Team of Rivals

I just finished reading “Team of Rivals,” subtitled, “The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” written by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I highly recommend it. While reading it I kept thinking of our present politics.

The title refers to the fact that Lincoln appointed to his cabinet a number of the men who opposed him, and each other, in the race for the Republican nomination. Many people at the time considered it an act of folly. Lincoln’s political genius had not publicly manifested itself at the beginning and most observers though he would be overshadowed. Also, these were men who had schemed against him in the backroom politics of the day. Lincoln held no grudges. He recognized both the talents of his rivals and his need for the support of their constituencies. His political shrewdness in this was multifaceted. He had the services of the most intelligent and hardworking men that the political system could offer. He could satisfy the factions in his party by letting them spout off without committing himself. His cabinet members got blamed by opposing factions for Lincoln’s policies. They were all ambitious and suspicious of each other, so they each tended to ally with him against the others. In the end, he gained their respect and loyalty.

Contrast this to the monolithic gang of yes-men (and women) that surround modern presidents.

The Republican party of the 1850’s sprang mostly from the disintegrating Whig party. There were radical abolitionist Whigs, moderate “Free Soil” Whigs, and conservative anti-immigrant Whigs. Some present-day commentators have noted that a political party is in trouble when people have to ask, “Ok, but what kind of (insert name of party) are you?” This fragmentation and lack of definition afflicts both parties.

Both the Free Soil and anti-immigrant movements of the mid-19th century remind me of the immigration debate today. The Free Soilers looked at the economy of the south and realized that a free man could not earn a living in a state where others could be forced to do the same work for inadequate food and shelter, plus beatings. They opposed the extension of slavery to the new western territories. The so-called “Know Nothing” nativists were motivated by a mixture of xenophobia, religious intolerance, and an aversion to the competition from an immigrant labor force. The wealthy southern Democrats relied on slave labor and used the myth of racial superiority to enlist poor southern whites in supporting the slavery that kept them poor. Sound familiar? Today we have wealthy corporate interests enlisting blue-collar conservatives in opposing “amnesty” for undocumented Mexican workers. This amnesty would place the Mexicans under the protection of minimum wage and workplace safety laws, thus improving conditions for American blue-collar workers.

The globalization debate covers the same issues, with Americans buried under a hail of propaganda. Apparently, competing with 30-cent-an-hour workers in China is somehow inescapable, necessary and beneficial to our economy. Note to the historically impaired: The abolitionists and Free Soil movement eventually won.

Another striking thing that Goodwin points out about the years preceding the Civil War is the deterioration of public regard for the institutions of government and the commonalties that bound the nation, as well as the growing violence and incivility of the debate. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 denied the possibility of citizenship to blacks and extended the possibility of slave ownership to the new western territories. It was widely regarded as a partisan political decision favoring the southern Democrats. People in northern states were enraged and debated whether they should obey the ruling. The reputation of the court didn’t recover for a generation. It brings to mind Bush v. Gore in 2000. Then as now, a highly partisan, conflicted Supreme Court abandoned its traditions and its adherence to precedent to deliver a desired political result.

The electoral process was widely seen as corrupt, with plenty of backroom deals and unelected power brokers throwing cash around. The extreme ends of the political spectrum utterly distrusted the government.

The attack bloggers and shock jocks spraying spittle across the electronic media are disappointingly reminiscent of the ultra-partisan slander sheets of that era. The goal of objective journalism was not in wide circulation in the mid-19th century, and vilifying one’s political opposites as lunatics, mental defectives, traitors, perverts, and criminals was ordinary press coverage. Congress was no more civil. The conflict occasionally spilled over into physical violence. At least our vice-president limited himself to an isolated obscenity.

Slavery was the wedge issue of the day, in the same way that abortion, gun control, or the Iraq war would be today. Just as today, many politicians sacrificed principle in favor of party unity, and watched their party fracture anyway. The country eventually split along this seam. As with many emotionally charged issues today, the opposing sides could find no common ground on which to debate, merely exchanging ritualized insults. Will there be a new fault line?

After reading Team of Rivals I wonder what kind of earthquake we will experience in 21st century American politics. The Republicans are fragmented between neocons, religious fundamentalists, old-line fiscal conservatives, and moderates, with splits on abortion, immigration, and the Iraq war. The Democrats are lined up for a split between economic populists and the big money DLC wing. Much of our press coverage has devolved into either stenography or character assassination. We have what is essentially a mixed slave/free economy in the U.S., the slaves being a combination of undocumented immigrant labor, overseas sweat labor (actual slave labor in some places), and fossil fuel energy. This last element may be a surprising thought to many people, but consider that most human energy inputs into our economy have been replaced by this uncomplaining, never tiring, underpaid black servant. (Every kilowatt-hour you buy for a few pennies is equivalent to a day of hard human labor.) As with the exploited human labor, there are serious moral issues bound up with the use of oil, coal and natural gas, as well as uranium.

We could use a Lincoln.

Democrats: Plan a way out of Iraq

It’s not surprising.

Not the action, not the response. G.W. Bush has ignored all the smarter people around him and has done the bidding of the war profiteers and our friends in Saudi Arabia. 21,000 American soldiers will be sent to reinforce failure in Iraq. The obvious thing for the congress to do is to use the power of the budget and deny Bush funds for continuing the war or increasing troop levels. The Democratic response is to deny that they will “cut off funding for the troops,” thus throwing away their only tool for influencing the situation and framing the issue just the way Mr. Bush likes it. (Cue sound of hands slapping onto foreheads all across America.) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been busy painting herself into a corner, with Joe Biden right beside her. However, they will subject his plans to “harsh scrutiny,” according to Pelosi. That translates as watching closely as people die and money drains away.

Sigh.

Ok, Nance, Joe, listen up for a minute. It’s time to be active, not reactive. It’s called “planning.” (Yes, this will be snarky. Snarky is what they deserve.) Here’s a way out of the painted corner.

What do we want? Troops home, ASAP. Maybe we can leave a few in Kurdish territory and Kuwait to keep an eye on things, but we want them out of Six Flags over Babylon. Who would have an actual plan for doing this? (play Jeopardy theme music) That’s right, the Pentagon. They probably have twelve withdrawal plans, each covering a different scenario. I am sure they even have budgets attached to them. Get your hands on them. I know you have security clearances. Ask the generals which plan they prefer. Take the plan, the schedule, and the budget, and make it into a spending bill.

Week One: $11.2 million (or however much) authorized to move the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (or some other deserving Brigade) from Camp Anaconda near Baghdad to Camp Ohthankgodfinally near Kuwait City.

Week Two: $4.3 million authorized to shred and burn mountains of classified documents in the Green Zone. $2 million supplementary funding to Halliburton for 8 cases of marshmallows to roast at bonfire.

Week Three: $17.9 million to move the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division back to Wiesbaden Germany.

And so on. Millions for withdrawal, not one penny for sticking around and getting blown up. All the money will be released on a fixed schedule, all restricted to the purpose. The troops will not be “abandoned,” just moved out.

When GW asks for supplementary money for the occupation, hand him Plan #12 for withdrawal.

Reality-based Republicans can back the bill without angering the folks back home. The Democrats, with a real plan in their hands, could conceivably round up enough votes from Republicans to override a veto. The Iraqis would have a deadline for negotiating some kind of inter-sectarian compromise.

I grant you, there is much imperfection in this idea. However, the chance of getting anything even close to good out of the chaos of Iraq is microscopic. It’s a way to get past the Denier-in-Chief. It’s a way out. The Sunnis, the Shiites, the ordinary soldiers, and the American public can at least agree on that.

Postscript: If you think this idea has merit, please consider forwarding it to your favorite representative or senator.

It could happen to you

Now that Sadaam Hussein has received hasty frontier justice, I have a few thoughts on the functionality of barbarity and its relation to Iraq.

In days of old, judicial punishment was always public. Whether it was the pillory, whipping, dunking, branding, hanging, or beheading, it was a spectacle. There was no cable TV or NFL, but your average Theodoric or Guillaume could always count on an entertaining “dance on the air.” Entertainment wasn’t the real purpose, of course. It was a demonstration of state power over the bodies of its citizens. Even when hidden away in a dungeon, brutality became public knowledge as stories and damaged bodies eventually made their way out. It was the use of violence to create fear in order to achieve a political outcome. In other words, terrorism.

The leaky state security apparatus that divulged the cruelties of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib did not defeat the purpose of those activities. In fact, the sometimes clear, sometimes hazy knowledge of what goes on in our off-the-books international prison system enhances its power. Those that the U.S. government wishes to terrify have both a clear understanding of what could happen to them and a springboard for even more nightmarish imaginings.

The CIA believes that less than 10% of the inmates at Guantanamo are “high value,” and that most of them are either foot soldiers or random victims of tribal feuds and bounty hunters. This abuse of the innocent is no handicap. In fact, it is an asset. If the innocents are as at-risk as the guilty, then everyone is looking over their shoulders and toeing the line. The United States Government has been quite successful at demonstrating its power over bodies both foreign and domestic.

The abrupt vertical demise of Saddam Hussein had a second purpose – closing the book on U.S. government support for him and his evil doings. In fact, our government led Saddam along the path to power starting in 1959. From his beginnings as a would-be assassin through his stint as a torturer to his glory days as a despot, the CIA and State Department were there for him.

Here’s my favorite Iraq-related quote, spoken as Saddam’s armored columns lined up at the Kuwait border:

“We [The United States] have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, July 25th, 1990, one week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in a meeting with Sadaam Hussein.

You’d think that we were looking for a new enemy to justify military Keynesianism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But that would be really cynical. The fact that Ambassador Glaspie’s boss, James Baker, was brought in to clean up the mess with the Iraq Study Group just adds an appropriately twisted bookend to the whole disaster.

We found him, helped to raise him up, supported him, suckered him, deposed him, and through our puppet administration, we killed him. The message to the world: It could happen to you.

Gloom and Sunshine

The news is mixed, as usual. First, the bad news.

I just read an interesting analysis of the near future of our natural gas supply. Louis De Sousa, writing for The Oil Drum: Europe, invokes the 23 year rule. It is a straightforward concept. Graph the discovery rate for natural gas in North America. Push that graph forward in time 23 years, and you will find that is a good match for the amount of gas actually pumped out of the ground. For instance, in 1977, natural gas exploration companies drilled a bunch of wells and discovered about 24 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas reserves. 23 years later they marketed about 22.5 Tcf of conventional natural gas. Coalbed methane and other unconventional sources added another 7 Tcf or so. Whether you look at the conventional-only production or the total, the lines are reasonably close. The problem is that the 23 year shifted discovery line drops off a cliff in 2000 and reaches about 20% of present production by 2010. Both present-day production lines are starting to follow it. Even with the addition of new unconventional sources, it looks as if we could be producing 50% of our present output by 2010. That’s an unfillable gap, and not far away.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), just over half of the homes in the U.S. are heated with natural gas, and 70% of newly built homes use it. Natural gas is the fuel of choice for new power plants, and accounts for 40% of the electricity generated up here in the Northeast. It is the premiere fuel for power plants that ramp their production up to meet peak loads.

The need for heat will undoubtedly win out over the need for light and home entertainment, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Electricity prices, especially at times of peak use, will skyrocket. Electrical rates that vary with time of use are optional right now in many places. I doubt they will be optional for long. A natural gas shortage will quickly create a heating fuel shortage, as the 50% of households with natural gas furnaces try to switch fuels. Residential use alone was about 4.8 Tcf in 2005. (All data EIA) That is equivalent to roughly 34 billion gallons of #2 fuel oil. Compare this with a total U.S. fuel oil and diesel use in 2005 of 63 billion gallons. If half the residential natural gas users eventually switch to oil, there will be a 27% jump in fuel oil use. Fuel oil distillates account for about 20% of our total crude oil use of 21 million barrels a day, so we would have an oil demand increase of 1.13 million barrels per day, which is 1.35% of world production. Expect oil price increases just from that. As if that wasn’t bad enough, refiners, wholesalers, and retailers of fuel oil would have to adjust from supplying just over 6 billion gallons a year to residential customers to 23 billion. We can only hope that natural gas users will hang tough and conserve. Yyyyeah….

At the same time, there are a few rays of sunshine.

I have already written about the work of Nanosolar, which has developed a low cost roll printing method for producing solar cells. As of this month they have obtained manufacturing space and funding and are about to build a 430 megawatt per year production facility in San Jose, California. This plant alone will produce three times the present U.S. solar cell output. Their method could cut the price of solar panels by a factor of 5-10, making solar electricity cheaper than utility prices.

Spectrolab, a Boeing subsidiary, is weighing in with a solar cell optimized for systems that concentrate sunlight with mirrors or lenses, achieving 40% efficiency. Theoretically, this type of solar could push system costs down to $3 an installed watt, about a third of the cost today, with amortized electrical costs dropping to 8-10 cents per kilowatt-hour.

The Australian National University, with funding from Origin Energy, the largest solar installer in that country, has developed the SLIVER cell, which uses 90% less silicon than normal solar cells in use today. Again, this could cut the cost of solar electricity to below that of utility power.

Stephen Forrest, a professor at Princeton, is working with Global Photonic to improve the efficiency of organic polymer solar cells. These cells use carbon instead of silicon, and, like the technologies mentioned above, offer the promise of sub-utility electricity prices.

If just one of these four technology developers hits the jackpot, we’ll see a beautifully disruptive shift in electrical generation. It will be idiotic not to install solar power. Better yet, solar arrays produce power during the day in a bell curve that roughly matches peak power demand, mitigating the upcoming loss of cheap natural gas fueled peaking power.

So, it’s a horse race, with Natural Gas Depletion in the lead, Origin second by a length and gaining, Nanosolar third but coming on powerfully, and Spectrolab at the back with Global Photonic. I’ll spare you any further elaboration of the horse race analogy. Will we go sufficiently solar before the natural gas crunch hits? Not possible. Will 30-month natural gas futures be a good investment? Probably. Will we be able to dig ourselves part way out of the hole with cheap solar? It looks like it.

Mutually Assured Economic Destruction

Imagine a bunch of guys locked in a room, each with a grenade strapped to his chest, and each with a forefinger hooked into the pin of some other guy's grenade. If anybody pulls out, somebody else dies and everybody else gets hurt, perhaps killed.

That's the international currency and commerce gig right now. The U.S. of A is trillions of dollars in debt to China, Japan, and some Middle Eastern entities. Part of that is our ever-growing federal budget deficit, and part of that is our trade imbalance. Cheney, Bush and Company have Dad’s credit card, which has the highest limit on the planet. They are buying loads of cool stuff from all their friends in the military contracting business and handing out billions to the fossil fuel industries. Meanwhile, American drivers and consumers are exporting huge amounts of cash to oil producers and overseas manufacturers. We are also going into hock building and buying real estate, although that is slowing down dramatically. All this debt is keeping our economy running for the moment

Oil producers need America to stay economically healthy so they can get that continuous stream of oil revenue to keep their populations (somewhat) happy and stay in power. China needs America to keep buying plastic crap at an increasing rate so the Chinese economy doesn't collapse. America needs China, Japan, and a few others to keep buying our Treasury notes so we don't go bankrupt. America needs dollar denominated crude to keep the value of the dollar from collapsing and bankrupting us that way. Our providers of oil and plastic crap need the dollar to stay strong so that we can afford their oil and plastic crap. The oil producers are buying stuff from Asia, so more dollars are dumped there, which are then loaned back to us.

So, our spiraling debt is making everyone nervous. It's a game of reverse chicken. Every country that has bought our debt wants to be the one that pulls out of the dollar first, but without creating a run on the dollar. Every one of these countries knows that if it makes a major move, there will be a stampede. If the dollar crashes, then we’ll buy a lot less oil and plastic crap, and the planet-wide Ponzi scheme collapses. Millions of Chinese (and Indonesians and Malaysians and Koreans and…..) will get laid off and end up in the streets, starving quickly instead of slowly. Millions of ordinary folks in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Mexico, and other oil producing countries will find their public services and subsidies drying up. You’ll need a program to keep track of the riots and revolutions. For us, the price of everything will jump, along with interest rates. It will be mid-seventies stagflation on steroids.

The alternative to collapse is political suicide for our (semi)elected representatives. They will have to balance the books, mostly on the backs of those who have been making multi-thousand dollar donations to their campaign funds. It’s not about ideology – it’s just that those donors are the only ones with enough money left. We will have to pull out of Iraq and make major cuts to the military-industrial hog trough. We’ll have to roll back those tax cuts for millionaires and corporations, and probably ratchet up their rates back to the levels of the 1950’s. Our economy, which has staggered along on the biggest rubber check writing spree in human history, will go into deep recession. There will be major societal damage, but less than if we let the whole Rube Goldberg machine cartwheel off a cliff. Many members of congress will undoubtedly lose an eye in the ensuing frenzy of finger pointing.

The Republicans have had ideological brain surgery that prevents them from even conceptualizing the possibility of putting the corporate hogs on a diet. Most of the Democrats have been pre-selected by large donors for a similar policy aphasia and spines of the most flexible latex. I’m not optimistic.

We, as citizens, can do a few things:

1) Visualize $8 a gallon gasoline/heating oil/LPG and $20/1000BTU natural gas, and act accordingly.
2) Localize our buying habits.
3) Invest time and money in our local communities.
4) Work on minimizing our personal debts.
5) Utterly harass our elected representatives on the subject of campaign finance reform…no…make that campaign finance revolution. We need mandatory full public financing.
6) Depending on the success of campaign finance revolution, we can then swarm our elected reps on the subjects of debt reduction, including hog trough closings, and sharp reductions in our use of fossil fuels.

Options 1-4 are good things to do no matter what happens, and will begin to mitigate the local effects of international economic turmoil. Options 5 and 6 have a low probability of success, but we need to pursue them anyway, just to maintain our status as conscientious citizens.

Did I hear the muffled click of two pins being pulled?

UPDATE: I have to admit that this essay is substantially wrong, at least in terms of currency economics. I got seduced by the panic-mongers. See this later essay for a correction. I stand by my recommendations for action, especially in terms of campaign finance reform.