BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? Ray Nagin has finally come up with a hurricane evacuation plan for New Orleans.
Archive for 2006
May 3, 2006
IN THE MAIL: Shelby Steele’s new book, White Guilt : How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.
Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That’s it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.
My associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ian Cornwall, calculates that if oil averages $71 a barrel this year, 10 autocracies stand to make about $500 billion more than in 2003, when oil was at $27. This windfall helps to squelch liberal forces and entrench noxious dictators in such oil producers as Russia (which stands to make $115 billion more this year than in 2003) and Venezuela ($36 billion). Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez can buy off their publics with generous subsidies and ignore Western pressure while sabotaging democratic developments from Central America to Central Asia.
The “dictatorship dividend” also subsidizes Sudan’s ethnic cleansing (it stands to earn $4.7 billion more this year than in 2003), Iran’s development of nuclear weapons ($45 billion) and Saudi Arabia’s proselytization for Wahhabi fundamentalism ($149 billion). Even in such close American allies as Kuwait ($35 billion) and the United Arab Emirates ($36 billion), odds are that some of the extra lucre will find its way into the pockets of terrorists.
Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But we’d be called imperialist oppressors, then.
UPDATE: Various people (with various degrees of enthusiasm) see the above as a call for invasion. It was, rather, a comment on the vacuity of the “imperialist oppressors” language. Though I was probably wrong there anyway: If we really were imperialist oppressors, the critics would be sucking up.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ah, I see that Scott Adams has engaged in a similar thought experiment. His closing line rings true.
But just to troll a bit more, I do think that seizing Saudi and Iranian oil would be entirely morally justifiable on terms usually approved of by the left: They didn’t earn it, they inherited it (it’s like the Estate Tax writ large!). They’re extracting huge profits for fatcats at the expense of the poor. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic theocrats! (Literally!) Surely if it’s ever permissible to redistibute wealth by force, this is the case. Right?
Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias offers a practical objection: That there isn’t enough surplus capacity in Saudi Arabia and Iran to make a difference. That’s possible, but hardly undercuts the point. He also quotes Tim Lambert, who invokes Iraq — but Lambert assumes, wrongly as usual, that Iraq was a war for oil. Had we wanted oil, we could have simply ended sanctions against Saddam, who after years of being limited to what he could launder through corrupt UN bureaucrats would have pumped plenty without us having to invade.
But practicalities aside, the point is — why isn’t war for oil not only morally permissible, but morally required, if the forcible redistibution of wealth in other ways (including “windfall profit” taxes — or Evo Morales’ seizure of natural gas wells in Bolivia) is OK?
MORE: Reader Tom O’Brien writes on practicalities:
Running the Saudi fields wide open would not do much for price. They are now being run at close to their maximum sustainable capacity. Running beyond that level for any length of time damages the reserve and curtails production. Can’t fight Mother Nature regarding the reserve.
The Saudis don’t really like these prices, although they surely enjoy them. They know as well as we do how markets respond to high prices, and the last thing they want is more exploration drilling in other parts of the world, more hybrid cars, more methanol plants, and the great horror of a plug-in hybrid that can run 40 miles on battery alone.
Well, that’s about practicalities — and based on practicality, the Estate Tax is a bust, too! (And the “windfall profits” tax, and, undoubtedly, Morales’ nationalization.)
I’m all for the plug-in hybrids, though. As I noted in our podcast yesterday, I could do my commute plus errands without ever firing up the gas engine. Bring it on!
But while you do, ponder the fact that an arrangement that subsidizes fatcat dictators is sanctioned — and even defended — by people on the left, while even the idea of doing anything about it is condemned. That’s not about practicalities, but philosophies.
And yes, the various lefty bloggers linking to this post and misrepresenting it are both dim and dishonest — but that’s hardly news, is it?
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: As Capt. Ed notes, it was a bad day for PorkBusters yesterday:
The projects that got past Senate pork hawks like Tom Coburn were a $200 million bailout of Northrup Grumman for indemnifyng the defense contractor against losses that its insurers refuse to cover. Coburn faced stiff opposition from Trent Lott, the man who apparently wants to make a career out of defying voters on earmarks, and Thad Cochran. Both Republicans insisted that the government needed to replace the loss, even though Northrup made a 7.1% operating margin in 2005, up from 6.7% in 2004 and 5.6% in 2003. That represent $2.4 billion in profit, an increase from $2.3B in 2004 and $1.9B in 2003.
Why does a corporation that made $2.4 billion in profit need another $200 million from American taxpayers to cover a loss they’ve absorbed in that same year?
Rather than focus resources on the truly needy and on real emergencies, Lott and Cochran have manipulated the relief bill to stick money into Northrup’s pockets. Perhaps folks from Lott’s home state of Mississippi should ask themselves why Lott seems more concerned about the travails of a corporation that had its best year ever than those who had their entire lives wiped out by Katrina. No wonder Lott proclaimed himself “damned tired” of constituents who question his pork-barrel activities — who’d want to keep explaining this? . . .
Congress has a rather narrow view of profit in a free-market society. When ExxonMobil makes 10.7% profit, they decry the “windfall profit” of a corporation. When Northrup Grumman makes 7.1%, they qualify for a bailout.
It’s as if there’s nothing going on but graft and shakedowns.
Last week, the Bush administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested a few hundred illegal immigrants, a move widely dismissed (here and elsewhere) as a for-show bust. But this minor blip in enforcement apparently frightened thousands of illegals into staying home from work, at which point the ICE felt moved to announce that nobody should worry because they didn’t really intend to enforce the law after all.
Jeez. But read the whole thing for some interesting points going beyond this comic incident.
CATHY YOUNG: “Many feminists seem to think that in sexual assault cases the presumption of innocence should not apply.”
WHY TRYING TO SILENCE BLOGGERS BACKFIRES: My TCS Daily column is up.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Porkbusters gets a mention in this Time magazine profile of Sen. Tom Coburn’s anti-pork efforts:
While they may not endorse his views on social issues, Coburn’s allies on his efforts to cut spending are perhaps the two most popular men in the Senate: Illinois Democrat Barack Obama and Arizona Republican John McCain. Before Coburn arrived in 2005, McCain was the chamber’s most vocal basher of wasteful spending, but he has eagerly ceded that to Coburn, while working with the Oklahoma Senator to strategize on how to cut earmarks from this month’s war spending bill. Obama, much to the left of Coburn, is an unlikely friend, but the Senate’s most famous freshman said his and Coburn’s wives became fast friends during the orientation for new senators and their families, and Obama has vocally supported Coburn’s spending efforts. “He’s fearless in his approach,” says Obama. Coburn has also found support from groups like Citizens Against Government Waste and the American Conservative Union, as well as a blog called porkbusters, to which his office is often feeding information about egregious earmarks, in the hopes of stirring opposition in conservative blogs that could embarrass his colleagues into limiting their earmarks.
Sadly, many of his colleagues seem immune to embarrassment, which is why the GOP is in big trouble.
HEH: “Insulting the Prophet is one thing, but insulting Stephen Colbert, the patron saint of the piously correct left! That’s really blasphemy.”
May 2, 2006
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “In some ways, the continuing row over his call for the complete destruction of Israel must baffle Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
OUCH: “The Bush Administration is the definition of openness compared to the New York Times.”
Another ouch: “Trent Lott has not yet recognized that he has a problem.”
We talk to Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics has just published an extensive look at alternative fuels like ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen (you can see the article here), and we had Editor-in-Chief Jim Meigs on to talk about what they found, and what the prospects are for getting away from gasoline — and for the political system’s getting rational about energy and fuel.
We also talk with Henry Copeland of Blogads.com about the future of the blogosphere. Blogads has just released the results of their survey on blog readers, and Henry talks about the results, the blog-advertising business, whether the blogosphere is too commercialized, and what’s likely to come next. Ads on podcasts? Who knows?
You can listen directly (no iPod needed!) by clicking right here, or you can get it via iTunes. There’s an archive of previous podcasts here, and you can get a low-fi version suitable for dialup here.
Music — appropriate for both biofuels and blog advertising — is Audra and the Antidote’s “Sugar Daddy,” available for download here.
As always, my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments and suggestions.
TYPEPAD IS DOWN: No word on how long it’ll be before things are fixed.
UPDATE: Anil Dash emails: “TypePad appears to be down because I think connectivity to the hosting facility has been knocked out for us as well as everybody else in the facility. I’m just finding out more now, but that’s why even the status site is offline, as well as a bunch of other companies’ websites. We’ll be updating the status.sixapart.com blog ASAP with more info.” I notice a number of sites seem to be hard to reach at the moment.
A reader reports that LiveJournal is down, too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Back up now, but I got this email from Anil overnight: “Thanks for taking the time to update, really appreciated after a long, shitty day. Looks like it’s a coordinated denial-of-service attack, but on word if it’s related to the DOS attacks on high profile bloggers last week. Our ops guys aren’t going to be sleeping tonight, but after they’ve had time to breathe, I’ll update you if we find out who the attackers are.”
Hmm. There’s certainly a lot of that going around.
IF YOU READ THE JURIST WEBLOG they’d like you to vote for them for a Webby.
MORE ON FRANCE’S CLEARSTREAM SCANDAL, from Fausta.
THE UN-SILENCED BILL HOBBS blogs about a spending cap amendment sponsored by Tennessee Republican state Senator (and candidate for Governor) Jim Bryson. I think a lot of people are going to wish he were still busy working at Belmont University . . . .
ED CONE: “I’m guessing former Clinton mouthpiece Mike McCurry meant to sound tough and bloggy with this post about net neutrality. It really didn’t work. He sounds like an angry insider who can’t believe a bunch of nobodies dared to challenge him.”
“WHY ZARQAWI IS ALL ALONE:” Plus, why Al Qaeda is retreating from Iraq.
Heck, according to this report, even Zarqawi is hiding out in Syria.
TODD GITLIN WRITES ON the self-inflicted wounds of the academic left, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
CATO@LIBERTY is a new blog from the Cato Institute.
A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES from bloggers on the left and right, about individuals and privacy.
PAJAMAS MEDIA offers a video report from yesterday’s immigration protests in Los Angeles, featuring lots of interesting interviews.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles reader Matthew Holzman emails: “I hope they have more protests. The freeways were flowing smoothly at 5:00pm, and we probably saved as much in gasoline as the cost of the lost man hours!”
If a day without an immigrant means a day without traffic, Angelenos will build a fence on their own.
UPDATE: I’m guessing that the protesters know who not to cross.
IN THE MAIL: Eric Boehlert’s new book, Lapdogs : How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.
UPDATE: Now the reviews are gone.
THE D.C. EXAMINER: “Arrogant politicians like McCain show why Congress desperately needs term limits.”
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More developments:
The playground bully in the Senate _ the Appropriations Committee _ actually took a loss last week at the hands of senators determined to strip so-called pork barrel projects from a bill that’s supposed to be devoted to the war in Iraq and hurricane relief.
And the House this week will vote on requiring members to attach their names to “earmarks” _ those hometown projects slipped into spending bills. The idea is that the sunshine of public scrutiny will mean fewer wasteful, silly sounding projects like $500,000 for a teapot museum in Sparta, N.C.
Lawmakers say voters are getting sick of all this pork; there’s even a recent poll that says reforming earmarks is the most important issue facing Congress. Could it be that politicians are losing their appetite for the other white meat?
Definitely not, alas. And Trent Lott is dissing Bush and bragging about how “wily” he is:
Not only is Lott not worried that Bush might for the first time in his presidency veto a spending bill, Lott thinks quite highly of himself and Sen. Thad Cochran, Lott’s colleague who happens to be Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Senator Cochran and I are wily guys,” Lott boasted to the newspaper.
He was referring to the emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery that Lott and Cochran stuffed with a $700 million earmark to move the “Railroad to Nowhere” in order to clear the way for gambling interests and other developers to construct new facilities along the Mississippi coast.
Lott and other senators pumped the bill to more than $106 billion with earmarks added to the emergency bill that originally included $92 billion. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, failed by one vote last week to secure passage of an amendment that would have stripped the $700 million out of the bill.
Who was the one vote? Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who earlier in the day had told Bush he and others had rounded up enough senators to sustain a presidential veto.
Call me crazy, but it seems like these guys aren’t just killing their party, but actually bragging about it. That doesn’t seem very “wily” to me.
UPDATE: Reader Eric Alexander writes:
I think – really – that he would be just ecstatic if the Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate. I suspect he’s been waiting a long time to get back at the President and the party for stripping him of his leadership status over his tin-eared Thurmond remarks a few years back, and he sees his chance to stick it to them. And I think he’s especially thrilled he can do so while doing what comes naturally to him – pushing pork for his Mississippi good-old-boy cronies.
Well, that’s just another reason to think he deserved to lose his leadership position, isn’t it?