Brad Warthen's Blog

The Energy Party Manifesto: Feb. 4, 2007

Since, I'm on my Energy Party kick again, it occurs to me to provide you with something never previously published on the blog: My original Energy Party column from the paper. Since it was based on a blog post to start with, I didn't post it here. Consequently, when I do my obligatory "Energy Party" link, it's always to the incomplete, rough draft version of the party manifesto.

So, if only to give myself something more complete to link to in the future, is the full column version, published in The State on Feb. 4, 2007. Here's a PDF of the original page, and here's the column itself:

THE STATE
JOIN MY PARTY, AND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS WILL COME TRUE. REALLY.
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
EVERYBODY talks about the weather, which is as boring and pointless as the cliche suggests. So let's do something about it.
    And while we're at it, let's win the war on terror, undermine tyrants around the globe, repair our trade imbalance, make our air more breathable, drastically reduce highway deaths and just generally make the whole world a safer, cleaner place.
    It'll be easy, once we make up our minds to do it. But first, you Democrats and Republicans must throw off the ideological chains that bind you, and we independents must get off the sidelines and into the game.
    In other words, join my new party. No, not the Unparty I've written about in the past. You might say that one lacked focus.
    This one will be the Energy Party. Or the "Responsible Party," "Pragmatic Party" or "Grownup Party." Any will do as far as I'm concerned, but for the sake of convenience, I'm going with "Energy" for now.
    Like weather, everybody talks about Energy, but nobody proposes a comprehensive, hardnosed plan to git 'er done. So let's change that, go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there's a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do.
    I've made a start on the plan (and mind, I'm not speaking for the editorial board here). Join me, and we'll refine it as we go along:
-- * Jack up CAFE standards. No messing around with Detroit on this one. It's possible to make cars that go 50 miles to the gallon. OK, so maybe your family won't fit in a Prius. Let's play nice and compromise: Set a fleet average of 40 mph within five years.
-- * Raise the price of gasoline permanently to $4. When the price of gas is $2, slap on a $2 tax. When demand slacks off and forces the price down to $1.50, jack the tax up to $2.50. If somebody nukes some oil fields we depend upon, raising the price to $3, the tax drops to $1. Sure, you'll be paying more, but only as long as you keep consuming as much of it as you have been. Which you won't. Or if you do, we'll go to $5.
-- * You say the poor will have trouble with the tax? So will I. Good thing we're going to have public transportation for a change (including my favorite, light rail). That's one thing we'll spend that new tax money on.
-- * Another is a Manhattan project (or Apollo Project, or insert your favorite 20th century Herculean national initiative name) to develop clean, alternative energy. South Carolina can do hydrogen, Iowa can do bio, and the politicians who will freak out about all this can supply the wind power.
-- * Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bends my ear about it almost daily. He apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez, bless him.) This will drastically reduce our transportation-related fuel consumption, and have the happy side benefit of saving thousands of lives on our highways. And yes, you can drive 55.
-- * Enforce the blasted speed limits. If states say they can't (and right now, given our shortage of troopers, South Carolina can't), give them the resources out of the gas tax money. No excuses.
-- * Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course). It makes me tired to hear people who are stuck in the 1970s talk about all the dangerous waste from nuke plants. Nuclear waste is compact and containable. Coal waste (just to cite one "safe" alternative) disperses into the atmosphere, contaminates all our lungs and melts the polar ice caps. Yeah, I know; it would be keen if everyone went back to the land and stopped using electricity, but give it up -- it ain't happening.
-- * Either ban SUVs for everyone who can't demonstrate a life-ordeath need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw that into the winthe- war kitty.
-- * If we don't ban SUVs outright, aside from taxing them, launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships." Say, "Hummers are Osama's Panzer Corps." (OK, hot shot, come to my blog and post your own slogan.) Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI -- absolutely socially unacceptable.
-- * Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin' slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity. But to keep us focused, limit all of these activities to no more than 20 years. Put the limit into the Constitution.
    You get the idea. Respect no one's sacred cows, left or right. Yeah, I know some of this is, um, provocative. But that's what we need. We have to wake up, go allout to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.
    Then, once we've done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems -- no matter whose ox gets gored, or how hard you think it is to do what needs doing. Stop whining and grow up. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.
    How's that sound? Can any of y'all get behind that? Let me know, because we need to get going on this stuff.

Join the party at my -- I mean, our-- Web Headquarters:  http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Tom Friedman's back, and he's going to bat for the Energy Party!

Tom Friedman is finally back after a four-month, book-writing sabbatical. The NYT said he'd be back in April, and he just barely made it! (Now I can stop fielding those phone calls from readers wanting to know what happened to him. Here's a recording of one of those. )

And he's coming out swinging... and best of all, he's coming out swinging on behalf of the Energy Party (whether he knows it or not). His first column is headlined, "Dumb as We Wanna Be," and you'll see it on our op-ed page tomorrow. An excerpt:

    It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
    When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit...

Go get 'em, Tom! That's a very fine leadoff hit. Coming up to bat next, on the same op-ed page, will be Robert Samuelson, and he'll bring Friedman around to score. His piece, succinctly headlined "Start Drilling," is the rhetorical equivalent of a hard line drive down the opposite-field line:

    What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we're almost powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.
    It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves)....

Not start drilling as a substitute for conservation or the search for new fuels (as the ideologues of the right would have it, and the ideologues of the left deplore), but in addition to. Like I said, this is straight out of the Energy Party playbook (yeah, I know this started as a baseball metaphor, not football, but bear with me).

To reduce dependence on tyrannical foreign sources, to help out Mother Nature, to keep our economy healthy, to stoke innovation, to win the War on Terror, and make us healthier, wealthier and wiser, we should adopt the entire Energy Party platform. We should, among other things I'm forgetting at the moment:

• Increase CAFE standards further -- much further.
• Raise the tax on gasoline, NOT reduce it, so that we'll suppress demand, which will reduce upward pressure on prices, and we'll be paying the higher amounts to ourselves rather than America-haters in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and yes, Saudi Arabia.
• Use the proceeds for a Manhattan Project or Apollo Project (or whatever else kind of project we choose, as long as we understand that it's the moral equivalent of war) to develop new technologies -- hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, what have you -- and shifting the mass of the resources to the most promising ones as they emerge.
• Reduce highway speed limits to 55 mph, to conserve fuel and save lives (OK, Samuel? I mentioned it.) And oh, yeah -- enforce the speed limits. The fines will pay for the additional cops.
• Drill in ANWR, off the coasts, and anywhere else we can do so in reasonable safety. (Yes, we can.)
• Increase the availability of mass transit (and if you can swing it, I'd appreciate some light rail; I love the stuff).
• Fine, jail or ostracize anyone who drives an SUV without a compelling reason to do so. Possible propaganda poster: ""Hummers are Osama's Panzer Corps."

And so forth and so on.

My point is, no more fooling around. It's way past time to get serious about this stuff, and stop playing little pandering games. Let's show a little hustle out there. And no dumb mistakes running the bases out there, fellas...

P.S. -- The name of the book Mr. Friedman's been writing, which will come out in August, is Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America. So yeah, he's got an economic stake in these concepts. Well, more power to him. There's money to be made in doing the smart thing, and to the extent he can persuade us to move in that direction, he deserves to get his taste.Just to help him out, here's video of him talking about these ideas. Here's a link to his recent magazine piece on the subject.

A Grownup Party forum

As I mentioned back here, sometimes I call the UnParty the Energy Party (depending on the subject at hand), and once or twice I've referred to the Grownup Party. That kicked off a discussion that I think has a certain relevance to some of the philosophical friction that vexes us these days. Here's the discussion:

Doug, I give you credit for being a consistent anarchist...but don't you support parental "authority"?

Posted by: Randy E | Apr 30, 2008 9:17:05 AM

Not coercive authority... I should be able to influence my children through my words and actions, not by threats or intimidation.

I want a government based on ethics, productivity, and fairness.   We have a government based on lies, inefficiency, and
greed.   

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 9:48:46 AM

Actually, whenever I have disputes with libertarians, I do so as a parent. I'm in my 32nd year of being a parent. I have five kids and three grandchildren, and my worldview is that of a parent. Whenever I hear people standing up for their "right" to do something stupid -- such as not wear motorcycle helmets on the public roads -- I hear the voice of a child. By now, it's sort of hard-wired into me.

Lots of people look at laws in terms of "what this means to me" in terms of "what I get to do" or "what gets done to me." I tend to look at society as a whole and think, Is this a good idea overall? or Does this make society safer, or healthier, or wealthier? or Is this the logical way for society to function?

I don't think, Do I want to pay this tax? or Do I think I should have to buckle my seat belt? To me, those are unacceptably self-centered questions. This makes for profound disagreements, because the basic cognitive processes, the entire perspective going in, is very, very different.

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 9:52:30 AM

Brad,

You may not understand this but my view on society is the same as yours: Is this a good idea overall? Does this make society safer, or healthier, or wealthier? Is this the logical way for society to function?

And then I examine the issue using my own personal experience as reference. Take taxes for example... I look at the issue logically based on the taxes I pay and conclude that a) the system is illogical b) the use of tax dollars is inefficient and c) the tax burden is unfairly applied.
I don't want MY taxes to be lower, I want EVERYONE's taxes to be lower... because I believe our economy would be far better off for EVERYONE if we had less government. The same logic applies to my views on Social Security, healthcare, education, etc.

Your world view is what gives us the government we have today. One where we citizens pay people to sit around making crucial decisions like: when can we sell beer and wine on Sunday? what time does a store need to open on Sunday? what tax breaks does a newspaper deserve that other companies do not? should we give people age 785 and over a 1/2% sales tax break? how much of the taxpayers' money should we give to the Okra Strut? and on and on it goes. Completely wasted effort... I want to see that abolished for EVERYONE's benefit, not my own.

Big government types are worse than selfish - they take what isn't theirs.

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 10:52:03 AM

And I see those as unrelated questions, not in terms of some sort of overriding conflict between "government" and... what -- "ungovernment?" But you're right in that government in one sense or another is involved in all those decisions. What I wonder about is what you see as the alternative.

Basically, we have this thing called a civilization. But even in the most chaotic, anarchic situations, certain arrangements arise among human beings that determine how they are going to live together (or NOT live together). Such things seem unavoidable in a group of any sort of social animals. With gorillas, you have a whole network of decisions and arrangements that tend to be built around the overriding question of, "Who gets to be the alpha male?"

Things get more complicated with humans because we are a verbalizing race, and think in symbols and abstractions that can't be communicated without language. But everywhere that there are two or more humans together, some sort of arrangement or agreement has to be arrived at in terms of how to interact and arrange things, from the ownership of property to acceptable behavior.

In the closest thing to a state of nature -- a place where government has utterly collapsed, such as in Somalia; or a place where conventional government is not recognized as legitimate, such as Sicily over the centuries -- you have something closer to the "alpha male" model found among other creatures. In Somalia, it's warlords. In Sicily (and sometimes among transplanted communities of Sicilians) you have a system of bosses and underbosses who hold power through the most elemental system of violence-backed "respect."

Now THAT is a system in which somebody is, as you say, taking what isn't theirs.

Actually, through much of human history, the warlord model has held sway, in such disparate settings as pre-communist China and Europe during the middle ages. Europeans called it feudalism. Under such a system, wealth that is coerced from weaker members of the society is used in such capital projects as building fortresses for the warlords. What you don't see in a system such as that is a system of roads. For such infrastructure as that, which might economically benefit the society more broadly, there has to be a different governing system. For well over 1,000 years, Europeans continued to use roads the Romans had built because that was the last time there was a broad government with an overarching concept of acting on behalf of something broader -- in that case, an empire in which the rule of law was only helpful if you were a Roman.

You saw some city-states rise up in Italy, and bands of city states along the Baltic and in other regions, in which councils and other decision-making bodies created infrastructure and regulations that facilitated commerce that created wealth for a somewhat larger group.

Anyway, to speed ahead... in this country we came up with representative democracy as a means for a free people to work out questions of how they would arrange themselves socially and make the decisions that WILL BE MADE one way or another among any group of humans. Once everyone gets a voice like that, all sorts of questions will come up: Do we need a new road? OK, how will we pay for it? Some people will not want to see alcohol sold at all, others will have an opposite view. Perhaps for a time, the community will strike a compromise: OK, we'll allow alcohol to be sold in our community, but not on Sunday, because there is a critical mass in the community that finds such activities on a Sunday beyond the pale, and those who don't feel that way go along to get what they want on the other six days.

Of course, laws governing alcohol get far more complicated than that, with debates over where to draw the lines in terms of operating a car on the PUBLIC roads after drinking, whether minors can drink or even hang out in drinking establishments, and so forth. And all of these are legitimate areas for regulation as long as we, acting through this system of representative democracy, decide they ARE legitimate areas for such.

Government, and politics, are in our system the proper place for deciding where all those lines are.

In our constitutional system, we have in writing certain guarantees to prevent a government answering to a majority doesn't trample certain fundamental rights (life, liberty, and such) of any individuals, including those in political minorities. This does not, of course, mean that individuals can blow off the more general will. You can't commit murder just because it's in keeping with your personal value system. Nor can you take your neighbor's car without his permission, or poison his cat, or engage in insider trading, or sell beer in a community that has legitimately (acting through the proper processes) decided to make that illegal.

This is a great system; it beats the hell out of doing things according to the whim of the local warlord. And everyone -- libertarians, authoritarians, Christians, Wiccans, what have you -- get to make their case in the public square.

Some libertarians, unfortunately, seem to regard the political and governmental decisions that THEY DISAGREE WITH -- a tax they don't want to pay, for instance -- as being illegitimate. But they aren't.

Each and every one of us accepts losing political arguments, and submitting to the resulting regulations or laws or lack thereof -- as the price of living in this (I would argue) highly enlightened system of making social decisions. We accept it rather than go live in a place where only brute force counts.

That doesn't mean we don't make our case for the next election, and so forth.

Is anything I'm saying here making sense to you?

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 11:51:33 AM

Also, Brad, your view of government is what gets us things like rebate checks to stimulate the economy and gas tax holidays.   

McCain claims both of those are great ideas designed to help everybody out when, in reality, he supports them for purely selfish reasons - to dupe voters so he can get elected President. He hasn't got the guts to tell the truth. His own personal ambition means more to him than the truth. Guess he'd make a good libertarian, huh?

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 11:56:27 AM

You can't commit murder just because it's in keeping with your personal value system. Nor can you take your neighbor's car without his permission, or poison his cat, or engage in insider trading, or sell beer in a community that has legitimately (acting through the proper processes) decided to make that illegal.
-Brad

Murder or killing the neighbor's cat are issues not in dispute by anyone, libertarians or otherwise. Those are acts that clearly affect other people and clearly must involve intervention by the government. Doug nor anyone else has suggested the legalization of murder. Clearly that is the mother of all non-sequetors.

But selling or buying beer on Sunday is completely different. That is a decision which rightly belongs in a class of activities that can and should best be handled by individuals without interference from the government because it has no affect on others. That is true regardless of who has their say in the public square. If I want to buy beer on Sunday that is a decision that should be made on the basis of my own conscience, religious views and other factors that only I can evaluate. It's no one else's business if I buy beer on Sunday. Same with video poker, pot smoking, what I do with my own body - including who I sleep with. It's no one's damn business, period.

Let's try another example that perhaps Brad can understand. What if some religious extremist came to power and, with the help of Congress, decided that only their religion could be exercised. The majority of the people agree. The folks from the banned religions had their say in the public square but were overruled. Brad could no longer attend the Catholic Church he's been a member of for decades.

Or, let's say that all movies that depict the political process in an unflattering light must now be banned. The Manchurian Candidate can not be shown any longer as a result.

Or, perhaps hitting close to home, what if the only newspaper allowed is the one run by the government. Even though The State has run editorials oppossing this the law passes anyway. The day after the law passes the government troops occupy The State paper's operation and begin publishing their own spin on the world.

According to Brad's world view all of these events are a legitimate intrusion into the way people conduct their lives. 

Posted by: bud | Apr 30, 2008 12:51:57 PM

Right, Bud. I don't want all government abolished, just some of it. I don't want to abolish all taxes, just some of them. I don't want to repeal all laws, just those that intrude on personal rights.

The whole drug issue is a perfect example. Nobody should ever go to jail for using drugs unless they end up doing some harm to another person. We have a society filled with people popping anti-depressants and sleeping pills, abusing alcohol, etc. and yet we have law enforcement people spending time and resources making sure adults don't smoke a joint. This is a case where the moral minority in power feels a need to enforce its will upon people.

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 1:27:26 PM

Actually, bud, what you just said is completely inconsistent with what I wrote. So this is a non-argument.

And Doug, come on: When a majority wants cocaine to be legal (again), it will be. I direct you to the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, which were followed by the 21st Amendment...

A lot of people (primarily libertarians) point to Prohibition as evidence that such things "don't work." Nonsense. Prohibition went away for the same reason it came in-- the prevailing political will of the time, acting with sufficient force to change the constitution (which is what would be necessary for bud's farcical scenario to work, and good luck that that one, by the way).

In other words, "Prohibition doesn't work" only makes sense when you say, "Prohibition doesn't work if we don't want it."

Doug is using the reasoning of the child -- someone OUT THERE is imposing something on my in contradiction of my sovereign will. With the child, it's the parent; with Doug, it's this alleged "minority in power."

I don't look at the world that way, because I am not alienated from the American political system. Therefore I can say WE decide something, whether it was my idea or not. I don't see the decision-making apparatus as being something OUT THERE.

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 1:43:56 PM

Why do people compress files -- or use PDFs?

Here's a pet peeve. I needed to share with a colleague a handful of Word files that had been sent to me. Unfortunately, they had been e-mailed to me as a compressed folder attachment, and my colleague didn't have the unzip software.

So I had to unzip the things, save them to a folder, and then e-mail them to her.

My question is, why do people do that -- create unnecessary barriers that just make work on both ends? The total size of all these files was less than a 72 dpi photo, so there was no need whatsoever. The e-mail went out in the blink of an eye.

I can only conclude that such items are generated by people who don't know much about computers, or whose knowledge is 10 years out of date.

And another thing -- why are so many things on the Web in PDF format, which takes my browser SO much longer than HTML, and can't be searched as easily, and all sorts of other mean, nasty, ugly things? I can understand when it's an image of a document that only exists in hard copy form -- say, a 30-year-old newspaper page. But most documents these days start out in electronic form. Why not keep things simple, and keep the interaction smooth?

The usual culprits in this instance are academics.

A Brad's Blog primer

Noticing that this recent post had attracted some first-time-readers, I thought I'd greet them and give them a quick orientation. And the message I wrote sort of said some stuff that it might be good to remind everybody of occasionally. So I hereby elevate that quick primer to separate-post status:

Marie, Joshua, thanks for joining us. Sorry you're disappointed, Joshua, but bear with us. And Marie, what part of Tampa are you from? I went to high school for two years there. Robinson High. A long, long time ago.

It occurs to me to give y'all a quick primer on what we're about here. I'm the editorial page editor of South Carolina's largest newspaper. We (the newspaper's editorial board) endorsed John McCain in the GOP primary, and Barack Obama in the Democratic -- and had the happy satisfaction of seeing both of our candidates win.

I think the possibility of an Obama-McCain contest in the fall will be the closest thing to a no-lose situation that I've seen in my adult lifetime -- and I first voted in 1972.

This doesn't mean being blind to either candidate's faults. I'm turned off by McCain's pandering on gas taxes, and Obama has a problem with Mr. Wright -- no wishing that away.

Sometime folks come here and have trouble getting their bearings, trying to decide whether this blog goes to the right or the left. Neither. I'm the founder of the UnParty, sometimes also known as the Energy Party -- depending on the subject at hand. I've also been known to call it the Grownup Party. I'm basically fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans, although I like some individuals in both parties.

Anyway, welcome.

I should add this: I try, I really try, to encourage a certain level of civility around here. I also try to discourage pointless, cliche-ridden partisan back-and-forth slogan-chanting of the sort you can get out on your ordinary, run-of-the-mill blogs.

But I've been pretty laissez-faire about it lately, and it seemed like time to crack heads. So I deleted a couple of, shall we way, less-than-constructive comments back on this post, and banned the posters. Just so y'all know. One was obviously beyond the pale (both the "N" word and the "F" word crowded into a surprisingly short, and distressingly unoriginal, composition), and the other was someone who had demonstrated time and again that he was not here in good faith.

The great thing is that I haven't had to do that in awhile. I'm not sure whether that's because y'all have all become so profound and high-minded, or I've just gotten more callous. Anyway, thanks for what most of y'all do.

One last thing -- to get full value out of the blog, you've gotta follow the links...

Did Obama get the job done in denouncing Wright?

There was no question, as this day dawned, that Barack Obama was going to have to denounce his ex-pastor in unequivocal terms -- no more of that, Well, you just have to understand about the black church stuff.

Right now, I'm trying to decide rather urgently -- did he go far enough in what he said today? I don't mean "far enough" to satisfy me, or even you, necessarily. I just mean, did he do what he had to to save his candidacy? Because there's no question in my mind that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's statements of the last two days put the Obama campaign below water.

After failing with white middle-class voters in Pennsylvania -- and not least of all because of what we'd already heard from the Wright pulpit -- this latest stuff could not be allowed to stand.

Normally, I'd allow myself a little time to decide whether what Sen. Obama said today was enough. But at the moment, I've trying to decide whether it makes the Bob Herbert column I just put on tomorrow's op-ed page too outdated.

We have this problem with The New York Times. While The Washington Post, for instance, gives us its opinion columnists in plenty of time for us to run them the same day that the Post does, The Times takes a far more self-centered approach, not moving its copy until it's damned well good and ready -- which is generally hours after our next day's pages are done. Consequently, when we run columns by Herbert, Dowd, Brooks, et al., it's generally a day later. Which is not usually a problem. A good opinion is a good opinion a day later.

Anyway, Bob Herbert had a strong column on the Wright situation this morning, and I picked it for tomorrow over -- well, over a lot of things, but in the end, it was down to that or a Samuelson piece that's embargoed until Wednesday. I chose the Herbert. But his column says, in part:

    For Senator Obama, the re-emergence of Rev. Wright has been devastating. The senator has been trying desperately to bolster his standing with skeptical and even hostile white working-class voters. When the story line of the campaign shifts almost entirely to the race-in-your-face antics of someone like Mr. Wright, Mr. Obama’s chances can only suffer.
    Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.
    Hillary Clinton is taunting Mr. Obama about his unwillingness to participate in another debate. Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race.
    Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Then today, Obama comes out swinging on the issue...

So right this moment, I'm trying to decide whether to run Herbert because he still makes good points, or ditch him because Obama has at least tried to do something Herbert says he needed to do.

Right now, I'm at the coin-toss stage...

Hillary joins McCain in pandering on gas tax; Obama stands up to them both

This has been a busy day and I'm just getting around to some basic things now. But I couldn't let the day pass without noting how right Obama is about this:

Obama says rivals Clinton, McCain pandering on gas tax
By MIKE GLOVER and BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writers
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Democrat Barack Obama dismissed his rivals' calls for national gas tax holiday as a political ploy that won't help struggling consumers. Hillary Rodham Clinton said his stance shows he's out of touch with the economic realities faced by ordinary citizens.
    Clinton and certain Republican presidential nominee John McCain are calling for a holiday on collecting the federal gas tax "to get them through an election," Obama said at a campaign rally before more than 2,000 cheering backers a week before crucial primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. "The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is tell you exactly what you want to hear."
    Clinton, who toured the Miller Veneers wood manufacturing company in Indianapolis, said "there are a lot of people in Indiana who would really benefit from a gas tax holiday.
    "That might not mean much to my opponent, but I think it means a lot to people who are struggling here, people who commute a long way to work, farmers and truckers," Clinton said. She has called for a windfall tax on oil companies to pay for a gas tax holiday.
    "Senator Obama won't provide relief, while Senator McCain won't pay for it," Clinton said. "I'm the only candidate who will provide immediate relief at the pump, with a plan."
    With his comments, Obama continued a running dispute over whether ending collection of the gas tax is the quickest and best way to help consumers. Leading in delegates and the popular vote, Obama in recent days has focused on McCain, but he broadened that criticism Tuesday to include Democrat Clinton.
    "Now the two Washington candidates in the race have decided to do something different," said Obama. "John McCain started it, he made the proposal, and then Hillary Clinton said 'me too.'"
    The plan would suspend collecting the 18.4 cent federal gas tax 24.4 cent diesel tax for the summer.
    He said drying up gas tax collections would batter highway construction, costing North Carolina up to 7,000 jobs, while saving consumers little.
    "We're arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say they did something," said Obama.
    "Well, let me tell you, this isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's designed to get them through an election," said Obama. He said his call for middle-class tax cuts would be far more beneficial than suspending gas tax collections.
    Obama took a different view on the issue when he was an Illinois legislator, voting at least three times in favor of temporarily lifting the state's 5 percent sales tax on gasoline.
    The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June of 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago.
    During one debate, he joked that he wanted signs on gas pumps in his district to say, "Senator Obama reduced your gasoline prices."
    But the impact of the tax holiday was never clear. A government study could not determine how much of the savings was passed on to motorists. Many lawmakers said their constituents didn't seem to have benefited. They also worried the tax break was pushing the state budget out of balance.
    When legislation was introduced to eliminate the tax permanently, Obama voted "no." The effort failed, and the sales tax was allowed to take effect again.
    Responding to Obama's criticism, McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said the Illinois senator "does not understand the effect of gas prices on the economy. Senator Obama voted for a gas tax reduction before he opposed it."
    Bounds was deliberately echoing one of Democrat John Kerry's most troublesome missteps of the 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry said of funding for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
    Obama and Clinton both opened their campaign day in North Carolina. Clinton toured a research facility and collected the prized endorsement of Gov. Mike Easley.
    "It's time for somebody to be in the White House who understands the challenges we face in this country," said Easley, in announcing his backing of Clinton. She then promptly headed for a string of events in Indiana.
    "The governor and I have something in common - we think results matter," said Clinton.
    Easley is popular with white, working-class voters that have formed the base for Clinton's success in recent primaries.
    Clinton also collected an endorsement from Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who praised "her support in rural America, her commitment to national security and her dedication to our men and women in uniform."
    Skelton, a conservative Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, was among a half-dozen Democratic House members called to meet with Clinton after she won the Pennsylvania primary last week.
    While Obama is favored in North Carolina, the race in Indiana is very tight, and Obama was heading there Wednesday.
    Obama collected endorsements of his own during the day: In Kentucky, Rep. Ben Chandler, son of former Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler, gave Obama his backing ahead of that state's May 20 primary, and in Iowa, Democratic National Committee member Richard Machacek - a supporter of former Sen. John Edwards before he dropped out of the presidential race - switched his support to Obama.
    Interest in the two primaries next week has been high. Officials in Indiana said nearly 90,000 people have cast early ballots, far outpacing absentee turnout in 2004.
    At stake Tuesday are 115 delegates in North Carolina, and 72 in Indiana.
Beth Fouhy reported from Indianapolis. Associated Press writers Christopher Wills in Springfield, Ill., and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report.

Obama's the only one acting like a responsible grownup here. He's also the only one speaking up for Energy Party values.

What McCain and Clinton are both doing on this is appalling. They're treating us like two-year-olds, and proposing to act in direct opposition to the nation's interests.

Rev. Wright still fails to clarify

Just in case anyone was still confused, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright emerged over the last day or so to explain (I think) what I've already said about his sermons: He meant what he said the first time.

It seems he was being "descriptive," not "divisive."

Asked whether he thought some of the things he said might be less than "patriotic," he changed the subject -- he mentioned his service in the Marine Corps in his youth, and mentioned that Dick Cheney never served. To which I say, "Huh?" To elaborate, thank you for your service, Reverend -- I stand in awe of anyone who has been a Marine. But did you mean "God Damn America" or not? Were you being ironic, or stating a wish that was not your own, or was that "descriptive?" And how does that message square with Semper Fidelis?

I should mention that he also explained that if you take exception to his message, you're a racist. Just so you know.

He also made the same argument that has been made in his behalf by others, that his remarks have been taken out of context -- mere "soundbites." I'm still waiting to hear the context that makes "God Damn America" mean something else. Sadly, I've not heard it yet.

Poor Obama. With friends like this one...

Payday lenders reduced to quoting McGovern

This release came in today from the Community Financial Services Association (Tommy Moore's employers), which among other things cited the organization's Quote of the Month:

“Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.”

George McGovern
Former South Dakota Senator
1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate
Wall Street Journal

... which of course reminds me of something I didn't like about McGovern, and which I had forgotten until I read that piece in the WSJ recently. Actually, it's a problem I had with the Left of those days -- they were way anti-government. We have a letter on tomorrow's edit page from one of those people who considers motorcycle helmet laws to be the first step to totalitarianism (I am not making this up). Such folks would have been at home in the Left in 1972.

And such people are not considered to be liberals any more -- in fact, some of the most fiercely anti-government types now actually claim to be "conservatives" -- which of course is one of the many reasons why I insist that the "liberal" and "conservative" labels haven't made sense for some time.

That aside, I find myself wondering -- whom is this quotation intended to persuade? Certainly not the GOP majority over at the State House. Maybe Tommy and the gang thought sending this out to the "liberal" media might have a salutary (from CFSA's point of view) effect.

If so, it didn't work in my case. But maybe I'm not typical.

Somebody's Big, Stupid Second Cousin

There was an intriguing piece today in the WSJ applying the principles of The Wisdom of Crowds to predicting the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. The logic of it was persuasive when it invoked Wikipedia, which I find to be far more useful and reliable than detractors claim (when people say it's inaccurate, I want to know, Compared to what source of such breadth and depth?)

It was less persuasive in the preceding sentence, when it said,

This collective intelligence also accounts for why Google results, determined by an algorithm reflecting the popularity of Web results matching a search, are so relevant....

Today, wearing my vice president hat, I heard a presentation on new vistas of user-specific smart online advertising that the presenter described more than once in "Big Brother" terms -- not as a bad thing, but in terms of Big Brother's storied effectiveness and, I suppose, intrusiveness into private thinking patterns.

But you know what? So far, I've been hugely unimpressed by the effectiveness of software that is supposed to get to know me well enough that it can predict what I want. Take Netflix, for instance. I have freely given Netflix more than its share of info on my preferences. I have, for instance -- and I'm embarrassed to admit this -- rated 1,872 movies on the one-through-five-star system. Yes, that's one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two. Any time Netflix has said I need to "rate more movies" -- and it seems to have an insatiable appetite in this regard -- I have taken a few moments (in the evenings, of course) to oblige.

I have done this in a vain attempt to give Netflix enough info to at least make a wild guess as to what sort of movies I like. It still doesn't seem any deeper or more intuitive than what a clerk at an '80s-style video store might have guess after less than a dozen rentals. Or so it seems to me.

For instance, Netflix is convinced I've got a fierce hankering to watch "Classics" -- you know, movies with Clark Gable or Myrna Loy or whatever. Apparently, this is based on the fact that I've given high ratings to, for instance, "It Happened One Night" and "The Thin Man." But of course I give those high ratings! Any literate movie fan would! That doesn't mean I want to see them again, or that I want to see lesser films with the same actors in them! I don't have a black-and-white jones here, people. I just acknowledge quality, and I think my judgments along those lines are fairly conventional, really. What I need you to do is extrapolate what I might like among films I haven't seen or heard about...

Whatever. Anyway, this sort of software hasn't figured me out, even when I've wanted it to. It's more like somebody's stupid second cousin than Big Brother.