It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

While it’s true that we’re only stuck with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania for another 11 months or so he hasn’t lost his ability to annoy. The amount of “say one thing and do another” that George W. Bush accomplishes is truly amazing. Here is a section this year’s SOTU.

To build a future of energy security, we must trust in the creative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs and empower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology. (Applause.) Our security, our prosperity, and our environment all require reducing our dependence on oil. Last year, I asked you to pass legislation to reduce oil consumption over the next decade, and you responded. Together we should take the next steps: Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions. (Applause.) Let us increase the use of renewable power and emissions-free nuclear power. (Applause.) Let us continue investing in advanced battery technology and renewable fuels to power the cars and trucks of the future. (Applause.) Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources. And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases.

OTOH, here’s an analysis of what he actually proposed in the FY 2009 budget for energy. And then of course the funding for FutureGen was pulled with the only replacement being nothing but vague proposals. I’ll be so glad when Dubya’s gone. But the cleanup from the disaster that has been the Bush Administration will be long and difficult.

 Minor update: Just after I wrote this I ran across a Washington Post editorial about the funding cut for FutureGen.

I like the essence of Senator Obama’s health care ideas but I think we just need to go farther. Comparisons to the system in Canada and Great Britain are always made by conservatives but they ignore other countries that have more government involvement than we do, including single payer systems that work much better than those two countries. This of course includes the rest of Europe. But in the real world it is questionable whether even any of those variations would be politically achievable in the United States. So I tried to think of something else. If anyone stumbles across this blog opinions and input are something I’d love to read.

First, nothing beyond current regulations except for consumer protection legislation would be passed limiting private insurance companies. But they’re still going to have to adapt to the existence of a new type of insurance organization. This organization would have a closer relationship to the government than the Post Office, but like it not be an actual agency of the government. It would be a purely non-profit health care organization like no other.

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Brad DeLong points out a couple of articles that speak of the reality of tax cuts and that the Republican claims that they always produce more revenue, currently being pushed extra hard by Rudy Giuliani, just aren’t true. None of what they say is really hard to understand and it makes a lot of sense. What does it say about the politicians who refuse to acknowledge the blindingly obvious? Nothing positive. Nothing positive at all.

The New York Times titles its article Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts. And it’s right. Those donor countries who relied on the blind belief in free markets that is currently the fashion in many developed countries and the World Bank were wrong and the new president of Malawi was right. Subsidies for poverty stricken farmers to be able to have seed and fertilizer was necessary for them to produce their own food and should probably be expanded to other countries with similar situations. The free market has little to do with farmers whose current production isn’t even enough to allow them to feed themselves.

So can we arrange for the Economics School of the University of Chicago to lose its government funding since we shouldn’t be subsidizing religion even if it’s the First Church of Free Market?

Congress finally passed a compromise bill affecting auto mileage standards. Notice the finally part of that. Also notice that it was passed in spite of the automobile companies continued resistance. When you see the ads they run pretending to give a damn about the environment and mileage remember that. Also, when they say that it just isn’t technically feasible keep this guy in mind. It’s true that his full blown rebuilds aren’t economically feasible for anyone but the wealthy and that their cost would never be recovered in fuel savings. But it is also true that it puts the lie to the claims that there is no technology that exists to reduce mileage as drastically as we really need.

 Then there’s the research at MIT that would produce an engine that while more expensive than current ones would be much less expensive than hybrids. What I wondered about when reading this was whether in their savings calculations they accounted for the reduced weight of the smaller engine and reduction in supports needed for it in determining what it would do for gas mileage.

When it comes to innovations that would allow even further divergence from the old gas engine standard there’s the in-wheel motor that has different companies creating their own versions of it including Bridgestone, Mitsubishi and PML.

There’s lots of tech out there to do what Detroit is saying can’t be done. They apparently just don’t want to put forth the effort. There might be what they view as good reasons for doing it given their current financial problems but looking solely at the short term will do nothing to help guarantee their long term existence. Now in my opinion if there was a technology that was proven to produce major fuel efficiency improvements and they just couldn’t feasibly afford to retrofit their factories to produce it I wouldn’t have a problem with the government subsidizing that retrofit so long as the accounting was transparent. It would just do too much good for our country to not do so.

Lots of single mothers, whether they are such because of their children’s illegitimacy or divorce have a hard time financially. It’s a commonly known item of our social and political environment. The public funds that the poorest among them receive hardly constitute a fortune and is basically barely enough to scrape by. The politicians who like to preach against welfare rail against the fathers who aren’t helping provide support They then pass laws to help track these men down and get the child support they should be paying from them, generally making it seem that they care about these women and children. But they don’t force the men to send money to the mother of their child(ren), they collect the money. And keep it. Yes, they keep it in order to reimburse the government for the welfare the mother and children received. The mother might get part of it but if they are receiving public assistance it won’t be all of the funds or even most of them as the New York Times points out today. What’s wrong with sending these funds on the the families, maybe keeping a small part of it to help defray expenses? I think it would be the better approach.

Why does anyone believe anything that George W. Bush or anyone who represents him or allies themselves with him says anymore? Remember the good old days when he was saying that he hadn’t made up his mind about going to war with Iraq?  And that thinking that it might cost $50 billion was dismissed as speculation? When Mitch Daniels said that Larry Lindsey’s estimate of $200 billion was the upper end of a hypothetical?

Now there are estimates that the combined total of Iraq and Afghanistan could reach $2.4 trillion before it’s all said and done. What’s the White House reaction?

The Bush administration has declined to make long-term projections because “the war is ever-changing” and costs are difficult to predict, said Sean Kevelighan, press secretary for the White House budget office.

“Congress got a predictable answer to its leading question, which was clearly intended to artificially inflate war costs (by) politicians in Washington trying to manage our military commanders,” Kevelighan said.

“Budgets follow military decisions, not vice versa,” he said.

What do Bush’s allies in the Republican Party have to say about it?

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the committee, said the estimates fail to show that as a percentage of gross domestic product, the nation is better equipped to pay for these conflicts than previous wars.

Of course I want to know what the percentage of GDP has to do with it? Government revenues and debt are what matter if you’re going to discuss an enterprise that the government is paying for and these same people want Bush’s tax cuts to stay the course. They want the estate tax eliminated. Many of them want capital gains taxes eliminated or at least reduced even further than where they are already at. Look at these numbers and realize that President Bush is once again threatening to veto SCHIP, claiming that part of the reason is the expense, $35 billion over 5 years.

As I said to begin this post, why does anyone still believe this man or his minions?

Well, at least the people who make big money on it are happy. The rest of us, not so much. the Washington Post writes about how easily completely unregulated energy trading markets can be manipulated solely for the benefit of the traders and their profits. The resulting commodity prices have nothing to do with supply and demand or any of those old fashioned things and simply result in higher energy bills. After the Amaranth debacle where the fund eventually paid the price for making a couple of bad moves Congress is looking into actually letting the agency that should be overseeing this kind of trading do what is needed but it hasn’t been being done for a while. Why? Well…

Commodity trading has exploded in complexity and popularity, growing six-fold in trading volume since 2000 — the year that a handful of giant energy companies, including Enron, successfully lobbied to get Congress to exempt energy markets from government regulation.

And the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, like so many other regulatory agencies in recent years, is understaffed and underfunded, so that even if Congress does undo that gigantic mistake it won’t make any difference unless they increase the CFTC’s funding as well. Unsurprisingly the unregulated markets want to stay that way and since Amaranth did go bust there are undoubtedly defenders of the status quo that will say the markets worked. But the truth is that the markets worked too late to prevent consumers from paying untold millions of dollars in additional utility bills for no other reason than to allow unregulated energy traders to make a profit in a market that had nothing to do with classical market forces.

At least I think that this doctor writing an op-ed for the Washington Post does. He calls the Republicans for their constant refrain of socialism, socialist and socialized when ranting against their political opponents proposals. There’s just no way it can be called a discussion when this rhetorical overkill and inaccuracy is used.

The Washington Post reports on the people who have left the Bush Administration and how they are dealing with life after Bush.

The article speaks of soul searching but for at least two of Bush’s former staff there isn’t any of that at all. Rove and Bartlett don’t seem to regret or doubt anything. I just love this one about Bartlett:

He started to watch Bush’s last news conference on television, then turned it off halfway through after finding himself pacing the room. He still resents the newspaper articles that present Bush as “the most-isolated, stupid moron in America today,” but he knows he needs to move on.

Apparently Mr. Bartlett doesn’t appreciate what he, Mr. Rove and President Bush have done to deserve that opinion so richly. In addition when asked about regrets he said

“As far as how the presidency has gone,” he said, “these are the cards we were dealt, these were the decisions we made. I learned too much in that job — you can’t second-guess every decision you made.”

What cards were they dealt that forced them into Iraq when they chose to invade? None. There was no overwhelming weight of facts or some imminent threat that forced them to choose the date they chose. There was nothing forcing them to not give the U.N. weapons inspectors more time and put forth more effort in the cleanup of Afghanistan. Not if you looked at the intelligence objectively instead of trying to mold it into something to justify a decision apparently already made.

As for Rove, consider this gem of information:

Rove said his book will be worth it. “It will be vicious and slashing,” he promised. He sounded as if he was joking. Sort of. But it’s not as if he has gone off the reservation. At the end of the interview, he asked that his quotes be sent to the White House first. “I’m still a cog in the great machine,” he explained.

What?? Karl Rove do something vicious and slashing? Say it ain’t so!