by Molly Ivins
January 2001
Bush and Energy
GEORGE W. BUSH IS threatening to give us an energy policy that marches militantly in exactly the wrong direction.
Bush’s views on energy are still those of a West Texas oilman. What oilmen want for energy policy is Drill More.
At one point during a debate with Al Gore, Bush suggested we encourage drilling in Mexico to lessen our dependence on “foreign” oil. Startled the Mexicans.
In addition to Bush, who took three oil companies into financial trouble, the new administration boasts Dick Cheney, CEO of Halliburton; Commerce Secretary Don Evans, chairman of Tom Brown oil; and Condoleezza Rice, a director of Chevron. Two of Bush’s biggest donors are Ken Lay of Enron and energy player Sam Wyly, who put up the money for the phony ad praising Bush’s environmental record.
The first fight is likely to be over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Bush favors drilling in the ecologically fragile area, as does his choice for interior secretary, Gale Norton. The object of all the drilling is to bring prices down (not too far) so as to encourage consumption, thus causing us to use ever more fossil fuel. This is the totally backward way of going about an energy policy.
You can’t get elected dog catcher in this country by advocating a sensible energy policy, which would certainly include slapping an additional tax on gasoline in order to discourage consumption. Even if that smart move is off the table because of politics, one can still push for more fuel-efficient cars.
There is a plan already in existence to ratchet up fuel efficiency, but it has been on hold for years as automobile lobbyists successfully fought its implementation by Congress.
Spencer Abraham, Bush’s pick for energy secretary, was one of the leading players in the fight to put off higher fuel-efficiency standards. Abraham compiled a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters.
Americans use five times as much fossil fuel as the other people on this planet on average, so of course we are contributing the lion’s share of carbon dioxide, which is what causes global warming.
Bush would rather not think about that. Upton Sinclair once wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The income of those in oil depends on their not understanding global warming.
Understandably, the industry has put a significant amount of money into a public relations campaign trying to convince people that global warming is not happening, or not happening fast enough to worry about, or needs more study. I suspect that someday—before too long—that campaign will be seen as the wickedness it is.
The other part of the looming energy crisis was caused by the stupid deregulation of the utilities industry, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Bush supported deregulation in Texas, and if his plan had been passed, Texas would be in as bad a shape as California, which deregulated only wholesale prices. We passed a more progressive version of deregulation, no thanks to Bush.
The dereg movement is not working—the new market-based system has not produced needed generating capacity, and those who own the power plants are ripping off everyone else.
Economist Paul Krugman points out that the problem is underinvestment, and “part of the reason for that underinvestment was the excessive enthusiasm of the financial markets for all things tech: When digital businesses are valued at hundreds of times earnings, while utilities have multiples more like ten, who’s going to put money into boring things like generators and transmission grids?”
The usual “leave everything to the magic of the marketplace” crowd needs to take another look at the consequences of deregulation. The same power companies that failed to make the badly needed investments are now making money out the wazoo. Some marketplace. Some magic.
The reason that the utility industry was regulated in the first place is because it’s a natural monopoly, and experience with monopolies indicates that you have to regulate the things. This is one of those deals, like the S&L mess, when you want to go back and check who pushed the ill-advised plan and what promises were made. (More energy! Cheaper rates! Pie in sky!) You would be well-advised not to listen to those same players again.
January 2001
Bush and Energy II
BACK-TO-BACK SPEECHES by the veeper and the only president we’ve got beggar the imagination. Let’s have a new rule: If you pronounce the word nukular, you shouldn’t go around nullifying nuclear treaties. Or building nuclear power plants.
When in the course of human events a treaty becomes outdated, the smart country does not announce it is breaking the treaty. This is unpleasantly reminiscent of numerous chapters involving Native Americans. Instead, the smart country calls upon its dear ally (provided they’re still speaking) to renegotiate the treaty. This has a less threatening effect on the ally.
I don’t know if a National Missile Defense system will work, and neither do you. Most experts not employed by the defense industry are dubious about it at best, but you never know how far we could get if we spend enough time and money on it. If we spend the first $60 billion, we’ll probably be a lot further along than we are now, thus justifying the next $60 billion.
The problem is, it’s massively stupid in terms of national security. What’s a bigger threat to the United States: North Korea or global warming? Our children will live to see the answer to that. It’s their future we’re playing with.
Hearing Dick Cheney make a speech that was outdated by the standards of the oil industry in the 1960s was eerie. Reactionary Texas oilmen are thick on the ground here, but Cheney is a throwback. Not since the late H. L. Hunt was crawling around (which he did—crawl) have we heard such nonsense.
Cheney’s National Energy Policy Development Group—two Texas oilmen, a CEO from the electricity-gobbling aluminum industry, and a tool of the energy companies, all members of the cabinet, meeting in secret—is pushing coal—hard. Unfortunately, it is the dirtiest source of electricity generation: The administration not only has reneged on its promise to curb coal pollution, but now it proposes to ease the pollution controls already in place.
Naturally, the group is also pushing oil and gas—major contributors to global warming—and, incredibly enough, deemphasizing conservation. What kind of energy policy would abandon conservation, which is effective and costs nothing? OPEC is the only thing hurt by it. Under the Bush budget plan, renewable energy programs lose 36 percent of their piddly total funding of $373 million, according to New Technology Week.
Wind-generated electricity is already cheaper than nuclear-generated electricity. It’s highly probable solar-powered photo-voltaic systems will also be cheaper before long: The city of San Francisco votes this fall on whether to back a $250 million bond issue for solar power. If we put $60 billion into researching and improving renewables, we’d not only save money, we could save the world. Quite literally.
One easy and simple way to bring down the price of gasoline is by letting fuel efficiency standards rise to where they already would be if the auto companies had not interfered via generous contributions to Congress. Some remarkable reporting by Jeff Plungis of the Detroit News reveals the auto companies have now wired the study being conducted by the National Academy of Sciences on fuel efficiency.
Nine of the thirteen panel members have ties either to the auto or oil industry; are free-market economists who do not believe in government regulation; or have criticized fuel efficiency standards in a very public way. My favorite guy on the panel is the “safety expert” who claims fuel efficiency standards have killed tens of thousands of people by forcing them into smaller cars.
Meanwhile, back in the world, fuel efficiency is at a twenty-year low, mainly due to the popularity of SUVs. Congress first passed fuel efficiency standards in 1975, when the average car got less than 14 miles per gallon. By 1985, under the required standards, that doubled to 27.5 mpg. It has since slipped to 24 mpg. Plungis reports that automakers have shifted virtually all their technological gains into bigger and more powerful
engines, rather than improving fuel efficiency.
SUVs consume an additional 280,000 barrels of oil in this country every day. That is 15 percent of what OPEC cut in production in March 1999, according to news reports—the event that nearly doubled the price of gas. Half the new cars sold are now SUVs. It is neither difficult nor onerous to improve their mileage: It would cost about $700 additional per vehicle, but with a fuel saving of about $2,500 over the life of the behemoth.
Speaking of campaign contributions, Time magazine reports Cheney’s aides consulted with the West Virginia coal baron Buck Harless, a Bush pioneer (at least $100,000); Stephen Addington of AEI Resources, whose executives gave more than $600,000 to Republicans last election; and of course, our old favorites, Peabody Energy—the biggest coal miner in the country—whose chairman gave over $250,000. Could this payoff possibly be more obvious?
February 2001
Bush’s Drug Problem
THAT WAS QUITE A remarkable moment that George W. Bush had in Mexico. You may have missed it or even assumed he was just pointing out the obvious again, but consider the implications of the president of the United States saying in Mexico, “One of the reasons why drugs are shipped, the main reason why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the United States, is because United States citizens use drugs.” And that’s not the first time that Bush has pointed out that our problem is not supply but demand.
Now, this does not necessarily mean that Bush has thought through the policy implications of his statement. Policy does not, actually, interest him much.
And it is also possible that he’s suffering from cognitive dissonance on the subject, a disconnect common to politicians of all stripes. But the futility of the War on Drugs is apparent to everyone except politicians terrified of the dread accusation “Soft on Drugs.”
The sad history of efforts to eradicate drug use in this country is pockmarked with recurring waves of hysteria, usually involving the association of some drug with some minority group. The Chinese and their opium dens, Mexicans and marijuana, blacks and crack—we literally scare ourselves silly, getting so scared of the menace of drugs that we react stupidly. That politicians feed our fears, milk them for electoral advantage, is another part of the sad pattern.
At the very least, I think we can expect Bush to support scrapping the annoying and presumptuous process of certification—our annual passing of judgment on Mexico’s antidrug efforts. At best, Bush may see the real political opportunity here.
The cost of the War on Drugs, both in lives and dollars, is staggering. And people know it isn’t working. The first party to stand up and say so will get a real windfall.
Bill Clinton, on his way out of office, told Rolling Stone magazine that he supports decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana and an end to the disparity of sentences for crack use vs. cocaine use. Of course, it wasn’t terribly helpful of him to say this on his way out the door. NOW he questions mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
But it is possible for practicing politicians to take these stands as well. The Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, is famous for his crusade against draconian drug laws.
The terrific new film Traffic underscores the futility of the War on Drugs. We have a million people in prison on drug charges—more than the entire prison population of Western Europe. Federal spending has increased from $1 billion in 1980 to $20 billion on the drug war last year, and the states spend even more. Yet drugs are as available as ever. Both cocaine and heroin have gotten cheaper and purer during the past twenty years. This is not working.
The bad news is that Attorney General John Ashcroft has a terrible record in this area. He is a noted practitioner of the Git Tough school of political pandering. When he was in the Senate, Ashcroft denounced the idea of spending money on drug treatment as a trick to take money away from the War on Drugs.
According to Drug War Facts, compiled by Kendra Wright and Paul Lewin, 55 percent of all federal drug defendants are low-level offenders, such as mules or street dealers. Only 11 percent are classified as high-level dealers. Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, the Bureau of Prisons’ budget has increased by 1,350 percent—from $220 million in 1986 to about $3.19 billion in 1997.
One of the most outrageous aspects of this is the seizure of property. During a ten-month national survey, it was discovered that 80 percent of the people who had property forfeited were never charged with a crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal to take property from an owner who had no knowledge of its illegal use. There is no presumption of innocence, no right to an attorney, and no objection to hearsay. The burden of proof of innocence is on the property owner.
For all the money, time, and hysteria spent on the problem of illegal drugs, all illegal drugs combined kill about forty-five hundred Americans a year—1 percent of the number killed by alcohol and tobacco. Rehabilitation is not only much cheaper than prison but also more effective in reducing drug use.
Powder cocaine and crack cocaine are two forms of the same drug with exactly the same active ingredient. The average sentence for low-level and first-time offenders for trafficking crack is ten years and six months; that’s 59 percent longer than the average sentence for rapists.
So we are looking at a colossal, stupefying, incredibly expensive failure. Don’t you think it’s high time that we stopped pouring good money after bad?
February 2001
Bush’s Favorite Flavor
WHILE PRESIDENT G. W. BUSH keeps the populace amused with ludicrous policy proposals, the complete corporate takeover of government is well under way.
The pundit chorus was astounded by the diversity of Bush’s cabinet appointees: blacks, Mexican Americans, a Chinese American woman, a Democrat. Wonder of wonders, a cabinet that looks like America. All hail Bush the Inclusive. This cabinet comes in exactly one flavor: corporate. Jim Hightower’s newsletter, the Hightower Lowdown, lists the corporations now represented in the cabinet, either by former executives or by board members:
Bank of America, Dole Foods, Northwest Airlines, Columbia/HCA Health Care (Elaine Chao).
Lockheed Martin, plus major contributions from the American Trucking Association, Boeing, General Electric, Greyhound, Northwest Airlines, UPS, Union Pacific, and United Airlines (Norman Mineta).
Amoco, Chevron, Exxon, Ford, and Phillips 66, all funders of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, from whence sprang Gale Norton, plus the American Forest & Paper Association, Amoco, ARCO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and Ford, all funders of the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates, chaired by Ms. Norton.
Alcoa, International Paper Company, Eastman Kodak, and Lucent Technologies (Paul O’Neill).
QTC Medical Services, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, and Federal Network (Anthony Principi).
General Instrument Corporation, G. D. Searle & Co., Asea Brown Bavari, the Tribune Company, Gilead Sciences, Inc., RAND Corporation, and Salomon Smith Barney (Donald Rumsfeld).
America Online and General Dynamics (Colin Powell, who has an endless list of corporations that have paid him $100,000 to give a speech).
The oil industry is in a class by itself in this cabinet, boasting G. W. Bush himself, Veep Dick Cheney, and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, all Texas oilmen.
John Ashcroft is particularly close to the Schering-Plough pharmaceutical company and was also heavily funded by BP Amoco, Exxon, Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum, Union Carbide, and Weyerhauser.
Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, sponsored a bill to abolish the Energy Department and led the fight in the Senate to defeat greater fuel efficiency for SUVs, a cause dear to both auto and energy industries.
Ron Paige, the education secretary, is an enthusiastic corporatizer of the public schools. While he was superintendent in Houston, he privatized food services, payroll, and accounting, signed a contract with Coca-Cola to put Coke machines in the halls, and with Primedi
a Corporation to broadcast Channel One in the schools.
Ag Secretary Ann Veneman was on the board of Calgene, Inc., which produces genetically altered food, and was also connected with an agribusiness front group funded by Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Kraft, and Nestle.
Hightower once proposed that politicians be forced to wear the corporate logos of their biggest contributors on their clothes like NASCAR racers, so we’d know who they sold out to. These folks couldn’t get them all on one outfit.
So you will not be amazed to learn that President Bush plans to solve the energy crisis in California by drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Also among the prize policies announced so far: a $1.6 trillion tax cut, 42.5 percent of which goes to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and 60 percent to the richest 10 percent. National Missile Defense, a Rumsfeld project formerly known as Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars, is being pushed along. Bush also proposed a school voucher program, now known as “opportunity scholarships,” and “faith-based” social services (formerly known as “religious”) by “faith-based” institutions (formerly known as “churches”).