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An Energy Plan--Just a Start

            The real presidential campaign has begun, reluctantly. This is not to suggest idiotic campaign claims are no longer going be perpetrated by both sides, but the fact we now have a discussion about a key policy issue—energy—is encouraging.
          Having said that, both candidates are pandering, one to the oil industry, the other to a fearful public.
          Republican John McCain keeps insisting on the ludicrous propo- sition of opening more public land to oil drilling now. House Republicans staged a protest in front of nobody but a handful of reporters and TV cameras to dramatize a demand that Congress end its just-begun vaca- tion and return to pass the proposal to lift the drilling moratorium. We have already spoken of the ridiculousness of that suggestion on this site: One Last Scam for the Sleazy GDB Era.
          Now we have Barack Obama’s more thorough energy policy, designed mostly by one of President Clinton’s energy secretaries, Frederico Pena. (These surrogates are well-schooled to speak of policy as “Senator X believes,” or “Senator X says” when it is actually the adviser who is forming the policy).
          The Obama plan offers only one positive response to dealing with the current crisis of oil prices—drawing from the Strategic Petroleum Re- serve, a reserve held by the federal government for emergencies. McCain and others claim it is only for military uses, but those statements are not accurate. The origin was a fear of emergency military needs during the OPEC embargo of 1973, but Congress intended it as an emergency supply without restrictions, as illustrated by subsequent drawdowns for domestic purposes.
          Another suggestion of the Obama energy policy is worth imple- menting, as was done after the embargo—a windfall profits tax. It is obscene the U.S. oil companies realized such record profits April-July this year as the American (and world’s) economy went into the tank.
          The oil industry argues the problem is the supply and cost of foreign oil, that they are not to blame. Check out how closely involved U.S. oil companies are with foreign oil production, where they obtain most of their oil and how much they bother to oppose the decisions and policies of oil-producing nations. Go ahead and tax windfall profits.
          Otherwise, the Obama energy policy is more of the same, a repeat of suggestions made after the 1970s crisis, implemented in part, but mostly junked in the 1980s, leading to the current repeat of history. His policy says nothing about the auto fuel-efficiency standards that have so many loopholes they allowed the proliferation of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, which many buyers are now trying to unload. There is a new push for nuclear energy, but history again should be heeded—the same problems that led to its rejection still remain, prob- lems with safety and spent-fuel and water disposal.
          When biotechnology emerged as the new popular science, it became apparent we did not have to rely on fossil fuels any more and could burn cleaner fuel in our cars and factories. Congress had a great idea, but as usual, in a fit of excessive exuberance, it overreacted and passed incentives for producing ethanol as a fuel alternative (that’s why 10 percent of your gas today is ethanol).
          But we now know that proposal was overreaching and the incen- tives should have stressed alternatives other than those that affect the food supply, such as corn, contributing to the stagflation the nation finds itself in.
          What is needed, from Obama as well as McCain, is a deeper- thinking and longer-term energy plan.
          We need to begin thinking outside the box on energy. Whatever solution is proposed should exclude the oil industry, a firewall if you will, between the industry that has acted to impede oil efficiency as far back as the attempt by Preston Tucker to market a more fuel-efficient car (most of Tucker's innovations were adopted many years later) and other efforts to supplant the internal-combustion engine. Do not look to that in- dustry for a solution, so bar it from any attempts to achieve one.

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A Solution to Our Fuel Crisis
Build Refinery to Compete?
Nationalize Oil Industry?

          The economic mess in the United States, a mess reverberating throughout the world, should bring a renewed focus on the basic element of the mess--fuel prices on the verge of having quadrupled since 2000.
          The federal government may not yet have the figures to declare a recession or to measure a huge rise in inflation, but the public from the middle-class on down know both already are here. The housing crisis was only fuel to a fire made inevitable by a steady and unconscionable increase in fuel prices.
          It used to be the oil industry made convoluted, confusing excuses for price increases, throwing around various figures and arcane reasons few people could ever unravel. Notice you do not hear any of that today. They say almost nothing, and when they do say anything, they simply shift the blame to speculators in the stock market.
          This is the second time around for a modern-day U.S. oil crisis. Between the other one and now, the federal government failed its citi- zens. We are suggesting a correction of that failure and a new way of thinking this time around. It may not work, it may not be feasible, but it is worth a look. Just the fact it is an option on the table could have an impact on the current mess.
          The U.S. government should build its own oil refinery, preferably away from the current Gulf Coast area where most domestic oil work is concentrated.
          This mess is not new.
          Back in the early 1970s we had the previous fuel crisis. Before the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries decided to impose a year-long embargo on exports of oil to the United States, causing a shortage of gasoline and a concomittant jump in prices, a gallon of gas had cost not much more than a quarter in the United States for decades, a period when the word "inflation" was never uttered.
          The crisis began when OPEC, largely for political reasons, em- bargoed U.S.-bound oil. Cars were lined up at service stations (they ac- tually provided service up to that time), often for several blocks, to get access to fuel pumps that could run out of gas at any moment. The cars were gas guzzlers by today's standards, about equal in mileage to most of today's trucks and SUVs.
          Supply and demand being what it is, the price of gas quadrupled to well over $1 a gallon (an increase that would equal more than $15 a gallon at current prices), and inflation followed close in its wake, leading to interest rates that had been steady for decades at 2 percent or 3 per- cent, to jump to 20% and more later in the 70s.
          Over the ensuing years, the government responded with laws to encourage alternative energy explorations, coupled with all sorts of sub- sidies for the oil industry itself to encourage domestic drilling, including greater freedom to explore for oil in formerly off-limit areas. The govern- ment also made inflation a major area of concern and enacted stronger fuel-efficiency laws. The inflation rate fell back to more sensible levels, although never to its pre-OPEC level except in odd instances.
          After the change of administrations (Carter to Reagan), the incen- tives to the oil industry remained, the incentives to explore alternative fuels were dropped. The number of refineries on line had crept up to more than 300 until 1980, when the administration changed. Suddenly, the number of refineries on line began a long plunge to our 149 today.

          Not so curiously, the price of gas never fell, almost defying the laws of supply and demand. In fact, prices continued on a steady rise, notwithstanding the waverings of politics, supply and demand and other factors. All the increases were accompanied by those aforementioned convoluted excuses.
          Part of the government response during the oil crisis included creating, in 1975, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves for the sake of future security, comprised of a storage of oil now totalling about 727 mil- lion barrels of crude and all located in four salt domes below ground, in a single part of the United States, on the coast from Texas into Louisiana. Even when released, to be offered to the oil industry on the commercial market at a set price, it still must be refined by the oil industry.
          This area includes or is close to the greatest concentration of U.S. oil refineries where basic crude oil has to be processed to make it usable, refineries jammed into a highly vulnerable area of the country. There are now 149 refineries in the United States, more than a third of them in hurricane-vulnerable Texas and Louisiana, producing fewer than 18 millions of barrels of usable oil a day. That is the same level of oil re- fining that existed before the last one new one was completed in 1976, at a time when we had more than 300 refineries.
          Although shutting down those refineries has not changed produc- tion levels, overall refinery production level has not been increased in nearly three decades as our usage, and even needs, have skyrocketed. Of course, with half the number of refineries, more than a third in two hurricane states, we are twice as exposed to weather and transport dis- ruptions.
          The U.S. petroleum industry is one of the top profit-making indus- tries in the United States. Individual companies claim they are just pass- ing along their added costs, but never mention they also are including the U.S. norm of about a 100 percent markup. Before the 1970s crisis, the normal business markup was about 40 percent.
          If the U.S. government had its own refinery, it could refine its own strategic reserves, already-refined, with a built-in capability of diverting some of that refined oil immediately to the public market in competition with the private oil industry whenever such a move would serve the public iinterest.
          Such a move bypassing much of the oil industry with which it would then be in partial competition, also would give the government greater power to support alternative fuels and play that power off against the price of oil to make the industry somewhat honest. The government already has the ability to do some of that by releasing supplies from its oil reserve. A refinery would greatly increase that impact, by being able to tweak the price to a level that would discourage increased use, but low enough to help balance inflation and other economic concerns.
          The crude oil it refines could come from two sources, foreign and domestic. With a world crying for foreign oil--check out China and Japan --the U.S. government as a buyer would give it added political leverage, something it badly needs after its recent foreign policy gaffes.
           Domestically, it could force the oil companies to donate crude in lieu of greater taxes, including windfall profits taxes, something that al- ready should have been restored. The cost of all this could be paid for, in part, by ending the subsidies to big oil, in a huge part by ending the massive cost of the fool's errand in Iraq.
          There would be an ancillary benefit. Remember the oil industry ruse of switching refineries over twice a year between heating oil and gasoline? A government-run refinery could step in an ease the impact of that semi-annual chicanery.
          Or, the federal government could simply nationalize the oil indus- try and operate it in the public's interest on grounds no industry should be allowed to hold the nation in a stranglehold.
          Either solution is fraught with all sorts of problems, chief among them lack of a political will. But the federal government is filled with gen- iuses--yes, among those much-maligned civil servants--who could work on the issue (and probably already have) if asked.

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The Big Energy Crisis Lie

One Last Scam for the Sleazy GDB Era

          One of the most sordid 14-year periods in U.S. history is about to come to an end, but not without one last scam about to be perpetrated on the American people.
          The Gingrich-Delay-Bush era that began in 1995 is not ending before its members try to line the pockets of their friends in the oil industry, and probably eventually themselves, describing their cause as independence from foreign oil and lower gas and heating oil prices. This is as big a lie as those told to get us into the Iraq fiasco.
          Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay resigned from Congress under scandal clouds, but George W. Bush remained untouched because Democrats would not undertake impeachment proceedings. And now Gingrich is trying to get his finger back in the political pie once again.
          The scandal now swirling around the arrogant and hateful Sen. Ted Stevens is not just a coincidence. As with most other sordid deeds of the GDB era, this one is connected to the oil industry and personal greed.
          The earlier GOP lobbying scandal centered around some of the most cynical people ever to operate in the nation’s capital--Jack Abram- off, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed--was tied directly to the GDB crowd and their Republican friends state and federal politics. They sweet-talked clients and then took their money to fund special interests, provide bribes and basically buying elections unrelated to their clients’ interests.
          Not content with leaving town with their tails between their legs, the GDB crowd, this time aided by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, is trying to convince the American people they can ease the energy crisis by opening more federal land to drilling by the U.S. oil companies.
          Democratic opponents of the proposal note it would take 10 years for any oil from newly opened sites to reach the consumer. That argu- ment is irrelevant. Opponents should be noting that in reality, it would more likely be their children who would see the first benefits, assuming there would still be benefits to anyone other than the oil industry in more oil production.
          The American oil industry is the father figure to those who partici- pated in the Enron scandal. What those in Enron did, the oil industry has been doing for years and apparently plans to continue doing—manipu- lating supply and demand and bamboozling the public.
          The industry’s plea for lifting a moratorium on leasing federal land for oil and coal mining so more resources are available to the industry has nothing to do with the present. It is part of a long-term strategy to ensure more oil resources will be available to the industry in the future, the future as in decades from now.
          For some reason, the truth is not being absorbed by the American people. Even some Senate Democrats appear not to be absorbing the truth, for they have offered a compromise that would open some addi- tional land. And Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has naively endorsed that compromise.
          That truth is the oil industry already has access to enough oil on federal land to double its current production of about 4.8 million barrels of oil a day. But the industry is not taking advantage of that access in the form of leases.
          During the past four years alone, the government has issued 28,776 permits for companies to drill on public land, but only 18,954 were used. That leaves unused about 10,000 permits, a third of those available, while the oil industry pleads that it needs more and more public land opened while gasoline prices remain at price-gouging levels and home heating oil is about to skyrocket to fatality-causing levels.
          It is no coincidence the major domestic oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron reported record net income during the April- June period. And there is no coincidence within a coincidence that those same companies would have seen greater profits if their refining and production sectors had not lagged. They lagged because the industry did not choose to use the refining and production resources it already has to put more gas on the market.
          Hmmm. Could the weak refining and production parts of their businesses and the inactive leases they hold for drilling on public land have anything to do with keeping the supply tight and prices in the $4 per gallon neighborhood?
          Foreign oil producers see the same scam and that is why they have declined to increase their own production. That’s right; foreign oil companies know what is going on while the American public remains ignorant.
          Much of the GDB crowd will be out the government after this year. Keep an eye on where they end up in the private sector.

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Help the U.S. Auto Industry:

Vote Against It

          Ask anyone close to the American auto industry who has been its biggest friend in Congress and you will hear a unanimous: Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat.
          Ask us who in Congress has caused the most harm to the U.S. auto industry and we will say: Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat. Why? Because he gave them what they asked for.
         Yes, the auto industry’s biggest enemy is straight out of the late Walt Kelly’s Pogo: “we have met the enemy and he is us.”     
          The U.S. auto industry is reeling and the stock market is expressing shock over the latest sales reports from Detroit. Together, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler suffered an 18.3 decline in sales in June, just the latest month of troubles this year, but also representing the steepest decline since 1993.
          Once again, history has been ignored, as George Santayana warned: “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And repeat it we have, in spades.
          Go back to the 1970s and listen to auto industry representatives appearing before the House Commerce Committee, now headed by Dingell, an otherwise liberal Democrat, later to become a millionaire by marrying a woman who is now a General Motors executive. For several years now, he also has been the longest-serving member of Congress.
          In 1972, before the supply of gasoline in the United States became a problem, U.S. automakers fought against auto-safety legislation that centered on bumpers that would reduce the amount of damage at certain speeds. The automakers wailed Americans were in love with their chrome, but crash-inefficient bumpers and would not accept the rubber-based bumpers that would allow the mph low-speed-impact to increase from 2.5 to 5.
          Dingell, already fourth-ranking member on the “powerful” Commerce Committee, and the automakers lost that battle and one result was the infamous (for other reasons) Ford Pinto switched from a bumper that sustained $500 damage in 1972 to one that sustained only $29 damage two years later. Heavy chrome bumpers disappeared and gas mileage increased as an unintended result, but not until after German cars made their first sales inroads with their rubber-based bumpers.
          Even before the Oct. 17, 1973 Organization of Oil Exporting Countries embargo on oil to countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, the United States was undergoing a crisis in its oil supply, fueled by an ever-expanding level of consumption. Prices were rising as demand outpaced the pace of supply, leading to those now-fabled blocks-long lines of cars waiting to fuel up at service stations, those places that used to pump the gas for you, wipe your windshield and check your oil.
          The government attempted price controls and allocation systems without success and practically gave up when OPEC began its embargo.
          All this time, there were proposals in Congress to increase the mileage cars could get on a gallon of gas. U.S. automakers appeared before Dingell and the Commerce Committee to plead against legislative efforts that led eventually to what became the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards governing car mileage.
          It began as an ambitious effort to require better gas mileage to reduce U.S. gas consumption, already the major reason behind the demand for imported oil. The automakers appeared before the panel to argue against various provisions, such as requiring them to reduce other vehicle weight not already reduced by those soon-to-be defunct chrome bumpers.
          In environment hearings, they also argued against catalytic converters, claiming that requiring them would add nearly 10 percent to the cost of a car and Americans would not stand for that. Congress required them nonetheless and the added cost not only turned out to be minimal, there was almost no buyer resistance.
          U.S. auto industry executives and lobbyists argued against just about every requirement that would later save their industry, and Dingell served was an obedient key ally. These efforts included establishing a national speed limit. The auto industry, of course, fought against it. The commerce committees heard testimony that the optimum efficient speed of a car was 50 miles an hour (Congress ended up setting a 55 mph limit to satisfy pleas of the trucking industry) and ended up establishing the 55 mph limit that has been largely diluted and 75 mph has become widespread once again.
          But it was the auto industry’s fight against the CAFÉ standards and Dingell’s help on their behalf that doomed U.S. automakers.
          Even as foreign automakers were making cars much more fuel-efficient than American-made cars, the U.S. auto industry fought the standards that would require them to average a certain amount of miles per gallon across their entire fleet. The standards would still allow gas-guzzlers, but they would have to be offset by vehicles that achieved an equal fuel efficiency on the other side of the center line.
          "We can’t do it, it would ruin us, we’d have to lay off workers," U.S. automakers wailed as representatives of the United Auto Workers weeped at their sides. Thus the CAFÉ standards were set so high and with so many vehicle-type exceptions, they became mostly meaningless and Americans guzzled away.
          Within a few years, automakers and their employees were banning foreign cars from their parking lots and foreign cars, particularly those made in Japan, were being vandalized but auto workers in the Detroit area. Why? Japanese cars became popular during the 1970s, a decade capped by another oil crisis in 1979, because they routinely provided a better mpg than American-made cars.
          Today Japanese-owned automakers sell more cars than the American giants (now numbering only two as Chrysler ownership bounces from country to country).
          Despite this history, what did the U.S. automakers do in the 1980s and 1990s? They not only supplied, they encouraged with billions of dollars of advertising, the new fad of gas-guzzling bigger vehicles supposedly demanded by Americans with memories even shorter than those of the auto executives.
          Sure, foreign automakers also began producing gas-guzzlers to compete with the growing fad, but they always maintained massive production lines to continue to produce their old fuel-efficient autos. More importantly, they led the innovations for more fuel-efficient cars, such as hybrids and autos using alternative fuel sources. Detroit, as always, lagged way, way behind.
          Now, the bloom is off the gas-guzzler rose and Detroit is stuck with gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs while foreign competitors find themselves unable to keep up with the American demand for economical substitutes.
          The U.S. auto industry was hoist by its own petard. Ten years from now, if it still exists, will the industry have learned its lesson this time? For clues, watch the next appearances by auto executives before concerned congressional committees.

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 Good News is Bad News

           Romania, Parade magazine, and network news show-enders all have something in common beyond an attempt to deliver an item on conservative wish-lists: they suggest just the opposite of what they intend.
          A Reuters item from Romania caught our eye about the same time as one of Parade magazine’s worthless pablum pieces, “How to be a Better Voter,” and network news shows were ending with their usual feel-good pieces.
          Each case is an attempt to satisfy a wish by conservatives who, beyond not wanting change, wish to be protected from anything that is not all they would wish it to be, something like sex education.
          In each of these cases, the attempt is made to emphasize the good news instead of the bad news that permeates our lives.
          There is an innate problem with all of these efforts, however. By definition, news is that which is novel, unusual, somewhat rare, not a daily occurrence.
          A hundred years ago, a car crash in which no one was hurt was news. Today, such incidents are so common they no longer qualify as news. A single-fatality is no longer news beyond the immediate vicinity of the incident. Similarly, a death resulting from use of a handgun is not news in a big city and may become so commonplace due to the Supreme Court ruling that such incidents are no longer news anywhere. And on and on.
          Romania’s Senate passed a law that, if upheld, would order broadcasters to balance good news with bad in their newscasts in the belief happier news would make Romania look better.
          Given the definition of news, Romania’s message to the world actually will be, this is such a god-awful, gloomy place where nothing ever good happens, that good events have become so rare they now qualify as news.
          Similarly, more than 10 percent of the 20 minutes on nightly network newscasts is wasted on a story intended to leave viewers feeling good, presumably so they will be encouraged to tune in again the next day. The real message is that whatever the pablum story they are airing is about, it is so rare now in America that it has become news. That is depressing.
          Similarly, that Parade magazine stuffed into Sunday newspapers, runs only good news, or at least feel-good news stories. We were attracted to the piece on voting, over the name of George Stephanopoulos, who can be somewhat forgiven because he is not a trained journalist.
          Because it was in Parade, the article could not contain anything negative, so it ended up being a 7th grade civics lesson instead of dispensing good advice.
          What it didn’t suggest is that potential voters stop listening to tabloid-cable shows and start paying attention to legitimate sources beyond the nightly newscasts that provide little more than headlines delivered by head-bobbing anchors and triple-bylined reporters more intent on making their story dramatic than providing any worthwhile information.
          The Parade piece advised potential voters to pay attention to what candidates say and do, but it does not advise them to be discerning about that is said and done by and about them. For example, if Gen. Wesley Clark says John McCain’s war record is not a qualification to be president, the response should be “so what?” and flip the channel until you find a real news item.
          The item also repeats the old saw, “your vote counts.” Yes it does, but citizens who cast their vote based on no or bad information or for some other worthless reason, they should stay home and do their country a favor. A bad voter is not better than no voter at all, no matter what the civics books and Parade say.
          And good news is bad news.

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When Lawyer Ethics Lead
To An Unethical Outcome

          The CBS program "60 Minutes" recently aired an almost unbeliev- able admission by a pair of lawyers who acknowledged they had allowed an innocent man to rot in prison for 26 years because of supposed law- yer ethics.
          Briefly, a man was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. A defendant in an unrelated case told his two lawyers he had done that crime and expressed pleasure another man was serving time for a crime he committed. The lawyers said they were prevented by law- yer-client confidentiality rules and legal ethics from revealing their client's guilt even though an innocent man was sent to prison. One of the two lawyers got his defendant's permission to reveal the confession to the other murder after their defendant's death, which came 26 years after the first innocent man was sent away. The lawyers went public on "60 Minutes."
         Strangely, they said they watched the verdict in the sentencing trial of the innocent man and were prepared to step in and tell what they knew if a sentence of death were returned. What is the difference? If their rules prevented them from keeping him out of jail for 26 years, they also prevent them stepping in when death is meted out. They cannot have it both ways.
          The American Bar Association claims as its credo, "Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice." In this case of the two lawyers who sat on their hands until their decades-ago defendant died, allowing them to con- fess, the ABA should be ashamed if the lawyers are considered to have followed the bar's rules and acted legally.
          The Illinois judicial system can throw out the innocent man's con- viction, but advocates for his release are going to have a problem proving the now-dead defendant actually committed the crime and the innocent man was, indeed, innocent.
          Yes, the legal system has a conundrum in this case. But one does not need to have a law degree, and we do not, to know that a sim- ple solution to that conflict would be to allow a lawyer to reveal to a judge his defendant's confession to the other crime. That confession could not be used against the defendant in his own trial, but could be considered (with the guilty person's name not revealed) in reviewing the other case. To avoid someone confessing in that manner so he can rid himself of other possible criminal acts, the judge or jury in the case could be told the defendant has confessed to another crime without de- scribing it and could take that into consideration in deciding the guilt in the case before them. But the confessor could not be tried for the crime pinned on the innocent man.
          Yes, there remains somewhat of a chill in giving up the defend- ant's confession. In addition to it being used as a ruse, the solution is somewhat in conflict with maintaining the purity of a defendant's right to believe in the safety of lawyer-client privilege. And that solution should be limited only to incidents where an innocent man is being tried or has been convicted.
          That is a solution offered by a layman. Undoubtedly, the legal system could find other ways to prevent a repeat of this tragedy and guarantee justice is done.

          Consider this relevant anecdote from the author:     

          The U.S. Congress and the legislatures of most states are domi- nated by lawyers who are elected members.
          The tax code is complex because accountants want it that way and law is more complicated than it needs to be because lawyers want it that way. In both cases, the more complex something is, the more the common person needs professional help, for which he or she must pay. But lawyers have a chance in this case to travel the high road. Let us see if anything happens.

Baseball Owners Again    Seek To Do Nothing   

          Here we go again.
          The report is out, confirming what anyone who paid attention to the issue suspected all along. Some of the biggest stars in major league baseball for the past decade, cheated by taking performance-enhancing drugs.
          What is the major league (i.e., club owners) response? There probably isn't much they can do about it because most of the steroid behavior does not rise to a legal violation. Any illegalities were con- cerned with side issues related to the behavior.
          The owners, along everyone inside baseball who knew about these violations early on, are once again trying to deflect the issue and continue doing nothing. Their response should not stop with being satis- fied the players have been exposed and most already are retired or gone or about to be gone from their clubs.

          For a start, ban all of them from the league. More importantly, cleanse the rec- ord books. Every player who has been exposed, and anyone else ex- posed later, should be stricken from the record books and any team record achieved while one of them was playing also should be stricken.
          Just as purist baseball fans still believe Babe Ruth is the home run champion, the cheaters should not be  allowed in the record books without an sterisk. Roger Maris deserved to stay on        The Mitchell Report           the books as long as there was an as- terisk by his home-run champion appellation because he passed Ruth after the 154th game, which was the season's length in Ruth's day and just before Maris played.
          Today's guys cheated. They may not have broken any law that was in place at the time, but they cheated by trying to get an artificial edge on their fellow players, and they cheated the current fans and those to come who like to follow the records, those who pay big bucks for mementoes of their "heroes," and those still willing to shell out even bigger bucks so they can watch a bunch of multi-millionaire mostly 20- somethings with their hot-dog prancing and in-your-face attitude.
          It is bad enough everyone is getting bulked up so much to please the bubba crowd, the game is turning into another sport for freaks, a la pro football and basketball. Baseball always has been an everyman's sport, meaning that even small guys can compete at the highest levels because it is a game of skill, smarts, flexibility and intriguing plot.
          Using artificial means instead of pure work, to get an edge over your opponents is not what sports is supposed to be about. It is the equivalent of corking bats, an action all players would call cheating.

          Letting the cheaters get by with a slap on the wrist will result only in the next batch of players trying to get an unfair edge by using the next magic potion that comes along.
          Major league owners, the sports media and indivi- dual fans need to set the stage for future generations to   Lenny Dykstra    say, "Barry who?" "Roger Who?"

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PBS, Not Only Valuable, But Necessary

Give PBS Support It Deserves Instead of Trashing It

          Sometimes the "Gray Old Lady" can get downright ridiculous. Take a recent item, "Is PBS Still Necessary?"
          As journalists ourselves, and with more experience than the New York Times writer, we are cognizant of the need to take a somewhat different tack on a story or to attack a long-held "given." Fine, but do not throw away fact, history and reason in doing so.
          The Times writer is in love with the Public Broadcasting System's audio sister, National Public Radio, as he should be. He is supposed to be a television writer, but he may be spending too much time watching "not reality" shows instead of PBS channels.
          The writer defends his theory by noting how much audience each entity has and apparently sees the difference as justifying federal cuts for PBS. As with many of today's government leaders, he either has never learned or completely forgot what PBS and NPR are supposed to be about. As television writer, he should be more concerned than any- one else about preserving alternatives in an ever-more monopolistic med- ia era.
          We begin with a primer.
          PBS and NPR were, indeed, created as alternatives to commer- cial broadcasting, but primarily, with regular federal financial support, as educational outlets to supply material to listeners and viewers the com- mercial stations were not offering. That proved to be a wise decision.
          Remember, these two public broadcasting entities were intended to be alternatives; they were not intended to compete with commercial broadcasters for viewers or listeners and not to copy what commercial stations were offering.

          Over the decades since those creations, federal laws and Federal Communications Commis- sion regulations have evolved to re- quire commercial broadcasters, in receiving exclusive rights to a piece of the public airwaves spectrum, to provide some sort of public service. Over the years that took on various hues such as providing regular newscasts, programming aimed at educating children and on an on. Many of the rules have been done away with under various Republican administrations, and the current Bush administration FCC ranks among the worst.
          As all of those changes were taking place, public broadcasting has largely remained true to its original intent, offering alternative pro- gramming. At times it has strayed a bit. It over-promotes its program- ming, it gives too much air time to promotional (read that advertising commercials) spots in exchange for large contributions and sometimes it engages in the same stardom-oriented staging of the commercial networks.

          But PBS has had little al- ternative but to open its air time to commercial interests. Driven large- ly by Republicans, federal funding has been slashed over the years,   causing the network to sell those spots and conduct those godawful fund-raising campaigns offering the type of self-help programming that is beneath its intelligence level and the levels of its regular and loyal viewers. The more federal funding is cut, the more PBS will have to pursue these antitheti- cal options.
          The Times writer seeks to focus on entertainment shows PBS has produced in the past that have been very popular with audiences. Fine. Most of the stuff was the type of programming that could not be seen then and could not be seen now on commercial television, primari- ly because most of it was produced by Britain's own public television system.
          But the best of PBS is not entertainment shows, although even those, such as the current Jane Austen series on Masterpiece Theater, are much more educational than anything you would see on ABC, CBS, NBC and, ugh, FOX. As an aside in defense of commercial networks, most have wanted for decades to provide an hour-long nightly news pro- gram, but have been resisted by local outlets that prefer to provide more profitable, but repetitive giggle news, amateurishly presented and so ho- mogenized, one can travel across the country watching the local news at every stop and see it all presented in exactly the same giggly manner.

          The best of PBS is its informational and news programming. We prefer Bill Moy- ers Journal as the best news-oriented show PBS offers. The hour-long nightly news show, The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, of- fers far more information on specific sub- jects in the news than any of the commercial networks would consider providing over a year's time. Instead, the commercial entities laughingly offer "in-depth reports," which means they may spend two minutes in- stead of one on a subject, staging question-and-answer with reporters to make it appear the perfectly coiffed news anchor (more accurately termed "news readers" by the British), actually is informed and engaged about the subject. Sadly, The NewsHour does some of that phony stuff itself.

          All sorts of other news and informa- tional programming is presented on PBS, probably not seen by many people, but im- portant nonetheless, programming that would never appear on commercial net- works. Much of that programming happens to be valuable history and there is no problem with rerunning shows such as the 1987 "Eyes on the Prize" year after year after year for generation after generation.
          The Times writer gives only a passing mention of "prime-time stalwarts" on PBS, but then dismisses them as old-fashioned. His tragic effort ignores that fact PBS is, for the most part, doing what it always has been intended to do--offer valuable programming that would never be seen if PBS did not exist, not even on the plethora of cable networks we have today.       
          PBS itself trumpets these shows on its home page. Look down the line of programs, and check out the "news and views" section, and see if you cannot learn something by tuning in.

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Guns For Self-Defense Myth

News item: Man stabs to death at least five officers inside Shanghai police station. Chinese police are well-armed. If they were unable to defend themselves with their handguns, what chance does anyone else have.
         Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rests much of the 5-4 majority opinion of the court in D.C. v Heller on the alleged right to have the right to one’s defense of one’s self defense. Supposedly, if one has a gun, one can protect oneself against attackers, intruders and all sorts of evil-doers.
          A check of blogs and pro-gun Web sites leading up to and including the court’s decision showed this is not an issue for the weak at heart.
        Our take on the d.c. v heller gun-control issue before the court attracted the ire of so many gun nuts, we were drawn into reading their comments and blogs and checking out their Web sites.
          A check of blogs and pro-gun Web sites leading up to and including the court’s decision showed this is not an issue for the weak at heart.
          We were struck by two factors--how borderline illiterate so many of the gun-nut bloggers are (not just on this issue, but others as well) and how many expressed macho boasts, such as “you’ll have to pry my gun from my dead, cold hands,” aping the John Wayne-type post of the late National Rifle Association figurehead, Charlton Heston.
      If anyone were ever in favor of gun control, knowing such people are out there with guns in their hands is justification enough.
          But since our mantra is to be informed, we checked out to the best we could what is known about the success of gun possession in fending off various criminals.
          The evidence is sparse, and what there is of that is old, but it puts the lie to the claim that personal possession of a gun is an effective defense.
          Although one would presume that a person who uses a gun successfully to repel an intruder or an attacker would then report the incident to the police, if for no other reason than to seek to put the perpetrator in jail.
          A cursory search turned up no research, not even U.S. Justice Department tracts based on voluminous federal, state and local crime reports, that compares the claims of self-defense with police reports of such claims.
          What we are left with is old research, much of it based on telephone interviews in which respondents merely state their experience, with no followup or comparison with other records to determine if the claims fit a pattern.
          The most credible of that research (federal studies of statistics and peer-reviewed journal work) suggest there is no self-defense value to keeping a gun at home.
          The best comparison was reported back in 1986 by the New England Journal of Medicine, which compared police information with stated claims in one Washington county. Of 743 firearm-related deaths over a six-year period (70.5 percent involved handguns), 398 occurred in the home where the firearm was kept, but only seven people were killed in self-defense, and only two of those killed were shot during attempted entry. Nine were accidental (the gun-owner or someone else in the home was the victim). Researchers concluded a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill someone other than an intruder, i.e., a member of the household or friends.
         Indeed, there have been incidents where a gun has been used successfully in self-defense, but those cases are rare, and most of those involved a perpetrator who was not armed.
         Justice Department surveys from the mid-1990s show that just over a third of American households contain a gun, but three-quarters of those claim they have one for self-protection.
          Another chant of gun nuts is that if guns are taken away from them, only criminals will have guns. Federal statistics show that 340,000 crimes each year involve the theft of firearms, two-thirds of them during household burglaries. It appears it is legitimate gun owners who are supplying the criminals with guns.

 Scalia's Gun-Control Vote

         The next time you hear Justice Antonin Scalia call himself a con- stitutional “originalist,” laugh out loud. As we suggested in the previous piece he might, Scalia tortured the words, twisting them this way and that to make them support an ideologue’s view of the Second Amend- ment. That four others followed him down that road is a shame that has resulted in nothing but turning the Constitution into a pretzel.
          The nation’s gun nuts, and their few rational supporters, are cele- brating the decision, but they don’t realize that lower courts are going to be hard put to make any sense of it. Those courts’ conclusions are like- ly to be in such disagreement with each other, the issue may be back before the Supreme Court in much less than the nearly 70 years it took to review the issue this time.
          One of the first such questions raised by the ruling is its applica- tion beyond the District of Columbia, whose laws are within federal grounds, not a state's. On its face, the ruling applies only there and nowhere else, but similar laws exist in other cities. Does the tortured Scalia explanation justifying the ruling actually have any impact on other jurisdictions? The lower courts will have to sort that out.
          An originalist view, as we said earlier, would read the same nexus between a right to bear arms and a state-run militia, as all the court’s precedents have read. An originalist view would hold the Constitution to mean only what it meant to the authors at the time they wrote it, with any other interpretation to be embodied only in changes in constitution- ally allowed law or changes in the Constitution itself.
          In his majority opinion, as we suggested he might, Scalia has thrown all of that out the window, or as in today’s tabloid-cable vernacu- lar, under the bus. And, as we suggested he might, Scalia has twisted words into pretzels to make them fit his ideology.
          He refers to the opening clause of the Second Amendment as “prefatory” and then ignores its existence, leaving an unrestricted right to bear arms. But with his pretzel words, he then suggests that well, this isn’t actually an unlimited right, that governments can still restrict some gun ownership, but not others, with no support for that conclusion, leav- ing it to the lower courts to figure out, court by court by court.
          This is the muddied opinion. For better writing and better judg- ment on this issue, we recommend the dissenting opinions of Justices Stevens and Breyer at the end.

Scalia: Activist Justice

          Antonin Scalia calls himself an originalist to explain the reasoning behind his Supreme Court votes. In truth, Scalia is one of the most activ- ist of the justices, a term applied to justices they don’t like by most orig- inalists.
          Being an originalist would be consistent with being a political con- servative. Both ideologies reflect a preference that time never change, that everything stay the same, like the Amish attempt to freeze time at the end of the 1600s. Similarly, a U.S. Constitution originalist would freeze time to a point a few decades later, to 1787.
          That view of the Constitution says the document refers only to the situation that existed at the time it was written, 1787. Whatever the Con- stitution says, it means only what it meant to the authors at the time and has no application to anything that comes later. If society changes after that and changes in law need to be made, then the Constitution needs to be changed to apply to that new situation, and the Constitution itself says how that is to be done.
          That interpretation is somewhat weird, because why would the Constitution have been written in the manner than it was, without refer- ences to the present, i.e., 1787 or the situation that was in place at that time. Everything about the Constitution suggests it was intended to be relevant forever, or at least forever as it applies to the existence of the nascent nation.
          Activists are considered those with an opposite view of the Con- stitution, that the Constitution itself established the Supreme Court to interpret the laws and actions of American governments and whether they comply with the restrictions or powers granted by the Constitution. The term “activists” applies to conservative as well as liberals, but it most often is intended by conservatives as a scurrilous description of a liberal.
          The most activist a justice can be is in overturning a precedent of the court, as in overturning the court’s long-held decision in 1939 interp- reting the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms as meaning that right exists as part of a militia and that state and local governments are free to control or ban any other type of gun use.
          But let us let Scalia have his weird originalist view of the Constitu- tion and assume it is a reasonable one. If one has a philosophy as well thought out as Scalia at least pretends his to be, then one would expect him to be consistent about it and to take that view down the line.
          Anyone who has watched Scalia during dozens of oral arguments before the court or has read dozens of his opinions for the court, his agreements with the majority and his dissents with the major- ity, one knows Scalia is anything but consistent. Where he is consistent is in his arrogance, in hogging the hour-long proceeding, sometimes in- terrupting his fellow justices, and often bullying the lawyers before him.
          His inconsistency is in his choice of words. He twists them like pretzels to make them appear to mean what he would prefer them to mean so they can support the viewpoint he wants to make fit into his originalist theory. He did the same in the oral arguments in D.C. vs. Heller, probably the most important 2nd amendment case to be decided by the court in more than half a century.
          It is not a stretch to say the justices should, in interpreting a part of the Constitution, should see it only as a part and should interpret that part in relationship to the rest of what the Constitution says.
          The 2nd Amendment at the core of the gun-control issue states: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
          The 10th Amendment has a bearing because it says that what- ever is not restricted by the Constitution, a state is free to restrict if it wishes and if it does not, the people are free to do whatever is not re- stricted, the idea at the very core of democracy: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
          The militia also comes up early on in the Constitution, in Article I laying out the powers of the legislative branch. It says Congress has the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; to pro- vide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appoint- ment of the officers and the authority of training the militia ac- cording to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
          Anyone who has read a newspaper or caught broadcast news has seen all of those actions carried out by an armed force controlled by the states. Those armed entities are universally called the National Guard.
          Since those opposed to gun control do so by rejecting the need, or even the existence of a militia these modern days, another section of the main body of the Constitution, the part laying out the powers of the executive branch, i.e., the president is relevant.
          Article II, Section 2: “The president shall be commander-in- chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”
          The current president relied on that specific provision to order the various National Guards of the states to the war in Iraq, sealing the fact state militias do exist today in the form of the National Guard.
          Thus, Scalia brought his originalist view to bear in the oral argu- ments in D.C. v Heller when he said to one of the lawyers he did not believe there was a contradiction between the personal guarantee of the 2nd amendment and its reference to a militia. But then he ignores the reference in Article II, Section 2 by saying, “not necessarily a state-man- aged militia because the militia that resisted the British was not state- managed.”
          In his pretzel-word way, Scalia then adds, “But why isn’t it per- fectly plausible, indeed reasonable, to assume that since the framers knew that the way militias were destroyed by tyrants in the past was not by passing a law against militias, but by taking away the people’s wea- pons—that was the way militias were destroyed. The two clauses go together beautifully: since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” He’s trying to say it is not the militia’s needs that guarantees the right to bear arms, but the need of someone who might have to be a member of a militia even if one does not exist.
          Elsewhere in the argument, Scalia said, “The principal purpose here is the militia, but the—but the second clause goes beyond the mil- itia and says the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” He then suggests the second clause is broader than the first.
          In truth, the sentence that is the 2nd Amendment is not written that way. Any grammarian can tell you the clauses are tied and are not separate, that the second one relies on the first. The first clause sets up the second and is not even a complete sentence on its own.
          Thus, Scalia faced a conundrum of his own making when he voted in the D.C. v Heller gun-control case. As an originalist, he had to vote for the ability of a government to restrict gun possession, but as a right-wing conservative, he had to vote against any bans on the individual right to bear arms.
          Thus, Scalia faced a conundrum of his own making when he voted in the D.C. v Heller gun-control case. As an originalist, he had to vote for the ability of a government to restrict gun possession, but as a right-wing conservative, he had to vote against any bans on the individual right to bear arms.

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Setting the Record
Straight--On Guns

And Flying Pigs

The time has come, the walrus said,
To talk of many things:                   
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings                   
And why the sea is boiling hot,       
And whether pigs have wings.

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Helsinki, Omaha
Kirkwood, Louisiana Tech, Portsmouth, Los Angeles, Lane Bryant, DeKalb           Next?

          The incidents go on and on and what is the National Rifle Associ- ation's response? "Guns don't kill people, people do." That is a non-se- quitur response, as it was intended to be -- deflect the question you do not want to hear and turn it to something else. Who said guns kill peo- ple by themselves?

     The matter that needs to be addressed is the easy access to guns by people who will do stupid things with them, causing far more destruction and death than with any weapon that does not rely on an explosive force.

          These are weapons of destruction, just as deadly as smoking tobacco, and much more efficient and quick about it. It is far more irresponsible to allow firearms to be widely and easily available than to allow cigarettes to be available, yet even the laws that exist to govern guns are far less strict than those applied to tobacco.
          The only tobacco restrictions are decades of "just don't advertise them on TV" to today's restrictions on where you smoke, not at all on whether you can smoke at all. Despite all the evidence that smoking tobacco is a lethal cancer-causing addictive, tobacco companies still push them, and change their corporate names so you can no longer identify the perpetrators. The NRA never offers comments about any of these massacres because it pretends that guns are not associated with them, that the events have nothing to do with guns.

          Well, we need to talk about this  subject, instead of talking about whether pigs have wings and pretending the world is the reverse of what it is and citing only part of the Second Amendment and pre- tending it says other than what it says.
          If we do not, there will continue to be Columbines and Virginia Techs and Helsinkis and Omahas and on and on on. The why is not the issue for the common weal, it is the how that counts. There will continue to be the pretense that possession of guns is worthwhile because some people can use them to protect their property -- the NRA never misses a chance to note those times that such use is successful in one out of the thousand times they are kept for that purpose. It blithely ignores the other 999 cases in which the possession of a gun leads to tragedy be- falling the possessor.

          Here are some possible actions that can be taken at the federal level, the only level where any restrictions can be an effective check, be- ginning with the smallest and building to the ultimate.
          Go ahead and institute those mental-con- dition checks. One might also include everyone seeking "fame" in today's society of sycophants.
          Otherwise, do something useful, beginning with what the NRA will label the camel's nose under the tent, and let us hope it is at least that:

--Ban sales of firearms to anyone under 21, just as sell- ing cigarettes is  restricted.
--Hold a firearm possessor liable for any damages caused by an under-age person using that firearm.
--Ban personal concealment of firearm while not in one's  home.
--Require all firearms in personal possession to be kept locked up.
--Ban all but supervised and licensed possession of handguns.
--Expand the ban to all firearms. 
--Ban all handguns.
--Ban the private possession of all firearms.
--Restrict the possession of firearms by law enforcers.
--Restrict even the use of firearms by law enforcers.
--Ban all firearms not kept by state militias (National Guard), just to be in compliance with the Second Amendment.   
Choose!!!

The sun was shining on the sea,            
Shining with all its might.                       
He did his very best to make                  
The billows smooth and bright.               
And this was odd, because it was          
The middle of the night.                         
So said Tweedledum to Tweedledee 
Alice Through the Looking Glass 

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Supreme Court decides D.C. ban on handguns 

          The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case, 07-290, that could mean, as early as next May, a United States returning to the gun-toting West depicted in horse operas or just the latest in a long line of decisions based upon the Constitution as it is rather than one some quarters want it to be saying. Or, more likely, something in between.
          The Second Amendment, the No. 2 item in the Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution, states in full: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be in- fringed.”
          Gun supporters usually cite only the latter half of the amend- ment, which with the rest of the first 10 rights has an anniversary Dec. 15. But the latter half is part of the same sentence, and the framers were not fools, so the latter and first half do not exist ot exist without the other.
          Thus, if the only weapons allowed in the United States other than those controlled by the military were kept in town or state armories des- ignated for that purpose, the Second Amendment would be satisfied. And just about every town of any size has one. They are called National Guard armories because the National Guard is what we call our militias these days.

Second Amendment

A well-regulated militia, being necessary

to the security of a free state, the right of

               the people to keep and bear arms, shall                        not be infringed.                                             

          Just down the road in the U.S. Constitution, there resides the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
          That means the individual states have the power to ban guns within their borders. Similarly, if the state itself does not ban guns, but its Constitution allows its municipalities to do so, towns and cities may ban guns, neither entity in violation of the Second Amendment. Con-
versely, if the federal government, a state or town does not ban guns, the U.S. Constitution says you can have them.
          The U.S. Supreme Court ruling as it stands today holds to this interpretation of the Second Amendment, but could be altered if the court rules as early as next May in a case concerning a Washington, D.C., gun-control law.
          The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, or the local government of the U.S. capital versus Dick Anthony Heller. The question presented to the court is a narrow one. It asks whether a municipality can ban any gun if it is kept in a home. In this case, D.C. enacted a law that banned private ownership of hand guns, regardless of where it is kept, but al- lowed ownership of rifles and shotguns:
                                QUESTION PRESENTED
                Whether the Second Amendment guarantees law-
           abiding,  adult  individuals  a  right  to  keep  ordinary,
           functional   firearms,   including   handguns,   in   their
           homes.
          Heller took the case to federal court and won at the appeals court level. D.C. is a municipality, but challenges to its laws are treated as federal issues since it is not part of a state with its own court system. Thus, its cases are handled in the federal District Court and Appeals Court that also review federal laws.
          Since the appeals court ruling overturning the district court's re- jection of Heller's arguments flew in the face of the last time the land's highest court adjudicated the issue--1939--and the rest of the appeals court districts still operated according to that last decision, the Supreme Court had little choice but to consider the case even though it has turned down every other gun-possession case over the past 70 years.
          On its surface, this is a narrowly defined issue--whether one type of gun, including the handguns specified in the law, can be banned if it is kept in one's home. The court always has upheld a more sweeping right of governments to limit gun possession to "militias," as clearly stated in the Second Amendment.
          If the court rules narrowly, it will confirm or not confirm a munici- pality may ban the ownership of a gun kept in a home, essentially leav- ing its most recent decision, in 1939, the law of the land.

          But biases, agendas and unique readings of the meaning of laws and the Constitution often creep into Supreme Court decisions.
          The current court is one com- posed of a majority chosen by Republi- can presidents who tend to be more em- bracing of the National Rifle Association, which rarely quotes anything more than the huge and influential membership.
          The NRA, then located on the edge of downtown D.C., put off its  planned relocation to the far suburbs of Virginia for a few years because it justified the initial move as because D.C. had become too dangerous, making it the laughing stock of a metropolitan area that appreciated iro- ny. Area residents knew that D.C. had become the nation's capital for drive-by shootings (not drive-by knifings) and the murder capital of the    nation, just about all of those crimes commited with guns.         
          But the NRA claims a membership of more than 4.3 million mem- bers, a huge voting bloc that often actually does vote as a bloc, fired up by NRA screeds. Ironically, the group has filed no briefs in the case so far, but was fighting hard behind the scenes to see the case did not make it to the high court. It lost that effort, a rarity for the organization, but the NRA never quits.

          So anything could happen.
          A decision is expected to be handed down in June. The court could still punt the case on some legal technicality.
          Don't look for any help from presidential candidates. Few, regardless of party, have the inclination to challenge the NRA and its huge voting bloc. Look for Re- publicans to hug the group, Democrats to dance around a commitment one way or the other.
          Stay tuned.

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          Stem Cell View           Invites New Setback

          Charles Krauthammer is a well-educated psychiatrist, wheel chair-bound paralytic and conservative syndicated columnist distributed by the Washington Post. He does occasionally step out of conservative character and defy being put into a political category, but his writings are closely watched by learned conservatives.

          Now, however, he is seizing upon some of the latest  research to justify President Bush's limits on federal help for stem-cell re- search. We make the politically incorrect mention of his physical state, the result of a 1972 diving accident, because one would                  Stem Cell Basics      think someone who has experienced and benefited from some of the best in medical work would be a bit more generous in allowing it to be available to others.
          Krauthammer declares in a column, "The embryonic stem cell debate is over" and cited recent research as meaning Bush's 2001 exec- utive order that has crippled stem cell research has "been so thoroughly vindicated." Krauthammer praises Bush for taking a "moral stance" in saving human embryos. Bush's "moral stance" was mainly an effort to cater to the anti-abortionists and a major right-wing causes.

          If that assertion catches on, it could set back this valuable field of research for many more years be- yond the delay Bush's "moral stance" already has caused.
          The new research, conducted simultaneously by researchers in Wisconsin and Japan, claims stem cells, which determine how animals, including humans, turn out, can be har- vested from the skin of a patient for treating genetically based illnesses. This is an especially important segment of research because scientists are finding more and more evidence that all illness may be genetically based. Any breakthroughs in that field of study are important.

          The new research would be a tremendous breakthrough, but most experts in the field say it does not ob- viate the need for embryonic stem cell research, still the most valuable source of the magical cells.

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Paper? Plastic?

It's Really Not a Toss-up

          The confusion over whether it is better to ask for paper or plastic bags at the grocery store stems from a failure by most people to complete the recycling circle. For recycling to occur, the entire circle must be completed.
          Separating something into a recyc- ling bin does not mean you have recycled. You have only performed one of the many tasks that go into completing the circle of recycling.
          Similarly, if you do not consider the making of the product in the first place, you have not gathered enough information to make a decision about something such as whether paper is better than plastic.

The cycle of plastic:
          1. The plastic bags you receive in retail stores are made from the same crude oil that is refined into the gasoline you burn in your automobile or heating oil that keeps homes warm during cold weather.
          When the crude oil is refined, the stuff (dross) that is left by that process happens to be the highest-quality portion of the oil. But to become gaso- line or heating oil, it would have to be refined again. Oil companies con- sider it more profitable to turn that dross into things such as plastic bags than to run it back through the refining process.
          If that dross were re-refined, it would add enough oil to the na- tion’s supply that the cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump at today’s prices would be reduced by about 10 cents. (The first analyses of this issue, which set the cost at four cents a gallon, were performed when gasoline prices were less than a dollar a gallon.)
          Also, by receiving plastic instead of paper, you are at least en- couraging further use of finite, not renewable, fossil fuels that also have a gotcha of contributing to carbon dioxide levels, all at a time we are sup- posed to be trying to become independent of foreign sources.
          The law of supply and demand being what it is, that means that driving up the demand for plastic by accepting it instead of paper at the store costs you an extra 10 cents a gallon for gas.

          2. After its contents are removed, a plastic bag usually is thrown away or saved for use as a container for discarding other material, meaning it ends up along with other garbage either disposed of in a landfill or burned or, as is too often the case, to be carried by the wind or water along with other trash.
          People often believe they are doing good and contributing to the environment by “recyling” the bags. They believe they have done so simply by putting the bags in a recycling bin, supposedly to be collected and made into something else. They have not.
          Despite two decades of research, no one has developed a cost- effective way to reuse those plastic bags (thus completing the recycling loop) even on a massive scale. Thus, today just about all plastic bags turned in for recycling are wasting away in warehouses waiting for a prof- itable solution, or, quite likely, they’ve already been dumped or burned.
          Plastic bags are not recycled.

The cycle of paper:
          Check the fine print on the bottom of a paper bag supplied by a retail store. Safe- way says its bags include 40 percent re- cycled content. Most paper bags made to- day claim similar content.
          That means nearly half of that bag already has gone through a recycling process and that by demanding it instead of plastic, you not only are providing encouragement for continu- ing that initial process, you are encouraging repetitions of it.
          The 60 percent of the bag that has not already been recycled usually is made from shavings, sawdust and other detritus left over from processing wood into other products. There is a negative impact for ask- ing for that bag, however—you are making it cheaper to produce those other wood products made from trees cut down for those purposes. On the other hand, trees are, in theory, renewable resources.
          Just as with plastic bags, paper bags can be put to use for other purposes—storing items, holding discarded newspapers until the bag and the papers can be recycled together, or reused to carry home the next set of groceries. In those cases, it is best to put one bag inside the other for extra strength.
          Eventually, a paper bag no longer can be used, but it can be re- cycled and usually is. That is the source of much of that 40 percent re- cycled content.
          Paper bags usually are recycled, often many times.

          All sorts of money and energy have been spent on life-cycle analyses trying to determine which is better, or put another way, less offensive. Arguments are made that the manufacturing process for making paper bags and later for recycling them con- sumes more extra energy than does the process for making plastic bags in the first place. But what if the plastic bags actually were recycled? The manu- facturing process for paper still might be more energy-consuming than that of the paper bag, but the gap would be smaller.
          It would be nice if everyone could or would "go totally green," but that is simply not realistic in today's society. We all make choices, about which charity to support over another, and about which part of "go- ing green" we find it convenient to support, based upon their own experi- ences or environmental concerns.
          Retail stores prefer plastic because it means they just have to tell the clerk not to put some products in with others, and don’t have to train them in how to load a paper bag. And plastic takes up less storage space at the store than paper.
          Most consumers prefer plastic because it is easier for them to handle in most cases.
          It's nice that these life-cycle analyses have been done, and it would be nice if the environmental issues could be reduced to objective terms. But in today's society, we have our individual lifestyles and will continue to look at things subjectviely. Given that, few of us are going to delve into the minute study of life-cycle costs, but we do understand what we are willing to do to help the environment.
          If one considers the entire recycling process for each, paper bags are clear winners over plastic ones.