Who Let the Dogs In? (36 page)

F
OR
TERRIFIC ENTERTAINMENT,
watch the Washington press corps swoon over George W. Bush. The famous charm offensive (he’s calling congressmen by cute nicknames, like “Big George”) has the chatting classes producing the most priceless gushing heard since Newt Gingrich bestrode the political world like a colossus.

The more alert among them have noticed that the policies don’t seem to quite perfectly reflect the charm offensive. Welcome to Dubya’s World’s: Bush is a walking definition of cognitive dissonance—what you see is not what you get.

Frank Rich of
The New York Times
noted that in his relentless photo ops, Bush has “surely posed with more black Americans than voted for him.” As Texans know, the eternal Bush photo op of the man posing yet again with small children of minority persuasion is always stepped up just before he does something awful. Like trying to knock 200,000 poor kids off a federal medical insurance program. This is compassionate conservatism.

Several of the swifter students in D.C. have questioned Bush’s executive order reinstituting the Reagan gag rule on women’s health clinics abroad, pointing out that the only consequence of this policy is to increase the number of abortions, as more women are unable to get contraceptives.

The question arises: Do we think Bush realizes this and did it anyway to pay off the religious right, or do we think he doesn’t get it? And the answer, as always with Bush, is . . . it’s hard to tell.

No one has ever been able to figure out if he understands the consequences of his policies. Or, as is frequently the case, if he knows his policies are having contradictory results.

One of the funniest weekend thumb-suckers was by Richard Berke in
The New York Times,
announcing to an astonished world that there are some Democrats who are still angry about the election. Imagine! Berke reports with a straight face, “This fury can be hard to detect in Washington, where, Mr. Ashcroft aside, every day brings more images of cheery Democrats embracing Mr. Bush.”

The noncheery Democrats include Susan Albach of Dallas, who is in the ranks of those who are Not Handling This Well.

“Are you in anger or depression?” I inquired.

“I’m still in denial,” she announced firmly.

The really smart folks in Washington are those keeping an eye on the numbers—how big is this tax cut, already at $2 trillion, going to get once the corporate lobbyists start porking out on it, and what’s left for anything else? The profoundly dumb people in Washington are going around saying, “Recessions are good for you.”

I love this line of argument, especially from pundits who make more than $1 million a year. Yes, they gravely opine, recessions are part of the business cycle (these are the same people who were saying until last month that we were in a New Economy and could look forward to perpetual growth), and furthermore, they are morally good for us. They cure irrational exuberance and hubris.

No one can deny that irrational exuberance and hubris have abounded in recent years, but that’s not who gets punished by recessions. Last hired, first fired.

The working people who never got ahead at all in the nineties are the very ones who will be losing their jobs now, and the fatuous complacency with which the prospect is being greeted is another example of a disconnect so enormous that it’s funny.

Sort of. But then, to quote Berke again, “This fury can be hard to detect in Washington.”

January 2001

Bush and Energy

G
EORGE
W. BUSH IS
threatening to give us an energy policy that marches militantly in exactly the wrong direction.

Bush’s views on energy are still those of a West Texas oilman. What oilmen want for energy policy is Drill More.

At one point during a debate with Al Gore, Bush suggested we encourage drilling in Mexico to lessen our dependence on “foreign” oil. Startled the Mexicans.

In addition to Bush, who took three oil companies into financial trouble, the new administration boasts Dick Cheney, CEO of Halliburton; Commerce Secretary Don Evans, chairman of Tom Brown oil; and Condoleezza Rice, a director of Chevron. Two of Bush’s biggest donors are Ken Lay of Enron and energy player Sam Wyly, who put up the money for the phony ad praising Bush’s environmental record.

The first fight is likely to be over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Bush favors drilling in the ecologically fragile area, as does his choice for interior secretary, Gale Norton. The object of all the drilling is to bring prices down (not too far) so as to encourage consumption, thus causing us to use ever more fossil fuel. This is the totally backward way of going about an energy policy.

You can’t get elected dog catcher in this country by advocating a sensible energy policy, which would certainly include slapping an additional tax on gasoline in order to discourage consumption. Even if that smart move is off the table because of politics, one can still push for more fuel-efficient cars.

There is a plan already in existence to ratchet up fuel efficiency, but it has been on hold for years as automobile lobbyists successfully fought its implementation by Congress.

Spencer Abraham, Bush’s pick for energy secretary, was one of the leading players in the fight to put off higher fuel-efficiency standards. Abraham compiled a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters.

Americans use five times as much fossil fuel as the other people on this planet on average, so of course we are contributing the lion’s share of carbon dioxide, which is what causes global warming.

Bush would rather not think about that. Upton Sinclair once wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The income of those in oil depends on their not understanding global warming.

Understandably, the industry has put a significant amount of money into a public relations campaign trying to convince people that global warming is not happening, or not happening fast enough to worry about, or needs more study. I suspect that someday—before too long—that campaign will be seen as the wickedness it is.

The other part of the looming energy crisis was caused by the stupid deregulation of the utilities industry, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Bush supported deregulation in Texas, and if his plan had been passed, Texas would be in as bad a shape as California, which deregulated only wholesale prices. We passed a more progressive version of deregulation, no thanks to Bush.

The dereg movement is not working—the new market-based system has not produced needed generating capacity, and those who own the power plants are ripping off everyone else.

Economist Paul Krugman points out that the problem is underinvestment, and “part of the reason for that underinvestment was the excessive enthusiasm of the financial markets for all things tech: When digital businesses are valued at hundreds of times earnings, while utilities have multiples more like ten, who’s going to put money into boring things like generators and transmission grids?”

The usual “leave everything to the magic of the marketplace” crowd needs to take another look at the consequences of deregulation. The same power companies that failed to make the badly needed investments are now making money out the wazoo. Some marketplace. Some magic.

The reason that the utility industry was regulated in the first place is because it’s a natural monopoly, and experience with monopolies indicates that you have to regulate the things. This is one of those deals, like the S&L mess, when you want to go back and check who pushed the ill-advised plan and what promises were made. (More energy! Cheaper rates! Pie in sky!) You would be well-advised not to listen to those same players again.

January 2001

Bush and Energy II

B
ACK
-TO-BACK SPEECHES
by the veeper and the only president we’ve got beggar the imagination. Let’s have a new rule: If you pronounce the word
nukular,
you shouldn’t go around nullifying nuclear treaties. Or building nuclear power plants.

When in the course of human events a treaty becomes outdated, the smart country does not announce it is breaking the treaty. This is unpleasantly reminiscent of numerous chapters involving Native Americans. Instead, the smart country calls upon its dear ally (provided they’re still speaking) to renegotiate the treaty. This has a less threatening effect on the ally.

I don’t know if a National Missile Defense system will work, and neither do you. Most experts not employed by the defense industry are dubious about it at best, but you never know how far we could get if we spend enough time and money on it. If we spend the first $60 billion, we’ll probably be a lot further along than we are now, thus justifying the next $60 billion.

The problem is, it’s massively stupid in terms of national security. What’s a bigger threat to the United States: North Korea or global warming? Our children will live to see the answer to that. It’s their future we’re playing with.

Hearing Dick Cheney make a speech that was outdated by the standards of the oil industry in the 1960s was eerie. Reactionary Texas oilmen are thick on the ground here, but Cheney is a throwback. Not since the late H. L. Hunt was crawling around (which he did—crawl) have we heard such nonsense.

Cheney’s National Energy Policy Development Group—two Texas oilmen, a CEO from the electricity-gobbling aluminum industry, and a tool of the energy companies, all members of the cabinet, meeting in secret—is pushing coal—hard. Unfortunately, it is the dirtiest source of electricity generation: The administration not only has reneged on its promise to curb coal pollution, but now it proposes to ease the pollution controls already in place.

Naturally, the group is also pushing oil and gas—major contributors to global warming—and, incredibly enough, deemphasizing conservation. What kind of energy policy would abandon conservation, which is effective and costs nothing? OPEC is the only thing hurt by it. Under the Bush budget plan, renewable energy programs lose 36 percent of their piddly total funding of $373 million, according to
New Technology Week.

Wind-generated electricity is already cheaper than nuclear-generated electricity. It’s highly probable solar-powered photo-voltaic systems will also be cheaper before long: The city of San Francisco votes this fall on whether to back a $250 million bond issue for solar power. If we put $60 billion into researching and improving renewables, we’d not only save money, we could save the world. Quite literally.

One easy and simple way to bring down the price of gasoline is by letting fuel efficiency standards rise to where they already would be if the auto companies had not interfered via generous contributions to Congress. Some remarkable reporting by Jeff Plungis of the
Detroit News
reveals the auto companies have now wired the study being conducted by the National Academy of Sciences on fuel efficiency.