Kevin Drum, writing in Mother Jones, has a good article on the unique power of big ag to force through incredibly damaging environmental legislation. In particular, the legislative language in Waxman-Markey concerning ethanol is especially galling:
But that still wasn’t enough for the ag lobby. Next on their hit list was protection for ethanol. For years corn farmers have argued that ethanol has a lower carbon footprint than gasoline. It turns out that this isn’t true if you take into account the land-use changes that accompany ethanol production: The corn grown for ethanol displaces feed corn, which displaces soybean crops, which causes Brazilian farmers 6,000 miles away to make up the difference by growing more soybeans on their pastureland. This in turn displaces their cattle to new pastures created by clearcutting the rainforest, thus wiping out all of ethanol’s carbon benefits. The net effect, the EPA’s scientists have concluded, is that ethanol’s real carbon footprint is about the same as gasoline’s—or even worse.
The ag lobby’s response was simple and direct: They insisted that Waxman-Markey be changed to forbid federal agencies from considering indirect land-use changes when assessing the greenhouse gas footprint of ethanol. End of discussion.
The experts were agog. “This is not a close scientific call,” wrote Michael O’Hare, a public policy professor at UC-Berkeley who’s studied land-use issues extensively for the California Air Resources Board. “If we are willing to make stuff up and stifle the science with legislation like this, countries like India and China and the Europeans have no reason to get on board…It will be a catastrophe.”
Too true. And while Drum doesn’t go out of his way to mention names, I’d like to note that Minnesota’s own Collin Peterson is the number one reason why these terrible agriculture policies make their way into critical pieces of environmental legislation. But hey, Representative Peterson is just voting in the best interests of the people who sign his paychecks, the voters in MN-07 big ag PACs. After all, these particular constituents are responsible for more than three-quarters of his campaign donations, a higher proportion—by a factor of one half—than any other Minnesotan representative.
The average Israeli apparently has no idea that Israel’s illegal settlements precipitate Palestinian outrage:
For most Israelis, the occupied territories are located somewhere beyond the world’s edge. After the Second Intifada began in 2000, the army banned Israelis from visiting Area A — the parts of the West Bank under full Palestinian control — for their own safety. Except for settlers, Israeli civilians are unlikely to visit the other areas. They don’t see how the suburban houses of the settlements have spread on the hills, how illegal outposts have sprung up between the established settlements, how the 200-foot-wide security barrier meandering through the countryside further hems in Palestinians. (The settlers look at this every day, but in their own way they are blind to it.)
I’ve heard statements along this line before and I never cease to be astonished by the apparent ambivalence of the Israeli electorate towards the settlements. I mean, the American electorate is chronically uninformed, but I would still wager that if the United States began annexing swathes of Mexico (and the Mexicans responded with an armed insurgency!) most American voters would take notice and demand some shift in policy. What gives Israel?
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this very excellent CityPages profile of Rep. Paul Thissen, one of the many DFLers currently vying for the Democratic nomination. The whole thing is really good journalism and you should definitely go read the piece— if nothing else it will give you an idea of what a grueling ordeal running for statewide office is. The only commentary I would add is that Thissen comes off as a very cerebral candidate in his profile. As a DFL loyalist I certainly admire this quality but I must say that in the past Democrats have gotten into a bit of trouble with the electorate for running overly intelligent candidates who lacked the personal polish to sell themselves to voters. If Thissen is actually a candidate who can bridge these two qualities, and I have to say I’m certainly impressed so far, he’s probably going to be the first DFL governor of Minnesota in twenty years.
A few days ago Ezra Klein composed a little ode to the postal service in which he used a cute personal anecdote to champion a public postal system:
I had to mail a package today. I was late to do it, and busy, and there’s a Fed-Ex/Kinkos storefront steps from my office. Compared to the post office, mailing my package was at least twice as expensive. But the real fun came while figuring out which speed to mail it at. I asked the guy at the front for their “standard shipping.” I explained that it wasn’t time sensitive. He steered me directly towards “Express Saver” shipping. “Saver,” huh? That sounded good. He’d even give me the envelope for free, he promised. A deal! He rang me up. A shade over $15.
Huh?
Turns out there’s also a “ground” shipping that he didn’t mention. That was “only” $8, plus a bit for the envelope. The salesman had been steering me towards a costlier item that I didn’t really understand, which is sort of what you’d expect, given that he’s in business to make a profit. But I’m not shipping things to help him make a profit, and don’t want to pay $15, or even $8. Good thing I have a public option to choose in the future.
Nevermind the fact that I could regale you with tales of my own postal service woe—the station here at Yale sometimes slips weeks behind sorting mail—but Ezra’s little story doesn’t even make sense. The salesman maliciously ‘steered’ Ezra towards a more expensive option? Give me a break. I sincerely doubt that the guy at the front really stands that much to gain from FedEx corporate or his boss for squeezing a few more dollars out of a customer. It’s far more likely that either Klein or the clerk (or both!) got confused and Klein accidentally ended up with the pricier option.
Moreover, this whole assailment of the profit motive is pretty dumb. One of the strongest debate cases I’ve run this year is a little gem about postal service privatization—it’s yet to be defeated—and undoubtedly one of the stupidest opps to this case is some nonsense about how abolishing the postal service is going to lead to greedy companies harming the general welfare. If this is true why don’t we abolish all for-profit business and turn everything over to the benevolent hand of the state? Seriously. I hate to run up the red flag of communism but, by Klein’s logic, if we can only expect to be mislead and cheated by people who are “in business to make a profit,” we might as well make sure there’s a private option for everything (and while we’re at it we should probably just make profit illegal altogether).
Sure am looking forward to buying my public option car, making calls on my public option phone and drinking my public option wine.
Can’t say I entirely agree with this assessment of the GOP field of gubernatorial candidates:
State Rep. Emmer and former State Auditor Anderson are both well-known enough to garner significant support, but both are targeting the same intraparty demographics. If at any point one of these two candidates pulls away and unites the 37-39% who are supporting one of them, that could be a pretty effective counterweight to Seifert’s superior name recognition. (Bold mine-DT)
It’s always been my understanding that Pat Anderson is mostly trying to tap into the Paulite/libertarian segment of the GOP base, while Tom Emmer is more of a mainstream Republican aiming for the type of Republicans likely to vote for frontrunner Marty Seifert. If this is true, which I’m reasonably confident it is, neither Anderson nor Emmer has access to a universe of voters that could coalesce into some sort of grand anti-Seifert coalition.
What I expect will happen over the next few months is that Emmer will struggle to peel voters away from the Seifert column and Anderson will try to cobble together enough Ron Paul supporters to overwhelm party regulars at poorly attended precinct caucuses. Personally, I’m not putting much stock in either strategy panning out.
The Star Tribune reports that the Vikings—fresh off their surprising winning streak—are currently pining for a new stadium at the state capitol. Color me skeptical. Not only am I philosophically opposed to the idea of government intervention in private industry but in an era of crippling budget shortfalls and budget cuts this is definitely not a sector that deserves a government handout. Furthermore, it’s not entirely clear to me that a new Vikings stadium is even desirable. After all, the Twin Cities will soon have five large sports and entertainment stadiums (the Target Center, Target Field, the Metrodome, TCF Bank Stadium and the Xcel Energy Center)—do we really need another sports arena capable of seating over 20,000 people? Keep in mind that New York City, home to a little more than seven million people, also has five stadiums which it struggles to fill—seems to me that Minneapolis, which has a slightly smaller population, probably doesn’t need more stadium capacity than the largest city in America.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the economic argument for stadium subsidization when stadiums serve as critical components in community revitalization. If a stadium can achieve high occupancy rates, it can certainly play an important role in anchoring a dense urban center. However, if stadiums are going to achieve high usage rates they really need to be used for a variety of different things (NFL, MLB, NHL, college football, concerts, etc.). Dividing these activities up between several locations creates massive money losing ventures while simultaneously depriving the areas surrounding stadiums of the critical mass of attendees needed to support local business.