The World Baseball Classic – Where’s the Love?

With the passing of the second quadrennial World Baseball Classic, it’s once again time to crown Japan as the champions. And an exciting WBC it was! The United States shook off a poor showing four years ago, and staked a stunning come-from-behind victory against Venezuela, to proceed to the semi-finals before losing to Japan (no shame in that). And the championship game between Japan and North Korea would rival any playoff or World Series game you’ll see in October. When the two teams, whose baseball programs enjoy a pretty strong rivalry anyway, met in the championship, they had already played four times, splitting the games two apiece. It was a classic baseball contest, requiring exemplary defense, solid pitching, timely hitting, and even a tenth inning to decide. Seiichi Uchikawa made just about the best play you will ever see in the outfield. And when the passion both countries posses for baseball is coupled with the historical political tensions between the Japanese and Koreans, this game can easily be seen as more than just a mere contest of skills on the diamond; a comparison of the 1980 United States/Soviet Union Olympic hockey game would not be a specious analogy, even if the animosity isn’t quite as severe.

I was sad to see the United States lose to Japan. But I couldn’t say I was disappointed with Japan winning the championship. The intrigue of a Japan vs. South Korea game aside, I love the way the Japanese play baseball. They play the game the way it’s supposed to be played; hit for average, run when you get a chance, pull the ball to right with a man on first – pretty much just a small-ball team with an emphasis on defense and pitching. I do enjoy the current makeup of the game, but American baseball has turned into hitters swinging as hard as they can at pitches thrown as hard as possible. I understand the irony of this coming from a fan of the Cubs, a team which in recent history has relied a bit too much on strikeouts and homeruns (pop quiz – when was the last year Cubs pitching did not lead the Majors in strikeouts? 2000; and they came in fifth), but I prefer the old-school style of play. Joe Morgan commented that one of the big differences between Japanese and American pitching is the Japanese trust their off-speed pitches in hitter’s counts. As a guy who always preferred Greg Maddux to Roger Clemens, those are the kind of pitchers that I enjoy watching. It’s smart baseball, not just muscle baseball. And baseball really should be more chess than wrestling.

In short, they play the game the way Ryne Sandberg says it should be played.

Certainly the tournament made me long for exuberant discussion – if only I could have found someone to discuss it with.

By all accounts, it was a smashing success; everything that Major League Baseball had hoped it would be . . . if you look at its impact internationally. For Monday night’s championship game, over 40,000 baseball fans packed into a stadium in South Korea to watch the game on the JumboTron, and almost 55,000 showed up for the actual game in LA’s Dodger Stadium. There were some anemic crowds for some contests. Less than 10,000 people showed up for the Japan vs. Cuba semifinal game last Wednesday, but that game was played in the United States, so some tepid reaction is excusable. And just a touch over 13,000 fans showed up for one game featuring the United States in Dolphin Stadium last week, but that could rival any other baseball game played in Dolphin Stadium (one reason the Florida Marlins may leave Miami).

The goal, however, was not to breed further interest in the sport at home (though I’m sure MLB wouldn’t decline the offer), but rather to garner interest across the world in an effort to make baseball a truly global sport. And the truth is it is a global sport. Of the four major sports in the United States, football and basketball don’t share near the international intrigue of baseball and hockey, though basketball has become very popular in some Mediterranean and Eastern European countries.

The problem is, while hockey’s international appeal has a direct benefit on the sport in the United States, as the lack of pronouncability on player’s jerseys will quickly prove, baseball’s appeal has relatively little economic value for Major League Baseball outside of the United States and the Caribbean. The market for players is starting to expand into Japan and Southeast Asia, and clubs are spending more than ever evaluating talent in those areas. But that is sadly being offset by a tendency of youths coming from economically challenged backgrounds in the United States, whom traditionally looked towards baseball to gain wealth, shifting focus to basketball and football instead. MLB is trying to deal with this problem through programs such as RBI, but the sad fact is the only thing keeping baseball from once again becoming a “white” sport is the influx of major league ballplayers from Central America and the increasing number of players from Japan and Southeast Asia.

I know it sounds cold to put the situation into such nondescript socio-economic and racial terms, but the truth is the best athletes tend to come from economically challenged backgrounds, and money is spent by fans where players are being produced. This is an issue that affects both the integrity and quality of the game played, as well as the economic value of the sport. So the World Baseball Classic was established, in part, to try to expand the market globally, producing an increase in both the quality of players entering the league and the markets in which Major League Baseball can financially tap into.

After only two tournaments over four years, it’s hard to tell if this will have any real impact on either of those goals. As for me, personally, even if it is a failure in that regard it would be a measure of pride that my favorite sport is increasing its global appeal.

I love the World Baseball Classic. I love what it represents for the game. I love watching other countries and nationalities compete in the sport outside of the Olympic venue. And yes, I love seeing how the Americans stack up against players from other countries. And even though there was little representation outside of North America and Asia (The Netherlands, Italy, and South Africa were the only three of the 16 not from those two continents), I honestly believe that this is going to be instrumental in spreading the popularity of the game.

But I don’t understand why this love is so seldom shared among my US brethren. I would think millions of baseball fans would jump at the chance to watch good, quality baseball games in March. (Have you seen Spring Training games?? They’re painful!)

One excuse I’ve heard for the bland response is that it competes with March Madness. This is undoubtedly true, and I don’t think you can reasonably expect it to achieve its full potential in the US during this time frame. But that doesn’t explain the complete lack of enthusiasm. If there was any excitement for it, then it would fare well right along side March Madness; they could even compliment each other. Bud Selig said he’d like to eliminate a lot of the off-days during the tournament, which would increase the number of games played on the weekdays (when the NCAA tournament is dormant) and also lessen the amount of time it has to compete against the NCAA tourney. That will help. Some suggest changing the timing, but to when? To November, so they can play baseball in the snow? To July so they can suspend the regular season for three weeks? March is the only logical time to play the WBC, and so fans are going to have to learn to multitask. It shouldn’t be asking a lot. You don’t ignore the Winter Olympics because of the NFL playoffs.

To be fair, there would probably be a lot more enthusiasm in the United States if the United States baseball team was more successful. The American team, while doing well overall, was hardly the dominating force one would expect them to be. And winning breeds enthusiasm. Without Lance Armstrong’s dominance, the Tour de France is just a bunch of people in stupid outfits riding bikes. And who actually thinks the US swimming team would have received constant national attention if it wasn’t for a certain Michael Phelps?

It is possible, of course, that the Japanese are just a better team. That “old-school” baseball really is a superior game and Japanese dominance reflects this. And it’s possible that we are overestimating the superiority of American ball players to other countries. Still, when considering the bad performance of the team in 2004 and the level of play against some countries in earlier rounds, it’s obvious the American team did not perform up to par.

There are a lot of excuses for the American team not playing as well as one would expect. I’m not sure I buy many of them, mostly because the Japanese team played so well. People say that there wasn’t enough time for players to prepare, and that the team couldn’t jell the way other teams could, or that commitments to their Major League teams kept players from being utilized appropriately or playing as hard as they otherwise would have. But there were several MLB players on most teams, and the rest of the Japanese team was comprised of top-tier professionals from a very successful major league program in Japan. There’s no reason why the Japanese could work around these problems but the Americans couldn’t. To me, it was obviously an issue of attitude.

I don’t want to take anything away from the players who decided to play. I know the players who participated in the WBC felt honored to do so, and seemed legitimately disheartened when they lost. Particularly, Derek Jeter obviously really took the tournament to heart, and I appreciate that. However, the overall reaction from Major League players and their teams to the WBC has been lukewarm, at best. Many of the game’s top players seemed to jump at the chance to wiggle out of the tournament. Look, if CC Sabathia doesn’t want to play, he shouldn’t have to. But practically nobody turns down a shot to play in the All-Star game (though I have seen some pretty lame injuries keep players out). Players should view this as another form of the All-Star game, except instead of representing your league, you’re representing your country.

Much of this attitude seems to stem from the ball clubs. They don’t want to take the risk that their players will be injured, or that the early training and stress will wear them out towards the end of the season. This is understandable, but baseball is notoriously a marathon sport, and there should be ways around this without meaningfully affecting your team’s play in September or October. And I don’t think that competing against a team in international play is any more hazardous to a player’s health than competing against another team in spring training. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I’d also be inclined to believe that many ballplayers probably see this as little more than a run through minor-league all-star teams, so what’s the point? We don’t need the WBC to tell us we’re the best in the world (even though we’ve yet to prove it in that venue), so why break our backs for it?

Culture is a hard thing to change, and I’m not sure I know how to do it. My first thought would be to provide monetary incentive to teams for winning games, but that would seem to fly against the spirit of the tournament, and I’m not sure you could award financial incentives large enough for ultra-competitive multi-millionaires to use it as any more of a motivating factor than winning would otherwise be.

Bud Selig said owner’s need to realize this tournament is ultimately good for baseball, and they may have to make some sacrifices for the greater good. I think these sacrifices would actually be quite small, and agree that the ball clubs should fall in line. But I think he’s missing the point. As long as the majority of Major League Baseball continues to see the WBC as a sacrifice teams need to make, they will not have the enthusiasm for the tournament it deserves.

Progressive is Pragmatic, Not Punishment

There has been a lot of talk about taxes lately, as in a desperate attempt to regain control in the election John McCain is accusing of Barack Obama of raising taxes on the middle class while simultaneously claiming that his tax cuts on the middle class, which he insists won’t exist, paid for by rolling back tax hikes of the Bush administration, which he was originally against, are some form of socialism.

Of course, the American tax system has been a progressive tax system since the passage of the 16^th Amendment in 1913. There were two income taxes prior to that, during the Civil War and the 1880’s, which had flat rates. However, both of those taxes were only levied on the wealthiest of individuals in America, and therefore still adhered to the principle of the progressive tax which claims that those who make the most should shoulder the largest burden.

The historical battle between America and communist/socialist governments has made throwing around the terms “communist” and “socialist” very attractive. But I don’t know anybody in this country who is completely against any government program which dabbles in socialist ideology. I would have very little respect, and suspect very, very few Americans would oppose this view, of those who wanted to eliminate some of our programs which are quite socialist in operation, such as Social Security, Medicare, the postal service, the military, or Major League Baseball. But I digress . . .

There are two prevailing arguments against any sort of tax increase on the wealthy. The first is that the rich already pay far more than their fair share. You hear all sorts of statistics like “the wealthiest six Americans pay more in taxes than the rest of the US population, the crew of the Starship Enterprise, and every Chinese person since the beginning of time combined.” The part they leave out is that they make much more money than everybody else. So I set out to find some statistics which compare income distribution with tax burden. And I stumbled upon a very cool Excel spreadsheet (if there was ever a such thing) made up by the Congressional Budget Office. Check it out here. Unfortunately, it evidently takes two years to come up with this data (as a government employee, I should not have been as surprised as I was), because the most recent data was compiled in December 2007, but is only through 2005. Still, more recent data would actually prove my point better, because Bush helped push through another tax cut on the wealthy in 2006, as one of the Republican Congress’s last actions.

Instead of spouting a mountain of numbers, I decided to create some graphical evidence that our tax system is merely progressive and not some punishment for making money (click on the graphs to see a larger, more legible size):

I stumbled on another interesting little tidbit. Since the other popular argument among the right is that decreasing taxes for the rich increases wealth for all individuals, al la trickle down (I prefer the term “voodoo,” originated by someone whom I’m sure was ultra-liberal) economics, I decided to see how damaging increasing tax rates on the wealthiest individuals was for their earning power. Turns out, it’s not much damaging at all. In fact, their pre-tax income follows their tax rate much more proportionally than inversely:

And mean tax rates vs. mean income follows the same trend:

So it looks like demand side economics isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Of course, I’m not advocating for WWI tax rates, when the richest were taxed at about 70%. But it would appear that rolling back Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthiest while providing breaks for those who can least afford their taxes would hardly be the fatal mistake some would imply it would be.

Many argue for the flat tax as a way to eliminate the “redistribution of wealth.” But since we currently have a progressive tax system, doing so successfully could only result in one of two outcomes: either tax rates on the lower and middle classes would sharply increase, with the increase most severe on those making the least amount of money; or a drastic cut in government spending, inevitably targeting the most drastic cuts in programs designed to support the poorest individuals. Either way, it would also be a massive redistribution of wealth, this time from those most incapable of affording it to those who need it the least.

The Real Cause of Economic Discourse (Hint: It’s not socialism.)

I’d like to take a little time to address an issue which, I thought, was pretty much common knowledge – the way we got into the economic mess we now see ourselves in. I have been keeping at least a passing attention on the economy since, well, just about forever, and am astonished by the lack of respect some people have for the general population’s ability to retain information over the course of several years, but even more amazed by a general willingness to soak it up.

Mostly what I am referring to is the misplaced belief that somehow the economy was moving along swimmingly, and then Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae came out of left field and just messed the whole thing up for all of us. The truth is the economy has been struggling for quite some time. Heck, earlier this year Bush had to convince America that, based upon a very technical meaning of the word “recession,” we were merely in an “economic slowdown.” This was months before the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We don’t argue about technical meanings of the word “recession” when everything’s going fine. And meanwhile the American dollar was decreasing in value while American’s purchasing power was being decreased by, among other things, the high cost of energy and oil for a couple of years. So how people can believe that the economic mess is being caused by the collapse of the housing market, and not the other way around, is a little confusing to me.

But the reaction du jour for the far-right conservative movement has been to deny that any economic uncertainty was taking place, and throw the burden of the current economic crisis directly on the shoulders of 1977’s Community Reinvestment Act, with the proverbial back-breaking straw coming in the form of a Clinton amending bill in 1995. This does not seem to be done as a means to blame Bill Clinton for our current economic strife per se, but rather to shift the responsibility from the economic policies of the Bush administration to a much more wide-reaching ideology; that in an attempt to destroy American capitalism and replace it with a neo-socialist liberal agenda which rewards the lazy and indifferent at the expense of the hard-working, God-fearing aristocracy (a la the beautifully poetic dung slinger Ayn Rand), the liberal left has destroyed America’s economy under the name of – get this – equal housing legislation (poor people owning homes: how delightfully evil!!)

A succinct illustration of this argument is an article supposedly passed from an economic professor to a Republican State Senator and former Governor, to the fun loving people of the internet (probably not – these things are seldomly written by those whom it’s attributed to.)

First, it says that the base for this problem was first laid in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  It tells you to look it up, but doesn’t actually provide any evidence or reasoning to back up the claim.  Evidently, since it says to look it up we’re just supposed to blindly accept that this statement is true without any sort of validation whatsoever.  I called their bluff.

The bill was actually designed to prevent lending institutions from denying credit to deserving applicants based solely upon the location of the applicant or the general economic status of those in his or her area.  The bill specifically stated that these loans be “consistent with safe and sound operation.”  In other words, contrary to the implication of the article, the bill was not designed to provide credit to those who should not get it, but rather to force credit agencies to end discriminatory practices which denied credit to those who would have been approved if they lived in another area.

And as for that heinous 1995 adaptation?  Well, in 1995 both the House and the Senate was under Republican control.  So this wasn’t something those socialist liberals could have passed without Conservative agreement on the issue.  In fact, according to an article from 1995, most of the law was written by Republicans in Congress, and was almost vetoed by Clinton.  But again the argument damming the liberal agenda makes a claim that it doesn’t bother even attempting to substantiate, and hopes that it’s not checked out by making the assertion that you should.  I did.

The majority of the 1995 amendment was actually aimed at changing the regulatory practices to make them more streamlined, easier, and cost-effective for the lenders.  So the claim that it was targeted towards people who cannot afford to buy a house is patently false.  Contrarily, the biggest impact this bill had on the current economic crisis was the inclusion of subprime securities (which I’ll get to later).  Democrats were originally against these new rules, while the securities lobbyists fought hard for it.

We’re supposed to take it on faith that because the bill was passed during Clinton’s Presidency, he must be to blame for any problems it caused.  In reality, the bill that was passed was a mostly Republican bill with appeasements to Democrats to allow its passage and veto-less escape.

At any rate, CRA loans are typically profitable and safe for the companies which provide them, according the Federal Reserve.  Also, most of the sub-prime loans were not held under CRA oversight, so it couldn’t have been to blame, anyway.  According to an article in Business Week, over 50% of the bad loans were made by an independent lenders not privy to the CRA, and up to 30% were made by lenders associated with CRA institutions but not under CRA regulations.

Finally, it should be noted that CRA lenders were some of the most heavily regulated institutions, and these regulations were becoming more and more lax under the Bush administration.  Since virtually all of the loans which were bad were made during the lessening of the CRA, and not very many were even a part of this program, it’s simply not logical (never-the-less factual) to blame the mess on the CRA at all.

But I’ll let Ben Bernacke, the chairmen of the Fed who was put into place by George W. Bush sum up the “mess” caused by the CRA:

“The managers of financial institutions found that these loan portfolios, if properly underwritten and managed, could be profitable. In fact, a Federal Reserve study found that, generally, CRA-related lending activity was at least somewhat profitable and usually did not involve disproportionately higher levels of default.”

Now, as far as the Freddie and Fannie claims – it is true that some Republicans wanted to change the regulations but ultimately failed in part due to the opposition of some Democrats.  But just as in 1995, to blame this solely on the Democrats is to ignore the makeup of Congress.  As in 1995, both Chambers of Congress were under Republican control, so ultimately if the Republican Party had wanted these reforms they could have just outvoted the Dems on the issue and that would be that.

Also, the changes in regulation which Bush and McCain wanted would have changed the agency under which they would have reported, and would have been a far cry from guaranteeing the defaulted loans would not have occurred.

However, even ignoring that, and even if the claims that the CRA caused the high number of faulty mortgages are true (which they aren’t), it still doesn’t explain the mess that everything’s in now.  Why?  Because if that was the case then Freddie and Fannie would have been bailed out and that would have been the end of the story.  The truth is that, in an attempt to assign blame to the current economic problems on a specific ideology (the evil, communist idea that people in poor neighborhoods should be able to own their own homes, too), the argument misrepresents one major factor in the subprime mortgage crisis, and completely ignores the real crux of its effect on the economy as a whole.

The biggest problem here is not regulation, but deregulation.  The most guilty acts of deregulation fall under Bush’s terms, but also Clinton’s last term, so it is fair to say Clinton shares some of the blame.  In the late ’90’s, regulations put in place after the Great Depression started to be relieved due to a perception (real or imaginary) that American banks could not compete with European and East Asian banks.  This lead to two problems – speculation and securitization.

First, the problem started with the housing boom that began in the 1990’s and continued for upwards around a decade.  Some market correction was going to occur after a while, and that is neither the Democrats or Republicans faults.  But the economy never completely recovered from the tech-bubble bust in 2001 (and has a completely partisan comment, Bush’s economic policies caused downward trends to continue and increase), and interest rates were seemingly being lowered every quarter.  This had the very intended consequence of making credit exceptionally easy to obtain, which played a much bigger role in the ability of people to obtain mortgages they couldn’t afford than the CRA ever could.

As the economy started to tumble lower and lower in 2005, credit started tightening and interest rates rose.  The worsened economy caused many people in sub-prime mortgages to default, but the real killer was the adjusted-rate mortgages (ARM), which were given to many people who actually could have afforded their mortgages with higher, fixed-interested rates.  While it is true that the people who signed these mortgages have some culpability and should be held responsible, there is virtually unanimous consent that many or most of these individuals were at least somewhat victimized by unscrupulous lenders and policies whose risks were not made clear.  And as interest rates climbed and some of the sub-prime mortgages started to go bust, ARMs rates were getting unreasonable and forced many people who otherwise could have afforded their mortgages to default.  (I thought this was pretty well understood, but evidently I’m mistaken.)  This can in no way be attributed to the CRA, especially considering most of these ARM issues were centered in suburbia and were typically causing defaults by lenders not covered under CRA regulations.

When this occurred, housing prices started to plummet.  This caused an even larger problem because people now owed more on their houses than they were worth.  For the average homeowner, this is probably not a big deal because (assuming they have the more traditional fixed-rate mortgage) it doesn’t actually affect their ability to pay the bills.  But at this time speculation was a major wealth builder for many people, who viewed their mortgaged property not as homes, but investments.  When people could no longer turn over their investments for profit, they panicked and got out from under them, causing housing values to fall even lower.   This was a major contributing factor in the collapse of the housing market and since banks could no longer make up the loss on a faulted loan due to recessed pricing in the open market, ultimately helped create the necessity of a Freddie and Fannie bailout.

But even though all this is the case, it’s still not really what caused the extent of the wider impact on the economy.  The real reason why it hit so hard was the securitization of these loans.

Lenders were able to take these sub-prime and ARM mortgages, cut them into little pieces, pool them with other mortgages and types of credit, and then sell these pool on the open market.  This is called securitization, and due to Clinton and Bush deregulation, they were able to inflate the market value of these securities to make them more appealing.  In theory, this spread the risk of these mortgages along to several investors, but in practice some banks were either keeping the securities on their own books, or buying up large amounts of them, centralizing the risks.  And again, though this started under the Clinton administration, it was a Republican addition to the bill, not a Democrat.

In fact, during the Bush years, the percentage of these loans which were securitized rose from just over half to over 75%.

When the mortgages started to go bad, it was this centralization of the risks by the use of securities which caused the most trouble, not the defaulting of the mortgages themselves.  When these securities defaulted, credit froze, causing a halt on the issuance of corporate paper, which locked up the credit market.  The biggest impact on the market was not caused by the loan the bank made, but how they proceeded to package that loan to other investors.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.  A Mr. Alan Greenspan, nominated by Reagan and head of the Fed through the W. Bush administration, agrees, claiming not only that ”subprime mortgages are risky, but they are worth it,” but also that the economic downturn was caused by “not the subprime problem itself, but to the securitization of subprime.”

I tried to keep it relatively unpartisan.  (Note that my position is bolstered by the comments of two conservative Republican Federal Reserve Chairmen.)  But since I can’t resist, here’s the partisan timeline of events:

Bush’s failed policies cause the economy to falter.  This causes poor people to lose their homes.  This causes interest rates to increase.  This causes ARMs to become unmanageable.  This causes subprime securities popularized by conservative ideology (i.e. blanket deregulation regardless of original necessity of regulatory action) to fail.  This causes the credit market to lock up.  This causes the Stock Market to suck.

Was Kyle Orton the Drummer for Nirvana?

A big break from my usual posts, but this is HUGE news.

So I was on Metallica.com today to listen to “Tomorrow Never Comes” (they actually have six songs up in preparation for the release of “Death Magnetic” this Friday), and there was a picture of Dave Grohl, who was doing a radio show with the Metallicatz.  And I noticed he looks just like Kyle Orton (or rather, Kyle Orton looks just like Dave Grohl).

Seriously.  Check it:

Grohl:  

Kyle:  

This is my favorite Orton pick, though he doesn’t look quite as Grohlish:

Right now I’m a bigger Dave Grohl fan than Kyle Orton.  Though if he takes on linebackers like he did Sunday night I’m open to rethinking that position.

Palin’s Fiscal Hypocrisy

As (hopefully) everybody in America knows, McCain picked Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his Vice President nominee.

I really did not think this was coming.  Word had been skewed about the political lair for a while, and over two months ago I wrote a response to a comment about why Palin would not be a very successful VP pick.  Which I stand by.

People asked me how I felt about Biden.  Excited I was not, but neither was I disappointed.  He is a safe pick, one that will help Obama in a general election in several ways, and who won’t convince any Obama supporters to defect to McCain.  I was going to write a post about the man, but didn’t.  Work has been busy lately, and they expect me to keep up at the expense of my blog.  Horrible.

But I am very excited about Governor Palin.  She’s given us more dirt in the last week than McCain and Obama have all summer.  As an Obama supporter, it’s hard to imagine a better McCain Veep pick to help achieve the goal of an Obama Presidency.

After watching highlights of the Democrat and Republican Conventions (the Cubs have been playing a lot of night games lately), I’m certain of two things.

1. If I hear the term “red meat” one more time I’m going to start systematically incorporating pundit carcass into the actual material.
2. Palin is a liar.

I don’t want to rehash on stuff that’s been said for a week.  So I won’t get into the vetting process that didn’t, or the irony of Palin’s pregnant daughter, or the ethics investigation which could conceivable recommend her impeachment less than a week before the election.

Though I have to point out that Palin named her children Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig.  Can you really trust this person’s judgment??

There’s not much material to pick through, as Palin has only had one real speech enter the national conscience, and that was Wednesday night.  But she spent a considerable amount of her time speaking of her grand accomplishments enacting fiscal responsibility in Alaska, which should work well in the party of fiscal responsibility.  Even though the U.S. Government reports Republican administrations seem to be the only ones which increase the national deficit, Bush’s tax “cuts” didn’t do anything for most people but were targeted towards the wealthiest individuals (linked figure taken from this story), and Obama intends to decrease taxes for most Americans.

And even though Palin wasn’t nearly so responsible.

First, she has talked in great lengths about killing the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere.”  Sounds good – it was turned into a symbol of government waste and McCain has used it on more than one occasion to show how bad earmarks are.

Problem is Palin was not only hesitant to cancel it, she supported it in the first place.  In a questionnaire by The Anchorage Times she said she supported using state funds to build the Gavina Island bridge.  Tonight she said she told the nation “I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere.”  But a year ago she said, “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.”  And she didn’t exactly tell the government “no thanks” on the money they were willing to spend, anyway, but rather spent half of it on other road projects before officially axing the bridge project.

In related news, it turns out that the pipe line she droned on about her Governorship created hasn’t actually been created yet.  It’s still in the planning stages.  And by “planning stages” I mean still awaiting approval from the people who are actually going to build the thing.  But if she works real hard, it’s estimated to come online sometime around the year 2020.  So worry not; McCain/Palin has energy assistance on the way – you just have to wait about twelve years.  No big deal.

She also got things a little fuzzy when she said she enacted massive budget cuts which brought the Alaskan budget to more responsible levels while creating a budget surplus.  This is not exactly accurate – Alaska had a budget surplus in 2006 (she was elected in November 2006 so you do the math).  The reason for the surplus?  Not budget cuts, but oil.  Oil taxes, royalties, and fees account for at least 80% of the state’s revenue.  This makes sense, since it’s the leading oil producer in the nation and its next best export is tundra.  Of course, it should be noted that gas prices in Alaska are the highest in the country, which could say something about McCain’s plan to drill to lower gas prices.

Oh, the surplus was also due to federal government spending, since Palin asked for more federal money to Alaska in earmarks per capita than any other state in the union.  Of course, Palin claims to be against these earmarks.  She just doesn’t mind asking for them, spending all the money before saying “no thanks,” and then taking credit for the surpluses they helped achieve.

And not only was Alaska’s surplus not due to Palin’s budget cuts, but Alaska’s 2007 capital budget was one of the largest in the state’s history, and the $6.6 billion operations budget escaped veto-free as the largest Alaska had ever had – despite a promise to cut $150 million from it.  But she had a good excuse; there’s not enough time between her becoming Governor and the passage of the budget.  So let me get this straight:  when she’s in Alaska she didn’t have enough time to adequately cut the budget, but when she’s in Minnesota she’s a shining example of how to do so?

Though to be fair, she did cut money from the capital budget in 2007 and 2008.  Programs that were cut included housing for homeless and runaway youths, grants to schools and nonprofit organizations, a learning center, a library, and a government transparency program (seems kind of counter to McCain’s government transparency arguments).  She also cut spending on youth sports, but allowed full funding for sport fishing hatcheries.  Probably because sport fishing brings money into the state, but youth sports only bring money into individual schools.

My two favorite program cuts?  A 20% cut in funding to help support teenage moms, and a 62% cut in special needs education funding.

So she may not be completely honest, but she seems to be winning major points for hypocrisy.

The Harden Trade Analysis

Haven’t blogged in a while, which is a shame because I have some big (or at least numerous) plans in the works, but things have gotten a bit hectic lately. But I saw this and I had to immediately put aside everything to write about it.

The Cubs traded for Rich Harden.

Wow.

I did not see this one coming. I was hoping we could get our hands on CC Sabathia (no more periods), as he was having a bit of a down year (a relative term, to be sure), the Indians are having a very down year, and he was in the last year of his contract, which is pretty much the Pillsbury recipe for trade-bait. After they fell out of the front-running, I probably stopped hearing the Cubs mentioned about a week or so before he was traded to the Brewers, I just figured that was that and moved on. Though I figured the Cubs would probably do something towards the end of the trade “deadline,” I thought it would be something like, say, getting a Jason Kendell or Steve Trachsel. I had no idea they would get someone this good this soon.

Harden has been besieged by injuries; injured six times in his six major league seasons, he’s already sat out a month this year. But when he’s on, he is on. So far he’s 5-1 with a 2.34 ERA in the hitter-friendly American League.

The move surprises me mostly because the Oakland A’s are not exactly floundering. They are seven games above .500, only six back in the AL West, and a scant 3.5 games behind the AL Wild Card leading Boston Red Sox. Throw in the fact that the Cubs have not been one in my lifetime to trade for high-class pitchers ever, let alone in the middle of the season, and this completely blindsided me.

The Cubs did not make out like bandits. They traded four players for Harden (oh, and Chad Gaudin was thrown in, as well), at least three of whom have the potential to be very good players in the Major League level: Matt Murton, Eric Patterson, Sean Gallagher, who have all played in the Majors this year, and low A-ball Peoria Chiefs’ catcher Josh Donaldson. Eric Patterson was shaping up to be better than his brother, Corey, who showed me two years ago that Felix Pie was going to be a bust (looks like I was spot on there). I’ve always liked Sean Gallagher, and I love Matt Murton. Though I’m very sad to see him go, he’s been getting a raw deal in Chicago, and I am happy to see him traded to a team which may appreciate his talents a little more.

This trade was really made possible, at least from the Cub fan’s point of view, for four reasons.

First, the Cubs are obviously thinking short-term. Though this trade is a positive boon for the rest of the season, it could end up being a negative long-term even if he stays with the Cubs for a while. Seeing as he is probably a “loaner” and will sign with the highest bidder at the end of the season, and with Gallagher, Murton, and Patterson all solid prospects, this is obviously not going to be of any help for the 2010 Cubbies. Much has been made of the fact that mid-season trades seldom work out the way the team thinking “this year” hope they do, but this is completely different. The Cubs are not making this trade to try and find the missing link to get into the playoffs. They are already in a solid position to do so, nobody will be able to argue that Hardin is not an upgrade over Gallagher, Murton and Patterson would not be instrumental in getting there, and once the postseason starts it’s pitching, pitching, pitching. With the pending sale, the Cubs have been blatant in their attempts to win a World Series under the Tribune’s watch, future-be-damned, and this will be of tremendous help in getting them through three series victoriously, while sacrificing practically nothing to get there.

Second, the acquisition of Jim Edmonds and Reed Johnson, both of whom came with huge question marks, made the Cubs’ outfield very crowded. Previously mentioned bust Pie has been sent down and probably will not return until the rosters expand, if he returns at all in 2008. But Soriano is due back shortly following the All-Star break, Fukudome has been all the Cubs (or at least I) had hoped, and the Cubs have two outfielders with major league experience in the minors: Sam Fuld and Jason Dubois. So though I would have loved to see a long Chicago career in store for Mr. Murton, he was not a needed part of the Cubs short-term plans.

Third, the unexpected play of Eric Patterson must have made him very appealing to a team needing a second baseman, and the Oakland A’s have a bunch of no-names lining up behind the pitcher. Mark Ellis is currently starting at 2B, and he owns a less-then-impressive .269 career batting average with an anemic .340 OPS, and is hitting under .250 so far this year. Eric Patterson’s numbers haven’t been fantastic, and his experiment in the outfield has been pretty much a failure, but he’s only played thirteen games with the Cubbies thus far. His minor league stats have been solid, a .300 hitter in 2007 and 2008 in AAA Iowa, and he has shown some great promise when he’s had the chance to play on the big league roster. The Cubs didn’t really have a place for him in the infield; Ryan Theriot looks like he’s going to be their shortstop for a long time, Mark DeRosa pretty much only gets a day off at second when he plays somewhere else, and there’s not a team in the league who wouldn’t like to have Mike Fontenot and Ronny Cedeno on their bench. Nobody’s going to supplant Ramirez or Lee in the next few years. So when Patterson looked lost in left field, he was an expendable but attractive part of the Cubs organization.

Finally, the Cubs starting rotation has been a mixed bag. The disappointing season of Rich Hill, who went all the way from the majors to struggling in A-ball, left an opening in the rotation they were not expecting and could ill-afford. Meanwhile, John Lieber has been solid out of the pen but was unpitchable in his only start, delegating him permanently to the bullpen this year. And Jason Marquis is Jason Marquis. However, there have been some pleasant surprises, as well. Ryan Dempster has been pitching better than anybody could have expected, and he’s headed to New York for the All-Star Game. Ted Lilly bounced back from a terrible start and, though he’s not really a surprise, has pitched well as of late. Sean Gallagher has pitched well this year, and has gotten better as the year went on. And probably most importantly, Sean Marshall has pitched very well since he’s come back from the minors to transition from reliever to starter, which ultimately allowed them to be able to send off a starting pitcher and absorb the loss.

A quick list of Cub players who did not suit up for the 2006 North Side season: Alfonso Soriano, Geovano Soto, Kosuke Fukudome, Ted Lilly, Mike Fontenot, Daryl Ward, Reed Johnson, and Jim Edmonds.

Can the Cubs be for sale every year?

Drilling is Not the Solution

The public outcry over $4 a gallon gas (and rising) has spurned somewhat of a college industry among the press in the woes and perils of high energy costs. The latest news is that unsigned bands will have to cancel national tours due to the high fuel costs. Heartbreaking, I know.

Actually, despite my sarcasm my second dream job was rock star. I found out I couldn’t throw 90 mph, so that ended my first, and then I found out that most rock stars spend years living on cheap beer and sand, which ended my second. So I support small bands and wish them the best. (I still think of you, Julie!! Hope Portland’s better than BFE, IL.)

And raised energy prices are nothing to disregard so lightly. After all, Hillary Clinton “heard from some folks” that things are getting rough. So both candidates are starting to showcase their plans for relief. For example, they both support closing loopholes which allow oil company speculations to drive prices up. Some are saying Obama is merely following McCain’s lead on this (thanks, liber.rhetoricae), but it’s good that both candidates agree.

However, McCain has taken the extra step to try and end the 26-year moratorium on drilling off the U.S. coastlines, a plan that is even having a hard time convincing many coastline Republicans.

I think many people along the coastlines are having a “not in my backyard” type reaction. We get that a lot in central Illinois when companies want to start building wind turbines. But in this case I have to agree wholeheartedly with those who oppose it. It’s just not a smart, responsible way to deal with the fuel costs.

First, the Senate has already turned down such a measure, by a 56-42 vote. This is a plan championed by Bush, which means (fair or not) it’s not going to get a lot of air play in a Democrat-controlled Congress before January. So far from offering immediate help, it won’t even be approved for at least seven more months.

Further, though both Obama and McCain agree that at least part of the gas price problem is a lack of oil supply, even Bush admits that it will take years, as long as a full decade, for drilling to start pumping more oil into the U.S. economy, and hence years before any sort of relief at the pump.

When you couple this long time line with the increase in demand that will continue due to higher oil consumption from large countries such as China and Brazil, this is a plan that will bear no fruit for the average American consumer.

McCain has voted against such a measure before, and as little as three weeks ago stated that such actions “would take years to develop, [and] would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels.” This change of heart seems to be little more than the same political posturing used to champion the ill-advised gas tax cut.

(To his credit, he continues to express opposition to drilling in ANWR.)

The truth is, the time and resources spent drilling for oil in our coastline could be much better spent developing ways to alleviate our dependency upon oil, which is going to be the only way we can ultimately provide permanent relief from high gas prices. Ten years is along time to wait for help at the gas pump, but it’s also a long time to incorporate solar power, or find new ways to reclaim all the lost energy involved in driving a car, or establish a hydrogen infrastructure to power fuel cell or liquid hydrogen vehicles, or increase electric engines which run on American made energy using coal, natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, or nuclear energy, or even something really cool that we haven’t even thought up of yet.

Working to expand the energy matrix, and not just our oil supply, also has an added benefit – it provides relief not just from the gas station but the electric company. Focusing our solutions on providing more oil does us no favors when the price of energy required to power our homes is also increasing. I must admit, McCain seems legitimately interested in helping expand our nation’s ability to provide cheap, clean, renewable energy. But framing the energy debate on the price of gasoline only limits the nation’s sense of expediency in accomplishing this goal by suggesting the problem is not the status quo, but rather our capabilities in sustaining it.

Many people are complaining that Obama’s opposition to this drilling is merely representative of a larger “can’t do” ideology of the Democrat party, if not liberal thought as a whole. Obama has an extensive policy of things we can do to help provide cheaper energy – at the pump and at the home. In fact, focusing our attention on increasing the oil supply is actually much more of a “can’t do” policy – we can’t increase fuel efficiency to levels already demanded in much of the world, can’t increase it in a financially viable manner, can’t create automobiles or technologies which rid us of our dependency on oil to begin with.

We can, we must, and it’s time that we do. For Julie’s sake.

The Two Ironies of Public Funding; How the Electoral Map Favors Obama

The big news over the last couple of days is Obama opting out of public funding for the Presidential Election. (Not Michelle Obama’s dress. I can’t believe this stuff gets on the air.) McCain has claimed this is evidence that Obama “is just another typical politician,” which is ironic because he’s the first to opt out of public funding since the system was established in 1972. By definition, that makes him atypical.

In fact, the biggest reason why Obama has opted out of the public funding is due to his unique ability to raise large sums of money from small donors. Truth is, there is absolutely nothing “typical” about this decision.

Of course, that is merely a point of irony, and not what McCain was referring to at all when he stated this is just an example of political expediency. Obama had famously stated that he would accept public funding if the Republican candidate and he could work out a reasonable system for doing so. But since he no longer needs to do so, McCain argues, he is going against his word and taking the path which will allow him the most money to spend come September and October.

Still, the decision to opt out of funding has few objective detractors in and of itself. And if the system is as broken as Obama believes it is, this decision may provide him with the perfect opportunity to scrap it and begin anew. Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough presents the perfect illustration of the real issue the press has with Obama: opting out was the right decision, but he’s using the wrong explanation to justify it. Earlier this morning, he said the appropriate explanation would be to just say that due to the millions of small donors online, things have changed to a degree he just couldn’t have imagined a year ago. Dan Rather agreed, saying the reason why he did not do so is because politics at the top is like “dancing like you’re barefoot on August asphalt.”

You have to love Dan Rather.

Finally, Wednesday Quinnipiac University released an interesting poll which showed Obama ahead of McCain in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The margin was all below ten points so, while they were all above the margin of error, the data’s not entirely useful this far from the election. However, it has to be comforting for Obama.

But the interesting data was not the leads in these three states, but the impact that Clinton has, or more to the point has not had, on the general election. In these three points, Obama leads McCain among women . . . by ten to twenty-three points. What’s more, when asked if Obama should put Hillary Clinton on the ticket, Democrats in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania say yes by margins of 57-33, 58-31, and 60-31 percent, respectively. However, independents in these two states oppose the idea by wide margins: 46-37, 47-31, and 49-36 percent, respectively. And the biggest Republican support she gets for the Veep nod in any state is 20%, in Pennsylvania.

So it would be safe to say the fact that Obama is not Hillary Clinton is not going to cause McCain to carry those states. But perhaps more importantly, it would actually be a detriment to him to put Hillary on the ticket.

If Obama carries all three states, it’s going to be virtually impossible for McCain to win. Quinnipiac seems to be generous to Obama in Florida. Realclearpolitics.com has an average polling line of +5% for McCain. And I’ll be honest; I don’t see Obama winning Florida. I didn’t think Kerry could win it, and I don’t think Clinton could have won it. It would certainly make things easier if Obama can grab it somehow, but I’m more than willing to concede it to McCain. However, the average line for Obama in Ohio is +5.3%, while in Pennsylvania it’s 7.3%. Ohio has 20 electoral votes, and Bush won that in 2004. If Kerry had carried Ohio he would have won. So hanging on to these two states means he doesn’t have to win Florida.

But looking deeper into realclearpolitics.com’s website reveals something even more interesting, and exciting for the Obama fan. It may not come down to Ohio after all. They list the battleground states for 2008 as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Of these states, the only ones McCain currently have a polling lead in are Michigan and Florida. Obama and McCain are tied in New Mexico and Nevada, though several others are virtual ties (leads of less than 2%). This includes Michigan, New Hampshire, Virginia, Missouri, and Colorado.

So let’s say that the map stays the same from 2004 to 2008 with the exception of these states and Iowa, which very narrowly went to Bush but Obama is currently leading. And let’s give Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada to McCain, let him keep Michigan, and throw Colorado and Virginia to him for good measure. Under this scenario, Obama would win the election by accruing 273 electoral votes.

And if the leads all hold up and McCain takes New Mexico and Nevada? Then Obama

wins easily, 295 – 243. With ten electoral votes up for grabs in those two states, Obama could win over 300 electoral votes.

In fact, if he wins any two out of the seven “tied” states he would win the election. More interesting, though, is if he wins only Michigan he could lose all the others and still get to 270. Of course, this is all predicated upon him winning Ohio and Pennsylvania. So the big trifecta for Obama is Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Win those three, and it’s in the bag. Win two of those, and it would be virtually impossible for McCain to win. McCain has to win two of those three in order to have a legitimate chance of winning the election (though at that point it’s unlikely he would lose).

With that in mind, I would not be willing to say at this time that any single state is going to determine the election. However, if it’s close, and certainly if McCain wins, I predict it will all come down to Michigan.

You heard it here first.

A Requiem

I tried to resist the temptation, but I feel as though I must say a few words about the immortal Tim Russert. I know there are thousands, if not millions, of tributes to this wonderful man, so I won’t try to offer some deep insight into who he was or what he meant to America. That should be obvious by now, if it wasn’t before (and I can’t understand why it wouldn’t have been.) To be honest, I’m not sure I can offer anything at all. But three days later I’m still in shock. I tried to write about baseball, but all that came out was Russert. So here’s what he meant to me.

Like many twenty-somethings who closely follow the Beltway, I first became intimately familiar with him on November 7, 2000. The first time I was able to vote.

I had no idea I was watching history. Someday the bitterness of the election that still lives in much of the U.S. population will have long passed and 2000 will serve as little more than a curious end game to a complicated election process. But it will be studied, and Gore’s name will live with Tiden’s and Cleveland’s in the blank spaces of history exams for decades to come.

But to those who watched the events unfold live, the disputes and recounts and court battles will not have lived on that Tuesday night. Those all happened in the days and weeks following. And grouped in those following days and weeks will be the events that actually did occur that night – the press stating Gore was President before recanting, then later calling the Presidency for Bush before recanting yet again. Or waiting for a Gore concession speech that never arrived. Or Bush telling reporters that he will win Florida and “you can write that down,” immediately followed by speculation on what Thanksgiving night at the Bush’s would be like if his prediction ended up hollow.

Because looking back on November 7, the big event wasn’t the election. It was Tim Russert.

If this story is to be told to our children, Russert will probably play the supporting actor to the dry erase board. But to me it wasn’t Russert’s board. At eighteen, I had thought that it was a decidedly low-tech and amateurish way to get information across. But combined with that smile Russert always accompanied with his fanatic doodlings, it seemed like we were watching a nerdy school boy playing news with a home camera. He would get so excited every time he’d come up with a new electoral count scenario, grinning from ear to ear and showing Brokaw look at what I’ve done!! It was bizarre, but it was also enduring.

If you look at how cable news shows handle the election-night results now, it’s all about who has the fanciest and flashiest dry erase board. But at the end of the day, that’s all they really are. Just different versions of Russert’s board. He seems to have really changed the way TV handles elections in a fundamental way that night. One of his many contributions – probably not the most important, but potentially the most memorable.

At the time, however, I was put off by this child-like figure, invading what I felt was the most important event of my lifetime with such a naïve narrative. But that was really what people loved about Russert, wasn’t it? His childish naivety. Of course, he was probably the least naïve person in all of television. From everybody’s accounts, he certainly seemed to be the smartest. But he never seemed like he was a professional newsman. He always seemed like a little kid standing on the courthouse steps, begging his heroes to “Say it ain’t so.” He was innocence exposing the culpable. And he always won, so he always made us feel as though innocence had won, too. And because of that, he gave me hope.

And now what is the news going to do? Outside of Chuck Todd, I can’t think of a single person who is even remotely capable of matching his unique mix of insight, intelligence, and boyish charm. So I hope Todd can do a good interview.

It was touching that MSNBC spent all weekend devoted to him, but I doubt it was much of a good tribute to Russert. With the exception of a block of Sunday afternoon, it was a loop of about three or four hours of Russert tribute material all weekend. Tim Russert was always about “hard news.” He resisted the temptations to blur entertainment with news, as most of our modern television press has done. He didn’t like the horse race aspect of politics and was always trying to sway the conversation to ideas and policies. And though it was fitting for MSNBC to devote the whole weekend to him, I thought it was a little disrespectful to him to just loop through the same material over and over and over again. I don’t think that’s what he would have wanted. He would have wanted there to be real news going all weekend. The best tribute (I can think of) to Tim Russert would have been to replay a wide swath of interviews and Meet the Press shows relevant to today’s topics all weekend. This tribute would have simultaneously showcased his abilities and his work while also providing real news and commentary. Most importantly, it would have escaped the “infotainment” which modern news organizations try to pass off as public import – the very trap Russert was so successful in avoiding (if not downright ignoring), but which ended up being the vein of his tribute.

I cannot help but feel that his passing is an omen for the four and a half months to come. We need Tim Russert more than ever. We need calm candor, but television news cannot seem to provide that. We need reason, but we are marketed fear. We need honest questions and long answers, but will be given partisan bullet points and thirty second responses.

We’ll have walls of TVs and touch screens and flying pie charts. And all I’ll really want is one damn dry erase board.

Washington’s New Eco-Agenda

Yahoo reports that “EcoGeeks get all the girls.” And from Clinton to Kennedy, Condit to Livingston, Tobias to Foley, (and who can forget Larry Craig?) there’s no doubt that nobody does sex quite like Washington. Which is probably why they are finally starting to take environmental issues seriously, with three major pieces of eco-legislation on the agenda.

The first two bills approaching Congress deal with the issuance of tax credits and federal subsidies designed to encourage production and distribution of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. These two bills are H.R. 6049: Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008; and H.R. 5351: Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008. H.R. 6049 would extend current tax breaks on companies producing renewable energy sources through 2009, while H.R. 5351 evidently creates them. Both of these have passed the House of Representatives. H.R. 5351 was added to the new housing bill, H.R. 3221, as an amendment by the Senate, and this bill was passed by both the House and the Senate. The two chambers’ differences have yet to be resolved, but the primary difference between the bill passed by the House and the amendment added to the housing bill in the Senate is whether $18 billion in tax breaks aimed at oil companies would be eliminated to pay for the tax relief for renewable energy.

The Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008 is a $54 billion package which extends current tax breaks for wind energy until the end of 2009, solar energy through the end of 2014, and biomass, geothermal, landfill gas, and other technologies through the end of 2011. These tax breaks are essential to secure our energy independence and ensure a sustainable ecology for the long-term health of humanity. It also has a significant economic impact; elimination of these tax breaks could cause a $20 billion cut in energy research and development, costing over 116,000 American jobs. These jobs are not only important now, but are a precursor for permanent infrastructure employment opportunities, improving the standard of living within the United States by simultaneously strengthening our economy and lowering the cost of living.

As with most pro-environment policies, this bill will not only increase the “green” on the land, but also the green in your pocket.

This is an extremely important bill to pass Congress for a variety of reasons. As time is allowed to drag before we take alternative forms of energy seriously, we will only weaken our power and influence in the world while raising energy costs at home. I urge you to contact your Senator to ask him to pass this legislation. You may find your Senator’s contact information here. There are many people in Congress who may be tempted to vote against this bill for strictly political reasons. It is important to remember that this time of the political calendar is one which a constituent has the most power. Congressmen do not want to upset the people who they are asking to vote them back into office, and many feel it is too close to Election Day for people to forget it.

If you wish, you may also sign the We Campaign’s online petition. Normally I do not sign such petitions, as they are usually about meaningless. However, the We Campaign is made up of a wide range of political activists – they are responsible for the commercials with Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson – so it does hold more weight then most other websites with similar petitions. However, I feel obligated to warn you that signing the petition will put you on the We Campaign’s mailing list. This is not like being on a typical campaign’s mailing list where you get three emails every day with “important” information you don’t care about. I am a member and I can assure you that the emails are few. It is a good way to stay abreast with current environmental issues, if that sort of thing sounds appeasing. So I do recommend signing the petition and receiving their emails and don’t want to scare anybody away from it, but I also want to be upfront and let you know there’s no way of signing it without signing up for the list. (Of course, you could always sign it and then send them an email requesting to be removed from the list . . . )

The third bill approaching Congress is the long-awaited debate on providing federal standards to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This is in the form of S. 2191: America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, announced by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and John Warner (R-Virginia). This bill is getting a lot of heat (no pun intended) from both sides of the issue because one side thinks it’s too expensive and the other thinks it doesn’t go far enough.

The crux of the bill is to cap greenhouse emissions at 2005 levels, and then start reducing gasses by 2% annually begining in 2012, creating a 20% reduction by 2020 and 70% reduction by 2050. This sounds very good. I like this. Could do better and I would prefer faster cuts, but I understand that industry has a legitimate gripe about cutting things too fast and some compromise is necessary.

The bill would also provide “transition assistance” to help deal with raising costs as a result of the expenses necessary to accomplish these cuts. This assistance would come in two forms: $350 billion to aide lower- and middle-income consumers and $500 billion to help offset the costs for companies and industries of modernizing their facilities to comply with the legislation.

This bill would also, by definition, increase the use of renewable and emission-friendly energy sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear.

However, the brunt of these cuts would come in the form of a cap-and-trade policy designed to encourage industry and private power plants to decrease their emissions. I have written about the positives of cap-and-trade before, so I won’t dive into too much detail about their relative merits. Suffice to say, these policies can be enacted and enforced responsibly and be very effective, though they can just as easily be meaningless, particularly if not enforced. If operated according to plan, this cap-and-trade system could move $5 trillion into federal coffers to help accomplish the reduction goals. This will undoubtedly raise many eyebrows amongst the “small government” crowd; even the New York Times is calling it “one of the biggest programs of redistribution of American wealth in history.” There are people who will claim this is just another reason to take the power away from the individual and place it in the hands of “big brother,” and any corrective actions should and must be conducted solely by and within the marketplace.

The truth is that if the market place was inclined to act responsibly to fix the global warming issue then it would have been done a long, long time ago. Some might argue that the market would prefer to act in a way which would be more environmentally friendly, but are unable to do so due to the financial burdens. Fine. But then the government needs to act to allow the market to become more environmentally friendly.

Either way, the health of our environment, the conditions which we leave our only habitat to our children, and the long-term economic and military stability of our nation are far too important to sacrifice in some theoretical discussion with Adam Smith. Our country’s greatest environmental accomplishments happened in the 1970’s, when the Environmental Protection Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, Community Right-to-Know Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) were all passed . . . and we had a Republican President in office. This is not and should not be a partisan issue. This is an issue which demands respect from all sides, as well as compromise. It’s far too important to be lost in the idealistic bickering of extremist thought; whether the arguments rendered be of market corrections or humanity’s ability to influence global climate change.

To that end, while it may appear difficult to impossible for this bill to pass, there are several indicators that such a bill will be passed in the near future. First, despite heavy complaints from some industry, many in the market actually want the federal government to pass greenhouse emission legislation. This is not so much a result of some moral prerogative as much as one of financial necessity. Many in industry fear that if the federal government does not pass emission standards quickly, state governments will become more likely to do so. This sets up several dilemmas. First, it is more efficient for a company to deal with a single standard then to adjust business practices for the differing standards in place in several states. Secondly, there is a fear that states will enact more stringent legislation than the federal government would be willing to, causing an increase cost burden on the industry. Third, states are not likely to provide such large relief plans to the industries affected by the legislation. And fourth (though probably not finally), many in industry are concerned that a state will place unduly high air quality standards and then penalize a company for operating a facility in a neighboring state for pollutants crossing state lines, setting up long and expensive legal battles.

I’m sure that many who control industry would prefer such a law for the law’s sake. However, absent that I really don’t care what the motivations for support of such a law are – the bill will have the same effect regardless of whether it’s approved for economic or altruistic purposes.

Another reason to be hopeful of such a bill forthcoming shortly is the policy of both Presidential candidates. Obama and McCain have both stated they will place an emphasis on creating some environmental controls to decrease global warming and increase energy independence in their next terms. Further, both have expressed an approval of cap-and-trade policy to accomplish reduction in greenhouse gasses. While neither seem as reliable on the subject as, say, Al Gore, they both seem much more sincere about their efforts than George Bush (or John Kerry for that matter). And as “green-living” becomes more and more popular and visible, and as more people understand the economic, as well as the environmental, benefits of more eco-conscious policies and lifestyles, the public push for such legislation will only increase.

It would be great if this bill passed Congress without amendments diluting its ability to positively affect the environment, as well as our economy. If not, hopefully Congress will use the debate to formulate a bill which will pass without rendering it useless in our fight against climate change.