Month: December 2009

Weigel tires of Matt Continetti's pro-Palin spin:

It’s true that strong candidates can turn around negative numbers–in 1980, Ronald Reagan overcame many polls that found Republicans were worried about his age–but this is getting silly. In 2005, polls found majorities of all voters, and huge majorities of Democrats, ready to back a Hillary Rodham Clinton candidacy in 2008. In 2009, Palin defenders are left arguing, as Continetti does here, that the fact that 47 percent of Republicans think she’s up to the job of president is fantastic news for her.

EIT exposes one of the lesser known battles of the culture war:

A reader writes:

I have been following your discussion of cap and trade versus carbon tax, and I participated in the development of the RGGI cap and trade scheme.  I think there are some unintended consequences no one has discussed.

As some of your commenters have alluded, the logical place to measure and price carbon (whether a tax or C&T scheme) is at the point where it is extracted.  This is particularly true if an international agreement is to be completed.  That would seem to give producing countries (say Venezuela or Iran or Saudi Arabia) a huge tax windfall at the expense of consuming countries, but maybe not.  Crude oil prices are not set in a market; they are set by OPEC (really Saudi Arabia) to maximize its wealth.  That requires prices low enough to avoid economic catastrophe.  OPEC "prices" will only decline by the amount of the tax.  Whether you call a payment a "price" or a "tax" is irrelevant if it is paid to a socialist government.

On the other hand, US domestic natural gas producers will pay that tax (or whatever pricing regime is developed).  The result is that natural gas (the lowest carbon fossil fuel) will be disadvantaged relative to oil.  That's the worst case of all.  It makes us MORE dependent on foreign oil, and ADDS carbon to the atmosphere (unless of course it shrinks the economy as GW deniers fear).

The better, simpler, maybe even unilateralist alternative is an increasing tax on oil imports.  It does not directly address carbon from all sources, but it reduces the value of foreign oil, makes domestic production (including renewable sources) more profitable, cannot easily be gamed, and may have more real effect on carbon than the scheme currently being negotiated.  And it would make the Saudi Arabians piss their pants.

Ironically, a Pigovian tax on carbon is impossible in the US, but a tax on oil imports might be get the support of anti-free-trade protectionists for all the wrong reasons.

A reader passes along video of what is said to be police slamming into a cyclist in the city of Yazd (east-central Iran):

A translation of the audio and text would be much appreciated. A reader translates:

Did you see? Did you see? Look! Look at this. Look at this. This is the Islamic Republic. This is the Islamic Republic. Oh my, poor bikers. Look at what they did to his motorbike. I swear to god my body is shaking.

A reader writes:

DiA took issue with your use of the label "evil" by noting that the bomber appears to be a rational actor. But doesn't his very rationality make him more evil? For me, that's the very difference between one who commits bad acts and one who is truly evil.

If one commits bad acts because of mental instability, we still punish him, but we might have sympathy for him and offer him medical help. If one reluctantly commits bad acts because of extenuating circumstances, we recognize those circumstances, especially if he shows remorse. But if one commits murder because he believes it is the rationally correct decision, if that person believes murder of children is morally permissible, that's evil. DiA's point was about the deep roots of these beliefs and the difficulty of dealing with them. I certainly agree, and we should do everything we can to understand their thought processes. But watching this video, if that's not evil, I don't know what is.

Things seem to have settled down a bit in Iran today, but Enduring America has a few updates:

1330 GMT:  Peykeiran is reporting that several hundred students are protesting at Tehran University. The demonstration is occurring despite a warning from universities’ authorities that any protesters would be “dealt with”.
…
0920 GMT: Students, Don’t Even Think About It. Fars News reports that Tehran University authorities have declared that any student gathering today is “illegal” and “will be dealt with”.

The video above is evidently from Sharif University today.

Greenwald criticizes a few Dish readers:

Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom are similar in kind to those whose reaction to Obama is dominated by their view of him as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual.  These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies.  But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important.  They're also far more potent.  Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who — like a loved one or close friend or religious leader — must be protected and defended at all costs.

Ambinder counters.

The details of the public option compromise are still shaking out. Ezra Klein is excited about the possibility of opening Medicare to Americans a few years shy of 65:

[T]he Medicare buy-in lets people in the broader insurance market see what national bargaining power can do for individual premiums. Right now, Medicare's rates are largely hidden, as no one pays the full premiums, and so no one can really compare it to private offerings. But if the premiums become visible, and Medicare's superior bargaining power is capable of offering rates 20 to 30 percent lower than its private competitors can muster, we'll see how long it is before representatives begin getting calls from 50-year-olds who'd like the opportunity to exchange money in return for insurance as good as what 55-year-olds can get.

Brian Beutler is all over the story.

Ackerman plucks out an interesting bit of testimony from Gen. McChrystal about the Taliban paying its soldiers more than the Afghan government does. Yglesias reflects:

[A]s far as problems go it’s an exceedingly correctable one. If there’s anything the international coalition has, it’s more money than the Taliban. If the Taliban pay $300 a month, there should be no problem with the coalition putting $350 or $400 a month together. This sort of thing is one reason why, despite some serious doubts about the strategy being pursued, I think there’s reason to believe Obama, Petraeus, McChrystal, etc. can make it work. Some of the mistakes in our policy are so egregious that an enormous amount of good is going to be done as we simply reverse the obvious errors.

He also asks: "Why are we spending a multiple of Afghanistan’s total GDP on fighting a war in the country? Couldn’t more be done, for cheaper, with cash for bribes and development?"