BeldarBlog

Marinucci claims SF Chron didn't report Obama's promise to "bankrupt" coal industry and cause "skyrocketing" electric rates because readers weren't interested

My team lost the election, but in this follow-up guest-post about Obama's promise to bankrupt the coal industry and make electric rates skyrocket over at HughHewitt.com, I believe I thrashed the San Francisco Chronicle soundly.

I suspect they've gotten over it already, huh?

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

On Sunday, November 2nd, like many other bloggers, I wrote a long post that included a lengthy quotation from an interview that Sen. Barack Obama gave to the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board in January 2008, in which Sen. Obama promised that under his cap and trade policy, "if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted." And in that same interview, Obama also promised that "[u]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

In the wee small hours of Monday morning, I followed up on that post with another which noted that — in response to a question being raised by Gov. Palin on the campaign trail as to why the tape of this interview was just now surfacing — Chronicle Political Writer Carla Marinucci was righteously asserting that her newspaper had never "hidden" the interview. I pointed out, however, that in neither the front-page news story that Ms. Marinucci had written about the interview on January 18, 2008, nor in a follow-up op-ed about the interview from Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz, had the Chronicle seen fit to give anyone the slightest hint that buried within the 52 minutes and 336MB of the interview one might find a promise to bankrupt the nation's coal industry or cause national electric rates to skyrocket.

This, I argued, reflected abysmal judgment as to what portions of the interview were newsworthy. I asserted that "anyone working for a junior high school newspaper would have instantly realized the newsworthiness of these quotes if he or she were not completely 'in the tank' for Obama."

After posting my critique, I emailed Ms. Marinucci with a copy of it. I wrote to her that "I’d be pleased to republish any response you might have, or reconsider with any additional facts you believe I’ve missed."

Yesterday afternoon, Ms. Marinucci sent me this reply, which (in a later email) she specifically authorized me to reprint here in its entirety for your thoughtful consideration:

Simple answer. This was an editorial board meeting to decide the endorsement for the Democratic primary in California, at the time a heated contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

There were lots of issues that California voters wanted to hear from these candidates as they made their decision, but coal was not one of them. The industry doesn't exist here. We wrote about what our readers wanted to hear about regarding the choice between Obama and Clinton at that time: their positions on the war, jobs, tech, the environment, etc.

This response, while gracious, is utterly unpersuasive. In fact, it's so preposterous as to be even more damning than her earlier "we didn't hide it" defense.

The last I heard, California still uses electricity — and some 56 percent of America's electricity is generated from coal. Indeed, it was a series of rolling electrical brownouts and blackouts in California from 2001-2003 which led directly to the mid-term removal of Gov. Gray Davis in the special election won by present Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. For Ms. Marinucci to suggest that the Chronicle's readers aren't interested in supplies, sources, and prices of electricity is far beyond ludicrous. It's like suggesting that Boston wasn't interested in taxes on tea in the 1770s.

Moreover, while I can appreciate that there is presently no coal mining industry to speak of in the fabled hills of and around San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle — founded in 1865, presently owned by the Hearst Corporation, and still "the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast" — aspires to be a national publication. I've listened to the full interview now, and I can assure you that almost none of the questions asked in it were specific and particular to the concerns of San Franciscans or even northern Californians.

In fact, the long response from Sen. Obama which contained the promise to bankrupt the coal industry was prompted by a question (at 25:10 in the videotape) that was indeed on one of the specific topics — "the environment" — which Ms. Marinucci acknowledges her paper's readers wanted to hear about:

Q: Senator, you introduced a bill promoting coal-to-liquid fuels, and then you said you'd only support them if they emitted fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline. Now: All the scientific evidence points to coal being dirtier than pretty much anything else. So how are you going to square your support for coal with the need to fight global warming?

Indeed, in the long block-quoted segment in my Sunday post that I obtained from ABC News' Jake Tapper and his Political Punch blog, there was an ellipsis in the transcript. Viewing the video, I've confirmed that what that transcription omitted was a repetition of this question:

OBAMA: ... So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives. But —

Q: Alternatives including coal?

OBAMA: — let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there....

If there is a place on the globe more fixated on the notion of man-made global warming than San Francisco, I haven't seen or heard of it. These questions about relying on coal to generate electricity certainly reflect that, regardless of whether coal is mined in northern California. And Sen. Obama's answers almost certainly would have been not only of keen interest, but entirely acceptable, to the liberal majority who subscribe to the Chronicle. Could the Chronicle's table-full of writers and editors all have collectively missed that?

No, gentle readers, it is entirely implausible that Ms. Marinucci and the Chronicle failed to recognize the newsworthiness of these promises by Obama — not just to their own readers, but to all Americans (and arguably to the entire world). And that brings us back to the question of why they didn't report something that was so incredibly newsworthy, and why — after it was found and then made much of by others, including the GOP candidates for POTUS and VPOTUS — they've offered such lame excuses.

And there's only one plausible answer left to that question: Carla Marinucci and her fellow writers and editors at the San Francisco Chronicle deliberately buried these quotes because they knew that in other parts of the United States, they would hurt the electoral prospects of Barack Obama — the candidate they wanted to see win not only the Democratic primary, but also the general election. These are "journalists" who've violated their sacred trust. And you simply can't trust them any more, if you ever did.

— Beldar

SF Chron insists that buried and unremarked Obama promises to bankrupt coal industry and bring skyrocketing electric rates weren't "hidden," but offers no explanation why they weren't newsworthy

Personally, I felt like this post made the San Francisco Chronicle look like they were totally in the tank for Obama.

It occurs to me now that that's never really been in dispute, though, has it?

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

On the subject of the bombshell quotes from Barack Obama about "bankrupting" the coal industry and making electric rates "skyrocket" — about which I wrote at my usual tedious length on Sunday evening, and an audio excerpt of which Hugh has since posted separately — the San Francisco Chronicle is now furiously trying to cover its collective fanny in a spectacularly unconvincing fashion.

"Political Writer" Carla Marinucci of the S.F. Chronicle righteously asserts that the audio which contained these quotes has been posted at its website since January 2008, and I have no reason to doubt that. She then offers up the Chronicle's come-back to a question from Gov. Palin on the campaign trail:

''Why is the audiotape just now surfacing?'' Palin asked the crowd, according to a report from CBS News. Someone in the crowd shouted, ''Liberal media!'

Let's be very clear: the Chronicle did not, and has never, hidden any interview, audio or video, of Obama from its readers.

But Ms. Marinucci's firey and "very clear" response is to an accusation that Gov. Palin didn't make, and Ms. Marinucci utterly failed to answer the very clear question which Gov. Palin did ask.

The very clear fact is that Ms. Marinucci, along with staff writer Joe Garofoli, wrote a lengthy news article about the interview on January 18, 2008, in which they and their editors necessarily had to have made the editorial decision not to even mention either Sen. Obama's statement that his plan would "bankrupt" those building new coal-fired plants or that it would cause electric rates to "skyrocket." Ms. Marinucci claims that the Chronicle "promoted" the story of its interview with Obama, and that's true enough — the story she wrote did appear on page A1, where it would make the most favorable impression possible for Barack Obama in his then-fierce battle against Hillary Clinton — but a Google News search of that newspaper for that day reveals six total returns mentioning Obama, exactly none of which also include the words "coal" or "bankrupt" or "skyrocket."

Ms. Marinucci didn't just "bury her lede." Rather, in metaphoric terms, she took it out onto the Golden Gate Bridge, shot it in the back of the head, and pushed it off into an unmarked watery grave in hopes that the corpse would never float to the surface.

Then two days later, editorial page editor John Diaz wrote a puff piece about the interview entitled Obama's Straight-Ahead Style. Its online version did contain a link to the tape (h/t InstaPundit), and it includes this sentence: "He demonstrated depth on an assortment of issues: mortgage securities, coal, California air-pollution laws." What a lovely and informative journalistic choice of words! As Mr. Diaz sees things, a deliberate policy decision to bankrupt an industry and cause electric rates to skyrocket merely demonstrates a candidate's "depth," but is not worthy of further comment. (I would have chosen, I think, a two-word formulation instead, as in: "He demonstrated deep insanity on an assortment of issues ....") Technorati indicates that the Chronicle never again linked to that video, nor to the .mp3 audio version linked today by Ms. Marinucci.

Cumulatively, that constitutes awful, indefensible journalistic judgment — the current national interest in these quotes proves that conclusively, but anyone working for a junior high school newspaper would have instantly realized the newsworthiness of these quotes if he or she were not completely "in the tank" for Obama.

Leaving these quotes buried in a fifty-three minute, 336MB video is not, in my own judgment, quite as bad as the Los Angeles Times' making (and then hiding behind) an unethical promise to a source not to release a videotape of another newsworthy event (the Khalidi dinner). But certainly when we see how the Chronicle's top writers and editors used such pathetic and compromised judgment in picking and choosing what to report as newsworthy from the Obama interview, the public has even more reason to doubt that the LA Times has been forthcoming, fair, and complete in its reporting on the videotape it's still concealing entirely.

Once upon a time (in 1930s, to be a bit more specific), when a pair of comic book authors named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster needed an identity and a "day job" for the alter ego of their crime-fighting super hero, they dreamed up "Clark Kent," a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet. If they were making such choices today, such idealists would do better to cast Superman's alter ego as a used car salesman, a carnival barker, or even an investment banker than as a reporter for any mainstream media source. "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" has been sacrificed for "Spin, Bias, and Obama's The One." With all too rare exceptions, there's nothing "professional" left in the profession of journalism, folks. Lois Lane would probably be in the tank for Obama — foreshadowing lots of future rescues that are going to be needed if he's elected — but I think Clark Kent might weep for his disgraced profession.

— Beldar

Obama quotes: "[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them," and electricity rates will "necessarily skyrocket"

You know, you just can't be unhappy that gasoline prices have fallen and that the whole subject of foreign energy dependence seems less urgent as a result. Except that that ended up hurting the McCain-Palin campaign. Energy was the #1 domestic issue in the spring and early summer. Then the Dems started backpedaling on offshore drilling, and the credit markets went into the toilet. By the time anyone figured out that Obama has promised to bankrupt the coal industry, that wasn't nearly as scary as it would have been a few months earlier.

My bet, though, is that the Dems will continue to screw the whole subject of energy up royally, and it will be a fabulous issue for Gov. Palin to run on in 2012!

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

It has already become painfully clear that Harvard-trained lawyer Barack Obama is even more inclined to lie by parsing words than Yale-trained Bill Clinton was. Clinton, you will recall, famously denied having had "sexual relations" with "that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," based on his secret mental reservation to the effect that anything short of genital-on-genital penetration wasn't "sexual relations." Then he argued that he hadn't lied under oath about that subject because "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

Now Barack Obama has been caught in a very similar and equally sleazy episode of parsing: He's all in favor of using America's vast reserves of coal to help solve our national addiction to foreign oil — so long as we don't actually burn any of it. And anyone who wants can build new clean-coal fired electrical generating plants! It's just that Obama has sworn to tax and fine them into bankruptcy if they do (ellipsis in original, boldface mine; h/t DRJ at Patterico's):

“I voted against the Clear Skies Bill. In fact, I was the deciding vote -- despite the fact that I’m a coal state and that half my state thought that I had thoroughly betrayed them. Because I think clean air is critical and global warming is critical.

“But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.

“But ... let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there. I was the first call for 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system. Which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I’ve said with respect to coal — I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it, that I think is the right approach. The same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don’t know how to store nuclear waste wisely and we don’t know how to deal with some of the safety issues that remain. And so it’s wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy. But I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal.

“The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take, as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.”

That long quote comes from ABC News' Jake Tapper, as taken from a January 2008 interview Sen. Obama gave to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Something about being in that city apparently releases some of his inhibitions and permits him to accidentally tell the truth in between his carefully constructed and lawyerly word castles.) You can see a video clip with a recording of Obama's voice along with some pertinent statistics in the video at Gateway Pundit.

Obama is saying as clearly as it's possible to say that the taxes and penalties he's going to slap on both the coal and nuclear industries will bankrupt them based even on their very best current technology. He's only open to those fuels if there are magical new developments which let us release the energy in coal without releasing carbon dioxide or make spent nuclear fuels completely danger-free. That would require rewriting the basic laws of chemistry and physics — and as brilliant as The One is, he hasn't posted his plan to restructure the universe at a sub-atomic level on his website yet.

And contrary to Team Obama's protestations now, Gov. Sarah Palin was not taking Obama's remarks out of context this weekend, but giving them an absolutely fair interpretation — indeed, Gov. Palin was playing a recording of Obama's own words:

Palin told supporters to listen to the audiotape. “You’re going to hear Sen. Obama talk about bankrupting the coal industry,” she said. The Alaska governor also pointed to comments that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden made to an environmental activist, promising no more coal-fired power plants in America. Biden was videotaped, likely without his knowledge.

“In an Obama-Biden administration, there would be no use for coal at all, from Wyoming to Colorado, to West Virginia and Ohio,” Palin said.

Tapper was wrong, though: The long quote above is not "the entirety of Obama’s remarks," and indeed, it is far from the only controversial thing Obama said on the subject of coal and energy in that interview. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has yet another video clip and transcript from that same interview (boldface Ed's):

The problem is not technical, uh, and the problem is not mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

 

They — you — you can already see what the arguments will be during the general election. People will say, “Ah, Obama and Al Gore, these folks, they’re going to destroy the economy, this is going to cost us eight trillion dollars,” or whatever their number is. Um, if you can’t persuade the American people that yes, there is going to be some increase in electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage, changing lightbulbs and more efficient appliance, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy, the economy would benefit.

If we can’t make that argument persuasively enough, you — you, uh, can be Lyndon Johnson, you can be the master of Washington. You’re not going to get that done.

A federal government completely controlled by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama can't change the laws of physics, but it damned sure can and will change the tax code, and it damned sure can — and here's Obama's promise that it will — tax and fine entire industries into bankruptcy. Obama thinks doing that to the coal and nuclear energy industries — as based on what he perceives to be the inadequacies of their very current best technologies — would be a good thing in the "long term." The problem is, friends and neighbors, that our economy can't survive the shocks on the "front end" that Obama admits his program will guarantee.

This, gentle readers, is madness masquerading as policy. This is a millimeter-thin patina of "reasonableness," achieved only by lawyerly word games, and it's being used to disguise a plan to radically transform our entire economy as part of some enviro-utopian pipe-dream.

Your very worst fears and nightmares about Barack Obama's policy ambitions are true. The only "dream" here has been the notion that Obama is any kind of moderate.

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UPDATE (Sun Nov 2 @ 10:15 p.m. CST): Hugh has now posted an embedded video above which is the same as what I linked to earlier from Gateway Pundit. And apparently the story of this interview first broke in a post on Newsbusters, an update to which links this San Francisco Chronicle article, based on the interview, as proof that nobody at that most sanctimonious of mainstream media outlets bothered to notice the newsworthiness of, or otherwise bring any attention to, Obama's promise to bankrupt the coal industry as it currently exists.

[Further material originally posted here as another update has now been moved to a new post.]

— Beldar

In prioritizing economic versus security issues for purposes of casting your vote, keep in mind that the Marines pay more attention to the POTUS than do macro-economic trends

At last, I'm into November. Hoo-rah for file maintenance!

In hindsight, I like this guest-post title at HH.com less than I did at the time. Too long, too long. Nevertheless, the premise is correct: Come Inauguration Day, every Marine in Washington will snap perfect salutes to the new Commander in Chief, who will deserve them by virtue of the office he holds. The Dow-Jones average is likely to be less deferential.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Given the rather startling photograph on the left, why is it that George W. Bush is not being hailed right now — triumphantly by the GOP, reluctantly by the Democrats — as a genius for definitively and dramatically solving the single most acute economic problem that was facing most Americans this past summer, when gasoline prices at the pump were topping $4 per gallon?

The answer any truthful macro-economist will give you is: George W. Bush didn't have anything much to do with that fall in gasoline prices at the pump. And neither did Congress.

The precipitous fall in gasoline prices in September and October was the result of world-wide economic forces outside either of their control and, indeed, mostly explainable even by economists only through guesswork. The simplest classical economic answers can only hint at part of the price change: worldwide demand for refined gasoline, while diminished at the margin by this summer's high prices, hasn't dropped by anything close to half, and worldwide supply, while increased at the margin by those same high prices, hasn't grown to anything close to double either. Although the cumulative long-term decisions made by governments are certainly one factor in such worldwide economic price trends over time, the role played by any government — be it in Washington or Riyadh or Caracas — in this particular pricing spasm was inconsequential over this time-frame.

Friends and neighbors, it's simply a fact that the general public and the popular press give politicians both too much credit and too much blame for both short-term and long-term economic changes. It wasn't FDR and the New Deal who ended the Great Depression, it was World War 2. It wasn't Bill Clinton who grew the gross domestic product in the 1990s and thereby swelled tax revenues to balance the budget briefly, it was the integration into the national and world economy of the information revolution most clearly symbolized by the personal computer on which you're reading this internet blog post.

I'm not saying that governments don't affect economies. They do, especially at the margin and over long periods of time. Only bad and thoroughly intrusive governmental policy applied across a wide number of variables over a period of decades could have screwed up our health care system to its current point of ridiculousness, to pick a prominent example. The current economic crisis in the housing market, to cite another example, is an acute problem — like a mutli-hundred-billion-dollar bowel inflammation — which was directly caused by well-intended but stupid government attempts to legislate away basic economic laws by pretending that people who really can't afford expensive home mortgages could actually afford them if we just tweaked the terms of their adjustable rate mortgages enough and the real estate market always kept booming. (Yes, it was a government-run Ponzi scheme.)

And really bad government — a government that taxes its most productive people and their capital at confiscatory marginal rates, for example, of the sort we had by the conclusion of the fiasco known as the Carter Administration — can really screw things up. Indeed, the single thing at which government is most effective is taking away money from law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.

So by all means, in deciding how to cast your own vote, or in discussing with undecided friends how they ought to cast theirs, factor in whatever economic concerns you may have for what they're worth. They are important.

But as you do that, just keep in mind that photograph above and to the left. And if you're unwilling to give George W. Bush and/or the Pelosi-Reid Congress credit for that dramatic drop in gas prices at the pump — and indeed they don't deserve that credit — then discount, too, the economic wonders that you expect your preferred political ticket to accomplish if elected.

Gentle readers, if we're not safe on American soil from the sort of suicide bombings that are routine in much of the middle east, it doesn't matter nearly so much what the latest LIBOR index is. If instead of the leader of the free world and its only remaining superpower, America becomes a vacation cruise ship of touchy-feely cultural relativism drifting from Kum-bay-yah recital to recital, while our enemies infiltrate us and exterminate our allies like Israel, then it doesn't matter whose health insurance legislation you think you like better.

I earnestly commend to you Fred Kagan's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, entitled Security Should Be the Deciding Issue.

And I remind you that just like our current one, our next commander-in-chief, whoever he turns out to be, is virtually certain to get immediate and vigorous compliance with the orders he snaps off to his military adjutants, whereas those gasoline price signs and a whole lot of other important economic facts of life are mostly, at least in the short and middle terms, going to do exactly what they were already gonna do anyway.

— Beldar

A respectful suggestion to the McCain-Palin campaign: Change your slogans

In 2006, when Sarah Palin and Sean Parnell ran for governor and lieutenant governor in Alaska, their campaign slogan was "New Energy for Alaska."

I think there is a lot of truth to Sarah Palin's one-liner, during her acceptance speech at the GOP convention, to the effect that the presidency is not supposed to be a voyage of self-discovery. Before delivering that line, she ought to have warned everyone who's read Barack Obama's first book not to be mid-gulp of any beverage.

But Obama's self-absorption and messianic status aside, I am not a fan of the McCain campaign's slogan, "Country First," which pre-dated the Palin announcement.

In his own mind, Barack Obama thinks he would be the best choice for the country, and tens of millions of people agree with him. They find this slogan to be presumptuous and offensive. The slogan lets Obama righteously thunder, "I've got news for you, John McCain, we all put country first." And even though that's not true, there's no reason for McCain to let his own campaign slogan furnish his opponent with such a plausible come-back.

The McCain campaign's secondary slogan, "Reform * Prosperity * Peace," could be used by any politician who's ever run for office. They excite no one. The campaign might just as well go with "Mom * Apple Pie * Kittens."

Look at this amazing photograph (h/t PrestoPundit), taken at the McCain-Palin rally in Colorado Springs yesterday, which shows more powerfully and certainly more concisely than all the thousands and thousands of words all the pundits have written in the past ten days just how the race has changed:

I respectfully suggest that the McCain-Palin campaign announce — simultaneously with Sen. McCain's carefuly considered change of position on drilling in ANWR, preferably from some of the mud flats there so that camera crews can capture their bleak ordinariness — the change in their campaign slogan to: "McCain-Palin: New Energy for America."

Energy is their best, simplest, strongest domestic issue. The "new energy" slogan is broad enough, however, to cover their entire reform agenda. And if there's one thing that everyone already knows about John McCain, it's that he's a warrior: His name is worth more in foreign policy/national security credibility than any slogan ever crafted.

Palin knows being pro-production doesn't mean being in the oil companies' pocket

Saturday's Houston Chronicle has a superb, insightful article by staff reporter Tom Fowler which quotes independent but knowledgeable energy industry experts who are familiar with Gov. Sarah Palin's record. It's packed with specific facts about that record, and the quoted experts ably draw a set of important distinctions. The article starts with a bang (boldface mine):

In an election where energy has moved to the top of the agenda, Republican vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin arguably brings more credibility on the topic than anyone else on the two major tickets.

She's the governor of Alaska, where close to 85 percent of the budget comes from oil revenue. It's second only to Texas among the states in oil production.

She's the previous head of the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and is married to a North Slope oil production engineer.

Since taking office in 2006 she has thrown out the previous administration's plans for a North Slope natural gas pipeline, which had been criticized as too generous to oil producers, and has bolstered state coffers through an overhaul of the state's oil and gas tax structure.

"Between Biden, Obama and McCain, Palin is the only one who can spell 'energy.' The rest of these guys are completely clueless," said David Pursell, an analyst with Houston-based Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., an energy investment and research firm.

So does industry knowledge translate into closeness? To the contrary:

Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said Palin knows the energy industry, "warts and all," and understands the importance of energy policy.

"She has shown an independent streak and has been anything but a patsy in dealing with the oil industry in Alaska," Bullock said.

The article notes that doctrinaire liberal interest groups (my characterization) insist that Palin is a puppet of the industry, which is also how they've characterized Bush and Cheney. At least with respect to Palin, however, that's just hogwash, say candid Alaska Democrats who actually know:

But Mike Doogan, a Democrat in Alaska's House of Representatives, said he's not so sure about Palin's chumminess with the industry.

"They don't have big color pictures of Sarah Palin in the board rooms of BP, ConocoPhillips or Exxon," Doogan said. "If she's in the pocket of big oil, she's kept it a pretty good secret."

(This is wry understatement. If ExxonMobil has Sarah Palin's picture up in its boardroom, it's tacked to a dart-board.)

Doogan said he agrees with Palin's oil and gas policies, as do many in the state where the state budget and economy rely on oil production. But the partnership between state government and the industry is not necessarily a happy one, he said.

"It's a good partnership if you consider having to sue your partner constantly to pay you a good thing," Doogan said, referring to frequent litigation between the state and industry over taxes and other issues.

The article runs through the conspicuous energy policy successes she's had despite her short tenure, often after vigorous "head-knocking" of the major oil companies, and always with complete public transparency (in contrast to her predecessors).

Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, said Palin represents a departure from past Alaskan politicians in how she has motivated the oil industry.

"She's taken much more of a 'knocking-heads' approach," Jaffe said. "She has stood up to the big players when she didn't like the process, and I don't think it's played well with the industry."

But there's no doubt Palin is clearly pro-oil production, said Robin West, chairman of energy strategy firm PFC Energy.

But her record, however, also suggests that being pro-production doesn't necessarily mean she's reliably pro-industry, West said.

"The agenda of Alaska and the agenda of Exxon are not always the same," West said. "They may both want more production but it may not be under the same terms."

There is no magic pony. My kids will be parents, and maybe grandparents, before we're wholly weaned from fossil fuels. We need to conserve; we need alternative sources.

But in the meantime, we still need to drill now, drill here, and drill smartly. Sarah Palin gets this. Better yet, she will make it happen — which in large part means "letting it happen," but in a smart way, making the market forces work for the taxpaying public and keeping everything thoroughly disinfected with the sunshine of public scrutiny.

Beldar's plea to Sen. McCain for the coming week: In your acceptance speech, use that multi-media capability to show video, plus maps, that will make abundantly clear to everyone watching just what a tiny portion of unexceptional mudflats will be disturbed when we drill in ANWR. Explain that your fabulous and knowledgeable running mate has opened your eyes to the fact that "pristine" doesn't always mean "precious," and that responsible development doesn't mean "plunder." And then announce that for the rest of the campaign and then from Day 1 forward of the McCain-Palin administration, Sarah Palin will be your energy czar, pounding on congressional doors to make this happen as part of an overall multi-faceted energy plan.

The Palin family's energy bona fides versus the Democrats' big talk

When Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi religiously intone, yet again, with serene and bleak confidence that "We can't drill our way out of this," I can't help wondering if either of them could tell the difference at a glance between a drillbit, a pumpjack, a derrick, and a blowout preventer.

By contrast, for most of the last 20 years or so, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's husband Todd has worked on or around Alaska's North Slope with job titles like "production operator." Now, that's a very blue collar job that can involve getting one's hands very dirty, but it's a job in which requires serious training. Slow-witted folks are quickly separated from finger-tips or worse, and the equipment one uses can cost tens of millions to replace, if you can get a replacement at any price any time soon, which right now you probably can't.

Which is to say, I don't think the notion of drilling for oil and gas is nearly so hypothetical to the Palin family as it is to either Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi. I'd place a large wager on the likelihood that the Palin family washer and drier combo has dealt with its share of grease and drilling mud over the years, whereas the Obama and Pelosi households have fewer challenging stains and, indeed, rely a lot on dry cleaning.

So when Barack Obama waves his hands in the air in front of his teleprompter and says that he's going to create five million "green-collar jobs" out of nowhere when he becomes president, I wouldn't blame the younger Palin children if they began to look around for the magic pony. I mean, if you have a magic pony who can ride over the rainbows, or maybe a unicorn, you can probably do that. If you actually want to keep gasoline in the retail pump stations, though — and no, that's not the same thing as a pumpjack — somebody needs to still be doing that blue-collar work.

And if you want to deal with the various regulatory agencies and energy companies and environmental groups and tax policy think-tanks and all the rest of that stuff — well, now you're talking the kind of job that falls within Gov. Palin's bailiwick. Indeed, she's had a striking series of legislative successes in her first two years as governor, accomplishing far more on energy policy than the U.S. Congress has in the last 10 years. Not empty promises — but actual results. Results that translate into tax revenues; results that translate into transparent and open free-market negotiations, with energy companies competing against one another for the chance to serve the public interest; results that will turn into actual drillbits and pumpjacks and derricks and blowout preventers and pipelines and compressor stations and oil tankers and offshore platforms and the whole nine yards.

A regular reader, a fellow west Texan, emailed me this link to a story in a newspaper from San Angelo, Texas, which notes that the extended Palin family has ties to Texas too: Sarah Palin's maternal uncle Michael Sheeran and his wife Billie moved there "from Washington state nine years ago. Billie Sheeran is a hospital inspector and Michael Sheeran is retired from the nuclear industry, where he was involved in fuel design and nuclear reactors." This doesn't surprise me.

And the San Angelo area is smack-dab in the booming Texas wind-energy corridor, as I discussed last summer after driving from Houston to my home-town past dozens of giant windmills, working and under construction. My guess is that Todd and Michael could probably take one of those apart and put it back together, too, and ditto for the broken pumpjack over in the next pasture.

I like practical people with real-world solutions, both on energy and other important stuff. We don't need pie in the sky, we need drill pipe in the ground (including the ANWR mud flats and the "ground" offshore) — plus some reactors on the ground and some windmills in the sky. I like people who've actually done stuff, because they usually have the best ideas about how to do more. I like people who understand that the government damn near never makes or discovers anything — that at best, it can facilitate private industry doing that, and then its most important role is usually to get the hell out of the way.

The Palin family strikes me as these kind of people. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi do not.

Don't be misled into thinking that Gov. Palin has championed the same sort of "windfall profits taxes" on oil companies that Obama has

Stephen Spruiell was generous and self-critical enough to link today on The Corner a comment I wrote to one of my own Palin posts in which I took issue with a post by my excellent friend Ed Morrissey (formerly of Captain's Quarters) at Hot Air. Basically, I thought Ed (and, inferentially, Mr. Spruiell) had been taken in by a hatchet job from a Seattle newspaper which was carefully calculated to argue that Sarah Palin is a fan of windfall profits taxes on oil companies, just like Barack Obama.

That's not so. Palin has stood up to the major oil companies, and has made utterly transparent the State of Alaska's dealings with them, but she is neither in their pocket nor a rabble-rouser who unfairly demonizes them. She's dealt with them like a responsible public servant, not a class warrior. I'll reprint here the comment Mr. Spruiell kindly referenced, along with a subsequent one on the same post describing my emails to Ed (again, without blockquotes, and with slight editing):

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What the article you linked to is discussing is a severance tax. State severance taxes charged on production of oil and gas and minerals are common throughout the United States. Also sometimes called "production taxes," they're charged by the state from beneath whose land valuable resources are extracted, and they're designed not to punish the energy companies, but to recompense the state for its loss of a non-replaceable resource — one that must be quantified and taxed upon removal, if it is ever to be taxed at all. Severance taxes are therefore based on production from within the state, not on profits earned by the company extracting that production — even though the production may be measured in, and the tax assessed upon, the market value or gross revenues (as measured in dollars) received for that production, rather than an "in kind" delivery to the state in barrels or cubic feet as such. See, e.g., Tex. Tax Code §§ 201.051 & 202.051 (Texas production taxes on gas and oil respectively).

Indeed, I once represented Conoco in a Houston lawsuit against Mobil over how to allocate the severance tax they jointly owed based on jointly owned oil and gas leases in Idaho. There's actually a fair amount of competing case-law from different states over whether severance taxes are more properly characterized as "property taxes" or "income taxes" — if for some reason (e.g., interpreting a sloppy contract) you have to put them into one of those two categories or the other. But in any event, severance taxes are in no way premised on the notion that energy companies are making unconscionable or excessive profits.

Alaska's previous version of its severance tax had been negotiated behind closed doors by defeated Gov. Frank Murkowski, a few top state legislators (some of whom are now in prison for corruption), and energy lobbyists. One of the campaign planks upon which Gov. Palin ran for office was replacing that tax with one negotiated in the open with full transparency; and the resulting tax was, indeed, slightly more favorable to the State of Alaska. The article you linked tells some of this anti-corruption history on the part of Gov. Palin. But just because the newspaper headline writers and some of the people the article quoted used the word "windfall," don't be fooled into thinking that the tax in question is the same thing Barack Obama and the Democrats are now promoting at a national level.

Rather, what Obama and the Dems are promoting is nothing less than selective government confiscation of the property of a particular industry, on the theory that such industry's profits are "excessive." That's a repugnant rabble-rousing scheme, populism turned into class warfare and carried to its excessive worst. It's completely unjustifiable either morally or economically. Its short-term victims are going to be energy-company shareholders (which include huge numbers of pension plans in which ordinary Americans have investments), but its long-term victims will be all Americans (who will suffer as our own energy companies are put at an increasing competitive disadvantage compared to others in the world, and whose national security interests will be further harmed as we become even more dependent on foreign sources of fossil-fuel energy).

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I hadn't seen Cap'n Ed's post at Hot Air, but I've sent him the following email:

Ed:

I’m pretty sure your post on Gov. Palin supposedly having supported a “windfall profits” tax in Alaska is badly misinformed. I think you’ve been suckered by taking the Seattle newspaper article at face value. I would not be surprised if this article is a plant by Dems who are terrified that McCain MIGHT pick Palin.

The tax in question is Alaska’s SEVERANCE tax, which is not a general corporate income tax, but a one-time tax that most states impose on the extraction of non-renewable resources that otherwise would escape taxation. I’m not an expert on tax law, but I have had a prior case involving state severance taxes, and I discuss the difference in a comment on my blog: link.

You also need to understand the context: The prior severance tax was negotiated behind closed doors between the three big oil companies who (to the exclusion of others) dominate existing production — ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips — and the corrupt former legislators (some of whom are now in prison) and discredited administration of former Gov. Frank Murkowski (whom Palin defeated). Palin insisted on renegotiating the severance tax in open meetings with complete transparency. The result was indeed a slight increase — but only from a base rate of 22.5% to 25%. link

In other words, Palin brought SUNSHINE to the process. That did indeed upset those three big oil companies, who were happier in the dark. They’re also pissed because she’s championing an open-bidding process for a new natural gas pipeline that will bring affordable energy to Alaskans as well as making its natural gas reserves eventually available to the lower 48 states. (A Canadian-based company won that bid after ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips refused to participate, but they’re promoting their own alternative deal. The Alaska legislature’s in special session to sort things out.)

Gov. Palin’s constituents, however, follow this stuff closely because it is so integral to the state’s entire budget and governing processes. Gov. Palin’s approval ratings are still at 80% as of the end of July.

The quote adding in royalty payments to the tax burden is extremely misleading. Producers pay royalty payments wherever they extract oil, gas & minerals. If you check, I think you’ll find that the royalty payments actually go to the federal government, not the Alaska state government, under the terms of the deal reached when Alaska became a state.

Costs of living are dramatically higher in Alaska than elsewhere. The local state tax burden is already comparatively low, however. Because of current energy prices — not specifically because of this modest increase in the severance tax — Alaska is in a position to rebate government money to its citizens. They’re choosing to do so by direct payments rather than cutting taxes. But since their entire state budget is already (and has long been) based on the development of Alaska’s energy reserves, it’s not at all fair to compare that rebate program to the confiscate-and-giveaway class warfare that Obama is proposing.

I write this to encourage you to actually research this more thoroughly, perhaps by contacting someone who IS a state tax expert and knows the state history better than I do. I don’t have time to do a more thorough analysis today or tomorrow, but if you choose not to, I’ll try to do so later this week. If you want to quote (with or without attribution) anything from this email in the meantime, feel free, but please be sure to include my statement that this is a “top of my head” reaction.

- Beldar

And I followed that with this email:

Ed,

Re-reading what I just sent, I’m particularly uncertain about royalty rights. It may be that they’re divided in some proportion between the state and federal governments. So that paragraph in particular probably ought not be quoted without some further inquiry. But it is fair to say that oil companies pay royalties to SOMEONE on essentially all production, and it’s not fair to characterize those royalties as being part of anyone’s “windfall profits tax.”

- Beldar

What's next is from the description from the universally respected CCH looseleaf tax service, as linked in my first email, of the legislation in question:

The base tax rate is increased from 22.5% to 25% of the annual production tax value of taxable oil and gas. When a producer's average monthly production tax value per BTU equivalent barrel of taxable oil and gas is between $30 and $92.50, an additional tax of 0.4% is imposed on the difference between the average monthly production tax value and $30. Formerly, the additional tax was 0.25%. When a producer's average monthly production tax value exceeds $92.50, the additional tax is 0.1% of the difference between the monthly production tax value and $92.50. The new tax rates are effective July 1, 2007.

That's not remotely consistent with what the Seattle newspaper article says, but I'd put my money on CCH.

Why Obama's conventional Veep choice should free McCain to make an unconventional one (Palin or Jindal)

Barack Obama, who is at least superficially a very unconventional presidential candidate, has now picked an exceptionally conventional vice-presidential running mate in Joe Biden. Biden was born in 1942; he was first elected to the Senate in 1972, when Obama was 11 years old, and Biden has been there ever since. Biden got zero traction among voters in his own party in either of his own two presidential bids. For those who can't distinguish between seniority and experience, Biden might appear to be a "safe" choice, one whose long Senate tenure arguably balances Obama's own brief and thin list of accomplishments. But the one thing that Biden has proven himself to be — both as a presidential candidate and as a senator — is a self-absorbed gaffe machine. My only question is not whether, but the relative degree to which, by November, Biden will have proved himself to be an embarrassment to the Obama campaign. And that depends not only on how many gaffes Biden makes, but how many Obama and McCain make during the same period (since theirs would likely overshadow Biden's).

I am confident that in between his gaffes, however, Joe Biden will endlessly and enthusiastically repeat the Obama campaign's talking points. Already-committed voters for either side may pay brief attention to his gaffes (defending or ridiculing them, depending on their already existing preferences), but other than that, they will mostly ignore him. As for undecided voters, or potential voters whose real decision is whether to show up at the polls or not, I do not believe that Biden is capable of connecting with them in any powerful (subconscious or emotional) way. He is more plastic, and less inspiring, than either Obama or McCain.

So what does Obama's choice of Biden mean for McCain's own Veep selection? Does it mean that McCain ought also play it safe? Or does this create a new and unique opportunity for McCain to exploit? I presume you've read the title of this post, so you already know what I think the answer to this question should be. But here's my reasoning behind the recommendation:

*******

For starters, one thing is absolutely clear now: Whatever else, Obama's choice of Biden didn't bring something to the Democratic ticket that McCain himself can't already counter in spades. Indeed, Biden was obviously chosen by Obama to try to match some of McCain's strengths — long Senate service, particularly with respect to foreign policy matters — but Biden's addition to the ticket doesn't require that McCain pick someone else, in addition to himself, who shares those qualities.

And because Biden's only in the second slot, no amount of perceived experience on his part can completely overcome Obama's own short and thin record. Indeed, since both parties' presidential nominees became clear, we've always known that when it comes to experience, the GOP ticket would be superior to the Democratic ticket — and that's true regardless of who either nominee picks for the Veep slot. For voters who value experience highly, the GOP ticket is already the superior choice. Long years of service are therefore a less important qualification for the McCain ticket's second slot because he need not worry about having to play catch-up on that count. And voters normally expect a Veep nominee to be the less experienced of the two.

Biden is also very much a known quantity. The odds of America becoming suddenly infatuated with Joe Biden, and that rubbing off on Barack Obama, are zero. McCain now knows that Obama's conventional choice is not going to somehow unexpectedly morph into a brilliant choice. He doesn't bring any battleground state definitely into the Democratic fold. And, frankly, the likelihood that Biden will be a gaffe-free Veen nominee is also about zero. Compared to where it might have been if Obama had announced that, for example, Sam Nunn or Hillary Clinton were his choice, the bar has been set fairly low.

*******

I've read several conservative pundits whose opinions I respect argue that Obama's selection of Biden means McCain ought to pick Mitt Romney. So far, however, I haven't seen anyone make a compelling, specific argument as to why Romney would be a better choice now than he would have been had Obama picked, say, Hillary Clinton or Bill Richardson. Instead, their arguments seem to be fairly generic ones, a restatement of the reasons why they like Romney anyway.

He was never my first choice, but based on their respective policies, I also preferred Romney to McCain during the GOP primaries, and by the end of them I ended up liking Romney substantially more than I did when they began. I won't be horribly dismayed now if McCain were to pick Romney. And there are, by sharp contrast, quite a few other names being bounced around whose selection would indeed dismay me deeply.

But except for his LDS religious faith, Romney would also be an extremely conventional Veep selection. He's as plastic and uninspiring as Biden, and just as unlikely to connect powerfully with the undecided or swing voters who presumably will decide the election.

To me, Obama's cautious and conventional choice ought simply highlights the strategic advantage that McCain could seize by going unconventional. With no need to directly counter Obama's choice, then instead of mirroring it, McCain ought to exploit it — to seize upon it as a chance to engage in asymmetric political warfare. Obama's hunkering down and digging in, so now is the time to get behind his lines. Or in football terms: Obama has stacked the box, assuming that McCain is going to run the ball up the middle, and he's already fully committed to that formation, so now is the very best time to call an audible and go deep.

That means Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

*******

If McCain picks Romney, or someone else fairly conventional (e.g., Pawlenty or Portman), I know I'm going to have to set my DVR to record the vice presidential debate because I can't be certain in advance that I won't fall asleep during the middle of it. But oh, how I — and, I think, how all of America — would relish watching either Palin or Jindal take on Joe Biden!

The Dems would expect it to be Quayle versus Bentsen all over again, but Joe Biden is no Lloyd Bentsen — silver hair-plugs do not translate into genuine gravitas. Because Quayle was a traditional, privileged white male, there was no potential backlash when the Dems mocked him for his youth and seeming shallowness; Dems would find it less easy, or more risky, to mock either Palin or Jindal. And either Palin or Jindal are far better at thinking and speaking on their feet than Dan Quayle was. Quayle wasn't as bad as his reputation eventually became, but neither was he ever the genuine hope for the future of his party that Poppy Bush seemed to think he'd be. Palin and Jindal are the real deal.

The vice presidential debate almost certainly won't be won on substantive debating points, however — on their merits, Quayle's answers weren't that bad and Bentsen's weren't that great. What very well could "win" the VP debate — and more importantly, what could even affect the outcome of the election — is the flavor, tone, and the visuals of the event. That includes identity politics of the sort that I usually deplore, but that can't be ignored, especially when one's trying to figure out how to capture undecided and swing voters who are seeking a visceral connection of some sort with either campaign.

Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal standing at the GOP's lectern at the vice presidential debate — especially across from Democrat Joe Biden, as stereotypical an old-school politician as has ever lived and breathed — would transform the Republican Party's image in the minds of literally millions of voters who presently associate it exclusively with rich, white, old men. And that's something no amount of television advertising buys or direct mail brochures could do. And it's true almost no matter what anyone actually says at the debate.

By picking Joe Biden, Barack Obama has handed that visual to John McCain and the GOP on a silver platter. Should that gift be squandered?

Even though I'm a big fan of Gov. Jindal, I still am more enthusiastic about Gov. Palin for this particular race at this particular time, and it's for two reasons, each of which can each be summarized in a single word. The first word is "Energy." And the second word is "Hillary." The first is the best domestic issue for the GOP, on which Gov. Palin is uniquely qualified as both a symbol and a spokesperson. The second is the source of a whole lot of disaffected woulda-been Democratic voters who are looking for an excuse to rebound in a way that secretly (but very satisfyingly) shoots the finger at Barack Obama.

*******

At the beginning of this post, I described Obama himself as "at least superficially a very unconventional presidential candidate." But in fact, the lesson of the entire 2008 presidential campaign so far — a lesson again re-affirmed by his pick of Biden — is that Obama is a very conventional politician who's running a disciplined, almost constipated campaign. He's far better at that than Hillary Clinton or, for that matter, Joe Biden gave him early credit for, which is why he beat them. And it wasn't until Hillary loosened up and started taking chances — a change that, in hindsight, came too late — that she started getting real traction against him.

I don't think McCain is naturally risk-averse, and I suspect he will indeed go with his own gut, rather than let his advisers push him into a choice he otherwise might not have made. But I fear that McCain will show his maverick streak — poke his thumb in the eye of the GOP establishment and its conservative base — by picking a Tom Ridge or a Lindsey Graham. So if there are any Republican angels out there who can whisper my words into the grumpy old man's ear as he sleeps, please whisper these:

"You're not Bob Dole, and you've never wanted to be. Yes, be unconventional, my friend, but not in a way that makes your would-be supporters despondent. Give them firm cause to back you, and a pleasant surprise, by choosing someone who's unquestionably conservative. Give all America inspiration by choosing someone who's fresh and energetic and emblematic of the new century, instead of the one just past. You're the candidate who already connects with practical voters who value security and honor; now bolster your ticket's appeal with someone who can connect with romantic voters who most prize hope and progress. Go deep, John McCain: Pick Palin!"

Windfall profits taxes on energy companies?

Here's a current affairs multiple choice question that is dirt simple:

For the second quarter of 2008, two highly pertinent financial figures reported by ExxonMobil were its net income (as calculated according to U.S. GAAP, i.e., generally accepted accounting principles) and the taxes it paid. Which of the following statements is true?

1. ExxonMobile's net income was $32.4 billion. It paid income taxes and other taxes totaling $11.7 billion.

2. ExxonMobil's net income was $11.7 billion. It paid income taxes and other taxes totaling $32.4 billion.

*******

Statement No. 2 is true, and Statement No. 1 is false. In fact, as an American corporation that therefore is already burdened with one of the highest corporate income tax rates among its global competitors, ExxonMobil paid $10.5 billion in income taxes alone.

If you don't understand that ExxonMobil is already paying roughly three times as much in taxes as it makes in profits, then you're very likely to be suckered by stories like this one in the New York Times, which only reports on the record-setting profits, and not on the record-setting taxes. And you're also very likely to be suckered by political candidates who call for "windfall profits taxes," as if politicians — politicians! — are oh so very much smarter than the market, such that they can decide which industries are enjoying "windfalls" that can be taxed without ill effect on either them or the national economy.

We call that kind of politician a "commissar," by the way.

An American windfall profits tax on energy companies, however, will guarantee certain results: American energy companies will be penalized compared to their foreign competitors, many of whom are already heavily subsidized by their own countries. And American energy companies will have less incentive and less ability to invest, whether in finding new sources of fossil fuel energy upon which we can rely if there are future embargoes or in helping develop alternative energy sources.