Across the Great Divide

From the Department of Unintended Consequences: Fuel Economy and Taxes.

Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) has been on my reading list for awhile, but I left the book in Colorado. I see he also has a related blog, which recently posted this interesting graphic on the history of vehicle fuel efficiency in the U.S.

It shows that the 1973 oil embargo helped stimulate innovation in fuel economy, with improvement continuing at a compound rate of 2% a year until 1991. Since then, overall fleet efficiency has improved at a compound rate of only 0.1% a year.

So what happened in the late 1980s to flatten the improvement? The rise of the SUV, of course.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards inspired by the oil embargo contained a loophole wide enough to drive a three-ton truck through, by placing less stringent standards on vehicles used for business. Automakers made SUVs tall enough and heavy enough to qualify for the tax and fuel economy exemptions for trucks.

New York Times automotive writer Keith Bradsher argues in High and Mighty – SUVs: the World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way that the CAFE led to a forced choice for consumers — little econo-cars that met the new conservation guidelines or gas-guzzling SUVs.

[A]uto executives attribute the rise of SUVs to the federal government’s insistence on preserving strict gas-mileage standards for cars while not raising gasoline taxes. The combination of cheap gasoline and stringent curbs on gasoline consumption by cars forced automakers to transform the family vehicle of choice from a car into an SUV, they contend, with considerable accuracy.

According to the Transportation Safety Center,

Tax code changes in depreciation regulations around 1984 severely crimped deductions for purchasing business vehicles ($17,500 spaced evenly over five years), unless the purchased vehicle weighed more than 3 tons. The rationale was that farmers buying trucks needed a break on depreciation. A luxury tax enacted in 1990 for vehicles costing more than $30,000 also exempted vehicles over 3 tons, another nod to farmers and other business buyers. Few SUVs were that big or costly when these incentives began in 1990, but they would be by the end of the decade, and people would want to buy them.

Meanwhile, between 1975 and 1996, employment on farms — the supposed beneficiaries of the legislation — fell by nearly 27%.

Cheney: Still Trying to Keep a Straight Face.

On the off chance some readers rely on me for national political news.... I used to think Dick Cheney had suffered a minor stroke, but now I think the grimace on his sinister side must be the result of trying to keep a straight face as he lied about Iraq, torture and other manipulations yet to be disclosed.

Pres. Obama's general stance of moving on from the mistakes of the Bush administration made sense to me. That's how I'd run an organization. But with Cheney's Torture Tour attempts to obscure his record and impeach the president's judgment, Cheney is asking for it. I hope the current administration will be just a bit less circumspect about the dirt it uncovers from the last one.

Frank Rich summarizes why. (h/t Norwegianity)

The traditional news media is heading way beyond lapdog status into fully submissive, peeing on the floor mode. It's lapping up the red herring story that Nancy Pelosi could've stopped torture and didn't, while the man who always had other priorities comes out of his bunker to finally tell the "truth."

Cheney gets his 20 minutes over and over, and the media has barely acknowledged how this man and his cohorts have been manipulating them. For example, how the Bush Pentagon populated TV news with "expert military analysts" who just happened to work for companies with fat Pentagon contracts. 

At least there's a chance that the viewers of Fox News might get some actual critical reporting by reading their men's magazines.

Seriously. GQ is breaking the story of how Donald Rumsfeld cynically slapped Bible quotes on classified intelligence briefings for Pres. Bush. Playboy.com walks you through a waterboarding (see video).

I checked Maxim to see if it had a scoop, too. The current issue has a story titled "The scariest man in America." I couldn't find it online, but I have an idea who it might be about.

Number of the Day: Oil and Gas Leases.

Last December, the Bureau of Land Management tried to sell some scenic Utah public lands for oil and gas drilling, but the high bidder had no intention of paying, throwing the whole process into chaos. Some of the lands were in close proximity to Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon.

In February, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled the sale, saying the auction was the result of "midnight actions" by the Bush administration.

This week, a new auction resulted in the sale of drilling rights for 55 parcels covering about 76,000 acres — about half of the land offered in  the new sale.

When you hear about oil companies buying up oil and gas leases and wonder why they don't rush to actually develop them, consider this: The average price for the latest sale was $8.52 per acre.

Free Firewater.

What's the big deal? How often do you light a cigarette while you're brushing your teeth? On the other hand, no one in this Colorado family yells "light a match!" through the bathroom door.

Their tap water is flammable.

Natural gas from nearby wells is seeping into their water. At least one other family drawing well water from the same aquifer has discovered their water ignites, too [video with this link].

Rural families report finding benzene or other contaminants in their water as a result of oil and gas development. One potential cause is a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects water and other substances into petroleum-bearing formations to increase output. It's difficult to trace water pollution back to specific sources, such as waste pits, fracking and spills because the industry doesn't reveal what chemical ingredients are used in specific formulations of drilling fluids.

Obviously, this doesn't happen everywhere, everyday, but if it happens to you, "drill, baby, drill" isn't such a cute slogan.

Exxon Valdez and Columbine Anniversaries Invite Reassessments.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Muckraker Greg Palast writes about the verdict that went away and the oil that didn't.

Doubtless, for the 20th Anniversary of the Great Spill, the media will schlep out that old story that the tanker ran aground because its captain was drunk at the wheel. Bullshit.

Yes, the captain was "three sheets to the wind" -- but sleeping it off below-decks. The ship was in the hands of the third mate who was driving blind. That is, the Exxon Valdez' Raycas radar system was turned off; turned off because it was busted and had been busted since its maiden voyage. Exxon didn't want to spend the cash to fix it. So the man at the helm, electronically blindfolded, drove it up onto the reef.

So why the story of the drunken skipper? Because it lets Exxon off the hook: Calling it a case of "drunk driving" turns the disaster into a case of human error, not corporate penny-pinching greed.

Next month is the 10th anniversary of Columbine High School massacre, with three new books coming out to reassess roots of the tragedy. One of the authors, Jeff Kass, a longtime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, sees place playing a role in the killers' disaffection and acting out:

"I think Columbine and other school shootings are an outgrowth of the South and West of the United States, and suburbs and small towns," Kass said. "In suburbs and small towns, if you're an outcast in high school, you feel like a loser through-and-through because there are no alternative outlets to find your self-esteem. . . . And in the South and the West, there is a mentality that if you feel your honour has been injured, you take it upon yourself to retaliate."

Thursday Report from the Desert.

Former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer comes out from under his shroud to ask:

Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

*****

When water rights make the Wall Street Journal, you know it's not about the farmers. And when statements like this make the article, you know the reporter doesn't get out west much.

Even if the oil companies use every last drop of their entitlements -- a scenario widely considered improbable -- there's no risk of the Colorado River drying up.

Oil shale development isn't going to disrupt some mating caribou, folks.

“Any large transfer of water to oil shale would shift the West Slope landscape from an agricultural landscape to an industrial one.”

*****

When state legislators make idiotic claims about how health and environmental rules are driving the oil companies out of the state, it's good to have this guy on the commission. I was getting ready to spank them myself until I read this excellent rebuttal.

*****
I did my first shift in the Catholic Outreach Center's free store yesterday. Clients get to come in once a week and shop for clothes, toys, housewares, books, etc. There's a computerized system for record how many of which items people take.

Is there any limit on how many items they can have?, I asked. Twenty, I was told.

It used to be 50, because there are some pretty large extended families that shop here, but then it was discovered some were having yard sales...

Next week, I start at the Day Center, when people living on the street can come in for showers and to do laundry.

*****
Then there's the bike.

Notes on the New Economy: Yard Sales.

A year ago, the Western Colorado economy was booming well ahead of the nation's. You remember those drill, baby, drill times, don't you?

New oil and gas leases were going to be opened up by the Bush administration to drive down the price of gasoline, and rigs and crews were busy in existing fields. Then people stopped driving less, and it turned out speculation, not scarcity, was driving up the price of crude oil.

Storage yards that were empty a year ago are starting to fill up with idled drilling equipment, like these flex rigs. Several energy companies are temporarily pulling out of Colorado. Not because of those new damn wildlife, environmental and health rules as their lobbyists had once threatened, but because oil and gas prices are too low.

Another sign was in a field where two years ago, I shot the planned subdivision sign, and last spring, visited the auction selling off the farm's goods.

Today when I rode past, the signs were down and cows were in the field. (No new photo without snow and sign, since today's angle was into the sun, but it was sunny and 48°.)

Speculate, Baby, Speculate!

60 Minutes asked "Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings?"

The short answer: Yes.

Supply went up and demand went down during the period crude oil and pump prices spiked last year. As one subject in the piece says, the only way to explain what drove up prices is "investor demand" — abetted by traders who learned their tricks at Enron.

Planning and its Perils.

When I'd give sessions on strategic planning, I used to tell people the reason you do it is so you've already thought through all the issues when nothing goes as planned.

Jim has another take.

Just a few months ago, gas was $4, and the only person who believed $2 gas would ever again be a reality was noted camera-loving screwball Rep. Michele Bachmann (R - MN), though Bachmann's predictions invoked a mechanism different than what has actually happened. Interestingly, our oil consumption is falling off drastically even as we see multi-year lows in the price of consuming oil. Who would have guessed this outcome earlier this year? Who would have based actual plans on such a guess?

*****
On the family planning front, Margaret Talbot asks why so many evangelical teens become pregnant. [via Open Education]

[T]he reactions to [Bristol Palin's pregnancy] have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

A sociologist who has studied teen sex "argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical."

The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.) Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them.

I haven't read the study or the entire New Yorker article that quotes it, but I wonder why this should be surprising, since to my mind, extreme religion (take your pick) seems largely organized on behalf of men who couldn't get laid on their own merits.

Invest in a Winner!

I don't usually impart investment advice here, but given the current state of the market, it would be criminal for me not to pass on this opportunity to "expect 650% gains in your portfolio now!"

With all the scorn and even hatred directed at President-elect Obama, isn't it refreshing to see some of the drill now boys are trying to exploit his election?