Why bother with truth when you can blame hippies?

Robert Samuelson continues his disinformation campaign on energy policy. Samuelson repeats his past misunderstanding of the carbon tax vs. carbon trading issue. He accuses environmentalists of placing a hidden tax, even though there is more to the issue and he has already been beaten up for this false accusation before. While carbon trading and a carbon tax may have similar outcomes, carbon trading uses markets to set the price of carbon while a carbon tax sets an arbitrary price for it. There are some good economic arguments for using the tax instead of the market, but Samuelson doesn’t under them. It’s easier for him to concoct an environmentalist conspiracy than understand issue.

Play the McCain game or get the blame

David Broder blames Obama for the increase in discord in the campaign.  McCain has run one ad claiming that Obama ditched wounded troops (a lie) and another comparing his opponent to an heiress-turned-homemade-pornstar-turned-reality-tv-star.  Even though Obama hasn’t resorted to such attacks ads, Broder thinks he’s the one to blame.  Broder writes that McCain offered to have a series of 10 joint townhall meetings this summer and argues that, had Obama tagged along with McCain, their together-time would have improved their relationship and negated the need for counseling and attack ads.  Obama legitimately turned down McCain’s offer because he had just been through dozens of debates during the democratic primary leaving both candidate and audiences with debate fatigue, but Broder doesn’t seem to care if Obama had a good reason.  Apparently, we can’t expect McCain to play well with others unless he gets quality bonding time.

I wonder when McCain will announce playdates with Ahmadinejad as a central plank in his foreign policy.

Above the fray without the facts

A WaPo editorial tried to stay above partisanship by faulting both presidential candidates for bringing up race in the campaign.  They charge that Obama brought up the idea of his face on the dollar.  The problem with the claim, as Mark Thoma of Economist’s View shows, is that McCain ran adds with Obama’s face on the dollar before Obama brought up the issue.  I suspect the WaPo editors couldn’t find any real fault with Obama’s behavior, but wanted to appear above the fray so they found an easy criticism and didn’t find the need to fact check it.

GOP ideology vs. net neutrality

FCC commisionar Robert M. McDowell, a former teleco lobbyist appointed by Bush, attacked net neutrality in his Monday Post Op-Ed.  McDowell took to the Post to make his argument since it seems that a majority of the other FCC commissionars are going to find that Comcast violated the law and broke net neutrality and needs to be punished.

Most ISPs are monopolistic and fail to compete in both service or price, simply taking in as much money as they can while only doing just enough to pretend they’re making an effort to deliver a service.   McDowell defends this system, saying we have the strongest “internet economy” in the world–even though well-regulated internet in Europe and Asia is faster and cheaper. McDowell even defends Comcast, one of the worst offenders. Comcast jacks up prices and its customer service been ranked the worst of any company or agency in several surveys.  As a virtual monopoly in many areas, Comcast needs to do little to compete.  Comcast has made over three visits to my house, missing several other appointments, in the past few weeks and the internet still does not work properly.  They charge me for services I never requested and pipe me through byzantine phone trees so that I can’t complain.  Most people would see such a monopoly and call for reform; McDowell wants to give it more power.  While Comcast controls price and service reliability, it doesn’t yet have control over the service content. McDowell wants to get rid of net neutrality so that Comcast controls this last aspect of internet access.  With content controls, Comcast can not only hose its customers with monthly fees, it can nickel-and-dime them with usage fees.  McDowell think say this is a good idea because he’s in the cable industry’s well-lined pockets or he may have a ideological, and clearly foolish, opposition to regulation.

McDowell’s piece is filled campfire ghost stories warning of dangerous government regulation.  He alludes back to congestion problems in 1987 when the present internet was its infancy stage as ARPANET and NSFNET.  McDowell says these problems were solved without the intervention of government politicians and bureaucrats.  This is true, however, it’s only part of the story.  ARPANET and NSFNET with both government projects.  Government research helped build these important building blocks for the internet.  The internet is a testament to the good work that government can do to coordinate and fund important research breakthroughs.  Government is only a problem for the internet when it becomes involved through its worst aspects, lobbyists turned politicized bureaucrats.

Can’t let neoconservatism go… five years on

Charles Krauthammer refuses to let neoconservatism die.  Neoconservatism provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Iraq war.  The neocons thought they could reshape the international landscape through military action designed to spread their ideology, an idea closely related to Trotskyism, a communist school of thought that many of the neocons adhered to in their early days.   The neocons envisioned American troops marching through the Mideast delivering international capitalism and crony democracy in exchange for roses from the welcoming natives.  This vision became a farce, but Krauthammer refuses to it let go.  In Maliki votes for Obama, Krauthammer has to abandon the latest conservative talking point, that Obama’s Iraq plan isn’t supported by those on the ground, since the President of Iraq, with a fair amount of “on the ground” experience, endorsed Obama’s plan.  Instead of repeating this discredited line, Krauthammer has to reinvent the rationale for the war… once more.  First, we had to get the weapons of mass destruction..  until we found none.  Next, we had to liberate the population from an inhumane regime… until we became one.  Then we had to fight to stop the insurgents who destabalized the country, but Maliki thinks Obama’s plan will address this best, so Krauthammer needs a new rationale for the war: Now, he claims, be must fight for a foothold in the Mideast to combat Iran.

If Iran were such a problem, we should have attacked them first. If we considered Iran the major Mideast threat, we should not have crippled their greatest enemy.  Krauthammer overlooks these details.  He just falls back on the neocon arguments of 2003: a Mideast country might have WMD, and we need to spread our values to the Mideast by force.  Krauthammer decides to rehash the same “noble lie” used to bring us to war in 2003 and combine it with the same defunct ideology that convinced the elites that we needed war.  Bad ideas do not improve with age; they remain as rotten as ever.

Into the memory hole

One of the Post’s “liberal” columnists buys into the McCain campaign line that Obama’s refusal of public financing represents a lack of moral character (McCain’s Core Advantage). Both the McCain and Obama camps have run this issue into the ground with spin, but one point that doesn’t seem to get much attention is that McCain did the exact same thing a few months ago.  Similar to Obama’s withdraw, McCain opted for public financing in the Republican primary and then withdrew once he realized it was more lucrative to raise private funds.  Unlike Obama, McCain was bound to public financing by a legal agreement, not just a pledge.  McCain took out a bank loan and listed public financing as collateral.  Under FEC rules, a candidate is legally bound to public financing if he takes out such a loan.  McCain petitioned for an exemption from public financing, but the FEC is not capable of giving an exemption because its board does not have enough members (another story). Meanwhile, McCain has acted as if he had an exemption and has spent beyond the spending limits set by public financing.  Whatever Obama’s faults for breaking a pledge, at least he’s within the law.

Even if Cohen intended his column as a warning to Obama, he should have mentioned something about McCain’s similar withdraw from public financing and the surrounding legal predicament. It’s hard to tell whether Cohen forgot about the issue, didn’t think it was important (despite mentioning other, less relevant McCain flip-flops), or had some other reason for omitting this.