All the sins of Larry Summers that justified his comeuppance

Since yesterday, when Larry Summers announced that he is taking his name out of consideration for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I have received two emails from old friends.  Hey, Judy, what do you think of that?  (As if they didn't know!)
Let us not cry for Larry and his lost dream.  He will have to satisfy himself in his comfy office at Harvard, and at whatever hedge fund he's hanging out at these days.  The man will not starve, though a little bit of fasting might not hurt him.
Still, it is time for me to lay out ALL of his sins, and to wonder why President Obama would ever have thought he would be acceptable to his (Obama's) base.  Most of these you will know about.  One, however, was embedded deep in one of Summers' op-ed pieces in the Washington Post over the past year.  It's the most cardinal sin of all.

Recap:  The frequently mentioned sins:  

1.  Responsible for the Financial Crisis:  He and his mentor (Bob Rubin) disparaged Brooksley Born, of CPSC, back in the 1990's, when she tried to get the Clinton Administration to do something about  the danger of unregulated derivative markets.  Those two, along with Alan Greenspan, snickered at little Brooksley who, as female, could not possibly understand the workings of big finance.  Eventually, to ensure their point of view, the four horsemen (Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and Gramm)  shepherded the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 through Congress near Christmas 2000.  Did Clinton even know what he had signed?  Well, not his greatest hour, but he listened to his advisors.  His advisor, our boy Summers, was not only wrong on the issue, he was arrogant about opposing views.   Unlike Alan Greenspan, he has never apologized for his role in the fiasco.

2.  Harvard Remarks on Women:  After alienating the faculty (let's forgive that), he made some remarks about women and math, which were probably inadvertent but which reflected an unscientific mindset and a clear bias against women.  He was pointing out the achievement gap in higher math between men and women. That's simple fact.  He argued for more research on the causes of same.  That's good.  But, then, he couldn't stop.  He said his "hunch" was that the cause of the gender gap is genetic and not environmental.  Ah, Larry. There it is.  No evidence, but your null hypothesis (needing to be disproven) was genetic male superiority!  Done as President of Harvard.  Yea!

3.  Performance in the White House during the Obama years.  Divisive, dithering, turf-conscious.  Ron Susskind's book, "Confidence Men" laid it all out.  I needn't say more.  Here is the New York Times article that describes Summers and what everyone (except the President, apparently) thought about him.  I will say no more as this item makes me wonder about my own crush on President Obama.  I don't want to go there.

The Mortal Sin:  (not mentioned in any of the news articles)

1.   The man supports the building of the Keystone Pipeline.  Why, he's such a genius that he knows about energy policy and global warming even better than the vast majority of climate scientists,   When I read his Washington Post Column (on economic growth) in which he put forth his argument, I felt obliged to write an angry letter to the Post editor asking why they print this man's drivel after his performance in numbers 1, 2, and 3 above. (I thought I was being clever, but my screed was not published.)  I have just spent a half hour looking for that opinion piece in the Post and could not find it.  But here it is, reprinted in a Reuters-India paper.

RIP, Public Servant Summers!  Enjoy retirement advising the hedge fund managers.

LWV should look into transparency of Fracking information

Here's something for a League of Women Voter's initiative to tackle! From ProPublica:   Fracking industry is pushing for legislation that would muddy the information about the chemical composition of fracking materials.  Where is transparancy?  (Not in the water?  Not in the government?)

More environmental hazards of Fracking showing up.

ProPublica's latest report on the inability of the fracking industry to protect our aquifers.  What a surprise!

A vivid example of the dangers of Fracking

Is there any such thing as "adequate" regulation of an environmental hazard?  My friend with an insider's knowledge of FDA says no, and she peppers me with stories about how politics have made the job of reviewers difficult.  (Her experience dates back to the Bush years, so I calm myself by thinking that all of this has changed since the new leadership at the FDA has arrived.  (Some of those higher ups are holdovers, however, so why should I think they've changed their spots?) 
Well... this post is about hydraulic fracking, the environmental issue du jour for Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.  Here is an article about some of the health problems that westerners in the path of fracking have experienced, brought to you by ProPublica, that innovative on-line source of investigative journalism.
Of course, I sit here with my new hip, wondering whether it's one of those metal-on-metal things that are failing at a rate of about 29% so far (based on British data...we Americans don't have registries, being ostriches as we are).  So, maybe FDA is more important than the future of the planet. 

Imagine the USA without regulators of gas pipelines.

When your TeaParty friend starts up again this fall, calling for deep federal discretionary spending cuts, here's a great example to (figuratively) shove in her face of an industrial regulation that we may not be able to live without.
This gas pipeline example involves faulty welds holding together the Millenium Pipeline Company's line through the southern tier of New York State.  Cities I know well -- Spencer, Oswego to name two --are in the pipeline's path. For a map of the track of the pipeline through New York's southern tier, see NaturalGasWatch.org. 
ProPublica has a good article on how bad the situation with the pipeline is.  If you know people who live in the southern tier of NY State, pass this information on. 
We should start a catalogue of federal government "discretionary" programs that are endangered by steep budget cuts.  I betcha our teaparty friends would say, well, of course not THIS program, but the other, wasteful, programs are the ones that need to go.  Or, maybe they would say this is just an outlier situation that the company will handle on its own quite nicely.  (I wish the company had addressed the issue somewhere in its web site. I would sleep better at night on behalf of my friends in  Oswego and Spencer if I thought the company was taking safety issues seriously enough to inform the public.)
We middle-of-the-roaders should start to catalogue federal discretionary programs, especially regulatory ones, that are worth their costs beyond a shadow of a doubt.  And, ask our teaparty friends to start listing the specific programs or regulations that are not worth their costs.  Let's see what we all come up with.

Tales of Two Fracking States: PA and MD

I just read a ProPublica report on Pennsylvania's department of environmental protection's new rule requiring inspectors to get all violations of natural gas drilling operations approved by the head of the agency.  Implication:  this is bad for the environment.  But I'm not so sure.  If human being regulators are susceptible to corruption, isn't it better to have one central actor to blame when the stuff hits the fan?  Having a lot of manipulatable inspectors with the power of the citation is not my idea of responsible regulation.  Nevertheless, PA seems hellbent on sucking the stuff out of the bowels of the earth.

Maryland, on the other hand, is delaying, studying, etc., according to the Washington Post's article a few days ago.  Will that be any better in the end? 

Oh, we of little faith -- science is our hope.  science is our folly.  Which?

Natural gas Fracking in Pennsylvania could ruin New York's Finger Lake

Friend Mary let me know that today's New York Times Article on natural gas fracking wells and their impact on the environment is a must read for anyone who loves the still relatively pristine beauty of New York's Finger Lakes, particularly Cayuga. 
Put it together with the ProPublica report mentioned in my previous post, on what the fracking technology has done to water in Wyoming, and it's scary that, once again, we seem unable as a society to limit our use of energy and abuse of the environment.

Fracking for natural gas, or conserving at the pump?

The new fracking technology proposed by the natural gas industry promises to reduce energy costs in the near term, but at what cost to the environment?  Fracking began in the US in Wyoming, and the current action is in Pennsylvania, New York State, and even Maryland.  Here is a ProPublica article on the impact of fracking on fresh water in Wyoming.  It's long but gripping.
Meanwhile, I'm cheering the rising price of oil, due to international events and China's demand, which may lead us Americans to start conserving at the pump.  There's nothing like $4.50 a gallon to get one to start thinking about high-mileage cars.  A gas tax that would get us there-- coupled with fixed dollar relief through payroll tax holidays and social security checks -- is what I think is the only sensible long-run energy-related response to so many problems:  balance of payments, federal deficit,  national security, and global warming,
Especially if you live in New York, Maryland or Pennsylvania, and are alarmed by what's happening in the shale bed regions of those states, you can pass on the Propublica article.   People should start contacting their state legislators about this before it's permanently too late. 

ProPublica is an on-line experiment in investigative journalism that is independent and thorough.  You can subscribe to email alerts -- I do. 

Make your own federal budget choices with this new on-line tool.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group of gurus who fret about our future (don't we all these days?) has just published a great little tool/game you can use to look at how various spending and tax changes would affect our ability to reach a "sustainable" budget by the year 2020. Try the Budget Simulator.
My favorite among the choices is to increase the gas tax by 10 cents, but I would do a lot more than that! I would vary the gas tax inversely with the oil price to maintain an at-the-pump price of $3.50 (regular), rising gradually to $4.00 per gallon over the next 5 years. That would send the signal that the market needs for manufacturers to invest in energy-saving car models, and for consumers to favor conservation. A double win! Our dependence on foreign fuel would gradually stabilize itself, and some tax revenue would help with the deficit. (We could give some of it back to the working poor by exempting the first $10K of income from social security tax.) My wise environmental activist lawyer friend Ben says this approach would be dead on arrival in the Congress. I'm going to start my own oil-can party, or maybe I'll call it the "Can Oil"Party.

Best argument for higher Fed taxes on gasoline

Today's Wall Street Journal (3/9/09) has a special section on the environment (Section R). Can only see it online if you subscribe to WSJ online, so fuggedabout it. In a nutshell, Mike Jackson of AutoNation (car retailer) made the case for why we need a gas tax that will bring price of gasoline to $4.00 at the pump. At current gas prices, says he, the demand for high gas mileage cars is nada, zilch. When gas hit $4.00, all that the consumer cared about was getting high gas mileage. Politicos say that it's a no-go with Americans, but what if it was REVENUE NEUTRAL? That is, what if it was given back dollar for dollar to taxpayers (either through payroll tax holiday or tax credits)? Or, maybe, relief could go to taxpayers based on state's population density or miles driven per capita (that's my idea). Point is, no high gas price, no energy efficiency!