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Fasten Your Seat Belt, Obama’s Driving Energy Policy
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By Llewellyn KingIf President Obama were driving an automobile the way he's driving energy policy, he'd be stopped and breathalyzed.The president’s latest decision to defer a decision on TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline is a sudden swerve to the left, after his sharp right turn in curbing the enthusiasm of the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting electric utility emissions.Similarly Obama has supported some new drilling for oil, but not in all the areas the industry would like to drill. He's in the middle of the road on this one, and no one is happy.On nuclear power, Obama signaled a right turn and veered left. He came to office endorsing the nuclear option, including loan guarantees. But in a tip of the hat to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the president opposed the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and undermined the case he was making for nuclear.The mischief did not end there. Obama appointed Reid’s man, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to end the Yucca project and entomb, in effect, the $9 billion to $15 billion (depending on who is counting) in its abandoned tunnels. But because the government has longstanding legal commitments to take the waste, and has taken the money charged utilities (about $900 million a year) and treated it like tax revenue, the whole project has torn up the commission and landed it in court.Jaczko, a former Reid aide, has riled the other four commissioners and the NRC staff to such an extent that the four went to the then White House chief of staff to complain about the chairman. An act of frustration totally unprecedented and deeply damaging to the credibility of the commission. Nobody resigned and a damaged regulatory body is now passing on the safety of the nation’s nuclear fleet. To all appearances, the chairman’s remit was to tear things up in the commission; that he has done.In particular, the issue of licensing of Yucca Mountain has caused ructions. Jaczko has stopped the licensing in what the quasi-judicial Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the case considers an illegal act. According to Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry wants the licensing to proceed if only to establish that Yucca was the right way to go and that it can stand the scrutiny that the NRC would give it in licensing. Fertel says that it's a marker for the future.Opponents of Yucca, presumably including Jaczko, fear that a license would pave the way for the Yucca project to come back to life under a different administration. Did Obama, a lawyer, not know that political brute force in a regulatory agency is bound to throw it into disarray, and to leave its decisions to be impugned in court later? So why did he do it?When it comes to alternative energy, Obama positively drove on to the left shoulder. The administration has promised wonders from wind, solar and advanced coal combustion. It has thrown money at these as though it were rice at a wedding. The most conspicuous of this mind-over-matter exercise was, of course, Solyndra. But the spending has been lavish, indeed promiscuous, and the bankruptcies are filling up court dockets and right-wing Web sites.Yet, the gods have smiled on the Obama administration. A boom in natural gas, brought on by new technologies, and enhanced oil production, fathered by the same technological improvements, have brought oil imports down below 50 percent for the first time in 20 years. Electricity supply is holding.Environmental organizations, having been cold-shouldered on climate change by the world in a time of economic upset, picked on the Keystone pipeline with fury. Particularly apoplectic about it has been the Natural Resources Defense Council, which hopes that by canceling the project, Canada would stop developing its oil sands.No, says Canada. I spoke with Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver shortly before Obama's first decision to delay the pipeline. Oliver said that if the decision weren't favorable, Canada would build a pipeline across the Rockies to British Columbia and export to China.The latest setback has infuriated Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, which now says it will no longer rely almost entirely on the U.S. market for its hydrocarbon sales.So Obama’s latest swerve has angered our best ally and good neighbor, denied American workers thousands of jobs and will oblige refineries on the Gulf Coast to buy oil from unfriendly places on the world market.He has also given the Republicans a handsome gift in an election year. Masterful! – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The Etiquette of Class War
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So it's come to this then: war, class war. The House Republicans and their allies, who live at the best addresses on Earth, have a casus belli:
President Obama is assaulting their class by suggesting that they pay more tax.
The Good Lord alone knows where it will end or how many of the aristocrats, the oligarchs, will be forced into exile in hostile extremes like Liechtenstein, Monaco, Geneva and Bermuda.
Oh, the coming horror! Families torn apart as rich brother faces off against poor brother, taxpaying daughter in love with tax-exempt heir, children who have scored in Silicon Valley bitterly divided from their parents over Social Security and Medicare.
Even now, the battle lines are being drawn in Aspen, the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard and Palm Beach. Surreptitiously, Perrier and Champagne are being stockpiled. And priest-holes are being constructed for tax-shelter preparers, who fear the arrival of the middle-class mob — that frenzied and irrational mass who want the American Dream back. Fools! Why can’t they see that a higher power has chosen who should be rich and who should be in debt?
And, besides, it's the rich who create jobs. Who do the Democrats think hires the chauffeurs, private jet pilots, butlers, maids, caterers and house contractors (who tear down lovely homes and build big, ugly ones)?
It's the rich that are holding together what's left of the housing market.
What Keynesian, pinko Europhile can afford six houses? A middle-class wretch can hardly hold onto the house he or she has, let alone boost the economy by buying a $23-million triplex on Park Avenue.
The trouble is, I'm not sure we know how to run a class war. But as a Brit-American, I regard myself as something of an expert. So, fellow Americans, here are a few tips:
1. Sadly for House Speaker John Boehner, it's not just about money. Those who have “class” know what it is, and they censure those who don't.
2. Money is important, but only if it was stolen and/or made by an ancestor at least three generations ago. Money — even billions — made in your lifetime, or that of a parent, is a no-no. It will have you limited by the dreadful appellation “nouveau riche”: a state worse than being broke, in class terms.
3. To get into the upper class (assuming you don't have an hereditary title that is at least five generations old), you must have attended the right school: Eton for boys and Roedean for girls.
4. If neither of these desirable qualifications are yours, you must speak the Queen's English; affect a passion for cricket and polo; and revere the undefined qualities of breeding, refinement and the rituals of marriage. The latter means that you can sleep with almost anyone, just as long as you marry someone like you and raise children like you. Then you're ready for the ruling class, and to be ridiculed in the popular press as “bosses.”
Well, clearly that kind of class clash isn't for the Republicans.
Our class-war model is cleaner and simpler: Money is akin to divinity and shouldn’t be adulterated by taxation and the middle class, whose moral responsibility is to take up the tax burden and tug at a grateful forelock.
The working class, you say, where are they? Don't be silly, vote-hungry politicians promoted them into the middle class years ago. Anyway, now everyone thinks the workers all come from Mexico.
Prepare for the worst; secession by Martha's Vineyard and barricades on the Upper East Side, Michigan Avenue and Palm Beach.
Only in Malibu and Beverly Hills can we expect hand-to-hand fighting; Sockless actors in loafers standing with their bankers, while their wives fret about what to wear to the class war. They're tricky, class-war uniforms. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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Back to the Future: The Intercity Bus
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Back in the 1960s, Eastern Airlines invented a new way of traveling. It was called the Shuttle, and every hour on the hour an aircraft left Washington or New York for the other city. Passengers were guaranteed a seat. If one aircraft was full, another one was put in service, even if there was just one passenger.The fare from Washington to New York, or the other way around, was $14. Payment was made on the airplane by cash, check or credit card. It was no muss, no fuss transportation between the two cities.Today, two airlines offer service on the same route for $156 one way, but you have to have a boarding pass to go through security. Flight time is about one hour.You can also make the journey by train. Amtrak offers two classes of service: The Acela, which costs $186 one way and takes two hours and 44 minutes; or the Northeast Regional, which costs $134 one way for a journey of three hours and 29 minutes.Yet last week, I went from Washington to New York for $19 and returned for $15 on a bus. Travel time in each direction was four hours.Something is happening here. Buses are better than they have ever been: They are leather-seated, restroom-equipped, wi-fi-wired and smoke-free. To board a bus, all you need to do is to show a receipt on your cell phone and you are on your way. Also, there are plenty of them; at least fivecompanies offer service.The New York-to-Washington route is the most heavily traveled in the United States. It is sought-after by the airlines and is the only route that Amtrak operates in profit. It is a golden highway, a silk road and every transport executive's dream.By its standards, Amtrak has lavished money on the route; first with self-propelled cars in the Metroliner fleet, and now with the Acela – a train that banks so that it can take curves at high speeds.Politicians love to talk about upgrading the track, so that the Acela can run most of the 225-mile route at 150 mph. As it is, the Acela achieves this speed only for short spurts because the track is not up to standard.The Obama administration wants to do something much more expensive, much grander than fixing the track: It wants to use the Northeast corridor as a critical component of its high-speed rail network, with trains traveling 200 mph or faster for the entire length of the journey. The Obama administration dreams of high-speed rail of the kind already in operation in Europe, Japan and China.Not only is the Northeast corridor extremely well served without high-speed rail, but it is unlikely to ever happen. An entirely new track bed would have to be laid without a single level crossing; technology would have to be imported, presumably from France, pioneers in high-speed rail; and a safety regime of incredible stringency would have to be established.Obama seems to be determined to enter a horse race where the rest of the field is already in the straight.Instead of wishing yet another transportation mode on the Northeast corridor, the administration might want to note what is already happening there. Three disparate modes are operating and offering an enormous variety of price and speed, with buses now the favorite.Call it back to the future, but that is what is going on.At one time, the United States had the most sophisticated and complete bus service in the world. The great brands were Greyhound and Trailways. Sadly, they were elbowed aside and the networks collapsed with the deregulation of airlines in the 1970s. Service became rudimentary where it had been complete.Buses are not a solution to all of our transportation problems. Five hours may be the maximum comfortable journey. No one would care to ride, of choice, from New York to Chicago or Chicago to Los Angeles by bus. But journeys of around 200 miles are feasible.In the Northeast, the market is saying the public wants buses, and commercial companies can operate them at costs that are a fraction of their competition. On the downside, buses require really good highways and safety improvements that have been recommended for decades by the National Transportation Safety Board, including mitigating the danger of fatigued drivers.I am sorry about the trains. I have loved them all over the world and have gone to lengths to ride them. But, now, I hop on the bus to go to New York..
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Political Lies and Small Business
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Brace for a storm of platitudes, recycled myths, and just old-fashioned
political lies.It will all start with President Obama when he addresses a joint session
of Congress on Thursday about the jobs deficit. Whatever he says will be
followed by scorn and abuse from the Republicans. All the hoary old claims
about the absence of leadership, wasteful spending, punitive regulation
and the need to cut taxes will be regurgitated.The president will have a TelePrompTer full of enchantment tales. He also
will talk of cutting some taxes; maybe because he thinks this will endear
him to the undecided voters, or mollify some Republicans, or because he
consistently tries to make his way in a viciously partisan political world
by endeavoring to sound like the voice of detached reason. It will make no
friends and infuriate the Democratic core. It will be another betrayal to
them.All of the tax ideas, presidential and Republican, will be wrapped in cant
about small business. Oh, do politicians love small business. Apple pie is
good, mom is noble but small business, and small business alone, can cause
the entire Congress of the United States to genuflect.They love the travel agent with six employees with the same passion that
they adore General Electric. The machine tool repair and maintenance
contractor with 40 employees – he is the very embodiment of American
exceptionalism. The woman with a wholesale jewelry business that she
operates with her husband and grown daughter — they are the stuff of
American legend.Nonsense.
If Congress knew anything about the small business world, it would
stop forcing the wrong medicine on the patient. Incorrect therapies won’t
help, no matter how vigorous the applications.To the political establishment, small business is suffering because of
taxation and regulation. Fiddle with these twin bugaboos, the political
narrative goes, and small business will bloom like the bluebells in
spring.Have any of these people ever talked to small business operators? Small
business has many problems, but taxation is seldom one of them. Do they
really think the garment manufacturers on New York’s 7th Avenue are on the
phone, schmoozing about the rate of corporate taxation? More likely they
are talking about why the banks won’t lend, even against collateral, to
heretofore good customers; why imports from all over Asia are laying waste
to their customer base; and why the traffic in the cross-town streets is
horrendous.Like all small businessmen, they don’t agonize over the frustration of
having to meet OSHA and EPA standards — these are irritants. Instead,
they agonize over whether there will be enough money to meet payroll.
Taxes, if any, come once a year, but the payroll keeps the small
entrepreneur anxious all year. It is the ogre that visits every two weeks.To many, government is the problem; but not in the way legislators think.
The problem is the growing shortage of federal and state funds. This
affects many small businesses like builders, excavators, asphalt-layers
and the service industries that owe their survival to small contracts:
social service providers, translators, software writers, and consultants
in just about everything.If you cut budgets, you cut small business.
Then there is the “chaining” of America. Local diners, hardware stores,
pharmacies and other retailing are crushed, annihilated when the chains
move in. The chains are not inherently evil, but they are manifestly
merciless. Walmart is but one of the chains putting small business to the
sword.If those who administer government want to know something about small
business, they should spend a weekend at a strip-mall bakery or any other
firm with less than 50 employees. The experience would radically adjust
the rhetoric. It’s too late for Thursday, but don’t believe what you hear.–For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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Give Yourself a Present, America
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A lightness of countenance has fallen on Washington. I kid you not. Strangers were talking to each other in elevators, smiles in the street made walking a pleasure.
Even President Obama lightened up. At his midweek press conference, the president seemed in an unusually good mood: helping NBC’s Chuck Todd sort out his questions, referring cheerfully to the work ethics of his daughters (and his own), and lampooning the corporate jet set.
Had peace broken out somewhere? On Capitol Hill, in Libya or Afghanistan, between Los Angeles Superior Court judge Stephanie Sautner and Lindsay Lohan — her honor dropping by for a few belts?
No. It all comes down to the prospect of a four-day weekend. It should be three days, but many are able to stretch it to four. Heapings of happiness!
By the joy this little perturbation in routine has wrought, it’s clear that Americans are overstretched, overworked, overstressed and badly in need of R&R — even just a syllable of it — over the Fourth of July weekend.
Also it’s a birthday bash. Uncle Sam has made it through another year and the dollar is still worth having; the barbecue worth lighting; and the hamburger, America’s great contribution to cuisine, worth eating. Even though Budweiser — like so much else nowadays — belongs to a foreign company, millions of us still find it worth drinking.
Hooray! Happy Birthday! For he’s a jolly good fellow! (Uncle Sam, that is).
Unlike many others of the British persuasion, as I once was, I agree with my colleague Martin Walker that Brits shouldn’t feel loss on the Fourth of July, but should be leading the celebration.
Walker, who knows a thing or two about celebrating, says: “I’m not downcast by the victory of honest British colonial farmers over a German king and his German mercenaries.”
That’s right, Americans love the Brits. Otherwise, why would a country that threw off the imperial yoke on July 4, 1776, go bats for the wedding of Prince Harry, heir to the despised throne once occupied by George III?
One thing the Brits do have over us: their vacations. A worker averages about a month a year of vacation.
Of course, it would never work here — especially not in Washington. Think of the anxiety. Oh the fear of being left out, losing your job or just being bored. Americans on long vacations get surly, marriages creak and desperate couples hunch over lunch in faraway places, trying to decide where to have dinner.
No. No. No. Our special genius has been the creation of the long weekend. We have more of them than most countries; they are envied even by the French who talk about — I kid you not again — le long weekend.
We have something here. Instead of pining for more vacation , we should build on the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Memorial Day by working only a four-day week.
I don’t like to point fingers, but there are those in the bureaucracy who are pioneering the new order for us. Around Washington, in the aisles of the supermarket and the sporting-goods emporium, you can hear it every Friday: Some person of impeccable rectitude about other things, declaring, “I’m working from my home office today.”
At the commuter rail station I use, parking is a big problem every day of the week except Fridays, when more than half the spaces are open. Well, not casting aspersions, I have to advise that 80 percent of the riders are government employees. Ah, the lure of the “home office” on Friday.
Here’s my proposal: Increase the workday to 10 hours and have three-day weekends every week. Once again America will be the envy of the world, even if we have to prohibit home-office work by civil servants on Thursdays. This way we’ll be a happier people. We’ll have given ourselves a present that keeps on giving.
Happy Birthday, America. And spare a kind thought for the Brits, who lost the best piece of real estate on Earth. Poor dears. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
January 30th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011