Green Posturing

The mayor of Denver has challenged the organizers of the 2008 Democratic National Convention to "make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet." The Wall Street Journal reported that they've hired environmental activist Andrea Robinson as Director of Greening. How does one become an activist for a living anyway? Is that really a valid career, going around to protest rallies and writing angry letters to politicians? I digress...

The WSJ article contains alot of gems, like the litany of liberal interest groups each making demands that ultimately over-constrain the problem:

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: "That just doesn't exist."

This is absurd on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. There is no logic to the position that trading with other countries, or products made by non-union labor, or cotton that is grown with modern farming techniques are bad for us as a society. I look at this and wonder if the Dems wish that the miracle of the industrial age (enabling the dramatic rise in living standards we enjoy today) never happened. Economics says that competition, another name for trade, forces improvements in productivity, which in turn reduces costs for everyone. Unions, nationalism, and unfounded superstitions about agricultural technology are all antithetical to those goals.

Speaking of agriculture, the real kicker was the description of the catering guidelines:

No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white." (Garnishes don't count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation.

The rainbow food claim sounds like typical new age unscientific garbage. It may be good for culinary artistry, but I doubt that color has any correlation with nutrition. A pile of gray sunflower seeds can pack some vitamins and other essentials, can't it?

The second claim about local food is a common meme going around in enviromental circles these days. It's adherents even have a name: localvores. Trouble is, the idea that local food uses less fuel during transport is actually wrong in most cases. The Boston Globe had an article in 2007 explaining the details:

Judged by unit of weight, ship and rail transport in particular are highly energy efficient. Financial considerations force shippers to pack as much as they can into their cargo containers, whether they're being carried by ship, rail, or truck, and to ensure that they rarely make a return trip empty. And because of their size, container ships and trains enjoy impressive economies of scale. The marginal extra energy it takes to transport a single bunch of bananas packed in with 60,000 tons of other cargo on a container ship is more than an order of magnitude less than that required to move them with a couple hundred pounds of cargo in a car or small truck.

"Local food systems are often built around small-scale logistics," says Chris Foster, a research fellow at England's Manchester Business School and co-author of a December 2006 study on the environmental impacts of food production and consumption commissioned for Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. "You begin to make more trips in cars. More food is shifted around in small trucks and vans, which are relatively energy-inefficient ways of moving."

Democrats and Deficits

John McCain undoubtedly bites off more than he can chew when he promises to balance the federal budget. He is a champion for fighting earmarks and pork, but those amount to a tiny sliver of the budget pie. The real budget meat is in the entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and other transfer programs that currently amount to more than half of the total spending per year. Even if he is successful in forging a compromise fix for Social Security, it is unlikely to shrink.



Meanwhile the Democrats have done an about-face on deficits this election year, and nobody seems to notice. For most of George W. Bush's reign, the Democratic minority in Congress were deficit hawks. They complained incessantly about the supposed squandering of the Clinton surpluses, and held press conferences touting "record deficit" numbers (fiscally irresponsible, but not close to record if you adjust for inflation). Now that they're the majority party in Congress and Obama is the frontrunner, suddenly deficits don't matter at all. Asked about McCain's balanced budget pledge, Obama said:

"I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families"

Note the weasel word he uses, investment. How did we go from Bush deficits being terrible to deficit spending = investment? It's simple, Democratic overspending is good, Republican overspending is bad. Libertarian Steve Chapman takes both sides to task for the coming fiscal disaster. The scariest part is that if the Dems control both the Whitehouse and Congress, the new spending burden will likely be much worse than if control is divided. Chapman notes:

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation added up all the promises made by the two candidates and found that McCain's would cost taxpayers an extra $68 billion a year. Obama's add up to $344 billion a year.

Please Do Piss on the Third Rail

I was not particularly impressed when John McCain said he'd balance the federal budget in 4 years. I think that such a goal is pure fantasy, especially with a Democratic Congress. Many analysts and observers agreed, noting that McCain's own numbers just don't add up. Still, I give him credit for trying. He has his heart in the right place: control spending! Maybe he should throw the Dems a bone and compromise on retiring the Bush tax cuts in exchange for tough cuts on the spending side. Of course that's really only something he could do as President, after winning the election.

I was stunned when he dared touch the third rail of politics a few days later, in Denver July 7th. McCain was roundly criticized by the lefty blogosphere for boldly declaring the impending Social Security crisis "a disgrace." The liberal nuts went insane, he muddied their sacred government cow. Matthew Yglesias called it "peeing on the third rail." The comments sections were flooded with the usual claims that Social Security has no real fiscal shortfall. This issue is the Dem equivalent of Global Warming denial: the science is all against them. The Trustees of Social Security themselves, actuaries with pocket protectors, publish a detailed report projecting demographic trends and resulting revenue versus spending. It says the program is in trouble. What's more, Obama believes there is fiscal imbalance. Why would he propose eliminating the payroll tax cap of $102000 if there were no need for higher revenue?

McCain was asked to clarify. Young people, he said, "are paying so much that they are paying into a system that they won't receive benefits from on its present track that its on, that's the point." Here is a courageous politician, willing to take on an issue that burned George W. Bush just 3 years ago. Anyone under the age of 40 should think long and hard about that. We pay more than 12% of our paycheck to FICA, yet the funds don't legally belong to us. The money is not in an account, it doesn't accrue interest or grow, and it can be redefined by Congress on a whim. In all likelyhood, future benefits for today's workers will be 75% of current benefits or less, and we will be forced to work years longer until retirement.

Note that McCain was not even proposing private accounts as the solution, that was D.O.A. for Bush in 2005. His very reasonable, politically moderate full response reads:

"Now, how do you fix it? Now, how do you fix it? You fix it by reaching across the aisle, and you say to the Democrats, 'Sit down with me at the table. Sit down with me, the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did the last time that Social Security was in deep trouble, and that was way back in 1983.'"

Zoom! Pow!

I'm part of the generation that grew up with Looney Toons on every Saturday morning. My brothers and I would wake up before our parents, and go downstairs to the T.V. room to watch Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian and other classics. We loved other cartoons too, like the old Tom & Jerry ones, the Superfriends (kinda lame, I know), and Deputy Dawg to name a few. I never knew that these would make a lasting impression on me, but they did.

Now that I'm a father, I'm embarrassed to admit that I find myself making cartoon sound effects whenever I play with my kids. When I pick up the baby, there's always an accompanying "zoom!!" or other rocket-like soundbite. With our older daughter, I often "fly" her around in my arms, then set her down with a final "pow," as if she landed on the ground like a superhero with cracks radiating across the dirt away from the spot. All of this is in my mind, like some weirdly involuntary cartoon being played parallel to my real life. When I playfully tickle the girls, I can't help but provide a soundtrack "beep! BEEP! toot toot!"

I know that this must be cultural. I can't imagine that fathers back in 1840 used to do this. "Zoink!"