A reliable White House source sent us Santa Claus' letter replying to President Bush's Christmas wish list. As a public service, we're posting it in full:
Dear Mr. President:
I don't like having to put coal in anyone's stocking, especially these days. Even with the economy coughing and wheezing, the price of Appalachian coal is still $45 a ton higher on the spot market than it was at this time last year. My accounting elves keep sending me cross memos about blowing my coal budget.
Still, however, you may not leave me a choice. I have a stack of reports on my desk here at the North Pole workshop about some of the naughty actions that have come out of your administration in the last few weeks. I have an idea for you to make things right, but first, the bill of particulars.
First, there was that business of oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah, including Dinosaur National Monument. Bringing noise, dust, traffic, and pollution threats to some of the most unspoiled scenic lands in America is not my idea of being a good boy.
You might be interested to know that a conservative Republican congressman named John Saylor fought tooth and nail to keep the Bureau of Reclamation from building a dam inside Dinosaur in the early 1950s. You could learn from his brand of conservatism, which equated conservation with patriotism.
National parks, Saylor said, are "an investment in health, recreation, education and in something as simple and profound as love of country – love of the unique and wonderful natural fabric that is the foundation of America."
Then, there was the rule that ...
A few weeks ago, the term du jour was “team of rivals.” This week, “shovel-ready” is the term most frequently on the lips of pols and pundits.
The incoming administration and Congress plan to direct a fire hose of borrowed money at the flames engulfing the economy. Many of those dollars will be directed at the “shovel-ready” – projects ready to break ground and put people on payrolls within weeks.
In an economic emergency, it’s certainly a good thing to put people to work right away spraying insulation into home attics, retrofitting wasteful cooling systems in federal buildings, and shortening the disgracefully long list of deferred maintenance projects at national parks and wildlife refuges.
Still, to put on green eyeshades for a moment, there ought to be some room on the ever-lengthening shopping list for supporting projects that will have long-term economic development value. Ideally, borrowed money should be used for long-lasting capital projects, so that the costs will be shared by the generations that will benefit.
An example of a long-range project is modernizing the creaky, overstressed transmission system used to move electricity from power plants to end uses, such as my computer and the one that you’re reading this on....
Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer, but may I have a word with you?
I couldn’t help noticing you over at the auto lot. You gave a quick once-over to the high-mileage sedans but lingered quite awhile by the SUVs. That concerns me.
I know what’s going through your minds. Average gas prices have fallen below $1.80 per gallon. The automakers are splashing out incentives to move the sport-utes off lots where they have been hanging around like unwanted in-laws since last summer. You’re figuring, maybe that gas price spike last summer was a fluke, the oil market is settling down, and it’s time to spread out on the road again with a 4 x 4.
You’re not the only ones figuring that way. The Chicago Tribune reported Friday that GM has ordered overtime for workers at the plant making the biggest honkin’ SUVs in GM’s fleet: Yukons, Tahoes, and Escalades.
Many years ago, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story, "Dial Double Zero," about a creepy life form emerging within the telephone system and harassing a guy minding his own business.
That's similar to what has happened with the federal budget – an inanimate object has taken on an intrusive life of its own.
As part of his economic recovery plan, President-elect Obama has promised to put the beast on a weight-loss program. Many of Obama's predecessors have made similar vows, yet the fiscal metastasis has continued. Still, in the face of a deficit likely to exceed a trillion dollars, Obama is right to have a go at it.
At the end of a weekend of turkey sandwiches and leftover sweet potatoes, farm subsidies are as good a place as any for Obama's federal slimming program to begin. ...
It’s been clear for a while that Utah Governor Jon Huntsman bears watching. You’re bound to sit up and take notice when a Republican governor of a coal-dependent state decides to sign up for a regional agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The shrieks of climate denialists notwithstanding, Utahns apparently had little problem with Huntsman’s putting Utah into the Western Climate Initiative. He was re-elected governor November 4 with a handsome 78 percent share of the vote that his fellow Republican candidates could only dream about.
Huntsman’s resume has some sparkle to it. Like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, he has diplomatic experience. Like Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, he speaks fluent Mandarin.
We are also told that he rocks out to ...
When the congressional enablers of the Big Three automakers proposed a bailout for Detroit, I got to thinking about a friend of mine.
He took pity on a female acquaintance with a somewhat chaotic lifestyle and loaned her $200. I told him that he would never see that $200 again.
I was right.
Call me cynical, but I am not sanguine about handing over large gobs of public money to manufacturers with a rotten business model that has exacerbated U.S. dependence on a fossil fuel supplied by assorted crooks, cartels, and despots.
Call me someone who dwells on the past, but it’s difficult to forget that Detroit and its unions spent years stonewalling and stomping on reasonable legislation to boost fuel economy standards – until public outrage at high gasoline prices in 2007 finally shouted down the Big Three and their can’t-do culture of complaining.
Call me hard-hearted, but when companies are run into the ground by sclerotic executive bureaucracies that failed to anticipate oil price risks, failed to fix their product development systems, failed to sharpen their brands, and failed to bargain hard enough over labor costs, they deserve to die. ...
First, a hearty congratulations to President-elect Obama. With a compelling life story, a strong message, and a superb ground game, he seized a moment in history. And, he gave us Republicans a thorough pasting. In many ways, we deserved it.
Already, the fight for the party's soul is on. The hard right has already begun plotting a campaign to push the party further to the margins of the spectrum. Those of us on the center-right had better fight back.
Because, as Margaret Thatcher once said, politics is like an airplane. The right and left wings may provide lift, but the middle is where the brains are. Alas, ...
Democrats are effervescing over the possibility that they will win enough Senate seats on Tuesday to have 60 votes, a “filibuster-proof” majority.
Well, it’s not that simple. Issues drive the dynamics of each filibuster. It’s not a given that every Democrat would vote to shut down every Republican filibuster every time. Or vice versa, if the shoe were on the other foot.
But with one party holding 60 or more votes, the filibuster would be in a weakened state. And that is not necessarily a good thing. Here’s to the defense of the filibuster. Not because it is all the leverage that Republicans may have in a town awash in blue. Because filibusters are a check on excess. And that’s good for both parties.
A story, possibly apocryphal, has it that shortly after the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson was having coffee with George Washington. Jefferson asked why the convention had created the Senate. Washington asked Jefferson why he had just poured his coffee into a saucer. To cool it, Jefferson replied. Exactly why Congress needs a Senate, Washington responded. ...
Rural values, family, and tradition are the warp and woof of conservative messaging. For better or worse, Sarah Palin has hit those hot buttons repeatedly at campaign rallies where the cultural prejudices of Big Media windbags are distinctly unwelcome.
Nothing could be more destructive of those conservative values than mountaintop removal coal mining. The high explosives and draglines that are gouging an alien topography onto West Virginia and neighboring states also are butchering old ways of life in the mountains.
The Bush administration has proposed a rule that would exacerbate the damage by easing stream buffering requirements. Since those requirements are largely honored in the breach, the rule would legitimize what has been going on anyway.
But it's not just Republicans who kowtow to mountaintop removal. At a Society of Environmental Journalists conference October 18, Congressman Nick Rahall, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, listed all the great things that flattened mountains can be used for. Imagine the shopping centers ...
How quickly things change.
In July, the price of light, sweet crude oil surged to $147 per barrel.
The investment bank Goldman Sachs had projected two months earlier that
the price could hit $200 per barrel in as little as six months.
Under the pressure of high prices, what didn’t happen in a Congress
ruled by Tom DeLay, the bug-spraying scourge of all things
environmental, happened on the watch of ultra-green Nancy Pelosi – the
moratorium on offshore oil drilling fell away.
Now, the hubbub over high prices seems forgotten. In the eternity of
the last several weeks of economic turmoil, energy largely disappeared as the lead campaign
issue. The price of oil has fallen by more than half. Gasoline prices
have dropped below $2.50 per gallon across the nation’s heartland. OPEC's barons of price rigging are holding an emergency meeting this week.
Can we cross oil overdependence off our enlarged list of things to
worry about? Not a chance. Just as beginning investors are counseled to
avoid obsessing over the short-term ups and downs of the stock market,
our thinking about energy should not be pulled this way or that in
response to price fluctuations.
At the rate that the stock market has declined over the past week or so, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will fall to zero by Thanksgiving, by which time America’s system of industrial capitalism will have collapsed and we’ll all be herding goats for a living.
Then, we can stop worrying about climate change.
OK, I’m kidding — I hope. A little dark humor never hurts in times of trouble and uncertainty.
But seriously ...
One of the media wise guys said before the vice presidential debate that it was like a NASCAR race – a good percentage of the fans came to see one or both candidates hit the wall and spin out.
The thrill-seekers were disappointed. Sarah Palin, the newest of newcomers on the national scene, held her own against Senate veteran Joe Biden, who seems to have been a DC figure since the Ice Age.
After a painful patch of bad interviews, Palin reverted to her appealing, just-plain-folks form, cheerfully punctured the pompousness of DC insiders, answered the questions, and even gave Biden a little chin music that scored a few hits.
For his part, Biden...
These are the days that we should be grateful that the Founding Fathers built federalism into the Constitution and retained a strong governance role for the states.
Last Thursday, when the Capitol descended into conniption fits over high finance, was one of those days. Oh, and the renewable energy and energy efficiency tax incentives that expire December 31 have been caught in the maw of partisan tantrums also. Huge investments in wind and solar energy on tap for 2009 are circling the drain.
To paraphrase the late, great Barry Goldwater, we might be well served to saw off Washington, DC, from the rest of the country and let it float out to sea.
While the pols in DC were looking out for number one, states from one end of the country to the other were getting some useful work done for their citizens.
Start with the Northeast. ...
Banking panics are supposed to be a forgotten relic of the 19th century, when laissez-faire reigned supreme and the federal government was composed mainly of clerks toiling away in a quiet Southern town by the Potomac River.
But there’s no getting away from human fears, which set off the old-fashioned banking panic that swept through the financial sector last week.
When the economy is fishtailing and the mentality is to circle the wagons, fear is taking hold. Which is not a sound environment for making decisions that have long-term environmental benefits.
The tendency is to deal with the short-term crisis and forget about long-term consequences. Understandable, but not always smart.
Here’s a sign of the times: A survey of chief marketing officers released this month by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shows that cause-related marketing has plunged to the bottom of the priority list for marketing messages.
Marketing officers increasingly believe that financially-stressed customers are more interested in getting a good deal on products than in hearing that products are nice to polar bears. ...
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