After who-knows-and-who-cares how long, I'm leaving this blog behind. It's been fun, it's been real, but it's no more. I'm moving my blogging to my home website (still being fixed up, the site that is). So for those keeping track, you can follow the news and views at www.kevinhoffberg.com/blog. I'll leave kevinrants up for awhile and at some point . . .
Tags: KevinHoffberg
10:40 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (2)
I looked this up today . . .
US Constitution, Article II, Section 1
Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
I suppose it's a matter of interpretation, but I wonder how history will judge the current oath taker on how well he did on this single, simple requirement?Tags: President, Oath of Office, US Constitution, Article II, Section 1
06:36 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
This arrived in my email box from United Airlines today. Interesting . . .
Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something to help now.
For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our customers. Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces, the nation needs to focus on increased energy supplies and conservation. However, there is another side to this story because normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poorly regulated market speculation.
Twenty years ago, 21 percent of oil contracts were purchased by speculators who trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking delivery. Today, oil speculators purchase 66 percent of all oil futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are known. Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs.
Over seventy years ago, Congress established regulations to control excessive, largely unchecked market speculation and manipulation. However, over the past two decades, these regulatory limits have been weakened or removed. We believe that restoring and enforcing these limits, along with several other modest measures, will provide more disclosure, transparency and sound market oversight. Together, these reforms will help cool the over-heated oil market and permit the economy to prosper.
The nation needs to pull together to reform the oil markets and solve this growing problem.
We need your help. Get more information and contact Congress by visiting www.StopOilSpeculationNow.com.
12:44 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
There is an excellent piece on Rush Limbaugh in the New York Times Magazine. Worth a read regardless of your politics. What he has to say about President Bush, however, is just nutty.
Tags: RushLimbaugh, George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Movement Conservative
06:49 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
A piece in the Seattle Times caught my eye . . .
We are in a grand national funk. We are having, to borrow the infamous words of Jimmy Carter, a "crisis of confidence."
For 35 years the Gallup polling firm has asked how much trust we have in our institutions, from the presidency on down to yours truly, the press.
Two weeks ago, Gallup released this year's version. It is stunning how much we the people have lost faith.
Only 12 percent say they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress — the worst rating ever measured for any institution in the history of this poll.
The U.S. Supreme Court got its lowest rating ever. The presidency has scored its lowest the past two years.
What's striking is how much more skeptical we are now than even back in 1979, when then-president Carter gave his "national malaise" speech.
That speech was the at least the beginning of the end for Jimmy Carter. I remember it but only vaguely. So I found it and read it. It's stunning. Here's the heart of it . . .I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.
It is a crisis of confidence.
It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.
The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom; and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.
We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.
We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation’s resources were limitless until 1973 when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.
These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.
Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests.
You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.
Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do?
Obama could take those words as his own and people today would know exactly what he meant. We've come so far, and traveled so little.
And what, pray tell, was the predisposing cause of this national malaise? What was the straw that tipped over the poor camel? High energy prices.
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.
In little more than two decades we’ve gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It’s a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation.
The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.
And what did Carter propose? In an act of leadership not seen since, he committed political suicide on multiple fronts by . . .
Playing the "what if" game is pointless, but it's interesting to think where we'd be if any three of those ideas had stuck. More to the point, I wonder if there is anywhere the political will to speak to the nation in truly leadership-like ways about big issues like energy, social security, or social justice. True believers of market forces and libertarian politics say "no" and "no need." Let the market sort it out. I worry that we have reached an age, where reality has outstripped the limits of either conservative or liberal orthodoxy as those terms are now understood. One fact pointing in that direction is the massive lack of confidence in the institutions that hold our votes, our laws, and our money. The argument that a more perfect realization of orthodoxy would solve the problems seems hollow given that there has never been a large scale example of perfect orthodoxy in the history of mankind.
Tags: JimmyCarter, National Malaise speech, crisis of confidence
01:19 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Two thunderous rulings by narrow majorities on the Supreme Court present an odd juxtaposition.
Today, the court ruled 5-4 that Washington D.C.'s essentially total ban on handguns and highly restrictive conditions on the storage of long guns was unconstitutional. The second amendment has always set a high standard for lexical ambiguity with its liberal use of punctuation . . . thus the running debate about the meaning of the prefratory clause dealing with militias. The majority ruled as follows . . .
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the landmark 5-to-4 decision, said the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In so declaring, the majority found that a gun-control law in the nation’s capital went too far by making it nearly impossible to own a handgun.
But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.
The ruling does not mean, for instance, that laws against carrying concealed weapons are to be swept aside. Furthermore, Justice Scalia wrote, “The court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
And this . . .Concluding his opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, “Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem.”
“That is perhaps debatable,” Justice Scalia wrote, “but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”
Whatever you believe about gun ownership, this is a "landmark ruling." The good news is that there is a strong, constitutional-based argument being offered in defense of the majority opinion. For the record, the minority opinion, written with equal vigor by Justice Stevens, excoriates the majority for its liberal and reaching interpretation of the second amendment.
The case of the Exxon Valdez is another matter entirely. Conservatives love to lambaste judges they dislike as being "activist" and applaud their favorites as strict constructionists. Getting past the jargon, the idea here is that it's not the job of the Supremes to make things up. It's their job to interpret and judge whether or not the matter before them does damage to the constitution, and presumably along with that, long-held court precedents that related to that same question.
In the case of Exxon, another narrow majority went completely off the reservation and plucked a ruling out of thin air.Justice David H. Souter, writing for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision, said a ratio between the two sorts of damages of no more than one-to-one was generally appropriate, at least in maritime cases. Since Exxon has paid about $507 million to compensate more than 32,000 Alaska Natives, landowners and commercial fishermen for the damage caused by the spill, it should have to pay no more than that amount in punitive damages, Justice Souter said.
And the constitutional basis for this?
The question remaining after Wednesday’s decision is whether the one-to-one ratio will apply outside of maritime cases. In the Exxon case, the Supreme Court was acting as a state appellate court typically might, assessing the reasonableness of the punitive award under the common law rather than asking whether it violated constitutional due process protections.
The one-to-one ratio was not grounded in statutory law or other maritime cases. Justice Souter relied instead on studies showing that in hundreds of cases, the median punitive damage award was about 65 percent of the compensatory award.
“We consider that a 1:1 ratio, which is above the median award, is a fair upper limit in maritime cases,” Justice Souter wrote.
If I were a card carrying member of the Federalist Society and this ruling wen the other way based on the same logic, I'd be looking for my Second Amendment guaranteed firearm. So absent any constitutional or statutory basis for a ruling, we're going with statistics? How about the mode? How about the mean? What's the second standard deviation? What about the facts?
What's not at issue here is that the Valdez made an absolute mess of things and the damage is by no means fully remediated. The fact that Exxon has written checks to the tune of $3.5 billion seems besides the point. If I run a hose into your basement and flood it, you'd probably like me to pay what it takes to return your home to the way it was. Whether or not I'm tired of writing checks is irrelevant.
At stake here is that Exxon doesn't want to pay a penalty. The probably don't want to pay anything, but that's not what's at stake. This one should never have been heard. By any "strict constructionist" logic, this is an over-reach of massive proportions.
Tags: SecondAmmendment, Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court, David Souter, Exxon Valdez
12:51 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's hard to listen to either President Bush or Candidate McCain without laughing when it comes to energy policy. The latest silliness is Bush's demands that Congress open up drilling rights in off limits areas both offshore and in Alaska by the fourth of July or answer to consumers why gas is at $4 a gallon. Even by the normal standards of Washington pandering, this one is a dinger.
Leaving aside the obvious little problem that there's a lag time of what, at least a decade between a lease and oil on the market assuming they started drilling on July 5th, there's the inconvenient truth that oil companies are sitting on massive leases with which they are doing precisely nothing . . .
Of the 90 million offshore acres the industry has leases to, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, it is estimated that upwards of 70 million are not producing oil, according to both Democrats and oil-industry sources.
One Democrat staffer said if all these existing areas were being drilled, U.S. oil production could be boosted by nearly 5 million barrels a day, although the oil industry said that number is far too high and one government agency said it was impossible to estimate production.
Why not just come right out and say, "Look, I've only got a few months left in office, so I'm going to do everything I can to larder up my buddies at the oil companies before I ride off to Texas."
Meanwhile, the Bush administrations plan 1A, begging the Saudis to pump more oil, doesn't seem to be working either . . .On Monday, the global oil market shrugged off the news, pushing up prices. Oil was up $1.38 to settle at $136.74 in New York on Monday.
The Saudis, who considered the meeting a success because of the high attendance, announced a production increase of 200,000 barrels a day and an expansion of their output capacity if needed in coming years.
But news of the immediate production increase had already been absorbed by the world market for oil. Some experts had anticipated that the Saudis might announce a bigger increase.
Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil exporter, is the only country with the ability to significantly increase production quickly.
Rather than finding areas of agreement, participants in the one-day meeting in this coastal city on the Red Sea illustrated the sharply diverging views on what has caused oil prices to double in the last year to the $130- to $140-a-barrel range.
Consumer nations, led by the Britain, Japan and United States, see more supply as the answer to higher prices. But most producing nations are either reluctant to or unable to pump more oil, and they say a big reason for the price inflation is speculation. Everyone agreed that surging demand in the developing world was a major factor.
Why the Bushies think this will work is anyone's guess. The fact is, OPEC counties are rolling in cash. Iran and Venezuela are special cases: Their leaders have so mismanaged their economies (including diverting huge sums to stirring up trouble in their respective regions) that they could actually use more hard currency. But for the Gulf states, the oil is worth more in the ground at the moment than it is in the bank. So what's their incentive for pumping right now?
Bush has jawboned about speculators but done nothing about it. He could fix that in about ten minutes by releasing a big chunk of of strategic reserve. That would cure the problem by tomorrow afternoon, if that is indeed what it is.Over the longer haul, America may indeed be at a tipping point. Our high per capita use of energy, both directly and indirectly by our hugely wasteful eating habits is hugely expensive and in direct conflict with the accelerating appetite for energy in two economies, India and China, that together account for half the world's population. There are only two choices open to us over the next twenty-five years:
Tags: Oil, price of gas, ANWAR, Energy Policy, Saudi Arabia, John McCain
06:21 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Michael Medved has written what seems to me to be a bizarre, self-congratulatory piece attempting to explain the high concentration of Harvard-Yale alumni in the Oval office and other seats of power. After pointing out the glowing list of office holders and aspirants, he goes on in this vein . . .
What's the explanation for this extraordinary situation — with Yale/Harvard degree-holders making up less than two-tenths of 1% of the national population, but winning more than 83% of recent presidential nominations?
It's not a reflection of longstanding tradition. Trend lines show increasing, not fading, dominance by the two schools . . . (huh?)
Nor can conspiracy theorists plausibly suggest that "old school ties" and establishment connections explain the recent rise of Yale/Harvard grads . . .
Yale-Harvard credentials play a more prominent role in jockeying for the nation's top job while college in general has become more important for those seeking a job. A university education doesn't necessarily make an applicant more qualified, but it tells you something about his or her ambition and self-discipline . . .
In that context, the competition has greatly intensified for coveted spots in the nation's two most revered universities. Today, pushy parents struggle to place their toddlers in fashionable preschools in order to gain some advantage in the furious fight for future admission to Harvard or Yale . . .
Today, the most prestigious degrees don't so much guarantee success in adulthood as they confirm success in childhood and adolescence. That piece of parchment from New Haven or Cambridge doesn't guarantee you've received a spectacular education, but it does indicate that you've competed with single-minded effectiveness in the first 20 years of life.
And the winners of that daunting battle — the driven, ferociously focused kids willing to expend the energy and make the sacrifices to conquer our most exclusive universities — are among those most likely to enjoy similar success in the even more fiercely fought free-for-all of presidential politics.
So the explanation, if you can call it that, is a syllogism that goes something like this . . .I haven't looked, but I'm willing to bet there are at least ten other schools that are every bit as competitive as Harvard and Yale. So the argument that getting into one of those places is the penultimate educational achievement is just goofy.
The idea that a prospective student is in some way defective if he or she choses to not apply to Harvard or Yale, and that seems to be the implication, is, well, defective. Remember, the initial premise of this piece is a thoughtful exploration and explanation of why so many of our recent Presidents and candidates hail from those hallowed halls.
The notion that admission to one of these institutions is a signal above all others implies a kind of omniscience on the part of the admissions committee at these institutions that is a reach of epic proportions. Given their affection for diversity (read quotas), legacies, and all manner of other criteria they don't speak of, their is far more capriciousness in who gets in and who doesn't than Medved would care to admit. It's true of any of the so called "elite" institutions.
I readily admit to an anti-elitist attitude, but I'm fine with the idea of an elite school. But let's call it how it is. Medved offers no useful explanation for the apparent ascendancy of these two universities, so let me step in with some alternative hypothesis.
Great Brands. Harvard and Yale are doubly blessed in that their brands attract the kinds of people who are prized by the post-graduate world: so the brands work in both directions. It's like a Ferrari or a Rolls. People want them when they're new and want them when they're used. So they're valuable coming and going.
American Royalty. We don't have an actual royalty in this country, but we do love royalty. So absent a House of Windsor, we transfer our national psychosis for benevolent parents on graduates of elite schools.
Network Effect. Any argument to the contrary is just plain wrong. Every university works to build "alumni-power", and the Ivys do it best of all. Getting into Harvard or Yale is a golden ticket to a very exclusive club.
Social Utility. I will agree with Medved that Harvard and Yale do serve as a magnate for people who are attracted to the exercise of economic and political power (not that that's the only kind of person who has or will go there; I'm thinking of Jody Foster as just one contra-example). So in that way, they perform a social good in that they signal to potential captains of the universe a path to travel.
The larger question, that goes unanswered, is does a degree from Harvard or Yale make one unusually qualified to lead. This will show my bias, but I recall that Bush the Younger has a degree from both. If someone would like to advance the argument that he was then or is now among the best and brightest this nation has to offer, I'm all ears.
Tags: MichaelMedved, Harvard, Yale, Decision Making, President, Candidate, George Bush
01:23 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1)
The pundits suggesting that Obama should start playing nice so as not to hurt the feelings of Clinton supporters see something here that I don't. I'm with Roland Martin . . . Hilary is all in and going all out to win this thing any way she can. Only a fool gives her an inch.
Remember all those wrestling "death matches," during which they talked about guys tearing their opponents' heads off in the ring? We all knew wrestling is fake, but the promotion was awesome, because it always sucked us in.
Lest anyone think the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination is going to end peacefully in June, forget about it.
Sen. Hillary Clinton will do anything and everything to win, and the idea that Sen. Barack Obama should give in to her demands to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates is ludicrous. When you're ahead, you don't concede any ground. If the roles were reversed, she would do the same.
This race, regardless of what anyone says, is still airtight. Obama has the lead among superdelegates and has garnered a majority of pledged delegates, but they always can change their allegiance, per Democratic Party rules, and don't think for a second that the Clinton camp doesn't understand that.
Her comments to The Associated Press that she may take this to the convention in August shouldn't be dismissed. I don't think Clinton cares about the party. Last week, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux said a Clinton source told her that their focus is Clinton first and the party second.
Tags: Hilary, Clinton, Bill, Obama, President, Michigan, Florida, Convention
09:55 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (4)
The drums are beating all over the Democratic camp. Paul Krugman weighs in that Obama needs to be extra careful handling Hilary in the closing days . . . and not to make too much of her assassination musings or fight to the death to seat delegates from states Obama didn't campaign in because, oh, whatever, he followed the rules.
But mainly it’s up to Mr. Obama to deliver the unity he has always promised — starting with his own party.
One thing to do would be to make a gesture of respect for Democrats who voted in good faith by recognizing Florida’s primary votes — which at this point wouldn’t change the outcome of the nomination fight.
The only reason I can see for Obama supporters to oppose seating Florida is that it might let Mrs. Clinton claim that she received a majority of the popular vote. But which is more important — denying Mrs. Clinton bragging rights, or possibly forfeiting the general election?
What about offering Mrs. Clinton the vice presidency? If I were Mr. Obama, I’d do it. Adding Mrs. Clinton to the ticket — or at least making the offer — might help heal the wounds of an ugly primary fight.
Here’s the point: the nightmare Mr. Obama and his supporters should fear is that in an election year in which everything favors the Democrats, he will nonetheless manage to lose. He needs to do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
There is no question that Obama has some political weaknesses, as does McCain. But I find the veiled and not-so-veiled threats from the Clinton corner to be distasteful, even if it's just politics. Running as strong as Hilary has, she certainly is a force to be accounted for. Obama is no fool on that front. But let's be clear here, he's the guy headed to the podium to make the big speech: Not Hilary. Not Bill. Stop with the threats. The Republicans will bring plenty of their own to the party.
Tags: Obama, Hilary, Clinton, Bill, Florida, Primary, Nominee
06:09 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
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