Moto - Music - Miscellany - Politics
Rounding up the last week - Meeting with Bill Richardson
Where did it go? Wherever it went, it went fast and HOT. Yesterday reportedly hit 112 degrees in the Tri-Cities. It may not be Arizona hot, but it is still enough to make you cringe. But after working on the contruction project most the day this weekend, we grabbed the boat and hit the river. And I gotta tell you there is nothing better when the temps get that high - and you don’t particularly like to sit indoors watching TV.
The House
Not the US House but, my house. Some of you know I have been remodeling a rental house I own to sell (thus the weekends being obliterated by projects). Nothing but good news there. Getting closer, although things like this usually take longer than expected, and better news is I have a buyer. It is a beast of a house, monster, unimaginable some odd sq ft. thing of beauty that is breaking my heart. For one, I just wish I could justify moving back in since it is so nice now. But alas, it is just too much. The new owners will be very happy. And so will I. Out of pocket remodel jobs hurt the pocket book but at least I did the work, for the most part, myself.
Bill Richardson Visit
Frankly, I could talk about my motorcycle ride over Chinook pass more than meeting Bill Richardson. Not that I don’t like Bill. He is a great guy who may be eyeing a presidential run in 08′, and he could get my vote if the stars align just right. But dang that was a nice ride. Ok… and a nice visit too.
As former Secretary of Energy he was a well known figure in this area due to Hanford. His being known may not be all that good to some as it was under his and his predecessor Hazel O’Leary’s tenure that workers saw contract restructuring that dropped many “outside the fence” to face pension freezes and higher benefit costs. Whether that was on his watch or O’Leary’s could be debated, but to many in the Mid-Columbia it doesn’t matter. The Democrats did it and we have been increasingly punishing ourselves with ineffective republicans ever since.
But what Richardson brings to the table is interesting. He does seem have a strong belief in bloggers for one. After all, he did meet with about 15 or so of us. And it was a good conversation that covered things such as the minimum wage. Interesting that in New Mexico, a failed push to raise the minimum wage there spawned a local ordinance that raised it in Albequerqe as well as a $9 per hour ordinance in Santa Fe.
I don’t know about you, but I have tried to live on minimum wage when I was younger and it doesn’t work. My first job I made $2.65 an hour. Big ouch for a young guy trying to break into an economic system that strives, and lobbies, for cheap labor. And if you are a business complaining about Washington’s highest in the nation minimum wage think about this. Could you live on it? I haven’t looked it up but I bet comparatively I was doing better at $2.65 than those getting 7 some odd dollars are today.
But with limited time (staffers coughing and tsk-ing to get him moving to his next gig), I did manage to get in one question. And his response is something you can mull over in the comment thread. It was posed around our discussion on energy independence and diversification. I asked him if he thought nuclear energy will creep back into the Democratic vocabulary. There was a pause (did I just say “nukular” er sumpthin?)… Nuclear he says… “because it doesn’t emit carbon emissions it has to be in the mix”. But he doesn’t think it is the future. The cost is high and they are too subsidised. Good point and I agreed that it probably shouldn’t be subsidised in these markets. But that isn’t how the current administration’s policy with energy is working.
But Goldy (horsesass.org) brought up a good point. What about the European countries like France and Germany. Are they being subsidised? Nobody really sounded sure about that answer so there could be much to learn there. Bottom line however is that we still have to figure out what to do with the waste and the costs associated (Yucca Mountain isn’t looking too promising), and tax breaks for nuclear energy amounts to a subsidy that we all pay for. For my little neck of the woods, I hope the answer can be found.
Will Bill Richardson make a run for president? Probably so. He, as most of the possible runners do, was non-committal. But he does define himself well. He calls himself a “New Progressive”. “We invest in people, not bureaucracy, you invest in training, invest in health care”. Not a bad start. Let’s just hope he keeps his seat in New Mexico for now. And that is looking good.
Lastly, I want to thank Ken Camp for the invite. Not only did I get a chance to chat with a politician I like, it was a fantastic excuse to take a motorcycle ride over some beautiful country. 462 miles of pure bliss.
Comments are closed.
July 25, 2006 - 10:52 am
I would really like to know if nuclear power is so much more heavily subsidized than oil or hydropower. An honest and full accounting of subsides for all current power sources would really be interesting to see. And what do you mean, Jimmy, when you say, “[...]I agreed that it probably shouldn’t be subsidised in these markets”? For some reason I couldn’t really follow that point.
Regarding WA’s minimum wage, I think it’s one of the finest aspects of living in this state. I’m proud of our state government for doing it, and I have not one ounce of sympathy for businesses who cry about it. The only shame is that all states don’t have similar minimum wage levels.
July 25, 2006 - 11:10 am
Subsidization comes out of our pockets through the tax breaks. It also contributes to less competition in those markets. Between that and the backroom deals with our current energy policy it is a big giveaway… at taxpayer expense. There must be a happy medium in there somewhere but I don’t know what that is.
July 25, 2006 - 11:53 am
my feeling is, if you’re talking subsidies, you should include EVERYTHING that taxpayers pay to provide for an energy source. For example, should we include the cost of our military when we calculate the true cost of oil? Seems to me one of the main reasons we have used our military recently is to protect our access to cheap foreign oil. Think about it — if we didn’t have to rely on the Middle East for oil, would we need the incredibly massive military that we pay for in this country?
From this angle, then, the “subsidies” for nuclear power or some alternative energy doesn’t seem so bad.
July 25, 2006 - 1:47 pm
Precisely, Oliver. That is exactly the kind of accounting question that we never hear the answer to.
July 25, 2006 - 2:12 pm
I always liked Robert Kennedy Jr.’s comment “Show me a subsidy and I will show you a polluter”.
Here is a fairly succint description of Kennedy’s position on pollution and subsidy. He has some good points about farming in Idaho and the nuclear industry. I think this is basically true. Subsidy avoids the true economic cost of production and ultimately leads to wasteful inefficiency. But obviously this is not an absolute. I think it is helpful to draw a distinction between investment and subsidy. Obviously, certain industries really need to reach a critical mass to achieve specific economies of scale and it corollary efficiencies. Perhaps the solution lies in coming up with very tight sunset provisions in the appropriations process. We should fund new innovative projects, research, and technologies. Everything needs seed money, works that way with venture captial in the tech world, and R&D in energy industries. I am all for some federal spending or tax breaks to get Bio Diesel, renewable wind energy, lesser environmentally destructive dam building etc. but there has to be explicit limits on it. If after a number of years or dollars an industry or technology cannot acutally be self sufficient, and more importantly environmentally sustainable, then perhaps the industry or technology should just die a graceful death. This goes for nuclear as well. If these power plants can operating in a safe and cost effective way so be it but if they are wholely dependent on subsidies for operational costs then we need to look at that.
@3 Oliver I totally agree. Not enough attention is paid to the real costs of things. This is why I am in favor of a universal recycling program. There should be a recycle bin everywhere there is a trash can. Apart from the environmental benefits, it creates awareness. If someone is visually confronted with a recycle bin and a trash can then they will have to think about trash and reuse etc. I see so much waste and affluence/effluence in this country it boggles the mind. I just drove down to Arizona from Washington. I had some bottled juice with me. I had to drive all the way to the freaking Grand Canyon to even recycle the bottles. Very discouraging. I am sure there are other areas and industries where we can call attention to the waste and process and true economic cost. Why do things have to be artificially cheap? Because we are afraid of a little economic disruption?
July 25, 2006 - 2:27 pm
Hey Jimmy,
Make your comment box a little taller, it will make editing and posting one’s comments a little easier. Perhaps 10-12 rows high instead of 4
Change this line of code
textarea name=”comment” id=”comment” cols=”60″ rows=”4″ tabindex=”4″
into
textarea name=”comment” id=”comment” cols=”60″ rows=”10″ tabindex=”4″
July 25, 2006 - 2:34 pm
I would rather have a pop-up comment option but haven’t found a good solution yet. Any ideas… now that you hijacked the comment thread? LOL
July 25, 2006 - 2:49 pm
@3 One other comment on why we are at war in the middle east. It is commonly assumed that we are at war to fight for cheap oil. I kind of think that this is not completely accurate. First, the evidence seems to be contradictory. Gas prices have gone up considerably since the war started. So if cheap oil is the desired result we have not been effective in that effort. Second and more importantly I agree with Noam Chomsky’s take on this. He basically argues that th U.S. is fighting in Iraq not for our own oil but to gain an important sphere of influence over there to work as an economic hedge against the Chinese. It is not about our own oil consumption (we have relatively massive reserves) but rather controlling the spigot, so to speak. This will have a long term effect on China’s ultimate future economic potential. These nutbars in the defense department are still fighting a cold war, it’s just that China is the object and not the Soviet Union. That is the only explanation I have read that makes much sense.
I think there is a somewhat naive notion that if we all ran electric cars or hydrogen vehicles that all our foreign policy escapades would go away. I think there would still be wars, and jockying for control and power. I just hope that we can someday get past this through effective internationalist institutions like the UN and make closed authoritarian institutions like the WTO more open and democratic. That is the way out of these wars in my opinion.