Thursday, April 17, 2008

I never thought I would say this...

I agree with Andrew Sullivan. I really thought I would never say those words in this lifetime. When I first started reading blogs and the best ones were only 'TalkingPointsMemo.com' and 'Whiskey Bar' Andrew Sullivan was the opposite of these writers. He was pro-war, he was right wing conservative, he was WRONG. He didnt know it yet, but he does now.

Over the past couple of years he has thought about this thoughts and he has learned from experience. He hasn't wasted a lot of time in that time trying to think of ways that he was right.

Now he has gone and said EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN THINKING. In his recent post that I have tracked back to, he has put his finger on what it is that we all love about Obama. He has identified how Hillary and McCain are two sides of the same coin. Have you ever wondered how a good Democrat like H. Clinton could start running negative ads and start covert whispering campaigns against another good Democrat, just to win the nomination? It is because that campaign doesn't see anthing wrong with adopting the dark tactics of the enemy? For years we have known that the Right Wing will stoop as low as necessary to get the job done. It's all they have, since reality 'has a liberal bias'. Ordinarily the Left Wing need not do this, but for some reason this campaign thinks that winning is far more important than doing what is right and proper. I think that the Obama campaign will never have to stoop to these tactics, because they know that the future must be a clean break from the sins of the recent past.

One of the things I liked about Bill Clinton's campaign was that when the Right started their baloney, he didnt quit. He kept on talking about the issues, about how he had answers, and they had rumors. He was right. He didnt need to stoop to their tricks. Obama is right. Obama is not afraid of politics as usual. Obama deserves to be President.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Sam Graves wrote me a letter...

I recieved a bulk email from the office of Rep. Sam Graves today concerning raising the federal tax on a gallon of gasoline by fifty cents. Opposition to this tax is understandable, with gasoline at record prices it is hard to see the benefit of increasing that price by seventeen percent (current prices). The Congressman says that we need to work on reducing the price of gasoline...

“We need to be working to reduce the price of gas, not increase it.”

If only the Congress would do something to reduce the price of gasoline, but it seems that the only law that control gasoline prices is the ‘law’ of supply and demand. Funny how the demand for a product like soda-pop is constantly going up, but the price is relatively unchanged in the past several years. Maybe it’s because the soda-pop prices are not being set by the manufacturers. I am willing to bet that if the Congress decided to make the gasoline makers prove how much it costs them to make their product and set the price accordingly, like they do electricity prices all over America, that the price of gasoline would drop OVERNIGHT the second the first Congressional hearings started.

The Congressman tells me “We do not need more taxes; we need an energy policy that addresses our growing energy costs.  To combat rising energy prices, we need to increase American sources of energy. This includes increasing production of renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel.  It also includes tapping into the sources of energy we have and are not using in this country. Millions of barrels of oil exist in Artic National Wildlife Refuge and off the costal shelf, but are not currently being used. By going after the energy we have in our own backyard, we can reduce the prices we pay.”

It is correct that what we need is an energy policy--a strategy. However I dont think that ethanol or biodiesel can be the foundation of that plan. What America needs is to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons, period. Things like raising the mandatory miles/gallon of new vehicles is a step in the right direction. Our plan should also find a way to reduce the amount of miles driven per person per year. In that way, increasing the cost of gasoline would help. If the tax revenue created would lower the miles driven per year it would be helpful. It would be doubly helpful if the revenue were used to bolster ways that Americans might travel more efficiently, like by rail.

In the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, there is a long discussion about the energy used to create civilizations, and how, when that energy source is exhausted, the civilization quickly collapses. Our sources of energy are all far away from us, with the exception of coal and nuclear energy. Anything that disrupts our access to cheap oil would devastate our ability to support three hundred million citizens in the manner that we are accustomed to being supported. Any disruption includes interruption at the source or along the trade routes between us, since our supplies are half way around the world. Currently our suppliers are already beginning to show signs of not being able to produce oil at the worldwide rate that it is being used. Ethanol can never make up for the loss of oil as the basis of our economy. We can't feed our cars and trucks from the same fields that feed our people and livestock. The piddling amount of oil in Alaska likewise will never make up for the loss of oil.

I also like the way he supposes that if we give an oil company access to local oil that it will somehow allow “us” to lower the price of gasoline. The amount of oil being pumped out of the ground has grown every year of my life, and every year of my life the price of gasoline has went up. I dont see how the Congressman jumps to the conclusion that one will suddenly track down if the other tracks up...

He is right, though, we do need a strategy. If he has any productive ideas besides the ones you indicated in your letter I would like to hear them, since this letter included nothing that looked helpful to me.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

New Tool--MacJournal


I have a new tool available to me to make blogging a little bit easier. Macjournal has been on this computer since the beginning, but I never set this feature up. I have so much trouble getting through the google password process (since I dont write as often as I should) that I decided to give this a go and let it do the rememberizing for me.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Faithfully executing the law

I wonder why the Constitutionally required oath of office for the President requires that he swear to "faithfully execute" the law of the land. Do you suppose it is because if the President were able to decide which laws he would or would not uphold might make it difficult to limit the power of the Executive branch? Imagine that Congress were to right a law that said that the President could not tap the communications of American citizens without the permission of the Judicial Branch. If the President did not faithfully uphold this law it would be impossible for anyone outside of the Executive to know about it. He refuses to get the permission of the Judiciary. He refuses to comply with information requests from the Legislative. Any case that comes up before the Judiciary by a potential victim is quashed because it would reveal State Secrets. The only way that any evidence would ever be forthcoming if a crime such as this were being committed would be in the format of an Impeachment Hearing whose main accusation was that the President was not faithfully executing the law as his oath compelled him to do.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Terrific Book to read

"The Ominvore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan is a very thought-provoking and educational book about food in the United States. In three parts, he examines the industrial food chain, the 'organic' food chain, and an example of hunting and gathering his own food. He makes no conclusions about these as to which is better or worse in general, but makes many specific and intelligent observations about the effects they cause and the value of food in each method.

When examining the industrial food chain he traces food from it's origin in a corn field in iowa thru the industrial meat production at a feed lot in Kansas. He follows this same corn into the industrial processed food system and ultimately ends up enjoying the product of this system at a McDonald's restaurant near his home. Along the way he meets people who's living it is to create food this way. He discusses at length the interesting fact that this system consumes vast amounts of energy and distorts whole areas of the country in order to make cheaper and cheaper corn. I would venture to say that most people have no idea that corn and corn products are so inexpensive because government policies and subsidies trade our tax dollars for less costly corn for the middle men in the corn industry. Chicken production is also greatly dependent on corn production. This chapter is by far the most enlightening.

The 'Organic' food business is also very enlightening in that he has traced an industry that started off with a mission to create healthy and sustainable agriculture that would prove that food does not need to be created with dangerous and energy-costly chemicals to compete with industrial foods. Thirty years on, this industry finds itself making more and more changes to these farms to get more and more produce from them, indeed they are becoming like their nemesis, the industrial farm. He spends a great deal of time contrasting a true organic farm from an industrial organic farm. Once again, in this chapter we find the semi-visible hand of the government making life difficult for the farm trying to do things the simpler way.

When he turn his attention to hunting and gathering we find the author obviously learning the most personally. He quite obviously had a blast with the people that he found to teach him to kill and dress a wild pig in Califonia, and to find wild mushrooms in the California mountains. By the end of this chapter the reader is likely to find himself wishing we could all live this way. I personally have wondered if I would have as much fun eating beef if I had to do the killing and dressing myself, but doing my own killing would make the eating something that I would better understand the sacrifice made by the eaten.

Read this book and you will learn a great deal about your nation, it's government, its farms and farmers, and yourself.