Out of Gas

I'm glad that election day is nearly upon us. I'd really like to get this thing over with. I can't take the suspense much longer. Or the campaign advertisements. My mind was made up long ago, so let's just get to it. I don't need another couple of weeks to figure out who should get my vote.

I'm sort of amazed that in the presidential race there are still supposedly large numbers of undecided voters out there. I don't see what there is at this point that anyone thinks he or she is going to learn about either candidate that we don't all know already. Interesting that the second presidential debate was built around undecided voters questioning the candidates directly.

I thought the range of topics covered by the questions was reasonable. Except for the one to Romney about how he is different from George W. Bush, they were the kinds of topics I would have expected. One question, though, really irritated me. It was this one: "Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it's not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?" It irritated me because it is symptomatic of an attitude toward energy use that shows that nearly forty years after the oil shock of 1973, we Americans still haven't learned a whole lot about energy policy. Our notion of energy policy still comes down to the price of a gallon of gas.

It's symptomatic of this foolishness that as the vital signs of his presidential campaign were growing fainter and fainter, Newt Gingrich decided to focus it on gas prices. Elect me, he said, and I will bring the price of gas down to $2.50 per gallon. I guess that's your proof that Gingrich is a historian and not an economist.

The Fool On His Errand

The honest, and proper, answer to that question would be this: "Yes, I agree with Secretary Chu. The price of gasoline is determined by supply and demand in the world market for petroleum. There is little that the president or the Department of Energy can do in the short run to influence either. In the longer term, we can pursue policies that encourage exploration and technological innovation that can increase the supply. If demand remains stable, that may bring prices down, but not necessarily, because as we extract oil from ever more difficult-to-reach sources, the cost of extracting that petroleum continues to rise, as does the environmental impact.

But we know that demand will not remain stable. As our own economy continues to recover, we know from history that domestic demand will rise. We also need to consider that the combined population of India and China is now about 2.6 billion people out of the world's total of around seven billion, and as those countries continue on a path of rapid development, we know that world petroleum demand is going to steadily increase, keeping pace with, and probably outpacing supply. Moreover, we know that the extraction, transport, refining and consumption of petroleum all take an enormous toll on our environment. And I should also note that a not inconsiderable part of our national defense budget is attributable to the need to ensure that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow unhindered to our shores.

With all this in mind, I believe it should be the policy of US government to raise gas prices, not to lower them. We should impose taxes that reflect the real cost of our continued dependance on oil as an energy source. That will give our citizens an incentive to conserve and our manufacturers of automobiles and home heating equipment an incentive to improve the efficiency of their products. That would be a much more market-oriented approach than trying to directly mandate efficiency standards such as we do with the CAFE standards for automobile gas mileage. Other industrialized countries follow this approach; gasoline taxes in France, Germany or Japan mean that consumers there pay significantly more for a gallon of gas than we do, but their per-capita petroleum consumption is also around half of our own, and nobody who has visited any of those places would seriously claim that their standard of living is lower than ours.

I understand that for some lower-income Americans, who have no alternative to driving in order to get to their jobs or to care for their families, any increase in the price of gasoline does represent a genuine hardship, and we need to address that. We can do so indirectly by using some of those increased tax revenues to make smart investments in public transportation where it makes sense to do so, and some of them to provide commuter mileage tax credits or other subsidies to lower-income Americans for whom public transportation is still not a realistic option.

Whatever happens, we need to recognize that focusing our national energy policy on keeping down the price of a gallon of gas is not the right answer for our country. We need to develop creative, market-driven policies to reduce our dependence on petroleum, especially petroleum that comes from some of the most politically unstable places on the planet, but also petroleum that is extracted in ways that represent a huge risk to the environment. It may be a very long time before we can fully wean ourselves from our dependence on petroleum as an energy source, but we need to start that process, and recognize that it is not a problem we can drill our way out of."

That's the answer I wanted to hear from Obama, but I didn't get it. At least in his answer, Obama did make a case for developing alternative energy sources along with the more traditional ones. Romney sort of paid lip service to that, but in the end, he also said, "I'll get America and North America energy-independent. I'll do it by more drilling, more permits and licenses. We're going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline, I will never know. This is about bringing good jobs back for the middle class of America, and that's what I'm going to do."

And notice that line about "America and North America". I'm not sure what the difference is in Romney's mind. Romney likes to talk about North American energy, which is apparently Romnese for "energy from sources that are in North America but not in the US". That oil that's somehow going to usher in a new era of mass consumption is in Canada, not the US. In Romney's mind that may be "our" oil, but in reality that oil is going to go wherever it brings the best price. That may be to refineries in New Jersey or Texas or California. It may also be to customers in Shanghai or Mumbai. That's just how markets work.

For a guy who likes to go on and on about his successful career in business, market economics somehow doesn't seem to be Romney's strong suit. You'd think he'd really know better than to point out that at the beginning of Obama's term, gas was selling for less than $2 per gallon. "It's because the economy was in the toilet!", I found myself screaming at the TV (I'm not normally one for screaming at the TV—that function is normally performed by My Favorite Wife, when she watches the German national team in some soccer match). So there's that old supply-and-demand thing again. I'm glad that Obama made exactly the same point (though he didn't use the word "toilet").



When he moves a few more inches to the left, I pounce!

Romney's peculiar notions about economics, and mathematics, are also apparent in his tax proposals. I was glad to see Obama being a little more articulate this time around in dissecting Romney's plans for mending the budget. For my money, neither candidate has put a credible plan on the table. But Romney's plans to substantially reduce tax rates, vastly increase defense spending and pay for it all by closing some as-yet unspecified loopholes is simply insulting; it's Romney's "read my lips, no new taxes" moment. Don't take my word for it, ask the Tax Policy Center.


Hey Dad! Kind of reminds you of your tax policy, doesn't it?

The one area in which Romney sort of scored a point or two in my book was during the discussion of the attack on the consulate in Beghazi. The undignified yes-I-did-no-you-didn't exchange regarding whether and when Obama uttered the magic words "act of terror" that was clarified in Obama's favor by narrator Candy Crowley made Romney look a little ridiculous, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of very confused and contradictory information was (and continues to be) disseminated about what happened. Sure, Obama did use those words in his Rose Garden statement the day after the attack, but in his statement he also connected "efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others" to "this type of senseless violence", i.e., he was putting events in Benghazi in the same category as riots that resulted from the insulting (and just plain stupid) film about the prophet Mohammed that had appeared on the Internet shortly before (something I commented on ranted about previously).
 

Did so! Did not! Did so! Did not! Did… Moooommmmmm!

But the real issue, that of whether this attack on the Benghazi consulate could/should have been foreseen and prevented, still does not have any satisfactory answer from Obama. I find it sort of curious that Romney chose not to drill down on that, but instead preferred to split hairs over whether or not the president called it an "act of terror". I also reject his assertion that "this calls into question the president's whole policy in the Middle East"; to conflate this potentially preventable tragedy with what is happening in Syria or Iran, as Romney went on to do, is just incoherent and stupid.

It's too bad that with so much at stake in this election, the most memorable thing from this debate seems to be the "binders full of women" quote. Apart from the awkward peculiarity of the expression itself, it turns out to be yet another application of the Romney/Ryan facts-don't-matter approach. The source of the binder (not "binders") in question, the non-partisan group MassGAP, has made it clear that it was not Romney who reached out to them to recruit potential candidates; on the contrary, MassGAP provided the information to all of the gubernatorial candidates prior to the election.

Tonight's Bedtime Story: Mitt and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good,Very Bad Debate

So now we're down to one last presidential debate. I'll be glad when that's behind us. It's all about foreign policy. I hope that the niveau of the discussion is going to rise above, "I got Bin Laden!" "You always apologize for America!"

Meanwhile, let's check in on what the VP candidates have been up to while their bosses have been duking it out on stage. It turns out that Joe Biden can read babies' minds! He demonstrated this neat trick recently at a campaign rally.

Paul Ryan is staying fit on the campaign trail! Apparently these pictures published in Time Magazine were actually shot some time ago, but I find them immensely inspiring. Congressman Ryan's own little Rocky montage!


Wants To Be Vice President—Doesn't Know How To Operate A Hat

The congressman is also apparently feeling himself drawn back to his fictional working class roots (we previously reported). He recently turned up at a St. Vincent De Paul Society soup kitchen in Youngstown, OH with his family and photographers in tow and proceeded to waste everyone's time with an unwanted and unneeded demonstration of his dishwashing prowess. Apparently the only lasting effect of this little stunt is that some of the organization's donors have pulled their funding because it is supposed to be strictly apolitical. Gee, Paul! I'll bet there are a lot of poor people in Youngstown who are grateful for your terrific charity work!

Dishwatergate Conspirators

Ronnie and Jesus

Something I find peculiar about Republicans/conservatives is the strange compulsion their leaders seem to have to perpetually, and loudly, trumpet their Republican-ness and conservatism. I don't see prominent people on the left perpetually going on and on about what exemplary Democrats they are, or accusing others of not being "liberal" or "progressive" enough. I am not saying that there is nobody on the left who does that, but I don't see leading Democrats like Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Kerry etc. going around impugning the leftist credentials of others, for example. Maybe I suffer from selective amnesia, but thinking back to the last presidential election, in which there were numerous candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, I remember them attacking each other in various ways, some of them pretty scurrilous, but I don't recall any of them accusing one of the others of simply not being ideologically pure enough to deserve the nomination, or putting him- or herself forward as the only one who is.

Observing the current race for the Republican nomination, I see all kinds of examples of that. Here's Rick Santorum telling you that he is the "true conservative" and here he is telling you that Newt Gingrich is some kind of impostor. Before dropping out of the race, Rick Perry wanted you to know that he is an "authentic conservative"; afterward, he insisted that Gingrich was the only true conservative left in the race. Romney says he's not just conservative, he's severely conservative. Today I see that Romney and Santorum are duking it out over each other's conservative credentials ahead of the Michigan primary. With the emphasis on ideological purity, I can't tell whether these guys are running for the presidency of the United States or for the chairmanship of some kind of right-wing politburo. Is it just an expression of insecurity? There's something weirdly fetishistic about this label obsession.

Despite differences of opinion about who today's One True Conservative is, there seems to be a fairly widespread consensus among those who think of themselves as staunchly conservative that one president who did govern in accordance with their worldview was Ronald Reagan. He vastly increased defense spending, and sent troops into Grenada to prevent the commies from taking over, and fought the reds by proxy in Central America. He went to Berlin and told Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall". He fought for deregulation and fired the striking air traffic controllers. He kicked off his presidency with that oft-quoted line, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He did all this and more, establishing himself as one of the more important deities in the pantheon of conservative American heroes. Conservatives look back at the 1980's and wish they could have another president just like Reagan.

And yet… various observers have pointed out that Reagan also raised taxes during his presidency. He signed a law granting amnesty to illegal aliens. He opined that people living below the poverty line should not pay taxes. He cooperated with notorious leftist extremists like Tip O'Neill. Those observers have asserted that with a record like that, it's pretty doubtful that Reagan, the conservative icon, could ever be a serious contender for today's Republican nomination, and I would have to agree with that. I personally have a hard time thinking of Reagan as a moderate, but by the standards of today's Republican party he would be found guilty of too many counts of giving aid and comfort to the enemy to be considered "a true conservative" and an acceptable presidential candidate.

Mortal Enemies

There's another guy who looms large in the background of the current Republican primary race. His name is Jesus; you have no doubt heard of him. We have certainly heard a lot from the candidates about "Judeo-Christian values" in this campaign season, mostly in the context of how these values are under attack from all directions and how only Mitt/Newt/Rick P./Rick S./Michelle/etc. can defend the faith. Newt sums it up nicely: "In a sense, our Judeo-Christian civilization is under attack from two fronts. On one front, you have a secular, atheist, elitism. And on the other front, you have radical Islamists. And both groups would like to eliminate our civilization if they could. For different reasons, but with equal passion." Or: "We see a president who is systematically trying to crush the traditional Judeo-Christian values of America" (Santorum on Obama).

I don't know of any other western democracy in which the appeal to religion is so constantly in the mouths of those who aspire to govern. This perpetual emphasis on how the man upstairs wants us to run the country puts us in good company with countries like, oh, Iran or Saudi Arabia. I guess that when you don't have anything substantive in the way of practical policy initiatives to bring the country forward, it's better to just change the subject and talk about your championing of "Judeo-Christian values".

And just between you and me, I wish these guys would drop the pretense of this ridiculous construction, "Judeo-Christian". Those of us to whom the "Judeo" part applies understand that the notion of shared heritage and purpose implied by that term counts only as long as we accept that wherever it conflicts with the "Christian" part, Jesus trumps Moses. Note to Newt, Rick et al.: We are deeply grateful for your willingness to accord us a kind of dhimmi status in exchange for our votes, but since we know you intend to govern according to the Jesus book, just drop the "Judeo" shtick because you're not fooling anyone anyway.

All this is not to say that living in the Jesus-driven state would necessarily be a bad thing. Let's keep an open mind. What would the Republican program look like if they really let Jesus write their platform?

For starters, I suppose they would push for a pretty strong social safety net: Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:34-40)

No doubt they would campaign to eliminate any special treatment for the wealthy, expecting them instead to contribute to society in proportion to their means: Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:21-24)

They might press for an even-handed and compassionate justice system: So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. (John 8:7)

But enough of that, you get the idea… This Jesus guy sounds like some kind of dangerous socialist nut. We'd better make sure none of these foolish ideas get implemented in our future Christian state. It's a good thing this guy isn't running for the Republican nomination. But then with ideas like that, I guess he wouldn't have a chance anyway.

I say unto thee: Thou must pull thyself
up by thine own bootstraps, my son.

For The Bible Tells Me So

I read earlier today that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declared California's Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage, to be unconstitutional. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who authored the text of the decision, wrote, "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples." I have little doubt that this decision will eventually end up in the Supreme Court, that is, is if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.

Here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, we've had legalized gay marriage since 2004. Oddly enough, in all the intervening years fire has so far not rained down from heaven, nor have we been afflicted by plagues of frogs or locusts or boils. I don't think anyone in my circle of friends and acquaintances has left his or her opposite-sex spouse to take up with a member of the same sex because now it's legal. Basically, nothing has changed in any way that I can discern, other than that I am told that there are people whose life has been made a little more humane because they can do things like visit their life partner in the hospital with the privileges accorded to a legally recognized spouse.

The whole debate around gay marriage really kind of baffles me. I started out as a vessel of the same received wisdom as pretty much any other non-gay kid of my generation that men who prefer men, or women who prefer women, in, er, that way were weirdos and perverts who bring it upon themselves to be ridiculed and ostracized through their own deviant behavior. And then a funny thing happened—I grew up. Along the way I met and, in some cases, befriended people who were just like me in pretty much every way except that they were just sort of wired to want a same-sex rather than an opposite-sex partner. Sure, there were the occasional over-the-top-flamboyant guys or militantly butch women who were just kind of caricatures of themselves, but I have known at least as many straight people who were equally annoyingly in your face about their perpetual lust for members of the opposite sex. So at this point I am neither anti-gay nor pro-gay, I just really don't care who some friend or acquaintance or stranger prefers to spend his life with because I can't see how it affects me in any way. By the same token I fail to see what interest the government should have in depriving such people of equal protection under the law.

Now, you knew I wasn't going to get very far without somehow turning this into a rant against our Republican presidential candidates, right? Well, I don't want to disappoint you. I won't bother with Paul or Santorum, since they're kind of out of the picture at this point (although Santorum's perplexing interpretation via Twitter that "7M Californians had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges" is worth mentioning); I'll just pick on Romney and Gingrich, as usual.

But first, in the interest of equal time, I'll note that President Obama has been hedging his bets in a way that I find kind of irritating. His approach is to try to sidestep the topic entirely by treating it as a matter of states' rights while generally presenting himself as supportive of gay rights. Saying that his views on the matter of same-sex marriage are "evolving" is an obvious and ridiculous ploy to buy time and not have to come out explicitly for or against it before the next election. The word "hypocritical" may not be an exact fit in this context—maybe "disingenuous" is better here—but it certainly comes to mind.

Romney has predictably condemned the Ninth Circuit Court decision, saying, "Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage". He then went on to demonstrate his amazing capacity for holding two entirely incompatible opinions at the same time by saying, "as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices". So if the unelected judges are your unelected judges and decide accordng to your politics and prejudices, it's OK?

And then there's Newt, who never fails to disappoint with his special brand of professorial-sounding hyperbole. Newt says, "With today's decision on marriage by the Ninth Circuit, and the likely appeal to the Supreme Court, more and more Americans are being exposed to the radical overreach of federal judges and their continued assault on the Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States". Newt's been on something of a crusade against the judicial branch in general and the Supreme Court in particular, saying things like, "If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it" and pledging to provoke a constitutional crisis on his first day in office: "I will issue an instruction on the opening day, first day I'm sworn in, I will issue an executive order to the national security apparatus that it will not enforce Boumediene and it will regard it as null and void because it is an absurd extension of the Supreme Court in to the commander in chief's (authority)." (The Boumediene decision was a ruling that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay can challenge their detention in US courts.) So there's an interesting idea for you—let's elect a president who will swear to uphold the Constitution, except for the parts he thinks are really dumb.

Newt's aversion to same-sex marriage is apparently theological in nature, as put forth in an explanation quoted here: "It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman… This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization." I'm sure that the infamous serial adulterer Gingrich, bible scholar that he apparently is, is also familiar with Mark 10:11: "And he [Jesus] saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her." Seems like an open and shut case… for the Bible tells me so.

Bet you won't be smiling when you're burning in hell!

Send in the Clowns

Demonstrating once again his uncanny ability to present himself as a clueless rich guy, Mitt Romney last week told CNN, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." Not to be outdone, metaphorically speaking, Newt said a day or so later, “What the poor need is a trampoline, so that they can spring up… So I’m for replacing the safety net with a trampoline.”

I'm not so sure that the poor need either a net or a trampoline. I think that if you are poor, what you really need is a trapeze! Am I right? Tell me I'm right. Wait, maybe not a trapeze. How about… a tightrope! How about if we teach the poor to juggle? Come to think of it, I guess that what the poor need most is to juggle flaming batons while riding a unicycle across a tightrope.

Or maybe what the poor really need is… decent schools? Safe and affordable housing? Reliable transportation? Protection from legal rackets like payday lending? Healthy food at reasonable prices? Could it be that some substantive policies and programs might be more effective at helping people out of poverty than abstract metaphors? I dunno, I'm just thinking out loud here…

Have I got an idea for you! No, seriously…

To Insanity and Beyond!

Goodtime Charlie's been on another long hiatus… What could be so important as to draw him back to the keyboard?

Glad you asked! I just wanted to make sure that all of you fine readers—yes, all two of you—are doing what you can to get Newt Gingrich elected President. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses, I'm just really excited at the prospect of moving to America's fifty-first state.

In case you missed it, Newt is now quite literally promising the moon if he gets elected. In a speech given in Florida on Jan. 25, 2012, he pledged that by the end of his second term (how's that for confidence), "we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American." He went on to remind his audience that he had once introduced a "Northwest Ordinance for Space" and said that, "when we get—I think the number was 13,000—when we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon they can petition to become a state. And here’s the difference between romantics and so-called practical people. I wanted every young American to say to themselves: I could be one of those 13,000."

Per aspera ad astra

I'm hardly young any more (as my children perpetually remind me), and I will be less so in 2020, but sign me up anyway. I can think of nowhere I'd rather be than hurtling through space on a freezing cold rock living in one of a series of airtight boxes connected by tubes. I imagine it wouldn't be much different than living in Minneapolis. I could pretend to be a giant hamster! And I could finally catch up on my reading.

The whole proposition seems perfectly practical to me. It can't possibly cost very much, or be particularly hard, to get all those people, food, medical supplies, building materials etc. etc. across a quarter of a million miles of open space. Plus, we have all kinds of money that's currently being wasted on infrastructure, healthcare, defense, education, social security and other frivolous nonsense that we could invest in this instead. Or we could hit up China again. You just have to keep in mind the benefits we would get in return, which would be, umm, science and stuff, and it would be really cool.

My hat's off to you, Newt! Keep those great ideas coming!