Well, silly me, here I thought that the Biofuel Pact that will be signed by President Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would be viewed as a good thing. Here’s what I thought would be the main storyline:
President Bush sees the new agreement with Brazil on ethanol as a way to boost alternative fuels production in the Americas and get more cars running on something other than gasoline….
Bush says he wants to work with Brazil, a pioneer in ethanol production for decades, to push the development of alternative fuels in Central America and the Caribbean. He and Silva also want to see standards set in the growing industry to help turn ethanol into an internationally traded commodity.
The first portion of the above excerpt is the first paragraph of the AP story. The second paragraph is much farther down and leads into a discussion of tariff’s. But in between, the AP devotes space to the conspiracy theory that Bush really wants to CONTROL THE FLOW OF ETHANOL IN AN OPEC-LIKE CARTEL!!!!!
UPDATE: Hit the “Continue reading” link below to view the middle–and tone setting–portion of the AP story (removed from above) in full. And it looks like many enviro’s in this country were for ethanol before they were against it (via Glenn Reynolds). Why the change? C’mon, you know…if the President is for it…..
UPDATE II: More here from WaPo (via this NRO post–which offers one conservative’s reason for why ethanol isn’t the way to go). From the WaPo:
The environmental organization Greenpeace issued a statement complaining that whatever environmental benefits ethanol would produce in reducing greenhouse gases pale in comparison to those that would be attained by a cap on carbon emissions, which Bush opposes.
“The U.S. government must take a giant leap forward quickly in order to make the necessary steps to combat global warming,” said John Coequyt, an energy specialist with the group. “An aggressive focus on ethanol, without a federally mandated cap on emissions, is simply a leap sideways.”
It’s that “nothing is ever fast enough…we’re all gonna die!” attitude that gives me pause.
[Open full post]Every time I come across such news as this, I wonder what it’s going to take to get people incensed:
… a new report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called “Leaders and Laggards,” analyz[es] the performance of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report found that four New England states — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut — rank among America’s top six in terms of their public schools. A fifth, Maine, fares very well, ranking 16th overall.
The performance of only one New England state is dismal: Rhode Island, which ranks 16th from the bottom, despite consistently finishing near the top in taxpayer spending per student. …
This report confirms what many others have found. It is the umpteenth warning that Rhode Island is failing its students and undermining its economic prospects. Teachers unions have their place, but clearly politicians have allowed the unions’ special interests to take precedence over the needs of students — with the results shown above. A radical change is necessary. Parents and taxpayers must demand it, and political leaders must come forward to lead it, putting students first.
I realize that a phalanx of special interest groups marches in the minds of state legislators, but I have to believe that Rhode Islanders, even public union Rhode Islanders, even (perhaps) legislators, have strong reactions to such results. There are just too many obstacles between those reactions and the political guillotine.
The first question to answer, especially among such citizens as make up Anchor Rising’s audience, is: Why on Earth can’t the Republican Party mount an opposition campaign despite the state’s clear faults? Perhaps it would do well to stop pretending that it’s a political party and approach the eternal campaign as if it were a political action group. Stop trying to play the game and begin promising to make heads roll.
OK, prompted by some comments to my recent post on our frigid February and by a ProJo letter to the editor which asked:
:Please provide the names of just two skeptics who work in the field of climate science and who have been published in respected peer-reviewed journals. Help me to escape the intellectual manacles that those “environmental clubs” like the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have duped me into accepting as good science.
I thought I’d explain where I currently stand on “Global Warming” (or Global Climate Change, for those of you who prefer that term).
[Open full post]According to Philip Marcelo of the Projo, leaders from a number of Rhode Island’s smaller cities and suburbs (Cumberland, Johnston, Lincoln, Cranston, Scituate, North Smithfield, Smithfield, and Portsmouth) have made some reasonable sounding proposals for relieving the pressure on local school budgets. Two of the proposals would have an immediate impact…
The coalition proposes exempting school buildings from the state’s stricter fire-code regulations and repealing state special education regulations that are more restrictive than federal guidelines.Another proposal is a structural government reform that could have a long-term effect in helping municipalities exercise fiscal restraint…
“Reducing state mandates doesn’t cost anything. It can be done with the stroke of a pen and would help these communities greatly,” [Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena] said. “Do we really need to have sprinklers in all our schools when most students are trained to go right out the door when a fire alarm goes off?”
[Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee] said the coalition will advocate for changing the “school governance model.” One measure would require school districts to tell municipal administrators what the anticipated fiscal impact on a community would be to a proposed labor contract.But there’s one other proposal which, given the current fiscal and economic climate, is completely infeasible…
That report, called a fiscal note, would be reviewed by a municipality’s chief financial officer prior to the contract’s finalization and would avert problems some communities face with soaring healthcare costs.
The coalition is also looking for a state aid formula that would give suburban and urban ring communities the same amounts of state aid they received last year and propose, over time, a gradual boost in the percentage of school department budgets the state covers.In other words, the small cities and the suburbs are adding their demand for “more” to the urban core’s continuing demand for “more”. When everyone is demanding “more”, restructuring the funding formula provides no solution. Only a fundamental change in the way that government spends money will solve Rhode Island’s education funding problem.
“In 1992, when the state aid formula was changed, the logic of supporting urban districts made sense,” McKee said. “Today that is not the case, and we are quickly becoming communities in need.”
One other point worth noting: the fact that municipal leaders, who presumably have a contact or two inside the state house, believe that obtaining “the same amounts of state aid they received last year” is a priority, combined with the fact that House finance chairman Steven Costantino said earlier this year that compromises in the education arena might be necessary, strongly suggests to me that the legislature may be considering whacking state education aid as a means of balancing the budget. [Open full post]
Benjamin Gedan has an article from yesterday’s Projo describing the long wait times involved in getting a building permit approved in Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Builder’s Association believes that the current delays are neither reasonable nor legal…
In an attempt to speed up the permitting process, the association has sued nine cities and towns, arguing that the glacial pace of municipal decision-making violates state law and deprives landowners of their property rights. The defendants include Warwick, Cranston, Lincoln, West Warwick, North Kingstown, Cumberland, Newport, North Providence and Woonsocket….Two questions arise from this story…
The lawsuit cites permit applications that were under review for as long as 19 months. The result, the association says, has been a steady decline in development throughout the state.
From 1999 to 2006, the number of building permits issued statewide declined by nearly 40 percent, from 2,600 to 1,600, according to the association. Though the period saw a weakened housing market, the number of permits dropped even in times of strong housing demand.
- I’ve seen affordable housing programs touted as big progress because they will add about 500 new units to the state housing pool. Given the numbers discussed in Gedan’s article, wouldn’t streamlining the permitting process also be an easy (and maybe even better) way to help relieve the housing crunch, if around 1,000 units per year are being lost to permitting delays? (Or is there perhaps an element of snob-zoning involved in the decline in permits?)
- Is there any reason not to look at these permitting delays as an indicator that Rhode Island has developed a public service culture that is overtly hostile to individual initiative, i.e. activities not fully controlled by Rhode Island officials are not activities regarded by Rhode Island officials as important.
The situation in Afghanistan is complicated:
In the sixth winter since the US-led ouster of the Taliban government, the radical Islamists are making a comeback. Their bold confidence was apparent last week, when a suicide bomber killed 23 outside an air base during Vice President Richard Cheney’s visit there.
There are many factors. But citizens…, the Afghan government and key NATO commanders agree on this: The use of force is sometimes excessive and errant. In Afghanistan’s tribal society, a single death – no matter if NATO labels it “enemy” – can create scores of sworn foes. And NATO, like the Taliban, has killed hundreds…
While troops go after Taliban fighters…that’s not a priority for ordinary Afghans; they are frustrated by insecurity and lawlessness, which they blame on a corrupt and inept government whose police extort, threaten and make them feel less secure.
Kinda sounds like Iraq, no? Above all else, the average Afghani wants security and they don’t care who provides it–Coalition forces, the government, the tribe, or the Taliban. Unfortunately, with some of our Coalition partners refusing to fight the Taliban, more of the burden has fallen on the U.S.
Some, like Frank Rich (via N4N) , have complained that the Bush Administration has been distracted by Iraq and has lost sight of who our real enemies–those who helped perpetrate 9/11–are: Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The recent rise in Taliban/terrorist activity seems to support Rich’s point of view, but there are two reasons for why the situation might look worse–right now.
The first is that weather is a very real factor in planning military strategy. A suicide bomber or small cell can operate nimbly–regardless of weather–and then escape into the snow-covered mountains. Not so a heavy military detachment. In fact, this year is very much like last year: the Taliban and Al Qaeda made noise in the late winter and were gearing up for a spring offensive. Meanwhile, the Coalition also geared up (including a few soldiers that were originally ticketed for Iraq) to face them head on. This included taking preemptive action to undermine Taliban plans and attacking their reinforcements. This week, Coalition forces launched Operation Achilles to counter the Taliban’s recent activity. (As the offensive began, Afghan forces caught a Taliban leader who tried to escape by dressing up in a Burqa–I guess women are second class unless you need to hide by dressing up as on).
Thus, the Taliban “military” isn’t faring so well. Which brings me to the second reason for why things may look worse to Rich and others–right now. The Taliban, having failed militarily, have switched to a media-centric strategy:
The Taliban are talking less about their field forces, which took a big beating last year, and are off to an equally dismal start this year, and are emphasizing suicide bombers instead. While the Taliban have been using suicide bombers a lot more, they have not changed the military situation. The Taliban are still unable to take back control of anything. What the suicide bombers have done is made more Afghans anti-Taliban. That’s because most of the casualties from these attacks are Afghans, often women and children….A new tactic is to use a suicide car bomber against military convoys, and follow it up with gunfire. If you do this in a town, with lots of civilians around, you can claim that the civilians were killed by the panicked gunfire of the foreign soldiers. This sort of thing is popular with local and foreign journalists. It doesn’t have to be true, just plausible, and Taliban publicists know how to run with that kind of story. The Taliban may not be able to handle foreign troops, but they are masters when it comes to manipulating foreign journalists….Because of their failures last year, the Taliban are backing off the troop unit angle, and moving back to terror attacks and hustling journalists.
As they’ve learned from Iraq, bombs and bodies are effective propaganda and can undermine the will of many in the West, who simply aren’t used to guerrilla warfare and have “grown up” with conflict fought at 15,000 feet. This is true even if while the local population increasingly rejects those who direct the bombings.
That both Afghanistan and Iraq are a different kind of war than America is used to–guerrilla campaigns that require more than just military success–explains why it is hard to explain if or how or why America and its allies are winning. Regardless of whether or not you view Iraq as “Bush’s war of choice” and Afghanistan as “the good war,” the fact remains that the strategy in both is remarkably similar: Clear / Hold / Ensure Security / Rebuild. That means aggressively killing bad guys and showing the Iraqi and Afghani troops how it’s done. It looks like it’s working in Iraq (so far) and it has worked in the past in Afghanistan. I think if more big-time media stars, like NBC’s Brian Williams, were to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and call attention to the changing situation, then a change in perception would follow.
It’s March 2007, not November 2006. Isn’t it about time that we update the storyline?
Addendum: Many of the links in this post are to Strategy Page. Here is an index of their 2007 Afghanistan stories. It’s very nuts-and-bolts military stuff and is helpful in getting wartime tactical and strategic “metrics” as well as a military–vice a strictly political–view of the situation.
According to the Associated Press, House Democrats have decided where they will finally make their stand on the Iraq War…
House Democratic leaders intend to propose legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008, and even earlier if the Iraqi government fails to meet security and other goals, congressional officials said Wednesday night….The author of the story opines that this is finally the tough stand on Iraq that Democrats have promised…
Democrats familiar with the emerging legislation said the bill would require President Bush to certify that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was making progress toward providing for his country’s security, allocating its oil revenues and creating a fair system for amending its constitution….
The legislation also calls for the Pentagon to adhere to its standards for equipping and training U.S. troops sent overseas and for providing time at home between tours of combat.
At the same time, it permits Bush to issue waivers of these standards. Democrats described the waiver provision as an attempt to embarrass the president, but their effect would be to permit the administration to proceed with plans to deploy five additional combat brigades to the Baghdad area over the next few months.
The legislation is expected on the floor of the House later this month, and would mark the most direct challenge to date the new Democratic-controlled Congress has posed to the president’s war policies. As such, it is likely to provoke a fierce response from the administration and its Republican allies in Congress.…but that’s just a bit of rah-rah partisan boosterism that somehow found its way into a news story. Since the President has publicly stated that he expects the Iraqi government to be responsible for security throughout all of Iraq by November of 2007, this legislation will have little impact on the President’s chosen course of action. Still, if some MSM make-believe about how Congressional Democrats have finally gotten tough is what it takes to get the Democratic leadership on board with trying to win the war in Iraq, then that’s a net positive for the country. [Open full post]
Warwick Sen. Michael McCaffrey has introduced (S 0159) legislation to lower the state sales tax from 7% to 6%. As McCaffrey points out, the 7% rate was originally put into place to help the state bailout from the credit union crisis in the 1990’s. Now that it has served its purpose–all of the money has been paid back–it’s time to go back to 6%. The legislation will also “reduce the excise tax paid annually by the owners of motor vehicles, boats, airplanes and trailers (excluding mobile homes), from 7 to 6 percent.” Here’s more:
“The 7-percent sales tax was not meant to be a permanent change. The 1-percent increase in the early 1990s was necessary to pay back the depositors affected by the credit union crisis. Now those debts have been paid, so the reason no longer exists. It’s unfortunate enough Rhode Island taxpayers got stuck with the bill for the credit union bailout, but it’s wrong to continue charging taxpayers for it after those debts are long gone,” said Senator McCaffrey….
He said the high tax rate can hurt businesses in Rhode Island, particularly since the state is so small that it is not very difficult for shoppers to take their business to other states. Massachusetts’ sales tax is 5 percent, while Connecticut charges 6 percent. New Hampshire has no sales tax at all.
Senator McCaffrey acknowledged the state’s current budget deficit, but said it doesn’t help the state’s fiscal health to continue putting Rhode Island’s environment for businesses and shoppers at a disadvantage by setting the sales tax at a rate higher than that of neighboring states.
“Besides, the state made a promise to taxpayers, and you can’t expect to build trust in government if that government breaks its promises,” said Senator McCaffrey, who serves as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Kudos, Senator.
[Open full post]After receiving our most recent gas bill from National Grid–and picking my wife up off of the floor–I thought back and realized that, “Gee, February was a pretty cold month.” Don Surber (Via Glenn Reynolds) calls this the “Weather story that’s not topping the news.” He links to several stories, here’s one example:
It was the coldest February since at least 1989 (18 years) and possibly 1979 for the nation as a whole, and the month is expected to rank between the 8th and 15th coldest in 113 years of national records. National precipitation trended up 134% over last year with snowfall up 60% over last year. Tornadoes and severe weather were also up with 89 during the month vs only 12 last year. Gasoline prices trended up 6% vs last year and were at the highest levels since middle September.
As Surber notes, “They have politicized the weather. None of the coldest February stories mention climate.” Well, don’t forget Don that there is a consensus that says that the earth is getting warmer because of human activity. All the cool–er, warm?–scientists say so.
[Open full post]The raid on the Michael Bianco leather plant in New Bedford is making national headlines. There can be no doubt that the company’s illegal actions were reprehensible:
The plant’s owner, Francesco Insolia, and managers “knowingly and actively” recruited increasing numbers of illegal workers to meet demands of multiple Department of Defense contracts since 2001. In 2004, the company received an $82-million defense contract, according to allegations in the affidavits filed in support of search warrants executed yesterday. More than 500 people work at the Bianco plant.
And, despite the emotional testimonials of illegal workers being broadcast nationwide, we can’t forget that they are here illegally. In fact, embedded in the intended-to-be heart-wrenching anecdotes about the workers and their children is evidence of why we should be concerned:
Advocacy workers rushed to the scene to deliver prescription medications for detained plant workers who have chronic conditions, such as diabetes and epilepsy.
Acting on information that most of the detained workers were women, the advocacy group representatives said they were working through New Bedford public school authorities and contacting day-care centers and private day-care operators, to ensure that children would be safely retrieved.
“Our main concern is for the children,” said Helena Marques, executive director of the Immigrants Assistance Center. “My concern is that a lot of people [arrestees] are women, and they have children. We are trying to get information to the schools and day-care centers.”
How did illegal immigrants get prescription drugs? Why are the children of illegal immigrants enrolled in public schools? Yes, I have compassion for their plight. Yes, they were victimized–and aided and abetted–by a despicable company (not to mention the Social Services sector and their advocates). But they are still here illegally and they’ve broken the law.
And how many of those jobs could have employed American citizens, including a few Rhode Islanders? There were a few bills proposed in the House this session, but H5367 has been “held for further study” in committee (H 5392 is still in committee).
UPDATE: Commenter Rhody reminds me of something I forget to include:
What I want to know is: how the @#$% did a government contractor which employs illegal immigrants (and treats them in ways that, to put it mildly, explain why we have unions in America) get away with this as long as it did? The heads which need to roll are not confined to this factory’s walls.
Thanks Rhody, you’ve got that right!
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