Wish I Had Known…
That eastbound buses on K street only run every half hour during the afternoon rush hour on June 30, 2009 and are jam packed with tremendously overweight people.
I seriously watched 20 buses go by going north, south, and west before any of the 3 lines going east arrived.
Filed under: Washington D.C. | Leave a Comment
Tags: DC, Downtown DC, K Street
The Horror
Given the harsh realites of the 20th century I’m often surprised that this type of narrative isn’t more common:
But it should be said clearly that today’s sense of outrage about the depredations of the Bush administration is in part about the nature of the depredations, and in part about the fact that our ethical senses have become more refined. World War II was something like the nadir of humane conduct in world history. Back then you could be deliberately targeting enemy civilians for mass death and still be the good guy in the war. Heck, you could be Stalin and still be the good guy. It was a bad time.
Only in brief flashes of cultural awareness do you really see people wonder how humanity can behave so monstrously. And while I’d agree we’ve moved in the right direction since World War II, it’s more that our institutions, technologies, and global power disparities have created a less violent world then that human sensitivities have changed. If anything we were more reflective about violence in the past.
Filed under: Culture, International, Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: War, World War II
Things I Don’t Believe
That none of the good ole boys that have risen to high office throughout the history of South Carolina ever cheated on their wives.
I mean Strom Thurmond had a secret child and married a beauty pageant winner 40 years his younger.
Filed under: Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: Mark Sanford, South Carolina
Big Picture on Climate Change
One thing that’s daunting about working on Climate Change is the multitude of factors which you need to consider. Crafting and sustaining legislation to address Climate Change will take place of most if this century and actually stabilizing the world’s carbon trajectory involves coordinating the entire global economy. So when you talk about the big picture for Climate Change, it’s a really big picture.
Which explains why you’ve got several major groups like Greenpeace withholding their support for the current Climate Change legislation. Looking at the bill from different perspectives or time frames really changes your view of the bill. Here are three viewpoints that are dominating the debate:
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We Can Do Better.
I think this view is largely focused on short term domestic change. It’s undeniable that Waxman-Markey has some warts, but to take it further it’s even true that many of those warts could be avoided using alternative legislative strategies. The primary method would be dropping the weak Cap and Trade elements and focusing on green energy and green jobs. Sustainable energy has more friends and less enemies then Cap and Trade. You design a policy that alters our energy trajectory substantially while reducing the agitation of coal, oil, and agriculture interests. Further because there would be no offset program to abuse you could likely craft legislation that reduced carbons emissions more and cost consumers less in the next 5 years.
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This is Bill is Revolutionary.
This position, which has been expressed President Obama, Al Gore, John Podesta, is much more focused on the long term. The Waxman-Markey bill sets a path towards dramatic long term carbon emissions reductions. Reducing carbon emission will become a formal national goal for the next 40 years. That’s a game changer, that only a Cap and Trade system like Waxman-Markey can deliver.
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The World Needs Us To Pass This Bill
A complementary argument to the above would be to focus on international change. It’s essential for us to commit to formal carbon reduction targets to facilitate action by Europe, China, India, and other big emitters. A bad bill that helps facilitate international action in China and India is worth more then a great bill that doesn’t set demonstrate we’re committed making tough change and thus undermines international action.
And it only gets more complicated when you start to critique each of these viewpoints. How much better could this bill really be and still get passed? Wouldn’t we make similar long term commitments sooner or later? Who says this bill will spur international action?
Each of the above perspectives contains a lot of truth, but ultimately the international and long term aspects of this debate need to carry the day. We need Waxman-Markey to become law and worry about fixing it through future legislation and impacting the rule making process, and monitoring the implementation of the bill. Particularly for income protection I think there are genuine opportunities to revisit and fix the policy.
There’s a lot of danger in passing Waxman-Markey, it could be too little too late, it could be politically harmful, and it could damage the integrity of the environmental movement, but those dangers are present in all the alternative courses of action. If we can make carbon reduction a national priority even if the related policy is imperfect we need to support that effort.
Crossposted at Carrots and Sticks
Filed under: No Category | 2 Comments
Tags: Global Warming, Waxman-Markey
Support a Public Plan
Happily for politicians contemplating the inclusion of such a plan, a robust public option is also the best way available to control costs and minimize the need for new taxes. So just keep in mind that when people talk about political obstacles to a robust public plan, they’re not talking about mass public opinion as an obstacle—they’re talking about the wealth and power of relatively narrow interests.
The current system is broken, the public is strongly supportive of reform, and yet moderate Democrats en mass are concerned that a public plan would be “unfair” to the same people that broke the health care system in the first place. That moderate Dems would even contemplate voting against a health care reform package in a floor vote is hard to understand, much less badger us for burdening the poor private insurers that have been sucking the American economy dry.
Crossposted at Carrots and Sticks
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Tags: Health Care Reform, Public Plan
Both the Nationals and Orioles won yesterday, and both are currently winning streaks.
They told me climate change would increase the chances of freak occurrences like this, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon…
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Tags: Baseball, MLB, Nationals
In Other News
The WordPress Dashboard tells somebody found this blog by typing “cat condom” into a search engine.
I have no recollection of writing about condoms or cats, much less the two together. But Google’s search engine is way smarter then me, so if they reached this blog using Google and the search term “cat condom” my writing must be relevant somehow.
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It was pretty predictable that the years of idol worship surrounding Alan Greenspan would be followed by widespread and virulent condemnation, which would in turn be followed yet further revisionism suggesting he was not in fact responsible for all bad things.
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Tags: Federal Reserve, Financial System
Back in the day I was interviewed by a Washington Post reporter at a mobilization for global justice (anti-IMF/World Bank) protest. The reporter asked 4 times if I was disappointed at the size of the protest. I answered:
“No. No. No. No.”
Obviously my quote didn’t make the paper, because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. So I found this the title of this blog post at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress interesting:
MacCracken: The New York Times quote did not represent my views, and it did not even represent the reporter’s attempt to portray my comments
More then any other issue the desire for balance has screwed up coverage of Climate Change. For years they quoted the non-scientist industry propagandists to “balance” the statements of actual scientists. These days they’ve canned the industry astro turf, but they still try hard to find something to undercut activist talking points. So they talk to legitimate people and cherry pick their comments.
The coverage of climate change has improved greatly, but sometime I wonder if prominent activists aren’t better refusing to talk on record. Talk off record, and for on the record quotes use e-mail. Seems easier then repeating yourself as they try wrangle a different answer then you just gave.
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Tags: Climate Change, Climate Progress, Global Warming, NY Times
DC Monsoon
It’s raining for like the 29th time in last 30 days.
Time to build a boat?
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Tags: Rain, Washington D.C., Weather
Twitter Revolution
I’m generally enthusiastic about the potential of new communication technologies like twitter, facebook, etc, to facilitate political uprising. But it should be mentioned that it leaves us highly vulnerable to misinformation.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an awful person and the sooner he’s off the world stage the better, but that doesn’t transform his opponents into automatically honest people, and if major bloggers are posting twitter feeds within minutes of their publication there is a great potential for fraud.
Filed under: International | Leave a Comment
Tags: Iran, Twitter Revolution
Worst. Team. Ever?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion the Washington Nationals television announcers have completely lost interest in the Nationals season. Can’t blame them. Early in the season they seemed mortified and disgusted, now it’s an active disinterest in the team sort of reminiscent of the Bob Uecker character in Major League.
Filed under: Sports | 1 Comment
Tags: Washington Nationals
National Energy Policy
There’s been a lot of talk regarding which environmental groups support and oppose Waxman-Markey. It’s easy to see why the current compromise bill is unpopular in some circles, the bill as written is far from ideal using most any criteria. At the same time the Waxman-Markey would launch a entire new trajectory on energy policy, which is why global warming activists stalwarts like Al Gore continue to support it.
Which has got me thinking about what would really change under Waxman-Markey. U.S. energy policy has been on a fairly similar trajectory from 1980-2008. Previously Carter had strongly supported conservation efforts and government lead research, both ideas were gutted by Reagan. Oil prices hit all time lows during the 1980s and relieved any pressure to change course. Bush Sr. was more supportive of air pollution controls, but generally followed the direction laid down by Reagan. Clinton was more hostile to expanded exploration and more supportive of research, but it’s hard to see what major changes happened. Clinton signed the Kyoto protocols, but didn’t even pretend to fight for it’s passage. Policy got worse under Bush II, but a lot of big things showed continuity. Under both Clinton and Bush II funding research was a big deal, but decades off technologies got big money, while ready to go technology was underfunded.
The basic result was foreign oil kept flowing in, energy consumption overall went up, and a wide variety of energy sources were tapped. Waxman-Markey would reverse the overall energy consumption trajectory (Theoretically overall energy consumption wouldn’t have to go down, but I think it almost certainly would) and certain energy sources would necessarily get phased out. Both are big game changers.
Before ethanol and oil could find harmony, and all major sources of energy would play nice with each other hoping that if they didn’t trash each other then they could all make out like bandits. Under cap and trade it’s a zero sum competition for survival among dirty energy sources. It’s not like they’ll get replaced over night, but they won’t be part of new projects.
I imagine that professional energy analysts have very good projections on how hard natural gas, oil, and coal will get hit, but the cool thing about cap and trade is the market picks the winners. But in some cases the losers are pretty easy to predict.
Which is why coal and ethanol supporters want so many concessions and why big oil producers are running television commercials on every Sunday morning talk show.
Cross Posted here
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Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming, Waxman-Markey
Here is Katharine Mieszkowski reporting for Salon.com on new climate change health impacts research:
Climate change is currently killing 300,000 people a year around the world, while seriously impacting the lives of hundreds of millions more, states a controversial new report from the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva. The report, “Human Impact Report: Climate Change — The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis,” predicts that by 2030, approximately 500,000 people will lose their lives to global warming annually. Even today, it charges that 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change, at a total economic cost of $125 billion a year.
“Climate change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time,” said Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, who is now the president of the Global Humanitarian Forum, in a statement. “Already today it causes suffering to hundreds of millions of people, most of whom are not even aware that they are victims of climate change. We need an international agreement to contain climate change and reduce its widespread suffering.”
The article goes on to say that the report has been questioned by other researchers suggesting it’s using shoddy methodology. I’m not qualified to judge the validity of the report, but let me be the first to say there are more important things then the exact numbers of climate change related deaths.
Lower estimates for annual climate change deaths are closer to 100,000, which is still staggering. Even if the number were much lower it would still be compelling reason to change course. Are only 10,000 annuals deaths less important then the profit stream of Exxon Mobil?
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Tags: Climate Change, Global Humanitarian Forum, UN Human Impact Report, Waxman-Markey
Government Motors For Evah?
Let’s think about the comparative strength of the UAW, General Motors, and the Japanese car companies as depicted in the mainstream media.
Back when G. Gordon Libby thought America was a free country it was:
1. GM-Large and in charge
2. UAW-Large
3. Japanese car companies-Weak
For most of my life it closer to this:
1. Japanese- Large, but not quite in charge
2. GM- Large
3. UAW- Super weak
These day it’s clearly:
1. Japanese car companies-Large and charge
2. UAW- Weak, but much, much better off then GM
3. GM- Non-entity
The executives, stock holders, bold holders, and overall political clique that once was GM isd a shell of itself. GM as a company will probably survive, but the project that was GM has proven to be an absolute failure. The UAW will survive, which is more then many unions in the world can say. Japanese car companies are set to dominate the global market for decades.
GM, or as it is derisively called Government Motors, as it exists today is a wholly different project with wholly different stake holders, top leadership, and even goals. Government motors isn’t ever going to reach the pinnacles of industry that the old GM, but I think it’s clearly done better then the GM was doing. They’ve succeeded at negotiating lower labor costs and debt, and they’ve made long delayed cost backs to dealerships and the like that GM had been avoiding.
I’d much prefer to see America pursue a larger and wholly private car company model to a smaller and quasi nationalized car company model. But that what we needed was a larger, wholly private, and forward thinking car company, what we got with GM was a politically pernicious, very short sighted car company that spent decades mocking every decision Honda and Toyota made, and spent more time convincing conservative columnists that everything was the UAW’s fault then actually doing anything to effectively lower labor costs.
So the choice is between a smaller, partially nationalized car company and massive lay offs that will devastate an entire region. It’s not perfect, but Obama’s making the right decision.
Filed under: Politics | 3 Comments
Tags: Car Companies, GM, Honda, Toyota, UAW, Unions
Remember When…
George W. Bush had the Democrats worried about Republicans attracting Hispanic voters?
It wasn’t hype. W spoke fluent Spanish, had middle of the road views on immigration, and appointed a bunch of Hispanics to high profile jobs.
The whole theory that Republicans are a bunch of evil geniuses is going down like a lead zeppelin. Seriously, a hundred years from now political science students will read case studies about how Republicans decided to piss all over the fastest growing demographic group in a country that already voted them out of power by historic margins.
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Tags: GOP, Hispanics, Latinos, Politics, Republican Party, Sonia Sotomayor
Fantasy
I don’t have a fantasy baseball team this season, but nonetheless I’m confident if I did it would be beating your or anybody else’s fantasy baseball team this week.
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Tags: MLB
Deep Thought
If both Orland and Denver make the NBA finals: left will be right, the earth will stop spinning on it’s axis, cats and dogs will get along, and a black man will be elected President of the United States of America.
Meaning in the universe will cease to exist.
Filed under: Sports | 1 Comment
Tags: Denver Nuggets, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, LA Lakers, NBA, Orlando Magic
Chris Bodenner nailed it, calling this quote from Harry Reid, “The Incoherent Cowardice Of Harry Reid”.
REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.
QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.
REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.
QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …
REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.
One thing people miss about criticism of Harry Reid, is that it’s not really about ideology at all. Steny Hoyer is as conservative as Reid, but not nearly so weak, stupid, or cowardly a leadership figure. The above quote isn’t Orwellian, but it’s just stupid.
Another thing is it that somebody has to want him to be a weak leader. (presumably the committee chairs and other senior Senators). If the Senate Dems wanted a strong leader they’d be able to find one, but clearly they’re happy in their rudderless ship.
Filed under: Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gitmo, Harry Reid, Senate
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