problem here is that any non-Catholic organization will include members who disagree with us, often on important matters. To restrict ourselves to working only with Catholics, and only those who themselves work only with Catholics, and only those Catholics of whom we approve, and that is pretty much what some are calling for, is hardly the message from Gaudium et Spes. It called for us to get out there and be involved with society, to work for justice. Working for justice is by definition a political activity. We can’t do politics without getting our hands dirty. No politics, no justice.

The Religious Police

2010-06-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

“Therefore, while we are warned that it profits a man nothing if he gain the whole world and lose himself, the expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one.” Gaudium et Spes (39), Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council

When I see in print or hear someone say “I’m all for peace and justice but…” I’ve learned to expect a rant from someone who considers himself a devoted Christian, doesn’t appear to be at all for peace or justice, and thinks anyone who actually works for them is either misguided or the devil in disguise. They do usually support pro-life advocacy, pro-birth really, they seem to be uniformly in favor of the death penalty, but they’re opposed to most everything else. They conduct often strident boycott campaigns against some of the most reputable organizations on the planet, including the cancer fighting Komen Race for the Cure, the anti-poverty Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and even Catholic Charities; all because those institutions mix a healthy dose of justice in with their charity and often work with other like minded groups, groups the boycotters don’t agree with on one issue or another.

They reserve special ire for anyone associated with Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. Alinsky was a mid-twentieth century radical who is considered the father of modern community organizing. He believed among other things that in war the end justifies almost any means, the only way to empower lower income groups is to take power from those who have it, and that a conscience just gets in the way. His methods were effective if controversial. Caesar Chavez was a follower. So is Barack Obama.

Controversial or not, many, many churches, parishes, Jewish congregations, and national religious organizations support IAF financially, and work with local affiliates toward what they see as the common good. My own parish, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Plano, is one of about fifty dues paying institutional members of Dallas Area Interfaith, an IAF affiliate. I attended a DAI monthly meeting this week. About the most subversive thing I heard was a reminder that Social Security, the GI Bill, and Medicare are all government programs. Current projects include lobbying the Dallas City Council to maintain current goals for increasing the ratio of police officers to population, raising public and private funds for a work force development program in Collin and Dallas Counties, and a listening campaign to better understand the top social issues affecting several of our member institutions. Immigration reform is high on the list and our critics won’t like our positions on that, I don’t necessarily like them all either, but it is a human rights issue and we do have a right to organize, don’t we?

I recently came across a blog by a priest, a self described conservative, lamenting that the “peace and justice brigade” have taken over the Catholic Church. He accuses us of reducing the entire church to working for peace and justice, doing away with any concept of sin and redemption, and dismissing faith in the supernatural as “medieval.” Well, I know a lot of people working for peace and justice but I don’t know anybody like that. The blogger, and he has a lot of company, seems to think we can get away with ignoring the needs of the here and now in favor of the far more important hereafter.

My church doesn’t teach anything like that. Popes at least since LEO XIII, the founder of the diocese of Dallas, have written encyclical after encyclical detailing the injustices of this world, and the responsibilities we all have to do something about them. The popes are very explicit. These responsibilities are both temporal and spiritual. They extend well beyond the individual to the family, the community, to nations, and internationally. We have both personal and communal obligations to see that our neighbors, all of our neighbors, have access to the basic needs of life. Those needs include not only food, water, clothing and shelter, but medical care, an education, a job at a living wage, and the opportunity to take time to tend to their own spiritual well being. And Catholics can’t do it alone. We need the good offices of other well meaning men and women, we cannot expect always and everywhere to agree, and agree or not, we have to work together where we can for the common good. That’s what my church teaches.

My blogger critic knows all that but doesn’t seem to think it applies to the church itself. We should focus on salvation; do a little charity work here and there, always voluntary, and always avoiding contact with undesirable groups. He is free to think what he likes but church teaching really is pretty clear on all this. The USCCB web site is full of links to documents and organizations related to justice, including CCHD and Catholic Charities. Presumably American Bishops are well aware and approve of these organizations, their philosophies, activities, and associations. That’s their job.

As for me, I think I might get myself a tee shirt, have “Peace and Justice Brigade” printed on it, and wear it as a badge of honor.

Death of a Nemesis

2009-01-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

I’m going to miss the newspapers. Except for one year in Vietnam when it was not possible, I have subscribed to a daily newspaper without break since I was seventeen. One of my most vivid memories from plebe year at West Point was the first snow storm. My duty was to go out to the sally port before breakfast and fetch the papers. They were there, so was I. Drifts were four feet deep. The wind howled. I had ice in my nose and ears. For an Alabama boy it was painful but no discomfort was more important than getting those newspapers. I never considered any alternative. There was none.

It was a part of our curriculum to subscribe to a different paper each year; one year it was the Herald Tribune, the next the Journal American, then the New York Times. That’s only three. I don’t remember the fourth. Only the New York Times survived the sixties. I’m not sure how much longer even the Gray Lady will be around.

Newspapers once ruled the world. When we came to North Texas there were two major papers here. The Dallas Times Herald came in the afternoon, and of course there was the Dallas Morning News. We subscribed to them both. They each had their star reporters, and their columnists. It didn’t last long. I suppose TV news got to the Times Herald first. I don’t remember the exact sequence but as best I recall the two papers began combining their production facilities, then their news rooms, and finally the Times Herald was no more. Now I see where the DMN and the Ft. Worth Star Telegram will begin sharing sports coverage. One will follow the Mavericks and Stars, the other the Rangers. For now they will both continue to cover the Cowboys. I wonder for how long. Of my five adult children, only one subscribes to a daily paper. I think we have established a trend.

When I was eleven my dad got sick and was bed ridden for a year. I had never heard of the New York Times but he subscribed to it and read every page. I didn’t understand that at the time but to this day before I get on an airplane I buy a copy and, like my dad, I read every page. And I love to complain about it. The NYT is the epitome of the Main Stream Media. AAAGHH! They don’t report the news, they spin it. When the facts on the ground don’t fit their agenda they report selectively. At last resort they manufacture the news. AAAGHH!

But what’s the alternative? On my second tour in Vietnam I got the Stars and Stripes, not a bad paper but trust me, the NYT is better. So is the DMN, or any major paper for that matter. It pains me to see them in decline. The Detroit Free Press recently announced they will suspend home delivery for all but three days each week. Ouch! I don’t go to Detroit that often but what will I read when I do? USA Today? How long will they last? They don’t even publish a Sunday paper. I’m not about to begin watching the morning TV programs. Internet news is good as far as it goes but I don’t see it replacing my newspaper.

Maybe the newspapers and I are dinosaurs. Maybe a million years from now some three fingered freak of an anthropologist will dig up my grave and wonder what on earth that unwieldy piece of papyrus is that I seem to be scowling at. Whatever it thinks I will have gotten the better of it. I will have enjoyed Dagwood and Blondie and the daily crossword. I will have noticed my friends’ obituaries and gone to their funerals. Most of all I will have enjoyed railing about the Dallas Morning News editorial board. I just hope they last longer than I do.

Some Folks Never Learn

2009-01-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

A Dallas Morning News editorial today includes a remark that the relative calm we are now seeing in Iraq “…reaffirms the wisdom that once in a hole, stop digging. The Bush administration finally pivoted with its surge strategy in 2007…” The comment is as gross a mischaracterization of what happened in Iraq over the last two years as it is graceless. The surge represented not a Bush pivot but a doubling down. Critics including the DMN saw it as a stubborn refusal to admit the war was lost. Fortunately Iraqis saw it as renewed commitment and it was they who pivoted. Sunnis turned on Al Qaeda and Shiites got their thuggish militias under control. It was a pivot all right, in a war many in the American media (and some political elites I’m sad to say) were shamelessly attempting to turn into a debacle.

The DMN advocated their own “plan B” that would have almost certainly have produced said debacle. It called essentially for pulling American troops back into their bases and watching the borders from the air while letting Iraqis slaughter each other to their hearts’ content. Joe Bidden, with his much touted foreign policy expertise, contended that Iraqi ethnic groups could never learn to live together and advocated an American imposed partition. That was a strategy that would have led to one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of last fifty years. Barack Obama just wanted out and damn the consequences. One can only imagine the boost in morale Muslim extremists would have gotten from that. That none of this happened is a tribute to Mr. Bush’s resolve. I suspect historians will judge him a bit more kindly than the DMN does.

It’s worth remembering what Iraqi insurgents were trying to accomplish. Al Qaeda saw an opportunity to defeat a super power, as Afghan Mujahideen had a generation earlier. They thought Americans would soon tire of the chaos and leave. A lesser man than George Bush might well have proved them right. Shiite militias were motivated by a combination of power, greed, and revenge. Calmer heads among them including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani eventually prevailed. Sistani is no friend of the United States but he never liked the idea of Muslims running around killing each other. With the surge and switched allegiances among Iraqis, improving security began to build on itself and make possible the political compromises that may ultimately produce the peaceful Iraq most of us would like to see. At this point that likely includes Messers Obama and Biden. They wouldn’t want to see things go south on their watch.

Much will be written about how all this came about but nobody is likely to study it more closely than the military. They need to get this right. There is one critical lesson to be learned. No foreign insurgency is likely to be defeated as long as countering it is perceived as a predominantly American operation. The turning point in Iraq came when Iraqis began taking responsibility for their own security. Americans can celebrate victory only when they can leave, and leave behind a stable government capable of maintaining order and defending itself. That was always the strategy. It’s been right there on the White House web site since November, 2005. The surge didn’t change that.

The same will be true in Afghanistan, although we’re going to need some serious cooperation from Pakistan. There are some encouraging signs. Pakistan seems to be taking things more seriously and Afghan insurgents are reverting to more primitive tactics as their casualties mount. The key remains however in an emerging Afghan security force. That’s one lesson we had better have learned.

Garbage in Power Out

2008-12-30T08:49:00.000-08:00

One of the more interesting technologies to emerge from the last few decades of interest in alternative energy is plasma gasification, or more properly plasma arc gasification. The plasma is produced from an arc of electricity. You can think of it as a controlled and continuous bolt of lightning. It was originally developed by NASA as a means of simulating reentry temperatures for spacecraft. The Army adopted it in the early nineties as a way of destroying hazardous chemicals, especially old chemical munitions. It works because it produces temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun. Any substance on earth exposed to that kind of heat is reduced to its elemental atomic components. The technology can be used to dispose of all sorts of toxic chemicals. It isn’t much help with nuclear waste because radioactive materials are already in elemental form but for things like PCBs it is just the trick.

The plot thickens when we begin to think about what other materials we can break down, and what we can use the byproducts for. As for the latter, extremely hot gasses can be used to drive turbines and produce electricity. Depending on the gasses they may also be used to produce hydrocarbons. Resulting gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels can be readily cleansed of most of the pollutants we usually associate with them. Inorganic residue can be used to produce industrial chemicals or even construction materials. As for what feed stocks might be used, the most obvious choice is municipal waste. You might think the immense heat required would demand more energy than the process would produce but that turns out not to be the case. Once the process begins it produces more than enough energy to sustain itself. The excess has the potential to provide as much as 5% of our electricity needs from the nation’s garbage alone. It could eliminate the need for landfills and there are no smokestacks. The input materials aren’t burned. They are turned into gas in a closed system. There need be no release to the outside air.

The technology seems to be picking up steam. A company called InEnTec demonstrated a system at Port Arthur in June that produces ultra clean synthesis gas from chemical residuals normally treated as hazardous waste and incinerated. InEnTec is planning a commercial facility to produce hydrogen. Dow Chemical has adopted the technology for a plant in Michigan. St. Lucie County in Florida is building a garbage processing plant to replace its landfill and produce 60 MW of electricity at a cost competitive with natural gas. Environmentalists tend not to like it because they say it hasn’t been proven in the US but if these projects turn out to be as clean and economically sound as their backers expect we should see a wave of new construction over the next few years. It has some pretty significant advantages. It doesn’t have the long lead times or waste issues nuclear power has. And the knock on coal gasification is it burns coal to create the temperatures to produce the gas, and generates lots of extra carbon dioxide in the process. The plasma arc doesn’t burn anything. And a solution to the land fill problem should be attractive to every municipality in the country. No more methane emissions, no ground water contamination, no worries about non-biodegradable trash, a built in substitute for expensive re-cycling programs, and no more smelly eyesores in the landscape. What’s not to like?

Of course we’ve heard these promises before and not just from clean coal. This may not work out either for one reason or another. Environmentalists are right that it hasn’t been proved commercially. But sooner or later one of these ideas is bound to work.

Bad Air

2008-12-28T12:20:00.000-08:00

One of the more disingenuous arguments in the litany of calamities predicted by global warming enthusiasts is that malaria will advance into regions where winters are now too harsh for the parasite to survive. It is a frightening prospect because today the disease kills more than a million people every year, most of them children under five. It is also a false alarm. The truth is malaria isn’t a disease of the tropics. It is a disease of poverty. It is prevalent today in Equatorial Africa not because it is warm there. It is prevalent because so many people there are too poor to protect themselves.

That was true of the United States as late as the 1940s, though it was as much from ignorance as poverty. It wasn’t until 1890 that we even knew what caused malaria or how it spread. It got its name from Romans who thought it was brought on by swampy fumes. English colonists brought it to Jamestown in 1607 at the height of the Little Ice Age. It quickly spread across the continent. By the 19th century it could be found from Florida to Massachusetts and west through the Dakotas. Malaria doesn’t need warm winters. It needs mosquitoes and unprotected people. As Americans grew more prosperous they installed screens in their windows and doors and the disease began to abate. It persisted in many areas though, particularly in the lower Mississippi Valley where the ground was swampy, mosquitoes everywhere, houses too loosely constructed to provide tight seals, and people often couldn’t afford the screens.

Health officials understood all this and in the late 1940s launched an eradication campaign. Local, state and federal agencies drained swamps and wiped out other mosquito breeding grounds. They also sprayed DDT inside every southern home. The DDT killed other insects as well and people loved it. It was one of the great public health successes of the 20th century.

Then we banned DDT, though it is not an environmental hazard when used inside. It is harmless to humans unless they ingest it. But the ban stopped its use in some areas where it could have done a lot of good. Some mosquitoes developed resistance to the insecticide. Also, we sprayed it on the walls. Many of the homes in today’s most vulnerable areas don’t have walls. New eradication efforts will require some ingenuity. They will also require some common sense. Some environmentalists have belatedly dropped their objections to the responsible use of insecticides; some but not all.

The point is malaria will not return to northern climes unless we lower our defenses. It wasn’t cold that drove it out. It was man. We can drive it out of the rest of the world too, if we just will. There is no need for all those children to be dying. We tried once, but when it was no longer a problem in the developed world, rich nations lost interest. In the 1960s WHO gave it up as a lost cause. It’s getting some renewed attention now. A number of research programs into anti-malarial drugs and vaccines have been funded. International organizations are distributing treated bed nets and currently available drugs in some of the world’s most impoverished areas. President Bush pledged over a billion dollars to the effort. The biggest thing we could do though is to adopt economic and trade practices to help eradicate poverty. A lot of 3rd world swamps still need to be drained. Environmental lobbying will likely prevent 1st world money going into very much of that but once they have the wherewithal people will do it themselves. As long as we keep our own swamps drained, and our air conditioners running, we have nothing to fear from malaria.

Fighting Other People’s Battles

2008-12-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

As the war in Iraq winds down and attention shifts back to Afghanistan what little news coverage and think tank analysis there is describes a deteriorating situation. Suicide bombings are up. Convoys are hijacked. The opium trade is brisk. Air strikes are causing too many civilian casualties. Whole sections of Southern and Western Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan are safe havens for Taliban, Al Qaeda, and hostile war lords. Allied commanders are begging for more troops.

All of this is true, but the sky is hardly falling. American, NATO, and Afghan forces still win every tactical engagement. That’s why insurgents have reverted to more primitive asymmetric tactics aimed at soft targets. Whenever they mass forces for a conventional attack they are annihilated. Critics are right about one thing though. After seven years we have made far too little progress in building internal Afghan forces to the point where they can stand on their own. That was the mistake we made in Vietnam. We learned from that and that’s why we have been able to begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. There is less need for us there now. The same thing will be the key to ultimate success in Afghanistan. There is no way American troops can win this war. The best we can possible do is prevent a total collapse long enough for Afghans to become strong enough to maintain order among themselves and defend against foreign incursions.

There is no reason this shouldn’t happen, and fairly soon. The rebels are not numerous. They are poorly organized, equipped, trained, and led. Government troops and police out score them on every count already. (Excepting possibly leadership, I’m not sure about that.) Afghans justifiably complain about collateral casualties from air strikes but the intentional carnage among civilians inflicted by terrorists is far greater. They aren’t exactly winning hearts and minds.

It seems to me it’s important to remember why we are still there. It isn’t to find and kill every terrorist. That would be impossible. It’s to prevent a recurrence of the chaos that brought the Taliban to power in the first place. We can’t afford to be seen as having “lost” in Afghanistan, but victory should be defined as leaving behind a self sustaining government. The longer this is seen as an American war the more difficult that will be. If there is one thing we should have learned about Muslims over the past six decades or so, it is that they resent any interference by non-Muslims in their affairs, no matter how well intentioned, even when justified in self defense. Muslims can slaughter each other to their hearts’ content and elicit no more than a collective tut tut from the community at large. If Jews or Christians are involved they react with outrage.

I’m not sure the current plan to send in more combat troops is such a good idea. I would rather see a focus on building up Afghan self defense capabilities. The sooner this is recognized as an internal Afghan problem the better. That won’t happen as long as Americans are doing most of the fighting. I don’t really understand why we haven’t made more progress in this regard. Afghanistan has been far quieter than Iraq. We’ve had years to get this organized. There ought to be a steady pipeline of Afghan troops and police coming on stream. By now we should be pulling troops out, not sending in more.

I hope somebody is asking hard questions. What’s the plan? What exactly is it that more troops are supposed to accomplish? What’s been the hold up with Afghan forces? What’s going to change? Hasn’t that been NATO’s responsibility? They don’t seem to have been much help. Why are we even still part of that alliance?

Wrong Side of the Argument

2008-12-14T16:47:00.000-08:00

The Greens are going to lose their fight with coal. For one thing their story is wrong. Coal is a lot cleaner than it used to be and newer technologies are about to make it cleaner still. More importantly, coal is the only available source for the worlds increasing energy needs over the next couple of decades. Oil won’t support the growth from China or India. Wind and solar certainly will not. And only coal can free us from dependence on petroleum imports any time soon. Coal’s only real problem is carbon dioxide and that’s only if you buy the man made global warming argument. People increasingly do not. They are for sure not prepared to wreck the global economy in a futile attempt to avoid it.

The case for coal is compelling. If you insist on low CO2 emissions it can be sequestered and stored underground. People claiming it has never been tested commercially are either poorly informed or not telling the truth. Since 2000 Dakota Gas has been piping CO2 from a coal gasification plant to a Canadian oil field for use in an enhanced recovery project, the largest in the world. In the future CO2 could be used as feed stock for algae farms, maybe even in greenhouses. A better idea is to use nuclear power for heat to gasify the coal. That could take CO2 emissions back to the level of the 1960s, produce hydrocarbons at costs competitive on today’s market, provide an ample supply of electricity, and make the US a net energy exporter all at the same time.

Diesel is the cleanest liquid fuel on the market today. Diesel powered cars get 30% better mileage than gasoline and more than twice that of ethanol. Since 2006 we have phased in low sulfur diesel at a substantial price penalty but South African diesel made from coal is cheaper and has less than a third the sulfur. With congress about to enact ever stricter mileage and emissions standards diesel will make more and more sense, but we need to get the price down. Coal is the way to do it. If we pair coal with nuclear we could power the world for the foreseeable future until better technologies come along, and do it far more cleanly. Dirty coal indeed!

It might even be a way to make all those wind and solar farms useful. The rap on them is the electricity they provide is not only expensive, it’s unreliable. While the wind is blowing and the sun shining they could be used to power coal gasification plants and produce natural gas. The natural gas could be used for standby power. There are even some promising technologies out there for using wind and solar to produce hydrocarbons from CO2 and water. That’s a few years down the road and we’d have to be careful. Plants won’t survive in air depleted of CO2. I’m not in favor of this until it becomes economically viable but if we insist on throwing public money at “renewables” we might as well get something in return.

Greens are an important constituency for Barack Obama and for Democrats in Congress, but a lot of Congressional Democrats are from coal states. They know the economy runs on cheap fuel and despite their rhetoric they recognize the limitations of “alternative” energy. They also like being reelected. They will toss the greens a bone or two with some big time subsidies but they realize the nation has to get its fuel from somewhere and they know coal is the only real place to get it. Obama’s proposed Energy Secretary is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who worries about both anthropogenic climate warming and nuclear waste disposal issues. I suspect he also knows we have got to have real answers for serious short term needs. If we don’t get them Obama will most likely be a one term president. He wouldn’t like that. Neither would the greens.

Red Got it Right

2008-12-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

If you look up Leif Erikson’s father you may well read that the discoverer of Greenland scammed his fellow Vikings with false promises of a hospitable place. He lied to get them follow him as colonists. The name was part of the scam. It’s a persistent libel. The truth is the earth was relatively warm place in 985 AD when Erik the Red founded his settlements. Greenland was as he described it, blessed with inviting fjords and fertile green valleys. Climatologists now call the time the Medieval Warm Period. Some call it the Medieval Climate Optimum because European agriculture fared better with higher rainfall and a longer growing season, and because a lot more people die in cold snaps than in heat waves. Some refer to it as the “so called” MWP because the occurrence suggests the current warming trend may not be all that unusual. There is little question mean and median global temperatures were a degree or so higher than they were a few centuries earlier or later. Whether temperatures in the 20^th century were even warmer is a matter of intense scientific conjecture. In any case the Viking settlements in Greenland survived for 500 years, until about the time the Little Ice Age began.

Being more recent, the LIA is a bit better documented. Spanish Explorers saw snow covered mountains along the California coast. The winter George Washington spent at Valley Forge was famously cold. The Hudson River regularly froze over as far south as New York City. Glaciers around the world were growing. Mountain villages in the Alps were engulfed with ice. Eskimos were spotted paddling kayaks off the coast of England. But precise measurements of temperatures around the world are hard to come by.

Determining global mean and median temperatures from ice cores, tree rings, and ocean sediment is an inexact science at best but a group from the Oregon Institute of Science surveyed the literature on the subject. They concluded most of it supports the .contention that there was indeed a warm climatic anomaly from about 800-1300 AD, a cold climatic anomaly between 1300-1900 AD, and the 20^th Century was probably not the warmest on record. All three conclusions apply to most geographic regions of the world. The historical record contains no reports of global warming catastrophes. None of this is good for today’s alarmists because the medieval period certainly predates the industrial revolution. Any warming could not possible have been caused by man made carbon dioxide. And warmer temperatures don’t seem to have done any harm. They were a good thing. Increased levels of CO2 have quite beneficial effects as well. Trees grow faster over a wider geographic range.

Given all this it’s safe to say the climate for the past 3000 years or so has been punctuated by periods of relative warmth and cold. But the accuracy claimed for the infamous hockey stick graph published by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the graph Al Gore used to dramatic effect to demonstrate the trend in man made global warming, is questionable at best. We are talking about a science that only recently has been able to say with any confidence what global temperatures are today, let alone what they were a millennium ago. Even current measurements are challenged by many as misleadingly high. Recording stations tend to be located in urban areas and affected by “heat islands.” We are also talking about differences of maybe 1 °C, a change most people in a crowded room wouldn’t notice. We are trying to project those differences into parts of the world where there are no reliable records, using a science in its infancy. All we know for sure is that Erik the Red got a bad rap.

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

2008-12-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

The greens have produced a new ad trashing clean coal. It must be well financed because I’ve seen it several times on the evening news in just the last two days. This is shaping up to be a battle royal because DOE estimates US demand for electricity will increase by between 18% and 39% by 2030 depending on how fast the economy grows. That translates to a staggering amount of new generating capacity needed, let alone what it will take to replace retiring plants. We only have about three places to get most of the power we need and if one of them is off the table the other two will have trouble making up the shortfall. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner than coal using current technology but we have limited supplies. Nuclear is a bit more expensive. DOE also estimates it will take about $2.475 billion and six years to build a 1,350 megawatt nuclear plant. If we went all nuclear we would need somewhere around 750-1500 new facilities at a cost somewhere north of $1.8 trillion, maybe twice that. It gets worse with other alternatives. Even conventional coal costs more than nuclear. Photovoltaic is the least viable. A small 5 megawatt solar cell farm would cost over $5.6 billion. A thousand of them wouldn’t make a dent in our needs. Wind is better than solar but not much. I figure we’re going to do most of this the way we do it today with coal, gas and nuclear. The cost will be staggering. Greens will make it as difficult and expensive as possible. At a minimum they will demand a requirement to sequester carbon dioxide. That will add about a $700 investment per kilowatt of capacity for both coal and gas. It could bankrupt us.

The idea is to make electricity as expensive as possible so we will use less. That much of the savings will come from reduced economic activity is immaterial. It might seem to make sense if you buy the argument that man made global warming will do catastrophic damage to the planet but it makes no sense at all if that turns out not to be the case. Many scientists have pointed out that the computer models predicting future warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not supported by the historical record or by scientific experiment. In any case the economic burden will be heavy. For the developing world a carbon capture requirement would itself be catastrophic. They aren’t going to buy into any such program.

Nor should we. Despite a six fold increase in the use of hydrocarbon fuels since 1940, there has been no increase in climate warming trends. Atmospheric temperatures have risen .5 °C per century since the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850. Temperatures vary from place to place and from one decade to another but the overall trend has been steady for 150 years. The warming we’ve seen can’t possibly be caused by carbon dioxide. The number and intensity of hurricanes hasn’t increased since 1900. Tornadoes have been on the decline since 1950. Rainfall in the US has been slowly increasing for the past century, but at a steady rate unaffected by increased atmospheric levels of CO2. It all amounts to a pretty good case that the warming models are wrong. We shouldn’t be imposing such an economic penalty on ourselves based on flimsy scientific speculation.

There are just too many better places to spend the money, including worth while environmental projects. There is plenty of real pollution all around us we could clean up. Imagine the improved living standards that could be had if we spent a trillion dollars on research in any number of fields. We could rebuild a lot of crumbling infrastructure with this kind of money. We’ve got only so much. Let’s use it productively.

The Environmental Church

2008-12-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

I began as a skeptic and after quite a lot of reading up on global warming I’m still a skeptic but I have reached one conclusion. There is more religion than science in the current environmental movement. It’s a shame. There is so much good we could be doing but aren’t. We have bought into a mindless barrage of propaganda and are focused on saving the planet from dangers it doesn’t face. We are bent on impoverishing ourselves, and on keeping the third world poor, in a futile effort to control a climate that is utterly beyond our control. Rather than prepare and adapt to whatever change might come, we would stand at the shore and try to hold back the tide. We don’t clean up after ourselves, we wallow in our own filth while we endlessly wash sheets that are already clean.

I live in North Texas, down wind from a group of cement plants belching unbelievable amounts of mercury, nitrous oxides, sulfur, and heaven knows what other nasty stuff that makes the air so polluted I can see it. We could clean it up but don’t in part because we insist on restricting carbon dioxide emissions at the same time. That makes it too expensive. CO2! Plant food! We have been told that man made CO2 will destroy the earth and we have believed it. There is no science behind the idea. CO2 is at worst a minor green house gas. Man’s contribution is minuscule. The world is no warmer than it was in the middle ages. The computer models that predict it will warm further in the next century aren’t really science at all. They are an exercise in cooking the books. They represent incomprehensibly complex mathematical calculations based on so many assumptions as to be of no value; garbage in, garbage out. So we propose to tax ourselves. The cement plants will move to China along with the other energy intensive industries. There will be no reduction in CO2, and maybe not in the other stuff either.

It’s an argument based on exaggeration, half truth, and outright fabrication. Al Gore’s famous hockey stick graph was a fraud. It failed to show either the middle age warming period or the little ice age. The spike in twentieth century temperatures was only about one degree. Sea level rose about a foot. Current ocean temperatures appear to be cooling and, with denser water, sea levels falling. The Antarctic ice cap is growing, not shrinking. Warmer water on one edge appears to be caused by volcanic activity. The hurricane season is affected far more by ocean currents than by minor fluctuations in temperature. If polar bears are in danger it is from hunting, not warming. The increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 years has lagged the rise in temperature, not preceded it. It can’t possibly be the cause.

The United States sits on coal reserves that could provide all our energy needs for centuries yet we dissipate our national wealth on imported petroleum. We could clean up our mining operations but don’t because of efforts to stop mining all together. We could clean up our coal fired power plants but don’t because of the CO2 bug bear. We could burn clean diesel fuel but don’t for the same reason. We would destroy our automobile industry in an effort to promote electric cars when the technology isn’t there to produce them, and without a thought as to where the electricity will come from. We would move our society to a pre-industrial state and forget the misery that comes with that. We could help the world’s poor move to prosperity but fret that they will then want automobiles and air conditioning. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a beneficial byproduct of the energy that has fueled our emergence from the dark ages. There is no plausible alternative. We can’t go back to burning wood to warm ourselves. Wood smoke really is a pollutant.

Nationalizing GM

2008-12-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

This bailout is beginning to smell more and more like the New Deal. FDR tried to nationalize the electric power industry and partly succeeded with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Power Administration. George Bush has begun nationalizing the banking system buying stock in Citibank while other big banks line up for similar treatment. Now the three remaining US auto makers have their hands out and a columnist at the LA times is suggesting the feds simply buy GM. His reason? Only the feds have deep enough pockets to solve the real problem; building the electric cars we need. You see, the batteries are so expensive nobody will buy them without heavy subsidies and private industry can’t be trusted to produce cars the public might not want. I’m sure the idea is a big hit with the chardonnay and organic tofu crowd.

He’s right about one thing. There is no indication large numbers of people want electric cars unless they are affordable, reliable and functional. They aren’t any of those, at least not yet. For the foreseeable future we will continue to rely on fossil fuels for most of our transportation needs unless the government steps in. Of course the electrics don’t get us away from that. Most of the power will have to come from coal and natural gas. It isn’t likely the end result will be greater fuel efficiency any time soon, though it might help reduce our dependence on imported petroleum. But the larger problem is he is trying to address the wrong issue. GM isn’t in trouble because they don’t have electric cars to sell. They are in trouble because they let their costs get out of control and they have a long history of poor quality. They do have hybrids and nobody is buying them. Right now hardly anybody is buying cars at all. Big ticket items are a tough sell.

I’m sure the big three will get some government money, probably a lot of it, but I doubt they are salvageable in the long term without a lot of restructuring. That would include serious reductions in labor costs and in dealerships. Unions are a major democrat constituency and every congressman has several auto dealerships in his district. I don’t see this happening under government sponsorship. I do see a major handout now, another one next year, and subsidies as far as the eye can see. But I don’t see any of it being much help. New Deal programs didn’t get us out of the Depression. More of the same won’t get us out of this. People are worried about their retirement savings, home values and jobs. We are in a deflationary economy, a very difficult problem to solve. Just ask the Japanese. Who would buy a house if it might be worth a lot less a year from now? What’s the five year warranty on a new Ford worth? Making credit easier isn’t the answer. People with good credit can get loans now. Those who don’t have to borrow don’t want to. Making automobiles more expensive isn’t the answer either, subsidies or no subsidies. The money has to come from somewhere.

We aren’t going to get out of this downturn until confidence is restored. We need predictability. What the government has done so far is create a great deal of uncertainty. Buying GM would just add to that. We need to know what we can expect our taxes to be. We need reassurance our energy bills aren’t going back through the roof. We need to know our export markets aren’t going to suddenly shut down. We need to be comfortable our houses aren’t going to lose half their value. We need secure jobs. We need to expect a reasonable return on our investments. We need a growing economy. We need a pro business government. If we learned anything from the communists the last thing we need is for the government to go into the automobile business.

Warming Fires

2008-11-23T14:02:00.000-08:00

We’ve raised the hysteria to a new level. With all signs pointing to a major global recession our president elect wants to impose a carbon tax. Democrats have thrown out a long time chairman of the House Energy Committee in favor of an environmental nut case at a time when the auto industry is imploding. The gubernator himself is blaming California wild fires on global warming. This is getting out of hand.

There is plenty of room for skepticism. One global warming icon after another has been debunked. Polar bears aren’t drowning. Whales are trapped in suddenly thicker Arctic sea ice as the northern hemisphere appears headed into another bitterly cold winter. Greenland’s ice pack is melting a lot more slowly than Al Gore would have us believe in his version of Little House of Horrors. The Snows of Kilimanjaro aren’t melting, they are ablating, being eaten away by dry winds. For years a few scientists have taken the politically incorrect view that sun spots have a far greater impact on our climate that CO2 does. Sure enough, the solar cycle peaked in 1998 and the planet has been cooling ever since. After retreating for 200 years, Alaska’s glaciers are growing again. This week the Goddard Institute for Space Studies was forced to retract a claim that October was the hottest on record. The retraction wasn’t widely reported but it also wasn’t the first time NASA got caught with cooked books. Last year the agency had to revise its data to show the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s. They’ve been wrong enough often enough to lose a lot of credibility.

And so it goes. The often cited consensus among climate scientists turns out to be no consensus at all. A growing number dissent, despite threats of lost research funds. Dr. William Gray, famous for his accurate hurricane season forecasts calls the whole thing a fraud. He predicts a new period of cooling saying the warming backers have fudged numbers in their computer models with too much water vapor, a much more potent green house gas than CO2. He is regularly vilified by his colleagues and almost lost his job at the University of Colorado over it. Only his prestige saved him. Other skeptics (Gore would call them deniers, as in holocaust deniers) include Weather Channel founder and eminent meteorologist John Coleman who insists there is no significant manmade contribution to global warming. Roger Revelle, sometimes called father of greenhouse warming for his work correlating CO2 levels with atmospheric temperatures, taught Al Gore as a freshman. Gore refers to him as his mentor. The late oceanographer was skeptical about just how much effect CO2 has, expected it to work to temper weather extremes, not exacerbate them, and argued against drastic steps to reduce green gasses because they would be ineffective and have serious consequences for world poverty.

Another prominent meteorologist, Anthony Watts, points out that US temperature measurements have a built in warming bias in part because the instruments are typically located at fire stations, surrounded by concrete. British science journalist Lord Monkton shows the worlds oceans have been getting cooler which would cause sea levels to fall, not rise as predicted by warming models. He sees no cause for alarm. German atmospheric scientist GR Weber criticizes extremist and alarmist views as having no rational basis. A lot of this is out there. These guys have credentials, they have done their homework, and they think it’s a mistake to spend public money on something that isn’t a serious problem. We probably ought to be paying attention. I can just see them rolling their eyes at California’s Governor.

Teach a Man to Fish

2008-11-17T07:43:00.000-08:00

If we really cared about the planet the best thing we could do for it in the short run would be to help a few billion people help themselves. It wouldn’t even necessarily cost us anything. All we really need do is dismantle the bone headed subsidies and protective tariffs we maintain for our agriculture sector. That alone would help lift heaven knows how many of the world’s desperately poor out of the squalor that produces so much pollution. Most of these people live in agrarian societies. If we opened up our markets to them their incomes would rise faster and they would have more to spend on things like education and nutrition programs, and on goods and services from people like us. More of their children would survive to adulthood with better health and higher IQ’s, and with the wealth to demand cleaner surroundings. We would feed and clothe ourselves more cheaply and have more money to spend on other things, including pollution controls. The only people to lose are an ever shrinking class of farmers and ag companies, many of whom don’t need help. If they are so addicted to the government trough they can’t survive without it then give them the damn money, just don’t tie it to artificially high prices. We will all be better off.

Yes, all these people will opt for the automobiles and air conditioners that come with the modern world. They are doing that now and without catalytic converters for their cars or pollution scrubbers for their smokestacks. They will add those when they can afford them for the same reason we did; to get rid of the smog. In the meantime we can be investing in R&D for cleaner energy options. The third world will buy the technology for those too when it is available at a reasonable price. They will also be better able to cope with the effects of global warming if it comes, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions if that turns out to be a significant contributor. The question is when? I say the sooner the better and we can help speed the process.

All this is probably going to happen regardless of what we do. The top two Millennium Development Goals at the World Bank are: 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and 2. Achieve universal primary education. The bank expects the poverty rate to be cut in half by 2015 from 1990 levels. Literacy rates are going up dramatically around the globe. Child mortality is down. Nutrition is up. Emerging economies are growing at about 6% per year. That may slow in a prolonged recession but it represents a doubling every 12 years, the fastest in recorded history. The world is becoming a better place to live for a lot of its people but despite all this progress there were still 1.4 billion people living on less that $1 a day as recently as 2005. They can do better and we can help them.

Yet here we are pouring subsidized ethanol into our tanks to reduce gas mileage. We allow fast track negotiating authority to expire effectively ensuring the failure of the latest round of world trade talks, which might have been a shot in the arm for a global economy now in a tail spin. Congress easily overrides a presidential veto on a massive farm bill to keep prices high on favored commodities for another five years. To the degree we talk about the environment at all we spend our energy protecting beaches and arctic wilderness areas that are in no danger. And we propose carbon taxes to reduce CO2 emissions. Scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel most often cited as the authority on global warming, say no conceivable reductions will have much effect in this century. New taxes will certainly suppress economic progress that would allow us to better deal with it. We can do better than this.

Better Ideas for the Planet

2008-11-14T18:50:00.000-08:00

Count me among the skeptics but let’s assume for the moment global warming is a fact, principally caused by human activity. The question is what to do about it. If you subscribe to the notion we should revert to a pre-industrial society, live in self sustaining communities without global trade or travel, happily riding bicycles to work, you can stop reading. The sixteenth century was not a pleasant time to live for most people, and they didn’t have bicycles. I will take an opposing view; a clean environment is desirable primarily to make the world a more hospitable place to live for its people. That means more of us must be more prosperous, better able to take advantage of the benefits modern goods and services can offer, and better equipped to clean up after ourselves.

There is a lot we could do. Brown clouds over Asia are back in the news today, but they are new only to Asia. They were once the order of the day in the west too. In much of early eighteenth century England the air was unfit to breath. I remember when my family heated our house with a coal fireplace. At least we had a chimney but soot was everywhere. That stuff was filthy. We still generate most of our electricity from coal but the haze is nothing like it was then, and nothing like it is in Asia now. It can be cleaned up. I would argue that as Asians become more prosperous they will do just that.

Dirty as it is coal is cleaner than wood, at least when it burns, but in the third world many families still cook with poorly ventilated indoor wood stoves. They generate a lot of carbon monoxide and particulate matter, a major source of respiratory infection. Just remember the last time you were in a room with an open fire. Didn’t your clothes smell afterwards? It’s not especially good for your lungs either. WHO estimates that cooking with not so green solid biomass fuels such as wood or dung contributes to a level of indoor pollution responsible for “2.7% of the global burden of disease.” That translates to a lot of deaths, especially among malnourished children. WHO’s recommendation; switch to kerosene or liquid petroleum gas. But the world’s poor can’t afford even kerosene. I submit they would do anything they possibly could to help a sick child stop coughing. A small increase in income levels would work wonders. Raising the price of kerosene would condemn those children for who knows how many more generations.

That’s what we are proposing with Kyoto style protocols to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; raise the price of precious fuels for rich and poor alike. For the latter it is more than an inconvenience. It can be a death sentence. Do we really expect countries like India to go along? It’s a terrible idea and there are better ways. I’m not suggesting the air needs to be cleaned up only in the third world. We have a way to go ourselves, but if global warming is a problem it is a global one. We can’t solve it by ourselves and we can’t expect people currently living in poverty to be satisfied with their lot. We must have solutions that allow them a route to prosperity. They will settle for nothing less.

There are solutions at hand. Some of them don’t cost very much. Some, like reduced trade barriers, have net economic benefits all around. Look at the Copenhagen Consensus web site. They’ve assembled a group of more than 50 prominent economists, including 5 Nobel Laureates, to rank cost effective approaches to the world’s most serious environmental issues. At the top of the list is a simple nutrition program. Trade is second. More R&D into zero and low carbon fuels is 14^th of 30. It’s a thought provoking list from a very thoughtful group. Before we go spending trillions on CO2 reduction programs that don’t promise much benefit, we might consider some of these ideas.

Carbon Hyperbole

2008-11-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

We had an early frost in North Texas this year, about three weeks before usual. The reason was pretty simple, a combination of low humidity and no cloud cover. When the sun went down the temperature started dropping like a rock, a classic reaction to low greenhouse atmospheric conditions. Thin dry air is the reason temperatures tend to fall so quickly at night in the mountains. Without water vapor the earth would be a much colder place and most life as we know it would be impossible. It is far and away the most important of the green house gasses and I suspect most of us don’t even realize that is one. Most of us might list carbon dioxide and maybe methane or nitrous oxides, but almost certainly not water vapor. In fairness an increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, those generated by human activity, is usually cited as the primary cause of global warming. Water vapor is rarely mentioned. But I think the example illustrates that most of us don’t really know very much about the issue. We’ve been conditioned to think of greenhouse gasses as pollutants and of course that isn’t necessarily so.

That all tends to get lost in the noise over global warming. An extremist environmental lobby, a few well intentioned celebrities, and a compliant media have so wildly exaggerated the harmful effects of CO2 that we may be about to inflict really serious long term damage to our economy in order to reduce emissions. We are told that last summer’s $4 gasoline was a good thing. Some think $5 or even $7 would be better. Our president elect wants a carbon cap and trade auction that would bankrupt anybody building a new coal fired power plant. If we don’t act now, humanity will soon be reduced to a few thousand souls living at either pole, the only habitable places left on the planet. Society will collapse into medieval poverty. To avoid that fate we must impose economic penalties on ourselves that would take us to, um, medieval poverty.

It’s a shame because there are so many opportunities we could be pursuing to make the planet a better place, and are distracted by all this hype. We could be drilling in ANWAR at virtually no environmental cost and using the oil royalties to clean up the Chesapeake, Lake Pontchartrain, the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi, San Francisco Bay, and who knows how many other polluted waters. At a fraction of the cost of cap and trade taxes we could build enough nuclear power plants to supply all our electricity needs with no pollution emissions of any kind. We could divert coal to clean technology that would eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, bring enormous economic benefits, and knock the props from under some of the world’s worst tyrants. We could build desalinization plants to supply fresh water for our cities in the southwest, divert water they use now to irrigation, and feed a lot of hungry people.

There are a lot of things we could and should be doing to make the world better and more livable but aren’t because of misplaced priorities. Instead we want to incur enormous costs for negligible benefit. Even the most alarmist scientists say current proposals to restrict carbon emissions will have little effect on global warming. Some say the whole thing is a giant hoax. Most say the warming is a fact and is caused by human activity but the dangers are grossly over stated.

I was encouraged last week to see several carbon related state ballot initiatives defeated as too onerous and too costly. Maybe we will now begin to have some reasoned public discourse. It has been too long absent.

Lame Duck

2008-11-03T05:50:00.000-08:00

Franklin Roosevelt was first elected president on November 8^th, 1932 but didn’t take office until March 4^th. The cruel winter in between was tragic for the nation. Herbert Hoover was moving frantically on domestic stimulus measures that FDR would later build on. He pleaded with the president elect to collaborate with him on that, on European war debt, and on an international economic conference to be held in January. FDR refused, partly because he genuinely believed the depression to be a strictly domestic issue, and partly, as he infamously remarked, to make sure any further deterioration was “Hoover’s baby.” He was as wrong on the first count as he was callous on the second. The United States depended then as it does now on a global economy. International cooperation was desperately needed to deal with a crisis that affected the entire world. It would take the incoming president some time to understand that. Concerted action by FDR and Hoover in early 1933 might have taken years off the worst depression this country has ever known. It didn’t happen and hard times dragged on.

With talk of a new depression in the air some pundits are remembering what became known as the interregnum and suggesting now might be time to narrow it further, to within a few days of the election. But the history doesn’t support such a move. There is no reason to suppose that had Roosevelt’s famous 100 days begun earlier they would have been more effective. The London Monetary Conference didn’t convene until June, 1933. FDR sent his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, with a delegation but undercut them with his own ambivalence and in the end rejected the stabilization plan they negotiated. He completely misunderstood the international nature of the depression. Taking office earlier would not likely have helped. He would have been no better prepared.

It seems to me new presidents elect need some time to get organized. They spend two years or more running their campaigns and doing little else. They have positions on all major issues of course but until they actually take office they have no experience at all in implementing policy. They tend to be desperately short on specifics. To expect them to step in immediately and take the reins of power is asking too much, especially in times of crisis. They need to know who their cabinet members will be, and incoming staff need time to prepare as well. No, orderly process with transition as smooth as possible is much to be preferred over abrupt and hasty takeover.

Not that transitions are necessarily smooth, but we haven’t had a repeat of 1933. January inaugurations have served us reasonably well through the years. Cooperation between incoming and outgoing administrations has been cordial if not warm, including several during war time. Eisenhower took over from Truman at the height of the Korean War, as did Nixon from Johnson in 1969 with Vietnam raging. American embassy personnel were held hostage in Iran until Ronald Reagan was sworn in, Iranians spitefully withholding their release until Jimmy Carter was gone. It would be hard to make a case that taking office immediately after election would have helped those administrations.

So why make a change now? Many of those advocating such a move are old enough to remember earlier times of stress. I don’t hear them making their arguments in the context of history. Could it be they’ve forgotten it? Do they really think today’s troubles are so different they warrant a one off constitutional amendment? Or are they just so caught up in their preference for a particular candidate, or their dislike for an incumbent that their judgment is clouded? I suspect the latter.

The Great Depression of 2008?

2008-10-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

So how do we avoid a repeat of the 1930s? It may not be possible to dodge it altogether but there is no reason it has to be that bad for that long. An economic depression is usually defined as a severe downturn that lasts several years. If you are retired and depending on your 401K the downturn is probably already severe. The market didn’t fully recover from the 1929 crash until 1954. That’s longer than most people can expect to be retired. If you live in Phoenix and your major asset is your house, that’s tanked too. If you’ve lost your job this is a tough time to be trying to find a new one. Those things alone will almost certainly translate to major losses for a lot of people and they will be permanent for some of us. Those of us who don’t have to sell anything to meet expenses any time soon should thank our lucky stars and think about living within our means for a while. We should also be paying close attention to what the government is doing. I would argue that the last depression was in large part caused and prolonged by bad government policy. If we have another one, we can look to the same source.

We’ve learned at least one lesson. The Federal Reserve is pumping money into the economy like crazy and they can be expected to continue doing that for as long as money is tight. Uncle Sam did the opposite eighty years ago with disastrous results. But two lessons we haven’t learned. We are clamoring for higher taxes on corporations and individuals, and for protectionist trade legislation. Both of those things are really awful ideas. We live in a global economy and trade is its life blood. These are tough economic times by anyone’s definition. If we are to get through them international trade will play a very large role. And Americans don’t need handouts so much as jobs, good jobs, and I don’t mean government jobs. We tried that in the 1930s too. So did Stalin. He kept at it, we backed off, and as they say the rest is history. We need those jobs in the private sector and that means private investment. The last thing we should be doing is discouraging investment with higher taxes on those most able to invest. One new lesson we ought to learn too. Our economy runs on energy, cheap, reliable, plentiful energy. It’s there, government really doesn’t have to do anything about it except get out of the way but we do need to stop this insane idea of deliberately driving up liquid fuel prices in order to discourage use of the internal combustion engine. Clean them up? Certainly, but we need those engines and the engines need fuel.

Here is what I propose. There are at least three free trade pacts gathering dust on congressional tables. Pass them. Get serious about the Doha Trade Talks. Renegotiate NAFTA? Yes. Expand it to include the rest of the Americas. Send the world a message that the world’s most vibrant economy is still open for business. We’ve been scaring our trading partners half to death for the last two years with our protectionist rhetoric. We’ve got some confidence building to do. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. The impending expiration is like an anvil around the necks of a lot of business owners. We need those businesses to be growing. Making the cuts permanent would be a big boost. Stop this foolish talk about windfall profits taxes and start encouraging the development of alternative energy supplies, all of them, not just the favored few that have the blessing of the extremist environmental lobby. That means wind, solar, shale oil, clean coal, algae culture, nuclear power, and anything else that comes along and shows promise. We have the wherewithal to supply all our energy needs at affordable prices from domestic sources. Do it. Do it cleanly but do it. We don’t want to see another depression.

Something to Fear

2008-10-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

We’re hearing the D word a lot lately. Most pundits and economists say it can’t happen again. A few say it needn’t. But could it? Recent events bear scary parallels to 1929. Proposed remedies have a New Deal look to them. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt famously said “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself...” As it turned out the country did indeed have something else to fear. It had a new president with a virtual blank check and a lot of bad ideas. Will Rogers commented that Roosevelt could set fire to the capital and people would say at least he lit a match under somebody. He lit a lot of fires but the depression dragged on at least until 1940, when WWII finally pulled us out of it. The rest of the world might be forgiven if they preferred an even longer depression.

In this day of panicking markets we might do well to remember the role government played in that dark time, some lessons learned, and some not. To be sure Roosevelt inherited the depression. Herbert Hoover signed the protectionist Smoot Hawley Act that took things from bad to worse. A worldwide wave of retaliatory tariffs ensued with a disastrous collapse in trade. Hoover also presided over a restrictive monetary policy in deflationary times, with dollars so scarce that cities and states were reduced to issuing script as instruments of barter. But if Roosevelt didn’t cause the depression, his policies prolonged it for another eight years. Every positive move he made had unintended consequences that made matters worse. He raised farm prices by taking crop land out of production at a time when hunger was a serious concern. Land owners prospered, especially large land owners, but millions of tenant farmers and share croppers were forced off the land. Some of them starved. He put people to work with massive public works projects and raised taxes on the wealthy to pay for them. Private investment dried to a trickle. Nobody wanted to take risks if they were to absorb losses while the government confiscated profits. Unemployment soared. He brought in a brain trust. Some of its members idolized the central planning they had seen in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Roosevelt built the Tennessee Valley Authority and tried to propagate the model across the country to monopolize electric power generation. When the Supreme Court began to resist New Deal programs the president tried to stack it with friendly justices. Had he succeeded we might well have gone the way of the Russians. And so it went. Roosevelt himself was wildly popular, elected for three more terms. The depression continued through his first two.

So what have we learned? Not much it seems. People worry so we advocate brakes on international trade, forgetting what happened the last time we did that. At the first sign of trouble we pour government money into tax credits for favored industries, forgetting our history there too. We have begun to invest massive public funds directly into private banks. Other troubled industries are lining up for similar treatment. Politicians talk about windfall profits taxes and higher rates for the wealthy and we cheer them on. Our Treasury Secretary is supposedly a near genius. So were the members of Roosevelt’s brain trust. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a student of the Great Depression, was before Congress last week inviting them to embark on a new round of interventions reminiscent of the 1930s. His predecessor, probably the most renowned central banker in a generation, now says he was wrong to trust in free market correcting mechanisms through his decades of prosperity. Is there reason to think government will get it right this time? Or do we again have something to fear besides fear itself?

License to Steal

2008-10-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Remember Eddie Chiles? He was mad as hell and wasn’t going o take it any more. It’s time the rest of us got mad. Corporate managers have been taking us to the cleaners and getting away with it for years. I don’t mean Enron executives. They got caught in their fraud and went to jail. I mean the people who do it legally and the boards of directors who allow it or even encourage it. One CEO after another has trashed his company and walked away with a king’s ransom. Stockholders lose fortunes, employees lose jobs and dreams, departing managers get rich, boards pay no price at all, and in many cases tax payers foot much of the bill. We’ve established a pattern here and in this day of the 401K it affects enough of us that it’s time to rethink some corporate governance practices. I’m not normally in favor of more regulation but this has been broken for far too long.

The list is long and brings back a lot of painful memories right here in North Texas. Harding Lawrence bankrupted Braniff in 1982 and retired to the Caribbean with his millions while the airline shut down, buried under a mountain of debt. A couple of years later Edwin McBirney partied Sunbelt Savings into a failure that cost taxpayers about $2 billion. The whole Texas S&L industry eventually collapsed leaving the freeways lined with half finished townhouse complexes and a few individuals wealthy, having gotten their money swapping the properties back and forth among themselves. In 1998 Les Alberthal left EDS with a severance package of $35 million, though the stock price was well off its highs of two years earlier and it was clear the company’s business model was in trouble. A series of management teams followed. None of them really managed to turn the company around though they all did quite well personally. Now the company has been sold at a fire sale price and is going through one more round in a lengthy series of layoffs. There have been many such stories. The common thread is that everybody loses except senior management and the boards that are supposed to be overseeing them. Once an executive gets control of a major corporation the rapine begins and too often continues until there is little left.

I don’t object to seeing these people do well while their companies prosper, though I do think their compensation is often excessive. My issue is that they do so well whether the company does or not. Nobody represents shareholders or employees, and now, one more time, not taxpayers. We are seeing stock market instability unrivaled since the Great Depression. I am hearing that D word more than at any time I can remember. We are bailing out banks, brokers, and insurance companies left and right at staggering expense. At the root of it all are managers who made bad bets using other peoples’ money and faceless boards of directors who are not being called to account.

Reform should begin where the problems do, with corporate boards. In theory they are elected by shareholders. In practice they are typically appointed by management, the wrong way around. My suggestion is institutional investors (mutual funds, retirement funds, etc.) be required by law to form director nominating committees and vote in proportion to their holdings. Individual investors whose stock is held in street name can be represented by their brokers if they do not exercise proxies or vote themselves. All of this should be done independently of management. Corporate officers should be prohibited from naming or serving on their own boards. Directors should report at least annually to the committees that nominated them. Anybody have a better idea?

The Trouble with Boone is

2008-10-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Boone’s wrong. We can’t substitute wind and gas for foreign oil, at least not for the bulk of it. I’m surprised his plan hasn’t gotten more critical analysis but aside from questions about his financial stake in it I can’t find much. He’s right about one thing. We are about to make massive investments in wind whether it makes sense or not. But wind comes with some serious drawbacks that haven’t been seriously addressed, including that it is unreliable, costs too much, and will require enough new transmission right of way to generate serious political opposition. The Department of Energy goal of generating 20% of our electricity from wind by 2030 may be achievable but it is pretty ambitious.

Natural gas has its problems too, especially as a major substitute for the liquid fuels we derive from petroleum today. For one thing we are already using all of it we can lay our hands on. Any more will require us to either import it or generate it synthetically. DOE expects a staggering 900 of the next 1000 US power plants to be powered by gas. The idea that we can also divert large quantities to transportation uses is preposterous. Even if we could we would be talking about another massive investment in infrastructure. As with wind, the current distribution system isn’t set up for it.

Besides, there are better alternatives, including coal in the near term, shale oil, and ultimately algae culture. They all have their environmental detractors but reasonable objections can be overcome at tolerable costs. All can produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and heating oil more cleanly than today’s processes. Those fuels are the most important uses of petroleum. All can use existing delivery infrastructure and power existing engines without modification. And all are available domestically in ample supply. The suggestion that we can’t drill our way out of this makes sense only if we restrict ourselves to petroleum and even there we have enough untapped capacity to make a difference.

The environmental worm seems to have turned, driven into remission by last summer’s $4 gasoline. Since then congress has allowed long standing restrictions on off shore drilling to expire along with prohibitions on shale oil extraction. Al Gore is in the news saying there is no such thing as clean coal and advocating civil disobedience to prevent its development but he’s on the wrong side of that argument. Both presidential candidates are for it. China and India will each use coal-to-liquid technology whether we do or not. One of the beauties of current methodology is it works with low grade coal which includes most of India’s. It can also help clean up mountains of slag and coal residue left over from a century and a half of mining in America’s Appalachia. The $700 billion credit market rescue package congress passed two weeks ago included hefty new subsidies for both coal and shale oil despite objections from the environmental lobby. You can bet more is coming. Self proclaimed greens have only themselves to blame for what I see as a sea change in public opinion. They cheered while gasoline prices soared and real people suffered. Now we are staring at an impending global recession that may rival anything we can remember. Some buzzards are coming home to roost.

Mr. Pickens will win his gamble on wind only because of government subsidies. Those won’t be entirely wasted but we’d be better off spending the money elsewhere. As for gas, he may make some more money there too but it will be because of the mad rush to gas for power generation we’ve experienced over the past few years, not from new uses. He’d better not wait too long. We appear to be finally ready to make real progress toward energy independence. Wind and gas will have real but minor roles to play.

Barbarians at the Gate

2008-10-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

For Roman Catholics today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. At Mass this morning our homilist reminded us of the feast’s origin. Given the current financial meltdown, it’s worth recalling that bit of history. In the fall of 1571 Christendom faced an existential threat from the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople had fallen more than a century before. The Black Sea was an Ottoman Lake. All of Asia Minor, most of Southern Europe, and North Africa were Ottoman. Turkish ships raided almost at will in the Northern Mediterranean. Ottoman conquest seemed unstoppable and word came that a Turkish fleet had been formed to take Italy. As Dominicans met in Rome to pray the Rosary, a Christian fleet met and defeated the Turks at Lepanto. It was one of the most decisive naval battles ever. Pope Pius V set aside the date to honor Our Lady of Victory. We’ve since changed the name but still celebrate the anniversary.

In light of all that it seems trite for pundits and some officials to be calling the present crisis existential. I can’t find a reason to panic. Gas prices are still through the roof but rush hour traffic doesn’t seem to have slowed. I don’t see as many brand new SUVs as I did but I’m still seeing them with temporary license plates. Somebody is buying. I’ve heard so much about a crunch I checked my credit union web site. They are offering their normal range of loans at good rates and asking for the usual collateral. Just to be sure I called and asked. Yep, they are still lending. Adjustable rate mortgages run from 4.7% to 5.7%. I’m not sure I know anybody that has a sub-prime mortgage. I’m still getting those credit card offers in the mail. My retirement portfolio is down but that has happened before. Every bit of financial advice I ever got was to keep at least several months cash on hand and never invest money in the stock market I expect to need any time soon. If a bear market lasts very long Lynne and I will have to tighten our belts but if we can’t eat caviar we won’t be reduced to cat food either. Housing prices may have dropped but our house isn’t for sale. Unemployment is up but it has been worse.

Now don’t get me wrong. For a good part of our marriage we lived from one paycheck to the next and a sudden job loss could have meant big trouble. That’s happening to more and more people right now and I can relate to them. My point is I don’t see that a credit squeeze is affecting me personally very much, at least not yet. My friends don’t share financial details with me but if it’s affecting them it isn’t obvious. They are more likely to complain about gasoline prices. Church contributions are steadier than they were after the telecom bust. If there are dramatic changes in lifestyle in our community I don’t see them. Nor do I see the end of the world as we know it.

A lot of very smart people say we have a serious economic problem and a big bailout package is in order. I have to go along though I confess it makes me wince when I hear congressmen and senators justifying it (as several have) because their local used car salesmen are complaining. It seems to me a matter of principle that banks in trouble with bad investments should be allowed to fail. Otherwise solvent banks experiencing a run on deposits can borrow from the Fed, can’t they? Isn’t that what the Fed is for?

Sixteenth century Christians had cause for concern. Ottomans and Arabs before them had been very nearly invincible for nine centuries. More that half of Christendom had been lost. Their biggest enemy was fear. One naval victory went a long way toward turning that around. So did prayer. Fear is our number one enemy today too. Prayer might be in order once more. I plan to thank God for what I have and try not to worry.

Caesar’s Wife

2008-10-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

If she were a judge Gwen Ifel would have been expected to recuse herself. But journalists don’t hold themselves to that sort of standard. It isn’t clear to me they hold themselves to any standard at all. If you missed it she is writing a book, expected to be published on inauguration day, on “the age of Obama.” If he wins the election, she stands to profit. If he loses the book will likely be a flop. She doesn’t see a conflict of interest with her role as moderator in last night’s vice-presidential debate. After ignoring the issue for several days her program, The News Hour on PBS finally acknowledged the controversy but didn’t quite admit to any conflict. Excepting a few conservatives, and there aren’t many of those, most of her colleagues went along.

Ifel didn’t tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about the book. I can’t find the commission’s reaction in today’s news but I doubt it would have mattered. This is the organization that scheduled the first presidential debate on a Friday football night, effectively ensuring that several million family and community oriented folks would not be watching. Why do you suppose they did that? Surely not to get the largest or most representative audience and, it occurs to me, not to get a lot of the suburban and small town people more likely to support John McCain. Who are these commissioners anyway? How did they get control of these debates? But those are questions for another day.

I don’t remember another occasion when the media in general were quite so blatant in their political bias. The closest I can recall was their reaction to the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination. Opposition to a conservative is one thing, but the idea of a black man leaving the liberal plantation is quite another. They still haven’t forgiven him. Even today I rarely see a reference to him without an accompanying snide remark. The Sarah Palin coverage goes well beyond that and I’m not quite sure why. I suppose it has something to do with her sudden appearance on the scene as a wife, mother, and successful politician who doesn’t fit the feminist mold.

Lynne and I missed the first debate too. We were in Japan on a long planned vacation. It was quite an exotic destination for us and we had a marvelous time. We also had limited access to TV and the internet. Our news source was pretty much restricted to The International Herald Tribune, which of course is owned by the New York Times. It could be mistaken for a news letter from the Democratic National Committee. The NYT maintains a pretense of objectivity though I doubt anyone takes them seriously. The IHT seems to have dropped even the pretense. So has PBS.

Or maybe not. Sometimes I think they are so convinced of their moral high ground they are unaware of their own hypocrisy. They aren’t ignoring Gwyn Ifel’s financial interest in the outcome of this election. They don’t see that it has any bearing. But reputations are fragile things. Like Caesar’s wife they must be above suspicion. Ifel claims to value hers. If so, at the very minimum she should have disclosed the book deal before agreeing to serve as debate moderator. It would have been better to decline. By doing neither she has compromised her own integrity as well as those of The News Hour and the debate commission. That none of them see the issue is commentary on the sad state of our modern news outlets. They like to dismiss criticism as mere media bashing, but if they want to understand why the public holds them in such low regard they need look no further. We expect them to hold strong views and to express them openly in opinion pieces. We do not approve however when they contaminate the news with bias.

Addicted to Oil

2008-09-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

We aren’t addicted to oil. Russia is. So are Iran, Venezuela, and all the other petrocracies. They have not developed alternative revenue sources and they are spending the oil windfall as though it will be permanent. The problem is the rest of the world’s dependency is on liquid fuels that can be produced from raw materials other than petroleum. Oil’s dominance rests on being cheap and plentiful. Today it is neither and the world will find other sources for gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuels. It’s been done before. It will be done now. Let me make a prediction. By the end of the next US President’s first term the price of oil will be half or less than it is today. Gasoline will be under $2 per gallon and it will be there to stay.

The necessary fuels can be produced from coal at a cost equivalent to about $50 per barrel of oil. The US has more than enough to satisfy the needs of the entire world for many decades. The only reason we haven’t done it already is an inability to compete with low cost oil. But now demand has outstripped oil’s capacity at any price. Its day will soon be over. Technology is or soon will be here to compete not just with coal but with shale oil and we have more of that than the proven reserves of Russians and Saudis combined. Biofuels from algae aren’t far behind. That supply is limitless

This is all bad news for today’s more belligerent autocrats. It’s been said that credit for the Soviet Union’s collapse shouldn’t go so much to Ronald Reagan or Pope John Paul II as to $10 oil, or rather $80 oil followed by $10 oil. At $80 the Soviets were fat. They could subsidize all sorts of mischief around the world and compete in the arms race at the same time. When oil collapsed their economy collapsed with it. They fell like a house of cards. Russians can be slow learners. They failed to modernize their military after a disastrous Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905. That led directly to an even more disastrous performance in WWI. It cost the Tsar his throne and his life. Now problems are more clearly economic. Vladimir Putin feels flush and is throwing his weight around. He thinks folks at home will back him in anything while the money keeps on pouring in. Europeans will do nothing to put energy supplies at risk. It’s a colossal strategic blunder. Europeans don’t have to go to war to stop him as they did with Hitler. They just have to find a new supplier. They can, they will, and it won’t take them very long. Russia’s economy will collapse again and she will find herself in need of Europe’s good offices. With less oil to export, Iran already has internal problems, even at current price levels. Their economy will eventually force them to behave as well.

We have only to look at Germany at the outset of WWII. They lost access to most of their oil supplies and switched to coal hardly missing a beat. The Wehrmacht wasn’t exactly awash in fuel but did have enough aviation gasoline to keep Messerschmitts flying, and diesel for Panzers. It may take us a little longer but only because the situation is less dire and our environmental lobby is dazzled by what they see as an opportunity to force the abandonment of the internal combustion engines. They are on the wrong side of that argument. We have already begun to see it. Our economy really does need those engines and will for decades. Keeping prices artificially high is a huge economic damper we will not long tolerate. Even if we would the Chinese and Indians would not. There is nothing keeping them from building their own coal refineries. They already explained that in no uncertain terms when they refused requests this summer to sign on to new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. Their prosperity is at stake. So is ours.

Don’t Tax You, Don’t Tax Me

2008-09-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Tax that fellow behind the tree. That was Russell Long’s famous 1918 definition of tax reform. He got it about right. I was reminded of it last week as Barack Obama was promising to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. The 5% behind the tree are in for it. For 2006 that would have meant anybody earning more than $153,542. They already pay more than 60% of all personal federal income taxes. Presumably that will go up. The fifty percent who earned less than $31,987 paid less than 3% of the taxes. A lot of people paid none at all. I guess they will be getting larger rebates.

Now that the conventions are over and candidates are recharged the media are making their quadrennial complaint that they aren’t focused on the issues. Actually it’s the media who are ignoring the issues. Both candidates post their positions on everything from health care to trade right there on their web sites for any who bother to read. For tax policy they both have a fairly specific set of proposals for cuts, although both are light on how they intend to pay for them. Senator Obama wants lower taxes for working families, the middle class, the elderly, and small businesses, as he says, just about everybody except large corporations and the wealthy. He also wants to simplify tax forms for most people by having the IRS fill them out based on W-2s and 1099s they already get from employers and banks. The taxpayer would just have to review and sign. The only revenue raising measure I see in his economic plan is a windfall profits tax on big oil to pay for a second general rebate to compensate for high energy costs.

John McCain outlined his economic initiatives in a speech back in April. His are a bit simpler than Obama’s and his tax cuts would appear to be restricted to people who actually pay taxes. He wants to double the personal exemption for dependents from $3500 to $7000. The Republican’s approach to a simplified code is based on a switch to two flat rates with a generous standard deduction. Anybody wanting to remain under the current system can. McCain also wanted a suspension of the federal gasoline tax for the summer driving season. We’re past that and he never did say how he would replace the revenue for the highway trust fund. Given today’s news that it is out of money and payments may be cut for state construction projects, that is of more than passing concern.

I can’t find a reference on either web site but the single clearest difference in tax policy may be in respective positions on the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in 2010. Most Democrats and presumably Senator Obama want them to expire. McCain wants them extended. Expiration would mean a lot of people who don’t consider themselves wealthy would owe substantially more than they do now. The Obama claim to be cutting taxes for most Americans probably depends on expiration, and on not calling it an increase.

So tax issues are there for anybody who is interested. The candidates like to talk about their proposed cuts, but not how they would pay for them. I would hope some people in the media would ask. That’s easy to do in a televised debate, which I presume is why Senator Obama has mostly avoided them. It’s hard to do in the blogosphere. It’s one thing we are still pretty much dependent on the mainstream media for. The other issues are all there too, all with just as many unanswered questions. Each of the four candidates has a huge traveling press entourage. I hope some of these people start asking real questions and soon. The phenomenal audiences for the acceptance speeches suggest a lot of people will also watch the debates. But three short sessions on TV isn’t enough. These folks need to get serious. Just who is that fellow behind the tree?

Hurricane Sarah

2008-09-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

Well let’s see now. Her daughter is seventeen, unmarried, and pregnant. Her husband was arrested for DWI 22 years ago. Somebody has accused her of misusing her office to get her former brother in law fired. There is a rumor going around that her four month old Down syndrome baby isn’t really hers but her daughter’s. She presents herself as a reformer who turned down the bridge to nowhere but she’s a fraud because as mayor of a small town she lobbied for and got some earmark legislation. It all raises questions about the McCain campaign’s vetting process. Baloney, McCain says he knew about all this before he offered Governor Palin the nomination. He doesn’t consider any of it pertinent. So what’s the question? There isn’t any. It’s just a smoke screen for the press to engage in an orgy of malicious gossip. Now don’t get me wrong. The press has not only the right but the obligation to do its own vetting, especially of a candidate who is not well known nationally. But vetting does not include idle speculation, slander, or outrageously catty remarks. Yesterday The New York Times carried no fewer than three front page articles on the governor, all of them essentially about her children. One went so far as to make the blatantly sexist suggestion that a young mother of three has no business running for Vice President. She should stay home with her kids. Nancy Pelosi has five children. Can you imagine them saying that of the Speaker of the House? Anyone who did would find themselves confronting a feminist lynch mob. The hypocrisy is palpable.

The whole brouhaha should be good for Republicans. For one thing nothing rallies the conservative base like the mainstream media ganging up on one of their own. They haven’t been this excited since Dan Rather used forged documents to smear George Bush. For another the MSM will no doubt be shamed into finally focusing on issues, and soon. I can’t remember when lines were more sharply drawn in a presidential election. National security, health care, energy, global warming, and the economy all are major concerns with the two parties adopting radically different approaches. Of the four candidates, Sarah Palin is the most knowledgeable on energy and holds the clearest views on its relationship to global warming. Given the impact gas prices and climate change have on the economy, and the effect the economy has on our ability to deal with health care and national security, she has a lot to contribute. This should be interesting. Not that I expect a lot of clear eyed analysis from the media, but we do need a rational public discussion and we may finally be about to get it. The measures we adopt, or don’t adopt, over the next few years seem likely to have an outsized impact for several generations.

The feeding frenzy over her daughter’s pregnancy should answer any questions about the treatment a conservative woman can expect from the media. We should expect a continuing campaign of veiled charges and innuendo. I don’t think it will have much effect on the public at large however. We’ve grown accustomed to these shenanigans and learned to take them with a very large grain of salt. Committed Obama supporters will be outraged of course if so much as a jay walking ticket turns up in her background, but the rest of us will remember when Bill Clinton’s perjury didn’t rise to the level of high crime or misdemeanor. Her real test will be in how she reinforces the first impression she made when Senator McCain introduced her. If she rises to the occasion in her acceptance speech tonight and in her coming debate with Joe Biden she will put to rest any question about her qualifications, or the McCain vetting process. We have every reason to expect she will. I expect big TV audiences.

NATO no Answer in the Caucasus

2008-08-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

For several years now President Bush has been advocating admission for Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. In response to last week’s Russian invasion of Georgia, both presidential candidates, several former Secretaries of State, and more pundits than I can count have endorsed the move. It’s a terrible idea. Had Georgia been a member of NATO last week the United States would have been obligated by treaty to intervene militarily in her defense. We might well have been fighting Russians. We wouldn’t have done it and neither would any of our other NATO allies. Every president since Kennedy has avoided any direct confrontation with a major power. Even Truman backed down when it became clear that victory in Korea meant war in China. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon both preferred defeat in Vietnam to an expanded war there. Johnson sacrificed his presidency. Nixon declared victory and came home. They were right to be wary. Truman found out the hard way what China thought of an American Army poised on her border.

Soviets installing missiles in Cuba precipitated the single most serious crisis of the Cold War. What makes us think Russians would be any less concerned about the presence of American troops on her frontier today? We could find ourselves once more on the brink of a Russo-American war. We do have strategic interests in the region but military action is just not an option. We need to realize that there are some things in this world we are powerless to prevent. Russian reoccupation of her former imperial provinces is probably among them.

The West can make Russia pay a price however. Russia is able to do this only because increased global demand for oil and gas has revived what had been a moribund economy. But Russia knows she needs more than oil. She needs to be an integral part of the world economic system. She wants to be a dominant part. We can make sure that doesn’t happen, in part by putting on hold her application for membership in the WTO. Russia has been known to use her status as an energy provider as a weapon but her oil and gas have value only if she can sell it at sky high prices. We have the wherewithal to make ourselves independent of that oil and gas within the next few years and to bring prices back down to reasonable levels in the process. We should proceed post haste with every available option. We can do it without damaging the environment. Its time to stop this silly bickering about pristine beaches and wilderness, insisting on no new nukes, and ham stringing ourselves with questionable science about the role of carbon dioxide in global warming. We should take all reasonable precautions but it’s time to get on with it. It is critical to our economic and, as Russia suddenly reminds us, to our military security.

There is another reason for exacting an economic price. China has ambitions for regional hegemony too and may look at Western inaction in the Caucasus as a green light for her own military adventurism. But economic growth is even more important to China than to Russia and China lacks natural resources to fall back on. She will not risk major market disruptions even to re-take Taiwan.

We have economic tools at our disposal that are in the long run far more powerful and more reliable than military force. We should recognize that globalization is on balance a good thing. It has produced unprecedented prosperity and been a force for peace on a scale never seen before. We should be talking about how to deal with it and take advantage of it, not trying to stop it. Else we may find ourselves confronting not just a wolf at the door but a bear and a dragon as well. NATO is no answer.

Vladimir the Great?

2008-08-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Russians are scaring me. Most pundits pretty much dismiss the idea that the invasion of Georgia is an opening shot in a drive to put the Soviet Union back together but they may be missing the point. Russian imperial ambitions are a lot older than communism and they just might not be dead. On the contrary they may have come roaring back to life last week. We could be about to reignite the Cold War. Nobody wants that, we certainly don’t and the Russians don’t either, but if they can re-annex Georgia with impunity as it appears they can, then what’s to stop them from taking another step, and another and another…This has to end somewhere.

Peter I became “the Great” by ending Swedish dominance in the Baltic region, taking over Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, moving his capital to St. Petersburg, building a navy, and making Russia a power to be reckoned with in Northern Europe. Catherine I became “the Great” by extending the empire through the Ukraine and the Crimea, constructing a Black Sea fleet, and ensuring Russia’s status as one of the “Great Powers” up to WWI. Catherine’s ambitions extended through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean. She even named one of her grandsons Constantine in preparation for his installation on the ancient Roman throne. But Constantinople couldn’t be taken without a dominant naval presence. The great naval power of the day was Britain and the British Navy thwarted the plan, then and for another century and a quarter.
The Russian Empire all but collapsed at the end of WWI but through a series of bloody wars, and in the vacuum left by the defeat of Germany and the Ottomans, Lenin managed to salvage it. It almost fell again in WWII but Stalin survived, went on to extend the empire through most of Eastern Europe, and built a Super Power. Catherine would have been proud. Then in the 1980s the Warsaw pact and eventually the Soviet Union did fall apart in what was essentially an economic implosion. Most of us declared the Age of Empire finally over, dead in the ashes of Communism, Fascism, and Absolute Monarchy. We may have been wrong. Vladimir Putin may be about to prove us wrong.

Putin reasoned correctly that no one in the West would intervene militarily in defense of Georgia. Ten years ago economic leverage might have been a factor but not in this day of astronomical oil prices. We have very little leverage of any kind. We can’t embargo the oil and we demonstrated years ago in Korea and Vietnam we would rather lose a small war than risk a big one. So what do we do if Russia begins to pick off another former client state or two? Probably nothing so long as they aren’t members of NATO, which brings us to another problem. What if they are? Four current members are former Warsaw Pact countries. Another three are former Soviet Socialist Republics and had been Russian provinces since the days of Peter. Would we really go to war if Russia decided to reassert its influence in Latvia? I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin tested us on that. The European Union has a problem too. Of the 25 EU states, 8 came from the Communist Block and another two are in candidate status.

I don’t really expect a return to the Iron Curtain but the West has to draw a line somewhere and if it has to be a military one this could escalate out of control. That leaves economics as the only effective tool. The long term answer has to be economic integration. Moscow has to see the disruption of markets as a cost it is unwilling to pay.

Russia already wants to be a member of the WTO but with its new found oil wealth feels able to flex its muscles. Getting oil prices down to reasonable levels could be a big help.

A Tale of Two Visions

2008-08-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

In comparing the details of Barack Obama’s energy plan announced this week with John McCain’s Lexington Project it is apparent there is much the two agree on. They both address dependence on foreign oil in the context of global warming. They both want to reduce US carbon emissions and both would use “cap and trade” market mechanisms. Both would encourage research into alternative fuels and promote electric automobiles. Both would offer temporary emergency price relief from $4 gasoline. There are differences of course but there are a lot of similarities.

But the comparison masks a fundamental difference in outlook at the heart of a great national divide that is becoming starkly clear. It looks to be the overriding issue in this presidential campaign. It may very well be the determining factor in what sort of place America will be as we make our way deeper into the 21st century. Will we continue on the trajectory of increasing prosperity that inexpensive energy has made possible? Or will we accept drastic lifestyle changes and reductions in living standards to accommodate unavoidable scarcity? It is the most glaring contrast in vision that I ever remember seeing in a presidential campaign.

Obama believes “We must act quickly and we must act boldly to transform our entire economy – from our cars and our fuels to our factories and our buildings.” McCain thinks we can use domestic resources and technology to produce ”more power, pushing technology to help free our transportation sector from its use of foreign oil, cleaning up our air and addressing climate change, and ensuring that Americans have dependable energy sources.” Obama thinks we have to get by on less energy and is prepared to see prices continue increasing in order to discourage its use. We would certainly have to use less petroleum. His windfall profits tax on big oil will further depress domestic production, as we learned in the Carter administration. McCain thinks we can produce the energy we need, do it cleanly, and do it without bankrupting ourselves. Obama wants to free us from Venezuela and the Middle East. McCain wants us to stop importing any oil, a fundamental difference considering the fungible nature of global oil markets.

Both men want new zero carbon cars. Obama wants to be sure they are made in the US, presumably through protectionist legislation. We would need it. Cap and trade would impose significant new costs on American business and Obama would fund much of his program by auctioning the licenses, another immediate cost to continue operating and a huge new incentive to move production overseas. McCain is a free trader, wants to keep existing tax cuts in place, and generally opposes new ones.

Obama wants to do all this without relying on new nuclear power until the waste problem can be resolved. Since he also opposes the only feasible mechanisms for waste disposal, he effectively means no new nukes. McCain wants a crash construction program on the grounds no other currently available technology is as clean.

While the battle rages China and India continue to expand their economies with little regard for any sort of pollution controls, let alone the still controversial need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. When we recently approached them with proposals for participation in a new CO2 protocol they both said no thanks. They have other priorities. The decision by both presidential candidates to couple the need for energy independence with climate change is an expensive one. If we take all options for increasing supply off the table and pile on new taxes to boot we could end up in the poorhouse.

Oil Money

2008-07-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

Boone Pickens likes to say the $700 billion or so per year we expect to pay for imported oil over the next several years amounts to the greatest transfer of wealth in history. Boone is overselling his wind farms and natural gas as the solution but he does have a point. Current US net foreign debt amounts to a worrisome $3 trillion. The next president could see that more than double. If he has two terms he could see it bankrupt the country; that is unless we do something about it, and of course there is something we could do about it. We are sitting on somewhere between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion barrels of known reserves in shale rock alone. We might want to consider extracting some of that oil. $150 trillion would go along way toward solving a lot of financial problems, and most of the reserves are on federal lands.

Not that the oil is really worth that much. It may not all be recoverable and at anywhere above $50 per barrel there are too many alternatives for liquid fuels. Cost estimates for extracting shale oil currently run about $30 per barrel. Still, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen, a trillion here, a trillion there… pretty soon you’re talking real money. With all the unexplored and undeveloped options off shore, in the arctic, in clean coal, and in algae culture there are plenty of trillions to be found. Don’t talk to me about ethanol. That has its best use in corn whiskey and I don’t like corn whiskey.

All of these options have the advantage they cut directly to energy independence and fuel price issues because all can be used to produce liquid fuels, the products that use most of our petroleum. All the fuels can be used in existing engines and delivered through existing infrastructure. None require tax subsidies because they can all be produced profitably at costs equivalent to less than half the current price of oil. All are at least as clean as petroleum. All of them need more research because none of them are proven for production on a commercial scale but all of them are more ready for prime time than any other alternatives. It is reasonable to expect that all could be producing substantial amounts of fuel within three to five years. The government doesn’t need to do anything except get out of the way.

Here is my suggestion. Let’s adopt a regulatory environment to encourage rather than restrict or prohibit production of liquid fuels from unexplored or undeveloped resources. Let the markets work. At the same time let’s begin drawing down the strategic petroleum reserve at a rate designed to exhaust it in five years, with the expectation that by that time we will no longer need it. If speculators are part of the current problem, and it makes sense that they are, that ought to take the wind out of their sails.

Most important, let’s understand clearly the nature of the crisis we are in. We may be in a long term global warming trend, it may have serious negative consequences for the planet, and man made greenhouse gasses may be the principle cause. All of those things may also not be true. That’s the subject for another essay. We most certainly do have a short term transportation fuels crisis on our hands. The world wide demand for liquid fuel is going to increase steadily for at least the next three decades. All those Chinese and Indians are going to get their cars. We cannot conserve enough to compensate. Nor can we convert rapidly enough to electric, hydrogen, or natural gas powered vehicles. New production of hydrocarbons must be a part of the solution. We have a number of options at our disposal and we had best get on with it. Else Boone Pickens may be right. We may witness the greatest transfer of wealth in history.

Economic Atlantik-Brücke

2008-07-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

When Angela Merkel visited the US two years ago she made a very sensible proposition, one President Bush welcomed but that got very little attention in the American press. Her idea was to incorporate the US and the European Union along with probably Canada and Mexico, into a single free trade zone. We really should treat this more seriously. As Richard Rosecrance points out in the current issue of The American Interest America owes it’s place in the world as much to our status as an economic powerhouse as a military one, and that’s about to change. The EU’s economy is now bigger than ours is, China’s is about to become so, and India’s may not be far behind. In thirty years we could find ourselves in fourth place with a corresponding reduction in influence. I not sure we’ll be able to maintain the enormous defense expenditures required to continue acting as the world’s policeman either. So who’s going to do that? China? It’s time we started rethinking what sort of world order might be emerging and Mrs. Merkel’s suggestion would be a good place to begin.

A combined market would encompass about 13% of the world’s population but somewhere around 60% of it’s production. It would represent an alliance of people with a great deal in common with shared values and much to agree on. As the EU has amply demonstrated, the trade ties would have huge implications for a more peaceful world. On a continent that saw almost continuous warfare for at least two millennia, Germany is now no more likely to go to war with France than Virginia is with Maryland. Access to such a market would be a very large incentive to put a break on any bellicose ideas others might have. The same mechanisms that work to maintain orderly trade can also help in addressing all sorts of intractable issues from clean air to potential pandemics.

I can imagine that Japan might like to be in on the deal, and would have to open up long protected markets to get there. Mexico would have to adopt reforms that might finally bring prosperity on our southern border, and solve an illegal immigration problem that has frustrated every American administration in my memory. That’s exactly what has happened in Eastern Europe as former Warsaw Pact members have clamored for admission to the EU. For a short time Polish workers were flocking to Ireland. Now they are going home. Poland and Ireland both benefited.

A pact with Europe wouldn’t be subject to the same Xenophobia as the often proposed Free Trade Zone of the Americas. Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound wouldn’t have the same ring. Americans love to complain about the French but most of us would jump at the chance to spend a summer in Provence. Congressional trade demogogs would have to produce an entirely new line of rhetoric. It is we, not the Europeans, who might have to make concessions on environmental and labor issues. American unionists and clean air advocates ought to be all for it, though I’m not holding my breath.

In fact I’m not so naïve as to think any such grand offing is in the cards any time soon. Protectionists have the upper hand at the moment. Globalization has become a dirty word. But all of that is bad for the economy and in the long run that is bad for politicians. We could be in for some rough years. Our foreign oil bill alone is staggering. Between that and the declining dollar we may be about to see another round of stagflation, a word so long out of use anybody who doesn’t remember the Carter years probably doesn’t know what it means. Carter was a one term president. It took another sagging economy to bring a Democrat back into office. Politicians would do well to remember that.

The Cruelest Tax

2008-07-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

It used to be said of socialists they loved humanity but hated the people. Something like that could be said of the modern environmental lobby. In their conspiracy to restrict fuel supplies and price transportation out of reach for all but the wealthiest they would bankrupt millions of Americans and condemn much of the world to perpetual poverty. The great socialist experiment failed, producing unimaginable misery in the process. We have the opportunity to avoid that fate for our next several generations but we had better get our act together. The zealots are out there and they are singing a siren song. What could be a greater calling than to save the planet? Of course as with socialism, the devil is in the details. Sky high prices cascade through the economy. Inflation erodes the value of savings. Marginal workers are laid off. Some have to quit because they can’t afford gas to get to work. Many who can barely afford the gasoline continue to drive their old clunkers, put off tune ups, and produce even more pollution. As people begin to catch on the twenty first century commissars spread more and more propaganda. No disinformation is beyond them.

They say off shore drilling puts our beaches at risk. The truth is we haven’t had a major spill from a drilling rig in almost forty years, not since 1969 off Santa Barbara. Thousands of platforms have weathered numerous hurricanes without incident. The tankers bringing in imported oil represent a far greater hazard. They tell us drilling in ANWAR will destroy a pristine wilderness. Baloney, drilling just down the coast along Alaska’s North Slope hasn’t done any appreciable damage. They claim oil is fungible so replacing imports with domestic production won’t have an effect on global prices. The fact is basic laws of economics hold that any increase in supply or decrease in demand will put downward pressure on prices. There are common sense measures to be taken on both sides of that equation to hold prices to manageable levels. We don’t need to repeal the industrial revolution.

Peak oil theorists maintain that the world has reached the upper limit on potential production. Future supplies will inevitably decline, so get used to permanently high prices: also demonstrably false. The United States alone has enough untapped reserves to satisfy the world’s appetite for decades if we choose to develop them. They’re just off limits. Add clean coal-to-liquid technology and we are talking many decades. New alga culture methods coming on stream will make the supply of carbon based fuels virtually limitless. That’s what this is really all about, carbon dioxide emissions. The rest is just smoke screen. But reducing CO2 in the air is another technical problem we could solve if we put our minds and money into it. The $700 billion or so we expect to spend annually for the next few years on oil imports would pay for a lot of R&D, all of it going into our domestic economy instead of being drained away.

Restrictive policies on development aren’t the only explanation for the dramatic rise in fuel prices over the last several years. Speculation in commodities markets plays a role. So does the declining value of the dollar and there is no question that increased demand from China and India is having its effect. But the increase in demand can be met. The expectation that it will be met would go a long way toward bursting any speculative bubble. The resulting decrease in US trade deficits should also reverse the dollar’s decline. This is in large part a manufactured crisis. I understand most members of congress got an earful while they were home for the 4^th of July. Good. It’s time they did.

Charlatan Obama

2008-07-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

He’s a free trader but opposes every trade agreement on offer. He’s pro nuclear power but only if the waste issue is satisfactorily addressed. No possible resolution is satisfactory. He offers a message of peace and racial harmony but for twenty years attended a church known for its confrontational and divisive theology. He is a patriot but has associated himself with some of the nation’s most violent radicals. He’s for energy independence but opposes all new drilling or exploration where there are known domestic petroleum reserves. In Rocky Mountain shale alone the United States owns six times as much oil as Saudi Arabia but Obama opposes its extraction. Instead he proposes higher automobile mileage requirements and greater reliance on ethanol, a fuel requiring almost as much energy to produce as it yields, and one less efficient than the gasoline it supplements. He addresses energy independence by discouraging economic activities that require energy. He’s for clean coal but would impose impossibly strict carbon emission standards, far higher than on the fuels it would replace. He’s all for reviving a sagging economy and would raise taxes to do it. He wants to prosecute the war on terror vigorously but would initiate a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, leaving the field for an unencumbered terrorist renaissance, or would he?

We’ve established a pattern here. Obama’s solution to ruinous gasoline prices is a windfall profits tax on big oil, a recycled idea from the Carter administration that had the disastrous effect of discouraging domestic production. Surely someone has explained to him that despite its size, Exxon Mobil is only number 14 on the list of global oil companies, the really big ones are all safely out of his reach. He would use the proceeds to fund endless research on alternative fuels, all the while complaining that any new offshore drilling would take years to have an appreciable effect. Presumably no new alternative fuels would be acceptable either.

Senator Obama has painted himself into quite a few boxes. If he is elected president and behaves responsibly in Iraq his base constituency will most likely react with a vengeance. If he does not he could well produce a national security catastrophe. Either outcome could make his a one term presidency. Ask the senior George Bush about his “read my lips” pledge on no new taxes. If Obama renegotiates NAFTA the Mexicans will want something in return for any new concessions. What’s he going to give them? Looser immigration controls? $4 gasoline is having painful results. People are losing their jobs, not eating right, and avoiding expensive trips to the doctor. Al Gore wants it to go to $5. If we aren’t already in a recession that ought to do it.

No wonder Obama doesn’t want to debate John McCain. Questions are Obama’s Achilles heel. In the primaries there weren’t many real policy distinctions but in the general election the contrasts are stark. Obama has begun the traditional move toward the center and he is already getting push back from his base. The New York Times has taken him to task for changing positions on campaign financing, faith based social initiatives, and gun control. They’ve fired warning shots across his bow on any redefining of issues like Iraq, taxes, health care, or Supreme Court nominations. But Obama needs to expand his base and has been catering to people with radically opposing views. Trade Unions expect him to block any new deals, Wall Street financiers (and big contributors) think he is a closet capitalist. Both sides think they have been promised something. The pattern holds on issue after issue. I don’t see how he pulls this off.

Aldonza or Dulcinea

2008-07-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

Of the Broadway Musicals I have been privileged to see, one of the standouts was Man of La Mancha. The lyrics are inspirational, none more so than as Don Quixote sings with the low born Aldonza. To him she is Dulcinea, his queen, his lady, his true love. She begins with as poor a self image as one can imagine, a self described whore. By the time they finish singing his belief in her has transformed her. She becomes Dulcinea. Don Quixote may have been tilting at windmills, his name has certainly entered the lexicon as champion of the hopeless cause, but I think deep down inside most of us are pulling for him. Dulcinea may not exist but the idea of her can make the world a better place.

I’ve been thinking about Dulcinea recently as two very different views of America and her place in the world begin to crystallize. One view is of a sick society in desperate need of reform on issues ranging from foreign policy to energy to racial relationships. The other holds to a more traditional view of an America that has met every challenge in the past and whose best days are ahead of her. I suspect most Americans fall somewhere in the middle, but with a pronounced tilt toward optimism, proud of our country. That’s why we were shocked at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American tirades. It’s also one reason we hold much of the mainstream media in such low esteem. The constant drumbeat of what’s wrong with America is offensive.

That’s been especially true of their disgraceful attempt to paint the war in Iraq as a catastrophe, and to produce one in the process. As the situation on the ground steadily improves, they have shifted focus to the lack of political progress, and as Iraqis make said progress, they ignore it, mindlessly repeating the mantra of proclaimed chaos. This week the news should have been that Iraq has now satisfactorily met 15 of 18 congressionally mandated “benchmarks” as assessed in the required quarterly report from the White House. Brit Hume correctly predicted on Fox News that only his channel would make it a headline. All three broadcast networks ignored it, as did the New York Times and the Dallas Morning News. The Associated Press carried the story but with an inane lead about how the next US president will have to deal with the painfully slow pace of the Iraqi government. Democrats who stipulated the benchmarks in the first place now dismiss them as false standards. These people have neither shame nor intellectual integrity. That they have the effrontery to call themselves patriots adds insult to injury.

Speaking of patriotism, this week we were also treated to the spectacle of a major presidential candidate insisting that he would not tolerate having his called into question. That he found it necessary to defend it suggests he recognizes it has already been called into question. It’s going to take more than a flag pin on his lapel to address those doubts. His explanation that his patriotism is of a different and more sophisticated kind doesn’t help either. We know a patriot when we see one, and we recognize unpatriotic rhetoric when we hear it.

It is the energy issue however that I expect will prove the most divisive in this election cycle. One side sees an America that has been bent on destroying the earth and only drastic revisions in our lifestyle can save it. If it requires major economic disruption, that is a price that must be paid. The other sees an overreaction, a technological issue not that different from problems we have overcome before. As fuel price shocks cascade through one industry after another we will have to decide if we are more comfortable with Dulcinea or Aldonza.

Pro Poverty and Anti-Environment

2008-06-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t really surprise me that the environmental lobby thinks ruinous gasoline prices are good, or that Democrats are determined to keep them in the stratosphere. It does surprise me that supposedly intelligent people can’t see how fundamentally self destructive their ideas are. It should be obvious from even a casual glance around the world that poverty is not environmentally friendly. Take a drive east from El Paso on I10 and look south across the border, then talk to me about pristine landscapes. It’s no coincidence the most economically depressed parts of the planet are also the dirtiest. The air in Mexico City is about as bad as it gets but the average citizen there is more worried about bringing home a paycheck. It takes money for us to clean up after ourselves. That takes a thriving economy. That takes cheap, readily available transportation, and for the foreseeable future that takes fossil fuels.

We can move away from them over time. We can go to carbon free electricity and hydrogen powered vehicles. We can build more and better public transport, and reorganize our population settlement patterns around it. But it will take time and money. If we begin by bankrupting much of our own society and halting progress of the teeming third world masses the money won’t be there and time won’t matter. That’s what these folks are trying to do. Extraordinarily high fuel prices have debilitating effects on all sorts of activity, the sorts that have brought us the greatest prosperity the world has ever seen. They have a depressing effect on domestic and international trade, driving the cost of goods and services ever higher. Unemployment will rise, deficits will soar, and governments will be forced to inflate currency to pay debt service. Investing in new, cleaner technologies could be quickly out of the question. Permanently high fuel prices are bad all around.

It’s not going to happen. A new president and congress next year won’t survive a wrecked economy. Even if wrong headed American elitists get the upper hand in fall elections, most of the world will refuse to follow their lead. Europeans may worry about global warming but they will not pay the cost of currently available options to seriously reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Chinese and Indians are going to get their automobiles and they are going to power them with inexpensive fossil fuels, no matter how much the chardonnay and tofu crowd fret about it.

There are inexpensive and comparatively clean options available. Off shore drilling is preferable to foreign imports not only for national security reasons, but because oil spills are more likely from super tanker accidents than from drilling rigs. Coal to liquid, shale oil extraction, and alga-culture technologies are all ready, or near ready, for commercial production at reasonable costs. All are carbon based but all can be cleaner than current petroleum processes. When push comes to shove, and I believe that time has come, no amount of environmentalist screaming will stand in the way of their development. Environmental extremists are not going to drag us back into the Stone Age.

A firestorm is brewing and a lot of politicians are going to be ducking for cover this summer. $4 dollar gasoline is eclipsing other issues. People are concerned about it, more concerned than they are about the war in Iraq. As Republicans get their teeth into it they are going to have a field day. I’m disappointed there hasn’t been more of a flap over Senator Obama’s asinine comment about his preference for a more gradual rise but as a friend pointed out, maybe it’s better if the flap develops gradually.

Just Say No

2008-06-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Ask Palestinians what you get for always saying no to everything; nothing. Yet that is exactly what environmental extremists have been doing for the past quarter century or so. They’ve said no and thrown up disinformation and political roadblocks to every potential source of US energy independence, and to the only viable source of carbon free electricity. Now it’s too late. They’ve let things get out of hand. I predict they will shortly be run over by a steam roller of public outrage. The battle is joined in earnest, people are beginning to pay close attention, and they are not long going to listen to the voices of people who are out to abolish the internal combustion engine, who would see an end to the industrial revolution, and who are apparently willing to see much of the world reduced to a subsistence existence in the process. Ordinary people are not going to sit still for ruinous fuel prices when there are numerous alternatives at hand.

Democrats have been listening to this drivel for so long they don’t even see the problem with gasoline at $4 per gallon. Barack Obama sees no controversy in it. He just would have preferred a more gradual rise. He didn’t see anything controversial about his church either and if he didn’t see the Reverend Wright debacle coming he isn’t going to know what hit him when people realize what he meant. He meant that a prohibitively high fuel price is a good thing because it will force people away from gas guzzlers. He apparently doesn’t realize it isn’t just Humvee owners who are affected. Everybody is affected and most of us aren’t driving Humvees. Even those who would consider trading their SUV in for a Prius have seen the value of the old car drop like a rock and the price of a hybrid skyrocket. There are a lot of people who can’t afford that.

It isn’t as though we can all just cut back on our driving. Many of us depend on our vehicles for a livelihood. More people will take public transportation but the infrastructure isn’t there to support a sudden large increase in ridership. What about all the people who have no alternative? We can’t all move closer to work. The housing isn’t there. What about taxi drivers, truck drivers, deliverymen, and all the other commercial vehicle operators? Do they just jack up their prices? They may be out of business.

Speaking of higher prices, people haven’t thought this through despite warnings from food riots around the world. There’ve been no riots here, not yet, but people are cutting back on food budgets. They’re eating out less often and eating less healthy. They’re cutting back on vacation plans too. People who never used to budget for the gasoline on a family outing are doing the numbers now. That may be good news for gasoline consumption but the travel industry is looking at a pretty bleak season. The ripple effect is just getting started.

Most of us want to be environmentally responsible but to ignore the supply side of our transportation needs is insanity. We are the only oil producing nation in the world that severely restricts new exploration and extraction. We are sitting on reserves of fossil fuels that would last us several centuries if we would just use them. We can and should eventually move away from carbon based fuels but for the foreseeable future there are no realistic alternatives. In pretending that there are the environmental lobby is losing all credibility, and the right to a place at the table as we decide the way forward. It’s a shame. We could have drilled in ANWAR years ago, taken reasonable precautions to avoid harming the caribou, and used the royalties to clean up the Chesapeake, maybe the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi to boot.

Irresponsibly Green

2008-06-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Not everybody is complaining about high gasoline prices. The green lobby sees in them an opportunity to discourage use of the automobile. Barack Obama would have preferred a more gradual rise but is apparently content to see them continue going up. His plan is restricted to higher CAFÉ requirements (CAFÉ is the federally mandated mileage standard imposed on auto manufacturers), greater use of ethanol and bio-diesel, and new taxes on oil companies. His model is Brazil’s sugar cane ethanol. John McCain offers no more than a temporary gas tax holiday and a halt to filling the strategic petroleum reserve. If he has a long term solution I don’t see it on his web site.

What this suggests to me is that the current upward spiral in prices is at least in part the result of deliberate government policy. Most Democrats, some Republicans, and many in the media have gone along with it. It doesn’t have to be this way. Most of us would like to be responsible stewards of the planet but there are domestic sources of fuel available at reasonable costs that do not necessarily damage the environment or interfere with our ability to feed ourselves. I can think of at least four: undeveloped oil and gas reserves, oil shale, coal, and the potentially inexhaustible renewable resource, alga-culture. Any one or a combination of these has the potential to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, or eliminate it entirely. All of them can be produced as cleanly as or more cleanly than petroleum. Self proclaimed environmentalist object to them all. Some of their concerns are legitimate. Some are red herrings. All of them can be addressed. Some require reasonable compromises but these are not reasonable people. They will object to any alternative that prolongs the life of the internal combustion engine.

So we have huge reserves of oil and gas offshore and in the arctic left unexplored and untapped. No measure to reduce the surface footprint or risk in drilling is enough. We have more oil in shale rock alone than Saudi Arabia has petroleum. Royal Dutch Shell has what they believe is an environmentally friendly process to extract it at a cost of about $30 per barrel. Last month with gasoline approaching $4 per gallon the U. S. Senate Appropriations Committee voted 15:14 along party lines to prevent them building a plant to prove it. We have enough coal to last us three hundred years. We know how to cleanse it of pollutants and convert it to liquid fuel at a cost less than half that of oil at current prices. Potential investors are reluctant to build commercial refineries in no small part because of perceived legislative risks. Scientists say alga-culture has the potential to satisfy the entire world’s appetite for liquid fuels, can use animal, agricultural, or municipal waste as feedstock, does not require arable land or fresh water, and leaves a byproduct that can be used as food supplements for people and animals. The Department of Energy shut down its one research program into alga-culture in 1996.

Our economic prosperity depends on the various modes of transportation that are affected by oil prices, and they are mostly dependent on internal combustion. There are alternatives to imported oil but for the foreseeable future there are no alternatives to hydrocarbons, not in transportation anyway. All-electric or hydrogen powered vehicles are things of the distant future if they are ever to be. We need transportation now and that means we need carbon based fuel. China, India, and every third world nation all need it if their people are ever to enjoy the life styles they aspire to. Environmental theists must not be allowed to continue dictating public policy. We have to make our decisions not only for the benefit of the planet, but for the benefit of those who live on it as well.

What are we Waiting For?

2008-06-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

I sent versions of this letter to:
US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
US Sen. John Cornyn
US Rep. Sam Johnson
Texas Gov. Rick Perry
Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst
Texas Sen. Florence Shapiro
Texas Rep. Jerry Madden

June 9, 2008

Representative Jerry Madden

520 E. Central Parkway
Suite 236
P.O. Box 940844
Plano, TX 75074

Dear Representative Madden,

I would like to encourage you to support expedited action toward independence from foreign oil. I’m sure I don’t have to point out how damaging current high prices for transportation fuels are. I am disappointed however in the progress we are making toward doing something about it. There are some things we could be doing in our state.

My understanding from reading Department of Energy reports and other materials is that there are readily available and environmentally friendly technologies that could produce alternative fuels on a commercial scale, at reasonable costs, and soon. Some of these alternatives have been around for some time, yet we seem to be bogged down in partisan squabbling, special interest lobbying, and never ending debate. With prices spiraling upwards it’s long past time for decisive action.

Clean coal-to-liquid technology in particular would seem an appropriate vehicle for Texas. We have a lot of medium to low grade lignite that in new refineries can be converted to gas, cleansed of its pollutants, and used to produce relatively clean burning gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuels at costs comparable to oil at $55 per barrel. The resulting carbon dioxide can be captured and uses found for it. These plants can be built on or near existing mines, avoiding much of the transportation cost commonly associated with coal. They could produce thousands of new jobs for Texans and help stabilize fuel prices at much lower levels than they are today.

I would like to see this become a serious issue in this year’s election campaigns. There are other energy issues too, and other proposals for short term help in a short term crisis. This is a long term solution to a long term problem. It’s something we can do now. These facilities can be on stream in five years or less.

Let me reiterate. Coal is an abundant resource. We know how to convert it to liquid fuels at net benefits to the environment, the economy, and national security. What are we waiting for?

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Respectfully,

/s/

What’s Wrong with Coal

2008-06-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

We own immense quantities of readily accessible coal we can refine profitably into liquid fuels at less than half the cost of comparable petroleum based products. Yet some environmentalists object on grounds it’s too dirty, and potential investors say it’s too risky. Neither argument is valid. I’ll try to address both complaints.

The most common environmental objections have to do with air pollution and the damage done by strip mining. The latter is a legitimate issue but the contention that coal is necessarily more polluting than petroleum is demonstrably false. Those who make it are either poorly informed or, I suspect, raise it as a red herring because lower fuel prices encourage continued us of the automobile. In technologies currently being proposed coal is cleansed of impurities before it is ever burned. Not so with conventional fuels. Coal based diesel even has positive effects on engine performance, no modifications required. It is reasonable to be cautious in proceeding on the scale that would be required to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign imports. It is irresponsible to dismiss out-of-hand a technology that has the potential both to eliminate that dependence entirely and to have profoundly beneficial effects on our economy.

That brings me to mining. Strip mines are ugly. Keeping the countryside pristine in say Appalachia is an understandable sentiment, if not always a practical one. It may be true that mountains have been flattened and hardwood forests razed in West Virginia but it is also true there is a lot of blight in the region due to its relative poverty. Forests can be replanted and land reclaimed, put to all sorts of good uses including as parks and recreational facilities. If thousands of well paying jobs can be created in parts of the country that need them, an increase in strip mining operations might be well worth the price. Increasing prosperity brings us both the desire and the wherewithal to clean up after ourselves. In any case we aren’t talking about turning the nation into an eyesore. Most of the coal we need can be gotten from existing mines. It will be many years before those resources are exhausted and in that time, if we do this right, new technologies will be available to present even better options than coal. The important thing to remember is that we need the stuff. The world will continue to increase its use of the automobile for the foreseeable future and we have to find fuel somewhere. We should be asking how we get it, not whether. Conservation and improved mileage can only take us so far.

As to economic risks associated with building expensive new coal refineries, the one most often cited is the uncertainty of future legislation regarding CO2 emissions. Congress may enact mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and require the addition of sequestration equipment. But that applies only to conventional coal plants. Coal to liquid technology under discussion includes built in CO2 capture. The projects make economic sense with oil prices far below where they are now, and it’s a safe bet oil can’t meet rising demand at lower prices. I don’t see an unreasonable risk. I wonder if powerful industry interests aren’t trying to protect sunk investments in old infrastructure. I can see why they might. They’ve successfully resisted cleanup efforts for many years now on the grounds increased costs mean fewer jobs. If the public begins to see an economic boom in clean coal, that argument may lose its luster. In any case the more immediate threat to the smokestack industry isn’t clean coal, it’s alternatives like nuclear, wind, and soar.

Economic factors argue for coal, not against it. So do the environmentals. This is too important to let it get bogged down in disinformation. Let’s get a move on.

Getting Off the Energy Dime

2008-06-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Energy Information Agency says US net oil imports for 2006 averaged 12.39 million barrels per day. By my calculations, at yesterday’s spot price of roughly $127.50 per barrel, a similar amount this year will cost us a staggering $1.58 billion per day, every day. That’s more that half a trillion bucks per year, amounting to more than 70% of the trade deficit for last year. Let’s stop doing that. Let’s set some national goals that will have us self sufficient in transportation fuels and other petroleum products by, say 2020. While we’re at it let’s plan to generate at least half our electricity from non-carbon based sources. Let’s cut current inflation adjusted energy prices by half or more. We can do it at phenomenal net benefits to our economy and we can take some serious steps to clean up the air in the process. It will require major investments in money and effort but the returns should more than justify them.

We can do all of this with increased emphasis on nuclear, wind, and solar power for electricity, and clean coal and alga culture processes for liquid fuels. The technology is available and engineers say they can build the necessary facilities at competitive costs, though wind and solar rely on subsidies to do it.

Nuclear power currently accounts for about 19.4% of US electricity. I’m guessing we could more than double that in 12 years if we put our minds to it. The Department of Energy has already announced a 6% goal from wind by 2020, and 20% by 2030. It’s a goal that should be accelerated based on current trends. Solar power has been lagging a bit behind but costs and capacity have been improving rapidly in recent years. One problem with all three sources is that the bests sites are remote from major population centers but with improvements in high voltage direct current technology the problems in transporting electricity over hundreds of miles, including under ground and under water, are a lot less daunting than they were a few years ago. These amount to big increases in electrical generating capacity. As new plants come on stream we could shut down older, dirtier coal plants and divert natural gas to home heating applications where it works best.

As for liquid fuels for transportation, we’ve been focused on the wrong technologies with corn and soy based biofuels that don’t have the potential to meet the need. Coal and algae do but 12 million barrels a day is a lot of oil and replacing it will require a gargantuan ramp up in production capacity. Just getting started could have enormous ramifications. Exxon alone expects to spend $21 billion this year on oil exploration and refinery expansion. That’s money that could build a lot of algae farms and coal gasification plants. If the big oil companies begin to see a future reduction in petroleum demand, they just might divert some of those dollars. Maybe some of our elected representatives could think of some incentives to help them to that conclusion. Exxon has been resisting the idea but most of the others are at least making tentative investments in alternative fuels. A change in their return on investment calculations could turn that into a flood.

It will need it. The National Mining Association puts the cost to build a coal-to-liquid refinery at about $600 million to $700 million and a lead time of five to seven years to produce 10,000 barrels per day, less than one tenth of one percent of the capacity required. The numbers get a little better with increased scale but the required investment would be many billions every year to get anywhere near my goal. It’s a lot of money but it’s nothing compared to the cost of imported oil.

Unsustainable Oil Prices

2008-05-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

One of the goofier ideas going around these days is that the solution to high gasoline prices is to use the tax code to keep them high. The theory is that by locking us all into high prices, we will encourage the great unwashed to avoid gas guzzlers because they would lock them into, well high gas prices. I suppose there is a certain logic to that for the organic chardonnay and brie crowd but for most of us schmucks there is a better way. Let the market sort it out. There are roles for government in R&D and in emissions and mileage standards but if there is anything to be learned from our disgraceful farm policies it is that price controls are a bad idea whether they be floors or ceilings.

There is a basic long term mechanism for bringing oil prices back into line, competition from alternatives. Anything above about $55 per barrel makes technologies like coal-to-liquid and alga culture economically feasible. Those two sources between them can provide a virtually limitless and environmentally friendly supply of fuel. The fear is that oil may drop back again and bankrupt investors who get too far out in front. But lower oil prices discourage exploration and marginal recovery processes. Petroleum producers can’t satisfy demand unless the money is there, maybe not even if it is there. There is a case for $55 per barrel or thereabouts as the long term equilibrium price.

For obvious reasons the US Air Force wants a reliable domestic source of aviation fuel and has been experimenting with coal-to-liquid production for several years. The result works as well as conventional jet fuel and they would like to see it produced on a commercial scale. To that end they’ve asked congress for long term contracting authority to jump start construction of the necessary refining facilities. They ought to get it. Guaranteeing supplies is not the same as market distorting price controls.

Another suggestion is that the Department of Energy build a refinery and then sell it. DOE did something like that with the Great Plains Synfuels Plant in the 1980’s. Since 2000 the carbon monoxide from that plant has been sequestered and piped 200 miles to a Canadian oil field where it is pumped under ground to enhance oil recovery. Most of it will remain under ground permanently. That should answer any question about whether it can be done and the plant’s owners have paid DOE several hundred million dollars in a revenue sharing arrangement. Unfortunately the twenty year old plant is still the only commercial coal gasification operation in the US. We’ve learned a lot about the technology and it’s time we built another one. I’d like to see one built in Texas. There is a huge lignite field off I45 just north of Centerville that might make an ideal site.

I’d especially like to see multiple plants using competing processes. There are at least three designs ready for use on a large scale. One will most likely prove superior and I’d not want to have DOE or the Air Force deciding the winner in advance. DOE was about to make that mistake with the recently cancelled billion dollar plus FutureGen project. FutureGen would have used up most of the available development dollars on an experiment involving the production of hydrogen, not a prospect for replacing liquid fuel on a large scale any time soon. Now DOE is proposing a series of production facilities to be on line by 2015, without the hydrogen. Predictably the Illinois and Missouri congressional delegations are fighting to keep FutureGen alive. Their states would get most of the money. The rest of us should support the change. A few firm coal-to liquid projects in the pipeline might be just the ticket to burst the speculation bubble that has helped get oil and gas prices so high.

Washington We Have a Problem

2008-05-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

The only reason we ever became addicted to oil was it was cheap and plentiful. It is no longer cheap and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that over the next few decades supplies may not keep up with demand at any price. While we’ve tinkered with bio fuels and disastrous unintended consequences for the food supply the world has been using up the real stuff faster than it can be produced. We are just now realizing that all the corn and soybeans the planet can grow won’t make up the shortage, and we’ll still have to eat.

In thinking about this it’s important to understand we are talking about transportation, not electricity though the hybrid vehicles can help. Most of the petroleum we use goes to the production of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel with home heating oil coming in a distant fourth. We can address needs for electricity with nuclear power, wind and photovoltaic farms, and improved capture of waste natural gas but none of that is going to get us across town, not any time soon. As much of what used to be called the third world emerges into the modern era they are going to demand the modes of transportation that go with it. We are going to have to find fuel for them, we are going to have to find it fast, and we are going to have to find a substitute for petroleum.

We really have only one alternative, coal. We have a lot of it, it’s readily accessible, and the basic technology for converting it to liquid fuels has been around at least since the 1920s. Self appointed environmentalists object because they say it’s dirty. It is but coal advocates say they can clean it up, and at a reasonable cost. The Department of Energy agrees. DOE has looked at designs they think can take the filthiest, lowest grade coal, cleanse it of pollutants, convert it to liquid fuels, and capture and store the resulting carbon dioxide. The processes work well in tests and on a commercial scale DOE estimates a cost equivalent to oil at about $55 per barrel. With current prices somewhere north of $130 and expected to go higher it’s time to stop dithering and find out if they are right. Required facilities can be brought on line in a few years, not decades. Nothing else on the horizon has that potential.

Environmentalists had better get on board with this if they want a place at the table. We will do it regardless. We have no choice. We should insist on doing everything we reasonably can to protect the air but the operative word is reasonable. We can also take measures to minimize and recover from damage due to strip mining but we need that coal. In the short term we have no other way to get required transportation fuels.

One other point: The United States has more than a quarter of the world’s recoverable coal reserves, far more than any other country. That coal contains more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. It has the potential to turn us into a net energy exporter, reverse our trade deficits, and do more for our economy than anything since the invention of the internal combustion engine. We’ve been working on it since the Carter administration. We should have been doing more, a lot more. We need to be addressing global warming and all the other energy related issues too but this is a problem we can solve. It’s way past time we got on with it.

I’m writing this while on a driving trip where I paid $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline for the first time. I don’t expect to go back to the days when I could fill up my tank without serious damage to a $20 bill but I’d like to ask my elected representatives how that happened and I don’t want to hear about greedy oil company executives. I want to know what we can do about it and why we haven’t done it already.

Throwing Stones

2008-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Fr. Art Mallinson, at one time an assistant at my parish in Plano, has been forced to resign as pastor at St. Michael’s in McKinney after being outed by a “conservative activist group,” dedicated to exposing gay Catholic priests. Roman Catholic Faithful is one of those muck raking organizations of the sort the mainstream media wouldn’t normally go near but anything involving sexual misbehavior among clergymen or conservative politicians is fair game these days. (Openly gay Episcopal Bishops appear to be an exception to this rule.) Fr. Mallinson hasn’t been accused of any crime so far as I know, or of abusing his clerical office, just of some lewd correspondence from several years ago. He may yet be hounded out of the priesthood, though that isn’t technically possible. In my church holy orders, like baptism, confers an indelible sacramental mark. Once one is a priest one is always a priest. No one seems to have alleged Fr. Mallinson has violated his vow of celibacy, though that is also a misnomer. Roman Catholic priests vow not to marry. Fornication is a sin, an infraction of the requirement for abstinence, but it does not abrogate a state of celibacy.

I’ve been Catholic and married to a Catholic long enough to have known quite a number of priests. I count several of them among my friends. A few are among the people I admire most in this world. Some I have known left to marry and no longer celebrate priestly rites. Some I thought to be irascible old curmudgeons. Like other men, priests have been known to abuse alcohol or have heterosexual affairs. Some presumably are homosexual. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few have visited pornographic web sites at one time or another, gay or straight. Not withstanding any of that I find most priests to be sincere and dedicated to their vocation. All of them, like me, are sinners. None of them belong on pedestals.

None of them deserve to have their private indiscretions dragged across the headlines either. From what I understand Fr. Mallinson would be welcomed back in his most recent parish, among those who know him well. His most vocal critics are people who don’t know him at all. Personally I think the hue and cry often says more about the accusers than the accused. Take a look at the RCF web site. These people have issues, actually only one issue. They don’t talk about anything else. It’s one diatribe after another and for the most part not about the abuse of children, though God knows we’ve had enough of that. This is about gay priests, any gay priests, the bishops who tolerate them, the abomination of gay households in our society, anything gay. They appear to be quite well acquainted with gay porn sites, presumably for investigative purposes only. They like to use gay bashing words like pervert and they aren’t above pointing their readers to graphic and offensive photographs. They solicit dirt from anybody who has any to offer.

It’s time we all took a deep breath. Our church is still trying to deal with the scandal of predatory priests that has rocked its foundations. It was the single issue that got the most attention during Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit. It’s not something we are likely to have behind us any time soon. But homosexual priests are a fact. They have been a part of our church at lease since the adoption of mandatory celibacy. They aren’t all pedophiles or predators, and they aren’t necessarily a menace even if they are sometimes guilty of sins many of us find particularly distasteful. We don’t need to be rummaging through every priest’s closet looking for homosexuals and we don’t need homophobic scandal sheets like the RCF news letter.

Pond Scum – the New Texas Tea

2008-05-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

The energy business is getting more interesting. Chevron, Honeywell, and Boeing have all announced projects to grow algae for use as substitutes for petroleum based energy products. Now PetroSun has started a commercial farm operation on the Texas Gulf Coast near Harlingen to grow it for conversion into diesel and jet fuel. Scientists have been saying for years that algae has the potential to replace the world’s consumption of petroleum, all of it, but until recently nobody has found a cost effective way to solve the technical problems. PetroSun thinks it has one. If they are right it will be the biggest economic news since the invention of the internal combustion engine.

The stuff has a lot of advantages. It is an inexhaustible renewable resource. It’s eminently biodegradable. It doesn’t need arable land. Certain strains thrive in brackish or salty water. Under ideal conditions it is many times more productive than any other crop. Enough of it could be grown on a few square miles of desert to supply all of America’s energy needs. It could turn America into a net energy exporter. It can be fed with animal or vegetable waste, including municipal waste. It’s a potential use for the excess carbon dioxide being spewed out by power and cement pants. Biodiesel fuel can be burned efficiently in existing engines and delivered through existing infrastructure. It contains no sulfur. What’s left over after extracting vegetable oil for use as fuel can make a nutritious food supplement for animals or humans. A group of engineers at Auburn University has calculated that Alabama’s cattle and chicken farms alone produce more than enough waste to satisfy the state’s need for liquid fuel. They’ve developed a design they think is feasible for doing just that, and at a profit.

The seminal work on algae based fuels came out of the Department of Energy’s Aquatic Species Program a relatively small research project launched in 1978 in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo. ASP demonstrated conclusively that oils from algae can produce natural gas and just about anything petroleum can but they never could make the numbers work. In 1996, with gasoline at $1 a gallon, DOE shut it down. The technical problems were serious. ASP focused on open pond systems thinking that an enclosed system would be too expensive. A lot of people thought that was a mistake, though both the PetroSun farm and the Auburn system are based on open pond designs. The open pond left them vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and contamination. This works best with a pure strain of algae suited for the specific purpose. One strain is right for diesel, another for jet fuel, a third for methane. Maximum yields require ideal conditions of light, temperature, and nutrient and catalyst levels. The algae must be circulated at just the right rate to avoid under or over exposure to sunlight. You need a lot more carbon dioxide than can be squeezed from the air. You have to get it from somewhere and it has to be mixed with water. At harvest time the algae must be extracted from the water, and the oil from the algae. ASP overcame all of those issues but their costs were just too high.

Fortunately research continued in the private sector and today, with oil at over $100 per barrel, the economics look a lot better. So does the technology. There are pilot projects going on at several places around the country using enclosed bioreactors that may be more costly than the ponds but are also more efficient and easier to control. When smokestack and vehicular carbon dioxide sequestering technology becomes commercially viable we may see an explosion of algae farms recycling it back into reusable energy. In the meantime it looks like we may well be on the way to not needing it.

Trouble in the Food Chain

2008-05-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

I stopped at Tom Thumb the other day to pick up stuff for our dinner salad. The only cucumbers they had were organic. I wasn’t about to pay $5 for one of those beasties so I went to Kroger and got a conventionally grown one for $1, still steep I thought. Now I’m not going to blame the global food crisis on organic tofu but the incident did illustrate the perils of diverting crop land to marginally productive uses. Maybe more corn for ethanol isn’t the best way to do our bit for the planet. Heaven help us if we start using organically grown ethanol. I read today that the high price of fertilizer is driving farmers in Iowa to replace commercial fertilizer with hog manure. It takes about 100 pounds of it to provide the basic nutrient of a pound of regular fertilizer. It takes tons of it to produce expected yields on an acre of corn. That’s a lot of pig poop.

Ethanol isn’t the only culprit in this or even the major one. The biggest factor seems to be an improvement in global nutrition. People are eating more and better. That’s good news isn’t it? It’s not like the typical Vietnamese child is sitting around watching television and eating fast food but his parents are a foot taller that their parents were. That’s because they had a better diet growing up. The same thing happened in Japan after WWII. The explosion in crop yields that came with the Green Revolution let us feed an expanding population, and feed it better that ever before in human history. Now it’s catching up to us with an interlocking network of bad government agricultural policy, high prices for the oil and natural gas needed to produce fertilizers and transport the crops, growing resistance to innovations in agronomy such as genetic crop modification, and of course greater prosperity allowing people to demand better food.

This could be the sleeper issue in this year’s presidential campaign. None of the candidates seem prepared for it. They are coming up with half baked ideas on how to deal with a spike in gasoline prices, and none at all for how to react to what seems likely to be a permanent rise in demand for limited supplies of food. If we begin to see spot shortages this could get serious in a hurry. If we begin to see wide spread hoarding, and we’ve already seen some, the whole thing could spiral quickly out of control. This is food we’re talking about. It was a bread riot that sparked the Russian Revolution for Pete’s sake.

There appear to be a number of long term solutions to this, but precious few of them get us through the rest of this year. Better irrigation techniques would work new miracles. The Israelis have shown us that. Much of the worlds’ arable land is still poorly managed. That’s a political problem that could be solved if we put our minds to it but it will take years to turn it around. We have hardly begun to develop the oceans’ potential for aquaculture. This old planet still has a lot to give.

It’s time we put some serious thought into this, and this spring’s early warning signs should prompt us to take some short term precautions. We might consider slowing down the diversion of food crops to non-food uses. We might want to temporarily take some land out of conservation programs and plant it this year. Conservationists, environmentalists, hunters, and everybody else with a vested interest in the current arrangements will all scream to high heaven. But we have had a few shots across our bow on this issue. It would be a lot easier to avoid a crisis than to deal with one in progress. I doubt we’ll see riots in the US but we’re seeing them around the world. Prices are up. Demand is up. Supplies are down. People have to be fed and that food has to come from somewhere. This year’s harvest is going to need a boost.

Obama Shocked, Shocked!

2008-04-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

With Rev. Jeremiah Wright back in the news with his outrageous Black Liberation Theology, and Barack Obama denying he ever heard any thing like that in twenty years of listening to Wright’s sermons, it’s fun watching the politically correct crowd congratulate Obama for distancing himself from his former pastor. It isn’t going to work. The problem is Obama can’t explain why he never saw anything wrong with the sermons until now. If he didn’t agree with the essential sentiment behind Wright’s anger, why would he belong to that church all these years? This brand of rhetoric has been a Wright staple throughout his career. He built a large and enthusiastic congregation on it. His remarks aren’t being taken out of context and they aren’t new. Obama’s dissembling isn’t going to cut it. This story’s got legs, big hairy muscular legs. I think the whole thing may turn out to be cathartic. Black preachers and civil rights leaders have been given a pass for several decades. Much of the public and essentially all of the media have been turning a deaf ear, partly out of naivety and partly for fear of being called racist. It’s finally out and we are finally talking about it.

Jeremiah Wright came of age at a time when American Blacks felt able to voice their frustrations for the first time in the history of the republic, and voice them they did, loudly, angrily, and sometimes violently. Black Liberation Theology was created from whole cloth specifically to add to those voices and to give them a Christian underpinning. But this isn’t 1964. A black man has served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as Secretary of State. At the time of the latter appointment he was one of the most respected men in the country and that had nothing to do with the color of his skin. The current Secretary of State is a black woman. Black men and women are among today’s top Hollywood stars, and they aren’t playing “black” roles.

Racial discrimination still exists and many blacks remain trapped in cycles of poverty. But the opportunity is there to escape it and blaming it all on the white man isn’t much help. A lot of people think it’s time to move on. One of the reasons Barack Obama is the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is a lot of people thought he might be the man to help us do that, and not just to move beyond racial politics. The Wright controversy calls that into question. It’s a shame but there it is. It isn’t something that’s happened to Obama, it’s something he has done. He’s not the victim of some dark racist plot. His past associations are fundamentally at odds with his present message of hope and unity. For Obama to say Rev. Wright isn’t the man he met twenty years ago just raises another question. What else is he not telling the truth about?

I think Obama was caught off guard by the uproar. A lot of black people were. They have grown so accustomed to the talk they don’t realize how offensive it is. When Michelle Obama said this was the first time in her life she was proud of her country I think she meant it. Many black people do see a racist in every white person and they see the United States as racist to its core. They’ve been telling us that for years and we’ve come to expect it, but not from the long time pastor of a serious presidential candidate. That many of us resent being painted with that brush is a surprise. That we might consider the America bashing as unpatriotic is unfair. That we would call Barack Obama to account for his association with the message is a shock. Obama is right about one thing. Words do matter. It’s well past time he and other prominent blacks understood the impact of some of those words.

Toward a Better Society

2008-04-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

In advocating for abolition of the death penalty the argument I have the most difficulty countering is “he probably committed some heinous crime” if not this one. He deserves whatever he gets. It’s hard because there is an element of truth to it. Most people on death row are really bad actors. Most of them committed the crimes they were charged with. Even if they didn’t prosecutors had no difficulty in painting them as fiends and a public menace. But some of the convicted almost certainly did not do the deed. The truly guilty have gone unpunished. Some death row inmates may not have committed any serious crime. That ought to bother us all. I find it disturbing that it does not. If we are to be a civilized society we must do all we can to ensure that we convict criminals only for crimes they are actually guilty of. We can't be hanging people on principal just for being despicable characters. In our current system it is entirely too common that we do just that.

Aside from that I don’t oppose capital punishment on grounds of morality or injustice. On the contrary I believe the public has every moral and civic right to decide what the appropriate punishment should be for various crimes, including the death penalty. The Good Thief who died at Calvary with Christ was right. He was guilty of his crimes and his punishment was just. But I am concerned less about the thief than about the society that put him on that cross. I wonder how far we’ve really come.

It’s fair to argue that we can’t compare modern American jurisprudence with Roman brutality. We don’t send slaves to the salt mines any more. Nor do we use religious minorities as human torches. But our progress is fragile. It wasn’t that long ago Japanese troops were raping their way across China and Germans were exterminating Jews at Auschwitz. Both those nations have looked into the abyss and promised never again. Both have also abolished the death penalty. They are better for it and we will be better for it when we follow suit.

The problem is that its only real purpose is revenge, one of our baser instincts. We no longer need it for its only legitimate purpose, the maintenance of public order. We are perfectly capable of incarcerating criminals and keeping them safely away from the public for as long as we see fit. It has been often demonstrated that forty or more years in a maximum security prison is significantly less expensive than carrying out an execution. There is no convincing evidence that fear of the death penalty is a serious deterrent. There is much evidence that it is not. Punishment is neither swift nor certain. Charges are rare, convictions more so, and appeals interminable. Prosecutorial use of the penalty in plea bargaining is a deplorable exercise in coercion. It is understandable that families of victims often want “closure” through the death of the perpetrator but understandable or not it is still vengeance. Most psychologists say any such closure is elusive.

Most of us consider ourselves principled people if not idealists. We hold the protections of our constitution up to the world as representative of our values. Many other nations have adopted them as their own. We pride ourselves on having emerged from the dungeons of medieval inquisition into trial by jury and right of appeal, both of which represent important but imperfect advancements. Juries make too many mistakes. So do appeals courts and, lengthy as they are, appeals are usually quite limited in scope.

It may well be true that in most cases of state sanctioned execution justice has been served. It is my contention that in no case has society at large benefited. It is bad public policy and the practice should be stopped.

Cutting Off Our Noses

2008-04-16T07:04:00.001-07:00

In a book about Columban missionaries in modern Japan Edward Fischer relates the story of Christian persecution during the two centuries Japan was closed to outside influence. Atrocities were as bad as anything under Nero. Repression continued for decades after the arrival of Commodore Perry and his black ships in 1853. Perry wasn’t there on behalf of Japanese Christians of course. His mission was to open markets to American trade, and ports to refueling stops for the whaling fleet. Perry acted high handedly but he shocked the Japanese into what may be the most amazing social revolution in history. In just fifty years they transformed themselves from a medieval feudal society into a major industrial power with perhaps the most literate population on earth. Christians did benefit though. In the eighteen eighties a Japanese trade mission to Europe and the United States reported back that they were asked about the persecutions everywhere they went. By then Japan’s rulers recognized how important trade was to their plans and if they wanted more of it with the west the persecution was going to have to stop. And so it did. Official restrictions on Christianity ended in 1889, not for human rights or spiritual reasons, for better trade.

The United States didn’t do too badly either. This country was founded on trade and nobody has profited more from it than we have. Despite a tradition of high protectionist tariffs that prevailed from the Civil War up to the Great Depression we have generally led the world in opening up trade and trade routes. Since the 1930s we have steadily reduced tariffs and other barriers until today ours may be the most accessible markets of all. With no colonies to speak of we are regularly accused of being an Imperial power mostly because of our readiness to defend economic interests abroad, another tradition, one that that began with fights against pirates off the Barbary Coast in the Jefferson administration and some would say continues today in Iraq.

Even unlikely Dallas has become an important hub for the distribution of goods to and from the Far East. The new inland port project in southern Dallas has been called the “largest economic engine to be built in the Metroplex since the opening of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 1974,” itself a major boost for international trade. Depending on how you count, Texas is number one or two in exports among the fifty states. That sort of story has been repeated many times across the country. It is no coincidence that we became and remain the most prosperous nation in the world.

One good way to alter that status and do serious long term damage to both our economy and our security is to backtrack on trade and international discourse, yet that seems exactly what we are about to do. We can’t close ourselves off completely as Japan did in the seventeenth century. That would be impossible but we are building a wall along our southern border, we’ve already made it much more difficult for foreign students to get study visas, both Democratic presidential candidates are vying to outdo one another on NAFTA bashing, the Speaker of the House wants to block an important trade agreement with Colombia, and prospects for the current Doha round of negotiations in the WTO have foundered.

None of this is in our best interest. The only viable long term solution to illegal immigration lies with prosperous neighbors to the south. We should be encouraging more trade with Mexico, not stepping back. Many of our best and brightest scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs were once immigrant students. Why would we choke that off? We’ve had recent food riots in Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. For the first time in years the world isn’t producing enough to feed itself. The best thing we could do to help is to encourage agricultural production in third world countries through trade agreements. Why wouldn’t we? Crop yields go up, prices go down all around, and everybody wins. If we follow the lead of French Minister of Agriculture Michel Barnier and call instead for higher subsidies for domestic farmers we will just add to the problem.

We ought to be encouraging the Middle East to open up its economies too. Commercial relationships don’t guarantee lasting peace but they’re a good place to start. Prosperous countries with open economies, respect for contracts, and the rule of law are a lot less likely to become pariah states than closed societies are. Trade is the single most effective weapon we have against terrorism. I’d much rather be buying hand woven carpets from Afghanistan, and selling them silicon chips, than sending them troops. Improved trade ties carry all sorts of net benefits for both parties. Why aren’t we doing all we can to promote them?

After WWII Japan rose from the ashes and made another spectacular run. It was the second in as many centuries and they soon became the world’s second largest economy, third if you count the EU as one. They have no oil, precious little arable land, and few natural resources. The have to import almost everything. They have accomplished miracles through trade. So have we. The difference is trade is a more obvious engine for Japan’s wealth. If we don’t start reminding ourselves where ours comes from we could be in serious trouble.

Getting it Right

2008-04-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

It’s been more than fourteen years since Ashley Estelle was abducted from a Plano soccer field and murdered. Michael Blair was convicted of the crime in 1994 and has been in virtual solitary confinement on Texas Death Row ever since. For eight years we’ve known the most important physical evidence used at trial to tie him to the crime was bogus. DNA testing showed that hair samples found on the child’s body and thought to be Blair’s weren’t his. Hair found in Blair’s car and linked to Ashley wasn’t hers.

The case went back to the trial court to weigh the new evidence and to consider several other issues raised on appeal, Judge Nathan White sat on the case until he retired in 2006 without ever ruling on those issues. In the meantime more DNA testing demonstrated that tissue found under the girl’s fingernails isn’t from Blair either. Last April Visiting Judge Webb Biard finally ruled. He held essentially that Blair probably didn’t commit the crime but none of the new evidence proved his innocence conclusively. He sent the case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals with a recommendation that the conviction and sentence should stand.

Now TCCA has sent it back one more time. They want the trial court to evaluate some further DNA testing that also fails to connect Blair. More important they want another look at the same issues the lower court already ruled on once. The Dallas Morning News quotes current Collin County DA John Roach calling the new order a procedural one. Procedural my foot, I’m not a lawyer but TCCA is saying in no uncertain terms Judge Biard got it wrong. He used the wrong standard. Blair doesn’t have to prove his innocence. He just has to show that "the newly discovered evidence, if true, creates a doubt as to the efficacy of the verdict sufficient to undermine confidence in the verdict and that it is probable that the verdict would be different on retrial…it is not reasonable to hold, and we reject the implication . . . that confidence in a verdict is undermined only when newly discovered evidence renders the State's case legally or constitutionally insufficient for conviction." I think TCCA is getting tired of being reversed by federal courts. This time they’ve set a forty five day time limit for the district court to reconsider. There will be no more interminable delays.

Michael Blair was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury that thought hair samples tied him to Ashely Estell. They don’t. He probably isn’t guilty and he should get a new trial. Personally I don’t think a reasonable prosecutor would try the case on what’s left. Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Those placing Blair at the soccer field come from people who had never seen him before, did not see him with Ashley, saw him only at a distance, and had trouble describing him. Witness who do know Blair but the jury didn’t believe placed him at his apartment far from the soccer fields. That he volunteered to help search for Ashley proves nothing. Neither does his driving by the site after her body was discovered. The only remaining physical evidence is fiber similar to that from a toy found in Blair’s car. Such fibers could have come from thousands of toys. Blair is a confessed serial child molester but you can’t just convict the first monster that comes along, and there is no evidence Ashley was sexually molested. In any new trial Blair will be represented by attorneys a lot more experienced than his original defense team. Most prosecutors are reluctant to try cases they are likely to lose. That is written all over this one. Any new jurors are going to be left wondering who really killed that little girl, and why the state isn’t trying to find out.

None So Blind

2008-04-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

April is Autism Awareness Month and most media outlets are carrying something on the subject, more than in any year I can recall. CNN had a series. HBO did a wonderful documentary on a group of children who staged their own musical. I liked it because it placed them in the context of everyday life, and gave a glimpse into the struggles their parents face. Several times recently I have seen or read of prominent scientists explaining that autism appears to be caused by a genetic vulnerability triggered by an as yet unknown environmental factor, or factors. That by itself is a major step forward. For years now parents of children with autism have been shouting from the rooftops to a scientific community that has insisted on ignoring them. Autism is affecting a lot more children these days and something is causing it.

Not all scientists or physicians agree. Yesterday I watched a program on PBS featuring a panel of experts. One member was a retired professor of pediatrics who averred that in forty years of practice he had seen maybe two cases of autism. He thinks parents of normal children are having them diagnosed with autism just so they can get benefits. The children will be needlessly stigmatized for the rest of their lives. I was so angry I could have spit. He is typical of the doctors my son and daughter-in-law have been dealing with in the five years since they realized their child had autism. Weston’s symptoms are plain to see but most pediatricians still don’t see them, I suppose because they aren’t taught them in medical school. Nor do they see the equally obvious digestive and immune system issues Weston has. Most children with autism have such issues as any of their parents will tell you but to this day when doctors will diagnose autism at all they almost always treat it as strictly a behavioral problem. None of the experts on yesterday’s panel mentioned the related medical factors.

The CDC now says 1 in 150 eight year olds in multiple areas of the United States have autism. How much it has increased over the last three decades is hard to measure. It’s diagnosed more often partly because of increased awareness and partly because the autism spectrum has been broadened to include Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder that was not included until relatively recently. People with Asperger’s typically function at a relatively high level and aren’t diagnosed until later, around age six. Weston’s autism became apparent at about eighteen months, a common age for “autistic disorder” symptoms to be noticed. Nevertheless, the idea that we’ve always had large numbers of children with autism in our schools is simply not credible. It can’t possibly be true, else we would have large numbers of adults with autism today and they just aren’t here.

Get ready for it. For most people autism is a lifetime disorder. Effective treatment requires a lot of intervention and it needs to start early. It’s expensive too. Insurance doesn’t usually cover it and most of the affected families are broke. Intransigence doesn’t stop with my friend from the panel of experts. Twenty years ago there was very little treatment to be had at any price. A lot of these people are going to have to be institutionalized, just to get the “benefits.”

It’s encouraging to see so much attention being paid. I suspect there is more and more interest because by now almost everybody knows at least one affected family. They are becoming more politically active and they are becoming strong enough to force scientists to look seriously for causes and cures. We are even going to have to take a real look at the role childhood vaccines play. That will get the most resistance of all.

Asking the Right Questions in Iraq

2008-04-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

In a Dallas Morning News op ed piece today John Nagl states the obvious when he says ultimate success in Iraq is up to Iraqis, and that the key to military success is in training internal Iraqi security forces. But when he suggests the army has no doctrine for that purpose he is being disingenuous. The mission LTC Nagl describes is called "foreign internal defense." It is one of five primary missions of the US Army's Special Forces, the Green Beret. One can argue that the army has too few trained professionals in this area, or that current doctrine is inadequate or even misguided. But to argue, as LTC Nagl does, that the army has no such doctrine is to suggest that he is poorly informed at best.

The Bush administration is regularly accused of having no strategy for the insurgency phase of the war in Iraq. That isn’t true either. The White House released a “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” way back in November 2005 highlighting the need for, you guessed it, strong Iraqi military and police forces and the need for training to produce them. It wasn’t a new strategy then and it hasn’t changed since. The surge that is getting so much credit for resulting in reduced levels of violence isn’t really a new strategy at all. It is the application of classical counterinsurgency tactics that would not have been practical as recently as two years ago. You have to have an enemy who is too weak to overwhelm small units before you can deploy those units to vulnerable positions among the populace, and you have to have reliable Iraqi troops before you can embed American troops with them. The strategy has always been to use US forces to maintain order in Iraq only until Iraqi forces can be made ready to assume responsibility. The frustration, and a legitimate criticism, is that it has taken far too long to get them ready.

It’s worth remembering that the general currently in charge of operations in Iraq, David Petraeus, was responsible for training Iraqi troops three and one half years ago. He wrote an opinion piece on the subject for the Washington Post back in September 2004. He said then he saw progress but there would be setbacks. I doubt the general appreciated just how serious some of those setbacks would be but you have to agree that there has been progress. Like the tactics now being used in the surge, the recent offensive launched in Basra by Iraqi army and police units would not have been possible when Petraeus wrote. It’s not surprising it had mixed results. Iraqi commanders had never before planned or led operations on anything like this scale. Nevertheless it’s encouraging that they can do it at all. Even if it turns out they aren’t very good at it yet they should learn from mistakes and improve over time.

All this is important because if we are to have informed public opinion on Iraq we need a serious public discussion about it. When we begin with false premises any ensuing discussion quickly falls into incoherence. If you don’t like our strategy in Iraq say so, say why, and say what you think it should be. First you have to understand what the current strategy is. To begin by saying there isn’t one is to lose any opportunity to critique it. Saying that the army has no doctrine for training foreign security forces robs LTC Nagl of credibility as he advances his alternative. That’s a shame. We should be asking our military leadership “what in the world is taking so long?” It takes about seventeen years to make a competent platoon sergeant in the American Army, about the same time it takes to produce a battalion commander. In past crises we’ve been able to expedite that process dramatically. What’s different about Iraqi’s? Is something wrong with our doctrine? The answer has to begin with understanding what the doctrine is.

American Madrassas

2008-03-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

In reading through the transcript of Barack Obama’s speech on race this week I was struck by what he didn’t say. He didn’t say that we have an opportunity to improve race relations in this country and we could start by toning down the rhetoric. He didn’t say that it’s time to rethink the Black Liberation Theology developed forty years ago to provide a moral basis for the black power movement. Maybe I’m the only one but I see parallels with the hate speech being spewed from so many Muslim pulpits around the world, and in the attitudes of American Muslims toward that speech. Ok, blacks haven’t made a habit of going around blowing things up, at least not lately, but that is how the movement got started. If we’re not careful that’s where it could go again. Liberation Theology in all its forms has tended to do just that.

Obama has said before that he didn’t see anything particularly controversial about his church. I think that’s probably true. Liberation Theology is main stream in black circles. Its two most distinguished academics teach at very well known divinity schools, Dwight Hopkins at the University of Chicago, and James Cone at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Most Christians might have a hard time reconciling the Beatitudes with the fiery sermons of Jeremiah Wright but many blacks hear it every Sunday. It has become part of the culture. We get intemperate remarks from the Christian right too, but I don’t hear it in my church. We’ll all be better off when Barack Obama’s daughters stop hearing it in theirs. It will be a better world when blacks, whites, Muslims, Christians, Jews and everybody else learn to keep the discourse civil, in public and in private.

Senator Obama attempts to explain the attitudes of many black people in the context of a familiar litany of racial injustice. But those attitudes are shaped too by growing up with an unceasing drumbeat of oratory blaming all social ills on a bigoted society, just as many Muslim attitudes are shaped by a never ending tirade against the Great Satan. It doesn’t help black people get along better with whites any more than it helps Muslims get along with their neighbors. Obama has learned better than most how to speak in polite society. But as long as he and others tolerate and explain away hate speech from the broader black community the underlying attitudes won’t change and will be an obstacle to real progress. They don’t even understand how offensive it is. American Muslims have a similar problem. Many of them don’t see much wrong with the rhetoric of their co-religionists, or see it as understandable in context, or don’t think it has any bearing on them. They are wrong. It taints them all

I am irreconcilably opposed to abortion but when someone vandalizes an abortion clinic I must speak out against it if I am to support a rule of law. When a Christian denounces Islam I cannot expect Muslims to distinguish the speaker from me. When a white supremist burns a cross in a black churchyard I can’t simply look the other way, not if I expect the black community to have a high opinion of me. And when Barack Obama’s pastor makes unpatriotic remarks Obama can’t just say he wasn’t at church that Sunday. Don’t tell me the comment was taken out of context. What context am I to put it in? Don’t tell me I can’t judge Jeremiah Wright by a single sound bite. I don’t. I looked at his church’s web site. It is not the web site of a patriot, of a peace maker, or of any Christianity that I recognize. It is the web site of a Black Liberationist. It is separatist, designed for the consumption of blacks who see themselves as a community apart. It is not what I would expect to see from the church of a serious presidential candidate.

Obama and Liberation Theology

2008-03-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

I don’t think the controversy is going away over unorthodox doctrine at TUCC, Barack Obama’s church. There is too much there and it evokes too many images of the days when black activism erupted into violence. Yesterday ABC News reported that it had purchased and reviewed copies of past sermons from the pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. They found some pretty intemperate remarks, the most scandalous being that blacks should not sing God Bless America but “God Damn America.” A close second was his contention that the US was responsible for 9/11. Fox News thinks Rev. Wright’s political endorsement from the pulpit may violate tax laws. Obama has been defending himself with Jewish voters but Rev. Wright also has close ties to Louis Farrakhan who is openly racist and famously anti-Semitic. You are known by your friends and some of Obama’s friends are not people a serious presidential candidate should be close to. Rev. Wright’s comments and associations are entirely consistent with his status as a prominent black liberationist. Black Liberation Theology is central to the TUCC vision.

I think it might be helpful to recount a little history. Liberation Theology became popular among Catholic Priests in Latin America shortly after Vatican II. They wanted to be social justice activists. Tactics often turned to violence and they became associated with revolutionary movements, some of which ended up oppressing those it was supposed to champion. In 1984 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a classic polemic on the subject, concluding among other things “it constitutes a fundamental threat to the faith of the Church.” It is at root Marxist: everything is expressed in terms of class struggle. Sin and redemption are replaced with oppression and liberation. All reality is political. Any personal relationship with God is secondary.

Vatican opposition tended to dampen but not extinguish Catholic enthusiasm. By the time Ratzinger wrote the basic ideas had spread around the world. In the US two Jesuit priests, brothers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, had become famous for civil disobedience, spending time in and out of jail for petty acts of trespass and vandalism, something the church had never seen before. Ratzinger pointed out that “no error could persist unless it contained an element of truth” and the strident rhetoric of the liberationists was and is certainly persistent. His issue was not with the causes the protestors espoused. It was in the absence of introspection, the imputation onto God of the political goals and prejudices being advanced, and the abandonment of traditional church teaching and authority, something dear to the heart of Catholic Bishops.

Black Liberation Theology as it is known in the US was founded by James Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Cone’s theology is designed to appeal specifically to blacks. He developed his work in the context of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s as promoted by Stokely Carmichael and others. The rhetoric remains consistently strident, revolutionary, anti-American and racist. Dr. Wright has been preaching it as pastor at TUCC since 1972 with phenomenal success. His congregation has grown from fewer than 100 to more than 10000. He hasn’t mellowed.

Which brings me back to Sen. Obama. I don’t see how he distances himself from this. He’s been going to this church for decades. He describes Rev. Wright as his spiritual mentor. He doesn’t see his church as particularly controversial, but his message is one of hope and national reconciliation. This message is one of divisiveness and confrontation. I’m no political analyst but I see a problem here for Democrats.

Recrudescence

2008-03-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

I know. I had to look it up too. The word means to break out afresh or into renewed activity. I came across it yesterday in an op-ed piece claiming the surge has failed in Iraq and the war is still lost. The piece is loaded with sarcasm. That’s usually enough to make me stop reading but it’s been a while since I saw a piece quite that cynical so I read on. The writer cites several incidents over the past week as evidence that Iraq has again collapsed into chaos and the situation is hopeless. The point was so at odds with my own perception that I decided to look a little further. It’s easy to do. The pentagon is required by law to send quarterly reports to congress on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq. The latest one is just out covering December through February. It is dry reading with no sarcasm but it is a methodical assessment of what’s happened lately on political reconciliation, infrastructure (water, power, etc.) the economy, level of violence, and so on. It’s a good source for anyone who wants a feel for the situation beyond what can be gotten from the nightly news.

Iraq is still a violent place, a lot less so than at this time last year but a long way from an attractive vacation spot. They can’t keep the lights on 24 hours a day across most of the country and it will be years before they can. The economy is growing but from a dismal base. They desperately need foreign investment in the oil fields but no business man in his right mind would risk that kind on money until things get a lot more stable. Health care is in crisis in part because half the country’s doctors have left. Iran has promised to stop training and arming militants but they keep on doing just that. The government has made some progress on critical legislation but not nearly enough. The process is stalled on several fronts. What gains have been made are fragile and could be lost in a flash. There is a great deal more work to be done before anybody declares victory. That’s all there in the report. They aren’t painting a rosy picture.

The picture isn’t all that bleak though. Conditions are difficult, not impossible, and far from the mayhem so many pundits describe. The surge was designed to allow coalition and Iraqi troops and police to establish a joint presence among the people and provide security and that is working. The Awakening that began last year in Anbar province has spread, now numbering 91000. Renamed Sons of Iraq it has been a big help despite realistic concerns about what happens next with all those volunteers. Children are in school. Politicians are slowly sorting through their differences. Government ministries are becoming more competent, less corrupt. Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active but under serious pressure with severely restricted capability. The Iraqi army is growing stronger and so are the police. The improvements we’ve seen since last summer may be fragile but they are real and they are progressing.

General Petraeus is expected to recommend a moratorium on troop withdrawals once they reach the level they were at before the surge began. That’s probably best. The last thing we should want is to pull out so quickly Iraq collapses into the sort of chaos that brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. That’s looking less and less likely to happen. Even if Barack Obama becomes president and orders a mad rush for the exits, by that time internal Iraqi security forces may be strong enough to maintain order on their own. Frankly I doubt he’d really do it. A scene reminiscent of the Saigon embassy evacuation would be an enormous boost for Muslim extremists around the world and probably make him a one term president. He wouldn’t want that.

Humpty Dumpty Elections

2008-03-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

We don’t do this in general elections for a reason. Some mistakes can’t be undone. In the 2000 presidential election most media outlets declared a winner in Florida with polls still open in panhandle counties. They were wrong, heaven knows how many panhandle voters stayed home thinking their votes wouldn’t count, and the country was thrown into a constitutional crisis. Nobody suggested reopening the affected polls. A vote is a vote, even a decision not to cast one. Now people are suggesting new primaries in Florida and Michigan because of the Democratic National Committee’s blunder in disenfranchising those voters in a dispute over election dates. It’s too late. The votes have been cast. Candidates made their beds when they decided whether to campaign or not.

It may turn out to be the best thing that has happened to our nominating process in the past half century. If the party begins its convention with neither candidate having enough committed delegates to win on the first ballot they could begin the rough and tumble of negotiation and compromise that representative democracy is supposed to be all about. It would be the first time since most of us can remember that every state in the union got its fair say. It wouldn’t be pretty. It never was, but it served us well for most of our history. It’s how presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Dwight Eisenhower won their party’s nominations. The system we’ve been using in recent decades can hardly be described as democratic. This is the first time Texas and most other states have had any say in either party’s choice of nominees since the 1960s when we adopted this system of staggered state primaries. It’s no way to run a democracy.

The only way to do this fairly is with a single national primary date. There is no other way to ensure every vote counts. With any luck multiple candidates will win enough delegates to either force a runoff or send it to the convention depending on party choice. My preference would be the latter. We can send a delegation to represent our interests, just like we send one to congress. If our first choice is also the front runner after the first ballot they can try to convince other delegations to switch. If not they will be in a strong negotiating position. More than one favorite son has used influence for a state’s benefit. We haven’t had a dark horse since Wendell Willkie lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 but at least four became president, including Lincoln. I’m dating myself by even using those terms in this context but there is nothing undemocratic about either one. It’s how representative democracy works, and among the reasons reason why it works. Direct popular election isn’t always the best solution. Sometimes it malfunctions. I would submit that our current system is not one of popular election. Nor does it necessarily have to be. We don’t elect our congressional leadership directly. We don’t elect federal judges at all. I don’t think we ought to be electing state judges.

It’s too late to salvage this year’s process but maybe the mess democrats have made for themselves has a silver lining. Maybe we will finally reconsider a really bad idea after all these years. You can’t blame Florida or Michigan for wanting a voice. We can question how the nation’s interest is best served by having the same handful of states make the critical decision every four years, leaving the rest of us to pick from the only two options they leave us. We can certainly argue that it’s not in Texas’ best interest. When our delegations get to their respective conventions we should expect them to say so, loudly and clearly. If they don’t we ought to remember that in the next party caucus.

Vaccines, Autism and Common Sense

2008-03-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

For years now parents of children with autism have been pleading with the medical community to reconsider its approach to the childhood immunization program. That community has steadfastly refused even to be careful. Pregnant women who wouldn’t dream of having a glass of wine or eating certain kinds of fish are routinely given flu vaccines, often containing mercury preservatives. Tiny babies are vaccinated before they even go home from the nursery ward. Multiple simultaneous vaccinations are the norm. The Center for Disease Control recommends a total of sixteen between ages 6 and 18 months Doctors insist there is no evidence they do any harm but there is ample evidence there for anyone who cares to look. Starting about twenty years ago the number of recommended vaccines increased dramatically right along with a corresponding increase in reported incidence of autism. Many, maybe most, children with autism also have immune system issues. It’s not proof positive. Nobody really knows whether there is a causal relationship but if this were a murder case a smart prosecutor could probably get the death penalty on less evidence. Silicon breast implants were banned on less. Why can’t we at least take a serious look at the vaccines, and be a little more measured in our use of them until we know more about any possible link with autism?

Last week the news was of federal officials conceding for the first time that vaccines may indeed have contributed to one little girl’s autism. Courts have ordered compensation in a few past cases but this is apparently the first time responsible officials have acknowledged even a possible link. A spokesperson for the CDC says it’s an isolated case with no implications for the vast majority of children. My youngest grandchild has autism and I can tell you his parents are not reassured. We think we probably have some sort of family genetic vulnerability that one or more of Weston’s vaccinations may have triggered or aggravated, not unlike circumstances in the case now in the news. It would sure be nice to know. Every year or so the CDC raises its estimate of the number of children affected. It’s now at about 1 in 150. That’s a lot of autism.

Most of us don’t advocate a halt to immunizations. We just want the medical and scientific communities to take our concerns seriously, and to take a few common sense precautions. Something is causing this and we’d like to know what it is. We know the vaccines are important for public health but doctors are taking a cavalier attitude toward an obvious risk. There are several things they could do that would make me feel better starting with a serious investigation. Don’t tell me all the studies point to no link. I’ve looked. There haven’t been any serious studies. Most of the research goes into genetics and ignores any possible environmental factor, especially vaccines.

We could also be a little more sparing in our use of vaccines. Space them out. Sixteen in one year is too many. More than one at a time is too many. Give their little immune systems a chance to recover. Don’t immunize children who aren’t at risk for the targeted disease. There is no reason to vaccinate every child for diseases they are very unlikely to be exposed to. And for heavens sake stop injecting these little bodies with mercury. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

We’ve known for years now that we have a problem, and that much of the available evidence points to the vaccines. It’s gotten a lot of publicity but the response from the people responsible has been mostly foot dragging and denial. Maybe we ought to put somebody else in charge.

Road Maps and Trade Routes

2008-02-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

One of the sillier things Nancy Pelosi did shortly after becoming Speaker of the House last year was to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and declare “that the road to Damascus is a road to peace." Shades of Hanoi Jane! Not that her foreign policy meddling did any real harm, on the contrary it served to highlight an emerging a new order in the Middle East that could finally bring peace to a region that has frustrated the best diplomatic efforts of every US president since Harry Truman. If, as seems increasingly likely, Iraq can be stabilized as a peaceful and responsible player then Syria and Iran will be the sole remaining recalcitrants. Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt have all long since made their peace with Israel. Now Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab League have decided that a settlement establishing Israel as a permanent regional power is in everyone’s best interest and are taking an active role in trying to make it happen. If they follow it up with efforts to tone down the anti-Israeli rhetoric in their media this could be the most positive development since the founding of the Jewish state.

The Iraqi if is a big one but if 2008 produces anything like the progress of 2007 prospects look pretty good. Barack Obama is a potential loose cannon. Of all the presidential candidates he is the most determined to pull American troops out precipitously regardless of consequences. A Vietnam style mad rush for the exits is the single greatest risk for a catastrophic collapse into chaos that could rapidly spread. By now it has become obvious to everybody except Iran, Syria, and Obama that it is in everyone’s security interest to see a strong, stable and peaceful Iraq emerge from the ashes of the Saddam Hussein regime.

My guess is it will be years yet before all this is sorted out and there is still a critical need for policies that will have positive effects over the long term. The two players that have the most to offer here are the US and the European Union. The single most effective tool they have is trade. Every major country in the Middle East save possibly Turkey has a stagnant economy and massive demographic problems with increasingly well educated, youthful underemployed populations, oil revenues not withstanding. They need the prosperity that comes with trade. Both the US and the EU have spent years negotiating more liberal trade with corresponding benefits all around. Unfortunately John McCain is the only current presidential candidate inclined to continue it and even if he is elected anti-trade talk in congress is likely to present major obstacles. The good news is the EU is the nearer and more important trading partner and is actively negotiating improved political, economic, and social relations with no fewer than ten countries around the Mediterranean, including Syria. It’s a shame that the US appears to be ready to take a back seat on this. America’s economic interest will be harmed most.

We will be debating the wisdom of invading Iraq for many years but it is looking as though George Bush may be about to accomplish what six decades of diplomacy have failed to do. He had a lot of help but it was he who took the fullest responsibility for changing a status quo that was going not exactly nowhere but certainly not anywhere very fast. He could still fail but it’s looking more and more likely that he will leave office with prospects for peace in the world the best they’ve ever been. North Korean nuclear ambitions look a lot more manageable. Iran is almost completely isolated. Syria is her only ally and Syria’s own neighbors are warning her that Iranian hegemony would be a dangerous beast. Sounds like quite a Bush legacy to me.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

2008-02-16T13:25:00.000-08:00

With all the current talk about looming economic recession I am reminded of the Clinton campaign’s 1992 catch phrase. That election turned on the economy and it looks as though this one could too. As it did that year the talk comes with an ugly undercurrent of protectionist sentiment. Ross Perot’s famous warning to expect a giant sucking sound as jobs went south with NAFTA resonated with a lot of Americans. This time around the support is broader and I think more dangerous. Candidates from both major parties are questioning the benefits of free trade. Even Hillary Clinton has suggested a moratorium on the agreements. It’s time to recall a little history.

Like a lot of Americans my parents suffered heavily during the Great Depression and I well remember hearing stories about it as a child. President Herbert Hoover is hardly remembered for anything else but history books barely mention what actually caused it. Some scholars point to the protectionist Smoot-Hawley act of 1930 and retaliation by other countries as the trigger. Some point to other factors but there is no question that international trade ground to a halt, people were thrown out of work all over the world, and that decade will be forever known for its breadlines. Germans suffered even more than most because ruinous inflation had already all but wiped out their middle class. Adolph Hitler found a ready audience for his fascist promises.

Franklin Roosevelt responded with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act and America led the world down a path of steadily advancing trade liberalization that has continued right up until today. My parents would never have dreamed of the explosion in global prosperity that came with it. Nor would they have dreamt of a world where the prospect of another major war is as remote as it is today.

The three issues are connected. Let’s take Europe for example. We are accustomed to thinking of our own economy as the world’s largest. It will come as a shock to some that it isn’t. The aggregate GDP of the European Union last year is estimated at a staggering $14.44 trillion. Ours was about $13.86 trillion, higher on a per capita basis but a bit smaller overall. Think about Europe’s past. The people of that continent were at war with each other with only brief periods of respite from the days of Julius Caesar right up to 1945. The grinding poverty they experienced was responsible for all but a fraction of the immigration that built America into the most powerful nation in the world. Then after WWII they began to integrate their economies for the first time. By the end of the cold war the wealth disparity may have been the signal factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any outbreak of armed hostilities among member nations today would be as unthinkable as a border war between Texas and Oklahoma.

Think about what makes our own economy so strong. It’s no coincidence that the several states are prohibited by the constitution from interfering with interstate commerce. We are a free trade zone by definition. Oregon cannot impose punitive tariffs on wine imported from California. Michigan cannot impose safety requirements on a BMW manufactured in Alabama if it exempts Buicks assembled in Detroit. The resulting flow of goods and services across state boundaries has been an economic boost interrupted only by the Civil War. It isn’t just interstate trade either. The single sector of our economy that has shielded us thus far from the current threat of recession has been exports. It’s not been much in the news but they’ve been growing at a healthy clip, especially to NAFTA countries, giant sucking sound not withstanding.

Addressing Muslims’ Image Problem

2008-02-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

I have to admit my view of Muslims is influenced by a stereotype and it is not a pretty image. It comes mostly from the news but also from movies, books, political cartoons, and unfortunately from some of the few Muslims I have met. You know the picture: intolerant, sexist, violent, and ignorant are among the adjectives that come to mind. I realize it is unfair to paint all Muslims with that brush. If all one knew about Christians came from the nightly news one might think we were all murderers and rapists. So in recent years I have tried to make myself better informed by reading up on Islam and its history. On occasion I accept invitations to attempts at interfaith dialog.

Last week I picked up a FAQ by Dr. Zakir Naik from the Islamic Research Foundation. A Plano Mosque handed it out as background reading for a class directed at non-Muslims. The FAQ is intended to dispel common misperceptions. It doesn’t. Some of it is downright offensive. I won’t conduct a point by point disputation but Dr. Naik defends polygamy partly by asserting that since there are more women than men in the world, some women have no choice but to marry a man who already has one wife. Otherwise she becomes “public property.” I’m not making this up. Worse, he insists that not wearing a veil invites molestation. I would call that blaming the victim. My wife and daughters go out in public unveiled and attractively dressed. They are most certainly not inviting molesters. He contends that western society, far from uplifting women, has degraded “them to the status of concubines, mistresses, and social butterflies…” Talk about a stereotype!

I have a couple of (well intended) suggestions for Muslims like Dr. Naik who would have people like me think more positively about Islam and Muslims. Don’t be so defensive. Promote the virtues of Islam without excusing bad behavior among Muslims. Yes, Islam is a peaceful religion but most of today’s suicide assassins are Muslims. I’d like to hear what their fellow Muslims propose to do about that, not hear it dismissed as it often is with the bromide “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” If you don’t see anything wrong with terrorism you are reinforcing my stereotype.

Modesty is certainly a virtue and Muslims are right to promote it but when they tell non-Muslims their women are no better than prostitutes they should not expect a sympathetic ear. Don’t pretend the hijab has never been used as an instrument of repression. Those stories about Taliban mistreatment of women aren’t all lies. Who is going to speak up?

Be careful of double standards. You may not see them but your listeners do. When you decry the 1492 expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain as a great humanitarian catastrophe many would agree. When you see nothing wrong in the seventh century massacre and mass deportation of Jews and Christians from what is now Saudi Arabia you betray a moral inconsistency. Caliph Omar viewed the presence of unbelievers on hallowed ground as sacrilege. So did Ferdinand and Isabella.

Most of all, be sensitive to the legitimate concerns of your audience. I often get the impression Muslims are only interested in monologue, not dialog. Spokesmen like Dr. Naik appear oblivious to the non-Muslim point of view. He makes me wonder if he has ever really talked to any. I would like very much to understand what so many Muslims, and especially Arabs, are so angry about. I would feel a lot better if more Muslims gave me the idea they were as anxious to understand what makes me worry about them.

Holy Anthropomorphism

2008-02-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

It’s a concept we can all agree on. We recognize it readily in others but are blind to it in ourselves. It’s one of the most dangerous failings in human nature. We assign human characteristics and failings to a God who transcends human understanding, a God who has no frailty or base motives. When we do that we invite disaster. Throughout history the habit has been responsible for much of our greatest inhumanity. We don’t recognize it when we are guilty. We don’t believe it when it is pointed out.

We confuse avarice with entitlement and blame our brother for our theft of his inheritance, secure in the belief that we are in the right. God meant for us to have it. That alone has been the ruin of more families than there are birds in the sky. We are at our worst when we go to war believing God is on our side. Our enemies are God’s enemies, undeserving of the most basic obligations of human kindness or consideration. That’s how Joshua justified exterminating the original inhabitants as Hebrews occupied the Promised Land. It’s how Christians justified slaughter of every Jew and Muslim man woman or child as Crusaders entered Jerusalem in triumph. It’s how American zealots justified wanton massacres in the Indian Wars. It’s how modern Muslim extremists justify the murder of innocents with their mad suicide assassins. It is the reason I am uncomfortable with our own characterization of the War on Terror as a contest between good and evil, as though an omnipotent God could have enemies among mortal man.

This week I attended the first in a series of five introductory classes on Islam at our local Mosque. I’ve been before in an ongoing effort to understand why so many Muslims are so angry, and what on earth their anger has to do with us. The Mosque offers the classes as part of a sort of community outreach program. They think if we understood Islam better we would be less apprehensive of Muslims. I’m not sure they are right about that but it is certainly worth the effort. They are most hospitable in these meetings and are anxious to make non-Muslims feel welcome, not at all the image we have of them. This latest meeting was moderately well attended with people who learned about it from ads in the paper, from a banner posted outside the Mosque, but mostly from their own church bulletins. There was a beautiful introductory recital from the Koran in Arabic by an adolescent boy, a short lecture from an Imam, and a Q&A.

One question was “If we all worship the same God why are there so many religious wars?” I liked the Imam’s answer. He thinks many of these wars have been based less on religion than is advertised. Extraneous motives are often cloaked in religious guise. The question and the answer could have referred to any number of the wars we’ve had over the last two thousand years. I think many of the worst offenders are sincere in their religious conviction. They are just wrong and I wish we talked more about that. Sir Walter Scott in his classic Ivanhoe has a Knight Templar telling a hapless Jew he only touches Jews with the point of a sword. It was a common sentiment of the day and St. Louis would have approved. My church has moved past that sort of religious bigotry but I’m not sure we have really addressed the underlying issue. If we consider something evil does that give us license to disregard all common decency in dealing with it?

So stated I think most of us would say not. But we don’t usually state the issue in such stark terms. We should. When we invoke religious imagery in our battles we run the risk of confusing God’s will with our own prejudices. Muslims ought to be careful about that. So should we. Maybe we all ought to tone down the rhetoric a bit.

Green Snobs

2008-01-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

Remember the limousine liberals? Well they are back and up in arms over a new automobile that’s priced so the great unwashed can afford it. I never heard of Mira Kamdar but she has this to say in an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News. “If millions of Indians and Chinese get to have their own cars, the planet is doomed.” I guess those people are supposed to be content with pulling their rickshaws. Anne Applebaum, who does her bit for the planet by eating organic granola bars, worries on the same page that as the world’s poor get richer they will buy their haricourts vert from farms that use (gasp) chemical fertilizers. Maybe Al Gore could win another Nobel Prize extolling the benefits of gruel.

What’s prompting all this is the Nano, a small car being built in India to sell for just $2500. It has made some people suddenly realize that a couple of billion people who were once thought doomed to perpetual poverty are instead moving into the middle class, and expecting the life style that goes with it. What they don’t seem to realize is that a more prosperous world is an unqualified good thing. It is no accident that the most polluted parts of the world are also the most impoverished. Clean air is not usually the top priority for someone who is having trouble feeding a family. Only people who can afford it demand things like plentiful supplies of potable water, sewage systems, out of sight land fills, tree lined boulevards, and public parks.

The green revolution was the great humanitarian marvel of the twentieth century. For the first time in modern history the world produces more than enough to feed its population. Where hunger exists today the reasons are political. It is true that phosphate runoff from the corn fields of Iowa contribute to a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi but it is also true that we could clean that up if we had the will. We certainly have the wherewithal and surely nobody would have us turn back the clock to the days without hybrid crops, compost only for fertilizer, and mass starvation.

Right behind the green revolution came globalization and the attendant explosion in trade. That made possible the phenomenal improvements in living standards that so upset my environmentally conscious pundits. It is just getting started and the benefits are more than merely economic. The European continent was the hellish scene of almost uninterrupted warfare from the Dark Ages right up until 1945 but today’s integrated economies make the prospect of war all but unthinkable in that happy place. At the rate we are going that may be true for the rest of mankind within another generation or two. If that means we are to have more cars on the roads, sky high oil prices, and global warming to deal with I say happy motoring. We’ll find ways to deal with all of that and we will have the money to pay for it.

When the industrial revolution was young most forests in England were cut down to fuel it. Coal came next and the air was literally black with soot for more than a century. Parts of the country became nearly uninhabitable. We’ve come a long way since then and learned a lot about cleaning up after ourselves. Now much of what was once the third world has begun to participate. That they will demand more and more energy goes without saying and for the foreseeable future most of it will come from carbon based fuels. But I don’t think we’ll all be covered in coal dust. I do think we will be better off with more prosperous neighbors. I hope I’m right because here they come, ready or not.

Government we Deserve

2008-01-14T19:01:00.000-08:00

It’s a quote attributed variously to Shakespeare, Jefferson, and Tocqueville. “People get the government they deserve.” Living in a representative democracy, what kind of government do we deserve if we don’t bother to vote? That’s what’s happening. Collin County is represented by six delegates to the Texas State Legislature. All are Republicans. Five are up for reelection this year. None will have an opponent in the fall. Only one faces opposition in the March primary and there has been no change in the delegation since 2002. The 2-7 thousand people from House District 67 who will vote in March represent the only prospect for turnover in this term. That’s a tiny fraction of the 200,000+ people who live in the district. A few votes either way will determine if we are to see any difference at all. We must be pretty happy with things down in Austin.

I don’t believe that for a minute. There are three top issues on my list that the legislature is in a position to do something about: air, water, and transportation. They are big concerns for North Texas. I had the same list in the last election, and the one before that, and the one before that… I don’t think I’m alone. Our legislators have been in office a long time and have accomplished precious little in dealing with any of them. My state representative, the only one with an opponent this term, has held his seat for 15 years. He is most active on issues related to the penal system, especially youth corrections. Now that is an important civic responsibility but it isn’t on my list of top three. Absent the current scandal in the TYC I doubt it would be on the radar screen for most people in a district that runs through central Plano and along the southern edge of the county. His has not been a prominent voice in the annual dust up over pollution generated by cement kilns in Midlothian. I didn’t see his name come up in last year’s legislative brouhaha that almost saw our long term water plan derailed at a time of near crisis. I haven’t heard from him about the proliferation of toll roads in the region, and the state contribution to commuter rail seems to be limited to a discussion about whether we will be allowed to raise local taxes to pay for it. I don’t get the impression I am being well represented.

Now I don’t mean to lay this all at the feet of one legislator and I could offer the same criticism of a lot of elected officials from City Hall to the national Congress. None of them seem to be doing much about the issues that matter most to me. That’s not the point. The point is the only offices I can directly influence are those representing the district I vote in. If I keep putting the same people back in office year after year I can’t expect anything to change. When a seat is so safe it goes uncontested in one election after another that leaves an incumbent free to be as active or inactive as he or she likes on issues that may be vital to constituents. That’s too safe.

In this part of Texas winning a Republican nomination is tantamount to being elected. The only vote that counts for any office not state wide is the vote in the primary. Few of us are Democrats but lots of us consider ourselves independents. If we want any say we must vote in the Republican primary. To wait until the general election is to effectively not vote at all in local races. Those should be contested elections, all of them. They would be if we had a better turnout. It’s a vicious cycle; low turnout means fewer challenges, fewer challenges means lower turnout. So make up your list. If it’s different from mine, that’s ok with me. If you can find a challenger you like, vote for him. Maybe next time we’ll get more challengers. If we don’t vote we deserve what we get.

Meeting the Enemy

2008-01-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

On September 10, 1813, after defeating the British Navy at the battle of Lake Erie, US Navy Captain Oliver Hazard Perry wrote these famous words in a letter to then General William Henry Harrison – “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” On Earth Day in 1970 Walt Kelly had his satirical cartoon character Pogo saying “We have met the enemy and they is us.” Pogo was right. America’s statesmen and generals would do well to remember that as they plan and conduct our wars. An internal enemy produced a catastrophe in Vietnam and very nearly repeated it in Iraq.

The American media turned against the Vietnam War during the infamous Tet Offensive of 1968 and the war was lost. We would never recover. The campaign was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese. Their army in the south was destroyed. But they weren’t the real enemy. The press were. They made a collective editorial decision that the war was un-winnable and repeated that message in headlines and TV news clips day after day and night after night for the next seven years. Lyndon Johnson left office in disgrace. Richard Nixon declared victory and came home. Congress withdrew aid from the South Vietnamese and on April 30, 1975 Saigon fell, forever memorialized in a photograph of a helicopter evacuating the US Embassy. The word quagmire entered the political lexicon. A rag tag third world army had defeated a super power.

The American military if not its politicians learned from the Vietnam experience and in future wars would handle the media better. News conferences from forward headquarters are today conducted professionally by senior officers who understand the power of a sound bite, and of the verbal faux pas. Embedding journalists with combat units during the invasion of Iraq was a master stroke, easily trumping journalistic hacks who, as they did in Vietnam, preferred to cluster around hotel bars and get their news from each other. But that only worked for a while. We hadn’t learned enough. The media were determined to regain control and peer pressure soon discouraged most journalists from embedding, even though it meant confining themselves to fortified hotel rooms with Iraqi stringers practically their only source of news, modern versions of the old Turkish dragomans. As they had in Vietnam they made their editorial decision that the war was un-winnable and sent out their stringers to report back the only message they wanted to hear. They might as well have done all their reporting from New York and Washington. Many of them did. A lesser man in the White House would have withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2006, leaving Iraqi’s to their fate and a rejuvenated Jihad to his successor.

Mr. Bush didn’t withdraw. He doubled down instead in a move that had the smell of desperation from where I sat. I am happy to say I was wrong. Iraqi’s saw an increase in troop levels as renewed commitment. The prospect of an abrupt American departure had been their only real fear, and insurgents’ only real hope. 2007 appears to have been a turning point. Sunni Arabs realized their campaign to produce chaos was having a disastrous effect on their own community, and that only George Bush stood between them and genocide. The Shi’a too realized they were at the edge of a precipice and decided to get their own radicals under control.

The media are quiet for now but they haven’t given up. They have an enormous emotional investment in producing a debacle. They are still there, still ready to pounce on any sign of trouble. They will be there next time too. We had better be ready. Not even nuts with nukes can ever defeat us but we can beat ourselves.

Racial Elephant in the Room

2008-01-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

It’s not surprising that Barack Obama would win the Democratic caucus in overwhelmingly white Iowa. He’s been a rising star since well before his rousing keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and that speech put him in the limelight to stay. Whether you agreed or not with the policies he advocated, or supported his candidate at the time, the speech was one of hope and belief in the greatness of his country. It helped that it was delivered with a flawless accent devoid of the pattern that sets so many black voices indelibly apart. The man on that dais was undeniably and unequivocally American.

What does surprise me is that his church isn’t more of an issue, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC). When I first heard about it I thought it was a false lead, one of those alarmist charges so easily spread over the internet like the rumor he is a closet Muslim. But it’s his church all right and it delivers a message that is stridently racist in its orientation. On their web site “about us” I count sixteen references to civil rights issues and Black origins, easily more than references to faith or religion. They call themselves an African people. Not once is America or the United States mentioned. They have Black values, not Christian. It is a message that harkens back to bad old days when Olympic athletes were raising their fists in Black Power salutes and “burn baby burn” was a catch phrase for the movement. It is a disturbing image and not one I am comfortable in associating with a serious presidential candidate.

I haven’t seen much mention of it in the press, not nearly the attention paid to Mike Huckabee’s or Mitt Romney’s respective religions. Columnist Erik Rush did a piece on it in The New Media Journal back in February substituting “white” for African in the TUCC 10 point vision to point out how racist that would be but I never heard of him before I started researching this. Monroe Anderson apparently wrote a rebuttal to Rush for the Chicago Sun-Times but I can’t find it and the issue doesn’t seem to have stirred up much controversy. It should. Senator Obama may be sincere in wanting to be president for all Americans. I think he probably is. He may not sanction the separatist message of TUCC but belonging to a blatantly racist church should raise at least as many questions as would belonging to a golf club that excluded women.

Somebody needs to start asking these questions before we go further down this path. Are Senator Obama’s values Black values? Are those different from American values? His church seeks reconciliation but their rhetoric is confrontational. With whom and how do they propose to reconcile? They have a “non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA” (emphasis theirs). Does Sen. Obama have a non-negotiable commitment to America? Does his church have any Asian or European American members? Would they be welcome? Mitt Romney has been criticized for belonging to a religious community that once excluded blacks. Why shouldn’t that standard apply to Barack Obama?

Another Black American gave a speech more than forty years ago that resonated far more than any Sen. Obama has given or is likely to give. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamt that one day his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We’ve come a long way since those dark days. We have a ways to go yet and we don’t need a bigot in the oval office to get us there. The color of Barack Obama’s skin should not cost him the White House. I don’t think it will. The color of his heart just might.

Tax Farming

2008-01-02T12:41:00.000-08:00

Whatever we choose to call it, it has been a bad idea everywhere it has been practiced and it is as old as history. There was a reason why tax collectors had a bad name in biblical times and if we continue down this road outsourcing one of the most basic public functions we will certainly be reminded. Tolls on public roads are a form of tax and collecting them should be subject to the same political give and take as any other tax, not contracted out to a private enterprise.

One politician after another has been advertising this as free money and more than a few pundits have joined in. The basic idea is this. Tollcorp advances billions to the state in return for the right to collect tolls for x number of years. The state uses the funds to build more roads, assuming politicians can be trusted to use them for the intended purpose. There are three obvious questions. Why would Tollcorp do that? Where would the money come from? Would someone please explain to me why the state is otherwise unable to raise money to provide for needed public transportation?

Tollcorp isn’t likely to be a nonprofit. They would expect to earn a handsome return on their investment. They would go to the financial markets for the money and anticipate enough revenue to pay interest and other expenses with a profit on top. There is every reason to think the state of Texas could finance the same project with revenue bonds at a lower interest rate and with no need for a profit. There is a very large fly in this ointment and I think we are being purposely misled. People don’t mind paying a toll when it is to cover the cost of the road they are driving on. It is quite another thing when tolls are used to supplement general tax revenues, even if it is to fund other roads. If the other roads can’t pay for themselves then maybe they shouldn’t be built. If they are for the general public good they should be paid for from general public funds. We are using tolls as a painless way to raise taxes and we are making it worse by proposing to spend the money up front while paying over time.

Transportation has been a bottleneck in North Texas for all of the thirty five years I have lived here and the state has never been more than a second level player in addressing the issues. As our population has mushroomed we have sent a huge amount of revenue to Austin and gotten precious little in return. When I came here the Dallas North Tollway stopped at LBJ and you couldn’t even get from one to the other without going through a red light. Now funds from the gasoline tax have been diverted to uses unrelated to transportation, tollways appear to be the only way we will get any traffic relief, the North Texas Tollway Authority is intent on using tolls collected in Collin County to build uneconomical roads in Fort Worth, and our legislators restrict their contribution to talking about who will administer the funds, if they speak up at all. It makes me wonder why we even have elected representatives.

Let’s do this in a more sensible way. Build toll roads if we must but finance them in the traditional way. Issue specific purpose bonds and use tolls to pay them off. There is no reason for anyone other than bond purchasers to profit from the transaction. When the bonds are retired stop collecting the toll unless it is needed for a major upgrade to the road. If reasonable tolls aren’t projected to cover construction costs either don’t build the road or finance it another way. Use gasoline taxes to pay for maintenance. After all toll road users are being taxed twice, once when they fill their tank, and again when they pay the toll. And let’s see if we can’t get some straight talkers in office.

Winning the Right War

2007-12-19T17:40:00.000-08:00

Philip Gordon has an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs on how to win the War on Terror. It’s a good read and a clear eyed analysis of both the nature of the war and what victory would look like. Mercifully he avoids the sarcastic Bush bashing that so taints much criticism of current administration policy. I don’t agree with everything he has to say but he presents well reasoned arguments and is right on in most of his conclusions. He does set up a few straw men, suggesting for example that we are about to conduct a WWII style mobilization and invade half the Muslim world. Who’s advocating that? He seems to think, like a lot of policy wonks do, that everybody else has it wrong and if we would just do as he suggests everything will come out roses. He also thinks invading Iraq was a mistake. Of course there are other views, including mine. Still, the essay is well worth reading and I ordered his book.

Straw men do have their uses. Gordon’s central insight is the need to avoid falling into the trap of over reaction. He uses the extreme case to make the point, noting that al Qaeda’s fundamental strategy is to provoke a heavy handed response, produce chaos, and ultimately step in as a last chance for order in the style of the Taliban after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. He makes the case that victory will come when Muslims turn away from the ideology behind al Qaeda style extremism. No acceptable amount of force can make them do that. Muslims will have to decide for themselves.

Gordon’s arguments are as well articulated as they are well reasoned but with the exception of his point that it is unrealistic to expect complete eradication of terror, I’m not sure how much of it is really new. Even that point has been made before. George Bush famously commented that the War on Terror might not be winnable in the conventional sense but was forced to “clarify” when he got a frenzied reaction from the media. People are going to have to eventually come to grips with the idea that the draconian measures required to insulate us entirely are not worth the cost. More public discussion like Gordon’s could help with that.

The notion that invading Iraq was counterproductive rests on the assertion that it has served as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda and caused increased anti-American sentiment among Muslims around the world. It has done both but al Qaeda has been discredited in Iraq, partly because of brutality directed at fellow Muslims, and far more importantly because they have failed. Young radicals were attracted to them because they saw an opportunity to defeat another superpower. Bin Laden told them God would lead them to victory as He did against the Soviets in Afghanistan. At this point Americans appear to have a clear cut victory within the grasp and foreign suicide bomber infiltration through Syria has slowed to a trickle. Much could still go wrong but so far God hasn’t taken the field. As for anti-American sentiment, I’m not sure how much worse it could get beyond the level that produced 911. Our efforts to defend ourselves with “moral authority” are an exercise in futility.

Ironically Iraq may yet serve to dramatically shorten what has been called the Long War. Retired General Barry McCaffrey concluded after a recent field trip that Iraqis are tired of the bloodshed, especially women. That’s what happened to prompt Afghans turning to the Taliban. Iraqis may now be ready to come together in support of government security forces if they conclude they are the winning side. It’s hard to think about complex political issues when your family is in mortal danger.

I get the sense something like that may be happening around the world. Terrorism isn’t getting anybody anywhere. Only the weak resort to it in the first place and because they are weak, they tend to settle for so called “soft” targets, meaning civilians. Sometimes that’s just to make noise and instill a feeling of chaos. Sometimes it is a devise to intimidate a local populace into supporting insurgents. Sometimes it’s directed at a foreign power to erode public support for a cause not seen as important enough to justify the cost. In any case the strategy isn’t likely to win many hearts and minds, especially if it doesn’t seem to be working. Lots of Muslims around the world might like to see America get its comeuppance but not at the expense of having to live under the thumb of such brutes, and especially not if America doesn’t seem to be getting said comeuppance. Terrorism has already produced a backlash among Muslims. Most Muslims never bought in to the ideology behind it. Many of those who did have begun to look for a better way. Growing prosperity, sizeable middle classes, and emerging democracy in Muslim countries as diverse as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia could well be that better way.

Philip Gordon is right. It’s time to start thinking what a victory in the War on Terror might look like. It may be closer than we think. There is one big caveat. Another incident with anything like the drama of 911 and all bets are off. That could still happen, in a western city or at a major Muslim shrine. Lets all hope it doesn’t.

Counterinsurgency Tactics

2007-12-12T19:40:00.000-08:00

I have recently been seeing journalists refer to a deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan. It’s a mischaracterization. Theaters in both Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact seeing marked reversals in insurgent capabilities. The classic successful insurgency, ala Mao’s 1949 takeover in China, begins with a small, poorly armed, organized, and equipped group of rebels who start out with a campaign of terrorism to intimidate the population into supporting them. If it works they slowly escalate into a more sophisticated force that can seize and hold territory, eventually evolving into an army able to engage in conventional maneuver warfare.

What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reverse of that, with insurgents no longer able to conduct normal military operations and resorting almost exclusively to suicide bombing and random acts of terror. The trick now is to separate them from the population, in Lyndon Johnson’s hackneyed phrase to “win the hearts and minds of the people”, principally by providing them with security. That’s always the key to ultimate success. It is a principle well understood by American military officers at least since the Indian Wars. The 64 dollar question is just how you go about doing that. Tactics employed against 19th century Indians would be anathema to a twenty first century American public. There are more civilized models from 1950s British operations in Malaysia and French in Algeria but both Britain and France were colonial powers at the time. Americans don’t want to be seen as occupiers let alone colonists and we can neither order forced relocations as the British did, nor used coercive interrogation techniques on civilians as the French did.

There is one idea to borrow from both British and French however and it figures prominently in General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency manual. You disperse your troops among the people, get to know them, and give them the local security they need. It is often said that there is no military solution to an insurgency and there is an element of truth to that. Troops ultimately have to become more like policemen than soldiers. There are a couple of flies in the ointment though. Petraeus calculates a requirement of 25 counterinsurgents per 1000 population. That’s a lot of troops and police and after four years in Iraq (five in Afghanistan) we are only just now reaching those force levels. Another problem is that troops need security too. Dispersed troops are vulnerable to an enemy who can selectively attack in force. That was the American problem in Vietnam. When I was there in 1965 we had to be constantly on the move, never staying two nights in the same place unless we could defend it in force. If we did, North Vietnamese regulars could scout our positions from secure sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia and attack in overwhelming numbers.

There is a moral issue too if you are a foreign power trying to suppress a domestic rebellion. To be successful you must solicit local support. If you fail your supporters will pay a heavy price. You must be able to assure them that you are there for the long haul, a serious concern for our current allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end it was the cause of French failure in Algeria, and American failure in Vietnam. French troops could deal with rebels. They could not deal with French public opinion and the anti-colonial tide of history. American troops could win every battle on the ground in Vietnam but still lose in Washington. Those are the real lessons to be learned. They will determine the outcome of current and future conflicts.

Culture Shock

2007-12-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

Religious historian Karen Armstrong recounts a story of a Christian monk in Andalusia who wanted to become a martyr. He walked into a market place crowded with Muslims and began loudly denouncing Muhammad as a misogynist, lecher, and false prophet, still today a good way to get oneself killed in certain parts of the world. Authorities arrested him before a riot could start and, not wanting to make too much of it, offered to let him go if he would recant. The monk only became more strident, giving them no choice but to summarily execute him.

I am reminded of that story as we see one headline after another regarding intemperate Muslim outrage over any perceived slight from non-Muslims or any departure from tradition among their own. This week it is a Muslim girl from Toronto killed by her father for not wearing a head scarf. Last week it was a Saudi woman sentenced to jail and lashes for having been in a car with a former boyfriend when they were both abducted and raped. The week before it was an angry mob in Sudan calling for the head of an English school teacher who allowed her class to name a pet Muhammad.

Many Muslims join the rest of us in condemning such attitudes as gross overreactions representing fundamental disregard for basic human rights. Others tell us to mind our own business or insist that the intolerance is un-Islamic and can’t be used to judge the community as a whole. Still, the incidents occur regularly enough to remind us all just how deeply mired many Muslims are in medieval attitudes, struggling to resist adapting to a world that has moved beyond them. They are like the Luddites of early nineteenth century England, trying to stop the industrial revolution. But Ned Ludd and his followers were just trying to protect their jobs by destroying looms. Modern Muslims are trying to protect a culture that is not serving them well. Both groups were and are acting in futility.

It isn’t just intolerance. David Galula describes offering medical clinics to impoverished Algerian villagers in 1956. A big obstacle was a deep sense of fatalism that often kept mothers from seeking help for sick children. They came around as they realized help was there for the taking but it was slow and difficult. Galula thought, and I think it was a trait characteristic of the region. The recent Jones Report to congress on the status of Iraqi security forces describes two major cultural challenges in building an effective Army. One is an ingrained disdain for preventive maintenance on equipment, a large part of a greater problem in logistics. Another is a lack of a tradition for a non-commissioned officer corps and a reluctance to delegate authority. No wonder Arab armies can’t beat Israelis. Similar accounts are coming out of Afghanistan.

Times are changing though. NATO advisors taught Bosnians the value of competent NCOs and Iraqis will learn too. Even Saudi women are becoming well educated. King Abdullah is building a 12.4 billion dollar university complex in the desert to catch Saudis up with the west in science and technology. It will be walled off from the rest of Saudi society because he wants to attract the best western minds and that requires academic freedom and gender equality. It will be a porous wall. Dubai wants to become the Singapore of the Middle East and that means increasing emphasis on a free market economy and rule of law. It is already a major tourist destination for Europeans. Libya wants to integrate into the world economy and to that end has dismantled its nuclear arms program and renounced old links to terrorism. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, is dragging itself up out of historic poverty, and is emerging as a democracy in the process. This week’s murder notwithstanding, Muslims in the US and Canada are assimilating quite well and are beginning to have an impact on their ethnic origins. Canada is a major destination for Iranian immigrants and the community there is characterized by entrepreneurs who maintain ties and influence in Iran. And so it goes across large swaths of the Muslim world.

The world is changing faster than at anytime in history and many Muslims are being dragged kicking and screaming along with it. They have no choice. The effects of globalization make the rest of society at last impossible to ignore. There is nothing in Islam that requires Muslims to remain forever poor. A lot of Muslims have already figured that out and a lot more are beginning to come around.

Death Wish

2007-12-06T13:28:00.000-08:00

Four and one half years ago Saddam Hussein went to war with a vastly superior power to defend a weapons program he didn’t even have. The madness cost him his head and now it appears his next door neighbors have been playing with the same fire. The good news this week is that the American intelligence community has concluded Iran suspended development of nuclear weapons sometime in 2003. The National Intelligence Estimate doesn’t say why, only that it was in response to “international pressure.”

Some pundits have pronounced the development a triumph of diplomacy over threat of force, and at the same time point to it as further evidence of unreliability in intelligence estimates. That inconsistency aside, I’m not sure what diplomacy they think has triumphed. The big international news in 2003 was Saddam’s demise coming on the heels of a Taliban collapse in Afghanistan and George Bush’s Axis of Evil remarks in his 2002 State of the Union address. For a time there it looked like the Ayatollahs might be next. That would seem to be the obvious source of international pressure. 2003 also saw another regional pariah suspend his nuclear activities. Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi admitted to his own program and agreed to allow the US and Britain to dismantle it under the oversight of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The part I don’t understand is why Iran would risk providing the United States with the same provocation that cost Saddam so dearly. If they were going to suspend development, why not follow Qadhdhafi’s lead and reap the benefits of international reconciliation? Current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds a lot like Saddam in his belligerence and appears to be taking his country down the same path. But the clerics who hold the real power in Iran are rational men. Surely they know that the nuclear threats only serve to further isolate them, and present the very real possibility of preemptive western military action. The handwriting was on the wall long before Americans invaded Iraq. The Ottoman Empire has been dismembered and it isn’t going to be restored. No new bellicose anti-western power is going to be allowed to become a hegemon in a region as vital to world economies as the Middle East, nuclear or not.

Iran has a lot to gain from being a peaceful neighbor. In the days of the Shah they were one of the more progressive players in the region. They had a pretty good university system and a growing middle class. Many of us remember Ross Perot’s daring rescue of EDS executives from an Iranian prison. Most have probably forgotten what took them there to begin with. They were working to implement a social security system sponsored by the Empress Farah, a lady who had also worked to make Iranian women among the most emancipated in the Muslim world. Not all of that has been undone by the Ayatollahs. Iranians are still relatively well educated, they still have a sizeable middle class, and their women are still pretty independent. Those factors, oil, and a well connected Diaspora position Iran to benefit hugely from the modern growth in world prosperity but all this talk of war and sanctions is bad for business.

There was never much chance of war with Iran and the new NIE report makes it less likely than it has been in years. We aren’t going to be on good terms though until, as President Bush insists, they come clean about the nuclear weapons and begin acting as responsible world citizens. I don’t understand what’s keeping them. One shoe appears to be on the floor. They need to let the other one fall.

No More Super Power

2007-11-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

The world has entered an era of unprecedented peace with virtually no prospect of war among major powers. There are a number of reasons for it but I think the single biggest factor is the remarkable surge of prosperity that came with globalization and the resulting interdependence of our respective economies. China can’t afford to attack Taiwan because any conflict around the straits would disrupt trade routes. Russians have grown rich selling oil to neighbors and that trumps any residual dreams of empire. The astounding economic benefits of the European Union have made war unimaginable among members that had been at each other’s throats since the advent of the nation state.

Even small wars are less likely than in at any time in memory. I had better be right about this. The United States is no longer prepared to fight one. The days of America standing as the world’s policeman are over. Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are minor by any standard of history but they have stretched our military to its limits. As they wind down the demands for a peace dividend will place serious constraints on attempts to rebuild a spent Army and Marine Corps, let alone refresh aging fleets of ships and aircraft. Maintaining super power status is fiendishly expensive and the American public cannot be expected to pay for it absent major perceived threats.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991 he quickly found himself facing the finest fighting force the world had ever seen. President Bush had inherited from Ronald Reagan a 600 ship Navy along with air and ground forces better manned, trained, and equipped than at the outset of any war before or since. Today’s Navy has just 280 deployable battle force ships. Every combat or support unit in the Army or Marines is either deployed, preparing to deploy, or just back from deployment. The troop draw downs recently begun in Iraq will provide some breathing room but neither that nor current modest plans to increase the size of the force will do much to make them more able to sustain such commitments in the future. Should a conventional conflict again present itself we may find ourselves with a military that is unprepared for anything but so called asymmetric warfare.

This isn’t necessarily all bad. The United States faces no serious conventional threat. Nobody is going to invade California any time soon. It is the nature of such threats that they do not spring up overnight. They must be constructed over a considerable period, giving ample warning of any danger. The European folly in the buildup to WWII lay in not responding to the warnings when they came. Some analysts think the existence of overwhelming American force can be as much provocation as deterrent. Ryan Carr argues in the September Issue of Small Wars Journal that it at least partly explains Iran’s motivations for meddling in Iraq. The presence of American troops next door represents a security threat. Iran might be next on Mr. Bush’s list of evil axis targets. Some in the US think that too. Iran’s response has been to promote instability in Iraq as a self defense measure. The trick is to make life miserable enough for Americans to force them to leave without giving them a pretext for retaliation. Fear of an American invasion may also partially explain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Carr cites as historical precedent China’s 1950 intervention in Korea and support of North Vietnam fifteen years later. China always thought she was America’s real target and to this day doesn’t fully trust Americans.

None of this is to suggest that the US will or should unilaterally disarm and retreat into isolationism. We aren’t about to do that. But the time has come when the rest of the world is going to have to take on more responsibility for securing not only its own territory but growing prosperity too. Everybody needs reliable raw materials, markets, and trade routes. Nobody needs chaos on their borders. The United States will not continue indefinitely as the sole or principal guarantor of any of those things. We cannot do it with a 200 ship navy and that is almost certainly where we are headed. Others are going to have to step up including China, Russia, India and more as well as our traditional allies. The good news is that, prickly as our relationships sometimes are, our interests are more aligned than divergent and the world is beginning to realize it.

The six party talks currently going on with North Korea are a case in point. Everybody at the table has a somewhat different agenda. The North Korean regime is worried about survival. The immediate neighbors are all worried about massive numbers of refugees spilling across borders. Japan is afraid the issue of kidnapped civilians will be swept under the rug. America’s primary concern is nuclear proliferation and another unenforceable agreement with continued North Korean cheating. Everybody needs regional security and stability and everybody will have to give something up to get it. They know it and that the United States isn’t going to take sole responsibility. Nor does anybody want that except maybe the North Koreans. That’s why we are at the table. We can expect to see a lot more of it. We can expect to see China’s emerging blue water navy put to productive use too.