One of the most appealing features of the Barack Obama candidacy is the idea that Obama is "postracial"--that he is a candidate who is black and does not practice the adversarial politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. This is why his 20-year association with the racist anti-American crackpot Jeremiah Wright was potentially so damaging to him, and why Jesse Jackson's lurid fantasies of sexually mutilating Obama were such a great stroke of luck for the candidate. But a story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin raises serious questions about Obama's postracialism. The paper describes an Obama appearance at Unity '08, "a convention of four minority journalism associations":
"I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged," the Democratic presidential hopeful said. "I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."
Exactly what Obama is advocating here cannot be determined, but it seems to be something of an endorsement of the idea of "reparations for slavery," which is usually taken to mean cash payments. In this view, the following deeds are insufficient to balance the ledger between America and the descendants of slaves: the Civil War, the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the continuing practice of racial preferences.
The idea of reparations is highly unpopular, and with good reason. Unlike the Japanese-Americans who in 1988 received compensation for their internment by a Democratic administration in the grips of wartime hysteria, no one alive today has ever been a slave. The idea of the government cutting checks to compensate people for a wrong that they did not personally suffer is unlikely to appeal to anyone except perhaps those who stand to receive those checks.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Victor Davis Hanson
Why Do Europeans Love Obama? Let us count the ways:
1) Obama’s tax code, support of big government programs and redistribution of income, and subservience to UN directives delight the European masses—especially at a time when their own governments are trying to cut taxes, government, seek closer relations with the US, and ask a petulant, pampered public to grow up.
2) He offers Euros a sort of cheap assuagement of guilt—in classic liberal style. When Obama says falsely that he does not look like other Americans who have addressed Germans (cf. Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice who have represented US foreign policy abroad the last 7 years), Europeans feel especially progressive—and therefore need not worry that no one of African ancestry would ever become a European Prime- or Foreign-Minister.
3) Europe is weak militarily and won’t invest in its own defense. But with Obama, they believe the US will subject its enormous military strength to international organizations—usually run by utopian Europeans. So they will play a thinking-man’s Athens to our muscular Rome. They especially lap up Obama’s historical revisionism in which he lectures about the world’s effort to feed Berlin or tear down the communist wall, never the solitary, lonely efforts of a Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan to confront the evils of communism when almost everyone else preferred not to.
4) Style, style, style. Remember socialist Europe is where we get our designer eyeglass frames, Gucci bags, and French fashions. Instead of a strutting, Bible-quoting Texan, replete with southern accent and ‘smoke-em’ out lingo, they get an athletic, young, JFK-ish metrosexual, whose rhetoric is as empty as it is soothing. The English-only Obama lectures America on its need to emulate polyglot Europe; while a Spanish-speaking George Bush is hopelessly cast as a Texas yokel.
5) Obama reassures Europeans that they, not American right-wingers, “won” the classical debates of the 1990s over economics, foreign policy, and government. He is a world citizen, who buys into human-created massive global warming, wind and solar over nuclear and clean coal, high taxes, and cradle-to-grave entitlements, and resentments of the rich. There is a certain European “We told you so” that comes with his election. In short, we elect a world citizen with a European view, and put behind us the embarrassments of a Texan or cowboy actor.
1) Obama’s tax code, support of big government programs and redistribution of income, and subservience to UN directives delight the European masses—especially at a time when their own governments are trying to cut taxes, government, seek closer relations with the US, and ask a petulant, pampered public to grow up.
2) He offers Euros a sort of cheap assuagement of guilt—in classic liberal style. When Obama says falsely that he does not look like other Americans who have addressed Germans (cf. Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice who have represented US foreign policy abroad the last 7 years), Europeans feel especially progressive—and therefore need not worry that no one of African ancestry would ever become a European Prime- or Foreign-Minister.
3) Europe is weak militarily and won’t invest in its own defense. But with Obama, they believe the US will subject its enormous military strength to international organizations—usually run by utopian Europeans. So they will play a thinking-man’s Athens to our muscular Rome. They especially lap up Obama’s historical revisionism in which he lectures about the world’s effort to feed Berlin or tear down the communist wall, never the solitary, lonely efforts of a Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan to confront the evils of communism when almost everyone else preferred not to.
4) Style, style, style. Remember socialist Europe is where we get our designer eyeglass frames, Gucci bags, and French fashions. Instead of a strutting, Bible-quoting Texan, replete with southern accent and ‘smoke-em’ out lingo, they get an athletic, young, JFK-ish metrosexual, whose rhetoric is as empty as it is soothing. The English-only Obama lectures America on its need to emulate polyglot Europe; while a Spanish-speaking George Bush is hopelessly cast as a Texas yokel.
5) Obama reassures Europeans that they, not American right-wingers, “won” the classical debates of the 1990s over economics, foreign policy, and government. He is a world citizen, who buys into human-created massive global warming, wind and solar over nuclear and clean coal, high taxes, and cradle-to-grave entitlements, and resentments of the rich. There is a certain European “We told you so” that comes with his election. In short, we elect a world citizen with a European view, and put behind us the embarrassments of a Texan or cowboy actor.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
National Public Radio reported last week on the Nunezes, a family of Ohioans who are mostly "unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps." Times are so tough that "they cut back on expensive items like meat." In a way, this is an ideal story for radio, since a photograph accompanying the Web site version presents a visual problem. The two Nunez woman portrayed in the photo do not, to put it delicately, appear to be starving, a fact that has provoked lost of catcalls from bloggers. But c'mon, guys, give the ladies a break. The NPR story notes that instead of meat, "they eat a lot of starches like potatoes and noodles." The previous day, the
Associated Press reported on a new study that found the Atkins diet was more effective in promoting weight loss than traditional low-fat regimes. Less meat, more carbs: ipso fatso.
Judith Flint: Heroine or Jerk?
It's a classic case of the little guy--or, in this case, gal--standing up to authority, at least the way the Associated Press describes it in a dispatch from Randolph, Vt.:
Children's librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on "Love That Dog" when police showed up.
They weren't kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library's public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.
Flint demanded a search warrant, touching off a confrontation that pitted the privacy rights of library patrons against the rights of police on official business. . . .
Investigators did obtain a warrant about eight hours later, but the June 26 standoff in the 105-year-old, red brick library on Main Street frustrated police and had fellow librarians cheering Flint.
"What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," said the library's director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint. . . .
The missing girl, Brooke Bennett, turned up dead a week later. Her uncle Michael Jacques, a convicted sex offender, has been charged with kidnapping her. "Authorities say Jacques had gotten into her MySpace account and altered postings to make investigators believe she had run off with someone she met online," the AP reports.
The cops were in the library that day "chasing a lead that she had used the computers there to arrange a rendezvous":
"The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers and I said 'OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,'" said Flint, 56. "He did say he didn't need any paper. I said 'You do.' He said 'I'm just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,' and I told him 'Show me the paper.' "
A Vermont law that requires librarians to demand court orders in such cases had not yet gone into effect, so Flint was acting on her own discretion in demanding a warrant. The cops yielded and obtained a warrant eight hours later.
Grasmick, and by extension the AP, depicts the police as bullies picking on "a very small women." To our mind her smallness is not just a matter of physical stature. Presented with an opportunity to help a little girl in danger, she officiously responded: "Show me the paper."
Far from bullying her, the cops--although they were bigger and more numerous than she--deferred to her, slowing the investigation by crucial hours in order to comply with her demand. You can describe their treatment of her as impressively chivalrous or as excessively obeisant. In either case, it was far from domineering.
Flint, of course, would claim that she was standing up for a principle--for, in the AP's words, "the privacy rights of library patrons." Have you noticed, though, how the people who assert this principle are never patrons but always librarians?...
Here is a case in which police searching for a missing girl were forced to waste precious time because a bureaucrat, acting on her own authority, said "Show me the paper" instead of "How can I help?" Judith Flint is no heroine.
It's a classic case of the little guy--or, in this case, gal--standing up to authority, at least the way the Associated Press describes it in a dispatch from Randolph, Vt.:
Children's librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on "Love That Dog" when police showed up.
They weren't kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library's public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.
Flint demanded a search warrant, touching off a confrontation that pitted the privacy rights of library patrons against the rights of police on official business. . . .
Investigators did obtain a warrant about eight hours later, but the June 26 standoff in the 105-year-old, red brick library on Main Street frustrated police and had fellow librarians cheering Flint.
"What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," said the library's director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint. . . .
The missing girl, Brooke Bennett, turned up dead a week later. Her uncle Michael Jacques, a convicted sex offender, has been charged with kidnapping her. "Authorities say Jacques had gotten into her MySpace account and altered postings to make investigators believe she had run off with someone she met online," the AP reports.
The cops were in the library that day "chasing a lead that she had used the computers there to arrange a rendezvous":
"The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers and I said 'OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,'" said Flint, 56. "He did say he didn't need any paper. I said 'You do.' He said 'I'm just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,' and I told him 'Show me the paper.' "
A Vermont law that requires librarians to demand court orders in such cases had not yet gone into effect, so Flint was acting on her own discretion in demanding a warrant. The cops yielded and obtained a warrant eight hours later.
Grasmick, and by extension the AP, depicts the police as bullies picking on "a very small women." To our mind her smallness is not just a matter of physical stature. Presented with an opportunity to help a little girl in danger, she officiously responded: "Show me the paper."
Far from bullying her, the cops--although they were bigger and more numerous than she--deferred to her, slowing the investigation by crucial hours in order to comply with her demand. You can describe their treatment of her as impressively chivalrous or as excessively obeisant. In either case, it was far from domineering.
Flint, of course, would claim that she was standing up for a principle--for, in the AP's words, "the privacy rights of library patrons." Have you noticed, though, how the people who assert this principle are never patrons but always librarians?...
Here is a case in which police searching for a missing girl were forced to waste precious time because a bureaucrat, acting on her own authority, said "Show me the paper" instead of "How can I help?" Judith Flint is no heroine.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Pizza clerk surprised to find robber is her dad
Thu Jul 17, 8:18 PM ET
Police said they will not file charges against a clerk whose parents and husband were charged with robbing the pizza restaurant where she worked, officials said. Police said the clerk didn't know they planned to rob the Pizza Patron Friday night.
While the robbery was in progress, the clerk discovered her father was the robber when another clerk struck him, knocking him out and knocking off his wig and sunglasses. He was later apprehended after witnesses followed the getaway pickup.
"Her husband told us she didn't know. He knew they were going to rob someplace but he thought it was going to be a convenience store," police Sgt. James Brett said in a story in Monday's online editions of the Denton Record-Chronicle.
A surveillance video corroborated the clerk's story. A police report shows the trio was in custody within 14 minutes of the robbery.
All three suspects were charged with aggravated robbery.
Thu Jul 17, 8:18 PM ET
Police said they will not file charges against a clerk whose parents and husband were charged with robbing the pizza restaurant where she worked, officials said. Police said the clerk didn't know they planned to rob the Pizza Patron Friday night.
While the robbery was in progress, the clerk discovered her father was the robber when another clerk struck him, knocking him out and knocking off his wig and sunglasses. He was later apprehended after witnesses followed the getaway pickup.
"Her husband told us she didn't know. He knew they were going to rob someplace but he thought it was going to be a convenience store," police Sgt. James Brett said in a story in Monday's online editions of the Denton Record-Chronicle.
A surveillance video corroborated the clerk's story. A police report shows the trio was in custody within 14 minutes of the robbery.
All three suspects were charged with aggravated robbery.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Washington Post Goes Off the Obama Reservation
A surprising editorial at the Washington Post actually notices that Barack Obama’s Iraq policy is, and I quote, “irrational.”
BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
...
“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome — that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
A surprising editorial at the Washington Post actually notices that Barack Obama’s Iraq policy is, and I quote, “irrational.”
BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
...
“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome — that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
"And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama's first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.
The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.
But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.
"It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered," said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. "That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week."
News executives say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of his primary battle with Clinton, which was at a peak when McCain last went to Iraq.
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain."
- they can cover whom they want when, but why maintain that you are somehow objective? They think we are fucking idiots.
The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.
But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.
"It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered," said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. "That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week."
News executives say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of his primary battle with Clinton, which was at a peak when McCain last went to Iraq.
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain."
- they can cover whom they want when, but why maintain that you are somehow objective? They think we are fucking idiots.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
"the Goot is on the Loose"
Guttenberg is shown haunted by the memory of his peers shunning John Travolta when it seemed he'd never live up to Saturday Night Fever again. The actor says, referring to his dating exploits, "the Goot is on the loose," and you figure he must have been making a joke. But then he starts sounding weirder and weirder, and maybe kind of like a jerk, and the next thing you know he's talking about his compulsive drinking, lying and womanizing.
The interview, for me, went clearly haywire right about here:
“I’ve tried to stay fit, you know, because it’s my instrument, this is my violin,” he said, gesturing over his body. “I play the violin. So I want to keep it tuned up …. So I work out there during the day, and then I write.”
This is my instrument? Surely profile author Spencer Morgan left out a "with a chuckle" or "jokingly" somewhere. Like, say, at the end of this:
“I go in spurts,” he said. Upcoming Goot pictures include Mojave Phone Booth, about a phone booth in the middle of the desert, and Major Movie Star, in which he plays Jessica Simpson’s dad. “I guess that’s just an artist’s life,” he said, gazing out over the park [and making that jack-off motion with his fingers?? and ironically holding up a copy of Police Academy 4: Citizens Patrol and grinning like a maniac?].
Guttenberg also says, seemingly appropos of nothing, after calling himself a "seducer," that "the meek will inherit the earth... so be nice to the meek. The old man spitting on the corner. The janitor cleaning up. The man behind the counter at the convenience store. Those are our people—that guy driving that truck—they make the world go."
That non-sequitur is still ringing in your ears (along with the cheesy, swelling orchestral score you'd expect to accompany Guttenberg's soliloquy at the end of some cornball flick from, yes, the 1980s) when the actor starts spilling his guts about his drinking:
“I indulge in wine, and I love vodka, I do,” he said. “And I love scotch, you know. And I love weed. And I love women. And I do have, you know, those … Addiction is such an overused word."
Um....
"I’ll go out with women, because it’ll make me feel better. Women that I shouldn’t be around, but maybe they’ll make me feel better.”
He estimated that he’s dated some 600 women, but still hasn’t found Mrs. Right.
Steve, maybe you should end the interview before you dig yourself in any dee...
“I’ll lie to make myself feel better,” he said. “If I feel shitty, and someone says, ‘What are you working on,’ I’ll get really pissed off and go, ‘Yeah I’m doing a thriller with, you know, George Clooney.’ I make myself feel better by that—that’s an addiction to whatever that is, to make myself feel better, to take the pain away.”
OK, well, it's time to update Wikipedia or something, because none of this is in there. Anyway, Steve, it's been nice catching up, great seeing you, catch you maybe at the 30-year reunion and, hey, don't ever change old buddy!
The interview, for me, went clearly haywire right about here:
“I’ve tried to stay fit, you know, because it’s my instrument, this is my violin,” he said, gesturing over his body. “I play the violin. So I want to keep it tuned up …. So I work out there during the day, and then I write.”
This is my instrument? Surely profile author Spencer Morgan left out a "with a chuckle" or "jokingly" somewhere. Like, say, at the end of this:
“I go in spurts,” he said. Upcoming Goot pictures include Mojave Phone Booth, about a phone booth in the middle of the desert, and Major Movie Star, in which he plays Jessica Simpson’s dad. “I guess that’s just an artist’s life,” he said, gazing out over the park [and making that jack-off motion with his fingers?? and ironically holding up a copy of Police Academy 4: Citizens Patrol and grinning like a maniac?].
Guttenberg also says, seemingly appropos of nothing, after calling himself a "seducer," that "the meek will inherit the earth... so be nice to the meek. The old man spitting on the corner. The janitor cleaning up. The man behind the counter at the convenience store. Those are our people—that guy driving that truck—they make the world go."
That non-sequitur is still ringing in your ears (along with the cheesy, swelling orchestral score you'd expect to accompany Guttenberg's soliloquy at the end of some cornball flick from, yes, the 1980s) when the actor starts spilling his guts about his drinking:
“I indulge in wine, and I love vodka, I do,” he said. “And I love scotch, you know. And I love weed. And I love women. And I do have, you know, those … Addiction is such an overused word."
Um....
"I’ll go out with women, because it’ll make me feel better. Women that I shouldn’t be around, but maybe they’ll make me feel better.”
He estimated that he’s dated some 600 women, but still hasn’t found Mrs. Right.
Steve, maybe you should end the interview before you dig yourself in any dee...
“I’ll lie to make myself feel better,” he said. “If I feel shitty, and someone says, ‘What are you working on,’ I’ll get really pissed off and go, ‘Yeah I’m doing a thriller with, you know, George Clooney.’ I make myself feel better by that—that’s an addiction to whatever that is, to make myself feel better, to take the pain away.”
OK, well, it's time to update Wikipedia or something, because none of this is in there. Anyway, Steve, it's been nice catching up, great seeing you, catch you maybe at the 30-year reunion and, hey, don't ever change old buddy!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Oil's Free Marketeers Rise Up
With the campaign against oil speculation in full swing, the speculators visit Congress to rally a defense
by Moira Herbst
The quaint portrait of a silver-haired farmer overlooks the hearing room of the House Agriculture Committee at the Capitol in Washington. It's a throwback to the days when the committee's business was most concerned with whether a drought might wipe out the season's corn crop, or whether an early frost could drive orange juice prices through the roof.
But these days the delegates of the National Association of Wheat Growers have company. Slick-dressed representatives of commodities exchanges prowl the halls of Congress, lobbying against a slew of legislation aimed squarely at the heart of their enterprises.
At the latest round of committee hearings July 10-11, tanned and fresh-faced Charles Vice, president and chief operating officer of IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), warmly greeted Greg Zerzan, head of global public policy for the International Swaps & Derivatives Assn. (ISDA). James Newsome, president and CEO of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX), arrived looking a bit weary as he greeted colleagues with a smile; he'd had to rearrange plans with his family to attend the hearing. Aides and assistants swirled around them, tapping into BlackBerrys and talking hurriedly on Bluetooth devices.
In this summer of torrid gas prices, a veritable witch hunt has been launched to determine a culprit for the oil price surge. Various congressional committees and subcommittees have convened more than a half-dozen hearings in recent weeks on the issue of oil markets. The Agriculture Committee, venue of the latest public skirmishing, has oversight of commodity futures trading. So far this year, lawmakers have proposed 19 bills that would increase scrutiny or regulation of commodities trading.
In response, notoriously tight-lipped hedge funds and derivatives traders and other investors are stepping forward to explain why they do not deserve to be the whipping boys for a public confused and angry over exorbitant fuel prices. Executives and lobbyists are urging politicians to stop the finger-pointing. They have been stating their well-reasoned cases that speculation is actually good for the market's integrity—not to mention for consumers and retirees whose pension funds are profiting from lucrative commodity investments.
The Honorable Skeptic from Minnesota
At the two-day hearing, trading executives explained that supply and demand are inflating the price of oil; the market is merely the messenger of an unpopular reality. "No one likes to pay $5 [per gallon] for gas, but at the end of the day it's not the market's fault," Zerzan told the committee. On July 11, the hearing's second day, the messenger delivered another milestone: Crude prices reached a new intraday trading high of $147.27 per barrel, before settling at $145.08.
The ISDA, which Zerzan leads, is the trade group for over-the-counter derivatives traders, and has been among the leaders in the lobbying effort against greater oversight of oil trading. Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange operates a commodities exchange, with physical operations in London and New York but an electronic platform that stretches across the world.
Representative Timothy Walz (D-Minn.) greeted the speculators' arguments with skepticism. At one point, he noted that U.S. airlines are among those industries under serious threat from soaring energy prices, and they are calling for more oversight of oil trades. He asked Zerzan, the swaps and derivatives chief, what explanation he could offer Walz's constituents and large companies based in Minnesota, such as Northwest Airlines (NWA).
"Northwest should have gotten a swaps agreement," said Zerzan, referring to the successful use of hedging in the oil markets (BusinessWeek.com, 5/7/08) by Southwest Airlines (LUV). Because of extensive hedging contracts on its fuel purchases, Southwest is the only major U.S. carrier that has remained profitable. The airline also has much of its expected fuel use covered for 2009 at prices far below the current market rate. Walz pressed him further, pointing to the growing chorus of voices targeting speculation: "So ExxonMobil (XOM), consumers, Northwest Airlines…everybody's wrong but the commodities traders?" asked Walz. "We haven't found a better method [than trading] to determine prices," Zerzan replied.
Battle Lines for the Media Campaign
The speculators' defense has expanded beyond the halls of Congress and into the media. IntercontinentalExchange has begun an aggressive advertising campaign in The Washington Post (WPO), Web site Politico, and other venues warning of "unintended consequences" if Congress acts hastily to boost regulation of oil trading. Next to a large picture of an onion, the headline of the ad reads: "If you make laws in a hurry, it's bound to end in tears."
The text of the campaign points to Congress' 1958 ban on futures trading in onions as farmers blamed futures markets for price fluctuations. What followed was a rocky road for onion prices, which increased 400% in late 2006 and 2007, crashed 96% this past March, and surged 300% in April, according to the ad. "From oil to onions, well-regulated futures markets create stability and predictability by allowing consumers to hedge price risks," the print ad reads. "So maybe when you peel the onion, the futures markets work a little better than some people think."
At the same time, a coalition of transportation interests led by a dozen large U.S. airlines has launched a campaign to enlist Americans' support in pressing Congress to curb oil futures trading. "As largely unregulated speculators pocket billions of dollars at your expense, the price of commodities has increased out of proportion to marketplace demands," says the group's Web site, www.stopoilspeculationnow.com. And so the debate rages.
Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.
With the campaign against oil speculation in full swing, the speculators visit Congress to rally a defense
by Moira Herbst
The quaint portrait of a silver-haired farmer overlooks the hearing room of the House Agriculture Committee at the Capitol in Washington. It's a throwback to the days when the committee's business was most concerned with whether a drought might wipe out the season's corn crop, or whether an early frost could drive orange juice prices through the roof.
But these days the delegates of the National Association of Wheat Growers have company. Slick-dressed representatives of commodities exchanges prowl the halls of Congress, lobbying against a slew of legislation aimed squarely at the heart of their enterprises.
At the latest round of committee hearings July 10-11, tanned and fresh-faced Charles Vice, president and chief operating officer of IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), warmly greeted Greg Zerzan, head of global public policy for the International Swaps & Derivatives Assn. (ISDA). James Newsome, president and CEO of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX), arrived looking a bit weary as he greeted colleagues with a smile; he'd had to rearrange plans with his family to attend the hearing. Aides and assistants swirled around them, tapping into BlackBerrys and talking hurriedly on Bluetooth devices.
In this summer of torrid gas prices, a veritable witch hunt has been launched to determine a culprit for the oil price surge. Various congressional committees and subcommittees have convened more than a half-dozen hearings in recent weeks on the issue of oil markets. The Agriculture Committee, venue of the latest public skirmishing, has oversight of commodity futures trading. So far this year, lawmakers have proposed 19 bills that would increase scrutiny or regulation of commodities trading.
In response, notoriously tight-lipped hedge funds and derivatives traders and other investors are stepping forward to explain why they do not deserve to be the whipping boys for a public confused and angry over exorbitant fuel prices. Executives and lobbyists are urging politicians to stop the finger-pointing. They have been stating their well-reasoned cases that speculation is actually good for the market's integrity—not to mention for consumers and retirees whose pension funds are profiting from lucrative commodity investments.
The Honorable Skeptic from Minnesota
At the two-day hearing, trading executives explained that supply and demand are inflating the price of oil; the market is merely the messenger of an unpopular reality. "No one likes to pay $5 [per gallon] for gas, but at the end of the day it's not the market's fault," Zerzan told the committee. On July 11, the hearing's second day, the messenger delivered another milestone: Crude prices reached a new intraday trading high of $147.27 per barrel, before settling at $145.08.
The ISDA, which Zerzan leads, is the trade group for over-the-counter derivatives traders, and has been among the leaders in the lobbying effort against greater oversight of oil trading. Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange operates a commodities exchange, with physical operations in London and New York but an electronic platform that stretches across the world.
Representative Timothy Walz (D-Minn.) greeted the speculators' arguments with skepticism. At one point, he noted that U.S. airlines are among those industries under serious threat from soaring energy prices, and they are calling for more oversight of oil trades. He asked Zerzan, the swaps and derivatives chief, what explanation he could offer Walz's constituents and large companies based in Minnesota, such as Northwest Airlines (NWA).
"Northwest should have gotten a swaps agreement," said Zerzan, referring to the successful use of hedging in the oil markets (BusinessWeek.com, 5/7/08) by Southwest Airlines (LUV). Because of extensive hedging contracts on its fuel purchases, Southwest is the only major U.S. carrier that has remained profitable. The airline also has much of its expected fuel use covered for 2009 at prices far below the current market rate. Walz pressed him further, pointing to the growing chorus of voices targeting speculation: "So ExxonMobil (XOM), consumers, Northwest Airlines…everybody's wrong but the commodities traders?" asked Walz. "We haven't found a better method [than trading] to determine prices," Zerzan replied.
Battle Lines for the Media Campaign
The speculators' defense has expanded beyond the halls of Congress and into the media. IntercontinentalExchange has begun an aggressive advertising campaign in The Washington Post (WPO), Web site Politico, and other venues warning of "unintended consequences" if Congress acts hastily to boost regulation of oil trading. Next to a large picture of an onion, the headline of the ad reads: "If you make laws in a hurry, it's bound to end in tears."
The text of the campaign points to Congress' 1958 ban on futures trading in onions as farmers blamed futures markets for price fluctuations. What followed was a rocky road for onion prices, which increased 400% in late 2006 and 2007, crashed 96% this past March, and surged 300% in April, according to the ad. "From oil to onions, well-regulated futures markets create stability and predictability by allowing consumers to hedge price risks," the print ad reads. "So maybe when you peel the onion, the futures markets work a little better than some people think."
At the same time, a coalition of transportation interests led by a dozen large U.S. airlines has launched a campaign to enlist Americans' support in pressing Congress to curb oil futures trading. "As largely unregulated speculators pocket billions of dollars at your expense, the price of commodities has increased out of proportion to marketplace demands," says the group's Web site, www.stopoilspeculationnow.com. And so the debate rages.
Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.
A Moderate Massacre
"The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to hand over the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road attack in which 36 people were murdered and 71 wounded," the Jerusalem Post reports:
Israel is planning to deliver Mughrabi's remains, together with those of scores of Palestinians and Lebanese, to Hizbullah in the context of the new prisoner exchange between the two sides.
The PA said in its request that it wanted to "honor" Mughrabi by holding a big funeral for her in Ramallah.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a "the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel." He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in "Palestine."
"We want to turn Dalal's funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration," the Fatah official said. "The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women's struggle."
The March 20, 1978, issue of Time described Dalal's "operation":
Their orders were to kill until they themselves were killed. And thus last week a Palestinian suicide mission left a grisly trail of carnage along Israel's main coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Slipping ashore from the Mediterranean on the afternoon of the Sabbath, the terrorists hijacked two buses filled with tourists and sightseers, took them on a wild ride down the road toward Tel Aviv, shooting along the way at everyone in sight, and finally destroyed one bus in an orgy of fire and death. Official statistics put the dead at 37 (all but a few of them civilians, among them at least 10 children) and 76 wounded--a toll that exceeded the 1972 Munich massacre (11 dead) and the slaughter at a Ma'alot school in 1974 (26). It was the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history.
The Sabbath massacre came on the eve of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin's scheduled departure for Washington, where he was to confer with President Carter this week on the derailed Middle East peace talks. . . .
The timing of the attack left no doubt about the terrorists' purpose: to sabotage any attempt by Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to move toward a peace that would ignore or bypass Palestinian interests.
The fullness of time does not seem to have diminished the bloodthirstiness of the Palestinian leadership--and remember, the people who want to honor Mughrabi for murdering children in the name of preventing Israel from making peace with its neighbors are the "moderates."
"The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to hand over the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road attack in which 36 people were murdered and 71 wounded," the Jerusalem Post reports:
Israel is planning to deliver Mughrabi's remains, together with those of scores of Palestinians and Lebanese, to Hizbullah in the context of the new prisoner exchange between the two sides.
The PA said in its request that it wanted to "honor" Mughrabi by holding a big funeral for her in Ramallah.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a "the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel." He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in "Palestine."
"We want to turn Dalal's funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration," the Fatah official said. "The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women's struggle."
The March 20, 1978, issue of Time described Dalal's "operation":
Their orders were to kill until they themselves were killed. And thus last week a Palestinian suicide mission left a grisly trail of carnage along Israel's main coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Slipping ashore from the Mediterranean on the afternoon of the Sabbath, the terrorists hijacked two buses filled with tourists and sightseers, took them on a wild ride down the road toward Tel Aviv, shooting along the way at everyone in sight, and finally destroyed one bus in an orgy of fire and death. Official statistics put the dead at 37 (all but a few of them civilians, among them at least 10 children) and 76 wounded--a toll that exceeded the 1972 Munich massacre (11 dead) and the slaughter at a Ma'alot school in 1974 (26). It was the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history.
The Sabbath massacre came on the eve of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin's scheduled departure for Washington, where he was to confer with President Carter this week on the derailed Middle East peace talks. . . .
The timing of the attack left no doubt about the terrorists' purpose: to sabotage any attempt by Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to move toward a peace that would ignore or bypass Palestinian interests.
The fullness of time does not seem to have diminished the bloodthirstiness of the Palestinian leadership--and remember, the people who want to honor Mughrabi for murdering children in the name of preventing Israel from making peace with its neighbors are the "moderates."
Thursday, July 10, 2008
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