Parting gifts

Not too many years ago there lived in Washington, D. C. a rather intense fellow named I. F. Stone; the mere mention of his name evokes a special nostalgia in the hearts of news junkies and Congress-watchers throughout the land. He certainly is one of my heroes.

I. F. Stone’s Weekly, as he called the four-pager he published, became required reading for political types; he famously spent hours reading the Congressional Record in search of priceless nuggets of news he could publish, news that had been overlooked by major outlets but that people needed, in his opinion, to know. He was usually right.

Here’s how he describes his work:

I tried to give information which could be documented so the reader could check it for himself. I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. I also sought to give the Weekly a personal flavor to add humor wit and good writing to the Weekly report. I felt that if one were able enough and had sufficient vision one could distill meaning, truth and even beauty from the swiftly flowing debris of the week's news. I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context called "the significant trifle" — the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.

I thought of Stone when I began thinking about today’s column; I’ve no doubt if he were still with us, he’d have been all over the subject weeks ago.

President George W. Bush and his administration are working feverishly to remodel as they see fit what’s left of the country we live in — mostly by removing some regulations in critical areas, creating new rules in others, or easing restrictions found inconvenient by certain industries.

I think it’s fair to mention that these are matters which the administration was unable to get through Congress in the ordinary course of business, and this is their final chance to leave what they hope will be a lasting impression.

According to the Washington Post,

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo.

Among the areas to be deregulated or eased are factory emissions, drinking water standards, and mountaintop coal mining. In fact, there are reportedly around 100 of these gems being put in place as you read this.

One rule, for example, would increase the level of carbon dioxide emissions allowed to a power plant; another would ease limits on coal-fired power plants near national parks as well as on oil refineries, chemical factories and other industrial plants.

And speaking of pollutants, the new rules will make it easier to dump mining slurry into the streams of Appalachia, while factory farms will be able to decide for themselves if they need a permit to dispose of animal waste into streams.

There’s something for just about everyone. There’s a rule to increase the number of uranium mining permits near the Grand Canyon, and another to allow public lands to be leased for oil shale development.

There’s a new rule extending the number of hours on the road for truck drivers, and another giving law enforcement greater surveillance authority.

The Post report points that a number of the proposed new or changed regulations come at a significant cost to Americans, individually or as taxpayers, such as new limits on family- and medical-related leaves and new standards for preventing or containing oil spills.

Bill Clinton famously put new regulations in place on his way out the door — I seem to remember, for example, regulations concerning logging in national forests — but the Bush folks simply undid those as soon as they came to power. They were able to do so because such last-minute regulations don’t become final until Congress has had 60 days to look them over, and Clinton put them in place so close to the end of his term that they weren’t final when Bush took office.

In this case, the more Machiavellian Bush folks have carefully seen to it that their work is done well before the 60 days starts running, with the result that it may take, literally, an act of Congress to undo any of them.

It may be that the lame-duck session of Congress will be able to intercept this particular pass; I hear they are working just as hard to prevent the havoc as the administration is working to wreak it.

Stay tuned, but mark the words of Molly Ivins: I just think it helps, anything and everything, if the people know. Know what the hell is going on. What they do about it once they know is not my problem.

The Big Three Million

The hot topic over the last week or two has been the proposal to offer some kind of bailout to the “Big Three” American auto manufacturers — Ford, General Motors and Chrysler — all of whom, most immediately General Motors, are struggling to survive the current economic crisis.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the American automobile, whatever its breed, has been near and dear to my heart since I ran with the ‘rodders back in high school — back in the day when I could tell you the make and model of everything coming down the pike.

There were certain rules that I still take as sacrosanct, too: You might drive a Ford family car, but your old pickup was always a Chevy and the van conversion had to be a Dodge.

Suffice to say those days are past; I began to lose track somewhere between the MG-TD and the Lamborghini, and finally gave up trying when the Japanese started building pickup trucks.

Thirty years ago it made good sense to want an American vehicle; no matter the buzz that Mercedes might be better engineered or that a Volkswagen or Renault got better mileage, it just seemed practical to avoid the possibility of being stranded for days in some remote village without ready access to foreign parts.

Then the economy got all global and now foreign cars are made right here in America, but old habits die hard and I confess to a visceral loyalty to the American originals. So it matters to me, for that reason if no other, what happens to our automobile industry.

The possibilities being debated among members of Congress and opined upon by an array of media pundits range from government loans to bankruptcy, with a few hard-hearted suggestions that nothing at all be done because “they brought it upon themselves.”

Maybe so. But who deserves punishment? Certainly not the almost three million Americans whose jobs will likely be lost if just General Motors is allowed to die!

It’s said that one in every five American jobs would be affected: after all, it’s not just the assembly-line workers in Detroit, but also the companies that make the components, the truck drivers who transport the new cars all around the country, and the salespeople and mechanics in the dealerships; consider, too, the graphic designers and video producers who create the new car advertisements, the Madison avenue types who sell them and the media that publish them . . . you get the picture. And it’s not pretty.

So it may be tempting to say “It’s their problem,” but it’s much bigger than that.

If your neighbor lights his roof on fire by burning leaves on a windy day, you could say it’s his problem, too. But that doesn’t mean you refuse to call the fire department just because it would cost taxpayer money to run that red truck over and put out the fire.

You call the fire department because, among other really good reasons, that fire just might spread to your house and then it is definitely your problem.

Interestingly, folks who favor bankruptcy as a solution almost always seem to get around to the appeal of “tearing up union contracts,” which makes me wonder whether they are more interested in helping to rescue the industry or in getting rid of unions. These same folks also complain about the pensions retired workers are receiving.

What is it with these people? Pension envy?

If someone is to be punished it could be management, it could be labor, it could even be the public that demanded what Detroit was selling. For years – well, just about forever, the big three resisted safety changes that cost money, increasing gas mileage – which would cost money, building smaller cars, and so on, and yes, they did bring it on themselves.

But that just makes a case for spreading the punishment around, to borrow a phrase, rather than socking it to workers and the economy that workers support.

We can provide bridge loans to the auto industry but with serious conditions: we can require that they retool ASAP to build fuel-efficient cars and hybrids; we can demand that the unions concede some of their hard-won benefits and that managers and stockholders take serious cuts in pay.

I heard one of the opponents of a bailout cry, “But it will cost money! Where are we supposed to get the money?” Maybe from the same place that’s providing the money for the war in Iraq? Where did we get the money for the AIG bailout?

In fact, the main bailout proposal being talked about would get the money from the $700 billion already on hand for economic relief, and would amount to only 4% of those funds.

But it won’t be enough just to help the industry get past the present crisis; we can do more to help rebuild and stabilize this hub of American manufacturing, at the same time working to reduce our dependence on oil. Robert Goodman, a professor of environmental design writing for the New York Times, suggests that

As part of its loan package, the government should insist on the development of "transportmaker business plans" from the car companies, with specific timelines for developing more fuel-efficient cars. The companies should also provide detailed plans to transform some of their factories into research and manufacturing centers for the development of light-rail cars and high-speed trains and buses. (In some cases, these could run on existing tracks and on the median strips of Interstate highways; in others, entirely new lanes and tracks would be built.) . . .

During World War II, the auto companies converted their factories to build not only military trucks and jeeps, but also airplanes, weapons, tanks and other vehicles. Ford’s Willow Run plant built thousands of B-24 bombers, becoming the world’s biggest bomber plant.

The research and production capacity that the car companies built during the 20th century could be adapted for the needs of the 21st.

Sounds like a plan to me!

Early Thanksgiving!

Election night was unbelievable. Literally. Down at Democratic Headquarters several dozen folks had gathered to watch the returns, yet the room was strangely quiet over an almost unbearable two hours, as the patient assembly tried to make sense out of the myriad maps and graphs displayed on TV news reports. Then, suddenly, the screen filled with the announcement that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States.

The room erupted into noise and motion as people shouted and danced and hugged and cheered, the emotion of the moment even driving some of us to tears. How to believe that this moment in American history had arrived – and that we had been a part of it?

And yes, everything did change. The rest of the world celebrated right along with us; news flashed from all around the world, like the rolling reports of new years' celebrations, except it was all at once.

It was thrilling, no doubt about it. Especially for those of us who supported Barack Obama for the better part of two years, way too long by some standards, but that’s a problem for another time.

For those who are less than thrilled, but would welcome some good news, let me offer at least one thought.

The election is over.

And another: The winner was Obama, not Clinton.

And this: Rahm Emanuel, known as “Rahmbo,” is to be Chief of Staff at the White House. This appointment likely signals that the Obama administration will be disciplined, and that it will not be pulled to the left by the left-most members of the party. (That could be a whole separate column, so trust me for now.)

There was some collateral damage, too, in that the hapless campaign run by McCain and the Rove acolytes he listened to may have been the death of the Republican Party. And no, I don’t find that cause for celebration, because I believe in the usefulness of a loyal opposition.

But that opposition should be honorable and I think that the Republican Party, after it was hijacked by radicals, lost its moorings. Without those moorings, it will likely be a very, very long time before American politics regains its balance.

How is the Republican Party to become viable again? Certainly not by returning to the slash-and-burn tactics of Rove and Gingrich, now thoroughly discredited as party visionaries. These guys, along with Grover Norquist, are where the blame really should go once the dust settles.

How about revisiting the ideas of William F. Buckley, one of this country’s truly thoughtful intellectuals, about whom George W. Bush said, “Bill Buckley was one of the great founders of the modern conservative movement. He brought conservative thought into the political mainstream, and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America's victory in the Cold War and for the conservative movement that continues to this day.”

Buckley often spoke out strongly against the “neoconservative” approach to government. In a conversation with George Will (no slouch in the matter of conservatism), speaking about the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy abroad as foreign policy, he said:

It's anything but conservative. It's not conservative at all, inasmuch as conservatism doesn't invite unnecessary challenges. It insists on coming to terms with the world as it is, and the notion that merely by affirming these high ideals we can affect highly entrenched systems.

The thoughtful conservatism of Buckley was overrun by radicals like Grover Norquist, head of the euphemistically named Americans for Tax Reform; Norquist once told NPR, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Starve the government of revenue and you can do away with foolish things like, oh, national defense, public education, Medicare, Social Security, and FEMA.

Norquist was co-author of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” and had a long association with Karl Rove. He was instrumental in securing early conservative support for George W. Bush in the lead-up to the 2000 race for the presidency.

In 2003 Paul Krugman, who this year won the Nobel Prize for Economics, wrote:

Here's how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these "lucky duckies." (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their "blood boiling with tax rage."

If I were trying to rebuild the Republican Party I’d get out a new broom and run these guys out of town.

The loveliness of the Obama victory is that it did not involve viciousness (pleas by some worried supporters notwithstanding) and remained calm and thoughtful throughout. And it paid off: Obama won in almost every identifiable constituency, including college graduates making more than $100,000.

Question for Karl Rove: Does this mean that to build a permanent Democratic majority all we have to do is provide college education for everyone that wants it?