French Presidential Politics

As an unabashed Francophile, I am following France's current presidential election fairly closely. I'm not sure that there is much to be learned, but it sure is fun.

The following three articles give a good summary of the state of play, which I should warn you, changes almost daily:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701719.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/europe/28france.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/europe/29paris.html

Moderate vs. Puritan Islam

I have just finished reading "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists" by Khaled Abou El Fadl and recommend it highly to anyone wanting to understanding the schism in Islam between what El Fadl refers to as "Moderates" and "Puritains". (Click on post title above to see Amazon's listing and reader reviews for the book. Note that it is a real bargain to boot.)

El Fadl is an Islamic jurist who is Professor at UCLA. He takes an Islamic jurist's look at the Qur'am and how it can be (and, historically was) interpreted in a moderate way and how the Puritans have hijacked the holy book and the Islamic religion in a perverse fashion. His analysis should interest and appeal to Muslims and non-Muslims as well.

He concludes with a short but important chapter on what the moderates must do in order to reassert the primacy of their enlightened view of their religion.

Not a long book and reasonably accessible. Read it for sure.

Shooting The Messenger

Boy, do I identify with this cartoon. For more cartoons on Gore, click on post title above.

Gore: Don't single out cars and trucks to solve global warming

Agree with Al Gore in general or not, his advise regarding the automotive industry makes a lot a sense.


Gore: Don't single out cars and trucks to solve global warming

Harry Stoffer | Automotive News / March 21, 2007 - 11:41 am

WASHINGTON -- Automakers have an ally of sorts -- in Al Gore.

In a highly anticipated appearance before Congress today, the former vice president said he supports higher fuel economy standards. But automakers alone should not be expected to solve global warming, he contended.

"Don't single out cars and trucks," Gore said in a lengthy statement before a pair of House subcommittees. He described emissions from motor vehicles as "only a slice of the problem" and not the biggest slice.

Still, the future Gore envisions would be vastly different. He called for an immediate freeze on greenhouse-gas emissions and a 90 percent cut in those emissions by 2050. He did not say exactly how those moves could be accomplished.

The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, said a freeze, if taken literally, would mean no new businesses, no economic growth and no more people.

Gore also called for:

• Taxes on the carbon in fuels, offset by cuts in payroll taxes.

• U.S. participation in a new international treaty on climate change, which would follow the Kyoto treaty rejected by Congress and the Bush administration.

• Programs that would encourage consumers to generate their own electricity through means that don't release greenhouse gases into the air.

Gore said such steps are needed to deal with "a crisis that is by far the most serious we have ever faced." He has achieved international recognition for his Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

Auto industry leaders who testified last week before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee said they could support a cap on total U.S. emissions. But they said the burden for compliance should be spread across all businesses.

Automakers say that regulators should determine the highest feasible fuel economy standards and that lawmakers should not arbitrarily set tougher standards.

Motivating Good Health Care Research?

Here is an area about which I know very little, but this article raises some very useful questions.

Race for the prize

Joseph Stiglitz

March 17, 2007 3:00 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/joseph_stiglitz/2007/03/prizes_not_patents.html

Part of modern medicine's success is built on new drugs, in which pharmaceutical companies invest billions of dollars on research. The companies can recover their expenses thanks to patents, which give them a temporary monopoly and thus allow them to charge prices well above the cost of producing the drugs. We cannot expect innovation without paying for it. But are the incentives provided by the patent system appropriate, so that all this money is well spent and contributes to treatments for diseases of the greatest concern? Sadly, the answer is a resounding "no."

The fundamental problem with the patent system is simple: it is based on restricting the use of knowledge. Because there is no extra cost associated with an additional individual enjoying the benefits of any piece of knowledge, restricting knowledge is inefficient. But the patent system not only restricts the use of knowledge; by granting (temporary) monopoly power, it often makes medications unaffordable for people who don't have insurance. In developing countries, this can be a matter of life and death for people who cannot afford new brand-name drugs but might be able to afford generics. For example, generic drugs for first-line Aids defences have brought down the cost of treatment by almost 99% since 2000 alone, from $10,000 to $130.

But, despite the high price they pay, developing countries get little in return. Drug companies spend far more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research, far more on research for lifestyle drugs (for conditions like impotence and hair loss) than for lifesaving drugs, and almost no money on diseases that afflict hundreds of millions of poor people, such as malaria. It is a matter of simple economics: companies direct their research where the money is, regardless of the relative value to society. The poor can't pay for drugs, so there is little research on their diseases, no matter what the overall costs.

A "me-too" drug, for example, which nets its manufacturer some portion of the income that otherwise accrues only to the company that dominates a niche, may be highly profitable, even if its value to society is quite limited. Similarly, companies raced to beat the human genome project in order to patent genes such as that associated with breast cancer. The value of these efforts was minimal: the knowledge was produced just a little sooner than it would have been otherwise. But the cost to society was enormous: the high price that Myriad, the patent holder, places on genetic tests (between $3,000 and $4,000) may well mean that thousands of women who would otherwise have been tested, discovered that they were at risk, and taken appropriate remediation, will die instead.

There is an alternative way of financing and incentivising research that, at least in some instances, could do a far better job than patents, both in directing innovation and ensuring that the benefits of that knowledge are enjoyed as widely as possible: a medical prize fund that would reward those who discover cures and vaccines. Since governments already pay the cost of much drug research directly or indirectly, through prescription benefits, they could finance the prize fund, which would award the biggest prizes for developers of treatments or preventions for costly diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people.

Especially when it comes to diseases in developing countries, it would make sense for some of the prize money to come from foreign assistance budgets, as few contributions could do more to improve the quality of life, and even productivity, than attacking the debilitating diseases that are so prevalent in many developing countries. A scientific panel could establish a set of priorities by assessing the number of people affected and the impact on mortality, morbidity, and productivity. Once the discovery is made, it would be licensed.

Of course, the patent system is itself a prize system, albeit a peculiar one: the prize is temporary monopoly power, implying high prices and restricted access to the benefits that can be derived from the new knowledge. By contrast, the type of prize system I have in mind would rely on competitive markets to lower prices and make the fruits of the knowledge available as widely as possible. With better-directed incentives (more research dollars spent on more important diseases, less money spent on wasteful and distorted marketing), we could have better health at lower cost.

That said, the prize fund would not replace patents. It would be part of the portfolio of methods for encouraging and supporting research. A prize fund would work well in areas in which needs are well known - the case for many diseases afflicting the poor - allowing clear goals to be set in advance. For innovations that solve problems or meet needs that have not previously been widely recognised, the patent system would still play a role.

The market economy and the profit motive have led to extremely high living standards in many places. But the health care market is not an ordinary market. Most people do not pay for what they consume; they rely on others to judge what they should consume, and prices do not influence these judgments as they do with conventional commodities. The market is thus rife with distortions. It is accordingly not surprising that in the area of health, the patent system, with all of its distortions, has failed in so many ways. A medical prize fund would not provide a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction, redirecting our scarce research resources toward more efficient uses and ensuring that the benefits of that research reach the many people who are currently denied them.

It's About Time, But Don't Be Too Subtle

I am glad that someone is taking the lead here, although more directness and coordination (e.g., through AAMA) stands a better chance of driving change (maybe). To read the rest of the article, click on post title.

Industry chiefs: Higher CAFE is not the only answer

Harry Stoffer | Automotive News / March 14, 2007 - 12:44 pm / UPDATED: 3/14/07 2 P.M.

WASHINGTON -- Government should take steps to boost consumer demand for fuel-efficient vehicles, top auto industry executives told lawmakers today.

Simply raising fuel economy standards is not the answer to the threat of global warming or the nation's energy supply concerns, the executives argued.

In Europe, automakers achieve fuel economy levels that some members of Congress want to require in the United States. But much higher gasoline prices in Europe create consumer demand, Chrysler group CEO Tom LaSorda said in prepared testimony before a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

LaSorda did not call directly for higher U.S. gasoline taxes but said "a new and unique formula" for the United States should include "harnessing of market forces." Other company executives noted that Chrysler has endorsed higher gasoline taxes in the past.

The House panel sought testimony on the industry's role in combating global warming and improving energy security. Called to testify today at the unusual hearing were the CEOs of the Detroit 3; the president of Toyota Motor North America Inc., Jim Press; and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

'New approach'

U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the full committee, signaled before the hearing that he is receptive to ideas beyond corporate average fuel economy standards. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, March 13, Dingell said: "We need a new approach." He did not elaborate.

....

Steroids Scandal

Now I understand it all. Click on post title to read rest of parody.


The Atlantic Monthly | April 2007

Inside the Bush administration’s steroids scandal

The Shots Heard 'Round the World

by John Freeman Gill

.....

Illustrations by Steve Brodner

An open letter from Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig:

ith Opening Day upon us and Hank Aaron’s hallowed career home-run record likely to come under controversial assault this season, it is with some urgency that I share with you disturbing new revelations about the conduct of several current and former Bush administration heavy hitters.

In recent weeks, baseball’s ongoing investigation, led by former Washington Senators left fielder George Mitchell, has turned up damaging new evidence.

Put simply, it has become clear that when key players in the Bush administration appeared in 2005 before the reform committee of Major League Baseball and declared under oath that they had never knowingly used steroids while conducting foreign policy, they were not being truthful with the American public. Formerly classified urine samples conclusively confirm the charges—first leveled in former Oakland A’s star Jose Canseco’s book, Juiced—that Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz regularly injected each other in the buttocks with anabolic steroids during the 2001 and 2002 seasons....

American Islam

I have recently finished reading "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion" by Paul M. Barrett and recommend it most highly. Through a series of sketches of American Muslims he describes the diverse counter-currents of that religion as it is practiced in the United States. For me, this diversity of thought and action was an eye opener. Along the way, the author shows the reactions of non-Muslim Americans to their new or old Muslim neighbors, not always edifying on both sides.

Here is a list of the profiles:

• The Publisher (Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News in Dearborn, MI)
• The Scolar (Kaled Abou El Fadl, a liberal Muslim who seemed interesting enough to drive me to buy several of his books)
• The Imam (Siraj Wahhaj, of a mosque in Brooklyn and much in demand as a preacher in other parts of the country)
• The Feminist (Asra Normani, of Morgantown, WVa)
• The Mystics (focusing on American Sufis)
• The Webmaster (Sami Omar al-Hussayen formerly of Moscow, Idaho, but since deported after being found not guilty of terrorism charges)
• The Activist (Mustafa Saied who has rejected Wahhabism for a much more tolerant Islamic belief).

Read this book. It reads relatively quickly and is well-worth the investment in time. I can recommend the following review in The Washington Post on the book by Reza Aslam (whose book on Islam I recommended some time ago):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/15/AR2007021501527.html

An online discussion with the author in The Washington Post also is interesting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/02/16/DI2007021601412.html

Press Source Confidentiality?

I have been watching the PBS series on the press with much interest. One of the issues raised is whether reporters should have immunity from naming sources. Much more subtle that I had realized.

In today's New York Times, there is an excellent column on the subject. Read the entire column by clicking on the post title. Here are a few excerpts.

Not All Sources Are Equal

By ANTHONY LEWIS

Published: March 7, 2007, New York Times

Boston

THE conviction yesterday of I. Lewis Libby Jr. on perjury and other charges, after a trial with a parade of press witnesses, leaves a legacy of intensified concern about legal proceedings that force journalists to disclose confidential sources. It is a legitimate and urgent concern. Without the ability to promise confidentiality, the press would have been unable to report notorious abuses of government power from Watergate through the Bush administration’s violations of fundamental rights in the “war on terror.”

But it is much easier to see the danger than to agree on a way to stop it. That is because there are compelling interests on both sides of the problem, as many in the press are loath to admit.

....

THOSE are some of the conflicting interests at stake on the issue of a testimonial privilege for the press. Can Congress figure them all out in a qualified privilege statute specifying in detail when journalists should have a privilege? I doubt it. I think a statute will have to leave the balancing of interests to be done by judges, case by case.

One respected judge, David Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has made a wise proposal. It is that the courts use their power to define privileges — a power affirmed by statute — to give a qualified privilege to journalists.

Judge Tatel’s proposal is aimed at the typical leak case: when a federal prosecutor is trying to find the source of a leak and subpoenas journalists. Judge Tatel suggests that a judge in this situation should weigh the public interest in the leaked material against the damage alleged by the government. If the leak were, say, the fact of the government’s lawless wiretapping, it is easy for me to see that the public interest should prevail.

Judges are not always wise. But in our system they are the ones we trust to weigh acutely conflicting interests. In the wake of the Libby case, Congress should pass legislation that makes clear the public interest in journalists’ confidentiality but leaves it to judges to weigh that against other social necessities.

Yet Another Sane Voice on Fuel Taxes

An article in today's Detroit News makes the argument for higher fuel taxes, among other useful points. To read the entire article, click on post title.


....

"Fuel taxes move auto market

"The overriding consideration is that it is fuel taxation policies -- not automakers -- that drive consumers to buy differing vehicle types. If gasoline was priced two or three times higher in the United States and if high quality diesel fuel was available here at a lower cost than gasoline, then you can bet Americans would be interested in much more fuel efficient vehicles.

"In the meantime, with our lifestyle and relatively cheap fuel, there is a good reason that full-size pick-up trucks like the Ford-F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado have been America's best selling vehicles for decades...."

Oil Pumping Innovations: The Whole Story?

There was and interesting article in the New York Times (click on post title to access article) about technologies/techniques which increase the yield from existing oil wells/fields. The article does admit that the costs of recovery using these technologies/techniques cost more than usual pumping, but are still profitable given today's oil market. The article argues that this makes the discussion of "the end of oil" questionable at best.

I am more interested in what the article doesn't say. Not only do these recovery techniques typically cost more, they also often require significant amounts of energy. Thus, the net energy extraction is significantly less than more "normal" techniques.

This means that the net effect on the total amount of energy available is less than one might think, although maybe more oil becomes available if alternative forms of power are used to drive these approaches. However, in most cases, we would probably find that significant amounts of CO2 are generated to increase the extraction of this additional oil, in addition to the CO2 that is generated when the oil is utilized. Thus, the effects on global warming of these "high-tech" extraction techniques is almost certainly adverse.

Ignatius: The Climate Change Precipice

I strongly recommend David Ignatius' column in today's Washington Post entitled "The Climate Change Precipice". Click on post title to read column.

In that article, Ignatius refers to a report by Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network on this subject: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/documents/gbn_impacts_of_climate_change.pdf

I have just scanned the report, but at first glance it looks excellent. I have been a fan of Peter Schwartz and his approach (systems- and scenario-based) for many years now.

Friedman Column Well-Worth Reading

I found this column especially enlightening - and challenging. To read all of it, click on the post title above. Through it, I discovered the site of MEMRI which I think will be most useful in learning about the Muslim world: http://memri.org/aboutus.html

March 2, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times

The Silence That Kills

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

On Feb. 20, The A.P. reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near “a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in the city of Khost.” A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for exams, killing 40 people.

Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards. Europeans are mute, lost in their delusion that this is all George Bush’s and Tony Blair’s fault.

But worst of all, Muslims, the very people whose future is being killed, are also mute. No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a “moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

....

The world worries about highly enriched uranium, but “the real danger is highly enriched Islam,” Mr. Fandy added. That is, “highly enriched Sunnism” and “highly enriched Shiism” that eats away at the Muslim state, the way Hezbollah is trying to do in Lebanon or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Al Qaeda everywhere.

....

“The battleground in the Arab world today is not in Palestine or Lebanon, but in the classrooms and newsrooms,” Mr. Fandy concluded. That’s where “the software programmers” reside who create symbolic images and language glorifying suicide bombers and make their depraved acts look legitimate. Only other Arab-Muslim programmers can defeat them.

Occasionally an honest voice rises, giving you a glimmer of hope that others will stand up. The MEMRI translation Web site (memri.org) just posted a poem called “When,” from a Saudi author, Wajeha al-Huwaider, that was posted on Arab reform sites like www.aafaq.org.

....

Jerry Brown: Automotive Champion?!

Let's assume that Jerry Brown wants to be constructive. He admits that he has no idea how to change consumer behavior. Let the automakers wave their magic technological wand. I will still argue that suitable purchase and use taxation will be the most effective aid to changing automotive consumer behavior, giving a realistic chance of California's concerns with Global Warming to be addressed in the real world. (click on post title for rest of column.)

EYES ON THE ROAD By JOSEPH B. WHITE California, Auto Makers Battle Over Vehicle Emissions Flurry of Litigation Over Efforts to Reduce The Environmental Impact of Cars, Trucks February 24, 2007, Wall Street Journal When it comes to automobiles, California isn't just another state. It's something close to a sovereign nation -- a nation currently at war with a fair chunk of the auto industry. California's recent efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, and to mandate reductions of CO2 emissions, including gases coming out of vehicle tailpipes, has provoked a flurry of litigation with big auto makers. The car companies contend California's efforts to clamp down on CO2 amount to an effort to regulate fuel economy, and states have no right to supersede federal fuel efficiency laws. The state has countered that car makers, by persisting in selling gas guzzlers to Californians, are creating a public nuisance by contributing to the ill effects caused by global warming -- including rising sea levels that could threaten California's 1,075 miles of coastline and dwindling mountain snows that could undermine the state's water supply. (Read the complaint1) Into this fight comes now California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown -- yes, that Jerry Brown, the former California governor who ran for president three times and more recently was Mayor of Oakland. Mr. Brown inherited the litigation with the auto industry when he took his current office in January. Some have called on Mr. Brown to quit the state's legal fight with the auto industry. But Mr. Brown has chosen a different tack. He has called on the chief executives of the six biggest auto makers in the U.S. market to meet with him to find "cooperative approaches" to the global warming issue. (Read his letter2) So far, the auto makers have declined, through their attorney, to schedule a CEO summit. Instead they have offered to send "legal representatives" to brief Mr. Brown on the industry's "multi-faceted efforts to improve fuel efficiency." So what does Jerry Brown really want? In a telephone interview, the attorney general says his real goal is to help the car companies. "This is not a problem that is going to be swept under the rug," he says. "It is getting intense scrutiny. Even a year ago, people would not expect we would be as far into this issue as we are." .... Mr. Brown also remembers that when he was governor, the auto makers fought seat belts. And he says electric cars, once mandated under California law, "died because the car companies wanted (them) to die." Industry executives counter that electric cars died because they were exorbitantly expensive, and the vast majority of consumers had no interest in buying them, preferring instead the larger, heavier vehicles Mr. Brown is denouncing. But Mr. Brown's point is that the auto industry has a long history of insisting that it cannot profitably build cleaner, safer cars -- only to be shown up when such advances turn out to be both possible and profitable. .... To a significant degree, the dispute between California and the car makers is a culture clash. California has a long history of using its special status as the nation's biggest car market to press for risk-taking on advanced technology. This is what you'd expect from a state whose economy is based to a great degree on nimble, high-tech entrepreneurship. Auto makers, by contrast, are stuck with a business that involves sinking enormous chunks of capital into machinery and factories staffed by thousands of workers whose labors will yield a return only after several years. Those returns will come only if the car makers haven't misjudged, while planning their vehicles three to five years earlier, consumer tastes or the price of oil. The risks inherent in auto making breed a certain conservatism -- all the more so given the inconsistent track record of various on-board gadgetry. The other problem is that car makers don't create CO2 emissions by driving cars. People do. Mr. Brown, who says his last car was a Mercury Sable purchased in 1991, concedes that changing Californians' motoring habits won't be easy, he says. ....

Well Worth Considering

Zakaria emphasizes a very good, and often forgotten, point. If we are to develop a robust global warming strategy, we have to cover both mitigation and adaptation. For rest of article, click on post title above.


Zakaria: Unfortunately, We Can’t Stop Global Warming

Even if we adopted the most far-reaching plans to combat climate change, we would still watch greenhouse gases rise for decades.

By Fareed Zakaria

Newsweek

Feb. 19, 2007 issue - The most inconvenient truth about global warming is that we cannot stop it. Please don't mistake me for a skeptic. I'm fully persuaded by the evidence that climate change is real and serious. Of the 12 hottest years on record, 11 have occurred since 1995. Temperatures have risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past century. (If that seems small, keep in mind that the difference in temperature between the ice age and now is about 5 degrees C.) And human activity appears to be one important cause. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has risen dramatically since the industrial revolution. Methane has doubled and carbon-dioxide levels are up 30 percent since 1750. The projections going forward are highly plausible scientific estimations. The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that by 2100, temperatures will have risen by somewhere between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees, and as a result, sea levels will rise by 18 to 59 centimeters. The trouble is, if you accept all these facts and theories about global warming, it is difficult to see how any human response launched today can avert it....

... in addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate climate change, we need to employ another strategy—adaptation.

No one likes to talk about adapting to global warming because it seems defeatist. But the result is that, as we debate the meta-theories about global warming, we're increasingly unprepared to deal with its consequences. Whether or not CO2 emissions are triggering certain reactions in the atmosphere, we can see that sea levels are rising. What are we going to do about it?

In an intelligent, practical speech last September, the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Frances Cairncross, urged that we begin such a discussion. "We need to think about policies that prepare for a hotter, drier world, especially in poor countries," she said. "That may involve, for instance, developing new crops, constructing flood defenses, setting different building regulations or banning building close to sea level." She points out that adaptation programs could move forward fast. Unlike plans to slow down global warming, which require massive and simultaneous international efforts, adaptation strategies can be pursued by individual countries, states, cities and localities.

Three years ago the Pew Foundation sponsored an excellent study, "Coping With Global Climate Change," which focused on the role of adaptation. The report found that moving in this direction would be costly and fraught with uncertainty and error. Yet, the authors point out, humankind's long history has shown it's possible; we have adapted as the environment around us has changed. The costs of relocating seaside communities are extremely high, but they will be even higher if we wait 20 years. The most important conclusion of the Pew study was that early planning is far more effective than managing the consequences of a breakdown. In other words, strengthening the levees in New Orleans costs much, much less than rebuilding the city.

Many environmental advocates fear that talking about coping with global warming will hamper efforts to slow it down. In fact, we have no alternative but to do both. Mitigation and adaptation complement each other. In both cases, the crucial need is to stop talking and start acting.

Putting the Heat on Global Warming

Yet another voice of reason. To read complete article, click on post title.

John McCormick

Putting the heat on global warming

Detroit News, February 12, 2007

....

All these considerations aside, the rational minds running Motown's automakers are left facing a dilemma. On the one hand they know that the modern automobile is actually responsible for a relatively small part of the emissions 'load' that mankind's activities impose on the earth. At the same time they recognize that cars - versus coal-fired power plants, heavy industry or even the hundreds of jets streaking across our skies daily - are far more visible to the general public. Unjust though it is, the automobile's exhaust pipe has become the poster child for air pollution and, by extension, global warming.

As a consequence, environmentalists repeatedly attack the auto industry as if it is single handedly to blame for the planet's climatic problems, real or imagined. The so-called 'greens' argue that the carmakers must sell vehicles that they think people should buy, rather than the vehicles people want to buy, thus ignoring the most basic tenet of a market driven economy.

These same activists point to General Motors' withdrawal of the plug-in electric car, the EV1, during the 1990s, as proof that the auto industry is not serious about producing environmentally sensitive vehicles. The absurdity of this argument is self-evident. Does anyone truly believe that GM chose to waste billions of dollars on a vehicle that would not succeed? The fact that only a few people bought the EV1 (or any other electric vehicle of the time) was because they were impractical. Consumers in a free market economy buy what they wish to buy; be it a Hummer, Toyota Prius or anything in between.

What influences the vehicle buyer's decision is a subtle combination of desire, practical considerations and dollars and cents. And it is this last factor that should be given the biggest weight as we debate the relationship between the automobile and the world's environment. It is not the job of the automobile industry to tell buyers what to purchase, any more than it is the job of house builders to promote smaller homes. This role is best played by the government, not by direct edict, but by exerting financial pressure on a vehicle purchaser's decision.

The most obvious example of this process in action is Europe's vehicular tax strategy. For example, European governments tax fuel in a manner that encourages diesel, which is much more energy efficient and therefore lower in CO2 emissions than gasoline. They also tax higher displacement engines, leading consumers and therefore automakers to concentrate on smaller, more efficient vehicles. This policy does not prevent consumers from buying larger cars and trucks, it simply makes the choice more expensive.

If a US administration, now or in the future, is ever to make a serious effort to curb this country's appetite for the world's energy resources and corresponding imbalance in overall emissions, then attacking the auto industry with legislation is not the answer. Nor is the misguided focus on grossly inefficient corn-based E85 production. It's wiser to concentrate on producing cellulosic-based ethanol, or much better still, to give major financial assistance to the development of advanced batteries for a new generation of electric cars.

But in the short term, the answer, as tough and unpalatable as it may be in some quarters, is to use taxes, not half baked rhetoric, to persuade consumers to modify their vehicle choices.

John McCormick is a columnist for Autos Insider and can be reached at john.mccormick@detnews.com

Interesting Thinking about Iraq

I have left out much of the meat of this challenging opinion piece. Click on post title to read the rest. It is worth the effort.

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; B01, Washington Post

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.

For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.

....

Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.

If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.

If he stays on his present course, he will leave Congress the opportunity to earn the credit for such a turnaround. It is already too late to wait for some presidential candidate for 2008 to retrieve the situation. If Congress cannot act, it, too, will live in infamy.

William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute.

Anti-Semitism?

If you are interested in this subject, the entire article (click on post title) is well-worth reading.

The New Anti-Anti-Semites.

Split Personality

by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.08.07

s there a growing trend among American intellectuals (and former presidents) toward anti-Semitism? That is what a number of recent articles, essays, and speeches--the latest on "The Poisoning of America" from Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at the Herzilya conference--would suggest. Some of these statements stop short of saying that Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Tony Kushner, and Jimmy Carter (to name some of the best-known targets) are anti-Semites. Instead, they say that what they have written is anti-Semitic or encourages anti-Semitism. In The Wall Street Journal last year, Bret Stephens, a member of the editorial board, suggested that Walt and Mearsheimer's essay on the Israel lobby "may not be anti-Semitic in intent [but] may yet be anti-Semitic in effect."

What these charges are meant to do is to raise the warning flag of anti-Semitism over certain opinions, placing them beyond argument--in a realm consigned to social pathologies. Who would argue, for instance, over the "history" contained within The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? In "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism," a paper published by the American Jewish Committee, Alvin H. Rosenfeld writes of the critics of Israel interviewed for Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, "[They are] not driven by anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis, but rather by a complex range of psychological as well as political motives that subvert reason and replace it with something akin to hysteria."

My intention in broaching this controversy is not to argue on behalf of Walt, Mearsheimer, or Judt. I think Walt and Mearsheimer do exaggerate the influence of the Israel lobby and define the lobby in such an inclusive way as to beg the question of its influence. I also don't share Judt's hopes for a secular democratic state on what is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. But I think that, in characterizing these views as anti-Semitic, or as contributing to anti-Semitism, Rosenfeld and other critics are attempting to suppress an important debate on American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. And they have also fallen prey to a contradiction within their own thinking.

....

These controversies over anti-Semitism come, too, at a predictable and particularly unfortunate time in the discussion of U.S. foreign policy. The last time a similar brouhaha arose was in the 1970s, when Jewish peace organizations in the United States challenged Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. At the urging of the Israeli government, organizations like Breira were run out of town by their traditional, and more subservient, brethren. Partly as a result, the United States acquiesced in Israeli policies that, in the long run, have benefited neither the United States nor Israel. The same thing could happen again. A debate has already begun over U.S. policy toward Iran in which AIPAC and the Israeli government have expressed interest in the United States stopping at nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Fears of a new Holocaust--made more plausible by the very real anti-Semitism of Iran's president--have been sounded. What policies are in the interest of the United States? And of Israel? These are difficult questions, but they are not made easier to answer when critics of Israel and of the Israel lobby in the United States are charged with anti-Semitism.

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Some Excellent Questions About Iran

What to Ask Before the Next War
Don't Let the People Who Brought Us Iraq Define the Questions

By Paul R. Pillar
Sunday, February 4, 2007; B07, Washington Post

Imagine that the famously flawed intelligence judgments about Iraq's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been correct. What difference would that have made to the American effort in Iraq?

The Bush administration would have had fewer rhetorical difficulties in defending its decision to go to war, even though any discoveries of weapons programs would have confirmed nothing about the use to which Saddam Hussein might someday have put such weapons or whether Iraq would eventually have acquired nuclear weapons.

But the war itself would be the same agonizing ordeal. An insurgency driven by motives having nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and little to do with Hussein would still be going on.

Iraq's sectarian divisions and intolerant political culture would still have pushed it into civil war. Iraq would still have become the latest and biggest jihad, winning recruits and donors for al-Qaeda and boosting the militant Islamic movement worldwide. And the United States would still be suffering the same drain of blood and treasure in Iraq and most of the same damage to its global standing and relationships.

This thought experiment highlights how problems with the policy process (or, rather, the lack of a process) that led the United States into the Iraq quagmire went beyond the administration's manipulation of intelligence on weapons programs and terrorist relationships. The administration so successfully shaped the policy question around its chosen selling points involving these two issues that what passed for a national debate gave little attention to important questions about the likely nature and consequences of a war. The debate was largely reduced to contemplating the terms of a pseudo-syllogism: Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; Hussein supports terrorism; therefore, we must use force to remove Hussein.

Now, an accelerating debate about Iran and its nuclear program shows signs of the same dangerous reductionism. Some argue for an airstrike against Iranian nuclear facilities sooner rather than later. Whether the Bush administration will act on such advice in the next two years is uncertain, but it is taking confrontational steps, including augmenting forces in the Persian Gulf and raiding an Iranian consulate, that increase the chance of heightened tension escalating into a military clash.

A long argument over many barely addressed issues would be needed to get from a belief that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to a conclusion that a military strike, or even policies that increase the risk of U.S.-Iranian hostilities, is advisable. One issue is the uncertainty of the intelligence about Iran's nuclear program, although this is getting some discussion thanks to the recriminations about the intelligence on Iraq.

Other questions that need answering include:

What would be the urgency of taking forceful action, given that the announced estimate is that Iran is still several years from acquiring a nuclear weapon?

How malleable (and how well-defined) are Tehran's intentions, and what changes in Washington's policy might lead Tehran to abandon a weapons program? Even if Tehran's intentions do not change, what other options would impede or slow its nuclear program? If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, how would that change its behavior and affect U.S. interests? In particular, why would deterrence, which has kept nuclear peace with other adversaries, not work with Iran?

The likely hardening, concealment and dispersal of Iran's nuclear facilities raise questions about the impact any military strike would have on the program. How much would Iran's nuclear efforts be set back, especially given that bombs are not very good at destroying knowledge and expertise? Would the Iranian response be appreciably different from that of Iraq after Israel bombed its nuclear reactor in 1981 (Iraq redoubled its nuclear efforts while turning to different methods for producing fissile material)?

The most neglected questions concern other consequences of a U.S. strike or any other U.S.-Iranian combat, even if such combat did not lead to a prolonged occupation. How would Tehran respond to an act of war? What terrorism might it launch against the United States? How would it exploit U.S. vulnerabilities next door in Iraq, where it has barely begun to exploit the influence it has assiduously been cultivating? What other military action might it take, with the risk of a wider war in the Persian Gulf?

Other effects concern Iranian politics. How much would the direct assertion of U.S. hostility strengthen Iranian hard-liners, whose policies are partly premised on such hostility? How much would it add to all Iranians' list of historical grievances against the United States and adversely affect relations with future governments?

Broader regional and global ramifications include the impact on the oil market, whether other Middle Eastern nations would be less willing to cooperate with the United States and the prospect of exacerbating the damage the Iraq war already has dealt to U.S. standing worldwide.

Some might argue that the worst case that could ensue from an Iranian nuclear weapon is so bad that it trumps all other considerations. But there is no more reason than there was with Iraq to consider the worst case of only one side of the policy equation. And the worst case that could result from U.S.-Iranian combat is plenty frightening: thousands of Americans dead from retaliatory terrorist attacks, a broader war in the Persian Gulf, $150-per-barrel oil, a global recession and more.

That's not the most likely case -- neither is a vision of Iranian-generated mushroom clouds -- but it is plausible that substantial portions of that scenario would materialize.

Avoiding the next military folly in the Middle East requires that the agenda for analysis and debate not be so severely and tendentiously truncated as before Iraq. Not only must proponents of military action not be allowed to manipulate the answers, they also should not be allowed to define the questions.

The writer, a former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, teaches security studies at Georgetown University.

Is that how the State of the Union was drafted?

To see more on this topic, click on the post title above.

Technological Answers to CAFE?

The following article (click on the post title to read all of it) lists several practical and less-practical ways of meeting increased CAFE requirements. The one thing it does not discuss is to how to change consumer behavior, other than differential vehicle pricing.

In fact, in this week's Automotive News there are many articles related to President Bush's comments last week in his State of the Union message. Although I hardly read every line of every article, I saw no mention of fuel taxation in any of them. The subject is simply ignored by what proports to be the most comprehensive newspaper in the automotive industry. Strange.


Bush's shocker: How to meet a higher CAFE


Richard Truett | |

Automotive News | 1:00 am, January 29, 2007

First the good news: In theory, automakers can meet President Bush's call to improve fuel economy simply by commercializing off-the-shelf technologies. But it's going to cost plenty. If light-vehicle CAFE standards rise by a third by 2017, to 34 mpg, as President Bush proposed last week, we'll see a more small cars, diesels and hybrids. Here are the technologies that could deliver big gains in fuel economy, along with ratings for practicality and cost. A score of 5 five means the technology could be on your driveway soon. A rating of 1 means the technology is the modern equivalent of the 100-mpg carburetor....

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Best bets How various fuel-saving technologies are likely to fare. Winners: Turbochargers, diesels, starter generators, efficient transmissions The jury is out: Lightweight materials, plug-in hybrids Not in this lifetime: Fuel cells

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• Now that we've rated these technologies, we will offer a caveat on our grades. If Congress approves a steep increase in fuel economy, automakers inevitably will speed up introduction of these technologies.
  
• One way to improve CAFE would be to manipulate the marketplace: Raise the price of big trucks and other gas hogs, then lower the price of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. In the world of CAFE, this is a time-honored technique.
  
  So maybe we'll have to switch to pass-fail grades after all.
  

A Point Very Well Taken

January 27, 2007, New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

At Ease, Mr. President

By GARRY WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the “Saturday Night Massacre” (as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox’s firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.

What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, “You know what it means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his team cannot execute it.” This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr. Haig’s later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that “Constitutionally ... I’m in control.”

President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus’s commander in chief. The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.

When Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified, then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the commander in chief.

The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.

That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.

Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is the author, most recently, of “What Paul Meant.”

What A Great Idea

Why didn't we think of this a long time ago?

Return to regular web page

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This is a printer friendly version of an article from The Detroit News
To print this article open the file menu and choose Print.

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January 26, 2007

Daniel Howes

Daniel Howes: One bonus plan for all employees is bold move

F ord Motor Co. and UAW leaders, in a revolutionary bid to put real money behind the "we're-on-the-same-team" slogan, are in discussions to create a single incentive plan to cover all U.S. Ford employees, according to three ranking sources close to the situation.

Likely to be presented to Ford's directors in March, the plan would pay each hourly worker "somewhere between $500 and $1,000" in advance of this summer's national contract talks and set common performance targets for all of Ford's 115,600 U.S. employees -- salaried and union.

If ratified, the plan would create an unprecedented model of mutual interest between the UAW and Detroit's automakers. It would mollify critics outraged that Ford is mulling whether to pay bonuses to salaried employees for hitting predetermined targets. And it would closely bind all employees to the company's competitiveness, striking a blow to the malignant us-vs.-them culture of Detroit.

It would be, in a word, brilliant.

How can talk of bonuses be justified when Ford on Thursday posted a $12.7 billion loss -- the largest in its 103-year history? The same way CEO Alan Mulally theoretically justified paying bonuses to salaried employees for 2006:

They helped achieve massive restructuring targets on cost-cutting, quality and customer satisfaction, the precursors to delivering profits and expanding market share. Without the hard work of all Ford folks, from Glass House offices and engineering cubicles to the factory floor, the Blue Oval is toast.

It's all about "inclusion," Mulally told The Detroit News, referring to his notion of team-building. "It's about everybody knowing the business realities, everybody knowing what our plan is to deal with it. The most important thing to our employees is that we're compensating them competitively -- our executives, our management, all of our employees."

And, it should be added, compensating them fairly. That Ford would be considering bonuses for salaried employees when union members approved health care concessions for retirees, saving Ford close to $1 billion annually; or when most of its locals approved "competitive operating agreements"; or when 38,000 hourly workers accepted buyouts -- all of them saving Ford big dough -- strikes many as unfair.

Treating all the same

"Our current agreement does not give" union members "a penny," one source familiar with the talks told me, because the United Auto Workers' profit-sharing plan pays out only when Ford books profits from its U.S. operations. "It feeds divisiveness. You take away all that stuff. You have one Ford team working for the same objective. If you're in the money, you all benefit."

The logic behind the plan, similar to ones used at Boeing and Xerox, is that union and salaried employees would benefit if the company achieves incremental improvements of 15 percent or more annually on predetermined targets. Those include cost, cash flow, quality and customer satisfaction, as well as profitability and market share.

Ford and UAW officials declined comment.

If agreed to by both sides in a memorandum of understanding, pending ratification in this year's contract, the deal likely would pressure General Motors Corp. and the Chrysler Group to follow suit. Currently, Ford has five separate incentive/bonus plans, Chrysler has four and GM has three.

"If they eliminated the bonus pool and said we're using the same bonus formula for everybody, that would be a sea change in Detroit," said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research. "It's a big fairness issue. Let's recognize productivity change, flexibility -- the whole shot -- not just profits."

Ford's 'better idea'

It would be hard to overstate how revolutionary a change like this would be. Union and salaried folks would share incentives to achieve the same goals and would be rewarded for hitting or exceeding them -- a reflection of Mulally's intent that everyone be on the same page.

In Ford's often petty culture, salaried employees might grumble that union members are being rewarded for their innovative engineering, design or purchasing decisions. There might be concerns among the rank and file that jettisoning the traditional union profit-sharing plan for a single unified incentive plan might shortchange them.

But how? By its own admission, Ford will not be profitable in the United States until 2009, meaning UAW members are likely to go half a decade or more without seeing any profit sharing.

Under the plan being discussed by Ford and the UAW, members would see a modest payout this year for last year's progress and likely additional payouts in the next few years -- money they would never see under their profit-sharing plan.

"You're not going to be getting the same payout," one source said, "but you'll be working towards the same metrics."

Yes, the CEO would reap a bigger reward than a 10-year veteran of the assembly line. But they'd both be reaping a reward according to the same criteria.

'Equal sacrifice, equal gain'

If nothing else, Ford's year-end earnings and the outlook for this year and next, detailed Thursday, show how difficult the automaker's road back is likely to be. The brutal truth is, there are no guarantees Mulally & Co. will succeed.

They have too much plant capacity and too many people. Too much of their business model rests on slow-selling SUVs and pickups and not enough on fuel-efficient cars, crossovers and gas-electric hybrids. And brands like Jaguar Cars continue to consume cash and deliver losses.

But Mulally has told associates he regards a unified incentive plan as a potential game-changer, a rallying point that "makes so much sense" and could help Ford emerge from its funk sooner.

Pursuing the deal in advance of this summer's bargaining with the UAW gives UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Bob King some help in selling an agreement likely to offer slim pay raises, if any, and changes to health-care benefits.

"Perceived fairness costs a great deal of votes on any contract," McAlinden said. "Equal sacrifice is something that's printed above every work station at Ford. You've got to give the equal sacrifice -- or equal gain."

Gasoline: Price Matters

The following is an exerpt of an interesting article from the LA Times. To read all of it, click on the post title above.

To read a summary of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates report cited in the article, go to:

http://www2.cera.com/gasoline/summary/

All in all, this confirms my conviction that higher gasoline taxes will significantly change consumer behavior.

U.S. motorists cutting back a bit

Americans cut miles driven for the first time since 1980. High prices are behind the change in transportation habits.

By Elizabeth Douglass
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 25, 2007

Two years of record-high gasoline prices have forced auto-crazed Americans to do something they haven't done in more than two decades: Drive less. ...


Other reports over the last year on mass transit ridership, total miles driven nationwide, gasoline demand, vehicle sales and retail and restaurant spending reinforce the notion that U.S. drivers made significant — and in some cases, lasting — adjustments to offset steadily rising gasoline prices.

"In 2005 and into 2006, we did see consumers start to change their driving behavior," said David Portalatin, director of industry analysis at NPD Group Inc., which tracks consumer spending. "That's a very hard thing to change, because I've either got to change where I work, where I live, or what kind of car I drive in order to actually consume less gasoline."

It's a small but important shift for a nation that many believed was impervious to rising gas prices because drivers were unable or unwilling to rein in their gas-guzzling ways. Lofty energy costs have generated such concern that President Bush devoted a significant chunk of his last two State of the Union speeches to addressing the nation's oil addiction.

"The message is that price matters," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Boston-area consulting company that recently published an analysis called "Gasoline and the American People." The study highlighted the decline in per-driver mileage and a cooling appetite for the largest sport utility vehicles, among other things, and concluded that expensive gasoline was transforming "America's love affair with the automobile."

Even though pump prices have dropped substantially from their highs in 2006, "there's a greater sense of insecurity, and people don't want to be caught emptying their wallet at the gasoline pump," said Yergin, author of "The Prize," a Pulitzer-winning history of the oil industry....

While high prices cut into the expected growth rate, U.S. gasoline consumption nonetheless increased by about 1% in 2006 after staying flat the previous year. "The gasoline consumed since that August peak in gasoline prices is up nearly 2.5% versus the comparable time period a year ago," said Portalatin, the NPD researcher. "What it means is that consumers have a short memory."

Retiree Joe McElroy of Fountain Valley admits to being a backslider. When local gas costs jumped last summer, McElroy consolidated errands and trimmed trips to visit Riverside relatives. But, he acknowledged, "when prices eased up, I kind of relaxed on that cutback and went ahead and did a little more driving."

That response is what economists have come to expect. Decades of studies invariably conclude that big spikes in prices at the pumps produce only tiny short-term cutbacks in demand. If that research is any guide, whatever changes motorists made during the recent gas-price spikes would be wiped out by recently plunging prices outside of California.

But some transportation experts say that a handful of new factors are starting to turn the tide, causing some consumption changes to stick despite lower prices....

Energy and the State of the Union

One of President's Bush's major themes in last night's State of the Union message was energy independence, wherein he proposed some "painless for the electorate" initiatives. I was disappointed, but not at all surprized, that there was no mention of changing consumer behavior in significant ways, such as by increasing fuel taxes. Biofuels are, as the following column says, may be good ideas but will not significantly impact energy independence in the foreseeable future. Playing around with CAFE will not probably have much real impact (other that causing the auto industry problems) if consumers have no economic reason to choose smaller, lighter vehicles and drive less and more slowly.

Nor was it surprising that President Bush had nothing to say about stationary sources of CO2. Apparently, he still doesn't believe in global warming.



Blindness on Biofuels

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; A23, Washington Post

President Bush joined the biofuels enthusiasm in his State of the Union address, and no one can doubt the powerful allure. Farmers, scientists and venture capitalists will liberate us from insecure foreign oil by converting corn, prairie grass and much more into gasoline substitutes. Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases. Already, production of ethanol from corn has surged from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 5 billion in 2006. Bush set an interim target of 35 billion gallons in 2017 on the way to the administration's ultimate goal of 60 billion in 2030. Sounds great, but be wary. It may be a mirage.

The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil: higher fuel taxes to prod Americans to buy more gasoline-efficient vehicles and tougher federal fuel economy standards to force auto companies to produce them. True, Bush supports tougher -- but unspecified -- fuel economy standards. But the implied increase above today's 27.5 miles per gallon for cars is modest, because the administration expects gasoline savings from biofuels to be triple those from higher fuel economy standards.

The politics are simple enough. Americans dislike high fuel prices; auto companies dislike tougher fuel economy standards. By contrast, everyone seems to win with biofuels: farmers, consumers, capitalists. American technology triumphs. Biofuels create rural jobs and drain money from foreign oil producers. What's not to like? Unfortunately, this enticing vision is dramatically overdrawn....

To read the rest of this column, go to:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301562.html


Dan Howes of the Detroit News has some interesting reactions to President Bush's energy declarations in last night's State of the Union Message. To see them, go to:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/AUTO02/701240347/1148

To see the New York Times article of this part of the speech, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/washington/24energy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Wall Street Journal take on the subject:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116957395027385156.html?mod=hps_us_pageone



Following are summaries of the President's energy proposals:

From the Detroit Free Press:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/BUSINESS01/701240403/1002/


"Here are some details of President George W. Bush's 20 in 10 proposal. To reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20% by 2017, Bush wants to:

• Increase requirements for renewable fuels to 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. The current targets call for 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. This increase would account for a 15% reduction in gasoline use.

• Increase fuel economy by about 4% a year, starting with the 2010 model year for cars and 2012 for trucks. This would save up to 8.5 billion gallons of gas a year, the additional 5% reduction toward the goal.

If met, the moves would reduce U.S. gas consumption in 2017 to below today's levels and halt the increase in global warming gases from vehicles."

From the Detroit News:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/POLITICS/701240421/1148/

"Autos/energy

Slash gasoline consumption by up to 20 percent by 2017, primarily by increasing the amount of ethanol and other alternative fuels the federal government mandates must be produced.

Give federal officials authority to raise auto fuel mileage standards, allowing automakers to trade or "bank" credits among models.

Double the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- a protection against emergency oil market disruptions caused by terrorism or natural disaster -- to 1.5 billion and fill it by 2027."

American Islam

A fascinating dialogue. I have bought "American Islam" and will probably report on it when I finish reading it. Don't hold your breath: I am way behind in my reading.


the book club
American Islam
Why Americans fear Muslims.
By Reza Aslan and Daniel Benjamin, Slate Magazine
Updated Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 2:05 PM ET

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From: Daniel Benjamin
To: Reza Aslan
Subject: Will Islamic Radicalism Gain a Foothold in America?
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 10:35 AM ET
Reza—

One of the striking things about mainstream journalism in post-9/11 America has been the scant attention paid to the nation's Muslim community. There were, of course, plenty of stories on the many immigrants taken into detention after the terrorist attacks and on the questioning of large numbers of Muslims by law enforcement officials. But compared with the enormous amount of copy that newspapers devoted to the pederast priest scandals, the coverage of American Muslims has been seriously inadequate. Given the size and importance of the community—it's no understatement to say that it is the first line of defense against jihadist attack—the lack of reporting has been a dramatic failing of the American media.

There were a few exceptions, and one was a series of Page One stories that Paul M. Barrett wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Those articles provided the basis for American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, a book that fills a real need and does so remarkably well. (Full disclosure: Paul Barrett is an old friend and former colleague.) American Islam does not give us the entire picture of what is going on among believers of the nation's fastest-growing religion. Nothing could. But through a group of seven profiles, it delivers a set of powerful insights about Muslim life in the United States and the tensions that are shaping the community—or, more accurately, communities, since there is a fractious diversity of Muslims in the United States.

As you might imagine, American Islam is a study of people caught in the crosscurrents. Some are trying to navigate between the roles of dexterous insider and outraged outsider. Others are trying to push their fellow Muslims to adopt changes that are at odds with hundreds of years of tradition. Others still are re-litigating ancient struggles—such as between mysticism and orthodoxy—in a New World setting. Several are trying to champion a tolerant, ecumenical version of Islam against one that seems increasingly insular and xenophobic.

In that sense, the book poses the question that really is the central one not only for Muslims but all Americans: Is radicalism going to gain a real foothold here?

Barrett's carefully crafted approach is a smart one because of the paucity of sociological data on Islam in the United States. We don't even know how many Muslims there are in the country; the Census Bureau doesn't ask about religious affiliation. Estimates by Muslim groups put the number at 6 million or higher, but these are truly rough guesses; as Barrett notes, the best guess is between 3 and 6 million. The number of mosques is also a matter of dispute, as is the degree of religious observance within communities. Trying to get a sense of the relative strength of different strains of thought among American Muslims is maddeningly difficult.

So, instead of giving us unsubstantiated generalizations, Barrett looks closely at the micro-environments of his seven subjects. Among them are a colorful newspaper publisher of Lebanese Shiite origins who is a power broker in Michigan's large and politically influential Muslim community, and noted Kuwaiti-born scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl, who challenged fellow Muslims to speak out against the attacks of 9/11, becoming something of a pariah. A chapter on Siraj Wahhaj, a radical-leaning imam in Brooklyn, traces the complicated story of African-American Islam, whose adherents compose a fifth of the country's Muslim population but who have tense relations with Muslims of foreign ancestry, as well as attachments to figures such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan that are shared by no other Muslims.

In telling these stories, Barrett exercises great restraint, avoiding the temptation to generalize on the basis of individual experiences. The book—which I thought was a great read—does not overinterpret, letting the reader instead, for example, hear the unadorned story of Abdul Kabir Krambo, an American-born hippie-turned-Sufi whose faith gave him an anchor in life but not quite enough equanimity to deal with the foreign-born Muslims (he was " 'the token white guy' " on the board of his mosque) who don't always approve of his native ways. Krambo's mosque was destroyed by arson in 1994. The mystery of whether the attack was carried out by non-Muslim Americans or anti-Sufi Muslims provides a perfect example of the complex tensions that plague Barrett's characters.

Among scholars of terrorism these days, the accepted wisdom is that a major reason no second catastrophic attack on the United States has occurred is that the foot soldiers of jihad are not here—at least not in great numbers. Many Muslims in this country may be angry about U.S. foreign policy, but they are not alienated from American society or values. They are also more educated than the national norm, earn more than the norm, and are not ghettoized, as the Muslims of Europe are. ("American Muslims have bought into the American dream," my friend Marc Sageman, the author of Understanding Terror Networks, likes to say. "What is the European dream?")

But will it stay that way? One of the most moving chapters hints that it will. "The Activist" describes the trajectory of Mustafa Saied, an Indian-born Muslim who gravitates to the Muslim Brotherhood while in college and spends his time at rallies where the chant was "Idhbaahal Yahood" ("Slaughter the Jews"). He later renounces his extremism after intense conversation with other Muslims, one of whom persuades him that " 'the basic foundations of American values are very Islamic—freedom of religion, freedom of speech, toleration.' "

However, that there are some extremists afoot is clear from a chapter on Sami Omar al-Hussayen, the Saudi graduate student at the University of Idaho who was unsuccessfully prosecuted under the Patriot Act for giving material support to terrorists through his role as a Web master for a legal student group. The members of al-Hussayen's Islamic Assembly of North America are, at the very least, addicted to some deeply anti-American rhetoric, such as the writings of the "Awakening Sheikhs" of Saudi Arabia, Safar al-Hawali and Salman bin Fahd al-Awda.

I'm persuaded that America's culture of immigration has made a huge difference in shaping the attitudes of Muslims here. But other elements in the culture—rising Islamophobia, especially from the Christian right, and ham-handed law enforcement efforts, of the kind Barrett explores in his chapter on al-Hussayen—appear to be eroding some Muslims' sense of belonging. And, of course, there is our presence in Iraq, which appalls most American Muslims, including the Iraqi expats who once supported the invasion. Which way do you think the wind is blowing?

I'd also like your thoughts on one of the central themes of the book—that Islam, or at least one stream of it, is being remade by its encounter with America. This notion appears in several of Barrett's chapters, including the one on Asra Nomani, the former Journal reporter, single mother, and author of Standing Alone in Mecca, who confronted her hometown mosque in West Virginia with a determined campaign for equal treatment for women. In your superb book No god but God, you discuss the "Islamic Reformation" and mention, for example, European thinker Tariq Ramadan's contention that the synthesis of Islam and Western democratic ideals is driving the faith in that direction. Does Barrett's reportage suggest something similar is happening in the United States?

In any case, the changes that Barrett describes are encouraging. But as I think he would agree, it is impossible to say whether the stories he relates are indicative or isolated. What's your take?

Bests,
Dan

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From: Reza Aslan
To: Daniel Benjamin
Subject: Assimilation and the Creation of a Uniquely American Faith
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 2:05 PM ET

Dan,

As I was reading American Islam, I was reminded of an incident that occurred last November in Washington, D.C., and got a lot of play in the American Muslim community. Jerry Klein, a popular radio host at WMAL-AM 630, suggested during one of his shows that Muslims in the United States should be forced to wear "identifying markers," specifically "a crescent moon arm band, or … a crescent moon tattoo." As one would expect, his phone lines were immediately jammed with listeners. Only they were not calling to excoriate Klein, but to agree wholeheartedly with him. One caller argued that American Muslims should not only be tattooed "in the middle of their foreheads," but that they should then be "rounded up and shipped out of the country." A Maryland caller concurred. "You have to set up encampments like they did during World War II," he said, "like with the Japanese and Germans."

Of course, what the callers did not realize was that Klein was joking. To his credit, he was horrified by his listeners' reactions, and said so on air. But perhaps Klein should not have been so surprised. According to recent polls, 39 percent of Americans want Muslims living in the United States to carry "special identification," and nearly half think their civil liberties should be curtailed in the name of national security. Roughly a third of those polled are convinced that the sympathies of America's Muslim community lies with al-Qaida, while a full 60 percent say they do not know any Muslims.

As a Muslim, I am obviously disturbed by these figures. But what I find particularly remarkable about these polls is that if the person being polled actually knows a Muslim, they are less likely to have negative perceptions of Islam. (By the way, I think that Barrett's estimate of how many Muslims currently live in America is low; more realistic, I suspect, are estimates of 6 million to 10 million.) It follows, then, that the best way to educate Americans about Islam is to introduce them to living, breathing American Muslims. That is precisely what makes Barrett's book such an engaging and important read. To my mind, this intimate group portrait of American Muslims is far more revealing than any of the half-dozen or so academic tomes that have been written on the subject over the last few years.

You are right to point out that the American Muslim community has, for the most part, managed to avoid many of the problems of identity and integration that plague Muslim communities in Europe. Barrett, like many social scientists, argues that this is partly due to economic factors. After all, the majority of European Muslims come from impoverished immigrant families, while the majority of Muslims in the United States are either middle-class converts or educated immigrants. Sixty percent of Muslims in the United States own their own homes. Believe it or not, the median income for a Muslim household in America is greater than it is for a non-Muslim household.

But as I read the individual profiles in American Islam, it became clear to me that it is more than mere economic factors that have allowed Muslims to so thoroughly assimilate into American society. (By the way, maybe it is this assimilation that explains why so many Americans think they have never met a Muslim. Perhaps they assume all look and dress like Osama bin Laden.)

Although Barrett does not press the point, I truly believe the ease with which Muslims have assimilated into American culture has less to do with economics than it does with America's long and storied history of assimilating different cultures and ethnicities under a single shared political and cultural ideal—an ideal we can label simply as Americanism. The Muslims who settled in Europe formed insulated ethnic enclaves cut off from the rest of European society. But American Muslims have seamlessly integrated into almost every level of American society. Indeed, they represent the most powerful argument against the prevailing "Clash of Civilizations" mentality that pits Islam against the West.

Finally, as a Muslim who lives in the United States and who has spent a great deal of time among Muslims in Europe, I can tell you that, more than anything else, it is the core American belief that faith has a role to play in the public realm that has allowed American Muslims to so seamlessly reconcile their faiths, cultures, and traditions with the realities of American life. Say what you will, this is not, nor has it ever been, a "secular" country. It is, in fact, the most religiously diverse and religiously tolerant nation in the world. In no other country—and certainly no Islamic country—can Muslims pursue their faith and practice in whatever way they see fit than in the United States. It is, in short, America itself that has made American Muslims so much more resistant to the pull of jihadism than their European counterparts.

This brings me to your excellent question regarding one of the central themes of Barrett's book. Is the Muslim encounter with the United States creating a new, American brand of Islam, much the way this country gave rise to new forms of Judaism and Catholicism? The short answer is yes. Just look at the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, Calif., established by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, an American convert and one of the world's most respected authorities on Islamic law. Tired of Muslims in the United States being forced to import their imams from countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—countries whose values and traditions are far removed from ours—Sheikh Hamza has created America's first Muslim seminary, to train American imams who can relate to the unique cultural and religious needs of American Muslims. But that's just part of the story. America also gives Muslims the freedom to explore issues like Islamic feminism (as demonstrated in Barrett's wonderful profile of my friend Asra Nomani, a journalist and author), Islamic pluralism, Islamic democracy, and even Islamic homosexuality, all of which has allowed Islam in America to flower into an independent and uniquely American faith.

The real question, which you touch upon, is how the U.S. government, whose image in the Muslim world is at an all-time low, can tap into the American Muslims community and take advantage of what you rightly note may be America's greatest weapon against jihadism. I mean, if what you say is true—if the American Muslim community is the "first line of defense against jihadist attack" —then why have they seemingly been sidelined by the US government in this "great ideological battle for civilization"?

Reza

Reza Aslan is a research associate at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.
Daniel Benjamin is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2158114/