Oil prices - We won't get fooled again?

It was probably too soon to declare that oil would keep going up and up, and never come down again back at the end of June. It’s probably too soon to declare that oil is coming down again. Still there are hints that that is exactly what is happening. The NYTImes suggests that oil traders think a recession will cause US demand to fall. Of course, possibly conservation (that dirty word that Cheney spits out) might be having an effect. That may be too radical a notion for oil traders (or newspapers reporting on them) to contemplate, but truth to tell, our record from the mid eighties doesn’t give anyone much reason to think we could maintain a serious effort at conservation. Either way, it looks like the price per barrel is dropping a bit. Of course, so far the price at the pump isn’t budging downward, in fact, in some places it is still edging upward.

What will be interesting to see is if demand for gas plateaus or even starts rising again. I suspect demand for gas in China and India have at least slowed. I know China subsidizes gas, but its payments to it domestic energy companies weren’t keeping pace with the rapidly rising price of oil, so they were threatening to go out of business. China adjusted the price of gas upward by some 20% (as I remember), still below the international price but a respectable jump. Since the Chinese are newish to the driving game, they may park their new cars, or delay buying one, and get back on their scooters, electric bicycles or plain old pedal bikes. Ditto for the Indians.

But while global demand for oil may slow, I don’t see it stopping, at least not in the near term. We could be leaders in this regard, but for every Barack Obama, there is a Newt Gingrich that thinks Americans don’t want to and shouldn’t have to give up their comforts and conveniences (after all, its just the planet at stake). Unless population growth stops rising and becomes only replacements for existing people, the demand for energy is going to continue to rise. But we have gotten the really cheap oil out of the ground. Now it is going to get more and more expensive to even get the same amount of oil out of the ground, and of course eventually there will be less and less of it. At this point, investments in the solar and wind industries look like a good bet.

However, I believe Congress is still paying money to oil companies for … nothing, just giving them taxpayer money. They were doing the same for solar and wind, but the Republicans decided that was a good place to tighten the belt (read: solar and wind aren’t contributing to campaigns yet).

If we do start to use an alternative fuel, how is that going to work? Are there enough french fries to fuel a whole America of veggie mobiles? Would you be able to stop in at your local gas station and plug in your electric car or even plug in hybrid and, in the same time it takes us now to fill our tanks (about three minutes), could you fill your battery? How will your corner gas station feel about competing with an extension cord and your own outlet? And is our electric grid ready to replace all those fuel tankers? Where would all that electricity come from?

These are non-trivial questions, and since electricity is a regulated industry, and there are safety standards for cars, government will have to be involved in the answers. I don’t know what they will be. I would hope that a big push for solar and wind generated electricity would be part of them, but who knows.

@#%* Planet green

I don’t know if I have mentioned the Planet Green Channel before. Discovery something or other changed into Planet Green a few weeks ago. I noticed it because I wondered if there was going to be a new season of “Living With Ed” or at least repeats (there are repeats on “PG”).

The Planet Green channel specializes, obviously, in environmentally themed programming. They have managed, amazingly, to combine environmentalism with good old fashioned American competitiveness. Every show has a greener than though element to it, and to someone not familiar with the environmental movement (or even some who is), it would seem that it must be very expensive to save the earth. The programs feature things like renovations with triple paned windows and blue jeans insulation (just try to find it, then marvel at the cost).

I thought part of the point of the environmental movement was to find cheaper, more sensible alternatives to our ostentatious lifestyle. Instead, Planet green is creating a whole new way to be ostentatious, and of course you get to flout it. Here are some of my suggestions for environmental improvements, and then what I think their suggestions would be:

For windows, that plastic film you buy in the hardware stores is 70% as effective as changing single pane windows to double pane windows. That may not sound good until you consider the price differential; five bucks versus one hundred fifty or more per window. Oh, and the five bucks covers three average windows. PG (for Planet Green) wants you to consider triple pane windows for the ultimate in insulation.

For insulation, insulating you attic with a foot or more of fiberglass in rolls or batts is one of the cheapest ways to save energy around. The recycled newspaper insulation is another way to go, about the same price, but to do it yourself you are supposed to blow it in (with a rented machine), I don’t what you are supposed to do about a vapor barrier, if you already have some fiberglass you are not supposed to mix them, yada yada. You can insulate your walls, but that absolutely has to be blown in, and by professionals. So you should max out your attic insulation first. PG would have you use the blue jean insulation, or some esoteric sprayed on insulation made from natural materials. And go ahead and rip down the plaster from your walls, put in the spray, and then re-cover with recycled timbers from a farmhouse in Vermont.

For transportation, I say first a used bicycle from Craigslist. People sell bikes on there across the whole price range, but you don’t have to buy a Cannondale racing bike for $1000 just because some says it is worth. And for a car, a used stick shift small rice burner, possibly from Craigslist, is the ideal choice. If you want new, a Yaris, Fit, Accent, Versa or Aveo are good choices, or a hybrid, especially the Civic or Escape (the Prius has picked up a price premium). The Escape still has a three thousand dollar tax credit. PG would have you look at folding or electric bikes. There are some cheaper folding ($125-$175) and electric bikes ($350), but PG would have you buy the top of the line versions in both (a thousand and up), which do perform better and weigh less, but are they worth it? And for cars PG would advocate hydrogen if it was available, but esoteric electric cars and of course Prius hybrids are about the best they can do.

Listening to AnnaBeth Gurwitch on Wa$ted talk about how she buys organic cotton clothes because even though they cost more they are better for the earth, I was struck by the fact that middle class and lower income people, squeezed by higher prices already, would change the channel to MTV or Cinemax, rather than be lectured to and ordered to spend even more on a mother earth that is already threatening to force them drive stupid little golf carts instead of their dream SUV. You can do well by doing good. But that won’t work if the environmentalists keep rubbing your nose in the fact that they do better and more for the earth than you do (apparently because they can spend more). If its so cheap to put plastic on your windows and recover the cost next week, you should do it. If adding insulation and putting the plastic on your windows saves you money over the next five years, then maybe you can afford to put in new windows. Or get more education, get a better job, and sell that crappy house.

Dowd N'@

You may have noticed a Tribune Review story about Pat Dowd that included a quote from me. The quote they didn’t print from me is that I am very confused by Dr Dowd recently. I’m confused because although I understand (but don’t necessarily agree with) each of his individual positions, I am having trouble conceptualizing them as a coherent whole.

Our story so far ... Dr Dowd was not happy with the way zoning/permitting process was “streamlined” so that the Lamar LED sign downtown would receive no (pesky) public hearing, in fact was not even run by the boards of the Zoning Board or Parking Authority. Dr Dowd asked for an opinion from the Law Department and six weeks later they say it isn’t kosher and essentially “so what”. So Dr Dowd decides someone needs to file an appeal with the Zoning Board, but can’t find a private citizen who lives downtown (in, say, the Pennsylvanian) who will do it, so he files the appeal himself, as a private citizen, who works downtown on Grant street. Now, in that position its possible, maybe probable, that the Zoning Board would have said he lacked standing. Dr Dowd was prepared to go, from there, to the Court of Common Pleas to argue his case. I halfway suspect he wanted to do exactly that.

But four other Councilmen also stepped forward and jointly filed an appeal with the ZBA, as COuncilmen on City business. And the five won and Lamar has to refile, and presumably will go through the hearing process. And since then Dr Dowd and Jim Motznik separately but unfortunately at the same time asked for a legal opinion on the City paying the four Councilmen’s legal bill, and Dr Dowd has argued that it is improper for the City to pay the bill. And (to the Trib) I tried to say that Dr Dowd had “dug” himself a small hole (instead as I was thinking ahead I apparently said “cut” himself a small hole). It’s a small hole because if Dr Dowd drops the confrontational attitude, it could all be forgotten in six weeks (the time it takes to render an opinion … heh).

It seems to me that Pat Dowd is treating Council like it is the US Senate. It is easy to imagine Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch arguing and fighting tooth and nail over policy and procedure, saying positively nasty things about each other. But the next week they could “reach across the aisle” and co-sponsor an education or anti-poverty bill, standing next to each other and beaming, going on about “bi-partisanship” and so on.

But a City Council is not the floor of the US Senate. Here your constituents are closer, and they have the capacity (if not the desire) to hear every word you say. Here your fellow Council persons are more ordinary citizens themselves, people who ran for Council because they had reached the limit of what they could do as party ward chairpersons, and so went the next logical step to be able to get things done. They are much more interested in the ends than the means. You can convince ordinary Council persons that they need to worry about transparency and the division of power in city government, but it is not something they come by naturally.

It seems like Dr Dowd is going a more formal route, but in so doing he seems to be turning Council into more of a courtroom setting, obeying more complicated rules. But that is a dangerous path. All the parties in a courtroom agree to the rules, even while they try to use them to their advantage. Courtrooms are highly stylized places where people agree with the outcomes (at least to some degree) because they do have this formal process that everyone agrees to, including the ability to appeal to ever higher authorities if you can demonstrate the process was violated.

But Council is not a courtroom, and the other Council persons are going to get tired of Dr Dowd trying to inject this formal process notion into the proceedings. Meanwhile, the three new Council persons and Doug Shields and Bill Peduto had (in January) a promising political block, at least enough people to get things passed. Now the “Lamar Four” will need to find a different fifth member. Maybe Darlene Harris, who has demonstrated that at least she appears to care about her constituents (including the four legged variety). But whatever hopes Dr Dowd had for legislation, whether greater transparency, addressing Pittsburgh's debt or creatng more bikes lanes, are endangered by the grudges he is creating with his postions and style of articualting them. And we are not going to have the technocrat Council that some people were hoping for (and an even more interesting what-if, if DeSantis had been elected and had worked with the Technocrat Council – maybe we would all have solar powered Segways by now).

Your mileage may vary...

I just read a NYTimes piece called “American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot”. It pointed out that when gas prices went up the first time, in the late seventies and early eighties, we reacted with a 55 mph speed limit, with higher fuel standards for cars and by then actually buying the smaller cars. But when the gas prices went down, in the mid-eighties, the speed limit went back up, no updates for the CAFÉ standards were considered, and we started buying bigger and bigger cars. We simply frittered away the nineties and most of this decade. President Bush talked about a giant solar array in the Desert in the South East, back years ago, but did nothing about it. In fact, President Bush could have made energy independence a feature of his homeland security policy back in 2001, he could have advocated solar power, mass transit and new fuel standards for American cars. Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a Texas Bush could have endorsed conservation and alternative energy. But Dick Cheney once said "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," and the Bush policy has followed suit. Even now, the major recommendation of the Bush administration is to open up more areas for drilling.

But while the federal government may be incapable of acting, we can each individually do things, and pressure our local government to act. We can increase our use of bikes in commuting, or use public transportation. By the way, I should mention the electric bike went back. The second rechargeable battery was working no better than the first. But I have taken up using an old hybrid bicycle to commute to work. Hybrid does not refer to engines in this case, rather it was the name given to bikes which have narrower tires and lighter frames than mountain bikes, but are less fragile than road bikes, having fatter tires and the upright riding position of a mountain bike. I already have a stick shift, two door Korean rice burner mini car, but I am going to try to stop driving it to work so much.

Meanwhile, I wonder what the City and County could be doing to help their citizens. One thought that occurred to me is that the City could take public land and do things with it. The City could buy up or just seize (temporarily) some of the vacant lots and start growing switch grass there. Switch grass has been cited as a possible source of ethanol, like we are using corn and the Brazilians are using sugar cane. The difference with switch grass is that we wouldn’t necessarily use fertilizer on it the way we do corn (we apparently use a lot of petroleum based fertilizer on corn, in fact, apparently we over use it in the Midwest, it runs off and has created a dead zone in the Caribbean). And Steel City Biofuels has taken up residence in the building where Construction Junction is, no doubt just waiting for a knock at the door.

Another thing the City could do would be to put solar panels on Flagstaff hill in Schenley Park. The hill seems about angled right to get a lot of sun. The city could sell the power back to whatever utility (or utilities) it uses to power its buildings and our traffic lights. Maybe this could be done in conjunction with CMU engineers, in exchange for some fraction of the electricity.

The County, meanwhile, needs to resolve its issues with the driver’s union. That union seems to feel it can use a strike to its advantage, keeping or even increasing its benefits and perhaps getting a raise too. The County should point out to the driver’s union that transit agencies across the country are seeing increases in riders, but they are also seeing fuel costs increasing even faster. Nationally transit agencies are talking about cutting back on routes. PAT should let the drivers know that if they strike, and afterwards the Authority loses riders, there may be layoffs and dramatic cuts in routes. Which of course is absolutely counter intuitive in this time of higher gas prices. A bus may pollute more than two or three cars, but with twenty riders it is taking twenty cars off the road, and using less gas than probably the first fifteen to eighteen.

The point is there are a number of things we can do locally. It remains to be seen whether we will.

Jack Kelly Sunday (as stolen from 2PJ's)

This is the territory of the Two Political Junkies, but I wanted to comment on Jack Kelly’s column in today’s Sunday Post Gazette. Kelly expresses the opinion that energy independence is quote unquote a pipe dream, and while I think his motivation for saying it is to skewer liberals, I think this is an issue worth mulling over.

Kelly’s basic point, I think, although he does not explicitly use the word, is about scale. He talks about coal gasification, mass transit, plug in hybrids and the nuclear power plants he thinks we would need to power them, solar (although not wind), conservation (55mph)and also drilling off the coasts and in the ANWR. He says that environmentalists could/should be mollified by an offer of 2,000 acres of some new national park where people could actually visit (he seems to skip over the point of a refuge). And Kelly’s conclusion is that all of this would help us reduce our demand for foreign oil in five to ten years from 60 percent of our consumption down to 25 or 30 percent.

By the way, Kelly has a novel suggestion about where to locate nuclear power plants to avoid the NIMBY problem. He suggests military bases. I think the troops have suffered enough, but Kelly's idea is probably doable. You give up a lot of your rights when you put on the uniform.

He’s probably about right about how much we could reduce our oil use too, maybe. There’s reason to be pessimistic, though. Many thought gas prices would not come down in the late seventies and early eighties and that a period of austerity and deprivation was with us to stay. Then greedy OPEC, getting rich as a collective, fell apart due to that greed, and gas prices plummeted. If demand in the US and the rest of the world falls, and if speculation really is fueling (so to speak) part of current oil prices, prices may fall again. Then the SUV’s will start selling again, and we will start the cycle of consumption again. Eventually we will reach a point where oil will start to run out, and we may have a global depression, complete with mass famine, plague, political upheaval and global war.

But stepping back to Mr. Kelly’s assessment, he glosses over the liberal accusation that new drilling (whether in banned areas or in areas where oil companies apparently hadn’t exercised options they already have) won’t start producing results for five to ten years anyway. I will say, picking up on the speculation theme I mentioned above, since oil is priced on a futures market, permission to drill in the ANWR and off the coasts might have an immediate effect on the price of oil, since traders/speculators would see the increased supply coming.

There is one thing to say about Mr. Kelly’s estimate. I do think it is accurate, what he estimates in a five to ten year period. I think that he should be wrong about eventual energy independence, though. If we started working today on all the things he said, new drilling and new nuclear power plants (which probably also take five to ten years) and also increased use of mass transit, conservation, plug in hybrids, solar yada yada, we would probably reach that 25 percent foreign oil figure in the five to ten he says we would. But there’s no reason we couldn’t go further, and reach a zero foreign oil percent figure ten years after that, if we continued on that pace.

No reason except that we won’t. By then there will be a new President, and even if it is a Democrat, (s)he will have run on a popular “Let’s make America fun again” ticket (or some variation). And that’s assuming we even get that far. Mr. Kelly doesn’t even catch some of the problems facing our national lack of will. Mass transit use is up, but the increased costs to mass transit due to fuel are rising even faster. Of course in Pittsburgh we have a separate problem (driver’s union) and Dan Onorato is no Reagan. The paradox of mass transit is that it gets more riders when gas (diesel) gets more expensive, but that’s when it needs to cut routes because off increased costs. Unless we adopt European style taxes to help fund mass transit (for those who can’t afford a car), we will not make it cheap enough and also it will not be solvent enough to really help us out. Public transportation in the US is hardly private, but it is still not public enough (ie European level of funding).

There is also the effect fuel costs have on everything else that I haven’t mentioned. The majority of our food and basically all of everything else is transported by truck, ship and train (even some by airplane), and so the price of everything is going to increase. We may finally get those raises we never got during the Bush Presidency, when there was massive increases in productivity. Or not, corporations may not want to deprive stockholders of any more than they have to. But look for people to start talking about Victory Gardens again.

If gas prices do not fall, if they in fact continue an upward trend, I think Mr. Kelly’s projections might be accurate. Especially if gas prices continue their previous dramatic ascent (I think they may have plateau’d in the last week or two, though). If gas prices fall, as they did in the mid eighties , we are probably sunk, due to repeat the cycle. The only good news being the “spinner” hub market would not suffer. Though they are probably made in China.

Gas prices some more

There is a still something of a national discussion about who’s to blame for higher oil prices and what to do about them. As far as blame, the discussion keeps shifting between the Chinese and Indians, the oil companies, the oil producing countries and any speculators you might find in the oil futures market. I can see why looking for a culprit would be attractive, because once found we could tell them to stop, and they could give us back George Bush’s America, where the explosive growth of the income of the rich means that we are all doing well (on average). Maybe we will find that speculators drove the price away from the actual cost of getting oil out of the ground and turning it into gas (sometimes estimated now at $75 a barrel, which makes you wonder why we had cars three or thirty years ago). If so, maybe we should give them a medal for forcing us to think about cutting back or buying smaller cars. Or maybe we should acknowledge a truth, that China is supposed to have as many cars as we do in maybe just a couple of years, before passing us, and the market is just adjusting to that fact.

But I want to talk about Dick Cheney’s notion of personal virtue, the other side of the equation, what to do about gas prices. I can’t remember where I read it, but I saw an interesting article about how we really need to concentrate not on the Ed Begley (Jr) wannabes, but rather on the clueless so and so’s who drive alone in their Lincoln Navigators and Ford F350’s at 80 on the highway. If one of them slows down to 65, it will save more gas in percentage and real terms than if I squeeze another two mpg’s out of my Hyundai Accent by coasting instead of accelerating up to a traffic light. If a family switches form a Dodge Durango to a minivan, they will make more of a contribution to reduced demand than if a Birkenstock-wearer switches from a Camry to a Corolla.

Actually, I am guessing that a lot of these Navigator drivers are males, particularly the ones who drive at eighty on the highway. Not to be discriminatory, I am sure there are women who do this too, although why do I thing that they (a) are listening to country music while they are driving eighty and (b) do not have a graduate degree? In any event, these same people who will give up their handguns when it is pried form their cold dead hands (a view blessed by the high court) are not likely to become small SUV or minivan people. But I have a solution. I think these drivers (who are often driving alone) would enjoy a large motorcycle. The motorcycle, even a big one, would at least triple their mileage, and they are quite fun. You don’t have feel like you are in a giant cocoon, instead you have the massive engine right there, between your legs. And if they don’t want to wear a helmet, I say don’t force it. Let them have their freedom.

Not that I take the Darwinian view or anything. Suffice to say, either way problems are solved.

Even China ....

Even China is raising gas prices. Actually, they’re not raising prices above the market price. They are only raising prices closer towards the market prices.

Ok, first all, how come no country is a real capitalist country, not even the communists? China had fixed (and thus subsidized) the price of gas back on November 1st, and kept it there (where-ever there is) ever since. But a funny thing happened, their own energy companies threatened to go bankrupt, their stocks plunging. So China’s newly wealthy class took a beating in their accumulated wealth. And last week China decided to adjust the prices of gas and diesel upwards 18 percent, which for gas means its now the equivalent of $3.58 a gallon. Doesn’t sound too bad compared to here, but an 18 percent jump may mean that the Chinese will drive a bit less. At least no more Sunday drives in the park. And that may mean further downward pressure on demand, possibly causing the price to drop.

By the way, the NYTimes noted that if demands does fall in China, it will lend support to the idea that economists here are advancing. If we tax gas more, much, much more, the core price will very likely fall, as we use less. The less we use, the more that remains for our grand kids ( the great grand kids will have to be on their own, the ungrateful snots).

Cover of the Rolling Stone ...

Well, not really. But I did get quoted in the PG’s “Cutting Edge”, which might pass for a form of journalistic notice (in the city of Pittsburgh). Never mind that the column is apparently not linked to anything. Anyway, they noticed my last post, “Gas Prices”, and this is what they said:

“Thank you, Europe

Cognitive Dissonance in Pittsburgh and Beyond (cognitivedissonancepittsburgh.blogspot.com) thinks it's crazy to drill for more oil in the United States because it only would slightly reduce gas prices for a short time just so we could continue to drive SUVs. We could drive prices much lower by reducing demand. How? By living like Europeans, "where they make do with much smaller cars and a lot of trains, buses and bikes. Some say life there is just as good as here, some say maybe even better (with low crime and better schools)."

CDPB also suggests we thank the Europeans for heavily taxing themselves to keep their own gas prices high, which induces them to conserve, which helps keep worldwide prices lower, which saves us money while we drive gaz-guzzlers.”

I only repeat it here to note that they failed to mention that (I think) the US itself should also reduce demand by taxing gas like Europeans. But I am very amused that they did mention what I consider to be a inescapable conclusion: if we can reduce demand by taxing gas, we have to give a nod to the Europeans, who already did reduce demand with their own heavy gas tax. It could be the real reason OPEC collapsed as a cartel in the eighties, thus giving us the low gas prices that allowed us to buy SUV’s and drive them at eighty miles an hour on the highways.

Thank/Fuck you very much, Europe (pardon my French, Frenchies).

Gas prices

After the initial big rise in the price of gas, at the end of last month, there were some comparisons made between life in the US and life in Europe, where they make do with much smaller cars and a lot of trains, buses and bikes. Some say life there is just as good as here, some say maybe even better (with low crime and better schools). Sometimes people would note that taxes on gas are much higher there, about four bucks more or less.

Now the conversation here has settled on the wisdom or viability of offshore drilling, and drilling in national parks and the ANWR. Never mind the fact that we don’t have additional refining capacity for more oil, or apparently even enough ships equipped to set up the rigs. Or that the oil companies will want to sock us with the initial cost of drilling.

So we have two competing theories of how to bring down the cost of oil, increased supply or decreased demand (the decreased demand is the European solution of high taxes on gas). The increase in supply is straightforward, although some people are predicting it wouldn’t work out that way. The thing is, depleting our domestic supply of oil just so we can continue to drive SUV’s eighty miles an hour on the highway and defer taking steps to address our future … I have no words.

Curbing demand would be difficult. The wealthiest people bought houses the farthest from the cities, bought the largest (and thus the ones that consume the most energy) houses and drive the largest and least efficient vehicles. But they lobby their Representative and/or Senator, and regardless of party, money talks.

Plus a tax on gas of European magnitude, even if it was phased in, would hurt poor people. Even if it was offset by an increased EITC and some kind of tax refund to the elderly, even if the poor and elderly knew to adjust their W-4’s or Social Security payments to get that money on a weekly or monthly basis, it would still hurt.

Everyone would be paying more, so many would feel pushed towards public transportation and/or bicycles, electric bikes or walking. The feds would have this revenue from the gas tax, some of which they would be giving to the poor and those on small fixed incomes. They could use another part of that income on increased subsidies to mass transit, and grants to cities for bus and/or bike lanes and bike paths. Mass transit, with more ridership and increased money from the feds, might be able to do without money from the state or the county. The remainder of hte gas tax revenue could be used to fund or subsidize alternative fuels research and production.

Or all the revenue could be thrown into Universal Health Care.

The funny thing is that the Europeans have been sacrificing on our behalf. With their higher gas taxes, they reduced not only their own demand, but their reduction contributed to a lower world wide demand. Before China and India’s economies took off, we were the only people consuming oil with total abandon, our SUV’s barreling down the road at 80 miles per hour.

It should also be pointed out that the last time gas prices were high, in the seventies and early eighties, Americans reacted fairly admirably by cutting back, and buying smaller cars. Congress reacted intelligently, with the 55 mph speed limit (something else I am in favor of) and with CAFE standards for American cars. Then gas prices came down, the 55 mph speed limit was repealed, and people started buying SUV's, and continued to move further and futher out into the suburbs.

Since oil is a finite resource, and since it also seems clear that we will not behave like it is until we are hit over the head with a sign, I am in favor of taking steps to decrease demand by artificially increasing the price. We can take steps to make sure that poor people can still meet their rent and feed their families, but we need everyone else to suffer some. We have seen that the pain we already feel in the current price run up has influenced our behavior some, demand for gas has fallen a percent or so in the first quarter, although I don’t the impact from the latest run up has truly been measured yet. But to separate the people who truly need a pickup truck from those who want to play cowboy and also to cut down on oil company profits, we need to beat up demand with even higher gas prices.

John Yoo, Justice of the SCOTUS?

John Yoo, legal conservative extraordinaire, wrote an interesting editorial in the WSJ. He condemned their recent decision giving habeas corpus rights to the detainees at Guantanamo (the Boumediene decision). His reasoning was that these are prisoners of war taken from the battlefield, and such rights have never been given to POW’s. Further, he points out that several of the detainees (over 30), when released as mistakenly captured or whatever, have gone on to join the fight against the US in Iraq. Thus he says a clearly liberal court engaged in “judicial imperialism of the highest order”.

This is, of course, Mr. Yoo’s cover letter to John McCain. First vacancy on the Supremes, you should put me on if you want the right sorts of decisions on Iraq, Mr. Yoo all but screams. I won't go into the various criticisms I have read or heard about Mr. Yoo's editiorial, except to note the exist. Now, I don’t know if the Senate could bring themselves to confirm Mr. Yoo to the SCOTOUS (besides being an unabashed conservative, he is really young), but it hardly hurts to get oneself back on the national radar.

Mr. Yoo didn’t mention the lengthy dissent in Boumediene. Among the arguments (apparently), Justice Scalia states that the constitution stops at the “water’s edge” (except for you, Hawaii), which Mr. Yoo did obliquely refer to as a factor in the Justice Department’s choosing Guantanamo (no habeas for POW’s held outside the country). What’s ironic about that is that Maureen Dowd, covering George W Bush’s trip to Europe in today’s NYTimes, quotes him as saying:

” “There is some (sic) who say that perhaps freedom is not universal,” he asserted, adding that he rejected as elitist the notion that “maybe it’s only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government.””

I really enjoy the double standard the administration states with a straight (perhaps smiling) face. Freedom is universal, but only apparently the freedom to have a “unitary” chief executive. The rights of the United States are only for US citizens, you furiners can create your own rights for your own people. I assume Bush will next embrace Robert Mugabe as “my kind of leader”.

The Empire Strikes Back (Actually just the conservatives ...)

The latest chapter in the electric bike saga, I was going to call the company last night, but I had an errand to run right when I got home, so I didn’t get to the phone until 7:00pm. No problem, their manual say they are open nine to five pacific and I could swear that’s what their recording said, when I called before.

Uh-uh, their recording said their offices were now closed, their hours are nine to four. Mind you, this is a company that also shuts its customer service down at noon (pacific), for training and lunch. Impressive.

So I wrote yesterday about how I thought newspapers were trying to get us to accept not just European policies, they were trying to force a European lifestyle down our throats. But our government(s) also struck blows yesterday, blows for … well against progress. Actually, the state legislature passed a smoking ban, so I can’t complain about that.

But in the city, our Mayor veto’d Bill Peduto’s campaign finance reform bill, and the council was unable to over-ride the veto. Ravenstahl’s reasons, as enumerated in an incomprehensible statement and several confusing interviews, include the lack of statewide limits on contributions, that city wide offices are treated the same as council district offices, a statement that union PACs are somehow disadvantaged by being treated the same as other PACs, and the infamous millionaire argument. Of those, only the city wide versus council argument might have some merit (there’s some sense to the statewide argument, but its like saying gun sales should not be limited, because gun collectors might be affected, as opposed to the criminals the law is aimed at). Saying that no reform should be allowed because it doesn’t restrict millionaires and doesn’t give unions special status is saying nothing should be done until it is in perfect form (not to mention that both those actions, limiting a person’s personal spending on his/her campaign and granting one group status over others for no reason would invite courts to strike the law down). There’s more to say about campaign reform, but the Burgh Report is tossing around a lot of ideas, I'll leave it here for now here.

On the other end of things government, the Senate took giant steps backward in the middle of our energy crisis. Senate Republicans did not allow a bill containing credits for the solar and wind power industries for research and development to come to a floor vote, effectively killing it for the time being. They also blocked a tax on the Oil industries, on “windfall” profits, saying it would just be passed on to the consumer. Now, six months ago, when gas was $3 or a year ago when it was $2.50, I would have said ok, we don’t absolutely need such a tax. But now, at $4 a gallon and rising, we could use the extra incentive to cut back. The Democrats were talking about using the money to help the poor with their energy bills. We know some oil companies are vertically integrated, owning the wells, refineries and franchising the stations (and setting their price). So in fact their actual price per barrel is much less than other refineries and stations. But for them to use that price would be to throw the domestic gas market into a funny sort chaos, beneficial in the short run but ultimately detrimental. But a tax might extract some of those excess profits, and redirect them back to a segment of the consumer market.

Of course, the democrats had their day too. They blocked a Republican sponsored measure to repeal a twenty five year measure banning new drilling in coastal areas. Besides the fact that we don’t want to encourage demand by lowering prices, shouldn’t hold on to the oil we have, in view of our special status as biggest user per capita?

Really, the Senate is proving that American politics is still pretty reactionary, cmpared to those oddly behaving but still progressive Europeans.

Not so much (electric) ... and also those crazy Europeans

Well, I rode the electric bike last Monday and then again on Friday. Something I did, I assume riding it to work on Monday four miles and then *not* charging it at work (since it is supposed to have a range of 8 miles and I thought I could just ride it back home) has caused the battery to basically fully discharge. Now it seems to have a range of two miles of electric charge, with pedaling. Needless to say I am pissed off. I tried calling the company yesterday, but they wanted the bike and charger present, which would be difficult considering I was calling from work (during lunch). I meant to call them when I got home (they're on the left coast), but got distracted.

Now, I was always taught and learned the hard way a few times that you don't recharge a battery until it mostly or fully discharges. It you always leave a laptop plugged in, after a while the battery will never hold a charge. But apparently Sealed Lead Acid batteries are different, you must charge after each use and letting them get down to 20% charge spells doom for the battery. Which still makes no sense to me.

ButI have this fear that Currie Technologies will say I screwed up the battery. So I am dithering between sending the battery for "warranty work" and just buying a new battery and being done with it. I will probably choose the worst of all worlds, buy the new battery and also send the old battery in for warranty work, so they can yell at me.

Meanwhile I took my “basement bike” to Iron City Bikes to get worked on. To me, a basement bike is one you used to ride, and then it got a rear flat tire, which are pains because of the derailleur, so it sat for a couple of years. My bike is a hybrid or cross bike, one with a frame shaped like a mountain bike frame, but lighter and with tires thinner than a mountain bikes but not as thin as a road bike. It has no motor, though, so I either have to ride that eight tenths of a mile hill up Stanton or carry it up city steps from Morningside.

But the city schools are suppose to let out this week. I may try the city buses again, with the folding bike.

A bunch of articles and blog posts have looked to Europe as a model for alleviating some of our current problems, particularly around oil. I remember reading somewhere in the PG sometime in the last two weeks a piece about how in Austria people often live in apartment complexes near a bus line or a light rail line, and commute that way. The piece mention how people walk around city centres, and how there is almost no street crime.

But I also read yesterday about truckers in Spain, France and Portugal going on strike protesting high gas prices. And of course you wonder about stories about low crime in Europe when there are soccer riots and used to be terrorists.

I do think that some European-style gas taxes here (ie $4 a gallon) would be a good thing. Although tough to deal with on a personal level.

The latest Europhile suggestion was made by Bob Feikima on Sunday (who I know of through a relative). He complains that American drivers try to cheat traffic lights, barreling through yellow and then the first part of red lights. In fact, he said that lights equipped with cameras cause rear end collisions, as drivers at the rear of a column of cars are surprised when someone aheadof them obeyes the law. He was advocates removing all traffic lights and signage from intersections, something apparently done in Europe, Then if you are approaching an intersection and see a driver, you have to”negotiate” by catching his/her attention and bargaining on whether you have to stop or he/she should.

Personally I am not impressed with this idea. As I drive through Stanton Heights and other neighborhoods around the city, there are frequently narrow streets with about three lanes. So if cars are parked on both sides, and a car is approaching me, I have to do this negotiating thing that Feikima suggests. I generally pull over, expecting the other car will proceed for a little way and then do the same. But what happens about ninety percent of the time is that the other driver continues and drives right past me. My only other alternative would be to play chicken with other drivers, not terribly appealing.

This is what is likely to happen if Feikima’s suggestion is adopted. There will be a whole bunch of side impacts as cars try to jockey their way through intersections, believing they can beat the on coming car and force it to slam on its brakes (and most satisfyingly skid into a parked car). But maybe soon we will be forced to abandon our cars for bikes anyway. I am willing to risk an electric bike to electric bike accident.

It's Electric!

Again, long time, no post. I've been busy, we moved my mother in law into a nursing home, I took a trip south (see last post) and general other stuff. I am in the process of buying a new (used) car, more on that later.

I don’t think I mentioned that I bought an electric bike. I did> I have taken it on one test ride into work so far, and it doesn’t look like I will get another ride this week because it is due to rain the rest of the week. I bought the bike here. So I am substituting dirty coal power for human power, somewhat. I can basically live with that, since it is not a whole lot of dirty coal power, but that brings up another issue. I rode the thing into work, using the battery fairly frequently to give me an assist up hills and so on. I then let the battery sit the rest of the day while I worked. What I really wanted the power assist for was the ride up a long hill at the end of the ride home. But when I reinstalled the battery at five, it was indicating a half or less charge. I wasn’t sure how much power was left, so I rode the bike as a regular bike most of the was home (albeit a seventy five pound regular bike). When I tackled the hill, the battery still had juice, but it didn’t seem to be much. The bike and I struggled up the hill.

Now, I am not supposed to let the charge go below 20%, but there is no meter to indicate when you get down to there, so I just have to hope. The battery on the bike is a sealed lead acid type, apparently the heaviest, and indeed it weighs 25 pounds by itself. Meanwhile, I am only supposed to get 200 to 300 charges on it. Maybe by the time I go to replace it there will be something lighter and more durable. Meanwhile, that 200 to 300 charges was the reason I didn’t plug the battery in at work. I may have to start doing that, but then maybe I won’t be riding the bike that much, not if I want to avoid rainy days (rain plus electricity does not sound like a good idea, besides the lack of fenders). We’ll see. Still, even if I only ride 100 to 150 times, that’s a lot of gas to save.

A conversation with my evil Republican side

It’s all the Democrats fault. They messed up everything when they took over Congress in 2006, which is exactly when the price of oil started going up. They put these provisions in the last energy bill, which prohibited the import of Canadian oil made from the oil sands, and prevented western states from developing oil shale. That caused the price of oil to go up. It shot up even higher when Reid and Pelosi issued statements saying they still weren’t to let Canadian oil made from oil sands to come into the US. We need to import that oil and drill in the Arctic and off the coasts of Canada and Texas. Then the price of gas will come down, and we will be able to get back to the things we like to do.

Well, if the Democrats we doing something, why didn’t Bush say anything, why didn’t he veto the energy bill? Also, I doubt the increased drilling in Alaska and off the coasts would bring in that much crude, and anyway, currently refineries are operating at only 80%, apparently the keep the price of gas higher. Also, aren’t we robbing our children’s future if we drill for very drop of oil and use it all up? How long can these new sources of oil last, and even if we could flood the market with crude, wouldn’t that just keep people from developing new sources of energy and fuel, because the gas would be so cheap?

The Democrats probably buried the restrictions deep in the energy bill. As for how long the new sources of oil can last, I’m sure it’ll be twenty or thirty years, long enough for those hippie eggheads at Berkeley to finally get off their butts and develop something useful, besides the electric golf cart Ed Begley Jr tools around in. That’s when our kids will need the jet packs to replace our SUV’s. Once the Arab countries know we are developing hydrogen powered jet packs, they will fall all over themselves to drop the price of crude.

dotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdotdot

I just came back from a three day trip, driving down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina for a birthday party for two cousins and my dad. The drive was grueling, ten hours each way, made longer because I tried to drive 60 the whole way, instead of 65 or 70 (or 80 or 90). I had borrowed my mom’s car (I was kind of pressured to take it) because my mechanic has more or less pronounced my car to be on its last legs. Something about how the pistons get the air to mix with the gas fails once the car warms up. So I need to get a car, and I can do that, but I am in the in between stage right now (and didn’t want to drive a limping car ten hours down).

So I drove 60, partially to save gas for my own benefit, but also to make a statement. I have heard both 55 and 60 as the optimal fuel economy for cars, probably because fuel economy is tested in a couple of different ways (sometimes in a lab, sometimes in real world tests). Around here, when I drive 60 on Route 28, I pass as many cars as pass me. But on the interstates, I passed few cars, and many passed me. I don’t know if other cars were driving 60 (I wouldn’t, since I wouldn’t pass them if we were both driving the same speed), but I suspect I was something of an oddity on the road. That’s what inspired me to write the above fictional exchange.

I think the people advocating drilling much more are being incredibly selfish, willing to throw away their grandchildren’s future so they can be more comfortable in the present. Of course, I suspect they would think I was being selfish. I would advocate taxing gas to double the price. I think that would encourage conservation and the use of bicycles and public transportation. I’m sure people would say I was trying to tax the rich (true) and that I don’t care about poor people and I would be bankrupting governments. Actually, I would advocate not taxing gas sold to transit companies and city governments for the use of cops and fire trucks and the like. I think a tax credit could be given to rural volunteer fire fighters and EMS. And I think the Earned Income Credit could be increased for the working poor (maybe out of the gas tax funds) and state employment agencies could give cash to poor people actively looking for work.

I was thinking about all this as I watched cars in West Virginia drive at maybe 80 or 85. There were SUV’s and Prius’ right behind them; ten, fifteen or more miles over the speed limit. The ironic thing is that because of taxes, the gas is West Virginia is twenty cents more per gallon than in Pennsylvania, even though it seems to me that we drive a bit slower on average around here than they do there. The people who want to drill, who want to vote the Democrats out of Congress, could also chose to just slow down. It doesn’t even matter what kind of car (or SUV or pickup) they have, as long as they slow down, they will save gas. Sure, when these people went to buy or lease, they could have chosen a smaller car. But that is water under the bridge. But the eight dollar a gallon gas (with the new gas tax I favor) would like influence their next car purchase.

4 plus or minus 1

So I was bad about posting last week, partly because we had people coming to visit, my sister in law and family, including a four year old. He was almost everything I expected, but when his 23ish uncle and I had to watch him for about two and a half hours, it went surprisingly smoothly. Not so much when, on his birthday on Monday, someone in the morning unwisely mentioned he would get cake later (I honestly don’t know who). He then decided he wanted cake for breakfast, and was inconsolable for a good (or rather bad) hour. During the visit he flailed considerably, jumped repeatedly on a bean bag chair, repeatedly ran into an air mattress propped up against the wall, but only suffered one boo boo running into the air mattress at its edge and slamming into the wall beside it. For all his running and flailing, he never kicked any of the electronics. And I think the Chinchilla survived intact; she was probably more pissed that we are out of bananas.

We’ve all, by now, probably heard about the four City Council members clever maneuver of walking out of Council when the issue of their own payment for a lawyer in the LED sign affair came up. This was done because the Law Department issued an opinion that the four should not even discuss payment, much less vote on it, since it represented a conflict of interest. Mind you, the Mayor accepts tickets to charity events and then discusses City business with the companies that donated tens of thousands of dollars on his behalf at the event (hell, he brags about how he was working then), but that is not seen as a conflict of interest. The City Law department needs to grow up, they need to start behaving like adults. The issue in question with the four had extraordinary circumstances. The City Solicitor told the Council persons he could not represent them, because he had a conflict of interest. The Council persons did not receive any benefit from taking this action, they were simply trying to compel the City and Lamar to follow the rules.

Now, you can ask whether the four should have joined Dr Dowd’s suit. You can say that if they were going to do that, they should have done so as he did, as private citizens. But you can also say that if they hadn’t joined the suit, that Lamar might have pressured the Zoning Board to ignore Dr Dowd, or simply to rule against him, forcing him to take the matter to Common Pleas (where it ended up anyway).

When I first wrote about Dr Dowd in January of last year, I believe I wrote that politicians always break your heart, because they are human and almost always have to take some action you disagree with. Certainly some commenters are complaining about Dr Dowd’s vote yesterday, including me. But then some commenters have always been against Dr Dowd, because they preferred Len Bodack or they didn’t like Dr Dowd’s performance on the School Board. Dr Dowd, along with Jim Motnik, asked for the opinion from the Law Department. This is the second time I know that Dr Dowd has asked for an opinion for the Law Department, although in fact he may have asked for many tht I never caught. But the first time I knew of was when he asked for an opinion about the LED sign, and that took weeks. In fact, I think it only arrived after Dr Dowd had filed his appeal. If Dr Dowd had waited for the opinion, he probably would have been too late with the appeal.

This city’s elected officials have had a tenuous relationship with ethics. Between the hostile reaction to Bill Peduto’s campaign finance reform legislation and the Mayor’s antics, the one issue the Law Department has reacted swiftly on is whether the four Council persons have a conflict of interest in getting their legal bill paid, on an issue the Law Department should have handled themselves months ago. Evidently Dr Dowd is still prepared to take the Law Department seriously, even though I can’t imagine anyone else does. I myself had characterized George Specter (who I am sure is a perfectly nice guy) as similar to the lawyer Ted on Scrubs, and I am thinking he is sliding back into that role. Dr Dowd needs to decide if he believes the Law Department is still acting in good faith in rendering its opinions, or if it is simply taking direction from the Mayor’s office.

More gas ('scuse me)

Kent Moors was on the KD/PG Sunday edition, which I caught from the web later in the day on Sunday (http://kdka.com/video/?id=40898@kdka.dayport.com, http://kdka.com/video/?id=40899@kdka.dayport.com). He said a couple of very interesting things, which I hadn’t heard before (although one I had suspected). He said that US refineries are currently operating at 85%, which was actually up some from earlier in the year. I had thought (and I keep reading from other sources) that the refineries were maxed out. But in fact oil companies are creating an artificial shortage, to drive the price of gas up just a bit more.

Moors mentioned that several of the big oil companies are vertical companies, meaning they control the oil fields, the refineries and the distribution of the refined oil (the gas we put in our cars). He speculated that their cost for a barrel of oil was actually around $75 (what they charged themselves). I had always thought this was the case, so it was nice to hear Dr Moors verify it. So these bigger oil companies (probably Shell, Exxon, BP, Sunoco and others) could give us a break, but they would rather make a profit now.

Moors also said that he expected worldwide demand to jump in ’08 and ’09, and the supply we see now would start to dry up. I assume that means we can expect to see a sharp rise in the price of gas. I believe Moors mentioned that he thought the Asians would be willing to pay more for gas than we would, but I don’t remember if he described what would happen as a consequence of that.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton literally says that she doesn’t want to listen to economists, because they give you “Elite Opinions”. More than a few people have already drawn the comparison to George Bush. Apparently Mrs. Clinton said, on one of the network morning news shows, that a lot of people don’t understand what she is proposing. I think I do, it is the gas tax holiday combined with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. I haven’t looked to see what constitutes a windfall profit, but I think Mrs. Clinton will find forty nine Republicans and Barack Obama voting against her in the Senate, leaving the tie breaker up to Dick Cheney… Hmm, wonder how he would vote? In a perfect world, the Republicans would support Clinton’s plan, just to watch it fail. But there is a chance the windfall profits tax would hurt the oil companies, so I doubt that will happen. Clinton still gets to portray herself as the champion of the little guy, the poor white trash who never got themselves much book learnin’. That must kill Obama.

How many dollars a gallon?

The national Sunday morning news shows focused on Obama and Clinton, because of the recent Reverend Wright resurgence and the upcoming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. However, the KD/PG program and the Post Gazette Forum section focused on the price of gas. That’s not surprising, now that our primary has gone by, we can and are more interested in every day matters. The Post Gazette’s piece, by a CMU professor named Lester Lave, was both pretty interesting and sort of a “no duh” sort of piece. He began by giving a reasonable sort of over view of the US’s recent history of gas consumption, the missed opportunities to improve mileage standards and the unfortunate fashion of buying SUV’s (as one owner put it , because everyone else has one). He mentioned that Europeans are much more efficient consumers of energy, in their buildings, their industries and their transportation. He also made the statement that they do not suffer in their standard of living, something that many of us simply might not believe.

He made some policy prescriptions as well. The first was to raise mileage standards and the second to educate consumers. Of course, Congress simply has not shown the will to raise the CAFÉ standards and especially with “An Inconvenient Truth”, those who are willing to be educated (and even many of those who aren’t) have learned quite a bit. Dr Lave’s last suggestion is one that has in fact been made many times, but may be getting closer to being enacted. Instead of enacting a gas tax holiday, Dr Lave proposes going the European route and enacting a gas tax nightmare – four dollars a gallon tax. According to Dr. Lave (and I believe him, by the way) Europeans are paying $8.50 a gallon. Before the wealthy white readers throw up their hands and say “What about the poor people?” (many of whom may not have cars), remember that tax revenue can come back to targeted groups. Dr. Lave suggests exempting the $20,000 of income from the Social Security tax, paid for the gas tax revenue. I think the earned income credit could be adjusted upward as an alternative, for example. The EIC is a great way to help the nation’s working poor, too, because it costs employers nothing, so it doesn’t impact prices (the way the minimum wage might). Now, I would hope a four dollar a gallon tax would be phased in, say a dollar a gallon every six months. The oil companies would scream bloody murder because their profits would go down with the decreased gasoline use. But they helped get us in to this problem, and they wouldn’t disappear, they’d just have to get use to smaller profits. And the tax revenue could also help fund research on alternative fuels.

I myself have decided that bringing a folding bike on to a PAT bus is a practical impossibility. I may still try a few trial runs after July first (when I am sure there will be few or no Schenley students on the morning bus). But I have already ordered a cheap electric bike (from Walmart). It’s due to arrive in about a week. Actually, its not so cheap, it will take, in my estimate, a year to pay for itself in lower gas consumption. And it is recharged from the house electricity, so I am helping the coal burning electric companies (although not a whole heck of a lot). However, arriving to work not totally drenched in sweat is an appealing idea, and perhaps my presence on the road will give a few more people the idea that they too could occasionally abandon their cars and find some sort of two wheeled transportation.

Free for all market

I’m probably getting this wrong, but it seems like the Republicans, in their haste to strike out and set up their own policy on health care, are actually undermining the shaky, crappy system we have now. I believe I have read that John McCain’s proposal ends the employer based tax deduction for employer based plans and instead offers a tax credit to everyone – $2500 for individuals or $5000 for families – to buy their own health care coverage. That’s fine as far as it goes, but employer based health care plans offer health insurance companies pools of healthy people (they are working, after all) to insure. Even the spouses and children tend to be healthy (they live in the United States and are not destitute, since mom and/or dad are working). It seems likely to me that if individuals or families get the tax credits, employers will stop offering health insurance to their employees, letting the employee take on the burden of finding a health insurance plan to use the tax credit with. I’ve criticized the proposals of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama because I believe we need a single payer health care plan, because I believe we need to dismantle the health insurance industry. I didn’t think the Republicans would be the ones to take the first steps to actually do that.

It's a gas, gas ... gas

So apparently US refineries are working at full capacity. This, much more than the supply of crude oil, whether at home or abroad, determines the supply of fuel here. This is what the boring veteran of the Reagan *and* Clinton administration's said on the PBS news hour last night. If there is a gas tax holiday, and the price of gas drops (say, to $3.25), and lots of Americans plan a farewell tour this summer, what do you think will happen? Gas stations will run out of gas. Right now, the supply of gas is inelastic, that is, it is fixed. It is fixed at the level we are getting right now. Hillary Clinton’s gas tax holiday combined with a windfall profits tax might be revenue neutral (although it may also cost money or make money, it all depends how the plan is set up). But I doubt President Bush would sign it into law, and in fact I doubt the republicans would let it get out of the Senate. John McCain’s plan may have a chance on both counts, which means we may see the price of gas rise a little slower, and yet the oil companies will get a lot richer faster. But the republicans will have done something to help the common man.

Reverend Wright redux

I hadn’t planned to stay away so long. I was somewhat downtrodden about Obama’s loss in our state, although it was expected. I am also somewhat disappointed that people (including me) are not interested in issues, preferring to speculate who would be more fun to have a beer with, the black guy or the old lady. Well, I have looked at the candidates’ websites, but not taken the time to actually read their policy proposals.

I had planned to write something on Sunday, but my wife wiped it out when she went to read her email.

Still, I am a bit inspired tonight, after watching the news about Obama’s press conference. Pundits and the like were annoyed that Obama had not done more to distance himself from Reverend Wright when those YouTube videos had first surfaced a couple of weeks ago. Obama had instead offered a complex statement about how he rejected the statements as edited, but understood the man. I can understand this idea. After all, Reverend Wright had no control over these videos, presumably edited from the church’s DVD.

But now Reverend Wright has embarked on what seems to be a speaking tour. Now the Reverend has complete control over his own words, even whether to say anything. And he is speaking up a storm, saying things that African Americans are perhaps like to agree with or at least understand, but that may chill or annoy white voters. Louis Farakhan (spelling?) is one of the great thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The US government is using AIDS to try to wipe out African Americans. Now, I would give Mr Farakhan his due, as a highly successful leader, but I suspect there are a lot of people who are as intelligent, and no small number more intelligent than him. And while the US government has a shameful record in using African Americans as guinea pigs in some experiments, the notion that the government is both smart and stupid enough to use Aids as a weapon against anyone is sheer fantasy.

So of course Mr. Obama did not say anything until now. He has to respond now, and he responded in a way that leaves no room for doubt, that makes it clear Obama shares the values of his white constituents with regard to African American radicalism. Some of his African American supporters may be a little disappointed, but they likely understand why Obama has to say that.

I had thought the first African American President might be someone like Colin Powell or Condi Rice. Like Margaret Thatcher, who did not have to prove anything about whether she was tough enough for the job, so too a Colin Powell would never be mistaken for a radical. But Barack Obama surprised me. It did not seem to be an issue with him. He convinced enough people that the number of people who felt the country was ready for a black President went from 50% to 75% over the last year (according to Meet the Press). But now the Clinton’s are trying to tie labels on him, radical, Muslim, weak. Now, I don’t think Obama’s lead of maybe a hundred and fifty delegates is a sufficient reason for Hillary to drop out of the race. But I am beginning to be convinced that her willingness to do the Republicans work for them and go negative is a reason for her to drop out.

I guess we’ll see.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day.

It is actually an accident that I rode my bike from the house today. My wife insisted I wait for the plumber this morning. I had taken my car to the mechanic yesterday with a lit “check engine” light. My mechanics, though, are pretty busy, and did not look at it yesterday. So with no car, I grabbed the folding bike at 10:00 and took off for the bus. I lasted all the way to Centre and Aiken (from Negley and Hampton) on the 71A, before it looked like too many people were going to get on, and make exiting difficult. That’s better than previously on that bus. The bike does tuck neatly under the front seats (where we are supposed to let the elderly and infirm sit). But it has to come out again, and that is a problem if too many people are on the bus. So we’ll see what the future holds.

Last comment before we pull the lev ... push the button.

John MacIntire (whom I probably ought to link to) makes a pretty good point in his latest post. Since we are all pretty sure Obama is going to win the nomination, if you are voting for Mrs. Clinton, you might ask yourself why? Are we sure Obama is going to win? Well, even when he lost primaries, he didn't lose by much. Apparently the Clinton's are pretty sure of a win in Puerto Rico. But when Obama does try to campaign in places, he is able to narrow Mrs Clinton's lead. So she didn't win by that much in California and New York, or even New Hampshire. Basically he is not likely to lose his lead, and probably will improve on it before the convention.

So do we think she should stay in the race? Well, we know that if she does, its not issues she is going to be talking about. She will be looking for any mud to sling at him, and he will be forced to do the same. Which will then happen again in the fall, when the Republicans go after the Democratic nominee.

MacIntire's point, in other words, is that a vote for Hillary is a vote for John McCain. And while I might not agree totally with that, there is a point there. Pundits keep talking about democrats coming together at the convention. Maybe we should do that now.

When good answers go bad

Chad Herman of TWM commented about how Obama’s answer in the debate about Iranian nuclear weapons was so much less satisfying than Clinton’s. I think it was Washington Week in Review that picked up on this same answer, albeit from Mrs. Clinton. They noted, as did Mr. Hermann, that Mrs. Clinton’s answer indicated an expansion of US policy in the Middle East. They went on to say what a bad idea that would be. Mrs. Clinton was talking about intervening in conflicts between Iran and anyone else. Presumably that would also include conflicts between other players in the region, such as if Libya and Egypt have a dustup. The problem is that the Middle East has seen what happens when we get involved in the area. Under Bush we brought just enough firepower to further wreck Afghanistan and Iraq, but not enough resources to fix either country. Granted, we did bring enough resources to make corrupt officials fabulously wealthy, but we better skip over that.

On this particular point of distinction, I would say Obama gave a reasoned response about how he wouldn’t let Iran get nukes in the first place, but if they did he would deal with the situation at the time based on the circumstances. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was talking about expanding the US’s role in the region at a time when our popularity is at an all time low. I don’t see how that could be good for us, at least not until we take steps to re-establish our credibility.

Barden and Obama

I had wrote that I would wait until Monday to post again, but stuff has happened I want to say things about. So first, for the third time, let me direct you to Nicholas Kristoff’s Thursday column and the comments.

I noticed that no one in the Burghospree picked up on Don Barden dropping his pledge of $3 million dollars assistance for the Hill. I guess that was because the story broke on a Friday afternoon and everything else happening around town is more interesting. I was surprised that the One Hill people were even moderately sympathetic to Barden. I’ve lost track of who all was supposed to commit money to the community, I just remember that it is not going to be the City or the County, and now, apparently, Don Barden.

I kind of like David Brooks. As a conservative, he seems more human than many. But Brooks is capable of being a partisan whenever he chooses. In his last few columns he has bee savaging Barack Obama, and did so again today on the “Meet the Press”. One of his complaints is that Obama made a promise to remove all the troops from Iraq in 16 months, in the debate. It fell to Michelle Norris, who was also on MTP, to point out that Hillary Clinton made the same promise in the debate, albeit in her own words. Brooks had praised Obama earlier in the year, and now acts disillusioned, as if he might ever have voted for or supported Obama.

I will say this, it seems to me that Obama is getting frustrated and tired in this campaign. He is acting human. But we always knew, or should have known, that Obama is human. He is intelligent, a good, occasionally great speaker and seem perfectly capable to be the President. But he slips sometimes. He slipped in using the words “bitter” and “cling to” in San Francisco. I personally think he was frustrated that he had not made more progress in Pennsylvania. He may have done it intentionally, to give the media a story about how his gaffe cost him the win in Pennsylvania, but he was only back 5%, or something. But that would be a silly calculation, and it seems easier just to be careful and try hard.

A troll on 2PoliticalJunkies gave an address for a couple of YouTube snippets. In those clips, you see Obama speaking, mentions Hillary Clinton, and then casually reached up and scratches his cheek. With his middle finger. We know this happened and the audience was the intended target because they give a Fox Sitcom type of whooooo. Like I said, Obama human and probably frustrated. And showing that he lives in Chicago.

I still intend to vote for him.

Thinking about things ...

In my last post, I recommended Nicholas Kristof's Thursday column. I also recommend the comments, where people sort of, sometimes agreed with Mr Kristof, but almost always then said "except for me".

I'll have something more to say here on Monday.

two different issues...

I think this is a bad time for a local political scandal to break, right before the presidential primary. It’s come out that Pat Ford met with executives of another billboard company (Liberty Pacific Media, not Lamar) in 2006, and that their understanding was that he agreed to allow them to set up two new billboards, one downtown and one on the north side, both without the public hearing process, even though city code stated bill boards could not be put in those locations. They met on Mt Washington (where I never go anymore). Mayor Ravenstahl apparently put in an appearance at that meeting, although he now says he does not remember discussing bill boards, especially on the north side or downtown. Those two executives from Liberty Pacific donated $12,500 each to Mayor Ravenstahl’s reelection campaign a month later. The billboards went up, were sold to a different media company, and then came down. Granted, this would have likely come out soon, but I can’t help but think that Mr. Ford’s loud protest of having been framed on Monday likely sped the media’s investigation along (as I suggested might happen in my previous post). Now Our Mayor finds himself being dragged (further) into this mess.

On the national front, I have to take issue with something Hillary Clinton has said repeatedly, including again last night. She claims 35 years experience in politics. Now, consider an analogy. I don’t know what Dr Starzl’s wife does for a living (or if he is even married). But assume she is a doctor, but not a surgeon. She has lived with the man thirty some years (say), and listened to his tales of transplant surgery, met the operating room nurses, but has never performed a transplant. Would you want her doing your liver transplant?

Granted, Mrs. Clinton was an unusually active first lady, in Arkansas and in the White House. She did extensive work on children’s and women’s issues in both places. But I would trust her a lot more if she described herself in a more complicated way, maybe as the ultimate insider *and* outsider. She was there while the decisions were being made, she met a lot of everybody, national and international, but she didn’t make the decisions that pissed people off. She could say she is coming to the office as a newcomer who happens to know where the bathrooms are.

But Hillary has dumbed her message down, saying she has 35 years of experience. When ABC brought up the bitter and cling to remark in the debate last night, Hillary took the low road, describing her faith and her roots instead of trying even a feeble conciliatory remark, to say something like how we should move past that. That’s why I didn’t blame Barack a bit when he brought up the “bake cookies” remark she made in 1992 a little while later, while Hillary stood there, visibly angry, practically shaking.

They have both taken shots at each other, it is true. But Barack has pulled off making it seem like defensive moves on his part, because in polls, on the question of trustworthy-ness, he is ahead of her by twenty points.

Nicholas Kristof had a very interesting commentary in today’s NYTimes. I personally believe he is looking at cognitive dissonance in our choices of presidential candidates. It dovetails reasonably well with the book I was pitching during the Mayoral race in the fall, "The Political Brain" by Drew Westen.

doth protest too much ...

Any lawyer will tell you, if you get pulled over by the cops or if they knock at your door, don’t say anything, in the case of a criminal investigation don’t answer questions or in the case of a traffic stop don’t argue with them. If you have to say anytihing in a criminal investigation, just ask to contact a lawyer. Pat Ford clearly has not absorbed this idea. He is persisting in trying to defend himself in the media. He is blaming the Housing Authority, specifically A Fulton Meachem for tryingto smear him, as well as claiming that bloggers threatened him (specifically Bram Reichbaum). Well, if a blogger lies about something, it is likely to come out eventually. The problem is, if Mr. Ford lies about something, and the media investigates, it is likely to come out now. It is reasonable for Mr. Ford to ask what conflict of interest he had as executive director of the URA and chairman of the board of the Housing Authority. It is *not* reasonable for Mr. Ford to assert that Mr. Meachem was trying to block an audit of the Housing Authority if no one else has heard of this attempted audit. According to the PG, the Vice Chair of the Authority said she had no knowledge of an attempted audit or any attempt to resist it. Also apparently Mr. Ford had previously agreed to leave the Housing Authority board, and then changed his mind. I myself have no idea of the timing here, whether it is related to Matt Hogue’s charges of inappropriate finances at the Authority.

On the other matter, the gifts of ties, cigars and a surround sound system, Mr. Ford claims that the surround sound gift retails for $215, below a $250 threshold for the state. Well, hell, you could get a $250 laptop, with printer and wi-fi, if you got in line at Best Buy, probably by midnight, for the sale on last year’s Black Friday. If Mr. Ford can demonstrate $215 is the price for his system, he should in fact be in the clear. But it is not the media he needs to convince (as least not yet), it is a State Ethics Board. Regardless of the value of the system, it ought to be declared, just to make sure Mr. Ford does not go over any yearly maximum, and in the interest of good government.

In a month a that saw the city-county merger plan and the Act 47 hearing, and will see the primary election, Mr. Fordhas to work hard to keep the spotlight on himself, and in doing so is begging reporters to dig into his personal life. If he lays low, lets the Ethics Board do his job, he could get away with the best possible result. But he seems detirmined to argue with the cops, to fix it.

Billboard scandal, go away ...

I thought the billboard issue was resolved. Sure, Ruth Ann Daily (who apparently doesn’t like any billboards) wants it taken down. Given the cost apparently already sunk into the project, I think Lamar would fight that as hard as they could. Otherwise, though, Friday saw a suspension of the Lamar law suit against the city council members, as well as Lamar agreeing to suspend construction and submit to public hearings. And I have no idea where the public will come down on this. On the one hand, the public does not seem to mind LED billboards in general. On the other hand, an LED billboard would clash with the old fashioned motif the city has created on Grant Street. On a third hand (?) New York’s Times Square has embraced lighted advertising for how long? My only stake in this issue is that the process needed to be followed, and now it is. Of course, that partially constructed billboard is a problem, in that if it does have to come down it will be a big punishment for Lamar. Frankly I am ok with that too, but I don’t think it will go that way.

Meanwhile, we hear from Char that Pat Ford wants to fight this thing, or at least complain about his treatment. I think he is making a mistake (probably the latest in many). Right now, the atmosphere in Pittsburgh is that small gifts are in fact ok. Surround sound systems may be problematic, but the whole neckties and cigars thing is probably fine. At least fine enough that he will escape indictment, although I suspect he will lose his job.

In this town, though, the corporations realize that we are far from Harrisburg, that Philly is likely to grab a lot of the attention, and that while the farmers in T part of the state don’t like us, they are inclined to leave us alone, as long as we don’t ask them for anything. So in that spirit the State Ethics Board is likely to give Pat Ford a token investigation and ultimately just a reprimand, to avoid having to look into Luke Ravenstahl, who has his own sets of gifts he has not documented. But if Pat Ford kicks up all sorts of trouble, all bets are off.

Actually, I would like to know how many Steelers, Pirates, Penguins or golf course tickets/admissions have been given to the Mayor and by whom, how many times someone else has picked up the tab for dinner and who they are, all sorts of things. But unless Pat Ford has inside information about mobsters from Youngstown hanging out with the Mayor, the State Ethics People will not likely broaden the investigation to include Ravenstahl. The most Ford could do is embarrass/irritate the Mayor, and make his suspension permanent, but without pay. So I guess I am saying that all the roads I see lead to Ford being gone.

Near the end of an interesting week...

Hey, spring is in the air, the Pens are in the playoffs, the Presidential candidates are in town off and on, and ... mumble mumble there is a city government scandal mumble.

What? I expect most of the public, even the voting public, has not heard about the LED billboard business. The people most likely to pay attention, besides democratic committee persons all over the city, are probably the people who had likely voted for Mark DeSantis. In other words, people neither Lamar nor the Mayor have to worry too much about. Still, the Mayor just got done endorsing City/County merger, so he doesn’t want his national image tarnished. If the State Ethics Board does a reasonable job, Pat Ford will probably be linked to a series of low level corrupt practises, not enough for any real charges but enough to have him removed from this city’s government. So the Mayor wants to be seen as getting out on the right side of this issue.

Meanwhile, I don’t go downtown, so I don’t see these things. I read that the billboard in question is almost finished. Lamar will be able to present the city with a fait accompli, a billboard that is ready to go, maybe today. That’s probably why they filed a lawsuit against the five city council persons that is almost totally without merit, to provide an excuse for them to ignore the zoning board’s order to suspend activity. I predict the city will refuse to provide electricity for the billboard for maybe a week, and then let them go ahead and advertise. What would be nice would be if the Mayor found an appropriate punishment for Lamar’s role in this. Providing some level of free advertising for the city’s human and social service non-profits would do nicely, but I have my doubts this Mayor would do that (free campaign advertising is more his speed).

Speaking of the Mayor, as I said, he is trying to get out to the right side of local issues, the side of championing the rule of law and the interests of the people. But if the Mayor hadn’t been interested in asserting his power, or in making the city more developer friendly, or in being a 27 year old, maybe none of this would have had to come up. Mayor Ravenstahl understands that modern politics is all about making connections and raising campaign funds. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that good politicians do those things so they can also spend some time helping people.

Will a judge in the court of common pleas throw out the Lamar suit today? I don't think the Lamar lawyers would care, except they want the five city council people to post bond, something Lamar can take home if they are forced to abandon the billboard.

Just another average, ordinary day in the 'burgh

Pittsburgh bloggers have started to spontaneously utter the phrase “This is extraordinary” in increasing numbers of posts and comments. Well, I have anyway. Lamar Advertising is currently refusing to halt construction on the downtown LED billboard, though I grant you that might change anytime. When asked about it at the Zoning Board of Adjustment hearing, Lamar’s attorney’s said the council members who appealed the permit would have to go to Common Pleas Court and post bond. Presumably this somewhat enigmatic response referred to Lamar’s lawsuit against the five City Council members.

Well, there is apparently a hearing tomorrow for this lawsuit. It is possible some things will be resolved then. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lawsuit wasn’t thrown out, although it is also possible that the four council persons who filed after Dr Dowd might have to withdraw their appeal from the ZBA. On the other hand, Lamar’s argument that private conversations between council persons constitutes a plot against Lamar is ludicrous on it’s face.

Some commenter’s on other blogs have argued City Council is wasting everyone’s time with petty and unimportant issues. It would be nice to see City Council discuss crime or how to improve the business climate in the city. But these issues, the billboard and take home cars, are important because they get to the heart of the Ravenstahl administration’s style of governing. We learn that we do not know how many take home cars there are because some city employees park them near by there homes in city lots, and are not on the list for take home cars. And of course we now know that Lamar got a foot in the door with billboards years ago, and Pat Ford guided their fortunes over the years. And that George Specter objected years ago and was ignored. By tackling these issues now, Council will have a firm precedent for how to address the bigger problems.

Gifts? ...We don't need no gifts ... I don't have to show you any stinking gifts

It's probably just me, and there's no direct quote, but it seems to me that there is an air of wistfulness about our Mayor as he says he was aware of the gifts and Vlasach did not offer him any gifts.

The week goes on ...

It’s interesting how much things have changed in the last couple of months. The Mayor’s, or perhaps his administration’s, indiscretions have moved from being stupid, frat boy class to closer to indictable political favoritism. The City Council has gone from one of its do-nothing phases to a more confrontational with the Mayor, activist phase. And everyone seems to be acknowledging that Act 47 should have always, or at least should now include a provision for debt relief and for the under funded pensions.

At last night’s Act 47 hearing, called for a few months ago, it is reported that all the players acknowledged the city’s long term problems, and no one made a more than qualified call for an end to oversight status. The Mayor has stopped asking for an end to oversight himself, instead leaving it up to the state (i.e. leaving them with the blame if the City goes right back into deficit). Apparently the Mayor did say that if the city does remain under Act 47 oversight, we need a new plan, one that tackles the debt and pensions. Doug Shields argued that the City has met the criteria to exit oversight status, but he acknowledged we would be right back where we were in 2003, with deficits approaching. He wants the legislature to allow the city to tax non-profits, and wants help with health care costs and the pensions. Others argued for a new Act 47 plan, one that seems to deal with our real situation.

Just because people in this region have faced reality doesn't mean the State Legislature or Governor are. It is possible that the recent call for City/County merger will play well in Harrisburg, despite (or maybe because of) the lack of details for the plan. Meanwhile, I think the Governor is busy trying to get a win for Hillary in the primary.

Meanwhile, a story has broken that Pat Ford turns out to be a close friend of a Lamar executive (h/t to the Comet). The Ravenstahl administration is looking more and more like “lil’ Bush”, which ironically was some commenters’ nickname for Mark DeSantis. The timing of the Trib’s release of this story, the day before the Zoning Board hearing on the billboard and the day after Lamar filed suit about that appeal, could not be more perfect. I can feel Richard Scaife's delight at the City’s anguish. I feel a little bad for Pat Ford, but he seems to have picked up a Dick Cheney-like disregard for procedure and accounting rules. At the very least, he probably needs to be a salesman for some private sector company, preferably as far as possible from public money.

I assume this means the appeal hearing before the Zoning Board will go well.

Our own everything including the kitchen sink, not Hillary's

So a lot happened last week. And a lot is going to happen this week. Last week George Specter issued his opinion on the electronic billboard. And what an interesting opinion it was. Mr. Specter opined that Ms Tymoczko (the Zoning Board of Adjustment director or administrator) acted appropriately in her decision to approve the permit the billboard, because of the 4 year practice of allowing vinyl billboards to be swapped with electronic ones. However, he split the difference, also opining that a variance would have been required for this electronic billboard by the Zoning Board (which had not happened). So he stated the practice should stop in the future.

How does that affect the appeal filed by Dr. Dowd, which was joined by several other council members? I think over all it strengthens it. All that has to be stated is that since the billboard is not up yet, the rules established by Mr. Specter’s opinion call be applied retroactively. We now know that Lamar received special treatment, which they really should not have reasonably expected, so they should be blocked, or at least forced to renegotiate. By the way, I am not a lawyer, so that is nothing more than my uninformed opinion.

A few minutes later, in an odd bit of timing, the Nordenberg committee released its report on City County Merger, only five months late. I’ve only scanned the report, but there does not seem to be a whole lot of specifics. I notice that Yarone Zober and a deputy county manager, Kathleen McKenzie, were the vice chairs of the Nordenberg committee. That might explain the vagueness of the report and the timing of its release. Another interesting part to this issue is Our Mayor’s conversion to the religion of merger, as of the day of the release of the report. You really do wonder if the Mayor is getting instructions from Rendell or Onorato or both. First, hours before Ravenstahl endorsed Hillary Clinton, he was saying he didn’t even know if he was a super delegate. Now he says he started to take merger seriously only in the last couple of weeks. These were the same weeks where Council learned how to be assertive. I believe Our Mayor is looking forward to getting rid of City Council, and was letting them know that (my opinion). If true, it is a pretty short sighted view. I hope the Mayor makes up and starts to play nice with Council, though, starting tomorrow. Council is likely to stay in existence well past the 2009 election. I think they will vote for merger when the issue comes up, but if the progressive coalition holds together, they can let the Mayor know that they will decided vote by vote whether to continue supporting the merger. This is not something coming from outside, so Council will now have the option of being petty without endangering State money essential for the City’s survival.

Speaking of outside State money, the Act 47 hearing is coming up Tuesday, I believe. I guess my invitation or public notification got lost in the mail or went to an old address. Seriously, the only reason I know about this was from a tangential mention in a story about city firefighters wanting to get in some early negotiations on contracts. But I really wonder if the removal of Act 47 will be the Mayor’s reward for having endorsed Mrs. Clinton. My fantasy is that the State people will say we need a whole new five year plan, where we need to act like grown-ups, with a real capital budget, not some ephemeral chunk of the operating budget that is a faux surplus. They would also say we need to hit the non-profits harder for money, and apply it to the debt and under funded pensions. In turn, the State would match the additional revenues from the non-profits as admission that they had a role in our problems. We probably wouldn’t wipe out the debt in five years, but we might reduce it by a quarter.

That, as I say, is my fantasy. Reality will probably be the State cutting us loose from Act 47, with praise from Democrats and threats from Republicans. And my God have mercy on our souls, because Wall Street will not.

Chad, not the Alltel guy, not hanging.

I just noticed that my name comes right before Chad Hermann’s on the Tube City Almanac’s blog roll for Pittsburgh.

Bram at the Comet posted about Chad’s four volume analysis of Obama’s speech on race. Like Bram (I assume), I wanted to wait until Chad had finished before posting about it. But today was one of the days where I leave CMU a bit early to go to the Southside to prepare and/or review taxes. So I couldn’t post at 4:30.

I rather like Bram’s comparison of Chad to Ahab. Personally I feel like I read a work by Melville going through the four parts of Chad’s criticism of Obama. After all, Obama’s speech was pretty long to begin with, and to reprint it and criticize it, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph....with repeated declarations that Obama is lying, or obfuscating or whatever, over and over. We get it, you don’t like the way the man talks.

Bram posits four overarching themes for Chad’s four volumes, including this one at number four: “The speech was not written as well as it could have been.”. But really I think there is one theme running through Chad litany of criticisms. Obama could not have listened to Reverend Wright for twenty years without being influenced by him, without having developed a hatred of the white man as deep as the Reverend’s. By which Chad is saying that the Civil Rights movement is over, should be declared dead. Any further progress needed by anyone is the responsibility of that person. Dress neatly, pay attention in school, read books, speak clearly and without colloquialism. In other words, behave like a white person. Take responsibility. It’s not that there is institutionalized racism, it’s that white people don’t hire African American’s who act black. So as long as you have children out of wedlock and don’t have a proper family structure, you are responsible for your own situation and should not ask white people for help (much less demand it).

But as I say, Chad seems to believe Obama is a fraud because he won’t take a side and either say Wright is absolutely wrong or say that Wright is in fact right. In other words, Chad is angry at Obama because Obama won’t end his own candidacy. Obama is the first African American to be the front runner in a presidential primary. To reach that position, Obama must have constituencies in both the African American and the white communities. And he can’t let either constituency stare at the other one too long, think too hard about how much that different skin tone next to you has a different life. But Chad seems to want Obama to either say to the black faces in the crowd to grow up and take responsibility or to say to the white faces that its their fault so many blacks are poor. Instead, Obama makes a speech that hints at both, but lets both sides off the hook too. Because that’s what you do in a presidential campaign, you talk, and you try to make it sound fresh and new (like it’s the first time an African American has been the front runner in a presidential primary).

Whatever Obama's personal beliefs on race are, he seems to want to project a balanced view, allowing for the views of both African-Americans and whites. I actually disagree with Obama that the United States has made great progress towards equal rights, I think a fair amount of segregation has simply transformed into ossified ghettos. But regardless, to accept Chad's position that Obamais a fraud, we have to agree that his mind is so weak as to be influenced by twenty years of Sundays with Reverend Wright. My feeling on that is that Obama has been African American all his life, he almost certainly developed some ideas before moving to Chicago (albeit in Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, New York and Cambridge). Just like many, many undergraduates have read Marx and Lenin and only a few have become radicals, so too Mr Obama could listen to the Reverend Wright (whom I believe is only occasionally as dramatic as Youtube would have us believe) and not be turned into foaming at the mouth bomb thrower.